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[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

There's something lurking in the jungles of Maldrapur... It's big, it's grey and it has tusks, stupidly flappy ears and a trunk...

It's an elephant.

No... No, that's not a reeking elephant... Elephants don't bite people in half.

The Makara - a terrifying Aquatic Hybrid Monster of Hindu Mythology... Part Crocodile, Part Elephant and Part Fish...

Only, because I'm currently still bioengineering all my Dinosaurs in gmax (see Page 9), my Makara sort of accidentally mutated and became Part Tyrannosaurus Rex, Part Elephant, Part Fish.

But, you know, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Indian Marsh Crocodile, what's the difference really? Theropod or Eusuchian, they're all Archosaurs...

Besides, ancient Indian depictions of the Makara vary considerably, ranging from creatures that look much like a Gharial to bizarre reptilian elephants with fins. Mine is evidently just another different subspecies... Makara Rex.

All you really need to know about the M-Rex is that it's big, freakishly strong, maniacally aggressive, will attack on land or in water, can run faster than you think, has extremely acute visual, aural and olfactory senses and is an OBVIOUS SPLEEN!

As I think I mentioned in the Timingila post on the previous page, when the Timingila rises from the ocean depths, the Makara scatter ahead of it and enter Maldrapur's river systems, causing no end of mayhem and carnage. Which would be bad enough without the even bigger problem of the Timingila itself heading for shore... This particular story, as you will gather, is the Maldrapur Chronicles' Hommage a' Gojira with all the rampaging chaos you'd expect.

The Makara's daft trunk, indecently flappy ears and fins are all danglymesh which give it a somewhat odd, fluid sort of motion that possibly helps it seem more aquatic or, if not, makes it weirder. Not that it isn't filthily weird anyway. I'm reasonably confident from the play tests though, worried as I initially was, that the farcical proboscis and flappy ears don't detract from the supposed, alleged, so-called horror of the M-Rex. When it comes charging at you in-game, it's quite terrifying enough that you don't just stand there and mock its ludicrous nasal appendage. Not if you want to live.

And, since heaving about in the jungle is not necessarily the surest route to clear depictions, we went out early one misty morning and surprised a Makara ambling through the estuary in plain view, just so's you can see it properly. Note the huge slashing claws of the forelimbs as opposed to the berkish, stumpering, elephantomatic, useless, pseudofeet of the rear limbs. All for additional weirdness. Fear Makara Rex for it is, as has been observed, an OBVIOUS SPLEEN... and they hunt in packs.

[Grymlorde]

I spent some little time with my friend Vineeta (who's being my token India advisor), asking her to help me fathom how you'd create a NWN sari and she waved all sorts of bits of silk at me and tried to explain the mystical inner workings of the sari but the fog of confusion just grew thicker as figuring out how it all works just made it seem even more complicated despite Vineeta's ceaseless assertion of how simple it all is - so eerily simple she managed to end up tying herself to me inextricably and we fell over... and Fifi just dismissed the entire debased exercise as my fifteenth most imaginative excuse yet for trying to get a beautiful woman out of her clothes...

 

But you don't need to know all the fascinating and probably illegal behind-the-scenes manufacturing processes of the Maldrapur CC […]

 

Sounds oddly similar to my honeymoon with my Indian wife.   I think that the sari is a beautiful garment, but then again I'm biased.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Nothing whatever wrong with bias so long as it's going the right way...

 

I suppose I ought to point out that Vineeta and I have been intimately acquainted since college and I'm not just pouncing upon any passing woman in a sari... Vineeta, Natasha (or Fifi as she insists upon calling herself here) and I have spent more years together than we care to admit, prowling about the planet in order to be vexingly strange and get chased by fierce animals - so doing abstruse and incompetent things with clothing is nothing new or unusual... And since Vineeta's as mad as Fifi and I, it's actually her long-suffering parents who keep getting screenshots and debased descriptions of stories foisted upon them in order to have them determine how authentically Indian/Hindu my NWN efforts are... or aren't.

 

We obviously don't distress them too much since they actually let Vineeta bring "Fifi" and I over to their home last month for the festival of Diwali which is where I commenced measuring all their colourful lanterns in order to make NWN versions (see last page). And also the equally necessary Diya - small, votive oil lamps used at Diwali.

The Placeable Diyas are as diya-shaped as they can be and retain a low enough polycount that you can have millions of them without bringing the game to a halt. Because that's the whole point of Diwali; you can't have a "Festival of Lights" with ten lights. No, you needs PILES of 'em!

