#holodrum

[taboonle]

[acquired-stardust]

Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons Gameboy Color 2001

[lightningclaw13]

A simple map I made showing off the world of Ever Diverging Paths. Eventide is where Zola live, Aluron is where the demons mostly live, and Dromiand is monster territory.

[linderosse]

Hi there! Id like to ask a question.

I like your idea that the kingdoms Legend went off to adventure to (Holodrum, Labrynna, Hytopia and Lorule) are all in the same place or era rather haha, like they all coexist. Its rather genius!

But that makes me curious, do you have an idea where the kingdoms are located? I know Lorule is a whole other place entirely, but what about the others? Which kingdom is from the north? South? Etc. I'm just curious how far or near each kingdom is, and where Hyrule is between all of them. (Also am I missing other kingdoms?)

Thank you!!!

Yep— the five kingdoms currently entering an alliance in Legend and Fable’s era are Hyrule, Labrynna, Holodrum, Lorule, and Hytopia.

Technically, Legend (and sometimes Fable) have seen even more: Subrosia is a separate kingdom beneath Holodrum, past Labrynnans can visit the present with the Harp of Ages and have canonically traveled to other countries, and Koholint… was as real as a dream can be 🥲. And that’s not counting independently governed countries that are part of the larger conglomerates, like Hyrule’s river Zoras ruled by Queen Oren, or the Tokay island beside Labrynna.

So, background— as you may know, there are four types of non-Hyrule worlds in the Zelda franchise.

Independent government, but owes allegiance to Hyrule (Ex: Every Zora’s Domain and Gerudo Town in the series)

Actual, independent other country (Ex: Spirit!New Hyrule, Hyrule!Calatia (Calatia is not canon to the games, but is a popular fan-canon based on Link’s homeland in the Valiant Comics adaptation))

Parallel world (Ex: Time!Termina)

Dream world (Ex: Wind!Ocean King’s Realm)

The question is: which of these are each of the kingdoms Legend has visited, and if they’re physical, where are they located with relation to Hyrule?

Koholint is a dream world, and is therefore not in this alliance. However, I love Link’s Awakening too much to ignore it entirely in the Wisdomverse. What happened to Koholint will be addressed in The Secrets We Keep :).

As you said, Lorule’s different. No need to place it geographically; it’s a parallel world to Hyrule.

Hytopia seems to be confirmed North of Hyrule according to the (admittedly non-canon) Hyrule Encyclopedia. Apparently it’s also confirmed in ALBW? I don’t remember that, but it’s been a while since I’ve played ALBW so I’d believe it. According to the Encyclopedia, the Hytopians wear frilly clothing to brave the cold northern climates. That’s hilarious and I love it. I’m going with north for this one.

Hyrule is where Hyrule is :)

Finally, Holodrum and Labrynna are claimed by the Encyclopedia to be parallel worlds, but I disagree with this. The Encyclopedia is non-canon, and iirc also says Termina stopped existing after Time left, which I refuse to believe as well. Sure, it looks like Legend gets teleported to Holodrum/Labrynna by the Triforce in the beginning, but later, Impa, Fable, and a bunch of Hylian knights make it over there just fine and I doubt they did so using anything other than normal physical means. In the Hyrule Historia timeline (which I pretty much mostly follow), the Oracle games happen before Link’s Awakening, which means Legend sails home from Holodrum/Labrynna. But Legend is also pictured riding somewhere on a horse at the beginning. Therefore, we can deduce that perhaps one of the two countries borders Hyrule on land, and the other is a separate continent— or both are connected by land, but you could take a boat back to Hyrule if you wanted. My money’s on Labrynna being off to the West so far— the eastern Labrynnan forest border connects to Hyrule’s woods, and this leaves the southeast ocean of Labrynna open for Legend to sail back to Hyrule to, through the Sea of Storms where the storm at the beginning of Link’s Awakening seems like it could work (Legend has already shipwrecked there once before, but he’s totally the kind of guy to want to brave those waters again either as a test of strength, challenge, or punishment.) Jury’s still out on Holodrum!

UPDATE: After the Echoes of Wisdom and Adventure of Link connection, I maintain most of what I said, but I’m swapping sides. Labrynna is to the East of Hyrule. This matches with where the Zoras are in EoW, since the Ocean Zoras migrated from Labrynna at the end of OoA; and where the raft takes you at the halfway point of Adventure of Link. Holodrum, I believe, is to the Northeast of Hyrule, closer to North Hyrule and Hytopia/Calatia (relevant post). This is why I imagine Calatians to have slightly darker skin, like Din and some of the people of Holodrum.

