Religious Value In Shadow Hill is A Strong Driving Force.

Witch Craft, Cults and Religion play a very strong role in the Shadow Hill series but one has to be careful when religion is brought up. To take careful consideration into how the religious context in Shadow Hill will be approached the series doesn't use any of the Christian religions at least not in a sense when it comes down to God, Jesus Christ, etc. There may be verses from the holy bible but again it's not to mock Christianity in any way shape or form. I know this would mean very little to actual Christians.

There are two different cult groups in Shadow Hill, both of their Gods are female and actually appear in the physical form. In Silent Hill they speak of God but they never truly show her in the physical form. A fellow artist I know personally created an interesting image of a woman in red allowed me to use his piece of work to demonstrate what the God of The Order might look like but since I rather create my own version of a female God, I'm not going to copy his artwork.  I am fully capable of doing one of greater justice considering the experience that I have in the Dark arts alone. 

My GOD will definitely resemble that of a Roman Goddess for sure. Roman literature and culture has been influential on a lot of different artist over the years. When you compare the Greek and Roman Gods and Goddesses to the Gods and Goddesses of every other culture in the world...Well we can all agree here that Roman and Greek Gods and Goddesses are presented the most. Here is that image. And while I'm on the subject matter of GOD, I want to bring up Witch craft. 

According to Silent Hill's Wikipedia page (although not always accurate) they mentioned Witch Craft being a part of the Orders beliefs and methods to how they cause a lot of the destruction in the world. Silent Hill never did go into extreme detail about any of these things, and the comic books were absolute failures with horrific drawings, and storylines that had little if any at all to do with Silent Hill... The movie's made a good attempt and while the first film was a bit like the first SH game, the second movie (which was suppose to be SH3) was a bigger failure than the first one. 

However the first movie still failed and pissed off fans and I had a lot of issues with it especially how they killed off the cult leader...It was uncalled for and they ruined a very important character, Alessa by trying to paint her as evil when she clearly is not evil in the games. I would have went on a tyrannical rage if they had of done that to Claudia Wolf in the movie.... Usually I'm not someone that overreacts to fiction but there are times when I just can't help it.... I'd have lost my mind if Claudia was killed the same way... The director would have gotten all kinds of hate mail, leave my woman the fuck alone!

When I first seen this image, it reminded me immediately of the GOD from Silent Hill. 

Now then since I don't know anything at all about Witch Craft other than the stereotypical aspect of it. I am familiar with how cults and religion tend to operate based on some of the things I have read about them in the past. I also spend most of my time during the night reading about cults but there is always something in them about child sacrifices, you know the usual scare tactic stuff. I'm not saying that reading about these things make me uncomfortable...It's just that none of it is written in a way like the stories you find about famous people that did barbaric things to their own citizens, like Ivan The Terrible, Vlad The Impaler, or Elizabeth Bathory.

When these controversial type of things get brought up, it's always written or presented by someone who isn't writing any of this stuff in a way that make the content they are discussing interesting to read about. Instead they mention all these controversial things in order to provoke anger out of the reader...I read to be entertained, to be enlighten, and so that I can have a better understanding of the real world around me both in a fictional and realistic sense. There is nothing wrong with seeking knowledge, but we live in a world today where assholes want more useful idiots to control for their twisted agendas.

I've come to the realization that religion can help with story telling a lot if you dive deep enough into it and you're not using it as a means to mock or make fun of it. Sometimes I feel that I'm being bit a blasphemes when I use religious themes in my work, and though I try to be mindful and respectful of these themes. I still would like to create my own horror erotic stories that use some influences from religious text without insulting Christianity.I have used some verses from the bible since they are often creative and I like the way some of it sounds.

This is why I chose not to make the religions in Shadow Hill about Christianity in order to avoid this conflicting problem. Sometime last year I came upon a story about a group of lesbian nuns in a real Covenant, and then there was another story about a Nun that forced a 12 year old boy to impregnate her which I scoffed at as fictional despite it was written by an elderly old man that claimed this confession really happened to him as a boy.

I don't know if I believe the confession but I do believe the story about the Lesbian Nuns being true more than the elderly man's boyhood story. The two Nuns were intimately involved without anyone else in the convent knowing about it. Then they got married after they left the church. This led me to believe that no one in the world is truly safe from such desires and urges, that once a person becomes curious about something they either give in or resist whatever it is.

Nuns are surrounded by other women all day so there is a possibility that if you have a Convent and there are 400 or so women with no men around it's going to be just like how it is in Women prisons, someone is going to want their face between the legs of other women even if it's temporarily. Nuns aren't immune to taboo urges, just like the priest aren't immune to those urges either...One way or another people will have to decide between their faith or their desires.

