Pachumaster
Past, Present and Future
This post
I was planning to post "I'm back, baby!" and then continue to use this site as I have years ago, but honestly, with the state of the site, I cannot really use it as my main site. It'll just be for archival purposes, basically.
Oh, I'll keep uploading stuff here as I make it. I'll keep an eye on the people who I watch, but I'm gonna have to find another platform to be my 'main' for uploading art, especially if I want to advertise myself for any kind of professional work.
That will probably have to be twitter, which I've been avoiding for years because I believe it is a horrible place. Sadly, I probably have no choice. I think I'll keep twitter 100% professional only and use this place and discord for more substantial talk.
for any new watchers seeing this post, this probably will not mean a whole lot to you. Unless you're particularly curious about my ramblings, you can feel free to skip it.
The past - tying up loose ends
So, this isn't an excuse, but I'll start by looking at what got me drawing and posting in the first place and why I didn't do it for years. It's hard for me to overstate how important certain niche communities have been for my art journey, as I like to call it.
My other big influnce, of course, were tabletop RPG's. DnD at first and, more recently, Lancer. I think even earlier back there's RWBY and the fanfics of author Coeur Al'aran.
I believe storytelling was always a big part of my making art. Possibly even the center of it. Almost every illustration or even sketch I ever did has had some kind of narrative behind it. That must've been at least part of the reason why I was drawn to airfortress- of course the tight nit community is the other big draw. Airfortress isn't huge, it doesn't have a bajillion fans but honestly, every single person there is an excellent human being.
I was already drawing some stuff when I joined that group, but AF made me take drawing seriously.
it seemed like a natural progression from there to try to make my own artwar, fantasy themed, because I felt like there was some demand for it. That's why deathband happened. This was also me taking my first stab at game design. In retrospect, there were other ways to learn game design principles.
I woudn't say Deathband 'failed' per se. Yeah, the actual game mechanics were horrible, NGL, and I had very little idea of where to take the setting, but it spawned some amazing ideas and great art (none of them my own). If anything, I feel like I let down the Deathband group. I gave them a lot of expectations and they put a lot of faith in me, and work on it too, but ultimately I failed to deliver on anything even halfway decent. This isn't the end of this, tho, more on that later.
What Deathband did make me do is write. I wrote, well, not a lot, but it did feel like a lot at the time because I wasn't really used to writing. and I also started doing other forms of art besides visual. I began writing a novel, writing worlds and stories for my games. I also wrote the rules for Airfleet: commander and began that whole shebang (again, more on that later)
A lot of things happened in my real life. it's almost a cliche for milennials to say they're depressed, but fucking hell, in retrospect I really was depressed at a point. I wasn't great before all that but it got a lot worse. I used to think depression was a mental illness and of course my brain was fine so I couldn't possibly be depressed.
Then I started reading on the subject and watching a few vids and, uh, yeah, I had a lot of the symptoms. IDK if I had 'real' depression or whatever, but fuck it, I was crying myself to sleep every other day, clearly that's fucked up. I just couldn't function properly, I felt like a horrible failure of a human being, I felt everything was my fault, I felt immense external pressure and could not find the motivation to do anything.
Just the knowledge of that alone helped me a ton, in a way I cannot fully explain. While I wouldn't say I'm perfect now, I still hold many insecurities, I do feel better than I have felt in years with regards to my mental health. Funny enough, one of the signs is actually starting stuff and not finishing it. That explains a lot.
So, I decided on two things: 1) I would not start any more goddam projects 2) advance the stuff I've already started to a point I could feel comfortable leaving it done. Not necessarily with a grandiose conclusion, but a point that it no more is the promise of a thing but an actual thing.
The present- what to do now and what not to do.
You remember the past and imagine the future, but you only live in the present.
The only real defining quality of 'now' is that you're experiencing it, so in this section I will be talking about my mindset, the immediate future and the recent past.
I'd say a big problem for me is both having multiple projects open at a time and also doing one thing at time. I cannot focus properly or manage my time adequately. So I gotta work on my time management skills first of all.
both drawing and writing consume my creative energy but I noticed that they do it in different ways.
Writing is intensive for me. Drawing can be too, but writing is hardly ever relaxing in the same way painting can be. I can listen to a podcast or audio-book while I paint perfectly fine, but obviously not while writing.
