Woodsman's Journal for No Mercy for Monsters
I decided to pick up the game No Mercy for Monsters. Played my first set of trials, and recorded the results below. If I can keep my ADHD brain focused enough to keep coming back to it, I will post more entries on this blog so they will be available for others to read.
Warning: this game deals with some significant trauma inducing concepts and not in what would be called a healthy way. Consider this your content warning.
A note on the art: I don't love what I've produced so far. That said, I'm enjoying the process, and the concept I'm working through. The game No Mercy for Monsters is designed from the ground up to be about extreme absolutes. Black and White. Light and Dark. Good and Evil. So I thought the art I do for this experience should match that. So here's what I'm giving myself as limitations:
- Black and white only.
- 15 minutes or less per image. This is fast for me. Even for simple sketches, let alone in a process I'm not used to (more on that), but I think that will add to the disjointed / chaotic feel I'm going for.
- Break my normal process. I'm using 'select and fill' in Procreate to create black shapes and then delete from them for the white shapes.
- Chunky. Chaotic. Violent. Alien. These are the concepts that I think fit the game, so...
Day 1 of The Hunt
It didn’t take me long to find the Beast’s trail. It’s sloppy. Overconfident. It taunts me. I’m equipped, and I’m ready. It will fall before me, and not Hell itself, nor any of its minions will stop me from ensuring the Beast’s demise. I’m sorry, Mother and Father, but I will see your killer dead.
4♢ - Nightmares plague me
I woke up in a cold sweat. My dreams were a chaos of tearing flesh and bloody claws. Teeth gnashed and rent clothes and skin alike. The fire in the creature’s eyes, though - that was worse than any simple wound. It’s as if it was fueled by the life of my loved ones. It gleefully burned away my life and love. It raged atop everything I held dear and mocked me for my inability to stop it.
6♤ - The blood imprinted monolith
It’s massive. The monolith stands at least ten feet in height and is made of… obsidian? Black as the Beast’s soul and smooth as glass save for the terrible etchings. Men, women, and children changing into wolves. But that’s not right. Calling what they become wolves is like calling the ocean a puddle. Calling the mountain a step. My heart, upset.
The bloody hand claw print on the thing is massive. Double the size of my own, not small, hand. The damned thing mocks me. Its message is clear “Keep coming… you’re almost here…”
2♢ - A scrap of the Beast’s clothes - and their scent
The fire burned low, with only glowing embers to light my camp before I realized that I’ve been holding this scrap of cloth to my face, smothering myself with the scent it holds. My knuckles are white with my fervor. It smells… dainty. Feminine. Just another of the Beast’s lies. Or perhaps its most recent victim? I would throw it into the fire, but I just can’t. I can’t help but feel like it will somehow keep me on the demon’s trail.
J♡ - The corrupted girl + 1 dot + roll (8)
She lays in the snow, a withered husk of a person. Her arm is in tatters, and blood flows freely from the wound and stains the white around her. I know this girl, and she’s not much older than me. There is nothing for me to do for her. She is yet another in the long line of victims the Beast has left in its wake.
Her eyes seem locked on mine. They beg me to make this right. One more soul on the pyre.
10 ♡ - Laying down on a river rock - a memory of a similar moment - who was I with?
After rinsing the sweat and grime from my face in the river’s waters, I lay down on the large, flat rock. It’s stupid of me. The babbling of the waters around me deafen me. The Beast might find me here and finish this Hunt once and for all. Let it come. I’ll dye this river red.
My mind drifts like the water. As the sun fights its way between the tree limbs above me, I recall a time far in the past. Father was rinsing the wash in a river not so different from this one while I jumped from rock to rock along the river’s edge. It’s a fleeting memory, and gone the instant my mind shows me once again how my Father looked the last time I saw him. I can taste the blood in my mouth where I’ve bitten through the flesh of my tongue.
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