iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I dig that a ton! I also found that if I put those characters into google translate, split up in various ways, I get some *extremely* thematic phrases, such as "The Path of Delusion: The Taking of Life", and "Deity Who Deprives the Lost of Life".

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Thank you so much! I dig Kaesumono a lot, and "the thing that returns" is very creepy and thematic for this particular character, who is a big cosmic background evil.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It's a splinter of a universe that achieved total sentience and unity, and now wishes to forcefully return everything to that state, rather than allowing the natural spiritual evolution of the new universe to unfold.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It is, actually! In a way at least. Kind of a misguided and broken Buddha, in a way, from a previous cycle of the universe that achieved total enlightenment, existed in satisfied stasis for a long time, and the collapsed back into the current cycle of the universe.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The character I'm naming is a big background evil in the cosmology of the world, so the negative implication is actually quite appropriate.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

BUT, I wasn't really looking for a standard normal name, but more of a way to change the verb into a noun in the most straightforward way possible, like how in english I could take "to snatch" and make it "snatcher."

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

That's fascinating, and the fact that it leads to Enlightenment is a pretty neat synchronicity with the background of the character!

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Thanks! The verb is Ubaikaesu, which means to take back or reclaim. So basically, The Reclaimer, but when I type that into google translate it takes me away from Ubaikaesu, which I think is the word that sounds coolest as a name.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

People of bluesky, are any of you fluent enough in Japanese to help me modify a word? I wanna change a verb into a noun, for upcoming fantasy samurai RPG character name purposes.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I absolutely adored this book as a kid, and drew all the aliens many times. They were painted by Michael Whelan!

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Someone, please, take whatever generation of developers who decided that not being able to arrange things alphabetically was a good idea and send them off to a remote island where they can no longer do any harm.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I just had to reinstall spotify mobile this morning, and it also made this change to when I try to add songs to a playlist. Since I am my RPG group's DJ, I add hundreds of songs to dozens of playlists all the time, and now they are in a random order.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Oh, sorry for the misinformation. Collections aren't in order of last updated, but are literally in a random fucking order. Or maybe in order of creation, oldest to newest, which might as well be the same goddamn thing.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I organize various subjects that I want art reference for into collections. As recently as a few weeks ago I knew exactly where each collection was in the list by virtue of the alphabet. Now they're in random order and who the fuck knows. I hate it so much.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Recently (for me at least) Artstation changed collections so that they are no longer organized alphabetically, but in order of last updated. I absolutely despise this change.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Back a really cool DnD supplement by my friend Robin, which I'm going to do some art for!! Play your cards right and I might even do a special ink drawing for you!

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I understand that principle, I just almost never want it, and I certainly don't want it to be the automatic default on dozens of brushes I just downloaded.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Browsing the trending topics and seeing all the "if you do [extremely commonplace thing], you are complicit" posts, and friends, having taken a step away from social media these last few years, I can't tell you how nice it's been not to see that shit.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

In my mind this is the exact same issue as when I dabbled in making synthwave music, and most of the premade bass synths I downloaded were already at -2 octaves. Like, sir, I can choose my own notes, thank you.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Hey, people who release brush packs, stop making brushes that are automatically in multiply mode. If I wanted to paint a black brush stroke, I would have painted it fucking black. I don't need you to do it for me.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I've gotten to the point now that I've posted most of my back catalogue of work that I can still stand to look at, so I'm going to slow my roll for a bit as I start posting my current work and ongoing projects. Thanks for liking and sharing my stuff so far!

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

A last bit of Planegia work. These were spot illustration sketches for monster templates, which are themes and special abilities that DMs could quickly append to an existing monster stat block.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Some more Planegia work! A tricerataur, a shapeshifting alien, and a giant empress.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Here's some work I did for Planegia, an awesome stone age/prehistoric DnD 5e setting by @smrvl.bsky.social ! Here are Kho, an ape god, and a monster called the Night Thing.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

My players defeated it by tricking it into swallowing some fuel and then firing a flare gun down its throat, which is a more modern solution.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

If I'm misstating the mythology of this creature, please forgive me, since I'm going off of the half-remembered wikipedia research I did a few years ago when I ran this game.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

The only way to defeat the Giwakwa is to melt the block of ice in its stomach, either by tricking it into consuming salt water, or by feeding it so much that it barfs.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

In actual Giwakwa legend, they are wendigo-like maneating giants. They are former humans who transformed due to evil deeds. Depending on the story, they either have a heart of ice, or a block of ice in their stomach; in some stories, the ice is their original human body, frozen solid. Fucking metal.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I'm going to keep on rolling with one more Monster of the Week monster, a reinterpretation of the Giwakwa of Abenaki legend. I made the creature blind, but its eye sockets had grown into giant sound-sensitive membranes to make up for its lack of sight. More actual lore on the Giwakwa in a reply.

