Evany Starr & Midnight Penn™ STARRFALL THE starr blog
New Verance City™ is bleeding through time. The past is breaking in. And three people who never asked to be heroes are the only ones who can stop it.
Who??
Midnight Penn – A private conservator and secret heir to an ancient bloodline. Her memories of that legacy have been erased, but when a series of targeted thefts hits her shop, she realizes the city is assembling something catastrophic. She doesn’t chase power; she chases containment.
Evany Rae – A self‑taught engineer and former Coda street vendor. She dreamed of inventing a new sport, but after the Guild rejected her, she kept her prototype bat for protection. By jury‑rigging a broken Vein Core relic into the bat, she created STARR — a reality‑bending weapon that forces ancient magic to obey human engineering.
Emma Rae – Evany’s twin sister. Emma can rebuild her own memories into physical holograms that overlap with the real world. The cost is devastating: the deeper she searches for clues about their missing parents, the more her present‑day memories are violently erased. A faceless stranger haunts her most precious memories, evicting her whenever she gets too close to the truth.
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Welcome to New Verance City™, a city where the past isn’t just a memory — it’s a physical place you can accidentally walk into. Beneath the neon and rain operates the Coda Network, a sprawling black market where thieves and hawkers deal in salvaged tech and ancient contraband. But Coda isn’t just a criminal enterprise. Without knowing it, their everyday smuggling is a city‑wide ritual — a reflection of a hidden cult called The Chantry. The Chantry’s only members are The Acolytes. They believe they are orchestrating the return of the Ancients through the alignment of Vein Core Relics — rare, reality‑warping artifacts. When Cores get too close, reality breaks down. Pockets of New Verance become “Rollback Zones,” frozen in past decades. Ordinary citizens walk through them and never notice anything wrong. Their memories simply adjust. The Acolytes want to force a world‑ending Convergence. The rigid Inventors Guild wants to lock away any technology they can’t control. Caught between them are our three unlikely heroes. Midnight Penn – A private conservator and secret heir to an ancient bloodline. Her memories of that legacy have been erased, but when a series of targeted thefts hits her shop, she realizes the city is assembling something catastrophic. She doesn’t chase power; she chases containment. Evany Rae – A self‑taught engineer and former Coda street vendor. She dreamed of inventing a new sport, but after the Guild rejected her, she kept her prototype bat for protection. By jury‑rigging a broken Vein Core into the bat, she created STARR — a reality‑bending weapon that forces ancient magic to obey human engineering. Emma Rae – Evany’s twin sister. Emma can rebuild her own memories into physical holograms that overlap with the real world. The cost is devastating: the deeper she searches for clues about their missing parents, the more her present‑day memories are violently erased. A faceless stranger haunts her most precious memories, evicting her whenever she gets too close to the truth. New Verance is bleeding through time. The past is breaking in. And three people who never asked to be heroes are the only ones who can stop it. -YGA
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If someone this meticulous left his workbench before putting everything away... what could have been important enough to pull him away? The tablet offers our best clue. It's still running, while everything else remains exactly where it was—as though the investigation simply paused mid-thought.
 Researcher's Desk
Someone was working here.
Someone expected to come back. Or perhaps someone found the answer they were looking for and left knowing exactly where the trail would lead. The Researcher, one of 6 Acolytes of the Chantry - is not simply a collector of old knowledge, he helps preserve and create it. Alongside the Architect (another Acolyte), he has spent years restoring lost texts, translating ancient records, and publishing modern editions for Chantry study. Many of the volumes stacked across his shelves are their own work, field journals turned reference books and forgotten histories given new life. Unlike most Acolytes, he commands no Delegates of his own. Instead, trusted sources are loaned to him by his peers because his investigations serve them all. His research underpins much of the Chantry's understanding of relics, resonance, and the world they believe is unfolding. Unlike many scholars, he prefers to verify his findings firsthand. Thorough practical, and often working in the field, he is just as likely to be examining an artifact as reading about one.
