Beyond the Western Deep

This week, Quinlan packs up his things and begins the journey back into the city, continuing his rumination on why his grandfather would insist his less-than-favored grandson replace him as Captain of the Royal Guard. The Captaincy, after all, is no ceremonial position – the job requires a 24/7 dedication to the task of upholding the laws of Terria, providing advice to the king on matters of Tamian security, handling protection for the royal family, and – in the event of, say, a royal coup attempt – the Captain of the Royal Guard is expected to lay down their life to protect the king no matter what. Of course, Quinlan isn’t keen on any of these things.

As was the case with Caldus, Quinlan is expected to be an “ideal” Tamian – a beacon to look up to, an inspiration for the younger generations. The Captain of the Royal Guard is a supreme tactician, a fearless warrior, and a shadow in the treetops. It is also expected that they be well-versed in Tamian law, the ancient martial arts form known as Tesque, and be from noble blood.

Quinlan actually does hold the highest rank in Tesque – “Master” – and his skills in this ancient form of combat come into play later in the story. He is also from the Tamian definition of “noble blood”, meaning that his family has worked in service to the king for the last many generations. Caldus was a renowned war hero and the previous Captain of the Royal Guard, for example, which guarantees their family a number of things, including job security. There are other guarantees of course – a home to call one’s own being one of the big ones, but we’ll come back to that in a few weeks’ time.

As with all things related to the prior versions of this tale, the word count was large enough that the script required a forklift to transport it around. Trimming the dialog helped make the scene more powerful, I think, driving home Quinlan’s confusion as to his grandfather’s actions. The old script did bring Quinlan’s parents into the equation, but in the end, if we establish Quinlan has been raised by his grandfather, then readers can also establish that something must have happened to Quin’s parents. At the end of the day, the shorter pass felt more natural, and helps keep the pace of the scene.

This week, I figured I would bust out some of the ideas we had for the website teaser image and banner. Both the final directions for the teaser image (the scroll about to be opened) and the banner (the drawing of Quinlan and Dakkan on parchment by a Felis scholar) appear in this sketch page. As you can see, there were a lot of different versions Rachel put together – some involving the characters themselves, some that looked like the old comic covers we did for the original pitch, and some that were just plain cute!