Calvin & Hobbes meets "Studio Ghibli" w/ a touch of How to Train Your Dragon in this children's book set in the Unfound universe. The story follows two children and their Callings on an imaginative adventure that unfolds right under their parents' noses!
(1) "Joan's Calling" Book Matter, "Joan's Calling": For all of history, the god of Bastunia has bestowed upon the people a gift: a spiritual beast-companion that helps them on their life’s Path. In the span of a couple hundred years, they have turned from barbarians into high society. But when the god vanishes, leaving people to find their own way, their civilized world begins to fall apart. Enter Joan, a clever but scorned No-Beast. Life is hard for No-Beasts, but worse for Joan, whose father is Bastunia’s greatest beastborn hero. The world has driven a wedge between them, leaving her to fend for herself in this falling world. The scholarly girl’s aggression is mounting. Her anger is threatening to consume her. Just when it seems things cannot get any harder for Joan, she gets into a back-alley fight defending a friendless schoolmate. In the wake of the fight, her life is forever changed.
(2) "The Return"
Book Matter, "The Return": The Year is 293. In Main City, nothing will ever be the same for Joan Daniels. She wouldn't say she loved her old life, but she had gotten used to it. She had found a way to make being a No-Beast work. But now Joan has become the very thing she hates most: a Beastborn. To complicate matters further, this one is no ordinary Calling. This one comes with a history that threatens the safety of the entire world. As Joan struggles to wrap her mind around what has happened, her father takes the lead. Joan quickly begins to wonder if he has her best interests at heart…
(3) "Training Grounds"
Book Matter, "Training Grounds": Being a beastborn is no joke. Not only has Joan’s mind been invaded by the infant-god, but every time her Calling gets hurt, she shares in the pain. Her father, Bastunia’s most heroic beastborn turned self-appointed mentor, is determined to forge Joan and Monkey’s connection into something special. But before progress can be made, Joan and James must make amends. Overcoming a lifetime of troubled history will not prove easy. So begins a battle of wills that puts Artie in a precarious position. Can they settle their differences before the boy becomes collateral damage?
Description of "Enjoy Every Step": One girl grapples with an impossible decision: Either stay in Base Camp and follow in the footsteps of many great Explorers before her, or leave her family and everyone she has ever known to set out of a true adventure of a lifetime.
Description of "We All Build": Two revered Builders, a Mogul and a Politician, square off to build Metropolia, the city of the future. Their visions, and methods, could not be more different...
Description of "On the Road to No Wasteland": One Defender father wishes the best for his Builder son: to send him off to Metropolia to study. But when the stewarding party is late to arrive, a mission to rescue them from one of the desert's many predators ensues.
Description of "Of Mice and Boys": It is Artie's last day of school, the same as it is Joan's. But Artie follows a very different path to arrive at the alleyway where their fateful fight changes their lives forever.
First Five Pages of "Joan's Calling" (Comic with prose)
(1) The memory made Joan’s leg itch. Or maybe Joan’s itchy leg reminded her of what happened that night.
6 YEARS PRIOR
Joan teetered on the edge of sleep. Something had roused her. Her father had returned. She could hear his thunderous feet on the stairs leading up to her bedroom. She hovered, half-asleep, in this dreamful state, allowing herself to anticipate that any moment James’ big, blurry face would appear in the crack of the door. He would be grinning, excited to give her a trinket from his travels. But the half-awake part of Joan was strangely alert. Something was off. A smell? A draft where there was usually stillness? A protective instinct, an awareness that her dad’s return was unlikely?
She furrowed her brow. A chill blew across her bedsheets. It leeched the remaining sleep from her mind.
No... James did not have thunderous, stomping footsteps. The man glided. He was as lithe as a monkey. Which meant…
Somebody else was inside Joan’s house. The eight year old had to act fast. In one motion, she flung herself out of bed and slipped on her big, circular glasses. Her moonlit bedroom came into focus. Her door was cracked. She was alone. The footsteps she had heard were not coming toward her, but leading away. Whoever it was, they had not come for her.
“Mom!” she gulped. Then she stopped thinking. She ran for the open front door. Light poured out onto the cobblestones, and Joan poured out with it. Ahead of her, held up between two enormous men, was her mom. They were already across the street when Joan caught up. She grabbed a handful of her mom’s nightgown, dug her two calloused heels into the dirt with all her might, and pulled. For all the good it did. She was a flea to them, less significant than Cinder, her mom’s scarab-beast. Still, she had to try.
Finally her mom turned to face her. Her face was shaded, but Joan saw everything she needed to see in Cinder. Everything she feared seeing. Cinder buzzed slowly, not stricken with panic, not in a frenzy, not fighting to return to the house. When the light caught her mom’s face, Joan glimpsed what had become painfully familiar: madness.
