Indie production label Card Shark Comics has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the first issue of its new series Vessels, which it is describing as “Dark Souls meets Inception, thrown head-first into Game of Thrones.” The campaign, which is already underway, can be viewed here.

The comic is planned as a multi-part series, which takes place in a dark fantasy world on the brink of death. Readers will witness the final days of the once-proud realm of Cairnthala as it splinters and merges with another plane of existence.

Created and written by Dave Cook – author of critically-acclaimed, post-apocalyptic comic series Bust (reviewed here) – Vessels #1 focuses on a woman named Wake, who has spent her life hounded by a mysterious entity from another world. Wherever Wake goes her demonic pursuer follows, laying waste to anything in its path, so she has chosen a life of exile away from civilisation. But when she finds herself taken to the realm’s capital city of Stratum against her will, the race is on to sever the entity’s power before it can kill again. In her way stand five legendary warriors known as Vessels, who are hell bent on stopping Wake from slaying their master. Their arrival causes strange, dreamlike anomalies that begin to tear the world apart, followed by the appearance of modern day objects that fall into the world.

Also the founder of Card Shark Comics, Cook said of the first issue, “I’m a huge fan of Dark Souls and that series’ concept of repeating cycles, along with the struggle between light and dark. Vessels takes those base concepts and injects mind-bending set pieces and characters that are often warped, grotesque and just plain weird. I think anyone who likes genre mash-ups will appreciate the ‘odd’ factor of our first issue. It’ll keep readers guessing as to exactly what is happening to Cairnthala, without being all up itself like Lost – sorry Lost!”

“We’d love for anyone who likes the sound of Vessels to check out our Kickstarter campaign and consider backing us. This is my third comic campaign as creator – the last two were successful too – so we know what backers want to see before they buy. Expect lots of updates and cool rewards too.”

The funding for Vessels has begun, and has almost reached its target with three weeks still to go. You can check out the campaign here.

More information on Card Shark Comics and their projects can be found on their website and Facebook page. You can also follow Dave on Twitter.