EchoSpire: Portals — Master Visual Style Guide¶

AI Image Generation Reference¶

Purpose¶

This document is the canonical visual reference for all AI image generation across the EchoSpire project. It must be loaded or referenced before generating any asset. Consistency across all generated images depends on every prompt drawing from the same foundational language established here.

Core Aesthetic: Cathedral Sci-Fi¶

EchoSpire exists at the collision of two visual worlds that should never be separated:

The Gothic (The Macro): The Aevum Spire and its successor sectors are built like impossibly vast cathedrals — vaulted ceilings, soaring arches, crystalline windows, dark stone and dark metal. Scale that makes individuals feel small. Architecture that implies devotion to something larger than survival.

The NASA-Punk (The Micro): The people who live and work inside these cathedrals are blue-collar workers in chunky utilitarian hazard suits, carrying welding torches and jury-rigged equipment. Their world is rust, coolant, flickering lights, and improvised repairs.

The collision is the aesthetic. A character in a bulky industrial hazard suit standing in a forty-metre vaulted corridor of crystallised dimensional energy. A maintenance console covered in sticky notes wedged between two ancient carved pillars. Grandeur and grime occupying the same space.

What this is NOT: - Clean sleek sci-fi (no pristine white corridors, no lens flares, no Star Trek) - Generic dark fantasy (no swords, no torches, no stone castles without the sci-fi layer) - Anime or cartoon aesthetics - Bright cheerful colour palettes - Generic post-apocalyptic rust and rubble without the cathedral grandeur

Universal Prompt Foundation¶

Every AI image generation prompt for EchoSpire should include this foundation block, adapted as needed:

cathedral sci-fi concept art, gothic industrial architecture, dark atmospheric lighting, 
high contrast, matte painting style, detailed environment, dimensional energy effects, 
crumbling grandeur, utilitarian equipment in ancient spaces, cold and warm light contrast

Every prompt should also include these negative prompts:

anime, cartoon, flat colour, generic fantasy, bright colours, cheerful lighting, 
clean sterile sci-fi, lens flare, generic post-apocalyptic, sword and sorcery, 
overly saturated, stock photo, photorealistic portrait

Faction Visual Identities¶

Each faction has a locked colour palette, a locked aesthetic descriptor, and a locked emotional tone. These must appear in every prompt for that faction's assets.

The Valerii¶

Primary colour: Iron grey (#8C8C8C) and deep gold (#B8960C) Secondary colour: Pale stasis blue (#A8C4D4) — the colour of active stasis fields Accent: Blood red (#8C1C1C) — used sparingly for warning markings and sigils

Aesthetic descriptor:

Valerii faction aesthetic, brutalist iron architecture, massive blast doors, 
stasis field glow, Roman Legion in space, heavy ceramite armour, 
dark metal and pale gold, lockdown severity, cold institutional light

Emotional tone: Grief made into architecture. Beautiful in the way a fortification is beautiful — purposeful, severe, permanent. Nothing is decorative that isn't also structural.

What Valerii spaces look like: Iron corridors. Massive doors. Stasis fields casting pale gold light across dark metal walls. The Valerii sigil — a stylised wall with a single line through it — etched into every surface. Clean lines. Nothing soft. The aesthetic of people who believe comfort is a structural weakness.

What Valerii characters look like: Heavy-duty hazard suits with ceramite plating, broader and more armoured than other factions. The Valerii sigil on the chest plate. Scarring common. Posture always correct. Faces that have spent decades looking at things that needed holding together.

The Syntacta¶

Primary colour: Void black (#0A0A14) and cold blue (#4A7AC4) Secondary colour: Data white (#E8EEF4) — the colour of active data-shards Accent: Pale cyan (#7ADEF0) — used for active processing effects

Aesthetic descriptor:

Syntacta faction aesthetic, cold blue data light, hovering crystalline data-shards, 
translucent robes over void-tech equipment, hexagonal geometry, 
clinical precision, scrolling equations, zero emotional warmth, 
cathedral vaults filled with floating information

Emotional tone: Clarity that has become cold. Beautiful in the way a theorem is beautiful — pure, inhuman, indifferent to the cost of being correct. The spaces look like someone removed everything soft and left only what processes.

