Outfits are drawn with our contemporary/modern settings in mind but the story concepts are generally the same currently.
LLama here with a fun twist to one of our characters. If you've been around the discord or looking at our monthly sketches you might've seen this idea I had stewing around. Eternal Synkka or just Syn for short (I believe Sheep also called her Twynkka in the last Piczel stream which is also good) is an idea I'd been cooking up for a few months now. I'm not totally sure what specifically inspired this look if I'm honest beyond a general craving for me to make a shortstack.
Synkka and Mallory have an interesting dynamic as Synkka, being a very powerful yet very bored high ranking member of the vampiric leech clan and Mallory, an unlucky, timid human peasant girl made into his portable bloodbank. Mallory feels some sense of debt to him for rescuing her from her destitute housing and placing her with Mula and Tay (he didn't really place her there but thanks to him she ended up there) who eventually warm up to her and consider her a genuine friend; Mula and Tay.Knowing this, Synkka took advantage of Mallory and would use her as a test subject seeing that she has potential to be more than just a bloodbank, she could be the heart of a new clan. On occasion she would flex according to Syn's whims and birth hellspawn for Syn to command: goblins, imps, gargoyles and the like. Mallory proved herself to be just as useful as an investment as Synkka imagined.For reasons yet explained, Synkka suspected he would have to leave his clan which is the only true way for a vampire to die, a vampire disconnecting from their Mother Heart would have nothing to respawn from. Unless there was a new heart of course.Mother Hearts are rare, there is one to every clan comprised of less than 300 members each, they're responsible for respawning every member of their clan and are said to have cycles death and rebirth that span 5000 years. The Leech clan is estimated to be halfway along this cycle at best, but Synkka plans to end the cycle early which would mean and end to himself as well as a rebirth.
Staging a mass betrayal to his own clan, Synkka knew he'd have to do more than go into hiding, hiding in the shadows is not nearly enough for a vampire who lives in them. The process would start with the tampering of a pregnant Mallory, the child she gives birth to having a complete genetic rewriting to make a double of Synkka. As such, Syn is reborn and re-written without sharing any of the genes of Mallory. It's a messy process that involves the power of a Mother Heart in her beginning stages so picture something like a blood cocoon rather than a typical pregnancy.When Synkka meets his end he takes on the identity of the shortstack Syn here (Although likely with a new name). Synkka's true core is a genderless leech that simply inhabits whatever body it has. After rebirth, it adopts a female identity this time. She carries on as if she hadn't died besides the change in height, free of the baggage she's accumulated in her past life.Though she has lost access to the grotesque power her body once held, they are traded in for a slew of dirty and manipulative tricks that could bring any of our cast to their knees or marching to Syn's whims.We'll make another post at some point discussing her powers later. At the moment I'm calling them DNAvr (genetic video recording) and having more of a 'paranormal investigator/streamer' vibe to her. This will be backported to our fantasy universe as well... somehow. You're free to suggest other names for her to use as aliases! :D-LLama
Drak with some extra: This is also "Mother Heart" Mallory, which is pretty much just Mallory but BIG. Her personality doesn't change. We also mean to clean up this and give her a cooler outfit alternative that Syn makes her wear during streams.
I wanna share a little about this modern setting, enough to give you guys an idea. It's kinda like this small town paranormal setting, shrouded in mystery, autumn vibes, melancholic and nostalgic. It needs to be surrounded by forest, where weird shit is happening. Cryptids and ghosts or other SCP-like entities that come from "somewhere else". I like there being a door or a portal to a different world, Alice in Wonderland type stuff, but still focused on the modern setting, no Isekai adventure here. I also want old houses with victorian style architecture. For Honey I wanted her to move into an abandoned old victorian house on a hill in this town, and it's haunted as hell 👻
Basically, it's a very specific vibe I've been trying to capture, and I have some examples of media that has this vibe; Over the Garden Wall, Coraline, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Paranorman, Gravity Falls, Twin Peaks, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and more but those stood out to me. I tried to find a term for this specific aesthetic and "Whimsigoth" is the closest lol.
For Mallory and Synkka, they live in a trailer by the edge of town, by a decrepit old graveyard. The trailer is being consumed by thorns cause it's been there for so long. Very spooky, but inside the trailer the vibes are still kinda cozy... Cramped and cluttered but cozy.
Mallory is unemployed and relies on Syn for most of everything. She mostly does chores, much like her fantasy counterpart, or is used as a sexy prop for Synkka's stream. She's a bit of a scene/goth girl and she loves plushies, they have an enormous pile on their bed.