Introduction

Chapter 1: Foreword

GMS-verse is the unofficial name that I had given to the shared universe between Masteria, MONAD, the Sengoku Warriors, Jett, Beast Tamer, and several other storylines. However, GMS-verse is only a subset of overseas storylines, and not the entirety of it, as there are plenty of other storylines, such as Mo Xuan, Lynn, Malaysia, and many other overseas content that are completely unrelated to this shared universe.

While Maple World is the common setting for these different factions, the main plot remains firmly in the background as a new story unfolds in its place. For many years, these were all disparate storylines that had no relationship to each other. In Summer 2018, the MONAD blockbuster was released, which intrinsically tied together all of these individual stories to the lore of Masteria, the linchpin of GMS-verse.

Over several years, MONAD was slowly removed across different overseas regions. In November 2022, MONAD was removed from JMS and GMS, and is now permanently inaccessible. Its removal has significant impact on GMS-verse, as MONAD was the only connective tissue that tied together the overseas universe. What this means is that GMS-verse as it once stood no longer exists, and the different storylines of each overseas region will remain separate from each other.

Despite MONAD’s removal, certain characters and settings from the blockbuster still persist in the Masteria storyline, which indirectly maintains the lore introduced in MONAD. Several storylines in MapleStory have been presented as sequels to removed content, such as Kerning Tower and Mushroom Castle continuing the stories of Kerning Square and Mushroom Kingdom. Based on this precedent, it’s possible that MONAD will remain canon and have its story continued, despite its removal in the game.

With that being said, however, certain other storylines in GMS-verse, including classes like Jett and Beast Tamer, have also been removed with regularity from the game, making it extremely unlikely that we’ll get any more stories that continue this shared universe. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to keep the GMS-verse portion of this site as a way of preserving the integrity behind this shared universe project taken up by the overseas writers.

With that being said, I have two important notes about GMS-verse before getting to the actual content. The first is that throughout this site, I’m making the assumption that the protagonist of GMS-verse is the same across all storylines, similar to the Adversary in the main story. The only exception to this is the Neo Tokyo protagonist, and I’ll give my reasoning for that at the beginning of the Neo Tokyo section.

There are several mentions of there being a common protagonist between individual stories (such as Mushroom Shrine Tales and the Asura Crisis, or MONAD and Masteria), and while it’s not explicitly confirmed that the Asura Crisis protagonist and the Masteria protagonist are the same, for instance, I think it’s easier to assume that they’re the same, given the nature of the setting being a shared universe.

The second note is about Masteria and the way that I’ve presented its story in GMS-verse:

Those who’ve played the original story of Masteria are likely familiar with its grand origins and regrettable collapse. I myself only learned about the story of old Masteria in my research for this site, which gave me great appreciation for its lore, as well as a better understanding of the many grievances about the direction that Nexon decided to push the story in.

For those who aren’t aware, Masteria is one of the oldest pieces of GMS-exclusive content to have existed, and its incredible story and iconic characters have made it quintessentially the face of GMS, similar to how Zipangu is the face of JMS. The story of Masteria was one of great intrigue and mystery, with a vibrant personality that drew in many people since before the main story with the Black Mage had even begun in KMS.

Much of Masteria’s success was thanks to the efforts of NxProse and his team, who wrote the story of Masteria while working at GMS Nexon. Though NxProse did write a majority of this content, he always emphasized that it was a team effort. During this era, NxProse would frequently interact with players, tease new content, and expand the lore in little ways. This was a rare time of communication with the story writers, the likes of which we’ll probably never see again. It was clear from these interactions that there was a highly-developed (if not complete) plot conceived ahead of time, and that there was a plan to slowly unravel the mystery of Masteria.

Unfortunately, NxProse left the company before he got the chance to finish the story. Since then, he’s confirmed that GMS Nexon had the drafts of his story and had every power to follow his proposed ideas. However, this is when the history of Masteria turned sour, as GMS threw away his drafts in favor of their own plot. In a left-field move, they added a completely unrelated alien invasion subplot and removed a huge chunk of the original maps, although they restored the maps after receiving heavy criticism for it.

Though the aliens remained, Masteria was left alone for many years until the Masteria Through Time blockbuster was released in 2015, which was received extremely heavy criticism for retconning nearly every part of the original story, ungracefully lifting much of the mystique surrounding the lore, and needlessly changing the characterization of many characters for the worse.

The biggest example of this was Naricain, the main villain of Masteria. Originally, he was conceived as a powerful demon of darkness on par with the Black Mage until he was defeated by Subani, a great magician of light. The Masteria revamp retcons Subani as the crybaby brother of Naricain, both of whom were adopted by Crimsonheart, a legendary warrior who had no relationship to either of them in the original lore. Naricain goes from being a demon of unimaginable power to a Kylo Ren-esque figure who hates Crimsonheart because he was never around when Naricain was a kid, resulting in his mother being killed when thieves came to steal the Antellion, an infinite power source that Crimsonheart was sworn to protect.

Granted, this is some mitigating nuance, much like with Kylo Ren’s story, but the fact remains that Naricain’s motives are presented more as angsty teenage rebellion than anything else. If you want a comparison for what the magnitude of these changes mean, you can view it as the Black Mage’s motivations suddenly being retconned from him wanting to restore free will to the world, to wanting to destroy everything because “daddy issues”.

Since the blockbuster, Nexon had been trying their hand at making their rendition of Masteria more interesting by taking the pieces left behind by NxProse and using them only in name while changing everything else about them, almost like bad fanfiction. They’ve also ambitiously tried to incorporate all their overseas content into a single shared universe tied together by the Antellion, which transcends space and time.

The exact nature of how they intended to tie everything in is still unknown, as it was only briefly teased in MONAD, whose removal has put into question the future of GMS-verse. However, I will say that some aspects of the more recent Masteria updates were fairly interesting, mainly because they took large chunks of NxProse’s old story and wrote around that skeleton, making it slightly more bearable than their original entry for the new Masteria lore. 

With all of Masteria’s rich history, a lot of which has been removed, I was originally hesitant about covering the current lore without having any understanding of what came before. I especially didn’t want to misconstrue anything since I know that this guide might be people’s first and only exposure to the story.

Fortunately, I’ve had a fun journey learning as much as I could about old Masteria, as well as the other aspects of GMS-verse like the Sengoku Warriors, Jett, MONAD, etc. I’ve been fortunate enough to have gotten in contact with people like PirateIzzy and Saught, both of whom were incredible resources in making this guide. Because of them, I’m much more confident in presenting this guide - perhaps not 100% comprehensive as I’d like, but still highly informative nevertheless.

Unlike the main story writeup, I’ve structured this guide into arcs. Most of the chronology isn’t established, and so many arcs could technically have occurred in any order besides the one that I presented, although I’ve tried to structure it in a way that lets the story flow in a way that makes sense.

Another unique decision I’ve made is that I wanted to present the original lore of Masteria as part of the prologue for this writeup. I generally don’t add non-canon content in a writeup that’s meant to cover canon events, but I ultimately decided that it would be a disservice to present GMS-verse without the foundation that shaped it into what it is. I would highly, highly recommend reading it before jumping into the main writeup. Not only is it one of the best stories in the game, but it’ll help give context for you to form your own opinions about the long-standing debate about the Masteria story.

I hope that y’all enjoy learning about these stories as much as I did while writing this guide. As always, if you have any questions, find any errors, etc, feel free to let me know!