Category: Activity Report

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The Abyss – Re-illustrated and Bonus Images

A while ago — to be honest, at the beginning of 2019 — when I decided to open the Gates to The Realms of AbyssalEros, one story of mine, which I wrote many, many years ago in German, came to my mind immediately.

After I started translating, I realized that the original German story needed a good deal of proofreading and revision, which took longer than anticipated, but finally, in October 2019, “The Abyss” was ready to be unleashed.

While I am not a megalomaniac or insane — at least not more than other creatives — I confessed already that parts of the story are autobiographic. However, due to the nature of the story, I still will keep secret which parts precisely; but you are free to guess.

In 2019, I also started to learn to do digital arts with DAZ Studio and Photoshop. And although I was a bloody beginner, I tried to illustrate my story with a few rendered images. But unfortunately, my skills at those times were nearly as limited as my 3D content library, and in addition, my rig at that time was very outdated. Thus, I was never really pleased with the outcome of the images.

Meanwhile, I am a bit better with digital arts and postwork, and when I pondered what I could initially offer for a DeviantArt subscription, I decided to revisit the images of my first translated short story and re-illustrate it. Thought and done.

However, I got a bit overboard with myself and rendered a few more images of the second and third scenes of the story as a bonus. They are just a bunch of different camera angles, different perspectives, close-up details, and more to behold the beauty of the luscious succubi from all directions.

I already uploaded the re-illustrated story and all the images to my Patreon page, where patrons of mine could find them (I now only need some patrons).

But from now on, you can also decide to become a subscriber of mine at DeviantArt, where I will offer all the naughty and lewd art that is too kinky for the public audience within The Kinky Corner.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

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The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 7

Today, in the seventh (and likely last) part of my activity report, I will talk about worldbuilding and developing background stories for the Trinity-verse.

As those of you who follow the Society of Lust know, I have created the Trinity-verse based upon our own world. However, to make this world more thrilling and different, I changed the history of this twin of our earth.

The earth of the Trinity-verse is geologically and geographically mainly identical to our world. ‘Mainly’ because the sovereign archipelago state of which the metropolis of Trinity is the capital is not part of our reality.

It is from this city that will play a significant role in the lore of My Life with Laura that the Trinity-verse takes its name from.

Or may I have even a more secret agenda? Why is the capital of that still unrevealed archipelago called Trinity in the first place? Could there be more behind that name?

And those of you who now think it could have something to do with one of the monotheistic religions of our reality are totally wrong. I will not tell you more at this point, as it will be spoiling you. Therefore, I kindly ask you to wait a bit more until everything is revealed within the unfoldings of My Life with Laura.

From a chronological point of view, the Trinity-verse is similar to our own time. However, in the past of the Trinity-verse certain historical events did not occur that influenced our own world’s developments up to the present day. Therefore, the geopolitical situation of the Trinity-verse can hardly be compared with ours.

As you might know, I am a “former” historian, and while many historians disdain it, I often ask myself, “What if?” concerning certain historical events. This is also called “Counterfactual history.” While it is not the same as “Alternative history,” they still have a lot in common. However, while the former is “a method of historical research, [that] explores historical events with an extrapolated timeline in which key historical events either did not occur or had an outcome different from the historical record,” [Source] the latter is far more known outside historical debates and also more entertaining in the form of fiction.

I only point that out because I try to use what I learned throughout my long historical studies to create a plausible alternative timeline for the Trinity-verse by changing certain key historical events or removing them altogether from it. Naturally, the world of the Trinity-verse and its alternative history is still speculative fiction, but I try my best to make it as plausible as possible.

Once again, I hope you will forgive me for not saying too much on this topic, as I intend to have you, the reader/player of the games set within the Trinity-verse, discover the rich lore by yourself. Unearthing this lore and pondering its consequences for the plot will be a significant factor in My Life with Laura. And I really do not want to spoil you in advance.

However, I can tell you that one of the key elements I changed has to do with a particular Egyptian pharaoh and his religious policy, while another key event is a political one of ancient Roman history. In my conviction, these and a few other minor changes would have caused a chain reaction that would have altered the flow of historical events.

Problematic with that approach is as farther down in history you make changes, the greater the diversion from our timeline becomes, and the less accurate or predictable following events become. My alternative history is just that, a fictional one, and while it is, at least for me, closer to the “Best of all possible worlds,” it is certainly not the best, as that would just mean a boring utopia with no stories to tell.

