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findingjoynweirdstuff · 4 years ago

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Dream SMP Recap (December 6/2020) - End of Week

What started as a sad but calm day ended with a revolution where morality was questioned and blood was shed. The server’s first canon death since the three lives rule was implemented occurred, and all hell broke loose.

Dream’s motivations have started to be laid bare, but whether or not he’s in the wrong or right remains foggy as ever in a world where everyone’s morals are gray.

Also, the prison’s construction continues and some strange red corruptions called “Blood Vines” have sprouted up on the server.

A short summary of the week’s total events is at the end of the post.

---

- HBomb hosts Niki and Wilbur’s L’Cast

- Fundy continues work on the chess board

- Ranboo is leaving a book with messages to communicate with Tommy

- Fundy and Ranboo visit Tommy and help him through the Nether to find blaze rods. It’s a very...interesting...time... Fundy fills Tommy in on the fact that Dream is officially recognizing L’manburg as a country.

- Tommy falls in lava and loses all his stuff

- Then he burns to death

- Then he falls in lava and loses all his stuff again

- He FINALLY gets an ender chest

- Lazar asks him for help since he’d fallen in lava and needed help getting out. As Tommy does so, Lazar questions why Tommy hasn’t turned against L’manburg. Tommy says it’s because Tubbo is there, but Lazar points out that Tubbo was the one who exiled him.

- Ghostbur comes on and says he has a gift.

- Tommy attempts to rescue Lazar from the depths of the lava pit. Techno starts arguing with him.

- Tommy falls in lava and loses all his stuff again. He gives up on helping Lazar, who is understandably annoyed at him.

- Philza joins the call wondering wtf is happening and why Tommy keeps dying, but Tommy just ends stream

- Psyche! After credits scene. Ghostbur asks Tommy to return to Logstedshire so he dies in lava to fast-travel back. Ghostbur gives Tommy a lodestone compass named “Your Tubbo” that points back to L’manburg at all times. Tommy puts the compass in his ender chest right next to the discs, saying he’ll keep it close to his heart.

- Thunder’s frustrated that Tommy got exiled exiled because the Prank War he was setting up between Dream and Tommy can no longer happen and Thunder’s great villain arc has been cancelled - he is no longer a villain now.

- Now, he wants to do the clay prank to George instead to try and get Dream and George to turn on each other as revenge for Dream burning his house.

- Puffy builds Tommy a second Christmas Tree.

--- Note: From this point on I tried to include more specific details than normal since it’s an important and confusing event ---

- Quackity declares war on the Dream SMP from Mexican L’manburg. He gets George, Sapnap and Karl on to help. He’s rigged TNT under Eret’s castle bridge and wants to invoke the same ideas as the Mexican Revolution. He wants to put M.L. on the map by staging an assassination and using George’s dethronement as an excuse to start a political movement.

- Sapnap wants to take on Technoblade but Quackity tells him that they have to take things step by step and that it’s an extremely bad idea to do it now.

- Eret asks Hbomb to be one of his knights. HBomb agrees.

- George wants his kingship back

The explosion goes to plan with H and Puffy as witnesses.

--- ---

CANON DEATH: KARL

Cause: Death by explosion and falling

--- ---

- George distracts Eret while Quackity, Sapnap and Karl steal his throne. Punz joins Eret’s side as one of his other knights.

- The M.L. side reconvenes in L’manburg and drink invisibility potions. Dream is in Mexican L’manburg. He is tearing the dirt to shreds. Meanwhile, Eret gives a speech to his Knights as they head to Party Island. Dream, alone, is invisible in Boomerville.

- Sapnap gets Dream to log (he says it’s lag). The Dream SMP faction blows up M.L. with TNT. The Mexican L’manburgians kill Puffy.

- They want to head to the Holy Land. Dream says he wants to talk. They collect at the Church.

- They argue. Dream threatens to kill Quackity permanently and make sure Mexican L’manburg can never rise again. (Also Karl’s acting is genuinely good holy shit)

- Sapnap tells George that he thinks Dream has completely turned against them, and that they’re better off disowning him.

---

Dream: “You’re painting me as this tyrant when I’m just trying to maintain peace.”

He refers to it as his castle, his throne. He calls the people of M.L. “terrorists.”

---

He says that in his eyes, Mexican L’manburg does not even exist, and that he’ll speak to Tubbo about making sure he sees that it doesn’t exist as well.

M.L. argues that putting a human life above a few blocks of gold is more important.

Dream refers to himself as the “ruler” of the Dream SMP, the “leader,” letting it slip that “king” is a meaningless title.

He says that Quackity is causing the most problems, the number one “enemy” of the SMP right now. Similar to how he referred to Tommy defying him.

He says that Quackity is not like Tubbo, who is a “fair, just ruler” and that is why New L’manburg is recognized and Mexican L’manburg is not. Tubbo would never do what Quackity did. Wilbur and Jschlatt and Tommy would. He says that he waited until New L’manburg had a reasonable leader to recognize it.

- “Un-killing” is implied to be a thing, where the person who gave you your canon death can take it back.

---

Dream: “The king is a figurehead and he knows that!”

Eret: “I do.”

Quackity: “So that’s what you are Eret -- a puppet--”

Dream: “Yes! -- no he’s not a puppet-- h-he has no power and I have - and - it’s the same thing and--”

(Dream proceeds to deny Eret being a “puppet”)

---

- Quackity decides to dissolve Mexican L’manburg for a clean slate and call it something else. He wants the server to have a precedent of establishing new countries without having to go to Dream for recognition every time.

- Eret agrees to recognize Quackity’s new country if they apologize and return the throne.

--- ---

CANON UNDEATHING: KARL (?)*

* Dream says that the death is still canon later since plot was based around it. I don’t know what Karl considers his death count to be?

--- ---

- Sapnap declares that he no longer wants to fight Techno but Dream instead. He says he wants to slay Dream in front of everyone.

- Overall, Dream and Eret declare it a “failed coup” and say that the destruction is just a consequence of “what happens when you don’t plan anything” but Quackity is satisfied that his new country has been “put on the map.”

- Quackity declares the country to be named “El Rapids” in honor of Cedar Rapids.

- Punz no longer wants to be an official Knight.

- Quackity misses Ghostbur and wants to speak with him. He tells Ghostbur about the war. Ghostbur asks if it was a revolution - Quackity says yes! Ghostbur also informs Quackity that he burnt the sacred texts - How to Sex 2 - in lava.

- Karl streams with the intention of rebuilding and preparing for Pokimane’s visit

- Karl steals Eret’s Museum Llamas and gets caught in the act. Fortunately this doesn’t spark up the war again. They take a llama to Party Island.

- They get into trouble at Boomerville and Lazar joins.

- Dream comes online and asks Sam about the prison’s progress. Bad gets annoyed at Sam for destroying the beachfront property value, and he didn’t authorize the seizure of the land. Dream is there helping to shovel but Bad wants him to stop. Bad is angry about the prison being built and starts shouting at Sam.

- Bad tries to negotiate with Dream. Dream refers to the prison as containing a “prisoner.” Singular. And that the prisoner would have nothing, and Bad would be in charge of helping to guard it. There are going to be multiple “layers.”

- The prison will be in the middle of the ocean bit, and Bad would have a terraformed beachfront property. All of the land would be considered property of the Badlands - including the prison.

- People are going to have to go through PORTALS to escape the prison.

- Bad starts to come around to the prison idea. Dream tells Sam he thinks they need more hands to help, potentially Ant and Eret.

- A strange, giant red “egg” has appeared in the corner of Bad’s statue room. He feels a strange aura coming from it, and he’s unable to bring himself to break it.

- Dream says Eret can’t help with the prison but he can help make the beach nicer. Bad says he might want to put Tommy in the prison but Dream says no, Tommy’s already exiled. So the prison isn’t for Tommy.

- Once the prisoner is in there, Dream says they would only be able to be let out “by the server.” It’s got certain secrets that only Dream and Sam know about. Sam says that he could potentially escape from it, but it will be so impenetrable that even if you know the secrets it would still be difficult to escape from.

- Bad shows Dream the Egg. Dream gets creeped out by it.

- Another Red Corruption has appeared near Hutt’s Pizza, and another at the Mansion. Everyone swears that it wasn’t there before, and there wasn’t enough time for someone to place all of it manually in the time that they were down there.

- Bad stabs Dream for trying to “hurt it.” He likes it for some reason.

- Bad asks Dream about who the prison’s for. Dream says “if you can’t kill somebody, you need to lock them up.” He mentions that it’s one of the more powerful people on the server, someone who either provides a threat now or in the future. He has someone in mind.

--- ---

Dream explains to Bad and Sam that the reason he switched sides in the Manberg-Pogtopia War was because Schlatt gave him something.

And that thing is “a card up his sleeve” until he needs it.

A book of great value.

It puts Dream in danger if people know of it, but also gives Dream power.

The “most valuable thing on the server.”

Something pertaining to the prison.

Something where they wouldn’t believe Dream if he told them what he was given.

--- ---

- The corruption grows AGAIN despite Dream, Sam and Bad all being in the middle of the ocean

- Another corruption appears on Tommy’s Power Tower

- The water level in New L’manburg has risen again, covering George and Quackity’s mushroom house

- The prison is going to be as tall as a MOUNTAIN

- Dream proposes the idea of Bad giving him the disc to piss off Tommy. Bad says that Skeppy has it so he’ll have to ask some other time. He might trade some information about Schlatt’s book in return for the disc.

- Bad says he likes the name a dono came up with for the corruption -- “Blood Vines”

- Dream and Sam removed the Blood Vines on the Mansion to Bad’s dismay. Sam burns the Vines and Bad goes on a murderous rampage against him.

- Technoblade got a “Bee our guest” achievement

- Dream burns down the Eiffel Tower again.

- The prison will be reinforced with 15 layers of obsidian, and the guards will have Ender Pearl Stasis Chambers that are alarm-activated.

- The Blood Vines have sprouted up from Schlatt’s Grave.

The prison’s unofficial name as of right now is “Pandora’s Vault,” but it is subject to change.

Upcoming events:

- Karl will be touring Pokimane around soon

Potentially Scrapped:

- Elytra Challenge

- Bad and Skeppy’s plan to burn the disc *

* Bad mentioned it on stream, but it’s unclear if it’ll still happen

END OF WEEK RECAP:

11/30: Fundy bonds with Wilbur, Cursed Lore Day

12/01: Creation of Mexican L’manburg, Girl Dream visits, Mexican Manhunt

Note: not sure what’s up with 12/02. Probably messed up the dates? Whoops.

12/03: Sleepy Bois Family splits in half, dethroning of George

12/04: Day of the Exile, Badlands start to divide

12/05: Tommy’s first full day in Logsted, Sean’s visit

12/06: The Mexican L’manburg Revolution, end of M.L., start of El Rapids

---

!!! SPOILERS AHEAD !!!

- Wilbur had two special lodestone compasses in his inventory. He didn’t want HBomb to see, but H looked anyway.

#mcyt #dream smp #dream smp recaps #long posts #dream smp end of week recaps

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recapcrew · 2 years ago

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Week 12 Transcript

Intro

Extra extra, read all about it! Welcome to the Empire’s Recap, and today we will be going over the chaos and drama of our (somewhat) respected rulers!

This week, news from the Recap Crew has come in saying even though this episode is short - sorry, Joel - due to the number of uploads, we did our best to make this week very pog. And I am contractually obligated to say that. Let’s get to the madness!

Joey

[JOEY] Today I want to possibly expand on this area, maybe move my cows that are a little overinfested - sorry guys, these living conditions are just not ideal for you, you’re literally in a pit. Yeah, please do not call PETA on me guys, I swear I will get them in a better situation.

[NARRATOR] Sorry cows, but pirates always have priorities, and the crew comes first!

Joey finally remembers the map he found in the Skull Fort, with directions to another of his missing crewmates, and sets to sea for a rescue mission.

He runs into an unusually talkative “skeleton” in the middle of a typhoon, and a few shots set that “skeleton’s” boat a-sinking. Shame Joey forgot to grill him for directions to the crewmate first, but there was just something weird about that guy.

In a cage floating just atop the water, Gator the Armorsmith has never been happier to see his captain. Pirate Joe paddles them home, speeding up as they pass Sanctuary. Stupid Sausage and his stupidly beautiful builds.

[JOEY] Don’t go over there, yeah, keep looking this way because… you will be, uh, disappointed when you see the forgotten cove if you keep looking that way, so, good job Gator you know what's good for you!

[NARRATOR] With Sir Piggles “out on a very important journey”, Joey puts Gator in the fish shop until he can gather all the materials to build him a proper home - a lighthouse to keep the ships in Forgotten Cove safe. The lanterns to light it come from Pirate Parrot Pete himself, after Pirate Joe gives him a good dressing down for drinking on duty. He’s not fond of shirkers.

Inside the lighthouse, Joey takes advantage of the lack of fire tick to make a lava-fueled forge for Gator to work with, once he can finally get him to stay inside. Moving villagers is the same as ever, even if they’re pirates.

Joey terraforms the path leading and around the lighthouse, connecting it to his storage room and finally freeing the cows from the pit. He lures a few of them back into a fenced area near his sheep, but the rest of the herd is allowed to graze on the hill for aesthetic. De-cow-ration, if you will.

[EDITOR, DEADPAN] Boo. Bad joke, get off the stage.

[NARRATOR] A quick check-in on paper production shows that Joey has built a second wing of the sugar cane farm, for once pages - and rockets - start flying off the shelves.

Now if only Jimmy could get his act together, so they can get in business!

Jimmy

The Sheriff isn’t very happy with deputy fWhip this week, for several reasons! Before the America trip, fWhip and many other server members came by on stream and ended up locking Jimmy in his own jail and spawn killing him - now, it wasn’t canon, but it WAS disrespectful! And now, there’s a warden in his base!

Looks like the deputy is getting fired!

Discovery of The Claw is next, and the Sheriff is tired of the disrespect! He needs some people who will support him, and what better way to do that then to bring in some residents for Tumble Town.

With the villager operations underway, Jimmy returns to the heart of Tumble Town and findsa “totally legit business” selling terracotta!

He arrives at the coordinates listed and finds the workings of some Tumble Town bandits hidden in a cave. There’s only one solution for this!

[JIMMY] Bon voyage Tumble Town bandits!

[JIMMY, FRUSTRATED] …Come on!

Take 3, double the explosion, bon voyage Tumble Town bandits. Go.

[JIMMY] --blowing up everything! This ought to do it! Bye bandits!

[NARRATOR] Bon voyage Tumble Town bandits, take 4. The area is pretty nice though, and their idea for a terracotta business is a good one…

There isn’t any Boss in Tumble Town except the Sheriff. He takes down the signs and declares he has taken over the business. He’ll have to redesign the balloon though, it doesn’t agree with the style of Tumble Town - it needs to pop with colour!

Shelby

Great witch Shelby is working on her magical protections for this week - she works on creating a pond full of amethyst shards and tropical fish to hopefully keep away ghosts while looking very pretty!

Although we don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, it is suspicious that when she gets back from collecting some more amethyst that her pond is entirely done, with no sign of the perpetrator!

[SHELBY] Cave pickles are not to be used for dye due to threat of war…

gasp a goat screeches

[NARRATOR] She overpays for some pickles from the Gobland pickle cart and explores deeper into the fog behind her house where apparently a forest spirit resides!

She hasn’t explored deep enough to know if forest spirits are a common occurrence in the Evermoore, but she certainly doesn’t like the implication that it is staring at her house, no matter the intentions!

The underground of the Evermoore is just as scary as the above ground, and Shelby doesn’t want to traverse it alone. Sausage agrees to accompany her and she shows him her new scythe to reap monsters in undiscovered caves and mangrove trees. They find a lush cave where Shelby picks up an axolotl, some spore blossoms, and an affinity for lying.

[SHELBY] sighs dreamily Yeah, her muscles inspire me…

[SHELBY] Maybe one day she'll let me watch her work out.

[SAUSAGE] -yeah, yeah, Joey’s like, in love with Katherine, mhm!

[SHELBY] gasp But-- [SAUSAGE] He says they’re gonna get married! You better put a stop to that!

[SHELBY] splutters wh-what does she think about that?

[SAUSAGE] I dunno, I think at first she was like ‘eww’ and a little bit of puke came out whenever he mentioned it- [SHELBY] phew

[SAUSAGE] But you never know! Maybe over time one thing leads to another and she's like ‘You know what, nobody else is coming after these muscles, maybe, y’know!

[NARRATOR] She seems a little flustered over Cursed Princess Katherine Elizabeth, and I can’t wait to see her battle Joey for the hand of the princess.

[SHELBY] I have to make a plan. I have to make a plan [SAUSAGE] –before it’s too late, she’ll be a married woman, y’know.

[SHELBY] I’m stronger than Joey!

[SHELBY] Maybe I have to duel him for her heart.

[SAUSAGE] Oh yeah be careful he has a gun. Well I have a wand!

[NARRATOR] Sausage has quite the accurate Joey impression. She’s pleased with her adventure and her new scythe - you’ve got to have good defenses with witches and the law on your tail.

One idea is to pretend to have been bested by the dangers of the Evermoore. They put her there, it would be convenient if she “mysteriously disappeared” if they visit.

Although… Her grandma would think she disappeared too. Shelby’s not sure how to contact her just yet without the academy finding out. Or what the end goal is with this hiding business.

