House of Ainsley Doodley-Doo!

[The Widowed]

Yay, I have a bunch of doodling stuff out of the package and I'm using it now! Hard pencils, soft pencils, mechanical pencils, hard charcoal, soft charcoal, a vinyl eraser...*gasms* :singdance

So anyway, I thought I'd avoid polluting the Out-of-Character Banter thread (if it's even possible to pollute an off-topic thread with topics) and express myself here. I still have tons of special characters for the campaign in reserve, and you'd be surprised how much easier it is for me to envision what eash character is, does or says if I have a picture for reference. And if I cook the pic up myself, that's even better. I guess it's a helpful way to bring imaginary characters to life even more vividly, no? :)

I also wasn't sure if I should place this thread in the art forum at first, but then I decided "Eh, that art's mostly City of Whatever art, and this is doodles for a forum-based D&D campaign. Never the twain shall meet." I think I made the right decision.

Now, some characters below are "General" characters, created to interact with anyone and everyone with no particular player-character in mind. Other characters are tailored to certain PC's and their life (or undeath) stories and are denoted as such. Of course, player-specific NPC encounters aren't limited to interacting with that PC by any means; if Antinidia wants to bring Bitarosiel home and introduce the erinyes to Ashton, he can go right ahead. :thumbup:

The doodleys are just rough concept sketches to help me flesh out a character, and any side sketches therein don't necessarily depict how the encounter between the PC and the NPC will go down once the time comes. Maybe Yavana will end up fighting Grim-by-Bones, maybe they'll have a brief conversation and go their separate ways, or maybe they'll play several rounds of Tic-Tac-Toe with rocks and sticks and become good friends. It depends, it depends, it depends.

The pics below are also clickies, shrunken by 50% and linked to the actual-size pic. You're welcome for not stretching the page. :)

And thanks to Scarfy for coining "Doodley-Doo," among other cute words. :D

[The Widowed]

http://mypetdungeon.tritonius.com/CABitarosielSm.jpg (http://mypetdungeon.tritonius.com/CABitarosielNAntinidia.jpg)

(NPC for Antinidia)

The Monster Manual says that the erinyes are the devilish counterparts to the demonic succubi: both exist to lead mortals into temptation and depravity. I myself would prefer the erinyes to serve the function prescribed to them in Greek mythology, where the erinyes punished and tormented those who had gone astray.

So then I reasoned, "Why couldn't Bitarosiel do both?"

Bitarosiel, as you might expect from an erinyes, is attracted to souls teetering on the balance between redemption and certain damnation. She's attracted to magic and those with strong potential to become its most powerful wielders, too.

So what could she possibly want with an arrogant, depraved and outcast drow elf wizard like Antinidia? That would be telling. ;)

She still has psychokinetic control over ropes, along with all the other traits of a typical erinyes, but the long trumpet is unique to her character. I intended for the trumpet to have features which were both angelic and infernal, suggesting some sort of balance between the Heavens and the Hells. If I could color worth a damn, I'd like to color that trumpet; the end near the mouthpiece is made of gold, but the end at the trumpet's mouth is dark brass, and the two metals meld together as a gradient alloy in the middle. Again, there's a symbolism for the balance between good and evil here.

The rest of the details I leave for Knightward (and Antinidia) to discern later. :think:

[The Widowed]

http://mypetdungeon.tritonius.com/CAGrim-by-BonesSm.jpg (http://mypetdungeon.tritonius.com/CAGrim-by-Bones.jpg)

(NPC for Yavana)

Dang it...I forgot Yavana's little cape. :|

So according to the Monster Manual, treants are always Neutral Good. It's probably something to do with their empathic connection to the land and their roles as protectors of the woodlands. I'm sure Treebeard wouldn't have it any other way. :)

So I had a little recollection of a Choose Your Own Adventure book I used to enjoy as a wee lad, where Merlin the wizard (masquerading in the modern era as the proprietor of a bookstore) sent you back in time to Camelot. One of the encounters in that book was with a black knight who pretty much fought and killed every knight who came to his castle and challenged him, then took the slain knight's shield as a trophy and hung it on a tree in front of his castle. Of course, every knight's shield was emblazoned with his coat-of-arms, so that shield served the knight as a piece of his identity as well, and hanging that shield on a tree would be a good way of telling all the world "So-and-so fought me and I killed him". Which is why the black knight did it, I guess. Yes, that encounter was one of the "The End" pages, and the black knight ended up killing you in a tilt and taking your shield as well.

