The Shadow Knight

It's hard for me to discuss this portrait without gushing about the subject. This is a Shadow Knight, but more importantly, it's an Erudite Shadow Knight. Erudites are awesome. Easily the best "drip" (outside of Dark Elf Plate and Wood Elf Plate, arguably) of any race in the game, and a really interesting backstory with their lore.

I love Erudites. Masters of spells and magic, with exceptional starting stats of both good and evil, and awesome-looking hybrid classes like the Shadow Knight and the Paladin. Like the Iksar, they are geographically exiled and play the "stranger in a strange land" role, which I personally enjoy quite a bit.

An Erudite is a really interesting race choice in EverQuest, not from a player choice perspective, but from a developer addition perspective. When you look at the roster, you have three/three and a half human races to choose from. You also have three/three and a half elf races to choose from. The rest all sit as lone representatives of their cultures.

Humans have Humans, Erudite, Barbarian, and (the 0.5) Half Elves. Each of these races (except for Half Elf) suffers from the horrendous human night-blindness, making nocturnal traversal nearly impossible without a light source. Humans sit as the all-rounders, Barbarians are the physical powerhouses that also get Shaman magic due to their tribal nature, and Erudites, as mentioned, are the spell-masters.

The question that this brings up, is why - contextually - Humans are called...Humans? If we look across the Half Elf genetic bridge, we see that there is no race just called Elf, or Elves. There are qualifiers to the type of Elves that they are based on their lore. Not complicated, but differentiated. For humans (not the playable race, but the biological classification), their races are characteristics.

Erudite literally means "having or showing great knowledge or learning," or "knowledge that is gained by studying." This is an awesome descriptor for a race of people who became powerful through effort, but a bit on the nose, isn't it?

Barbarian means "members of a community or tribe not belonging to one of the great civilizations." I think most of us would clock it as a descriptor of large, powerful, and tribal warriors. While close, not exact, but still makes sense for the race in EverQuest.

I realize I am probably overthinking this, but the entire point of this "Return to Norrath" project is to dive deeper into this game and it's many layers. While I don't fault the developers for adding these different races into the game, it shows a bit of preference for humans and elves, but also forgets to give the playable race of Human a more interesting moniker.

As for this specific painting (and I realize that I am dragging on), I love it because of how complicated the Erudite armor is, especially for a woman. The helm in-game looks like it has a glass face shield, but it's really a veil. Using that to create a more macabre look for a warrior of death and undead resurrection was a no-brainer. I also really like the idea of Shadow Knights using their summoned pets like squires or pages.

This will always be one of my favorite pieces, and it was a real step up for me as an artist as well. I hope I continue to have more moments of progress like this as I keep spending time putting pen and paint to paper.