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walaw717 · 4 years ago

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Single trees are extraordinary; trees in number more remarkable still. To walk in a wood is to find fault with Socrates’s declaration that ‘Trees and open country cannot teach me anything, whereas men in town do.’ Time is kept and curated and in different ways by trees, and so it is experienced in different ways when one is among them. This discretion of trees, and their patience, are both affecting. It is beyond our capacity to comprehend that the American hardwood forest waited seventy million years for people to come and live in it, though the effort of comprehension is itself worthwhile. It is valuable and disturbing to know that grand oak trees can take three hundred years to grow, three hundred years to live, and three hundred years to die. Such knowledge, thoughtfully considered, changes the grain of the mind. - Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot Recently we drove to Couer d’Alene. North of town, I saw a strikingly handsome building set in a grove of old-growth trees. It was not a natural landscape, but when the building was constructed, the developer had left some ancient Douglas fir and ponderosa pine and created the impression of a long solidity in the landscape for his construction. It is rare for a builder to go to such trouble because it is simpler and more economical to clear a lot and build than to build around trees and other natural landscape elements. As we sat at the traffic light and I studied the property with its balance of trees, the stone and woodwork of the building, I wondered how the trees had experienced this construction and the loss of so many other trees in that particular stand. Two years ago, I witnessed a tree apparently doing something that I suspect I was not meant to see. Marilyn had just placed a planter full of new young plants on a deck rail, which was under the canopy of a very ancient willow. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement and turned just in time to see the willow purposely lift a frond and stroke the young plants. The action was like an arm lifting and then stroking the plants, and the movement occurred twice, lifting and returning, lifting and returning like a parent might stroke the head of a much-loved child. I have had the privilege of many odd and spiritual experiences – especially after I moved to New Mexico. Still, this particular moment in the pacific northwest haunts me as maybe the most significant spiritual moment of my life. I feel as though I saw a moment we are not privileged to see, and if we do see, it is under the influence of a mind-altering chemical like LSD, a moment when our ego is de-potentiated and no longer in control of our perceptions. I have had such experiences using LSD, but that was 50 years ago, and I doubt that I was having a flashback at this late date. Humanity suffers incredible hubris. We speak of looking to space to find intelligent life when we are actually looking for life like us. I suspect if we ever do find life like us, it will be terrifying – it will be a life driven by insularism and an attitude that cannot see us as an equal and will more than likely only see us in terms of our utility or see us in terms of something in the way, much like we see trees, wolves and everything else on this planet. We now scientifically know that trees and plants in forests have a massive communication network of mutually sustainable interactions. “In the 1960s, CIA interrogation expert Cleve Backster experimented with polygraph machines when he stumbled onto something novel. He noticed what appeared to be a change in electrical resistance with one of the plants, to which he connected the polygraph equipment whenever he removed a leaf or even “threatened” to harm the plant by intent alone. He likened this sudden electrical pulse to a “scream” emitted by the plant in response to endangerment. While Backster’s theory was considered a crackpot idea, many would follow similar, unusual observations about the behavior of plants, which seemingly represented a sort of “communication” they might be capable of.

For instance, a 1989 AP article discussed what one physicist, named Ed Wagner, believed were evidence he found of plant communication via what he called “W-waves”: Physicist Ed Wagner says he has found evidence that trees talk to each other in a language he calls W-waves. “If you chop into a tree, you can see that adjacent trees put out an electrical pulse,” said Wagner. “This indicates that they communicated directly.” Explaining the phenomenon, Wagner pointed to a blip on a strip chart recording of the electrical pulse. “It put out a tremendous cry of alarm,” he said. “The adjacent trees put out smaller ones…. People have known there was communication between trees for several years, but they’ve explained it by the chemicals trees produce,” Wagner said. “But I think the real communication is much quicker and more dramatic than that,” he said. “These trees know within a few seconds what is happening. This is an automatic response.” Wagner has measured the speed of W-waves at about 3 feet per second through the air. “They travel much too slowly for electrical waves,” he said. “They seem to be an altogether different entity. That’s what makes them so intriguing. They don’t seem to be electromagnetic waves at all.” Another physicist, William Corliss, also took an interest in Wagner’s discovery, noting that, “The voltage measured by electrodes implanted in trees goes up and down as one goes higher and higher up the trees… incidentally, electricity does seem to affect plant growth.” In more recent years, the idea of plants capable of forms of “communication” has been considered a bit more thoughtfully and is not outright shunned by the scientific community. One leading modern researcher and advocate for the varieties of ways plants communicate is Suzanne Simard, whose work with plants has helped set new precedents for how interactions between various species of flora occur. Simard’s research began to coalesce around what became a doctoral thesis two decades ago, in which she argued that a variety of communication methods were used by trees to achieve everything from expressing their needs to sharing nutrients “via a network of latticed fungi buried in the soil.” She further studied the varieties of ways that fungal filigrees were exploited by trees in ways that allowed them to send signals to other plants nearby about changes in the environment and even “helping” endangered plants by transferring and sharing nutrients with them. Speaking with “Yale Environment 360” last year, she talked about how, as she puts it, a forest “is a cooperative system,” saying: “To me, using the language of ‘communication’ made more sense because we were looking at not just resource transfers, but things like defense signaling and kin recognition signaling. We as human beings can relate to this better. If we can relate to it, then we’re going to care about it more. If we care about it more, then we’re going to do a better job of stewarding our landscapes.” Despite having communicative abilities, plants generally aren’t deemed to have any sort of intelligence. However, there are still some members of the scientific community that argue this is not necessarily the case. Author and researcher Michael Pollan, who studies the field of plant neurobiology, argues that plants are more perceptive than many would think: “They have analogous structures… They have ways of taking all the sensory data they gather in their everyday lives … integrate it, and then behave appropriately in response. And they do this without brains, which, in a way, is what’s incredible about it because we automatically assume you need a brain to process information.” Understanding how various life forms on earth communicate and cooperate with each other gives us a much broader sense of what “life on Earth” is truly about. It also challenges us to consider whether more complex interaction systems exist between organisms, including those that aren’t deemed intelligent or even responsive, by humans. In the case of plants, it seems unusual that these organisms, while deemed

to be very much alive, have long been relegated to being unresponsive and “vegetative,” in the most literal sense. Maybe it’s indeed time we start paying closer attention to our floral kindred and the subtleties of their interactions with each other and their environment.” Trees That Talk: The Bizarre World of Plant Communication Micah HanksJuly 2, 2017 As I come closer to the ending of my own span of years on this earth, I have become more acutely aware of the commonality I have with all life. Fear and suffering appear to be the same across all species, and I am beginning to wonder if love is also – not romantic love, but the deep logos love spiritual people have written about for millennia. I understand there are reasons we avoid seeing these connections and being aware of the “intelligence,” love, and fear of life around us. The Danish/Inuit Arctic explorer Kund Rassmussen once wrote, “The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and which must therefore be pacified lest they revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies.” That is seen as a very primitive view, yet I wonder in our confusion of scientific methods for technological growth and exploitation if we are the primitives and the barbarians. I suspect our blindness to the intelligence of life here on earth, intelligence other than ourselves, is summed up in that statement. Maybe all intelligence really is is the knowledge that everything is connected and what we call intelligence is a form of narcissistic blindness. Perhaps the natural intelligence is in the willow, lifting a frond to stroke young plants that came under his/her/its protection and scope. Maybe the only innate intelligence is displayed in how we honor, respect, and care for everything. In addition to slowing me down in my interaction with the world, I find that this view brings me a sense of greater peace and a change in focus about what is and is not essential and how to express that “essentialness.” I also have greater clarity about what the ancients meant when they wrote of a fear of God. It is not a fear full of the pain of punishment – it is an awe that is hard to express and is likely to bring tears and an awareness of the pity of things and our oneness with everything.

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unwelcome-ozian · 4 years ago

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Thank you for answering. I was wondering how neurolinguistic programming differs from the trauma programming you talk about, and from hypnosis. Following this, could NLP be used "badly" (i.e. in a non therapeutic way, to cause more harm), and could hypnosis be used in a traumatising way? Please ask for more clarity in my questions if needed :)

Yes NLP can be used ‘badly’.

NLP is the building of associations with an anchor. Neuro linguistic programming is the evolution of hypnotherapy. Classical hypnosis depends on techniques for putting patients into suggestive trances; NLP is a technique of layering subtle meaning into spoken or written language so the programmer can implant suggestions into a subject’s unconscious mind without them knowing.

The programmer is attentive to the subject they’re working with by studying subtle cues such as eye movement, skin flush, pupil dilation and nervous tics.

Through these observations a programmer will determine: a) What side of the brain a subject is predominantly using; b) What sense (sight, smell, etc.) is most predominant in their brain; c) How their brain stores and utilizes information d) When they’re lying or making information up.

The programmer will gradually and subtly mimic the subject. The programmer will take on the subject’s body language, their speech mannerisms, and will begin speaking with language patterns designed to target the client’s primary sense.

For example, a subject predominantly focused on sight will be spoken to in language using visual metaphors—”Do you see what I’m saying?” “Look at it this way”—while a subject for which hearing is the dominant sense will be spoken to in auditory language—”Hear me out,” “I’m listening to you closely.”

By mirroring body language and linguistic patterns, the programmer is will achieve one very specific response: rapport_._ A programmer essentially fakes the social cues that cause a subject to drop their guard and enter a state of openness and suggestibility.

Once rapport is achieved, the programmer will begin to delicately lead the interaction. Having mirrored the subject, they can now make subtle changes to actually influence the subject’s behaviour combined with subtle language patterns, leading questions other techniques. A programmer at this point can guide a subject wherever they like, as long as the subject isn’t aware of what’s happening and thinks everything is arising organically, or has given consent. This means it can be fairly difficult to use NLP to get subjects to act out-of-character, but it can be used for engineering responses within a subject’s system’s range of behaviour.

From this point the programmer will do two things; elicit and anchor_._ Eliciting happens when a Programmer uses leading and language to engineer an emotional state. Once a state has been elicited, the Programmer can then anchor it with a physical cue—for instance, touching the shoulder.

Anchors

A stimulus is linked and triggers a physiological or emotional state in the subject. The skilled programmer will anchor an emotion with several sensory cues– auditory, visual, and touch. The subject visualizes an emotional state from the past, or is placed in an emotional state by the programmer. When the state is reaching its peak, the anchor is placed in. The anchor needs to be unique, distinctive, and easy to repeat in the exact form that it was done. The law of strength applies to the strength of the trauma and the strength of the anchor. A stronger smell may be easier to associate with a strong trauma, which makes the anchoring stronger.

Much of trauma-based programming is setting anchors into parts. When the anchors are triggered, and the part is pulled up, then the anchors have worked. Two separate states can be fired at once.

These types of post hypnotic commands are the ones commonly used by hypno-programmers to change behaviour (behavioural modification).

Triggering Techniques: Real-Time Subconscious Implant Delivery: the Programmers are transmitting the posthypnotic command script to the subject and observing the subject’s response. This technique is required for subliminal programming. All programming standard posthypnotic command scripts can be delivered in real-time. This form of delivery can cause the perception of a voice heard in the mind of a subject to give them information or orders depending on the purpose of the handler/programmer.

Prescheduled Subconscious Implant Delivery: The internal central switching computer can transmit a script to a specified part/alter at a pre-specified time. The transmitted script’s transmission range can be limited to a single building, a city, or a large geographical area. By having prescheduled scripts, the subject has seemingly randomly occurring thoughts and feelings that can’t be associated with a commonly recurring situation like event-triggered scripts precipitate.

Event-Triggered Implant Delivery : Posthypnotic subconscious implants that are triggered with an event, thought, or code word. These are strongly experienced by the subject and are powerful tools for reinforcing a predetermined desired behaviour and inflicting delusions.

The Handler can reinforce a predetermined desired behaviour by associating a subconscious implant (negative or positive reinforcement) with an event. An example is when the programmer desires to isolate the subject from a specific individual, place or thing; the subject will be implanted with a feeling of increased anxiety, hostility, tension, and discomfort. When the subject leaves the individual, place, or thing, another posthypnotic implant is triggered rewarding the subject’s behaviour with a feeling of relief from the anxiety, hostility, tension, discomfort, and calm is restored in the subject’s mind.

The handler/programmer precisely tailors the type of negative and/or positive reinforcement, the degree of the reinforcement, the duration of the reinforcing effect and the conditions of the trigger. This posthypnotic event-triggered reinforcement can be decreased gradually and can remain so subtle that the subject believes the discomfort is naturally occurring. The subject will believe it is there decision uninfluenced by anyone else that the subject should avoid the individual, place or thing.

Subconscious implants can be combined with other implants like posthypnotic-triggered thoughts to enhance the subject’s decision concerning a specific situation. For example the subject can be implanted with a command to be sensitive to the changes in their emotions when around a therapist. The situation will elicit a strong negative emotion. This can be reinforced with another posthypnotic suggestion to avoid every situation that cause the subject discomfort and each time the subject commits themselves to removing themselves from a situation of this kind, they will feel increasing control over their lives

Steps to Anchoring

The anchor (or anchors) should be fired in exactly the same way every time to link them to the resource experience.

The programmer chooses an anchor (or anchors) that will trigger the resourceful state.

The programmers create a situation the subject will have an emotional response to (hate, fear, love, disgust, embarrassment, etc.). They will find an anchor that is unique to the experience. Individuals have the ability to use any three of the types of anchors independently or all together. It is important to ensure the anchors are used together and at the same time. The programmers ensure it is something that happens associated with that experience and is not common to other experiences.

A memory is induced, imagined or situation where the subject can experience the state.

The programmer then attaches a trigger.

The programmer will activate the anchor or anchors when the experience is vivid and the subject is in the desired state. The most effective time for the association of the anchor is at the peak of the experience. As the intensity of the experience lessens, so does the association. If the state is maintained at the intensity for a longer period of time it is more likely the anchor will be established.

Depending on the intensity of the experience can control how fast the subject makes the associations. If the experience is extremely intense the association may be strong after only one occurrence.

The programmer will break the state by having the subject participate in another activity briefly. The anchor will be tested by repeating the action that placed the anchor. It should be noted if the original response returns.

The steps should be repeated several times, each time making the memory more vivid. Replicating the experience will achieve the anchor permanently. This is not required when the anchor is established at the high point of the experience. It is recommended the anchor be strengthened by establishing it at the high point of several experiences.

Future pace the situation where the desired state is to experienced. Trigger the anchor to check that it creates a sufficiently resourced state.

The programmer will use the trigger to elicit the emotional response.

After twenty-four hours the programmer will check the anchor to ensure permanent.

Tips

If the subject does not experience the state when future pacing and experiences another state stop applying the anchor. The subject will experience the wrong state.

There is a knowingness which makes anchoring work that is established by the unconscious mind.

