#cadiana jacqueline steelsong

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saw oc kiss week floating around and wanted to participate, I love drawing kisses for february so it's nice to have the excuse!

ft. cady (she/they/he) on the left and @solfell's kishore (she/her) on the right. just two nbs sharing a kiss

edit: my pal wrote a piece to go along with it!

[iironwreath]

Repair [Cadiana]

[a rewrite of an old thing—took me a while to get to but I wanted to rewrite cady's older pieces into exandria like I did for union. this takes place during the year the party is in the feywild. and now it's longer than it was before oops]

Cadiana darkened the terrace of the house. It should have been easy—raise a fist, knock. They had done it before without hesitation, but it was if she were stone again, her limbs heavy and locked in place.

It was by both miracle and effort they found the house at all. Emon had always been a large city, being the first stretch of land to greet newcomers from Vasselheim, but it must have at least tripled in size in the last three centuries. Cadiana had missed so much time that Gwessar had become Tal’Dorei. 

She curled her fingers into her palms, shoulders creeping upwards. Even a subtle shift made noise, tiny clicks of overlapping plates like a second set of joints. 

They had been to their mother’s grave, but none of the surrounding plots belonged to their father. There were too many ifs: he could have moved anywhere from several months to two hundred years ago. He could have been executed and then burned and sacrificed to Neminar’s demonic legion. Cady wanted to complete the puzzle of where he'd gone—potentially sniffing out the start of a trail, then seeing if it ended in another grave or a living relative. Why hesitate, when she knew what she wanted? 

Passer-bys were unbothered by the armour-clad half-orc looming on a doorstep, too caught up in their own chatter or getting from one place to the next. Elspeth and Hadrean waited across the street, Elspeth attentive on Cady while Hadrean surveyed everyone else.

Cady inhaled, raised an arm, and pounded on the door.

Inside came a call, footfalls, then the door swung inward to reveal an elven woman. Her hair was ginger and cropped close to her skull and there were a sprinkle of freckles beneath a pair of pewter-blue eyes. They were similar to her father’s—to hers. 

Cadiana was a few inches taller and could see into the front hall. A staircase climbed the left wall. Furniture had been replaced and rearranged, and the scent wasn’t one she remembered. A dwarven woman, blonde, stood with her hands on her hips in an archway on the right wall, across from the stairwell. She wore a pair of half-moon spectacles that made her look like she could examine Cady for faults.

“Can I help you?” the elven woman asked with a perfunctory smile. Her accent was from Syngorn. The trophy dagger at Cady’s hip weighed heavy. 

Cady cleared her throat. “Cadiana Jacqueline Steelsong. I’m a paladin of Erathis.”

The woman’s eyes cut up and down her tabard. “I can see that.”

“I’m not here on any official business.”

“What brings you here, then, Cadiana of Erathis?”

There was no eloquent way to phrase it. “I used to live here.”

The elf shared a glance with the woman over her shoulder. “Did you?”

“I did. I was wondering when you purchased the house, if you did.”

The dwarf sidled up beside the elf, arms shifting to cross her bust. “Must’ve been about nine years ago now? Why, you lookin’ to buy it back? We’re not lookin’ to sell.”

Her accent was from Kraghammer. It sent a shiver of memory through Cady—of years spent warring beside them. She closed it behind her teeth, trying not to grind them.

“No,” Cady said. “I was wondering if you bought it from an elven man. Ginger hair, about this tall.” She measured outwards from her mouth with a flat hand.

They looked at each other quizzically. “No?”

Cady massaged their temples with one hand. “Damn it.”

“We might be able to help if you gave us more,” the elven woman said, now with a sprig of amusement. “You’re not lost, are you?”

Frustration pricked at the back of her neck and her posture snapped taut. The women, to their credit, didn’t flinch. “I’m not lost. I’m looking for my father.”

“What was his name?”

“Rhys’Erowyn.”

The elf scratched at her cheek, looking apologetic. “It doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry.”

“Taverns’ll be the next best place to ask,” the dwarf added. “Keep fishing with that name and eventually you’ll get a bite, I’m sure.”

Cady’s mouth went firm. “Thank you.”

The couple nodded and eased the door shut. Cadiana backed off the terrace. She trailed the seams of the house with her eyes—the door’s casing, the windows, then past it to the shingles of the roof and the chimney pointing into the dome of the sky beyond. It was the pale pastel of blue hydrangeas, and the occasional cloud scudded by. 

The home had felt more capacious when she was younger. Homes back then hadn’t always been built with orcs in mind, but her parents had made due. The church had always been home more than this place—where she bunked down, where she had made her first friends.

A part of her wanted to say goodbye to it, like it was important, somehow—but they normally didn’t ‘do’ things for the sake of it, for sentimentality. Normally she had orders that determined what was important for her. A part of her missed that—she could seek out as much guidance as she wanted, but everything was only ever a suggestion, never demanded.

Maybe it was to see if there was any remnant of her mother that wasn’t stone, earth, or bones—a scent, possession, or painting. A grave hadn’t been enough. She wanted something with more life and memory, to know that not everything had been or would be war—but it had been so long. The dust had settled. Maybe her father was that missing link.

Was it even the same building if there had been an attack from the Chrome Conclave, or did it just occupy the same address? Emon looked like it had a fresh coat of paint over fresh scars, but its core remained intact. Tal'dorei wore scars on its body as much as its people—she hadn’t seen the physical scars from the Scattered War yet, though she’d been told where to find them. The mental ones—she was living proof of that. 

She reached up to brush her fingers against her lone tusk, then wrung her left hand to pinch the stub at her knuckle. Homes could be rebuilt from the ground up—did it make them the same home? Could she be rebuilt?

Had she ever been broken? Could she replace what she’d lost?

They turned in a huff and strode back to their companions.

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forgot about this old doodle—prosthetic tusk for date nights (any pronouns)

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been messing with cady’s backstory to fit them into matt’s exandria setting and settled on the lawbearer as her deity which ofc means an outfit rework. dunno why I never considered dark armour before, it’s sexy

I always love coming back to an oc later & making their story a lil stronger 🙏🏻

(any pronouns) 

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meant to just draw a bit of cady, ended up playing around a bit

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new cady sprite dropped ⚔️

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when in doubt, charts

these are less ‘these characters inspired me to make mine’ and more ‘they helped influence and inspire me as I was fleshing them out after coming up with their initial concept’

except koda. koda was just ‘what if I made kermit’ and then came into his own

cihro’s weird because he’s an enigma I’ve had for far too long and I have no idea what his inspiration was, only what fictional characters he resembles cuz I’ve had him since before zootopia came out 

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cady warmup sketch from ?? ago

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hhh tall

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“As you learn to release the past and surrender to the present, the future becomes even brighter.

Death can mean that you are on the verge of meaningful change but are resisting it. You may be reluctant to let go, or you may not know how to make the change you need. You still carry harmful viewpoints from the past that may interfere with a new opportunity. Because of your refusal, life has stagnated, and you feel stuck in limbo.”

I’m so tired of looking at this, please take it

but I love it when a card is a perfect fit for multiple reasons, reversed and upright B)

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a quick self-indulgent cady cuz she and the wizard went into a pit of water last session and she figured she should take her armour off for the swim up since it was heavy 

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I feel like half the fun of a paladin for me is just getting completely fucked when you don’t have your armour and being covered in both your own blood and the enemy’s

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tfw ya kid gets real big and scary and you rarely get to see her anymore

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self-indulgent half-orcs? it’s more likely than you think

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conquest paladins can legally say fuck, right

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buncha cady drawings, captions underneath

the stealth one is from here