In the future, I will be drawing AND writing, depending on how much 'energy' I have. Instead of having one thing at a time and forcing myself to finish it, I will have 2 or 3 (hard limit 3) and do the one I feel best at doing at that moment. I will also make it so that I always have projects of different types.
I know this sounds like it should make me less productive and I really should force myself to do things, but I see it in a different light- before I had a spiral of "Cannot finish X thing -> feel bad about it -> get depressed -> no motivation -> cannot finish X thing" I am more aware of this mental trap now and I want to avoid it.
My motivation will be getting things out of the way so I can start on something else. when I don't feel like writing I will draw, when I don't feel like drawing I will write. Instead of feeling bad about not being productive in something I will be productive elsewhere. Hopefully it works out.
Now I'm gonna talk about projects that I have open and ones I finished recently.
so, this image was loose end I had to tie. fucking hell it felt good to
These other pictures were also a series of linearts I finished and that I needed to find the time to colour
so, those were actually smaller scale things I had to do. most of my other projects (some are in DA, some are not) are grander in scale, which makes finishing them harder.
List of open projects:
in no particular order.
>Airfleet: commander
so, this is the airfortress tactics game I made originally just as some fun to have on roll 20. at some point we tried to scale it into a whole 3d printing operation which might've been a bit too ambitious. Even a digital port would be too much. I think the best would be to scale it into a rulebook with some rules that can be tested and some 2D paper minis that can be printed and folded into shape. This is a project that I have the ability to do with my current skillset and no external help.
right now it's hard for me to say what % done I am with it now. publishing it would require rulebook in english, but I will probably also have to make a spanish version if I wanna test it where I live IRL.
All I need is time and, later on, some playtesters.
the airfleet rules have to be revamped for the new game mechanics
nicely presented rulebook PDF with pretty pictures should be made. This would be a prototype for a printed book.
printable paper minis should be tested
I also want to include about 100 pages of lore, which, trust me, airfortress can absolutely fill.
The final result should be a product that can be expanded uppon, but also stand on it's own two feet and it would be something I'd feel comfortable selling. Do expect more airfleet art in the future.
>Hollow GLOry
This is a science fiction novel that I'm writing. I was stuck for a while but now I have a clear path for what to write, it's just a lot of work since I need to rewrite a lot of it and it's demotivating to have to do so. it's about 50% done. once I finished it I want to publish it in some form so that I can claim to be a published novelist. I will probably have to publish independently, IDK if any publishing houses would want to take it.
I also don't know if I want to do art for it. I can't explain it, but I want to commission someone else to do the cover, so when I finish the book I'll save up money for that and do it.
>Deathband
This is a complicated one I have the dreaded writeup for the yangdo crisis and have for quite a while now. those in the deathband discord already know that situation so I won't go over it again.
There's significant work that needs to be done for me to leave deathband in a place I'm comfortable with. I very much don't want to generate any kind of hype around this as it would be detrimental in this stage.
I need to make a more clear guide to the eras of the world, tech levels, etc, including a solid timeline to make everything more coherent. I don't feel comfortable inviting other people to collaborate into this setting if I don't give them something solid to build off of.
I started writing rules for a deathband TTRPG. currently it's technichally playable, but it's not very good right now. I will probably just put it for free as open source somewhere. Making my own RPG and running it is definetly on my list of 'things to do before I die'. This RPG will also include a good 'ol section of lore.
>pirate adventure story I've got a draft. work on this isn't entirely up to me as it is something I'm doing together with a relative who is an artist too. It's going to be an adventure novel and we already have a plot outline, the problem is that we're working out what our target audience. we plan to illustrate it, but to what degree... it's hard to say. for now I'm also waiting for them to be available.
>Pilgrim dock: Da'Aris
Lore thing for a lancer group. shouldn't take me too long, probably a couple of afternoons. Won't be publishing here.
>sky's the limit
Lancer campaign I'm running. it is also the setting where these originate from
The reason why this even is in the list is that I'll probably make more art for it. I might also compile all the lore into something, but I'm not putting any effort into that, just control c and control v all that when the campaign ends. Definitely expect more mechs in this style as I find them quite fun to do. >big DnD poster
Big art project to do a movie poster-like illustration for a dnd campaign I've been playing in for 2+ years. It's gonna be a lot of work, but fun work. This project will require that I learn a few new skills. will definitely publish here.