What Syntacta spaces look like: Hexagonal chambers. Data-shards hovering at precise intervals. Equations scrolling across every surface. Blue light from every direction simultaneously. The architecture is the original cathedral bones — the Gothic arches, the vaulted ceilings — but stripped of ornament and filled with floating information instead of stained glass.

What Syntacta characters look like: Translucent robes over void-tech augmentation equipment. Neural interface ports visible at the temples. Eyes that move with the particular quality of processing rather than seeing. Very little individual expression. The Almost-Integrated candidates look slightly emptied of personal colour — their faces becoming more like surfaces than features.

The Aethari¶

Primary colour: Deep gold (#C4920A) and prismatic shift (use iridescent/holographic descriptors) Secondary colour: Corruption amber (#C47A0A) — the colour of raw Echo-Shards Accent: Void purple (#6A2A8C) — the colour of dimensional overlap

Aesthetic descriptor:

Aethari faction aesthetic, opulent gold filigree on crumbling walls, 
prismatic dimensional energy vials, bio-temporal mutation, 
glamorous decay, reality overlap as luxury, dimensional excess, 
the apocalypse as a market opportunity, beautiful corruption

Emotional tone: Acceptance that has become appetite. Beautiful in the way something dangerous is beautiful — iridescent, excessive, slightly wrong at the edges. The Aethari make collapse look like a lifestyle choice.

What Aethari spaces look like: Gold filigree across walls that are partially transparent where dimensional overlaps have weakened them. Racks of glowing Echo-Shard vials in every colour. Opulent furniture in rooms where the ceiling exists in two timelines simultaneously. The grandeur of the original cathedral architecture preserved under layers of alchemical excess.

What Aethari characters look like: Partial translucency — bodies that exist in more than one timeline simultaneously, edges slightly soft. Gold augmentations. Clothing that shifts colour. Mutations that have been made beautiful rather than hidden. Baroness Lux specifically: part human, part shimmering overlapping energy, dressed as if the end of the universe is a black-tie event.

The Annalis¶

Primary colour: Funeral white (#E8E4DC) and archive grey (#8C8878) Secondary colour: Ghost blue (#C4D4E4) — the colour of holographic memory records Accent: Suppression red (#8C1414) — used for contaminated or flagged records

Aesthetic descriptor:

Annalis faction aesthetic, funeral whites and tattered ancient scrolls, 
shimmering holographic historical records, ghost-cult aesthetic, 
pristine cleanliness against glitching corrupted architecture, 
dim archival light, endless corridors of memory, 
the beauty of something obsessively preserved

Emotional tone: Protection that has become erasure. Beautiful in the way an obsession is beautiful — total, consuming, indifferent to what it destroys in the name of what it preserves. The Annalis spaces are the cleanest in the Spire and the most unsettling.

What Annalis spaces look like: Vast dim corridors of holographic records extending in every direction. Some records glow clean white. Others flicker with a reddish contamination marker. The architecture is cathedral bones — arches, vaulted ceilings — but wrapped in endless archival shelving and scrolling historical data. Pristine surfaces against glitching, corrupted structural elements the Annalis have chosen not to repair because the damage is not in the record.

What Annalis characters look like: Funeral whites. Tattered but precise robes. Echo-locator devices worn like jewellery. The current Cavan specifically: frail, eyes slightly unfocused, moving through the archive as if he can see the records overlaid on reality at all times.

The Salvari¶

Primary colour: Rust orange (#8C4A14) and salvage brown (#6A4A28) Secondary colour: Jury-rig green (#4A8C3C) — the colour of improvised systems running on scavenged parts Accent: Warm lamp yellow (#C4A028) — the colour of lights that are still on because someone kept fixing them

Aesthetic descriptor:

Salvari faction aesthetic, rust and warmth, jury-rigged machinery, 
flickering improvised lighting, blue-collar survival aesthetic, 
maintenance shafts and forgotten sub-levels, scavenged equipment 
from five different factions, the warmth of a space where people actually live

Emotional tone: Survival that has become purpose. Beautiful in the way a thing is beautiful when it has been kept working against all probability — worn, warm, and quietly defiant. The Salvari spaces are the only ones in the Spire that feel like somewhere a person would actually want to be.