The above star-shaped display dais is based on the one Vineeta's parents had in their big room... the one near which guests kept tripping over the Shabby Hyena Weirdo crawling about on the floor measuring the dais for NWN use and disturbing everyone with his eerie resemblance to a stalking tiger... Well, that was the description I preferred; there were others that made reference to drunken stick insects, but...

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Following the M-Rex above, to the surprise of absolutely nobody at all... Another Spleen!

Like the ferocious Makara, Kabandha will do everything in its power to eat you into tiny pieces.

Unlike the Makara, however, it is not just a terrifying predatory beast.

Its tale appears in both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the name Kabandha literally meaning headless torso...

Once a happy, harmless little Gandharva (celestial bard), Kabandha incurred the wrath of Indra and was thus cursed to be transformed into a huge, lumpy, mindless, carnivorous blob monster (or Spleen, as we scientists call them). Disgustingly, its head having vanished somewhere during the cursing process, Kabandha's entire body split open to become a vast mouth into which he stuffed anyone he could catch as he rampaged madly about, Spleen fashion, very much in the manner of a Spleen.

As well as elongate arms to catch people with, an eye also appeared on its nastily lumpy torso, for the purposes of seeing people so's it could lumber over and devour them without so much as sprinkling pepper on them first; or even asking if they minded being devoured. No manners, these Spleens. (Some depictions give it two eyes, but I stuck with one, which is what it should have).

I also made it somewhat more disgustingly gross than most of the traditional Hindu pictures and made the filthy great gob take up even more of the body area... I mean, its appearance didn't really allow for the presence of the copious stomach area it would need to house all the semi-liquescent people it's eaten anyway, so what the hell? It's a freak, cursed Spleen monster, so who can say what bizarre digestive abilities it has?

In the Ramayana, it is, naturally, Rama and his brother who battle the Kabandha - but for my purposes, when the ArchEvilist Jhurgha (remember him from Page 3?) resurrects and unleashes the cursed Kabandha upon Maldrapur, it's Kali who has to deal with the ravening middenheap... The old "see if the Spleen explodes if you feed it the raw power of Deva'Loka" ploy...

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

In the jungle just outside Maldrapur's capital city of Rajatnur, there stands the Royal Lodge.

Up until now, this fine building has been depicted in my NWN Modules as something akin to a colossal cardboard box. This is not really acceptable for the private retreat of the Maharani (Maha great - Rani ruling queen) (female equivalent of Maharajah - of whom there was one but he got splattered by Spleen Beasts way back in Demoness Tales 37 - Rakshasa's Gate, so his daughter rules now).

I crushed the old, shoddy box version to a paste with a big brick and then reinflated it with the handy pump provided into a new and better form.

Now it actually looks somewhat like the drawings in my huge folder of designs for the Maldrapur Chronicles and lacks any true resemblance to a cardboard box... A closer view confirms the suspicion that I've been messing around with Enterable Building Placeables again.

Lurking at the threshold (not that I'm suggesting a Supreme Goddess "lurks" as such), it is immediately obvious that the door is not so much a door as an arch with the wilds on one side and the nice clean floor and carpets of the lodge on the other? Should a Royal Lodge not have slightly better security against thieving villains?

Having the Lodge interior open to the jungle is the security, however, allowing wild animals to enter freely. Maharani Apsarvati has a natural bond with animals (the ones that aren't gargantuan rampaging Spleen Monsters) and thus is in no danger from them and, what's more, they don't even sharpen their claws on her expensive furniture. Furthermore, they instantly fall upon any intruder who isn't known to them. (Clever sods, most of Maldrapur's animals).

The Interior of the Lodge is... well, you can see what it is, that's why I'm posting all these incessant damned images. It's a big empty square space with walls round it. Into this space you can pile all that Maldrapuri furniture I keep making... Well, not ALL of it, 'cause the whole lodge would be clogged up something chronic and then you couldn't get in 'cause it'd be all full of cabinets and chairs and shelves and beds and things, just stacked.

Note the large decorative Peacock Pot... Full selection of large decorative Indian Pots will be available. Image soon. You'll also by now have noticed that there are new carpets too...

Note also the complete absence of cane baskets. I'm all over that now. Mostly.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

One thing I frequently find useful in my Modules are nice big arches set into barrier walls for putting across roads through canyons and at approaches to towns, that kind of thing. So I've added some to Maldrapur's growing heap of architecture.

The first wall arch has the dharma chakra over it and so I'll probably use it near temples, the other is of plainer, less decorative stone and... well, they're all just made of squashed trimesh that's been hit with a big brick really, but...

