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Damn i can't believe Fitz managed to fumble every single bad bitch in the Six Dutchies 😔

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thymara and rapskal exploring kelsingra core

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Round 2

Aoi Zaizen submission

Spark/Ash submission

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Silver Well

Illustration series for the Rain Wild Chronicles by Robin Hobb

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more lazy touchpad color! Teen Boys (some of whom are 40)

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mother of elderlings

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Dutiful and Elliana.

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Ash and Spark

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waow...silly little guy alert

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Fitz's girls 💜

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I love drawing elderlings

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Covers for the Czech version of the series The Rain Wild Chronicles (The Realm of the Elderlings) by Robin Hobb, I discovered one of these covers through @blackandwhitemotley and had to look for the others to know, I loved them all. In order: The Dragon Keeper Dragon Haven City Of Dragons Blood Of Dragons Arts by https://www.deviantart.com/skvor/

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Top 10 best RotE covers

So my Top 10 worst RotE covers has been making the rounds again, and it reminded me that I had started a list of my 10 favourite covers. NGL it was much harder to find 10 covers I liked than it had been to find 10 really bad ones, but there are still some gems out there 💖

10. Assassin's Apprentice (Brazilian Portuguese)

This is where you can clearly see that I don't have much to work with in terms of good covers for this series. Do I love this? No. Is it generic-looking? Yes, but the stag and font look badass and the result is effective

9. Assassin's Quest (Turkish)

Nice and graphic, I really like the tile effect and this red is very striking.

8. Mad Ship (Romanian)

I'm not sure if the figurehead is supposed to be Paragon or Kendry, but they did take a risk and the result looks cool and very different from every other cover out there.

7. Royal Assassin (Polish)

What I really like about this one is that instead of looking badass and in charge like in most covers, this Fitz looks sad and lost, so the artist got that right. And the cloak that morphs into a trail of blood is 👌👌

6. Fool's Assassin (French)

Bee actually looks her age and there's a heartbreaking contrast between this small and lonely child and the pyre burning next to her. Very good one!

5. Ship of Magic (French)

Althea reaching out to a gorgeous and very dramatic-looking Vivicia with a mysterious atmosphere around them, yessss! Really cool and memorable

4. Fool's Errand (UK)

A classic, and this spot is for John Howe's covers in general. I don't love them all but there's a very unique and ethereal feel to his art, his use of colours is wonderful and there are always a lot of details to look at.

3. Fool's Errand (Japanese)

The Japanese editions for Tawny Man look unreal and it was extremely difficult to pick just one so again, this spot is for the whole set. So, so beautiful and imaginative!

2. City of Dragons (Czech)

I fell in love with this style as soon as I saw it. It looks absolutely fantastic, damn, look at this Alise and the stone statue behind her!! I love that all the covers from this edition of RWC focus on a different character instead of just showing random dragons. The artist has obviously read the books and it shows.

1. Fool's Quest (UK)

I am not just saying that because this is the edition I own, but Jackie Morris is the queen of RotE covers for me. I have nothing bad to say about her covers, they look stunning and they work extremely well as a set.

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Fitz, probably: Yeah, I got like 12 Dollars

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I was looking at the Fool’s wiki page today - truly a character of all time

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!!! I hope it's okay to reblog but I had a post sitting in my drafts about this for 2 years and I have to share even if it's a bit of a mess:

(this is copy-pasted from my drafts but I deleted a detail that I know is from the last trilogy and edited some stuff, I don't think I missed any spoilers but a lot of info was probably from epigraphs and it's hard to know from which book without doing a full reread, I will put this under a readmore just in case)

Some thoughts on Elfbark and the history of its use in Chalsed

First of all, what we know:

- Elfbark blocks the Skill & excessive use is said to kill the Skill ability in a person (also Kestrel mentioned it was also used in the 6D as punishment)

- it is commonly used in Chalsed on slaves

- it seems that people from Chalsed are less likely to understand dragons speaking? (I think that's true but I don't actually remember if we have evidence more than a general vibe, we did see at least one soldier understanding Icefyre and Tintaglia in rwc)

-I'm pretty sure dragons speak using a combination of Skill and Wit, and that they use the Skill to glamor people (unrelated but I also think cats do this too)

- Chalsed had been an enemy of Dragons/Elderlings/Kelsingra in the past, and has also been an enemy of the Six Duchies for a long time ("Sooner or later, there is always war with Chalsed")

- Kelsingra & the 6D were presumably allies in the past too if they existed simultaneously (first Farseer queen was an Elderling*, they have legends about seeking help from the Elderlings, king Wisdom, tapestries, etc) (*I'm not sure were I got this info, I just remember a vague description with the color purple in a song/historical text)

-We saw Verity use the Skill in the Red Ship War to influence the enemy and crush their boats and stuff, and this was one tired Skill user being dosed with elfbark. Imagine the sort of advantage several fully trained coteries would be in a war.

My theory is that Chalsed began to use Elfbark for their army and for their generals in order to protect against the influence of Skill users on them. (for morale, navigation, decision making in general).

They may have also used it because they didn't want to be susceptible to glamor from dragons, if elfbark was in use back then.

And if there is one thing that could potentially offer protection from stone dragons flying overhead and forging you, it would be Elfbark, but I'm not sure about this part.

I think that after the long history of wars between Chalsed and its neighbours, even if the need to use Elfbark was a long time ago, the Skill ability in the population would be very rare and weak, and that's could be why it seems most chalsedians don't understand dragons. (now editing this I think I may be wrong in my initial assumption, we know Burrich is skilled and his grandmother was a freed slave, and Tats didn't have any trouble understanding the dragons from what I remember)

I still wonder what exactly is Elfbark, where do the trees they get it from grow, and how did people know to use it. (Just realized I didn't even mention the Outislanders' version of elfbark in this post so if anyone has anything to add about it that would be great)

Silver/Skill seems to me a bit alien in nature and I have a lot of thoughts on that too (and smth I think I remember from rwc about animals drinking from Silver-contaminated water and Silver spreading up the food chain?) but this is veering off topic so I'm gonna leave now, this is already long 😅

Ahead of them loomed the city walls, and high above it, on a hill within the fortified city, stood the towers and ramparts of the Duke of Chalced’s stronghold. It was more fortress than palace, and as they approached it, Sintara knew a moment of unsettling doubt. This was a bad place, a very bad place, and her inability to summon up the specific memory that told her that only made it appear more ominous. IceFyre had been insistent that the entire city must be completely annihilated.

Ok so what with this and Rapskal telling Chalced was enemy of dragons back in Elderling times and the ehole time being a circle thing I think that maybe not necciserally Chalced as a country had always been hostile to dragons but Something in the place