So then I asked myself, "What if that tree was actually a slumbering treant, put to a long sleep through some sort of enchantment?".

If a treant--a champion of life and of good--absorbs the essence of the land around it, what if that essence is so corrupted with death and evil that the treant itself is affected? Normally, if the land grew blighted, barren or unholy, a treant wouldn't stick around; it would either fight the source of the problem--if possible--or pull up roots and leave. But if that treant is slumbering because of magic and is hence unable to defend himself....

A tree could be used for any number of atrocitious functions: kill people and hang their shields on it, turn it into a hangman's tree and lynch people from it, take a few discarded branches from the tree and shave them into long stakes with which to impale people (or their heads) or display the helmets of one's slain victims, and so on. Bury the victims near the tree, spill the blood of the fallen around the roots and burn or raze the grove around the tree (or, in this case, the slumbering treant) for bonus points.

When that treant finally wakes up, he's not going to be happy. :look:

I skipped the impaling thing; no black knight's going to go through all that trouble when he has a good, tall tree and plenty of rope to deal with random non-combatants who offend him somehow. The combatants who offend him, of course, get put to the sword in a duel which may or may not be rigged. Shields are taken as trophies if the victims have them, helmets are taken if they don't. I haven't figured out what the black knight would do with someone who had neither a shield nor a helmet...oh, crap. The weapon. I should have added some weapons to that treant, too. :(

So where's the black knight? That would be telling. But Yavana may eventually find out...if we can wake Scarf Girl from her enchanted slumber and get her to post more, that is. ;)


For photographic reference when doodling Grim-by-Bones, I used pictures of yew trees. Yews have to be some of the most twisted and sinister-looking trees out there; the fact that their berries and needles are poisonous makes the yew seem even more evil and nasty. On the other hand, there's some kind of anti-cancer medicine that comes from yew trees, so I guess yews aren't all that bad.

I had also come up with the idea to make Grim-by-Bones bleed red blood instead of amber-colored sap when wounded; maybe the Tree of the Dead in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow movie had something to do with that decision. So imagine my surprise when I found a photo of the Bleeding Yew (http://www.thinplaces.net/nevern.htm), a yew tree which bleeds some mysterious red fluid and no one knows why. Supposedly the tree started bleeding when somebody was hanged from it, and it won't stop bleeding until a Welshman sits on the throne in Nevern Castle.

A real-life blood-oozing yew tree. Way cool. I should throw in something like that throne thing too. :)

[The Widowed]

(Still doodling. Be patient.)

(General NPC)

From his grandiose white palace rising atop the Radiant Crown mountain in the heart of Fioriallia, the Faceless and Eternal Emperor reigns. For a millenium he has governed the continent, and--if the prophets' words hold true--he shall watch over his empire until the end of time, and his dominion shall not fade.

But what the people of Ardonia don't realize is that there have been many Emperors in the throne for the past one-thousand years. The clandestine Order of the Diamond Crown shelters and cares for the Emperor's family--as they have done for 1,000 years or more--so that when the time comes for the Emperor to die at the end of his lifespan--if not before--his or her successor may don the mask and garments of the Emperor--without ceremony or recognition--and silently ascend to the throne.

