#finished enough

Find a Vessel to Fill Your Small Body

Oil on wood 18 x 24 "

“This is a test, I’m being tested...“

So I really, REALLY love JourneyQuest.

Every time a new season comes out I get ridiculously excited. I love all of the characters so much that it’s one of those series where it’s really hard to pick a favorite character. I just love all of them so much and for so many different reasons. If had to pick a favorite, though, I’d probably have to go with Carrow. His outright traumatic character development has my heart aching for him each time he’s onscreen and I cannot wait to see how he continues to develop.

But the same is true for all the characters.

If I don’t stop myself here I’m going to start gushing and I don’t need to do that to myself after spending the past 4 hours slowly ticking away at this. I might go back and modify it if I see some errors with it when I get to sleep and wake up with fresh eyes, but as of right now, file it under Finished Enough.

Another study for the Skyless project. Another Crodog.

Their primary fighting style involves them being airborne and striking with their tails. The sharp tips tear or impale small prey items, and can rend huge cuts and gouges in attackers. When they snap their tail forwards, they clutch their legs together at the heels to cut down on the surface membrane that they fly with, meaning that they’re fighting against less resistance.

Sometimes their spines will become lodged in larger creatures and stay there. Such wounds are not always fatal, but can be since the wounds will have a hard time closing and often times keep bleeding.

Ahhh, a while back I ran a game called Springdown. It was an attempt to run a game set entirely in a school. I’ve never been a fan of those because it feels to me that one of two things always ends up happening, either 1) the game gets severely bogged down by the day-to-day of going to classes, or 2) the game is so unrelated to its school setting that it might as well not take place in a school except for flavortext and as someone who hated middleschool and highschool (when these games exclusively seem to take place in) the flavor it leaves is just bitterness and teenage horomonal angst.

But it was a challenge I’d always wanted to take on, making a school game interesting.

Given that most of my players immediately asked if there was going to be a sequal, I’d say I did a pretty good job.

Unlike my other pictures I won’t be giving a synopsis here, partly because it would take a really long time, and partly because this game was actually recorded. While the recordings likely wont be posted for quite a long time, i wanted to put these out while I was thinking about them, especially since they’re older pieces at this point.

So because it was recorded, I made icons for each of the characters so there’d be sort of a visual aid.

The basic premise was that everyone was playing children of lesser nobility who were sent away to the house of a higher noble who enjoyed teaching and had basically turned his manor into a school for the education of select privileged youths. The manor doesn’t accept more than 20 students at a time.

So from left to right in the group portrait (which I mostly made to show off size differences) we have Aquilla Loretto, first year, daughter of two prestigious Phorlesian Knights who’s heritage is in question following a series of magical experiements performed upon her by drow, Alasdair Honeyhive, third year, the cursed oracular first son of a Baron of Algandis, Ezekial Whitehall, third year, seventh son of the Baron Whitehall of Calatang (where the story takes place), Aran Breckenridge, third year the illegitimate daughter of an Algandan Baroness and a cursed fey-elf, Dyrdine Guthriekor, second year first son of a Dwarven Champion, and Faustus Elrius, first year the first son of the White Herald of powerful Crystal Dragon.

The Robber Prince 2/9

The first god the party decided to tangle with was Stal the King of Horns, god of the forge, god of the Cerveri people: goats, bulls, deer, boar, etc. They went to the City of the Sun and climbed to the grand temple, where they saw the Armor of Stal, which was the last item made by Stal’s hands from the Sunforge, and it was said that only the true hero of Stal would be able to don the armor.

This was when the party discovered something interesting about the re-awakening of the Robber Prince. Particularly high level ratfolk are gifted with a unique ability to activate magic items even if they don’t have the proper activation word, or even if the item was designed to be exclusive- such as having a chosen-one narrative around it. Such as the Armor.

So at night they manage to break into the vault in which the armor is kept, and they come in to this surprise. The armor is not being guarded by paladins, priests, warriors, or even mercs. Before them stands an avatar of one of Stal’s wives.

The Robber Prince, 1/9

I love to run Pathfinder games. My most recent one has been an all-ratfolk game with my close group of friends. My world and my games have next to nothing to do with the core pathfinder story and world, except that I do use a good number of the gods, but this particular game focuses much more heavily on the “beast pantheon“ or the gods responsible for and worshiped by the beast races of the setting.

So for each of the major NPCs through the game I decided to make a fairly quickish picture. I have all but one of the pictures finished, and I’ll post them as the party discovers them.

This lovely character was the inciting NPC, Hanni Suffo, a ratfolk bartender who has an exceptional love for opulent and suggestive attire, and her familiar Smiley. She is the one who gathered the party together in her tavern The Lonesome Arrow... along with about every other high-level ratfolk she could get in time.

After a test, she let the party in on the goings on of the world...

Somethings has felt off all year. That is the thought which has crossed your minds regularly. Not bad. Not good. Simply off. Maybe it was warmer than last year? Maybe the winds were stronger? Maybe it was a smell that was hanging around? No, since the turn of the year a bit over six months ago, there’s been an odd feeling in the air. Sometimes it’s easy to ignore, sometimes it becomes background noise, but every now and then, especially at night, something still continues to feel… off...

           Like something is missing.

Long ago the ratfolk had their own god, known as The Robber Prince, as well as by a slew of other titles. He had a prosperous people, a thriving community, and everything a god could hope for his followers. But he became bored. Thievery was losing its spark, because what could really challenge him? Then one day, he decided it was time to seek that challenge he had been missing, and what could possibly be better than attempting to steal from another god? He set his sights on the god of merchants, the god of the Coyote folk, a god of death, fair trade, and madness.

And madness is what he stole.

He was overcome by an immense greed and began stealing from god after god until eventually he was too powerful to be stopped by any one god. Seven of the beast gods banded together to stop him, and they forged seven powerful items, things he wouldn’t be able to help but steal, and placed on them a powerful curse. For each item he picked up, he would be weighted down by the chains of the curse, until eventually upon picking up the final item, his powers and influences would be sealed and he would be banished back to the pits of his gods realm.

Eight hundred years have passed and already he is breaking free. The party has seventy four days to go around to each of the original seven gods and steal an important artifact from them which will then be offered in sacrifice to revive the weakening curse and seal him again. The items must be stolen, though, to be properly sacrificed to the Robber Prince.

The price for failure is the theft of the soul of every ratfolk, and likely the end of all pantheons.