I had this post in my drafts since the end of June so I think it's only appropriate to finally get to it. It's going to be a long origin story for sure, since I want to go through the initial inception of Caym (and a certain other character who's related to him) up until what he is now and what's in the store for him in the future.
It all started with the SCP Foundation - a site and community dedicated to writing about anomalous "objects" who have to be secured, contained and protected. Right now there's more than 2000 entries about many things, entities and places. I'm not gonna get into details about it but leave a link to their site, so if you like horror themed stories, go on and read em! The rest of this post will be about my characters so yeah... this is the cutoff.
Anyways, it all started with SCP-073 also known as Cain.
This is the very first fanart I did of him (in 2013 when I got into SCP) - the article described him as a heavily tanned male of middle eastern descent in his early thirties. Ironically this is the first time I started drawing dark skinned characters, lol.
Anyone who knows entry level Bible myths knows that Cain is the first murderer who killed his brother, Abel. In the SCP universe there is a skip that is named "Able" which is obviously implied to be Cain's brother (even though the SCPs were created in different times and the connection happened accidentally, but I'm not gonna get into SCP history here).
In short - we have a Cain and Abel. Basically, I really liked the characters and made a tumblr ask/rp blog where I RPed as Cain and answered questions and so on. I had a small following (it's a small fandom) but I got some loyal followers and askers and people seemed to like my approach to Cain. I dropped the blog a year ago or so... maybe even like 6 months. Sigh, I'll get nostalgic at this point so I won't mull too much about it.
Anyways, the blog part is very important, since on tumblr RP blogs you can get "magic anons" - someone sends you an anonymous message and makes your character do a thing or become something for a set amount of time. At one point I was sent a magic anon that would create an "evil twin" of Cain.
That was the inception of Caym - I actually looked up if there is any mythological being as an anti-thesis to Cain and there sure was. Caym is a demonic being based on Cain. He is a whisperer of birds and controls a small army of demons.
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Of Cain, originator of murder, consigned to Hell by early Christian writers.
In demonology, Caim appears in Ars Goetia, the first part of Lesser Key of Solomon as a great president of Hell, ruling over thirty legions of demons. Much detail is offered: he is a good disputer, gives men the understanding of the voices of birds, bullocks, dogs, and other creatures, and of the noise of the waters too, and gives true answers concerning things to come. (Source - Wikipedia)
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So if you ever wondered "what's with the bird theme?" this is why - Caym is a demon bird. Even though there are other things mentioned as his powers, I stuck to the bird theme. Especially since a bird seems very silly for an evil or demonic being.
If I'm not wrong - this is the first ever drawing of "evil Cain" - honestly it's just a sneaky version of him with slicked back hair, easy to identify. This is from 2014.
This is from late 2014 (obviously Christmas, hence the mistletoe) where you can see that Caym got a more "unique" design - basically I replaced the metallic arms that Cain had with a carapace. Another thing - Caym and Cain had a slow burn romance with them eventually becoming a "real" couple. I don't remember at what time - Valentine's maybe? I think it was during another festival.
What matters is this - I made an alternate version of a character and then fleshed that version out into a full character of his own and even made him have a meaningful relationship with his other self (sounds kinda weird but whatever). There's a lot of self-made lore for Cain and Caym and that is the main reason I never wanted to drop the characters completely.
Obviously I had to drop whatever mention or related to the SCP foundation because the SCPs are not my intellectual property and it would be stealing. Bible myths, however, are not an unknown source of inspiration - so characters based off Cain and Abel are not something unheard of. Probably Ars Goetia is also well known enough around demonology buffs so I thought "to hell with, time to unshackle myself an make something new from the inspirations I got".
Ironically, Caym and Cain's quest to become unique characters started with an AU of SCP Foundation I made. I took more human characters from the Foundation and created an alternate universe where the humanoid skips ruled and rebelled against the establishment. Edgy.
I liked the concept so I wanted to drop the SCP part and make my own story (this is also the inception of my current Walpurgisnacht universe). Originally it was a sort of x-men like universe where people with "abilities" and "regular" people coexisted, more or less.
This will be the first concept art of my skips-turned-to OCs universe.
Ok, the drawing is hard to see because it's really light but I'm not gonna besmirch an artifact, ok? This is from 2015. Pay attention to the first row - Caym and Yin.
At this point I changed Cain's name to Yin (and now he is Qa Yin). Qayin is the old Hebrew spelling of Cain, I think it even has a similar pronunciation.
Yin's first design was a bit cringy - instead of giving him prosthetic arms I made him into an android. He used to be a human but got badly disfigured, paralyzed from the neck down. His brain was transplanted into an artificial body. The plot twist of this story was that Caym was indirectly responsible for this.
Eventually I dropped that concept of Yin mainly because I decided sci-fi and fantasy is hard to mix so I just went with witches and magic. I even the dropped the "different abilities" shtick and now am sticking to the concept of witches, druids, clerics and maybe bards. Eventually I will elaborate on that too.
This is a drawing from last year, 2016, and Yin's almost-final design. As you ca see, the only thing I kept is the fact that he's a dark skinned middle eastern man. I mean, not that I'm so good at drawing you could discern his ethnicity just from a drawing but whatever. Since my story is set in a fictional universe - he belongs to a cultural/ethnic group that is loosely based on ancient Sumeria. Sumeria is basically the ancestral land of modern day Iraq so - middle eastern inspired it is.
If you're asking "why ancient Sumeria instead of modern Middle East" and it's purely because of the religion - Sumeria was polytheistic so I'm basically making the fictional group also have a polytheistic society. Religion is something I will elaborate on too in the future.
The tattoos Yin has are a part of his cultural and familial legacy so it will take some time until I get the design down as it's very important to his story.
Right now Qa Yin of Gala and Set (that is his full name, they don't have last names but a sort of title like name denoting their parents) is a priest in the temple of the moon. In his society, religious figures are authorities in many questions and held in high regard. The countries itself are a mix of Theocracies and Democracies - Priests are the ruling class but many elected officials deal with more "earthly" business like internal and external affairs, economy etc. That's important but not important.
At this rate my story will have like 3 books as an addendum for the universe, loll.
Anyways, returning to Caym.
Jumping back a year - a drawing from 2015. Caym's initial design had him hide a tattoo with a bandaid (because that totally doesn't attract attention) and he also had prosthetic thumbs. Yeah, edgy. Originally he lost his thumbs because he got in cahoots with the wrong people. I dropped that idea mostly because it feels crowded - he doesn't have the thumbs or tattoo anymore now. The design is simpler and the story is less convoluted.
This is the most recent drawing of Caym that is "canon" - a chibi from 2017! As you can see, no more tattoo, no more prosthetic thumb. This is how Caym has evolved over the years.
Last note - as Caym is a familiar, it is important to show what his bird form looks like.
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| Source: Wikipedia. |
A black bellied hummingbird also known as Eupherusa nigriventis. Humingbirds are fast, small and love sugar. So does Caym - from an "evil twin" he has turned into a very hyper, bubbly guy who is always on the run. His story revolves around meeting Yin and reconnecting with his softer side and dealing with the traumatic events of his childhood. Yeah, Caym got an edgy backstory, a lot of the characters do, it's a sort of pre-requisite for living the underground witch and familiar life. But don't worry - most characters do earn their happy ending!
This concluded the post on Caym. I'm not sure what character I will talk about next. Not many characters have intricate origin stories but some characters are tied to interesting concepts. So I might use characters to tell about a group of people, perhaps the religion and other institutions of the world.
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