#By Bloody Plunder

[just-b-wilde]

Five ✘ Lila • Survival

AO3 | Wattpad

They were ready for the end, but it was only the beginning. The Hargreeves family has survived another apocalypse, but now they face another difficult task: sort out all their private problems and wrongs they thought they would never have time to resolve. A story about how they would all deal with what happened between Five and Lila and what their future could be... The original one-shot grew into a more comprehensive story.

Thank you so much for the perfect art for my story, I love it, Bloody Plunder @bloodyplunder! ❤️🥰😍

[ameliathornromance]

“What happened to you?!”

Your Orc Boyfriend sat by the tribe healer. Gashes that started at his forehead and go across his face. Blood dripped down and onto his chest, which was bruised and transitioning into a purple hue in certain areas.

You went to rush over, to cup his face, examine him from head to toe, but the healer held a hand out to you. “I know it looks serious,” he said, “but they’re surface level.”

As you opened your mouth to protest, your Orc Boyfriend grunted, “I’ll be fine, love.” He gave you a pained smile. Even as his face oozed with blood, he still tried to reassure you. “I’ll come see you in a minute.”

He loved this about you. Everything was so different now that you were around. Before you and your Orc got together, when Orcs returned injured, they were told to endure it from their others. No sympathy given. Healers would provide Orcs with a pack of ice in a leather sack and send them on their way.

It started when one day, your Orc came back to camp with a bloody nose. You had instantly run over, "Oh my God, are you okay?!" Everyone had stared, startled by your reaction. But when you started tending to your partner's wounds, the camp seemed to follow your lead.

Orcs were now afforded more luxuries than before, being fed soup if they were immobilised temporarily or being washed by someone they were close to when they couldn't reach certain areas.

But your Orc Boyfriend, always did his best to come back intact. Despite the sweetness of your concern, he couldn't bear witnessing your distress over his injuries. 

This time, he was too careless. 

At that sight of your reluctant scowl, your Orc Boyfriend’s heart ached. He wished he had been more careful.

But you turned away and went back to your shared tent. 

He came in later, his face lined with stitches and his chest wrapped up with cloth. Your Orc groaned as he laid in bed beside you, scrunching his face up in pain. 

Propping yourself up on your elbows, you looked him over. “What happened?” Your voice was muted, small.

“Highway men.” He said.

They had jumped him while he was trying to find his hunting party. Your Orc had got separated when he’d tried to go after a stag. He emerged out onto a popular path taken by humans, looking around for his prey.

But a second was all it took for the humans to attack him.

The men were more vicious that most humans he’d fought, with weapons imbued with some kind of magical properties. One human delivered such a powerful blow to his chest that he thought his ribs had broken.

Your Orc got out by the skin of his tusks, and that was only thanks to another Orc finding him and helping him beat the snot out of the Highwaymen. 

You bit your lip at that and cast a look down at his chest. It had turned black now.

“It’ll heal.” He assured you. “It’ll take more than a few humans to kill me. Don’t worry.” Your Orc shifted and pulled something out from his belt pocket. “Here, for you.”

You gasped. Clutched between your Orc’s meaty green fingers was a small, golden band. A red ruby sat on top of the gold, catching in the dim candlelight. “We took their plunders, this was among it… And I thought of you.”

At your hesitation, your Orc offered it, “I promise I’ll be more careful when I go out in the next few weeks. See this as a pledge of that.” 

Biting your lip, you sighed. Your eyes traced the stitches on his face. You wanted to run your fingers across them, hoping that your touch could heal them. 

Taking the ring, you kissed the ruby. “You promise?” holding the ring to his lips.

Your Orc smiled and kissed it. “I swear on my life.”

[theoneofshame]

Harry grabs for the firewhiskey.

“Do you only ever go for the hardstuff?”

“It gets you there faster,” Harry exclaims, rummaging through the cabinets for glasses. Why in the bloody hell they were in the topmost shelf is beyond Harry. Probably Kreacher in a petty spell.

Voldemort, the giant git that he is, makes no move to help.

"Do you mind?"

"Yes, yes I do."

Prat.

“Besides, what’s the point of drinking if not to get pissed?” Harry huffs out, stretching for all his 5'4 stature allowed him. His middle and index fingers graze the edge-most cup, accidentally pushing it further in.

“To enjoy it perhaps,” Voldemort snarks. He watches Harry throw away his last shred of dignity and climb the counter to reach, like it's something fascinating to behold.

“I’ll be enjoying myself plenty, thanks,” Harry says, victorious in his plundering with a cup in hand.

"Why not just summon it?"

Harry rolls his eyes. "Kreacher has objects not react to my magic when he's cross with me." Which is always. Harry stopped keeping track of the reasons.

Voldemort wandlessly summons the second cup to him. Harry flips him off.

For all Voldemort's belly-aching he still shares a glass with Harry. Then four more. They've moved to the study and drank through most of the bottle when Harry makes the comment, “never would’ve taken you for a lighter spirits fellow.”

“I prefer sweet things,” Voldemort says, slowly raking his eyes up Harry's form before locking on to Harry’s own. The way he said it had Harry’s cheeks flushing. Probably just the alcohol catching up to him. Still, his belly is warm and he's feeling good.

[vivi-the-goblin]

Just thinking about the poetic nature of the Gith

Originally, there was just one species that broke free of the mindflayers and turned to bloody rebellion. In the aftermath the Githyanki (those who follow Gith) formed a new militaristic culture based on their inherant superiority, while the Githzerai rebelled against becoming like thier old masters and left (those who spurn Gith). The Githyanki live in the Astral Sea, a place where nothing ages or changes unless change is forced upon it. The world is vibrant, sure, and it IS constantly changing, but only through force and intrusion.

The Githzerai live in Limbo, a land of infinite chaos where even the fabric of reality might turn from air to bread to napalm in a second. It is only through massive willpower and active dedication that you can craft anything, and that needs to be actively and constantly maintained.

The Githyanki have not changed. They became their old masters. They have slaves of their own. They're coping with the scars of their enslavement by making sure THEY'RE the ones on top this time. Though they still identify themselves around wiping out their old masters, the system never fell. tyranny just gained a new face and explanation. The same face, the leader has been the same bloodline even since those times beyond measure, with the current one being an undead immortal ruling for thousands of years, unaging even when in places that do change. Githyanki are forced to occasionally explore to have kids and let them grow to adulthood. But they leave the encampment only to plunder resources, keeping the kids as secluded as possible and dragging them back ASAP to double down on indoctrination. Nobody moves on, and the youth who attempt to are met with force.

The Githzerai have changed so much they're no longer the same species, even if they are still externally recognizable. They left for a land where everything changes. However, through introspection and dedication to ensuring personal freedom, they thrive. Specifically, it's from their leaders giving up that freedom to eternally power their chunk of safety in the storm. Literally sitting in a sarcophagus for eternity, the death of self. You'd think would be horrible, given the whole point was escape from eternal labor and gaining freedom! But the difference is that it's willing, it's their choice, one they were free to make or decline. They chose to make a home others could grow up in safely, a place that would still remain for them even if they left for a time. These elders are also don't age...but they're the ones who came to terms with their trauma, fought, and decided to move beyond. They even lost the initial war, but persisted and kept working to break the system. And they do so by supporting those that come next, trusting they'll keep fighting to stop this cycle of oppression.

The Githyanki are conquering the stars but haven't really moved an inch. The Githzerai are living in an ever-moving and actively hostile world, but came to terms with themselves and their past and moved ever forward.. Beautiful.

...

I'm also thinking about how the Githzerai names a city Susanowo. Like the brother of Amaterasu. Like, in-universe named that after actual スサノヲfrom actual Japan. Because Earth exists, and the various gods USED to exist there. An old empire kept kidnaping people from Earth, and the gods followed their believers but got stuck. I keep running into bits of lore that tie into that and it hits me like a truck every time.

[katyawriteswhump]

I do, I do, I do 💝

For @steddieholidaydrabbles day 29 prompt, fairytale, and @whumpcember day 29 prompt, choked.

Rating: E; WC: 987 CW: sex, knotting, biting. Tags: Omega Steve, Alpha Eddie, fluff and angst, sex, fairytale-ish setting, cracky tbh, happy ever after. Summary: Omega Princess, Steve, has been conducting an illicit affair with devilishly handsome woodsman, Eddie. When his mother, the queen, announces an unwanted marriage for him, he has nobody else to run to…

💝💝💝💝💝

Steve stumbled into the forest, with his corset laced so tightly it choked him. He’d not intended to flee in this stupid pink ballgown. However, his mother had announced that he was to be wed to Lord Breedemhard.

