#brigand raider

[cynthplop]

assorted selections from the oc (and vvulf) meemee storage . ft @werepaladin and @silenthillcoffeebeans <3333333333333

first image template credit to @//sweepswoop_

[dailyadventureprompts]

Monsters Reimagined: Bandits

As a game of heroic fantasy that centers so primarily on combat, D&D  is more often than not a game about righteous violence, which is why I spend so much time thinking about the targets of that violence. Every piece of media made by humans is a thing created from conscious or unconscious design, it’s saying something whether or not its creators intended it to do so. 

Tolkien made his characters peaceloving and pastoral, and coded his embodiment of evil as powerhungry, warlike, and industrial. When d&d directly cribbed from Tolkien's work it purposely changed those enemies to be primitive tribespeople who were resentful of the riches the “civilized” races possessed. Was this intentional? None can say, but as a text d&d says something decidedly different than Tolkien. 

That's why today I want to talk about bandits, the historical concept of being an “outlaw”, and how media uses crime to “un-person” certain classes of people in order to give heroes a target to beat up. 

Tldr: despite presenting bandits as a generic threat, most d&d scenarios never go into detail about what causes bandits to exist, merely presuming the existence of outlaws up to no good that the heroes should feel no qualms about slaughtering. If your story is going to stand up to the scrutiny of your players however, you need to be aware of WHY these individuals have been driven to banditry, rather than defaulting to “they broke the law so they deserve what’s coming to them.”

I got to thinking about writing this post when playing a modded version of fallout 4, an npc offhndedly mentioned to me that raiders (the postapoc bandit rebrand) were too lazy to do any farming and it was good that I’d offed them by the dozens so that they wouldn’t make trouble for those that did. 

That gave me pause, fallout takes place in an irradiated wasteland where folks struggle to survive but this mod was specifically about rebuilding infrastructure like farms and ensuring people had enough to get by. Lack of resources to go around was a specific justification for why raiders existed in the first place, but as the setting became more arable the mod-author had to create an excuse why the bandit’s didn’t give up their violent ways and start a nice little coop, settling on them being inherently lazy , dumb, and psychopathic.   

This is exactly how d&d has historically painted most of its “monstrous humanoid” enemies. Because the game is ostensibly about combat the authors need to give you reasons why a peaceful solution is impossible, why the orcs, goblins, gnolls (and yes, bandits), can’t just integrate with the local town or find a nice stretch of wilderness to build their own settlement on and manage in accordance with their needs. They go so far in this justification that they end up (accidently or not) recreating a lot of IRL arguments for persecution and genocide.

Bandits are interesting because much like cultists, it’s a descriptor that’s used to unperson groups of characters who would traditionally be inside the “not ontologically evil” bubble that’s applied to d&d’s protagonists.   Break the law or worship the wrong god says d&d and you’re just as worth killing as the mindless minions of darkness, your only purpose to serve as a target of the protagonist’s righteous violence.  

The way we get around this self-justification pitfall and get back to our cool fantasy action game is to relentlessly question authority, not only inside the game but the authors too. We have to interrogate anyone who'd show us evil and direct our outrage a certain way because if we don't we end up with crusades, pogroms, and Qanon.

With that ethical pill out of the way, I thought I’d dive into a listing of different historical groups that we might call “Bandits” at one time or another and what worldbuilding conceits their existence necessitates. 

Brigands: By and large the most common sort of “bandit” you’re going to see are former soldiers left over from wars, often with a social gap between them and the people they’re raiding that prevents reintegration ( IE: They’re from a foreign land and can’t speak the local tongue, their side lost and now they’re considered outlaws, they’re mercenaries who have been stiffed on their contract).  Justifying why brigands are out brigading is as easy as asking yourself “What were the most recent conflicts in this region and who was fighting them?”. There’s also something to say about how a life of trauma and violence can be hard to leave even after the battle is over, which is why you historically tend to see lots of gangs and paramilitary groups pop up in the wake of conflict. 

Raiders:  fundamentally the thing that has caused cultures to raid eachother since the dawn of time is sacristy. When the threat of starvation looms it’s far easier to justify potentially throwing your life away if it means securing enough food to last you and those close to you through the next year/season/day. Raider cultures develop in biomes that don’t support steady agriculture, or in times where famine, war, climate change, or disease make the harvests unreliable. They tend to target neighboring cultures that DO have reliable harvests which is why you frequently see raiders emerging from “the barbaric frontier” to raid “civilization” that just so happens to occupy the space of a reliably fertile river valley. When thinking about including raiders in your story, consider what environmental forces have caused this most recent and previous raids, as well as consider how frequent raiding has shaped the targeted society. Frequent attacks by raiders is how we get walled palaces and warrior classes after all, so this shit is important. 

Slavers: Just like raiding, most cultures have engaged in slavery at one point or another, which is a matter I get into here. While raiders taking captives is not uncommon, actively attacking people for slaves is something that starts occurring once you have a built up slave market, necessitating the existence of at least one or more hierarchical societies that need more disposable workers than then their lower class is capable of providing. The roman legion and its constant campaigns was the apparatus by which the imperium fed its insatiable need for cheap slave labor. Subsistence raiders generally don’t take slaves en masse unless they know somewhere to sell them, because if you’re having trouble feeding your own people you’re not going to capture more ( this is what d&d gets wrong about monstrous humanoids most of the time). 

