Creative Director and Artist: Mark Kelly
Mark Kelly is a Scottish-born photographer, designer and illustrator based in and around Los Angeles. In addition to his freelance work for companies such as Onyx Path Publishing and Paradox Interactive, he is the owner and creative lead for Dirty Vortex.
Always Dreaming… Darkly.
Developer: Matthew Dawkins
Matthew Dawkins is a writer and developer of tabletop roleplaying games and video games based in the UK, with credits including Vampire: The Masquerade, They Came from Beneath the Sea!, and Mummy: The Curse, among many others. Matthew is a mainstay of the Onyx Path Publishing development team and also hosts a popular YouTube channel. As a hungry consumer of horror media, especially the British horror movies of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, Matthew is thrilled to act as Solemn Vale’s developer and co-writer. Matthew’s full credits are available on matthewdawkins.com
Writer: David Cartwright
David Cartwright was born in 1981, and raised in a Golden Age of Saturday morning cartoons. From that time and forever more he has been an avid watcher and reader of Fantasy and Horror, encompassing the likes of The Hammer Horror catalogue and Friday the 13th, to The Walking Dead and Train to Busan, and the works of Stephen King and James Herbert.
David has been a Jack of many trades, but so far, a master of none. Previous jobs in manufacturing have given way to writing full-time whilst his academic background includes studying in Media and Counselling. His credits to date encompass work in both literature and RPG. He wrote the Camelot 2050 Trilogy, and made contributions to the Chronicles/World of Darkness books via Onyx Path Publishing, and the Age of Steel setting by Isolation Games.
He lives in Hampshire, England with his family, his cat and his growing collection of flannel shirts.
Writer: Christopher Allen
Chris Allen lives in Bristol in the South West of England, perhaps suspiciously close to the supposed location of Solemn Vale. He designed the Wyrd Abacus system for Solemn Vale, and has been writing and designing on roleplaying and miniatures games since the mid-2000s, including credits in the Bablyon 5, Starship Troopers, Chronicles of Darkness, World of Darkness, and Trinity Continuum rpgs. He’s also sometimes found in a soggy field with nearly two thousand other folks in costumes, as part of the plot team for Empire LRP.
Writer: Ross Fisher-Davis
Ross Fisher-Davis knows a thing or two about strange little rural English towns. A Cornish native, as a child he once saw a dryad in the forest. Dabbling in filmmaking, ghost hunting, and journalism over the years, Ross is far too widely read for his own good, with rooms full of books on history, mythology, spirituality and everything bizarre. Now living in Los Angeles, Ross is a professional writer who has created content for Vampire: The Masquerade, Deadlands, and a multitude of fantasy fiction. Occasional observations on film, music, and the ongoing adventures of the fantasy heroine Cerce Stormbringer can be found at absenceoflove.blogspot.com
Writer: Alan Gowing
Alan Gowing hails from a city of glass and now lives in Cardiff, where he teaches Creative Writing and talks enthusiastically about Urban Folklore and Interactive Fiction. His writing credits include Chronicles of Darkness: The Contagion Chronicles, Pugmire: Pan’s Guide for New Pioneers and Mage The Ascension: Victorian Age. His own age is indeterminate, but his love for tweed is obvious.
Writer: Ashley Perryman
I have been playing role playing games since the early 1980s, larp from the mid 80s. Since the 1990s I have been writing and designing larp, mostly in UK and Ireland and have won awards for this work. I was a member of the Men in Black, Steve Jackson Games Convention Support Team, concentration mostly on GURPs, Transhuman Space and In Nomine. I have been involved in organising gaming conventions and have been both a team member and lead in large events for an international larp organisation which focussed on vampire material. Currently I am safety lead for an large high budget international larp scheduled to run in Croatia this autumn.
Writer: Hilary Sklar
I have been roleplaying since the late 1980’s and ran a successful (award winning) single player RPG through physical mail for several years prior to the general availability of the internet. Since the early 90’s my partner and I have written and run larps and table top games at English and Irish conventions. I was a member of Steve Jackson’s ‘Men in Black’ (convention rep) team for many years during which time I wrote RPG and larp scenarios for the scheme, concentrating on In Nomine and Transhuman Space.
For the past four years I’ve been writing free-lance for tabletop RPGs with highlights being They Came from Beneath the Sea!, V5, Kult: Divinity Lost and Dune. In addition, at present I am the character-writing part of the organising team for an International Blockbuster Larp scheduled to run in Croatia this autumn.
Stretch Contributors
Steffie de Vaan
Danielle Lauzon
Richard Dansky
Phil Brucato
Graeme Davis
Graeme Davis is best known for his work on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and is the only writer to work on all four editions, including the ten-volume Director’s Cut of The Enemy Within campaign. He has written, co-written, or edited almost 150 products and countless articles for a wide range of board, card, miniatures, and roleplaying games, as well as tie-in fiction and more than 40 video games. He is a co-founder of indie tabletop roleplaying publisher Rookery Publications and a regular participant in their “Inside the Rookery” streams on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook.
Justin Achilli
Justin Achilli is a game designer with over two decades of experience in commercial computer games, roleplaying games, card games, and board games. He developed Vampire: The Masquerade and managed the editing and development department for White Wolf Game Studio. Currently he is the Brand Creative Lead for the World of Darkness at Paradox Interactive, having also worked in design at Funcom and Ubisoft.
Howard David Ingham
Howard David Ingham is the author of Cult Cinema: A Personal Exploration of Sects, Brainwashing and Bad Religion in Film and TV, the short story collection this is not a picture and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror.
Kenneth Hite
Multiple Origins, Golden Geek, and ENnie Award winner Kenneth Hite has written or designed 100+ tabletop roleplaying games and supplements, including GURPS Horror, Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London, the Delta Green RPG, The Fall of DELTA GREEN, The Dracula Dossier, Night’s Black Agents,and Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition. His other works include Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales, Tour de Lovecraft: The Destinations, and an annotated edition of Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow. Half of the award-winning podcast Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, and an Artistic Associate at Chicago’s WildClaw Theatre, he lives in Chicago with two Lovecraftian cats and his non-Lovecraftian wife, Sheila.
Allen Stroud
Allen Stroud is a lecturer at Coventry University, where he teaches BA (Hons) Media. Stroud completed a Ph. D. at the University of Winchester entitled An Investigation and Application of Writing Structures and World Development Techniques in Science Fiction and Fantasy. This covered his work on the computer games, Elite Dangerous (2014) and Chaos Reborn (2016). He then worked on Phoenix Point (2019) and Baldur’s Gate 3 by Larian Studios, due for release in 2021.
Stroud was a co-founder of Lave Radio, an Elite: Dangerous fan podcast that started in February 2013 and runs the annual convention Lavecon. His novel set in the Elite: Dangerous game world, called Elite: Lave Revolution was successfully funded on Kickstarter and published in late 2014. Stroud then supported Spidermind Games in developing the Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game and worked for Make Believe Games on Revolutionaries (2019), I Am Zombie (2021) and Solemn Vale (TBA).
Stroud was chair of Fantasycon 2017 and 2018, the annual convention of the British Fantasy Society, which hosts the British Fantasy Awards and will be chair of Fantasycon 2021. In June 2019, he became Chair of the British Science Fiction Association, taking over from Donna Bond.
