Building The Outlaw Timberlands

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“Dimnonqua is a dirty place. What kind of dirty? Any definition that comes to mind is true, but none of them are said as an insult. Yes, it is dirty– in the way a scrapped-up and destroyed husk of a car is dirty… yet fascinating. It has character, a story to it. The bedrock of that story all lies in the writing, in tales of dirty people with dirty wants and desires. All wicked and gritty, with a rawness to the tone of the narrative, as well as the characters and their outlook on life. This reflects the rawness (the way a decayed corpse is “raw”) of Dimnonqua, from top to bottom. The lowest slums and bandit-ridden territories of the Timberlands and Lowlands are no more welcoming than the warring factions of the most powerful in the land, such as the Anointed Divine or Gan Jurus– and no less bloody, either. Filthy politics and good old fashioned bloodspilling are one and the same.

Designing the world and its denizens always loop back into each other; no one aspect is designed without being inspired by the other. It all started with Rhys’ bestiary– it’s a bit like a food chain, you know. Humans and other intelligent life tend to be on the top of that chain, but they can’t exist without the lower links, which itself can’t exist without understanding the environment. Much of the basis for this is well established in the text, so for me, it all started with that bestiary, which itself started with…dinosaurs! Or, synapsids. Somewhat. Despite the initial groundwork that it’s a fantasy realm with your usual dragons and goblins and magical creatures…these dragons and goblins and magical creatures inhabit a hostile and primal land that ultimately influences how they all look. Tyrannosaurus-esque dragons (which funnily enough, I didn’t initially think to include were it not for a single line in Act 1 that described Thog Luc’s weapon to have a dragon inscribed into its design. How would a blacksmith know what it looked like if it didn’t exist?), riding terror birds blemished with crude spikes on their bills to swing around like morning stars, wagon-pulling beasts of burden with the build of a bear and goring claws of a sloth, and such. Admittedly most of it is designed off of the “This Is Kind Of Ridiculous, But It’s Cool Shit” clause, but that’s natural when you start from dinosaurs, I’d say.

The bestiary not only informs the biodiversity of the world, but loops into the design of other aspects of the world– even architecture. When compositing the initial look of the logistical nightmare of a city like High Kheldrada, all I knew going in was it was buildings stacked on top of buildings– a real mess, you know. I knew its ruler was a “Conjurer King” of course, but it wasn’t until I thought “Ah, I know I want to illustrate the scene of Hercutian investigating the late king’s quarters– and a magician’s quarters are known to be stuffed with crazy baubles and oddities– let’s do that!” and started blocking in all sorts of placeholder fantasy creature statues, one of which being a two headed chimera. That really clicked with the exact approach of “stacking buildings” I’d gone with. Which is to say, pieces of houses haphazardly piled onto one another, a lot like how your traditional illuminated manuscript chimera have their respective creature parts chaotically mashed together. It became a mascot of sorts for the city, hence a chimera gargoyle being the centerpiece of the Magician King’s quarters.

All of which loops back into the characters we meet that do speak to us (characters being the key word, not humans. It is fantasy after all). Humans are humans, and some humans are humanoids, and some humanoids would be (foolishly) classified as beasts by the people of the land, and some beasts… loop right back into having an innate human nature to them. The divisions between everything are never hard lines, but a blur. Men such as Gan Jurus, Setus Mata, and Argus Jaw are beastly in their cruelty and cold-blooded willingness to kill on a whim, while Thog Luc’s riding dromierre In-Riotous-Travails regails her rider as a helpless babe needing her protection. It’s a chaotic world that is a fantasy world, yes. But the only rule with fantasy is that there aren’t any rigid set rules. Up can be down, down can be up, and a middle-aged traveling outlaw can discover the fulfillment of giving a damn about someone else for once in his life. Maybe.”

*Addendum From The Commandant*

Out of all the artists to Understand The Damned Assignment, Megan has proved the best for for Mad Romance In The Outlaw Timberlands. She brings spark and verve to this Primeval swords-and-sorcery world. Much gratitude for her behind-the-scenes commentary here.