This strip was actually inspired by a post on the forums. (Many of the strips, and certainly the major storylines, I had planned out well in advance, but there were some gaps here and there, mostly one-shot strips, that I didn't write till shortly before they went up. This was one of them.) Alas, I can't go back and see who was responsible for the post in question, because it was on the old EZBoard forum which, unfortunately, seems to be long gone and not archived. Regardless, someone had asked what the Amulet of Ygraine, the object the champion had gone into the Crypt of Irchalos to find, actually did. (Ah, OK, there we go... the old forum may be gone, but I'd mentioned it in one of the old news posts, which I still have a copy of; the question was asked by a forumgoer who went by the nick of Aife Le Fay.)

Now, as it happened, I hadn't decided what the Amulet of Ygraine did, nor did I plan to decide; it was irrelevant, because the Amulet was just a MacGuffin, a plot device, an excuse for the champion to have something to do, and I never intended to mention it in the comic again. But the question gave me an idea. There was a character who would become very important to future storylines whom I hadn't decided how to introduce yet. I could use the Amulet of Ygraine to do that... so I did.

(As it turns out, this strip introduces four new characters. Three of those, however, were just made up for this strip, although they all did end up recurring. Which one of the four was the one I'd designed before the strip had launched and had had plans for all along? I'm not telling. At least, not yet.)