Well hello, travelers. We are looking once again at a new sigil from the world of Tellest, and we once again find ourselves looking at a city that was introduced in The Child of the Stars trilogy. This one was introduced in more than just name, although it may look different (or evoke a different feeling) than it did in the original book. That’s because we’re looking at Graden, the city where Retrus nearly killed Kaos Kreegan, although he was processed by a demon at the time, so… Let’s let bygones be bygones, maybe? Of course, we’re in a new timeline, which means that hasn’t happened (yet, at least), but Graden has a different feeling for it. Let’s look into it a bit further.
A big part of me feels like every city in Tellest is going to try to be known for something. Yes, the little hamlets and villages might just be trying to survive, but they don’t get sigils! To that end, I wrote places like Ashcombe in D’Aprile’s Fools, a place that’s known for making soap. Soap’s good and all, but Graden found something people like a lot more: wine. As such, the folks have a nice lilac background, and upon it sits a wine cask. It’s a little abstract, but then, that’s when you get when you’re drinking all day!
It’s fairly likely that since Graden has just come into an understanding that wine makes the people of the city so filthy rich that they wouldn’t have had a lot of time for their new sigil to age all that much. In time though, you know they’re going to have that design everywhere, and someone’s going to block up some back area of a warehouse (maybe even Cask of Amontillado style), and it’ll wear down over the ages.
Now, you might be surprised about how often we’d see some Graden flags waving about. First off, while Graden makes a lot of money shipping their product out, and yes, you would see merchant wagons with banners, and even ships that sail down the river, it’s become a bit of an experience to imbibe at the city as well. Think of Graden in some ways as the equivalent of Napa Valley in the Tellest universe. It’s a whole experience.
Below, you’ll see the painted version of Graden’s sigil. Once again, they’re relatively new, so they haven’t had a ton of chances to go ahead and paint things yet, but as their warehouses overflow, they might have to make more buildings, or even search out nearby caverns to store their surplus. One thing that people never tire of is getting a little wine drunk.
And once again, we leave you with one final picture: the phone background!
When we next look at a sigil from the Tellest universe, it’s going to be from a city that we’ve seen mentioned in passing in some of our newer books, and was described in small details in one of our old encyclopedia entries. If anyone guesses it, I’ll send the first person who comments correctly some cookies.
Michael DeAngelo
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