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(https://dl.dropbox.com/s/s988y201gjmfoce/heroes.png?dl=0)
Supporting cast:
Jonathan Morris - 73 years old
The guardian of the Vampire Killer and the Alucard Spear, descendant of the Morris clan and relative of the Belmont family.
Jonathan is a father figure to Julius; Not only did Jonathan teach Julius Belmont about the secrets of whip combat and the manipulation of vampire-hunting tools, but also martial arts and exorcism. Jonathan taught Julius to value his own strength and character above the power of the whip, just like his father had taught him. Under his tutelage, Julius learned about his ancestors, and about the conflict destined for him to overcome.
Eisuke Hakuba (白馬 栄祐) - 54 years old
The chief priest from the Hakuba Shrine. Eisuke's clan was found by Alucard, and he eventually learned about evil incarnate Count Dracula.
Eisuke and an ensemble of his priests travel to Europe in 1999, to conduct a ritual that will banish Dracula's Castle, the source of Dracula's powers, inside a total solar eclipse.
Father Ermingild: - 40 years old
An exorcist who got tangled with the Church's ongoing battle with Dracula.
He was a first-hand witness to the terrible influence of Dracula and, after the events surrounding a mysterious cult's actions in 1997, Ermingild joined the ranks of the Church as a field agent.
Ermingild earned himself a fame of being a highly accomplished exorcist, having defeated very dangerous demons years ago.
General Berthold - 45 years old
General officer leading the military forces against Dracula's army of demons.
Berthold was present when, in 1997, an invisible party unleashed chaos upon the unsuspecting population of a quiet town. As a seasoned soldier, he fought back, but his involvement with this event forced the Church to disclose its feud with the forces of darkness to the government, along with the prediction for Dracula's revival in 1999.
The governments of Europe worked with the Church, naming Berthold as the man to assemble and lead a special battalion against Dracula in 1999, should his presence become a threat to the world.
It's true that we all have a general idea of the DCW and that each of us has our of personal views about it at the same time. Take my idea for instance; I had always imagined that the start of the DCW game would be fast-paced with quite a bit of action going on. Numerous amounts of soldiers and monsters fighting it out, not just in the foreground but also in the background as well. Kinda like the first stage in Contra III where all hell is breaking lose and you have aircraft coming in and bombing the hell out of the place. And the gameplay would be in a classicvania style as that allows for a more fast-paced play-through. But once you get into Casltevania itself things slow down as the war itself is not present in the castle. And you'd have the Metroidvania segment take place here as well as that seems to be the best format for a deep, yet steadily progressing story.
Your idea is... SCARILY similar to mine, which I have discussed with Donoffrio a long time ago.
The true first "level" of the game would happen at the Castle's bridge. Tons of incoming creatures in the foreground and background trying to leave the castle, while Julius fights his way through it in sidescrolling action. He's stopped midway by a Final Guard that takes lot of punishment but never dies. It gets destroyed by a missile shot by an helicopter. This helicopter goes on to give Julius cover as he walks on the bridge and you can see soldiers fighting the monsters in the background. Finally, the helicopter is taken down by a sea monster (which would be one of the bosses of the game, and not a serpent-like creature ;) ).
That's where I'd show that, whenever you try to shot missiles at the castle, HORDES of flying demons (bats, gargoyles, devils, imps) sacrifice themselves to protect it by flying against the missile and dropping it on the sea or flying it up making it miss the target containing its explosion, as antibodies protecting the main body.
When Julius broke through the main gate, that would be the first boss in the game. After defeating it, Julius would STILL have to deal with the main corridor's entrance swarming with demons that can craw all over the walls. After reaching the first save room, Julius would find a hidden mechanism allowing for him to close the main gate's bridge (temporalily) until the endless swarm of monsters stopped coming out at such a consistent pace. This is where the game would slow-down enough progress the story at metroidvania pace.
The music track for this scene would be a fast arrangement of Super Castlevania IV's "Into the Castle/Ascension to the Castle", something like this, but more orchestrated and less metal:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV5k6DgBqGk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV5k6DgBqGk#ws)
I say "true first level" because the game wouldn't start here for real. Before that, the player would control Julius in his last training with Jonathan (where all the controls and combat techniques would be taught to the player, much like Barlowe teaching Shanoa), and would again control Julius in a "real" combat situation in another thing, before actually going for the war.
Cure Spell? Like the Sanctuary spell from PoR? Interesting.
Bingo.
Since I'm unable to post the whole thing yet, I'll post this specific bit right here:
1843 - After Dracula is defeated by Shanoa, she goes into a travel hiding his dormant remains all over Europe. Their power completely drained by Dominus, they are as good as useless and cannot be traced by evildoers.
1844 - After traveling and having no goals left, Shanoa returns to Wygol expecting to spend time with elder Daniela. However, she is greeted by Alucard, who had returned after perceiving his father's presence, but arrived just after Dracula had been destroyed by her. After being informed by the villagers about Albus and Shanoa, he became curious to meet the one able to destroy Dracula without the Vampire Killer and awaited for her return.
Shanoa fills him in all details surrounding Ecclesia, Dominus' creation, and her quest. She reveals that Dominus had been made into a glyph by extracting Dracula's power from his soul, and that she had resisted its corruption because she had absorbed the power of the Belmonts present in the 13 villagers through glyphs set by late Albus. Interested, Alucard decides to analyse Shanoa looking for traces of Dominus as potential means against Dracula, but finds something else much more interesting in its place.
He discovers that by absorbing the Belmont essence contained in each villager (including Nikolai's/Richter's), Shanoa had unwittingly turned into a vessel for a shard of Belmont spirit born out of the concentrated power from each of the villagers. The shard was solid and powerful enough to shield Shanoa from the evil influence of Dracula himself, and now resided inside her. With this knowledge, Alucard reveals to Shanoa the reasons for the disappearance of the Belmonts, and the secret behind Wygol's existence.
Inquiring Shanoa about the glyph-forging method, he tells her his new plan based on this discovery: To forge a glyph out of the Belmont spirit shard she possessed - just like Dominus had been forged from Dracula's spirit. Thanks to having recovered her memories and still having access to the now abandoned Ecclesia, Shanoa complies.
She recovers all of Barlowe's research about glyph forging and the development of Dominus at Ecclesia, and with Alucard's help, she forges a glyph from the Belmont spirit shard contained within her: A gigantic seal, encompassing the entire Wygol Village meant to slowly heal the crack in the soul of the main-Belmont-bloodline descendants by drawing power from the souls of all other villagers related to the Belmonts standing inside it.
As Dominus had been created from Dracula's spirit to be the ultimate Glyph of destruction, this one had been created from the Belmont spirit to be the ultimate Glyph of healing. It was named "Sanctuary" as a reference to Wygol Village itself, since it was built to be the sanctuary of the Belmont bloodline.
As planned, the crack had started healing for the first time in half a century, albeit very slowly. With each new main-bloodline Belmont born, the crack would return progressively smaller. It'd still take generations of Belmonts to have the crack completelly healed, but now Alucard had a hope that it could be done. However, Dracula's return would not wait, and now Alucard had to plan a way to stave off his ressurrection until the Belmonts were ready while still guarding the village.
And now you know how the Belmonts were cured from their spiritual mallady. I also tried to explain where Ecclesia's studies went: Shanoa recovered them, used them to fabricate Sanctuary, and destroyed them.
Wygol plays a last large role in the story I'm writting. I'm just trying to fit the pieces in.
Now... This spell is found inside one of Brauner's paintings. Can you guess how it wound up there (and ultimatelly in Charlotte's hands)?
Well we all know how Charlotte finds the spell; Inside one of the paintings they were traversing. The Egyptian painting if memory serves. The only one who knew about the spell or at least heard of such a spell was Wind (Eric Lecarde). But he did not know where it could be located. Are you by chance having Charlotte be a relative of Shanoa's? Remember though, Charlotte doesn't have any of the Belmont's power within her or it would have been mentioned in her PoR backstory. That and she's not mentioned to be related to the Belnades family either. Shanoa does have the Belmont power, but it was an unnatural occurrence; a blessing in disguise from absorbing Dominious, and probably cannot be passed down to the next of kin as it does with the Belmont's natural-born power. It'll be interesting to see what you can come up with :)
Charlotte does have a connection to the Belnades, but IGA never elabored on that, even though he did mention it in his interview about Portrait of Ruin. Charlotte will be the great-aunt of Lenora Belnades in this story, and have nothing to do with the Belmonts through blood. Her family is to the Belnades what the Morris are to the Belmonts, probably.
And no, Charlotte is not a relative of Shanoa. All Shanoa did was fabricate Sanctuary from the Belmont power she got from the villagers. As soon as she created the glyph, this power left her body to work as the glyph itself.
And Wind, apparently, didn't even know something like that was possible:
Charlotte: I wonder if there's a chance we can save those two if
I use some kind of purification spell.
Eric: The chances are very slim. You should know that. Even I
never knew how to do it. I appreciate your sentiments, but
I am resigned to their fate.
Neither him, nor Charlotte... The most we can see here is that just maybe Wind thinks a purification spell could work but not even he knew how it could work...
...but Vincent Dorin did have a vague knowledge about how purification spells work, possibly because he's an insider from the Church. You can check that in the dialogue he gives while being vampirized. More on that later.
Here's somewhat of a hint about how this "spell" landed in Charlotte's hands:
You're right about it being hidden inside one of Brauner's paintings. Now, what are his paintings? Why would a vampirism-nullifying magic be inside one of his creations? Are the worlds inside the paintings real, or are they created from something else?
The answer to this involves a very vague line from Wind in Portrait of Ruin concerning Brauner's existence:
Wind: It is indeed Dracula's Castle. However, the castle's
lord is a vampire by the name of Brauner.
Charlotte: I've heard nothing about that!
Wind: As one would expect. His identity has been kept secret
for years, after all. He infuses magic into paintings to
increase his power. You will undoubtedly come across
these paintings in this castle. Search for these paintings.
Why would this be? What happened to Brauner that became a secret that not even the people hunting Dracula could know? And one more hint. Remember the Vincent dialogue I mentioned up there? This is the one:
Charlotte: J-Just calm down! You've still got time before
you turn into a vampire.
Vincent: !! Y-Y-Yeah... That's what they say. Purification spells
are effective in the early stages. I beg of you! Do
something for me! Get that purification spell!
Now keep in mind: Charlotte finds this spell inside a painting made by a vampire, and the knowledge about it was vague to null even to her, who is a magical genius. But Vincent somehow heard about something like a "purification spell being effective against vampirism in early stages" from someone.
So, I think this might help you piece what I have in mind together ;)
Being a member of the church, Vincent would have access to knowledge normally off-limits to the general public, so it goes without saying. However he's not all that up there in the church hierarchy so his access would also be limited. But a sanctuary spell for fending off vampirism he would definitely know about, as it would be required in order to fight off the effects of vampirism if someone had been victimized.
OK, here is what happened. But since I still can't post about it due to reasons, this is subject to change as all pieces are still not in place:
After Shanoa fabricated Sanctuary as the ultimate Glyph of healing to slowly heal the Belmonts, and a very little time after Castlevania Bloodlines, Brauner had his magical power awakened due to his grief. He, then, sought a place to complete his turn to darkness by absorbing enormous amounts of dark energy. To this end, he started looking all over Romania for places where concentrations of darkness were abundant.
This search led Brauner to the Monastery: A place where once good men sucumbed to evil. Thing is that Brauner discovered the reason to why this had happened: There was a rift to a dark realm under the monastery, through which a small amount of darkness poured in this world and corrupted the monks who once lived there, eventually attracting demons and ghosts.
While Brauner started messing with the rift to open it, the Church, noticing his movements, dispatched agents to fight Brauner and stop him, all ultimatelly resulting in failure. Eventually, Brauner had absorbed darkness enough to finally turn into a vampire and became too strong to be defeated in this form. The hunters sent to face Brauner then devised a plan: Near the Monastery, there was Wygol Village. By this point it was known to the Church through Alucard that Sanctuary existed there. Brauner would need to feed soon, and would need to leave the Monastery to attack the townspeople at Wygol, the nearest town. So they hypothesized that the all-healing magic of the Glyph could revert the newly-vampirized Brauner to human form, and decided to use this in their favor.
The hunters hid on the village, and when Brauner arrived, they trapped him there in a fierce battle. They expected that Sanctuary was going to revert Brauner back to human form, so they started fighting him inside the enormous Glyph to buy time and make Brauner grow weak, enabling them to finally best him.
Unfortunatelly for the hunters, Brauner noticed the ruse of the Glyph as his recently-acquired vampiric powers started to fade, and fled Wygol Village before the Glyph could take full effect. His vampirism was not reverted in time, but a small fraction of the powerful magic of the gigantic glyph was engraved in his own dark magic due to it having affected him, even if momentarily.
When Brauner began creating his paintings containing the will of the artist, his own will, many elements of real life that he had witnessed were subconsciously given shape inside the twisted worlds that Brauner weaved with his magic. One such thing given embodiment was a much smaller form of the original Sanctuary magic, which manifested inside the painting when Brauner infused his magic into it and the small fraction accidentaly absorbed from the Glyph years before poured into the painting.
After Brauner fled from the trap, the hunters had to take care of the rift opened by him at the Monastery. They sealed it with powerful magic, and the Church built a tower surrounding it that came to be known as the "Condemned Tower" given the nature of the thing that it was built to seal. Eventually, this tower became the annex to a castle...
Okay dudes, a small-ish update:
The BIGGEST issue with Julius' origin is finally solved: The origin of the Lecarde family.
This doesn't exactly intersect with Julius himself and I could've explained his own birth alone, but it's important to set-up why did the Lecardes inherit the Alucard Spear, and the whole "Morris and Lecardes take the place of the Belmonts" shebang. Alucard is behind the method through which Julius' birth was possible, and both stories interwine with him.
I won't post it just yet, but here is a brief summary:
The Lecarde family was NOT blood-related to the Belmonts before a certain someone entered their family by 1800~1820. No game ever mentions where exactly did the Belmonts branch into the Lecardes, as opposed to the Morris, which was by the time of Trevor Belmont. But the Lecardes were next to the Belmonts as a friend-family of sorts.
This certain character carries the blood of the Belmonts, but is not a main Belmont descendant, and when they make contact with the Lecardes, the descendants become blood-tied to the Belmonts automatically, of course, but as distant relatives. This character is also the reason why Alucard trusts them to pass his spear to them.
But, of course, I may be missing information on this matter. If someone knows where the Lecardes branched from the Belmonts, please let me know. My research of the lore brought NOTHING but bits and pieces that I used to build this background.
Ah and no, they have nothing to do with Alucard besides the spear. They are not his relatives in any way, shape or form. I'm aware that some fans suspected them to be his descendants or something, but Alucard is trying to rid the world of his bloodline. It'd make no sense for the Lecardes to have anything to do with him.
And one more update: While trying to write this part of the background above, I made an artwork to illustrate part of the 1999 plot itself:
This is Dracula's Castle 1999. There is a complete map to be overlaid on top of it designed to follow details on my story, but ALSO to be used if a fangame ever comes from it. I won't show the internal map yet, but believe me: It's huge. But I'll show you this:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezimba.com%2Fwork%2F150624C%2Fezimba14048790689604.png&hash=aa81e890768f9b3dc12523a92cc91090)
The general shape of this castle, if no one notices, is a homage to the NES Castlevania's map. It happened that my story-game system required the Clock Tower to be at the center of the castle, and that I wanted it to be divided into two very separated wings, so I made a full-on homage.
That's it for now, dudes.
While you wait for Julius, here is Umbra's explanation for how Dracula became the Dark Lord.
Dracula:
Before his confrontation with Trevor Belmont, Dracula was not the Dark Lord, but rather a powerful vampire sorcerer living in relative harmony with humans, even managing to have a son with a human woman named Lisa.
However, after being accused and persecuted for witchcraft, Lisa was unfairly executed by the people, sending Dracula in a path of bloodlust and vengeance. He then declared war against mankind.
Dracula was aware that, even with his vast powers, he was unable to face and destroy all humans. Therefore he sought to increase his own dark power and build an unstoppable army of darkness, and to achieve this goal he held a ritual to summon the greatest darkness of all - The god of primordial chaos and the stars, and current Dark Lord Amatsu-Mikaboshi.
As the Dark Lord, Mikaboshi possessed the Dominance, a power that crowned the entity who owned it as the King of Demons and forced all other demonic entities to bend to the Dark Lord's every will.
Dracula urged Mikaboshi in conceding him control over the demonic legions in the Demon Realm, and the Dark Lord agreed, but not for free. Coveting Dracula's blackened, powerful soul, Mikaboshi offered him a deal:
The Dark Lord would bind Dominance by proxy to Dracula's soul, enabling him to summon and command the demonic legions of the Demon Realm to wage his war. But once the war was over by either him winning or losing, Mikaboshi would rise from the depths to claim ownership over the soul belonging to Dracula, stripping it from the power over the demons it had been granted by the pact, and taking it to serve under the Dark Lord for all eternity.
Dracula agreed to the contract's terms. Yet, with no plans to have his soul become anyone's eternal servant, he devised his own scheme.
With his newfound power, Dracula summoned legions of demons from the Demon Realm to Earth, and in the ensuing chaos, he covered Europe in darkness, gradually increasing his strength. His war would come to a halt, however, as Trevor and his conrades would defeat him in combat. Before disappearing, Dracula uttered a vile curse that would eat away at men's hearts in the years to come, seeking to speed up his own revival in the process.
