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The Late Strip

Okay, so the thing about not making a weekly deadline is, you took extra time to finish, which is unfair to the rest of the class. I learned this in third grade art. This is why I will often wait until the next Sunday to post a CFB strip if I’m late (which has been happening more frequently), to leave a hole in the schedule and produce the necessary amount of shame to nudge me back on track. However, by ersatz virtue of being late, this strip almost posted on 2/2. I plan to fudge the date on my website and say it posted then anyway. This is a relatively historic strip. 

Here you can see me working on the page in question.

The sorceress Darkana, aka The Dark Witch and The Shadist, is one of the first characters I created for Ceaseless Fables, in 2009. Like Nefaria, she can use “connective darkness” to travel, by entering darkness in one place and emerging from darkness in another. She can also be contracted to relay private conversations, as she does here, which is a precious commodity in the current Beyonding, wherein everything is investigated or supervised by the Empress. 

Crybdeth was created in 2010 to be the overseer of Bonehenge, the ossuary prison that held Nefaria until her escape in #330 (2017). She is the first ever to escape Bonehenge, and Crybdeth took it very personally. It is rumored that he steals the breath of infants. You are about to learn of a battle that has rocked the Aresinian Coast for the last seven years (BT), that began with the demand for the extradition of the Fraudulent Empress. Seriously it’s gonna be hot stuff. 

Eagle-eyed readers may have recognized the guy in the last panel of #42 from #349 of the original strip, getting kicked out of Castle Creepwood alongside the loathsome Orduroc. Here we see him twenty years older (BT) as General Etalun Risiodos, who served Nefaria in the Bone Wars. Yes, you read that right. I told you. Hot stuff. In case I don’t get to reveal it in the strip proper (or forget to do so), Etalun is a reformed Obsolesmian (follower of Obsolesmus, the Dark Unmentionable who was summoned to Ystyr by Refusaleth) from an old Fargonian sycophant family. That’s why he hates his surname; it reminds him of his past, before he became Nefaria’s star general. Also, it reminds him of someone who disappeared from his life a long time ago. 

More on that next Sunday. Be there!