One thing was clear. Cinder, and her mom, were leaving.
(2) “Don’t follow me,” her mom said. Words like icy daggers. But Joan held on. Even as tears flooded down her face. She could not let go. She wouldn't.
“You don’t listen, do you?” the boss said. He was tall and strong, with a shock of white hair. His voice was a rattling chain. He nodded to his henchman. “Oso, take care of her. Make sure she can’t follow us.”
(3) The man hefted his Auraed sword. “Greatest requires sacrifice,” said the boss. Suddenly, her mom was free of her grip. Joan stumbled backward onto the hard cobbles. A ghost ran across the lawn, or was it a glint of light reflected off a fast-moving sword? The last thing Joan saw through wetted lashes was her leg lying next to her, detached.
(4) MODERN DAY
5 am came especially early that morning. Joan peeked one eye open. The brace that secured her metal leg itched, but she ignored it. She also ignored the desire to go back to bed. It was the last day of school. One more day of this, she thought. But she knew she was kidding herself. Tomorrow she would be up just as early to run through her pendamoto, her morning routine.
Her dad had told her that pendamoto meant “to wake up love”, but as she dropped down into her first push-up, that didn’t seem likely. She had tossed and turned the night away, and that morning her giant POWER TO NO-BEASTS poster seemed more like a taunt than usual. Nevertheless, certain things were non-negotiable for Joan. Her wake-up time, her pendamoto, and her affirmations in the mirror. By the time she had finished her routine, she was feeling better. She tied her hair up, gave herself a gritty smile in the mirror, and told herself: “Time to be the best.”
(5) It felt like a day for climbing, so she pulled on a pair of loose capris, a long vest, and belted it all together. Once she left the house, she did not plan to be back until after dusk. A big breakfast of fried eggs would do the trick. It was shaping up to be a good start to a good day! She had a break from school in sight, a whole grove of new trees she planned to climb, and a beautiful day to climb them. She also had the latest copy of A Brief History of Bastunia to study from the treetop. Nothing could get her down…
“Moooooorning, Joany!” her dad greeted. It was then that she noticed him in the living room, in skandasana, a one legged squat. He had the newspaper in one hand and a cup of tea in the other as he ran through his own pendamoto. Joan wondered what he warmed up in place of love. She thought maybe arrogance, maybe bullcrap. As if reading her mind, James said, “You hear about the latest Ahzigra attack?”
Joan looked over to see her dad and Kazi, her dad’s massive canine-beast, winking at her.
Her dad went on, “I guess they created a rockslide that dammed up the Vedazon River. Do you believe this? It took a crew three days to restore the river’s flow. The five of us could have done the same in an afternoon. Maybe next time your old man will shake off the rust and show ‘em what he’s got!” “You don’t say.”
Joan rolled her eyes at the five of us. Of course, James was not including Joan. Her dad meant him and his four beasts. “The great hero, James Daniels…” She speared an egg yolk with her fork, and then shoveled the runny bite into her mouth. With her mouth still full she grumbled, “...saves the day again. What can’t you do?”
Shipping Details: All of these rewards are digital and will not require any shipping or shipping fees!
Timeline: Early Birds (based on a pledge level) will have "Tales of Bastunia" books & map delivered immediately! The children's book (Becc & Ceith) is underway with plans to be completed by Winter 2024.
What is Unfound Adventures all about? Here on planet Earth, we live in an age when "creativity" is sold over the counter. The creative process can be reduced to automatized prompts, the imagination put away like pool toys in winter. With a few clicks, people claim to be artists - and yet, the "art" hoisted by unblemished hands looks vaguely familiar. It's nothing new. Even the "artist" is the same as before...
At Unfound Adventures, we believe that imagination & creativity are two of life's treasures. They are acts to be engaged in, much like dancing, swimming, flying, healing, or...levitation. They are playful, yes, but they are also testing. They teach you about yourself, about your values, about your mettle, and you come away as a deeper version of yourself. Art, therefore, is not the purpose of creative engagement but a colorful bi-product. The real gift of imagination & creativity is the knowledge of one's self, a chance to look squarely at the shape of one's vibrant spirit.
What began as a comic book project for ourselves has grown into a mission for the next generation. In everything we do, we intend to involve kids. We wish to stoke their imaginations, nurture their creativity, and provide them with tools & frameworks to go deep in their exploration of self.
CALLINGS: Examples of a few "Callings" (and Matthew Emmorey, one of the creators):
Matthew and Chugach
Sentrak
Chugach
Murgatroyd
Um
Cade
Cade 2
Chungus
Voltcano
Escaballo
Tee'Cee
Ott
Maydee
Aalish
Trigarr
