“The Harbinger’s Path” | Preview panel from Chapter 1
Note: This post may contain spoilers for the story in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.
Here are the first previews for some of the panels from The Harbinger’s Path, and a little more about my thought process behind what inspired this project.
Two questions I always wished Guild Wars 2, and Heart of Thorns specifically, could have explored are:
What happened to Malyck?
What might have happened if Malyck and Trahearne had encountered each other during the events of Heart of Thorns?
Two questions we have never received (canonical) answers for. One question has a chance of being answered again, while the other’s chances are exceedingly slim (though not impossible). Despite this, the possibilities for how these two questions could have been answered – especially during or just before the launch of Heart of Thorns – continued tickling my mind for years.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Preview panel from Chapter 1
For whichever reasons, these two questions continued piquing my interest, long after the official canon had (seemingly) moved on from these story threads. I didn’t ponder them continuously, but every now and then, invariably, idle ideas for how these two questions might have been answered bubbled to the surface.
Most of all, I found the ideas which arose from attempting to answer these two questions endlessly inspiring – which I credit entirely to the brilliant writers who first created these wonderful characters, and set up their initial backstories and lore. These two characters were written with such care and nuance, that it made their placement in the world’s setting feel uniquely rich and alive.
I always wanted to see these two characters again – and especially for them to interact. That’s part of the inspiration behind starting The Harbinger’s Path – I hope I can capture some of that inspiration, and convey it to you in the form of this short comic.
“Pact Marshal Trahearne spent 43 days captured by the Elder Dragon Mordremoth. What happened to the Firstborn during this time?”
I’m excited to announce The Harbinger’s Path, a new project I’ve started and have been wanting to do for a while! It’s a Trahearne and Malyck short Guild Wars 2 fan comic, taking place in an alternate, non-canon, fan-take on “what could have been.” I always thought it would be fun to explore this with these two characters.
The Harbinger’s Path is a completely fan-made project, unofficial, and not affiliated with ArenaNet – it’s a small passion-project I’ve toyed with in scattered artworks here and there over the years. I’ve contemplated doing a longer project about it for a long time, and now, I’ve finally decided to do so!
To start, above is the cover reveal! This cover is still in-progress and not final, but hopefully it’s in a mostly presentable state. I’ll add a few earlier process images and share some additional to the this post soon!
Because this project is a little more personal to me compared to Guild Wars 2 art I’ve done in the past, I’ve decided to leave the ArenaNet Creative Partnership while I work on it. I felt more comfortable working on something more personal to me while not sponsored, especially as I’m not sure how much interest there might be in this project beyond my own specific tastes.
Here’s an earlier version with the cover art in an earlier stage, and before adding Trahearne and Malyck’s names to the subtitle.
Trahearne sketch ideas (character from Guild Wars 2).
The idea was, I wanted to see how Trahearne looked if he held Caladbolg in the “modern fantasy” greatsword style, where the weapon is slung (probably impractically) over the shoulder. I suspect (though could easily be mistaken) this pose was once popularized by FF7’s Cloud Strife player character, and has since become a standard fantasy pose. I think GW2’s in-game male humans and norn also take inspiration from that pose, instead of the more practical carried to the side, as GW2’s in-game male sylvari characters wield them. Incidentally, this was one of the early things which endeared me to my male sylvari character – and eventual new main – over my original female charr main.
While I cannot help but think the pose is impractical whenever I see it, there’s no denying it looks slick, in an anime sort of way, haha. It admittedly also probably looks more practical in this case, as I made Caladbolg smaller than I would have otherwise, to fit in the composition. If I take this further, I’d need to push Caladbolg’s perspective more, to appear its proper size.
Earlier versions, plus a rough color test.
Random Trahaerne sketch from last week. I think it became unintentional practice for the sketch from this week.
Kurt, one of the characters from my unnamed project.
Happy New Year! Wow, it’s been a bit since I last updated here. I’ve been meaning to start updating my sketchblog again for a while, and the new year seems like a prime time to start. My plan is to start using this blog as an additional archive for posts I make on social media. Which is sort of funny, as when this blog was first created, it was intended as the main archive, and social media was the secondary avenue – how it switched during the heyday of social media during the 2010’s!
