The Complete and Chronological Lore of MapleStory: Crown Update

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The Crown update has officially released all its story content in KMS, which includes the Kinesis remaster, Radiant Malefic Star, the Astra Sub Weapon, Geardrak, the Night of Falling Illusions event, and the 2nd transcendence for the Destiny Weapon. Almost all these storylines have been added to the lore site and the new MapleStory Wiki, with the exception of the Kinesis remaster (which didn't actually change anything in the story at all) and the Destiny Weapon part 2 story (which isn't gonna be available for a while with how long the liberation process is gonna take).

Radiant Malefic Star / The Black Sea:

Radiant Malefic Star was released in a new level 280 side area called the Black Sea, located in Central Grandis right by Savage Terminal. Originally, the Black Sea referred to the giant black void of space back when Grandis was just a bunch of planets and moons. After Adele was released, you could talk to an NPC in Ristonia who could sing Grandis songs that served as Easter eggs for future content, one of which was about the Silent Sea - a sea in southern Grandis infamous for strange disappearances of sailors. With the release of Radiant Malefic Star, the Silent Sea was revealed to be another name for the Black Sea, and the boss prequest focused on uncovering the reason for these strange disappearances.

• After the Arteria invasion, Edea began researching the power of the Ancient Gods and learned that many of them still haven't woken up. Kain gets exclusive dialogue that confirms that Satiras still hasn't woken up from his slumber, while Angelic Buster's exclusive dialogue reveals Eskalade to be a clone body of a Nova god who created the Outrigger, a holy relic that was featured in the Heliseum storyline.
• For context, when Magnus took over Heliseum, the Nova priests - unable to transport the Outrigger - instead extracted as much power from the relic as they could inside a sacred stone. Eskalade, whose spirit inhabited the Outrigger, was sucked into the sacred stone and brought to Pantheon. The Nova then split it into four sacred stones to power the Protective Shield that keeps Magnus and his Specters out of the city. Angelic Buster would later fuse with one of the sacred stones and inherit Eskalade's power. However, her exclusive dialogue has Eskalade reveal that when the Outrigger's power was extracted into the sacred stone, the Nova god's physical body was destroyed in the process, meaning that Eskalade is the only remnant of that god left.
• There's also another bit of exclusive dialogue for the Heroes, which actually doubles down on the lore in the remastered Heroes of Maple storyline. While the original HoM story stated that there were 365 gods, the remaster actually changes this up a little by saying that the gods were manifested from 365 creations. While this distinction seems minor at first, it actually implies that there could have been far more than just 365 gods, with multiple gods springing forth from each creation. This actually does line up a lot more with the current Grandis lore, which has a considerable number of gods who have the same power (e.g. multiple Nova gods, multiple gods of illusion, etc).
• Getting back to the story, Edea has been trying to find traces of the Ancient Gods and believes that the centuries-long disappearances in the Black Sea are related to this power. She's found a temple in the Black Sea hidden behind a barrier made with ancient magic. As she needs a magical expert to help her out, she asks Neinheart to temporarily release Grendel the Really Old in order to help them. In the Karote storyline, we learn that Mihile and the Dawn Warriors arrested Grendel after he broke the dimensional seal and fused Maple World and Grandis, which not only caused the Sol Erda to nearly annihilate the world, but gave the High Flora free access to invade Maple World with their airfleet.
• Together with Edea, Grendel, and Brighton, we enter the Black Sea temple and discover that the barrier doesn't keep people out, but instead traps them in. At the bottom of the sea, we encounter Radiant Malefic Star, who claims to be a sea spirit sealed away by an evil god. However, we quickly deduce that she's a malevolent entity who's been responsible for bringing down ships and airships before devouring the life force of all the sailors who were unfortunate enough to be passing through.
• Radiant Malefic Star boasts incredible illusion magic, which she uses to trap us within a powerful nightmare. However, the World Heart's power allows us to break free from her illusion and confront her. Radiant Malefic Star then steals Edea and Brighton's life force, and so we fight her in order to save their lives. During this time, we discover that Radiant Malefic Star is the clone of an Ancient God who used to drain the life force of the Adversaries during the Ancient War. After we defeat her, we absorb her into the World Heart and return to Ereve, where Neinheart resolves to look into gods with illusion magic. He also remains a bit wary of whether or not Grendel is still under the influence of the Black Mage's core, for while Grendel doesn't actually do anything suspicious, he still says some slightly sus things at the end of the story about his obsession with trying to uncover everything there is to know about the power of the gods.
• Meanwhile, Ymir - an Apostle of Darmoor first revealed in the Nightmare Paradise epic dungeon - arrives at the Black Sea and discovers that we absorbed her clone's power. As she sets out to warn Darmoor about us, she thinks back to when she had first created her clone. During the Ancient War, Ymir had fought the Adversaries and drained their life force to become stronger until she had eventually, for unknown reasons, come to believe in Darmoor's idea of a true paradise, where only "noble lives' that embodied true selflessness and self-sacrifice deserved to live. For this reason, Ymir had expelled all her inner darkness and malice into a clone body, which is the complete inverse of the Black Mage casting out his inner light in the form of Luminous.

