Webcomic / City of Somnus

A webcomic by H. L. DeVera and sequel/spin-off to Archipelago, set about five years after the original story.

Travelling the lands of their home country, Majestan, prince Paollo and his faithful guards are asked to help an insignificant little village that is being terrorised by a Dynn - a dream-devouring monster. After they manage to (somewhat bumblingly) dispatch it, they witness a mysterious creature abduct the messenger who brought them to the village in the first place, and naturally follow.

Right into Land of Faerie.

The comic began on August 2nd 2017 and is still ongoing.

It can be found at the creator's deviantART page (although with seemingly random pages marked as "mature" and needing a log-in to see) and at Webtoons.

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Provides examples of:

• Abstract Eater: The Feyn eat human creativity.
• Action Girl: Tusura, whose first reaction to spooky and mysterious is to grab a Martial Arts Staff and investigate.
  Tusura: In my experience, few things remain spooky OR quiet once you hit them enough with a stick.
• Affably Evil: The Feyn are big on manners, but this only enhances the creepiness when they turn on each other or mortals out of the blue.
• The Ageless: The Feyn look whatever age they want, usually around mid-twenties, and many of them are quite old.
• Alien Geometries: The space in Feyn kingdom doesn't seem exactly connected like we're used to.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The dreamers trapped in the Feyn world to sustain it. Those dreamers who beg Paollo for help in his vision.
  • Adazi, infected with a mysterious nightmare thing and kept heavily medicated, isolated from human touch, for the last thirty years.
• Anger Born of Worry: The conflict between Paollo and Zatachi in chapter 9 boils down to: Paollo wants to do a dangerous thing because he thinks it's useful, Zatachi is furious at him for putting himself in danger. Neither will back down.
• Animal Lover: Vamuro, who seems nicer to the steeds than to his fellow guards. Meeting a corgi-shaped animus in the woods he immediately feeds it gefiti.
• The Apprentice: Goji is a Dream Walker in training under Amani's tutelage, but for now is mostly running errands.
• Arranged Marriage: One of the purposes of Paollo's trip around the country was to look for potential spouses, but this doesn't seem to have worked out.
• Arc Number: Six:
  • A Majestan gets five guards, making a group of six people.
  • Keeping with her Animal Motif (bees), Odette's magic tends toward hexagonal shapes.
• Art Shift: Every dream world is drawn in a slightly different style - for personal dream worlds the styles reflect owners' personalities and preferences.
• Ash Face: After Zatachi's experiment with fire in chapter 7, both him and Paollo are covered in soot.
• A Sleep For Days: This tends to happen to Odette. She did only take eighteen hours to recover form a magical explosion, though, which the healer notes is pretty fast.
• Badass Boast: Paollo's dad enters the story delivering one. And does he back it up:
  Nemo: I don't think of myself as a possessive man. But then I see someone invading MY dreams... attacking MY son... and stealing MY people's children. I don't think of myself as a violent man, either. But I'm willing to re-think my self-image when it comes to defending what's MINE.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Denami "If dreams are the breath of Majestan, then paperwork is the skeleton!" Patula, the friendly, no-nonsense woman in charge of dream records. Other employees of the Hall of Names are also friendly, no-nonsense and professional, if some of them Cloudcuckoolanders.
• Baku: Favored helpers of the Majestani royal family. Unfortunately, they're extinct in the wild due to poaching and only live in captivity.
  Paollo: They're guardians of human dreams. Any malicious nightmares come close, the baku slurp them up like noodles. The stories say that the dream keepers of the past commanded vast herds of baku that numbered in thousands. Then foreign poachers started hunting them for tusks. Now there's only a handful left in captivity, and no one's seen one in the wild for centuries. Similar to what have happened to the keepers themselves. Perhaps it's true that the keeper's fate is tied to their baku's.
• Bathos: Paollo entering the dream world and spreading his enormous butterfly wings looks impressive... until he lands. With a SKIIID...
  Zatachi: Another brilliant, three-point landing from the Rem Prince of Majestan. All nines from the judges, except the Babidin judge who graded it a four.
  • Morg going "I'm not cleaning this up!" after this boss's Imperfect Ritual causes a huge mess.
  • The first personal dream world we visit Zatachi's is a grandiose, Aztec-temple-inspired place full of dragons. Upon entering it, Tusura says:
  Tusura: Well... nevermind then. He's not there.
• Big Eater: Zatachi:
  Gozazi: You've had FIVE gefiti already, we're saving these for later.
  Zatachi: Future me will forgive present me for eating his share now.
  Gozazi: Future you will whine and wuss if I let present you get away with it.
  Zatachi: That's future you and future me's problem! I'm still hungry!
• Cathartic Exhalation: Odette after Douglas's "critique". She also exhales after her first encounter with Vaohn cooking.
• Chekhov's Boomerang:
  • Chekhov's snacks: the gefiti (sort of a flatbread) Gozazi makes for the road, right in the first scenes. They come in handy more than once (everybody loves gefiti).
  • Chekhov's monster - we haven't seen the last of the Dynn after Paollo's explosion mangled it. Later Tatami observes its love for gefiti and uses the snacks to Summon Bigger Fish. Repeatedly. Afterwards Bean's Imperfect Ritual inadvertantly brings the Dynn into waking world, and Gozazi befriends it. Her.

