Jurjen

Jurjen fights evil spirits. He’s a plush toy. A mother gave the toy to her daughter and told her it would protect her. The mother, a wizard, did not make this gift and promise idly. She knows full well that evil spirits are real things and that they’d strike at her through her daughter. But the toy, Jurjen, remains vigilant. The thing about evil spirits is that they’re essentially imaginary, they’re more things of mind than matter. The little girl’s imagination is strong and fuel’s Jurjen’s jaunts into the mental realms where the spirits dwell. There, Jurjen fights the evil spirits, to protect a little girl’s life.

I drew this little guy and didn’t quite know what to do with him. The above is pretty vague, but I feel like it is something to work with. I kinda expect to expand on it in the future. The little girl’s mother, the evil spirits. There’s plenty to work with for future posts.

Princess Dazerra

I usually like to put a bit of the character’s story here, but I’m just gonna launch into the background stuff for this one. I like video games where you have to save a princess. It is so simplistic and satisfying. Someone has been kidnapped and needs to be saved. Sure, it doesn’t have to be a princess (Adventure Dennis had to save the Mayor), but there’s something about princesses that just makes it work. Obviously it can be problematic to present princesses as weak and, essentially, objects to motivate the hero, but suppose I want to create a Zelda-style game someday. I need to have a princess there to rescue, right? Correct, but Princess Dazerra is not that princess. Princess Dazerra is the protagonist of the game. She’s on a quest to save her younger sister, who has been kidnapped by the forces of evil. Two princesses, man. This game would rule.

I figure the mechanics of the game would involve finding different gemstones that, when placed in her crown, give Dazerra different abilities to solve puzzles and fight monsters and all that video game hero stuff. I also figure that, man, I suck at drawing swords.

The High Coronach

Death comes to all things that have life. This is the truth of the universe. Nowhere is this more apparent then the city of Cemeteria, the city that borders the spiritual realm. Naturally, with that proximity to the beyond, a system of ritual and religion has built up. The majority of Cemeterians revere the idea of death, not only as an ending, but as a source of continuance. The apple dies, but the one who eats it gains nourishment. So it is for souls. When a person dies, the afterlife becomes stronger. The crux of it involves the quest to make sure the souls feeding the afterlife are good ones. The head of this religion is the High Coronach. Elected pope-style, from the lesser clerics. When the city of Cemeteria is exposed to the world by a supervillain’s attack, the Coronach wants to start spreading the religion to the rest of the world. This proselytizing is not welcome everywhere in the world, and so the ruler of Cemeteria, Queen Deathknell, has to try to smooth things over politically.

I remembered Queen Deathknell just recently and figured “Hey, that’s a pretty ‘supernatural’ idea, lets build on that” so I’m doing it. The next character is also from Cemeteria:

Morrie

Cemeteria is not a perfect place. As with any large city, there is a criminal element. But they have to deal with Morrie. Morrie has served as the police chief of Cemeteria for over a century. With supernatural gun-summoning abilities, Morrie has stopped the soul smugglers and ghost bandits and, of course, grave robbers that are brave or stupid enough to try their luck. Morrie is a grizzled, rough old man, who was a great ally to Queen Deathknell’s mother and is now especially protective of the current monarch. While this is very welcome when it comes to him doing his job (Cemeteria doesn’t have a military, at least not yet), he has been known to cause some embarrassing situations when dignitaries from the outside world are in town.

It doesn’t come across too well, because I’m not good at this, but Morrie is supposed to be unnaturally tall and lanky. I had the Arch-Vile from Doom in mind. I named him Morrie as a reference to the phrase Mememnto Mori, which seemed appropriate.