does aphelion have a full world map? there’s some glimpses of the globe in one panel, and it has quite a few implications for what the earth’s like, so i also wanted to ask whats up with the planet’s geology?

@sukicool

I haven't made an official world map because I may add or remove things based on what I think would be coolest at the time (it's very helpful to not paint myself into a corner if I change the plot). There are some major things you can see in the bits I've shown though! Mostly the sea level is much lower. The black aurora of Asher 1 is carbon nanofoam, and it took most of that from the atmosphere, causing a global cooling effect that massively expanded the ice caps. Most C3 plants are also extinct because there isn't enough CO2 for them (If I screwed up a species and I know I did, let's say it's a genetically engineered C4 experiment). There's also a lot of craters from attempting to kill ashers or the ashers themselves, and I think some megaengineering projects (big bridges mostly).

Earth's geology is largely unchanged, however it does not seem to pose a barrier to whatever is making the ashers and sometimes they blast their way out of the earth's crust.

"Why's the bounty so high?"

That's not important.

"If you want me to do this, I'm going to need more information."

... She stole something.

"What the hell did she steal to get that kind of bounty?"

Something priceless.

Went a little too far with practicing certain angles so here you go.

Thinking about Ganondorf for Bad Moon. He's such a weird character because some parts of him are so fascinating, and then other parts are just... why are you like this Nintendo.

I'm not interested in making him secretly good or whatever. But I like when he's got more going on than just being evil. To that end, I think his true flaw is that he's a king. And royalty can't be good, only benign at best. This applies to all royalty. He sees what the royalty of Hyrule has done and understands its horrors, but he doesn't want to end the hierarchy. He wants him and his followers to be in charge instead, they'll be better right? A little collateral damage is acceptable isn't it? Just a little, it will all be worth it when it's over. That tree and its diseased children needed to be culled anyways.

Anyways, holy shit let's talk about Twilight Princess Ganondorf. Can you imagine being executed in a holy temple of your people that has been converted into a symbol of your enemy's power after some kid tattles on you? You didn't even get to finish anything other than killing that big tree. And then the goddesses themselves seem to hear your rage and Din blesses you for it...

Except you fail anyways. And you die on your feet realizing that you've been betrayed by another pathetic man that wanted to be king of everything and was told he couldn't be.

Downfall Ganondorf... well that turns out quite differently. And probably not in the way most people think it did. I'm really proud of how fucked up that gets in Bad Moon.

Die on your feet

Die on your feet

Alright, time for rambling (I love to ramble, can't you tell?).

Bad Moon Gorons are based on various desert lizards, such as horned lizards and armadillo lizards. As far as diets go they're closer to marine iguanas, scraping chemolithotrophic bacteria off of volcanic springs, and supplementing with other extremophile organisms. Their teeth are continuously growing and are worn down by a combination of eating, tooth grinding, or actively grinding them down with harder rocks.

Gorons are distantly related to Lizal-folk, but at some point in the distant past they spurned their dragon gods and switched to a vegetarian diet. The Gorons are largely laid back, but they despise dragons like nothing else.

While Gorons are extremely strong and able to move quickly by rolling up in a ball much like an armadillo lizard, they have major weaknesses that cause them problems outside of their volcanic home. Their dependence on a limited food source makes traveling a logistics problem, they do poorly in the cold (some Goron heroes are notable for having rudimentary fire magic that keeps them warmer), they are too heavy to swim, and they have never been able to harness magic on a large scale in the same way Zora and Hylians have. Their strength and blacksmithing skills make them valuable allies, and nobody wants them as enemies.

Goron Link

Mostly inspired by horned lizards. I just love lizards in general, they're great.

You simply can't go wrong with Bunny :3

Doing one of those "themes in worldbuilding" bingo cards.

Also, I'm glad a lot of people are following me for Zelda stuffs! But I do want to warn you that awful mil-spec sci-fi body horror is what I keep coming back to, and am in fact "secretly" finishing a comic on. And I'll probably go back to that some day 100%. So. Y'know. Don't be surprised if that happens.

Doing one of those "themes in worldbuilding" bingo cards.

