Study of Galena Wrapped in a Sheet

A brown pen and ink portrait drawing of an albino woman, with a sheet wrapped around her chest, with her eyes closed and an ambiguous facial expression of pain and/or pleasure.

Study of Galena Wrapped in a Sheet, 2025. Brown and sepia inks and gouache on vellum, 6 x 8 in,

The character of Galena was drawn from many different sources. Her endless quest for increasingly intense sensations—and the use of heroic doses of alcohol and substances to approach such a heightened state—was inspired by the painter Francis Bacon’s biography and interviews. I also modeled aspects of her personality and speech on someone I once knew who was simultaneously a psychopath and a masochist: quite a combo.

A line from William Gibson’s Count Zero was also inspiring:

“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”

— William Gibson

Galena displays “inhumanity” through her inappropriate reactions to situations, whether it’s poking her nose into a painting she’s trying to figure out how to appreciate, laughing uncontrollably at a fistfight, or taking visceral pleasure in having large amounts of money stolen from her purse in an elevator car.

Study of Renata During the Binge (Full Body Version)

A blue pen and ink figure drawing of a tattooed woman with black curly hair and a dazed expression kneeling on the floor with a liquor bottle next to her.

Study of Renata During the Binge (Full Body Version), 2025. Blue ink on vellum, 6 x 8 in.

Renata is a character who shows up in several stories. In the original draft of The Vaster Conspiracy, I gave her a brief cameo in which she is passed out drunk in a banquette next to Dr. Rasteban at the Breslin Bay Old Colonist’s Club. In the second draft, I wrote a scene in which Vaster and Renata go on a binge together, with Vaster interrogating her about Dr. Rasteban’s dubious medical experiments until he gets so intoxicated that he forgets what they’re talking about.

The black square tattoo on Renata’s shoulder is a cover-up. This raises the question: if the rest of her body is covered with demonic sigils and arcane talismans, what was so dangerous that it needed to be completely blacked out?

The composition of this study was inspired by Caravaggio’s strong use of the edge as a framing device, as seen in paintings like Self Portrait as Bacchus and Conversion on the Way to Damascus.

Study After Ashera

A brown pen and ink figure drawing of an albino girl with a surprised expression, wearing an oversized clerical outfit with her sleeves covering most of her hands.

Study After Ashera, 2025. Brown ink on vellum, 4 x 6 in.

In Ashes and Dust, if the player solved enough puzzles and opened enough of the mysterious reliquaries, a new character would have appeared while the priestesses were sleeping during the second ashfall.

Arazue, waking up early to start cooking, finds an albino girl lying curled up in Leoba’s washbasin by the stove in the shrine’s kitchen. The girl is unable to speak and can only utter “ahh” sounds. The priestesses dress her in a spare, oversized shrine attendant’s uniform and try to figure out who she is and how she suddenly appeared in the shrine.

Leoba recognizes her from a prophetic dream she had in which a pile of ashes turned into a girl who uttered nonsense sounds before exploding. She decides to name the girl “Ashera” after a porcelain doll she had as a child. The doll, in turn, was named after a character from a popular book about an artificial girl made out of porcelain and imbued with the soul of the inventor’s daughter.

Teccla tries to teach Ashera how to speak, and she’s able to parrot a few words, but it’s unclear if she understands anything she’s saying.

There’s someone else who’s interested in Ashera, as well: a Zeelean nobleman calling himself “the Collector” who has been pursuing her and the reliquaries across the ashfields.

This drawing is a new pen and ink version of a sketch of Ashera done for the game in 2020.

Study After Priestess Arazue Zishangal

A brown pen and ink portrait drawing of a woman with short light hair smiling, wearing an ornate clerical outfit, with text in a cursive script below her portrait.

Study After Priestess Arazue Zishangal, 2025. Brown ink on vellum, 4 x 6 in.

Arazue would have been one of the three playable characters in Ashes and Dust. A native of the ash-covered Rodinian region of Zabool, Arazue was raised in the faith of the Enshrinement and ended up becoming the first-ever ordained priestess of Rodinian heritage. She returned to her hometown of Zabool after the war to help rebuild the settlement’s looted shrine and aid the fractured, traumatized community.

Between Teccla’s random intellectualism and Leoba’s spacy scrupulousness, Arazue was the voice of reason of the trio:

“I can’t believe I have to say this, but we’re not spending the shrine’s food money on knives! And we’re absolutely not playing around with knives in the first place! What is wrong with you two?”

— Arazue

This drawing is a new pen and ink version of a sketch of Arazue done for the game in 2020.

Study After Priestess Leoba Ascelina the First Witnessed Leandrade

A brown pen and ink portrait drawing of a woman with long dark hair, eyes closed, with her gloved hands folded over her chest, wearing an ornate clerical outfit. Below is cursive text and 2 symbols: a flaming heart and a pillar on a cloud.

Study After Priestess Leoba Ascelina the First Witnessed Leandrade, 2025. Brown ink on vellum, 4 x 6 in.

Leoba is the most devout and scrupulous of the three priestesses in Ashes and Dust. During her childhood, she had spiritual visions of the goddess Lucca and the Returned, episodes that embarrassed her wealthy burgeis family and led to her being sent to an Enshrinement academy to train as a priestess during her 12th reading. At the academy, her visions grew less and less frequent, and Leoba believed that she had done something wrong and lost the goddess’s favor.

Assigned to the ruined shrine in the war-torn city of Zabool after her ordination, Leoba rarely leaves the shrine’s grounds and spends her time in quiet contemplation and prayer while making sure the candles and incense cones stay lit. She wears dozens of medals of the Returned on and under her clerical outfit, along with several portable reliquaries containing their remains. She even gave up her family name to take on the name of one of the Returned in the hope of regaining the goddess’s favor and experiencing spiritual visions again. She still has occasional strange experiences, though — the game begins with Leoba having a prophetic dream:

“Oooh, ash blew into the shrine from under the door and formed a pile in the middle of the sanctuary! The ashes came together to form the body of a girl! She tried to say something, but all I could hear was, ‘ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh!’ She was standing on her tiptoes and gesturing like she was saying something important, but I couldn’t understand any of it! Then her body exploded and sent ashes all over the shrine, and Archpriestess Vinfrithe made me clean it all up!”

— Leoba

Leoba’s brother, a military officer, taught her how to do “knife tricks” with balanced throwing daggers. Leoba claims to have the goddess’s protection and to never have been hurt while juggling knives, but because she wears silk gloves that she never takes off when anyone else is around, nobody knows if she has any scars hidden underneath or not.

This drawing is a new pen and ink drawing based on an in-game graphic of Leoba from 2020.