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Description
  Okay, I've been putting this off for way too long. I haven't updated my chapter title cards since April 2013- at which point Paper Mario: Double Darkness didn't even have a name, not to mention I was terrible at drawing. And if that's not bad enough, I've NEVER done a title card for the Prologue. So basically, I'm trying to get them all up to date as soon as possible, starting- where else?- at the beginning.
  Thanks to February break, I managed to get this whole thing sketched and colored in about five days. You'll notice the familiar theater aesthetic from The Thousand-Year Door is gone. Don't get me wrong, I think it was a cool idea, but I wanted to go in my own direction for my own fan game. Besides that, the Mt. Mushroom Observatory got redesigned (especially the telescope/Celestial Cannon on top), and instead of having the entire town inside of it, it only contains the stuff that looks at stars, with all the houses and shops being their own buildings.
    Okay, from here on out is the description for the Prologue. WARNING: Really, really, absurdly high levels of reading ahead.

Characters (from left to right):
Parri: A high-ranking astronomer from the Mt. Mushroom Observatory. Usually he acts pretty professional, but at the moment he’s panicking about his job security, because being an astronomer is impossible if there are no stars. Becomes Mario’s first partner, with the ability to fly across small gaps.
Infinnah T.: In charge of the Mt. Mushroom Observatory, and the one who writes to Mario at the beginning. She’s also a part-time tinkerer and inventor of such gizmos as the Celestial Cannon, which is capable of firing things straight into space. Despite all that, her most incredible quality is her legendary social life- she seems to know pretty much everyone in the Mushroom Frontier.
Mario: If you don’t know who this guy is already, I recommend you go and play some Paper Mario games before you go on reading this.
Darkblot: An evil sorcerer who was responsible (in part) for the fall of the Nox Empire, and now for draining the energy of the stars. Hopes to go back in time and conquer the Nox himself as revenge for imprisoning him in the Pit of 100 Trials.

--PRE-PROLOGUE--
    The game starts with a little anecdote from the traditional Paper Mario storybook about the Nox Empire. (I’m not going to bother typing up the whole thing, but you can get some pretty solid background about the Nox from here , here , and here .)
    As usual, the first scene is Parakarry delivering the mail. Luigi brings it in, complains a bit that he never gets any, and hands Mario an envelope with a star-shaped seal. Mario breaks it open.
    Inside, he finds a letter from Infinnah T., who explains that recently in the Mushroom Frontier, there have been strange magical events happening at random and causing all sorts of trouble. No one has any idea how they started. She asks if Mario can head down to the Mushroom Frontier and help get it sorted out.
    At first Mario is a bit worried about leaving the princess alone, but Luigi promises to take care of any Bowser situations (and there will be Bowser situations; if there weren’t, it wouldn’t be a Mario game). So Mario books a flight on the Star Spinner (a passenger helicopter that runs between the Mushroom Frontier and the mainland), asks Luigi to let everyone know where he’s going, and starts out on his next adventure.

