The Scholar and the Seawal: Page 10
The end!
But not really, as you can intuit. Isa’s job is far from complete, after all! The seawal was but one “mythological” creature from a single culture. There’s a lot more ground left to cover, and it sounds like Isa (and maybe Nora?) are up for more!
Funny enough, the original draft for this page had only one Isa line to end the whole story. It felt nice and pithy in the draft all those months ago, but after months of seeing Isa and these characters rendered in Jayelle’s style, ending it on a single line just didn’t feel right.
So I noodled on it a bit and we wound up with the final iteration as you can see here!
Next week, we’re going to be resuming our schedule on Beyond the Western Deep: Chapter 3! Janik, Mitra, some canid guards! Things are getting interesting, so stay tuned :)
For guest art this week, I wanted to share a couple pics from Jerijune and Rachel herself!
If you haven’t seen “Aggretsuko” on Netflix or elsewhere, it’s about a red panda in an animal-run modern-day Japan who occasionally goes into the bathroom or a karaoke bar to scream heavy metal tunes expositing on the various challenges and obstacles placed on her by vile coworkers and society in general.
Jerijune started with this piece of Janik:
But then, very quickly after this, Rachel jumped in with this wonderful piece of Quinlan, singing his problems in the death metal style of Aggretsuko:
Yeah, Quin really just wants to sit and draw in the woods, but literally everything gets in his way.
Thank you so much Jeri and Rachel for these wonderful pieces!
Aww, I was honestly hoping for a bit of a longer story. I like these characters a lot!
Why do I feel like Nora is going to jump ship and be Isa’s sidekick from now on?
I hope so.
Isa & Nora seem like kindred spirits: a mythical living avatar of the ocean’s will has appeared before their eyes to save them from certain death?! Most of the crew are freaked out by this disturbing new paradigm but those two fearless lunatics are fascinated – if this myth was real then so might all the others – and by thier expressions Nora and Isa want to see them all!
Perhaps we will get to see them adventuring across the background of future
comic panels á la Cain and Yurk nudge, nudge, wink, wink?
Just imagine what would happen if Isa and Nora ran into Cain and Yurk . . .
Soooo what makes them think THEY’RE not going to get attacked by the Seawal?
Good question. Nora and Isa especially seem very chipper about this whole near death experience. Probably filled with adrenaline.
I suppose from the mythic point of view that Isa just recounted the Seawal acts in protection of the Lutren people. Let’s hope it knows that.
This is so cool! Can’t wait for more! Ummm I finally got discord the other day, and tryed to go onto the server… did I miss something?
Hi Stars–we’ve removed the open invite for the Discord for the time being. But if you’d like to join, do me a favor and send an email to thewesterndeep(at)gmail(dot)com. Thanks!
Will definately do!
Well, that was disappointingly short. Or are you going back to the Western Deep storyline? You kinda left it hanging to go off on this little adventure. All the same, you guys have uber skills an the art department. And I’m not kidding when I say that you could make some serious dough off this. It’s good enough to be made into a film or TV series!
Hi Fireblade! I’m glad you like the series artwork so much, and I hope you enjoyed the Scholar and the Seawal short story. We are indeed going to be resuming the main Western Deep storyline, so stay tuned! :)
“I trust you’ve all had your fill of myth?”
I see one Lutren who doesn’t seem to have her fill of myth yet. :P