purity-town

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Andrew's got a lot of complicated feelings about what's going on that are suddenly a lot harder to repress/ignore, but he's trying to do the right thing even when in the past he wasn't nearly so accepting of his situation.

He's not intentionally making a dig at Alalia for her disappearance, nor is she trying to be callous; it's just a delicate subject and they approach it in different ways.

#purity town #terraria #purity town updates #latest #guide terraria #dryad terraria #chap 08

[purity-town]

Been another very tiring week so I won't be able to get the next update out today -- in the meantime, I'll toss some ask responses under the cut! Ended up getting pretty into the weeds with these ones, haha.

Edit: Someone sent in an ask less than a minute after I posted, so I snuck it in at the end.

Alalia doesn't know the exact circumstances that led to the burn scars (i.e. the doll), but she can extrapolate that it's related in some way to him being the Wall of Flesh. She doesn't know every minutiae of how his whole deal works (her comment of "I didn't know what would become of you!" was originally written in the script as something along the lines of "And you made it to adulthood too -- truth be told, I didn't know what would happen to you!". Basically saying that she didn't know if he'd even grow up, or if he'd go the other route and end up an old man with an unnaturally prolonged life, or be continually reborn young, and so on. In reality, he just ended up not aging after reaching maturity).

Andrew often doesn't bother concealing his scars when he's alone (ex. here and here) for casual comfort, and while he doesn't know Alalia on a personal level he knows what she is and implicitly trusts her because of that. She's older, a direct creation of Terraria, and a part of the natural world. If she comments on it it becomes a segue for him to talk to her about the circumstances that led to making the doll, and if she doesn't, then he can assume she either doesn't care or made a guess but most importantly isn't judging him about it.

So to explain my thoughts on this I first want to talk about the Wall of Flesh's design. The Wall of Flesh visually serves as a very neat intermediary between pre-hardmode and hardmode (specifically Moon Lord):

You've got the obvious design parallels of the Eye of Cthulhu's first and second phase // The Wall of Flesh's two eyes shooting lasers and mouth design // The Twins and their attacks // The Moon Lord and the True Eye of Cthulhu's beam attacks.

Then there's the leeches spawned by the Wall of Flesh paralleling the Moon Leech Clot: the Wall of Flesh's leeches are described as "a worm-like parasite spit forth from the Wall of Flesh, filled with the lifeblood of its host. This blood has healing properties." This contrasts with when (what is apparently the Moon Lord's tongue according to the wiki, haha, but is in my opinion visually similar to the WoF leeches) grabs the player during its fight and produces a Moon Leech Clot, which heals the Moon Lord instead.

And if you're running a Corruption world, you can at least make an argument connecting the Eater of Worlds both to the leeches and the Hungry (at least in theme), then tying in the Destroyer as well, though the official bestiary lore is kind of a mess in this regard (the Destroyer is meant to be Cthulhu's...spine? And the Eater of Worlds is just a thing? It's confusing, so I've been taking some creative liberties in the comic to tie it together nicely).

Then if you're on a Crimson world, the whole "flesh" theme of the WoF serves as a nice in-between for the Brain of Cthulhu and Moon Lord's actual design.

This is a lot of words to explain that within the context of Purity Town, the "reason" for many of these design parallels is due to how it all links back to Cthulhu/Moon Lord.

Ripped-off pieces of the Moon Lord, or beings that arose from the chaos it wrought --> The Eye of Cthulhu, the Eater of Worlds

The ancient magics and chaos and light and dark all locked away until the world has healed enough to release them again (or the Moon Lord is near enough return that their power is necessary to kill it once and for all) --> The Wall of Flesh

Artificial constructions designed from the aforementioned parts of Cthulhu and monsters made from its power --> The Mechanical Bosses

The Moon Lord itself.

