Blog 31: The Temple of Memories: Designing the First World
The Temple of Memories was the first world I designed for Shambhala: The Ascension Protocol, and it remains the most personal.
I imagined it as an ancient structure, half temple, half laboratory, hidden in the roots of sacred mountains. The world outside had forgotten this place. But inside, memories still hummed in broken machines, cracked glyphs, and glowing fragments of old technology.
The temple is where the children are hidden. Where the Old Man carries the last embers of a dying dream. It had to feel both sacred and broken, a place where past and future crash into each other.
Visually, I drew inspiration from crumbling temples in India, the hidden ruins seen in movies like Sahasam, and the vast, lonely laboratories of Kalki 2898 AD. The lighting had to be mournful soft beams cutting through dust, relics barely illuminated, and echoes trapped in stone.
In this world, players don’t just find artifacts. They find questions about what was lost and what must be remembered.
The Temple of Memories is not the beginning of a journey. It is the place where the past begs to be reborn.