About the Character

Nijra is a devkarin (dark elf) necromancer with a wealth of objects hidden in her fantastic hair (like a pot perfect for faerie naps) and a love of scavenging for corpses. Her big brother is a renowned necromancer in the Golgari Swarm, so our competitive Nijra is doing her best to surpass him-- even if it means constantly pretending she’s smarter and more capable than she actually is.

Designing Nijra

Artist’s block never lasts long when you have friends with fantastic imaginations.

This piece came out of the same table top roleplaying campaign as my faerie bard character. I immediately became enamoured with Nijra’s cocky personality and her mythic pile of hair that acts as another place to store (and lose) items in. After sketching away at the character for a while… I sprung my desire to work on this project to my friend and she graciously let me go for it.

Golgari fashion is arguably the most haute of all the Ravnican guilds. High necklines, dramatic shoulder shapes, and sweeping asymmetrical shapes are inspired by mushrooms, mould, and sublime decay. Because Nijra is a bit of a pack rat and often examines corpses for a living, I outfitted her with gloves and a leather apron as practical hygienic features. As a spore druid, mushrooms are integral to Nijra’s magic toolkit so it was crucial to integrate the mushroom theme to her design; this also allowed for room to add some fun glowing effects. The second key motif for Nijra is spiders. The character has a spider “cloak” or covering which protects her from the daylight sun, a pet spider, a magical bag with a sticky spider security system built in, and wears makeup markings which evoke the arrangement of spider eyes and help her better communicate with insects.

To capture Nijra’s arrogant and narcissistic personality, I depict her here in a confident pose, chest out, with a slight smirk on her face. Her right hand, however, protectively rests on her spider satchel to hint of insecurity beneath Nijra’s surface persona.