History Webcomic / InOurShadow

* EyeScream: Schorl, [[spoiler: then known as Nehr,]] bleeds from the eyes after using the damaged neural flare.

* YourHeadASplode: [[spoiler: The general effect when Lady Brushfire [[https://www.deviantart.com/kitfox-crimson/art/In-Our-Shadow-page-346-749713598 crushes]] Quartz's tiny rat skull in her bare hand.]] Though a later comic shows that despite the blood geyser she only cracked his skull.

One of [[http://kitfox-crimson.deviantart.com/ Matt Cleaver's]] webcomic projects, [[https://tapastic.com/series/InOurShadow In Our Shadow]] takes place 50,000 years after a hyper-advanced human civilization apparently wiped itself out. In the interceding millennia many species of animal that had grasping appendages evolved rapidly in response to the variety of artifacts left behind by humanity, developing sapience even.

The story of Book 1 opens on Brianna, a numbat, and Bray, a wallaby, escaping from a prison camp run by the highly advanced and xenophobic Rat Empire, who recently conquered Australia seeking human technology. Together they seek a human device called a "neural flare" that Bri believes can save the world from the rats, or seal its fate. Book 2 continues from where Book 1 left off, exploring the conflict with the rats.

A sequel set six years later has started around late February 2022, labelled "In Our Shadow 2".

* AnimalIsTheNewMan: The webcomic takes place 50,000 years after a hyper-advanced human civilization apparently wiped itself out and left their hyper-advanced technology all over the globe, including caches of weapons under stasis fields with only a few intelligence tests locking them up. In the interceding millennia many species of animal that had grasping appendages evolved rapidly in response to the variety of artifacts left behind by humanity, developing sapience even. [[spoiler:It is later revealed in the stinger of Book 1 that a human ship has been circling the solar system for millennia, and is now coming back after detecting the flare used by Bray.]]

* BattleTrophy: [[spoiler: After the timeskip Queen Brushfire is shown to have kept [[https://www.deviantart.com/kitfox-crimson/art/In-Our-Shadow-page-369-756986989 Quartz's cracked skull]], and left it on Bray's tomb.]]
* BearsAreBadNews: Bears were bred to be smaller and more docile by the Rat Empire, but a bear schoolteacher still manages to fight off her rat minders and get her mixed-species students safely to Australia when the submission signal goes down. At the start of Part 2 the bears have managed to build an empire that has almost unified Eurasia [[spoiler:before the kangaroos intervene.]]

* BigBadWannabe: [[spoiler:Quartz]] fancies himself as a great schemer who will [[spoiler:kill all the Flare users and give the power back to the old Labrat Aristocracy]]. However, while he manages to [[spoiler:kill Bray]], he's nowhere near as close to succeeding at [[spoiler:overthrowing Schorl]] when [[spoiler:Lady Brushfire kills him]].

* {{Cliffhanger}}: Book 2 ends with [[spoiler:the humans reaching Earth and making FirstContact with the kangaroos. Initial impressions, what was implied the story so far and their reaction upon being refused imply that things won't go as smooth as one would hope...]]

* DeathOfPersonality: The neural flare overwrites most of the user's memories. [[spoiler: Immediately after Bray used it the fans started acting like he was dead, followed shortly after by the rest of the cast, although it did appear as though he might able to regain part of his memories back before he died.]]

* DeflectorShield: Human mechs have shields that can withstand a rat squadron's worth of fire, and the control crowns project personal-scale shields around their pilots even outside the mech, though they'll break after tanking the overload blast from a Shroud pylon.[[spoiler: The kangaroo soultech mechs Bray builds have physical shields that use gravitic lensing to redirect and absorb beams. Humans, once they enter the story, are also shown to wear personal shields that allow them take a somewhat relaxed attitude towards e.g. an entire raccoon army blasting them with everything from small arms to MLRS volleys.]]

