PHoD KALI

The Hindu Goddess, Kali... and a huge pile of other Indian/Hindu inspired stuff... and, inevitably, Undead Animals!

The island continent of Maldrapur is a realm in my Demoness Tales series, 'til now very seldom visited in my NWN version due to the almost total, utter and complete lack of any Indian material in NWN whatsoever - which has been a bit of an obstacle since Maldrapur bears a suspiciously strong resemblance to India. However, as usual when faced with reality, PHoD and Fifi make strange noises and firmly kick reality in the teeth and jump up and down on it, in this instance desiring to make the entire land of Maldrapur available in NWN. So for the last year or so (as well as doing all sorts of other things) I've been hitting everything in sight with large bricks specially imported from Delhi in order to create a series of Maldrapur Chronicles Modules.

As Kali is the main PC in these Modules, she was the first thing that needed to be done. I finally got round to creating her during the "Deities..." CCC. But aside from a couple of statues, she was alone... Now, via the miracle of the not very miraculous procedure of spending hundreds, thousands, millions of hours hitting things with big bricks in gmax, the Maldrapur Chronicles have reached their sixth Module and I felt it was feasible to therefore apply a gargantuan brick to NWN's lack of any Indian content.

As the ridiculously abundant screenshots show, this Hak contains a somewhat eclectic assortment of "stuff" from the first year of the Maldrapur Chronicles. As well as the lady herself, there's her filthy, evilist arch-enemy Jhurgha, a fallen god and Obvious Spleen. There are the Rompo and hideously colossal Maharompo, epic level Undead Animals which make Hinduism approximately the only religion in the world with Undead Animals in, which is probably why, blatant atheist that I am, I couldn't resist using tales from the Upanishads, Vedas and Mahabharata as a basis to my own unbalanced stories. (The Rompo were thinly disguised as the "Stahnk" creature I did for the "Krynn..." CCC. You also get the hideous Pisachas, the half-demon king Ravana, Hiranyakashipu, Tyrant of the Asuras and the dribblingly mad and incompetent pig-headed (literally) giants, Kaitabha and Madhu... Then there's the appallingly horrible Rakshasa, the Devil God of Maldrapur and its flesh-splinters the Rakshasi, which are seethingly eeeeeeevil. Most of these are based either closely or loosely upon characters and creatures from Indian mythology but there's nothing to say you can't use them for whatever else you might wish to...

Note:- The scimitars wielded in four of Kali and Jhurgha's six arms are fixed since NWN doesn't allow for a Creature model to equip six actual weapons. Shocking oversight on BioWare's behalf, that. Discrimination against multi-limbed deities. Disgraceful... Anyway, the matching scimitar weapon models show up in the Toolset as a fifth addition to the default Scimitar 1 model. In other words, set a scimitar in the Toolset to 1, 1, 1 down the left column in its appearance tab, and set the right column to 5, 5, 5. That gives you Kali's scimitar with the green gem, change the bottom one to 6 and it gives you Jhurgha's nasty, evil red gem version. Not that you can't have them wield other weapons, it just LOOKS BETTER when they're all the same. (If you're already using a mod that places additional scimitar parts in the same slots you'll obviously need to change something round somewhere).

I'm working on three different Indian Tilesets for Maldrapur (you can see elements of them in some of the screenshots), but these are long term projects and in no way finished yet. There's still a lot more Maldrapuri stuff to be done... However, there are now some Placeables finished. Something like 55 of them here, if I recall correctly.

You get some whopping Placeable temples, including the Great Temple of Jaiutmeer, Maldrapur's centre of festivals and grand ceremonies. I'm actually quite proud of that one having examined architectural plans of several Hindu temples whilst making it. (It's actually the second attempt 'cause the first one was so high-poly it killed NWN stone dead instantly).

Fifi accused me of becoming "all girly and making silly noises" when it came to creating the distinctive Indian-inspired furniture of Maldrapur 'cause I got all obsessed with pretty Indian silks and fabric patterns and things. Anyway, I'm all better now and normal service has been resumed and I'm making huge rubbery monsters and stuff... but, it is ever so nice, that furniture. I think it may be the nicest, cutest furniture in NWN, but obviously I'm biased... Fifi's looking at me despairingly and shaking her head sadly...

You get Maldrapuri statues; the ones of Kali are fairly high-poly, the others I've kept lower to avoid lag when I pile loads of them into an Area. There are assorted Hindu tapestries (intended to be stuck on walls) and nice round Indian carpets with traditional designs and really nice fabrics and... She's shaking her head again... The carpet with the golden wheel motif represents the DharmaChakra, a Hindu symbol of great spiritual power. Mostly for use in temples, that one. And... there's some other stuff too, I forget what. Just grub about in the big box and you'll soon see what's in it. I don't even know why I'm bothering to say this having spent three months nailing all those damn screenshots to the page with special Indian nails imported from Bombay...

Anyway, for anyone who ever wished there was some Indian themed stuff in NWN, here it is... Just remeber Kali is shockingly powerful and a real goddess worshipped by millions the world over - be nice to her!