• Continuity Nod:
  • Paollo mentions once or twice how he's not travelling abroad nowadays because of the "Archipelago incident".
  • Knull appears, hale and hearty, and quite happy to live in Majestan. The password for the magical artifact he's made is "Lucinda".
  • After Odette saves Paollo and becomes the talk of the town, we get several shots of the rumors and gossip forming. Several townsfolk mistake her for 'the girl that saved the Prince from the Great Raven,' and assume that he brought her back to the city to marry her.
• Cryptic Background Reference:
  Paollo: Sure, but just because no one can get into the Floating Fortress of Krell doesn't mean no one knows it's there. It's a giant castle in the middle of a lake, it's hard to miss!
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Odette and her housemates speak of Douglas returning home almost as if he was an abusive spouse who would hurt them if he finds anything out of order. Then again, he is emotionally abusive towards Odette.
  • Baku are extinct in the wild because poachers were hunting them for tusks. They even look a lot like elephants in the dream world (in the waking world they look more like tapirs).
• Dope Slap: Vamuro hits Zatachi with a rolled-up mat in chapter 1, for bragging about how they eat Dynn for breakfast.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Heaps of it in the scene where Paollo and Odette are hiding from Douglas: first, Douglas thinks Paollo must be a "sorcerous, evil mastermind" since he's evading him so well (Douglas refuses to aknowledge the possibility of Paollo being helped by Odette). Then he lands right on top of Paollo and Odette's hiding place and never notices them. And then the sweet prince tops it off with:
  Paollo: I'm so good at being lost, there's a whole team of people in charge of finding me again. But they're safe in the waking world right now.
  • Chapter nine, page 58, as the girls enter the tea shop, Morg is, once again, buying a fluffy bunny critter, or at least arguing with a salesman, in the foreground (so it can't be called a Meaningful Background Event). We know by now what happened the last time Morg bought one of these, but the protagonists have no idea a dark ritual is in the makings again.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Paollo has too few of these dreams and his divination teachers are being mean about it, apparently. He does get one rather thick with foreshadowing right at the beginning of chapter 1, but neither he nor his guards know how to interpret it.
• Dream Land: Maintained by the Majestani. As Gozazi explains:
  Gozazi: The Majestan and his guardians aren't just the protectors of the dream world, their minds are the linchpin to a large and consistent dream network accessible to anyone on the continent. Without them, dreamworlds would be small and scattered, only accessible at short range and vanishing everytime the dreamer wakes.
• Dream Stealer: Dynn eats dreams. That's pretty much all it does, although one gobbles up the gefiti Gozazi dropped and happily goes to find more. Later on the Dynn befriends Gozazi, him who has food.
