Snow by Night

We return to Bertrande and her reaction to Peyre’s letter in Page 10 of A Life So Free. This concludes the vignette. My thanks to Minuiko for illustrating it. She helped bring the scenes of the voyageurs to life. Thank you for all your hard work. She now joins our ranks of our contributors on our About page.

We will begin posting Chapter 8 on Monday, Dec. 2. It’s titled Of Making and Unmaking and will be picking up right where we left off in Chapter 7. To see a preview of the great cover page that Brittany did for Chapter 8, please vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics.

We will not be updating the Almanac on Friday because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Also, this Friday is Native American Heritage Day as the capstone of Native American Heritage Month. Our thanks to the First Nations for being one of the inspirations for Snow by Night.

And finally, don’t forget to check out Kaspall, the SpiderForest webcomic of the week. Good stuff over there. Lucy is a talented artist and writer.

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Peyre meets his end in the icy waters of the Upper Country on page 9 of A Life So Free. Shooting the rapids was a dangerous temptation for the voyageurs. You could either carry your weight in furs and then come back and get the canoe — a process that could take hours of heavy labor. Or you could avoid all of that by shooting the rapids. The Ottowa River is littered with rapids named after the voyageurs that drowned there. To see the a preview of the final page, please vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics.

This week’s SpiderForest webcomic of the week is Kaspall by Lucy Lyall. It’s a long-running (from 2005) mystery comic. A good bit of the supernatural creeps into the story so be ready for thrills and chills.

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This week’s Almanac entry are The Sweet Seas. What happens when you put the Great Lakes through a fantasy filter? Great things, naturally. (Oh, the puns.) Read all about the five freshwater seas of Everique in the almanac. They are the beating heart of trade, communication, agriculture, and a vibrant native society.

Don’t forget to check out Kez’s What It Takes. It’s a fine webcomic with good art and good story.

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Peyre and the voyageurs head home in Page 8 of A Life So Free. The trip downstream from the Sweet Seas goes much faster than the trip up from Ville Marcelet. To see a preview of Page 9 and the fate of Peyre, please vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics.

Don’t forget to check out What It Takes by Kez when you have a chance. If you’re a fan of post-apocalyptic adventure (and you probably are, with the Fallout-playing and the Walking Dead-watching), you’ll like this comic.

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Peyre speaks to us about the unbridled freedom of the Upper Country in A Life So Free page 7. Think about the Canadiens of the early 1700s. They’ve come to this vast wilderness after leaving a hyper-civilized Europe where everything is controlled, monitored, and prescribed. The forests of Europe are long gone. Every scrap of land is claimed. And then they come here. The North American wilderness must have been intoxicating. It was complete freedom without structure or restriction.

Minuiko did a fantastic job at capturing that feeling with this page. The flying geese above Peyre as he stands as straight and unbent as the pine trees behind him. And to contrast that, we have the woodcuts of Japethan life, bound in squares, with figures bent in servitude. Wonderfully done on this page, Minuiko. To see a preview of her next page, please vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics.

This week’s SpiderForest Webcomic of the Week is What It Takes by Kez. This is the story of Colbey, a martial artist who has survived the end of the world. In this grim, post-apocalypte landscape, the strong exploit the weak. But there is a glimmer of hope. a city where it is rumored to have technology, safety, and even an elected government. Yet can this place be real or is it just a legend, and what does it have to do with a man named Peter Wolfe. Read and find out!

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Today, I wanted to talk about Beavers in the Almanac. Yes, I said beavers. Beavers! I want to talk about these furry little rodents. They’re the basis of the economy in Aradie and the lure that drew so voyageurs like Peyre deep into the Upper Country. Peyre is lucky. He only had to paddle to the Great Lakes from Montreal. As the beaver thinned out, the voyageurs had to paddle further and further into first Manitoba and then Saskatchewan  to get the furs they wanted. That’s a really long way.

In non-beaver related news, Snow by Night will be returning to Katsucon in 2014. It’s a fun convention with a heavily emphasis on cosplay. It also has one of the best venues I’ve ever seen.

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The Upper Country is big sky country, and it made quite the impression on the voyageurs who ventured that deep into the continental interior. Peyre echoes their awe in Page 6 of A Life So Free. You may have noticed that I changed the style of the caption boxes for this vignette. The drop shadows were causing issues in Illustrator so I switched them over to a standard stroke behind the fill. I think it looks cleaner. As always, to see a preview of the next page, please vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics.

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Peyre reveals his generosity on Page 5 of A Life So Free. The wealth obtained by the voyageurs and the coureur des bois were enormous. Yet many of them died impoverished. To see a preview of the next page, please vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics.

The SpiderForest webcomic of the week is Snow by Night! Hey, that’s us. It’s a great comic, if we say so ourselves. You should totally read it.

If you’re visiting us for the first time on a referral from one of the other webcomics in SpiderForest, welcome! We’re glad you can came by to visit. We’re in the middle of a vignette at the moment. These are short stories by a guest artist we run after each chapter. This one is drawn by Minuiko and tells the story of a voyageur and his love of the wilderness of the Upper Country.

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