Most Recent – Design Thesis Project – Khoursara: The City of Seven Sentinels
My hope is to use Kickstarter to publish a setting book that allows players to interact with the world he has written, inspired by ancient Egyptian mythology and dieselpunk imagery. The writing and game design derive from the art history courses taken over the length of my college career, which influenced me to read even more on cultural inspirations for game mechanics. I wanted to blend the pantheon, afterlife, and cultural traditions of the old/new kingdoms of ancient Egypt with present-day Egyptian-Arabic speaking Cairo. I applied this not only to the setting and story of the world, but in the design of the book’s layout as well, such as in this style guide that informed the rest of the project.
A city within the world of Infinis Ajer, this place is known as Khoursara, the City of Seven Sentinels. The “Sentinels” are towering spires that climb into the heavens surrounding the city’s walls. The megalopolis city is made up of numerous districts, each the size of New York city. As of 908 KDS (Kynd Set Date), Pharaoh Pyrrhic Adaephonus rules over Khoursara, and his 7 Nobles and their houses oversee aspects of day to day life.
Inside the city of Khoursara, you can play / meet many different ancestries and creatures, all of which are meant to reflect the Egypt-inspired animal-headed gods. Half-devourers are crocodile and hippo-headed humanoids that trace themselves back to the Goddess, Sekh-maw the Great Devourer. They’re able to rend the Ka (the aspect of the soul that makes us alive) from the body of those judged as unworthy. Hairless sphynx cat Mirankh embody a Goddess who was split into two parts, her eyes of truth and her body of knowledge – Miram and Kita. They tattoo their life stories onto themselves, carrying on and becoming empowered by their family’s traditions and tales. There are many more playable ancestries planned for the full book, such as jackal-headed Jackhasans, snake-headed Oserpenti, and more. I comissioned Mingi Webber (@Sinner_Minner) to help me with the Half-devourer and Jackhasan art, making the rest of the book’s art myself.
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The Rest of my D&D Setting: Infinis Ajer
I’m a particular fan of Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons, but more particularly the design philosophy of Paizo’s Pathfinder 2nd Edition. After years of playing this table-top role-playing game with friends, I figured it was time to write and design my own content instead of the pre-written adventures intended by companies like Wizards or Paizo.
I decided to write my own world setting for the game on a gigantic scale. The core premise of the world of Infinis Ajer is that it is fueled particularly by human faith. What human cultures believe is in turn made reality. Thus, societal concepts, like gods, religions, or the imagined way the world should work all rapidly change at the hands of humanity’s collective belief in their surroundings. It’s an idea I thought of while exploring art history and the vivid worlds imagined by completely different cultures for the same concepts.
Another result of this faith is that Infinis Ajer has restarted itself over completely from memory hundreds of times each time this faith reaches a boiling point and creates problems – such as The Seraph of Cinder – unbound by Gods and controlled fully by people. This Seraph nearly ends the world each generation, but is instead slain in a particular way, sparing life as we know it and instead burning away the collective memory of the entire world. While the physical artifacts and ruins of previous societies still exist, the ancestries of the world forget everything and start over from the stone age, gradually building layer after layer over previous cities, adapting their technology, customs, and culture as their own.
Figures like the Marshall of Ash guarded those from other dimensions from Cinder’s flame, like the Plane of Shadow.
To begin, I made a deck of cards both for use with the game setting as well as set in the universe itself, as if you could purchase such cards from a Khoursaran merchant.
It was in college at CU Denver I was able to apply my concepts into tangible design. One example of such explores a enormous city in Infinis Ajer, inspired by steampunk and ancient Egyptian mythology. I’ve seen plenty of RPGs approach various mythos, but it tends to be quite Eurocentric. I wanted to show a fantastical, gigantic megalopolis city made of many districts, each as big as New York in size. This place is known as Khoursara, the City of Seven Sentinels. The “Sentinels” are towering spires that climb into the heavens surrounding the city’s walls.
To begin, I made a deck of cards both for use with the game setting as well as set in the universe itself, as if you could purchase such cards from a Khoursaran merchant.
I also designed a mockup for what a setting book for Khoursara might look like, as I intend to someday publish my writing, designs, and illustrations to the greater community.
