GOD MONTH: Moradin, the Soul Forger

Dwarven legend reveres Moradin not only as a ruler, but as a creator. Tales tell that he fashioned the first Dwarves from jewels and precious metals, explaining both the Dwarven passion for minerals and their propensity for forging.

So God Month is officially over now! I'm sure you're pleased to note that we were mostly on-schedule for the whole thing (unlike last year's Dragon Month which, uh, dragged on a bit) which hopefully bodes well for the future. I'm going to be returning as a regular contributor to the blog again, anyway. I've really enjoyed doing these illustrations for the last few weeks!

Picking a religion is a fun part of character creation for me, and Blanca always spends a long time designing pantheons of gods whenever she's writing a campaign setting. Deities - particularly of the polytheistic, Romanesque, soap-opera superheroes variety (where they're all trying to murder each other or having babies with mortals) reflect interestingly on the humans who invent or revere them. I think both of us have tried to illustrate our picks in a way that maybe gives you an idea of how that god might be represented by its worshippers, which I think is an important thing to consider when planning a campaign or playing the role of a character.

GOD MONTH: Ehlonna of the Forests

Ehlonna is one of D&D's many nature gods, representing peace, fertility and goodness in nature. She rivals Obad-Hai (representing primal energy and balance in nature) and fights against Kannan (representing brutality and destruction in nature). Of all the nature deities, she's the one most sympathetic to those seeking to farm and hunt in it, though she always works to prevent the wild from being completely tamed. Ehlonna isn't an elven goddess, but she's very often worshipped by them and has allies among the pantheon of elven gods. She rules over the good animals, fey and plants of the forest, and her most faithful servants and heralds are unicorns.

This image marks the end of God Month. I was originally going to put Elhonna first, but I decided to put her last to end God Month with a colorful, trippy bang. Obvious Arcimboldo influences in this image, though not as clever and refined as he is. Originally she was just going to be a unicorn-headed figure with a cloak of leaves and flowers and a rose halo, but a lot of my original plans had animal heads (still there with Azul) and the halo thing felt like I was just repearing Pelor.

GOD MONTH: Vecna, Master of Secrets

Whether they originate in good intentions or ill, ours is a world riddled with secrets. Great or small, of tawdry inconsequence or unspeakable importance, secrets are and have always been a source of power for those wise enough to see them; this is the chief tenet of Vecna-worship. In reality an insanely old and unfathomly powerful lich, Vecna is a terrifying entity, bent on the simple, terrible goal of destroying all other gods in order to rule the universe.

Vecna is my favourite villain deity. As described in the lore (and also in the stats - should you care to peruse them in Deities and Demigods), he's not actually as powerful as some of the more fundamental deities like Pelor and Nerull, as essentially he's just an uppity lich. But there's something about his insidious Neutral Evil alignment and wily obsession with secrets that makes me think that while he may at times seem like a small, angry dog yipping at the heels of the big gods, he probably does have a legitimate plan of action to succeed in his objective of serial deicide. What form will it take? Well, he's certainly not telling you anytime soon.

GOD MONTH: Gruumsh, the One-Eyed God

Gruumsh, battle-father, man-killer, orc-blesser. He will see no weakness, only survival. He will see no surrender, only conquest. One-eyed, always-watching. 

Long have the orcs given him war-praise, and long has he blessed us with bounty upon bounty of blood, like rivers, thick with bodies. 

Spear-stabber, elf-breaker; he wars with elf-god Corellon Larethian, coward-lord, who stole his eye for fear of his strength! For this crime all elves will suffer.

Another Gygax original, Gruumsh is one of a couple of common orc deities put forward in the PHB.

I love orcs. So simple-minded, so vicious, so oddly noble. An uncaring and vicious society, sure, but it's worked out fine for them, often making them the most numerous race in many fantasy settings. Reading about orc lifestyle it was fun to think of what kind of iconography would actually be used in orc deity worship to inspire faith and reverence. I went for a simple, angular design with lots of angry colours, but there's a bit of a stained-glass feeling in there too.