Therefore the Nuns both kept their love life a secret and for some reason that story got me hooked on the idea on wanting to do a serious theme involving Nuns without all the bullshit that often associates with the theme. My thoughts to that story was that women who try to devote themselves to GOD can still be tempted to do things the same way some Priest end up doing controversial things. You learn quickly that humans aren't perfect even if they are suppose to be fighting and serving the Will of GOD, sometimes they struggle with obedience of the word, and then betray the word go astray.

To my understanding when I created Shadow Hill I always wanted a Dark Religious story that involved a lot of questionable things because I knew that these elements would be perfect for telling an interesting story of fiction in a Dark erotic setting. I worked on the Book Of Eve back in 2015 which became known as Shadow Hill. The series was then divided into multiple major chapters. These books were to be created in this exact order: 

                                         Religious Verses are often used in Shadow Hill.

Shadow Hill: Escape From Echidna Asylum 

Shadow Hill: The Book Of Eve

Shadow Hill: The Leviathan Order

Shadow Hill: The Motherhood Order

Shadow Hill: Claudia's Promise

Shadow Hill: Exiled From Heaven

Shadow Hill: The Beast That Breeds Holy Women

Shadow Hill: Bloodline Of The Wolves

Shadow Hill: Little Girl On The Prairie

Shadow Hill: Claudia's Salvation 

 So there were to be at least 10  main chapters to this series with a few additional stories becoming mini-series with fewer pages than the main stories that would contain over 70-140+ pages in total. Silent Hill is a series that goes into some detail about The Order, a cult in the series that never had much of a well written back story in Silent Hill. 

What I wanted to do was explore a different Order with different views from that of Silent Hill using Silent Hill's Claudia Wolf as the main protagonist of the Shadow Hill series behind the Leviathan Order. The creators of Silent Hill said so themselves that The Order is very similar to Satanism than it is to Christianity. Rather than using the pentagram they chose to go with The Halo Of The Sun Seal. Yet there is also a battle with a Baphomet type demon in the first game depending on the conditions you've met prior to reaching the end. 

This Seal is also used often throughout Shadow Hill but it has a much different meaning than it does in Silent Hill. The symbol can be seen printed on books, paintings, scriptures, and sometimes even engraved into the flesh of believers. In Shadow Hill the Halo Sun Seal symbol can be used to access areas of the Town that can't be reached by foot, car, boat, or horseback. These seals are also used as a means of communication between members of the Order, so if the seal is discovered in a specific location like painted on a wall for instance that can only mean the area is occupied by Leviathan Order worshipers.

 Anyone with the symbol engraved on their flesh is a Leviathan Order servant even after
death, they continue to serve The Order and it's causes.There is also the Motherhood Order which is more on the evil side of things and share a lot of their similarities with the original order from The Silent Hill Series.

They also do not permit younger women from joining them either. This would explain why all their members are middle age women, young women are useful for other reasons. The young women flirting with evil are normally kidnapped and used for rituals. Some say a lot of this is due to jealousy of their youth because The Motherhood Order is mostly women in their late 30s mid 40s and early 50s and 60s. Envy is a sin and they are full of it.

But there is also an additional secondary seal which only high ranking members of the Order are allowed to have and carry with them. They can also use this seal to summon powerful forces from the other world to serve them. When the Seal is stolen by the Witches they exploit it's great power in order to conjure up evil forces to raise hell throughout the entire town. The seal also gives them the power they need to free themselves from their prison. 

Another interesting thing here is sexual encounters with demonic forces of evil which is another concept I found quite fascinating. This came about after I read Convent Of Hell several times and wanted to create a similar concept that involved Nuns fornicating with demonic forces. When I brought this to the attention of one of my fans two years ago, he felt uncomfortable about this because he believes that something tragic would happen if you fool around with demonic themes.

 I then explained how I understood because I didn't feel comfortable with it either having to look up images of Baphomet all over the web exposing myself to very strange imagery and part of me felt concerned that I would upset GOD despite I'm not exactly a Christian. The older you become, you often start realizing how not everything is false about the bible though. That some of the things within it's teachings might just be real after all. Especially considering how it predicted a lot of the things we're dealing with today. But don't worry, I'm not trying to scare anyone with this stuff.

I don't believe that the monstrous demons we see in fantasy artworks and such exist, it just seems too far fetched...Demons that appear in the artworks we see are created entirely from the minds of human beings with dark thoughts to conjure up such disturbing creatures. People believe in Angels as well, but do these Angels have wings and wear white robes like they've been portrayed since forever? I have a difficult time grasping that any of these things are real and I'm not even an Atheist.

 I'm saying there was a time when people in Rome believed in their Roman Gods and Goddesses the same way Christians believe in GOD and Jesus Christ. Almost every religion the believers believed in a place people go to live peacefully and a place where others go to suffer damnation for eternity among the Demons. I have no idea if people in Rome still believe in these things though. But Christianity borrowed a lot of stuff from Greek Mythology. Some of the stories in Greek mythology came first. 