I’m actually playing Oracle of Seasons for the first time right now (on Wednesdays and Fridays! 😇) and just finished Oracle of Ages last week— so I may update my views on Holodrum as I unlock more of the game’s map!

Tl;dr: Fable’s got a whole intricate mess of a chronospatial geopolitical situation to deal with here. Mad respect to our diplomat Zelda <3

[aikoiya]

LoZ TotK: International Relations

You know what I'd like to see in a future LoZ game?

An exploration of Hyrule's relationships with other countries.

As far as we know, Hyrule is a really small country. About the size of Kyoto.

This, when compared with the confirmation that Hyrule exists upon an alternate Earth where magic exists, means that there's so much more to their world that we only truly get glimpses of.

So, I wanna see what other countries exist in their world, other races, & their cultures.

Like, Holodrum/Subrosia, the Republic of Labrynna, the Drablands, New Hyrule, Koridai, & Hytopia! (Also, wherever an Oracle of Secrets game would take place; possibly Calatia?) Or maybe Termina isn't actually in a separate universe, just a different country? Or, if it is in another universe, it's possible that it's actually an alternate New Hyrule rather than Hyrule proper. Several people have noticed that the 2 maps are surprisingly similar.

Also, speaking of New Hyrule? I wonder if it's sort of like what America is to England?

Not to mention the islands of Oshus from Phantom Hourglass. Someone mentioned that it was a spirit world & that all the islands & people had been sucked in there by Bellum. If this is the case, then wouldn't that mean that those islands & their inhabitants have likely returned to Hyrule's Earth? If so, then I believe that they likely exist between TotK's Hyrule & New Hyrule.

I also theorize that the Gerudo aren't originally from the desert on Hyrule's southwestern border. Recall that we don't see any mention of them beyond the Gerudo Dragonfly in SS & that they don't show up until Cadence of Hyrule (which isn't canon, but still) & OoT. And 2,000+ years in the past, it was actually full of life & sat beside the sea, which has now evaporated into sand. (Which, the presence of the Gerudo Highlands in the Era of the Wild suggests that the sea may have evaporated due to tectonic shifts that raised the Highlands in the first place, thus the Gerudo Desert is most likely a Rain Shadow.) Not to mention the fact that it'd been referred to as the Lanayru Desert & the Lanayru Sea back then.

My thoughts are that the Gerudo were a nomadic tribe from another continent far to the southwest of Hyrule. One that had before been entirely separated from the continent that Hyrule is a part of. And ever since the sea had evaporated, the 2 are connected to each other in a similar way to how North America & South America are connected via Mexico.

Like, I especially wanna see a full world map someday.

You know, Hyrule used to have humans living there. You meet them in both Wind Waker & Twilight Princess. You think that Hylians are unique to Hyrule?

I remember that having "long ears" was a plot point in Wind Waker as targets for Ganondorf, indicating that not everyone had them. In both, it's indicated that Hylians, in comparison to humans, are fairly rare.

Where did all those humans go!? Did they just go extinct??

I also read somewhere that the populations of Holodrum & Labrynna are predominately human.

LoZ General Masterlist

LoZ Cultural Masterlist

[pixelartpeach]

hi bee! i'm a relatively new follower & absolutely captivated by your zelda lore. the oracle games were my first zelda games ever and still hold a special place in my heart. can you tell me anything about Labrynna and Holodrum? especially how they tie to Hyrule? and as well of the Oracles themselves?

I've got a post on the oracles here!

Labrynna and Holodrum, though, are something of a mystery, at least as far as Hyrule is concerned. With the drastically different climates of these countries in comparison to Hyrule, along with the ocean bordering both of them, it's hard to place them geographically. But we do have a handful of clues.

For the sake of this post, I'm going to do Holodrum first, then revisit it later with a part 2 for Labrynna.

The placement of the Oracles games in the timeline has kind of flipped back and forth as far as Nintendo's been involved; in Hyrule Historia, they come directly after A Link to the Past, but in the Hyrule Encyclopedia, they come after Link's Awakening, as a separate Link to ALttP's hero. However, thanks to A Link Between Worlds, we know exactly what Oracles' Link's Hyrule looks like.

ALttP and ALBW have functionally identical maps, meant to only be a century apart as a remake. And regardless of Oracles' placement, it always falls after ALttP but before ALBW, which means it also has a Hyrule that looks like that.