Malik's comment about Andrew being the Moon Lord's son, as much as he's clowned on immediately after about it, isn't entirely out there. Malik has a good sense for monsters and magic and curses (as do other characters like the Witch Doctor), and can put together that Andrew gives him the same vibes as a lot of the eldritch monsters out there. He just doesn't know that it's due to Andrew being the sort of human-avatar-thing for what is effectively the barrier/guardian holding back a lot of that power.

(On the other side of things: Andrew doesn't know who his actual, biological father is. He had a father figure of sorts in the form of his mentor, James, and was content with that. At the end of the day, everyone involved except for him has been dead for around four centuries at this point, so he's never going to get an answer and doesn't really care. And if he did have, say, a half-sibling out there or something on his dad's side: once again, it's been four-hundred years, so any living "relatives" will be very, very far removed from his family and culture. Technically this means he can't personally dispute the idea that he's not the son of Moon Lord or whatever, but as far as he knows his dad was a human, and he and his brother share the same dad.)

All that out of the way: your idea of the Guide's father being related to the cult is super cool!! Andrew does still have some ties to the Lunatic Cult in Purity Town, though it's less the Cult itself and more just the Cultist. The idea of his father being a manifest of Cthulhu and kickstarting the Cult and all the ideas that could spiral off of that- I really like the concept!

Yeah of course!! My tagging system on my main blog is non-existent (i.e. I really ought to actually start tagging things), but I reblog fanart there!

Of course if you want to just draw the characters for fun and not share you're not obligated to, but I'd love to see it if you choose to share!

#purity town #not an update #pt asks #I didn't mean for this to be so late but I ended up adding a lot of details

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

In a way, Andrew's happy to see Alalia -- she's the only person from his childhood he could ever see again so many years later, and is in a unique position to give him the answers and advice he can't really get anywhere else. It's everything else associated with her return that's throwing him off.

#purity town #terraria #purity town updates #latest #guide terraria #dryad terraria #chap 08 #AUGHGHH #Page is done; I will now go outside and touch grass

[purity-town]

Today's update will be late -- been an exhausting week and I had to stop working and head to bed earlier than usual.

#not an update #Putting on the new pannenkoek 4 hour sm64 video for this one

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Thank you all for the myriad of boops this past Monday, haha. I did my best to boop back in kind!

#purity town #terraria #purity town updates #guide terraria #dryad terraria #chap 08 #I found out about evil boops and super boops and went out swinging #I know I got past the 1k boops given mark #(FYI: Purity Town is a sideblog so they all came from my main @Ariibees)

[purity-town]

No update today as I'm still working on the script for this chapter and have some IRL obligations this weekend. In the meantime, quick ask response below the cut!

I've had a couple of thoughts on this subject but nothing super concrete, so here you go! Also -- I'm always excited to talk about worldbuilding, so no need to apologize!

Back when Andrew was a child and the ancient spirits were newly-locked-away, precautions for blood moons (and other dangerous events) were a lot more intense. Main reason being that people still remembered the preceeding years where such fortifications were absolutely necessary, and since the memories were still fresh and the infrastructure/protocol still in place, it still got used. Living out on the edge of the plains, they would likely have had plans in place to get underground quickly and then sweep the town the next morning for any remaining monsters.

Chris, in comparison, is from a modern coastal town. The main precautionary system there is a bell system that alerts people when a blood moon begins rising to give them even a small amount of notice to prepare, and fishing is strictly banned. His hometown also has walls around the main land-facing portion with a local guard stationed along them, helping keep out monsters from entering on foot. This helps ensure people can get inside, block their doors, and safely hunker down for the night. All of this is organized by the local Guide and helps to keep folks safe.

Purity Town, and the region the town (and other settlements) is in, has fewer precautions in place due to the relatively low population. Chris' hometown can get away with heavy infrastructure because it has the population to support it, and Andrew's hometown did it out of fear/necessity. In Purity Town's region, people like Malik might run around near the start of a blood moon to make sure everyone is able to get inside safely, cover their windows, and so on. It's also generally accepted that people who go out late at night should have a plan for what to do if a blood moon suddenly begins, because the region is just too remote to go out looking for them.

