Minifigures and a Map

The most frivolous aspect of my creative process is when I commission custom Lego minifigures of the characters, just because... I really want to see what that would look like. These are all done by piXa Design, who can be found on Instagram here.

This collaboration started when I commissioned these figures for the third anniversary of Better Yet? Didn't really do anything else for that anniversary; the fifth anniversary was last month, and I'm aiming to prepare a fifth anniversary special this year even though the actual day has passed. Stay tuned for that.

And later on, after I got the Keys & Kingdoms characters redesigned, I got piXa to do those as well:

The K&K redesigns were shortly followed by those for Irregular Fantasy!, and I was really looking forward to getting those done because, well, Irregular Webcomic! mostly consists of Lego minifigures, except for the main characters of the Fantasy theme (and most characters from the Space theme) who are represented by gaming miniatures instead, so I had a feeling that the Irregular Webcomic! creator and fans would be really pleased to see what those characters would look like in Lego form.

And today, for a bit of extra fun, we're gonna talk more about the Irregular Fantasy! version of the characters -- a few details of the minifigures are based on their Fantasy design rather than the original miniatures used in Webcomic, and I've also invented a few biographical details for the adaptation which we'll see here.

 

So let's talk about the info displayed!

SURNAMES

In David Morgan-Mar's brief campaign notes which predate the webcomic, Lambert has a surname never mentioned in the comic: Lacebuckle. Upon finding this detail, I was reminded of a single line from the comic in which Alvissa claims to hail from the noble house of Endeäthil. And so suddenly I was chasing a new detail: surnames for all the main characters. I asked David if any of the others had ever had surnames at any stage of development, and he confirmed they had not, so I had free reign there.

Mordekai's surname was chosen because he comes from a dynasty that's long run the local "guild of lovable rogues", so I figured his actual family name would be the kind of name that dashing rogues give themselves.

For Kyros, I wanted to go with something exotic and vaguely Roman-sounding; names starting with O are pretty rare, so I jumped on that, and from there it was basically... regal.

I forget exactly when I had this idea, but I decided Dwalin belongs to a once-illustrious clan whose symbol is the Helicoprion, an ancient shark with a tooth whorl, a buzzsaw-shaped lower jaw. I added a D to "Whorltooth" based on the rule from the comic that dwarves (at least dwarves from Dwergenberg) all have names beginning with "Dw".

And I would normally assume that lizardfolk don't use surnames, but there was a scene from the comic which I felt would be good to assign Draak a title of sorts: in a conversation with a frog guy, it's explained that Draak's name is actually Zrxgy, but he introduced himself to the rest of the party as Draak, his people's onomatopoeia for burping, for convenience. So I decided to use that name: Draak was given the title Zirx Gy by his people for his strength and courage. I added a vowel to it to make it more readable, and made it two words so that Draak is allowed to say it in dialogue; the rule is that when he speaks the Common tongue, he never says any word with more than one syllable.

BIRTHDATES

The birth dates of the characters are based on significant dates in the history of the comic. As for why this world uses the same calendar as the real world, well, that's because Tolkien's works used the real-world calendar rather than making one up, and since the comic makes a lot of reference to Tolkien, I figured that was good enough for me.

January 6, 2003: Strip #3, the first Fantasy strip and the first appearance of Alvissa, Mordekai, and Lambert. This was chosen as Alvissa's birthday.

March 11, 2003: Strip #50, in which Lambert makes his first hobbit pun, a tradition which would continue roughly every 100 strips.

June 11, 2003: Strip #137, first appearance of Draak. Also works well for my developing assumption that lizardfolk mating season is in the spring.

August 2, 2003: Strip #189, in which Kyros casts his first insanely overpowered fireball. I briefly considered using his first appearance, but that was in strip #9 on January 29, so I decided I wanted to spread the characters' birthdays around the calendar a little more.

September 7, 2004: Strip #490, the first time Mordekai insists upon being called a "lovable rogue" rather than a thief.

May 7, 2006: Strip #1197, first appearance of Dwalin.

AGES

Choosing the characters' ages was a fairly simple process:

Lambert (33): 33 is the age at which hobbits come of age in The Lord of the Rings; a detail unmentioned in the films is that Bilbo and Frodo share a birthday, and that Bilbo's fateful 111th fell on the same day as Frodo's 33rd, both important numbers in hobbit numerology, especially since they add up to 144, a gross, a dozen dozens, also a very important number. In my general fantasy multiverse, halflings age at the same rate as humans, so Lambert's attitude is a bit more what you'd expect from a 33-year-old character... though, being 33 myself at the moment, I feel a lot less adult than most people give 33-year-olds credit for.

Alvissa (120): There exists a famous Irregular Webcomic! strip in which Alvissa explains, "Elven children breast feed for 30 years, teethe for 20 years, throw tantrums for about 100 years, and don't take to toilet training until they're about 200." I for one have never thought it made much sense that elves' long lives should also mean they grow up slower than humans; as Vaarsuvius once pointed out in a prequel book for The Order of the Stick, this implies all elves have some sort of learning disability. Even if they physically grow up slower, they shouldn't be so slow to taking to the basic tasks of being alive, so what you'd expect to see are... uncannily wise children. But, no, I'm going with elves reaching adulthood at the same pace as humans, but perhaps not being respected as adults until the age of 100. Alvissa went on the road as a teenager, which has the same implications for elves as for humans, she's just... still young, like early 30s young -- I'm also not having my elves' lifespans measured in the thousands of years. 800 or less.

Mordekai (22): Lovable rogues tend to go on the road at an early age. Nuff said.

Kyros (45): As an experienced wizard, he's probably been around for a while.

Draak (16): Being reptiles, lizardfolk live about as long as humans but reach adulthood faster, so he's young but has been an adult for a while.

Dwalin (39): Dwalin is an experienced professional adult but still youthful, as dwarves live longer than humans but not nearly so long as elves.

HOMETOWNS

Mm, heck, I'm gonna go for it, I'm gonna tell you everything I've recently put together for the world map. Very important for a fantasy story to have a setting, but I'm bad at those. And I couldn't just use the map from the comic, because, well, it's a bit silly. Well, it's a lot silly: the tone of Irregular Webcomic! is "a lot silly", while the tone we're shooting for in Irregular Fantasy! is "a bit silly". Adaptational changes.

