Beyond the Western Deep

Wow, look at those old character designs! Kenosh looks moooostly okay, but Dakkan and Quinlan have absolutely seen a lot more iteration in terms of their character designs. Just looking at them up above and then juxtaposing it with their current, in-comic versions, well…

The changes speak for themselves really!

So, in this second (and final–for now!) week of Western Deep Before Western Deep, I wanted to dive into some more of the original pitch materials, so you can see how some things remained remarkably consistent, even if some other things are now completely different.

For example, here’s the cover for Volume 2 of the original pitch:

If you squint your eyes and tilt your head just a bit, you might actually be able to figure out that this cover is actually presenting the events of the Quin vs Feyn battle atop the battlements of Deltrada Garrison from the final act of Chapter 2!

This is one of several of what Rachel refers to as “tentpole moments” in Beyond the Western Deep. Basically, key setpiece scenes that we’ve been mulling over in our heads for over a decade. The battle between Hardin and the tribal guardian juxtaposed with the Quinlan vs. Crim fight in Chapter 1, the Deltrada battle in Chapter 2, and… well, stuff that was going to be in Chapter 3 but didn’t actually wind up in Chapter 3, that got moved to Chapter 4!

Wait, what? Yeah, I know, it’s confusing. But the long and short of it is, the mock up cover we did for Issue 3 of the original “Four Kingdoms” comic pitch is actually, legitimately, a spoiler for what is now Chapter 4 of Beyond the Western Deep. How did it get moved back by a chapter?

Well, there’s one really good reason: the original comic pitch was only divided into two POV groups: Quin & Dakkan, and Hardin & the Sratha-din. And even then, the story mostly stuck with Quinlan and Dakkan–something like 90% of the entire story was just those two trying to chase down Hardin and Co.!

No Janik, no Sigrid, nobody else! It was a very different story to be sure. Just look at these issue summaries!

Ugh, I was still capitalizing the species names in this original pitch! The way I see it, you don’t capitalize “human,” so “lutren,” “ermehn,” etc shouldn’t be capitalized either. That’s actually a house grammar rule for Guild Wars 2 as well, so it’s been easier to drive that point home :)

You’re probably asking yourself what that “Seer” thing is in Chapter 1! Well, in the original draft, Hardin wasn’t 100% sure about going ahead with his whole plan, so he hunted down a fortune teller to confirm everything. If that sounds cheesy and more than a little Redwallian (I’m like 99% sure the same thing happened in Taggerung?) then you’re absolutely right. Hardin lost a huge amount of agency by needing to be told he had to carry out his plan by some weird third party. So we axed this plot thread entirely in subsequent drafts and I believe the story (and Hardin’s character) is all the better for it.

Chapter 2 is surprisingly similar except… yeah, wow, in these early drafts it was Hardin who killed General Clovis! I’d actually forgotten that was a thing! That’s exactly what you’d expect to happen, isn’t it? Hardin says he’s going to go kill Clovis, and he does, and shenanigans ensue? We realized that Kenosh had to do it–his character basically demanded it. It also opened up so many fascinating questions, like why would he risk his life, career, even his own SON to save this random ermehn murderer? It presented us with so many interesting story and character conflict possibilities that we changed that very early on.

No spoilers for Chapter 3 of course–because even though 99% of the story details are different now, that big “tentpole” moment is still there! The context is completely different, but I think you’ll appreciate my discretion all the same so as to maintain the surprise :)

Ooh, hey, the world map for Dunia is in here too!

Except… what’s that in the corner? THE POLCAN FLOTILLA!

What is with that name, though? Rochas’ve? How the heck do you pronounce that? Well, don’t worry, that’s not going to be the name of the Polcan capital anymore. You hear me, lore hounds? THE NAME AIN’T CANON!

*ahem*

But yeah, that world map has remained surprisingly unchanged in all the years since the very, very first version. That I drew.

Yes, me. Alex. The writer. I drew a thing way back in like 2006 in MS Paint. You want to see it? Oh, of course you do!

Wow, isn’t that terrible? Wait for it–I made another terrible one too!

Yeah yeah, I know. It’s terrible, right? Well, sometimes writers just have to bust out their digital pens and pencils to get a basic outline of a thing down for other teammates. And of course, to Rachel’s credit, she was able to take my childlike scribblings and turn them into a cohesive and incredibly useful map that was adapted and updated with all the new names and locations!

An’Bothar as the Aisling capital? What was up with me and apostrophe-separated fantasy names? Ugh. Obviously readers will know the real name of the canid capital is Arklow. Throw that high fantasy gibberish apostrophe nonsense in the garbage.

I’ll also point out another area that I’ve personally improved in from the first draft! Check out this absolute mess of a script:

Even at this early stage, Rachel knew an overly verbose panel when she saw it. Some of this was framing, sure–and we both had to learn a lot early on about the unique storytelling language of comics. I came from a video game writing-centric background, and Rachel from an animation-centric background, and comics are their own beast. Even if you’re a professional writer or artist in other media, comics have their own rules that require extensive study to master.

Here’s the same panel in the final comic, by the way:

Even now, nearly a decade since our launch, Rachel and I both find new things we’re learning. Beyond the Western Deep came from very humble origins, first as a prose novel, then a first draft comic pitch by a newbie comic team, then a webcomic that has been evolving and shifting ever since.

While it’s fun to look back at the way things were before we started and think gosh, I’m glad we didn’t do that we think it’s incredibly important to remember that every step we’ve taken, even the ones that ended in failure, led us to where we are now.

Am I glad we didn’t have any magical McGuffins in Western Deep? You better believe it! Did I have to write that story out first so I could see how terrible it was for myself? You’d better also believe it!

If anything, I hope this look back on where we came from can serve as a motivation for all of you readers with your own worlds, stories, and characters that you want to build and share with others. It’s exceedingly rare for a story to come out perfectly the first time, or even the second time. In our case, Western Deep took three tries before we even got it started! Don’t let the missteps or hang-ups keep you down: it’s all a learning experience, and every step you take, even steps in the wrong direction, help you grow personally–as creators, and as people.

We’re excited to continue the main Western Deep story next week! Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, and see you all next week!