So the roots of Silverwood stretch all the way back to 2002/2003-ish (me being 11 or 12 at the time) and the story, being made organically, had gone through a number of incredible changes over the years which are still hilarious to me so Buckle Up for a hell of a ride and some never-before revealed Silverwood backstory! This is very long but also mostly art-heavy so you can scroll through and just look at silly art through the years if you want.

2002-2003. Fresh off reading The Riddle of the Wren (by Charles de Lint) I came up with a story heavily inspired by it. The story featured a villain by the name of Ithian who was hunting the main character Sanne (who was like an angel or a fairy or something idk) via dreams. Differences being that Sanne came to Earth (I guess?) as a child and was adopted and her new brother was helping her fight Ithian and also they never left their own world. It wasn’t very exciting and I promptly forgot about it (excepting that ideas about magic and space and world-hopping from this book have continued to influence me to this day and are especially noticeable in Stringworlds, but that’s another story).

2004. My friends and I mostly being active on The Lion King Fanart Archive, and this also being the very brief period of time where I was interested in Harry Potter, we started a Harry Potter…thing. Not really an RP but. Anyway my character was an original named Hawkswind (I think I took this sort of naming idea from Mercedes Lackey but I’m not clear on the details) and she was a red wolf who was later turned into a purple lion by magic shenanigans. Two pictures courtesy of @devinsdesigns hopefully she doesn’t mind me putting them up.

2005 (probably). Hawkswind got resused in an actual Harry Potter RP, but this time as a human who’s real name was Rene and she was a French werewolf and also in hiding and probably a bunch of other embarrassing shit I’ve admitted to before but no longer remember truthfully (something about being an immortal princess? sounds about right but who the fuck knows). I don’t have any pictures of her like this but she looked like me.

Between 2005 and 2006. For the first time ever I will admit. Yes, Anthem’s original name was Ansem due to Kingdom Hearts. No, I had not played Kingdom Hearts at this time. But I did read a lot of KH fanfiction for some reason and there was one in particular that grabbed me and I used parts of it for the Original Silverwood Plotline which mostly featured Hawkswind as a chosen one who had failed to save the world and was now being held captive.

2006. By late 2006 I had renamed Anthem and the plot had really taken off. Hawkswind was still French, Anthem was British, she was still an unsuccessful chosen one who had basically been brainwashed into joining her former nemesis. She was a heartless, but by this point I was already calling them Harketein. 

Although Hawkswind was a lesbian (her girlfriend was Aidian) she and Anthem had several children and the story had shifted from the parents to the children, about one of whom there was a prophecy. (Keir and Kaite were the main children in question). Predictably for someone who loves mythology, Anthem’s response to this was to try and murder the children and so the struggle between him and Hawkswind shifted to a domestic one. Pics from this period.

(This is the first picture of Anthem I ever drew so you can see he’s pretty much remained the same from the get-go).

Also around this point Sonya and Aya were first introduced. They were vampires who were friends of Hawkswind.

2007. In early 2007 a short side-story about Keir and a magic mirror led to the creation of the Shenlai, and specifically the shenlai anaora, useless shadow servants who have haunted Anthem’s mansion ever since. They used to look like this.

Also around this point in time this story (then called Saga) met Purgatory, the LARP that @hakbot and I did every day after school like the nerds we are. It was all about gods and thus Hawkswind (now called Hawkie for short) became queen of hell and goddess of evil. Anthem was also in hell and kept breaking out so her main purpose was hunting him down and dragging him back. It also led to pictures like this.

This is where Tris was introduced! The queen of demons came into the story as an eternally cursed child already, and eventually other characters like her assistant Bird (a soul with no memories who therefore could not be placed) and demons like Bermuda were created to fill her court.

By late 2007 Hawkswind was already in love with Anthem, though she also hated him, and since he was capable of magically controlling her who knows how accurate that was.

Between 2006 and 2007 I was in a group story with some other writers and she was my character (obviously) and in late 2007 they officially killed Anthem off. It lasted a little while, but not super long because what would I do without him?

Art from this period also shows the first appearance of her scar, initially from Anthem ripping her heart out to turn her into a Harketein.

The story changes again to a game of chase with Hawkie fleeing from world to world and Anthem chasing her down. The kids are still present, but not as important. It’s around this time that I remember the original story of Ithian and Sanne, which had certain similarities. Sanne is scrapped, and Ithian enters the story as a rival for Anthem. By this point he wasn’t necessarily evil but he was certainly a deviant of a sort. Cross-dressing and also a very unhealthy one-sided obsession with his sister. One of those things has lasted to this day, the other has not (hint: it’s the incest).

