The Clockwork Soldier - Character Discussion

The Clockwork Soldier is a clockwork-powered automaton built for war and ‘piloted’ by a transplanted human brain formerly belonging to a prisoner of war. Prior to being implanted into the machine his mind was brutally and systematically broken to make him co-operative and destroy his will to rebel against his captors, but slowly, over the century or so he was in active service, his mind began to heal. He has no recollection of his life before becoming the soldier, but he has made a new life regardless. He fell back in love with the world, and acquired a great number of mementos and treasures from the places war took him.

Eventually newer, more advanced forms of the machine-soldier were brought into production, and the Clockwork Soldier was outmoded. With such an impressive armoury built into him, and being a military and industrial secret, he could not be released into the civilian population, but due to being built to be completely tamper-proof he could not be safely dismantled. Thus, his ‘commanders’ had no other option but to lock him away and wait until he wound down by himself.

It has been a very long time since the Soldier was locked away. The commanders who imprisoned him are long dead, as is anyone who remembers the reason the bomb-proof underground bunker is so heavily guarded. It doesn’t need to be; the Soldier never wanted war, and has resigned himself to living away his days alone with his books and his treasures.

He is not unhappy, at least most of the time. He knows most of his books by heart but still reads them out of affection, and carefully maintains his clockwork shell out of a stubborn refusal to die when he’s supposed to. He has made his prison into a home, with all sorts of improvised furniture and storage space to reflect the world he loved and lost. He surrounds himself with his keepsakes and memories of the outside, having long since come to terms with the fact that he will never see sunlight again.

His brain, like any brain, requires sleep and food to survive. Though he cannot feel the comfort of a bed he has one anyway, and, once a week, a tiny hatch is opened to provide him with just enough food and water to live on, and a little oil to keep him going. Nobody on the other side knows why, but they follow orders, and so the Clockwork Soldier persists.

‘Live well. It is the best revenge.’ – The Talmud

Environment Thumbnails pt 2

Starting to think about hero props and furnishings. I'm trying to think about the things the soldier would have access to, and how to make the environment visibly 'clockwork'. I keep thinking he's a bit of a hoarder, trying to hang on to all the pieces of the outside world he no longer has access to, improvising shelves and the like to keep all his stuff, not to mention the boxes that seem to be ubiquitous in my sketches. Also ubiquitous are the books; mostly travel books I imagine, because I know if I was locked away never to see daylight again I'd bring a whole library's worth of books to keep me from going insane.

Initial Thumbs

 The Magic Shop - I have distinctive memories of trips to London and finding impossibly narrow shops full of sundries and strangenesses, which I want to channel into the magic shop. Perspective remains a struggle for me, hence why I am glad I'm doing interiors because I really need the practice. In order to get a better idea of how things might sit within the shop/glorified corridor, I hashed out a couple of possible floorplans as well.

The Red Room - this extract has more 'stuff' in it - that is, there are more objects and things mentioned in the text that need to be accounted for. The bed, the fireplace, two great mirrors, the barricade of furniture, the many, many candles and, of course, the dark little alcove in the wall that so fills the protagonist with dread. This one will probably also need a floorplan.

H G Wells Excerpts

Because I really, really need to get back into blogging.

 

H. G. Wells' The Red Room is a horror story  about a supposedly haunted room in an old manor house, said to be trod by the ghost of an earl's wife who died of fright, but actually home to the 'spirit of darkness' that killed her. Architectural and structural details are sparse; three main areas are described, the manor caretakers' house, the halls and stairways leading to the red room, and the red room itself. Lighting is critical in this story, as candles and fireplaces are devoured by the spirit, driving the protagonist almost to madness with fear.

Wells' The Magic Shop is far less sinister than The Red Room, a seemingly lighthearted story of a father and son discovering a shop that sells 100% genuine magic. The shopkeeper takes the pair through his old, cramped shop, showing off wonders and marvels as he goes, and then into his showroom, where even more magnificent things can be found. While the shop and showroom seem whimsical, there are a few scattered hints that all is not quite as it seems. The shopkeeper mentions the price paid for magic, although he says it is not so steep as people might think, while the boy's father at the end ponders the bill for the toys his son comes away with. As such, while the locations themselves seem harmless and playful, I would like to include a few hints at something a little darker.