Votive Attendant Tutorial Enemy

The Votive Attendant is a proposed tutorial enemy for the sanctum. It is a masked figure carrying a lantern: a once-faithful guide whose work continued after the corruption took hold. The character's art is complete as a concept sheet and packed pixel-art atlas, but the enemy is not yet configured or connected to the tutorial battle in the checked project version.

Design sheet

The original concept sheet establishes the character's shape and five available poses. The hood and pale mask hide its expression; the low-hanging lantern is the brightest point of the silhouette. Gold trim and a warm flame recall its former service, while torn navy robes and small violet marks tie it to the sanctum's corruption. The lantern remains visible in the attack and final fallen pose, so the same object connects its role in life to its role as an enemy.

Pose	Visual purpose	Available art
Idle	A slight shift in posture suggests that the attendant is still waiting to guide someone.	idle_0, idle_1
Attack	The lantern moves forward, making the threatening action readable before contact.	attack_0
Hurt	A red tint and recoil make damage feedback distinct from its normal palette.	hurt_0
Death	The figure falls beside its lantern and does not return to an idle pose.	death_0

The five pixel-art frames are 512 × 512 pixels. They are packed in votive_attendant.atlas with a 2048 × 1024 texture sheet and Nearest filtering, which keeps the pixel edges sharp when scaled.

Background story

Before the sanctum was corrupted, Votive Attendants carried lanterns from the outer halls to the first shrine and guided new arrivals along the safe route. Their masks represented the office rather than the person beneath them: visitors followed the light, not a particular face.

The corruption did not stop this attendant from making its rounds. It still waits near the entrance, raises its lantern when someone approaches, and begins the familiar walk. But its sense of welcome has become a rigid instruction. A traveller who does not follow is treated as an intruder, and the lantern that once showed the way becomes a weapon. The attendant is frightening because it is still trying to perform a duty it no longer understands.

This role is distinct from the Lesser Shades, who carried messages between the sanctum's halls. It follows the same broader story pattern as the Dark Acolyte and Tomb Guardian: a former responsibility survives, but corruption changes what that responsibility means.

Proposed bestiary text: “It once guided newcomers through the sanctum by lantern light. Corruption has taken its memory, but not its route. It still beckons visitors onward—and turns on anyone who will not follow.”

Tutorial role and current status

The design is intended to give the first battle a character connected to the sanctum's story. Its mask and lantern make it recognisable at a small combat scale, and its attack pose provides a clear visual cue. Combat values, AI behaviour, tutorial dialogue, and the exact encounter sequence still need separate design and implementation decisions; they are not defined by this art page.

The project version checked while preparing this page contains the concept art and frame sources and the packed atlas. It does not list votive_attendant in enemies.json or use it in a tutorial encounter. The tutorial battle in that version still uses Bone Crawler. This page therefore describes a character proposal and available assets, not a playable enemy already present in the game.

Art provenance

The character brief specified a masked lantern-bearer, the game's existing 2D pixel-art style, and a corrupted sanctum guide who continues doing the same work. The concept and frame preparation were AI-assisted with Codex/ImageGen; the resulting art was reviewed and committed as an art-only asset change in e6f7ad27. No gameplay code or enemy configuration was included in that commit.