Tacitus' Den

Day 31, Fire.

… And the last one! For Fire prompt, I decided to go with something I’ve actually done on previous Inktobers (my very first one in fact). At the time, I wasn’t satisfied of that particular entry, so I wanted to redo it, but better…

Is it really that better? I don’t know…

But here we are with a little Balrog from Tolkien’s books!

And it’s kind of twice more relevant, because I’ve recently started a playthrough on “Return to Moria”, which is a game where you can play as a Tolkien lore accurate Dwarf : meaning you can customize your avatar in game to show a beard, even for female characters, if you want to…

Day 30, Rush.

I must confess i’m getting really tired of the challenge now. I try to do my best to keep up with the will to draw but it's almost gone for this one. So i will most certainly go back to it at some point after the challenge (‘cause i still don’t like the result so far).

But for now… It depicts a battle scene with Iris, yet again, with her good friend at her side (the dream wanderer). But this time around, she’s wearing at least some degrees of armor : more specifically a chainmail as well as a pair of greaves. She also got an hoplon (or Aspis) : a shield that can get quite heavy.

Day 29, Massive.

This one didn't turn out like i imagined. Should've put some buildings in the background maybe : just for the sake of adding a better sense of scale. But, well...

Day 27, Beast.

Honestly, i’m arriving to a point where the challenge becomes a bit “boring” (to say the truth). But we’re really close to the end : so, got to hang on!

For “Beast” prompt : a Besticarius from my “Chronicles Inked with Blood”! Besticarii are the mindless henchmen of their sleeping master (Incubo) : they would roam the land of that waking dream in search of any lost humans (or hunting ones). But some of them have a different purpose. Like this one : “the passer on the Rubicon river” (leading to a single Tower which importance is significant to the plot of my webcomic) : he also plays a more important part than it seems at first when he’ll appear in the tales of the Dream Wanderer (in a chapter yet to come)…

He shares a peculiar look (half man, half owl), and is very greedy! He wouldn’t necessarily attack humans tho : he’s kinda too weak for that (not harmless, just less suited for combat than his peers). Instead, he could even lead you gently to the other bank of the Rubicon (if you have anything of value, of course). If not, his distorted scream is loud enough to alert any guard on each banks from miles away!

It’s still possible to swim your way through somewhere else, but you’d have to leave behind any armor (if you don’t want to sink straight to the bottom of the river) : because there’s no other safe pass on foot anywhere near! That’s why Besticarii pay him so well in food to take them safely to one side from another.

But he’s no fool (and you are if you’d think he’s good hearted) : what he’ll make sure to keep for himself is even if he let you cross the river, you’d quickly get in trouble with any guards from the tower (down the same road). So what you’d pay him for safe passage is just bonus!

Day 26, Remove.

Today, is a wasted day : my first idea for the Remove prompt would have been something about a sumptuous fanart of Shadowheart (from Baldur’s Gate 3) but it appears it’ll never happen. I just had to back down for something way less ambitious : because, apparently, 24 hours are simply not enough in a single day!

Day 25, Dangerous.

I wanted to do something real quick with this one : it doesn’t always have to be overly complicated (simpler doesn’t necessarily means cheaper)! So, i tried to go for a nervous, more spontaneous, kinda fierce look (but he now looks like he wants a high five to be honest)! Anyway, (as i did it in a rush), hope it’s still at least a bit accurate : i didn’t draw lions in quite a long time…

It’s something that i (think) i usually get right tho : i draw something close each time I have to draw Tacitus’ Heraldry, but most of all, i used to draw quite a lot of them in my early days (it would go along as a sort of challenge by my childhood classemates around Disney lions back then, like in my teenage days some others would often ask me to draw Goku or something), so…

Day 24, Shallow.

Some years ago, i did a single (crappy) fanart representing my character in a videogame dearest to my heart : which is Final Fantasy 14! It technically worked as a Shallow entry, so i thought i’d redo it : but this time around, i wanted to set the thing straight up in the infamous 1.0 era of that game.

Something that became overlooked (way before “A Realm Reborn” version came out) was, there were many things you could’nt simply do in 1.0…

The game was clearly unfinished at that time (to say the least). But for some reasons, despite its unfinished state (and all the nonsense the game was built upon), i still get nostalgic when thinking about this aborted version : also because i mostly remember it as my very first mmo experience!

Anyway, the most basic things, like jumping, lifting your visor, having a simple mount (at least at the beginning) or simply “swimming” for instance, were not implemented in the game at first. And that last point will kinda make my whole entry for the Shallow prompt : the best you could do to actually get into water, was walking in small ponds and “shallow” rivers. In retrospect,  i always find that detail kinda realistic tho! As swimming in armor in any video game is cheated to me : in the real world, it would be nearly impossible to swim with any kind of armor heavier than the lightest chainmail (you already get a very hard time swimming with only clothes on)…

So, you get it : noone could ever enter in water deeper than his knees in 1.0…

But how can you tell it’s 1.0?! Well, first, the visor of that helmet is always down: there’s no way to lift it up (at all). And the belt armor : it’s still an item you can get in game (called a “Tassette”), but the engine doesn’t bother rendering separate pieces for belt armors anymore (which is still a shame, ‘cause you could then get the most badass looks by simply mixing more pieces of sets!

Day 23, Celestial.

I hadn’t much time today, and i got a bit carried away by all the managing of my Society6 shop too, so I was afraid I’d rush today’s prompt. But in fact, I got pretty close to the idea i had basically. So, I’m quite satisfied of the result in the end : i think it turned out really neat!

It’s supposed to represent a Stone Angel (from the lore of my “Chronicles Inked With Blood” webcomic series). As he’s technically an elder, he still lacks a pair of wings (that I simply forgot to draw) : normally, he got two pair of those broken stone wings! But his skin and armor are still made of nearly indestructible minerals, so he’s quite impervious to any kind of damage. Few have managed to kill even only one of these celestial beings (one who actually did being Oriflamme, the Maiden of the Void).