An illustration of a creature in a dark space. The creature looks like a monstrous quadrupedal human with long limbs. It has no eyes, and its eye sockets are huge and dish-shaped, and it uses them to help hear its victims.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Continuing on with the cryptids, here's an alpha chupacabra I painted for a Monster of the Week one shot I ran a few years ago. I jokingly called it the Megacabra, which actually just means "big goat."

Illustration of a giant Chupacabra against a dark red background. The creature has long limbs, bristles on its back, and a small bulbous head with a long tongue tipped with a sharp barb.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Some more spooky doods I drew for that campaign. Various types of humans transformed by the main monster. The fish creature was influenced by The Monster of Piedras Blancas, an old monster movie set in the very same place as the campaign!

A psychic monster with a big brain, long arms and fingers, and stunded skinny legs hovers above an offscreen explosion. A tire and other bits of wreckage fly through the background.

A fishman monster, inspired by the Monster of Piedras Blancas.

Pencil style drawing of a transformed human creature with a stunted body, long hands, and a bulging forehead.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Hayyoth, the main monster from a Monster of the Week mini-campaign I ran back in 2021. I consider this one of my very best creature designs. And again, Monster of the Week is a banger of a TTRPG system, and you should give it a try!

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I obviously went with the pterosaur/parrot/Oviraptor route with the design, because I wanted to flex some animal anatomy knowledge.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

A sketch I did of the Van Meter visitor, a cryptid reported in Van Meter, Iowa in the early 1900s. Described as a gargoyle, or perhaps a pterodactyl, which used its beak to climb like a parrot, was apparently immune to gunfire, and perhaps most oddly, with a glowing horn on its head.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

40k Tyrannid cards I did for Magic the Gathering back in 2021!

Illustration of the Biovore tyranid from Warhammer 40k. An alien with a pale exoskeleton with purple armor plates and an organic cannon on its back, on Mars.

An illustration of Tyrannocete tyranids from Warhammer 40k descending to the surface of a desert planet, where a slimey purple growth has grown to cover a vast area.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Fifth Head of Cerberus is a set of science fiction stories, but the world it describes feels incredibly old and ornate, with a layer of dust. I went with a hatching/etching style of linework to try to evoke that feeling.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

An illustration I did for @alzabosoup.bsky.social ! This was for Gene Wolfe's "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", one of my favorite novellas by my favorite author, so it was a true delight to get to do it.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

The Mew went viral on Twitter when I posted it, and that was one of the main experiences that made me get truly, truly tired of social media, because half of the comments were just useless comments about an internet cat named Bingus.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Mew and Mewtwo! The Mew is still one of my favorites.

Realistic rendering of the pokemon Mew, floating in a dark void.

More detailed redesign of Mewtwo, in a sketchy watercolor style.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

An alien design I did for a project I worked on briefly with my good buddy Nate Abell. The sketches for it played with the idea that it was actually two symbiotic aliens linked together.

A green alien with six limbs and four scissorlike jaws, and a smaller beaked mouth between the jaws.

Sketches of the previous alien, exploring the idea that it's actually two symbiotic aliens, and a diagram of how its mouthparts work.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Here's some work I'm still very fond of! A battle from a D&D campaign run by my friend @zoerobin.bsky.social , done in the style of Darkest Dungeon. This was so fun to do, but an incredible amount of work to make all the faux icons and menus and such.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Rolling Blackout, a prologue comic I made for a session of Monster of the Week I ran several years ago. This mystery centered around a living blob of experimental GMO fertilizer that traveled through the sewers and destroyed power lines so that it could hunt in the dark.

One page comic of a utility worker investigating a destroyed transformer on a power line. Meanwhile, a creepy blob monster, never shown clearly, emerges from a nearby storm drain, and attacks and eats the worker.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I made the semi-random decision to give every dragon in this campaign 8 limbs, rather than the typical 6 limbs. I did this partly because I grew incredibly annoyed by how most dragons in pop culture over the last 20 years were boring ass tetrapods.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Doodles and Dragons. Some heavily redesigned D&D dragons for my old campaign. The first one is Ladon, a highly redesigned bronze dragon, and the mount/guardian of the BBEG. Next is a gold dragon, which I made look like a Brachiosaurus. The last is a random gharial green dragon.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

The Order of the Veil, an order of assassins in an apocalyptic death cult. More art from my old DnD campaign.

A trio of elite fantasy assassins in muted purplish outfits. One is a seemingly normal human with red hair. Another is a red skinned fire genasi who is floating. The last is a dark elf with a magic spear giving off some sort of vapor, wearing a mask carved like a draped face.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

The party interrupted the ritual by pulling out the dagger, and Sragh's heart came with it, becoming the Heart of the Deep. The ritual was already nearly complete, however, and most of the Old One's blood transferred to the new host, the BBEG of the campaign.

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Cory Trego-Erdner @corytregoerdner.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Sragh was an ancient dwarf priest who carried the parasitic essence of a Great Old One in his blood, and was transferring the Old One to a new host through the use of a pair of ritual daggers and a magic mirror.

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