Hello! Fantasy! Death! (Patreon)

Hey there, people. In case you didn't know the Patreon has been paused while I rejigger my life+projects+everything else but now it's starting up again.

I assume everyone who subscribes to this Patreon also follows me on twitter (@cdbunker2 in the unlikely case you didn't find me there) that I've been working on a new project (I know, I know) with a collaborator.

So far it's untitled but my collaborator and I have just been calling it 'morrowindclone' internally, as our initial concept is just that: a first person RPG in a weird fantasy setting where you can poke monsters with a  sword, throw fireballs, pickpocket, and so on.

My fellow dev on this is primarily interested in programming while I'm focusing on the writing and aesthetics, which honestly is a dream come true for me. 

The world of the untitled fantasy project is called Ettare (a name swiped from a James Branch Cabbell novel), and is an excellent excuse to research and repurpose interesting historical topics (Persian warrior fraternities! Romanian folk religion! Human sacrifice!) both textually and visually. 

Researching weapons and armor, it's striking how trade, war, and the intermingling of cultures produces what we think of as something archetypically one culture or another. I've started trying to intermix visual styles I find interesting and inventing histories from the results. 

For instance: a Bronze Age style helmet reinforced with boar tusks+Slavic/Norse/Persian/Byzantine/etc. inspired conical helmet with chainmail mask. The boar tusk no longer protective but ceremonial, daubed with paint. Ancient folk religion mixing with the modern (by Ettare) style of helmet. Atavistic, cultic. 

Ettare has characteristics I appreciate in any fantasy setting: mysterious and strange cosmology where the alignment of the stars (the abodes of the Arestars, the demons who maintain the world) and planets affects magic (which is abundant but dangerous), gross demons, an ancient world honeycombed with the crypts and ruins from previous better epochs, and lots of decadent, debauched aristocrats. 

One of the exciting things about working on this untitled project with my unamed co-Dev (I should ask him if he wants his name mentioned) is that he has added a lot of organization, which I so desperately need. For instance:

We've started mapping out a coherent list of goals and a rough timeline for what we want done by when, and while I'm sure that not everything will go to plan, it still gives me a lot of hope and excitement for this project. Xeno is not paused (Xenocidaire and its ridiculous world will never die) but this project has momentum.

As ever I'll be posting every bit of detritus and progress on twitter (as far as visuals go) and on here I'll try to post once a month. 

I am so grateful and amazed that there's so many of you interested in the shit I make. I cannot overstate how honored I feel by the interest. I feel like I've been getting better at what I do and work far better than anything I've made before is waiting for us in the coming year. Stick with me, it'll be worth it.