Chapter: Issue 17

The chanting of the cultists sells it for me as Hammerhead and Slothanar wreak havoc on the battlefield.

That classic ‘Run away!’ just resonates with everyone, I feel. In that moment, we are all cultists.

EDIT:

So, when we published the first page of this story, there was some discussion of whether the character was racist caricature.

While that was never the intention, we realized that intention is not supplanted by the perception of the audience.

Dee was on vacation, so we couldn’t address it then. But we heard you, and a simple change can make all the difference in the world.

If we have offended anyone with this offering, we apologize. We’ll do better, and make course corrections when we go wrong.

The archives are also changed, so hopefully this gets us back on course. Thanks for your patience, all.

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And we’re off!

“Let us cut him into spools of thread” always struck me as an oddly specific yet menacing thing to say before entering battle.

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Just imagine he’s an actor trying to talk around all those dental appliances and I think you get a really good approximation of what Slothanar sounds like.

This is a fun tale of Urth we hope you enjoy!

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The Sacred and the Uncouth

Enter Britomart the Paladin, the shining holy warrior who will light our darkest hour. She’s tall, she’s regal, she’s virtuous… and a teensy bit full of herself. In this saga, I had to have some conflict built into the party. So Britomart is all rules and order, fully accustomed to everyone doing as she says, because she’s right and sensible and has God on her side.

As anyone who knows our titular character, we all know how this is going to play out…

DEE’S NOTES

Britomart is a VERY fun character to draw. I love playing with the haughty expressions and body language, though her ARMOR is very time-consuming to ink as it’s very detailed, and the reflections create what is called a lot of “line mileage”.

As we were working on the page, we joked back and forth about the idea that Ronni should have KNOWN the paladin would be important… she’s got her own spot color! 😉

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SUMMER BREAK!

The Call To Adventure

In the Hero’s Journey, this is a step. In Ronni’s story, this has already happened when she answered the summons from the witch, and she’s now covered:

1. The Ordinary World.
2. The Call to Adventure.
3. Refusal of the Call.
4. Meeting the Mentor.
5. Crossing the Threshold.

So while this is the call to adventure for the adventuring party, Ronni’s journey is instead at the ‘Tests, Allies, Enemies’ stage. So it’s interesting that the heroes of the quest are at different stages of their journeys, at least to me.

Duncan, Earl of Scotts’ dialogue is Shakespeare by way of Raimi.

DEE’S NOTES

This was a lot of fun to play with. With Duncan, I was absolutely imagining Brian Blessed “playing” him as I drew. The basic layout and castle were taken from Koen’s original page, rather than my recreating the wheel, which allowed me to have a lot of fun playing with Ronni’s expressions and reaction.

Also, the classic “light through the open door as heroes enter a dark chamber” shot for the first panel. I drew a lot of inspiration from a lot of sources there, but mostly Luke’s first appearance in “Return of the Jedi”.

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Gold Fever

I mean, she gets big and destroys billions of dollars worth of property on a semi-regular basis. One such incident could keep your finances wrecked for life, and Giant Girl has lost count of how many times it has happened to her. So Ronni is understandably excited about the possibility of walking away from this with a tidy little fortune.

The Witch did say ‘amply compensated’ as well, and Ronni’s starting to see the possibilities.

The walk and talk page is a bit epic as Dee lays out the town of Witching Hill passing by in the background, even as she looks for somewhere to sheathe her new sword. Which you know she’s gonna lose along the way…

DEE’S NOTES

This was a very challenging page to pull off, with a lot of meat to showcase, along with mostly new backgrounds in every panel. It was also, however, an opportunity to do what I love to do the most: character beats and acting.

In the original script, Ronni gave the blanket to the old soldier in the first panel, but we worked it out to become a three-panel sequence telling a story in the background to contrast Ali blindly accusing her of being a gold-digger. I LOVED that thematic juxtaposition. Ronni’s not PERFECT, but in her heart, she’s still a hero and I loved the chance to show that in little moments like this one Sabrina conceived of here, so I enjoyed taking it and expanding on it.

Similarly, the “Looking for a place to put the sword” was a throwaway moment that we also expanded to take up what otherwise would have just been talking heads. And artistically, doing SOMETHING is always better than doing NOTHING.

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FASHION- turn to the left!

This was an opportunity to play with the tropes of female fantasy adventuring outfits, as well as show off our girl Ronni in some sexy and ridiculous outfits. Because sometimes a page is just there to have fun with as creators, and this page, while it does serve to move the narrative forward, is mostly about fun.