Yes, "her". So concealing are the garments and the mask that the people cannot discern the Emperor's true sex, face or any other details of the Emperor's identity. And the mask carries an enchantment to alter the wearer's voice to a particular baritone pitch and a typical Central Fioriallian accent and intonation, regardless of the Emperor's true voice, be it bass, soprano or anywhere in between. So unbeknownst to the people, there have been several Empresses throughout the Empire's history as well.

The Order of the Diamond Crown goes to these lengths to conceal the Emperor's true identity for two reasons.

First, as far as the populace of the Empire knows, the Emperor truly is immortal because the Emperor seated in the throne now looks exactly like the Emperor who was seated in the throne 1,000 years ago. At times, the throne has been shaken with the Emperor's apparent death by fatal accident or by assassin's blade, but such public dismay swiftly dissolves when the people see the hale and unwounded Emperor walking tall the next day. And having a liege who is immortal (or apparently immortal) has a way of both heartening the Empire's people and demoralizing the Empire's enemies.

Second, in those rare times when a direct threat to the throne and the Emperor's life comes forward, the Order of the Diamond Crown keeps duplicate garb and masks at hand. Suitably sized people from the Order may be dressed as duplicate Emperors to serve as decoys, leading enemy soldiers and assassins away while the Order makes good the real Emperor's escape. The Order, cult that it is, believes that dying through such service to the Emperor is one of the highest honors that the Order can award.

Not one of these reasons includes fear that the Emperor will ever be seen without the mask and garments of office, for there is no such fear. From the day of coronation to the day of death, the Emperor never removes the mask or the outfit of office, save only to sleep, to eat or to bathe (all of which are done in the Emperor's well-insulated private quarters). The same countermagic vested in the mask to ward off Divination spells is the same countermagic found in every wall, door and ceiling in the Emperor's quarters, along with additional countermagicks such as anti-teleportation enchantments.

I only have one stumbling block in creating the Emperor so far: what size should the Emperor be? On one hand, a human-sized Emperor will be easier for the Order to defend. On the other hand, a large or huge Emperor would be physically more prominent and imposing, adding a certain extra "oomph" to the Emperor's authoritarian presence. And the palace is on a mountaintop, so I thought, "You know, most rulers over kingdoms of humans or elves or dwarves are from the same race as the people they govern. How cool would it be to have the Empire ruled by a titan or a cloud giant?" I even had the idea of making the Emperor a deity's avatar, but then the Emperor truly would be immortal...and I doubt that the other gods would sit still while one god established and cemented such a huge foothold in the mortals' world. So we'll just have to settle for an Emperor who is a human/elf/cloud giant/storm giant/whatever with no divine powers to call his own, even though the Order thinks that the Emperor has such divine powers....

So where do the Order's Emperor-worshipping clerics draw their divine powers from if the Emperor is not a deity? Is there a deity behind the Emperor, gifting the clerics with powers in exchange for proxy worship? Do the clerics publicly claim to worship the Emperor while secretly paying homage to an actual deity behind closed doors? Or is there something else at work here?

That would be telling. :P

Also, this isn't just my thread. Speak up, folks!

[Knightward]

Hawt devil Wids, :P

Antinidia would just want to know one thing about her: How good is she at lying motionless and being room temperature? *rimshot*

[The Widowed]

Lying motionless shouldn't be a problem, but she might have trouble keeping her body temperature below a low Hellfire simmer. :P

Better stick with the vampires. :P :lol: :P

[The Widowed]

Okay, I lied. That Emperor pic's not anywhere near being done. As soon as I decide on the right look for him, maybe he'll become more than a bunch of pencil scratches on paper.

