Ink-stained Roses covered in Thorns

This idea has been rotting in my head for a year and a half now. It originally came to me in July 2024 after the reaveal of Sigmar's true identity.

Over a year later, the mental image of Sigmar stabbing Rook in the chest became reality in-campaign when we were deep underwater (but not in water) in the temple of a demon lord. The demon lord (who Rook's life force is keeping imprisoned in another dimension) separated Rook from the party and took the form of Sigmar.

His recreation of Sigmar was uncannily accurate, down to the dialogue being used, which makes sense since Sigmar had also been cursed by Furicifer in the past, so he'd been in his head.

Rook passed the "test" with flying colors, never letting "Sigmar" hit him again after that, and quickly dispatching him. But while the physical damage toll was relatively low, the emotional one was very high.

I'm so glad I was able to make another edit before the end of the year, and more importantly finish this idea that's haunted me for so long.

A bit from my write-up of the scene:

So this render has a LOT going on in it, and in order to explain it all, I have to briefly explain some events from the D&D campaign Rook is in.

Basically, Rook met a guy named Sigmar, who ended up becoming Rook's mentor. They got super close, and Rook is very attached to him. However, as it turns out, Sigmar is actually Dr. Purity, the potential final villain of the entire campaign. And Maka (the wizard) knew this, and still let Rook get close to him. Maka's reasoning was that as long as Sigmar/Purity is preoccupied with Rook, he won't be trying to destroy the world. And he was right.

So now, Rook has to find out that basically only the second person who was ever kind to him and cared about him (party PCs excluded) is actually evil. And it's going to destroy him. And he's going to be furious, but not at Sigmar. He cares too much about Sigmar to be mad at him, at least not yet. But Maka... Maka has been using Rook as a piece in this grand game and didn't even deign to let him know.

There was a scene that we played out months ago where Maka beat Sigmar in a game of chess, and his player specifically narrated that he used the Rook piece to take Sigmar's king. And the DM reminded me of that detail, and thus this render was born. (It's funny. I never intended any of this chess shit to happen, but now it's like a major theming thing for Rook's character... Funny how that works.)

Oh, and of course there's the fact that the party just a day or two ago lectured Rook about hiding things from them. Things that had much less to do with them than this fact about Sigmar has to do with him. So he's going to be very upset at their hypocrisy.

Anyways, I'm not quite sure exactly how the reveal will play out in-game, but I know it's going to be bad for Rook. He's already reckless and impulsive (occasionally to the point of hurting himself) at more decent times, let alone when he's upset, and he's never ever been this upset in-game before.

Okay, last fun fact of the day: I actually looked up chess checkmate patterns for this render. The one shown here is the Vukovic Mate.

Wait, I lied. One more. Before I even knew that Sigmar was going to betray the party, I gave his sim the same ring that I gave Rook's father, Alistair. Funny that the two people to wear that ring cc are two of the people who've hurt him the most in his entire life...