The shelves themselves tell a story. Studies of Vein Cores and Resonance and Rollback phenomena sit beside restored accounts of ancient artifacts. Discussions of the Lattice sit beside historical surveys and field manuals. Some volumes build upon one another. Others seem to argue quietly across the shelf, offering different interpretations of the same old mysteries. Some of these books were recovered from forgotten archives, old scrolls and manuscripts. Others were written here, assembled from years of investigation and careful translation. The Chantry preserves history—but it also continues the conversation. The desk itself reveals an equally practical side of its owner. Resting atop an older, occult-looking volume are two exposed Vein Core relics, carefully laid out for study rather than display. Beside them sits an intricate magnifier, its layered lenses positioned for close examination. Someone wasn't simply cataloging artifacts here. They were comparing, measuring, and looking for details hidden beneath the surface. The open notebook, the resonance logs, and the field samples scattered across the workspace suggest the same thing: observation from every angle before reaching a conclusion. Today's focus is on 3 of the books and the notepad:
Book 1: 𝐕𝐞𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬 - Composition, Reaction, Interaction Vein Cores are the remnants of an ancient system. They don't just sit there—they interact with the Lattice, the underlying structure that keeps reality stable. When two cores come close, they try to synchronize. That's not a design flaw; it's a feature of the original system. But the system was never meant to be triggered by people who don't understand what they're handling. The book breaks down:
But if you read carefully—between the lines, in the margins—you'll find the warnings. The Researcher didn't just document the mechanics. He documented what happens when someone gets it wrong . What you need to know: The book exists because the Researcher has spent years trying to understand a system that doesn't come with instructions. His findings are a map—but the territory is still dangerous. Book 2: 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐖𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 - Rituals, Lineages, and the True Calling Where Vein Core Studies is clinical, Blood Wakes is esoteric. If one explains the mechanics, the other preserves the ritual. Believed to have been compiled over generations by Acolytes of the Chantry, Blood Wakes predates what modern followers now refer to as the Red Awakening. It is less a technical manual than a theological record—part instruction, part warning—describing how Vein Cores were once joined with specially prepared vessels. The text explains that a Vein Core is not itself a weapon, but a condensed reservoir of ancient resonance. Only when housed within a compatible frame—whether an engineered receptacle, ceremonial relic, or lineage-bound artifact—can its stored resonance be directed into a useful form. Ancient craftsmen carved these housings with precise resonance pathways that matched the unique structure encoded within each core. The resulting object became an extension of both its bearer and the Lattice itself, capable of extraordinary defensive or offensive function depending on its intended design. Most surviving frames are inert. Without a compatible Vein Core they are little more than beautifully engineered relics. Likewise, an unmounted Vein Core remains unstable potential—power without purpose. The final chapters describe the Blood Wake, a rare awakening in which certain lineage-bound vessels recognize both their rightful bearer and the Vein Core housed within them. Modern Acolytes attempt to reproduce this event through what they call the Red Awakening, believing the ritual itself grants power. Whether they are restoring an ancient process or misinterpreting it remains uncertain. What you need to know: This is the book the Acolytes don't talk about publicly. The Researcher and Architect preserved it because they believe history shouldn't be erased—even the parts that contradict their own doctrine. 𝐑𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐏𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐚 - Temporal Displacement Zones — Observed Effects Rollback Zones are locations where parts of the city appear to have slipped out of sync with the present. Streets, storefronts, and technology may reflect earlier decades despite showing no signs of preservation or reconstruction. Most people never question these inconsistencies. Acolytes believe the phenomenon subtly influences perception, encouraging observers to accept the environment as normal rather than recognize it as impossible. Whether Rollback Zones are remnants of past events or evidence of something still unfolding remains unknown. Researcher's Annotation"Rollback is often described as reality moving backward. This interpretation is misleading. The evidence suggests reality is not reversing—it is remembering." Notepad and Tablet: The notebook records more than observations—it captures an investigation in progress. Every note references the same event: the Library Incident. The accompanying tablet is fixed on a single resonance return, while nearby Vein Cores appear unusually active, suggesting the Researcher was comparing multiple sources in real time. His interest may never have been the twins themselves. Instead, they may have represented the first observable proof that resonance disturbances could be tracked across the city. If Rollback Zones are echoes left behind by changing resonance states, then perhaps the tablet wasn't searching for people at all... ...it was learning to follow the city's memory. 