Tax Farmers: special mention to this underused classic, where gangs of toughs would bid to see who could collect money for government officials, and then proceed to ransack the realm looking to squeeze as much money out of the people as possible. This tends to happen in areas where the state apparatus is stretched too thin or is too lighthanded to have established enduring means of funding.  Tax farmers are a great one-two punch for campaigns where you want your party to be set up against a corrupt authority: our heroes defeat the marauding bandits and then oh-no, turns out they were not only sanctioned by the government but backed by an influential political figure who you’ve just punched in the coinpurse.  If tax farming exists it means the government is strong enough to need a yearly budget but not so established (at least in the local region) that it’s developed a reliably peaceful method of maintaining it.  

Robber Baron: Though the term is now synonymous with ruthless industrialists, it originated from the practice of shortmidned petty gentry (barons and knights and counts and the like) going out to extort and even rob THEIR OWN LANDS out of a desire for personal enrichment/boredom. Schemes can range from using their troops to shake down those who pass through their domain to outright murdering their own peasants for sport because you haven’t gotten to fight in a war for a while.  Just as any greed or violence minded noble can be a robber baron so it doesn’t take that much of a storytelling leap but I encourage you to channel all your landlord hate into this one. 

Rebels: More than just simple outlaws, rebels have a particular cause they’re a part of (just or otherwise) that puts them at odds with the reigning authority. They could violently support a disfavoured political faction, be acting out against a law they think is unjust, or hoping to break away from the authority entirely. Though attacks against those figures of authority are to be expected, it’s all too common for rebels to go onto praying on common folk for the sake of the cause.  To make a group of rebels worth having in your campaign pinpoint an issue that two groups of people with their own distinct interests could disagree on, and then ratchet up the tension. Rebels have to be able to beleive in a cause, so they have to have an argument that supports them.

Remnants: Like a hybrid of brigands, rebels, and taxfarmers, Remnants represent a previously legitimate system of authority that has since been replaced but not yet fully disappeared. This can happen either because the local authority has been replaced by something new (feudal nobles left out after a monarchy toppling revolution) or because it has faded entirely ( Colonial forces of an empire left to their own devices after the empire collapses). Remnants often sat at the top of social structures that had endured for generations and so still hold onto the ghost of power ( and the violence it can command) and the traditions that support it.  Think about big changes that have happened in your world of late, are the remnants looking to overturn it? Win new privilege for themselves? Go overlooked by their new overlords?

Art

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Hey there, friend!! I was wondering if you could give me any advice on writing pirates and kingpin type characters? Im trying to write a love story about this lesbian pirate falling in love with a kingpins daughter, but her mission is to carry out her late captains legacy - which is to make sure both him and his daughter are dead (i hope that makes sense 😭)

Writing Notes: Pirates

The word "pirate" typically conjures up images of a/an:

Slightly comical seaborne ruffian

Parrot perched on the shoulder

Peg leg

Bandana

Eye patch

Gold teeth

Skull and crossbones flag

This comes from a century or more of cartoonish depictions of pirates in Peter Pan, Treasure Island and The Pirates of the Caribbean.

Pirate - a robber who travels by water. Though most pirates targeted ships, some also launched attacks on coastal towns.

We often think of pirates as swashbuckling and daring or evil and brutish, but in actual fact most of them were ordinary people who had been forced to turn to criminal activity to make ends meet.

Nowadays these sanitized pirates are used to sell everything from rum to home insurance. The pirate has become an instantly recognizable symbol whose meaning is far removed from its dark and sinister origins.

The term ‘pirate’ has been changed over the years.

A ‘privateer’ was a government-sanctioned pirate who did not attack his own people.

The French called these people ‘corsairs’, although even this term became associated with Mediterranean ‘pirates’ instead of ‘privateers’.

A ‘buccaneer’ was a 17th-century raider who preyed on the Spanish in the Caribbean, while a

‘filibuster’ (or ‘freebooter’) was simply a French word for a ‘buccaneer’.

As for ‘swashbuckler’, the term meant a 16th-century brigand, or a 17th-century swordsman, but in the 20th century it was adopted by the writers of pirate fiction, and then by Hollywood. In the piratical heyday most of these terms were never used the way they are today.

Finally, there were ‘pirates’. The dictionary specifies that a ‘pirate’ is someone who robs from others at sea, and who acts beyond the law. Usually, they attacked whatever ships they came across, regardless of nationality.

Sometimes, though, these ‘pirates’ themselves crossed the line from one category to another.

HISTORY OF PIRACY

Spans the time of the Egyptian pharaohs to the present day. The real "heyday" of piracy falls neatly into two halves:

The colourful era of the 17th-century buccaneers who preyed on the Spanish Main – men like Henry Morgan or the bloodthirsty François L’Olonnais.

The ‘Golden Age of Piracy’. The phrase was first coined by the creators of pirate fiction rather than by people who experienced piracy for themselves. There was nothing golden or romantic about the real thing. Still, the term serves as a useful historical shorthand for a time when some of the best-known pirates in history were sailing the world’s oceans in search of prey. This was the brief but heady period in the early 18th century when the likes of Blackbeard, Black Bart and Charles Vane roamed the seas.

This early 18th-century French slave ship is typical of the slavers that were often captured by pirates, and sometimes converted into pirate vessels themselves. They had a reputation for being fast, an important feature for ships engaged in transporting a human cargo across the Atlantic.