If the subject is in a situation where they experience the desired state in reality by another trigger, the programmer must re-establish the anchor to that situation.

Programmers can stack anchors together.

Collapsing anchors When states oppose one another and cause too much difficulty in a subject the anchors can be collapsed.

The programmer must identify the preferred response and the state they wish to change.

It is essential, first, to identify the response preferred to replace the unwanted response. The programmer must create an occasion where the subject experienced strongly the preferred state.

The subject is moved into the memory and it is intensified before anchoring it. The programmer then triggers the anchor to make sure that the state is powerful and the anchor is properly set.

Once the programmer is satisfied that anchor is firmly in place, the subject is taken to the state that is to be changed. As the subject re-experiences the response, it is anchored to a blank part. The programmer then triggers the anchor and breaks the state.

The subject is tested to ensure each anchor is properly set, and then triggers both anchors simultaneously. The effect is usually one of mild confusion. At this stage, the programmer holds the anchors until the confusion dissipates.

The programmer gradually lifts the anchor of the unwanted state, and a few seconds later lift the anchor for the resource state.

The programmer will test by trying to trigger the unwanted response. The subject’s dominate response should be more neutral or the resource state should dominate. This is repeated as necessary until the resource state dominates.

Visual Anchors Visual anchors are among the most common. There are positive and negative visual anchors.

Auditory Anchors An auditory anchor is a stimulus that is a sound or sounds neurologically linked to a state of mind.

Kinaesthetic Anchors A kinaesthetic anchor is one that is a movement, touch or physical action that is associated with a particular state.

Chainless Slaves

#answer to questions #NLP

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empowercbcgl · 5 years ago

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Silence and Sleep

This post was written by Michael Ni who will be graduating from Boston University in Winter 2020. Hopefully he can find a job afterwards or something. Here is a collection of his various musings about his faith in his recent college years.

I would like to preface by stating that I will be referencing a few sources, both secular and religious. While it is important for us as Christians to meditate upon our Divine command, it is my belief that only through ruminating the words of others can we truly strengthen our faith beyond a superficial level. In his book Art as Experience, American philosopher and writer John Dewey states that “A poem and picture present material passed through the alembic of personal experience. They have no precedents in existence or in universal being. But, nonetheless, their material came from the public world and so has qualities in common with the material of other experiences, while the product awakens in other persons new perceptions of the meanings of the common world”. If we so choose to examine the teachings and musings of both Christian and non-Christian writers alike, we strengthen both our faith in His divine power as well as our resolve to defend this faith.

We often view the embodiment of wisdom as an elderly, perhaps scholarly, man or woman, regaling those around them with tales of their vast experiences or cryptic and grave-sounding prose or parable, meant to evoke a lesson or invoke a period of introspection. However, I believe that each and every person, without regard to their age or experiences has some degree of wisdom worthy to share with the world. In fact, it is a fallacy itself to believe that a wise or even perfect man is above learning a new lesson. While God himself is the Great Teacher of humanity, I believe that there is wisdom to be found beyond just His holy scripture that may teach us to better interpret His will.

“Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.” -Jean Paul Sartre

A large part of reaching emotional maturity lies in our ability to live with others. Learning our boundaries with people, setting our limits on how to speak or act, and even how to interpret our outlook on those around us are important aspects to becoming a mature and contributing member of both society and the natural world. Intersubjectivity is a term used by philosophers to refer to the psychological relations between people, as opposed to the traditional Cartesian view of solipsism, the individual experience. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre describes the intersubjective experience in his book Being and Nothingness as something he calls “The Look”. Imagine yourself walking through an empty park alone, taking in the sights and sounds, appreciating the world for what it is to you when you suddenly notice a man on a bench. The man looks up at you and immediately, for a split moment, you are unnerved. From the moment your gazes cross, you both now realize that you are not alone and the world around you which you had interpreted in your own way, is now a shared experience, no longer subject to your interpretation alone. In order to learn to exist in the presence of others, we must learn to live with The Look. Simply put, it is of utmost importance that we realize that the world itself is not set up specifically to cater to our will but is a realm we must share with others and their views.

One of my primary struggles as a Christian is learning to coexist with people who do not share my beliefs. While on a surface level this includes communicating with non-Christians who may believe in a different God or no God, I also run into the conflict of communicating with Christian believers who share my same core beliefs but have differing views on concepts such as social justice, or sexual bigotry. Truthfully, this is an aspect of my faith I have not yet been able to solve, but my confidence lies in the fact that while God is my Almighty Father, my connection to the Hereditary and Original Sin have imparted upon me the privilege of wisdom and the ability of free will. Thus I am no longer subject to merely bear witness to the atrocities of false prophets and the destruction of Sodom, but am empowered to speak up against the face of hatred that masks itself under the guise of the Christian faith.

Sartre claims that “essence precedes existence”, that is, that the personality is not built upon pre-existing models or natural purpose, because it is the conscious human who chooses to engage in behaviors or enterprise. As an example, while the traditional Christian view is that marriage is the union of man and woman in Christ’s spirit, it becomes my free will, my essence, to cement a potentially different belief, for my existence itself is imperfect by nature, as Adam and Eve indulged in the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Rebellion is not sinful by nature. In fact, sometimes rebelling against the word of God further bolsters the strength of our faith as we learn new insights of what His will truly is. The most fatal path to take when facing adversity against both our justice or our faith, even when originating from ourselves, is silence, as “the dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence (Psalms 32:3 ESV). The time of passivity in the face of injustice has passed, rather it should have never existed to begin with. Now is the time for us to no longer stay silent but to speak out against the evils present, for “what we do now echoes in eternity” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations).

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” -Rumi

In his poem “A Great Wagon” Rumi describes a field, a world beyond even the concepts of right and wrong, where the world is too full to talk about, and ideas, language or the phrase “each other” no longer matter. There is tranquility and peace to be found in Rumi’s words, imagining a field where the “breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you” and “people go back and forth between the door-sill where the two worlds touch”; A field where we are bathed in the light of salvation; Able to touch God. In a world distraught by conflict, plague and violence, we can only imagine this field, where the wrongdoings of others no longer matter, and the need for right-doing is a thing of the past, where the people of the world can coexist in harmony under the loving embrace of the Lord.

However, we cannot delude ourselves into believing that this “doorsill”, the threshold to this beautiful world, can be traversed so easily. Happiness is built upon the backs of those who have sacrificed. Both the biblical martyrs and those who die to bring injustice to light have established the better, brave new world we live in today. This is another struggle I have had with my faith in the past. Is it right to live blissfully upon this pyramid of bones and bloodied soil? What is the worth of my happiness where nothing was staked? Even Jesus, the great martyr and redeemer, who died for the sins of all of mankind; Am I permitted to rejoice and exist in comfort today?

“Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want.” For the past five to six years and even to today, I have battled with depression. Depression is not sadness. Depression is the lack of vitality, the loss of the mind’s ability to wake up and experience life itself. There were countless mornings when I would wake up and stay in bed, not because I was physically exhausted, but because I no longer had the will to stand up and face the day. There were sometimes months-long periods where not a single day passed without me thinking about how much I wished to die. What kept me going was not the fear of pain of death, nor the sinful nature of taking one’s own life, nor even the grief of loved ones had it come to pass. Within the tempest of hopelessness and hatred for the world, there was a single anchor for hope; There was work that needed to be done in the world. Even though change on a global or national level was far beyond my jurisdiction, I felt compelled to do something with my life. I felt that I had not yet paid the toll that my life was worth. While each day I struggled, I needed to endure them, and while each small step I took towards my healing was arduous, they were victories, and I needed to claim them, no matter how hollow. God has set forth a path for our salvation. Let us fight for this salvation with our own hands. In the words of Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations, “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” It is my mortal duty to open the door to Rumi’s field for those who have not yet found their salvation.

Don’t go back to sleep. You may not want to wake up again tomorrow. You may no longer feel compelled to do kindness upon others. “Let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober… putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation” (1 Thessalonians 5:4-8 ESV). Truthfully it is beyond my capability to say that better days are yet to come for either you or me, but even still, let our love and faith resonate and move the hearts of others, so that we may one day see justice prevail as we walk together into a field beyond all ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing. God has granted everyone the right to live, thus it is our duty to fight for this right.

“Let your kindness be like rain, that cares not about whom it falls upon” -Rumi

#reflection

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bonepranks-a · 5 years ago

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@anonymous said... For any later thought: how do you interpret skeletons as a monster species? Obviously they’ve got some drastically different shapes than a normal human skeleton! But I’ve seen some interesting concepts (like fuzzy skeletons— cute— strange— but cute!). But are their any interesting biological traits you incorporate (claws, thicker bones, strength of tactile perception given they are Just Bones—) or social traits (any quirks of the species—)?

. OUT @vertebralheights and i could give a whole lecture on skeleton biology (maybe we will one day lol) so ivy, feel free to chime in here with any thoughts. but! i reject the idea of most skeletons having ever been human. that being said, and i’m pulling from ivy’s lore here), there ARE some skeleton monsters who were specifically revived from dead humans (mostly during the war). they have their own unique traits i won’t get into because it’s not super relevant to your question && it’s not my lore or area of expertise. i am intrigued by the comment papyrus makes about skeletons being descended from humans, and i am interested in maybe exploring that, but that’s some backstory detail i have no time to think about right now. instead, i see their shapes and sizes are more reflective of other monster types than human types. that being said, i think that pre-war they were actually the species that bridged the gap between humans monsters mostly because of the familiarity and similarities to humans. of course, as times changed and skeletons as a concept became more associated with necromancy and death and all around spookiness, the humans began to reject the skeletons. this was one of the impetuses for the war.

as for more specific biological traits, i can tell you what i don’t like. and by don’t like i mean fucking HATE. 1) ecto-genitalia/bodies/tongues/etc. i don’t judge anyone who DOES headcanon that but to me it’s just.... dumb and unnecessary. like rip to the entire udnertale fandom but i’m different. it was literally a concept only created for the sake of po.rn and i’m just not here for it?? the whole point of them being SKELETONS is that they’re vastly different from humans and like... all other monsters. just let them be actual skeletons. it’s way funnier that way. also, having ecto-parts is just an easy out for everything. if you’re going to conceptualize a species of monster, make it work within the confines of that species. skeletons are the ONLY pre-existing monster species (besides uh. dogs.). i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again -- just come up with something new! for fuck’s sake. okay, rant over.

i’m not a fan of them having fur, hair, claws or fangs. again, that’s an aesthetic choice i just don’t get the point of. in my mind, they’re really just bones, held together by magic and magic alone. which is HILARIOUS because i love the idea of a skeleton being so tired/devoid of magical energy that they just sorta fall apart. they’re fine (i think they can detach random bones at will) but they have to kinda put themselves back together again. it doesn’t happen that often -- not even to sans except on rare occasions. pretty much only if their body isn’t producing enough magical energy to sustain their physical form. along those lines, the reason they’re able to eat without the food just falling out of them is that monster food as we know does not pass all the way through the body. the natural conclusion to this fact is that their bodies simply convert it to magical energy as it enters their system. this is what gives it it’s healing power. skeletons probably jut evolved in such a way that this conversion happens instantly (even if it takes longer for other monsters. maybe it doesn’t.) i’m not sure what happens if they try to eat non-monster food. my guess is that it works the same way -- but it only satiates hunger, not magical energy nor can it heal. so even on the surface, monsters need to continue making monster food.

i talked about skeleton eye-lights in my last post but something i forgot to specifically say is that they don’t need their eye-lights to see. it’s more of an expressive thing anyway. the eye-lights are magic generated, not an actual biological trait. because again, they’re just eyesockets. however -- skeletons CAN close them. that’s just an odd quirk that’s different from a typical human skeleton. that and creasing their brows.

also, because they’re just bones, they don’t weigh much. think science classroom skeleton. however, they ARE very strong as a general rule, they can lift their own body weight which again, isn’t much, but compared to humans who have to train to be able to deadlift their own weight, it’s a natural ability for skeletons.

in terms of social traits/quirks? i think there’s a tendency to be more reclusive? but then again, i see all monsters that way (as opposed to humans who are naturally social beings). but also, there just..... aren’t a lot of skeletons. most of them are in vertebral heights, and while sans and pap socialize, they also tend to just..... do their own things. skeletons, i think, have a history of standing apart from other monsters and so the ones that are still alive continue that trend.

oh! i need to talk about font & voices while we’re here. again, this could be a post all on it’s own, but i’ll try to streamline it. skeletons are usually (but not always) named after fonts. these names tend to be chosen after hearing the baby vocalize (not necessarily speak, although i ALSO think that babybones speak much earlier than human babies). a skeleton’s font is like a visual manifestation of an accent. it’s not a different language (among roman alphabet fonts) but rather an inflection in the voice. skeleton voices work sort of like synesthesia, where another skeleton can see or at least sense the font that’s being spoken in. and so this is usually how they get their names. sometimes skeletons have multi-part names (first & middle & last), other times not. sometimes a family will use one generation’s last name and carry it down even for skeletons who don’t possess that particular font. i’ll do a post later on the specifics of sans’ family to give some examples.

the exception to this rule is skeletons who speak in symbolic fonts (wingdings, webdings, dingbat, etc). they speak in a series of vocalizations that other symbolic-speaking skeletons understand but pretty much no one else can. it sounds similar to the soundfont used for entry number 17, if less distorted (i think that what we hear there is an effect of the void, despite being written before he fell into the core). symbolic-speaking skeletons CAN learn to speak non-symbolic fonts (that usually take the form of one of the plainest fonts of either the serif or the sans serif families), but not all of them choose to (gaster did not). however, it’s INCREDIBLY difficult for a skeleton who does not possess the natural language to learn to speak it (it’s possible with training, but their voices just don’t work that way). however, learning to read/write in the fonts is an easily achievable practice, as is understand it when spoken, with time. however, most symbolic-font skeletons learn how to sign, and in return most non-symbolic font skeletons learn how to understand sign language.

and i think that’s it??? friends & followers, feel free to drop your skeleton biology thoughts into the replies or in my ask box! i always love hearing other people’s takes!

#this is.... so long wow #* ring ring ring // . ANSWERED #* you will determine the future of this world // . OUT #* massive anomalies // . HEADCANON

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gnosticgnoob · 5 years ago

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Variations on a Theme: "The Weird vs The Quantifiable" -- Aggregated Commentary from within the Gutenberg Galaxy

The pursuit of examining the world through philosophy, mathematics, and science tends to be seen as expanding the borders of what is known and quantified, conquering the territory of what is not yet known. In this pursuit, the investigator encounters wonder or the "weird", and what ideologically separates some philosophers and scientists from others is whether the investigator sets aside the weird as a misunderstood quirk of what is not yet known but still knowable, or the investigator takes into account the weird as a fundamental, permanent attribute of the landscape of inquiry that may perhaps always represent factors which intrinsically and inescapably evade knowledge and literary explanation, not as a bug of our understanding but as a feature of the true ontological state of affairs. The former mindset supposes that with more time and rigor, our inquiry will finally arrive at a sort of epistemological/ontological "bedrock" that dispels any sense of the bizarre, the latter treats scientific inquiry itself as necessitating the injection of a sort of subjective poetry or play to adequately do justice to the full reality of what is observed and described for our purposes, without ever expecting that we will hit such bedrock. Materialism/scientism perhaps would posit that any inclusion of the mystical or poetic in the language we use to describe the world is inappropriate, pseudo-scientific, pseudo-intellectual, or maladaptive; the mystic posits conversely that to exclude the poetic and not make room for the weird is maladaptive.

