This room is a new location on the Khoruysa Brimia that hasn’t been shown to date. In the ship floor plans (printed in the Vol 1 graphic novel), there are four bedrooms in the upper living section of the ship. On the main cargo level, there is an old smaller cargo bay on the starboard side that has since been split and converted into a medical bay and additional bedroom. This is that bedroom and it houses Cember and Bennesaud. Everyone else has their own separate quarters, but I just pictured Cember and Bennes as being buddies enough to share a room and even a bunk bed (more visible in the preceding pages in the background). And if they have a spat, there’s also a sofa in the room for someone to sleep on! Although, given the size of the room, it’s not like it would make much difference. Luckily they get along pretty swell.
Next up will be another couple Bonus Content posts featuring concept sketches and a link to my Patreon. Any support is greatly appreciated and you’ll also be getting behind-the-scenes content like penciled pages, inked pages, sketchbook with commentary, and more!
After that, we’ll check in with Cember, Sky, and Bocce!
For some reason, I thought that last bubble was going to be, “I love you.”
I mean, looking at Suul and Cember, Gorug’s probably not Bennesaud’s Type.
…That Type clearly being tentacles, haha! XD
Have to wonder if that will be tested for Gorug in the future.
The zeroes in his bank account vs his friendship with Bennesaud.
I love the kinda unspoken clash between Black and White VS Apathetic Grey thinking going on here.
Bennesaud drew his line, but it’s easy to see that he falls into the same trap Goshen stumbled into, where they’re taking up arms against a symptom, instead of the actual problem.
It’s so easy to just go “Crush bad.” and call it a day, but, at least as far as we’re aware, none of the Ulon Dosi had guns held to their heads and told “TAKE DRUG OR DIE” to be forced to get addicted, but it’s much easier to imagine that they did, so you can form a solid “enemy” in your head, instead of having to face the tricky question of “What’s going wrong to lead a whole village of people to eventually decide that turning to drugs was a better alternative to living life as they were?”
It’s also easy for Bennesaud to just go “Hey, just leave” to Gorug but- Even beyond Gorug’s seemingly only care for money, Bennes seems to fail to take into account how Gorug doesn’t have the same luxury of he has of being built like a MOUNTAIN, as well as him previously being Suul’s Favorite (TM) to protect him from the consequences of just up and leaving.
If Gorug’s not just taken out outright for desertion, best case scenario for him would be the chance he could be picked up by another Dhama as a way to get an edge over Suul, but that just paints a bigger target on his back. And, let’s face it, NONE of the Dhama are angels.
(Though, if you gave me a weekend to dig into all the teeny, tiny semantics, I could probably make an essay argument that from the canon information we have, Suul’s probably the least morally black one we met so far. Maybe another day. This brainvomit novel is getting long enough, LOL!)
Gorug probably DOES have a line, but- it’s much easier, and ultimately safer, to just- throw up the “Job blinders” and just keep doing business as usual. Just like Roka does, and, although he may not want to admit it, Bennesaud does so too. He’s not going out of his way to find out if any of the people he’s doing a job for is dealing in Crush, to make sure he NEVER EVER deals with the drug. His line is simply…”Does he KNOW it’s Crush?”
…Apologies again for the spontaneous novel, this story and world and it’s characters just make me think- so much. Possibly too much, haha! :’D
Great comments everyone! Gorug was definitely a fun one to write since the scene paints him as a bit of a morally questionable mercenary. But the flip side is that Roka and most of his crew fall into that category as well, whether they care to admit it or not.