"...A kid? No... Not a child. Not with that aura...!"
After countless years searching the stars, the Cendarii finally found a suitable world for colonization. Unfortunately, it was already occupied. Marael was sent to Earth to study its inhabitants and learn their combat techniques. But what was supposed to be a relatively simple operation quickly turned out to be much more complicated...
Cendaran: Marael is a webtoon written and drawn by "Miss M", A.K.A. independent VTuber Maia Starchild, chronicling the adventures of Marael and her classmates at Saint Scarlet's Combat Academy in a world where magic and monsters have returned to Earth.
The comic can be read on Webtoons
, Tapas, or on Miss M's personal website.
Cendaran: Marael features examples of:
- Academy of Adventure: The comic's first arc is the aptly named Academy Arc, detailing Mar's time at Saint Scarlet's Combat Academy, a school where the first lesson is being thrown in a huge maze and encouraged to fight any other student you encounter for points.
- After the End: 200 years prior to the events of the main comic, the Earth passed through a giant cosmic Ley Line, which rendered a majority of the planet uninhabitable and reduced civilization to a collection of city-states.
- Art Evolution: Even within the first few months, Miss M's art style developed quite a bit. It's most obvious looking at Rime: in the early chapters, they had a constant transparency effect on their body and looked like they were constantly melting. By the end of Marael's fight with Sienna, they'd become totally opaque and had a much more stable Slime Girl design.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Marael vs. Sienna. Sienna breaks Mar's ribs with one hit, Mar harmlessly wraps her in an energy rope, Sienna flares her aura, disintegrating the rope and sending Mar flying into the wall. Marael never lands a hit.
- Ditto Aliens: All Cendarii look pretty much the same - pale skin, similar faces, long, electric blue hair, matching eyes, and extremely short and petite by human standards, unless they're a Paladin, in which case they might just be pretty short by human standards. Of course, they are Artificial Humans.
- Don't Think, Feel: Raziel tells Marael that if she keeps a clear, meditative state of mind in a fight, her shell will move on its own. Once she forces herself to take a deep breath and ignore the world around her, she sudden awakens to incredible powers.
- Dream Spying: Sienna has a nightmare about Shades attacking her while praising their God, and senses psychic noise when she wakes up, causing her to suspect this trope. Lily explains that psychically sensitive people involuntarily become "dreamers" all the time.
- Eldritch Abomination: The "Amorphous Flesh" Marael shows in a hologram looks like something between a tentacle monster and a massive pile of undulating muscle tissue, with drastically misaligned eyes and jagged, foot long teeth. And according to the voice over, it can spread Flesh Corruption...
- Elemental Powers: The Tribes inscribe themselves with runes of power tied to a specific element, allowing them to manipulate their tribe's element. The Graves family are from the Shadow Tribe.
- Extranormal Institute: Saint Scarlet's Combat Academy is one; the first class only features two humans, both of whom are mages of some sort.
- Fantastic Caste System: Cendarii are created with specific purposes in mind. Marael herself was designed to be a scout, and protests that she isn't a combat model multiple times during the first trial.
- Fantastic Racism: Bioroids are highly mistrusted on Terra, to the point where making new ones is outright illegal.
- First Contact: Occurred shortly before the beginning of the comic, with Marael being part of an expeditionary squad to study Earth and figure out the basics of the planet and its society.
- First-Episode Spoiler: Though it won't come as a surprise to anyone with prior familiarity with the Maia Starchild character, Marael isn't revealed to have divine power until the end of the third strip, isn't revealed as artificial until the seventh, and it isn't revealed that the Cendarii are aliens until strip 10.
- At the end of the first day of in-comic time, High Priestess Auriel tells Marael that she isn't an ordinary scout unit, but a prototype for a new model who has been charged with an important mission.
- God Is Dead: According to the shadows in Sienna's dream, the goddess of Terra has been slowly dying alongside her planet. When Marael is told about it, she bursts into tears and yells that they "can't lose another one", implying that the Cendarii have lost a god of their own.
- Hive Mind: Downplayed. All Cendarii are constantly in mental contact with the Master System and their batchmates, and have access to the combined knowledge of the entire history of the species.
According to Miss M, any Cendaran who was cut off from the hive would instantly fall into a coma, and, even if they were to ever recover, they would feel a deep, profound emptiness. - Human Aliens: Cendarii look like short human woman (even if they're men) with electric blue hair and eyes. Marael finds this as confusing as anyone, considering that the Cendarii only learned that humans exist very recently.
- Improbably Female Cast: The only non-women to have appeared in the comic so far are Instructor Graves, Alaric, and Rime. Even the Cendarii Master System uses female pronouns.
- Light 'em Up: Light elemental magic is definitely a thing. Cendarii, being divine powered beings, are naturally extremely gifted with it, and Sienna also uses it with the help of a magic focus.
- Living Shadow: Sienna has a nightmare of being attacked by a small army of shadows called Shades who ask her to "join us". Her reactions indicate that they are a known quantity in the setting and usually summoned by Necromancers, but the ones in her dream just giggle as they talk about their God...
- Our Angels Are Different: Cendarii are frequently regarded as "artificial angels" by humans, especially ones who can sense their divine auras. Thought they haven't appeared yet, Word of God is that real angels exist in the setting, and that they have no individual personalities or free will and would vanish from existence the moment they were cut off from their god.
- Planet Terra: Marael is part of the "Terran Expedition Team" and refers to the people of Earth as terrans, despite the actual Earth people of the comic still preferring "Earth".
- Power Tattoo: The Tribes derive their magical abilities by tattooing unique runes on their bodies, usually on the face.
- Proud Scholar Race: The Cendarii, although they aren't "proud" so much as they are "adorably enthusiastic data hoarders".
- RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Characters are given classes and levels.
- Science Fantasy: Let's start with the fact that our heroine is an artificial alien angel and go from there...
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The shadows eagerly look forward to being freed from Terra's prison upon her death.
- The Corruption: "Flesh Corruption" is a risk in this setting. Spread by "Amorphous Flesh", the Cendarii official policy when dealing with it is to run like hell.
- The Magic Comes Back: Due to Earth's decreasing mana density, magic users and fantasy creatures were much rarer before the Ley Line hit.
- The Maze: Navigating one is the first trial at Saint Scarlet's. The Infinite Canvas is used to show just how huge it is.
- Wimp Fight: Trainer Wyvern assigns Marael and Lily to spar. So they run at each other... and both flinch and back away at the same time. Second try, they get their legs tangled together and both fall over.