The changes I have made led naturally to a hugely different geopolitical world, which means that most countries and beliefs we know from our world are either hugely dissimilar or do not exist in the Trinity-verse. This is neither a political statement of mine nor any form of discrimination. But if you are either a prude or a hard-line nationalist, I am sure you will not be happy with my world.

As you can imagine, I have a lot of notes, outlines, diagrams, and rough maps that I’ve made over the years to help flesh out the background and lore of the Trinity-verse. After all, I need to rewrite more or less nearly 3,500 years of history and politics.

Unsurprisingly, this task is by far not done yet, as it is a colossal undertaking, but I have already more than enough material to fill several booklets. However, I have already enough suitable material to make the world and its history believable and unpredictably interesting as nothing will be, as you might assume. Initially, you will not notice any differences compared to our world, but soon enough, you will stumble upon clues that the Trinity-verse is indeed different. How much you will find out yourself while you delve inside the story of My Life with Laura.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

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The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 6

Welcome everybody to the sixth part of my activity report. Today, I will tell you about my fantasies of omnipotence and my glee to torture innocents.

I am just joking. In fact, today, I will talk about being a roleplaying gamer and game master for most of my life, what it means to me, and why it is part of my activity report series.

I have been a role player since the classical D&D red box — and a game master since not much later when the second first German RPG was published in 1984 (and yes, I own the original „indexed“ box). Aside from that short period — okay, it was not that short, as it lasted until 1989 —with Das Schwarze Auge, known in English as The Dark Eye, I later came back to AD&D with its second edition, where I discovered my lasting love for the Forgotten Realms by Ed Greenwood.

Naturally, I played and/or game mastered a lot of other systems, and I collect a lot just for the fun of reading them. But the Forgotten Realms, with all its subsidiaries, like The Horde, Kara-Tur, Matztica, and Al-Qadim combined with Planescape, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft, is and stays my all-time favorite.

In this thrilling mix of settings, I created a campaign in the mid-‘90s, which started right before the Time of Troubles in the year of 1357 DR.

After all those years, this campaign is still going on. But, unfortunately, we had a very long break because of all the issues life imposed upon all of us, and not to a small degree because of my mental breakdown.

When we resumed playing irregularly a few years ago, we switched first from AD&D II shortly to D&D 3.0/3.5 and then to Pathfinder. We also tried out D&D 5. But meanwhile, we use a custom rule mix of the Pathfinder system ported to fit the Forgotten Realms setting how it was before D&D 4). And yes, we totally ignored D&D 4 (rules and Realmslore) and do the same with the actual D&D 5 rules and lore, as we regard them rather as a form of HeroQuest Enhanced instead of being a suitable TTRPG system for our tastes.

Initially, we started to play in the world of Golarion from the Pathfinder setting, as our group is hugely reduced in strength compared to the good old times when we were between 6 to 8 people around the table. We used that time to get ourselves comfortable with the new system; however, my players and I were never thrilled with the world of Golarion, as it just sucks. Eventually, my players, who are also my lifelong friends, nudged me to continue our campaign in the Forgotten Realms, of which I was a long time opposed. I was opposed to that idea as we stopped our campaign around 2005/2006 with 7 players right before a climactic event, and I feared that continuing there would spell certain doom to them. Especially as we still had issues with understanding some rules — mainly because the translators of Pathfinder into German often had no clear understanding of the rule mechanics and apparently at times also had problems understanding the English text. At the same time, they generally lacked the skill to write coherently in German.

After I figured out that most rule issues are based on bad translations, I started to translate the rules myself and declared my translations to overrule any official German rule texts. I fear, in the end, I will have translated most of the rules, so fucked up are the official German translations.

Playing again in the Forgotten Realms also means I need to rework many a spell (mostly renaming them) and many a monster (either by recreating unique classical D&D monsters with Pathfinder stats or using the Pathfinder stats of monsters known in both systems, but with the monster description of the original D&D (Forgotten Realms) version, as those also suck in Pathfinder). Not to mention that I need to convert whole pantheons and their clerics and priests with their powers from D&D 3.0/3.5 to Pathfinder.

As you can see, these alone are massive undertakings, and I still have not talked about all the time needed to work myself back into the lore of the Forgotten Realms and our campaign after so many years.

