[Comic] Bloody But Unbowed

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

(Invictus, by W. E. Henley)

After a bit of teasing, I finally present A Thing. It's quite a bit different than I originally envisioned, but I'm glad to get it off my desk and I hope you'll find some value in it.

I haven't actually played the Icebrood Saga episode 3 that hit earlier this Summer due to the lack of voicework caused by the pandemic, but I did spend my time running the metas and these three are what actually brought home that "oi, there's a bona fide civil war going on". It was a risky move from ANet, to use characters from old past who are fondly remembered by the charr playerbase and hammer in that anyone can succumb to Dominion propaganda.

Funnily enough, this was originally meant to focus on Elexus (as the Blood representative of the bunch) and was pretty much just three pages of an argument between her, Fyon and Soure, since all three of their personal quests actually deal quite heavily with the concept of loyalty and legion allegiance. It was by far the one charr comic with heftiest research and notes material in terms of me scouring the dialogue and trying to piece together the core of each character's views on the topic. But then episode 4 came along and gave each of them a diary that explained their motives for going turncoat, and I could toss the whole script and start from scratch, since Yahuk got pretty much the same core plot.

It did allow me to just wing it in the writing department by replacing every text with in-game dialogue and go absolutely wild on the layouts, so it's not exactly that bad.

The Making Of of this thing will be fun to dissect.

Full list of charr NPCs appearing in this:
Yahuk Fellstrike, Elexus Shredskin, Luccia Wildeye
Wroda the Quick, Samona Ironclaw, Soure Doomsday, Fyon the Wraith
Ranoah Grindsteel, Vishen Steelshot
Cerosi Breaksteel, Volante Tornpaw, Castor Crushpaw, Nasus Thundershot

P.S.: I wonder if anyone will see something looking back...  

Context for non-GW2 players:

Every charr player gets to choose between 3 legions - Ash, Blood or Iron. Each legion gets a bit different starting story and unique first recruits Yahuk, Elexus and Luccia, respectively. These recruits form the core of your new warband as a player, getting you through the first 30 levels of personal story.

Recent story developments saw Blood legion imperator go rogue (and a bit crazy), start a new charr Dominion and try and recruit as many charr under his banner, which led to a civil war. Many charr players were quite surprised to see familiar names on the enemy roster.

Thank you all my wonderful patrons who keep making these possible. Next up, there's the poll picture from this month to progress, and the first half of October will see me work on something non-charr related that's quite a bit overdue.