5.5 Chapter Art - Covenants

Please post your chapter art ideas for the Covenants here!

Visit our announcement page for more details on what we are looking for.

What do you want this chapter's introductory art to look like? Please list the thematic elements, mood, characters, setting, visual style, details, etc. that you would like to see for the Covenants.

Links to all the chapter art threads:

Intro, Order of Hermes, Characters, Virtues & Flaws, Abilities, Covenants, Hermetic Magic, Laboratory, Spells, Long-Term Events, Obstacles, Realms, Bestiary, Mythic Europe, Stories, Sagas

We can't wait to see what you come up with!

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The obvious: a covenant. A lonely tower (obviously created by Conjuring the Mystic Tower, so smooth sides, of marble or some distinctive stone), in a clearing or on a rocky outcrop, surrounded by outbuildings. Alternatively, one of the major covenants - Durenmar is the obvious one.

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A covenant, bustling with activity. Grogs going about their business, a bored guard at the gate, an apprentice hurrying across the yard with a stack of books, some dramatic magical effect in the background ignored by (almost) everyone, a visitor approaching (a red cap maybe?), a magical/faerie/infernal creature watching from a distance.

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Nightcafe art incoming... I stuck to the wording in the descriptions given as best I could.

Our lonely Tower:

Bustling Manor house.

Gotta admit, I really don't like AI generated castles. Way too many entrances. :wink:

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I think so too, I'd rather go for a forest clearing, and around a few wooden houses where the grogs live, a pig pen and some kids tending to the animals, maybe a spearman(or spearwife) standing guard, a scribe of some kind walking by holding a bundle of scrolls. These should all be fairly "realisitc" elements, to show that the location is grounded. Then I'd add a couple of more supernatural elements, maybe a pegasus or other familiar type of creature, or an elemental faerie (dryad etc) which would be conversing with a mage.

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I'd second this. You want to get across the point that a covenant needs people for it to work. The Magi need the help of the mundanes.
Having the really cool image of a covenant carved in the side of a mountain, an island covenant with huge cliffs, whatever, great. Have the fisherman, show a field with a peasant in it, etc.

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I agree that the Covenant image needs to show that a covenant is not the building, it’s the people that comprise it. Not only wizards, but companions and lots of grogs. They’re places not only of high magic and study, but of mundane activity and daily life.

If anything, I wouldn’t feature a wizard on the “ground level” of the scene. Maybe have one up in a high window of a tower doing something like conjuring or speaking with an air elemental, while ordinary folk, noble companions, and tradespeople like bookbinders and glass workers work in the foreground. Including some who look decidedly odd, from warping, faerie blood, or the like.

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Theme: Side cut of a covenant (similar to anatomical chart), with a focus on the dual nature of covenant: having to deal with the outside world, but also doing hidden/forbidden practice inside.

Description: side view of a fortified farmhouse. The drawing is made of two equal halves. The left side is the inside of the farmhouse, the right side the outside.

At the center:
Just at the door step, the autocrat (a purse in hand) is discussing with a farmer (behind him, a cart with crates vegetable (turnips, carrots, but no potatoes yet).

Left side.
Inside: the entrance (where the autocrat is standing) leads to a kitchen, busy with two-three people cooking a lot of food..
Behind the kitchen, a small room with a door (on the same floor and two stair cases going up and down).
Groundfloor, behind small room (further left) is a large room, with high-back chairs with Hermes house carving at the back (it is the meeting room), two mages are discussing, on the table are various figure representing houses, buildings, people.

Upstairs is a laboratory, with a window open on the roof. This laboratory is bright-lighted, with maps of the stars, armillary, mirrors, cristals (telescope has not been invented yet), a mage with a teenager apprentice.

Rightside
In the background one can see an outside wall being erected, with a half-built two stories towers in progress.
Further to the right (of the farmer discussing with the autocrat), still inside the limit of the fortified farmhouse is a blacksmith workshop. One can see details indicating it is an unusual workshop (Verditius): one forge-companion is much taller than the other, the master craftsman (Verditius, dwarf, leather apron adorned with golden thread) is looking at the forge fire glowing blue, and there are some dragon scales being forged.

Underground, for the whole width (building and courtyard): the stair case leads to a library, lighten with magical, floating lights, rows of bookshelves, a larger, slightly less busy section three kids are being given a lecture by the librarian in front of a black board, with latin text on it.

One level under the library:
There are a staircase, a sanctum symbol on the door, leading to a sinister-looking mage laboratory (a circle of invocation, a mage talking to a ghost and taking notes, glass jar containing body parts, skull with horns).

Other details:
Outside the walls, fields of wheat, and far way, nearby the horizon, a hill with the silhouette of a church

Style: Realistic, to give a feeling of normalcy until you pick up the details.

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