Thanqol Learns 2 Draw: Every Step Is The First

[Thanqol]

Day 474: Aboleth

A new challenge begins.

I've got my old 3.0 edition of the Monster Manual, and I'm going to go through it cover-to-cover and draw every critter in there at least once. This challenge is designed to get me familiar with drawing strange and inhuman creatures, broaden my range, and get me used to new tricks and techniques I wouldn't learn through my usual spheres.

This is not going to be a one monster a day challenge. I reserve the right to spend as long on each critter as I need.

So, day one: The Aboleth! I've had an idea for a campaign involving an Aboleth in my head for a million years.

The monster, old and blind, was washed up on a rocky reef outside a small fishing village. Half-suffocated by the unnatural air, the Aboleth began to go insane, calling out in psychic dreams and mournful whale-song to the village.

Over time, the village began to be shaped by the old monster's will. The Aboleth had never encountered humanity before, and began possessing townsfolk from it's rocky prison, exploring the society of it's lessers out of agonising boredom. In a curious case of stockholm syndrome, the Aboleth actually started to like the humans - and even fell in love with one boy in particular. Unfortunately it doesn't know how to, or understand the idea of, possessing a specific person. So it just grabs whatever mind it can and then begins stalking, reading poetry to, singing alien whale-music at and generally trying to flirt with the boy it loves.

The Aboleth is now almost so insane that it's barely aware of it's desiccated body on the rocks any more, trying haphazardly and earnestly to fit in to the town despite having to possess random townsfolk and being an alien monster. The townsfolk think it's some kind of ghost or spirit. The Aboleth stares with blind eyes into a brass mirror it desperately clutches and imagines it is a pretty human, with long hair to comb and lungs that can breathe air.

Links

Time: 45 minutes
Music: Horizontal Rain