--PROLOGUE--
    Mario touches down at the Frontier Helipad and sets out on the path to the observatory. Nothing too interesting so far. The only reason the path’s even there is so you can go through some tutorials before the fun really begins.
    After a little while Mario makes it to Mt. Mushroom, a small town sitting on top of the identically named mountain, mostly populated by scientists and researchers who either examine the skies with the state-of-the-art stargazing technology in the Mt. Mushroom Observatory or excavate the ruins of the Nox capital of Corona Town buried beneath the mountain. For now, Mario heads to the former, only to find that it’s locked.
    As he wonders what he should do, the door opens, revealing Parri on the other side. He asks Mario what he’s doing standing there and blocking the door. At first, Parri insists that access to the observatory is restricted, but once Mario explains who sent for him, he quickly apologizes and shows Mario to the Starchives, the top floor of the observatory and Infinnah T.’s residence and lab.
    Infinnah T. greets Mario and makes some humorous small talk for a while before getting to business. She invites Mario to take a look through the giant telescope at the sky. When he does this, he sees a bunch of barely visible flickering gray dots. With a shock, he realizes that they’re stars. Infinnah T. goes on to explain that the unexplained disappearance of the stars could be disastrous for the Mt. Mushroom Observatory- and yet it’s only one of the strange occurrences that have been going on all over the Frontier lately. And the most worrying part is, Mt. Mushroom seems to be getting hit the hardest...
    Of course, Mario promises to find the source of the wild magic. At this point Parri, who’s been up in the Starchives this whole time, offers to go with him, explaining that without the stars he’ll undoubtedly lose his job. Mario accepts and gains his first partner, and the two head out of the observatory (which you can now enter whenever you want).
    The middle part of the Prologue consists of Mario and Parri walking around the town, trying to answer the question of where all this crazy magic came from. Thanks to Parri’s ability to fly over small gaps, Mario now has access to most of Mt. Mushroom. He picks up some interesting information about the wild magic occasionally, but the investigation doesn’t really take off until Mario completes a side quest where he brings a Magnifying Glass to one of the archaeologist Toads in town. As thanks, Mario (finally) receives a Hammer, which he can use to smash through a yellow block into a back alley, where he saves a Doogan with a camera around his neck being roughed up by some Goombas. The Doogan introduces himself as Alias, a professional photographer, and it turns out that he has a photograph proving that the nearby Shy Guy Clubhouse was the first location to be hit by a wild magic attack. Parri recalls seeing a Shy Guy hanging out near the inn. Perhaps he knows something? The Shy Guy (who later turns out to be Shylington, by the way) turns out to have seen a cloaked figure coming from the Pit of 100 Trials, which attacked him and his fellow Guys. When asked further about the pit, he says that it was built by the Nox and the archaeologists at the dig site would know more about it.
    If Mario approached the dig site before this point, he would be stopped by Antiqua T., a headlamp-wearing Toad who’s in charge of the excavation, at the entrance and informed that the Nox ruins are completely off-limits. Once Mario comes back with his information about where the magic came from, though, Antiqua T. becomes worried. If something from the Nox era crawled up out of the Pit of 100 Trials, it might try to sneak into the ruins! Realizing that the valuable artifacts could be in danger, she decides to let Mario in.
    After traversing a path infested with Goombas, Paragoombas, and Spiky Goombas, just before Mario and Parri make it to the dig site, a huge explosion is heard ahead, and panicked Toad archaeologists come running, exclaiming that a giant hole just got blown in the remains of the Shadow Spire. Whatever came out of the Pit, it looks like it came here after all. Mario rushes to the dig site and enters the Shadow Spire through the hole. Although the dark energy- conducting tower used to be 9 floors high, only the top two floors are left after 5,000 years, so there’s not much trouble making it to the top.
    On the top floor, Mario runs into the cloaked figure described by Shylington just as it’s turning on a really old-looking machine. The figure is surprised by the intrusion, but it quickly recovers. When Parri demands an explanation of what’s going on, the figure says he’s a sorcerer from the Nox era named Darkblot. After he was unjustly thrown into the Pit of 100 Trials by the Nox (actually, they had a pretty good reason), he slowly crawled his way back out over the next few millennia, with plans to conquer their empire as revenge. However, when he made it out, he found he was too late. However, he refused to give up, and returned here so he could use the portal inside to go back to the Nox era and defeat them for good. As if for emphasis, a swirling white hole appears in the air above the machine as he speaks.
    What about the wild magic? Most of it, he says, was nothing more than a side effect of the previously sealed Pit of 100 Trials being opened again. However, he admits to having himself drained the energy of the stars to use as a weapon against the Nox, and triumphantly holds up a glowing bag with a flashing star symbol on it! Once Mario sees the stolen star energy in Darkblot’s hands, he decides enough talk and attacks.

DARKBLOT
Tattle Entry #142
That's Darkblot! He's the evil sorcerer that tried to take over the Nox Empire 5,000 years ago! What's worse, HE'S TRYING AGAIN! Some people just can't admit defeat very easily, I guess. Maximum HP is 40, Attack is 3, and Defense is 0. His main attack is hurling bolts of dark energy, but he can also drain your HP and FP to heal himself or gain various status effects. If you don't carry a lot of items, you'll be in trouble before long. No one knows very much about who he is or where he came from, really. He just appeared in the Nox Empire one day and started to steal dark energy from our reserves. We put him in the Pit of 100 trials for his offenses, and he's been seeking vengeance for it ever since. Still, what do you think he wanted that energy for to begin with? What was he trying to accomplish?...

