.:	Fhtagn-Nagh by Ionous 	:.
	
A colossal tower rising from a sea of poison. A brushwork experiment, built entirely on the 64-unit scale. 
Built for the Copper mod, version 1.20 and above. 
Custom soundtrack courtesy of Funeral Doom Metal band, Pantheist. 
This map should work without issue in Ironwail and VKQuake. Quakespasm will work fine, though playing with gl_farclip set to over 20k is needed to avoid long-distance greyflash. 

Filename: 		ion03.zip
Author: 		Ionous 
Email address: 		voice.of.the.nephilim@gmail.com 
Twitter:		@voiceovnephilim		 	
Description:		Giant, experimental map done in R'lyeh textures (Sock, Danzadan, Pyropilot and probably others) 
Single Player:		Yes
Cooperative:		No
Deathmatch:		No
Difficulty Settings:	Yes
Base:			My imagination
Editors used:		Trenchbroom 2022.1  			
Textures:		Kaahoo.wad, jam2_common.wad (Sock), rj7_koohoo.wad, ion03_koohoo.wad (Danzadan), chicklet.wad (Pyro)
Build Time:		Close to 3.5 years, intermittedly. 
Music:			Track206.mp3 (Custom Ambient-Doom track courtesy of funeral doom band Pantheist) 
Skybox:			R'lyeh (made by Kell)
 
			
Brushes:		7,096
Faces:			42,607
Entities:		2,088

Monster Count:
Easy:			256
Normal:			552
Hard:			815

Map background:

I originally started this map for the 194 speedmapping event, BigMcGee, an attempt to make a map entirely on the 64 unit grid.
Being me, this turned into an attempt to make curved structures on the 64 unit grid, which required vast upscales of size. 
With architecture that dwarfed the player, it lent itself to the feel of R'lyeh, the fabled city of Lovecraft lore.
The custom textures Sock built, inspired by The Castle of Koohoo, fit nicely. 

I never came close to finishing by the deadline, so I kinda treated it as a joke, expanding it to mammoth proportions. 
To push the 64-unit motif to its breaking point. As the map ended up being bsp2, I think I succeeded on that front. 

Kostas, the main musician behind doom metal band Pantheist, once offered to make a custom music track for me. 
I couldn't ask for a better map for him and his band to put their musical talents towards. 
I was able to curate the track, and Pantheist really delivered. I think the track came out great, and fits the map well. 

I had planned all sorts of lore to explain the foreign language bits (secret hints), but am rather burnt out.
There are many issues with this map, ways it could be improved...but I've got too much other stuff on my plate.
Between trying to finish my Wrath responsibilities and Tremor, I can't spend any more time on this. Sorry it's not better. 

Lore and story was planned out, but I just don't have the will to write and implement it. Think Michener by way of HPL.
Starting from the birth of the universe to the raising of the Watcher's Tower. An alternate take on the Tower of Babel, though without the biblical overtones. Thus the languages from all corners of the globe. 

On my collaboration with Pantheist:

While I’ve been a music connoisseur for some time, writing my own has long been outside my grasp. Perhaps with enough time and effort I could probably make headwinds, but at this point in my life, the former shows no sign of presenting itself.

When Kostas (the primary musician behind doom metal band Pantheist) offered to one day create a custom piece of music for one of my Quake maps, it was if a djinn had appeared with a wish in hand. It didn’t take my long to decide which project I’d put his talents behind; when you’ve a veteran in the Doom Metal scene offering you the chance to curate music, how could one say no the opportunity to meld his talents with Lovecraftian atmospheres?

The level I had been slowly chipping away at for three years, ‘Fthagn-Nagh’, was an attempt to approximate the nightmare city of R’lyeh. Described as a sunken city with immense architecture comprised of impossible, which housed Cthulhu within its green vaults. The geometry mentioned would have been difficult to pull off in any game, let alone one as Quake based primarily around simple shapes, but large-scale structures was something very doable. As if built for creatures dwarfed humans in scale. Something gigantic, which slithered with slow deliberation. What better a musical genre to convey such feelings than Funeral Doom Metal?