While this story was pretty light on story, it did confirm Ymir as an Ancient God and added an interesting bit of timeline complexity to the mix. As we learned in Sefirot's Gardener, Darmoor's true goal isn't to wipe out all other races, but rather, he's using the High Flora in order to create his true paradise of noble lives. In Nightmare Paradise, we learn that Ymir is working with several corrupt elders of Shangri-La to not only create a new Adversary for Darmoor, but also to enact the "great culling", which will erase all unworthy lives from the world. We learn in that story that Ymir plans to use her godlike illusion powers to place everyone inside a personalized nightmare that will test whether they have the selflessness to sacrifice their own lives for something greater, which will allow them to survive the great culling.

Astra Sub Weapon:

• This storyline takes place between Karote and Odium, focusing on an Ancient God named Erion: a small winged cat who was a master blacksmith during the Ancient War. After Erion was sealed by the Adversaries, he woke up in the present day and started selling weird weapons with useless features, leading him to getting arrested by the Alliance. After he claims to be a god, we verify his story by talking to Archelon, who reveals that Erion had outfitted countless gods with weapons during the war, and he was even responsible for creating the holy sword Azor for Mitra (which Seren wields in Cernium). Because of this, Erion had been a prime candidate for elimination by the Adversaries, leading him to go on the run until he was finally sealed away.
• After Erion learns that we're an Adversary, he starts begging for his life and Neinheart takes advantage of the situation by blackmailing Erion, promising his safety and freedom in exchange for making us a weapon. Erion tells us that the materials that he used to craft weapons during the war aren't available anymore, which is why his present-day weapons are all weird knockoffs, but he believes that we can collect scraps of his old weapons called Erion Fragments (obtained from doing Grandis dailies), and filling the weapon with the energy of powerful enemies in the form of Battle Traces (collected from Grandis bosses).
• There are two stages to crafting this weapon - one to initially create it and one to enhance it. After enhancing it twice, Erion creates the Astra Sub Weapon for us, which has been refined into a relic-grade weapon used by the gods. After we conclude our deal, Neinheart tells Erion that he's free to leave, but Erion refuses to leave his prison because he's finally found somebody who appreciates his talents. For this reason, Neinheart decides to make Erion the special weapons expert of the Alliance.

Funnily enough, this was one of my favorite stories that they've released in a while purely for the comedic value. Watching Erion crash out over the stupidest things in his tiny little cat body is lowkey kinda hilarious, and seeing him want to leave when he can't and refusing to go when he's allowed to is like the most peak cat energy thing I've ever seen.

Night of Falling Illusions:

