Webcomic / Elf & Warrior

Basri: You swore you wouldn't rob anyone!
Hector: That picture could be anyone. Unrelated, we should probably leave town as soon as possible.

Basri is a young, optimistic elf who wants to be a wizard but isn't particularly good at it. His uncle Hector is an older, cynical human warrior who considers it his job to protect Basri, which he mostly does by taking advantage of everyone else who crosses his path. On their journey, they encounter dangerous demonoids, an elven warrior with a connection to Basri, a punny stump, an Axe-Crazy fish-girl, and more.

Elf and Warrior is known for mixing every type of comedy with suddenly dead-serious moments. The main story is about Basri, but flashbacks reveal how his parents got together, side stories follow people he encountered briefly, and there is even a running sideplot in the demonoid realm.

Available on Webtoons.

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This webcomic provides examples of:

• Acquired Situational Narcissism: When Basri becomes famous for his singing, he quickly turns into a spoiled jerk. At his the talent competition, he realizes he's gone too far and performs his terrible magic instead, giving up on singing entirely.
• Age Without Youth: The Elder meditated under a magic tree to prolong his life in case another demonoid invasion happens. This method slowed down his aging, but did not stop it. As a result he looks like a living mummy.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Puglas used up the last vestiges of his emotional strength to defeat the dragon demonoid, and became a demonoid himself.
• Arranged Marriage: Gilly's father, Gilleus IV, set her up to marry an old, scrawny, balding man, well below her expectations of a young, handsome prince with good abs. Needless to say, it did not go well.
• Artifact of Doom: Gilly gets an enchanted axe that turns her into a mindless creature of destruction bent only on feeding the axe with blood. So not that different from how she was already, but now she talks less. Eventually Gillbert gets the axe, and explains the reason it rendered her mindless was because she wasn't killing enough. He is killing enough, and enters into a symbiotic relationship with the axe.
• Bad Guy Bar: The Stagnant Puddle in Crudgutter is where the scumbags and thugs hang out, and where some suspicious types go to hire people to do their dirty deeds for them. Dribbles the bartender knows some people who want a crime done for anyone looking for work.
• Bar Brawl: Somebody called for one in Chapter 43 when Hector punched a person who tried to attack Stump, but nobody responded.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: Basri, surprisingly, despite being terrible at everything else, is a great singer. He quickly becomes famous throughout town, and Hector uses this to get rich. He gives it up to go back to trying to be a wizard.
• Big Damn Heroes: Basri and Darian do this in Chapter 153, just as the enchanted axe-possessed Gillbert is about to kill Gilly.
• Call-Back: Some hooded musicians were part of the audience during Basri's talent show finals. Much, much later they introduce themselves as The Bards of the Ancient Society of Spellsingers, and tell him they need his voice to awaken the Elder.
• The Caper: Lazlo Featherby hires Hector, Basri and the others to steal an elemental core from an elven airship. The plan was to intercept a diplomatic envoy's crew and pass as them to gain access. Subverted in that Lazlo has no intentions to steal the core and blows himself up and the ships controls to set the ship on an explosive collision course to an elven city.
• Captain Morgan Pose:
  • Darian does this in Chapter 157, next to a statue while he lectures Basri on Crudgutter's three high offices.
  • Hector also does this in Chapter 124, as he proposes to be the next new Warrior of Crudgutter.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: In Chapter 37, Basri and Hector argued over whether to save the airship or escape. Hector left Basri to his own devices, but came back at the last minute when it seemed that Basri and the others weren't enough to control the ship.
• The Corruption:
  • All the various "monster" races are a result of ordinary animals and people being mutated due to exposure to magical energies long ago. By the time of the story, the magical energies have faded, but the monsters created remain, and have built their own civilizations in the area.
  • Anyone trapped in the demonoid realm loses all their memories and is slowly transformed into a demonoid.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Pugglies, being dogs, mostly punish crimes by calling criminals "bad dog!" Some of the worst crimes get them whacked with a rolled-up newspaper, which they consider horrifying and disproportionate.
  Basri: Didn't you try to execute Stump?
  Pugleen: He burned down three orphanages.
• The Cynic: Hector believes life sucks, the world sucks, and being good will just get you killed. He constantly tries to pound this lesson into Basri's skull, with little success. Likely has something to do with believing that being good got Basri's father (Hector's brother) killed.
• Cypher Language: Demonoids speak in a substitution cipher set of symbols, but if you squint your eyes just right, you can actually read what he's saying. Basri and Rilien also uses this language to banish Adnihilus. Gekker's comic book/pamphlet uses this lettering, but the other conversations in the realm are depicted in common.
• Descriptiveville:
  • While not necessarily a Wretched Hive, Crudgutter is the home to thieves, scumbags, corrupt officers, and counterfeiters. Its law enforcement is ineffective, being held in check by a comptroller who doesn't even hide the fact that he is being bribed.
  • Pugtown. A town inhabited by humanoid pugs called puglins. Home to people such as Pugleen, Puglas, Pugule, Pugjon, Puglisa and Puggo.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Once Pugule has become the chancellor of Pugtown, offences as small as accidental littering get a spanking with a rolled-up newspaper. Calling the chancellor a bad dog gets jail time.
• Dogs Love Being Praised: Basically the reward/punishment system of Pugtown is based on this. Puglas patted Basri's head and called him a good boy as an honor for stopping an assault. On the other hand, offenders are called bad dogs and are penalized accordingly.
• Double-Meaning Title: While the title can obviously refer to Basri (elf) and his uncle Hector (warrior), it also refers to Basri's mother (elf) and father (warrior).
