#basically just saints campaign

[romancantthinkofausername]

if youre cold, theyre cold put them in the microwave

[landfilloftrash]

[Saint Barbarian Rollo Enters The Fight]

oh yeah normal church occurance dw about it

[arti-cat]

me and @calameowri making a whole AU inspired by one in-game image and this sentence is still sending me

[foxstens]

scavenger reputation sure is confusing

[anothermonikan]

hey guys guess who just beat rain worl- *trips and falls into a puddle of tears*

[merlinfromberlin]

Downsides of becoming a queer historian you don't realise until you are in waaaaay too deep:

sometimes you have to read an article on "TrAnSvEsTiTeS" that was written by a white straight cis-man in, like, the seventies and it's just a guy who took Freud too seriously and is like: Men wear women's clothing because their mothers were ~homosexuals~ (if you know what I mean) who project on their little boys and their fathers were beta b#ches who let the household be run by a woman and didn't protest.

And all that while doing research for your paper that's due in four days that's about a really cool topic like - in this case the question of whether or not St. Mary/Marinos can be understood as a trans person and it's really fascinating because like, you can definitely read Marinos as a trans man from a modern point of view - even though it's always a curious discussion because obviously we can never know what Marinos would have chosen to call themselves. Except that we literally know that he would have rather been punished severely for fornication and fathering than child than tell people that he had a vagina. Like. As in Marinos told noone, they only found out after his death - so, I don't know what you want me to make with that, but that's not very cis. And that's basically what my essay is about. :D

And then there come the 80s and 90s scholars again and there all like this person is definitely a WOMAN - like, what do you mean, SHE lived her whole life as a male monk in a monastery and rather get expelled than tell people about HER vagina that made it impossible for HER to father a child and never told anyone and people only found out SHE was a WOMAN after HER death? Well Obviously SHE was in denial about HEr Womanhood.

Or- my favourite cishet interpretation of the story: well, obviously that story is written for cis men because St. Mary is a personification of the guilt men have for desiring women the shouldn't and acting on that because you see- she was punished for it and she couldn't have done it but it isn't revealed until after her death so men have stories that make them feel guilty and help them stay on the right path.

But like. Seriously. It's an absolut shit-show.

[theflorasdiary]

The problem with this show are not the characters or how the episodes are made,but the writers that decided to develop a literal masterpiece into a circus.

The campaign for season two literally started with making the audience choose between team black and team green:we had two trailers,two official posters and even the actors were “divided” to promote their teams.

So they basically told us to pick a side since the beginning.

Then they procede to turn team black in the saint team:making them the victims of the patriarchy,the heroes of the story.They showed us team black as if they are more Targaryen then the other team only because they know a prophecy and use this fact to excuse them from anything they do.

They made team black loved and worshiped by the small folks after Rhaenys killed hundreds of them during her dumb and useless girl boss scene and after Rhaenyra starved them.When in the book the small folks hates Rhaenyra and her incompetence,they will literally kick her out of the city and she has to run away or they will kill her just like they did with the dragons.The small folks instead loved team green,they loved Helaena as their queen and blamed and hated Rhaenyra for her death.

They forced use to like Rhaenyra just because she is one of the main characters,pushing on her the role of strong female character that is fighting a male society and then again just because she is a woman she is excused for everything that she does.We had to sit and watch two scenes of her giving birth and two of her weddings because we needed to empathize with her.We need to see her on her dragon constantly so that we can see Daenerys resemblance.They had to make her a saint,of course she wouldn’t want to kill a child she is too good,she would never hurt Helaena,everyone is loyal to her and she can do no wrong.They even took down Nettles to not show us Rhaenyra racism and the way she wanted to have a little girl killed because her pedo uncle-husband was rumored to be her lover.

On the other side we have team green that was completely dehumanized,stripped down of every good aspects they had in the book,changing and canceling everything.