Pirate ships usually carried far more crew than ordinary ships of a similar size.

This meant they could easily outnumber their victims.

Pirates altered their ships so that they could carry far more cannon than merchant ships of the same size.

Stories about pirate brutality meant that many of the most famous pirates had a terrifying reputation, and they advertised this by flying various gruesome flags including the 'Jolly Roger' with its picture of skull and crossbones.

All these things together meant that victims often surrendered very quickly. Sometimes there was no fighting at all.

It's likely that most victims of pirates were just thrown overboard rather than being made to ‘walk the plank’.

FEMALE PIRATES

The capture of the two female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, in 1720 provoked the outrage of a society where women were simply not supposed to become seamen, or pirates, or fight. As a result, the pair became some of the best-known pirates of the ‘Golden Age’.

In this 19th-century illustration, Mary Read, having vanquished a fellow pirate in a duel, exposes her breast to reveal to her dying adversary that he was shot by a woman. After their capture it was said that she and Anne Bonny put up more of a fight than all the rest of Rackam’s pirate crew.

While this depiction of Anne Bonny is probably fairly accurate – she wears the standard clothing of a sailor from this period – the artist felt obliged to emphasise her gender by giving her a low-cut shirt.

Like the depiction of Anne Bonny by the same artist, Mary Read is shown wearing the outfit of a European sailor from the period. A contemporary said of the two women that they ‘wore men’s jackets and long trousers, and handkerchiefs tied about their heads’.

A lot of what is known about pirates is not true, and a lot of what is true is not known.

Pirates could also be civil, neighborly, and law-abiding.

One reason piracy was often an act or a phase, and not a way of life, was simply because humans have not evolved to live on the sea. The sea is a hostile place, offering few of the pleasures of terrestrial society.

The expansion of commercial trade, particularly the slave trade, cemented a colonial social order increasingly threatened by instability at sea and less tolerant of social mobility on land. This change in attitudes led to the period we call the “War on Pirates”—roughly 1716 to 1726—and the advent of sea marauders who, with little hope of ever resettling on land, attacked their own nation.

Some Pirate-Related Tropes - you could use to help guide you write your own character.

Writing Notes: Kingpin

A character trope also referred to as "Big Bad", specifically a crime boss (usually a drug lord).

A character with evil plans (some popular examples of "evil plans").

"The Don"

A similar character trope.

The patriarch of a crime family — most often the mafia.

He is shrewd, ruthless, and very dangerous to cross.

Often he will hold to an arcane code of honor, which is perhaps incomprehensible to non-mobsters.

He will be very protective of his family and he will ensure that his dear little girl wants for nothing, all while maintaining the illusion of morality.

Read or watch media that depict this trope to help guide you write your own character, such as:

Vito and Michael Corleone in The Godfather.

Batman's The Penguin fills this role in Gotham City, having retired from committing crimes personally — for the most part.

Mr. Big from Zootopia is Tundratown's most notorious crime boss (right down to being a parody of Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone), despite being a diminutive arctic shrew. Judy is lucky enough to get in his good graces by saving his daughter's life.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References

Already sounds like such an interesting story, thanks for sharing it with me! Choose which of these notes to help you build your characters :)

[corsairesix]

I do think that partly the way raiders are talked about in analysis of Fallout is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy tho. Because on that post, New Vegas’s raiders are discussed in contrast to the Khans and Legion, when both of those groups are referred to in-universe as raiders.

It’s almost impossible to ask why raiders don’t have more nuance because “raider” (see also: bandit, brigand, etc) is almost defined by its orclike game role as someone whose wholesale slaughter is not only justified but built into the game. When you give a group of raiders nuance and philosophies and interiority it ceases to become a raider and becomes a faction

[joffyworld]

Hi Joffy!! Word bomb WIP attack!!

“M’lord, I come to you with news of the west” three soft bootsteps ring out through King Joffery’s manor. “I pray for a moment of your time, tis a matter of grave importance” the scholar Catharsis shifts a glass across the table. The mouse fiddles idly with their cuffs, the soft yellow and navy stained with ink.

“Tell me Ser Tharsis, what news is so pressing you come to me in my bedchambers?” The homunculus, in night garments purple as for his banner, turns toward his scribe. “What information comes from the western front? More brigands and raiders of the Horneigh clan?” Joffy takes a heavy seat across from Catharsis, placing the glass in front of him.

“No M’lord, with the work of Duke Spider’s artifice, we’ve pushed back the western invaders” they rise from the table, grabbing a bottle of wine from the seal’s personal reserve. “But, I’ve heard there may be traitors in our midst” With a brisk motion a small letter opener falls from Catharsis’s sleeve. With a minor flourish, they slip it into the bottle's cork and twist. “I will give you transparency my liege, I am among them”

“YOU BLOODY WHAT” Joffy’s voice reverberates through the chamber, shaking the glass to the table’s edge. The seal steels his voice and takes a slow breath “You have betrayed your king you fool, I implore you to explain, lest your head roll with the Brigand’s”

“M’lord” The mouse scoops the glass, pouring themselves a drink. “I sought only to protect a contemporary of the court” they take a long sip, placing the glass in front of the king. “Tis no slight or foul to your name or banner, I still serve under your purples and yellow. Twas an instinct alone, but Sire Bash threatens my burrows now.”

anyway buh bye! back to writting :3

The Great War has begun to be chronicled I see.

