[BLOG] WHAT IS COMING: KAKASHI // THE XENOVERSE

It’s been a while since the last update but that is because we’ve been hard at work. The art of balancing streaming and book production is something I’ve never quite mastered. But I’ve always put a focus on production. And I maintain the philosophy that getting more product out and into hands should take priority over fluttering away your time on social media and in promotion.

So, what’s been going on?

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been slaving away on Kakashi: Murder Dolls while our colorist powers through some of the most detailed environments in Wonder Island.

While we’ve finished all of the storyboards for Kakashi. Amazingly, Yuka’s roughs are better than a lot of other manga artist’s final art, but she is nothing if not a perfectionist. So, we find ourselves essentially drawing the whole book twice to clean it up. It’s a habit I am working hard to break her out of but its going to take more time before she is confident enough to go from straight frames to final art. At her current rate, I’m confident that she will break through the barrier by our next book. Which should allow us to complete it even more quickly than Kakashi.

Unfortunately, the real problem we’re facing is the shading and texturing. While I was sure we could finish the 30-day manga challenge, I’d miscalculated by not factoring in the extra time it takes to shade and texture the book. It might seem like an amateur oversight in retrospect, I was basing her production speed on her work within Wonder Island. A book which had been intentionally left with a lot of white space so the colorist could really bring it to life.

Of course, if we were to do it pure lineart, we could have made it across the finishing line easily. However, I do not feel it would be a fair representation of Yuka’s art or the best product we could produce. So, it's going to take us a little while longer.

But don’t worry, it isn’t going to take months or anything. We’re still planning on getting it out fast. It will likely be fulfilled shortly after the close of the campaign after we bring it to market and we’ll hop right into the next book slated for release. Which, barring any last-minute change of plans, will be the SOVEREIGN SWORD SAGA—the SWORDO solo series that serves as a prequel to Wonder Island.

We’re excited and privileged to have the support of you guys. Without you, we couldn’t do this. Its nothing you have not heard before but we’re working hard to grow this company and build up our talent.

But enough about Yuka, what have I been up to?

I was on a stream recently where fellow Conquest Legend; the Spartan Scotsman took a playful jab at writers. He said that we can hammer out a script in just a weekend, which, for some I guess, is true. But it gave me pause to think, I don’t believe most folks at home really know the depths and lengths I go to with my writing and if anyone should know the secrets of my process, it should be you, The Thirteen Apostles of Conquest. So, without further ado, let me peel back the veil a little…

Kakashi: Murder Dolls – The Inception

The seeds for Kakashi: Murder Dolls started from the aether. Like most inspired works it came out of nowhere and struck like a bolt of lightning. Which, in and of itself, would be a huge part of the series itself. Log that one away in your memory banks, it will make more sense later.

I was trying to think of a relatable story for modern audiences, one which wouldn’t need to be entirely office politics with superpowers.

Earlier that day I’d been in a conversation with Yuka, passing along a few nuggets of wisdom about how you write a successful protagonist, and the importance of the everyman and relatability. So, I found myself pacing in circles thinking of things that most comic and manga readers have in common. When suddenly it hit me, boredom. Everyone has been bored. We all hate our jobs. Tedium stinks at the best of times!

So, then I started thinking about what kind of jobs are boring. I thought of an old print job I used to do with a friend where we’d stand around all day, and on the day, someone was away or sick, the soul crushing boredom of standing alone and running a printer for 8 hours a day. The worst part was standing and trying to find something to do between loading the machines.

So I tried thinking of jobs that required people to stand around doing very little or careers with solitude or isolation. I knew for any new series to work (or be worth developing) I needed relatability along with a solid theme.

As I paced, I kept coming back to standing around and boredom. Then I remembered growing up in Ramornie, a little unknown corner of the wilderness far from the city. As kids my brothers and I would play war, we’d hang out with the neighbour’s kids, hunt snakes, smash fire ant nests, and always complain about how bored we were because the remoteness made it feel like there was nothing to do.

That’s when it came, I’d set it on the farm. The lead character would be a Scarecrow. A thankless sentinel that spends nearly all day bored but must rise to fight against a monster that threatened to destroy the crop they protected.

From there, it wasn’t a long jump to the villains being crows. Crows are common throughout anime and manga, influencing and inspiring countless mangaka – but arguably, most notably Death Note. Similarly, they are prominent figures in the zeitgeist, folklore, and mythology. I knew I could use elements associated with corvids as touchstones but also that I wanted to do something a bit different.

I’d found the seed of my idea. But now I had to grow it!

Was the scarecrow going to be an artificial lifeform? A living doll made of string and straw? If I went that route, it would be easy to make the character more charming and comedic. Comedy is powerful and well-written comedy is a sure-fire way to make a popular manga. Even if the rest of your writing is terrible, a well-timed gag or two can keep folks coming back.

But would I end up with the Pinocchio predicament and is that the story I want to tell?

No, that did not feel right either!

So, I pivoted my thinking, would this be the story of a man or a woman – a boy or a girl?

As I’m sure you all know I’ve been very vocal about first-time male authors writing for women. Especially in violent series as it can often come off quite poorly. I’ve written for women before but I was not certain.

