Welcome back to a
retrospective of my entries to the Topsfield Fair, except this week is not much
of a look back, since we’ve caught up to this year’s entry. I started making
this picture in August, and I won’t lie: my August sucked, mainly due to the circumstances around my car. But I still
wanted to submit a picture to the fair, and I wanted to get a bit more
ambitious with my digital art. Thus, here we have “Warden of the Dark Woods”.
Since the Topsfield Fair mostly occurs in early October, I had wanted to make a spookier picture for the fair for a couple of years. And at the time, I recently whipped up a potential new character to play for Dungeons and Dragons (a game I only started playing last year) who visually resembles a witch.
Kiri Padparadscha (first name is decided, last name could be changed) is a Cleric of a small sisterhood devoted to the spirit of the Samhain season. Her sisterhood is suspected by some of being witches due to their garb, though others don’t mind their presence since they seem to avoid harming the people. Kiri mostly chuckles off the witch accusations, though she doesn’t deny them. Kiri is the second-youngest of four in this sisterhood, and the others took up domains one in our world could easily associate with Halloween: Twilight (oldest), Grave (second-oldest), and Trickery (youngest). Kiri’s sisters question her decision to represent the Light domain. Kiri, however, knows that Samhain ushers in a time of great darkness and cold. Thus, Kiri chose her domain (approved by the spirits of the season) to become a source of light and warmth to drive away whatever cold, dark forces threaten the people.
After watching Breadsword's video discussing the Disney movie The Black Cauldron which called it a “Halloween masterpiece”, I wanted to try making a D&D character who could represent Halloween (or Samhain) in an off-beat way. One of my big ideas was being able to cast fire magic out of a Jack-O-Lantern, but I didn’t strictly want the character to be a Wizard. (For those who don’t know, D&D has several different magic classes, and they each cast in different ways.) Hearing about the idea of children using carved-out vegetables (like gourds and turnips) to hold candles which light their way through the night, I thought about that fire and light being a protective force. Clerics are typically thought to be a support class in D&D, and the Light Domain subclass adds some fire spells Clerics wouldn’t normally learn (such as Burning Hands and Fireball) to a list which already includes several light-themed spells (like Sacred Flame and Guiding Bolt). I suppose this kind of concept could work for a Wildfire Druid, too, though for now, I understand Clerics a bit better and think it fits the concept better.
Kiri’s outfit was largely inspired by an outfit VTuber Korone Inugami occasionally wears. In addition to being an adorable outfit, I thought the colors work well for a character themed after autumn, as well as for fire due to the generally "warm" colors. Her holy symbol is a pumpkin with a Bowen knot carved into it. I tried to look up Samhain symbols, and the Bowen knot appeared often in my search, though I did try to design other leaf-themed symbols before settling on this. (Would making a Jack-O-Lantern require tinkerer’s tools or woodworker’s tools? Or something else?) I also figure she could use a hook to hold the lantern a distance away if she needs to, which could double as her mace.
