Selene a'Caemhacag

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Exposition:
Selene a'Caemhacag is a Warrior Maiden of DeMawann. The country to the north of the Rationalist Union (where Freetrick, Istain, Madene, and Kendrick are from). DeMawann is the successor of the old Dames' League, a coalition of nations that worshiped the three aspects of the female godhead, Maiden, Mother, and Crone. I won't bore you with the names, but the worship of the Maiden granted virgin women of the easternmost state superhuman strength, speed, agility, and senses, while the central Mother-worshiping state got telepathy, clairvoyance, and leadership, and the southern worshipers of the Crone got healing and memory.

The Dames' League was destroyed five hundred years ago when Skrea invaded the country of the Maiden-worshipers. Those who did not die in the war fled to the Mother's country where, shortly thereafter, they rose in a coup that toppled the Mother government. The Crone's nation quickly seceded and has since joined the Rationalist Union as the state of Moire (where Madene was born). The Maiden generals in the Mother's country, meanwhile, took over the government and modified their religious practices to merge Virgin (DeDewa) and Mother (DeMaw) and create the modern deity of Maw Dewsca, the Virgin Mother.

In Modern DeMawann, worship of the virgin mother generates Maidencraft, a magical system that works only for virgin women (technically "women pure in thought and deed"). These magic users the Maidens of various types, have superhuman martial abilities as well as various psychic tricks they inherited from the worshipers of the Mother. Their government is run by the High Maidens, who are adept at these tricks, which they use to command troops on the field, determine guilt or innocence in courts of law, administer punishments, and preserve their own mentalities by copying their memories into the minds of infants in a process called The Virgin Birth. Some of the High Maidens possess minds that are nearly five hundred years old.

This system, however, is not stable. When they had their own country, the Maidens lived in loosely-knit encampments or farmsteads, where related women (sisters or cousins) would select one of their number to abstain from sex and become the Maiden Aunt, head of the community, commander of its young warriors, and last line of defense against attack. This lifestyle is still practiced in the wilderness to the extreme east of DeMawann, but the Skrean invasion convinced many that living in isolated communities made them too vulnerable. In the new system, power is concentrated in the capital city of Pruíomgreaig. All officers in the military and all government officials except for the lowest levels of the bureaucracy are Craft-wielding Maidens, and if a woman wants to have children, she must give up all of her temporal power and prestige. Men are second-class citizens in DeMawann, but mothers are utterly despised by the elite. So strong has this stigma become, in fact, that it is nearly unheard of for a Maiden of any standing to raise a family voluntarily. Initially, the DeMawann government attempted to solve this problem by instituting a system of early retirement for all Maidens, but of course this policy was only enforced if a particular Maiden lacked ambition or powerful friends. Very quickly, retirement became a way for the DeMawann elite to purge the government of anyone they didn't like, and in practice has become a policy of systematized rape, where officials or officers with unpopular ideas are forcibly coupled with men and thus stripped of their powers. Generally, the higher one climbs in the hierarchy, the greater the danger of rape and disgrace, and so the top echelons of the DeMawann hierarchy (many of them with minds several hundred years old) are notorious for their ruthlessness, cruelty, and utter amorality.

Selene wants none of that. Her mother (like most of the mothers of the lower and middle ranks) was sentenced to rape, and Selene (like all Maidens) is well aware that the same thing will very likely happen to her. She is friendly, empathic, and well-loved by her subordinates. She is also a powerful wielder of Maiden-craft, which she generally uses to augment her speed during battle (where she favors the DeMawann grass-slender sword). She knows it is precisely these attributes that make her dangerous to the High Maidens, but Selene lacks the ruthlessness to fight them at their own game. Instead, family friends and her own political maneuvering got her a posting in DeMawann's one social release valve, the Silver Guard.

The Silver Guard is the border patrol, and the Maidens who man it are a little outside the purview of the High Maidens back in the capital. On the south- and north-eastern borders, the Silver Guardians are more or less rangers, living for weeks alone in the wilderness, looking for rouge Skrean monsters and defending the border from incursions. Selene, however, was placed on the cushier southern border, which DeMawann shares with the Rationalist union, and her job consists mostly of preventing DeMawann from escaping to the south and escorting southern diplomats back and forth. That's the fun part.

For the past two generations, it has become established practice for the the Silver Guardians of the Rationalist border to seduce any male diplomats or merchants who cross the borders and use them as a way to get the hell out of DeMawann and Selene has attached herself to Istain Scander, a student from the Rationalist Union. Selene hopes to use Istain as a political lever to get herself out of DeMawann and into the Rationalist Union. She will of course lose her Maidencraft if she leaves DeMawann, but in Lidra (the Rationalist state where Istain lives) she will be able to use Lidran Thaumography like any other literate person.

Her plan will unfortunately be foiled by war and the machinations of a particularly cruel High Maiden.

other Kingdoms of Evil stuff
--Freetrick ([link])
--Skrea ([link])
--Bloodbyrn ([link])
--Seethra([link])
--Mareliths ([link])
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So, another character from my ongoing fantasy story, Kingdoms of Evil. This is actually a fairly minor character, but I had a good idea for the design and I went with it. I tried a new (and fairly lazy) technique this time.

Actually, it's the same thing I did with my first deviation ([link]). where I made a small pencil sketch, blew it up in photoshop, faded the lines, printed out chunks of the picture (head, torso, feet), traced over them and added details, then scanned them in, blew them up, printed them out, and so on. I think I've given up on trying to do the lineart in photoshop with my little grafire tablet. It's just so much easier to draw the lines with a pencil.

Anyway, the technique is fun and efficient, but it seems to magnify anatomy errors. I see a bunch in this one. Whaterver. At this point my productivity of art is so low I felt like I had to make SOMETHING, even if it left something to be desired.

Done while listening to: Maurice and his Amazing Educated Rodents

FOR DETAILS ON MY BOOK AND HOW YOU CAN BECOME A BETA-READER AND GAIN MY EVERLASTING LOVE AND AFFECTION, see my journal entry here: [link]