#(they’re sentient and deadly)

[neverheroes]

You know how the TMNT “don’t even use their weapons” in the 87 run?

You’ve got to acknowledge the control and restraint it takes for Leo and Raph to raise weapons frequently shown to be capable of slicing through metal like butter and manage to avoid making the villains of the week bleed in scuffles.

There’s always an argument to be had over how deadly the 1987 marshmallows actually are. It doesn’t help their case that when it comes up in any cross-dimensional episodes that work their way into a run that they’re played off as a bunch of lazy goofballs.

In the very first episode of 1987 TMNT Raphael attacks a foot soldier (and this stab looks directed under the rib cage, for the heart, that is a death blow) resulting in a metallic sound, to which he responds “Clang? Did you say clang?” and Leo lands a would-be fatal abdominal blow to a foot soldier to confirm they’re fighting robots. That other guy could have had hidden armour, Leo doesn’t know he’s fighting a robot yet, but would have outright killed this guy to gain the information. Mike and Donnie only leap into actual offensive attack mode after they realise there’s no risk of taking a life, which tells me they know they’re absolutely capable of it and were hesitating to engage.

I’m just not convinced they couldn’t hold their own in the 2012 world the way they were depicted, or are as incompetent as they’re so often painted. They’re naive and silly, it’s soft and fun and then Donatello murders an exact sentient clone of himself with his personality and memories (REAL). I just think there’s more to them than their cream-puff legacy.

[honey-minded-hivemind]

for a naga au, have you considered having the reader be a human, that the x-men thing is a baby who was born deformed so they got abandoned? So they’re like “poor little dude, abandoned. But I can help!”

and reader just here panicking

Oh h*ck yeah! And worry not, they have excellent healers and their own venom, which helps speed along growth of naga traits- Oh, Reader will be in for it, won't they? That being said, let's see:

You weren't sure how this happened.

You didn't think snake people existed. Yet here you were, in a large, hidden nest, full of smaller snake people, and being watched over by larger ones.

The largest of them are giant compared to you, their tails long and winding, splayed over the cavern hidden behind a waterfall you'd lived near. They keep making concerned noises, poking at your legs and making small hisses each time they bent or jerked. The smaller ones would have likely been your age if human, but their tails, while smaller than their elders', were still long, as thick as a small tree in some places. The colors among their scales ranged from lilacs and pinks to oranges and blacks, grays and browns to blues and golds. Every color you could think of was there, with some of them being iridescent or pearlescent.

Why were you there?

You made the mistake of rescuing one of the smaller ones. It had been caught in a trap, a large net that kept its form suspended and away from the ground or trees, tight enough in some places to cut through their scales. You'd found them, writhing in pain and hissing desperately, and while you knew it was likely deadly and might have venom... It was part human, it was a living being, sentient. It deserved to be free, to not be hurt or displayed as a trophy. And with that, you loosened the ropes from where they were tied, soon releasing the creature with a loud THUMP. For a moment it looked at you, eyes wide and curious, before it slithered off, back to wherever it came from.

The people who had set the trap found you, your hands stained with a bit of the blood that had been on the ropes, and had immediately chased you. It didn't matter how far you ran or where you tried to hide, they hunted you until you had nowhere left to run and nowhere left to hide. Just as you thought you were to be killed, tossed off the waterfall into a rocky pool below-

HIIIIISSSSSSSS!

Giant versions of the creature you saved came hurtling from the water, fangs flashing down as they tore into your would-be killers. You managed to hide in a tangled bush during the bloody fray, hunching yourself down and into a ball and staying as quiet and still as possible. The noises of the fight drifted over the rush of water, until it finally died out with a loud CRACK. Shivering, you buried yourself deeper in the dirt and leaves, praying to be left alone...

Only for large, clawed hands to snag you up from your hiding spot, a surprised hiss coming from a large snake thing. It had dark eyes, and orange and black scales dotting its face and shoulders. It's tongue flicked out, almost as though scenting you, only to immediately feel at your legs.

You kicked out at it, reflex more than anything.

It froze, eyes wide, and with the loudest cry, it called the other snakes over. Whatever the problem was... it had something to do with your... legs?

They just kept, poking at them, making sad and scared noises, while looking between each other and back at the waterfall. Eventually they seemed to reach an agreement, and forcibly brought you with them, kicking and crying out the whole way.

Which led to now, being tucked into their nest, alongside the smaller snake creature you saved and its companions, who were watching you carefully, all while hissing between each other and one of the adult creatures watching over you.

You'd lasted for two whole days without sleep before you were squeezed between the coils of the adult who first found you. It was trying to make gentle hisses, tapping lightly at your neck, then your knees. You weren't sure what it was trying to say, until one hand was holding your head still, the other holding your wrists together.

"No, nonononono," you mutter, trying to pull back, yet the creature just tightened both its tail and claws, and just as quick-

It bit you.

A pained yelp escaped you as you felt the rush of venom enter your veins, and tears entered your eyes as you struggled. All the creature did was press a kiss to the wound, using the hand previously steadying you to stroke your hair, making soft hisses and rubbing its cheek against yours. It was getting harder and harder to stay focused, the heat from its scales and the steady rhythm of its caresses and nuzzles soothing a part of you, while the other part felt hazier and hazier. Soon, your head felt stuffed, as though full of cotton, causing you to slump into the grip around you. A pleased noise comes from the bundle around you, further putting you at ease. Everything feels so warm... So calm... All sleepy and soft like a small bunny in its burrow. A relaxed sigh leaves your lips, being met with a rumbling purr from around you. And just as soon as your eyes slip closed, youre met by a soft, gentle darkness, sweeping you into quiet slumber...

(Can y'all guess which X-Teen they saved?)

(To answer which X-Teen they saved... it was Scott. And he was the first to think, "oh, wow, they're a deformed naga, poor little guy.. Aaaaaw, they saved me! So cute💕 Wait, I need to tell the Professor and Logan and Storm and-")

[would-this-pokemon-be-a-friend]

Would A Trubbish Be A Good Pet?

Remember the other day when I called venomoths “living, breathing biohazards”? Well, I probably should have held onto that title for trubbishes, everyone’s favorite literal living, breathing biohazards. As much as it may sadden those who, like myself, see a little charm in these little stinky monsters, keeping a trubbish as a pet would be a truly disastrous idea.

I always thought that trubbishes were simply creatures that resembled trash bags. My dismay at discovering how wrong I was hit me about as hard as the stink of walking within twelve feet of one of these pokémon. Trubbishes are, in fact, literally trash bags which have been given life through the power of toxic industrial waste (White, Shield). Are they radioactive? Maybe. It probably depends on the individual. I can tell you this much, though: anything that has been in contact with toxic waste powerful enough to create life is not something to cuddle. Goodness gracious, please do not cuddle a trubbish!

Trubbishes feed on garbage, which on first examination may be a great thing (Black2/White2, Moon). However, much like in the case of Alolan grimers, trubbishes don’t eliminate trash without creating a dangerous byproduct: as a result of consuming garbage, trubbishes generate a toxic gas that they release into the air by belching (Black, Moon). This gas, if inhaled, is enough to send an adult into a week-long coma (Black) requiring a hospital visit (Moon). If inhaled by a young person or pokémon, however, this gas can be lethal (Ultra Moon). It is not a good idea to bring a trubbish into an enclosed, indoor space.

Sure, if you keep your trubbish outdoors and avoid breathing in this gas, you may be able to avoid being sent into a coma by spending time with your little buddy. There’s an unfortunate side effect to keeping a trubbish outdoors too: the stench of their gas attracts other poisonous and toxic pokémon. In the Alola region, trubbishes are known to attract the deadly Alolan variants of grimer and muk (Sun, Ultra Sun), while in Galar their gas attract the region’s variant of weezing (Shield). If a trubbish alone isn’t poisonous enough, they’re likely to attract other poisonous pokémon in your area right to your home. Outdoors or indoors, trubbishes are a lose-lose situation.

They may not be a particularly violent species, but trubbishes can be pretty formidable if they need to attack. They have a truly startling barrage of moves that can induce poisoning, both through physical contact with toxic materials with moves like Toxic Spikes or Gunk Shot and through the inhalation of poison gas with moves like Belch. Again, like I said, living, breathing biohazard.

Look, I know trubbishes are kinda cute, in their own trash-goblin way. They’re really friendly with humans too, as they have adapted the instinct to know that we are the best sources of their food around (Black2/White2). Unfortunately, they are simply too dangerous for anyone to keep as a pet, unless you’re willing to live your life in a hazmat suit while putting all of your neighbors at risk. All of this analysis is pretty mute though, for one reason: I think a lot of people won’t want a trubbish as a pet because they are stinky. Very stinky. You won’t be a very popular person if you share your home with a sentient trash bag.

