About 3 years ago a bunch of strangers met on the dndbeyond forums united by the wish to play DnD and tell a story together. Many Forum threads never make it past that point but as you might be able to guess what ever luck (or fate =P) brought us together stuck around and we actually kept our group running.
The story is to long to sum up in a short tale, we’ve dealt with Mindflayers and Dragons, befriended and antagonized some Fey, travelled through time and space and stumbled into places we had no business being in. So far only one of us died in a more permanent sense.
But those are stories for another day, for now and in the spirit of sharing a bit of my art journey, I want to introduce my character: Gen.
Here is the first design I drew for him:
We started at Level 1. Gen and Fen, twins born to a big family of shifters in a magical forest, had been separated by Gen’s sudden magical giftedness and his will to explore it. He had gone to the Lazuli Archive, a school and library, to study magic and had graduated and taught there for a little while. He was about to leave for Skalvik when one day his sister just showed up and they decided to make that journey together. Shortly after arriving there, on a job that could have been like any other, they met the rest of the bunch and their adventure really started.
After helping our Druid, Ciccerek, find his mentor and then help him find his father, we all were bestowed a Dragon Boon… In Gen’s case: A fey Familiar. Much like himself, in a way, shaped like a Common Genet. On our way back we learned that Skalvik had started a war with the Mindflayer infested Kornear, and we decided to join the effort, one way or another.
We plundered an abandoned lair and as we left stumbled into an ambush… unwilling to give up what they wanted from us and unable to come to a decision, Erazil hurled himself and the attacker onto the Astral Plane and left the party running, unknowing whether he was alive or not.
It was a long journey to get Erazil back, one that brought all of us to the Astral plane, in a circular line of events of cause and effect. Gone for barely 3 days we skipped half a year into the future and soon after had to say goodbye to Ciccerek who had his own journey from now on. It wasn’t long until all of us split up but before that, we me a new ‘friend’ and old acquaintance of Gen: Divination Wizard Illya.
And as luck (or fate =P) would have it, we met her again as most of us reunited at the fairy ball, held by the winter court, everyone dressed up for the occasion of a Masquerade and its theme: Creatures of the Night. But that one is a Story for a different post. A few more months passed afterwards before another inciting incident would reunite us all again. And as is appropriate for a big time skip, I sat down and drew what is the most recent and most elaborate Character Sheet I have done so far:
This captures Gen as of Level 10. His familiar and the then Arcane Focus he was using: A Wand of Magic Missile (a gift from his Mentor back at Lazuli) with a Feywild Shard attached to it (itself a gift from our Summer Fey contact, Aurora). During the time skip Gen travelled a lot, he stayed in Lazuli for a little, visited his sister in the magic forest not far south of there and then, accompanied by party mascot, sabre-toothed cat, Tom and a horse he bought for the journey, made his way to the castle, they had been gifted and that had become home and lair of adopted dragon Ciccerek, up in the far north. There he tried to find some connection to the source of his magical abilities.
A lot of thing have happened since but they will have to wait for another post.
What I think is apparent is that I have learned a few things over time, that the only minimally changed design of my dear Gen show off quite well. But I’m sure there is more to learn… and another Design update is not far away as the story progresses.