I name you Poet Laureate, Ser Tharsis, by the powers invested in me by God and men alike.

May you continue to chronicle our fight well

[transrathma]

Alone, betrayal, bound, break, desire for Raenir

oooooooo i know you see me standing here

alone: How does your OC deal with loneliness? Have they ever been completely alone before? How do they act when there's no one around to see them?

raenir's loneliness is a new thing for him.. he lost over three thousand years of his life and his new life is startlingly more alone than he ever was before. he largely grew up in rivendell and is a lifelong soldier - he's used to being in (and leading) large groups of people. the months following his decision to remain in middle-earth saw him mostly nomadic and almost entirely alone, and he quickly realized his thoughts are far too loud for him to deal with on his own. the fellowship is good for him in that sense.

he acts mostly the same when he's alone - he truly can never escape the pressure to act, even when there's no one around to perceive him. whether or not it's actually who he is - well. he hasn't unpacked that

betrayal: Has your OC ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust? Has your OC ever betrayed someone who trusted them?

never in the dramatically ironic sense, really. he's intensely loyal and demands loyalty in return, and he doesn't entertain people who he doesn't think he can trust.

i think the closest thing to betrayal he's ever felt is when he awoke in the third age and discovered the woman he'd had feelings for had pledged to someone else. they'd never been in an official "relationship" by any means, though, and he doesn't blame her at all, but it's still a raw feeling - he'd decided to court her once sauron was defeated.

bound: Has your OC ever been imprisoned or captured? What happened? How did they get out? Did the experience leave any scars?

he's found himself captured by various tomb-raiders and brigands in his hesitance to slaughter entire groups of men at once since traversing third-age middle earth, but he always breaks himself free by some means or other. assuredly the witch-king had attempted to capture him post-morgul stabbing, but his unconscious body was recovered (somehow) by the Alliance. of course he has that scar - he was stabbed between the ribs, and it still pains him pretty consistently

break: What would cause your OC to break down completely? What do they look like when that happens? Has anyone ever seen them at their lowest?

the moment he allows himself to process any of his experiences basically ever. tbh. whether or not it happens, he needs at least a good 45 minutes of wailing and screaming and losing his voice. the only one he'd allow to see it is his brother, and raestoril has definitely seen him at his lowest, whatever that entails - their reunification in celondim was probably close for both of them

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

he wants to see a peaceful middle earth. he cannot allow himself to rest or to return to valinor until it's more peaceful than he's experienced it. he speaks of this freely, and attempts to counsel his mortal friends through his experiences as he travels with them. he sees it as his purpose, especially after gil-galad's sacrifice, and will do everything in his power to see it done<3

[dans-artzone]

Butchers circus brigand raider

[theblackbookofarkera]

Athrimar

The red lipped Athrimar are a wild tribal people from the chaotic land of Kathos. Brigands and cattle raiders the Athrimar will make their way by whatever means as long as it does not include honest work. A petty and wicked race the Athrimar are addicted to furyroot from cradle to grave, this is what gives them their red stained lips. Historically restricted to Kathos the dark mercenary sorcerer Kreschi Sardenyev has hired Athrimar mercenaries so now the rest of the world has the pleasure of dealing with this filth.

[metataxy]

The origins of Hexenbiest... (drabble fic)

The story Sean Renard’s mother tells him about the genesis of her people, and the Wesen, and the Grimm.

Warnings: Sex between a prostitute and an eldritch being, described in biblical language.  Actually, if you’ve ever read the bible, you’ll probably be chill with everything here.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a story only the Hexenbiest tell each other these days:  In the beginning were all things, and from chaos, the Creator drew forth the world, and all the animals in it.  And from all the animals in it, the Creator separated out man and woman, but when she came to the very last of her animals, she was tired.  So she told herself, “I will do half the work today, and half tomorrow,” and so half-separated the woman from the fox and the ziegevolk from the goat, but the next day, she forgot to complete her work, and so the Wesen have remained forever suspended between man and animal.

And there was famine and plague and war on the earth, and men died in numbers uncountable, until their race dwindled and you might walk a tenday before meeting another living soul.  Out of her loneliness and desperation, the first of heroes walked back into the chaos before creation and called upon Death.  

“Death,” said she, “my husband has died on the blades of brigands and my daughters have been taken by demons, my sons rot in the fields after the Wesen picked clean their bones.  The only child I have left to hold is the one yet in my womb, but he has not moved a fortnight, dead of hunger before he could live.  Give me back his life.”

“What will you give me for that life?” asked Death of the hollow-faced woman.  The mother smiled like a skull.  

“I will give you a fight,” she told Death, and leapt to tackle the god.

So startled was Death, that they did not disappear into void or shift their shape or meet the mother with any divine artifice. They met the mother as mortals do, hand to hand, and they hurt her as mortals do, in the flesh.  They drove their thumbs into her eyes even as she bit and clawed at Death’s manifold necks, they gashed their claws through her ears, their wings beat down and broke her bones, and still, she fought. Death crushed her all but to jelly, but there in the void, her soul clung to her corpse, and through sheer will, she stood again and again to defy the god, where all others would have submitted.

It was the fifth or fiftieth or five hundredth time, perhaps, when at last the god tired of the game.  “Enough then,” they said, to the blind and deaf body at their feet. “You have proven a will worthy of your Maker, I will now give you a body to match it.”

