Here’s a LOAH commission by DeviantArt user “sky665“. These suckers only cost a whopping $0.25 each! What an amazing deal from such a friendly artist! How could I resist the call for more League of Aquatic Heroes goodness?! That’s right: I could not.

Here’s a cute Swordfish commission by Russian artist JennyFra from DeviantArt. Once again, an accidental find at just the right time as she was doing promotions to get work done. Thankfully, she loved both mermaids, AND pirates, so getting a Swordfish piece from her was a no-brainer! I swear, this character deserves her own mini!

“They probably spread the rumor to keep their treasure safe!” Carlos replied, getting in one last chuckle before putting in his mouthpiece. The sylph-generated oxygen entered his lungs.

Carlos turned away from Manuel and lumbered across the deck of the skiff towards Luisa and Antonio. The two treasure-hunters were sitting on the edge of the small craft clipping weight belts to their waists.

Carlos moved slowly and hunched over to compensate for the 40 kilograms twin-hose aluminium double-tank aqualung rig strapped to his back. He sat down on the skiff’s edge by his additional gear: two extra lamps for safety, each diver always had two backups, some net sacks to retrieve any valuables discovered, and the guideline, which he’d be responsible for.

Carlos was eager for the weightlessness promised by the sea.

“Maybe the pirates drown in the cave while hiding their gold. Their loss, our gain, right?” Antonio said with a smirk. The playboy winked his eye at Manuel and inserted his mouthpiece.

“May God rest their souls if that’s true,” Manuel said. The action of lowering his goggles over his eyes was quickly followed by the sign of the cross across his wetsuit.

“Hell, if they’re still shambling around down there,” Louisa added, “they’ll take a celestium spear to the head!” Louisa raised her speargun like a proud warrior. In went her mouthpiece.

“People go missing down there and yet you all joke,” Manuel said. “What kind of treasure gains its value in corpses?” Manuel mumbled more to himself than to be heard by anyone in particular.

Manuel shuffled over to the other three deep sea adventurers and placed in his mouthpiece.

There would be no more talking from here on in.

Manuel activated his headlamp. He raised a hand to the captain and the navigator, signalling that the four explorers were about to dive into the sea.

Carlos ensured the guideline was secured to the boat and was the first off the boat. Then, one by one, the divers fell backwards over the side of the skiff into the cold and still waters of the Noxpraeterium Sea.

Manuel let his body sink a few feet before kicking out with his flippers to straighten and turn his body. Manuel placed his arms close and kept his breathing calm to conserve oxygen. After a few kicks downward, the bottom of the skiff was gone. The night sky and stars were gone.

The darkness of the deep stretched out beyond him.

The light from Manuel’s headlamp was barely enough to make out the forms of his descending colleagues, their forms mildly silhouetted by the glow of their own light sources.

Going down was the easy part, Manuel thought.

Ten minutes later, and the team was 200 metres below the surface, at the mouth of the fabled cave. The sylph-elemental didn’t only help fill their lungs with pure oxygen due to a symbiotic process, it also powered a propeller unit attached to their tanks. It would take the explorers hours to return to the surface as they’d have to schedule stops along the way to avoid the bends. They’d be lucky if they could get back to the skiff before sunrise.

Carlos secured the guideline to an anchor point outside the cave entrance. Antonio and Louisa settled in behind him. Carlos turned to give them a thumbs up.

Manuel descended and joined the group; he gave them an affirmative wave. Carlos nodded and entered the cave, taking point with the guideline into the darkness.

Thirty minutes had slipped by as the treasure hunters glided through the cave’s passages. Their headlamps did a superb job of lighting up the tunnels along the way. Up ahead, though, beyond a ninety-degree turn that his team had already cleared, Manuel could see Carlos bathed in a luminescent golden glow that came from a larger cavern within.

There was about twenty feet between Carlos and Manuel. Antonio and Louisa moved along, an equal distance apart, excited about their discovery.

Manuel had stopped moving. He was certain that treasure didn’t glow–and no matter how impressive their headlamps were, they weren’t strong enough to fill an entire area with a glowing aura.

Carlos and Antonio entered the cavern. Louisa glanced back at Manuel and motioned for him to keep up with the group. The passage between Manuel and Louisa was lit with two crisscrossing lamp lights for a moment, until Lousa entered the cavern. Manuel reluctantly guided himself down the dark tunnel towards the glowing chamber.

