Webcomic / Cosmoknights

"Cosmoknights... ready your weapons... start your engines... get set... joust!"

Cosmoknights is a sci-fi webcomic by Hannah Templer.

Five years after helping Princess Tara escape from Viridian, Pan works as a mechanic in her father's shop. When two Cosmoknights come to their door looking for medical aid, she learns they have been liberating princesses from the patriarchal monarchy one by one and stows away on their ship to escape Viridian herself. What follows is a spacefaring adventure to topple the patriarchy with powered armor and rocket-propelled jousting.

The comic is intended to finish as a trilogy; books one and two are complete, and book three is in production.

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Cosmoknights provides examples of:

• Absent Aliens: There's a kind of space-tiger seen in paintings and the Princess has a baby one but there don't seem to be any sapient aliens so far.
• Air Jousting: Cosmoknight matches involve a fair amount of this despite the fact that not all of them use polearms.
• Anachronism Stew: The technology is at a pretty stable level but some places are neon-drenched Cyberpunk cityscapes while others look like small towns on Earth. And that's not even touching on royal fashion...
  • During Cass' flashback she goes from wearing an ornate dress to a simple red jacket and backwards snapback.
  • Bars in the setting seem to have at least aspects of old-fashion brick-and-wood taverns... regardless of how futuristic the cityscape outside is.
• Bar Brawl: When the Space Pirates crash the bar in Ironvein they almost immediately get into a brawl with the cosmoknights inside.
• Battle Couple: Cass and Bee work in tandem during the matches. Cass uses her lance for melee combat while Bee uses her rifle to cover her.
• Blood Sport: The cosmoknight matches are full-contact with actual weapons. The first one we see ends with Bull getting stabbed with a trident.
• Cast Full of Gay: The blurb quite literally refers to the protagonists as a 'rag-tag band of space gays'. Cass and Bee are Happily Married, Pan is frequently flustered around attractive women, and Kate flirts with other women.
  • At one point the author bought the domain cosmoknights.gay and set it to redirect to the comic site.
• Chekhov's Gun: The royal medallion that Pan received from Tara is called a royal favor and all of them are, among other things, connected to tournament databases. Kate unlocks Tara's, providing insider information and helping Bull win the match.
• Color-Coded Characters: The space pirates who fight Cass all wear slight variations on the same outfit, but they also all wear masks each with different color lights.
• Combat and Support: Cass and Bee's strategy as Bull and Harrier. Cass provides a visible target and fights off attackers while Bee surveys the arena and picks off sneakier enemies.
• Distress Call: Pan receives one from Tara... five years after it was sent.
• Dramatic Unmask: Pan and Tara have a drawn-out swordfight without knowing who the other is. Tara removes her mask upon beating Pan, who, realizing her identity, removes her own mask in turn.
• Dying Town: After Pan helped Tara escape Viridian, the royal family left the planet to go look for her. As a result the economy went downhill fast. A strip of lit-up buildings seen in the prologue is run-down and abandoned five years later.
• Engagement Challenge: Played with. The prize for winning a cosmoknight match is the princess's hand in marriage, but to the winner's sponsor rather than the victorious cosmoknight themself.
  • It's this specific system that Cass and Bee are subverting; they don't have actual sponsors, so when they win matches they take the princesses elsewhere and help them live on their own.
• Feudal Future: Downplayed. Space is full of planetary monarchies, but the feudal system doesn't appear to extend to the lower classes, although the presence or absence of royalty can affect things like general economic prosperity.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Deliberately invoked by Cass and Bee in their Bull and Harrier personas. Bull, who fights as a man in jousts, uses a lance while Harrier, who openly competes as a woman, primarily uses a rifle.
• Headbutting Heroes: There are a number of ideological and personal conflicts between the protagonists that come to the fore as they travel together.
  • Cass wants to keep doing what they've been doing while Kate believes winning one princess at a time does nothing to help everyone else trapped in the system. As the two are very outspoken this leads to a lot of arguments.
  • Bee likes having more people on board while Cass wishes it were back to the two of them (and maybe Pan).