So here's a crude map I put together in recent weeks during my attempts to expand the world, specifically trying to determine where the main characters come from, as I was putting together profiles for them.

I hoped I could get a lot of mileage out of David's old campaign notes -- after copying them down in all their incredible detail, I did a bit of Googling to determine how much of it was taken directly from D&D's Greyhawk setting. As it turns out, all of it, his Demesnes campaign setting was literally just Greyhawk, so... couldn't adapt it directly, but it definitely gave me some inspiration for putting together a new world's history and geography, so, time still well spent.

So what we see here are the two continents that make up the Demesnes, a region consisting of one-quarter of the planet Irf. What's on the rest of Irf? Nobody knows and I assume nobody ever will. The Demesnes themselves are a fallen world, once resplendent in many great empires which fell to ruin during the War of Damnation, and is today a realm of dark wilderness with small points of light and civilization scattered all around.

You'll see I drew a box around a portion of the western continent; that's where the first story arc takes place and so the best-developed area of the world. In the comic, the quest starts in a nameless village and runs generally westward: up the Elusian River, across the Orcrift Mountains (via the village of Footcrag, and through the abandoned dwarven city of Dwergenberg), into the Swamp of Terror and so to the Golden Citadel.

In our version, it starts in Dwergenberg, which now resides within the Solitary Mountain across the lake from Icehaven, making it a riff on Erebor and Laketown rather than the original Mines of Moria parody, with Icehaven and the lake also taking some inspiration from the Ten Towns of D&D's Forgotten Realms setting. And since we're starting in the frozen north, the quest goes generally south: the Elusian River, Footcrag, the Orcrift Mountains, the Swamp of Terror -- but this time, from the Swamp of Terror they'll find the port town of Umat and charter a ship across the Great Sea of Storms to Primus, the city in which the Golden Citadel resides.

On the coast, I ask myself, "Why?" Namely, why must they cross the Orcrift Mountains before crossing the sea? Well, I talked that over in a meeting with Aaron, my co-producer and the voice of Dwalin, and he suggested that, given the premise that there are only scattered points of civilization in the setting, there probably simply aren't any port towns between the First Wall and the Orcrift Mountains -- Umat is simply the nearest one. What a simple solution to a dilemma I'd been grappling with for ages.

On that eastern continent, contained within the legendary four walls, you'll find Dorillian lands, what was once the Dorillian Empire, now just a region of the world that bears its name. During the war, the massive four walls protected the empire, but have been crumbling for many millennia; they're still there and still fairly impressive, but no one maintains them anymore so they can't really keep anybody out.

Northern Dorillian lands lie between the First Wall and the Orcrift Mountains. This is where the most prominent elven lands are located, and the time came to name Alvissa's hometown: I called it Ëlbeleth, the first word of a gibberish faux-Elvish poem Alvissa recites in the comic. Yay, trees! Beyond the First Wall are the frozen lands of human barbarians, the largest goblin and orc societies in the world, and probably frost giants.

Central Dorillian lands are south of the Orcrift Mountains and north of the Second and Third walls. This is where I figured Lambert comes from; generally halfling lands, and I always figured his home village would have an overly long name that ends in "-shire". Aaron ad-libbed "Wursterhamstonhigginshire" and I totally rolled with it, that'll work. The Second Wall is an extra layer of protection beyond that unrealistically curvaceous mountain range there, total overkill of defense, probably because within the wall you'll find a lot of great civilizations: fabled locations from the comic such as Rivendeep, Riften, Disfahar, and the River Caluna.

Beyond the Third Wall is a mysterious tropical peninsula, formerly the Suoza empire; and I always knew that's where Draak and Kyros are from, both of them being fairly mysterious and cagey about their pasts. I decided Draak keeps his exact place of origin to himself, being from a semi-nomadic tribe of lizardfolk who lived somewhere in the northeastern swamps of the region. Having been working on an original spin-off set in this region, I decided Kyros should be from Debrukk, a distant and largely hidden city.

Then we have southern Dorillian lands. For spin-off and prequel reasons, I knew the general location of important settlements such as Yestermorrow and Castleton, and that Mordekai's hometown was right by the Fourth Wall. Knowing it would be considered a place of vice and sin, I decided to simply call it Vyzcin. Beyond the Fourth Wall, despite a joke in the prologue that it's where you'll find the likes of Pittsburgh and Detroit, are dark lands including the Realm of the Necromancer. That'll be a thing at... some point, I dunno.

So, still need to develop the eastern continent, I've split it into four distinct regions which will need further divisions. In the sea is the island colony of Triana -- I decided to name a few cities after planets from David's science-fiction campaign, which unlike his fantasy campaign seems to be fully original. Triana appeared in the Space theme of the comic as a planet with no rules where anything goes; I'm using the name to be the hometown of pirate lass Wendy Wenchgood, who in the comic hailed from Port Royal as the Pirates theme had a historical setting but will be transplanted to the fantasy setting!

Other than Primus and the Vast Stone Desert, the only other set-in-stone settlement on the eastern continent thus far is Castle Waraji, one of the four magical academies in the region.

In the southern portions of the Sea of Storms, there's the sunken city of R'lyeh, that'll of course be a thing in the Cthulhu plotline, and... there are probably some equatorial islands south of the eastern continent, I'll figure that out, along with a lot of other details... later on when I need them.

Skies and Zodiacs

The world of Keys & Kingdoms is called Cosmos. Weird name for a planet, I know. Because it's a planet, not a cosmos. I believe it's called that because the setting was originally a take on the Kingdom Hearts universe, before shifting gears to be much more generally Disney-esque. Kingdom Hearts takes a lot of its elements from Final Fantasy, and Final Fantasy has a crossover series called Dissidia, in which the good guys are united under a goddess of light named Cosmos. So... that's the connection.

Being of the mind to create many different fantasy settings in the multiverse of the AE:GIS gaming system, one thing consistently bubbling under the surface is that each world should have a unique sky. This started when I saw Starcrash, a 1970s sci-fi B-movie which was riffed in the Netflix revival of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Space scenes in Stacrash feature a sky full of multicolored stars. I knew I wanted that look for Realm of Stars, the default AE:GIS setting.