I have here a collection of excerpts from other thinkers that I think work together to allude to the mystical as a permanent fixture of our endeavors for clarification through experimentation and language, or at least suggest that a more "mystical" mindset will always be more useful than one that is conversely more in the vein of materialism/scientism trying to arrive at a "final technical vocabulary":

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“We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. […] Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ad infinitum.” --Gregory Bateson, English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1979). In Palo Alto, California, Bateson and colleagues developed the double-bind theory of schizophrenia. Bateson's interest in systems theory forms a thread running through his work. He was one of the original members of the core group of the Macy conferences in Cybernetics (1941- 1960), and the later set on Group Processes (1954 - 1960), where he represented the social and behavioral sciences; he was interested in the relationship of these fields to epistemology.

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“The mind is somehow a co-creator in the process of reality through acts of language. Language is very, very mysterious. It is true magic. People run all over the place looking for paranormal abilities, but notice that when I speak if your internal dictionary matches my internal dictionary, that my thoughts cross through the air as an acoustical pressure wave and are reconstructed inside your cerebral cortex as your thought. Your understanding of my words. Telepathy exists; it is just that the carrier wave is small mouth noises.” --Terence McKenna, "Eros And The Eschaton". McKenna was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s", an American ethnobotanist, mystic, psychonaut, lecturer, author, and an advocate for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. -------------------------------------

“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet. Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” --Niels Bohr, Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which he proposed that energy levels of electrons are discrete and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. Although the Bohr model has been supplanted by other models, its underlying principles remain valid. He conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analysed in terms of contradictory properties, like behaving as a wave or a stream of particles. -------------------------------------

“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” --Werner Heisenberg, German theoretical physicist known for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which he published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for the creation of quantum mechanics. He also made important contributions to the theories of the hydrodynamics of turbulent flows, the atomic nucleus, ferromagnetism, cosmic rays, and subatomic particles, and he was instrumental in planning the first West German nuclear reactor at Karlsruhe. -------------------------------------

“We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.” --Max Planck, German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame as a physicist rests primarily on his role as the originator of quantum theory; the discovery of Planck's constant enabled him to define a new universal set of physical units (such as the Planck length and the Planck mass), all based on fundamental physical constants upon which much of quantum theory is based. -------------------------------------

“There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.” --Daniel Dennett, American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. A member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, he is referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism", along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens. -------------------------------------

“Things themselves become so burdened with attributes, signs, allusions that they finally lose their own form. Meaning is no longer read in an immediate perception, the figure no longer speaks for itself; between the knowledge which animates it and the form into which it is transposed, a gap widens. It is free for the dream.” --Michel Foucault, French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, and critical theory. Though often cited as a post-structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. -------------------------------------

“When the mind projects names and concepts on what is seen through direct perception, confusion and delusion result.” --Patanjali, sage in Hinduism, thought to be the author of a number of Sanskrit works. The greatest of these are the Yoga Sutras, a classical yoga text. -------------------------------------

“The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one.” --Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes (1911). Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Conrad wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of what he saw as an impassive, inscrutable universe. Heart of Darkness is among is most famous works. Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors, and many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that Conrad's fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events. -------------------------------------

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” --Richard P. Feynman, American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II and became known to a wide public as a member of the commission that investigated the Challenger shuttle disaster. Along with his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing and introducing the concept of nanotechnology. -------------------------------------

“The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.” --Michel Foucault -------------------------------------

“In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as ‘dazzling obscurity,’ 'whispering silence,’ 'teeming desert,’ are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions. “He who would hear the voice of Nada, 'the Soundless Sound,’ and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana…. When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams, when he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE—the inner sound which kills the outer…. For then the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the inner ear will speak THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE…. And now thy SELF is lost in SELF, THYSELF unto THYSELF, merged in that SELF from which thou first didst radiate.… Behold! thou hast become the Light, thou hast become the Sound, thou art thy Master and thy God. Thou art THYSELF the object of thy search: the VOICE unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from change, from sin exempt, the seven sounds in one, the VOICE OF THE SILENCE. Om tat Sat.” (H.P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence). These words, if they do not awaken laughter as you receive them, probably stir chords within you which music and language touch in common. Music gives us ontological messages which non-musical criticism is unable to contradict, though it may laugh at our foolishness in minding them. There is a verge of the mind which these things haunt; and whispers therefrom mingle with the operations of our understanding, even as the waters of the infinite ocean send their waves to break among the pebbles that lie upon our shores.” --William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James was a leading thinker of the late nineteenth century, one of the most influential U.S. philosophers, and has been labeled the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce, James established the philosophical school known as pragmatism. James also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, as well as former US President Jimmy Carter. -------------------------------------

“Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. … Whenever the Westerner hears the word ‘psychological’, it always sounds to him like ‘only psychological.’” --Carl Jung, “Psyche and Symbol”. Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work was influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies. Jung worked as a research scientist at the famous Burghölzli hospital, during which time he came to the attention of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The two men conducted a lengthy correspondence and collaborated, for a while, on a joint vision of human psychology. Among the central concepts of analytical psychology is individuation—the lifelong psychological process of differentiation of the self out of each individual's conscious and unconscious elements, a process which Jung considered to be the main task of human development. He created some of the best known psychological concepts, including synchronicity, archetypal phenomena, the collective unconscious, the psychological complex, and extraversion and introversion. -------------------------------------

“God is a psychic fact of immediate experience, otherwise there would never have been any talk of God. The fact is valid in itself, requiring no non-psychological proof and inaccessible to any form of non-psychological criticism. It can be the most immediate and hence the most real of experiences, which can be neither ridiculed nor disproved.” --Carl Jung -------------------------------------

“Daniel C. Dennett defines religions at the beginning of his Breaking the Spell as ‘social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought,’ which as far as Christianity goes is rather like beginning a history of the potato by defining it as a rare species of rattlesnake…. He also commits the blunder of believing that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world, which is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.” --Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution. British literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual, Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983). The work elucidated the emerging literary theory of the period, as well as arguing that all literary theory is necessarily political.

#occult #scientism #mysticism #esoterica #philosophy

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spectral-musette · 5 years ago

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Finished Thrawn: Treason a couple of days ago, and typed up some thoughts (cause I don’t know anyone else who’s read it and I just wanted vent them somewhere).

Overall, I think I still liked Alliances the most of the new Thrawn books, but Treason (or as I’ve been calling it, Threason) was also really enjoyable.

(Spoilers to follow for the current Thrawn series, Outbound Flight, and the end of Rebels)

(Disclaimers:

While I think Thrawn is a fascinating character, I’m not under any illusions that he is heroic, good, or admirable just because he’s written as the protagonist of the current series of novels. To me, Thrawn is interesting because I don’t see him as the kind of villain who convinces himself he’s actually good; it’s just that, in his calculations, morals and ideals are valued below expediency. He doesn’t think he’s right, only that he’s necessary. When you’ve compromised morality and justice and sworn allegiance to someone like Palpatine for what you believe to be the greater good, what’s left? What remains of your own soul when you’ve made yourself a monster just to fight off worse monsters? None of the novels have gotten to that point yet, but I hope TZ will eventually take us there.

Also, I know Outbound Flight is considered “Legends”, but I think it gives a lot of insight into Thrawn’s character. At his panel at SWCC, Timothy Zahn said he always writes as if all his old books could still become canon, so I’m assuming that the events of Outbound Flight continue to factor into TZ’s development of the character.)

I think the title maybe oversold the angle that we might see Thrawn working against Imperial interests. Apparently, he’s much too committed and careful for that. Acts of treason certainly came into play in the plot, but not committed by Thrawn. He doesn’t even lie to Palpatine – he omits, carefully, sometimes, but rarely that.

I discovered at SWCC that fandom was pretty hyped about the return of Eli Vanto. I had admittedly been rather tepid on Eli in the first novel in the series. Any good things Eli did were always tempered by the fact that I couldn’t quite forget that this was a young man who quite freely decided that the Imperial Navy was the career path for him. In Treason, I found it much easier to like Eli now that he’s no longer an Imperial officer. Seeing him finding his footing on the Chiss battleship was interesting, and I liked the soft beginning of romantic feelings between him and Vah’nya (the Force-Sensitive Chiss navigator who, at 22, is the oldest known Chiss to ever maintain her abilities). I was going to say “hints of feelings”, but I think it was a bit stronger than that? Her flirtation was downright overt at times (“You were not merely coming to see me? Too Sad.” Lol, get it Vah’nya), and Eli did tell her that he’d die for her, so that seems like a pretty solid foundation? I’m a little worried about them, though. What I recall about Chiss society from Outbound Flight and Survivor’s Quest is that it’s pretty class-bound and that they don’t really think much of outsiders. It’s unclear to me if an important asset to the Ascendancy like Vah’nya would be permitted to have a relationship with a non-Chiss.

Much as Assistant Director Ronan (who is just the worst, see below) liked to throw around “traitor” re: Eli, I’m not sure I’m ready to give Eli Imperial Defector status, at least not quite at the same level as the people who joined the Rebellion. Eli has yet to actually work against the Empire. I feel like Eli’s background (being from Wild Space) did affect the way he perceived the Empire as just the same old Galactic Republic going by a new name, but after the things he experienced in the first Thrawn novel, Eli at least knows very well that the Empire uses slave labor. But I guess at this point he’s buying Thrawn’s rationale that the military strength of the Empire is keeping the Grysk, the spooky big bad from the edges of the galaxy, out of that part of the galaxy? It would be interesting to see how Eli’s perceptions of the Empire might change after the destruction of Alderaan.

Leading up to the release, I saw some promotion for the novel, I think on twitter, saying that a “new” female Chiss character was being introduced, Admiral Ar’alani. My initial response was, uuuuuuuuum wasn’t she in Outbound Flight, though? And I know that’s not technically canon anymore, but, wasn’t she also mentioned in the first new Thrawn novel? So actually, not really new at all? BUT Vah’nya and little Un’hee are both new and I love them, so there absolutely ARE new female Chiss characters in Treason… just… not Ar’alani. Though we do see a good bit more of her in this book than we have previously.

And I really enjoyed Ar’alani as a character in Treason. She’s a great foil to Thrawn to directly demonstrate that no, all the Chiss are not Like That. She’s honorable and cunning, and she’s quite passionate, quick-tempered but also quick to move past her anger. I liked that we got to see her being fierce and indomitable, but she was also able to be so soft and comforting to a rescued child without ever undermining her authority or seeming remotely awkward or uncomfortable about it. It was fun to see her get so angry and annoyed at Thrawn, but be able to put it aside and work with him because she knows it’s the best course of action.(There are points from Faro’s point of view when Ar’alani just goes off on Thrawn in the Chiss language aboard the bridge of the Chimaera, and I’m DYING to know what she’s saying to him). I was kinda getting a vibe that the two of them possibly were exes before the scene where Eli has the same thought -

Eli Vanto, on the bridge of a Chiss warship, during battle: I Think My Admirals Used to Bang.

(Verbatim, it’s “he wondered at the history and the relationship between Ar’alani and Thrawn”)

And it kinda solidified for me in the farewell between them:

[“Someday, Mitth’raw’nuruodo, you’ll overthink and overplan, and it will come crashing down all around you. When that happens, I hope someone is there to lift you back to your feet.”

“You, perhaps?”

Ar’alani shakes her head. Her expression holds regret, perhaps even pain. “I very much fear I will never see you again.”]

(I MEAN, wow okay, why don’t you two just make out right there in the turbolift, then?)

(And I get that you could totally read the dynamic another way, but that’s how it comes across to me)

I don’t recall their dynamic being that uh… charged? in Outbound Flight? But Outbound Flight was a bit more focused on Maris’s hero-worship/crush on Thrawn (and admittedly it’s been a while since I read it).

Speaking of Outbound Flight, the fact that Ar’alani has held the rank of Admiral since before the Clone Wars tells us that she definitely is not a young woman. Even if she rocketed through the ranks on a combination of extraordinary ability and family connections, it seems like she’d be at least in her 30’s at that point (and that’s really low-balling it), and that was 25+ years ago. Granted, we don’t know much about Chiss lifespans or how they show their age, but no mention is made of her age at all. The only descriptor I could find of Ar’alani when paging back through Outbound Flight (aside from the typical “blue-skinned”/“glowing red eyes” Chiss stuff) was “resplendent”, so I’ve decided that’s her main attribute and she might be slightly immortal.

Eli makes note of the fact that she has the same name-structure as the navigators (two-part instead of three-part, never abbreviated to a core name). This can’t just be a gendered thing – Eli is supposed to be good at noticing patterns in things and would SURELY have realized that (plus, Feesa in Survivor’s Quest is a lady with a three-part name) – but I wonder if the answer is just: Ar’alani was a navigator when she was a child. She knows an awful lot about the navigators’ abilities (even Thrawn doesn’t know much about “Second Sight”), seems particularly sympathetic to and protective of them, and both Vah’nya and Un’hee seem particularly attached to her. Force-sensitive Ar’alani is an interesting prospect!

I’m not sure I’d say I ship Thrawn and Ar’alani, exactly, but the idea of him being her ex-lover who keeps calling her up and asking for favors even though he’s off the grid doing CRAZY SHIT is amusing to me. I’m not sure if I like the idea of them having been together when they were young (in a military academy, maybe) and splitting up for political reasons (differences in class/family affiliations) or if I prefer to think they had a thing when he was her junior officer, or what. Mostly I think it makes an interesting sunken ship, as it were. She probably deserves better anyway (more on Thrawn’s personal problems in a bit).

Wow that turned into “just blather on about Admiral Ar’alani”, didn’t it? Anyway, she’s a great character and I like her a lot.

To move on to another character, Assistant Director Ronan is, as I said, the worst. I’m pretty sure Thrawn’s not wrong about Vader straight up murdering this dude, given the opportunity. And I mean, there are two types of characters Vader will murder: Ones you Really Don’t Want him to, and ones that you… do? Ronan is the latter. Instead, Thrawn is using him to let Ar’alani feed very select info back to the Empire about the Chiss. So, cape-wearing, Krennic-worshipping Ronan thinks the Emperor is petty and more interested in watching his subordinates squabble than providing effective leadership and also apparently hates Force-users (declaring himself an enemy to Thrawn if he’s working against Palpatine’s goals to eradicate them). And while I’m sure the Chiss will maintain the secrecy and protection around their navigators as well as they can, I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of this guy anywhere near my tiny blue daughters.

