Dwarf Paladins Battling Skeletal Warriors — Print & Oil Painting

The whole picture converges on one small orange event. Where the dwarf's raised gauntlet meets the outstretched hand of the thing above him, a burst of hard sparks throws light in every direction, and it is the only place on the canvas where two objects are actually touching. Both bodies have been arranged around that contact point like a hinge.

He is one dwarf, not several, and he is winning by refusing to move. The knees are bent, the weight is low, the shoulders are square, and a stone-headed hammer is held down and back in the right fist, unswung. Gold plate covers him from the winged helm to the sabatons, with purple hose and a red sash showing between the plates, and a long red-orange beard falls across the breastplate.

The two attackers are drawn as decay rather than as bone. The nearer one has a green-grey face rotted back off the teeth under a tan horned helm, a violet tunic, and forearms wrapped in filthy bandage; the further one is taller, greyer, red-eyed, and carries a long sword above the whole scene with a second blade at its hip. Neither has been given a whole face.

Under his boots the floor is inscribed. A ring of orange sigils burns into the flagstones and throws light up the insides of his legs, and beyond that ring the room falls away into a cold blue-black that gives no wall, no ceiling and no exit. Warm figure, cold room, and no middle distance at all.

The order he belongs to had to be rebuilt from volunteers. The original knighthood of the Light was a human institution attached to a human throne, and when that kingdom fell apart the survivors were scattered and the charter lapsed; what took its place against the plague was a subscription army that accepted anybody who turned up with a weapon and a reason, which is how a dwarf ends up alone in a crypt doing this particular job. Part of our World of Warcraft collection, alongside a paladin of the older tradition defending a burning village and another dwarf of the order standing in a haze of gold.