Saltmarsh Comic 1 – Dark Dreams
Month: January 2021
Marvelous Anchorome – The Maker
It took me a long time to figure out how to approach Marvel character Forge. I’m getting around to understanding Artificers as a class, but they didn’t seem to fit into the True World particularly well.
It came together when I decided that the Maztican magic schools of Pluma-weaving and Hishna-shaping wasn’t represented enough in the Anchorome Campaign Guide. I wanted to include these with Forge, but I’d also always admired the way that the character had honoured his ancestry, but never defined himself by it.
In Anchorome, The Maker is a Minnenewah traveler, learning from many different peoples with no regard to nationality and bound to no tradition. From Fort Flame he learned how to forge steel, from Maztica how to weave Pluma and shape Hishna. He has combined all these types of knowledge to rebuild his leg and hand, lost in a battle long ago. Whether it be flint-knapping, birchbark weaving, and tanning leather, or more magical means, The Maker learns and teaches.
Get to Class
I’m not sure what subclass/specialist to assign to Forge. I’m definitely open to suggestions. Probably a Mastermaker? He might also have a Wizard or Sorceror multi-class, given Forge’s own history. Or you could spin that to Cleric of the Forge Domain – but I don’t think of Forge as a particularly wise person.
Using the Haunted One background will provide Arcana and Investigation skill and reflect his dark past in war.
Further Thoughts
I based my less-muscular Forge off of Barry Windsor-Smith’s early drawings of the Cheyenne inventor, particularly in Lifedeath. Later artists have drawn him pretty stacked.
The Marvelous Anchorome Series imagines Marvel Comics Indigenous characters as D&D PCs and NPCs from the Forgotten Realms “True World” setting, including Anchorome, Maztica, and Lopango. See also my new Distinguished Anchorome series and Random Anchorome series.
Adaptations of (mostly Indigenous) Marvel Comics characters into Maztican (or other True World) D&D characters.
Adaptations of (mostly Indigenous) DC Comics characters into Maztican (or other True World) D&D characters.
All True World art, including adaptations and original art and character design.
Band of Bastards Comic 12 – Elf Help
Maztica/Anchorome – Desert Dwarf
The Maztica books introduced the idea of the almost mythical “Hairy Men of the Desert”, dwarves who had ended up in the True World after a disaster in their tunnels.
I’ve drawn a few such Maztican dwarves and I do not intend to stop. I like to imagine this one is a Beastmaster ranger with a fighting rooster companion.
Desert Dwarves can be found in Anchorome and in Maztica.
Adaptations of (mostly Indigenous) Marvel Comics characters into Maztican (or other True World) D&D characters.
Adaptations of (mostly Indigenous) DC Comics characters into Maztican (or other True World) D&D characters.
All True World art, including adaptations and original art and character design.
Marvelous Maztica – The White Ocelot
Despite my love of Marvel comics, I have a blind spot – and it’s often in some of the seventies trends of kung fu comics. But I didn’t want to overlook the Caribbean heroes in my series, and Ava Ayala is the latest person to take up the jade amulet that bestows magic kung fu powers.
Ayala is not textually Indigenous, but is identified as being Puerto Rican. My understanding is that the Indigenous people of Puerto Rico and other Caribbean areas are the Taino, an Arawakan speaking peoples, and that many modern Puerto Ricans have Taino ancestors.
In Maztica, the islands known as the Green Sisters are home to humans, some of whom have also harnessed the power of Zaltec – or possibly his daughter, an ocelot goddess. Monks like Ayala use their dedication to imbue their feet and fists with holy might, and, at higher levels, become ocelots themselves. Ayala is the latest champion of this line, dedicated to hunting beasts in the darkness, and being the monster that even monsters fear.
Get to Class
For the True World, I decided to make this another variation on the Jaguar Knight paladin – much like I did for Puma – this time as a monk. The other possibility was making her a Tabaxi, but I’ve already drawn a few of those. I imagine this as a Monk class, a reskin the Way of the Living Weapon (Weretouched).
While the followers of the Ocelot tradition are the island’s Jaguar Knight equivalents, i imagine there is also a Monk class mirroring Eagle Knights. This tradition is the Way of the Ascendant Dragon, devoted to the god Qotal , the Feathered Dragon.
For this crime fighter I’d probably use the Investigator variant of the City Watch Background for Athletics and Insight.
The Marvelous Anchorome Series imagines Marvel Comics Indigenous characters as D&D PCs and NPCs from the Forgotten Realms “True World” setting, including Anchorome, Maztica, and Lopango. See also my new Distinguished Anchorome series and Random Anchorome.
Adaptations of (mostly Indigenous) Marvel Comics characters into Maztican (or other True World) D&D characters.
Adaptations of (mostly Indigenous) DC Comics characters into Maztican (or other True World) D&D characters.
All True World art, including adaptations and original art and character design.
Duchess of Lantan
I needed to draw a noble Gnomish woman for one of my PC’s backstory. I remembered Lantan as a technological society full of gnomes (Although apparently decimated by the Spellplague!).
My usual practice is to find a real-world equivalent to build outfits around – I’m not original enough to come up with my own – and the nearest geographical equivalent to Lantan I could find were the Canary Islands – thus my Canarian gnomish Duchess.
Her titles are Lantar (ambassador) and Santar (Duchess) Tiatelle Malaka Del Sambar.
Or “Santar Del Sambar”.
Band of Bastards Comic 11 – The Impatient Hunter
Elves and Half-Elves of Anchorome
The elves of Anchorome migrated from Faerun in ancient times, following a prophet, Pehotan. They tend to be xenophobic, especially towards the east coast, where they have historically warred upon Faerunian invaders like the Flaming Fist. I didn’t want to evoke any specific Indigenous group, so I made them a bit more generic – with a few elements from the Indigenous Sami people of Europe’s arctic – seeing as how they likely migrated via the ice caps.
The half-elves of Anchorome are little described, even in the Anchorome Campaign Guide. I decided to fit them into the niche of the Metis Nation and the Mountain Man tradition of the U.S., both of whom have historically participated as middlemen in relations between nations – much as half-elves are said to do. Anchorome are known to live in the Pagunki woods and in the city of Elfmeet.
One original half-elf and one from my Marvelous Anchorome Series (Echo) can be found here.
Adaptations of (mostly Indigenous) Marvel Comics characters into Maztican (or other True World) D&D characters.
Adaptations of (mostly Indigenous) DC Comics characters into Maztican (or other True World) D&D characters.
All True World art, including adaptations and original art and character design.
Varis Two Point Oh
Varis, the elven gladiator known as “The Champion” and occasionally “Horny Bastard”, recently had an adventure in the Nine Hells. He returned to the Band of Bastards with a few levels of warlock, a new set of armor, and some demon-swords.
The armor is based off of this amazing drawing of Dispater, combined with a few touches of Lodoss War’s Deedlit!
Coromandel the Magnificent
This Bullywug Wizard/Fighter is a character for one of our new sidequests for Tomb Smashers. He is a “Bladecroaker” and “Planes-hopper.” I got a homebrew rules for bullywugs here.
HyperboreanComics 