#Soul Forge

[asgard-pics]

[chibifox2002]

Okay *clap* so! I've just gotten into/caught up on @dasiychains 's Soul Forge comic, and just like the other aus I enjoy I felt like drawing my oc in it in some way as well as try to draw their ocs.

And due to the seriousness that the comic currently has, I also figured "hey, why not make the drawing funny?" So then this happened lol

(I wasn't sure how their golem ocs would react to a human-goblin hybrid, so I just left it as it is)

[gexian]

“Soul Figth” Helmet Bro

league of legend wild rift - soul figth event

[sysig]

For Requestober

Papyrus and Sans cozily hugging each other in soft clothes😭😭😭

(well this is literally first time I did this hope didn't do anything wrong)

Day 10 - Sleepy snoozey skeletons

[starry-bi-sky]

DPXDC CFAU Headcanon: Ghostspeak Edition

Ghosts in the Infinite Realms who saw Jason and Danny together called them "luzdra", a term in ghost speak that directly translates into the words "shared soul". It's literal definition is; "two ghosts with a bond so deep that it was as if they had split their souls in half and given one to the other", but in general it just means two ghosts with a profound, indescribable bond.

Luzdrus is the singular form of the word, and refers to only one ghost in the bond. While "luzdra" is plural and either refers to both of them together, or the relationship as a whole. It depends on the context of the conversation and who they're saying it to.

There is no romantic, platonic, or familial connotation behind the word. It just means "someone who shares a deep bond with someone" and can be between anyone.

It also does not mean soulmate, and if you say that you'll be corrected. Soulmates implies that their bond was destined by the universe, luzdra are two people who developed and built that bond themselves. It's a relationship forged between two (or more) people.

Some of Danny's rogues -- like Kitty and Johnny, who might've seen the two together and are possibly luzdra themselves -- still call him 'luzdrus' even after Jason's disappearance from the Zone. Danny doesn't know how to feel about it.

[vaguely-concerned]

having seen at least the rough outlines of all the romances now I have to say that I think emmrich's is probably objectively the best in terms of coherence and completeness of story arc (with the understanding that ultimately the 'best' romance is whichever one makes YOUR heart sing anyway so objectivity is a silly thing to claim that way, it just felt like it's the arc with the most well-paced focused content and the least dangling threads)... but lucanis' is my favourite haha. just. the whole kneeling before your beloved full of reverence but without any of the distance that usually implies??? his complete undramatic certainty and calm in every scene with rook after this, having spent the whole game caught between fear and longing???? mr. lives in a pantry but it says nothing about my psyche don't worry about it it's purely for tactical reasons that I keep myself contained in a small dark room not entirely unlike a cell, love among the parsnips -- finally coming to rook in their room and it's so comfortable and comforting???? after all the times rook supports and comforts him through the game he's finally able to return the same to them when they need it while being so calm and steady and it's so fucking sweet and feels so effortless and with no price attached?????? he basically assigns himself the role of your bodyguard and he WILL stab a god over it??????????????? the turn to protector (which was in his heart all along longing to get out and find a place) of it all????? he sounds like he's found himself unexpectedly stumbling into such a soul-lightening state of revelatory existential relief, full on 'you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves' mary oliver style, and he goes and he shares that with rook and protectively envelops them in it when they're hurting??????????????????????????? hello for the maker's sake hello can anyone hear me?????

[deakyjoe]

You ask me what Ghost’s best cover is and I’m going to say this one live version of Sympathy for The Devil. I think about it everyday and listen to it most days. Tobias, give us a studio recording!!

Link to full version

[star-trekster]

Q-pid B-plot; Geordi la Forge and Data adventure

[thinwhitedoc]

SHERLOCK | Martin Freeman as John Watson

[buttercatrho]

Buggy! based on this image by @/mcapriglioneart on twitter

[kradogsrats]

The Mystery of Blacksteel Sanctum: A Retrospective

So, I loved TDP: Xadia, right? And my no-question favorite region was the Border: best environments, best NPCs, best-ish puzzles (look that ones a close call, okay), and best, most lore-rich story... which, in true TDP fashion, winds up raising more questions than it answers.