So we're here to talk about the Keys & Kingdoms sky, whose general vibe is having the least alien-looking sky in the AE:GIS multiverse, it's fairly standard. Most of the work on this sky was done by our own Casey Gosselin.

 

Here's the basic gradient and star patterns you'll see in the background of day and night scenes in the K&K world. We also prepared similar gradients for dusk, dawn, sunrise, and sunset; and different star patterns depending on which direction you're facing, this being the north sky. There's also a set of what clouds look like, in both a peaceful and stormy state, at each time of day.

And here we have the design for the evening star, the sun, and the moon. The moon was the very last thing Casey worked on, for old times' sake, as it was based on various moons she designed for the Deities Project, only bluish where it was more gold in that project. We worked out a 21-day cycle for the moon's various phases, which presumably work a little differently in this fantasy world than they do in our physics-based real world where it's all about reflected light and shadows. I assume this is one of those worlds where the moon only comes out at night and therefore there are never eclipses.

One thing that makes the sky of K&K particularly unusual is that if you look sorta indirectly at the evening star, moon, or sun, you'll be able to see a zodiac symbol which will help you determine what day, month, and year it is.

I invented this days-of-the-week zodiac based on the mythological meaning of the days of the week. There are various ways of naming the seven days of the week but they all have the same motifs in both Germanic and Latin traditions: the seven days being respectively named after the sun, the moon, a god of war, a god of travel, a god of storms, a goddess of love, and a god of the harvest. So if you look at the evening star, you'll get a faint impression of the current day's symbol, and so you'll learn what day it is.

I decided to do kind of a riff on the Forgotten Realms calendar system by having every month in the K&K world consist of exactly three seven-day weeks, meaning months are only 21 days long and so the year is only 252 days. So, everything in the K&K world kinda ages faster to keep things simple from our perspective.

And if you look in the general direction of the sun, you'll see a symbol from the eastern zodiac, which changes at the beginning of the year. All these zodiacs will be fairly significant and frequent topics of discussion in the world, with astrological signs presumably having a bit more tangible validity than they do in real life.

Now, Casey agreed to do the moon but said she would be passing on doing the western zodiac, as she had her own projects to focus on. What projects? Well, I've asked, but she evades the question. Not for me to know, I guess. We've worked together a long time, but we ain't that close.

So I had my sister-in-law Nicky start working on the western zodiac. Two years later, I decided she had officially missed the deadline, so I approached freelancer Nyxthedragon225, who had just done a bunch of character poses for me, about taking on the task, and so that got cleared up in about a week.

And so you see the symbol of the current month when you look at the moon. Yes, in this setting the twelve months correspond directly to the twelve zodiac symbols and are named after them, a little shake-up from reality.

So from there a time will come to work on the skies of other worlds. For Irregular Fantasy!, I asked David Morgan-Mar if there was anything special about the skies of the Demesnes, and he said he'd never thought of it and was reserving judgment on it in case he came up with a one-off joke regarding ways the sky was different from our own. A lot of fantasy worlds, for example, have a weird moon, or multiple moons.

I'm having this idea of basing the sun and moon on images that explore the idea of "what would it look like if Jupiter or Saturn were as close to Earth as the moon is?" So the sun and moon on the Demesnes will be massive and detailed and probably have rings. Still thinking over the specifics, nothing yet on what the stars will look like. Thinkin' about it.

Meet the Characters of K&K:TC

Here's something that's, well, been done before: some character bios of the cast of Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices. Gathered all the resources I needed for it, so here's the credits for those:

Character art and western zodiac symbols by Nyxthedragon225; alignment icons and pride flags by Sadie Allen; eastern zodiac symbols by Casey Gosselin. Pictures of the cast taken from their most recent and flattering social media posts that I could find, I hope they're flattering enough! Their voices were recorded a good five years ago, I really need to get on finishing that teaser so we can finish that pilot.

Since I'm hoping to share this blog post with lots of new people: Keys & Kingdoms is a fantasy world and hopeful gaming setting I'm working on, combining Dungeons & Dragons-style high fantasy with the aesthetic and tone of a classic Disney fairytale musical... if such a combination of things was rated R for its language and nudity... and probably violence, haven't really decided, it's not as important to me, but yeah, probably the violence too. And The Choices is a plan for a pseudo-animated series to introduce people to that world.

So, let's see, I'll follow these images up with the bios I wrote for a similar presentation right at the end of 2021, then some personal comments.

Airi was hatched from an egg purchased on the black market in the seedy underbelly of Eirdale, a town in the isle kingdom of Sheafell. She has lived her life in the city walls as a street urchin and a crafty thief, mastering the use of her self-contradictory appearance as both innocent child and winged demon, a nocturnal hunter with prodigious strength. She has never met her own kind and knows nothing of gargoyle culture or biology; as such, she is unaware of the gargoyle aging process and believes herself a very petite twenty-year-old woman when physically she is half that age. Airi is loquacious and pragmatic, with a roguish code of honor but the unbalanced emotional state of a growing child. After years alone, she befriended Zaya shortly before the ranger took the initiative to start her mission, and helped to co-found the band of adventurers who now undertake Zaya's quest.

So, yeah, the elephant in the room is that Airi canonically identifies as asexual, unaware that she's actually prepubescent and will probably cease flying that flag as she gets older. So... pretty much the worst asexual representation ever. It just made sense to me that she'd identify that way for now, given her unique and fantastical circumstances. Certainly not meaning to say anything about people who are actually asexual, such as our former art director Stacy, who advised me to include some real ace representation in something soon to make up for it; definitely gonna do that, probably right here in The Choices.

And then there's the other elephant -- because concerns have been expressed since the inception of this world -- about the presence of a child character, one who indeed is chronologically older than she looks, in this R-rated, very sexual story. If you're getting the bad vibe that Airi will be sexualized, rest assured that you won't find that here. To my eye, whether she knows it or not, she's ten and that's all there is to it. You know, prestigious stories like Game of Thrones have child characters, they just generally have those characters steer clear of the story's heavy sexual stuff. And I'll work hard to do that as well. People worry, I get it. From me, you got nothing to worry about.

