#tome of pacts

[inkeyjay]

🩸🗡️

This is Iron Fang. Once and obedient guardian, his oath to protect a nobleman, only to receive constant lashes if he didn't comply to his corrupt bidding. Parts of their body replaced, little by little, to make them more lethal. More obedient. More a beast than a human.And like a beast, they tore the hand that fed them off, and now roams the realm seeking to protect those who have yet to grow their fangs.

Yippee! I can finally show you the paladin i did for Book of Devotion by @sleepywyrm_ed. Some leftovers are available right now so if you didn't grab your copy through the kickstarter now's your chance! 🩸

[planetsandmagic]

🕯️ Irfan, The Roving Trader

"Bound by Oath to an endless quest for hidden knowledge, Irfan struggles to abandon their beloved world for the unknown."

Meet the paladin I designed for @/SleepyWyrm_Ed's Book of Devotion, a book full of unique deities and their devotees! Thanks so much for having me in the project ;w;

[vesperosy]

charlotte the snake, a warlock of the living weapon

for the tome of pacts zine!

[yazmati]

patron design for Tome of Pacts, a kickstarted book of patrons and their associated warlocks! You can get a copy here on leftover sales if you want to find out more about this lil guy

[neuralgray]

I worked on a zine called Tome of Pacts and made a Patron for it for whom I was very proud to have produced! Loved designing them and just all around working with the team. Jae-In The Trick Shot

[l-a-l-o-u]

Capucine 🌼

[tshortik]

The Lachrymore - The Weeping Wanderer 🧿💧

The fey patron I painted for the Tome of Pacts Zine! A patron that is two entities at the same time, a primordial being of loss and grief...

[justavulcan]

Backgrounds With Class: Izzet Engineer

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer.  So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.  Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

Izzet Engineer

The Izzet Engineer Artificer is a study in contradictions.  Temperamentally, he’s the quintessential vedalken- cool, calm, orderly, and precise.  When it comes to the subject of his work, though, he’s exactly the opposite.  His area of expertise is pyrodynamics, and he specializes in demolitions magic.  When asked about the contradiction, he’s as likely to say that destruction should be no less calculated for maximum efficiency than anything else as he is to crack a rare smile and say simply that it needs to be done.

The Izzet Engineer Barbarian was lab security before his accident, mostly internal in case the mephits or weirds break containment somehow.  Turns out that his chemister employer was experimenting with tri-elemental weird fusions, though, and the massive surge of wild magic that resulted contaminated everyone in the lab that didn’t meet an untimely end.  Now the wild magic is in him, too, triggered by the surge of adrenaline brought on by combat.  Accordingly, and in the spirit of testing the results of the accidental experiment, he’s been involved in a lot more field work lately.

The Izzet Engineer Bard is preoccupied with bringing life to the lifeless.  Motion in general has been an interest of his from gobling on the streets to assistant in the lab, and it’s always fascinated him how the world acts around moving things.  Gifted with a keen sense of timing, he claims to be able to keep the rhythm of the universe, and his ability to magically pull that rhythm to reality is his greatest pride and joy.  If you need someone who knows how to get something somewhere sometime, he’s your man.

The Izzet Engineer Cleric has never been a high-concept member of the League, instead focusing on the materials fabrication.  Attached to things they can work with their hands, they’ve made thousands of miles of piping and scaffolding in their career, and have even supplied housing, capacitors, and other more technical equipment for a variety of projects in the League.  Low-key indispensable and firm in their desire to one day be working with guild-trademark alloys like mizzium, their faith draws from the raw confidence that with the proper tools, and the right material, anything is possible.

The Izzet Engineer Druid is an unusual member of the League in that she hates spending time in the lab.  Bound to a fire elemental companion of her own and planning one day to be a one-woman foreman, her real ambition is to serve as one of the guild’s elementarii.  Weirds and their creation have always fascinated her, and her willingness to field-test anything even remotely related to the topic has made her a popular contractor for testing handheld equipment.

The Izzet Engineer Fighter, like his father and older brothers before him, has always been a dab hand with the crossbow.  The family business is support and assistant work for the chemisters of the Izzet League, and he’s always wanted to be a scorchbringer.  The old man says you always need an edge, so to set himself apart, he’s audited engineering courses at the guild workshops and started making new ammunition for his ‘bow- enhancements of energy and matter, making some truly unique shots possible.  His designs have recently caught one of the lesser magisters’ eye, and now he’s on track to become one of the guild’s best combat engineers and troubleshooters.

The Izzet Engineer Monk was caught in an electro-galvanic storm as a youth and hasn’t been the same since.  Infused with raw elemental energy and adopted by the scientists whose work took the lives of his parents, she spent much of her youth brawling and scrapping on the street until she suddenly- explosively- cut loose with a thunderwave.  Her adoptive parents, hearing of the incident, took her into the Laboratory of Storms and Electricity to see if there’s more to the storm’s changes than her perpetually windblown hair and the crackle of ozone that follows her.

