The Abyssal Dunes: Page 18
Little bit of Western Deep Deepest Lore™ for you in this week’s Abyssal Dunes page! One of the reasons I was excited to set this story in the ruins of an old vulpin city-state was the notion that we’d get to explore stuff like this! Pre-Nessian history! Back then, the vulpin nation was a bunch of warring cities that competed not just for control of fresh water, coastline access, and trade routes, but things like what language to use.
This city-state, which has since fallen on hard times (any time you’re piling your dead in mass graves I’d say that qualifies as “hard times”), clearly was influenced by their felis neighbors across the Aderyn Mountains. Obviously when you’re fighting for the hearts and minds of an entire civilization, the language you choose to take influence from says a lot about you and your allegiances.
Or not! Historically speaking, many cultures have borrowed other cultures’ languages and written scripts, making them their own. It feels like it could go either way, but for this particular city-state, their ideas on which language to use clearly didn’t last into the modern era.
Some fun Rachel art this week pulled from Outfit August once again! This one of Dakkan dressed up like he’s a character from Horizon: Zero Dawn! Check it out!
I believe the prompt here was “post-apocalyptic,” and while some folks clearly went with a more Fallout or Walking Dead route, Rachel has a lot more fun with Horizon’s post-POST apocalypse. I tend to agree with her–I like the storytelling benefits of a greener, wilder world inhabited by smaller groups of characters and our modern society feeling more like mythology.
Anyway, see you all next week!
I always like how you guys tell history. Little details can reveal so much info.
It’s always interesting when ancient history dictates old societies having once been, in some shape or form, homogenized and then branched off to become more diverse; you really see the change happening over the test of time and the differences between societies according to their respective centuries, worlds apart-wise. Just like our history anyways!
Love Rachel’s picture of Horizon Zero Dawn-Dakkan here! It makes me wanna see outfits like this for the rest of the cast too! Before, I already saw the “Helis the Felis” drawing on Twitter and it was quite a sight to behold! Brings me back 2 years ago on March 11 when I first saw the guest art of Quin fighting a giant robot Treewalker. (makes me wonder what it’d look like if the characters could hack robot critters -like ostriches- for rides…)
“…a greener, wilder world inhabited by smaller groups of characters and our modern society feeling more like mythology.”
Don’t forget how there’s sci-fi elements (ex: robots, AIs, technological ability, people from before) designed and/or arranged to look like fantasy elements! ;) (AIs=deities, robots=fantastic creatures/beasts, people from before=”Old Ones”/Atlantean-like higher beings, technological ability=supernatural powers) A fantasy genre-world built with sci-fi genre-storytelling…
Indeed, how does he know that! Maybe he’s classically educated and is just slumming it with Yurk?
“Excuse me for having hobbies, Yurk.”