Mono Mondays: Kautalina and Charles

On Mondays, we like to support our resident artist, Mono!  They're an up-and-coming scribbler of things dark and weird, and we consider ourselves lucky to have leeched onto— er, formed a mutually beneficial relationship with them.  You can watch Mono hard at work creating various pieces on their YouTube channel.  For those who don't feel like watching digital paint getting splashed around, we'll be showcasing a different piece of theirs right here every Monday.

This work is inspired by a game that Mono played not too long ago.  In the game, their character was the crow-like Kautalina (think "Katalina" with a caw to start the name), a prophesied warrior who controlled one of four elemental stones.  Kautalina is seen pictured here with their partner-in-crime, the enchanted War Axe... Charles.

For those curious about the game, Kautalina and their band of fellow adventurers were summoned to restore the four elemental gems and use them to save the local fantasy kingdom from an eldritch beast who had slept for a thousand years.  In a journey that spanned the continent and ended in a space station in low orbit, the heroes discovered that the king who had sent them on the quest was a jerk from a long line of jerks, the eldritch beast was quite agreeable, and they "defeated" it by convincing the beast to wait until after the heroes had died of old age to eat the kingdom.  The quest ended with the heroes celebrating the fact that, as Kautalina put it, "Either we've bought enough time to figure something else out, or we've guaranteed that it won't be our problem."

Future games mentioned that the kingdom in question was, about a hundred years later, obliterated in some kind of unfortunate meteor impact.  Probably a coincidence.