Welcome to Terraria!

A blog for the Purity Town Terraria webcomic; updates every Sunday at 12 pm eastern time. Check out the About page for more info!

[purity-town]

It’s come to my attention that Tumblr’s default “dashboard” blog view hides the custom page links in the blog header. So, here’re some quick links for anyone using the dashboard view:

About/Info

Chapter Index

Read from the Beginning

Webtoon Link

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Trying to reassure someone that their life is worth saving regardless of if them living brings additional hardship (without acknowledging that you wish someone could say the same thing to you) (without acknowledging that you made the choice to conceal all knowledge of their whereabouts, not because you wanted them to suffer, but because you knew no one in town was capable of saving them and couldn't risk someone taking a risk and getting themselves killed)

[purity-town]

No update today because I was pulled very, very last-minute into participating in a historical reenactment event and had to leave early for that. Page will be good to go for next week, though!

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Err, so, about that...

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Update: she's not doing too good.

[purity-town]

No update today, but I wanted to share this submission from @superlativebean!!

----

Heyo! I found Purity Town a few weeks ago and am OBSESSED.

I very much enjoy characters who have to grapple with their own mortality, and this webcomic made me realize that I’ve been sleeping on the guide’s lore for nine years.

As such, here is a meme to express my love for Andrew. I hope you like it!

P.S. I’m new to Tumblr so I’m very sorry if I’m breaking any rules of etiquette 🙇

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Checking in on the Mechanic!

[purity-town]

No update today for a combination of reasons: I have a family event this weekend, I'm fighting for my life trying to draw a chair on the next page, and I've been dutifully sitting and watching my partner play Tomodachi Life. In the meantime, I've finally written up some ask responses under the cut!

1) Nathan(Andrew's brother)'s body was never recovered; his tombstone was symbolic and just meant to give the family closure and something physical to mourn and remember him by. This is also why he never carved a tomestone for the mage; there was no one except him to remember them.

2) Yes, the mage became the Lunatic Cultist. They suggested creating the doll and performed the initial work on it, and once their condition progressed to the point where they were unable to hold a needle and thread, they mentored Andrew on how to finish it.

3) Andrew originally believed that his situation was as follows: "He is immortal. Eventually, someone will ritualistically sacrifice him in Hell. This sacrifice will serve as the catalyst to release the old magic back into the world." He hoped that, through the doll/dolls (and some very careful spellcasting), they could "trick" the world into thinking that Andrew had been sacrificed.

The problem with their plan was that they fundamentally misunderstood the real situation: "Someday, Andrew will burn and die in Hell, and in so doing, be reborn as the physical manifestation of the barrier which traps the old magic in the core of the world. If this incredibly powerful monster is slain, the barrier will die with it and whoever felled the monster will be able to wield the old magic to fight the Moon Lord. If it's instead the challenger who dies, then Andrew will be resurrected once more as a human until another challenger arises and a new attempt to kill it is made."

Their plan failed because they didn't understand that replacing who was sacrificed was irrelevant. Andrew's sacrifice doesn't summon the Wall of Flesh -- instead, Andrew is the Wall of Flesh, and the sacrifice is merely the catalyst of his transformation.

Their plan did not, and never could have, worked.

As far as Andrew knew for a very long time, the mage died in Hell to the Wall of Flesh, and any other dolls are still down there, causing Andrew quite a lot of pain. At least he won't have to go directly with Chris when it's finally time.

4) From a cursory glance at the game -- I think the recent generational trauma of having their entire world almost destroyed by Cthulhu would probably put her off enjoying it, but I'll give you points for the joke!

The simplest way of phrasing it is that neither one of them actually has a set schedule or obligations, but also, they both chronically invent ways to be incredibly busy.

Chris had a fairly strict sleep schedule back when he was running a store pre-canon, so he still tries to stick with it and get up early, but since most terrible things happen at night (thanks, Moon Lord) it's slowly unraveling. He spends most of his days exploring, collecting loot, and fighting monsters. When he's at home and not eating/sleeping/cooking/cleaning/etc., he's usually either crafting or researching/studying (reading nonfiction, usually books about the old world/old languages/astronomy/astrology/spellcasting). He struggles a lot with downtime/relaxing/nonproductive hobbies since he's always been so busy prior to coming to Purity Town, always either running the store/helping around the house/caretaking for younger kids/etc., so when he has time to himself he usually immediately finds a way to fill it. He does hang out with some of the townsfolk from time to time, Malik especially, but he doesn't just "chill" very often outside of maybe some occasional solitaire or other card games. Pre-canon he was in a relationship and participated in bar trivia with a small team, but he broke up with his boyfriend and hasn't really kept in much contact with any of them since moving to town.

