Suilad my lovelies!

So yeah... me is back with one of my children. If you have a rough clue about Cev's family you probably know who Roval is, but for those who don't know anything, here's a small segment, inclusing the most important people:

So yeah, Roval is the shitty, cruel, idiot dad of Fer and Ti.

And... well, even though his story will be told in the Novel "Flowers", which is still in planning, I will just throw a rough overview of his backstory later on in this chapter.
Anyways! Remember this drawing I made of Fer back in July?

>>pats him<<

So I decided I was sick of these simple portraits and wanted to make more torso-including portrayals of my OCs. Especially since I now have more time in the holidays I can afford to make more of these, for more important characters.
If I only need a face ref, I will probably go ahead and still do that face thing for less important people or when I'm bored, so don't get too worried xDD

Let's start with the actual drawing. Plan was, to draw Roval in his youth. Roughly the age that he met Dambeth at.
Roval is a shy dude and learner, so I wanted to show that especially in his posture, slowly crippling away through centuries of midnight study-sessions and hiding away, at the same time he should have this partially dreamy exression, since he daydreams a lot in his daily life, mainly since he's on his best way of becoming a priest.

How was his childhood? Well, his family was the ideal eastern family, in the eyes of society. I probably have written more about the South than about the East in here, so I will just throw some cultural info at ya ^-^

Those of you, who are familiar with the East a bit, know that the continent is split in four states. The continent is ruled by the religious leaders, consisting of one central leader and one leader per state.

Here's the landmass-map that's still a WIP, since I've been pretty lazy with my map making...
Essentially that Island is one state and the mainland is split into threes, at the points where the distances between the shorelines closen up a bit...
>>hopes that you guys understand what the fuck I'm talking about<<

Cool cool. Now what does the religion and culture look like?
Here's just a rough overview, but simply imagine, that all the cruel dark-fanatsy elements, that the ArtClub people made go away, because they think my characters suffer to much, had to go somewhere.

After the Era of Mortality, and thus the beginning of the second world, all the gods were essentially erased, only for them to slowly get reborn again over billions of millenia... well most of them. Except Inthys, the former goddess of hatred.
Since she was being to much of a bitch, her element left her, making her just a simple Harath, which is why she was unaffected by the destructive Force of Anthrax.
Well, the element of hatred liked here again, so after the entire universe was nearly erased, she was a god again! And because she apparently was very popular the element of order came along. So she's essentially a double goddess now! (oh good lord, why does this OC even exist, I hat her so much)
And what does an arrogant person do, that just seems to have double the magical force than before and is momentarily the only god on this planet?? Right, she chooses a continent and essentially turns everyone living there into her slaves.

So the entire culture and religion is extremely brutal and everything is oriented towards Inthys.
Examples are the public hangings, where a criminal will be publicly executed pnce a month (Doesn't sound that frequent, but these people are immortal, so in a year you have 16 dead people, in a century you have 160 and after ten millenia you have 16.000. Compared with public executions in other countries, that's about 150 times more). Otherwise we also have the law, which essentially makes everything against the regime, religion or goddess illegal. It's also illegal to leave the country, if you aren't especially a guest or have a merchants-license.

So Roval grew up in a family, that prayed five times a day, all worked for the equivalent of the church and never ever did anything illegal. Everyone respected them and since his father was pretty high ranking in the working priests, Roval grew up pretty wealthy as well.
After graduating from school as class best, he decided not to go and study further (as his brother Basgorn did), but instead joined the holy priests, who essentially devote their entire life to the goddess. (... his mum and aunt were very proud... his father and brother not so much)

The main differences between the working and the holy priests are, that the holy priests are more like monks, including a lot of strict rules, such as not having relationships and children (which is btw punishable by... let's just say worse than death........ and I think we all know where this is kinda going since he's the father of Crook n Stutts), or not taking drugs or alcohol, whilst the working priests are simply crafters and make up the elite of the working class society. The latter have less strict rules, but need to pass an entry exam which is extremely hard to... well pass.

So Basgorn studied and then later on joined the working priests, since he did indeed have a girlfriend at the time, but still wanted to be part of the priests.
Roval just went straight for the other option, which quite a lot of people don't do, since a single mistake could lead to the ruin of you, your family, your friends... and neighbours.... and maybe even everyone you've ever talked to. So yeah. But Roval was dedicated!

So he was having the time of his life, making quite some friends, but staying by himself most of the time. Until he helped this boy through giving him his blessing and saving his life kinda. That's when he met Dambeth, who was the sister of that boy.

Long story short: they became friends.... and then more than friends. And whilst Dambeth was completely in love and was willing to give up her life for him, he still was clinging onto his position as priest.
He was just in the lowest ranks, you know, and not a small ammount of priests in the lowest rank break the rules secretly, so Roval did indeed feel guilty, but it wasn't as though ther would be too bad consequences, right?
Well... he got promoted. And now this is a huge problem. Because there are in total four ranks in the holy priests: the lowest one, the second one, then we have the state leaders and right at the top the overal head of the religion makes an entire rank up for himself. So a promotion is something extremely special.
Now Roval was very much fucked, because he told Dambeth about it, since he planned on breaking up with her and probably never talking to her again as soon as he got promoted. Yeah. Dambeth was a bit very much in love, so she messed with the birth control and... well she was pregnant, hoping that if they had children, he would simply switch over to the working priests (which was indeed very much an option).

Now the next issue was, that the entire family was now hella proud and told everyone. So if Roval would give up his position to start a family, he's most certainly be shunded by everyone he ever knew. The entire pregnancy thing also made his original love for Dambeth fade away bit very much, so he decided to somehow make his promotion still work.

