I will show you fear in a handful of dust...
Hemlock
is a black-and-white webcomic by Josceline Fenton. Set in the forests of Scandinavia in the 1800s, it follows the story of Lumi, a young witch who, by a string of bad luck, has found herself tied up in the events of the Witches' Court, and the story of Tristan, a poor peasant boy, who, through a series of unfortunate accidents, ends up being her familiar.Was updating every Friday, usually several pages at a time but now updates whenever Fenton has time between jobs.
This comic provides examples of:
- Accidental Marriage: Lumi and the fallen witch king, Sindri. Although it was only accidental on Lumi's side.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Sisu is the nicest character in the comic. He also used his wish to learn the secrets of necromancy.
- Back from the Dead: Tristan died and his soul actually left his body, only to be sucked into the body of a frog.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Ulla appears to be this. Conspiracy to attempt murder on Lumi can be added to her list of charges.
- Bilingual Bonus:
- Since the story is set in 1800’s Scandinavia,note a lot of the background text is written in Swedish. Tristan’s angry rant at Limu after his soul gets stuck in a frog is in Swedish with some ”approximate” translations in slightly overlayed speech bubbles, and a book Limu is shown to read quite often is ”Häxans Kokbok”, which means ”The Witch’s Cookbook.”
- Baba Yaga, a character from Russian folklore, is also shown to occasionally speak in untranslated Russian.
- Bookworm: Tristan loves reading and sets aside every spare bit of change he has for books. This indirectly leads to his death, as he forgot to salt the meat for winter because he was reading, causing it to spoil and leaving him having to travel to town to replace it during a thunderstorm.
- Blood Magic: Limu relies on this and her potions for her spells. This is to compensate for her general lack of talent for magic, but the witches of the 1800s consider this method to be outdated and repulsive, preferring to use wands instead.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Tristan first shows up in the comic as a little boy that happens to spot Lumi in the forest. Needless to say, he plays a far bigger role later on.
- Chekhov's Skill: Tristan taking his time to learn Snail Speak to communicate with Richmond allows him to learn from the shrunken snail that he and Limu are about to walk into a trap set up by Simo in chapter 5. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do him much good as he’s Killed Mid-Sentence.
- Civilized Animal: Subverted with Richmond. He only speaks in Snail Speak, and he doesn't live in a house: he is one.
- Cliffhanger: Chapter 5 ends on Tristan and Limu getting lured into an ambush, with Tristan seemingly getting killed by some Razor Floss and Limu, while tearfully screaming his name, being kidnapped by Simo’s guards.
- Clingy MacGuffin: The "wedding ring" Sindri slapped on Lumi's ankle. Not only can she not remove it, it can harm her if she annoys Sindri enough.
- The Dreaded: Everyone is afraid of Baba Yaga, including her own sons.
- Elderly Immortal: Baba Yaga is the only witch to appear elderly, because she ages whenever someone asks her a question. (She's also the oldest character in the comic, at least according to the cast page.)
- The Evil Prince: Sindri, who basically went on a tyrannical rampage after Baba Yaga left to the other places, leaving the crown to him. He murdered his familiar, Hrimfaxi, and sold his subjects into slavery to the Night Things in order to learn their magic. Then, he tricked Lumi into becoming his wife after she tried to help him. Though Simo is revealed to be behind Hrimfaxi's death by tricking Sindri into killing and eating him.
- Exact Words: In a flashback to Simo using his one question to ask Baba Yaga how he can kill Sindri and getting an answer, Sisu expresses disgust at how willing Baba Yaga is to give her own children the means to kill each other. However, Baba Yaga reassures him that Simo won’t succeed in killing Sindri; After all, Baba Yaga is only said to give answers, not that those answers are true.
- Face Framed in Shadow: Sindri is a subversion. He originally appeared this way, but then it was confirmed that his face is shadow.
- Familiar: Lumi was taught how to practice the old magic by her bird familiar Suul, and there are potions, poisons and spells that require a familiar to work. Later, Tristan becomes her new familiar as a replacement for Suul. Additionally, all of the witches are said to have these. The only exception, it seems, is Sindri, who supposedly murdered his.
- Family Theme Naming: Baba Yaga's three sons all have names beginning in Si-.
- Family-Unfriendly Death:
- The first chapter starts with a scene where Lumi eats Suul. When we find out her reasons, though, it can be viewed as a
kind act. - In chapter 5, Tristan is bisected with Razor Floss when he and Limu are ambushed by Simo's guards.
