#Dolmen Gate

[altamontpt]

Massacre Metal Fest || Á-dos-Loucos: Metal up your ears!

Estamos no ano 4 depois de Corona. Todo o Planeta está ocupado por festivais mainstream patrocinados por megamarcas … Todo? Não! Várias aldeias povoadas por irredutíveis melómanos resistem ainda e sempre ao invasor. Felizmente, Á-dos-Loucos é mais uma delas e recebeu, pela oitava vez, o Massacre Metal Fest, organizado pela banda Speedemon e pela UDCA Adoslouquense.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Estamos no ano 4 depois de Corona. Todo o Planeta está ocupado por festivais mainstream patrocinados por megamarcas … Todo? Não! Várias aldeias povoadas por irredutíveis melómanos resistem ainda e sempre ao invasor. Felizmente, Á-dos-Loucos é mais uma delas e recebeu, pela oitava vez, o Massacre Metal Fest, organizado pela banda Speedemon e pela UDCA…

[dawns-beauty]

Favorite LE mods?! :D

Ooo good question! I will try to answer with stuff that hasn't been ported/supported for SSE that I miss:

I really like Dark Forests of Skyrim. It got a port, but it just doesn't have much support for SSE, or I would still be using it. My favorite parts were the addition of giant mushrooms to the Eastmarch hot springs area and birch trees with crimson leaves in a few snowy areas (maybe unrealistic, but very striking.)

I also love Freckle Mania 2. Just some solid freckles there!

Gifts of the Outsider - Dishonored in Skyrim is near and dear to me too. Nothing like summoning a swarm of rats to devour your enemies while you Blink away lol.

Natural Lighting Vivid Atmospherics - man, I miss this one. It took me forever to find one for SSE that I liked as much as it

OrinLinwe's houses have a special place in my heart: their clutter game is immaculate, and a big inspiration for Khajiit Has Wares

Solstheim for the Dunmer - one of my first big modding projects was patching this mod and Quaint Ravenrock for an über Dunmeri experience. I should redo that sometime...

Thengil Farms Remastered - simply adds some sensible variety to some of Skyrim's farms

More Draconic Aspect + Real Flying - janky, but such a cool idea that Draconic Aspect grants yoy wings and flight

Sneak Tools - also janky, but such a cool upgrade to your rogue's toolkit

[nobrashfestivity]

Unknown, polygonal stone and upright triangular stone, Cornwall, 3000 to 2001 BC

Large perforated stones standing upright; left one locally known as "Menetol", polygonal in form, pierced by circular hole sculpted through center; right one known as "Tolven", similarly pierced; b) drawing showing outlines of stones and perforations at "centers.Giedion observes that the perforations appear to have been shaped by sculpting from both sides as in countersinking so that the center of the hole is also the center of the stone. He writes that these megaliths are believed to have possessed magic properties of healing and rebirth. As ritual objects it is thought that they may have been early sacrificial stones or altars. According to Neumann, the feminine symbol of the dolmen and gate is always connected with rebirth through the woman's womb, thus the act of passing through signifies a journey to renewal. Giedion states that within memory Menetol has been used for curing infirm children by passing them through the aperture and for healing lame people by lifting them sunward through Menetol's ring. According to Levy the anointing and circumambulation of monolithic stones has been practiced until recent times. this leads to the belief that they were endowed with sacred meaning from earliest times, when the setting up of a stone for the habitation of a spirit, as a place kept sacred to him, to which be could be summoned by rites, was practiced. Layard Cn writes that the rough-worked stone, or the stone "cut out without hands" of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, carries with it the meaning of the immanence of the spirit which fills the whole earth like a great mountain. Stones carry within them the spirit of the living men who erect them and their contact with the earth kept them within holy ground. [- - Levy.]

