TLDR: Odwain is OLD in our current games and has a new exo-suit that has magic/organic components so that he can keep his carcass in fighting shape. There is a little extra exploratory sheet of sketches on my patreon.
In the current campaign that we're playing (which is set 10 years after Godslaughter, but we'll be going 'backwards' again to do other stuff with different characters) Odwain Novak is a spry 79 years old, quite a far cry away from his starting age of 27 in our very first tabletop game, which this is a direct continuation of. Our current game, "Distant Trees", marks the first time I'm using Odwain's grandson, Oedwythe, as a PC, but also the last game that I will play OG Odwain as a PC. It's kind of bittersweet for me, I love Odwain very much and he was the first time that I felt truly close to my character in a roleplay setting. But I feel that his stuff with his grandson ties up his character arc pretty definitively and he'll be delegated as NPC from here on out. Because he's not fully human, he physically ages a little slower, but is still no spring chicken and his mortality has been weighing heavily on his mind, as well as his husband, Rusty's - who will outlive him for several hundred years no matter how you slice it, and still looks like they're around 30 or so. Odwain and Oedwythe are currently in an awkward position where Odwain's age makes Whitty feel like he needs to protect him, and similarly, Whitty's youth and inexperience make Odwain feel (perhaps more justifiably so) like he needs to protect Whitty.
For "Distant Trees" and going forward, Odwain sports the Phasmid Rig, a mash of technology, magic and bio-engineering, the latter of which was scalped off a highly sophisticated, Space Jockey-esque race of beings by a friend of Odwain's who works for the fantasy feds, basically. The interior of this harder than steel, chitinous material is full of webbing tendrils which adhere themselves to his body, securing the panels in place. Odwain's staff, the Luminous Mind, has also been augmented to hold stores of explosives, drones and other nasty paraphernalia. The suit also gives him strength, speed and endurance that he would perhaps not be capable of at his age...at least, while he's wearing it.
The main image is the "finalized" (nothing's ever finalized lol) design, where the second was some exploratory sketches when I was considering a full body suit. I really wanted to keep this one loose, I've just come off a big project and I'm exhausted. Hence why some of this is kinda "off model".
One of the questions I got for this thing on twitter was “are any of your characters parents” and the answer is yes, there’s a few, but I wanted to focus on Rusty, Multiverse’s #1 Dad. Top is our TTRPG Canon (which is not the same as the comic canon, which shall yet remain shrouded in mystery) aka the first game we did. Mindrunner is the same game/setting Ozzy is from, and The Stolen King is the short game that introduced Horatio. Though they are separate universes, the do cross paths and Horatio specifically has become acquainted with the Primeline characters. Horseradish’s role is upcoming when we finish Godslaughter and return to the troubles of Ozzy’s home plane in Mindrunner II.
Other points of interest: Ash and Sable are twins. Russet’s other parent is no longer in the picture, though Sable has probably found someone nice to settle down with by the time Russet is an adult (Russet is not a very fleshed out character other than Whitty’s Older Cousin but that’s ok). Sable is Odwain’s favorite. Horseradish is a Secret Baby and as far as most people know, Artie is her dad and is a single parent (he is neither of those things). Rusty and Jonquil would normally not be able to make baby because they are different races, but Odwain helped. The “Tsivanoh Gap”, as the gap in their teeth is called, is a hereditary trait that everyone blood-related to Rusty has, traceable back to their first Bennai ancestors who came to The Road. Rusty and their respective partner let their kids choose which last name they want to go by.
So, I did this inbox questionnaire thing second time. The first time was about six months ago, so it’s interesting to see how I handle my technical pen inking now. There’s a lot of chewy lore in these, but Patroklos’ is the most substantial, if you feel like reading about the Threnghelleon Muses.
Wow, featuring one of the more flattering drawings I’ve done of Odwain. Like last time, I’ll post all these guys separately and then do all the headshots in a masterpost. In the meantime buckle up for...a lot. (Thank you for giving me my favorite character.)