The Izzet Engineer Paladin sees herself one day as not just a scorchbringer, not just a security chief on a project, but the champion of the Izzet League.  She’s not much of an inventor herself, but there’s always room for a strong back and a will to fight in the League, clearing abandoned structures for refurbishment and engaging in one of modern Ravnica’s countless small-scale military action.  The day is coming, she can see, that she sprints into battle bearing the latest and greatest of her League’s tech.

The Izzet Engineer Ranger joined the Izzet combine under unusual circumstances.  A kraul and formerly a farmer in the Undercity, she used to deal with all kinds of run-off from the Izzet laboratories above contaminating her food until one day a weird washed down the pipes.  After putting it down, she went to the laboratory to demand they reroute their sewage, and left hired as the official run-off and chemical waste technician under the League's employment, as well as underground security.  Now, she handles the access tunnels and piping for a network of laboratories, growing increasingly interested in wielding a scorchbringer.

The Izzet Engineer Rogue has a dirty job, for the Izzet League.  Officially on the payment records as an outside consultant, she is one of the League’s idea thieves.  When guildless engineers hit on something the League can use but refuse to sell, she seeks them out and makes sure their designs and experimental materials fall into the hands of someone who can use them.  She doesn’t mind the work; the challenge is nice, and although she has enough technical know-how to make modest progress herself, she is much more comfortable cracking locks and dodging security.

The Izzet Engineer Sorcerer is a natural talent at storm summoning, but when a stray bolt fried their clan’s shaman, they fled the Gruul to take up with the other guild that likes lightning.  Among the Izzet, their talent is looked down upon for the more primitive flavor they bring with it, but none can argue with the results.  As-is, they ended up doing the scut work of keeping maintenance tunnels clean and smoothly running, a dull job with a lot of hands-on ground-level know-how involved.

The Izzet Engineer Warlock has had an unorthodox apprenticeship.  Instead of working with and learning from a chemister or blastseeker, she made a deal when she joined the guild to work under a water djinn.  He gave her a disused segment of water-cooling piping, part-time work at two labs, and a promise of an arcane engineer’s manual in the future.  She’s making the best of it so far, helping with her colleagues’ experiments where she can and faking her way through the rest.

The Izzet Engineer Wizard is, predictably, fascinated by conjuration magic.  Themself a weird brought to life by a magister’s experimental elemental summoning, gifted with an unusual spark of intelligence for elemental plasm, it is small wonder their talents tend toward the calling of things- and, eventually, beings.  Crackling with life and lightning, limber as a stream of molten mizzium, they’re as mercurial in interest and focus as any magister of their guild, a role they hope one day to fulfull.

[utilitycaster]

I think that people who try to play a character who is like one level in every class are very tedious but I did just get an idea for a D&D character who's like "what if I tried to develop every power" and so they do a number of things (try to make deals with various powerful entities, dabble in religion, try to tap into forces of nature and the echoes of creation, walk through a weird wild magic field, sword and martial arts training, etc) but accidentally through the process of learning so much in order to try to cheat the system just becomes a wizard.

[inkeyjay]

🫀 Eucharist of the Ravenous 🫀

It started out as a bellyache, guts rumbling after two days of barely eating. An unfinished visage, featureless, fixing the blurry sockets it had for eyes into his soul.

The humble priest dropped his brush onto the cold floor of the chapel and stumbled backwards. The walls, towards the ceiling, all full of still fresh perfect faces framed by golden halos, that he had been carefully painting non stop for days. Faces of dead saints and prophets, long gone, commissioned by the high church as a display of power and opulence in an age of religious and political crisis. And this last saint, the one that still had some loose and tired brushtrokes for it's face. There was something about it that made the priest flinch out of his creative trance. He swore the paint moved, vibrated with anticipation at the touch of the brush.

He laid tired in the center of the chapel, exposed to a hundred pair of eyes that almost felt judgemental, knowing of the priest's internal thoughts. "Why am i doing this" "Why do i have to over exert myself with work to survive while i use pure gold to embellish... You. This" "Why"

And the faces remained still and silent.

"Why all this for long gone martyrs that had the fortune to die for their for their beliefs, or to let their God speak through their lips, bestow miracles through their fingers"

"Why this for a God that let them die at the heretical hands of the non believers. That leaves hundreds if not thousands of people to die of the pestilence outside this golden, rotten, WALLS"

The bottle of turpentine exploded and its contents dripped down the wall, dragging hours of work with them, dissolving like acid false flesh and gold leaf alike. And then blood, through the priest's hand, holding the neck of the bottle. He panicked and kneeled towards the wall, trying to undo the mistake with cloth, only to make a bloody mess. Red running through the gold, ichor like.