As per the pact's terms, Mikaboshi rose from the Demon Realm to claim his prize - Dracula's soul - upon Dracula's downfall, yet he found something else: The weak soul of Walter Bernhard, with the power he had bestowed upon Dracula nowhere to be found to be stripped from him. Having indeed sold a soul that belonged to him, Dracula had abided to the contract, but in Mikaboshi's eyes, he had been cheated. Growing wrathful at Dracula's deceit, Mikaboshi ignored the useless, powerless soul before him and returned to the Demon Realm seeking retribution against the King of Vampires, unaware that Dracula had already antecipated his every move.
As the pact was being agreed on, Dracula surmised that if the proxy power of command over demons he was granted were to clash in the Demon Realm against the Dark Lord's Dominance, his power would surely be overridden or stripped from him by the Dark Lord. Therefore, by offering a soul belonging to him in place of his own, Dracula forced Mikaboshi to leave his domain to take it while he gained entry in the Demon Realm. Mikaboshi would be forced to refuse the soul offered to him, since it did not have the power that the he had granted to Dracula.
With Mikaboshi's refusal to take this soul, the pact was not given closure, allowing Dracula's soul to descend into the Demon Realm with the power the pact had granted him. Once there and with Mikaboshi out of his domain, Dracula exercised his power over the demonic population uncontested. When Mikaboshi realized Dracula's deceit and returned to the Demon Realm, it was already too late to reverse Dracula's control over the legions of darkness, and the Dark Lord Mikaboshi was overwhelmed by the countless waves of demons under the vampire's command before being able to react.
Solidifying his victory over the fallen Dark Lord, Dracula stripped him from his power, his identity and his will. He fused the mangled essence of Mikaboshi with the magical structure he had created to be his fortress in the war against mankind, fuelling it with chaotic power and providing it with a mind of its own - the Demon Castle was reborn as a creature of chaos, and as the symbol of Dracula's magic and cruelty. With Mikaboshi permanently unable to give closure to the contract, the power of the pact bound the Dominance to Dracula's soul, making him the Dark Lord for as long as his soul exist, and effectively nullifying any chance for any other demon to achieve the position of Dark Lord.
Dracula now would be resurrected as the Dark Lord, and his castle would become the inexhaustible source of the chaotic power that would bring him from the dead through the hearts of humans when their chaotic desires became uncontrolable.
Detail explanations:
Why a Dark Lord previous to Dracula is needed:
In Castlevania III, Dracula is said to have made a pact with an "Evil/False God" to obtain his power (the precise term used in the manual for this entity is "ankoku jashin" or "False/heretic god of darkness"). I considered this idea to have been scrapped until I discovered that IGA actually reinforced it in the Curse of Darkness manga endossed by him:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F0opvp2h.jpg&hash=d6c74cd21ae6dc90b75a6d4e97f4c800)
This page reads:
In the beautiful landscape of southern Romania,
since a few months ago, a horrible curse has been treatening the people
The undeniable darkness at night...
Demons who were just believed to appear just in legends
suddenly started to reveal themselves to humans
The leader of the grotesque creatures was a black clothed count known as Dracula...
Borrowing the power of the false god, he summoned monsters one after another
The entire land of Wallachia was changed with darkness and slaughter.
On this manga, it is explicitly mentioned that Dracula is "borrowing" the power of a "False God" to obtain his demonic troops. If Dracula was already the Dark Lord - the demon atop the food chain - why would he need to make a pact with another, lower being to obtain demonic troops, if the Dark Lord alone has the power to do it through the Dominance? Furthermore, why would the harbinger of mankind's destruction live among humans, even fathering a child with a human woman, if his entire purpose is to destroy mankind?
These things seem awfully out of place for someone who is the Dark Lord. The only answer is that he was not the Dark Lord before Lisa's death - and this is confirmed by the story contained in Castlevania Adventure's japanese manual (http://www.vgmuseum.com/mrp/cvgb1/documents/CVAJ.txt). Dracula was "transformed" into the Demon King. And by Christopher Belmont's time, he's already the Demon King.
Credit for the CVIII translation goes to Nagumo.
Credit for the page translation goes to Shiroi Koumori.
The choice for Amatsu-Mikaboshi to be this previous Dark Lord:
Amatsu-Mikaboshi (AKA Amano Kagaseo) is a Shinto deity related to the primordial chaos and the stars. He's a "star god" (deities meant to be defeated due to their rebellious nature - heretic gods ) and having existed before gods like Amaterasu or Susanoo as a primordial entity, he's referred to as the August Star of Heaven/Brilliant Male. The star associated with him is either the North Star, or Venus (which is not a star, but is symbolically recognized as one due to its shine). Different from what Wikipedia will have you believe, though, Mikaboshi is not inherently evil, but he does stir/feed from emotions of destructive nature inside humans. As the lore goes, he's the "lack of good", therefore being a sort of an "unintentional evil" that spreads/grows with each evil deed perpetrated by human hearts. However, in some stories concerning the battles between the gods, he is indeed referred to as an "evil kami" that must be banished.
Through this part of the plot, I considered many entites to be the previous Dark Lord to Dracula. The top ones were Satan, Pazuzu, Ahriman, Azatoth, and Susanoo, but they were discarded in favor of Amatsu-Mikaboshi for two reasons:
1. In 1999, a Shinto ritual was needed to banish the castle from this plane. Althought the eclipse itself could be a reason for requiring Shinto knowledge to banish the castle, there is something else: Exorcizing/cleansing rituals tend to have an intimate relationship with what they are exorcizing and the lore this entity is associated with, and eclipses are not specific enough to require a Shinto ritual, since they are symbols of darkness in many different cultures. Mina Hakuba's mention about the Tensho Daijin (Amaterasu and Susanoo's story) being required for the banishment is incredibly specific.
Therefore I choose Mikaboshi to be the entity that would become Chaos, the force feeding the castle from the chaos in human's hearts. The Hakuba ritual was the only able to banish the castle because the castle was possessed by a Shinto entity all along. Thus the need for a very specific ritual to banish a very specific entity.
2. In Aria of Sorrow, the Chaotic Realm displays some very interesting imagery beyond the obvious chaos. I'm specifically talking about the stars.
Right at the entrance of the Chaotic Realm we see a motif of stars and the moon:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fa2HRosD.png&hash=364497f8f3523f78e29fc93f1ebd1a58)
Even though this could be interpreted as a reference to Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto, Shinto deity of the moon, or simply as meaningless decor, I have more evidence showing otherwise.
Then, throughout the entire Chaotic Realm, we see that there are patterns of a starry sky/space as the background for decaying rooms, suggesting that this is an alternate reality composed of whatever chaos represents:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FuPqatA6.png&hash=f3dae9fd7a7b153c4e40d923e9d8287a)
In the room containing the portal to Chaos, there is a single light in the middle of the darkness that could be easily interpreted as a single, brilliant star's light (the August Star of Heaven, one of Mikaboshi's names, sometimes depicted as a very bright star through the Pole Star or Venus):
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FjfJmmMw.png&hash=af637334fc9cccf206b4c03e98349d2f)
Finally, Chaos' true/last form is that of a black sun in the middle of a heavily distorted, Giger-esque background representing its chaotic nature:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FYhmJ59C.png&hash=fd3392a58fe9538d957d85039438b924)
But when Chaos is defeated, the black sun breaks like a mirror. In japanese mythology there is a black, round mirror that once was used to lure Amaterasu out of her hiding - The Yata no Kagami (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yata_no_Kagami). Mina Hakuba mentions this specific story's lore (the Tensho Daijin) to have been used as a base for the castle's banishment ritual:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-bUwS6tuQ6uM%2FT9ahZdcgYGI%2FAAAAAAAACj8%2FkLyPObSKCf4%2Fs1600%2F3mirror.jpg&hash=7d537797539386a70fb4605ab76a4235)
Notice the sun motif in the middle of the mirror.
In the end, the connections are too many to overlook, and Mikaboshi fit all the requirements to be the deity chosen to be the dark entity with which Dracula sealed his pact for power, and eventually topped. He fits both the need for a Shinto banishing-ritual and fits the symbolism of the chaotic realm through his association with the stars and the chaos much better than any other entity could, in my perspective, and in retrospect.
The Dominance grants the position of Dark Lord and Dracula becomes its eternal owner:
First, the Dominance granting its owner the throne of Dark Lord is explained in Aria and Dawn of Sorrow. Dmitrii explicitly mentions that the Dark Lord's power is needed (the Dominance) but Dracula's soul is not, and therefore if he can obtain the Dominance, he can become the Dark Lord. Obviously we saw how that turned out, as Dmitrii was not able to have the true Dominance by his side on top of his soul not being able to contain it.
Secondly, Dracula has already been defeated numerous times, and even reincarnated, and the Dominance is STILL strapped to him. Why would that be, if not for the fact that, possibly, Dracula CAN'T be separated from this power anymore?
So I provided this answer too, and it is due to the pact's power. Until the pact is rendered void, Dracula cannot be separated from the Dominance. And with Dracula's strategy, he ensured that this is never going to happen.
How will this factor on Umbra at all:
The story for Umbra will introduce the Hakubas, and how they were summoned by and experienced Charlotte to banish the castle. Originally, Charlotte will be the one to discover about Mikaboshi's existence, so she'll employ the separation of Dracula from his power, and the Hakubas will employ the sealing of the castle inside the eclipse.
Any and all critique is welcome.
Okay, this is what it looks like now. Yellow enphasis on the changes:
Before his confrontation with Trevor Belmont, Dracula was not the Dark Lord, but rather a powerful vampire sorcerer living in relative harmony with humans, even managing to have a son with a human woman named Lisa.
However, after being accused and persecuted for witchcraft, Lisa was unfairly executed by the people, sending Dracula in a path of bloodlust and vengeance. He then declared war against mankind.
Dracula was aware that, even with his vast powers, he was unable to face and destroy all humans. Therefore he sought to increase his own dark power and build an unstoppable army of darkness, and to achieve this goal he held a ritual to summon the greatest darkness of all - The stargod of primordial chaos and current Dark Lord, Amatsu-Mikaboshi.
As the Dark Lord, Mikaboshi possessed the Dominance, a power that crowned the entity who owned it as the King of Demons and forced all other demonic entities to bend to the Dark Lord's every will.
Dracula urged Mikaboshi in conceding him control over the demonic legions in the Demon Realm, and the Dark Lord agreed, but not for free. Coveting Dracula's blackened, powerful soul, Mikaboshi offered him a deal:
The Dark Lord would bind Dominance by proxy to Dracula's soul, enabling him to summon and command the demonic legions of the Demon Realm to wage his war. But once the war was over by either him winning or losing, Mikaboshi would rise to claim ownership over the soul belonging to Dracula, stripping it from the power over the demons it had been granted by the pact, and taking it to serve under the Dark Lord for all eternity.
Dracula agreed to the contract's terms. Yet, with no plans to have his soul become anyone's eternal servant, he devised his own scheme.
Upon his agreement, Mikaboshi possessed Dracula's castle, connecting it with the Demon Realm allowing Dracula, with his newfound power, to summon and command legions of demons at once from there to Earth. In the ensuing chaos, Dracula covered Europe in darkness, gradually increasing his strength. His war would come to a halt, however, as Trevor and his conrades would storm the demon-possessed castle and defeat him in combat. Before disappearing, Dracula uttered a vile curse that would eat away at men's hearts in the years to come, seeking to speed up his own revival in the process.
As per the pact's terms, Mikaboshi rose to claim his prize - Dracula's soul - upon Dracula's downfall, yet something else was given to him: The weak soul of Walter Bernhard, with the power he had bestowed upon Dracula nowhere to be found to be stripped from him. Having indeed sold a soul that belonged to him, Dracula had abided to the contract, but in Mikaboshi's eyes, he had been cheated. Growing wrathful at Dracula's deceit, Mikaboshi ignored the useless, powerless soul before him, abandoned the castle to crumble under its own weight, and returned to the Demon Realm seeking retribution against the King of Vampires, unaware that Dracula had already antecipated his every move.
As the pact was being agreed on, Dracula surmised that if the proxy power of command over demons he was granted were to clash in the Demon Realm against the Dark Lord Mikaboshi's Dominance, his power would surely be overridden or stripped from him by the Dark Lord himself. Therefore, by offering a soul belonging to him in place of his own, Dracula forced Mikaboshi to stay on Earth to take it while his own soul left to the Demon Realm. Mikaboshi would be forced to refuse the soul offered to him, since it did not have the power that the he had granted to Dracula, therefore leaving the pact unfinished.
With Mikaboshi's refusal to take this soul, causing the pact to be unfinished, Dracula's soul was allowed to descend into the Demon Realm with the power the pact had granted him. Once there and with Mikaboshi out of his domain, Dracula exercised his power over the demonic population uncontested. When Mikaboshi realized Dracula's deceit and returned to the Demon Realm, it was already too late to reverse the vampire's control over the legions of darkness, and the Dark Lord Mikaboshi was overwhelmed by the countless waves of demons under the Dracula's command before being able to react to the onslaught.
Having defeated Mikaboshi, the god of chaos and Dark Lord, Dracula stripped him from his will and powers by shattering his body in many parts with powerful black magic, and using them to built himself an ethereal fortress connected to the Demon Realm. From Mikaboshi's head, Dracula built the throne room, where he would sit to command the entire castle. And from Mikaboshi's heart, Dracula built a chaotic maze to house the endless flow of chaos from humankind's darkest desires, that now would feed the castle's existence. The Demon Castle was born, and became the symbol of Dracula's magic and cruelty.
With Mikaboshi permanently unable to give closure to the contract, the power of the pact bound the Dominance to Dracula's soul, making him the Dark Lord for as long as his soul existed, and effectively nullifying any chance for any other demon to achieve the position of Dark Lord.
Dracula now would be resurrected as the King of Demons, and his castle would become the inexhaustible source of the chaotic power that would bring him from the dead through the hearts of humans once their chaotic desires became greater than their faith in good.
The last part, about making the throne room from Mikaboshi's head, was meant to reflect the nature of the throne room as the "command center" of the castle, and its recurring nature. Furthermore, the throne room seems to be extremelly important, as in Portrait, Brauner separates it from the rest of the castle, leaving "the body" without a "head" to control it. In Aria it also happens that the one to inherit the castle must reach the throne room. Graham does become the castle's temporary master, but Soma is recognized as the true Dark Lord when he gets there.
The part about the right arm becoming Clock Tower is supposed to reflect how the right arm is considered the most important one. It seemed fitting to turn it into the Clock Tower, as Death (Dracula's right-arm) is commonly associated with it.
The part about creating the Chaotic Realm from Mikaboshi's heart is also obvious, I suppose. The heart is (more symbolically than physiologically) the "source" of one's strength, pumping blood through the entire body. The body, in this case, being the castle itself.
I was going to add more things, but I think it's already too much as it is :P
In retrospect, this idea makes much more harmonic sense than Mikaboshi being Chaos. I'll even be able to use the "demons are antibodies protecting Dracula's castle" comparison with more clarity now.
Hey, it's me again. Julius has to wait a little more, since real life got in the way again. While he waits, I bring you the overlay of the map I posted here before. It had no overlay, but now it does as I built it while thinking of how the story should unfold in case it turned into a game.
The internals of the castle have been worked with both a story and a game in mind, so almost all rooms here have been thought carefully envisioning how the "game" should play out from it. This map has about 1600 rooms. It's big because it should fit the hypothetical campaign for four characters. There are also a lot of rules I followed to build it, like keeping in mind the distance between each Save Room and Teleport Room, or keeping the routes needed to find certain items as fresh as possible to avoid boring backtracking... If your eyes are sharp you can even spot some rooms of interest. Hell, if they're REALLY sharp you can even spot where "Don't Wait Until Night" would play :)
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezimba.com%2Fwork%2F150814C%2Fezimba15362461854204.png&hash=d696c5c7fbc3daeb95eeb3b4e46ecad9)
■ = Save Room
■ = Teleport Room
■ = Transition Room
And yeah, you may think "Holy shit, the Save Rooms are sparce here!" but there is a good reason for that: If this was a game, "Save Tickets" would be a thing that would allow the player to generate a Save Totem (provisional name) wherever he's at. Yet this Save Totem would not have all the capabilities of a Save Room.
One more thing that might be brought up: Why is the Clock Tower not connected to anywhere else? The answer is because the story demands so. The Clock Tower plays a fundamental role in the story and it's necessary that it remains disconnected from the rest of the castle. Futhermore, upon the player gains entry into the Clock Tower, the plot is pretty much straightfoward from there. The player is "pushed" into following through with the final stretch of the story, that will demand urgency from the hero, giving him no time to fool around with exploration shenanigans.
The following zones are in this map:
Entrance Halls
Forbidden Library
Forlorn Villa
Corrupt Cathedral
Observatory
Underground Waterway
Treasury
Necropolis
Castle Sewer
Clock Tower
Castle Keep
Hidden Gardens
***Slow clap
Keep it up, looks real good
Thank you!
Now, dudes. I present you Umbra of Sorrow's version of Julius Belmont, done by artist Junki Sakuraba!