[thepythakorean]

parallels between the boy and the heron and this painting, plus general analysis

Arnold Bocklin, Island of the Dead. 1880

i want to preface this by saying i am by no means an art history nerd, i just happen to know some stuff about the background of this painting in particular.

as soon as mahito is sucked into the tower floor he is standing at the shore of an island surrounded by an endless ocean. he is dwarfed by a large set of golden gates that say something like "those who seek my knowledge shall perish" and an even taller forest of cypress trees. these features all frame a white dolmen (primitive tomb usually made of giant rocks stacked like below) that beckons to him.

this scene immediately struck me since it has so many of the visual elements of the painting. mahito is even framed in the foreground to be so very small approaching these giant, daunting structures just like the boat heading for the island in the painting. besides the tombs, the cypress trees are also traditionally associated with mourning and death at least in europe/the mediterranean. other ghibli movies have lavish european aesthetics tied to characters (howl, yubaba, etc.) but it feels particularly intimate here given that mahito's great granduncle, the creator and ruler of this world, is apparently european and can only pass on his role to a direct descendant. (btw not saying the gaudy european decor signature of howl and yubaba aren't important to their characterization, it def is! i'm just saying it stood out to me in this movie especially.) the cliffs full of stone entrance passageways are prominent later in the movie as himi takes mahito through the parakeet's domain, and interestingly, in the delivery room where natsuko is, there is another dolmen behind her (can't find pics since the movie hasn't been uploaded yet urgh).

the backstory to the painting continues to parallel to the events of the story! so there's 5 versions of this painting. the first three versions were painted in a cemetery close to bocklin's residence which was also full of white headstones and sculptures, and cypress trees. one of his infant children, one of many children he lost, was buried there. the one i posted above is the first/second-- while bocklin was working on the first, a the soon-to-be wife of a politician visited his studio, saw the wip, and commissioned her own version with the added white figure and coffin to commemorate her first husband who had just died of diphtheria. already somewhat similar to how mahito's mother died in the hospital fire (well. she died from the fire but presumably she was there because she was sick) and when his father shortly remarried. these were also added to the initial wip and stuck in later versions of the painting. bocklin later wrote to her, "you will be able to dream yourself into the world of dark shadows". the movie is also very dreamlike-- it's a fantasy world filled with strange creatures, alternate versions of people he knows, and passages that seem to alter the fabric of time and space. people also seem to forget about it as soon as they leave even after spending long periods of time in it like a dream. the painting is also very dreamlike, but why? the warm lighting, maybe not in the version i posted but in a couple others, may explain it, but the island itself resembles the curtains and stage of a theater (referencing the audio clip below the description). even if it doesn't look EXACTLY like that to you, it's definitely a too-perfect little scene in a nebulous expanse of space. this theatrical quality is also shown in the movie by the parakeet uprising side plot as well as the scene when himi and mahito collapse in front of the delivery room-- the curtain falls directly in front of the viewer over them as though a stageplay just ended. oh and a friend mentioned to me how this is a classic hero's journey plot and mirrors orpheus in the underworld. island of the dead has also directly inspired NUMEROUS other works of art, including other paintings, stage productions, and symphonic poems. apparently the painting was so popular many people in berlin hung prints of it in their homes (i do too)! as i stated above though, a lot of the visual elements in the painting were already traditional symbols relating to death so i don't want to 100% conclude that miyazaki was directly inspired by this painting, he may have just also resonated with those symbols independent of bocklin which i still think is awesome.

the first time we see himi also reminded me of the painting. she's wearing a white dress and standing at the bow of a small wooden boat, and though her intentions are to save the warawara from the pelicans, she inevitably kills some of them too. visually and thematically she's like the white figure at the front of the rowboat in the painting. she acts as a guide for mahito (analogous to the rower? he traveled to this world of his own volition but needed a guide) for a good part of the movie and is a collage of life and death. she is a younger but kind of omniscient version of his dead mother; she's known all along she is mahito's mother but is about to be born into the world by the end of the movie and accepts her fate happily. she can control fire which envelops her like how she died in the real world, but is harmless to the touch unless she directs it as a weapon, and as we see with the warawara and pelicans it helps creation but also destroys much like fire's role in the natural world. natsuko, though a separate person from himi, is still connected as a sibling, and we see her wandering into the forest at the beginning of the movie while wearing white like himi, back turned to mahito, and that is what prompts him to first enter the tower. the strange nature of her character that doesn't adhere to a proper time or space parallels the way the white figure completely stands out in the painting, at least the ones with darker lighting. another crazy parallel surrounding fire and wwii between the painting and the movie is that the fourth version of this painting was destroyed during wwii due to bombing, again like how mahito's mother's hospital was presumably set on fire by bombing during the war.

