The Big Reveal - Part 5

End Game
(left to right, top to bottom)

Alright, I kinda see the surudaverse tale as a trilogy. Surudago will fight villains throughout, but these mostly destroy land and kill people. Each part of the trilogy, however, will culminate with a final villain, each with the power to destroy the earth, and life as we know it. These are the end-game villains.
Also, I've yet to decided what order I want them to appear in, since I've thought of multiple plots points, but some can only happen if they go in a certain order, which excludes other plot points that only work if they go in a different order. It's frustrating.

The Elder - This is basically my version of Cthulhu, yet to be given a proper name. He's undergone tons of changes in his design, and I still haven't found just the right one, but it looks something like this. I'm thinking a timeless beast, traveling through space in an asteroid (I figured the rocky exterior could be like outer armor, and he could just curl up into a ball of rock and shoot through space. Anyway, surprise surprise, it comes to Earth at some point, threatening destruction. A lot of his powers are psychic - levitation, etc - but he'll also be more than able to go toe-to-toe with any kaiju that he wants. I haven't really decided how he'll be stopped, but one idea I have is that he just gets bored and leaves mid-rampage. Anti-climactic, I know, but I've yet to come up with anything better.

Pestilence - Alright, I guess the four horsemen of the apocalypse aren't technically four entities, but they come together so I'm counting them as one villain. Pestilence is a sickly creature with open wounds who does little more than wander the land. As you can see by the smoke clouds surrounding him, he is extremely contagious, and I'm thinking he'll infect people with anything from cancer to ebola to a reanimation virus (I haven't quite decided).

Famine - I haven't finalized the design, but I want famine to look fat. Really fat. I like the body here, I just don't know how fat he'll end up being. Famine will appear probably in Africa, devouring fields, causing millions (more) to starve. Neither famine nor pestilence will really fight, but all the horsemen have nearly limitless regenerative powers.

Conquest/War - War is going to be the biggest threat of the four, as well as the de facto leader (while Death is as powerful, War is more cunning and strategic). Similar to the elder kaiju, War will probably have powerful melee and (passive) psychic attacks. Not that he'd need to use them much. I just picture a squadron of jets, en route to attack War. Nearing their target, one of the jets suddenly fires a missile at a teammate, and all hell breaks loose while they turn on each other. Also, I kinda want the elder to fight War at some point. I just think it'd be awesome.

Death - The most destructive of the horsemen. His greatest attack are three beam attacks, one from the mouth, and one each from the armor thing over each shoulder. I picture Death charging the beams (looking something like Godzilla's fins before he attacks), starting at his tail, and running along the tips of his spikes. Death would really just go around, firing at everything and killing as many people as possible. This is the biggest redesign I have to do, as the other three horsemen aren't really based on any creatures, to give them an alien (but not too alien) feel, so I'm going to have to come up with something that's not just a hulking dinosaur.

The hardest thing I found when designing the four horsemen, was which kaiju to make which horsemen. Originally, I had designed them exactly as they are now. I felt conflicted over whether to use the original horsemen, or the pop-culture interpretation. The biggest problem came when I wanted to color them. Looking at the bible, the colors given for each horsemen are given to the original horsemen: conquest (white), war (red), famine (black), and death (pale/green). Now, I didn't want to make war white, and then give the iconic red to someone else. Nor did I think black felt right for anything besides death. So, for a short time, I tried alligning the kaiju with the original horsemen, but that wasn't working either. I decided that, as the perception of the horsemen changed over time, so did the horsemen themselves (there will have been a few incarnations from history in the surudaverse). This basically fixed everything, as famine and pestilence split into their own, death became black, and conquest merged with war (also giving it the red/white coloring that I ended up really liking).

Also, I said three major villains. The elder, the four horsemen, and...where is the third? Well, let's just say...he's too big to draw alongside any of the other kaiju. Yeah, think about that. I'll try and get a picture up soon, but...I don't want it to be too underwhelming of a reveal.

CAMERA SHY:
There are a few kaiju that aren't included in the pictures. Originally, I had a dunkleostus kaiju, but after seeing a few on dA I axed it (I still want to do some sort of aquatic, prehistoric kaiju, though). Also, I plan on adding a kaiju based on ramphoryncus, not pictured because I thought of it after I drew these. There's a swarm of man-sized mosquitos, I imagine a cop driving into town, only to find it full of corpses sucked dry of blood, before the swarm attacks. I'll possibly tie them in as apocalyptic locusts. I drew a concept for giant leaches at some point, but I really just forgot about them, and I don't know what I want to do with them. Lastly is some sort of tunneling worm creature. I haven't done much work on it, and it may end up in the 'Our Hero' -verse.


[link] Variations on Surudago
[link] Wild Kingdom
[link] Artificial Abominations
[link] Earth Incarnate