IOT4: Smile by @Thorvald (El Thorvaldo)

Third of four illustrations for the epilogue to Imperium Offtopicum IV, September 2010. Hand's a bit stunted but this is one of the very few pieces from the old days that holds up reasonably well.

When the game started to slacken, I had the bright idea of giving everyone nukes in the hope the warmongers would kill themselves off and a "winner" could be scavenged from the surviving wreckage. Turns out even this wasn't enough to push it through to the end, so I finally just pulled the plug. One of the players voiced interest in continuing the story, so I began drafting an epilogue as a springboard for a sequel that I would ultimately end up running.

The name kaetif was appropriated from the webcomic Black Tapestries, itself deriving from the Anglo-Normal caitiff, meaning a captive, coward, or wretch. In BT, this referred to magically-uplifted animals used as a slave underclass until a violent uprising many decades before the story begins, with the enduring racial antipathy forming the crux of its setting. I adopted a similar template for the game's prospective sequel, as humanoid mutants emerge as a potential rival to humanity's fumbling grip on the ruined Earth. This is based on a schematic that was a purchasable item before drakkolupen.com expired.

Originally submitted to Buzzly.art November 2021; reuploaded to DeviantArt February 2022.