Renascentia - The Awakening 3D Render, Digital Artwork by RedSpartan

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Renascentia - The Awakening

3D Render by RedSpartan

Renascentia. Part One: The Awakening

She slowly opened her eyes, finding a thin layer of frost covering the glass of a tank she was suspended within, obscuring her vision. She was immersed in a thick-ish, very cold amber liquid and she became faintly aware of a slight humming from beneath her feet. With a sudden, startling moment of clarity she realised that the liquid was within her and began to panic, thrashing about against the confines of the tank. A gagging reflex and an instinctive fear of drowning took control and it was some time before she noted that she was inexplicably breathing, that somehow the fluid was giving her oxygen. She calmed herself, breathing as she could, with steady rhythm. As her heart rate slowed she tried to peer from the confines of the tank, but the world beyond the glass and the frost was dark and devoid of any obvious movement. It was then, with a hiss, the tank released its grip on her as the glass door before her opened upwards and she stumbled out onto a cold metal floor suddenly awash with the liquid from the tank.

The room was dimly lit, the only source of light were pulsing LED’s on some of the walls, the dull glow of a monitor some distance away and the tank behind her that cast her immediate surroundings in a sickly beige hue. Dust danced in the air, settling on abandoned machinery and rusting metal shelves. A cloying yellow mist issued from the tank as it vented into the room.

She sat kneeling in the liquid, aware that it had joined a deep layer of dirty water that already covered the floor. Umbilical tubes were still attached to her arms and the back of her neck. She pulled at them in disgust, tearing them out of her body as if they were some form of invasive violation.

Her head was pounding, memories elusive as she tried to piece together who she was and why she had been placed in what appeared to be a regen stasis tank. She was alone, shivering in the cold, uninviting environment.

Regen tank. Regenerative. She’d recognised the vessel that had contained her, though little else was coming clear in her fuddled mind. She must have been injured, wounded in some fashion, placed in the tank to heal. But how, and why? A soldier perhaps? She clawed at indistinct scraps of knowledge as they flittered into her mind. Regen tanks such as this were primarily used for military purposes, to heal wounded soldiers. Had she been a soldier? A Marine! Yes, a damned Marine, and a good one too. Except no, that wasn’t right, not now, that had been long ago, in a different life. Now she was something else. Something more dangerous.

What the hell did that mean? She shook her head violently, angry and frightened that the information she sought wouldn’t come. Who had placed her in the tank, and why did it appear to all intents and purposes as if she had then been forgotten, abandoned.

As if to distract her, the ceiling above her head suddenly came alive with lights and an unpleasantly demanding buzzing noise. As she looked a spider like mechanoid descended slowly on a sturdy looking appendage to hover before her. She backed away slowly, not in fear, not alarmed, but weary. There was something lingering, just beyond reach in the back of her mind, something about mechs. They weren’t allowed, illegal even. Was that right? That couldn’t be could it, for here one was.

A large single red glowing lens mounted on what appeared to be a head scrutinized her with apparent curiosity. A holographic ring leapt into life around the eye, scrolling through information too fast for her to take in, but, she noted, in a language she understood. She realised it was some sort of monitoring drone, designed to keep its pulsing single eye on the tanks, or more importantly those held within them. She reflected that she’d recognized the mech immediately, and that in its current mode it posed no physical threat. But still a sense of unease pervaded. Knowledge was returning but something important about mechs wouldn’t come, and a sense of self-identity remained frustratingly elusive. The drone murmured, as if in some imagined amusement.

‘Fuck you’ she thought, turning her gaze away from the mocking lens, shivering in the cold air, ‘I’m trying here.’

To Be Continued…

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Have been away for a while, but have been busy working on a little project. A couple of months ago I was browsing the web looking for some inspiration. I was looking at the work of Vladimir Manyukhin on ArtStation, an artist I've admired for years, and a couple of his pieces kickstarted an idea for a story in my head. This image is heavily inspired by those works but I've produced nearly twenty pieces now following a rough narrative which I'll start to upload in the coming weeks. The story flits backwards and forwards in time, but I will try to write an accompanying piece to keep things clear. Of course you can take the pictures as stand alone works and not worry about the story, but the same characters will appear in most of them. I've really enjoyed doing these (to the detriment of my poor eyes that have been staring at a computer screen constantly for two months), and I think on the whole they're some of the best things I've done.

Be warned there will be nudity, sex and violence...

Also I should add that I'm probably like many Daz and Poser artists out there who purchase things all the time and then only use them once or twice, so I set myself a small challenge to use some of those models that have been sitting in my Runtime for years now gathering dust, like Stonemason's cryo tanks seen in this picture (Stonemason gets used a lot to be honest), models that I'd completely forgotten I had in some cases.

Hope you like them, and thanks for taking a look...