This document defines the visual canon for Apocalyptica Arcanum. It is intended to guide generative image models, illustrators, designers, mapmakers, token artists, and anyone producing visual material for the setting. The purpose is not simply to evoke a vague steampunk mood. The purpose is to preserve the specific visual identity of the world across all outputs.
Apocalyptica Arcanum is not generic fantasy, generic gothic horror, or generic steampunk. It is a late-19th-century alternate Earth transformed by The Meteor, where industrial civilization, supernatural contamination, religious upheaval, frontier survival, and speculative technology all coexist in a single visual language.
All images for the setting should feel like they belong to the same historical reality.
A Pinterest board with reference images can be found here
At its core, the setting is:
Industrial Gothic Arcane Catastrophe
It combines five primary ingredients:
The baseline world is rooted in the 1880s to early 1900s. Clothing, architecture, machines, transportation, print culture, and material design all begin from this historical foundation.
This is an alternate Earth after The Meteor. The world still contains recognizably historical cities, bridges, cathedrals, rail stations, ports, boulevards, and monuments, but they have been transformed, scarred, repurposed, flooded, frozen, overgrown, or spiritually corrupted.
Civilization did not collapse into medieval fantasy. It kept building. Rail, canals, workshops, laboratories, airships, factories, ports, vaults, and corporate systems continue to function. The world is damaged but still industrial.
Shardisite is the visual and metaphysical hinge of the setting. It is a resource, a pollutant, a power source, a religious problem, a scientific obsession, and a source of mutation. Its presence changes architecture, ritual, politics, warfare, and visual tone.
Cathedrals can house relics, laboratories, engines, rituals, and archives. Science is not cleanly secular. Religion is not passive. Horror is not isolated from modernity. All three occupy the same visual world.
The baseline technological band is late 19th century, with selective speculative extensions.
Visual technology should begin from:
Speculative advancement is allowed only when it feels like an outgrowth of this world. Advanced technology should still look:
Nothing should feel sleek, digital, minimalist, plastic, chrome-futurist, or post-war modern unless a very specific exception is being made.
The world is not powered by invisible convenience. It is powered by machinery, heat, pressure, fuel, labor, shardisite, and risk.
The dominant architectural language is drawn from:
Core architectural features include:
Cities should feel dense, vertical, damp, old, and inhabited.
Many cities in the reference set are not horizontally planned in a modern way. They are layered and vertically entangled. Use:
The city should often feel like it grew upward and inward under pressure.
Cathedrals are essential to the setting. They should feel monumental, political, and spiritually charged. Common elements:
Cathedrals are not background dressing. They are power centers.
The old world persists in altered form. Use:
The world should feel like it built over its trauma, not that it erased it.
Rail is foundational. It appears in stations, bridges, elevated tracks, ruined frontiers, and urban cores. Rail imagery should include:
Trains should look heavy and lived-in, not luxurious unless specifically depicting elite transport.
Water infrastructure is a major part of the world. Use:
Waterways should feel practical, dirty, and embedded in everyday urban life.
Airships are canonical to the aesthetic. They should feel like the industrial age’s answer to imperial mobility, commerce, spectacle, and war. Approved visual traits:
Airships should look imposing, engineered, and period-appropriate. Avoid cartoon whimsy unless intentionally making in-world poster art.
Factories, refineries, foundries, and energy sites should include:
Industrial interiors should feel hot, loud, dangerous, and physical.
Shardisite is one of the strongest anchors in the setting and must remain visually consistent.
It should appear as:
It should read as both beautiful and hazardous. It should strikingly stand out in whatever context its in.
In its “refined” form, shardisite always appears as a faceted crystal or a cut gemstone. In its “raw” form it appears uncut and partially fused with stone or other earthy substrate.
Use the shardisite palette carefully. It should remain distinctive. Primary tones:
Do not casually assign this glow to unrelated magic systems. Its overuse weakens the identity of shardisite.
Shardisite may appear in:
When used in machinery, it should look unstable, experimental, and dangerous rather than cleanly domesticated.
Religion in this world is visually serious, public, and politically embedded. Sacred imagery should feel institutional, not whimsical.
Use:
Divine imagery should feel old, formal, and potent.
Choir-associated spaces should emphasize:
Even when beautiful, these spaces should still feel heavy with institutional authority.
This is the primary exception to the normal color palette as each angel of the choir has its own distinct and striking contrast to the world.
Forbidden cultic or undercroft spaces should emphasize:
These spaces should feel intimate, secretive, transgressive, and old.
The laboratory aesthetic is central to the setting and must not become generic sci-fi.
Approved laboratory elements:
Everything should feel like Victorian science pushed too far.
Mutation, experimentation, and bio-industrial horror are canonical visual elements. Use:
Avoid generic zombie aesthetics unless intentionally depicting a very specific creature. Horror in this setting should often feel engineered, contaminated, or metaphysically altered, not merely undead.
The setting supports multiple environmental archetypes, but they must still belong to the same historical-industrial world.
Traits:
Traits:
Traits:
Traits:
Traits:
Traits:
Culturally distinct but still mechanically entangled cities. These should preserve: