Drowtales Has Ended

[Vinyadan]

www.drowtales.com

After 21 years, three partial rewrites, thousands of pages, a bunch of timeskips, and 58 chapters, the main story of Drowtales has ended. It was actually a rather prolonged, relaxed epilogue, ending with a vision of the future and a slight tease of the studio's next project, Hel.

Drowtales started out in 2001, based on a D&D adventure, and was later developed into its own setting. Escaping ruin on the surface, Dark Elves created an underground megalopolis, Chel, where they survived under the rule of rigidly hierarchical noble clans organised by bloodlines, the continuation of the ancient surface nations, with the Empress's ruling clan reaching domination over the other clans through early wars. The new environment, however, caused children of the Elves to be born as the physically different Drow. Chel is heavily fractured along various lines: the clans and factions within the same clan or even bloodline claw for power and fight each other for supremacy, while the younger Drow have long pushed to dislodge the few remaining Dark Elf matriarchs. Further conflict is driven along the axes of race (there are many varieties of Drow), approaches to religion, and class, in particular between the once apolitical commoners and the ruling nobility of the clans. Finally, previous conflicts have left scars and revenge is often a motivating factor in perpetuating them. Starting out as the story of Ariel, the potential heir to one of the clans, Drowtales later branches out to the viewpoint of other characters as the ruling clan starts to collapse and the demonic weapons that turned the surface world into a wasteland are reintroduced to Chel.

Drowtales reached its peak in 2011, when Studio Drowtales comprised a team of 18 and managed daily updates for the main story while juggling numerous side projects. After 2011, however, the Studio decreased in size, finally settling to just the original creator, Kern, and his partner, Kite. This led to a slower release schedule, as well as to the use of paid cameos to keep the studio financially afloat.

Having to make a short review of the comic, I think it's admirable for the grandiose way it aims to portray the fight around Chel, a city of a million rich in raw materials and inhabitants, technologically advanced, but constrained by the scarcity of terrain for building and agriculture. Violent competition has become a matter of survival for many, and, after a coup hobbled the Empress's capacity to mantain stability, war is a way to rise for the desperate, the ambitious, and for those promising a revolution. While nine clans are a lot and some are never given much space, the effort in differentiating them is remarkable; they effectively represent nine different nations, with their cultures, dresses, stakes, philosophies, and scientific interests (while it's high-power fantasy, the comic's application of magic and technology sometimes straddles the line into sci-fi).
Drowtales also starts out in a very dramatic fashion (too dramatic, some might object), with family and political drama and a setting that chews up children (children that also stab each other). Slavery, blood sports, mental illness, terminal illness, you want it, you have it. While the comic develops a large, interesting ensemble cast early on and puts it on a high-stakes plot to solve a bloody mystery that mixes politics and forbidden arts, it also makes some incomprehensible blunders. An uninteresting, anticlimactic journey to the surface world is the most evident, but the fatal one is a timeskip that interrupts the mystery plot and introduces newer characters, locations, and situations without giving them a way to grow on the reader. In some chapters, you get the impression that the politics of Chel need to move from A to B, and that that takes priority over telling the stories of the characters. And yet, once in a while, the virtues of the writing before the time skip come back in great style from the most unexpected direction.
One more timeskip introduces a mostly perfunctory final arc, that shares the same vices and virtues as the previous one.
A final warning goes out for Kiel and cameos. While Drowtales is mostly serious and even grim, Kiel is a member of an heretic, mad clan that after a while started breaking the fourth wall, talking to the audience, and occasionally using Internet slang. I feel she doesn't fit the general tone and actually cheapens the story, but she was a fan favorite, and fans shaped Drowtales. When tough financial times struck, fans kept the comic going, mostly by paying to be present in it, be it as original characters, as one of Kiel's demons, or by bringing back old characters. This however forced the writing in the chapter to give a moment in the spotlight to a massive number of potentially throwaway named characters (no warranty the patron would pay again), splintering, confusing, or slowing scenes considerably.

From my point of view, this is a comic that mostly runs on the goodwill gained by the cast in the first part, but, if you get into it, that's a lot of goodwill. I don't think the author actually was conscious of what made his writing good or bad, but the setting is unique and interesting, the characters that were correctly developed get poignant portrayals, and it's also pretty for webcomic standards.

[Daffy Dutch]

Man this is a blast from the past. Haven't read this thing since I was 16. I remember dropping it around the time that the MC went to the surface,

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(I think specifically where her half-demon companion died? Did he die? It's been a while)

. I think the issue I had was that the story jumped around too much and it was hard to follow so many different characters.

But still, dang. I might need to go back and binge through it all.

[Draconi Redfir]

always meant to get back into Drowtales: Moonless age, always tried to read it in chunks so i'd never hit the point of running out of comics to read, think that ultimately caused me to just forget to check in again unfortunately.

Last thing i remember was their visit to the surface, and the Half-dragon guy they brought as a bodyguard and his whole thing with Ariel (The MC). Have vague memories of Ariel as an adult though, so i might have read as far as the next timeskip, maybe i dropped off when the story started being less about her, as i remember the first chapter or so was more about setting up the world, and i found it very confusing with introducing a lot of long, complicated names and terms i didn't know, and it wasn't until Ariel was introduced (as the first name i could actually mentally pronounce) that i actually started getting a grasp on what was happening. Remember they were planning on re-writing the early chapters though, so that bit might not exist anymore.

I'd actually completely forgotten about the fact that one of the characters broke the fourth wall, think i was alright with that, i thought it was neat. IIRC it wasn't as bad as Deadpool or the like because technically she was talking to "Demons" (Which her clan is known for) that do exist in the world or something. Maybe it got a bit too much overtime, idk. I still remember her "Big sister" though, and the "Dolls" she made. Now that was Creepy-cool. Don't think she ever had a major role in the story though. Thought it was a neat addition overall, I've always been a sucker for stories about alien (i.e. non-human) societies that are just okay with things we'd find absolutely abhorrent, and Drowtales hit that mark on a few fronts, which was neat.

[BloodSquirrel]

As I said on the previous thread-

I mostly read through it all at once about a year or two ago, and by the time the epilogue rolled around I was completely lost. The changing art styles and often non-distinct character designs didn't help, but the story also kind of failed to come together to a sharp enough point. There's a definite lack of direction for most of the comic.

I hope the next project starts with a clean enough slate to be comprehensible to newcomers and stays more focused.

[Vinyadan]

By the way, I noticed that the stuff I mentioned earlier seems to be related: 2011 was the last year before the timeskip into adulthood. After it, the comic made less and less money, and the studio decreased in size.

I kinda wanted to answer some comments about plot, but it would be a bunch of spoilers.

[WanderingMist]

By the way, I noticed that the stuff I mentioned earlier seems to be related: 2011 was the last year before the timeskip into adulthood. After it, the comic made less and less money, and the studio decreased in size.

I kinda wanted to answer some comments about plot, but it would be a bunch of spoilers.

Anyone coming into this thread nor expecting spoilers from the title is reading it at their own risk.