[SHELBY] Everything’s going to be fine, right?

Joel

[NARRATOR] Doing Lore is Joel’s specialty, being the god of it and all - this week Joel returns from his trip to fWhip’s wedding and finds Joey has left him the Stratosphere gold. Naturally, it blows up - you can never trust a pirate!

You can never trust a fWhip, either, seeing as he left a warden in the Stratosphere bridge for Joel to fight. He digs inside and gets into a bowfight with the warden, though he's the only one with a bow. Fortunately, he only dies once to the warden in the bridge because he is big and tall and strong... etcetera.

[JOEL] –and some deep (x10) Lore! Which I promise you I’m definitely not making up as I go along.

[NARRATOR] The material gathering montage this week includes wedding highlights and pictures of fWhip’s dogs.

He is building a temple off the Stratosphere bridge with some warmer colors than the usual palette for Stratos. The lore is: Joel wasn't the only god, not that he can remember who the other gods were but anyway. The other gods are dead, and Joel and his humor remain in Stratos alone.

According to ‘Canon Deep Lore’, God Joel has a bit of a bad memory, but can remember the exact height of this farming god and not their name? Curious.

Hermes is back in Stratos with a gift from Sausage! This week’s gift is a custom designed axe, so Joel can think of him when chopping wood. In return, Joel brings Hermes back to Sanctuary with a mini stratosphere to remind him of Joel.

Sausage

Sanctuary was made to help everyone who came across their lands, including the warden in the present box right outside Sausage’s storage room. He made sure to rescue the spider axolotls before working to build the warden a new home with them in Sanctuary - he enlists the magic of Sanctuary to help him make a pretty cave for his new warden friend to stay in.

For the safety of the warden, Sausage brings Bubbles into the banner shop - she is fond of eating wardens whole, so she’ll be a good protector of banner boy in case the warden escapes - ironic that, a warden escaping.

The magic came through and made a beautiful mix of Sanctuary and the Deep Dark to help the warden feel at home. Now all that needs to happen is to get the warden into the cave.

Phase 1 is to make a couple noise machines to bring the warden to the correct area, but it goes wrong before he even breaks the first block as a creeper blows him up and then the warden shoots him. Twice.

The warden gets distracted by the first noise machine - Lucky, too, as Sausage has to fight a barrage of pillagers right next door.

He gets the warden trapped in the cave with the noise machines, and it’s distracted enough that the risk of being sonic boomed is considerably lower!

Now, Shelby needs some help on an adventure, and who better to help then the man who just transported a warden!

[SAUSAGE] --put stuff away, uh, before I, uh, strip anything else. I'm gonna start a stripper business soon!

[SHELBY] ...I'm sorry what?

[SAUSAGE] A strip- a stripper business! I strip wood for people!

[SHELBY] Right. Strip- strip-er. Strip- stripping wood.

[SAUSAGE] Stripper, yeah, a stripper of wood business.

[SHELBY] You strip wood which makes you- you're the stripper.

[SAUSAGE] Yeah!

[SHELBY] A wood stripper.

[SAUSAGE] Yeah, a wood stripper, that's the, y'know, job title, y'know, whatever.

[SHELBY] You are the wood guy.

[SAUSAGE] Yeah, I'm the wood guy, the stripper... of wood! Of wood!

[SHELBY] And the stripper! Of wood.

[SAUSAGE] Of wood. I'm gonna-

[SHELBY] Stripper with an asterisk, which means of wood.

[SAUSAGE] Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna let everyone know about this, I'm gonna hand out flyers of my stripping business, it's gonna be fantastic.

[NARRATOR] He arrives at Shelby's house in enough time for her to present her new magical weapons to him before the caving adventure begins! He keeps mentally hearing warden sounds, and they talk about Bubbles and traveling inter-dimensionally - Sausage makes sure to mention that technically that potion he drank last time let him travel into the past. It's not inter-dimensional, but time travel is pretty cool!

Sausagey the wingman comes out in full force at the end of their trip - Nature Wives, anyone? - but Shelby better be careful, Joey is going to fight for Katherine's affection!

Back in Sanctuary, Sausage celebrates having no visions today - oh no, wait, no he’s jinxed it. He goes to sleep and appears in a strange summoning circle. Voices speak inaudible words. You might recognize this place … dot dot dot…

Outro

And with that join us next week for more chaos and shenanigans! Thank you for watching, liking, and subscribing, and thanks to everyone helping with the project, check them all out below!

#transcript #empires recap #empires season 2 recap

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danganronpasurvivoraskblog · 4 years ago

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Operation Coronation Part 1: Mikan, Ibuki and Hiyoko.

So...is this really the secret tunnel that Sonia mapped out for us?

Yeah I uh...I think we should try another door...

According to the Scepter Map there are no other doors...

...

WAH!

*Hiyoko stumbles back as she turns and faces a statue with a creepy face.

Are you ok?

Yeah, but this place is giving me the willies...

Don’t get your tighties in a twist Hiyoko. If there are any traps down here, they probably haven’t worked in centuries.

There are three ways we can go, so I think we should split up.

Ok then. I’ll go left, Hiyoko go right, and Ibuki, go down the middle.

Ok then...

*The girls split up, but as they run down their respective tunnels, but as they do, a loud roaring noise echoes through the left and right tunnels.

AAAAAAHHH!!

EEEEK!! I CHANGED MY MIND! IBUKI WAIT UP!

*Mikan and Hiyoko book it and follow Ibuki down the middle tunnel, unable to slow themselves down and crashing into her.

ACK!

OOF!

UGH!

Nuh...

*Hiyoko climbs out of the pile, and comes face to face with a demonic looking gargoyle.

YEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!!! OK FUCK THIS! I AM OUT!

*She makes a mad dash back where they came from, but as she does, a large door slams down in front of her.

No! No no no no no!!

There’s another one!

*Mikan points to the other end of the hallway, where another door is descending. Ibuki instinctively makes a run for it, but doesn’t escape in time.

NGH! Dammit! Almost had ya...

You know, maybe we SHOULD stick together...

Yeah, you-

Huh? What’s that?

*The girls all listen closely as a strange rumbling sound echoes through the tunnel. All of a sudden, the floor beneath Ibuki and Mikan gives way, and they both fall down a pit.

AAAAAHHH

ABUBUBUBUBUBUBUH!!

Guys!

*Hiyoko suddenly notices the ceiling panel above the pit open up to. When it does, a large round boulder drops into the hole after the girls.

Oh shit...! Nrgh...UGH! Fine!

*Hiyoko holds her breath and jumps down the pit.

Ibuki! Mikan! If you can get near the walls, do so! There’s a boulder coming!

Got it!

*Ibuki and Mikan carefully push of the walls so they are out of the way of the boulder falling on them. As she falls, Hiyoko eventually catches up to them. The pit then bends slightly so it turns into a small slide. The girls slide out of the hole into a completely different room. They stop in front of a large statue.

More of these statues? I’m sick of this place.

*Hiyoko gets to her feet and angrily kicks the knight statue.

*Whiiirrrrr*

Um...what?

*All of a sudden, the knights head clanks and stares down at her. There is more humming when suddenly, it starts shooting flames out of its visor!

WHAT THE FUUUUUUCKK!

*Mikan luckily moves Hiyoko our of the way, before the flames can hit her. The knight statue then breaks free of it’s bolts on the wall and starts chasing the girls.

Oh boy! Here we go again!

*The knight statue chases the girls, all three of them being careful to avoid the flames shooting out of the helmet.

Quick! Out there!

*Ibuki spies a doorway and the girls rush to it. Hiyoko and Ibuki charge forward.

Wait! It’s a dead end!

AH!

WAH!

*Hiyoko and Ibuki are just able to stop themselves before they fall into a ravine.

It’s coming!

*Hiyoko screams and points as the knight approaches. It heads straight towards her and Ibuki, ignoring Mikan for a moment. However, as it draws closer, Ibuki notices a lever on the wall.

Mikan! Pull that switch!

Ah! AAH!

*With no other apparent options, Mikan pulls the switch. However, when she does, the platform Ibuki, Hiyoko and the knight are standing on suddenly drops, and all three of them plummet.

N-no!

IBUKIIIIIIII!!! HIYOKOOOOOO!!!

*Mikan screams and rushes to the edge of the ravine. She stares down, and breathes a huge sigh of relief when she sees her friend and girlfriend clinging to the wall.

Oh, lord, please spare my fragile body...

Wooooaaah...

*Ibuki is staring down at the bottom of the chasm, where the night is slowly sinking into a stream of magma at the bottom.

This place has Lava traps too!? God dammit!

Novoselic’s quite a playground.

Hold on! I’ll pull the switch again!

*Mikan pulls the switch again, and the platform raises back up, lifting up Ibuki and Hiyoko with it.

*Continuing forward, the girls encounter many more traps, and even another knight mech as they make their way towards the castle. Eventually, they manage to hide in a small room.

I...I think we’re safe now...don’t you?

*No sooner does Mikan say that, the rooms door locks shut, trapping them in.

...No...No I don’t...

Yeah...neither do I...

Ah! Look up!

Huh!?

What!?

*Ibuki, Mikan and Hiyoko all look up, and to their horror, see the ceiling closing in on them.

WhatdowedoWhatdowedoWhatdowedoWhatdowedoWhatdowedoooo!!!?

There’s gotta be a shutdown mechanism somewhere...P-Perhaps one of these panels!?

*Mikan notices a loose panel on the wall. Without hesitation, she presses it, but the mechanism causes the floor beneath the girls to rise up at the same pace.

S-Sorry!

Hiyoko! There’s another one by your feet! Push it!

Why!? It’ll just kill us faster!

Trust me on this one!

*Hiyoko, with no time to argue, stomps on the panel. That then causes the walls to start closing in on the girls too.

Great! Now we’re gonna die faster!

No! Look! The mechanism is collapsing in on itself!

Huh!? I-It is?

It can’t take the stress! Hold on tight!

*The girls embrace tightly, making as much room for themselves as possible. After a few seconds, the trap crashes, and the floor and walls return to their original positions.

Phew...That was close...

Good thinking Ibuki. We should be there almost. Come on, let’s go.

Oh thank god, we’d BETTER fucking be...

#danganronpa survivor #danganronpa #danganronpa 2 #dr2 #mikan tsumiki #ibuki mioda #hiyoko saionji #novoselic revolution arc

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fandomrecycling · 4 years ago

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Pax and her Potions: Prt 2/3

Part 1 here I guess

@anxiousworm @vlanderzine I blame worm for infecting me with angst but also this kinda worked p-well ngl.

Grabbing a bundle of sticks, Pax shifted through her cloak to make room for the new stack of ladders beside her pickaxe, food and notebook. After clicking that both her parents were indeed asleep and that there was no one in the streets below, she pried open the wood planks to her bedroom and looked down.

The drop was easily at least a dozen meters off the ground, maybe more. There was a tree she could jump to, but Pax didn’t trust her athletic skill. Replacing the removed planks and ladders once she hit the ground, the amature alchemist frowned up at the redstone lamps.

Technically speaking, there were no dark spots in the city. The mayor had spent dozens of diamonds ensuring that there was no risk of monsters beyond the walls entering or appearing in the middle of the night. Even the rooftops were lit up with torches. It made sleeping difficult.

On the plus side, that meant most citizens were conditions to avoid darkened patches at all costs. So the dimmer alley with only a single light source was the perfect place to creep through.

Keeping a tight grip on her tool, Pax leaned out from the alley to the small procession of sleepy guards who were standing guard at the portal. One was leaning against the obsidian structure, the other fiddling with his sword. Looking into her inventory for a moment, she found a spare stick and threw it in the opposite direction.

That worked better than she expected, cliche as it was. Both guards jumped at the sound, raising their swords in alarm. With their heads turned, Pax dashed into the open square and ducked behind a set of tall bushes.

She was forced to wait several more seconds before they wouldn’t see her in their peripheral vision. Running up towards the portal, Pax suddenly stopped.

Staring into the swirls of violet energy, there was a palpable heat radiating from the frame. She would have compared it to a summer breeze, but that was too gentle of a metaphor. Hovering a hand just over the portal, a flash of heat made her flinch back.

A moment of realism crashed into her. This was dangerous, more dangerous than just stealing ingredients for faulty potions. This was another dimension, this was fire and monsters and possibly death.

“What are you doing?” Pax asked herself.

The guards were returning. She threw herself into the portal.

The heat she’d felt radiating from the portal was nothing compared to this. Pax coughed from the humid air and ashes stinging her throat. She wasn’t even in the Nether proper, having landed in the small hub that the miners used.

Stone brick and slabs decorated the small room, with little tables that the workers could use for their breaks. A corner of the hub was locked by an iron door, with the inside filled with chests. There were tunnels cut through in all four cardinal directions, with minecart chests and rails running down as far as she could see.

Pax almost considered breaking into the locked room for more supplies, but she knew that it was likely trapped against any real thieves. Instead, she chose one of the tunnels, squeezed her pickaxe, and began to dig upward.

In all her stories, they described caves as dark, damp and scary places. Where you could be faced with the growling maw of a zombie or a spider dropping onto your face at any moment. Digging in the Nether was some other kind of dread. Pax could hear the bubbling drip of lava through the netherrack, making her flinch every time the sounds grew louder.

When she finally broke through the surface, it didn’t seem like it was the surface. The sky - at least as far as ‘sky’ meant - was a distant roof made of deep red stone. Fires speckled the ground, with long streams of lava dripping down from the layers and layers of floating islands and cliffs.

The mines below her suddenly felt pitifully small in comparison. There was just so much to explore, she almost forgot what she was here for.

Nibbling on a small bundle of golden carrots, Pax made her way across the scorched landscape. As she walked, she heard an odd sound between a snort and a growl behind her. She heard something creak, then an arrow cut a gash across her cheek.

Screaming, the girl wheeled around and found a humanoid pig creature reloading a crossbow. It was the first, non-zombified creature she’d seen and Pax had a moment to marvel at another sentient creature from this realm. Until she found another arrow pointed at her face.

The girl dashed away in an instant, remembering to dodge the magma blocks haphazardly placed across the ground and the lava pouring down. Arrows whizzed by her and another lucky shot cut another hole through her cloak. It wasn’t until she was faced with a sheer cliff that Pax turned again.

Her hands were shaking so bad, she dropped the half-eaten golden carrot and clutched her pick like a sword. The crossbow was level with her face, growing closer after each tick. It was a meter away from her but her legs refused to move.

The piglin blinked, beady eyes glancing down to the dropped food. It lowered it’s crossbow. Pax relaxed her grip.

“Uh, hello?” She asked, feeling slightly stupid.

It bent down and grabbed the carrot, stuffing it into its mouth and chewing the carrot to paste. Pax grinned, “You’re hungry?”

She fished out another carrot, threw it to the ground, then pressed her back against the wall. The piglin’s face formed something that might’ve been a grin as it bent down to munch on the carrot.

To her surprise, it also dropped it’s crossbow and began fishing through what looked like an inventory. After it finished the second carrot, it dropped a pile of greenish-orange slime, picked up it’s crossbow and walked away.

Pax watched the mob disappear back into the misty red before she felt confident enough to poke at the strange substance. Her first thought was that it was some kind of weird piglin poop, but it lacked any poop-like smell so she dismissed that theory.

Whatever it was, the mob had offered it to her out of some kind of trade. It looked interesting at the very least, so Pax stuffed handfuls into her cloak and began to tower up the side of the mountain.

The height gave her a good vantage point to look across the landscape. And to her luck, there was a fortress a few feet away. Smiling, Pax climbed down, dashed towards the closest pillar and threw down the first ladders. Sticky ash clung to her skin, excitement and fear blending together into a heady concoction.

Once she made it up to face one of the barred windows, she tore down the fence that blocked her and climbed inside the fortress.

It was quieter than she expected, the red bricks insulating her against the ambient sounds of the nether. Pax could hear footsteps, though; a shambling, rattling sound that echoed down from some unknown place deep in the structure.

Flipping through her notes, Pax found the copied out section of her book on myths that detailed some of the old mages ingredients. She was pleasantly surprised to find that the weird slime the piglin gave her looked like one of them. The specific item she was looking for, though, was a deep red, fungi-like plant named ‘netherwarts’.

There wasn’t a detailed map that showed her where she’d find this plant, so Pax found herself wandering aimlessly. Despite the oppressive atmosphere, hidden monsters and any manner of unknown danger, she was absolutely thrilled to have made it this far.

Coming down from a staircase, Pax was about to start down the new corridor until she saw the plants. She started a scream of delight, then slapped a hand over her mouth and refused to breathe. The clacking sounds grew louder, closer.

She needed to get out, but she needed that netherwart. Jumping down and onto the plot of soul sand, she tore up the plants, grabbed a chunk of the cursed dirt to grow them on and ran back up the stairs and towards her exit.

Pax screamed this time when she came face to face with a blackened skull. A stone sword nearly cut a gash down her chest, then Pax felt herself fall. Rolling down the stairs, she forced herself to her feet and blasted down the new corridor.

Wither skeletons; even she didn’t think they were real. She swerved around corners, her momentum throwing her into the walls. From what few windows she could see, the fortress extended over the bowles of a lava lake. Digging out would just be suidice then.

The next corner she turned made her heart drop. The corridor broke away, the rest presumably resting under the magma below. Pax whimpered and turned, hearing the skeleton growing closer and pinning her between two options for a painful death.

