Fanfic / Zenith Nymph's Adventures

RULE #1: NYMPHS DO NOT WEAR CLOTHES. PERIOD.
—Common saying throughout the series, usually from and regarding Nymphs.

Zenith Nymph's Adventures refers to a series of Terraria fanworks by Great Pikmin Fan. They are not all set in the same world, but they all involve the same general core cast, have a few similar themes, and all involve the Nymph realized as a "Town NPC"/proper character running off of the idea of there being an actual "Lost Girl NPC..." but with her personality based moreso on the Nymph enemy. And as the title says, she is on a quest to create the Zenith. The series in general also involves a large amount of original content, mostly in the form of a huge variety of "Nymph Variants" in addition to the Nymph enemies (here practically renamed "Oreads" to avoid confusion with the entire overall species) and the Dryads. They also loosely involve a Power Trio between the Terrarian, here a man with black hair and a goatee named Vince; the aforementioned Zenith Nymph named Sonata; and Tania, the Last Dryad, although Tania is absent for the first several chapters of the main story.

Fanworks in this Series

• Romancing the Last Dryad: (NSFW, link leads to relatively worksafe first chapter) the main story, a very loose novelization of the game with a lot of original content. Vince, the Terrarian, plans his adventure poorly and winds up far from his home on his first night in the Shores of Sparkling. He thinks hiding in a cave would be safer, only for him to run in to a Nymph/Oread by the name of Sonata. He narrowly avoids getting killed by her when he blurts out that he had the bizarre goal in life of making a Nymph harem, which Sonata conveniently also wanted. Sonata at first decides to have Vince work under her as her wingman, but comes to regret this choice after several events in the cave, especially a very failed attempt to win the love of the most powerful Oread in the world, Lindsey. They proceed to go about living on the island trying to slay giant monsters, also getting involved in the antics of the other Nymphs living on the Shores of Sparkling and other islands. Tania, the title Last Dryad, is slated to join with the main group after the Eye of Cthulhu falls, but this has yet to happen as of October 2023. Tania has however appeared in some chapters in her own B-plot. The story is currently in the process of getting a rewrite to try to improve the pacing and make the story make more sense, and after the ninth original chapter was released on Fanfiction.net as a "bonus," the series was placed on a soft hiatus while it was being rewritten. The rewrite is set to be uploaded chapter-by-chapter on Archive of Our Own here, (Link contains image with mild rear nudity) with Chapter 1 having been revised and the others planned to follow eventually.
• Teasers: The very first part of the series to be published, on the end of 2020. It started as a short story of the Nymph Sonata being purified by the then-unnamed player character some time late in Hardmode, before wandering about in town, taking advantage of her nudity to try to distract other town residents. She does not get the results she hoped for. A second chapter was released going over the general lore of the Zenith Nymph series. The "pilot chapter" is not part of Romancing the Last Dryad's continuity, but the exposition is. A third chapter was released on the anniversary of the 1.2 update (the one that added the Nymph enemy) that makes a pseudo-trailer for The Dangers Above.
• "Nymphposting" Short Comics: A set of MS Paint comics that act as non-canonical goofier shitpost side-stories. There are three "sets" of them:
  • "Octobionicer" Drawings: A daily series Fan made throughout the month of October 2021 posted for an event by Terraria fanartist BionicBandit, most but not all of which are related to the Zenith Nymph series as a whole^{The Relevant Entries} Days 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, and 31 all involve the main crew in some way or are tied to the greater Zenith Nymph lore. Day 4 is technically set within the world, but only involves a Mushroom Pikmin. Days 1 (bio in the comments, not in the image itself), 7, 15, 23, 25, 27, and 30 are bios relevant to True King Slime Attack below. The rest are random comics and drawings of other works. Day 1 (Slime), Day 2 (Tongue), Day 3 (Plant), Day 4 (Fungi), Day 5 (Beer), Day 6 (Squid), Day 7 (Fire), Day 8 (Blade), Day 9 (Crystal), Day 10 (Scar), Day 11 (Fluffy), Day 12 (Cat), Day 13 (Coral), Day 14 (Fish), Day 15 (Monster), Day 16 (Feast), Day 17 (Fruit), Day 18 (Tattoo), Day 19 (Bunny), Day 20 (Phobia), Day 21 (Egg), Day 22 (Meme), Day 23 (Frost), Day 24 (Antlers), Day 25 (Robot), Day 26 (Piercing), Day 27 (Magic), Day 28 (Cavern), Day 29 (Bones), Day 30 (Free Space), Day 31 (Pumpkin).
  • Dryad & Nymph: a quintet (with four published as of January 2023) of longer comic strips mostly about the misadventures of Tania and Sonata. They can be read on Deviantart: "Cold Case Clothes," "Dump Truck," "Quest for Clothes Part 1," "Quest for Clothes Part 2." The big finale, Quest for Clothes Part 3, is upcoming, and after it will be comics that involve the Variants.
  • Weekly Dryad Memes: A series of Reddit posts that started late February 2022, with the goal to have one "meme" Dryad-centric image a week until Terraria's 1.4.4 update. This goal was technically met with Week 31, as the next weekend would not be until after the update, but Fan did a "proper sendoff" the weekend after the update dropped to act as the Grand Finale. Week 1,^note A version without the text or Scenery Censor eater of Souls was eventually posted on Fan's Twitter here. Mildly NSFW, although it's Barbie Doll Anatomy Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12, Week 13, Week 14, Week 15, Week 16, Week 17, Week 18, Week 19, Week 20, Week 21, Week 22, Week 23, Week 24, Week 25, Week 26, Week 27, Week 28, Week 29, Week 30, Week 31, Week 32.
• Nymphlopedia: (NSFW, link leads to worksafe first chapter) A large collection of mini-stories and profiles that go over the Nymph variants, mostly to serve as a guide for anything Romancing won't have space to fully cover. Was meant to be part of the main continuity, but after deciding to change some details by the time Romancing was finished, it wound up being "outdated" as is planned to be rewritten along with expanded upon to include more Nymph Variants. The rewrite began on July of 2022, to be released some time after the last of the "main" Nymphs of Romancing Book 1 are revealed.
• True King Slime's Attack: An upcoming, more worksafe/PG-13 self-contained side-story set in-between Books 4 and 5 (but it may be published much earlier) where Vince, Sonata, and Tania are tasked to go to the island of Fortifica and defeat the six major minions of the actual King Slime, who is significantly more powerful than the canon boss, then finally face the monarch himself. Bios of each of the major "bosses" were already posted through MS Paint drawings. While this will be canon to the Romancing the Last Dryad continuity, it's still meant to be a standalone and neither fanfic will need to be read in order to understand the other.
• The Dangers Above: A potential shorter alternate universe story themed around the "Remix Seed," imagining how it would work as an apocalyptic scenario. It is merely an idea that might not come through, and Fan has not started writing the story itself. However, the third chapter of Teasers is a "faux-trailer" for it.

It has been confirmed that the only Terraria content in it will either be directly from the vanilla game or it would be Great Pikmin Fan's invention; meaning that no content from popular game mods will be included^note unless, Great Pikmin Fan claims, it is directly integrated with the official game, similar to what happened with The Binding of Isaac integrating the Antibirth mod for its Repentance DLC.

"Canonicity" Note: Any information from Nymphlopedia is subject to change in a way that is not confirmed, as Great Pikmin Fan has announced in advance that he intends to write the story. This may result in some aspects mentioned in the other folders not coming to be.

These Fanfics, Comics, or Other Related Content Provide Examples of:

General/World Building

• Adaptation Expansion: Zenith Nymph is considered a "novelization" of a hypothetical massive content mod that does not exist, and rather than just limiting itself to vanilla content. It also elaborates on some aspects of the game's world that are, at most, only suggested.
  • The biggest expansion is that the Nymphs go from being a rare enemy with no confirmed connection to the Dryads except that Dryads, mythologically, were a type of Nymph, to being expanded to have one thousand plus "Variants," Dryads just being one of them. The enemy seen in-game are renamed "Oreads" and are basically the equal and opposite counterpart to the Dryads; despite being rare in the game, they are the most populous type, it's just implied that Nymphs are really good at hiding themselves from others unless they want to be found. There is a Nymph for every biome except Forest and "Normal" Cavern (Dryads and Oreads respectively are "associated" with those biomes, but they have stronger connections to the Jungle and Underworld respectively), and plenty of completely original biomes are created.
  • All the "in a Bottle" items are tools created by Nymphs, along with an unclear number of other items. They had ran around stashing things in chests, explaining why items are conveniently located in treasure chests in the vanilla game.
  • The magma layer is now its own biome, the "Magma Lakes," distinct from the Underworld or Caverns. It's implied that fiery plants similar to ones that can be obtained from magma fishing can be found here, without having to actually go to Hell.
  • The world in general is expanded upon. It is not Earth, and in fact the planet is only referred to as "Terraria" (although "earth" is still used to refer to dirt, rocks, and such), and it is made up of millions of islands of varying sizes. An entire "Terraria world" in game is just one of the millions of "Nature Islands," places uninhabited on the surface that tend to house huge Nymph societies below, and the type seen in-game is just one "type," with there being places such as "dark islands" that house more dangerous biomes with a darker theme. Each island also does not represent a "different world" from the game, but rather each world in-game is a different iteration of the same sort of journey. "Multiple worlds" are not canon, the different islands are their own thing entirely. In addition to the Nature Islands for the Nymphs, races have larger island/continents that act as their sort of "capital," and the largest continent is the heavily infected "Corrupt Mainland."
  • The verse explains that the reason for the Zombies roaming the surface (and Skeletons roaming the caves; how this ties to the Skeletons in the Dungeon is not yet clear) is because the death of the Dryads has caused a shift in life/undead balance, which somehow means Zombies are very common. Nowhere in the vanilla game is any such thing even suggested. Great Pikmin Fan says that should the Oreads have been wiped out instead of the Dryads, the world would look something like the "Not the Bees!" secret world seed, and if both were reduced to just one, the world would crumble up and decay to "nothingness."
  • Canon, at most, only slightly implies that there are more World Evils than the Corruption and Crimson. Zenith Nymph has a full rainbow of them with at least ten additional Evil Biomes. Candyland, a planned but scrapped alternate Hallow, is also added.
  • The Terrarian's story was an Excuse Plot in the game: They're a random hero who dropped off and, from the lore additions and 1.4's credits, is off to save the world from Cthulhu. That's it. In Zenith Nymph, Vince wasn't actually trying to save the world, he just wanted to get away from his old life in the overworked city, and came with his childhood friend Trent (the Guide). It's explained that they both dropped on the island together in a one-way hot air balloon trip that also cost Vince very last copper coin he had, explaining why he starts in the middle with both ends unexplored, with the Guide, and with nothing but the starting copper tools. Other characters are also seen explicitely being dropped off on the island.
• Anachronic Order: While the main story of Romancing the Last Dryad is a typical chronological tale (barring flashbacks), plenty of the side content is not, especially the joke comics (with the exception of the Dryad & Nymph quintet).
  • The short stories of Nymphlopedia take place at different points along Romancing the Last Dryad, although the Oread chapter's story is framed as the first, taking place on the night Vince and Sonata first met. The chapters are split by groups of 25 as well, and each group of 25 is always set after the last, meaning Entries 26-50 are after 1-25, 51-75 are after both, and so on. The twenty-fifth is also always the latest of each group, acting as the "transition" to the next part so to speak as the gang gets ready to fight the next major boss (Wall of Flesh, Plantera, Moon Lord, and Lindsey). The entries themselves are written after the last short story took place, with the "bonus" at the end of the Dryad/Conclusion chapter being the big finale in both text and chronologically. The actual first short story chronologically is the Dryad chapter, as it's really set at least a hundred years in the past, detailing an attack Lindsey launched on their Jungle home. The Ashen Nymph short story is the last of the Variant-focused ones chronologically, while the epilogue celebration after all entries are written is the very last part of Nymphlopedia both chronologically and in terms of what's actually written.
  • Both the Octobionier comics and the Weekly Dryad Memes are just random snapshots in time of the lives of the Terraria characters as they are in this verse, some even being set in alternate continuities entirely. The final Octobionicer comic is chrnologically at the very end, but otherwise one comic may be set Pre-Hardmode while another will be in late Hardmode. In the Octobionicer comics, a general way to tell when they're set is by the state of Tania's dress.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: The naked characters are usually drawn without nipples or genitals, with one noteworthy exception being an edit Fan himself made to the Octobionicer Day 22 drawing that gave both Sonata and Tania nipples just for the hell of it, which is... underwhelming, due to the art style. Which was also part of the point. Asses on the other hand are drawn, fully and uncensored, and it's usually Sonata and/or Tania whose butts are visible.
• Bed Full of Women: According to Chapter 4 of Romancing, this (as well as mixed-gender examples and, while rare thanks to the 99:1 gender ratio, gender-inverted examples) is the default way Nymph harems sleep, with all of them being in bed together, and usually in a pile. The bonuses of Nymphlopedia show that the Naked Empire will end up sleeping like this as well.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Two out of three of the main heroes are rather self-centered and horny, and the third one has her signs of being Not So Above It All. The major Human nation is an overworked, dystopian, capitalist hellhole overran with garbage, disease, and pollution where Vince and Iris at least would rather risk their lives on islands full of monsters and pissed off Nymphs than have to work another day there. When Impetua asks if Vince would rather lose his limbs and be stuck in a torture chamber or go back to the Human Capital, Vince bluntly says he'd take the former fate. The Nymph Variants are hair-trigger, generally assholes, and are unreasonably hostile towards the people who haven't done the things that made them mad. The Dryad society is implied to be corrupt to some degree and heavily racist towards other Nymph Variants. Yet most of these groups/nations still have their positive qualities, especially the Main Trio. Lindsey, on the other hand, has no positive traits to speak of at all.
• Cast Herd: The series will have over one hundred recurring characters at the absolute minimum^note Nymphlopedia covers at least 100 Nymph Variants, and one of each will be recruited as an ally of the "Naked Empire" in Romancing proper, where she will be a recurring character after that. In Nymphlopedia, the individual Nymph Variants are mostly one-offs only seen in their main chapter, although some make cameos in other chapters. They are generally split between the main trio (Vince, Sonata, Tania), town NPCs (Trent, Iris, Madeline, Mollie), "Naked Empire" army (Igniss, Fridginy, Impetua), sapient monsters/enemies (King Flinx, Dave, Lindsey), and the occasional side character who is neither an enemy nor a resident in either Vince's homes or Sonata's "Naked Empire" (such as the Cold Temple Guard). Of the town residents, the women have a higher tendancy to actively go on adventures with the main leads than the men, who more typically stay around the town. Of the Nymphs, they are conveniently divided in to overall groups of twenty-five mostly determined by the saturation and lightness of their color (the "main Nymphs" of Book 1 are all "Saturated," and there are also "Dark," "Light," and "Dull" groups), and they may be further divided in to smaller Nymph groups. The Snow and Sand Gang in particular is seventeen out of those twenty-five Saturated Nymphs, and they are further split in to three: Fridginy's Snow Group, Harsahne's Sand Group, and General Impetua by herself leading both of them.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • The Evil Biomes all form a spectrum, with ones on opposite sides being "foils" to each other in some way. The Error is associated with pink, the Crimson red, the Fury orange, Dust yellow, Plague lime, Nest green, Wilds teal, Cobalt cyan, Sorrow sky blue, Mist blue, Corruption purple, and the Battlefield violet.
  • All Nymph Variants have a main associated color scheme except Oreads, which could generally be any color anywhere. Of these, the Nymph Variants with certain saturation/lightness tend to stick together in spectrums. The Shores of Sparkling, for example, has a majority of "Saturated" Nymphs. "Within" these saturation/lightness groups is a spectrum of twenty-four colors, even throughtout the RGB color wheel, and an "other" color (usually grayscale — black, white, gray — but in at least one case, a double half-blue half-yellow theme).
• Color Contrast:
  • All of the Evil Biomes can be arranged in a(n RGB) color wheel where each opposing pair is a symbolic "foil" to one-another in some way. It reaches the point where it is very likely that any two opposing biomes would try to "fight each other" in some way:
    • Error and Wilds (pink and teal): The Error is one of the most recent Evil Biomes, an area with a heavy emphasis on technology and wants to take over the natural world; while the Wilds are one of the oldest Evil Biomes, an area with a heavy emphasis on nature and detests technology and sapient races.
    • Crimson and Cobalt (red and cyan): The former is a Hive Mind fleshy eldritch horror trying to consume the world to make it all one, the latter is a Mind Hive result of a Human who accidentally screwed up and turned himself in to a shiny metalic horror that wanted to save the world at first, but went mad. Both also have the bonus of being the only known Infectuous Biomes to be named after colors.
    • Fury and Sorrow (orange and sky blue): The former pumps emotion in to people and fills them with hate while also having a loose fire theme, the latter drains emotional energy out of people and fills them with despair while also having a loose water theme (not as strong as the Mist's water theme).
    • Dust and Mist (yellow and blue): They are outright speculated in-universe to be connected to each other and may have some "natural" origins to them. They are based on two opposing extremes, dryness and wetness.
    • Plague and Corruption (lime and purple): The Plague was formed from people praying to the gods to help the land and the gods responding by siccing an ultra-strict disease land that only targets the evil... but has such a broad definition of who is evil that everybody more-or-less is a target. Meanwhile, the Corruption was formed from the sins of people, and very well seems to be an independant thing.
    • Nest and Battlefield (green and violet): The Nest is the result of a bunch of interdimensional, small "bugs" teaming up together and creating their own fortress, the latter is the result of a smaller amount of "Earth-born," huge beings trying to find a place so that they could kill each other.
  • While Oreads have no set in stone color scheme and could look any color, their magic is generally associated with purple, and this is the color of Sonata's magic. Dryads are associated with lime, on the opposite end of the scale. The two races are essentially "opposites" of one-another.
• Death World: The Nature Islands are considered this even by the Nymphs that live deep within them, let alone any outsiders who want to try to make a new living there. The Forests and Ocean shores are generally considered plesant places, but everywhere else is a death trap to people with no experience. After the near-extinction of the Dryads, undead have started roaming the lands, with hungry Zombies stalking the surface and the more powerful Skeletons deeper in the ground. Nearly every island has a large batch of an Evil Biome somewhere on it, not only loaded with hostile monsters, but even the Nymphs themselves dare not go there for risk of petrification. Cultures are generally pretty warrior-like. Local regions include places such as a highly electrified area with pools of what is referred to as "liquid volt," a watery substance that zaps people to death; foggy areas with even stronger ties to ghosts and other undead than the norm; and even less-deadly but still unpleasant places such as areas swarming with thorns, such as the biome of Spivva's Variant. Humans are the most popular migrant to the Nature Islands, because in their opinion, their "mainland" is even worse, overworking them to such an insane degree that they consider going to a deadly place and dealing with the Nymphs to be an improvement.
• Decon-Recon Switch: Of the Cute Monster Girl harem subgenre in general. The series, especially Romancing the Last Dryad, goes to great lengths to remind the readers that the Nymphs are monstrous, some of whom eat people, and even the "friendly" ones are far from cute and harmless. Vince, Tania, and to a lesser extent Sonata are regularly antagonized by them (Vince and Tania because most Nymph types had a bad history with Humans and especially Dryads; Sonata because they also tend to distrust Oreads due to the massive group of them allied with Lindsey) and have to be cautious in order to stay safe. On the "Recon" side, most of the Nymphs are still presented as being reasonable and may occasionally come around, several being genuinely heroic overall. Sonata's transition from cave-dwelling creepy monster to a legitimate hero is one of the major arcs fo Romancing.
• Doomed by Canon:
  • The series makes it crystal clear that Trent the Guide is going to have to die before Hardmode begins, and that his death will stick. (He is not even replaced — everything set from Hardmode onwards doesn't even have a Guide at all.) Nymphlopedia even dives in to a bit of angst on Vince's part about it, since Vince and Trent were childhood friends. Week 29 of the Weekly Dryad Memes, which has an endgame Sonata crafting the Zenith, outright shows his ghost, another confirmation that his death will be permanent.
  • Canon bosses are still bosses and still fought. Great Pikmin Fan confirmed that High-Heel–Face Turn is unlikely aside from the Nymph enemy (Sonata), and even bosses like the Empress of Light will most likely die in the events of the story. It is confirmed on Fan's profile that the Empress will definitely be killed at some point.