Long before the library incident, Evany and Emma Rae were already tied to the edges of the Coda Network – two resourceful kids surviving inside a system far larger and more dangerous than they realized.
Like many children who fall between the cracks, the twins survived by working inside the city’s underground economy. They operated as low‑tier hawkers and runners, moving through Coda‑controlled spaces: rollback storefronts, storage depots, flea markets, side‑street venues, underground clubs, and temporary exchange points scattered across the city. At first, the work looked harmless: moving packages, selling jewelry, keeping lookout, running deliveries. But over time, the girls began seeing things they were never supposed to see. The twins gained limited access to parts of Coda’s internal communications. Most low‑level workers received only fragmented instructions through disposable devices, rotating frequencies, encrypted message boards, and dead‑drop routing systems designed to keep operatives isolated. The network was intentionally compartmentalized. Emma, however, became obsessed with the patterns hidden inside the network. She was unusually good at navigating fragmented systems – tracing repeated routing behavior, signal timing, reused identifiers, and abandoned access points most operatives ignored. What began as curiosity slowly turned into unauthorized access. She never fully breached the network, but over time the sisters learned how to monitor local traffic: shipment reroutes, safehouse warnings, burn notices, broker circulation lists tied to private auctions, and operative movement alerts. Evany used this information differently. Where Emma focused on patterns, Evany focused on survival. She memorized transport routes, understood which sectors belonged to which crews, learned how contraband circulated between rollback zones, and recognized how quickly operations shifted whenever something important surfaced. By the time of Issue #1, the twins possessed something extremely dangerous inside the Coda ecosystem: partial operational awareness. Not enough to understand the full structure. But enough to move through it without permission. This eventually leads Evany to intercept a distress transmission connected to a coded Delegate emergency channel – revealing that the sisters had been listening to parts of the system they were never supposed to hear. Evany adapted faster than Emma. She learned how to navigate the streets, negotiate with vendors, repair equipment, and survive around dangerous people without drawing attention. Emma struggled more. Certain locations affected her differently. Rollback zones made her disoriented, exhausted, or emotionally unstable in ways neither sister understood at the time. Neither girl knew anything about Acolytes, Vein Cores, or convergence. They were never important enough to be trusted with real knowledge. That was the point. Coda survives by ensuring most people only ever see one piece of the machine. By the time of Issue #1, the twins were already beginning to distance themselves from the underground world they grew up inside. Then the library incident happened. And suddenly, the system they spent years surviving began shifting around them in ways neither fully understands. -YGA
Vein Core Relics – What They Are and Why They Matter
You’ve probably walked past one without knowing it. Not because they’re hidden in plain sight, but because your mind quietly decided not to look too hard. Vein Core Relics are not normal objects. They were never meant to be held, traded, or used by ordinary people. They are fragments of a much older system – something that predates modern technology, recorded history, and even the way we understand time. What Are Vein Core Relics? They look like carved metal, sometimes with tiny crystal veins running through the surface. Some are small enough to fit in a ring. Others are larger, embedded in weapon housings or sealed inside protective casings. Size doesn’t matter. What matters is what they do when they get close to each other. The most valuable items the Coda network collects are Artemis stones and their shards. Vein Core Relics are the second most valuable – rare enough to be worth stealing, trading, and fighting over, but just common enough to be moved through auctions, foreign deals, and underground networks. A full Vein Core is much larger than a shard. The bat that Evany carries contains one. So does the Milican Blade. Smaller fragments, the shards, are what Delegates sometimes receive as rewards – set into ancient bloodline artifact housings, then placed inside modern weapons. These shards can be charged through certain rituals, but the effect is never completely stable or predictable. How They Affect the World When two charged Vein Cores come close to each other, they try to sync. That’s when small, strange things start to happen right away – lights flicker, metal hums without power, outlets spark, sometimes a reflection splits