Gaia – A fantasy comic in the making

└ posted on Friday, 31 December 2010, by Novil

I have started to write a fantasy comic called Gaia. The scripts for the cover and the first six pages are now finished. The comic is based on a canceled rpg mod for the game Neverwinter Nights 2 I tried to develop a couple of years ago together with a small team. The setting and characters are still basically the same, but I have already rewritten important parts of the story. Irrespective of the fact that the existing extensive dialog was way too long to be used in a comic, I also made additional changes to make the story more exciting and logical.

Gaia is about an epic quest of an adventure group consisting of five graduates (and one additional friend that joins the party later) of the elite academy of the large and powerful country Cania. The two most important characters will be the swordsman Ilias Oter and the bluemage Lilith Caillean, Ilias’ love interest. The interaction between the various group members will play an important role over the course of the comic. Overall, my goal is to create a comic with a similar feeling like Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX and will therefore contain various elements from these classics. But there will also be some reminiscences to Western fantasy games and literature.

The comic is taking place on a rather small planet called Gaia. Gaia is also the name of the goddess of life which is basically equivalent with the planet. The world is somewhat unusual in that monsters and evil wizards are rather rare after Bhaal’s forces of evil were defeated several thousand years ago by the hero Arathor and his troops. There will also be almost no non-human characters. Low-level magic like that to produce a glowing orb is widespread and makes the everyday life of all but the poorest citizens a lot easier. But powerful wizards who are able to manipulate the bluestream to produce more dramatic effects are as rare as in most other fantasy worlds. The story begins one day before the final exams at the “Academy of Cania” in which the students have to prove their fighting skills.

I will write around 40 or 50 pages over the course of the next weeks before having a look who might be able to draw the comic. There are already some good news for potential readers: I have already specific ideas about the most important events, including the ending. This means Gaia won’t become yet another long-form webcomic that goes on and on forever without a satisfactory ending in sight. I guess the whole story will need between 800 and 1000 pages, a little less than Bone had.


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