Chronos Compendium

This is Castle Drachenfels (1992), which is maybe Flame Publications’ last Warhammer supplement. Or it is a weird interregnum publication by Games Workshop after Flame’s shuttering but before the Warhamer Fantasy Role Play license was handed off to Hogshead. Whatever the case, this is Carl Sargent’s adaptation of the castle as portrayed in the novel Drachenfels, by Kim Newman (using the pen name Jack Yeovil, 1989).

What you get is a history of the castle and its owner (the great enchanter Constant Drachenfels is a legendary, monstrous figure in the lore of the Old World), a detailed room-by-room description of the horrible place, scads of NPCs and several “adventure themes.” These last are interesting, in that they give motive to players to explore the castle while also acknowledging that the castle is largely unconquerable. No megadungeon is, but rarely are they so upfront about it.

I'll admit it, I have a bit of a soft spot for old depictions of dinosaurs like this. While they certainly didn't age well, you have to remember that they were working with literal scraps and fragments of bone at the time. Plus, the usual method of identifying long extinct animals was usually by comparing their remains to living species. Dinosaurs vaguely resembled reptiles, so it would've made sense to depict them as lizards.

Not to mention these guys were literally among the first depictions of dinosaurs in media. The chances of them being 100% accurate on the first try are pretty dang slim.

I feel that we do need to remember where we came from in terms of paleontology and...well anything really if we are to fully appreciate the field. And these early depictions definitely did help set the groundwork for dinosaur research as a whole. The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs in particular helped foster the public's interest in dinosaurs that still lasts to this very day.

-Statues come from the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and directed by Sir Richard Owen

-Hylaeosaurus illustrated by S.G. Goodrich for Animal Kingdom Illustrated