#RW Gatherer

[boyswhowawa]

Halloween Costumes Day 10!

there was a slight accident with lineart on the wrong layer, but honestly all things considered, I don't think it turned out too bad!!

also, the green boy is Gatherer, Hunter's twin from me and some friends' shenanigans

[ask-the-pioneer]

"I've always been captivated by them. Something about the shiny exterior, how they glimmer when you tumble them around in your hands. My younger self would obsess about them, a childlike fascination. Even back then I instinctively knew they had value. My mom would use pearls I found to pay for a safe passage at scavenger tolls. We tried to bypass those points as much as we could, but sometimes it was unavoidable."

"It's a looong story…. I was found roaming the wilderness by my mentor, who brought me to er, an entity, called an interator. Do you know of iterators? Apparently they are what was left of an ancient civilization that once inhabited these lands. I couldn't wrap my head around it at first. Iterators are massive, absolutely huge, like mountains. Do you see that big structure of a regular, smooth shape?"

[She points towards Five Pebble's can in the distance]

"That is an iterator's «superstrucute». A mountain, the entire thing… is a person. It still sounds crazy when I say it."

"Ah, right, my name… like I mentioned, I got lost and my mentor found me. He brought me to his iterator. If my memory serves me right, his name is «No Significant Harassment», or NSH for short. I recall thinking at that time, «Harassment? I hope he won't be cruel to me». I had no concept of iterator names, their meaning, why it's three or however many words long. It was incredibly confusing to my young mind, though looking back at it I consider myself very lucky. The iterator was, dare I say, «god-like» (his own words), but benevolent. I saw how well he treated Hunter – my mentor – and it made me trust him more, even though I was scared and wary in the beginning."

"Would you believe it if I told you… there are stories written inside the pearls? That those things I’ve been obsessing about all my life are used for storing information? I had many of them leftover from when I lived at a scavenger outpost. One cycle, NSH noticed my interest, and – I wish Hunter had told me about this sooner, but – the iterator shot at my head with something…? And suddenly I could understand everything he said. Not that he said much, because I started crying loudly and ran straight out of there, haha. But before I bolted, he gave me one of his pearls as consolation. I think he felt bad for the scared little me."

"After that, he would eagerly read all the pearls I brought to him. That is how I learned more about the culture of the peoples who were here before me: the Ancients, their customs, why the iterators were built, and much more. It was like the knowledge of the entire world was suddenly revealed to me – to a seemingly insignificant being, a tiny speck in an endless ocean of life. It both made me feel very important, and very small. And, yeah, it has intensified my obsession with pearls beyond mortal limits. What if I could write into a pearl? I could archive the history of my entire species! All the stories my mom told me when I was small? All the places I’ve been to? Or other scugs have been to…"

[Her eyes widen, sparkling with glee]

"Y-yeah… that would be nice… sadly I am what I am – a slugcat. I don’t know how to do this very advanced stuff at all. I have no means of doing this. I once asked NHS for help, but there’s only so much he could guess from my frantic signing. I don’t think he understood me, in the end. But he did appreciate my efforts, and I was given a title – the Pioneer, like a person who is the very first to explore something uncharted. Apparently no slugcat before me thought of reading from or writing into pearls? I find it a little hard to believe."

"This one! This is a very special kind of pearl – it contains an ancient poem from which my name originated. See, my name was a gift from NSH the iterator. It’s spelled: «Mirmyntasseth». The best way I would describe it, is… it’s a name for a feeling, or an experience. The way it was explained to me, is that the word «Mirmyntasseth» is an expression of seeing a marble roll on a flat surface, then hitting another marble. Ah, right, you may not know this – a marble is like, like a pearl, but translucent and even more ornate. I was told that marbles were used by the Ancients for entertainment. They had a game where you rolled one to hit another. I'll admit, I can see the appeal. Throwing rocks is fun, although I image this game was considered a more dignified pastime."

[She tumbles the dark pearl in her hands, admiring its luster]

"The poem inside this pearl, one of its verses spells: «Eight Marbles Cast in Stone». The poem itself is long… very long… I had the iterator read it to me once, and we had to stop in the middle because the rain was coming. Maybe I will ask NSH to read it again, when I’m back at his superstructure with Hunter."

[Her gaze trails off to somewhere far away for a moment, a subtle grimace on her face. She closes her eyes and shakes off the thoughts that cloud her mind]

"So, um… yes… that is why I am called Eight Marbles Cast in Stone, or Marbles for short. I like how it sounds, it has a nice ring to it. And it’s a gift from an iterator, a god-like being. I consider it a great honor."