Manuel stopped himself at the cavern entrance. The room was, indeed, filled with treasure. Dozens of wooden chests, ancient unrecognizable armours and weapons, and art objects in the shape of sea creatures he had never seen.

The most impressive object in the area wasn’t the treasure, though: it was an enormous sea anemone… a glowing one. The lit-up sea cavern must have been thirty feet high; this sea plant’s tentacle limbs–hundreds of them–brushed against the stone surface above. The basal disk was thick, easily twenty feet in diameter.

Antonio was near the basal disk inspecting a breastplate made of gold and coral.

Carlos was drifting near the swaying tentacles above them, enthralled by the immensity of the sea plant.

Louisa had her celestium spear harpoon at the ready. Her eagerness and curiosity quickly fading.

Manuel was still at the entrance when a low vibration spread out from the sea anemone. Manuel could feel it in his eardrums.

And then all was dark. Even their headlamps were extinguished.

Manuel scrambled for his backup lamp. He flipped the on-switch. A beam of white light cut through the deep darkness, and Manuel pointed it into the cavern.

In the next three second of his life, Manuel knew it was all over for the divers. They wouldn’t make it to the surface. This was their last deep sea treasure hunt.

Carlos floated limply, half way into the giant sea anemone’s tentacle mass, the ancient breastplate slipping from his fingers.

Antoine was subdued by three tentacles, one of them firmly around the exposed skin of his checks. He looked like a marionette, Manuel thought.

Louisa’s legs were entangled by one extended tentacle, while she held off another with her speargun. She stopped struggling when the tentacle touched her exposed hand.

Louisa’s speargun arm floated behind her. A muscle spasm, brought on by the paralyzing poison of the anemone tentacle, caused her to fire the celestium spear in Manuel’s direction. It narrowly missed his head and pierced his rebreather tank instead.

All this, Manuel saw in three slow seconds. His lungs hurt as the sylph-elemental was expelled from his tank. Without the sylph-elemental, his body’s adaptability to the higher pressure at these depths was reduced significantly.

The sylph-elemental was a primal creature. If given the opportunity to be free, it would take it. Unfortunately, at this depth, the oxygen content in the water was as fatal for the sylph as it was for Manuel.

Bubbles gathered around the tank as the sylph rebuilt its bird-like elemental form. It panicked when it realized it was nowhere near the air. It even struggled to re-enter the rebreather tank, but it was too late. The damage was done. The sylph’s essence was corrupted and it was dissipating.

Manuel’s eyes glossed over as he watched his three colleagues disappear into the anemone’s mass. It was the last thing he saw as he began to lose consciousness. He’d drown before he was rescued.

“The Belly of the Deep Sea Cavern” by Nuno Teixeira © 2012, XEI
Licensed under the Creative Commons License By-NC-SA

You can share and distribute this story, but can NOT make profit off it, and MUST share it freely as well with the same CC-License indicated above.
You MUST include the proper Attribution with the shared story:
“Written by Nuno Teixeira, © 2011, XEI, http://www.nunoxei.com”

Captain Kraken is the leader of the League of Aquatic Heroes. He’s a psionic soldier of a long-forgotten race called the Krakatoa. The Krakatoans are a highly reclusive race who live in the deepest depths of the sea. Their physiology is highly adapted to the tremendous atmospheric pressures of the ocean. This is not so much due to a highly resilient body structure, but due to an innate psionic sheath that protects their forms at all times. Members of the soldier class are gifted with the ability to manipulate this psionic force outwards, and are trained to harness those energies in an offensive and defensive nature.

Captain Kraken has abandoned his society in order to concentrate his efforts to help protect the surface dwellers. He tends to shout orders, verbally and mentally, at the League while in combat. Although a capable hand-to-hand combatant, Kraken tends to stay back and analyze and affect the battle from range.

He is a skilled tactician and deductive thinker, but even more outstanding is the unharnessed power of his mind. This power is something Captain Kraken is afraid to tap too deeply into for fear of awakening a dark force the Krakatoans believe is the source of their species: their ancient and slumbering god, The Deep One of Many Eyes.

This character covers the “demi god” role common to many super teams. The intent was to keep him fairly ”generic” as to which god he had ties to. Poseidon? Neptune? A long lost Atlantean deity? It’s been left up in the air. I’d, personally, like to consider him multi-pantheon-polytheistic. He is a harold of the relentless sea, of the typhoons and whirlpools, of the storms and fog. He is the unforgiving tempest personified.

