Sketch-Soldiers

Overview

Sketch-Soldiers are warriors drawn on paper that come to life to fight. They belong to the Muse's Studio, the Resonant Zone of the Dreaming Veil where whatever is imagined with enough force takes shape from the matter, light, and sound at hand. They are among the Studio's Manifestations, its workers, made by a visitor and acting at the visitor's direction. Like everything the Studio makes, they are rough drafts.

Appearance

A Sketch-Soldier looks like the drawing it came from, stood up. It is as tall as its maker drew it, often a little taller than a man, and as detailed: a quick soldier is a few bold strokes, a helmet, a spear, and a suggestion of legs, while a careful one has buckles, rivets, and a face. Its body is paper and ink made solid, flat when seen side-on, cream or grey with black or brown linework, and where the drawing was smudged the soldier is blurred. Hatching becomes shadow on it; the edges of the sheet can still be seen at its shoulders and heels.

It moves the way it was drawn to move, stiffly if it was drawn standing, in a lunge if it was drawn lunging, and its joints bend with the crisp rustle of a page turned. Its blade scratches like a pen. It smells of ink, old paper, and charcoal dust.

Habitat and Range

Sketch-Soldiers exist only in the Studio, among its floating tables, leaning easels, and drifts of discarded sketches. Any sketch on the floor might become one if a visitor's thought falls on it hard enough. They do not leave the zone; what a visitor carries out of the Studio as a drawing stays a drawing.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Sketch-Soldier has no temper of its own. It is the drawing's intent: it fights what its maker drew it to fight, guards what it was drawn to guard, and stands in a rank if it was drawn in one. It has the character its maker gave it, and only so much as the drawing holds: a soldier drawn fierce is fierce, one drawn in a hurry is clumsy. When its maker's attention slips, it acts on whatever the maker is thinking at that moment, which is how a soldier drawn to guard a visitor can turn on the visitor's companion after a flash of anger.

Abilities

A Sketch-Soldier fights with the strength the Studio could give it: the more matter and energy at hand, and the more forcefully imagined, the harder it hits. Its blade cuts. It does not tire or fear, and it cannot be reasoned with, only redrawn. Because it is a rough draft, it fades, smears, or rusts if it is not finished; a soldier no one tends grows faint, its lines breaking, until it falls back into a sheet of paper on the floor. A torn or burned soldier is a torn or burned page.

Uses and Dangers

Visitors draw soldiers to guard themselves in a zone that will shape a monster from a moment of distraction, and some artists draw them to stage a battle they mean to paint. The danger is the Studio's own. A frightened visitor who draws too many, or draws in fear, fills the room with soldiers who obey the fear; and when a maker loses focus, the Manifestations can turn on them or come apart into chaos. The Muses encourage the drawing of soldiers, and tempt their makers to draw worse ones.

Lore and Belief

Outside the Studio, people who have heard of the Sketch-Soldiers tell of painters whose battle-pieces came alive and of a drawing master who was killed by his own pupils' work. Many believe that a drawing which has once stood up keeps the wish to stand, and some artists will not sell a sketch made in the Studio for fear of what it might do. Those who know the zone say otherwise: what makes the soldier is the zone and the thought together, and outside it a drawing is only a drawing. Painters' workshops nonetheless have a custom of finishing every figure they start before they leave for the night.

Where It Appears

• The Muse's Studio