So they straightened and set her bones, and along every fracture they firmed up hard as iron.  So they healed her body, and gave into it the strength of a manticore and the swiftness of an aswang.  They traded her ruined ears for a pair of their own, and the same for her ruined eyes. Last, they exchanged a piece of their own unlife for the infant’s death, and the child moved in the mother, and she cried then with Death’s eyes, overjoyed.

Then Death said to her, “When you cross back, I will come with you, I will accompany both you and every child of your will, until the world collapses back into me. For now your eyes and mine are the same.”

And that is why the eyes of the Grimm turn black: they are the eyes of Death and look out unto the void before being.

The second one to come before Death was a leader of men, tall and proud but lean as any other in those famine days.  “Death,” said he.  “My wives are dead of plague, my sons swallowed up by beasts.  My men throw down the swords grown too heavy for their hands, and their women throw themselves from the cliffs when the raiders breach our walls.  As all things go to Death, they say Death also can give all things.  So Death, I ask you: give me back my wives and my sons and the strength of my city.”

Death considered the man with their many eyes. After the exchange with the Grimm, their gaze had grown kinder: the mother’s eyes looked out amid their tangling wings.

But Death is still Death, and so they said, “What will you give me in trade for these things?”

Though angered with his losses, the man was not lacking in sense or restraint.  He recognized he had nothing a god would need or fear, if he gained anything, it would be by Death’s good will only.”

“Who could give you anything, oh Death, equal to your generosity, you who bestow your gift equally on king and worm and all life between?  You are the ground out of which the Creator makes and returns us; our lives as much as our deaths rely on your largesse.  You, greatest of gods,” and so he went on, for five or fifty or five hundred hours, until Death tired of his praises, and said, “Enough.”

“Your words are enough to move Death,” they said, “I will make it so they move also the hearts of men.  Go back into the world and travel to the easternmost country, and you will find there the Creator still idling on the mountain.  If you kiss her, you can steal her voice, and the words you speak thereafter will change the world.”

So the man left back into the world and found the Maker on her mountaintop, and she was lovely as the moon and stars, too lovely to make him dishonest.  He would not steal a kiss from her, but sat with her, in her garden, day after night after day, and learned at her knee.  And after five or fifty or five hundred years, she kissed him, and he kissed her back, and they passed her voice between them forever after; and every scion he sired on her had something of their mother’s power, though diminished by mortal blood.  And this is why the Royals do not marry outside their bloodline.  

Last of all, came the temple prostitute to Death. “Death,” said she, “my priests have been stoned and my temples burnt and raided, my mother and aunts taken in the road and their bodies left behind there.  I am plague-ridden, Death, so none will sleep with me, and I have no coin to buy a cure or bread.”

Death looked on the whore with their many eyes and asked, “What would you have of me?”

“Our gods promised those sworn to them protection from violence and disease and famine, I ask you make good on their word.”

“And what will you give me in exchange?”

“In exchange?” the woman asked, furious.  “I have already given the gods my life, what else would you ask of me?”

“Your life and service you have given to the gods of life, but I am Death, and to Death, you and yours already belong, be it in a year or an hour or day.  What can you give to Death that I do not already own.”

She looked on Death, and she disrobed.  She came before their many mouths and kissed them, and her skin withered against their skin.  She stroked their many hands and feet and all else belonging to the body of the god, and her golden hair gristled below their beating wings.  She laid with them, fearless, as one who has known the worst of men cannot fear worse from gods, and Death took her gently.

She worked her arts upon them as carefully as though they were a kingly patron, and the novelty pleased Death.  They finished with her, and then said, “Go. Your womb is seeded with Death now, with the chaos before creation, your skin bears my seal.  You are Death’s wife, and none will harm you, your daughters will bear the measure of our power, and no man will touch them but by their will.  Go back and bring my scions into creation.”

So Death’s wife returned to the world a crone, but that crone bore three daughters.  And to the eyes of men, each was beautiful as the morning, but to the eyes of those others who belonged to the half-made world—the Wesen, the Royals, the Grimm—they appeared as those long dead.  They knew the secrets of the made and unmade worlds.  Their tonics could cure or kill, and they had the god’s hand, and could move a knife without touching it.

Thus came the first Hexenbiest, greatest of all god-touched creatures.

[thistechnologicalterror]

What can you tell us about Tattooine?

A WASTELAND OF DESERT, ROCKS, CRAIGS AND OTHER THINGS ASSOCIATED WITH DRY HEAT AND ARID.

FILLED WITH PLENTY OF RAIDERS, BANDITS, BRIGANDS, VILLAINS, AND MONSTERS THAT THINK THE AVERAGE HUMAN IS CRUNCHY AND GOOD WITH KETCHUP-- AND THAT IS JUST THE POPULACE OF THE LOCAL SPACEPORTS.

IT HAS BEEN ONE OF THE FEW PLANETS THAT HAS NEVER LEFT HUTT CONTROL IN THE WHOLE OF HUTT CONTROL HISTORY. LIKELY BECAUSE IT IS NOTHING BUT A DUSTY ROCK UNDER TWO SUNS.

EVEN WITH THE DEATH OF JABBA THE HUTT, IT HAS NOT STOPPED IT FROM BEING IN HUTT SPACE.

