A couple months ago, I managed to get this character in an auction, at a very good price for such an interesting character design. Over the time since, I've sketched him in passing and toyed with his features a little bit as I flushed out a backstory and personality for him. This is more or less the final design, excepting a little streamlining or editing as I start to introduce him into my character rotation for art.

Cyrral Coleson was born in the 1740's in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the most northern region of France. As a Bernese Mountain Dog, Cyrral and his family fit right at home into the frozen climate that gripped the coastal region. Like most of the young men in his village, Cyrral started working the coal mines as soon as he could hold a pickaxe, eventually taking over as the family provider when his father died in a cave-in shortly after Cyrral turned 20.

A few years would pass before another accident would change Cyrral's life forever. When an unsteady system of support beams began to collapse, Cyrral and a pair of children were stranded underground. It was there that Cyrral was visited by a demon who offered to save his life in exchange for the children. Cyrral reversed the trade, offering part of his soul to the demon as payment for taking the children out of the mine and to their parents. When he returned, the demon took Cyrral's sacrifice, absorbing half of his soul and gifting him half-demon blood for his new endless life. Though he would still be susceptible to unnatural death like any, the demon warned, he would be free to live an eternal life, walking the earth until the end of days or until he was struck down and the demon would return for the other half of his soul. Then he vanished, only to be seen again in passing on rare occasions.

Cyrral looked upon his horns, his wings, and the bony structures growing from his hands and feet, and knew he could not return to his village. The next couple of centuries, the canine travelled across borders and oceans. Torn between his mortality and the emptiness in his heart, Cyrral would often flip between acting as a teacher and student, learning and passing down knowledge from generation to generation and terrorizing anyone he could, abusing his newfound magical abilities as he was corrupted by the scorn and hatred of those who saw him as a monster and an abomination.

And so goes the story of Cyrral Coleson, cursed to walk among society but never again be part of it.