Keith Thompson inspired setting

LILI

The twisted children of Lilith and Adam, these creatures are almost as old as the earth itself. Able to don complete facades, it is said that even the busiest settlements are riddled with their presence. They tend to only be discovered when they carelessly let their personage last, unaging, for unnatural stretches of time. The presence of a lili seems to sow distrust and confusion among people. It is not unknown for ships to be found becalmed at sea, the crew dead by their own hands and a single woman alive on board, strangely unshaken by the ordeal.

WERECORDOBA

Bred and infected from an extinct chain of Argentinean pit dogs for the purpose of killing encroaching werewolves in an urban environment.
The plastic milk jug holds water that he can guzzle as his metabolism is so accelerated (he sweats profusely and pants simultaneously) that he constantly needs to rehydrate and eat.
The baseball bat has sharp strips of jeweler's silver hammered into it with wire wrapping around to prevent the bat from splitting. This tool is specifically used on werewolves.

NECROMANCER

Madame Theodosia hearkens from the Aeolian islands and is part of a long lineage of necromancers. Growing up in a family with a long tradition of raising the dead, she was uncharacteristically shaken to learn of her barrenness, and in a rather emotional state vowed to give birth, if not to a new life, then to an already passed life. For this purpose she had found assistance in fashioning a steel, pressurised womb in which the souls of the freshly dead were to be trapped and condensed. This gestating entity came to be referred to in hushed tones as The Collect. The expectant mother now unnerves her followers with a detached resignation towards her eventual agonizing death; a necessity to feed her newborn babe in a self-sacrificial fashion akin to a mother spider.

THE COLLECT

Formed in a steel womb fitted to a female necromancer, the Collect is composed of souls captured at death and contained under high pressure with liquid aglaophotis. These souls were condensed into each other until enough life force was coalesced for the birth of a unified entity. The Collect now hangs in the upper stratosphere, a collection of uncountable eyes overseeing the earth and influencing world events. As humanity is led towards war and strife, the souls of the dead rise in large clouds which the Collect drifts through, absorbing more and more souls into its fold and growing ever stronger for it.

>personal favorite for how it relates to the previous post

dat feel when you forget the pic.

NECROTIC COLOSSUS

Towering hulks of reshaped and animated flesh are a common sight in the Northern Steppes. Once terrifying siege engines employed in the Horizon Upheavals, a prolonged spate of peace has seen them decommissioned and adapted to cultural rituals. This specific necrotic collossus is actually functioning as a nomadic funeral temple. A site of excarnation that can follow tribes in their caravans, the colossus, once directed by a whip cracking beast master, is now only directed by two weary oxen.

SARACEN GHAST

Atrocity matches atrocity as the crusades grind onwards, and most hope to only suffer the moaning ghosts of the massacred heard during moonless nights. A sudden increase in caravans and pilgrims found slaughtered has led to the clergy admitting their knowledge of a raiding force of ghasts haunting the crusader's supply line. It is later unearthed that the warrior monks tasked with confronting the threat have been intentionally lax, benefiting from the drop in pilgrims living to reclaim the money the Knights Templar hold in safe keeping for them during their travels.

COBBLED SKALD

When a talented skald of the Swedish courts, renowned across Scandinavia for his unparalleled musical prowess, revealed himself as a disguised woman, she was swiftly executed, and the embarrassing events were stricken from polite conversation. Her sudden return to court functions shook even the staunchest war veterans, but not enough to stay a second wary, though swift, summary execution. Upon further returns, each revealing the scald to be strangely repaired in a manner befitting tailor more than physician, the court began to almost embrace the eerie presence. This cycle of returns and executions leading to a more and more transfigured court poet became something of an exalted tradition.

