Character Dive: Vexielzethix

In this short series, I'm going to be looking at not only how my art has changed and improved over the course of each featured character's (or group of characters) existence, but also how their personalities and my conceptions of them have changed and grown.

As the epic, twenty-year long campaign that Vexielzethix was a part of (as well as Ithenrael, who I talked about in the first of these, and Kuzimiyel, who I'll be talking about in the next) has come to an end, this will be a more complete retrospective than it might've been if I'd written it a bit earlier – although there's still one final piece of art I'm working on for Vex.

Back to the beginning now!

Vexielzethix started off as an NPC in one of my earlier adventures in the campaign world, wherein he had been captured by a demon which took over Colothys, the layer of Carceri upon which he and his family (Tarterian dragons all) lived and had previously ruled. Ziminadrix was currently in charge and hired the party to kill the demon, Bazalgaur; freeing Vex was a bonus.

They were led onto this by Vex's friend Vignarhyaex, a fellow Tarterian dragon who had led an assault against this demon fifty years ago and ended badly (included with Vex's capture). Vex wasn't intended to stick around much after this campaign, but the party being what they were, they decided to recruit him.

Vex was a paragon Tarterian dragon assassin/fighter, although he only actually made use of his assassin skills in the first several adventures he participated in, drifting fairly quickly away from the evil alignment requirement and generally prefering fighting up front in any case. He was usually seen in human form for the practical reason that the rest of the group were not dragon-sized (although he was not a very large dragon), and between that and the fact that I didn't feel at all confident trying to draw dragons for many years, almost all of the existing drawings of Vex and the other Tarterian dragons are in human form.

I wasn't very consistent drawing Vex's hair to begin with; it started out partially dyed bright green in the first two drawings, and then it went to being fully black, but how straight it was varied a lot to begin with. This one is fairly accurate to what I eventually settled on: almost completely straight, generally shoulder-length.

Ziminadrix was a cleric of Falazure, the dragon deity of darkness and death; during the brief time she travelled with the group, he had an unpleasant habit of resurrecting or reanimating dead party members immediately while they were still in harm's way, and killed a few she didn't like. Generally an unpleasant person.

She ruled Colothys until her death, at which point Vexielzethix officially became its ruler, being the last of the ruling family of Tarterian dragons... a duty which he then proceeded to aggressively shirk until the planes began to disintegrate, at which point he figured it was too late anyway.

It didn't take particularly long after Ziminadrix's death for Vex to begin turning over a new leaf, although said leaf would take quite some time to fully flip over. He was also still dealing with the after effects of his fifty years of imprisonment at Bazalgaur's hands, which strained his already questionable mental state. Getting medication for his psychotic episodes (thanks to one of the party's medics) helped him a good bit.

While I included Vex in the thieves' series, by this point he was fighting upfront with his bastard sword exclusively. I think I was just low on characters I could include in that category.

Vex was also shifting more towards heavy armor towards this time, and farther away from the group of mostly-evil dragons he had been hanging around with and towards the group he'd end up being a part of later. He also ditched the coronet he started with for an ioun stone, which (unlike for other characters) I didn't end up drawing much.

Vex had two sisters other than Ziminadrix who the group encountered at some point: Myonzalret, a much younger sorcerer (who if I ever drew, no drawings survive of) and Jedrazeldariset, an older warrior who had left to fight in the Blood Wars when Vex was young. Jedrazeldariset didn't last long in the party, but she was there for a time, returning to take over Colothys briefly.

Vex more or less completed turning over his new leaf while the party was going through the Tower of Kron, a mega-dungeon vital to the overall plot that cost many lives. Here he has a set of armor that he picked up in the dungeon but didn't end up keeping long, and his companion spider (a paragon six-eyed sand spider that was imbued by a mage friend) Virix. I did draw the ioun stone this time.

This was from a series of drawings depicting various characters at their hobbies, which in Vex's case, is sculpture. Not that it's particularly easy to tell from this drawing, mind you. I'm also not sure what this room was supposed to be; maybe somewhere in the palace in Colothys?

