Had the pleasure of painting this piece and two others for @dragonageannual 2026 zine! It was so much fun working on this and seeing other people's art and writing!
Y'know, sometimes when I think about Edda and the Tam-Tara/Palace of the Dead story, I get reminded just how much of FF14's main story is centred around love and loss and the past and how terrifying it can make someone when they can't move on from their grief.
I mean, it's the driving force behind Nidhogg, behind Emet-Selch, behind Hermes, and now behind Sphene. Hell, it's in some of the crafting quests, too! Alchemist especially.
And it all started with Edda. You see her right at the start of your journey! Before the scions, before Ifrit, before everything. She's there saying, "Look at me! Look at how much I loved, look at how much I lost, and look at how much I changed because of it."
And it's a *side quest* !!
You finish Copperbell Mines thinking that Edda might be okay after everything. If you don't pay any more mind to things, then sure, that's how it stays. But if you do go on to do Corpse Groom, you see she wasn’t. She was alone, grieving, and in pain. Stuck in the past, in what was and could have been. She can't move on and becomes fixated on getting back to those yesterday's that have become perfect in her mind. Despite the truth that things were never perfect. They weren't even really all that good. But it doesn't matter because she can't move on. Won't move on.
Edda descends into maddness in her efforts to bring Avere back. Killing, necromancy, the works. In the end, it killed her too.
She was the first! She was the one to set up the theme that 14 would go on to embody in so many of its villains! In her wake, we got Nidhogg! Enternally grieving his sister, stuck in the memories of her death and the desire of vengence that came from it. We got Emet-Selch! Immortal and so lost in the maddness of his grief, he constructed an entire city to fill with his memories! We saw Hermes, who loved all life so much and mourned its end that his despair caused him to seek the end of creation itself. And now we have Sphene, replica made from the grief of her kingdom, who could not bear to face that grief and instead choose to force others to forget.
It's all love, it's all loss. And it started with a Conjurer who lost her fiance and never stopped blaming herself.
Happy birthday to Baldur's Gate 3!
Thank you for helping me overcome years of burnout and finding joy in art again. I wouldn't be where I am today without it ❤️
Coincidentally, today I can finally share the illustration I made for the Down by the River charity artbook!
"The Alamarri crossed the Frostback Mountains to escape a beast they called the shadow goddess in their stories. I met the spirit that they fled. She walks the Fade along the southern tundra, weeping, lonely, and forgotten. Great Ferelden formed because a lonely spirit drove her prey away."
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