She didn’t have any combat training and she certainly wasn’t fireproof. Shuffling through her inventory, Pax pulled out the rest of her ladders and looked up to the broken remains of the hallway.

Climbing up and onto the roof, she had even less protection from whatever might drop down, but she made sure to break the makeshift stairs so mobs couldn’t follow her at least. Backtracking from where she came and making use of her ladders, Pax soon found her original entrance and began to build her way down.

A new sound made her turn her head. Hovering in the sky, a ghostly white creature with tendrils and red eyes spat out a ball of fire.

Pax let go of the ladder, dropping her onto the ground from higher than she could tolerate. Shock buzzed up her heel and through her spine, nearly knocking her off her feet. The ghost-creature had closed its eyes, but hovered closer to her position.

Running with fresh bruises, she cried out and blocked her face as hot flecks of exploding netherrack pelted her thin cloak. Scrambling up the mountainside, Pax heard the shriek of another fireball and managed to throw one arm up onto the edge.

The impact threw her into the air, flipping her over before crashing into the pit the explosion left. Pain filled her senses; lingering along with the smell of burning hair. Agony flared all across her back, refusing to dull and growing worse as all her adrenalin was sapped from her body.

She had just enough sense left to try and bury herself with whatever materials she had left and prayed that the ghast would leave her alone. Biting her sleeve to muffle her crying, Pax waited in the dark with dying ember ticking her nose.

#mcoc trio #minecraft #minecraft oc

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humble-wayside-flower · 5 years ago

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“The surface escapes you upward, leaving you in freezing depths, fathoms below. Watching. Return. Reward. Wonder. A final squeeze sends the last breath from your lungs in a muffled scream. Punish.”

~Episode 53

“Settled within a small chamber of tangled leaves and roots, within this mass of vines and green, you swear you can see a face. Female. Motherly. Her eyes closed.

The womb I grant, but withers without faith. His will shall find you again soon. His will shall find you again, but until it does, rest.”

~Episode 65

Episodes 49 - 76

Spotify (X)- Liner Notes Under Cut Part 1 / Part 2

_______________________________________________________

Pretender (Acoustic) by AJR (Post Pirate Arc- Feeling adrift and throwing yourself into another situation so you don’t have to think about the previous one. With everything going on in the empire and the lives of his friends, there are far more important things to be focusing on.)

I’m a good pretender Won’t you come see my show? I’ve got lots of problems Well, good thing nobody knows

Seafaring Song by Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell (He feels uneasy being this far from the ocean, as he runs from the promise he made and things he did to chase power that didn’t matter. Looking up into the Xhorhas sky and seeing an unfamiliar, yet familiar vastness reflected back at him.)

I have traveled the world around Wandered far from home Sailed the ocean in foreign skies Still further to roam

False Confidence by Noah Kahan (The City of Beasts- Fjord should feel comfortable here, no one glances at him sideways, he isn’t the only one of his kind, but he still doesn’t feel like enough. Insecurities about his size, his tusks, his humaness, his orcness abound. Feeling like you aren’t enough for either place yet too much for both as well.)

Don’t take yourself so seriously Look at you all dressed up for someone you never see You’re here for a reason but you don’t know why You’re split and uneven, your hands to the sky Surrender yourself

I Don’t Even Care About You (Stripped) by MISSIO (His first Uk’otoa dream since leaving the coast. It’s a warning and a threat of punishment. Being crushed in your dreams is every bit as unpleasant as it sounds.)

Depressed again Evening comes too fast, still tired of the routine Depressed again I can do without all your false curiosities Angry again No, I don’t wanna have a conversation with you Angry again Let me sit alone with kerosene I do’t even care about you

A New Mission by Josh Whitehouse (Everything about Wursh exasperates Fjord’s insecurities, but he feels seen in a way that, while not pleasant, is necessary. The group also gets another peek at the childhood that made their friend.)

Sometimes I can’t control a feeling that I get inside my chest Even with those who are close to me, the ones I call my best I lose sight of all my confidence, in a heavy single step It’s happened ever since my childhood, things I thought I’d put to rest

The Wolf in Your Darkest Room by Matthew Mayfield (Uk’otoa makes it clear that what can be given can also be taken away. The loss of his powers, however temporarily is terrifying.)

And I just want to taste you on my teeth And clawing at your neck to feed my needs You thought you found my limit But you don’t seem to know You don’t seem to know How far I’d go

The Mask by Matt Maeson (Fjord has spent a lifetime crafting masks, but at what cost, and with such weight. He’s not ready to take them off yet, but he gets one step closer with each day. Fjord’s second talk with Wursh about anger, picking your battles, and not letting others define who you are.)

Tell me what you know I settled my grievance by crafting a mask And I never looked back I will never grow While this anchor is chained to my feet

Waite by Lowland Hum (Xhorhas montage- Adjusting to a new city, a new culture, and having a home of your own for the first real time ever. The paranoia of feeling like you’re being watched. Caleb waiting for him in his room- a conversation with a friend you don’t yet understand, and are not sure you fully trust.)

Hunter, rush, mauve, dust; Colors I didn’t trust Until I saw them from the train Home with stranger kin Camp in the kitchen Tears and sweet refrain Pining, dining, late reclining Pillow steals my brain Stop through, see you All we’ve been through Are we not the same?

In Memoriam by The Oh Hellos (Sleeping next to the Wildmother’s tree. Uk’otoa strikes again, but she saves him, brings him to her, and offers him a place of refuge to seek and strive for. For the first night in a long time, his sleep is peaceful.)

Well, it’s a long way out to reach the sea But I’m sure I’ll find you waiting there for me And by the time I blink, I’ll see your wild arms swinging Just to meet me in the middle of the road And you’ll hold me like you’ll never let me go And beside the salty water, I could hold you close But you are far too beautiful to love me

Diver (Acoustic) by Kid Astray (The Wildmother’s tree again, but this time his eyes are on Jester only. Also known as: He literally jumps off a tree into a deep dive to save her guys!! That’s some Disney bullshit!!)

So dive in with me, leave without the feeling that you’re on your own Hold fast drifting, know that I won’t go before you’ve had enough ‘Cause I can be anything that you want me to be, anything that you need me to be So dive in with me, dive in with me

A Lullaby of Home by Jessica Curry (Bazzozan, Oban, and the loss of Yasha. The feeling of betrayal that strikes deep to his core.)

Instrumental

The Difference by Noah Gunderson (Fjord and Nott are parallel stories. The weird understanding and also misunderstanding between those who are in the same place, but had very different journeys to get there, and also don’t want to acknowledge just how much the same they are.)

I hope I don’t miss it Though I know I probably just won’t get it Maybe we were made this way Maybe we weren’t made Maybe we just got here Learning from our mistakes Maybe we don’t know What we’re looking at The ever pressing question takes a toll

A Little Broken by Storm Greenwood (The Vandran scry conversation. Fjord confides in Jester about all of it, not knowing what he wants, losing his powers, being afraid of losing his friends and himself. She supports him like he never expected anyone to. He leaves feeling more grounded and ready to make a decision. )

And though we’ve been down the hardest road we’ve yet traveled At least we weren’t traveling alone Time ticks by and we’re still a little broken But together we can lighten this load

Broken Crown by Mumford & Sons (The whole damn lava pit thing, that defining choice. The giving up something bad to replace it with something better. Jumping off a cliff and praying you’ll be caught.)

Touched my mouth and hold my tongue I’ll never be your chosen one I’ll be home, safe and tucked away You can’t tempt me if I don’t see the day

Dear Wormwood by The Oh Hellos (The aftermath. When you’ve named the beast you can tame it, or throw it away entirely. In a way it is freedom. Fjord and Caduceus share a private moment of encouragement and support.)

I know who I am now And all that you’ve made of me I know who you are now And I name you my enemy

Kinda Feels Alright by Wild Rivers (Fjord’s friends love him so so so much. Coming clean about who you are even though it is terrifying, and finding that nothing has changed really, not in the ways that matter the most.)

I swear I should be terrified But damn, it kinda feels alright

Ginger by The Front Bottoms (Powerlessness and the Strength of Self. Fjord was never really weak, he just needed faith in himself, his abilities, and in the love of his friends.)

Back before I got struck by lightning Things were so much different than they are now I got a lot more people leaning on me And all I wanna do is make them proud But this is my body, the only thing I own entirely And it’ll carry me to greatness somehow

Better in the Morning by Birdtalker (Fjord and Caduceus commune with the Wildmother and talk about the importance of faith. There is no requirement to have it all figured out immediately. You are safe, you are loved, you are wanted. Just have faith.)

Be gentle with yourself as you uncover Your best kept secrets yet to be discovered In stillness, boys, clear water to the bottom You will do better in the morning

The Dragon from God of War (The Battle at Mythburrow for the material to finish Star Razor. If there was any doubt that his friends turned family would do anything for him, it is dispelled now.)

Instrumental

Atlas: Eight by Sleeping at Last (Rebirth, Reforged, Revival.)

Here I am, pry me open What do you want to know? I’m just a kid who grew up scared enough To hold the door shut And bury my innocence But here’s a map, here’s a shovel Here’s my Achilles’ heel I’m all in, palms out, I’m at your mercy now And I’m ready to begin

#fjord #fjord stone #critical role #wildmount campaign #cr2 #critical role spoilers #my playlists #it only took 10 millions years #but I finally completed this!

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 5 years ago

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SO idk fellas and felladies and those of you who know better, u know i don’t do too hot unless im constantly working on something so i decided i was gonna work off the stuff from the japanese descriptions of the calypso twins about you know... the whole ‘brainwashing’ thing

which is all well and good and then i was thinking about TFTBL while i was doing it and realized mmm you knooow only 2 sets of people have ever really “gone inside” a vault, being the TPS VHs and the TFTBL VHs and we know these two games were made within super close time frames to one another. SO i have a proposition for you, post readers: im here to suggest that Eleseer IS the Vault of TPS

tl;dr: i did actually do some talking about Eleseer being the ACTUAL Vault of Elpis (not the giant eridium crystal we see inside Eleseer) and that Tycho’s ribs was actually a generator/bigass key keeping the entrance opened. because that starry-background thing was also shown in the Vault of the Traveler and it made me go OH! those are the same thing. then eleseer must be inside a vault. because that actually makes sense. also the giant eridium crystal thing was just the Eridians’ version of the Claptastic Voyage turing the VHs into code.

and then i went, well im on the subject of TPS, might as well update my “the twins are going to use the chemical filth of elpis’s Vault to turn their followers into pseudo-Sirens like the Lost Legion Eternal” theory. so i did. and it was cool. there’s some concept art of the twins statues hanging out on a DAHL pumping station. and dahl did have a presence on pandora, but they were mining iridium, which is a metal. on Elpis, they actually did have pumping stations for the methane. which would make a lot more sense

also i go over the rakk-winged dude from the mask of mayhem again, because i mean... rakk wings... angel wings... i still can’t believe nobody else is talking about that.

oh also possibly the idea that the Commander Lilith DLC ties into the Lost Legion Eternal ties into the ‘creating Sirens’ thing that’s going around right now. As in, all 3 things would be: it’s latent in person -> some outside thing activates it -> now they have their abilities/physical change. bonus points for the Commander Lily dlc tying in this plant monster thing to Eridian ruins (the mine) and the gas to the Vault Key/Map (hector uses the key/map to mass produce the gas). and that possibly tannis wanting to create a plant monster army is just foreshadowing for her creating an artificial siren army in 3 to help us defeat the twins. because i mean... why wouldn’t she. plsdon’tlettannisbeevil

so hear me out for a second

you guys know im 100% unconvinced that eleseer is actually inside Elpis. We see that giant hole in the ground, we see those eridian ruins, we see tycho’s ribs. and that, sure that is believable to me, because Tycho’s ribs is built into the ground. we see parts where the ruins are sticking out of the cryo rocks (methane rocks? hm.)

from the giant pit in the center of tycho’s ribs

the entrance to eleseer from tycho’s ribs:

and we know that Vaults only open with a key, and that key only automatically charges once every 200 years (OR according to the Vault of the Traveler, be anchored somewhere and held open by the key) and/or the key must be charged with eridium through a Siren

and i think you might see where I’m going with this.

do you remember that easter egg? Moon = Key. yeah? yeah.

Remember, every other Vault that is opened in the series requires a Vault Key (artificial or no) to be opened, and it’s not open forever.

im going to pause here and show some pictures of Eleseer for reference. compare them to those pictures of the inside of the TFTBL Vault, if you could :)

i noclipped out of the normal area to get a full shot of the platform

suspended in this weird starry night sky

which should look familiar to you now

because this is the same kind of area the Vault of the Traveler leads to

both these games were in development around the same time and i don’t think this is coincidence in the slightest

in bl1 and bl2 we don’t enter the vaults, instead whatever is inside comes to meet us, so we don’t have a frame of reference for those two vaults.

however

these two vaults look nothing like tycho’s ribs/eleseer.

not even the outside of the Vault of the Traveler looks like Tycho’s Ribs. in fact all three of these Vaults look identical. unlike eleseer and its ‘vault’

u might be saying to urself, but cruddy there IS a vault that looks like this in eleseer.

im getting to that >0>

my theory is that the Eridian buildings/ruins on Elpis (Tycho’s ribs, that big shaft/hole)

is actually keeping the Vault of the Sentinel open at all times

and that

well that must take a LOT of power and eridium, right?

i think that’s exactly the purpose of tycho’s ribs

now im not a physics major but i would bet this is some sort of power generator

because of these pulses

and would it be so hard to reason that the eridians decided to build it in the cryo rocks/methane reserves of elpis in order to keep it cooler?

in fact i could not shake this feeling so i looked around on the wikia for tycho’s ribs

here’s a list of the areas in tycho’s ribs

compression chamber

exhaust port

maintenance access 42 (which im certain is a HGTTG reference)

observation deck

particle collection chamber

the most important of these areas i would say is

maintenance access 42, mostly because it’s explicitly stated to be “lined up with a number of energy generators” that then leads to the exhaust port (and from there, eleseer)

sooooo break here because im about to switch gears 180%

----------------------

guess who just realized eleseer might mean ele-seer as in [Extinction Level Event]-seer [where seer is a person who is supposed to be able, through supernatural insight, to see what the future holds]- because everything in tps is named after seeing/watching. we got the Watcher, the Sentinel, even the Vault treasure is being able to see the future. considering most things are named after mythos in borderlands, eleseer is actually not a single word in mythos and uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh “ele” and “seer” both actually mean something.

that is, Eleseer should mean something like ‘prophet of the extinction’

That’s pretty metal

also no good, i guess

am i about to rewrite my entire zarpedon and the lost legion eternal theory? oh i guess i am. wheeeeeeee

oh, and given that this was the story summary of the game before the website was updated all those weeks ago, i think we know exactly what sort of extinction was being prophesied

cool? cool

doesn’t help that tannis hints at this, too

with her ‘mass extinction’ reference in Commander Lilith

“... mass extinction. i figured we had at minimum six or seven years before something like that”

(sorry for the cruddy screenshot i took it my first time through, am not up for playing the entire dlc again for that one line right now)

okay i might pull this back later on in this post, because i think i have a good idea of where to go, but just keep this in the back of ur mind. sorry u gotta deal with my dumb ass jumping between topics so often lol

---------------------------------

anyway, tycho’s ribs being the opening to the real Vault of Elpis. Yeah. I refuse to believe there’s a giant space place in the middle of the moon just hanging out. i’ve discussed in an earlier post about whether or not it was a pocket dimension fueled by Eridium, but i mean what is a Vault but that?

i mean if they need eridium to power the opening to the vault, they’ve certainly got that covered, there’s eridium EVERYWHERE in tycho’s ribs. that plus all those (apparent) power generators... yeah i think they’re covered

also somewhat off topic but have you guys noticed in TPS how rocks surrounding cryo get white/blue lines, rocks surrounding lava get red/orange lines, and rocks surrounding eridian ruins get purple lines?

probably from all that FUCKIN ERIDIUM

sorry i get off topic so much

anyway

i think that the entirety of Eleseer is the Vault of Elpis. That the entrance is being held open by Tycho’s ribs/Elpis through massive amounts of power/eridium

and it could be possible that using all that eridium to keep the Vault from closing is what’s causing all that ‘chemical sludge’ that mutated the Lost Legion Eternal into the pseudo-Sirens they are.

and remember that the center of eleseer is a giant eridium crystal? and apparently entering it teleports you inside and then you fight the sentinel and see the future?

i think that’s all an illusion. I wouldn’t argue that you go into the Eridium. sure. But i think that the whole thing in there is actually a program/hologram/illusion, or the eridian equivalent of it.

