Today, we’re showing you the third member of “the nine” who has undergone some pretty big changes.  You’ll remember that in the original Child of the Stars trilogy, Christopher Linus was an undead hunter.  In a way, he was kind of a paladin as well, and we didn’t want that overlap, so we took him in a different direction.

In a lot of ways, a monk is similar to a paladin.  Faith and spirituality steers both of their hands.  For Christopher, in this new timeline, a little nudge in a different direction sent him down a path of solitude.

He also doesn’t have the same power that he once did.  While the same could be said for the others we’ve shown, it’s hard to keep this a big secret, as you’ll soon see.  No longer able to manipulate objects with telekinesis, Christopher has a darker, sometimes stronger gift (or curse, depending on how you look at it).

Part of the reason Christopher enjoyed his solitude was that it kept people from being around him.  His studies also helped to keep the blood from burning in his veins.  But when he is unable to control his rage, that power can run a bit out of control.

Of course, he can’t be alone forever.  Christopher was lucky in that he found companions he could rely on to keep him calm and hold their own in a fight, so he could use more reserved tactics to take down his enemies.

As you’ll see in this completed piece, though, sometimes the rage wins out.  Christopher thereby goes from a ranged warrior to someone who gets a little more “in your face”, leaving distance attacks to the mages and the ranger of the group.

We’re so excited about these latest looks at the characters, but we’re still nowhere near done.  Check back soon for a look at yet another character from the world of Tellest, reimagined for a strange new world!

The post Character Art – Christopher Linus appeared first on Tellest.

The novellas and novels that I’ve been working on since Mageborn have been taking place in this bold new timeline, and they change a lot of things.  Characters like Adelia, Maximus, Venathryn and Bolt have retained a lot of the parts of themselves that made them easy to identify.  But as we saw with Luca Kreegan a couple weeks ago, not everyone is the same version of the characters we knew from the Child of the Stars trilogy.

Today, we’re unveiling another of the characters from the original three books re-imagined for this new timeline.  David Garus was a roughneck gladiator, but his station in life is a bit different since Rhys altered the structure of time as we know it.

We start things off with some sketches, as we often do.  Even here, you can see that our warrior, who used to wield dual axes, has a different bit of a style now.

David is still a powerhouse.  But rather than wield two axes with ease, he is almost celebrated for his power, wielding an enormous sword and shield combo, and plenty of armor to boot.

There’s a lot of silver and gold in this piece, with some blue accents to touch things up and make it pop.  So how exactly did this change come about?  Well, we’re not saying just yet.  We’ll let the story speak for itself, mostly, but we will say that David is no longer the secret gladiator he once was.  He enjoys his time in the sunshine, that’s for sure.

Ack!  He’s lost his head!  I actually really like this step of the creation process, as Dennis really takes time to make sure the lighting is handled properly.  You can see in this phase how it would look if we made a figure of the characters…

David’s grand finale really pops.  First of all, I’m so ecstatic that we were able to work the Atalatha sigil into a lot of this costume.  Going forward, we’re really trying to make the people who are banded together feel like they’re part of a cohesive group, and seeing David as a representative of Atalatha is really special.  Beyond that though, the piece is just absolutely spectacular.  Dennis Kessel crushes it again, and keeps us eager for the next piece that he’ll deliver to us.  Once again, you won’t have to wait long.  The next piece is just a couple of weeks away!  See you then!

The post Character Art – David Garus appeared first on Tellest.

If you’re all caught up on your Tellest reading, however, you know some pretty big storylines:

• The Child of the Stars trilogy focused on Kaos Kreegan and the vengeance he aimed to find after his family was attacked by the terrible necromancer Juramentado.
• After that, we introduced the Tales of Tellest series, and began following the exploits of several of the other characters from the Tellest mythology, including Venathryn, Bolt Thunderfury, and Maximus Xanders.  Perhaps the most important character storyline to focus on, however, was that of Adelia Kreegan.  Gaston Camlann has decided to teach her in the ways of magic, and he studies her strange gifts of ancestral recall as well.
• At the same time, the short stories in the Tales of Tellest volumes tell narratives that focus on lesser known heroes—some of which are on their way to being elevated by their own longer stories.
• Of all the characters in the Tales volumes, the most integral is Rhys Oberon.  Rhys has fractured time more than once, first in his debut story Into the Void, and then again in the 2019 tie-in novel Quantum Quest.  One of the stories in Tales of Tellest, Volume 2, however, was the one that ultimately sent Tellest down a different path.
• In the finale of Adelia Kreegan’s trilogy story, several big revelations are had, but perhaps the most important one is the appearance of her brother at Forsynthia, despite the fact that in The Bindings of Fate, we learn that he did not know of Adelia’s survival.  Yet he is alive, and he goes by a different name altogether.

Everything that you see in those bullet points had a part to play in how we got to here now.  Adelia’s ancestral recall works not only as a window to her family’s past, but also to one of her own—that of another timeline.  Because of what Rhys Oberon has been doing, the original timeline has been splintered off, and takes a new direction.  Some of the changes have been small enough not to notice, but perhaps you’ve noticed other ones already…

Now, however, we’re reaching the point where we’re really going to dig in and explore these new changes.  And perhaps one of the biggest ones is the introduction of Adelia’s brother once more.  Luca Kreegan knows of Adelia’s powers and of her past, but he isn’t the Kaos Kreegan we used to know.  Things have changed somewhat, and we leveraged the awesome talent of one of our newest artists to help bring this new version of one of Tellest’s most essential characters to life.  This has been the most verbose opening for a piece of art that we’ve ever seen, so perhaps its time for me to shut up and let the art do the talking!

We begin with some pose sketches.  We didn’t have a lot of art of Kaos, but a lot of what we did have showed him as pretty aggressive and ready to rumble.  We wanted to show this new version of our old main character as someone with a little more reserve and poise.

We chose one that had a very introspective look.  This variation of Luca did a good job of showing off some of his goodies: he still has a grappling hook, a strange spherical object in his pouch, and a flaming sword, so it appears that some things do not change.  But with some colors, perhaps more of the picture will become apparent.

Perhaps the biggest change that we entertained was a palette change.  Kaos wore a lot of red, brown and grey, whereas Luca wears brown and blue.  This choice was made specifically because it evokes a more peaceful feel to it.  Clearly Luca knows his way around a weapon still, but perhaps he isn’t as eager to use violence to further whatever end…

The character is almost completed here, but Dennis put things together a little further, as you’ll soon see.

We absolutely love Luca’s new look.  We’ve known for a long time that the story was going to go this way, and part of knowing that means that you worry about how things are going to be interpreted, and how a shift is going to feel.  Dennis proved immensely capable of the task, and put together a fantastic version of our character that we could not be happier with.  I’m so excited to show off more of Luca in the future, as well as to see the other ways that the landscape has changed now that we’ve officially declared the timeline shift.

You won’t have to wait long either.  In just three weeks, we’ll show you another character who we’ll be exploring in a brand new way.  Keep your eyes peeled, and we’ll be back before you know it!

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