(https://dl.dropbox.com/s/24cs9wxty1op5yn/JULIUS_BY_JUNKI.png?dl=0)
Small rant ahead:
"yadda yadda he's too feminine/I don't like his design"
I know you may not like it, dudes. And I'm sorry, but this ain't changing. The design choices (clothing, instance, hair) are things I personally have choosen for him, for reason mulled over through months. The feminine style is obviously meant to emulate Kojima's style, but the artist IS NOT KOJIMA and I'm satisfied with his own flair.
Just small update on what I'm doing now:
Lately, I've been trying to trace the origins of the Lecardes. I succeeded in the side of Eric, and most recently, I traced the side of Eric's second wife. This is important to tie up with how Jonathan acquired both the Stellar Sword and the Alucard Spear, and the knowledge to teach Julius the Omnia Vanitas technique, which is developed from Maxim's ancient technique. Here it goes:
Remember how I established that Daniela, in Ecclesia, is the descendant of Maxim with a Belmont female, and therefore has the knowledge of the secret arts used for monster hunting that she mentions having learned from her grandfather? It turns out that Daniela inherited Maxim's Stellar Sword from him, too.
Further in the future, Daniela had no children, and Shanoa had no family. After the events of Ecclesia, Shanoa settled in Wygol to become Sanctuary's guardian, but also to live with Daniela due to the bond they formed during Shanoa's quest, causing Daniela to see Shanoa as her own granddaughter.
Before passing on, Daniela taught Shanoa her grandfather's secret art, and gave Shanoa the Stellar Sword representing the art, and as a symbol of their bond.
Further down the road, Shanoa had her own children. She would teach her children the secret art, along with passing onto them the Stellar Sword representing it. She would also unwittingly pass on her natural ability with Glyph magic.
Many decades later, by 1922, on a trip to Wygol looking for a cure for John Morris whose condition slowly deteriorated with the years [1], Eric would meet his second wife - a descendant of Shanoa, and current caretaker of the Sanctuary glyph.
Together, they would bring two sisters to the world. Eric choose the name for one of the girls: Loretta. His wife choose the name for the other: Stella - a name derived from the sword passed down her own family [2]. Unfortunatelly, Eric's wife couldn't sustain giving birth to both girls, and became bedridden, dying shortly after [3]. Before dying, however, she made Eric promise to train both girls, helping Loretta develop the latent magic that was present in her and inherited by her bloodline [4], and teaching Stella swordsmanship. She, then entrusted Eric with the secret art passed down her family, and gave him the Stellar Sword [5].
Eric trained both of his daughters, helping them develop magical and fighting skills, but one day in 1942, word of Brauner surfaced, and hearing from the Church about the vampire's goal of summoning Dracula's Castle, Eric grew fearful.
He told his daughters to not search for him for he would come back to them soon [6], and before hastly setting out to hunt Brauner down before he could accomplish whatever sinister plans he had for Dracula's Castle, he taught the sisters the secret of the Lecarde family - How to unlock the Vampire Killer's true power in case evil arose and the whip's owners came to fight it [7].
Unfortunatelly, he wound up dying before his daughters' eyes, unable to complete their training and pass onto them the sword of his wife's family.
Later, with his daughters brainwashed and without hope for their recovery, Eric gave the sword to Jonathan Morris, and taught him the secret art passed down to him by his wife, so he could fight Brauner inside Dracula's Castle without the need for the whip in his possession.
Jonathan, in turn, would return the sword Eric's daughters later, after destroying Brauner and stopping Dracula. But the knowledge of the secret art would be mastered by him during the years to come, and be taught to Julius in the form of the Omnia Vanitas.
Now for the detailed explanations:
[1] - As we know by Portrait's dialogue, John Morris condition was deteriorating due to using the whip. However, by the same dialogue, he was still alive enough to train Jonathan in the basics. So, in my story, while his condition was not that bad yet, Eric set out to look for a way to cure him.
[2] - This, along with [4], was one of the major pieces of info/connection I used to build this story.
At first, I though that the "STELLAr Sword" sounding so alike to the name of one of the sisters was just a silly coincidence, since "stellar" is a word derivative from "something related to the stars." Soooo, in japanese, the sword's name may read/sound something like "Sword of the Stars (恒星の剣)" or maybe have "Hoshi (恒星)" somewhere in it's name right? RIGHT? Well, would you look at these curious images!:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Ftq74eNL.png&hash=2a99b927c64435c937b5580a238fc1ef)
The first one is from Harmony of Dissonance's japanese manual. The second one is from the official Portrait of Ruin character portraits. You see the katakana? The one under Maxim is talking about the Stellar Sword. The other is Stella's name.
They are EXACTLY THE SAME. The sword is named Stella!
So, from there I drew the first connections: Eric has the Stellar Sword... Stella's name is the same as a sword which just happens to be under Eric's possession... Therefore, Stella was named after an important relic in her family: The Stellar Sword.
Why would such a relic be so important? Well, because just maybe it was from her mother's side and represented something important? I know, big leap here, but as I said before, fanfiction is unavoidable.
As I had established before that Daniela was Maxim's descendant due to the "secret art" bit, and as the game showed us the Daniela had a sentimental connection with Shanoa, the whole connection was set: The sword was passed down from Maxim to Daniela, from Daniela to Shanoa, and from Shanoa to her children, until it reached Eric through his wife, who descended from Shanoa.
Now, how to show that this wife could be a descendant of Shanoa? That's what I'll try to do in [4].
[3] - Portrait never mentions Eric's wife anywhere, but we know it's a second one due to his first girl, Gwendolyn, being vampirized by Elizabeth.
After analysing the game, I started thinking she died very early, specifically because she's never, ever mentioned. Even in the locket, she's not present. Furthermore, in the Sisters Mode at the beginning, the sisters express zero concern for a possible mother, and too much for Eric. This all indicates (to me) that a mother is not present at all, because she died too long ago to be relevant right now.
[4] - Here is the other part of the big connection thing I stated in [2]; I knew that the "Stella" bit was important, but I also knew it was not strong enough to set up the whole "Stella and Loretta are descendants of Shanoa through their mother" plot convincingly. I needed to find a way to get the goddamn Stellar Sword to Eric's hands, so I set to look for a last evidence that I could retroactivelly rationalize.
Stella received the name of the sword, so, what did Loretta inherit? She inherited Shanoa's natural gift of using Glyph magic, that's what.
Looking for a way to connect the sisters to Shanoa, I stumbled upon the game's graphics. Look at this:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezimba.com%2Fwork%2F150904C%2Fezimba15362455651504.png&hash=3e16372672a1788c08890020fcedd3c3)
This picture is Loretta's magic spritesheet. See the blue circle with symbols all over it there? It looks a hell of a lot like a giant glyph. Sure, it could be merely a magic circle of course, and therefore it was still not strong enough evidence for me to convince myself that she could be using a variation of Glyph magic, a trait that she could've inherited from Shanoa herself. Stella also uses a magical attack that looks a lot like Shanoa's Pneuma, only much stronger. Like Loretta's magic looks like a much stronger version of Shanoa's Grando. But STILL was not enough of an interpretation, so I went to watch the Stella/Loretta boss battle.
Skip to 1:12:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyz39w_FqyI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyz39w_FqyI)
Did you see it? The ice sword attack? Do you remember who also could do it, with a movement scarily similar? She could:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezimba.com%2Fwork%2F150904C%2Fezimba15362495005704.png&hash=37f5b2ba1c3b11e55d03f6521ec12a3e)
We DID see in Order of Ecclesia that Shanoa could do a Grando Glyph Union like this. If she equips Grando in one arm, and a sword glyph in the other, this attack comes out.
Now, with the help of Loretta's magic, Stella can do it too. And if you pay close attention, it's almost as if they were a Glyph Union... Where one is the "arm" with the sword glyph and the other is the "arm" with the ice glyph.
This all made me think that yes, this looks like a convincing interpretation of things. The sisters are performing a "Glyph Union" where one represents the sword property, and the other represents the ice property, reflecting Shanoa's use of the attack with one sword glyph arm, and one ice glyph arm.
Another evidence that the sisters compliment each other is hinted by their eyes: Each one has a different red eye. As if they are indeed meant to be combined, just like two arms in a Glyph Union.
Therefore I drew the last connections: Loretta inherited properties from Shanoa's ice glyphs, and Stella inherited properties from Shanoa's sword/wind glyphs. Both of them combined allow them to execute a "glyph union"-like attack, due to having inherited these powers.
And let's not forget that Ecclesia states that Shanoa is a natural, that she possesses something on her makeup that allows for her to grasp Glyphs much easier than anyone else. It IS something on her blood or spirit. What if she were to have descendants?
Now, after aaaaall this you could say "Ah, but what if Eric was the one to actually descend from Shanoa, and therefore have the sword?"; Sure, it could be, but there is a problem: We never see Eric display any similarity with Shanoa at all. Not in the magic, not in the dual wielding, nothing. From who could the sisters have inherited these traits then? The only answer left is "from their mother."
[5] - This explains how Eric got the sword from his wife while there being no wife to receive it from. It also explains how Jonathan can use the art while having the sword: Eric taught him after learning it from his dying wife.
[6] - This is present in the Sisters Mode dialogue. The sisters say that Eric told them to not come, but they follow him anyway after him being out for too long.
[7] - This is meant to explain how do they know the technique even if Eric is dead, and why they got taught it in the first place. Eric knew that the rising of Dracula's Castle is a bad sign, so this is why he set out to hunt Brauner and why he taught his daughters how to unlock the whip's power. When the castle appears, someone with the whip is not too far behind.
Now, the only thing left is Eric's side and how the hell he got the Alucard Spear. It's already written and is being reviewed.
Hey, I was playing Project Zero 3 and I think of a NPC for you.
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpre14.deviantart.net%2Faf51%2Fth%2Fpre%2Ff%2F2012%2F217%2Ff%2F3%2Fhugs_all_around__needlewoman_engraver__ff3__by_senilionia-d59wnih.jpg&hash=0951f10cdf0a577bd355d7b344ed0020)
Description:
When you look at the mirror, you saw a strange woman looking right at you. Don't look at her eyes? No. Don't look away from her. Not until she lost her interest to you.
How about this: She is the store owner in your game and you can access to her store through mirror. But don't you dare skip her lines or it will result in a hitten boss fight.
My added suggestion is to add some key concepts from your game to the logo art, the spear being a prime candidate.
Dracula's final form maybe? seeing as the viewer will only see the outlines they will only serve as a foreshadowing but still give that aha moment when they encounter things ingame.
I don't think it's a good idea to add too much foreshadowing. STILL adding one weapon might be a nice idea! But only if I find space to do it.
Right now I removed the furigana. I'll mess with it a little more before posting it again.
Now, for today, I bring you one GIANT plot point of my story - It deals with how to break Dracula's revival cycle and the importance of Dracula's remains in the equation. This piece of plot is what kickstarts all the chain of events in the story. Read at your own risk:
These are the steps to break Dracula's resurrection cycle once and for all to be explained in Umbra.
They will be developed by Charlotte Aulin over the years to be applied in 1999, after understanding what exactly is the core of Dracula's revival cycle - his connection with the Demon Castle.
Charlotte studied how Dracula was unable to revive when Brauner separated him from the castle, and studied closely the relationship of Dracula's remains with his revival cycle. She developed a method of her own that works as follows:
1. First, the soul/influence of Dracula must be manually separated from his great magic - his castle. The separation ritual must come before the banishment because the castle itself is impervious to banishment rituals while Dracula is still connected to it.
This connection between Dracula and his castle resides inside Dracula's soul and can be accessed through his remains - the proxy through which Dracula acts in this world even beyond death. So, for the connection to become apparent and be able to be broken, both Dracula's body (his remains) AND the castle must be intact at the same time.
If Dracula is not separated from the castle first, his power/influence alone can shield the castle against banishing rituals. If Dracula's body is destroyed while the castle is whole and they are not separated, the symbiotic relationship will cause the castle to crumble, returning to the spiritual plane, and therefore placing it beyond the banishment ritual's grasp. It is imperative that the castle remains intact and trapped on Earth, without a master, for the banishment ritual to take effect.
2. After the separation, Dracula can be banished. To achieve this, all of his remains - the mechanism of his influence on Earth - must be destroyed at the same time, removing Dracula's soul's access to Earth without causing his castle to collapse. If only one remain stays intact, Dracula is not banished and his influence alone can rebuild the severed connection to the castle again with time. In addition, the destroyed remains have the power to regenerate if any of their obliterated residues come into contact with an intact remain.
Finally, if they are all destroyed, but the soul/influence of Dracula has not been separated from the castle, once the castle returns to the physical plane, it's dark power can regenerate them even if they are completely obliterated, allowing Dracula to be revived. Hence the need for the separation in step 1 before their destruction in this step 2.
3. After Dracula's soul/ influence is separated from the castle, and after he's banished through the simultaneous destruction of his remains, the castle can now be sealed. Without access to the castle, rebuilding the connection is impossible and the remains can no longer be regenerated.
So, in short:
1. Cut Dracula's soul's connection with the castle; This step is performed by Charlotte along with her pupil, Lenora.
2. Destroy the remains/his body to banish him; This step requires no specific performer.
3. Banish the castle; This step is performed by the Hakuba priest and his followers.
If the first step is not performed in this order, the castle will be shielded from banishing rituals. If the second step is not performed in this order, the castle will collapse, making it unreachable by banishing rituals.
And again: The connection lies within the soul of Dracula, and can be accessed through his remains - his body. If the remains are destroyed, the connection still exists within the soul of Dracula, which can regenerate them again. The same is true if the castle returns first - they will be regenerated due to this existing connection. If you destroy the connection before destroying the remains, they can not regenerate anymore, thus breaking the cycle of resurrection, allowing the castle to be banished to a place where it can't return to Earth.
And here is a piece of the story's background, that will act in tandem with the above details:
Up until 1999, the Church is in possession of 3 of Dracula's remains. They were recovered by Charlotte and Jonathan after Portrait of Ruin, which were used to revive the Count during the events that took place then. Brauner was able to take control of the castle by severing the connection of these three remains from it - which were then able to give Dracula a weakened body in an early revival as soon as Brauner was gone.
And yes, Dracula's revival doesn't need all of his remains. Simon's Quest corroborates this.
Story update:
In Aria of Sorrow we learn that Julius Belmont sealed the Vampire Killer inside Dracula's Castle to "weaken his magic and his spirit". However we never get to see where did he do it, or why the whip is needed to seal this magic or his spirit.
Now, for Umbra, I've selected a number of places where the whip could've been through logic. From featureless rooms to frachise staple rooms. And, through elimitation, I arrived at two choices.
As the story goes on Umbra, I'm deciding between these two places where Julius could've done it. The reason why the whip is needed is already decided for the two places (and they are different depending on what room it is), and now I'm thinking up only what will be the most fitting one for the tone of the story.
At the moment, the story is nudging me towards this one. And of course, spoiler alert:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ezimba.com%2Fwork%2F151002C%2Fezimba15362493615004.png&hash=225c61ad31e566ca152fde69e20c0148)
This is a room in the Floating Garden. This grave has also a role to play on Umbra, as it belongs to someone special. If you wish to know more about this place's role in Umbra, or to know what is the second possible place on the list, PM me.
If you guys have more ideas where the VK could be sealed, tell me. The two places I'm thinking about are handpicked, BUT if you provide a reason to why the VK could be somewhere else, it can be considered :)
Amen. Orlox should be the main antagonist of a game. He's way overlooked.
Olrox is the main antagonist in Ricordanza of the God Abyss. Now THAT would be one hell of a story to turn into a fangame!
Now, it's me again with one more of my questions.
In Umbra there will appear a city that will be the stage for the story's introduction. This city will be where the "war" will take place while the heroes face Dracula.
Initially I didn't want to introduce a city setting, since I already had an "war" aspect in the story with the involvement of the military. But recently, while writing it, I discovered/developed a reason for a city to appear and justify a myriad of things, including this one line from Graham Jones in the future:
SOMA: Well, uh, no. I thought the story of Dracula was made up, actually.
GRAHAM: NO, it's all true. It was leaked to the outside world. Usually, the church handles these things with utmost secrecy... Over the course of time, Dracula has resurrected many times. When people lost faith... and craved chaos and destruction.
I had another device to justify Graham spilling this information, but I found that the city setting might work better to explain other points all at once.
What I want to know is this: Would you like to see a town that has already appeared in the series but now evolved into a modern city, or would you prefer to see a new setting? And if it's a previous town, would you want it to play a role in the plot as a device (as is my plan), or for it to simply work as a stage for the story to introduce itself, without further complications?
Also I should add: Wygol seems like the obvious choice, but is off the list. It ALREADY plays a significant role in the story's background and in a plot-point, thus, in a way, it's already added. I'm asking you to choose between having a returning town or a new town. If you choose for a returning town, I already have one up in my sleeve that is NOT Wygol.
A keen one, yes. But the rules are different if the lord is egotistical with a superiority complex over humans. Such a being would not hide beneath the waves, out of sight; such a being would put his fortress in a place where he can strike fear into those he subjugates, and sit atop the highest tower and look down upon them.
I couldn't have put it better than this. Dracula was a brilliant strategist before, but he let his pride take the best of him. As such, the castle follows suit. It exists purely to instill terror on mankind with its appearance alone.
The castle in itself is a cynical invitation from Dracula - "Are you badass enough to face me, maggot? Then here, this is my castle. Let me see if you have the balls to come here and fight me."
He doesn't want to keep people out of his castle. He wants them to come in and die an humiliating death.