We had never saw Alicent give birth to children that came to her out of marital rapes,we also did not see her getting married as a child bride to a man that will abuse her.Apparently the love of her life is Rhaenyra instead that her own children,she betrays them and her own side of the family in favor of her ex best friend that didn’t do anything to help her in the past and instead laughed in her face about her trauma.They keep telling that Alicent has never sacrificed anything when she has sacrificed her all life for duty and family unlike Rhaenyra.

Healena is totally marginal as the “weird bug girl” that just rants things out.She was a dragon rider that enjoyed being with her dragon Dreamfyre,yet in the show apparently she doesn’t like that.Even her dragon legacy was taken by team black,because now Dany dragon eggs comes from Syrax.In Viserys last days Helaena used to visit her father with her children but again this was taken from her and put on Rhaenyra instead.She was also stripped down of her coronation,of the way she was loved as a queen and how Aegon made sure that she was remembered as the true queen during the dance.They took from her the grief and mourning of her son one of the things that will literally drove her to death,because only Rhaenyra can cry her son and no one else.

Aegon was transformed into a rapist,because you can’t like him,you can only like Rhaenyra.There was no scene of him and Sunfyre beside the battle of Rook’s Rest,they have the strongest bond between a dragon and a dragon rider,he loved Sunfyre to the point he changed the family sigil to a golden dragon.They took down his will to fight,his family support and loyalty to him,his rage as a father that had lost his son.They took two of his sons,because Maelor do not exist and now he can’t have any more children because in the show he had lost his penis.They made him useless and pushed him on the sidelines in his own story.

I still don’t understand why they had to make Aemond betray his brother when in the book he was loyal to him,also in the book there was no indication of Aegon bullying him so again i don’t understand why choose this path.Daemon had a “redemption arc” after his betrayal one but of course Aemond can’t,only team black can.

Criston Cole is portrayed as an angry incel that still hates one woman that coerced him into having sex with her after he told her no multiple times.So much wasted potential in this character,when in the book he was one of the masterminds of team green,convinced Aegon to take the crown,took care of Sunfyre and served his king just right.

Daeron…sorry who?What do you mean that there is a third brother?I just know that his character will be completely destroyed,he probably will be a bastard with dark hair and we already won’t have the Maelor storyline for him,we definitely won’t see him making Ser Hugh and Ulf change sides or any of his victories with Tessarion.He will probably be marginalized like he already is,because again you can only like team black and only them can have the best.

How can you “pick a side” like they desperately want you to do,when they do shit like this?Literally forcing you to like team black because they are paint as the saints/good guys and assassinated every good thing about team green?

Keep telling me that this show is not team black propaganda and that’s is fair like this.

[cephalofrog]

been playing rain world and thinking about saint again recently

full rain world spoilers below

I hate the "saint is the triple affirmative" interpretation. hate even more how it appears to have become the accepted truth in the fandom

first off, my dislike for this interpretation is not logical. it isn't something I can be convinced out of using canon evidence, because my reason for not interpreting the story this way is not evidence-based, it's because I don't find it to be a satisfying conclusion to the entire story of rain world.

but here's some rambling about logical reasons why it doesn't make sense anyway

if saint was created as the triple affirmative by sliver, that makes them extremely old - they came into existence LONG before spearmaster's campaign even started. if they came into existence with the purpose of ascending iterators, they sure took a long time to ascend any iterators - like okay, travel time and whatever, but you'd think they'd get at least one or two more before all the iterator comms break down entirely post-spearmaster. SM and hunter managed to get from SRS and NSH to the pebbs/moon area pretty quickly.

they also have fur, which seems to be an adaptation for the cold judging by the lizards in the campaign, despite the world not being cold at the point at which they were created. this could be easily explained by sliver just being very forward-thinking, but...

