TO THE RAVENS
This is a concept sketch of a character who never actually made it into the book. Her name was Polylampa ("many lights") and she was going to be a rather stately, severe pagan priestess whom Akantha met late in the story during her travels over the moon.
Her outfit is based on a painting of Athena (nudity at link) which dates to 330 BC, which is earlier than the book's setting, but I thought it was a fun departure from the muted draped tunics we often associate with the Greeks. You can also see my attempts to try to figure out how you'd pin the dress to accommodate wings. (That painting actually features a winged figure too, wearing a patterned tunic, but the ancient painter wisely only shows his front.)
Polylampa is meant to be winged, though I didn't fully draw her wings -- actually, her one wing. Her left one is only a stub, which you can see above her arm, but she's wrapped it in a patterned cloth.
As I said, Polylampa never actually made it into the book. But traces of her did. Menaios, Akantha's cousin, has two permanently injured wings that keep him from flying. Pas, a priest of the goddess Cybele, is Akantha's friend but often quite stern with her (and she often doesn't listen). Vitalis is an extremely cold Christian noblewoman who leads a community of unmarried women, a proto-nunnery. And then Galana is a strange and very mysterious woman whom Akantha meets during her lunar travels.
I really liked this design, and I like that even when you decide against including a character, they can still influence the end result.
