Searching for Collaborators for a Dark Fantasy Multimedia Project [18+] [NSFW]

Hey everyone, my name is Tobias and I’ve been worldbuilding for over a decade. I want to share my most ambitious project yet, along with the foundation of a multimedia project I am hoping to build and continue to develop with other passionate creators. Any use of AI anywhere in the project is strictly prohibited.

For caution this post has been marked as NSFW due to the project exploring heavy themes including child abuse, addiction, gore, domestic violence, self harm, and more. All to be explored and handled with grace and respect, NEVER for shock value.

What is Aethle?

Aethle is a grim, somber fantasy world rooted in a twisted combination of cosmic, folk, and psychological horror. My personal background is in psychology which has shaped the core of the project: using a dark, dreadful setting to dissect the human condition, explore morality, and work through difficult emotions and experiences rather than sensationalizing them.

Some lore to give you a sense of the world:

God Death

The Gods of Aethle were deliberately murdered by the people of Aethle a thousand years ago. A mass hysteria rapidly spread throughout Aethle that caused people to question the authority of the Gods. Did we have free will? Would we still have created successful civilizations without them? This line of questioning ultimately brought about the Gods’ end as worship and praise turned into riots and condemnation. However the death of the God was not without consequence.

Shattering

The death of the Gods led to an event known as the Shattering. The continents of Aethle quite literally shattered due to the reality of the material plane and the Shimmer protecting it to weaken and break down. It wasn’t known at the time but the lifeforce of the Gods is what kept the Shimmer around the Material Plane stable, and the lands connected. With their death everything began to crumble, leaving a broken world without Gods to protect it. Shortly after this a new location in the larger Astral Sphere was observed—The Dark.

The Dark & The Great Ones

The Dark was first observed through the Oculus shortly after the Shattering. The Dark was viewed as an infinite expanse of void that not even the most powerful or studied wizards were able to gaze through. With that said, there were occasional accounts of incomprehensible malevolence suspended in the void. The few accounts of actually seeing them are difficult to understand. They express viewing colors they had never seen before, or fourth dimensional shapes that slowly eroded their minds. These beings have now been recorded as The Great Ones, and they seem to be even more impossibly powerful than the previous Gods that the people of Aethle took for granted. It was never clear how much influence—if any—these beings had on our lives, and there has been zero contact made with them. This of course has not stopped the numerous cults and religious orders from sprouting up, idolizing these strange beings.

Aethle now sits as a broken, sad world unable to forget its sins from millennia ago. The Shimmer continues to thin, and now the stars have begun to go out. As far as church theories go they believed that the old Gods’ souls would ascend to the stars to be reforged. They have no theory as to why the stars are going out, unless something was out in the cosmos intentionally killing these Gods before their rebirth.

What I’m Looking For

This project has grown well beyond what I alone can build. I am looking for like-minded and mature collaborators who are interested in contributing to any of the following:

• Lore writing and worldbuilding
• Tabletop mechanics design
• Original art
• Comics
• Books
• Music composition
• Game Development
• Wiki / Lore editing and ensuring consistent continuity

The main idea of this project to develop a setting for use in TTRPGs and as a larger setting for music, books, and potentially a small, point and click game. The current focus and end goal of what I’m calling Phase 1, would be an establishment of a fully fleshed out Wiki for the setting along with the Gameplay Guide book, since those would be the bare minimum to allow this setting to be functional. I have recently reached 100,000 words in worldbuilding development and I still do not feel like I have even scratched the surface of what I want to explore. Additionally, I can only come up with so many unique ideas so I would appreciate getting other perspectives and ideas written into the world.

I am hoping to find three more writers, at least one artist (something I’ll personally be contributing to soon), and at least two more team members focused on either editing, mechanics, or music composition. I would like to make it clear that there is currently no financial incentive and this is purely a passion project. There is already a small but engaged community surrounding this project, carried over from an earlier project.

Current Writing Organization & Plan

Currently most of Aethle’s writing has been done and organized through Notion, with any collaboration being done in our discord server. With my previous project I was using LegendKeeper as a pseudo-wiki due to liking the format and ease of organization. For Aethle’s wiki I am unsure of what I will use, and that will more than likely be something that we as a team figure out together. As for the Gameplay Guide portion I was using Homebrewery to develop the few pages I have put together, though again I am open to other options as people with different skills are welcomed into the team.

Below is an organized plan for how I want to conduct this project going forward:

• Phase 1: Finish the general lore and worldbuilding along with development of a Gameplay Guide that takes advantage of the worldbuilding to introduce and utilize new mechanics to make the setting feel unique at the table. This may include art.
• Phase 2: Develop original art as concept art for the purposes of the Gameplay Guide and Comics.
• Phase 3: Compose original music for the setting (for use in the TTRPG space, game development, or simply for its own purposes) along with opening up the space for people to write books based in the setting.
• Phase 4 (optional): Begin game development, using the fleshed out setting of Aethle as a baseline. I envision something here similar to Monstergarden’s project. If you’re unfamiliar you can find his work via YouTube under the same name.

This is generally what I anticipate the development of this project to be. Things may of course change as things unfold.

If you are someone who likes writing lore, worldbuilding, or really any aspect of world development and want to be part of a larger, collaborative project, this may be for you. Feel free to fill out this form here if you are interested: https://forms.gle/YBHvU7mTTmNasAFq8

To Mods: If there is any additional clarification needed for the scope or goal of the project let me know. I'm happy to change or add anything to fit within the rules.