[bunneclair]

I have something for you guys ….

here are my redesigns of the four known 7 deadly sins from the hellaverse! I’ll go in order explaining.

Here’s Lucifer — the adjustments I made were primarily to his hair and smaller features, such as giving him goat eyes, a snake themed cane, and pulling more classical and biblical inspiration forward. I love a lot of the artistic liberties in the Hellaverse designs but I do think that him being a curly-redhead is a pretty important thing that I hated to see left out of his design. I also gave him hooves and claws because I felt like he was a bit too human compared to the other sins, and wanted to make him stand out a bit more!

Next is Asmodeus! My main focus was to make it more evident which sin he represented — while I love Ozzie’s design, I felt like his color palette could be slightly more representing of the sin of lust, so I shifted toward warmer toned colors such as red and purple, while sacrificing the green and blue. I wanted to bring across more gender-fluidity since lust is something I think it is important to represent through various gendered lenses and so I went for the whole upper-half masculine lower-half feminine thing that you see here with a vest+button up and a long slit skirt! I also wanted to show more heart motifs that appear to be evident in ironically all of lust and its inhabitants besides Ozzie most of the time, and so I curved his tail and head feathers in a way that made heart shapes, and I placed Bull and Ram in a way where they’re more visible and stand out more so as their own little entities since it’s implied they’re separately sentient.

My girl Beelzebub! I LOVE her design, but I do feel like it leans heavier toward hellhound (and fox somewhat) and not enough toward her insect features, so I gave her Bee stripes as well as putting more emphasis and effort into her wings. I kept the multicolored lava lamp hair and belly but made an extra effort to highlight the gold in it to emphasize the honey/bee theme, while also placing this texture in other places such as her paws and inner-ears. I also gave her a honeycomb crown, and more loose-fitting flowy clothing to display her fun and laid-back nature, while referencing her bee themes again by adding a yellow gradient meant to mimic pollen that gets stuck on bees during their pollination process. I also gave her the funky bug eyes :) anddd sorry but I took away the mohawk, it just felt too cluttered for me to draw among other things.

Here’s Mammon! I may be biased but I love his design so much already that it was difficult to change a whole lot. However, I did find things that I wanted to change. For one, you may notice there are hat and no-hat versions of Mammon here, and that’s because I wanted to display the broken imp-like horns I gave him. In biblical mythology, Mammon often disguised himself as someone who was poor or in need so that he would be able to garner profit from pity, and I think that there is no better way to represent that than ripping off his favorite little brand-baby. I edited a lot of the black in his color palette to be gold instead, as well as adding gold to the fingertips of his gloves as a reference to Midas’ touch. I gave him more of a spider-like appearance since according to a lot of the fandom his species is fairly ambiguous, and I made his shirt (or whatever you call that lol) a bit shorter and less cluttered because I often struggled with drawing it. I also attempted to adjust his proportions a bit as I feel like the designs for the fat characters in Helluva and Hazbin often struggle a bit with proportions and it feels important to me to better represent them.

That’s all I got, but I also created my own takes on the sins that haven’t been revealed yet, which may end up being one of my next posts! I’m doing my best to stay active in the art community and this media has given me some motivation and fuel. Any input is welcome as long as we stay positive ❤️

Reminder as well that my commissions are very open!

[nyxicnymph]

Le Triton

Chapter 1

Wriothesley did not often feel eyes upon him when he stepped into the depths of the Fortress of Meropide. This, he knew, was thanks to the thick metal walls and the gallons upon gallons of water that surrounded the Fortress.

Gallons of seawater that were slowly becoming more and more deadly to him and his people.

But it seems, despite what one would pass off as common sense, there are things in Teyvat that just��� defy common sense.

Such as the gaze Wriothesley felt when he is en route to check on the Wingalet. Finally, this bothered him enough to carefully trace his path back and forth, to try and pinpoint where he is being watched from.

He noticed that it’s the only place with windows in the entire Fortress that lent him to the mysterious gaze. Windows that look out directly to the seafloor.

This was becoming migraine worthy.

So, Wriothesley retreated to his office, to mull it over. Sure, there are animals in the water. But he doesn’t often notice the gaze of an animal. A mecha wouldn’t give him that same, spine-tingling feeling, either. It has to be something sentient, he concluded. But what?

He thought of the Fatui. He did ferret them all out of the Fortress, but if they’re that determined to infiltrate, perhaps they’re scoping out the glass on that lower level.

Besides, he remembered that the first time he noticed this gaze, he had been taking a short swim around the Fortress. That had to be the connection.

He’d have gone and investigated the area, but he needed to check the levels of the Primordial Seawater before he decided to go for another dip in the sea. Otherwise, he might end up faring worse than he did before. A little flushing of the skin could very well turn into full on dissolving if he wasn’t careful.

But when Wriothesley checked the levels, he found that they’d lowered some since the last time he checked. His eyebrows lowered in confusion and he turned away, and fiddled with something else for a few minutes, and came back. The readings were still lower than he expected.

There’s no explanation.

He was really confused.

.

.

.

It took a few weeks, but he finally was able to get far enough ahead in his work to take a day off. He left the Fortress, something that Miss Sigewinne, frankly, viewed as a miracle, and he headed to the Palais Mermonia. Mostly because he didn’t exactly know where the Library would be, but he was certain that someone there would know.

But as it turned out, the Library was located in the Palais. Now, all he needed to do was… figure out exactly what he was looking for.

He didn’t exactly plan his research ahead of time. All he had to go off of was… well, mysterious underwater gazes. Maybe to see if there is anything that… lives in the sea? Beyond the usual animals. Something else.

Unfortunately, with so little to go off of, there wasn't a lot of research he could really do, other than looking into common myths about the sea and the creatures.

There still wasn't a whole lot to go off of, just general uneasiness, or a feeling of being watched when in the depths. But he found some books to read anyway, and settled into a chair for a while.

As Wriothesley had suspected, most of the book was filled with older, debunked myths, things that were explained by the crabs, the stingrays, or even just mischievous Hydro Phantasms acting up. But here and there, were little snippets of divers feeling a strange gaze upon them, unnerving them so much that they would surface and avoid the area they had encountered that gaze. Some reported a long, dark shadow slipping away, and others reported encountering strange structures, structures that weren’t natural, but that none of the known creatures in the lake could have possibly done.

So there was definitely something in the water. Wriothesley scrounged around for a map of the underwater side of the nation, and using his finger and a few small items he kept on his person, he marked a few spots mentioned in the stories he was reading. 

As far as Wriothesley can tell, most of the incidents were in a relatively large area, but there were some more concentric spots he noted. Whatever was in there, first of all, didn’t seem to have intent to harm, secondly, seemed to maybe patrol around the lake, and thirdly… might have a home near the Fortress.

Wriothesley looked at his makeshift tracking map. Then he reached for the book again, rereading the part of the strange structures. Not described like houses or any kind of shelter, just “structures”. If the author had left some illustrations, maybe Wriothesley would have a clearer idea of what these “structures” were.

Eventually, Wriothesley wrapped up his research, keeping some notes on the topic, though nothing very coherent to anyone outside of Wriothesley’s mind. Then, he took his leave, nodding at the melusine at the desk as he did so.

Back in his office in the Fortress, Wriothesley took a map of his own, and tried to replot the points from earlier. When he deemed it close enough, he set it aside, and went to go check the Primordial Seawater levels.

The Levels, as he was expecting this time, still lower than his predictions. So, he prepared himself for a dive.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of any easy entrances to get into the waters around the Fortress, all by design, obviously, but it still could be frustrating to have to go all the way up to the surface just to get into the water.

Still, as Wriothesley took a breath and dove into the sea, he couldn’t help but feel a thrill of anticipation. What would he find? Some mundane explanation? Or maybe… Something less easily explained?

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

honestly like I think going after people who use AI for hobbyist fun reasons is kind of missing the forest for the trees. while obviously there’s environmental issues and the inherent ethical issues (and I’m not even talking the content scraping by itself here, i also like don’t really give a shit if someone’s using my art for hobbyist fun as long as they’re not passing it off as their own it's obviously not great but if no one’s making money or anything off it and they’re not pretending they made it it’s relatively harmless- i'm talking about stuff like it’s ability to generate inappropriate content of actual irl kids) those again are like, mostly not coming from people using character.ai, which isn’t to say there’s no issues with the site (i heard it added voice shit and that’s a fucking nightmare this is not a defence of them) but going after chatbots isn’t really efficient when the issue is mass commercial scale usage of ai (which is the main environmental impact) which is extremely dangerous even outside of that bc ai is literally a pattern recognition machine and doesn’t know shit it cannot have initiative which means it does stuff like creative jobs really badly (bc it can generate a pretty image but that’s the least important part of stuff like advertising, which has tons of psychology behind it the ai cannot grasp) and the second it's giving any sort of advice or help it’s downright dangerous, from ai therapists encouraging eating disorders to ai plant guides encouraging eating extremely deadly mushrooms, bc it’s not sentient let alone sapient and can’t know shit. and also the child exploitation. like kids using character.ai are like the least of our problems and not actively being malicious give them actual support to find a better option and save your anger for people actually putting others in danger deliberately bc directing it at children is not going to actually help with any of the serious problems machine learning being used like it’s the next coming of Christ cause.

