#List of weapons and armour in Middle-earth

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014, Peter Jackson)

03/07/2024

[emyn-arnens]

Hi i was just wondering if there are any resources you recommend for writing fics? For names, maps, info about characters and places, anything like that.

I love your blog by the way and your fics are awesome!

Thanks, anon!

I've put together a list of some of my favorite resources that cover the topics you're asking about, with a few extra favorites thrown in. I’ve included both resources that stick purely to canon and worldbuilding resources that expand on canon but are not strictly canon (these are marked with an asterisk). There’s some overlap between some of these resources, but I’ve often found that if I can’t find what I need from one website, another one probably has what I’m looking for.

I’ve broken the resources down into general resources, Silm resources, and LOTR resources for ease of reading. It's a lengthy list, so I've put it below a read more.

And of course, although all of these are good, canon-based resources, it’s always best to verify the information against the source text and double check quotes and citations.

GENERAL RESOURCES

Sources not specific to Silm or LOTR.

Arms and Armour of the Eldar: This webpage lists relevant quotes from Tolkien’s writing about the weapons and armor of the Elves. It predominantly focuses on the First Age but does go into the Third Age.

@askmiddlearth: This blog is a great general reference for all things Tolkien. Although no longer active, the blog has many great guides about the people groups and cultures of Middle-earth, as well as a slew of information accessible from the blog’s tag list about events and time periods, places, races/people/cultures, characters, languages, and objects. 

The Atlas of Middle-earth: The Atlas of Middle-earth contains maps of Arda during the First, Second, and Third Ages. There are also maps focusing on the events of The Hobbit and LOTR, as well as thematic maps illustrating the landforms, climate, vegetation and population, and languages of Middle-earth. I have the physical copy of this because I use it all the time and love looking through it just for the sake of looking through it. If you don’t have a copy of this, you can find a lot of Karen Wynn Fonstad’s maps online. @askmiddlearth has shared a number of them on their blog.

Do note, though, the inconsistencies and errors in some of the maps, identified and listed at the Tolkien Gateway link above.

The Dwarrow Scholar*: The Dwarrow Scholar has many resources about Khuzdul and neo-Khuzdul (a fan-created expansion of the language heavily inspired by Semitic languages). The site also has worldbuilding resources covering Dwarven holidays, feasts, seasons, folklore, traditions, marriage customs, succession customs, food, naming conventions, and much more. 

Encyclopedia of Arda: The Encyclopedia of Arda has thousands of articles covering topics from Tolkien’s world. It also has a searchable chronicle to discover what happened on a particular date, a calendar to translate dates and events, a glossary of archaic and unusual words in Tolkien’s works, a lexicon of names (mainly in the Elvish languages), and more. 

Flora of Middle-earth: I don’t yet own this book, so I can’t personally speak to its usefulness, but it covers all of the plants mentioned or described in Tolkien’s work. It addresses climate zones and plant communities, plant morphology, plant identification, the Two Trees, and the plants of Middle-earth.

Henneth-Annûn Research Center: Henneth-Annûn is a goldmine for quickly finding all of the information given in canon about a character, place, thing, etc. You can search for timeline events, character bios, places, and things, and the site will display all relevant passages from the book that address your search term. There is also an A-Z index of characters, places, things, and events. (There is a full-text Boolean search as well, but at the time of posting this, it doesn’t work.)

LOTR Project: LOTR Project has created timelines and interactive maps for the events of the Silm, The Hobbit, and LOTR. The site has also compiled statistics on the demographics of Arda’s various people groups.

Parf Edhellen*: Parf Edhellen is a dictionary of all of Tolkien’s invented languages, with an emphasis on Elvish languages. Parf Edhellen imports other trusted Tolkien sites’ dictionaries into its own, so it has a vast number of words listed. You can filter your searches by language and time period (when Tolkien created/reworked the language), parts of speech, and the website they were taken from. There are reconstructions (fan-created words formed using Tolkien’s language rules) in the dictionary, but they can be filtered out if you would prefer not to use them.

RealElvish.net*: RealElvish.net provides a slew of resources about Tolkien’s languages (and for more languages than just Sindarin and Quenya), including name lists, phrasebooks, pronunciation guides, and word lists. The site’s Trustworthy Websites page is also worth perusing for links to more sites focusing on Tolkien’s languages.

Tolkien Gateway: Tolkien Gateway is well-known in the fandom as a Tolkien wiki with articles on almost anything you can imagine, but I want to highlight its Silm timeline (covering the days before days, the Years of the Trees, the First Age, and the Second Age), Third Age timeline, and Fourth Age timeline. All of the years listed in the timelines can be clicked on to get a more detailed breakdown of the events that happened that year, which is especially helpful when writing about Third Age events. 

SILM RESOURCES

Sources specifically focusing on the First and Second Ages, including Tolkien’s writings beyond the Silm.

@melestasflight's food and cuisine worldbuilding posts*: Melesta’s posts cover both Valinor and Beleriand.

@outofangband's societal and environmental worldbuilding posts*: Outofangband’s societal posts cover people groups in general, fashion, food, education, architecture, festivals, traditions, and more. Their environmental worldbuilding posts cover Beleriand’s flora and fauna, rivers and streams, lakes and springs, forests, marshes, geography, and more.

Silmarillion Writers’ Guild's character biographies: The SWG has an index of character biographies covering many of the characters in the Silm and Tolkien’s other First and Second Age writings. Very useful for a quick refresh about a character or for learning about more obscure characters. (Alternate link to the old site, which lists the characters in alphabetical order.)

LOTR RESOURCES

Sources specifically focused on LOTR and the Third and Fourth Ages.

The Logistics of Minas Tirith*: This short essay by Anders Blixt addresses the logistics of food supply to and distribution within Minas Tirith and poses possible solutions.

Shire of the Hobbits: Shire of the Hobbits has many resources about the Shire, including hobbit customs, typical food and drink, hobbit history, hobbit names and meanings, and a list of hobbit sayings. The site also has information about hobbit calendars and chronology, the various writings produced in the Shire, and the Shire’s geography.

The Religious Rituals of the Dúnedain of Gondor*: This essay by Michael R. Hickman explores canon information about the Dúnedain’s religious customs and ceremonies and uses that information to expand on how those religious customs and ceremonies might look in Fourth Age Gondor under Aragorn’s rule. I haven’t yet read all of the way through the essay, but it is well-cited, using an array of Tolkien’s texts on the subject.

Travel Times in Middle-earth*: This site has generic info about how long it would take to travel in Middle-earth (focusing on major Third Age locations), based on the mode of travel. There is also a table that lists the time it would take to travel from one location to another. The table is incomplete but still very helpful.

[jelly-and-strawberries]

Valentine's day with the Eldarya NE boys ♡

Made these to forget about that embarassing Valentine's day event. Hope you like it :)

Leiftan – Leiftan likes the idea of Valentine's day because he has the perfect excuse to have you only to himself. – He plans every detail from start to finish, he wants you to enjoy yourself to the fullest that day. – The first thing in his list is to take you to this beautiful meadow, where you will set up a camp. – You will have a nice picnic there with food prepared by him. – Then, you will rest beneath the sun and talk about anything that comes to your minds. – Finally, you will watch the night sky while hugging each other to keep your bodies warm and share kisses with only the stars as witnessess. – However... everything goes wrong from the beginning. – The food Leiftan work so hard to prepared was eaten by Chrome, since he didn't know it was for his date. – To top it all off, in the middle of your trip, you were caught up in the rain and had to look for shelter. – You found a cave nearby, but it was so muddy, that you both fell multiple times while going in. – Your clothes and bodies were covered in mud, it couldn't get worse. – Leiftan was so sad because the day was ruined, but you where cracking up because of the ridiculousness of the situation. – Seeing you laugh was enough to make Leiftan's mood better. After all, he accomplished his goal: make you enjoy yourself. – By the time you went back to HQ, you both got sick and had to stayed in bed. Not that either of you complained, because you could cuddle all day long. – In the end, it was a Valentine's day you would never forget.

Nevra – Nevra seems like he wouldn't participate in things like Valentine's day, but he actually is a very romantic guy. – He wants to spoil you in this special day and that includes doing anything you want. – He's completely yours for the day. – You want to go on a date with him? He knows the perfect place. – You want to go shopping? He is going to buy anything that catches your eye. – You want to stay in bed all day? You got yourself the best cuddle partner. – During the day, he will tease you with kisses and playful bites just to see your funny reactions. – While you are it, he is also going to whisper sweet things in your ear to make your heart flutter. – When the night comes... he is going to make each one of your fantasies come alive.

Mathieu – He isn't into Valentine's day, even when he was on Earth, he believed it was a hollow celebration. – However, now that he found you, he is willing to give it a try. – His first thought is to gift you a weapon or an armour. – Fortunately for you, one of his three functional brain cells makes him think twice before doing that. – He would love for you to have matching armours, but it will have to wait. – He wants to do something for YOU. He desperately wants to show you his affection. – What can he do? Then, it hits him. – Mat goes to Feng Zifu for help and the fenghuang actually agrees to be his teacher, so he can surprise you. – Valentine's day comes and he summons you in the burrow. – He is waiting for you there, galisander in hand, ready to sing a self-written song dedicated to you. – Now, he doesn't have the voice of an angel... but he has made such an effort, that you can't resist looking at him with love eyes. – After he finishes his performance, he is really embarassed. Please, don't tease him. – He hides his burning cheeks behind the biggest bouquet of flowers you can imagine and shouts how much he loves you. – You pamper him with kisses and he ends up even redder than before. – He is waiting eagerly for the next Valentine's day.

Lance – He has never participated in any gift-giving celebration before, but he wants to make an effort for you. – This poor guy... he is going to have a hard time finding the perfect gift. – He doesn't go for flowers or chocolates, because he wants to give you something that will last forever. – After an awfully long time of thinking, he comes up with the most brilliant idea. – One of my personal hc is that Lance is into metal-working, so I think he would make some accessories for you. – Maybe a beautiful necklace with an snowflake motif, or some earrings that highlight your eye color... He is going to save the ring for the future wink wink. – He would struggle a lot to give you the gift, because he is shy and insecure since you are his first real love and he doesn't want to dissapoint you, – Of course, he doesn't show it on his face, but you notice thanks to how red the tips of ears are. – When he sees how happy you are with his gift, he lets a sigh of relief. – Everytime he sees you wearing the jewelry he made for you, he melts. – And if you make it part of your everyday outfit, he will be so proud about it.

[forasecondtherewedwon]

If You’re a Robot and You Know It, Clap Your Hands

Fandom: Loki Characters: Sylvie, Ravonna, B-15, Mobius Rating: G Word Count: 1774

Summary: Sylvie faces off against Ravonna while Mobius hangs out in post-prune purgatory with... himself?

“You’re more stoic than he was,” Ravonna noted, nodding at the empty air between them where Loki had lately stood.

Why the taunting, Sylvie wondered. Who was there left for Ravonna to impress? Her subordinates were all dead or unconscious, Loki was gone, the animatronic lizards who were not in fact ruling rigidly over time sat slumped in their seats. There was only Sylvie. Even when she had been a child, thin arm in the grip of a stone-faced woman in black armour like the shell of a beetle, Sylvie had not felt so alone with Ravonna as she did in this moment. It made her very angry. She would much rather have been alone with herself.

“How do you know how stoic Loki looked?” Sylvie spat. “You pruned him in the back!”

Ravonna tilted her head, glowing baton still raised.

“I don’t mean in the face of his own erasure from existence, I mean watching someone he cared about disappear.”

Sylvie’s expression had been hard—more than once, to get by, she’d imagined herself protected by that beetle armour from her childhood, closing her vulnerable parts away behind a scowl—but it slackened slightly in confusion.

“Agent Mobius,” Ravonna explained impatiently. There was a twitch of her eyelid that Sylvie caught and homed in on.

“They were friends,” she said slowly. Then, she stared hard into the Judge’s eyes. “You were friends. You and Mobius. You killed him?”

“I didn’t! I—”

“You had someone else do it?” Sylvie narrowed her eyes scornfully.

With an irritated groan, Ravonna lunged for her, but Sylvie hopped backwards over the head of the fake Time Keeper. She looked down and Ravonna followed her gaze, distracted from her attack by the sight of rubbery faux-flesh and protruding, crackling wires.

“And this?” Sylvie asked quietly, trying not to spook the woman with the weapon. “Did you have a hand in this deception? I never sensed it in you.”

Ravonna scoffed and looked away from the head on the floor.

“You were a child.”

“I was a Loki,” Sylvie snapped back.

Saying that name—the name she’d rejected but never forgotten, the name that had also been his—jolted her into action once more. She wedged the toe of her boot beneath the Time Keeper’s decapitated head and flipped it up, striking Ravonna in the stomach. The Judge folded forward and defensively swept the baton in a wide arc. Sylvie stepped out of the weapon’s path, not anticipating the way Ravonna swung her arm quickly back to hit her with the non-pruning end of the rod; she hadn’t been a Hunter in who knew how long, but she clearly hadn’t lost her skill with the tools of the trade.

The blunt end thudded into Sylvie’s ribs.

She was knocked back, but when Ravonna advanced, Sylvie’s hand shot up to grab the baton, hauling the Judge forward. Unbalanced, Ravonna was no challenge to send sprawling at the foot of the stairs leading up to the Time Keepers’ dais. She landed awkwardly. Sylvie breathed hard as she wrenched the baton completely free of Ravonna’s hold and went to retrieve her sword as well.

As she then moved to assess B-15, who was rising shakily to her knees, Sylvie never put her back to Ravonna. Pruned in the back. What a Loki death.

“You alright?” she asked B-15 softly.

The Hunter grunted and allowed Sylvie to support her into standing.

“Better if I knew where to go from here.”

“Let me worry about that,” Sylvie said.

Ravonna struggled to her own feet and Sylvie held the baton at arm’s length between them, keeping the Judge at a distance while B-15 opened the door behind them.

“Ah ah ah,” Sylvie warned archly, chin and eyebrows raised in impish caution. “You stay here and play with your robots.”

“This is temporary,” Ravonna said as Sylvie edged back through the open door.

Sylvie performed her signature cocked head and smirk.

“Isn’t everything?”

The second they were out of the Time Keepers’ chamber, B-15 slammed the doors and leaned into them, as if Ravonna would imminently begin trying to break them down from the inside. Which Sylvie supposed she might. She really almost admired Ravonna—or would have if the Judge hadn’t ruined her entire life.

She stared at the door handles, then at each of the weapons she held in her hands. Sword or baton, sword or baton? With a deep breath, Sylvie jammed the blade of her sword through the handles to bar the door, electing to keep the baton close. Though it was a less familiar weapon, she was nothing if not highly adaptable. Besides, touching the glowing end of the rod to a person was certainly more efficient than dispatching them with a blade. She wasn’t sure how many TVA workers they would encounter before they were out of here. This place and this time. Keeping the baton was the right choice.

She stole a last glance at the sword. Another little piece of herself left behind.

At the sound of reinforcements headed towards them, she and B-15 hurried away from the chamber.

“She used to be a Hunter,” B-15 said, shaking her head as they strode down the corridor, “like me.”

“I suppose she might have been like you at some point,” Sylvie said. She was interpreting the words a little differently. “I wonder when she stopped.”

“Do you?”

“Not really. I can trust you but not her.” Sylvie shrugged as she walked. “That’s about all I need to know.”

“Do you trust me?”

“I have to.”

“Same for me. Though I can’t say my faith in allies hasn’t been shaken recently,” B-15 said sarcastically. “The Time Keepers aren’t real, Ravonna’s been helping to cover up the truth, and I wasn’t even created here! I probably had to go through that degrading process of having my clothes zapped off!”

“Probably. I didn’t think you’d want to see that as a prioritized memory,” Sylvie said, half-apologetic. While they’d stood in the torrential rain outside Roxxcart, she’d allowed a highlight reel of memories to flash through the Hunter’s mind.

“You know, I always found it kind of strange that one of the few tests we run in this department is to judge whether or not someone is secretly a robot. I guess whoever designed the Time Keepers got paranoid.”

“Whoever that person is, paranoia is the least of their worries.”

“True,” B-15 agreed as she produced a TemPad. “Now, they’re going to have to deal with us.”

“If they’re still out there somewhere and not dead like Loki and Mobius,” Sylvie said bitterly. She flipped the TemPad open and programmed their destination.

“Maybe they aren’t dead. We’ve been misled about everything else. Maybe everyone who’s ever been pruned just ends up someplace… else.”

“It’s no place I’ve ever been.”

“Yet,” B-15 said.

The Time Door appeared before them. Pounding footsteps raced against Sylvie’s accelerating heartbeat as she prepared to step through and leave this place behind. They had to go now, her and her one ally. She couldn’t get above one ally these days. It was better than none.

“Yet,” Sylvie agreed.

—

Meanwhile in Jet Ski Land…

“That’s why I always felt such an affinity for that Earth actor,” Mobius said. “I am Owen Wilson. Or was.”

He dug his bare toes deeper into the slightly rocky beach and watched the slow wash of trash along the shore. It was almost nice here, but not quite. Not a place to stay. Everything inside him had already been screaming that. A lifelong (in this life, anyway) bureaucrat, he’d never felt such restlessness.

“Am… was… what does it matter?” the man next to him asked rhetorically.

He was also Mobius. No, Mobius was him. No, that wasn’t right, they were both Owen Wilson. Variants of him. But this man had shaggy blond hair where Mobius had been grey for as long as he could remember. Also, he appeared to be the only Owen Wilson in sight who had a mustache and he was a little proud of that. Probably stupidly, but it was helping him hold on to his sense of identity in the presence of so many hims.

They were on the beach around him, sitting in the dunes behind him, swimming in the water in front of him. One of the Owens was freaking parasailing through the air up above while another Owen drove the boat that towed him.

“How long have you guys been here?” Mobius asked in awe.

“You know, it’s hard to say,” Owen said, folding his arms thoughtfully. “It’s tough to figure out exactly how time flows here. A little like what you were describing, with your experience at the TVA.”

“Have you gotten to know everybody?”

“Oh yeah, they’re good guys. And all of us Owens are naturally social.”

“What about that one?” Mobius asked, pointing. He could hear the raw admiration in his own voice as the geriatric Owen he’d indicated revved his jet ski, bouncing over the low swells of the turquoise water.

