Tell me about Alesse and the Briar Knights, I'm intrigued
!! Absolutely, but I apologize ahead of time for the length lmao I'm normal abt this setting and Briar Knights. Tl;dr they're cursed knights with thorn aesthetics
Alesse is my custom setting for the ttrpg Heart: The City Beneath. It's a cosmic horror fantasy western set in a mostly medieval setting with some intentionally-anachronistic modern influences. A major aspect of the setting is the existence of a complex spell known as the Cycle that is capable of bringing the dead back to life (allowing players to return their characters if they die, plus it's been fun working out how that would actually affect the world).
Briar Knights are a reskinned variant of the Hound class from Heart. They're an order of knights that have been essentially cursed by the Cycle ~200 years ago. They were the ones that the Cycle was first cast on and they were turned into an unkillable army, but it turns out that dying and getting up and throwing yourself in to battle and dying and getting up again and again as the last forces standing against an invading army is a little fucked up.
In Alesse, human suffering on that scale can manifest physically as Sin, a magical force that takes the form of thorns (roses, barbed wire, etc). Eventually they got all kinds of fucked up with Sin, enough for their souls to be infused with it. They're able to tap into that magic to fuel their class abilities.
They also stopped being able to be revived by the Cycle properly, instead becoming ghosts tied to their specific title of Knight when they die (lore reasons). That title can then be claimed by another person, at which point the person gains the memories of the previous Knights when their soul fuses with the ghost. Essentially, if a Briar Knight dies, another person can become that Briar Knight.
Briar Knights generally have a thorn/rose/barbed wire motif bc of their ties to Sin. Your art really reminded me of the way I would want to portray them metaphorically. Not quite infested by the thorns exactly, but them being an intrinsic aspect of the knights. I really like the piece!