Full Name: Odwain Novak. In Ben Yit’gab, the Bennai language, his first name would be Oediwen, and it’s what his dad called him. His mother calls him Oddy and he does not like it.
Gender and Sexuality: Male and Bisexual
Pronouns: He/him
Ethnicity/Species: Odwain is a Ben-Aleth, a Human-Bennai hybrid, also called a mosshead if you’re in coarse company. His human mother Blanche Novak is mixed race. Odwain’s maternal grandfather came directly from Earth, Poland specifically, during one of the several accidental migrations of humans coming from Earth to The Road. His maternal grandmother is from a previous wave who were already settled on The Road by that time, but the family can trace her ancestry back to West Africa. Odwain’s father, Ashatov Novak, was a full-blooded Bennai, a plant-based halfling race. Ashatov took his wife’s last name.
Birthplace and Birthdate: Thinking about this trips me out man. Odwain was born in 1946, sometime in the summer, probably July or August, in Septor Secundis, a coastal, metropolitan city and the seat of The Road’s government. He’s 27 during his first adventure and right now, in Godslaughter, he is 69 (what the FUCK). He will live maybe 20 or 30 years longer than your average human, and is in better physical shape than a human would be at 69. He’s more like late 40’s or early 50’s.
Guilty Pleasures: A lot, probably - Odwain has just a bit of hedonistic streak just because he feels miserable so much of the time that he needs to feel good somehow. He smokes cigarettes for much of his life (but eventually quits), is a casual cannabis smoker and binge eats really truly terrible junk food (and has a bit of a gut because of it, but because he’s kind of lanky otherwise, he’s just kind of gourd-shaped). He likes beer, but doesn’t drink hard liqour all that often because he gets astronomically bad hangovers. Despite having a generally weak stomach, Odwain really likes frightfully spicy food, and his kids’ obligatory dad-gifts for him are probably hot sauces. When he’s not pounding down garbage, his favorite kind of cuisine is Thai. Not a guilty pleasure per say, but he also loves all things that have to do with insects, and when he and Rusty have a house together, Odwain takes up gardening as a hobby and plants an expansive garden of flora that are attractive to bees. (A Nice Thing: Odwain plants this garden when Rusty is pregnant because he found his love of insects through his father’s garden as a child, and wanted to give his kids the same opportunity) Odwain also maintains an apiary from the time that he’s living in a warehouse in the desert, to when he’s living with a partner and beyond. When he learns how to make Hot Honey it’s over for all of us. He has a modest collection of novelty bee-themed things that he’s amassed over the years, but he is not guilty about asserting his love of bees/wasps, like, at all. He’s also a little kinky but I’m not going into that.
Phobias: All of Odwain’s fears are existential - what if I push everyone away, existing in society is anxiety inducing, what if I’m just a bad person and my existence is making everything more difficult for functional people, etc. Though he’s kind of a sad fellow and has ideated suicide, and came very, VERY close to trying to kill himself after he dropped out of college, he also fears growing old and dying. I think death is more digestible to him if it’s on his own terms, but even then, I think what coaxed him off the edge was fear. If anything ever happened to his chosen romantic partner or any of his kids, he’d be besides himself, and is kind of one severe trauma and emotional breakdown away from becoming a bee-themed supervillian.
What They Would Be Famous For: Odwain is notable at a certain point in his career for being a pioneer in AI programming, and also for designing, building and patenting an invention called the Hercules Rig, which is basically a beetle-wing inspired jetpack. You can see it here. He holds the patent very closely and only allows it to be reproduced for recreation, construction, emergency rescue operations, etc. Odwain has taken a very firm stance on not allowing the military or any paramilitary organization to get their hands on it, though it has not stopped them from making shitty knock-offs that he is constantly suing people about.
What They Would Get Arrested For: Breaking and entering. Exploding something he shouldn’t. Buying illegal hazardous materials. Doing something petty that bites him in the ass.