GHOUL

As crops fail and famine wracks the land, those who turn to the last resort of cannibalism contract kuru, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, and their brains become pitted like sponge. As they degenerate the ghouls form into familial packs which whoop and laugh uncontrollably as they pull down the healthy in mob attacks. However they only feast on the bodies after weeks of decomposition, as the notion of consuming fresh meat disgusts them. The ghouls numbers are disproportionately comprised of pregnant or child rearing mothers. They are particularly resistant to the pull of despair and suicide, if only to care for their single child; the greatest number a desperate mother can afford to care for in such conditions.

ANTHROPOPHAGUS

While not undead themselves, these corpseherds bear down on the aftermath of battle fields, reanimating the strewn dead and consuming the irreparable. These beings loom up eight feet, headless with unreadable faces set in their chests, mumbling to each other as they collect their cattle and return to the hills.

"And portance in my travels' history;
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak- such was the process-
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

Othello
-William Shakespeare

FUNGAL ZOMBIE

An entire division dropped out of communication with Le Premier Consul in the eastern campaign when they hacked forth into uncharted marshlands. Written off as lost to desertion, or more likely victims of the harsh elements, it was with great surprise that their madly twisted forms returned only to attack and consume their fellow countrymen. Shambling and mutilated, these corpses harbour a crop of fungus that animates their stiff forms. Acting as though consumed with a ravenous hunger for dead or living meat, these beings are only driven by a neurologically enforced desire to transmit their carried fungus to new hosts via saliva or blood.

UNDYING FLAGELLANT

Unable to fully reach true devotion, and resultantly undeserving of entry to the Kingdom, the Brotherhood of the Holy Scourge divined a method of self abuse that would cleanse them of sin, but send them into a state of half death. Wandering the land and collecting alms, the undying monks seek worthiness through their self debasement. They deceive themselves with notions of piety, but secretly derive pleasure through their pain. This sin of pleasure negates their purpose, and their path has cost them their mortality, binding them to the earth, and robbing them of any chance to die and ascend.

LICHE

High priest and prime demagogue of a people displaced and driven into inhospitable salt plains. Disease and famine poised to kill the tribes to a man when their high priest declared that he would go alone into the salt flats, commune with the heavens, and return with the answer to their salvation. Days later, when his desiccated form reappeared on the horizon he announced the discovery of a divine solution to their plight. He appealed to the medicine men to conduct a drastic form of trepanation on him. A large hole was cut into the top of his skull as his third eye with which he would commune with the heavens. After a day and night of mantras a holy pillar of light descended from the sky into the priest’s pate and burst forth from his face, removing much of it in the process. This beam of light acted as a guide to lead his people to a land of plenty. Once safe and settled, the priest announced that he was leaving, much to the lamentation of the saved tribes. It was blasphemy for him to dwell amongst them any further, he explained, for he had died on the first night he ventured forth into the flats to find his answer.

anyone lurking and want to add some ideas? there's still a lot to go now that i'm finished with a majority of the undead.

LAPUTIAN TEMPLE

A religious cult has built a temple and surrounding dwellings on this island, and they float across the continent indoctrinating and spiriting away new followers. Of course the more established religions on land encourage all to resist the new cult and attacks on the island are common. It floats and steers very slowly with the use of huge lode stones. Peasants on the ground are taught by the churches to set forest fires in the islands path to suffocate the inhabitants.

PLAGUE CART

As the pandemic sweeps the known world, society's crumbling infrastructures desperately try to form organized methods of disposing of the insurmountable amounts of dead. Criminals are co-opted into becoming the drivers of the plague carts in exchange for pardons they invariably never survive to enjoy. These carts trundle through streets ringing their distinctive bells as the driver croaks as loud as he can, compelling the peasants to emerge from their homes to fill the cart bed with their mass burial destined dead.

Key Features:

Adapted feed bag containing posies and other herbs in hopes they will filter the impure air and prevent the horse from contracting the plague.

Bells constantly jingle to both warn the uninfected and to attract those who have dead that need picking up.

While the driver's visibility is severely hampered by his constraints, he can still crane his neck enough to perceive the roads he has to go down.

