Ladies and Gents, I present to you my next big project. Dun­geon Crawlers is (going to be) a Heroic/High Fan­tasy Web­comic writ­ten and drawn by yours truly, with some edit­ing and cre­ative input from my bril­liant friend XIV­cal­iber.

Cur­rently the comic is still in the devel­op­ment process (iron­ing out the fine details of the plot, doing drafts of the first arc, etc.) but I have quite a few details to share that don’t actu­ally spoil any of the story.  Read on, but make sure you have enough time on your hands; there’s a whole lot to read through!

Set­ting

Dun­geon Crawlers is set in my Con­structed World, Orbahlen (pro­nounced Orb-uh-lin).  It’s a World In The Sky, con­sist­ing of four mas­sive con­ti­nents and assorted arch­i­pel­a­gos which are bound in a rough sphere around Amma, the God­dess of Life, whose will is what pre­vents these remain­ing land­masses from float­ing off or dis­in­te­grat­ing further.

The story begins on the con­ti­nent of Ailev, eas­ily the most pop­u­lous and tem­per­ate of the four con­ti­nents.  It’s divided into eight coun­tries, each with a num­ber of dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures which I unfor­tu­nately can’t talk about right now.

There are seven fully sen­tient races across Orbahlen.  These include:

Humans: One of the two “Empire-Building” races, humans have dura­bil­ity and adapt­abil­ity on their side.  Unlike many other (pos­si­bly most other) fan­tasy set­tings, humans are not the sin­gle most pop­u­lous or wide­spread race; they com­pete for that title with the avians, detailed below.  “Human” cul­ture, at least what lit­tle exists, places great empha­sis on the creed, “We were here first.  Before the avians, before the devials, before the xal­vians, we walked this world.”

Avians: The other one of the two “Empire-Building” races, both avians and humans have been defined in the dis­tant past as rivals and com­peti­tors, each seek­ing to outdo and under­mine the other.  Avians resem­ble anthro­mor­phic birds, with down-covered bod­ies and a ves­ti­gal beak which appears to be a nose at first glance.  How­ever, avians have humanoid mouths and forward-bending knees, and what­ever nat­ural flight they may have once pos­sessed has long since van­ished.  Avians are lithe and agile, and develop remark­able exper­tise in what­ever skills they study.

Elvan: An off­shoot of humans which devel­oped over mil­lenia on the bru­tal desert con­ti­nent of Shrith, elvan are far less pop­u­lous than humans but stub­bornly hold them­selves sep­a­rate from their “soft” breth­ern.  Elvan are tough, gritty, and abra­sive; their cul­ture is stern and unfor­giv­ing, hav­ing evolved in an envi­ron­ment which dealt with weak­ness by tear­ing the flesh from its bones.  They are incred­i­ble hunters, explor­ers, and war­riors, but don’t ask one to do any­thing requir­ing tact and grace; you’ll get a lob of spit in the face for your trou­ble.  A pretty far cry from Tolkien’s elves.

Relta: Another, more mys­te­ri­ous off­shoot of humans.  His­tory seems to have lost track of what sep­a­rated them from human­ity orig­i­nally; some sug­gest they were once the upper caste of some long-lost civ­i­liza­tion, becom­ing so dis­tant from their infe­ri­ors that they began to change into the smaller, more del­i­cate, and more comely beings they are today.  Relta are nat­u­rally cun­ning and affa­ble, but nowhere near as tough as their elvan and human relatives.

Devials: A race of (barely) humanoid rep­tiles.  The devials have an incred­i­ble tal­ent for the arcane arts; it was a devial which cre­ated the first air­ship, allow­ing travel between the con­ti­nents, and it was another devial which first devel­oped a sci­en­tific approach to arcane magic, found­ing an entire pro­fes­sion ded­i­cated to the cre­ation of devices pow­ered by arcane laws.  They are the third most pop­u­lous race, after humans and avians.

Xal­vian: A race of quasi-animal humanoids with antler-like helms, fur-covered bod­ies, long heads, clawed hands, thick drag­ging tails, and deeply spir­i­tual mind­sets.  They’re one of the less pop­u­lous races, but their iron-clad faith (of one kind or another) and knack for divine magic means that they’re in lit­tle dan­ger of dying out.  Xal­vians are also well-liked almost every­where, due to a long-standing tra­di­tion of pro­vid­ing heal­ing and aid to any who request or require it.

Spir­i­men: The least pop­u­lous of the races, and the one most likely to be the tar­get of sus­pi­cion (unde­served) or racism (unfounded).  They’re also the youngest of the races; accord­ing to the lore of the spir­i­men, their fore­run­ners were orig­i­nally cre­ated by a magic-wielder of untold power, who attempted to siphon power from the God­dess Amma her­self to bind spir­its from the Ethe­real Plane to phys­i­cal bod­ies to cre­ate his own per­sonal army.  While the spell was suc­cess­ful, the magic-user was anni­hi­lated by the spell, leav­ing hun­dreds of sen­tient beings dis­ori­ented by the sud­den seper­a­tion from their nat­ural envi­ron­ment.  Phys­i­cally, spir­i­men remem­ble strongly built humanoids; how­ever, their skin is a pearly white tinged with blue, strange to the touch, and their bod­ies lack many of the fea­tures that humans take for granted.  Their hands are large, and have only two fin­gers and a thumb (all of which end in points).  Their faces appear to be white masks, with two large, ovu­lar eyes which glow with a uni­form light blue.

Char­ac­ters

Tal, the pro­tag­o­nist of the story. She’s a human, 6′ 3″, 206 lbs., and one of the nicest peo­ple you’ll ever meet. She’s not bad with a sword, but she’s inex­pe­ri­enced with adven­tur­ing in general.

Gear, a devial and one of the first to join Tal on her jour­ney. He’s an adven­turer first, and a sci­en­tist as a (very close) sec­ond. He’s young, arro­gant, and on occa­sion, brilliant.

Menna, an elvan magi­cian pur­sued the arcane arts due to her vora­cious hunger for knowl­edge. She hits it off with Tal thanks to their sim­i­lar back­sto­ries, and is Tal’s first com­pan­ion on her first adventure.

Hope­fully this will get you inter­ested in the comic itself.  I can’t give you an exact date for when it will start, but check back in peri­od­i­cally; I’ll be sure to make a absolutely MASSIVE announce­ment once the comic begins.

Keep on Dreaming,

Jake the Dreamaniac

Dun­geon Crawlers, Orbahlen, and all related char­ac­ters and infor­ma­tion are copy­right Jake Cour­ing­ton 2010.