A discussion that came up during the illustration of this page is about the buttoned flap of Ali’s wrists on his costume. My logic is that those flaps hide the bracers he’s wearing underneath, as he’s a spoiled rich kid on an adventure, after all, and mom sent him with proper wizard armor- bracers. For the record, he is wearing rings, they’re just invisible. Because the witch does stuff like make invisible rings thieves won’t know to steal.

Quite the inventory on hand for a simple tailor, right?

Also, note that Ali had time to change clothes and get the ‘full briefing’ from his mother before he followed Ronni here, despite the fact that he appeared on the road ten seconds after she did. A clue about the dilation of time, laid early in the narrative, as well as a bit of irony.

Because Morgan DOESN’T fully brief Ali in the least, despite his thoughts on the matter. He doesn’t know her plans for grandchildren, thus illustrating she clearly doesn’t trust Ali with said plans. Instead, she expects him to think with his loins, and follow his usual instincts to produce the results she desires. Working very hard at being that master manipulator, so others won’t see her hand quite so obviously in all this.

Which, as long-time readers know, isn’t going to work out so well for her…

DEE’S NOTES

I loved playing with the different styles of costumes, and in the case of the 90s EXTREME one, even some of the proportions and inking styles of the period, like the underboob uplighting.

And I have to say, it is FUN getting back to drawing Ronni in her fantasy garb. It’s a really fun design that I had to re-research to REMEMBER how to draw. I also had to make an effort to remember to NOT put any dings, dents or damage in it, as I had become accustomed to in the initial pages I did.

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Enter Witching Hill, redux

Morgan did promise an ‘unerring sense of direction’, after all. So here’s that promise in action, which will feature prominently from time to time throughout this story. Fear our plot device!

I love how Ali points out that his mother is a witch, but she’s usually honest.

Usually.

Morgan actually lied, obfuscated or misdirected quite a bit before sending Ronni here, so this points out that Ali is aware that his mother doesn’t always tell the truth. I think that’s important to note, as Ali tends to take her word for things, even though he’s likely caught her in a few lies over the years.

There are plenty of easter eggs hidden in the large final panel. We’re gonna stay mum about them and let you folks look for them on your own!

DEE’S NOTES

This page used a good degree of the layout and existing architecture from the original artist, Koen. The design of the town was solid and there was no reason to reinvent the wheel when it just needed to be rebalanced and cleaned up. Like a lot of these pages, Sabrina and I enjoyed taking advantage of knowing exactly where the story was headed to add foreshadowing, easter eggs, etc.

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I’ll Get You My Pretty

I’ll be honest- I wanted to give Dee a little breathing room and an easy page, as she works kind of non-stop. Plus I liked the idea of showing that Morgan is definitely keeping an eye on Ronni and Ali throughout their adventure on Urth. While we seldom do full-page spreads unless it’s high drama, I deliberately asked for this one to be more of a pin-up image, as we’ll probably use it as promotional material later.

That fancy border is actually the wallpaper of Witching Hill, which was too small for you to really see the details of when we used it in the house. But Dee designed it and I really liked it, so I specifically asked for her to include it here as a framing element.

Stryper, of course, violates the panel border, because he’s a cat.

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That Darn Witch

A lot of behind-the-scenes discussions went on about this page, a lot of it focused on Morgan’s bad behavior.

She sent along the toy hospital, so clearly sending along a change of clothes wouldn’t have been any trouble for her, either. Morgan warned Ronni about her coat, but didn’t bother to mention that she knows how Ronni has stuff shrunk down with dimensional anchors in her gloves, boots and costume dress. She just comments on the coat, then leaves the whole costume on the floor anyway.

To her credit, she does send Ali with a blanket for Ronni. But again, it could have been an entire suit of clothes. Hell, it could have been a duplicate of her costume. But nope, Morgan WANTED Ronni to arrive naked. In theory this was so that Ali could be a bit more chivalrous, but really, it was because she wants to rattle Ronni even more, getting her even more off-balance emotionally so she’ll lean on Ali that much harder.

Later in the book, Ronni comments that if you start making yourself smarter, you eventually lose touch with your humanity, and sentient life becomes an experiment to you. Morgan Chesterfield is living proof of that theory in action. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.

Naked version available on our Patreon Adult Entertainment Tier!

DEE’S NOTES

This page is something of a first in the recreation of the opening of this storyline. It’s the first page where I am largely recreating what the previous series artist, Koen, had created. The original page used virtually the same layout and I incorporated art of the castle, rather than redrawing it from scratch.

As a result, I got to really play with the character acting and expressions, which was a lot of fun. Also, as my art of Ali’s magical wardrobe makes more clear, there was really no way he could have offered Ronni his cloak without dismantling his outfit, hence Sabrina rewriting it as a blanket. We had a LOT of fun putting that tartan pattern on it.

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