• Doorstopper: Books made by or with the aide of Tania tend to be this.
  • The title Nymphlopedia, in universe, is a giant book; the fic story is apparently an abridged version leaving out "boring" technical data and illustrations and it's already over 100,000 words in length. The few times it's seen in the shitpost comics, it's exceptionally thick.
  • Tania's plan for what to do with the Sun being destroyed in The Dangers Above takes the form of a giant book that the trailer describes is larger than she is tall. When Sonata complains about the length, Tania tells her that this is the shortened version, specifically for Sonata.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: A lot from Teasers and to a lesser extent a bit of the early comics don't match up with the rest of the series, especially when Romancing proper came out and acted as the true "base" from which the future installments were supposed to be derived from:
  • Vince was originally a Featureless Protagonist (aside from being a man) and was unnamed, his handful of early appearances in "extra" images just had him completely obscured by Shroomite or Vortex Armor. It wasn't until Nymphlopedia that he stopped basically being treated as a Hero of Another Story whose adventures from the canon game were just background things going on while the focus was on the NPCs and he became equal to said NPCs.
  • The center of Tania's flower used to be a darker pink. It would later become orange, making it resemble the flowers of Pikmin more. Tania also "wore" a very bizarre set of vines around her whole body that left her breasts exposed, but also "just happened" to have one vine go through her legs and cover her crotch. While Tania stays topless and revealing, her costumes in the series proper are much more practical than that, ranging from a full skirt of large leaves, to a long loincloth, to a vine bikini bottom/thong. She never just has a vine up against her genitals like that, aside from a brief period in Weekly Dryad Memes 13-15. Chapter 7 of Romancing finally gives Tania's definitive "starting outfit" as a skirt of pink petals, which has not appeared at all prior. (The closest was the skirt of large leaves seen in some of the MS Paint shitpost comics.)
  • The whole plot of the "pilot chapter" of Teasers is basically just Sonata going around naked and flaunting herself, and about half of the town being shocked. In Romancing the Last Dryad, Nymphs running around naked completely becomes an Unusually Uninteresting Sight; Vince is about the only character who has anything to say at all about public nudity, and even then, it's only when it's done by Non-Nymphs like Iris, which Iris notes is a dumb double standard. In general the attitude towards nudity becomes extremely relaxed shortly after. In fact, it's a Running Gag in the background of the second Dryad & Nymph comic that Nigel is able to very easily persuade anybody he talks to in to running around naked, until Stephano passes out (for an unrelated reason), comes to, and suddenly sees that everybody is naked around him, which he doesn't even care about — it's Tania who asks. In Romancing, Iris also takes to going around naked aside from a bra and Vince is the only one really bothered by it, and he gets used to it soon.
  • Teasers itself went with the idea of the Nymph enemy becoming a friendly Lost Girl NPC by hitting her with Purification Powder, and that her monstrous form was simply the result of a curse that the Powder broke, with the twist being that she's still not Human, still doesn't want clothes, and that she has a bit of a brash and tomboyish personality. In all other installments this disappears, instead Sonata genuinely was a dangerous monster that wasn't cursed (she simply never killed anybody), and her becoming a town resident was the result of a character-based Heel–Face Turn rather than having anything thrown at her.
  • Characters did not have names in the first few comics, because Fan was unsure if he wanted them to have the same names as their counterparts in the prose stories, especially Sonata as that was a placeholder at first. He settled on making that the case, including Sonata's.
  • This early Paint.net drawing of Sonata that pre-dates the proper Nymphposting comics uses Scenery Censor (three of the swords from the Zenith obscure her nipples and crotch, although she was drawn with nothing there initially) instead of the Barbie Doll Anatomy of the proper comics. For a while, the only other comic to use convenient object placement was the first of the r/terraria Weekly Dryad Memes, which was generally because it's a gag, and since it's meant to mimic the sort of ads that would probably rely more on a visual cover up trick should it use a topless character than simply drawing her without nipples. Starting with Weekly Dryad Meme 16 when Fan ran out of ideas for Tania's increasingly skimpy outfits, she goes naked and has a Scenery Censor on her groin (but only her groin) at least once per comic.
  • Early drawings of Sonata suggested that the "red marks" on her really are blood, as they seem to be in the canon Nymph's sprite. This is especially evident in the closeup of her face in "Cold Case Clothes," where she outright appears to have a "trail" of blood dripping from her mouth when she transforms, even though this would not make much sense given that she would have no reason to "still" have blood covered on her. Later on it's just patches of her skin that are colored reddish-brown.
  • Sonata is seen as cold in a blizzard in the Snow biome (Teasers) or even just the Snow biome in general ("Cold Case Clothes," which is how the entire thing is kicked off). Tania is said to be able to use some temperature regulation, but it's implied to be a spell she's actively managing (and needs to be learned) rather than a passive ability. In Romancing the Last Dryad, it would later be established that Nymphs do not mind the cold by default even during blizzards, let alone the Snow biome just by itself. It's a major plot element there that Sonata and her fellow Nymph company can walk through it just fine, while Vince is forced to set up shelter with fellow Humans Iris and Madeline because the blizzard caught them off guard. Even back in the ambiguously-canon pre-rewrite Nymphlopedia, the Glacier Nymph chapter has both Sonata and Tania in the middle of a harsh snowstorm in the South Pole and neither mind, although Sonata's wording implied that she may have chugged a Warmth Potion beforehand.
  • Teasers lacked the "Rule #1: Nymphs do not wear clothes. Period." Running Gag entirely. When "Vince" outright asks Sonata if she wants to put something on, she simply says that she's fine, instead of citing the rule. Her not citing it when Tania tells her to put something on could be chalked up to her being too shocked to say anything, but "Vince"/the Terrarian asking her would have been a reasonable opportunity for her to say it.
  • True King Slime's bio in the Octobionicer set is the only one without a proper profile. Instead of being a part of the image itself, the usual Vince/Sonata/Tania comment section is posted in the comments of the Reddit post, and he lacks the "general description" with the location, Three Quick Facts, and so on.
  • The opening chapter of Nymphlopedia has Sonata remark that she's not sure if Vince counts as "Human" after using Life Crystals and Life Fruit. In Romancing proper, it's apparently really common for anybody to take a lot of Life Crystals, to the point where it shouldn't be as unusual for Sonata to remark.
  • A deliberate, justified instance is that the first few chapters of Romancing only contain comments from Vince and Sonata. Since Tania has yet to join the group, her words won't be added until after, including her comments on the subjects of earlier chapters. Nymphlopedia, mostly because the comments are part of the in-universe encyclopedia written after the events of all the mini-stories on each Nymph type, does not have this problem and instead Tania comments even before her proper debut.
  • The first version of Nymphlopedia mentions that only Oreads and Dryads among the Nymph Variants are capable of changing their skin tones. As of Chapter 6 of Romancing, this is no longer the case, as Impetua (an Energy Forest Nymph, one of the "in-between" Variants) offhandedly mentions that she and Arborea (Deep Woods Nymph) have Human Forms, and Impetua even uses it outright.
• Eldritch Location: In addition to the Corruption, Crimson, and Hallow of canon, the Zenith Nymph lore adds at least eleven more such biomes — ten Evil and one "Good" — with the implication being that there are even more. Going over the ones covered in the second chapter of Teasers:
  • The Error is a cybernetic/grey goo-esque scenario where an AI leading a band of nanobots was tasked to try to automatically purify or protect the land, but this backfired and now they're about infecting it for their own benefit.
  • The Fury is essentially a Hate Plague, visually it's themed around fire and rage. It has the power to put anger in to people who are in it.
  • The Dust is a mysterious "dry world" full of, well, dust, drought, and is generally like an exaggerated Desert that can infect any biome. Even being under water feels like breathing through air, and being in air in this biome is exceptionally dehydrating.
  • The Plague is some unknown force being a Jackass Genie — answering prayers to bring some light by creating a biome themed on disease that infects any "sinners," but it's built on such high standards that anybody is infected by it. Noteably, it's classed as an Evil Biome despite having a minor "holy" or "light" theme to it, and this isn't just a terminology of how dangerous it is — it has Souls of Night and is generally aligned with the "darkness."
  • The Nest is the result of several interdimensional "bugs" turning the land around them in to, well, a creepy nest for their massive swarm.
  • The Wilds are a twisted form of Gaia's Vengeance, except not as even the forces of Gaia themselves, the Nymphs, oppose it and consider it evil. Its forces are anti-technology and it sends powerful beasts on it. The glimpse of it provided in "Quest for Clothes Part 2" shows a giant snake with red eyes.
  • The Cobalt is a warrior who tried to make himself more powerful to fend off the evils of the world, but this backfired, making him multiply in a way that broke his mind as he split across the world, resulting in a biome of his will made of cyan-colored metal that has a middle ages-esque theme to it.
  • The Sorrow is a strange "sadness"-themed infection that drives the people in it to despair and lose energy, unless they have a strong will.
  • The Mist is an exceptionally "wet" biome where people feel like they're drowning in the air, and drowning harder while underwater — even fish drown underneath. Like the Dust, it has among the most mysterious origins, and it and the Dust are the closest of them to possibly just being bizarre "natural" biomes, although neither has a Nymph Variant associated with it.
  • The Battlefield is a terraformed wasteland for giant monsters that were sealed within the earth to fight each other. The glimpse of it in "Quest for Clothes 2" shows a gigantic flower with teeth.
  • The sole new "good" Biome covered in Teasers Chapter 2 is Candyland, a candy-themed world based on a scrapped alternate Hallow idea for the vanilla game. It apparently has a strong theme of explosions.
  • Even some of the "Natural" Biomes edge towards this, but none more than the Disarray Bizarros, RandomLand-inspired regions where the regular rules of the universe do not apply. It is "scientifically" explained, but that explanation boils down to "in these places, the stone here makes space and itself unstable. Also it can create things based on your mind, which leads to faces appearing on everything."
• Fantastic Racism: The world of Terraria as portrayed here is fairly chaotic with races being against one-another. The most evident is the Dryads and other Nymph Variants; the Dryads of old blamed the Nymphs for bringing Cthulhu to the world, so while Cthulhu was under a "temporary weaker seal," four of their strongest mages banished all Nymph Variants underground, with a powerful seal. The Nymphs obviously did not take this well, and as seen in the present, plenty of them still hate the Dryads and resent Tania for the sealing. The Nymph Variants also see Humans as land-stealing assholes who couldn't properly use their own resources and are now taking from the Nymphs, and to a lesser extent they distrust Oreads because of their general alliance with Lindsey. Finally, there's the Elves, who are hated by everybody, and/because the Elves see themselves as superior to all the other races and are snooty to boot. Unlike the other relationships and conflicts, the over-the-top hatred of Elves is played for laughs.
• Feminist Fantasy: While there is a Token Human male lead, Vince, he's not the main character, and is roughly equals with if not less important and less active than Tania or Sonata depending on the story.^note Vince does not appear in the Dryad & Nymph comics and is just a nameless small cameo at the beginning of Teasers. The Weekly Dryad Memes are explicitely about Tania as the center character, and the series as a whole is named after Sonata. The series overall is based on a woman proud of her sexuality, Sonata, in her quest to both become a powerful hero and ultimately grow her relationship with Tania. Women in power are also seen all the time and, population imbalance aside, Nymph societies appear to be geder and sexuality equal. It's a "harem story," but none of the love interests are strictly defined by their relationships with any of the main three, instead having their own stories and blurbs of character. Neither Tania nor Sonata are ever a Damsel in Distress or forced in a real humiliating, depowering situation; they are especially not forced in to eye candy outfits they would otherwise not wear, which is part of a Running Gag with Darnell trying (and failing) to get Tania in a maid costume, and Sonata flat-out refusing to wear any clothes at all. Sonata's relationship with Tania is also treated as seriously as either's with Vince. As the Big Bad and most Arc Villains are also female, it means the story is almost entirely driven by women, and even Vince is mostly portrayed as being strung along with the events as he is a victim of Villains Act, Heroes React.
• Fictional Colour: Dual Nymphs are capable of making people see "bluish yellow" and even appear to be that color. By default, they are half-blue and half-yellow in their true forms, meaning they themselves avert this trope. In a more realistic example of the trope, they are simply using psychic projection to make people see blue-yellow, since even Nymphs appear to be unable to, by default, generate actual light that the mind detects as alien hues. Tania mentions in her comments in the Nymphlopedia chapter on them that it is possible to simulate this for some people by crossing one's eyes with a special image, which is a real thing.
• Gender Is No Object:
  • The fic portrays the game's "NPC Towns" like this, at least in the case of what Vince has set up. Men and women both venture out to Nature Islands to start new lives away from their capitals, they also have roles in combat^note While most of the game's NPCs prefer to stay in their place and work as merchants or the like, some such as Iris and Mollie are all-but Adventurers along with Vince and go along with his journeys some times, they just have jobs that come first. Co-ed baths are also the norm. It is not confirmed if this also applies to the home Human Capital or if it's just a Nature Island society thing, or even just a "Vince's Nature Island town" thing.