In this post, I gave my best guess at how the various Zelda maps fit into BotW's huge map, including ALttP's.

All in all though, it's not TOO different, the biggest differences being the omission of the coastline, Faron, and Hebra due to size and angle.

But what does this mean for the Oracles games?

Well, for starters, it means that we know what immediately borders ALttP Hyrule on all sides, that being thre remainder of BotW Hyrule. So we can rule out Labrynna and Holodrum being its direct neighbors right from the get-go, since none of the terrain matches what we have available.

We also have something we rarely get in Hyrule: confirmation of the cardinal directions. While in the 3D games, we can figure out our orientation by the sun in the sky, in 2D, things aren't nearly so clear-cut. But in Labrynna, we have South Lynna, Northeast Lynna, and the South Shore, and in Holodrum, we have the Eastern Coast, the Eastern Suburbs, North Horon, the Northern Peak, and the Western Coast. That's direct confirmation that the maps we get are oriented properly, with north at the top and south at the bottom.

And then, we have Samasa Desert.

I went into depth in this post about how deserts surrounded by mountains form, in relation to Gerudo Desert and its highlands. Knowing which way the wind blows storms in can actually give us a rough latitude placement on the globe.

Gerudo was easier to figure out than Samasa, though, because it only has mountains on two sides. But Samasa has mountains on three sides (almost four, if not for a gap at the very south), making a sort of cup shape around its edge, and has the ocean carrying away any southward indication of the wind direction.

Except we have a clue.

This oasis is in the northeast corner of Samasa Desert, surrounded by grass and trees. And on top of this, to the direct north of it (behind the cracked wall) is a fairy fountain, which shows itself as a small pond rather than a spring.

The reason deserts form behind mountains is because when wind collides with a mountain range, the mountains trap the majority of water before it can reach the land beyond it (Artifexian has a good video on worldbuilding that here). If the wind gathers what little water is available in the desert and deposits it when it collides with the mountains again, it would have to hit the mountain from a southwest angle. And if we look at a full map of Holodrum...

We see that a LOT of the country follows this wind pattern. Greenery in the south, with some of the biggest water sources and plantlife appearing in northeastern corners against cliff faces (represented by the red circles).

So what does that mean for us?

Well, if the Hyrulean day is identical to ours, it means that Holodrum can be confined to only one section of latitude, being between 30° and 60° in the Northern Hemisphere of Hyrule's planet, a good deal north of Hyrule.

But Holodrum also borders an ocean to its south; that rules out it being beyond the chasm at Hyrule's left or top border, because as we can see—

—there's only flat land that way. That confines us to going to the right, instead, to Hyrule's northeast.

Holodrum ALSO lacks a western shore, though, which means there's a landmass between it and the water, ruling out a Europe-like placement.

So with all of that information—its latitude, its apparent distance from Hyrule, and its ocean borders, on top of the fact that the Triforce had to teleport Link there instead of send him traveling (and we know how far he's willing to travel), I'll place Holodrum in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, about where Mongolia is on our world.

Please keep in mind that the topography of Hyrule's world is VASTLY different from ours, with different oceans, landmasses, tropical ranges, etc.

[burlveneer-music]

Holodrum - s/t LP - “Disco rock from West Yorkshire“

Holodrum are a new disco-infused synth-pop group, who feature members of Hookworms, Yard Act, Cowtown, Virginia Wing, Drahla and more. Maybe Holodrum were destined to start at this point. This might be the first time they’ve all officially worked together, but between Emily Garner (vocals), Matthew Benn (synth/bass/production), Jonathan Nash (drums), Jonathan Wilkinson (guitar), Sam Shjipstone (guitar/vocals), Christopher Duffin (sax/synth) and Steve Nuttall (percussion) they’ve shared bands, mixed each other’s records, promoted live shows and made music videos together in and around Leeds. As Holodrum, this is the seven-piece’s debut album, but the interlocking grooves and hot headiness of their repeato-rock-via-CBGBs dopamine hits have in one way or other been fermenting for years.

[friedunicornstudio]

Prompt #15 is "Pet/Animal" and I would like to draw your attention to Moosh the bear.

It has been ages since I played the Oracle games, but I always thought Moosh's design was extremely cute, and I'd love to see him, Ricky, and Dimitri get equivalents in some other games. I am always a sucker for big, ride-able animal companions.

Like, horses are cool and all, but I absolutely cannot say no to a blue flying bear.