Lengths of fabric catch bodies that fall from the back of the cart and can drag them for short distances (peasants are very helpful in hoisting the bodies back into the cart to avoid having them left in the middle of their streets).

PALANQUIN OF THE STRANGLED THANE

The streets hush and a deathly pall descends over the populace when the Strangled Thane's procession shuffles by, surveying the provinces. Carried on the twisted shoulders of ascetics, the palanquin stiffly bobs back and forth, its rider sitting in his throne above a seething sea of silently devout followers.

Key Features:

Peasants may approach and place small offerings to the thane in this vessel.

Only the highest tier ascetics of the Strangling are granted the honour of bearing the palanquin upon their shoulders.

The thane is kept partially hanged at all times from this gallows, as with this he can maintain a persistent state of enlightenment.

The cowled ascetics bear the sign of the "calming noose" emblazoned upon their veils

STEAM WALKER

Long in development, but first used in the Boer war, the Steam Walker proved tremendously efficient in almost single-handedly demolishing fortifications and blockades. However it proved less useful against the common guerilla actions it was forced to deal with.

Key Features:

Observation slot must be shared by both gunner and driver.

Twin smoke stacks with decorative embellishments.

Short bore, breach loading cannons mounted on rotating fixtures.

Gas headlamp fixed to entrance hatch.

Machined steel parts incur an incredible weight to the tank, but render it both resilient and impervious.

MAXIMILLIAN'S MORTAR ROACH

Polished to a glittering shine, Sir Maximillian's new siege engines scuttle along battlefields, lobbing mortar rounds into the citadel walls of the neighbouring fiefs. It is whispered that the lord has fashioned a pact with Beelzebub in exchange for the arcane knowledge required to manufacture such unnatural weapons of war.

Key Features:

Vantage tower, allowing the crew a commanding 360 degrees of battlefield visibility.

Tilting mortar hurls explosive iron fire pots high into the air, and over protective parapets.

Entry hatch can open quickly, allowing the crew to pack and load the mortar while exposing themselves minimally.

Polished iron plating is the primary material covering the whole roach, offering it substantial protection.

Maximillian's heraldic crest displayed on a billowing penant, held triumphantly forth at the front of the vehicle.

JONAH'S FORTRESS

Crowning achievement of the burgeoning Beast Appeaser caste, Jonah's Fortress has grown to be so infamous and feared across the known world, that its only military use so far has been in coastal bombardment. The fullsman whale is kept in an almost catatonic state, and extreme body movements are suppressed with a perpetually injected epidural. The whale's prime function is bouyancy, but its drugged and sluggish pectoral fin movement gifts Jonah's Fortress with a top speed that far outclasses all known sea bearing vessels.

Key Features-
-Dual loaded catapults located on the prow of the fortress.
-Iron sheeted cannon bays arranged in an outward curve.
-Small complement of life boats
suspended low, behind the whale's fins.
-Blinders to prevent the drugged whale from becoming concerned or spooked by things located at the starboard or port.
-Trawl net laid out not for fish, but to collect whale excrement for use in
processing fuel and gunpowder.

STEEL BELLY

Invented as sort of a mobile guard post, the Steel Belly is used by colonial troops throughout the British Empire to protect and barricade embassies and trading posts during times of civil unrest. Plodding and ungainly, this vehicle is used as much as a visual deterrence as anything; a looming presence of industrial weaponry capable of mowing down whole crowds.

Key Features:

Pot belly stove affixed to the top of the main boiler has proven a boon to exhausted colonial troops manning long hours on the vehicle.

Twin Gatling guns with a ratcheted speed loader.

Steel riot catcher mounted on the front of the vehicle help it clear paths through dangerous crowds.

Engineer's seat where the driver can hunker down behind the extended shield and work the rather Byzantine control deck.

Steel legs actually allow the vehicle to climb quite sheer inclines and cross very difficult terrain.

