Ecology of the Deathknight up

[Merlin the Tuna]

Does anyone else think it looks like the elf (or whatever) was added/photoshopped in after the fact? Maybe it's just the aura of electricity, but it really looks to me like she was stuck on over the rest of the image.

The blue glow means it'd be a pretty easy shop, but at the same time... what would the Death Knight be so enthusiastic about swinging at if there weren't anyone there?

 

[DandD]

Does the Death Knight really have a "3" on its armour being hit by the lightning?

Let's try to find a "4" somewhere on the spikey-ear-girl. Such symbols might very well be put somewhere...

 

[Mouseferatu]

The blue glow means it'd be a pretty easy shop, but at the same time... what would the Death Knight be so enthusiastic about swinging at if there weren't anyone there?

Oh, I know there would have to be something there. And the glow on the armor matches. It's just--something about the elf herself that doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the image.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I thought the article indicated that the abyssal blast power was added back after the second design pass.

Did it remain in the final version? I couldn't quite tell...

I read the DL Nexus and Wikipedia entries for Lord Soth, and I don't see why the Dragon summary was so off.

Soth’s wife gave birth to a monster that was a representation of Lord Soth’s soul.

The child was conceived through magical means, and it was born deformed. It was not a monster that represented Soth's soul.


Thinking his wife had been unfaithful, Lord Soth murdered her and his child, even though Lord Soth was himself unfaithful to his wife.

He didn't think his first wife was unfaithful. He blamed her for his son's appearance, so he murdered them both. He did think his second wife was unfaithful, but that was due to the elven women.


Soth confronted his new wife and their child while the cataclysm occurred, refusing to save them from a fiery death.

A chandelier fell from the ceiling, pinning Isolde to the floor. She tried to hand Soth their baby, but he refused to take it. So she cursed him to become a death knight.


As mentioned, the broad strokes are there, but the details are off.

 

[Exen Trik]

Maybe elves in 4E are Small?

So the elves killed the gnomes and took their... size? Or maybe halflings are being recast as part of the eladrin/elven family... I actually wouldn't mind that, but I can already hear the rumbling of irate grognards just from thinking about it.

 

[Cadfan]

1) Elves were always short. The average height for a female elf is about 5', by my view of the height table. By definition, half of them are shorter than that. As far down as 4 foot 7 inches on the table. She looks fine to me based on that information.

2) Long pointy ears are NOT "anime." Or if they are, there are a LOT of american artists that someone needs to get on the phone.

3) That's got to be a holy symbol. The only characters so far with holy symbols are clerics and paladins. I don't have any insight on which one she is, except I'd expect a paladin to have a shield or something. To look a little more martial.

4) Her glow is pretty stark. It does kind of look like she could have been photoshopped into the image.

 

[Wolfspider]

What a useless article. I understand previewing 4e, but the game isn't out. The article should have focused on how to use the Death Knight in the current system and not give hints of monsters and abilities that we know nothing about and will know nothing about until the Monster Manual comes out next year.

I'm not very impressed with the online magazine so far, but it's only the first article, so there's time to impress me.

Bring on Graz'zt. I'm ready...and wary.

By the way, is the image of the Death Night and Elf (?) fighting available anywhere as a full-sized image with the Dragon Magazine logo on it?

 

[Hussar]

Put me in the "Don't like the glow so much" camp. Don't think it was a photoshop glow from a cut and paste though. Looking at the tops of her arms and her face, there is almost no glow, but, behind her, the glow is very stark. I think it's meant to be there. Unfortunately.

2) Long pointy ears are NOT "anime." Or if they are, there are a LOT of american artists that someone needs to get on the phone.

Shhhhh. People have an ingrained need to show their own ignorance. Don't correct them.

Oh, and I'm glad that I'm not the only one confused by the switch from Demogorgon to Orcus. Although, really, Orcus does make a whole lot more sense. I always wondered why the demon lord of undead didn't make the baddest undead warriors. Not a huge deal.

 

[Hussar]

What a useless article. I understand previewing 4e, but the game isn't out. The article should have focused on how to use the Death Knight in the current system and not give hints of monsters and abilities that we know nothing about and will know nothing about until the Monster Manual comes out next year.

I'm not very impressed with the online magazine so far, but it's only the first article, so there's time to impress me.

Bring on Graz'zt. I'm ready...and wary.

By the way, is the image of the Death Night and Elf (?) fighting available anywhere as a full-sized image with the Dragon Magazine logo on it?

I would guess that when the pdf comes out at the end of the month, the cover will show elf on undead knight action.

And, boo hiss if it's bloody zip'd. Stop doing that, it's annoying as hell and doesn't save you that much bandwidth.

 

[Alzrius]

Regarding Lord Soth's history, the reason the article is so off is that it's apparently drawing from Edo van Belkom's novel Lord Soth, which is, in my opinion, a fairly poor novel.

The book takes some liberties with Soth's history, getting things wrong ranging from his hair color (he's blond, not black-haired as the book says) to how Paladine tells him to stop the Kingpriest (it's supposed to be that Soth has a vision from Paladine, but that book says that Paladine spoke through his wife, and Soth later wondered if she was faking it).

The bit about his child is that, in van Belkom's novel, Soth's first wife took a magic potion to help her conceive. The witch who gave it to her warned her that the child's conception would reflect Soth's virtue. Since he was already cheating on her at the time, it was born monstrous, and as his wife accuses him of having done something, he murders her and the baby.

None of the above matches with anything else regarding his history, as far as I know. Ironically, van Belkom referenced James Lowder's Ravenloft novel Knight of the Black Rose quite a bit for backstory (such as Soth's senechal, Caradoc), but still managed to ignore a lot of what that book had already laid down regarding Soth's past.

In any event, that's where the confusion comes from.