Introductions
Discover more from Mnemoria
Introductions
Welcome to the first newsletter for my comic-in-progress Mnemoria!
I have been working, and reworking, a comic called Mnemoria, which I have struggled to come up with a summary for for years. Well, this year that's changed, and so I will give it to you now in one complete sentence: Mnemoria is a supernatural modern fantasy drama comic about otherworldly community service volunteers who sometimes have to fight things.
Please note that due to the mature nature of this comic’s contents in the future, it will be rated 18+ only. Do not subscribe to this newsletter if you’re under 18!
A longer summary will be provided below, but first I want to talk about the protagonists!
The Protagonists
Shrialba Naliniovis is the first protagonist to be introduced. She's a Daemon, an otherworldly being from a world called Anapomnium, and she's of Ji'taava-Tuniit descent; Ji'taava are known as common elves, and Tuniit are the less magically-inclined giant cousins of elves who originate from the icy north.
Shrialba is sporty, spunky, and outgoing, but she's also hot-headed and rebellious because she does not like living on Earth. She's originally from a tiny country in Anapomnium, and is only on Earth to find the whereabouts of her father Scree after they were separated 13 years ago. In order to access the resources to find her father, she reluctantly works for a volunteer community service group called the Nota Bene agency who study the human world... and also sometimes have to fight things to keep their presence a secret from humans. While she isn't exactly thrilled of this exchange nor living in a life shrouded in secrecy, she is willing to do it for the sake of reuniting with her father so she can go back to the life she once had. Her passion lies in animals, and while she never went to school for it, she is an expert animal caregiver who also knows how to wrangle just about any animal from Anapomnium that may have somehow ended up on Earth. The magical gloves given to her by Nota Bene manifest a lasso as a "weapon" for self-defense.
Her human disguise just changes her ears and her eye and hair color to look more... "human".
Kee-Chee Skitskonay gets introduced a little later, and she can be described as a polar opposite to Shrialba in demeanor— she's stoic, unflinching, and has the pride (and brutality) of a warrior, but they are also compassionate and patient. Kee-Chee is also from Anapomnium and is a Deeira'taava— an elf who can see into the future, and in some cases, alter it through sheer willpower. She is also categorized as a Revenant, a person brought back from the dead, since she definitely died 2,000 years ago, but the reasons behind their revival remain unknown.
Kee-Chee was originally a warrior who died in battle against a tyrant emperor who ruled an entire continent for 10,000 years, but she currently has no recollection of how she died. Waking up not just in the future but on a whole other planet has shocked them to their core, but she still wants to get to the bottom of this, and will do so on her own terms. She doesn't trust modern foreign technology in her body, so she has opted out of using a human disguise to navigate Earth, which will eventually cause some tension between members of Nota Bene. The other problems she causes is her ways of negotiation and subjugation are... outdated, and Shrialba helps teach her how to approach certain conflict without needing to maim someone. She was an archer in her past life, and this continues on when she's given special gloves used to aid in such conflict, but it somewhat disappoints her how things are now so needlessly pacifistic in the future.
And now, here is the longer summary for Mnemoria
An elf named Shrialba is a reluctant volunteer for a magical, otherworldly community service group called Nota Bene, a government agency that secretly studies and protects the human world. Reluctant is the key word: she doesn't care much for humans or Earth, and prefers living in the more utopian world people— called Daemons— like her originate from: Anapomnium. Her only reason for being on Earth is to find the whereabouts of her father Scree, who was separated from her 13 years ago when a malfunctioning magical portal sent her crashing into an abandoned warehouse in Seattle, Washington.
From then on, she's made an agreement with Nota Bene to volunteer work for them in order to use their resources to find her father. The work is usually mundane, but sometimes it taps into her passion— animal care— and other times it involves protecting humans from threats that have escaped their world. One such threat Nota Bene specializes in researching and exterminating is the parasitic creatures who prey on humans: Cytotapilkutos. When and where they came from remains unknown, and while their numbers have been decreasing, they still pose a threat to humanity, and also threaten to reveal the existence of Daemons. Thankfully, Shrialba hasn't had to actually deal with one... yet.
Aiding Shrialba's search for her father is her own father's relatives that she didn't meet until that fateful separation: her grandmother Solana, the Director of Nota Bene, and her bibi (gender neutral term for aunt/uncle), Absolüm, who is her legal guardian. Her only other aid is her mnemoria— a magical memory-storing device that all Daemons consider essential to their lives. With a mnemoria, one can relive their memories much more intensely than how a human recollects their own. She takes comfort in her mnemoria since it's one of the only things she has left of her father, and it's what pushes her to keep looking for him. She's held onto the belief that her father is somewhere on Earth like her since no trace of him has been found on Anapomnium, but since Earth has no way to use magic without bringing it there, it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
While no leads have come up just yet, other strange occurrences have been happening that have been distracting Shrialba, namely one: an elf named Kee-Chee Skitskonay. According to Absolüm, she's been definitely dead for 2,000 years, so to be found brought back to life begs the question: who did it? Not only that, but why? She knows Scree from her past, but they don't believe he has anything to do with her revival. Still, Shrialba feels a connection to this person since she can't help but sympathize with someone who has been left with nothing (not even clothes) in a world she knows nothing about, so she helps take care of them, and also teaches them the more modern ways of dealing with conflict. Not wanting to sit around and do nothing, Kee-Chee takes initiative and volunteers to help Nota Bene, but under a few conditions that will soon cause tension.
Thanks for reading!
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