Aramie is my sister, sharing a family stage name with our mom, like Charlie Sheen. She's a longtime champion of art contests and debate clubs -- couldn't tell ya much beyond that, as she's currently a wild teen who stays out too late and doesn't return anybody's calls. Punkass kid. Long ago, she helped me determine the general vibes of these characters and their destinies, the personal way they'd interpret their RPG archetypes.

Emily was the final addition to the main cast, as the young singer originally set to sing for Airi had to drop out at the very last minute, leading me to call upon Emily, as quite a bit of time had passed since she dropped out of the role of Natha Lee, and I thought she might be able to come back. I met Emily where I met most of the TAPAS crew, in a 2015 stage production of Spamalot. We also worked together on She Loves Me in 2017 and she would seem to be best known for her award-winning performance in Oklahoma! in 2012.

Zaya is a neo-fairy, composed out of pure magical energy which coalesced in the wild forests of Sheafell, into an adult form with a mind full of knowledge of the stars, the trees, and the ways of the world. Styling herself a guardian of nature and a hunter of monsters in the wilderness outside of Eirdale, Zaya was haunted from the day of her birth by visions of a golden talisman in the shape of the sun. Learning of the talisman's existence in a lost ruin within the forest of her origin, she set out to find it and gain its powers of light and goodness, but was betrayed by the fiery priestess Jax who took it for herself. Returning to Eirdale, Zaya resolved to put a band of heroes together to retrieve the sun talisman and put an end to the schemes of Jax's god. Zaya is fierce and noble, motivated by doing the right thing while sometimes getting caught up in making sure she is seen doing so.

Heh, I had forgotten how the beginning of this bio kind of asserted a justification for the "born sexy yesterday" trope; a lot of fey beings in this setting are born as adults, but I wanted to establish that they're not born naïve. It's just kind of a whole thing I wanted to explore, being a semi-recurring element in D&D 4th Edition. Yeah, 4E used to be my game, what can I say.

Ziya is my other sister, she's been in college for what feels like a long time, learning botany and Japanese studies. My sisters are not seasoned performers, but they were sporting enough to drop by the studio during a visit and lay down their voices, though they both declined to do their own singing part. I'm sure they could have sung if they were really into it, but they weren't.

And so Stacy landed the role of Zaya's singing voice, and recorded her singing part remotely from her closet, rather than coming into the studio like everyone else. She was formerly the art director on these projects, but fell chronically ill several years ago, sadly requiring us to eventually soldier on without her, though we keep her in our hearts and minds and hope she gets the help and care she needs.

Stacky comes from the village of Stitwood, born to a single mother who raised her as a charlatan, engaging the populace in cons and scams. Dissatisfied with this life, Stacky travelled to Eirdale to attend the local university. She engrosses herself in lessons of history, legends, and magic, and spends her spare time engaging in music, revelry, gossip, odd jobs, and rampant promiscuity. Stacky was the first to answer Zaya's call for adventurers, and is the group's most valued asset; though a mediocre hand at combat and magic, Stacky always knows what to do, where to go, and who to seek out to fulfill the party's needs and desires, always with a spring in her step, a winning smile, and a generous supply of her wit, cleverness, and charm. Nearly every step of the journey starts and ends with Stacky in bed with some helpful and exciting new acquaintance.

Every member of the main cast is based on someone in my life, who chose what species and class they'd be in a game of Keys & Kingdoms. So Stacky, naturally, was based on Stacy. This includes the various pride flags the characters fly, taken directly from their real-life inspiration, though we've been in production so long that a number of people have changed what they identify as. Stacy, for example, now knows herself to be asexual, and, uh... well, that'd be way too big a change to make to Stacky at this point. I'm bad at this. Both Stacy and Allison are somewhat bewildered by the fact that Stacky is tall -- something they don't usually associate with themselves.

When Stacky's original voice actress dropped out, I was initially in despair. Where, I asked one of my co-producers, would I ever find someone else simultaneously funny, sexy, and nerdy enough to be Stacky? He said Allison's name with no hesitation, which was certainly intriguing. So I saw her in 2021's long-delayed performance of Chicago and signed her up, where she stepped right into the role with gusto and dedication. Her fittingness was only solidified later that same year when she was cast in Beauty and the Beast as one of Gaston's groupies, who served as Stacky's animated face claim. Allison also plays in a band called The Whatevers.

Cristela was born in a lonely jungle grove, within the borders of the southern empire of Itaxan. Though a neo-fairy like Zaya, she has retained the appearance of her birth, that of a typical human woman from Itaxan, rather than creating a new form as most fairies do. Cristela found herself intrigued by fey magic, and protected her grove for much of her early life before being inspired to set off, to find companions who would help her defend the natural order. Sailing to Sheafell, a land often associated with crossing over into the otherworldly Fey Domain, she took up a job as an artisan in Eirdale and joined Zaya's fellowship purely by chance. Cristela is quiet, offering up little information when she speaks and having no personal relationships with any of her colleagues, but remains by their side, sure they are destined for greatness and can open the path to the Fey Domain she craves.

When I decided to turn my market research into main characters for a story, the friend who chose a fairy druid had come out as a trans woman mere days earlier. Since she didn't have a personal style yet, I based Cristela's appearance on her girlfriend at the time. Now, under most circumstances I would have made Cristela trans as well, but this was prevented by the one possible thing that could have prevented it: she had been designated as a fairy, and if a fairy in this setting was trans, well, they'd probably just figure that out within a few minutes of being born and immediately shapeshift into the body they truly want. An appealing fantasy, but not a compelling story. So, from that was born the notion that Cristela stuck with the body she was born with, which is very against the norm for fairies, kind of making her, like... the extreme opposite of being trans. So, yeah, I'm telling a lot of stories about how this cast's diversity could be better, but it's pretty good... especially in the sense that nearly everyone I knew at that time was a woman, I like how that turned out and the main cast it gave us. With the benefit of years having passed, a character who actually is trans, and is more definitively based on Cristela's inspiration, is upcoming.

Jessie is one of the two cast members who was on board all the way from the early 2020 auditions to the late 2021 recording sessions. A stranger to me when she first auditioned, she completely nailed the tone of a character whose voice I had never been able to imagine before. It was awesome. She was just starting to dare to put herself out there; I soon realized I had previously seen her in her stage debut in 2018's Mamma Mia! and later saw her in 2022's Mame.

