This entry was first posted on my Patreon on October 19, 2024 and has been reproduced here in its original form.
The funny part about this painting is that while my character Kroza spends millennia trapped in the Realm of Suffering (Hell), none of my early designs of this realm included fire. I’ve always imagined Hell to be cold and inhospitable, an impassible landscape of jagged rock, splintered bones, amalgamated corpses, pools of blood, and filth. I painted this mostly to highlight the mutable, “forged by fire” qualities of Kroza’s body. From inside her chest is a source of energy that responds to the development of her consciousness — when within the Realm of Suffering, her passions are painful; when she reappears in the mortal realm, takes on mortal qualities as a test of enlightenment, and regains her full powers of godhood, this energy becomes a fire that does not burn her. Her skeleton doubles as exoskeletal armor that she can infinitely reconfigure at will, not just as a defensive mechanism but to create anti-daemon weapons made of her bony flesh that can be extracted directly from her body. More on these weapons can be found here.
When she spends too much time outside of the mortal realm, Kroza’s body withers down to this fiery skeleton. When reduced to her primal state (weakest emotionally), she lacks sentience, and transforms into an ethereal, black bird-like deity. Her bones and body at all times are extremely dense, weighing several hundred pounds even at her most emaciated, which causes some problems when returned to the mortal world, like falling through multi-story floors. It takes a while to remember (or learn) how mortal societies have constructed their buildings so that she does not accidentally destroy them.
The halo around Kroza’s head is an indicator of her status as Immortis, the guardian and ruler of the mortal realm but also subject to its influence: she becomes increasingly more human in appearance and conscience as she mingles among her subjects. During one of her early interactions with the fire witch Cassica, Cass asks her why she cares about the mortal realm and saving it from invading daemons if Kroza is Death itself. Kroza responds that when she first stepped out of the realm of the dead and into the realm of the living, she finally became conscious of her own existence, her influence over the world, how she felt all living things immediately recoil from her, and knew that her presence alone would lead to the Daemon of Fear manifesting outside of the Realm of Suffering.
This sense of self also made her aware of [Oblivion], a shapeless anti-god whose true name cannot be spoken, that is counterpart to all other gods’ collective power and balance, and is her cosmic equivalent. Kroza says, yes, she is the most powerful lord in the mortal realm, and dealing with mortals' relationship with Fear is her responsibility — but she has limited power outside this realm. If the mortal realm unbalances due to Fear taking over, so do the others — and cause [Oblivion] to consume all, and all of reality will cease to exist.
The most spiritually advanced mortals, all disciples of Death, understand that Kroza is not to be feared, and that her presence in the realm is one that reminds them how to live virtuously, respect the living, and honor the dead so that their spirits do not corrupt the land or fall prey to daemons. Kroza is the only deity who naturally cleanses and soothes the souls of the dead, and teaching mortals how to do the same is paramount to the stability of the realm. Those who do this earn themselves incredible magic abilities, good fortune, and longevity for themselves and all of those around them. Few manage to do this, but those who do become legendary and true heroes among mortals.