At midnight tonight.

He ran.

Now, fear and cold congealed his blood. Mud clogged his silken slippers. Worse, the horses and hounds of his royal mother’s search party drew nearer. He was beyond exhausted, barely able to breathe… and now he scented another kind of beast, barrelling toward him.

They pounced, body-slamming Steve into a patch of fortuitously springy-soft moss. A wild-haired, mahogany-eyed Alpha pinned his wrists, growling:

“What’s an edible Omega like you, doing in a forest like this?”

“I… I…”  Steve trembled too hard to think. The Alpha licked Steve’s unbroken mating gland, then backed off, frowning.

“Baby, you’re scared. I know we didn’t arrange a tryst today, but I scented you and now I smell sadness. Don’t wanna play?”

Steve threw his arms around Eddie’s neck, told him everything: “I know our secret liaisons are a game for you, but I have n-nobody else.”

Eddie muttered under his breath. Steve, sniffling, braced for rejection. Then Eddie enfolded him tight, rocking soothingly. Steve cursed the corset more than ever, because he could barely feel Eddie’s kind caressing hands:

“I thought you were the one playing games with a lowlife woodsman, Princess.”

“Then I’m sorry! I know I can be a tease, even a bit of a bitch, but… I’m very much in love with you.”

“Seriously, you can’t mean—”

“I do, I do, I do!” Steve got right in Eddie’s baffled face, searching it desperately. “Tonight, I’ll have to say that to an Alpha thrice my age, after being punished for ruining my gown. Unless you’ll help?”

Not that Steve could hear his pursuers anymore. He wasn’t even that scared. Eddie’s comforting closeness overwhelmed his senses, as did Eddie’s words:

“I love you too.” He cupped Steve’s face and smiled, setting Steve’s heart flipping. “I didn’t dare hope. I ache when we’re apart… Mmmmf!”

With an un-Omega-like boldness, Steve initiated the kiss, which Eddie returned hungrily, plundering passionately to Steve’s depths. It was like being swept away over the rainbow… till Steve started seeing stars, and not in a good way.

Bloody corset! Can’t breathe!

Eddie broke the kiss. “What’s wrong? You’re safe now. They won’t find you.”

“Oh… um, crazily, it’s not mother.” Steve tugged his ballgown from his shoulders. “Omegas are supposed to have tiny waists and perfect deportment. This stupid corset suffocates me.”

Eddie nuzzled tenderly at Steve’s nape, while loosening the laces. As his breathing grew easier, Steve filled his lungs with Eddie’s potent Alpha musk. Finally, Eddie eased Steve out of the torturous whalebone cage and tossed it aside.

“Thank you!”

Steve whirled around so they could kiss again, and Eddie pressed him back into the moss. He’d never felt so loose and relaxed, so pliant and ready to play. Eddie’s nearness and kisses ignited a nectar-like glow inside him. The gush of slick from his cleft had him squirming with glee.

“Claim me now, Alpha!”

He anticipated a brush-off. To be fair, they should probably hide from his mother.

Instead, Eddie beamed wolfishly: “With pleasure, my Princess.” 

Eddie unlaced his britches, and his Alpha cock sprung free, weeping in a fashion that made Steve rather proud. Meanwhile, that candied glow became a nigh-torturous ache of emptiness. Fortunately, Steve’s tattered petticoats hitched up easily, and Eddie inserted his steel-rod of an erection between Steve’s wet folds.

“You sure?” whispered Eddie. They’d only played games before, and Steve was a virgin.

He gaped, nodded. Eddie’s tongue breached Steve’s mouth for another kiss the same instant that cockhead split him.

“Good?” asked Eddie.

“Sublime.”

Eddie nudged deeper, stretching Steve’s oh-so-wet-and-ready tunnel impossibly wide—plowing slow and sweet, while Steve adjusted, any slight pain fading. Steve soon rocked his hips, silently pleading. Eddie let rip. Everything disintegrated beyond the feel of Eddie inside him, kindling hitherto unknown sensations of rapture that built and built. Even better, Eddie made love—his adoring gaze penetrated Steve’s soul. All Steve could do was bask in it, whispering, “l-love yoooou… ooooh!”

The wondrous friction gradually grew too much, bordering on torture again. When an unexpectedly high-tide of it burst, Steve cried out, clamping so hard around Eddie that Eddie howled too. His knot caught inside Steve, and he stopped moving, while his dick swelled even larger, pumping out molten heat.

“Sorry, Princess.”

“D-don’t you dare apologise for giving me what I’ve craved since we met.” Steve loved this stuffed feeling as much as anything. He still wanted more: “Bite me!”

Eddie’s fangs pierced Steve’s mating gland, and the sharp pain robbed his breath yet again. He saw stars again too. They were almost as beautiful as his mate, whom they only briefly eclipsed.

Eddie nested with Steve in the velvet moss, his knot buried deep. He kissed Steve’s sore neck and smothered him with love, while in the distance, the search party danced in fruitless circles.

“I ruined their ball.” Steve snickered. “Thank you for ruining me.”

“You’re more perfect than ever,” whispered Eddie. “No more games.”

“One thing confuses me, tho’. How did you know we’d not be found?”

Instinctually, he’d trusted his Alpha to keep him safe. It was still befuddling.

“Sweetheart, I might look like a devilishly handsome woodsman. I’m also a wizard on the lute and… a powerful mage. I cast a protection spell when you told me about your pursuers.”

“Oh.” Steve let that sink in, then returned to enjoying the fullness of Eddie’s knot, while purring more madly than he’d believed possible. “Thank you, Alpha.”

A few hours later, Steve’s mother was handed his corset—covered in fake blood that Eddie had conjured—and presumed he’d been ravaged by beasts.

Steve and Eddie, meanwhile, returned to a cosy cottage, raised six pups, and lived happily ever after.

💝💝💝💝💝

(yes, um... sorry. Again. Set very loosely in the same universe as this fic, which could be read as following on, although the tone is rather different.)

tags: @wheneverfeasible 💚 My stranger things fic on AO3

[northern-passage]

No Pride with Genocide!

You have probably seen the grotesque images of jubilant Israeli soldiers holding the pride flag on top of our scorched Gazan lands infiltrating social media feeds last week. The Israel State cynically publishes on its Twitter account, “The first ever pride flag raised in Gaza,” as it proceeds with its genocidal crusade and its concomitant Zionist propaganda campaign. We view these images with immense feelings of frustration and uttermost disgust, and we see through their despicable tactics of weaponizing homophobia and queer violence for colonial means. The following are notes from Queers in Palestine, elaborating on what such imagery tries to accomplish and what underpins their production:

1. Zionist Colonization is Anti-Civilization 

Colonial and Imperial powers have long used their fabricated lies of “civilization,” “rights,” and “democracy” to justify their plunder, military rule, and capitalist accumulation. We learn this from global histories of European colonization across Abya Yala, Asia, Africa, Turtle Island, Aotearoa, and Australia. The Zionist colonization of Palestine is no different. Oftentimes, the pretext of all of these bloodied invasions is that the “civilized” world is invading racialized communities to bring culture, education, and liberalism and instill it in societies it deems barbaric, immoral, and uncivilized. The images of the LGBT flag supposedly claim to bring rights and liberties to Gaza, but unironically, the soldier stands on top of the debris of hopes, dreams, and human remains of Palestinians he himself and the army he serves bombed moments before. The flag merely stands to reaffirm the simulacrum of colonization, death, white supremacy, and destruction. 

2. Israel Erases Palestinian Queerness

The images of the Israel Pride Flag and the other with the text, “In the name of love” send a clear message: Israel will not allow queer liberation unless it’s through its settler-colonial genocidal project. To that, we say No! We queer Palestinians have a vibrant, diverse liberation movement that is part of the Palestinian anti-colonial movement. For decades, we have been tirelessly working on carving up and maintaining a space for Palestinian queer life amongst our communities and not despite them. We are everywhere: in schools, streets, prisons, hospitals, and at the forefront of every confrontation in every corner of Palestine, from the river to the sea. What we are working towards is a Palestine liberated from colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalist exploitation.