Maer hails from Mochalli, a coastal town of elven nobility in the empire of Akhmis. Lost among a multitude of siblings and cousins, Maer fled the empire at a young age and went to Sheafell to seek her own fortune. Her luck soon ran out, and Maer found herself homeless in the streets of Eirdale, but over the course of thirty years, eventually grew into the queen of the grimy back alleys of the city, the most notorious gang leader Eirdale had ever seen. Maer joined Zaya's fellowship on a whim, seeking a new sort of entertainment. She battles with underhanded tactics and a vicious blade, aided by the supernatural speed and stealth of her wood elf heritage. Maer is a vocal cynic who often comes into conflcit with Zaya's ideas and methods, and refuses to admit any respect or affection for any around her, but her suspicious mind and reflexive contrariness provide a surprisingly valuable asset to the team.

Mekia is the other cast member who's been around for the entire ride. I sought her out when I saw her looking very intense in a 2020 promo for Chicago, and she dove right in, submitting auditions for four characters and giving the best Maer. After Chicago was put on hold on account of the pandemic, she entered the realm of fantasy gaming again for a webcast performance of She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms. She's continued to rise as a superstar, especially in 2023 when she gave epic performances in Rent and in the title role of Peter Pan.

Natha Lee was raised in Namarion, a cavernous city of dark elves in Alfheim, the traditionally elven territory in the frozen northern nation of Athundoft. At a young age, Natha Lee manifested sorcery, the gift of magic inherent in the blood, though possessing little control of it, had a tendency for destruction and misfortune. As an adult, Natha Lee pursued the life of an academic scholar, but simply lacked the focus and smarts to excel. With no direction in life, Natha Lee emigrated to Sheafell and took up a job in Eirdale's library, before seeking out Zaya's adventuring party at the urgings of Kinzie. Accident-prone, often too shy to speak coherently and too anxiety-riddled to take risks, Natha Lee finds themself in the unprecedented position of being the target of tender affection from most of their fellow new adventurers.

So, yeah, despite appearances, Maer is a wood elf and Nat is a dark elf. In this setting, you can't judge by skin color. Actually, that's good advice anywhere. Let me head off another important thing: ain't no character in this series named "Natha". "Natha Lee" is her first name. You can call her "Nat", but never "Natha".

Nat's inspiration was of course my wife Naty. My spouse's longtime struggles with their gender expression, years spent trying to figure out what's really going on there, inspired the turn that Natha Lee is not struggling at all; while insecure about a lot of other stuff, they're a perfectly content she/they non-binary person, and so the only member of the core cast to be under the trans umbrella.

Hannah joined the cast late, when Emily originally dropped out, and gave a good commitment to getting the accent I wanted for the character -- Naty's Swedish accent inspired the idea that many elves throughout our fantasy multiverse sport the same accent. I first worked with Hannah on the aforementioned 2017 production of She Loves Me and more recently saw her in one of the leading roles in a 2025 production of Into the Woods.

Kinzie was born, in the young adult body she still bears today, in a burst of rainbow-colored mist in a pixie grove at the foot of Mount Olympus, the celestial mountain and home of the gods in the eastern nation of Magnae. Initially content with the pixies' life of frolicking and enjoying beauty, Kinzie was obsessed with the gods and serving them. Growing bitter at the discovery that pixies are stereotyped as flighty children, Kinzie sought to become a paladin, a holy crusader for Athena, and successfully bid for the chance to take that path under the tutelage of the knight Gregorio. The pair adventured together for some time, and were temporarily settling in Eirdale among paladins of Heimdall when Kinzie joined Zaya's adventure. Kinzie, influenced by her newfound knighthood, is an insufferable and condescending snob, but has a soft spot for Natha Lee due to the sorcerer reminding her of simple pixie life.

During the first round of auditions, the actress who I had originally had in mind for Kinzie auditioned for the role -- but in a very unexpected way, giving her a snooty English accent I hadn't anticipated, which influenced the direction of her characterization going forward. It's nice how that lingered even though that actress had to drop out.

Gretchen initially signed on as our production manager, helping coordinate the cast and some of the other steps we took at the time; I asked her at the first cast gathering if she could also take over the role of Kinzie. She struggled at first to find a connection to a character for whom she saw no redeeming qualities, so I gave her some of the hidden insight on the character that we'll learn later. I believe we also met on She Loves Me, and that she's best known for a terrifying turn in Sweeney Todd earlier that same year. She was also one of the stars of the first, and still only, big TAPAS project, the audio drama Better Yet?, released in 2021. Production on Keys & Kingdoms really crashed some time ago, but it's going to resume soon and I hope we get our production manager back -- eventually if not right away.

New character designs!

Several years ago, our art director Stacy fell ill. As I understand it, she's still suffering chronic fatigue that inhibits her ability to do any sort of work, which is very tragic. We're all wishing her the best.

The last thing I had her work on was... adding more mathematical precision to the existing character designs. Why did I think that was a good idea? That was dumb. I regret putting her through that.

To move forward with designing new characters, well... I found that the design system Stacy and I had concocted was rather impenetrable to anyone else, so... what I needed to do was start over, concoct a slightly simpler system that anyone else could jump into. This involved starting by redoing the main characters.

So I found Yeray on Fiverr, and he's been great, I definitely have a lot more plans with Yeray to fully fill out the details of the new process so, hopefully, other artists can jump in and design some characters as well. Here's the height chart of his designs for Irregular Fantasy!

There's some bitterness in having to overwrite Stacy's work. But progress pushes ever forward and I'm confident this is the final and ultimate version of the character design. In addition to the 3/4 view making things a little simpler than the straight front, back, and side of Stacy's designs, this also allows us to lean a bit harder into the intended look of the two stories, Irregular Fantasy! being based upon television cartoons of the 80s such as He-Man, Thundercats, Jem, and of course the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. The distinct fingerprints of Stacy's art style were something I was definitely perfectly okay with, but having to go without her, the opportunity to lean more into the original intent was too tempting to resist.

And with a new art style, I decided it was time to also redo the promotional poses. Keeping them simpler, no longer with extra shading, textures, and details that the model sheets lacked, just purely on-model.

