The DM of our weekly Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, James Maliszewski of Grognardia fame, just had this piece commissioned by Zhu Baije of our adventuring party. We’ve moved up from being a group of clanfolk looking for a way to advance ourselves and our clan to being a full-fledged bad-ass adventuring party.

• Standing above the team is Aithfo hiZnáyu, an adventurer and the tactical & strategic leader of the team when we get into fights. He orders our men-at-arms around and generally keeps a solid tactical view of the battlefield.

From left to right

• Znayáshu hiNokór is our sorcerer, a lay-priest in the service of Sarku (and my character’s favourite cousin). His fiancee couldn’t come with us for this campaign, on account of her being dead and embalmed and kept in a closet in his apartment at our clanhouse.
• Ssúri hiNokór is a priestess and temple dancer of Durritlamesh. She’s often our social interface with the world, although she does get a bit sharp when annoyed. As a spellcaster, she’s mostly support – detecting evil, creating light and healing wounds.
• Keléno hiNokór is a priest of Sarku who is actually very bookish and nerdy and tries to stay at the back in conflicts as he is the party’s main scholar. The whole robes and staff thing is him compensating for his skinny bookish self. The reality is that he’s actually becoming the dignified and powerful priest he pretends to be.
• Grujung hiZnáyu is my warrior and Aithfo’s uncle. He’s the oldest character in the group, married with many nieces and nephews. He retired from the military a few years ago after losing a lung and damaging several other important organs in the service. Aithfo freaks out occasionally because he tends to just rush in to combat ignoring the carefully crafted plans and strategies. He is incredibly strong, and yet lacks endurance and is often sickly because of his old wounds. He’s in it for the money.
• Jangáiva hiTlélsu is a tried and true warrior of Sarku. She’s a hunting and killing machine with a streak of bad luck. She takes the whole “worshippers of Sarku the death god” thing crazy-serious.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, this has been my first foray into Tekumel and the Empire of the Petal Throne RPG, and it has been a blast. Having our DM commission a team drawing is icing on the cake. He’s also going to be using the team illustration as the cover of the sixth issue of The Excellent Travelling Volume.