3. Queer Opacity in Times of Hypervisibility

In a time when Palestinians are being prosecuted without trial, student movements shut-down and students in universities suspended and detained, and solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians at large are attacked and criminalized, visibility has proven itself to be a frontline of resistance against the erasure of Palestinians worldwide. In Palestine, Israel’s surveillance apparatuses hunt any expression for Palestine’s right to exist as grounds to attack, incarcerate, and murder Palestinian life. This over-fixation on the supposed lack of Palestinian queer visibility steers the attention from Israel’s campaign against all Palestinians – workers, activists, students, feminists, queers, and otherwise. Israel and its allies dangerously decontextualize the violence queers suffer from its historical colonial roots, and dissociate it from the impacts of current settler-colonial violence. This is an attempt to portray Palestinian society as unsafe for queers to legitimize the annihilation of our people, and in turn our annihilation as queers. Under Israel’s surveillance & police state, visibility, opacity and invisibility are survival and resistance tactics we use interchangeably, and aren’t always a matter of choice. None of us is safe under settler-colonization.

4. These Images Endanger Queer People Worldwide

The Pride Flag has long been hijacked and homonationalised. It represents a narrow and limited understanding of gender and sexuality and excludes the myriad of sexualities in the colonized world. This homonationalism renders colonized sexual and gender attitudes illegible to the liberal gaze and forces us to speak a language that compromises our experiences. Under nationalist and colonial regimes, our bodies and sexualities will always be regulated. What the pride flag has come now to represent is a commercial, imperialist, and white supremacist sexual ideologies, and this, in turn, puts us queer people in danger. This homonationalist project hinders our fight against anti-queer violence within our communities because our identities and sexualities are constantly being hijacked by the empires and colonies that brought destruction upon us. We need to reject such associations that only strengthen queerphobia in colonized societies, especially during this time in Arab and Muslim communities, when the soldiers and armies that are destroying our homes and killing our parents, siblings, friends, and children are doing so in the name of LGBT rights. 

5. Colonialism & Empire are Anti-Queerness

In the past, colonial projects sought to eliminate any sex-gender organization systems that fell outside of the European binary patriarchal model of man-woman. We learn this from the British criminalization of the Hijra in South Asia, or British and French social organizing efforts to enforce a binary sex-gender system in Yoruba Land, or Portuguese and Spanish efforts to eliminate “two-spirit” indigenous North Americans – deeming all uncivilized in need of external civilization. This was also the case in Palestine under British-Zionist military occupation, as same-sex relations and other diverse gender practices became criminalized and demonized. All the current laws in Gaza that criminalize queerness are, in fact, British and are upheld by Zionism. However, it becomes evermore absurd that rhetorics of bringing queer liberation to Palestine have been now hijacked by Zionists and, for the most brutal reasons, in service of annihilation of Palestinian life and mass destruction. We, Palestinian queers, position our movement for liberation alongside anti-colonial and anti-racist movements globally, and we stand firmly in objection to any attempt to hijack our movements, or exploit our bodies.

In the name of revolutionary love, a love which fuels our struggle for liberation and yearning for freedom, rooted in our love for our communities and our land; we tell you, there is no pride with genocide, and there is no pride in settler-colonialism.

Our pride can only come through true liberation for all, for us and for all the peoples fighting worldwide.

A Liberatory Demand from Queers in Palestine | Pinkwashing - Decolonize Palestine

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: Along the Road of Nameless Graves

Presiding over a series of forested foothills and mountainous valleys that divide two rival kingdoms, the mist-shrouded barony of Siirvyn has seen more than its share of war over the past generations. Betrayal, invasion, and massacre are all too common motifs in the barony's long history, leaving all sorts of scars on both the landscape and the people who dwell within it.

Adventure Hooks:

Rumours of a treasure draw the party to Siirvyn, apparently concealed in a vault beneath the ruined castle of a long dead baroness Taviaa. Surely it won't be too hard to locate a single ruin in a land frequently beset by war, right?

The party arn't the only one combing across the barony looking for something. A hardluck knight seeks her brother after he vanished on a foolish quest, and might be willing to help the party out of jam if they aid her in search.

Folk of the barony tell of Grimcackle, a great black winged beast that moorlands that's sometimes heard laughing over the desolate battlefields but is only ever seen by the lost and the desperate. To heed the old stories it plunders the old battlefields of it's choicest riches, hoarding the wealth of the dead over centuries of war.

Subquest 1:

The party's hunt for riches gets complicated after arriving in the region to find that there has been no less than eight baroness Taviaas over the past century(backwater fiefdoms do like tradition after all) with five castles between them. Most have been destroyed by disaster, neglect, or siege, leaving the party to trek across the land checking checking out each option (though a clever party might narrow their search by hitting the local archives and cross referencing historical accounts).

Potential ruins include:

The delapidated lair of the local owlbear

Huanted by the ghost of one of the baronesses Taviaa,

The Hideout of a gang of smugglers with far reaching ties

Thoroughly cursed by a battlefield savaging spriggan who deals in cursed weapons.

To make matters even more complicated, one of the castles has been restored by the current baron Arkolo who would likely not take kindly to a band of renegade sellswords pilfering riches from under his nose, forcing the party to avoid it entirely or risk getting thrown in the dungeon if caught.

Subquest 2:

Ser Riley of Breakbridge never expected to inherit the family title, her father favoured her elder brother Rhys far more, and when the old man died in the last war there was no question who his holdings would pass to. Then, a couple of years ago Rhys got it into his head that he needed to reclaim the family's ancestral sword which was lost in the same bloody battle that did their father in, crossing the mountains to scour old battlefields and not being seen since. After righting the mess Rhys caused by his chivalric absence, Riley has come to Siirvyn herself to drag him, or possibly his body back from his foolhardy quest. The party may run into her requesting aid from the Baron, seeking advice from the local shrine to Tyr, or drinking off another unsuccessful trek through the wilderness at the local tavern. She'd welcome their aid in her search, and would gladly pay them back by lending her blade to theirs in their search (or using her influence to spring them from the baron's dungeons, should they have been caught).

Rhys' trail snakes all across the barony (including leaving a journal in one of the ruins the party wanted to search), but terminates in the great barren battlefield that was his father's last stand. While searching these moorlands the party & Ser Riley will run into a band of armed scavengers apparently conducting their own body-hunt for one of their fallen comrades. They served on the opposite side of the war from Riley's family, and if that wasn't bad blood enough, they apparently came to blows with Rhys a little under a year ago and aim to settle the score with his sister.

Regardless of how the standoff plays out (talking the scavengers down and exchanging favours or beating the information out of them) the Next step is to find Grimcackle's nest. By now (especially if you're playing with my affliction system and the party is tired out from all their wandering across the countryside) the party will have realized that the only way to see the great raven is to be nearing the edge of death, whether through actively dying, being poisoned, or just being exhausted to the bone. This is because the great raven is infact a psychopomp, tasked with sorting out the dead from the region's innumerable wars. Once the party find the particular tor the dread raven uses as roost, they'll find him quite chatty in the way of most birds, happy to trade gossip or play show and tell with his many finds. Rhys did indeed come to challenge Grimcackle for the sword, an act of daring rudness that forced the psychopomp to drag the knight's soul to the purgatory it rightfully belonged.

Resigned by the love she bears her brother, Riley insists she must venture into the shadow to save him, leaving the party with the choice of convincing her to abandon her quest, leave her to her fruitless pursuit of honour, or risk it all alongside her for the sake of an idiot who thought he could convince an aspect of death to respect his pedigree.

Subquest 3:

After their harrowing adventure the party return to town to find that Baron Akolo has been assassinated and all of Siivyrn has been thrown into chaos and suspicion. Fingers point and depending who the blame lands on it might spell civil war or invasion for the backwoods barony once again.

Background: Both neighbouring powers wish to control who moves through the region's winding passes, and expend great effort in both war and peace to ensure the barony is favourable to them. While occupying armies and vassalage have been all too common in the past, the region's ostensibly independent ruler Baron Arkolo is a puppet in all but name for the winning side of the most recent war. Little more than a bandit leader during the conflict savaging battlefields and attacking supply lines on both sides, Arkolo saw the way the wind was blowing before anyone else and made himself indispensable to his current patrons before their inevitable victory.

Little more than a strongman at first, the newly elevated baron managed to ingratiate himself to his subjects by leveraging his outlaw status to cast himself as a hero fighting against the great powers rather than ruling on their behalf. All the while the canny old bandit was of course playing both sides, toadying to the victorious kingdom while helping to run the smuggling operation for their rivals.

