The Most Heart-Wrenching, Mind-Bending, Bone-Cracking Speculative Fiction World Project. Strangereality. Esoteric Wuxia. Dark Fantasy.
Imagine for a moment.
A world steeped in struggle.
Combine—1900s Warlord Era Asia. Turmoil Southeast Asia (Struggles For Independence era). Ivalice. Revachol. The lands between. Esoteric buddhist, Gnostic, and other mystical metaphysics. Communist Philippines and Indonesia. Throne. New Crobuzon. Morrowind. Bulikov. Camor.
An esoteric wuxia dark fantasy setting. Wandering swordsmen, mercenaries, alchemists trying to make a living by accepting pacts from gods and demons. demons—born from karma— and other monsters ravaging farmlands, homesteads, death unto the peasants. peasants banding together and trying to revolt against foreign empires. empires that are fractured and broken and collapsed. collapsed but held together with veneer and illusion. illusion is the truth of phenomenal reality. reality is two-fold: one is phenomenal and arises from the Ultimate. the Ultimate is the god/buddha-womb/devil-nature/emptiness/violence.
Second world but not by much. Struggles of 11,000 years of human progress and evolution creating a world of mystic materialism, psychomagickal infranuclear esotericism. Quantum physics bleeding into magick. Spirits as hyperobject, eidoloweaves, arising of memories and entropies of objects together. Reincarnation as atoms dispersing into other atoms that turn into new sentient beings. Gods as hyperstrong entities with longer lives, stronger physical capabilities, and with sharper mental acuities. A world with the material conditions for revolution and post-revolution, in the face of burgeoning colonialism and hypercapitalism.
What will you fight for in the ashes?
Hingsajagra is a fantastical world project built upon the movement of history, negative dialectics, and revolutionary science. An antirealist fantasy. Literary Fabula. New Weird. Magickal Antirealism. darkweird Fantasy. What if the world never developed automatic guns and mobiles? What if the world's colonial superpower was Indochina-Suvarnabhumi? What if the Buddha met Marx? What if the world ended because of the failed proletariat revolution? What if the breathtaking invention that kickstarted the Industrial Revolution was not the steam engine but the Karma Engine, where sentient-beings' karma is used for electricity and mechanic energy?
A world that has moved past the phantasmic fog of the Heroic Age and the God Age. A world that challenges ours in terms of integrity and movement. A world built upon the mystic esoteric tenets of sunyata set down by Vajrayana Buddhism. The synthesis of Nagarjuna's Emptiness with Camus' Absurd. The handshake of the Buddha's Bodhicitta with Marx's Communism.
A world not too interested in mytho-national reproduction, a world interested in being a place for us to express emotion and not just evoke it. Instead of epic odysseys, letters-never-delivered from a failed philosopher to his knight husband who died in war. The eternal grief arising from outliving your son and daughter. Hopeless love poems from a fisherman to the Company Heir of Ressen-Nalenji. Scribblings of a genocide victim. Suicide note of a failed actor. Drawings of a child in a war zone.
From it springs forth novels, serials, poems, paintings, RPGs and more. It is materialistic in its historical dialectic, built upon transcultural ideas and the overcoming of idealism-materialism as well as individualism-collectivism. It's a love letter to revolutionary movements in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South Asia.
Go. A world to win. Do it for the ocean. Set your heart ablaze. Emancipate humanity.
Until all the hells are empty.
Until all beings are free.
May you grasp Ultimacy.
May all beings attain Violence.
Cold War Asia New Weird. Post-Industrial and Post-Apocalyptic. Dark Fantasy with specks of light. Folk and Occult Horror. Think engines that work off karma instead of steam. Strange, weird, gonzo intermixed with non-traditional inspirations: Korean Shaman rituals, Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, Philippine Catholic Syncretism, Chinese Wuism, Indo-Tibetan Sage Cultures. Instead of horses and libraries, carabaos and monasteries. Instead of castles and dragons, magicpunk kratons and catfish spirits. Instead of wandering knights, brave swordhands ostracized by society but choosing to fight for their Code and Law. Think flying shields as hoverboards. Think Lunar Viruses. Think Oil as the God of Capitalism. Rethink Progress as worthy end-goal. Think ancestors as power-bestowers. Consider perspectives you’ve never thought of. Be comfortable in the search. 1800s - 1900s Asia.