The priest cried holding his hand, a deep wound running through his palm, burning because of the chemicals. But the pain was not the cause of his tears.

"A sign" "I just need a sign"

But the faces remained still and silent.

The priest got up, slowly, and turned around towards the door. Why be here then. Why remain hungry, at the mercy of a dying church that kept their riches safe in mausoleums and layers of paint upon gold leaf upon stone, while its believers died in the streets famished and sick. The priest saw it clear now. If God did ever exist, it was long gone, uncaring for its creation. He might as well die outside, with his people. It would be like inviting the sickness into his chest but at least his last breaths wouldn't taste of incense. His steps echoed through the chamber, determined, reaching for the doors.

But the faces opened their lips. And with a cacophony of voices, each one vibrating with a torrent of beating wings, It spoke. No.

It sang.

Super happy to finally be able to show you this illustration i made for Tome of Pacts, a zine about warlocks, patrons and their pacts! There's a leftover sale going on right now! This is Pantheon, a shapeshifting entity that impersonates long absent gods and feeds on the faith of their followers, always hungry for more. But it's not for me to tell you.

! First of all, credits to @/gothhoblin, the writer of our team, for helping shape out this Patron "...and it spoke with a cacophony of voices, each one vibrating with a torrent of beating wings, a thousand or more." Is a marvelous line of her creation.

Tome of pacts has 11 more patrons and 24 warlocks for your enjoyment, all beautifully depicted by teams of artists and writers. Im super proud to have been able to participate in this project 💛

This short story is about an original character i created after the patron, just as an appetizer, pun intended. You get it right??

Hungry for a copy?

[felsjustart]

Etch belongs to @raise-the-colors 💜

Pretty sunset themed "Tiefling" from our Red Roses by the Crypt 5e D&D campaign. Etch & Parsley have made fast friends from adventuring together so long and, although Etch has clearly been cursed by some god to occasionally be reverted/trapped in a sword form from time to time, it was just revealed that Etch is actually a Changeling, so I did another version of her to show that off under the cut! A crop/close up is under there as well and a little bonus. ;)

Was super fun working with shimmery/sheer fabrics and gradients galore! I also now have a full body I can continually dress up as Etch gets outfit changes in our game huehuehue.

Etch's Changeling form;

And bonus the Imp she adopted during our time in Carceri & said Imp's favorite place to travel.

[milfvael]

Reclassed laezel to open hand monk this pt and I kind of think she will never be a fighter in my games again

[neuralgray]

For the Tome of Pacts Zine I did a few extra drawings of my patron, Jae-In, doing silly things with the other patrons. Really enjoyed working with the team and just the same, sketching and doodling funny vignettes of gods acting up with other gods.

[corvidaedream]

making a d&d character sheet for a d&d au version of laura palmer for funsies

[vigilskeep]

There's a Carcinisation joke in here about Morghaine's familiar somewhere, I'm just not clever enough to make it.

going to try to convince gale that all fey familiars will eventually become crab and for quothe it’s only a matter of time

[justavulcan]

Backgrounds With Class: Orzhov Representative

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer.  So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.  Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

Orzhov Representative

The Orzhov Representative Artificer is a thrull-crafter’s apprentice with an unusual interest in metal for her profession.  Working in what amounts to a meat-processing plant under a gifted fleshcrafter, she’s more interested in the chemical interactions that fuel the thrull’s return to life and the polished brass that forms their faceplates and sometimes armor.  Eccentricities aside, she’s a gifted assistant, and when a Rakdos party got a bit too wild in their neighborhood, she led her creations in an effective defense of the property- even scraping together a reward from the Boros doing so.

The Orzhov Representative Barbarian is a family man, but not in the typical sense.  Generations of his dead relatives- aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even cousins haunt him relentlessly, as the young half-elf undertakes his training as a tax collector and enforcer for the Syndicate.  While they’re certainly a nuisance in his day-to-day life, he can’t begrudge their aid in combat.  In the heat of battle, they protect him from harm, guide his halberd, and even have started to make motions like they’ll keep his charges safe if he travels with a retinue or as a bodyguard.

The Orzhov Representative Bard is not the only wildly ambitious junior advokist in her law firm, nor even the only one who thinks of the courtroom drama as just that- high drama- but she is the only one who casts herself not as the main character, but as the supporting secondary to her client.  This gift, for pitching and selling a narrative starring the best intentions of her client rather than the regrettable reality, is what serves her best in court- and out of it, as it demonstrates she knows the power behind the throne wields just as much power as the one on it.