    After receiving a beating from Mario, Darkblot realizes that he has to make a desperate move before his plans are ruined for the third time. Without warning, he makes a beeline for the portal, but before he sends himself back in time, he tears the machine into 9 pieces. Mario doesn’t have a chance to follow him- the portal starts destabilizing immediately, and spits out a huge quantity of sparks and debris from the past- along with a Nox girl wearing a crown- before exploding. The Nox girl picks herself up, looks around, and exclaims something that, although Mario doesn’t speak her language, is clearly very panicked.
    From there, the game cuts back to in front of the Mt. Mushroom Observatory. Mario and Parri, accompanied by the still very confused Nox girl, are met by Infinnah T. outside the observatory, and they explain what they discovered about the disappearance of the stars. Sadly, it seems, with the portal destroyed there’s no way to pursue Darkblot. Infinnah T., however, replies that she just might have an idea . . . and takes out a folded purple piece of paper with a design on it that looks just like the window on the top floor of the Shadow Spire. She explains that it fell outside the observatory just a few minutes ago, and it must be one of the parts of the portal! When she hands it over to Mario, the paper unfolds into the portal’s base...
    *** YOU FOUND A PORTAL PIECE! ***

--LUIGI INTERLUDE--

Back in the greater Mushroom Kingdom, Luigi is relaxing on the porch when Parakarry stops by and drops off another letter for Mario. Obviously, Mario’s not there, but Luigi opens up the letter anyway out of curiosity, and finds the usual invitation from Peach to come over to the castle and have some cake. It’s at that moment that Luigi remembers he was supposed to let everyone know Mario was off on an adventure.
    Possibly because of his deep-seated desire to finally experience the hallowed position of Player One, or possibly because he just likes cake, Luigi heads to the castle anyway. What follows is a slightly awkward but undeniably hilarious scene where Peach ends up splitting her cake with the entirely wrong person. Although she’s a little put off by the fact that Mario left without telling her, she’s glad that at least someone will be around for protection. Toadsworth, of course, is still panicking about the princess being in danger, and not even bothering to hide his doubt of Luigi’s abilities.
    Meanwhile, just outside the window of Peach’s Castle, Bowser Jr. is eavesdropping on the conversation, with some amazing results. It looks like now is the perfect time for his dad to strike! With Mario gone, who’ll be able to defeat him? That green guy? Please.
  Bowser Jr. turns away from the window and starts heading back to report to Bowser- and bumps into Kammy Koopa standing at the window right next to him. He demands to know what she’s doing here. She replies that she’s eavesdropping on Peach and Luigi. Bowser Jr. exclaims furiously that that was his job. Kammy insists that Bowser gave the job to her because he can actually trust her to get results. The situation quickly explodes into a fight, and the screen fades to black.

Description
  Okay, I've been putting this off for way too long. I haven't updated my chapter title cards since April 2013- at which point Paper Mario: Double Darkness didn't even have a name, not to mention I was terrible at drawing. And if that's not bad enough, I've NEVER done a title card for the Prologue. So basically, I'm trying to get them all up to date as soon as possible, starting- where else?- at the beginning.
  Thanks to February break, I managed to get this whole thing sketched and colored in about five days. You'll notice the familiar theater aesthetic from The Thousand-Year Door is gone. Don't get me wrong, I think it was a cool idea, but I wanted to go in my own direction for my own fan game. Besides that, the Mt. Mushroom Observatory got redesigned (especially the telescope/Celestial Cannon on top), and instead of having the entire town inside of it, it only contains the stuff that looks at stars, with all the houses and shops being their own buildings.
    Okay, from here on out is the description for the Prologue. WARNING: Really, really, absurdly high levels of reading ahead.

Characters (from left to right):
Parri: A high-ranking astronomer from the Mt. Mushroom Observatory. Usually he acts pretty professional, but at the moment he’s panicking about his job security, because being an astronomer is impossible if there are no stars. Becomes Mario’s first partner, with the ability to fly across small gaps.
Infinnah T.: In charge of the Mt. Mushroom Observatory, and the one who writes to Mario at the beginning. She’s also a part-time tinkerer and inventor of such gizmos as the Celestial Cannon, which is capable of firing things straight into space. Despite all that, her most incredible quality is her legendary social life- she seems to know pretty much everyone in the Mushroom Frontier.
Mario: If you don’t know who this guy is already, I recommend you go and play some Paper Mario games before you go on reading this.
Darkblot: An evil sorcerer who was responsible (in part) for the fall of the Nox Empire, and now for draining the energy of the stars. Hopes to go back in time and conquer the Nox himself as revenge for imprisoning him in the Pit of 100 Trials.

