⭐ The Starless Town

• The Starless Town Gallery: Almost every drawings I've drawn/doodled for this storyline!
• The Starless Town Story: Main Story Summary, Story Detail infodumping, and various story snippets are here!

About

A storyline concept revolving around a resurrected wizard—Cairn—who wanted to figure out the story behind their murder, and a ghost who revived Cairn—Nydia—who also sought revenge for her murder years ago.

As Cairn and Nydia learned the stories behind their deaths together, they eventually get roped into strings of events that were transpired by Nero— the magic researcher, and the one who orchestrated their deaths.

Together, they team up as two experienced wizards possessing the same body, and seek to set things right together.

Contents

• Setting
• Characters
• Misc.

Setting

The main events happen within the town in Twilight Island and the nearby unnamed islands, which are located within the Zenith Ocean that utilizes its own magic system. Set within the Lands of Equinox world, where all magic (despite the systems utilized) is originated from the stars' magic essences.

Characters

• Cairn: The protagonist who's trying to figure out the whole story behind their murder. A magic teacher.
• Nydia: The deuteragonist who brought Cairn back to life, and resided in Cairn's body so she can continue her quest of revenge. Past and occupation remains disclosed for now.
• Nero: The one who murdered Nydia, and the one who made Velin kill Cairn. A magic researcher and a part of the Twilight's Wizard Council.
• Velin: Cairn's young apprentice, who's made to murder Cairn for a greater purpose. A 15-year-old magic prodigy.
• Xiphos: Another young wizard prodigy, colleagues with Velin, and Nero's adoptive daughter.
• Dory: Another young wizard prodigy, colleagues with Velin, and the cousin of Cairn's and Nero's mutual friend.
• Rune: Cairn's and Nero's old friend who died in an incident involving the three of them, and Dory's aunt. They were once a famed explorer.

Misc.

• The very first version of the story idea was created sometime around 2023 August.
• At its very first concept, this was supposed to be a text-based interactive game where Cairn focuses more on helping people out with their problems, using their magic. But since I really, really lack experience in developing game mechanics that'll be needed for this project's first concept + I'm way more passionate about writing a story rather than making game mechanics + I've been wanting to develop a mystery game with more focus on the story instead, I've changed it into a mystery game idea instead.
  • Then I eventually realized I'm much more comfortable releasing shorter, snappier interactive stories as of now, plus university life still keeps throwing stuff at me, so I've decided to turn this into a storyline that I'll be creating/writing/doodling little things for. Big projects can get very daunting to me, really. I've burnt myself out in the past with longer projects before, so this would be one way to keep me interested in the story, while still lifting off the pressure from me.
  • So yeah, as unrefined and messy this may be, I hope you enjoy the two wizards story!
• If you want to see stuff related to this project but in scattered Tumblr posts format, you can find posts tagged for The Starless Town in these tumblr tags:
  • This one is for the older version of the Starless Town!, where it was planned to be made into a readily-readable story.
  • This one is for the Starless Town storyline.

character tidbits

• I made Cairn's gender vague/flexible at first during the project's first concept, since I intend to let the audience decide on their gender. But as time went on, I can't see Cairn identifying as either a woman or a man, but they wouldn't really care if people gendered them. They're now agender to me.
  • If someone were to ask them if they're a woman or a man, they'll either ignore the question or answer with something that implies their gender is just "wizard".
• Nydia went from "local ghost who brought Cairn back to life and hangs out in house while Cairn helps people out + she gets to live a peaceful? domestic life with them" to "local ghost who brings Cairn back to life because she wants to screw over the person who killed her". The character development, in a sense?
  • But she remains the careful and selfish character in contrast to Cairn, though. Cairn may get selfless at times to the point of self-sabotaging, and they could use someone to tell them to live for themself for once.
• I assign every characters with a signature color, so I can quickly make distinctions between everyone in case I got lazy to draw someone.
  • the hair color highlights are there for better character identification + i thought it'd make for a cool aesthetic. sometimes i don't color the hair highlights though
  • cairn is yellow, nydia is teal/blue, velin is purple, nero is red.

not that important stuff / jokey stuff

• This was jokingly named "light wizard money gang". A reference to how Cairn specializes in Light magic.
• A friend pointed out that Cairn reminds her of Harry Potter, and I—a person who has never read, watched HP, or had any plans getting into that—find it pretty funny.
• Welcome to the Starless Town! We have:
  • morally ambiguous cast!
  • unethical uses of magic!
  • messy platonic dynamics!
  • a meet-cute situation! (wizard who got murdered and wizard who brought the other back to life)
  • messy breakup! (hint: whatever the hell went and will eventually go down with cairn and nero)
• If you take the story not seriously enough... Then yeah, Nero murdered Cairn because he couldn't handle another gnc wizard. Too gender. Trust 💯
  • /j

(the two gods in question are illustro-nathereth)