This post, and the thought I've put into it, are kind of my love letter to that story... and the other people who loved it, or could have loved it.

So: let's talk about what was going on in Blacksteel Sanctum.

Catch-Up Summary for Non-Players

If you played TDP: Xadia during its brief lifespan, you can skip this section. But to bring anyone who didn't up to speed:

In the Border region, a joint effort is underway to establish and secure reliable routes for crossing between Xadia and the Human Kingdoms. This is challenged by two fronts of enemies—magma crawlers, an aggressive part-bug and part-crab pest species infesting the area, and Saranar and the Dawnbringers, a faction of rebel Sunfire elves hostile to the new peace. The missions for the region are thereby divided into two "plotlines" directed by accompanying NPCs: the crawler plot, led by human rogue zoologist Mervyn and ending with the Crawler Queen boss, and the Blacksteel Sanctum plot, led by Sunfire elf Knight Ravna and ending with the Blacksteel Forgemaster boss.

Got it? Okay.

Digging for the Truth: Blacksteel Sanctum Basics

After first encountering the (sealed) Blacksteel Sanctum beneath the surface of the Border, Ravna expresses shock that not only is the Sanctum here, but that it's even real. She summarizes its story as:

This is a fairly standard Atlantis-style story—a place of legendary technological or magical wonders, brought low by some calamity and its secrets lost forever. In this case, it's reportedly where the Sunfire elves started their journey as master smiths of magically-enhanced weapons and armor, but also largely considered to be a myth.

Knowing that Blacksteel Sanctum was real, can we determine what was actually being made there? Well, there's a prominent crossroads location in the Blacksteel Sanctum mission maps, a setpiece room featuring a massive, gilded statue:

(That's not the room, but it is the same statue. Because of the way the game's camera and controls were set up, the statue was excruciatingly difficult to get even halfway-decent screen captures of in its in-game setting.)

Between the statue and the prominent, repeated use of the rune from Janai's Sunforge blade sheath as a decorative motif, it seems likely that Blacksteel Sanctum is the place where the first of the so-called "Sunforge" blades were, uh, forged. That technique was then either passed to or replicated by the Sunforge smiths.

There's even an answer for how Blacksteel Sanctum could compete with the Sunforge in magical power: in one of the magma crawler storyline missions, Mervyn concludes that "the same primal magic that led the ancient elves to build Blacksteel Sanctum here has attracted the crawlers." That source, whatever it is/was, made Blacksteel Sanctum's forges powerful enough to craft the first of the ever-burning blades that would later only be achievable with the Sunforge.

However, what should be considered the real trademark creation of Blacksteel Sanctum (as we shall see) is one Ravna is entirely unfamiliar with: those autonomous combat golems. She initially assumes they are strange suits of armor, and is astonished when they are able to move and fight, which suggests that not only did this technology never leave the Sanctum, it wasn't even preserved in the legends... and may have been deliberately excluded. At the same time, the golems are clearly the weapons the Dawnbringers are looking for, with Saranar stating her intending to march an army of them to retake Lux Aurea (after eliminating the humans and loyalist Sunfire elves securing the Border, of course). This raises the question: how exactly did the Dawnbringers find out about them? (Put a pin in that, we'll come back to it.)

Bearing Her Mark: The Forgemaster

In what is learned from exploring the Sanctum, a single significant figure emerges: the Forgemaster. She appears in a couple of recurring murals (technically they're on the floor, probably since that's the easiest area for the player to see), depicted as a radiant, almost queen-like leader of legendary stature:

Who appears to even send her people into battle:

This could just be figurative, in that she's sending forth Sunfire elf warriors through equipping them with the best and most powerful weapons. It's also very unclear who the enemy they are fighting actually is—the blocky, hooded figures contrast with the horned elves in a way that suggests they might be humans, possibly including dark mages?

Possibly confusing the timeline even more, the clearest reference to the Forgemaster as an actual person is the Signet of the Forgemaster item and its text:

All of Lux Aurea knew that armor bearing her mark would be as strong as her will.