  • Aside from Sonata remarking that she could also use a woman's opinion as a second wingman in the first chapter of Romancing, Nymphs do not seem to have any distinction with gender at all and do not split roles. Nymphs can also reproduce homosexually or asexually, so even relationships/reproduction is not taken in to account. Most Nymphs seen in power are women seemingly only because most Nymphs out there in general are women.
• Harem Genre: It's technically a poly/harem story, especially Romancing and Nymphlopedia (the comics only imply a poly relationship between Vince, Sonata, and Tania), but it takes liberties with the basic premise of "multiple lovers." The biggest being that rather than Vince acting as the de-facto "center" with the women all exclusively pinning after him, there are three main leads acting as the "center," Vince himself, Sonata, and later Tania. The three also end up dating each other. Rather than a Love Dodecahedron, they are in an open polyamorous relationship, and casual sex between them and involving them and other people is common. In Romancing proper, the harem started with Nymphs, but Iris and Mollie would later join in.
• Hotter and Sexier: Both to its source material and to Fan's other fanworks (it's about on par with his average original fiction). The Zenith Nymph series isn't a full-blown pornfic, but it still does not shy away from sexual situations or even characters having sex, if not described in too much detail. Nymphlopedia is also meant to be this to Romancing the Last Dryad, as the latter is more story-focussed while the former is all about the nude flirty beings.
• Lady Land: Nymphs have a 99:1 female:male ratio, Gender Rarity Value is averted, and sexism seems to be near-nonexistant among them; Nymph societies are matriarchal as a result to the point where female and mixed-gender terms are one in of the same for them. Such as how "Nymph" can refer to the race as a whole or just the women, while "Satyr" specifically refers to male Nymphs only.
• No Antagonist: Romancing the Last Dryad is the only published story as of January 2023 that has a definitive Big Bad that will be fought directly and acts as the main villain. True King Slime's Attack and The Dangers Above will be joining it. The other installments as of then have, at most, one of the villains being planned to be fought offscreen but never in the proper story/comic, making them Villains of Another Story at best.
  • Teasers hints at Vince getting ready to fight the endgame, but the actual main story is just Sonata going around flaunting her body in front of everybody, without anybody antagonizing her.
  • The comics, except for the ones going over the True King Slime bosses, are just goofy side-stories that never have actual fighting going on. The closest is Darnell (and Stephano to a lesser extent) coming up with ridiculous schemes to get Tania in to a maid outfit, but even then Tania makes it very clear that he will in no way just "trick" her in to wearing it.
  • Nymphlopedia is almost entirely just the Main Trio getting in to random shenanigans with Nymphs, some even being friendly from the get-go, some of them having their stories focussed on after the Trio befriends them. The finales of the "parts" involve the gang preparing to fight the Wall of Flesh, Plantera, Moon Lord, and Lindsey respectively, but the former three are dealt with offscreen and the story ends before the latter is taken care of. Bizarre characters like Dave may show up to try thwarting them, but this is just glossed over and Dave himself is not regarded as a remotely serious threat. Subverted in the Dryad chapter, which has Lindsey make her only in-person appearance in that story, serving as the definite villain of that.
• Oh, My Gods!: Nymphs of almost all kinds shout out Pan's name in vain in place of a swear. The biggest known exceptions are the Dryads, who call out Gaia instead. Humans say "God" and even "Jesus" on a few occasions, implying Christianity exists in some form in the Terraria world. Wood Elves are implied to worship some sort of tree deity, but what they call it is inconsistent ("True Tree," "Order of the Tree," etc).
• Polyamory: Vince, Tania, and Sonata at the very least are in a three-way relationship starting at some point in the timeline, something Nymphlopedia makes explicit, and a few of the comics heavily imply (the Octobionicer comics saying that they live together, although only Tania and Sonata are showing romantically involved, at the very end at that). They are also sexually involved with the "main" Nymphs of the "Naked Empire," but mostly see each other as friends with benefits, with Vince even telling Fulgra outright in the fifth chapter of Romancing that he considers her a stranger after they had sex.
• Rotating Protagonist: According to Fan, the intent is that neither Vince, nor Sonata, nor Tania is "the" main character, even though the series as a whole is named after Sonata, the main story is named after Tania, and said main story begins from Vince's point of view. All three of them are supposed to have about equal importance to the story and get about equal screentime, Tania's later introductions and Vince being absent in the Dryad & Nymph comics aside.
• Rule #1: It's a Running Gag that the first rule about Nymphs is that they do not wear clothes, and the only rule (or at least universally recognized one). This "rule" is not a law amongst them (some Nymphs can and do clothe themselves but they are by far in the minority) but rather a warning directed towards outsiders about their society — most of them are naked and proud of it, and attempting to clothe them will end in even more disaster than most other forms of antagonism. The previous Elf King in Romancing can attest to this when he taunts them with dressing them up as maids and Impetua immediately slices his legs off. Downplayed in that this has rarely been used more often as a phrase of pride from them rather than an actual warning or procedure.
• Running Gag:
  • Sonata will take any chance she can get to say "Rule #1: Nymphs do not wear clothes. Period." It's another gag that there is no (universal) "Rule #2." Chapter 6 of Romancing confirms that this is a general Nymph thing, and not just a Sonata thing, when Impetua gets a massive crowd to cheer it during a speech.
  • Vince always builds box houses, which was the Boring, but Practical design in the canon game. Every "Terrarian-made house" shown in the comics is rectangular. In Romancing, Impetua lampshades that their design is realistically impractical, as a lack of sloped roofs at least mean problems with rain accumilation.
• Serious Business: Being naked is this to the Nymphs. While Sonata constantly belts out "Rule #1, Nymphs do not wear clothes, period," it's implied that that's not just a Sonata thing, or even an Oread thing, but a Nymph thing overall. The Dryads, as part of them "breaking off" from the other Nymphs, decided to cover themselves from the waist down — this is seen as a huge middle finger to the rest of Nymphkind and a symbol of allying with the Humans and other Non-Nymphs. According to the shitpost comics, Sonata really doesn't like the idea of Tania putting on any more clothes and explodes with rage after a poorly-thought out attempt by Stefano and Darnell to try to force Tania in to a maid dress. The closest exceptions are "wearing" certain "elements" or plant mass around the arms and legs to aide in drawing their powers, and a select very few of them (such as Diltica) have "accessories..." that don't cover them in any way at all, such as a single completely transparent cloth. Chronologically, Tania wears less and less as the story goes on, which is meant to be a serious symbol of how she gets closer to the Nymphs and bonds more with Sonata.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Pikmin:
    • Nymphlopedia is based loosely off of and even named after the Piklopedia. It, and the main chapters themselves, also include notes from the main characters. Just like Olimar, Tania's begins with the name, "scientific name," and family name if it's a species or even an individual.
    • The first three Nymph recruits Sonata gets are a red "fire" Nymph, a yellow "electricity" Nymph, and a blue "water" Nymph, just as the Red, Yellow, and Blue Pikmin are the first types in the series (and the only types back in the first game, not counting Mushroom Pikmin).
    • The Dryad's flower is consistently drawn to resemble a Pikmin flower: Five petals, with a yellow (or orange in this case) center.
    • Sonata's comments in the beginning of Nymphlopedia suggest that Nymphs are "born" in the same manner Pikmin are, they are planted in the ground as seed forms, an extention grows out of the ground, and they are pulled out by the extention. Unlike Pikmin, the extention soon goes away.
    • Power Nymphs are confirmed in the closing notes of their Nymphlopedia chapter to be inspired by Purple Pikmin, and the same note also confirms the Pikmin-Nymph similarities, to the point where it's a gag to keep the reader wondering if Pikmin actually exist in the Zenith Nymph world and if they are at all related to Nymphs.
    • Each of the heads of the Ultimate Hydra of Death and Destruction is based on the "main" seven types of Pikmin: A red fiery one, a yellow electric one, a blue watery one, a gray "crystal/rock" one, a white poison one, a pink one with wind (corresponding to Winged Pikmin), and a purple one with "pretty kickass hair," as Purple Pikmin are the only type with "hairs."
  • The MS Paint sketch of Pants has a pattern made to resemble Uboa, and in the "top view" Delirium and the pink face from the Fly of Despair can be spotted. Pants himself is also explicitely said to be inspired by Scissors and the description paraphrases what Scissors says at the beginning of the fight — Pants "WILL annihilate you."
  • When Vince and Sonata first meet in Romancing, Sonata offers a handshake. The narrative describes that Vince is reluctant to shake her hand, as if it would mean she could jump in to his body if he accepted it.
• Take That!:
  • Great Pikmin Fan hates Adaptational Modesty or any of the related tropes, and makes it clear that his stories will not be giving anybody that treatment, no matter who complains, in-universe or out-universe. Sonata brings up that "Nymphs do not wear clothes, period" any chance she gets and asking a Nymph to put on clothes is a bad idea — not only does that piss them off, but they outnumber most other races and are stronger than them to boot, so the one asking to put on clothes is in the minority. Tania does start more modest than the game's Dryad — from the waist down. From the waist up, she's always topless. As a nudist, he also hates it when a Shameless Fanservice Girl character "develops modesty" as a sign of Character Development or a symbol of getting closer to humanity. So Sonata is confirmed to stay naked throughout the entire series, while Tania wears less the closer she gets to Vince and Sonata.
  • The difference between how Sonata treats her "harem" and how Lindsey does is mocking the idea of a glorified "dominating" slavery-based fantasy. Sonata's harem is really more of just a free love, friendly poly group that values consent. Lindsey is the more abusive "my girlfriends are my slaves," and she's not fetishized or glorified at all — Lindsey is a serious villain feared by all and generally played for horror. Romancing also attacks "pickup artists," with one of the earlier jokes being that as terrible as Sonata was by the beginning, she refuses to stoop to the level of one.
  • The "Quest for Clothes" comics attacks maid-themed fanservice. Darnell suggests that, to the artist event, Tania should wear a maid outfit. Tania immediately shoots that down with a flat "No," and Sonata a puzzled "The fuck?" In Part 2, Darnell and Stephano buy one from the Planetera Shop, taking advantage of the fact that Tania and Sonata were pre-occupied with purifying Vince's Evil Biome farming area. Tania's reaction to this is horror, and Sonata goes completely berserk, chainsawing the dress and running over in the limited time she has to get the clothes herself. It's not much of a coincidence out-universe that in Romancing's sixth chapter, the last thing the Elf King says before Impetua hacks off his legs is that he thinks she'd look better in a maid costume than she would look naked, making her message on that very clear.
  • The first Weekly Dryad Meme mocks Sex Sells ads for mobile/browser games. It's a re-creation of the "We are fucking under attack!" meme, but it has the Dryad uncharacteristically trying to "strike a sexy pose" while the area around her is Corrupt, ignoring the Eater of Souls nibbling at her or the small Eater of Worlds going right in front of her.
  • The stories take any chance they can to mock Double Standards. The narrative itself in Romancing says that it would be stupid if Iris and Sonata tag-teamed against Vince just because he is a man and they're women, and in fact, Chapter 6 implies that Iris does not get along with Sonata very well and has issues trusting her. Slut-Shaming and the general idea of harem love interests "only" being interested in the main lead are both brushed off, with Iris sleeping with Hiram, Sonata with various Nymphs, the Snow and Sand Gang with each other, Arborea and Impetua having been a married couple in the past, and none of this is treated as anything wrong at all.
  • One of the later Octobionicer comics has Peter Griffin getting killed by Sans specifically for his treatment of Meg. While the whole thing is in Stylistic Suck, it's clear that Fan genuinely doesn't like the show in general or the man specifically. Both of the Family Guy-centric entries are intentionally even crappier than the rest of them to highlight the low respect the author gives to the show.
  • Nymphlopedia's Radiant Nymph Bonus has Sonata, in shock of finding out that Tania has never seen porn despite being long-lived, say that she thought the trope of a virgin that is also Really 700 Years Old was just "a creepy fantasy of control freaks." This is a dig at other erotic fantasies having their monster characters still be virgins despite being extremely long-lived even if it would not make sense in order to appeal to purity culture. Sure enough, the Zenith Nymph series lacks this — none of the main Nymphs (all 100, with Tania and Sonata being 500) are virgins and have slept with people other than the protagonist. Even Tania herself during that scene has had sex, she just had not specifically watched an explicit movie.
• World Half Full: The series portrays the world of Terraria as not the best place to live in initially — the Human capital is such an overworked, polluted hellhole that has people leaving in drove preferring to take risks on islands loaded with hostile monsters. Goblins declare war at the swing of a cloth, Elves are just all-around assholes, and the "Nature Islands" in question have an array of undead and other monsters even before dealing with pissed off Nymphs who think the other races betrayed them to side with the Dryads. All of this is without considering the consuming Evil Biomes, which tend to be at least in one patch on each island, growing with even worse monsters of their own. However, the heroes end up eventually taking steps and working with other people to reduce these problems. Giant monsters are slain and wars are ended, and it's suggested from the endgame-level content in Nymphlopedia and the various comics that Vince, Sonata, and Tania eventually end up making a nice home out of Sun Island.