[blood-injections]

Expanding on this extreme violent zones headcanon of mine. Warning for torture mentions, body horror and crimes against humanity.

So everybody is violent and deadly and in the zones where it’s every killjoy for themself, allies are hard to come by and friends, people you actually trust, are even harder. So if you have a crew, it’s ride or die. You’d do anything for your team and having one is proof that despite all your violence and the monstrous things you’ve done, you’re still human, you’re still capable of love and receiving it. Having a crew is Hope incarnate.

And the fabulous four are one of the tightness knit crews there is. They’re deadly and unparalleled in the sands but then in the safety of the diner, when they’re all out of danger for the night, they’re so domestic, gentle with each other, even. They’re a family.

But the thing is, while the desert may be a sin-stained wasteland, most killjoys still have some morals intact, still feet regret and grief and fear of the horrible things they have to do to survive. But in Battery City, there are no morals, no limits. They do things that make even the most messed up things the Fab Four have done look like child’s play. Dracs are expendable mindless zombies because they’re the spoils of human experimentation. Some can’t walk, they stumble through the desert on cheap prosthetic limbs, but they’re sent out anyway. The citizens have things in their heads that keep them in line. If someone acts out something inside them cuts out and they’ll drop dead where they stand. Androids are forced to do the dirty work whether they’re sentient or not. Some can think and dream but when it comes down to it they’re not in control of their own body, their limbs servants to programming no matter how advanced the circuits in their heads may be. Some have been stuck doing the same thing for years when they just want to live, but they have no control over their body and they must scream.

And Fun Ghoul, despite all his skills, was one day overpowered, captured and tortured within an inch of his life. There was a storehouse that was bugged and when they caught him on the surveillance feed they sent Korse to take care of him. He wasn’t taken back to Bat City, they did it right in that abandoned building they caught him in and when they were done with him they dragged him out into the blistering sunlight and left him there to bleed out, a meal for some passing scavenger.

The others were able to find him in time but in order to save his life, Jet Star had to do the very thing they swore they’d never do to a friend- tear him apart. And then put him back together again. When Fun Ghoul eventually woke up, he didn’t recognize himself. He was left with a stitched up, full ear to ear Glasgow smile that’s sure to leave a nasty scar, one blinded eye, a cybernetic leg from the left knee down, stitches all over from excessive lacerations and other little cybernetic parts to keep things inside him together.. and he had someone else’s lung and right arm.

Over time he made the best of his condition, owned his resemblance to something like Frankenstein’s monster, embraced it, even. But for a while he was in a stranger’s skin.

[consumeroflemoans]

THE IPC AZUL POST

The World

Azul grew up on a planet that is very Subnautica-esque. The majority of the planet is very deep ocean with some spots closer to the surface being reefs, kelp forests, and other more diverse biomes. There are a couple islands that have mostly foliage and smaller amphibious animals populating it. There is quite a bit of volcanic activity in these areas, which typically causes these island and shallower areas.

Due to the very small amount of land, most sentient life has developed underwater. There are three main types of merfolk.

Amphibious and crustacean merfolk that live in the shallows around the few islands

Your typical fish merfolk that live in the deeper shallows in the reefs/kelp

Abyssal merfolk that live in the deep ocean

Becoming a Pathstrider

Azul is an abyssal mer. They’re often very reclusive and tend to be loners. He lived with his mother for a short time until getting could fend for himself and then she died, as octopus moms tend to do.

Azul wandered after that, occasionally facing and fleeing the creatures of the depths. He constantly learned and scavenged what he could and became quite good at making tools with his hands and learning what things underwater can help heal and hurt other beings.

Eventually he stumbled on an upwards slope, leading to one of the shallows. He continued to travel and soon encountered other merfolk, who often treated him like a freak and drove him away for being from the abyss. All they know about the depths is that there are deadly predators down there and very rarely do mers that venture out come back. Something coming from there cannot be a good thing.

It was only when Azul encountered a pair of twin eel merfolk, a pair that tend to trick, extort, and scavenge off other mers for food or information. They’d heard whispers of the strange mer that had been traveling and wanted to check him out. Azul initially was suspicious, but the twins weren’t fearful of the abyss like others. If anything they thought it would be fun to fight something down there.

The three became a group and continued about their business terrorizing the local merfolk. They began spreading rumors that Azul had special abyssal magic. This often resulted in others just handing over their belongings or food in fear of being cursed.

That was until one particularly wealthy mer sought them out. They pleaded for Azul’s magic to help save someone’s life close to them from a disease and offered a permanent and safe place to live in exchange. He reluctantly agreed and now had the dilemma of actually finding a cure.

Luckily he did remember a small plant in the depths that he had previously used to cure one of his illnesses. He found it in the hopes it could help and did successfully cure the other mer.

After that, he set up shop in the place he was given. He continued his deals, often extorting as much as he could gather out of any potential customer. They were both benefitting, so why did it matter?

Eventually, those powers he pretended to have became a reality. The Harmony recognized his mutually beneficial deals and decided to bless him, allowing him to create his signature contracts.

Becoming a Stoneheart

The IPC in its constant quest stumbled upon Azul’s world. It had been largely untouched by anyone on the outside, so they took it as free real estate. They descended into the ocean, taking the chance to speak with the recognized sentient species. They proposed deals with the local rulers as usual, but also quickly learned of Azul’s prestige.

The leading Stoneheart, who happened to be Jade, took interest in him. So also runs a shop based on mutual exchange and is always open to a business deal. She traveled to Azul and explained the situation with the IPC and her interest with him. She offered him a deal: she would allow him to operate one of her Bonajade branches on another planet. If he managed to double the profits, she would take him under her wing and give him the chance to become one of the Stonehearts if he continued to improve. Azul agreed with the only conditions being Floyd and Jade had to come and she would have to provide a way for them to survive on land.

Jade, of course, took no time to find a solution for that problem. A simple potion that would temporarily allow them to turn human. It would keep the trio in her debt even if she succeeded, considering she was the only one that could supply them.

Azul’s talents shone at his new position and he quickly turned the required profit for Jade. Due to his skills and her guidance, he rose through the ranks of the IPC. After all of that, he was suggested and approved to join the elite group of Stonehearts.

Azul doesn’t care much about what happened to his planet or any of the other planets he helps the IPC aquire. He only cares what happens to him and the twins. They’re constant shadows behind his money making talents, acting as his partners in crime.

————

As usual I would love other people’s opinions or ideas on Azul and his rise to capitalistic glory. A lot of this is very rough ideas, so it’s always open to changing!

I’ll probably post about him more so any info will be on the #IPC Azul tag

[dumbasswithapen]

You're reblogging some fantastic stuff about The Mechs (coming from a tma fan) is there anything else you can tell me about it? I'm deadly curious and very interested in seeing more of Jon Sims' work

hello!!!! I am so normal about the mechanisms (lying) but am not good at describing things so if you want, like, The Intro Post To The Mechs than @x-ca1iber has it and that’s much more fine tuned but I shall try my best! This may be… a bit of an infodump, and not very concise.

base content warnings for mechs, not this post but the mechs as a band and their stories: violence, so much violence, lots of death, war, general tragedy, British people (ew)

okay. So. The basics! The Mechanisms were a 9 person folk cabaret band who told stories in their albums and songs that were based on mythology and stories (more on that later)

Outside of these stories they played individual characters, a space, steampunk pirate crew of immortals roaming the universe aboard a sentient starship named the Aurora and finding tragedies to tell through their albums. They're, as I mentioned, immortal, through a mechanism (not to be confused with The Mechanisms, the name of their crew lol. They weren’t very creative with that) A mechanism is a replacement for a part (or in some cases several parts) of one’s body made of metal and shit, that causes regeneration if you die. And this shit isn’t light, it is totally possible to regen from being, for instance… shoved into a sun for a century. so basically, crew of immortals making stories they witness into albums and playing the roles of people in those stories.

