Hello and welcome back!

Well despite all of the work this week, I still managed to finish the page. I hope everyone enjoys it as much I do!

Michael has a few words for you this week so I figure I will hand it over to him. Thanks a see you all next week!

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MiRaJes (2007.10.24)

Hey all, I thought since I am being given the privilege of helping write dialog for the comic, it might be nice to give people some insight into how the dialog is written (especially some of the more obscure stuff you’re likely to encounter from here on out), and also some background on where story lines came from (mostly Kris) and how they are evolving as I help him fill in the blanks.

To that effect I will be writing occasional entries under different headers: MiRaJes, which are pretty much whatever thoughts float through my head on pretty much any topic at random (like this post); DiaBlog, where I’ll post anything directly related to items in the dialog itself; I am also thinking of writing under a Cosmology header, which will have background information about the world, characters and (to blatantly steal a line from Douglas Adams) Life, the Universe and Everything.

I’ll try to follow along in the comments and answer any specific questions I can, but remember Kris has been percolating this amazing world in his caffeine-raddled brain for, well, decades I imagine, and while I have extracted a fair bit of the details from him over the last months, I am sure I have barely scraped the surface of what will undoubtedly prove to be a fecund abyss of raw material.

And yes, if HP Lovecraft were writing material for Monty Python, it would look an awful lot like this…

DiaBlog (2007.10.25)

For this first DiaBlog post I will go back to the previous two pages I wrote for: 10-13 and 10-21. Kris probably got a bit tired of me pestering him about the characters, what their personalities were, favorite sayings, what gods/beings they worshiped, what modern and historic cultures the races and individuals most resembled (hence the decision to go with French for the light/holy spells), and whether they were Mac or PC people. That last one was particularly nasty, and I only got out alive because I fight dirty.

All of which just goes to highlight that someone who has been playing/running a game character for ages knows the answers to all those questions at some level, they just don’t consciously think about them – it’s the sign of a truly devoted role-player. It’s great for creating a sense of believability and depth for a game session – or a comic – but it sort of sucks when you’re trying to create dialog for what is essentially someone else’ creation and make it fit. I hope I am doing OK on that.

Soooooooooooo… I have started a sort of story and dialog “style guide” for all the people, places and things in the Ethereal world, and I’ll try to stick to it and expand it as we go along. I may even try to go back and “adjust” the previous panels at some point (counting all my fingers, yes none of them have been cut off – yet).

Since there are only two pages I’ve written for (OK three, you have not seen the next one yet, heh heh) I didn’t try to move things too far. Established Frenchy-sounding words for light spells (check), got the right amount of hissing gutter-speak for the green-caps (check), Una swearing on Odin’s Eyesocket (hmm, minor error there on my part, had intended to use “Woden”, the original name, my bad, maybe Kris will change it?), Una commenting on Gatan’s staff (hmm, I don’t remember writing that line, must have been snuck in there by EVIL SPIRITS!). That’s it for that page.

The page with Charlise et al was a bit more fun because I had longer to work on it, after water-boarding talking to Kris to get more detailed background on them and how they would view the situation and players in the scene. I got to work in a bit about how dangerous the sisters are (and not always just to their enemies), how Wrathe isn’t exactly afraid of them, but he feels a bit like Darth Vader after jumping off the lava-raft – if you’re not careful you could lose something vital. And of course Charlise and her bitchy bossy attitude towards hirelings; hey, I’ve worked for people like that… And of course my first Swamp Elf swear word! *sniff* I’m so proud!

DiaBlog (2007.10.28)

This was a really good page to write dialog for: the physical layout of the panels gave a perfect flow to both characters’ lines (or in the case of the Orc, noise and laughter). Bianka starts out a bit cocky and overconfident – until the sword starts to glow. I hate when that happens. Then of course is my little play on words, “Lugh’s Balls”. That’s actually a historically appropriate curse – derived from Celtic legend. Lugh Lámhfhada (Lugh of the Long Hand) was a character out of Irish myth, portrayed as a deity or hero depending on the source (and how Christianized the story was later made). The Celtic story cycles seem to fit Bianka and Gatan best, so that’s where I drew from. I also liked the idea that one of Lugh’s other names was “Lonnbeimnech”, which can be translated as “sword-shouter” – since Bianka uses a magic known as “sword singing”, it seemed appropriate that she would swear by someone who had similar attributes.

Oh, and Lugh’s Balls? While I am sure balls would be an understandable thing for her to swear by right before getting slammed with a magical blade, in fact these balls were “tathlum” – projectiles made of clay, stone and human brains, used by slingers (Lugh got the name Long Hand because he favored slings and bows before rushing into melee), said to have magical properties capable of slaying the mightiest foe. Read “Red Branch” by Morgan Llywelyn. And yeah, I am a medieval history major, which is why I don’t have a “real” job. 

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