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Just recently contrived an entirely new way of importing and organizing stuff in Custom Palettes in the Toolset and so don't have to be quite so wary of cramming billions of Placeables in and thus clogging things up. So I've allowed myself to add a few more Maldrapuri tapestry/painting/whassname things (for nailing to walls) to the already available selection I did before...

Just a largely random assortment of things that happen to be relevant/required in some of the new Maldrapur Chronicles stories... Aside from a couple of yantra things for temple interiors, the lady with the sitar is Saraswati, goddess of learning, music, arts and knowledge, who is supposed to turn up in two of the Modules, just as soon as I get this Indian clothing sorted out (some small progress there). The blue lady with the blades and the anger management issues is - well, you know who she is by this point... The lady with the Crocodile (properly a Makara) is the goddess Ganga, so we'll assume that river is the Ganges...

I couldn't leave Lakshmi out, what with all the Diwali whatsits and, since this selection was getting more or less entirely female dominated, I threw Lord Shiva in just to vaguely even things out slightly... Oh, and there's lots of elephants too. (Whopping elephant statues still to come - I mean, how many places can you go in India and NOT see elephant depictions of some sort?).

More Architecture, Spleen Monsters, Furniture and Stuff to come also...

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

One of the best known tales of Kali is the battle against the Blood Demon, Raktabija...

Raktabija was an Obvious Spleen...

One of the most powerful of the Asuras, his name literally means Blood Seed and any drop of his blood that was shed upon the ground would arise into an entirely new duplicate; some texts suggest that these "blood clones" had a thousand times the power of the original. Naturally, this low, vile, underhanded, contemptible, cheating activity gave him a certain advantage in battle...

Leading a vast, demonic army - which is easy to do when every drop of your blood near instantly grows into another vile Asura - Raktabija obliterated all before him. The gods attempted to stop him but were driven back before his filthy, despicable self-cloning activities, overwhelmed by his nasty, smug "every time you stab me, there's another hundred of me" presence.

Then Kali appeared. Being the Supreme Goddess and just generally tougher than everyone else, Kali single-handedly (if someone with multiple arms can be said to do anything single-handedly) did battle with the entire demon army and completely mushed them all (this is the short version, you understand). Facing Raktabija himself, with a fury beyond measure, Kali cut the Evilist's head off and drank all his blood to the last drop, thus ensuring it couldn't fall anywhere and become more dirty enemies.

Crazed in her battle fury and bloodlust, Kali's victory dance threatened to destroy the world and Lord Shiva was sent to stop her - only she trampled him into the dust too. But when she noticed, she immediately became chastened and calmed down, thus sparing the world the earthquakes her power was causing. And no doubt she picked Shiva up, dusted him off and smiled an apologetic sort of smile...

Anyway, that was the end of Raktabija... But for the purposes of Maldrapur Chronicles, I'm assuming one or two filthy blood clones managed to flee the battlefield unseen and have been lurking, waiting to attack Kali once again... which suggests they're not very bright.

[3RavensMore]

and smiled an apologetic sort of smile...

 

Yep, I can see that. 

[werelynx]

That Raktabija fellow would require scripting and quite a powerful machine to render almost infinite army of spleens

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

In a hurry. Stuff happening.

But here are those Elephant Statues I mentioned...

Note matching Elephant Design on bases... Darn pachyderms get everywhere...

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Back to proper architecture, as distinct from gelatinously unrealistic elephants...

Lakshadi temple is cursed. Or at very least haunted.

It wasn't cursed to begin with, but a dirty cabal of evilists attacked it, massacred all the worshippers within and desecrated all the hallowed symbols of the Devatha on the filthy order of the mad tyrant Ravana (available in the earlier Maldrapur Chronicles box - like anyone would want him).

The tormented ghosts of the slaughtered faithful are still bound to the stones of the temple by a malign Asura curse and their dismal moans echo more or less constantly, despite the best efforts of a small group of devoted Brahmin who tend the now sad and lonely place. Kali has pledged to free the suffering spirits - which entails facing an entire Asura empire, but, you know, she's not one to take much notice of little things like numerical statistics...

Of course, there's no specific reason you have to use this temple as a cursed, haunted place. There's no reason it can't be a nice, happy place... and theoretically it will one day again be happy and no longer shunned in Maldrapur by the time Kali's sorted everything out... but you can't use it as a Woolly Mammoth. Not believably anyway.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Here are those Indian Pots I mentioned a few posts back, when I wasn't dribbling on about cane baskets...