• This event story is set after the Tallahart side quests but before Geardrak. The premise of the event is that the Seekers of Grandis find a crystal ball in the desert, which belongs to Luce - the twin sister of Noctis, who was the supreme goddess of Tallahart. After we activate the crystal ball's power, Tallahart is filled with the memory of the Night of Falling Illusions: a night when Noctis used her illusion magic to create spectacular sights for Luce in order to cheer her up during the Ancient War.
• Throughout the celebration, we encounter various echoes of memory from the Ancient War. One such memory is a meeting that Gob (the toad-like Ancient God from Extradimensional Visitors) sets with Noctis, Archelon, Keira (the goddess of Carcion), Garuda (a newly introduced winged god), Enki (the god of Identisk), and a new goddess called Melian who studies under Gob as his student. Gob calls this meeting to discuss an invitation that a powerful god named Jupiter sent out, rallying the gods into an alliance against the Adversaries. Although the gods can't come to a decision, we get hints during this conversation about a failed experiment that Gob had created that becomes relevant in Geardrak.
• another set of memories, we hear the echoes of several gods who attended the Night of Falling Illusions long ago. One set of memories has two small-winged gods attempting to flee to another land (implied to be Maple World) and seeking shelter from a large-winged god (hinted to be Shinsoo). In another memory, one forest god from Eastern Grandis talks about how they disguised themselves as a mortal and attended a festival in their own honor. Their friend then thinks to themselves that they should be a wandering bard who tells stories by hiding their godly powers. It's suggested that this god may actually be Selazar (the epic dungeon NPC who magically has knowledge about all these weird events that he has no business knowing). The third memory has one black-fanged god (speculated to be Satiras) who wants to dominate the world by defeating Jupiter. The final memory has a god that wants to seek out Erion in order to obtain a more powerful weapon.
• In one more set of memories, we see memories of Jupiter after the fall of Tallahart, where he leaves in order to prepare for the final stretch of the war now that his territory is the last bastion left. It's implied here that Jupiter is the last god that the Adversaries defeated at the land where Cernium would be founded many years later, and if that's actually true, then that actually means both Kaling and the Angler Company founder were failed experiments made to fight Jupiter himself.
• We learn during the story that Gob has exiled his disciple, Melian, who seemed far too eager to revive the experiment that Gob had deemed a failure. We also learn during this story that before the Overseers existed, the Ancient Gods fought in the War of the Immortals, where they constantly battled for power by killing each other. At the height of this conflict, Jupiter commanded around 30% of all the gods in the world, making him perhaps the most influential and strongest god in the world, even more than Mitra and Noctis. When Jupiter's attempt at making an alliance failed, he and his followers were sealed away until Jupiter awoke in the present day and sent out another call to the gods in the Tallahart side quests, hoping to unite them against Gerand Darmoor before he can take their power.
• Soon after, we meet with Ailene and Kelly of the Primacy, who tell us that Gob has gone missing after leaving to meet "someone that he doesn't want to see". We also learn that Captain Iker and Khafdi have gone to meet someone about the Apostles' movements. This person claims to be a "great monarch", and Adele's exclusive dialogue confirms this to be Jerome, who we last saw in Adele's Aftermath cutscene when he left Ristonia to find the Primacy.
• Some time later, the Shadowdealers Gen and Tara come to Tallahart in order to make a deal with us. Gen is the Savage Terminal branch leader of the Shadowdealers and Cadena's mentor, while Tara is a new character revealed to be the new #2 of the Shadowdealer High Council after Cadena defeated the former #2, Mr. Hazard, in her class story. Tara tells us that Mr. Hazard had been working with the High Flora in order to gain control of the Shadowdealers, seizing influence over various branches in order to execute a coup.
• After Hazard was kicked out of the Shadowdealers, Tara was responsible for flushing out Hazard's rats, though many branches of his branches had defected from the Shadowdealers and openly sided with the High Flora, supplying them with weapons and armor. We learn in Cadena's story that Mr. Hazard sold Vision Bombs to the High Flora (which we first saw in Arteria), and the Arteria side quests have us explore the battleship and uncover weapons with the Shadowdealer logo.
• While looking into the High Flora, the Shadowdealers learned that the High Flora are using the Shadowdealers' secret trade lanes to transport a magical stone with enormous quantities of mana. To our shock, Tara tells us that entire towns' worth of people in Central Grandis are disappearing without a trace everywhere that the magic stone is being transported, particularly isolated Anima tribes and minor races. As the Shadowdealers are merchants, not soldiers, she asks us for our help in investigating the disappearances in Central Grandis, as she believes that this combined with the fact that the Apostles are mobilizing is a sign of something grave.

Overall, this event gave us a ton of new information about future Grandis stories. Aside from the Geardrak stuff, the Shadowdealer portion gave us our first hint of what we can expect in the level 300+ regions - most notably, it's confirmed that we're now moving from Western Grandis to Central Grandis, which is home to the High Flora nation. These disappearances are heavily implied to be part of the great culling, which Darmoor orders to begin at the end of Tallahart, with Morning Star Banquet being where the Apostles are given their new orders to enact it. The magic stone causing disappearances is very likely to be part of Ymir's illusion magic, and while there's nothing concrete confirmed, I'd speculate that this stone is responsible for creating an illusion that the people have vanished when they're likely just asleep and trapped in Ymir's nightmare. As we move into Central Grandis, the overall Grandis story seems to be reaching its final half until we fight Darmoor in Aboris like how we fought the Black Mage in Tenebris.

