2000AD - Slaine - The Sky Chariots pt. 2

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>>49715579
Last page >>49714317

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Drunes like Slough Throt here are evil druids who worship a monstrous God named Crom Cruach and use a poisonous form of magic which draws the life force from the earth and its creatures to empower themselves. This twists and changes them, causing them to slough off their skins, emit a foul odour, and spread corruption wherever they go.

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The Sourlands (in what is now northern France and some land under the Atlantic ocean) are so called because the Drunes have soured them with their presence. Zombies, were-creatures and time-displaced monsters abound there, and, as you can see, form the basis of an economy.

Thanks for the posts, OP. Slaine is a classic but I never read the very beginning.

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>>49715718
Thanks for reading! I was getting concerned it was just me.

Until quite recently it was surprisingly hard to find the earliest Slaine stories unless you went back to the original progs. Most collections skipped straight to the Sky Chariots and missed out all the early stuff, then moved straight onto the point where Slaine becomes High King and skips out everything in between. Which is fair enough, because that's where Things Get Millsy, but still.

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>>49715579
>sword striking a wooden haft makes sparks

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Plus its not The Horned God. I mean, I love the Horned God, but it really has overshadowed everything that comes before it.

>>49715761
Inferior Drune steel combusting as it touches glorious Sessair oak and killing itself out of sheer shame. Entirely accurate.

>>49715754
Yeah, those are hard to find.

But it's always the most fun to read an origin story once you've gotten to know a major hero in the prime of his powers.

>>49715754
Fuck, I don't know why people always pick Conan as the "archetypal barbarian" when they've got Slaine right there being a tribal birsirker x9000.

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There's a really good but quite subtle bit later on that's easy to miss if you haven't read one early story, and I hope we get to it (and I remember to point it out)

>>49715827
Being fair, Conan was around for at least eighty odd years before Slaine and he's had movies, comics and saturday morning cartoons to go with the original pulp novels. To say nothing of the debt Slaine owes to Conan.

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You're right though, Slaine's a great twist on the classic barbarian hero in fuzzy underpants archetype that I would love to see explored more. Particulaly when it goes into the deeper stuff, or when it goes over the edge into lunatic neo-pagan madness.

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Moralltach, the Great Fury, is the name of a sword from Celtic mythology,

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It's super-effective!

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I don't know if the Ogham in Throt's book translates to anything, but if you wanted to check there's a table here >>49713681. Might have a go myself later if I remember and have the time.

>>49715579
Shakaranon, you're the fucking best.

Stay golden.

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That is one intensely satisfied looking bear.

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End of the First Saga

>>49715579
just finished reading the first thread, keep up to good work anon.

>>49716086
Thanks! Got here a bit late, but reading over it now.

And to answer your question from last thread. Yes, I did read the Edge Chronicles, have all of them.

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All of the stories so far have been collected in the book Slaine: Warrior's Dawn (2013, has the OP image from the last thread with Slaine and the Time Beast for a cover), along with other bits and pieces and with much nicer quality pages. If you've enjoyed it, do buy it if you can.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/u2noijzu6zu6uqr/Slaine_1_Warrior%27s_Dawn.cbr

Incidentally, this is how McMahon draws Slaine today, 30-and-a-bit years on. You can still see the similarities, but he's got a lot more stylised over the years.

I'm hoping to be able to continue to what's usually thought of as the second Slaine collection early-ish tomorrow, which is where things go bonkers. Hairy dragons with jewels for eyes! Leyser-guns! Tiki mask druids using earthworks as magic batteries! Aliens! Dev-els! The most ridiculous wizard outfit ever created! And a choose your own adventure game

>>49716216
Shakaranon, I have to be a bother. But do you still have that download link for Nikolai Dante? I've only been able to find one book of that in a store.

>>49716226
*hate to be

Goddamn typos.

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>>49716226
Sure, just give us a sec.

In case you didn't know, they recently started reprinting the collections, sometimes with new titles.

Book One is now "Too Cool to Kill"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00O31HMZS/ref=pd_sim_351_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=J7TZS9WTNA7P2NFEMXP4

Book Two is still "The Great Game" but has a new cover
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nikolai-Dante-Great-Robbie-Morrison-ebook/dp/B00O31HMPS/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476066724&sr=1-8&keywords=Nikolai+Dante

And I'm 99% certain Book Three, "The Courtship of Jena Makarov", is now "Love and War".
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00O31HMM6/ref=pd_sim_351_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=J7TZS9WTNA7P2NFEMXP4

The other books are still reasonably easy to find on Amazon UK, although I know that's not always helpful. Rebellion also always sell the ebooks directly.