SOME OF THE DUNES SUGGEST THAT IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A TROPICAL PLANET ONCE. IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED THAT THE TUSKEN CLOTHWEAR MAY HAVE ORIGINATED IN A SOCIETY THAT DOOMED ITSELF TO SOME CALAMITY AND THAT IT MIGHT HAVE ONCE BEEN ENVIRONMENTAL-HAZARD SUIT WEAR, THAT HAS SIMPLY EVOLVED OVER THE COURSE OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

STRANGER THINGS DO HAPPEN.

AS FOR MY THOUGHTS, I HAVE NEVER STOPPED HATING THIS PLANET, EVEN AS A CHILD.

IT IS A MISERABLE, VILLAINOUS PLACE WHERE OUT HERE IN THE OUTER RIM, ALL SORTS OF NASTY EVILS CRAWL ABOUT.

AND ONE LEARNS AT A YOUNG AGE THE "LAW OF THE WASTES", THE "ALGEBRA OF NECESSITY", AND "WASTELAND JUSTICE", LEST ITS RESIDENTS PICK YOU APART AND LEAVE WHAT IS LEFT TO THE DESERT.

[scots-gallivanter]

FOUR

The moon shone broad and bright upon the placid face of the Solway Firth, and showed a slight ripple upon the stakes, the tops of which were just visible above the waves.

SIR WALTER SCOTT, Redgauntlet (1824)

THE CLOCKS WENT forward today but there’d hardly be enough blue in the world to darn a sailor’s hanky. My ears, exposed after an out-of-season haircut, are red as hen’s heads as Nikki and I take in the windswept mudflats which Robert Burns called ‘this wild place of the world’. A heron pecks patina into flotsam; tuxedoed oystercatchers hurtle along the mud with their lame men’s gaits and then moan into a monochrome sky. To hoodwink their prey, plovers tap-dance on the beach pretending to be raindrops.

Three boys in shell suits stand around an observation viewer. ‘Quality’, offers the tallest of the trio, after discovering it isn’t coin-operated. He squints through it to England. ‘What the Butler saw’, I joke, ‘That’s where Edward the First cursed us before breathing his last.’ The three boys dander off, perplexed about butlers; an oyster-catcher pipes past, and a flock of timid redshanks retreats past the Altar Stane, more often than not under water, which has bounded the burgh of Annan since 1539.

Before they moved to Lochmaben Robert the Bruce’s ancestors had a castle at Annan, and a running track and park now sit beneath its tree-colonised motte. A stone from the castle, with an inscription related to the Bruces, was somehow acquired by an Annan antiquarian, who took it with him when he moved to Devon. It was returned in 1927 and is now incorporated within the town hall. There is a story that Archbishop, later Saint, Malachy put a curse on Annan. When he had dined with Bruce at the castle, Bruce had promised to spare the life of a condemned man. However, he reneged on the deal – with the result that a vampire allegedly ran loose in the town in which Thomas Carlyle later went to school.

Chop all the wood from boats that sailed in the Solway Firth, and Bonfire Night could be celebrated the length and breadth of Scotland until they launch the first zebra into space. Horn-helmeted raiders, Roman warriors, English incursors, pirates, kings, folk heroes, brigands, smugglers, and lovers. They all came and went with swords, fire, trade, romance or murder. Hadrian put his ‘Roman wall’ up at Bowness-on-Solway on the shoulder of England, a mile from where we stand – across a wath that was used by interlopers for centuries. That wath or ford can be walked when the tide is out, but you’d better know the currents intimately or you’ll be struggling in quicksand before your brain can contemplate the meaning of M’ Aidez.

From Cumberland’s tussocks – an official Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty since 1964 –trains used to smoke their way across the sea on the longest bridge in Europe. We gaze at England from a lichened mound of concrete and mudstone with mini-ferns curling out of Scotland like croziers. Behind us the trains passed through a cutting that has doubled for decades as a way for dog walkers undeterred by the pipeline running bang down the middle, through which Chapelcross Nuclear Power Station discharged its shit into the sea.

It’s March 2023. The first sod for the Solway Viaduct from Bowness-on-Solway to Annan was cut here 158 years ago today in a ceremony that featured ‘four navvies in smock frocks, red neckcloths, and white nightcaps ...... a mahogany barrow with the silver spade on their shoulders’. A cannon was fired, prayers were said, and big wigs sat in a decorated pavilion for their déjeuner à la forchette, and much speechifying and backslapping.

The idea for a viaduct had originated in 1830 in an anonymous pamphlet but The Cumberland Pacquet and Ware’s Advertiser called it ‘sublime, utopian, stupendous and bordering on certain of the Munchausen achievements’.

It took three years to build, but in 1881 ice floes wrecked it. It was repaired but it never quite recovered and was shut down in 1921. Notices went up to keep people off the bridge; however, thirsty Scots made their way across on Sundays to take advantage of more liberal English licensing laws, and there were cross-border romances for which the viaduct wasn’t a bridge too far. It was dismantled in 1935, and the scrap was recycled for armaments in Japan for its war with China. A signal box allegedly ended up being used as a garden shed.

What remains of a rusty tanker sits deck-deep in silt now behind an old warehouse that once rung with the sound of shipbuilders’ mallets. A local group pulled it out of view in 2020 with cash collected from flogging scrap bikes and shopping trolleys. Thousands of people once thronged the pier at Annan, an important shipbuilding port, whence steamers took folk to new worlds. A wooden lighthouse stood at Barnkirk point but it burned to the shore in 1975. Today a scarfed pensioner wheezes along the quay with smoky breath; and a subdued mongrel, oblivious of history, looks just as disconsolate.