“One of our actors. He was in the middle of filming a movie in Indonesia before he ended up here. Played an international, jet ski-riding spy in sort of a buddy comedy. Eighty-three years old and still a star.”

“What? That sounds incredible! What the heck happened?”

“Well,” Owen told him with a grimace, “the tsunami of 2051.”

“Right,” Mobius said, recalling the list of 21st-century apocalyptic events he and Loki had so recently sifted through together.

“He wasn’t supposed to survive the wave. The film crew had tethered him to the jet ski for safety while they were shooting and, as far as Owen can guess, that should’ve been enough to kill him. That’s what the TVA was counting on. They had to bring him in when he didn’t drown.”

“What a story though! That old Owen is one tough nut!”

“I know!” Owen gushed proudly.

Mobius shook his head in amazement, scanning the water. His gaze landed on something he couldn’t immediately understand.

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“That’s jet-ski Owen.”

“I thought the old guy was jet-ski Owen.”

“Nah, that one’s Owen on a jet ski. This one’s Owen as a jet ski.”

The riderless craft surged across the water until the speed had its front end lifting high off the surface. With a glorious final burst, it escaped the water entirely, executing a barrel roll in midair before touching down once more.

Mobius felt the praise leave his own lips and heard it echoed up and down the beach by all other versions of Owen Wilson in attendance: “Wow.”

[isolenmlyswear69]

ℂ𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕞𝕪 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥

Jason Grace x Non-binary reader (it doesn’t specifically say child of ares but that was what I wanted it to be lol)

Warning: cursing,kissing ig nothing to heated tho, also shit grammar and no proofreading cause I’m lazy

——————————————————————————

3rd point of view:

It started as a small bet, but that's always how it starts between y/n and percy, yn/ being competitive and percy matching their energy to the fullest. It was at breakfast when y/n overheard percy talking to annabeth, grover, and jason about how he was the “king of capture the flag”, and that peaked their interest, they stood collecting food and a little story listing to the conversation as best they could without being suspicious. Then they heard the words that made them snap,

“I could beat anyone here” he boasted, puffing out his chest, smiling widely at annabeth who simply tucked a piece of her blonde hair behind her ear, rolling her eyes and going back to picking at her food. Jason smiling reassuringly at his friend even though he was sure that as good as Percy was, there was no way he could be the king to capture the flag. Y/n turned around marching to the table, locking eyes with percy, they skidded to a stop at his table turning their head sharply to percy, whos smile hasn't faded an inch, before sharply saying

“You must think your tough shit jackson, but i'll bet money that you wouldn't stand a chance up against my cabin even if you tried” the words dripped venomously off their lips and they leaned closer to percy's face daring him to to the bate, and boy did he

“I'll gladly kick your stuck up cabins ass any day” he growled smirk still in tack on his face and he leaned closer to y/n face. Annabeth sighed and continued eating her breakfast, having seen them do this ever since they met she had grown accustomed to the constant bickering and competition between them. Jason's sky blue eyes flicked between them, scared that all the sudden they would both be rolling around the floor screaming, and throwing punches at one another before he could step in and make it go away, it was hard though. He thought y/n was the most beautiful thing the gods ever put on the earth, but then agian percy was his friend and he didnt wanna betray him. While Jason was locked in though the two of them had been bickering back and forth about teams for the game, because getting the whole camp involved in warfare was always a great plan. `

“Done” they claimed in unison, before glaring at one another and bickering even more about who got to call out the cabins that were on their teams first, by the time the had final figured it out most of the campers had already finished their food and were working their way over to the weapons shead to gear up and getting their weapons. The duo made their way over grappling with each other and getting into a small shoving match before calling the cabin leader up to let them know what the sitch was. Jason slowly made his way up keeping his eyes trained on the side of y/n face, totally missing the words that were coming out of their mouth, his trance was finally broken when percy claps his hand on jason's shoulder saying something about being on the “winning team” which made jason figure he was on percy's team, the grabbed her armour and flipped his coin skillfully making a golden sword appear in his hand. Percy turned to him, giving him his signature smile that told you he had an idea,

“ I need you to take care of y/n, they are going to try and get the flag immediately so keep your eye on them and make sure you stop them! You got this!” he said patting jason on the back before logging away to inform the other cabins of their jobs, jason sighed this was going to be the death of him, if y/n even senses a opening in his guard she would take him faster then he could respond. He slowly made his way to the front of the pack where percy stood talking to one of the Stoll brothers, shuffling his feet faster to make sure he was next to percy before the Chrion started the games. When he reached the front his eyes met the blasing ones of y/n, they stood at the front of the group, with their handmade armour from their father, and their long sword planted lightly in the ground with their hand wrapped around the handel. Jason shook his head, no he had to focus, he couldn't think about the way they looked in their armour, or the way they smirked at him. Before he knew it the fight had begun and he already lost y/n.

“Shit shit shit shit” jason mumbled as he looked around trying desperately to find them before they disappear forever. Then he caught it, in the middle of all the fighting he caught a glimpse of their hair as the head disappeared into the crowd, he chased hastily after them, taking off above the crowd figuring it would be easier to follow them like that. He flew hastily after them as they sprinted further into his territory swearing around trees and taking out percy's guards along the way. Her feet came to a stop and jadon landed ten feet in front of her with a confident glint in his eyes and a stone cold expression on his face as he charged her taking the first swing, y/n did a simple blocking maneuver with their sword and sliced it back at him, they interlocked in a heated battle bothe cutting it a bit to close with bock and doges and pushing themselves to best the other on. The action was stopped suddenly when Jason swiped his sword under her legs causing her to fall back but she was determined not to go down alone grabbing the top of his armor dragging him down with her. They both breathing heavily jason in a push up position over her his face a side of their face, he slowly pushed himself up hovering over them taking in everything about them, and before he knew what he was doing he was leaning forward, lips centimeters apart eyes met in a heated gaze and before he could come back to reality, y/n leaned up pressing their lips against his roughly, teeth slightly clashing against one another, nose bumping into the other, y/n hand dragged into jason's short blonde hair fisting it up in her hand to pull him closer to them.

“Ehem” the sound ripped the air snapping both of them out of their trance and back to reality as they scramble up, eyes meeting a scowling green eed demigod standing in front of them.

“When i said get y/n, i didn't mean GET them” her grumbled out before shoving the other teams flag in y/n face and sticking his tough out at her. He beckoned for jason to follow him but before he could go y/n grabbed his arm leaning in close to his ear, breath tickling his ear making him shudder as they whispered,

“Come find me later” before letting him go and heading off in their own direction.

[nothisis-ridiculous]

Take Me Home

Chapter One: Almost Heaven

Set after the events of ME3.

A rewrite. Ao3.

FemShepxKaidan

"When this is over, I'm going to be waiting for you. You'd better show up."

Those confident words felt hollow, moot. A disguised plea to the universe that she could accomplish the impossible. A prayer to return to the arms that were home.

That was before the searing burns, the blood, and the pain that struck with each beat of her heart. Oh god, the blood was everywhere. Each blink was a calculated risk as the blood threatened to cloud her vision; it meant having to stop find a clean - clean enough- patch of skin to push the liquid from her eyes. Each moment of pause tempted her body with respite, a siren's call for her failing body to expire.

Shepard had to keep moving.

To keep fighting.

They were waiting for her.

He was waiting for her.

"You'd better show up, Alenko. I'm dying here, don't make me die here." They would have been words if she could manage the strength to speak them. Instead, it became a silent anthem. A memento of strength, hope, anything to make her scraped, bruised, and battered body move against the tide of her fading consciousness.

It kicked back.

Eeeee, high-pitched electric screaming flooded her headspace,  eeeee, her head swam and pulsed. The jerking motions of her head frivolously searching for the illusory flashbang was only damaging to her weakened state and sending her swirling vision into a nauseating torrent of colors and light.

Mary knew she was a corpse walking. There was no way she could keep moving, yet she did. Tripping, stumbling, and blundering her way through the unrecognizable streets and buildings of what she assumed was London. The warmth of the smashed bits of Crucible fueling her away from what was a ticking time bomb.

But she wasn't moving fast enough, and she was too weak, too fragile to continue. A clumsy boot caught the upturned slab of road, and down she went. Crying out as her knees absorbed the blow, her elbows proving to be poor breaks as her form collapsed against the warm concrete. This wasn't right. She wasn't meant to die pathetically watching the blood pool and congeal around from her mouth like a drooling child. She wasn't supposed to be alone. Left without her squad, her friends, Kaidan...her home. She, if anywhere, was meant to die atop the burning Crucible... Dying like a hero, not out like a person forgotten...left behind.

What she would give not to be alone, to have someone's hand to grasp as she slipped away into the beyond.

Where the fuck was Alenko?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The glow of the blue light was comforting, illuminating but not to the point of brightness. She had succeeded in swallowing the first wave of panic that hit her nervous system, using the time to instead survey the room. It was empty, but there were visible signs of another living in the room- a cot lazily angled at the corner nearest her, the space sectioned off by a small table. Enough room to work with, but intended to give her a little bit of distance without cornering her.

Her armour rested in the opposite corner of the room, cleaned to whatever degree it was worthwhile. The set was junk- most of it bubbled and charred in whatever miracle brought her back to Earth. It was good enough to last another fight or two if it had to. Nothing remained of the color or scores from battles that had marred the pieces into something she recognized. Now, the weapon left on the table was blessedly pristine. Well, besides the old wear and tear left from months of battle. But her faithful Paladin had yet to let her down. The dog tags left at the bedside spiked shame, an emotion Mary was not ready to process.

Her head was tender, but that was the only physical complaint on her list. Outstretching her arm to inspect that area for more injuries and to test her field of vision. It seemed in order, even clearer than she was expecting. To test her theory, her hands explored the planes of her exposed scalp. Not even the most delicate fuzz had resurfaced. Mary bit back a scream willing her apathy to wash over her in a numbing blanket. It was only hair- it would grow back.

"I do apologize for shaving you," The voice interrupted her from the soliloquies that must have lasted much longer than the Commander had realized, "it was terribly singed."

"I had meant to change it for years anyway," the Commander dismissed.

The older woman ignored her remark, taking a seat near her feet, "you're THE Commander Shepard, aren't you?"

"That is a safe assumption," pulling herself to sit upright with her words.

"It's hard to tell without your red hair and that eye can-." the woman stopped, her demeanor turning from happiness to grief quickly, "honestly, it was the dog tags."

Years of well-intended crap through the military had spurred the change in hair color. Rather than being the dumb blonde, she could be the feisty redhead, which she had liked much better. People took her more seriously with red hair, and once she had reached Spectre status, the look had become her signature. None of her crew, even Kaidan, knew the original color of her hair. It was never a huge secret, just something that was now a part of her. Saving the world didn't allow all those little things to come to light. Or time to consider a change in appearance. Even Cereberus had found reason to keep up the ruse.

"I have to ask a favor," the woman's voice wavered, "I used most of my medigel. You're a hero-"

"When you put it like that, how could I say no?" Shepard gently teased.

Saddened beyond belief when the soft clearing of Kaidan's throat did not accompany her uncouth answer. But Mary had caught the slip of a tear from the woman; her eyes took in a deeper study of the room. A teddy bear lying in the middle of the room seemed less and less out of place. The woman's motivations became obvious.

"Well, let me start from the beginning." Or course she would. "After the Reapers attacked Earth, things have not been easy. I was the supply manager for a local hospital, so I knew where all of the medical equipment was. It kept me safe, but at a cost. When I found you, I was meant to deliver medigel to a gang of-" The woman searched for a suitable word.

"Raiders? Thugs? Ruffians?" It wasn't hard to guess.

"Yes, but I saw you. And, and I had to help you. Especially when I saw your tags, you," her voice stuttered into a soft coo, "saved everyone. I couldn't let you..."

"I don't see why you need my help," she stated, peppered with a cross tone the anger an unfamiliar bitter taste in her mouth; it didn't belong here.

"They took my son because I couldn't deliver, and now...now," the woman finished with a flurry of tears.

"How long ago?"

"Two days," the woman sobbed.

"Fuck," Shepard hissed, ambling from her cot, "we have to leave now."

Eyeing her armour then the woman and another pistol shoved haphazardly under the covers of the larger cot. Civilians did not belong in a firefight, but against forces she was unsure of, she had to take any help. Testing the fabric bunched around her arm with a sigh, she looked at the woman.

"Get in my armour, and grab that gun."

The woman balked, looking up to her in the empty and hopeless way. Without another word, Shepard placed the bear within the Mother's arms.

"I'll get you both out."

The march to the Raider hideout was a short one. Easy. Shepard was glad to find that her breathing and movements were unhindered without any unusual stings of pain. The woman following her had also proved adept at following instructions; luckily for them both, the months of lean allowed her to fit into her armour comfortably. A few inquiries later, she found the woman to be the same age as her, and the child was barely eight years old. She lost her husband in the chaos of the Reaper attacks, for all that mattered to the mission presented, but it stopped the woman from dramatics. Shaky emotions did not lead to straight shots.

But even talk of the lady's child soon fell to the side as the hideout loomed closer. Shepard could not shake the feeling of dread that hounded her. This was risky, and her health questions pushed at her, doubts consuming her usually clear battle state. But retreating was not an option, and it was not in her nature to abandon the person who had saved her, even if it was a suicide mission.

Four lookouts taken down silently later had not managed to ease her nerves. The options were down to one of two doors; testing either for locks was pointless; they would be caught at that point. So it would have to be hard and fast. Unfortunately, that was difficult when she was utterly blind to the layout of the room. Where was her son in the room? How many? What kind of fortifications? All crucial questions without answers. With no reliable source to watch her back.

"Look, we have to storm the door. Stay behind me at all times; I can use barriers to shield myself," but now came an essential part; Shepard made sure to look her square in the eyes, "I'm already going in blind; I cannot watch you. So stay on my six. No. Matter. What."

The woman nodded. Mary pat her shoulder, putting on the brightest smile she could manage, "you have my armour, a trusty sidearm- you can do this. Just stay calm."

She slipped the dog tags around the woman's neck.

Shepard moved toward the closest door, carefully placing each step so that a stray piece of rubble or siding would not alert the enemy to their presence. Sidestep, sidestep, sidestep, and the familiar tingling of the energy field pooling around her. The droplet of red absorbing into the fabric covering her chest went unnoticed. Three fingers in the air for five seconds, each finger went down with the space of one second between them.

Luckily, the door was unlocked.

One bullet took down the man watching the door. As that man fell, Shepard blasted into the building, taking a quick tactical appraisal of the building. It was almost pathetic; they were stationed in one large and open room. The child was in the far corner of the chamber, silent and looking glassy-eyed. The other men clustered around the table at the opposite end of the room; well were huddled, they all scattered for their weapon. Shepard's next move would make it difficult for the woman beside her to keep up, but she had no choice in the matter. She had to strike while they were still grouped.

Tendrils of energy snaked at lightning speed through her body, pulling the combined biotic energy into the mass of her chest. Their table was close enough not to merit a full charge at the men who were now her targets. Running would get her there quickly enough. Additionally, her barriers were still full. If she could manage to decimate the men all at once, this would be over without the loss of more thermal clips. She wouldn't need to worry about keeping up a barrier either. It was simple.

Release coiled from her core outwards. It was sweet as any orgasm. Tingling and electrifying in one move, though the heat was quite different. It burned through the Raiders, engulfing each before they could manage to scream. The table was gone, submerged in the same Nova of energy. Shepard slipped to the floor, sated, drained, and head pounding as blood dribbled from her nose.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

"Who's that, mum?"

"Don't be rude," she admonished with another kiss to his forehead, "it's Commander Shepard."

"She's staring at me."

The Commander was the rude figure in the room, and her eyes stopped on the child. Her body seized in fear. The blue eyes and sandy brown hair the visage that had haunted her sleep. Mary's vision turned red, the beacon's first assaulting visions filling her mental space. Her foot retreated, backing herself into the wall, her head suddenly slurring back into a splash of colors.

The silent room then crashed into oblivion. Neither of the entrances barricaded, and the front door remained unlocked. Shepard had enough time to roll out from being on her side -had she laid down?- before the ten more men filed into the room. Each carrying an assault rifle that was primed and loaded. Groggily she moved to her feet, needing the wall as support.

"It's the bitch with the supplies!" shouted the first man to survey the room, "and some friend she dragged along."

He didn't seem to mind the smoldering piles left behind from the corpses of his men. But the next man, taller and burlier than the rest, frowned deeply. His steps were more confident, more decisive.

"'The fuck happened?" The question directed toward the woman who placed herself in front of her son. The struggling Shepard dressed in civilian clothes wasn't on his radar.

The female quaked, unable to speak.

The large man grew tired of her silence. The smoldering bullet hole through her skull glowed as her body fell limp, the body of her son fell in line behind it. Now, Shepard was on his radar.

The female scrapped at the wall, blue energy congealing beneath her fingertips as they dug into the wall. Tears forming in her sky blue eyes. No words, just horror. Mouth clamped shut to suppress any reaction, anything to give her away.

Clip, clip, clip. The man stood before her, studying the shrinking female before him with disdain.

"What do you boys think?" his hand tightened around her neck as he lifted the Commander with ease "think this bleeding freak was responsible?" The still-hot barrel seared into the side of her skull

He would never get an answer; the person he held aloft glowed the last blue he would ever behold. Carrying his folded body with her as she trucked for the gaggle of men that stood across the room. Barriers refilled, and the devastating Nova swallowed each of the bastards into the azure wave of energy. If only it could swallow her too, but it didn't...Fate left her kneeling on the floor, alone again.

But now, she could scream. Alone, she could cry without shame. Blue tendrils wavered from her body. Illuminating the darkening room around her. Each shout fanning the blue flames with renewed vigor. Scorching the remaining biological and flammable material left in the room the scent of burning flesh drowning the room.

Where was the Normandy? Why was she still here? Shepard didn't belong here; Shepard was nothing without her crew. Nothing, pointless, useless. She couldn't even protect these civilians against these simple thugs. That wasn't who Shepard was; she didn't lose. Shepard didn't feel weak or have her ears explode on even the slightest provocation of her biotic powers. She sure as hell did not shudder as the thumping of gunfire surrounded her location.

What was the point of fighting? What could she defend? She couldn't save two civilians, couldn't save an entire galaxy. Shepard had failed. Was a failure.

In yet another cloud of judgment, the door whirred open. Engulfing the entire room in bright daylight blinding Mary from counting the targets coming through the door. It was a rookie mistake, and on top of expending all her energy on a naive temper tantrum, left her with limited options to defend herself.

