Gigerverse thread

That's a pretty decent concept for them, though I don't think that the actual nobles of Envy would be seen that often.

House Envy is like a hydra, each part of it is semi independent and there is no central ruler. The closest thing to a ruling body is the Shadow Court, where the heads of the different operative cells gather, by connecting to the hidden chamber via the neural network of the city, and speaking to one another via the faces planted on the walls of the chamber.

You guys should probably link back to the OP of the last thread if it's still up. It will sit in the archive for a bit too.

Any who I want to build on baryx some more from earlier So I think we have hashed out the nobility pretty well; the higher up you go, the less adornments you will see because pride don't need no accesories and now I want to look at the bottom levels. I know we have a European guyver knight thing going for the military. What do the peasants wear to hide themselves? I was thinking lots of cloaks, baggy clothes, very mideast/eastern inspired. The lowliest getting by with whatever scraps they can to form a hood and cloak, better off probably look a bit like the mister mushroom from the last thread. As an user suggested, Echolocation is probably a popular trait to have and if you can't get that, a mirror is probably your most prized possession if you had a chance to use it in service of the nobles, always polished dutifuly. This can lead to creative insults, and to think breaking a mirror was bad luck nowadays.

So far for envy I can only pin it down to a broader sense in the same vein as jealous lust. I think we do have a decent look for their operators that operate operationally tho, I think I will lurk more for this one before input.

Those ideas on the Baryx peasants are good. They aren't that wealthy and generally they are rather repressed but their lot in life ain't the worst possible within the city.

As for Envy, they don't really even have a peasant caste. They are generally rather disinterested in the average freaks. Their main attention is on the other Noble houses.

You could just put them in nothijabs

>I don't see why there is a need for some parasites to cause change.

Because the parasites were found by the exile. And when that happened it gave him one powerful tool. Their discovery is both the means for change and part of the change by themselves,so we don't fall into making them just a plot device, but rather tools that change the people that use them and at the same time those people can use their new abilities to influence the system they live in.

>That to me, seems like taking agency away from the Houses themselves.

No if the main reason there is a "house" in the first place is the parasites giving the means for it to exist. The parasites don't take agency from the hause, they are part of the nature of the house as explained above.

I'm not seeing that much activity in the document... no chat, no comments, no suggestion... are just reading it or just leaving the tab open?

I'm working on Sloth right now.
I'm gonna put it all in the doc shortly.

>And how does pride and arrogance tie to that?

You are looking for perfection, mathematical pure and constant perfection. Mushrooms can have that.

But of course they can't be perfect, they are arrogant after all, degenerated, so you need to add this into the mix; perfect deformation of what they think the original form is, this is something you can use too.

See the long arms are unsetling, but they are clearly not part of what should be their "perfect" form, but rather their deviation of their ideals, with mushrooms aesthetics you can have these solid-statue-like creatures but still they have these "perfect deformities" without breaking the figure or the general tone.

For now most of discussion is here in the threads.
The doc is just a repository for info about the setting right now.
A quick and easy way to get newcomers up to speed.

I gotta tell ya buddy I'm really not feeling the parasite thing either.

Well I think I will come back when I have a more developed idea.

I don't really see why the parasite needs to be the reason for the existence of any of the houses.
Also, finding organic stuff like the parasite outside of the city doesn't really fit the idea of the wastes outside of the city being basically devoid of life.
The city is where living things linger. Outside of it, you just find wastelands of dead bone, sand and ash. The relics found in these badlands are ones dating back eons before the time of the Freaks and the Nobles.
There are strange ruins hidden underneath the sands, made out of cold, and shiny stone, husks of constructs made out of the same material, and other strange, inorganic relics of bygone, forgotten eras.

>You are looking for perfection, mathematical pure and constant perfection.
Not really. The perfection Baryx seeks, is that of physical beauty aesthetics. The whole ideal is the look of a marble statue. I don't really see how the mushrooms would tie to that particular house well.
I do like the sketch though, which is why I said it could work very well for house of Sloth. Their constructs, and maybe even the nobles themselves, could have mushroom like growths on them, as signs of decades of inactivity, until suddenly they spring into motion once more, as if jolted into wakefulness by some unseen command.

Some parts of it are kinda messy right now due to some of the discussion taking place there.
I'd advice against that in the future. Keep the discussion here, and if you want to make comments to the doc, make them brief, so it can be kept tidy.