if sliver created saint, their entire triple affirmative thing comes across as incredibly thoughtless, which imo contrasts with sliver being forward-thinking enough to make saint immune to cold. like they finally created the magical rat that will ascend them all but didn't even think to send out a message beforehand like "hey guys I'm trying something new if I send out the triple affirmative and die right after this it worked and you should be visited by a flying green dude with an ascension beam at some point in the future"

there's also the thing of... wait so how does this whole iterator ascension work again? cause saint's timeline loops. after they ascend, they end up back in sky islands, with the iterators back where they were. this could be explained by "later playthrough loops aren't canon and pebbs and moon are ascended if you got em" but there's literally a specific gameplay mechanic - carrying stuff in your stomach between campaigns - meant to make it clear that the campaign is a loop.

anyway. the real reason I hate the theory isn't related to any of this - it's that it absolutely destroys pebbles and moon's story, thematically speaking.

sliver of straw's triple affirmative/death is a random event that could mean basically anything. the futility pebbles felt around trying to solve the great problem caused him to assign meaning to sliver's death that wasn't necessarily there - they found the solution, and it was self-destruction. that's what they were trying to tell everyone. it wasn't a random event, the triple affirmative was real. one of the bugs in the maze found the way out, and he's going to prove it to everyone by following them and escaping.

and that's what leads to the events of the main story. this random event - this horrible tragedy, the death of someone who seemed to mean so much to so many people - was assigned meaning by someone desperate to prove that his entire existence, and the existences of everyone around him, are not futile. the ancients created the iterators without knowing whether the answer to the great problem could ever be found, and this is the result of that.

a nihilistic, hopeless person, abandoned by his creators to work forever on an unsolvable problem, assigns meaning to a random tragedy, and tunnel visions on what he has to believe is what he's been looking for - because it is an unimaginable understatement to say that the alternative would be worse than death. and then, in his self-destructive desperation, he kills his sibling* and dooms himself to the slowest, most painful death imaginable. this is the legacy of the ancients' dead society, the result of all of their stupid ideals and obsession with karmic perfection. (*as far as he knows)

but saint being the triple affirmative undermines all of that. not only does it make sliver's death less of a tragedy and more of a noble sacrifice - like yeah, sure, they were loved, but solving the great problem was far more important - but it also makes pebbles look less desperate and more just kinda stupid. like you thought that the solution was self-destruction? nah, it's a magical flying rat. in this version of the story, pebbles wasn't striving for something that didn't exist, he was just not smart enough to figure out the real solution.

even outside of canon evidence, that sucks. it causes pebbles' story to go from being about how you should value the people around you over the impossible striving that life always seems to expect from you or you're gonna end up hurting them and yourself to how you should just be smarter to find the right solution to all of your problems.

anyway as for my own interpretation of saint, I think that the campaign is just a representation of what it's like to be an echo. reliving the moments that led up to your failed ascension over and over, reaching maximum karma and gaining superpowers because you're just that karmically pure - you are a saint, after all - and then letting your ego consume you at the crucial moment of ascension, over and over again, cycling into infinity. (I don't think they actually had superpowers prior to ascending, I just think that they kinda thought of themselves so highly that they thought they should have those powers.) then contrast this with the world as the age of the iterators and the rain finally ends, and you have an unchanging echo reliving the same few cycles over and over contrasted with a world that is, at last, changing and moving on.

yeah it doesn't make sense with the joint iterator dialogue in rubicon (at least, the final line doesn't make sense). I don't care. it's what makes me happy as an interpretation. you can pry my morally dubious hypocritical ego-driven saint from my cold dead hands

[its-rat-time-babey]

“The Artificer’s campaign has little impact on the overall story” bitch I cannot stress how much of an impact the Artificer had on the entire world. You just need to pay attention to some things.

By the time of the Artificer, Scavengers are basically in the middle of a massive golden age. They have a Chieftain (with a mark of communication (maybe Five Pebbles gave them the mark and citizen ID drone and tried to use them for something but they rebelled and found Metropolis)) with armour made from Red Centipede Scales, they have a permanent home in metropolis above the rain, they figured out how to harvest electrical scrap and broken down Rarefaction Cells from the ruins of Looks To The Moon and pieces of Five Pebbles to make electric spears and Singularity Bombs, they even have specially trained Elite Scavengers, which did exist before in the time of the Spearmaster but it’s still worth bringing them up.