Also, I'm glad a lot of people are following me for Zelda stuffs! But I do want to warn you that awful mil-spec sci-fi body horror is what I keep coming back to, and am in fact "secretly" finishing a comic on. And I'll probably go back to that some day 100%. So. Y'know. Don't be surprised if that happens.

Goron Link

Mostly inspired by horned lizards. I just love lizards in general, they're great.

Characters that can hear a flea fart from 30 meters away.

World's most ridiculous crossover courtesy of:

Timie from @scopophobia-polaris and

MOUS from @charseraph

YESSSS! Let the freaks be friends!!!

@turbofanatic

Hyrule's resting bitch face champion for three decades and counting.

@scopophobia-polaris asked for some more details on this silly guy and I needed to post the redesign of his scars so I'm gonna ramble!

General "rules" I am using for the Bad Moon AU:

-You cannot change the future. If you saw the future, it happens. Maybe not to you, but it happens. Time travel either involves splitting timelines, temporal loops (see the song of storms), or two extremely similar timelines that collapse together (a dumb child goes to the past to plant beans). What does this mean for Termina? OH GOD OH GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TINY WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

-If you turn into something, you will never entirely turn back.

-Two opposing wishes on the Tri Force will really fuck things up. Also, it happened. Bad Moon is about dealing with the fallout.

Tiny has a series of magic scars from his various transformations. Most of them are benign or beneficial due to Farore's blessing and the Fierce Deity's Mask's intervention, but not all. Believe it or not, this is me nerfing him, because I'm getting rid of all the Terminian masks except for the FD's mask, which gets broken.

-From the Deku mask he has ivy vines. Most are centered along his spine. He uses them to hold stuff. If he sleeps in fertile soil they will grow into the ground and he leaves weird plants that are sort of beholden to him all over the place. Gross. Anyways, remember how the Hero's Shade is covered in ivy? The "missing" eye is also more or less a Deku scrub's pitlike eye now, granting him low-light but otherwise mediocre vision in that eye.

-From the Goron mask he is disturbingly strong now. Most of Farore's blessed are pretty strong to begin with and now he's got Darmani's strength on top of that. His teeth are continuously growing and need to be worn down by grinding them on each other (because he's missing a tooth from that facial scar those teeth are maloccluded and grow all weird). It's definitely inspired by wrathful deity artwork though. He's also extremely resistant to heat. He got the white hair and scales on his shoulders/knees/elbows from Darmani too. Guess what part of his magic scarring the Hero of Twilight inherits!

-From the Zora mask he has some extremely strong scales on his forearms that can be used to defend himself. He can also make nasty electrical shocks, is very resistant to electrocution, is an extremely good swimmer (nowhere near as good as Mikau though), and can hold his breath for twenty minutes easily. His toes are webbed too.

-From the Giant's mask his height just kinda varies. His "true" height is over seven feet tall but it can vary between about 6"/15cm in either direction. He has some control over this but it's more related to his sense of security. He's at his smallest when he's the most insecure but like, that's still 6'10"/208 cm so he's still way too big. Lucky for him the magic also affects his clothes/armor but it takes some time so he just makes/buys things on the larger end and waits for them to shrink to his current size. The effect goes away when removed from his body. Is this so I don't have to be consistent? Yes.

-He turns into a puppy in the War of Eras when he's ten and Zant uses the twilight as a weapon. Specifically an epicyon puppy! A 100lb/45kg puppy! Medli will ride him! I just want to draw the biggest puppy in the world. He can still turn into the big ancient wolf, and thankfully it doesn't do too much to him (unlike Twilink) but his jaw attaches waaay further back than it ought to and he can open his mouth to a scary degree. It's probably influencing those big fangs too. Combined with the Goron bite strength and... yeah.

I'll probably change things because I'm just playing around with him, so don't be surprised when I do!

I finally (got help) slapping Wordpress into shape and Runaway to the Stars is now releasing as a public webcomic! Thank you so much for your support over the years, and sticking with me while I'm slowly chewing my way through this book. I'm very excited to share this story! It'll be updating every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday thanks to the massive Patreon backlog. Patreon will continue to update as I finish pages, which happens on a sporadic non-schedule.

If you experience bugs with the site report them to me. Some things may occasionally break, as coding problems tend to be a very "whack-a-mole" affair; and I'm still getting used to the interface.

