This was intended to be posted yesterday as a sneak preview, but now the strip’s posted anyway, so I’ll just make it a freebie. Enjoy and share!<\/p>\n
This is page #141 of the Second Solstera of The Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding<\/a>, of which it is the 501st page overall. The location is the notorious mining prison Bouldershade, which was bombed (allegedly) by Imperial forces at the end of the Battle of Smisland during the Bone Wars.<\/p>\n Zazmene<\/strong> (rhymes with as-many<\/em>) is scaling the other side of the interior of the crater left by the bombing. She hopes to reach what’s left of the prison complex, and possibly locate her father (who is trapped in an immobilizing “idlesuit”), and\/or her old boyfriend Riv (who was unjustly incarcerated by the Empire for refusing to give her up).<\/p>\n Zaz has a long, painful history with the Midirian Empire, even before the Nefarian Era. An unknown informant claimed that Zaz’s father hoarded books that were forbidden under the Empire, and so her house was raided and her family was destroyed. Her father was sent to prison, her mother’s history was rewritten to include the Imperial Debt and enslave her, and her brother was conscripted into the Imperial Army. (He met his end as a general on the IMFA* Derecho, early in the battle with Refusaleth Badidea.)<\/p>\n *Imperial Midirian Forward Airship. I had to go look that up.<\/p>\n All of this happened pre-Narrative, before Zazmene appeared in the Original Saga. When we first saw Zaz, back in 2011, it was on the Drymouth Coast, and she swiped a very important map of the Beyonding from Essul. She tried to escape with her friends on a trolley, but was detained by Faddlegas the great Nard. At one point Zaz slashed Essul in the face, which resulted in a bandage and then later a scar, both of which afforded Essul heretofore impossible facial expressions. All of this actually happened.<\/p>\n Zaz’s friends on the trolley are her boyfriend Riv, and her friends Heglo and Sneza. As seen in recent strips, Heglo and Sneza went on to start a sub shop<\/em> (as in, submersible<\/em>, or in this case a Submersi-Bull<\/em>), where they’d been receiving letters from Riv in prison, until those letters stopped arriving. During this period, Zaz was indebted to the ruthless sky pirate Ussurrup (pronounced like YOU-syrup<\/em>), who held Zaz’s mother Tiscinivel (who had been installed as Imperial Inspectorate) hostage. By the time Zaz reached her mother, likely by design, it was too late.<\/p>\n In the last two panels of this strip, Zaz’s wrist is grabbed by Spaprivun, who has suddenly appeared. The last time we saw Spaprivun<\/a>, he was bickering with his necklace familiar, Verru, while exploring the outskirts of Bouldershade. Coincidentally or not, that was the last page I drew for the rest of last year. Anyway, Spaprivun, whose name I hate typing, claims to sense that his body was born somewhere in Bouldershade. This is all relevant, because Spaprivun’s body is not his own; in fact, Verru has more right to it than anyone.<\/p>\n In the Original Saga, Spaprivun went by a different name. He claimed to be a Knight of the First Solstera, and he was merely a head that continually hunted better materials for a body. Ultimately he attached himself to the body of Curdelbludd, which he utilized until it was reclaimed by its creator, Refusaleth, who squeezed the Knight’s head to the size of a rubber ball and discarded it.<\/p>\n When we finally get a good look at<\/a> the young Agratian cavalier Riverrun, he is sporting a necklace familiar called “Spapou”, who happens to look just like the shrunken head of the Knight. This is not a coincidence. If you recall, Riverrun became catatonic when Zazmene called him “Riv” by mistake*, allowing the WOEWON A-B to smash his skull. His fate since then has been unknown.<\/p>\n *I actually have this wrong. Riverrun returned from catatonia briefly after the WOEWON probed his headstone, to save Zaz. A tussle ensued<\/a>, and the WOEWON touched Riverrun’s headstone again, which appeared to immobilize him. <\/p>\n The clues are there.<\/em><\/p>\n This was a fun strip to draw. It was all about making it look as sheer and dangerous as possible; Zaz clearly rushed into things by diving into the crater, and didn’t think about how vertical the opposite side would be. Even though there are visible ladders<\/em>, a fact which gave me a nice continuity headache for a brief moment. Folks; I hope you appreciate the titanic amount of effort I put into this series. Like, I know I’m no Tolkien, but Tolkien is the standard I try to meet with this property.<\/em> That’s more an analogy than anything; as stated in the awesome video that almost no one saw<\/a> promoting the relaunch of the strip in 2020, the primary influences on The Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding<\/em> are:<\/p>\n 1. The Neverending Story Not so much Tolkien in that regard. Where his influence comes in is the world-building, the fantasy archetypes, and the languages. I can’t for the life of me figure out where I put the list of Beyondigan tongues, and I’m drawing a blank at the moment on examples, so you’re in luck. I’ll wrap this awesome article that’s a good sample of what you regularly get if you’re a paid subscriber, up. Please feel free to share, that’s why I put in all the links. Thanks in advance.<\/p>\n As a sort of bonus, here’s some notes from Zazmene’s first character design page, dated 1\/13\/11:<\/p>\n -knows constructed languages from growing up in Smislandic ghetto<\/p>\n -skilled in unarmed Close Quarter Combat, plus dagger-fighting (Smisland has a prison with a huge hard-labor spar mine.)<\/p>\n
<\/em>2. Finnegans Wake<\/a> by James Joyce
3. Dragon Ball Z<\/em> (manga<\/a>) by Akira Toriyama<\/p>\n