Steen's home of the certainly strange
The long-awaited sequel to “Back Taxes” (http://www.certainly-strange.com/?p=1741)
Anyhow, there is much speculation as to how exactly Aryon procured his imprisoned Imperial soldier / museum display. I thought it would be funny if the Telvanni just kept tricking Imperial bureaucrats in the exact same way, and they just kept falling for it.
Since Aryon was himself a rogue Telvanni operating without charter, this scenario is not entirely far-fetched.
I commissioned Lukas Ketner to draw the scene of Steen and Aryon smoking and chilling and “researching spells,” and ho-lee crap he knocked it out of the park.
The style is fantastic. I absolutely love the old-school Dungeons & Dragons vibe, it brings me right back to my childhood when I would spend hours flipping through the AD&D Monster Manual. It perfectly suits eccentric wizards in their weird mushroom towers.
Each detail is more amazing than the last – I especially love how the hookah design echoes Telvanni architecture, that’s a nice touch.
Tax time is coming up! But ancient Telvanni sorcerers don’t pay their taxes, unfortunately for Ragash gra-Shuzgub.
It is one of the more on-brand Telvanni anecdotes in the game, I think. Baladas Demnevanni does not recognize the legitimacy of Imperial rule, so he refuses to pay taxes to the Empire. And apparently any tax collector the Empire sends in to make him pay, he imprisons.
If you get the Legion quest to find out what happened to Ragash gra-Shuzgub, however, it *is* possible to convince Baladas to let her go. But I don’t think it is possible to convince him to finally pay his taxes. As he says, he’s been there long before the Empire arrived and he plans to still be there long after the Empire is gone!