And I’m pretty sure Thrawn is not working with Palpatine to kill Force-sensitives in the Ascendancy. If he was, this would be a dark prospect given Eli’s project to collate data about the navigators! But as far as I can tell at this point, Thrawn’s goals for the navigators are the same as Ar’alani’s – more navigators who maintain their abilities longer are a benefit to the Ascendancy. And while navicomputer technology is certainly more sustainable, it seems like if the Ascendancy wanted it, that’s certainly something they would be able to obtain. Possibly they’re just being traditionalist about it (using navigators because they’ve always used navigators) and possibly it’s partly to contain the Grysk – a navicomputer doesn’t have an expiration date like a captured Chiss navigator does. Maybe Force-aided navigation has advantages we haven’t fully explored (or I’m just forgetting some of the ones we have).

I think TZ has tended to write Thrawn as more sympathetic over time (not that this is a recent development; see Outbound Flight) so it becomes hard to reconcile the version of Thrawn in Rebels to the current Thrawn in the novels, even though the events are tied up quite closely. Probably because Rebels Thrawn is drawn mostly from the less-developed version of the character in the original Thrawn novels, and mostly I think because TZ didn’t have any input in writing Thrawn’s episodes.

What seems to be an on-going thread in the current novels is Thrawn’s tendency to isolate himself. I think he’s actually pretty fond of Eli (insofar as he’s capable of things like “fondness”). And while I’m sure Eli can be an asset to the Ascendancy, with Eli serving Ar’alani, Thrawn also no longer has to deal with Eli, who views him as a good commander and a brilliant, admirable person, holding him accountable for any actions that might contradict that view. He holds Eli at arm’s length throughout the story in Treason; in part you can chalk this up to the urgency of the mission, but it strikes me that he’s actively pushing Eli away. Eli never gets much of a moment with Thrawn, no renewal of camaraderie. Eli’s angry about it at the beginning, perceiving it as a snub, but by the end he’s more resigned to it. It sucks to love someone who doesn’t seem to care about you.

(But I’m not sure Thrawn doesn’t care about Eli, I think he’s just being careful to let Eli get that impression.)

And Thrawn does the same with Commodore Faro, recommending her for a major promotion out of his immediate circle. She’s deeply loyal to him and admires him, and he is sure to remove her from his sphere of influence. Always to the benefit of the removed party (Eli is thriving in the Ascendancy, and I’m sure Faro will do well in her new command), of course. But they’re also gone. He doesn’t have to be privy to their disappointment, disillusionment, and he doesn’t have to be responsible for their lives or deaths. Thrawn is actively denying himself the opportunity to be cared for, and maybe keeping himself from getting attached beyond a certain point as well.

Because once upon a time, before the Clone Wars, Thrawn was a person who liked being admired, who deeply valued idealism in others, who loved his brother.

Does the self-isolation go back to his brother’s death, or is it part of his approach to serving Palpatine? If he doesn’t live like a person with feelings and loved ones, is it easier to tolerate the suffering he’s causing to other people with feelings and loved ones?

(And in the aftermath of the Rebels finale – assuming Thrawn survived the Purgill attack, and there’s no reason he MUST have – what happens when he is really truly isolated, with nothing between him and oblivion but an angry teenage Jedi apprentice who utterly loathes him? And… some space whales.)

#long post

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transhitman · 6 years ago

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TMA D&D Homebrew

So fellas, I’ve been working on a TMA dnd homebrew, and I thought I’d share what I have so far. I’m not sure if it’s balanced. I’ve never really delved deep into the rules of dnd, so I would love some input! I’ve been writing this with a modern setting in mind, and so far I’ve been working on the powers as warlock patrons. I have 5 done so far: Beholding, Buried, Corruption, Dark, and End. I also added a level 20 patron ability since there seems to be some kind of ascendance point where the avatars become irreversibly inhuman, and it felt a little anticlimactic to just have the final ability at level 14. I’ve also nerfed the actual spellcasting, so there are less spell slots, and the actual spells you can know (as well as the eldritch invocations) are limited by patron. It seemed fair since the actual patron abilities might be a little bit OP. I’m aiming to edit most of the other classes, but I might remove some classes altogether (druids wouldn’t really work IMO). I’ve also been trying trying to word in in a way that’s accessible to people who aren’t familiar with TMA, so it gets a bit verbose at times. It’s not meant to reflect cannon 100% accurately, but I did my best. I also made it so that a lot of abilities can be subject to house rules, and some abilities rely on the RP aspect of the game. If you end up using this stuff, feel free to edit it! Since it’s built around a modern universe, a lot of it might not fit with actual dnd lore. Anyway, the five “finished” patrons are under the cut. If you read, please tell me if I should keep on this track or if I should change some things up before I commit to it completely : )

THE BEHOLDING

Expanded Spell List

1st - Identify, Healing Word 2nd - Detect Thoughts, See Invisibility 3rd - Clairvoyance, Sending 4th - Arcane Eye, Divination 5th - Legend Lore, Modify Memory

Lv.1 - The Pen is Mightier

You are proficient in all intelligence skills, as well as the medicine and insight skills, and you may learn one extra language of your choice. In addition, when attacking, you may choose to use your intelligence modifier in place of your strength or dexterity.

Lv.6 - Media Consumption

The acquisition of new factual knowledge restores your strength and sustains your body. When you acquire a large amount of knowledge at any time, you may choose one of the following effects:

You heal yourself for 2d6 health. This increases to 2d8 at level 10, 2d10 at level 14, 3d10 at level 17, and 4d12 at level 20.

You negate any effects of exhaustion.

You regain expended spell slots in a quantity equal to your proficiency bonus.

For the next 24 hours, you don’t have to sleep in order to gain the benefits of a long rest, rather you may use the time to do non-strenuous activities.

You do not need to eat for the next 6 hours. If you were previously hungry, no are no longer hungry.

You gain a +1 bonus to dexterity for the next 6 hours.

The knowledge you gain in order to create this effect must be substantial. You can not simply google a list of facts and read them one at a time in order to abuse this ability. If you are reading the information, it must be a complete series of events that takes place over more than 5 minutes, or it must be an academic paper long enough that it would take a narrator at least 10 minutes to read out loud. You may read it more quickly to yourself and still gain the benefits if you are able. If a creature is telling you the information, it must sustain communication with you for at least 5 minutes or until its story has come to a close. If the new information you gain is related to true supernatural events, you may heal yourself for the maximum amount possible, or if you choose to use another ability, heal yourself for one warlock hit die + your constitution modifier. This ability can be used once per day.

Lv.10 - The Truth and Nothing But

If you ask a creature a question, they are compelled to answer truthfully no matter what. There is no limit to what kind of questions you can ask, or the amount of times you can ask a creature questions. A creature can only answer your question if it knows the answer. If a creature is aware of the nature of this compulsion, it may make wisdom save against your spell save DC. The player in control of the compelled creature makes the roll in secret. On a success, the creature resists your compulsion and may answer however it likes. This ability bypasses any spells that would normally prevent a similar compulsion. Creatures that don’t understand your language, or who can not speak are immune to the effects of this ability. You are automatically aware of this compulsion if it is used on you. Any acolyte of the Beholding has advantage when trying to resist the compulsion.

Lv.14 - Found in Translation

You are able to comprehend any language that exists, be it written, verbal, visual, digital, or psychic. However, you can not speak the language. If a humanoid is communicating in a way that is not a real language, you automatically know the general message it is trying to get across.

Lv.20 - The Watcher’s Crown

You look human, but no man could know such things. Choose a creature whose name you know or whose face you can recall with decent accuracy. No matter where they are, you can see and hear exactly what they are doing. This ability bypasses any anti-divination effects. While in the watcher state, you are aware of your own surroundings, but moving or focusing on a different subject breaks the effect of this ability. In addition, you have disadvantage on perception checks regarding your actual surroundings, and your AC drops to 10. The subject feels like they’re being watched, but has no way to detect you. Furthermore, if you are familiar with a subject, you may learn anything about their past, even things the subject does not know themselves, such as things that happened to them as a young child, or the feelings and memories of people they knew in the past. Using this ability, you may attempt to break the subject’s will by revealing information to them that they don’t want to hear, and planting detailed information in their minds. For example, you could show them how painfully one of their loved ones died, or you could tell them the reason their family hates them. Doing so will emotionally incapacitate the subject, the effect of which is up to the DM’s discretion. You can stay in the watcher state for as long as you can concentrate. You may use this ability once per short rest.

THE BURIED

Expanded Spell List

1st - Catapult, Earth Tremor 2nd - Dust Devil, Earthen Grasp 3rd - Erupting Earth, Meld Into Stone 4th - Stone Shape, Stone Skin 5th - Transmute Rock, Wall of Stone

Lv.1 - Deepsight

When in complete darkness, magical or not, you see your surroundings as vague, white outlines and shapes against a dark background, similar to a wireframe in animation. Creatures concealed by illusion magic still remain hidden, and your sight is not detailed. If you are lost in an enclosed space, such as a cave or subterranean building, a bright point of light will appear, leading you toward an exit.

Lv.6 - Architectural Nightmare

You are able to alter the architecture of the building you are currently in. You may choose a room that is no more than 20 ft wide, 20 ft tall, and 100 ft long. The alterations you make do not damage the structural integrity of the building, and the room returns to normal after a set amount of time. Choose one of the following effects to apply to the room:

The walls begin to slowly close in on the occupants at a rate no more than 12 ft per minute. The occupants must make a perception check to notice the moving walls, and will take no action to leave the room if they don’t notice it. (The creature may still leave the room for unrelated reasons.) If the creature notices, it will attempt to leave through the nearest possible exit. If it is unable to exit, the walls will close in on the target, trapping it in a tight box. While it is trapped, you may deal 2d6 bludgeoning damage per round until the creature drops to 0 hit points. If the creature dies, the walls return to their original place, and any objects in the room are also put back in place. If you choose to simply trap the creature, you may maintain concentration for up to an hour, after which the walls return to their original position at the same rate they closed in,

An empty room becomes a maze of small passages. The maze must have a path from one entrance to another, but can be as complex as you want it to be. If a creature attempts to navigate the maze, they will take an amount of time in minutes equal to your warlock level (a minimum of 6). You can extend this time by a minute by using your action to change the layout of the maze. You can change the layout an amount of times equal to your proficiency bonus. The maze lasts for an hour, until you dismiss it, or until you become incapacitated.

You create a stairway leading downward in any part of a room you occupy. This stairway ignores the layout of the building you’re in and can not be seen from the outside. It extends up to 500 ft underground and terminates in a plain oak door. The way down is shrouded in total darkness, and lights can not illuminate it for more than 5 ft. If you are not on ground level, your distance above the ground does not count toward the 500 ft limit. The door at the bottom of the stairs leads into the nearest man made underground structure. The door is locked to anyone aside from you and creatures you specify when you create the stairs. The entrance to the stairway lasts for only a minute after you cast it, but the stairs and the exit last until no creatures remain inside the space you created. Anything trapped in the stairway, such as creatures and objects, will be able to exit through the top of the tunnel again when you next use this ability. While within this space, creatures do not need to eat or drink. No health can be regained in this space, and for every hour a creature aside from you remains within, it takes 1d4 psychic damage until it has 1HP remaining. If you die while a creature is in this space, it is ejected in the empty space nearest to where you last used this ability.

You may remove all windows from a room, replacing them with walls that mimic the appearance of the rest of the room for 8 hours.

This ability can only be used in man made structures. You can use this ability once per long rest.

Lv.10 - Pressure Cooker

Choose a target. It makes a constitution save against your spell save DC. On a failure, roll a d10. The result of the roll determines the effects of the spell.

1: The target takes 1d10 bludgeoning damage.

2-3: The target takes 3d10 bludgeoning damage.

4-6: The target takes 3d10 bludgeoning damage and is knocked prone.

7-8: The target takes 1d12 bludgeoning damage every round for 4 rounds, and must make a constitution save against your spell save DC or be paralyzed.

9: The target takes 1d12 bludgeoning damage every round for 4 rounds, and is paralyzed for the duration.

10: The pressure hits, then reverses itself, creating a vacuum around the target. It takes 4d12 bludgeoning damage with the initial strike, then 2d6 fire damage as its blood boils inside its body. It is knocked prone.

On a successful save, the target takes 1d8 bludgeoning damage. You may use this ability once per long rest.

Lv.14 - Waking Grave

Choose a creature. If it is unwilling, it must make a wisdom save against your spell save DC. The creature is teleported into a box just big enough to fit it inside. For every minute that passes in real time, the creature in the box experiences 10. The creature has absolutely no way to contact anything outside the box, and while in the box is immune to any divination spells and psychic damage. It also does not have to eat, drink, or defecate, and it is unable to sleep. Every minute in box time (6 seconds real time), the creature may attempt to make a strength save against your spell save DC, though it does not have to. On a success, the creature frees itself from the box and reappears back in the real world, taking 1d6 piercing damage in the process. On a failure, the creature takes 2d8 piercing damage from splinters lining its coffin. If you so choose, you may summon the box into the real world. It appears where the creature was before it was teleported. All the same effects still apply, but you may move the box freely and it can be opened from the outside. The spell lasts for a week in real time, until you release the creature, or until the creature breaks free of its own volition. You may target only one creature at a time, but you can have up to 5 creatures trapped this way at once. Per long rest, you may use this feature a number of times equal to your charisma modifier.

Lv.20 - DIG.

Dig. The earth within 20 ft of you begins to sink at a rate of up to 10 ft per round, the ground at your feet sinking faster than the rest and creating a slope. The area becomes difficult terrain for any creature that is not an acolyte of the buried. You remain suspended above the center of the area and can not move until the hole stops sinking. If a creature who is not an acolyte of the buried starts its turn within the sinkhole or enters the sinkhole at any point during its turn, it must make a dexterity save against your spell save DC or slip 5 ft toward the center. Upon reaching the center of the hole, the creature is pulled beneath the earth and takes 3d12 piercing damage per round. A creature may use its action to make a dexterity or strength save against your spell save DC to pull itself out of the earth. The body of a creature that dies while in any part of the sinkhole is pulled beneath the earth and lost forever. The hole can be up to 100 ft deep. As an action on your turn while the spell is active, you can attempt to compel a creature to enter the sinkhole through a contest of charisma. If you succeed, the creature moves toward the hole to the best of its ability. The sinkhole lasts for 10 minutes, until you dismiss it, or you are incapacitated. When the spell ends, the earth reverts to its previous state with no trace of the hole. If a creature is submerged in the earth when the spell ends, it remains submerged but moves toward the surface as the ground returns to normal. In order to use this ability, you must be standing on unpaved ground. You can use this ability once per long rest.

