Chapter 3: Page 24
So yes, I threw in a little misdirection there. CLASSIC NARRATIVE TOOL. I always find it funny that lock-picking is so prevalent in fantasy fiction when in reality, most people probably wouldn’t even know where to start.
I mean, I know it’s a genre staple — I was picking digital locks in Quest for Glory games way back in my formative PC gaming years. I remember thinking the age-old deadly adventure game question: what happens if I try to use this item… on myself?
… Oh.
Well. Oops, I guess? Man, Sierra games were NOT kidding around.
Aside from the great many D&D examples I can think of, lock picking also became a staple in popular game series like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. I recall repeatedly jamming a lock pick into doors and chests in Morrowind and quickly whittling down my collection of lock picks in a hopeless bid of improving my lock picking stat by pure attrition. I still have nightmares about it. LOCK PICK FAILED. LOCK PICK FAILED. LOCK PICK FAILED. This would be Quinlan trying to use the arrow on the manacle lock.
So, this page — every once in a while we get to a page and I say something like I’ve waited a really long time to share this page with everyone. Usually it’s because it’s a memorable action sequence or other cool moment that Rachel and I have had brewing in our heads for years.
With this page in particular, though, aside from the fun little back-and-forth between Quin and Dak, I was really excited to see how Rachel would handle Dak’s last line there. I think she knocked the 8| expression right out of the park, and I really hope you find it as amusing as I did!
For guest art this week, I wanted to share this adorable piece that RM Fung sent over a few weeks back of Caldus and a young Quinlan sharing a peaceful movement. As he said in his email: “I’ve got a brief quiet moment between little Quin and his grandfather Caldus – could be after he decided to take the boy in or a training session gone awry. I don’t know if this kind of affection is in-character for Caldus, but I though it’d be nice to show him doing something sweet anyway.”
Despite Quin’s less-than-enthusiastic opinion of his grandfather, he did raise Quinlan from a young age. While he was stern and probably not the most supportive parental figure in the world, Caldus always did his best to try and raise Quin to become an upstanding and contributing member of Tamian society, and the two shared a very strong familial bond.
Now that Quinlan’s been forced to accept his grandfather’s harsh teachings probably saved his life the night before, it’s possible he’ll rethink a lot of how that relationship worked.
Anyway, thank you RM for the wonderful piece of artwork! See you all in the comments!
Good to see they left Dakkan’s sarcasm intact.
lmao ikr
Quinlan suddenly looks really cool in the second to last panel! He’s finished being the punchline…
That last panel…. It cracks me up so hard… Mainly because I have a story character who would be making the exact same expression and be saying the exact same thing in that situation
In my circle of friends, I would be Dakkan here. I can definitely relate, heh.
Gotta love Dakkan. If there was anyone in the comic who I wouldn’t be surprised to see demonstrate a sudden knowledge of lockpicking, it would be him.
I remember getting the same message “Lock Pick Failed” in Elder Scrolls a lot. And thinking that it would be funny to see it in a whole bunch of other situations that did not call for it.
Which inspired me to make this: https://imgflip.com/i/1o42pv
Amazingly enough, I think there was a little trick in Morrowind where you can instantly kill someone using the lockpick and your pic reminded me of it.
That would perhaps have been a sneakier way for Kenosh to go about his assassination . . .
Dakkan’s sass is just getting better and better X) Pulling that Kuzco face and everything, hahaha totally worth the wait for this page!
Lockpicking in elder scrolls usually never gave me too much of an issue until when you’re at the end game and those Master locks really start becoming such sally sues.
And me being a total sap for adorable family stuff, Iove Fung’s work here! Caldus being a secret favorite character of mine, despite his rough upbringing I can imagine every now and then he would show some affection for his only grandkid.
Could be a comfy dungeon…
Dakkan is a salty sea otter indeed.
Heck, he’s got enough salt right now to season all the salmon in Lutra.
All those Lockpick Failed messages and by extension all the misses in Morrowind’s combat still haunt me.
Not just all the Salmon, all the fish caught in Lutra this year. It’ll keep for years at this rate.
Yes! A “Quest for Glory” reference! (Or “Hero’s Quest” as it was called when I played it.) Those games were awesome. To be fair, the warded lock, which was the most common design from the 5th to 18th century, was pretty easy to pick. Though, there’s nothing to stop a fantasy world from having more advanced locks.
Okay, nice surprise with overturning the typical fantasy world tactic there. But all-in-all, looks like Operation Escape Deltrada has begun! I’m psyched for this!
For the guest art: Aww, it’s nice to reminisce on a little family past. I would imagine Caldus had to have shown kindness at some point, at least in order to raise Quin right.
Okay, sorry for not having commented in ages, no excuse, just pure laziness, even though I love the comic. And I might not resume commenting, this is just a one-off thing, and I apologize for that as well. But there is something about chapter 3 that has really bothered me, and I haven’t seen it addressed yet – if it has, and I missed it, I apologize for my stupidity. But I really felt like I needed to ask this question, so here it goes:
What about Quinlan’s shoulder?
