Close Encounter with a Jackelope

So, I've been looking for inspiration a lot lately and not finding a lot of it. It's been getting in my hair. So, today, staring blankly out the window and drooling a bit, as I am wont to do, I see this dark shape go flying past my window.

I finally catch it zipping around and it's a jackelope. I'm an open minded guy but I can't accept that it's zipping past my window on the second floor. Upon closer inspection, it was a winged jackelope, which really explained it all. He was chasing around a couple of hummingbirds that hang out near my neighbor's feeder.

I was exceedingly excited to see it. Jackelopes are only slightly less rare than the flying variety. Then he stole one of my hubcaps and pooped on my car.

I hate jackelopes.

Image is © 2011, me.

A Toast to the Steelwater

On this trip to the Steelwater, we meet Carrion-Master Gro'Ahl McHrek and his favorite drinking buddy, Mzshek, the head of a fallen golem. They never tell the story, but they come in together once a fortnight and Gro'Ahl drinks a toast to an incredibly long list of fallen comrades from the battle where the two of them met. Lots of speculation surrounds their joint appearances: Gro'Ahl created the golem. Gro'Ahl destroyed the golem. Mzshek slaughtered every one in Gro'Ahl's army and then the Carrion-Master stole the golem's head.

Whatever the story is, once every couple weeks, Gro'Ahl stumbles in, already drunk,
goes to the cave room in the back of the pub and makes toast after toast until everyone else goes home. Mzshek doesn't drink, or even have the capacity to speak, but he mouths the names of fallen comrades, long forgotten and a talented lip-reader can make out a grocery list of epic heroes.

The original sketch took me about ten minutes. The finished piece took about three, maybe four hours in photoshop, largely.

The characters and images are © 2011 to me.

Back to the pub.

There's a nearby temple to one of the old gods or other and they do a lot of services for the area as their sworn duty. The priesteses all have a pretty strange dress code and are fair lookers so nobody around the Steelwater complains too much when they come around.

Sheggat Ar'MoAl is their highest oracle. Her visions have a 99% accuracy rating, so it costs a fortune to avail yourself of her services. The down side for her is that she always gets horrible headaches after she has a vision. She stops by the Steelwater after these for a tea made of Monk's Hood, Nightshade and Hemlock. It's highly poisonous, so I can't tell you how it tastes or how she survives it, but she swears it tastes like a licorice, absynthe and virgin's tears smoothie.

Here's the original sketch. I decided the decorations on the cup were too distracting so they hadda go.
Pencil on sketch paper, it took about 45 minutes.

The above pic took about 5 hours in Photoshop.