While Working On The Headshot Rough Drafts For The AU Variants Of Neue, I’m Also Brainstorming On Some

While working on the headshot rough drafts for the AU variants of Neue, I’m also brainstorming on some concepts for, I guess a reimagining of a few AUs. This is not me trying to “improve” the original AU, it’s just me wanting to have some fun & doing my take of other AUs.

This is gonna be a veeeeeerrry looooong post.

The main 2 I’ll be working on are Horrortale & Dusttale.

I wanted to get opinions & suggestions for these concepts before delving too deep into these ideas. Please tell your thoughts on this & if I need to change/improve on.

Horrortale will be more appearance-based, meaning that I won’t be doing a lot of story building & it’s more of just redesigning the characters to look more “monstrous”. Basically they’ll be more animalistic or feral & their bodies would have gone through heavy changes to “adapt”.

*This is literally an excuse to draw the characters as big & scary horror movie style “monsters”. I guess this would make it similar to the Underworld AU, but the story or origin for the change would be similar to Horrortale, but takes place even further after the Neutral Route*

For right now, I’ve been calling this AU of an AU: Feral!Horrortale. But a few others are Dwellertale/Underdwell, Undercave/Cavetale, Carnitale & or Undermaw.

I’ve written a few ideas for their overall appearance based on Nocturnal & Cave-Adapted animals. I won’t list all of them otherwise this post will be way too long, but here are a few:

Eyes

Will become bigger

Pupils will become extremely dilated

Will become blind, either with cloudy Pupils or losing their eyes completely

Mouth

Jaw becomes much stronger

Able to be unhinged

Senses

Becomes extremely sensitive to light

Scent of smell & hearing will become much more heightened

May develop echolocation due to loss of sight

General Appearance

Depending on location, those in colder areas will become bigger, while those living in hotter areas will become smaller

Aging will slow down, longer lifespan

Psychological Changes

Will become much more aggressive & animalistic/feral

Start to communicate through nonverbal communication: clicking, chirps, barks, croaks, etc.

These are just a few of concepts for this version of Horrortale.

For Dusttale, it’ll be more story-based, but will have some illustrations here & there. The main differences is that Vani would be from this version & would detail an alternate ending for Vani, also this version would include Sans being “hired” to work for Nightmare.

Now before I go on about the basic concept for this AU, I’ll need to explain a few things first:

Sans’s Killing Spree: I don’t know if in the original he killed all monsters (I kept getting mixed answers or no answers at all), but in this version he only killed most monsters. There were a few that were able to get away & hide before Sans could get them; Sans only wanted to get enough EXP to reach LV 19 or 20 (I can’t decide which one yet). Vani, & probably characters like Monster Kid, Napstablook & Mettaton (Ghost Form), would be one of these survivors.

*As a side note: Papyrus in this AU is an actual ghost & not a hallucination, but I’ll go over that in another post*

Frisk & Chara: In this AU, Frisk & Chara are basically “organic” A.I. attached to a “Real World Anchor” aka Frisk’s body/vessel. Chara was the original concept for the “Fallen Human”, but was scrapped due to them being too “independent & free-willed”. Frisk is the current concept prototype for the “Fallen Human”, made from original data & a blank template; however bits of Chara’s A.I. was used as filler for missing information within Frisk’s A.I., this causes Chara to appear as a glitched phantom (good example of this would be Glitchtrap from FNaF Help Wanted). Chara has little to no control over Frisk, instead they can only give “suggestions” to hopefully influence Frisk’s actions.

The Player: The Player is depicted/described as a higher entity or deity, they could be seen as the “Angel” sent to create peace between humans & monsters (this is based off the theory that the rune we see throughout the game is a depiction of 2 monsters, a human & an angel). The Player at the beginning of the route will have minimal control over Frisk, mainly able to give “directions or actions” that Frisk should follow. But the more EXP that is gained, the more control the Player will have over Frisk. This could cause a total takeover with the Player “ejecting” the A.I. from the anchor aka vessel.

How Did Vani Survive: In the most simplistic way of describing: she can’t die, her soul will automatically heal itself/her. Now in further details: Vani was born with (what I’ll be calling for now) a glitched soul; this causes the soul to look, well glitched out. However it has an ability to automatically heal itself & its body, but not through the usual way; via magic or healing items. Whenever Vani takes damage, the soul will “reload” her back to the point/time & placement right before she takes damage; however the world around her is not affected or altered by this ability, to everyone around her: she looks like she’s “lagging” or “glitching”. Fortunately, or more like unfortunately, this ability is automatically & Vani is unable to “deactivate” it; it use to be super over efficient (would activate if Vani took 1HP or less), but started to calm down has Vani got older (would activate if Vani loses half or more). Even if her HP reaches 0, the soul will activate its ability & essentially “resurrect” Vani; this is what happened when Sans was trying to kill her.

Ok now that that’s out of the way, the basic concept of this AU is…

BRINGING BACK THE DEAD!!!

Or Vani & the remaining monsters tried to improve on the artificial DETERMINATION to resurrect the fallen monsters. But it still causes them to melt, but can gain stability by “merging” with other monsters or inanimate objects (sticks, plants, sturdy clothing, etc.).

This obviously a huge info dump, but I’m super excited about this & I wanted to get everyone’s opinion or suggestion before I go too deep in.