BARON

The serfs grow increasingly tired of the brutal and irrational treatment they are subjected to at the hands of their lord. The Baron is a feudal knight of a militant and formerly prosperous fiefdom with coffers swollen only by recent land grabs. During a campaign for further territory acquisition the Baron was made awares of a tomb on the outskirts of a neighbouring lord's manor. While rumoured to contain the dowry and burial tributes of a wealthy aristocratic couple struck down in their prime by a virulent and pernicious illness that had wracked the local countryside, it was said that grave robbers have superstitiously avoided the loot. After the Baron had dashed their remains about the crypt while ordering the collection of anything of value, he returned to his own estates. He began refusing to be seen outside of his armour, and a horrific stench emanated from both his person and quarters. He had his smithy refashion and modify his armour in seemingly illogical ways which should have rendered it unwearable by a normal person. Servant girls consistently went missing when attending him in his private chambers, and he became a rare sight outside these rooms. His lands lay in disarray, and his subjects starve and flounder.

MERCHANT

This man is currently a very wealthy merchant in the southern trade city-states. Only recently has he come into power as an independent financial force. Originally married into a position as treasurer of the powerful Culnacci family, he was privy to many a goings on in the region. Made aware of the date planned for a riot and coup to overthrow the administration of a neighbouring city-state, he surreptitiously snuck off to the troubled area with the Culnacci seal. There he proceeded to use the family's reputation to take out huge loans from the city's major banks. He paid a fraction of this wealth to several cutthroats and promised more on the condition that they burn to the ground every bank he specified amidst the chaos of the impending uprising. When the uprising came, all proceeded well, and the records of the loans were destroyed. He had his wife poisoned, invested his gains, had the rogues hanged when they returned for their pay. He now lives comfortably, hopping from one riverfront property to the other with his twenty concubines.

WARDEN

The Fey Folk, being barren, steal away human babies and raise them as their own, twisting them into fair forms. Often the fairies leave one of their own in the raided crib as a spiteful taunt to the oblivious parents. The Warden was a young fairy who took the place of a babe stolen from an old woodsman’s house deep in the forest. He would twist his face hideously as the old man and woman tried to love and care for him. Mischievously, the fairy would break valuables, set fires, and make the animals ill. Still, the parents patiently raised him. This continuing love puzzled the Warden, and he slowly became accustomed to it, growing tall and healthy as a young man would from such compassion. He knew that he could never live as a man in the city, so he stayed with his new parents in their isolation until they eventually died, still thinking him their ugly, troubled son. In bitter grief, the warden took to the forest with the intent of returning the same sorrow the Fey doled out so generously. He now stalks through the forest, his size immense for a fairy from his humans’ diet, and the nurturing of the old couple. He captures all Fey Folk he comes across and lets them slowly waste away, savouring their pleas as they cry out in a language he hardly remembers.
A young fairy with his wings clipped is chained to the turret in the Warden’s hat, where he is forced to use his man-catcher to snag those flitting high in the trees. An adder lives in the warden’s sleeve, darting out to capture fairies skulking in the underbrush.
Men who find themselves lost in the forest often wake up to discover a small leather purse in which is a drawn map showing the way to town, and a bundle of small, iridescent wings tied together with the finest hair.

CAPRICORN

Capricorn represented mans' rights over animals of the land and of the sea; the goat and the fish. It's holding its own horns because it's purpose is to be sacrificed. As a deity it's hermaphroditic and multi limbed. It's backed by Mesopotamian cuneiform. The knife is Sumerian.

GUARD POST

Two guards posted along the rim of a floating island. A religious cult has built a temple and surrounding dwellings on this island, and they float across the continent indoctrinating and spiriting away new followers. Of course, the more established religions on land encourage all to resist the new cult and attacks on the island are common. These guards especially have to look out for fires being set in the path of the island. It floats and steers very slowly with the use of huge lode stones. Peasants on the ground are taught by the churches to set huge forest fires in the islands path to suffocate its inhabitants. These guards use very rare and expensive cartridge rifles (plundered, the industry of cartridge ammunition is long forgotten) to pick off scouts or shepherds who appear to be hurrying to warn towns of the island's advance. The cultists undergo a series of skin bleachings so that they begin to resemble dolls or puppets. The female is the example of successful treatments, and the figure on the tree is covered up due to severely disfiguring mistakes made in the process.

