#and slug lore...... i'm LOOKING so hard

[loominggaia]

Do trolls have anything akin to cuisine and traditional dishes? Just because you can eat just about anything doesn't mean it has to be presented with no flair. :D I suppose same question for minotaurs. Are there any foods other races go out of their way to try from either of these groups (besides minotaur milk)?

They certainly do! Trolls are in a unique position where they can eat damn near anything without consequence, even foods that are totally raw, filthy, or rotten. But what's even more unique is the fact that they like the taste of nasty, rotten food!

A troll's sense of smell and taste oppose that of most peoples'. By that I mean, smells and tastes that other peoples find pleasant are usually unpleasant to trolls, and vice versa. Taste is subjective, but we can agree that 99% of humans would retch if they put a rotten egg in their mouth. Meanwhile, the average troll can--and will--happily devour it, and enjoy it much more than a fresh egg.

Because of this, trolls have developed many unique dishes that only their species can safely eat. I will warn you, some of the following text is really disgusting. So if you get grossed out easily, consider skipping the rest of the post.

With that said, let's take a look some of these troll-specific dishes from around the world!

Redge: A rotten egg slathered in bitter herbs.

Plopslop: The manure of a herbivorous animal, boiled down into a soup with half-composted vegetables added.

Grrsi: Fresh meat is inoculated with fly eggs, which hatch and partially digest the meat over time. The meat becomes infested with the fat grubs, which are the main attraction of the dish.

Urizluuk: The urine of a male goat, fermented for months in an alcoholic fruit broth. This is a popular drink dating back to ancient times.

Akwi: Raw fish heads, left to dry in the sun until they smell putrid. Sometimes akwi is made with clams or some other sealife instead.

Dukleka: Garlic is force-fed to rats over the course of many days, then rats are fed to a pig-hawk, which has its rear-end sewn shut. The garlicky rats ferment in its GI tract until the bird dies of bloat, then its stomach and intestines are removed and eaten as a delicacy.

Zlub: This is not a meal in itself, but a sauce made from boiled slug slime and rancid onions. It's added to other foods to give it a slimy, repulsive texture that trolls love.

Volzkriz: Animal blubber (traditionally from a walrus or whale) is boiled down into a liquid and then left to cool, forming a hard block of fat. This can be eaten fresh, but it said to taste better the more rancid it gets.

There are lots more, but I'm sure you get the idea...Even ogres, who can tolerate rancid corpses, will be sickened by some of the things on this list. This gives trolls a serious survival advantage over other species.

As for minotaurs, they are a lot less tolerant of rotten foods. However, they can tolerate tough fibers which are undigestible by most peoples. This includes things like raw grass, bark, and woody vegetation. Even trolls struggle to digest these fibers unless they compost them down to a softer form, but minotaurs can eat them fresh, no preparation needed. This is also quite a big survival advantage.

Minotaurs have quite an affinity for fresh grass, and some of them can get quite snobby about it. There are many debates about which type of grass is best for taste and health, and how best to prepare it. Cooked or raw? Some insist that cooking the grass is culinary heresy, and its subtle flavors should be enjoyed in their purest form as nature intended. There are common grasses which are considered "peasant food" and other, rarer species which are enjoyed by royalty.

Grass is a big meme in Etios Nation. Even the Etiosi make fun of themselves for their apparent cultural obsession with grass, and it certainly hasn't gone unnoticed by foreigners. "Go eat some grass" is a common insult hurled towards minotaurs worldwide.

*

Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Read the Series

[readingismyhobby24]

im doing pretty good too ^_^!!!!

im SO excited to yap about rainworlds >:D i wanted the game a lot like last year and its like “oh wow i have it now lol” so ive been playing it a bunch and reading about the lore (because its super hard to tell the lore in the game)

to start off simple, you play as a slugcat (basically cat mixed with a slug) in an ecosystem with other creatures, id like to mention how i enjoy that the creatures dont just have set animations for their actions like most games, theyre placed on a rig and the ai has to go off of what to do which i find interesting! you, the slugcat arent meant to be a hero in the story, youre basically just another part in the ecosystem, youre also very low in the food chain (below you are basically just small creatures and plants, while lizards, scavengers, vultures, etc are above you.)

i also enjoy how it isnt JUST a survival game, each character has a story, such as how monk and the survivor are brothers that were seperated, how hunters cycles count down instead of up because she has a disease, etc!

oh yeah i should also probably do a gender chart so nothing gets too confusing (highlighted in yellow is canon, highlighted in purple is implied, white is just my own personal interpretation)

male- gourmand, monk, survivor

female- artificer, rivulet, hunter

neither- spearmaster, inv, saint, nightcat

oh yeah! i should probably explain the actual main thing you SHOULD be worried about!