• Dream Weaver: Keepers of dreams are a very big thing in Majestan. They take care of the common dream world, where Talking in Your Dreams, among other things, is possible.
• Eldritch Abomination: Dynn, a demon or monster that devours dreams, is a huge mass of pure black, with lots of tentacles and teeth in unexpected places. And way Too Many Mouths. Dynn don't do a lot besides eating, sometimes each other. It's quite a surprise for Gozazi to discover they are actually sentient. And pretty nice.
• Establishing Shot: The very first page, in which the character travelling through majestanian landscape is less visible than little creatures in the foreground.
• Explosive Breeder: The dodo. Besides this and their chicken-like size, they're exactly the fluffy birdbrains they used to be in our world, with no preservation instincts, which is good, because otherwise the entire land of Majestan would be up to their heads in dodos.
• The Faceless: Solomon is wearing a strange gas mask all the time. Gozazi hides his face under a headscarf.
• Faerie Court: The Feyn are ruled by Queen Marula and King Ur.
• The Fair Folk: Despite their insect wings and general Tinkerbell colorfulness, the Feyn, who Cannot Tell a Lie (it's their magical nature), feed on human creative energy and do not kidnap children. They rescue unhappy ones (don't ask what counts as "unhappy"). They also fight a lot among themselves (there's lots of technicolor blood) and tend to be very in-your-face. Sometimes literally. And if you happen to be a grown-up, they turn outright cruel.
• Fairy Tale: The "prince is separated from his retinue, wanders into Land of Faerie and has to get by using his wits, helped by allies he gains by being kind" sort of one. Although we also see what prince's retinue are doing in the meantime. And what happens after he and his friends get out.
• Familiar: Each of the Feyn is accompanied by a shapeshifting white or black animal called an animus. Per Word of God:
  They're pretty much magic that forms itself into different shapes.
• Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Apart from beasts of burden, Majestan has huge bees that carry messages, small dodos that fulfill the role of chickens, and mimmoths.
• First Time Feeling: Odette's been eating bland dream world food her entire life. The first thing she eats in the waking world is very spicy and leaves her out of breath.
• Fusion Dance: The Feyn can merge with their animus, resulting in a somewhat nightmarish, near-unstoppable Amalgam. Turns out, Paollo can put his soul in others to achieve this, too.
• The Glomp: Zatachi's "dragon dive hugs". He's rather free with them. Sometimes Paollo glomps Zatachi, as well.
• Gilligan Cut: In chapter 2, after waking up alone in a mysterious forest:
  Zatachi: Paollo! Tatami? Tusura?! Gozazi! Vamuro?! Okay, Zatachi, don't lose your head. You're fine. You're all by yourself in a strange dream and the last thing you remember is fighting some dusty-smelling rabbit monster... Calm! Caalm as a cucumber. Calm as a vaguely oblong vegetable can be. All the other squash are looking positively STEAMED in comparison. So like all good little veggies, I'm going to stay calm, sit still, wait for my soul mates to find me... and not run off into the scary dream woods like a maniac.