As for frequency, I'm inclined to say somewhere between monthly and every few months -- quite irregular, but happening often enough that it's not uncommon.

#not an update #pt asks

[purity-town]

Ask responses are typed up & under the cut!

I'm happy I was able to work in some more of the NPCs even if it was just into the background, so I'm glad you're liking seeing them. And yes! I don't have specific measurements on anyone's heights beyond a vague “X is taller than Y,” but she's the tallest member of the cast, all divinity and ancient magics and humanoid-but-not-human. And thanks for reading; I'm glad you're excited for the next chapter!

Andrew much prefers to deflect over lying outright, but if pressed claims to be 26 with a summer birthday (putting him as “29” in the comic now as he's lived in town for 3 years). Mid-twenties roughly aligns with his physical age, as he slowed and eventually stopped aging around that point, so people don't have any obvious reason not to believe it.

In the past, Andrew usually just moved around every long while, assuming things were otherwise peaceful. The jump from “this guy is weird and aging gracefully” to “this is an immortal being inextricably tied to this world and its fate” is quite large, especially since Andrew mostly kept to himself.

Living in Purity Town is a first in many ways for him, particularly in that he's serving an actual purpose to the town and has to both interact with people and stick around for the foreseeable future. Under normal circumstances he would absolutely gracefully arrange his leave, but then once you throw the hero being present into the mix things just get messy.

Honestly, with enough time he probably would come clean to the townsfolk. If he explained it to Chris delicately enough initially, Chris (and Alalia!) would eventually back him up and that'd likely do a lot to sway folks. Between their input and him having just…been around town long enough to show that he’s not a bad person and actually form some relationships, I think it would go okay.

Thank you!!! I'm glad you're liking the comic so much!

Honestly, I have no idea! It's probably a combination of factors in my art style (like my tendency to use solid/clean lines and keep painted portions to the background) playing nice with however Tumblr crunches images. I know that Webtoons struggles a good bit more with my pages due to color/resolution limitations, but Tumblr’s always been pretty good with it. That's all just a rough guess though; I couldn't find your art on your blog to examine so I'm just throwing out ideas!

Possibly relevant, each page is 2320x3587 pixels (350 dpi) after I trim the edges and export it as a .png. Downloading pages from Tumblr saves them as a 1987x3072 (72 dpi) jpeg, but preserves the fine details pretty well. So that’s what we’re working with here!

(Interestingly, after some testing I found that Reddit preserves the higher resolution of pages, but crunches their colors around areas of shading, while Tumblr smoothly fuzzes them when it downscales.)

I'm happy to see more folks caught what I was going for there! I didn't draw much of her shimmered design since she's mostly covered and under some heavy effects, but it was cool to work with. Here's a snippet of her shimmered design in that panel without the effects, since I had it on hand already from a comment a while back.

Thank you!! It feels crazy to me that it's been going on so long, but I'm really happy to have continued with the comic for so long. I'm also happy to be done with college, haha -- I’m liking my new job a lot more than the school grind!

Thank you so much for this!! It’s super touching that you’ve stuck around so long -- I definitely recognize the folks I’ve seen popping up in my notifications over the years, and I’m really glad that people are liking being along for the ride. I’ve learned so much through working on this comic and I’m really really happy that other people are enjoying it too, because I love these characters and this world and this game so so much.

I’m not articulating this well but- thank you for this! I hope that whoever you are, you’re doing well, too :)

Go right ahead! Though this serves as a reminder to myself to make sure that all of the pages on the various sites are all updated, since I usually go back through after a chapter is done to correct little errors, haha.

I totally understand if you want to remain anonymous, but if you need files or anything give a shout here or on Discord (@ariibees)! Purity Town is somewhat formatted for print by virtue of having pages instead of vertical-scrolling but I know that the chapters are kinda short and pages would probably need to be re-formatted around the edges to fit book binding.

All that said -- if you end up going through with it it'd be insanely cool to see how it turns out, if you're comfortable with sharing!

Chapter titles are done in Albertus Medium (with the exception of the "Purity Town" text and character intro bubbles, which is in the Terraria font Andy Bold). Speech bubbles use Segoe Print. There's not really any concrete reasoning behind the fonts I picked (beyond the obvious choice to use the Terraria font), I just chose ones that looked good enough, haha.

#pt asks #purity town #not an update

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

It's worm time!

#purity town #purity town updates #terraria #chap 08 #(fyi: I haven't forgotten about asks I just really struggle to type out coherent responses) #(I'm hoping to queue them up for later today to space them out with the page)

[purity-town]

No update today -- this next chapter's cover is in a different style than what I normally do and is quite complex because of it. I also need to finish actually writing the script for this chapter, haha.

It's also been quite a while since I last answered asks, so I'll see about getting those posted soon!

#In the meantime...off to bed #(To be clear. I schedule these posts before I go to bed the night before.) #not an update

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

And that's it for chapter 7! The Dryad is in town and she's getting along with the current folk living there, more or less.

#purity town #purity town updates #terraria #chap 07 #guide terraria #dryad terraria #arms dealer terraria #nurse terraria #merchant terraria #stylist terraria

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Dryads are interpreters of Terraria's will, and as such are uniquely in tune with the world. Alalia was summoned to this region once Chris proved himself by defeating the Eye -- that doesn't mean she was given a full run down on the intricacies of the whole "Lunatic Cult" thing.

#purity town #terraria #purity town updates #guide terraria #dryad terraria #arms dealer terraria #chap 07 #In the past there would have been enough Dryads that each one could watch over the settlements nearby and sense the evil and magic #And if more came they could share that information #But nowadays all she has are the Guide(s) #It's just not the same

[purity-town]

No update today -- I wasn't planning on skipping two weeks in a row, but I didn't get home from my trip until Saturday evening and had to head out Sunday morning for something else, so I haven't had any time to sit down and draw.

#not an update #I'll also be delaying the webtoon mirror #Either skipping this month or posting in 2 weeks when the chapter is done #I really want to wrap this chapter up! #I just have not had the literal time at my desk to do so

[purity-town]

No update this week as I'll be traveling for work so my schedule is a bit weird right now. Should be back next week with a new page -- only two left in this chapter!

#not an update

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Alalia knows how immortal dryads work, and how mortal humans work. An immortal human? Nope. Andrew seems to be doing fine for himself though, so, that's good!

(Andrew would greatly appreciate not having this conversation right now, and immediately deflects, as usual.)

#purity town #terraria #purity town updates #guide terraria #dryad terraria #chap 07

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Dryads don't have the perfect recollection that Guides do, but Alalia didn't forget about Andrew entirely, even if they haven't seen each other in a long while -- after all, his life is inextricably linked to the current state of their world. It'd be difficult to forget about that.

#purity town #purity town updates #terraria #guide terraria #dryad terraria #chap 07 #Little late to the update with this one #I was planning on finishing the page this morning and waffled around for too long

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Andrew knew, or at least assumed, that Alalia was still alive all these years later -- she is a Dryad, after all. And it makes sense in a vacuum that she would make an appearance once a Terraria-chosen hero started making headway fighting monsters. But it's been a really long time, to the point where he had begun to discount ever meeting her again. So to suddenly see her in town is quite a lot to process!

#purity town #purity town updates #terraria #guide terraria #chap 07 #dryad terraria

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Coming back into town to see everyone gathered late at night is concerning enough. Chris casually brushing aside the fact that he found the Aether biome is not alleviating that feeling.

#purity town #purity town updates #terraria #chap 07 #guide terraria #Stylist cameo! And merchant but just barely #After the Gun Incident Chris has already garnered enough of a reputation for Getting Into Things #This does not make Andrew any less worried