A series of still-frames from recordings of an abandoned world.

All illustrations drawn on a Wacom Intuos Art M, in 640 by 360 pixels, 1 bit per pixel.

Started on 2023-10-01.

Image: A stone wall connected with two towers with some grooves running vertically on their shafts. A diagonal bridge-like structure with an intricate framework connected to one of the towers, overgrown with hanging foliage. Several massive pillars, much bigger in diameter than the towers, can be seen up ahead in the distance. There is no one here—these ancient structures have stood there for centuries. Thick clouds spread across the sky; behind them a vague silhouette of a superstructure. Nothing but light rain and faint, calming wind.

Outer Expanse

Image: A view from the ruins of an old building. Its interior is a home to some bush-like species of plants with vines entwining the branches. The walls are worn down and decayed; a pile of rubble on the floor is what remains, but this gives way to a vast landscape up ahead. We don't see far into the distance, as the fog covers nearly everything. The crumbling temple looks outward in silence to some equally crumbling gigantic piece of machinery. A railway viaduct suspended in the air by a line of giant pillars stretches into the distance, carrying a caravan of train wagons. A transit control tower looms up above in front of a layer of thick clouds.

Sunken Pier [OE_RUIN04]

Image: Dappled, overexposed sunlight describing the defocused shape of a ground fissure on the surface, falling against the architecture in a dark, underground tunnel. The central part of the image is occupied by a stone statue with a very square head, large nose, wide mouth, and a hand that holds some sort of a spear. A similar statue can be seen a bit further up ahead next to two large pillars that reach all the way to the ceiling. This ancient architecture is contrasted by a line of train wagons coming from the distance. The sunrays reveal numerous little particles floating in the air; a thousand little grains against the solid, featureless darkness.

Subterranean

Image: Water flowing from wide, rusted pipes, falling into a small reservoir that covers an entire floor of an old building. It spans several corridors that go off into the distance, embellished with sparse foliage, stone columns, and faded graffitis. Some old machinery near the ceiling: never-ending pipes and huge valve wheels.

Drainage System [DS_B04]

Image: An industrial landscape. Alien-looking coral-like foliage thrives on the tops of soaring, spiraling spires. The atmosphere here is so thick that we can't see the bottoms of these; we might as well be miles above the facility, and the fall would certainly be deadly. The towering chimneys used to exhale something from the numerous vents scattered atop, but it's been centuries since they've functioned.

Chimney Canopy

Image: Beautiful tree-like flora that grows on a towering piece of old machinery. The plants resemble some sort of huge hands with 15-ish twisted fingers that spiral off in different ways like those L-system curved fractal trees; with each branch like a feather, the entire thing becomes a tail of a peacock. Some occasional ferns dapple the floor here and there. We must be pretty high up. Here, one can feel the purity of the air and the clarity of the clouds.

Sky Islands [SI_B07x]

Image: A ruined communications facility amidst a backdrop of dense, layered clouds. Our attention is divided; a colossal mast seen through an opening in the cloud cover, its intricacies veiled by the mist. Stretching far beyond the clouds, we could probably see the top but its details would be blurred from the sheer verticality. In the foreground, crumbling pillars that straddle the clouds, adorned with numerous dish antennas that have weathered the passage of centuries; their purpose now a fading echo of forgotten voices, long dead.

Communications Array [SI_A07]

Image: A desolate, pitch-black dungeon, illuminated solely by the faint glow of neon signs with alien-looking symbols etched on the back wall and the radiant light emitted by three specimen of a rodent-like species that has the ability to glow in the dark. Two of the mice are peacefully sleeping, suspended from the rugged ceiling by their long, stretchy tails, while a third mouse, positioned closer to the foreground, remains vigilant with one eye open, casting a soft, ethereal glow that pierces through the gloom.

Shaded Citadel [SH_B05]

Image: Strange mechanical serpents peek from the murky water among a pile of rubble; their heads are covered in some sort of gears and elongated bug-like antennae. We seem to be in the middle of nowhere: a gigantic stretch of water engulfed in thick, blinding fog from every direction. A calm breeze carries the waves off into the distance.

Shoreline

Image: A long elevator shaft seen from above. The glancing sunlight hits its circular wall segments at an angle, but doesn't reach very far—from our point of view, the pit might as well be bottomless. Deep down we see glimpses of some bridge-like structures that connect the openings in the wall of the shaft, but that's about it; anything deeper is covered in total darkness. On the surface, directly above the opening hang the remains of a mechanism, covered in creeping vines. It looks like the mechanism is missing some bits that perhaps fell down into the abyss.

