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.
No comments:
Post a Comment