My O(r)ctorber project: Orcus (Patreon)

Hey guys, a sneak peek of the 31-day challenge I've planned and I will hopefully complete for October: Orcus, a showcase of characters and sceneries of a story from the world of SkyHorn's Adventures set in its Underworld.

The protagonist is Heckor, a barbarian hero orc who willingly enters the Underworld to complete a heroic deed so glorious to become a god, but ends up engulfed in the bureaucracy of soul allocation and has to climb the way towards the palace of the Dragon of the Underworld using his strength, cunning, and "social skills."

What do want I to be the format of this story? Well, at the beginning I wanted to be an illustrated novel on Wattpad, but then I remembered that gay erotica is dominated by cis straight women that barely know a gay man, so I didn't feel like dipping my toes in that swamp again.

So I opted for a visual novel, but I remembered that I can't learn Ren'py for saving my life, then I finally opted to unload a bunch of assets of this hypothetical visual novel in a month and lure someone to code it for me.

I know, it seems like I'm spreading too thin, as usual, and I should go on with SkyHorn, but this story it's about SkyHorn because it goes deep into an aspect of the worldbuilding that bothered me a lot: in a world created by three dragons, each one associated with an aspect of nature, what role do the gods and the Underworld have?

Also, I wanted to play on the very interesting evolution of the word "orcus."

It spawned the modern definition in English of a fantasy race of muscular and green-skinned brutes that can't lace their shoes, but its original meaning was the name of the King of the Latin underworld, and by extension, the underworld itself or a malicious spirit form there.

"Wasn't Pluto the king of the Underworld?" you might ask. Yes, also: while Pluto was more the Roman equivalent of Hades, gods of both the Underworld and Wealth, Orcus is from another tradition that believed in a more monstrous God of the Dead, which fitted better the narrative of hostile ghosts that people have to please and calm down during the celebrations of Lemuralia, that was the progenitor of Halloween.

In Italian the word "orco" preserved this sort of meaning, ogre or devil, but obviously, it slipped towards the fantasy green brutes in recent years because it's a better phonetic fit when dubbing movies and games.

So yeah, what if an orc went to Orcus?

I want to post at least 31 artworks this month and some of them will be animated, so guys, wish me a lot of luck!