This post is gonna be a little different from my other posts, it’s not about a patch or events or anything. A lot of people liked the character relationships post I did a while back so I wanna do something similar.

This time, I’ll be talking about three different books Nexon has released for MapleStory (I mean there’s more but these are a specific type). They’re actually really cool and I’d like to own them myself one day, but for now, we’ll have to make do with pictures others have posted.

MapleStory Official Fanbook: Secret Story (Hero Edition)

SECRET 1 – WORLD VIEW

I think this part of the book was just like general details about MapleStory and it’s story, because no one has posted pictures of it so I guess I’ll just skip it haha.

SECRET 2 - HEROES

Mercedes, Queen of the Elves

Here are some sketches for early concepts of Mercedes! Thanks so much to Dolphin-Fly for the scan (and for later Hero concepts as well)! I think some of them actually look really good haha, I was never a fan of Mercedes’ design though.

Mercedes also has a Q&A section.

There’s also a comic version of Mercedes’ past (which we play in-game in the tutorial).

Aran, the Polearm Warrior

For Aran, they included sketches for both genders. I’m pretty sure he isn’t supposed to have a specific gender anymore haha.

Aran’s comic is about the Elin Forest refugees and how he stays behind to fight the Black Mage.

Phantom, the Master Thief

Phantom doesn’t seem like they changed much over his development. I don’t think that’s a problem though, Phantom is one of my favourite characters~

Phantom’s comic is, of course, how he sneaks into Ereb and foils Hilla’s plans.

Luminous, the Magician of Light and Darkness

Wow, black and red-haired Luminous! Some of those hairs look sort of silly lol.

Luminous’ comic is about the sealing of the Black Mage.

Evan, the Dragon Master

Evan’s designs were also very similar to his final release.

Evan’s comic has to do with both Freud and him finding Mir. It’s actually pretty sad, Freud is saying “But Afrien… don’t sacrifice yourself for me.”

Another part of the book is MapleStory If: “If I wasn’t a hero…”. It’s sort of like an alternate reality in which the Maple heroes are all school students haha.

I think parts of it are like a dating simulator as some of the characters try to ask out others lol.

Each of the characters also has a different back story! Mercedes is the all around good student, but her only flaw is that she cannot wake up early in the morning. It’s also mentioned she doesn’t understand relationships.

Aran is the typical jock student. He’s been in love with Mercedes since he first set eyes on her.

Phantom is the only son of the chairman of the Crystal Garden airlines, and hasn’t grown up with any hardships.

Luminous is the class president and very studious. Whenever he gets mad, Dark Luminous appears.

Evan is a younger student in the school. He is also in love with Mercedes, but she considers him a little brother.

Female Aran and Evan also show up in it, I think they’re fangirls of Phantom haha.

Another big part of the book is Maplebook, a Facebook parody where each of the heroes has their own pages, posts, pictures, etc.

There’s also a bunch of cute little comics strewn around, this one is about Cardcaptor Freud haha.

SECRET 3 – LAST STORY

Note: this book came out a while back, before we had even heard of EunWol. Maybe he wasn’t as shoehorned in as people thought? :-)

MapleStory Official Fanbook: Secret Story (Commander Edition)

SECRET 0 – WORLD VIEW

Before I begin, I wanna mention this book came out like a month ago so there’s not that much information/pictures from it!

Like before, I don’t think this part is too important.

SECRET 1 – Commanders

This part of the book talks about 7 commanders (in-depth, there’s a couple more that are mentioned though!).

Sage Arkarium
Demon
Treant Guwaru
Wing Masters Orca and Suu
Sibyl Hilla
Lion King Van Leon
Fallen Dragon Magnus

There’s a bunch of comics for each commander, detailing their history and how they became one.

Each commander has their own Secret Files, with special information about them. I heard the book talks about Orca and Suu’s birth?

There’s also Commander Kindergarten! It’s a cute little alternate universe comic where all the commanders go to a school where the Black Mage is their teacher, haha.

A bunch of smaller comics are included here and there, here’s one where Magnus leaves Pantheon (Monster Life anyone?).

