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Raven's Children: Our Story So Far:: home ::This is a bare-bones sketch, not a replacement for reading the comics. However, if you are not familiar with the story, and don't want to buy the print issues at this time (or are waiting for the new TPB), this will help you read the newest online pages without being too lost. For centuries, the Dog People of the mountains and the herding/farming Wagaibe of the plains uneasily shared the Arctic region of their nameless world. The reclusive Dog People, with their fierce hunting/sled dogs, were looked upon as savage subhumans by the Wagaibe ... while the Dog People scorned the Wagaibe as weaklings. However, since the Dog People were armed only with stone weapons and mostly kept to their mountain home, conflicts between the two groups were limited to occasional border raids. This changed when the southern Tolshay Kahn Empire turned its attention to the resource-rich northern lands. They began supplying the Dog People with metal weapons and other trade goods to raid the Wagaibe, burning their towns and capturing survivors to be sold as slaves. Thus weakened, the Wagaibe embraced their invaders as their saviors, for the Tolshay Kahn promised to restore order and suppress the unruly Dog People. The plan had worked, but now the Tolshay Kahn were left with the job of convincing the Dog People (by force if necessary) that their services were no longer needed. This unpleasant task was dumped into the lap of Ronin Kheheli, a disgraced nobleman who had been essentially exiled to the north after falling out of favor in the courts back home. Ronin turned out to have very little talent for diplomacy, and his bungling of negotiations was not helped by his translator, Jained. Jained was a Wagaibe who had once been a slave of the Dog People (thanks to the Tolshay Kahn's weapons-for-slaves program), and therefore spoke their language. Unfortunately Jained still bore a bitter grudge against both sides. The peace talks broke down in a battle that killed several people on both sides and crippled the Dog People's most influential warlord, Deneko the Snow Fox. This was a year ago. Since then, Deneko's son Coren has been using the Dog People's resentment of Tolshay Kahn betrayal to unite the different clans under the leadership of his own Raven's Children clan, in preparation for an all-out attack on the Tolshay Kahn. He's also got a couple of secret weapons up his sleeve -- in particular, a dog named Patch, which has turned out to have some really freaky special abilities... Jained, meanwhile, had a very bad falling-out with Ronin's people and fled under threat of death. (Ironically, it had nothing to do with the fact that Jained is at least partly responsible for the current mess with the Dog People. Ronin still doesn't know about that.) Now back among the Wagaibe, Jained has become aware of rumors that the Dog People are gathering an army in the hills. But is warning Ronin worth risking his own skin?
Just to make things still more complicated, there are supernatural forces gathering as well. The patron spirit of Coren's clan, Raven, is quite real, and this trickster/shapechanger has been observing events and sometimes lending a meddling talon to the whole mess. One of Ronin's concubines has been revealed as the earthly vessel of the war goddess Ashiva (also known as Eskeeven and Skaefen in different lands). And ... just what exactly is Coren's dog Patch -- a creature that can change shape, speak as men do, and appears to have a circuit board in its head ...?
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