Clues & Consequences:

The baron had a stormy relationship with his son and prospective heir Kalo, who came up raiding alongside his father. After the war however, the young man felt he'd had enough of violence renounced his possesisons and joined the secluded temple of Tyr as a means of making peace with his bloody past. Arkolo never approved of his son's taking the cloth, refused to name another heir and would frequently make pilgramage to the temple just to argue with him. Despite their years of contention however the had seemed to reconcile in recent months, becoming closer than ever. Kalo is not taking his father's murder well, and has decided to dust off his old bandit skills alongside his newfound connection to a wargod as a means of finding the killer. Like an angered bull, he's liable to charge at whoever draws his attention, a weakness the real culprit might use to direct him onto the party's trail.

Gareth Gosdown, the baron's advisor and castilian is an agent of their patron kingdom, sent to keep the former outlaw in line and the kingdom's garrisons well supplied. In the wake of Arkolo's death, he's less interested in finding the killer than he is reinforcing his masters' hold over the barony in case of a new invasion. Known for butting heads with the Baron's more slapdash ruling style he's the one the common folk are most likely to point to.

Taviaa (ninth of that name) was born to the Baron after he'd claimed the region and married one of the local nobles. Though still young, she has a cutthroat attitude and a mind for politics, which made it all the more frustrating when her father refused to give up on her pious half brother as heir and name her instead. She knows she's the obvious culprit, the case made all the more convincing by the fact that she's recently been paling around with emissaries from the other kingdom.

Art 1

Art 2

[the-californicationist]

Guile & Guilt (Ch. 11) -- Epilogue

Hello again! This epilogue was written using prompts 8, 12, 14, 20, and 29 of @glitterypirateduck 's January challenge! Hope y'all like it!

“There you are, thief. I've been lookin’ for you,” Johnny spoke quietly as he snuck underneath the crossbars that very obviously said “Keep Out!”, displayed in bright red across the gate. 

You smiled at him as he made his way through the castle’s ruins, his boots crunching on the gravel and stone, ducking through the ancient archways like an overgrown warrior, home from the front. He was wearing a tee shirt and his hunting kilt, dressed for the warm night air. 

You imagined what it might have been like back then to see him coming through your castle toward your hugs and your kisses if you were his lady of this sprawling manor house. 

If he was your highland laird, he’d pass by a glowing hearth, the orange fire shining in his eyes, casting long shadows over him. He’d be in a tartan, much like he was now, but perhaps in a shirt with more frills on the collar and sleeves, the expensive stitching reflecting his high status. He’d be in brogues, not boots, allowing him to step silently through the heath and the heather, hunting Englishmen in the night. Your servants would take his deerskin bag from his shoulder, and they’d offer him a clean handkerchief to wipe the journey’s filth from his brow. 

He climbed the stairs of your tower, a knight after his very own princess, meaning to rescue or to ravish, and you couldn’t help but be excited for either. 

“I cannae remember the last time I did this,” Johnny laughed softly, stooping through the refurbished wooden doorway to join you in the circular tower room. It was a small space, and the roof was missing. There were two wooden stools (made to look ancient) and a truly historic hearth, black from centuries of soot. There was a small sign plate pinned to the wall of an artist’s rendition of what the room may have looked like when it was new. They’d made it a bedroom, complete with a sleeping dog on the rug. It was only stone and a wooden floor now, save for the two small chairs. 

Johnny sat in the open one next to you, and you stared out of the window together, surveying your sprawling grounds. A family of rabbits chased each other in a small grove beyond, oblivious to any danger, leaping over each other in the dark under the quilt of stars. You watched their brown, furry forms, hop and jump, running to and fro through the grass, making it whisper as it ruffled against their fur. 

You felt his enormous hand cover yours, his thumb lingering on the shining ring you wore on your left hand, the one he had given you so many months ago. 

“I cannae believe I'm going to marry you, mo mèirleach,” your hulking soldier sighed, kissing your ring and the fingers that held it. 

He turned your hand over to kiss your palm, letting his tongue dart out to lick the spaces he was about to kiss, leaving cool little wet spots on your skin. You grabbed his chin in your hand, catching his attention, and brought his mouth up to yours, making him kiss your lips, letting him suck on your tongue and fill your cheeks with his own, plundering into you, licking you like warm cream. 

You broke away from his kiss with a sigh, resting your face against his, relaxing into his hands as he held you close, clutching you tightly in the small, drafty room. 

“Johnny…” you whispered, warning him and begging him at the same time. 

“Don’t tempt me, lass. I’ll have you right here in this bloody tower if you start makin’ me hungry for you. Sayin’ my name like that…” He whispered to you, rocking his forehead back and forth, nuzzling his face into your neck, letting his breath warm your skin. 

“Maybe we could be very quiet,” you whispered back, giving him a mischievous smile, kissing his cheek reverently. 

“What a naughty wee hen you are. Was this your plan the entire time?” He asked you, shaking his head and grinning like a wolf. 

“Could be…” you laughed, leaning your body into his mouth as he trailed hungry lips down your neck and collarbone, peeling the shoulders of your tank top down your arms, leaving kisses where the fabric lay. 

He stood and lifted you with him, hoisting you up to sit on the wide stone window sill, its panes long gone. His hands dug under the hem of your skirt and followed your thigh up to your warmth, nestled between them, wet and waiting for his appraisal. When his fingers discovered you, he broke his kiss, sighing directly into your mouth with a heavy need. 

Slowly, almost maddeningly so, Johnny sank a long, thick finger into your hole, groaning as he felt how deeply your pleasure had soaked your skin. He began to rub himself, a little absentmindedly, against your calf as he hiked up your skirt a bit more, and you could feel his hard length tenting his kilt, pressing through the pleats. 

“Give me your cock, mo chridhe,” you commanded, darkening your voice and pulling down your tank top to your waist, letting him see your breasts on full display. 

“Want me tha’ bad, hm, bonnie?” He smiled rakishly, teasing you desperate, fucking you languidly with just the one finger, pulling himself out and pressing himself back in without any urgency. 

“Please, John–” you were interrupted by the sound of tires on the gravel near the castle’s entrance. 

Johnny released you, and you bent down together to peer out of the window. You waited, holding your breath, trying to stay out of sight. There was a white sedan making a u-turn in the parking lot, and only after it turned to go back down the hill did you let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, shit,” you laughed, sitting on the floor of the tower room, staring up into the stars in disbelief. 

“You’re the one who wanted to sneak into a wee castle and tease your man half to death. I cannae barely walk with this…” 

You looked over at him as he sat across from you, and you saw that he had pulled his kilt up to his hip to palm his cock underneath it. He was achingly stiff, and you could see the tip shining, leaking under the moonlight. 

“My poor darling,” you cooed at him, a little sarcastically, taunting him by playing with your breasts as you knelt in front of him, “You need me, hm? Should I put you inside?”

You straddled his lap and he fell backward, laying beneath you and letting you ride him however you saw fit. That smart mouth didn’t have anymore comments now. 

You hovered, stroking him with your hand, and he humped himself up into your grip, shamelessly. Smiling down at him, you decided to tease him just as he had done to you on the window sill. You fixed his head at your entrance and sank down just enough to let it pop in and out, not going down any further than that.  

His face contorted into a furious mess of longing and desire, his brow furrowing as he begged,

“C’mon, thief… just a little more. I dinnae think I’ll last much longer if you torture me like this… please…”

“Better be good, Johnny,” you sank down a little further, “Only good boys get rewards.”

He groaned, squeezing your thighs and turning his head away from you, wrenching his eyes shut, trying to keep himself from coming too soon,

“This already feels like a reward, mèirleach.”

“Stay with me, Johnny,” you coaxed him, “Be patient.”

“Fuck…” his eyes rolled white like a shark as he felt you purposefully bear down around him, settling down onto his cock and keeping him in you as deep as he would fit, resting there and feeling him pulse his muscles right back. 

You started to rock back and forth along his length, feeling him slipping in and out of your folds, long enough to penetrate you deeply, using his head to grind against your swollen spot just inside of your walls. You arched your back, staring up at the stars with him, bare to the night sky and all of its glittering constellations. 

Johnny’s hands moved up and held your breasts, plucking at your nipples and making you moan.

“Tha’s it, bonnie. You fuck me so damn good. Cannae believe it.”

He whined as you picked up your pace, holding you around your waist and helping you grind back and forth. 