That being said, I figured that since about half of these cats are out of the bag anyway (and two of them have already been killed), I might as well blow ahead of the Emperor and breathe a little life into the minibosses. :think:

As any game master knows, there's a balance between fluidity and order in any adventure. Too much order leads to railroading, which most players resent. But with no order at all, you don't really have an adventure at all; whatever you have amounts to a bunch of player-characters wandering around their virtual aimlessly until the players get bored and call for a cab. So I like to set up the adventures I pen in a way similar to one of those old hippie-ish gypsy-style bead curtains. You have a few big beads, and going into each of those big beads are a few strings of smaller beads. So the players start the adventure at one of those big beads (ie. the proverbial get-together at the Prancing Pony or some other tavern). The next big bead in the adventure might be Baron von Badman's audience chamber. So your job as the game master is to come up with several ways for the players to get from the tavern to the audience chamber, and that's where the players pretty much decide on some course of action based on the information you give them. They may choose to follow one string of little beads..."That old man looks like he knows something."..."Okay, he tells you that his master is in the audience chamber of Baron von Badman's castle and he has work for you." Or they may choose another string of beads..."We go and see if the duke has any work for us."..."Okay, the duke says 'I haven't seen my friend Baron von Badman for a while. Bring this gift to him and I'll pay you handsomely'."

Sometimes the players even weave their own strings of little beads. "We jump down into the sewers and randomly head off in search of adventure!"..."...okay, I honestly wasn't expecting that." And when that happens, you have four choices: A) Be a butthead and blatantly railroad them ("The sewers go around in a big loop. You kill a few giant rats but soon end up where you started."), B) be a butthead and stonewall them ("You can't do that. Somebody welded all the sewer lids shut." "Every sewer lid in town?" "Yep. Must have been the mayor trying to keep all those giant rats off the streets."), C) subtly railroad them with Schroedinger's Plot or other handy Game Master devices ("You follow the sewer tunnels for about six miles and end up..." *fake dice rolls* "...outside the entrance to Baron von Badman's audience chamber.") or D) generously throw the players a cookie and give them a side adventure ("Okay, you follow the sewers down and find an ancient crypt which is in no way related to Baron von Badman or his castle, but the crypt's full of treasure and undead monsters and I just threw it together with dice and Cardmaster cards so go on and knock yourselves out.").

But eventually, the players are going to find their way to the next big bead in the hippie curtain. Someway or another. Players are inquisitive and imaginative like that. If they weren't inquisitive and imaginative types, then they wouldn't be gamers and they'd be sprouting roots in front of the TV watching sports like the rest of the schlubs, right? ;)

Yes, the House of Ainsley campaign has little beads and big beads too. And among those big beads lie the minibosses, not to be confused with the big bosses who must be encountered at the end of each character's prologue. More on the big bosses later.

As you know from any kung fu flick, bad guys can be broken into two types: goons and tough guys with names. The minibosses in each Chapter Zero are the tough guys with names; in Ashton's prologue, for example, the Karkovan archers and soldiers were goons, and Lieutenant Gannolva was a miniboss. See? The Karkovan goons don't have names (unless I bestow them in the flavor text, but their scratch sheets still say "Foot Soldier 3" or "Archer 1"), but Lieutenant Gannolva does have a name because she's a bad-ass and she deserves to be diffrentiated from all the wimpy goons.

Each of our six protagonists has anywhere between one and three minibosses, and some of the minibosses may be optional; Ashton was bound to run into Lieutenant Gannolva, but there's a chance that he may not encounter Danika Primm at all depending on his actions (but considering her importance as part of a foreshadowing device, it would be nice...).

Anyway, my (very) rough concept sketches follow. Shutting up now, Optimus. :)


http://mypetdungeon.tritonius.com/Minibosses1.jpg

Left to right: Linimeira the Night Hag - polymorphed and true form (Antinidia), Shann MacOrton (Yavana), Razozel Tinbrick (Yavana), Captain Hethakan Sharper (Corwin)

Man, Captain Sharper was all set up to kick ass on Corwin and the rest of the Saint Alarice's crew and I made this nice doodle and now Corwin's gonna haul off and join the bastard. See what I mean about players throwing curveballs? Well, this is where I get to show you guys how awesome I am at rolling with the blows. I guess I'd better figure out an XP award in case Corwin succeeds in sweet-talking the scar-faced old gimp. :D

