Vol. 3 January

2012 TTThhheee EEEllldddeeerrr

SSScccrrrooollllllsss VVV:::

SSSkkkyyyrrriiimmm

NNNeeewww AAAnnniiimmmeee

CCCooommmiiinnnggg

SSSoooooonnn!!!

FFFrrrooommm AAArrreeennnaaa

tttooo SSSkkkyyyrrriiimmm

[THE DRAGON’S

CLAW]

2 [THE DRAGON’S CLAW]

Contents

Literature Section

Book review: I Am

Legend by Richard

Matheson

Book Art

Game Section

The Elder Scrolls V:

Skyrim

Game Art

Film and Animation

Section

Anime News

The DC Team

Contact Us

Credits

New Anime From the Director

of Cowboy Bebop

Page 14

Dragonistic Artwork and Crafts

[FANTASY HEADQUARTERS] 3

We here at the DC are proud to bring you the January issue of

our web magazine. Everything you see has been put together by

a team of only a few people. The links you see are fully functional,

and we encourage you to visit the pages of the artists and sites

featured. We return after taking a month off in December, and

we hope to continue bringing you interesting articles and artwork

features. We are currently looking to expand our team,

particularly in the Film and Animation section. We are also always

looking for artwork to feature and sales to advertise. If you are

interested in contributing to the magazine or promoting your

work, see our Contact Us page.

-The Dragon’s Claw Team

The Legend of Zelda:

Skyward Sword

Page 14

From Arena to Skyrim

Page 10

4 [THE DRAGON’S CLAW]

Book Review

I Am Legend by Richard

Matheson Reviewed by AJ

With a film adaptation starring Will Smith, I

Am Legend gained quite a bit of

recognition a few years ago. I read the

book simply because I liked the movie.

While the story was heavily edited for the

movie, the basis remains the same – there’s

one man alive in a sea of things that want him dead.

The story follows Robert Neville, a man who is quite average. His

home is attacked by vampires every night, forcing him to constantly

repair the damage and forage for supplies by day. He is plagued by

the death of his family and the lack of human contact.

Eventually, Neville takes it upon himself to learn more about the

vampires and separate the ancient myths from the reality. Through

many painful struggles and against the odds, he stabilizes himself

and dedicates his time to research.

The story, though often describing grueling tasks in Neville’s

day-to-day life, is never boring. There is a steady flow that keeps the

plot moving forward at all times. Matheson’s writing style, particularly

because of some of his adjective choices, is great at conveying

everything from the peaks of insanity to the emptiness and loneliness

of death. At one point he describes the air as “molten” – definitely a

unique description of air, yet one that perfectly explains the heat,

humidity, and stagnation.

The story is quite sad in many places, and, at times, a bit

gruesome. It’s an interesting take on vampirism and a post-

apocalyptic society, and also a unique look at basic human

emotions, instincts, and needs. The plot is hardly comparable to the

movie, and if you like one, you won’t necessarily like the other. The

book, fortunately, is quite short, and I would recommend it to

anyone looking for a good story.

[FANTASY HEADQUARTERS] 5

Book Art Feature

↑A G A P E by Velvet-Moonlight

6 [THE DRAGON’S CLAW]

Featured Game

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim By AJ

The fifth installment of The Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim, certainly has a

lot of people talking about Nords and Khajiit. The game was at the

top of the UK’s Christmas charts, which have been dominated by

Activision and EA for the past eight years, and several of its voice

actors have been nominated for 2012 Academy Awards for their

work in the game. People who have never played any of its

predecessors are picking up a copy and starting their adventures on

Tamriel, hopefully without any arrow-to-the-knee incidents.

Graphically, Skyrim looks fantastic. The rugged mountains are

dotted with crumbling ruins, glowing caverns, spired towers, and

busy towns. Cities sprawl over the mountains in the distance, giving

you quite the view from high above. The complex scenery certainly

has its share of glitches, too, though. There are known freezing issues

on PS3, and there are many instances of clipping and stuck images.

Skyrim is quite a bit different in mechanics than the previous

games. The entire skill system was overhauled, cutting and adding

[FANTASY HEADQUARTERS] 7

skills, changing the way player’s level up, and adding perk trees. The

crime system has been updated from Oblivion, giving you different

bounties depending on the area you’re in. You may also have

assassins or hired thugs sent after you for stealing, making it much

more interesting, but the system’s not without drawbacks. Horses can

report you for crime, and that was probably taking it a bit too far.

The combat of Skyrim is quite customizable. Skyrim introduces

dual-wielding, allowing much more versatility. Different combinations

of equipment (or equipped magic) will create different attacks, and

the same spell on both hands can be combined for a massive

casting. Certain attacks take place in a tiny cutscene, which is nice-

looking, but seems to break the flow of combat a little.