• Dungeon Crawling: Basri and the puglins traced the source of a lingering dark magic that's affecting puglins to an ancient temple/mausoleum. Unfortunately the temple was closed for renovation. So they LARPed their way through to get through the source of the evil.
• Escort Mission:
  • Basri's first independent hired mission was to guard Kina's corpse-filled cart to her house in the woods.
  • One of Hectors early jobs after leaving the army was an escort mission. This particular job was ambushed by Sanchros and his crew.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Gilly is an Axe-Crazy criminal who hates everyone and especially the pampered life she left behind, but even she is horrified when she finds out that Gillbert murdered her parents in a misguided attempt to "free" her.
• Evil, Inc.: The Prince of Spires's headquarters is a multi-story office building with its own parking lot for monsters that seem to be used as cars. His organization seems to be run like a corporation. Puglas and Gekker spoke to a receptionist before being allowed to meet the Prince of Spires in his office.
• Fighting for a Homeland: Played with. The elves are fighting to retake their ancestral homeland from the monsters who have claimed it. Except the elves abandoned their homeland after they caused a magical cataclysm that rendered it uninhabitable; the "monsters" are the descendants of various people and animals who couldn't leave, and were mutated as a result. Now that the magical side effects have dissipated enough for the elves to move back in, they showed up and told the monsters to get out. When the monsters refused, the elves started killing them.
• Flashback: Different types are used to tell the story of Basri's parents, Hector's past, Gilly's childhood, Rilien's backstory, and others.
• Flipping the Table: Hector does this mostly:
  • In Chapter 124, after Basri returns from Pugtown and says he wants to talk to Rilien.
  • He does this again in Chapter 159 while the rest of the crew were talking about Darian. He got so angry he picked the table back up and flipped it again.
• Forever War: Lazlo says there have been skirmishes along the borders of Everdeep Wood and Elven territory beyond living memory.
• Giant Woman: Finn didn't seem to have stopped growing since she was a child.
• High Hopes, Zero Talent: Basri wants so much to be a hero, but he has neither the physical nor magical talent to become one.
• Identity Amnesia: People trapped in the demonoid realm start with all their memories gone, and it only gets worse from there. The entire world seems designed from the ground up to force people to do the worst in order to survive, giving up more of themselves in the process.
• Just Like Robin Hood: Finn and her group robbed rich nobles of their money and kelp shipments to give to the poor of Reef Town. Finn herself lost her kelp delivery to the same group when she was a child, just before she joined them.
• La Résistance: Word spread after Puglas killed the Prince of Spires, and gradually other people started rising up against their oppressors.
• LARP: Basri and the puglins made a deal with the dungeon keeper's guild rep to let them into a dungeon that was closed for renovation. Since all the traps in the dungeon were destroyed, they had to pretend how they would have been hurt as if the dungeon were still working.
• Loads and Loads of Races: Oh so many. Sure, you have the Standard Fantasy Races: There are the elves and humans, there seems to be dwarves, and some characters look like orcs. Then you have the demonoids, and some horned humanoids whose races are unidentified as of yet. And then you have Funny Animal races like the puglins, the corgoyles, fish people (who have their own level of diversity), humanoid birds, humanoid frogs, humanoid cats, humanoid turtles, and others.
• One-Steve Limit: Played with. Turns out there is another Hector, this one a raccoon. After he stole the prize for the tournament of power, he was paying everybody to call just him Hector instead of Raccoon Hector. And Human Hector is peeved about it.
• Please Select New City Name: The once noble and proud city of Uricho Harr has fallen into hard times, and is now plagued by lowlifes and scum. Now it is called Crudgutter.
• Pungeon Master: Stump just cannot stop making puns about him being an animate log. Even the judges at his execution can't help giggling. He decided to move on from making puns all the time, however.
• Purpose-Driven Immortality: The Elder is the last living survivor of the demonoid invasion, whose entire history has been lost to time. In order to warn others of an impending return of the demonoids, the Elder put himself in a trance underneath a magic tree to stay alive for as long as possible.
• Sickbed Slaying: King Gilleus choked the recuperating guard with his own bare hands.
• "Super Sentai" Stance: The Bards have their own pose of sorts.
• Summer Campy: Everdeep Springs Magicamp for Gifted Wizkids is a poorly maintained, mismanaged dump run by an exiled wizard. For one week Basri and the other campers had to put up with perils from monsters and ghosts, even one of their own. Eventually, the camp director reveals everything was a test to select his new apprentice.
• Talent Contest: Hector enters Basri into a talent show once he discovers Basri's singing ability.
• Tournament Arc: Hector and the others were invited to a tournament of power apparently held only once every thousand years, while Basri and Pugleen were returning to Pugtown. It was discussed and even teased a little, but very little detail was given about it. Raccoon Hector won by stealing the prize.
• Travel Montage: Happens in chapter 125 during Basri and Stump's search for Rilien.
• Vision Quest: Basri inadvertently begins one in his attempt to awaken the Elder. In it he lives the life of an elf named Kalikar who, like him, has little to no magical ability.
• Water Is Air: Played with. On one hand, fish people seem to be amphibious and have no problems breathing air and water. On the other hand, they apparently do laundry and have underwater clotheslines. On top of that, Jack couldn't make successful jumping attacks because he's too light to hit the ground fast enough.
• Weird West: The demonoid realm is depicted as this. The town Puglas found himself in is a typical Wild West town, right down to its beleaguered townsfolk and the two villainous henchmen out to collect their joy and spirit. Strangely enough, though, the Prince of Spires's lair is an office building.