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#864 – Takuka Shakoor
Born in 404 AD in a herd of nomads, Takuka was forced to marry at 11, murdered her husband at 13 and became a gladiator champion at 16. Now she travels across dimensions thirsting for blood and glory in the ring.
RomanPunks is a retrofuturistic, cyberpunk derivative world-building project inspired by fine art, history and the cryptopunk movement.
A total of 1,000 RomanPunk characters have been frozen in time and minted as Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum, WAX, Polygon and Algorand blockchains.
RomanPunk characters are comprised of commoners and famous individuals based on Roman history, art history and pop culture.
The basis for RomanPunk lore and backstories is exhaustively researched by history/sci-fi buff and co-founder, Punktavian.
All images are drawn by hand by woman artist and co-founder, Cleopunktra, without the aid of AI or generative tools.
RomanPunks came into existence through early minting on OpenSea, promoting on Twitter and building a Discord community through giveaways and engagement. The idea of a cyberpunk-derivative ‘RomanPunk’ theme was in our heads for years, but it was the success of the Cryptopunks that became the catalyst for project conception and launch.
After a hard working first 60 days spent networking and attracting new collectors to RomanPunks, our community had begun to flourish and sales increased. We began to offer our collectors an opportunity to battle their NFTs in a tournament bracket powered by dice rolls.
Encouraged by the tight knit community and the carbon-neutral blockchain with lightning fast and low cost transactions, we launched 'romanpunksio' collection on WAX Blockchain as the first step to expand the backstories of our RomanPunk characters and the baseline for future development of a card game.
RomanPunks integrated with Chainlink Labs to utilize VRF (Verified Randomness Function) to host a giveaway raffle for our holders. We developed a smart contract on Ethereum which guarantees true random number selection on chain and can be used for a wide range of functions that require random selection.
After much anticipation in the community, we released our first WAX NFT card 'pack' through the Neftyblocks platform, which sold out in less than a week.
We launched our Twitch channel and begun building an audience by offering numerous giveaways of WAX NFTs from our collection, as well as giving participants a chance to win RomanPunk ETH NFT airdrops for taking top spot at the end of the 'season'.
As firm believers in a metaverse future and land owners in The Sandbox, we undertook to build the RomanPunk Colosseum on 1x1 land and entered our experience "Gladiator Bloodsport" into a GameJam contest. We will continue to build the Colosseum into a PVP arena and social hub once The Sandbox offers creators the ability to do so.
Thanks to the user friendly tools offered by NeftyBlocks, we launched a comprehensive blending system on WAX, allowing our collectors to blend the common NFTs they earn in our Discord RPG up into Legendary famous NFTs through the use of blending 'coins' that can also be earned on the Discord as reward for helping to promote the RomanPunks project.
We launched the VX collection on Polygon. Each owner of an ETH NFT gets their voxel equivalent airdropped to them, and these NFTs can be redeemed for official NFTs on The Sandbox Marketplace once available.
All 1,000 original, unique 1:1 RomanPunk characters hand drawn by Cleopunktra and minted on OpenSea.
The RomanPunk WAX NFT Trading Card Fighter Pack Series II consists of 3 NFTs randomly selected from over 236 characters.
Upcoming plans for RomanPunks include:
Below is a comprehensive and searchable directory of all 1,000 RomanPunk Characters.
Born in 404 AD in a herd of nomads, Takuka was forced to marry at 11, murdered her husband at 13 and became a gladiator champion at 16. Now she travels across dimensions thirsting for blood and glory in the ring.
Born blind in 81 AD in Lutetia, Jill was sent through an interdimensional portal by her wealthy parents to have her vision restored. Now with the help of a cybervisor and her trusty labrador retriever, Caesar, she operates a dog sitting and grooming business in the 22nd century AD Neo-Carthage.
Born 70 AD in Aventicum, Jo is a passionate baker and trailblazing founder of the interdimensional cupcake franchise known as “The Swiss Miss”, whose beloved products are mass produced and enjoyed infinitely across space and time.