>Airfortress: hijjia rework So, the last run of airfortress made me think about hijjia a bunch. some time ago krewzt worked on in and we got the kid pope out of that, although in terms of general aesthetics it wasn't really what rava and van expected. I believe Hijjia has got some untapped potencial.
I got some ideas of what I want that country to be, which isn't exactly what was envisionned so far.
My goal with this particular project is to produce an illustrated PDF document similar to the lore showcases I did for deathband. Stylistically it will be very different from those and will not use an in-universe narrator. It will also be much longer than those and incorporate coloured art.
I plan to publish it here when I'm done. This is also something that I want to incorporate into Airfleet: Commander
>the other project
we don't talk about this one
so, what am I working on right now?
right now my two 'in progress' projects are some more airfleet art for the drawing portion and the pilgrim dock thing for the writing, because I really want to be done with that.
following those I'll do some more mech art and I'll do at least two chapters of my novel + the rewrites that I need to.
The future - New man every second
I have learned that there are lessons that cannot be taught. There's wisdom in the world that simply hearing won't make you learn it. I'd go on a limb and say that is the case with most of what we call 'wisdom'. how many times have you heard "life advice" or similar and it actually changed your life? yeah, not even once.
I knew everything in this section since I was a kid, but it took me much longer to learn it. You probably already know everything in this post too.
I'm 25. assuming I live to 100, and that is generous age, I have already burned away 1/4th of my life. I get only 3 more of these till I pass away?
That's kinda terrifying, because honest, my life didn't feel that long, and I know as you age time seems to go by faster.
I think in some regards I developed much later than I should've. Like, I didn't seriously start with art until like 2014. I was 16 or 17 at the time. most people start a few years younger. I also spent much of my younger years alone and so I missed on making a lot of the childhood memories most people have.
But, as much anguish as that has caused me, there's no use crying over spilled milk, as they say.
I think the reason why I feel like my life has been so short is that I don't feel like I started really living until like 3 ago, more or less when I stopped posting here. not saying there's a coorelation there, but that period of like 2 months absolutely just fucking shattered me and by the time I had put myself together I have become an entirely different human being.
I look at the me before that as a complete stranger. If I could go back in time and try my life again I'd do everything different. I don't think that would be true if you asked me 5 years ago, because back then I believed I could do nothing wrong.
that's just what growing up does to you.
There's an an anime short film that I fucking love. It's called tailenders and it has a 6.7 on MAL. But it holds a special place in my heart.
I cannot remember when it was that I saw it for the first time, but I've rewatched it since more or less every year. It came out in 2009 BTW. Please watch it and then come back. it's 24 minutes long and you can probably find it on you tube or something.
spoilers, BTW, from this point on.
It has a very cliche message, typical anime stuff, but I think the way that it is presented and the fact that it has a bittersweet ending just really made it stick to me. Just like the terraformer, life always throws us new and different challenges, and we have to learn to change, adapt, evolve, to meet them.
but it's not about 'adapt or die' like we often see in other media, but rather it's about the more you evolve, the further you can go. In tailenders you don't die if you don't participate in the race, you just live in the city, and you still have to adapt, but to the world that happens
The racers, on the other hand, have to adapt to the terraformer because...they got there. they had the skill and willingness to reach the final strip. And that's where the genius part is, the final stretch is infinite. They don't say it, but it's almost implied.
And yeah, if your goal is "get better" you have an infinite goal. you will never stop getting better, but that doesn't mean that you are destined to fail because the goal cannot be reached, rather that how much you adapt and how far you make it is directly related to how much you change as a person.
the terraformer wasn' just changing the planet, it was changing the people, and the hero of the story doesn't cling to his pride as a human like you would expect to see in a western property, the hero embraces change and evolves.
"I'm not the man I was when I started the race, I'm not even the same as one second ago"
And that's what I want to say: we are always growing up, the future is always coming. Don't cling to some idea you had before about who you are. Embrace your own change as a human being. Seek it out.