* DumbMuscle: Bray is certainly the strongest and largest and least educated of the main group, his displays of ignorance are one of the series' few sources of humor. Brianna frequently makes fun of him for this. But he does display the occasional insight, like being the first to notice that the blackleaf trees are sticking out of solid rock.
* EasilyForgiven: Queen Brushfire doesn't bear Amethyst any ill will for killing her husband, [[https://tapas.io/episode/511570 explaining]] that she realizes she was still under the fear signal's influence and he was a hotheaded idiot. [[spoiler: Quartz, on the other hand, didn't have such an excuse when he shot Bray and she kills him with her bare hands for it.]]

* FailureHero: Bray sees himself as one, which is why he uses the Neural Flare. He feels like it's the only useful thing he can do.
* FakeDefector: [[spoiler:Quartz pretended to defect from the rat empire and join the kangaroos. After gaining the trust of Lady Brushfire, he [[HeroKiller killed Bray]] and all her advisers without warning, almost killed her as well, and then detonated a bomb destroying the factory that had been building the kangaroo mechs before making his escape in a rat stryder. This would have spelled doom for the kangaroos altogether if not for a bit of foresight on the part of [[SpannerInTheWorks Amethyst.]]]]

* FirstContact: [[spoiler:Book 2 ends with humans landing on Australia and meeting the protagonists.]]

* FullCircleRevolution: In Book 1 the Rat Empire rules the northern hemisphere with an iron fist and periodically ventures into the southern to trash other polities that seem overly ambitious. In Part 2, the Kangaroo Kingdom does the same with the hemispheres reversed, albeit under a pretense of preventing stagnation [[spoiler:and getting the humans' attention]] by keeping the successor states in a constant state of war.

* HeadCrushing: In the climactic battle at the end of Book 2, [[spoiler:Lady Brushfire leaps from her wrecked mech, tears open the cockpit of Quartz's mech, and [[https://www.deviantart.com/kitfox-crimson/art/In-Our-Shadow-page-346-749713598 crushes his head in one hand]]. Justified as she's a red kangaroo and he's a rat. The epilogue shows that Brushfire kept Quartz's cracked skull as a trophy.]]

* HeroKiller: [[spoiler:When Quartz reveals himself to be a traitor, he manages to kill most of the military leaders of the kangaroos, including Bray and Miss Granite. And he would also have been able to kill Lady Brushfire, [[ForWantOfANail had his wrist not been broken by the recoil of the kangaroo firearm he used]].]]

* HumanitysWake: It's not clear how exactly humanity died out, but there was both a nuclear war and an ice age. [[spoiler: The ends of Book 1 reveals that they never actually died out. They simply got bored and left Earth to sail the cosmos, leaving behind a starship on the solar system's edge in case the neural flare back on the Moon was used, which was what happened with Bray beforehand. The end of Book 2 has the mentioned ship reach Earth and make contact with the kangaroos.]]

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Brianna. On the one hand, she tries to bring down the Rat Empire, doing the world a favour, and is shown to be devastated by the deaths caused indirectly by her plan. However, she admits that she enjoys [[DeadpanSnarker putting down people around her]] [[InsufferableGenius to feel more intelligent]]. Bray was a frequent target of this before he used the neural flare. Later, she tries it on Pipa, and gets a short but brutal TheReasonYouSuckSpeech for it...

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Clover managed to escape when the final battle turned to the Kangaroo's advantage and is the only main antagonist still alive at the end of Book 2.]]

* NotQuiteDead: [[spoiler: Jayrunner after the destruction of Madagascar. Lady Brushfire, Amethyst, and Pipa after Quartz betrays them. TheStinger to Part 1 suggested Bray might have survived a bullet to the head as well, and Part 2 page 36 confirms it.]]

** [[spoiler: TheStinger of Book 1 suggested that a human ship has been circling the solar system for millennia and is now coming back. Said ship arrives at the end of Book 2.]]
** In Book 2 it turns out [[spoiler: that an isolated group of lemurs making an anthropological documentary in Africa survived, along with Jayrunner. The epilogue shows that the Kangaroo Kingdom is attempting to rebuild their population through cloning.]]