In the end, I settled for developing the series about a woman. As the audience would be more forgiving of a less proactive woman, as to a man, who would be expected to be the catalyst for change in his own life. Its unfortunate for a woman to be stuck in a dead-end situation, bored, and submit herself to that fate. But a man who would do the same would be seen as weak, impotent, and more of a boy than a man. This definitely was not what I wanted.

In a way I thought of Kakashi as a working-class Rapunzel story, with the lead heroine toiling away for hours on end in a thankless dead-end career, only to explode into action and fight hordes of monstrous crows.

I’d give her a superhuman body, but rather than making her a Zombie-Girl, a lycanthrope, a vampire, or some kind of cyborg I wanted to do something a little different. But I still was not quite sure HOW, yet. Regardless, I had enough of an idea that I could bring it back to Yuka in casual conversation...

The concept and the pitch were simple and came up as a continuation of an earlier conversation:

SCARECROW (as it was originally titled), would be a post-apocalyptic story about a man (or a young woman) gifted an immortal body who spends their days bored in a field, making sure monster crows do not eat the food sustaining the last remnants of human civilization.

Nothing really to write home about, I know. But all the elements were there. It would be like Trigun meets the Walking Dead, except instead of folks roaming the sunburnt landscape or fighting off hordes of Zombies until they needed to move on, the Scarecrows would be the sentinels and the last line of defense against total obliteration.

Yuka heard the pitch, liked it, and as a gift began working on it. Of course, she put her own spin on things that would greatly shape how I told the story. First and most drastically, she decided that she would have TWO protagonists. She’d hinted at this before she had told me that she’d officially begun working on the book behind my back. I’d firmly disagreed with her at the time, as I felt with company it would take away the elements of boredom and tedium that I felt made the characters human. Likewise, I felt that having two protagonists in what I had envisioned as a smaller page count would make it harder to balance world-building, character introductions, and action in the first chapter. All problems we would ultimately run into, but nothing we could not overcome.

In the week leading up to the reveal, Yuka had routinely asked me questions about Scarecrow throughout the work day. She’d decided both the characters would be sexy, strong, and heavily Australian. This is something I probably would not have thought of doing on my own, but I recognized it for the seed of genius it was when the project was revealed to me.

When the project was finally revealed to me I was shocked and pleasantly surprised. Of course, there was a lot that needed to be adjusted, since, though well-intentioned, it was made of more of a foreigner’s idea about Australia and lacked a little authenticity in the dialect and attitude.

Yuka had done a great job, but if I was going to bring this to market, what would be the best way to do it?

While we butted heads over the two lead protagonists, the project was made with love, the pages were beautiful, and neither was going anywhere. So, I had a new job. I had to come up with how their bodies work, why they work, and a mechanism through which we can springboard this series into something bigger.

It started out with Lloyd Sawtell, named in honor of my old mentor and scout master, Lloyd See. While Lloyd Sawtell has a strained relationship with his adopted children (one we hope to explain and explore in future chapters), Lloyd See was a man of legend around these parts. So the two have very little in common other than name and the fact that he taught us how to shoot a bow, throw a knife, hunt, and survive in the rugged Australian bush.

Through Lloyd these two strangers would become siblings, bound together under an abusive drunk that made them the men they are and gifted them with a blessing, a curse, and a responsibility in a job that neither really wanted all that much.

So, we had the WHY for their immortal bodies. From there I needed to come up with HOW the STITCH SURGERY was performed. Then WHERE the surgery came from, which of course led us to the grand daddy question of them all WHO came up with it… and why?

By this point in the process, Yuka had called for the project to be renamed to KAKASHI, the Japanese word for SCARECROW and BAG OF BONES. Though I was reluctant and resistant initially, I would eventually rescind. Giving the series the full title of SACRIFICIAL SOLDIER SCARECROW, KAKASHI following a poll on Twitter – which in retrospect probably should have been held exclusively here on Patreon.

As I continued to develop the series, a supplier for their weapons was required. As was an explanation for a Japanese name in what was essentially an Australian setting. So, let's talk a bit more about that...

Setting the Setting

Recognizing the themes of APOCALYPSE within the series and hoping to expand the lore of the XENOVERSE further for our loyalist readers, I decided to set the series on the Planet Orhm. I’d grown quite fond of the designs and the idea of a potential crossover in the future seemed like something everyone would be able to enjoy.

So, the series was moved from Earth to the convergently evolved planet of Orhm. The company that developed the process would be called NOIRCO, a subsidiary of the Vanglorian Mega Corporation NME who salvaged their patented technology from the USSF Expeditionary Force sent to recon the planet. But more on them another time.

NOIRCO, is a play on our last Australian owned Dairy Company here in Australia (NORCO) and of course, the word NOIR. Meaning a series that depicts danger, violence, and mystery. NOIRCO would be a self-interested organization that had set themselves up as saviors during the collapse of civilization. Preying and feeding on the small communities while protecting them against the looming threat of apocalypse. In many ways they have much in common with Wayland Yutani from the Alien Franchise.

