Loving the current stages of Beyond the Western Deep by Alex Kain and @kobbers . Captain Kenosh of the Lutren Sea Guard is another one of my favorite characters, and I decided I had to draw some fanart of him. But what kind of fanart?
Well, that leather-wrapped ricasso on his longsword—and the use of James Horner’s excellent score in the fan-dub of the first half of the comic—just screamed Braveheart. I decided that I had to make a parody of the movie poster and draw Kenosh in Mel Gibson’s pose. I sketched over the movie poster to capture the pose, and used it to guide the composition of the poster.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!!
There were a couple of variations on the background and Kenosh’s costume. For the background I was torn between Deltrada Garrison, where Kenosh revealed his true colors, and his current location in the highlands of Aisling, so I decided to try both of them.
For Kenosh’s costume, I felt it was appropriate to have him continue to wear his new Ermehn scarf, given his current membership in the Sratha-din. But then what? In the first two variations, I have him wearing his current get-up—the surcoat of a Lutren captain with the addition of the Ermehn scarf. But then I asked, “What if Kenosh decided to take his loyalty to the ermehn further?” So I decided that in both versions of his costume he tattoos (dyes?) his fur with Ermehn facial tattoos—and in the last versions, he “goes native”and gets the torso tattoos as well, which of course means he has to rip off his shirt and show off some rather impressive abs😸.
If Kenosh did decide to get tattoos, he would obviously need to choose another tribe’s tattoos or use neutral, non-specific tattoos. But his reasons for siding with the Sratha-din are personal, so I went with the idea that he would choose the tattoos of one of the members of the Sratha-din. I imagine that Kenosh would be flexible with the face tattoo traditions, and so unlike other Ermehn, he would feel free to mix and match tattoos to show his loyalty to particular members of the Sratha-din. The two he seems closest with are Hardin and Bevan, and so on the left side of his face, he turns one of the scars Rathik gave him into the tattoos of Hardin—and presumably, Oran, Hardin’s father that Kenosh slew personally. And then, to show his compassion for Bevan, Kenosh openly tattoos the forbidden marks of the lost Evyn-din on his face. The torso tattoos are a design favored by both Hardin and Rathik. While it may be that Kenosh is yet again identifying with Hardin, I would like to think that he is giving his due respect to Rathik, whom he saw for the last time buying them all time by making a last stand against the pursuing Canid soldiers, despite their…differences of opinion just prior.
And the font was chosen to emulate the movie poster. There didn’t seem to be a faux-losophical line I could use from the comic itself, so I decided to write my own little couplet and ham it up. But I do think that it captures Kenosh’s attitude toward the Ermehn conflict well enough, so there it is next to his face.
If anyone sees this, let me know which one is your favorite costume/background combo. There is a version where fully-Ermehned Kenosh is pictured with Deltrada as the background, but it wasn’t my favorite, so I’m not going to post it, but if anyone wants to see it maybe I’ll post it in the comments.