For a fan of tma, the most recognizable part of this is 4 people in the crew (though only 3 are major characters in tma) Jonny Sims, of course, plays Jon in tma and Jonny D’ville (he/him) in the mechanisms. (He is… perhaps not the most creative with naming his character) Jonny D’ville is the first mate (NOT captain. Though he would say he was) of the Aurora, and his mechanism is his heart. He was the first person in the crew, and the first to become immortal. He’s also the lead singer, and plays harmonica. Frank Voss plays Basira in tma, and in the mechs plays Ashes O’Reilly (they/them) an arsonist crime boss, ship’s quartermaster, whose mechanism is their lungs! Jessica Law plays Nikola Orsinov in tma, and in the mechs she plays The Toy Soldier (it/its) The Toy Soldier is… a bit of an outlier, in that it wasn’t ever mechanized, wasn’t ever “made” immortal. It is simply a sentient clockwork toy, with a voice box stolen from a human it had been in love with. (Somehow jess is typecast as an unsettling dollike entity twice in a thing created in part by Jonny sims) Its role in the crew is… really nobody knows. Occasionally it’s called mascot. It’s just kinda there and whenever it’s kicked out it finds its way back. It’s very charming, and simply happy to be involved! last, and kinda least in the context of being a tma fan, is Tim Ledsam, who plays the exterminator Jordan Kennedy in tma and Gunpowder Tim, (he/him) master-at-arms, in the mechanisms. His mechanism is his eyes.

others, who I’m not going to go into detail about, are Nastya Rasputina (she/her) engineer, Ivy Alexandria (she/her, actor uses he/him) archivist, Drumbot Brian (he/him) pilot, Marius Von Raum (he/him, actor uses they/them) and Raphaella la cognizi (she/her)

two, the albums! This is gonna be pretty quick because it’s just an overview, but there are 4 main story albums that tell self contained stories, 2 that are a collection of songs that tell single stories, and 1 EP thing that tells its own little ballad. Then there’s a live recorded version of their final show ever, death to the mechanisms. They’re all very tragic, and *very* queer stories.

first, once upon a time (in space) a story based on fairy tales, tells the story of a war through the stars. second, Ulysses dies at dawn, a film noir style telling of a dystopian world based on Greek myths. third, high noon over Camelot, a cowboy western ballad about Arthurian legend on a space station. fourth, the bifrost incident, a rock ballad about Norse myth, lovecraft eldritch horror, and one person being really fucking horny for a train (Dw about it) the other albums are a mix of myth and story retellings (Frankenstein, the story of Prometheus, a rhythm based video game called crypt of the necrodancer) and character backstory songs for the Mechanisms.

random ass fun facts because I’m out of base info and I think the mechs is really funny for something supposed to be tragedy

-one of the crew, Nastya, is in a loving romantic and sexual relationship with the starship

-there are creatures called octokittens that are half octopus half kitten. I love them.

-Jonny is Texan. Yeah. (Well technically New Texan, because he was born on a planet called New Texas, but whatever)

-I’m not going into this because it’s more complex lore but the person who “created” most of the mechanisms was a vampire named Doctor Carmilla and was a (very disfunctuonal) mother figure to at least most of the crew. They kicked her out

-Doctor Baron Marius Von Raum, one of the other crewmates, is neither a doctor nor a baron. His real name is Byron. He psychoanalizes people for fun.

-they’re all horrible people, the Mechanisms. They kill and burn and destroy and manipulate unrepentantly and take pride in breaking every law they can find (though we have explicit canon confirmation that Jonny flat out refuses to commit any sexual crimes) It makes them fun, though

-there are *so* many photos of the bandmates in character and a good part of fandom activity is just passing around those photos within the fandom like they’re Pokémon cards

-last, and very much not least, it’s quite important to note that Jonny Sims didn’t “create” the mechanisms, not like he did tma. It’s a collaboration between a bunch of great storytellers and musicians that started out as a uni band

here is a photo of the mechanisms as a whole group, because why not

Anyway I’m going to see so many glaring issues with this as soon as I post it but I hope it makes at least some sense! Check out x-ca1iber’s post for it if something doesn’t make sense… yeah. That’s it.

[smolcinnamonchipmunk]

I thought way too much about the logistics of if the Trailblazer was to be incredibly small, so you’ll have to suffer through this brain dump if you want anything else out of this, because I’m way too busy right now to write or draw anything actually about it ;-; Of course, I’m going to be making this from how I think my Trailblazer, Nova, would kind of experience

Starting from the beginning (because I found Honkai Star Rail no commentary, and now I can actually review/imprint everything in my stupid little lizard brain), I’m just thinking that maybe the vessel is somehow unstable so that when Silver Wolf manifests them, they’re just a little guy but both Silver Wolf and Kafka (at least Kafka doesn’t seem like she’d be worried about it, Silver Wolf might feel insulted by the Vessel not manifesting properly) aren’t concerned because there was nothing in Elio’s script that suggested the Vessel not being a normal human-size would affect anything significant enough to be warned, so they just move forward with it and the Vessel is stable enough to harbor the Stellaron

Of course, it would be extremely jarring to not only wake up on a random space station with your only memories being your name and vaguely Kafka, but to find yourself TINY in someone’s palm with their mouth almost entirely on top of you, only to be snatched away by another gigantic person who's a lot more energetic and loud

I feel like the first section of the game would have to essentially be without Nova being able to participate in fights, which personally I don’t like because I love the fact that they use a fucking BASEBALL BAT. I’m very torn between waiting for them to meet Herta or somehow manage to find a way to be temporarily human-sized naturally

If I go with the ‘natural’ route, I’m thinking that because the Stellarons seem apparently comparable to galactic nukes and are semi-sentient(?), maybe somehow if they ambiently absorb a large amount of Anti-Matter (Say, for instance, the appearance of a Doomsday Beast), the vessel has enough fuel to be temporarily normal-sized, allowing for Nova to get in on some beat-down action themself while revealing the Stellaron stuff at the end of the Prologue like normal

It would also give Herta something to go off of because I feel like she’d want some way to have a better look of Nova outside of the Simulated Universe. So! I’m thinking that Herta essentially concocts some kind of Antimatter concoction (I imagine it’s deadly to normal people but perfectly safe since Nova has a Stellaron inside of them) similar to the potions that the Mermen in TW have to drink to maintain a human form, that way it allows both smacking people upside the head and also goofy G/t shenanigans (And Nova would want their privacy still with their own room, though it'll eventually have to be fitted with some pathways for their normal size after a couple times of waking up tiny and unable to do much)

So Nova would go about everything mostly normally but when unable to take the Herta concoction, would revert to their more natural shrunken form. Which, I think would be hilarious with Sampo in particular because imagine coming across a weird trio, ‘befriending’ them, and then when you swoop in to help them out from Bronya, one of them just spontaneously shrinks while you’re taking them underground. Easier to carry but HOLY SHIT SOMEONE IS RANDOMLY TINY

Of course, when this kind of stuff happens without being able to get ahold of one of Herta’s concoctions (I imagine people would start carrying around extras after a couple incidents), someone usually has to uptake the ‘burden’ of carrying Nova. In Jarilo-VI, I imagine it’s mostly Dan Heng and sometimes Sampo. I feel like with the Xianzhou Luofu that Welt would be responsible enough to ensure that Nova had a steady supply of Antimatter, though that’s where Dan Heng would explain his draconic instincts. And I’m mostly thinking that they’d be good in Penacony? To meet Aventurine, there needs to be the check-in hold up, but maybe the Antimatter gets confiscated? I’m not sure how much their natural size would factor in considering the whole arc is about being in dreams

Everyone agrees March 7th should not hold Nova, even March 7th after some logic from Dan Heng and Welt, unless in an emergency and there’s no one else more responsible to do so

Obviously, there’s room for shenanigans, but I just wanted to word vomit some general stuff

[minty-mumbles]

Hi Mint! Just read through your Here There Be Monsters series (I love Wind so much!!! Adorable baby with a ghost problem), and was wondering if you had anything to share about Sky! All I know about him thus far is that he's a demon, has assignments, and scares ghosts!

I've seen your comments on all the htbm fics, and I really appreciate them 💕💕

Sure, I can give you some info on Sky!

Full Name: Sky Crim of Skyloft

Species: Demon

Physical/Mental Age: Early Twenties

Actual Age: 2-3 thousand years old

Gender/Pronouns: Demi-Boy (He/Him) 

Sexuality: Queer 

Physical Appearance Notes: He looks pretty much like he does in LU canon. He’s a very sweet looking guy. Nothing physically menacing about him at all until you see him in action, and then you’re like… oh, this teddy bear is deadly

Family/Friends: 

Sun: sun is the heir to Skyloft, this AU’s version of the afterlife. (Hylians do not know that it exists, but Creatures do.) Sky and Sun are so sappy about each other. They aren't officially together, because as she’s the heir, courting her would be a big deal. Sky wouldn't have a problem getting Sun’s parents’ approval, but Sky wants to prove himself first before he presents his offer to court Sun.

Groose: Fellow Reaper and room mate. They work together sometimes, and are friends. Groose knows Sun though Sky. (Personally, that is. He already knew her as the Heir to the throne.)