"…that said, I wonder why he didn’t just name me «Pearl»? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Maybe it didn’t sound cool enough. They’ve used pearls just to store information. I guess it’d be silly to be named «Dirt» because you doodle in dirt, or «Batfly» because you love eating batflies? Hmm…"

[sleepyc63]

art / info dump of an au i've been thinking about for a whiiile

essentially, artificer and gourmand meet and have a pup! his name is the gatherer, named after hunter (hunter-gatherer -- get it?) as a way to honor them after gourmand found them... yknow. anyway, gatherer meets the mother and they have pups of their own: monk, survivor, and wanderer!

wanderer is an oc i made based off of the green sibling in the intro cutscene and "the wanderer" passage. he's spent his adult life searching for the siblings he lost as a pup, which earned him the title "the wanderer" :) i like to think if he existed as a campaign, he would follow a similar story to monk and survivor; either led to the depths and seeing his family in his last moments before ascension, or reuniting with them in outer expanse!

i have more ideas for this au but i’m gonna save that for another post cause it is 4am and i have places to be in the morning lmao

[grimdochdraws]

Ko-Fi Commissions!

hello! i've updated my commission listings! you can see them all here on ko-fi!

thank you for your consideration ::]

[zahanh]

fellow ragequit enjoyer??????????

RAGEQUIT BOMB 💣💥💥💥💥

💥💥💥

[motheline]

Clover all growed up

She lives in Outer Expanse as one of the last few Slugcats at the Slugtree alongside her sister Frosty and her mother Minty. Her job is to gather supplies and food for the colony during daylight hours.

[north-winds1]

Gourmand!

[pupb-rur]

Some headcannons with how biomechanical each lizard type is

И версия для русскоговорящих. Немного хедов на то, насколько каждый вид ящериц биомеханический

[mewguca]

The people NEED iderator yuri!!!

What kind of iterator yuri you want

also Gathering Petals belongs to @cloverlady

sorry almost all of it is doomed

[aloe-vera-7]

Group photo with the gang

this took me 9+ hours straight holy shit

[autismagolor]

i forgot to post these. anyways hi i made some rain world ocs

they're all on my artfight btw :3

[ofliterarynature]

SEPTEMBER 2024 WRAP UP

[loved liked ok nope dnf reread* (book club)]

Bryony & Roses • The Paragon Hotel • The Invisible Library • (The Magic Fish) • The Gathering • Paladin of Souls • Mislaid in Parts Half-Known • Red White & Royal Blue* • North Woods • The Empty Grave* • Barda • Lost in the Moment & Found • The Creeping Shadow* • The Spellshop • Lalani of the Distant Sea

* * * * *

Lockwood & Co - not much to say, but it was fun revisiting an old favorite! It's becoming clearer with age and rereads that there are things about this series that I don't like, but the things I like definitely outweigh them - the way it does ghosts and uses a casebook structure among them! Would highly recommend if you're looking for something a bit spooky and mysterious.

Lost in the Moment and Found - this book was very hard to get into, because as it warns you, the opening involves a child experiencing grooming and gaslighting from an adult, and it is tense. Oof. But that said, between this and Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, I think Antsy's story and the Shop Where the Lost Things Go might be my favorite place and narrative arc we've seen yet.

Barda - I was obsessed with Ngozi's Check Please! for a number of years, and I think she's a very funny person in general! I read this on the strength of that alone despite no previous knowledge of the DC characters involved. I do honestly think this needed to be twice as long to get the depth of story necessary for an outsider, but dang did she pack the emotions in! I can fully see why she's obsessed with these characters, even if I don't feel like I have enough info to get into it myself.

North Woods - honest to god I'm so glad I picked up a copy of this at the library book sale, because I don't know if OR when I might have gotten to it otherwise. I don't really have the words, but it's one of those slow, literary, speculative, books that you have to work to put together that I love to listen to on audiobook and just marinate in for a few days. I would highly recommend to fans of Emily St John Mandel.

Red White & Royal Blue - I'll be honest, I somehow found myself on a FirstPrince fanfic binge and eventually hit a point where I thought to myself, you know, I've only read the book once, maybe I should go check that out again. It was fun! Remarkably similar in tone to the fanfic, so keep up the good work yall ;D

Paladin of Souls - Y'all. I'm so mad it took me this long to get to this after Curse of Chalion. I've seen this recommended so many times independent of the first book and they were so right, I loved it. Character-driven fantasy, great world building, a middle-aged female character who's on a journey of self-discovery and also so done with everyone's shit (including the gods, lol).

