SwordsVale

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SwordsVale
First appearanceLocal Area, page 6
April 9, 2014
GenreMMORPG
TypeOnline game
Related charactersStacy, Abbey, Sue, Amaya, Mike

SwordsVale is an online fantasy role-playing game that a small guild of Roseville High School students plays together every night. First glimpsed on Stacy's computer screen in Local Area, it has resurfaced every few years since — as convention cosplay, as a lunchroom scandal, and as a guild meeting in Mike's bedroom.

Description

The character-creation menu.[1]
Guild avatars gathered in the game world.[2]

SwordsVale is a PC MMORPG, played at home in the evenings. Sue describes it plainly as "this MMORPG" that the group plays every night.[3] On screen it is a rather pretty watercolor fantasy world of green fields and mountains, and its player characters are elves and other fantasy folk instead of the comic's usual cat-people.[4] Sue plays a blue-haired male elf named Yearrug, Stacy a red-caped warrior with spiked pauldrons, Amaya an armored figure in blue and gold, and Abbey a brown-haired bovine humanoid.[2][4] Mike plays a female flower mage in a green dress with pink flowers in her hair, on the grounds that he "really liked her design!"[4]

The comic shows the game in bits and pieces. There is a character-creation menu,[1] nightly quests,[5] and a server list that separates the public servers from the group's own "serious server where we remain IN CHARACTER."[2] Guilds come with a working /gkick command,[6] and the raid system is "actually very simple for newcomers," according to Sue.[3] Meeting talk runs to raid schedules, an upcoming expansion, PvP sign-ups and an event calendar.[7] There are also in-game events like the Crimsonflame Festival.[8] In the planning for that one, Abbey wants to save Forestgale for the 2.11 patch, once the bugged Hellfiend spawns are fixed.[9]

The guild itself is Sue, Stacy, Amaya and Abbey, with Mike recruited in Local Area and Daisy offered a trial copy years later.[2][10] Sue runs things, from festival planning to disciplinary kicks.[8][6]

History

Stacy's screen reveals her SwordsVale character in Local Area.[11]
Mike's flower mage among the group's avatars.[12]

SwordsVale debuts in Local Area, where Mike bumps Stacy's mouse and wakes her computer, revealing her secret character.[11] Stacy is mortified and insists that nobody needs to know.[13] Mike learns that Sue, Amaya and Abbey all play too,[2] makes his flower mage, and is soon questing with the group every night.[4][5] The chapter ends with Mike venturing onto a public server alone and getting an eyeful of how the rest of the player base behaves. Sue is horrified: "You joined a PUBLIC server?! Oh my god."[12]

The secret takes its first hit in Guest of Honor. Stacy, Sue, Abbey and Amaya attend a convention in SwordsVale cosplay, in costumes that match their avatars right down to Yearrug's gold pauldrons. Paulo catches the group in full regalia.[14] Mike comes along without a costume, which Sue finds a bit disappointing,[15] and the group eventually heads off to a panel together.[16]

Abbey later points to shared membership as his reason for staying around the group after his breakup, telling Sue that, differences aside, "we DO share the same guild, Yearrug."[17]

Popularity Contest hands the guild an entire chapter. It opens with lunchtime planning for the Crimsonflame Festival, where Mike wants two scavenger hunts and a rehearsal run still needs scheduling.[8][9] The trouble is Stacy, who has decided her new popularity is worth more than her guildmates and disowns them in public.[18] Sue answers her in the computer lab with the game's own vocabulary: "Consider yourself /gkicked!"[6] Stacy folds by the end of the chapter. She still loves SwordsVale and doesn't want to lose the guild, and she is let back in.[6][19]

By a 2024 side chapter, the guild has a standing monthly meeting, and this month's lands in Mike's bedroom after he forgets about it.[20] Paulo has been ribbing Mike about the game for a while by this point.[21][20] He ends up hiding in Mike's closet for the entire meeting, grumbling about "these fucking nerds."[22] On the other side of the door, the agenda covers the raid schedule, the next expansion, PvP sign-ups and the event calendar.[7] Sue also offers Daisy a trial copy of the game, and Abbey volunteers to help her make a character.[10]

Trivia

  • Veronica has said she is "NOT an MMO player," and that SwordsVale suggestions are "an INSTANT rejection" when she picks ideas for commissioned comics, since the game "requires research and asking MMO-savvy friends" to draw properly.[23]
  • The game went unnamed for six years of publication: it is on screen from Local Area in 2014, but the first character to actually say "SwordsVale" out loud is Stacy in Popularity Contest in 2020.[11][6]
  • Oliver's commentary greeted Mike's flower mage debut with "~~~~magical girl maishul-chan~~~~".[4]
  • The alternate-continuity side story Grave Concern gives the flower mage a cameo of sorts, with Lucy laughing over Mike's shoulder at his monitor while he splutters "A FLOWER MAGE?!"[24]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Chapter 82: Local Area, page 10
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Chapter 82: Local Area, page 8
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 109: Popularity Contest, page 4
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Chapter 82: Local Area, page 11
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Chapter 82: Local Area, page 12
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Chapter 109: Popularity Contest, page 7
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 120.1: [Unknown Title, page 10]
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Chapter 109: Popularity Contest, page 1
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 109: Popularity Contest, page 3
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chapter 120.1: [Unknown Title, page 9]
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Chapter 82: Local Area, page 6
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Chapter 82: Local Area, page 13
  13. ↑ Chapter 82: Local Area, page 9
  14. ↑ Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 30
  15. ↑ Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 31
  16. ↑ Chapter 89: Guest of Honor, page 42
  17. ↑ Chapter 98: Moments Apart, page 14
  18. ↑ Chapter 109: Popularity Contest, page 2
  19. ↑ Chapter 109: Popularity Contest, page 14
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 120.1: [Unknown Title, page 3]
  21. ↑ Chapter 119: New Year's Resolution, page 6
  22. ↑ Chapter 120.1: [Unknown Title, page 11]
  23. ↑ . 2026-02-11 https://bittersweetcandybowl.tumblr.com/post/808211372836061184/. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  24. ↑
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