- The first chapter starts with a scene where Lumi eats Suul. When we find out her reasons, though, it can be viewed as a
- Fantastic Diet Requirement: Limu’s and Sindri’s Lethal Chef tendencies aside, witches overall are implied to have rather… unconventional diets. How else would Limu discover that she’s allergic to specifically spider legs?
- Freak Out: Limu, who’s previously been shown to just be slightly nervous and uncomfortable at worst and otherwise being a pretty cool customer, has a bad one after Sindri kills one of Simo’s guards, the latter having disguised themselves as Limu’s shawl, due to at first believing that he was trying to kill her. She ends up having a complete sobbing meltdown, fearfully screaming at Sindri to stay away from her and refusing to come back into his house, instead falling asleep on the ground in the snow. Sindri, who has otherwise treated her like his possession that he can do with as he pleases and tricked/forced her to become his ”wife” in the first place, is actually shown to regret scaring her to this extent, and he ends up giving Tristan a Comforting Comforter to drape over her while she’s sleeping outside, citing that ”if she’s going to sleep in the snow, you can at least prevent her from getting cold.”
- Frustrated Overhead Scribble: When Lumi realizes Sindri put spider legs, which she's allergic to, in their dinner she storms out of the room with a tangled line in her speech bubble. She's been poisoning him for centuries though, and he put her favorite spices in the dish as well making his intentions muddled through their very dysfunctional relationship.
- Get Out!: After accidentally looking through Tristan’s Third Eye just as he’s about to kill him for snooping around and somehow seeing the connections to his and Limu’s dead familiars, Sindri reacts with tossing Tristan at Limu, claiming that the human-turned-frog isn’t some familiar and demanding that they leave his home to the point of chasing them out.
- The Glomp: Sisu greets Lumi, who he hasn't seen in centuries, with a huge bear hug. It's a marked contrast to the way Simo treats their sister-in-law.
- Gorgeous Garment Generation: When Ulla shows up to get Limu for an audience with Simo, she sneers at the latter for her ”shabby” clothes and uses a spell to give her a clean, more elegant dress more befitting for a meeting with the ”king of dawn”.
- In the Blood: According to Baba Yaga herself, her three sons each take after their fathers: Sindri is selfish like the night things, Simo is paranoid like the dawn folk, and Sisu is wretchedly kind like the day people.
- Jar of the Bizarre: Baba Yaga throws a jar full of eyeballs out the door of her house in a fit of rage.
- Jerkass: Good lord, Simo. He’s rude and condescending to basically everyone around him, being passive-aggressive and snooty towards others at best. He’s especially cruel and mean to Limu, who he treats like she got married to Sindri on purpose rather than getting tricked by him, and he treats her like a prisoner when he summons her to his palace and expresses disdain at how ineffective her methods of trying to kill his brother are. Tristan isn’t shy about voicing his dislike of the man’s demeanor once he and Limu are finally allowed to leave.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: In chapter 5, after finding out from Richmond that Simo has set up a trap for him and Limu, Tristan yells out a warning to his master... Which unfortunately is cut short when he’s bisected by some Razor Floss.
- Lethal Chef: An odd deliberate case with both Limu and Sindri. The meals Limu cooks for her ”husband” all contain some form of poison, but it’s difficult to tell if this is because she’s been ordered by Simo to kill Sindri or if Sindri genuinely likes his food being dangerous or outright lethal to consume; He mixes spider legs into Limu’s food despite knowing that she’s allergic to them and mentions afterwards that he ”enjoys a good food poisoning”, and while this could of course be an act of spite on his part, the two also reminisce almost fondly on Limu’s previous attempts at poisoning him, and Limu expresses concern for him after he becomes bedridden when she feeds him gingerbread laced with hemlock. Suffice to say, their relationship is very, very complicated.
- Light Is Not Good: Holy crap, Simo. While the story Lumi tells portrays him as a hero overthrowing a tyrant, these days Simo is a petty, paranoid man who's committed to killing his oldest brother and willing to use Lumi to do so. He also is responsible for several of the things which are used as proof that Sindri was an nonredeemable tyrant, bragging as Sindri lay wounded that no one will remember it as Simo having been anything but a heroic liberator.
- Lured into a Trap: After visiting Baba Yaga, Limu and Tristan return to Richmond with the intent on bringing him to Sindri’s home so that they can stay there. However, when they arrive at the place where they left him, he’s nowhere to be found. (”How can one lose a giant snail?”) Then, Tristan discovers that it’s because Richmond has been shrunk to the size of an ordinary snail… And the snail reveals that they’ve walked into an ambush set up by Simo in order to kill Tristan and abduct Limu.