Ahhhh! I love them so much! What a wonderful design!

Inspired by @turbofanatic and @deadwooddross

I spent too much time trying to think of spec-bio for the Zora, because they just don't make any sense. Their life cycle looks like amphibians (soft egg with tadpole bodies to land-dwelling adult with legs), except they can live in sea water. In the downfall timeline they look more like alligators/swamp thing monsters and breathe fire. In the adult timeline they're related to birds (I spent a while trying to make them penguins but I wasn't happy with the result). In both the child timeline and BotW/TotK, they have aspects of all sorts of water creatures, including mammals!

Considering that they're associated with a fair amount of magic and venerate Nayru (her symbol shows up with them a lot and ohhhh we're gonna need to unpack the Hylia stature in their domain in BotW/TotK at some point) let's just say that at some point they were transformed by magic to survive in a inhospitable environment (hmmm, like the Twili...) and had their magic modified to refer to birds in the adult timeline (perhaps this was just the fresh water Zora, and there's a thriving salt water civilization of ocean Zora we never see).

Anyways, I love spec bio but I also love combining a bunch of different animals with people, and also making bad puns.

I figure guitarfish worked for Mikau because lol, pun. But also they have pretty impressive scales/denticles on their heads, and Mikau needs some strong scales to guard with his hands/fin like he does. I considered electric rays but they don't have anything like Mikau's shape. But at least they're also flattened cartilaginous fish. So maybe he's related to one. I dunno. Guitarfish hehehe.

Zora Link is a goblin shark because they both have cute noses. Mikau looked similar but he was a... guitarfish.

Zora Link is a goblin shark because they both have cute noses. Mikau looked similar but he was a... guitarfish.

That's me!!! I was planning on connecting the accounts publicly once I had it completed but you beat me!

So yeah, I'm trying to write again. This has been fun practice!

Notes on the artwork:

-I realized that a lorica segmentata worked really well for the armor, with some Japanese armor influences on the arm guard, so I went with that instead of my prior design. It will change in the FD's future though.

-The story under the picture is mostly a hypothetical that could happen. It's a war, people are greedy, and wow it's easy to take advantage of a poorly socialized kid cosplaying as a warrior god.

-The sword currently looks like a big metal stick. When active it vibrates like a plucked string and looks closer to the shape we know and love from the game.

-I fucking love Ravio so much you guys.

"The worst part, Mr. Tiny Hero, is that they thought I wouldn't notice. Me! They wanted to turn a profit on this war and expected I wouldn't figure it out! They also didn't invite me! I've never been so insulted in my life!" Ravio hurried down the path, dragging the confused otherworldly being behind him.

"But they get one kid dressed up like some kind of death god and start thinking they can capture part of Calatia under the pretense of securing the border or some bullshit. Like you're just a tool for them! Well you're not, especially if I have anything to say about it. And I want to fuck them over too. Just a little. A smidgen." Ravio made a quick turn to the left, toward the docks.

"Don't worry, I've bribed the guards and Mr. Pirate Hero's got the boat ready. We're getting you out of here. If there's one thing I'm good at it's running away." The packed dirt turned to wooden planks under their feet, clacking under Ravio's boots and groaning under the former hero's.

"Also in retrospect I should have given you a better nickname Mr. Tiny Hero. My bad."

"The worst part, Mr. Tiny Hero, is that they thought I wouldn't notice. Me! They wanted to turn a profit on this war and expected I wouldn't figure it out! They also didn't invite me! I've never been so insulted in my life!" Ravio hurried down the path, dragging the confused otherworldly being behind him.

"But they get one kid dressed up like some kind of death god and start thinking they can capture part of Calatia under the pretense of securing the border or some bullshit. Like you're just a tool for them! Well you're not, especially if I have anything to say about it. And I want to fuck them over too. Just a little. A smidgen." Ravio made a quick turn to the left, toward the docks.

"Don't worry, I've bribed the guards and Mr. Pirate Hero's got the boat ready. We're getting you out of here. If there's one thing I'm good at it's running away." The packed dirt turned to wooden planks under their feet, clacking under Ravio's boots and groaning under the former hero's.

"Also in retrospect I should have given you a better nickname Mr. Tiny Hero. My bad."