From this, we know that the Forgemaster lived at a time contemporary with Lux Aurea—which doesn't actually tell us a huge amount, given that Elarion stood for a thousand years or more and Lux Aurea is no doubt even older. Did she leave Lux Aurea to establish Blacksteel Sanctum? Was this before the Sunforge, or maybe before the Sunforge was an actual forge-forge? If magical smithing was unknown to the Sunfire elves before Blacksteel Sanctum, presumably the Sunforge either didn't yet exist or was used for other purposes.

The problem is mostly that we don't have any real concept of what "ancient" means to elves. If we the Blacksteel Sanctum murals depict dark mages, that would mean that it can't have been buried more than 1,000 years, unless we're going to reject the conventional understanding of when dark magic entered the picture. Is 1,000 years ago considered "ancient" for elves? I wouldn't expect it to be, but realistically we just don't know.

(That being said, for Blacksteel Sanctum to have been founded shortly after the continent was split for the expulsion of humans would explain things like the discovery of a buried source of primal magic, unearthed by the massive geologic shift. The part I can't wrap my head around is the idea that the Sunfire elves didn't discover magical smithing until the same time that humans were being given dark magic... but I could get used to the idea.)

Anyway, in addition to this mysterious figure of the past, there's also, y'know... this Forgemaster:

I.e., the "Blacksteel Forgemaster" golem, the first region boss encounter for the Border.

Story-wise, the Forgemaster golem is first referenced in an encounter with a Dawnbringer group that it exterminated, where the dying captain speaks of a "gleaming giant" defending the lower reaches of the Sanctum from exploration. Ravna confirms this account, and declares that the golem must be eliminated for further investigation of the Sanctum. Even at this point, it's not exactly a secret that there's a connection between this golem and the Sanctum's master smith:

This is made even more explicit after defeating the golem, when Ravna reveals that she went to inspect its remains, and it reactivated at her touch to deliver a message:

Now, Ravna seems to think that this was essentially a pre-recorded message stored in the golem, which is otherwise autonomous, but mindless. However, having played a video game or two with very similar plotlines... even if it's not where things start out, someone always eventually starts stuffing souls into these things. Personally, I have no doubt that this was the Forgemaster herself, or whatever shreds of her remained. This is also the first place we get an explicit reference to the Sanctum's downfall—that the Forgemaster herself went too far, and that horrible act, whatever it was, led to the Sanctum being abandoned.

Ravna is sympathetic to the Forgemaster golem's plea to let the Sanctum's secrets remain buried, and decides that once the scattered remnants of the Dawnbringers are cleared out, all exploration will end. She intends to return her full attention to the mission that really matters: securing the Border crossings and the shared future of humans and elves.

This is a fairly typical "act one" soft ending for a video game plotline that will be picked up again later—I very much doubt that it was intended to be the final, decisive ending of the story of Blacksteel Sanctum. My bet would be that the eventual TDP: Xadia roadmap would have included additional story arcs for each region, with new bosses and some new missions, maybe another mission map... something like that. These would be either a new story, probably sharing some of the same characters, or a continuation of the first "resolved" story from that region. For example, I would expect the Far Reaches to have a second act not centered around the Natamus, since that plot was pretty well wrapped up (though it could be opened again), but possibly following up on Zeph's mysterious backstory and departure at the end of the first arc.

For the Border and Blacksteel Sanctum, an obvious hook for act two would be for the Sanctum's true secrets, their awakening set in motion by the Dawnbringers, to finally started crawling up to the surface. Because I don't think the Forgemaster's golem was there only to keep intruders out... there's something down there that she was also intended to keep in.

Shadow and Flame: The Sanctum's Fall

(Oh, did you somehow think you were getting out of this without a Khazad-dûm reference? You were wrong.)

So the Forgemaster golem confesses to Ravna that she and her smiths did "something unforgivable," spurred by their own arrogance in considering themselves all-powerful, and their continued hunger for more knowledge and power in spite of that. However, there have also already been hints of a dark secret to the Sanctum, probably related to its decline and/or fall.

One is made nice and obvious in the form of the Sins of the Sanctum item, presented as a book and providing a one-line excerpt:

"... its moral heart did die and rot, but oh! Its fire and flames did not..."

Another, a bit more subtle, is the region armor set shared by Soren and Viren, which offers three ominous lines:

Something echoes in the metal. Does it sing, or does it scream? What did they bury down there beneath the earth?

