The Lore & Music of Ludibrium
This is the first of a lot of posts I'll be importing from Cohost.
Originally posted: May 27th, 2023
This isn't my favorite Maplestory BGM, but just. Man I love this part of Ludibrium.
For the uninitiated (consider yourselves lucky), Maplestory is a 2D side-scrolling MMORPG that is almost 20 years old. While the game itself is a mess on several levels, from a level progression that goes from "complete in a concentrated afternoon" lvl 0-200 to "hope you like months of dailies" 200-275, to the 2 decades of game design by landfill, to the fact the game plays its own cutscenes via Youtube embed, it has always been famous for one thing- fucking amazing music.
This track is from an area known as the Path of Time , and it requires a little context, about Ludibrium. Ludibrium is a Latin word, meaning a plaything, or a trivial game, and appropriately to that definition, Ludibrium is a Legally-Not-Lego-Bricks city in the clouds. Centered on a giant toy factory where Not-Lego people make endless toys, held up by two giant towers that hoist it between two islands below. And initially, that's all it is- you do quests, clearing out spiders from the towers, collecting spare parts for weeble-wobble construction men, and eradicating angry teddy bears for a grenadier riding a toy horse.
But then things begin to... change, as you descend into the center of Ludibrium. First you just encounter the Toy Factory, which is a bit more industrial but still whimsical as all hell. You're collecting cheap batteries from malfunctioning toy robots to give to smiling, toolbox toting repairmen. But eventually, you reach areas simply themed after... time. Its still twee, but the colors are darker, and inbetween the cute (but frowning) monsters themed after clocks, you find variants of "Chronos", rather creepy things with yellow dot eyes and wide mouths containing swinging pendulums.
Finally, you descend further, and reality quite literally crumbles as you go. Entering the Clocktower's bottom floors, you enter the Path of Time, the area whose music we were talking about in the first place. The floor is still made of Not-Lego blocks and you still buy potions and take orders from Not-Playmobil men, but the background is a swirling galaxy-like void of floating gears and twisted clock faces.
And once you leave the safety of the town, things go fully into horror-town. While there's a few less scary enemies- Ghost Vikings and some creepy, but run of the mill twisted jesters, continue down the path and you'll run into things like the Soul Teddies- broken, restitched, and broken again teddy bears being puppeteered by their own souls behind them. Eventually the toy act drops entirely and you fight whispy cyclopes covered in armor plates, named Thanatos [1]
This, eventually, reveals the truth at the heart of Ludibrium- it is not just a place dedicated to childhood wonder, it is a place frozen in time by an agreement with Maple World's God[2] of Time to protect it's innocence. And at it's core lies the area boss Papulatus, a (surprisingly tame looking) evil being who in the gods recent absence, has leaked through a crack in spacetime to corrupt Ludibrium.
It is just such a wonderfully themed area, and I enjoy it so. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my bottled up rant.
Footnotes
[1] The Greek personification of death
[2] Technically "Transcendents" but who's counting?