Rathik looks pretty grumpy doesn’t he? Stomping around in the rain and the mud whilst muttering to oneself isn’t the best of looks, admittedly. And Ashtor looks like he’s been putting up with this nonsense for waaaay too long.

Eira, to her credit, seems to be pretty good at ignoring the big lug’s temper tantrums by this point.

As we’ve hopefully demonstrated in the past, the Sratha-din is, in many ways, a family. A family forged by the fires of conflict, and one thrust together under incredible circumstances and facing immense odds. Like many families, there are internal conflicts that hum at a low boil, sometimes for years, before finally coming to the surface.

The actions taken at Deltrada may have just turned up the heat.

Speaking of turning up the heat, I hope our readers are having a cozy December! As I’ve mentioned previously, we’re going to be taking something of a break for the next several weeks when it comes to new pages. However, we will not be taking a break from awesome new Western Deep content! The next several weeks will be what I call WINTERSDAWN.

Here’s the tentative Wintersdawn schedule:

Dec. 18th! Next week there will be a fun little teaser for that side project I was hinting at earlier!

Dec 25th! There will be a fun guest comic to celebrate the holiday!

Jan 1st! On New Year’s Day there will be a full and official announcement for the side project I just hinted up above!

Jan 8th! The week after that (just two days after my birthday!) there will be a brand new Western Deep prose short story that ties directly into the side project I just hinted at up above (twice)!

Jan 15th! The OFFICIAL RELEASE of the side project, which Western Deep fans new and old alike should really enjoy :)

Jan 22nd! The last week of Wintersdawn will be devoted to a behind-the-scenes MAKING OF post focused on the side project. There will be a lot of great stuff in here, and hopefully gear folks up for the return of main Beyond the Western Deep pages on January 29th.

I encourage everyone to follow along with us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/thewesterndeep where we’ll be posting updates all Wintersdawn on all this stuff and more!