Elderscrollers Sketchy Stuff

[Elderscroller]

Wow, really amazing pencilwork!  This is the sort of stuff one hopes to find when opening up somebody's sketchbook.  The monsters are weird, but believable, and I just love the archer at the end.  The costume, the expression, the arrows just indicated.  

By the way, it feels like a silly question, but is it just a regular pencil you use to get the nice dark shadows?

Thanks!
To answer your question about the pencils I use: They are regular pencils: HB, 2B, 6B and sometimes 8B, BUT you can´t draw to a really black value with pencils, you would have to combine them with charcoal (or draw in charcoal completely)
As charcoal needs to be fixed onto the paper with a spray, I don´t use it in sketchbooks, because it smears. To compensate for that, I adjust the contrast a bit in Photoshop as my scanner tends to wash out all my values.
The darkest accents in my pencils would be about an 8,5 to 8 on the original on a scale from 1-10 (10 being black). I adjust the contrast till all values are right again and use a curves adjustment to punch the darkest darks a bit more to about a 9 or 9.5. Hope that solves this mystery :)