Background story for Miles Nielsen's Shishi

In honor of leap year, I'll be posting 4 times today. This is the second post, which is also quite unique as there are no images! ^_^

Recently I've written about Munktitki's Miles Nielsen's upcoming ceramic figure Shishi. You can find those reports here and here. The figure will be released tomorrow at a show featuring Miles' work at Grasshut.

Miles is going all out with these figures, including coming up with an extensive backstory which brings together all his clay creations. Each Shishi will come with the full story in a mini-booklet. Here's the synopsis:

"A once thriving and prosperous town, now lays in the grip of a mutated and deformed madman. With his minions of Ikakumora and shadowy, skulking horrors, he has reduced the towns folk into a huddled, scared mass, afraid to even venture forth from their homes.

The mad man, a once prominent and rising star in the field of advanced genetics, through a horrible mishap in his lab has become grotesquely deformed. Through the mutation brought on by his own hand, his D.N.A was fused with that of his test animals, aggressive and cannibalistic squid. With this mutation, he discovers that he has the power to control with his mind, his malformed progeny. Using his mastery of genetics, he built an army of rabidly aggressive spider and squid hybrids, among other horrors. Mindless and terrible, these "spider squid" are controlled by more willful and evil, larger minions. Returning to the town of his youth, the madman, in his underground liar, sets out to wreak the twisted vengeance that his madness demands of him.

Two brothers, with a rich family tradition as the keepers of the foo relics, must brave the lurking terror and go to the temple on the edge of town where the foo statues reside, and perform the ritual that will resurrect the mighty foo from their stony slumber. The foo, once the towns pride and protectors now are nothing but a distant memory for the towns folk, except in the hearts of two brave youngsters.

The towns only hope now rests heavily on the shoulders of two small boys and their legacy.

After braving life and limb, the two brothers perform the ritual that sets in motion the resurrection of the mighty foo guardians. At the moment of their triumph, after the first foo has been awakened, the spider squid and their foul controlling minion attack, and mortally wound the remaining foo, who is still encased in its stone prison. In an act of mercy and preservation, the first foo fuses and joins with its wounded counterpart, thus saving its life. Through this, the foo, separately powerful, are now enjoined and infinitely more powerful as one, two headed foo guardian.

Thus begins our tale....."