I think I got a way to salvage the parasite idea.
What if instead the house isn't controlled by parasites but are parasites.
Like if the higher echelons of the house use flesh warping in order to make themselves into mind control parasites and then attach themselves to other high ranking members of different houses.

Pride is not thinking you are awesome, it is knowing you are. Plus from the very start they are the least changed house and very phyrexian. Part of pride is hubris and not a willingness to change, stone is also very resistant to change hence the connection to very durable materials.

You have a good idea going, and I actually think it should be applied to envy as it is a flip side to ambition.

Not too keen on the go auld rip offs. See above, envy didn't bring back a parasite, it is the parasite assertiong its will, like a fungus wrapped around tree roots or an ants nervous system. They started out as fa imitators and middlemen, but then went further and further into the dark.

>What if instead the house isn't controlled by parasites but are parasites.

That is the idea that was left in the other thread(and in the doc). The parasite is not really conscious, they are vessel for consciousness instead, so when it first attach to a host it will replicate its brain, kill the body and efectively move their ego inside their new body in the parasite.

So the parasites can move from body to body, and this is why they are so good assasins.

I was trying to see if I could make the catch that once they move into a new body, the body dies and is only maintained through the parasite phisiology, slowly decaying, so members of the hause of envy have to be seeking new bodies constantly and they can't simply take control of the biggest body with the highest amount of augmentations. This also means that any mission or task that requires a specific body has a time limit before people start noticing that there is something wrong.

When I say that the parasites are also a force of change its because the transference of consciousness into a new body also changes the ego of the person, since now they are in a completly different phisiology, so they promote new behaviours instead of the parasites just being a tool.

Its like electricity, by itself is not really conscious but everyone that uses it will have a change in their lifestyle and after that, their personality because they would have new needs.

>I don't really see why the parasite needs to be the reason for the existence of any of the houses.

Yes but it does makes sense if the parasites give them new abilities(like changing bodies) then you can have enough power to be a player in the political arena and hence the reason you might even have an organization that you might want to call a house.
>Also, finding organic stuff like the parasite outside of the city doesn't really fit the idea of the wastes outside of the city being basically devoid of life.

Oh well, the location can be changed... thats a minor detail unless there is a specific need for the place.

>stone is also very resistant to change hence the connection to very durable materials.

Mmm...

In nature the mixing of stone and organic matter is not really that common. What is common is to process that "stone"(specially underwate were Ca ions are just in the water dissolution), and deposit it in layers and layers while the organism growths. For know two masters of this "art" is the phyllum mollusca and anthozoa class.

Anthozoa is the one that actually does it massively. the nearest thing that comes to my mind into something that doesn't look like tentacle porn is the genus Gorgonia.

Mollusca are the ones that get all the aesthetic perfectionism because it has Gastropoda in it with the archimedean spiral in the shell and all of that.

Maybe mixing them both will get you both the look you are looking for?

biologically, I don't think there are that many ways a shell of thin stone on the outside can be that referective without something like transparent skin for the constant secretion of polishing enzymes.

But there are ways for the outer layer of stone to be at the very least be reflective, just don't expect it to be very protectitive against damage though.

>In nature
See I think this is the source of your misplaced ideas.
Sure everything in gigerverse is BIOLOGICAL but it is in no way NATURAL and trying to view everything through a naturalistic lens is just going to lead to a lot of disjointed parts.
Thats seems way too obvious.
My idea was to just have the nobles of envy be hyper specialized for the role of spying.
This brain replication and killing their hosts thing would make their activities too noticeable.
It's better to just have them mind control their hosts to get what they want and then leave them when they got it with no one any the wiser as to what happened.

So I've been thinking, what if House Envy was a small and unimportant house during the successor wars that went into hiding, because they realised that they couldn't defeat Ralkhai via force, so they tried stealth instead. They spent years sending their agents into the Ralkhai, embedding assassin after assassin, buying countless loyalties and generally preparing for the day that they ruled the Ralkhai (and therefore the city) from the shadows.

Then Lienis and the Vatmothers tear the Ralkhai to the ground, destroying centuries of hard work, slaughtering countless agents, nearly revealing the Existence of the house of Envy and setting their plans back by centuries. Ever since then they have been quietly rebuilding their broken networks, planting moles and traitors at every turn, intending to usurp Lienis and the Vatmothers, possibly by BECOMING them.