Pipeyard [VS_H02]

Image: Two cephalopod-like creatures with insectoid wings playing with each other by spinning around in circles among the flooded ruins of a train station. There's something yin-yang-ish in their colors and the way they are rotating in the air. Their quick and blurry movement contrasts with the threatening stillness of the scene—massive train wagons hang above a collapsed bridge, almost by a thread, as if a tiny breeze could push them from the tracks into the lake below. Some sunlight pierces through the ceiling; the scene almost looks like an oasis in this dilapidated landscape.

The Floor [LC_C08]

Image: A sterile chamber with strange bio-mechanical creatures. Its central part is occupied by an arrangement of latticed memory matter hovering in front of a large circular window lit solely by an artificial spotlight. Long tentacles with creeping tendrils, weird fronds on arms made out of bone-like segments, schools of glowing firefly-esque insects—everything floating by as if completely submerged in a liquid. Every creature, no matter how small, seems to have a great purpose here. A faint sound of a heartbeat can be heard through the walls.

Five Pebbles (Memory Conflux)

Image: Tall and thick fungal-like plants with stems reaching towards the sky, a sky that is somewhere out there, beyond the fog. These crops used to be cultivated in those trenches, spaced out evenly on multiple long rails called Linear Farms that stretch into the distance. The plants are neither blooming nor withering away, as if completely frozen, waiting an eternity for their harvest. Acres of dead flora. Swathes of useless farming plots. Fields of gently swaying grass.

Farm Arrays

Image: A decorated skull of a deer-like animal, stuck on a tall pole amidst crumbling landscape. Its bones are embellished with various painted ornaments and an ancient symbol in the middle of the frontal, all done with a thick coat of some blood-like substance. Shiny data pearls with holes crudely burned through their centers hang from the antlers, twinkling, tied together in chains with some sort of twined plant fiber. An uncanny aura envelops the totem, where wisps of smoke and mist dance in the air, shrouding the plantlife.

Outskirts [SU_C02]

Image: A long bridge stretching into the distance, its abandoned roadway now shattered from the merciless batterings of heavy rains. Miles above the ground, it usually would be completely shrouded by the fogginess of the clouds, but an opening in their cover reveals something else looming above, something worlds apart in size: a colossal superstructure, taking up half of the entire sky. The sheer scale and enormity of this megalithic fortress of machinery introduces us to our vast, chilling insignificance.

The Precipice

Image: A luminescent flower-like organism with a wheel-shaped top. The plant became the symbol for enlightenment due to its hallucinogenic properties — very long ago, the ancients would eat these and stare into the fire, momentarily letting go of their carnal selves. The strange energy radiating from the flower illuminates the surroundings, revealing contours of a lush jungle overtaking this underground water facility. Now overgrown with a thriving ecosystem and teeming with life, this place seems to be unaffected by the cold blizzards of the outside world; the nature will soon once again reclaim all that's left, and this new era begins right here, from the ashes of the old.

Undergrowth [UG_A20]

Image: A pack of eel-like creatures with long and wiggly bodies peeking out of the murky water, observing the viewer with great curiosity. Mostly biological beings which evolved from garbage-sorting purposed organisms, they primarily feed on plastics and metal prevalent in the dirty pools. The endless savannah-like landscape of towering trash hills battered under the rain and sun is a dangerous place, though one thriving.

Garbage Wastes

Image: A shrine on the edge of a primordial temple, hidden deep in the caverns beneath the earth. No light reaches this place; instead, the walls and columns are dimly lit by an ethereal glow of an ancient glyph etched into the back wall: an X within a circle, a symbol for enlightenment and ascension used long ago by the Ancients.

Depths [SB_A14]

Image: A night view from the edge of a megalithic construct, far above the clouds. The sky is a velvety black; the moonlight, reflecting off of the permanent shroud blotting the entire landscape, shapes out vague silhouettes of other distant superstructures. Up here, higher than almost any creature before us, we realize that this mass of pipes and machinery is just one of hundreds of worlds that stretch on the curvature of the planet, peeking out of the thick cloud layer. Despite the howling wind, and the rumbling of the downpours set by the rhythm of the venting cycles, for the first time in what seems like ages, the world is quiet.

The Wall [UW_F01]

Image: A ghost of a being, revealing itself, stuck between this world and the next. Emanating a glowing aura, it hunches over, observing the very core of our soul as if wanting to bless us with its infinite wisdom. Its appearance is a heavily distorted image of what it used to be: black hulking mass of its deformed body, tattered rags now reach and swirl like eldritch tentacles, its glistening golden scales fall like leaves and burn up in the air.

Atop the Tallest Tower [LC_highestpoint]