First pass at designing a bandit dragon-man! A very silly exercise. Thinking about Tolkien's somewhat vaguely-defined term "cold-drake" I developed the derivative ringwëthûllókë (bad Quenya: frost-breath-serpent), a lesser wingless dragon of the mountains that can magically breathe in atmospheric heat, an ability used for survival in their cold habitat as well as offensively.

Calaniquis was unluckily born dragonmarked in a mountain hamlet & so sold to a travelling peddler at the first opportunity. After changing hands a few times he eventually wound up among a gang of brigands, where his instinctive love of fine things, treasure & causing havoc found a natural outlet. His cockiness & haphazardly applied growing supernatural abilities won him few friends, even among that unsavoury element, but when he applies himself he is a ferocious & canny leader of men. Repeatedly captured by & escaping from adventurers hired by wardens & waylords he has become infamous for both his prowess & his arrogance. Thanks to his willingness to ransom rather than kill captives & unusually successful career he is sometimes called 'the bandit king'.

Synthesised from talking & thinking a lot about fantasy, stegoceras, lammergeyers, the seasonal renewal of Tolkien fever & D&D's weirdly specific dragon taxonomy.

nostalgic fineliners & pocketbrush<watercolours & pencil crayon<photoshop