#markofahero

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Y'all liked the ones for Mark of a Hero, so here are some of the banners out for Goddess of Secrecy as its going through its edits. Thinking about some of these locations and how they're different in GoS versus MoaH has been a lot of fun. It's a concepting goal of mine to make sure that these locations remain unique in each interaction of Hyrule I make and has been a lot of fun of writing MoaH while I'm reviewing GoS.

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Figuring out how to talk about original legend fic is super hard cause I don't feel comfortable, like, using other game tags cause it wouldn't be accurate even if it would make my stuff more visible, so then I have to summarize Mark of a Hero on its own as a story, which is the bane of my existence. Elevator pitch? How? I just got a bunch of what ifs! I guess here's a few of those:

Zelda but what if it had the energy of a D&D game

Zelda but what if the quest started 10 years late

Zelda but what if it was epic/comedic (as genres, not epically comedic, I wish) fantasy

Zelda but what if Zelda proved why she's got the Triforce of Wisdom and it wasn't just because of emotional intelligence

Zelda but what if Link missed every quest starter cue his whole life

What if Link didn't have to do the quest alone

What if they started the quest as adults

What if she hates him the first time they meet

What if this was all supposed to be an act not an actual legend

What if the world was more than just Hyrule

What if the world had opinions about Hyrule

What if the world had opinions about the legends themselves

What if we talked about the cultural impact of the legends in the worldbuilding instead having to put in back in in post

What if we got to have characters the games just can't have for tech limitation reasons

What if we had the conversation Nintendo must be avoiding by always killing Link's parents

What if this man is just doing his best

What if they got to grow up before the world was thrown on their shoulders

What if we told this new story, this new Link, this new Zelda, this new Hyrule, this new legend

Please read MoaH.

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I really hope people aren't expecting a serious story out of Mark of a Hero, you will not find it.

Link pretending to be the Hero in a very All Might style of presentation? Check

Korok mob boss? Check

A different Korok with the vibes of that Luma from the Mario movie? Check

Meme references? Oh, just a whole bunch of checks here from jelly donuts to film quotes to vines

Fortune telling self insert? You bet it's a check

This is a silly story with silly characters because that's part of what Zelda is as a franchise. This series has never taken itself too seriously, not in its entirety. Are there serious moments? Yes. But they're about having fun. In trying to capture that, MoaH is about having fun. If you're expecting it to be serious because it's more adult, well.

It's not that kind of book, kid.

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If there are any questions about why I link my Wattpad before my AO3 when I know Tumblr has a preference for one over the other, I have two reasons. One, it's cause that's where my fanbase is presently. I started on Wattpad and I am only now joining AO3 for dual uploads. Basically all of the people following me on this blog as of writing this came here from my Wattpad, and I'm super grateful for the community I've built around that. They deserve some credit for putting up with my hiatuses.

Two is to give myself some credit on my fics' quality. Since I am so new to AO3 and I bulk imported a bunch of two of my fics, I haven't had time for a lot of people to find me on AO3. And I know kudos/hits work different from votes/reads, but like. One of these does make me look a little better.

Whichever platform you prefer, I hope you'll give Goddess of Secrecy or Mark of a Hero a read. There are definitely some people who like them, and I hope you to do too.

(Also my view on Wattpad shows chapters I have queued in the total, there are not more chapters out of MoaH on Wattpad than there are on AO3. That is not the case for GoS, it's getting chapters to AO3 as it's getting edited)

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Ah, Marela. There is so much coming up with her in the Nayru's Temple arc. Y'all know so little about her. I promised y'all she had a full character sheet, and I still can't tell you every reason why. For folks new to MoaH, Marela is Zelda's head attendant and best friend.

We're having so much fun messing with expectations with Marela. As the first named Zora woman in the story, series expectation says she should have a crush on Link. Marela is in fact not interested in men at all. That doesn't mean she's not interested in any Marksmen.

Marela is an absolute gossip and we love her for it. She is also one of those people that ships people in real life (actively doing so in story too).

Marela and Zelda have been friends since childhood, for backstory reasons that will make more sense soon. At the very least, the two studied spellcasting together, and so Zelda has a lot of enchantments that she designed for Marela, or helped Marela research. Marela's water teleport ability is one of those.

While there hasn't been too much of Marela's magic shown off, she is a talented seamstress (for cultural reasons), and a lot of her magic manifests in her sewing. It is a specific type of magic that Zelda is actually not that good at. Currently. Mechanically, this would be largely illusion spells.

Marela's combination class is a mixture of College of Eloquence and a custom subclass I still need to build. Both the subclass and the hybrid would reveal too much, but once y'all figure out her backstory, there might be some clues.

