October 2026

[718 words, 4 min estimated read time]

This month I worked on the design for a new character, and continued weaving bookmarks.

New Character: Gwynitheniel

When looking at character creation for Pathfinder 2e, I realized that playing an automaton (a robot) is considered an ancestry, and a nephilim (equivalent to aasimar in dnd, a sort of part angel/devil character) is listed as a versatile heritage. And because you pick an ancestry and optionally a versatile heritage, I got the idea to combine them into a character who is an angel that got shoved into a robot.

I started with just making a pinterest board and some messy sketches. I knew I wanted to go in the direction of a porcelain doll for the robotic features, and I wanted them to have a big head crest of some kind.

I kept wanting to incorporate wings somehow to make the crest, and finally got it to a point I liked. Eventually I settled on something I liked and started to clean it up and pick colors.

I made another rough sketch of them where I ended up changing the proportions slightly. I wanted to widen the facial features more in particular. Most of their features are very angular, and I wanted to broaden the nose and eyes more. And I ended up broadening it a bit more in the final design. I wanted the face to resemble maybe something similar to a sheep/ram, or a cat, while still being humanoid.

And this is the final design! At least for now.

The color palette is pretty simple, but I really like how it turned out. I feel like the body could maybe have some more ornamentation. Probably not more segmentation, but maybe some decorative swirls or something. But for now I’m happy with it. My reference was mostly porcelain dolls, and they tend to be more simple and then have decoration on top of that, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to have it be simpler. Just something I might want to revisit later.

I also saved a version of just the flat colors, and I think it helped highlight how much I enjoy the glow of the wings, and how I want that to stay the main focus.

I also saved a version with some basic clothing. I don’t think they would pick anything fancy, just some simple dark robes to wear. It also helps draw even more focus to the wings.

Obviously with the design I went pretty obvious on the whole angel thing. I did consider going with something more contrasting and discordant with the angelic aspects. I may rework the design to go in that direction, to make it clear this was an angelic being shoved into a body not their own. But for now I wanted to go with a design that was more recognizable angelic in nature. I wanted to focus on the idea that this body is only an imitation of what they once were, it is a shallow depiction of their original form, but was still a body crafted with care.

As for the name, I’ve had the name Gwyneth on the mind for a while, and also looked at biblical angel names to get some ideas for a combination. I landed on Gwynitheniel, and goes by Gwyn for short. I also felt like that may have had some influence from recently watching Knights of Guinevere hah, but oh well.

I don’t know if I’ll play this character anytime soon, but I really like how the design turned out and want to keep playing around with it. In the meantime I’ve made a Toyhouse page for them, here’s the link.

Woven Bookmarks

This month I also kept working on the hand woven bookmarks I’d started last month! I thrifted some more colors so I got to try out a lot of new color combos which was a ton of fun.

There’s a local independent coffeeshop/bookstore combo I go to pretty frequently, and I ended up asking if they would be interested in selling them in-store, and they were! Last time I was there the display was up, and it was super exciting to see. A few have sold, so I’m gonna plan on making some more in those color combos.