And it did work! It also meant ruining Dambeth's and their children's life, but that was a price he was willing to pay, because otherwise he'd be essentially tortured to death and Dambeth and the twins would be executed. So he made their life extremely shitty and hard, but they had a life.
After some time he was promoted to the Gardian state leader, which was great since from that point on the priests wear masks nearly 20/12 (yep... a day has 20 hours and the eastern week has 12 days...). This was also the rough time that Fer and Ti were old enough to go to school.

So then Roval got promoted again (extreme success kinda runs in the family, as you can later on see with Tirith and his prosthetics, Feredir and the Rebellion or Cevrond with the Paladins). So now we had our shy boy Roval at the top of society. He was at the top. He was  the top.
So if someone found out about his children and his non-virginity (do we have a word for not-virgins?? Can someone please google that for me? I'm in the middle of writing this chapter and probably will forget later on... QwQ), he would become a "Slave to the tree", the most terrible punishment and most brutal form of torture known to Harath.
He would die miserably, his brother would die miserably, his nephew and niece would be tortured to death, even though the little kids haven't even finished primary school yet. Dambeths entire family would probably be killed to.
Essentially it only took one wrong connection and he would cause the demise of two entire family trees (and remember, how Harath are immortal... so he would probably kill a shit ton of people) and probably the nation itself, since he might cause a rebellion through his death.

So Roval was more than determined to silence every single rumour, and making sure Dambeth and the twins were as secluded from society as possible, without making anything lead back to him.

So later on, when Crook decided to study and Stutts decided to go work, Stutts tried to apply for the working priests, in an attempt to save his own, his brothers and mothers honour (since Roval had them excommunicated). Well... Basgorn was at the time leader of the metal-work department, which is also where Tirith wanted to work.
And Basgorn isn't stupid. So when this kid walked in, that essentially looked like his brother when he was younger with green eyes, more coolness and straight hair, he connected the two dots pretty quickly.
So that's when Basgorn found out, how badly his little brother had fucked up (feeling sorry for his nephew he did indeed give Stutts a job though... which is also why Tirith actually managed to leave to continent and kick of the entire plot of "Defiance" essentially).

Anyways Basgorn kinda confronted Roval and promised to support his little brother, whilst also using that fact to win some luxuries for himself and his little family on the side... so essentially we have a mixture between brotherly love and blackmail over here, which should also represent the corruption within the countries culture.

...

yeah...

I just realised how much I have written by now, without showing you the drawing, that you are probably here for.

So here ya go, my little psychos and the rest of Rovals life shall either be told in the books or in some other chapter including him. We'll need to see about that >w<

Personally, I really really really like the drawing. I don't know why, but I just do... Maybe it's the hair, because the hair was hella fun. Maybe it's the hands, because the hands were... hella fun...

But yeah. Drawing him finally was a blast! It did indeed take longer than planned, and at some point I was so done with him, but overall I had a great time and the result is indeed one of my favourites this year!

So theoretically that would be it for this chapter, but I still have some clothing I wanted to throw in here, because I'm apparently in a clothing phase at the moment xDD

So here we have some ideas for the clothing of young Roval and Basgorn. I initially planned on making seperare sheets for the two, but whilst drawing the first outfir Inspiration struck and now the two are just gonna have some sheets together.

Thing with Roval was, that he is part of the holy priests, meaning he needed to be barefoot and wear some sort of light green fabric wrapped around him, since the shade of green determines the rank within the priests. At the same time he was supposed to look a bit wealthy and with a sense of style, whilst also being thoroughly incorporated within the culture and religion. Sadly I only have a ton of unexported clothing desings for the East, so I can't quite yet shove those in your face, but just trust me that I had a lot of fun >w<

With Basgorn, it had to me more versatile and practical. The shade of green didn't matter here, so I just chose a colder and more grey tone of Rovals colour, for contrast and to show how Roval is indeed even tone-wise more highlighted, and Basgorn is more coheisive and calm.

Overall... it was fun. Clothing is hella fun. And incorporating personalities, beckgrounds and cultures inside an outfit is even more fun. (Spoiler: Tutorial for clothing designs is indeed in planning, but I will tell y'all as soon as it's up)

Okie dokie. Next batch of clothing. This is the really interesting one... at least for me to design.

Because now I'm thinking about Roval as the State leader of Gardia. So that meant:
Cool masks, a lot of gold, epic Antler-Crown-Stick thingies and Capes.

So I just went ham on ideas... I can't really describe my though process here, since I just went with the flow and put less though into these. The magic of Inspiration guys xDD
Overall I just went along with the vibe of "magical, forest-cult leader" and built on several cleric, ranger, monk, priest, robot-king, alien and whatnot designs I found on pinterest.

What also helped a ton, was that I personally find it way easier to create over the top designs, because you can just add layer on top of layer and don't need to worry about something being "too much"
... but I did indeed want to hold myself back a bit, because the big guns are indeed coming out when I'm planning his outfits for the spiritual leader
>>evil laugh<<

So yeah. Here are the first three designs. I really like where all three of these are going. Especially the mask and bet on the first one, the fabric thingies with the golden embroidery on the second one and the cape and tattoos on the third one.
Sadly none of them feel 100% right yet, so I'm still working on more alternatives.

So yeah! I hope you like Roval a bit more, and if not then at least like his design and/or clothing. Next up I also plan on drawing Basgorn a pic and one for Dambeth as well.
But I will indeed try to hold myself back a bit, sine my main project at the time should indeed be "Ashes" or "Defiance" since I've already started on those and am making pretty good progress.

Anyways. Hopefully we'll see each other in another chapter! Feel hugged and loved and until we read each other next time: