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Synopsis:
Sheriff and local witch of Dull Water County, Mrs. Vera Devoy has filled many roles in her day. But in the aftermath of a murder close to home, she finds herself playing detective in Old Shepherd, a city of ancient ruins wrapped over in new construction. So far from her familiar swamp, Vera feels lost amongst the strange tech and towering buildings, and to make matters worse...
She has little time left.
About The Setting:
I should preface by clarifying that these characters are not actually speaking English, nor are signs written in English, nor do they have English names. Everything has been translated from the dominant language of Loom. Names are translated based on a combination of approximate meaning and sound (My excuse for not coming up with creative, alien-sounding names).
A Backwater Repose takes place in the city of Old Shepherd, located in the greater Dull Water County on Sphirin. This is only a tiny section of a much larger sci-fi/fantasy universe I have named Soulbearer. In this universe, the Soulbearers are a group of twelve species/races, whose intelligence comes not from their brains, but from an energy contained within their bodies referred to as the soul. Imagine a fox possessed by a human ghost, acting with an intelligence above what it should have, and which it would lose were the ghost removed. This is how the Soulbearing Species live.
In this setting technology and magic work in tandem, and are equally viable paths to reaching goals, though they do have different strengths. As new tech grows more sophisticated and diverse, old magics grow tempered and potent. Both the newer and older something is, the greater the use which can be found for it. The planets in this setting are home to staggering technological achievements, and strange twisting things that dart and flicker in the spaces forgotten within the trees.
And on no planet is this contrast more vivid than Sphirin.
About The Comic:
I originally meant for this project to be a practice comic to precede a much bigger but unrelated story I had been mulling over for quite a while. Vera, after all, was made up on a whim only to end up an NPC for a TTRPG campaign I'd been running. I had also planned for this comic to be a prequel to her story in the campaign...
Turns out I much prefer this story over the big one I'd been planning, and thought it would be far more interesting to have this take place after the rpg campaign instead of before. The actual plot is loosely inspired by a Discord roleplay I'd set up, but never got off the ground. So there's that :).