Half a page later, that's exactly what he does.

• Good News, Bad News: In chapter 1, after Paollo's magical explosion that levels a good bit of the dreamscape:
  Zatachi: Well, I've got good news and bad news, but I hate bad news so I'll tell you the good news first. The Dynn is gone!
• Herald: Goji has been sent specifically to get help. He finds Paollo and his guards right on the first pages and brings them to where the plot begins.
• Horse of a Different Color: Several kinds: bagogi (the first bird-of-burden we see), kirin (Paollo and guards ride those, they're only used by rich people), the capybaras that pull carts... The Feyn use their animae as steeds.
• Imperfect Ritual: Bean's got the timing right, he's got the proper dribbly candles and actually found the (single-use) artifact to power his portal, but due to difficulties in getting the proper animal sacrifice (or possibly because nobody on the other side of the portal cares squat about answering his summons), all he manages to do is unleash a dynn on the town.
• Instant Messenger Pigeon: Sikan messenger bees, but only for quick messages within the limits of majestanian capitol.
• Iron Lady: Amani, the dream keeper of Okowaburi, Goji's mentor and a lady who stands for no nonsense.
  Amani: Well then. Greetings, High Keeper. Welcome to Okawaburi. Forgive me if I skip any further formalities. My dream world is being ransacked by a somniphagic demon and I don't have time to spare.
• Jackalope: A huge black magical jackalope kidnaps Goji out of the blue after the Dynn situation. Chasing it, Paollo and his guards inadvertently enter the portal to Feyn kingdom. As it later turns out, that was Douglas in his Amalgam form.
• Kirk Summation: Paollo has this to say to Queen Marula:
  Paollo: Maybe you don't lie, but you don't speak truth, either. You talk and talk to drown out the cries of those you claim to love. First you silenced them with ignorance, then with fear, and finally with sleep. Yet, trapped in sleep they still dream, and it's their dreams that have called me here.
• The Klutz: Paollo still hasn't grown into those limbs. He can't even wash his face without splashing water all around.
• Lady-In-Waiting: Miss Manapli is one to the Majestanian Queen. She's also Tatami's mom. The queen's usually accompanied by another lady-in-waiting who is her distant cousin and Gozazi's mom.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Zatachi continues to make Lame Puns nevertheless.
  Zatachi: We could chop down a tree and use it as a bridge!
  Tusura: With what? I think you're wildly overestimating my staff's chopping ability.
  Zatachi: Yeah, you're right. Still, it never hurts to "axe".
  Tusura groans
  • A chapter later... Zatachi keeps punning. All the way.
  Vamuro: Well, that's it. The puns have infected his brain. The only humane option left is to put him out of his misery. No jury would convict us.
• Land of Faerie: The Feyn kingdom, technically located in the dream world, but not really following the normal rules of dream magic. It's also home to The Fair Folk (the Feyn) and human children they have stol... rescued.
• Laser Blade: Wyrmwood is a material naturally imbued with magic, and weapons made of it normally look more like magic wands, until the wielder activates the magical blade. The one Knull has made on Tatami's suggestion, however, just has a wooden handle - the blade is magic only, no stick to support it.
• Last-Name Basis: The norm in Majestan. First names are only used among close friends, like Paollo's guards. Except for the apprentice keeper Goji Chi, whom everyone calls Goji, and Paollo, whom almost everyone calls either Paollo or by his title - Keeper Prince. The majestani actually have five names: first, used in personal situations among close friends and family; last, the one they use in public; the name of star they were born under; the name of the clan they're oath bound to; the name of the clan they're blood bound to. For example: Jinyu Zatachi Direwur Fili Ramarok is Jinyu Zatachi born under Direwur, oath bound to the clan Fili, blood bound to the clan Ramarok.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Dream magic has rules. Too bad the Feyn kingdom is breaking them all, to the keepers' confusion.
  • As Tusura explains, a spell requires shape, script and source. Script is runes that define what the magic does - like a program (this world has Magic from Technology, but the inhabitants don't know that). Source is caster's memories, thoughts, emotions associated with the intended result - they power the spell. Shape can be anything, but shapes the caster associates with what they want to do work better.
• Mental World: Personal dream worlds are private, safe spaces that reflect the owner and can be personalized to their heart's content. Friends can be invited, but if someone overstays their welcome, the dreamer can and will throw them out.
