What is Kingdoms of Ether?
A CC0 and web3 open-sourced franchise.
Kingdoms of ether is an open-sourced franchise and a contemporary fantasy world. The project is an ever-evolving digital world that currently merges medieval elements with contemporary trends to create a narrative inhabited by knights, archers, and wizards of Ether.
The project aims to build a large collection of open-sourced assets for creators to collaboratively expand the World of Ether.
Intellectual Property, Countless Heroes
Fantasy literature has a strong tradition of reincarnating archetypical characters from previous stories. In the case of Arthur who is arguably at the core of all of western fantasy, this is made explicit. Warcraft’s Arthas, Tolkien’s Aragorn, Robert Jordan’s Artur Hawkwing and Game of Thrones’ Robert Baratheon are all based on Arthur who in turn is based off Alexander the Great.
Fantasy’s explicit relation to past works makes it an excellent basis for a project that seeks to challenge the notion of intellectual property. Kingdoms of Ether sees itself as a stepping stone that reappropriates past works and encourages future works to in turn reappropriate themselves.
The open-ended world of countless kingdoms and heroic figures is ideal for co-creation as any future artists may add their own stories into the Kingdoms of Ether canon with new characters interacting with old ones. The result is a world with blurred edges without orthodoxy and containment. Arthurian legends are written by countless authors and form a complex web of both complimentary and contradictory stories. Kingdoms of Ether will follow proudly in its footsteps.
Realms of Ether
Ether’s realms constantly gain resolution; blank spaces fill in as adventurers traverse the realm. In these lands, trees never fall unless somebody is there to hear them. The world grows from every corner as time expands between them. The empire that dominated the lands, has ruptured under the expansion and has broken into countless kingdoms.
The fallen empire’s monuments weather away as the kingdoms left in its wake, flourish. The various factions are led by chivalrous knights, sly archers, and haughty wizards who scheme and battle for the control of the realms of Ether. The gaping fissures of the ever-expanding world reveal crystalline caverns bursting with shards of Ether. The magical stones refracts truth and creates matter.
The kingdoms are bitter rivals in the fight for the Ether shards. Years of turmoil finally ended when a group of adventurers came together in order to forge an alliance across the kingdoms.
The Kingdoms of Ether Collection
The Adventurers are true 3D characters all rendered in 4K directly from Blender.
Adventurers from 10 unique Kingdoms will be a part of the initial launch. The Kingdoms have unique aesthetics that reflect their realm. The Kingdoms are inhabited by four or five distinctive factions, with a total of 42 factions in the collection. The Factions have various styles, patterns, ways of living, and tiers that differentiate them from each other.
At the core of the project, we have developed The Armory. An ever-expanding open-sourced library of digital assets and resources for creators and the community to use to collaboratively expand the World of Ether.
Within the collection, we have 21 Legendary Adventurers. These are the foundational characters of the Kingdoms. A majority of these are reincarnated CC0 characters like Lancelot, Saint George, Merlin, Robin Hood, Morpheus, and Alice in Wonderland to mention a few.
We are developing a foundational guideline for all CC0 characters to be a part of the World of Ether. A center that populates the most significant CC0 characters and stories within an open framework.
The first of its kind.
End notes
Follow the project’s socials for announcements and further updates regarding the launch & mint.
Premint raffles can be found here: https://linktr.ee/kingdomsofether
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kingdomsofether
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kingdomsofether/