the looming effects of war alluded to throughout the movie eventually tie into its resolution, when mahito accepts his new family that he initially rejected, his own imperfect being, and the fact that one must seek out love to be happy in this bitch of a world. his great granduncle is confused as to why mahito wouldn't want to recreate his own world like him. why would you want to return to the world that killed your mother and rejects you as a person? the world that forces your people to die in war and will eventually drop the deadliest weapon mankind has ever seen even a century from now onto your home? you can make everything perfect here! he's created something of a "paradise" himself, full of lush tropical plants, parakeets, and strange insects (some of them looked like the bugs from nausicaa, another fantastical world of lush nature which is also threatened by war. interesting), almost like a garden of eden, and it so happens to be at the very top of the tower. funnily enough, bocklin also painted this several years later:

Arnold Bocklin, Island of Life. 1888

i don't know much about this one so idk if it's an explicit companion piece to the island of the dead but it certainly looks like it. the similarities are now less apparent to the movie if there are any, it's much less lush but there are exotic plants and uh birds and stuff. this is definitely more likely a case of shared inspiration from the symbols themselves rather than movie directly looking at the painting. anyway clearly the promise of a perfect paradise isn't real, as this is interrupted by a war of his own unwitting creation, the uprising of the parakeets he wanted to breed in a paradise that literally bring about the end of the world. no world will ever be perfect when left long enough to its own devices. life finds a way! plus, this world was created through so much death (the construction workers in hazardous conditions, the way the tower keeps spiriting people away. btw in the english sub mahito's dad calls the whole ordeal a "disappearance" but he says "kamikakushi" in japanese which means "hidden by god" in reference to people who mysteriously disappeared as if from supernatural circumstances and yes that's the word they used in the japanese title of spirited away!!!) and is on the verge of collapsing from reality every three days just because of some building blocks?? the real world may be on fire but it'll go out/burn less badly someday, and at least it won't completely disappear in a snap, not in an easily imagined timescale for a human anyway. it's up to you to make the best of it, and this is what mahito decides. there are also visual allusions to other ghibli movies about the constantly present threat or consequences of war. the only other landmark aside from the island mahito lands on is a line of ships which kiriko later tells him are all fake. it immediately reminded me of the stream of planes in porco rosso which were the souls of dead fighter pilots moving on. the shadow people in the swamp were also reminiscent of those in the train in spirited away, which are never explained to my knowledge but the given that spirited away's characters are largely spirits and the way souls are so similarly designed in this movie makes me feel that they were also souls of people in spirited away.

through this imagined otherworld, there is also the blurring of lines between life and death, reality and imagination. himi plus her dyad with natsuko (they're sisters AND they look exactly the same AND both are mother figures to mahito) are great examples of this. mahito's mother is gone, he knew this and set foot into the world anyway. he rejected natsuko as his new mother but in going through the struggles of the tower he comes to accept familial love for her and even keeps confusing "natsuko" and "mom" while reaching out to her in the delivery room. a family is made up of different people but inevitably you will see each other in each person. in the delivery room scene we see the paper hanging from the ceiling lash out to attack and stick to mahito like tape, it even leaves red marks on him. this is one of the best scenes in the movie to me because of its visual contrast to him rushing to save his mother in the fire. in the fire scene, the real world around him is blurred and distorted and at times so is mahito and especially his mother. the fire doesn't seem to burn him or his clothes (i could be remembering that wrong tho) and the scene cuts off before it shows him possibly going in further. in the delivery room, everything is drawn with clean lineart, no stylization. there is no mistaking the reality of this situation even though this world is conjured, the dawning realization upon mahito that this person is his mother is so visceral that he actively fights through the paper literally snapping its jaws and natsuko spitting her hatred towards him. when mahito is ready to leave the tower, himi leaves through a separate door to be born as his mother sometime in the past though she is not a warawara and knows what has happened/will happen, an exception that further demonstrates the nonlinear nature of time and space in the movie.