I'm also using this info as an exposition device. Here is a dialogue excerpt:
Alucard:
The Clock Tower is Dracula's final stand against invaders. If the path to the Clock Tower requires any keys, then they may be the only way to reach him. And if the gate is still locked, the keys must be somewhere in this side of the gate.
Julius:
How can you be sure that the key is not on the other side? Wouldn't Dracula have thought of this? Wouldn't the castle want to keep its master safe from all harm? If this is the case, we will have a tough time making it through.
Alucard:
Vampires are naturally sadistic and manipulative creatures. They will find cunning ways to give small hope to their foes, just so they can snatch this hope away from their eyes as they are slaughtered. As a creation from Dracula's will, this castle would not make it impossible for vampire hunters to reach its master, as there would be no enjoyment for him in watching them suffer otherwise. Fortunatelly for us, not even Dracula can fight this basic trait. An inherent flaw in his nature that has allowed us to prevail for centuries.
Why not research a town that actually exists right near one of Vlad III's castles? It would have a more authentic feel in my mind.
This was the first idea. The choosen town was going to be Ocnele Mari - a truly romanian town, where the eclipse reached its peak.
I discarded the idea because Castlevania is not very keen on pointing specific real places. We know it happens in Wallachia, but that is still too general of a place. I can tell you that the story happens on that small town in the middle of nowhere on Wallachia and it still won't sound strange to you.
Once I start using well-known real locations, dissonance with the real world becomes apparent. An obvious example: do you know about any Romanian town that suferred a strange ocurrence in 1999 that could be explained by the presence of demons attacking it? My research brought nothing that could allow me to squeeze in this story.
While Castlevania refers to real world events while not referring to real world locations, then you can still feel like the story happened but is kept under wraps - keeping up with the theme of a secret battle of good and evil that permeates the series. Events are much easier to adapt than locations, because locations are things you can physically check anytime. If I tell you that Ocnele Mari was attacked by demons, you could check the town and discover that not only the town is the same as it was in 1999, but no one remembers anything strange happening there. But if I tell you that a town called "Yomi" or "Aljiba" or "Jova" got wiped out, then where will you look? You could say "Ah, but the town never existed! I could check the registers!" but then I'd say "The Church erased all records of it because they must keep Dracula's menace a secret!".
With an invented location, the author is also free to do whatever he pleases with it without risking the reader/player having their suspension of disbelief broken.
This would work if the real location/events taking place in it existed far in the past (and this is why CVIII's "Dracula almost conquered Europe" plot works, as the Church could've had plenty of time to manipulate history to hide this event), but 1999 is too recent, and these real towns still exist.
I might be wrong here, but that's how I perceive it.
Today I introduce you to Julius Belmont's rival - Timothy Danasty!
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Timothy Danasty - 25 years old
Descendant of the Danasty clan - a family originated from Grant Danasty, one of the hunters who helped Trevor Belmont destroy Dracula 500 years ago - Timothy is a soldier who grew listening about the great glory behind his name that slowly faded away in the many centuries elapsed after Trevor Belmont's victory.
When he reached age 18, Timothy was given the chance to join the army to be formally trained in battle. His training allowed him to receive a weapon meant to replace the Vampire Killer, and for him to wield against Dracula in 1999. Timothy was trained as the new hope for a world where mankind couldn't wait for the Belmonts to resurface to oppose the Dark Lord.
The concept behind Timothy's inception is, basically, "What would happen if a Belmont reappeared even when someone else is already in charge of fighting Dracula?".
What happens is that someone is going to lose their purpose. What happens when one sees himself suddenly without a purpose?
Bruh, did you even look at his profile? :V
It's the motherflippin' Agartha.
The card seems to draw quite a fair bit of my attention, does it serve any particular purpose?
Yes it does. Slightly spoily but I'll post anyway:
The card is the Sword Card. Alucard wouldn't be Alucard if he didn't have a sword to attack with. While his spear is meant to be his heavy duty weapon, the Sword Card is meant for faster, evasive combat.
In Umbra, Alucard slashes through the air with the card, and the Sword Familiar's blade comes out of it to strike his foes, vanishing back inside the card when Alucard finishes swinging it. It can also be summoned as a familiar, of course, but only under specific circunstances.
But now, this raises one question that can also be quite spoily to respond: If Alucard needs a sword, why doesn't he use HIS sword? If there is enough interest, I can answer this one too.
I'm guessing that he can't use his sword due to a specific circumstance that required him to switch to his spear in the first place?
I'm guessing that he can't use his sword due to a specific circumstance that required him to switch to his spear in the first place?
Well yeah, this is kind of obvious lol
Here is a hint: He can't use his sword because the sword itself is physically impossible to reach at the moment. Same goes to his shield. Let's say that both do not exist at the moment. In fact, they have not existed for more than a hundred years now.
But they can go back to existing, should Alucard do what it takes.
Oh, and for the dudes overall: In Umbra there is an explanation for Alucard's hair being black. This explanation has some pretty good evidence from the official sources to back it up, even. It's nothing incredible, though. So, if you expect a plot-twistey thing that will blow your mind, stop right now. His hair being black is more like a side-effect than something being intended to happen.
But expect to see Alucard's hair being platinum too!
Well yeah, this is kind of obvious lol
Here is a hint: He can't use his sword because the sword itself is physically impossible to reach at the moment. Same goes to his shield. Let's say that both do not exist at the moment. In fact, they have not existed for more than a hundred years now.
But they can go back to existing, should Alucard do what it takes.
Can't quite put it together yet, looks like I'll have to fish out another hint. Was the spear created after the sword and shield became unavailable?
Can't quite put it together yet, looks like I'll have to fish out another hint. Was the spear created after the sword and shield became unavailable?
Yes.
Though Alucard DID create the spear for third parties to use and to compliment the Vampire Killer's power, and not for himself to wield. However, Alucard fully expected the spear to return to his hands.
Thanks for the PM plot! ;D
No prob, Shiroi-chan~!
OK, a little update and FINALLY some background on Julius Belmont. Before reading, keep in mind that this is all subject to change. Julius' origin is the absolute hardest part of this story to pull off successfully.
Also, I'll be skipping one part of this background because Nagumo has recently thrown a wrench on my plot, by discovering that Albus calls ALL the villagers of Wygol as "distant relatives to the Belmonts". This part will need to be re-written, and yes, it probably means that Irina is not a direct descendant of Richter anymore, nor that Nicholai is an amnesiac Richter Belmont.
Enjoy!
After the events of Order of Ecclesia, Shanoa returns to Wygol, intending to spend her days with elder Daniela [1]. But, as she arrives at the village, she's met by Alucard, who had returned to the land after sensing Dracula's presence. He arrived just as Dracula was destroyed, however, and decided to discover who had achieved such a feat without the need for the Vampire Killer, reaching Wygol before Shanoa's return and staying there after hearing word about her accomplishments from the villagers [2].
After a long meeting, Alucard learned everything from Shanoa about Ecclesia, Albus, Dominus and herself. To ensure that Shanoa was truly free from the venomous influence of Dominus, he decided then to scan her spirit for traces of it, but ended up discovering something completelly different and much more valuable instead: A solid fragment of Belmont spirit.
After Shanoa absorbed the essences from every of the villagers, they amalgamated and solidified themselves into a small but powerful fragment of a Belmont spirit. This fragment was what ultimately protected Shanoa from Dominus' influence, and she had become a living vessel to it [3].
Having made this discovery, Alucard then disclosed the reason why the Belmonts had disappeared, and enlisted Shanoa's help in restoring the souls of the direct Belmont descendants, who had been left with a crack on their souls many decades before due to Shaft's controlling of Richter. Shanoa agreed to assist Alucard, and to do this, she retrieved Barlowe's research on the creation of Dominus from the now abandoned Ecclesia[4].
Dominus was created by extracting power from Dracula's soul contained in the stone vessel, and converting it into a glyph. By using the same study, and after pouring her own soul into it, Shanoa managed to forge a new glyph - the last glyph - from the Belmont spirit shard contained into herself. As Dominus had been born out of Dracula's soul to be the ultimate glyph of destruction[5], Sanctuary was born from the Belmont spirit shard to be the ultimate glyph of healing.
The glyph was powerful, but to heal such a scar on the soul of the Belmonts, it still needed time. With Alucard's help, the glyph was inscribed into the land under Wygol, encompassing the entire village. The Belmonts were finally allowed to come out of hiding to live in Wygol, where now they'd be guarded by Alucard's watchful eye, and where their soul would be gradually restored as time passed.
Alucard knew now that it was only a matter of time before the Belmonts were back on their feet, but he also knew Dracula and his worshippers wouldn't wait. With him disabled from fighting Dracula, he had to take measures, and the Alucard Spear was born as a way to lend his power to another clan, who would assist the Morris in fighting Dracula while the Belmonts recovered[6].
--
Many years later, in May of 1985, an incident drew the attention of Alucard and the Church: A house in Wygol had collapsed on top of three inhabitants due to a massive explosion of unknown origin. Two adults were found dead, and a five-year-old child - a boy - was knocked unconscious. The adults were the boy's parents, and died due to the collapsing, but he was found unscathed, his body enveloped by a bright holy aura, next to his mother. The explosion coincided with the complete vanishing of the giant glyph created by Shanoa more than a century ago.
The Church recovered the child, and by scanning his spirit searching for the holy aura's origin, they confirmed he was a direct Belmont descendant. They also discovered that the crack that had plagued the souls of the Belmonts for generations was completelly cured, as the spirit shard that powered the vanished glyph now filled the faulty space in the boy's soul. The glyph had accomplished its mission.
When the child woke up, he had no recollection of the incident, though he remembered everything prior to it. The traumatic experience caused the boy's fragile mind to lock the memory of his parents' death, and his survival was attributed to an instinctive release of holy power that protected his small body from the explosion and the house's collapsing.
With the fulfillment of Nostradamus' prophecy drawing near, and with the boy's ancestry and impressive display of resistance discovered, he was choosen to inherit the Vampire Killer. As a reference to the month predicted by Nostradamus for Dracula's resurrection, the boy was re-baptized as "Julius", his name representing the month where the legacy of the Belmonts itself was destined to be revived through the boy's hand, by prevailing over the looming menace of the King of Terror's return[7].
In 1986, one year after the incident in Wygol, Jonathan Morris - the guardian of the dormant Vampire Killer - was contacted by Alucard. Julius' and the entire hidden existence of the Belmonts was made known to him, and he got tasked with raising and training Julius Belmont to inherit the whip and assist the Church in preventing Dracula's return[8].
Details:
[1] - This eventually leads Shanoa to inherit the Stellar Sword, which belonged to Daniela's grandfather Maxim. The sword would then pass unto Shanoa's descendants, until it reached Eric Lecarde through his wife.
[2] - As of now, Alucard's whereabouts are not defined. However, he knows where the direct descendants of Richter Belmont are.
[3] - Thanks to the Belmont power she had absorbed from the villagers, Albus was protected from having his will erased. If it happened to Albus, then it's very likely the same thing protecting Shanoa from being corrupted:
Albus: It would seem the blood of the holy whip's legacy makes many things possible. One of life's fortunate miracles, you might say. Betrayed by the old man, I fled with [Dominus]. In this way I had taken your place as bearer, and you were no longer at risk. Alone, I continued my research into methods of controlling [Dominus]. As you know, that Glyph's power is Dracula's as well. To this end, I required the blood of the sacred Belmont clan. Since they vanished years ago, I set out to find any traces of their heritage.
Shanoa: ...The villagers.
Albus: Exactly. Fate drew them to the village...all thirteen of that line. I studied their blood with great diligence... In the end, even that power wasn't enough to contain [Dominus], and the Glyph consumed me.
Shanoa: ...But with your body gone, your spirit remains--absorbed into the Glyph. And now, that soul dwells within me, alongside the power of [Dominus].
Albus: By all accounts, [Dominus] should have overpowered and erased my will. However, the villager's power courses through you, and that tethered me here.
[4] - In the ending of OoE, it's said all records of Ecclesia "vanished in the mists of time". They vanished because Shanoa was the one to retrieve all this research and put it to use in the glyph she forged. However, there is one last object from Ecclesia that will surface...
[5] - This is canon; Dominus is, according to Barlowe and Shanoa, a glyph of ultimate destruction, and "no less could ever rid the world of Dracula."
[6] - The Alucard Spear was created to compliment the power of the Vampire Killer. But its creation will need a post for itself, since it deals with how the whip got to the Morris and why were the Lecardes chosen to guard both the spear and the secret to unlock the whip.
[7] - Nostradamus' prophecy states that the King of Terror will be revived in the "seventh month". So, July = Julius.
[8] - The existence of the Belmonts was a complete secret from everyone, including Jonathan. Only the highest ranking members of the Church knew about Wygol. Jonathan was aware that a Belmont had to appear to take the whip before 1999 thanks to Wind's reveal of the prophecy, but he was not allowed to know about the Belmonts before this.
Whew... Finally I get to put this here :P
But remember! Everything is subject to change! Though I doubt I will change this anymore. You all have no idea how many drafts for this exist.
Good luck on the re-write, buddy.
By the way, I assume that the memory lock will be important?
Good luck on the re-write, buddy.
By the way, I assume that the memory lock will be important?
Yes, more or less.
This memory lock is a real thing, a side effect from trauma experienced at early ages. So I'm not ass-pulling.
But if you think Julius will remember what happened at some point, then.... You're absolutelly correct :rollseyes:
Today I come to share with you how Umbra started.
Many years ago I started the project with a friend. It was going to be a comic, and had no name, but it was going to deal with 1999.
It was back then that I wrote the first draft for the whole thing, but being nowhere as knowledgeable in Castlevania as I'm today, the plot was pretty poor. Even so, he did the art, but we couldn't even finish the first chapter. You'll notice that the art is pretty amateurish, and much of it is still incomplete, too.
Also, do not ask me how the dialogue should be or the page order, I do not remember. But in this scene, two members of the church (one Belnades and an original character with the power to create objects made of psychic energy) were going to investigate an abandoned mansion where they had detected black magic, and ended up stumbling upon Arikado.
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Character profile cards. They will replace the sprite profiles I have on the first page for this thread (many people are visiting the thread, and these cards will greet them).
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There is no Lenora yet. But she's coming.
If you people think I should change something, please tell me!
Yet, Cecilia did inherit something, in the end, which she uses to defend Jonathan's property.
I imagine what it is...
Its Stellar Sword, right?
Dracula and Soma are not two separate entities sharing the same body, and that's impossible from a spiritual standpoint since only one soul can inhibit a body at anytime. Soma is Dracula reincarnated unto a new life. A lot of people seem to make this mistake, and it is understandable given the vagueness of IGA's writing at times. Of course I also blame the American localization as they like to put a spin on things as they've done before. Anyways, bottom line--Soma and Dracula are one and the same spirit.
First of all a "spiritual standpoint" don't ever applies to game or movies since they are a work of fiction (and possession in media doesn't "throws" the other soul away of his body).
It may have sounded as if I'm saying that Dracula was possessing Soma's body. Now, I wasn't even trying to say that xD
I could explain but plot did it already better than I could:
Yes, Soma's and Dracula's soul are one and the same. Julius' line is more about two sides of the same soul fighting for control of the body.
That is what I meant, he could see Soma and Dracula because of that, his inner good (Soma) and his inner evil (Dracula). :)
I'm aware of this. I'm using IMGUR now. The images that have disappeared are not really relevant at this point in time, but if someone wants to see what the vanished image was, I can restore it.
I would like if possible, since some are fanart that people are praising and I can't see it :-/
Yep, that's what she taught him - sensibility. Were, say, Richter or Simon in place of Julius, he'd not take second chances and would slay Soma right there and then and second chances be damned.
Though this stil doesn't respond what is this character trait of hers :P
Well, I wouldn't say for sure Richter or Simon, but Trevor surely attacked Hector without thinking 2 times LOL
About her character traits I'll give 3 shots: She was a vampire at some time (half-vampire counts)? She was some kind of bandit? She have or had some kind of disease?
edit: forget everything, now its obvious to me, it can only be it! She is blind. This way she doesn't see with her eyes, but with the eyes of her heart :)
STILL BETTER THAN THE ARMS-OUTSTRETCHED-TATTERED-ROBE-WEARING ZOMBIES WE'VE ONLY SEEN RECYCLED ABOUT A BILLION TIMES IN THE SERIES
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Sorry guys, not a good time for it, go away... :'(
Your sprite work is excellent, as always! :)
Means a lot coming from you man!
Today I come to explain how the ceremony to banish the castle was developed:
Many years before 1999, while studying a way to seal Dracula's Castle, Charlotte Aulin realized that banishing the castle with the powers available to humans was an impossible task. Her vast magical knowledge could counter demons and even minor, fallen gods, but it was not nearly enough to counter the darkness permeating the Demon Castle, which at this point was well-known to be a being born out of chaos, possessing power much beyond what any demon of fallen god had demonstrated -- power drawn from the human heart itself.
Charlotte, then, went back to her books. But this time she knew what to look for: A way to call upon the gods. In almost every creation myth, the gods are the only beings who could actually counter chaos and place order on the universe. If there was any power that could counter the Demon Castle's chaotic biology and intent, it had to be of godly origin. If this could not do it, then nothing else would.