Like the last secret story, there’s another parody of social networking! This time, it’s Twitter, or should I say, Mapler!

They also parodied Wikipedia, with M-Wiki. This one’s about Dimension Invade.

At the end they talk a little bit about the newer commanders, Spider King Will, another Demon Demian, and the Dream Manipulator!

The book doesn’t mention it but we see her in EunWol’s story, her name is Lucid and she’s actually an elf!

Each of the commanders has a Q&A as well, but Lucid doesn’t give any detail at all in her answers haha.

SECRET 2 – Truth

An Inconvenient Truth

Someone posted this rough timeline of MapleStory’s history, which was from this Secret Story.

The White Mage becomes the Black Mage. Luminous’ light is created. The Black Mage collects his forces and begins his attack on Maple World.
Alicia creates the undersea tower, The Seed.
Ephinia becomes corrupted. Guwaru is convinced by Ephinia to become a commander.
The twins born in darkness, Orca and Suu become commanders.
Hilla, Aswan’s shamaness, betrays Iason and becomes a commander.
Van Leon, the Lion King, believes he is betrayed by the Knights of Cygnus and becomes a commander.
Arkarium chooses a dark future, betrays the Goddess Rhinne, and becomes a commander.
Magnus is injured after the former Kaiser sacrifices himself to destroy his forces. Darmoor sends Magnus to Maple World, where he becomes a commander.
Afrien refuses to join the Black Mage, leading to their extinction.
Suu and Orca kill Empress Aria. Phantom joins the heroes.
Arkarium burns down the southern Leafre forests, including Demon‘s home. He tricksDemian into joining him. Demon betrays the Black Mage and breaks his shield.
Phantom mortally wounds Suu.
Magnus betrays and absorbs Guwaru’s energy, and returns to Grandis.
Freud creates the seal of time. EunWol sacrifices himself to power the seal. Luminousactivates the seal. The Black Mage gets sealed away.
The ship carrying refugees crashes in Elin Forest. Helena begins exploring Victoria Island. Future adventurers encounter Ephinia. Victoria Island’s peace persists.
The Sharenian Kingdom is destroyed. Magatia is founded.
The Black Wings are created. Orca hires Gelimer. Orca uses the captured Demon to create energy. Gelimer experiments on kidnapped children.
Arkarium tries to revive the Black Mage. The Cross Hunter organization stops him.
Empress Cygnus is crowned. The Black Wings attack Ereb. The Knights of Cygnus begin recruiting. Mikhail becomes a Chief Knight.
The Black Wings make their move. They begin to collect the Seal Stones. They invade the Door to the Past and Chaos monsters begin to appear.
Evan makes his contract with Mir.
Aran awakens. Aran meets Helena.
The Lion King, Van Leon, appears.
Mercedes awakens and hears about Aran.
Demon awakens. The revived Guwaru leaves signs of his return.
Velvitty (Vita) dies in an explosion.
The Maple Alliance is created.
The Black Mage is revived fully. The Door to the Future opens.
Phantom begins to make his move.
Hilla and the ancient city Aswan appear.
Phantom joins the Alliance.
Orbis Tower is attacked and some floors are destroyed.
Luminous learns the truth of his past. Luminous joins the Alliance.
The Nova race and the Maple Alliance join together.
Will becomes a commander. The Child of God is split into two.
Demian goes to Root Abyss and seals away Alicia with the Seal Guardians.
The Maple Alliance helps save her and she sleeps within Shinsoo.
Demian attacks Ereb to bring back Alicia and kills Shinsoo.
Cygnus awakens her full powers and becomes the 4th Transcendent.
Demian and Demon are reunited in the Temple of Time.
Gelimer betrays Orca. Gelimer takes her place as a commander.
Gelimer creates a crimson Dimension Gate with Hilla in order to capture the traitor Magnus.
Zero defeats Will and escapes from the Mirror World. Zero meets the other commanders and declines to become one.
Kritias appears.

SECRET 3 – Next

Trip to the Future (?) With Gelimer!

