Grate-Scratcher Archetypal Image and the Kivians

Svetana Milevic -- a Grate-Scratcher Burglar

Svetana is short and slim near to the point of emaciation. She has pale, unhealthy-looking skin, and large (I mean inhumanly large) eyes with irises so light they almost blend into the whites. She is in her early 20s. Her hair is limp and straggly in a dirty gray under a pair of dark goggles she wears across her forehead. She wears plain, dark rags, mottled in grays and dark reds (a makeshift urban camouflage for a city filled with brick and stone) -- and they look like they used to be 18th-century peasant garb, reminiscent of Les Miserables. What skin shows is splattered in mud and grime, as though she’d been living in a sewer for years (as indeed she has). She carries a thick length of rope with a grapnel on it on one shoulder, a crowbar in her belt, and is removing a lockpick from a leather case. Her lips are thin, but pressed into a grin of smirking happiness.

Picture after the jump:

Iversdotter Archetypal Image and Riannos

Ingra Eagle-Shield Iversdotter -- an Iversdotter Battlecrafter

Ingra is tall, with light blonde hair, Nordic features, and a muscular and buxom figure. She wears her hair in complex Viking-style braids, but with part of her head shaved in a kind of Viking-Punk look. She is in her late 20s or early 30s. She has a series of Norse runes tattooed across one cheek and down her neck. She has a lot of piercings, from ears to nose (not a bridge, please) to lip and perhaps further south. She wears a leather bustier and leather pants -- both sexy but practical-looking, perhaps patched. She has a long dagger on her hip, and one hand -- curled into a fist -- has nasty-looking bone spurs jutting from her knuckles, forming a kind of brass knuckle. Her expression tells the viewer to back the fuck off.

Picture after the jump

Kipman Archetypal Image and the Realm of Opening

Closk Hotblood -- a Kipman Soldier

Closk is a mongrel. He has features from half-a-dozen different animals. Primarily, he is human -- tall, heavy-set, imposing, a physique reminiscent of a bull or bear. He also features a bear’s muzzle and ram’s horns. His eyes are human, an intense blue. He is in his late 20s. He has patchy fur all over his body, interspersed with tan skin and the occasional patch of reptilian scales. One hand looks like a bear paw, while the other is human. He has the backward-jointed legs and hooves of a sheep. He is dressed in ragged clothes like that of a 19th-century peasant, heavily soiled and patched -- a coarse canvas shirt and ragged pants, with a jerkin of studded leather armor over it. In his human hand, he carries an old, heavily-notched hand axe. His face tells the viewer to die horribly.

See the picture after the jump:

Pariah Archetypal Image and the Shertasi

Marcek Rystyna-per -- a Pariah Information Merchant

Marcek is short and slim. He is in his late 30s. He has dark skin, hair, and eyes, rather Middle-Eastern features. His thin cheeks are permanently stained with tears, which glow with a black light. He has a short goatee. His head is covered by a skullcap in dark orange and purple stripes. He wears an Elizabethan-era tunic and pants (“slops” or “trunk hose”) in black, gray, and purple, simple and severe. He has a stuffed-full scroll-case on his belt, ink-stained fingers, and a quill pen in one hand. His face says he knows more than you, and wants you to know it.See the image after the jump:

Promethean Archetypal Image and the end of the Ma'ar

Phaedra -- a Promethean Explosives Artificer

Phaedra is tall and statuesque, with the high breasts and aquiline nose of a classical Greek statue. She is in her early 20s. Her skin is burnished a dull red, and her veins glow with a dim orange light. Her hair is cut in a “Cleopatra” hairdo, ash-gray, and her eyes look like glowing coals. She wears a flattering Greek tunic with bare legs. She holds a small black-powder grenade (like from Pirates of the Caribbean or old Looney Tunes cartoons), and is lighting the wick with a small breath of fire. She has a pyromaniac’s glee in her eyes. Image after the jump:

Sky-Carver Archetypal Image and the Ma'ar continued

Tessiria Aderino -- a Sky-Carver Courtier

Tessiria is thin and tall, looking slender at best, if not emaciated. Her eyes have no irises, instead being a solid light blue, and her long hair, waving in an unseen breeze, is stark white. She is in her mid-40s. Her skin is pale and tinged with a light blue, with white, cloud-shaped markings appearing across her skin. She is dressed in a long, flowing Renaissance dress, perhaps inspired by Lucrezia Borgia’s dress in the attached picture. She should look sexy, supercilious, and terrifyingly cruel.



This is the only archetypal character we had Amy Clark draw that is an actual character in the playtesters' campaign. Specifically, this "Tessiria Aderino" is a Sky-Carver aristocrat collaborating with the Niontians to aid their invasion of the City of Lives, and is the primary antagonist of the campaign. The playtesters have only encountered her once -- and even then, only one character saw her personally (calmly torturing a servant who had failed her), but her fingers are in everything they see and touch, and are constantly acting to take down her numerous powers.

And

This

Picture

Is

HER!!!

Excellent work, Amy! Tessiria is ethereal, cruel, beautiful, and looks like she's floating despite being unable to see anything below her waist. Also, an excellent adaptation and interpretation of Lucrezia Borgia's dress in her famous portrait.

I can't really say negative, or even "constructive criticism" on this (besides the eternal "I wish it were in color," but that seems less necessary for this drawing than some others), so let's take a look at how the Sky-Carvers will change now that the Sons of Light are being removed from the game:

Very, very little. Mostly, the change will mean that they have fewer adversaries on the aristocratic battlefield, mostly fighting among themselves (and, to a lesser extent, the Leovites and Prometheans, but both of those bloodlines are less concerned with status than the Sky-Carvers and ex-Sons of Light). The only other change is that I'm removing the artistic temperament that formerly was a secondary part of the Sky-Carver personality, leaving Prometheans as the only artists -- because otherwise they step on each other's toes, archetypally speaking.

