Inspiration
Synthacrosia is an interesting project to me. It's always been born out of a love of DnD and pathfinder; it began as a small idea, whilst playing a friends pathfinder campaign. A magic floating city, slowly decaying and sinking into a cursed ocean. Over time, it radically transformed into the Tower of Souls it is today.
Most of my inspiration comes from pictures, and books. The point that the world is at right now is still in it's construction phase; I'm building the world, and populating the characters. The stories are slowly being built, but they aren't the main focus. In light of this, the inspiration boards below are mostly just pictures! They help set the feel for with Synthacrosia. It's my hope that when you look at these images, you can picture exactly what is in my head when I think of the tower.
The exterior of the tower. These pictures are about capturing the feeling of Synthacrosia; when I think of the world I've built, and the immense scale of it, these images come to mind. It should be an impossibly tall tower, at mind boggling scales. It should be magic, it should be otherwordly, but it must be physical.
The tower is something much easier to invoke images of, compared to it's setting, purgatory. Purgatory can be many things, depending on your culture and beliefs. I choose to see it as a place of blindingly bright darkness, of shapeless clouds that stretch on infinitely. I see purgatory as a clashing mixture of positives and negatives, of true opposites existing together in the same place at the same time.
These images, which may or may not be loosely organized into a specific order, are what help me to develop the interior of Sythnacrosia. The 8 floors of the tower vary in theme and contents from floor to floor. Some are desert wastelands, some are mountainous, while some are massive oceans.
I like to use these images to build the skeleton of each floor. I want each floor to have a few themes; a general visual theme, an encounter theme, and a hidden theme that describes the meaning of the floor. I browse image boards or artist profiles, looking at images like this, to begin building a bank of ideas.
The landscape is built off of these ideas. The cities, the ruins, the secrets hidden in deep dark places... those are born from my love of gaming. Those come from the stories I read growing up. Those come from the times I spent camping as a kid, exploring and using my imagination to create stories.
Exterior
by various artists detailed below. Collage by Stormbril.
Interior
by various artists detailed below. Collage by Stormbril.
by Stormbril
Beautiful layout Stormbril. I loved reading all the little bits of info. That collection of books was nice too. Very creative with the images. Your passion for the project shines. *clap*