You remember in the claptastic DLC where the Vault Hunters are ‘turned into code’ and injected into Claptrap?

don’t you think that was like... really weird concept despite being canon? it’s possibly that was gearbox’s way (because gearbox did take over for that dlc) of introducing that idea as something that IS possible in canon, as to explain that the Vault of the Sentinel actually isn’t magic

and you might be thinking

what the fuck is cruddy on, this is super far-fetched

but it’s not!

think about it, the skybox is the EXACT SAME as Eleseer. which should already be ur first clue that something isn’t right, considering you can’t see eleseer anywhere around you. Even the map is the same. If you had a side quest open, you can see that the game still thinks you’re in the correct area. even though this area is LEAGUES bigger than the actual crystal. shit, you can even seen the enemies around you still

and what animation plays when you teleport inside the crystal? the same one as the lilith teleportation

all those circuit looking things. the same exact things that are everywhere on eridian tech, including the Vault Key from bl2

but you haven’t GONE anywhere

you’re still where you were before, the map confirms this, even the skybox confirms this and yet there’s no hint of eleseer actually around you

there’s more hang on lemme get the ~pictures~

okay you see that pink 2d fire effect on the ‘walls’?

if you actually walk up to it, you’re greeted with this grid effect locking you on the platform

and this effect on the floor

which you know, screams projection/hologram to me. i mean the fire is legitimately 2d. it’s flat.

also the Vault pieces that form the Vault of the Sentinel (ignoring that we’re already inside the Vault of the Sentinel

you know...)

they’re formed out of the floor. just materialized

which again... is really weird. and i don’t think this is a real Vault for obvious reasons (we’re already inside the Vault of the Sentinel, Eleseer is the Vault, etc etc) but also just look at the Vault in general

it looks weird

again, calling back the other Vaults we’ve seen in this series

they’re all made of stone/rock

the Vault of the Sentinel is... not? if it is, it’s shiny asf obsidian or something

either way, it’s entirely different compared to the other Vaults we’ve seen in the borderlands series, it’s entirely smooth with no markings and, while it’s broken into pieces to hold that aesthetic, it’s not cracked or anything. the broken look was likely intentional

too shiny

not a real Vault

~everything in this area is fake~

even the steps appearing as the sentinel walks down is just... not real to me

like the sentinel is the one controlling this tiny pocket dimension/hologram/program/whatever you get the idea

further proof by him summoning more structures as the fight goes on, from stuff to hop onto to avoid his attacks and barriers to hide behind

hell, he even crawls out of the ground himself at one point, as a bigger version of himself, which is probably the real version of him considering that one actually dies when we kill it, while the tiny one just keeps getting brought back to life and laughs at us

i mean cracks even appear around the floor when the big boy comes in, unlike every other thing that’s summoned from this floor cracks appear only when the Empyrean Sentinel comes in. the real sentinel

like this rock (iunno lol it’s the first screenshot i found) im saying the tiny sentinel and the vault he walks out of are both fake

the big sentinel is the real one come to kill us after getting frustrated we keep destroying his avatar

he’s feeling the gamer rage lol

and you know how when you kill a Vault Monster and the Vault closes, it drags it back inside? referencing the warrior here, because idk wtf the canonical thing is for the Destroyer given when Hyperion does

instead of being dragged into the Vault we see him walk out of, the one that’s right there in front of us, he’s dragged back into the floor

there he go

oh speaking of that Vault

yeah it’s not like any other Vault we’ve seen for another reason

check out the edges on this bad boy

it’s like a bubble in a bubble wand

good shit

meanwhile the Vault of the Sentinel is all crinkly and shit

like hmmmm i don’t THINK so

and when you actually walk into that structure? you’re just teleported to the back of the crystal you walked into

which should be another indication that maybe something isn’t right here

also the Vault Treasure, while inside that weird hologram/pocket dimension/program/seriously whatever you wanna call it, is probably an illusion, too. personally, i can see the entirely of this Vault being like a huge computer, that can compute the future of whoever touches the key and show it to them

We know Vault Monsters are tied into their Vaults, like the Traveler being able to teleport just like the Vault it came out of, the Warrior being the giant living weapon, the Sentinel is probably the guardian of the timeline or whatever. He probably has 3 faces to see the Past, Present, and Future. that’s my theory, anyway. i also noticed the one on the furthest left doesn’t have eyes, while the one furthest to the right doesn’t have a mouth.

which i thought was a cool detail to tie into that theory

anyway

i was going to regale you the tale of my lost legion eternal/Calypso twins theory

but like BETTER this time with MORE evidence

cuz i can and tbh that post is getting harder and harder to find every day

lemme just copy and paste the tl;dr for everyone who doesn’t wanna read the whole thing (i meaaan maybe do because it goes pretty in depth and im gonna summarize a lot of stuff plus im about to add more stuff here so)

“The whole Tl;Dr is that I think the events of BL3 are a chain reaction from Jack opening the Vault in TPS and that Zarpedon saw even further beyond into the future than Jack did with the 2nd Vault on Pandora. Bonus, the Lost Legion Eternal and the Vault on Elpis is the key to giving the Children of the Vault superpowers because the twins kept failing. Yes, that’s a reference to the cover art easter egg.”

So for those of you who don’t know, basically the twins claim to be giving their followers “special powers”

‘Learn special powers!’

and i’ve been thinking a lot about how they’re going to do that, exactly.

because Siren powers, well, there’s only 6 (supposedly), and you can be sure Tyreen isn’t going to give up her own. Now she could just be handing out Siren powers to high-ranking cultists after she steals them (like Liliths), but we see she (or Troy) is using Lilith’s powers on the cultists to teleport them on Promethea. so that can’t be the case.

But we do know about something that’s really, REALLY similar.

We know about the Lost Legion Eternal. and i’ve been thinking about them a lot.

in the post I go over some ties to Sirens, notably how Magus ones can fling slag balls at you, just like Maya’s melee override capstone, how Tempests have the same elemental wings Sirens get and can sling elements, one is literally called a phasewalker, etc, etc.

but they’re not Sirens. they’re super imperfect and just weird. like the slag balls aren’t perfect orbs like maya’s is, they’re weird and wobbly. the tempests wings aren’t fully formed, they don’t even have, as far as i can tell, actual tattoos

and how did these Eternals get these weird Siren powers exactly?

it’s explained that these ‘rashes’ and shit started appearing after Zarpdeon’s dig team was exposed to the Eridian ruins, specifically some vapors in the air

[callback to the ventilation shaft in tycho’s ribs, anyone?]

during her boss fight, zarpedon even mentions that the Vault is buried underneath a ‘tangle of chemical filth’

so it’s obvious this ‘chemical filth’ is what’s mutating her team and turning them into Eternals.

but they’re not like... always using Siren powers.

they’re not always ascended

they actually have a trigger to ascend. for one, they gotta be low enough health. but two... im pretty sure they gotta have Eridium on them

a lot of the LLE models have Eridium on their belts

like so. which is fair, you know? lots of eridium on elpis apparently because of tycho’s ribs.

but then there’s this

when the eternals ascend

when they come back down, they have eridium growing out of their chests/shoulders

take this tempest for example

im also not 100% sure what their ascending animation even is? it looks almost like they're throwing eridium powder on top of themselves? or stabbing themselves with the crystals? idek

maybe they’re just saluting/grabbing at their bodies as they change

there’s gotta be something there involved with eridium cause they certainly don’t have those crystals growing out of them beforehand

i almost want to say their blood has crystallized/hardened into those crystals cause if you look at Zarpedon’s death scene, she’s bleeding neon purple

just like Guardians do

which is fun

im also curious if this, in any way, ties into the Commander Lilith DLC. Like we know the plant stuff in the mine was more than likely mutated by the eridian ruins and that they’ve already gotten into everyone on earth

and Hector is using the Vault Key/Map to synthesize the gas to ‘activate’ the particles that are already inside of everyone

which ties into the Lost Legion Eternal in that they’re also not always ‘ascended’ (mutated), but they need Eridium (Vault Key gas) to become their second state. given these are both caused by Eridian stuff, I 100% can see them being tied together in some way. probably worded a helluve a lot better than i just did, too.

OHHHHH YOU KNOW I JUST HAD AN IDEA

okay maybe this ties not only into the Lost Legion Eternal, like you know what i was actually getting at, but Sirenhood as a whole. in that everyone is inherently a Siren, but only 6 are ever “active” at a time

and maybe Tannis can figure out a way to force this/induce Sirenhood in people. We know she’s the one who’s been studying both Sirens and the Vault Key (and Eridium) for the longest time. and now she has experience with this sort of deal with Hector and the gas. Maybe that’s why there’s cut content of Tannis going “oh is that why... nevermind” when talking about Angel’s powers appearing at 5 instead of birth.

s o oh man okay so the twins are going to use Elpis (moon is key) to create their army of pseudo-sirens

okay

okay oh man okay

and then tannis is going to reveal that she’s figured out a way to induce sirenhood in people like officially, none of that cheap rip-off shit and there’s gonna be an all out WAR of real Sirens vs fake Sirens

im just saying you know the game devs were all like “mmm we might introduce new skill trees instead of new VHs as dlc” and IM JUST SAYING maybe those new skill trees are already in the game and they’re gonna appear when the VHs get their own Siren powers (Amara gets an upgraded version of her own, like Lilith) and that’s why Guardian ranks are unlocked until the end of the story because then we’ll be able to buff ourselves with

alright yeah sorry i got a little too excited there

let’s ground ourselves back in reality

we know the twins are planning to somehow give their cultists powers, and we know that the Lost Legion Eternal are basically pseudo-Sirens without the need to steal and gift anyone Siren powers (which you know we don’t even know if Tyreen or Troy CAN gift the powers they steal. I’m still holding onto the theory that Tyreen passes them to Troy with the arm shake and Troy is the output and Ty is the input, but now isn’t the time to discuss this).

it wouldn’t be viable to give all their followers Siren powers ANYWAY, unless they find a way to multiply them (possibly a part of Tyreen’s/Troy’s powers? like being the main holder, but being able to gift it to others so long as you keep yours- could explain the ‘knighting’ looking thing Troy does with a cultist)

UGH I KEEP GETTING OFF TOPIC OKAY I HAVE STUFF I WANNA SAY

THEY’RE GIVING THE CULTISTS POWERS

YES

OKAY

we know in the mask of mayhem, Siren powers are indicated by Angel Wings.

What if the fake Sirens are indicated by something that’s not Angel wings. something that’s still wings- still holding Siren powers- but maybe indicative of a corrupted angel wing

like uhhhhhhhh

rakk wings?

yeah

yeah let’s go with that

you know like how bat wings are supposed to be demon wings and bird wings are angel wings okay yeah we get the tie-in

im just saying! directly below this dude (who is the cover art psycho, just you know, putting that out there, probably some sort of tie in to the gold weapons (high standing in the cult) and the robes and stuff. you knoooow you only get powers when you’re loyal enough or whatever, you know)

we have lilith with her angel wings, indicating her Siren-ness. which i don’t think is a coincidence

i got more though, because of the museum of mayhem

we know on pandora, there are hyperion pumping stations for slag and eridium, right? so if the twins were controlling some pumping stations on pandora, it’s a given that they’d be, you know, hyperion-brand

so in this concept art we see something like a pumping station, with a waterfall of purple goop, which you know, i immediately associate with those darn eridians annnnd

this isn’t Hyperion.

this is DAHL baby

and where did dahl have such a big presence and huge pumping stations all over the surface? (with bandits already everywhere, no less?)

elpis!!

originally dahl was there mining and pumping methane all across the planet, and, while they also had a mining presence on pandora before bl1, there weren’t any pumping stations there. they were mining for iridium (not to be confused with eridium), which really wouldn’t require pumps of any kind cause its a metal

so why is this pumping station considered holy holy holy? because it’s the source of their fake Siren powers

we even see, on the mask of mayhem, giant pumps with scaffolding and ladders all around them, they even have valves and shit

which, you know, are spewing vapor which could also tie into the gas that transformed the LLE

orrrr the purple stuff is just slag runoff from the eridium refinement process and cultists are fucking weird cause it could also just be a way for the twins to charge all the vault keys they’re collecting but damn it please let me have this lmao

i mean, why wouldn’t the twins go to elpis in search for the Vault that lets you see the future? that seems like a HUGE deal to me. especially for the two who seem to have this huge, grand plan in place. “you’re my most loyal follower vault thief, you just don’t know it yet” yeah i sure don’t let’s go to elpis and see what you guys have in store for us vault hunters!

man how fucked up would it be if us vault hunters had been brainwashed from the start to think the cult was the crimson raiders and the crimson raiders were the cult

now that’d be one hell of a twist

could explain why sanctuary-iii goes from orange/gray to blue/yellow with red graffiti on it

but uhhhhhhhh that’s a theory for another time because it is 2:07 in the am and im tired as FUCK

#borderlands #bl3 #borderlands 3 #wow sorry i just #really love the lost legion eternal #and i really hope they come back at some point #also there is space in the moon??? huh????#how does that work? it's gotta be a vault. it's gotta be #and i don't want tannis to be evil!#but seriously #kudos to gearbox if they tie in hector's plant monster army into tannis creating an artifical siren army #like actually she uses the info she learned to be like and then we have infinite sirens and break the universe #oh! well its latent in everybody so just like hector's gas all we need to do is #ACTIVATE IT!#plot twist tannis forcing more than 6 sirens to exist at one time collapses the fabric of the universe #that's actually the universe destroying power not whatever's in the vaults #oopsie

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adapembroke · 6 years ago

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No Freak-Out Guide to Venus Retrograde

If you’re looking for more info on Venus Retrograde 2018 specifically, I also wrote Everything You Need to Know about Venus Retrograde 2018.

When I started studying astrology, you could generally assume most people knew three things about astrology:

Their sun sign

Mercury retrograde sucks

Seriously, don’t even bother getting out of bed when Mercury is retrograde

Thanks to witchblr and the increasing popularity of witchcraft,* it is becoming common knowledge that every planet goes retrograde.** Some planets, like Pluto,*** are retrograde for half of the year, which means that there is almost always a perfectly astrologically legitimate reason to panic.

Except, retrogrades aren’t a reason to panic.****

Inhale. That’s the first step to dealing with Venus retrograde. Exhale.

Notice how you feel slightly more calm?***** That calmness you feel is Venus telling you that everything Venusian in your life isn’t flying into a boiling pit of lava while Venus is retrograde.******

What is Venus?

In astrology, the solar system is like a giant map of the human mind. Each planet (and the Sun and Moon) represents a part of the psyche.

Venus represents:

The ability to experience pleasure

The ability to make and maintain relationships (with friends and lovers)

The ability to calm down

The ability to make an aesthetic response (make art, express yourself through clothes, style a room, sigh at appropriate moments while watching a rom-com or Bollywood movie)

What happens when Venus is retrograde?

Retrograde is short for “retrograde motion.” If this were a post about Mercury retrograde, this is where I would explain the science of retrogradation. Since Venus is the planet of liberal arts majors, I’ll say that “retrograde” comes from the Latin word retrogradus, which means “backward step.”

When Venus is retrograde, the planet appears to move backward in the sky from our perspective on Earth. In astrology, this means that we have the psychological urge to step back and reflect on Venusian things.

Things that might happen to you when Venus is retrograde:

Old friends and lovers might come into your life to resolve unfinished business. (If you meet someone new, they might be someone from a past life with whom you have unfinished business.)

Relationships that are worn and stale might come to an end.

If you are an artist or writer, you may feel the urge to return to or revise old work. (Or you may find a new market for old work or have the opportunity to put out a reprint or new edition.)

You may return to artistic practices you’ve been neglecting for a long time.

You may find yourself wanting to listen to old music you used to love or binge watch old movies or TV shows.

You may find that all of the clothes you own no longer suit (hah) you or that you need to do something new with your hair.

The techniques for self-care you’ve been using (or the things you used to do to feel good) aren’t working anymore, and you have to try something new.

How to make sure your Venus retrograde is a good one:

Intention. Intention. Intention. Like Jung says: Anything you refuse to acknowledge appears in your life as fate. Retrograde periods are times when those “fated” things tend to happen. If you know perfectly well that your relationship is dead and you don’t do anything about it, something is likely to happen that is outside of your control during Venus retrograde. It’s better to deal with problems yourself and have some power over how things turn out.

Engage in reflection on purpose. Don’t want to hear that song in a coffeeshop? Go through old music that makes you feel happy and reminisce on that instead.

Don’t fight backwards motion. If you’re in the middle of writing a book, and you feel like you need to return to that old plot thread again, do it. You’ll have to do it eventually, anyway, and it will be much more of a pain later.

Breathe. Meditate. Practice being calm.

Are you calm? Good. That’s, really, all you need to know.

*Again. Witchcraft becomes trendy every 20 years or so. Gardner in the 50s. Goddess worship in the 70s. TV in the 90s. Tumblr in the 10s.

**Every planet goes retrograde except the Sun and Moon, which, astronomers will point out, aren’t technically planets, anyway.

***Pluto is still a planet in astrology, which is another reason to get your Official Practicing Witch card. Then you can yell at Sephora and Neil Degrasse Tyson on the internet.

****This is a secret. Don’t tell anyone.

*****If you are not feeling calm, try breathing again. I am not a doctor, but I am pretty sure breathing is safe for most humans. If you have been told by your doctor not to breathe, or you aren’t sure if breathing is right for you, you can always look at cat pictures instead. Unless you’re allergic.

******That’s Mars retrograde.

#venus #astrology #retrogrades #witchblr #original content #original astrology #original witch tips #venus retrograde

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 5 years ago

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Dream - Mining Disaster 3000

I was deep in the first set of tunnels and was coughing up a storm of obscenities to those who had sent us down there. The miners and I had stumbled on some infestation of what could only be described as zombies; shambling creatures resembling humans but with odd proportions and no love of us. We had fought our way out of the lower tunnels with anything and everything we could use as a weapon. It was difficult, but thanks to the modern mining gear we carried most of us made it out.

