#urskek

[papabirdurskeks]

An empty shell

[flowerprintundies]

I forget I made these no joke haha and it's almost the anniversary of their creation!

[podlingmom]

Some sketches I never posted

[ender--slime]

Happy Dark Crystal Day, Thralings!

Today is The Dark Crystal’s 40th Anniversary!

To celebrate, I’ve got some very special stickers in my shop:

Crystal of Truth Rainbow Decals!

These are no ordinary stickers, but RAINBOW window decals that light up your whole room with rainbows when the sun hits them!

These are SUPER cool and I’m personally obsessed with them, so I’m really excited to finally be able to sell them :D

These are super limited, just for the 40th anniversary, and might not be restocked, so make sure to grab your own decal!

Grab a decal at my shop here:

Support me by buying me a Ko-Fi here:

The Crystal calls!!

[sunstar-of-the-north]

Charm, much like Chernabog, has been a dear and supportive friend of mine since I first joined DA way back in 2016. She is just--so amazing, kind, and sweet. I always get a smile on my face whenever we talk. Thank you for being such a wonderful friend of mine! Here is her Urskek oc, Durnazshar! It was honestly relaxing drawing him!

@charmstar71

[moa-sting]

Have you ever wanted to be an urSkek? How about a Skeksis--you know, one of those weird bird creatures from the Dark Crystal? Well, if you have a deck of cards you can play Sundered and Undone, a one-player storytelling game based off The Dark Crystal. 

i playtested this and my Mystic learned the value of community while my Skeksis just took consecutive Ls constantly. 

You can also hack this to be about any two characters with a psychic/material connection aka soulmates, but this is my game and I saw it’s about urSkeks first and foremost. 

[skekgra-smokes-weed]

BIBLICALLY ACCURATE ANGEL URSKEKS

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

I've been thinking a lot about the Dark Crystal Creation Myths lately and specifically how much it really... Complicates the series' relationship to the UrSkeks in a way. Like from the beginning the reunion of the UrRu and the Skeksis is portrayed as a good thing, it's how the whole conflict of the franchise is solved, it's the climax of the movie, it's the happy ending. Hearing the story from Heretic and urGoh it's also very clear that they long to be one again. But the way UrSkek society and culture is portrayed in Creation Myths make it sort of feel like something you wouldn't want to go back to. "Your utopia sounds like oppression" like Raunip said. The division occurred because one UrSkek "gave into his darker nature", but what darkness means to an UrSkek is just wanting to be an individual. Dark Heart's heart first started to darken when he heard Gyr play his song, when his inner most feelings and desires were heard through another voice, when it was shared. When we first see his heart go dark is when he exclaims "That is MY song!" It darkens further when Raunip tells him that he's the first of his kind who "speaks for himself". Then during the great conjunction, when he discovers that he can't feel his home world, he thinks they're all being rejected, until Raunip taunts him and calls him poisonous. There he switches from the we to the I, lamenting that no one in the universe will ever love him, and that causes the split.

There's just something so tragic about it, and so much you could read into it. Was Dark Heart rejected because he wanted something to keep for himself? Because he wouldn't let his inner self be known? Because he had an inner self to begin with? Because of the shame? Because he wanted to be loved? Because he wanted to be loved for who he was and not as a part of the UrSkek collective? Is wanting to be loved a kind of UrSkek cardinal sin because it's an expression of ego?

You can see the Skeksis as the extreme of this of course because they're completely self-serving and have no concern for anyone else. But then again, they might be evil but they're at least distinguishable from one another. Dark Heart could only be told apart from the other UrSkeks when he started to darken. I'm not really going anywhere with this I'm just having feelings about Dark Heart??

[monsterforge]

Funko Pop repaints

SkekGra and UrGoh

2020

Funko Pop repaint of SkekGra and UrGoh

[greys-slippings]

Some All Tomorrows inspired urSkeks

[papabirdurskeks]

Another commission done, this time for @skekgroodie of their OC HanZel (the smaller one) with my OC VilVek(the big guy on the left)!

They requested one of her urSkeks with mine so here we are!