The Gathering - a murder investigation in Alaska with vampires *sounds* cool, but... the vampires are people, they're sentient, they have a culture, but they're also deeply hated and treated like predatory animals and are designated a protected species? It's trying to say something, but I'm not sure it works. Definitely taught me that I don't like crime novels or thrillers, but some bonus points for being unexpectedly queer.

The Magic Fish - I've see this around, but tumblr finally convinced me that I needed to read it and I got it onto the book club list. It was completely not what I was expecting, it was so much better! The description really led me to think it would be a lot more YA-ish and be about the son, but his mom is just as important to the story! It's got fairy tales, it's got complexity, the art was incredibly beautiful, ah!!! I'll be needing to get my own copy so I can read it again and think about it some more.

The Invisible Library - tumblr apparently finds this book very divisive, and both times I've asked about it there's been a 50/50 split on whether people liked or hated it lol. SO I went in with very low expectations, and I thought it was fun! It's not a great work of fantasy, I will give you that, but I do enjoy a tropey alt/historical fantasy adventure on occasion, and this filled that niche pretty well. It also didn't lean into a romance plot like I was afraid it would, and as long as it continues to do so (or at least handles it well), I think I could have fun with the rest of this series.

The Paragon Hotel - this is somehow my third Lydsay Faye, and while I don't think I've particularly loved any of them, she can really write a very solid book! A good read, with queer identities playing an unexpectedly major part in the plot!

Bryony & Roses - I have so far epically failed in my goal this year to read more of T Kingfisher's fantasy backlist, but I saw this on hoopla and thought I could fit it in. A very good time as always!

DNF

The Spellshop (16%) - I've read the author's YA in the past and (mostly) liked it at the time, and have been meaning to read her previous adult book for ages. Unfortunately, I've been having terrible luck with anything recent being marketed as cozy fantasy. I put 2 hours into this on audiobook and my initial impression of the story was earnestly quirky, charming, and anxious. Perhaps better than L&L, but I wasn't feeling much more than a vague interest and decided to cut my losses before my feelings entirely soured.

Lalani of the Distant Sea (10%) - this book sounds really cool (yes I did love Moana), the mythology and worldbuilding in the bit I read was interesting, but it is very much written for a younger reader. If I had any in my life currently I would be happy to give this to them! Just not the right pick for me right now.

[cloverlady]

My Rain World Iterator OCs! I have a few, but these two are my main ones. Flowering salvation, she/it, and Gathering Petals, she/her.

They're sort of like siblings, but sort of not? If you asked them, even they wouldn't really know how to define their relationship- but it's undeniable that they're attached at the hip, and protect each other no matter what. They even run off the same hardware, sharing a structure. Both are part of Local Group M2, and are close with their Group Senior, Counting Strings of Beads. Before the Public Mass Ascension, their structure was dedicated to the care of Ancients, serving a variety of roles from medical clinic to luxury resort. (Please feel free to ask questions about them! Also, huge shoutout to @fauxbia and @mewguca, who were both instrumental in their development, and who I have the privilege of sharing a lot of cool oc lore with ^^ )

[mothsakura]

"there will be debates at the function" they said. "you'll have such a great time at the function" they said. __ i hc that councils would definitely drag their iterator along to a fancy ceremony or function!! would the iterator like it? depends on the iterator really! RB sure as hell hates this :( i wonder that the ancients did at such an important ceremony that they needed to get all dressed up in fancy attire and so did their iterators. maybe they had very important governmental gatherings too? maybe it was some kind of debate? i hc that ancients value debates a lot, especially during court cases; where the dude who wins the debate will win the court case as well. and after the initial debate there'd be a whole ceremony for the winning team or individual! it'd be one of the only times iterators aren't doing any work so so much things to think about!!! but alas i need to actually write the lore, after all the lore won't write itself!

[needlemeister]

various things

nsh

nsh n hunter

anti gourm

anti spear

scugified oc

riv n twelve-six, my scav oc

cherrypie n fishstick pups

[spotsupstuff]

How is tarrows relationship with the scavs? Does she have any scav friends?

back at Fish's!!!! she has a whole fam, still! well... technically. after her life as a sluggy that was a sister to two scavs and part of a whole tribe, her relationship with them is pretty good. i like to think that animals n such r better capable of feeling out a person's spirit so they'd know that that there is Their Tinkerer

she can Kind of understand them- it's kinda like trying to listen to the second/third language you know but the speaker is going full ham with some accent that makes it hard to completely make sense of their sentences

her rep would be continentally good and she'd still refuse to harm them (both the Tinkerer and the Seafarer aren't capable of hurting scavs, speaking in game terms, n they r locked at chieftain lvl of rep). prolly would go out of her way to help them out n would be all panicked if They panicked cuz of her shotgun