Her research led her to recollect an old, forgotten legend from Japan -- There once was a young woman who came from foreign lands long ago, and who had the power to listen to the gods and relay their message to the mortal men. She was known by the japanese people of old as the "Voice of the Gods (神々の声 Kamigami no koe)" and word of her quickly spread across the demon-infested land, as she defended the common people from the demons by calling upon the gods to smite evil with their power. Eventually, the young woman earned great respect from the priests, and as she grew older, her powers expanded, allowing contact with much greater gods than before.
During her life, the woman had learned greatly from her own powers, from their origin to their peak, and relayed her knowledge and the word of the gods unto the priests, becoming a protector of the land until she died.
After the woman's passing, the priests built a temple at the place of her death, which exists to this day -- The Hakuba Shrine. Since then, the Hakubas maintained a special ceremony in honor of Tensho Daijin and her brothers, who, according to the teachings left by Kamigami no koe, were nearest to mankind during solar eclipses of an specific cycle, mirroring the old legend of Tensho Daijin's coming out from inside the Ama-no-Iwato thanks to her brothers' help.
Charlotte went to Japan, and sought the help of the current head priest Eisuke Hakuba. Explaining the dire situation that Dracula's revival represented to the world, Charlotte convinced the priest, and spent years in Japan learning their customs and methods from him, which were taught by Kamigami no koe long ago. Together, they planned a ceremony to be held in Romania in August 11th 1999, when the eclipse would bring the gods nearest to mankind -- at which point they would call forth the gods' strength to counter the Demon Castle's darkness, and finally seal its evil inside the eclipse, like Tensho Daijin's own dark intentions had been sealed inside the cavern in the legend.
Details:
OK so, while trying to understand how exactly the castle was sealed, I gathered all the evidence I could find about the ceremony. They are not many, but two pieces of crucial evidence exist:
-In Aria, Mina tells the story of Tensho Daijin's retreat inside the cave "Ama-no-Iwato" to "contain her anger against Susanoo", and eventual return from it thanks to the actions of her brothers. Tensho Daijin is none other than Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, and the story is a real part of the Shinto teachings, being present on the Kojiki, which are the religion's sacred texts.
-In the Portrait of Ruin Timeline, this bit of info is present:
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So, in conclusion: They used actual magic which could control the gods thanks to the eclipse. By what Mina says, we can conclude these gods are the same ones from the Amaterasu story (and can even infer Amaterasu herself -- the Sun -- was called to seal the castle). All in all, these gods were controlled by the ceremony (which was probably a summoning ritual) to seal the castle inside the eclipse in a recreation of Amaterasu's retreat to the cave.
So I used these ideas to weave the story behind the ceremony, BUT there is one last detail: Can you guess who "Kamigami no koe" is? She is the thread that connects the whole thing together ;)
This might be a bit of a reach, but I'm guessing a Renard due to Maria's shtick.
This might be a bit of a reach, but I'm guessing a Renard due to Maria's shtick.
You got it. But it's not any Renard - its Maria herself. Maria's ability to "listen to the gods" is explicitly mentioned in the Nocturne of Recollection radio drama.
After the crack on Richter's soul was discovered and he was disabled from defending mankind, the first decision was to find someone to guard the whip locked with Richter's memories, and someone to guard Dracula's remains which were sealed in a vessel by Alucard himself. Alucard and Maria travelled the land and delivered the whip to the Morris, who then moved to America to guard it. They were told to train with the whip because, in case their help was needed, they would be summoned back to Romania to fight in place of the Belmonts -- Though Alucard intented for this to never happen, and for the Morris to act purely as guardians of a weapon that couldn't fall in the wrong hands.
They then went to the Church, and the vessel was delivered. They were told to guard it until Alucard returned with the power to destroy it.
Finally, Alucard decided to help Maria expand her powers so she could either become the Belmont's cure, or Dracula's bane. If Maria could summon gods from Japanese mythology*, then in Japan they would find a way to develop her powers enough to finally destroy Dracula, and so they travelled there.
That's why Alucard is missing during the events of OoE -- he was in Japan with Maria, helping her develop her powers to either restore the Belmonts or destroy Dracula once and for all. When Dracula revived in OoE, though, they were caught off-guard and she was not ready. Alucard then rushed back home, leaving Maria to live and evolve in Japan, now that she was under trustworthy care.
When Alucard came back, however, he discovered Shanoa and the Belmont Power, along with a village full of Belmont descendants. Seeing this as a newfound opportunity to restore the Belmonts and lift the burden from Maria's shoulder, he decided to stay and focus his efforts on this instead -- telling Maria to live a good life. He also intended to lift the burden from the Morris' shoulder by restoring the Belmonts quickly, but seeing as the healing process would take ages and the Belmonts needed a guardian, this was not possible and the Morris would be needed. At this point, Alucard had to take measures.
That's where the Lecardes come in, but this is a story for another day.
* = I know the Four Gods aren't japanese deities originarily. However, they were absorbed into the Japanese belief systems (Onmyōdō firstly, and Shinto and Buddhism later) as Suzaku, Genbu, Seiryu and Byakko, earning their own japanese-given characteristics, and becoming a little distinct from the chinese analogues.
So, all in all, she seemed to be the perfect explanation for the origin of this "god controlling" magic, for Alucard's absence and for some more details that explain what was Hammer doing at the shrine in 2035.
However, I'm still a bit conflicted with one detail. I think I'll make Alucard simply tell Charlotte about the magic hiding in Japan once she concludes that nothing can rival the castle besides the power of a god. As it is now, it appears as if Charlotte deduced that very important piece of info alone, while Alucard simply stood there, mouth shut but knowing it all. This is not very consistent.
OK so I said I have a simplified timeline leading up to Umbra. Here's what it is looking like now. But keep in mind not ALL details are working. There are one or two things not clicking juuuuuuust yet.
Timeline:
1800: Richter locks the whip with his memories to stop the rejection. The whip is passed to the Morris clan, and Dracula's sealed remains are entrusted to the Church by Alucard. Compelled by the gods, Maria leaves Alucard and journeys in secret to the east. With the Belmonts gone, mankind loses the ability to resist the darkness.[1]
1815: Maria returns from her journey and settles on Spain. The legend of "Kamigami no koe (Voice of the Gods)" who banished the Jiang Shi from the lands of the east with the power of the gods is born. Priests who learned the gods' teachings through her build the Hakuba Shrine, holding eclipse ceremonies to pray to the gods.[2]
1843: Shanoa defeats Dracula. Sensing his father's presence, Alucard returns to Romania[3]. Shanoa starts the forging of the glyph that will cure the Belmonts, using the Belmont power she acquired from the villagers.
1848: The glyph to cure the Belmonts is completed and encompasses the entire village. Richter's descendants are brought from hiding to live in Wygol and healing process starts. Alucard becomes their guardian and their existence is kept secret.
1893: Dracula's revival draws near. Unable to battle, Alucard forges a spear and entrusts it to the a family related to the Belmonts through the one "whose power surpasses even that of a Belmont", sealing his own power in the process. They must train to harness its power for three years before the Morris are summoned to Romania and the spear is needed to compliment the whip.[4]
1897: The Morris and Lecardes team up for the first time. Quincy Morris finishes Dracula.
1914: Drolta Tzuentes revives Elizabeth Bartley. The countess sets off the events leading to the WWI.
1917: John Morris and Eric Lecarde team up to stop Elizabeth's plans. She's destroyed by Eric, while John finishes Dracula. Dracula's remains disappear.[5]
1942: Dracula's Castle is revived. Eric Lecarde is killed by Brauner.[6]
1944: Jonathan and Charlotte storm the castle and finish Dracula together. Charlotte learns from Brauner that Dracula can be separated from his castle. Two of Dracula's remains used by Death to revive him are recovered by the Church.[7]
1961: After a mission, one more of Dracula's remains are recovered by Jonathan and Charlotte[8]. Jonathan displays symptoms of weakness from having Richter's memory consume his health. The Lecarde sisters isolate the memory in Jonathan's right hand at his behest, taking it off. Charlotte marks Jonathan with a glyph able to produce a new hand.
1985: An explosion of unknown origin destroys an entire block in Wygol. Two adults are found dead at ground zero, but their son is found enveloped by holy light and unconscious. The boy is taken by the Church and the light is suspected to have protected him. The explosion coincides with the disappearance of the glyph encompassing Wygol. The secret of Wygol as the shrine for the Belmont bloodline becomes known.[9]
1986: Having identified the surviving boy as a Belmont descendant and realized that his soul has no flaw, he's re-baptized as Julius Belmont, and is taken by Jonathan Morris to be trained to inherit the Vampire Killer. Julius' memory of the incident is locked by trauma.
1990: Cecilia L. Lang is taken by Jonathan to be his assistant and guard the Vampire Killer in his absence. She inherits the Stellar Sword.
1991: Researching for a way to banish Dracula's Castle using godly power, Charlotte discovers the legend of "Kamigami no koe" and tracks it down to Japan seeking the power to control the gods. There, she convinces the Hakuba priest to help in banishing Dracula's Castle, and spends one year learning to perform the Hakuba eclipse ceremony. Having learned her role in the ceremony successfully, Charlotte returns one year later, and a ceremony to summon the gods is planned to be led by priest Eisuke Hakuba at Romania in 1999.[10]
1992: Lenora Belnades' training begins. She's taught by Charlotte how to separate Dracula from his power based on her studies of Brauner's method. Lenora becomes the only person able to carry the task safely.
Details:
[1] - The whip getting to the Morris shortly after SotN comes from IGA himself. Dracula being sealed by Alucard is confirmed at the end of the Radio Drama (though the specific meaning of "sealed Dracula" is a subject of debate). Mankind losing the ability to resist the darkness is straight out spelled in OoE's prologue.
[2] - This is why the Jiang Shi "crossed the sea from the east." He escaped from China as Maria hunted them all down on her way following the calling of the gods. He buried himself in a cave and laid dormant until Shanoa disturbed him.
[3] - Alucard is gone from Romania, and I still do not know why exactly, though I THINK it could have to do with Nostradamus' prophecy. I only know that he "was looking for a way to destroy Dracula" as per the japanese entry for Alucard on Dawn of Sorrow's Library mode. Judgment's ending says the same thing. So this prophecy could be a discovery of his in France while looking for clues.
[4] - As per the entry for Alucard in Dawn of Sorrow's library, Alucard sealed his powers to "prevent Dracula's return." The interpretation given here is that the sealing of his power is a consequence of creating the spear for the Lecardes, so that it can help prevent Dracula's return by complimenting the power of a whip that is not as powerful while locked. Why Alucard didn't fight in 1897 or in 1917 or in 1944? Now you know -- his powers were sealed and he was guarding the Belmonts. Also, if you played Judgment, you know who is the one "whose power surpasses even that of a Belmont" and will understand why Alucard trusted them to keep the spear.
[5] - The remains disappearing is a build-up for Umbra. Notice how Dracula keeps getting revived after Ecclesia and the remains are nowhere to be seen and nobody is looking for them?
[6] - As stated in the manual, Eric died at 50 years old. If you do the math with the years of his birth and Portrait, you'll notice he died two years before Portrait. Ergo, the castle in Portrait has been up for two entire years.
[7] - Death is implied to have revived Dracula, and needed the throne room to do it. This explains how Dracula was so weak, to the point of needing to absorb Death to transform -- he was revived by Death with only two remains. More build up for Umbra.
[8] - This mission will be explained in Umbra -- the Church is already aware that there is a force behind the remains' dissapearance. This force still has two remains after the mission.
[9] - There is something to be added here and it has to do with the military. Though I'm not ready to do it yet.
[10] - Charlotte knows how to separate Dracula from his power, but not how to deal with the Demon Castle. So she seeks the power of the gods to do it, as explained before. After learning the ceremony from the priest, she trains Lenora to conduct the separation, while she and the priest carry on the sealing.
Today I come to talk about Umbra's antagonists: The cult named Angolmois, working in the shadows to ensure Dracula's rise in 1999.
Heavy spoiler ahead. There is not much I can keep under wraps for this project anymore, so from now on, basically everything I post will be spoily in some way. Also, this will come in two parts, so today is part 1:
Soon after Dracula's defeat at the hands of Richter, the remaining followers of darkness previously led by Shaft were hunted by Richter himself and other hunters. Many of them were captured or killed, and the surviving ones went into hiding like cockroaches.
If things were bleak for them, they got even bleaker after Alucard sealed Dracula's remains. Now the reason for their union was beyond their grasp, behind an unbreakable seal. It became impossible to locate the remains since their dark energy couldn't be tracked anymore, like they had done for centuries.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Belmonts disappeared. The evil cultists tried to seize this final opportunity to rise and recover the remains, but in the place of the Belmonts, many organizations of vampire hunters and clerics arose. Without any way to fight back or locate the remains, they hid their secret treasure -- previously used by Shaft to locate Dracula's body -- and finally disbanded.
With the years, Dracula's resurrection became a fleeting dream and, as their wickedness subsided, it was forgotten by most cultists with time. But not all of them.
----
In 1844, Dracula was revived once more by Barlowe, and his castle appeared for all to see. Shanoa was fast in returning Dracula and his castle to dust, but not fast enough -- Cultists still roaming the land had witnessed Dracula's return. The return of the castle signaled that the remains had been freed from the seal.
The last handful of cultists of old reunited once more, many years after the persecution carried by the numerous vampire-hunting organizations. They recovered the secret treasure they had hidden long ago and used it to track the dark power of Dracula's remains one more time. They didn't know that the remains had been reduced to ashes and silenced by Shanoa's use of Dominus, however, so they couldn't find any of them. But they found something else instead -- pulsing faintly with Dracula's dark influence, a weapon lied buried inside a makeshift grave along with the corpse of a young man.
A new cult was formed, and with this discovery, preparations for Dracula's next resurrection began.
----
In 1897, after having prepared for more than 50 years, the now robust cult set out to revive the Count once more, even without his remains.
Through an intrincate scheme, an once noble-hearted man was slowly corrupted into insanity until he became a suitable vessel for Dracula's soul. As his possessed body slowly morphed into Dracula's visage, the cultists carried it inside a coffin towards the Demon Castle, which had reappeared to receive its master and restore his power.
With the help of a Lecarde, Quincy Morris succesfully reached and destroyed Dracula at the entrance of his castle, ensuring that he couldn't be fully revived by reuniting with it. The man possessed by Dracula died as a consequence, but such is the price paid by someone possessed by Dracula's evil soul. Quincy, also, didn't resist the injuries from the battle, dying shortly after his victory.
Meanwhile, the cult still existed, taking notes in the darkness. It was imperative to locate Dracula's remains and rebuild his own body, since a vessel would never provide the resistance against vampire hunters that Dracula's body had. And thanks to an agent who had worked with Quincy and his group, the cult now knew exactly what to do next.
That's it. Part 2 will come soon. Some things here were kept secret, but I can answer through PM to anyone who wishes to know.
Here is part 2:
17 years after Quincy's victory over Dracula and subsequent death, the witch Drolta Tzuentes is deployed by the cult. Her goal is to resurrect the vampire countess Elizabeth Bartley, who was the first person to locate Dracula's remains and revive him with them -- information acquired by a cult agent from vampire hunter Van Helsing himself during the events of 1897.
Elizabeth is revived, and starts a war. Just as the cult predicted, she's able to locate all remains through a ritual held at the ruins of Dracula's Castle, and is able to restore them with the chaos from the war she started, resulting in Dracula reviving in his own body.
By unlocking the true power of the Vampire Killer, John Morris defeats Dracula, and the Countess is destroyed by Eric Lecarde. Yet, through Drolta's efforts, the cult is finally able to seize control over Dracula's previously lost remains.
At this time, along with control over the remains, the cult also receives knowledge about Nostradamus' prophecy for Dracula's return in 1999, and that the Belmonts must not touch the Vampire Killer until then.
----
During the following decades, the cult evades detection by the Church, who is looking for Dracula's remains after they disappeared in 1917. They seek the perfect moment to revive Dracula, and the moment shows itself when the growing tension in Europe turns into a second war.
Believing that the lingering despair of the war coupled with an eclipse's darkness can grant Dracula enough power to block the sun in the entire planet, they schedule Dracula's next revival to take place under a total solar eclipse in 1945.
They see this as an opportunity to outsmart Nostradamus' prediction by fully reviving Dracula 54 years before it materializes. Mocking the prophecy, the cult names itself "Angolmois."
In 1942, however, the vampire Brauner manages to gather the despair generated by the war to revive Dracula's castle by himself. With his magic, he separates Dracula from the castle, taking control of its power. Startlet by the castle's sudden return, Angolmois tries to resurrect Dracula, but the ceremony is a failure -- Unbeknownst to them, Dracula's revival cycle had been broken by Brauner's unexpected intrusion.
Angolmois spends the next two years looking for a method to circunvent the magic cutting Dracula off from his castle, and trying to discover who is behind it.
----
In 1944, Charlotte and Jonathan invaded Dracula's castle.
Angolmois had awoken Death from his slumber and had been working with him to discover who or what was behind Dracula's disappearance, without success. But it is thanks to the hunter duo that Death learns about Brauner's presence.
Death informs Angolmois about Brauner, and they then form a scheme to manipulate the hunters into gaining access to him, so Death can kill him and remove the impediment on Dracula's resurrection. Angolmois gives Death two of Dracula's remains, so, in case the hunters win, they can't recover all remains at once. Death then sets out to the castle, and waits for the best opportunity to revive his master.
