#Ancients and Champions

[blueshystargazer]

@ancientschampionau

Cross and dust staring at the new baby

[deatni]

Hello, it's been a while since I posted here, so I brought just a little drawing of our beloved Classic Sans. ( :D, I had fun creating this little drawing, an attempt was made TwT) inspired by part of the Ancients and Champions series, "Dressing Up", well that's it, bye.

[tchai-castor]

Litle Diomedes. I based his appearance on my designs for his older self. I added some beads in his hair at the top, because I thought it would be fitting for Diomedes to have some sort of oath. Like the beads would cover a little braid in which he has braided part of his father's hair, which he will cut off and sacrifice to the gods once he has avenged his father. I thought it would be a nice little detail.

I have another drawing I made of Odysseus as a boy (together with Ctimene and Eumaeus), but I'll post that one tomorrow.

[lupinsmissingnipples]

[illjustpretend]

ANCIENT CHAMPIONS

[thevaelguard]

Seriously, how many Warden artifacts does Sebastian and/or his family own... they owned an amulet that contains both the blood of an archdemon and the Warden that slew it !!! The boy has all the Warden memorabilia- no wonder his bedroom in Knight Errant looks shite, he's spending everything to indulge his Warden love...

[ganondoodle]

i am being so brave trying so hard to hold back writing a rant about that 'minimizing narrative noise' comment on totk sage concept art bc its actively flying around in my head like the worlds most annoying fly

[championsandheroes]

You know what I'm impressed by? Corypheus picking up a modern language the very moment he returned to the living. Imagine how badly things would have gone for him if he wasn't a linguistic genius.

And yes, that is aurebesh.

We do our best not to anger powerful, ancient mages over at Patreon and society6.

[digimontamerrichie-tcg]

[ancha-aus]

Finished uploading my main story

Just uploaded the last chapter for Ancients and Champions.

I can't believe that after two years I actually finished the story.

Feels a bit double but I am happy I managed to complete it and fully upload it.

For those who are unaware, the story:

It is over there. Actually completed and finished!

I am both happy but also a bit sad to actually finish it. it is strange.

[inbarfink]

[blueshystargazer]

I'm out of practice. I draw around 20 pictures . And only 2 are any good

@ancientschampionau

Spoilers under the cut

This sketch could go with a couple chapters

We will say chapter 12

An this one is chapter 66

[galleryofart]

Milo of Croton

Artist: Joseph-Benoît Suvée (Flemish, 1743–1807)

Date: 1763

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: Groeningemuseum, Bruges, Belgium

Milo of Croton

Milo or Milon of Croton (late 6th century BC) was a famous ancient Greek athlete from the Greek colony of Croton in Magna Graecia.

He was a six-time Olympic victor; once for boys wrestling in 540 BC at the 60th Olympics, and five-time wrestling champion at the 62nd through 66th Olympiads. Milo kept on competing, even well after what would have been considered a normal Olympic athlete's prime; by the 67th Olympiad, he would have been over 40 years of age. He also attended many of the Pythian Games.

His historicity is attested by many classical authors, among them Aristotle, Pausanias, Cicero, Herodotus, Vitruvius, Epictetus, and the author of the Suda, but there are many legendary stories surrounding him.

Diodorus Siculus wrote in his history that Milo was a follower of Pythagoras and also that he commanded the Crotonian army which defeated the Sybarites in 511 BC, while wearing his Olympic wreaths and dressed like Hercules in a lion's skin and carrying a club.

Hereupon the Sybarites took the field with an army of three hundred thousand men. The Crotonians had but an hundred thousand, which were commanded by Milo the wrestler, who at the first onset put to flight that wing of the army which was opposite to him: for he was of invincible strength, and had courage answerable to his strength, and had been six times victor at the olympic games; when he began his fight, he was crowned with olympic wreaths, wearing (like Hercules) a lion's skin and a club; at last he gained an absolute victory, and thereupon was much admired by his countrymen.

Milo's death became a popular subject in art in late Italian Renaissance sculpture, continuing to around 1900, allowing the sculptor to show his skill in a dramatic anatomical pose. It was a more compact equivalent of the Roman group of Laocoön and His Sons.

