Charoca was based on the Chilean myth of Cherufe, which is an enormous lava monster covered in rocks with an explosive temper. His anger was supposedly the source of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and when he would go on a rampage the only way to sate his thirst for destruction was to appease his hunger for human flesh by offering to him a virgin sacrifice. Many cryptozoological sources also refer to him as a humanoid reptile, but I was never really able to determine if that was something that was part of the original myth or if it was something the monster evolved into during the modern era.
As with the Noblins we didn’t want to be quiiiite as extreme as our reference material, so we had to tone Charoca down in the people eating department. Other than that (and the fact that Cherufe was supposedly reptilian) Charoca is pretty close to the monster that inspired him. Volcano-controlling temper tantrums and all!
Charoca was a lot of fun to design! When I was first handed the character my mind immediately went to Golems and while they’re Jewish in origin I thought it might be cool to have Charoca sort of have that man-made look. Almost like an ancient Maruvian wizard had brought a pile of rocks to life long ago and now he’s cursed to wander the lands with no companions and these mood related problems that he can’t control. A big part of the story in the script was that he saved the town by using his body to block the lava, so I thought a cool possibility would be to have him transform when he’s angered into a much bigger and more menacing creature. That way he could still be friendly and likeable but still be able to present himself as a real threat when necessary and him saving the town could be possibly be really cinematic and grand. As inspiration for these Golem designs I looked at a lot of Chilean and Aztec face pottery as well as Toltec statues. When I presented them it was immediately made clear to me that I’d gone in the wrong direction, and what we wanted was in fact a more natural looking creature. Still ancient in feel, but he should look like he was spawned from the Earth, not made by man. Luckily one of the designs I’d done was already sort of going in that direction, so I used that as a jumping off point.
Charoca was also one of the few characters (maybe only, tbh I don’t quite remember) that I had the pleasure to fully paint up to serve as reference for the modelers and studio!
Anyway, once again, I hope you all enjoyed looking at some of the work that went into designing Charoca!!
I noticed that Elena’s dress (post “The Magic Within”) turns orange when she's mad, light blue when she's calm, and pink when she's feeling love, just like Charoca and Charica do when they feel those emotions.
Yesterday I had a dream in which I read on tv tropes that in last episode of eoa there was male bi rock monster (or ambigously bi?) and had feelings for both Charica and Charoca?
What are your thoughts on Charoca? Why do you think he came to Avalor in the first place? Did his old place lose its heat or was destroyed by Shuriki? Or was he one of those creatures who was brought over by Shuriki to control the villagers, but with him, after failing to realize he can control the volcano and she can't control him, left him there?
I like those ideas a lot! Particularly the notion of Shuriki being unable to control him, that would annoy her
She probably wouldn’t have a hard time with villagers though. City people? Maybe at first. Other magic users? Definitely! Villagers mostly just want to grow their crops and live for a reasonable amount of time without contracting a horrible disease, they don’t really care who’s in charge.
My current headcannon for this gets into this fairly sizable story I have planned so -uh- spoilers under the cut?
Charoca isn’t a name - it’s a species. They were created by the Maruvians as labourers and were devoid of personality. So where are they now? Well, they get their power from the land they’re created on and the Maruvian gods/spirits inhabiting those places. In my timeline the Maruvians were wiped out by the Avalorans but that history has been corrupted and forgotten. When the Avalorans would take possession of land it would remove the spirit’s connection to it and thus the Charoca’s links to magic. They would slowly wind down and, essentially, die. Since they’re made of stone from the area they just became piles of boulders and because they’ve “always” been there Avaloran geologists have no reason to think these piles are weird.
The Charoca we know was created by a sorcerer who got his hands on some Maruvian lore. Perhaps it was a tablet he deciphered, perhaps he was guided by an artifact or a spirit. However he manage to get the know-how, he messed up, big time! His first mistake was using a volcano as his powersource, his second was not properly severing the connection between that source and his creation (hence Charoca’s anger causing the volcano to react), his third was messing up the connection between himself and the spell. He was absorbed by his creation and so the personality we see in Charoca now is a corruption of the sorcerer who created him!
