So this strip features the introduction of a new character, who’s bound to rise to the very top of the popularity chart nearly immediately! I’m referring, of course, to the Elder’s doctor, an unseen character, whose well-meant and well-timed piece of advice has saved everyone from at least three more strips full of broad outlines, blatant exposition and randomly scattered nebulous hints of things to come.
For that’s what the Elder was bound to deliver, since it’s basically part of his job description. But thanks to the timely medical intervention, K’ip gets a mission, a map and is (almost) out of there already! Habitual cutscene-skippers would be particularly grateful for this turn of events, I’m sure.
As will be K’ip himself, whose patience has already been somewhat taxed by the mere name of the mystical McGuffin he’s supposed to find. He valiantly struggled to maintain the state of rapt attention that’s expected of him when listening to the Elder, but then his cat nature demanded its due. After all, the Elder isn’t shiny or moving quickly, and it’s been a full few minutes since K’ip’s last nap.
So he definitely prefers to receive his crucial info-dumb in a visual form, instead of a verbal one…although the map has, admittedly, a slight bit of a readability problem. It’s a fantasy world, after all, and that comes with an assumption that such a culture’s map-makers would put a lot more stress on the ornamental and decorative qualities of a map than on the actual information content. But if you look very closely, you can make out some snippets of geographical features between the title ribbon and the putti on top of the compass rose…I think I see some sort of river there? Or perhaps it’s a road. And there is woodland indicated…or perhaps it’s the texture of the paper. Well, this should be helpful: Look for a river or a road in a region that is, or isn’t, wooded. >_> But make sure it’s the right one.
Long-time readers might have the feeling that they’ve heard the name of that amulet before, and that’s indeed the case – it appeared in chapter two, where it was a crucial clue to the mystery of Snuka’s ancestry…until it turned out to have been a fake lead. Uh…I’ll put a link to that here once we’ve managed to get the archive of past chapters up and running on this new site. ^_^; The overly-long name isn’t a real name, of course, it’s actually just a list of basic Korean vocabulary – but I think it works well enough as a fantasy name. And recycling the name doesn’t only save me the effort to come up with a new one, it also ties the two continuities together, just as if I had planned that. XD
I will not comment on that bit about a group of heroes summoned from a different world…I think it’s reasonably obvious who that might be, ain’t it? =P
More on Mon…uh, Thursday.