JP Koenig

Original Inspiration: Taliesin

Added 2025-03-21 14:32:13 +0000 UTC

Behind the Scenes: I don't know how often I'll do these, but I felt like sharing, and you are the kind souls who are supporting the story so if anyone was interested in bonus content, I'm going to give it to you.

I found this image floating around as a wallpaper of all things, when I was dreaming up the idea of a wizard in a new world. I knew that I wanted to write a story about a powerful magic user, that was part "regression" and part "apocalypse" but neither of those really fitted my vision.

At the end of the day, true regression stories require the main character to have foreknowledge, but Taliesin doesn't have that advantage. Apocalypse stories typically are about weak people surviving as the world dies, but I didn't want to write that either.

But a wizard type who has a strong foundation of knowledge in a world-ending situation? That idea fascinates me.

I did a reverse image search to try and find the original attribution, but the closest I came was that Nerdist used it on one of their articles that's since been taken down. It's on Pinterest, Instagram, at least one wiki in cropped form, and a wallpaper site. If anyone knows the original artist, I'm happy to attribute it to them, but I couldn't find it.

The idea for Taliesin's white hair was inspired by this image, and I just thought the whole drawing was well done and suited my writing mood when I was starting the story. As you can see in the chapter art, Taliesin has become more square-jawed and noble looking, rather than the fine-boned wizardly type in this image. But this was where it started.

EDIT: Thanks to Talespinner Lore and Benjamin Johannsen for finding it! The original art is from the Battle of Wits card in Magic the Gathering. It was drawn by Jason Chan, and is copyrighted by Wizards of the Coast. The card's info can be found here. Image has been updated to include copyright info.