#sun soul

[readingbyraven]

Drew my feral, mean, shifter monk, Smoke! She's a sun soul subclass I usually use for one-shots at my Wednesday table!

[gilded-coq]

The young Dae Rivan, a prosthetically augmented monk from a spelljamer campaign - in her first iteration

[lark-vermillion]

Bao'Zhai - Tabaxi/Cat Sun Soul Monk.

Had the OC for about a decade now, I'd like to play them in a dnd campaign one day.

[fishsticxz-art]

sun soul

[justavulcan]

Backgrounds With Class: Boros Legionnaire

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer.  So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.  Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

Boros Legionnaire

The Boros Legionnaire Artificer is a walking proof that workers in magic are just as important as workers of brass and steel to the Legion.  Although her magical talents are shorter-lived than her material ones, they are certainly more flexible in the heat of battle.  Armed with a sword she made and backed up by a brass construct in the shape of a large war-hound, she joined the legion to follow in her family’s footsteps- supplying the Legion has always been the family business, and she’s just taken the next logical step testing her creations in the field personally.

The Boros Legionnaire Barbarian has always been a competitive soul.  The Ordruun line of minotaurs has been the standard bearers for their people in the Legion for centuries if not millennia.  This minotaur is not one of those line, and if the truth is told, his motives for joining the Legion have more to do with this family he is not part of than the good he can do serving under the Warleader Aurelia.  Competitive spirit and the raw zeal that the Boros embodied before current leadership ascended are far more familiar to this soldier, and his target is the entire Ordruun line- who he would very much love to show up.

The Boros Legionnaire Bard has always been a perfomer at heart, no matter the purpose of their performance.  A child to Rakdos parents who somehow acquired an overwhelming respect for authority would be absolutely fascinated by the talents of a Boros bugler- equal parts inspiration and mayhem-bringer.  Still, in their way their parents are proud of the literally street-shattering performances their child can put on.  That they happen in the midst of quashing the more violent Rakdos parties at the head of a Boros strike force is bittersweet, but still bombastic.

The Boros Legionnaire Cleric knows that violence is not always the way of the legion.  Certainly, as the military police to all of Ravnica, it is their primary function, but in a guild that deals so matter-of-factly with violence there must be those who protect life and heal both their comrades and those they go to defend.  Dedicated spiritually to aiding those around them, this loxodon healer wears the heaviest armor she can tolerate and carries no weapon but that which she must from her station.  For her, the Legion is and has always been meant to be a shield for those who cannot or dare not raise arms in their own defense, and a poultice laid on any wounds savagery or scheming brings.

The Boros Legionnaire Druid walks a delicate line.  Armed with the Legion’s typical fiery magic, he maintains a delicate balance between his duties and the cycles of Ravnica’s limited wilderness.  He’s a fan of cycles- patrolling territory, keeping routines, bringing both healers’ and embermages’ talents to bear in battle in turn, and even (secretly) inciting unrest to justify cleaning out neighborhoods with unsavory elements.  Familiar with the cycle of burn-cleanse-grow of ancient forest destruction and regrowth, this centaur is as tied to the green space of Ravnica as tightly as any gruul anarch or selesnya initiate; he just views the city as subject to the same natural cycle.

The Boros Legionnaire Fighter was always a runt among his kin- noble cyclops blood adulterated by too many ogres and humans through the centuries, he barely breaks eight feet tall and will never see the immense stature of his two-story ancestors.  Still, he’s a natural hand at the forge and an avid student of his runes, so he has unique talents to bring to bear against the Legion’s enemies.  He hopes, secretly, that studying the ancient language-magic of his people will lend some of their more storied traits.

The Boros Legionnaire Monk is a bearer of the light so often spoke of among the Legion.  Raised in the strictest traditions of a multigenerational family of wojeks, it was always assumed that she would take her inner light and cast it about to find the darker sides of her peers and serve as one of the Legion’s investigators.  Instead she’s proven her talents again and again as a natural complement to her allies’ heavy armor and broad shields, darting across and through the battlefield with a sword in hand and a growing trail of radiance behind her.  Perhaps one day the light will be able to do more than show her trail, but she’s content to serve until it shows in its fullness.

The Boros Legionnaire Paladin has sworn an oath, as paladins are wont to do, to Aurelia herself.  An oath of service, of fealty, of devotion, naturally.  However, it paints him in an uncommon light- as one of Ravnica’s unquiet dead, a zombie still shambling around tied to a deteriorating body and encrusted with mold that peels and bleaches in the sun, he should be among the Golgari.  A memory is all that stands between him and that path- one of battle, sprinting with great urgency, with an angel at their backs and surrounded by warriors in gleaming armor.

The Boros Legionnaire Ranger wasn’t taught to stalk, to hunt, and to use the bow.  They come naturally, a strange talent for a human from the grittiest part of Precinct Six, raised near an iron foundry.  Still, his talents are unrefined, and formal training at Sunhome has taught him to bring them to bear on the legion’s behalf, stalking and occasionally killing Ravnica’s malcontents and anarchists into the Rubblebelts and beyond.  When not tasked with a mission such as this, there is always work as a support for a squad on the street, but he hungers for larger quarries than Tin street gangs and the occasional belligerent ogre.

The Boros Legionnaire Rogue lives by the motto “who dares, wins.”  Daring bordering on foolhardy, even for a goblin, she is known for pelting ahead of her comrades to bring her dual swords to bear against the enemy before all others have their chance.  Boastful and proud to match her admittedly sterling reputation as a promising candidate among duellists, she’s broadly disliked among the other cadets for how she seems to dodge the due punishments for defying orders.

The Boros Legionnaire Sorcerer was exposed to heavenly fire as a child- the consecrated flames of a firemane angel’s blade set alight the wagon in which her family dwelt, and her burns were grievous.  As the rest of her family was a small Gruul clan that had just rampaged through a city block, that same angel had just finished leading the counterattack that cost her parents her life.  Years later, fully aware of the source of her burgeoning powers and how she acquired them, she joined the legion, facing that same angel as she proved her ability with the fire that scorched her.

The Boros Legionnaire Warlock met Aurelia of the Legion for the first time as a child.  At this first meeting, when she told the warleader of the Rakdos ‘surprise party’ waiting around the corner, the angel gave her a feather from her wing for her vigilance and aid to the legion.  From that first meeting, she knew that the Legion was her way out of the chaos-wracked Precinct Four and joined the legion as soon as she was able.  There, swearing her oaths of service, she reaffirmed her commitment to Aurelia herself, and the angel honored the oath with a pact.  Now she serves proudly as embermage and medic both- whichever is needed for the engagement, she brings to bear.

The Boros Legionnaire Wizard serves as a critical component of the Boros war machine- the one that keeps their troops from being torn apart by Golgari necromancers or Gruul druids.  Armed with countermagic and explosive battlemagic like few others, this dispassionate vedalken warmage is known for his poker face- in battle, his face is a mask beyond which no insight penetrates.  Despite his apparently frozen demeanor in battle, his heart burns no less brightly than his comrades’, and he shows it in the rare moments between battles when he remembers who he’s protected.

[dunezday]

Drew another portrait of mmy boy Varun, The Sun Soul Monk...we won't talk about the fact that his temple expelled him, he's better than them anyway!

[king-bito]

When your male d&d character dies and since he always got called 'she' because your voice is too fem, you make a gender Neutral air genasi Sun Soul Monk to force players to at least use They/Them or get punched in the face with the sun xD

Rest in Peace Tarik, your death humbled our chaotic party and created necessary character growth.

[they-call-me-veral]

Asha O'Hare, monk of the sun soul tradition