'Work of a wandering artist. Reminiscence of a painting titled Champion's Song. This painter is said to have captured the landscapes seen during the last moments of those welcomed into death's embrace. The dying soul whose final memory was this painting was given the gentlest, kindest farewell that a death-companion knew.' The Wandering Painters are the canon's quiet poets-of-image : a small order of itinerant artists whose vocation is to walk the deathbeds of the Lands Between and paint the scene the dying person sees in their last conscious moment. Each painting captures a real landscape, Champion's Song, Flightless Bird, Homing Instinct, Redmane, Prophecy, but each is also a portal : a painter who knows the technique can take the painting back to the spot it depicts and find a small treasure there, left by a hero who died at that view.

'Reminiscence of a painting titled Flightless Bird.' The painters' tradition is older than the Erdtree, and survived the institutional purification of Death because it does not preserve souls, it only marks where souls were last looking. The Erdtree's clergy tolerated them. The catacomb watchdogs ignored them. By the time the Tarnished arrives, painters are scarce, only a few remain, scattered, mostly elderly. The Tarnished can find each painting, walk to its viewpoint, and collect the trace-treasure : a Lord's Rune, a Rune Arc, a Stonesword Key, an Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone. Each is a hero's last gift, left at the spot they last looked at the world.