This week, conflict is resolved! Sorta! With the help of the Canid soldier, Quinlan’s in the clear for the moment, and Dak managed to fend off the remaining Ermehn warrior — enough to turn his attention to his friend and see what’s going on. And now we finally get to show an element of Dak’s personality that we haven’t had much opportunity to cover in-comic until now: Dak’s near-crippling fear of blood.

158_rough
This is actually one of those elements of Dakkan’s character with origins that precede Beyond the Western Deep, and I liked it so much I decided it would be a great element to work into the story proper as one of his foibles. The staff is actually symptomatic of this fear: why wield a blade that gores and maims when you’re deathly afraid of the result? Dak’s seen his share of combat, of course, and isn’t afraid to knock heads, but once the claret really starts to spill he gets weak in the knees. Rachel illustrated this in a non-canon storyboard she did many years ago — some excerpts below:

067

109

118

No doubt while he was young, Kenosh tried to cover up his son’s phobia (which would be more than a bit embarrassing for the son of a renowned warrior) — but that only works for so long before acceptance. Kenosh was instrumental in Dakkan’s switch from bladed weapons to staves, going so far as to rationalize it to himself and to others (“Easier to interrogate a living Polcan than a dead one, after all”). Now that Dakkan is combat-proficient in the staff, the issue doesn’t come up that often, with Kenosh or anyone else. At least until now.

For guest art this week, I wanted to share a piece that SaraaLuna did a little while ago of Rhosyn, who we haven’t seen in action for quite a while!

saraaluna_rhosyn

I can’t wait to get back to Rhosyn’s slice of the action, but this will have to hold everyone over for just a little bit longer! We love the piece, Saraa! It really captures Rhosyn’s innate snarkiness, I think. Don’t worry, we haven’t seen the last of her!

Lastly, C2E2 UPDATE!

Print

I need to make a correction to our C2E2 table placement. I said E17 before, but that was wrong! We just got our final table assignment: U16!

That’s U16 in Artists Alley! They put us off in a bit of a corner, but that’s okay — anyone walking around just needs to keep their eyes open for Quin and Dak. That banner is pretty visible from afar, after all!