#The eye of the storm

[trinalwilliams]

"In the silence, I hear the symphony of my soul's liberation."

[audhdnight]

[electricshoebox]

The Eye of the Storm, Ch. 25

Sequel to: A Line in the Sand, it will make more sense to read that first.

Pairing: Deacon/MacCready, Minor/Background Preston/M!Sole Survivor Chapter Summary: Deacon sees this through to the end. Anthony has some words for the Institute. Fic Summary: Deacon’s just like any other spy trying to have it all: juggling multiple identities, on thin ice with his boss, spreading himself too thin, and trying to help save the world. Perfect time to be figuring how to be in a relationship, too. As the Institute’s shadow grows ever longer, Deacon tries to balance his life, his work, and his love, and figure out how to keep it all together. Chapter Warnings: Vague mentions of blood, bruises, and ongoing pain from injury, and a flashback to (extremely) minor character death without description. Noteworthy Tags: Established Relationship, Relationship Issues, Trust Issues, PTSD, Angst and Humor, Blood and Gore, Angst with a Happy Ending

I'm so sorry for another long wait. But Happy (slightly early) October 23!

[stonegearstudios]

Creating A MegaDungon Part 7

Backstory

The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn, Giorgio Vasari, 1555

What is the most important narrative in a adventure module? Well, it's not the backstory, not by a long shot. It's whatever narrative the players spin up as they go.

But backstory isn't unimportant, because it justifies the world they adventure through.

The Fall of Phaeton, Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1604-1605 © National Gallery of Art

Now, I've already said before that The Eye has a Greek theme. in its landscape, it's architecture, it's ecology, but that left me a question. Do I bring the Greek Gods into this?

The Primordial Elementals had to war with someone, and I had been loosely referring to the other side as the Nascent Divinities. The Olympic Pantheon makes the most sense.

So I'm not going with them.

Instead, we have the Titans.

Cronos and Rhea by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, 19th Century

I remember thinking before "Ok, the Titans were the predecessors of the Olympians in myth, but did anyone actually worship them, were they a prior religion, or were the created whole cloth to be predecessors?"

I don't know the answer, my degree didn't focus on that, but I'll tell you what, in the history of The Eye, they were real.

These divinities, apart from the primal elements, came from elsewhere to try and claim a newly formed world. The conflict they had writ large across the islands of The Eye.

The fact that there seems to be very little to the stories of the Titans (in easily accessible English at least) is fine. After all, their war with the Elementals was truly ancient and essentially completely forgotten by the surrounding world. Even divinity looses its lustre after a while.

Given that, I've been going through resources, picking out Titans that might be interesting to have in the dungeons story, with the players able to discover fragments of their past.

Prometheus is an obvious choice, as is Kronos, Atlus, but some of the lesser known ones gave me ideas.

Hekate - Often not thought of as being a titan but you can have a lot of fun in an rpg setting with the leftovers from the ruler of witchcraft.

Mnêmosynê - The titan of memory and language, someone had to create the records of this divine conflict, and perhaps some fragments still remain, etched in stone.

Ophiôn - In some tellings apparently a king of the Titans before Kronos, be interesting to try and make that work with the common story but could reinforce that even divinities fade with time.

There are others two, but now I have a new project. The Elementals, they need characters too, but I intend for them to be even more alien than the Titans (despite being the originators of this world), so standard names wouldn't make sense, and I don't have a quick corpus of mythology to draw on.

How should I name the Primordial Elementals then?

[mae-peachie]

haven't been too happy with my art lately, but finally managed to draw a piece I liked decent enough :) inspired by @electricshoebox's TEOTS, of course

[barbossas-wench]

[fibrefox]

I, too, flirt this way.

[dcviated]

Been awhile since I sent asks around. Should do that.

[hypnified]

🖊️ + Irais and/or Storm!! 💙

When storm gets intro trouble he creates more chaos or blames Erix

Irais can draw really well!

[thedestinysunknown]

Sly Cooper - The Eye of the Storm:

“First boss battle in the game and...I don’t care for it. It’s a boring fight. This game has such creative and interesting fights, but this one doesn’t have much to offer.”

PS: the gameplay used for this gifset is not mine. The original video belongs to the user: Sourcespy91, on Youtube.

[mischievous-thunder]

What truly got Johnny killed is his relentless flirting with Wade's Angel Baby

[audhdnight]

[electricshoebox]

The Eye of the Storm, Ch. 24

Sequel to: A Line in the Sand, it will make more sense to read that first.