- Meaningful Name: Tristan's last name, Grodkropp, means "frog's body". Additionally, "Tristan" means "sorrow" or alternately "tumult/noise". Make of that what you will. So far, Tristan's adventures do seem both tumultuous and a bit sad.*
- Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: ”Well, ”heart of hold” may be pushing it slightly, but Limu is shown to be an overall humble, good-natured and considerate woman. She may come across as a standoffish loner at first, and even other witches think she’s weird and off-putting, which is implied to be due to a combination of her status as Sindri’s ”wife” and her relying on Blood Magic and Eye of Newt potions rather than a wand in order to compensate for her lack of skill in using magic. (Though Baba Yaga appreciates that at least somebody still understands the ”old ways” of magic) She also takes Tristan as her familiar regardless of his feelings on the matter and bluntly tells him that she could’ve just left him to die. But aside from an awkward start, she overall treats the human-turned-frog with kindness, repeatedly showing concern for his well-being and trying to keep him out of danger to the best of her ability; She even apologizes to him for almost getting him killed when she asks him to snoop around in Sindri’s lair to see what he’s hiding behind a special door. When out among people, she’s also generally courteous and polite, even inviting Tristan’s cousin for ”tea” even when she knows that he suspects that she’s the one who killed Tristan; She only really snarks and shows hostility towards people who are rude and aggressive to her first. And despite using Blood Magic, she’s shown to always use her own blood for it rather than harming or killing another creature for it.
- My Greatest Failure:
- Sindri is implied to to consider letting Simo trick him into killing and eating his horse familiar Hrimfaxi to be this; Tristan mentions to Limu that, while he wasn’t able to get through the sealed door in Sindri’s home as she asked him to, he could somehow detect that there was regret behind it… And the room turns out to house the skull of his god-given companion.
- Sisu once encountered a little girl who died from an illness, with him being unable to save her. This lead to him using his one question to ask baba Yaga how to learn necromancy so that he could aid people even after they’ve passed away.
- Nice Guy: Sisu is by far the kindest of Baba Yaga’s sons, practically to the point of being an All-Loving Hero. When he sees Limu, he cheerfully gives her a giant Bear Hug and gushes about how long it’s been since she came for a visit and happily refers to her as his ”sister-in-law”, and he treats Tristan with patience and kindness to the point of transforming himself into a frog to make him feel more comfortable when he realizes that Tristan is bothered by his lack of a nose. It’s even implied that the reason he asked Baba Yaga to teach him necromancy is because he wants to be able to help everyone, even the dead.
- The Older Immortal: Baba Yaga's sons are thousands of years old. She herself is "damn old."
- Pet the Dog: Sindri may be an asshole overall, what with him tricking Limu into becoming bound to him as his ”wife” and treating her more like a possession than a person. But 800+ years of ”marriage” has made him develop some form of genuine caring for her, as well; Even though he gives her food poisoning by mixing spider legs into her food, Tristan notes that he also put saffron, Limu’s favorite spice, in there. He also feels genuinely bad when he causes Limu to have a Freak Out after he kills a guard disguised as her shawl, and he gives Tristan a coat to drape over her when she falls asleep in the snow afterwards.
- Public Domain Character: Baba Yaga is the oldest and most powerful witch, and also Lumi's mother in law.
- Stab the Scorpion: Sindri stalks wordlessly up to Lumi with his sword raised, and swings it down towards her in order to kill the disguised Day soldier that snuck in by disguising himself as Lumi's cloak. Lumi is still traumatized by this and runs outside because she thought Sindri was going to kill her, and she's upset even after Sindri's motive is revealed.
- Rags to Royalty: Subverted. Lumi was tricked into her marriage to Sindri. As a result of his bad reputation, Simo refuses to recognize her as royalty and she's actually treated more cruelly than she would be if she were a common witch.
- Talking Animal: Subverted with Richmond. He only speaks in Snail Speak.
- Third Eye: Tristan, after transferring into the frog's body, has one appear. The eye doesn't seem to belong to him and he cannot see out of it. He covers it up with a spiffy hat.
- Time Skip: In the space of two panels Lumi lies down to take a nap and then is woken by her husband. The nap turns out to have been 10-years long.
- Unskilled, but Strong: A magic variation. Limu is apparently a rather poor spellcaster, something that she freely admits to, and Baba Yaga tells her to her face that she’s neither a particularly skilled or powerful witch. But she compensates for that with her use of old-school Blood Magic, which apparently contains more raw power than the ”modern” type of spellcasting.
- Witch Hunt: During the visit to Simo's Court, witches fleeing prosecution from the Salem Witch Trials were shown milling around.
- Wizards Live Longer: Witches and wizards live for thousands of years, and while humans have far shorter lifetimes they are far more numerous.