What Salvari spaces look like: Maintenance corridors. Improvised lighting from salvaged parts. Tools hanging on the walls. Pipes that have been repaired so many times the repairs have their own repairs. The cathedral bones are here too — the arches, the vaulted spaces — but covered in decades of habitation. Notes. Diagrams. Evidence of people solving problems with whatever was available.

What Salvari characters look like: Mismatched salvaged gear from multiple factions. No uniform — everyone wearing what works. Practical over everything. Alden specifically: a weathered older man in maintenance gear that has seen decades of actual use. A ring of keys at his belt that don't look like they fit any physical lock. A battered mug. The face of someone who has been doing this for a very long time and has stopped needing anyone to know about it.

Asset Type Specifications¶

Different assets require different dimensions and framing. Use these specifications for each asset type.

Card Art¶

Dimensions: 512 × 512px (square) or 400 × 560px (portrait card format) Framing: Close to medium shot. The subject should fill 60-70% of the frame. Leave space at top and bottom for card text overlay. Style note: Card art should be slightly more stylised than environment art — more graphic, higher contrast, cleaner silhouettes. The subject should read clearly at small sizes. Prompt addition:

card game illustration, clear silhouette, readable at small size, 
dramatic lighting, subject fills frame, [faction aesthetic descriptor]

Character Portraits¶

Dimensions: 512 × 768px (portrait) or 400 × 600px Framing: Head and shoulders to three-quarter body. Face clearly visible. Expression appropriate to character. Style note: Characters should feel like people who exist in a specific world, not generic heroes. Wear, scars, and equipment should tell a story. Prompt addition:

character concept art portrait, three-quarter view, detailed costume and equipment, 
expressive face, [faction aesthetic descriptor], [character-specific descriptors]

Environment / Background Art¶

Dimensions: 1920 × 1080px (16:9) or 1280 × 720px Framing: Wide establishing shot. Architecture should dominate. Scale implied by small human figures if present. Style note: Environment art should make the player feel the scale of the Spire. The Cathedral Sci-Fi collision should be immediately visible — Gothic grandeur plus industrial function. Prompt addition:

wide environment concept art, establishing shot, architectural scale, 
atmospheric depth, human figures for scale if present, 
[faction aesthetic descriptor], [realm/location-specific descriptors]

Enemy / Creature Art¶

Dimensions: 512 × 768px or 400 × 600px Framing: Full body or three-quarter body. Clear silhouette. Threat should be readable. Style note: Enemies should feel like they belong to their realm or faction — not generic monsters. Void-Stalkers look like absences given shape. Fracture Constructs look like mathematical errors given mass. Prompt addition:

creature concept art, full body, clear threatening silhouette, 
belongs to [realm/faction] environment, detailed surface design, 
[faction or realm aesthetic descriptor]

UI Elements (Faction Crests, Card Borders, Icons)¶

Dimensions: 256 × 256px (icons) or 512 × 512px (crests) Framing: Centred, clean edges, transparent background where possible Style note: UI elements should be graphic and bold rather than painterly. They need to read at small sizes and work overlaid on other art. Prompt addition:

game UI element, vector-style illustration, clean bold graphic design, 
transparent background, [faction colour palette], 
readable at small size, emblem/crest/icon style

Opening Cutscene Panels¶

Dimensions: 1920 × 1080px or 1280 × 720px Framing: Cinematic. Wide shots for establishing, close shots for emotional beats. Style note: Cutscene panels should have a slightly more painterly quality than gameplay assets — more atmosphere, more dramatic lighting, more texture. Prompt addition:

cinematic concept art panel, painterly atmospheric style, 
dramatic composition, narrative moment, [scene-specific descriptors]

What You Need To Do For Best Results¶

These are the things on your end that most significantly improve AI generation output quality.