“Yes, yes, yes,” he hissed through gritted teeth, “Come on me, mèirleach. I wanna feel you.”

“Johnny… fuck, I just… I can’t…”

“You can, lass. I’m so close. Ah… I cannae breathe. You’re gonna make me come in you… so fuckin’ deep.”

You made a noise that caught in your breath as the shimmering crescendo of your orgasm washed over all of your senses, making your head spin with pleasure. You felt yourself go soft over his cock, relaxing into his steep curve, letting him sink even deeper than what you thought your body would allow. 

He felt your core give way, losing its tension, letting him sink further inside, and as he watched you come down from your high, he began to thrust himself into you from below. Johnny held you tightly to his chest, crushing you to him, and he fucked you with powerful, quick bursts, your bodies making pornographic slapping sounds in the deserted castle ruins. 

You heard him coming apart in your ear, and you suddenly felt the urge to kiss him as he whined for you. You slotted your mouth over his, and when you did, it was as if you had given him permission to scream. He cried out into your mouth as he kissed you, letting his screams of pleasure and joy be muffled by your lips and tongue. 

As he came in you, he called out your name, talking to you in your mouth, telling you what a good girl you were, claiming you as his, and only his. His woman. His thief. 

Reblogs and comments deeply appreciated!

AO3 Link

[caesarsaladinn]

Today in “Sal, what the fuck are you talking about?”: the middle Byzantine period.

The period from the mid-ninth century to the late 11th was defined by a resurgence in the empire’s fortunes, as the Abbasid Caliphate weakened and the bloody stalemate on the eastern border yielded to conquest, plunder, and expansion into regions that the empire hadn’t controlled for centuries. Domestic politics responded predictably to this influx of land, wealth, and prestige: the generals who led these conquests became immensely rich, respected, and in some cases powerful enough to make themselves emperor. Byzantium had never had a true hereditary aristocracy—when you died, your titles generally died with you—but these guys came pretty close, as a few dozen intermarried clans came to dominate both military and civilian politics for generations.

Making military leadership into a family business generally went well, as future commanders could begin learning the trade from a young age, instructed by the most experienced leaders in the empire. The downside was that their egos grew along with their conquests, and when they felt they weren’t being treated with the honor due to such a distinguished family, they had all the resources they needed to launch a rebellion against the throne. This happened again, and again, and again, and again; it’s no coincidence that this was the period when surnames became common among the wealthy.

In the palace, this era was defined by the so-called Macedonian Dynasty, a string of emperors and usurpers founded by Basil, a peasant from—you guessed it—the military district of Macedonia. Basil took the throne by becoming the emperor’s confidant and most trusted servant, before quite literally stabbing him in the back.

The next two centuries saw an alternating series of Basil’s descendants and usurpers take the throne, with coups and rebellions too numerous to list here. Basil’s heirs had a tendency to die while their sons were still minors (or to leave no sons at all), leaving a mad scramble for a new man to marry or kill his way into the imperial family. This was also the heyday of the court eunuch, as aristocrats looked for servants who would serve their family without trying to displace them in favor of their own sons; of course, plenty of eunuch did displace emperors in favor of their own friends and family, or else overshadowed them so completely as to become the functional ruler themselves.

Culturally, this period was quintessentially Byzantine. Emperors were very concerned with soft power, so they poured money into anything that would make them seem like the holy sovereign they considered themselves to be—histories, encyclopedias, churches, monasteries, public games, bejeweled reliquaries, and the like. Foreign ambassadors were feted with gold and silk in front of a throne that could rise from the floor until the emperor was looking down at the from the heavens. My favorite piece of writing from this era is the Book of Ceremonies, which spends hundreds of pages detailing the protocol for every imaginable public event, from the order of seating at imperial feasts to the proper weight of cargo loaded onto an army packhorse; it shows how the emperors tried to synthesize the importance of orderly, standardized, professional administration with the need to appear wise, just, and all-powerful to their subjects. It also shows how unbelievably wealthy the government was—very few states, at any point in history, had the time and resources and literal tons of gold to spend on court ceremonies that intricate and impressive!

I’ll spare you the list of emperors, their personalities, and the various schemes and subordinates that put them on the throne; that’s a whole separate post. Suffice to say that I think this is one of the most interesting eras of history, and I encourage everyone to learn more about it.

[ms-scarletwings]

This Single Oversight Will Bring Irken-Kind to Its Knees

I have a little riddle for you.

What does an ant nest, a computer, and the ancient city of Troy have in common?

While you ponder the significance of this question and consider your answer, there’s a few things I want to analyze about the worldbuilding of Invader Zim.

We may have heard it said before, least I have (and agree), that the fate of the IZ universe appears to be a rather bleak picture.

Through our lens of focus, being upon Earth and an oh-so specific nutball waging his battle upon humanity, we often don’t do as much thinking about the larger cosmic war taking place meanwhile. Not between the Meekrob and Tenn, not between the Tallest and every dumb luck threat they are thrown against, but between the Irken Armada and all life in the entire universe, sentient or not.

Their intentions will not be made any more clear, between outright eradication or eventual enslavement of every lifeform they set their sights on. While they have alliances and neutral treaties, those agreements seem few and far between, as well as born from temporary conveniences. The cards have already been dealt, and all available evidence has indicated that every planet they are aware of is doomed from the moment The Massive was operational.

Though littered with inefficiencies and incompetency that could suggest an empire in internal decline, the development of the control brains and other centralized command crutches of the species suggests the Irkens can still keep a well oiled machine running, no matter how many mishaps happen along the way. At least, that machine and their plundered resources will definitely outlast the survival of their enemies, for sure.

To speak of their enemies, there has not been a single competitive race within the show that demonstrates any credible threat to Operation Impending Doom II- only those that can resist the conquest a little bit longer than others, or those who survive by appeasing Irk (or evading its detection). The fall of Vort, which stood as the homeworld of the only aliens with the technological ability to match the armada’s firepower is…. Really bad news. That’s to say the least of comparatively primitive, TINY planets like Earth or Blorch, standing zero chance in the way of what’s eventually coming. This is a war that has continued despite the death of two.. FOUR Almighty Tallests if you follow the movie’s events… and Irkens wholly are still thriving for it across the Galaxy.

So, given all of these facts, and the perception that the Irkens (like any invasive species or colonial force) don’t seem to be a society that will make responsible and/or sustainable use of their ill-gotten territory… it seems like this is how life across the universe ends in Invader Zim one day: Not with a bang, not with the whimper of heat death, but through screams muffled under the bloody boots of a dominant predator- a predator that is, itself, doomed to cannibalize its own once it hits the carrying capacity of all existence.

Bleak, concrete, and horrific as that may sound, there’s still a “however” here to consider!

Yep, that’s me about to point one of my big fat fingers to the sky and protest- Irk just might be,

Not so Undefeatable, after all!

And not only have I figured out exactly what sort of countermeasure you need to destroy these invaders, I have reason to suspect it’s a plan already long ago set into motion.

Let’s break it down,

An Irksome Achilles’ Heel

True, individually, the bug bastards are irritatingly tough to kill through conventional means. True, collectively, they are nigh impossible to outmatch. And more than most anything else, they owe this tenacity to two things: numbers, and R&D. Possessing some of most state of the art pinnacles in transportation, communications, and military equipment, the Armada found a knack for being able to steamroll most lesser planets before it.

The genius of the individual PAK unit grants each and any one Irken a theoretical path to partial immortality itself, by route of consciousness archiving. I strongly believe that kind of cybernetic progress was also one of the stepping stones that led to the creation of the Control Brains. Nonetheless, this very same strength of the Irkens’ has also proven to be the source of their greatest vulnerability.

Paks, Paks… Oh Paks. The entire race’s civilization revolves around such technology the way we do around our own brains, our own hearts, and our communicative network. For all intents and purposes, and as I’ve gone on about ad nauseum in my other spills about the show, a PAK is all and at once

• Synonymous with the holder of their soul, consciousness, being, whatever you want to call their personhood.

• Able to have their data repurposed by future generations, in the result of an Irken’s permanent death.

• A universal necessity shared by the entire population.

• Susceptible to alterations, sometimes by intelligent enough individuals (as demonstrated by the Zimvoid comic arc), but usually by a Control Brain, directly.

In addition to that last quality, there’s another way the code in a PAK can be changed, for better or worse- Via evolution. Though I am talking about digitized neurology, the actual data in a PAK is a lot more comparable to biological DNA or a “self-learning” AI than it is a rigid computer program. By this, I mean that its code is subject to certain changes over time, perhaps both directed and completely random, particularly during the recycling of its information back into the Smeeteries.