Gelimer has created a time machine to go to the future, what can it hold for us?

Apparently, in the future, the Black Mage is defeated?! Can Demon and Demian really be happy together in Leafre? Can Will be with his true love, spiders?

SECRET 4 – LAST STORY

I’m not sure what’s actually in this part, but here’s an ominous message from the Black Mage himself!

MapleStory ARTWORKS: Official Art Book (Bon Voyage)

This one’s my favourite of the three, there’s so much in here! It’s divided into 5 parts.

PART 1 – World

It’s the ship that goes from Victoria Island to Orbis! There’s even descriptions of each part of the ship.

Here are some early concepts for Crystal Garden. I think the one they went with was definitely the best haha. The one in the top right has Phantom’s hat built-in!

That early version of Edelstein looks pretty different from what we have now.

These versions of the Ancient City, Aswan are really… foggy. I wonder how long they spent on this, considering you can’t even explore Aswan anyways (still salty about them not making it its own area…).

Here’s Angelic Burster’s Room. I guess early AB was very self-absorbed, her room had portraits and statues of herself!

Wow, Ellinia looks really nice when it’s drawn like that! I wonder if they’re going to update its graphics like they did with Henesys?

PART 2 – Character

Here’s the new Adventurer warrior using different types of weapons.

This part of the book also has a lot of early designs for some skills, such as Archmage (I/L)’s Thunder Storm and Frozen Orb.

Here’s Bishop’s Heaven’s Door skill. That first one looks sort of odd haha.

Here’s Marksman’s Arrow Illusion, I think that badass version of Puppet is really cool, I wish they had chosen to keep it.

I think they might have loosely based the new Pirate art on the old one.

They also included Cannon Shooter and his new design. On the left you can see some early concepts for some Dual Blade skills, might be Tornado Spin?

I guess Demon Avenger’s Desperado was meant to have a bunch of engravings on it at first.

Wild Hunter’s Cross Road skill’s prototypes, I think one of those effects is an old Wind Breaker skill lol.

There were some posters made for Xenon, although I think we only saw one of them (the coloured in one).

On the right you can see Luminous’ art in positions different to his usual demeanor.

Here are some super cool concepts for Evan’s Onyx Dragons! I really wish they used one of these instead of the Mir we have, or at least let us choose which we wanted? Dragon customization?

PART 3 – NPC

This section of the book includes illustrations (and some early concepts) for many of the NPCs in MapleStory! For example, you can see many different designs for Gelimer, one of which was even a female!

There were a couple different designs for the Androids that Gelimer designed that reside in Leben Mine.

Shadrian and some other Elin Forest NPCs were shown as well.

Here’s the Former Kaiser, as well as young and older versions of Kyle, Tear, and Belderos.

There were some different outfits they were working on for Beryl, I think she looks best with the white so I’m glad they chose that.

Here’s Evan and Utah’s father, Grid. Some of those prototypes look a lot more like Utah haha.

PART 4 – Monster

This part is for the various monsters of MapleStory. Here you can see Dragonica, and some deep Ludibrium monsters.

They tried a bunch of things out for Lion King Van Leon. Some of them look really weird haha, like the bottom right. The top right looks sort of like Chopper’s Rumble form from One Piece!

They made Mutated Stumpy really fat lol. Some of those early concepts for the squirrel monster from Mu Lung make it look like it’s on drugs haha.

Here’s a detailed sketch of Zakum! I wonder what he would look like in-game if they made him recently instead of so many years ago.

Xerxes, from Chryse! The drawing at the bottom says “Sparta!” haha. I think the other ones are possible monsters they were gonna put in Chryse.

Here’s Fallen Cygnus and also her awakened form, from the Cygnus Returns update.

PART 5 – Special Supplement

This part includes special illustrations and also EunWol! Here’s the 2013 New Year posters, featuring Xenon and Beryl.

Here’s the 2012 New Year ones, almost all of them have Angelic Burster but I think in the end they changed it to Mercedes. There’s also some really cute Luminous and Lania ones~