We came to the entrance to the tunnels. With the outside sunlight gleaming through the entrance it was easier to see everything around us. The tunnels were machine-carved in a flat-bottomed, arced ceiling way, with rows of equipment stacked neatly in large bins to each side, and a few machine-carved bollards at even intervals. The rocky material was blackened and dark, but patches of the natural earthy tones were visible in places.

Then we were out and into the administration area. It was a transition from tunnel to a small industrial building in white, with steel staircases. I marched right up to the head office without taking off any of my gear, which made my entrance through the normal sized door a little silly as I banged and rattled against the frame.

We were all yelling. I was yelling about the things in the lower tunnels. The only other miner who came out with me was yelling from the building floor about all the shit we had to go through, and the admin was yelling about something that seemed more important than the dead miners we had left behind.

Then things really got shook up.

The building shook. Dust and furniture rattled loose from the walls. All the arguing suddenly stopped and we just stared at random walls or floor or ceiling, trying to comprehend what just happened. That was a detonation of something really big someplace nearby.

I pushed through the admin office to the outer door and sort of broke/pushed it open. It was sunny and we were deep in the mountains. There was a dirt parking area with a long gravel road winding away. We were pretty high up so most of the mountain range was visible, at least on this side of the mountain.

A chunk of the mountain nearby lifted up and shredded into pieces, and a moment later the deep rumbling and shaking hit us again. It wasn't a small chunk. It must have been a square kilometer, or perhaps a cubic kilometer since so much was lifted up. The trees looked like tiny dots all over it just before it turned into random jumbles of broken forest and rock.

Another, slightly smaller, piece of mountain did the same thing, this one right beside the building. I was showered with dirt and leaves and bits of bark and rocks. I didn't know what exactly was happening but I knew if I didn't get moving there was a good chance that one of those sudden upheavals was going to be where I was standing.

I vaulted down the outer staircase, a good 15m distance, to the lot below, just as the tunnel entrance, the admin building, and part of the mountain behind me burst up and came crashing down in pieces. I ran up the roadway as far as I could. Every few seconds there was a heavy rumble. The air was heavy with dust. I could see an occasional glimpse of the mountainside peeling away at random. But I hit a dead end. Or rather, a chasm. That part of the mountain had already been demolished. Then the ground under me shook and lifted up.

I still didn't know what was happening. Earthquakes didn't strike small spots at a time. A volcano bursting up from below? It could be. That meant lava. I hadn't seen any flaming anything .... Scratch that. As I was clinging to the ground that was moving upward, I noticed a streak of something pass overhead. More than one, in a cluster. Like meteors entering the atmosphere and burning up. The ground started to break up under me and a red haze filled the air around me. Yeah. Lava. There was nothing I could do. I was about to fall into a pit of lava.

At least it would be a quick death.

Everything hurt as I slid down the gravel and rock waterfall and I landed in a rocky, eroded valley just to the side of the main rockfall of debris. I was covered with red clay dirt, and the air was thick with a red dusty haze. That was pretty incredible luck, all around. I had been at one tip of the mountain chunk that had been torn apart, and had tumbled sideways when it broke up, and landed just outside of the pile, which would have certainly crushed me if I had been in the middle.

Also, it wasn't lava.

I hastily slid down the valley, or gulch, or crevice, whatever it was. It was barren and mostly red dirt and eroded rocks. Overhead I could still see more of those things streaking down from the sky. The ground still rumbled every few seconds. Now it actually did all make sense, but I didn't know the reason this was happening. I held that thought as I tumbled out of the crevice and into a washout. I was near the bottom of the far side of the mountain range, in one of the valleys. I must have been five or six kilometers from where the admin building was. I sat against a boulder and caught my breath. The things falling down were at a low angle and I was protected here. I had the entire mountain between myself and where they were landing, based on that angle. The rumbling became further apart in time, then stopped.

Yeah. It was exactly what it seemed, then. Someone had decided to do an orbital bombardment.

I closed my eyes and rested against the boulder. I remembered, or was I imagining? I could see huge spacecraft in high orbit. Things shaped like cylinders with all manner of projections sticking out of them. Shadowy things. Dozens of them. Things that large were military. And there were some support ships around them. Dropships. I was sitting in one, red lighting setting a hellish mood, staring at some pilot who was grinning like a madman.

I opened my eyes. Whose military was doing this? Were they targeting the mine? Was it just caught in the collateral damage of something bigger? Why did they stop?

I achingly got back up. I took a moment to give an industrial prayer, thankful I had been wearing the mining gear, else I would be mulch under a pile of dirt someplace. As far as "mining gear" went my outfit was probably overkill, and would have made Tony Stark proud. It was a close-fitting hard shell of a suit with a small degree of powered assist, made for wielding heavy mining equipment in tight confines, hardened to take abuse and survive minor rockfalls. It was a self-contained armored suit made to keep a wearer alive even if buried, and to help keep away fatigue in use. It was also beat-up right now and covered in red grit. It was still working, though.

I hadn't been to this area of the mountain, but I remember hearing about it. Rumor was there were some old ruins here and some mines that had been abandoned due to instability. I walked along the wash and it opened up to a large section of the valley. There were trees and I found an old, unused roadway. I followed it for a few minutes. Aside from my breathing and stomping footsteps, it was quiet. No rumbles, no streaks of flaming death above. Also, no real birds or things. Must have been scared off by all the quaking.

I came up to a ruin. It was different than I had thought it would be. It was probably a circular building at one time, but had been sliced down the center and opened up. There was still a central tower inside the thing. It was all damaged and looked to be made from reinforced concrete. Maybe some kind of pre-fab thing? I touched a wall. Nah. This was military-grade stuff. This was built by someone, recently. Not too recently, maybe within the last 100 years or so, maybe abandoned within the last 50 years. It was in rough shape but still standing. From above it was like looking at the following: ( o ) ... with me standing at the lower part looking in to the central tower, flanked by curved walls that had openings broken out of them.

I noticed an active transmitter embedded in the central tower at about eye-level. There was a flashing beacon, the old style that was embedded in materials, faintly flashing in a hazy blue. I brushed dirt off a sleeve of my suit and pried open a dented cover to reveal a transmitter/receiver. I knew the frequency these old beacons used, and tapped that in to the keypad on my sleeve. The computer in the suit set about decoding the weak signal. It would take a few seconds.

I walked around the curve of the inner tower. It was maybe 20m tall and tapered just a little inward at the top, and maybe 20m diameter at the base. The encircling walls were maybe 100m diameter ... They were pretty far out from the central tower, but not as tall. I noticed a lot of carvings on the inner part of the walls and some on the base of the tower. Maybe someone decided to try hacking away at the walls with some heavy saws. There were a lot of marks, actually, and they seemed to be arranged in groups. Wait. Could these be claw marks?

The suit beeped in my ear. It sounded odd. Like a beep mixed with some kind of radio interference like a low hum. The message was brief and in a woman's voice.

"Stay away from the facility. Danger. Quarantine order number ...."

I didn't hear what was said because another low hum came through, but this time I realized it wasn't part of the message. It was something on the other side of the tower. I toggled a quick area map, made in real-time from the mining suit's tunnel sensors. There was a tunnel entrance on the other side of the tower, not just another break in the wall. It was an armored entrance made from the same materials as the walls and tower, and had a massive door on it. The sensors showed the door was partly open and the tunnel extended deep into the valley wall.

That was also where the humming noise was coming from. But it wasn't really a hum. It was more of a howl. A deep, low howl. There was more than one.

I backed away and hiked back up the old road in the other direction. Whatever was making that noise was big and I didn't want to tangle with any wildlife, even if I had no idea what it might have been. On the plus side, the sounds faded as I walked away, so I wasn't being followed. It must have been a vocal warning from whatever was there. Stay away, indeed.

I heard the unmistakable sound of aircraft engines close overhead. They were going across at a slow pace. I rested a moment in the trees and listened to them. They faded, changed pitch, then intensified briefly before fading away. That was good. They weren't circling the area so they probably weren’t looking for me, and they landed someplace fairly close. I could probably walk there within a few minutes. Perhaps I could get a ride out of this place if I could find them before they got airborne again.

I walked in the general direction of where the sound had stopped at, taking note that it was also the same direction as a side road off the road I had been on. Neither seemed like they had been used in a few decades. It followed a cliffside and led to another valley area. There were the aircraft. They had landed in a gravel clearing that looked to have been recently re-cleared. Actually, they were dropships, clad in armor plates and painted a stealthy black to blend in with the darker areas of off-world space. I also didn't recognize their design beyond their general layout. I didn't even see any kind of identification on them.

I hunkered down and let the suit do another map update. It was messy. It was made for use inside tunnels, to map unseen traps and hazards and faults in the surroundings, not to check open spaces like valley clearings. I could just make out that there was a bunker of some sort just out of sight on the cliff face. But there was also what looked like another opening closer to me, but the garbled information didn't show what was there. It looked like it had something blocking it but was giving echoes from further inside.

I crept around the base of the cliff, just out of sight of the dropships, and found there was indeed a cavern there. A natural one, it seemed. But a few steps in revealed a heavy armored wall had been put up. There were some slots in the wall for airflow, anchor points, and a couple of small openings for attachments. I peered in one of the openings, not much bigger than a gloved fingertip. There were lights set up in there, and some equipment. It looked like that area was being used for storage. There was movement.

Someone in a military hardsuit slowly paced into the room, looked in, then turned and looked back into some hallway deeper into the tunnels. That suit was black, had armored panels everywhere, and had a helmet that would have made Darth Vader proud. They were carrying a rifle as if expecting trouble, but relaxed enough to not be pointing it at anything. I didn't recognize any of that uniform beyond it being a standard military hardsuit, basically an armored version of my own mining gear. It wasn't the heaviest military hardware, and that rifle wasn't the biggest you could use with it. That one must have just been a grunt on guard duty. They moved back out of sight and I stepped back from the wall.

No insignias. No identification. If they had transponders it wasn't a signal my mining suit could pick up - it would have automatically detected an identification signal from any of the standard military unless they were under stealth orders, which was extremely rare. These guys were military. These guys weren't from the military that was normally supposed to be in this area. Invasion? Orbital bombardment for ... what reason? I didn't trust these guys at all. There was no way I was just going to walk right over with waving arms and beg for a rescue. It might end with me being a pile of smoking chunky salsa.

I crept back around the cliff, the same way I had come in from. The sun was on the downward arc. I would be night in a few hours. I had plenty of light left. It was time to take a hike and see if one of these old roads actually led out.

It only took about half an hour of walking before I ended up on the far side of the same military landing area. I silently cursed whoever made those old roads for putting me into that position. This time, though I was in a better shielded area with more cliffs. I had also noticed a larger cliffside just beyond the clearing where the dropships were at. That one led down into a deep valley.

I tried to get another map done, but it was just as messy as the last time. I couldn't tell much more from the map than what I could see. There were a pair of guards in lighter armor lounging outside the bunker entrance, which looked like a standard machine-carved cave in the cliffside. Beyond that all I could see were lights inside the tunnel and the craft in the lot.

But then I heard aircraft engines. So did the guards. While I flattened myself down behind some rocks, I caught a glimpse of them jumping up and brandishing light rifles. They obviously were not expecting visitors.

I slithered back to a better hiding spot as the engine sound grew louder. Three familiar craft passed overhead at a blistering pace. They were white with red markings, looking like some kind of fanciful arrowheads with engines. They banked hard out of sight then were back in a second, hovering noisily overhead and pelting the dropships with heavy weapon-fire. Those ships, even with all their armor plating, were chewed up pretty fast. Some of the fire focused on the tunnel entrance, just a brief notice to anyone inside that they weren't allowed out.

Then I was noticed.

One of the craft spun around to face my direction and sent a short burst of fire my way. It was probably my fault. I had tried to back away from the scene, and was probably noticed immediately because of the movement. Thankfully I was in the middle of jumping behind some large part of the cliff and only the rocks around me were pulverized instead of me.

I ran along the cliffside as two of the craft split off behind me and circled overhead. They didn't shoot. I fell. It was a long fall. I had misjudged how close I was to that other, larger cliff and went right off the edge. I careened down the steep cliffside, trying to steady myself amidst the rockslide I had created. I slowed to a stop above a steeper part of the cliff. It was only a few meters above a flat valley floor and there were some large boulders sticking out from the cliffside that I had landed on. While the dirt and dust showered down around me, I noticed all three craft came over the cliffside and were banking around to get me in their sights. I jumped. I landed inside the nook of a larger boulder outcropping several meters up from the valley floor. Dirt poured in on top of me and around me. There was only a narrow gap where one of the craft might be able to fire in through, but I was certain I wasn't able to be seen at all.

The craft circled the cliff area. One was low in the valley and I could see it was inspecting the pile of rockfall that had gotten to the floor. The other two were circling around the rockslide area on the cliff. These craft were also military. Irecognized them. They were out-system military, though. Those colors were not local. I just stayed put, mostly buried in gravel and dirt, waiting. They couldn't hover out there for too long, as it was a strain on their fuel supply. They would have to break off. The problem was would they leave before or after calling in the position for a ground squad to investigate.

They left rather quickly. I heard more weapons firing from the plateau above. I guessed the other military guys had decided to make a stand, or something else was going on.

I wiggled myself free from the hole I was buried in, once again thankful for the mining gear I was wearing. I fell/slid/dropped the last few meters onto the pile of gravel below, then hiked along the valley floor at a fast pace. I made it to some natural caverns and stopped to catch my breath. Outside, back from where I had come, I could hear the weapons had stopped and the craft had either left the area or had landed someplace. I waited. The sun was starting to go down and the valley was starting to drop into dusk shadows.

There was a deep, rumbling howl behind me.

I turned and was faced with natural cavern darkness. Nothing moved. I toggled my helmet for a map and enhanced vision, but the mapping gear had been damaged – probably when I was on the way down the cliff. I could see better, though. The cavern closed up and led to a natural tunnel deeper into the cliff. There was something on the ground where the tunnel started. It was a cargo box. It wasn't dusty at all. It was put there recently. I popped it open and found some military rations, a light rifle, a pistol, a uniform I didn't recognize, and various personal items. There were also some mechanical parts I recognized. They were replacement parts for the type of aircraft that had been chasing me. These weren't normal replacement parts. These were pirate parts, designed to over-ride the pilot identification system. With these parts and the right know-how, someone could steal one of the craft in a matter of moments.

I wedged open the visor on my helmet. It didn't move very far. The helmet must have deformed from all the abuse I had been putting myself through in the last few hours. It was open enough to push a wafer of dried food into my mouth. I chewed as I hefted the rifle. It was a standard military rifle with standard caseless ammunition, looking like someone took an M4A1 and threw a lot of plastic on it to make it look sleek and "sci-fi". The pistol was standard issue as well, and similarly "sci-fi-ized". Both had their identification systems scrambled. They were no longer tied to military use ID’s and could be used by anyone.

Another howl took my attention away from the box. That was too close. I snapped the visor back in place and hefted the rifle. I toggled the weapon ‘on’ and the dim red light on the sights perked to life. Another howl. It was no closer. I crept into the tunnel and rounded a corner. There were rocks and some stone pillars in the center, and it dipped downward past them. I could see something back there. I stopped at the rocks and peered over them.

There was something large back there. It was all pale. It moved and I almost opened fire on it. It was ... It was something like a hippo or rhino in size, pale hide, instead of stumpy legs and feet it had "hands" with massive claws ... on all four legs. The head was nothing like a hippo or rhino. It was bigger than either, with a large, flat face and a huge mouth filled with cone-shaped teeth, and it had at least two eyes that were way larger than should have been normal for anything. It also had one back leg held by a heavy bracelet attached to a heavy cable that was anchored to the stone wall.

The thing obviously was looking at me. It probably knew I was there when I first entered the cavern from the valley. It didn't struggle to get at me. It seemed resigned to being a prisoner back there. Just then it leaned forward, almost casually, and I could see, and almost hear, the cable straining to hold it back. It relaxed back to where it was before.

Then I remembered to finish chewing the dried wafer I had put in my mouth. It had stuck to my lips. I stared at the thing for a few moments, just chewing and not moving any more. It just stared back and shuffled slightly. There was something mixed in the dirt around it. I couldn't be sure but it looked like ripped cloth. Then I noticed another creature was next to it, also staring at me.

I had only seen one anchor on the wall.

I backed out, keeping the rifle aimed on the pair. They didn't follow. On the way out I grabbed the cargo box. I carried it back to the cavern entrance, dug quickly through it and pulled out the handful of parts at the bottom, then backed out to the valley.

Again, I hiked around, this time headed back to the plateau and the military battle. It took less time than I thought, and as I reached the area the sun was just setting and everything was in a monochromatic evening haze. The dropships were still a ruin, one smoking as if it had caught fire recently on some internal part. The white aircraft had landed nearby, with a similarly-colored troop transport alongside. All the activity was inside the tunnels. I could hear small arms fire from deep inside. Whoever was in there was not giving up easily.

I noticed someone at the transport. It was someone I knew. Someone who shouldn't have been on this planet, someone who definitely wasn't a normal part of any military. Case in point: He was dressed in a jumper and workboots rather than in a military outfit. Was that his box of gear I found? That thought left my head immediately. I went over and greeted him, and he was suitably shocked to see me there. I told him he had one choice to make. Step aside and walk away, or help me commandeer one of the aircraft and leave.

He stared for a moment. I imagined him processing this ... A random person from his past, dressed in a battered and broken mining hardsuit, brandishing military weapons that had been hacked, wanting to hijack a military fighter craft using parts he probably had stashed himself. He nodded and ran towards the parked aircraft.