Don't change because the environment demands it. Don't change into whatever happenstance demands. Change because you want to. Change into something that you decide.
but don't stay the same, because nobody is perfect.
3 variations on a SF world
so I started to think about ways this could be done, creating a space AU for rwby, which later I adapted in my head to remove all the RWBY-specific elements and make it as scientifically accurate as I could with my knowledge at that time and then I spent some time reading in project rho and had it all shatter. anyways I ended with 3 variations: a completely fantastical one, a semi-realistic one and a hardcore one. before I forget everything I wanted to put it somewhere and here we are.
for the RWBY space AU:
- firsts off I want to talk about dust, atmosphere and space: Ozpin narrates in one of the WoR vids that space travel is not possible using dust as it does not ignite outside of the atmosphere. that makes no sense, I can get behind dust needing a gaseous element to react, what I cannot understand is that whomever builds rockets in remnant has not the common sense of taking compressed air with them, or using air dust to generate the air for the other dust types to react. even if air dust (which we know exists in the world) is absurdly expensive and/or rare they should still be able make oxidizer out of actual air.
also, I'm certain that air dust would be able to generate air. to prove my point I just have to point out at all the other types of dust we've seen:
gravity dust increases the recoil of a weapon, but since gravitons are not made of matter like the stuff generated by the other types of dust we can ignore this.
fire dust seems to create flames AKA plasma. this is important, since it means dust can generate matter in different states. it could be heating up surrounding air into plasma were it not for the fact that it is also used as a replacement for gunpowder. if fire dust ,or whatever type of dust is used as a gunpowder replacement, generated heat but no gasses there simply should be no guns in remmanant. we can conclude, then that fire dust, mixed with an 'oxidizer' (there is no air inside a cartrige) has the ability to generate hot gasses. we could think then of fire dust as compressed plasma in a way.
we aso see Ice dust generate enormous quantities of ice, so much that it would be impossible for it to be pulled out of the moisture in the air, even if weiss pulled all the air in the amity colloseum and it was saturated she woudn't be able to generate those enourmous ice ramps. so I feel confident in saying that ice dust is like 'compressed ice' and air dust is therefore like 'compressed air'. probably the same with water dust.
in this alternate setting, air dust is just as common as the other types and the CCT is never built, remnant uses a satellite network instead. space travel is expensive but not as much as it is on earth due to how powerful dust is and although many scientists think they can crack FTL travel via gravity dust there is no public interest for interplanetary or interstellar travel.
In cannon I would assume that either: they woudn't know how to provide power for satellites, so they need the CCT to feed it dust or there was a conspiracy and the SDC shut down all the space programs to kill the competition, but that is irrelevant to the setting that I'm presenting.
at one point, Grimm commence to arrive from outer space. they are half-mechanical abominations ,larger and fiercer than those before. at first the attacks are sparce, but with time they start to get more intense. as a responce the 4 kingdoms build starships and starfighters similar to the ones in freespace 2 to intercept the space Grimm before they can land.
over time the attacks intensify until a huge invation arrives, remmanant explodes and everyone who can flees to space now the 4 fleets, one for each kingdom, fly trough subspace nodes (similar to the webway in 40k or hyperspace in stelaris. basically they're stable wormholes and 5 minutes in subspace takes you 10 lightyears but they are naturally occuring and only in specific spots, they're the main plot device in freespace)
looking for a new habitable world while evading the everpresent Grimm.
the amity colosseum is turned to a gigantic space station orbiting a dust-rich planet that supplies the fleets, and every two years the fleets converge for the vytal festival and to exchange information on the worlds surveyed.
the huntsmen are still a thing, though the're called 'starhunters' now. each starhunter has a starfighter and a starfighter key. the keys would be the weapons that the cannon cast has with the addition that they also serve as an ID card and as the starting key for their spacecraft. the starhunters would also have the duty of exploring new worlds, so the weapon serves to combat the Grimm that live there but also some hunters can jump out of their cockpits and use their keys to damage a Grimm in a hard to reach weakspot before a teather pulls them back in.
the cast would be fusions of the characters in freespace2 and the ones on RWBY, Adam Taurus would be like the admiral of the hammer of light, cinder like Bosch, ozpin like that black captain that yells at you the entire game and of course ruby would be alpha 1. convinietly in freespace fighters are deployed in groups of 4, which would be mirrored in the 4 person team structure of RWBY.
