Here’s the beginning of some Fatal Frame fan art (like I nearly promised), this one if from Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented (Zero 3: Shisei no Koe) and the subject is a tattoo priestess.
(Click for larger version)
I decided AGAINST doing specifically Reika, the priestess that the game kind of revolves around because I just know some obnoxious otaku person will come out of the interwebs somewhere going “OMGwtf her tattoo didn’t look like that, you did it all wrong.” It never fails. Yeah, I know what her tattoo looks like, I have pictures. I just decided to give myself a break this time because drawing a replicate full body tattoo can be tedious if the occasion calls for it. Which it did. I DID botch up the pants, though. Anywho, a bit about the picture in reference to the game…
SPOILERS!!!
There’s a large house in the midst of mountains somewhere, where the residents of the surrounding village can offer up their pain to a priestess in the form of a tattoo. The tattoo is blue and composed of a snake and holly design. I haven’t played the game in a while but I think it said that the holly was supposed to represent the pain and the snakes are supposed to consume the heart of the priestess (this is all figuratively speaking of course) or something crazy symbolic like that. I don’t know, if I could find more out on this particular piece of folklore, I would, but books on this kind of stuff is scarce. If the game is fresh in your mind, feel free to correct me.After the priestess has been covered in tattoos (the tattoos can even go into her eyes) she is taken deep underground to the “Chamber of Thorns” where her hands and feet are nailed to the ground with stakes by four handmaidens, who are kind enough to sing to her a lullaby of sorts derived from the following lore:
Sleep, priestess, lie in peace.
Sleep, priestess, lie in peace.
If you cry, the boat you’ll ride,
The last trip to the other side.
Once you get there, sacred marks you’ll bear,
They shall be peeled off should you fail to lie still.
Sleep, priestess, lie in peace.
Sleep, priestess, lie in peace.
If the priestess wakes from her dream,
perform the rite of stakes, her limbs pinned tight.
Lest the doors open wide, and suffering unleashed on all.
Go to the other side, go to the other side.
Cast the boat, take a ride,
Cross the rift, to the other side.
Further and further, to the other side.
It must sail, bearing your tattoos and our offering of tears.
Anyway, the thing with Reika was that the man she loved snuck into the chamber to see her, and the headmistress of the whole thing killed him right in front of her, so a curse was put on the place and everyone was miserable. The end.Here are some pictures from the game. The first two are from the ending cinematic, I’ve lightened them in photoshop so you can see that the chamber is actually chock-full of these half-naked, tattood girls. Pretty creepy. The second picture shows Reika and her lover (the girl in my picture is obviously not laying in the same position next to a dead man + she has a visible stake through her hand) and the third is just a CG of Reika I have scanned from my guidebook just…because.