Bard was actually a really hard pick for Marela, she was tied with another class, but there would be too many ??? for the sheet to be really intelligible at that point. Also once I did the math on Jack of All Trades and Expertise, Bard was better. Persuasion and Insight on the Expertise by the way. Only one other person who can keep up with her in that regard.

Starting feat is Actor because she's dramatic like that. +2 CHA, +1 DEX

This also becomes clearer once there are more Zora women in the story, but screw gender dymorphism in fantasy. Marela has shark teeth like we see Zora men have. There are also Zora men and women of varying heights, to include shorter Zora men and taller Zora woman (like up to the height of Sidon comparatively).

Lots of races in MoaH have wider trait variants that they can't have in games for things like asset limitation reasons. Zora are one of those and Zora have traits reflecting multiple kinds of fish besides just sharks. Marela's traits are inspired by beta fish and jellyfish.

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I don't know how to add these to AO3 yet, so I figured I'd share them for folks reading over there. Here are some of the setting banners so far for Mark of a Hero. On Wattpad, these go up to match where a chapter takes place (typically where they start if locations change), so here are all the ones for chapters out so far.

I get all of my background images from Unsplash, which is a CC photo repository.

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Another character sheet without art yet, let's talk about Ambrose! For those new to MoaH, Ambrose is Link and Saddiqah's guild mentor. He fills the slot of Zelda "old man character" for MoaH. He's a surly old grouch with a soft spot for his two former apprentices and some kind of grudge with an evil mage he's trying to hunt down.

Definitely a normal old man.

While the name of the his hybrid path class would give some things away for his character arc, I can say that it's a combination of Path of the Beast and Path of the Zealot. Doing some thematic stuff there with mechanics.

Speaking of thematic things with mechanics, Sentinel! I think it probably would be better to say Ambrose is indomitable. So less, thing passes me and I stop it and more I put myself in the way and stop it. Very immovable object of him. +2 CON, +1 STR, standard array otherwise.

Definitely just a normal old man.

Ambrose's charisma isn't great, but I like using STR for intimidation, so we'll give him that.

Also the party barbarian being the Wisdom leaning member? Weird, but we like thematic mix ups. And fitting for Ambrose as he's fought everything, he's definitely a monster almanac himself with how long he's been around.

Since this is the first time it's come up in a post, humans and Hylian are distinct races in MoaH. This gets into races with divine blessings, but human is an umbrella species evolutionary in this canon, and then a handful received divine blessings to become other races, like Hylian, Gerudo, Sheikah, etc. back at the beginning of time.

But he's definitely just a normal old man.

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With some of the new chapters coming out, I figured it was a good idea to go over how rupees work in MoaH. And while I was at it, the other currencies you might see in other settings the series has in store.

Also, math's hard enough, I'm doing the easy multiples for the conversion rates.

And there is a dedicated page for these kinds of resources on the blog! It is also linked on the pinned post. This is one of the reasons why I'm debating making a Discord though for MoaH to make these things easier to find since tags can be funky here and the blog pages aren't always interactable.

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I'd been waiting to do a post with links because Tumblr likes to hide those posts and I was already not getting shown in the tags for like two months, so it would have shown up for no one. But we've gotten that fixed, so hopefully this shows up for a handful of people. I'm only linking two of my fics for now because of quality/editing passes that have or have not happened, so, here y'all go:

The Legend of Zelda: Goddess of Secrecy - Final Chapters Out On Wattpad July 26th, 2024

Hyrule has only ever dreamt of an end to the resurrection of Demise. With the returning of an ancient power, that dream could finally be fulfilled. Can the Hero of the Fourth Goddess save Hyrule once and for all?

Wattpad - AO3

(Edits in progress, first pass edited chapters have banner images on Wattpad, only edited chapters are uploaded to AO3)

The Legend of Zelda: Mark of a Hero | Part 1 - Hyrule - New Chapters Continuing August 9th, 2024

Hyrule is at peace, or so the Royal Family would have its people believe. Something is afoot in the kingdom, and someone needs to do something about it. Least likely would be Marksmen Link Sayre- a mercenary* and monster hunter doing his best to get by. Until a job goes wrong, and he gets roped into the secret plans of Hyrule's princess. Now Link must play the part of the Hero to dive deeper into the mystery, and maybe stumble into a legend of his own.

Wattpad - AO3

*Wanna add a quick note that in any other context, mercenary used in MoaH would probably be replaced as "adventurer" by most modern fantasy conventions in relation to like, TTRPG storytelling. Without putting the TTRPG style of storytelling inspirations in MoaH's just blatantly front and center though, I wanted to use a term that would have been more likely used in setting. Felt I should clarify because of previous crowds getting the wrong impression cause MoaH is not remotely dark or grim dark fantasy. It's next closest genre might honestly be comedic fantasy after epic. This is not LoZ meets Witcher, it's LoZ meets your home game's energy.

