In Part One of my overview of my weird science-fantasy campaign, I highlighted some of my S&S fiction influences of the setting, but not the more pure Sci-Fi and graphic art elements that helped to shape the world.
As you can see in the Artume Campaign Guide from the previous article, the setting takes place in a hollow world created by a chaos godling and has certain features that were inspired by fiction and film.
The idea of a hollow world lit by an internal sun is certainly nothing new in science-fantasy fiction. French author Jules Verne published Journey to the Center of the Earth in English in 1871, Willis George Emerson wrote The Smoky God in 1908 and Edgar Rice Burroughs brought us the world of Pellucidar starting in 1914.
The interior of Artume is divided into different domains that are stages for me to host the sandbox RPG adventures and they each have a distinct environment and “flavor” to them. The Lunar Wastes and the Moondust Sea are influenced by the novels and films of Dune by Frank Herbert, the oddball ’70s film The Boy and His Dog (adapted from a Harlan Ellison story) as well as the anime film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The look and feel of the wastelands was also shaped and influenced by the artwork of Moebius, Philippe Druillet, and Wayne Barlowe.
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