basically, every cycle is around 13 minutes i believe (except rivulets, hers are shorter, but its back to normal when you meet five pebbles) and when the 13 minutes is up, you have to find shelter before everything rains. you have a certain amount of food pips depending on the campaign, if you have full food pips you can hibernate for the night and itll save, if you dont have enough filled it wont save and will give you one extra food pip, you can also eat extra so you have a few food pips already filled for the next cycle!

the main objective of the game is to follow the guide (iggy/overseer, i prefer to call em iggy) to Looks to the Moon and then Five Pebbles (theyre both iterators which ill explain later!!!!!) im not quite sure how the campaigns end, but ill find out trust :3

so basically, the iterators are what created the slugcats (i believe) and gave a few of them purposes, most were to send a message (like how spearmaster was made to be a messenger), also they have funky names like “Seven Red Suns” and “No Significant Harassment”

also some parts of the game are just really funny 😭 like i know its a game thats probably intended to make me mad but i cant help but laugh at the fact that spearmaster canonically got top surgery (in a way) and that theres a dating sim after you finish inv’s campaign

after each cycle you gain karma! (everytime you die you loose karma too btw) which can help you get through certain passages :)

remember how i mentioned that hunters cycles counted down instead of up? thats an important detail to her story :) because she basically has a disease, after the certain number of cycles, it starts to effect you, and death is permanent (fun fact! if you die in hunters campaign permanently you can go into gourmands and find her body (did i forget to mention that some parts of this game are actually really disturbing? i HATE the spiders.))

its such a confusing yet amazing game, its definitely worth it to get it with the DLC, the sound effects of the creatures, explosions, stabbing, literally every small detail is incredible and i LOVE the music !! oh yeah theres also an upcoming dlc with the nightcat… im very excited :3

sorry if i yapped a lil too much or jumped around too much or if this is hard to understand 😔

bonus pictures of the slugcats with the timeline :) i love them a lot

Okay! Wow!! This sounds really cool and interesting!! And also stressful because this sounds like a game I'd be horrible at 😅 (but honestly I'm bad at all games except for LoZ games, but even then I still struggle with them). Thank you so much for explaining it to me! The little slugcats are adorable by the way!!!

Also, never worry about yapping too much to me!! It literally doesn't bother me at all. I love hearing what you have to say!!! And getting long asks of people yapping actually makes me super happy ^_^

I hope you have a great day/night 🩵

[kakyogay]

wrt possible lore... first off, lore cool and good. meanerator >:(. now im imagining mooncat and pebbsicat going on a journey (like one of the campaigns) to iterator!hunter's structure after learning from a pearl that they had the rot and hoping hunter could help peblcat (in a fitting reversal of pebbles' and hunter's roles in hunter's campaign.) Just wanted to let you know I like your au and it's got my gears turning. Have a good one.

holy fuck you got my brain spinning

I'm like building a campaign in my head.

You'd play as moon. She's like rivulet but gets exhausted more easily. Kinda sucks but it's nothing special.

Now the gimmick >:))). You got the little pebble guy to take care of. He's like any other pup. You gotta feed him, carry him, protect him, and stop him from being stupid.

Unfortunately, the silly little ouppy adds a cycle limit to your run. Every couple of cycles, his condition will get worse. At first he would just have lower stamina and function like a starving slugcat. Then later on, he'll fall off your back, stop moving entirely, have seizures, refuse to eat, and so on. At the end of the limit, the rot consumes him and he essentially becomes an hll but smaller. You can still bring him with you to the goal but it'd be harder, more dangerous, and just a pain (it'd be super easy to not get eaten by him but very hard to bring him around due to being dumb rot ouppy).

The goal would be to reach hunter under the limit and with the pupbbles. Unfortunately there isn't much that hunter could do in their condition but still attempts to help (they give him more cycles so they can reach an iterator who can actually help).

It would be possible to just toss him off the edge and continue on, removing the burden from the start. But that has consequences. Without pebbles, going to the hunter wouldn't do anything and you wouldn't be able to ascend. Also it would change the sleep screen to a sad slug moon with no ouppy and that's very sad :(

There would also be dreams every few cycles. The dreams would go from blips of happy lore to blips of sadder lore. Also if you still have pebbles and he's getting worse, you'd see him change slightly in the sleep screen (he'd look more uncomfortable and pale). I just think that'd be a neat way of explaining their situation without needing background information.

highly doubt any of this would actually be possible because of bs pup ai, cycle changes through a pup you don't play as, sleep screen changes, and many other things but I think the idea is hella cool.

