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Madcap Archaeology.
Jun. 22nd, 2011 01:53 pmSo. While progress on The Hellion Prince is getting back to normal (I'll have two more chapters up for you soon, I promise!!), the last coupld of days, since I got confirmation that I'd be going forward with this webcomic project, my head has been full of nothing but Madcap Archaeology. So of course, I want to talk about it a little more.
The world of Madcap Archaeology is a patchwork quilt of sorts, subject to periodic Flux Storms that over-write local reality that seem to import flora, fauna, architecture, technology, and other erratic miscellanea from unknown elsewheres. It also warps distance and direction in local space. Direct exposure to the storms is usually fatal, and when it is not, the resulting insane mutations, both feared and pitied, are generally reckoned to be better off dead in any case.
This has some ramifications. Most settlements are either nomadic, ready to be evacuated at a moment's notice, built underground where the storms are less likely to reach, or built over the ruins of a few stable locations. Why these locations are stable no-one knows, but they all bear the architectural and artistic hallmarks of the same lost and forgotten civilization. The legend goes that this ancient people possessed a magical artifact that anchored their constructions, and that if this Meridian Anchor could be found again, it could still be employed to stabilize modern structures. Groups of mystics worship this mysterious civilization and its remaining relics in a variety of ways, and the cults of worship are often unconnected with one another. The most notable worshippers are the mountain reclusives known as Anchorites, who are rumored to study the Flux itself, and to have unlocked mental powers that allow them to survive unprotected in the storms, but nearly every ruin has its own assemblage of cultists camped in the foundations.
Travel is fraught with all sorts of dangers -- with distance and direction themselves subject to uncertainty, permanent roads an impossibility, and the ever-present danger that one's destination may have simply stopped exisiting,. most travel is regulated through the powerful and extortionate Lodestone Guild, a collective of mages who use sorcerously attuned magnets to triangulate one another's positions.
One of the few nomadic groups that does not deal with the guild is the world's most powerful industrial collective -- the Graze. A sort of collectivist monarchy, the Graze is situated atop a fleet of mobile harvesting machines that clearcut forests behind them as they go, and use assembly-line production to churn out all manner of tools and other products en masse.
The people of Madcap Archaeology are notable as well -- all of them have some animalistic traits, more like anime catgirls than furries, but with nigh-infinite variation. Children inherit any traits shared by their parents -- a foxgirl and a catboy would produce a child with traits from some small warmblooded carnivore, whereas a komodogirl and a goldfishboy would simply produce offspring with some cold-blooded traits. This is less a vital storytelling conceit and more a visual, stylistic choice, something that will make characters more easily able to be distinguished from one another. And it's fun. The main characters of the story are a Indir, a peacock-boy; Vessa, a foxgirl; Jonathy, a sheepgirl; and Naurian; a giraffeboy. Traits such as ethnicity are determined based on the geographic origin of the species -- so the peacock boy is Indian, the giraffeboy African, and while there is a much greater potential variation for the other two, the foxgirl is northern European, and the sheepgirl is Korean.
In the area we begin, most of the flora and fauna seems to have been imported from a prehistoric jungle of some sort, though it's likely to be fanciful enough to drive any paleobotanist into a fit -- but then, looking at the overall aesthetic of the comic, consistency and accuracy aren't so much my major concerns, as keeping things visually striking and narratively interesting. Still. None of these choices were made in a vacuum, and even if I don't want to share my rationale for them just yet, some of the chosen details will eventually become very relevant to the continuation of the plot.
The world of Madcap Archaeology is a patchwork quilt of sorts, subject to periodic Flux Storms that over-write local reality that seem to import flora, fauna, architecture, technology, and other erratic miscellanea from unknown elsewheres. It also warps distance and direction in local space. Direct exposure to the storms is usually fatal, and when it is not, the resulting insane mutations, both feared and pitied, are generally reckoned to be better off dead in any case.
This has some ramifications. Most settlements are either nomadic, ready to be evacuated at a moment's notice, built underground where the storms are less likely to reach, or built over the ruins of a few stable locations. Why these locations are stable no-one knows, but they all bear the architectural and artistic hallmarks of the same lost and forgotten civilization. The legend goes that this ancient people possessed a magical artifact that anchored their constructions, and that if this Meridian Anchor could be found again, it could still be employed to stabilize modern structures. Groups of mystics worship this mysterious civilization and its remaining relics in a variety of ways, and the cults of worship are often unconnected with one another. The most notable worshippers are the mountain reclusives known as Anchorites, who are rumored to study the Flux itself, and to have unlocked mental powers that allow them to survive unprotected in the storms, but nearly every ruin has its own assemblage of cultists camped in the foundations.
Travel is fraught with all sorts of dangers -- with distance and direction themselves subject to uncertainty, permanent roads an impossibility, and the ever-present danger that one's destination may have simply stopped exisiting,. most travel is regulated through the powerful and extortionate Lodestone Guild, a collective of mages who use sorcerously attuned magnets to triangulate one another's positions.
One of the few nomadic groups that does not deal with the guild is the world's most powerful industrial collective -- the Graze. A sort of collectivist monarchy, the Graze is situated atop a fleet of mobile harvesting machines that clearcut forests behind them as they go, and use assembly-line production to churn out all manner of tools and other products en masse.
The people of Madcap Archaeology are notable as well -- all of them have some animalistic traits, more like anime catgirls than furries, but with nigh-infinite variation. Children inherit any traits shared by their parents -- a foxgirl and a catboy would produce a child with traits from some small warmblooded carnivore, whereas a komodogirl and a goldfishboy would simply produce offspring with some cold-blooded traits. This is less a vital storytelling conceit and more a visual, stylistic choice, something that will make characters more easily able to be distinguished from one another. And it's fun. The main characters of the story are a Indir, a peacock-boy; Vessa, a foxgirl; Jonathy, a sheepgirl; and Naurian; a giraffeboy. Traits such as ethnicity are determined based on the geographic origin of the species -- so the peacock boy is Indian, the giraffeboy African, and while there is a much greater potential variation for the other two, the foxgirl is northern European, and the sheepgirl is Korean.
In the area we begin, most of the flora and fauna seems to have been imported from a prehistoric jungle of some sort, though it's likely to be fanciful enough to drive any paleobotanist into a fit -- but then, looking at the overall aesthetic of the comic, consistency and accuracy aren't so much my major concerns, as keeping things visually striking and narratively interesting. Still. None of these choices were made in a vacuum, and even if I don't want to share my rationale for them just yet, some of the chosen details will eventually become very relevant to the continuation of the plot.