Funeral Doom emerged from Finland in the early nineties, with bands Thergothon and Skepticism at the vanguard. Building upon the foundations lain by Black Sabbath and Candlemass (to name a few), Funeral Doom slowed the pace to a near-crawl, to let the low-tuned riffs expand to their breaking point, to create an almost suffocating, depressive atmosphere. Thergothon in particular was very clear on their strong Lovecraft influence, as evidenced by their first demo, ‘Fhtagn-Nagh Yog-Soggoth’.

The last track on that particular demo, ‘The Twilight Fade’, is a short, two minute epilogue (especially compared to the trio of eight-minute monoliths that precede it), but it stands out from the rest of the album. The oppressive atmospheres part for just a moment, as the riffs are played slightly higher, and the guttural growls are replaced by clean, mournful elegies.

It is this atmosphere that I thought would best fit into the level. However, transporting it to Quake would require certain changes.

Sound is a vital piece of most games, but few more so than the FPS / shooter genre. With a limited viewpoint, danger can come from any direction. The growl of a fiend before it strikes can be the difference between lift and death. Any music has to be rather minimalistic in nature, as to not overwhelm the necessary gameplay cues. As much as I enjoy Black Metal, crashing, furious drum work was not going to work in Quake. Even played at a funeral-dirge pace, crashing symbols and snares were still going to be distracting.

The percussive style that probably would work, however, would be something low, almost tribal in nature. Like a distant heartbeat thudding beneath, the pulse of the track.

I didn’t think words or actual vocals would be appropriate, as the music is intended to be part of the ambience, but low sub-vocalizations seemed appropriate. Like the choir of the cults of night, summoning forth deities from the spaces between. The foundation that the track would be built upon.

As the level is a large one, it felt appropriate for the soundtrack song to be as well. I envisioned a fade-in of the sub-vocalizations, and then other pieces would slowly seep in and drop out as the song progressed.

With such a talented composer at the ready, it seemed appropriate that the keyboards would be the lead instrument (as if oft the case in Pantheist songs). The work he had done with organs on the ‘Seeking Infinity’ album almost perfectly captured my ideal sense of them, while also evoking the early-Skepticism sounds I thought would work well here.

For all my good intentions, not being a musician, my guidance could have just been word salad. To my surprise, Kostas seemed to have a pretty good idea of what I wanted to achieve. He did suggest to take the track in a ‘Warhammer 40k’ direction, by having the song structure be circular in nature.

When a track completes in Quake, it just start over again. With the beginning and end of the song ending in similar manners, with respective fade-in and fade-out, a player might not be able to discern where the song began or ended, potentially creating the sense the music was just a single, continuous experience. Especially with it pushing past the seventeen minute-mark, one might only hear the track three or four times during a playthrough.

Needless to say, Kostas and his fellow cohorts within Pantheist more than delivered. I couldn’t have asked for a better soundtrack to traverse this giant, green-tinged wasteland. I most likely will never develop the musical skill to write my own material, but being given the opportunity to curate such a thing was a dream realized.

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Thanks:

Thanks to Lunaran for not only Copper, but for being my tech support throughout the desing process, and patiently dealing with my dumb questions. 
Thanks Zothique for converting the original music file into a more palptable mp3 form.
Thanks to Kell for the skybox.
Thanks to Sock for the textures.
Thanks to Danzadan for the textures. 
Thanks to Pyropilot for the floor texture upscale. 
Thanks to EricW for the compiling tools. 
Thanks to Sleepwalkr for Trenchbroom. 
Thanks to Negke, Kell, OTP, Lunaran, FW and Zothique for testing. Any remaining mistakes are willfully or otherwise, mine. 
Thanks to my wife for putting up with my nerdy habits (mapping is only one of many). 
Thanks to Skacky, OTP, Pulsar, Giftmacher, JCR, Danz, Adib Murad, Ukko, CZG and anyone else I've forgotten for the translations. 
Sorry to all those I've forgotten over the past few years. 

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Disclaimer / legal stuff:
Legalese. Legalese. I made this map. Don't fuck with it without our permission, or modify its conten, without contacting us first.