This is the type of horrific monstrosity you would most likely run into in an abandoned school, hospital, or some other area in town you are not suppose to be in. Every religion talks about demonic forces, a Heaven and Hell even if they don't use those same exact terms...I believe the Bible goes into greater detail about them, but not enough detail to make them truly stand out. In my world, demons are mostly futanari's because if there is to be any sexual encounters with them involved...I don't want to be thinking "Male demon" that is unless I approach it the same way I did with Nure-Onna the transsexual ghost demon that can change appearances to reflect either gender but cannot alter their genitalia.

That could only mean there aren't many male demons in Shadow Hill, the majority of them are either female or futas because for some reason this makes them more sexually appealing. These demons prey upon human females and do not discriminate. If they believe the person to be breed-able, then they will target them. You also have to understand that these Demons answer to the likes of Rosaria that sees herself as a GOD rather than a servant of GOD of her own faith.

This is why she was also exiled from Shadow Hill with the Witches. She believed herself to be superior above all. When she was instructed to kneel during the arrival of Uriel The GOD The Church of Leviathan worshiped, Rosaria responded "I kneel before no GOD, nor mortal man, and especially a mortal woman that includes you dear sister. For I am above all living beings including the force in which you serve." This act of disrespect enraged Claudia Wolf and she threw her own sister out along with the 600 fallen Nuns that followed her. 

 I do still believe in there being a higher power in the world, but at the same time I have a taste for uncomfortable themes that let me challenge my mental state of mind. The other day I spent half an hour reading about Jeanne Of Arc and wanted to do something that involved her facing off against demons, including having her involved in modern time since Shadow Hill does take place between the 1970s-1980s. I figured I could do a resurrection story that brings the legendary Maiden of God back to life for a chance to combat evil forces by having her serve The Leviathan Order.

 Having knights exist during the 70s and 80s could still be quite interesting even if it seems out of place for those time periods unless I were to use this for a historical purpose that discuss how the town came to be before The Wolf Family occupied it. That means doing flashbacks. Or like how it was in Castlevania Lords Of Shadow 2 when they blended the Gothic Castle in with the modern city that surrounded it. You still had knights roaming around this Gothic city occupied by demonic forces and modern life where people dressed normally vs wearing peasant and renaissance era clothing, I've always liked the theme of that game for this very reason that it did well by blending the Gothic theme with the modern theme.

One of the interesting things about the town of Shadow Hill is that you will notice a lot of Victorian  styled homes, the town remained a traditional Victorian town with modern structures in some parts for quite some time, this isn't a town where people are trying to "get with the times" and follow the current trends. 

In Silent Hill 3 Claudia objected materialism, greed, money, and all the things she believe to be destructive to the human soul she wouldn't wear shoes or even drive a vehicle. If you seen her bedroom it was practically empty. In Shadow Hill she lives inside a massive Cathedral surrounded by Gothic architecture that looks a bit medieval in some parts of the Church because it's a very old 17th century building.

Residents take tradition and culture seriously and they will not sacrifice that for materialistic things that are less likely to bring them any joy. What this also means is that you will find a lot of strange scriptures and text throughout the series, even symbols you may not recognize that reflect the nature of those involved with the two Cults.

 

 I also came across a lot of different artistic images that gave me a good deal of inspiration to work with and so I thought about buying the rights to those images and then using them for my own work although I doubt the artist will sell them to me, and if he did I probably can't afford them.

Shadow Hill does play with Demons often, and while The Witches are only half the threat in the series they aren't the worse or biggest threat. There are all sorts of monstrosities in this town that terrorize the residence and visitors. In Silent Hill all the horrifying things people witnessed was part of their sub-conscious. Dark forces only appeared if they did wrong to someone at least this is how the story went for Silent Hill 2. I don't think this was the same concept for Silent Hill 3-4 and all the other games. Henry Townsend never did anything wrong yet he could still see the dark forces of the town. He was just a ordinary man living his life, trapped in an apartment until he discovered a hole in the wall that allowed him to escape to the other side. 

Ever since I was a kid we use to sit right at the table and do bible studies, religion was very important to my mother and it's still important to her. And I was hesitant about it up until I became more involved with religious artwork and paintings. A lot of these things started to influence me, and I developed a strong fascination with it. Censorship is garbage and does make it difficult for artist to really think outside of the book. 

We need to continue challenging censorship, but trying to force our ideas onto platforms like Twitter isn't the best way of doing it. I've had youtube censor me several times, and even porn sites are starting to censor the way you talk. Pornhub for the longest had a ban word list...I find it ridiculous how porn sites are starting to censor words. Everyone is out of control with this nonsense.