Gruumsh actually lives on Acheron, a hellish dimension whose upper levels actually consist of countless giant metal cube-planets all waging war with each other. I thought about trying to incorporate this into the design but after Boccob I didn't want to make you all think I'm some kind of geometric one-trick pony.

GOD MONTH: Boccob, the Uncaring

Perhaps, long ago, when the archmage Boccob was still a man, there still existed some corner of his heart which was not dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the harnessing of the endless primal energies of magic. Perhaps he knew uncertainty, as men know. Perhaps he knew fear. Perhaps love.

Now, Boccob is beyond all these. No man can say how he ascended to divinity; many foolish wizards have attempted to follow in his footsteps, but none have succeeded. Alone in his endless Library of Lore, he ponders in infinite silence the mysteries of magic and of the multiverse. He answers no prayers, he does not engage in petty squabbles, as the other gods do. And yet, his followers - wizards, and students of the arcane arts - revere him with utmost respect as a paragon of knowledge, an example of greatness to be aspired to.

Hello again! It's been a while, hasn't it? I'm back to join in the fun on god month, to celebrate the 2nd year anniversary (wow!) of Dungeons and Drawings. So you'll be getting double the usual amount of uploads for the next few weeks. Lucky you guys!

Pretty much from the get-go with D&D, Boccob was my favourite deity. Something about this person who'd become utterly unhinged from the human element of the world really got me thinking - I initially imagined him as little more than a chaotic mass of letter-forms or shapes. I was a tiny bit disappointed by the "official" look - a slightly generic-looking white-haired old wizard - but Boccob was an invention of Gygax himself so I thought I'd try to involve some of it in my version. I tried to get a sense of this old guy whose body is frail and decaying but whose abstract, conceptual mind is breaking free. The shapes are mostly based on the Platonic Solids, the most basic and perfect 3-dimensional forms (not to mention the shapes which are used for most modern dice!).

GOD MONTH: Fharlanghn, the Dweller on the Horizon

Fharlanghn rules over roads, freedom and those who travel the world. He offers safety, luck and favourable weather to those who pray to him. He's brother to Celestian, the Far Wanderer, who rules over stars, space and those who travel beyond the world. Fharlanghn is one of the few gods (maybe the only one) who mostly lives in the Prime Material Plane. While most other gods make their home in other dimensions, Fharlanghn, by virtue of being the god of travel, has no home. Not sure why he prefers the non-spiritual world over other dimensions. He sometimes goes across other dimensions, but very rarely, and he almost never sets foot on the Elemental Plane of Air or any of the outmost dimensions, which would fall more under his brother's domain.

As a travelling god, he has no temples; only small shrines near roads. His mortal servants follow his example and never stay in the same place for long. Since he has no set home, his dead worshipper's souls don't go away. Instead, they stay on their home plane, and continue to aid travellers. Many people worship him, especially adventurers or any others who make their living from travelling.

I went for a primitive look for Fharlanghn, the god with possibly the most annoying name to spell and pronounce. Even though he isn't a major god, it feels like he would be very ancient, and would be worshipped before settled civilization became a thing.

DRAGON MONTH: Tiamat, Mother of Evil Dragons

Tiamat is one of the most iconic members of the Greyhawk pantheon. Although only a minor goddess, she's heavily involved in the mortal world, and in her home plane in the Baator. All evil dragons keep shrines to her, in rooms separate from their treasures so she won't reach through and take their hoard. Good dragons respect her (warily). She's a vengeful creature and concerned only with her survival and that of her progeny. Her enemies include most good deities, with special regards to Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon. She sleeps in a mountain of demonic skulls and guards the borders between Avernus and Dis, attended by five ancient dragon servants.

Even people who aren't familiar with games might've heard of Tiamat. She's a common enemy in the Dragonlance books and was one of the main baddies in the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.

First of all, I'd like to apologize for being so late with this. I've been working really hard for the past few months on some animation for a film, A Liar's Autobiography, a documentary about Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame. While it's been super awesome to be working on a film, doing character animation (basically exactly what I want to do), it leaves me absolutely exhausted when the weekend comes around.

