can i ask how valentin and landry met? i love your art of them, i'm so interested in their lore!
Oh of course!! Thank you for giving me an excuse to talk more about them!!
In the world of this campaign, people born with magical ability carry that magic in an organ called a “source”, and the gods of the world siphon magic for themselves by “sundering” mages, removing their sources and consuming them. The gods are then able to control the magic in their regions directly.
Valentin grew up in a region where one of those gods had gone mad and been locked away, and without her magic the land became diseased and barren. He managed to invent a sort of magical sieve which could collect traces of magical run-off in the river and return it to the land. This was a big enough deal to catch the attention of the god Pollux, whose region, Iversol, is known for innovation. Pollux sent a group of his soldiers to collect Val and his invention to be brought back to Iversol, and sunder the few mages left in Val’s village. Landry was a part of that group.
Landry is one of seven “perfect” soldiers hard-sculpted by Pollux and brought to life by a divine spark; their whole purpose is to serve the crown, with no emotion or personal connections of their own. After returning to Iversol, they were assigned to Val to make sure he didn’t attempt to escape. Val resented them at first, but soon began to see Landry as someone as lonely as he was, and their secret friendship grew from there!