Unhallowed Metropolis: Portrait of a Mourner

I spent my Saturday night in a vintage warehouse loft, knee-deep in lace and gore, screaming orders to a slew of photographers in goggles and bowlers, dabbing flour and dirt on zombies, whores, and aristocrats.

I am a mercenary artist, and this was strictly business.

Unhallowed Metropolis is a tabletop roleplaying game set in a dim and sooty future. I had sworn off working on RPG books; the pay is shit, the fame nonexistant, and the work is grueling. But after hearing the concept for UnMet, I pledged to contribute to one more franchise.

It has been two hundred years since first the outbreak of the Plague, when without warning the dead rose, hungry for the flesh of the living. No nation was spared. Everywhere, they prowled the streets, killing and spreading the infection as they passed. For each victim claimed, a fresh animate joined the ranks of the risen. As panic and mass hysteria gripped the public, the cities were abandoned. Countless millions perished in the chaos that followed. Overnight humanity found itself on the brink of annihilation. Seventy percent of the world's population succumbed to the Plague, secondary epidemics, and the mass starvation that followed.

The year was 1905, the dawn of a new dark age.

The purpose of Saturday night was to throw a raging costume party, andby association, fill out the rest of the book’s illustrations withphotographs. We got thousands of pictures, which I am currently wadingthrough. I will choose the best ones and give them an age treatment inPhotoshop, then they go into the book.

Over the week I’ll be posting some of our results. At ToM, we lovezombies and steampunk only slightly less than we love squid. Florianasked me to bring some of my UnMet stuff in, and I will make him ruethe day.

This first piece is one of the few that I took myself. Portrayed hereis a Mourner, a character class that describes a professional woman whois hired by grieving families to attend the bedsides of the recentlydeceased. There she stays for three days, veiled and silent, watchingfor signs of reanimation. At the vaguest twitch or slightest groan,
she decapitates the beast with her kukri. Mourners lead lives ofdignified chastity, absolutely devoted to the arts of stillness andobservation.

Model is Nicole Vega, one of the two head writers on the project. As with all images on ToM, you may click to see the large version.

Unhallowed Metropolis [Official Site]