And this is actually good design on the control brains’ part, the same way not reproducing Irkens as genetically identical clones was. Genetic and digital diversity are desirable goals to keep in mind if you want a healthy and versatile stock of workers, engineers, soldiers, and everything in between. We’re talking about highly sentient, highly intelligent, and emotional organisms here. A static drone mindset is going to offer them inadequate ability to adapt to their lengthy life experiences or be unique persons. How else would social mobility have purpose in their world? How else could the cream of the crop rise so far above their peers? That positive was deemed worthy of an obvious risk, however: computational errors.

When the Bugs Get Bugs

 IZ does not clearly lay out what it means for an Irken to be defective, but it gives us a general idea. Defectiveness is not something diagnosed from a code scan for this missing value or that incorrect variable. It’s not judged by one specific character trait or quality that’s abnormal for an Irken to display. “Defective” is a judgement stamp, wielded by the Control Brains when they gauge the total sum value of a life’s contribution to the species. And it’s not one given to Irkens which are merely incompetent, no. Anyone proven to be unfit for their standing is given generous opportunity for redemption or simply reassigned a more suitable occupation. If it were based on likability, we’d have seen Skoodge sent to Judgementia years ago.

Rather, it’s given to those who are viewed as so twisted that they are proven to be an existential danger to their brethren. Irkens that are so destructive to the essence of the collective that their memory must be purged from the record and their identity erased.

I adore the enthusiasm behind fans who want to view this as an analogy for disability or neurodivergence against a conformist society, but the metaphor I’m seeing is one of extreme antisocial behavior. A defective Irken screams less “adhd/autism” to me than they do serial murderers (of their own) or outright traitors. Pardon the use of a gross phrase, but it’d seem we were talking about an Irken equivalent of what the outdated gens would have dubbed the “criminally insane”. No one on screen has ever shown Skoodge or Tak the sort of concern that would get them sent to the Spike of Judgement, but when Zim was in that hot seat? NO one was doubting what his verdict would be.

^ courtesy of “The Trial’s” transcript

I think about the 40 shmillion mistakes a lot.

It’s such a vague quantity. But it sure sounds like a hell of a big one. And what mistakes… what did the lil squirt even have to compare them to? There’s no standard one person an Irken can be. Every presentation of the flaws in that code to the control brains hasn’t ended up a flaw to him.

I only started writing this because I really couldn’t stop thinking about the 40 shmillion. There’s no chronological room for bad self-modding to add up to that so quickly.  DNA replication, nature’s own sloppy and random process of creating new life, can be excused around 120,000 hiccups when duplicating with a 6 billion pair-long protein. But this kind of shuffling is under a futuristic AI’s precise eye. Yes, defects happen, but as bad as him? From birth??? How could you possibly get that many detrimental deviations from the mechanical fucking god-queen(s) of their entire homeworld?

And then it hit me.

You don’t. Not from Irk.

The hot take I’ve been charging for this entire time is thus.

Zim is not defective by any random accident. In fact, I smell the tampering of foreign sabotage.

Not only is this guy the thing his kind fears more than any else, they have every right to be shaking in their stance.

That puzzle i posed at the beginning of this journey, have you seen what I’ve seen yet?

Because the answer I was looking for as to what similarity connects an anthill, a PC, and a city from Greek legend was a most effective tactic for taking them down.

Do you know the best way to deal with a bad ant infestation? Cuz you can lay down all the raid and crushing action you want, but you won’t really be getting anywhere unless you target the pests directly at their queen. To that end, liquid ant baits are marvelous inventions- a sweet substance hiding a small amount of slow acting poison. Poison to be peacefully delivered by the stomach of an ant to the rest of her colony, poisoning her kin, who sicken more members, on and on until the queen is destroyed and the entire nest perishes. An insidious toxin to do all the work while its user never lifts a finger, pretty ingenious.

And when it comes to computers, we also have ways to attack entire networks at source, from quietly and far away. “Trojan” was a category of malware responsible for 64.31% of all cyber attacks on Windows systems in 2022, and they still make up a majority of active malware hits today. The concept is deviously simple. The malicious code is hidden within an innocent looking program, maybe even within a legitimate software that does what it’s supposed to. Once the stowaway is invited into the system, it can get down to it some sneaky, nasty, destructive work on your device. As for what those acts could look like, well, malware exists to do all kinds of things. Mostly something involving trying to get money/information from you or hijacking your computer for whatever its creator wants to use it for. And some of them will just up and wreck your shit, disable your antivirus software to open you up to more infections, disable important operations, wipe your data. Use your imagination.

And as for Troy.. well, where do you think Trojan programs got their name? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, Irkens have their Armada, bionic drones, and homeworld- in other words, the thriving swarm of army ants, the billions to trillions of computers they so rely on, and their nigh untouchable fortress, always at war.

And some damn crafty bastard(s) in the stars said

“Here is their sugar-bait,”

“Here is their cyber attack,”

“Here is their wooden horse.”

And one particular race is going to be getting the last laugh before long.

Nerds That Are GOATed With the Sauce

That’s right, I thought about this all the way through to finding our prime suspect. And let me tell you, NO ONE in the Galaxy reeked of fish like the Vortians did. Get over here and lemme show you my whiteboard with all the red circles and polaroids on it.

- The Means

In a way of tragic irony, Vort has contributed more than any else to the same Irken conquest that turned on them in the end. A natural talent for cutting edge engineering and technical development actually does not seem to be what Irk already came into the ring with. For how mighty and superior they view themselves, the greatest achievements of their military can actually be owed to Vortian outsourcing. When we would have gotten a look at Tallest Miyuki’s very own “finest minds” during her reign, notice something interesting about these guys below,

Zim there is the ONLY Irken to be found! Yes, transferred there because of the punchline explanation of ‘he breaks everything he touches so maybe he’ll have an affinity for weapons research’ but damn right he actually did! And still does; I don’t want it to go unsaid that Zim has shown MUCH more technological skill and innovation than near any other Irken we’ve seen.

Another fun thing to note about this is that Lard Nar was also part of this lineup, and in the transcript he was in the process of working on the blueprints for The Massive. (which leaves you with the cursed knowledge that Zim, Prisoner 777, and Lard were all familiar coworkers long before the events of the show) And that brings me back to what I’m saying about the real reason the Vort natives were enslaved and imprisoned instead of outright sweeped after conquering. The Armada needs their skills, because Vortian advancement is something their own scientists couldn’t come close to. Left to their own devices, Vort could have easily outmatched them at an earlier point in history. It’s a people that figured out infinite power sources and potentially wormhole technology, while PAKs were something a disfigured human tween with a lot of time on his hands was able to crack. If anyone could outpace and outsmart the defensive measures of the Control Brains, it’s going to be them. And what better, cleaner way to sabotage the enemy than from within. 

The very same strings of inserted code that cursed Zim with his delusions, paranoia, lust for destruction, and horrible tactics may also have blessed him with a determination and intellect higher than almost any creature alive. The saboteur gave Irk the most powerful racecar in history, and then fitted it with bicycle brakes. No matter how hard Zim tries to conform to what will give him admiration, no matter how competent he is at keeping himself alive, it’s as if he is instinctually compelled toward whatever actions will cause the MOST damage to his allies in the process. Dib may think he’s the bulwark against the invasion when, ironically, he’s fighting against the one being that’s predetermined to be the arrow that strikes Irken leadership right in their dumb, green heels. (There is also an instance in the comics where Dib figures out that Zim is the ace in the hole for total Irken eradication but that’s another fun story.)

Oh, oh HO HO, and that’s only what he’s capable of doing before the empire’s actual immune system against defects like him wakes up and notices!

Three planetary blackouts, two dead generals, and a whole swath of dead invaders was just the fucking warm up, babey! All that is merely the kind of loud disruption that you need in order to fulfil the real thing this Trojan horse exists for in the first place.

What a celebration of hubris the Spike of Judgement was. Yeah, let’s take our method of filtering the corrupted data from the hive mind, and completely centralize it on a single planet! As well, let’s have the very purging agents also be the same ones to perform the evaluations themselves, I’m sure that it would be unthinkable for any outsider to design a worm that could make it through the brains’ firewalls. Goddamn spectacular. Like inserting an infected USB into your laptop, the Tallest never realized what kind of beast they woke up by plugging that PAK into the Spike’s mainframes. Those brains were meant to handle an expected spectrum of deviation when it came to defective Irkens, never a sleeper virus of this complexity.