--PRE-PROLOGUE--
    The game starts with a little anecdote from the traditional Paper Mario storybook about the Nox Empire. (I’m not going to bother typing up the whole thing, but you can get some pretty solid background about the Nox from here , here , and here .)
    As usual, the first scene is Parakarry delivering the mail. Luigi brings it in, complains a bit that he never gets any, and hands Mario an envelope with a star-shaped seal. Mario breaks it open.
    Inside, he finds a letter from Infinnah T., who explains that recently in the Mushroom Frontier, there have been strange magical events happening at random and causing all sorts of trouble. No one has any idea how they started. She asks if Mario can head down to the Mushroom Frontier and help get it sorted out.
    At first Mario is a bit worried about leaving the princess alone, but Luigi promises to take care of any Bowser situations (and there will be Bowser situations; if there weren’t, it wouldn’t be a Mario game). So Mario books a flight on the Star Spinner (a passenger helicopter that runs between the Mushroom Frontier and the mainland), asks Luigi to let everyone know where he’s going, and starts out on his next adventure.

--PROLOGUE--
    Mario touches down at the Frontier Helipad and sets out on the path to the observatory. Nothing too interesting so far. The only reason the path’s even there is so you can go through some tutorials before the fun really begins.
    After a little while Mario makes it to Mt. Mushroom, a small town sitting on top of the identically named mountain, mostly populated by scientists and researchers who either examine the skies with the state-of-the-art stargazing technology in the Mt. Mushroom Observatory or excavate the ruins of the Nox capital of Corona Town buried beneath the mountain. For now, Mario heads to the former, only to find that it’s locked.
    As he wonders what he should do, the door opens, revealing Parri on the other side. He asks Mario what he’s doing standing there and blocking the door. At first, Parri insists that access to the observatory is restricted, but once Mario explains who sent for him, he quickly apologizes and shows Mario to the Starchives, the top floor of the observatory and Infinnah T.’s residence and lab.
    Infinnah T. greets Mario and makes some humorous small talk for a while before getting to business. She invites Mario to take a look through the giant telescope at the sky. When he does this, he sees a bunch of barely visible flickering gray dots. With a shock, he realizes that they’re stars. Infinnah T. goes on to explain that the unexplained disappearance of the stars could be disastrous for the Mt. Mushroom Observatory- and yet it’s only one of the strange occurrences that have been going on all over the Frontier lately. And the most worrying part is, Mt. Mushroom seems to be getting hit the hardest...
    Of course, Mario promises to find the source of the wild magic. At this point Parri, who’s been up in the Starchives this whole time, offers to go with him, explaining that without the stars he’ll undoubtedly lose his job. Mario accepts and gains his first partner, and the two head out of the observatory (which you can now enter whenever you want).
    The middle part of the Prologue consists of Mario and Parri walking around the town, trying to answer the question of where all this crazy magic came from. Thanks to Parri’s ability to fly over small gaps, Mario now has access to most of Mt. Mushroom. He picks up some interesting information about the wild magic occasionally, but the investigation doesn’t really take off until Mario completes a side quest where he brings a Magnifying Glass to one of the archaeologist Toads in town. As thanks, Mario (finally) receives a Hammer, which he can use to smash through a yellow block into a back alley, where he saves a Doogan with a camera around his neck being roughed up by some Goombas. The Doogan introduces himself as Alias, a professional photographer, and it turns out that he has a photograph proving that the nearby Shy Guy Clubhouse was the first location to be hit by a wild magic attack. Parri recalls seeing a Shy Guy hanging out near the inn. Perhaps he knows something? The Shy Guy (who later turns out to be Shylington, by the way) turns out to have seen a cloaked figure coming from the Pit of 100 Trials, which attacked him and his fellow Guys. When asked further about the pit, he says that it was built by the Nox and the archaeologists at the dig site would know more about it.
    If Mario approached the dig site before this point, he would be stopped by Antiqua T., a headlamp-wearing Toad who’s in charge of the excavation, at the entrance and informed that the Nox ruins are completely off-limits. Once Mario comes back with his information about where the magic came from, though, Antiqua T. becomes worried. If something from the Nox era crawled up out of the Pit of 100 Trials, it might try to sneak into the ruins! Realizing that the valuable artifacts could be in danger, she decides to let Mario in.
    After traversing a path infested with Goombas, Paragoombas, and Spiky Goombas, just before Mario and Parri make it to the dig site, a huge explosion is heard ahead, and panicked Toad archaeologists come running, exclaiming that a giant hole just got blown in the remains of the Shadow Spire. Whatever came out of the Pit, it looks like it came here after all. Mario rushes to the dig site and enters the Shadow Spire through the hole. Although the dark energy- conducting tower used to be 9 floors high, only the top two floors are left after 5,000 years, so there’s not much trouble making it to the top.
    On the top floor, Mario runs into the cloaked figure described by Shylington just as it’s turning on a really old-looking machine. The figure is surprised by the intrusion, but it quickly recovers. When Parri demands an explanation of what’s going on, the figure says he’s a sorcerer from the Nox era named Darkblot. After he was unjustly thrown into the Pit of 100 Trials by the Nox (actually, they had a pretty good reason), he slowly crawled his way back out over the next few millennia, with plans to conquer their empire as revenge. However, when he made it out, he found he was too late. However, he refused to give up, and returned here so he could use the portal inside to go back to the Nox era and defeat them for good. As if for emphasis, a swirling white hole appears in the air above the machine as he speaks.
    What about the wild magic? Most of it, he says, was nothing more than a side effect of the previously sealed Pit of 100 Trials being opened again. However, he admits to having himself drained the energy of the stars to use as a weapon against the Nox, and triumphantly holds up a glowing bag with a flashing star symbol on it! Once Mario sees the stolen star energy in Darkblot’s hands, he decides enough talk and attacks.

