Across the Sea

Doom's travels ranged far and wide. These doodles appear to date from a time that Doom was particularly interested in chinese culture and history. Dragons and the color red figure strongly in Doom's art from this era. 

 There is no true evidence to connect this dragon with the following picture of the phoenix, but scholars are almost unanimously agreed that they do, in fact, relate to each other.

In ancient China, there were many legends depicting dragons and phoenixes together, some of which label the dragon as the high emperor, and the phoenix as the empress.

Whichever the case, it is certain that these two drawing were done in correlation, and are some clue to the origins of the old legends.

Although the characters drawn here do not correlate with any current chinese writing systems, we can be sure that they do have a meaning. A scrap of text was uncovered not long ago. A Doom Rosetta stone, as it were. We have learned from it that these characters are elemental in nature.

Beginning with the largest symbol at the head of the circle, and continuing clockwise:
Water
Metal
Air
Flora and Fauna
Ice
Fire
Stone