Study After Priestess Leoba Ascelina the First Witnessed Leandrade, 2025. Brown ink on vellum, 4 x 6 in.
Leoba is the most devout and scrupulous of the three priestesses in Ashes and Dust. During her childhood, she had spiritual visions of the goddess Lucca and the Returned, episodes that embarrassed her wealthy burgeis family and led to her being sent to an Enshrinement academy to train as a priestess during her 12th reading. At the academy, her visions grew less and less frequent, and Leoba believed that she had done something wrong and lost the goddess’s favor.
Assigned to the ruined shrine in the war-torn city of Zabool after her ordination, Leoba rarely leaves the shrine’s grounds and spends her time in quiet contemplation and prayer while making sure the candles and incense cones stay lit. She wears dozens of medals of the Returned on and under her clerical outfit, along with several portable reliquaries containing their remains. She even gave up her family name to take on the name of one of the Returned in the hope of regaining the goddess’s favor and experiencing spiritual visions again. She still has occasional strange experiences, though — the game begins with Leoba having a prophetic dream:
“Oooh, ash blew into the shrine from under the door and formed a pile in the middle of the sanctuary! The ashes came together to form the body of a girl! She tried to say something, but all I could hear was, ‘ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh!’ She was standing on her tiptoes and gesturing like she was saying something important, but I couldn’t understand any of it! Then her body exploded and sent ashes all over the shrine, and Archpriestess Vinfrithe made me clean it all up!”
Leoba’s brother, a military officer, taught her how to do “knife tricks” with balanced throwing daggers. Leoba claims to have the goddess’s protection and to never have been hurt while juggling knives, but because she wears silk gloves that she never takes off when anyone else is around, nobody knows if she has any scars hidden underneath or not.
This drawing is a new pen and ink drawing based on an in-game graphic of Leoba from 2020.