Otherworld: Infinite Requiem
Aberration Illustrations!
Hello one and all, and welcome to the next update in a multi-year-long project that is my attempt at building a board game! This is a cool (albeit short) progress report wherein I reveal aberration art for two of the beasties that will pursue our hapless protagonists across the ghost city of Andersonville, Illinois!
Many of the monsters’ physicalities were originally mean to be vaguely human in design. This impulse is predicated on Infinite Requiem’s origination as a stage play. Despite the limitations, one can get creative with things like liquid latex and other makeup effects. Additionally, actors’ movement can create some interesting and decidedly alien elements to a monstrous part. The decidedly non-humanish monsters were always implied in character dialogue, thus suggesting a larger world without having to a) buy/manufacture prop monsters or b) mutilate actors.
Now, the heavier emphasis on human-like qualities manifests in the earliest drafts of the aberration cards.
This has definitely improved.
As you can see, the flavor text that I used in lieu of art (because I am quite hopeless at it) does negotiate the space of potentially seeing an actor portray the creature on stage. The description serves primarily to give the gist of what the creature either looks like or how it hunts. Additionally, some cards also contain other material that emphasizes some other element of the creature’s social structure or biology.
It would be the one on the right. The item that a playtester always referenced as "squeezing" her meat.
I am generally okay-ish at the whole writing thing, but from the start I knew that there would be absolutely nothing quite like seeing these nightmares leap from text to illustration. As such, I commissioned Erica “Guezadilla” Dominguez to do the hard work of taking my words and turning them into drippy, gnashy, and generally fucked-up life.
Also, she is open for commissions!
🎀HOLIDAY COMMS🎀
— Naff – Comms Open (@Nafleky) November 16, 2018
Ah, the holidays, a good time of year. I'm offering portrait sketches for the first time!
🎉 Accept payments with paypal invoice / $cash / https://t.co/uTTCWuDLyw
🎉 Portrait Sketches require picture ref
🎉 Prices may vary (extra for text only ref) pic.twitter.com/AsTNA7Qy5v
And now for the part you’re most likely reading this for!
Go on, give your drippy boi a hug.
In the original play, two of the really big bads were followed around by a horde of sluggish, melty goo monsters that I termed the Sycophants. In-game, these creatures are fairly simple to evade, having the lowest movement score of the common beasts. They also have a harder time hitting players, and other monsters will try to kill them if they wander too close. However, the Sycophants are deadly in packs, and although they may miss more frequently than their cohorts, the more of the species there are in proximity to each other, the more damage one can do.
I really love the personality that Erica infused this gooey child with, from the sight of the exposed ‘bone’ in its arm to its unsettling terror-mask face to its overall slouching and inward-turned posture. The bursting shoulder gives the impression of an unstable monstrosity, and the arms clawing up from the floor suggest how the creatures engage in their pack tactics.
For the next reveal today, I need to digress just a bit. In the stage play, the first recurring lesser that one of the characters encounters—the Stalker—is in the forest on the outskirts of the city. When I made the game board and wanted to include the forest, I was presented with a bit of a pickle. Stalkers were already the most common spawn (occupying 1/3 of the game map!) and the state forest wasn’t adjacent to what was otherwise its home. As such, I had to come up with an all new lesser.
The idea was to keep some element of the re-engineered human body but take it to the degree where it was very clear that there is an element of painfulness involved. As such, having someone skitter about on all fours in precisely the wrong way was a fascinating direction to take it. The teeth thing is partially motivated by one of the major thematic ideas behind the Ravenous—that it is driven by a hunger that it superficially has the means to satiate, but never can. It is also motivated by the fact that teeth are just kind of weird, you know?
Like… have you seen an x-ray of a child’s head?
This was actually the first illustration that Erica provided, and it was so perfectly unsettling. One of the things that gets me every time I see it is the absolutely horrific evolution of the thing’s head. The way that the teeth radiate out of the mouth suggests that this monster is undergoing a constant, painful growth that will eventually lead to every available surface covered in molars, leaving it immobile in its torment.
I’m beginning to think my game may not be suitable for everyone.
< PREVIOUS ENTRY • NEXT ENTRY >
Advice • Fiction • Gaming • General Musings • Reviews