Overall, Scavengers are at a golden age of invention and life in general.

And then they anger the Artificer, who slaughters countless Scavengers, kills their Chieftain and drives them out of Metropolis, locking the gate behind them.

After that, a new Chieftain is never made, armour like the chieftain once wore is never made again, Scavengers suffer a massive population loss, they can’t enter Metropolis without a Citizen ID Drone and Elite Scavengers slowly disappear as the methods used to teach them and the knowledge of how to scavenge and create electric spears and singularity bombs is lost, with the last Elite Scavengers being seen in the Hunter’s campaign, which happens next in the timeline. In other words, the Artificer literally sent Scavengers into a dark age.

It takes until the time of the SAINT for Scavengers to show real signs of recovery, now appearing in larger numbers than before. And even THEN Scavengers never do anything like they did during the time of the Artificer. The Artificer plunged Scavengers into a dark age for countless years, and they STILL haven’t recovered.

And that’s not all. According to the wiki, Scavengers are afraid of Slugpups, most likely because they remember how the last time they killed one they were hit by the full force of an angry explosive lobbing goddess of destruction that slaughtered countless members of their kind. They are afraid of Slugpups in all campaigns, even the Saint’s. So even by the time of the Saint Scavengers know not to mess with Slugpups, presumably because the last time they did so is a legend among Scavengers by that point in time.

Hell, the Artificer’s existence even explains something about the Hunter. The reason that the Hunter starts with a negative reputation among Scavengers is because they look like the fucking Artificer. Scavengers look at the Hunter and see the goddess of vengeance and destruction that they’ve only ever heard of from stories.

Both of them have red fur and a scar on one eye, and will the time gap between campaigns, there’s a good chance that only a few Scavengers that saw the Artificer in person are even alive by that point in time (without even taking into account how the Artificer murdered so many Scavengers that it’s probably rare that a Scavenger saw them and lived to tell the tale), meaning that the Artificer is probably told about in Scavenger stories and her appearance would therefore differ, leaving the most obvious details like the scar on one eye and red fur.

[raintailed]

INV REAL!!!!!!!!! it's just a concept but yes. real

Uhh my inv has Lore. Basically, MARS (the eldritch thing masquerading as an iterator) decided it would be fun to make a simulation where they put a scug through hell versions of the vanilla regions, just to see how hardy a scug can possibly be.

Except because MARS is anomalous and weird and stolen iterator parts don't like that, uhhhh the simulation became Real and formed a whole entire Mirror World. the Mirror World is basically Inv's campaign but it includes all of rain world and it is exceedingly weird.

Also Mirror World's timeline placement is totally fucked up because different regions have different world states basically? The mirror vanilla regions are in hunter's worldstate, since the simulation was made right before Moon was revived. But there are other regions that appear to be from Saint's time, from Spearmaster's time, or even from when the ancients were still around. It's very weird

ANYWAY uhh. my inv is based on five-lined skinks and has inverted countershading! because it's fun :]

[transmascpetewentz]

I hope this isn't intrusive but what the fuck is happening with the trans community right now? I don't think I've seen this kind of thing like. ever?

I personally find it very hard to understand/keep up with. Basically, a vocal group of transfems and self hating transmascs have decided to group together against transmascs talking about transandrophobia using tactics such as lying, harassment campaigns, and blaming trans men for every instance of transphobia ever.

It's really funny how the people who are vocal about anti-transfem harassment campaigns (which, to be clear, are bad) are now the ones pushing anti-transmasc ones. This infighting needs to stop, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend like "transandrophobia truthers" (never use that term bc it's antisemitic, but transandrophobes use it so I'm just using their language) hold equal blame to the transandrophobes who have decided to stir shit.