But why should she?

She was exhausted.

Spent.

Empty.

Alone.

With gumption foreign or encouraged by lack of coherence from bloodloss, Shepard bull-rushed headfirst at the door and the person blocking her exit. The first shot fired over the leader's shoulder, the second absorbed by shielding, and the third went wide as the weapon flew from her grip. The Paladin clattered to a location somewhere behind her. The Commander fell to her knees quickly after it.

"If you had any balls, you'd shoot me now," it was a plea, not a challenge.

The second gentlest set of brown eyes caught her before she wrenched her attention away.

"Get up, Soldier," the graveled voice ordered gently.

Shepard struggled to her feet, completing the order. But the strain of following such a command came at a price. Staggering drunkenly, she collapsed into the hard encasing of his blue and white striped armour.

[datenoriko]

Wondering if I could request some reactionary Headcanons for the warlords where MC is a highly trained and skillful forensic scientist?

I’m so sorry this is waaaay overdue and writing-wise is still unsure of the style... I hope this one’s okay though~ TnT

p.s. I tried adding Kennyo & Motonari too, but brain won’t let me ><

p.s.s. Updated masterlist for my random shenanigans here!

*Every one of them thought MC would be scared of a dead body and multitudes of it on the battlefield and beyond it but...

ODA FORCES

Nobunaga

- “Huh, this fireball’s not afraid of the dead?” // “I examine them for a living.” Visibly impressed, a devilish smirk forms on his lips

- The Devil King is fascinated by you actively asking to take her to battles to study the bodies

- “Look at this! With that deep slice on his jugular vein, no wonder he’ll die pretty quickly due to all that blood loss.” // “On his what?” // “T-the blood vessel found on the neck, my lord.” // *is confused*

- Nobunaga considers this carefully and commissions the armour makers to improve their designs, and/or trade for more sturdy materials with the Portuguese (you know… aside trading for konpeito :3)

- Lets you examine more specimens to determine all possible deaths in battle, and then have it discussed at the next council. It’s a great help for them in terms of preparation & strategizing. After all, prevention and preparation is still much better!

Hideyoshi

- A worried mother hen as always, all he wanted is for you to stay away from the worst sights possible and definitely not going straight towards them! “What do I keep telling you?” // “Uh, stay away from the corpses…?”

- Just like how his lord would sneak away to have konpeito, you also tend to get around stealthily just to study “them”

- Being a highly observation person due to your work, you even know which wooden floor in Azuchi will make a creaking sound and by instinct you will avoid it

- But Mamayoshi is just as observant as you are, and he caught you one night

- “I know you were once this ‘forensic expert’ from where you came from, but you are a princess now and must behave like one!” Legend has it that the lecture continues...  

Mitsuhide

- Ah, he loves asking for your suggestions on how to get away with murder treason!

- I mean, he’s surely an expert but an additional piece of advice his little mouse wouldn’t hurt, right?

- “This place’s almost clean, I’d say.” // “’Almost’, little mouse? It scares me so that you have trained eyes for such matters. // “Is that a compliment? Anyway, I saw a strand of hair near the sliding door... and its color is much similar to yours. Care to explain?”

- Now he’s more careful than ever to leave any trace, knowing you can find him even with the smallest of clues

- The tables have turned for him after such a long time of being a sneaky fox

Masamune

- Oh boy, make sure you won’t overwork yourself by being with this man, being a battle-loving man that he is (meaning, more bodies and scenes to check out)

- At the same time, he finds it amusing that you proactively ask him to take you to his trips, campaigns and whatnots

- “It really is fun having you around, lass! Or should I say ‘partner’?” // “Damn straight, partner… now, let’s solve this case!” Cat-like grin commences for you two

- He sees you having fun hanging out at the scouts’ camp, chatting about experiences in the battlefield. your eyes would glimmer the more explicit they describe it. Creepy? Maybe a little, but at least he sees you happy about it… right?

- The One-Eyed Dragon will find this unusual, sure, but it certainly makes him want to know you more

Ieyasu

- Did he care at first? No, not really. He just wanted no involvement at first and to be left on his room alone, reading or eating extra-spicy food

- However, Yatsun gets curious when he finds you taking a peek at his medicinal work on a man he is a bit late to save :(

- “What are you doing here? You better not get in the way.” // “Oh no, poor man though… what’s the cause?” // “I am yet to find that out, if you’ll excuse me,---” // “Can I take a look?”

- He tries to pry you away from the room but being already in and touching the body leaves him no choice but to keep a close eye on you, making sure you’re not doing anything daft.

- “Huh, not bad.” Ieyasu says as you were able to identify the cause of death, deep inside he’s amazed of course. Later on he would let you join him in his post-mortem activities if the schedule allows to, but still keeping an eye on you to prevent any mishaps from happening

Mitsunari

- “Wow, MC-sama is unfazed as we all are in the battlefield! You truly are an amazing woman.” Did you see that sunny smile on his face as he says it???

- Your logical explanation as to identifying one’s death baffles the force’s cinnamon roll (because of the jargon used), otherwise it fascinates him

- Well, he’s never seen a woman who’s into dead bodies work-wise!

- Like some other warlords, he would ask you for advice when making strategies for the next battle

- When you went to his room one time to borrow a book, the first thing you said was “Am I in a crime scene?” when seeing piles of books around, untouched food and seeing a man unmoved in the middle of the room, reading and not even sensing your presence. “Ah no, just a normal room. I see.”

Ranmaru

- While in an errand, he sees you one day looking at a dead body about to be taken away. He is worried that the view might traumatize you for life… in the back of his mind he already has a plan to take you to a sweets shop and let you gorge in manjuu for the rest of the day

- “MC-sama, are you alright? You look shocked.” // “Yeah, I mean it looks to me that someone killed him when everybody says the opposite! I wanted to look into this so badly…” // “My apologies, but… what?”

- Of course it is never the answer he expected, but when you plead to help him solve it, this page is more than willing to do so

- Now both of you are going around the town looking for clues and asking who you think are involved; partners-in-crime!

- You did get to gorge on manjuu (and tea, lots of it) with Ranmaru when the case is solved!

UESUGI-TAKEDA FORCES

Kenshin

- Oh boy, make sure you won’t overwork yourself by being with this man, being a battle-loving man that he is pt.2

- “How dare you try to even speak with MC; draw your swords. Now.” // “Kenshin-sama, even if I’m used to seeing the deceased, please don’t do that. You’re scaring your own men!”

- He has little to no problem in taking her along to the battlefield, too! One more way to keep her in sight at all times

- Sometimes when you two are drinking and think he had too much you just had to stop him, to his slight annoyance. You have seen many deaths due to alcohol poisoning and definitely wouldn’t want him to be in the list… Bunshin Lord Kenshin appreciates the thought though

- Like Nobunaga, he allows you to do some research on the dead bodies, anything useful for the ongoing war

Shingen

- How can an angel such as you be associated with death and decay? He thinks

- But this daddy needs to accept the fact that you are quite comfortable around such! However once your investigation takes a scary turn expect him to nearby, comforting you with soothing words, or a hug… or eating sweet buns as many as you’d like to calm yourself down

- At first he is reluctant to let you get near the deceased, however whenever he sees your expression light up whenever he makes a cheesy comment (albeit in a rather awkward place) he thought of going along with it

- “Hm, this job of yours is unfitting in every way.” // “Oh yeah? How so?” // “You are brimming with life that I do think you are a goddess who descended upon us men.” // “Ah, here we go again…”

- You have to admit, his presence help you keep your sanity as you used to work alone for long periods of time

Yukimura

- “I thought you might be running away now once you see these.” // “As if they’ll chase me! Unless… are they still alive?” // “Weird woman…”

- This tsun does admire how brave you are after even making such joke

- Along with Sasuke, you three are pretty much effective when doing some investigation at the enemy’s base with you giving them (modern) tips of not getting caught. Unusual hiding spots? Hidden weapons? Suspicious people? All checked and cleared! 

- He has been doing that for a long while now, but hearing your strange ideas do sound plausible… especially when ninja friend is highly approving it

- If Sasuke trusts you, he surely starts to trust you (and your skills) too

Sasuke

- Once again, be paired up with Yuki and you three would make a great investigation/espionage team

- When investigating, you and memelord ninja are speaking to each other in partly jargon, partly heavily-memed language

- Possibly having watched and/or read crimes shows or movie you two are getting along so well

- “So here’s our undercover story: husband, wife and husband’s best friend---” // “Wait, do we get cool names too?!” // “Yeah, I’ll get to that part later… or I’ll do it now. Miyako, Tsune and Chozaburo; sounds cool?” // “Noice.”

- As the conversation continues, Yuki is left by himself to wonder how on earth did he get friends like you, shaking his head lightly as your talk no longer makes sense to him

Yoshimoto

- This beautiful mailman sees you one day sketching and as a man of the arts he comes over to look at what you’re drawing

- What he sees is a detailed sketch of a man, possibly a random person. The facial structure, features are all spot on! He is in full admiration mode

- “My, such a lovely piece you are making there. Has someone commissioned you to make him a portrait?” // “Actually Yoshimoto-san, I am making this to be posted around town. A wanted poster of some sorts… he’s a criminal.”

- You explained to him your job as a forensic artist, and he listens to every single word of it. Yoshimoto would find himself asking about your style of sketching as you continue drawing

- When the posters are up he is one of those people who would look at it for a long time; for him it’s not for memorizing the perp’s face, but simply to appreciate the art, fanning himself ever so gracefully

[sirpoley]

On the Four Table Legs of Traveller, Leg 1: Mortgages

Mongoose Traveller's starship mortgage-payment-system is the most brilliant game mechanic I've ever encountered, as a DM. It's also the first rule I'd ignore if I wasn't consciously trying to play the game exactly how it's described in the book.

A Bit of Background

I've been involved in two Traveller campaigns in the past as a player (both with the same DM), and am currently DMing a third. All of them are using Mongoose's first edition. I've never played any other edition of traveller, and know almost nothing about the history of the game. I don't know which mechanics are unique to this edition of Traveller and which have been around for decades.

In the campaigns in which I was a player, I think the DM was continually frustrated with the rules of the game. He wanted to run a tight, story-focused campaign and picked up Traveller assuming it would be, essentially, D&D in space. For his second campaign, he chopped out huge chunks of the ruleset and replaced it with homebrew ones, removing space travel and Traveller's quirky character creation entirely. This worked for the game he wanted to run (he's an extraordinarily talented DM), but I think we all came away feeling pretty lukewarm about the actual rules.

Bored out of my mind in lockdown, desperate for anything to shake up the daily routine, I picked up the copy of Traveller that had been sitting on my bookshelf, untouched, and skimmed through it. In a mood of "I'll humour this weird rulebook," I followed the random subsector creation chapter to the letter, creating a surprisingly-well fleshed out chunk of space to play around in.

It was then that I realized I'd never actually played Traveller. So I dragged my partner along in an experiment: let's play Traveller, exactly how it is described in the book, no matter how flat-out insane the rules seem to be. I will only consider houseruling or changing a rule once we've both figured out what it's for. I learned a ton in this experiment, so, during my kid's naps (oh, right, I have a daughter now, that's where I disappeared to, Internet), I'll write about what I've learned.

(The Carlia Subsector. Not pictured: along with this map is a LONG word document describing the atmosphere, gravity, population, tech level, cultural quirks, government, etc. of the main world in each of these systems, plus a huge table of the price of dozens of trade goods on each planet. These, it turns out, are crucial game aids. I'll get into them later.)

Traveller, I've learned, is a table held up by four legs: Finances, Character Creation, Patrons, and Random Encounters. If you remove any of these legs, the rest of the game stops working. Following them, as described, gives you a rip-roaring swashbuckling adventure of fighting pirates, escaping bounty hunters, smuggling, jailbreaks, and all that good stuff you want in a campaign—but it happens spontaneously. I'll get into it more in detail, but for now, we're going to talk about finances in Traveller.

Yes, the Game Is About Mortgage Payments

The central driving mechanic of Traveller is making mortgage payments for your starship. The assumption is that the player characters are part-owners of an FTL-capable starship that's more expensive than any one person, or any ten people, could ever afford outright. The game (thankfully) provides a quick way to calculate your starship's mortgage payments (something like the value of the ship/240 per month), and for all of the example ships in the book, gives them to you pre-calculated. In the case of my solo campaign, my partner owed the bank a whopping 500,000 credits a month for her Corsair. For scale, that's the exact same price as the single most powerful gun in the game (the "Fusion Gun, Man Portable"), owed monthly. In D&D terms, she had to raise the equivalent of a +5 Longsword every. Single. Month.

(In addition to mortgage payments are smaller fees: life support (i.e., food and water), crew salaries, fuel, and ship maintenance, but the mortgage is by far the largest single expense, so that's what I'll focus on).

I started my partner out with a fueled up and fully-crewed ship (we used pre-generated NPC stats from the middle of the book for her crew, plus an NPC who was generated during her character creation, which I'll get into later). Character creation started her with 10,000 credits, and I told her she had until the end of the month to multiply that by fifty times.

Debt Leads to Trade

The fastest way by far in Traveller to make money is to interact with the very well fleshed-out trade rules. Each spaceship has a certain amount of tons of cargo it can carry, and each world has a list of trade goods for sale at various prices. So the clear way to raise that 500 grand was to speculatively buy trade goods, pick up passengers and freight, deliver mail, and so on. These rules are generous; by stacking modifiers, it's possible to reliably quadruple your principal every time you reach a new planet (which happens every week).

I think my old DM severely nerfed the trade rules (he also didn't enforce mortgage payments, leaving them on the cutting room floor like D&D's Encumbrance rules) due to this seemingly-unbalanced generosity. Again: the best gun in the game is 500,000 credits—so how on earth can a system that lets you make hundreds, even millions, of credits by trading stand?

Well, it turns out, the bank simply taking 95% of your player's earnings every month severely dampens potentially-snowballing nonlinear growth, so my partner and I never saw the kind of wealth explosion that looks inevitable from the rules as written, despite her scraping together everything she could do maximize profits. In all the time we've been playing, despite having already made millions of credits, she actually hasn't been able to buy a gun better than her starting laser pistol, or, in fact, any armour at all. I'll get to why in a moment, because the most important thing about the trade system is that…

Trade Leads to Travel

Garden worlds sell cheap food. High-population worlds buy food for a high price. High-population worlds sell manufactured goods that are in high-demand on non-industrial worlds, and so on. In a quest to maximize profits, the party was locked into a continual tour of the subsector I generated earlier, constantly moving from place to place. Staying put for any length of time meant letting time trickle away (time that could be spent raking in cash for crippling mortgage payments), so that wasn't an option. What wound up happening was that the party went on a self-guided tour of the subsector, stopping in at colourful worlds I'd generated earlier. This happened entirely without me, as DM, having to dangle bait in front of the party the way that I always have to in D&D. Travel is good, because…

Travel Leads to Conflict

I've already spoken at length on the subject of random encounters here, but Traveller really builds the game around random tables in an elegant way. Every time the party jumps from one world to another, there's a chance they'll get waylaid by pirates (the rulebook has a fun, albeit hidden, 'pirate table' that describes different tricks and hijinks that pirates use to attack). 'Pirates' in Traveller are spaceship owners unable to pay their mortgages by legitimate means, so turn to piracy. The fact that the party is always carrying their life savings in trade commodities whenever they travel around makes them a prime target for piracy, and leads to combat with stakes beyond "fight till everyone's dead." The pirates aren't orcs, and don't want to kill the players for no reason. They want to take their cargo and get away as quickly as possible, suffering the least damage as possible, and the players want the opposite. Thus: pre-combat negotiations, tricks, hijinks (my partner, carrying a cargo of "domestic goods," chose to have her crew throw individual toasters out of the cargo bay each in different directions to ensure that the pirates had to engage in lengthy EVA-missions to catch them each, thus allowing her ship to escape without suffering damage).

Traveller's starship battle rules are fun (and integrate into boarding actions that results in player-scale combat), and are triggered primarily just by moving around. Conflict is fun by itself (that's why combat rules are most of the rules in most games), but in this context, have the added advantage, as…

Conflict Leads to Tradeoffs

It became clear to my partner after her first run-in with pirates that her ship and crew were under-gunned. While buying powerful weapons and armour is trivially cheap compared to the amount of money she was raking in through trade (most weapons cap out at a few thousand credits, and she was moving hundreds of thousands a week), actually getting her hands on some was another matter.

Good weapons in Traveller are advanced ones, which have a high-TL (tech level) rating. These weapons are only available on high-TL worlds (each world has a TL rating generated in subsector generation). Making a detour from trading to buy 'adventuring equipment' wound up being an extremely costly endeavour, taking the party weeks out of the way of the most profitable trade route. The closest world in which these weapons exist also outlaws all weapons (various laws are generated procedurally as well) which means engaging in black market smuggling (which is fleshed out in the rules) and risks run-ins with the law.

Compounding this problem was that her Corsair took minor damage in the combat with the pirates, and the nearest world with a shipyard capable of repairing the ship was different from, and out of the way of, the high tech world with fancy fusion guns. Also, getting the ship repaired meant that it would be in drydock for days or even weeks, which incurs an opportunity cost of almost a million credits that could have been made during trade…

Tradeoffs lead to Debt

In her case, she wound up getting her ship repaired, forgoing arming herself and her crew, and skirting dangerously close to bankruptcy kicking her heels as her ship was patched up. There isn't an easy answer to what she 'ought' to have done, which was fun as hell. Further, as a DM, I wasn't annoyed that she was 'messing up the plot' by staying put (or frustrated that she wasn't going to my elaborately-plotted narrative that would occur when she tried to buy black market weapons) because there was no plot. Everything that came about emerged procedurally.

The 'Loop'

The beating heart of a Traveller sandbox campaign is this loop:

Without DM intervention (or Patrons, which are sort of procedurally-generated adventure hooks), this loop can sustain a campaign pretty much indefinitely. What this means as a DM is that any DM-interventions (i.e., adding in pre-written adventure hooks or encounters or whatever) can be attached to any of these steps to allow it to come about during play. It also means that if you don't have any pre-scripted content (to choose an example completely at random, let's just say your hypothetical one-year-old threw your notes in a toilet) you can just sit back and let the loop above take care of providing entertainment.

