The Warrior & His Guide
My family is often very involved in my creative pieces. They’re who I bounce ideas off of and they’re easy victims for when I need models. Sometimes ideas come from locations I find while out hiking with my son and sometimes from books or movies I watch. I do prefer to make up my own characters instead of doing cosplay pieces as I find it more challenging and fun. I have notebooks full of character outlines and this image came from one of those.
“Just hold this and stand there for a few minutes please!” - said the wife who had an idea.
My husband, Jesse, is the model for this image. I had him posing wearing what he had on that day which is an ugly orange zip up sweatshirt. I hate that shirt but it’s one he often wears while working around the house. Unfortunately I do not have a collection of magical staffs so I simply had him holding our daughters old, pink walking stick. A stick sword fight did break out between him and the kids in the studio as I attempted to get him to be serious for just a few minutes!
The Warrior and His Guide
- An excerpt of a tale by Dana Rose
Jaron was a traveler tasked to wander the medieval lands keeping an eye out for uprisings of evil. He often spent a lot of time on his own not seeing another soul for days but he always had his trusty guide near by. Jaron found Hawkins, a beautifully colored Harris Hawk as a young bird tangled in a fisherman’s net years ago and he has been his faithful guide since. Hawkins flew above scouting the trail in front of Jaron leading him to where he needed to go and warning of dangers ahead.
Jaron was trained by the old warlock monks deep in the foreboding mountains of Duran. Duran was home to the highest peeks in the world and is said to be where the gates of hell are hidden. The monks are the only ones who dare to inhabit the mountain range with it’s harsh climate of wicked storms brought on by the pure evil locked away within. Their mission is to guard the gates ensuring that the monsters locked away deep within the earth never escape.
The training methods Jaron endured were strict and harsh but as a result he was one of the most fearsome warriors of his time. He was train in hand to hand combat but had deep knowledge of magic lost to the lowland dwellers long ago. He fashioned a special talisman that Hawkins wore which allowed the pair to not only communicate but Jaron could see what Hawkins was viewing as he flew above.
Currently the pair were traveling through a misty forest filled with sharp cliffs and deep ravines. Jaron depended heavily on Hawkins with his sharper eyesight to navigate him away from the deadly drop-offs as visibility was little to none in these parts. They were on the trail of the Beast of Givaudan, a man-eating wolf said to be three times the size of the dire wolves found in these parts and grossly deformed. It’s believed to be the creature who slaughtered an entire village five days past. Jaron has been on it’s trail for a month now but the monster was elusive and seemed to be able to simply disappear into the mist that covered this land. Hawkins was getting quite agitated and seemed to sense that the creature was near, quite possibly stalking Jaron. Has the hunter become the hunted?
Hawkins - a close up of the details in the image.
