3230 A Volume Issue
on June 19, 2019
Chapter: Force of Hobbits
Characters: Charla Firelight, Urzal Firelight
Location: Firelight Academy of Music
Fun with Cosplayers:
The real Levena & Zac dressed as Cadugan & Lucas, standing with the REAL Cadugan & Lucas.
-R
Just how low cut was that chainmail shirt? Female fantasy world armor strikes again.
Don’t take it Urzal! That armor is for a bard and you clearly seem more the ranger type!
Man she does have teeny shoulders, is she half orc-half stick? (I joke at her but I love how different looking all the characters can be, this twiggy half orc is adorable)
Y’know, there is almost certainly a spell for that. I bet Eddy and Meegs both know how to cast it, too.
…what? I meant for resizing *armor*.
I expected the problem to be that it’d be too short, not that it would be too broad. But that’s an easier issue to solve: Just rob the wardrob of a 1980s business woman for some power shoulder pads and there yo go!
Realistically, mail shirts were worn over a jacket of quilted padding anyways. It may be too warm during the summer, but the quilting protects against blunt trauma.
Rich, now I realise you probably have the next few strips already done, but this might be the perfect setup for "who the heck taught you how to wear chainmail?" joke, with an appropriate clocking of the perpetrator. Or the whole "you never mentioned that" followed by "yeah, I thought it was obvious! Who wants those links rubbing against you with only a thin shirt in between?"
Aw Fnordius! You’re mistaking real historical armour with cartoon D&D fantasy armour! Fantasy armour comes with a soft inner coating of the finest Fluffbeast down and slickeel oil. You have to get the mixture just right or the down gets prickly and leaves a rash. On the other hand, Mithril mail and Elven undershirt linkmail is tough to breech but feels like a kevlar bedsheet! Imagine how real soldiers in history might have fared if they’d had that kind of luxury! Heck, soldiers might still be wearing it today, if only for the feel of it against their skin at night.
With D&D fantasy armor, if it’s enchanted, it automatically resizes itself to fit the wearer. Obviously this is just a regular chain shirt.
So, Urzal’s probably half elf/half orc? That would explain her youthful flat-chested-ness, since Elves usually don’t have superprominant breasts.
I never said it was magic. Just made in a fantasy world.
That. Also, think about all those clothes wizards and mages wear in different fantasy games, or the (in)famous bikini-armour. They never cover much, and yet, always protect the entire body. You know, its just how it works. 🙂
Guess I am revealing my GURPS predilections here, heh.
That, and I think others have already done the gag already. It’s a sort of "new guy making a dumb rookie error" or "naive believer of stories" joke. Which you already subverted when we first met Glom.
Still liking your art and storytelling, so don’t think im criticizing you, dear sir! I just thought it might be funny to have the kid wear layers and be annoyed by it.
Not taken as a criticism! I just hold with the fantasy armour thing. Reality can be a bit of a downer on fantasy aesthetic I find.
As Adam Savage said on Mythbusters, "Reality makes for lousy special effects." Clearly Rich has "rejected reality and substituted his own."
Oh, good mother… You don’t wear chainmail shirt without proper under armour, if you don’t want all those rings stuck in your flesh.
Ah, you too! Heheheh.
I’ve got a feeling that she’ll be following a similar path to Jone Half-Orc.
She seems too well-adjusted currently to go Jone. As far as we know, there’s no trauma in her past.
Yeah; Jone is fueled by pure, incandescent anger. The closest we’ve seen Urzal come to anger is griping about orc-face.
Hey, speaking of orc-face, I was just thinking recently about what a wonderful job Rich does of showing us who a character is in a few words and quick sketches. The moment Urzal grumbled "I’m not an orc. I don’t want to do the Orc-Face!" I felt like we knew years of history for her.
Unless I’m reading it totally wrong, when she and the other kids were small, they would all LOVE Urzal’s scary orc-face trick, and Urzal would delight in being the center of attention while her friends laughed and screamed in pretend-terror. Then they were teenagers, and instead of wanting to stand out, Urzal wanted to be like everyone else. Orc-face wasn’t fun anymore for her, and after a few sullen retorts, they stopped asking her to do it.
And now she’s in those awkward young-adult years when you start to realize that the things you thought were vitally important as a teenager are actually not such a big deal, and you can relax about them a little…but you’re not quite READY to relax. If you’re not about angst over being different, then what ARE you about? You’re not quite sure yet.
