OROBORO is a dark fantasy world crafted by Christopher Mahon and the Occult Triangle Lab, inspired by the body horror of Hellraiser and the occult worldbuilding of Bloodborne. You can explore this world through fiction, artwork, music, games, and hidden puzzles that challenge you to go deeper.
Overview
In the world of OROBORO, humanity is faced with a bleak truth: death is not the end. All mortals will become wandering ghosts, their minds shattered at the moment of death and their forms twisted into monstrous shapes.
Faced with an eternity of anguish, mortals desperately seek to stave off death with surgery and esoteric arts: feeding trees with blood to grow new organs, carefully binding souls to gilded homunculi, or even building otherworlds whose lands are frozen in time. These are the arts of the Grand Schools of immortality, whose power and influence eclipse any lord.
Meanwhile, necromancers hunt the wild ghosts that wander after sunset, seeking to bind them to the service of the living. Others seek to extract hidden knowledge from the mad ramblings of the dead, for the art of magic is inextricably tied to the hidden symmetries of music, geometry, and the body, but only ghosts can unravel these arcane connections.
A World Filled with Ghosts
Upon death, the soul does not pass on to an afterlife—instead, it becomes a ghost tormented by fractured memories and insatiable desires. These ghosts haunt the wilderness, linger in city alleyways, and lurk unseen in houses and estates. Many ghosts are magically bound by the living to serve as scribes, guardians, or servants, and most labor in this world is performed by ghosts.
A Hunger for Immortality
The fear of death has become all-consuming in this world, causing the art of immortality to become treasured above all others. The Grand Schools of immortality jealously guard their esoteric arts, and the price of initiation is eternal loyalty to these secretive institutions. However, the schools may not be what they seem, and the pursuit of immortal life may force scholars to commit unspeakable acts.
A Desire to Transcend the Flesh
Physiomancy is the art of shaping the human body with surgery and spellcraft. Physiomancers can graft a second pair of arms onto a client’s body, replace skin with porcelain, and even graft a bull’s muscles onto a client, along with a second heart to nourish the new tissue. Some use physiomancy to extend their lives, while others reshape their flesh according to the whims of fashion.