This page is a description of the overall storyline and design of Regicide (working title), a graphic novel and dear project started in 2004 by yours truly (and now, finally, really under construction). Regicide is not only a story about a pretty face and some cryptomnesiac fantasy surroundings, but a tongue-in-cheek semiotic study of storytelling archetypes, clichés, religion and whatever ails the author at the moment.
The storyline and scetches are only for the truly interested.

Request password via email should you find yourself so; but since after seeing these pages you would know far too much and a) would not enjoy the actual story and b) would have to be killed, I will amuse you right here now with a small synopsis and some key points.

Regicide begins with a celebration of a victory, much like the ones usually seen in the end of an epic.
Of course, the party is inside a nightmarish dream sequence, always a wonderful way to begin a story.

The main character waking up in terror in an unfamiliar place in my version is Quill, a generally unpleasant young man, who until recently was in the service of subterranean king and beginner level conqueror Inti - one of the last heirs of a wonderfully convenient legacy. He is called the cave opener, since he can do just that; melt stone, metal and flesh with his bare hands, thus expanding the reach of the light of the civilization ever deeper into the ground.
That was before the frustrated progress fanatic royal physician (Basic Surgery and Political Medicine) failed in his most ambitious attempt at stunning the court; wishing to cure the monarch of his “blessing”, Quill turns Inti into a golden statue.

Quill is exiled, and accompanied by a centaur - Cinder, an adrenaline-addicted outcast of a race working in slavery in Inti’s silver and sulphur mines - flees pursuers, explores the world above, meets people, kings and gods, driven by his pride to make right the worst mistake in his career (so far).

On the other side of the story, there’s a hero, Anax, and a child prodigy called Runner, who travel from kingdom to city to haunted mansion to spread the message of the Cave opener’s hibernation, to collect an army and take over the subterranean, placing Runner on the throne. Most importantly, they of course have to deal with the evil alchemist and poison cook Quill, rumored to leave behind corpses and burning cottages left and right in his ruthless crusade to bring the feared warlord back to life.

All names of places and characters are still undecided on. Naming is difficult. There is a kind of a rugged logic behind it all, I promise you. Whether or not the same logic is at all visible in the finished work, I can’t promise yet.

Regicide is about killing kings. Apart from the real king, there are several abstract ones; There is religion, tradition, storytelling, values, education, science, violence, frustration. All monarchs to bow down to, or do away with. I don’t wish to preach. Some of these themes I merely run by in terror, some I try to handle with more care and concentration, all within the limits of my relatively young brain.

The beauty in publishing in the web is that I get to go back and change the things that didn’t work out.
This is why I have to beg my possible readers for patience: The graphic novel will not be finished in a long time. Maybe some day I’ll be happy with it and try and find a publisher. So far I can only say this - when Regicide is printed, it is a long, long strip of uncut paper, meaning, it goes from left to right all the way, not page by page. Also, because of it’s theme of reversed stories, it should be printed left-right on the other side and right-left on the other; my greatest artistic challenge in Regicide is to not only draw something that one can look at without flinching, but something that can be mirrored at any point and read “from the end to the beginning”.

Not that it affects the story. But you know, there’s a reason why heroes in our illustrations mostly journey facing right.

Any last words… ehmm…
Serious as I try to be with my big ideas - and perhaps for that very reason - Regicide is not void of humor. Some human emotions might make a fast guest appearance too.

But mostly it’s just about my love of stories, centaurs and unrelated dialogue.