The Dust of Mars

I finished up an old speedpaint I found while cleaning up my files. It’s like the 1980s never ended, but I liked the colors.

The Wreck of the von Kessler

Following the Conquest, the eyes of Earth found purchase upon wider realms. Where one world had become two, two became five beneath the four crowns of the victorious blue world. As Mars yielded her secrets, the shipyards of Luna and Telemachus Minor birthed ships embodying the unearthed knowledge of lost races. With this, a tide of steel flowed out from Sol, seeking to turn the five worlds into a dozen, or perhaps a hundred.


The SMS Markgraf von Kessler was a cresting wave upon this tide, though that didn’t save her from the hunger of a haunted universe. Here she drifts above a nameless world that would eventually be known as Sargon IV, though the mystery of her cargo and her loss are still not fully understood.


Dedicated to all those crossing a wide abyss to an uncertain hope.