originally posted at https://comicalmomentum.tumblr.com/po...
A worried villager comes to Lupiko’s shop, ATELIER LUPIKO. “Atelier” is actually a word in English that I didn’t know, meaning “a workshop or studio especially for an artist, designer or fashion house.”
A villager’s daughter is ‘slowly mineralising’, which sounds like something out of a Porpentine game. There’s something called ‘Dweomer’ left which means it’s ‘thaumic’, i.e. ‘magick’.
The culprit is a Crystal Basilisk, and the cure is Crystal Basilisk blood. But Lupiko has a problem with flying, so she recruits the two adventurers from before, whose names are Redcloak and Fodderman (pff, I’m sure they’re going to be very longlived).
The author is providing the instant gay shipping fanart for us. That’s unusual.
OK this is cute.
Really not seeing what the rollerskates are a philosophical metaphor for, haha.
There’s a DnD character sheet for Lupiko complete with an extensive backstory. From it, we can discover:
- Witchcraft is an established profession, Kiki’s Delivery Service style.
- Lupiko works in a town called Ponsbury-on-the-Mere (which sounds even more British than most towns in Britain!). Her mother worked in a large trading city called Gyranfryll Wabe.
- Lupiko’s surname is Kazemahou. Even I know enough Japanese to see that that’s ‘wind-magic’.
- Her mother’s name is Faelini and she had an abusive aunt called Muri.
- there’s a legal act called the Arcane Witch Traditional Principles Act. It’s not clear what government passed it, or how it’s enforced.
- there’s probably a place called Ranflesmeknuria, which makes a delicacy called Klefesters.
- Somehow there’s Wicca in this setting?
- Separately listed ‘sex’ and ‘gender’. That’s a discourse I’m glad to see the back of…
- Her DnD character sheet has a Kinsey Scale field. (…honestly, why is ‘on a scale to 0 to 6 how gay are you’ so popular a measure?) Lupiko rates a 3.5, which means she’s bi.
- The language spoken here is called Talcryl.
- There was once a “wolvish witch” called Aroo.
- The currency in the area is the Til. Lupiko has 122 Til.
- Elves are a thing.
The Crystal Basilisk has a really neat design. No obvious quadrupedal shape: it’s just a big crystal that sticks out smaller crystals haphazardly in order to move around. It gets DnD stats too, and the description of the way it moves around is really inventive.
I’m so glad RPGs now are moving away from DnD.
Anyway the Crystal Basilisk falls off a cliff and Lupiko seemingly can’t retrieve its blood from there. Hmm. I think that’s actually an early indication of something about this world. But this means Lupiko can’t save the daughter. Fortunately Uni can save the day by doing something… poking a hole in the daughter’s arm an drooling in it? Because of Unicorn powers..?
Yeah it’s the unicorn stuff. It hasn’t eliminated the infection, but it’s allowed the daughter to recover as a composite entity thing.
Also the Holy Unicorn appears to be a god-analogue? This was suggested earlier in Lupiko’scharacter sheet.
The daughter’s name is revealed to be Chou (previously Amalthea), and sure enough, she also gets a character sheet.
Explanation for what Uni did:
The girl was saved from certain death by the actions of both Lupiko and Uni, but especially by Uni, who impaled the child with its horn, and injected what Uni believed was the very substance it had gained from the Holy Unicorn. This noble and total self sacrifice saved the girl’s life, more or less, but left Uni to revert to being a wretched Slime once more.
so yeah Uni spat unicorn piss directly into her veins. nice
also Chou is named in-strip.
OK there are in fact chapters and we’ve just reached the end of one!
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