THE CORRUPTION

Expanded Spell List

1st - Detect Poison and Disease, Ray of Sickness 2nd - Acid Arrow, Lesser Restoration 3rd - Life Transference, Stinking Cloud 4th - Giant Insect, Vitriolic Sphere 5th - Contagion, Insect Plague

Lv.1 - We Swarm

You are immune to all disease and resist poison damage. Eusocial insects, rodents, and birds associated with disease or scavenging are drawn to you. As an action, if such creatures are within 120 ft of you, you may command them to take one of the following actions on your behalf:

Attack a creature. Make a ranged spell attack. On a hit, the swarm deals 1d4 piercing damage and 1d4 poison damage. The damage for both damage types is increased to 1d6 at 6th level, 1d8 at 10th level, 1d10 at 14th level, and 1d12 at 20th level.

Scout out an area that you can’t reach. Upon their return, you know the general layout of the area, how many creatures are in the area, and the location of any traps in the area.

Cover any artificial light sources.

Swarm a creature and attempt to frighten it. The target makes a constitution save against your spell save DC. If it fails, it is frightened for a minute or until it takes damage.

Per long rest, you may take this action a number of times equal to your warlock level.

Lv.6 - Taken Ill

Choose a creature. It makes a constitution save against your spell save DC. On a failed save, it suffers one level of exhaustion and takes double damage from poison attacks for the next 12 hours. The sickness can not be cured by non-magical means. You may use this ability once per long rest.

Lv.10 - Subdermal Residents

A colony of eusocial insects of your choice has made its home inside your body. Most of your organs have stopped working. You have resistance to piercing and necrotic damage. You no longer need to eat, drink, or sleep. These insects are vital to your survival, so you must protect them and keep track of how many units you have left. Losing 70% of them inflicts one point of exhaustion on you, and losing all of your swarm will result in your death. Using your swarm, as an action, you can use one of the following abilities:

Your swarm revitalizes you. Recover 1d8 heath for every 10% of your swarm that remains. This increases to 1d12 at level 15. You lose 1d4x10% of your swarm.

You may sacrifice 1d12 health to regain 10% of your swarm.

Your swarm eats through a barrier. It takes a base time of 15 minutes, with one minute subtracted for every 10% of your swarm that remains. This causes you to lose 5% of your swarm for every inch they bore through.

Make a ranged spell attack. On a hit, the target takes 1d6 poison damage and 1d6 piercing damage for every 10% of your swarm that remains. This causes you to lose 20% of your swarm. Both types of damage increase to 1d12 at level 15.

Your swarm protects you. You may use your reaction to negate all physical damage of one attack at the expense of 20% of your swarm.

When you kill an enemy, insects burst from the corpse. You regain 1d4x5% of your swarm.

Your swarm lies in wait for its next victim. You can plant a trap that deals 3d12 poison damage when it is triggered at the expense of 30% of your swarm.

Your swarm stows away in a person’s belongings. You may track a creature over a distance of up to 50 miles at the expense of 10% of your swarm.

The first time you drop to 0HP while over 50% of your swarm remains, you are automatically stabilized. A return to full health restores the use of this ability. During a short rest, you regenerate 20% of your swarm, and during a long rest you regenerate 50%. If you have access to meat of any kind, you may use it to regenerate you swarm at any time you aren’t in combat, regaining 1% of your swarm per pound of meat.

Lv.14 - Fetid Aura

Any time a creature within 30 ft of you takes damage, you may add 1d8 poison damage to the attack. This increases to 1d10 at level 17, and to 1d12 at level 20. Furthermore, if an ally within 30 ft of you takes poison damage, they may roll the same die and reduce the damage by the rolled amount.

Lv. 20 - Postmortumorphasis

For all intents and purposes, you have become your swarm. You are immune to poison, piercing, and necrotic damage. You may now exceed 100% of your swarm, and all attacks you make with your swarm deal an extra 1d12 psychic damage. If you die and have at least 5% of your swarm left, you have 1 hour to find a new host. The host can be any living human. In order to infect a person, at least one of your bugs must burrow into the hosts flesh for at least a minute. From the time of infection, it takes you a week to fully infest the new body and take control. While completing your infection, you can compel your host to perform the tasks you want through a contest of charisma. Once your infestation is complete, your host will die and you will have complete control of their husk. The new body takes on the stats your original body had, but you can’t alter your appearance. You may also attempt to infect others with this method while you are still alive. If you manage to do so, the creature retains its own will, but becomes a new acolyte of the corruption, and thus entirely loyal to it. You may have only one such infection in progress at a time, and such an infection takes a month rather than a week.

THE DARK

Expanded Spell List

1st - Faerie Fire, Sleep 2nd - Blindness/Deafness, Pass Without Trace 3rd - Blink, Nondetection 4th - Black Tentacles, Greater Invisibility 5th - Mislead, Teleportation Circle

Lv.1 - Shadowcery

You do not have darkvision, but you have a 6th sense with which to navigate the dark. You can sense creatures and objects up to 30ft around you, and if a creature you’re familiar with is in the dark with you, you know exactly who and where it is up to 60 ft away. You have command over the shape and darkness of shadows. You can not create new shadows or erase shadows, but can extend existing shadows up to 10 ft as an action. While in shadows (dim light or total darkness), your speed increases by 5 ft. This increases to 10 ft at level 10.

Lv.6 - Blackout

You can snuff light sources with a thought. Roll a d10. The result determines the result:

1: Light bulbs within 10 ft of you flicker for a minute.

2-3: Light bulbs within 10ft of you burn out instantly, and those within 15 ft of you flicker for a minute.

4-5: Light bulbs within 20 ft of you burn out instantly, and any torch-sized fires within 10 ft of you are snuffed. Flashlights cease to work for a minute.

6-7: Light bulbs within 30 ft of you burn out instantly, light bulbs within 50 ft of you flicker for 5 minutes, and any campfire-sized fires within 30 ft of you are snuffed. Flashlights cease to work for 5 minutes.

8-9: Light bulbs within 60 ft of you burn out instantly, any campfire-sized fires within 60 ft of you are snuffed, and any screen that emits light bluescreens for 5 minutes. Flashlights cease working for a half hour.

10 - Light bulbs within 60 ft of you explode. Bonfire-sized fires within 60 ft of you are snuffed. Flashlights cease working for an hour. All electronic devices show static for 10 minutes.

You may use this ability once per long rest.

Lv.10 - Antilight

Choose a point within 30 ft of you. This point emanates darkness for 120 ft in all directions. The dark acts as light does, being blocked by opaque objects and diffused by translucent ones. Where the dark is blocked from reaching, light can still shine, but the dark does not create new light. Concentrated beams of light (strong flashlights) can penetrate the dark, but fade away after 5 ft. While in this darkness, your shadowcery extends to any place the antilight touches. Creatures with darkvision can only see half as far, and divination spells, including The Watcher’s Crown, have a 50% chance of being blocked. The darkness lasts for 10 minutes. As an action, you can move the antilight source up to 30 ft per turn. The antilight dissipates if you are incapacitated. You can use this ability once per long rest.

Lv.14 - Predatory Dark

You can make shadows tangible, and very, very aggressive. As an action, on your turn, if a creature is within 10 ft of a shadow or within an area of darkness, you can make a spell attack roll against that creature. On a hit, deal 3d10 necrotic or cold damage to the target. Once you have successfully dealt damage to a target, the shadows latch onto it and deal 1d10 necrotic damage per round for 5 rounds, or until you dismiss it. On its turn, the target may try to make a strength save against your spell save DC. On a success, the shadows detach and you regain an amount of health equal to the damage the shadow dealt. If a creature dies while the shadow is attached to it, choose another target. The shadows automatically attach to that creature and you gain 20HP instantly. The health you regain stacks until the shadows return to you. Per long rest, you can use this ability a number of times equal to your charisma modifier. This ability deals an extra 2d8 damage when used in tandem with antilight.

Lv.20 - Sandman

Pray the Sandman only brings you sleep. Choose a creature. That creature must make a wisdom save against your spell save DC. On a success, the creature takes 3d10 psychic damage and falls asleep for 10 minutes, until its allies rouse it, or until it takes damage. On a failed save, the creature falls into a deep state of sleep paralysis. It can not be roused by any means short of your own will. While in this state, the target begins its hallucinations. It sees a creature, the sandman, carrying a sack. Black sand flows from its mouth, warping the world where it touches until there is nothing left. Darkness surrounds the target, pressing in around it everywhere but their eyes. The creature takes 30 psychic damage per round for 10 rounds or until it escapes or dies. While in the nightmare state, the creature can perform actions on itself (such as healing), but not on any other creature. As a bonus action, the target can attempt to break free by rolling a d20, to varying effects:

20: The target breaks free.

17-19: The target breaks free and is blinded for 24 hours.

14-15: The target breaks free and is blinded for a week.

2-13: The target remains trapped in the hallucination.

1: The target breaks free, takes 1d10 slashing damage, and is blinded permanently.

The blindness inflicted by this ability can not be healed by any means short of replacing the damaged eyes. If an acolyte of the beholding rolls a 1 to escape, they are blinded for a week, and lose the use of one eye rather than suffer total permanent blindness.

THE END

Expanded Spell List

1st - False Life, Wrathful Smite 2nd - Healing Spirit, Silence 3rd - Feign Death, Revivify 4th - Aura of Life, Death Ward 5th - Raise Dead, Cone of Cold

Lv.1 - Life’s a Game

Once, you gambled for a second chance at life. You won, and thus were damned. You have advantage when playing any kind of game that involves chance. If you are subject to an effect that would normally insta kill you, you can still make your death saves. Once per long rest when you drop to 0 HP, you return to life with 5% of your maximum health instead. You no longer age.

Lv. 6 - Planchet

As an action, point at a creature you can see. You now know exactly how much HP it has, any disease or injury it suffers from, how many people it has killed, and in certain cases, how it is fated to die. Using this ability on an ally reveals the source of its next injury to it, and grants it a +1 to AC until its next turn. Using this ability on a corpse reveals the wound it died from, but nothing more. The creature you use this ability on knows that you cast a spell on it.

Lv.10 - Rigor Mortis

Death does not come easy to someone like you. You gain a +2 bonus to AC and are resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage (chose one). Any time you are healed, add your constitution modifier to the amount healed.

Lv.14 - Cauterize Emotions

You and any ally within 30 ft of you is immune to the frightened condition. As an action, you may choose a target. The target makes a wisdom save against your spell save DC. On a failed save, the creature does not feel emotion for 24 hours and becomes incapacitated. On a critical failure, choose an emotion. The creature can not feel that emotion ever again. A creature can only ever have one emotion cauterized. You may take this action once per long rest.

Lv.20 - Exxus

You are death incarnate, and you don’t have to play by your own rules. You literally can not be killed by anything short of having your soul destroyed. If you fail your death saving throws, your body appears dead until you are sufficiently healed. Even in the event of the total destruction of your body, part of you is guaranteed to survive and find a way to rise to full power once again. You may extend this immortality to one other creature. The creature you choose becomes exempt from death. They cease aging and gain the benefits of your Life’s a Game and Rigor Mortis abilities, and if their body should die, their ghost becomes bound to you for as long as your soul remains intact. In exchange, they become entirely loyal to The End. You can grant immortality only once, and it can not be revoked. Chose wisely.

#the magnus archives #dnd homebrew #not art #long post

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thecreaturecodex · 5 years ago

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Slaad, Yellow

Image © @tredlocity

[Since slaadi are tied to disease through their reproduction, I’ve always thought that a specifically disease-themed slaad was a good idea. The first version of the yellow slaad was a CR 15, and was clad in full plate. This is because it was a ripoff of the version of Nergal that appeared in the 3pp Book of Fiends. I’ve minimized the similarities in my current take on it, as well as removing references in the flavor text to Pandemonium. That’s not a plane that exists in PFRPG.

Also, that first version was written almost 17 years ago. I feel old.]

Slaad, Yellow CR 9 CN Aberration This foul creature might have once resembled a swollen, nearly spherical humanoid toad, but many of its features are concealed by massive warts and boils growing along flaps and folds of skin. It is sickly yellow in color, and its eyes are permanently sealed by cyst-like growths. A third arm grows from its back between its shoulders, reaching awkwardly around the thing’s body

Yellow slaadi are perhaps the most physically grotesque of their kind. They form from an accident of the slaad life cycle—if a green slaad is infected with the chaos phage spread by a blue or brown slaad, it metamorphoses into a yellow slaad if unable to cure itself in time. Yellow slaadi are slow and blind due to their deformities, but make up for this with a supernatural mastery of disease. Some scholars view the yellow slaad’s personality as being composed of its diseases, and the physical body is merely a host. Indeed, yellow slaadi created from the same source often display characteristic personality tics not found in other, less “related” members of the species.

In combat, a yellow slaad typically stays put and lets enemies come to it. Their stink is a weapon in and of itself, and yellow slaadi target sickened foes above those unaffected by their stench. A yellow slaad’s primary goal when it fights is usually to infect as many creatures with its diseases as possible—chaos phage if it is seeking to reproduce, and other magical ailments if it merely wants to propagate sickness for its own sake. They can issue telepathic commands to creatures suffering from a disease, and may periodically visit a creature it has infected in order to direct its behavior over a longer duration.

A yellow slaad typically has a patient and steady-tempered outlook, especially in comparison to other slaadi. After all, a disease needs time to properly spread throughout the body and reach its fullness. They do not move quickly, relying on dimension door if it needs to reach a destination with haste. Brown slaadi view yellow slaadi as powerful, near holy, figures and often flock to them. On the other hand, most other slaadi view their yellow cousins as abominations, albeit dangerous ones. Gray slaadi may approach adventurers in disguise to hire them to slay a marauding yellow slaad, in order for their own expeditions to succeed later in that territory.

A yellow slaad is roughly spherical and has a diameter around six feet. Even the lightest of them weigh about three tons.