Joe's already mentioned that he doesn't intend to return to Dungeons & Drawings on a regular basis due to other projects he wants to work on. We started this blog just over a year ago with the intent of it being a weekly drawing exercise while we looked for work: pick a monster, draw it, avoid getting rusty. With the work he and I have been getting it's been harder to keep up with the blog. So, for now, Joe's called it quits. Not me, though. I'm still too obsessive over this game to stop.

I'll start putting up the poll again so you guys can help me pick the next monster and I'll keep doing my weekly thing.

Wee Jas, Goddess of Death and Magic

Wee Jas, the Witch Goddess, occupies a unique position in the magical pantheon of deities and demigods. She dwells in blood, death and magic, but is not inherently evil. Her followers and clerics, most of them necromancers and powerful wizards, are some of the most dangerous men (and women) alive (and dead). She is distinguished from other gods of death such as Nerull (Foe of all Good and Enemy of Life) by the fact that she venerates death as an inevitability, rather than something to be cheated or dealt out wantonly. The dead are taught to be respected and remembered, that the living may be treated the same way in turn when their time comes. Her alignment is Lawful Neutral, and her favoured weapon is the dagger.

To commemorate this blog's continual maintanance for ONE WHOLE YEAR (!), this weeks' "creatures" (can we call them that?) are actually Gods from the main D&D pantheon. Blanca and I have illustrated gods that are on pretty differing ends of the spectrum so it's interesting to see how they've turned out.

This depiction of Wee Jas is a little unusual if you've ever seen any literature on her, which mostly describes her as a beautiful, red-headed woman with skull-themed jewelery. I'm not a fan of depicting gods as visually identical to humans, though, they need to be a little more abstract or symbolic to pack more of a punch. This actually affects pretty much all of the gods as listed in the Deities & Demigods book - most of them are illustrated in the same manner you'd draw an ordinary PC; you might not even get that they were deities if you weren't told so. In contrast, there's this one little icon of Wee Jas in the Player's Handbook that I really like - it has the look of a skull, but it also has these weird flame/tendril/ribbon things that seem to grow out of it, getting this combination of magic-plus-death that for me sums up the goddess. I based my design on that, trying to depict the Ruby Sorceress in a flayed, corpse-like body, roiling in gory magic, deep in her home dimension of Acheron.

Pelor, The Shining One

Pelor is a top god of the Greyhawk pantheon. His followers are many; he is creator of all things good, god of healing, and he who feels the sun rise. He lives in a golden citadel in Elysium. The fortress is surrounded by beautiful fields, farms and orchards, and is inhabited by various war-like angels and peaceful saints.

It's a rare thing for a religion not to have the Sun as one of their main gods. Even the most primitive civilizations could tell that life is sustained by that big ball of fire in the sky (except for the Greeks it seems, who made their main god king of thunderstorms).

I'm similar to Joe's frame of mind in that I don't think divine beings should always be shown as human. Deities and Demigods kinda disappoints me from an artistic point of view, since the gods just don't look that interesting. Pelor's some old guy in golden robes, Kord's a buff barbarian, Olidammara's a bard, etc... They don't look very divine.

I was always quite fond of old myths, where the reason the gods looked the way they do to us it because their true divine form is so dazzling that it can kill you. The Zeus and Semele is the most famous example. I'm pretty certain I came across a Hindu myth with a similar thing, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Bible had a couple of instances too. Well, I think the whole dazzling true form deal is pretty apt for a the god of that thing that you should never look directly into.


HAPPY ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY, DUNGEONS & DRAWINGS.

Valkyrie

These are the maidens of battle, towering above mortal man, born from the spilled blood of war gods. On their steeds the Valkyries are part of the endless battles of the Heroic Domains of Ysgard, or fly over earthly wars in search of great warriors. Their eyes always crackle with lightning, as do their swords. They know no cruelty, but they also know no mercy.


There are actually two entries for the Valkyrie creature in the books of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. The first is a storm-wielding woman of fury with wings and hooves, and the second one is essentially a celestial level 20 Paladin. I liked aspects of both (the lightning of the first and the steed of the second) and decided to combine them into a single image.

This image is dedicated to Wolfgang Baur, publisher of the D&D/Pathfinder magazine Kobold Quarterly, who requested this creature.