OC You Ship Them With: To be honest there are not a lot of other characters besides Rusty that I ship him with. Bitter college rivals, thrown back together as late twenty-somethings, becoming better people together and learning to express empathy and vulnerability…it’s good. The only other character that I really go yeah, that’s the good stuff, is Jake’s character Finnick, who is kind of Odwain’s weird BFF and fellow mad scientist type. I don’t think they’d have a super stable relationship, and I think it would most likely be a “we yelled at each other and had weird sex enough that we like each other now” kind of scenario. But I do think they would come to love each other and have each other’s back to the death. Him and Hemlock, my dirty swamp witch who’s only picture was devoured during the great tumblr purge, also make a pretty fun couple for similar reasons. Iona too, but I think they are too explosive of personalities to ever find a stable middle ground. I also think he would find certain people attractive (August, Hare, Ganzrig, Ifechi the man I have spoken of but once, Jonquil in certain scenarios) but may not put himself out there to pursue them.
Neither of us have ever posted any art of her but here’s a few headshots of Finnick I did awhile ago, because she really is my favorite romantic partner for Odwain aside from Rusty, and is the only other one that’s really relevant in our games.
OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Odwain is fairly physically fragile and to be honest I think that most people could kill him as long as they could get their hands on him - he’s very dexterous and has a lot of gadgets that let him get the upper hand, keep enemies at a distance or escape. He has a ranged fighting/add-spawn build so he is mostly out of direct harm unless he’s reeled in somehow. But uh, Odwain IS dead right now in Godslaughter, he died fighting an eldritch deity named Dreamer who sucked him into a nightmare dimension and flayed his soul out of his body. It’s ok though, as long as the party beats Dio, he’ll be fine. I didn’t cry you’re the one who’s crying.
Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Ok, so, first off HAHA Odwain canonically likes Transformers and collects them, which are a thing in circulation after the last human migration from earth in the 90’s. Imagine. Imagine your grown ass father with a genius level IQ and multiple patents collecting plastic robots. Him and Finnick have transformers sonas - ANYWAY, that aside, he doesn’t really read for pleasure, just information, and generally just puts on cable while he works for white noise (and in later years, whatever The Road’s TV streaming service is). Most of the media he consumes is incidental to him, but will get interested in strange things that pique his interest. He probably thinks true crime docs are neat and enjoys pulpy sci-fi stuff that he can complain about. Any documentary about bugs. He’d like Mystery Science Theatre if they had it around. He enjoys things that are the fun, good kind of “bad” and has a fairly high threshold for disturbing imagery.
Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Odwain is that guy who makes 20 minute long youtube videos lampooning movies for “not making sense”. If there’s anything that breaks his suspension of disbelief, his attention and tolerance disintegrates, even if it’s just one of those things that needs to happen to move the plot along. It doesn’t really matter what genre it is, though he is most hard on sci-fi and fantasy. There is a tipping point for him, however, where he starts enjoying the thrill of blasting something and circles back around to enjoying it.
Talents and/or Powers: Odwain is only a little bitty bit magical, and only because Bennai are the most magical race on The Road. He has latent magical ability that allows him to sense magical signatures and incorporate magic into technology, and maybe cast a low level spell if he tries really hard. If he was in a high fantasy setting, he’d be an enchanter. His staff (the big lightbulb thing I draw him with sometimes), the Hercules Rig, his Wasp Suite (robotic wasps with an AI and different spells loaded into them) and any other devilish, bug-based weapons and utility objects do his work for him.