Unfortunately, we started to resume our campaign right when the pandemic emerged in 2020, and thus we had not much time to seriously play yet. But, on the other side, that gave me enough time to get back into the material, and meanwhile, my players tell me that I am on a good way back to the glorious day of being the best game master they ever knew. I am trying my best to fulfill their expectations – and mine.

I love torturing them with my devious imagination, scaring the shit out of them with my adversaries, stealing their breath with intriguing adventures, and intoxicating them with fantastic plots.

Being a game master is my devotion as much as being a writer — and to be honest, for me, there is no clear distinction between them as I spin tales with both pastimes. And I love to tell stories! My own character is not by chance a bard.

You can imagine, I spent a lot of time reading and preparing the last two years, and doing so inspired my creativity and gave me itches to write more fantasy stories — once more.

As, hopefully, the pandemic is lessening its grip, we resumed playing every second Friday for a while now, and we have a lot of fun doing so. But that also means I need parts of my spare time to prepare those game nights, time that I cannot work on the projects for the Society of Lust or on the content for The Realms of AbyssalEros. However, as being again a game master inspires my creativity, you will eventually profit from it, too. Promise.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

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The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 4

While I gave you a report about my translation works last time, today I will sum up my contributions to last year’s contests.

However, I will start already with December 2020, when I miraculously made first place in the 2020 3D Holiday Contest with my image of Santa’s Moonlit Pipe Dream and also made second place in the 2020 Writers Holiday Contest with my story, The Long Silent Night. I tell you this once more because I closed the year of 2021 with a follow-up story, The Annual Winter Fair of Elves, Gnomes, and Dwarves, which won first place in the 2021 Writers Holiday Contest.

In February 2021, I partook in three 3D art contests at Renderosity, the 3D Dolls Contest, My Greatest Catch Contest, and Pin-Up Poster Contest. Astoundingly, I managed again to make a place, namely the third one in the 3D Dolls Contest with the image Master of My Universe. My contributions for the other two contests were My Greatest Catch and Cybernetic Burlesque.

In March 2021, Renderosity held an Animals & Creatures Contest, wherein I made third place again with my image, An Evening at Monsters’ Rest.

In April 2021, I joined two more contests at Renderosity, where I made third place once more with my image, Disappearing Humanity, at the Invisible Human Contest. But apparently, I am not that funny, as my contribution to the Funny Contest, Twiggy the Bouncer, had to stay outside the victory party.

In June 2021, I contributed my entries to the Watercolor and the Charcoal Contest of Renderosity. My contribution, The Black Guardian, made third place in the first one, while my contribution, The Lions, did not impress in the latter.

In July 2021, I partook with my image, Into the Dragon’s Lair, in the My Pet Contest, without success.

In August 2021, I sent the girls from My Life with Laura into the Swimsuit Contest with the image, Full Volley Fun, and contributed an illustration, The Prison of Venus Infernalis, for the Triptych Contest; both without success.

In September 2021, I contributed to two more contests, the Nostalgia TV Contest and the Film Noir Contest. Unfortunately, my images for them, The Adventures of Bloody Vicky and The Most Intimate Case, in that order respectively, failed again to catch any prizes.

In October 2021, I joined the fray of the annual Halloween contests with entries for the 2021 3D Halloween Contest: Los Días de los Muertos and the 2021 Writers Halloween Contest: 2 Sentence Horror Stories. My image entry, The Melancholic Chasing after Long-Lost Things, showing Tizia from the Trinity-verse, failed to climb the post, but my Horror Story entry, Void, made the first place.

In December 2021, I also joined the annual Holiday Contest with an image and a story contribution. That I made first place with the latter, I already told you at the beginning of this report; my image entry, Remembrance of Gramps, for the 2021 3D Holiday Contest: December Around the World was not so lucky.

Throughout the whole year, I also partook at every single contest at Slushe, and while usually most of my images got featured on that site, not once did one of my contest entries got featured, and thus my entries stayed unnoticed. However, I will not be bothering you again, how that eventually led to me letting Slushe behind me. If you want to know more and have not yet, check out parts 1 and 2 of this activity report series.

As you see, I was quite busy testing my skills in competitions, using those contests to force myself to improve. And I hope you can see my evolution and stay with me to see what I will come up with next.