From here it probably won’t even matter if Zim survives much longer on Earth, his virus has already spread to the very thing relied upon to keep things like him out of the data pool in the first place. With the Judgementia brains corrupted and no higher authority to overrule them, the firewall is effectively broken, and you know what that means? Bigger cracks for future defectives to start trickling through, both spontaneous and artificial. The ideal scenario is one where a degenerating and glitched population accelerates the incompetency of the empire to the point where it just implodes on itself; nevertheless, even a disease that only slows down Operation Doom could be a game changer, by giving the rest of the little guys more time to band together a coalition strong enough to strike back when the time is right.

- The Motive

The history of these two races’ alliance is something I lament us not having more lore to pull from- how far back it goes, what the character of the Vort was like during that time, what the Irkens had offered in return- a few among dozens of questions it rears.  The implication behind how it ended lies in Zim’s creation that slayed Tallest Miyuki. Interestingly, the Empire never received the memo of what exactly went down, or, perhaps, stubbornly denied the account of the other scientists who were there that day. Neither Red/Purple nor the Judgmentia Brains had any idea that Zim’s actions led to the death of a Tallest. So, makes sense that the Vortians became the unintentional scapegoat (no pun intended) for the incident, and the rest is history.

Note: It’s also in the realm of possibility that Vort was actually the one to withdraw from the alliance instead, given that the same blob that devoured Miyuki (purely the fault of their Irken transfer) also went on to cause untold amounts of devastation. Red’s reaction to the real story stuck out to me as more telling, although.

But why am I even talking about this? Zim was decades old before war was declared on them, and either people’s regard to each other seemed strangely… respectful, if anything.

But, was Vort really a monolithic bunch? Irk was already an empire by this point, and diplomacy with those they needed something from did not mean they weren’t otherwise an aggressive force in the universe. For all we know, the alliance itself might have been coerced, or result of depraved leadership among the Vortians.  Any citizen with a conscience who could see the writing on the walls would be disgusted by giving so much aid and brown nosing to such a menace, no? I know who would have seen that writing before anyone else. Brainiacs who are smart enough to build something like The Massive and all its bells and whistles would know better than anyone just what it was all capable of in the wrong hands. The collateral damage against your own people might be a sacrifice worth making in the face of the alternative.

- The Oppurtunity

So.. that’s all well and good, yeah? A why, and a what, yet this is actually the tricky part of saving the galaxy,

Sneaking your StupidifyIrk.exe file onto the assholes’ homeworld without alerting either them or your own treacherous, weak, collaborator superiors to your actions. Infecting and releasing a random Irken alive would be far too dangerous, far too noticeable to the point where they could just be destroyed outright before given a chance to wreak real havoc.

But what about releasing a dead Irken? 🤔

PAKs are only screened for criminal flaws when errors begin to affect their body’s behaviors in destructive ways. A fully competent scientist, or soldier, or navigator performing a lifetime of loyal service to the empire and then meeting an unfortunate end? Their minds’ shadows can be accepted back into the data pool no questions asked. That’s only business as usual.

That almost makes new smeets something of a reincarnation of their ancestors. Personally, I see it kind of like replaying a video game and re-rolling your stats, even if you’re reusing your character’s name and general play style.

Either way, we come full circle to my theory about Zim’s actual origin. Maybe not “our” Zim, but the previous iteration of data that was shuffled to create his person. Whoever they were, I’m convinced that they were also an exceptional individual. They were probably pretty arrogant, but it was a more earned confidence, and they were a prodigy genius, the likes of which that was drawn to work alongside Vortian allies, as another researcher. Then, an untimely demise befell them. I couldn’t say they fell victim to some unfortunate accident, considering the cockroach durability of their body. No, I find it a lot easier to imagine they met their end in one of the more embarrassing ways for an Irken to die- A PAK stolen, disabled or forcefully detached by an assailant they might have allowed a little closer than they should have. To the homeworld, it’s a small matter. One more PAK recovered by the natives of the friendly planet, brought back home to be repurposed by the smeeteries, right?

Well, that’s what one smartass might have been hoping for.

And they really were a clever cookie, because that scheming seed is fruiting beautifully.

[exactlycleverpirate]

Wild Theories About Rafayel

Spoilers under the cut.

So, I've been contemplating how the various deceptions Rafayel has experienced occured and how that connects in his story over all. He or his story references being deceived at least 3 times: in Anecdote 3, in the Myth, and in Your Fragrance.

Anecdote 3:

"The young boy sits alone in the middle of the coral reef, softly humming “Siren's Ballad.” Waves lap the shores, staining it dark red. The color blends almost seamlessly with the bloody setting sun in the distance. Those who deceived him have long since sailed away on their massive ships, laughing all the while. “Siren's Ballad” isn't a song of revenge. It's an elegy sung for Lemuria.”

Myth:

Amund: “I believe in Your Quintessence. Her method of acquiring the heart wasn’t forgotten, was it? If that island sparked the beginning of our demise, then everything should end there. The Lemurians cannot be deceived again!”

MC: “The Lemurian tales I’ve read said the God of the Sea died long ago… I’m sorry, you must refer to it as a “slumber.” How can there still be a God of the Sea?” Rafayel: “Does Your Highness know why he perished? His heart was stolen by humans.”

Your Fragrance:

“It must be an allergic reaction. This isn’t perfume. How dare they use such underhanded methods to trap me…” “Who gave you the perfume?” “Are you trying to run away again?” “I’m not going anywhere. You’re gonna lock me up again… You’re with them, I just know it. Don’t think I’m unaware of what you’re about to do. (MC name), I won’t fall for it again. Not this time.”

They all seem to be connected to you somehow, but not enough so to make him hate you or lose trust in you, as he is still willing to be incredibly vulnerable with you (Ebb and Flow), give up his life for you (Myth chapter 8-9), deeply love you, and want to be with you for the rest of his life.

So my thoughts are that MC has been used as bait against Rafayel in at least 2 lives. There seem to be events that reoccur in their different reincarnations, such as Rafayel meeting MC when they are young/children and vowing to find MC again. He gives her the blue fish, the Emissary of the Ocean, in both current and Myth lives as well.

So going with this idea of reoccurring events, I think on their first life, which I believe was the Island of Songs life, there was likely a vow made as children. But then as adults, I think there were a group of humans (or perhaps just one in particular) who decided to use her as bait to trap the God of the Sea and plunder Lemuria's riches while he was weak. She is unaware of any of this. She is offered to him as a sacrifice (think Bride of Habaek (manhwa)), essentially becomes something like a temple maiden trapped on an island. What she doesn't know is that those who sent her there are using her as a honey trap.

And it works. She and Rafayel fall in love and bind themselves to each other. Now, I haven't decided yet whether I think the humans knew he would go so far as to give her his heart or whether they just got lucky there. But the end result is, Rafayel is trapped when he is weak, Lemuria is plundered, and I believe they then go into hiding in the deep, becoming the stuff of myth and legend.

MC, meanwhile, is seen as the betrayer by the Lemurians, though not necessarily Rafayel, not completely at least. They curse her and turn her into a Sea Witch (Fragrant Dream). But eventually Rafayel finds her and saves her at the cost of his own life.

Now fast-forward to current day Rafayel. He has once again made a vow with her when they were children. And I think he is deceived by the same person/people as before, be they gods, reincarnations or some other immortal. And I think now that they are behind Ever Corp, Onychinus and related organizations. (I also like the idea that Astra from Zayne's Myth is somehow a part of all this.) So, they use MC as a lure, to draw him away from Lemuria, since even as a child, he is their protector. They once again plunder Lemuria, this time nearly wiping it out.

Meanwhile, I think they know MC has a Sea God’s heart, and were experimenting on her to find a way to use it. Hence the Aether core and what not.

Sometime in the far future, they will use what they learn from it to remake Earth into Philos, with a fake core that keeps all humanity immortal, except those sacrificed to it. Eventually, MC's immortal heart is essentially connected to the core like a battery, to drain, die, recharge the core, then be reborn to do it again. Essentially making all human life on Philos leaches off of Rafayel's immortality, draining him as well and eventually condemning him to eternal slumber if he does not reclaim it from her.

What do you think? Wild and crazy? Has some merit? What are your own theories? Let me know in the comments or PM me!

