The Guide to Forgotten Monsters volumes 2-4 Behind the Scenes

Hail and well met, adventurers!

The Guide to Forgotten Monsters is all wrapped up, but I have more to share. It's time to take a peek behind the DM's screen and see what could have been and what almost was!

BARB

In TGTFMv2, Barrek turns into Barb through the fel magic of the Masculinity Devourer! Of course this was inspired by the Intellect Devourer from classic D&D. At the beginning of the comic I didn't really know what look I was going for. Initially Barb was going to be less Red Sonja and more American Gladiator:

Of course Barb ended up going the Babearian route, which I think kept the comic more firmly in the realm of fantasy.

MELANDARA

So with volume 3 I decided to introduce two new characters in Melandara and Gelliger. I knew I wanted to keep the dynamic of a three-person party intact so I limited the amount of time we get with Melandara. This also let the audience have a healthy distrust of her.

Melandara was my tribute to the Living Armor. When I used to play D&D more often, I would think to myself "what if someone was trapped inside of one of those. That would be kind of awful."

I almost wrote myself into a corner with Melandara and her plans. I loosely established the rules, but I don't think I conveyed the idea super clearly so here's her whole thing:

• Melandara and Gelliger, along with their third party member, raided the dungeon 100 years ago. Things went bad and Melandara died. Being a practitioner of soul magic, she was able to store her soul in the gem built into her armor. Then Gelliger, being the last one alive, sealed off the dungeon for 100 years, so that it would be lost to time and no one could get in or out. That used up nearly all of his mana. When a mage dies when they run out of mana, so Melandara enclosed Gelliger in her armor to protect him. The two wandered the dungeon and learned its layout, though they were in no condition to fight Silverthroat. She didn't want to possess Gelliger as that would have probably killed him. When Melandara saw Prince Wald's gem, she saw an opportunity to possess a younger, stronger body. She just needed to align his essence the correct way. With the Gelatinous Boob, she was able to transform most of his masculine essence into feminine essence so their souls would be compatible. She possessed the new princess, but Wald kept her at bay. If Wald had given in when she made contact, the transformation would have been complete and Melandara would have been in a younger version of her own body. Instead they were stuck half-way and just had to make it work, because Melandara wanted to defeat Silverthroat and steal the idol once and for all. She sealed away the rest of Wald's masculine essence and the two became bonded at the soul-level.
  
  It was pretty tricky to get all of that information into as little page space as possible.

GELLIGER

My idea with him was always to have him sacrifice his final mana to save the day and halt the ritual. Initially it was going to be his spell that rescued everyone from the dungeon, but that didn't feel sufficiently wizardly enough and it didn't solve the problem of the ritual, so I shifted his role with Dale's.

WALD

Wald's story was actually the simplest to tell. He's a prince with no real ambitions who just wants to party all the time. His, or rather her, adventure through the dungeon gave her companionship and a sense of responsibility. Back home she still lives the lavish lifestyle of a princess, but now she cares about others a little more. Sharing her body with Melandara was actually the best thing to happen to her.

DALE

Dale had the most gradual transformation of the book. I always knew I wanted her to end up as a bleach-blonde bimbo elf. I still wish I could have worked her hair transformation more clearly into the text of the book. Dale contracted Fabulice on this page of volume 1.

Since this moment, I wanted to show Dale's hair growing longer. Fabulice were inspired by that one episode of Futurama where Fry gets worms that make him a better person. I wanted to write a guide page for them, but it just never quite made sense. Essentially they spread through a population and psychically manipulate their hosts into keeping up their hair into various feminine styles and presenting more femm, eventually creating a hive-centric matriarchal society.

In case you were wondering who that dead person is: remember how Melandara and Gelliger had another companion in their travels, Korgoth the Wastelander?

Well now you know what happened to him.

Originally I was going to make Dale much more of a slutty character, but that fell away as the story started to take shape. She became way more of the rare nerd bimbo archetype, like the main character from Read or Die.

THE DUNGEON
Some my inspirations were other fantasy comics, like Dungeon Meshi and Tower Dungeon. I wanted to capture my own view of a massive, nearly impossibly large dungeon. I never made a map because that would have taken away the spontaneity of designing the various rooms and made the dungeon too finite.

I never stated it on page, but the dungeon eventually becomes known as The Dungeon of Lost Legends, which is a small series of illustrations I did a few years ago. I'd like to get back to those some day and do something set in another era.

MONSTERS

Here's some unused monsters from before I knew this was going to be a full comic

SILVERTHROAT

When I started The Dragon Queen's Thirst, I didn't know she was going to end up being such a prominent member of the cast in my next big story. I wanted her reveal to feel special, so I only but a nod to her in volume 2.

Obviously her final form is different from her earlier versions, but I think it just shows the transformative nature of the curse.

CONCLUSION

The Guide to Forgotten Monsters was a really fun project to work on. It was also a lot of work. With Dragon Queen's Thirst included, that totals up to 101 comic pages in this story. This is by far the longest story I've ever written and drawn. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed making it. Thanks for joining me on this adventure into the dungeons of time.