The Characters of the Ziva Payvan Universe

Today is the 9th anniversary of Dakiti’s publication, and I thought it would be kind of fun to go through my files and share a look at every single Ziva Payvan series character I’ve ever generated concept art for. It’s not quite every named/speaking character we’ve ever met throughout the series, but it’s pretty dang close.

A month ago, I did a similar post like this highlighting all the alien species found in the Ziva Payvan universe, so be sure to check it out if you haven’t! As I explained in that post, all of these concepts were generated using Midjourney. I know AI has become kind of a touchy subject these days, particularly when it comes to using AI-generated artwork on book covers and other end products that will be sold and profited from (and I agree that should probably be off-limits). But I think it’s been an incredibly useful (and fun!) tool for personal use, particularly for authors so we can visualize our characters and settings. Not all of these concepts I’m about to show you are 100% how I’ve pictured some of the characters, but sometimes I don’t really have a crystal clear image in my head of what they truly look like, especially the more minor players. So I’ve really enjoyed having a way to put faces to the names, so to speak.

Without further ado, here they are! Click any image for a larger view. And don’t forget you can learn more about who these people are (and find a pronunciation guide!) on the Glossary page.

The Core Four™

(aka the only Haphezian characters I’ve manually added cosmetic details to)

More characters originally introduced in Dakiti

We haven’t seen much of Mari and Colin—Adin’s two teammates—in the current books, but they should play a larger role in an upcoming project.

New characters from Nexus

I swear, no matter how many variations of “futuristic” I used to describe the police uniforms in my prompts, Kade and Zona both still ended up wearing modern shirts and ties. Just pretend they’ve got a more sci-fi look 😉

The Jaroon Family

New characters from Ronan

Like the supporting Haphezian characters, Taran and Mae are also missing cosmetic details here (i.e. cybernetic implants). There’s one more piece that should go with this bunch, but I’ve omitted it to avoid spoilers. If you’ve read the book, you can view it HERE.

The Niiosian Mob

Tobias was of course introduced in Ronan, but he makes a good bridge between that book and the other Niiosian characters introduced in Fracture and Embers.