Brauner is destroyed, and Dracula is successfully revived by Death once more. Even with Death surrendering his own soul to supplement Dracula's incomplete power, however, they are defeated. The two remains used in Dracula's revival are recovered by the Church, just as Angolmois antecipated.
Their last plan foiled by Brauner, the cult decides to take another route -- use Nostradamus' prediction against the Church. A new solar eclipse draws near, and they'll have their chance at the same plan again. With the return of the Belmonts becoming inevitable, they turn their eyes to another family who might have one or two scores to settle with them, and who might just be the perfect allies in their pursuit of Dracula's resurrection.
So, this is the basic framework for Angolmois' motivations and moves up until 1999.
So, I was going to wait for more content to be ready to update, but since this is basically a dev thread, there is not much reason to do so as you'll eventually see everything there is to see.
So, without further ado:
Alucard -- and Castlevania: Umbra of Sorrow's Prologue. (https://dl.dropbox.com/s/kktkjzrtigauad0/CV%20Umbra%20-%20Introduction%20%28with%20voice%29.mp3?dl=0)
"In the 16th century there existed a seer whose reputation had spread all over Europe. He had named himself "Nostradamus."
Seven decades after the dispelling of Dracula's Curse, Nostradamus made an encoded prophecy -- the rise of the King of Terror for the year of 1999. Unknown to the people at that time, the prediction foretold the complete resurrection of Dracula Vlad Tepes, the Lord of Darkness, who had abandoned humanity in return for eternal life, and had sworn to extinguish mankind.
In the past, the Belmont clan wielded the Holy Whip to destroy Dracula and return peace to the land numerous times. But, after three centuries of relentless battles, they became unable to touch the Holy Whip and went into hiding. It was then that the prophecy was deciphered and I began then the arrangements to prevent its consummation. I became the guardian of their bloodline.
Heeding the call of hearts poisoned by wickedness, Dracula continued to revive in the wake of the Belmonts' absence. Many arose to stand against him and sacrificed themselves to subdue evil. However, with each resurrection, Dracula grows stronger and, eventually, none but a Belmont would be able to stand against him.
Now it's 1999.
It was 13 years ago, nearly 200 years after the Belmonts vanished, that the efforts employed by an old friend and I bore results -- The return of the Belmont blood to claim the Holy Whip once more became a reality. The fear of a confrontation against the Lord of Darkness could now be challenged.
With all the pieces falling into place, we expect now to prevent Dracula's resurrection, ridding the world of his evil once and for all."
Voice acting by Dracula9
Soundtrack by Chernabogue
Writing by me
Please, leave your feedback. We want to know what you Dungeonites think and use this feedback to improve.
Many thanks to Chernabogue and Dracula9. These two are talent incarnated.
Hmmm... What about making a machinima?
You are already have the story, sprites and voices. I just can't see any drawbacks.
Sorry, I forgot to address this response. Though there is no need -- Dracula9 summed it up.
A machinima would require me to create assets that would be much better used in a game. So, if I can give the people a game, why not make a game? And yeah, the mystery programmer is down to make it into the coolest thing ever, and also wants a game out of this whole thing.
THAT SCENE WASN'T FINALIZED ANDST THOU KNOWETH IT
I don't want people to know what Olrox has to say yet because the lines give exactly the idea. Even though the lines are not yet polished, they are nearly finalized and this might step on spoiler territory.
Though, if you wish to interpret Olrox, you can read one of his lines from the Kabuchi no Tsuisoukyoku novel. Specifically one where I took inspiration from:
“It was within my assumption that you would be resurrected but... I wasn’t expecting that you would be like your old self. Now that the castle has lost its dark lord, I thought that your soul was driven out of chaos as a magical beast, but, was it because of my haste that this happened?” Olrox spoke with a tinge of admiration [for Death].
Another line of his:
“Oh Death, there is no need to be so loyal and respectful to that dead human, right?... Oops, he was not human, he was somehow a vampire.”
With Olrox’s provocation, Death just kept silent and asked about his attitude.
If you interpret these ones as you did the ones you saw for Umbra, you'll be pretty much spot on for the tone.
Though I must warn everyone reading this that Olrox is still open for a voice actor -- but he'll have to follow more or less on Drac9's path, since the tone he set for Olrox follows his personality very closely, if not perfectly.
Hello peeps! Today I want to introduce one more plot-element for this story project which will impact the events of 1999 -- The Outbreak of 1997.
In 1997, the Church, who was pursuing -- with little success -- clues about an evil cult suspected of having Dracula's remains, received a distress call from Romania. The Church receives many of those in Europe and in the world all the time, but this one in particular signaled a possible attempt at reviving Dracula on one of his centennial cycles: A mysterious disease of supernatural origin was spreading amongst the people, causing them either die, or go murderously insane.
Suspecting this to be an attempt at blackening the hearts of people to spur Dracula's revival, the Church deployed Alucard and Lenora Belnades on ground zero to investigate. Amongst the growing desperation, both Alucard and Lenora met the person who made the distress call, and another person who was helping the people to protect themselves. The four of them formed a team, and together they tracked down the origin and cause of the mystery disease, discovering it to be indeed an attempt by the evil cult at gathering panic and despair to resurrect Dracula. The disease was nothing more than Dracula's influence being amplified to corrupt the populace -- like Dracula's Curse -- and coming from the Dracula's remains in possession of the cult.
The cultists managed to escape capture, but not before losing the Heart of Vlad to the team and making their name known: "Angolmois." The message was clear: The cult was well aware of Nostradamus' prophecy, and tried to outsmart it by reviving Dracula before the predicted time.
Their attempt thwarted, the curse was quickly stopped and cleansed by Lenora's prowess in magic during the following months. The event didn't go unnoticed, however, and attracted the attention of the government, who immediately started investigating the Church's affairs. Unable to avoid investigation any longer, the Church disclosed its secret feud with Dracula, Nostradamus' prophecy and their pursuit of the evil cult to the government who, in response, created a coverup story about the disaster, calling it an outbreak of West Nile Virus, and initiating a healthcare campaign, all to avoid mass hysteria and hide the truth.
Yet, the governments of Europe were far from letting this settle down. After the revelations of the Church about the King of Terror prophecy, they joined forces under a man named Berthold -- one of the two people who joined forces with Lenora and Alucard and had witnessed the effect of Dracula's influence in 1997 -- to form a secret battalion properly armed to fight the supernatural in 1999 if the Church failed to avert Dracula's resurrection.
The other person to form the team of 1997 took on the role of the Church's eyes, becoming an undercover agent and updating the headquarters whenever Angolmois reared its head.
These events explain how the military got involved with Dracula in 1999, and General Berthold was already introduced, for those following the project. Yet, this second character is new. Although he has been a piece of the plot ever since the beginning, only now his story is fully fleshed out. However, I'm not telling who it is or what is their name yet.
Hello!
Today I come to ask you to give your opinion on a point on Umbra's development. Before I ask, I need to clarify one thing I already did on this thread: There is a game-designing document being created for this in case it becomes a game. Now, with that said, I want your opinion on the following:
In the game version of this project, an enemy is introduced to drive home a plot point: The Bogeyman. The Bogeyman is a creature who manifests as its prey's worst fears, intending to weaken them to consume them easily. This enemy will appear to three characters in the story, one of them being Alucard. Alucard's greatest fear is of turning into a complete vampire. Therefore, the Bogeyman appears as Alucard himself -- but fully vampirized, and in a scene evoking Alucard's own psyche.
During the development of this enemy, I proposed an idea, and my partner proposed another. Then we proposed counterpoints to these ideas, and came to disagreement. The two ideas are the following:
1. The Bogeyman manifests to Alucard as Alucard himself in full vampire mode. The arena changes to the village where Alucard's mother was killed. The village is burning, in reference to the first and only time Alucard succumbed to his vampiric urges, mentioned on the Radio Drama to happen in the same place. Nothing else is present but the burning village, Alucard and his own vampire persona.
2. The Bogeyman manifests to Alucard as Alucard himself in full vampire mode. The arena changes to the village where Alucard's mother was killed, referencing her sacrifice and last words. Also a reference to SotN, where the Succubus tries tempting Alucard. Alucard witnesses his full-vampire persona slaughtering the villagers that killed his mother while her corpse overlooks the carnage like a grim harbinger, thus not only succumbing to his dark side but also denying his mother's dying wishes and attacking humans out of vengeance and hatred.
The counterpoints are the following:
Counterpoint to idea 2 and defense of idea 1:
Idea 1 is better. Adding the burning village doesn't detract from the players' unfamiliarness to the lore since the same village from SotN's "Nightmare" is present, still linking them with the familiar symbolic representation of the village on his mind. Fans familiar with the Radio Drama get an extra fan service for recognizing the scene, while fans unfamiliar with it lose nothing -- it's the same village with the same symbolic significance after all. It's important to set this appearance of the village apart from it's previous appearance in SotN for novelty, but still link it to important events on Alucard's life. He lived one when his mother died, and another when his vampiric side was exposed, thus the choice for the second, "burning" version of the village is favored, as the first version is already present on the canon. Keeps the symbolism, gets a new visual. Also important of note is that this scene is referencing a past event ("see what can happen?"), not evoking it ("look what you did!") -- thus why Magnus the Inccubus is not present.
Counterpoint to idea 1 and defense of idea 2:
Idea 2 suffices without requiring the radio drama, due to the key elements of Alucard's entire moral compass being explained in SotN--he lives by the final wishes of his mother, and strives to do good by humanity and not fall to his darker side and become what his father is. By expanding further on Alucard's fear--which stems in no small part from his unshakeable dedication to Lisa's last words--and having his Bogeyman not only show what he could become, but the ultimate extreme of what he could become by also discarding the foundation and source of the very moral code he lives by.
In addition, it must be considered that there will be many potential players who know nothing of the radio drama, and while a reference only understood by some isn't inherently bad, relying on such a source provides a context which those unaware players will not have, and thus the scene involving Magnus would lose some portion of its impact.
Thirdly, the Bogeyman provides purely hypothetical worst-fear/worst-case scenarios for each character it appears to; therefore, having it manifest as a confirmed canonical scene (the village-burning from the radio drama), the Bogeyman is doing something different for Alucard than it does for the others, when there is no inherent reason or importance from a writing perspective for it to change its presented methods for the sake of an inside reference.
The other two characters will simply see hypotheticals of their deepest subconscious fears realized and confronting them, but Alucard would simply be reminded of something that actually already happened. Alucard going vampire and burning the village may be a realization of his worst fear, but that scenario could, of course, always be made worse--one small village does not compare to the other millions and millions Alucard could slaughter and feed from if he chose such a path. Therefore, expanding on the themes that made the radio drama scene effective and having the Bogeyman manifest as a complete and utter refusal of everything Alucard stands for (his mother and her dying wishes to do well by humanity even if they show no gratitude) is a step up in realizing Alucard's deepest fear. Simply being reminded of something he already lives with and fighting another knockoff Doppleganger would be a picnic for him, since it can't show him anything he's not already confronted before. But a version of himself which abandons Lisa's manifesto is something he has yet to confront--Alucard is so steadfast in his loyalty to her ideals that such a scenario likely seems unthinkable, and thereby would have an actual impact on him beyond simply being reminded of that really embarrassing and unpleasant thing he did a long time ago.
I will not say who proposed what idea or counterpoint for a reason: You might end up biased. I'm not looking to be appeased, but to choose between two ideas which there is no agreement. The points and counterpoints here are written by its creators in their own words as to not incur on misrepresentation.
I'm also not telling who my development partner is for the same reason as before: Turning this into a game is not a 100% certainty and I don't want people expecting a burden from a person who would be doing this out of free will.
So, that's it. Please give your opinions.
Hello. Here's today's update for project Umbra! First of all, the latest artwork -- General Dietfried Berthold:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fd2lwHba.png&hash=6bc45b71eca8d019ce96bfa6fa254816)
You can check the full-sized artwork at Junki's Deviant Art. (http://junkisakuraba.deviantart.com/art/General-Berthold-Castlevania-Umbra-of-Sorrow-622942138)
As some of you may be already aware, General Berthold is the leader of the battalion assembled to assist the Church in 1999. Berthold has fought alongside Alucard, Lenora and another character in a past battle two years prior to the Demon Castle War, and thus is a witness to what the supernatural forces are capable of. With this knowledge, he managed to convince the governments of Europe on letting him assemble a special military force to contain Dracula's castle during the sealing ceremony scheduled for 1999. He has personally handpicked every single soldier amongst the best in Europe, and is highly respected by his peers, including the Church team. If the army is armed with Silver Guns, Berthold is the guy who they should thank.
Now, for the new character: Father Ermingild.
Father Ermingild is an accomplished exorcist working for the Church. Some weeks ago I wrote about the Outbreak of 1997 (http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,7852.msg191122.html#msg191122) and the involvement of Lenora, Alucard, Berthold and a fourth character who originally issued the distress call. This character is Father Ermingild who, being an exorcist, imediately recognized the "disease" to be of supernatural origin.
During the events of 1997, Ermingild helped the people resist the curse unleashed by Angolmois. Unlike Berthold, Ermingild was familiar with the powers of darkness, yet this was the first time he saw something so powerful taking control of the people -- Dracula's influence. When Lenora and Alucard arrived, Ermingild teamed up with them, and together with Berthold, they stopped the evil cult's corruption from spreading further. This event became known as the Outbreak of 1997 -- an attempt by Angolmois to achieve a centennial resurrection for Count Dracula.
From this point onwards, Ermingild became an agent of the Church, and helped them track Angolmois' actions through the land for two years, while using his exorcism to help rid the land from the forces of darkness.
Now, for the game situation of this project:
This project has many partners, of course, but the mystery partner offering to code Umbra into a game is none other than Dracula9 -- the same Dracula9 who is providing Alucard's voice. Yes, he's a voice actor, wants to code AND has contributed to the plot of Umbra so many times now I have lost count. I must also point out there are music tracks made by him for the project, too. Jack of all trades, as they say.
Oh my sweet children, you have no idea how much we have butted heads already over specific design decisions. Fortunatelly, things seem to work themselves out and become better from the conflict.
Before I pass the word to Dracula9 so he can speak, I want to enlighten you about some design choices made for the possible game to be developed:
-- Game Maker 8.0:
The engine choosen by D9 to develop the entire thing. You may think GM is too underpowered but we're not trying to build the next Call of Duty. The project might need to be ported later to a more powerful engine, but we'll work with it for now. D9 is known to have done some pretty awesome stuff with it, including his very own fangame of Haunted Castle.
-- It'll be Metroidvania:
I believe most of you expected this. However, there will be a bigger focus on platforming and puzzles and smaller focus on levelling. RPG elements ARE present, but we'll aim to simplify them, or to create a new formula that encourages exploration and discourages grinding. With multiple, independent characters to focus on, levelling up doesn't work as well as it does for one character or for a party. More on this later.
-- Hearts are now experience:
Umbra is placing a bigger focus on Hearts by making the subweapons evolve through collecting them from candles. In other words, the more hearts you get, the stronger will the equipped subweapon become. All characters will already come with all subweapons. And yes, Subweapons still consume an unit akin to MP. Which takes me to the next topic:
-- The Focus MP system:
Every character will have MP, used for numerous things from subweapons to special moves. But, since Hearts are now a way to level up subweapons, then a new function will be present to replenish MP, which is a simple focus system: Hold down a button, and the character will recover MP slightly faster than by simply waiting, yet will become vulnerable to enemy attack in the process. MP will also be recovered through traditional methods, such as saving, potions and by itself very slowly.
-- The Character Switch system:
The game's multiple characters will be handled more or less like The Lost Vikings does. Each character will be controlled independently and, unless the game allows a character to stay with you, you're NOT controlling them all together. Switching between characters will mean also switching to their respective positions on the map. Of course, as I said, the plot or the map itself will demand sometimes that certain characters stay together. During these periods, switching characters will work just like in Portrait of Ruin. This is why there will be a smaller/different focus on levelling -- every character must be millimetrically balanced for this system to work. With each character acting independently, there can't be a levelling system that levels all of them at the same time like there was on Portrait of Ruin, but, at the same time, there must be an incentive for players to fight monsters. This levelling system is not yet fully developed, but some ideas already exist.
-- One character may not get where another can:
Obviously, and just like Castlevania III. The game version of Umbra is being designed with this in mind, and you can expect Lenora, for instance, to reach places that the other heroes can't. The same can be said for each of them. The plan is to have entire areas be only accessible by one or two characters only. This will be accomplished by having specific mechanism/obstacles that only specific characters can interact with.
-- Special Enemy Interactions:
There are plans to have certain enemies react according to specific interactions with them. Results can range from instakilling to imediatelly increasing item drop rate to 100%. Think of this like using ice magic to attack fire enemies but harder to figure out, yet more rewarding. It'll be more a matter of context than "rock beats scissors."
-- The castle lives:
It's funny to hear about the castle being a living entity, yet having no actual representation of this. Therefore, now, we're planing having the castle itself be an active adversary throughout the game.
These are just some of the ideas being designed, but everything is subject to change as the development goes along. There are plenty more to come, and with Dracula9's help, they can potentially become reality. Speaking of Dracula9, now it's his time to talk:
-----------------------------------------
The fuck am I supposed to say to build off of all that good shit? Yeesh. Talk about a tough act to follow.
Where's that cat-bag gif...need to shoot for three postings.