I made a great find here in another Fiverr artist, Nyx. In addition to being faithful to the new art style, I decided that these new images should now be posed precisely like the gaming miniatures that represent the characters in the original Irregular Webcomic!

And I also finally had this group shot made that I've always been wanting! I call it the "drinks promo". The characters enjoy drinking in the comic, and I decided to assign each of them a signature drink, taken mostly from what they usually order in the comic, each drinking from a signature container they presumably carry around with them, and these will be seen in the story every time they get some drinks.

Alvissa has a goblet of fine elven wine, Dwalin has a flask of whisky, Kyros has a bottle of cider, Mordekai a tankard of mead, Draak has a great big mug of stout, and Lambert has ale served in a gallon jug.

I believe this is the first thing I had Yeray work on, the characters of Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices. Always trying to keep every setting artistically distinct, with the Keys & Kingdoms world looking like classic Disney, so we can get a little more wild and cartoony than Irregular Fantasy! -- but just a little, I don't like just how cartoony supporting characters get in Disney films, I prefer to stick to a consistent art style that best matches the attractive main characters. Ultimately any face can serve as an inspiration for a K&K character's face, as long as we smooth out its features to this one consistent art style.

And once again I had Nyx pose them! By now you're likely familiar with these poses, here they are in a new style. Notice little Jax in the lower left; her model sheet is not shown here, as she's not on the height chart, she's our main antagonist, so doesn't usually accompany the heroes in most settings, but she appears in the pilot so I've always included her among the design process of the leads.

And there are new poses as well, and I put them on this background to be the header image of our big pilot fundraiser, once we finish the teaser. Here's another one you've seen already... Overex is a team on Fiverr I've worked with for a long time, being responsible for most of the imagery in the Irregular Fantasy! teaser... but they just weren't as good at matching the Keys & Kingdoms look.

They happen to be in Venezuela, and were in the middle of making this promo when some stupid country invaded their city... their commitment to pulling through and finishing the promo anyway was admirable enough that I just couldn't bring myself to correct any of their mistakes. So for a while that was the official promo, but in the end, I was like, quality and consistency is gonna be very important here, so I asked Nyx to redo Overex's work on these K&K poses, including this promo. Again, it stings a little to have to do that. I really appreciate everybody's contributions, but sometimes those have to be sacrificed to get the material out that's really needed.

While I was at that, I thought, hey, what if I had Nyx redo this Pride Month 2022 image in the new style as well? That was fun.

Let's talk about this one a bit: it only features five of the seven main characters. Maer's out because she's in fact a cishet woman and, at the beginning of the story, a bit too abrasive to want to hang around at Pride waving an ally flag or some such.

Airi, meanwhile, identifies as asexual, but I try to downplay that. Airi knows nothing of the culture or biology of her species, so she's unaware that the reason she's not keen on the idea of sex is that she's actually prepubescent despite being in her early twenties, that's just how gargoyle aging works. She's likely to discover as she matures that she's not asexual. So, you know, worst asexual representation ever, I'll be the first to say it. It made sense that she'd be identifying that way right now given her extremely unique and fantastical circumstances. But she's not actually ace, so I'm going to heavily downplay the fact that she currently elects to fly that flag.

For the record, this is also not one of those anime scenarios where she looks ten but she's actually much older, so you can supposedly depict her in sexual situations. No you can't. She's ten. Period.

And most recently, we've gotten back onto the intended track: designing new characters! I had Yeray make full model sheets for this set.

Saison and Gregorio were conceptualized in early stages by myself, Naty, and Casey, but we didn't give them final designs because while they're major characters on par with Jax, they don't appear in the pilot, so we left them out to save time and effort. Now was the time to fill in some gaps, make sure we really have the procedure down, before moving on to additional minor characters who do appear in the pilot.

I sketched them for the story summary earlier, but didn't give away that the large horned fairy was actually Saison. I'm inconsistent about spoilers. Right now I'm thinking it doesn't matter, it'll be so far in the future that this is given away that surely anyone reading this will have forgotten: Saison and Gregorio start out as very important allies and mentors before it's sadly revealed that they're both evil, both getting a major design change at that moment.

The two officers and their captain have very small roles in the pilot. The pilot is no longer canon, so I think they'll have significantly bigger roles in the real first episode. And the pilot also features a flashback to Cristela's early life, so I made her up a leafy outfit for that scene. These designs were largely improvised in storyboards -- the guards in a scene Sadie did, flashback Cristela in a scene Michelle did -- before being refined in concept art by Naty and myself.

Michelle's storyboards for Cristela's flashback also included some great background character work we've also developed into characters who really will appear in the pilot. And beyond! We're gonna reuse background characters a whole lot, just to be whimsical.

Random Stories

Trying something experimental today, I have a number of random stories on my mind and I'm just going to tell them all.

Cherries

I read a story online once about some young guys who worked at a restaurant, and some older guy comes in and says he wants a sundae, "86 cherries". None of the workers happened to know that "86" is an old-timey phrase for throwing something out, still in common usage in restaurants, and so counted out eighty-six actual cherries to put in the old man's sundae.

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one: I tried to tell that story at work, some restaurant humor for the kitchen, and it didn't get a laugh, and at first I couldn't figure out why. In the awkward silence that followed, I put it together in my head: I had completely flubbed the story... by saying 69 instead of 86. Oh no! I quickly cleared up what I had meant to say, but yeah, I ruined my telling of the story.

That's okay! Just means I now have a story to tell that's twice as long.

Voice Acting and Shujinkou

Shujinkou was one of the best-reviewed games of 2025, and also one of the lowest-selling. It's good, but it's very esoteric: an old-school dungeon-crawling JRPG that's also educational, teaching you the Japanese language while you fight monsters.

For myself, I couldn't figure out the eccentric combat rules or dungeon navigation, and I simply can't connect to such a dense game that has absolutely no voice acting in it, so I abandoned my playthrough very early on. I want to commit to continuing to support Shujinkou, though, as I've worked with the composers and it's just a cool title I want to get more eyes on. I'll make a full let's-play one day.