into two images for a heartbeat. The air might feel cold on one side of a room and warm on the other. Car alarms go off for no reason. If the sync is strong enough, people nearby can experience a memory flash of the most recent time two charged cores came together miles away and hours earlier. It’s not random – it’s a residual echo imprinted in the Lattice. These flashes are brief and leave behind disorientation, nosebleeds and confusion. They are not the same as deliberately walking into Emma’s memory construct, but they can feel eerily similar. Most people don’t even notice the smaller effects. Their minds smooth over the inconsistencies – a survival mechanism, or maybe part of the system itself. But the effects are real. You can see their scars in certain neighborhoods where whole buildings or parts of city blocks look forty years out of date, where phone booths still have rotary dials and where your reflection in a window takes an extra second to catch up to your movement. (POTENTIAL SPOILER) Relics Don’t Always Behave the Same Some relics respond with precision. Others react unpredictably. The restored blade recovered through the Coda pipeline appears deliberate in its construction—ancient, controlled, almost ceremonial in the way it activates and responds. Evany’s bat is different. Built from modified salvage and experimental engineering, it was never intended to function like a relic object at all. Yet under certain conditions, it reacts in ways that continue to defy explanation. What makes the two objects unsettling isn’t that they behave identically. It’s that they sometimes seem to recognize the same things. Small distortions. Subtle vibration. Moments of interference that appear connected to people rather than mechanics alone. No one fully understands why. And that uncertainty has started drawing attention from the wrong people. Why People Are Hunting Them Not just anyone hunts for Vein Cores in New Verance City. They are valuable, and only those in the know will go after them. Special Coda operatives are tasked with acquiring them by any means necessary – trade, theft, auctions, foreign channels. The network also distributes certain masks across the city, which act as false nodes, creating tiny resonance pockets that help anchor larger attempts at convergence. The people buying masks don’t always understand what they’re starting. They just know the objects are rare and powerful. Ancient history whispers about a time when these systems were whole, when bloodlines worked together, when reality responded to intention rather than instability. That time is long gone. The bloodlines fractured. The knowledge scattered. What remains are fragments – incomplete, misunderstood, and desperately sought after by people who think they’re on the verge of something big. They may be wrong. They may be right. Either way, the cores are gathering. So the next time you see an old building that doesn’t fit its neighborhood, or a storefront that looks like it’s from the 1980s, or a phone booth that still has a rotary dial – don’t just assume it’s old. Something might actually be off about that place. The people who know why cores are valued are already working on their own plans. The only ones left to figure it out are a reluctant antiques dealer and two sisters who never imagined any of this. And they’re just getting started. -YG
Above: The Milican Blade, object stolen from Penn's Antiques Shop in Issue #1 is a forged copy of an ancient bloodline relic.
Above: Different Active Vein Core Shapes
Above: Dormant, Non Charged Vein Core
Above: Active, Charged Vein Core
Dormant Ring Core
Ring Core Actively Charged 1. World of New Verance
Everything about the city, the Lattice, Vein Cores, rollback zones, and the rules of reality. 2. Characters Profiles, sketches, and thoughts about Evany, Emma, Penn, Velek, the Acolytes, and Delegates. 3. Lore & Artifacts Deep dives into the Chantry, the Acolytes, the Continuum, STARR, the Milican Blade, the Artemis Core, and any ancient history. 4. Process & Sketches My 2003‑2004 drawings, rough layouts, script snippets, and any “behind the scenes” content. 5. Blog Updates Shorter posts about milestones (new art, convention appearances, crowdfunding, site updates). 6. Excerpts & Previews Sample pages, panel descriptions, or short story fragments. |
 REFRESH OFTEN FOR UPDATES
STARR BLOG POST #1
WHATS THE NAME ABOUT?
AuthorI’ve been a comic artist since 1992. This is my first story — born from a dream, lost to corrupted hard drives, but kept alive in sketchbooks from 2003. After a recent rewrite, it’s finally here. Archives
January 2030
Categories
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Character Intro #2
Welcome to New Verance City™
The Championship That Never Happened
Starr Blog Intro
Vein Core Relics
Earliest Sketches of Evany Rae 2003-
The Rae Twins & CODA
The Remidy Saga:
Unwanted War
MASK ATLAS ARG DEVELOPTMENT UPDATES
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