The Orzhov Representative Cleric always fit in on the churchier side of things.  Working as a grave tender, catacomb custodian, and occasional mason, he has always had a connection with the quiet dead of the Orzhov’s churches.  Naturally, he’s also served as security against intruders interested in wealth and spiritual power alike, but he considers his most important duties to be putting the unquiet, un-contracted dead back into their bodies and their tombs.  He’s willing to travel to work on problems like this, and many other churches than his home have taken advantage- for a fair fee, naturally.

The Orzhov Representative Druid has always felt a certain connection to the guild’s symbol of a sun in eclipse.  Born on such a day himself, he has made a habit of studying the stars from the highest belfries of the cathedrals he can climb to, eventually taking a role as an augur and occasional bell-ringer to grow a relationship with the guild he felt most connected to.  Uncommon as a loxodon in the Church of Deals is, he finds his talents well at home- as he can call upon the night sky’s light to serve the Church’s will and gain insight or deliver punishment to those his superiors point him to.

The Orzhov Representative Fighter was just a stable-boy when his family fell into debt.  They sold him into indenture to square the books, and he went into the service of one of the Syndicate’s Knights of Despair, a vampire.  As he got to know his new master, he became more and more curious about the Knight’s state of being, and after some negotiation earned himself a sizeable blood transfusion and a new lease on unlife as the elder knight’s squire.  On the path to becoming another Knight of Despair himself, he’s keen to collect tithes for the church in gold…and his own in blood.

The Orzhov Representative Monk has always been quick of wit and foot.  Trained young as an altar boy, courier, and sometime debt-collector, their revelation came when they managed to bind an indentured spirit to their own body as part of a contract.  Impressed by the achievement, the Syndicate invested in an ectomancer’s education for them.  While their magical talents have manifested unusually for a member of the Church, they’ve continued to impress, bringing the spectral limbs to bear in combat and the spirit’s flight to grant themselves bursts of weightlessness. They promise to be a fine investment for whatever higher-ranked member of the Syndicate sees their worth first.

The Orzhov Representative Paladin was always among the wealthy elite of the Orzhov.  A true scion, she cut her teeth extorting protection money from the smaller children she grew up with before swearing her oath of domination and power to the Obzedat when she came of age.  After years of study as a squire, accountant, and negotiator, she was recognized as a knight in her own right, although not old or renowned enough to earn the title she truly desired: Knight of Penance.  Still, her ambition and greed place her well at home among the Syndicate’s scions, and she plans for greater things yet.

The Orzhov Representative Ranger was a mistake twofold- first, a careless mason carved a gargoyle with fragile wings, causing them to erode and shatter only two short years after the gargoyle was placed in the heights of Vizkopa Bank.  The second was the gift of uncommon intelligence for what usually amounts to a shrieking stone statue, and the gargoyle spent long years on the bank’s roof befriending the bats and birds that call the belfries and roof home.  Now, companions following close behind on the wing, they’ve descended to serve the Syndicate as a spy, debtor-hunter, and sometime killer.

The Orzhov Representative Rogue had an unusual childhood, by Orzhov standards.  Raised in the undercity by Golgari parents, they were prone to squeezing into tight cracks to avoid the many dangers of the lightless city’s underbelly.  One such foray took them into the belly of an Orzhov basilica, into a family crypt with a cracked floor.  Taking a token to remember the name, they found their way to the surface and went to the bank beneath which the corpse lay.  Instead of pawning the stolen token, they told the priests of the crack, and earned themselves a position of some trust, in training as a church euthanist with a skilled ear for the dead and their tokens.

The Orzhov Representative Sorcerer was born to a bank manager with a penchant for posthumous labor contracts, and the fact that this had rubbed off on her was evident from a young age.  Pale like the dead with icy skin and an extremely slow pulse, she’s been a figure of some fright to those around her all her life, an impression she is learning to cultivate in her career as a church representative.  Not quite priest or banker, she’s still the first choice for speaking to ‘difficult’ borrowers, as her near-death appearance and penchant for mind-affecting magic make her an unsettling negotiator.

The Orzhov Representative Warlock started their journey in their parents’ attic, digging up ancient family ledgers rumored to belong to one of the Ghost Council.  Ghost Council’s or not, the figures and sums started to whisper more than wealth to the young banker-in-training, and arcane power followed.  Now they’re almost inseperable, ledger and warlock, and are putting their new pact-given boons to better use than just clerical work.  A few particularly advantageous loans later, their manager has taken note of the magic they use and is considering putting them to work outside the bank’s walls just as much as within them.

The Orzhov Representative Wizard is an economist by trade, observing the ebb and flow of commodity availability and making her coins on the back of the market’s labor.  A skilled eye for forecasting the future and a dedication to the arts of knowledge have always been her preferred tools of the trade, and her wizardry is just the logical extension of this craft.  Lately, though, her luck has been failing, and, forced to lean into her other talents, she’s started taking freelance work as a ‘problem solver’, financial and otherwise.