It’s the most brilliant and babiest of bois my sister introduced me to a mere month ago who has my full respect and adoration as a fellow neuro. He’s been my favorite character from his episode season one, and I’d resigned myself to loving another side character with minimal screen time, so imagine my surprise and pure joy to learn season four is all about him. I’ve already had to hold back tears of empathy all season, so I’m looking forward to more.
Drew him as my birthday present to myself since I felt sad. Seeing his face improves my day immensely, so here he is. 💚
Austar: Not how I’d put it, Rags. Grender’s going to tear me a new one when we get back.
Ragto: We’re not telling the girls, are we?
Austar: Absolutely not.
Sketched out the good monk bois Austar and Ragto after a night of vigilante antics. Ragto, the Kitsune on the left, is a strength-based monk of the astral self NPC that’s been with the party almost since the beginning of the campaign, right around when Aussie lost his left leg (long-ass story). He’s one of Austar’s best friends and a huge part of why my boy’s still alive.
A few months ago (in campaign), the kobold mayor of Burrowedinn Grender, who is also the mechanic of Austar’s prosthetic leg, gave my boy the deal that if he brought down crime he’d get discounts on leg maintenance. Essentially, vigilante work in fantasy New York City condoned by the mayor. Knowing how much his fox friend enjoys a valid reason to punch people, Austar invited him to join, and Ragto very eagerly accepted. So now the two of them spend most weekends fighting crime in Burrowedinn, getting both of them much-needed breaks from the main world-ending plot.
Being vigilantes, they were forced to got to adopt alternate personas, with Austar becoming The Raven — a motif he very much leans into as a Shadar-Kai elf — and Ragto being known as The Brawler — fitting considering how much and how well he punches. They became very popular as time went on, even getting their own comic series recently: a solo print for each of them as well as a team-up edition.
They’re both stupid nerds and I love them and their dynamic so goddamn much. 💕💕
I don’t say this often, especially about my own work, but they look SO FUCKIN’ CUTE!!! I could stare at them for hours. As such, I very much have and intend to continue doing so.
Drow rogues, rangers, and artificers: eat your hearts out.
It's a gun. Spiders come out the end of it. I mean, really. What more could you ask for?
(Technical details and ammo descriptions below.)
Functionally, it works the same as a regular pistol, revolver, or shotgun. But instead of metal rounds, live spiders come out of the barrel. Compared to traditional metal ammunition, spider-point rounds have a rather shoddy range, as spiders are somewhat less aerodynamic than a metal sphere. On the other hand, spider-point produces minimal recoil, requires far less gunpowder, and doesn't produce a loud bang upon firing.
Different "calibers" and shot types exist in the form of different species of spiders. Larger arachnids such as orb-weavers and tarantulas deal more damage than your common household spider, and venomous spiders have the ability to cause additional poison damage.
Shotgun shells do exist but are typically far less common than handgun rounds, being more difficult both to make and to gather materials for. The exception to this is the tarantula load (a slug equivalent), as they are easy to produce and distribute. "Swarmshot" loads (AKA birdshot) fire a swarm of tiny spiders in a cone to cover targets inside the area, not dealing any notable damage but certainly giving a fright. "Biteshot" loads (AKA buckshot) are able to deal actual damage in addition to allowing for venomous upgrades but have a smaller shot spread and contain fewer spiders per shell due to their larger size.
Often found alongside spider-point rounds is what's known generally as silkshot ammunition. Able to be used in most shotgun-load spider guns, silkshot rounds are loaded with web fibers harvested from specially-bred spiders and come in two different loads: strand and tangle. Strand-variety silkshot fires a braided line of webbing that stretches between the muzzle and the target, tethering the two to one another. Tangle-variety, meanwhile, launches a sticky net-like projectile designed to hinder and immobilize its target.
So... yeah. Spider guns. As for the real-life inspiration, I work at an outdoor shooting range. One of our regulars was showing his pistol to another customer, and when he racked the slide, a whole-ass Black Widow tumbled out of the barrel and onto the floor. Thankfully, he only uses that particular pistol for competition and had just taken it out of his backpack, so he hadn't been carrying an arachnid around on his hip, but still. A different kind of deadly came out of that muzzle.
