Chapter 1: Page 63
We are nearing the end of our first chapter, and next week we will have a special double page weekend – Chapter 1: Page 64 will hit at the usual time on midnight Saturday, and Chapter 1: Page 65 will hit at midnight on Sunday.
As I mentioned last week, we’ll be taking a month-long hiatus to build up a buffer of pages for Chapter 2, as well as taking some time to go through Chapter 1 and clean up some things we noticed over the last year+. We’ll still post something up every week, and readers are still encouraged to send in their fan-art! Just because there isn’t a new page going up doesn’t mean we don’t have to hold off on your wonderful art!
On a personal note, a game that I worked on last year, “Dust: An Elysian Tail”, was just released today on Steam for PCs! If you’ve got a Steam account, you can grab the game at 10% off now until the end of this week by visiting this link here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/236090/?snr=1__4__105
This week we’ve got some awesome fanart from Temiree! He’s been a longtime follower of Rachel’s work, and has graced us with a wonderful rendition of Dakkan!
He looks AWESOME Temiree! I love his expression and gesturing here – so quintessentially Dakkan-esque :)
Wow, that does look like an awesome picture of Dakkan ^^
And I bet I can tell what Hardin’s going to say next:
“Our honor means nothing if we cannot call our land our own.”
Alrighty then, $50 he says that next time, in some fashion
I really love how you can tell Hardin is a bit taken by surprise in the second panel even though his back is turned.
I also feel like the third panel shows the new tribe as close enough to Hardin and Ashtor to have heard their whole conversation.
I love the third panel; I don’t think Hardin ever expected to have to show a “taken by surprise” face, though his last expression pretty much proves that he’s very aware of Ashtor’s point, perhaps more so than I thought he was. And AAHHH, we’re so close to the end of the first chapter!
I really like how the Ermehn have kilts and cloaks. Makes them seem like they fit in the tundra.
Oh God, this otherwise touching scene is forever ruined for me by that Oglaf comic. You know the one I’m talking about.
Holy Hell, tronn, *why did you remind me?* haha, oh god
I suppose I’ll just enjoy my blissful ignorance here? X)
It is for the best, Rachel, it is for the best.
Seconded with the power of a thousand suns. Now, I can’t even– auuuugh, every bit of dialog on this page now has terrifying implications, and I’m laughing because it’s so horrible. Thanks.
Oh God, now I see it too. ‘Canid cannot take our honor by force’.
Oh God.
This is horrible.
Funny, but horrible.
We have literally just hit rock bottom, tronn; I heard decency dying. There is nothing lower. dear lord
I dunno; tronn and I came pretty close to reaching the nirvana of awfulness, though not quite.
Close. Quite close.
Hadalpelagic
Thank you VarVau. I’m always pleased to learn a new word.
I feel as though everyone who has made an awful joke in the BWD comment section deserves to join up together on some kind of horrible super team. Except we just drain faith in humanity’s good taste and decimate poor Hardin and his dignity instead of doing any good deeds.
What bothers me is that everyone seems content to let the defeated champion just lie there. You’d expect at least his friends and family to take care of his body, unless the Ermehn have very pragmatical views on dead people? Even though the ground might be too frozen to dig a grave, at least a cairn of some kind should be in the order.
I think they are going to build a funeral pyre or something after Hardin’s band stops hassling them around to get ready; right now, everyone is a bit busy, and very, very nervous. The priorities of the living come over those of the dead.
He does have a mourner kneeling over him now that Hardin’s speech is over. She’s mostly hidden by Hardin’s head, though. Might have to fix that.
You know, I’m kinda missin Dakkan and the other fellas.
I like the old guy. Seems like a voice of reason–which means he’s probably going to get ignored.
Hardin is looking at this situation the same way one does when their dog rolls in manure and then crawls all over the couch, except they don’t have a rolled-up newspaper to smack it on the nose with.
“Bad, Ashtor, Bad!”
I must go on a crusade to find this ferret gif now. Hi-ho, Google!
…aaaand if it involves a ferret, a couch, and lots of profanity, then I have found it. My day just got a bit brighter.
I love Ashtor’s snaggletooth. So adorable.
He is the precious old guy of the Ermehn. I love him. :<
I feel like if he was a pudgy little six year old with a squeaky voice, we’d end up with the same effect.
I really can’t handle the image of cub Ashtor at six years old. I think he’d be one of the skinny, scruffy, thin-chested kids instead of the plump ones, and he’d still have that ridiculous snaggletooth and be trying to wave around a staff nearly twice his height at everyone else to imitate one of the elders, and then he trips and accidentally whaps someone else in the face and NO THAT WASN’T MY FAULT, YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THERE, I TOLD YOU TO MOVE OUT OF THE WAY. NO I CAN HANDLE THIS STAFF JUST FINE YOU CAN’T TAKE FROM ME.
And it all ends with someone having a black eye, and a disciplined Ashtor sulking in a corner without his confiscated staff (and maybe without a baby tooth or two as well.)
On the subject of everyone as children, I can see Rathik as being the one more heavy-set/taller kid than everyone else who is always cheering on a fight and starting random tripe for the hell of it. Also, if anyone gets too sassy with him, he beats them up and takes their lunch. Why have a battle of wit when you can have a battle of *fists*?
Nah nah! Ash would totally be the awkward slightly-plump kid. All the teasing is what made him so honorable and empathetic! Then again, snaggleteeth do go along well with skinny kids…and in a culture where calories are undoubtedly scarce, plumpness might very well be what’s desired. So maybe he was the awkward skinny kid.