For all his potential destructive power, he remains fairly calm, almost brooding, constantly. He speaks in few words, and is quick to execute orders given to him. No one knows exactly how old he is, or even if he’s human. Not even he does. The most Sea Squall can do is focus on keeping the sea protected while he seeks out answers about his past along the way. Truth be told, though, Sea Squall seems to be in no rush to find out.

So, why “Uncanny”? Primarily, because the adjective has a longterm connection to the X-Men of course! Blowfish is a mutant. He’s the “one that doesn’t belong” in the crowd–the central narrative theme in the second LOAH story arc.

The rest of LOAH are actually water-based entities. Blowfish is a human mutation, a freak of nature to both aquakind and humankind, a bipolar specimen (literally). He’s both a vibrant extrovert as well as a brooding loner. Rules are optional when it comes to getting things done. He respects the law, but his heart is dedicated to the freedom of living creatures, even if it means facing the law itself.

That’s the kinda guy Blowfish is: the guy you wanna hug but are afraid too because of the retracting quills that spike out of his body when his adrenalin rises, or he feels threatened. Blowfish gets it too. He doesn’t try to get too close to people because he’s afraid of hurting them if he does. Instead, he finds some gnarly waves to ride and forget about the things “normal” people get too do… and then he goes and finds criminals to punch. Whatever works, right?

It’s not clear in the two webcomics arcs how she goes from having two legs to a fish tail, but the answer is attached to that sash around her waist. It’s likely the only design requirement for her wardrobe ever.

In my comic series Raven Nevermore (coming soon!), in issue #3, a ship captain who carries contraband on her ship is introduced. She goes by the name Captain Alakai. Some people call her Swordfish. Coincidence? No. It’s simply my way of sending a shout out to alternate timeline / alternate world concepts in comic book history. It’s fun times.

He moved past more hanging carcasses – a lamb, half a cow and something he couldn’t identify – as he approached his captive. The man was tied to a chair, ankles bound, hands together behind his back.

Aranax enjoyed the way the man’s eyes widened ever so slightly at his approach, the way his nostril flared and his muscles tensed.  He noticed the set of the man’s jaw, a determined grimace, trying, and failing, not to show his fear. A sheen of sweat glistened on the man’s brow, despite the cold of the chiller.

“What do you want?” the man asked.

“Nothing,” Aranax replied. One of his chains slunk towards the captive, the bladed edge brushed the man’s cheek.

The man jerked his head away. “Then let me go!”

“No.”

“You must want something! What is it? Money? I have money.”

Aranax chuckled: a low, throaty sound full of menace. “I am already getting paid far more than you could ever hope to give me.”

“What do you want?” the man growled again. He tugged at his bonds, causing the chair to jump a little.

“I don’t want anything,” Aranax replied. “The man I work for wants you out of his way.”

“Why?”

Aranax heard footsteps so he drew back from the captive. He smiled. “Why don’t you ask him that yourself?”

Two pig carcasses swayed as Aranax’s employer moved them aside to step through. The man was tall, taller than Aranax, and lean, with dark, cropped hair and pale blue eyes. He wore a thick coat with a furred collar and leather gloves. When he laughed, his breath clouded in front of his lips.

“You!” the captive hissed.

“He recognises you, Mr Keller,” Aranax said.

“I expect he does,” Keller replied. “He’s sleeping with my wife, I imagine he’s seen my photo beside the bed.”

Aranax chuckled. “You would think that’d put him off.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” Keller agreed.

The captive jerked his arms. “Let me go!” he demanded. “Does Maria know you’re doing this?”

“What do you think she would do if she did?” Keller asked. “Rescue you?”

“She’ll hate you when she finds out what you’re doing to me.”

Aranax doubted Keller’s wife would ever find out. He smirked and folded his arms across his chest.

Keller simply laughed. “She already hates me. Now then…” He turned to Aranax, slipped a hand inside his coat and pulled out a fat envelope. “Your fee. You’ll find it’s all there.”