DARKBLOT
Tattle Entry #142
That's Darkblot! He's the evil sorcerer that tried to take over the Nox Empire 5,000 years ago! What's worse, HE'S TRYING AGAIN! Some people just can't admit defeat very easily, I guess. Maximum HP is 40, Attack is 3, and Defense is 0. His main attack is hurling bolts of dark energy, but he can also drain your HP and FP to heal himself or gain various status effects. If you don't carry a lot of items, you'll be in trouble before long. No one knows very much about who he is or where he came from, really. He just appeared in the Nox Empire one day and started to steal dark energy from our reserves. We put him in the Pit of 100 trials for his offenses, and he's been seeking vengeance for it ever since. Still, what do you think he wanted that energy for to begin with? What was he trying to accomplish?...

    After receiving a beating from Mario, Darkblot realizes that he has to make a desperate move before his plans are ruined for the third time. Without warning, he makes a beeline for the portal, but before he sends himself back in time, he tears the machine into 9 pieces. Mario doesn’t have a chance to follow him- the portal starts destabilizing immediately, and spits out a huge quantity of sparks and debris from the past- along with a Nox girl wearing a crown- before exploding. The Nox girl picks herself up, looks around, and exclaims something that, although Mario doesn’t speak her language, is clearly very panicked.
    From there, the game cuts back to in front of the Mt. Mushroom Observatory. Mario and Parri, accompanied by the still very confused Nox girl, are met by Infinnah T. outside the observatory, and they explain what they discovered about the disappearance of the stars. Sadly, it seems, with the portal destroyed there’s no way to pursue Darkblot. Infinnah T., however, replies that she just might have an idea . . . and takes out a folded purple piece of paper with a design on it that looks just like the window on the top floor of the Shadow Spire. She explains that it fell outside the observatory just a few minutes ago, and it must be one of the parts of the portal! When she hands it over to Mario, the paper unfolds into the portal’s base...
    *** YOU FOUND A PORTAL PIECE! ***

--LUIGI INTERLUDE--

Back in the greater Mushroom Kingdom, Luigi is relaxing on the porch when Parakarry stops by and drops off another letter for Mario. Obviously, Mario’s not there, but Luigi opens up the letter anyway out of curiosity, and finds the usual invitation from Peach to come over to the castle and have some cake. It’s at that moment that Luigi remembers he was supposed to let everyone know Mario was off on an adventure.
    Possibly because of his deep-seated desire to finally experience the hallowed position of Player One, or possibly because he just likes cake, Luigi heads to the castle anyway. What follows is a slightly awkward but undeniably hilarious scene where Peach ends up splitting her cake with the entirely wrong person. Although she’s a little put off by the fact that Mario left without telling her, she’s glad that at least someone will be around for protection. Toadsworth, of course, is still panicking about the princess being in danger, and not even bothering to hide his doubt of Luigi’s abilities.
    Meanwhile, just outside the window of Peach’s Castle, Bowser Jr. is eavesdropping on the conversation, with some amazing results. It looks like now is the perfect time for his dad to strike! With Mario gone, who’ll be able to defeat him? That green guy? Please.
  Bowser Jr. turns away from the window and starts heading back to report to Bowser- and bumps into Kammy Koopa standing at the window right next to him. He demands to know what she’s doing here. She replies that she’s eavesdropping on Peach and Luigi. Bowser Jr. exclaims furiously that that was his job. Kammy insists that Bowser gave the job to her because he can actually trust her to get results. The situation quickly explodes into a fight, and the screen fades to black.