Design Brief

Between options 1 and 2, I have chosen option 1 because the feel of the prompt resonated. It was challenging to not to go where other creative minds have already gone. I started down the ‘Mad Max’ route, but was quickly deterred for blending in to the background.

Looking through movies like Dune, I finally started to incept my idea. I decided to make the world a paradise lost to natural and man-made catastrophe, its once-lush forests and large bodies of water burned away and replaced by dunes and sunbaked earth. All across the world a brave adventurer would be able to find great natural monuments and ancient structures from when the world was a venerable Eden. The struggle for power between different city-states across the planet eventually turned it in to a ghastly desert. Skeletal remains of forests and their long-extinct inhabitants still litter the sands. Now, descendants of the ancient city-states still compete for dominion over food, fuel and water. Nomadic barbarians who have broken off from the main ‘tribes’ wander the sands and take what they need, their minds cooked to madness by the unforgiving sun.

With the cataclysmic climax of the City States Wars and the destruction of the o-zone, the water supply on the surface quickly and all but the hardiest of plants withered away. The City States began to drill for water, awakening the insect horrors living beneath the surface of the planet.

There are a few sources of water on this planet, but none of them are easy or exact. One way that the humans collect small rations of water (say for emergency rations) is by using vehicle mounted moisture collectors. Because the world is so barren and dry, there are thin pockets of moisture that move around the planet. Another option is drilling for the water that is trapped in subterranean rivers and lakes, but the humans are not the only creatures actively searching for large water sources. The final source of water is the massive insects on the planet – the females carry a great deal of water inside their bodies as a means to incubate fertilized eggs. The males are the warrior caste of insect, exoskeleton armor, sharp claws, and deadly venom. The males have very little water on/in them and serve a singular purpose of protecting the females.

-The Antagonists:

- Savage humans that move around in nomadic raiding parties, searching for water transports from the main cities to hijack or for the insect creatures that are the main indigenous life forms on the planet.

- Insect creatures make their hives in subterranean desert caves, constantly digging new tunnels throughout the desert, only surfacing to hunt surface-dwelling creatures.

The clothing of people in this world is a mixture of Middle Eastern modern garb, modern military utilities, and some clothes inspired by the Wild West era of the United States. These three inspirations are both practical and designed to protect the wearer from intense sunlight.