#Oetn lore

[crannbo]

I bring to the table: art!! I've been in a decent lil funk lately, but here's some of the art I did today!!! I've been working on drawing more accurate portrayals of black individuals (do tell me if that's not the right way to phrase that, I genuinely don't know what anything is tbch) but here they are!

the first was my "practice" for a second larger peice (the second photo) where I was originally gonna make her hair look like either the ocean or the sky or smth, I'm not rlly remembering what I wanted to do w it, but I settled as using it in Oetn's lore

so right outside of the city you have,, a forest. so in that forest there is a THRIVING ecosystem - you have larger creatures like your masked (or whatever, none of these rlly have a name barring a few in particular, so these names aren't set in stone so you'll see em change eventually but for now I'm using descriptors as names), which is not rlly a species but a fungi! if you aren't properly prepared for the woods, you will get lost, and you will, in fact, get "masked" which is like, the fungi creating a "mask" and controlling you as a hive mind. the fungi does not go outside of the forest, thankfully. it doesn't seem to want to, which is weird, coz, y'know,,, it's a fungi, but fair enough ig. so it's not necessarily transferrable - if you're not in the forest, you're not getting infected but once youre inside, you're fair game.

and the way it does this is by convincing you that life will be better, that it has a lot to offer, don't you miss a sense of community?? (it often markets to merchants because they're rlly the only ones who go into the forest and come back safely - most merchants are kinda seperate from any community in particular which is why sometimes you will find a merchant or two with their masks (I'll draw the masks n stuff when I get up tomorrow, I reckon)) but I digress, so you have this one - the masked/infected, whatever.

and then you have the pjuvju, the krvr, creatures like that, the gatherers of the community, and I thought I had my concept art for them but it seems like I don't have it here, it will be posted later w the masks

uh and then you have creatures like the second and third photos! clever bastards - they, much like Melje's species - are ambushing predators; they lie in wait til something weak and tasty comes along and they drag it into the "bush", aka it's body and they devour it! they're easy to miss as they do look like ground covering or shrubbery! they are NOT a type of golem tho, as they are living breathing things that grow as they age. they look like bush,,, because they steal twigs and moss to look like bush.

anyways, that's all for my rambling about the ecosystem of Oetn (for now! keep your eyes peeled coz I adore writing about it)