Yellow Slaad CR 9 XP 6,400 CN Large aberration (chaos, extraplanar, slaad) Init +3; Senses blind, blindsight 60 ft., Perception +14 Aura stench (30 ft., Fort DC 21, sickened 1 minute) Defense AC 21, touch 8, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, -1 Dex, +13 natural) hp 115 (10d8+70); fast healing 5 Fort +11, Ref +2, Will +8 Immune disease, gaze attacks, nauseated and sickened conditions, visual spells and effects; Resist acid 10, cold 10, electricity 10, fire 10; SR 20 Defensive Abilities stability Offense Speed 20 ft. Melee bite +12 (2d6+6 plus disease), 3 slams +12 (1d4+6) Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft (10 ft. with bite) Special Attacks acidic phlegm, command the sick Spell-like Abilities CL 10th, concentration +13 (+17 casting defensively) At will—diagnose disease, dimension door, protection from law (DC 14), ray of enfeeblement (DC 15), spectral hand 3/day—contagion (DC 17), eldritch fever (DC 16), stinking cloud (DC 16), telekinesis (DC 18), touch of slime (DC 17) 1/day—dispel law (DC 18), plague storm (DC 19), scrying (DC 17) Statistics Str 22, Dex 9, Con 22, Int 14, Wis 13, Cha 17 Base Atk +7; CMB +14; CMD 23 (27 vs. forced movement) Feats Combat Casting, Improved Initiative, Lunge, Toughness, Vital Strike Skills Heal +11, Intimidate +16, Knowledge (arcana) +15, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +12, Perception +14, Survival +14 Languages Common, Slaad, telepathy 60 ft. Ecology Environment any land or underground (Maelstrom) Organization solitary, pair or ward (1-2 plus 2-12 brown slaadi) Treasure standard Special Abilities Acidic Phlegm (Ex) As a standard action, a yellow slaad can vomit a bolus of phlegm at a range of 60 feet, which explodes in a 10 foot radius burst. All creatures in the area take 9d6 points of acid damage and are entangled for 1d4 rounds. A successful DC 21 Reflex save halves the damage and negates the entangled condition. Any creature that takes damage from this ability is exposed to the yellow slaad’s disease. A yellow slaad may use this ability at will, but must wait 1d4 rounds between uses. The save DC is Constitution based. Command the Sick (Su) As a standard action at will, a yellow slaad may telepathically issue a command to any creature currently suffering from a disease. Creatures infected with a disease in its incubation period are immune to this effect. Treat this as a suggestion spell (CL 10th, Will DC 18), except that the yellow slaad does not need to share a language with the target. A creature may be subject to only one suggestion implanted by command the sick at a time. The save DC is Charisma based. Disease (Su) Xanthic chaos phage; bite or acidic phlegm—injury; save Fort DC 21; onset immediate; frequency 1/day; effect 1d6 Con damage and 1d6 Cha damage; cure 2 consecutive saves. A creature that is reduced to 0 Con or Cha by chaos phage is immediately transformed into a brown slaad. This transformation can only be reversed by a miracle or wish. A slaad instead transforms into a yellow slaad. The save DC is Constitution based. Stability (Ex) A yellow slaad gains a +4 to its CMD against any combat maneuver that would move it from its current position, such as a bull rush, overrun or reposition. It loses this bonus if it is not in contact with the ground.

#slaad #yellow slaad #plaguebringer #pathfinder 1e #tredlocity

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wildstrandsblog · 6 years ago

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I am an Empath. I am an HSP.

I am an Empath. I am a Highly Sensitive Person. I live with Kundalini. If these words sound foreign to you, I can understand. I was in that same boat a year and a half ago, too, just after my thirty-seventh birthday. If someone had said these psychological terms, “Empath,” “Highly Sensitive Person,” “HSP,” or “Kundalini,” to me I might’ve said, “That’s interesting. What does that mean?” Now, I cannot afford to be so cavalier. Aside from my work as a wife and mother, my life revolves around understanding the meaning behind these words because the quality of my life and the life of my family depends on it.

I had no idea I experienced an aspect of my life so differently than others. I walked the same and talked the same as others, ate the same food producing the same amount of energy my body needed to keep running the same as others, but there was and is something inherently different in the way I received, or felt, information beyond the five senses normally attributed: sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste. This extra sense or ability I have is strongly rooted in the way I perceive the world and allows me to “sense” or “feel” the world beyond the physical with something we have all come to know as intuition.

What is intuition? I can tell you what it means to me. I came into it strongly in my mid-twenties when it guided me out of a mental health crisis that neither myself nor any family or friend around me knew. The year was 2005 when women still remained publicly silent about abuse and were threatened by being labeled “crazy.” I was stricken with a panic attack after an intense two-week study of my young life and the world around me. I was working to make sense of the injustice that had come to me as a little girl who had been sexually abused, and not just me but so many young girls and women who fall victim to sexual abuse repeatedly only to have had societal norms heavily suggest they remain silent. The pain I felt for all those who suffered silently, women in my family, women whom I never met, their stories lost to history, was unlike anything I had experienced before, falling to my knees, crying out in agony, and gripped by an intense energy as if in a night terror where the dreamer is half asleep and half awake and powerless to stop their intruders.

By the end of this self study turned compulsion where I only thought I was gathering information, I found myself laying on a couch, close to death, hooked to my father’s at-home blood pressure monitor registering my heartbeat at 45 beats per minute. I was unable to move out of a paralyzing fear that someone or something was going to take me. What eventually released me from the psychological torment was prayer.

After having gone through the toughest of the psychological battles, I scheduled a visit to see my family doctor a few days later, trying to seek an answer from the medical community when others had no answer and facing my fear that I would be diagnosed with insanity. The doctor ended the exam saying, “Everything checks out. You look great. I don’t know what you experienced but maybe you hold the key to unlocking people’s brains,” said rather sarcastically though it stuck with me. There was no referral to see a psychologist or any type of counseling, and loved ones encouraged me with a lack of wisdom saying, “Well, you can’t be crazy if you think you’re crazy. Only people who think they’re not crazy are the crazy ones.” I did nothing more to pursue the mystery of what caused a low level of psychosis, frankly because all my energy was now devoted to acclimating myself back from this strange, new world I came into as if I were a child again, having been reborn into something just as real, if not more, as the world around me.

The event itself I never spoke on much again, tucking it away as something others would see as strange and largely discomforting, resting on the habitual tendency to remain silent. What I did do, though, was place a lot of stock in this unknowable instinct that emerged, guiding me from nothing I knew or created, but had an intelligence far more adept at knowing me than I knew of myself, and in a way I was never taught before. It became known to me as the one thing, more than people, more than family, even more than friends, I could count on, yet, I still had no language or words to identify the force that guided me into the perilous jungles of the inner, unconscious, world and was there, again, guiding me back. It provided solace from a harrowing experience and put me back on the path to what would become future transformations.

My whole world has changed since then, again and again, going through the cycles of life like a Ferris wheel offering different views from the top and then again from the bottom but always in the same place. I was brought to my knees a second time when I became a mother, fearful of imparting this cycle of abuse onto my children like I had seen repeatedly in my family. After a second mental health scare, I came out with a new identity and the words I needed to empower myself and family back to the path where abuse no longer needed to be written into a future history. From there came a place where talking about thoughts and feelings were honored, and openness encouraged from the beginning becoming like a bridge to a life where unconditional love without ignorance was the currency. And it all started with me, the Empathic mother, who finally chose to feel all her feelings, all the pain, so much pain, over and over again, in silence, aching for an end to the misery.

Armed with tools now that help guide my empathic gift that has always given me the innate ability to feel others feelings, I have begun teaching my children the lessons I’ve learned from my own experiences. I have discarded the idea that I “feel too much” or “too deeply,” as I’ve been told in the past having the standard of the culture’s stunted emotional intelligence applied to me. I feel on the level that was always intended for me and others, though different than most who have not opened up to their intuition, to all its possibilities, and the compassion we could all possess on an innate level.

It wouldn’t be fair for me to conclude this story with a fairytale ending where everything suddenly became sunshine and rainbows. It doesn’t work that way if you’re a real person who sorts through real pain and real life lessons. We still live in a world that is largely controlled by habits & societal norms that don’t place a high value on empathic and emotional intelligence just yet. However, I am encouraged by the future. I am encouraged seeing my own sons, one perhaps on the same empathic spectrum as I am. When I see his acts of compassion towards me, towards his brothers, and his father, beyond his three years of life, I feel blessed that a child with his gifts will be raised by a mother who knows the power he holds in every act of kindness he shows. And I have been given the opportunity to love a remarkable child in the ways I always longed to be loved.

What is on the other side if the world turned more towards empathy? I like to think it would look more like the world so many of us have dreamed. The world would slow down, the image of nature would come back into its full view, and people would see the value they hold by adding to the beauty of the Earth. Those of us who are Empaths, HSPs, and live with Kundalini are the gateway, telling our stories to the future generation, and offering hope from lending a helping hand. Through the power of intuition when it is followed, pathways are made plain to the gifts we cannot see just from using the five senses. We let go of the insane reality that we have any control over life by using the tools developed by humans and move towards a change in perception and our innate ability to use the tools developed by an intelligence greater than ourselves, moving with the harmony of the universe.

Like George Carlin said, “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting, ‘Holy shit, what a ride!’” This is for all those that don’t THINK they know, but KNOW they know what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. The road has been tough, very tough, but I’m here to say I’m with you. I hope you’re with me, too.

___________________________________

📸 taken on my solo journey to London, 2010. A picture of The London Eye.

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koboldsden · 7 years ago

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Oath of Humility

[Image by Tatiana Vetrova]

“Those who have armed me, who have fed me, who have cared for me- they are ones who should be praised. Without those who have guided me, I would not be here today. I pledge my service to them.” - Colyn Matterhorn, Paladin

The Oath of Humility is a younger oath, but nonetheless honorable. Those that take this oath are crafters, common men, or protectors of them. They dedicate their lives to those who spend their days tilling soil, shaping steel, cobbling boots, and running taverns. Those of the Oath of Humility understand that the work of heroes is nothing without the common man, and that the work these individuals do is just as glorious and heroic as their own. Their armor is often plain but strong, their weapons simple but effective. These paladins commonly place their faith in gods and goddesses of craft and metal.

Tenets of Humility

The tenets of the Oath of Humility reflect their dedication and focus on simple people, and their own dedication to honing their skills and talents. While these oathtakers understand that evil must be stopped on all fronts, they focus their efforts on protecting those whose works most go unhalted.

Protect the Simple. There are those whose creations must be brought into the world, or the world will be a darker place for it. You must do your best to ensure that those who create must be free of harm.

Hone your Craft. You are steel, and must sharpen yourself daily. Never rust, never dull, and continue to grow your strength and mind.

Guide the Hand. For those lost on their paths, you must apply your knowledge to help them along. Show them where their hammers must be placed, how strong their fires must be, and nourish their minds with creativity.

Remain Humble. Every creature that does simple work is just as honorable as a hero. Understand in your heart that you are not above a common man, but your work is equal to theirs.

Channel Divinity

When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following Channel Divinity options.

Form the Militia. You can use your Channel Divinity to protect and arm those to weak to fight for themselves. As an action, you may provide any number of creatures of your choice within 30ft that are half your level, rounded down, or lower of you with a bonus to attack rolls and AC equal to your proficiency bonus. Along with this, whenever they take damage, you may opt to take this damage instead if you are still within 30ft of them. This effect lasts on a creature until four hours have passed, or it is incapacitated.

If the creature does not have a level, their challenge rating is used instead. At level 3, you can use this on creatures with a challenge rating of 0. At level 6, you can use this on creatures with a challenge rating of 1/4. At level 12, you can use this on creatures with a challenge rating of 1. At level 16, creatures with a challenge rating of 2, and at level 20, a challenge rating of 3.

Guided Spirit. You may provide assistance to someone doing an activity with your holy spirit. When another creature makes a skill check, you can use your Channel Divinity as a bonus action to add your proficiency bonus to their check. If you are making the check, double your proficiency bonus even if it would already be doubled for that roll. This can be done after the roll is made, but before the outcome is decided.

Honor in Craft

Beginning at 3rd level, you learn to hone your crafts. You take proficiency in two Artisan’s tools of your choice. You then choose two Craftsmans Creed’s abilities based on their tool proficiencies. You may take another Artisan’s tool proficiency and Creed at level 10. You can change out one Creed every time you level up.

Along with this, select one skill to gain proficiency in, and select any skill you have proficiency in and double this proficiency.

Craftsman’s Faith

At 7th level, your Craftsman’s Creed abilities become more in tune with your holy abilities. You may now select one option from the upgraded Craftsman’s Creed section. You gain another upgraded Craftsman’s Creed at level 14. You can change out one Creed every time you level up.

Holy Wisdom

At 15th level, your deity blesses you to bestow its wisdom on willing creatures. Whenever you use the Bless spell on a creature, they may their d4 on ability checks as well.

Manmade

At 20th level, you can become an avatar of all that man is. Using an action, you gain the following benefits for 1 minute.

You and allies within 30ft of you gain advantage on their ability checks.

You may trade places with any willing creature within 60ft of you as an action.

You may apply two more Creed’s to yourself, even if you do not meet it’s tool proficiency requirements.

Craftsman’s Creed

Craftsmen can take special abilities based on their chosen tools of trade. These represent their dedication to their crafts, and their deities wisdom and power shining within their work. For items you have not personally made, it is assumed you worked on them to apply these benefits.

Sharpen your Bite. You gain +1 to your damage rolls when using a metal weapon, arrows, or bolts. Requires Smith’s tools proficiency.

Bolster the Line. You gain +1 to your AC when wearing metal armor. Require’s Smith’s tools proficiency.

Never Lose your Grip. You gain +1 to attack rolls with melee weapons. Requires Leatherworker’s tools proficiency.

Hold your Ground. You gain advantage to resisting checks to dismount you from a mount. If you cannot resist, the enemy gains disadvantage on attempting to dismount you. Requires Leatherworker’s tools proficiency.

Know your Way. During a long rest, you may study maps of an area. If you do so, you may use your Passive Perception for any Wisdom based checks regarding that area until your next rest, due to confidence in the local terrain. Requires Cartographer’s tools proficiency.

Trimmed Hems. You gain +2 to Persuasion rolls when not wearing any armor. Requires Weaver’s tools proficiency.

Bring your Song. You gain +2 to Performance rolls against people who have drank your brews. Requires Brewer’s supplies proficiency.

Feed them Well. When your party takes a rest, you can cook for them. Those that eat gain temporary HP equal to your paladin level + your cooking roll divided by 2, rounded up. They must choose before the roll is made. Requires Cooking utensils proficiency. You can do this for four creatures.

Nature’s Gift. You gain +1 to attack rolls with bows, crossbows, or wooden weapons. Requires Woodworker’s tools proficiency.

Trust your Feet. You gain 5 feet of movement, and can stave off the effects of Exhaustion one time between long rests. Requires Cobbler’s tools proficiency.

With the Colors of the Wind. When you attempt to hide and have 10 minutes to prepare, you gain advantage on the ability check. Requires Painter’s supplies proficiency.

The Blessing of Flame. Any lantern you use now shines with holy light, revealing invisible creatures in the closer half of its bright light range. Requires Glassblower’s tools.

Deepen the Well. Any container made to hold a liquid can hold twice as much liquid as normal when used by you. This effectively doubles the effectiveness of some items, like alchemist fire or oil, as long as you have twice as much of the components. Requires Potter’s tools.