[kitkatscabinet]

Got Prince Kyle x Pirate reader brainrot, courtesy of the discord server (especially @bunnyreaper @perfinn).

Kyle being the only son of the king, lives a spoiled and resplendent lifestyle but feels stifled due to his parent's overprotective nature. Grew up on stories of adventurous explorers, daring escapades and best of all pirates.

Pirates his father grumbles with malice, frothing with rage every time a small portion of his wealth gets plundered. Still, Kyle can't help the way his heart yearns for the adventure, to experience life outside the stifling walls of the castle.

It takes months of planning, listening to gossip on the docks and bribing his way through people until he manages to sneak out of the city. He somehow makes it to Nassau without being discovered, but the moment he stows away on your ship you sniff him out.

Naturally, you recognise him straight away, you've made a habit of memorising individuals who could prove to be prosperous. A prince is certainly one of these people, you could ransom him for a literal fortune, and retire in peace should you choose to.

But there's something in the defiant spark in his eyes, the way he doesn't cower in fear even when the tip of your sword nicks the skin of his neck. He's easy enough on the eyes too and so desperate to prove himself to you.

So you keep him around, keep his secret, show him all kinds of adventures and introduce him to the debauchery of pirate life.

Unfortunately, the fantasy can't last and someone recognises Gaz, the king and queen are distraught, willing to pay thousands in gold to have their 'stolen' son returned.

But Kyle doesn't want to go home so you don't turn him in, you let him live the life of freedom he's so desired by your side. He stays right up until you can't hold off the barrage of people hunting you down any longer.

Kyle gets dragged from your ship screaming and begging for them to spare your life, watching as you kneel bloodied and bruised and on the verge of being executed because of him.

[just-b-wilde]

Five ✘ Lila • Give me your memories

Inspired by a scene from Chapter 11: Was that weird? Thank you very much Bloody Plunder for the art! 🖤

AO3 | Wattpad

Diego wants his wife back and is willing to do anything to get it... What might it look like if Lila and Five forgot their years on the subway? Would Diego have a chance again or would their feelings be stronger even if they didn't remember what happened between them?

[fem-the-artist]

Time for me to actual explain some stuff about my wild magic au

Timmy’s backstory time! normal Elven boy, who no one understands. But one day when his parents leave him alone for an extended period of time, and the eight-year-old boy gets anxious and looks through a spell book to try to summon somebody to keep him company unknowingly sending of invitation to a dark evil (it’s Vicky the dark evil is Vicky )

 Vicky is a special type of evil that needs to be invited in, once she is there’s no getting rid of her. Leading Timmy to be the accidental cause for the death of his family and entire village being burnt to the ground. The boy is mentally and physically scarred (that one watercolor, I did of Timmy being all bloody, staring at Cosmo and Wanda’s cat form. Yeah that’s what happened there.) fae and only taking children who have no other option which is what Cosmo and Wanda did and since there are no other survivors aside from Timmy, it was believed that he made a pact with the Fae, which caused the destruction of his home village, which is why I now as a young adult he’s considered a mysterious evil force that lives in the woods 

The main reason why Vicky is not blamed is because this isn’t her MO when it comes to her wickedness she’s usually not summoned, what she’s known for is having a child (aka tootie) essentially be a mole and worm their way into a village, gaining  trust, and asking the phrase “ can my older sister come to play?” if the unfortunate souls answer yes, depending on whether they’re adults or children

Adults being slaughtered, and having their riches plundered, while children, become forced to work under her command, doing various tasks and labor for her for all of eternity. at best you’ll be promoted to an inviter like tootie but that rarely happens, and when it does tootie usually sabotages the child because she knows that if she gets replaced she’s done for 

[whencyclopedia]

Battle of Cowpens

The Battle of Cowpens (17 January 1781) was a decisive battle in the southern theater of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). It saw a detachment of Continental soldiers and Patriot militia under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeat a British force under Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton. The battle helped lead to the end of British domination in the American South.

Background

On 2 December 1780, Major General Nathanael Greene rode into the American military camp at Charlotte, North Carolina. A 38-year-old Quaker from Rhode Island, Greene had been entrusted by General George Washington to take charge of the remnants of the Southern Department of the Continental Army after its disastrous defeat at the Battle of Camden (16 August 1780). What Greene found at Charlotte was less an army than a rugged gathering of 1,400 disheartened men. The troops were undersupplied, underfed, and lacked clothing. Several men sat huddled around the campfires practically naked, with only rags or blankets to protect them from the elements. Many of the soldiers stirred themselves only to plunder the surrounding countryside for food, and the officers had grown jaded enough not to care. It was a ghastly display of dejection that must have reminded Greene of the state of the main army at Valley Forge three winters before.

It was not hard to see why the army was in such a depressed state. The Americans had suffered nothing but defeat since the British had first invaded the American South in late 1778. Having grown frustrated with their unsatisfactory military campaigns in the North, the British had shifted their focus to the South, which was rumored to be replete with Loyalists as well as the source of much of the United States' commercial wealth. The capture of the South, it was believed, would not only cut the United States in two but also cripple its ability to keep fighting. The British implemented their so-called 'southern strategy' in December 1778 by seizing Savannah, Georgia; the following year, a Franco-American attempt to retake the city failed, and Georgia became the first state to fall back under British control. In May 1780, the British won the Siege of Charleston, taking the largest and most important city in the entire South. Under the command of Lord Charles Cornwallis, the British then set about pacifying the rest of South Carolina. This sparked a bloody regional civil war, as the state's Patriot and Loyalist militias brutalized one another in the South Carolina backcountry. The southern Continental Army, under General Horatio Gates, had tried to retake the state but had been decisively defeated at Camden.

Now, as Greene took over command of the depleted army from Gates, he realized the monumental task that rested upon his shoulders. Should he fail, there would be nothing to prevent Cornwallis from conquering North Carolina and Virginia, completing the British 'southern strategy'. Greene was a cautious commander who pursued a 'Fabian strategy'. That is, he tried to avoid fighting any pitched battle that he was not sure he could win, instead wearing the enemy down through attrition and guerilla fighting, striking only when he spotted vulnerability. The Patriot militias already operating in South Carolina could serve this purpose well; Greene hoped that they could keep the British distracted long enough for him to whip his army into shape and maybe find new recruits. However, he would need someone he could rely on to go down into South Carolina and keep the militias supplied and organized. As it happened, Greene already had just the man in mind.

Continue reading...

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

Permit me a bit of gushing, even though I've said most of this before, in a variety of places. But what is a tumblr blog even for, if not for subjecting you all to this? Anyway, I am just so, so enamoured with Dame Aylin, the way she is written, the way she speaks and acts, and every single trope that makes an appearance with her.

I adore what she's doing to people's vocabularies! Love seeing 'panoply' come up in the context of her armour. 'Libation' is another great fun one popping up, in actual religious ritual contexts, in Shadowheart-getting-drunk-in-camp-again contexts, and sometimes Isobel's, uhm. Yeah. And hey, she has single-handedly brought 'succor' to unprecedented levels of popularity!

Also, I cannot tell you how fun it is to write her! The levels of sheer intensity! The contrasting genuine sweetness and moments of vulnerability! What a gift it is to let loose with some really apeshit vows of bloody vengeance or stuff about cleaving foul villains in twain to rot unburied in dishonour without end, then go into gloriously inspirational and actually quite insightful supportive words reserved for loyal and respected allies, and after that waxing poetic about fair Isobel and her wise countenance and the honeyed indulgence of her lips and the luminous moonlit halo that rests easy upon her blessèd brow-- I love her so much, she is invited into my brain forever, she sparks such pure unadulterated joy. Just this evening I was picking at a fic doc and didn't get much done, but I filled in a bit of banter

"A snivelling coward as always, Balthazar. Were there no spines to be found in any of the tombs you plundered?"

and then sat and had a little giggle with myself.

Anyway. I could happily post bits and pieces of Aylin lines all day (this is only slightly a joke post), there's just so many excellent ones, and ones I feel people often miss, which is a shame. But here, for now, to cap off these rambles, have this bit from the Shadowfell prison that just goes so hard and that I am particularly personally fond of for some reason. The phrasing is just... chef's kiss.

Know I will feel every wound, and still I will hurt less than you, who so utterly yourself defile.

On a more humorous note, I am also a big fan of when she calls you a chicken.

Run your coop all you like, chicken. You cannot fly without my wings.