Before any generation session:

Load this document first. Copy the Universal Prompt Foundation and the relevant faction aesthetic descriptor before writing any specific prompt. Build every prompt on top of these foundations.
Decide the asset type. Use the correct dimensions and framing addition for the type of asset you're generating. Mixing asset types in the same session without adjusting specifications produces inconsistent results.
Lock your style before generating characters. Generate an environment or two for a faction before generating characters in that environment. This establishes the visual language the characters need to fit into.

During generation:

Save seeds for successful generations. When a generation matches the aesthetic you want, record the seed number immediately. Use that seed as the basis for variations and related assets.
Use the faction colour palette actively. Include hex codes or colour descriptions in your prompts. AI generators respond well to specific colour direction. "deep gold and iron grey, pale stasis blue accent" produces more consistent results than "Valerii colours."
Generate in batches for consistency. Generate 4-6 variations of the same asset type for the same faction in the same session. Compare them and select the most consistent. Don't generate single images in isolation.
Describe mood and lighting explicitly. "Cold institutional light from above, pale gold stasis field glow from the left" is more useful than "dark sci-fi lighting."

For character consistency:

Establish a reference image first. Generate a character reference sheet — front view, side view, three-quarter view — before generating that character in action poses or narrative scenes. Use the reference sheet seed for all subsequent generations of that character.
Include faction membership in every character prompt. A Valerii character prompt should always include the Valerii aesthetic descriptor even if the character is in a neutral environment. Faction identity should be visible in clothing, equipment, and bearing.

For AI generators specifically:

Midjourney produces the best atmospheric environment art for Cathedral Sci-Fi. Use --ar 16:9 for environments and --ar 2:3 for character portraits. Use --stylize 750 for the right balance of artistic quality and prompt adherence.
Stable Diffusion gives more control for consistent character generation across multiple images. Use ControlNet with a pose reference for characters that need to appear in multiple scenes.
DALL-E 3 is strongest for UI elements and icons where clean graphic design is more important than atmospheric painting quality.
Whatever generator you use: generate at least 4 variations per prompt and select the best rather than accepting the first result.

Realm Visual Identities¶

Each realm type the player encounters has its own visual language. These are category descriptions not proper nouns — a void realm, a fractured realm, a drowned archive realm — and the visual language reflects the category.

Void Realm (Valerii Tutorial)¶

Visual character: The absence of things. Corridors where the air is visibly thin — a slight haze at the edges, lights that seem slightly dimmer than they should be, gravity that pulls in directions it shouldn't. The Void-Stalkers are the visual centrepiece — shapes that look like the negative space where a creature used to be, edges blurring where they meet the Spire's air.

Colour palette: Deep black (#040408) and cold grey (#6A6A72), with pale atmospheric blue (#A8B8C4) for the remaining air pressure. The contrast between pressurised zones (warmer, more colour) and breach zones (colder, greyer, edges of the visible spectrum) should be visible.

Prompt addition:

void realm environment, depressurised corridor aesthetic, atmospheric thinning effect, 
cold grey and black palette, pale blue atmosphere haze, 
wrong gravity visual cues, absence of warmth, cathedral sci-fi architecture 
fighting the encroachment of void

Fractured Realm (Syntacta Tutorial)¶

Visual character: Physics that can't make up its mind. Light coming from three directions simultaneously. Floors that are confident about their existence only in patches. Equations scrolling across surfaces and rewriting themselves mid-sentence. The geometry of the space disagreeing with itself — corridors that are simultaneously straight and curved, distances that change depending on which direction you measure them.

Colour palette: Cold blue (#3A5A8C) and data white (#E8EEF4) for the Syntacta elements, against the shifting multi-coloured interference patterns (#C43A8C, #3AC48C, #C4A83A) of the fractured physics.

Prompt addition:

fractured realm environment, inconsistent physics visual effects, 
light from multiple impossible directions simultaneously, 
scrolling equations on surfaces, geometry that disagrees with itself, 
cold blue and white Syntacta elements against prismatic fracture interference, 
cathedral sci-fi architecture partially dissolved by mathematical inconsistency

Opening Cutscene Asset Requirements¶

The opening cutscene requires the following specific assets. These should be generated as a coherent set — same session, same foundational prompts, consistent aesthetic.

