Elf Blood

"I'm not a bad person, Mara! I just do bad things!"
—Lt. Buma Geller

No, it has nothing to do with Blood Elves.

Elf Blood is a bi-weekly webcomic by Chris Manson that tells the story of two warring factions of magical beings, hidden in the shadows of a human city. It is a science-fantasy action-drama, with a rich cast of characters who possess a complex set of relationships and ideologies between them.

The main story focuses on a young girl, Mara, whose life is invaded and shattered by the conflict between the two groups. A renegade elf, TKO, is fleeing from a soldier of The Council, her former captors. Mistaking Mara for a fellow elf due to the elven blood in her veins, TKO unwittingly leads her pursuer, Buma, to the house. Mara's mother is killed in the ensuing fight, and to keep her safe from the clutches of the controlling Council TKO must drag Mara away from the normal life she knew before. A bewildered Mara must adjust to the violent and ruthless magical society she now finds herself a part of, and must come to terms with a heritage kept hidden from her all her life.

Elf Blood is separated into story arcs, each spanning four 'blocks' of around 12 pages each. It is illustrated in a manga style and composed similarly to a graphic novel. New readers are advised to start at the beginning, to fully appreciate the relationships between the characters.

Read it here.

Tropes used in Elf Blood include:
  • Abandoned Warehouse: Ixnay's Pixie glamour makes the Renegades' home appear this way to prying human eyes, as well as concealing it from the Council when she remembers to cast the spell.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Averted: During the Truenamer arc, it is a Storm Drain system attached to a nullah that the Council team traverses, justifying the amount of movement space they have.
  • Action Girl: Shanna can and will beat pretty much anyone or anything up. Even giant demon maggots.
    • Carlita Delacroix can intercept an incoming punch from Shanna and return the punch to her kidneys. Suffice it to say, Carlita is the better fighter. Because she's a superspy, though, this isn't really such a surprise as Ixnay notes after the fight.
  • All Myths Are True: Averted. SKO expresses doubts as to Alcyone's claim to be a Pleiad, and she is correct; The Pleiades in Elf Blood are constructs built to serve the will of the (presumably seven) sages, the last surviving generation of the original Alfen people.
  • Amplifier Artifact: Many of the characters' Magitek implants do not grant them new powers, but instead improve their natural abilities: SKO's psychic command module, TKO's sympathetic magic amplifier, JN's super strength, Buma's enhanced eyesight and (failed) enhanced intelligence.
    • Possibly not true in Mara's case. Her Magitek package, Tiger Pink, is stated to be an analytical package, but it remains to be seen how it operates. It could be the first instance of a non-amplifier type implant.
  • Art Evolution: Flick between the most recent page and the first one. The difference is astronomical. The jump to full color helped as well, after the first few pages of line art and screentone. Even between the differing story arcs, the art style improves quite dramatically.
  • Being Personal Isn't Professional: SKO on duty. Off duty, she seems to be on quite friendly terms with her colleagues and subordinates.
    • And on particularly friendly terms with King.
  • Bio Augmentation: The K-Series subjects have been genetically engineerd to be hyper-compatible with Generation III Magitek implants.
  • Blood Bath: One of TKO's more complex spells involved killing a goat and bathing in its blood.
  • Boobs of Steel: Averted: Shanna, the Brawler, has reasonably ample breasts but they are not as large as TKO, who is the Mage. Proportionally speaking, Ixnay the Pixie has the largest breasts and is so physically weak she cannot operate an ordinary door handle.
    • Played Straight with Carlita Delacroix, however: She can easily beat Shanna in a fight, even when surprised.
  • Braids of Action: SKO wears her hair in one when on-duty, though she doesn't seem to be all that good at physical fighting.
  • Break the Cutie: Mara gets placed in a coma for three months after something goes wrong during her implant installation.
  • Coat, Hat, Mask: Rather, Coat Helmet Mask. SKO's uniform in her role as the Controller of the Council.
  • Cute Little Fangs: Fliss and Carlita have them, although since they're fox and feline spirit incarna respectively, not hugely surprising.
    • Shanna also has fangs, being a fox spirit incarnum. They're less cute, more terrifying.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: TKO, an otherwise friendly and cheerful optimist, was designed, born and raised to be a long-range assassin.
    • And if that wasn't bad enough, her twin sister SKO would take the hit when the job troubled TKO too much.