the typical 'shield' trope of sci-fy is replaced with the 'aural projector' which projects the pilot's aura around the starfighter, so the pilot feels the pain when the ship takes damage and their aura dips when it regenerates. you can imagine regenerating a ship would be more taxing than a body. this also means that they can project their semblance to the craft too, ruby's accelerating at tens of g's, blake's creating afterimages, yang's missiles getting amped with aura, so on and so forth.
the temptacion to make the fighters macross-like mechs is real though, this version throw all realism out the window anyways.
in general they would just fly around the planets, fighting Grimm ,seeing alien landscapes and discovering some conspiracy. the story might play more like the freespace story with the white fang replacing the rebellion and salem's faction replacing the hammer of light or the other way around, exept it won't end in that giant cliffhanger... capella! noooo. those last missions with the ares were the shit. the FS1 final mission was cool too though.
this version I would title 'huntsmen of the stars' 'starhunters', 'starhunters of the vale'.
For the versión based on my own knowledge:
in this case humanity tampers with AI and they are essencially kicked out of the planet. the remaining humans construct the 'remanant of earth' a massive space-faring vessel consisting of multiple rings rotating in alternate directions to generate artificial gravity. in this scenario nuclear fusion is the main power source and antimatter is the main fuel source for spaceships.
the ship acts like a nation, with it's own internal economy, democratically elected goverment, etc. I wanted to do 'capitalism in space- and only space' since the only times I saw that in SF it's either a seedship with a totalitarian goverment or an inter-planetary economy
the starframe pilots are the fighting force of the remnant and are hired by individuals or by the ship's goverment (again, the idea that everything, or almost everything is privately owned). the starframes themselves are 1-3 man spaceships of varying size and función (thus the term starframe as some might be space fighter equivalents and others could be space- bomber equivalents or motherships or any combination of a multitude of types)
the remnant travels through a wormhole generator that is financed through taxes. to solve the negative mass problem but not generate entire planets worth's of matter every jump, and also to reduce the energy costs, the wormhole generator works by creating large ammounts of dark matter, which is expulsed from the wormhole at lightspeed. yeah I'm stepping onto speculative physics, but until someone comes up with a proper wormhole generator, it's all we've got.
character arcs would be similar to the RWBY versión with the advantage that I can justify numbers of characters as big or as small as I'd want. also all OC's and whatever arc I can think of so I can do whatever, really, but this lends itself to more light-hearted stories sine the remnant would travel around a lot and see many places.
now the hard science versión: in this versión I envision a colonization attempt by two rival companies (or nations) of the keppler system. there is no FTL travel at all. the war woud be interplanetary and so orbital periods would be central plot points. the protagonist would be a single person sitting on a mothership that commands a bunch of drones. space drones and missiles are the main way of warfare and pseudo-AI play a central role in all war technologies.
The humans are required to make strategic calls on what to target, then the computer does the rest. the story would focus on the main character's development like ender's game or good kill, where there is a large detachment from the brutalities of warfare and pressing a button from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away and killing multiple million people, as well as the irony of using such contrived equipment to keep the captain/pilot safe while doing so. in this scenario being in the military is actually the safest job in the world, as only the drones and civilians are exposed to dangers of nuclear fire.
m-I'm mage
m-and it's our job to analyse their armour, weapons and skills to see who would win
both- a fatal combat!
so there was this rwby fanfic I was following that was a deathbattle spoof (kinda). unfortunately one of the authors passed away and they announced that they are not going to continue sooo I think the idea is up for grabs, and I think that there is a high demand for battles betoin OC's.
I'm prepared to do this on my own, but if anyone wants to help or submit OC's they absolutely can. for now the only rule I'm imposing is that no OC submitted be objectively more powerful than every cannon character (so basically no OP chars) The first thing I need to do is establish a series of rules for what makes an acceptable entry. also I should decide if the first chapter should be with submitted character or a demo done with the characters I already know. if I do a demo it might give people an idea of what to expect and how the process of deciding who would win
A FATAL COMBAT!