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Duties of The Princess's Guardians w/ Impa

Impa: "..."

"..."

"..."

Impa: "No."

Link: "What? You can't just say no!"

Impa: "I did."

Marela: "Impa, this does seem rather against the spirit of these discussions."

Impa: "My oath is to protect Princess Zelda and the Royal Family. Divulging my people's secrets impacts my ability to do my job. So. No."

Link: "Not even a little secret? Like how you did the transformation thing."

Impa: "No."

Marela: "Come on, Impa, these have been fun! Surely there's something you can say."

Impa: "*sighs* Fine."

"..."

"..."

"..."

Impa: "No. (L: "Oh come on!") That was the request. I have work to do. Don't bother me again."

Marela: "I was really hoping she'd play along for once."

Saddiqah: "You wanted more rumors to spread."

Marela: "I did and she ruined it."

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Mark of a Hero (Updates on Tuesdays & Fridays, 1 of 9)

Hyrule is at peace, or so the Royal Family would have its people believe. Something is afoot in the kingdom, and someone needs to do something about it. Least likely would be Marksmen Link Sayre- a mercenary and monster hunter doing his best to get by. Until a job goes wrong, and he gets roped into the secret plans of Hyrule's princess. Now Link must play the part of the Hero to dive deeper into the mystery, and maybe stumble into a legend of his own.

AO3 - Wattpad

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It's Map Monday again! This is helping my partner with progress, so we're going to try to keep it up. Weekend got busy, he's put the mountains on hold for a while, so we've got forest outlines this week! Because of the program he uses/he doesn't like custom brushes, all of this is hand painted (part of why mountains are difficult). I love the direction so far for the forests, they look so good!

He's not big on social media, so I'm passing on all y'all's love to him. He really appreciates it!

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It's been a weird experience starting the switch to adding AO3 to my uploads after posting to only Wattpad for so long. I imagine that's added to as well that I just came back from a seven year hiatus in April to an already very long fic as my first project. But it is slightly different with AO3 than just returning from hiatus.

I joined Wattpad in 2011, and started writing fic in 2012, which I think was still considered back of Wattpad's golden age of fic? I stayed there for so long cause I was also writing original fiction alongside the fanfics I had, and Wattpad made it easier to maintain a singular platform, share an audience an all that for both. And I did build a pretty reasonable audience. I still link my Wattpad for GoS and MoaH, partially cause some of the folks here followed me from my Wattpad and get their updates there, and also because as I've said before, GoS and MoaH's credibility look a lot better on Wattpad versus on AO3 even if reads/votes work different from hits/kudos.

But it's also been nice to start over. It is also exhausting, reexplaining that I am kinda good at what I do, but it's also kinda like. A really refreshing reset. It's given me an opportunity to refocus on telling stories I wanna tell over stories readers expect me to tell. I do still have a queue way out until anyone is gonna read it, but I'm just writing for me again. The queue gives me a buffer. And now I get to meet folks all over again.

It's also given me an opportunity to really look at how the community has changed. When I started GoS in 2012, there was a lot more diversity in LoZ fic. Now a huge bulk of it is the Wild duo or LU focused, which isn't a criticism, only an observation. It's one of the reasons I really wanted to get behind trying to help organize some kind of community for "Original Legend" fics or whatever it ends up getting called. Relearning how fandom works here really highlights the importance to me of finding other folks who also work in your niche. Which is why I'm trying to be a little more social and organize a collection for it. I'm still learning though.

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The poll was tied when I needed to get this going, so I'm starting with Lance cause it's easier for me than Marela's. I honestly wasn't expecting this poll to be split, so I'm happy to see the love for him. For those new to MoaH, Lance is Link's dad.

Lance was a Marksmen until he was injured roughly 10 years prior to the story beginning. He took over running Sayre's Seedpot, his wife's shop, at that point and is now a self-taught florist.

Low DEX is due to injury. Lance still maintains some of his fighting ability, but a lot of his range has been limited due to his hip healing badly. He's now more a STR based Ranger.

If Lance had continued to level, he would have gone Beastmaster for his subclass. Adira more or less fills this role in the story as his animal companion.

While Lance doesn't need it typically around the shop, he does use a cane or walking stick when he needs to go into town. He also will usually take Floan or ask Link for help if he's having bad flare-ups. The Sayre's also have a lot of neighbors willing to help.

Lance chose not to remarry. It's something he and Ambrose have bonded over and one of the two main reasons they stay in contact. The other is Link, who is bad at writing letters for updates.