  • Dark-Skinned Blond: Carlita Delacroix, naturally. Her tanned complexion likely comes from her Cuban mother, but there's no word on how natural her hair color is.
  • Demonic Possession: Mara, after her Magitek operation goes wrong.
  • Does Not Like Shoes: Ixnay is a Pixie, and spends most of her time flying or sitting down on tables, etc. It seems the whole pixie race does not like, nor need shoes in general.
    • In the Council residential quarters the officers appear to go barefoot while off duty.
  • Dumb Muscle: Buma. He has magitek-enhanced intelligence and he's still kinda dumb.
    • JN. Not dumb per se, but his two defining characteristics appear to be 'muscle' and 'TKO's Boyfriend'
    • The female Death Elf Punk in the Sister, Sister story arc. She's a street fighter and still manages to fall for Fliss' dirty fighting techniques.
  • Everyone Went to School Together: Considering that the Council has an academy dedicated to raising soldiers and the two main factions consist of The Council and escapees from it, not unduly surprising. Shanna even explicitly states that she and Carlita went to school at the same time, just in different year groups.
  • Face Doodling: An unfortunate Mint suffers at the hands of Cecelie's boredom while observing Mara's operation.
  • Fetish Fuel: One of TKO's more complex spells involves stripping naked and drawing arcane shapes on her skin in black ink. See Nightmare Fuel on the YMMV tab.
  • Fiery Redhead: Though they're generally reserved and calm otherwise, just watch when the KO twins are in the same room...
  • Five-Man Band: A couple:
  • Five-Bad Band: Again, YMMV
  • Ghost Town: The Village, a hidden part of the human city concealed by pixie glamour from the ordinary citizens. Most of the magical populace seems to live there. It appears to be an old section of the city, once populated by the humans and long since abandoned. Little effort has been made to renovate the place, but it is probably safe to assume that magical beings not working for the Council are either too poor or too lacking in skills to do so.
    • Within the Village itself are the Old Projects, possibly a literal Ghost Town, as it is rumoured to be populated solely by bandits, demons and angry spirits.
  • Groin Attack: Fliss kicks the female Death Elf Punk in the 'girl junk' while ascending the abandoned apartments. It has no effect on her. Fliss expresses concern at this, as she has been kicked there before and it hurt.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Mara is half Human half Dark Elf. As a result, she looks like a human but has the energy of an elf, and is also able to cast spells.
    • Recently, a magical accident exhausted her body and accelerated the growth of her ears into the more classic Elfy point, causing her to look slightly less human. Dr. Wehrner states that this does not normally occur until later life in half-elves.
    • Carlita Delacroix is a half-human half cat-spirit hybrid, and it shows: She has her mother's feline features with her human father's mercenary greed.
  • Heinz Hybrid: Carlita Delacroix: She's a half-French half-Cuban half-Cat-Spirit-Incarnum half-Human. It may not be physically possible to cram anything else in there.
  • I Know Your True Name: The most effective way in which sympathetic magic can work, by directly targetting the individual even remotely.
    • The end goal of both sides in the first story arc.
    • The root cause of the second story arc.
  • Invisibility Cloak: Scout deploys one after grenading the Renegades. He later uses it to cop a feel off Shanna. It does not end well for him.
  • Jerkass: Gipsy. She's a bitch to almost everyone bar her superior officers. Even to her own boyfriend.
  • Language of Magic: Eldarin, used to cast all spells by every race.
  • Ley Line: Naturally occurring and constantly shifting flows of magical energy exist as part of the Elf Blood Universe's magical physics. Where two or more of these flows meet, an eyrie is formed.
  • The Men in Black: King is a high-ranking government soldier-scientist in a secretive paramilitary organisation. Naturally, his favoured apparel is a black suit and dark burgundy tie.
  • Mind Probe: TKO performs one on Mara's father at her behest without knowing who he is. It turns out to be King, and he is not best pleased...
  • Odango Hair: Mara wears her hair in ox-tails
  • One Steve Limit: Averted (ish). Mara shares her name with (and indeed, may be named after) the Alfen pantheon's Mother Goddess. However, the deity is almost always referred to as Great Mara, to avoid confusion.
    • It appears to be a common name throughout the Elf Blood universe, as the Renegades do not seem to put two and two together to realise that Mara Jeung is in fact Mara Schwarz-Konig, the long-lost daughter of the leader of the Council.
  • Only in It For the Money: Carlita Delacroix. An almost perfect merc, though she's still very friendly and willing to help out.