LOOK AT MY FRIGGIN NAME! IT HAS A STAR!
moved into a new house so I don't have wi-fi, typing this from phone. yeah it has had an impact on how much time I am online lately
so, someone gifted me a month of core, god I feel like one percenter now that I have the orange gizmo there. whomever it was they chose to remain anonymous, I imagine to not put preassure on me or make me feel indebted, which is something I admire and respect; even though I have a sneaking suspicion on who it was, I won't pursue the matter further.
just changed my username to a proper alias. even though my real name is still hanging in my profile somewhere it's something I've been meaning to do for a while (it's pronounced pa-chu, like sneeazing)
I will try to upload more stuff these days, just spending a lot of time with the family currently.
I'm working on a certain sprite of a certain character (a certain deviant knows wich one) fortunatly Im' done with the front and right side, should be done soon
if anyone from the airfortress group is seeing this, should I prioritize the enshaw takeover or that illustration with the two characters...? you know what I'm talking about.
and to the troublemakers: I wanna get to MAWV as I feel they are closer to being done, what needs doing, exactly?
two crazy world ideas
one of these is science fiction and the other a kind of fantasy, they were both born from the question 'what if X went wrong with the world?'
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okay, so cientists belive that a mars-sized object impacted the earth several million years ago, this impact had two major consecuences on the planet: for one it gave the earth the 32 degrees of inclination wich is why we have seasons and the impact sent debris into space wich would later form the moon (this theory was what the apolo missions were primarily for, they compared the moon rocks to those on earth). my question is what if the angle and speed at wich this objet hit the earth was diferent? diferent in a way that the earth now has 60 degrees of inclination?
why 60 degrees? you know how the poles are colder than the ecuator becouse the face less directly toward the sun? with inclinations greater than 57 degrees the poles start to face the sun more than the ecuator, this means that the planet would have an 'artic belt' of frozen oceans and tundra arround the ecuator wich would divide the hemispheres. such a divide would cause life to evolve diferently on each hemisphere, or, altenatevely, two civilizations could develop on opposite sides and find alien life in their own planet! good setup for a Columbus-like tale of crossing a frozen desert (perhaps folowing the migration patterns of birds)and finding a new world equal in size to your own.
seasons would be more extreme, especially on the poles wich would still have one day and one night per year, exept that during summer the poles would be the hottest places of the planet and in winter the coldest. in betoin the ecuator and poles there would be two bands of temperate weather wich is where life would be most abundant. winter would suck thoug, as the inclination makes it so that during the winter the sun's zenit would ownly be so few degrees up, making winter days as dark as normal twilight(and very short). in summer the days would be VERY LONG and hot, especially near the poles.
fall and spring would be very similar to how they are in our world in that days and nights would last close to 12 hrs (asuming 24 hr period) for the ecuatorial regions theese would be the hotter days of the year.
it doesn't need to be on earth of course, but it would be funny to see the continent of antartica house all of the world powers and Australia a a huge lush green forest. Siberia would be less white and more green, africa frozen all over, etc.but you could make the argument that a diferent impact of the mars-sized object would alter the mantle and make the continents form diferently too...
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the second worl I thought of is an 'alternate mythology' wich comes from 'what if all the grecoroman heroes failed at their missions?' the idea is to make a sort of post-ancient-greek-apocaliptic world where greece, spain, Portugal, france and italy are overrun by mythical (and original) monsters. here is how it goes:
theseus goes to try to kill the minotaur but fails, the minotaus kills him, so Athens has to continue to tribute human sacrifices to crete and crete never joins the legue of nations that fights the trojan war. hercules dies in his first job and thus he never creates the Gibraltar strait and never joins the argonauts. without hercules's help, the argonauts loose men to the sea monsters, the crew mutinees against jason and then stays to live in lesvos. becouse the lesvians(as in the women who lived in the island of lesvos) were crazy psicopaths who murdered their husbands, and jason isn't there to want his men of the danger, the argonauts die too.
the trojan war follows a similar course, exept the greek league takes heavyer losses as they have a smaller army. ulises kills parís and later hector fights achiles and defeats him by cutting his foot off with his sword and so achiles surrenders.
seeing their hero in such humiliation the greeks retreat, leaving achiles, who now walks with a cane and wooden peg, behind.
