We start off with a few sketches, from general pen strokes to a bit more line art and finally a general idea of what his face will look like.

The next image that Valence got us was one that was full color, and had a tremendous amount of polish on it.  At this point, Alexander practically looked like a Disney character.  You can see that he was presented as the rogue he is, with his hood up, and with blades at hand.

Our penultimate version of the image takes things a step further, putting some shine on the armor pieces.  Ultimately we knew we had to change a few things, so we stepped some of them back, but we loved Valence’s ideas, and it was so hard to step back from this look!

Luckily, the final look at Alexander isn’t too far from the earlier concept, and it just dials up the awesome to 11.  There’s plenty more polish in place, from the cloth portions of the garment, to the arm guards, and even the blades.

That completes our look at Alexander, but we still have one more character to show off that Valence sent our way, and then after that, we’ve got plenty of other ideas that we’re trying to work with him for.  Cross your fingers for us!

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Valence started us off with a couple of basic sketches to get the shape right, and get a roundabout idea of what Grohl’s equipment would be.  We had only seen his head before, so we didn’t really have the greatest idea of how the final piece would look, but you’ll notice that even in the second rough sketch, we could still see the orc cleric’s glasses!

This next step was another relatively iterative step on our way to finalizing Grohl’s look.  There weren’t too many changes here, but you’ll notice one of the two avenues we could go down was a little more flowy than the other.

Ultimately, we ended up going with the less billowy of the two options, just because it’s hard being an adventure when your robe gets stuck in stuff all the time.  After that, Valence moved us toward more detailed measures.  Our initial look at Grohl was him in his early college days, when he moonlighted as a model.

In all honesty, it was just that as Valence was working on new iterations of the character, he started looking as though he was aging up.  Sometimes that’s just the way it happens, and it ended up being a cool experience here.  In the next version of Grohl, you can see he seems more focused on his books, and his hair looks a little less “frosted tip” than before.

Then in our final version of the artwork, you can see that we lightened the hair again, and he seemed to age up even more.  That’s probably in tandem with the added glasses, of course.

Well, that about wraps us up for this look at the character.  We still have more D&D stuff to show you, but in the meantime, don’t forget that we’re releasing Tellest brand battlemaps these days.  You can find beautiful jumbo-sized game pad versions on the Tellest Etsy, or if you just want a digital version, you can find those on our Patreon.

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Lance started us off with a pretty basic sketch.  We wanted to show off the equipment that Megit uses, so you can see some vague shape of his hammer, and his shield here.

We put a bit more polish on the sketch next, and you could see that Megit is a paladin who has a tremendous force at hand when it comes to his equipment and his armor.  The shield is plenty big, the hammer is hefty, and his armor looks mighty heavy.  It should be nothing for a warrior of conviction to handle, but he’s doing a good job with it, it seems.

Valence actually gave us a third sketch, because he wanted to make sure that our symbols and sigils were presented effectively.  That’s because, as a force of one of the gods of Tellest, Megit needed to wear his faith quite literally on his chest.  He also has it emblazoned on his shield.  The Tellestian god Animus is represented by the tree of life, which you’ll see in this sketch on both of those pieces of gear.

With our first splash of color, we also get a bit of polish, which really helps to sell you on where exactly this piece was going.  Megit is a towering force, and now having moved beyond the sketch phase, you can see the fierce gaze that he maintains.  Truly, this paladin is almost always one of the first to enter the fray.  Dave plays him so well, and is always a quintessential force in bringing the roleplaying elements of the game to the forefront.

And here we have the final look at our mighty paladin.  Though he’s questioning his faith, you’d never see that internal struggle from here in the artwork.  With a bit of shine and shadow, Valence brings this character to life in a way befitting of our player, and we could not be happier with how it turned out.

As of this writing we are finally in the planning stages of trying to get the Cora’s Champions campaign back in order.  It has been a long time because of the pandemic, but we’re ready to roll dice again, and I have been working my butt off to get plenty of things prepared for a glorious return.  Stay tuned, and we’ll have more to show before you know it!

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First up, Lance prepared us with a few sketches that showed the general shape and form of the character.  You’ll see a quick slideshow below that gives us some basics, as well as the beginning stages of Anaria’s attire.

Once we moved forward a little bit, we got a bit more of an idea of what Anaria looked like in the color scheme.  We were lucky in that we had some work done on the character’s heads before, so we already knew the basic color scheme and the like.

Valence gave us the option to move forward with or without a hood.  For a while, we were going to have both options available, but that idea became untenable, as it was a lot of extra work for the artist, even from this point.  We ultimately decided to go for the hooded version, but Valence still had to build Anaria up without it to get a proper idea of the shape.

We were also given the opportunity to choose whether the hood would be present at all, but we opted to keep the hood, as that one captured the magical essence that we were hoping for with Anaria.