Finally, and most importantly, there's what I'm just going to refer to as the "dragon forge." At the end of a story-oriented mission to escort Ravna herself while she explores the Sanctum, she calls out the final room in a pretty suspicious way:

Ravna links the Sanctum's most prominent forge with dragons, while Sins of the Sanctum links dragons, or a dragon, with the Sanctum's fall. There's also the reference in her original summary of the Sanctum's legends that one possible reason for its disappearance is that it was "destroyed by jealous dragons."

The draconic theme isn't the forge's only unusual feature, either:

It's worth noting that she delivers the line about its size immediately after you've defeated a giant mission-boss golem, so she's familiar with just how big those golems get. Based on the size and power of that golem, she also comments that her ancestors "clearly wanted this particular forge protected." We're meant to understand that whatever was made in this giant, dragon-themed forge was somehow special, and likely tied to the Sanctum's most prominent works... including the one that led to its downfall.

This is the room in question, by the way, or close enough to it:

I'm not sure whether the stuff around the very perimeter is the same as in the game, but the dragon-themed forge itself and the floor pattern are accurate.

Ravna doesn't comment on the floor pattern, but I'm going to, because that center floor image is the main section of another mural that appears repeatedly throughout the Sanctum environment. It's on walls, banners, and floors, basically anywhere that a space needs to be filled. (The Forgemaster murals appear far more rarely, really only in specific areas.) With screenshots being both difficult to frame and not the best resolution, this non-game render is the clearest image of it:

It's easy to look at this and say "well, obviously that's the confrontation between Ziard and Sol Regem," except... it's not. Or if it is, it's not a depiction that makes any sense at all. Because look, if Sunfire elves know how to represent one thing in their decorative and architectural motifs... well, okay, back up for a second. If Sunfire elves know how to represent one thing, it's the sun. However, if they know how to represent two things, those are the sun and Sol Regem's horns. So unless everyone down in the Sanctum somehow forgot what Sol Regem looks like, that's not Sol Regem.

(There are actually no visual references to Sol Regem's horns in the entirety of Blacksteel Sanctum, aside from statues of juvenile dragons with only two horns in the same shape. Considering just how many there are in all other Sunfire architecture we've seen? That's weird. Like weird to the point that I wonder if it indicates some kind of schism between the Sanctum and Lux Aurea specifically about dragons.)

Additionally, the mural shows a massive, jagged hole in the dragon's chest, which is not something that happened to Sol Regem in the confrontation with Ziard. It's not 100% certain, but it seems to me that it makes more sense to interpret the central orb as being ripped from it, rather than being thrown at it. This is the imagery that is centrally and visibly featured in the dragon forge.

So we have 1) some terrible act by the Forgemaster, 2) the Sanctum's most prominent and unique forge being dragon-themed, 3) depictions of a dragon rent asunder, and 4) references to something buried in the depths, with fire and flame persisting beyond mortality.

Just to seal the deal, we also, if you do the kind of extensive ArtStation dive that I did, have this piece of concept art:

As Ravna says, the dragon forge goes "beyond armor and weapons for elves," and in this concept we have what appears to be pieces of armor for a dragon. Obviously it would be a pointless exercise to arm a dragon with forged weaponry, but could they have tried to armor one? What would be so unforgivable about dragon armor?

But wait, what did Ravna herself mistake for armor, when first entering the Sanctum? That's right.

They built a goddamn dragon golem.

Furthermore, as with the Forgemaster golem, they definitely put some piece of an actual, living dragon into it. Whether that was its heart, or its spirit, or something else, it was torn out and caged in metal. This could have been a malicious attempt by the Forgemaster and her smiths to enslave a dragon into their own control, or it could have been an altruistic attempt to save the life of one that had been torn apart by something else (dark mages?) by playing god. Either way, it seems that it went... quite badly. Badly enough that the Forgemaster not only had the Sanctum sealed and abandoned, but also put herself into a golem the same way, so she could stand as an eternal guard against her creation ever escaping or being freed.

