Broken Chains:
A Garlemald Fanzine

A collection of ephemera from the Garlean Empire

Our Vision

Broken Chains is planned as a free digital zine framed as a collection of ephemera - art, documents, and other items - that relate to the late Garlean Empire and its people. We're aiming to tell stories that peek into the daily lives of those in Garlemald at ground level and above, rather than focusing on specific ships or characters. Pieces depicting canon characters, OCs, or both are all welcome. Below are some examples of what we're looking for, though we're excited to hear your ideas as well!

  • Letters between civilians, soldiers, or conscripted people

  • Photographs or paintings depicting daily life in Garlemald

  • Snippets of in-universe media such as comics, novels, or plays

  • Newspaper articles

  • Posters promoting (or criticizing) the Empire's ideals

  • Traditional Garlean recipes

  • Fiber arts (knitting, embroidery, etc.)

  • Podfic simulating a Garlean radio broadcast

  • Excerpts from someone's journal

DISCLAIMER: This is a zine about a fictional evil Empire and the people who both benefited from it and lived within its shadow. This means content in this zine may deal with with issues of colonialism, imperialism, fascist ideology, bigotry, war trauma or other heavy themes. We want to engage with these themes thoughtfully and critically.Real life bigotry and harassment will not be tolerated in this zine or by its contributors. We will not be judging applicants based on any prior created works, aside from those that are explicitly bigoted or harmful to real world groups.

Applications

The application period will run until December 8th. At that point, mods will review the applicants and will reach out via email to those who will be invited to join our zine!Please feel free to reach out to the mod team via Twitter or Bluesky if you have any questions about the application process!


Application Forms

Schedule

Below is our approximate schedule - dates are subject to change.

StepDate
Interest CheckOctober 8th - October 31st
ApplicationsNovember 5th - December 8th
Acceptance EmailsMid-December
Creation PeriodLate December through February
Zine FormattingMarch 2025
ReleaseApril 2025