A semi-random selection of designs that suit Maldrapur. The decoration suggests they're pretty much all pots from reasonably affluent places, but as there are already basic clay pots and things in NWN and as a basic clay pot essentially just looks like a basic clay pot, it didn't seem worthwhile to add to the already VAST list of new Maldrapur stuff some additional basic clay pots just like a billion other basic clay pots. So I just did the nice, expensive (and definably Indian) sort of pots.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Sorry - getting increasingly caught up in STUFF at the moment... Will soon be heading off to India, properly, with Fifi and Vineeta, to work with lots and lots of Venomous Snakes. Should be interesting... Anyway, I WILL get the second pile of Maldrapur Chronicles rubbish on the Vault before I vanish.

Bhandasura - yes, another Obvious Spleen...

When the god Kemdev got himself vapourized by Shiva, there was, naturally, little left but a heap of ash... The child Ganesha found this ash and sculpted it into the likeness of a new playmate, hoping for a fine friend. But, the figure lumped together out of ash rapidly proved to be a Reeking Evilist. This saddened Ganesha. The sadness became outright alarm when the new evilist, calling itself Bhandasura, went down the old "raise formidable demon army, destroy everything in your path, attempt to conquer the universe" road.

Naturally, with this ashen Spleen marauding about the place, coming on all evil at everyone and putting the boot in on Ganesha, Kali was roused to fury (actually, that doesn't take much) and instantly attacked Bhandasura's army, mushing it into pieces. Bhandasura, showing a remarkable degree of astuteness, immediately hid behind an impenetrable forcefield and refused to come out. Kali was unimpressed by the sickening polyp's nauseating cowardice and just waited menacingly for him to emerge. When he finally did, she killed him very firmly and resoundingly into a sort of squashed paste.

Despite all that had happened, Ganesha was saddened and shed tears for the playmate that might have been...

Kali wasn't sorry at all. But a simple gift of a flower did calm her down again.

The appearance of my NWN Bhandasura is by no means the traditional one.

In the specific Maldrapur Chronicles chapter he turns up in, I've used quite a bit of Buddhism as well as Hindu tales and there are repeated uses of cubes of clay, ash, etc, of varying sizes in assorted puzzles and events in the Module. Wanting a different sort of look for Bhandasura, to set him apart from some of the other characters and to enhance the fact that he's essentially a "construct", I decided to try and make him look as if he had been entirely formed from these cubes of ash, rather like children's toy blocks... except his head; he just looked bloody daft with a cuboid head... The cubes have then taken on a strange appearance as he has infused himself with nasty warding magics, Spleen fashion.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Nandi, the sacred bull, acts as vahana (steed) to Lord Shiva and also assumes the role of his doorkeeper. Statues of Nandi are commonly found all over India, often guarding the door to shrines in temples devoted to Shiva. There are also temples dedicated to Nandi alone. Given that this seated bull figure turns up so profusely in India, naturally I have to have it in Maldrapur too...

But, in Maldrapur, nobody is worshipped more highly than Kali herself. So, to go with her new, personalized temple and the old statues, I've also added these decorative pillar stones with the lady in question painted on them. These look nice flanking gates and that sort of stuff.

"Is there no end to all this Indian stuff?" you ask... Well, leaving soon for India, as mentioned above, so I'm not going to get some of the farcically large and ambitious list done before departure and thus, yes, there will be an end soon and it'll have been tested to perdition and thrown on Kali's page on the Vault where you can go and examine it and poke it cautiously with sticks in case a Timingila bursts out and bites you...

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Carpets! I got Carpets here and I'm not afraid to use them!

Yes, I know all the Maldrapuri Carpets I did last time were circular. Yes, I know these ones are all circular too... Yes, I have seen numerous examples of Carpets in India that are not circular - as well as many that were... but for some reason known only to one of my comprehensive collection of aberrant mental quirks, I have a rabid, zealous belief that every single Carpet on the entire island continent of Maldrapur is circular, probably for theological reasons. So they're circular.

You want PHoD Indian Carpets, then you have to have circular ones; this is not a democracy. This is Absolute Carpet Totalitarianism. (This is dribbling insanity, you mean; Fifi).

Technically, not all these Carpets are actually Carpets... No! It's the Feared CARPET MIMIC! You walk on it and it engulfs you and you die and... No, sorry, ignore me, I became momentarily strange. (Momentarily?! Fifi)

In fact, amongst the Carpets are a few Diwali Rangoli designs which are traditional circular patterns painted, chalked, etc on the ground - sometimes of amazing complexity. Diya lamps (see earlier post) are then placed at symbolically significant parts of the patterns.