Also I think 51995437 should be called "Shifters" and 51995745 should be called "Changelings"

That OP brings back memories. What did happen to Freak Quest?

It just ended.

well those links didn't work
are Shifters
are changelings

House of Sloth/Zhdun lore added to the doc.

I could see some sort of infiltration "body snatcher/doubleganger/ style parasites being used by Envy, but I don't think that it should be the source of their power or anything like that.
It should simply be just an example of the biotech they use.

I generally don't like the idea of any of the houses having some singular source of their abilities and powers. The Houses are ancient organizations, and their abilities and powers come from the knowledge they have preserved, and the methods they have adopted that best suit their goals, desires and culture.

Like, Baryx could make parasitic weapons as well, but they would view such practice as disgusting and dishonorable, and thus not use them.

And the author has no intention or continuing/rebooting it?

That is actually a pretty good idea.
I like it. It also ties to the idea of many of the members of Envy being actually members of other houses, who either have been subverted, or are foolishly working for their enemies while thinking that they are enriching themselves.

He said theres a possibility of a reboot.
But personally I doubt it's ever going to happen.
Better luck getting that webcomic.

FQ ended because my depression got super bad, and I had no clue where to take the story.

I might reboot it at some point, earliest maybe sometime late spring/early summer.

Most of my time until that will be spent on reading for university entrance exams, and I can ill afford distracting myself with the work needed to put a quest together that would do this setting justice.

Good man. Take care of yourself. We can wait.

>Sure everything in gigerverse is BIOLOGICAL but it is in no way NATURAL and trying to view everything through a naturalistic lens is just going to lead to a lot of disjointed parts.

Is just that I know how biological systems work, I just like using this knowledge to keep things under a scientific terms.

>It's better to just have them mind control their hosts to get what they want and then leave them when they got it with no one any the wiser as to what happened.

Well I was thinking about a different way to balance the whole thing, getting into a new body in here gives you access to new powers.

>I generally don't like the idea of any of the houses having some singular source of their abilities and powers.

Well, then I see were the whole problem comes from, but as I tried to state it, they are not really a house they are trying to gain enough power to be one, why should they be subjected to the same themes as the rest if they are trying to be something new?

>Well, then I see were the whole problem comes from, but as I tried to state it, they are not really a house they are trying to gain enough power to be one, why should they be subjected to the same themes as the rest if they are trying to be something new?

Because Envy is one of the 7 deadly sins, and each other sin has a house themed after it, thus I'd rather see Envy as equally ancient organization as the other noble houses, instead of some sort of emergent power trying to become something new.

I got nothing against the idea of such emergent powers, Vatmothers were one until they claimed their place within the city, I simply don't want Envy to be such a power, because it breaks the overall theme of the ancient Noble houses based on the 7 deadly sins, that date their origins eons into the past, to the point where more of their history is myth, than on record.

thats one thing that is really important in any setting, suspending your disbelief and allowing for some things to just be unknown, mysterious, magic, or even beyond knowing. Trying to apply real wold rules to fantasy tends to dilute the experience and gradually go into "no fun allowed". Not to say there are not rules to the scenario, otherwise you end up full retard, but its best to know what they are.

A long time ago I ran "freak quest: side story" and had bits of lore that did not normally mesh with the setting. It was explained that it took place in another part of the city, with different factions. The tech was generally right, so it was permissible.

The city is so vast in scale that its not exactly known how big it is, and some areas are very isolated or remote. There is that tinge of eldritch style to it, just barely there.

I would establish minor houses affilated to the greater noble houses, sort of internal factions or breakaway nobility that wanted to do something. Younger, less powerful, but still note worthy in their region. Or gangs, or guilds.

The crux of my shitty quest was that the vat mothers were hunting down and trying to capture the creation of a small guild of researchers who managed to half ass their creation techniques via different methods. The end product was an abomination that was the main character, but was a living pile of "cancer" that damaged every where it touched and existed, gradually corrupting the environment around it and forcing it to stay on the go. Never got too far.

...

I guess the biggest thing for me is that while the Gigerverse was a Veeky Forums setting, to me FQ was the setting of one individual, so I felt obligated to try and blend into the vision and not be disruptive with my ideas or subvert the work, but im sensitive like that.