Thank you so much for commissioning me! <3 I had a blast with this one! Can never say no to urSkeks xD

[gretchensinister]

Dark Crystal Vampire AU Part 1: HERE WE GO

I alluded to two different Dark Crystal AUs I probably wouldn’t write, but I figure, I can still talk about them, put them into the hive mind for consideration. It was in conversation with @tejoxys where he brought up the idea of the skeksis being vampires in a “human” AU. I thought that idea was really cool and an opportunity for weird vampires.

So, in this AU, there aren’t any real “regular” vampires; they’re still in folklore and fiction, but if anyone was like “hey I think that guy’s a vampire” everyone else would be like, “stop being a weirdo.”

Therefore, in the grand old tradition of Our Vampires Our Different, here we go:

The UrSkeks: In the 900s there was a small, secretive, mystical/esoteric cult who believed a) they once had been bodiless spirits, fully mature and aware (not like a baby soul waiting to be installed), b) one of their purposes on Earth was to spread the wisdom/knowledge they had due to once being bodiless spirits, and c) the other purpose they had was to become pure immortal spirit again, without dying, and remain ever-living on the Earth.

If I did this I think I’d spell it URSKEK and have it be a relevant acronym for mystic/occult/esoteric terms.

Some problems: a lot of their wisdom and knowledge was like...just utterly wack, or impossible to say if it was or wasn’t true. But some of it was good, and some of it was surprisingly ahead of its time, even when considering the whole world (if I wrote this I would set it somewhere in what is now modern-day Italy). Another problem is that they had a secret 1-7 ranking system for all other people based on how worthy the URSKEKs thought they were to receive URSKEK wisdom.

Anyway, (and here I had to stop myself from going down a rabbit hole of find out what interesting astronomical events were happening in the middle ages) at a certain point all 18 members of the inner circle of the cult have been excommunicated because the cult shit is getting too obvious. (Hmm, wait, there was a solar eclipse visible in some parts of Europe on July 20, 966, maybe that would be a good date for the Big Event. BTW it still troubles me that 2020 ended with what is called a great conjunction on Earth.) Anyway, things are getting hot, even though all the inner circle is pretty wealthy/privileged, there’s talk of heresy trials because WTF are you even talking about. This big astronomical event is going to occur, and the URSKEKs are like, we’re ready, we have everything ready to cast off mortal flesh and become immortal beings of pure spirit.

The aesthetic is very alchemy. (Another significant research hole hindering this project.)

So the URSKEKs prepare this complex ritual to cut their spirits free from their bodies during the eclipse (maybe the thing is that their flesh is “eclipsing” their spirits and as the moon moves away from the sun their radiant spirits can be free).

Now as a writer I’m always up for taking aim at the concept of the body vs. mind/spirit. They’re not really separate! So there’s that issue with the ceremony, along with the fact that the URSKEKs are not as pure and wise as they’d like to believe. Also, most of them are at least a little bit afraid of this ceremony, which, if one has any doubts at all, sounds like an elaborate suicide pact. But they can’t stop now, it needs 18 people to work because 2x3x3 and other math and geometry reasons, and no one else is enlightened enough. So the ceremony starts, and it gets underway, and whoa it seems to actually be working, or at least something’s happening that’s not just bleeding out and dying when you cut your body down the center line with a quartz dagger. But they also feel like they’re losing themselves and they don’t really want to do that (too late).

When totality ends there are now 36 bodies in the ceremony location, with fractured memories and appearances that are now somewhat off from human.

All of them immediately feel that there’s something very wrong about this situation, but it’s hard to think in the confusion.

And then a lower-ranking cult member that they’d arranged to check on them after the ceremony (an honor, to see their new spirit forms and maybe deal with their bodies if they were still there after the transformation) opens the door to the room. And for all of the new skeksis AND urRu, a couple of things become very clear: 1) one of the ways in which they’re different from humans is their fangs, and 2) they need that guy’s blood. Basically a feeding frenzy ensues, and this is when they all learn about paired injuries and paired deaths, and those two pairs whose names I forget die. Exsanguinated by their former cult fellows. Kind of fucked but this is a vampire AU babey.

