Juathuur: Gatecrash

Gatecrash is the direct sequel to the original Juathuur webcomic series that aired over at juathuur.spiderforest.com.

Gatecrash takes place 4 years after the events that occurred at the end of the original series and mainly follows Faevv, a young woman who has the power to manipulate space. In Gatecrash, Faevv has become a sort of errand-girl for the gods and has spent much of the last 4 years visiting other worlds and reporting back to the head god, The First.

New to Juathuur? Daunted by the 850+ pages of the original series? Forget half the stuff that happened? Here are a few story notes to help clear things up so that Gatecrash can be enjoyed independently. For more information on the characters, check out the characters section.

What does ‘Juathuur’ mean? Who the heck are these people?

The word ‘juathuur’ means ‘true wanderers’. It is a name applied to a race of people on the world of Fianna who all have a certain set of god-gifted powers. These powers are passed down genetically - Juathuur have Juathuur children about 97% of the time even if the other parent is non-Juathuur. The ancestors of the Juathuur were given their powers by a god named Merlu.

What’s with the black swirly stuff?

The main character, Faevv, has the power to manipulate space. The black swirls are a visual representation of that, and show up when she does things like teleport.

So where exactly does the comic take place?

The comic will actually jump around between a few different planets. Faevv has the ability to cross to different worlds and the comic will show at least four of them. The world shown at the very beginning of Gatecrash is NOT Faevv’s homeworld, Fianna, but rather a world she was sent to visit. In the years prior to Gatecrash, Faevv spent most of her downtime on the Gods’ world, which is called Lyrre.

Okay, what’s with Merlu and the tree he lives in?

Merlu is sometimes called The God-in-the-Tree or Second, because he was the second to awaken. The tree is no ordinary tree - Merlu is bound to it and cannot physically leave the hilltop on which it stands though in circumstances he can ‘project’ himself to other locales. Merlu was bound to the tree by the head god, The First, as a punishment for meddling with the natural progress of humanity. There is a longer story behind this though, that involves a lot of Godly politics. Mainly it involves a the conflict between Merlu and another god called Lok.

And Lok is…?

Lok is the younger brother of the first and is also called The Chained God, because like Merlu he was punished by the First. But while Merlu got what amounted to house-arrest in a tree on a pretty hillside, Lok was confined to a dark and gloomy dimensional prison.

So why all the hate between Merlu and Lok?

Lok once made a mistake that caused the destruction of an entire world. Because of this, Lok came to believe that it was wrong for Gods to become too attached to the humans they oversaw and ESPECIALLY wrong to try to raise humans to a more god-like level by giving them tools or abilities that they couldn’t handle. Merlu was the prime example of a god who did all of this - meddling constantly with humans, experimenting with their abilities, and even going so far as to live among them and father a human child. Lok started a faction among the gods to oppose Merlu and their feud escalated until Lok murdered Merlu’s human family to prove his point. The First ended up punishing both of them in order to appease both sides and avert an all-out war. But as we will see in Gatecrash, nothing was really resolved.