This Hak is respectfully dedicated to all those working to prevent the dreadful crimes against women in parts of India today, a situation all the sadder given the enormous respect for women and very powerful female figures in Indian mythology - even the creation of the devanagari alphabet (in which Sanskrit is written) is credited to the goddess Lakshmi, after all, and without Kali, all life would have perished thousands of years ago...

--------------------------------Massive-Update------------------------------------------------------------

KALI - The Maldrapur Chronicles - Year Two

A whole new world for NWN...

It seemed a tad ambitious, in retrospect - but I'm getting there... Having created further adventures in the series, it was necessary to add assorted new Creatures and Placeables to expand the world of Maldrapur. And so now, I have colossally updated the Kali Hak with a VAST pile of new Indian stuff, all lovingly hand-crafted by the Shabby Hyena Weirdo hitting them with big bricks a lot...

New Creatures include the biggest, baddest beast in Hinduism, the Timingila; an immense, marine creature of devastating power - a sort of Maldrapuri Gojira. There are also the fearsome Makara, hybrids of Crocodile, Elephant and Fish, though mine became genetically corrupted and are now Tyrannosaurus, Elephant, Fish hybrids. Plus the Blood Demon, Raktabija, one of Kali's most infamous foes, the savage Yali, the Bird God, Garuda, whose nature varies considerably between Hinduism and Buddhism, the undead ash construct, Bhandasura, the cursed and horrifically mutated Kabandha and the nauseatingly ugly Preta, tormented ghosts of the malformed... Yes, Kali does actually know some nice people as well, but I haven't got round to them yet...

I've expanded the architectural horizons of Maldrapur A LOT. Still some stuff I want to add and finish with the Tilesets, but there are now piles more Placeables. These include a set of elements for the Rajatnur Palace, which can be used to create all sorts of customized building layouts. Plus Temples. LOTS more temples, including one specifically for Kali herself. Based on various styles of Indian temple architecture, there's now quite a variety. Plus all sorts of other palaces, shrines, archways and so on and so forth. And some grotty old rural houses, since not EVERYBODY in Maldrapur hangs around in palaces and temples.

There are also millions of tonnes of statues and additional Maldrapuri carpets and tapestries, plus new decorative pots and all that sort of thing. Also there are lots of additional pieces of Maldrapur furniture to pile in the showroom with all the first lot. And also also, most importantly of all, I have thumped NWN's deplorable lack of any really good quality cane baskets with a big brick and there is an eight piece set of Maldrapur Cane Baskets of assorted shapes and sizes... Never attempt anything without sufficient Cane Baskets.

Also, you can now hold the Festival of Lights, Diwali, in NWN, by means of thousands of PHoD Diwali lanterns and Diya Lamps. These look a bit silly in broad daylight, but when darkness falls... well, just look at the screenshots. Note:- The Diya Lamps and their little emitter flames do not actually radiate any light. This is because light nodes in Placeables will cause lag if there are too many in one Area and since Diwali festivities involve hundreds, thousands, millions of these things, the results would be rubbish in-game. I tend to simply secrete one or two of the BioWare Candle Placeables that have light at strategic places amongst the hordes of Diya, setting the Z position so that only the little flame shows. This gives the right sort of atmosphere but avoids lag.

There's probably piles of other stuff too, but I forget what. That's what the insanely gargantuan numbers of screenshots are for. The NEW stuff is in the screenshots beginning at "201".

You also get a set of Maldrapur Loadscreens (of which there are just a couple shown in a screenshot), some of just the jungle and several others depicting assorted Indian temples that look a bit like the Placeable temples in the Hak. And which don't fit easily into long low loadscreen shapes. In the Toolset, you'll find they all come up under the BioWare Forest TTF01.

It should be noted that this material is not intended as a Guide to Hinduism and should not be interpreted as such. Anyone with a genuine interest in learning about Hinduism should go to proper, actual, legitimate sources of information upon such, not just a Debased Hyena Loony's NWN stuff. Hinduism is, I think, rather misunderstood in the West by most and a load of rubbery PHoD Spleen Monsters and some temples with frustratingly enforced polycounts insufficient to render all their details is probably not going to provide miraculous enlightenment. (And I should thank my lovely and talented friend Vineeta (and her parents) for putting up with me showing them stuff and asking if it looks sufficiently Indian and also for prowling round their Diwali celebration measuring all the lanterns... And apparently I must thank Fifi for not killing me stone dead for spending so much time in close proximity to Vineeta...)

Anyway, the screenshots tell you what you need to know, there's more detail to be found on my PHoD Things thread over on the BioWare forums and I'm getting frostbite sitting here in this feckin' gobshite icebox of a house. The End.

(NOTE:- I was just going to replace the old Hak with the new one, but I wasn't certain if maybe someone just MIGHT for some unknown reason require the old version, so I left it there. Ignore it. ------------------ The NEW Hak, clearly marked "2" and nearly three times the size of the original, is all you need. It contains ALL the original material as well as ALL the update stuff. No 2da entries have been moved so you can safely replace the old Kali Hak in any Module you used it in with this one.)