In the end the path forward was clear to me, like the proverbial lightning bolt that had given life to Frankenstein (see I told you we’d circle back to that), the Kakashi would be expendable soldiers, given an undying body by cruel and poorly understood science.

Like Prometheus having gifted fire to man, the science of NME is as dangerous and mysterious as it is enlightening. And so, it’s fitting that just like Prometheus, the Scarecrows, whose own bodies are as much a mystery to them as to the townsfolk who pay for their protection, their greatest enemy is a bird.

The How, What and Why of the Ziz.

Monster Crows. Pretty simple, right?

But maybe a little too simple. As the franchise took form, we’d gone from being uncertain about the protagonist(s) to a rich world full of conspiracy, intrigue, sex, and ultraviolence. But I wanted more from the Ziz, who were at the time called “The Murder.”

The XENOVERSE had been very carefully balanced, paced, and planned. So, fitting in Kakashi to that trinity without breaking the wheel was difficult. But the themes of Frankenstein and the cautionary tale of Prometheus made everything slot together so well. I wouldn’t just be telling an action-packed story with guns, sex, and violence, I could make it smart too. But that would mean I needed a smart antagonist…

Fortunately, corvids are one of the smartest creatures in the animal kingdom. So, after just eleven combined hours of research, I knew exactly what I needed to do…

The Ziz take their name from the giant bird in Judaism. A creature so large that when it spread its wings it could block out the sun and when a single egg from its nest fell and broke, cities were drowned in its yoke. But the Ziz of Kakashi aren’t quite that big.

The looming threat the Ziz pose is not obliteration or murder, they are not engines of destruction. Rather, they are ravenous agents of famine, so in many ways they have more in common with Locusts.

I wanted swarms of crows led by one or two truly massive monster birds, I wanted them to be more cunning and clever as they get older and the story behind them to rival those of the Titans in the popular manga series, Attack on Titan. If these were going to be something different to the Aulnaga of Xenotype,, I needed to explain EVERYTHING.

And I did, and I have, but we’re going to have to keep that a secret for the time being until the series develops. In fact, I went so in depth with the Ziz that I came up with an ecology, a life cycle, even down to their mating habits, the size and weight of their eggs. They are truly a fascinating creature, but that alone does not suffice.

With the Ziz came the Corvid, a mutagenic virus that decimated the urban centers, casting the last bastions of hope into the shadow of death. Only those who hid out in the bush would survive. And the world they’d create would become a very different one…

The Enemy I Know…

While the Ziz are the common enemy, the perpetual threat, just as often the fear of outsiders is a driving factor within the series. As mentioned above, NOIRCO are a secretive organization, but an essential one. Employees within live in heavily guarded outback fortresses where they trade food and technology, and where the most vile ne'er-do-well or desperate of homesteaders can sell children to train as the next generation of Kakashi.

Outback Raiders are commonplace too, as sometimes the safest way to survive is by spending your life running and plundering the ashes of Pre-Collapse Civilization or taking from others weaker than yourself.

The Lost History of World

It only takes two generations for a skill or certain piece of knowledge to completely vanish from the world and Kakashi is set 75 years after the Collapse. The grim shadow of famine and pestilence settled over the old world and as the seeds of neo-civilization sprout from the ashes of Tartary, the brave men and women of the new world can only speculate at many of the wonders that came before. Those outside of the Noirco Fortress Compounds are too busy to worry about what came before. Their modern lives are too preoccupied with survival to be worried about minutia, invention, or the higher sciences.

You Dream Big but what do you Actually Do?

Even small children can dream up a world. What I do isn’t rocket science, but there is a logic and a rationality to it. I do not just make things up as I go along. Everything happens for a reason. Everything I do drives the story forward, there is very little waste in anything I write. Dialog often has hidden clues or double meanings, and I spend tremendous amounts of time developing full notes and working on world building that most folks will probably never see. To me continuity and consistency is key – consistency and continuity is everything!

The XENOVERSE isn’t just some arrogant or vain attempt to create my own superhero universe. It is a very carefully constructed world with rules, history, themes, and stories that are designed to speak to the human condition. Each painstakingly structured to tell a different part of a larger narrative, showcase a greater problem, and ask part of a bigger question…

XENOTYPE: APOCALYPSE is a story of submerged rage at an unjust world, finding family in the most unlikely of places, and forging your own path.

XENOTYPE: DREAMCATCHER is a story about fighting back against a corrupt system to pursue your hopes and dreams so others might find the courage to live and die free.

XENOTYPE: FATHOM is a story of conspiracy, seeking reform, and working within a broken system to use it for good.

While KAKASHI: MURDER DOLLS is a story all its own – it’s something else – but entirely as important. For it is the story of those who witness and must endure the changing of the world.
 While Esper, DK, and Devilmanta all seek to change the world in their own way, and may even succeed in their efforts… or find themselves at odds with one another, Kakashi is the story of regular people trying to survive the hostile changes made to the world by the ambitions of others.
Its ultimately a story about people fighting to protect their homes, their families, and their very futures from destruction while faced with the frightening reality that even the gift of an immortal body is utterly meaningless if you’ve got nothing to live for.