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Brand new God

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Please do talk about your god design!

Okay, will do! And thank you to all the kind people who also asked! Fair warning, this is a bit of a long ramble, so you don't have to read this!

Okay, so, back when King Charles got coranated last year here in Britain, the formal invite contained an image of a green man, which the painter of the invitation cited as an "ancient symbol of rebirth".

The thing is, this is actually a common misconception - images of the Green Man have existed in Britain since the 12th century but the attribution of it being a pagan ancient symbol of rebirth/new life is a 19th century attribution. The Green Man was used as lot as decoration but there's no evidence he was ever a god.

A lot of old pagan rituals here in England are removed from their original intention. Things like the Jack In The Green and Hoodening (hooded animal/horse) ceremonies went through periods of dying out and being revitilised but detached from their original movement. There's this romanticisation of old Pagan Britain but barely anyone actually took care of all those old rites. They're still alive, but different.

Which all leads into this character. I wanted to make a deity/young god character who came into existance from the process of people doing some sort of Spring festival they THINK is something old and pagan but is actually brand new. So the God has been born into existance with no idea what to do, what it wants to be a symbol of, and is basically a baby. It THINKS it should be something maybe related to nature or fertility, but isn't sure. It has a Green Man face, a Jack in the Green body (they are made of moss and branches!) and a Hoodening animal hood and garlands! Their "default" body is a deer, an animal that's associated with the forest but is actually a meadow/savannah animal pushed into forest by human settlement and denaturalisation. The antler branches are naked of any actual growth - but as the god learns about itself, figures out who they are, the branches will start to grow and bloom :)

Anyway, fun facts - they can change the form of their body, and take the form of a human, or any animal, but not the face. The face is a mask! They can't change expression. But occasionally they will smile. They can "talk", but it appears as the voice in your head that only appears when you read something. They're good, sincerely.

(If you made it this far I'm both sorry, and thank you!)

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clippy ass looking late cretaceous ammonite mf

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A Hummingbird clearwing! (Hemaris thysbe)

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They're just normal chests. Innocent chests.

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Looks better with the glasses.

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Artist’s drawing of the Flatwoods Monster, based on descriptions by the people who encountered it in Braxton County, West Virginia, in 1952.

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Given that evidence suggests all extant forms of cartomancy began as card games and were only later adapted as tools for divination, doing readings with your Pokémon cards is really just respecting the history and traditions of the practice.

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Cryptid fish that has only been seen once and never again that may or may not exist but well never know my beloved

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thinking about weevil photonic crystal structures...

Weevils (such as Pachyrhynchus genera) have evolved epidermal cells that can produce colour through opal-like arrangements of packed spheres, forming a three-dimensional photonic crystalline structure.

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I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:

Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weapon’s region of origin. 

Here is a page of medieval weapons.

Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.

Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.

Here are some gemstones.

Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on. 

Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, don’t worry) information about the black market.

Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised. 

Here is every religion in the world. 

Here is every language in the world.

Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.

Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.

Here are poisonous plants.

Here are plants in general.

Feel free to add more to this!

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Today's Card Is: The Magician

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A herd of wild Przhevalsky horses in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Photograph: Tatyana Deryabina/University of Porthmouth. & a 17,000-year-old horse painting at the Lascaux cave in France

More: https://thetravelbible.com/top-artifacts-from-the-stone-age/

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"We call it vff," said the alien. "It's - it's hard to describe to a species without vffsense. Imagine trying to describe light to a species that never evolved eyes. But there are forms of life that are only perceptible with vffsense, and they've visited Earth and fed on life as long as it's existed here."

There was a pause.

Then the human said, "That's the worst thing you've ever said."

"Don't worry about it."

"I think I have to, now."

"No, because - well - you have a species of spider which pretends to be an ant, correct? It's not capable of understanding the fact that it's mimicking an ant, but it instinctually mimics an ant in order to deter predators."

"Sure?"

"Humans produce a vff to mimic varths, predators only perceptible through vffsense. The organisms that would like to feed on you are terrified of varths, and so they leave you alone. You aren't aware you do it, you don't have the capacity to understand you're doing it, but you evolved to instinctually do it to deter predators you can't see."

There was a pause.

Then the human said in a very soft and thoughtful voice, "And are there varths on Earth?"

"Yes," said the alien. "Everywhere. But don't worry about it."

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Turquoise mosaic pectoral, Mixtec or Mexica (Aztec), circa 1400-1521

from The British Museum

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my toxic trait is that I think pliny the elder did an okay job for a guy living before the invention of the printing press trying to basically write all of wikipedia all by himself