PATRON OF POOR MINSTRELS

Proud arm in the pantheon of misfit gods.
Her cacophonous playing offended all but her own misshapen taste. Mutilated, hanged twice, and wrists nailed to tree trunk by the other gods whose ears bled.
On she played.
And during that playing she gave life to a daughter never meant to tread the earth, and slain before birth.

PONTIFF

Pontiff of the sea. Presented here personally acting as a missionary from the deep. He carries a gallows, the sign of their martyr. He smokes a hallucinogenic kelp from his long pipe (smoking being one pleasure dry land can offer him). He's actually wearing pilgrim's garb, and his papal attire at home in the sea is stunningly beautiful in comparison to this dour travelling wear. The bleached driftwood tied to his girdle is an element of his ecclesiastical dress. An emissary of the Fey Folk kisses his coral ring in supplication to their developing alliance against man.

PRINCE WITH THE TURQUOISE HEAD

The man, dressed as royalty, arrived by sea on a trading ship. He soon became popular among the elite and wealthy circles in the city for the outlandish tales of his homeland, and his cryptic but surely sage advice. Beguiled delight was always found at the turquoise mask he was never seen without.

An illness took hold in the city upon the prince's arrival; one that loosened skin to grotesque proportion. The people implored the visiting noble for his wisdom.

"Remember, I come from Mu." he said as though that answered it all. Taking it much to heart, the city's people began fervent and depraved worship of this unknown land in hopes it would cure the sickness that afflicted them and their families. Trade with other cities soured, and the country's clergy denounced the new worshipping. The lord of the land, needing some way to keep his newly hired mercenaries busy until he had more important uses for them, took it upon himself to siege the town, raze it to the ground and appease the complaints coming from his other subjects. The sick people of the city saw the soldiers at the walls and cried to the stranger for more aid.

"Remember, I come from Mu." was all he said. Dumbfounded by such wisdom, all among them slopped to their knees, worshipping the wise prince as their city burned.

MOLLUSC TREE

This case of sorcerous artifice is one of many of its kind which dot the hills in this area. Originally a byproduct of alchemical study, the mollusc tree is now harvested for both medicinal and culinary applications. A rare mollusc is fished, and immersed in an amniotic solution within the bulb of a specially cultivated tree. The ageing process is quite long and the mollusc actually lives in a torpor until its harvesting. Specific parts of the pickled mollusc meat are a much saught after delicacy, and the brine possesses a potent restorative effect when imbibed or applied as a salve. If the proper procedure is not followed, and the bulb split or tapped by a poacher, the mollusc will viciously attack, and soon suffocate, spoiling its meat.

SURFACE KING

King & Son's Oceanic Surveying Co. folded late in the year, unable to stave off the debts incurred by constant delays. The delays were caused by a disturbing casualty rate among the deep sea divers; they simply stopped returning to the surface. The company's assets and few remaining dive suits were sold to a competing group. They scrubbed off the suits' distinctive crown logos and immediately put them to good use in successful dives arranged in the same previously unlucky waters.

During the course of these new untroubled ventures two divers working at the absolute limit of safe diving depth happened upon a building of sorts; some type of oppressive colonnade sheltering a row of seated figures. A tentative investigation discovered that within the building were seated the drowned remains of the missing divers, chained in stone thrones. In front of each corpse drifted bundles of kelp, crustacean meat and other seemingly edible offerings. The dead diver's bodies themselves were coated in a thick layer of silt, with the exception of the still shining, as though regularly polished, stylised crown markings on the dive suit's outer plating.

Upon return, with the intent of winching up the men's remains for proper burial, it was revealed that the entire submerged building had seemingly collapsed, dragging most of everything down with it into an unfathomable trench below.

