A Cool Hot Mess's Art Stash

Okay so for those of you who don't know:

Heralds of Valdemar is a fantasy novel series that got started in the late 80s and is still having new installments published. It's about Valdemar, a fantasy country whose forces and government include Heralds. Heralds are people who are Chosen by Companions (magical horse-like beings) and Heralds, once Chosen, are proven to be fundamentally decent and uncorruptable people and also get psychic powers. As a result, the ruler of Valdemar always has to be a Herald to prevent a shitty ruler from taking over. The books run all over the place in the timeline, from the founding of the country to hundreds of years later. One of the main themes of the series is the power of good over evil and what exactly those mean, and how exactly you can use your magical horse-angel-friend and your psychic powers to become a fully realized person and save the people you love.

Guild Wars 2 is a fantasy video game about a fantasy world under threat of Elder Dragons who are primordial forces of nature that corrupt and blight the world and eat magic. In the game, you as the player character end up becoming second-in-command of an organization dedicated to killing the Elder Dragons to save the world as we know it. One of the five playable races are the charr, giant militaristic cat people with horns. One of the main themes of the game is unity, and how all the disperate peoples and races of Tyria need to unite to fight against a threat to all of them.

So Theo and I ended up making an AU wherein Valdemar is an originally human kingdom, but over time different groups of the different races were integrated into the country as a whole, more or less. Valdemar has no magic, except for the Gifts (psychic powers), and most within Valdemar believe that magic isn't real anymore. The themes of the AU are finding the fundamental goodness in yourself, accepting yourself for who you are and finding the people who love you, and finding unity with different people in the face of the end of the world.

Starriean Greybone has recently been made into a gladium, put at the lowest rung of charr society, and is targeted by a group of bullies who plan to frame her for desertion and possibly beat her to death. She's saved what she thought was a feral horse, who reveals herself to be a Companion after making short work of the bullies and Chooses Starriean, which I depicted here.