after coming out of the tower, the heron tells mahito he should forget everything that happened in there. even his grandmother seemed to have forgotten the whole year she spent in there (it seems like tower time reflects irl time judging by the events of the movie). anything that comes out doesn't just disappear, it transforms into a real-life counterpart as we saw with the pelicans leaving as they were (presumably minus the ability to speak) and the parakeets going from big bloodthirsty things to regular parakeets. so mahito can't just forget, especially because he comes out changed from his experiences in there, not just himself personally but also his changed relationships with natsuko and the heron, and also his little souvenirs. then the movie abruptly ends with mahito narrating that they left for tokyo again shortly after the war ended. i like to think that this was a hopeful ending where mahito maintained that character development and was able to welcome natsuko and his new sibling into his family while being able to seek more friends and family in the future. i've seen other analyses talking about how this movie was semi-autobiographical for miyazaki and i can see it, how events early in his life shaped his personality and how he had to fight to find beauty in a world that otherwise treated him poorly, so i'm glad he ended the movie on that note, although in less words. pretty similar to how spirited away ended, although there was arguably more loss involved, but still hopeful, and that's what i find so powerful about this movie. and like this movie, spirited away involves a dyad between yubaba and zeniba as a device for the hardships and beauty of life, how they're not so discreet at times. as a last kindasorta tie-in to bocklin's work, i'll point again to the island of life which was created after the island of the dead, plus a composition directly inspired by the island of the dead, a symphonic poem with the same title written by sergei rachmaninoff. the last time i listened to this was in high school and it's like. 20 minutes long so i'm too impatient to give it a relisten now but from my vague recollection plus some quick searches it's a very somber piece that escalates into emotional climaxes yet still contains warmer tones, and goes back to the same "rowing" motif at the end. it weaves together evocations of life and death in one piece, also illustrating how the two really are so closely connected.

tl;dr, this was me the entire movie because miyazaki SEEMS to be heavily inspired by this one symbolist painting i happen to like a lot:

also also here's a self portrait of bocklin:

yes, all of his paintings are that cool.

[skunts-own-truth]

My buddy, Nick, the one who’s been reading the Horus Heresy all the way through for the very first time, has gotten so into it he made his own Ultramarine OC- that’s not news. What is news is that he wanted to write Fanfic so bad! He’s never written fic before, so me and D are now doing a PbP of Wrath & Glory where he can play his Ultramarine and get more used to writing. :)

Ain’t that great? Nick’s OC is an Assault Intercessor, D’s playing a White Scar Techmarine, and there is a Salamander Apothecary NPC in their Deathwatch Kill-Team. They’re currently in the Pariah Nexus trying to fuck up a Dolmen Gate on a mining world that’s being evacuated while Necrons do what they do.

They just drove some bikes up on a group of warriors and a Cryptek and had a blast blowing them to bits. Wrath & Glory is just so damn fun, y’all. I love the slow investigative games like Dark Heresy and Imperium Maledictum, but sometimes it’s just great to ride up and blow apart a Cryptek with an Attack Bike’s Heavy Bolter. Good for them, and yay for Nick for wanting to get into writing!

[adleryoung]

As we entered the dolmen, it occurred to me that I should probably warn Zandar what was about to happen. She had, as far as I knew, never been to Faerie before. That was the reason I had tweaked the Gate (using my hard-earned mastery of it) to send us into the magickal scry-space instead of into the base of the tower. Couldn't have a potentially dangerous Changeling running loose until I had assessed the risk!

Did I forget to mention that? Well, it was something I did as part of my preparations. But to get back to the story…

"Nothing from that world may pass this portal," I warned her, an instant before all of her clothing disappeared. I turned to look, and saw that Zandar was very upset. I needed to let her know that I didn't do it on purpose! It wasn't a cheap trick just to see her naked, like Estvan would have pulled! "Oh my!" I exclaimed, in what I hoped was a convincing tone of surprise and regret. I also tried to make a face which indicated that, although this is not what I wanted to happen, I did still appreciate her beauty.

She was quite beautiful. I gazed a little longer, just to make my point (and to steady myself, since turning around had made my head spin.)