The Pen is Mightier. You create your own code that is only understood by people you spend part of a rest teaching it too. This code is written, and anyone who attempts to read the code who you have not taught must make a Perception check against your Calligrapher’s tools roll. You also learn how to trace the origin of certain writing techniques, and when rolling to determine what language something is, you roll with advantage. Requires Calligrapher’s tools proficiency.

Shelter your Kin. Whenever you are withing a building or wall of stone, you may bless them, taking 10 minutes. This gives disadvantage on attacks against the walls, or ability checks attempting to break them or the door down. Alternatively, you may give advantage to attacks or ability checks on walls or doors of stone structures when attempting to break them down. Requires Mason’s tools.

All that are Weary. Whenever you are aboard a water or land vehicle made of wood, the vessel will heal HP equal to your Charisma modifier + half your level, rounded up, on your turn. Requires Woodworker's tools proficiency.

Shine your Light. Your jewelry is considered your holy symbol. When you take the Divine Smite action, add your Charisma modifier to the damage done. Requires Jeweler's tools proficiency.

Upgraded Craftsman's Creed

Pierce their Soul. For any Creed you already have that increases your attack or damage excluding Shine your Light, double this effect.

Protect the Weak. If you have the Protection fighting style, you now no longer need to spend your reaction to protect someone. However, you cannot use an opportunity attack and your protection on the same enemy. Requires Smith’s tools proficiency.

Bathe in Light. For those that have the Shine your Light Creed, increase your Persuasion rolls by 1. Along with this, add your Paladin level to your Divine Smite damage.

Master your Craft. Choose two tools you have proficiency in, and double this proficiency.

Glory in Skill. Choose two skills to gain proficiency in. Choose two more skills you have proficiency in, and double this proficiency.

Stand your Ground. While mounted and possessing the Hold your Ground creed, you are immune to being charmed or feared. You gain +1 to AC while mounted.

Living Shelter. For those with the Shelter your Kin or All that are Weary creeds, gain advantage when resisting being grappled, and gain +1 to your AC.

Leave your Mark. As a bonus action, you can mark a symbol on your weapon. On the same turn, if the attack hits a creature, that creature is blinded until the end of your next turn. Requires Calligrapher’s tools proficiency.

Blessings of Man. Any Craftsman’s Creeds you possess that can be extended to others through the use of items, such as Sharpen your Bite or Thicken your Walls, is given to them, as long as you spend time modifying the item during a short or long rest.

The Path to their Heart. If you have the Feed your Folk creed, the temporary health points you give to your allies is now instead your paladin level + your Charisma modifier + your cooking roll, undivided. This still can only be done for four creatures.

The Will of a Drunk. You may add your Charisma modifier to your Initiative. Along with this, your AC is increased by 1, and you may turn water into an alcoholic beverage using an action. Requires Brewer’s supplies proficiency.

A Perfect Fit. Your speed is increased by 5 feet, and you have advantage on all checks made to resist being knocked prone. Requires Cobbler’s tools proficiency.

Take your Time. When you possess a pocket watch, you may use it as a reaction when another creature makes an ability check or a saving throw. The creature must reroll the check, and use the new roll. This ability can only be used once between long rests. Requires Tinker’s tools proficiency.

Like the Back of Your Hand. You may craft a single simple alchemic brew as part of a rest, such as an alchemist fire. Requires Alchemist’s supplies proficiency.

One with the Easel. For those with the With the Colors of the Wind creed, you may now hide among natural material regardless of whether there is cover or not, and you only need 1 minute to prepare.

#paladin #dnd #d&d #subclass #homebrew #oath of humility #original

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stringsofstarlight · 3 years ago

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11:11💘

Darling, I see it super amazing and a shift in perception in the whole country scene(started snowing as I wrote the last statement), that you not only won, but they designed a new category for artists to have their work go full circle. The whole confirmation by the storm kicking up all crazy like at the exact moment keeps me going on this line of words. Yes, it is true that I reanimated as a solid state of swoonful being, only to be taken to the edge to limit of ecstatic reality, instead of melting, these words so gleefully are written upon this page. 🌶🔥🙏 Each step into having a tinsy bit more of an open mind is part of long tail shift, while at the same time many things seem to be in a status quo. This shows the appreciation and support that really is there for you, behind the scenes and in hearts of many. Congrats, each of these movements makes me smile all through out my whole being. The following will be updated and changed to reflect better what I am saying: Darling, you don’t have to assent to certain things happening when you feel unsure about things that have happened. I understand the need for touch in a whole different way in the last couple of days, it just didn’t click until the love language thing, now I get it fully. You don’t have to offer me anything, or agree to things that kind of make you feel queasy, as a balance. My love doesn’t keep score or need to win, our love is beyond a zero sum game to me. I love you the way you are, I know choices I have made leave you with way less physical touch. Now that isn’t like a free Hall pass(even though I accompany you), just saying that we grow even more when my heart is solely right there for you. Then we don’t need the couple days of recovery cycle, cause’ you know we are ““same team”…always and evermore. Any of the other times that you agreed, kind of reluctantly like, it felt odd for any and all parties, except how the last couple of weeks have flowed…I want, need, and love you, my darling. All of the past two weeks has been different because it seemed much more like a dialogue was continuing that had been waiting to start. Plus, both LK and z have already developed the ability to communicate in their own style to a very advanced level, he’s been at it a long time. QMK and BL have developed their abilities in wholly different ways, by the pathway that led them to today. Now we all know what is possible, it is time to get this all going into action from the astral into the physical. I know you are like some kind of titular head, however that goes, all I know is that your beauty, in body, mind, and spirit, balance in a way that is my cosmic connection for the ages. Such as this only happens every couple thousand of years or so. 🔮🙏❤️‍🔥🤟🏼🍯 Now that all being said, I appreciate your willingness to look deeply, to work on and let go of sets of feelings that are no longer serving you. 🥰 Honestly, it is smoking hot that your kind of gumption just keeps on going and going, it has expanded my own personal repertoire of flavors to way more than I even knew possible. ☺️🍦🌈

✨🤟🏼👑💘🍯🌶🔥☮️⚡️💗🌱🦋🌈

eternal love,

james

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myfriendpokey · 7 years ago

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zine thoughts pt 2

where do you sell videogames? zine fairs, children's book stores, used record marts, from the trunk of a car like rudy ray moore, on etsy or on craiglist, with flyers on the wall of the local chip shop or library. through awkwardly hammered-together handmade electronic systems or the reverse, turning your game into a jumbled set of paper text and graphical fragments which can be sold in boardgame stores as some kind of reconstruct-the-narrative puzzle. you could make one-off bespoke games or game simulacra for movies that want to depict some kind of videogame being played onscreen without having to go through the licensing rights. you could ghost-develop games for wealthy people to put their names on ("american mcgee presents my life with princess diana by donald duck"). you could develop training games for the military-industrial complex, ha ha ha ha. you could get funded by the CIA to ensure the medium of videogames remains sufficiently arty and rehabilitated to function as propaganda for capitalism... i mean we already know they were involved with the paris review and iowa writer's workshop and all that jazz so they gotta have least a couple people on the payroll already, right, and we will all be treated to some very entertaining revelations following the inevitable freedom of information act request 15 years down the line. you could try connecting with the little self-contained fan communities for things like touhou, fnaf, undertale, m-minecraft, like those renaissance artists who had to drop their patron's face in the background of some religious scene except in this case it would be one of the homestuck guys. you could make "trainers" for more popular games, or demos that could show how they "feel" without a $60 investment. you could sell small games as assets for larger ones that want to have some kind of in-universe playable arcade system without having to invent a whole new game from scratch. you could just make extremely specific forms of pornography, maybe not the worst option even, just make sure the very artistic sequences of the protagonist remembering his dead wife are broken up every now and then with scenes of him unhinging his jaw to swallow and slowly digest another, smaller sad games protagonist whole (with rumble function for controllers!!!). you could make games for all the people who are still on windows xp or earlier or have some kind of arcane video card setup that prevents them playing anything other than that one preinstalled pinball game. you could try selling them at street vendors. you could try learning another language and making games for non-anglophones that don't sound like an english-written game that was localised without much thought after the fact. you could make games for kids in the hopes that they sexually imprint on them enough to support your erotic oil paintings of the characters 10 years later, just like nintendo. you could make an extremely interesting and thoughtful videogame and then offer not to release it if the donation threshold is met, thus sparing people the emotional obligation of having yet another thing on their should-play-this-eventually list. you could develop games with some bewildering system of in-game and real-world currency interactions and then sell it to the mob as a way to launder money. you could make videogames that robots record themselves playing to upload en masse which are then watched by other robots as part of some weird, ungraspably abstract SEO economy, or better yet make robots to make the videogames as well. you could make virtual cemetary plots either private (downloadable exe) or public (hosted on the server) with their own customisable mood-themes and weather settings (dark, stormy, remember-you-will-die; sunny, quiet, circle-of-life etc). you could make prosperity orbs. you could make games for office workers or call center staff which resemble excel documents or phone system frontends from a distance. you could make games which really ARE excel files, some dense collection of interlocking hidden formulas that change to display text and ascii characters as you tab your way through. you could probably talk your way into "adapting" any of those old IPs that still float around long after anyone stopped having any particular thought or feeling about them at all, like the flintstones or ziggy or something, maybe do like those 1960s superhero cartoons where they just filmed panels from the comics - just break a 2d flintstones cartoon into constituent elements and have them hover around in a little cutout diorama that you fly thru, possibly explained in-universe as representing the 4-d vision of the great gazoo. you could make games that play themselves, for the depressed. you could become a ghastly serial m**derer where after each crime you upload a new game to itchio which will reveal the name of your next victim, and costs only $9.99, and of course everyone buys and plays it because the police have put up a reward for solving the crime because they can't get past the dinosaur on level three, and all seems lost until some plucky young computer student who found the game on a friend's hard drive manages to solve the riddle hidden within the game's structure, following the clues, to an old castle, she knocks on the door, it's opened by, yes, it's will wright, wearing a wizard outfit, who tells her that by dint of solving all the puzzles she is now invited to join that mysterious organization known as "The Elect" which is assembled from the finest minds in all game design with a view to secretly controlling the world economy (via "werewolf blood", somehow), that she need only complete the ceremony by sacrificing one untutored soul, he holds out an ornate knife, she hesitates........

the question is where to sell videogames rather than how because for the most part we already know how - there are a million more or less instructive articles out there about hitting up conventions or talking to the press, and it's not that they're wrong, exactly, more that they expect to be applied in an environment that no longer exists. but what should preface and qualify the idea of sheer volume swamping the indie games market is that, outside of a few small pockets, there never really was an "indie games market" to begin with - indie games drew and mostly still draw on the existing videogames market, rather than constituting a new one. it's telling that the glory days of indie games were just the ones where they were able to draw upon some of the same privileges larger titles already had in the ability to access that same audience - being frontpaged by steam, say, or making it onto a comparatively closed console platform, or generating earnest thinkpieces... you could say that they were tapping into structures the industry had already built but had not yet occupied to full capacity.

of course there are exceptions and various efforts to set up new economies for small weird interactive things (like patreon, or game bundles), and some efforts to reach outside the existing games audience likely were successful - but when we think of indie games "functioning" economically, whether that means supporting a small team, a single person, or just hitting minimum wage per hours spent, i believe we're mostly still talking about ones which are built around the existing games economy. which is fine, but i think it's also intrinsically precarious in ways which maybe get glossed over in discussions of the "indiepocalypse" - are all those new steam releases really causing a problem or are they just exacerbating a structural limitation which was already always there, a reliance within the indie game economy on a certain lucky-few-ism which just became grossly more noticeable the more disproportionate it got?

of course it's easier to be dismissive after the fact, and my fantasy about "where" to sell videogames is partly a fantasy of them having a location to begin with - of attaining something of the grounded and immutable appearance of the non-digital, as though brick and mortar stores don't have a relationship to the likes of amazon as basically precarious as any online storefront. and there are also real and obvious reasons why the various videogame audiences all tend to clump together - similarities in terms of the hardware required, the inputs allowed, of visual and cultural reference points, to say nothing of the personal / professional histories of the people involved in each. we are all contained within "the medium"...

so maybe it's also a fantasy of starting to pick apart that conception of the medium. i think small game developers already have more in common with artists or musicians working on the fringes of their respective industries than they do with even moderately successful teams within the same format, and use similar language, engage in similar forms of practice - particularly as near everything comes increasingly mediated by the digital these days. i think they already ARE working in similar spaces to some extent, whether it's social media sites or digital storefronts or meatspace stores pushed by necessity not to specialise. and without wanting to be paranoid (or moreso than the CIA thing, at least) i think we should be cautious of the way a certain focus on mediumicity can obscure these overlaps. a "new medium" is one which inherently pushes against the image of one as grouded ahistorically in some eternal human verity or other (where each medium supposedly embodies some different mode of perception / medieval humour / ninja turtle etc) - it is to see firsthand the way in which supposedly eternal, neutral qualities are materially constructed, which includes seeing forms of social organisation and usage become mystified into extrahuman conditions. and given their basis in technology that includes drawing from wider trends in the use of that technology as a whole - which specifically, in tech circles, can mean more and more tightly interlocking systems of proprietary knowledge and speculative capital, as well as "new mediums" constructed so as to be inseperable from some storefront, website or monitoring technology. i don't think anybody will necessarily break even taking their games to a zine fair (not that they're breaking even now). but i do feel like trying to build networks across those medium boundaries could be more valuable in the effort to build some sustainable environment for these things than any amount of reform within the house that tech built.

[PS: it occurs to me that you could plausibly argue that the very bagginess of medium-centric formulations is what makes them valuable, in forcing many different groups to butt against each other on one platform rather than just disperse into echo chambers. but i think exactly the reverse is the case: nobody really engages with each other's work in artgames because the stakes are simultaneously too small and too large. they're too small in that however much i might be picky about another person's work - and i think it's this vague pickiness or sense of not-quite-right-ness that drives the most searching critiques - it still feels pointless to pursue that instead of the glaring, omnipresent faults of the big AAA players, which means more complaining about far cry for all eternity. and they're too large in that most small game development is so precarious that it's not really worth the risk of knocking someone out of the circle over penny-ante shit. only with both economic security and broad similarity of outlook can a truly vital, human culture of spiteful cattiness begin... our day will come]

(image credits: Eco Fighter, World Heroes 2 ,The Space Adventure, Nancy)

#zines #vgames #talk talk

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goodvibesatpeace · 7 years ago

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How to Enter the Spirit World And Receive The Answers

God speaks to us in many ways. He gave us an extraordinary, unique ability – intuition. An immaterial mechanism to sense and receive information from the spiritual realm when you need it and you’re in “search mode”.

We, the people, usually wish to have interesting spiritual experiences, although we don’t appreciate what that means, and quite often we don’t want to put forth any efforts.