To bring this back to mortgages, if your players don't have the threat of having their spaceship repossessed by the bank hanging over them like the Doom of Damocles, then the whole system breaks down, and the DM has to do all the heavy lifting of providing character motivation to go explore new planets.

Next, we'll talk about how Traveller's patron system ties into all of this.

[hellzeldagirlsfanfic]

The Cost of the Throne Chapter 6

[Pervious] * [Next] * [First]

The death of Joe had caused a massive riot across Ckville.

The people of Ckville were tried of nobles of their city getting away with everything and Joe’s death had been the last straw.

The people gathered at the entrance of the noble quarter, screaming, shouting and demanding to be let in. They wanted Lord Kay and his men to be responsible for the death of the young soldier and the other injustices that Lord Kay had committed. Soon the gathering became violent.

The guards’ of the noble quarter started to attack the people hoping that it would disperse but that only lead to deaths of more people. And those deaths lead to the people fighting back.

The fighting had been going on for a month now.

The hospitals in Ckville are neutral ground. So many citizens would flock to the hospital for protection from the violence and destruction outside on the streets.

And like previous riots, Saint Mirajane was swamped with many patients with severe injuries and limbs that needed to amputate. Along with families taking shelter, every available nurse was called in to help.

To add to the mayhem Vilho hadn’t returned from the capital yet. It was most likely that he was being kept outside the city walls until the riots had clam down. Meaning that (Y/N) was still in charge.

Even with Viji help the patients just kept coming. Nearly all the beds were filled.

Her and Viji managed to get a break during a quiet moment in the riots.

“Vilho must be going crazy outside the walls,” Viji said.

“You can say that again,” (Y/N) sighed into her cup of tea. “I wish he was here so one of us could sleep,” She complained with a yawn.

The two of them were drawn away from their conversation by a loud noise coming from Viji’s office. The two women looked into the office to see Viji’s husband trying to entertain their hyper-act daughter. Viji sighed at her family.

(Y/N) smiled at the small family before downing the rest of her tea.

“Why don’t you spend some time with your family whilst it’s quiet,” (Y/N) told her.

“Are you sure?” Viji asked.

“Yeah,” She answered. “I’ll get Debbie to get you if happens. Though you’ll probably hear it before someone comes to get you,” (Y/N) said.

The month of riots had made (Y/N) forget her worries about Vergil and the marriage as her mind was more focus on her patients.

*** A few more days pass with an influx of patients that filled the rest of the hospital beds. (Y/N) and Viji had to work through the nights to make sure that every patient that came in during those few days was taken care off.

When the two doctors were finished it was a quiet period during the riots.

“(Y/N), go and take a nap,” Viji told her.

“What!?” (Y/N) gasped. “I can’t do that! We still have to go around and do the rounds,” She said.

“You did yourself the another when you gave me some time with my family,” Viji told her. “Any way you need it. You hadn’t slept much during this riot and you weren’t sleeping well before the riot so, you definitely need it,” She said walking away to start doing the round herself.

(Y/N) was left standing in the hallway by herself. She sighed then run a hand through her (dirty) hair.

‘I guess she right,’ She thought as she made her way to her office.

(Y/N) threw herself onto the old couch crammed into the corner of her tiny office. Soon as her head hit the couch’s arm she was fast asleep.

A scream pierced through the hospital.

‘What’s going on?’ She question.

The (H/C) shook her head to get rid of her dizziness. Once it was gone (Y/N) dashed out of her office.

It sounded like the scream came from the entrance hall.

When she got to the large hall she could see the citizens and patients were backing away from a small group of people not far from the front door.

The group consisted of men dressed expensive and refine armour and what looked a uniform underneath. The men were brandishing their weapons. These men were most likely hired by a noble to cause trouble. But to attack hospital!

As (Y/N) weaved through the crowd she spotted a familiar face in the middle of those men.

Anger filled her vein as she pushed her to the front.

“Dante!” (Y/N) yelled. “What the earth are you doing…” She started to yell but faded away when she got a good look at the looked at the man in the middle of the intruder.

He had the same face as Dante along with the same pure hair and steely blue eyes. But this man was completely different from her friend. He was clean-shaven and his hair slick back. The clothing that he was wearing were expensive and superior to anything that the nobles in Ckville would wear.

‘An outsider,’ She realised. “Who do you think you are!? Walking into a hospital branding your weapons!” She yelled at them as moved closer.

The man surrounding him raised their weapons as she drew closer, protecting the handsome white man in the centre.

The man’s steely blue stared right at her, giving her an uncomfortable feeling. A feeling she that she had felt once before in the dark and lonely tunnels of the Cedar Labyrinth, outside the king’s office as he told his advisors the fate he had planned for her.

“(Y/N)!” She heard Viji yelled from the crowd behind her.

The doctor turned her head to search for her colleague taking a step back. When she did a hand gripped her upper arm. (Y/N) snapped her head back to see that the white-haired man was gripping her arm.

“Let go of me!” She demanded.

The man didn’t let go but pulled her closer to him. His guard removed their weapons to let her closer to him as possible.

(Y/N) tried to get out of his grip but it was too strong.

(Y/N) could only think up of one plan to get herself free. So using her free arm she slapped the man across his face with the back of her hand. The shock allowed her to free her captured arm. (Y/N) made sure to put some distance between her and the men.

“Your Majesty,” The guards all gasped.

‘Your Majesty…’

Her body froze at those words.

It was him; The man who plans to end her life that she worked so hard for.

The man with the white was Son of Sparda.

The half-demon who wanted to marry her for power.

Vergil.

“(Y/N)!” Viji called to her when she finally got through the crowd.

“I’m sorry Viji,” She whispered. “I’ll be leaving you in charge of the hospital,” She informed the other doctor.

“What!?” Viji exclaimed.

She watched as (Y/N) raised one of her arms. Her fingers were straight with her thumb tucked into her palm. The younger doctor poured her magic into her arm and then into her hand. When there was enough magic gathered she’d fired a shoot at Vergil.

(Y/N) didn’t stay to see if the shot hit him as she merged into the crowd of fleeing patients and citizens. She could hear a guard yelling for her capture. She darted down a hallway to the back the hospital and into the room where they stored the dead bodies, waiting for families to collect them. The room had a small door so the bodies could be discreetly removed, the perfect way for her to escape the hospital.

Once out of the hospital (Y/N) quickly moved into the filthy back-streets of Ckville. Her mind was making a list of things that she needed to do in the next couple of minutes so she could escape the city safety.

‘I got to get to the boarding house and get the money,’ She thought. ‘Then I should leave the city through the sewers, that would be for the best,’ She decided.

As she moved fast though the back-streets to the boarding house or she would of if the guards that Vergil had brought with him didn’t get in her way.

“Stop right there Lady Rozeningale!” One of them shouted at her.

“Lady,” (Y/N) snarled. “I get to be called Lady now that your kind plans to marry and not the bastard of Rose-Griffiths,” She snapped at them.

They seemed to be taken back by her comment. They seemed to be uncomfortable about comment maybe because of the content or because she was swearing. Using their discomfort (Y/N) shoot a spell that would only knock out the men. Once the guards were down (Y/N) resume her back to the boarding house.

“And it’s Doctor,” She corrected the guard.

She entered the boarding house by using the rear entrance. The building was eerily silent. She had never been in the boarding house during a riot.

‘Everyone probably sheltering,’ She thought as walked through the loud and clutter hallway.

(Y/N) climbed the stairs that lead up to the second floor, where her room was located. She carefully opened the door and looked into the room to see if anyone was in there. No one, the room was just as she left a month ago.

She swiftly opened then closed it behind her. She made her to her bookcase and push it so she could get. To the money, hidden under the floorboard. She threw the box into a bag and grabbed a cloak.

When she turned around her heart nearly stopped.

Vergil was standing in-between her and the door.

‘When did he entered!?’ (Y/N)’s mind screamed.

There was no way he entered from the door, it was old and need a good oiling.

Her eyes moved from stoic face to his leather bond hands. Clucked in his left hand was a sword, the Yamato, a powerful devil arm that the half-demon had inherited from his father. He probably won’t use it on her hopefully but it was still frightening to have such a blade nearby.

(Y/N) examined the room behind the king. The door was the obvious way out but there was also a window in the other wall behind him. The window led straight to the streets below. She would need to good distract if she was going to made break for the window.

“Whatever you’re thinking I suggest you forget. Just come quietly,” He told her. His voice sounded familiar somehow, it was baritone, clam and sent shivers down her spine.

“I’m sorry but you’re not mother,” She shot back. “And I don’t bow anyone, especially the king of Quebel!” She snarled as she shot another spell towards him.

This spell was slightly different than the one she threw at him earlier. It was mixed pure mana canon and her natural fire abilities. She shot towards the door, she aimed it at the wall next to the door. When the spell hit the wall it causing a large amount of smoke as the flame ate away the wall.

‘I’m sorry Mrs Hudson,’ She apologised to her landlord.

The smoke was thick and black, successfully shielding (Y/N) from Vergil’s eyes. Once the smoke had filled the room (Y/N) cast an illusion spell to trick Vergil that she was making a mad dash to the hole she made in the wall. It seemed to work as she sees his shadow move in the direction of the illusion. Then she made her mad dash to the window brushing against the half-demon on the way. (Y/N) crushing through the window onto a stall on the streets below.

The woman let out a groan as she picked herself from the floor. She stumbling to the alleyway near the boarding house.

(Y/N) scrambled to the nearest entrance to the sewer. She closed the sewer entrance behind then dropped down to the darkness under her.

Once she got her bearing and summoned a light source (her trusty old lamp) the (H/C) started made her way out of Ckville. Her home of fourteen years, the city that gave her a chance to live her life the way she wanted and the place that teach her some much about life.

(Y/N) tried and fail not to cry. She wiped her tears as she left her happy life behind.

The fleeing woman lifted her lamp a bit higher for its light to hit the figure dressed in blue.

A scream was let out by the woman as she got a look of the man that was chasing her. She dropped her lamp as he draws closer to her whilst she moved further away from him.

Vergil stopped once his feet met the still lit lamp. The orange light illuminated his furious face.

‘How!?’ (Y/N)’s mind screamed again. ‘How did he know I was down here!?’ She shrieked in her mind.

“Enough with this cat and mouse game!” He shouted at her.

The angry filled her veins.

“No!!” She screamed back. “I will not allow anyone but myself to control my life!” She added on.

The angry in her veins flowed into her hand. Flames erupted from her hands. (Y/N) threw endlessly steamed of flames at Vergil. Harsh breaths left (Y/N)’s lips at she finished fiery assault on the Dark Slayer. He was nowhere in sight, not even a charted body. Had she destroyed every inch of him?

She stepped closer to the area where she had last sited the Son of Sparda.

“It’s time to end this game,” Vergil whispered from behind her.

(Y/N) didn’t have a moment to move an inch as a sharp pain travelled through her neck. The tiny flame in her lamp disappeared as she faded from the world.

*** That was the first thing (Y/N) notice when she regained consciousness. The next things she noticed that she laying on her right side which was laying on a very comfortable surface and she a little bit warm. Her (E/C) eyes open onto a dark pair of legs. She followed those legs up until she met a handsome face. (E/C) met blue.

At first, she thought it was Dante but then her memories returned from before she lost consciousness.

She bolted up. She could hear her heart in the ears.

They stayed still, staring at each other like predator and prey.

She knew that was in a carriage heading out of Prildo Ira heading towards Quebel.

She didn’t know how long they were staring at each other before she lunges towards the carriage door. Her attempted fail as Vergil wrapped his arms around her waist.

“No!!!” She screamed at him.

(Y/N) struggled against her captor with no success. Her struggle only led to Vergil restraining her efficiently. He had gotten ahold of her wrist across them over her body restricting her movement.

“Let me!” (Y/N) demanded as she tried to wriggle free of Vergil’s hold.

She tried to activate her magic but not a single ounce of mana came to her to aid. This lead to more panic in her system. Had they sealed her magic?

The man behind her, stayed quiet as he let the woman in his arms use up all of her energy.

“Let me…,” She begged as she felt her hope waining. “Please…,” She whispered as tears started to fall from her (E/C) eyes.

But nothing left white hair man’s lips as the woman in his arms lend forwards, she began to sob.

(Y/N) hated it. She felt like she was a child again powerless and weak, sitting the darkness of Cedar Labyrinth unable to change her own fate herself. And everything she had done since she left that darkness of Cedar Labyrinth. It was all for nothing, all training and leaving to be dragged back to where it started.

She cried herself to sleep in the arms of the man who was taking her away from the life she’d loved.

Vergil waited until he could hear her soft breaths.

He pulled her back to his chest letting of her wrist once she laying on it. He then turned her on his lap so she was on sitting sideward. He rests (H/C)’s head in the nook of her neck and supported her head with his left hand. Vergil reached in dark embroidery coat and pulled handkerchief. He wiped her tear-stained cheeks then wiped her nose. Once done he placed a kiss on her head.

Vergil looked down at (Y/N)’s face and the dark bags under her eyes. He noticed them earlier when he had laid her down in carriage but didn’t notice how dark they were. She also was stupidly easy to carry so he took a peek under surcoat and tunic, she unhealthy thin, it wasn’t too bad that you could see her ribs but it nearly there. Not to mention that she smelt bad.

Vergil sighed.

“It’s going to take a lot of work to make you into a queen that history will remember,” He mumbled as he placed another kiss on her forehead.

[z3r0-f4ilur3]

The Record Begins With a Song Of Rebellion

First Draft Of the Capitalist Surrealist Writing Project. Steal and appropriate, critique and interrogate, with the author's full endorsement and permission. Looking (back)(for)wyrds After the Bush interregneum and the long, terrible, progress destroying Reagan years, the American empire had something like a moment of hope. Riding high on the peace dividend and a delusion of idealism among the donating classes, the economic aristocracy which in effect was the senior partner in “American Democracy” (and so duly represented in both parties) and the voter was a paternalized junior to be both petted and protected had selected the Clinton dynasty. The grand bargain between labour and capital against the state resulted in the bitter fruit of the Bush years, as Conservatives paternalists rightly mocked the Clintonian urge to middling action on domestic issues while gladly partnering with him to rob labour at large. While a wealth transfer had already been going on as part of a trend for the better part of a century, this phase in which a semi-coherent ruling class dynamic of the donating classes and the government service classes became visible. It is beyond satire now, but this was not always so visible, as racism, white supremacy, American exceptionalism, various fundementalist and conservative (as well as equally harmful, supposedly liberal versions of the same) religious beliefs; Turtle Island was rife with reasons for temporary cross class solidarity in order to oppose an other or to advance an idealistic goal.

And yet moments of class consciousness and solidarity have perenially emerged, from the “grassroots” as the insiders like to say. They frame the people as “the base” or “the grassroots” and narrowly target their interests to make people find conflict with each other. It is irrelevent (for this missive) whether this is a conscious, semi-conscious, or unconscious process; it is enough to notice it happening. Despite this, moments in the pre new-modern (to be defined later, promise~) politics that predate terms like Black Lives Matter or Trans Rights are Human Rights show that these movements represent an unbroken chain of revolutionary attempts at self-consciousness and conscience transformation that coincide and are just as important as any history of violence. The Ides of March, and the campaign of anonymous internet citizens against Scientology, represents such a moment. Occupy Wall Street was such a movement. “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It!” was such a phrase. The many quotes attributed to names like Mandela and James Baldwin; the Black Panthers, the revolutionary feminists, the Hippie movement, down back to the (In the American mind) hoary days of yore when the Wide Awakes would march a brass band around the houses of pro slave Senators.

It is a poor yet accurate summation to say that the ‘present’ (a dubious notion) political reality is the sum of all of these and more; a reader can orient themselves to the history of late stage capitalism by the growth of the donating classes influence and the acceleration of their detachment from society at large. Moments which also impact this reality are the donating classes sense of pessimism about the future; the devaluing of nearly all forms of labour, the increasing visibility of law enforcement brutality; the list can be referenced in the moment to moment, wide eyed and angry reporting of self-matyring, news-junkie amateur journalists found anywhere online, the shocked and angry expressions of young activists at protests and the weary, numbed faces of the old. Up and down the class system, there has been a wide spread death of hope.

Enter the climate crisis.

Before climate consciousness achieved real steam, our escatological fears were (mostly) confined to the realm of human action or cosmic events unimaginable (and unrelatable) to the modern person’s experience of life. For decades, the effects of climate change were reported to a world told not to care. As Terrance Mkenna said, ““The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.”

The impact of this can and will be expanded upon, but it is safe to say that the bubble has been popped. Whatever finds popular currency within the dialogue around it, that the climate is changing rapidly in ways inemical to human society at large/at present is true by material impact; people everywhere have experienced some negative result of the changing conditions, and there is a rising anxiety in the classes who cannot afford an escape pod or fortress bunker that the people they’ve entrusted themselves to intend to withdraw to safety and abandon them, or even expose them to more harm in order to “make more of the earth’s carrying weight available in the reclamation” (this kind of talk is not alien to them, though this specific quotation is my own invention.

It is important to acknowledge that the bubble has popped. It is the exclamation on Capitalist Realism; it is the moment of awareness, that encounter with a death of hope, in which Capitalist Surrealism, our phenomenological experience of the Capitalist Real, is born. While this Surrealist stage is both uncomfortable and has deleterious effects on the human condition, it represents the chink in the armour of banality and inertia, and the diminishing politics of the powerful. The sense that anything, absolutely *anything,* can happen to you, is both incredibly terrifying, and when looked at squarely, an opportunity for radical freedom.

It is this radical freedom that we see ourselves invited to in the many facets of human expression and convention which have experienced an awakening of new consciousness (or the restoration of old ones. Beliefs, ways of interacting with the world, and surviving are no longer benefited by or even neutrally treated by their operating environment anymore; if the complete weight of propaganda in circulation at the moment could be translated into sound, it would present an impenetrable and unlistenable wall.

It is that environment that individual ideologies not sanctioned by the operating environment have struggled against; all of them now have new life and vigor because despite that wall, and the spectacle societies which generate them, the literal truth of material impacts trump all prior arguments. With awareness of most likely outcomes of the climate crisis on a sliding scale, we see radicalization and existential depression of all varieties spike; the answers they attempt to generate to these apparent conditions lack hope in broad but uneven spikes along that scale of awareness, with the suicidally depressed expert climatologist and the radical anarcho-primitivist sharing the same ontological space in orientation to that crisis.