BROOD MERMAID

An exemplary member of a Piscine Magistrate's sub-harem; a collection of fertile females used for the sowing of seed as opposed to serving a directly pleasurable role in the prima harem. A swarm of eels harass the brood mermaid in her later stages, eager to snatch up freshly hatched young. These swarms are encouraged by most Magistrates as they consider it an excellent measure for thinning the weak offspring; immediately setting the stage for a strong and culled lineage. Brood mermaids are often given as donativum profundi, "imperial largess of the abyss", to honoured guests, as the reciprocated offering of offspring is considered an assumed display of trust in important dealings amongst piscines of high standing.

THE PROPHET

Pilgrims listen in rapt attention to one of the many prophets imprisoned along this road. The town that can be seen was built about a cathedral which dates back beyond scholars' records. A large cache of gold was found in the cathedrals catacombs and the high class now lives in relative comfort despite the poor harvests of late. Those who can afford it live off the trade of a neighbouring coastal fishing town. Since the gold was discovered a rash of severe birth defects and sudden oncomings of insanity have been plaguing the populace. After trading began, the fishermen and their families who accepted the gold as payment have been suffering the same ills. The particularly opulent burgomaster has become worried about his dwindling reserves, and after the discovery of further tunnels connecting to the cathedral's catacombs, he has taken to paying highly those who plumb its depths in search of more gold. Unfortunately these men invariably return completely mad, and desperately try to burn the cathedral to the ground. The burgomaster furiously condemns these men to the gibbets that line the road as a warning to those "weak of mind, and lax in duty." Those scarred and deformed by the gold’s unwholesome influence flock to these prophets to hear their fractured gibberings of what they saw below the cathedral. It is rumored that the burgomaster’s wife can birth naught but plump, healthy fish.

SAINT OF PARASITES

I took ill and was confined to a bed in the furthest wing of the local hospital. My health worsened as I spent my time alone save the occasions when a visitation would wake me from fitful dreams. A wan figure would enter, passing down between the rows of empty beds towards me, flanked by two monastic attendants each holding up the lengths of her vestments to prevent them trailing on the floor. My body seemed to shift and stir on its own accord in response to her presence.

"My dearest." she would say in hushed tones that seemed to emanate from within my own ears.
"Fear not, I will be with you always, till the day that you die."
The squirming sensation inside me increased as though hanging on her every word.

"I only ask what any devoted lover would. Everything you have left you share with me."

SCRIBE

A scrivener automaton working in a rather wealthy merchant's library. The arcane procedures for creating automatons are as varied as their appearance and roles in society (servitors, military, labour, prostitution, etc). The taxidermic use of cured human remains is legalised, economical and common place in their construction (similar to how the powdered wigs in our past often used the hair of corpses). However the practice of "rendering" down living persons into an automaton state is outlawed, it is frequently employed since the resultant product tends to outperform the legal alternative. The merchant who owns this particular scribe automaton has some very extensive paperwork detailing her conformity to all applicable regulation. Despite this assurance, those who deal with her have noticed how quickly she learns new tasks, and have caught her smiling when backs are turned.

DURNWHIP GRINDYLOW

Little fellows of the Grindylow peoples, who venture out into war torn fields where battles were recently fought. Snuffling about they collect the mugcurrants that grow amidst the fallen. When their bellies are pleasantly full they waddle home and promptly cook themselves into a delicious, thin stew. Durnwhips are poor conversationalists however and rarely, if ever, hold any company who can be present to sample this delicacy. Resultantly a Durnwhip stew is one of the most under appreciated dishes presently documented. The few critics of the Durnwhip stew also cite post-consumption convulsions as a prime factor contributing to the meal's lack of popularity.