  • Both Cass and Kate have some dislike of Scotty; Kate as an anarchist against a princess and Cass as a response to Scotty being angry about getting out of a system she'd had to fight to leave.
• Knight in Shining Armor: The cosmoknights. How much shine is variable but this is the intended effect. Cass is probably the most direct example of this trope; she wears bright armor that was designed for royalty.
• Made of Explodium: Bronco Batteries violently explode at high temperatures. Fortunately the explosion isn't enough to kill an armored cosmoknight, but it will heavily damage their suit to the point of uselessness.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Pan helps helps her best friend flee to space so she won't be married off by her family. This leads to Pan being arrested and the royal family leaving the planet which tanks the economy. Pan ends up widely despised on Viridian due to her highly publicized part in the incident.
• Powered Armor: Cosmoknight armor works this way, giving its users enhanced strength and the ability to fly.
• Power Trio: Cass, Bee, and Pan make a pretty good one for Book One. Cass and Bee are already a Battle Couple and when Pan gains access to insider information on the other cosmoknight suits she uses her mechanic background to look for weaknesses.
  • The end of Book One implies they may become a Three Plus Two team with the addition of Kate and the newly freed princess.
• Rebellious Princess: The prologue centers on Pan helping Tara, a princess, escape the monarchy on Viridian.
  • Cass won her own joust by defeating the cosmoknights who were competing for her. She then dedicates herself to helping other princesses escape by winning matches with Bee.
• Samus Is a Girl: Cass is introduced in her cosmoknight persona of Bull who the announcers refer to with male pronouns. The first we see of her out of armor is when she shows up on Viridian looking for medical attention.
  • In-universe, Cass plays this trope completely straight during the Slone games.
• Schizo Tech: A lot of the technology used by royalty for ceremonies looks like this. Subverted in that it's likely perfectly normal technology made more aesthetically ornate.
  • Of particular note are the giant golden orb the princess sits in during jousts and the royal favors which look like fancy lockets but contain holographic displays, networking capabilities and emergency communication features.
  • The Slone arena gives us a close look at a cosmoknight arena. Despite being a levitating aircraft, it appears to be attached to a brick-and-mortar castle.
• Sequel Hook: A couple. Book One ends when Cass and Bee decide to work with Kate in bringing down the monarchy in a more efficient way than their princess-by-princess strategy. Shortly afterwards, Pan gets a five year old message from Tara telling her something went wrong and begging her for help. And on top of it all they have an angry princess on board to deal with.
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: Bull and Harrier fight this way. This extends to outside the ring; when Bee loans Cass her pistol Cass complains about being a terrible shot.
• Skeleton Motif: The five space pirates who take on Cass all wear masks with glowing lights. Several vertical lines on the bottom of each one make them look like stylized skulls.
• Smash the Symbol: The favors on Cass and Bee's trophy wall all have their gems smashed, as well as Cass's own favor. We get to see Pan smash one towards the end of the first book.
  • Considering the extra features that come with the favors, this may both be symbolic and to keep the monarchy from tracking them somehow.
• Space Pirates: The crew has to fly through pirate territory after winning a joust. Bee thinks they're too small a target to concern them, though. At least until the princess pings her location in an attempt to contact the wardens.
• Sword Fight: After Tara follows Pan and Scottie to the ship she has a dramatic one against Pan, both armed with sword and shield.
• Time Skip: The prologue ends with Pan being arrested. The story picks up five years later.
• Trophy Room: Cass and Bee have display for the favors they've won hidden behind a retractable wall.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Every main character seems to have a few different outfits geared towards their preferences but Kate takes the cake. All three times she shows up in Book One she has a wildly different outfit down to the style and color of her hair. While her outfits since then have been more understated she still has a lot of variation.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Despite their numerous disagreements (see Headbutting Heroes above) the entire crew (even Scottie) dislikes the monarchy; they just have completely different responses to that fact.