Romancing the Last Dryad

• Adaptation Deviation:
  • The gang first butts heads with the Deep Woods, with Impetua coming after. In the 2021 version, they would take those threats on the other way around.
  • In the 2021 version, Igniss, Fulgra, and Aquafla all knew each other prior and moved in together at the same time, the three all taking the same ad. In the 2023 rewrite, they didn't know each other prior to arriving at Sonata's homes, and them living there is how they meet to begin with.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Igniss, Fulgra, and Aquafla get their own arc centric around them before heading off to meet the Snow and Sand Gang, extending the very early parts of the story. Vince's going around the caves and getting equipment to become stronger also happens here, rather than just before fighting Impetua as it did in the old version.
  • The Deep Woods forces have three other Deep Wood Nymphs serving the Grand Elder Wood and fighting besides her, forming a Quirky Miniboss Squad. In the 2021 version up to its last chapter, the Grand Elder Wood only had Arborea as an major follower of hers, while this rewrite expands them in to a team of five villains.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Arborea was originally introduced in a flashback that happened towards the end of the second arc of the first version of the story, and makes her proper appearance in the next arc. In the 2023 rewrite, she and the Grand Elder Wood appear as early as Chapter 3, before Impetua, Fridginy, or Harsahne are introduced, and barely right after the RYB Trio.
• Adaptational Heroism: Sonata was a dangerous threat in the pre-rewrite version, trying to eat Vince and only sparing him because she wanted to use him as a wingman. She opperated far more with Blue-and-Orange Morality, where killing and eating people was apparently a commonplace thing on the Nature Islands. It takes seeing Vince and Iris willing to sacrifice themselves or try to fight Sonata off together that she feels guilt about it and later becomes The Atoner and a more legitimate hero. In the rewrite, Sonata's friendly right off the bat, and doesn't want to kill and eat Vince, although she is willing to kill those that attack her and eat people who have died in self-defense or by accident. Sonata and Vince still fight, but this was from a misunderstanding where Vince thought Sonata showing off her Copper Shortsword was her trying to attack him. When this is cleared up, Sonata realizes her mistake and apologizes.
• Agony of the Feet: Iris stabs Nyxza's lime-haired minion at the base of the foot to help turn the tide of their battle in Chapter 2.
• Ascended Extra: In the original 2021 version, Igniss, Fulgra, and Aquafla were mainly just there to be "Sonata's first Nymph Variant companions," and were soon overshadowed in the same arc that introduces them by the Snow and Sand Gang. In the rewrite, one of the main goals was to give them their own arc before getting to the Snow and Sand Gang that is largely about them, and they have more development and focus in Chapter 3 alone than they did in the whole pre-rewrite Snow and Sand Arc.
• Darker and Edgier: Downplayed.
  • Romancing the Last Dryad is the darkest installment of the Zenith Nymph series, having a serious, threatening antagonist, the heroes being in cases of genuine danger, more showcasing what a bleak world the fic's imagining of the Terraria setting is than the others, more Black Comedy, and the main leads' relationships are much more rocky. But since its predecessors and most of its successors were generally continuity-free (or continuity-ignorable) oneoff joke adventures, being darker than them is not a rough achievement.
  • The story as a whole is darker than Terraria canon, portraying the game's setting as an outright Death World where various factions are at war with each other. The potential horrors of elements like the bosses, Corruption, and invaders are played for their worth and not really brushed away, except for the Slimes and Elves.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Vince's desire to be normal and live life away from the dangers of the Nature Islands is given in the first chapter, where the narration around his point of view ends up saying the tagline of the original game. ("Fight. Dig. Explore.") Before the next line gives a "But fuck any of that. He just wanted a spot to relax." The entire beginning also paints a picture of how much he hates the Human Continent, by referring to it in negative terms and having him be short with the person who would take the hot air balloon back there.
  • The Grand Elder Wood's first appearance is knocking on the door to the Nymph homes Sonata made, telling her and her group that they're planning to force Forest territory under their control, and then leaving. This sets her up as an arrogant Control Freak. In the same scene, Arborea shows how much of a powerful and serious threat she is by quickly reaching in to Sonata's hammerspace hair with a wood-vine and pulling out an Occularcall/Suspicious Looking Eye while Sonata can barely scratch the "vine," with the Grand Elder Wood noting that even she didn't sense that Sonata had that on her.
• First-Episode Twist: Both halves of the first two-parter have one.
  • In the first chapter, Vince runs in to a Nymph initially pretending to be a scared, lost woman in the caves, before they get in to a fight over a misunderstand. However, she manages to get things cleared up with Vince and joins his side at the end of the chapter. She would go on to become one of the main characters, the entire "series" is named after her, and in fact her face is the cover art for the story, so her turning good is only a twist for that chapter and not for the rest of the series.
  • "Lindsey" is just referred to as a mysterious figure in the first chapter. The second confirming that she is Evil All Along and not just someone above Sonata's league that she's pinning after is a twist at the time — and is actually an Oread tyrant named Nyxza. However, she would go on to become the Big Bad, as revealed in Great Pikmin Fan's profile.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Vince and Trent reach Sun Island in the beginning, a description of it is given. While the canonical Snow, Desert, Jungle, Corruption, and Dungeon are heavily implied, this also mentions new locations like a bright green forest and a violet-covered foggy wasteland. These will end up being important biomes later, with the former being a brief glimpse at the Deep Woods.
  • A reader keeping track of the number of minions Nyxza was said to sic on Vince, Sonata, and Iris and seeing which ones are knocked off would figure out that one of them was unaccounted for. Sure enough, the one with lime hair turns out to not have been knocked off the mine cart tracks, but instead was only hiding, and she ambushes the trio as they escape Nyxza's neighborhood.
• Hotter and Sexier: The sexual content is toned up from the 2021 version, with the Introduction Arc having a brief sex scene near the end when there was none in the original, and just prior to that being an original river/waterfall bathing scene where Sonata puts on a show for Vince and they both get an eyeful of a nude Iris. Vince sleeps with the RYB Trio on the latter's debut chapter as well. It is stated that Life Crystals can improve one's sex drive, something that the original version did not imply. The rewrite also tones down on "forced" nudity, like Iris slipping out of her clothes to escape the spiders and spending the rest of that chapter and the next in her underwear, but this was due to Water's personal preference in trying to move away from that sort of thing and focus more on consensual and non-contrived nudity.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to the old version, the rewrite has more comedy in general, and Sonata is made legitimately nice and heroic from the beginning as opposed to someone who wanted to eat Vince initially. While the Nature Islands are still not the most pleasant place to live in, the rewrite leans more on this being because the Nymph cultures encourage jerkassery rather than being an outright Death World. Part of the reason for this was so that this could have more of its own identity tonally compared to Biome Artists, the planned original fiction successor to Romancing that is meant to be about as dark as the old version, if not darker.
• Poor Communication Kills: When Sonata first meets Vince, Vince is huddled up in an underground cabin scared out of his wits and recovering from dart poison. He sees Sonata, instantly recognizing that she's a member of a monstrous trickster race known as a Nymph, swinging her sword around to him. Sonata also asks Vince questions about how armed or prepared he is, and asks so in a very suspicious way, making it seem like she's trying to gauge how defenseless he is. Vince flips out and tries attacking her, which makes Sonata assume that Vince is just a Nymph-hunter only after her money or tools. They clear things up before either party is killed or seriously hurt, although this is brought on by Vince screaming that all he wanted was a Nymph Harem right as Sonata was about to go for a killing blow.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Arborea's letter to Trent about how their towns would soon be under Deep Wood control is for the most part formal, but at the end she lets a "We are NOT an expansionist empire like those fucking Wood Elves" slip.
• Waterfall Shower: When Sonata shows Vince around the surface in Chapter 2, she leads him to a waterfall coming off of a mountain and tries to convince him to bathe with her in it. She's flirty at first, but then bluntly tells him that she really does want him to wash up because she thinks he smells bad. Sonata tries to turn it in to a Shower of Love (or, bath, as they were away from the waterfall), but Iris' arrival postpones the lovemaking.

Teasers

Tropes on stories that are teased through a "trailer" are under their own folder.