WITCH PUPPET

An Obeah servant of a witch, fashioned from wood, bronze, and gourds for work in the fields. A monkey is sacrificed to inhabit each limb, and a still birth is encased in the head to manifest a controlling spirit. Wholly subject to the wills of their creator, these puppets are usually utilised for menial tasks and are kept out of sight. Folk tales tell of a time when the witch kings would rase whole villages with witch puppets leading packs of cackling hyenas, the cracks of whips cutting the dusty night air.

Key Features-
- Eyes on the mask are closed, and the puppet sees through the painted third eye.
- Cured, hollowed gourds, and bundles of tied grasses used as limb parts.
- Tanned skins drawn taught over bowed, wooden frames.
- Spry and strong saplings used as feet.
- Long, sharp fingers for threshing millet terminate the Puppet’s second pair of arms.
- Scythe for reaping the witch's harvests.
- Branch from a cemetary tree fools the soul into thinking of the Puppet as a resting place.
- Bone dagger pierces skull; if removed the puppet collapses, lifeless.

HER MAJESTY'S HONOURABLE BRASS LION

Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself, the Brass Lion was a marvel even in the impetus of the industrial revolution. Vaulting into true international fame when a single Brass Lion saved the charge of the light brigade in the Crimean war. Flanking, it smashed into the Tsarist artillery positions where it was eventually felled but not before bursting open and showering its attackers with boiling water and gouts of steam.

Key Features-
-Enlarged 6 shot revolver affixed to saber arm.
-Series of adjustable lenses which switch and telescope depending on the field of vision required.
-Fore wheel arms used as base when the robot settles into firing posture.
-The cannon wall is actually far thinner than conventional cannons, and is intended as a one-shot disposable weapon that splits open and is discarded after firing.
-Adaptation of a cavalry saber for
cleaving foot soldiers from an elevated position.

That's about everything in the fantasy genera. now, what can we figure for connections? i'd love to see how Veeky Forums fits elements together.

I mean, it already looks like it all takes place in the same universe. Also, would bang the saint of parasites lady. I'd probably need protection though.

but Keith Thompson is shit

The Holy Piscine Empire is a race of humanoid fish people that live far beneath the waves. their world's control of waterways force a rocky peace between them and the coastal empires, causing them to look the other way when divers and fishermen are killed mysteriously offshore.

Plagues are commonplace above the surface since the crusades, legend has it that they were transmitted from across the great salt planes from returning soldiers, responsible for ending an already dwindling population. Across said plains a legend of a prince from a far off land by the name of "Mu" introduced his pestilent religion to the land. in the years since, parasitic cults have sprung up across the land, offering their salvation to the dying as hosts...

the practice of necromancy has long been common in the houses of the Aeolian islands, passed down from generation to generation of slavers as a way to keep getting the most out of their crop. The Collect is the new god of the afterlife, fashioned by man itself. all dead souls will eventually join it.

across the salt plains, the nomadic remnants of the once glorious Northern Steppes once knew older arts adopted by the crusading empires in new ways. their rites are esoteric now, and rarely practiced by the remaining few survivors.

Automata have frequently been seen in many spaces of the Empire after the crusades to prevent plague spreading near more civilized areas of the aristocracy. as the rabble languishes in their disease those on top worry of nothing. when riots commence in the streets, they are torn down by gunfire from thick steel plating. these machines helped tremendously in their original place during the crusades.

whilst smaller cults rise and fall with the Pisciean tides, some stick like an angry thorn in the empire's foot, gangrenous and unattended. plagues may take the majority of the attention, but the Fey were a problem long before that, thieving children from parents and replacing them with their own. with the dogmatic cruelty of children they haunt the woodlands. those that worship them congregate on floating isles and convince others to join.

furthermore, many lowmen of the empire disagree with the treatment of the Pisceans, believing that their unsteady truce costs them dearly with every child delivered to be raised among the fishfolk. these extremists adopted the capricorn as their symbol, asserting their dominance over all beast of land and sea

And that's what i've got for a setting at this point. if anyone wants to connect further dots, be my guest.

No other artist gives me consistent paranoia from viewing their artwork like Keith Thompson does