For the last couple years, I've been kicking around some miscellaneous fantasy adventurer characters. Most of them first appeared during my Figure Drawing Friday livestreams, where I would use the "Sketch" feature on AdorkaStock.com as a warm-up, and then turn my favorite sketches into characters.
A combination of having a lot of repeat characters, having Dungeons and Dragons concepts that never really got to see the light of day, and having a strong desire to make little comics and things again, has resulted in me finalizing three new adventurer characters!
I do intend on having short and longer? form content featuring this little party, but obviously a lot of it is still in development. The project, such as it is? Doesn't even have a name yet, which is a little daunting.
Nevertheless, here they are.
Gilda Alberk
Gilda started life as Galdis, an elf sword-mage who features in the piece, A Short Rest. I was really proud of how this drawing turned out, and you can actually kind of catch her in the Ruins as well; she's wearing her big wizard hat and looking at a map in the corner.
Galdis was born directly out of AdorkaStock. An extremely cool sword pose turned into a wizard summoning a magical dragon. I made up most of the details on the spot, but Liked her enough that I'd revisit her a few times throughout various figure drawing sessions.
The name "Galdis" is based on something from RealElvish.net, a website specializing in the construction of names in Tolkien's languages. Throughout my time with DnD, I've utilized Sindarin and sometimes Quenya for elf places and characters, and as I started getting more into these characters as their own thing, I realized that maybe...I shouldn't do that.
It was around this time I decided to try and shake up the traditional fantasy races a bit for my own worldbuilding. This could be a whole separate blog post -- and it might be, if people are curious -- but the short of it is, "Gilda" is a brand new fantasy species I decided to name the Tanau.
The Tanau are very much like humans, but they have special "gill vents" all along their bodies. They can expel high-pressure steam from these vents to augment their physical strength, or, if surrounded, scald their foes. They also have fuzzy, pointed ears, and they tend to have greyish skin tones.
Gilda is a very proud swordmage, and acts as "the party face." She talks a big game, but she's confident she has the skills to back it up. And if she doesn't, she'll find a way to make it work. Usually by relying on her parter, Bernie.
Bernice Markwardt
Bernie also started life out as an elf! She was originally called Ristare, and she's always been the "fighter" archetype. Unlike Galdis, she was not born out of a sketching excersize, but rather out of the need to populate the Ruins piece with other adventurers.
Some poses referenced from AdorkaStock. Click to expand.
She was also designed specifically as a counterpart to Galdis, blue to contrast the red, and with a calmer demeanor over Galdis' hotheaded tendencies. As I started seriously considering the two as real characters, I realized I had an opportunity to work out their relationship. As it turns out, they are madly in love with each other!
Redesigning Ristare into Bernice, I think, made her a much more interesting character. I think her new body type reflects her nature as a tank better, and it adds a little more contrast to Gilda. These sketch pages feature a couple of memes, which I admit feels a little cheap, but I think anything that can get me into their headspaces at this early stage helps.
Gilda is hot-headed and excitable, Bernie is measured and stalwart, and together they are both experienced adventurers. Adventurers who might do well to take a pupil under their wings...
Finyae Lonniran
Finyae was developed with a particular story in mind, the Big Project all of this is going to hopefully culminate in. She is a novice adventurer and functions as a combination of the party rogue and ranger.
Finyae is a Delvin, and that is absolutely a blog post I'm going to make in the future. You can consider her a nocturnal, forest-based elf. She's young, but she's eager to prove herself, and she's very good at sneaking around.
At this point, I have the least to really say about Finyae, because most of the development stuff surrounding her is very much part of her story, and I'm not ready to release those details just yet.
Of the three characters, she's going to be the most central figure; a lot of the story is going to be watching her come into her own as an adventurer, and figuring out exactly what that means for her, with Gilda and Bernie guiding her all the way.
And that concludes my introduction of the main cast! I still have a ton of worldbuilding and other important characters to develop, and I'm excited to share more about them all down the line. The setting doesn't really have a name yet, and the story doesn't have a title, either, but that will come in due time.
Thank you very much for reading!