Shawhill railway station, built on the verge of Annan for the viaduct traffic, is now a scrapyard. Back on the foreshore cinder path a decapitated man stands on a plinth – a bone of contention between his maker (who welds together bits of scrap and exhibits them) and others in the community, whom he regularly lambasts on his social media page. Metal Man began life in 2009 on a roundabout at the Tesco store in town, but he was beheaded in 2019. Since then, he has had a traffic cone for a head, then a football, a parrot’s head and a pig’s head. A month ago, a prankster sawed the statue’s haaf-net and fish off. Goodness knows how he ended up on the shore here where for generations real haaf-netters have battled the currents and tides.

Old Annanites speak of haaf-netting in reverential tones: it has been pursued since Viking times and is enshrined in royal charters. A haaf-net resembles a portable football goalmouth with a rectangular frame and three legs. The top beam of the frame is 18 feet long, the length of the oar of a longboat; when a fish swims into the net the frame’s legs float to the surface and the fish is netted and clobbered on the head with a nep, a priest or a killer. Well, that is what used to happen, but legislation introduced in 2016 bans the killing of salmon, and fewer and fewer men feel like paying the near £40 annual licence fee when they cannot take a single fish home. The tradition is certain to die out.

Leistering was another unusual form of fishing practised by the men of the Solway. A leister was a four-pronged, twenty-foot-long javelin, which killed fish in huge quantities. Richard Franck, a Cromwellian trooper, was the first person to report on Scotland’s salmon-fishing. The Cambridge-educated sea captain travelled through Carlisle, Dumfries, Glasgow, Stirling, Perth, Forfar, Loch Ness; Sutherland, Caithness, Cromarty, Aberdeen, Dundee, St. Andrews, Edinburgh, and Berwick.

Franck saw the mounted men of the firth galloping along the shallows spearing salmon (Northern Memoirs, 1694). Sir Walter Scott also gave leistering a mention. In Redgauntlet, Darsie Latimer wrote to Alan Fairford, of the day he was rescued from straying into the Solway quicksands: ‘...they chased the fish at full gallop, and struck them with their barbed spears, as you see hunters spearing boars in the old tapestry. The salmon, to be sure, take the thing more quietly than the boars; but they are so swift in their own element, that to pursue and strike them is the task of a good horseman, with a quick eye, a determined hand, and full command both of his horse and weapon.’ Latimer lingered on the sands and looked to the English shore that was ‘still gilded by the sun’s last rays, and, as it seemed, scarce distant a mile from me’.

For nearly half a century Chapelcross nuclear power station was a familiar landmark outside Annan. I was one of thousands of people who watched its four chimneys being demolished in 2007. Some souls were sentimental to the point of weeping. It was, indeed, the end of an era for a business that had employed three generations and had brought prosperity to a town which, in 1727, Daniel Defoe had found to be in ‘irrevocable decay’. It was hooray for me when the towers fell, though. Goodbye, plutonium. Goodbye, tritium. There have been proposals for a wood-burning power station there, using sustainable coppiced willows, and an adjacent solar farm has been approved. It remains mothballed.

In the 1960s there had been plans for an atomic metropolis that would have spanned the firth. There would have been a circuit-linear Solway City for 50,000 people, and a new airport. Forty years later there is another proposal – to route an ‘electric bridge’ from Annan to Bowness-on-Solway using energy from the world’s third greatest tidal bore. It would create a pedestrian and cycle route between England and Scotland with the usual razzmatazz for tourists and have enough in its locker to power 60,000 homes. The decommissioning of Chapelcross won’t be complete for some 80 years. Meanwhile, Annan’s dreams of a transformed harbour, a tourist hub, were thwarted in 2023 when an application for £8 million from Michael Gove, who had the Tory government’s portfolio for the Orwellian concept of ‘levelling up’, failed.

[wyvernwriterarchive]

DToL Cast P3

Eleanor🔥

Cavalier->Paladin

The young, popular princess of Liron. More than a bit spoiled, entitled, and airheaded, she cares deeply about the well-being of her friends and makes great efforts to understand the ways of battle after she was saved by the Gilded Guardians. But her ego and loud, haughty nature can sowmt8kes draw ire towards her.

Adoette🪨

Knight->Sentinel

Adoette, a commoner from Bovent who became a knight in order to be useful to the people around her. Feeling she didn't have any good looks, talent, or special features about her, she thought her strength would be good Adoette, a commoner from Bovent who became a knight in order to be useful to the people around her. Feeling she didn't have any good looks, talent or special features about her, she thought her strength would be good enough.

Vesta🌑

Fighter->Warrior (Blacksmith)

A blacksmith who used to be a guard for her village's mine. However, that life was stressful and painful. She decided to rest for a while and continue her work. However, one day, her village was raised, and she felt responsible. She's on a mission to find the raiders and put ruffians to justice, as well as use her talents to create things that can help others.

Jonas⚡️

Rogue->Outlaw/Assassin(Pawnbroker)

Once an urchin from the streets, he was taken in as a merchant's apprentice and saw that as his ticket to living an amazing, wealthy life. He's taken up the job of an arms merchant, selling weapons to those who need the steel, a cheerful grin on his face.