And today, she has her answer. She’s about saving the world.
Not many writers could invoke all that in one grumpy line from a character we hardly know yet, but Rich makes it look easy.
Wow…. That’s pretty much exactly how I imagined her background and yet had no idea I was conveying it. You’re good!
Exactly! Very well said. 🙂
Mammarius Engorgo!
It’s Harry Potter’s dirty little secret that that’s his favorite spell.
But it’s HERMIONE GRANGER’S DLS that it’s HER favorite spell, too!
She’s cast it on Ron eight times and he STILL hasn’t figured out the counterspell.
Or at least he SAYS he hasnt.
Just take in the neck.
I was just going to say "Adjust the neckline with some leather laces" since it’s pretty hard to truly do alterations on chain mail.
That way, if she did want to wear something padded underneath (to appease those who know way to much about medieval armor vs DnD fantasy armor), she could and adjust the neck line appropriately. Like corset strings.
(though I did like someone’s idea of the 1980’s shoulder pads!)
I got a bit of a deja vu feeling from when the Khalifa gave her armor to her daughter. lol
Heheh, ’tis no accident.
hihi only this time no ‘well it was over 20 some years and 3 children you know
Oh, do you have a link for that part?
I myself was rather thinking of Frodo and Bilbo…
You’ll find it here:
https://yafgc.net/comic/1467-sahars-new-assignment/
Thanks! 🙂
Having a *link* for it. Nice pun 😛
The subtle, unheralded beauty of YAFGC is how it uses the space *between* strips. Today’s strip is an excellent example.
Last strip: Urzal enters the scene. We anticipate conflict.
This strip: They’ve had *an entire discussion* already. Stuff we as readers already know or expected, so it’s not terribly interesting to go over it (again). Rich cuts straight to the important lines and the main dramatic beat: Urzal states her case; Charla concedes.
It’s fantastic storytelling.
t!
I thought of it as lazy originally, skipping over huge chunks of narrative because I knew I was up to a boring bit. But I like the way you put it better. 🙂 Thank you!!!
You call it ‘lazy;’ I call it ‘intuitive.’
t!
Whitespace is as much a part of the art as the lines, so to speak. Your use of silence, omission and forward momentum conveyed what was important to the two of them, and what wasn’t, brilliantly.
🙂 Thank you. 🙂
And instead of watching a predictable quarrel play out to its predictable result, we move straight to that look of pure delight in Panel 4. Everyone wins!
(And don’t worry, Urzal; tall, spindly orcs are as badass as any other orc. When you run into the former Black Mountain crowd, look up Gadgia.)
Urzal do Orc Chest!
HAHAHAHAH! That needs to be on a tee-shirt. But… I wouldn’t wear it.
A true milestone has been achieved here at Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic:
The *absence* of boobies.
t!
Yes, that’s been bothering me too.
Did I miss Charla’s ‘adventuring’ days? I know she was a wandering bard, but I didn’t realize she was a fighter. I wonder what Clover would think? And when did Charla adopt Urzal? I’M SO CURIOUS.
One of the characteristics of YAFGC’s world (be it a strength or a weakness, you decide) is that it’s far bigger than I am able or inclined to write about in entirety. I try to hint at swaths of history or simple past events like this. But sometime between Clover getting sent to prison and then running off to Greyfort and the reunion in the "Lich of the Rings" story, Charla left home and became an adventuring bard.
These adventures of Charla’s (with Roberta and Vanessa and Stonefoot among others) were chronicled in a D&D campaign I ran many years ago called "The Further Legends of Falania" (A sequel to a shorter campaign I ran called "Legends of Shadow and Light", which featured Shawn as the Fox and Sayedrah among others). I have it all pretty well documented in reams of DM notes from those days, and it’s included in my Timeline of YAFGC History which I call my YAFGC Silmarillion.
Many placenames and maps of YAFGC’s world are taken and edited together from several campaign I ran or played in over many years throughout my 20’s and 30’s. To me and my friends, these places already existed a long time ago and are meant to be familiar landmarks to those in the know. Hopefully to become that for those who read the comic for any amount of time too.
I like that this world is so much bigger than this comic can portray.
Never mind her boobs, what about her shoulders? And passing down your old armour kind of works better if there isn't a huge difference in *height*.