Anyway, this had been in deliberation for a while and so far every programming concern brought up by Plot has been addressed, and I've more or less given the greenlight of "yes, this or that can be done--might be a royal pain in the ass to get it working, but it can be done and I can think of ways to effectively do it."
After dropping HC due to a large lack of any real direction (only a handful of things were ever fully fleshed-out, the rest was either carbon-copying the original or winging it), I've been bemoaning that all that work might have been for nothing--but this potential endeavor would right that wrong, as I would no longer have to conceptualize, visualize, AND program everything. Less stress for me, and more joy in bringing the ideas of others to life.
That said, this is still just an idea. Nothing has been set in stone for programming anything just yet--though I have offered to build a base physics engine just to see how everything might look in motion.
Anyway:
(https://media.giphy.com/media/dEaZGGlSOFdqE/giphy.gif)
-------------------
As Dracula9 said and I must corroborate for the 9384209384th time, there is a plan, but not a certainty. The ideas have more or less evolved into a plan, but a certainty is something we CAN'T offer. We are people who do not dwell in extremes, and the last thing I want is to start somethingand then never finish it.
Every mechanic and design decision is going through Dracula9, because he's the one who can say what can or cannot be done. Some things will be invariably scrapped, but we both have experience with working with limitations. As I said, we butt heads all the time, but this has more to do with creative decisions than mechanical decisions. On the creative side we both argue to improve the ideas and make it better, but on the mechanic side there's no arguing: Dracula9's word will be final.
Also of importance: D9 has the Variable Zero (http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,8614.0.html) project happening right now. I don't want to interfere with this, so as of now, the entire game design is on the discussion level. Once the development begins in a pratical manner, you will know.
And now, for a final heads up: Chernabogue has joined the voice acting cast! I'm not telling yet what character he's voicing, but I must say I'm very satisfied with him. Soon I'll have him record some decisive lines to show you what he can do! And to end this post, here is something from Chernabogue:
Through The Looking-Glass (https://dl.dropbox.com/s/aotu778tyjz3gez/CV%20Umbra%20-%20Throught%20The%20Looking-Glass.mp3?dl=0)
The Stellar Swordswoman (https://dl.dropbox.com/s/dvffc5wrbucxom0/CV%20Umbra%20-%20The%20Stellar%20Swordswoman%20%28Cecilia%20Lang%27s%20Theme%29.mp3?dl=0)
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F2kuzfTC.gif&hash=3f0d720751b1eeb1cb8c27c3ca805f8d)
CLICK ME! (http://bit.ly/2fSIdI0)
Hello, people. It's time for an update! First of all:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FnhRjquc.png&hash=51d3bc4d735ed07664aa333a36d2d085)
As I have introduced before, this is Father Ermingild. Except that now you know what he looks like, thanks to Junki Sakuraba. As it's been long since I last introduced him, I'll jug your memory:
Ermingild is a Catholic exorcist working with the Church staff since 1997, when the town where he preached was attacked by Angolmois and had its inhabitants infected by a sudden outbreak of insanity. Recognizing the threat as the work of a supernatural force, he helped the team end the cult's plans.
From then onwards, Ermingild has become a spy infiltrated amongst the ranks of a mysterious religion in order to find a connection between its leader and Angolmois, the cult planning the lord of darkness's resurrection.
Among the deeds of the priest is the imprisonment of a group of demons responsible for the mass possession of several people during the 90s.
------
As you know, the people on this team are working a lot to bring the project to life. On the last update I talked about how there were game-design concepts being laid down and some of the ideas for it, and today I can already say that I've already seen Julius walk around. Between then and now, also, some ideas changed as we debated them, and now we know how the character-switching will work, for instance, or even item and enemy names. We also know now more or less how the game's flow will go, changing the perspective of the player every so often so the game and the story can work together to benefit each other. This sounds a bit cryptic now, but will make sense in the future.
Anyway, to illustrate this story-game interaction idea right now, I'll talk a little about something we've introduced that Lords of Shadow also did, but that we feel wasn't done very well -- mid-game dialogue. Like in LoS, the plan is to have certain dialogues play simultaneous to the gameplay. Yet, different from LoS, our mid-game dialogue will not repeat and will almost always seek to add something of relevance to the story or to the character development, aiming to enrich the gameplay and diminish the idle time imposed to the player by lightening the weight of the scripted cutscenes.
We have four characters walking around inside a demon-infested castle, sometimes together, sometimes alone. So we thought that it'd be nice to develop the "Talk" function from Portrait of Ruin into something more useful and natural, having the characters converse with each other without interrupting the gameplay while expressing their feelings or further developing their backgrounds. These will also be present during boss battles, for instance, but remember how Zobek constantly gloats the same lines over and over at Gabriel? Yeah we're not having that. Whatever short lines the character speaks, they'll play only once and will have a definite objective to them.
And, since we're talking dialogue...
"The coming of the King of Terror enshrouds the land in black blanked. But I can see it, a glimmer amidst the night. I can see the darkness wrestling with this flame that won't vanish... It's a quarrel which I'm unable to predict the outcome from, but that can spell the end for the entire humanity..." (http://bit.ly/2g6AcSF)
Chernabogue has joined us as a voice actor too, and will be playing Nostradamus!
Chernabogue is french and Nostradamus was french. We needed Nostradamus to display his roots in a somewhat stereotypical manner but still be respectful to the language, so Chernabogue KNOWS what a frenchman sounds like more than anyone on the team. He was the go-to guy to incarnate the prophet and has shown that he will pull it through with flying colors. There is a reason why he's sounding so far away... Maybe you can already tell what it is.
Chernabogue, however, isn't the only one joining the voice-acting ranks. I've previously revealed Dracula9 as the Count but wasn't able to fully demonstrate what he's capable of. So, today, I'm (re)introducing Dracula9 as the Count and adding Belmontoya as Julius Belmont! Check this out! (http://bit.ly/2fBixOM)
Belmontoya has done an EXCELLENT job at voicing young Julius and has cemented himself very early on. As I heard him talk I knew he was Julius just as I knew Dracula9 was Alucard.
Julius has spoken very little yet, but if you have any further doubts, let me demolish them for you with this one short snippet. (http://bit.ly/2fBj8Ac) And yes, this is Belmontoya acting exactly what you think he is probably.
There is so much I want to talk about right now but I can't just yet. So I'll be saying that yes, you can now have more hope for a fangame, and that the story is almost completelly defined from start to finish. What I must tell in advance is that the next update may take quite a while because, when it comes, it'll contain what everyone is waiting to see. Also, check the front page as it has been slightly tweaked to contain the relevant info about this "fangame" stuff.
To end this post, I'll leave you with two more tracks by Chernabogue:
Words of Wisdom (Charlotte's Theme) (http://bit.ly/2fSIB95)
Sanguine Moonblossom (Alucard's Theme) (http://bit.ly/2gyZ6Zg)
...And, on top of the previous work, a little something by Aensland, whom I can't show everything yet, but that has also pulled an outstanding job on this project, flying much higher than I had antecipated and dropping the team's jaw every time:
Hesitant Night (The Count's Theme) (http://bit.ly/2guQQIk)
? ? ? ? (http://bit.ly/2guIx2U)
holy shit wavs lol
Also, Chaconne in C Moll? Interesting.
Also, Chaconne in C Moll? Interesting.
It will be when I manage to complete it...
It's an honor to voice Julius!
So, you're the one who voiced Julius.
I was impressed with your performance, hopefully my bgm will make justice to your acting.
flying much higher than I had antecipated
╭( ・ㅂ・)و~♪ !
I think I've figured out the big secret PlotTwist is trying to hide:
The Church and / or Belmont Clan are secretly the bad guys
Hello! Today, the post will be a bit negative. Nothing about the project ITSELF, it is doing fine. It'll be more about an specific criticism I found of my work that is not only unfair -- it is objectivelly incorrect. If you cannot take a bit of vitriol, please ignore.
Walking the internet, I stumbled upon some curious anon posts over 4chan concerning the conceptual sprites used on this project's planning phase. While the anons expressed a dislike over Julius Belmont's design (which I can understand, this happened before and I don't care), I've been accused of "sprite editing." Let me squash this right now and prove objectively that anon doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about:
Here is the page, saved on an archive (which is why I was even able to find it at all). I'll be taking prints from it:
http://4archive.org/board/v/thread/340124469#p340131642 (http://4archive.org/board/v/thread/340124469#p340131642)
First print:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FStORXrg.png&hash=781ba80d535d93ae454700b43dbfbf66)
So, smartass anon (which now I know who it is because he's apparently a complete idiot and spaghetti'ed everywhere) shows up. He thinks the main character conceptual sprites are "sprite edits". Apparently, if I draw Alucard in a way that it is thematically recognizable as Alucard, for instance, then I'm "editing" the original. Please compare Alucard yourself and tell me how "edited" it is to you:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FhHD4vyP.png&hash=0bc79ca324173478c898101f5426c2e2)
I happened to have one progress sprite, too, as you can see on the print. Alucard not ONCE on the entirety of SotN does a similar pose to this, at all. So I can't even to some sweet ass Frankenspriting. In fact, his entire spritesheet is readily available on the internet so anyone can debunk me right here where the shame will be public. Donoffrio is the one who created Lenora's and Timothy's conceptual sprites. He spent hours tweaking them to my liking, just so some anon who knows not a single thing about sprites could say they are edits.
Anon could've stopped there, but nooo. Anon gets really bold in a really short amount of time:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F2mlxTzN.png&hash=e02bdc15860d16d8f103dc03975f5509)
Anon doesn't not think anymore they could be edits. Now he's absolutelly sure and wonders if the other anon (who can quite clearly see they are not edits) has ever played Castlevania. Because HOW COULD HE NOT SEE they are not edits and that I'm a lazy hack? And it gets worse:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FbBhUJfE.png&hash=9289d4d3401e14ec2673d0a9071fae15)
So now anon has resorted to objectivelly pointing out how these sprites were edited and says "some are barely even edited". Well anon, you're wrong. Let's see how your extraordinarily specific claims compare to reality , shall we?
"The first knight only has some spiky shield added."
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FgfzAJET.png&hash=07067a7091b26c133827f400e6f1c81e)
Look on the entire Castlevania series for a sprite that is the exact same as this one only without the shield. I even put in two process sprites of mine (two of which don't have a shield) to make your work easier. I could compare them myself, but the sheer amount of knight sprites on the series is so incredibly huge the image would not fit on here at all.
But, by all means, find one and debunk me, please.
"The following five sprites don't even seem to be edited at all."
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FV4qXDPr.png&hash=35a45d25d49735a177c697cec78eb82e)
Wow, anon! How could I not tell they're exactly the same!!!!!!
To be fair to our (mentally handicapped) anon, the colors are similar. In some of the sprites the colors are the exact same, even, and this is because at the time I was using similar/same palettes to evoke the similar aesthetic cohesion of the originals. But anon can't even tell apart the Skeletons' skulls. Because his own is too thick.
"The green scorpion tail eye is another typical starting enemy, which he again added spikes to"
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FOrvgMeD.png&hash=a05e6a1e5bc1f8598cfea06d0353c765)
In red the Peeping Eyes I made. So, to anon, if you draw a "typical starting enemy", then you're editing sprites. Anon, you need to try harder. This is not the expert analysis I expected from you.
This next one is so out of touch with reality that it's hysterical:
"The dragon heads look identical to the game sprites. The mermen are just colour edits"
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FKZdzCta.png&hash=c7e8d6fc616ee8cbc99ac505a32b42e8)
CAN'T YOU SEE THEY'RE EDITED?!! No you can't, because they aren't.
"The medusa heads aren't even colour edited?"
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FLlIZGjD.png&hash=bb52a3f03e8108c6443a047ea9fb5641)
Not a single pixel changed at all. And I would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for this meddling anon!
"The wolf is based on the punching wolf (might have a new head?)"
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fxu8Lijh.png&hash=342a751a072eb569e3f47823bd0a3b20)
>might have a new head
rarest_pepe.jpg
Anon goes on and on, and gets to compare me to a guy who did use graphics from Order of Ecclesia's Wygol Village to build his own game, which is really deep offense to me, actually, because I did no such thing whatsoever. You may be thinking "Why is PlotTwist paying any attention to what some neckbeard thinks on /v/" but these things actually DO reach me as a pixel-art professional. My clients do question me and do wonder if I'm ripping shit from other games, to which I must offer a lengthy explanation in technical terms why this is not happening. My work has been featured before on places with big audiences. I cannot let any 17-year old idiot say things of this nature and let it slide.
I can take /v/ shitposting, no problem. You can tell me my sprites suck and that I have no imagination, I will try to do better, I really will. You can be relentless on your critique, I can take it like a big boy. But don't accuse me of stealing (oh oh "editing"), or I'll have to debunk your shit to hell and back.
Really, this is a small thing. But it is a small thing that is stored forever on the internet and that, if I could find, others will.
If you, anon who typed this stuff, is reading, then know this: You are not a video game connoisseur because you like shitposting anonymously. You're not a graphics expert (I am). And you have not played Castlevania nearly enough to tell a mere sprite from one another (I did, and I can even tell what sprites you're comparing mine to without you even mentioning them). Ideally, your best bet when you don't know something, is to shut the fuck up.
Although, I have to say, if this guy couldn't tell the difference from my sprites to the official Konami ones (which I adore, as they are works of art whose level I aspire to achieving), then I'm a bit flattered. On that regard, you're welcome, anon.
Closure:
The enemy sprites used here were not even meant to become final Umbra sprites. They were concepts/practices which I quite clearly stated to be recreations here. (http://empixel.tumblr.com/post/133558975811/a-bunch-of-tiny-little-monsters-from-castlevania) The objective was to reimagine the enemy in a way it doesn't deviate too much from the originals but still provide something new to look at, hence why you'll notice that my Merman is similar to the original Merman but has a more defined pose, or why palette similarities are present. But are they "edited"? No.
The objective of this post is demonstrate that I won't stand idly to accusations without evidence as small as they may be, and show transparency on my part. These dudes don't come here say this kind of shit to my face, I wonder why would that be.
Hello people!
Tiny-ish update for you. First of all, I bring you the master of a section of the Demon Castle himself. As always, a work by Junki Sakuraba:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F9mVJdHo.png&hash=5c403dcefeb08899002fda0652fc4ec2)
Olrox is a character that I have confirmed to be present on this story quite a bit ago. While he had next to no background in SotN, here he'll be a bit more fleshed out as one of Dracula's three vampire generals. Yes, three. One is Olrox, another is Carmilla, and the third one is an original character rooted firmly on the CV lore and based on a certain character from ghost-story tropes.
I have made a point to make Umbra a lot more "vampire" than Castlevania has done before, and this is reflected on the numerous more "vampire"-based foes, including this third vampire general. But you'll have to wait to see him.
Now, I want to show off just a tiny bit more than Olrox -- a VERY SMALL demonstration of engine programming hijinx by Dracula9. Since the Dungeon can't load these in special, please click here to see it. (http://imgur.com/a/Y6AaQ)
What you're seeing is just a small part of many effect tests we have done on the engine. They're using placeholder assets for faster debugging and testing, and there is plenty more from where those came for a myriad of situations we have planned for the game version.
Here's a bit more:
(https://media.giphy.com/media/26xBGUGnnaWR1S3Ic/giphy.gif)
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FsuPVTkg.gif&hash=75da0ef14fb66d83e708db38e3404dfe)
That's it!
Please keep in mind that NOTHING you're seeing here is final. Some things are more "ready" than others, but fine tunning is never enough. There's even some stuff here not reflecting what we currently have, being used here only for demonstration purposes.
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fr1o48CU.gif&hash=b68cd895b2b4f01e9f7f6b7c7bc97153)
Have a nice day!
Suprise, tiny, character-update:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fqb53h1n.png&hash=33664bbda818457e9bd87498ba1a09f3)
"There is a reason why the Morris have stopped Dracula three times, Julius. We're real tough. And you will be even tougher. You're already stronger than I was at your age."
Old-man Jonathan Morris lives. And he's the hottest old man you'll see today.
Suprise, tiny, character-update:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fqb53h1n.png&hash=33664bbda818457e9bd87498ba1a09f3)
"There is a reason why the Morris have stopped Dracula three times, Julius. We're real tough. And you will be even tougher. You're already stronger than I was at your age."
Old-man Jonathan Morris lives. And he's the hottest old man you'll see today.
Damn.
Suprise, tiny, character-update:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fqb53h1n.png&hash=33664bbda818457e9bd87498ba1a09f3)
"There is a reason why the Morris have stopped Dracula three times, Julius. We're real tough. And you will be even tougher. You're already stronger than I was at your age."
Old-man Jonathan Morris lives. And he's the hottest old man you'll see today.
Wow. This, right here, is one grandpa I would go to great lengths to at least have the honor of meeting if I was in the Castlevania universe. Bonus points for him being one of my favorite hunters, too. Nice work!
Hello! It's time for a "we're still alive, y'know?" update!
First of all:
(https://i.imgur.com/rPhNRu2.gif) (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/q8ers1798w4cntw/alucard%20voice.mp3)
What? You can't hear him? Try clicking that dialogue box!
Say hello to Martin Wain. He is the selected voice actor for Alucard. He's competent, swift, and he also has a passion for Castlevania!
As I have posted before, Alucard was going to be voiced originally by Dracula9, but this proved to be too taxing on his voice, so we set out to find another actor who could impress the entire team. Despite "cold rock with bursts of emotion" sounding simple to perform in theory, Alucard is not an easy character to nail. Yet Martin proved to be a godsend when he captured the entire character pretty much on his first performance.