Andrew's sleep schedule is somewhat less reliable -- he only goes to bed when he's at a good stopping point in his work and remembers he's tired -- but he's always up with the sun. His main work is doling out advice/acting as a mediator/acting as Google for the townsfolk; people ask him questions and he answers, they ask for his advice and he gives it to them, and he weighs in on arguments to deescalate things. His "other" line of work is translating old books and compiling his historical research into, effectively, textbooks. He's in a very unique position as someone with a perfect memory, native fluency in older languages, and the unique and irreplaceable historical context that comes from actually having been around for (or only 1-2 generations removed from) the actual time periods he's writing about, and so he uses that to its fullest.

Despite living in an actual society now, Andrew's spent a long time on the edges of civilization, and so also likes to spend his time hunting, gathering, preserving, brewing, and so on. He's not entirely used to having good infrastructure and the ability to acquire food that you yourself haven't grown/hunted and stored for later, and also just enjoys the process of hunting, making his own things, and the likes, so that fills most of the remaining time he has set aside for "hobbies."

And then of course, there's all the time that Andrew is giving advice to Chris, usually in terms of suggesting what to do/where to go next or assisting him in crafting.

Thank you!! I had a lot of fun with that pose. Chris gets to be a little divine and scary, as a treat.

Here you go! It's a pretty simple cosplay, so it's fortunately very comfortable to wear for long periods of time. I've posted some other pics on my main blog!

First: It's awesome to hear my stuff has inspired you! Keep on making characters and keep creating stories!

Second: Malik has a backstory, but it's a fairly loose one -- I've gone into it a little bit here, but it skips over a lot of his life. The main points are that Malik has always had a very strong danger sense/sense for the evil and eldritch, and because of it grew into a monster hunter with a thrill for being "the predator" when fighting monsters/exotic animals. This turned into a similar enjoyment for his preferred weapon type and eventually becoming a proper arms dealer as a job. He moved out to Purity Town both for its location and potential unique dangers, and was very close with the previous Guide before Andrew.

I'll also present Malik's theme song.

It's loosely intentional! The specific shadow you're looking at is technically the shadowed side of a mountain in the background of the mural, but the original draft had Andrew's silhouette almost entirely scratched out from the mural, and parts of that stuck around as I painted and influenced how I did the background and paint around Andrew specifically.

Not on screen, for a few reasons -- primarily that that would be REALLY hard to draw, and secondarily that that opens a gigantic can of worms insofar as worldbuilding questions go that just aren't relevant enough to the plot/themes to justify the time I would need to dedicate to it.

That being said, the current script does have the Goblin Tinkerer show up to give the Mechanic some happiness and explain Chris having access to combined accessories from the Tinkerer's Workshop.

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Good going, guys.

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Now go to BED.

[purity-town]

No update today -- this has been a very very busy week for me work-wise and I just haven't finished enough of this page to think I can get it done by a reasonable time today. The good news is that things should calm down much more for me going forward. This was just a busy month in general, and I'm ready to get back to working on the comic!

[purity-town]

No update today because I was at Galaxycon this weekend! I was in my Lunatic Cultist cosplay for part of it, and it was a lot of fun meeting other Terraria fans!

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Malik's not putting up with this.

[purity-town]

No update today -- I have a side project that I've been putting off working on that I need to actually, finally, start on or else it won't get done by the deadline. In the meantime, here's a little sketch snippet of Chris from the next page.

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Very, very late update today because I spent an unreasonable amount of time tweaking the dialogue on this page.

Also, folks made good points on the last page re: the magic missile being a wand and not a staff, so after some consideration it has been retroactively miniaturized :)

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Chris doesn't have the patience for this right now.

On the upside, he's giving the Magic Missile a whirl! It's one of my favorite magic weapons -- it's so much fun to drag the projectile around.

[purity-town]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

Time for a Blood Moon! Malik's having a great night.