    • Averted somewhat when Fliss persuades Carlita to give them maps of the Council base so they can go and rescue Mara. She does this for free, although before that she was refusing to go against her biggest employer for any price anyway.
  • Oral Fixation Fixation: Shanna is frequently depicted smoking and drinking.
    • Carlita is rarely ever seen without a cigarette in her mouth.
  • Our Elves Are Different: The elves in Elf Blood are remnants of a magical race evicted from their Germanic homeland by the overly pious Holy Roman Empire. Prior to their exodus, they appear to have been broadly similar to other empires in the Central European Region for the 15th century.
    • Elves in Elf Blood are not haughty, nature-loving traditionalists. They seem to be very accepting of other races (magical and non-magical) and are not shy about mixing technology with magic.
    • Death Elves are different in particular: They are 7-foot-tall, grey-skinned muscular nomad descendants who cannot use magic and favour their fists and heavy melee weapons in combat. They can be closely likened to Tolkienesque Dwarves, with a hint of viking and steppe dwellers about them.
  • Phlebotinum Girls: SKO and TKO, designed to be Magitek-wielding supersoldiers.
  • Phlebotinum Rebel: The Renegades as a whole, but only TKO really seems all that bothered about bringing the Council down. Ixnay seems to be content to remain idealogically opposed to her former employers, but would not move against them unless pressed.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Ixnay. She's a pixie, and isn't strong enough to operate human/elf sized door handles. She more than makes up for this in magical potency however, matching and exceeding the combat abilities of beings several times her size.
    • Bonus points for actually being about as tall as a pint glass.
  • Poirot Speak: Ah, formidable! Carlita Delacroix, she is the biggest offender of this type, non?
    • The sages will often inject some Deutsch into their speak, mein liebschen, as they were children during the last days of Alfheim and this was the language they spoke, ja?
  • Purple Eyes: A few characters have purple eyes.
    • The KO twins, presumably to highlight their magical abilities and the fact that they are different from the rest of the cast, being super-soldiers.
    • Carlita Delacroix also has them. She hasn't been demonstrated as having anything unduly special about her, asides from being half-human half-spirit.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: The Truenamer. He is a remnant of the first generation kicked out of Alfheim, and the last generation to receive the benefits of the elves' legendary longevity. He only appears to be around 70 years old.
    • It is implied that Madame Goss, the apothecary, is of this generation too.
    • It would follow, then, that any of the sages would be of this generation, and thus would invoke this trope.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The KO twins. SKO stands for discipline, order and security, and is quite reserved. TKO stands for passion, total freedom and individualism, and is a very outgoing, caring individual.
  • Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: Apparently Shanna was quite a bully in school: She's bullied Gipsy, she's bullied TKO (while on a mission, no less), and she's taken Carlita's lunch money. Judging from the reactions of two soldiers in the Council, when she became a sergeant she didn't get much better. Even now she would rather apply force than reason to get what she wants.
  • Secret Project Refugee Family: The Renegades, although only TKO and JN were really subjects in the council's programmes. Ixnay and Shanna were soldiers, and Fliss was only at school there.
  • Shout-Out: A few:
  • Smoking Is Cool: Shanna, a brawling badass, smokes quite frequently.
    • Gipsy, a stone-cold bitch who can manipulate reality through mastery of maths.
    • Carlita, a supercool mercenary spy.
    • Even Fliss is depicted smoking at one point, but the author stressed quite strenuously that he did not condone underage smoking and cited it as part of the character's relationship to her older sister.
  • Swirly Energy Thingy: Where Ley Lines meet, concentrations of magical energy called Eyries form high up. It's apparently possible to summon a demon from one.
  • The Alcoholic: Shanna loves to drink. When she's happy, when she's sad, when she's angry, when it's 3 o'clock. She never seems to get drunk, though.
  • 24-Hour Armor: Averted, Buma (and the other Council officers, for that matter) likes to relax in his skinnies.
  • You Can't Go Home Again: The reason the Renegades take Mara in: Her adoptive mother was killed indirectly by TKO's actions.
    • The Renegades themselves apparently were brought up within the Council. TKO and JN were definitely born into the Council, being experiments with Magitek.
  • Zettai Ryouiki: Mara gets the Class A type in her Council school uniform.
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