[dogtoling]

My favourite game is make an OC and sit here and wait for Splat to make them non-canon!

I'm joking of course, but sometimes it can be hard to make non-inkfish OCs for that exact reason. Fear that they may become obsolete compared to canon.

My friend had this problem when he made a Nautilus in splat1, only for Ink Theory to kind of send his concept of a nautilus out the window with splat2.

That said, if canon proves you wrong? At least you had fun in the mean time!

This is like the Biggest Pain in splatoon but I mostly keep running into this with the game's lack of extremely crucial worldbuilding. Sure, you can fill in gaps in the game's world by just coming up with stuff, but if you start relying on the shit that you came up with TOO MUCH and building the whole world on top of that, and then canon DOES come out like 10 years later and completely contradicts it.... needless to say it is EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING (yes this is vagueposting about the lack of octarian lore.)

About the nautilus thing, when it comes to species you can run into annoying stuff like that, BUT on the other hand different variations of the same creature can coexist in Splatoon so you can quite literally opt to ignore stuff half the time. For example there's been at least 3 different species (or at least appearances) of urchins, and on top of those, non-sentient actual urchin-shaped urchins also exist, some anemones just don't have eyes at all, sapient sea slugs come in legless AND legged forms plus the non-sentient pet sea slugs... there's at least a lot of wiggle room in that regard. And in terms of SPECIFICALLY the nautilus, Splatoon itself has 3 different iterations of them, out of which 2 are canon and aren't anatomically consistent (and the one in the art book looks different still!)

[doublegoblin]

Artificer Ramblings

Okay so I want to gush about Artificer a little, but seeing as I will be talking about some light theming and this is an unlock character; I'll be putting the thoughts behind a read more. So if you don't want mild spoilers for Rainworld: Downpour then don't peek dingus!

So firstly I know the Scugs don't have genders and what not, but I will be referring to Artificer as a she/her. She is a bad bitch and I love her. If you see Arti otherwise that is chill too, but she is my murder mama.

She is by far my favorite Scug to play as; gameplay wise, movement wise, and story wise!

I feel she is one of if not the strongest representation of some of the themes of the overall game (quick aside I had no idea that funny slug game would turn into more of a philosophical experience). She starts her campaign as this revenge fueled little gremlin, broken down and scarred by the experiences she has had. The game then puts an obvious path in front of you; continue the cycle, give into the cycle of violence and retribution, kill the chief, it won't bring your pups back but maybe you'll feel a little better?

The fight with the chief is like the echo states too, it is completely unfulfilling. For me I only really beat him when I just stopped caring, I had died over and over and over and I was just going through the motions. It was almost like the game let me win (his A.I. does have a big factor to how the fight goes, either a cake walk or he is a leaping demon of spears). When it was over, I didn't feel like I had accomplished anything.

Because of this I feel like Arti is also a nice parallel to Five Pebbles. He is also someone who is set in their ways, no matter who it hurts.

But

This is where the part I love come in. We have a chance to go against the path the game put forward for us. The echo in Metropolis is likely going to be the only other (or maybe the only) echo that you encounter outside of the one near FPB. Then like all echoes, your karma level is able to go above level one (or as I sometimes call it Harma).

When my partner and I were first playing we had the collective thought of, can we get this bitch to ascend? Yes.

And the narrative power of this player decision is huge! You need to go against what the character is good at, and avoid confrontations and only do what you need to to survive. Until you've seen enough echoes to get to level 5 karma your ass needs to have eaten a karma flower and hold onto that shit. All the while kill squads and everything else wants you dead. It is a god damn struggle. I wouldn't ask for anything else.

I've heard people complain that her campaign is too harsh with the Scav spawns, that there are too many enemies, that you play and hour and a half and don't make any meaningful progress. Bitch that is the point! Going against fate, or nature, or whatever, isn't easy. You are making the hard choice to not continue to be trapped, you are were the bloodshed will end.

Now I haven't actually ascended her yet, still working on it because damn it hard. But I am so looking forward to it.

A fun little tidbit I saw is that the Chief can also be aggroed by gifting him a pearl. And that is a wonderful touch.

That's it really. I'm not that versed in the lore of Rainworld but I had feelings and wanted to subject others to it.

