Eclipsing the Hydra

~Bad Poetry~Knights of the Dark Age

Oct. 26

Written By Tiler 'Ti' Bradshaw

Warll, Geseus and Stral about to get to work on a Hydra. The idea is that the three remaining Eclipses are driven to destroy all of the Great Beings of the world, and lead humanity to true freedom. This Hydra is a type of Dragon, the second order of creatures after the Gods themselves and therefore not a threat on this basis. The problem that the Eclipses have with Dragons is that after their creators and masters were slain by the Eclipses at the dawn of the Dark Age, they saw fit to try and replace the now dead Gods by demonstrating their power to the Theians and allowing these people to worship them.

After learning of this, the Eclipses decide that they will have to step in. The only thing in their doctrine that is worse than a God, is a false God, and thus their powers must be brought to bear against the charlatan.

Dragons in the world of Theia are sentient constructs created by the Gods of the early ages of the world and super-charged with the powers of their creators in order to destroy their brethren the Dark Gods. These Dark Gods also created their own Dragons, and The Wars of the Great Ones was fought using such creatures and later on Giants, then eventually the Dark Gods were completely defeated when the Gods ultimately created Humans with the Power of Potential, and the first Heroes through them. Dragons Dragons act as if they have an unlimited mana pool, and are only capable of using magic of the most destructive power associated with their elemental alignments. They have Icons just like Heroes, Giants, and Gods, and therefore are immortal, they can heal from even the most grievous wounds in relatively short time and can only be truly slain if their Core is destroyed.

The Core of a Dragon is the Nexus of power that is perpetually charged with the Deepest Blessing of the Gods, a special rite of the Gods for Imbuing an inanimate object with sentience, which can then be bound to a body, that can grow depending of the limitations set by the God. Because the Gods were desperate to win their battles with the Dark Gods and end the seemingly endless stalemate, the Dragons were empowered enough to slay a God if assisted by another Dragon or God, and the sheer volume of energy this required led to the Parent God becoming incredibly exhausted for a long time afterward.

The role of Dragons in the War of the Great Ones was to bombard the enemy with overwhelming force using magic and their immense bodies. They are almost inexhaustible and are unrelenting in battle and do not appreciate property enough to avoid collateral damage on extreme levels. Offended Dragons have been known to obliterate entire kingdoms in days leading up to the Shining Age despite their inherent intelligence granted by the Gods. Because they are essentially the Theian nuclear option, the Gods asserted absolute control over their Dragons and tried their best to destroy all of the Dark Gods' Dragons as a those restraints no longer exist for orphaned Dragons.

All Dragons, being designed as weapons of a particular power set, are not able to procreate (a limitation that involves lacking of the Power of Potential), and thus can only be made by Gods. Also, the Gods of the Early Ages who created Dragons were slain by the Dark Gods or otherwise formed the Pantheon of the Shining Age or became the obscure Gods known as the Stray Gods, and as such, the number of Dragons on Theia may never increase again, and the individual Gods who know the rites are dead, save for the Stray Gods who have stepped aside in recognition that Humans are willing forge their own fate.

Enough about Dragons in a fictitious world, I made this scene to illustrate how some of the people that slay Gods and rule the world might occupy themselves during their downtime. The overall feeling that I sought was something akin to how one might feel looking at the poster or cover art of an epic movie or video game that you would really want to get into (personally, I get a delightful SNES feeling when looking at this).

This piece was my first attempt at atmospheric perspective/depth by using judicious application of line, line weight, contrast, and particularly, obfuscation. I thought that I could add focal depth and lead the eye better by painting the background over some of the elements that should be farther away from the viewer, and farther away from the viewer's mind. I wanted it to have a certain parallax style appearance with contrast and posing/blocking - note the use of vertical elements and how they relate to the horizontal elements. I also removed things like a horizon or natural light and general terrain (are they by a lake, or up in the clouds? An underwater cavern?) The construction of the scenery was not nearly as important as the techniques I sought to employ or the action that should take place.

I always was quite happy with this one.