I ran right behind him. As he passed the side of the transport he reached up and yanked on a hatch I hadn't paid attention to. I closed down just as I reached it and my helmet smacked into it with a loud thunk. It threw me off balance. I picked up the chase a second later. It was obvious he was choosing to not help. But he was also acting pretty strange about it. He was running and had his head turned away from me, like avoiding my gaze as I ran behind. I changed direction. I wasn't chasing him, I was headed for the nearest white and red aircraft so I could get off this rock, before something else bad happened to me.

Or the monsters came out of their caverns.

Then I woke up.

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chrismerle · 6 years ago

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OKAY NOW IT’S DONE time for my thoughts, the least spoiler-y part of all my rambling

gameplay: A +. seriously, there are not a lot of games where I’ll contemplate going back once the story is done solely because they’re fun to play. for this one? I will probably wind up playing it more tomorrow just to keep filling in the map and doing side quests. combat is smooth and easy to pull off even when it requires multiple buttons. web-swinging is possibly the best game mechanic I’ve ever experienced. like, I don’t like flight or gliding in games, but I very willingly spent this whole damn game playing The Floor Is Lava until putting my boots on the ground was mandatory. it was good enough that I only used fast travel twice, and one of those times was required by the game tutorial (the other time was because Spidey on the subway is funny as hell). granted, I do still have my complaints. maybe I was just doing it wrong (I was probably doing it wrong), but dodging felt a bit wonky. for a lot of higher tier baddies and bosses, they attacked in volleys, so if you didn’t hammer on the dodge button until your thumb fell off then you were going to take two or three hits or more even if you dodged the initial strike. at higher difficulties, Spidey’s really only got three or four hits in him. also landing could be a bit of an ordeal. I can’t count the amount of times I vaulted straight over a roof I was supposed to land on, back and forth, several times. luckily, you were incapable of accidentally launching yourself to your death, as even jumping off of skyscrapers just resulted in Spidey doing a tuck-and-roll and bouncing to his feet on the ground below. and I wasn’t a huge fan of the stealth mechanics. don’t get me wrong, I loved MJ and Miles, but I’m generally more of a fan of very fast-paced gameplay, and the stealth sections were very slow.

boss fights: on the whole I liked them, but they weren’t perfect. most of them were some variation of ‘do this, kick in face, dodge, repeat half a dozen times, you win.’ it got a little old. especially since, for most of them, the pattern was ‘run/swing/dodge in circles, web up enemy, kick them in the face, retreat, repeat.’ still, it’s a minor complaint. Shocker escaped the pattern. Electro and Vulture were both in an area conducive to swinging the whole time, which made it more exciting. and while Scorpion followed the pattern, Rhino definitely did not, and having to keep an eye on both of them and their methods of defeat kept it interesting. unfortunately, while fighting Mister Negative on the train was entertaining, his later fight felt a bit generic. and the first stage of Doc Ock’s fight was yet another round of ‘run in circles, web, kick, retreat,’ with an added periodic AoE attack that was super annoying and the loss of the ability to customize how you fight. the second stage makes up for it, though, but I’m always a sucker for an overly emotional slug-fest.

interface: not much to say here. it looks clean. it’s pretty well organized. there’s a lot of variation in how you can do things. it’s pretty intuitive, when it comes to upgrading. the map is functional. it’s nothing groundbreaking, but it does its job well and won’t make you rip your hair out.

visuals: the animation was beautiful. fluid. natural. filled with detail and care. the settings were great. for the most part, the people looked great but, and I’m still not letting this go, for whatever reason damn near every character model had eyes too big for their faces. I was legitimately glad that most of the cast wore masks because the ET eyes were genuinely creepy. like, if it had been a stylistic choice, sure, but eyes aside the people were basically photo-realistic. and anytime a photograph showed up, it looked super uncanny. but really, those are basically my only gripes about the visuals. as an added bonus, whatever suit you wear shows wear-and-tear when Spidey gets the shit kicked out of him, which is a nice, unexpected touch.

story/writing: I am so glad this was not another Spidey origin. I have seen too much of the Spidey origin. you have seen too much of the Spidey origin. we have all seen too much of the Spidey origin. I’m not even giving the MCU a pass here: we didn’t see Holland Peter get bit, but he was in every other way a stumbling newbie. so the fact that he’s already been Spidey for 8 years at the start of the game? I am all for it. and I’m glad it was its own thing. it didn’t try to ape the comics. it’s attempting to be its own universe, rather than trying to retell the movies or 616, and it’s compelling as hell to boot in the creative liberties its taken. the dialogue is spot on. this has become my quintessential Peter Parker. you spend the vast majority of the game with him, and you will love him by the end. he’s an endearing wise-ass with a guilt complex the size of Manhattan, and if you are prone to feelings of ‘I like to watch my faves suffer’ or if you enjoy feeling like you want to wrap a character in a blanket, then Pete has got you covered. and while the side villains are a bit neglected, the main villains are definitely not. you know they’re doing bad things, but you can see the twisted logic in it. you can follow the paths their thoughts took to get them where they are, and you can realize that in a twisted way, it all makes sense. and it’s a little chilling. and there were just...so many small moments that made it great. Spidey teaching Miles how to throw a punch, Pete damn near crying when Aunt May gives him money after he gets evicted, the way everyone staying at the homeless shelter is so familiar with Pete so you know he volunteers there a lot, the way civilians react when Spidey’s close by. the world feels just lived in enough to make you care. even the characters who don’t have much to them are still enjoyable. a lot of the villains that show up don’t have much to them. I’ll be upfront about that. they show up. they snark. they fight. they get their asses kicked. but the ways they interact with each other and the details you find in the background still manage to make them compelling. I think it all works well together whether you’re new to the Spidey mythos or not. if this is your first exposure to Spidey, then parts of it may genuinely shock you, and I want you to have that experience. if you already have some idea of the Spidey story, then you get this pit in your stomach as you realize certain things that are going to happen later and then hope to god they don’t. as an admitted nerd, I was very much in camp ‘oh please no.’ but still, it managed to pleasantly surprise me. the writers knew what they were doing. there were aspects I was geared up to complain about--the argument Pete and MJ have for a good portion of the middle of the story, foremost among them--because in the hands of any hack, they would be unbearable Hallmark-esque cliches, and...they weren’t. instead of having some ungodly Third Act Misunderstanding, things I ordinarily would have taken issue with got addressed in ways that made sense. the wind got taken out of my sails on a few occasions, and I was happy for it to happen. my only real gripe is small, and it’s that we don’t really know what happened to Mister Negative. like, did he die? did he get sent back to prison? did they just leave him on the floor? what happened there?

voice acting: someone give Yuri Lowenthal a medal, he was fucking spectacular you see what i did there? eh? eh? but really, every voice was great. Pete was the joking wise-ass who cares too much for his own good that we all love. Otto was the right amount of long-sufferingly paternal. May was an authority figure you wanted to listen to while simultaneously wanting to shake her. Miles was an endearing puppy. MJ was...also kind of a puppy, but a more excited one. JJJ was JJJ. no one’s performance was grating. no one was phoning it in.

aaaand...yeah. I think that covers all of it. I had a good time. maybe I’ll even buy the DLC.

#spiderman #elsa liveblogs nonsense #long post

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findingjoynweirdstuff · 4 years ago

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Okay since I’m not satisfied reblogging the recap as is since the older ones weren’t as good, I’ll just paste it here but with some edits to include more direct quotes and stuff

This is one of my favorite days for Quackity’s character

---

RECAP: December 6, 2020

- HBomb hosts Niki and Wilbur’s L’Cast

- Fundy continues work on the chess board

- Ranboo is leaving a book with messages to communicate with Tommy

- Fundy and Ranboo visit Tommy and help him through the Nether to find blaze rods. Fundy fills Tommy in on the fact that Dream is officially recognizing L’manburg as a country.

- Tommy falls in lava and loses all his stuff

- Then he burns to death

- Then he falls in lava and loses all his stuff again

- He FINALLY gets an ender chest

- Ghostbur comes on and says he has a gift.

- Tommy attempts to rescue Lazar from the depths of the lava pit. Techno starts arguing with him.

- Tommy falls in lava and loses all his stuff again. He gives up on helping Lazar, who is understandably annoyed at him.

- Philza joins the call wondering wtf is happening and why Tommy keeps dying, but Tommy just ends stream

- Psyche! Ghostbur asks Tommy to return to Logstedshire so he dies in lava to fast-travel back. Ghostbur gives Tommy a lodestone compass named “Your Tubbo” that points back to L’manburg at all times. Tommy puts the compass in his ender chest right next to the discs, saying he’ll keep it close to his heart.

- Now, he wants to do the clay prank to George instead to try and get Dream and George to turn on each other as revenge for Dream burning his house.

- Puffy builds Tommy a second Christmas Tree.

- Sapnap wants to take on Technoblade but Quackity tells him that they have to take things step by step and that it’s an extremely bad idea to do it now.

- Eret asks Hbomb to be one of his knights. HBomb agrees.

- George wants his kingship back

The explosion goes to plan with H and Puffy as witnesses.

— —

CANON DEATH: KARL

Cause: Death by explosion and falling

— —

- George distracts Eret while Quackity, Sapnap and Karl steal his throne. Punz joins Eret’s side as one of his other knights.

- Sapnap gets Dream to log (he says it’s lag). The Dream SMP faction blows up M.L. with TNT. The Mexican L’manburgians kill Puffy.

- They want to head to the Holy Land. Dream says he wants to talk. They collect at the Church.

- They argue. Dream threatens to kill Quackity permanently and make sure Mexican L’manburg can never rise again.

- Sapnap tells George that he thinks Dream has completely turned against them, and that they’re better off disowning him.

— [Including some more direct quotes here] ---

Quackity: “Listen...this should be between Eret and me, I don’t know why you are getting involved...we will give back the throne, but what we want-”

Dream: “- Mexican L’manburg is not...existing. Ever again...if you wanna destroy and grief the kingdom, then that is called being a terrorist! Listen, Karl, I don’t give a crap if you died, that’s your fault. You died griefing and being a terrorist...”

...

Quackity: “Is that what we’re going off of now? That the entire server can be run by one goddamn person? We’re not even allowed to voice our opinions now? What’s going on? As far as I remember, you’ve been taking all the shots, and anything, nobody has free speech anymore!”

...

Dream: “I think you forget that I designated this as the holy land.”

...

Dream: “I have no problem with Tubbo, who’s leading his country gracefully. You are a terrorist.”

...

Quackity: “What is it that you want from us? We were doing peaceful protest, that’s all we were doing.”

Dream: “Quackity...you’re not doing ‘peaceful protest’ when all I hear is ‘hey, the Dream SMP castle has been sieged.’ ...Look, I...You’re trying to paint me as this tyrant when I’m just trying to maintain peace...if you think Eret’s being too political, come and talk to me! Don’t go and raid my castle and my throne.”

Karl: “YOUR castle? YOUR throne?”

Dream: “Yes!”

Karl: “Dream’s an absolute TYRANT!”

...

Dream: “The only reason it’s a no-kill policy in the first place is because I wanted it to be that way, and it’s enforced by me.”

Karl: “That sounds like a tyrant!”

Dream: “It’s not a tyrant! I’m a humanitarian if anything! It’s not for my agenda...listen, my agenda always, since the beginning, has always been for the SMP to thrive. That has been my agenda, so if you’re saying for my agenda, it makes me a tyrant - no, it doesn’t, it makes me wanting the server to thrive and everyone to be peaceful.”

...

Dream: “In my mind, Mexican L’manburg does not exist as anything whatsoever and you know what? I’ll talk to Tubbo about it and make sure he sees it doesn’t either.”

Karl: “Dream said the same thing about L’manburg back in the day--”

Dream: “No I didn’t!”

...

Dream: “You don’t get a country recognized by being a terrorist, Quackity.”

...

Dream: “I did NOTHING! At all! Until you decided to attack my nation...you know what someone has to do to be recognized? A country that is established has to have a fair, and just, and logical ruler, and you are NONE of those things. Tubbo is all of those things, and that’s why L’manburg is recognized.

When Tommy was head of state, and Tommy was vice president, you’re right, L’manburg had no right to be recognized...it was the fact that Tommy, a dumbass, was exiled and is no longer in charge of their land anymore...Tubbo would never...never in a million years do what you just did.”

“You know who would? Jschlatt. You know who would? Wilbur. You know who would? Tommy.”

...

Dream: “The king is a figurehead! He knows that!”

Quackity: “So that’s what you are? That’s what you are, Eret? A puppet?”

Dream: “YES!” -- No he’s not a puppet --”

---

M.L. argues that putting a human life above a few blocks of gold is more important.

He says that Quackity is causing the most problems, the number one “enemy” of the SMP right now.

—

- Eret agrees to recognize Quackity’s new country if they apologize and return the throne.

- Sapnap declares that he no longer wants to fight Techno but Dream instead. He says he wants to slay Dream in front of everyone.

- Quackity declares the country to be named “El Rapids” in honor of Cedar Rapids.

- Punz no longer wants to be an official Knight.

- Karl streams with the intention of rebuilding and preparing for Pokimane’s visit

- Karl steals Eret’s Museum Llamas and gets caught in the act. Fortunately this doesn’t spark up the war again. They take a llama to Party Island.

- They get into trouble at Boomerville and Lazar joins.

- The prison will be in the middle of the ocean bit, and Bad would have a terraformed beachfront property. All of the land would be considered property of the Badlands - including the prison.

- People are going to have to go through portals to escape the prison.

- Bad starts to come around to the prison idea. Dream tells Sam he thinks they need more hands to help, potentially Ant and Eret.

- A strange, giant red “egg” has appeared in the corner of Bad’s statue room. He feels a strange aura coming from it, and he’s unable to bring himself to break it.

- Bad shows Dream the Egg. Dream gets creeped out by it.

- Bad stabs Dream for trying to “hurt it.” He likes it for some reason.

— —

Dream explains to Bad and Sam that the reason he switched sides in the Manberg-Pogtopia War was because Schlatt gave him something.

And that thing is “a card up his sleeve” until he needs it.

A book of great value.

It puts Dream in danger if people know of it, but also gives Dream power.

The “most valuable thing on the server.”

Something pertaining to the prison.

Something where they wouldn’t believe Dream if he told them what he was given.

— —

- The corruption grows AGAIN despite Dream, Sam and Bad all being in the middle of the ocean

- Another corruption appears on Tommy’s Power Tower

- The water level in New L’manburg has risen again, covering George and Quackity’s mushroom house

- The prison is going to be as tall as a MOUNTAIN

- Bad says he likes the name a dono came up with for the corruption – “Blood Vines”

- Dream and Sam removed the Blood Vines on the Mansion to Bad’s dismay. Sam burns the Vines and Bad goes on a murderous rampage against him.

- Technoblade got a “Bee our guest” achievement

- Dream burns down the Eiffel Tower again.

- The prison will be reinforced with 15 layers of obsidian, and the guards will have Ender Pearl Stasis Chambers that are alarm-activated.

- The Blood Vines have sprouted up from Schlatt’s Grave.

The prison’s unofficial name as of right now is “Pandora’s Vault,” but it is subject to change.

---

(You can tell this was written a while ago lmao)

#long posts

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thekiiword-blog · 6 years ago

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Living in a space between Heaven and Hell is not as easy as it seems. The good and bad are constantly playing tug of war. Whoever wins has my heart, my soul and my mind at their mercy.

When the bad comes to visit, he makes it feel like something more than just a bad day. It's like being dropped in the middle of the ocean and there's no sign of the bay. Only to find out it's a dream but you wake up and feel the walls closing in.

When he's around, I suddenly feel like a stranger in my own space, like these friendly faces and familiar places are elien so I alienate from them and find a dark dingy corner to hide. Where I write my self into the light and ride my pen like a spaceship taking these hardships scattering them across the universe.

The good suddenly gives a welcome hug and it's warmth feels like a walk in paradise. My soul splits and somersaults in speedily steps swinging to splash and swiftly swim on the smiling sea.

But suddenly the sea floor opens and leads me to an abyss. So I find myself falling and leave happiness hanging, the darkness devours all the bits and pieces of my internal peace. And I just stand at these places that were once familiar and stare at these faces that were once friendly. I feel their stares piercing through my eyes and catching glimpses of my dying spirit. They see me like a UFO as my external shell looks like a ghost that once housed a being that carried sunshine in their hand and their infectious smile was forever gleaming with no limit.

Then sparks than run through my veins shock my heart into health. And once again I open my eyes wide enough to catch the smile of the bright blue sky and my muscles work in unison to turn my frown upside down. And for a brief moment, hope feels like a comfortable feeling. Every millisecond brings back the laughter my cries kept stealing.

But like a ticking bomb, those few moments expire and my happy bubble explodes into salty waters that my doleful eyes catch and send pouring down my cheeks. Down into my pillow they go, leaving dirty marks that draw out a map directing me to my demise. Coupled with a few hints and suggestions of a rope and a packet of pills at its peaks, they tempt me with easy exits. But then I smile again. And I sit, anxiously waiting for darkness to drag me down again.

