Writer's Notes! - Illustrations

Time for more artwork!

First, the big one I obviously HAD to do, one of the scolopendrae!

Yep, it's a giant centipede. Probably not that shocking to anyone who already new that "scolopendra" is the scientific word for centipede. But why a centipede, you ask? There's a few reasons.

Centipedes never sat high on my list of anxiety-inducing creatures, but apparently they do for others. I once had a room full of women grab me from a hallway to dispose of a common house centipede - a creature that not only looks like an animate feather, it has all the ferocity of one as well. Evidently, though, there's something about all those legs that freak people out.

On another occasion, I went to an entomology club social (which was actually really fun) and was fascinated by the fact that almost every creature - spiders, scorpions, etc. - was out of its cage. They were being played with and petted; I even saw a woman get stung by a scorpion and apologize to it. There was one notable exception, though: the "giant" centipede was kept in a sealed case at the back, with a warning sign that depicted several fingers being removed by a circular saw. That impressed upon me, that in the centipede world, size matters, and one does not **** with the big ones.

Finally, the whole passage with the Dark Dweller's forest was written while living with my parents and attempting to landscape part of their property that had been overgrown by ivy and wild vines. The darkness, stillness, and general oppressive feel was inspired by the way the foliage seemed to isolate you, and - of course - all while I was wading in the 8 inches of thick ivy, all I could think about was that centipede with the big warning sign on it.

So, yeah, centipedes were definitely going to be the big boss fight of the book.

Of course, I wanted the creatures to have a little bit of fantasy about them, so I decided the Dark Dwellers should blur the line between living and artificial, with an armored carapace that almost looks forged. In my mind, there was inspiration being drawn from the scorpions in the newer Clash of the Titans movie, Mechanacles' conveyance in Aladdin, and a transforming ear-wig I have tucked away somewhere in my Beast Wars collection. Making the legs actual swords was probably carrying it all a bit too far.

On the subject of villains, I'm also going to hop back a little. In my head, Chieftain Tharkrada's look was inspired by one of Gamesworkshop's Ork warbosses. Of course, those are a bit over the top for the book, so I tried to come up with my own looks. I also started experimenting with a different art style, based on Bruce Timm's cartoons.

This is actually spoofed off of a DC character called Kalibak...

And this one uses the character Lobo as a base.

Of course, from Tharkrada, it's an easy segue to his son, Thrakaduhl.

This was an attempt to create a face that would look orcish, but still be sort of handsome in a prince charming sort of way. Think I definitely overdid it on the eyes though, so here's another, very different, approach:

Either the quiver is on the wrong side, or T.D. is left handed. Not sure.

So, that's right - this version not only has emerald green skin, he has silky black hair, deep eyes, and trim pencil-thin mustache above his little tusks.

Finally, one concept for the dwarven contraptions that chased our heroes out of the abandoned 'mine':

I originally imagined something like the T-1 HK Tank from Terminator but with the general style of the automatons from Bioshock 3. The drones are supposed to be multipurpose, reliable machines, though, so I figured the look needed to be a bit less aggressive. Carrying the weight of built-in weapons would waste energy when the drone spends 99.99999999999999% of its active time doing basic maintenance tasks. The same would be roughly true for armor - the machine would need enough of an outer casing to protect its most fragile parts from the occasional dropped piece of junk or accidental collision, but it doesn't need to be a tank. The interesting part in the book was describing a tractor tread in the context where mechanization is an almost alien concept to most of the characters. Azraea and Kaira would be familiar with tension-based clockwork mechanisms (gears, springs, pulleys, counterweights, etc.) but only Ochsner would have any acquaintance with pressure-based mechanisms like pistons and hydraulics.

Anyway, if you've stuck with us this far, THANK YOU!

We're coming to an end soon, and then before long we'll be starting Book II!