As mentioned previously, we prefer a delivery closer to Robert Belgrade's voice for Alucard because, for us, not only is that interpretation the most iconic, but it also lends him an air of strangeness that he is confirmed multiple times to have in-universe. Martin is very talented, so expect his delivery to be more convincing than Alucard was on SotN -- the hammy acting is something we can do away with. And do not let this bit of audio fool you: We're keeping the real wide-range-of-emotions good stuff to the main course ;)
Martin does not have a social media you can follow yet. As soon as he does, we will update accordingly to let you know.
And, Martin is not the only actor to join... But I'll keep this one to a mini-update in the near future.
I won't mince words here: Development is still going slow. But it never once stopped-- we're always adding new things or ironing past ones, or hunting for more new information. So we're definitely not dead. And speaking of "hunting for more information", one event happened recently that has a potential to make a slow development even slower: The announcement and release of Grimoire of Souls.
As you know by now, that game is drawing upon the classic timeline. Umbra's mission statement being to respect the canon at all costs, that meant that I had to do all research I could humanly do on this game, without having access to it, to make sure everything on Umbra was working according with it. So, from the game's announcement until this game comes out, I must be all over it collecting all information available to me. We are preemptively considering Grimoire of Souls canon even if there's no official word on this matter yet.
Bad news is that not only the game is still not fully released (barring me from looking at the entire thing and continuing with the adjustments on project's storyline), but the beta demo that WAS released contained information contradicting Umbra. Because of course it did :P
Good news is that this information contradicting Umbra was really minor and did NOT throw a wrench on Umbra's developed story or gameplay. Having a Plan B came in handy, and the adjustments were made without any losses to Umbra that would require a full rewriting of stuff and would bog us down even more than we already are. What GoS contradicted was nothing more than holes that we already knew to exist.
Bonus news is that this game confirmed some small stuff I had discovered/theorized a long time ago, and made Umbra even more convincing than before on this regard :O
So, in short, Grimoire of Souls could prove to be a challenge. As of now, nothing major interfered with Umbra, but if GoS reveals something TOO major once it comes out, it could mean that entire chunks of Umbra's plotline (and possibly gameplay aspects that are interwined with the plotline) must get rewritten to suit what GoS says. Anything official Konami puts out > Umbra of Sorrow.
But I'll let you guys know that I'm making an effort to account for that before it happens. At the moment everything is fine and we have much more pressing matters to take care of (graphics, engine, etc), and they are being taken care of.
So, remember the promised Gameplay Demo? It's also still coming and it was not scrapped or anything like that. You can expect MORE news on that soon outside of this update. We may have been slowed down, but new content is produced all the time for this project, be it graphics, coding, music, be it design decisions (on which we take strides constantly via internal discussions), and it all affects the demo's progress too. That said, we want to talk about and SHOW you scrumptious stuff to chew on. Ready?
-Julius Belmont's sprite is being retooled.
(https://i.imgur.com/tWyWAGz.png)
After testing it in-engine, after receiving feedback, and after myself growing as an artist, Julius is being edited/updated to be better read on-screen, fix pose issues, fix subpar animations or outright look more badass in general. He has over 150 frames, so that will take a bit to complete, but not NEARLY as long as it took to create him, that's for sure. And speaking of Julius' design...
-Julius' concept itself is being updated.
(https://i.imgur.com/RFwg5OU.jpg)
Junki also grew as an artist, and we felt suit that Julius needed an update to his artwork, which will get used in-game constantly. One such improvement is making him more "manly", something that was criticized a long time ago when his first concept was unveiled. And yes, that means that the other main characters are also receiving an update -- can't have Julius be the only one to receive an update, can we? This will be the first and ONLY update to these character designs.
And, here are some in-engine screensho-- Nah, to hell with screenshots. Let's see stuff MOVING:
(https://i.imgur.com/798D14G.gif)
Julius locates a secret passage. He has his Castlevania game on point. Also, is that... Is that a returning foe?
(https://i.imgur.com/Fta3oQc.gif)
Julius fights an old enemy with his trademark Red Axe and does some climbing.
(https://i.imgur.com/BONkOMh.gif)
He can grapple on things, but it looks kinda different, doesn't it?
(The "green glitches" on some of these are just glitches from the recording. They don't exist on the game itself. And keep in mind you're not seeing retooled Julius yet.)
Here you can see a number of stuff. But more importantly, you can see for yourself how one of the core mechanics for Julius -- his grapple -- will work. No longer does grappling work like it did on Super Castlevania IV or Harmony of Despair. Julius, instead of merely dangling from a peg and vulnerably staying there, pulls the whip to propel himself on the opposite direction, more or less like Shanoa's Magnes glyph, but different in that he doesn't need to pull back to shoot forward. This makes Julius very fast in certain situations and enables him to move fast across long distances by himself. We felt that this was the best way to mix both the platforming and hectic action that we have planned for many sections of the game.
However, although we're showing you stuff moving, it's important that I make clear that THIS IS NOT FINAL. You'll see certain stuff off here that we KNOW is there and are working to fix or adjust, or stuff that is simply placeholder even if it looks "final graphics". Our goal with this was to demonstrate that work is happening, not that it is complete. Dracula9 felt suit to reunite some of his own coding progress to give you a general idea of what's ready or what is not:
non-codey general progress stuffs:
-all enemies are in and working properly, simply in need of varying degrees of "finish sprites/animations". That includes a certain someone...
-inventory working with (small) selection of different items/equippables to appear in demo.
-Julius' mechanics to be showcased on the demo are nearly complete.
non-codey general to-do list:
-actually finish tiling the damn levels
-rework certain particle systems to look better
-implement new menu graphics (once the remaining graphics are completed) and submenu transition effects
-finish creating the handful of needed SFX that are left
codey progress stuffs:
-levelling system working properly
-general stuff working properly (physics, collision, stats and the like, enemy AI, etc. etc. etc.)
codey to-do list:
-restructure inventory arrays to be more dynamic and efficient (they're 6-dimensional and nested, for those who would know what this means and implies--take aspirin for the headache with me, friends!)
-try and get water shader to run exclusively at the base resolution and upscale in tandem, and not just rescale the entire shader to fit the various window/resolution sizes
-get off my ass and implement controller support and control customization for keyboards (controller has specific planned layout, that's why it isn't getting customization support)
Also yes, Punaguchi. And yes, that sprite is from Adventure Rebirth. And yes, he's getting new graphics and that is placeholder.
It's time to close this update. With that, I'll leave you with a screenshot, and a new soundtrack. Thank you people for not giving up on us. We're working hard, and we will bring you the best possible content we can -- you think all this is just for a demo, but it isn't. Every bit and piece made is going for the final game, and it is important that it looks as (close to) pristine in the demo as it will be in the final game. See ya, and I hope I can bring better news soon ;)
♪ Iron Crusher (http://dl.dropbox.com/s/84xzy8domc54m6t/Iron%20Crusher.mp3?dl=0) - By our demonic songmaster Chernabogue. Can you tell where this comes from?
(https://i.imgur.com/mtXUpK4.png)
"A beast who rebelled against Heaven; Siding with the Dark Lord, it now fights even after death."
Considering that mobage stories tend to be released in a piecemeal manner with new story chapters sometimes taking months on end to release, are you concerned with how long this might take?
Considering how long Umbra itself might take on the great scheme of things, not really.
But I am a bit concerned still because we have no idea what they plan on showing with GoS. There are a few things that could make us go "Well shit." up to including:
-Showing what young Julius Belmont did look or think like.
-Speaking of certain characters' involvement or NO involvement.
-Speaking of what caused Dracula's defeat in more detail.
-Speaking of something AFTER a piece of Umbra is out that is contradicted and can no longer be fixed.
Some things can be adjusted for, some can't. In the case of the some that "can't", we will strap ourselves to one of the project's mission statements: We only aim to present a plausible version of this story with our silly headcanon. We have our feet on the ground and we know that we're ultimately nothing more than a fangame.
This is also how we will deal with the possibility of Konami releasing an OFFICIAL 1999 media. In case they do, we will just move forward with our fanfiction as "solidified headcanon" because that's what it was always meant to be. In fact, their releasing an official 1999 media scares me much less than them releasing other piece of media around the 1999 storyline talking about it (which is also not a lot of "scare", just a bit, like I said above), because a supporting media forces me to collect info and follow the breadcrumbs, an actual 1999 media does not -- it flat out tells me "you're wrong, here's the official thing" and I go "oh ok but fanfiction is not wrong tho".
On where we CAN make adjustments, we will, I promise, even on the stuff that takes months to get revealed. Konami being god, Umbra follows it like a devout unofficial and not-endorsed cultist doing what it says. I had to sacrifice a relatively minor thing that was in place already due to GoS speaking too much :P but the plan B might be just better than what was in place before, who knows? I have one million plan Bs still :)
As far as backstories go, do you guys have any plans for the Scholomance? It's mentioned in the Stoker novel that Dracula's family "...had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholomance
I had thought not just Dracula but other dark luminaries in Castlevania may've studied there, such as Brauner. POR's Dark Academy may even be his rendition of the place, though I don't think it fits the Scholomance's description in lore.
Hey!
We have plans to adapt certain specific details from the Bram Stoker novel, but I cannot give you a status on the Scholomance. It's something that was never considered (not discarded, just not considered). I can tell you that this was never on my mind, even though other details are.
However, I might consider this too. It will depend on what the other core team members think and if it could be used to enrich the plot, even if a tiny bit. They will be reading this, so we will discuss internally. I would also like to know if more people are interested on THIS detail making it in, so leave your feedback, but please understand that the Umbra team keeps the final word.
From my personal, preliminary opinion based on your input given now: I have no plans to incorporate Scholomance, because it conflicts with Castlevania's overall lore. I will give a short rundown why:
Scholomance is ran by the Devil, so this says that there is a Devil to begin with. There is two ways to go about it: Either Dracula runs it or another demon does while working for Dracula. That is because, after a certain point, Dracula becomes the "Devil" figure himself.
Coincidence or not, there is precedent for Dracula teaching occult secrets to already-gifted individuals before his turning into the Dark Lord, but there's proof only for two individuals -- Hector and Isaac (and the implication of a third) --, and not an entire school. Also, the "school" for these two was Dracula's castle. We can find parallels with Scholomance even on the fact that the Devil kept a student for himself, as Dracula kept Hector to be his vessel to revive in, amongst others such how Isaac looks like a Solomonar is described. But, of course, there are many contradictions.
As for him having studied there prior to his turning into Dark Lord-- interesting, but a tad implausible as Scholomance is described. Dracula was already (much) older than the age preferred by Scholomance for its students by this point, and he himself was already extremely knowledgeable on the occult after his vampirization on Lament. Not to mention he was not a commoner. We DO know he learned more in the time between Lament and CVIII, but I don't think he did it at a Scholomance-type facility.
As for having studied there prior to his turning into a vampire in Lament: Even more implausible, even if Umbra is not giving as much detail this far in the past to warrant the evoking of the school or Mathias having studied in there in his infancy. He grew to be a warrior of God, after all.
So, if Scholomance makes it in, it'll get adapted, including the core concept of the Devil teaching there. But it might disappoint people, something I have to consider a lot before making a decision. You mentioning Brauner as someone who you imagine having studied in Scholomance makes me think that you'd be A-OK with it being adapted, tho!
Hello, Gardraphius! Thank you for the support, first of all.
The spoiler contains a longer response but the TL;DR is: PlotTwist can't draw fast enough. Other projects have some or no bearing on development speed. Situation is not changing soon.
I'm responsible for the slow progress. Reasons for this are many, but one I can clarify is- I can't dedicate time to produce high quality pixel art fast enough, and I won't reduce my quality standards to speed it up.
A good measure to accelerate this is planned, but can't be taken before a tangible first "product" is completed and made available. The programmer needs sprites to code, the musicians need scenarios to envision, etc etc it all boils down to how fast I can draw. If you need a solid reason to cling to, it's this one.
Wallachia is part of my job. Real life comes first, and Wallachia is just one element of it I let the public know about. Weren't it Wallachia, it'd be something else. While we're on the subject: Please look forward to Wallachia. Everyone involved gave their best to produce some amazing work.
Rhapsody of Darkness has no bearing on when Umbra does anything. Junki takes time to produce assets for us as he has his own life to lead, but that has also in no way slowed Umbra anymore than it already is, and nobody in this team is under deadlines. He has produced Umbra content that has never been shown because it's not yet appropriate to (idem for music, code and pixel art too).
When enough content that can be displayed is created, we may release updates, but we're not interested in promising anything. Also, if Umbra gets shelved, there will be no secret of it at all. We'll just make a statement and move on.
Hello. So, I've been discussing something for a while with the team, and I'll take the opportunity you started posting here to bring it forward. I will privately reveal a summary of how the entire plot (read: the fanfiction) goes. The plot and ONLY the plot - no game, no graphics. Plot. It will be revealed in a more freeform format, in a steady stream. So, you won't get dialogue or super specific stuff, but you will get to know the entire idea from start to finish. Again, like a summary of the whole thing.
I'm doing this privately because I don't want to keep bumping this until something bigger is out. It really is to those who care about Castlevania plot.
If you wish to know, send me a PM and we will go from there.
EDIT: This is no longer being done.
I have received requests to respond if the project is alive or not. So, pseudo-update time. I'll try to be objective and offer a bit of context where needed.
Is the project alive? Yesn't.
The project has not done leaps for a good while now. We're talking years. The reasons for this range from naturally slow development to lack of budget. Mainly lack of budget, but at the end of the day, it's my responsibility.
Slow development means I can take something up once in a blue moon, and obsess over it until it's absolutely perfect. So, every skeleton, bat, zombie, it's all original, all super fluid, etc. When the stars align, the programmer Dracula9 and I will go nuts and work in a burst until we burn. we set an objective, we do it in just a few days time. Music is a non-issue: These guys have composed an entire game's worth of music just on descriptions alone. But the bigger issue is budget.
As said before, I made a point not to make a single dollar from this project, while ripping zero Konami graphics. However, this means I have to leave for work, which means freelancing and disappearing for months at a time until work is done, and stringing a project on the next until the spring stops giving.
Every gain goes into sustaining mine and other people's living, and seeking help with my health. I have exposed my failing health - this is still true. Not as bad as I was back when I exposed it, but still bad that my work got slower. I still have no answer on that front, and covid made it nearly impossible to keep the doc visits going, but I'm trying.
On top of me working, the team needs my direct input on the meat of the project and can't perform alone. The director needs to be there to DIRECT, but outside reasons keep me away. One such example is: D9 needs graphics to code into the engine and placeholders can only work for so long. Where are the graphics?
Thing is, I'm actually reasonably fast. However, in my current state, this speed can only happen if I'm earning while I'm drawing or if it WILL earn in the future. Working on Umbra means the income will stop flowing, which means I can't eat Umbra for dinner, or pay the doctor with Umbra coins, etc. Ultimately, it all boils down to budget and health. A salary for developing this project (this goes for every member, not just me) would complete it in 2-3 years tops. But no budget could mean this will come out when the 2035 eclipse happens in real time, or not at all.
So, again, is the project dead? It nearly is. We never once discussed giving up on it for real, actually. For us it feels like it's still going. But if progress is not getting made, then what is the difference?
Finally, bear in mind that all this is speaking only for myself, because the biggest responsibility is mine. Hence why my health, my work, etc etc. Despite all members having their own personal lives, it's my direction that is faltering, and it's my direction that is key to make it walk.
TL;DR: Budget is the bigger issue. I can't work more than I already do for a living, therefore Umbra has slowed down to a halt.
There's the pseudo-update. Now, for something a little more positive.
We actually downsized the project, with Dracula9 spearheading this move. We still want to do the full thing, but we're afraid if nothing comes of it, we STILL have something to show for it. So, it's STILL not all doom. This downsized thing actually has content going, actually looks pretty damn great, but I'll leave Dracula9 to expand on what it is and how it works when it's time to do it. He plans to speak about that before the year ends, meaning within two months or so.
To conclude this screed:
2022 is the final year for Umbra. It will decide if it lives or dies. This will also be the last update until things take a drastic turn, which has to happen in 2022.
I shouldn't really have to say this, as I owe nothing to anyone. But nonetheless, I apologize for firing up expectations for anyone who has them. Despite making it clear not to have them when this project began, I know it's inevitable on the wasteland of content Konami has going on. This is also why I avoid giving updates - I can't do it knowing this will give someone expectations that are more likely to end in frustration. The correct path is to do your thing without telling anyone. I didn't do that, this was a terrible mistake.
Please understand: In this context, we're just some dudes. If someone drops a wad of cash on our heads, Umbra is planned for 2025. Otherwise, if I'm to be transparent, it ain't going to happen in its full form. We could pitch this to, let's say, Konami. We have enough to build a pitch and I'm absolutely confident that it would be competent. But pitching this to anyone will just get the project killed for real and the SECOND I try to earn anything with it - effectively fixing the budget issue and basically giving it all it needs to be completed -, is the moment I'll get a C&D. "But that one dude with the Patreon!" anyone doing that obviously has something going I don't. I guarantee you I can't do the same and get away with it. We're already blessed to not get screwed up as we are, for I have actual proof Konami is aware of this project and has done no move to end it on the spot until the time of this post.