After spending so much time with InfestedRL, I think it’s time to give some updates on my ultimate dream – Splintered Core.

In this post I am going to talk about a town in Oasis: Moonstone.

Moonstone

Moonstone was originally an isolated village in northern Oasis that produced some of the best rice wines in the region, which was a fact kept secret by a circle of merchants who traded the wine in the black market, passing them for premium wines. When the desertion began and the dark age set in, the merchants stopped coming, and Moonstone turned further inward, fighting desperately to protect their people from the ever rising bandit traffic.

Somewhere around the late dark ages, a squad of the Talos clan (who later merged with rogue Lorekeepers to form the Awakened Order) stumbled into the village, and through a series of coincidences managed to help the village drive away a massed bandit assault, winning them great respect from the normally isolationist villagers. Soon, the village was integrated into the folds of the Talos clan, and enjoyed a decade-long period of peace from bandits and raiders.

When the confederacy-crissen conflict broke out, Moonstone became the staging ground for the Talossa Shadowblades, and was almost razed to the ground when the confederacy successfully deciphered the mutant freedom fighters’ radio codes, leading to the compromise and massacre of almost two complete battalions of Shadowblades in Redwater (an incident famously remembered in the Awakened Order’s history archives as the “Day of Black Blood”).

After the Talos were exiled during the formation of the Combine, they returned to Moonstone, packed their bags, and traveled south to eventually form the Awakened Order. Those that remained in Moonstone returned to their isolationist lifestyle, brewing delicious and intoxicating rice wines for self consumption.

Moonstone serves as an opening vignette for the game, and is the player character’s hometown of sorts. The area will play out as a flashback, when the player was still a little kid, and teaches the player all controls of the game.

However, like all towns in Oasis, there’s a secret in there if you look hard enough. Over the course of the actual game, the player will eventually find a way to return to the village (or what’s remaining of it), and discover an important hint to his birthright.

Now that we’re done with the village, let me add in some work in progress artwork and concept arts:

A ruined arch in the middle of the forest:

High resolution model of the character:

High resolution model of a mutant enemy: