The City on the Sea

Creative Content Artwork
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Hello everyone on the Boards!

I hope this post finds you through the tidal wave of Hagah entries.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a legit digital painting, but I was itching to do some experimenting and wound up with this.

The City on the Sea
The City on the Sea3456×4990 3.56 MB

Context: As always, this comes from a recent scene in my D&D campaign. For a while we’d been on a bit of a pirate adventure aboard a ship called The Flying Dragon. One of our party members, Syphira Blackmoore, was once the captain of this ship.

Our crew intended to sail to the town of San Vera Don to find the map to a lost city of gold, but along the way we were intercepted by the fleet of the Volusian Empire. Chief among their ships was a legendary vessel, impossibly large and equipped with destructive fire power far beyond conventional weaponry: The “City on the Sea.” As our session ended, we were left only with the terrifying image of this monstrous ship dwarfing our galleon.

We’ve been through quite a lot since, but this moment definitely stuck with me. It became one of the most tense and interesting turning points we’ve had so far.

I’ll be honest in that I feel I haven’t done the City on the Sea justice in terms of its sheer size and presence, but I wanted to emphasize the stand-off and the sheer insignificance of the Flying Dragon in comparison.

Anyways, just wanted to share this one, hope you all find it interesting!

Whoever can guess the closest as to what happened when we faced this ship wins the cookie this time: :cookie:

As always,
Comment and Discuss!

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you died

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I see what you did there

and I hate you for it

dude this is the kind of thing people pay for. Saving this for a future phone screen saver.

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I love the contrast in sizes between the two boats! Really excellent work!

My guess is that the ship phased through you guys, and it was a ghost ship all along

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Oh it’s so beautiful.

I love the sheer concept of this alone.

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Most impressive!

You performed a Star Wars style trench run and shot the D&D equivalent of a proton torpedo into an exhaust port, which destroyed the entire ship…

…Or what @GoodGuy2006 said. That was my second guess :stuck_out_tongue:

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Looks beautiful!

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That’s incredible!

My guess, judging from my own experiences in D&D, I’d guess you either hijacked the entire boat somehow, or you blew it up.

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But, wait, he might have a vindictive DM, and the session ended in a TPK.

The next session was all of them being resurrected as lemures in Baator.

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Ooh, I really like how this looks, especially with the lighting and the birds.

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This is brilliant!

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This very high quality drawing. Really thorough work. And the idea of modern, huge, metal ship vs old-school Galeon is great too.

I guess what you did in the D&D campaign is leading City on the Sea to a reef and using its own weight and clumsiness against it, so it crushes. That seems like rational variant to me.

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Believe it or not, it wasn’t intentional.

At first.

I mean…you caannn… :wink:

Thanks, dude! I’m honored!

Thank you!

Thanks! I like to think, regardless of the context, this has some universal themes anyways. That’s partly why the moment stuck with me.

image

No, you!

Thanks!

I actually have a special bird brush. I love using it in landscape stuff.

Thanks, guys!

As for the cookie…

Thankfully, no. But it certainly felt like we were going to.

Would have been very cool, but perhaps a bit anticlimactic.

But it did wind up running through a considerably smaller warship…

This is pretty close to the plan we attempted. Certainly one I would have tried.
Connie took along some dried coconut husks to make bombs out of, but sadly I forgot to buy the fireworks that would have actually made them explode…

Again, very close to the attempted plan. But alas, the City still floats.

This is now how I wish it went down.

I’m thankful that everyone in my D&D group are very close friends anyways. Our DM is generally pretty understanding and fair.

A very creative solution, and one I’m sad none of us thought of! Definitely will keep something like that in mind for future encounters, though!

@T4k4nuv4 was probably the closest, so here’s your cookie: :cookie:

What actually happened:

Our party, sans Syphira, set out on a rowboat to try and hijack the City on the Sea. Our plan was for the Flying Dragon’s crew to distract the fleet while we took it down from the inside.

Moments after we took off, our boat was blown up! Syphira’s girlfriend, Saya (an NPC), had remotely detonated a spell scroll in an attempt to get rid of us (it was an “I can’t lose you again” kind of situation). Saya forced Syphira to stay on the boat, and as the Flying Dragon attempted to retreat, it was obliterated by the City on the Sea’s magical railgun.

The rest of us got fished up by a smaller warship, but we managed to take out most of the enemies on board and seize control of the ship. However, we were on a collision course with the City, so we abandoned ship. Our lifeboat was eventually captured, and we were all taken to an imperial prison. We believed our friend Syphira to be dead, along with everyone aboard the Flying Dragon.

Thanks for the support, everyone! I love sharing my art, and I love sharing my D&D stories at the same time!

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Thanks, I’m honored! I shall cherish this cookie

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not if I steal it and eat it :space_invader: :cookie:

there it’s gone

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Wow nice drawing

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Eh, that’s fine, it had dairy, so I wouldn’t have been able to eat it. I’m glad it went to such a noble young lad

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Now this is amazing!

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This looks amazing! Nearly renaissance quality

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