So I live for the intermittence of smiling moments. Each day dies and leaves me feeling like maybe happiness is an art of pretence. And I can master this skill, I need only to be a thespian. Pretend like the world is a stage, life is a plot, and I'm stuck in a tragic scene. And these tumbling walls are visual effects on a green screen. Sadness is the director calling at me through a loud speaker but maybe I can alter the echo. Channel my alter ego, sing and dance through this slump and leap to cloud nine. And watch my tears dry. But my fears won't let me try.

So I'm constantly praying for the ground to crack open and suck me in down to the magma, and erupt with the lava. And maybe its warmth and light would give me comfort forever. Maybe in that liquid fire my smile would never expire. I can wear it for as long as I feel it is in fashion. And force some suppression to this depression and save my eyes from always giving a sad expression. If my cries could die they would bring some laughter to life. Happiness would hold me close for the night. I'd pray and hope that when the night is over that good feeling won't disappear to the light. And when happiness airways finally takes flight, I'll be the captain in the cork pit. Like an Airborne pirate ready to sail the skies. I could spend the rest of my life on the sea of clouds. Depression would crumble from its impotence. And I would live in the sky, while I plot and plan how to bring depression to it's knees, behead it and wipe it from existence.

#poetry #my writing #writers on tumblr #writing #poems on tumblr #poem

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firecakes-art · 7 years ago

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Marker Man Misadventures 12

This is it. This is the world that will truly test my abilities as a map maker. It's as if the game is taking my map making as the actual point of the game and is upping the difficulty to maximum. I will do what I have done since the very beginning when faced with a challenge: adapt and invent new techniques in order to get to my goal.

The soundtrack sounds mischievous and is 6 measures even.

I do not show it on the map, but the parts where the black platforms turn gray is a gradual effect. What that means is that in the game the visible platforms slowly fade away to invisible ones, and then the completely invisible ones are indicated on the map by the gray color. So, basically the entire level is invisible. Not exactly ideal when you're trying to figure out where the platforms are. Not to mention there is ZERO background art. It just looks like I'm walking on air and there are also items that are on air. I mean, I get it that you cannot have background elements or else this invisible theme wouldn't work but I feel like this is just a cheap way for the level designers to not have to care about making the levels pretty.

Fortunately that dumb grid that has existed since the very beginning of the game is still there, so I can use the squares on the grid as a reference of distance traveled. Basically, I'm drawing circles and pushing them to see how they respond to the environment in front of me. It's probably a good idea to do that even if I wasn't mapping the levels out because it will help find potential traps for me. Let's face it: the developers are cheap enough to do that. They did it in the last level of the previous world. Of course I'm going to check for traps.

The part with the bouncy walls is annoying because you have to build around it to climb up. Either use a super jump power up or figure out the reach of the bouncy blocks to make the appropriate bridge.

These levels take no time at all to load. GEE I WONDER WHY. Also, do not try to force shut the game when you lose your last life. Just like with that water world, you will lose all of your progress. The only difference is your save file is just straight up gone instead of glitchy. Perfect. Watch out for long falls, and always check where the edge of a platform is before building or making a jump.

It's like a combination of the previous two levels, only simpler.

You sort of don't know which pits are places you can go to or places that will kill you. It's a safe assumption that if a shape you draw in it falls outside your view then it will probably kill you. Another really dumb thing is that sometimes you can draw shapes inside walls. If you're just making random guesses it's not entirely clear whether the successful shape is placed in an area you can walk to or if it's inside a wall.

You doubt my ability to try and make every level's title some kind of pun or reference? Just watch me.

These levels got homogenized really quickly. I had to replay this level and I had no memory of its existence.

Markers are cool. I like markers. Please give me more markers.

So, the first spiky wall area has a little bump before you fully pass the obstacle. If you're me, this means you'll get stuck under the wall, and before you can register that you need to jump, the spike wall crushes you. Note that when you game over, you only gain one life back. So every time this game decides to pull a stupidly cheap trick on me I have to redo the whole world over.

Wow. We have a new contender for the most basic level in the game. Congratulations.

One strange thing is the area under the exit. You can draw shapes under your platform and watch them disappear after falling a bit. No need to worry about crashing your game, because the developers placed triggers under the map that will delete shapes drawn out of bounds. They did at least one thing right there.

It's a level with invisible blocks and things and stuff.

Snoop around enough and you may find the coin. Or a spike pit. Same thing, eh?

I should be more upset at how hard they're trying to hide the coin and exit, but I think I'm too desensitized at this point to care.

Oh... I figured it would take until level 150 or something before the game was over, but maybe it's ending early! If you manage to die here, just remember the trick with the water world when the game over glitch happened: let the game over screen appear, continue, reset, and load to be at the level where you died. Isn't it fun when you apply what you learn?

Oh yeah, the point of the level. The giant ball is back for another rematch, and you have to scale down the level pretty fast in order to beat it (unless you're using power-ups). It took me a few tries before I was able to beat it. Be careful with some of the drops, as they are enough to damage you. After making it to the bottom, stand on the blue platform and let the ball push the other one down, flinging you upward.

Do I... really need a world map for this one? Yes? Ugh fine.

No no no no no. Nope. I'm not waiting any longer. This game is going to be finished in this post whether I like it or not. It's time to end this.

The cutscene showed the dog and marker man jump into some kind of teleporter. The result is that we are now on some space rock or something. It looks like they stuck with the themes of space too, such as making the level vast, yet empty. Hmm, not really a theme specific to this world, but oh well.

Long Boy

WHAT DID THEY DO TO SHOE BOY? It now has an oval head. I guess it's supposed to be an alien. It's really funny how they attack because they rotate their elongated head when they kick, and it just looks funny.

Ugh, these types of levels are the worst. Huge open spaces with lots of emptiness and lack of features between the platforms. It makes the game boring and frustrating to map and play, so why do it? Especially the road to that two-coin exit. Why make the player walk so far to get there? The developers could've easily added a path down from the coin to the hallway.

Alien

A projectile-based enemy, just like all the other projectile-based enemies. This one has a scarily fast firing rate, making it a very dangerous long-ranged enemy. Its barrage of bullets can also make quick work of drawn shapes. Be careful. When trying to block its bullets, don't just put a single line over it, as the place the bullet spawns can bypass the line. Place like, 2 lines. I don't know. What's interesting is the developers actually managed to make the bullet spawn from the gun's barrel instead of the top left of the sprite. Good job. You're learning! It's a little late for that, but whatever. This does mean you may need to place lines completely covering the alien before the projectiles are stopped.

Same glitch as last world. Do not force stop the game on gaming over. Let it happen, continue, exit, then get back to the level you died on.

The spike walls move at different frequencies. I recommend activating super speed and just focusing on the bottom one moving out of the way. Seriously, you better have some markers coming into this world or you're in big trouble. Actually, there's an easier way to get past this part. When the bottom spike wall is hiding under the floor, lodge a line between the floor and the wall and it will get stuck there, allowing you to pass without doing anything ridiculous.

Pleeeeeease give me more markers. I actually have to conserve resources in this world and it's annoying. There's simply too much terrain that needs to be covered that will inevitably use up all my markers. This is different from the lava world because in the lava world there were at least interesting elements in the levels that made you think on how to approach the problem. In this world it's just a battle of attrition.

Speed Cheese

It's cheese on.. wheels? This is probably a reference to moon cheese. It quickly moves back and forth, simply knocking anything that touches it out of the way. It deals no damage.

I think I know why there are so many dead ends here. The game just really doesn't want the player to have any markers in this world. How rude. This is why people like me have to come in and bright light to the correct pathway to victory.

Oh yaaay. Another level where you just have to look everywhere to find the coin and exit. The part of the map where it says SLIDING has no friction. Marker man will not stop moving on that platform until a wall is hit. The exit is kind of dumb to get to. In order to even see it you have to either stand on the platform with the alien (which noone is going to do) or build up and then look up. I recommend just making a giant rectangle on the corner of the map and then building off of that to the exit.

This is the realm of the shoe boys. Their final congregation is at this location. They are planning big things. They already have presence in just about every world. Their plans to finally take over the world of marker man have started to unfold in this meeting area, and you are in the middle of it all.

This is pretty straightforward, isn't it?

Beware of the many dead ends in this level. You get one marker in here. Well, there is a second one, but it's in a trap so I'm not counting that one.

What. Why is the map so linear? Why is there a pointless dead end to the right with a moving platform? Why is the map small? Why is there large stretches of nothingness? I don't understaaaaaaaaand. Maybe the devs want this game to end as bad as I do. Fair enough.

We all want this to be over! Just walk down this straight pathway, hug the left, and you'll get your coin, and you'll get your exit right above the coin. It's that simple. We even went ahead and put the useless parts of the map all on the right side so you don't even need to travel there. I'm doing you a favor, but don't tell my boss I'm doing this. These are supposed to be the hardest levels in the game. Go forth!

Uhm. What. WHAT.

This is the final level. There is no indication that this is the final level. There is no dog seen anywhere, and the level number didn't jump to the range where the dog levels appeared. I simply walked into the exit, my level got reset to one, a cutscene played, and the game is over. I think it's really fitting that the background track that plays throughout the cutscene and the credit rolls is the game over music, because did I really win by beating the game? Everyone's a loser for trying.

But hey. I get a star next to my save file now. I guess any recognition of me going through this torture is better than nothing. I was curious to see if this star meant some sort of change in the game, like a new game plus, but it doesn't seem like it. My markers and lives left carried over from the previous game to this one, but that's about it.

And.... that's it. The game is done. I mapped every level. Here is the final world map.

Thanks for reading. However, there is still one final post to make...

#art #drawing #personal #mmm #marker man #marker man misadventures

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quillerqueen · 7 years ago

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A Chthonic Odyssey 1/2

Day 2 of @oqfixitweek. I’m using my wild card today and making my “quest to bring Robin back” story due tomorrow a two-parter.

Inspired by events and elements of my beloved Xenaverse. And Homer, obviously.

Bait and Switch

Regina comes alone.

She tells no one of her plan as she watches Robin’s coffin be lowered into the ground (and bloody hell, if that—his near and dear ones mourning his loss, his son crushed and his soul mate heartbroken—isn’t the most fucking dreadful thing he’s ever witnessed). She says nothing of it as she sits at their table, in their booth, stroking his empty spot on their bench, deaf for the most part to the condolences laid gently, if hastily, at her feet. Once the wake is over and everyone scatters from Granny’s to their homes, Regina does the same—and Snow White’s watchful eye is fooled by the ploy just like everyone else.

No one knows of Regina’s plan—except for Robin.

For Robin, stuck in boundless fields of pale asphodel, is listening.

He can almost hear the soft click-clack of her heels she berates herself for as she sneaks out like a shadow under the cloak of night; can imagine the gentle rustle of a satchel of provisions clutched under her coat; and distinctly makes out the last, barely whispering vestiges of hope hunkered in the deepest corner of her heart.

It’s that wonderfully resilient heart of hers that speaks to him even now, though in slightly different ways under the circumstances. He knows it well enough to understand why, loath to risk any more lives, she sets out to brave the dark Stygian depths on her own. She carries so much fear, so much doubt, and guilt, and pain; yet the weight she ultimately bends under is that of love. Every other thought, every other emotion is imbued with it, fuelled by it, drowned out by its might even as she follows him where she’s no way of knowing he’s presently to be found.

Affection swells within as he waits for her, itching to reach out and alleviate some of her pain as she ventures to do the impossible.

Then again, had they not beaten impossible odds time and again before? Was he not supposed to have ceased to exist? Could there be a way out for him after all? Is there a way--or must they be ripped apart again, with the sole consolation at least this time they get the chance to say a proper goodbye?

Robin knows exactly when Regina’s descent below ground is complete, for the moment she embarks to cross the mist-hung waters in Charon’s ferry, he no longer hears her thoughts.

Isolated in this squalid place with a myriad listless, wandering souls, he’s left with no way of knowing what goes on beyond its confines.

And so the wait begins.

Read on ff.net

Regina’s been preparing for the worst--for Robin’s absence in the land of the dead and no proof of his existence elsewhere--but she’s nowhere near ready for this.

Barely has she reached the other shore of the River Styx when the first stirrings of trouble present themselves.

“What the--?”

“--hell?” the gnarled-limbed ferryman finishes for her. “I know, right? Even with the old order I had my work cut out for me, but this? This--chaos? This pandemonium?”

Manoeuvring around a cluster of howling souls crowding the usual landing spot, the skeletal man rows further upstream. The sight of him only seems to act as bait, luring dozens to give chase.

Regina grips the sides of the dangerously rocking boat.

“What’s going on?” Her first thought is they’re here for her, bearing old grudges and wounds inflicted by the Evil Queen. “What do they want?”

“To cross, of course! But I sure ain’t ferrying anyone back to the surface--look what happened the last time we let you mortals walk outta here. Hades--gone! Stripped of his powers! His realm in disarray!”

Charon continues to steer them off course, spilling profanities at the souls clamouring after them amid the tireless tirade he rains down upon Regina.

“Even the afterlife isn't what it used to be,” he carps. “Sure, that flea-ridden beast Cerberus is having a field day, chasing around the damned and the redeemed, but does anyone give a damn about my workload? I'm not cut out for this border patrol duty--not like this anyway.”

Regina, fighting back an eyeroll in hopes of gleaning some useful information from this outburst, looks up into his flaming eye sockets.

“The damned and the redeemed?” she repeats. That’s new--and most definitely not good.

“Why, after Hades’ fall, all hell broke loose! Without him, there's nothing keeping the damned from walking in the light, or the good from being cast into eternal night. I swear if I could hold my liquor,” he pats his belly, rattling the bare bones underneath his filthy cloak, “I'd already have started drinking on the job.”

“Yeah, well,” she scoffs, “perhaps there’s an alternative solution to the problem?”

She’s here for Robin. She never once dreamed to find herself in a world upside down in a way more atrocious than the mess that had been Underbrooke. But just as she couldn’t leave the first time to chase her own selfish goals, the sense of obligation wins out again. They are, after all, somewhat responsible for the current state of affairs, having upset the balance on their quest to bring back Hook ending in Hades annihilation--never once considering the consequences for the order of the world. So she can’t help the question, even though it derails from her original mission.

“Sure, Your Majesty,” Charon cackles, coughing up little balls of dust as he finally heads to a patch of rocky shore surrounded by jagged cliffs, and shoos her to disembark. “Just a trifle, really. Tiny little thing--almost unfit for a hero of your calibre.”

Regina sees it coming--should have seen it coming all along, really.

“You must find someone to take Hades’ throne.”

She fucking hates this godforsaken--pun absolutely intended, thank you very much--place. The first time had been bad enough, but at least Underbrooke had been familiar, its streets and buildings interwoven in a pattern they’d recognised. But this, now? They should give out fucking maps on entry.

Except those wouldn’t really be needed ordinarily; it’s precisely the utter lack of order that makes the task of finding one’s way around so damn frustrating.

Regina roams the bright fields of the blessed, on the lookout for former leaders with the potential to take on the delicate task of restoring said order. She scours grassy hillocks and babbling brooks of a countryside so gorgeous and idyllic it puts the most sickeningly sweet of pastoral images to shame. She braves the desolate wastelands, dark rocks dotted with seething, fire-spitting volcanoes and pits of molten lava, seeking those wielding magic and willing to take the reins. Everywhere she goes, she crosses paths with a motley of souls of the most varied of merits and depravities.

Regina’s head aches, her fists clench from sheer frustration when neither the deepest circle of hell nor the brightest tier of light brings answers. Not a single candidate seems a decent match--and none, no matter how noble or distinguished, seem all too keen to ascend the hellish throne. From the depths of depravity, where the only volunteers rear their heads to slobber over the idea of such power, she refuses to choose.

Worse yet, her eyes are sore and scratchy from scouring the horizon for the familiar figure of her soul mate--all in vain.

Not another failure. Not another heartbreak.

Even if she did find him--it seems fucking impossible to find anyone at all, even knowing for a fact they’re actually here, in such disarray--they’d still need to find a way to get past Charon, who’d categorically stated Regina herself, much less anyone else, won’t be leaving without the express authorisation of the new ruler.

“I suppose you could try one of the Titans,” says a man fumbling to hide an ornate sceptre (the reason she, in her final desperation, chose to address him in the first place) as his two companions throw her evasive glances. “Some of the better ilk might be grateful enough for the rescue not to wage war on the world like they did in the days of yore. But I wouldn’t rely on it. In fact, I strongly advise against it.”

“Why would I even need to free them?” Regina frowns, irritation catching flame quickly--why do people always insist on wasting her time by dwelling on things that cannot be done? “Aren’t all residents able to go wherever they please nowadays?”

“Not all, no. The Titans’ chains are forged with the power of the Olympians--they’re held by more than the mere might of Hades. Ironically, so is Hades himself.”

“Hades is dead,” she says flatly. “Obliterated.”

And if the damn crystal can do that to a god, then Robin--

“Hades is immortal.” The man puts up a hand to stop her from speaking, and Regina, forgetting momentarily about the limitations this awful realm places on her magic, is about to incinerate him on the spot for the sheer daring and blatant condescension of the gesture, when he adds quickly: “You can’t kill gods, not even with the Olympian Crystal--merely trap them. Hades was cast down to the depths of the same prison he’d been lord of.”

Oh.

So Hades had lied to them after all.

Could this mean--?

“What would the crystal do to a mortal?” Regina asks, tripping over the words as her heart picks up speed. She tries, truly she does, not to get her hopes up--but she’s already here, isn’t she, so who is she even fooling?

