#knights and necromancer

[chrisrin]

Those OCs look cool, its the middle of the night, i cant sleep, so heck it whats the lore reason for the casual fit on Drexel?

SOOOOOOOOOOO the world my little OCs live in is EARTH!

but a very, very weird Earth.

Imagine if on Earth, as we were developing technology and bringing advancement into society that we discovered MAGIC! It was used to power almost everything and created a very easy shortcut to create around the same level of tech we might have in our real world right now, and maybe further. Magic was innate to almost everyone and easily usable, it was a concept as solid and concrete as gravity.

And then imagine if, one day, the magic malfunctioned. The once-controllable element of magic suddenly goes haywire, becoming unpredictable and dangerous. Cities, infrastructure, governments, and technology, all that relied on arcane sources were suddenly unstable and it sent the world into what was essentially an apocalyptic event.

Now, hundreds of years later, Earth has recessed back into the Dark Ages. Magic is universally banned and a government of super powerful figures called the Lord's Court have an order of Knights specifically tasked with hunting down any magic users. There's laws and bans on scientific renovation of any kind, in fear that magic may further induce harm on the land.

BUT, there's still relics of modern Earth all around. Drexel is one of the few mages who still practices magic in attempt to calm its wild nature. He's also a HUUUGE fucking fanboy of any pre-Cataclysm (that's what the magic malfunctioning apocalypse is called!)

So he's a bit of a nerd loser and ALSO is insanely obsessed with fashion and all sorts of stuff from the old world. He also just has an immense amount of knowledge about it too!

(this is the vibe)

[illustratus]

Astolfo in his turn is lured to Atlante's Palace of Illusions (Orlando Furioso) by Gustave Doré

[askymzbuki]

HELP SHE KEEPS RAISING ME FROM THE DEAD

[urivart]

Gobtober day 6-7 Necromancer/Knight #Gobtober2023

[nuclearwasabireturns]

A few of the Inktober adoptables I'v been dishing out this month. All the designs are for sale, you can DM me on Twitter @wasabi_nuclear to check for availability [100 USD each] Or just look at them, I think they're pretty neat!

[redthemarten]

Oh! What if Neuvillette dressed up as a king and Wriothesley is his knight?

Okay, I kind of mashed these two together, making it the king, the princess and the knight. As a way to lie to myself that I've drawn more costume ideas than I actually did :'D

The Duke can be very scary when he gets in character. Before you know it, you have already forfeited all of your Credit Coupons to His Royal Majesty. Long live the king!

[dreorcaul]

Gideon + harrow fanart! finally starting to read Gideon the ninth and harrow is waifu.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Villain: The Knights of St. Kazvarin

There's pious and selfless devotion, and then there's whatever these weirdos have going on

Riding forth from their brooding fortress-abbey to do the will of a long dead holy man, these inscrutable warriors have long been the subject of rumour and suspicion. It's not an undeserved reputation, as apart from looting tombs for ancient relics or ominously observing the goings on of the common folk these forboding knights are most often acting as the hired muscle for unscrupulous nobles who have no regard for the legality or virtue of the orders they enforce.

Far more than mercenaries with a patina of piousness, the Knights use these contracts to fund a secret and sinister endeavour that they have undertaken for centuries.

Adventure Hooks:

While delving through a dungeon the party follow a trail of slain monsters to a gravely injured knight and his thoroughly overwhelmed young squire. The boy will introduce them as Tilaen and Ser Darrik respectively and ask for their aid in tending to his master's injuries, before the dour Knight chides him for speaking on his behalf and tells the party to be about their way. Ser Darrik wants no help from "the faithless" and is willing to use the last of his strength to get violent about it. If cooler heads prevail, the party will learn that the two were after a rare manuscript hidden somewhere within the dungeon, and the offer of collaboration might be explored. If the party don't help, they'll find the squire waiting for them at the dungeon's entrance, requesting their help to bury his master and guide him back to their order's abbey. It's only after a few days of travelling together will realize that Squire Tilaen is muchabused by his sect, and that steering the boy away or outright adopting him might be the real kindness.

