this made me feel weird to look at

it feels a little ridiculous to draw maud and moryis' middle aged son after only having drawn them once, but unfortunately my mind moves faster than my hands. i already know how their story generally goes. maddocke mac moryis is their only child, and i think my first example of what a "hybrid" looks like in this world among folk who are able to reproduce. you can see we are following pokemon rules here. maddocke mostly resembles his mother, with a few traits that indicate his father is a gnoll. did you expect him to be a hairless cat? thats a fair assumption. but him not having any of that longer hair atop his head that maud has can be described as baldness among whiskin. nencia is "bald," too. maddocke inherits the earldom in lieu of his cousin/moryis' nephew, and theres a whole spat involved with that

silvia and maddocke are very like minded. he quickly discerns that silvia is a necromancer from the fallen city of lafossa, which is why she shows her scarification so openly here. silvia travels more often than not, but after becoming acquainted with maddocke finds herself coming back again and again. both feel as though they have met their equal in each other, but its not a "will they or wont they" - its more of a "they wont, but maybe in another life." but i like to think that in maddockes final days, an old friend comes to see him one last time. and when the funeral is done and the sun has set over the earls grave, a witch comes from the trees to raise him again, freer this time. or maybe not! i like silvia as a solitary, trickstery figure once she leaves lafossa. maddocke is not the first man by any means to be taken with her and her mysterious rizz

maud selbie is an expat from the freefolk of iscolain. "freefolk" refers to a new nations that spring up in the years following the stampede, but for the most part the kingdoms they broke off from are too busy with other shit to try and reincorporate them. so you have these unofficial democracies running with varying levels of lawlessness. they do pretty okay for the most part, but maud has a histrionic/narcissistic streak and thinks she could have a better life beyond iscolain. which isnt really true, but once you leave the freefolk they dont let you back. sort of an echo of whats going on with orchidees story post-lafossa

maud basically works her way up from the bottom of the societies she travels through via scamming and fraud. when one day she sees the earl moryis mac niniane riding horseback through the streets in a parade, she is entirely taken by him. she weasels her way into a mid-ranking family and is able to successfully bid for his hand, mostly because she was such a menace to the family shes scamming that they were eager to be rid of her. this should have been a harder task, but moryis is more or less middle aged and did not expect marriage to be something he ever participated in, so the bar was low. he is the runt of his family and fought his brothers literally tooth and nail for the earldom, though because he has no children his nephew is his named heir

the thing is that moryis knows maud is pretending to be something she isnt, but is interested and attracted enough to entertain her and figure out what she wants and what her problem is. he might be pleasantly surprised to know that she doesnt want anything other than a comfortable life with a husband she perceives to be extremely desirable. they affectionately refer to one another as "lord husband" and "lady wife"

after john everett millais' 1895 work of the same name, with a little dash of marianne stokes' 1908 "death and the maiden"

a scene thats been rattling around for a month or so while i worked on other things. i want to someday write this scene as well, but it has been hard to find the internal voice of a freshly-turned wanpyr. was most excited to draw a mad azalee during her last days… though intimidated too