Let's take a look at the Ma'ar. We'll ARTT this out.

Archetype: First off, let's cover the fact that the Ma'ar and the Shertasi are designed to be, in the words of tvtropes.org, "Always Chaotic Evil." They are antagonists, first and foremost. The City of Lives is the hero of this campaign world, as it were. It may not be perfect, but a central thesis of the campaign world is that the City is the best of all possible Realms. Thus, the Shertasi Empire, the Niontians of the Lesser Chthonic Worlds, and Ma'ar Commonwealth are all antagonistic -- they may not be at war with the City itself, but their goals are almost certainly opposite to the PCs'. So while we want to create a realistic, full-featured society here, it's important to remember that it should be largely abhorrent.

Real-Life Inspiration: The Ma'ar are pack felines: how do we reconcile these two ideas? Well, let's start by listing out some attributes associates with dogs and wolves on one hand, and cats big and small on the other.

Dogs/Wolves:

• Carnivores
• Hunters
• Pack mentality, complex hierarchy
• Strong
• Good sense of smell, hearing, decent sight. 
• Mate for life, have "heat". 
• Must be dominant to mate. 

 Cats:

• Carnivores
• Hunters
• Independent
• Agile
• Good hearing, sight, decent smell.
• Have "heat", do not keep sexual partners.
• Must be dominant to mate

Interesting. Really, they're much more similar than dissimilar. Let's see how we can put some of the differences together. Pack animals stay together, form a bond of trust. Cats are solitary, disliking and challenging other felines that invade their territory. Mix them, and we have a pack system, functioning in packs and families even more than humans do -- if you see a lone Ma'ara [the singular form of the name], there are at least two more nearby. However, it's based not on trust, but merely need. Status is of terrible importance -- but none will sit quietly and keep their status static, instead constantly fighting for dominance in a series of ritualized challenges.

Ritualized combat and dueling would play a large role in Ma'ar society, methinks - Every Ma'ar adult must own a very specially-designed, very expensive, very elaborate robe that is specifically meant for dueling and only dueling. They must always have this with them, prepared for a duel. In a duel, they will go through a very elaborate set-up, very ritualized, very formal, then let loose the savage beast within. They do not stop for a moment until one is dead. Then the winner must buy a replacement robe for the rags that he has just destroyed in his fight or he will have lost all the honor he just gained.

Okay, again we've run out of room. Next time, we'll examine the Promethean archetypal image, and look at the Ma'ar Theme and Twist. See you then!

Son of Light Archetypal Image and The Ma'ar

Casus Aetunius Holvinus -- a Son of Light Commander


Casus is a thin man -- but wiry, not gaunt. He has a sharp nose and wears his dark blonde hair cropped short in a Roman fashion. He is perhaps 50. He wears an 18th-century nobleman’s outfit -- waistcoat, breeches, cravat -- in gold and silver hues. However, on his hip he wears not a watch, not a rapier, but a Roman gladius, and holds a Roman-style plumed helmet under one arm. He stares at the viewer with an intense, commanding look in his green eyes.

Image after the jump:

Realms - Niontia Unprime 236

We begin with a piece of concept art, for the Dead-Blooded bloodline, and then we will travel to Niontia Unprime 236.

Elexender Gwaiotus - a Dead-Blooded Blightshifter

Elexender is a dour, serious-looking young man in his early 20s. His skin is sallow and unhealthy-looking, his black eyes sunken. Part of his lip has rotted away, leaving his teeth visible. His straight black hair is cut into a style like the wigs of the Revolutionary War. He wears an 18th-century nobleman’s outfit -- waistcoat, breeches, cravat -- in stark, plain black, and it is old and not well-cared-for. He holds a skull in one hand, with the other hand making an arcane gesture at it. The skull appears to be regrowing its flesh. He stares at the skull with an intense look of concentration.

And the image, after the jump:

On Archetypal Images and Realm Geography

As I've worked on this blog and my playtest campaign, I've realized two things: People want images, and I'm not very good at visual thinking. Hence, I decided that if I were to get across exactly what a "Rural" or "Grate-Scratcher" Iooked like, I would need some are. I wanted to get an "archetypal" image of each Bloodline, like those one might see in the Race descriptions in D&D or what have you, and also a bit of the Archetypes (similar to Classes in D&D or what have you). So I asked my fiancee to commission some art for me for Christmas. It turned out to be a Valentine's Day Gift, but whatever... For the next ten posts, we'll supplement the main topic with short discussion on the Bloodline pictures I got from artist Amy Clark (check her stuff out at deviant art). This is the the description I wrote for my fiancee, who sent it on to Amy:

Thewton Wells -- a Rural Explorer
Thewton is short and stocky -- perhaps five-foot-four and extremely thick -- but well-muscled. He is perhaps 30. His skin is a deep, deep tan -- though with Anglo-Saxon features -- and his hair, shaggy and mossy (see below), and eyes are both deep brown. His skin is caked in a half-inch of thick loam, with moss and small flowering plants sprouting all over his body -- if there’s a spot where his natural skin is showing, it’s singular and unusual. He wears a ragged pair of coveralls with neither shirt nor shoes, with a large backpack complete with a coil of rope, bedroll, and pickaxe. He has a confident, simple smile.

And here's the picture after the break: