A Comprehensive Overview Of My Original Characters And This Illustration (A.C.O.O.M.O.C.A.T.I.)
Quick disclaimer: The name of the story that these characters exist in is called Human Nature. And as you can imagine, the lore of my characters are tied to the world & story building of Human Nature. All of which are in extremely early stages, meaning everything here is *very* subject to change... So, please enjoy this lore drop, but keep the fragility of these contents in mind as well. Thank you and please enjoy reading !
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Content warnings: Mentions and visuals of blood & mentions of killing/murder. Proceed at your own discretion and remember to take care of yourself.
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So, for starters, let’s meet our two characters.
The woman on the leftmost side of this illustration is Leora. Leora is an anonymous bounty hunter by trade, who mainly operates in an undercity called Mareapolis, located in the center of a valley. The lady on the right, reading the newspaper is Justine. She’s the owner of an inn located in the uncultivated outskirts of that same valley.
Despite operating in secret, Leora’s gained quite a notorious reputation in the undercity and has even been dubbed the “Kudzu Weedkiller” by city locals. This is due to her tendency to only hunt members of a faction called “Kudzu Agents”, who are known to invade and “consume” whatever land they come across. But as nefarious as the Kudzu Agents are, Leora doesn’t exactly hunt them for the sake of justice. Instead, she has her own personal reasons. Reasons involving old grudges and uncovered lies. Leora was born into a faction similar to the one she hunts down now. A faction that raised and trained her to excel in her current profession. But one that also specialized in keeping dangerous secrets. Secrets so dangerous that overhearing mere whispers almost cost Leora her life. Forcing her to flee into the forest, finding refuge at Justine’s inn. Nowadays, Leora investigates leads on those same secrets that almost got her killed, and so far, every lead has brought her to the Kudzu Agents. So, when the sun sets, Leora visits the undercity, finds a group of Agents and presses them for any information about a certain “Dome of Fog”. Whether or not she receives any information, she tears up the weeds and completes her bounty.
Given the nature of Leora’s profession, it’s very common for her to return home covered in blood. This is precisely why Justine isn’t exactly shocked to see her in this state.
Justine’s taken in many wanderers who’ve happen to come across the inn., and views Leora as yet another stray. The inn in question used to be a typical castle owned by Justine’s family. Justine’s family had their own corrupt reputation in the undercity, before the Kudzu Agents invaded. Some of Justine’s family were killed in an attempt to oppose the Agents’ rising authority, Justine’s parents included. But the rest of her family ended up hunkering down, even further underground, leaving Justine by herself in a big, empty castle. Despite hating majority of her family, Justine wasn’t used to being alone. She desperately missed having others around. Hearing their voices and footsteps echo through the large, dust-covered hallways, feeling the warmth of passing them as she went up and down the stairs every morning or just seeing them in distance as they leisurely went about their day. She missed those moments. To Justine, community matters more than anything. So, over the years, Justine began taking in anybody who needed shelter and happened to cross her inn.
Justine’s inn, as you might’ve guessed, is also the setting of this illustration. Leora is returning from a bounty on foot, stumbling back to the inn, deciding to take the long way inside, instead of through the front door, on count of looking half-dead and being covered in blood. Which is when she ran into Justine, who on the other hand, had been feeling rather exhausted from catering to her residents every need. Of course, providing hospitality is all she's ever wanted to do, but there's no denying the toll it takes either. Countless children tracking mud all over the castle floor, residents demanding access to bathrooms in their rooms, rather than down an endless corridor, more residents demanding maps of the castle's complex layout and even more borderline dysfunctionality at every turn. So, in order to take her mind off the residents’ endless troubles, Justine heads behind the inn, with newspaper from the undercity and relaxes on an elevated bench.
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Artist’s notes:
about the text at the bottom of the illustration, I left who's saying which line ambiguous on purpose because this could literally be about either character in this illustration. They've both "had quite a night." and they can both tell they've had quite a night. Of course, it's more apparent for Leora, since she's covered in blood, but Leora's also aware that Justine only ever comes to this bench when she's stressed out about something.
In the future, I’ll draw more detailed illustrations of both Leora and Justine respectively, and then eventually the inn and the undercity.
To see the speedpaint of this illustration, you can head to my tiktok account @angelousic