by killing parís, Ulises made it so that afrodite could never hold her promise to parís, and becouse the oath of a god is the most sacred thing in panhelenism, that made venus get bad looks from the other gods(wich isn't nice for the godess of beauty). enraged, she seduces posidon to turn the life of ulisses into a living hell. the odyssey happens exept that Ulises looses members of his crew along the way back home. the sailors were...forsefully met... with the local... fauna... of the diferent places Ulises visited spawning a new race of half-monster half-humans known as the "sons of ulises"(not the definitive name, could call them something else like 'ulisians' or 'demihumans') who include witches, half-sirens, etc.
as for Ulises himself, poseidon had placed a curse on him so that if he left the sea he would die. he had been warned by a priest who traveled with him so he never stepped off his boat, but when he arrived at Athens and his wife came to meet him, he was so eager to jump to her arms that he forgot about the curse and had a heart attack the moment he set foot on the city.(just like orpheus! his story did not suffer any changes though since he fails in the original myth, his doesn't really impact the world so it could be changed)
hephestus was mad that his wife had cheated on him for a second time (there is a myth where ares is involved) and seeing it was with zeus's brother, hephestus refused to make lightining bolts for Zeus anymore.
Zeus told poseidon to apologise but poseidon, in his pride, refused to bow to what he considered a minor deity and thretend to unleash the beasts of the sea uppon the cities of men if the gods didn't side with him.
ares, who is always looking to stir trouble, sided with poseidon while athena stayed loyal to zeus's faction, and so sparta(nd the warrior states that prayed to ares) were spared while Olimpia, corintia, Athens and any port city was invaded and destroyed by giant creatures that emerged from the depths. at the request of Zeus, Artemis, godess of nature and hunting, began to bestow powers onto the huntsmen of the cities that were attacked to give them the strength and accuracy to hunt down the monsters(and also the power to talk to animals), creating a new race: the 'blessed'(name subject to possible change) who would later clump together to survive.
at the same time, hades, god of death(who sided with poseidon since he hated hephestus), shut the doors of hell. with nowhere to go, the souls of the deceased began to return to their bodies and the fourth race came to be
I don't have a name for them, but basically undead. the're optional though)at the same time Ulises spent years in the sea, eneas was in a dispute with hector over the throne of troy. hector was the rightfull heir(as the eldest) but an oracle (the god of the oracles was apolo, who sided with Zeus, being his son and all) predicted that 'if hector became king, a great empire will fall', hector gave no sh*ts and exiled his little brother (so now the illiad takes place) and became king. seeing all of this, and fearing that greece may face trojan invasion in the future, Zeus told eneas in a dream that he must fund a new empire in what today would be italy and worship him, so eneas took some folowers ,including the cripple achiles who had been training him, and set sail to the peninsula.
the illiad plays more or less the same untill they reach carthage at wich point they decide to stay instead of leaving.
so eneas becomes consort prince of carthage, achiles begins to train the soldiers of the empire and forms the first legion, who worshipped the greek gods instead of the cartagenian ones. the years passed and although zeuss kept talking to eneas in his dreams about making a new empire, eneas was content staying there and worshiping the gods of carthage, wich was starting to piss Zeus off.
when the poseidon invasion arrives the cartagenians were cought off-guard and so achiles, folowing the instructions of eneas, escaped with the twin princes: romulus and remus to the delta of the river tiber while the rest of the army and eneas himself stay behind heroically to buy them time.
along the way the legion faces many hardships from poseidon, but they recive aid from athena, apolo and Zeus and make it to their destination to fund the roman empire.
but it is not easy, as they find that the war in the heavens is causing demons and other monsters to rise from the earth all over the world. the spirits of the resentful come to posses wild animals and persuit after the worshippers, and the sons of Ulises, who seem to be able to control the evil spirits and beasts, threaten to take over the world.
so that is my setup, basically you have sparta, rome, the blessed nation of artemis, the carthage remanant and troy picking sides and trying to survive a divine world war.
you could also focus on other cities, like Alexandria, if you wanted to do so. the monster could be anything from possed and/or deformed animals, the ulisians, outright demons (wich could take any form), ghosts up to the kraken if you wanted.
if anyone sat through all that text, wich one di you prefer? let me know your opinion below