[valiantvillain]

While yes, it is disappointing that we won't get to import the hundreds of personal choices we made across three previous games into Veilguard, the reality is that this was bound to happen at some point simply for the sake of telling some form of consistent story. Up to a point, there's no way to feasibly account for even all the major choices made, let alone when the next game in the series takes place in an entirely different geographical region that up till now in the story has faced very little impact from actions taken in the previous games.

Would I love a thousand little kinda insignificant in the grand scheme of things flavor text referencing my Warden or my Champion from years and years ago or the outcome of the Winter Palace? Sure, but practically speaking I understand the choice made bc the sad reality of RPGs that allow for big player choices is that eventually some, if not most of those choices, will have to be disregarded or at the very least curtailed for the sake of a coherent narrative. And it's kinda something I realized a long time ago was bound to happen with Dragon Age not out of lack of care for player decisions but simply because trying to accommodate for three games' worth of several major decisions is not exactly sustainable in the long run.

I certainly understand long-standing DA fans being disappointed. So long as it doesn't pull a Baldur's Gate 3 "Abdel Adrian is the Bhaalspawn" and allows me to headcanon away the lives of my previous heroes, I'll be content and realistic with what I get. Especially if it means a tighter story and greater reactivity for my Rook's personal story.

[justavulcan]

Backgrounds With Class: Simic Scientist

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer.  So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.  Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

The Simic Scientist Artificer was always a practical sort.  Enamored with the surgeon’s art from his youth and with a fast friend of decades working in the Izzet League, he’s found ways to adopt the other science guild’s technology for medical use on a number of occasions, particularly their chemistry.  The reverse is also true- unbeknownst to those around him, he’s been trading insider secrets for his colleague’s aid.  He doesn’t view this as a betrayal- to his mind, it’s a crime that there isn’t already an exchange of innovation in the regular course of things.  Surely their fields would advance much more quickly with the aid of other points of view.

The Simic Scientist Barbarian is an experimental direction for the Guardian Project, a soldier with adaptive talents flexible enough to change specialization on the fly or between engagements.  Trained with weapons and spliced with at least a little sluiceway scorpion, she believes wholeheartedly in the assurances of her experimental overseer that she will one day no longer need armaments of steel, as her hybrid traits and experimental mutagenic adrenal glands grow into full maturity.

The Simic Scientist Bard has a job as an educator, putting her keen understanding of biology and biomancy to work in the classroom imparting wisdom to her students.  Adept at teaching by multiple avenues to suit different learning styles, she is always conscientious to mix the practical and hands-on with deep concepts, and takes the careers of her students very seriously after graduation.  In her off hours, she works as a consultant for other matters, both in the lab and on the street, and has started to make a name for herself as one of the public faces of the Combine.

The Simic Scientist Cleric kneels at no altar that the people of Ravnica would know, but many of her peers would understand, if not condone.  The Simic Combine is not a religious organization, but surely they can see that knowledge itself is a thing divine no less than the Worldsong of the Conclave or the Orzhov’s Church of Deals.  While her colleagues view this eccentricity with bemusement and even occasional suspicion, she is more than welcome in the lab, as her work has an uncanny prescient feel to it, often making breakthroughs just when it would be useful.

The Simic Scientist Druid is an oddity even among Simic Biomancers.  Originally a Guardian Project volunteer, this druid is technically a krasis rather than a hybrid, as the ratio of hermit crab to vedalken is too high to qualify her as a simic hybrid.  Still loyal to the combine that reforged her into a clumsy new shell-bearing body, the druid serves the Hull Clade, her defensively-oriented mind an asset to guardian squads in the field and biomancers working with shell, carapace, and scale in the lab. 

The Simic Scientist Fighter is a typical product of the Guardian Project: a disciplined, careful, and tactically gifted elf with latent mollusc traits.  Trained for both long-range and short-range combat, he is being groomed for a position as a squadron leader to field both terrestrial and aquatic threats- a true amphibious soldier.  This flexibility is reflected in his mindset- despite his participation in the Guardian Project and aggressive skillset, he is a Holdfast advocate, claiming it’s far more important for the Combine to ground themselves than to expand aggressively; overreach is a mistake.

