SkyHorn Adventures - The Lion Explains it All

Here we are guys, back with the two pages per week update. First things first, the link for Odam’s loincloth is here.

The first page was a challenge: fitting three majestic dragons in three 16:9 frames, you can appreciate them in the following crops. Not fully, because technology hates me and, despite having exported a backup copy, it didn’t save, and the full depiction of the Fire Dragon, is lost forever.

You will never appreciate the bronze boots I gave him.

(Not quite forever, I’ve still the sketches and the lineart, but it was still upsetting.)

By the way, I anticipate some of the information I will (hopefully) cram in the space of the comic pages that is not occupied by beefy hunks with magic powers.

Dragons, as I said many times, are the gods of this word. Supergods, I’d said, because other gods exist on the mainland but are way less powerful and are “just” mortal heroes deified by the dragons after their death. Like Hercules/Heracles in Greek Mythology.

Sea, Earth, and Sky Dragons are the primeval triad, they created the Men (with the contribution of the Abyss Dragon, but that’s another story), but the Men were savage and ferine towards one another, so the Dragons argued with one another about who screw up the creation, they brawled and the morning after all the three of them were carrying an egg.

From the three eggs hatched the Civilization Triad, the three Dragons that guided embodied more specific natural forces and guided the men towards the science, technology and art, that make the lives in the gilded cage of civilization worth to be lived.

Falamaco, the Fire Dragon

Sadly this is the concept that was more badly botched by the loss of data. His epic bronze boots now exist only as a sketch. Me sad.

Being a Fire Dragon, the most classic of elements associated with them, I’ve designed him to look like a classic dragon, with a lizard-like face. Uh yeah, his element, Fire, is a product of Sky and Earth. No four-elements system here. Fire is a chemical reaction and can’t exist on its own. It needs to combine something containing carbon (Earth) and oxygen (Sky.)

It’s also the god of Math and the Forge, the Hephaestus of this world. Just more assertive and less awkward and creepy and used the fire in order to purify metal out of rocks.

Its association doesn’t make him less creative than his brothers-cousins, because also Math and Engineering require a lot of intuition and lateral thinking.

Silivaco, the Wood Dragon

Despite being wood the last thing you can associate with a Dragon, this is the design I’ve enjoyed more. I love hippy-dippy dudes that are all about Planet Earth, spirituality, and singing on the beach.

Also wood and ecology are a good association with sound-based art, which is more contemplative than the others. Imagine him fabricating sustainable paper and instruments and planting a new tree for each one that gets cut.

Ineveraco, the Ice Dragon.

That was more of a stretch, because Ice doesn’t make reliable art material, but isn’t all art material unreliable in the end? Won’t every statue and painting ever created be one day so worn out to be unrecognizable?

Isn’t art made out of Ice a metaphor of the romantic and hopeless effort to let a durable trace of ourselves in the world, that sooner or later will melt on the ground no matter what?

Cheap philosophy apart, that’s the Dragon we will have to deal with in the next chapter.

Each one of these three lives in a city of the Island, obviously with a steampunk, forest, and glacial theming.

Yeah, SkyHorn is one of those videogame islands that can contain an insane amount of different climates and cities on its quite small area. Don’t you love those?

Please tell me which is your favorite dragon design.