D&D Adventure – The Ladice Mastaba
The Ladice Mastaba was an adventure I designed for my game that I wanted to fully produce, complete with custom game design in encounters, boss mechanics, and floor layouts for each level of this dungeon.
The background of this dungeon involves a Khoursaran Noble, Fielence Ladice, who was previously head of the royal treasury of the Pharaoh. Fielence was interred after a coup left half of the seven Nobles of Khoursara dead. Inspired by the tombs of Egyptian nobility from the real world, I wanted to represent his tyrannical, childlike nature in the dungeon itself. His life was spent with everything served to him on a silver platter, and as a result he takes literally everything for granted and never wishes to deal with the adult responsibilities placed on him with being a treasurer. Each room is hand-crafted to reflect the world Fielence intended to bring with him into the afterlife – ranging from childhood parties filled with mummified remains of his relatives, an entire boat in reference to the real-world Khufu ship, an undead pet orca, and much more.
Encounters included meeting Fielence’s equally unpleasant parents as mummies, a snake-priestess who paints mythology upon the walls, Shadow Fetchling Operatives to compete against the player party in locating Fielence himself, disguised torch-traps, and a massive gelatinous cube made of embalming fluid intended to clean up and prepare bodies for mummification within the crypt.
Other parts of the design included a “God-Blind,” which was something I came up with in my setting to explain the reason as to why such a lair of undead could exist without the pantheon Gods of Khoursara intervening against it. In this God-Blind in the center, magic and connections to faith fizzle out as lead, specially-treated bronze, and sand constantly pour into a pit below, nullifying arcane and divine connections. It also means powerful artifacts can be concealed below without divination magic locating it.
The center of the dungeon had this God-Blind, and disabling it would not only allow access to the deeper regions and even Fielence himself, but also alert the rest of the world to its opening. The idea was to give the players a difficult choice as to whether or not they should continue through the intended way or find another way below.
Photography – Miniature Models
For a introductory photo class, I figured what better subject than my partner and I’s painted 3D printed miniatures. To establish environments, I made some extra terrain and lighting conditions to really create ambience to go with the miniature characters, photo’d with a macro lens. The first is of a shadow dragon, the second of a pit fiend, the third of Festrond the half-dead norse-inspired necromancer from a game I ran, the fourth of some mushroom men, and the last was an animated stop motion gif using different models as frames for a mimic attack.
Battle Map Illustration – Orchid Court Cathedral
The Orchid Court Cathedral was part of a quest my players went on in Khoursara. The idea I had was that a gothic-style church was built by missionaries from afar, but their worship was overwhelmed when surrounded by Khoursaran faith in their animal-headed pantheon. I wanted to create the floorplan and layout in a more official, fully-designed way, so I ended up drawing the entire thing. I designed each floor to fit the same square of battle-map, so that it could be printed or overlaid if played digitally.
The church itself was dedicated to followers of a fey god, Zig-Zargon. Without fully realizing it, they brought a corrupted version of their belief into reality, resulting in the church being overrun with infected priests and bishops. The form of the spread manifested as overgrown oleander flowers spreading into the wounds, with an intended encounter of fighting an avatar of Zig-Zargon in the basement; his phylactery in the fifth floor of the church tower. I wanted to convey these themes in the layout of the church, and have written extensively on the design of the multi-floored encounters.
Part of the design is to show height via illustrations of the lower layers being faded as you go higher above them.
Another project within my D&D setting and in Khoursara, “MIDRA,” saw my first foray into 3D animation. Wanting to continue on my writing specifically into Khoursara further, I decided to recreate a setting with some fog, megalithic structures, and a bit of eldritch horror suspended in the ancient technology. I was inspired by Kid A by Radiohead, and more specifically the song from that album, Everything in Its Right Place. That song gave me the direction to tackle the vastness of the Sentinels surrounding the city of Khoursara, and what lie within their unfathomably huge spires.
Another Part of Infinis Ajer – Journskull
In a different part of the setting of Infinis Ajer, I wanted to focus on the continent of Journskull. This place is 80% jungle, and filled with its own cultural powerhouses. The Phyuzan empire, for instance, draws from Incan mythology in a vast mountain range where gigantic ancient airships are buried. The dwarven cloud culture sprung up for both that reason and for their admiration of cloud dragons.