No starting feat as Lance is really just a guy fighting wise, +1 STR, +2 WIS.

Spoiler warning for the Nayru's Temple arc:

Before Lance was a Marksmen, he grew up on the coast as a fisherman before his father was promoted from Navyman to Royal Guard. Lance actually had a chance to apprentice as a Royal Guard, but as fate would have it, he missed the entry exam. Considering what normally happens to parents of the Hero, this change in fate may have saved his life. And the opportunity was given to someone else down the road.

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Your honor, I love him.

Reposted with permission by @sillydillybean who just joined Tumblr, so hopefully using the little following I have here to help him boost his start too. Dill is collaborating with me on the art for the MoaH cast. I had a lot of fun at our first stream for it, and I'm looking forward to the next one, but this first sketch of Link was too good to not share. I think Dill will be sharing some more of these sketches soon on his socials, so be sure to give him a follow for more MoaH character art!

I'm only reposting this one here because it'll be the pfp for a bit and he's still setting up his blog, moving forward I'll reblog from Dill directly for his art.

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She doesn't have character art, but she's got a character sheet. MoaH's Impa. Technically been in some chapters, has not really shown up yet fully, only a name drop. I think these are soft spoilers because they do kinda follow Impa's standard tropes, but mentioning it for now since she's pretty straight forward.

Impa's hybrid subclass, Way of the Guardian is a combo of Way of Shadow (duh) and Way of the Open Hand. Balancing stealth with sustain, but also her job is to protect Zelda, and that Sanctuary ability at 11th level fits the job (I'm letting her retarget it for lore reasons, also, again, books).

Despite initial interactions with Link (y'all will meet her soon into the return), her CHA is pretty high. CHA for Deception and Intimidation, she does those a lot, but also for some other roles she fills in assisting Zelda, she needs good CHA. She just has opinions about Link that prevent getting to see the friendlier uses of CHA.

That low CON currently has her with the lowest HP total in the group though. Her CON is low as a reflection of character arc reasons, so y'all will have to wait on that.

Much like Saddiqah using the Bugbear stats not being reflective of all Gerudo, Impa getting the Changeling abilities is not reflective of all Sheikah, this is reflection of a unique ability she has as the head of her clan.

+2 WIS, +1 DEX, standard array and her bonus feat is Skulker for, again, pretty obvious reasons here. She is a ninja.

She really is pretty straight forward. Impa doesn't really share a whole lot, I think her sheet is about all you're going to get too.

Divine Ancestry is just a reskin of Fey Ancestry if past sheets haven't indicated that. I still can't decide who the Sheikah's blessing in from though so it's just gonna be a clan secret, sssssshhhhh.

Look, we have three more weeks until MoaH is back and I have two more characters with full sheets, I promise. They haven't gotten a single vote in any poll I've run, and they're both well liked characters too. I feel so bad for them being the last ones.

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Alrighty, it's time for the titular character herself. Here is MoaH Zelda. I talked about this a little in Link's post, but this is a design clash. Based on EoW though, the implication of Zelda's Triforce of Wisdom, I read as an indicator of cunning and intellect, so in 5e, that would be Intelligence. And if Zelda is going to be a high INT character, she's going to be a Wizard. Maybe an Artificer in BOTW, but definitely a Wizard in MoaH. More notes:

Zelda's character design is the biggest sign that I am not an artist, I did this sketch years ago before I started learning body shapes. Zelda is described in MoaH has having visible weight suitable for her class standing. She would also have visible weight because she's an incredibly competent Wizard (that's a whole tangent, but good Wizards would be heavy set because they aren't burning excess energy casting spells, but are eating a lot to retain energy for spellcasting). Her eyes are also green.

Zelda's hybrid subclass is a combination of the School of Evocation for her Sage abilities and the UA School of Theurgy, with the domain there being Light, for her divine ones.

If Zelda has had one thing before MoaH, it's a whole bunch of downtime and infinite resources to learn. This is why she totals way higher on languages and instruments than she should have. It's also why I'm not bothering with the spell list, you can assume she's dabbled in everything available for Wizard at her level. Again, these are book characters, I don't care about balance.

Zelda has Observant as her starting feat, it works on Link about 50/50. Otherwise, standard array, +2 INT, +1 CON

I replaced quarterstaffs and light crossbows with rapiers and longbows for I think obvious thematic reasons.

Zelda's familiar is named Blip and he always appears with a glowing blue-gold aesthetic no matter his form. He has not been named in the released chapters, but he has appeared.

There was not a tie this week, so I have the remaining results to get through over the next two weeks. MoaH will be releasing shortly after that as well.