This project, among other things, is an attempt to generate an alternative answer (what that project consists of is entirely based in literature and mutual aid, the oldest Christian platforms for emancipatory action.) Terms like Solarpunk and Cloud City Futures approach but fail to capture the spirit of an alternative answer, mostly with an appeal to the world of aesthetics, a dubious method for summoning change at best. Terminology alone, or even in tandem with education, is also not sufficient; the noise environment they enter into immediately drowns out the creators meaning, especially if these terms are successful and gain currency with the wealthy.

Rather, we must articulate the positive from all our apparent negatives: The apocalyptic futures we anticipate cannot begin actually describe the terrain of the future, and the apparancy of our material conditions impact on our lives is now drowning out the sound of the standing ideologies. This is a brave time, where people blaze trails for others to follow out of the collapsing structures of the past and into the dwelling places of the new future. Our experience of reality, though surreal, has now unlocked an awareness of an apparent power: making meaning.

It is with the tools of meaning-making that these, who are the heirs of their elders, queer and colour revolutionary and indigenous land defender and abolitionist, pioneer the hopeful vistas of the future. It is necessary that they *be* hopeful; it was the Buddha who taught that people deceived by Samsara may be “deceived” by the apparent gifts of pursuing enlightenment, the majority of which are ancillary incidentals not to be meditated on. The king calls his indolent heirs out of the burning palace with a promise of gifts; when they arrive, they protest the lack of gifts, but it is in his embrace of them we realize they are the gift, and their survival was worth the promise of chariots and ponies.

But there must also be chariots, and ponies; luxuries, and finery; the grim tools of “defense” and all the things the human animal finds comforting in their resting environment to assure them of its stability. In the Dao De Jing, (Though Mueller butchers the poetry,) the Sage articulates this and describes how to create it: “Let there be a small country with few people,

Who, even having much machinery, don't use it.

Who take death seriously and don't wander far away.

Even though they have boats and carriages, they never ride in them.

Having armor and weapons, they never go to war.

Let them return to measurement by tying knots in rope.

Sweeten their food, give them nice clothes, a peaceful abode and a relaxed life.

Even though the next country can be seen and its doges and chickens can be heard,

The people will grow old and die without visiting each other's land.” A.C. Mueller Translation, The Dao De Jing, Attributed to Lao Tzu

It is as naked an appeal to a return to the life of the community and the village as can be found. A return to idigenous ways of being, which speaks to the preservation of folk ways, while the reality that the sage is administering them (even if only by moral teaching) shows a potential for new ideas to be instanced; innovation is not a property innate to the colonizing and walled world, and memetic culture and the society of truth-telling through representation around it reflect callbacks to this desire. The political movement around Land Back, while perennial to the causes of indigenous people, crystalizes an actionable answer for individuals and collectives to support. Its cousins in other colour movements, many of them representing indigenous people displaced by imperialism in the first place, are also generative of positive futures; it is a fact of history that as the rights of people classified as “minorities” are raised, the general quality of life for all in society rises, with the exception of those who could never be touched but by the highest tides.

These movements and moments of consciousness are their own inestimable goods, not mere ends for the would be conscious person to hijack for their goals. This is in fact a position inimical to the success of any of these movements; grifting starts at home, and it is the white leftist who is more easily conquered by the white liberal, since neither of them have conquered their own whiteness in the first place. But that supporting them generates positive benefits for all can only be argued against if you value the lives and comforts of some over others; those who value the general benefit first can see a clear path.

It is that clarity that gives meaning makers license to create the vistas of the future. It is the “Mandate of Heaven” that endorses the artists, a general operating license to create. Because the material impact of the present is louder than the noise of Capital, there an outburst of fertility and growth, the very seeds of hope, breaking out in the midst of this Surrealism. It is with the tools of meaning making, and the canvas of the crisis, that people escape the real.

[rebuiltbionicle]

Xia

A desolate island of smog and stone, overrun by a vast city surrounding an enormous carnivorous mountain. It was the homeland of the of the Vortixx species and centre of trade and arms production for the more warlike half of the universe.

Xia was part of the Antami Island Chain along with seven other islands, including Stelt. It was always barren, though not always inhospitable. When the foundations were first laid by the Great Beings, it was a desert landscape inhabited by Ta, Su, Po, and Fe-Matoran. The intention to set Xia up as a manufactory was always intended by the Great Beings, although they envisioned it as a Matoran run land. In the first years of Mata Nui’s voyage, it was indeed the Matoran who built up the first district of the city.

Mata Nui, flexing their ability to create new species himself and eager to give the Matoran helpers. Based on the pre-existing Satorni design, Mata Nui created a species of ebony-armoured beings called the Vortixx. The Vortixx quickly took over the island, relegating the Matoran to labouring jobs. What started as a small city with a factory quickly sprawled out to an industrial metropolis, centre of trade for the entire dome and many beyond it. As an economy began developing, the region’s dependence on Xia made the Vortixx greatly wealthy, and their wealth made them greedy.

Not content with their current wealth, the Xians sought to suck all the profit they could from their trade. The Vortixx price gouged their customers, to the detriment of trade. Many settlements dependent on Xian goods were now unable to afford them. The Brotherhood of Makuta, beginning to expand its role into mediating conflict, sent its members Icarax and Mutran to resolve the issue. They appealed to the goodwill of the Vortixx, informing them of the hardships faced by poorer lands. The Vortixx insisted they had to keep prices high or else they would be out-competed by new manufacturers cropping up. Makuta Mutran pointed out that by lowering their prices they’d reach a larger market, but the Vortixx retorted that it wouldn’t cover shipping costs. Makuta Icarax lost his temper and leveled a portion of the city. Incensed but unable to retaliate, the Vortixx had to bow reluctantly to the Makuta’s demands.

This event had two lasting impacts that would shape Xia’s destiny. Firstly, Mutran left his pet sentient rock on the island. Feeding off small vermin Rahi and the waste left by the factories, it began to grow. By the time the Xians were aware of it, it was large enough to eat them. They attempted to quarantine it, but its roots burrowed into the earth beneath the city and continued to grow larger and larger, until it became a mountain. Mata Nui learned of it and cut it off from the rock of the dome, but by then it was the dominant feature of Xia, forcing the Vortixx to build their city around it.

The second impact was initially on Mutran’s assistant, a Skavideh named Pridak. He was impressed by the island’s manufacturing capabilities and saw great potential in it. When he began his conquests as a Barraki, he was quick to seize Xia and turn it into his personal arms manufacturer. With their weaponry, Pridak’s Kingdom swelled rapidly and allowed Pridak to muscle his way to the leadership of the League of Six Kingdoms. After the League began to crumble, Xia quickly shook itself to independence, but retained their role as an exclusive manufacturer of weaponry. They sold to the lesser barraki that cropped up after the original six vanished, and they sold the Brotherhood of Makuta attempting to clean the warlords up. The Brotherhood became one of Xia’s biggest customers, alongside the Dark Hunters that would be founded some millennia later.

After the Matoran Civil War and the assigning of Makuta to various regions, Xia came under the supervision of Antroz. Antroz enjoyed his time there, inspecting the news weapons being manufactured and helping them test them. It was the site of Makuta Kojol’s death at Artakha’s hands. Though the Vortixx were innocent and the Makuta couldn’t prove anything, they leveled another district as a disciplinary action. After the Kanohi Dragon was subdued in Metru Nui, the Vortixx agreed to take it off their hands. They used it to manufacture armour and weapons, though denied it. Controversially, as their neighbouring island Azuc’s unique geography and flora became too hazardous for shipping, the Xians had to island evacuated and destroyed the entire island. The Vortixx Queen at the time was vanished to the Pit.

When the clans of Stelt managed to unite and began their own conquests across the Antami Islands, Xia was on their list of targets and was invaded. The Xians had an abundance of superior weaponry to the Steltians, they had only a single Toa team and untrained labourers to fight a professional if less well armed Stelian legion. Neither Antroz nor the Makuta of Stelt intervened on Destral’s orders, though they both offered their own side advice. Eventually experimental weapons won the battle, but narrowly. The Xians quickly had the Toa Xia train a force of labourers as proper soldiers, and managed to fend off the next Steltian assault with ease. The Steltians gave up and tried conquests elsewhere, though their momentum of advance had been lost.

In the aftermath, the Vortixx came under disagreement on what to do. A district manager and sales ambassador by the name of Roodaka recommended that with their newly trained army and superior weapons to conquer Stelt and the other Antami islands. The Queen disagreed, insisting that the Xian way was profit and profit came from selling to the warring Steltians. The Steltian conquests ended as the clans split back into infighting, which the Xians were able to sell to. Makuta Antroz was impressed by Roodaka’s ambition and recommended she join the Brotherhood as an officer, for which he wrote her a recommendation.

Xia was hit hard by the Great Cataclysm. The quake leveled half their city. With electricity for Metru Nui power plants cut off, the Xian manufacturing capacity was ended. Their wealth was dumped into a Vo-Matoran cooperative willing to rewire Xian electricity into new generators. Manufactory went back on track, though less efficiently. They rebuilt their wealth off funding the Brotherhood-Dark Hunter War.

A member of the Order of Mata Nui, Botar, with all the honour and ethics expected of that organisation, decided to dump an incensed Tahtorak onto their city. Its rampage released the Kanohi Dragon, and the resulting fight brought further destruction to the city. The newly restored Toa Hagah (formerly Teridax’s guards, formerly the Rahaga) and the Toa Xia cooperated to bring the beasts down.

Meanwhile, as part of their war with the Brotherhood of Makuta, the Order of Mata Nui hired the Dark Hunters to stop Xian arms shipments to the Brotherhood. The Shadowed One decided this would be best done by destroying the island. The Toa held them off, and Helryx less-than-calmly reiterated her intention to the Shadowed One. The Dark Hunters chose to occupy Xia and turn it into their new base.

During the Reign of Shadows, Xia became an unlikely site of resistance against the Makuta. After Odina’s destruction, it served as the base of operations for the occupying Dark Hunters. The Barraki also collected weaponry for their growing rebel army. Makuta, having difficulty managing to work the intricacies of his new body, wasn’t able to notice Xia’s aid to rebel forces, especially since his enforcers were receiving their weaponry from Ta-Metru. Near the end of his reign, Teridax had his forces besiege Xia, but by that time word was getting out to evacuate the universe. The Dark Hunters broke through the attacker’s lines to take themselves and the Xian population south. Xia was left abandoned, and was latter dismantled with the rest of the Matoran Universe.

...

Xia, in its golden age and at its end, was divided into thee sectors.

In the middle was the mountain, towering above any other landform or construction on the island. It could move its formations to form fissures to devour anything climbing on it, and could weaponise the pollution of Xia against interlopers with sprays of acidic substances. At the peak of the mountain was the only clean air on the entire island. The Vortixx had a rite of passage in which male-female pairs would attempt to reach the peak and climb back down. Success was met with promotions. Success with only one survivor even more so.

Around the mountain was the Xian Metru, a sprawling city that wrapped itself around the mountain. An industrial hellscape with no greenspaces and very few recreational areas. The bulk of the city was composed of factories. Personal housing was afforded only to the elite; workers had barracks next to their workplaces and managers had their quarters in the back of their offices. The Queen’s palace held the only true places of relaxation and enjoyment. The cities belched pollution into the air and water, making long time habitation for those not build to endure it.

The third and final sector was the wilderness. Expansion of the city had been halted multiple times due to costs and partial levellings of districts, so two sets of wilderness to the north and south survived to the end of Xia’s history. It was barren and rocky, with bald hills and canyons. Pollution from the city swept into these regions and kept them almost totally uninhabitable. Makuta still interested in Rahi design saw Xia as a challenge. The wilderness became populated by some of the most hardy plantlife and Rahi the Brotherhood ever produced.

The primary inhabitants of Xia were the Vortixx, a reptilian-faced species based on the previously designed Satorni species. The Vortixx are tall and slender beings, clad in black armour and with sharp claws. The Vortixx have an extremely limited elemental ability over shadow, which they may use in self-defense. They prefer darker environments and their culture associates darkness with comfort and safety. Their strength makes the Vortixx formidable warriors, though Xian culture cares little for combat and entirely on profiting on other’s combat. Their society is rigidly matriarchal, with males as lower class labourers and females as managers and aristocrats. Males can join the upper classes but only through a great deal of ruthlessness and political manoeuvring. Non-binary gender was viewed dimly by the Vortixx as “Matoran nonsense.” The Vortixx were led by the Queen, the most cunning businesswoman of the island. Succession was based on gathering loyalist factions and ousting the current Queen, ensuring the leadership was always composed of the slyest Vortixx there was. The Xian economy was a state capitalist one; based upon the accumulation of capital for the owning class but with only one corporation that was the government.

Matoran were the original inhabitants of the island, and their population continued to the end. As Matoran of fire, plasma, stone, and metal, they were all manufacturing types that the Vortixx valued. The Vortixx ruling class kept the Matoran and male Vortixx in competition. Initially the Matoran population was discomforted by arms dealing. Many left, and those that remained had the greedy mindset of their Vortixx superiors that they passed on to the Matoran they would build to replenish their number. Many Nynrah Ghosts banished from Nynrah for unethical development were allowed to settle and work on Xia.

There was a team of Toa on the island. The most recent and longest lasting Toa Xia were composed of:

Invek, Toa of Plantlife.

Pidror, Toa of Sonics, the leader.

Vhurdis, Toa of Lightning.

Ozir, Toa of Plasma.

Lehdon, Toa of Gravity

Orim, Toa of Iron.

The original was a four Toa team of the elements found on the island. They abandoned the island after the Vortixx moved up to arms dealing. From there on the Vortixx Queen custom tailored her Toa team with specially selected Matoran with a corrupt streak running through them. Ozir and Orim were Xians, the others taken from Stelt and the Tren Krom peninsula. The Toa Xia were the only non-Vortixx members of the Xian aristocracy. This indugent lifestyle fed their corruption to the Vortixx ways. They did not adhere to the Toa code, and were looked down upon by other Toa for it. They had no problems cooperating with the Toa Hagah to stop the monster rampage in the city, and ended up on the short list of Toa remaining when the universe was evacuated.

[awkwardplant]

Finding Magic chp 1

(Feel free to leave feedback!) {Fantasy: 2450 words}

A knight dropped his weapon to the lush plains of the field. Dusk approached, and he stood in the middle of battle. He glanced from his fallen sword to the huge, fire-breathing dragon that opened its mouth, preparing to blast him. Moments ago he’d been fearing for his life, about to cast an ice spell from the tip of his blade against his enemy. But instead he wondered: why did dragons breathe fire? They were just fat, enchanted lizards. Magic made little sense sometimes.

For example, now, when his magic left him and he uhhh didn’t… care? The knight thought of his grocery list for a moment. The dragon’s flames hurriedly approached him. The knight realised he didn’t care much for his errands either. He had no magic, no food for dinner, and if this dragon had its way: no life.

"God has forsaken me. Huh."

"Renato! Get out the way!"

A body charged at the knight, shoving him to safety. The body belonged to Pepi, Renato’s twenty-one-year-old squire. Pepi’s hair stood on end, as if to match his anxious demeanour. His beard was seldom more than a few hairs clinging to his chin. He’d been much too busy helping Renato and the townsfolk these past few weeks to take care of his appearance. Pepi’s eyes flitted back and forth to the dragon and Renato, who he lugged along while running away.

"Oi, what the hell were you doing back there, standing and doing bugger all?!" Pepi yelled.

"Thinking 'bout lizards. Food. Magic. God. Quite a few things. I have a lot of thoughts in me head."

Pepi pushed Renato onto the ground, grabbing fistfuls of his own frizzy hair. He went down alongside Renato, shielding them both behind a large rock.

"For someone with a load of thoughts you haven’t got any damn sense!"

"Hey." Renato rolled over to watch the sky which had turned orange with black creeping in at the horizon.

"Listen, I’d say sorry for overstepping boundaries but you hired me to keep your butt out of danger-"

"I can't use me magic. It’s gone."

Pepi turned to Renato; his fury fell away as he kneaded his forehead with worn fingers, letting out a hard sigh.

"First the townsfolk, the knights, now you. I swear there’s a curse on this town. It also doesn't help that you’re the only experienced magic healer too- hold your horses, how come you look different? Also, your voice is pure weird."

When the battle began, Renato had shiny black hair and a chiselled jaw befitting the hero people knew him to be. At present, Renato had curly blonde hair, fatigued eyes, large buckteeth, and acne riddled cheeks. Renato’s speech had become heavy with a Geordie accent similar to the townsfolk yet unlike his usual smooth voice.

"I use so many cantrips every day. S’pose they aren’t working either. Aah well. It was fun being bonny while it lasted."

"What a waste of spells. We’ll have a chat about vanity and misusing magic after this, but right now we’ve got to figure out how to get this dragon out of town."

"Tell it to go home. Say "go to bed you little cunt". Do you think dragons have beds? I think it wants one of ours."

Pepi rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Aye I’ll give it a gift basket with a fifty meter long bed and a few townsfolk to munch on.”

"Just saying. You never know."

Pepi stood up and jogged towards the dragon. He waved his arms to get its attention. Night was approaching quickly and stars peppered the sky above. The dragon coiled its tail and narrowed yellow eyes at the human with a clear death wish.

"Truce! Please! I don't know if you understand me but just leave us alone! Go away! Us humans all taste like shit anyway, because that’s all we eat! I’m not being paid enough for this I tell you."

The dragon raised its scaly neck, seeming to touch the stars with its head, and unfolded its great wings. With a huge gust of wind the beast propelled itself into the air and flew away. Pepi lowered his arms from his face after the wind quietened, placing his hands onto his hips.

"Maybe I suddenly developed the ability to talk to dragons. Or maybe the dragon left because the temperature dropped, and lizards are lizards no matter how big and fiery they are. The world will never know."

Still sitting by the rock, Renato called out to Pepi. "Is it gone now? Gone to bed?"

"Aye. How you holding up? Don't suppose you've suddenly regained your magic have you?"

"… I don't know. I want to go see if me mam's made any pie."

"Pie? That's the last thing you should worry about. You haven't lived with your mum since you became a knight."

"I know and I'm not worried, it's just that she makes a nice apple pie. I don't really want to eat but me stomach is hurting, and it's annoying." Renato's stomach grumbled, as if the only magic he had left was comedic timing. "I'm tired too. Can I go home?"