Alchemy, enchanting, and spell-making are also available in

Skyrim. Alchemy suffered a downgrade, allowing three items

(instead of the four items Morrowind and Oblivion allowed) and

using a standard table instead of four pieces of leveled alchemy

equipment. As someone who hoards reagents and potions, I was a

little disappointed.

Smithing takes weapon and armor repair to a new level,

introducing ore mining, smelting, leather tanning, workbenches,

forges, and grinding wheels. It makes for a much more interesting

experience than simply repairing weapons and armor. In fact,

durability has been completely removed from Skyrim, allowing the

player to focus more on improving their equipment rather than

simply keeping up with its damage.

Marriage is another new feature, and it doesn’t discriminate

against race or gender…as long as you don’t want to marry a khajiit

or bosmer. Still waiting on a mod for that, Bethesda. Having a spouse

has several benefits, like extra money, food, and a bonus for

sleeping with your spouse.

Of course, the most important new features of Skyrim are the

dragons and the Shouting. Shouts use the dragon language to

create powerful effects, unlocked by finding the words on Word

Walls and collecting dragon souls from killing dragons. They’re like

super spells. Shouts play a significant part in the overall game, and a

pretty huge part in the main story. Dragons are found in several

places, perched on Word Walls or terrorizing guard towers. Weaker

8 [THE DRAGON’S CLAW]

ones can even attack randomly, raining fire or ice down on you from

the sky.

Overall, Skyrim is great to play. There are loads of NPCs and

objectives, lots of massive dungeons, and plenty of ways to

customize your character. In general, it seems that the game was

made with a bigger audience in mind. The menu is minimalistic and

clearly labeled, the skills seem a little more simplified, and the attack

cutscenes are all closer to other popular video games than they are

to previous Elder Scrolls games. It can be buggy in places, but it’s still

very much worth playing.

[FANTASY HEADQUARTERS] 9

Celestial Chainmail on Etsy

10% off with the code

2MYVALENTINES until

February 15th!

10 [THE DRAGON’S CLAW]

Featured Game

From Arena to Skyrim By AJ

In 1994, Bethesda released The Elder

Scrolls: Arena for MS-DOS. The open-

world game had cities, generated

wilderness with inns and other points

of interest, and dungeons. Designers

took inspiration from the Ultima series and built their world for a first-

person RPG game. Arena was difficult to get started with, a little

buggy, and hard on the computers of the time, but it was

considered a success, paving the way for other games of its type.

The second game in the

series, Daggerfall, was released

in 1996. The world of Daggerfall

is massive, with over 750,000

NPCs and over 15,000 places of

interest. Instead of a linear

storyline like Arena had,

Daggerfall has six different

endings with more complex

quests.

Then came The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in 2002, setting a new

standard. The game had very

customizable characters, detailed

stats, and a wide variety of

factions, items, and side quests.

The game characters and

landscape was created by hand,

making it far more detailed than its

predecessors. Very few things in

the game are leveled, meaning

the player can encounter (and try

to defeat) very powerful enemies very early on, and find very good

loot if they know where to look. The main quest is generally

[FANTASY HEADQUARTERS] 11

considered to be a little lacking, but that didn’t keep it from getting

a Game of the Year edition. Bethesda released The Elder Scrolls

Construction Kit, which allows users to modify the game. Thousands

of mods later, including many graphics mods to help it keep up with

the latest graphics, Morrowind still holds up today in playability.

Morrowind had two sequels, Tribunal

and Bloodmoon. Tribunal introduced

mercenaries that would follow the player

around, and Bloodmoon introduced

werewolves and several monsters that

later appeared in Skyrim.

In 2007, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

came, complete with horses and NPCs

that interacted with each other. The story

was better told than Morrowind’s,

combat was more complex, and the skills,

while mostly similar, had the added benefit of perks as they were

leveled up. NPCs sleep, eat, and read, generally following

schedules, but not to the point of being fully scripted. Alchemy

introduced poisons as well as potions with good effects. Monsters

level with the character, keeping the game around the same level

of difficulty and continuing to challenge the player.

Oblivion had a single sequel, The Shivering Isles, that added

plenty of new items, monsters, and new areas to explore within the

realms of Oblivion.

12 [THE DRAGON’S CLAW]

2011 brought us the latest game in the series, The Elder Scrolls V:

Skyrim. The skill system was reworked, the crime system became

more advanced, more activities opened up for the player, and

dragons will attack you at random. The graphics are generally

described as being somewhere in between “really good” and “the

best thing ever.” The landscape is incredibly detailed, and the map

is dotted with tons of diverse points of interest. The development

team focused on making each region, race, and even different

sectors of the same city seem unique.