Again I reached the second page of my report, but luckily I also reached the end of this part. Thus, see you next time.

Sincerely yours
AbyssalEros

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The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 3

Some of you know that in 2020 I translated the episodic kinetic visual novel Elsa‘s Nightmares, written by Tlaero from Tora Productions, into German as my gift for her un-retirement.

And later in September the same year, I informed you that I also translated their game Life Changes for Keeley.

However, since then, I have translated many more projects of them, which I have not told you about. So, here is the follow-up of everything I have translated so far.

In October 2020, Tlaero published her first text-based short story, Rain God, which is a sort of follow-up of happenings of Life Changes for Keeley.

Still in 2020, namely November, Tora Production started to publish another episodic kinetic visual novel, Elsaverse: Transitions, whose sixth and last episode was published in May 2021.

Already in July 2021 followed Westbank, another short story taking up the arch from Rain God.

In between, I worked on translating Mortze’s solo project, The Warrior’s Heart, of which, up to now, I translated roughly half of it.

On the 15th of December, Tora Productions published their next big game within the Elsaverse, Chasing Beth, and I had roughly 13 days of head-up time for the translation. As you might already assume from what I told you in the first two parts of my activity reports, I was not able to start working on the translation in December at all. And this bothered me immensely. Do not get me wrong; Tlaero and Mortze have never given me a deadline or demanded anything from me. In fact, they told me more than once, I could take my time.

Thus, the game was initially published without a German translation.

And already on Xmas eve, Tlaero told me that she had finished the next short story and was about to publish it very soon.

So, after all the troublesome times of last year and right after my birthday on Janus‘ Day, I set myself down to translate the short story, Sister, which is again in a continuity of the previous short stories. I finished this translation on the 6th of January, but it was published much later, namely on the 2nd of February, despite the original intention.

Right after that, I started with the translation of Chasing Beth, and I needed the rest of January to finish the translation of the impressive script (over 33.000 words on 79 pages) so that the German translation was published on the 30th day of the year 2022.

As you see, I spent a lot of time and effort on translations for Tora Productions, and that I did, because I really have high regard for them, so if you have not checked them out yet, do it now. And if you happen to be German-speaking, try the translations and tell me what you think of them.

However, I realized I cannot do that anymore, as I need the spare time I have to work mainly on my own projects, which naturally includes the projects of the Society of Lust. And thus, I wrote with a heavy heart on Thursday a letter to Tlaero and Mortze that I cannot translate their future projects anymore into German.

I am happy that they understood my reasoning and bear no ill-will for telling them right before they are about to publish their next project that I will not translate it, as I did with all their projects for the last two years.

However, now I reached the second page of my report once more, and therefore I close it with my well-wishes for them and all of you.

Sincerely yours
AbyssalEros

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The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 2

So, what else is there to report that I wouldn’t bore you with?

Perhaps we’ll risk a look at my battling windmills over the past few years. While karma has been screwing the world at large since the beginning of the Pandemic, my problems actually started much earlier. I don’t want to whine or be pitied; I just want to explain how it nearly came to my retreat from digital art.

Actually, I only joined an adult content creator, who later became my friend, as a writer back in the days when Patreon wasn’t ashamed of this clientele when it simply took our money without hesitation and just let us do our thing.

I am not condemning some regulation regarding intolerable, because clearly illegal content, but, what Patreon has done since those days, and continues to do, is clearly a kick in the guts for any adult content creator.

While adult content creators were already hidden behind a reasonable soft barrier (you had to confirm as a user that you wanted to see adult content first), additional mechanisms were later introduced or existing ones abolished (like the suggested creators). Unfortunately, ultimately those changes led to smaller adult content creators, like us, going completely unnoticed, as simply no one can find them on Patreon unless they have a direct link to them.

This alone makes it challenging to build a following, let alone one willing to pay for content.

And here we are, of course, already at the even bigger problem, the missing content. As you probably know, my friend Grabiobot was already thoroughly screwed by fate before the Pandemic. So I will not repeat this here.

Sure, it all sounds like whining, but it isn’t supposed to be. I’m actually trying to say that the Society of Lust couldn’t get content in the form of a game off the ground for a long time. Yes, I could have written and written and written. And, in fact, I did just that. But without artwork, no visual novel, or any other game! It’s just that simple.