...

anyway, good luck and really dig into the lore, you will find that the Prime houses are all descendant from one ancient house, and even then, they are so old that their history has been lost, so a lot of things are inflexible with regards to them. The agents they use are more malleable to recent developments though. Politics in the city move like the currents in a swamp.

>Well I was thinking about a different way to balance the whole thing
I don't really see how it was unbalanced in the first place.
>getting into a new body in here gives you access to new powers
Yeah but see I think this is where you've fallen down.
You're trying to give physical reasons why they moved to a new body (because they kill they're hosts) but what you should be doing is to come up with psychological reasons.
Envy are just never happy with the bodies they got no matter how good they are.
They see a freak with an aug they don't have and they just gotta get that body regardless of how useful the one they have is.

Wait was side quest not run by the same guy?

I'm just going to say this: I think this whole idea - the parasites, the body changing and such - could work as a religion, as a counterpart to the Vat Mothers, a new religion for the freak in the street. However, trying to apply this idea to the house of Envy is doing both of them a disservice. If you make it a house there is a implication that, like all the other house, it will merely change who controls things, not how things are, making its intent worthless. However, if it's a counterpart to the Vat Mothers there is an implication that it might just change things (for better or worse is entirely up to you) as the Vatmothers did during the sucession wars.

Drew some quick doodles of two ideas I have for the potential looks of the Zhdun bio-golems.

Gonna go sleep now.

What if the slugs were an offshoot branch of envy that are old and want to take control of the house

What are the slugs?

shit, sorry I meant the parasites idea. I just imagined them looking like slugs in my head

That's right. The one actually titled Side Story was run by a friend from Primordial Evo. Tale of Thrax, however, was run by FQop himself, mainly for testing that kinda shitty d6-based system that he and I whipped up.

Huh and all this time I thought side quest was just that.

I guess it can be confusing. There were three and a half quests taking place in Gigerverse. Flesh Quest by FromAether This had a very different interpretation of the setting. Some could be used as examples of life in the warrens; Freak Quest and Tale of Thrax by FQop; and Freak Quest Side Story by Nongent.

Now I realize that all those were run by evofags.

I'm also going to suggest that A: there are more Changelings than there are Shifters, because the process of making a Shifter is far more likely to end in death than the process that makes a Changeling and B: many Changelings envy the Shifters cause Shifters can return to their original shapes whereas Changelings cannot. Also, Changelings can be made into Shifters, and they have a higher chance of survival than a normal freak would

Playing with some armor concepts. Kind of like predators I feel like envy would take trophies of victims

Sounds like a good idea to me.
Though, I dont think that the changelings should have any higher change of surviving the process that creates shifters. After all, a changeling is just a freak that has undergone extensive plastic surgery, whereas the biological modifications needed for one to be able to rapidly alter ones shape and appearance enough to convincingly impressionate other denizens of the city, are far more radical and harder to accomplish. I recon the creation of a shifter requires a LOT of genetic altering and basically full body augmentation and alteration. So yeah, the shifters should be monumentally rarer than the mere changelings

>The Last King of Baryx

>Baryxians are each a lord onto themselves, kings and queens all terrible to behold in a house as unified as it is divided. But there was once a time within the fettid bowels of the City, that House Baryx was whole, a shimmering beacon of ivory and carmine flesh barred against the dim grit of the urban sprawl. Once they were a noble breed, adamant enforcers of just law and defenders of the meek. For what greater badge of honor is there in a world that eats the weak than to be their aegis? This all came to an end on the Day of Swords.

>The House had been ruled by a royal family, a pure and majestic stock, but in the climax of the house's history they had met a stark decline. The Queen of Baryx focused on the art of Flesh Warping to perfect her already majestic form, and the King did turn his attentions away from his people, obsessing over his hoard and harem. The Baryx royal family had become fully self indulgent, content to flaunt their wealth and stature while the streets decayed and families were forced to feed on their own spawn to stay alive.

>This had not escaped the notice of Absalom, Lord of the Baryx Paladins. Absalom was nothing if not just, but greater than his sense of justice was his loathing of material excess and his thirst for blood. It did not take much to rile the Paladins into a frenzy and challenge the Royals authority. The other warrior clades of Baryx fell in with Absalom shortly after. The ensuing bloodshed would be engraved in history as the Day of Swords.

