Chapter 4: Page 46
And with that, we leave our Sratha-din friends (and frenemies/maybe probably dead frenemies) to revisit another group of characters that we haven’t actually seen in quite a while! How long you ask? Well, when we last left a quartet of ostrich-riding diplomats-slash-charismatic criminals, it was January of 2019.
So yeah, it’s been over 950 days. Crazy to think of everything that’s happened since then, honestly!
It’s been pretty bad, admittedly–but it hasn’t been all bad, right? I mean, we did our second Kickstarter campaign, we released Wintersdawn in the Deep, the very first Beyond the Western Deep video game. We also opened our shop on TopatoCo!
Speaking of all the cool stuff happening right now in Western Deep land, as I’ve mentioned before, Rachel and I will be attending this year’s Rose City Comic Con in Portland, Oregon! We’ll be in Artist Alley, Table O-4, and we’ll have all sorts of cool merch.
One of the things we’re going to have in suuuuper-limited quantities is this sleek limited edition V2 t-shirt! We loved the design for the book cover so much that it naturally felt like it would work on clothing, and we’re really pleased with the final result.
In addition to the shirt, we’re expecting to have:
- Volume 1 and Volume 2 hardcovers
- Quin/Dak and Kenosh/Hardin pin sets
- Sharkhunter prints
- Emote sticker sheets and Quin/Dak logo stickers
- Mini-print sets
- Signed bookplates
- Whatever else we can dig up!
Of course if Rachel is here on the west coast with me and working our table at Rose City, that will mean a few weeks where we go without pages. But I like to try and find fun content to fill the gap wherever possible, so stay tuned to our Twitter account at TheWesternDeep for the most up-to-date information, and hopefully we’ll see you at Rose City!
There is a moment in the 1965 film “Doctor Zhivago” where the scene abruptly shifts from a moderately-lit indoor shot to a wide white winter panorama. By all accounts, when seen on the big screen, the sudden juxtaposition takes the breath away and leaves audiences gasping.
I feel like this page is the “BWD” version of that quick cut.
Gone are the gloomy, rainy wastes of the north, replaced in a flash by the blinding desert vistas of Navran, where one might almost expect to spy T.E. Lawrence riding his camel (if we can flit from one David Lean epic to another). This would have been one of my top guesses as to where the action would have shifted next, and I am not at all disappointed to be rejoining Janik & Co. The totem poles are an awesome visual touch, and I hope they are touched upon (pardon the semi-pun) in the pages ahead.
Very excited to be embarking on this next leg of the adventure!
I can’t honestly remember who are these people and what are their intentions. The squirrel girl is called Janik, I think?
Cue “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin! ;) Dramatic scene and dramatic shift! I’ll bet those obelisks are distance markers, you follow them to the next oasis so you don’t get lost.
I second that, only I’d be playing “Memories of Dust” by Keiichi Okabe instead.
The creatures their riding remind me of chocobos for some odd reason.
they’re*
Chocobos are definitely one of the fantastical go-tos for bird-like steeds! It just made the most sense when we began to lean into the idea of messenger birds as a primary means of communication. If there were all these messenger birds, and it felt weird having something like horses in a world like Dunia, what could fill that role? So we expanded on the bird-as-steed concept and came upon these ostriches!
Woah, is that a sandstorm?? Maybe they will take shelter by the pillar thingie…
Good to see these guys again!
Oh, what a day! What a lovely day!
Reminds me of my time in the sahara. Ways were marked by empty drums with some sand inside. Distance varied from 100m to 2 kilometers. Also this kind of sandstorm. There are others, though.