Building a static homepage that just links to topics is totally doable and you can get all the info you need from the API to generate it.
If you looks at /latest.json you can get the featured image from the image_url field on each of the topics:
Have you taken a look at: Embedding Discourse Comments via Javascript ?
You may also be interested in Page Publishing and Topic List Thumbnails Theme Component which may help you in your blogging adventures.