• Martial Arts Staff: Tusura's has magical enchancements, but it's mostly just a staff.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: Douglas gives one to Tatami in chapter 4, but Tatami keeps his cool and frees himself.
• Mistakes Are Not the End of the World: The guards tell that to Paollo right after the Dynn incident, but he's still worried, not only about his last screw-up.
  Paollo: That's the thing. When my father makes mistakes everything smells and everyone laughs. When I make mistakes everything breaks and everyone just wishes they had a competent Keeper Prince.
  • Goji actually thanks him for the opportunity to understand that (the screw-up he's talking about is the very same screw-up Paollo is currently worrying about):
  Goji: High Keeper? I'm sorry to bother you again, but I wanted to say thank you. Not just for catching me earlier, either. I just... good grief, this is going to sound weird. Yet I promise, I'm being completely sincere. I know it's going to take time and effort to fix all this... but I'm really honored I got to see you mess up like that. I know what it's like to make mistakes. I'm still in training. Amani is one of the few other keepers I know, as well as my teacher. She tells me it's normal to fail sometimes. I still compare myself to her, even if I know I'm not being fair to myself. I start to think I'll never be able to be like her. But if even the Keeper Prince can make a really big mistake... not that it was that big! I mean, it'll take a long time to fix everything, but we're very grateful! Not for the dream world, of course - for the Dynn - but the dream world will be fine too! Eventually! I think?! Oh, I think Amani's calling me, gotta go!
• Modest Royalty: Paollo really doesn't want people to genuflect before him and is anxious to be Royals Who Actually Do Something. His mom doesn't even tell Odette she's the queen when they first meet in the palace library, and she's nothing but lovely to her son's new friend.
• Must Have Caffeine: Paollo's guards seem to have found a better way of getting him out of the post-vision state than a bucket of water - a cup of tika. And that's just after waking, he gets a fresh cup with breakfast.
• No Hero to His Valet:
  • It's not that Paollo's guards don't love him, they're just by his side all day and see how adorably clumsy he is on a daily basis. Goji, in contrast, is completely starstruck, at least until he sees Paollo screw up.
  Zatachi: Hard to feel "reverence" for a guy who pours warm tika in his lap.
  • Bean might think he's so impressive, but all his (only) servant has to say after he opens a portal to dream world and summons a dynn who wrecks the room is:
  Morg: I'm not cleaning this up!
• Noodle Incident: Vamuro and Tusura mention a string of these on their journey before encountering Goji:
  Vamuro: The whole trip has just been one disaster after another. The dinner party in Phest, the stampede in Miku, that Vaohn urn... well, former urn. I should have known that dock in Chiye wouldn't be the last of our bad luck.
  Tusura: That last one wasn't Paollo's fault! That railing was probably on the verge of breaking for weeks before we got there.
  • These are explained a bit later, with some more noodly details (like Tatami having to be bailed out of jail because of mistaken identity).
  • And later Paollo mentions an important family heirloom he accidentally swallowed while at some dream noble's house. That must have been some trip.
  • Not to leave Odette out of this, Douglas mentions in his "critique" that she did something with the microwave that left scorch marks on the kitchen ceiling when she was eight. Come to think of it, how a Feyn would get his hands on a "precious ancient artifact", a.k.a. microwave is not explained, either.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: The Hall of Names is nearly identical to how it was when Shor, the first heir of Aurelius, built it almost a thousand years back, because nobody really knows how it works or knows how to dismantle it without tearing out half the tapestry with it.
• No Time to Explain: To be fair, they're running for their lives:
  Gozazi: Who are you people?
  Tusura: Why are you helping us?
  Vamuro: ARE you helping us? How can we trust you?
  Sakhalin: All valid questions that we do not have time to answer.
• Oh, Crap!: Odette, often.
  • Odette, seeing Douglas in the Queen's garden.
  • Odette and Goji when Paollo confronts the Feyn Queen. He does end up in need of Big Damn Heroes, but luckily, Tatami manages that on time.
  • Both Odette and Paollo as they realize the adventure is not over yet and they have brought it to the waking world with them in the last pages of chapter 4.
  • Odette also makes a terrified face when meeting Dody for the first time, because he's being weird, just for fun.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When the two optimistic, friendly, goofy jokers of the group, Paollo and Zatachi, start screaming accusations at each other, the business is officially serious.
  Paollo: DON'T ACT LIKE YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL!