• Characterization Marches On: As the first proper "story" in the Zenith Nymph series, some of the characters haven't found their footing just yet.
  • Sonata flaunts her nudity rather than just having it be a part of her that she'd just rather not have anybody question. In that regard, she was closer to Kabus Daygelz than being her own sort of, if similar, person. She was also implied to be a Head-Turning Beauty. In the proper series a lot of people find her just there if not outright annoying.
  • Vince in his brief appearance showed no signs of being as interested in Nymphs as he is later. He even asks if Sonata would want clothes — if he had known nearly as much about Nymphs as his Romancing counterpart does, he would know that that's a stupid question to ask.
  • Tania comes off as a lot ruder than in any other appearance. Her main role is to rather bluntly tell Sonata to put clothes on before she closes the door on her. By itself, it's Hypocritical Humor relying on Rule of Funny, since Tania is just barely more "dressed" than she is, especially compared to other fan depictions of the Dryad. With an actual world being built and the lore being that Dryads had a pretty rough history with other Nymph Variants, especially Oreads, and that nudity is actually Serious Business among them, Tania comes off as extremely disrespectful.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Sonata wanted to become genuine friends with Tania, if not enter a relationship with her. Tania's the only character Sonata gets flustered around. Instead, Tania just tells her to put clothes on and closes the door on her, and the story ends shortly after.
• Establishing Character Moment: The very first thing that happens in the entire Zenith Nymph series is Vince asking if Sonata would want any clothes after being saved from a curse, and then Sonata proudly turning the offer down. She would then go on to flaunt her naked self around town. While the "curse" aspect would be dropped, this general attitude sums up Sonata.
• Hypocritical Humor: The only character who actually tells Sonata to get dressed is Tania, who is not wearing much herself. Specifically her outfit is even more revealing than in-game, just consisting of a vine between her legs and nothing else.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Sonata goes around trying to get this reaction from various townspeople just to troll them. The only direct time she gets this asked to her is with Tania, the one person she's trying to impress. It leaves her speechless.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: There are more NPCs that ignore Sonata's being completely naked than there are ones who notice or say anything about it, and the residents that talk to her do so in a casual manner. It's heavily implied that they had gotten used to Tania's similar near-nudity already, so another naked woman roaming around the towns is no big deal at all.

The Dangers Above

• After the End: The story will take inspiration from the "Don't Dig Up"/"Remix Seed," taking the common interpretation of it as an apocalyptic scenario and that the reason why it begins in the Underworld is because people were forced to live there.
• Alternate Continuity: Explicitely the case, as none of the Main Trio knew each other, and the trailer goes over their "first meeting."
• Darker and Edgier: With the possible exception of Romancing the Last Dryad due to its heavier themes, the trailer presents it as one of the darkest Zenith Nymph installments, as it's in a full-blown apocalyptic scenario. There's still humor sprinkled around, but it's a much more dire story overall.
• Downer Beginning: The trailer in Teasers shows that the Lunatic Cult had wiped out the Oreads, with Sonata being the only known survivor for some reason, and this lack of either Dryad or Oread power to passively protect the world causes it to fall under the control of the Evil Biomes within a week. Tania manages to track down Sonata and drag her to the caves just barely before the place they're on suffers a massive Evil Biome outbreak. Somewhere along the line, they recruit Vince, who had been cryogenically frozen, and was thought to be the last Human until Warren the Tax Collector shows up.
• Last of His Kind: Tania is still the "Last Dryad," except in this story, Sonata is also the Last Oread. Vince was thought to be the Last Human, but other Humans have been seen at least — the NPCs, meaning they are Saved by Canon in a roundabout way.
• Star Killing: The trailer describes a mysterious, colossal worm-like entity destroying the Sun, explaining why there is no Sun in the Remix Seed.
• The Stations of the Canon: Averted. Romancing the Last Dryad had the NPCs encounter the gang only after meeting the requirements they would have had in the original game, taking just a few creative liberties. Most noteably, Tania will not join Vince until after the Eye of Cthulhu is defeated. The Dangers Above drops this rule by having Vince meet Tania and Sonata immediately, even before meeting Warren, the actual starting NPC of the seed.
• Surreal Horror: The story takes the eldritch nature of the Infectuous Biomes and runs with it when it comes to their takeover of the surface. The trailer alone shows grass suddenly melding together to the Crimson and gnawing Sonata's leg, a tree bursting to flames out of nowhere (the Fury), a swarm of interdimensional bugs infesting another tree (the Nest), and a wall of the Dust colliding with a wall of the Mist.

Short Comics

• The Big Damn Kiss: Downplayed, as it's set after they're a couple. Or, trio, but only two of them kiss. The final Octobionicer comic's last panel has Tania and Sonata kissing for the only onscreen time in the comic (and neither is even shown kissing Vince), to celebrate them winning the Halloween costume contest.
• Body Paint: For the Halloween contest in the final Octobionicer comic, Mollie decides to go nude with just white strips of paint acting as a Felicia costume, which is based on an actual paint cosplay of her. Because of the art style and the comic's use of Barbie Doll Anatomy anyway, she looks about as "dressed" as Felicia is normally.
• Continuity Cavalcade:
  • The final Octobioncer comic contains at least one reference to every single other of Fan's entries in some way. All of the boss bios (and the True King Slime drawing that marked Day 1) get references in the form of their trophies being seen over the walls of the Trio's home, several other drawings are referenced by the costumes the characters are wearing.
  • The final Weekly Dryad Meme does not reference every past one, but it has some callbacks:
    • Vince is seen holding on to the gold star Tania awarded him with all the way back in Week 2.
    • The first half of the comic features plays on the Dryad's title in impact font, mimicing Week 3.
    • The Glitch Dryads from Week 10, the Knight from Week 15, and C-H-N-M's imp character from Week 29 all make cameo appearances mourning the Dryad's transformation to a tree. Homer Simpson is also present; while he was not in any previous Weekly Dryad Meme, he did make appearances in some form or another in the Dryad & Nymph comics.
• Denser and Wackier: These are much goofier than their prose story counterparts, featuring a dumber cast (except Tania, except for the "Quest for Clothes" trilogy), more outlandish things happening, and they're not taken seriously at all. Even the Octobionicer comics, most of which are implied to take place in a similar timeline as True King Slime's Attack, are goofy and odd compared to the prose stories being played straight.
• Didn't Think This Through: In "Quest for Clothes" Part 2, Darnell and Stephano realize almost immediately after doing it that going behind Tania's back and buying a main outfit — and only a maid outfit — while she was on a time limit to find an outfit for the drawing event might have been a bad idea. They point out that tricking a 500 year-old nature warrior in general isn't a good idea, and sure enough, Tania isn't too happy about it, while Sonata is downright furious at them. Tania also simply would not wear it to the photo event any way. She'd rather either go naked or just not go at all.
• Disney Death: Played for laughs. In the Grand Finale of the Weekly Dryad Memes, the Dryad turns in to a tree as she does in the credits of the game, and the text "BYEAD" appears, implying that she has turned in to a non-sapient tree and is effectively "dead." After everyone gathers around and mourns her, her face morphs back, and she explains that she can turn back and forth at will. She's just resting.
• Dissonant Serenity: Tania in the 13th Octobionicer entry. When she finds out that Vince and Sonata failed to get rid of their Corruption and Crimson farms, she smiles brightly and acts like she's happy, but she's really furious at them, evident by her making her internal vines start to snake out. She's grinning with empty eye sockets and large vines coming out of her by the end.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first comic gives Sonata and Tania's dynamic right away: Sonata is complaining that it is cold in the Snow, while being naked, while Tania calmly starts to explain that she (who is also naked aside from vines on her limbs and in her hair) can simply regulate her temperature. Sonata does not listen to this and instead jumps in the campfire set up, also lighting herself ablaze. She doesn't care about being set on fire at all, all while Tania just gives her a look. The punchline is that Sonata buys clothes from Nigel the Clothier only to burn them and use the bigger fire to keep herself warmer, showing her hatred of clothes — she'd rather set herself on fire before actually putting anything on. This also overlaps with Early-Installment Weirdness, as later Zenith Nymph installments would make it clear that the cold of the Snowfields isn't a problem with Nymphs even in a blizzard, let alone in clear weather. They actually find it pleasant.
• Funny Background Event: In "Dump Truck," while Sonata is asking if her butt is too big and being annoyed at the responses, Nigel is seen running around convincing everybody to convert to nudism. He succeeds.
• Idiot Ball: Tania is normally the Only Sane Man even in the comics, but in "Quest for Clothes," her idea of getting clothing is to go all the way out to the dangerous Jungle and get clothes from the anti-Dryad, anti-Human Plantera Store, rather than simply asking anybody other than Nigel (who retired from the Clothier business after Sonata's "permanudism" spread throughout Terraria).
• Loophole Abuse: The final Octobionicer comic centers around a Halloween Costume Party where you get kicked out if you don't have a costume. Darnell made a bet with Sonata that she'd not only find a way to enter the contest, but win, despite her complete and utter aversion towards clothing. She, Tania, and Vince hook up a machine to replicate the arrival of the Terminator robots, and claim that they are "going as" three Terminators who just arrived. They appear to the party completely nude yet still are considered "in costume" because of this and win anyway.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: In "Dump Truck," Nigel is seen convincing others to start running around naked with him. When he's seen trying to do the same with Sammy and Charlotte (the Angler and Princess), in the next panel he's shown being chased by two cop cars and talking to the police. Subverted after as the cops are shown running around naked too, implying that he cleared things up and he managed to get them to run around naked. It's left ambiguous if he actually convinced Sammy and Charlotte to join his nudism, but the bonus panel (the Tax Collector being treated as the last clothed NPC with Sonata "closing in" on him while Tania reassures him that it's optional) implies they were.
• Naked People Are Funny: The Dryad & Nymph series generally has a much bigger focus on nudity than the main continuity proper, the plot of every comic having it worked in in some way. Even beyond Tania and Sonata, the first comic ends with Nigel deciding to go around naked, and throughout the second he's seen convincing other town residents to go nude as well.
• Palette Swap: As the "Drink" comic reveals, Tania looks completely identical to Sonata when absolutely everything of hers is off, including and especially the vines in her hair. She strips them off to go streaking, and the image of her passed out in the Hallow is exactly the same as the image of Sonata sleeping in their home, just with the colors changed. Note that these comics almost never simply copy and paste an image from one panel to another, so the copying and pasting in this instance was intentional.
• Scenery Censor:
  • The first Weekly Meme has the Dryad, topless as usual, with her breasts covered by a smaller Eater of Worlds. The comics usually use Barbie Doll Anatomy, but here the Eater was used as a censor because it would be funnier that way.
  • Every three weeks the Dryad wears less and less, until by Week 16 she's fully nude aside from vines around her limbs. In Week 16 in question, her crotch is obscured by the ecto-mist of the Graveyard, while her (completely featureless) chest is not, again for Rule of Funny.
• Self-Fanservice: In-universe in Week 13 of the Weekly Dryad Memes. Stefano, in his proposal for a "Dryad Dating Sim (With Boobs)," draws the Dryad/Tania with a large bust and a slim figure. Tania herself appears in person, and she is drawn to be much less busty and with more of a "blob-like" stick figure body, implying that Stefano wasn't drawing her accurately and instead upping her sex appeal.
• Stylistic Suck: The comics are drawn in sloppy MS Paint, mainly because Fan was never much of an artist and just rolled with it.