Now, after this whole shitshow, the 32 remaining vampires are a lot calmer and they’re able to figure out that they’re halves of the URSKEKs. One set of halves (the urRu) is of the opinion that they all represent a horrible failure of the ceremony (they were compelled to tear into that guy like wild animals), while the skeksis halves immediately start insisting that it went right or even better than planned (they’re now above humans and can consume them like any other meat animal). The difference of opinion corresponds to some subtle physical differences between the two as well.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

[ben-the-hyena]

Idea for the Natives AU : as said, previously, Skeksis speak Skeksish in-universe, and almost all Skeksis and UrRu speak UrSkeksish with each other which is like Italians and Spanish speaking a language in the middle of it that is like Latin but not dead, but the ones we know happen to be perfectly fluent in Gelfling, the standard/main/universal language of Thra like English is to Earth

In the AU obviously it's nor spoken by everyone, only politicians, diplomats, scholars, royals, merchants, traders, army translators, religious and officials in general have to know it. All the canon Skeksis are nobles in the AU minus SkekTek (who is fluent in it for usefulness when studying foreign sciences), SkekSil (who figured it is best to know it to manipulate more people and integrate the court even more) and SkekHak (the Merchant so he had to sell his products to most people possible) who entered the court (in SkekHak's case his own, SkekYi and he living in another town) by themselves

So by this logic so must their descendance. Most do in fact. But some have more difficulties than others, or don't see it as useful. None of SkekTek's kids or grandkids speak it since they barely count as courtiers anyway. SkekSa's adopted kids on the contrary only speak Gelfling since she raised them the Sifan way and doesn't see herself as a Skeksis by the end of her life. SkekVou (SkekZok and SkekVar's middle son) is a bit too dumb so couldn't even get the pronouns and articles thing (SkekSish doesn't seem to have any) and so gave up, and his own child only knows school bases since he doesn't see why they should know it since he is doing well without it. SkekEi (SkekNa's adoptive daughter) had to learn it from the moment she was adopted which was when she was a preteen instead of it being taught from a young age so even if fortunately for her she had facilities and learned it quickly she still has an accent the canon Skeksis don't have. Twins SkekNetk and SkekSsaz (SkekSil and SkekUng's sons) do speak it but badly, usually being mischievous and uninterested in class, resulting in them knowing how to understand it and read it but when they speak it they sound like SkekSil but NOT playing dumb but genuinely because they too have a hard time with the grammar differences and essentially literally translate what they think (a little nod to how it used to be what they wanted to imply for SkekSil in the test audience dub lol) and the fact that not only they butcher that is so simple to him but also sound even more like their mother has SkekUng cringe and enrage when he is with them on a mission that requires speaking to Gelfling. SkekSsaz' eldest daughter, SkekMet, has severe dyslexia so she can barely read her own language let alone another so out of frustration got disgusted from learning Gelfling through books and completely gave up too not even bothering remembering the few she knew finding it useless anyway. SkekFih, mate of SkekLong (SkekVar and SkekLong's eldest son) being just a guard didn't have to but perfected basic sentences for his stay in Ha'rar and learned more there giving him a level like the twins' after 6 unum there with an extra accent. SkekSosh (SkekLach and SkekLi's eldest biological son) doesn't speak it because he never wanted to bother lowering himself to slave language, and with a father as irresponsible as SkekLi who never took care of him and SkekLach who whines about anything bothering her therefore having taught her son to feel the same being the one to raise him, none of them opposed or cared to

[thebibliomancer]

I was joking with a friend about how since the Gelfling have two separate groups that live underground - Grottan and Firelings - they might have a long lost clan in the sky. Maybe on an ancient urSkek ruin where ancient Lore-esque constructs endlessly attend tasks beyond the understanding of the Gelfling that share the ruins.

And oh no I’ve just recreated Laputa.

[monsterfucker-showdown]

Bracket E Round 1 Matchup 7

May the most fuck worthy monster win!

[crispy-skek-memes]

VilVek as my part of an art trade with @papabirdurskeks ! I haven’t drawn an UrSkek in a while so it was very nice to work on him!