Vulturemen on shackled, enslaved hawkbeasts soar overhead and dive to feast on the dead left behind in the greater war between the ratmen on their giant human-headed spider beasts, facing insect-people on goat beasts, and pigmen riding lizard beasts joined in battle against octopi riding crab monsters.
Yeah so, I've started work on a new project. It's just a short and silly thing to get my creative juices flowing again, but of course I'm already hungry to see artwork based on the brief I posted above, and I've reached out to Michael Raston (lizardmandiaries.blogspot.com) to help me flesh out the setting and concept a bit more.
My thought is this is all there is to the world; just the face. The face itself has been ripped off of a God, so there’s a Faceless God out there somewhere. Probably a little pissed to be missing their face.
So it’s clearly a ripped off face floating in darkness I guess? Although the world has some kind of day/night cycle, some kind of atmosphere and physics and gravity making it all work.
I’m not great at writing right now but I kind of envision this place as a weird, Alice-in-Wonderland-kind-of-weird place, where it has its own sense of logic and reality that functions for the bizarre factions that are all engaged in ridiculous war for no reason.
As for the rider/mounts:
Vulturemen riding shackled hawkbeasts.
Clearly at some time the hawkbeasts were free roaming. The gangly vulturemen, In all their skeksi-like glory, have imprisoned them, quite possibly in heavy and burdensome shackles making flight difficult but possible, but hardly graceful. And the vulturemen could fly themselves, but they are lazy and hate to use their wings.
Breathing-mask wearing humans riding giant ticks.
No idea where the masks come from or why they are needed but the only humans present wear ornate face masks wit breathing apparatuses attached and ride gigantic black ticks.
Ratmen in howdahs riding gigantic human heads on spider legs.
Weirdest of the mounts, the massive human heads are the heads of priests and kings who once served the now faceless god. Clearly for them this landscape is some kind of version of hell. They do not speak but probably appear angry or distressed as they are ridden into combat.
Insect-men on dual-headed goat monsters.
The goats have two heads aligned vertically, and seem to constantly be in pain. The insect-men are regal in design, each warrior atop a goatbeast a prince of their hive.
Pigmen riding lizard beasts.
The pigmen (NOT pig-nosed orcs) were the worshipers of the Faceless God when he had a face. This too, like the priests and kings mentioned above, is their version of hell. They ride atop horse-like lizard/dinosaur beasts.
Octopi warriors atop crablike monsters.
Somewhere there is an ocean whose water smashes against a beach, and it is from this place these warriors rise. Fierce and intelligent, the octopi wield multiple weapons as they ride their crablike behemoths into battle.
Six factions so far. I'll probably (or Michael will) come up with a few more. Maybe it will be possible to mix and match Rider and mount, with the above outline being only one possible outcome. I suppose each rider and mount has unique advantages and disadvantages in play.
With a great deal of thanks to everyone on Google+ who contributed ideas and suggestions!