THE FINAL UPDATE STARTS HERE!

Take the Finale Reader's Poll!

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Music for the credits!

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Heroes of Thantopolis is finished! It’s incredible that an idea I came up with 15 years ago exists in a fully completed state. Back then I could only dream about making a webcomic; look how far I’ve come. 

So many people have supported me in bringing HoT to life. I want to thank:

• My family, thank you for listening to me talk your ear off about these characters.
• My fellows in the Chimera Comics Collective, who are a group of seriously talented comic artists;
• The crew over at The Webcomics Travelogue, who I work with to further the visibility of independent webcomics;
• The Hiveworks staff who helped me with the technical aspects of running a webcomic. Though I'm not longer part of Hive, I'm grateful for the work they did for me. 
• Katie, who does layout for HoT's physical books. You rock!
• Everyone who contributed guest comics and guest art throughout the comic's life. I appreciate each and every piece of art!
• And most importantly, you, my readers! Thank you SO much for reading!

You WHAT?!!?

Let's end with things looking up for our heroes.

THERE'S ONE MORE PAGE! 

Newark: Cal is subservient to us! It doesn't make sense!

Ohare: Cal wasn't making sense. It's called love, dummy. 

Well, if it isn't Newark and Ohare, the leaders of the Offsprings (and two my most beloved characters).

Newark has a very handy remote viewing ability. If Cal hadn't altered his memories, he might've checked up on Cyrus sooner.  

And now Cyrus, supported by his friends, begins his journey as an immortal caretake of ghosts. 

...Hey, what's that ominous dark floating rectangle doing there?

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Next week is the final update!

One last batch of pages to end off the comic. Are you excited? I'm excited!

Ah yes, the mysterious ghost who Helene broke the ghost rules for! The one Cyrus has been asking about for a while now. We finally get the answer - it's Veld, the ghost who lives at Cyrus's house and is Cal's friend! I hope you all feel quite edified knowing the answer to that pressing question. 

...You want to know why Helene broke the ghost rules for Veld? I guess that's a mystery for another day ;)

Yeah, Cyrus really isn't ready to talk about Luzi.

Aha, you were all tricked! For it was not Cyrus writing the letter at all - it was Veld, making her first actual on-page appearance outside of flashbacks and extra pages. Veld has the unique ability to posses objects (and people, if they're unconscious) and move them around; in exchange, she can't manipulate anything with her hands. 

Isaac, you scamp!

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Helene's got a brand-new look! I've learned a lot about character design in the 12 years I've been working on this comic, so I'm now able to give Helene an outfit better fitting her personality, as well as altering her ears and making her tail visible so she's more identifiable as a rat.

Fun fact: Helene's hair previously resembled Cal's. In fact, it was once short and she grew it out sometime after their friendship dissolved. Her cutting it here (as well as putting away the Medium Charm necklace that belonged to Cal) is how I'm showing her committing to leaving her infatuation in the past. I'm also telling you guys since, well, Cyrus isn't savvy enough to pick up on it alone XO

Gee, you think?

If I were to do a rewrite of HoT - a kind of "second draft" of the whole completed story - I'd give the plot element of "Helene shirking her duties for so long is why things are so bad in Thantopolis to begin with" greater emphasis. It's definitely there in the story, but it's more subtext than text, IMO. 

Remember Ozwella, the ghost with a grudge against Helene from Chapter 11? It turns out Helene had kept the hat she threw away in disgust after Helene refused to acknowledge her. Maybe there's hope for Helene yet!

No, Cyrus isn't ready to talk about Luzi/Trickster yet. Have a map I labored over instead.

Ugh, this map! To save myself the hours of effort sketching out the placement of buildings, I used a web program called Icograms to put down basic building shapes in an isometric grid. I fully drew out the castle as it's the building most people are familiar with, but left the rest as shapes. Please consider this less a representative map and more a pulled-back sketch of what the city looks like now.

Yay, the crew is back! Sag, Redburn, and Xisea haven't been seen since April of last year! I know all the Xisea fans missed seeing her sweet little face :)

Music for this scene.

This is the last scene of the comic, aka the epilogue! I am concerned this scene is going to be long XD That's good for you guys, it's just more work for me. Let's see if I can't wrap up this wrap-up in less than 15 pages. 

Cyrus is moving up in the world! He's got a new room in one of the castle's back towers. The last time we had a wide shot of the back of Castle Thantopolis was the end of Chapter 2! I usually draw the castle from the front. 

I rewrote the dialogue in this scene SO many times! After watching people's reactions to the Amazing Digital Circus finale, I tried to take what worked and what didn't work from Caine's redemption scene as direction. I know Helene has her haters out there, but I hope you found her redemption at least satisfactory from a narrative standpoint. 

This is technically the end of the chapter! But don't worry, we still have a meaty epilogue to get through.  

No Helene, you can't be my mommy anymore, but we can be co-workers?

What did you expect him to say?

The reason I included pages in past chapters where Cyrus and co walked to and from Osiris's villa was to make it clear that the those places were east of the city center -- and thus were totally destroyed by the Orinthope. 

For a sec there, Helene thought someone else had swooped in and saved the day. 

Do you know it's almost been a year since Helene has been on-page??!? I can't believe my audience was deprived of her presence for so long.

Looks like Fear took a bite out of Thantopolis.

And when I see the light

How could I turn away

But all I know

Is it will tear me all apart if I stay