A lot of people talk about this discourse as if it's transmascs vs transfems equally, but I remember a few months ago when transmasc discussion existed in relative peace. The anti-transmasc crowd is reactionary, and while not everyone raising awareness about transandrophobia is a saint, the discourse isn't equal on both sides.

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

I don't. The thing is I am a Star Wars Prequels fan first and foremost, here. I like the original trilogy, it's fine, but that's not what keeps me awake at night.

I don't give a shit about the sith. I don't find them interesting. I was always here for the impossible situations the jedi and the protagonist senators and other kinds of heroes were finding themselves in. The ones without an obvious answer. The ones they could get wrong. The ones they would get wrong because it's a tragedy, and sometimes I like to cry my eyes out over made-up people.

And even after several years of fandom, that's still basically what I want. I want the jedi (and other characters) to be put in the situations. I want them be unsure what the right path is. I like watching them make mistakes.

Some call it nuance, some call it flaws. I'm tempted to just call it being people. That's the sweet spot I'm after: not saints, not devils, just people. People fuck up. People are very varied. They have a culture- does every aspect need to be dissected for faults? Can it not exist even in a state of imperfection?

It can get complicated, maybe. I've encountered plenty the attitude that the jedi are evil because they are humans but are meant to be more than that. I have blocked absolutely relentless commenters of this who would show up on every post with this exact philosophy

… But it can become a subtle distinction. For some time I was blissfully unaware of Filoni's views on the simple basis that the jedi in the clone wars were more real and human than the generic antagonists I tended to see in fanfic.

It is a distinction, though. Human (derogatory) and human (empathetically) are different approaches, which does show up here and there.

The thing about star wars, and the prequels, and the jedi, is that no matter how you try to slice it, the story of a genocide is inextricably woven into a story about jedi. Every one of your #shots fired about their eventual downfall is accompanied by…. a systemic extermination campaign by a nazi allegory……….. and even if that's not something you're willing to contemplate, that's just going to make people uncomfortable. Especially if you start adding talk about a shadowy cabal secretly controlling everything who also steal children etc. Listen, I know that the jedi are fictional. That's not what you should be considering when you say these things.

So you end up with these two fundamentally diametrically opposed stories:

Here's this religious minority who are literally in touch with their divine force. This does not make them gods, so they have flaws, weaknesses, and make mistakes. They are murdered. This is the beginning of an imperial age. (compassion is at the centre of their philosophy. anyone can be compassionate, with or without the force.)

Here's this bunch of corrupt overpowered secret police who hold their position by maintaining a mythology of super-humaness, but psyche! Wealthy elites are also degenerate humans, which is of course forgivable in US, but not THEM. They were supposed to be the model minority. KILL THEM

[randomgods]

What are your thoughts on survivors campaign? :0 And how well do you think downpour preformed as a DLC for Rain World?

Ah!! Two questions I have a lot to say about!

I love The Survivors campaign to death. Their campaign IS Rain World. Before everything, before the Hunter/Monk update, before Downpour, The Survivor was it. That was Rain World—how it was intended to feel, play, be experienced. It is vital to play The Survivor's campaign before anything else. The Survivor is the lens that you see the world for the first time. All the questions, all the frustration, all the wonder. As The Survivor you learn what it is to be a slugcat. You learn how to move, how to explore, what you can eat, and, perhaps more importantly, what eats you. There is no experience quite like the vanilla campaign.

I think we may take for granted how special The Survivor's experience is because we get so caught up in all the cool abilities and lore of the other cats. But none of that would be as exciting or as impactful had we not learned and grown with The Survivor. Their limited abilities are how the game was meant to be experienced, you're not supposed to be special in Rain World. You are a small animal that rests near the bottom of a brutal food chain, exploring a world that has history and beings who are far greater than you will ever be. You are a fly on the wall witnessing the death rattle of an era that has long since abandoned you.

