Sunday 20 December 2015

The Duelist #27-30 (Exodus)



After all the stories, background lore and other cool stuff we've seen in the past year, suddenly it all seems to have dried up. We get another storyboard for Exodus, but it's only one page. There's no Dominian Chronicles. At first I presumed that it was because Exodus doesn't introduce any new part of Rath to chronicle, but then issue 28 is suddenly missing the Dominian FAQ as well, and a month later it is said Pete Venters has left Wizards. It's not officially announced, suddenly articles just talk about him having left. Maybe Pete leaving has something to do with the drying up of lore? Issue 29 does start Born to Greatness, the follow up to Sisay's Quest that shows how Crovax met Selenia, but as that story doesn't wrap up till issue issue 35, it will get its own review. So all in all, there's not much to talk about here.

Well, except for all the advertisements and announcements! It seems that after the success of The Brothers' War Wizards really doubled down on the novel line, promising two trilogies of stories plus some other interesting publications in the next year! Things didn't quite play out as planned though, so this review will be partly a preview of things to come and partly a look at what might have been. So maybe it was just decided that novels were a better way of presenting stories than The Duelist had been.

To give this review a bit more substance, I've also included a look at the online coverage of Rath block. I'll spoil now that it's mostly a summary of the main story, similar to the storyboards we've already seen, but there is some cool background info on the main characters in there.

Monday 14 December 2015

Sisay's Quest


Part one: The Heart of a Minotaur
Part two: The Knife's Edge
Part three: Old Wars
Written by Kij Johnson
Appeared in The Duelist #21, 23 & 25.

SUMMARY
The Weatherlight is en route to Oneah,where they hope to get info on a piece of the Legacy: the Juju Bubble. (Yeah, I know. Not the most epic of the Legacy items.) Unfortunately they fly to close to a dragon's lair and get in a fight, ending up crashed in a forest. To make things worse, it is in Talruum Minotaur terrain, and the Talruum kill any intruders. To try and get out of this, Sisay challenges them to single combat. This would've ended pretty badly, as no one in Sisay's camp can stand up to a minotaur, but a Talruum youngster called Tahngarth intervenes. He finds the idea of killing weak outsiders dishonorable, and thus decides to be Sisay's champion. Tahngarth wins, and claims the title of Talruum Champion. As his interpretation of honor has gotten him into conflict with the archtraditionalist Talruum, he decides to leave with the Weatherlight.