Her appearance is unusual enough to cause serious consternation, certainly, but think about the three instances we've seen so far:
1. Cave elf. Explicitly evil. Saw her face and went screaming and crying the other way.
2. The villagers. Confused and angry, but not necessarily adversely affected beyond that.
3. The Drath. The first thing out of one's mouth once it realized what she was? I HATE YOU. Not the sort of thing you greet an old friend with.
On top of that, she's primarily associated with white (her hair), blue (her eyes), and gold and gray (clothes), all archetypal "good" colors. She's explicitly able to do things with her magic a normal mage shouldn't be able to do, like reviving/curing John and LouAnne's child and charbroiling a cave elf. And, again, her appearance/nature seems to most strongly affect evil creatures. The humans didn't seem to be inherently scared or repulsed, just frightened by not understanding what she is, a la classic Tragic Monster tales.
So, celestial or half-celestial. Maybe one of the weirder ones, like a Cherubim or something.
- Jossed. Thistle is a cave elf, and the other cave elf that attacked her regretted it because cave elves have a matriarchal society, thus commanding more respect to women. Also, she's actually brunette — Word of God states that her eyebrows are colored as white when her hood's on so it's easy to read her facial expressions.
Currently, the ongoing theory on the page, is that Thistle is a cave elf
. This theory, largely due to reading of translated text, slight hesitation when attacking the aforementioned elves, and similarities in her hands and having long ears and sharp teeth, doesn't hold much water, though, given that cave elves have red eyes, fairly severe male-pattern balding, her teeth are different enough that any dentist would say she was a different species, and her face (so far), looks more in line with human standards than the tattooed and sickly elves.
The other wiki has a number of types of elves, which may or may not be part of Dot L canon: moon elves, aquatic elf, drow (cave elves?), high elves, grey elves, painted elves, sylvans, or even something else like a werewolf or dryad or other fey.
- Thistle has indeed been confirmed to be a cave elf, as of this page.
Most likely she has extra eyes in unusual places, extra faces or both. And maybe more.
- Partially jossed for now. While being bound to or possessed by a celestial isn't an impossibility just yet, she hides her identity because she's a cave elf. Aside from that, there doesn't seem to be any other noticeable oddities in her appearance.
- Although, she *does* have unnaturally blue eyes. The other two Cave Elves we saw had red ones, and vividly blue eyes seem to be indicative of being a Wizard. Take a look at Wu and Hym's eyes.
So we begin with Thistle herself, fairly normal (it is pretty clear that Thistle didn't always suffer from her condition, it came on somehow, and suddenly) and training as a mage. She is, for whatever reason, noticed and made apprentice to the wizard Hym (who I believe to be the bearded man
◊ who became a skeleton
◊ in her dream). It is customary for a wizard to have two apprentices, as wizards must pass on their wizardly power before they become able to die (explaining Wu and Hym's confirmed advanced age
◊) and Hym's other apprentice is a good deal older than Thistle. She is disquieted by Thistle's arrival at such a young age, and, out of insecurity, starts to verbally abuse Thistle, thinking Hym might favour Thistle to be his heir. However, this backfires, as her mistreatment of Thistle makes Hym actually start to favour Thistle, where he hadn't before. Thus, the whole thing turns into a feedback loop as she responds by abusing Thistle more (and thus she becomes the abusive
◊ voice
◊ in Thistle's head that looks
◊ like
◊ a Drath echo
◊, and the woman in Thistle's trauma flashback
◊), making Hym favour Thistle more. Of course, she makes sure Thistle believes it's the other way around (hence Thistle's "it wasn't supposed to be me"
◊). Eventually, the time comes for Hym to finally pass on his power. He passes it onto Thistle, stating that he hoped that it would be her. Sadly, this is quite traumatic for Thistle, not out of malice, but simply because he disintegrates in front of her, and that's just not a nice thing to see for anybody.
However, something goes wrong. Personally, I think it'll have had something to do with Thistle's mental state, after the possible years of abuse. Instead of basically looking the same as she did before like Wu and Hym (presumably), Thistle loses control of some aspect of her new wizardly power, and her condition manifests (I think it'll be the wizard's shapeshifting powers, similar to Wu's dragon form). She runs away, possibly escapes after being found, and starts to disguise herself. However, the other apprentice knows, to some degree, what happened. She knows that Thistle became Hym's heir after all, exactly as she feared. She starts hunting for Thistle, to take revenge, to take the wizardly power somehow, I'm not sure, but she's still actively looking for Thistle (Thistle has at some point in her travels bound her chest for no clear reason, and she changes her name
◊ regularly, this is more than just hiding her appearance, this is the behaviour of someone being specifically hunted).