• Painting the Medium:
  • Like in Archipelago, things mundane are Deliberately Monochrome, while things magical and dreams are in color. Since a larger portion of this story takes place in the dream world, many pages are fully colored.
  • But anger still gets its own, smeary font.
  • Whispering is, again like in Archipelago, conveyed by smaller font or grey lettering.
  • Cuss words in Soon (the language most conversations are conducted in) are white-on-black and printed in a vaguely devanagari-like script. Other than that, most languages are represented by English or ASL .
  • When Paollo tries to talk to the first person he meets in the Feyn kingdom, he runs through several languages and the font is a little different for every language.
  • When a character is speaking in sign language, their hands move, but they also get a Speech Bubble with transparent background. When Odette, who's a little rusty, can't understand the signer, the words turn into strings of question marks.
• Plot Threads: Paollo and the guards are separated after crossing the portal to Feyn kingdom, so from chapter 2 onwards there are two distinct plot threads: Paollo wandering and guards searching for each other and for him. They reunite in chapter 3.
• Power Incontinence: Paollo's having it and by accident destroys a chunk of the dreamscape along with the monster he was trying to slay.
• Pungeon Master: Zatachi is the group's joker and his reaction to stress seems to be strings of increasingly horrible puns.
• The Republic: Waking world affairs of Majestan (like lawmaking and economy) are handled by the Council of Reconciled Territories, while the royals manage the dream world. It's sort of a constitutional monarchy.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • The purple snakes in dream forest latch onto you and repeat all your insecurities. That's part of the defences for the Feyn kingdom.
  • Douglas's "critique" is three pages long speech on how much Odette sucks.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Majestani royal family is supposed to keep dream monsters away and (micro)manage dreamscape. Paollo's father is really good at this. Paollo would really like to follow in his steps, but keeps fudging it.
• Running Gag: The "if you support a topic related to this strip" one from Archipelago is continued, except with Patreon instead of the old voting site.
• Shout-Out:
  • Odette tells the girls to keep Douglas busy with Calvinball (she uses this specific word).
  • Odette's very name and Douglas calling her "his precious swan" bring to mind Swan Lake.
  • There are mimmoths in the guards village.
  • Among the girls Odette used to know in the Feyn kingdom there were Ozma and Irulan.
• So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe, Vamuro and Zatachi are fans of the Long Runner book series "Pool Reflection". While Zatachi enjoys it unironically, Vamuro claims the stupidest installments are the best.
• The Symbiote: The Soonish are humanoids in a mutualistic relationship with fuzzy aquatic mammals (they are carried on host's back). Symbiotes are not always the same gender as hosts. Paollo's mom is a Soonish, her symbiote is male and sees himself as an uncle to Paollo.
  Rant: The medic depicted here is Soonish, a lineage of humans who are physically adapted to bond with the symbiote Soonish, they're considered to be part of the same culture. The symbiotes are a species of aquatic mammal. They have a minimalist bone structure and struggle to get around on land, so they use their human hosts as a ride and an ambassador to other human cultures. When in the ocean, they give their human hosts greater maneuverability in the water and a larger lung capacity. Both human host and symbiote are sentient and live as committed pairs. Even after bonding they can both survive independently away from the other, but a long term loss of one half of the partnership is considered a physical disability and an emotional hardship.
• Tastes Like Friendship: Want to tame a weird magical critter? Feed it gefiti! Works like a charm even on the dynn.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Paollo is a skinny guy of more or less average height for a majestanian male. Odette is over a head taller than him (about Tatami's height, but Tatami is thinner), proportionately built, and carries him in her arms with no problem.
• Throwing the Distraction: When pursued by the Feyn, Paollo tries, but just can't throw worth a darn and briefly attracts the attention of an animus. Thankfully, Odette chucks another pebble far enough to make it leave them alone.
• Travel Montage: The ride to Okowaburi in chapter 1 takes three pages of riding through exotic landscapes.
• The Unintelligible: Solomon. His Speech Bubbles just contain scribbly lines.
• Unsound Effect:
  • SKIIID... as Paollo makes his landing.
  • fidget fidget when Tatami is anxious to leave.
  • "pounce!" accompanies some glomps

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