Story concept by Kris Verwimp
Music by Arkadius Antonik

"Creeping Of The Black Blood"

"While Odoric, Ahrimas and Kalthür are on a mission to find The Heart of the Serpent deep inside the catacombs beneath Cainnthüra, Khargin and her forces are waiting on the mountain ridge, unaware of the fact that her brother Bohriar has gone on a quest of his own!

When Bohriar encounters a mysterious hooded figure in the forest, he assumes that it is Payches-Ra and decides to attack. Against all odds, he manages to kill the bodyguards and slay the unknown commander with his spear. But then something unexpected happens. His dying victim emanates a terrible mental shriek that almost renders him unconscious. Suddenly the pitch black blood on his hands seems to start creeping up on him. As Bohriar struggles for control over his mind, he is surrounded by the Dachnak who have come to the aid of their dying Cüh’llnak. At that moment, a strange beam of light suddenly bursts up from the main temple-pyramid!"

Realms Of Odoric - Creeping Of The Black Blood

Welcome to “Realms of Odoric”, the ongoing soundtrack / artwork project of Arkadius Antonik and Kris Verwimp.

Biografie
Ever since the release of Odoric “The Wall Of Doom” back in 1996, most of my free time has been absorbed entirely by painting CD-covers for Metal bands. But all that time Odoric kept wandering in the back of my head, yearning to return one day. My idea was to combine my two passions: illustration and music by creating a soundtrack for the next Odoric comic with the help of various metal musicians. Over the years there were a number of people who wanted to help me out with this project. Belgian bands The Darkening, Axamenta and Dagorlad showed interest to work on the soundtrack and even composed quite a few tracks. However, I never found enough time to complete the story entirely. 10 years went by and looking back at the first pages of the story, it became clear to me that my drawing style had changed too much to complete this book.

I had almost given up on Odoric entirely when I learned about the soundtrack compositions of Arkadius Antonik of Suidakra. I was absolutely amazed and inspired by his tracks and after having worked with Suidakra for more than a decade and even writing their concept stories and lyrics for the last three albums, I got the idea that this could be the ideal opportunity to bring back the Odoric soundtrack project.
I presented Arkadius with my thoughts and to my surprise he was very enthusiastic. He had even wanted to ask me about doing illustrations for his soundtrack compositions but was afraid that I would be too busy. But after 20 years of doing mainly CD-covers, I felt like working on something personal again. I decided to accept a lot less cover art commissions and focus on Odoric again.

So this page marks the start of a new project to resurrect Odoric, starting with the rediscovery of the geography, history and mythology of the Realms of Odoric. Arkadius will compose the soundtrack and I will be illustrating and writing with the help of Filip Keunen who wrote “The Wall Of Doom”. Hopefully this will be a fun project in which we all will draw inspiration from each other’s works. Progress will be posted on this page regularly so everyone can keep up!

Kris Verwimp
May 2013 