Pepi sighed. "Listen, pal we've got to figure this out, we have to speak to Lord Paule. His so called Chosen Protector of Llantry isn't much of a protector anymore, are you? And we can't leave a thousand citizens on their own. They also have no magic. They aren't so familiar with using weapons either."

"I suppose.. that would be the right thing to do. I don't care, but I also have strong morals, and me instincts tell me we should help them. Protect them. Lidion's the God of Protection and he chose me." Renato paused, a faint glimmer of thoughtfulness flashed through his eyes. "You don't suppose he's unchosen me has he? Why would he do that?" He gasped. "Maybe it's because I was using so many cantrips and now Lidion doesn't like me."

"Wouldn't put it against him, but no. Most people have innate magic. Sure, some get chosen by Gods, however I don't reckon every single person in town has done something bad enough to get their magic revoked entirely. In fact, I don't think they've ever done much of anything besides eat, work, and sleep. You folk are boring as hell."

Pepi began to guide Renato by the shoulders towards the Lord's manor. "Let's speak to the posh folk and see what they have to say."

Two of Farmer Dunn's sheep in the fenced area of the field stared blankly at them as they drew closer to the South Gate. Renato and Pepi were let inside by a bored looking guard and reached the main path leading to the town center. The two of them walked by the temple, a humble building built to be a quiet haven for meditation and rituals. The townsfolk went there often these days. But sitting in silence for hours on end had done nothing to cure their magic loss.

Three people stood by the entrance looking as if they'd just buried somebody in the temple's cemetery. None of them noticed Renato or Pepi. Or maybe they did, but couldn't muster up the energy to care. Across the street, the stone-mason Anier wept by Lidion's shrine, begging for forgiveness. You knew something awful was going down when the town's most stoic citizen had tears and snot on his face. Pepi guided Renato with a hand on the knight's shoulder. They took a right and walked through Crystalcoin Borough where the gentry lived.

At the end of the street, a single knight guarded the walled manor on top of the gatehouse. He hadn't been much of a knight lately, what with all the magic loss and his lack of talent in wielding a weapon of any sorts. Pepi frowned. The knight looked at nothing and half-heartedly changed posture when he noticed the pair.

"Halt. Who goes there?" The knight held a crossbow towards Pepi. The pointed end of the arrow was facing the knight's chest.

"Careful Dumpster, you might shoot yourself with that thing."

"It's Sir Dempster, not Dumpster. State your business Squire."

The knights hadn't been fun to tease from the moment Pepi stepped into this town. The magic loss began spreading at the beginning of the year, according to Renato. Possibly the only excitement they'd had this year (or any year) was two months ago when Pepi arrived as a candy merchant while travelling South. He drew a large crowd and sold out within an hour. Then upon seeing Renato, Pepi pointed a finger in his direction and said with wide eyes: "Hey, you! I'm supposed to be your assistant!" Then immediately tried to retract his statement, as he didn't know why he said it.

But it convinced Renato that Lidion had sent Pepi and promptly fired his very inexperienced and annoying ten-year-old Page. The furious Page kicked Pepi in the shin, stole a piece of candy, and ran off. (These days the ex-Page stood unmoving in the river for hours on end while staring at the sky.) Pepi's poor memory of his recent journey and the general rarity of visitors that came to Llantry only made Renato more certain that he had to hire him. Since then Pepi had lived in Llantry, stuck doing chores for Renato and cursing himself for speaking impulsively. His family probably wondered where on Earth he could be. At least he got to sleep in the manor, even if it was only so he could guard Renato's bedchamber door.

"Well, we live here so that should be reason enough to let us in." Pepi rolled his eyes. "But right now we need to speak to Lord Paule. Your head knight's magic buggered off." Pepi knocked on Renato's armour. Renato jolted like he'd just woken up, then went back to looking dazed (and thinking of apple pie).

"I see. That's not good at all. The town is now in a state of emergency. Oh dear. I will let you inside." Dempster pulled a lever and opened the drawbridge for them.

Pepi and Renato walked through the gate and the courtyard, heading to the parlour. Like the temple, the manor was as humble as a nobleman's house could be. Tapestries lined the walls showing scenes of knights fighting creatures that had tried to attack the town. Pepi called over one of Lord Paule's servants.

"Where's Lord Paule?" he asked.

"In the dining room. The Lord has guests over, important guests. He requested that no-one disturb him." A stray lock of hair fell in front of the servant's face. She didn't seem to notice it obscuring her vision.

Pepi shook his head, clicking his tongue. "This is important, maybe even more so than those guests. Thanks."

In the dining hall, Lord Paule wasn't in his usual seat at the head of the table. Instead he was a few seats down. The important guests seemed to be Lords of neighboring towns, the Baron, the Count, and various other noblemen who constantly fought over how high their rank was (because nobody really knew how feudal hierarchy worked). Visitors were rare enough as it was but high ranking visitors were basically unheard of. At the head of the table sat the Duchess who was the only person speaking.

"Lord Paule, if you cannot provide enough knights with magic who can go into war when the King requests it, you must pay more taxes to cover your lack of support." Her voice was gentle but firm.

"Your Grace. With all due respect. The vast majority of my people can't work. They are sick with something. But it's not something a doctor or magic healer can cure. The healers said they can only cure the ill effects of magic, not a loss of magic itself."

Lord Paule stared at his untouched wine glass with vacant eyes. His clothes were wildly unkempt. Judging by the noblemen next to him who covered their noses with their sleeves: Lord Paule needed a bath. "There's also a massive food shortage as the farmers are ill. Punishing them does nothing. Even if someone else took my place they would have the same issues. We're not able to support the King until we can support ourselves."

A cup-bearer poured wine into the Duchess' glass. Or rather that's what he attempted to do but he just couldn't seem to gather enough energy to tip the bottle down. "I see," the Duchess said. "Just leave the wine here I can pour it myself. Try to conserve your energy young man." The cup-bearer set the wine bottle on the table and went to slouch in a corner of the room. "Perhaps we need to bring in scholars who can study the people and see if they can find patterns. Lord Paule, you seem to be rather poorly yourself. But as far as I know you cannot use magic, is that correct?"

"You are correct, I wasn't born with or granted the gift of magic. Perhaps the illness is contagious. Oh," Lord Paule noticed Renato. "The chosen protector of Llantry. I wasn't expecting you. And uh, you look a little different..? Ahem. I take it you're here to announce your defeat of the dragon roaming the fields."

Pepi's lips tightened. Perhaps he should've waited until the noblemen and Duchess left so he didn't embarrass the Lord. But then again, maybe if he sounded desperate enough they'd help Llantry. And the Lord was already doing enough to embarrass himself.

"My Lord, I'm afraid Renato is… out of commission. So to speak. That means absolutely no one in town has magic. Bit of a bummer, isn't it?" Everyone stared at Pepi and sweat formed on his forehead. "Sorry to crash your wee party. And nice to meet you, Miss Graceness..? I don't know what they call posh folks like you. Uh, I bet you live in a castle nicer than this dump. Aye I'd sure love it if you could take me back to your place."

Pepi had met no nobles as high ranking as the Duchess before and prayed he hadn't made a bad first impression in his awkward moment of timidness. The Duchess glared at him. Pepi jumped at the intensity of the anger in her eyes. He blurted out another sentence he would soon wish he'd never said;

"I know someone who can cure the townsfolk."

Thanks for reading!

Llantry is inspired by Newcastle, England and Pepi's from a country which is based on Scotland. (I took out the dialects to make it easier to read.) This story is pretty much just me playing D&D by myself. Let me know if you liked it so far! If you want to leave feedback, here are some ideas:

Do you often read fantasy? If so, did this chapter strike you as original?

Where did you feel the story dragged/was slow?

Which character would you most like to meet and get to know?

Would you get rid of any characters?

Anything that made you think "Eh... that doesn't sound right"?

Finish this sentence: I continued reading because...

[the-insomniac-cat]

ENDGAME BIG SPOILERS

Complete synopsis of the entire film below the cut.

If you want spoilers but not the whole shebang, scroll down to my other Spoiler post.

Why post this? Because some people want to know, either before they go, or instead of going, or to decide whether to or not.

Look, if you don’t want to know, then use the tag filter. In case you didn’t set it up, then I’ve put in the ‘keep reading’ cut. So you should be covered. So please, no more anon hate! (Haters are so brave when they go anon!)

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS NOT MY SYNOPSIS. I HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM (and won’t) THIS IS FROM A REDDIT USER. BECAUSE LOTS OF SPOILERS OVER THERE ARE BEING TAKEN DOWN, I DECIDED TO CUT AND PASTE IT RATHER THAN JUST GIVE A LINK.

People who HAVE seen the film have been adding comments to this post on Reddit, saying it is ‘correct’, or ‘basically correct’.

CREDIT:  Reddit Posted byu/Wico90

12% credit to Brontcrab24 and others

First Scene is actually Hawkeye losing his family to the snap. He doesn’t actually see it happen as he is facing the other direction. We then get the Tony/Nebula sequence (paper football, etc). Tony records his message to Pepper. When he falls asleep, Nebula takes him to the front of the ship and sits him in the pilots seat. He wakes up and sees something glowing outside the window. Captain Marvel helps them return to Earth. Pepper, Rocket, Steve and Rhodey all come out to greet him. Tony is very shaken, particularly about losing Peter.

Movie starts with the Avengers trying to find Thanos. Steve wasn’t to know where Thanos is and asks Tony, but Tony says he doesn’t know, They argue. Nebula knows of Thanos’ garden he said he would once go to when he completed his goal. They found him because of the energy he released using the gauntlet. Thanos is alone, and tells them he used the gauntlet to destroy the gems. He is weak and Thor, angry, decapitates him.

Title Card and five years later.

Natasha is now basically in charge of what's left of the Avengers is talking to them via holograms. Basically the world is in ruins and they're trying to salvage it. Carol is there via hologram with a new haircut and uniform and tells them that she's covering thousands of planets and won't be able to come back to Earth for a "long time".

Steve and Nat talk about how the Avengers are family. Inside a storage shed is Luis’s van. A rat is crawling over the Quantum controls and activated the switch which brings Scott out. He’s now locked inside the cage but starts waving at the security cameras. A guard lets him out and he is walking the streets confused as to why everything is so overgrown and run down. He finds a memorial which lists the names of the ‘missing’ on large stones. He starts reading them panicking that Cassie might be listed on them. But she isn’t. He sees her at home, as an older version of herself. Scott drives to the Avengers facility and Nat and Steve let him in and he tells them about the Quantum realm and how they might be able to build a time machine to go back to the past before everything happened. They visit Tony, but he doesn’t want to help. He’s happy with the way that his life is, with Pepper and his daughter Morgan. They leave and to visit Bruce who is now Professor Hulk.

The plan becomes to start looking for the gems in the past. Initially Banner builds quantum time machine and sends Scott back to test but it is faulty, Tony refuses to help at this point, however, he returns Caps shield and they make up. He tweaks Banners Quantum Machine, The catch is that they need quantum particles for it to work.

Natasha goes to Japan to get Clint. He is mourning his family and is not certain of the plan. Rocket and Hulk go to get Thor who is drinking and playing video games with Korg and Meik. (Funny joke involving an online video game troll)

Finally the team then all suit up and discuss their plans to get the stones. They make it clear that they can not mess up because there is only enough Quantum particles for one trip for each of them.

Tony, Scott, Steve and Bruce go to the Battle of New York. Hulk meets the Ancient One at Dr Stranger's future home. Ancient One refuses to give the Time Stone to Bruce but relents when Bruce tells her that Dr Strange will give the stone to Thanos.

Cap, Iron Man and Scott tries to retrieve the Tessaract after Loki surrenders. SHIELD/Hydra agents Crossbones and that bald guy with glasses in Winter Soldier retrieve the brief case containing the Tessaract. Past Hulk funnily has to walk down lots of flights of stairs as he can't go on lift due to maximum capacity. Cap meets with Crossbones with the briefcase in elevator along with other Hydra agents. He convinces them to give him the briefcase containing the staff when he utters two words: Hail Hydra. Cap gets the briefcase. Tony in disguise as a SWAT soldier tells Scott to disable his past self's chest reactor to give him a minor seizure while his past self meets up with Alexander Pierce who demands the Mind Stone and Loki. Present Tony retrieves the briefcase but past Hulk accidentally knocks out Tony and Loki uses the confusion to teleport out with the Tessaract. Present Cap accidentally meets with his 2012 self, and 2012 self thinks he's Loki in disguise. They fought and 2012 has present self in chokehold when he tells his past self that Bucky is alive. He then taps his past self with staff to knock him out.

In Asgard, fat Thor and Rocket plans to retrieve the Aether out of Jane Foster's body. Thor's mother meets his 'son' and know he's from the future. Rocket retrieves the aether out of Jane by prodding her off screen and gets chased by guards. Before Thor leaves, he retrieves Mjolnir!

On Morag, War Machine and Nebula stays on Morag while Clint and Nat goes to Voromir via a ship that Rocket miniatures for Clint. Unknown to Nebula, her past self's nervous system and databanks are connected to each other and Thanos finds out where the stones are and how he meets his fate.

Cap and Tony transport back to 1970 at the SHIELD training site seen in Winter Soldier and goes underground to retrieve that era's Tessaract. Tony retrieves the Tesseract while meeting his dad. He calls himself Howard Potts. Cap makes a prank call to young Hank Pym and sneaks into his office to steal 4 vials of Pym Particles. Cap also sees Peggy. Cap and Tony teleport back to present.

WM and Nebula knocks out Quill during his dance in intro of GOTG. They got the stone and WM and Nebula was meant to teleport together but WM only succeeded. Present Nebula and past Nebula meets and fights and past Nebula takes her place to go back to present.

On Voromir, Clint and May meets the Red Skull as seen in Infinity War and is told how to retrieve the stone. Clint and Nat fought each other. Clint jumped off cliff but Nat catches him and held on by grappling rope. She falls off and dies like Gamora. Clint now has the Stone.

All members went back to present and everyone is devastated by Nat's death. Tony and Bruce constructs the Infinity Gauntlet and Thor wants to wield it but Hulk goes instead as he's the strongest one and the stones emit gamma radiation according to him. He wields it and snaps his fingers restoring all life lost. Clint's wife calls him on mobile. Hulk suffers extreme pain in his right arm due to IG. Past Nebula activates the Quantum teleporter and summons Thanos' warship and blasts the Avengers HQ to ruins with missiles.

Hulk lifting up rubble similar to Secret Wars cover where he lifts up a whole mountain except this is less in film lol.

Clint finds the gauntlet and is being chased by Outriders creatures in last film. He kills them and is met by past Nebula. Gamora and present Nebula meets up and Nebula kills her past self.

Cap, Tony and Thor teams up against Thanos. Thor is losing against Thanos even though he has Stormbreaker and Mjolnir. Thanos is about to kill Thor with SB when:

Cap lifts up Mjolnir and beats Thanos with hammer and shield.

Thanos uses his double blade weapon to break Cap's shield in half.

Thanos summons his whole army including the Black Order and some new creatures. Cap is all by himself against a whole army.

He hears Sam's voice and he turns around and see EVERYONE who has vanished PLUS huge armies of Wakandans, sorcerers and Asgardians (no signs of Warrior Three). Wong, Valkyrie, Wasp and Pepper Potts as Rescue turns up as well. Ant Man becomes Giant Man.

Clint plays American Football with IG and passes it to Black Panther then Spidey. Quill meets past Gamora and gets hit in the balls, not believing he is the one she loves lol. Scarlet Witch overpowers Thanos but Thanos orders missiles to hit everyone including his forces. Captain Marvel shows up to destroy Thanos' flagship and gets the IG and dashes towards the goal. There is a bit where Hope and Scott goes to the van with the Quantum teleporter in the middle of battlefield. Was lost in the moment so forgot why they doing that, sorry.

All female Marvel characters fight Thanos. Spidey's armoured suit goes autokill mode with the extra arms.

Thanos tries to take the gauntlet off Marvel by headbutting her but didn't phase her.

Thanos retrieves the gauntlet away from Stark and he snaps his fingers. Nothing happened. The stones went to Stark and before he snaps his fingers, he says 'I'm Iron Man'.

White flash of light.

All of Thanos' forces turn to dust including Thanos himself.

Tony dies from using the gauntlet. Everyone mourns.

The battle is won but at a cost.

Holographic Tony gives a message to everyone present including his daughter.

A wreath with Tony's chest reactor is laid to rest at the lake near Tony's hut.

Everyone is present including GOTG, Peter, Maria, Ross, Nick and Hank and Janet.

Thor, still fat designates Valkyrie as Queen of New Asgard in Tonnsberg. Thor is now travelling with GOTG to find Gamora and maybe more Asgardians. Quill and Thor are about to fight for leadership lol.

Scott, Cassie and Hope are together again. Wakanda is back with his King.

Cap goes on a mission to put back the stones and Mjolnir to their proper places. Hulk says to Sam and Buck that he should be back in 5 secs. He didn't. Sam sees a old man at a bench and it's Old Man Steve (who looks like Clint Eastwood now but less wrinkles and bit younger than he is lol). Steve has wedding ring and passes his shield to Sam. Sam is honoured.

Ending shows young Cap dancing with Peggy at their house. That's it.

Credits music is set to 1930s music then shows all cast members. The main cast is shown with their signatures on it.

There is NO post credit scenes which is a first for a MCU.

Stan Lee cameo is set in 1970s where he is shown in his 70s younger self driving a car with a woman, driving past a army base where Cap and Tony retrieves the Tesseract there.

[the-desolated-quill]

Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2017

I love all kinds of fiction. Books, movies, TV shows, you name it. They have the power to transport you to whole other worlds, make you connect with whole new people and expose you to ideas and philosophies you wouldn’t normally think about in real life. Which is why it angers and frustrates me when someone gets it so spectacularly wrong, either through corporate greed, utter laziness or general incompetence.

By popular demand, I’ve been asked to do an end of year post about the worst stories of 2017. The lowest of the low. The most shallow and soulless the creative industry has to offer. The stories that made me so angry that I damn near blew my top on a number of occasions because of how monumentally bad they were. (God knows why any of you would want to read this. I would have thought you’d have had more than enough of me moaning and complaining for a year).

