Karkki Does Art

Valeri has a big part of his back covered in burn scars, but he also has gotten into some trouble in the army thanks to his *ahem* temperament (kindly put), and if your offence is not bad enough to get an dishonorable discharge, you’ll get flogged. Some areas of his burns were 3rd degree burns and so his skin’s nerves got damaged. The damaged nerves causes him chronic pain. His back doesn’t hurt constantly, it comes and goes often.

Valeri is acquiring some new scars lol. It’s from a scene where he’s fighting a small band of Imperial troops with Agrippa and nearly getting himself killed. They are in the middle of Dir’ahin’s wilderness, where he hasn’t gotten change to shave (which explains the beard) but they have gotten some ahinian clothing already.

This is a tiny death spirit. They born from lingering feeling of fear of death and they poorly imitate scavenger birds. They gather in places with a lot of dying people which is why they can be often seen in hospitals and battle fields for example. They are not dangerous for people normally, since they are mainly scavengers and just wait for their victims to die before eating their souls. Though they might eat souls of birds who are not yet dead, causing weird and destructive behavior in them. If there’s a lot of them, they might try to gang up and take down a human too.

Wright is one of the POV characters of The Knight Wars. He is a not exactly a human. He’s not sure what he is. The body once belonged to Tiuto, until he died, and now it’s been reanimated by planting a daemon in place of it’s heart. The result was Wright, who is not exactly the daemon or Tiuto. Tiuto was master assassin, as is Wright now, but he is something much more terrifying. He can now turn into mist and as a mist go through solid walls. He doesn’t have human limbs since Tiuto died, but the mist provides those too. If he’s mist too long though, the daemon takes over and acts like a blood thirsty beast that it is. He likes insects and carries a notebook with him where he draws them.

Cassia can disguise herself as other people via transformation magic. You can’t actually see her real reflection in mirrors, it's just a visual effect to show the "lie". The magic does involve killing people, drinking their blood and making a jewelry out of their hair, so not maybe the most ethical method, but very effective till people notice the person you are impersonating as is dead.

Sváfa (from The Shield-Maiden Saga) almost drowned one time and met something in the depths of the sea.

The Sun Sword is one of the five legendary artifacts of Dir’ahin. Artifacts are are objects, often made from precious metals or gems, than can trap a spirit inside them. Since the spirit is trapped they don’t have a lot of choices than to obey humans, which makes it possible to make fewer sacrifices for a spell. This opens the possibility for more powerful magic, since usually very powerful spirits will ask for ridiculously high sacrifices. However trapping powerful spirits is hard and extremely dangerous business and will need some serious sacrifices, which is why very powerful artifacts are so rare. Using them is also dangerous though, since it gives the spirit the possibility to possess the user.

Sun Sword has a sun spirit, or to Ahinians the sun god, trapped in it. The blade is made of gold, which is very soft material for a sword, but better prison for a spirit than steel. However it’s main function is not to cut things. It’s not even used for battle almost ever. It can be used to control weather though to a degree. The spells have to be used very mindfully though, since weather is complicated and without understanding how it works, they can have unexpected effects. It can also be used to control fire. It radiates very brightly and doesn’t even look like gold. It’s not hot thought, but the radiation can cause cancer and with very long exposure, even radiation disease (which is the most terrifying thing in the world, don’t google if you don’t want nightmares). It’s very hard to control thought, which is why it’s used by the high priestess with the Moon Diadem (another one of the five legendary artifacts), which spells can control it better.

Agrippa’s favorite thing in life is painting and she would do that as her profession if she had a choice. She loves painting her favorite scenes from books, portraits and animals, but hates painting landscapes, though sometimes does them as practice anyway.

Faerathos is not a morning person.

There’s an abandoned orphanage in Amari. It’s in the middle of the city (or the poor area of it), and it has just been standing and it’s patio has been taken over by the plants. It wasn’t a good orphanage. Valeri and Fiolew lived there the first year after they came to Amari, till it was shut down after having too little funding. There was never a lot of funding to begin with and therefore many children died out of diseases that were mostly common and treatable, some out of negligence.

The spirits of some of the children who died over the years refused to leave. Ghosts in this world can’t really do anything. They just are sad, lonely and in search of something they needed when they were alive. In places where there are many wandering, in between, spirits, they tend to lump together and that happened in the orphanage too. The ghosts merged with the spirit of the orphanage itself. It’s not especially malevolent spirit. It wants to eat adult souls, and play with children. If children won’t play with it, it might eat their souls too.

The child gang that occupied the old orphanage after it’s abandonment always gave it it’s own food and cup of drink, even though it can’t eat other than spirits, and included it in their plays, so it let them stay. They even brought back the adults that were nuisances to them (guards for example) as sacrifices for the orphanage.

Cassia’s get ready routine starts by strapping on the hidden blade.

Fiolew has to navigate his way in the spirit realm, which is dangerous business. It’s very easy to get lost in the spirit realm. At the first glance it looks like the material realm but it has a very uncanny feel to it. The figures look human at the first glance, but the more you look, you notice their appearance is not stale. They grow eyes in wrong places and too many or too few joints. Same with everything else. Everything is alive. It’s all made of spirits. They seem twisted and wrong versions of their material counterparts. And the deeper you go the more wrong it is. Some have withnessed untold horrors in the depths of the spirit realm. Monsters of inhuman scale.

For a human it’s hard to navigate since it doesn’t have time or place. People sometimes get caught in timeloops until they loose their grip or reality. The space and time flows there without bounds. Therefore some people can see past and possible futures there.

In Dir’ahin there’s Šáv Mountain range and in it there’s Silver Woods, a forest area where the giant silver trees grow. Children of Tree live there, a group of Ahinians, who are independent from the Dir’ahin state. They worship the silver trees as their protector gods, but they practice Dialach (the main religion of Ahinians which god is the Moon Goddess). The trees do give actual protection. They shield the villages in their forest that worship them by cloaking them from the eyes of outsiders. Anyone who hasn’t gotten the blessing of the tree (a ceremony performed by tree priestess), can’t find to the villages, the tree spirits will lead them astray. The tree in the middle is the biggest and oldest tree in the Silver Woods and possibly the whole world. It has partially died inside, but still keeps growing. Around it is the “capital” of Children of Tree and inside it is the tree temple.

 Valeri and Agrippa are captured by Children of Tree and are brought to the “capital” or Ŧiesimuottu village.