Meet the Card – Yahiro Midori – Health Potion

The Backstory

Yahiro Midori’s family has been making traditional medicine for hundreds of years without magic. When magic returned, her grandfather told Yahiro that she must rediscover the old ways and find their old book of healing.

Yahiro took up the cause and, despite her father forbidding her, found the book amongst the family’s supplies in the attic. After hastily performing a ritual binding herself as a healer, she ran away and went on her own quest to find rare ingredients far up Mt Hook.

She was confronted on the way by the powerful fae creature Ayanna, who tests her intentions, and offers her the power to kill as well as heal. After Yahiro refuses, Ayanna argues her point that to heal and to kill offer the same power to the wielder – to give or to withhold life at your whim.

Yahiro, remembering her family, argues that goodness, along with magical and traditional healing, makes the difference, and Ayanna takes her leave.

Shortly after, Yahiro finds the ingredients she is looking for and gathers as much as she can to bring back to her family. She also uses the book of healing to concoct a magical tincture or protection before departing.

On her way home, she is confronted by Ayanna again who transports her to an unfamiliar place and tries to trap her there. Yahiro sees the majesty of the fae existence, but thanks to her magical tincture manages to quickly escape.

Afterwards, she worked together with her family to rebuild the Midori magical healing empire, and today helps make and dispense some of the most powerful healing magic known on the continent – turning the tide for the Riverfolk in their battle against the Kingsmen.

How The Art Was Made

The artwork for Health Potion was made using Stable Diffusion XL v1.0 – the original image would have been generated at a size of 1,024 x 1,024px. The image was then upscaled using a second stable diffusion process to add extra details to the image, until it was 2,048 x 2,048px.

Several variations were generated and the images were merged together in photoshop, taking the best bits from each variation. A separate image was created for the background, which was then photoshopped in.

Additionally, the borders of the image were filled in using Photoshops a.i. powered generative expand feature, which can draw out the borders of an image. This was used to creat the full artwork, aside from the more zoomed in version used on the actual card.

Combinations of artworks were again used to fill in the expanded version of the card, with the final image being a composite of several different generated artworks.

Alternative Artworks for “Health Potion”

There were several alternatives considered for the health potion card, from different characters to just images of a health potion – but Yahiro was chosen in the end, because of the striking nature of the image overall.