Born 1972 AD in Larissa, Teren was a videographer hired to shoot a routine military transport—until his footage captured something the Empire couldn’t allow to exist. Scrubbed from the records and marked for deletion, he fled with the raw files and a camera too old to track. Now he drifts between safehouses, haunted by what he filmed and unsure whether he’s chasing justice or just trying to prove he still exists.
Born 155 AD in Leptis Magna, Vitus was a prodigious scholar who opened an interdimensional portal at the Temple of Dolichenus after reciting some incantations from an ancient Phoenician scroll. Now, he explores the labyrinth of parallel universes with the daunting task of unraveling the mysteries of space time’s greatest civilizations and recording their legacies on an immutable ledger that spans the multiverse.
Born in 123 BC in Tarsus, Rox was a Cilician pirate who had captured and sold Julius Caesar for ransom. As revenge, Caesar returned to condemn Rox to an eternal life of fighting in the most brutal gladiator pits through time and space.
Born 199 BC in Pella, Philip was enslaved by the Romans after losing the Third Macedonian War, then forced to fight as a gladiator for the entertainment of the masses. However, at the moment of glorious death in battle, his consciousness was ‘freejacked’ by time-traffickers to the 23rd century AD Britannia where he battles in a cloned body for the Interdimensional Cybergladiator League (ICL) on a squad sponsored by the Algorand Foundation, known as the AlgoSaxons.
Born 351 BC in Hecatompylos, Roxane had a promising career as a concubine of Alexander the Great before she was kidnapped by time traffickers and whisked to a Romanesque 20th century AD alternate dimension and forced to fight as a shopping mall gladiator.
Born 2010 AD in Alalia, Kael is the silver-spoon heir of a techno-aristocratic family with deep Roman and Punic roots. Restless within his luxurious cybernetic world, he sought adventure beyond his privileged life. During a voyage across the Tyrrhenian Sea with his love, Sienna Elara, a sudden whirlpool transported them to an alternate Roman realm dominated by sentient apes. Stripped of status, Kael must navigate a society where humans are subjugated, forging uneasy alliances with sympathetic apes and confronting the authoritarian simian rulers. His wit and resilience are tested as he strives to survive, challenge the oppressive ape hierarchy, and find a way back home.
Born in 182 AD in Rome, Herta is the cold blooded guard captain for Emperor Caracalla who plotted his assassination by sowing discontent amongst the troops and turning a blind eye while a soldier stabbed him to death as he was urinating.
Born 41 AD in Rome, Aericus is a senator masquerading as an actor to be closer to his forbidden love, a pleb Philetus, star of Virgil’s Aeneid.
Born in 132 BC in Cirta, North Africa, Izara came from a tribe of futuristic warrior women who traveled through a dimensional portal in Egypt to change the course of history by tipping the balance against Gaius Marius and his Roman legion in the Jugurthine Wars.
Born 89 AD in Rome, Oppius was a member of the Punktorian Guard sent through an interdimensional portal on a reconnaissance mission by Emperor Hadrian; however, Oppius preferred the alternate 28th century AD reality and never attempted to return.
Born 222 BC in Carthage, Addicus, a veteran of the Second Punic War, was enslaved by Scipio’s legionnaires after losing the Battle of Zama. As punishment, he was sent through an interdimensional portal to toil as a public servant in the effete, benighted 22nd century AD kingdom of Neo-Carthage where he now languishes as a bitter, cynical, brooding alcoholic.
Born 1918 AD in an atompunk dimension in Scodra, Lavinia is a socialite who avoids the sun’s warmth outside her VR sanctuary on the Adriatic coast. From her retrofuturistic refuge, Lavinia spends days browsing the latest virtual couture and nights immersed in smoky, jazz-infused metaverse lounges. Heiress to a vast fortune amassed from Queen Teuta’s legendary pirate booty, she rarely entertains visitors but is quietly enamored with a Dacian vampire she met online. While their meeting IRL remains out of reach, Lavinia’s fascination with him only deepens, tempting her to blur the line between a curated digital life and the world outside her goggles.
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