But on top of everything, the pure wonder of The Survivors campaign is astounding. You get to experience every creature, every region, every room for the first time. The beauty and mystery of the world is unmatched here. Sequences like unfortunate development, general systems bus, and the void sea are so unique and awe inspiring. It will be a very difficult task for anything to live up to experiencing those for the first time.

IN CONCLUSION! The Survivor’s campaign is incredible, and I think we all need to give it a little more love.

AS FOR the Downpour DLC. It certainly preformed well in terms of bringing people into the game lmao! The fandom is HUGE compared to how it used to be prior to the DLC. For better or for worse. I'm just happy it isn't so lonely around here anymore at least.

But I personally loved it! A whole lot!! Not everything, but basically everything. I think it does an amazing job expanding on the world, the lore, and the story. There were multiple times where I was so excited and emotional over how the DLC was handling everything. I think The Rivulet and The Saint’s campaign are really amazing overall. And I also adore all the new gameplay mechanics. Though, as stated previously, they do take away from the original purpose of the game. I’m very very happy with it ultimately. I could write essays about each campaign but I shall save that for another time!

Also hiiii sunfish it’s great to see you :) I’ve always loved your work! Thank you for asking these questions I really appreciate it

[cigalien]

My take on designing Ilmater for a future campaign ! Praying for tumblr not to censor this for the nudity but oh well, if it happens it happens .

This is for a homebrewed campaign where basically after a war most of the gods retired and left humanity on its own basically, and only a few gods ( like Ilmater ) stayed there to either help or try to gain power . Ilmater in this universe does not appear as an avatar, it’s true Ilmater there :)

For the design I just liked the idea of him having the scars of his saints and to bear markings slaves historically had ( like the ankles and knees being slit , which was something you did to runaway slaves ) . I considered giving him burns but I decided against it bc it’s not only Bane that has slaves in dnd .

Anyways he’s my pookie and I love him dearly . And here’s an animation made in barely 5 minutes for how I see his healing abilities

[sanctus-ingenium]

What are some of the other countries in the alt-history your Inver stories are set in? Is Armorica roughly where modern day Brittany would be? :0

Because our concept of countries is very modern & constructed it's not quite that Armorica or Hibernia were Countries as we might understand them. They were mostly made up of smaller fractured kingdoms and cultures which were always fighting one another. Armorica was a region which was roughly here (map and history ramble under the cut SORRY i basically didn't answer your question i got carried away)

(this map is from the 1860s! not Finbarr's time.. I still need to make a map of that)

but it was never a country, just a region alternatively ascribed to Inver or Aquitan. It fell on the northern side of the Inver border with Aquitan whenever it was established but the border was put there rather arbitrarily and cut across the region without consideration for the people who lived there.

So there IS in fact a whole other history which doesn't even concern Inver at all. There is a small city-state on the southern coast of Aquitan called Suzette, which was founded by the pseudo-Catholics of this world and used as their main base of operations. It's basically just the Vatican, but an early actually-Catholic historical figure called (Saint) Alexandre led a schism with the church and was successful. The schism dealt with the legality of using magic to advance the church's position, Alexandre argued that it was a moral imperative to preserve the ability to use magic within the ranks of their holy knights. Alexandre became a very polarising figure but his most famous follower was military leader called Renzo who, in the renaissance period, basically upturned and reshaped the entirety of the Mediterranean region.

At the time, Aquitan was a kingdom with an absolute monarchy and the same werewolf-based religion as the nobility of Inver (the winners of Finbarr's war were the Aquitanian werewolves and it became the dominant religion in Inver as well). Renzo led a religious crusade against the monarchy of Aquitan, to wipe out all that pagan werewolf stuff. He blindsided the queen of Aquitan, who had been running her own campaign of expansion against the king of Notte [placeholder name], on the far-western coastline of Iberia. When Renzo began winning substantial victories in the southern countryside of Aquitan, the queen immediately turned around and ""allied"" with the king of Notte, by mounting an invasion against the city of Notte and forcing him to surrender and play nice. She sent him off on an enforced holiday under house arrest, aware that her play relied on not martyring this king while she ruled his country in all but name. With the combined might of these two kingdoms she was certain she could crush Renzo, and this began a decades-long war.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the king of Notte was killed by bandits who didn't even know who he was, before he ever reached his holiday home. The nondescript carriage was ambushed and there were no survivors. The queen, in a panic, chose not to publicise his death.

