Call of the Abyss III/Lore

—Orpheus opening dialogue

All Call of the Abyss tournaments have a distinctive theme or aesthetic, with their own sub-story separate from the Main Story. Lore-wise, these sub-stories seem to be novels written by Orpheus before his amnesia. For Call of the Abyss III, it had a "Lovecraftian" Mafia theme.

## Background

#### Summary

*In a mysterious art museum, there are works of art on display that are shrouded in darkness, severely distorted, but full of strange charm.*

*The artist, who calls himself an otherworldly traveler, turns his crazy imagination far beyond human beings into endless inspiration, mesmerizing all viewers.*

*The seeker, attracted by the strange statues, stepped deeper into the gallery, only to realize the mad artist was merely using his most successful technique to express a truth that no one had ever been able to touch before. But he is only a modest evangelist. The abyss behind him is still searching for a new agent, looking for an opening to spread chaos to the world.*

*After the brilliance and shock, who will lift the curtain out of curiosity and look directly at the shadows that have been watching for a long time?*

#### Prologue (from the 2nd Anniversary Netherwalker's Offer package)

*When the auctioneer showed me that eye, it was still closed.*

*I was curious to see what color that lidded eye would glow, but I also wanted them to stay closed, quietly and forever, to escape any malice that might be stirring.*

*That night, I gave it to her.*

*When I framed the scene, everything changed.*

*It seemed to have heard my faintest wish.*

*I wanted to capture the most beautiful things and the things that aren’t even allowed to exist in this world on the same canvas, if only for a moment.*

*At that moment, my wish came true.*

*It opened its eyelids.*

*And for the first time, a smile appeared on her face.*

*In a moment of ecstatic madness, I had completed the masterpiece of my half-life.*

*The moment I put down my brush, I knew this was all I had left.*

#### Vile Blossom Lore & Design Notes

*The inspiration for Call of the Abyss III’s story came from a famous story, “Pickman’s Model”, by H.P. Lovecraft, the creator of the Cthulhu Mythos.*

*In our story, Pickman is a lofty, nameless artist, and his model is a disfigured dancer. When the evil eye of the Abyss opened before them, their interwoven fates suddenly changed.*

*Wandering the Abyss, Pickman abandoned his human form and became the Netherwalker. His endless creation was both a welling up of inspiration, and a release of stress under the pressure. But the intrinsic motivation behind all his actions was this model, so heavily affected by the Erosion – in resonance with the poem “Les Fleurs du mal”, the disfigured dancer felt deeply the sickness of society, and the malice in life. She determined that all “beauty and grandeur” is the end result for the people, and pure beauty is fragile and short-lived, withering away in the end.*

*When the twisted foreign things of the abyss began to grow petals on her body, she finally realized the beauty depicted in that poem anthology — Live in symbiosis with the deformations of malice, never to resist decay, never to fear corruption, and in the original contradiction between ugliness and beauty let your ego bloom. She faced the Nether with glee, willingly abandoned her name and identity, and returned to being but of the origin, a vile blossom.*

*As the core of the story’s conflict, we hope that the image of the "Flower of Evil" can be a combination of beauty and corruption at the same time: in terms of style, it can break the common pile of gorgeous beauty, combined with COA's Cthulhu elements, to bring players a more layered sense of beauty. In terms of specific design, there are several expectations as follows.*

*① Mask is an important element of the clown camp fashion design. Added a foreign flower mask to enrich the face elements of the fashion, in line with the setting of the character disfigurement at the same time point.*

*② Changed the bag around the waist of the dancer to the poetry book "The Flowers of Evil". The evil eye and tentacle elements on the book are the manifestation of the abyssal consciousness of the book (character).*

*③ Short skirt and high heel design to embody the perfect body of the dancer + model.*

#### Call of the Abyss III Promo Director’s Edition

*The short film needs to show a story with a complex background and full of turning points in a limited time. We used a lot of metaphors and clues to express the plot, leaving the audience ample room for reasoning and imagination.*

*The story is based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft's work "Pickman's Model" under the Cthulhu mythology system: a letter of commission from the dancer entrusted the four investigators, Cowboy, Mechanic, Embalmer, and Seer, to go to an art gallery to investigate the artist Joker, who is deeply influenced by Cthulhu's power, and the four of them start a fierce battle with Joker in the art gallery. The truth is that the dancer is the ultimate boss possessed by Cthulhu’s power.*

*In the end, Cthulhu's power was unfortunately transferred to the captured Mechanic, and the Cowboy was also caught in a dilemma in order to save the Mechanic.*

*We have spent a lot of thought on how to imply who is the mastermind behind the scenes. And in this especially important scene, an Easter egg was buried for the player.*

*The battlefield is the dancing girl's weapon-the music box. The dancer looked down on the battle to indirectly express that everything was under her control...*

#### Extra

*Our entire Call of the Abyss is a continuous story, and this time COA III and COA II also have such a connection. The core of the COA II fight [the evil eye of the abyss] originated from COA I's R’lyeh, and now it is in COA III's bizarre art gallery that inspired the creation of the Netherwalker, and the core of its sculpture prototype is the character we originally intended as a hidden element at this stage (the dancer)….*

Extra info about Call of the Abyss from the official IDV Weibo about COA being a continuous storyStory/Lore for COAIII from the Netherwalker's Offer Package (part 1)Story/Lore about COAIII from the Nethewalker's Offer package (part 2)
### Related Cosmetics

#### Costumes

A-tier

* **Vile Blossom** (Dancer): *Pickman once believed that the human body was the most beautiful art, but she also believed that such beauty would eventually fade. It wasn't until the Nether's decay blossomed into petals on her body that she realized her favorite poetry had bloomed long ago, and she would become its everlasting champion.*

B-tier

* **Connoisseur** (Bloody Queen): *She didn't care about how the artwork was created. Even that blood and desire-soaked blossom she'd be willing to capture herself and place within the glass encasing she had designed.*

#### Accessories

S-tier

* **Carnival Party** (Mercenary): *My customer, as you receive that invitation, the gate to Nether has opened its embrace. Welcome to my Carnival Party. - Pickman*

A-tier

* **Heart of the Machine** (Mechanic): *A feature created by the Puppeteer with the help of Trickster, with imitation tentacles that enhance the Doll's mobility or can be used as disguise.*

## References

1. ↑ https://m.weibo.cn/status/4449593451914943?%22