The Sage of Fate; A Chronicler of Stories - Art by Mutter_Butter AND Skyeypony · 2:24am Jan 19th, 2023
I bring you a double whammy today, since both of my artists finished their pieces in unison almost. I also felt it important to show them together to introduce a new character. The Sage of Fate. A long-lived chronicler of worthy stories to add to his antlers, so that those stories can immortalized in the strings of fate.
Art by Skyeypony:
This is Skyey's rendition of the Sage. Again, Skyey just has a way with truly illustrious backgrounds and lighting. Wonderful, no?
I showed Skyey's piece first to speak a bit on the Sage. Fimbulpur is an old, old fella from a race of elk with very long lifespans. Their purpose in life is to write down any worthy stories by carving them into their antlers, or by attaching those stories to them. Each individual from their race uses different languages, and different writing scripts to add to their antlers (such as scrolls, papyrus, stone tablets, etc). Fimbul himself uses old Celtic letters (Norse Runes) for his stories, and because he has lived a long life and has traveled the world extensively, he attaches Tanabata-style Japanese talismans to his.
As you can imagine from Skyey's work, their race has partial divinity. And if the name, letters, and Japanese talismans haven't given it away, you can also imagine that the Sage himself is from our real world. In fact, Fimbulpur isn't something I created for my pony-related work, but for my real stories that I've had published and sold in book stores in the past! It just so happened that his motif and his race was very compatible with Equestria, so I thought to add him to my pony-work too.
This brings me to Mutter's piece, which is an illustration from A Kindled Beginning's Extra Chapter when I first wrote him into anything. The Sage, even in Equestria, is often seen as a saintly figure due to his long lifespans and well... Unique appearance and role they serve. But he's an old man that doesn't care for the veneration that others try to show him. He'd rather be treated as a friend than a godly figure. So he's adopted a rather fun but cooky personality that tries to dispel any notion of regality by being goofy at most opportunities.
That said, we made this fun illustration showing him raising his bushy eyebrows to make a funny face and so that Chrys can take a good look at his eyes, like how it happened in the chapter.
No detail is without purpose in my stories, as I am want to do. Notice anything particular?
Art by Mutter_Butter:
