#fanart for mysta's terrarian quest

[whiteboardartstudios]

[Image ID: This is a tall drawing of Eth and Gendaen from the Mysta's Terrarian Quest Tumblr Webcomic. The top half of the image shows Eth sitting alone on the edge of the Fountain of Purity in the crimtained Green Citadel, his head in his hands and surrounded by glowing golden leaves. The atmosphere is dark and gloomy, and red light shines down from the top right of the image. The bottom half of the image is upside down, like a reflection of the top half. The bottom half shows Eth and Gendaen discussing one of Gendaen's blueprints on the edge of the same fountain, except the Green Citadel had not been crimtained yet. The atmosphere would be bright and happy, if not for the dark vignette effect and messy scribbles on the outer edges of the image. Gendaen's eyes are blacked out with a scribbled rectangle. The two halves of the image are separated by a glowing white line. End ID] fanart for @mtqcomic!

I've been trying to draw something for this comic for like forever but I keep messing up TwT

This took forever to make but I'm pretty happy with it! It's not perfect but I had a lot of fun making it so I'm gonna count that as a win :D (I think Tumblr might've ate the image quality a little though...)

Here's a version without the vignette and messy scribble effects because I also really like this one!

[Image ID: This is a tall drawing of Eth and Gendaen from the Mysta's Terrarian Quest Tumblr Webcomic. The top half of the image shows Eth sitting alone on the edge of the Fountain of Purity in the crimtained Green Citadel, his head in his hands and surrounded by glowing golden leaves. The atmosphere is dark and gloomy, and red light shines down from the top right of the image. The bottom half of the image is upside down, like a reflection of the top half. The bottom half shows Eth and Gendaen discussing one of Gendaen's blueprints on the edge of the same fountain, except the Green Citadel had not been crimtained yet. The atmosphere is bright and happy, and light yellow sunlight is shining from the bottom right of the image, where the top right would be if the image was flipped the right way up. The mountains in the background are blue and green and birds are flying in the distance. The two halves of the image are separated by a glowing white line. End ID]

Anyways here's an obligatory long post warning plus spoilers for the comic because I'm gonna go on a LOOOOOONG rant about this comic >:) *rubs hands evilly*

SO

COMIC

I've been wanting to talk about this comic for like a LONG time now but I've been saving it for when I finally posted a piece of fanart to go along with it. Now that I finished the art though, I'm free to yeet all of my brain thoughts onto a tumblr post!!!!!

Okay, first thing, LORE. LORE LORE LORE LORE LORE LORE LORE (sorry I like lore haha)

There's so many cool things going on here! You've got the whole thing with the Crimson obviously (plus the other evils but they haven't really appeared all that much yet aside from the Corruption), but then there's also the Order-Dryad thingy and the whole thing with prophecies and Destiny and of course the whole Gendaen mystery.

Speaking of Gendaen, he's a really interesting character! He hasn't appeared all that much, but he's one of the main sources of motivation for Eth! I have a few – well, more like one big convoluted and probably incorrect one – theories on what happened to him, but I wanna talk about everything else first :)

Mysta! I like how resourceful she is, and how she uses all sorts of weapons in combat! You never know when she's going pick up a random lampost or something and bonk someone over the head with it ^^ That said, I'm really curious about the whole thing about the "powerful soul". So far Mysta has done some pretty incredible things with soul magic, and it's logical to assume that they'll get more insane later on in the comic. I wonder if it will play an important part in finding Gendaen? Since she was able to sense the "undetectable watcher" who I assume is Zaïl on page 205, there is the (although rather unlikely) possibility that one day she'll get strong enough to sense wherever the heck Gendaen went.

Also, Zaïl is cool :D They seem to be sent by Yele to keep an eye on Mysta? Most likely to update her on Mysta's progress, probably. Anyways, they're cool, I love their color scheme (and design in general), and I can't wait to see them show up again later in the comic :)

Yele! She's really cool, and her beef with the Order is very interesting to read about! Also, page 173 was hilarious lol *rainbow sparkles and confetti rain down from the sky* More on her later in my conspiracy theory hehe

Eth. Eth. This guyTM. I saved him for last because WOAH there is a lot to say about Eth (plus this is where I start talking about my conspiracy theory lol). First, epic special agent war commander guide. Amazing, 100/100 idea, I love it :D Though the comment on him being "equal parts ally and enemy" is very intriguing... According to his character sheet, he's unnervingly loyal to the Order of Learning, which is a very interesting trait to single out, as it seems like it's a core part of his character. Soooo conspiracy theory time! Finally! (I've held onto this for so long oh my goodness it's probably incorrect but it's very fun to think about >:) )

So I think the Order of Learning might be evil.