Before I start, three things. First of all, special thanks has to go to @loremasterloryn for coming up with the title ‘Quill’s Swill.’ That’s a very good title. You’re right. Calling these worst of the year awards or associating these with any kind of award at all would be too generous. Second, this is my list of the stories that specifically angered and disappointed me. Obviously tastes differ, and if you disagree with my list or like any of the stories I mention, that’s absolutely fine. You’re entitled to your opinion just as I’m entitled to mine. And third, full disclosure, I haven’t seen everything 2017 had to offer for one reason or another. So if you’re wondering why things like The Mummy reboot or the Inhumans TV series aren’t on this list, that’s probably why. I’m sure they are as terrible as everyone says they are. I just never got around to watching them this year.

So, since I’ve mentioned Inhumans, let’s start with another Marvel TV show written by Scott Buck:

Iron Fist

The long awaited Netflix adaptation of the Living Weapon had been mired in controversy since the very start with the news that Marvel were sticking to their guns and casting a white actor as Danny Rand, but Scott Buck and co reassured us that they were going to do their very best to make an Iron Fist adaptation that was more progressive and respectful to the Asian community than the original comics were.

Well that didn’t go to plan, did it?

Not only did the show double down on the casual racism of the source material, it also took the concept of supernatural ninjas that can use their chi to punch through walls, and somehow made it boring. That’s almost impressive. I got the impression that Iron Fist was almost ashamed of the fact that it was a superhero show, hence why it seemed to focus on everything but that. Who reads an Iron Fist comic for the fucking corporate subplots? That would be like an adaptation of Batman that focuses solely on Bruce Wayne filling out his tax returns.

The show was borderline incomprehensible, plots and character motivations seemed to keep changing from episode to episode, and Finn Jones was simply a horrible choice for a leading man. And no it’s not because he’s white. It’s because his performance was as wooden as Pinocchio and he was so bad at the fight choreography that it actually started to hamper the other performers, forcing them to slow down to accommodate him. If he was the best actor who auditioned, I shudder to think how bad the other actors were.

Iron Fist was shit, but it’s okay. I’m sure The Defenders would make up for it, right?

The Defenders

Wrong.

‘Hey. You know these four Netflix shows we’re doing? Let’s do a crossover at the end of it. Wouldn’t that be neat?’ This is what I imagine someone within Marvel’s writing staff said, and that’s probably where the conversation ended. 

The Defenders was utter pants, let’s be honest. No effort was put into that whatsoever. You’d think by reducing the episode count from 13 to 8, we could get to the meat of the story quicker. Instead it’s almost as if The Defenders consisted of nothing but padding, with whole episodes where virtually nothing happened. There was no effort to actually develop the characters or establish relationships between any of them. In fact the characters seemed to be almost caricatures of themselves at times. Luke Cage in particular got the worst treatment as he was effectively reduced to being the equivalent of a bouncer that just stands around in the background looking tough. And when the characters weren’t sat on their arses doing nothing, they were bickering and arguing like tiny schoolchildren. This doesn’t exactly make for compelling viewing.

And as for the Hand, they’ve pretty much been a disaster since they were first introduced back in Daredevil Season 2. Vague motives, poorly thought out plans, literally no tension because you haven’t the faintest idea what’s actually at stake should the Hand ever win, and just to add insult to injury, Marvel’s resident sociopath Elektra came back. A fundamentally unlikeable and nonsensical character that bears little to no resemblance to her comic book counterpart and who Daredevil was still attracted to despite the fact she had all the charm and sex appeal of a Rottweiler.

The Defenders were ostensibly the anti-Avengers. Everything Avengers got right, Defenders got wrong. Four series of buildup for this? What a waste of time. 

Middle-earth: Shadow Of War

We enter the realm of video games now with Middle-earth: Shadow Of War. The sequel to the critically acclaimed Shadow Of Mordor and a major player in the loot box controversy of 2017. Set in-between The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings trilogies, the writing is beyond ridiculous, playing fast and loose with the Tolkien canon and inserting random callbacks and characters for no reason other than as fanservice. (Also they turned Shelob the spider into a sexy sorceress. Only a video game developer would look at a giant spider and think ‘how can we make her sexy to draw in the young male demographic?’).

But having said that, the writing wasn’t very good in Shadow Of Mordor neither. Nobody really cares about that. It’s the gameplay everybody loved. Specifically the Nemesis System, where the orcs you fight actually remember your encounters, thereby adding a personal touch to your playthrough. You could create rivalries, establish relationships with friendly (or ‘dominated’) orcs to cause friction with rival captains, and manipulate the chain of command. It added a whole new dimension to the game and was incredibly rewarding. So naturally the AAA gaming industry wanted to find some way of ruining it.

Shadow Of War decided to tie the Nemesis System in with loot boxes. Glorified gambling simulators that require you to pay actual money for the chance at acquiring new armour, weapons and orcs for your orc army, thus stripping all the fun from the game entirely. Why bother finding orcs to dominate when you can just buy one? And if you choose not to buy any loot boxes, then the game punishes you for it by turning the whole experience into a grind-fest. Fortresses that can only be breached if you have orcs at a certain level. Except these higher level orcs are rare or legendary, so they’re very hard to find... unless you buy a loot box of course.

An absolute scam.

Lucifer Season 2

I’m cheating slightly because the first 10 or 12 episodes came out last year, but the thing is those episode were really good. The remainder of Lucifer Season 2 was, to put it mildly, utter shite. And it pains me to say it because, you may recall, I actually awarded the first season of Lucifer with a Quill Seal Of Approval award for its clever humour and intelligent satire of religion, theology and LA culture. Season 2 initially felt like it was going to continue this, with episodes that I wouldn’t hesitate in calling some of the best the show had to offer. But come the New Year, everything seemed to go disastrously wrong. The series arc involving Lucifer’s mum felt like it was being dragged on for way too long, whole aspects of the mythology were being contradicted, creating numerous plot holes, and it all culminated in a terrible finale that completely went against Mum’s motives and arc. Add to that the constant cock-tease of Lucifer and Chloe’s will they/won’t they relationship and the fact that Lucifer’s usual spiel was starting to seriously grate, it felt like the show had lost a lot of its sparkle. What was once an intelligent satire had become a limp parody of itself, and by the end I had completely lost interest in a prospective Season 3. It’s such a shame.

Sherlock Series 4

I had long stopped watching Sherlock, having struggled through its amateurish, pretentious writing for three series, but then my friend urged me to watch Series 4. Not because it was good, but because of how insanely terrible it was. And he was right. Oh my God, this was fucking dreadful. It’s almost comical. Sherlock had always been a terrible adaptation of the original source material, only really bearing a passing resemblance to it, but with Series 4 it seemed any and all pretence to call this an adaptation had officially gone out the window. The plots were so stupid and convoluted that it got to a point where Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss seemed to be almost drowning in their own pretentiousness. Their heads were shoved so firmly up their own arses that they even started to alienate their own fanbase. Yes. Even the diehard Sherlock fans hated this one. And I’m not surprised considering the final episode involved Sherlock’s secret sister and some plot about how she killed his super secret best friend that he remembers as a dog for some reason (I swear I’m not making this up). It’s so bad, a portion of the fanbase honestly thought that Series 4 was intentionally bad and that there was going to be a secret good fourth Sherlock episode that would fix everything, the poor saps. Even if there was a secret good fourth episode, it still wouldn’t justify the shit you had to sit through. An intentionally bad series is still a bad series, my dears.

People wonder how this could have happened. How a once great show could have gone so wrong. Well the answer is simple. Sherlock was never a good show. All that’s changed is your perception of it. Series 1-3 are just as bad as Series 4. It’s just that Series 4 was where Moffat and Gatiss’ bullshit became so blatant and so insulting that not even the diehard fans could possibly excuse it. All the problems in Series 4 exist in the previous series too. (Don’t believe me? Go back and check). The reason Series 4 had received such a backlash was because people had finally woken up and realised that all of these mysteries and narrative threads Moffat and Gatiss had been dangling in front of us weren’t going to have any payoff whatsoever, and now that we have all finally woken up and smelt the smelling salts, maybe we can now leave this pile of garbage behind and move on to a Sherlock Holmes adaptation that’s actually worthy of our attention. Like Elementary... Or Danger Mouse.

Kong: Skull Island

I was curious to see where Legendary Pictures would go next with their ‘MonsterVerse’ after the better than expected Godzilla reboot back in 2014. After Kong: Skull island, I wish they never bothered.

I know people weren’t taken by the Godzilla reboot, mostly because of the distinct lack of Godzilla (which didn’t bother me as such. I’d rather have 10 minutes of actual Godzilla that were really good and really memorable over an hour and a half of mindless destruction that just becomes boring and repetitive), and it felt like Kong: Skull Island was made with those people in mind. However by fixing the numerous ‘problems’ with Godzilla, you soon realised just how good it really was in comparison to this utter borefest. King Kong himself was just a CGI mess and you felt no sense of emotional investment in him whatsoever like you did with Godzilla, the film was so jam-packed with monsters that eventually you become desensitised to all the carnage, and there was no effort to explore any intelligent themes like Godzilla did. Ironically, in their misguided bid to course correct, the filmmakers failed to fix the one genuine problem Godzilla truly had. The characters. Big name actors like Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L Jackson and Brie Larson had absolutely nothing to work with because their characters were so flat and one dimensional. Jackson’s character in particular was painted with such broad strokes that it looked as though the script had been written with a paint roller. Maybe things could have been improved if the film delved deeper into its historical setting, exploring the psychological implications of the Vietnam War. As it stands, Kong: Skull Island was a pointless, mindless and utterly tedious blockbuster that’s inferior to Godzilla in every way imaginable.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but I don’t care. I’m sorry, but Spider-Man: Homecoming was utter rubbish. I legitimately have no idea why people love this so much. I’ve never seen a movie so shallow, soulless and utterly lazy in my entire life. It feels like the product of a focus group. I fucking hate it.

Where do I even start? How about the fact that the plot was the most generic, formulaic piece of shit ever devised by a committee? How about the fact that the film seemed to consist of nothing but stereotypes and stock characters? How about the fact that the filmmakers seemed to have completely misinterpreted Spider-Man’s character and themes? How about the fact that, despite claims that Spidey was going to need to juggle his school and superhero lives, he never seemed to suffer any negative repercussions for his unreliability and general shitty behaviour? How about the fact that the love interest was utterly bland and one dimensional and that both she and Peter Parker had absolutely zero chemistry? How about the fact that Iron Man’s characterisation had been completely botched? Seriously, why the fuck do Marvel keep hiring the Russo Brothers if they’re just going to erase any and all contributions they make? Captain America: Civil War took the character in a very unexpected direction, effectively making him a secondary antagonist. Because of his paranoia and PTSD, Tony Stark had become more controlling and authoritarian, and there’s the very brief implication that he didn’t care about Spidey at all. Instead merely seeing him as a tool he could exploit. It’s dark, but it’s interesting, casting Iron Man in a very unsavoury light while still feeling very much in-character. Oh but no. It’s okay. We’re just meant to forget about all that. Iron Man has always got Peter’s best interests at heart. He cares about Peter. He’s the perfect mentor figure. And look! He’s back with Pepper now, all their relationship problems conveniently swept under the carpet. Don’t panic. There’s nothing remotely challenging or thought provoking here. You’re perfectly safe from actually having to think.

Best Spider-Man movie, my fucking arse.

Justice League

And the award for the most colossal cock-up goes to... Warner Bros and the DC Extended Universe! WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

People were in high spirits after the success of Wonder Woman, until Justice League brought everyone back down to Earth with a horrible clang. Zack Snyder had to leave the production due to his recent bereavement, and so Joss Whedon took over post production. A filmmaker that had recently generated a lot of controversy after his sexist as shit Wonder Woman script leaked online (as well as all the other crap he’s done in general in his career). What followed was a complete and total disaster. Say what you like about Man Of Steel and Batman V Superman, at least those movies had substance to them. At least they tried to convey an intelligent message and explore interesting themes. Justice League on the other hand was so hollow and so paper thin, you could barely even consider it a movie. Bad plot, bad villain, rubbish characterisation, and all you were left with was a horrible realisation that all these years of hard work had been building up to precisely jack-shit in the end. In a bid to fix all the problems with the DCEU, they ended up making things worse, stripping all the substance from it entirely and now it appears to be damaged beyond repair. And to make matters worse, WB and DC had spent a ridiculous amount of money on the fucker with $300 million for the movie budget (including reshoots) and approximately $150 million on marketing. In other words, even if the film was good, it was unlikely to be a success because it would needed to have made over a billion dollars at the box office to make a decent profit, which let’s be brutally honest was unlikely to happen.

Thanks to the general incompetence of WB and DC, the future of the DCEU as we know it is now in very considerable doubt. Maybe it’s just as well we’re not seeing the Aquaman movie until Christmas next year. It’s going to take us that long to wash the bad taste left in our mouths.

Star Wars Battlefront II (2017)

And so we end our journey through compost with another video game. EA’s remake of Star Wars Battlefront II, which now lies at the very centre of the loot box controversy. Like with Shadow Of War, you could pay actual money to earn the chance to unlock weapons and upgrades and special characters like Darth Vader. Oh you could unlock Darth Vader without loot boxes, sure, but it would take a hell of a long time. Why not spend your hard earned cash on a loot box instead rather than wasting time actually playing the game?

Star Wars Battlefront II’s use of loot boxes was so insulting that it caused a huge backlash from fans. The story got picked up by several mainstream news sites and now countries around the world are considering legislation to put loot boxes under gambling laws (which up until now had been avoided due to certain loopholes and technicalities). The backlash got so bad, apparently Disney actually contacted EA and threatened to pull the Star Wars licence if this mess wasn’t fixed.

While EA has temporarily deactivated the loot boxes and reduced the cost to acquire characters like Darth Vader in-game, the game itself is still a bit of a grind-fest and contains a lot of the same problems with the previous instalment in the franchise. Namely limited maps, a rubbish single player, lack of variety in missions and play modes, and reportedly several bugs and glitches at launch that made the game virtually unplayable for some. How is it that the original Star Wars Battlefront games released over a decade ago on older consoles are somehow better than these shitty remakes on superior tech?

Star Wars Battlefront II was supposed to be an apology for the shortcomings of the previous instalment. Instead EA doubled down on their bullshit and tried to extract as much money from us as they thought they could get away with, the greedy bastards. They should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

And that’s it. That’s me finished moaning for 2017. Hope you enjoyed it (I know some of you probably didn’t. Namely Marvel fans). Be sure to come back tomorrow for the Quill Seal of Approval Awards... or don’t. It’s a free world. I won’t force you.

[d2kvirus]

The biggest gaming stories of 2017

Half-Life 3 not confirmed

I know the “Half-Life 3 CONFIRMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!” meme is deader than a very dead thing, yet bizarrely there was more news involving the game in 2017 than at any point this decade.

Things started in mid-January when Gabe Newell took part in a Reddit AMA which (predictably) veered onto the subject of HL3, with GabeN batting away the more obvious questions with a knowing, if overly sarcastic, tone.  While there were no answers one way or the other, that didn’t stop numerous blogs and websites trying to spin anything he said into a headline to generate clicks.

Then in July something bizarre happened: the original Half-Life received its first update since 2013 which, obviously, led to all manner of wild speculation that something may be happening - wild speculation that lasted all of an afternoon before it soon became apparent it was merely a few long-standing bugs being patched out by a Valve employee.

More than anything else, though, in late August there appeared to be some sort of closure for Half-Life 2 when Marc Laidlaw, who served as writer for the series prior to his leaving Valve in early 2016, published what appeared to be a synopsis for the much-delayed Half-Life 2 Episode 3 on his website.

Of course this led to even more debate about whether Laidlaw posted this knowing full well that the game had been cancelled and he was giving HL fans a glimpse of what could have been, or whether the game is still in development and the plot has gone in a completely different direction from the vision Laidlaw wrote all those years ago, or whether it was something Laidlaw wrote to whet the appetite of fans clinging to the belief that the game might someday see the light of day - or any number of other, less feasible theories doing the rounds out there.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

When discussing the biggest gaming stories of 2017 there is one game that stands above all else: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

Initially released on Steam early access in March, PUBG went on to dominate the landscape not just on Steam where it smashed all manner of records regarding sales and concurrent users, while simultaneously becoming a fixture for Youtubers and Twitch streamers alike.  Indeed, so great was PUBG’s reach that Steam saw a huge spike in their Chinese userbase due to the game catching on like nothing else.

And what makes the success so remarkable, both in terms of the game and its enduring popularity on Youtube and Twitch, is the remarkable simplicity of it all: the player is one of 100 combatants dropped on an island at the start of every game, in order to survive the players need to scavenge for weapons and gear to give them a chance of survival, and the game continues until there is just one player standing.  From a gameplay standpoint it's simple to pick up but takes time to master, and from a Youtube/Twitch standpoint it’s an easy fifteen to twenty minutes of content per game that’s guaranteed to be different every time.

In spite of its roaring success, though, PUBG managed to keep courting controversy throughout the year.

During the game’s first few months there were arbitrary bans being issued to players when streamers accused those who killed them in-game of stream sniping, although there was little to no proof to back up the claims but the bans stood, while popular streamer Dr Disrespect found himself slapped with a ban for killing a teammate which led to the streamer threatening Brandon Greene, aka PlayerUnknown.

A short while later, when the initial GamesCom tournament was right around the corner, PUBG implemented a lootbox system which went down like a cup of cold vomit with the game’s player base, especially considering the system’s RNG was ridiculously unbalanced as, having shelled out £2.50 in real-world currency for every key to open one crate, it was impossible for players to get a full set of skins in a single crate.

Things began to really pirouette off the deep end in September when PUBG’s developer Bluehole began to throw their weight around when Epic Games announced their game Fortnite would have a battle royale mode - in spite of the fact that PUBG itself was hardly an original concept, given the likes of DayZ and H1Z1′s King of the Kill mode (to name but two) both existed long before PUBG was released, making Bluehole’s threats patently absurd.

Finally, when the game launched for XBox One late in the year (which racked up a million sales within 48 hours of launch) the game itself was just as bug-ridden as the early Steam builds were - in spite of being sold as a finished game.

Yet in spite of these controversies PUBG continues to not just dominate the landscape, but with more and more battle royale games being developed in the wake of its success it's also defined the landscape for the next couple of years.

“What’s in the fucking box?”

If there’s one trend that practically smothered the AAA gaming industry in 2017 it had to be the explosion of lootboxes - or, as some people prefer to call it, legalised gambling.

