On Tuesday, aspiring comic book creator Ryan Cardinal launched a crowdfunding campaign for KAYAS: a Story of Blood and Stone via Indiegogo.

KAYAS is a 48-page, manga-inspired black and white action/fantasy graphic novel intended as the first part of a massive (over one thousand pages) series filled with “high-impact action, martial arts mayhem, swords, sorcery, monsters and the spirit of adventure.”

Here’s a summary of the project taken from the Indiegogo campaign page.

 

KAYAS- A Story of Blood and Stone, takes place long before the Earth was formed and the heart of our Sun was forged in the crucible of the cosmos. In a realm where might, magic and high adventure reign supreme.

In issue #1 we follow the tale of a lone rider who is being hunted down. Her cargo is the key to her freedom and to her damnation. She blazes a trail across a foreign land and hopes that she will lose her pursuers in the crystal labyrinth known as the “Dragon Mouth Pass”.  The ripple effect of this moment cascades into a chain of events that will echo throughout the lives of all in the realm, especially a teenage boy named Nito.  

Nito has lived his whole life in the “Ever-Growing Forest”and has been trained in martial arts under the watchful eyes of the strange (and stinky) hermit ‘Cat Master Lee‘, ‘Trigger‘ the chain smoking “fowl” mouthed chicken and ‘Sissik‘ a giant and apathetic rattlesnake. But when Nito is entrusted with a rare oddity called a seeker stone, they are thrown into an odyssey of adventure and peril!!

Backers can get a signed copy of KAYAS: a Story of Blood and Stone for $20. For those with a bit more money to spend, there are options to get a bit more swag, including extra copies of the book, a wood print, original artwork, and a one-of-a-kind sketch cover.

At the time of this writing, the KAYAS crowdfunding campaign has already raised roughly half of its goal, so it’s definitely off to a good start.

You can check out some sample artwork below or visit the full KAYAS: a Story of Blood and Stone Indiegogo page here.