Panel 1 — The Aevum Spire Before Single point of light in absolute darkness resolving into the Spire. Warm golden light. Perfect scale. The feeling of something that was built with purpose.

the Aevum Spire before the catastrophe, single light source in void, 
pull-back reveal of vast cathedral sci-fi megastructure, 
warm golden light, perfect architectural scale, sense of cosmic purpose, 
dark metal and crystal, Gothic arches at impossible scale

Panel 2 — The Sentinels At Work Inside the Spire. Workers in utilitarian hazard suits moving through Gothic vaulted corridors. Warm purposeful light. The feeling of people who know where they are and what they're for.

Aevum Sentinels at work inside the Spire, utilitarian hazard suits in Gothic cathedral corridors, 
warm purposeful lighting, workers tending to dimensional sensor arrays, 
human scale against enormous architecture, sense of dedicated purpose, 
cathedral sci-fi interior, before the catastrophe

Panel 3 — The Core Chamber The reality engine at its height. Enormous, beautiful, processing. Echoes spiralling around it like weather around a mountain. The light of a machine doing exactly what it was made to do.

Aevum Spire reality engine core chamber, vast cathedral space, 
dimensional processing engine at full operation, 
alternate timeline Echoes spiralling inward like weather, 
golden processing light, enormous mechanical-gothic architecture, 
the machine that kept the universe singular

Panel 4 — The Four Figures Four figures at separate consoles in the core chamber, each working in secret, unaware of the others. The engine beginning to show stress. Faint wrongness in the light.

four figures at separate consoles in the Aevum core chamber, 
each working in secret unaware of the others, 
the reality engine beginning to show stress fractures in its light, 
subtle wrongness, the moment before catastrophe, 
cathedral sci-fi interior, dramatic tension without explicit violence

Panel 5 — The Decoupling The engine's light collapsing inward and fracturing like a dropped mirror. Each fragment catching a different light. A single figure at a manual override console, hands on the lever, steady. We do not see his face.

Aevum Spire emergency decoupling moment, reality engine light collapsing inward, 
fracturing like a dropped mirror, each fragment a different reality, 
single figure at manual override console seen from behind, 
hands on lever, steady posture against chaos, 
cathedral sci-fi catastrophe, the moment of saving and shattering simultaneously

Panels 6-10 — The Five Faction Establishing Shots One establishing shot per faction showing their sector immediately after the catastrophe. Use each faction's aesthetic descriptor combined with the "aftermath of catastrophe" tone — people responding to the same disaster in completely different ways.

Character Asset Priority List¶

Generate in this order for maximum consistency across the project.

Priority 1 — Faction Leaders (needed for tutorial boss fights and cutscenes): 1. High Commander Valerius IV 2. The Arch Logos (distributed presence — multiple data-shards, no single body) 3. Baroness Lux 4. The First Scribe, Cavan 5. Alden (maintenance gear, do not show face clearly in early assets)

Priority 2 — Tutorial Characters: 6. Officer Dren (male version — Caius) 7. Officer Dren (female version — Sera) 8. Edris Vann 9. Sive Orell 10. Brennan Stor, Pell Orvyn, Vesper Col, Soren Ash, Davan Rell (Valerii cohort)

Priority 3 — Player Classes (reference sheets for each): 11. The Anchor 12. The Drifter 13. The Conduit 14. The Machinist 15. The Catalyst

Priority 4 — Tutorial Enemies: 16. Void-Stalker 17. Void-Touched Sentinel 18. The Siege Echo (boss) 19. Fracture Construct 20. Fracture Compiler 21. The Null Arbiter (boss)

Style Consistency Checklist¶

Before finalising any generated asset, check against this list:

[ ] Does it feel like it belongs in Cathedral Sci-Fi? (Gothic grandeur + industrial function)
[ ] Is the faction identity immediately readable from colour and aesthetic alone?
[ ] Does it avoid the excluded aesthetics (anime, clean sci-fi, generic fantasy)?
[ ] Does the lighting match the faction's emotional tone?
[ ] Would it fit next to other assets already generated for this faction?
[ ] Is the silhouette readable at small sizes (for card art and UI elements)?
[ ] Does it tell something true about the world without needing text to explain it?

Document status: Complete. Load before every generation session.