Tropes Exclusive to Past Versions of Stories

Romancing the Last Dryad (2021)

• Armor-Piercing Response: After reuniting in Chapter 5, Vince confesses to Sonata that he loves her, which catches her off guard. Sonata then catches Vince off guard to an even greater degree and makes him question himself with her response: "Hahaha, why?"
• Black-and-Gray Morality: It's a common theme over the story that while there are definitive assholes, nobody is a definitive saint.
  • Vince and especially Sonata are jerks and have shown to not be perfect ideal heroes on multiple occasions, both of them really fighting for themselves. They are basically a Nice Mean And In Between trio, except the "Nice" (Tania) has not arrived yet. Even still, they are the sympathetic ones compared to villains like Impetua or especially Lindsey.
  • Chapter 6's flashback of Impetua's history. This is revealed after Impetua was already established as a hostile character and that she's scheduled to fight the lead heroes, and it's clued to be her Start of Darkness, so it's clear that she's not a saint. However, she is downright heroic and the "gray" compared to the invading Elf Army and the leaders of the Elven Colonies on some of the other Nature Islands, who are card carryingly awful and have absolutely no redeemable qualities. It's a bit muddier when Arborea picks the Deep Woods over Impetua and the Deep Woods start taking control of Sun Island, especially taking advantage of Impetua's fall from grace. While the Deep Woods and Arborea themselves are portrayed as backstabbing assholes, they still have a point in that Impetua's "Be as violent and vicious as possible to any haters" style was not going to work forever, and they're still not nearly as bad as the Elf colonists were.
• Brick Joke: Two in Chapter 5 where the payoff is in the same chapter:
  • When Harsahne explains Fridginy's kidnapping of Vince, Iris, and Madeline to Sonata, Sonata says that when she sees Fridginy, she'll punch her in the face. This is exactly what happens when everybody reunites in the second half of the chapter.
  • Harsahne says near the beginning of the chapter that the Snow and Sand Gang have a big speech prepared about their mission and general goals, but she stops herself, says she doesn't really know the speech well, and that Impetua is better with it. When Impetua shows up in-person, she recites the speech perfectly, and it's a long one.
• Boss Subtitles: "Boss fights" get introductions that include their name appearing in bold for just one line.
• Call-Back: Tania's proper introduction at the end of Chapter 7 ends with her giving a more verbose, Dryad version of the usual "Rule #1: Nymphs do not wear clothes. Period."
  Tania: Dryads do not are unwilling to fully dress beyond the method to spite Nymphs.
  And our stance on that is final.
• Cerebus Retcon: The beginning of the first chapter implies that Vince simply thought his original Human life was "boring," with a brief mention of unpleasant desk work, which is why he moved to the Nature Islands in general. It is framed as something of an overreaction and that his real reason for going to the Nature Islands was to try to get a "Nymph Harem." Chapters 7 onwards expand that Vince's home life actually was so bad that he'd rather risk living in the Death World of the Nature Islands, and he tells to Impetua's face that he'd still prefer losing all his limbs and being tortured to going back there. The same chapter ends with Tania going over there, revealing how bad living conditions are.
• Cliffhanger: Most chapters end with one.
  • Chapter 1: Sonata wants to introduce Vince and Iris to the powerful Nymph named Lindsey and see if they could help her win her affection. She takes them on a mine cart ride leading to her home.
  • Chapter 2: The mildest of them as of Chapter 8, it just consists of Sonata about to show Vince, Iris, and Madeline her plans for what she'll do in the world. Nobody is in any immediate danger and there's no big reveal about to be had.
  • Chapter 3: Vince, Iris, and Madeline are captured by Fridginy and her group, while Sonata, Igniss, Fulgra, and Aquafla all fall in to the Corruption Chasm.
  • Chapter 4: Sonata and her team are suddenly visited by Mollie, who wants them to save her brother from the Underground Desert.
  • Chapter 5: While everything is sorted out with the Snow Gang and Sand Gang, their "combined leader" Impetua barges in, hits Vince and Sonata with her tank, and threatens them to a fight in one week, with the loser being forcefully evicted from Sun Island/The Shore of Sparkling.
  • Chapter 6: The actual fight with Impetua will begin in the morning. Tania finally makes her first appearance at the very end, having found the last Eye of Cthulhu, and is about to start hunting for it.
  • Chapter 7: After destroying the Terra Tank and getting Impetua to surrender, the gang is met with a mysterious pair of talking rabbits apparently controlled by an unknown Nymph. A voice says through the rabbits to bring Tania to the "Dancer of the Jungle" and that she'd know what the voice is talking about, but Sonata ignores the request and Vince has little idea where to start. Sonata created a Suspicious Looking Eye (or "Occularcall," as its "more official" name is), but Arborea shows up in the present for the first time and snatches it, also declaring that she'll have Deep Wood hunters around to swipe any Lenses so that Sonata cannot simply make another one.
  • Chapter 8: The smaller one is that the second challenge will begin with Vince, Mollie, and their new Nymph allies, while Iris and the Nymphs still have to navigate through the Underground Deep Woods. The larger one is at the very end: Tania arrives on Lindsey's island and challenges her to a direct fight. This also marks Lindsey's first appearance since the second chapter.
    Tania: I want a rematch.
  • Chapter 9 has a smaller one. Arborea announces the final trial of her tasks so that the gang can get the Suspicious Looking Eye, which is a tournament. Sonata, who hates tournaments, screams in annoyance.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The beginning of Chapter 7 has the Terra Tank capable of taking on anybody. Impetua, keeping her word of not harming her former friends, dodges around them and avoids their traps without outright attacking any of them. (The closest is when she runs through Utavnem's leaf pile, with Utavnem herself in it, but Utavnem simply flies out instead of being hit.) She also gets through the townspeople by using a special trick that paralyzes them for a moment.
• Double-Meaning Title: Chapter 5 is called "Lines Drawn in the Sand." The "sand" could be referring to the beach sand, as this marks the point when Vince, Iris, and Madeline finally make it to the Ocean biome after travelling for three chapters; or the Desert sands that Sonata, Mollie, Igniss, Fulgra, and Aquafla venture through to save Billy. The phrase in general also refers to something Impetua says in the second half, remarking that the line is drawn in the sand of how much the Nymphs will tollerate outsiders, and Vince killing a Hydra (one of Impetua's designated "protected" species) was what really set her off.
• Enemy Mine: All over the place, given that many of the setting's factions do not like each other. Nymph groups in particular have a habit of getting in to fights, within their islands, or cross islands, yet they'll band up together against other threats like Human or Elven invaders. They're also willing to even work, reluctantly, with the Dryad that they all loathe if it means fighting off Cthulhu's remnants, since as much as the Nymphs dislike the Dryad (and her kind), they know that working with her is preferable to having Cthulhu resurrect and/or have his severed parts wipe out their populations.
• Erotic Dream: Both Vince and Sonata have one with the other in Chapters 3 and 4 respectively. Vince is woken up (barely) before it gets too intense for him, on account of Fridginy breaking in. Sonata does not get such luxury.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Chapter 3, Fridginy warns Vince and his friends about Impetua. Madeline says she's not scared of a Nymph, and Fridginy brings up that she has a secret weapon that's much bigger than a sword. Two chapters later, that "secret weapon" turns out to be a tank. So Fridginy wasn't kidding.
  • Chapter 7 opens up with Sonata dreaming about turning the Starfury in to the Zenith and obliterating most enemies in front of her. This includes outright killing Impetua, and when Sonata tells Vince about this dream, he finds it odd that she went for "kill" instead of just "defeat," but he drops the subject. In the end of the fight, the Terra Tank is destroyed and Impetua is still alive and surrenders, but Sonata pretty much wants to keep beating her, possibly to death. It's not that surprising that Vince and Sonata get in to an argument over this considering her dream earlier on and his reaction to that dream.
  • Several chapters have dropped hints that Sonata's admiration of Tania is actually a minority opinion among Nymphs, and that the bulk hate her. In a flashback, Impetua reading over Sonata's book that involves striking a romance with a "long-lost Dryad" has Impetua chuckle and tell herself that the author has unconventional political views. Other Nymphs give off-handed negative comments about the Dryads in general, and include Tania to the mix. With all this mind, the Nymphs of Washed Island immediately attacking Tania on sight when she lands there to look for the Eye of Cthulhu is not surprising.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Downplayed, but thanks to the Nymphs being very long-lived, they can run in to each other and make no notice of it. Chapter 6 heavily implies to the point of outright saying that Sonata attended a big speech Impetua gave after liberating the colonies placed by the Elves. Sonata does say that she is somewhat familiar with Impetua, implying that she still recognized her through her role in history and from being at her speech, but Impetua does not find Sonata familiar at all.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Twice in Chapter 6. First is Impetua slicing off the Elf King's legs. The story does the text equivalent of a Smash to Black, only writing out the sound effect of her sword swinging, followed by him screaming and swearing in pain. Second, it's to the Elf King again, but this time it's Arboea beheading him completely. The story cuts to the present, describing the head of a training dummy falling off after Mollie uses her new tool on it.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear:
  • As with the rewrite, Sonata poorly covers herself with her arms in Chapter 1 when acting as a lost Human. Vince sees right through it and knows she's really an Oread. In Chapter 4, she covers her crotch again — not to hide her nudity, but to hide the mess from an Erotic Dream she had.
  • In Chapter 7, Vince covers himself with a racy romance novel Iris was reading when the home he's in is visited by mysterious talking rabbits.
• Horrifying the Horror: In Chapter 4, the Nymphs' Cold Temple is guarded by an absoluely massive, muscular Ice Nymph mage who uses what is implied to be a powerful tome that is not in the vanilla game. Vince, Madeline, and Iris are all intimidated by her. Shortly after she admits that Impetua scares even her. And in a chained example, Lindsey is heavily implied to even scare Impetua.
• Irony:
  • As Fridginy's friends point out, even though she's a type of Nymph accustomed to cold regions and lives in the Snow, many of the friends that bunk with her are Variants associated with warmer biomes. The opposite goes for Harsahne, the Nymph stationed at the Desert, whose friends are generally Variants from cooler and/or aquatic biomes.
  • Diltica is an in-universe and out- Ms. Fanservice, being a member of the most sexualized Variant and even a popular erotic author, and yet she wears more "clothing" than any non-Dryad Nymph that sides with the heroes. Specifically, a tiny, see-through cloth over her crotch and nothing else, but it's still an actual cloth.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Chapter 4, the topic of Minecraft comes up, and Terraria is known for being inspired by and often compared to Minecraft. Vince, the "player Terrarian stand-in," remarks that Minecraft isn't really his sort of thing. And the reasons why are pretty much because of three-dimensional versions of things that Terraria deals with too. He doesn't like the block building and he's stressed about the enemies trying to kill him.
• Loving a Shadow: A theme in the first handful of arcs is that Vince thinks his relationship with Sonata is a serious, romantic one, but Sonata — and other characters such as Iris and Impetua — believe that it's a casual, sexual relationship and Vince is simply in love with some "ideal image" he has of Sonata rather than what she is actually like. It's also said repeatedly that he doesn't "really know her," and it's hinted that Vince just has a Nymph fetish and it's coming to bite him back in the ass when he has a friend that is one but doesn't know how serious the relationship with her is.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Impetua's big speech about the mission of the Snow and Sand Gang mentions that they are Technical Pacifists, and will spare the lives of everybody... including the near-universally hated in-universe Elves.
• Naked First Impression:
  • In addition to the obvious of Nymphs almost always being naked, Mollie is the first Non-Nymph NPC introduced in the buff. She's in her werefox form in the nude, and stays naked when changing back, implying that it tore through her clothes.
  • Billy Bones, the Golfer, is introduced naked when he's found by Harsahne's home. It is not explained why, but the story implies that it was part of staying with Nymph hospitality; unlike Mollie, he's suddenly uncomfortable with it when he's around the others back in the town.
  • Lexus, the Party Girl, is introduced bursting out of a cake "wearing" nothing but frosting on her breasts and crotch. She essentially "takes the frosting off" and spends the entire rest of her debut chapter completely naked, not that she minds.
• Nocturnal Emission: Female example — after passing out from exerting her magic purifying the Corruption, Sonata has an intense dream about Vince, and ends up going over the edge in her sleep. Since Igniss, Fulgra, and Aquafla were all there to make sure she was okay, they all knew it would happen, but none of them wanted to look. Vince almost has a case of this when he's sleeping right next to Madeline and Iris (huddled up against the cold), but Iris wakes him up after hearing Fridginy break in to their shelter.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Played with. When Mollie summarizes that the Sand Gang are tricking Billy in to being sent to Washed Island for an unknown reason in exchange for their services, Sonata realizes entirely on her own that it's not too different from how she wanted to have Vince eaten if he didn't help her win over Lindsey and living in her home, and later when she briefly tries to offer four Humans to Lindsey in exchange that Vince and Iris stayed alive. Subverted when Sonata's friends tell her that she was probably just being all talk and that, no matter what Vince would have done in that situation, she wouldn't have actually eaten him. The conversation also makes Harsahne fully realize how bad her plan is.
• Power-Strain Blackout: Sonata successfully manages to purify a good chunk of the Corruption to save herself and the Nymphs with her from being petrified (or half-Corrupted and half-petrified in Sonata's case), yet because it uses so much more purification magic than she trained for, she passes out for a good while after it. Aquafla, Fulgra, and Igniss all carry her to safety.
• The Reveal:
  • The end of Chapter 8 confirms that Tania and Lindsey knew each other and fought previously. The chapter ends right before they battle on the latter's desert island. Outside of the last chapter of Nymphlopedia, this has barely been hinted up to this point.
  • After three chapters of buildup, the mysterious Washed Island is finally seen in full when Tania lands there in Chapater 9. It's extremely technological, with an almost utopian, futuristic aesthetic; Tania's thoughts imply that a few hundred years ago, it was a more frail and tiny land. The Nymphs there have technology heavily ingrained within them. Tania is also at least partly familiar with the mysterious figure who acts as the island's leader.
• Spared by the Adaptation: The ninja inside King Slime here is a man named Shay, Trent's brother. He survives the battle, recovers, and Trent takes him back to town, while in vanilla Terraria the ninja vanishes when King Slime is killed. It's not explained, but it is heavily implied that the ninja inside King Slime was either already dead or died upon defeating the King.
• The Stations of the Canon: Downplayed. Vince only runs in to NPCs at game-appropriate times the Player could get them and the gang fights the bosses in an order that works with the original game (as in, the Mechanical Bosses will not be fought before the Wall of Flesh), but the story takes plenty of creative liberties with it. The Stylist^note And the Oread, as this story technically considers the latter a "town NPC" and was written with that in mind is the first town NPC Vince runs in to besides his Guide, something that is technically possible but is unlikely^note The Stylist could spawn at any point in the game's progression, but only in Spider Nests, which have enemies that would slaughter an unprepared early player. Mollie the Zoologist is one possible exception — because of all the new Nymph types and various other enemies and characters, it's not clear exactly "how much of the Bestiary" Vince had filled out (or if people encountered by Sonata or other town residents would count towards this) or if she'd still have the same percentage requirement, plus Vince may as well have ran across several critters on his early journeys, but she still shows up at around the point of progression that the Zoologist might in-game. All content involving Lindsey is original, as well as the Nymph Variants.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: Whenever the gang separates, expect the narration to bounce back and forth between their individual plotlines. This happens as early as the second arc, with Vince going to the Ocean and Sonata eventually following after him after she gets her first tenants, but getting sidetracked along the way by the Corruption and by Mollie begging them to save her brother. They reunite about halfway through the arc, just in time to set up the "boss fight" of the arc's climax.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Lindsey and Tania battle at the beginning of Chapter 9, Tania manages to successfully "seal" Lindsey's sword. Lindsey completely blows up over this, becoming a screaming maniac firing lasers randomly to Tania with no care. Tania just finds this funny and hell and leaves, considering the Eye of Cthulhu to be a more pressing threat.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 7, "Terra Tank Showdown 1.0," is where Tania becomes a main character alongside Vince and Sonata. While she only has a few scenes, it's enough more than her cameo at the end of Chapter 6 so that the narrative considers this the beginning of her B-plot and includes her in the post-chapter comments, rather than just Vince and Sonata. It's also where the Snow and Sand Gang, including Impetua, fully join the Naked Empire; where the Deep Woods and Jungle start getting involved with the story in some way; and where Sonata starts making steps towards killing both Cthulhu and Lindsey. Finally, it's the first chapter that tests Vince and Sonata's relationship, with Sonata threatening to kill Impetua behind Vince's back. Vince explicitely did not want Sonata to kill Impetua.
• What Does She See in Him?: A variant where the "him" (her, in this case) is the one asking the question. Sonata sees Vince as a casual fling and maybe just a friend at the moment; when Vince confesses that he loves her, she's genuinely confused and wants to know why. Vince can't give an actual answer and admits he might have just been in love with a shadow, but she says that after enough time they might form a genuine romantic relationship.