At the end of Chapter 2, he was hit in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt, resulting in what looked like a pretty serious injury. Since then, he’s presumably been given some rough and quick medical care by the Canid – who, given how much they despise him right now probably didn’t go out of their way to make him comfortable – tossed him in a dungeon where he is forced to sit upright with his arms above his head against a bare stone wall. You would think that he would be in agony right now and barely able to move his left arm. And yet he’s portrayed as being just as agile as always, to the point that he can meticulously chip away at the stone wall with his wounded shoulder.
I’m just wondering: why isn’t this a thing? His wound has barely even been mentioned since we started this chapter, even though you’d assume it would be a pretty big deal for Quinlan at this point? Is there some particular explanation why he’s taking his pierced and bleeding shoulder so casually?
For all that, still a great comic, still great characters and great setting, still amazing artwork. Keep up the good job, Alex&Rachel! <3
Great to see you back, Sam! :)
As for Quin’s shoulder, it was a pretty serious injury, but I imagine the Canid have long-perfected recipes for blood-staunching and pain-relieving medicinal compounds from local plantlife and imports from around the Four Kingdoms. They would certainly have a ready supply of it at Deltrada, which serves as a main bulwark against the Ermehn and sits right on the border of the Northern Wastes.
In short, Quin got expert medical care from experts in his type of injury. Having his arms raised for so long is probably not the best for it, so there may very be some long-term ramifications and complications to the wound healing.
Thanks, and once again I’m sorry for having been gone so long, and I really can’t promise I’ll resume regular commenting. But I’m very glad you remember me and I appreciate the welcome <3
Now, I could argue with some of your contentions here, and the realism of the scene and whether the Canid would even bother giving him painkillers and such, but let me guess something…
The arrow wound at the end of Chapter 2 was there to give some brief dramatic tension and you don't really want it to be a "thing" that needs to be addressed by the story. As such, you're willing to sacrifice some realism for the sake of just geting the plot going. Is that correct?
That's totally understandable, I just wanted to cut the discussion short in case you just don't find it an important plot point to focus on.
It’s not hugely important, no, but neither will it be forgotten. Right now is just a little “do-or-die” and it wouldn’t do to have Quin waste time moaning about it until he has the space to.
Well the Canid fixed up Quin’s shoulder presumably so he wouldn’t die and miss Tosch’s interrogation, so I guess it’s not too hard to believe that they’d also give him painkillers so that he wouldn’t be in too much pain to think clearly and answer the questions?
Also the wound wasn’t just there for dramatic tension, it also got Quin out of a torture session by proving his innocence, and, perhaps most importantly, gave Tosch a reason to (accidentally?) leave a pointy object in the cell, thus giving our two MacGyvers the opportunity to enact a jailbreak.
Eh, I can still see Quin toughing it out after taking a bolt to the shoulder. Here’s a real life example of something similar:
My dad is a part-time PSIA instructor and broke his left clavicle in a nasty fall about halfway down the mountain. Rather than calling for the ski patrol, he got back up and skied the rest of the way down before getting help. After the patrollers gave preliminary treatment (cardboard braces) for his shoulder he was told that an ambulance would be a couple of hours, to which he replied: “I’ll just drive to the hospital myself.”
So instead of waiting for the ambulance, he drove for over an hour and walked right into a hospital in Fresno, complete with a busted shoulder wrapped in a cardboard box. Good times!
I could never hit a thing in Morrowind. Mash the buttons! DO SOMETHING! Fidget quotes aside another great page. Also found Rachel’s old Mossflower stuff in the dungeons of Deviantart. Fun to see how far her art has come.
Mossflower! The second best Redwall book!
I’d forgotten about all that animation project concept art. Rachel can draw a mean looking Tzarmina.
Also: Krogan love American football! It makes perfect sense.
“You are allowed to throw one punch per play”. Ha!
Nice page! I’m liking the twist here, and Dakkan’s still playing it cool with his sass lol. I’m also starting to think that the sass runs in the family, with Kenosh describing “war” to Quinlan back in chapter 1…
I’m loving the guest art! It’s sweet seeing Caldus be nice for a change. Can’t always be *that* strict with a child.
If only Asha were here!! (Hopefully Canid locks wouldn’t be as hard to pick as Felis locks?)
Still, it seems that by leaving them the bolt, Tosch has Locked MacGyver in the Store Cupboard! Bonus points if the stool is also used in the escape (other than just being a handy place for Tosch to drop the bolt and forget about it) – and if Quin and Dak use the chains that will still be attached to their wrists to knock out/strangle a few guards or something (“everything is a weapon,” right?!). Unfortunately they won’t be able to escape by dressing up as guards – even if they didn’t have chains conspicuously dangling from their arms, they’re obviously not Canid (and the Canid don’t wear masks).
Also, I see Rachel added the bloodstains on Quin’s clothing and Dak’s face to the last page.
Ah the classic sierra games, good times…. a lot of frustration picking the wrong combos but good times once you got the right one going on. Also, given that image and Dak’s bleeding nose, i can only think “fortunately he didn’t shove it in far enough”
hey, about the, ‘most people don’t even know where to start’ for lockpicking… I figured it out when I was 11. But the head of the arrow might have been too big anyways.
As I recall in Quest for Glory, if your lock-picking skill is high enough when you pick your nose you get the message ‘Success! Your nose is now open!’