Well guess what Renzo was doing with his holy knights' blood magic. With each victory his army grew, because he raised the dead to serve him. Resurrection and immortality were key themes of Saint Alexandre's teachings and although Renzo's war crimes would result in his own religion banning the practice of this type of magic, it was kind of a-ok back then (the Church of Suzette would later go on to be pioneers of medical innovations such as antibiotics, germ theory, and safe anaesthesia). And you'll never guess whose dead body Renzo's knights found one day, dumped on the side of the road. Renzo alone recognised what had just come into his possession, and he formulated a counter-play against the queen by using the dead king as his own pawn. Using the king, he got the entire Iberian peninsula to turn on the Aquitanian monarchy, so instead of it being 2-on-1 against Renzo, it was suddenly the queen who was dangerously outnumbered and deeply unpopular.

The monarchy of Aquitan was finally defeated by its own people sixty years after the war began, and a theocracy based on the teachings of Saint Alexandre was founded there, along with the city-state of Suzette. The final execution of the monarchists had severe ripple-effects that reached Inver, which had been pretty insulated from the war by virtue of being a kinda pointless place to invade and housing a population of faeries outnumbering humans 10 to 1. The monarchy of Inver took pride in its links to the Aquitanian nobility and now that was gone. The result was a death spiral for the Kingdom of Inver, as the werewolf monarchists, fearing their imminent extinction, began to fight one another to grab as much power and wealth as possible before the Suzettes reached them, too. They banned the church at the border, only allowing the harmless priests of Suzette's poor Austerity sect to build their hospitals, though they were forbidden from holding religious services and actively converting the public, you have to willingly join.

The final Hibernian families who bought into the monarchy of Inver included the descendants of Finbarr, who had largely betrayed everything he would have stood for by assimilating into their enemies' ranks. And, as anyone might have predicted, their assimilation did not protect them when the nobles of Inver chose to prune their own ranks to concentrate power. One of these families was the noble and now extinct Mercier family, the family of one of our protagonists of Said the Black Horse (bowman lol). The other two protagonists are a second-gen immigrant Hibernian and a war orphan originally from Notte.

[napoleonic-sexyman-tournament]

Propaganda for Michel Ney:

This man. THIS MAN HAD SO MUCH CHARACTER. HE’S LITERALLY THE KIND OF MAN THAT INSPIRES GOOD FICTIONAL CHARACTERS NGL!! Since he’s up against a british person, here is a description of him by the Times of London:

“... his name rendered illustrious by 25 years of eminent services and brilliant exploits, was dear to the country, and even the enemies of France admired in him the character of the Great Captain. All allowed him to possess as much generosity of sentiment as bravery and skill at the head of armies. No trait of weakness, adulation or rapacity, had ever cast shade over his loyalty and military virtues. His sole defect seemed to be a certain vehemence of character and expression, which rendered him little suited to public affairs.”

And his death was so tragic. In Waterloo, he had made a fatal mistake with the cavalry, and he decides here that he will die. We don’t know exactly what happened here. Did he have so much PTSD from russia and years of war that he made such a stupid mistake (AA ALSO AFTER the disaster of russia campaign he isolated himself so much. Poor man🥺)? But one thing’s for sure, this man wasn’t a coward. The Bravest of the Brave was not a man who’d mess up in the war and just run away. On those grassy fields, Ney tried everything to get his men’s attention and when all hope seemed lost he shouted in the faces of the enemies “See how a marshal of France meets his death!” It seems in that moment his greatest want was to be killed by english bullets. But Victor Hugo recounts this and adds the ironic line of “Unhappy man, thou wert reserved for French bullets!”