"BASTARD!!!" Zandar shrieked. "You made them put those horrible clothes on me!" She took a swing at me with some blunt object in her hand.

I blocked her attack easily, almost reflexively, thanks to Adoyret Sam's training. One concussion was enough for today! I had to admit to myself though, that this meeting was not going well. "Tut tut, temper, my sweet," I clucked in a soothing and reassuring tone.

Hold on a second; an object in her hand?? I had to keep reminding myself not to underestimate this femme! "What's this you've got?" I asked, peering at the item she had smuggled in. "No, this shouldn't have come through."

I took it from her and turned around to examine it in a better light. It was smooth and cold, fairly lightweight. What was it? "Ooh, no way! It's a.. That's.. WOW!" I muttered as I turned it around in my hands. In the state I was in, it took me more than a few seconds to recognize the item as a glass bottle.

"GIVE IT BACK!" Zandar yelled behind me.

I was raptly examining the bottle. How had it gotten through the Gate? Holy Fuma! Through my brain haze I could see some EXTREMELY dark magicks attached to this thing! What in the Netherhells had Zandar been doing?? "You must have been very VERY naughty to have gotten this, my sweet," I declared. "I'm somewhat impressed, though- OW!"

WHACK! She hit me in the back of the head! Why are femmes so quick to resort to violence? It was all I could do to keep from crying out in agony and falling over. I struggled to maintain my composure as the pain in my head rattled around like broken glass and rusty nails inside my skull.

"Okay, here… Jeez," I grumbled, holding the bottle out in the general direction of the five Zandars I could see, hoping that one of them would take it and be satisfied. "I guess that explains how it was that you managed to survive." I was disappointed to note that I had probably been giving her too much credit when I thought she had mastered preservation magic.

"Why did you bring me here?" Zandar demanded.

"Heh heh," I chuckled, changing tactics. If trying to soothe her with a calm and fatherly demeanor didn't work, then I would have to resort to Wiles. "Come closer and ask again."

"What do you want from me?" she asked, stepping closer.

I chuckled merrily so as not to seem creepy. It was working! She wasn't trying to hit me again! Her lack of murderousness meant she was primed for the coup de grace! I grasped her shoulders, cast a charming glamer over myself, and gave her a Smoldering Look.

"Oh Zandar, you and I are going to shake the pillars of the earth and set the halls of heaven ablaze," I breathed huskily. Pretty good stuff, just off the top of my head! She was surely becoming completely smitten!

"Um… We are?" she replied, in a way that revealed the true extent to which she remained unsmitten.

She seemed to have a high Wiles resistance. I would have to increase the dosage! I reminded myself that I wasn't dealing with Angela Weakflit here. It was time to take the gloves off! I leaned in close and gazed into her eyes. That's when I noticed… What WAS that on her forehead? It was hard to tell through my watery, blurred vision, but it looked like - IT COULDN'T BE - she was growing a third eye!!!

"GREAT FUMA'S WHISKERS!" I exclaimed as I backed away in horror and shielded my mouth so it couldn't suck out my soul. "Answer me plainly, woman, and do not dissemble- What in all the nine Netherhells is THAT?"

"Tis the mark of my sin," she answered glumly.

"I can see that already!" I hissed. What misbegotten demon-pacts had she made to turn her into such a freak of nature?? "FURTHER DETAILS!"

"Made with a silver dagger."

So it wasn't a third eye after all, but just a scar. Still, that was really bad! "HELSBEGONDI!" I gasped, horrified and dizzy. "By whom?"

"By one whom I had wronged."

What did that mean? Did someone try to murder her? Was that why she was late? Was there some deranged elf-hating serial killer going around tracking down and slaughtering Changelings?! I would need to warn Rebecca!

"What stupid, what knave, what miserable doomed cur would dare to do such a thing to you?" I bellowed, in spite of a headache that threatened to split my skull in half. "To one of US?"

I paused to catch my breath, and it suddenly sank in. Someone she had wronged? "Wait. You did what?"

I am well aware that this part of the story has already been told - and although the published version does not present me in a very flattering light, I cannot deny that it is an accurate record of events as they happened. Rather than rehash what you already know, how about you ask me questions and I'll fill in the missing parts.