Why Someone Might Love Them: Odwain’s a bit of a tough walnut to crack because I think that he shines in moments of sincerity and vulnerability, but he has to, well, get there. He’s capable of very great, thoughtful acts of selflessness and compassion, and deeply desires meaningful relationships with other people, but he gets insecure about how he expresses himself and can clam up. He’s passionate, emotional and expressive, but has been put down for being so, and was probably a very brilliant, curious child who was beaten down into a somber adult. I actually think that, at some point in his childhood, he was not entirely unlike Whitty in the way that he was eager to share things with people and explore the world around him, which is why Odwain feels very protective of his grandson. I think the most lovable thing about him is that when he’s at his best, nothing can stop him - he’s extremely intelligent, diligent, creative and innovative. He truly, deeply loves making things, and making them better, and when he’s not in a crash, creates prolifically. What he loves, he loves deeply and without compromise, which makes Rusty, a person that could also be said of, a good match for him. I also think his cattiness makes him very witty, he’s a genuinely funny guy who can engage in some really goofy shenanigans when he’s feeling up for it.
Why Someone Might Hate Them: Oh, lots of reasons. Odwain is an acquired taste to many, or just not to many’s taste at all. He is very petty, blunt and catty, and as a young man is extremely bitter and negative. You’d be very hard pressed to get a positive statement about anything out of him between the ages of 16-25. He’s very confrontational, can become very loud and intense if it’s something that he feels is important, and is not afraid to cut people out of his life if he feels that they aren’t good for him. Sometimes, he will end relationships/friendships prematurely because of this. Being such, he is heavily prone to self-inflicted isolation. He has no childhood friends, and only kept in touch with one person from college. He just cuts and runs. Odwain’s self-loathing runs very deep, which makes it hard for him to accept, or ask for, emotional support or affection. And that can be hard on the people around him who care about him. His executive dysfunction can also be abysmal, making it seem like perhaps he is messy or lazy, but he’s just kind of a mess himself, hah.
A weird non-psychological one but I think is enough to get someone’s hackles up is that Odwain doesn’t like animals very much unless they are insects, invertebrates, etc. He finds mammals loud, messy and needy, and that “I’m the only one in my house that is allowed to be all of those things”.
How They Change: As Odwain ages and gains a stable support network of friends, his edges soften and he learns how to ask for help more effectively. He also learns how to better choose his battles, and how to exercise the compassion that he knows he has, but has been too insecure to utilize. He manages his mental health better, but is never entirely free of it, because you never really are. Most importantly, I think, he learns how to forgive the people who deserve forgiveness, and give people second chances, accepting that people can change. Which means the same can be said for him, too.
Why You Love Them: I’ve talked about this before, somewhere, I’m sure. Odwain is one of those characters that has a very big slice of my personality, and has a lot of my more negative traits, though they are ones we’re both working on. My first session with Odwain was a scene where Odwain’s dad died after being ill for a very long time, and as it happens, it was on father’s day, on the first or second father’s day after MY dad died, after several brutal months fighting with the cancer that eventually killed him. I had to put down the dice, so to speak, and for a short time, thought that Odwain might actually be a character that I scrapped completely. He came too close to something very painful and personal. I don’t remember how, exactly, but the solution to this problem of mine was that if he’s getting close to me on his own, then I might as well just let him in on everything. I can genuinely say that doing that has changed the way that I empathize with my characters and how I make them, and that there is something I share with Odwain that I don’t have with many of my other characters. Also, I like bees.
when I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea
Doing some lil prompts on twitter, but doing too many sketches makes me antsy, so I wanted to do one with a little more polish. The impetus was my ‘favorite couple’, and while I honestly wouldn’t say I have one, Odwain and Rusty were the ones I wanted to draw - I also wanted to do some typography so have a little nod to “Love You Madly” by Cake.
the best blue is through the trees / a royal canopy / we’ll row, we’ll row, we’ll row... -
A comic panel size thing I did as a little test. I imagine this as a kind of recurring dream that Odwain has - full-blooded Bennai do not dream at all unless there is some kind of supernatural interference, so I imagine Odwain’s dreams are very, well, odd.
Haven’t drawn my main two goons, Odwain and Rusty, in awhile. Haven’t drawn all of Odwain’s bugs in one place, either! Bumblebee is Gordon, Mud Dauber is Dot, Flying Ant is Midge, and the ol reliable Wasp is Rita.
