This Town Is Haunted👻👻

AIMEE WAI

I made beef stew tonight! It's incredibly good.

I glanced at a few recipes and listened to what the spirits had to say, and came up with this recipe:

Ingredients:

1.5 lb cubed stew beef 4 whole carrots, peeled and chopped into 1 inch pieces 3 sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed  1 lb button mushrooms, halved Olive oil

2 cups red wine ¾ cup balsamic vinegar ½ cup worcestershire sauce 48 oz beef broth 2 Tbsp minced garlic

⅓ cup flour

Salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, Cholula hot sauce to taste

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 450F.  Oil the bottom of a roasting pan, and lay out the beef, carrots, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms.  Roast for 40ish minutes, turning as needed to brown all sides.

Put everything in a large stock pot, then pour red wine into hot roasting pan, scrape off browned bits, and then pour into stock pot as well.  Add other liquids and garlic.  Whisk in flour.  Season with salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, and hot sauce to taste.  Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 2 hours, until sweet potatoes are cooked through.

Serve hot.

mysteries 🌜 happy autumn equinox!

Does cresce have any sub-nationalities and ethnicitys, or did the state convince people they're all the same?

–The three main groups are the Jarlans, Northern Crescians, and the Kusmen in the south. Their differences are minor in the modern era, enduring only in traditional songs and some of the stories surrounding the Victori. Our Captain Toma is from the Sava family who are part of an agrarian folk called the Klipou. They get teased for being rural and slow on the uptake, but are a very upstanding and honest people.

If Unsounded was prose I would play up these subgroups much more heavily. The Sonories are North Crescian, as was the legendary Crescia, while General Bell’s people are Jarlans. When Crescia was consolidating her power and uniting the country, the Jarlan river people were her fiercest critics, so much so that Crescia was afraid if she went through with her ultimate goal of dissolving the monarchy that the Jarlan leadership would seize control upon her death and run Cresce into the ground. Peace came a few generations later when Crescia’s descendants made a pact with the Jarlans, establishing the capital and the royal palace on a massive man-made lake along their holy river’s course.

This stuff is all ancient history now but some weirdos like Bell hang on to it, and a few old school Crescians doggedly perpetuate stereotypes. It’s not a driving motivation for Bell, but it adds a little texture to his distaste for Queen Sonorie.

This is for you, Rainwalker! You asked for it, baby!

The road infrastructure in Sharteshane must be appalling, good thing Rilursa can always count on GEICO Roadside Pickup :)

If I'm reading this page correctly, it's the next morning and Ruffles is coming to wake Duane up. I'm curious if Duane was self-aware in the khert during the night or if he was stuck in his memories the whole time?

You read it correctly. I wanted to try doing a page with just sound effects and no dialogue, I’m glad it reads okay <3

Duane was stuck in memories all night. In the script I had a cut-away to him in the khert really mired in his worse days to hammer home the darkness of his present state, but it got chopped. I think at this point we’ve got the idea anyway :)

Cool, thanks for answering! ^.^

Two things: 1) what exactly is the Foi-Hellick affair? I know it was an Aldish civil insurrection of some kind but I am interested in the details the details and 2) (if this is not too spoilery) What exactly was Queen Sonorie's agenda in having Duane killed? I never fully understood that. P.S. Love your comic so much it has taken over my life

Haha, don’t let it take over your life, there are better things out there like coffee and foot rubs.

You ask about intentional mysteries! Well, the Foi-Hellick affair isn’t too mysterious, it just hasn’t been discussed in the comic yet. The Foi-Hellick affair/war/insurrection/rebellion/call-it-what-you-will was indeed a civil insurrection. It concerned an attempt by two wealthy families recently joined by marriage (the Foi-Hellicks) in the Aldish district of Avelpit to declare their independence from the Aldish state and become a holding of Cresce. Queen Sonorie reneged on her promise of military aid after the mastermind of the affair, Roger Foi-Hellick, absconded to the Crescian court, abandoning his family and his cause. The Foi-Hellicks tried to go Just Kidding Bro but it didn’t work out so well for them. When it became clear they were going to be made an example of, they recruited a citizen army and hired southern mercenaries, kickstarting a pretty brutal few years of warfare that they ultimately lost. Badly. Impaled-on-spears-in-front-of-their-own-children badly.

Duane and his brother served in the army during this. We’ll see some of it firsthand in an upcoming chapter and meet many of the players. This was a very important event, which is why I threw in some early references to it.

As for why Queen Sonorie had Duane killed, you can believe Duane’s speculation here, or not. Duane thinks Sonorie wanted to encourage the ill feelings between Alderode’s two religions by making it look like she supports the Gefendur. The idea that Sonorie would kill a Ssaelit priest for them would have to positively infuriate Duane’s camp, no? If Alderode falls to all-out religious civil war, that can only be good for Cresce. “Divide and conquer,” suggests the zombie.

But this is only Duane’s speculation, and all he has to go on are words written on a wall in his own shed blood.

cracking open a cold one with the boys

tricks your ghost