Blog

Symbiotic Homunculi

After spending some time getting acquainted with his newfound other, Enigma discovered that the symbiote can be divided, in a way not to dissimilar to a cell. Though psychically linked to the original and its host, these copies have their own (mostly benevolent) personalities.

And like their progenitor, they function best when bonded to another living creature.

This piece, from September of 2018, was the first in what became a series of commission from an old artist friend of mine, Kraest. He’s a great artist for horror/macabre-themed pieces, which made him well suited to this idea.

As the short description implied, the concept is that Enigma can command his symbiote to detach a portion of itself from the main body. That new lump of formless mass would be reshaped into a “false” symbiote and repurposed for a variety of uses.

The idea exists almost purely to give Symbiote Enigma (which was the only canon Enigma at the time) a way to pad out a deck with creatures that fit thematically with him. The card designs actually came first this time around, before the art. That will become more common as we progress through my archive.

And if it seems like I’m avoiding use Companion’s name in these descriptions, that’s because I didn’t have the name nailed down at the time. (Pro Tip: It’s often useful to leave details not yet fully established as ambiguous as possible so you can back-fill them later.)

It would be almost half a year later, in February of 2019, when I returned to Kraest for another symbiote homunculus piece.

This is another example of one such creature. Unlike the last one, which was more of a proof of concept, this one has been given a specific function and purpose. It can be used as an infiltration unit, with the power to blend in to its environment.

And as a symbiote itself, it can bond with other living creatures (albeit only temporarily, unlike the more permanent bond Enigma has with the progenitor) and confer this cloaking power to the host body.

Conceptually, by infusing his homunculi with different ratios of colored mana, they would be imbued with different properties. And in another half a year, October of 2019, I would get the last art in this series.

This is another in the line of those homunculi, infused with White mana. Its function is to defend its master and those in his company. If need be, it can even bond to those it aims to protect to provide a barrier that protects them from otherwise lethal injury.

Here, a rogue pyromancer caught and ambushed Enigma and Companion in their symbiote form when they were out exploring some ruins in a faraway corner of Crossroads. Seeing its master in danger, the homunculi did the only thing it could…

As you can see, by this point, after an entire year had passed, we had finally settled on “Companion” as the name for the symbiote. We had also established “Crossroads” as the name of the plane that Enigma hailed from. It was still early, but details were starting to come together.

That said, I’m a little surprised all of this was settled only a few months before Covid. It feels like there was more time between the two events.