*vine boom*

Okay okay okay I'm gonna explain I promise, but like, a super-powerful government organization that also controls knowledge? That's a little suspicious not gonna lie. Very Suspicious. *amogus music plays*

Maybe it's just because the Sumeru Akademiya just happened in Genshin Impact when I made this theory (yeah I like genshin please don't judge) but I feel like I don't really trust the Order? Like it's hard to explain. So you know how so far all the lore documents are canonically stuff from the Order's archive? Well one of the most important things I learned from social studies class is how to analyze sources for reliability (teachers are you proud of me) and right now I see a bunch of different sources from ONE perspective which may very well be biased, especially after what Yele told us about the "accidental" Dryad genocide which I think might not be completely accidental? Like, how convenient is it that you just "accidentally" committed genocide on the species meant to guide the Heroes of Terraria and then just conveniently replaced them with your own Guides? Like, they didn't even apologize for it either! Something fishy is going on here cmon. Maybe they want to be able to control how the future of Terraria turns out through the Heroes? IDK just something to think about I guess.

Going off of that, it may be possible that the Crimson isn't entirely evil evil. Like obviously it's bad to humans and eating away at the purity and whatnot but so far we've met several Crimson demons and only Malvox seem to be outright malicious; the other ones feel like they're just doing their jobs (especially the Imperator guy – give xem a break XD). Nelun Soma'o even had a whole conversation with us (AND answered our questions!!!! Eth take some notes please) before he officially challenged Mysta to a duel(?) If anything, they feel kind of like half mentor half rivals testing Mysta's strength than evil world-conquering warlords. Like yknow how in Pokemon you battle with people to grow stronger? Kind of like that. An antagonist but not necessarily a villain. They're just trying to exist, yknow? I do wonder what their perspective on all of this is... what's their half of the story?

Speaking of Nelun Soma'o, that lore bomb he dropped about Gendaen is really interesting (and also what started this convoluted conspiracy theory in the first place haha). So yknow how on page 229 he said that the Crimson didn't do anything to Gendaen? Well, so far he's been pretty friendly all things considered, and we don't really have any reason to distrust him, as he pointed out. Just the fact that he's leading the Crimson, and he said that "each of us fights to help someone", which is very very interesting for someone the Order deems to be evil evil. So that got me thinking, if the Crimson wasn't involved in Gendaen's disappearance, who else could? The Corruption is nearly nonexistent, the Hallow is still sealed away, the Gloome has long since been neutralized, and it's certainly not the Dryads since they're still recovering from "accidental" genocide. Oh wait, there's a super-powerful government organization that controls all knowledge who could conveniently kidnap Gendaen and just not tell Eth about it! Oh wow! I do wonder if this means we'll have to bust Malvox out of nonexistence prison though, since it seems to be the only one that might be able to tell us what happened to Gendaen since if the Order did it they're definitely not going to help us find him. Maybe Gendaen found out some terrible secret about the Order or he was starting to doubt them so they decided to take him out of the equation. Eth is not having a good time though, someone please go and give him a hug :(

Speaking of Eth, as I said earlier, his unnerving loyalty to the Order and his idolization of them seems to be a core part of his character. If the Order is indeed evil in this hypothetical scenario, it's possible for Eth to be a mislead protagonist like Zuko from ATLA. His heart is in the right place but he's helping the wrong people kinda thing. Additionally, this might mean that we'll eventually get a separation arc where Mysta does something not in accordance with the Order's will or something, and Eth's loyalty to the Order wins against his loyalty to Mysta and he becomes an antagonist. Yele could even step in as a mentor so that Mysta gets both Order guidance and traditional Dryad guidance! And then Eth somehow finds out what happened to Gendaen (Zaïl maybe? Subterfuge and cool spy stuff), maybe we get a dramatic emotional reveal scene where he is shocked and then starts to question everything the Order has ever told him, and then he either finds some way to contact Mysta or just rescues Gendaen by himself and rejoins Mysta, now fully against the Order. Plus we can get a cool reunion scene, both with Eth and Gendaen and Eth and Mysta! Yele would definitely distrust him at first, because what if this is a ruse from the Order and Eth is like double-agent-ing or something but then she sees Gendaen and goes "oh wait he's serious about this isn't he"

I'm probably wrong about all this (it's my first time making a theory out of anything plus this is super convoluted and there's a high chance that I'm connecting dots that doesn't exist), but it's still very fun to think about! I might've missed some stuff since I've been thinking about this for a very long time so I probably forgot to add some things, but either way I'm very excited to see where the comic goes! :D

Great comic, if you haven't read it go read it, it's very very good and I like it a lot :) *insert a bunch of sparkles here*