The Simic Scientist Monk is an experimental departure from tradition.  Raised deep underwater as a potential Deepsage, their tradition of unarmed combat has met with modern biomancy and medical knowledge to produce a warrior with a literal healer’s touch.  Mastering the flow of vital energies and fluids through their own body and those of others, they are as skilled a healer as a bodyguard, equally adept at setting bones and force-healing contusions as bringing death with a touch.

The Simic Scientist Paladin follows an uncommon tradition among elves, a holdover  from his time among the Selesnya growing up.  While he’s firmly an Upwelling adherent, confident that change is the way forward for the Combine, his own magical tradition is among the oldest on Ravnica, as he swore an oath to life itself to be a light in the world.  Many of his colleagues shake their heads at the juxtaposition, but he’s not dissuaded by their confusion- after all, Upwelling is a resurgence of old matters and ways, not an act of genesis.

The Simic Scientist Ranger is a field researcher, a lab assistant who, after his amphibian hybridization, seeks to assess the results of his guild’s work in the field.  From chill ocean below to lofty aeries above, he ranges to see that the Combine’s work finds its niche, and observe how the web of life on Ravnica changes to fit.  He’s also one of the hunters the Combine turns to when they have need of samples from exotic wildlife, or when a krasis proves disastrous for its environment and must be euthanized.

The Simic Scientist Rogue was part of the Combine’s covert troubleshooting force before the inception of the Guardian Project, and remains so to this day.  Usually dispatched as an investigator or recovery specialist, as the guild has ramped up its preparations for wartime she has found herself more and more involved in guerrilla action against threats preemptively.  Always a proponent of striking harder sooner, she is keen to do whatever she can to keep the Simic at its best.

The Simic Scientist Sorcerer, as a prospective member of Gyre Clade, often finds herself involved in the less physical of the guild’s pursuits.  Be it assessing the mana currents of the hidden oceans or seeking strange weather phenomena to observe the dispersal of energy, her apprenticeship has been anything but dull.  It’s helped to give focus to her talents, though, which run toward the stormy, and often leave her struggling to pay attention to things if she’s not confronted with novelty now and again.

The Simic Scientist Warlock came up from the zonots with the second generation of merfolk to grace the surface.  Having long ago made peace and pact with a great beast of the deep, she quickly found her talents for team support in high demand among Guardian Project strike teams and Crypsis Clade scouting missions.  She’s very protective of the fine abalone necklace she wears loose around her neck; it’s both a mark of her pact and the only thing she brought with her to remember her parents by.

The Simic Scientist Wizard is, by all accounts, brilliant- surgeon extraordinaire and transmuter-scientist of the Fin clade, it seems there is little he cannot do if he sets his mind and hands to it.  Of the two, the surgeon’s path is far more important to him, as he would rather save lives with tools and expertise than work at biomancy- so much so that he’s rejected or missed opportunities for more profitable apprenticeships in favor of earning his surgical license and trying for a private practice.  Unfortunately, the money’s run out, and he’s recently had to turn his mind from clean, sterile lab work to the rough conditions and uncertain developments of field work.

[illjustpretend]

will you accept my ancient zora champion who is a black axolotl? 🤲

Axoltls are native only to lake Xochimilco in central Mexico and are to this day are revered as sacred beings. This lake was home to the Tetihuacanos, Aztecs, and even the Toltecs throughout its history. After the Spanish conquest, many of the dams and sluices were destroyed and the native populations were decimated. Over time this massive lake has been drained to reduce flooding in what is now the most populous city in North America- Mexico City. Sadly, this lake and it’s ecosystem are at great risk of destruction due to many factors.

History lesson aside, my vision of a hypothetical ancient meso-American Zora’s domain mirrors the canal system of this great ancient lake. Since it’s my fantasy ecological zone and I get to decide how it’s built, I think it would also be very enchanting for these canals to continue far and wide, eventually culminating in a series of underground caves and cenotes. In reality these cave systems and cenotes are mostly found on the Yucatán peninsula which is pretty far from central Mexico.

I want to do more with this concept, but I figured I’d share the bones with y’all in case anyone is interested!