So...backstory time.

A number of years ago me, my mate  ingonyama , and my mate  seneca99 were involved in a D&D style RP with Seneca's mate Thanos and friend Verdant ( northy ), who was our GM. The plot and world would be a bit too complicated to go into (plus I don't remember all the details) but the short version is that it involved all of us traveling from Earth to the world of Tesiare and there transforming into our fursonas...and joining in a quest to, of course, rid the world of evil and save innocents and loved ones alike. Thanos was a technomage, Yama was a druid, Seneca was a berserker warmage...and Nieve was a paladin.

Setting aside any real-world connotations of such a class and how it interacts with the world, I've always loved the idea of a holy knight, when done right and played as someone truly good, noble, and heroic rather than, well, a Knight Templar (in the TV Tropes sense--read fundy). What can I say, in many ways I'm still an idealist. So even though the paladin in this game served a dual-faced nature god who was both dark and light, order and chaos, it was still a great jumping off point for another role in Nieve's past. It also enabled me to do another RP, much more recently, more explicitly involving Nieve as his kingly self but also a paladin, hiring a troupe of good demonic mercenaries to help him destroy the undead army and its lich commander who was invading the lands of Clan Urquhart.

And now that role has been given a visual representation at last.

There's really nothing else I can say about this picture since it speaks for itself...anyone who knows of Cheetahpaws knows how incredible his art is, more stunning with every piece, and he certainly did not disappoint here. The silver and gold coloring was of course my own choice for a holy knight, but the coloring of his divine magic, and the motif found on his sword, coronet, and shield is derived from the fact that, in yet another RP I was part of with Seneca and Yama, Nieve possessed holy and moon elemental magic--a deliberate contrast to the usual sun symbolism of lions, but also one that fit in with his fey/nature heritage. (And my own tiger, Blake, already had dibs on fire magic anyway.) The rest of the design is inspired by the armor I had made for Blakeson (lion faces here instead of tiger), and a picture of a shield borne by the Powers, one of the nine orders of angels in the Book of Angels and tasked as celestial enforcers.

There you have it then. Hopefully that puts this picture in perspective for you and gives it even more meaning for some watchers. I adore it...even though Nieve is primarily a fey king, I do love the fact he can be a guardian and believes in protecting, defending, and combating evil in the world as well--perhaps he stepped down briefly from his throne, even gained mortality, so as to fill this role? You will see more of this aspect of his character in future art, but this is the only depiction that is explicitly D&D based.

Nieve Urquhart is copyrighted to me. Art is copyrighted to the incomparable  cheetahpaws .