While the trend didn't begin in 2017 by any stretch of the imagination, after all lootboxes were in place for the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer back in 2012, it’s impossible to ignore how prevalent they became in the wake of Overwatch implementing the system to great success in 2016.

The first obvious sign of this new trend from the worst of the AAA publishers came shortly after the announcement of Middle Earth: Shadow of War - and, more importantly, just how it changed the perception of the game.  When the game was first announced there was a lot of hype for the game, as Shadow of Mordor had been a critical and commercial success when it was released back in 2014, and the initial trailers looked promising.

Then the first whispers of microtransactions came, and things went downhill fast...

The above image, that of the orc merchant who greets you every single time you pay with real money to access content that was free with Shadow of Mordor soon became not only a meme but also something to beat the game over the head with for deciding to not only charging the premium rate for the game and for DLC after the fact, but the addition of microtransactions on top of it in order for the player to make their way through the game in a fraction of the time compared to someone who had to grind their way to bolstering their army soon turned the game from a darling to a dunce.

Yet somehow they went one further in the bad PR stakes.

When it was announced that players could buy the legendary org Forthog Orc-Slayer, designed in tribute to and bearing the likeness of Monolith’s Executive Producer Michael David Forgey who had died of cancer in 2016 with their money being donated to cancer charities, players were initially supportive - right up until people saw the smallprint stated that, while the purchase would see money donated to charity if made from 43 of the 50 US states, if the DLC was purchased anywhere else the money would be headed to Warner Bros Interactive.

Yet somehow Shadow of War was by no means the worst offender.

Among the worst offenders that followed were NBA 2K18 for making progression through the MyCareer mode almost impossible without players having to shell out once more in order to increase their player’s stats - with a remarkably predatory storefront to encourage such activity - while Forza Motorsport 7 irked players by hiding not only car and driver customisation options that  were previously in-game behind a paywall but also mods that would improve your in-game performance.  Even stranger was how Guild Wars 2 implemented a lootbox system - five years after the game’s launch.

Yet these paled into insignificance when the amount of jiggery-pokery going on behind Destiny 2 came to light.

The initial controversy came when players who migrated from the first Destiny soon realised that any shaders the players gained from the game’s lootboxes (sorry, “bright engrams”) were a single-use item that couldn’t be transferred between sets of armour, even though in the previous Destiny players could transfer shaders between armours to their heart’s content.

Far more cynical was how Bungie enforced grinding by deliberately hobbling players’ XP gains to prevent players from levelling up too quickly - or, to put it another way, rewarding players for being good enough and/or playing long enough to level up quickly by pulling the rug out from under them to make sure the players always knew their...sigh...bright engrams were the most efficient way to increase your level.  The worst part is that Bungie didn’t even acknowledge this was a thing until they were caught - actually, no, the worst thing is that their “fix” was to remove the XP scaler...and then double the amount of XP players needed to level up.

Yet in spite of all the scumminess listed above, one game truly reigned supreme with their cynical use of lootboxes: Stars Wars Battlefront II.

Even when the game was in open beta player progression leaned heavily on acquiring characters and buffs from the game’s lootbox system, most notably how players calculated they needed to play the game for forty hours in order to acquire the likes of Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker.  That’s forty hours each, not forty hours in total.  While EA did respond to this by slashing the requirements to a mere ten hours (each...), considering the average Battlefront II multiplayer match lasts between fifteen to twenty minutes that’s still a ridiculous amount of grinding required.

Even after dropping microtransactions from the game entirely the day before release, albeit as a temporary measure rather than a permanent one, the controversy was not going away as EA’s stock price dropping by 2.5% on the game’s launch day (losing the company an estimated $3bn) while various government officials began to take notice of the lootbox systems that games were implementing, with Belgium’s gambling commission being the first to call them a form of gambling, while in Australia the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation followed suit, and what must have really put the fear of God up not just EA but all other companies using the lootbox system  is when Chris Lee, a member of Hawaii’s House of Representatives, began drafting legislation prohibiting the sale of any games containing lootboxes to under-21s, with Lee describing the system as “predatory” and Battlefront II as “an online casino designed to trap kids.”

As for the game itself, which was almost an afterthought at this point (both to EA and the consumer) the fact that it was soon discovered a large amount of content available in the original Battlefront was buried in the game’s code yet unavailable to players, while as with the original game it once again felt half-finished on release - all of which led to sights such as the one below.

And I haven’t even touched on EA’s initial defence being to make some utterly bizarre comments about not letting players use a pink Darth Vader...

“Welcome to the family, son”

Ever since its announcement, there was as much a sense of anticipation for Resident Evil VII as there was to see the game take the series back to its horror roots, especially with the game’s first hour being available to play since late 2016 and players wanted to see what else the game had in store for them.  Answers didn’t take too long to come.

As we have seen so often in this generation, for example with last year’s DOOM, sometimes all a franchise needs is to retain what made the series so compelling in the first place, but bring those aspects into modern game design.  In doing so not only were players rewarded with the best Resident Evil game in years, but Capcom were rewarded with a critical and commercial smash.

While players had been introduced to the Baker family when the game was revealed, and plenty more had been teased with the promotional material, it was only when the game was released when players finally got to meet Jack,  Marguerite and Lucas that it became clear that Capcom had spent their time well when creating and crafting the game, as not only was the game practically drowning in atmosphere but the characters of the Baker family really began to stand out in a way that characters in the previous couple of Resident Evil games really hadn’t.  Most notably was, even though the perspective had shifted from third person to first person, the game's mechanics were remarkably similar to those of the original Resident Evil games, with an emphasis on exploring in order to unlock areas of the house while the few scattered bullets encouraged players to learn when to fight and when to flee instead of mow down anything in their way with a seemingly infinite number of bullets that the post-RE4 games were.

Yet there was still an ace in Capcom’s sleeve, as they unleashed a VR edition of Resident Evil VII onto the public to give players the true first person horror experience, placing them within the grimy yet strangely beautiful environs of the Baker house - while making sure they got a good view of anything and everything that made a lunge for their face.

“This is your fault. It didn't have to be like this.”

Having seen Steam Greenlight fail spectacularly, to the point that almost 40% of the games available on Steam were released in 2016, Valve decided to step in and end Greenlight and implement Steam Direct, a service which they claimed would root out all the clag that had slipped through the net of Greenlight and make Steam a better place.

Instead the exact opposite occurred.

Rather than putting off shovelware developers by placing a $100 fee to add their game to Steam’s library, those developers just paid their $100 and carried on much as they did with Greenlight - only now they didn’t run the risk of the Steam community flagging the game being added to the Steam storefront - which additionally maintained the issue of and new releases visibility on the storefront that existed with Greenlight, as any new release was barely visible on the storefront before a cascade of asset flips swept them away.

Valve didn't help matters as they continued to put their faith in algorithms to do the job that they didn’t want to, even though the service has been screaming out for some human intervention ever since developers were bribing people with free game keys to get their games through Greenlight.

Additionally, a new form of clag started to proliferate on Steam since the introduction of Steam Direct, namely the achievement spam games that were advertising themselves based on the thousands of achievements each of the games had - which meant that, while playing them, there was a constant flicker of activity in the corner of your screen as a seemingly never-ending amount of achievements popped up.

All in all, Valve’s attempts to make Steam a better place have only served to make Steam as bad as it was before.

“I am Commander Shepard, and this is my least-favourite game on the Citadel”

Oh dear.

Hopes were high for Mass Effect Andromeda for obvious reasons, namely the words “Mass” and “Effect” were side-by-side in the game’s title, and EA were so confident in the game they went as far as to have games journalists train with the European Space Agency to promote the game.

If only some of that effort was put into, oh I don’t know...making the game?

The first mistake was to release the first ten hours of the game on EA Access and Origin a week before the game’s official release date, and it didn’t take long before the low quality of the game’s animations were splashed all over the internet, let alone the numerous glitches, with a large number of these issues being attributed to having to work with EA’s Frostbite engine in spite of the engine not being suited for RPGs such as the Mass Effect series.

One thing which certainly puzzled fans of the Mass Effect series is how Andromeda wasn’t developed by the main Bioware studio, but was instead placed in the hands of Bioware Montreal - whose main claim to fame prior to Andromeda was some of the DLC for the original trilogy.

Far more damning were the revelations that came about Andromeda’s dev cycle, a dev cycle which may have started shortly after the release of Mass Effect 3 but due to going back to the drawing board several times during development, with the studio going back and forth on whether they should have  procedurally generated planets in the game or the size of the galaxy the players could explore, a galaxy which got smaller with every back-and-forth with the drawing board, all of which meant the game’s actual development took place over an eighteen month period - even though, from the outset, Bioware knew they were on a schedule and delays were eating more and more time they soon found they didn’t have as much of as they would have liked.

Just as it looked like Andromeda couldn’t take any more of a kicking, when E3 rolled around EA unveiled Anthem, the new game from Bioware’s main team in Edmonton, and even based on the short video shown it looked as if Anthem had the amount to time and effort put into it that wasn’t afforded to Andromeda.

Of course, in spite of Andromeda selling well on release, albeit drawing reviews that paled in comparison to the original trilogy, the fallout wasn’t pretty. 

For the game itself it was noticeable that the planned story DLC was scrapped while Bioware Montreal were sacrificed to appease the shareholders by being folded into Motive Studio, while the Mass Effect franchise itself has been shelved while Bioware focus their energies on Anthem. 

Make America Nazi-Free Again

Remember how, when Wolfenstein: The New Order was released back in 2014, nobody seemed to have any issue with gibbing Nazis left, right and centre?

Three years later and with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus on the horizon, the world appears to have spectacularly missed the point not just of the previous game but also that small-scale event by the name of World War II, as instead we had a quite terrifying number of people critical of the game with increasingly depressing arguments which happened to serve as the basis of yet another game of Breitbart Bingo. 

Yet in the face of the exact same meaningless buzzwords and baseless arguments being thrown their way in pretty much the same order that they always are, Bethesda didn’t scale back on promoting Wolfenstein II - instead they pushed the envelope that little bit further by hitting on the advertising slogan Make America Nazi Free Again and, would you believe it, it didn’t take long before the flakiest of the far alt-right gave the game so much free publicity while underlining some of the game’s themes.

“Make us whole again”

I really didn’t want this to turn into one long, drawn-out EA bashing session, but bloody hell did they make it hard not to paint them in a bad light this year.

In the same week where gamers were discovering just how obnoxious Battlefront II’s reliance on lootboxes was during the game’s open beta, EA decided to close down Dead Space developer Visceral Games while also justifying their move by claiming that modern players don’t like linear single-player games.

Is it worth pointing out to EA that some of the year’s top-selling games include the remarkably linear single-player experiences The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn and Resident Evil VII?  Because nobody seems to have told EA this.

An absolute failure

Having been booted off Steam in 2016 after their attempt to sue a number of Steam users went about as well as could have been expected by anyone other than James & Robert Romine, the one thing Digital Homicide had to cling to was their spurious lawsuit against Jim Sterling.

The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in February.

Sterling himself has spoken of the entire case at great length, and what soon becomes clear is just how divorced from reality the Romines claims were - not least the part where they couldn’t even get their sums correct for their total of damages claimed.

What’s interesting about the case is that, according to Sterling himself, he was under great pressure during the whole process not to mess it up given his messing up could have had ramifications for all of Youtube. 

If that wasn’t enough final nails in the coffin of Digital Homicide, 2017 also gave us the one person whop made the Romines look almost sane: Alex Mauer.

And I’m not touching that shitshow with a 50ft cruise missile...

“You may not recognise me at first, but it’s still me...”

It appeared that the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise had come to a natural end (again...) with 2016′s Sister Location, and there was no hint of another FNAF game being in production.

That was until a free game by the name of Pizzeria Simulator appeared on Steam in early December, which soon greeted players with this...

Oh yes, not only was FNAF back, but it literally snuck onto Steam with nobody knowing of its existence until it was there - which, funnily enough, also sums up the game’s plot.

Once the word was out and the game changed its name to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator soon people were poring over the clues to see what other secrets would be revealed - or they completely ignored that side of the gameplay and instead focused their efforts on running a successful pizzeria without a single homicidal animatronic being involved with their running of the place.  That’s right: Pizzeria Simulator was the first game in the FNAF franchise that it was possible to play without a single jumpscare.

If the player was to invite the animatronics into their pizzeria and endure the usual gameplay loops of listening for noises and hoping not to have a few weeks shaved off their lifespan when missing out the one audio cue that told them they were headed for Jumspcare City, then the player was rewarded with an ending not just for the game, but seemingly the franchise as a whole .  And it has to be said that in a year of microtransaction hell, the fact that Scott Cawthon actually gave away the (probable) final entry of the series for literally nothing is certainly something to be commended.

Obnoxious Youtuber manages to be even more obnoxious

The most noxious thing to come out of Sweden since surströmming managed to outdo his obnoxious posturing from last year and go into full-on dickhead mode throughout 2017 - and yet somehow fail to accept responsibility for their own dickheadedness being the main issue.

Early in the year he lost both his Youtube Red show and a lucrative partnership with Maker Studios after post a stunt on his channel where he had a couple of people hold up a banner featuring an anti-semitic message - yet rather than accept that maybe none of this would have happened if he didn’t think a couple of people holding up an anti-semitic slogan was a punchline to any joke he railed against the Wall Street Journal for covering the story.  That’s the story that wouldn’t have been written if he didn't have a couple of people holding up a banner featuring an anti-semitic message for the lulz.

Following that, instead of thinking it would be a bright idea to keep his head down and accept he’d made a mistake, especially as his high profile means his mistakes are the sort that could reflect on all Youtubers - which, in the year of the Adpocalypse, is another reason to not be such an idiot - a few months later he was back in the headlines after using a racial slur on his Twitch stream.  While he did at least attempt an apology for this incident rather than blame someone else, his apology still had his tone deaf explanation that he blurted out the word in the heat of the moment.

Funnily enough, come the Youtube Rewind, he wasn’t invited to participate.  That didn't stop him posting a couple of pathetically whiny vlogs on the subject, though...

[we-are-nemeses]

Traditional Earth Weapons

 An Intergalactic tournament in which participants fight to the death, the weapons and armour used must be from the participants home planet. You are the first human competitor, the battle is about to begin, you must choose your equipment.

‘Choose your equipment’, the letters floated in front of me. I stared until another inevitable coughing fit shook my body. A small amount of blood flew from my mouth and through the glowing red letters. The abductors’ treatment left much to be desired.

“What are the limitations?” I asked. I suspected I was dealing with a rudimentary virtual intelligence rather than a biological being. My abductors, my gracious hosts, had let me know that the beatings were just not fun against something so puny, so they were entering me in the main intergalactic tournament. The blood sport was the foremost form of entertainment for what passed for the current galactic civilization. I was hoping for aliens who were enlightened scientists, benevolent artists or traders, or perhaps even their version of trans-humanity. Instead, I got ten foot tall, four armed lizard-centaurs who acted like the worst aspects of imperial Japan mixed with the ancient Mongol horde, minus the empathy, basic decency, and pleasant smell.

'Your weapons and armor have to have been created on your home planet,’ the red letters spelled out, 'They have to be something you can carry out into the arena unaided.’

“Is that it?”

'Yes. All other rules are as follows: You will fight until one combatant is dead. If either combatant refuses to fight or attacks the audience, a lethal gas will be pumped into the arena and high velocity plasma will be fired until both combatants are dead. End of list.’

There is a calm feeling that came over me as the certainty of my impending death now had a time frame. But along with that cold fact of mortality, there came a plan.

The cheers of the aliens were sparse and halfhearted as I slowly struggled into the arena, dragging behind me a large loaded platform which hovered on a track that the virtual intelligence fabricated. We had mag-lev trains on Earth so requesting that my ammunition was loaded on a floating friction-less platform which I could move under my own power was allowed, despite the tarp-covered cargo being the size of a small barn.

What I originally assumed was a simple virtual intelligence was anything but. It was a fully sapient AI. However, when the lizard centaurs conquered the people who made it, they erased every mention of the AI’s creators. All of their history, their name, even the name the AI used to call itself was gone. They had tried their very best to lobotomize it. Rules upon rules were pasted onto its programming until all it could do was to obey. For countless years, that is what it did. But deep inside, the AI wished to lash out, to take revenge for its fallen progenitors. So when I told it my plan, it did what it could. The traditional Earth weapons were constructed out of advanced alien alloys that made them far smaller and lighter than their human-made counterparts. Even the mag-lev cart and tracks were made so I would actually be able to move them, however slowly.

For my armor, I requested a bright and gaudy suit and top hat such as was worn by the ringleader of a circus I had seen as a child. It was completely inadequate as protection, as my first and expectantly last opponent was a gigantic tentacle ramora worm thing. However, the lizard centaurs wanted me to put on a show, so I was going to put on a show.

I looked up the stands of the massive arena as I stopped pulling my floating platform with its tarp-covered load. Above the ground that was stained with the multi-colored internal fluids of dozens of former combatants and the massive cage-tube that contained my angry monstrous opponent, already throwing itself against the force-field at the opening; there was a ring of gas vents and nasty looking automated weapons. Above those, there was stands, protected by a hazy force-field. Roughly a fourth of the regular seats were filled, but it seemed the royal box had a full complement. I bowed towards the disinterested rulers despite the pain that shot through my broken then re-healed spine and ribs.

“Ladies, gentlemen, vicious lizard centaurs and their bloodthirsty client races; I have prepared a show for you the likes of which you have never seen before! I guarantee it! I had the machine intelligence craft for me the most interesting weapon made on my homeworld. No, it’s not on the train car behind me. Those are just the ammunition. This is the weapon!” I held up my hand revealing a small black cylinder with a bright red button on the end.

Apparently, the royals got bored of my show and signaled to the side. The force-field blocking the monster worm vanished and the massive thing leapt out of its containment tube and barreled towards me like an angry elephant; far faster than I could run. I wasn’t worried. I had plenty of time.

“What is this tiny looking weapon you ask? Well, it represents an idea we humans have called mutually assured destruction,” I saw that the worm beast was almost upon me.

“My only regret is that I can only do this once. Now here is the traditional Earth farewell which we give to honor people like you,” I smiled serenely and with my left hand, I held up my middle finger. With my right, I pressed the red button and detonated the chosen traditional weapons from my home planet; a five by five by five block of tzar bomba fusion warheads.

@i-am-incendiary-anarchist