2007-2010 (Early Game-Big Bang)

July 2007: Magatia

(A/N: At the time of its release in April 2003, there was no overarching storyline to MapleStory. Instead, the game’s plot was just a series of unconnected town quests that existed solely for worldbuilding and adding immersion. Over the years, a number of different areas and storylines were introduced to expand the scope of Maple World, but it wasn’t until July 2007 that the release of Magatia introduced the concept of the Black Mage, serving as the foundation that would lead into the complex (and often convoluted) storyline that we’re familiar with today.

Since this chronological presentation is only meant to show the evolution of the main story over the years, I won’t be covering the entirety of the Magatia town storyline, and I’ll instead just cover the parts relevant to the Black Mage. I’ve been slowly working on a project called Maple Anthologies to cover every storyline that isn’t plot-relevant to the main story or the shared overseas continuity (which I unofficially call GMS-verse), and I’m planning to publish the full Magatia questline when I get around to completing that project.)

In Magatia, a traveler met with Han the Broker, who explained that Magatia - the town of alchemists - been founded after the Black Mage had disappeared from Ossyria centuries ago. While helping the two warring alchemist factions - the Zenumists and Alcandos - the traveler began investigating the disappearance of an alchemist named Dr. De Lang and obtained his research journal.

From the journal, the traveler learned that Dr. De Lang had stumbled across the Black Mage’s secret laboratory deep beneath Magatia. Despite knowing how evil the Black Mage was, Dr. De Lang had been desperate to find a way to prolong his life so that he could live with his Nymph wife and half-Nymph daughter, both of whom would normally outlive him with their fairy ancestry.

Over time, he had realized that despite the Zenumists and Alcadnos being different, both of them had the same scientific basis in the Black Mage’s research. He had then realized that Magatia itself had its foundations steeped in the Black Mage’s power, as it had been built directly over his laboratory. Nevertheless, he had proceeded with attempting to replicate the Black Mage’s research on extending his lifespan.

Soon after, the traveler learned that Dr. De Lang’s experiments to replicate the Black Mage’s research had resulted in an explosion that had disturbed a Magic Pentagram in the Black Mage’s laboratory. With the Magic Stones of Humility, Honesty, and Trust, the traveler entered the laboratory and used the stones to repair the Magic Pentagram and stop Magatia from facing collapse.

(A/N: The Black Mage’s research into life alchemy was referenced in Xenon’s storyline, which featured Gelimer sending his forces to Magatia in order to obtain the Black Mage’s alchemy research for his Xenoroid project. However, the idea that the Black Mage had been an alchemist became a dropped plot point fairly early into the game after the lore about Transcendents came out, leaving the main story to instead loosely acknowledge the Black Mage’s secret laboratory as the place where the Alliance uncovers important research notes that he had left behind about his plans.)