Chapter 2: Page 17
With Quinlan, Dakkan, and Kenosh still quite a ways from their destination, we take a break from the walking and cut to the Ermehn side of life!
Readers may remember Bevan from Chapter 1 (now being amongst friends and allies, he has little need to mask his face), but young Eira is now introduced properly into the fold alongside Bevan, Rathik, Rhosyn, Hardin, and Ashtor.
For Ermehn warriors in the wide open Northern Wastes, a good command of long-distance combat can be the difference between life and death, particularly when your typical Canid soldier is twice as big as you are, more heavily armored, and generally in a larger, better-supplied group. A throwing dagger isn’t the most practical of weapons because the craftsmanship required to create a truly balanced throwing weapon is rare amongst Ermehn weaponsmiths, but mostly because if you throw it and miss, you’ve just given the enemy your weapon.
The dagger isn’t Bevan’s only weapon in the field of course, but he’s hitting the bullseye from ten paces and feeling pretty confident about it!
The colored version of last week’s page is still in the works, but should be up in a day or two. Thanks for your continued patience!
Okay, so it isn’t all just snow. And Bevan looks cute with his hood down XD
Seems like they have more tents than they need for their little group, though it’s probably for the army Hardin’s gathering.
He also looks considerably younger than I thought. He’s barely out of his teens, isn’t he?
Yup! He’s in his early 20’s.
Bevan’s markings are odd, which I imagine is a plot point, but I like him already!
The authors did say he wears the hood to conceal them… then change the subject to tease us!
I say he’s from a traitor, canid-turncoat tribe.
He may be from a traitor tribe, but I don’t think Canid are involved.
I don’t think Eira has been without her satchel any time we have seen her.
It must contain pretty important stuff if she never lets it out of her sight.
I bet that’s where the gang keep their passports, nut allergy medication and Ashtor’s spare contact lenses.
Don’t forget Rathik’s inhaler. Except… maybe you should. He’s kinda sensitive about it. X)
This image this presents is adorable and hilarious all at once to me, though I don’t think Rathik would agree.
The true reason is because she is Eira “Bag”-gins, and it is the One Satchel to Rule Them All!
Whenever she opens the bag she becomes invisible. She must cast it into the fires of The Below before the dark lord Clovis regains it.
But on a slightly more serious note, I think that we can safely assume that the bag also contains some sort of journal to record what happens to their tribe, assuming that they can read and write. Also, dye for renewing those Ermehn tattoos from time to time.
And many spare canisters for Rathik’s inhaler, Bevan’s spare hood, a giant box for all of Ashtor’s other medications, and Roshyn’s Zyrtec, to go with the nut allergy medication already mentioned (epipen?).
Yeah, they’re screwed if they lose that satchel. Well, except for Hardin. He’s so awesome he doesn’t need anything from the bag.
I’ll laugh if the one with the crossbow makes a bullseye and says some sarcastic remark about it.
“Bullseye! Ha, like the time we went to the Taurus prairie kingdom down south, remember?”
“Practice makes perfect.”, “No one is perfect.”
Now I wonder whether those quotations were invented there as they were here, or if Doctor Who or some other interdimensional traveller went and made them popular there.
How do you go about deciding which details to change from the rough to the final drafts?
The somewhat larger things are easy to figure out, like showing what Rhosyn is doing with the crossbow and having Bevan holding the knife like a throwing knife in the final panel, but some of the smaller things, like changing the circular target to a cross or even changing Bevan’s ‘ya’ to ‘you’, seem like nobody would really notice them.
It’s all just part of the iteration process! Most of the time it’s just a pose or expression that Rachel catches during the evolution of a page, and sometimes I’ll point something out in the rough. Either way, each change has its own reason for being.
The bullseye was changed because the wooden post ended up being so thin that a cross would be easier for a thrower to make out. A bullseye might look too busy from ten paces. The original script has Bevan’s dialog as “Ya know,” but Bevan’s character is a bit more refined, so his manner of speaking changed to reflect that.
Ah, a switch of location and characters is always refreshing. Here we get introduced to Bevan without his hood and the remaining female Ermehn, Eira, thus rounding out all of Hardin’s gang.
I know others have said this, but Bevan without his hood is just ADORABLE, both in looks and personality-wise. A lot of us noticed that all the way back in his concept sketch last winter, and this page confirms it. This is particularly interesting given that knife-nuts in fiction tend to be the most unhinged, sociopathic ones, and he may still turn out to be a monster with the face of an angel, but I really hope that isn’t the case – it would be nice to see a subversion of that trope for once, and Bevvie’s just too darn cute that it would break my heart to see him go full-out evil :(
I noticed that while he hits his target, he doesn’t hit it completely in the bullseye, which is a nice detail – you could make an argument whether his expression in the fourth panel is meant to be cocky or sheepishly apologetic. Whatever the case, at least Eira is encouraging – from her reaction to Hardin’s killing of the enemy warrior in the last scene of Chapter 1, we figured she would be one of the nicer characters in Hardin’s troupe.
Finally, it seems the Ermehn lands have shifted to a relatively snow-free location. Have the season changed already or are they just in southern climes now?
– Practice makes perfect.
– Nobody’s perfect.
– Therefore, Nobody practices.
Be like Nobody.
Hahahahah XD well said, Granny Smith, well said.