Late Coming Home From School by Lionus (2003)
Excerpt from "THE KHARMISHARDI HISTORIES"
Wolf-gangs prowled the periphery of the poorer Kharishardi neighborhoods. The gangs were made up from the children of Raegian immigrants and had banded together to "rediscover their ethnic heritage." In truth they were gangs of thugs using the excuse of resurgent Raegian nationalism to vent their ancestral hatred upon the very Kharmashardi who had taken them into their country.
"A lion's place is in doing what a wolf tells him to do," was the dictum that they enforced on the lone lion cub or cubs that were unlucky enough to fall into their clutches.
Parents' frantic appeals to local police for the protection for their children fell on increasingly deaf ears after a wolf had been appointed to the post of Minster for Public Safety by the Prince Consort. Under the Minister's administration district chiefs of police were replaced by wolves or by compliant Kharmishardi lionmorphs that saw that the politically correct course was to ignore anything but the most public crimes by the gangs.
Lionfolk who went to the police to file charges against the gangs were shown the error of their ways by midight visits from those same gangs while the police were conveniently absent.
An atmosphere of terror settled over the land that the Queen seemed oblivious to.
A piece that I did to illustrate an incident from the history of modern-day Kharmistan. I am very aware that the theme of this picture, gang-rape, is repellant. But I can assure you that like most evil-doers the "wolf-gangs" and the country of Raegia that sponsored them, get their just rewards visited on them with interest in the end. :)
Pencil to Photoshop. Aside from the number of figures in the pic the hardest part to do (and at the same time one of the most fun parts) was the background. I wanted to suggest a dimly-lit cellar or basement setting while not making it altogether dark which would have made the poor little lionmorph stand out as if there were a spotlight on him. I settled on a technique the Old Masters used for their darker settings, a reddish-brown, or brownish-red light.