Unfortunately, I would bet money that the dragon golem has already been awakened (probably by the magma crawlers). Remember the question of how the Dawnbringers knew about the golems? Well, as Saranar lies dying, the golems having proved to be uncontrollable and turned on her, she says this:

Someone a) knew about Blacksteel Sanctum, a place Ravna wasn't certain was even real, b) knew about the golems still remaining there, something Ravna had never so much as heard legends about, and c) promised the Dawnbringers power and victory, should they breach the Sanctum and take the golems for themselves. This could be the plot of an unusually well-informed external actor manipulating the local gang as cannon fodder to access some heavily-guarded secret, except they already ran that exact plot in the Far Reaches with Vant and Margot over the Natamus. I think it's more likely that the dragon golem has found a way of communicating with the outside world, and brought the Dawnbringers to the Sanctum knowing that they wouldn't stop digging for more power and weapons until they inevitably went too far and unearthed it. With the Forgemaster golem defeated, the last true line of defense for either direction—into the Sanctum or out of it—is now gone. Like I said, it's an excellent set-up for a second act.

I mean, as the Dragonbreath Embers item puts it:

Go on. Let them out. Surely nothing bad will happen.

So yeah! We'll also probably never find out if any of this is correct, since even if the game never re-launches or continues, anyone who could tell us anything is almost definitely legally prohibited from doing so... but we may have been robbed of an eventual epic boss battle with a golem dragon, among the countless other things that were in TDP: Xadia's future. THANKS, NETFLIX.

—

Speaking of people under NDA, here are the TDP: Xadia artists whose public portfolios were invaluable to researching and making this post:

Marvin Tischler

Alice Cho

Jacinta Vu

Guillaume T. Delbarre

Margaret Dost

Nelson Dou

Rebecca Blessing

Sara Lansdell

[squircatlies]

Stop using character ai!!!!!

Find another equally unhinged soul to role-play with, like god intended.

[somewillwin]

My @thesoulforgeorder mc Dakota 😌😌😌 in her orphan era and then military

[esonetwork]

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood/

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the 9th film from Quentin Tarantino. As Hollywood’s Golden Age is winding down during the summer of 1969, television actor Rick Dalton and his stunt double Cliff Booth endeavor to achieve lasting success in Hollywood. They meet several colorful characters along the way. The film was released in the summer of 2019.

This week’s episode of the podcast is a rambling catch-up show. So much is going on in our lives these days, it can be difficult to find the time and energy to record a new episode. Therefore, it’s a quick solo episode. The main event occurring in our lives these days is the ongoing sale of our house. We have had a huge quantity of viewings, but the offers have been few and far between. Mid-October is when we take possession of our new place.

Many other things are taking up our time. In addition to packing for our move, we have also just launched our new podcast. The Have Coffee Will Travel Podcast is similar to Soul Forge, but has a bit more structure and research. So far, topics have included Disney adults, robots and cyborgs, and the history of coffee. You can find the new show at https://shows.acast.com/have-coffee-will-travel

I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood during the summer of its release. I remember it being a fun, action-packed spectacle. So, I bought the blu ray when it came out. It’s been 5 years since I watched the film, and wanted to introduce Leah to my movie collection. It turns out, half the enjoyment of the film was simply watching it in theatres. This time around, it was a tedious slog. The film is not nearly as good as I remember it being.

This week’s podcast promo: The Epsilon Three Podcast

[billybutchersbloodyjacket]

I will start this off by first saying I do not know the craft of making a sword, nor do I know if this actually happened because it is not shown in movies to my memory. This is just something I noticed.

Did they ever clean Andúril before they reforged it? Did the elves wash Boromir’s blood from the blade?

Is Aragorn going into battle with a sword bathed in the blood of enemies of ages past, and forged with the blood of the man who showed him the good of his own blood? Is Aragorn helping the son of the Steward of Gondor bring honor to his people? Helping him save his people? Helping him achieve the goal he died for?

On the day Aragorn first walked into the streets of the white city, did Boromir finally know peace because some small part of him finally made it home?

Does the King of Gondor carry the love of a soldier, of a kin, of a friend, always on his hip, ready to save him once more?

[bitebeforebark]

FUCK. think i fell in love again. i will be pacing back and forth in my kitchen like a detective with a cold case he can't quite crack about this revelation.