Nymphlopedia (2021)

• Book Ends:
  • The story begins with Sonata's usual catchphrase, RULE #1: NYMPHS DO NOT WEAR CLOTHES, PERIOD. It ends with Tania giving a special announcement and letting Sonata say it: RULE #2: DRYADS DO NOT WEAR CLOTHES, ANY MORE.
  • Sonata's comment on the Oread entry, the first one and her own kind, just consists of her saying "We're total bitches. Don't fuck with us." Tania's comment on the Dryad entry, the last one and her own kind, is more verbose but ends with her saying the same thing, about just herself.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Lindsey's attack on the Dryads ends up like this. Her mysterious weapon is capable of blowing through the secondary barriers the Dryads had guarding their Jungle and causing massive damage to their giant plant matter mechs. It's implied that Tania survived mainly because she was knocked underground and out of Lindsey's sight. Lindsey also had a massive army of Nymph Variants, who turned out to be unnecessary as far as getting in to the Jungle was concerned.
• Early-Bird Cameo: As the first 100 Nymph Variant entries, as well as the Oread and Dryad entries, were all published before Romancing the Last Dryad, this serves as the technical introduction of the Nymphs that would eventually become members of Sonata's harem, such as the Igniss/Fulgra/Aquafla trio, Harsahne, Fridginy, and Impetua. Lindsey also makes her technical debut here, at the very end in the past in the Dryad entry.
• Foregone Conclusion: The "bonus" to the Ashen Nymph chapter goes over how the Nymphlopedia was made in the first place, taking place right before the "entry" part. Sonata tells Vince not to go sentimental in the Oread entry and instead hype her entire kind up as someone dangerous. As seen in the very first chapter of the story, Vince does in fact get sentimental over Sonata, although he does talk about Lindsey (not by name) as a serious threat.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: The Curse Nymph chapter has a member of the Variant swap Tania and Vince's bodies, but in the entry's information rather than the short story. Both of them are mortified, Vince disliking Tania's Bizarre Alien Biology and Tania considering Vince's "rigid skeleton and muscles" the same way. Man, I Feel Like a Woman is also averted — Vince has standards and would not effectively grope Tania like that (and even if she okay'd it, he'd be too horrified), and Tania point-blank says that she hates having a Human penis.
• Hot Springs Episode: The Spring Nymph chapter is just Vince, Sonata, and some of the town residents bathing in a mountain hot spring with the featured Nymphs of the chapter. And Sonata complains about sex-segregation, happy that this is not what's going on in this story.
• Hotter and Sexier: It's intended to be this compared to Romancing proper, since it goes in to detail over each Nymph type and is planned to have some sexy adventure with most of them. In practice a few of the entries are serious or devoted to exposition, while Romancing gets its own fair share of fanservice starting from Chapter 3 especially. Great Pikmin Fan has planned to rewrite Nymphlopedia to deliberately turn the sexual content up while Romancing falls under a mild Cerebus Syndrome.
• Painting the Medium: The very last line in the story is a "comment" from Lindsey about Tania. Some of the text at the beginning is randomly replaced with capital bolded Zs, implying that this "comment" came about from some imperfect magic corrupting the in-universe Nymphlopedia itself to include it or something along those lines.
• Retcon: As noted in the story and even the "cover art"^note a yellow "warning diamond" saying outright that the story is outdated and planned to be reworked, something Great Pikmin Fan has used on some of his other stories, Nymphlopedia as of January 2023 is outdated and a few things in Romancing proper contradict it. One of the most noteworthy is that the Oread chapter appears to be set on the night Vince and Sonata met with them overlooking the Forest — except, when they made it back to the surface in Romancing, they immediately went to sleep and did not wake up until the next day. The "Art Biome" and "Flower Biome" are also merged, and the Indigo "Psyche" Biome is replaced with a more mundane Deep River Biome, among other things.
• The Reveal: The Dryad chapter's short story is actually a flashback of Tania's life before Cthulhu wiped them out. It also reveals that Lindsey managed to amass a huge Nymph army, temporarily break the barrier placed on them by the Dryads so they could enter the surface, and she curb-stomped the Dryad army with her mysterious weapon. The chapter also heavily implies that the Dryad society was not entirely beneficial nature protectors and that they have a nasty side to them.
• Sequel Hook: The Dryad/Conclusion chapter has a few that tie it to the main Romancing the Last Dryad, the beginning two-parter of which would be published later on the same day after the chapter came out. Lindsey, the Big Bad of Romancing, is set up and makes her publish-order debut in this chapter as the leader of the attack on the Dryads back then. Vince's comments reaffirm that the trio has not fought Lindsey but is about to at least go after her Key Holders, with Vince outright threatening her in the text. Finally, the very last line in the story is a partially corrupted comment from Lindsey, telling the reader Tania's loved ones out of the town NPCs and who to "go after first."

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Vince's Comment: Urgh, another trope list, I heard these things can ruin lives. My only advice is to click out while you still can. Or better yet, close all tabs. It reduces the temptation.
Sonata's Comment: I like browsing all the Nudity Tropes. It's a fun way to look for my bretherin in spirit.
Tania's Comment: TV Tropes.
Wiki Topicalis.
Wiki Family.
The name of the website is misleading; it also covers videogames, comic books, and other forms of media, almost all of which I outlive. It is facinating to live through and see entertainment evolve over the centuries, and this wiki manages to document such constants found throughout history. Quite honestly, it's one of the few pieces of Human invention that truly makes me feel old.