Acting as a stern and imposing shadow to whatever asshole noble or callous merchant the party have recently pissed off, the towering and always helmed Ser Gelceiras has "Bossfight" written all over him. However when the adventure's final confrontation looms the party find him cleaning off his massive axe, his employer's head in a bloodsoaked bag waiting to be delivered to them. "We got what we wanted from him" he rumbles as he exits, " you can have what's left. no hard feelings."

Just a new threat encroaches on the settlement, a mace wielding bruiser in burnished armour rides up and pledges to fight alongside the party in its defence. Ser Portia's skill as a fighter is sorely needed, perhaps enough to overlook whatever agenda it is that drew her to the settlement in the first place. Shortly after the final battle is fought and the dust clears, the party will realize Portia is nowhere to be seen... having escaped sometime during the aftermath after inexplicably kidnapping one of the locals.

Background: Before he was a sacred corpse, Saint Kazvarin was a necromancer of great talent, having dedicated his life to the study of thanatology and the many loopholes around death. This earned him great renown and wealth in his day, amazing the masses with seances while charging the powerful dearly for cut-rate resurrections. He amassed generous patrons and fanatical followers, only to have it all fall apart when the Raven Queen took an interest.

Kazvarin had and constructed his own bootleg afterlife, a place where his most loyal followers would rest forever in glory before being called back in time of greatest need. Atleast that was the sales pitch, in reality the "saint" had stopped just short of lichdom delving into the shadow to create a demiplane where his own soul would reside undeminished after death, sustained by the faith of his followers as the realm hollowed them out.

Such villainy inevitably created it's own downfall in the form of a young woman who's family were taken in and exploited by Kazvarin's cult. Though her name was not recorded by history, she was marked by the Duskmaven for greatness when she swore to tear down the saint who would conquer death, years later succeeding along with some allies in not only killing the necromancer but cursing him with a most ironic fate. Denying him the afterlife he had so meticulously constructed, the raven queen cursed Kazvarin with reincarnation, forcing his soul to live out a new life where it would forget all he knew and be remade.

It would have been a perfect punishment had the Saint's followers not been so fanatical. Though their organization had been shattered by their "benevolent" leader's apparent assassination, the most loyal of his inner circle poured through his research, finding the spells nessisary to seek out his soul in its new vessel. Thereafter they engaged in a grim hunt, crossing the realms to ritually sacrifice the youth their leader had grown into and pulling free his undigested soul. This is the cycle Kazvarin's followers have been following for generations, spending decades hunting for signs of their leader's return before using murder and necromancy to forcibly deincarnate him. Thereafter Kazvarin has a few months or years to act freely before he is swallowed back up by the tide of souls and the hunt begins again

Future Adventures:

Though they begin as a comparatively minor oddity, the knights become a true threat to the campaign as soon as they figure out who Kazvarin's current incarnation is and manage to wrest his soul out. Ideally this should be someone the party knows, to make it all the more tragic that they were sacrificed to bring about the villain's return.

Though it is much deminished, Kazvarin's demiplane (called the Howling Basilica) still traps the souls of those who have sworn their lives to him, acting as a vault from which he can pull rank upon rank of shadow-maddened spirits to his bidding. His most loyal retainers are allowed to keep their skills and individuality while being deprived of their will, meaning he has a backlog of highly skilled Knights just waiting for new bodies to possess no matter how many times the party defeat them on the field. What's worse is that the saint still remembers how to manipulate people with the offer of offbrand immortality, and will likely begin reaching out to powerful individuals shorty after his return.