Redemption is only one of three ArchReapers dedicated to the God of Death Tellatona. There is also the Grim Reaper, a female reaper who specializes in handling the paperwork and “business” tasks of the dead. While the oldest and most efficient of the trio by far, she’s also the least likely to be trusted with gathering interesting stories for Tellatona. By the way, she does have a name, but everyone who values their existence just tends to refer to her as the Grim Reaper. Redemption only calls on her for help when there’s an enemy he can’t handle on his own. So far, he’s only had to ask when faced with several unknown deities simultaneously as well as the Avatars of the Goddess of Vengeance and God of Destruction (an Avatar being a type of physical manifestation of a major deity on the Material Plane). She’s not called the “Grim” Reaper for nothing.
Redemption: I appreciate and respect Grim for what she does for the boss, but she has all the humor of a half-rotten pile of bones. Hey, fun fact, and you didn’t hear this from me: she only eats once a month. Apparently unhinges her jaw like a snake when she does.
Quintus:
As well as being another tiefling, Quintus is also Redemption’s nephew, his sister’s son. He’s the youngest of the ArchReapers by several hundred years, and only rose to his rank 5,000 years ago after an… incident that is not spoken of casually or outside those directly involved. (I might make a post about it later. Got some angst in there.) Though he’s the youngest, Quintus is Redemption’s go-to if he needs a Reaper’s help, mostly because he came to Redemption’s aid during the aforementioned “incident” and Redemption basically trained the boy. He’s much more comfortable calling his nephew in for help than the Grim Reaper, at least most of the time.
Redemption: Q? One of the few souls on either side of life that I can honestly say I’m proud of. He deserves it. Just needs a bit more of a sense of independence in my opinion, but he’s a good kid.
Holidays:
As a major deity in the pantheon, Tellatona and his most important servants have holidays dedicated to them.
Four times a year, there are three-day holidays to represent the cycle of life — one for each of the ArchReapers as well as Tellatona himself. Most recently added was Quintus’s about 5,000 years ago following his promotion to ArchReaper status. Each day of a Reaper’s three-day period sees a unique celebration centered around that Reaper’s personality and the theme for that day in the cycle: birth on the first day, life on the second, and death on the third. In the cases of the ArchReapers, this usually includes celebrating the circumstances of their deification and first life.
(Admittedly, the more specific traditions of the holidays are still being worked out, but I love the concept, so I drew Redemption and a couple of his symbolic flowers, Wisteria and Red Anemone.)
Segway to my very first D&D character: Winged Tiefling Redemption, Undying Pact of the Blade Warlock to the skeletal God of Death, Tellatona.
My official forever cameo character as a favorite of both myself and my DM. He’s explicitly said my chaotic-bastard scythe-wielding man will be in every homebrew world he makes. Goals. His character details are a bit out of date, as he’s since become a level 20 Warlock with max Strength and Constitution, as well as Charisma.
Born with the name Carmus over six thousand years ago, Redemption serves as one of three ArchReapers directly under the God of Death. His original life came to an abrupt end after he lost a high-stakes flyting. Upon reaching the foot of the God of Death’s throne, Tellatona found Carmus’s life story so hilarious the god offered him a new name, new life, and just the sort of job he could get used to. Redemption’s primary task under his pact is to seek out amusing stories and circumstances of death from the living to report back to Tellatona. Since the God of Death’s role is to read every soul’s life story and determine their afterlife, Redemption’s boss has grown rather bored of the usual “heroic” and “uneventful” deaths. In addition, he’s usually Tellatona’s go-to man in the field, using his scythe shaped from Tellatona’s own rib bones to hunt down mortals who have evaded their natural demise to become enemies of Death. So long as Redemption continues fulfilling his side of the pact, he has the ultimate life insurance as the God of Death’s favorite follower.
There was a close call one time when Redemption let the #1 Enemy of Death slip through his fingers and Tellatona was so enraged he aged Redemption fifty years and demoted him to a cleric, forcing my man to go through red tape for every spell he cast while experiencing moderate to severe joint pain, but it’s all good now. He caught the guy and fixed it.
Drawing I’ve done of my D&D character Austar Blackfrond, monk/bard extraordinaire. I’ve drawn him before, but this has been my first time drawing him actually happy. It felt weird, but very refreshing.