Crimson/Aeopn: Aepon is the name of Sky’s weapon. Demons have deep bonds with the weapons they use. They’re said to become partially sentient after a while of being used by a demon. He affectionately calls it Crimson, because the hilt of the blade is red and as a play on his last name. The blade is silver, and one edge of the blade is golden. (Not actual gold and silver because those metals are too weak for weapons, it’s just colored that way)

Schooling: He had a basic education, but decided to enter the royal guard instead of pursuing higher education. If he did go to college, it would probably be for a fine arts degree in either sculpture or music

Job: Sky works for the royal family (Indirectly.) He joined the royal guard at quite a young age, but advanced through the ranks quickly, and was chosen for a special program. He works as a reaper. His job is to travel to the Realm of the Living and retrieve Hylian souls that haven't crossed through the doors of death and that are causing problems. (Basically, his job is to hunt down stray ghosts. That’s why they instinctively fear him. Most of the time, when he isn;t on the clock, he just ignores them.)

Residency: He lives in the barracks when he’s in Skyloft. When he’s on duty, he shares an apartment in Castle Town with Groose, a fellow reaper, which is paid for by his job. He usually stays there, although he does come visit Time’s house pretty often if he’s looking for a quieter place to rest after a mission.

Other:

He’s a big fan of music! Both listening to it and playing. He likes to compose his own songs sometimes, and has made an embarrassing amount of love ballads about Sun

He duets with Time sometimes, him on his harp, Time on whatever instrument he’s feeling that day

He hasn’t met Wind’s Granny yet, but he would get along well with her. She approves of him already from what Wind has told her about him. She likes that Wind has a demon around that can help if ghosts start to become a problem.

He spends about 70% of his time in the mortal realm. He doesn’t have a lot of friends in the barracks back in Skyloft, so he really only visits for Sun.

[monstersdownthepath]

Spiritual Spotlight: Orcus, the Prince of Undeath

Chaotic Evil Demon Lord of Death, Necromancy, and Wrath

Domains: Chaos, Death, Evil, Magic Subdomains: Demon, Divine, Murder, Undead

The Complete Book of the Damned, pg. 84~85 The art, however, is from Magic the Gathering, since Orcus’ illustration in the BotD is... laughable.

Obedience: Grind a half-pound of bones from the skeleton of a sentient creature, mix with water to create a gray paste, and then eat it at the end of a long recitation of prayers to Orcus. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on all saving throws against death and negative energy effects. 

Bet a few of you are surprised to see this lad make it to Pathfinder, eh? Orcus is one of the very few Demon Lords that survived the transition into Paizo’s creations roughly intact without any significant changes, though to Paizo’s credit they’ve stepped further and further away from using OGL content as time has gone on. Orcus suffers a bit from this, as his presence on Golarion is noted to be “remarkably low” due to the prevalence of more popular gods of undeath like Urgathoa, Kabriri, and Zura. Not helping his case is the fact that Orcus holds liches in the highest regard, zombies and skeletons and Constructs made of undead parts in second place, most other forms of undead in one big lump in the middle, ghosts below that lump, ghouls below ALL of those... and vampries in dead last, the “parasitic” undead seen as vermin, creatures to be mocked and shunned as though they were lepers, by Orcus and his flock.

But we’re not here to discuss the unique philosophies of the Prince of Undeath, are we? We’re here to examine the statistical benefits of worshiping a god who wishes to extinguish all free thought and lord over a nation of silent dead! And we start off with quite a benefit here for not much effort! Just a little smack of cannibalism, because it wouldn’t be a god of undeath without it. The average human skeleton weighs roughly 20 pounds (I bear the burden of this question in my search history so you don’t have to), which means one complete pile of bones will last you over a month if you need it to. Half a pound of bones is quite lean for an Evil god, letting you get away with carrying around sacks of bones without anything really identifying them as humanoid. Just a bag of vertebra, or long bones from the arms or legs, or a fractured ribcage and skull fragments, and even inquisitive town guards will have little to go on when they’re waved off as bones taken from animals for soup stock or crafting material. Hell, take up scrimshaw to really sell the illusion AND make your character cooler in one go!

The best part? They don’t even HAVE to be human bones! They can come from ANY sapient creature! Dragons, Magical Beasts, Aberrations, anything with an Int of 3 or more is your Hearty Breakfast! And there’s even LESS of a chance of you being outed as an evil monstrous freak because of that! And, to top it all off, the recitations to Orcus can be easily disguised as prayers to a more mainstream faith if someone crawls up to you and listens too closely.

The benefit is decent. Death AND negative energy effects crop up only occasionally, but having protection from them isn’t something you should ever turn down, given the fact death effects tend to... well, be deadly. However, this benefit loses almost all of its bite in an Evil vs Good campaign, as Good-aligned creatures aren’t likely to be throwing around Inflict Critical Wounds and Finger of Death... but if you’re regularly going up against other Evil creatures--and ESPECIALLY Evil Undead--this bonus will give you an incredible advantage against them.

Boons are acquired slowly: the first once you reach 12 hit dice, the second at 16, and the third at 20. However, the Evangelist, Exalted, and Sentinel Prestige Classes can be entered as early as level 7; doing so grants you the Boons at levels 10, 13, and 16 instead. Servants of demons may also take the Demoniac Prestige Class; you don’t get the Boons any faster than E/E/S, but you may select which set you want, and you get cool demon-related powers!

------- EVANGELIST -------

Boon 1: Power of Death. Gain Inflict Light Wounds 3/day, Death Knell 2/day, or Animate Dead 1/day.

We’ve been over the likes of Inflict Light Wounds and Death Knell before, with the latter having a function that’s too overly narrow for my liking. If you want to use a standard action to execute an enemy, just walk up and stab them! Though, like every time I’ve mentioned before, Death Knell does shine against creatures with Regeneration or abilities like Ferocity and Diehard that you otherwise have no means to easily kill.

Inflict Light Wounds is basically worthless as damage by the time you get it, useful only as a quick patch-up job for any ally of yours healed by negative energy... Like the veritable army of zombies you’re going to create thanks to Orcus being kind enough to give you Animate Dead as a spell-like ability. Without the restriction of the expensive material components cost, you can freely raise an endless number of zombies in your thrall and completely, utterly shatter action economy for the rest of the campaign, something you may want to consider NOT doing for the sake of your DMs sanity.

Animate Dead allows you to command 4 HD of zombies or skeletons per caster level you have, typically allowing you 36 HD of additional allies by the time you achieve this spell, more than enough to raise the bodies of all the hapless commoners you just slaughtered and unleash them upon the survivors. The standard action casting time is especially heinous when it requires nothing more than a thought to activate the spell, letting you immediately turn the site of an enemy’s slaughter on its head

If you want to be a bit more economical (and more game-breaking), you may be able to convince your DM to use the expanded rules and double the HD of a specific corpse or two to make them rise as Bloody Skeletons, unkillable Undead that rise from their mangled remains an hour after being destroyed. They make excellent recurring siege engines, rising from their destruction again and again to work at a single task until it’s complete. The same expanded Animate Dead rule allows you to create Burning Skeletons, which set all they touch alight, Plague Zombies, which carry a lethal infection that creates more free zombies for you, and Fast Zombies, which move with supernatural swiftness and can attack more often.

It boggles my mind thinking of all the uses for Animate Dead as a spell-like, especially for a character in service to Orcus, who wouldn’t have much of a moral stance against killing small villages they cross to add to a hideous undead army. The only limit is the HD leash, but even that just means the zombies and skeletons wander off to do their own thing, they aren’t destroyed!

Boon 2: Destined for Undeath. You are damaged by positive energy and healed by negative energy, as if you were Undead; the bonus on saving throws granted by your Obedience applies against positive energy effects instead of negative energy effects (you retain the bonus on saving throws against death effects). In addition, you gain immunity to exhaustion, fatigue, and nonlethal damage, and you gain a +4 bonus on saving throws against death effects, diseases, mind-affecting effects, paralysis, poisons, stunning, and effects that cause damage, drain, or penalties to your physical ability scores.

i

hm.

y’know, maybe working with a demon isn’t bad, actually.

The negative healing is a pretty hefty downside if you’re trying to pretend to be a good person, though. If you’re not AND you have access to an Evil Cleric or similar, you’re perfectly fine. Antipaladins can give you a big chunk of health via their Touch of Corruption, and you no longer have to worry about being caught in the blast of your friend’s Channel Energy. You can even heal yourself with the Inflict Light Wounds from the first Boon, if you need!

It is, honestly, just a small roadbump when compared to getting... well, what is basically a +4 flat bonus to your saving throws. The sheer number of status effects this ability protects you from covers almost every indirect avenue of attack an enemy could possibly level at you, and since it’s an UNTYPED bonus it will stack with everything else you grant yourself (which means you have a +8 to saves versus death effects!), making it VERY hard to get any ailment to truly stick if you use even minor additional enchantments. Constructs and Undead are typically balanced by the fact they die at 0 HP instead of going unconscious, but you have the benefits of undeath without the downside!

