Below, you’ll see the three kingdoms that make up the archipelago.  In green, we have Neka, in violet, Richus (pronounced Ry-kus), and in orange we have Krill.  Despite the fact that these three kingdoms are ruled by different factions, there have been alliances made from those across all of the borders.

With that in mind, maybe it makes sense to look at a version of the map that doesn’t have the overlay.  Those of you who were around for the parchment version, and who have a good memory, may recall that there were no mountains or rivers in place on that iteration of the map.  I wanted to give it a little more realism, so I added a few places where you’d find mountains and rivers.  Culturally, these have some big significance in a lot of stories, and I didn’t want to lose an opportunity to explore that.

Right now, we only have art for a few characters who have yet to actually grace any Tellest pages.  We also have a character who Aaron introduced who doesn’t yet have art, but who we may see in the future again, so she may be yet another character who gets a chance to shine, and get her own art made.

Well, that’s going to wrap us up for today.  We’ve got another continent that we’ll be showing off in a few weeks, and that will get us back to our larger continents.  Stay tuned!

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Udo is a kobold from Numasa who looks a bit like a racoon dog, or Tanuki.  He swears up and down that he’s not, but his power seems to suggest otherwise.  You see, Udo has luck on his side.  Or at least that’s how other people see it.  If a rain of arrows were to fall on the battlefield, Udo would know just where to stand to avoid being hit.  If he was standing in a corridor, and knew he couldn’t run from an oncoming spear, he would know just where to strike with his katana to shred the weapon in two.

Udo uses his power for good, and has become a sellsword for merchant caravans, or troubled villages who are dealing with pirates or bandits.  He’s made a bit of a name for himself, and if some ne’er-do-wells find out he’s on the opposing side of a fight, that’s often enough to have them aborting their nefarious plans.

Udo was brought to life here by the same artist who worked on another member of his team, Kazuri, the wind-blade summoning avarian.  LizKay put her spin on both of these characters, and they ended up looking so vibrant and expressive and fun.

Together with Shiro, they make up 3/5ths of an interesting group of heroes from a place not often seen in the Tellest universe yet, but we’re hoping to see more of it.

Here is your final look at Udo for today.  I’m excited to cross the halfway mark of introductions to this team.  We’ve still got one more featured member that needs to be drawn up, and then the fifth and final member may not show up until the first sight of their group project.  But it’s fun to think about either way.

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Numasa is the only archipelago continent that you’ll see in Tellest (for now, at least).  There are an assortment of smaller islands, with three larger ones making up the more hospitable regions.  Numasa sees a wide range of races there, from humans and elves, to kaja, kobolds, avarians and more.

Again, we haven’t spent too much time in Numasa yet, so more needs to be seen to adequately define what is there.  But at the very least, I know of five characters there who will band together to save life as they know it in Numasa.  I have a samurai-like kobold named Udo who is incredibly lucky, an avarian ex-pirate named Kazuri who can summon blades of wind to heave at her enemies, a powered human named Shiro who can create celestial glass out of thin air, and an as yet unseen additional two heroes who I’ll show off a little bit later.

Once more, you’ll see I created a parchment version of the map that was made, which came out looking great.  If you come on back in a few weeks we’ll have a new Tellest map ready to look forward to.  I hope you liked what you saw of Numasa!

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So, you can see that we had a couple of designs to look at for Shiro.  That’s because Barnswallow wanted to capture her abilities when she presented her.  You see, Shiro has the gift of summoning celestial glass.  Anything that she can think of, she can create, though of course it takes its toll on her.  She primarily uses it defensively, making shields or walls.  But she also uses it for utility as well.  Got a problem reaching a book on the top shelf?  Why not make a step ladder out of celestial glass.  Need to cross over a muddy creek?  How about a quickly formed magical bridge?

We opted to go for something that let us see her in a more refined and almost regal fashion.  I wanted Barnswallow to be able to focus on her poise and her awesome outfit, as we haven’t really seen the culture of Numasa expressed yet (with a slight exception for Kazuri).

When you actually see the colored version of the piece, it pops that much more.  I especially like the effect of the celestial glass wobble on the lower part of the outfit.  I’d love to see Barnswallow do another piece of Shiro in the future, because you can tell that she had a lot of fun putting it together.  I also can’t wait to talk more about Shiro and the project that she participates in.  I’ll try to get on that soon!

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