And that brings us to the modern day of DotL, with a monstrous, hidden Thistle, a horrible confrontation nipping at her heels, and a power she doesn't believe she deserves and cannot properly control.
- I think you're on to something here, especially given the last few strips. One addendum: Thistle doesn't just have an echo; she's actually possessed by a greater drath, which as we know, hideously mutates the victim. However, and possibly because she *is* a wizard and Hym's successor, she's also "possessed" by the angel that Brent saw, which while it can't fix her physical form, is keeping the drath from completely taking over Thistle's mind, reducing its influence on her to that of a whisper. The drath, in turn, is preventing Thistle from accessing her full powers as a wizard, such as being able to polymorph into a dragon.
...- There are Ruins of the Modern Age, identified as the remains of real-life modern cities such as Wien (that is, Vienna). These places are considered to be extremely dangerous.
- The drath claim that civilization has risen and fallen in numerous cycles.
- The cult of the book beaters claims that the world was abandoned by the being that made it. Thistle's research on "the One Who Is Three" seems to suggest that it might be this being, and that the "anti-drath" are its old servants, who remained involved with the world.
- The current status quo is a fairly typical fantasy setting, with orcs, elves, dwarves, monsters, magic, and polytheistic gods ("the Seven Deities") — things that, in the modern day, demonstrably do not exist.
A basic outline for world history might be this:
- In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth, and then the basic Abrahamic creation story follows. This eventually leads to the modern day as we know it. The drath (demons and damned souls) and the anti-drath (angels) already exist, but keep away from humanity; the former by force and the latter by choice.
- At this point, a few major events happen, whose relationship with one another is unclear:
- Humans do something that brings magic into existence. Magic is typically described as a natural energy, not as something separate from the physical world; thus, it can be assumed to have originated form natural or technological processes — perhaps an increasingly advanced human civilization sought to give itself more powers and control over the world?
- Human civilization collapses. The causes are not clear, but the presence of destructive magic storms in the comic's present shows that magic can and does exist outside of people's control. Perhaps the new force or technology could not be controlled, and its effects overwhelmed the world.
- New forms of life come into being. Monsters proliferate, perhaps mutated by the newly-unleashed magic. Dwarves, orcs, and the various types of elf come into being from human ancestors: since they are all still closely related to one another, they can all produce healthy children and second- and further-generation hybrids, as seen in case such as Brent.
- Humanity does... something... that utterly disgusts God. He already promised not to scourge the world clean of mankind, so He does the next best thing and abandons it to its own devices. A few angels stay behind, and the demons and damned, now unchecked, begin to influence the mortal world.
- Civilization, now composed of multiple sapient species, begins to rebuild. most records of the before times have been destroyed, or else are locked in the ruins of cities too dangerous to explore. As such, most knowledge of the past is lost.
- The Seven Deities come into existence. Precisely what they are or where they come from isn't clear; they might be powerful spirits that formed after the apocalypse, or former mortals become something more, or the leaders of the remaining angels, or just myths, or who knows what else. The wizards are also established at some point.
- Recent history and the comic's present day.
- There are only seven of them at a given time. In order for one wizard to be chosen, an older one needs to be dead.
- This choosing does not seem to involve the other wizards.
- They take on apprentices, but don't give away all of their knowledge or power.
- The normal rules and limitations of magic do not seem to apply to them, and they're far more powerful than common mages.
- They are enemies of the drath, and have some sort of connection to the "anti-drath".
The theory is that wizards are mortals chosen and empowered by the anti-drath to serve as guardians of other mortals and enemies of evil spiritual entities. Their powers seem supernatural because they are: normal magic simply manipulates natural energy, but wizards can act outside of the natural world's systems — putting it a bit simplistically, they work miracles instead of casting spells. This power is given to them by the anti-drath's patronage. They are immortal as long as they keep to their missions, and train apprentices as replacements when they feel ready to pass on.