I definitely agree about Rathik, though.
Seeing the Ermehn are kinda starving to death slowly, the plumper the kid = the better would probably be their line of thinking (and sadly enough, a “plump” cub would probably just be regular weight.)
I want to make guesses about everyone else, but I feel like I don’t know enough about them to do so; Rachel has already drawn Dakkan and Quinlan as kids, so we know what they were like. I could see Janik still being a fiery miniature puff of walking sass and confidence, though.
But going back to the Ermehn, I have no idea about Bevan, Rosyn, or Worried Ermehn Girl. Hardin would probably be that solemn kid who takes everything taught to him just a bit too seriously but gets incredibly sore when someone treads on his pride, which he has a surprising amount of. He wouldn’t take failure well either; there wouldn’t be any yelling or anything, but he’d get incredibly pissed and disappointed in a quiet, menacing way, and everyone can just see that little bugger holding back a tsunami of *something* in his expression.
Did little Hardin screw up and end up tripping and cutting his arm in front of his teacher/everyone else when he was learning to wield a dagger? Yeah, you’re gonna wake up in the middle of the night and find him practicing his swipes and positions over and over again outside the camp like he’s trying to murder the air.
….holy tripe, I’ve written a bloody essay on this page; I need to stop.
Oh dear, now I’m picturing Hardin as a fuzzy version of Achilles from Ender’s Shadow. “What’s that, you saw me fail at something? Yeah, I’m going to kill you.”
Arrggh. Hardin would be the creepiest brat to run into at night. You’d be getting up to go somewhere, and he would just be
lurking
hanging out there in the dark around the fire, sharpening his chipped knife or something. Refusing to break eye contact when it got awkward and then just going right back to sharpening his knife again. ’cause you know he wouldn’t have enough manners to say “goodnight” or something to break up that tension; aw no, not a busy *Hardin.* kid’s got stuff to do and curfews to sneak around; he’s gotta do well in that training lesson tomorrow. Fluffy manners are the lesser concern.
….I reeeally want to tell myself that Hardin was just a bubbly ball of fluff as a preteen/kid, and your comment isn’t amusingly on target, but I can’t. /nor can I stop babbling/
Quinlan’s grandfather fought in the wars, so it’s not that long since peace and exile of the Ermehn. It’s very well possible that Ashtor was born in Ermehn homelands and had a chance at relatively happy childhood. Hardin, on the other hand, probably has been shanking people all his life. Even if becoming a bitter man was only a recent development, growing up must’ve still been filled with constant hardships for him. That’s the reason why they don’t see eye to eye – unlike Ashtor Hardin doesn’t remember what’s it like to be happy.
Or maybe Hardin was the pampered heir of Ermehn royalty, what do I know?
“Or maybe he’s just always been shankilicious” alright, VarVau, stealing that quote for future use. Unfortunately for me, an Ermehn version of “Fergalicious” started playing in my head the instant I read that word, and it was…. interesting, to say the least.
Also, agreed with tronn; Ashtor was probably alive during the tail-end of the golden age/pre tundra-exile age. He knows what an actual childhood is. Hardin comes across to me as someone who was groomed well for his place, but not necessarily pampered.
…something tells me Ashtor prancing about could only end in a sore, arthritic back and a snickering Rathik. No offense, Ashtor, but you are pretty damn old.
Hm hm. Ashtor catching a few rays of the glory days makes sense. He’d see how far the Ermehn have fallen from and not want them to go any lower.
Well, I could also see Ashtor making an excellent medicine man. They’re depicted as old and prancy.
Yes please.
“The name’s Sratha-din. Ashtor Sratha-din.”
And then everyone gets regaled with nostalgic tales of infiltrating Canid camps, making awful and cheesy but almost classy puns about the former’s deaths, saving smokin’ Ermehn babes, and being generally awesome, except whoops-we-didn’t-win-the-war/but-it-was-a-sweet-ride-till-then.
But on a more serious note, I legitimately don’t know what Ashtor would sound like, younger *or* older. I’ve got a mental voice for Kenosh, but that’s about it.
Huh, I didn’t think of that. After listening to 1 talking for a while, I think I would consider Ashtor just a little higher-pitched, for some reason. And not quite as fragile at moments.
Ian McKellen, clearly.
Hee, it always gladdens me to see the conversations in the comments section! I was quite frightened when I saw that there were no less than 53 posts I had to read through, but fortunately most were short and about a funny subject. I really agree that Ashtor looks adorable with that snaggletooth, and that’s when he’s an old man – I can only imagine how cute he’d be as a kid!
But yeah, this is a really sad little page. The looks of sorrow and regret on both Ashtor’s and Hardin’s faces conveys so much emotion in such subtle ways. You really are great at drawing faces, Rachel. We can only hope that Hardin manages to keep some of the Ermehn’s honor in the course of his campaign. But I doubt it… *sigh*
It does indeed seem a little strange that seemingly none of the Ermehn would’ve attended to their fallen warrior. It didn’t bother me when someone mentioned it before, because that was only a few moments after his death when the situation was still tense, and it didn’t bother me the first time I read this because I missed the body just hidden by Hardin’s head, but now it does come to my notice. Moving the position of Hardin to make the mourner more apparent would be nice.
Finally, say hello to my new Word Press avatar! *squeak*