Introducing Noa & Una (Patreon)

Today, I want to share something special with you: Ironlily is now a creative team.

For a long time, I have worked entirely on my own. All of the creative ideas, concepts, and historical research behind my work were done by myself. However, I am not a professional comic artist, animator, or novelist. I was only a designer who entered this field along the way. There is some limit a person can do, but I really want to present a more complete Ordo Mediare and medieval world to everyone. So over the past year, I have been preparing a team, searching for and choosing partners.

Perhaps unlike what you might expect when you hear that to build a team, the main thing I needed was not a more skilled comic artist or animator. I am not suddenly going to bring you more polished artwork or spectacular animation right away. What I need first is to build a solid foundation and further develop the world itself. I need partners who can understand and support both me and my work, while also having their own desire to create independently.

So, here to introduce Noa and Una, two scribes of Ordo Mediare!

Noa is a writer and has also been my longtime colleague. I have always loved the care she put into the game settings, stories, quests, and research behind her writing when we worked together on game projects. We started discussing collaborative work on the Sisters last year, and I am very happy that she was willing to support and eventually decided to join me.

I have entrusted the setting and stories of Ordo Mediare to her, and she has been helping me further develop its world, from geography and background to the characters themselves. Over the past few months, you may already have noticed that some characters have gained more background stories and that the relationships between different characters have become clearer. Behind the scenes, Noa has already helped me organize many of those relationships and develop each character's inner world.

Una is my friend I later met through our LARP community. She is actually a player who participates in roleplay activities with my Ordo Mediare LARP group, which means she is technically a real Ordo Mediare Sister!

She was very interested in joining my creative team, telling me that if she took part in creating the setting, she would really feel like a scribe of the order. She has also been inspired by me and several other artists she likes, and this year she began creating and sharing her own work online. She is still at the beginning of that journey and exploring what she wants to create, so I decided to support her and let her participate directly in the world of Ordo Mediare.

Because of this, in future posts you will sometimes see works with a noticeably different art style. Well, everyone has to start somewhere! She may still be inexperienced at drawing people, but do not underestimate her when it comes to flowers and plants. That is where she really shines!

From now on, through our collaborative work, we will gradually bring the world and stories of Ordo Mediare to you piece by piece. In the future, we will not only present stories of the Sisters written by Noa, but also a collaborative series called "Noa & Una's Marginalia," focusing on small pieces of medieval knowledge and the sisters' daily life.

The idea originally came from Una. The series will present knowledge about daily life within the order from the perspective of the Ordo Mediare Scribe Sisters. We are all amateurs researching medieval history on our own, so if any professional historians or reenactors come across our posts, you are very welcome to point out anything that could be improved.

I intend to give them the freedom to design this series themselves and to write stories within the Ordo Mediare setting. I am not someone who wants to hold every creative idea tightly in my own hands. I created the framework of Ordo Mediare, but I like sharing it. I want different people to be able to move freely within that framework and contribute their own ideas.

In a way, it is similar to historical classics and tales. They were often shaped by many people, sometimes across generations, taking what may once have been a small historical tale and gradually developing it into an epic story.

I believe that is how Ordo Mediare can become a living legend. If one day I am no longer able to create, I want there to be people who can continue carrying the world forward.

So today, I am also happy to openly acknowledge that Ordo Mediare is no longer something created by me alone. I now have Noa and Una as my partners.

They are also just beginning to build their own social media and creative spaces, where they sometimes share their own projects and interests. If you enjoy their personal work as well, please remember to give them your support!