[jones-friend]

Thop Thop fucker

I wanted to make a quick and fun post about one of my favorite commanders: Sai. Sai gives you a thopter on artifact cast with a sac for cards effect. Its a quick and neat 3 drop with fantastic early game potential and its one of my alltime favorite builds!

Essentially the plan is to make a lot of thopters then make them hurt. The key is playing Sai before any artifact ramp. Usually you play Sai T3, T4 you’re playing 2-3 mana rocks that make 2-3 thopters, then using those to play heavier support to make those thopters hurt.

Because you’re running so many small drop artifacts drawing cards is hugely important for this deck.

Recon Mission is the basic tech, as with bident of thassa, giving you a draw per thopter that connects. As early game fliers they have a huge edge. Kindred Discovery is a fantastic card that when thopters are named all your artifacts cantrip and thopters draw by attacking, no longer needing to connect. Crafter lets you draw off your swings bc they’re all tokens and gives you no max hand size. Spellbook is also good tech for the build as a 0 drop artifact to give you a thopter and let you hold more artifacts in hand to play later.

There are a delightful number of ways to make your thopters HURT. Throne causes loss of life for having attacked and can start taking chunks out of the table. Master of Etherium is a beefy blocker and like all three in this category spawns a thopter, in this case a 2/2 thopter. Then Forsaken Monument can get nuts in this build, bumping thopters to 3/3’s, giving lifegain, and letting you get extra mana from colorless ramp you’ll be using. The Immortal Sun is another great add here, letting you draw extra cards, play artifacts faster, AND buffs your thopters.

There’s also a number of cool tricks you can do exclusively around how Sai works. Crashing Drawbridge spawns a thopter and gives haste to the field so newly spawned thopters can come out swinging which is a huge advantage in this deck. Forebear’s Blade feeds into Sai’s artifact sac. Often you can sac blocked thopters to draw cards (a Dolmen Gate is huge for this build). If you sac the equipped thopter you can move forebear’s blade to an unblocked OR blocked thopter as a combat trick. Lastly rebuild lifts all your artifacts to hand. If your thopter army got wiped you can retract all your mana rocks and support to play again and rebuild your field in a snap.

Theres so many more good cards for the build I could go on forever. I’ll post my own list later, but the key behind Sai is to drop early game fliers and make them a problem fast. Every artifact drops a 1/1 thopter with flying and you can make the game a nightmare with just enough pressure, easily one of my favorite decks to play.

[chloristoflora]

"Every Hold, Finadd. Chaos. I have witnessed a transformation. Here, see for yourself. The tile of the Fulcra, the Dolmen. Do you see? A figure huddled at its base. Bound to the menhir with chains. All obscured by smoke, a smoke that numbs my mind. The Dolmen has been usurped."

Brys stared down at the tile. The figure was ghostly, and his vision blurred the longer he stared at it. "By whom?"

"A stranger. An outsider."

"A god?"

Kuru Qan massaged his lined brow with his fingers as he continued pacing. "Yes. No. We hold no value in the notion of gods. Upstarts who are as nothing compared to the Holds. Most of them aren't even real, simply projections of a people's desires, hopes. Fears. Of course," he added, "sometimes that's all that's needed."

"What do you mean?"

Kuru Qan shook his head. "And the Azath Hold, this troubles me greatly. The centre tile, the Heartstone, can you sense it? The Azath Heartstone, my friend, has died. The other tiles clustered together around it, at the end, drawing tight as blood gathers in a wounded body. The Tomb is breached. Portal stands unguarded. You must make a journey for me to the square tower, Finadd. And go armed."

"What am I to look for?"

"Anything untoward. Broken ground. But be careful – the dwellers within those tombs are not dead."

"Very well." Brys scanned the nearest tiles. "Is there more?"