The Elder Scrolls has also produced

several side games, including Battlespire,

Redguard, and even four mobile games.

The series has contributed heavily to the

RPG world, and it will continue to do so

for years to come.

[FANTASY HEADQUARTERS] 13

Game Art Feature

Halo by Vybeosa

14 [THE DRAGON’S CLAW]

Anime News

Sakamichi no Apollo By Tim

You know what animes

most of us would agree are

awesome? Cowboy Bebop

and Samurai Champloo. You

know what else is awesome?

Shinichiro Watanabe, director

of both Cowboy Bebop and

Samurai Champloo, is going

to be directing a new anime

called Sakamichi no Apollo.

It’s about three high school

students who come together

because of jazz music.

Now, I’m not normally a

fan of jazz, but the opening

theme to Cowboy Bebop,

“Tank,” and the rest of the

soundtrack is the only jazz

music I truly enjoy. Who composed that along with the rest of the

soundtrack, you’re wondering? Yoko Kanno. And guess what? Yoko

Kanno is the composer for Sakamichi no Apollo’s soundtrack. Yoko

Kanno has done many well known animes, such as Cowboy Bebop,

The Vision of Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex,

Wolf’s Rain, and many related movies. The soundtracks of all of those

I greatly enjoyed.

I think this is something to get excited about. We don’t know

when Sakamichi no Apollo will be coming out, but I know I’ll be

keeping an eye out for it.

[FANTASY HEADQUARTERS] 15

The Great & Powerful Trixie has finally arrived in your podunk town!

Prepare yourselves for the greatest show of your lives during Trixie’s

unprecedented Tour of Indefinite Length! (Trixie needs to lie low for

awhile after the debacle back in Ponyville.)

Let the show begin!

Trixie Tales on Tumblr

16 [THE DRAGON’S CLAW]

The DC Team

AJ

Audrey J. Ross spends much of

her time on various art projects.

She sells jewelry, crafts, and art

prints, and she has a book

published on Kindle. She plans on

going to college for visual arts to

further her artistic studies. When

not being artistic, she is often

cooking, listening to metal,

and/or browsing the Internet for

hours on end.

J

Jet (pronounce as: yet) is a Dutch

sixteen-year-old girl. She’s still in

school, but wants to study Biology

or Archeology after that, even

though languages are her

strongest subjects. She loves

reading, writing and drawing, but

can also often be found doing

some sport or another. She often

listens to music from Disney

movies.

Tim

Tim Geary is an avid gamer and

eater of spicy things. He’s often

spotted leaving his natural

habitat with a bag full of snacks

and a bottle of hot sauce. He

hopes to attend college to

pursue interests on wildlife biology

and psychology. He is currently

researching metaphysical and

paranormal phenomena and

beliefs from all over the world.

Jakku

Jakku Diran Ebansu is a

pseudonym. He's a 17 year old

amateur artist and professionally-

serious gamer. He represents

Britain on the DC team by

complaining about the weather a

lot. He loves high-tech scifi and

exaggerated science, like in

Eureka, for example. He believes

he reads far too much scifi and

fantasy. The scifi diet starts

tomorrow. Supposedly.

[FANTASY HEADQUARTERS] 17

The DC on the Web

Facebook Twitter Blogger DeviantART

THE DRAGON’S CLAW WEBSITE

Submit Artwork

Get in touch through any of the above sites or email AJ directly if

you’re interested in having your art featured in our magazine!

What We’re Looking For

We accept fan art and original works that incorporate fantasy,

science fiction, or gaming. No nudity or extreme violence, please.

More info can be found in our DeviantART group.

Advertising

Contact AJ if you would like to place an advertisement in our

magazine. You can message her on any of the above places or

email her directly.

Join the Team

Think you can do what we do here? We’re looking for team mates!

Fill out our application if interested.

Email AJ at eternal_night11@yahoo.com

18 [THE DRAGON’S CLAW]

Credits

Cover image and all Skyrim screenshots by AJ from Skyrim; Arena,

Daggerfall, Morrowind, Bloodmoon, Oblivion, and Battlespire images

from The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages and © Bethesda

http://www.bethsoft.com/

http://uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page

I Am Legend cover © Orb Books

http://us.macmillan.com/orb.aspx

Book Art Artist

http://velvet-moonlight.deviantart.com/

Game Art Artist

http://vybeosa.deviantart.com/

Cowboy Bebop image ©Tokyopop

http://tokyopop.de/

Advertisements

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dragonistic

http://www.etsy.com/shop/celestialchainmail

http://trixie-tales.tumblr.com/

This entire webzine was made in Microsoft Word 2007

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Word-2007-Old-

Version/dp/B000HCZ8GW

[FANTASY HEADQUARTERS] 19