Eventually Aidian was murdered and scrapped. I made Ithian Hawkie’s twin brother and lightened her hair slightly to match his. Wings also came into the picture, with varying levels of metaphorical depending on the day.

Ithian regains some of his dream-abilities and also he lives in the void between worlds where he was cast (coming back to Riddle of the Wren again). He pulled Hawkie in with him and it corrupts her. Aidian is actually Not Dead but she does sort of lose it when Hawkie turns evil because while they aren’t dating anymore, she still had feelings for her.

Another story change has Harketein as being allergic to iron, and one of the ways Hawkie protects herself from Anthem is by locking herself in iron shackles which is…a bad idea. In late 2007 she is gaining a lot of scars most, but not all, of which disappear in later versions.

In very late 2007 I take the story off of Earth, which it had been leaving for some time, and first start to design them different outfits with varying levels of…uh…interest. Anthem always wears a suit though because literally what else would he wear?

For the first time I’m calling her Ithea (yes, reverse engineered from Ithian because I’m a lazy piece of shit). For the first time she uses what would later become her pole-axe, and I gave her straight-up black hair.

2008. Sonya and Aya make a reappearance, though their personalities are shifting, with Sonya becoming ever more hopeless, though Aya has yet to obtain her status as Alpha Bitch. Aidian also makes another showing, this time as a dragon.

Around this time Ithea gains her pointed ears and aggressive, fight-happy personality. By mid-2008 she had her pole-axe well in hand, and I had names for the countries they were in – Tsime and Cylli, which have continued to exist in one form or another since then.

By August of this year, many things have become canon! Ithea’s “always smiling but will kill you” aesthetic happens. The first time her black-silver-and purple color scheme pops up, though it’s not set in stone yet. New costume design. The word Drezhein makes an appearance, and that’s what she is, and her shapeshifted form is wolf-like. Probably around this time Anthem became a Harkitein if he wasn’t already. Also her height is 5′5″ which it has been ever since. Her magic bracelets come in at this point too, as well as an unspecified illness making a return from an earlier version.

By the end of this year, the domestic situation is set in stone, as is the history of Harkitein being created to fight Drezhein (a failed experiment in the end). The illegality of making Harkitein, as well as Anthem murdering the wizard who created him, are evident. The anaora are still around and some of them have names (they’re still useless though).

Shortly after this, some of them gain human forms due to messing with Anthem’s magic and they just annoy the shit out of him all the time. Anthem’s role of “sort of evil but mostly just long-suffering” is here to stay.

2009. The children reappear, and also another very important character is created: Cranberries! Here is Kaite, Ro, and Cranberries in their designs at this time.

And here’s a really terrible family portrait.

At this point in time Keir is still a girl. I’m not entirely sure when Keir went from being a girl to being a boy but that did happen at some point. Oh well.

Sonya and Aya get a redesign and appropriate fantasy names. By this point new personalities for them are set in stone. Sonya is Ithea’s friend while Aya is Anthem’s, and their relationship is…less than stellar. They’re not vampires anymore but Vekain, another magical race in this world who have their own political shit going on (but we ignore it because Sonya is exiled anyway).

Important to mention but closing in on the year Kaite became the butch lesbian we all know and love, and certain aspects of her, Cyan, and Gavin’s future career in organized crime become assured.

The anaora are still around and becoming more catlike.

And at the very close of the year, Tris and Bird officially make a new appearance! Away from Purgatory, Tris is a cursed child empress and instead of being demons her people are the Daemir. Bird is still a memory-less stranger who washed up on the beach and quickly proved invaluable. With her came her husband Bermuda.

2010. The most important picture I’ve ever drawn is created.

Additional information is created about the gods and the history of the world and the creation of its various peoples.

Around this time the long-lasting political turmoil of what Ithea, Anthem, and Ithian did becomes more fully explored. The great-grandchildren are created and the story becomes intensely political in nature.

2011-2014. Around this time I took a long break. I had written the story down for NaNoWriMo and mostly considered it finished. I still played with the story a bit, but I was trying hard to focus on publishable things and so I didn’t really mess with it much except for dumb posts on Tumblr. Some art from that time.

2015-Present. By 2015 the story was officially called Silverwood and I was back in my obsession with it, which I’ve never left. Exciting things happened, mostly in the realm of costume and character design.

Inside and outside of tumblr shitposts I have continued to deepen the story in the cast, the world-building and design, the politics, and the personal relationships between the characters. Will it ever be done? Probably not. But at least I enjoy it. Thanks for reading, take some more art!