Kuru Qan halted, brows lifting. "More? Dragon Hold has awakened. Wyval. Blood-Drinker. Gate. Consort. Among the Fulcra, the Errant is now positioned in the centre of things. The Pack draws nearer, and Shapefinder has become a chimera. Ice Hold's Huntress walks frozen paths. Child and Seed stir to life. The Empty Hold – you can well see – has become obscured. Every tile. A shadow stands behind the Empty Throne. And look, Saviour and Betrayer, they have coalesced. They are one and the same. How is this possible? Wanderer, Mistress, Watcher and Walker, all hidden, blurred by mysterious motion. I am frightened, Finadd."

Midnight Tides, by Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen #5)

[mothmiso]

Lieux de l'Ardèche (2) (3) (4) by Isabelle Blanchemain

Via Flickr:

(1) A une heure proche du coucher du soleil, surgissent à l'horizon, les portes des Gorges de l'Ardèche. At an hour close to sunset, the gates of the Gorges de l'Ardèche appear on the horizon. (2) Un des nombreux dolmens du Sud de l'Ardèche. One of the many dolmens in southern Ardèche. (3) Jazz la Maine Coon. (4) Le jardin minéral, sous de sombres nuages de fin de journée. The mineral garden, under dark clouds at the end of the day.     

[bitchwhoreofastorm]

karnalta!

The Cheydinhal house had been nice-- charming stone walls, shiny dark-wood floors, windows with clear glass in them, a couple of meticulous little flower-gardens in the front, and, most delightfully, a neighbor who baked wickwheat bread every morning, filling the streets with a delicious homey aroma. The Cheydinhal house had been so nice, in fact, that Karnalta had momentarily considered not putting a dolmen outside the city gates. Maybe she could settle down here, she thought; maybe she'd find work as an apothecary and make herself a cozy little cottage and spend the rest of her days nursing her broken heart.

Alas, she had a job to do, and so after three months of residency in the Cheydinhal house she'd concluded her survey on inter-planary hypthofaults and abandoned her charming little rental to its daedra-wrought fate.

Karnalta wondered, sometimes, what a committed home decorator would make of Coldharbour. Her room in Mannimarco's palace was all dank stone and raw sewage-- ectoplasmic blues on moldy grey, white flame lighting in black wrought-steel sconces. Fine wooden furniture would rot swiftly, rugs would take to damp and flood, and any lamps would only illuminate flecks of gore stuck into corners, or catch the miasma of tortured souls flickering around her soul-gem torches. And yet-- it was hard not to wonder, sometimes, what furniture would improve this place. A tapestry? A colorful quilt? A large mirror, to catch the ghastly light?

Her next mission was Chorrol. As her abode she rented an old woman's basement. The space had once been a weavers' workshop, still littered with old yarn, still stinking of homemade dye. There were no windows, and every spare wall hosted a loom of some sort, all still warped and hosting half-woven blankets in garish colours. The only light came from whatever Karnalta cast herself.

"Do you weave?" the old woman had asked on their first meeting. It was a near-offensive courtesy; only moments before asking, the woman had struggled to shake Karnalta's scarred and deformed hand. Nonetheless, Karnalta had answered amicably-- sure. The room was cheap, and after Cheydinhal, she'd had enough of niceness. She'd only wanted something tolerable while she consigned a town to ruin. Of all tolerable situations, an old lady's insensitivity was hardly worth her notice.

Nonetheless, in her first evening after Coldharbour, when she settled down to sleep not in a moldy mattress but on a soft bed of scrap fabric and hay-- Karnalta wondered. She wondered about the lover who had betrayed her, and the packed-earthed basement walls, and whether the pile of fraying woolen balls in the corner would look better as herring-bone or tartan. She wondered if she would ever find happiness. She wondered what happiness was.

Finally she sat up, conjured a scamp, pressed a shuttle into its paw, and used her useless hands to direct it towards a loom.

[horademagic]

Portão Dólmen/ Dolmen Gate

Artefato de Prevenção

Custo de mana: 2 incolores e/ou de quaisquer cores

Por que ela é interessante? Com esse artefato em campo você irá prevenir todo o dano de combate que seria causado às criaturas atacantes que você controlar. Pense que você ataca livremente sem nenhum medo envolvido.