Valence knew exactly what we wanted from an attire standpoint then, and it was then completely up to him to polish the fabric, add the light and shadows, and basically just bring Anaria to life in his wonderful style.

In this final version of the artwork, you can see just how lively Valence’s work was for us.  Anaria had never felt so alive, and it was great to see her fully formed.  Rhianna was very pleased with the artwork, and we knew that we had a great thing going with Valence.

There were still a few other champions that Cora sent along to Versali-Virai (and that our party met there) that we needed to see illustrated, and Valence did not disappoint.  More on them later though!

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Today’s first champion is Pikeldorf.  My brother’s first character in WoW was a hunter named Pikeldorf, and he’s taken that and run with it for this campaign.  Matt’s dwarf’s name is a reference to one of R. A. Salvatore’s characters.

Matt loves to do cool stuff with Pikeldorf, even if he isn’t totally sure of his backstory, or his motivations.  He still managed to play it cool when he was hanging from a lighthouse in Versali-Virai, hanging on for dear life from a grappling hook as he overheard a suspicious conversation that helped them track down some nefarious dealings.

Grohl is one of the characters that was met after the escape from the jails in Cora’s castle.  An orc cleric, he’s very scholarly and thoughtful.  Played by our friend Matt B, Grohl is a lover of puzzles, and a bit of a humorous character indeed.

Grohl is one of the more patient members of the group, and he takes care to look at all the possible outcomes of a situation.  He often thinks of ideas that are a bit out side the box, leading the group down unfamiliar avenues.

Our next character is also the last one that was with the party since the first session, though he hasn’t been seen recently.  Fortune has an unfortunate name.  He had some bad rolls, which followed a rotten life where his wife and child were killed.

Fortune was played by a friend named Kiran who unfortunately didn’t have the availability needed to make it to the sessions.  Fortune hasn’t been seen since demons were first seen in the city of Versali-Virai.

Alexander started off toeing the line between heroics and villainy.  A citizen of Versali-Virai, he was close to joining up with the Enkindled Brotherhood…until he discovered they were summoning demons from the infernal plane.  He was introduced late in the game, played by Michael’s friend and collaborator Kevin.

Alexander is the second character that Kevin played, and he sure is a character.  Often speaking with a hilarious accent, it’s hard to take Alexander too seriously.  But, what he lacks in coherence, he makes up for in cleverness and a touch of luck!

These four make up almost all of the rest of Cora’s Champions, but we have one other character who joined the group much later in the game (and then of course a pandemic happened).  After a long delay, Cora’s Champions once again set out to figure out all they needed to in Versali-Virai’s sewers while they look to discover more about the Enkindled Brotherhood.

Stay tuned for more reveals from these D&D sessions!

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Those are the sewers under the market district in Versali-Virai.  I worked with UPrinting, who does beautiful banners for me for Comic Cons, and ended up with a 4′ x 6′ map that we used.  We started that back in 2019 I think, and we’re still not done with this session, technically.  COVID had a huge amount to do with that, as we have some ADHD folks who are hard to wrangle long distance (and it certainly doesn’t help that I’m OCD and like things done a certain way).  Anyway, I digress.  The point is, because we had been playing D&D for so long, it felt like the right time to get my players images made for their characters.  So now, you get to see the other people who are actively shaping Tellest in a lot of cool ways.

First up today, we’ll show you Anaria.  Anaria is my wife’s character, and she’s a kaja wizard who has an affinity toward fire magic.  Anaria was separated from her sister when she was young, and ended up at the Cirque de Malorum as one of their performers.

Years later, Anaria awoke unexpectedly in a place that was unfamiliar to her.  She had forgotten how she arrived there, but ended up working with the others who she met there in order to find escape.  Anaria is brash and inquisitive, sometimes at the same time.  She is not afraid to burn things down and search through the ashes for her answers.

The paladin Megit (played by my friend Dave) has been questioning his faith for some time.  When he awakes in the strange keep, he hears what appears to be the voice of his goddess.

Megit has quickly proven himself to be one of the most even-minded and dependable members of the party.  He is always ready to protect those he stands beside, even as he contends with the truth of his faith: that he in fact has been cut off from any divinity for some time—though somehow still has access to his powers.

Finally we have Noomali.  The long lost sister of Anaria, Noomali is played by Rhianna’s friend Noemi.

Whereas Anaria struggled for survival as a circus act, Noomali found a much easier life, serving a noble household and becoming close with the family.

Noomali has a much cooler, reserved attitude than her fiery sister.  Noomali tends to use ice magic, and she waits to see what is happening around her before rushing to action.

While their reunion was touching, Anaria and Noomali were unable to truly reconcile, as danger lay in wait all around them, and before they knew it, they were thrust into an adventure the likes neither of them could have expected.

Here you have the first three of our party members.  I run a large group, so I’ll be back with another four adventurers in a few weeks.  I’ll also divulge some more information about where the characters have gone, and why they’re called Cora’s Champions.  Stay tuned!

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