It... actually is kind of like that.
We'll go to the one who's helped the mad one. The one who straddles two worlds, but is of neither.
— Gwimbe, describing Oswald
The Oswald Chronicles
is a Web Comic by J.D. Calderon.
The story centers around Oswald, scribe and gentlemouse that lives in 54th Street and Park Avenue. He enjoys tea, and playing games of chance for candies and cake. That is, when he is not facing Eldritch Abominations of one sort or another - or visiting them for tea. He is unique in that he is of both the fae and human worlds.
The first story, although not the beginning of Oswald's story, begins when a group of Fae steals the hammer of Kalvaitis, stopping him from forging the sun that day and leaving the fae world in perpetual darkness. A lone kitchen helper from Kalvaitis's castle manages to escape, and heads into the human world to find the only person that can help, Oswald.
The second storyline starts in a time before the first. Diane, Oswald's love interest, heads out on a mysterious errand and leaves her cousin Diadra to look after Oswald. Three Mysterious Waifs show up, being followed by a monster called Howard.
Provides examples of:
- Beware the Nice Ones: You will not like Oswald when he's angry.
- Black Eyes of Evil: When Oswald is drawing upon The Power of Hate to fuel his magic.
- Cannibalism Superpower: Howard, Regis, Baba Yaga, and possibly a few others.
- The Chosen One: Oswald, apparently.
- Creation Myth: Kalvaitis's life story involves lots and lots of Viking mythology. Apparently, all recent pantheons started with a single band of roving heroes who fought monsters, and most either ascended to godhood by acquiring old world artifacts or just died.
- Eats Babies: Howard gets it from his father Regi
- Eldritch Abomination: The mushroom men in The Light That Attracts. Oswald himself is mentioned as having been regarded as a peer by their queen.
- Engagement Challenge: Kalvaitis, challenged to bring back the sun.
- The Fair Folk: Mostly of the Seelie court, including Malkit. In later stories, the Unseelie start showing up.
- Friend to All Children: Oswald has a soft spot for children ever since an ill little girl made him her friend. Woe be unto anyone who harms children in his presence, as many, many entities learned first hand. One wonders how the news about this hasn't spread.
- Gentleman and a Scholar: Oswald introduces himself as "Scribe and gentlemouse."
- Horror Hunger: Part of Baba Yaga's repertoire is inflicting the hunger for guts on other people.
- I Am a Humanitarian: Baba Yaga
- I Am One of Those, Too: Kalvaitis's story sounds mysteriously like Marduk's.
- Just One Man: Followed by the recommended smack upside the head of whoever said it.
- Knight Templar: Malkit.
- Light Is Not Good: Malkit is of the Seelie court, which hasn't kept him from severe Knight Templar antics.
- The Night That Never Ends: In Fallen Gods
- No Indoor Voice: Beelzebub can't say anything without shouting.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Howard, the dragon-esque monster
- Our Trolls Are Different: Proud Warrior Race Guys that will turn to stone if exposed to daylight.
- The Power of Love: What usually fuels Oswald's magic, until he finds himself in hell, where there is no love...
- The Power of Hate: Though he's loathe to use it, Oswald can draw upon this to fuel his magic if he has to... In hell, there's plenty of hate to go around.
- Rage Against the Heavens: Malkit lost his faith when his mother, a practical saint, was denied entrance to heaven and her soul disintegrated before his eyes.
However, given what Malkit has done "in the name of god", it's possible that (A)Malkit was being punished by proxy for genocide and would serve heaven better as a heretic than the manipulative bastard he has been, or (B) given how Malkit turned out, his mother wasn't that innocent. - "Shaggy Dog" Story: Oswald's journey to return a baby angel to his parents. Though the journey itself was productive in saving lives, in the end it turns out that Clive has always been possessed by a baby demon. While the demon itself was apparently good, as all it influenced Clive to do was kill some very HORRIBLE people, its mother (a cloud of pure darkness) waged war against the angels and mutated people into demons for the sole purpose of getting its baby back. The war against the citadel ends with Clive dying and the baby returned to its mother, which then promptly leaves peacefully and cuts off the wages of the demons so they can't continue fighting. The entire war has been waged on a misunderstanding.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Oswald, with his Waistcoat of Style, bow tie and pince-nez glasses.
- Silver Vixen: Diadre doesn't look a day over thirty, and acts like a teenage alcoholic to match. Of course, her serial killer sons are dead to her (figuratively and literally) and she's stuck with grandsons who inherited their father's genetic psychopathic tendencies, which tore the sexy romantic streak right out of her but left the hawtness behind.
- Technical Pacifist: Oswald is on the Actual Pacifist edge of this. Most of the time.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Oswald pulls this when he's about to get violent.
- Tranquil Fury: Oswald never loses his cool. No matter how enraged he is, he always expresses it very, very calmly. Doesn't make him any less dangerous.
- Ultimate Blacksmith: Kalvaitis, who forges the sun each night.