Dirigo🔮

Reverend

Once alive during times of greatness and innovation, he has gained much knowledge. Now, he intends to use that knowledge to help others, helping them achieve new heights.

Belle🌪

Griffon Rider->Griffon Knight

A mercenary who's trying to make a living after closing everything she held dear. She is renowned for her strength and ferocity in battle. She's kind to those she believes deserves it. Bandits and nobles rarely do.

Achilles🌲

Brigand->Berserker

A wandering "bandit" feared all across the land for his hulking height, brute strength, and ugly appearance. Though you don't have to look too deep to see that he is merely a softhearted man who wants to make friends. He has a hard time making them due to the above features, plus his oafish nature, but he will do everything he can to protect those in need.

[lutethebodies]

LTB Worldbuilding Wednesdays: The Kleptocracy of Repeia

A weekly series in which two of my BG3 Tavs describe the original homebrew 5e world they live in.

Cannor’s Guide

“Repeia is what happens when nobody’s in charge. Well, when either nobody competent is in charge or nobody competent is selfless enough to prevent the incompetent from failing upward. Even that selfish impulse might have been enough to stave off anarchy if neighbors on all sides had been more helpful instead of either picking at the Redlands’ corpse or propping it up in geopolitical undeath. The high-minded Nevelese and Naransi do police the Narrow Sound, and I’ll grant that needle of a channel is easier to thread now, but brigands still rule the depopulated hinterlands. I once met a Caranácian engineer whose entire crew was killed when House Provaganza paid them to upgrade the rickety Skybridge, but failed to provide adequate security. Other foreign fools have tried to resettle the Whitewall ruins only to suffer painful deaths from raiding Ashlanders.”

“There’s plenty of homegrown bloody-mindedness too, especially in Redpool, where the once-mighty, now-polluted Luster River limps into the sea. Greed, corruption, literal and figurative backstabbing—the gussied-up thieves ruling this feeble rump state keep it stable only by neutralizing each others’ worst impulses. Redpool’s a bad town to be stuck in, but I’ve known plenty of otherwise smart people who needed quick cash or another chance, desperate to score a skiff upriver to what they’ve been told are still gold-rich hills. Redpool’s not easy to avoid—there are few safe anchorages elsewhere nearby, and none around the volcano to the west—but steer south for Scandena or the Savansi coast if you can.”

Ruy’s Reckoning

“The Redlands is a disputed territory west of the strategic Narrow Sound, commanding one bank of the eastern sea route from Innemária to the open ocean. What used to be a safe and productive core province of the Aurigan Empire devolved into a dangerous and ungovernable haven of criminals and warlords after the Downfall. Rolling hills gave way to arid wastes, and large estates to raider-infested hideouts. Enterprising Nevelese from the north and Naransi from the east repeatedly finance attempts to pacify Repeia, but without the full backing of their governments—which only agree to keep the Narrow Sound clear of piracy and slavery—all inland projects have, to date, proven unsuccessful. Repeia remains beset by both internal and external forces, seemingly unable to assert a viable identity for itself.”

Main settlements: Vermeliga (Redpool; town), Ostena (West Narrows; fortress occupied by Nevelese garrison). Ruins: Pallina (Whitewall), Pardalis (The Port). Rulers: The Padrini of Redpool. Languages: Auransi. Economy: Kleptocratic oligarchy, extracting iron to trade for anything else, and sponsoring local banditry when that’s not enough.All text and imagery taken from "The Nua Gazetteer, Volume 1" by Keir DuBois (2022).

[critcrockett]

I had a dream, about a vague-ly European city, where the citizens had to be given "licenses" to die. (Little pet tag-like tokens.) It was more of process of dealing humorously with the event of death. The psychopomp figure was a cheerful little bureaucrat of a balding man with curly hair in a tweet suit and reading glasses, someone who'd tut-tut if the deceased passed before being "issued" a license, but would sneakily wink, say he'd let it pass this time or if "the paperwork was in order" would read the out the license as a eulogy, often with the death exaggerated (so many bed-bound elderly taking down entire gangs of thugs as their last gasp).

The tags, often with funny shapes, could be taken to a bronze memorial plate in a park-like place, where it could be inserted and it'd let parts move freely, so the people who loved them could animate little pop-up book-like bits about them. One was a plate for a former Queen who died young; she had a tag made of a rough, hand drawn star. Her plate showed her sneaking off to a cottage filled with books and just reading. Another, with a weird, gastric-like tag, was for a farmer, who attacked by raiders, swallowed a hail of bullets and farted them back out to explode the cow shed and blowing the brigands to kingdom come. (Obviously, a memorial to someone who died of a gastronomic disease and had time to write out their license request.)

There were plates dedicated to fire patrols with fountains with no water (needed elsewhere) memorials to those who died in terrorist attacks, depicted as scared human beings ("this is your acceptable cost?"); reporters with typewriters you could see the last line of their last report if you brought paper.

A lot of bronze, a lot of tiny spots rubbed copper bright, very crowded, filled with laughter.

[asimawv]

Drew something up of my brigand, who is showing his support for trans and nonbinaried people :+)

Fun fact: the transgender pride flag was designed in 1999; while we can easily guess the nature of the blue and pink stripes on the flag, the white stripe in the center is to represent those “who are intersex, transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender,” according to the flag’s creator (Source).

[contra-si-mismo]