Art Sample: Combat Tournament Champion Valeria (Patreon)

Valeria comes from the middling towns, those controlled by a combination of Noble and Guild Interests, and act as a direct interface between the central islands and the border islands like Cloverton. She is a retired from the life of a circus entertainer after her mentor and ring master vanished in a mysterious magic accident following one of his many many trysts.

Last time we didn't talk very much about contests. There are three contests each month, one every week. There is the cooking contest, the breeding contest, and the combat contest. Each of them looks for different things, and each of them has a champion. The combat contest is a battle of monsters against one another, mano-a-mano, or team play at times. The breeding contest instead looks at the hidden scores of various traits, stats, and domesticity, and determines how well you've raised your monster, and finally the cooking contest is where you show off the quality of your cooking and farming skills.

Guiness is Valeria's champion and veteran Alpha, the highest class of dog monster with the lowest level of domesticity. He's a mean, grey, fighting machine who partnered with Valeria early on, and has stuck with her through thick and thin. It should be noted that while their relationship isn't platonic, neither is it romantic.