Sketch and Color - Shackles

It had been a while since I did anything really artful, so I decided to work on the new character 'Shackles' that I had posted the sketch of a while go, adding some color to him and working on his story, so I do apologize for the huge text wall here.

"Shackles" is a hybrid creature of both tauren and wolfen decent, a strange and unique heritage, however he never knew who his parents were, having spent most of his life by himself.

He grew up living mostly in the forest making a modest life for himself, not making a lot of contact with the nearby villages, preferring his idle life of solitude and exploring the forest.
However, he had no idea that he lived very close to a weak dimensional 'border'; a place where the normal world and the world of the Fey occasionally cross over each other, and one night he found himself in a very unfamiliar place, accidentally crossing over into the Feywild.
His arrival had not gone unnoticed and the creature found himself surrounded by all manner of fey creatures and the 'lord' of the area. Having no knowledge about creatures like this, he had no idea that speaking with the lord would lead him down a new path in his life; the silver-tongued fey lord managed to deceive and manipulate the hybrid into surrendering his freedom and willingly serve the fey lord and before he knew it, the deal had been sealed and with the passage back to the mortal world closed, the fey lord cast a spell on the creature, making him forget his real name and giving him a new name: Shackles.

The hybrid soon found himself in his new 'home': an elaborate manor hidden within the forests of the Feywild, and he was stuck as a slave to the fey lord and, regrettably, his apprentice; while "Shackles" was meant to tend to the fey lord's demands around the home, he also had to do the bidding of the apprentice.
In time, he found that the fey lord was not quite as terrible as he had feared and was rather kind to him, but the younger fey was far more malicious, often times forcing the slave to do some nasty tasks or performing 'experiments' on him along side 'pranks', forcing him to dance against his will or alter his voice to speak in some kind of gibberish. The slave was forced to enduring strange spells or potions being worked on him as well as the humiliation of the prankster's spells, but the effects were temporary, or so he thought.

One night the apprentice had a particular test in mind and he created a rather potent potion and had Shackles hold onto the bottle while he attempted to cast a spell on it, however the spell's power caused the bottle to rupture, spilling the contents all over the hybrid. The strange mixture had started to work on the 'residue' magic left on the hybrid, and because of the strange mixture of spells and effects he had suffered, the results were quite devastating. The hybrid could not control himself or the effects that were occurring around him that were caused by him: arcane sprays and elemental bolts shot out from him, strange effects were conjured up and his own body seemed to move against his will.
The sudden burst of magical energy in fact causes severe damage to the study and the fey lord himself had to conjure a set of magical shackles and locked them onto the hybrid: the effects stopped the random flow of energy so they wouldn't tear the the manor or  the hybrid apart.

"Shackles" had become a walking 'time bomb' of magical energy; because of their chaotic nature even the fey lord wasn't sure how to dispel it, which meant that the hybrid was forced to wear the shackles to keep the powers at bay.

The apprentice himself was punished for his carelessness and the lord sent him out on a task to pay back for the damages he caused, however, the apprentice never returned.
His fate remained a mystery until recently, when a new creature emerged; the apprentice had grown powerful and mad, with a strong intend on revenge and domination. The fey lord himself felt responsible for the serious turn of events but he was unsure of what he should do, until he remembered Shackles.

Now the fey lord began to work with him and, with the aid of the magical restraints, the hybrid was able to focus and channel the chaotic energies flowing through him, allowing him to perform acts that he thought he could never do. The bonds he was forced to wear now are the only things that can help him control these new found abilities.

There are dangers though, should the shackles be removed, the chaotic powers infecting him would be unleashed and no one knows what kind of devastation they would bring.

I actually owe a lot of thanks to AbramWinterSmith, he helped me come up with a lot of the ideas for his backstory since I really wasn't sure what direction I should take him in, and what I came up with was quiet the opposite of the initial idea that sparked his creation.
The idea of Shackles forgetting his name is kind of interesting: a lot of stories that involve creatures like the Fey hold a very important significance to knowing names; that's why the fey lord or the apprentice don't have names (not yet), and should Shackles discover what his name is again, who knows what kind of effect that would have.


The linework and colors were done in SAI; I spent a bit of time trying to figure out a different way to shade him, it's not perfect but it worked and I kind of like the soft look he ended up getting.

Since he was forced to live in the Feywild, I wanted to try and incorporate some of the designs and details of fey craftsmanship and such, so some of his clothing is meant to be decorated with swirling designs, and since the shackles are magical, I wanted to give them a different look and try to incorporate the idea that these were different and served a different purpose.

Overall, I'm very pleased with how he turned out in both his appearance and his story.  If I'm lucky, I may try and do something more with him here, we'll have to see.