“I know I will, Mr Keller,” Aranax replied, taking the envelope and stowing it away about his person. He knew that Keller was aware of what would happen if he dared to cross a kyton. He waited until his employer had walked away and he’d heard the chiller door close before he turned back to his victim. “Now where were we…”

In one swift movement, the man tilted his chair back, slammed his feet down, and freed his ankles before the chair legs crashed heavily to the floor again. He rose up, hands still attached behind him, and twisted, smashing the chair into Aranax and breaking it into pieces.

Aranax grunted in surprise, then watched as the man ran away, darting between slabs of meat as broken bits of chair skittered across the floor.

Aranax laughed and brushed splinters from his chest. “Why prolong the inevitable?” he called. “There is no escape.”

“Yeah?” the man called back. “I’m a chancer, can’t you tell?”

“I can tell,” Aranax replied, moving pig carcasses aside to clear his view. “Do you know what I am?”

He heard the scuff of the man’s feet on the floor, then his voice coming from a different direction. “A kyton.”  The word was almost a whisper, almost a gasp, full of fear.

Aranax knew where the man hid and with one small gesture, instructed all the chains in the room to pull back, so that he could see his prey.

“There you are,” Aranax said, smiling.

The man had his back pressed against the wall. His eyes were wide and his jaw set. “St-stay away,” he stuttered.

Chains creaked and chinked as they moved. Those that had no meat attached snaked towards the man, wrapping around his arms and legs as he screamed and thrashed. Aranax himself stood back a moment, watching, before he raised himself up on his own chains, stabbing the pointed tips into the floor as he walked, spider-like, towards his victim. He stopped, grabbed the man around the throat and pulled him close.

“A pity,” he said, “I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”

The man choked, clawed at Aranax’s arms with his fingers, his eyes started to roll back in his head.

Aranax relaxed his grip and let the meat chains hold the man instead. With a smile, his face became that of Mr Keller’s wife.

Metal links crossed the man’s face; chains cocooned his head until only his eyes were showing. He looked at Aranax, a brief flicker of hope, then his muffled voice said, “Maria?”

Aranax only made the chains squeeze harder.

“The Chain Spider” by E.J. Tett, art by Pablo Peppino; © 2012, XEI
Licensed under the Creative Commons License By-NC-SA

You CAN share and distribute this story;
You CAN make “fan fiction” based on characters in this story;
You CAN NOT make profit off this work or any derivitive works;
You MUST use apply the same CC-License indicated above.

You MUST include the proper Attribution with ANY shared story:
“Written by E.J. Tett, © 2012, XEI, http://www.nunoxei.com”

In the November issue of Blueprint Magazine, the theme was “Queer”. I knew right away that I wanted to make the story in this month’s comic one that commented on alternative-partner-choice lifestyles.

Instead of depicting a relationship that would be easily correlated to a real-world partnership, I went in a completely “alien” direction… literally. I wanted to introduce concepts that (I believe) are at the core of alternative choice lifestyles. That core is one that represents the emotional bond between partners, the acceptance of one another as individuals, and the importance of happiness in one’s life.

Live and let live, I always say.

Read the “Queer” Issue on the Blueprint Magazine Website
Read other Beholder strips!

Paen’umbam had watched his target die and had mourned. Mourned not the death, but the fact that he had not been the killer. So, he waited for his second chance.

 * * *

Decades later, bishops removed the corpse from its original resting place in Ugola and moved it to Mircea. A country skilled in necromancy. A country so skilled in the old arts that the body, once animated, would be almost as good as new.

The corpse, one Bayard Chaput, had been a renowned knight when living. A hero. A cloaked warrior, capable of bringing down the most dangerous of fiends. He had died, not by the hand of an enemy, but from a tragic accident where his horse – the largest, most fierce of all destriers, threw him from the saddle. Bayard had broken his neck.

Paen’umbam retreated. He knew that heroes didn’t just die. He knew Bayard would be back, that somebody, somewhere, would bring the knight back. Paen was a babau assassin, his patience was unrivalled. He could wait.

* * *

The battle raged all night. Metal clashed against metal, men screamed and shouted and cursed. Blood, sweat and tears flowed freely. Clouds drifted across the sky and cloaked the moon and Paen watched as knights slaughtered knights across the battlefield. He slipped between warring bodies, silent and unseen, wrapped in darkness, and bent to take a taste of those already fallen. The flavour of human meat on his thin, dry tongue was something he relished. The flesh provided him not with sustenance, but with pleasure. He cared not which knight killed which knight so long as his own target survived.