…😭😭😭😭ISN’T THAT JUST…. SO POETIC AND TRAGIC?????

AND DON’T EVEN. DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW HE DIED!!!!

This man sobs afterwords he gets tried for treason against france basically for siding with Napoleon. But with how unfairly they zero-in on ney’s wrong doings, this was a blood sacrifice. To help him, his lawyer reasoned that the place Ney was born from technically was no longer french, since it has been annexed by Prussia from the 1815 treaty of paris…

But this guy. OH nOnoNonononononoNO, this red-haired, lion-looking, emotional honor-filled patriot has the audacity to interrupt his defender and say loudly without the slightest doubt or hesitation "I am French and I will remain French!"

….

Come on. COME ON!!!! How stupid is he???!! How idiotic!! He just closed another door to survival because of what??

because of honor….. Wow, can you imagine that? He has given everything all his years of service, all his years of being a husband, a father, a son, all his years of rest and peace of mind to France. He has done so much, and even when…EVEN WHEN FRANCE SLAPS HIM ACROSS THE FACE AND SAYS “you traitor” He shouts back “I am French and I will remain French!” aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OMG….. what the hek…who is this man????

So he is executed as a traitor. There are different versions of his death but here are a few:

By Rochechouart:

“He [Ney], of course, refused to kneel down and be blind-folded; he merely asked the Commandant Saint-Bias to show him where he should stand. He stood facing the platoon, who held their guns ready to fire. Then, in an attitude I shall never forget, it was so noble, calm and dignified, without bravado, he took off his hat, and availing himself of the moment when the Adjutant stepped aside and gave the signal to fire, he said these words, which I distinctly heard: Frenchmen, I protest against my sentence; my honour..." As he said these words he placed his hand on his heart; the volley was fired, and he fell. A rolling of drums, and the shout of "Vive le Roi" from the surrounding troops closed the mournful ceremony.”

Such a death made a deep impression on me, and turning to Auguste de la Rochejaquelein, Colonel of the Grenadiers, who was beside me, and who, like me, deplored the death of the bravest of the brave, I said: ‘There, my dear friend, is a lesson how to die.’”

By M. Laisne:

“He [Ney] took some steps, removed his hat, and in a loud and clear voice: ‘I protest,’ he said ‘before heaven and mankind, that the judgment that condemns me is iniquitous; I appeal from it to Europe and to posterity’ …. Before these words there was presented to him a handkerchief to bandage his eyes. He answered with exaltation, ‘do you not know that a soldier does not fear death.’ He advanced again four paces, laying his hand on his heart and said to the soldiers: ‘Do your duty. It is there that you must hit, do not miss me.’ Instantly he fell dead.”

And finally a very close person to him, Ida Saint-Elme:

“Ney got out of the carriage. He was wearing civilian clothes: a long dark coat, a white necktie, black breeches and stockings, a tall beaver hat with curved brim. He uncovered. His slightly raised head showed that his face wore a tranquil expression. He looked first to the right and then to the left. He caught sight of me. Then, as though fearing to compromise his faithful friends by the least sign of recognition, he bent his brow downward a trifle.”

“He walked on with firm step. At that instant I discerned through the mist, in the centre of the square of troops, and standing out from the dark background of the wall, the firing squad. I tried to rush forward. Belloc pulled me back, and forced me into the cab.”

“Then I dropped weakly upon the seat. A few minutes elapsed, each a whole century long. Then I heard a sharp report. I went into a dead faint."

His death is so tragic and amazing. It really shows out his character and was the initial thing that got me interested in him as a person. Anyways, basically, this dude is such a tragic glory-lover but also very heroic and inspiring.

So therefore HE ISS SEXY GO VOTE FOR NEY!!!

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