The most important note here is that it guards against any status ailment that would affect your physical ability scores, anything that affects mental ability scores can slip under this ability’s protection! ... provided it’s not mind-affecting, of course, since you ARE warded against those as well.

This is an incredibly strong defensive bonus kept in check by its lack of scaling, preventing you from relying on it alone. As you level up you should be scaling it up through other sources, because again, an untyped bonus will stack with everything! The biggest downside is that if you ever DO become an Undead, as your god encourages, this becomes a blank Boon. But by then you’re an intelligent Undead with an army at your disposal, so it balances out.

Side note: immunity to nonlethal damage technically means you no longer have to eat or drink (or at least can fast without consequence), so take that as you will.

Boon 3: Word of Finality: 1/day, you can cast Power Word Kill as a spell-like ability. However, it becomes a Necromancy [death] effect, not an Enchantment (mind-affecting) [compulsion] effect.

Power Word Kill is an interesting spell. especially if you get it two levels earlier than other casters. With no saving throw, you instantly snuff out the life of a living creature with 100 or less HP, letting you bypass any normal death-prevention the creature may have (Diehard/Ferocity, Regeneration, etc). As most NPC people won’t have HP approaching that amount, using it as an intimidation tactic is especially viable if you don’t mind blowing a powerful 1/day for style points.

Side note: while normally spell-likes have no components, Word of Finality’s description states it requires you to speak “a single word of unfathomable dark power,” so people WILL know you’ve used it.

The downsides of Power Word Kill, and all the other Power Word spells, are painfully known and talked to death. The biggest one is that, aside from extremely specific and narrow-use spells or magic items, tracking an enemy’s HP is more or less impossible. The best you can do is ask the DM how rough the monster’s looking or keep a running tally of numbers you’ve dealt in combat so far and take a guess (HINT: Most creatures hovering around CR 15~16 range have between 150~250 HP, with it rising by an average of 40 per CR), but as many will note: 100 HP is not a lot to cut through by the time you’ve reached level 12 or so and have a decent few DPS players. At level 15, 100 HP represents approximately 1 round of work once the team sets up, but sometimes you NEED to shut down an enemy at 100 HP immediately and with no saving throw, such as if its turn is coming up next and it’s about to kill everyone else in the room. Don’t think of it as saving just one round, think of it as saving the turns of your 3~5 allies so they can deal with any OTHER hazard in the room.

There was also the fact that, as a mind-affecting effect, almost every creature worth using it on likely had some level of defense against it, especially since Mind Blank starts showing up around this time. Changing it from a mind-affecting effect to a Necromancy effect is a double-edged sword, as it allows the spell to affect far more creatures than it could before... But, as a death effect, it’s actually easier to defend against (with Death Ward) and has a harder and harder time striking down boss-level enemies as your power grows. It’s best used for mopping up lesser enemies during big battles and, again, intimidating civilians.

------- EXALTED -------

Boon 1: Necromancer’s Secrets. Gain Detect Undead 3/day, Command Undead 2/day, or Vampiric Touch 1/day.

As is the usual for Evil deities based around death and destruction, these first few gifts are only really useful if you yourself are frequently fighting other Evil creatures. If you’re in an Evil vs Good campaign, you’ll likely never actually get to use Detect/Command Undead, seeing as how creating zombies is typically something Good people don’t do. They also require a bit of foresight; you’re unlikely to know exactly what you’re going to face in a given day unless you have advanced information (or are, like, heading into a tomb), meaning there’s a chance you may simply take the wrong spell.

Command Undead’s name isn’t exactly indicative of its function; it’s more like Charm Monster in that intelligent Undead suddenly become your bestest friends forever for the spell’s duration... which is one DAY per level, meaning getting an extremely lucky shot on a Lich or a Nightshade may simply bring a climactic encounter to a crashing halt as the party gains a new weapon. Just... just don’t let them cast Dispel Magic on themselves.  

UNintelligent Undead receive no saving throw and are entirely dominated by the spell’s effect, but can’t receive orders more complicated than “go here” or “attack that thing.” I do appreciate that commanded zombies can be ordered to destroy themselves before the spell’s duration runs out, but with its massive duration and the option to just recast it over and over, that likely won’t be much of an issue.

You can’t really go wrong with Vampiric Touch, in the end! A simple melee touch attack siphons 4d6 (+1d6 per 2 levels you have) damage and grants you half of what you deal as temporary HP. It works against everything and tends to give you enough HP to afford tanking the AoO to leave the enemy’s threat radius (unless you want to be there in the first place).

Boon 2: Invoke Death. 1/day, you can cast Slay Living as a spell-like ability. A creature slain by this spell immediately rises from death as a Juju Zombie. The Zombie is not under your control, but it will not attack you.

I mean... Slay Living is alright. It’s 12d6+13 typeless damage which grows by 1 per level. It works against any living target and the fact it’s typeless lets it bypass elemental resistance... but it’s a touch attack AND a successful Fortitude save (which is often the highest save a given creature has) cuts its impressive damage track down to 3d6+level instead, damage that’s okay but hardly worth writing home about. It’s also a death effect, making it utterly useless against many higher-tier foes you’ll begin facing at this point (consolation ribbon: it only works on living creatures, so you never have to run into the frustration of wasting it on Constructs or Undead).

And it’s even a once per day for the extra kick in the teeth! The second half of this ability isn’t even particularly juicy; Juju Zombies retain all of their abilities, memories, and even their personality, and get a suite of new powers, resistances, and ability score increases on top of it all. Since the resurrection happens immediately on death, it can actually be a huge disadvantage to use in combat, because all you may end up doing is giving your enemy a phase 2 as they pull themselves back to their feet with a new healthbar and new powers. The stipulation that they can’t attack you has no expiration date, presumably meaning they cannot harm you directly at all, but they have no reason to serve you and in fact may still hate you viciously. They can’t attack you, but they can attack your allies, and they can certainly escape to set up a plot that allows them to kill you without ever directly attacking.

Good thing you have Command Undead, right? That’ll go a long way to swaying your enemies to your side... or you can skip out on all that nonsense entirely and realize that you now have the power to raise your allies as Juju Zombies that are incapable of betraying you. Remember what I said about your enemies getting a Phase 2? Well what about giving one to your Fighter, who’s on his last few drops of HP? Your service is not yet over. Blast the last few bits of HP off them and give them a second health bar, a new coat of paint, and a tireless body. Then, if they for whatEVER reason don’t like the body you’ve so graciously given them, they can be slain again and raised as normal later when the team is safe. Really, using it on an enemy feels like a waste.

... Y’know, as written, there’s nothing stopping you from using this ability on yourself.

Boon 3: Call the Dead. 1/day, you can summon a Nightwing, 1d3 Devourers, or 1d4+1 Advanced Mohrgs as if you had cast Summon Monster IX.

A Nightwing is a terrifying, bat-like phantasm and member of the Nightshade family of monsters, horrors born in the deepest reaches of the Negative Energy Plane. They are pure death incarnate, and it says something when the weakest Nightshade, the Nightprowler, is CR 10. Nightwings are CR 14, monstrous flying creatures with a swath of powerful supportive spell-likes and an incredibly damaging bite attack (4d10+18 +4d6 Cold and a dispel attempt on any creature or item they bite) that vastly amplify how effective even a small army of zombies can be.

All Nightshades produce an aura of desecrating magic that empowers Undead in the area and vastly amplifies the number of Undead that can be raised with a single spell, AND they’re able to channel negative energy as a Cleric; Nightwings specifically can channel 7d6 points of negative energy eight times a day, letting them patch up your whole army at once. Even if you don’t have a party or army of Undead, the Nightwing can still offer bonuses like Haste, Greater Dispel Magic, Deeper Darkness, Invisibility, and 1/days like Cone of Cold and Finger of Death. The problem is that you’ll have to make your army the old-fashioned way, as Nightwings cannot create Undead and you don’t get Animate Dead for free by being Exalted. You gotta spend actual money!

Of the options presented, the Devourers hardly factor in. They only stick around for a few rounds, certainly not enough to take advantage of their spell-likes like Animate Dead, Bestow Curse, and Suggestion, and especially since they need to eat first. Given they come into play with an empty tank, they’re basically melee-only creatures who, at their best, deal 12d6+18 damage to a living target... and at worst, deal only 3d6+18, which again is restricted only to living targets. Typically, by the time they snap up a worthwhile soul that lets them use their powers effectively, their duration is almost up. The fact you could end up only summoning one is also a major factor, because when that danger is possible, why not summon the Nightwing? It’s more powerful and it doesn’t need fuel to run.

