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Stories We're Dying To Tell
The New Ars Moriendi is a superhero media project hosted at moriendi.net
. Shirana Itsuki launched the website in late March, 2023.
Several Web Serials, called "storylines" in the official descriptions, form the backbone of Moriendi. The launch storylines were Miracle Girls, which is billed as introductory reading for the shared setting, and The Bellow Street Boggart, which is narrated by a landlord.
A tabletop tie-in for the setting using the Cortex Prime engine is integrated into the website alongside the storylines.
The New Ars Moriendi contains examples of:
- Action Politician: One of the famous heroes listed on the Cast page is Firebrand, who is noted as a former Senator.
- Black Market: Bellow Street. The entire shopping district is just front businesses.
- Brought to You by the Letter "S": Extraordinaire's emblem is a stylized "E" made from three lines.
- Chess with Death: The entire premise of the setting is a twist on this.
- Detective Mole: Officer Olivia Jackson of the Red Straight Police Department is an evidence technician. The supervillain Mister Spot has a power that tampers with evidence. They're the same character.
- Code Name: Common enough, given that it's a superhero setting. Even those without a Secret Identity tend to come up with something just to help with branding and memorability.
- Differently Powered Individual: Miracle Girls has an early instance of commentary to this effect, which is then reused on the Gameplay page.Crystal: Superheroes. Or, well, superpeople, in any case. Capes. Zombies. Whatever.
- Enigmatic Empowering Entity: Quoted on the About page. It's known that there's an intelligent force assigning powers to people, but the details are hard to come by in-setting.
- Experienced Protagonist: When Boggart starts narrating his storyline, he's already been a supervillain for long enough to go to jail for it.
- Gentleman Thief: Lucas Maye tries to self-style as one.
- Leet Lingo: Basis of an in-setting meme. The stylized "E" on Extraordinaire's costume is subjected to the process of gradually warping into an unreadable string of numbers as internet users one-up each other while repeating a joke. The symbol in question resembles the number 3 in the Chinese writing system, which marked "3xtraordinaire" as patient zero of the process.
- Master of All: Extraordinaire's power is having skills. Any and all of them. It doesn't break physical human limits, though.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Crystal Lowe, narrator of Miracle Girls.
- Powers in the First Episode: Crystal discovers her power in Miracle Girls #1.
- Present Day: The official launch date of moriendi.net was March 25th, 2023. The first chapters of the Miracle Girls storyline are set on March 24th, 2023.
- Reality Warper: Miracle Girl, according to the Cast page. Crystal's area of effect is limited to a bubble, but the effect itself is arbitrary and potent.
- Secret Identity: Common enough. Crystal cites this as her reason for undoing the Super Gender-Bender aspect of her power. Lucas painstakingly spells out the importance of respecting secret identities in BSB#3, though his motives might be a little selfish in that instance.
- Secret Identity Vocal Shift: Accomplished on a biological level by Miracle Girl.
- Second Year Protagonist: Crystal has a trigonometry class, which is often sophomore-level mathematics.
- Single-Power Superheroes: The majority of the powered population falls under this category. The single power can be incredibly broad, like Extraordinaire's power to learn any skill, but it tends to still be one power. Exceptions like Maiden America are explicitly rare.
- Student–Master Team: Seems to be the premise of Miracle Girls.
- Super Cop: The U.S. Marshals Service employs three superheroes, nicknamed the Triple Threat.
- Super Gender-Bender: Crystal's power doesn't inherently make her biologically female, but she uses it for that anyway.
- Superheroes Wear Capes: Extraordinaire's costume includes one.
- Villain Protagonist: Boggart, for one. The tabletop rules also split their attention fairly evenly between hero and villain options for players.
- Utility Belt: Not uncommon. Extraordinaire has one.
- Whodunnit to Me?: The "Murder in Brandy" arc of Miracle Girls is named for Crystal's death, which she lacks a lot of detailed info about at first.