>>49716288
I have the Courtship, was the only one I could find in an actual store. Amazon(Amazon US I assume) had all of them except Love and War(or rather, Love and War was at 90 dollars) but I didn't check Amazon UK.

Thanks for telling me, though!

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>>49716309
No worries. It can be pain in the bum to get 2000AD and 2000AD related books outside of The Land of the Young and environs because of limited print runs and Diamond Distribution messes with non-US publishers (and even here there can be problems with the older collections - Dredd is about the only one that's kept in print perpetually, which affects pricing quite a bit). Book Depository is worth looking at as well, because their prices are often the same as Amazon but they have free shipping.

Here you are anyway.
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/31fr62chxx3xu/Nikolai_Dante

Should all be fine, but do say something if something is awry. Each folder is arranged by published corrections.

I'm off to bed, hopefully be able to carry on in this thread tomorrow. I can try and answer any Slaine or 2000AD related questions then or make suggestions about how to include things in your games.

>>49716369
Thanks a million.

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In case anybody is wondering what a "Blood eagle" is.

It's a form of viking human sacrifice usually reserved as punishment for kinslaying. They cut your ribs off of your spine and then pull your lungs out the back to make wings. Salt is rubbed into the wound to make it more painful.

>>49715579
I always preferred this earlier black and white artwork to the later photoshop or Bisley artwork, as great as Bisley is.

>>49715579
Much love Shaka but sleep time.

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Thanks for keeping the thread alive anons, we can now move onto the next saga: Slaine: THE TIME KILLER.

We begin with a story with one of my favourite titles - Dragon Heist!

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Nice twist on a dragon's gold lust here.

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The real Dinas Emrys is a rocky hillock in North-West Wales with the remains of an Iron Age fort at the top. In Arthurian legend it is the location of Vortigern's meeting with Merlin, and a pool where a red dragon of Britain and a white dragon of the Saxons wrestled each other for control of the land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinas_Emrys

>>49716523
I'd call it a mercykill because the shock and blood loss would result in very quick death.

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Sorry for disappearing without warning, had to deal with something that took a lot longer than expected.

We're now into the back half of this saga, the part that gives it its name and the point at which things go more than a bit mad (as shown from this handy prologue setting up the major antagonists).

We also get the first stories illustrated by the next major Slaine artist, Glenn Fabry

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A handy (?) guide in case anyone's lost. The "Root Races" bit seems to be based on the esoteric cosmology originally outlined by Helena Blavatsky, where the different races of man descend from different now-lost continents and their people (the Polarians, Hyperboreans, Lemurians and Atlanteans). Its interesting stuff to explore, if more than a bit racist in places, and Mills has changed it quite a bit from the traditional theosophical categories given that I'm pretty sure he doesn't think he thinks the Diluvials here are the genetic precursors to aborigines, bantu and dravidians.

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This'd look great airbrushed onto a van.

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Good lord, what an outfit.

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CROM!!

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Silbury Hill is another real world location. Its an artificial chalk mound in Avebury, Wiltshire, part of a group of neolithic monuments including standing stones and barrows. Stone Henge is relatively close by and may be related somehow. At 129ft/39m tall its as big as some of the smaller pyramids of Giza and is the tallest pre-historic man-made mound in Europe.

We used to visit it quite a lot when I was a sproglet

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Oops, forgot to link in case anyone was interested in seeing the real thing.
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/silbury-hill/

There's some nice pictures of some of the other nearby neolithic places around Avebury through the link

>>49726134
After all that hype, he's tather unimpressive for a god.

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>>49726571
It is a bit, yeah , but some of the later artists do a better job. Also another example of something taken from real world myths, Crom Cruach was a god in Pre-Christian Ireland whose worship St Patrick is said to have put a stop to. He may or may not have been a fertility god in that Aztec "lets offer piles of bloody human sacrifices to keep the crops growing" way. Robert E. Howard probably took Conan's god Crom from the same sources.

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We're about two images left from the end of the thread, so I'll pause here for a short while, write up a new OP and finish the story there.

quick bump

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New thread continuing the story here >>49729457