Bayard was there, gore splattered and muddy. Paen could hear the knight roaring like a man possessed. Battle-crazed, dead eyes shining, his armour blood-flecked and dented. Bayard cut down everyone in his path.

He came too close. Paen smelled death and decay seeping from the knight’s every pore, he saw the grey pallor of the skin around the man’s eyes, saw his sunken cheeks and his crumbling fingernails. And he knew when Bayard spotted him.

Their eyes met, briefly. And then Paen was gone, teleporting away from the battle and slinking back into the darkness, gathering the night around himself like a cloak. He watched from a distance, hiding in the forest. Waiting.

* * *

Morning came. Paen watched men pick through the battlefield and head on into the forest. He trailed after them a while, thought about killing the stragglers and then decided against it, turning back to seek out Bayard.

The knight must be with the other army, heading back into the mountains to tell the townsfolk of his victory. Paen knew he could get there first – a simple teleportation to some shadowy place and lie in wait – but he wanted more than that. He didn’t want an easy kill. He wanted a hunt, a fight. A kill worthy of himself.

So he turned and headed back through the forest, thinking about Bayard Chaput and all the grisly ways he could end that man’s second life.

The sound of a twig snapping underfoot. Paen hissed and spun around in time to see a knight swinging a sword. The weapon skimmed the surface of his skin, slicing through the acid slime that protected him.

The knight gasped as the blade bubbled and melted. Paen laughed as the man, wide-eyed, foolishly threw the sword to the ground. Then he attacked, leaping forwards and sinking his teeth into the man’s face, pulling a chunk of flesh away from the cheekbone before tearing at it again, all the while the knight screaming, screaming…

Moving on, Paen left the corpse to rot in the forest.

* * *

The white cloak flapped at the knight’s heels as he strode through the town. From the shadows of the town-hall, Paen watched.

In taverns along the street, people revelled in their champions’ victory on the battlefield, laughing and singing and brawling nosily as humans had the habit of doing. Paen could smell ale and piss and vomit, could see men falling over one another and women clinging to each other’s arms.

The moon showed in the sky, though it was not quite dark, and as Paen watched, he saw Bayard stop and gaze upwards. Seeing his chance, he pulled the shadows around himself and then pushed the darkness outwards into the street, letting it surround the knight.

He rushed up silently behind his target, sunk his claws into the gaps in the knight’s armoured shoulders and spun the man around, ready to sink his teeth into flesh.

Bayard’s fist struck him in the jaw and sent him reeling backwards. Paen heard the sword being drawn from its scabbard and he ducked down as the blade passed over his head. As he straightened, the knight swung the sword again and this time he vanished in an explosion of darkness and reappeared at the man’s back.

Quickly, Bayard spun around but Paen lashed out, catching the knight across the face with his claws. He struck again before Bayard could recover, watching as spots of dark blood arced into the air.

A mailed fist hit his cheek, then Bayard thrust out with his sword. Paen felt the tip of the blade touch his rib cage and he curled his lip at the knight as the blade started to steam and melt. He looked into Bayard’s eyes and was surprised to see the knight smiling grimly.

With a hiss, he teleported away up onto the roof of the town hall, snatched at the flagpole and ripped it from its base. Darkness billowed around him like a cape; he disappeared and once more confronted Bayard.

The knight roared, struck out with his broken blade, and Paen thrust forwards with the splintered pole, finding a gap in the armour below the man’s abdomen. Breath and blood sprayed from the knight’s lips.

Paen pulled the pole out and then, as Bayard dropped to his knees, thrust it down into the soft flesh between his neck and breastplate.

A crowd had gathered to watch, the drunken revellers now quietly sober. Paen became aware of them as Bayard Chaput dropped dead at his feet. He lifted the body and teleported back to the rooftop.

With a grin, he bit off the knight’s ear and spat it down into the street.

His eyes narrowed and he said, “Resurrect that.”

“Black Cloak” by E.J. Tett, art by Pablo Peppino; © 2012, XEI
Licensed under the Creative Commons License By-NC-SA

You CAN share and distribute this story;
You CAN make “fan fiction” based on characters in this story;
You CAN NOT make profit off this work or any derivitive works;
You MUST use apply the same CC-License indicated above.

You MUST include the proper Attribution with ANY shared story:
“Written by E.J. Tett, © 2012, XEI, http://www.nunoxei.com”