CotSF: The Moonlit King

The Moonlit King was once the ruler of the Shadow Fey, but has since been deposed by the Queen of Night and Magic. He is now a shadow of his former self, and I mean that quite literally. He has become a glass demon, a creature that flickers between solidity and transparency. The same flickering afflicts his mind; when the players speak to him, his attention seems elsewhere, and he oddly seems to stare right through them. He is no longer quite in touch with reality. But he is still a force to be reckoned with.

In exile, the king lives in a massive tower. Its exterior is as gray and pockmarked as the surface of the moon, and a gaping hole can be seen on the wall of one of the upper floors. The interior is an eerie, luminous chamber of piles of rubble, mechanisms of unknown function, and stairways made of seemingly little more than solidified mist and moonlight. Shafts of brilliant pure moonlight beam in through the windows. A majestic blue throne lies behind a wall of shimmering, protective force. The King gains power from the moonlight filtering in, and holds a Luner Orb that gives him control over all the mechanisms of the tower.

Sharing this strange place are one or more Derro servants (not pictured) and several moonlit devils. The moonlit devils are large, agile, crocodilian, armed with long hammers. Fighting the Moonlit King, if the players choose to do so, is an epic, high-level boss battle. Judging from what little I learned from the art briefs, it's a climactic point in the campaign.

Though I think this is one of the more impressive pieces I made for Courts, it was also one of the most challenging and...well, awkward pieces to make. The detailed surroundings provided a major challenge, but I sped up the work by drawing out rocky patterns that I could tile across the walls and the floors, saving me from having to draw each stone individually (though I did have to do a lot of editing to integrate the edges of the tiles with the surroundings, and to make it so that the tiling wasn't so obvious). I think this took me longer than any other courts piece.

One thing I learned from the art briefs is that the Black Prince is more of an ally to his father than to his mother. If you look at the Black Prince again, you can just barely make out a motif of a circle with one or more triangles above it. I intended for this circle and triangle motif to be the sigil of the Moonlit King. You can see it in his crown. The circle represents the moon, obviously, while the triangles represent power.