Motivations are suppose to be hard. For a mortal, it might be something like marrying the girl next door, but Exalted need to have Exalted motivations. They need things that should cause them to struggle for years and can’t be solved by mere use of Charms, spells or even good role-playing alone. Saber’s motivation is one of those. Glorious is more likely to reach his than she is to reach hers.

Every Exalted character, from a mortal to a Solar, has a Motivation with a capital M. This is what drives the character and gives them pretty significant bonuses when being pulled away from it. This being a silly comic, Glorious motivation is to basically defeat every signature character in the published books. Since White Wolf probably won’t stop publishing for a long time (we hope), this is basically an impossible motivation and truly epic.

One of the rules in Exalted is the ability to spend three weeks and get a specialty dot in Linguistic. Unlike most other specialties, this lets you speak like a native of some region, Thorns in today’s case. It was a nice little chance of explaining why Glorious doesn’t speak LOLcats anymore and I thought that beer being the reason was probably a cute idea.

Plus, looking back at the bar scene, you can see that his storm cloud of anger may not be directly entirely at Saber.

Yes, Glorious is speaking differently now. If possible, I want to change things in story instead of just changing it between one strip and the other. Even for things that are causing trouble with the few readers who comment. I did the same with Mask of Winter’s throne room and armor, trying to get it into story.

I had high hopes for Glorious speech patterns. Mainly in mockery of LOLcats, mainly because I despise it but also because it seems like a language of simple-minded people. Yes, I know that it is a grammar on its own and I shouldn’t make statements, I just have too much of a fondness for formal English to really appreciate it. I also don’t appreciate l33t or whatever travesty and label “r u” occupies in the constantly changing tapestry of my language of choice.

I absolutely love sub-plots in a game. They aren’t directly related to the main plot (which I actually have one, surprise, surprise), but sometimes you can get extras out of it, like better equipment, more experience, or even opening up new doors. So, the idea that a player asks for a sub-plot, or is offered one, is one of those appealing things to me. Some of my favorite games, Torg for example, players can request a sub-plot that seems interesting. In my Exalted games, I do the same thing: offer the players interesting distraction. Sometimes they take them, sometimes they don’t.

This is the end of the second arc. I seem to have done the gray-scale thing again, maybe that would be a good indicator of the end of the arcs. Of course, then I’d have to change it since this one uses more than one shade of gray! I’m going to try a couple new artist things with the next one, mainly because I want to see if the format I’m trying to do for a computer game would also work for this comic. It is a, um, flat style of artwork instead of the pseudo-perspective I’m using now that is a royal pain in the ass to do. It looks nice, but I wonder if a full-on 2D would look more fitting with the style.

A little bit of cosmetic changes to the trip. I forgot to update the legal section and the title to Webletter Pro BB. The font, despite having nearly the same name as Webletter BB, which is a free font from Blambot, has a much different kerning. Because of that, I can get a bit more on a line while still being readable. So, I condensed the legal statement down to two lines and the title down to one. Oh, if you are curious, the “All Rights Reserved” is part of White Wolf’s legal statement not mine. If I had my druthers, I’d be using Creative Commons.

I struggled with the results of Death of Obsidian Butterflies since it is unreasonable to expect my computer to render millions of tiny obsidian butterflies. So, I went with the cheat of a “pile of black” and some butterflies on the top. Originally, I had the remains of the Fire Dragon-Blooded in the pile, but you can’t see it. Obsessive attention to detail? Maybe.

The rest of the monologue by Winds Come Darkly and introduces Saber’s iconic anima banner. For those who don’t play Exalted, when a Solar uses a large amount of energy (magic, Essence, motes), they light up in a glow. At a certain point, they have a huge iconic display which kind of gives their personality or Exalted nature away.

Death of Obsidian Butterflies is a spell in Exalted that affects a 30 yard by 100 yard area with a ton of sharp, killing butterflies made of obsidian. It is room-clearing spell, but takes a bit to get off, hence Saber telling Glorious to guard. The little speech isn’t canon, but a nod toward the Dragon Slave from Slayers.

The sorcery font was Blambot’s and, not that you probably notice, it is rotating from frame to frame.

A two-parter told from the point of view of Winds Come Darkly. I had to add a bit of detail to Glorious’ iconic banner so it looked like a cat licking itself. Yeah, it is. Don’t worry, next week will show Saber’s iconic anima banner. It… isn’t much better. I’m pretty happy how the glows turned out for Glorious and Saber, but not sure about the fire dragon-blooded (that’s the red guy).

Glorious has no concept of Limit Break. He does have his Kittah Breaks which are basically the same thing, except he encourages them instead of dreading them. It didn’t come out as well, but the little black bar over Glorious says “CENSORED”. You can imagine what’s underneath.

I added this strip to help explain the previously one. Apparently, I’m having a bit of trouble telling a clear story and explaining my plots. Or at least the reasons for the names. Most of the questions I had were “there is Glorious Saber” and the woman is also named “Saber?” when they only called each other “Glorious” and “Saber” since the beginning. Bah, one silly joke ruined by unclear descriptions.

And I assure the reader, this is probably the last explanation strip. The next one is actually filled with plot-like goodness, or at least I hope it is. And the beginning of the plot starts with three words: “I gotta pee.”