Which leaves the Mohrg... 1d4+1 of them. That’s upwards to five bodies to get in the way of your foes, each of which can force a DC 23 Fortitude save to paralyze a target for minutes at a time? Even boss-level foes can fail those when they’re having to make five of them a round. Mohrg aren’t especially resilient creatures, but they’re basically two to five castings of Hold Monster every round for nearly two minutes, and really, that’s significantly better than anything the Devourer can offer you. Plus, their ability to create Fast Zombies out of anything they kill means you can loose them on a hapless population to stir absolute, unholy chaos... all without revealing it was you, because remember: Spell-likes have no components!

------- SENTINEL -------

Boon 1: Abyssal Rage. Gain Doom 3/day, Sound Burst 2/day, or Rage 1/day.

Nnnnot an especially strong showing to start. The first two are negated by saves, and spell-likes all scale off Charisma; unless you’re dumping points into your Cha as a martial character for some reason, that means Doom and Sound Burst are unlikely to make the impact. While I’m not normally harsh on spells like this being given to the Sentinel, the fact of the matter is the impact they’d have even if the enemy somehow did fail its save is too low to matter anyway. If you had to pick between the two, the potential mass-stun from Sound Burst surpasses anything Doom could ever do.

I’m not the biggest fan of Rage, either. The combat bonus it gives will stop mattering in another level or so, though in the fairness to the spell it is a morale bonus, thus stacking with enhancement bonuses, alchemical bonuses, etc. It’s hard to be mad at +1 to attack and damage rolls and +1 HP/level across all your front- and midliners, though it’s not likely to turn the tide of whatever battle you’re in. It’s more of a tiny, useful bonus than the game-changers I like to see as 1/days.

Boon 2: Aspect of the Prince. You can cast Divine Vessel 1/day as a spell-like ability, but only to assume a Fiendish Aspect. Instead of gaining two claw attacks from this fiendish aspect, you gain a gore attack that deals 2d6 points of damage.

Now this is a game-changing 1/day! Divine Vessel is a spell that ONLY Oracles get to use naturally, and for a damn good reason: because giving it to a martial character like yourself would be downright bonkers. I mean, +8 to Str, +6 to Con, +3 AC, Spell Resistance 12 + your caster level, AND you and all of your equipment increased by 1 size category. Your space and reach go up, and the Fiendish Aspect specifically grants you a fly speed, See In Darkness, DR 10/Good, and 10 Resistance to Acid, Cold, and Electricity.

You go from a warrior to a titan, unburdened by the Oracle’s lack of heavy armor, 3/4ths BAB, and lack of weapon proficiencies. For those who don’t want to do quick math, the spell gives +4 to attack and damage rolls, +3 HP per level and +3 to Fort saves, SR 23 (+1 per level), 10ft of space AND reach, plus the added damage from your weapon size going up (melee only; ranged weapons aren’t affected), AND FLIGHT... You’re a problem that’s impossible to ignore, and perhaps impossible for some foes to surmount, considering DV is an 8th level spell that you’re getting five levels early, at a point where 20+ SR gives you around a 25% to 50% chance to ignore a spell outright, including any attempt to dispel your buff.

With a duration of “one entire boss battle,” I can think of few weapons more terrifying in the hands of a full-martial character like the Sentinel, and it’s a hell of a step up from most 2nd Boons that Sentinels get from the majority of deities we’ve seen! How generous! What’s the catch, Orcus?

Boon 3: Wand of Orcus. 1/day as a swift action upon successfully hitting a creature with a melee attack with a heavy mace, you can cast Slay Living on that creature. You must be wielding a heavy mace when you utilize this ability—while the heavy mace can itself be magical, it can’t be one that bears any form of lawful or good magic (such as a Holy Weapon) or one that has particular power over undead (such as an Undead Bane or Disrupting weapon). 

Wow! That’s quite the catch! So once a day you can tack a burst of 12d6+16 damage to one attack against a living creature? And a successful save reduces it to just 3d6+16? How... generous of our Lord of Death!

It’s ironic to me that the Sentinel’s third Boon is essentially the same as the Evangelist’s second (with the small but still notable bonus of taking your swift action rather than standard), and coming off the heels of such an impressively powerful buff, too. It feels... well, it feels bad that your ultimate reward for being a warrior of undeath is a 5th level spell once per day. It’s an alright spell, sure; the dice average adds up to about 44, plus a flat amount equal to your level for a total average of 60 damage. But... once a day. AND the victim can make a save to make it go from 44 average to 12 average. Power Word Kill is, technically, a flat 100 damage with no saving throw allowed. and the summoned Nightwing or the swarm of Mohrg are a huge force multiplier.

Oh, and it only works on living targets. Compared to those two, this Boon is a severe letdown. You don’t even reanimate the idiot you kill! Terrible way to treat your most devoted warriors, Orcus!

You can read more about him here.

[stinkytrashman]

info dump about these two losers under the cut

so these freaks of nature are Zoe and Darcy. Zoe is a microbiologist (more like ex-microbiologist) who was hired by the big cool government thing to come on down to Ontario™ to find a cure for a super bad virus that was going around and killing lots of people. She’s like “👍” because she loves helping people and she gets hired along with this other scientist who’s like “wow you’re so cool let’s kiss” and they kiss and smooch and have a fun time until KABOOM the cure they were making turns out to be a SECOND deadly virus that instead of kills you turns you into a crazy mindless zombie with a weird fungal growth growing out of your body. She’s like WOAH WHAT THE SHITFARTBUTTNUGGET and ends up also getting infected by the zombie virus. She wakes up in her now broken lab all alone and looks outside and goes “woah” because she had been in a coma for 8 years and everything went to shit when the zombies got out. Now she’s like “shit this is crazy. Oh well there’s no cure and hey where did my crazy scientist girlfriend go?” And she’s like “SUPRISE MOTHER FUCKER” because her crazy scientist girlfriend actually SABOTAGED the cure and is using a special frequency to mind control the zombies and zoe is like “shit I gotta skedaddle”

across the country (in Saskatchewan (oh yeah this whole story takes place in Canada 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🍁🍁🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦🇨🇦 btw because I’m Canadian as fuck and have never stepped a foot inside America)) there’s this loner biker girl named Darcy who is camping out in a warehouse for a while. She was away at college when the zombie apocalypse started, away from her whole family because they were in Alberta and she was off doing school or whatever in Quebec and so she wasn’t there to save her fam when they all got brutally MURDERED by zombies they got ATE they got DEVOURED. Anyways so now she’s in Saskatchewan and she’s trying to get to BC because there’s a human settlement there and she wants to go and stay because she’s getting lonely and missing her dead family. So on her way she comes across this abandoned mall and finds Zoe and Darcy’s like “AAAAHH FUCK A ZOMBIE” and Zoe is like “AAAHH FUCK A HUMAN” and they fight a lil and Darcy is like “why are you sentient????” And Zoe is like “idk man why are you attacking me?????”

so some lore there’s 5 “breeds” of zombie because there were multiple strains of the “cure” that they were testing that turned them into zombies. There’s the regular zombies, the hivemind zombies, the flying squirrel zombies, the hyper intelligent zombies (which barely even count as a strain because there are only 4 in the whole world) and the super buff zombies. So they all behave slightly different BUT they all eat flesh, try to spread the virus by biting people (which we later find out in the story it’s not a virus it’s a fungi) and they don’t attack others that smell like zombies. Also when the virus got out it only got out in North America ™ and so Canada, the US and Mexico are all an apocalyptic wasteland but everywhere else in the world is like. Fine. They just closed off their borders and they’re chill

so darcy ends up kidnapping Zoe to take her along on a big ass road trip to BC so she can basically use Zoe as a human shield to deter other zombies. Darcy hates hates HATESSSSSS the guys that made the virus because the zombies killed her entire family and Zoe doesn’t wanna tell her that she helped make it because uh oh she’s slowly falling in love with Darcy oooooooohhhhhhh. And at the same time she is trying to put as much distance as she can between her and Ontario so she can stay tf away from her ex and her crazy mind control powers oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh

[ego-osbourne]

Unicorn

//click for better image quality … Time: 1hr//

“Oh, they exist. And you’re lucky they’re as rare as they are. The tales of them being majestic forest creatures were myths made by the unicorns themselves. They’re magical, but deadly. They’re skilled in illusion and destruction, and their horns are used to impale. They can spot you in pitch black darkness, they can smell your fear, and they can hear your heart beating in your chest. They’re carnivorous, and they hunt humanoids for sport. Sport, Ego. They’re sentient, and they love to torment us.