I'm also still in the game's Discord server, and one day I was talking about how I found it odd that a lot of super-indie video games have no voice acting, a stage that seems to be so much less time-consuming than every other part of game development, especially since most such games also have a fully-realized original musical score, which in my experience is so much friggin' harder to obtain.

The game's creator, Julian, saw my comments and talked a bit about why that's the case for Shujinkou in particular: it's based on older JRPGs which never had voice acting, it may not be time-consuming but it can be expensive for such a big game, and if not done exactly right it can seriously diminish a player's enjoyment, so it just wasn't something that he ever seriously considered prioritizing. It all made sense to me, and he also mentioned he did hope to give his characters voice actors at some future date.

I asked if he had any particular voice actors in mind, and he immediately cited Matthew Mercer and Laura Bailey. And I was like... huh. Is it hipsterish of me to be disappointed? When asked what video game voice actors you'd include in your extremely personal indie project, you immediately name easily the two most famous people in that field? He laughed at that, admitting that he didn't really see Mercer and Bailey that way, as he'd been following their careers since they began.

And I made it clear I wasn't really razzing him; voice actors do not get big and famous in the same way mainstream actors do. The only actual person who ever got A-list celebrity status from voice acting was Mel Blanc -- he's the only voice actor the average audience member has actually heard of and he died almost 40 years ago, and I'd argue the only other person who ever had their career trajectory altered, even slightly, by landing a voice acting role was Ellen DeGeneres.

The big voices in the industry like Mercer and Bailey get paid the same as those who are just starting out. The famous ones are the ones who get lots of jobs in lots of titles, and there's no internal politics, they get lots of jobs because they're very good at voice acting and, if they're known in the industry for anything whatsoever, it's for not being jerks in the booth. So, yeah, might as well go with those two. Heck, I'd hire them too, if I thought I had roles that suited them. Which I occasionally do think.

Sweden

I played Shujinkou with the Japanese-learning part turned off, as I've been needing to prime my brain to learn Swedish, I'll be immigrating to Sweden sometime soon to be with my wife, we've been married almost a year. I can't seem to get anything to stick in my head through independent study, so I'll just be waiting for the mandatory Swedish as a second language classes I'll be taking when I get there. We've been together almost twelve years and I don't know a dang thing; I know ja and nej and jag älskar dig and that's pretty much it. My in-laws think it's cute, but it's not very useful. I can't even read the place names on the signs, because I have no idea what sounds the extra vowels make. I'll probably have to start with that.

I just haven't hugely prioritized it before because, well, everyone in Sweden seems to speak English. When Naty and I are walking around town together and talking, and she needs to talk to someone, she generally doesn't bother to switch her brain to Swedish mode, she just sticks to English and the other person responds in kind.

The only place that doesn't work, interestingly, is when we go out for Japanese food. Every time we've done so, the Japanese waitresses know, at most, enough English to say they don't speak English, then require us to order in Swedish. That makes sense to me. If you're a young Japanese person waiting tables in southern Sweden, I can see why you wouldn't prioritize learning English, that would feel kinda random.

Pet Stroller

My mom got me a pet stroller when Sebastian was getting too old for walkies, enabling us to still go out and get some fresh air. After he died, the cats liked to use it as a perch sometimes, but mostly it took up space. And I do say take up space, because... I never figured out how to fold it back up after I assembled it.

A few weeks ago an old friend, Ashley, was asking on Facebook for a pet stroller she could borrow for a weekend, and I told her I could do her one better and give her mine outright. She came by for it, bought me a beverage in return, and later sent me a video of her on a walk with her elderly little dog. It was bittersweet giving away an item that was associated with Sebastian, but I was very glad to give it to someone who needed it instead of just tossing it aside.

It appears that Ashley's dog passed only a week later, which explains why she was looking to only borrow a stroller for the weekend. Oof, that's sad...

Sleeves

I saw a viral Tumblr post where someone had an idea for a guy: a guy who wears a shirt with some anti-sleeves slogan such as "sleeves are bullshit" or "sleeves are for wimps", but on a long-sleeved shirt. Part of the humor was that the poster was coming up with numerous variants on this single idea to try to find one that sticks.

After seeing that post on my feed a few times, it gave me an idea for some sort of friend or colleague of this sleeves guy: a woman who promotes bralessness with her shirt slogan, something like "no bra club" or "burn your bra", but is very obviously wearing a bra underneath it. Is that anything?

Evil General

Here's a situation you may have seen: someone suffering with depression forgets to eat the bananas they bought, and the bananas get mushy. They inititally feel like a loser for wasting bananas, but decide to reframe it as an opportunity to learn how to make banana bread.

I saw a post online that was a great parody of that concept: a warlord forgets to feed his army and they die en masse, but rather than feeling like a bad general, he sees it as an opportunity to learn necromancy and raise his army up as an army of evil skeletons! Even better!

My mom is always talking about cognitive reframing, so I thought she would appreciate that joke, and I sent it to her. She did not. She lectured me about how the general is a horrible person for letting his soldiers die and their families suffer, and delusional too since learning necromancy isn't actually a thing people can do. Jeez. No wonder she thinks my very typical fantasy stories would be inaccessible to audiences.

Now, to be absolutely fair, which I try to be in all things, I have a long history of being very hostile toward the concept of cognitive reframing, so she didn't grasp the point I was actually making by sharing it, thinking it to be a critique of the concept.

I have indeed critiqued it in the past. Cognitive reframing is basically saying "what you're going through isn't as bad as you think", but sometimes what you're going through is exactly as bad as you think and it's condescending, to a deeply jerkish degree, for someone to suggest otherwise. To tell me that there could be a positive side to some of my life experiences, well, that's just trying to be deceptive, and I don't like deception. So, yeah, I've been extremely hostile to the concept of cognitive reframing, so my attempt to convey that I'd come to understand it since we last discussed it, that fell flat like the cherries story.

Eowyn by Frazetta

This is an illustration by Frank Frazetta, supposedly depicting the scene from The Lord of the Rings in which Eowyn confronts the Witchking. Now, keep in mind that for most of this battle, Eowyn is disguised as a man. Is that the men's Rohirrim uniform she's wearing?