Yes, one of Captain Sharper's legs is indeed shorter than the other. Did you ever notice that all bad-ass pirates have some missing, crippled or prosthetic body part? I don't know whether that's society's subtle, centuries-old way of villifying the handicapped or if it's a device to lend the pirate an aura of dread..."Damn, he's a bad-ass who has to deal with a physical handicap and is still a bad-ass! Who cares if he has a peg leg? I bet he'll spin around on it and pop blades out of it and kick all our asses with it...." But I figured, "Why not play with tradition without nudging tradition out entirely?". So Captain Sharper has a gimpy deformed leg and a large scimitar blade for a hand instead of a hook for a hand. Does that work for you? :)

Of course Linimeira was an optional miniboss. Even though I wanted to slip her into the prologue somehow--and two brigands plotting in a tavern were as good a plot hook as any--Antinidia could have said "Eh, so they stole a coffer of loot. Bully for them." and continued on to Drakolicht. Happily, Knight sent Antinidia after the brigands, after the coffer...after Linimeira. And Antinidia ended up killing the hag and scoring a mess of loot from killing the hag. Bully for him. ;)

And you know what? Drawing gnomes is hard enough, but try drawing a full-body foreshortening on the little mongrel. You'll consider drawing a nude half-orc after that.

I'm still not satisfied with the way Linimeira's hag form turned out. Maybe it's the mace. Or the hands. Or the pose. I could stand to shrink her head a little, too. Man, I have so much trouble with drawing non-humans.... :think:


http://mypetdungeon.tritonius.com/Minibosses2.jpg

Left to right: Lieutenant Eisa Gannolva (Ashton), Sir Markov Stern (Ashton), Tiplit the Imp (Vallin), Danika Primm (Ashton), Minister Kaurg Thavari (Thornton), Praetor [CENSORED] (Thornton), Acolyte [CENSORED] (Thornton)

What's wrong, Chris? Thornton's prologue is set up to be a mystery. You don't really think I'm just going to give away the identities of the serpents in the nest, do you? Minister Thavari's obviously from out of town, so it's okay to blab his name; Thorn just has to figure out who gave him the keys to the house. :p

"Whoa!" you may say. "Wids actually utilizes lances and the rules for mounted combat in his D&D campaigns?" Yes. Yes, Wids does. :)

"But Wids," you ask, "Ashton has three minibosses, and two of them are--or were--heavily armored bad-asses! What's with the commoner chick with the picnic basket? How could she possibly be dangerous compared to Gannolva and Stern?"

Heh heh heh...there are plenty of ways. Ask Knightward about one of them. >:]

Along that vein, Vallin's scheduled miniboss obviously isn't intended to be a pound-into-the-ground type of miniboss either. Vallin's not a combat monster, so his miniboss isn't a combat monster either...and it fits his prologue's climax perfectly. And Vallin's climax is optional, therefore his miniboss is optional too.

As hinted by the title of his prologue, Vallin's Chapter Zero eventually leads to a big bead where Vallin's father Barrovik takes Lyria on a date and attempts to woo her and romance her so that Lyria will wed him more happily and willingly. Sure, Vallin can skip the whole thing--"You two have fun. I'm just going to stay home and steal from the neighbors."--but where's the fun (or the XP) in that? Otherwise, Vallin might follow the two and either attempt to grease the axles and work behind the scenes to ensure that the date goes smoothly (since his father's not exactly Don Juan and he could use a little help) or go the spiteful/jealous route and attempt to sabotage the date. Whether Vallin chooses to help or hinder his Dad's efforts to get Vallin a happy new stepmom, Tiplit shows up to either sabotage the date, sabotage Vallin's attempts to sabotage the date or generally get in Vallin's way. And even though Vallin could just throw a dagger and spike the little bastard to a wall, circumstances will be in place which will give Vallin a reason to butt heads with Tiplit without resorting to overt violence. ;)