Chapter 1: Page 14
Home sweet home at last! This week, Quinlan’s arboreal journey comes to an end, and we finally get a glimpse at the city of Terria – home of the Tamian race and half of the effective ruling power of the kingdoms of Sunsgrove.
Designing a cool city that exists mostly in the trees is much harder than you’d think. After Return of the Jedi, most tree-top villages had the same kind of motif. The Ewok Village is iconic – even Donkey Kong Country’s Tree Top Town aped the look almost entirely. Once you have a village in the trees, there are always hints of the Ewok Village. David Petersen got around it by having his mouse city of Sprucetuck actually inside a tree instead of outside it – a clever solution, but for us, and our internally-established beliefs on how the Tamian operate, that wouldn’t work, unfortunately.
An old concept for Terrian housing
The Tamian, you see, have a special relationship with the forest, and the trees in particular. Their forest, the Western Deep, is deemed holy ground – to kill one of the giant trees that make up the center of the city would be like killing a fellow Tamian. They are irreplaceable, and therefore the homes are not carved deeply into the trees. Instead, these ancient abodes are carved only partially into the trees, with structural supports and additions that poke out of the tree to offer a little bit more space for the occupants.
Another older concept piece
Most Tamian live very active lifestyles, and the idea of lounging about at home hardly enters into their mind. The Tamian home is more a necessity than anything – a place to sleep, a place to take cover when it rains or snows, and a place to store the occasional valuable (though the Tamian are very loose about concepts such as ‘ownership’). To this end, there aren’t too many structures that one might call a “home”. This area of Terria that Quinlan lives in is reserved for the elite of the city, with homes passed down from generation to generation. Most Tamian don’t even live in such abodes – instead opting for communal hammocks that lie further outside this nice area of the Deep, spread through the treetops like a massive spider web.
I think at the end of the day, Rachel and I are happy with the design of Terria’s treetop homes. They look unique enough from the iconic Ewok Village or Donkey Kong Country’s Tree Top Town that you wouldn’t confuse the two side-by-side, and it also gives us a great deal of background material to work with regarding the city’s construction, who lives where, what the different Tamian classes are, etc. We may not visit it all in the comic proper, but supplemental writings will no doubt be produced someday to assist the budding Western Deep loremasters :)
Click for full-size
Remember, if you have any fanart you’d like to share with us and have posted along with the new pages of Beyond the Western Deep, feel free to send us an e-mail at thewesterndeep@gmail.com!
As an avid outdoorsman, myself, I’m liking the Tamian more and more. I know I’ve said it before, but I love all the thought that has gone into every aspect of this story. Your guys’ hard work really shows. :3
The suspense is killing me! Love the architecture, reminds me of yurts… just in trees… weird. :D
I’m also glad there’s not uniformity that plagues so many other comics.
Reminds me of the ewocks’ homes (sp?) in starwars. LOVE IT…and the sespence is torturous…MUST IT CONTINUE!!!!???
Ahaha, intentional or not, this comment made me smile.
Twas intentional! Mwahaha!
Home sweet home indeed! Great job on both the design and the layout on the panels – the second one features some really terrific perspective work. Makes me worried what would happen if one of the Tamian ever missed their mark while jumping…
This is also the first time I’ve noticed the button on the tunic that goes underneath his tail. I think we’ve all wondered how anthro characters manage to get their tails to stick out of their trousers (I’ve often imagined a sort-of-fly at the back without a zipper), and I’m glad you chose to address that here.
I don’t think I even need to tell you how much I love your commentaries anymore, so I’ll just get right to the point. Your point about how the ewok tree village has become the standard image of the “tree city” in fiction is spot-on, and it’s interesting to know how you tried to work around this (and yeah, the Tree Top Town in DKC was basically the ewok look with only minor changes – still an awesome game though!).
I haven’t read Mouseguard, but the author’s choice of having his characters live inside the trees does sound rather creative. However, I think there are reasons beyond just Tamian cultural beliefs that would require that not to be the case in BTWD. The Tamian are rather large, after all, and having them all live inside the trees, even as big as those forest giants are, doesn’t really seem practical. In the end, I’d say the Tamian capital still evokes the ewok feel, but the look of the village in ROTJ was a great one, so I don’t think it counts against the comic in any way. And you still make it distinct, so it works out in the end.
And this discussion of their abodes in the trees also leads into more insight into Tamian culture. We get some references to their religion (trees are sacred), how they tend to live active lifestyles, usually don’t spend much time in their homes and have a rather loose concept of ownership (the communal hammocks referenced makes me think of the N’avi – I hope the Tamian aren’t quite as much of a Mary Sue race, though :P). This rather loose organization of their society was the main reason I was surprised they put so much stock in “noble” blood, as their free-spirited culture would seem to lean against that. But then, such internal contradictions in a society tend to make it more fascinating.
I would very much like to see those supplemental writings for us loremasters! You know you have created a fascinating world when your readers want to delve as deeply as possible into all its aspects ;)