Kenosh’s menacing glare WAS a bit nicer than usual back there! I suppose you’ll have to trust us on this one – Rachel’s done some concepts of Kenosh when he’s really angry, and he doesn’t look very pleasant. Let me see what I can dig up here…

See? Bit of a nasty customer when he really loses his temper. We’ve seen how the subject of the Ermehn/Canid situation can rile him up, and the problems there are only beginning.

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In this world, speedy travel doesn’t quite exist yet. There’s no automobile and no “horse” equivalent animal for these creature to ride around on, so most travel is simply restricted to walking from place to place. While the landmass comprising the Four Kingdoms is not especially large by our own standards (it is not, for example, as wide as North America) it still takes a great deal of time to travel from coast to coast. Even “shorter” trips, such as the 10-12 day journey from the Lutren capital city of Lutra to the Tamian capital, Terria, are rather large undertakings that require armed escorts and enough supplies to prevent the journey from taking a wrong turn.

There are speedy solutions to getting simple information across great distances – such as messenger birds – but these will be brought into focus later.

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That Kenosh and Dakkan would make a return trip to Terria so quickly after their previous visit, therefore, was not only a pleasant surprise for Quinlan, but a rather direct hint as to the importance of Kenosh’s information. That he would not entrust it to a messenger bird and braved the journey twice in such a short period of time was enough to pull in King Dabheid and Quinlan without hesitation.

This week we’ve got a surprise drop of fan-art from the amazing Jerome Jacinto, whose incredible Beyond the Western Deep pinup commission graced this site a few months ago. This week, I’ll share some inks he sent over of the four main characters: Quinlan, Dakkan, Kenosh, and Hardin:

As Jerome explained, he had been working in digital painting for a very long time and hadn’t broken out any actual pens in over a year. That he decided to stretch out his (awesome!) inking talents on the leads in Beyond the Western Deep after a year+ hiatus is a huge honor for us. I love seeing these characters in your style, Jerome! Definitely need to arrange another epic piece from you someday!

And that’s not even the end of it! But I’m going to save the other piece he sent over for next week’s post. Until then!