That one that you see there? I’ve been hunting her for centuries. She’s mean, she’s dangerous, and she’s terrifying. You don’t know fear until you’re in the teeth of something that you mistook for being so pretty before. And she loves that I keep coming back, because daedra are her favorite meal — we don’t die. We’re nothing but a never-ending dinner for her kind.” - Rakell, about a mystical unicorn spotted in the Skyrim wilds

[wanderingnork]

Horror Movies: Practical Effects Party

This list is one of movies that use primarily or entirely practical effects to make their monsters. CGI is used for enhancement, not as the primary vehicle of creation. In these movies, you could actually reach out and touch whatever fantastical creature is threatening the hapless protagonists. Here, I’ve tried to avoid a lot of the better-known practical effects movies (like Pan’s Labyrinth, The Thing, or Alien) to focus on things you’re less likely to have seen, or that used shoestring budgets to work monstrous miracles.

The Crawling Hand: A low-budget 1963 horror featuring the murderous antics of a hand that crawls. The hand is done entirely practically. You may get a good giggle out of witnessing the hand’s victims performing as their own killers, or the camera angles that just barely keep the body attached to a hand out of frame as the hand crawls along. Quality these effects are not. But this is a hand you could shake if you wanted.

The Deadly Spawn: In the heyday of practical monster effects, this low-budget 1983 movie features wonderfully gruesome aliens made almost entirely from the materials at hand. From a full-size, three-headed mechanical puppet to tiny spawn pulled by wires on S-shaped tracks to make them “swim” through a flooded basement, all of the Spawn are physically present on set. It’s a movie that’s rough around the edges, but full of heart. And full of monsters.

The Void: A better-known and much more recent horror movie, the creative team raised $82,000 on Indiegogo to create the movie’s monsters and effects. And they’re some of the most glorious, grotesque, gory beasts to ever grace the silver screen. This is one of my favorite movies ever, in any genre, just thanks to the creature effects.

Eyes in the Dark: Intensely, intensely low-budget found footage movie, full of shakycam and melodrama. Foolish, unlikeable college students take a trip into the wilderness and promptly make every cliched, stupid decision that can be made in a horror movie. The saving grace of this movie: the unique take on a classic and usually-not-scary critter, performed by puppets, people in suits, and LED eyes...in the dark.

Phase IV: A little-known movie from 1974, where a cosmic event causes ants to suddenly become sentient. The plot of scientists trying to understand and stop the ants is pretty standard sci-fi fare, but what makes this movie fun is the ants. Instead of stop-motion, puppets, or CGI, these ants are real. Microscopic photography brings us up close to the ants at an astonishing level of detail. With careful editing of their natural behaviors, the ants are given a sense of individuality and personhood, with heroic self-sacrifice, scenes of mourning, and malicious plotting. Sadly, many ants were killed during the filming of the movie, so you should go in with that knowledge. I was very sad that they died.

Some questions for thought: When practical effects are used instead of CGI, how does this affect the tone of the movie? Do actors behave differently when working with something physically present beside them? Why would a movie maker choose practical effects over CGI, or vice versa? In movies made before CGI was available or refined, do you think that affected the types of stories a movie could easily tell? Would decent CGI have improved any of the above movies? Do you find, as I do, that even poorly-made practical effects draw you further into a movie--or do they jar you out of it? What other movies would you add to this list?

[chryzure-archive]

this is also unrelated to everything and u dont have to answer!!! but i know you like RE and had RE aus…and since i’ve been afflicted by …l*on…i’m absorbing the series sm <3..ANYWAYS THO CAN I PLZ KNOW ABOUT THE RE AUs…. what ships do u have them for and any specific game… im sorry this is random💔i want to think about something that is RE but not…That Man.. 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

IVE GOT YOU, RYNE!!!!!!!

okay okay okay, so the re2 remake did damage to me in my junior year of high school<33 so i have a generic re2 au w chryzure,,,, not bc i ship leon and claire bc.. icky, but i do think it tracks that chrysi and azure would only go through the events of that game after having a heartfelt conversation in the rain on opposite sides of a chain link fence… they could only be separated frm each other via zombies, and even then, they find each other again… also azure turns around after finding chrysi and he finds that she has adopted a child. he is now a father. he didn’t know that would end up happening, but boy, did it!!!

speaking of chryzure re aus, sdldjflskjflksjdfslkdjf…… re7 chryzure au breaks my heart. azure doesn’t care that chrysi has been supposedly dead for YEARS—he gets an email frm his girlfriend wife soulmate and he is ON HIS WAY. nothing will stand in front of him!!! even chrysi made murderous by sentient mold!!!!!!!!!!! it’s okay, he can fix her!!!!!!!!!!!! but the scene where she shoves him out into the hallway and effectively separates them before she goes murderous again KILLS ME!!!!!! he loves his wife!!!! he wants her to come back with him so bad! AND THE HELICOPTER SCENE WHERE CHRYSI’S ALL LAID OUT ON THE MEDICAL COT AND THEY’RE FLYING AWAY FRM THE HOUSE AND THEY’RE HOLDING HANDS FINALLY, AFTER YEARS OF BEING SEPARATED…. IT MAKES ME WANT TO CRY!!!

i have a variation of the re7 au where azure’s the one that went missing and AUGH. it hurts more, i think? bc he’s normally so careful, so the fact that he was captured and infected w mold is upsetting to chrysi. again, the shoving-out-of-the-room-to-protect-her scene kills me, but it makes me even sadder when it’s azure doing it,,,, bc he’ll sacrifice himself for chrysi over and over again, he’ll do anything to keep her safe above all else, and even though it feels like tearing out his own heart, he’ll leave her if it means her safety…. in that universe, the helicopter scene is chrysi being very exasperated and frustrated w azure. meanwhile, he’s like “omg,..,,, i get to be w my soulmate gf wife for good this time!!!!!”…. cut to chrysi getting involved in zombie cases again bc there’s no stopping her. sigh.

it’s not super an official au, but i do like thinking of re3 scenes in aa chryzure context?? or jst chrysi being a cool agent being tracked down by a deadly lab-grown zombie creacher… i jst think chrysi kicks ass and she would look cool doing all the same things jill valentine did. azure is a prettyboy special agent that knows abt chrysi’s past and he’s always admired her frm afar,,, this is only so that i can have the scene where chrysi gets infected and azure starts tearing through zombies to get a cure for her bc he has such a major soulmate crush on her. umm ummm, the scene where that scientist guy is holding carlos in front of him and trying to get to safety under the context that jill won’t shoot, but he does that w azure and azure’s like “go ahead. kill him. i know your aim is good enough to not hit me” and chrysi’s like “i appreciate the confidence in me, i jst think that maybe you shouldn’t have it.” but she does have good aim, so bye bye!!! (i haven’t seen gameplayof re3 in a while, so pardon me if the details are hazy ;;;; )

UMMM, i don’t know if these count, but the live action resident evil movies that are not at all related to the games (not truly) have some moments that i’ve superimposed soooo hard on chryzure zombie aus. like azure slowly developing the telekinetic powers of the third one (??? i think??? i also haven’t seen the movies in a while), or him dying and being brought back wrong (…can’t remember the context for that either, but umm it’s because chrysi was going to be hurt by some flying shrapnel and azure shielded her with his body instead,,, causing the shrapnel to travel straight through his body and he dies apart from chrysi bc she’s dragged away from him by somebody trying to keep her away from zombies. it is a sad moment that i like to turn aroudn in my head like a plate in the microwave),,, meanwhile chrysi keeps building up her groups of survivors over and over again.

OHHH, ANOTHER RE MOVIE SCENE I THINK OF IS HAVING AZURE BE INFECTED AND HE’S SLOWLY TURNING BUT HE HAS TO HELP THEM, SO HE KISSES CHRYSI ONE LAST TIME BEFORE SACRIFICING HIMSELF BY BLOWING UP ALL ZOMBIES AROUND HIM. i don’t have this be canon most of the time (or maybe it is… maybe i’ll go with the “azure brought back to life” thing being that he’s jst clone after clone of himself, with new zombie powers each time.), but it is something i like to think of…

but yeah yeah yeah, i love the movies and how silly they are + i think azure deserves to be a new, fucked up zombie clone of himself each time, and that he should find his original body being kept in stasis with chrysi, and so there’s a whole moral issue of, “i’m not the actual person she loves, but i love her and i want to be with her… even though i know the original version of me deserves it more.” now i am thinking abt this rlly hard. fuck. i could make a whole, unique storyline frm this alone bc i looooove this little rabbit hole.

there’s also that chrysijacks re7 au, and with that, i mostly like to imagine chrysi chasing jacks with a chainsaw <3 it’s what she deserves. it’s also what jacks deserves. get his ass, honey.

(that helicopter scene haunts me so mmuch btw, so i always imagine a ship in that setting, bc it’s so genuinely romantic in its peak form… going through and hell and escaping it, and clinging to each other as you go to someplace better… it makes me cry every time i think of it. i always make it more touchy-feely bc IT SHOULD BE!!!