Webcomic / Fetch Quest: Saga of the Twelve Artifacts

Our heroine, Saffron Lachesis, among a Field of Blades

"It is special because it is a gift. Cherish it. Take care of it. And some day, years from now,...use it to protect what's most important to you."

— King Roland Lachesis to his daughter Saffron, about her cane sword.

Fetch Quest: Saga of the Twelve Artifacts is a webcomic series written by Mike Renner of In Wily's Defense fame and drawn by Alan Solivan, the Original Manga Artist. Although it reuses characters from both IWD and Tales of Southtown, it does have its own storyline and world, complete with people of all races and a compelling plot.

Saffron Lachesis is one of the two princesses of the Kingdom of Strife, although she doesn't quite look at all like a typical princess, preferring instead to utterly wreck the living daylights out of any criminal who is unfortunate enough to come across her, regardless of his original intent. She doesn't quite get along with her more conservative twin Nephilim. Ever since their father, the great king Roland Lachesis, left the kingdom for no apparent reason, they had to take care of it in his stead, sibling bickering and all. Nephilim's only solace from her trials and tribulations is the young Fafnirian and younger Happily Adopted sister Ambrosia Verdandi, whose desire to become a doctor someday she cautiously supports.

Meanwhile, from the Kingdom of Cicle, to the far north of Strife, a Child Prodigy in the arts of magic, Felicia Whitewind, is traveling to its capital, Strife City. As she travels, she is suddenly attacked by a couple of thieves. Although she defends herself quite well, it takes a stranger known only as Lionel "the Lucky" to dispatch them. After they meet, she accepts his offer to escort her to the city.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

As of July 2012, Fetch Quest: Saga of the Twelve Artifacts has been discontinued due to Real Life pressures.

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Tropes that this Webcomic series employs:

• Aerith and Bob: We've got characters named Nephilim, Rabi and Darius alongside others with names like Lionel and Lindsay.
• All There in the Manual: here ^note Do be warned, though; the Codex hasn't been updated since 2009.

• Black Magic: The Demons give this out to anyone willing to seek them instead of the Seraphim for power.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Chizuru Yamamoto. Third Sword of Terra (i.e. third strongest member of the Terran military), yet is obsessed with fashion and generally does not like being responsible.

• Casual Danger Dialogue: Although not necessarily in danger, Saffron has no problem starting a casual conversation with Lionel in the middle of their sparring match without missing a beat.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Remember the two thugs Saffron beat up in Chapter 1? They've kidnapped Nephilim nine chapters later as some misguided attempt at revenge due to mistaking her for Saffron.
• Curse: Those who obtain their magic from Benimarkum, Demon of Anguish, can add insult to injury by cursing the victims' wounds.

• Cranial Eruption: Saffron gets this as punishment for hitting Lionel with a chalkboard eraser, though to be fair, she didn't see him coming. She gets another by stealing Nephilim's tea.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Even with three Goddesses, and their eight Seraphim, they are primarily worshipped (at least in Zephyr) through a church led by a pope.
• Cut Short: Sadly yes. Even worse is the fact that it was just two chapters away from the conclusion.
• Death Glare: Dr. Lindsay Troy has one that could shatter diamonds, as seen here.
  • Pope Hajin also has a couple.

• Elemental Powers: Felicia is so good at magic that she had mastered all but two elemental powers in her youth.
• Ermine Cape Effect: Averted with Saffron, who wears her casual wear in a formal meeting.
• Facepalm: Ambrosia after Saffron rushes off to rescue her sister despite having No Sense of Direction.

• Field of Blades: The cover of Chapter 11.

• Girlish Pigtails: Momo
• The Glasses Come Off: Protip: Don't mess with Felicia. No, seriously.
• Great Offscreen War: Empuzu implies in his first appearance that Terra and Zephyr had a war at one point, and that his and Chizuru's presence in the latter country might start another if they were found out.

• Idiot Heroine: Saffron. She leaves the "smart stuff" to Felicia. As she herself says when she happens upon the hideout of her sister's captors:
  Saffron: "You think of something smart to do. I'm gonna do something big and stupid!"
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Can you tell Lionel's not a people person?

• It Was a Gift: Saffron's cane sword. See the quote at the top.

• Meaningful Rename: Before he was Lionel "The Lucky", The Lancer was once known as Joachim.

• My Greatest Failure: Lionel losing against Alastair, and thus losing his loved ones in his backstory. The fact that he lost again to Saffron makes that slightly Harsher in Hindsight.
• Mythology Gag: All the Goddesses were once Angels to another, much lazier and more egotistical God.
• No Guy Wants an Amazon: According to Shiori's Codex, Nephilim is quite popular among suitors while Saffron has yet to receive a proposal since most men are intimidated by her Super-Strength.
• No Sense of Direction: Saffron
  Ambrosia: One time when she was a kid, she got lost in the castle for several hours trying to find her room.
• Odd Friendship: Chizuru and Empuzu. One takes his duties as the Second Sword of Terra seriously, the other's a Bunny-Ears Lawyer.
• Oh, Crap!: Lionel. Big time.
  • And again with Rabi and Darius.
  • Also Played for Laughs in the first chapter after the prologue when Saffron effortlessly defeats those two thugs.
  • But Played for Drama as well at the end of Chapter 16 (excluding the bio and Side-Story Bonus Art).

• Orphaned Series: It ended with only 17 chapters published, just two short of the end of the current saga.

• Parental Abandonment: Saffron and Nephilim's father, King Roland, left for no apparent reason, and their mother died prior to the story's beginning.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Saffron and Nephilim; it's almost impossible to believe the two are related.

• Schedule Slip: It started out updating on a M-TH schedule (with a few extra chapters for a head-start), then overran its Strip Buffer once and was temporarily on a Monday-only schedule that ended at Chapter 9, Page 2. Then it went on hiatus so that Alan could catch up with life. That hiatus ended on 9/5/2010 with the release of Chapter 11: The Princess of Swords. However, starting sometime before the release of Chapter 16, Real Life began to drag on both creators (causing them to update less often), and by July 2012 they realized they couldn't update the comic anymore with those pressures. Thus ended the comic prematurely.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Alastair. The guy who found him should've known better than to release him by touching that crystal.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Felicia tends to lapse into this, as Ambrosia notes:
  Ambrosia: Felicia, I'm twelve. Don't throw around big words.

• Shock and Awe: Alastair, The Ghost in the Crystal, of the dark kind.
• Shout-Out: Aside from the world of Bideogamu being based on several RPG tropes, along with some other Video Game tropes thrown into the mix, we also have:
  • Sunshine Islet is, according to Word of God, inspired by a volcanic island that was the setting for one episode of the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon.
  • Brock (Rabi and Darius's superior) and Giovanni (his own superior) seem to take their names from Pokemon.

• The Stoic: Empuzu, at least compared to the others. All he does when Alastair shows up in Zephyr again, preceded by a massive earthquake, is to glance at him while calmly drinking his tea.

• You Have Failed Me: Giovanni gives Brock (the gang leader) this treatment after the latter's run-in with Saffron and Felicia.

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