But as they were circular I just threw them in with the Carpets - and anyway, there's no reason they can't be used as Carpets... though one or two might look a bit painted for Carpets... but... I suppose if Moths ate your Carpet and you couldn't find a replacement, you could just paint a Fake Carpet on the floor - and watch with glee as the irksome and malodorous Moths hurtle down to eat it and thus pan into the floor something chronic and mush! (Obviously I'm talking about nasty little Spleen Clothes Moth type Moths that devour fabrics, not nice, proper, Nectar-Sucking Moths which bounce off your lightbulbs if you let them against whom I have precisely no ill feelings at all... I'll just shut up now. (Not before time; Fifi).

[CaveGnome]

Oooh.... Carpets ! Little underground people love carpets ! So comfy... And you get them with those colorful mandala patterns ! And, these are really, totally, wonderfully, ROUND !!!! CaveGnome thanks PHOD with an improvised Kosakchok danse. This will be a good day, we got ROUND carpets...

[Tarot Redhand]

I know they are a bit mundane but any plans for including any ordinary Indian monkeys? BTW have a great time when you go, watch out for the wildlife, some of those monkeys are thieves! Oh, and don't forget to come back.

 

TR

[Mecheon]

Hope the whole India thing goes good! Mind this is coming from me who, y'know, occasionally just goes out into the backyard, sees a venomous snake and shrugs. Australia for ya.

[DM Frayne]

Hope the whole India thing goes good! Mind this is coming from me who, y'know, occasionally just goes out into the backyard, sees a venomous snake and shrugs. Australia for ya.

 

Are you sure that's what you really said? 

[kamal_]

Hope the whole India thing goes good! Mind this is coming from me who, y'know, occasionally just goes out into the backyard, sees a venomous snake and shrugs. Australia for ya.

Below is the list of all the things in Australia that won't kill you:

[Grymlorde]

Are you going to any of the Kali temples in Kolkata (Calcutta)? I also have a great appreciation for Kali and have wanted to go there but for some reason the wife insists on seeing her family (Delhi, Allahabad, Varanasi, Mumbai, Pune, Goa, and Bengaluru) instead. Something about the halflings who live with us and the importance of them meeting their cousins or some such nonsense. Oh well. Bon voyage.

[Tarot Redhand]

IIRC Australia is the only continent where the number of Venomous snakes outnumbers the non-venomous ones, on the whole planet.

 

TR 

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Grymlorde:-

Been to those temples in Kolkata on previous stays in India, but probably won't have the chance this time since we're going to be in the middle of nowhere...

We'll be way out in the Narayanpur part of the Abujmarh hill forests, pretty much the most wild and remote bit of Chhattisgarh, maybe all India... There's a reason Abujmarh translates in the local Gondi as "Unknown Hills". We'll primarily be looking for King Cobras - you'd be amazed how well an eighteen foot long snake that can rear up to be taller than a man can hide - since there's been very little done in the way of population studies in this area - since no sod ever goes there...

(That said, the museum have now told us that there might be armed groups of militant Maoist insurgents hiding in these forests, not to mention Indian Army units looking for them, so the local snakes, tigers, spiders, leopards and occasional crocodiles may be the least of our problems... Wouldn't be the first time we've been shot at in the field. Still, so long as we're allowed to shoot back... The people we're supposed to be working with in India are saying we should make maximum effort to show ourselves to be a scientific party and in no way military or political. WE, however, favour the stealthy approach of not being bloody seen in the first place. Also this doesn't scare off the animals we're supposedly looking for...)

Ho-hum.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Speaking of animals...

 

Tarot:- No monkeys here. The Kali Hak is primarily cultural stuff, so I'm not including any of the new Maldrapuri trees and flower bushes, nor any plain, ordinary animals - just Spleen Monster type things.

Besides, Maldrapur's wildlife is somewhat wilder than India's has been for the last few million years. I've added the Rajasaurus, now that I've finally got him done, as a sort of Royal Beast, with trained examples guarding the gates of Rajatnur. Also nearly finished a giant Gharial (think Rhamphosuchus) as well as a smaller, ordinary Gharial... I do have a couple of monkeys somewhere, improved and retextured from the existing monkey model... Eventually I'll probably do a PHoD More Or Less Completely Normal Animals Hak, just to balance all the assorted Weirdo - Mechanical - Mummified - Undead - Etc Animals I've done over the years.