Preço da carta: em torno de 33,00 até 90,00

Disponível em Português

"Essa carta tem algumas edições disponíveis, o preço pode variar a depender da edição que escolher adquirir"

Link: https://www.ligamagic.com.br/?view=cards%2Fsearch&card=Dolmen+gate&tipo=1

Até a próxima postagem, Ulli e Thiago

[dawns-beauty]

hey! what would you say are your favorite small, atmospheric mods (like immersion-category stuff)?

This post might interest you: it has a lot of atmospheric mods, though some are big. I especially recommend Ghosts of the Deathbells, Windmills of Skyrim, and Scarecrows of Skyrim :)

This is kind of basic, but I really like animation variants/addons for NPCs. Stuff like EVG Animation Variance and all of CHIMgarden's mods just really add that extra little bit of personality Skyrim's NPCs desperately need

FrankBlack has been doing some cool work with Base Object Swapper to introduce more variety into the game.

Clofas' sound mods are really cool and immersive

Flying Crows

Evil Dead Trees - Dying Trees in Evil Places

Supreme Fog for Morthal Region

Skyrim Battle Aftermath

Dark Anchors Ruins and Dolmens

Oblivion Gates

While not a small mod by ANY means... Oh my gosh, I just installed Seasons of Skyrim and man does that do it for immersion over a longer playthrough!

[ricmlm]

Dolmen Gate - Gateways Of Eternity (2024)

[musicshooterspt]

Massacre Metal Fest é já no dia 4 de Maio!

O Massacre Metal Fest está de regresso para a sua 8º edição já este sábado, 4 de Maio.

Com vários nomes de peso na cena nacional, não vão querer perder esta edição!

Para quem ainda não conhece, o Massacre Metal Fest é um festival de heavy metal organizado pela banda SPEEDEMON e pela UDCA “ OS Adoslouquenses” uma Associação Cultural e Desportiva de À dos Loucos, Freguesia do Concelho de Vila Franca de Xira.

O cartaz desta edição conta com: Holocausto Canibal, Toxikull, Fili Nigrantium Infernaliumm, Warout, Nagasaki Sunrise, Speedemon, Dolmen Gate e Legacy of Payne.

Nós vamos lá estar, e tu?

Deixamos os horários para não perderes nenhum concerto:

Bilhete: 16 massacres

Promo-pack, Bilhete+T-shirt: 27 massacres

Reserva de packs através do Facebook ou e-mail.

Todas as informações atualizadas nas redes sociais do Festival.

[adleryoung]

Time passed.

I got pretty good at controlling the time slip around the Gate.

I became an expert on the decay rate of dandelions.

I named butterflies and raced them around the stone circle.

I bathed periodically.

I ate stew made from acorns, insects, and various weeds that grew nearby in the forest.

Occasionally the trees would relay messages from Lana, but they were usually badly garbled. I gathered that some of my Ixies were still alive, but were unable to penetrate the barrier that the rabbits had set up. They conveyed information about Zandar and about the activities of The Sisterhood, which the trees then repeated to me. Little of it made sense.

Mostly I waited.

I was counting clovers in the clearing, and looking for a four-leafed one, when I heard something large crashing through the underbrush. The trees confirmed that it was neither bear nor deer nor horse nor hobgoblin.

It was headed this way.

I ducked into the shadow of the dolmen and listened as voices began to cut through the racket the creature was making as it stumbled through the bushes.

"Mister Barkingthwaite!" the voice exclaimed. "How can one expect to achieve enlightenment without faith?"

"How can one achieve it by being gullible and chasing after every shadow?" another voice answered.

"It is not gullibility to take each claim seriously and investigate it on its own merits," the first voice protested. "That is the only way to establish truth."

"I thought it was enlightenment we sought," the second voice countered. "Now you're talking of truth?"

"Oh you infuriating man," the first voice groaned. "Truth is but a step toward enlightenment. If you don't believe any of this, then why ever did you come along?"

"What, and leave a lady to face the perils of these woods alone?"

"MISTER Barkingthwaite!" the first voice snapped. "Those outmoded attitudes are certainly one of the things our Society seeks to eradicate. I am perfectly capable of fending for myself."

"By Jove," the second voice declared as they reached the edge of the clearing. "There actually IS a ring of ancient stones here!"

"Precisely as le Gobelet described it," the first voice answered haughtily.