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Illumination 3 page 18

Illumination 3 page 18 published on 59 Comments on Illumination 3 page 18

I dislocated my shoulder yesterday! Ow ow ow! It was really not fun, and my arm is in a sling for the next several weeks. I’ve been told that I’m okay to draw, but updates MIGHT be slow until my arm is completely healed. Sorry y’all! I’ll try not to drop any updates, but if I do you’ll know what’s up.

59 Comments

… He just doesn’t want to die. I can’t be angry at him (yet), he’s frightened for his life. He’s sought them out hoping that maybe they can help him blend in so he lives another day. I’m sure the repercussions of such a thing won’t tide over well with other dragons, so in this case he might be giving up his relationships with other dragons to hide within the mythical community, or the humans, where they’ll see that he obviously HAS a medallion, but he won’t tell anyone what he is to protect himself…

Now who do we know that has a medallion but we don’t know what they are?

He seems pretty far from sincere. I don’t think he’s really frightened at all, but trying to use this nemean situation as leverage for gaining something that’s already been denied to him, probably to his entire race. “Ohhh, I know what this is,” says Jocasta with a sly grin.

The dragon seems more feline than human in his smugness, and he’s throwing around backhanded compliments with ease. This is not a helpless victim. This is a shrewd and manipulative creature bent on getting what it wants. What I want to know is what the *real* reason is, because it sure as heck isn’t “dragonslaying”.

Unless it is and I’ve vastly overestimated Kory’s writing ability, but from what I’ve seen of this comic, it’s far more likely that he’s plotting and scheming away than anything else.

But why does he want a medallion? Why does he want to look human? Yes, he seems less than sincere but maybe he just doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. The purpose of the medallions is to take on the guise of a human, for safety. I don’t see any other reason for him to want a medallion; bragging rights? Leverage against all the sphinxes? To turn the other sphinxes against Wosret and Jocasta? Ok maybe now I see why, but I left my “yet” in parentheses to save some doubt for our dragon pal here

Ummmm….. According to the author’s comments offstage in PatreonLand……… “she,” not “he.” Just thought I’d say.

To be able to walk straight past any town defenses, and be right in the middle of town before you go dragon and burn the place down from inside? Tasty crunchy flame broiled humans, and oh! look at all this gold and such they left behind. Well guess they don’t need that anymore, may as well take it with!

Maybe to infiltrate the humans and to kill them from within.
Or he says really the truth and wosret and jocasta would create medaillons for the “good” dragoms who really just wants to hide but the “bad” dragons are going to hunt their own kind to get medaillons what would result in a dragon civil war which would go to the great war

See, what we have behind the scenes here is a classic power play. Dragons are traditionally as prideful and self-absorbed as they are large and powerful. Assuming Kory’s dragons follow traditional models, what this particular one wants is a medallion, not to hide from humans, but to be ABLE to live in the local Avalon and actually interact with the other species. Once this is achieved, she can begin the process of working her way up the social ladder and in time institute herself as, essentially, queen of that Avalon. That, I expect, is her end-goal, and there’d probably be a similar motive to the other dragons, who Jolcasta would be obligated to provide medallions for if she agrees to this particular one. At which point we enter into a Game of Thrones scenario with the dragons ruling these different Avalons warring for power between themselves, like they may do on their own already.

Currently, that doesn’t happen for one noteworthy reason: They’re too bloody big to fit in any of the Avalons we’ve seen thus far. She is huge, and Bloodcarver from way back was just as big. Unless they have innate shape-shifting (In which case they don’t need medallions in the first place), they physically cannot fit in the narrow streets and small buildings in the various avalons. Thus, they remain segregated and isolated from the greater mythical community, unable to involve them in their power-plays and disputes.

I’m making alot of assumptions, of course, but there’s been precious little info on dragons thought the comic so far. It seems like Kory’s going for the “Scheming lizard” angle, judging from this one’s choice of words and attitude. She’s certainly not actually scared.

I have to disagree with you about the dragons being self centered. Almost every book I have read with dragons in them either has them being wise teachers and mentors, being to dang hard headed to let some one that they know die and dying in there place, or and here is my favorite being mighty warriors that will never give up in a fight, and then the ever popular dragon guarding a mountain full of gold and killing anyone if they try to take it. I am looking at Smuag. Anyway from my experience there is little to no prof that dragons are self centered beings. Now if you want to talk about elf’s being stuck up snobs then I am right with you in saying that some one should put an arrow up where the sun don’t shine.

P.S. hey Kory are we going to see any elves in this series? Just curious.

In that case, you need to read more books, including books of actual mythology and legend rather than modern fantasy authors who’re doing ‘wouldn’t it be cool to have a nice dragon as a sidekick.’

The dragon Beowulf fought is probably the oldest example we have in the Western mythos, and that dragon sure as heck wasn’t a ‘wise teacher and mentor’ or about to sacrifice itself.

I’m also not sure how you can add ‘dragons guarding a mountain of gold’ for themselves and then say that they’re ‘not self-centered beings.’

…And I’m not even going to touch your comment about elves. The “in my experience” line really smacks of modern fantasy authors/furry/changeling identification rather than anything to do with the behavior of dragons or elves in actual mythology.

Look up, just for a few quick examples: Fafnir, Graoully, St. Leonard and the Dragon of Sussex, Blue Ben, Coca, the Laily Worm, the Lambton Worm, Kur, Yam and Lotan, Apep, Nidhöggr, Smok Wawelski (one of the best examples of the ‘dragon requires treasure or will come kill you all’ story), the Tarasque of Tarascon, Tugarin Zmeyvich and Zmey Gorynych, all of which lack the positive characteristics of which you speak and are representative of the majority of dragons in actual mythology (as opposed to McCaffrey-and-later fictions).