Art 1

Art 2

[lodium]

So I finally started to play Dark Souls recently and

[beetle-arcade]

The necromancer is still salty about his break up with the blacksmith lmao

[halfcatfish]

you can stop liking my portal 2 doodle page now.... please support my castle crashers hyperfixation...😞

[thundersummonr]

the castle crashers brainrot set in hard ... mine and my boyfriends ocs (blanka, jay, casey and aeron) ! The Boys (jay and aeron) belong to @bluswordz

[noahhawthorneauthor]

July was a heck of a good reading month, and I've well and fallen into a historical romance hole. Both series by Allie Therin were *especially* good.

[watchfulbirds]

i made some castle crashers stamps! all f2u without credit ofc :)

[lyannatropes]

The Key to The Underworld

[alhilton]

My position on Fan Fiction/ Fan-Make

I've been goaded into actually formulating a policy about this, due to actually finding fan fiction of my work. This is a good problem to have! My policy, here goes -

I firmly believe that fan-creations are a sign of health for any artistic property. I am always flattered when people want to spend extra time in my world and with my characters. There are a few pitfalls here, however, and authors have different ways of addressing them. Here are mine:

Visual Fan Artwork

I am generally delighted by visual fan art (images, dolls, cross-stitch, sculpture, etc) as long as you state clearly in the description where the world and/or characters came from and you’re not trying to sell it without a license. I enthusiastically share fan art when I find it. You do not need a license from me to make non-commercial, appropriately-attributed visual fan art.

Fan Fiction

Text-based fan fiction is a stickier subject. I am not interested in writing in a shared world. My canon is off-limits until I am dead. When my work is in the public domain, knock yourselves out!

Legally, best-practice is for me to pretend not to see fan fiction. I admit that I don’t always do this. However, I am nervous about interacting with fan fiction or linking to it because it is a legal mine-field. I do not want to lose control of my copyrights. (That is my main fear – not that you’ll make money on my work, but that I will lose control of my copyrights.)

Bottom line: if you want me to feel really free to interact with your fan fic and share it with my audience, you need to get a license from me. That license will give you legal permission to create “derivative works.” The license will also say that anything I create that is influenced by your fan fiction is mine alone and I do not owe you money or credit for any ideals that may pop up in my own canon creations due to reading your fan fiction.

If you obtain such a license from me, you are street-legal. This said, I do not promise to read fan fiction, even if you license it. I do not promise to critique it or give writing advice. Fan fiction is a gift to other fans, not to me.

Monetized Fan Creations (here’s where I really differ from other authors)

I am quite tolerant of fans making money in my world as long as you get a license from me first. I’m probably not going to give you a license for text-based stories to be published on retailers. Those have potential to confuse my readers. However, I will happily give you a license for many other kinds of monetized fan creations, including text-based stories in some forms. Unless you are a company, I’m probably not going to ask you for royalties. You can keep whatever you make, and I will happily link your work to my audience.

Examples:

You can sell commissioned artwork of my characters to other fans.

You can sell artwork of my characters printed on merch in places like Red Bubble (t-shirts, mugs, calendars, mousepads, etc).

You can make monetized pod-fic as long as it’s not on retailers and it’s clearly labeled as a non-canon fan-creation.

You can share your stories or art of my world and characters behind a paywall or on a site with advertising as long as it’s properly labeled and my own content is linked.

You can make a game based on my world. (If you are a company or a large kick-starter-backed endeavor, I will ask for royalties, but I’ll be reasonable).

You can make a D&D manual (OMG, please make a D&D manual. I get so many requests for this. I have no interested in making a D&D manual, but I will share yours and you can keep all the money…unless you are a gaming company or a large endeavor with backers, in which case I will want royalties, but I will be reasonable.)

The things you can do are practically limitless. I don’t have time to pursue all the good ideas myself! I just ask that you get a license from me first and link your source material (my books). Email me: abigail.hilton@pavoninebooks.com

If you would like to listen to me talk about this topic at length, you can listen to this podcast episode, recorded 8/31/2024.