>Once the bones of the King and Queen hung from the neck of Absalom the mighty Warrior and Fleshwarper set to reshaping House Baryx into a monolith of might once more, shattering the royal family and in its stead emplacing a council of Archdukes to elect a king they agree would be best suited to leading the house

Pretty good m8, I like it.

I could see Envy agents taking some trophies etc from defeated enemies, but with some restraint. I imagine them to be very professional, sort of black ops operatives that have extensive experience at what they do. They could probably have some small totems and trophies on their armor, but nothing to the point of extravagance.
Envy's envy extends to more than just material loot gained from others. Envy envies power, and influence, first and foremost.

fair, I ended up doing a design that spawned the idea, so I figured to toss it out there. Good to think of totems rather than all out trophies.

so just take the concept art not comment here

Doing creepy concepts for the thread

Eh, at first I thought it would be clever if House Envy was born out of envy for the City, by something that wasn't of the City. Thus the foreign parasite idea.
Then I thought if House Envy was one of the 7 major houses, and they deal in spy business and assassinations - their status as one of the 'greats' runs counter to their stealthy nature. So why not have them fake their 'death'? So on paper, House Envy does not officially exist between the other Great Houses no more, but they still exist. I do agree that they should have the least actual members, after all it's usually the weaker party that envies the stronger.

Reminds me of the thing from this house has people in it.

I really like the idea of them having faked their death.

Bingo. have a lewd.
Yeah, I chose "side story" kinda like in Japan a Gaiden is used for a setting, but not the main story. I tried my best to clone OP's style for the quest, but it ended up going dark, however I still extensively sampled the color pallet and styles from his own work in FQ.

My spin on a vat mother of a minor "coven", in a backwater region, of a slightly higher stature.

Everything is evofags.

>Trophies is just another word for spare parts. If your enemy had a part you liked and you killed them, make a quick stop at the nearest surgeon and now it's yours.
Has anyone been updating the google doc with all the art being created?

That right one looks top notch. It occurs to me that Hunters from the Halo videogames would feel right at home in this setting.

Left isnt bad, looks kinda 80's eldar-y, which is going to be a constant comment throughout all of this, no way around it really.

Would give her some biogel if you know what i mean

did some plastic surgery.

The foc doesn't need to have art in it yet

if you are the "hause" poster can you please leave

So what did the people before the freaks (and lived with the primordials?) look like?

Probably human.

i thought as much

That's pretty good.
Uncalled for.

How many of these do you think a single member of House Zhdun can control at once?

Depends on the experience and age of the noble, and on if they are controlling them from a dreamer pod or not. The number ranges somewhere between couple dozen on the lesser nobles, and hundreds for the elder nobles. Being in a dreamer pod boosts the number further as within those pods the noble can focus all his or her attention upon the task of controlling the golem armies.

Bumb

I was kind of bummed these guys never showed back up

oh, neat, I guess that shows off why some of the weapons they drop have infinite ammo.

Hey just because all his ideas are bad doesn't mean he should leave.

do you even lift?

oh baby

Some lore on the weapons used within the city.

There exist a wide range of weaponry found within the city, from primitive sharpened bone blades and sinewy bows, to advanced bioweapons that have been fully incorporated to the body of the user.

Weapons which we would recognize as firearms, are relatively common, and used by most factions within the city, from the lowly gangs and mercenary groups to the elite soldiers of the Noble houses themselves.

Generally, the Noble houses each have their own types of weapons they utilize, often either manufactured by themselves, or by their guild allies.

For example, House Lienis prefers to equip their forces with Pod Weapons and Shard Guns. Pod Weapons are a type of firearm that utilizes a wide range interchangeable of ammo pods, that contain a wide range of different ammunition types. Warriors using Pod Weapons can swiftly switch to different types of ammo pods to suit their combat needs.
Shard Guns on the other hand, propel hard crystal shards with explosive pulses, achieving a stunning rate of fire. The Shards are created within the gun itself, from an ammo fluid that is fed to the weapon either from a canister, or from a fluid tendril.

