Hey there, Legionnaires- Dragon King, er- Art Director Taylor Jones here giving you an inside look at the character and design of one of Eternum's most sinister denizens: Helia, the witch who embodies the tech domain.
Technological Terror
An unnatural landscape sprawls over miles of earth- vines and roots replaced with a conflux of wires, cords, and tubes of segmented metal. The bed of serpentine steel writhes menacingly underfoot, and rivers of light flow towards a mountain of metal. There's not a natural shape on the horizon, and even the sky seems to be watching you out of a foggy miasma. Welcome to Helia's workshop.
The Techno witch, like her sisters, is the embodiment of her domain. She represents the quintessence of the tech faction, and personifies its characteristics. She's a force of unchecked progress, reckless creation, relentless control, and centralized information.
"All for One, All are One" could be the motto of the tech domain, and Helia is the One. Helia has no subordinates; Helia has only herself. She collects and processes all that she encounters into a massive collective consciousness, downloading the knowledge of her victims and deleting their memories. The drained bodies of whatever hapless people she collects are then re-purposed into drones; half-living extensions of Helia's will and mind... and if Helia had her way, hers would be the only conscious mind on Eternum.
Aside from the life she hijacks and re-purposes, Helia is also generatively creative. She strips the land to produce Legions of Mechs, Automatons and Bots to serve her ambitious goals. She peers out of thousands of eyes, and what she sees she knows immediately. What she'll do to spread her metal mind across Eternum can only wait to be seen...
Helia in Design
Matt and the design team have given us artists a rich base of concept to play with, and creating Helia was no exception. As the personification of the Tech domain and its ideals, I wanted to give the impression that Helia herself was a work in progress; an ever-evolving, self-improving super computer. Her body is composed of mechanical parts of various age. Older, rusted looking chassis is layered with new clean steel.
Tubes of glowing energy feed data into Helia's central mind and connect her to her vast, networked body. The data that flows into Helia's core body is analogous to the life-force she absorbs from Eternum like a giant metal weed: a motif that puts her in contrast with her Natural counterpart, Yultiana. And let me tell you- this weed poses the threat of dangerous, dangerous growth.
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