Inspired by my fascination of ancient stories and cultures and the secrets they kept.
The Mercury Mask
Miles through the endless maze of caves beneath the great ancient volcano, miles into the ice planes, the obsidian scrapers (a name given to nomads who find obsidian shards for trade, in places not possible to mine) uncovered something so disturbing, so impossibly out of place, that even they couldn’t keep it contained.
At first it looked like nothing more than gold spirals pushing up through the stone—wrong, unnatural, as if the earth itself had been reshaped from the inside. They didn’t look grown; they looked made, crafted by someone… or something that didn’t share our sense of what should exist underground.
Deeper excavation, metres below the surface where the air feels older than time, revealed the spirals were only fragments of a much larger construct: a ceremonial shrine, arranged in a perfect circle, like an ancient eye staring upward.
Seven pillars surrounded it, each a different height, as if marking stages of something rising or descending. A thicker central one stood behind what resembled an altar—though “altar” feels too human a word for it. The numbers, the shapes, even the spirals themselves may not be symbolic at all. They might just be… traces. Leftovers of a mind that didn’t build things for reasons we would recognise.
At the centre was a sarcophagus just beneath the ground’s skin. Inside were scrolls crowded with an unknown language—shapes that felt like they moved if stared at too long. One page held what we think is a map of the stars, and with what we know of the skies, Mercury seemed to be the marked point. Another page showed a crude drawing of a being’s head and shoulders, though “crude” might be the wrong word—more like the artist was trying to capture something that didn’t comfortably fit inside the shape of a head.
Under the scrolls were statuettes matching the figure. Each one carved with unsettling precision, as if the sculptor had studied the being far too closely. Keepsakes, maybe. Or warnings. Or attempts at remembering something the world had already chosen to forget.
How old this place is—and what exactly these people were worshipping—remains a mystery. But the evidence makes one thing clear: whatever it was, it mattered. And whatever it was, it wasn’t from here.
Not from Earth. Not even from our kind of existence.
These masks are sculpted in Zbrush, printed, sanded and hand painted then mounted on a decorated wooden block. The mask and wood is varnished to last and made to be hung high as if to look down.
this mask comes with a free gothic arch window keyring
Inspired by my fascination of ancient stories and cultures and the secrets they kept.
The Mercury Mask
Miles through the endless maze of caves beneath the great ancient volcano, miles into the ice planes, the obsidian scrapers (a name given to nomads who find obsidian shards for trade, in places not possible to mine) uncovered something so disturbing, so impossibly out of place, that even they couldn’t keep it contained.
At first it looked like nothing more than gold spirals pushing up through the stone—wrong, unnatural, as if the earth itself had been reshaped from the inside. They didn’t look grown; they looked made, crafted by someone… or something that didn’t share our sense of what should exist underground.
Deeper excavation, metres below the surface where the air feels older than time, revealed the spirals were only fragments of a much larger construct: a ceremonial shrine, arranged in a perfect circle, like an ancient eye staring upward.
Seven pillars surrounded it, each a different height, as if marking stages of something rising or descending. A thicker central one stood behind what resembled an altar—though “altar” feels too human a word for it. The numbers, the shapes, even the spirals themselves may not be symbolic at all. They might just be… traces. Leftovers of a mind that didn’t build things for reasons we would recognise.
At the centre was a sarcophagus just beneath the ground’s skin. Inside were scrolls crowded with an unknown language—shapes that felt like they moved if stared at too long. One page held what we think is a map of the stars, and with what we know of the skies, Mercury seemed to be the marked point. Another page showed a crude drawing of a being’s head and shoulders, though “crude” might be the wrong word—more like the artist was trying to capture something that didn’t comfortably fit inside the shape of a head.
Under the scrolls were statuettes matching the figure. Each one carved with unsettling precision, as if the sculptor had studied the being far too closely. Keepsakes, maybe. Or warnings. Or attempts at remembering something the world had already chosen to forget.
How old this place is—and what exactly these people were worshipping—remains a mystery. But the evidence makes one thing clear: whatever it was, it mattered. And whatever it was, it wasn’t from here.
Not from Earth. Not even from our kind of existence.
These masks are sculpted in Zbrush, printed, sanded and hand painted then mounted on a decorated wooden block. The mask and wood is varnished to last and made to be hung high as if to look down.
this mask comes with a free gothic arch window keyring