--> '''Lady Brushfire:''' "People of Rampart City. You have surely heard that we have been betrayed, that our war machines are lost and Bray Stormfront is dead. Further, that the rat annihilation fleet swiftly approaches. You have heard correctly. However, there is one thing you shouldn't need to hear, for you know it as surely as you live and breathe. ''A kangaroo mech rises from the rubble behind her'' "To every last murderous rat with the audacity to invade our land, we shall give no mercy! The streets of this city will run red with the filthy blood of the vermin who seek to destroy us! The foul, evil brains of those would-be conquerors will be dashed against our shield and blade! Their feeble, technology-dependent bodies will be rent and left to feed the soils of Australia! And I personally will see to it that the white devil who betrayed us comes to an end wholly befitting of his vile existence! THE TIME OF RECKONING HAS COME AT LAST!"

* TheStinger: [[spoiler:It turns out Bray is still alive, and unfortunately Schorl might be a KarmaHoudini as well]].

* TimeSkip: The last chapter of Book 2 picks up six months after [[spoiler: the fall of the Rat Empire]], Book 3 skips another six years.

** Bray does this for real by using the Neural Flare, gaining a massive amount of knowledge, putting on a lot of height and muscle mass, and becoming able to interface with and control any human technology, and therefore, any rat technology. Later, his new knowledge allows the kangaroos to start building their own stryders that were technologically on par with the human mechs. But it comes at the cost of his personality and memories.

* AbusiveParents: Tourmaline is raising her adoptive daughter Marble to be a TykeBomb, routinely gaslights her and tries to break up her budding relationship with Seed because it might interfere with her plans. Marble's [[spoiler:human]] adoptive father Yash seems to be a lot more genuine in his care for her despite also being in on the plan to use Marble as a weapon.

* BearsAreBadNews: Bears were bred to be smaller and more docile by the Rat Empire, but a bear schoolteacher still manages to fight off her rat minders and get her mixed-species students safely to Australia when the submission signal goes down. At the start of Part 2 the bears have managed to build an empire that has almost unified Eurasia [[spoiler: before the kangaroos intervene.]]

* FullCircleRevolution: In Book 1 the Rat Empire rules the northern hemisphere with an iron fist and periodically ventures into the southern to trash other polities that seem overly ambitious. In Part 2 the Kangaroo Kingdom does the same with the hemispheres reversed, albeit under a pretense of preventing stagnation [[spoiler: and getting the humans' attention]] by keeping the successor states in a constant state of war.

* InterspeciesAdoption: Marble, the protagonist of Part 2, is a labrat raised by an opossum and a human, [[spoiler: though her "mom" intends to use a neural flare on her and make her into a new Emperor Schorl, and her "dad" seems most interested in seeing what'll happen.]]

* KilledOffscreen: Most of the shorter-lived characters who were still alive at the end of Part 1 are gone after the six-year timeskip to Part 2, [[spoiler: Amethyst and Bri's]] MemorialStatue is seen on page 36.

* NonMammalMammaries: Most of the armor the characters wear has pointed pectoral plates that look like breasts, but both genders wear them and multiple female characters are seen topless and breastless. Only the lemurs seem to have human-like mammaries. [[spoiler: In part 2 a human character takes note that a female opossum wearing Emperor Schorl's old armor seems to have the same bust size as him.]]

** Kangaroos. Lord Brushfire responded to Amethyst's request that they give up their weapons by sending her MiniMecha flying. Of course, it got him killed seconds later.
** The surviving [[spoiler:humans]] have adopted a philosophy of eternal conflict as the primary driver of evolution. [[spoiler: Hence why they left behind vaults full of weapons and spread an uplift virus among the animals while trying to destroy all the neural flares used by the decadent (in their eyes) human majority.]]