HUBERT SPALA

[HUBERT SPALA]

INKTOBER ‘20 #17 - Storm

While most places are subject to the whims and fancies of the weather, Wharf Town has the rare luxury to decide with a solid bit of control on what kind of sky they want to enjoy for the day. This helps a lot, both with combating the heated summer days as well as to limit the dreaded chills of the harsh winters. How, though, a city of such size can perform such a deed? Is it ancient magic? Forgotten xenotech? Dark pacts with the gods? Nothing so extreme - it is just the local weatherman, Mzzunt the Storm Djinn, who decided that living in a two storey house beats a crummy lamp 9 out of 10 times. For a substantial salary, prerogatives and respect of the citizenry he employs his skills to manipulate the very skies above the great polis. And sure… he might be a little snooty, quite moody and have an ego the size of his billowing head, but even such features of bad character do not outweigh the benefits he provides for the whole city at large, and so he is not merely tolerated, but welcomed even in the gilded saloons of the city creme de la creme.

Inktober 2020 art will become avaliable in fully colored variants in ‘Posterra: Folks of the Wharf’ artbook, including extended lore, two short stories and map of the Wharf Town and surroundings. Stay Tuned!

[HUBERT SPALA]

INKTOBER #1 - Fish

The Seakin were here before anyone else. The shores their to command, the seas open for them. They were peaceful, amicable folk, eager to trade and welcoming to others. It is most likely what spelled their doom, for Posterra never was a kind place to kith and folk that shows compassion. Slowly they gave way to the onset of resurging civilization. Brutal nomads scoured the sands. Old Gods awoken once more. Magic wracked the seas with eldritch storms. And then… The city began to grow, pushing them aside, more and more, claiming meter after meter of their sandy beaches to swallow the bay. Not all went extinct - they are just diminished, for it takes more than fickle fate to truly exterminate a specie. And no great threat focused on the amicable Seakin enough to wish their destruction - they were merely pushed aside as an inconvenience. Nowadays, they are welcome within the city walls as everyone else. They sometimes visit, to trade the treasures of the depths for basic commodities, but even such a gentle race can learn from the lashes of history, and now the few remaining tribes huddle closer and closer towards their last days on the face of the ruined realms, keeping away from the harsh progress that never showed any kindness to their kin.

Inktober 2020 art will become avaliable in fully colored variants in ‘Posterra: Folks of the Wharf’ artbook, including extended lore, two short stories and map of the Wharf Town and surroundings. Stay Tuned!

[HUBERT SPALA]

095 - Rak’sa Raider

Sometimes your success in Posterra is pretty nearly all up to luck, to a roll of dice of destiny. In a way, the savage people of the Rak’sa won a bit of a habit lottery as the mountain their scattered tribes settled over proven to be long forgotten shelters of the Remnants, filled with cashes of arcane technologies and weaponry. When most of them are either inaccessible to them or beyond their grasp, an amicable - if degenerated - AI custodian helped them uncover some secrets and use the Mystical Artifacts as weapons and tool of highest respect, awarded to most prominent warriors, warchiefs and shamans. And so, Rak’sa became a widely known tribe of martial disposition - with complex hierarchies, beautiful ornamental craft in stone and fabric and terrifying array of powerful if eclectic arsenal left behind by an advanced, extint civilization. For some it might feel almost offensive to be able to kill a Rak’sa warrior with a simple arrow only to receive a castle-ruining reply from a portable guass annihilator of another of their kin who also uses the high-tec weapon as a staff on office and calls it ‘The bringer of thunder’ in his own language…

[HUBERT SPALA]

094 - Angel of Kings

Some entities that still persist on Posterra evade simple classification - even the idea of classification is a pretty broad topic in the sciences of the ruined realms. There are the Others, a collective term for unique beings made during the times of high arcane potency. Remnants, technological creations of the bygone civilizations. The Forsaken, of course, being cursed by the Divinities to walk the paths of shadows and misery. Lord and Ladies, the mystical powers behind the realms domains. Xenos that came from the distant stars. Kin for all that is sapient and organized, folk for the most established species of what we call civilization. But some beings elude such simple labelling, be it to their powers, capabilities or origin shrouded by the heavy veil of time. Angel of Kings, Kingmaer, the Herald of Royalty… It’s a scary, otherwordly entity of radiant light, mental chorus and prophetic dreams. It’s ivory flesh oozes and crystalized into marble. It’s azure wings seem real, but when the feathers are touched they turn to light. The vapour it leaves is either toxic or euphoric. It sings a song that cannot be heard, but resonated within the minds of all. And it arrived whenever a coronation is happening across all the realms, from the loftiest self-proclaimed emperor to the tiniest tribal chief. It can be anywhere and everywhere at the same time, it seems, or it is merely a mass hallucination that perpetuates across all of the ruined realms. We might never know it’s true nature… Any stories of inquisitive parties trying to communicate, hunt or take down the entity always end with mystrerious and unconclusive demise of the daring-do’s.

[HUBERT SPALA]

093 – Dreamlord

Across all Times, across all dimensions, they existed, exist and will exist. They are the Endless, the manifestations of the great concept, the ideas that breach through every aspect of life itself. They began when the universe was young and they will end only when the last kernel of life will expire. Every mortal race, every kin and folk that ever existed know of them, for they are integral to the existence itself. They give them many names. They dress them in visages and masks that suits their culture, their shape… Their imagination. And so, they take on such roles, always performing their duties across all of reality, their dominions spreading their tendrils to every corner of creation. Time might’ve been a cruel mistress to Earth, transforming it into the globe of Posterra – a planet of ruined realms. Humanity is long gone, but life, like cancer, persist. And with it, they do as well. And now more than ever they take keen interest in the stories of this place, for the Dreadwake is unnatural, powerful and alien even to them, a peculiar Antilife, a creation alien to their own that came from outside all that could be. No wonder then that Dream of the Endless is seen far and wide, visiting dreams, sending visions, crafting nightmares of such exquisite composition. He is Morpheus, the lord of dream. Oneiros, Sandman, Kai’ckul, Lord L’Zoril. He is the Lord Shaper, Prince of Stories. To the awakened machine he is the Dark Behind. To the fungi of the bogs he is the Soporific Presence. To the kinfolk of the sea he is the Depths of the Mind. Many names, many titles, same entity of great power – garben in his ancient helmet, the mighty Dreamstone and the sand of dreams he reshapes the minds of mortals in his ever-changing domain of dreams.