Geardrak:

• In Gob's old workshop, Geardrak, Jupiter rallies all the remaining gods whose power hasn't been stolen by Darmoor. After Jupiter had woken up, his right arm had been severed by an unknown Apostle wielding a draining crystal. However, Jupiter received a mechanical replacement that was created by Melian, Gob's expelled disciple. In the Arcus desert, we discover that the person Gob had gone to meet after the Night of Falling Stars event was Melian, who kidnaps him and brings him to Jupiter.
• Elsewhere, we help Ailene and Kelly search for Gob, which leads us to discovering Geardrak beneath the desert. While we fight through Gob's old machines that Melian now controls, Jupiter tries to convince Gob to cooperate and activate Kronos, a furnace that uses the divine Erdas of the gods as its fuel. We learn that Kronos is Gob's failed experiment from the Night of Falling Illusions story, and that he had created Kronos to operate alongside an Erda Condenser in order to work properly.
• While we go through Geardrak, we rescue a small, spirit-like god named Tiny, who's fleeing Jupiter after he gathered all the gods and sacrificed them to Kronos. We discover that long ago, Gob and Melian had been working together to find a solution to the problem of the gods killing each other during the War of the Immortals. We learn that while the Erdas of mortals reincarnate in the Erda Flow after death, the divine Erdas of the gods will disappear upon death. As the gods possess far more Erda than mortals, the disappearance of such an enormous quantity of matter from the universe would have resulted in catastrophic consequences. For this reason, the Primordial God had created the Overseers to stop the gods from killing each other, which was why the Overseers had directed the Adversaries to seal the gods away in eternal slumber, rather than killing the gods outright.
• In order to create his own solution, Gob had made the Erda Condenser to capture the Erdas of the gods as they died, which would coagulate it and prevent it from disappearing from the world. He had also created Kronos as a furnace that could refine the coagulated Erda into a god-like entity that could destroy the Adversaries once and for all. However, Gob had been unable to find a way to capture the gods' Erdas as they died, and so he had abandoned his experiment. Meanwhile, Melian - who hated the chaos of her fellow gods and believed that only the most noble gods should live, while the other should be killed off - proposed directly feeding the gods' Erda into Kronos by throwing them into the machine, but her outrageous proposal shocked Gob into expelling her.
• In the present day, Jupiter - unable to get Gob to cooperate - threatens to sacrifice Melian, whom Gob still views with affection as his old student. When Gob reluctantly activates Kronos, Jupiter sacrifices Melian anyway and disdainfully looks down on Gob for making the ungodly decision to go along with someone else's will, rather than following his own like a true divine being. He then fuses with the entity so that he can gain the power to kill Darmoor, but after we defeat him, the entity devours him and leaves behind only his metal arm.
• Immediately, the World Heart attempts to absorb the entity's divine power, but as Gob fears that the entity is far too unstable from the improper fusion process, he uses the Erda Condenser to coagulate it into a crystal. He tells us that in order to have us safely absorb the crystal's power, he'll need to conduct research on how to stabilize it. We then report what happened to Neinheart, who believes that now that Darmoor has finished gathering an immense quantity of godly power, he'll soon make his move after he finds out that there are almost no gods left in the world.

Overall, this story was pretty filler-y, in the sense that all the important bits happened between characters who weren't us, while we spend 80% of the story just wandering around Geardrak aimlessly for an hour and only get a giant infodump in the last 30 mins. Despite this, however, I personally enjoyed it for what it was, and I also thought that the lore about the divine Erdas of the gods was quite interesting and well-written. It answered a long-standing question about why the gods were just sealed away when the Adversaries were reputed as "godslayers", as it basically confirmed that the Adversaries were made to injure the gods and force them into a coma, meaning that the player is the very first Adversary in history to actually kill an immortal entity.

However, one thing I didn't really like is the way that the Ancient God subplot was so haphazardly wrapped up off-screen, as if the story team had been given a last-minute directive to write them out so that we could get on with fighting the Apostles in Central Grandis. It's even weirder because some of the gods in the story were given illustrations but only given "???" as their names, which added to the hilarity of just how rushed the story was that they couldn't even bother to give them actual names. Overall, however, I'm looking forward to the last half of the Grandis story. With only one Flora class, one Nova class, and two Anima classes left to release, I can very easily see Grandis being wrapped up by level 325 or 350 at most, with Tynerum starting right after. I'm very much hoping that the Grandis ending doesn't feel as rushed as this, but the story team has pulled enough W's by now that I will very, very cautiously trust in their ability to at least give us a 50% satisfying conclusion.