Vexielzethix would probably not actually have been in human form for this assault, but I clearly decided to draw it that way. The transparent demon is Bazalgaur, and I believe the first of the fleeing people was supposed to be Vignarhyaex, who led the rest of the army away and abandoned Vex while he was fighting Bazalgaur. This led to Vex's hatred of cowards.

Another new suit of armor, although I didn't draw it very precisely here, and Virix is seen in the background (and again, the ioun stone is present). I have no idea what the background was supposed to be. Some kind of maze?

For a long time, this was the most accurate drawing of Vex I'd done, at least in terms of his face and expression, which are what I have tended to judge these things by. The perspective on a common gesture he made doesn't work here, but (accounting for the time the drawing was done) that's the main issue.

This one must have been after the Tower of Kron, because Vex is now sporting the long, sharp talons that he acquired from a Deck of Many Things variant after the dungeon. I believe this was also supposed to be the armor he wore for a long time, although it's insufficiently pitted and scarred here.

I also don't know when exactly this was from, because it was the time when I wasn't signing the year, but that means it was somewhere around 2013-2014. This is from a series of drawings of characters relaxing in their homes; for Vex, he's listening to music (with headphones and a music player he got from one of the more technologically inclined group members) while lying on his hoard in human form (presumably, so he can use the headphones). I was using some kind of really rough paper at this time, apparently, thus the skritchiness.

Here you can clearly see Vex's talons, and he's also acquired the Sytgian Headband that he wore for some time. The other character here on the left is Vedreth Zarkamidan, an elven pirate-turned Musketeer-turned tactician who was a fellow team member. They didn't get along incredibly well to begin with.

I didn't draw Vex for a while, which was mostly because I was so busy working on Corner the Maze that I didn't do a lot of miscellaneous drawing at all. But I did do a few portraits of characters I particularly liked, which of course included Vex. The hand gesture works somewhat better in this one but not great.

I also, around that same time, did this watercolor painting of my three characters of the group who became known as the Heroes of Light after going back in time and completing a prophecy. Vexielzethix is featured most prominently; lower left is Vivikyr, mid right is Kuzimiyel. This is the first color art I did of Vex.

Some time in 2018 I got annoyed with myself for never drawing my draconic characters in their dragon forms, and I decided the solution was to do a series of them as I usually drew them (in human form) with the dragon form in the background. I feel that Vex's turned out particularly well, because I managed to get the same characteristic expression on both forms.

This one looks the most like Vex of all the drawings I've done so far.

For a few years I had enough characters in this game to run an internal (out of character/alternate reality) tournament with my characters, and Vex won that more than once. This was from a tournament champions' series. I clearly paid more attention to his armor than his face here.

I went back to drawing whole big groups of characters in pencil very briefly at the start of 2020; this is my attempt at the entire Heroes of Light at the time, which does include Vex (second row, third from the left). Other characters of mine are Vivikyr (first row, second from left) and Kuzimiyel) first row, second from right). The team consisted mostly of small elves, so Vex in his human form was one of the taller members.

Kuzimiyel, Vex, and Vivikyr were all the subjects of painting attempts in 2020 after I got Corel Painter. For Vex, I decided to show him in Colothys for once, the sub-plane that he (at least nominally) ruled. Virix, the spider, is also featured.

I don't really know why I didn't end up drawing Vex again for another few years. To some extent I was focusing on MERP characters, but for whatever reason, I just didn't get to it again. But there was still some character growth left for him in the campaign arc, so I definitely had art possibilities.

I'm still working on one final sort of memorial piece of art of Vexielzethix (progress shot above); the campaign arc is over, and he didn't survive the final battle and couldn't have made it into the new multiverse if he had (for reasons too complicated to encapsulate here). His spider did make it, though, where it has become a god of hunters and assassins.

And that's that for Vex (although there's still that one last piece of art coming)! Next up will be Kuzimiyel, and the world they were part of, which I tried briefly to make a more complete setting of.