Author notes

Book one, page 8

bravo1102

on March 6, 2017

The first time the comic was posted about 12 years ago, the site's photo hosting had a glitch where it wouldn't accept the number 8 anywhere in a file name. So this page was originally 7_1. So all the files for the first couple of scenes are numbered 7, 7_1, 9.

I made a couple of last minute dialogue changes this morning. I have a feeling this may be too much foreshadowing too soon, but Halfdan is a major character so it makes sense to at least mention him and King Falkimir has reason to remember him. The Norse army was led by King Olaf of Norlar and Jarl Egill just the same as the Narthatheian army is led by King Falkimir and several of his dukes.

Halfdan was the creation of a friend of mine for my college D&D group. He was extremely memorable. I had already created Narthatheia and didn't want the player characters destroying my history so I separated their story line from Falkimir by a century. Then some years later I decided to combine the two saying the separation had been made by chroniclers who could not reconcile Halfdan the great Norse hero co-existing, even serving Falkimir the great Narthatheian hero. So revisionist historians recognized that the two co-existed and interacted. And this is the true story with my D&D campaign being the legend.

Now why Norse in a fantasy world? I like them, did a lot of research so stuck them in there. Narthatheia is totally made up. But it co-exists with some historical places (Norlar and Brythia) and like Conan is in some pre-historical never-never land some 35,000 years ago that a natural disaster will totally wipe from the history books. In fact it's the same antediluvian world that will give rise to the Aordians. Narthatheia was their homeland and would evolve into a technological civilization a thousand years after Halfdan and Falkimir.

To an Aordian, Falkimir is a legendary hero lost in the mists of pre-history. But they know as much about him as we do about the historical Arthur the Bear.