I tried my best to acquire the necessary skills to create digital images myself in the little time I had available. However, since I started from scratch, this was quite a long and rocky road that I still tread.

Last year, after feeling empowered enough to do so, I was faced with the choice of either working on My Life with Laura, Night of our Graduation, or Books Make Dreams Come True to deliver that content for the Society of Lust.

In the end, I chose the latter because it was the shortest and, in my opinion, the most straightforward project I could do on my own while gaining more skills and experience for the other ones.

My Life with Laura was obviously skipped because we won’t be developing this game for Ren’Py, but for Caligine, our own game engine. However, I’m considering making the introduction a teaser for Ren’Py. In any case, the text has been ready for a long time.

Night of our Graduation seemed a bit too scary for me as the first visual novel to be done almost entirely on my own.

Books Make Dreams Come True progressed reasonably well, even though I faltered at one point or another and had to delve deeper into certain DAZ Studio features than I had before to solve problems that arose.

At the same time, I tried to keep the Society of Lust alive and posted more or less regular content on Patreon. Sadly, this is mostly only possible behind the enforced paywall for adult content and is almost impossible for anyone to see. And to be honest, I almost gave up because of the lack of enthusiastic reactions – or any at all. After all, we only had less than a handful of patrons left.

DeviantArt — and in a certain sense also Slushe — let me continue because I got encouragement for my artwork, at least from this side. Unfortunately, Slushe developed in hindsight into a poisonous sting that caused self-doubt. But I have already talked about that in the first part of this Activity Report series.

Books Make Dreams Come True is a kinetic visual novel in nine chapters (rather sense or scene divisions), out of which for six, the images are already completed. Chapters 8 and 9 are relatively short and do not contain all that many images. Chapter 7, however, is the chapter that provides the so-called main adult content and will require some serious work on my part.

But enough for today, I bored you enough, I fear.

I will keep you posted on the development.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

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The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 1

It’s been a long time since I’ve written an activity report. And don’t worry, I’m not going to write a multi-page pamphlet. At least, I hope not.

In fact, it’s been so long that I don’t even know where to begin. So do I just start where I think it would be a good place to start, or where it almost came to a messy end?

I think I should start at the possible ending, though.

However, I need some introductory explanations for that.

As you know, I’ve only recently – though recently, as I was shocked to realize the other day, is actually the wrong adverb – taken up digital art, namely using 3D assets to render images.

Since I have a full-time job (even though I hate my job abysmally, as it just makes you dumb and drained), I have pretty little time to devote to what’s really important: My hobbies.

Of course, my most important hobby is my girlfriend, and in order not to upset her, I naturally have a few things to do at home, like our nameless protagonist of “A Very Small Business” once had to do, besides the obligatory cuddling.

If we add an average of 5 to 6 hours of sleep, I have no more than 6 hours a day to indulge in my hobbies. But, of course, that is if my nerve-racking work hasn’t completely worn me out.

Most of the time, it’s not even these 6 hours that I can muster.

But why am I telling you all this?

The answer is that I try to put as much as I can into this meager free time to improve myself and my skills, but I regularly get to the point where self-doubt gnaws at me about whether I’m imposing too much on myself and that my digital works are just bad.

My self-doubt got worse and worse in the last quarter of the past year until I was on the verge of saying goodbye to digital art completely in December to focus only on writing.

Of course, this also affected my mood and made me quite discontented. And this also led me to stop working on the visual novel “Books Make Dreams Come True,” although I only still had to render the images for the last 2 or 3 chapters. But more about “Books Make Dreams Come True” another time.

My girlfriend, Farra and Grabiobot, and other good friends, especially Willibrordus, eventually managed to convince me not to give up.

Moreover, in the meantime, I was also able to locate the main sting of my self-doubt and consequently pulled it out of my flesh.

I made the mistake last year of posting my images on Slushe as well, but since they don’t match their usual subjects, I misinterpreted the disregard I received there through their feature system.

Since I left Slushe behind in December and was able to give myself enough confidence again by reworking old images (e.g., the image series “A Photo Shooting with Rose“), I’m also doing much better.

This is to say that as soon as possible, I will continue working on “Books Make Dreams Come True,” and from then on, my priority will be this project.

Well, here I have already reached the second page of text and have not nearly dealt with all the topics that would have to be addressed. But I think I have annoyed you enough for today.

See you soon, and thanks to all of you for your support.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

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