Now, with how turbulent social media has become post-2020 (which I largely think began during the NFT-fiasco, and the nail in the coffin was generative AI images – though BlueSky is now sort of a tentative phoenix rising from the ashes), it’s lead me to pursue keeping this blog updated more seriously than I have in the past.
To start, I’ll post a few of my favorite personal artworks from within the past few months, in no particular order. Mostly of my original characters, and two fan pieces.
The first one above is a painting of Kurt with his original blue hair design, instead of the pale brown/blond he’s had for most of his design. I was practicing some painting techniques with this one, something more smooth than what I usually do. It was a fun experiment, and I’m happy with what I learned from it.
“Corveil,” from the same project as Kurt.
Above is a sketch of Corveil, in a looser style I’m more drawn toward. I really like the looseness, though I suspect it might be a little more difficult to read as a viewer. Though I haven’t posted more anywhere yet, I’ve been developing more about these characters over the past few months. I would really love to create a little story involving them, just small ones to explore their characters. I’ve done several small one-shot comic pages involving them, which are in various stages of thumbnails to flats. I’m not sure which of those I’ll finish – their quality varies immensely – but they’ve felt really rewarding to do just for myself over the last year.
One thing I seem to be forever struggling with is coming up with a name I like for the project involving these characters. I’ve tried several last year, and I still am not enamored with any of them. I really want to have some kind of name to unify them with, instead of a vague “my characters,” though I’m leaning toward this not being very important right now and that I’m overthinking it.
Trahearne and Malyck from Guild Wars 2 | With support from ArenaNet.
Above is an in-progress crop of Trahearne and Malyck from Guild Wars 2. I really love painting this characters, and I have so much I want to explore with them – which I have plans for later this year. :)
Corveil
Above is a practice painting of Corveil looking contemplative.
Corveil again.
Here’s a sketch of Corveil looking a little malicious. I’m personally fond of this one, though I also suspect this one doesn’t read very clearly.
“Gul Dukat” from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
And above we have a Cardassian (from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) study, which I just did today as a warm-up painting. Though I first watched DS9 three years ago – and I even did a small painting of Garak afterward, which I had completely forgotten about (it’s not my favorite drawing, otherwise I would post it here) – but that first watch was as background material I had on while I was working. I had the random urge to rewatch the series recently, and upon a rewatch (I’m in the sixth season now), I realized I had missed so much during my initial rewatch.
There is so much that is lost if you are primarily watching the show while not actively viewing it, as I had – so much wonderful physical and non-verbal acting by the performers which adds incredible layers and depth to their characters. I went into my second watch with The NextGeneration as still my favorite Trek (DS9 was the last series of the pre-modern Treks I watched), and by very early on during this rewatch (by season 2 or 3), knew that DS9 had overtaken TNG for me. It is now my favorite Trek, by a long shot (incidentally, TNG is probably now my second-favorite, followed by The Original Series, then Enterprise, and then finally Voyager).
This study is based on the quintessential Cardassian, pioneered by Marc Alaimo – none other than Gul Dukat, of course! After I read how the makeup artist (Michael Westmore) largely based the Cardassian design on Alaimo’s “unusually long” neck, I knew that if I decided to learn how to draw Cardassians, I would start by studying Alaimo’s Gul Dukat appearance.
I really love Alaimo’s portrayal of the Gul Dukat character – there is so much subtlety and nuance to his performance, and his voice has this ASMR-quality to my ears that makes him intoxicating for me to listen to.
I love Alaimo’s/Westmore’s physical representation of a Cardassian so much, that I didn’t want any drawings I do of the character to be a replica. We have seven wonderful seasons to admire their work on the character for that. I knew from the beginning I wanted to try some kind of merger between Alaimo’s physical appearance, and an artistic interpretation of the character. I’ve done a number of “Gul Dukat” sketch studies before this one to try and figure one out – I’m sure this won’t be the end version, but this is probably my favorite result so far.
I don’t think I quite captured his charming malevolence, though I am pleased with how knobby his Cardassian neck turned out.
Below is nearly all the artwork I’ve made of Trahearne & Malyck over the years. I thought compiling a post seeing them all might be fun, and also handy to keep updated for future easy viewing.