Of course, for most artists, the answer would be no and that would be very hypocritical, but this is Frank Frazetta we're talking about. The men in Frazetta's world go around in thongs too, and often midriff-baring shirts if any shirts at all, but I think even Frazetta wouldn't go so far as to have the men wear boob-shaped armor, so, yeah, he screwed up this scene in a very uncharacteristic way, just as much as any other artist who'd put Eowyn in sexy "women's armor".

Not-so-secretly, I like the "women's armor" trope, with the showing off of the shape and the skin. What do you want from me? I'm a guy. What I'm not is a hypocrite; I like the way Frazetta does it. If the women don't wear armor that actually works, neither should the men. Good armor is no fun. Makes every character look the same. Which is why my characters usually aren't wearing any armor at all, just fabric, so nobody can claim my characters are wearing sexualized, skin-revealing "armor".

Movies: Skinamarink

My final three stories are about movies I've seen recently that I thought were worth talking about. The 2022 horror movie Skinamarink is set in 1995 and is filmed in 1995 quality.

It stars two kids who wake up one morning to find that their parents have disappeared, as have all windows and exits in the house. Being about five years old, they're not as freaked out by this as they ought to be, and simply camp out in front of the TV watching cartoons, having completely lost their perception of the passage of time.

I wouldn't have known that just from watching the film, I only know that's what the film is about because of descriptions of it I read ahead of time. There's very little dialogue, and you practically never see the children, because the film is basically shot from their perspective and they're very uncurious about what's happening around them.

The children's song "Skinamarink" makes no appearance in the film, so I'm not sure why it's called that. It's a very surreal, dull film... I appreciate most works of art that I see, but this one was a dud, I did not enjoy it.

Movies: Smallfoot

Smallfoot is a 2018 animated feature I've been aware of since it came out but never actually decided to watch until recently. I was pretty much aware of the premise. There is a hidden village of yetis in the Himalayas. The yetis have a strict religion, one of the tenets of which is that humans, which they call "smallfoot", do not exist and not to go looking for them. But of course, one young yeti named Migo, played by Channing Tatum, is out exploring the mountain one day when he finds a human, who is himself trying to find evidence of yetis. Also, it's a musical! That's about when people figure this is the kind of movie people made on drugs, but, you know, I never vibe with that idea. Making an animated film takes about three years minimum, I don't think it's possible to stay high that long and competently finish your project while in that state.

I was also aware before going in of the third-act plot twist: the chief elder of the yetis eventually takes Migo aside and reveals to him that the yeti elders have always known humans exist, but kept it a secret from the general population because they feel that if curious yetis seek out humans, the violent history between the two species will reignite. I knew this ahead of time because the soundtrack had come highly recomended, and in the song "Let It Lie", the elder, voiced by Common, explains all this history to Migo via straight-up gangsta rap. Okay, referring to "Let It Lie" as "straight-up gangsta rap" is probably the whitest thing that was said on the Internet today, but still, it's a pretty good song and Common performs it and the surrounding dialogue with awesome intensity.

So, after having that song on my playlist for years, I finally saw the movie. It was... aggressively mid, which I might have guessed from the fact that none of the other songs on the soundtrack were worth listening to, but it might have, I don't know, deprogrammed some children from some strict religions, heck if I know. Like I said, I enjoy most art and I'm glad I finally saw it after all this time, I might watch it again sometime should the opportunity arise.

Movies: Fall

Our final story today, I saw the movie Fall, a 2022 survival thriller, which was recommended to me by a coworker. In this film, two daredevil climbers, Becky and Hunter, climb up to the top of an abandoned signal tower in the middle of a desert. Some pieces fall off the rusty tower when they reach the tippy-top, leaving the two women stranded together on a small platform 2,000 feet above the desert sands.

As I learned when I watched it, this all happens after the opening scene, in which Becky's boyfriend falls to his death while rock-climbing, and some months later Hunter is wanting to get out and climb something again so they can move past it. After the events of the film, I think it's safe to say that Becky will never be climbing anything ever again no matter what. And I think that point is proven by the fact that the recently announced sequel will be featuring completely different characters, because... yeah.

One thing that really caught my eye was, when I rented the film, the streaming service classified it as both a "suspenseful" film, which was to be expected, and also an "erotic" one. I figured that was probably not true, but held onto some hope that, hey, maybe so. Not so much; Hunter wears a very cleavagey outfit for the climb, and Becky's outfit... isn't cleavagey at first but becomes so later, I'm not sure how that works, but by the midpoint of the film they're horribly dehydrated and "erotic" is definitely not the right word, very intense stuff.

This one also has a pretty epic plot twist, but I won't discuss it like I did the previous one, because, well, I'd encourage people to watch this movie. Unless you're reeeeeally not into heights, in which case... you don't want any part of it. But if you like a good thriller with a minimalist cast, definitely go for it.

~

So that was my random collection of stories for today. There probably won't be a comparable blog entry anytime soon, but, you never know, I collect a lot of thoughts, perhaps enough will be worth distilling again later.

Visuals: Irregular Fantasy! Prologue

Another blog entry to serve as visual aids for a story on Archive of Our Own. Irregular Fantasy!: The Prologue was published a little over two years ago, and it's time to add to it the intended fixtures of all our AO3 publications: a cover illustration for every chapter, followed by a bunch of character profiles.

We'll be using these promos as the cover illustrations for the two chapters of the prologue. Future stories will hopefully have more elaborate illustrations.

Those character profiles to come later, to serve as a third and final "chapter" of the story. I have a whole process planned; have to design all the characters in the prologue (not fully, just well enough) and then draw them posing. And then, of course, figure out what to write about each of them.

Irregular Fantasy! Redesigns

Got this done a few months ago: having redesigned the Irregular Fantasy! characters, I also had their promotional poses redone. Found someone going by Nyxthedragon225, who did well enough that we're currently in talks about other stuff, other promotional characters.

The idea was that the new poses would not only match the upgraded designs, but also more closely match the poses of the classic miniatures from the comic.

 

I also made another group shot, one I've been planning for a long time, which I call the "drinks promo". I've come to associate each character with a specific drink, mostly derived from all the times they hit various taverns in the comic: ale for Lambert (served in gallons), mead for Mordekai, cider for Kyros, stout for Draak, whisky for Dwalin, and wine for Alvissa. A characteristic container was designed for each, and their choice of drink will be a recurring thing in the story.