[dimension-20-every-introduction]

Everyone Introduced in Dimension 20′s A Starstruck Odyssey episode 14

[juergenklopp]

/leans head on your desk beside computer mouse.

i dont suppose you know of anyone who has done a collection or run down of the scott/dario lore. ever since you pointed out that there's only eleven fics in their ao3 tag ive been compelled by an ancient and powerful force (gay) to improve the situation. however i simply do not know where to begin. much love xo

I love successful propaganda, I feel like I'm fulfilling a civic duty by helping serve a worthy cause.

I'm currently still on a deep dive myself—I've known of them for a while, but haven't quite paid attention until very recently after the 500 quali when I Live Slug Reacted so hard it sent me into an absolute spiral of madness. There being eleven (11!) fics on AO3 dot org proves that something is fundamentally broken with this world, especially considering [redacted for hater thoughts]

Users @raveras and @ripleyflair are theee expert on Ice Princess (huge fan of the ship name), and have been very helpful in filling me in: they wrote me a dossier on where to start (I compiled it and I can share it with you via DM, I hope that's okay @ripleyflair?), as well as compiling essential videos as a primer to their friendship and rivalry.

Even with shoggles (shipping goggles) off, you can just see and feel how much they mean to each other: the respect between fierce competitors, the love between long-time friends who share a common passion. I don't know if I believe in soulmates, but I'd imagine it would look something like what Dario and Scott have.

So yeah, I hope to further the propaganda and hopefully add to the 11 fics, and if not, since I’ve been having a massive, massive writer’s block for the past year or so, do what I do best: being an enabler to the many talented ficwriters on here, including you!

(Cat art by M. Cat Crumb beloved)

[jupiterstupiter]

Hey besties ask me stuff because I'm unmotivated to do art rn stress too high speaking of high did you know that in rain world there's this glowing mushroom you can eat to be faster (by that I mean the game slows down and you move around slightly faster than everything else for a bit) and the name for the plant is just "drug" anyways look at this slug cat animation I made like a day ago it sucks but I wanted to make floating things and the hunter is impossible for me to beat I don't have the motivation I just keep dying on hard mode speaking of hard mode why do some games insist on being impossible to beat I like rainworld because of the cool graphics and physics and lore and stuff not the fact that it's hard , if I weren't playing it on the switch I'd be getting some sort of easy mode mod or something so I can enjoy my game without being reminded of the hell these poor slug cats go through like literally just make your games more accessible to people you don't hurt anyone by giving an easy mode or tutorial (and before anyone says monk is easy that's literally only because they have less hunger points I can't get lore pearls or anything out of it anyways, at the very least make it a bit faster or something ig it's just survivor with less hunger and no lore) (I say all this as if I'm not one of the like, three people in the rainworld fandom here)

Anyway other than all that any questions in general or about art or something else I wanna say things

[infinityactual]

13, 16, 17

13: Do you prefer reading/writing multi-chapter fics or single-part fics?

Both, honestly. The length of the fic isn't one of the deciding factors so much as the content for me.

16: Do you stick to canon when you write characters and fics?

If there's any solid canon to go off of. For example, Lasky is largely a blank slate between the end of FUD and when he's assigned to Infinity in Initiation, so there isn't really anything I can do except make shit up.

It also depends on if canon matches reality in at least a super basic way. My favorite example of this is the snooty-shooties on Infinity. Her specs list them as spine-mounted MAC cannons. But when you see them fired at the Mantle's Approach, they are clearly lasers. Two beams with a visible amplitude that makes laser noise. I'm sorry but that isn't even remotely what a traditional slug-thrower would look like in the vacuum of space, so that bit of canon goes in the trash. Now, the MAC cannons on the orbital platforms in Halo 2? Yeah...they have a reload mechanism reminiscent of a traditional gun, and a muzzle flash. Neither of which any railgun tech currently has/would have in space. But, it's clearly a weapon that launches a projectile, so at the VERY least the basic concept of 'throw shit at the enemy really goddamn hard' is there. I can forgive that.

And lastly, it depends on your definition of 'canon'. Personally, if it's appeared in any official media at any point? I consider that canon, retconned or not. I feel like that gives me wiggle room in some areas, but I also wish that Halo lore had a comprehensive timeline of events, and better dates for important events as well.

So in short, it depends heavily. But generally I try to fit my ideas into any gaps canon has.

17: What has been your proudest moment so far since you've started writing?

That's...something of a tricky question. Pride is a weird thing for me, and there's a lot of pretty bad shit to unpack regarding the reasons why.

Honestly, nothing comes to mind straight away, but after pausing to think about it, probably the fact that I almost completed the Infinity Week challenge. I lost out by ONE submission that I just couldn't get done by the deadline, and that's as close as I've ever come to actually finishing something when it was supposed to be finished in my life.