Uphelios is an alternative world setting used as the basis for the weekly online comic, Weaponry.
Combining elements of Earth culture and history to create new
countries and peoples with over-arching themes of expansive Empires, the
Golden Age of Piracy, steampunk, occult magics and traces of the
supernatural.
There are four main historical Earth time periods that primarily inspire the setting and time period of Uphelios:
• The Golden Age of Piracy: Expansion of the British Empire,
East India Trading Company, unprescendented activity of pirates, circa
late 1700s to mid 1800s
• The Byzantine Empire: The splitting of the Church, Constantine and
Constantinople, the crusades, the wealth and power of the Church, the
Spanish Inquisition
• Hellenistic Greece: The age of classics, the nautical warring
of many cultures and peoples, the ancient Mediterranean, myth and pagan
practise, the discovery of new sciences and appreciation of art
• The Golden Courts of King Louis: The height of the Romantic
Age, the excess and high society of the French Courts, 1600s-1700s, the
Europe-central world view, rise of Empires and intrigues, start of the
revolutions
These elements combine to forge a new setting that is at once
familiar and unique. The use of Earth's languages and aspects of
culture, inventions and history anchor Uphelios in something real, but
the combinations of disparate time periods and cultures enables for a
touch of fantasy and the occult that makes Uphelios distinctly 'other'.
From the shifts of power between Mother-Goddess worship to monotheistic
patriarchal God religion, and back into pantheistic Angel worship, to
the hybridizing of cultures (i.e. Tantland is largely composed of
Scotland and Germany), Uphelios is a world to be discovered by its
readers while remaining familiar and accessible.