Shunka (who certainly never wrote a ridiculously long paper on draconic symbolism in mythology and its repurposing by Christianity while in college, honest).

Heh. I mean, I love re-imagining of dragons in storytelling, but let’s not pretend they were anything but greedy monsters in mythology. I mean, western dragons. Why every vaguely monsterish creature was grouped into “dragon” kinda perplexes me.

What’s funny is that most of those traits Atlas mentioned might be true if they were talking about Eastern dragons, but usually people aren’t. They don’t get a lot of play in the fantasy scene, sadly. They tend to be portrayed in myth as incredibly intelligent, noble, and principled, depending on a few other things they may be teachers, rulers, advisers, spiritual leaders, or any other form of authority. Oddly enough, both Western and Eastern dragons are agreed to be pretty self centered, and they certainly wouldn’t sacrifice themselves for a ‘lesser being’. This is because they are dragons and dragons are the height of existence, of course. Says who? The dragons, of course, and they believe they are absolutely right about that.

But then, they’re dragons, so they probably are. :T

. . . who do we know that has a medallion, but we don’t know what they are? The reverse-gryphon kid?

No, pretty much everyone agrees that Samhain is either a reverse griffon like his father or a human like his mother. There’s somebody else hanging out in the L.A. whose character description explicitly says that nobody really knows just what he is. (Hint: he goes by the name of a rare and powerful mythical critter.)

Doesn’t want to die, but are dragons really that threatened by humans? What exactly can 13th century humans do to a giant flying, possibly fire breathing, lizard?

Well. according to legend… poison them, feed them drugged prey that knocks them unconscious so they can be hacked into pieces, stab them with frickin’ big swords/spears, shoot them full of arrows, trick them into swallowing ensorcelled stones and then drown them, lure or drive them into caverns and then cave the entrance in on top of them….. the list goes on. Remember, “primitive” does not mean “stupid.”

My theory is that the vibe of people are getting that he’s plotting something nefarious is just a red herring/his personality/an unintentional bias to view those eye designs as evil, and this dragon is completely legit. That Jocasta decides to make a dragon medallion for him, and for that, he helps protect them when the war comes to the British Isles and that’s how Michelle exists now. And possibly also how Bloodcarver exists despite all dragons supposed to be being dead as well. Though an association with bloodcarver seems unlikely as his clan seems to want the sphinxes dead so clearly they don’t remember them fondly. Though it’s possible the father wanted her to make more dragon medallions, though Bloodcarver didn’t seem to think so. So maybe this dragon dies saving them or something. I still like this theory :p

I hope your arm feels better soon Kory! As much as I would hate to have a delay to seeing the next page, if you need to rest your arm you definitely should. Health always comes first!

People seem to keep talking like the war hasn’t started yet. These two are isolated and get little news from the mainland. They know, perhaps from rumors or perhaps just from Jocasta’s visions, that the dragons have been attacking the medallion smithies. I think the attacks may have been much worse than Jocasta and Wosret realize and have been going on for some time. The war could already be in full swing.

Wow, weeks in a sling for a dislocation? That much have been REALLY bad.

I’ve dislocated each shoulder several times (I suspect torn rotator cuffs or somesuch), and only once was it so bad that I got a sling (the weight of the arm was painful on the shoulder).

Take care, and take special care not to do the thing you did that caused the dislocation! I know from experience how easy it is once it’s happened once…

I think the Great War is not a black and white story and that there is a lot of truth in what she says here, even though she might have an ulterior motive.
We know that there is a lot of prejudice between the creatures and that some were denied medallions because of that (manticores for example and even nemeans wouldn’t have medallions if the sphinx leaders would have had any say in it).
Now given their size and power dragons would likely not have a very high standing among other creatures (after all even if they would want to they are unable to mingle with others because of their size) and even though Jocasta expressed her view that all creatures should have medallions in the past revelations she doesn’t really sound as she likes dragons much here.
So I think it is entirely possible that even she refused to make medallions for dragons and that this drove them to start the war as they needed them the most.
Or, as a twist, she indeed made a dragon medallion which caused the other sphinxes to intervene which in turn caused the dragons to attack the sphinxes.
But we will know more next week.

Kory I would give you a hug but that would probably hurt to much so I am just going to say that I hope you get better soon and that you should always take your time doing this comic. I mean sure sometimes a lot of us wish that you would update sooner but that is because we love your story and you. So I hope this helps you feel better and let’s you know that you are loved by all of us.

So I can foresee a couple complications; for one, I imagine it requires a buttload of magical power to squeeze such a large creature into a human-sized space using only a medallion. It would probably take many sphinx’s power to create it.

Which, inadvertently, could be simplified by decreasing the amount of sphinx the power splits between, hence killing many of them to make one powerful enough to make the dragon medallions. >.>

Also, I am curious for those who are dentists; what kind of back teeth does the dragon have? They look like mashers, which is interesting if that means they’re not primarily meat eaters. Or at least this one isn’t.

It’s been mentioned before that there are larger species that have medallions, with the Simurgh being a particularly good example as they mention that they’re pretty huge, and if I’m remembering correctly they specifically state that if a certain character was descended from one that he probably wouldn’t be able to fit into the shop

Just in case no one else has suggested it, I put forth the theory that the Great War was the result of a party besides the sphinxes and dragons who deliberately aggravated the situation for their own selfish reasons.

And as Ix has pointed out, we can’t just assume the dragons are all bad. Technically like 99% of centaurs were horrible, but we’ve seen one who is rather decent and delightfully snarky. Also, wars are pretty complicated.

Clearly, we can’t just base our judgements on stories where dragons were bad, since they may be written to make the hero in the right, or they may just be more well-known than any stories of nice dragons.

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