For Comparison, most Freak Militia members of House Baryx tend to utilize different variants of Bolt throwers, organic coil guns that launch ferrous spikes at great power, though with relatively slow rate of fire, whereas the Noble Knights of the house utilize a wide range of esoteric weapons, ranging from seeker launchers that fire swarms of homing blades, to Thunder Staves, large poles that can unleash torrents of lighting at nearby foes.

Likewise, the other Noble houses are characterized by their own weapons.
Chot is known of their their grotesque fang, bile and maggot launchers, Rai-Khil from their Spine riffles, Impalers and wide range of acid based weapons, Viam of their Stingers and Needlers, both weapons designed to deliver toxins and venoms to their victims and so on.

Besides weapons we'd classify as Guns, there are also other, stranger weapons.

Symbiote weapons are their own category of weapon organisms. These are akin to a middle ground between the fire arm bioweapons, and the bioweapons that have been fully incorporated to the biology of the Freak.

Symbiote weapons are often favored as covert self defense weapons, or as weapons of infiltrators and street level assassins as these weapon organisms are usually easy to hide, and require no ammunition, as just like a fully incorporated bioweapon, symbiote weapons draw their power from their user, though their drawback is their relatively low power.

The bioweapons that have been fully incorporated to a freak belong roughly into two categories, concealed, and overt. Concealed bioweapons tend to be small and rather weak, hidden within the flesh of the user. Such weapons require relatively extensive surgery and augmentation work to be incorporated and hidden within one's flesh.
The Overt bioweapons are openly grafted to the body of the freak, and usually their size makes the whole idea of hiding such weaponry absurd. These weapons tend to be very powerful, but also draw much of the user's own energy to fuel them.
Having such weaponry incorporated to one's body, is in most cases, clear indication that such a freak is a Combat Thrall of either a Noble House or a Guild, for without the support of such factions, a freak would have a hard time maintainging and fueling their incorporated bioweaponry.
Like the concealed bioweapons, the overt bioweapons require extensive surgery and augmentation work to be incorporated to one's body.

bump

I reckon house Envy has a lot of symbiote weapons, and those few weapons that aren't just melt if their user is killed

Or maybe they just use the non-symbiotic weapons from other houses. That way if an agent loses their weapon, it looks like it was one of the other houses trying to start something, as opposed to some mysterious secret society

How do house make their beasts? Like with House Chot, where do they come from?

They are genetically engineered and purpose bred creatures.

Rai-Khil hunts, captures and breeds "natural" beasts found within the warrens etc.

Baryx creates their "beasts" in labs, sculpting their flesh into forms of artistic beauty.

Aesthetics wise, Chot beasts are brutish, have massive maws and guts and generally are just ravenous animals.

Rai-Khil beasts are creatures from harshest regions of the city, though hided and viscous in nature, covered in armor plating, sporting sharp horns and tusks with which to gore their victims.

Baryx-Beasts are purpose engineered creatures that look more like strange, elegant sculptures, with smooth bone plates for armor, long, lean limbs for movement, heads ending in integrated weaponry and so on.
They are not bred, they are produced, and it shows, as they often lack many features a natural "animal" would have.

Envy using weapons of other houses is actually something I thought up.
Basically, the ideas I have for Envy in terms of weapons is that their lowest "forces" are just mercenaries who often got no clue that they are working for envy (usually they are hired by some front organizations), and their weaponry is basic bioweapons produced by the guilds and maybe some black market weapons belonging to the armies of the Nobles.

Above them, are the various types of agents and operatives, who use both weapons of other noble houses to obfuscate whom they are working for, and also occasionally experimental Envy weaponry often based on tech stolen from other houses, and combined in new ways.

Like for example, a weapon that sprays spider silk like filaments at foes, entangles them and then sends out a powerful electric shock into these filaments.

any long range heavy weapons?

Yeah, but pretty much exclusively held by noble houses.

>Aside from the ones which escaped into the wild. Feral Artillery.

>Above them, are the various types of agents and operatives, who use both weapons of other noble houses to obfuscate whom they are working for, and also occasionally experimental Envy weaponry often based on tech stolen from other houses, and combined in new ways.
>Like for example, a weapon that sprays spider silk like filaments at foes, entangles them and then sends out a powerful electric shock into these filaments.
I like this idea a lot actually. But I'm not sure what times such a obfuscated group would need unique weapons since I can't see them doing open conflicts as their own group. Maybe they equip their mercenaries with their findings.