Webcomic / Talon Hunters

In a world of dragon shifters, can Xem become the greatest hunter?

Talon Hunters is an action-comedy webcomic written by Serpyra.

Welcome to Granod: a mystical island where people can turn into dragons! Twins Xem and Quill set out to become Granod's best bounty hunters and, in order to do so they must complete all five Legendary Hunts—the most dangerous challenges known to man! Can they overcome great evils and ancient beasts to achieve their dream?

Find out by reading the comic at the Tapas website Here!

The webcomic provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Xem was physically abused by her and Quill's parents. Quill was afraid to stand up to them.
  Quill: I just hated seeing them hurt you.
  Xem: They'd hurt me even when I did what they wanted.
• Ambiguously Evil: The first two seasons portray Rubi as crueler than she first appears, but it's left unclear if she's an Anti-Hero or a flat-out villain. The last couple chapters of season 2 reveal that she's the Rift Demon.
• Anti-Hero: Xem has good intentions, but her bad temper and overzealousness cause a lot of grief. Rubi even denies her a badge because of it.
  • Ryden admits to committing cannibalism out of necessity and is willing to kill his enemies, but he won't intentionally hurt someone who doesn't deserve it.
• Badass Adorable: Xem, Quill, Fayol, and Janai all look cute but are badass enough to challenge hardened criminals.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Rubi wants Xem and Quill to become more willing to kill. Xem ends up killing Rubi.
• Big Bad: Briggs for season 1, Rubi, aka the Rift Demon for season 2.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Rubi.
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: Xem does this after killing her mentor Rubi.
• Blood Knight: Fighting powerful foes is the only thing that excites Rubi anymore.
• Brother–Sister Team: Xem and Quill.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: A variation. When setting the wannabe hunters up on their first target, they briefly think Rubi is sending them after the Rift Demon. Rubi doesn't and tells them that the Rift Demon is too dangerous for them to hunt. It later turns out that she was the Rift Demon the entire time.
• Chekhov's Gun: Melvin's journal tips Quill off that Rubi killed him.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Fayol recognizes that Rubi is not a good person, and that Xem is vulnerable to being manipulated by her.
• Evil All Along: Rubi is the Rift Demon. The only reason she hunts criminals and trains Xem and Quill is to stave off her boredom.
• Evil Mentor: Rubi trains Xem and Quill to be hunters so that one day, she can fight them in an "epic battle to the death".
• Fire-Forged Friends: By the end of season 1, Fayol and the twins have abandoned their initial rivalry. Fayol even offers her home to Xem and Quill.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Xem is whiny, impatient, easily falls for obvious lies, and is completely disinterested in anything that's not hunting or food. Quill is polite, Properly Paranoid, and offers practical solutions to problems. Quill often has to reign in Xem or appease people she's provoked.
• The Dreaded: The Rift Demon.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Xem, Quill, and Ryden get no credit for killing the Rift Demon.
• Heroic BSoD: Xem takes the revelation of Rubi's true nature badly.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Rift Demon is decapitated by her own sword, wielded by one of her students.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Xem takes Gareth at his word. Played for Drama with her admiration of Rubi. She refuses to accept that Rubi is a bad guy up until Rubi spells it out for her.
  • It's implied that Xem's Abusive Parents have something to do with this.
• Kick the Dog: The Rift Demon kills Gareth and Melvin basically for fun.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Rift Demon.
• Monstrous Cannibalism: Ouros only become the way they are by feeding on other shifters and they are seen as monsters by them as a result. However, this is somewhat deconstructed as its shown that many become ouros when they commit cannibalism out of desperation and become victims of insanity inducing Horror Hunger.
• Motive Decay: Rubi claims that she became an Ouros to protect her loved ones. 300 years later, she's murdering people for fun, including losers like Gareth who are no real threat to anyone.
• Noodle Incident: Xem and Quill attempted to get a normal job before the events of the comic, which apparently resulted in them setting a building on fire.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: The reason why the dusklands are so full of ouros is that the land is so narrow that the only food available is the flesh of other shifters, so the people exiled there are forced to either become ouros or starve. It's heavily implied that this is completely deliberate on the part of the hunters so as to insurance they have a guaranteed source of more ouros to hunt.
• Off with His Head!: The most effective way to kill an Ouros is to cut off their head. This is how Xem kills the Rift Demon.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Their are four different morphs that a shifter can have with their own attributes and weaknesses and can come in a variety of avian, reptilian, or mammalian appearances.
  • There are the traditional dragons, large flyers with four legs and two wings. They are strong and can fly but aren't especially agile.
  • There's the wyverns, smaller two legged flyers with great speed and agility but poor durability or stamina. An issue they share with dragons is that they have a long recovery time when they run out of stamina.
  • There is the raptor morph, two legged flightless dragons that aren't especially strong but very quick.
  • Finally, there are the drakes, which are large quadrupeds. Like they raptors, they can't fly but are very strong.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: Shifters can change between human and dragon form at will. They can also partially shift. Shifters are generally in control of their transformations, with the exception of Ouroses, twisted monsters that are created when a shifter commits cannibalism.
• Properly Paranoid: Quill finds Melvin's journal in Rubi's boat and is suspicious of how it got there. While Xem calls him paranoid, it is revealed that Rubi killed Melvin and Gareth.
• Selective Obliviousness: Xem refuses to believe Quill when he tries to warn her that Rubi may not be as trustworthy as she thinks and even lashes out at him whenever he provides evidence to back up his claims. It becomes pretty obvious from her words that this is due to finally having an adult who seemingly supports her dreams after living with abusive parents her entire life and not wanting the possibility that said adult is not a good person be true.
• Ship Tease: Xem with Fayol, Quill with Ryden.
• Trauma Button: Being mistreated by someone she looks up to, or otherwise being reminded of her Abusive Parents, causes Xem to either go into a Heroic BSoD or a violent rage.
• Queer Establishing Moment: When Faye asks to speak to Quill alone, Xem prompts this exchange:
  Xem: Oh, honey, if you're lookin' for a date, you're not gonna get far with him. Quill is very gay.
  Quill: So are you, asshole!
  Xem: What the hell! Don't out me!
  Quill: Then don't out me first!
• Villain with Good Publicity: Xem, Quill, and Ryden are the only ones who realize that Rubi is the Rift Demon. They tell everyone that she was killed by an ouros after they fail to convince anybody of her true identity.
• Weredragon: The shifters are all dragons that can take a human form (or vice-versa depending on how you view it). They have a full human and dragon form but they seem to be able to choose how much they are transformed into dragon mode with some shifters looking more like Lizard Folk as a result.
• Wingding Eyes: One of the telltale signs that a shifter is an ouros is that their dragon form's eyes have a chaotic spiral design. Rubi shows that they can also do this in their human form.

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