“There’s no such precedent,” the second man cuts in, fidgeting with the diadem in his curly hair.

“True,” nods the first. “In theory, though, such a soul would be exempt from our--exempt from judgement,” he corrects hastily, yet too slow to cover the collective intake of breath of his distraught companions. “Trapped by the crystal’s power, they could enter neither the highest nor the lowest tier of afterlife. They’d be stuck in the middle for all eternity.”

“A harsh punishment for the righteous,” adds the third man, twirling his bright flowery crown. “Possibly a relief for the wicked.”

“Debatable,” argues the second, prompting a lively discussion on the subject.

But Regina is in no mood for philosophical debate.

Robin is here. He has to be. He may be dead, but his soul’s intact after all, and she will get to him, she will--if it is the last thing she does.

“Where exactly would I find such a soul?” she cuts across them unceremoniously.

“Why, in the Asphodel Meadows, of course.”

It’s bloody torture.

Ever since Robin’s demise, the thoughts of his loved ones have kept him company--a blessing and a curse alike. Of all those he’d left behind, it’s Roland’s tender heart that calls out to him most often, shattering his own to pieces with his incomparable grief. Robin hasn’t lost his son entirely, remains connected to him through Roland’s memories, but the inevitable heartache means he’s constantly torn between joy and sorrow, oftentimes wondering if, given the option, he’d choose to sever the connection to (selfishly) spare himself the pain.

He wouldn’t.

He knows this now, because while it pains him greatly to be witness--and source--of their suffering, the silence is so much worse.

How long has it been since the last echo of Regina’s voice? Days? Weeks? A decade? Time is an elusive concept down here.

Elusive. Like that satisfying smile of hers he still thinks about every time he closes his eyes. Not that he’s any thought of sleep--there’s no need for him to anymore, anyway. But he thinks about her all the same, oh does he ever--pictures her soft, happy, and radiant; bold, sassy, and temperamental; visualises every feature and every curve, holding on to every little detail catalogued by awestruck eyes and questing fingers while he anxiously awaits her arrival.

To what end, he doesn’t know.

Just seeing her, just holding her one more time, scattering the dark clouds his death has brought upon her brow, would be enough. (It won’t be, but he can pretend for a while it might.) He’s been aching to chase away that guilt he knows she’s feeling, the blame she puts on herself, the firm belief she’s doomed to both lose love herself and bring doom upon those she loves. And he longs also to scatter demons of his own, to soothe his own pain in her embrace, to quell his regret that their story had to take yet another dreadful turn.

Days. Weeks. A decade.

Until his ceaseless, mechanical wanderings across the vast grey fields have him turn and face the never-changing horizon--and spot a figure moving towards him, for the first time since his arrival here, with purpose. Not wandering. Seeking.

She’s too far away to make out, but his heart knows.

“Regina!”

They break into a run in the same heartbeat, arms whipping and feet trampling the long stalks of vegetation with no care in the world other than to finally get close enough to recognise one another’s features (her smile, gods, the sheer brightness of it must make her jaw hurt just like his own is doing); close enough to hear them call their name (their voices even hitch in perfect unison); and finally, finally close enough to launch themselves into waiting arms.

She’s crying, gripping and clutching at him so tight it almost hurts--and Robin will gladly bear it for the rest of his life if it means no more forced goodbyes. He pulls her impossibly close, cradling her head against his shoulder with fierce tenderness before she raises her tear-stained face in a blur of motion and begins to dot kisses all over his mouth, cheeks, nose--wherever she can reach. She’s frantic. Frantic and disbelieving--and he can barely believe it himself.

“Regina,” he says thickly, struggling to soothe her erratic fumbling with soft touches of his own. “Darling, it’s okay, I’m here--you’re here.”

She sobs at that, repeats his name over and over again, kissing and stroking feverishly.

“I’m s-so sorry,” she says brokenly, and her voice splinters into a thousand fragmented pieces as she mutters apology after apology into his neck.

“Oh, my love,” Robin whispers, rocking them gently, pressing heated kisses into her hair. She’s covered in soot, smells of sulphur and smoke, and she’s still about the most beautiful sight he’s ever beheld. “None of that, now.”

“Are you okay?” she sniffs, palming his face, searching for physical traces of his malady. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no.” Dying hurt, missing them hurt, but all of that hardly matters anymore. He’s no less eager to check her for injuries, brushing hair from across her forehead and dropping a kiss over a bruise on her brow (it even tastes of ash). “Are you okay? I was so worried--it felt like bloody ages for you to reach me, I thought something might have happened to you.”

That ashy brow of hers furrows at that, and before he could attempt to kiss away the creases, she’s pulling back--though only just enough to hold his eyes without having to squint.

“You knew I was coming? How?”

“From you.”

And he tells her all about his peculiar experiences in this strange land, tells her above all of how the dead can hear your thoughts, and what bittersweet consolation that’s been to him, and thank you for remembering--for loving me so fiercely. Beyond that, he finds he cannot speak, all choked up and wary of her frame tensing infinitesimally in his embrace.

“You shouldn’t have done this,” she says at long last.

It hardly surprises him--they’d had these conversations before, when consequences of their mutual willingness to throw themselves into harm’s way for the other had merely approached fatal.

“You’d have done the same,” he tells her, soft but firm. “Don’t even try to deny it.”

She doesn’t; instead she extricates herself from his arms, pushing at him until she’s holding both his hands in hers, still toe to toe but touching nowhere but the fingers she’s toying with, eyes averted.

“But I didn’t,” she says bitterly, her words dripping pure self-loathing. “I could have magicked us out of there, or at least tried to. Instead I froze--and then it was too late.”

“And yet you never froze when it was Henry, or Snow, or Roland, or me.” And that, they both know, speaks volumes about her priorities, about how she loves others but not yet herself, about the long way to self-acceptance still ahead. This isn’t the time to delve into that though--there’ll be plenty of time later if he’s lucky enough to witness that journey. “I suppose we’ve a penchant for saving one another.”

She’s relentless though--inconsolable.

“Robin, you died. This can’t happen again.”

“I take it that means we’re leaving here together, yeah?” In hopes of coaxing a smile out of her, of lightening the conversation, he adds: “Because I never want to see a pale flower ever again.”

But all his attempt earns him is a frustrated sigh.

“Robin, I mean it. I won’t have you putting your life on the line for me.”

“I’ll promise to stop if you do the same.”

“That’s not--”

“Fair?” he suggests, raising an eyebrow at her.

“It’s not the same.”

“How is it not the same? And don’t tell me you’re not worth it, Regina, because that’s simply not true.”

Except she firmly believes just that--and he categorically rejects the very notion. Even as she grasps for some other justification (they’d exhausted the topic of their children, their friends, the good they can and do bring to the world many times over) he can tell she knows it’s a losing battle as ever before.

The silence stretches on, and Regina’s squared shoulders slump. Slowly, hesitantly, her arms wind around his torso once more, and he exhales in relief and anticipation as her lips hover inches from his.

She pours her everything into the kiss, tender at first then building in toe-curling increments, and all thought flies out of his head except for the single fleeting one that tells him perhaps this is how she brings him back to life.

Gasping for breath, they stand unmoving. They simply are--for a moment, or two, or a thousand.

“Wanna go home?” she breathes.

“With you? There’s nothing I’d love more.”

The first feat--leaving the Asphodel Meadows confining undistinguished souls--turns out a startlingly easy one. Much like they’ve both come to hope after Regina’d filled him in on the current state of the Underworld, there’s not an obstacle barring their path--nothing seems to be keeping the souls from leaving this corner of the land other than the sad, immovable listlessness of those trapped here by their own limits even with the realm’s magical borders down.

Robin counts his blessings for resisting that pull of lethargy, and squeezing Regina’s hand, tugs her gently into his side, dropping a kiss on her forehead.

“Which way to the Judges?” he asks, and follows her lead as they set off at a brisk pace.

Even with directions, the landscape is near impossible to navigate. They’re thrown off course by treacherous trails leading to nothing but dead ends; betrayed by patches of quicksand masquerading as solid ground; blinded by gusts of wind throwing specks of ash in their faces, stinging in the eyes and singing their skin.

When they finally find their previous location, the threesome they were counting on for counsel is nowhere in sight.

Well, fuck.

There goes their hottest trail to a rescue.

Robin runs a hand through his hair, tightening his arm around Regina’s shoulders. Her solid form is soothing as she leans in--until it occurs to him that she’s resting somewhat heavily against his side.

“We should stop,” Robin suggests. “Take a break.”

“No,” she protests croakily, refusing to meet his eyes. “We need to keep going. They could be close, they might know someone willing to--”

“Perhaps, but you’re dead on your feet. How long since you last allowed yourself some rest?”

Not since she set foot in here, if he were to guess.

It takes a while to convince her, despite the way she sways on her feet from exhaustion, and in the end he simply stands his ground and declares he’s not moving from the spot unless she agrees to take at least a short nap.

There’s an elm not far away, she tells him groggily, and everyone seems to give it a wide berth for some, presumably perfectly unpleasant, reason. So that’s where they head, for lack of a better idea, and settle down at its foot, Robin’s back to the trunk and Regina gathered in his arms. She’s tense, a bowstring drawn tight enough to snap, her fingers digging into his bicep rather desperately.

“Sleep, love,” he whispers, ghosting a kiss over the shell of her ear. “I’ll be here when you wake.”

Her head barely finds the cushion of his shoulder before her eyes close, and her deepening breaths resonate against his chest.

She dreams of home.

Knows she’s dreaming, because of how real, and peaceful, and happy it feels. Her kitchen is bathed in warm orange hues, friendly and welcoming, so very unlike the hellish lighting of the Underworld--and there’s Robin now, tossing a laughing Roland up in the air as she and Henry warm up a bottle for the baby girl (gurgling happily in her bassinet) whose name most definitely isn’t Robyn.

A possibility, just out of reach.

Always out of reach, so close yet never quite theirs to keep.

How will she get him out of here? Without a new ruler, there's no one to petition for Robin’s life. More than that--thousands of souls suffer oppression under the wicked. Sure, they could try to break Robin out, and possibly succeed…

But could either of them live with the knowledge that countless innocents are paying the price of their happiness?

A heartbeat--and she’s transported to her vault, dark, cold, and empty. Empty except for a sceptre and a stack of keys placed atop her parents’ tomb, circled by a diadem entwined in wildflowers. The odd arrangement rustles with a distant echo that sends chills down her spine.

You set your sights too far, dear child, While the answer you seek Lies inside.

Robin doesn’t sleep--neither needs nor wants to. He takes watch instead, glaring at every passerby, the timid and the rowdy, ready to ward them off should they choose to exploit their vulnerable position. Nobody approaches them.

So he redirects his full attention to the woman sleeping fitfully in his arms. Her eyelashes flutter now and again, and her features aren’t quite relaxed, but a smile is playing on her lips as he brushes stray strands of hair from her face.

Oh to wake up to this sight for many years to come.

He hates this place so bloody much for all it’s done to them, and for all the obstacles it’s yet to put in their way. Yet he supposes some modicum of gratitude is due as well, for his fate has actually been much kinder than the version Hades had threatened with. And for all its current turmoil, Regina and he have both managed to stay out of harm’s way so far.

He just wants to go home with his soul mate, back to their children, back to all the trials and tribulations of their messy (an understatement if there ever has been one) but oh so precious second (third? fifth? dozenth?) chance.

Which isn’t going to happen until order is restored beneath the surface. Not at the expense of all the righteous ousted from their rightful place in the afterlife. Someone must be willing to take the helm.

And hopefully that someone will grant them a wish in exchange for the favour.

And if they don’t, well...

His thumb, stroking softly across the apple of Regina’s cheeks, wanders to her forehead, and Robin sighs at the wrinkles of worry etched into her brow. Her jaw tightens, and she whimpers softly. He rocks them almost imperceptibly, enclosing her in his warmth. She shivers nonetheless.

“Regina,” he whispers, loath to wake her but unwilling to let her suffer even in slumber, knowing how vicious her nightmares tend to get. “Shhh, you’re all right…”

She blinks her eyes open, staring up at him with a softening expression as she reaches a trembling hand to stroke his face. It’s but a moment though before she’s sitting up, her features rearranging once more to look more determined than ever, and scrambles to her feet.

With a sigh he follows, lacing his fingers with hers as they resume their endless quest.

“Regina, can we please stop for a moment?”

They’ve spent a veritable eternity combing the blasted land, looking for someone worthy and willing to take the throne, but their search has turned up nothing. Minute by minute, the realm sinks into an ever deeper state of disarray. Anarchy feeds violence, and danger is omnipresent.

“I’m fine, Robin,” she dismisses impatiently, her fuse ever shorter the more her frustration grows. “I don’t need rest. What I need is to find someone--anyone--with at least a semblance of leadership skill and a speck of integrity, to just--”

“It’s not that,” he sighs, perfectly aware just how badly received his words are going to be. “We need to talk.”

“Now? About what?”

She’s wary--and rightfully so. Those words seem to be universally ominous in themselves, no matter the circumstance, and perhaps he should’ve chosen them more carefully, but in this particular case his word choice isn’t going to matter. No sugar-coating is going to mitigate the impact, so he cuts right to the chase.

“About the possibility that I might have to stay here after all.” She shudders at that, a dozen emotions ranging from disbelief through betrayal to defiance flitting through her eyes in a mere second. Robin understands, truly he does, but she must hear him out--she must. “No, Regina, please listen to me. If this new monarch agrees to let me go, you know I won’t hesitate a second. But if they don’t--”

“Then we leave anyway,” she snaps, immovable. “I don’t give a damn about their approval.”

“But I do.” He takes her hands in his with a pang of guilt at finding them cold and trembling. “Regina, if we reinstate order and our next step is to break it just to get me out of where I, by the laws of nature, now belong… They’ll be out to get us. And maybe I’ll survive this time, but someone else may not. And that’s not something I want hanging over me, or our children, or--”

Her eyes, welled up at first, now grow distant.

“Regina?” he questions, squeezing her hands.

Next thing he knows she’s slipping from his grasp, her voice measured and her face closed off.

“I think we should split up.”

This way they can cover more ground, she says.

Yet five thousand paces and not a single candidate later, Robin is half-resigned to having to remain after all. With a heavy heart he turns, as agreed, to take the same way back. Five thousand paces he spends rearing up for another fight to convince Regina, even though he detests the very idea himself, that this is how it must end. Not enough time in the world to prepare for the ultimate (and gods, there’s been too many already) gut-wrenching goodbye.

Regina, however, approaches with a crooked smile, eyes shining with something more than imminent tears. Hope blooms, and the stirrings of a tentative grin tickle his cheeks before she closes the distance between them and pulls him into a passionate kiss.

It’s all tangling tongues and nipping teeth as her fingers tug at his hair and his hands slide to her waist and lower still, grasping and taking, gasping and giving, like a silent promise of forever. When she tears her lips away from his after long moments of utter bliss, he chases them with another kiss, soft and gentle like a sweet confession, and another small peck to seal the deal.

She chuckles wetly at that--music to his ears--and presses her forehead to his with her arms around his neck and wrists locking at his nape as she draws heavy, ragged breaths.

“You’re going home,” she tells him. “I’ve found just the person.”

Old man Charon practically falls over himself welcoming them aboard, ushering Robin to the bow of his boat and attempting--in vain--clumsy small talk with Regina.

Even though their hands remain joined, Robin can't stop glancing at her for proof that this is indeed real. She looks...well, gorgeous as ever, though not quite as aglow with triumph as she might. Her eyes are a tad glassy, her smile a touch wobbly, but her relief is tangible.

“Are you all right?” he asks, his hand steady on the small of her back.

“Fine,” she returns much too quickly. He tilts his head, raising a doubtful eyebrow at her. “Just...tired,” she concedes, pressing a kiss to his cheek and lingering there until the boat hits the shore with a plunk.

She disentangles herself then and gives him a gentle nudge.

Robin steps off the ferry, thanking his lucky star--and Regina’s resilient heart--for making him the proverbial exception to Charon’s rule about never returning souls to the surface.

“You know,” he quips with a heart light as a feather as he turns to offer Regina a hand, “you still haven’t told me how you found the solution.”

“I hear no one else wanted the gig,” says Charon with a shrug.

And before the implication fully sinks in, a burst of magic pushes the ferry away from the shore--away from Robin.

What the hell does the blasted man think he’s doing?

Except it’s not Charon or his sad little pole but Regina’s hands emitting hissing sparks of energy.

She's not supposed to have magic down here--not like this anyway.

That’s when he understands.

It should have been me, her thoughts would ring, echoing the words to him countless times over his lifeless body--because it had been Regina after all Hades had targeted and not Robin, and it should always have been me.

“Regina--no!”

His desperate scream sets his lungs on fire as he plunges into the icy waters, a myriad pinpricks and then numbness in his limbs before he dives in to swim--but she’s faster, conjures up an invisible shield that won’t let him any further.

Shivering thigh-deep in the river, Robin watches her standing statuesque on the stern, hands wrapped around her torso, tears rolling down her face as they are his own.

“I’m sorry,” she says, as if somehow that made all of this even remotely okay. “There was no other way.”

And as the boat slices through the thick white curtain of impenetrable fog, Regina breaks the awful, crushing silence one last time.

“I love you,” she sobs.

Darkness swallows her.

#oq ff #oq fanfic #outlaw queen #oq fix it week #oqfixitweek #bee writes fanfic #a chthonic odyssey

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