Pairing: Deacon/MacCready, Minor/Background Preston/M!Sole Survivor Chapter Summary: Deacon and Glory descend into the belly of the beast. Fic Summary: Deacon’s just like any other spy trying to have it all: juggling multiple identities, on thin ice with his boss, spreading himself too thin, and trying to help save the world. Perfect time to be figuring how to be in a relationship, too. As the Institute’s shadow grows ever longer, Deacon tries to balance his life, his work, and his love, and figure out how to keep it all together. Chapter Warnings: Intense violence (see beginning note for specifics, NO DEATH I SWEAR), vague nausea Noteworthy Tags: Established Relationship, Relationship Issues, Trust Issues, PTSD, Angst and Humor, Blood and Gore, Angst with a Happy Ending

I beg your forgiveness on hands and knees for how long it took me to finally get this update out. But I finally have something to offer.

[stonegearstudios]

Creating a MegaDungeon part 6

Oh shit I'm starting to map things

So while loose ideas have obviously been bouncing around in my head for ages, I hadn't actually started mapping out areas, rooms, and encounters.

But now I have

I certainly hope you didn't expect any picture I made to actually look good.

So yes, this is a basic blob map, but that's actually an improvement for me. I have so many dead projects behind me because I immediately tried to jump to 'the cool part'.

I'd try to make fully detailed dungeon maps in art programs, or start dreaming about comming art, and those were terrible ideas. I'd quickly run into walls, loose inspiration, and give up. So, this time I'm forcing myself to take it slow, actually lay the groundwork for this project.

And that means we start with blob maps.

So, what is this thing? Well, as it says right at the bottom this is Layer 1 (or floor one if you want to put it that way) of the dungeon. The entry, the starting ground.

Expedition Point

Now, looking at this, you might thing it's more than a bit basic for what's supposed to be a megadungeon, those are usually sprawling maze-like maps.

For example here is a (small) section of one of the maps from Stonehell, a very good MegaDungeon, I recommend it.

This is what a archetypal dungeon looks like. Narrow corridors with rooms branching off all over, each one detailed in the text for what treasure and monsters inhabit it.

But, unless you are a specific kind of person, jumping straight to drawing out rooms and corridors is a bad idea. Sure, I could grab some graph paper and do it, but I'd have no idea what I was making.

That's where the blob map comes in.

These aren't rooms, not yet, they're 'regions' inside this floor of the dungeon.

My current progression is: Scan other rpgs, mythology, the internet for monsters I either want to us or rework -> subdivide those down into ones I think should be on an individual floor -> Think about the kinds of environment those monsters/enemies/NPCs would be in -> Use those ideas to make a few 'keystone' encounters for each areas.

After that then it would be time to actually map out the area in detail... but I'm probably gonna put that off for a while. I may blob map the entire dungeon before I go into detail, we'll see.

[placetnemagistra]

god imagine being Elton John or any glasses-wearing friend of Paul’s and realising that every single time you’ve idly cleaned your glasses in front of Paul he has been thinking about John

also ugh Paul finding John cleaning his glasses so fascinating, Paul I GUARANTEE that you had seen boys at your school remove their glasses and clean them but you just didn’t care because you weren’t OBSESSIVELY OBSESSED with them

also again sorry to George, equally a dead Beatle, “for example” is doing so much work here, END ME

PaulMcCartney.com: Is there anything in particular you hope people will get from reading your new book? What do you hope their main takeaway will be?

Paul: Well, I mainly see it as a ‘behind the scenes’ publication. After all these years, it was lovely for me to be taken backstage again. I love just looking at old pictures of the guys, for example, ones of John with his glasses; obviously it's hugely sad, because I miss him so much. But this just reminds me of growing up with him and all the pleasant memories.

Whenever I see John with these sorts of glasses, it reminds me of the way he would take him off when there were girls around. For some reason people think they look better without their glasses! And now, whenever other people do that it always reminds me of John. I’d be chatting with him, or writing a song, and he would take his glasses off and clean them. And because nobody in my family had glasses, I'd never seen someone just chatting and absent-mindedly cleaning them. So, that's what this picture and really the whole book reminds me off - it just brings back all those little memories which make up a life.

‘You Gave Me The Answer – ‘Eyes of the Storm’ Exhibition and Book Special’, 19th June 2023

***

In other words…

PaulMcCartney.com: What is the main takeaway from your book?

Paul: I love John. I miss John. John looked hot in glasses. John, John, John, John, John. John.

[theoldkyokodied]

Aaaaand more very quick stream doodles. This one shot was so fun to watch, it’s so sad that it had to end already. But oh well, let’s not dwell on that and let’s enjoy the good time we had, like disguised tiefling gale being both Karlachs and astarions type, wyll and gale having a spa day, bing bong in general (rip king, you will be missed), and of course the 8 strength fight for magic items <3 thanks to the cast for the chaos, I enjoyed it thoroughly