Our expectations are that a “teacher”, “healer”, “guru”, or “magician” can do the job for us, while we’re left to enjoy the end result.

But in sustaining such a paradigm of thinking, we deprive ourselves of engrossing spiritual encounters. Encounters that we can experience by ourselves. We’re also robbing ourselves of the control over this connection, inasmuch as we can talk about control.

I recommend you 7 actions & ways of thinking which can open you to spiritual sensations and perceptions. If you adopt them, you will receive the answers look for. You won’t have to seek the help of an intermediary.

My observations are based on the lives of people, who are turned inward to their inner world. And they refract every experience through their spiritual eyes, seeking the deeper meaning of everything that life hands them.

I know them and their experiences, which occur almost daily, and therefore no longer consider them “paranormal”.

If it weren’t for them, I would never have discovered the things I have. And by looking at their lives, I have intuitively understood some of my past actions.

Our common aim is to develop our way of contacting and connecting to the spirit world, also called our Home

How to Enter the Spirit World?

1. The first key thing you must change in yourself is the false notion that you can’t do it by yourself.

Each one of us, every day and every minute, is connected with the spiritual home. Part of us is always there and can make the contact when we need.

2. You must believe in your abilities and train yourself to practice in your daily life. You shouldn’t wait only when some dramatic event occurs (in such moments, strong emotions can become blockages).

3. Meditation is a great way to establish a communication link with the spirit world.

Meditation enables us to quiet the monkey-mind. It also enables us to practice inner reflection by falling asleep immediately afterwards with the intention of what excites us.

For instance, if you were reading an interesting book and wanted to feel the essence of what was written, you would read a little and set the book aside. Allow yourself to relax and close your eyes, contemplating what you’ve just read.

Ask yourself about the meaning of what you’ve read, and then let yourself fall asleep with those thoughts.

This way, you’ll teach yourself how to see into the spiritual realm through meditation on a daily basis.

The Magic Occurs When You Silence the Monkey-Mind.

More often than not, such moments will bring you interesting experiences while sleeping. You may have metaphorical dreams filled with symbols and feelings which, impart a deeper understanding of your questions and of what you’ve read.

Sometimes, insights and feelings from the day can continue in your dreams.

These can include visiting various places that you’ve read about, meeting with creatures you’re curious about, having exciting experiences that you’ve never had before, and much, much more beyond the scope of human concepts.

Quite often, my friends come and tell me that they drift off to sleep when they meditate. After an hour or two, they wake up feeling they have meditated. Their consciousness was there in the meditation, engaged in the subject they had chosen.

If you’re open for such an experience and you’re not afraid to dream (and there’s no reason to be afraid), the proper dreams are automatically organized, providing you with profound insights on the topics of your choice. Everything happens seamlessly without being planned because internally you’ve asked yourself the question.

Visualization Increases the Effect of Meditation.

4. Try visualizing while in the meditative state. Visualizing can actually help you get into the spirit world.

Pictures and images are a universal language. Even today, if you gather people from different nationalities, they all understand a painting in the same way.

This universal language is above all other communication. For that reason, our feelings are often associated with images.

Here I’ll share one more experience from a friend of mine. She shared with me that sometimes just by glimpsing a person or some ordinary thing like spilled water, she would almost instantaneously receive an image and a feeling about it.

On the last occasion this happened, a friend of hers was undergoing a surgery. My friend had no news about the outcome. She was in a state in which she was internally searching for a sign her friend’s operation went smooth.

This disposition provoked her to notice a sign – the image of an angel, formed by a spilled glass of water at her workplace. At the same time, she felt a very strong sense of her sick friend.

Later, it turned out that the water image of the angel described the exact position the sick woman had taken in her hospital bed after the surgery. Everything was accurate, the position of the hands and the body, the heaviness and slight tilt of the body on one side.

When visualization is done while meditating, it provides an excellent opportunity to further develop your communication with and receptiveness to the spiritual realm.

Look Into Yourself to Find the Answer.

5. In order to learn how to connect with the spirit world, you must turn inwards and feel what you want to express while you’re awake – a skill which the act of writing can help to develop.

Our inner world is quite rich. We constantly process huge amounts of information and at the same time analyze everything internally based on our relationship with God and the Universe.

It’s like writing an essay at school, but without the concern about being right or wrong. No one will judge what you write. It’s all up to you.

Writing on the white sheet of paper can lead to various insights. It’s a priceless phenomenon and everyone is capable of doing it.

Don’t be afraid of who you are or what you’ll write. Don’t be afraid to ask the questions that bother you, or to consider the answers. You know how to enter the spirit realm.

Initially, everyone is worried about trying it, but once the first step is made, you’ll realize how good you actually feel – seeing everything coming out on the white sheet, sorting out your feelings and thoughts, analyzing your experiences.

You’ll feel as if an invisible force is helping you to understand yourself and others, and to realize new wisdom. This wisdom, which we often feel isn’t our own and doesn’t come from us, is a message from the spiritual world and God. They are the answers to which we always have access but can’t see unless we slow down by simply expressing ourselves in writing.

Develop A Mindset That You Can Do It.

6. Cultivate a way of thinking which puts you in the consciousness of knowing how to contact the spirit world. And that you may always find the answers you seek.

Even when we can’t comprehend the motives of other’s, when we can’t understand why things happen the way they do, when everything seems chaotic and we lose positivity, it’s necessary to pause for a moment and remind ourselves:

“I might not grasp the whole concept of what is happening now, but I’m SURE and I BELIEVE that God will reveal the purpose to me in time, and that I’ll FIND OUT the meaning of these lessons.”

7. Every day we learn new things, meet new people, and find ourselves in different situations. Yet, as monotonous life might seem at first glance, nothing is what it seems.

Our internal processes, the experiences of our colleagues at work or at school, and everything that we see or touch happens in front of us, with us, and to us, simply because our soul needs to see and experience, in order to learn.

Everything contains a potential learning experience. By sustaining an attitude of self-improvement and inquiry, you’ll soon start to discover by yourself what the Universe is trying to teach you, by confronting you with certain people, situations, and occasional tests along your way.

It’s also a constant form of intercommunication. We don’t gain anything if we close our eyes and ears to the spiritual channel. Everything happens for a reason and is intended to enrich our lives and impart some lesson. Everything someone endures is an experience that can’t be accomplished in the spiritual world, but only here on Earth – a field where different lessons are physically being played out.

Final Words.

The most precious thing is the ability to notice the signs and messages coming from the spiritual dimension. Learning this, you’ll know how to act, will always feel protected and know how to cope with everything you encounter. It won’t matter how complicated or difficult a situation might seem.

Knowing how to enter the spirit world is an invaluable experience.

Teach yourself to search this communication within yourself, to welcome it, to analyze your experiences and thoughts, to analyze the situations and circumstances in your life but always asking “What does the Universe wants to tell me in this moment, why is it happening now, what’s hidden behind this delay of my plans? Is it an attempt to protect me from trouble or to show me there’s something better for me? Are my pans postponed so that I can mature and become ready for what I desire?

Even if you think what you have just read is all simply “infotainment” – the essence of this piece contains enormous potential if you apply it. Those of you, who intuitively do it already can appreciate what I’m saying.

It’s an integral part of the path of anyone, who seeks to achieve connection and be independent, to personally feel anything, to understand how to see the spirit world.

The satisfaction you experience when you realize that you actually received feedback, response or insight, is indescribable. There’s no other feeling in the heart quite like it – the feeling of love and support, not from man, but from a force much greater.

#greatest versions #spirituality #spirit world

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analluringlecture · 3 years ago

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I wrote this for college but they don’t deserve it.

How do you define the word integrity? It occurs to me that most people would say that integrity means to be moral and honest or “to do the right thing even when no one is watching”, as I’ve heard it so judiciously put. These descriptions would not be wrong according to the Oxford Languages dictionary. However, that same source has a second definition for the word that I believe is much more accurate. Oxford’s second definition for the word integrity is “the state of being whole and undivided”. What a simple yet beautifully complex statement. People often use the word integrity to describe themselves or others, but this definition of the word would mean that to describe oneself as having full integrity, we would need believe ourselves to be both “whole” and “undivided”. I personally do not know of a single human on earth that would truly fit that description, but I have been enlightened by three great books that have directed me on a path to pursue becoming the definition of integrity.

It was during my casual reading of Untamed by Glennon Doyle, a book that I passively picked up because of its colorful, eye-drawing cover and the words “Over 1 million copies sold” posted on the top of it, that I was struck with enlightenment. From the moment I began reading, I knew my experience with this book would be different than any other experience I’ve had prior. There was something about her tone, her choice of words, and how she flowed in the text that made me feel safe with her from the start. I felt like the way she wrote was so familiar, like I could have been reading my own forgotten entries from a dream journal. I believe this admiration I have for her writing style is what made her points ring so true to my heart and resonate deep within me. When reading the words: “Something's off about my life. I feel restless and frustrated. I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this”, I knew I would learn something from this book that would change my life. I did feel that something was off about my life. I had been feeling like there was something stirring inside me for such a long time just waiting to be let out and, to my great frustration, I was unable to articulate it even to myself. It was after reading her words “I hope that whatever you do next is born from you and not imposed on you. I hope the rest of your life is your idea. For what it’s worth, I hope you trust yourself. You know what you know. You have good ideas,” and a following quote “This way of life requires living in integrity: ensuring that my inner self and my outer self are integrated. Integrity means having only oneself. Dividing into two selves – the shown self and the hidden self – that is brokenness, so I do whatever it takes to stay whole. I do not adjust myself to please the world. I am myself wherever I am, and let the world adjust.” that I had an epiphany. In an instant I realized that what I had been missing all these years and what was making me feel so unsettled in my seemingly perfect life was the trust in my inner voice to pursue my path of integrity. I’ve always felt that being true to yourself was one of the most important things you can do to pursue happiness but what I now know is that the path of honoring your true self is the only way to happiness. What I had been lacking was my ability to trust my true self (or my inner voice) to guide me. It was the author’s words of “The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me” (Doyle & Audio, 2020) that made me see that I had been telling myself this lie for as long as I could remember, and it was the only thing standing in my way. I was the only thing standing in my way. Immediately upon reading those words, I was physically frozen in the feeling of relief from the realization that this was, in fact, an absolute lie. I had made myself believe that because I was unable to control my own thoughts and feelings enough to match them to my perception of everyone else’s thoughts and feelings, there must be something wrong with me. “We only control what we don’t trust,” her words coming to save me again. The instant gratification I received with the feeling of being freed from this self-deception was profound. I did not need to try to change myself to fit anyone else’s idea of what I should be, I am perfect exactly the way I naturally am. Once I was settled in that feeling and came back to my pondering mind, I began to feel that to pursue this way of integrity I must keep reading and learning everything that I can about aligning yourself with your true nature.

In my reading and research into accounts of those who pursue a life of integrity, I have begun to see patterns of happenings in their lives that might seem like coincidences but are perhaps, to my hopeful mind, a result of living a whole life based in integrity. I had my first experience with this in my own life while reading Untamed. I recall saying to my boyfriend “it’s weird, it’s like I put the book down and pick it back up again exactly when I’m supposed to or something.” It was like my subconscious mind knew that the next chapter would be better served to me the next day, after I had made some significant realizations the previous night. It was only a few days after finishing the book that I completely stumbled upon a book with the title The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck. This was so bizarre to me because for one, the title was exactly what I was searching for and two, the way I found it was not in a search at all. I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and someone that I follow posted a picture of Beck’s book on her Story. I thought to myself “well I know I’m not seeing this because my phone is listening to me and feeding me targeted media because I’ve been following this girl for years”. I immediately downloaded and started listening to the audio book. This book was vastly different than Untamed but was just as meaningful to me. Beck did not have the shrouded poetic-ness that Doyle exuded but was eloquent and dignified. What the two had most in common, however, was that I was certain that I would learn something truly meaningful after just the first few sentences. It was Beck’s description of her integrity-seeking “No Lie Challenge” (Beck, 2021), the year of her life where she vowed to not tell even a socially pleasing lie (like a head nod or even smile that she didn’t believe in) that got me thinking deeper about what actions I must take in order live this fuller life that I long for. Doyle gave me the what and Beck showed me the how. Since learning of her challenge, I have since challenged myself to not lie. Not to others and especially not to myself. I will no longer present myself in any such way that does not align with my true nature, including silence. I see the act of remaining silent to seem either in agreeance with something or someone or to seem indifferent all together as a violation of my true nature. The most difficult part about this challenge is accepting that my path of true integrity will inevitably insight adversity. Beck has helped me with this acceptance too, she writes “If you’ve really stopped lying, with both words and actions, resistance from others is often evidence you’re on the right track. People around you are probably unnerved by your behavior because it challenges their own cultural compliance. In other words, they’re all telling polite or mandated lies in order to keep peace with others and the way you’re following integrity may involve the very things they are repressing in themselves.” This lesson will be invaluable to me in my life as I try to remain true to myself while loving others for who they are and accepting that the issues they see with my true nature are only out of frustration and insecurity as I challenge their way of life that they are unknowingly uncomfortable in. The other gift of knowledge that Beck graced me with in her book was my next reading. All throughout The Way of Integrity she parallels her thoughts on integrity with examples from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante’s beautiful words she quoted so often in her book would stay with me sometimes all day even as I lay in bed at night, so I knew I had to read it for myself.

As I read through Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso I began to see for myself what Beck saw in the poet’s sentences that contained only a few words but seemed to hold the entire world inside them. “The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.” These words made the hairs on the back on my stand straight up. Dante in one, beautifully written sentence summed up everything that I was feeling up to the point of reading it. I had learned that I was not on my true path, then I learned how I can go forward actively pursuing that path, and now Dante has shown me the why. What Dante just expressed was that when we live a life in pursuit of what we think we need to achieve or gain to be happy, we will fail and our souls will be forgotten because we are not honoring our true selves. Going after what we think love is, what we’re told success looks like, and anything else that is conceived outside of ourselves is abandoning our true nature that only longs for peace. Now I know why money will never satisfy the heart, forced friendships will not evoke understanding, and having vanity is the same as having nothing at all. This is an incalculable lesson.

These literary works have changed my life and I am now on a trajectory of peace and prosperity as I apply what I’ve learned to my everyday life. These books are my what, how, and why and they have sent me on my quest for understanding. The lessons have not done the work, they’ve only given me the tools to be able to grow. There is comfort in knowing that after gaining this knowing, there is no unknowing this. As Doyle says “Because once we feel, know, and dare to imagine more for ourselves, we cannot unfeel, unknow, or unimagine. There is no going back.” Even if I falter, I will always find my way back to this truth and will be on a continual, possibly unachievable journey of becoming the definition of integrity. If the journey is achievable, I think reaching full integrity may be when we get to experience what heaven (or nirvana) feels like and if it isn’t not, then maybe the continuous pursuit is the closest to it that we will ever get.

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