#coal valley lore

[enjithequeer]

Teams I'd like to see in the life series

Jimmy & Skizz

These two need to team up in one of the life series, they haven't been necessarily on good terms the last 2 seasons, and these two are great, just both of them give off amazing vibes.

—

ITS (Impy, Top, and Skizzly)

C'mon it's ITS, do I need to explain?

—

Jimmy and Scar

I don't know why people don't want these two lovable idiots to team up, sure they might go out like very quick, but OG Valley girls. These two are both just funny and wholesome yk?

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Dubs, Etho

One word Ethdubs (QPR, in my opinion)

—

Tango and Cleo or Pearl

either all 3 of them of Tango and Pearl, cause their relationship in HC is honestly adorable. Top and Clebert because I feel like they would be a great team/duo.

—

BigB, Pearl, Grian, Marty, Tim

Iykyk.

—

Scott and Joel

Just because their relationship in the life series is a love-hate one, and it would be Scott's first non-relationship type duo/team. (Last life was 100% /P)

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Jim, Joel, and Liz

Because Seablings and Disktrack duo art OTP, I need more Pillager trio content. Kk.

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Jim, Mumbo and Tango

Because It's the Canary, the coal miner and the coal mine, and I love my canary lore

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Mumbo, Grian and Scar

It's them! Who wouldn't want them???

—

Dubs, Timmy, Effo

Because they need to interact with each other more

—

Impy & Skizz

Because it's Imp & Skizz, and their duo is like one of the best ones (after Ranchers ofc)

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Martyn & Grian

Because of Lore, that Watcher lore is needed, so if lore man is with the Watcher man who wouldn't want them together

There are many more, but I'm too lazy to add.

What is a pair/team you'd like to see together next season?

[p0rchc0ll4ps3]

comparing case notes on the ride home at the end of a long day

did all the perspective myself! it kinda' turned out jank but it's what it's. i'll get better at it eventually

really tried to capture the essence of revachol architecture style with this. the metro lines were built by the communards in '79 of the last century, about 11 years into the dictatorship. various cities in revachol have metro, but none are as extensive as jamrock's metro. however, due to mismanagement and embezzlement and war, a lot of the metro stations remain unfinished, especially in the poorest parts of the city (for example, it was never finished in the coal city district of jamrock, which is big enough to count as it's own city. the metro line was dug out, but the tracks were never layed due to the project never reaching completion and due to the commies not really caring to build out there. in the valley of the dogs, which is in west jamrock and about as poor as coal city, the metro wasn't even built at all due to there being a huge immigrant population out there and a lot of bullshit from the government). anyways a lot of homeless people live out in those abandoned stations. this among a billion other things really adds to how much east revachol and its slightly richer cities really think lowly of west revachol and jamrock despite not being much better off themselves

the metro cars and the metro stations are built in the neo-perikinassian style that the communards favored for all their structures (neo-perikinassian is an elysium equivalent to our neo-classical style). this style intends to give a vibe of old world richness and power and strong authoritative government, while also attempting to create a strong, national revacholian architectural style, celebrating insulinde's original pagan origins by reflecting traditional folk patterning. communism in revachol wanted to be purely revacholian, taking zero influence from the colonies that revachol used to rule over. the dictatorship did away completely with insulinde's original colonial past, trying to embrace a new totally revacholian identity and erasing anything deemed not revacholian. unfortunately, revachol is an immigrant country, with a history of colonialism and slavery, and a LOT of that has become a huge part of revacholian and insulindian culture. revachol is a melting pot, a mixture of influences from all over. the communists tried to erase this and make a new identity, but of course this attempted to erase everything else that makes revachol revachol. so in trying to make a new, purely revacholian identity, they erased true revachol from the books.

anways, they favored the neo-perikinassian art style with folk embellishments, but because revachol is revachol, there are also a whole lot of style moderne (revachol's art deco, a lot of airships, sunrises, and anti-pale shit) and noul stil (revachol's art nouveau which involves a lot of ocean and air organic motifs instead of flowers and the like) influences of course. as you can see here, there's noul stil motifs in the way that the lights are pearls and that they have waves on them. in fact, to go on yet another tangent, revachol's 'new disco' architecture, which started in jamrock during the new with the building of skyscrapers and new buildings in the style and spread to the rest of revachol, is a modern day revival of style moderne and noul stil that combines elements of both (i get a very og wizard of oz emerald city vibe).

anyways that's my lore essay. i really wanted to capture the feeling of being in revachol, specifically jamrock. the metro cars are also slightly based off bucharest's communist metro cars as well as the newer ones, but of course with a lot of wood instead because revachol and elysium are in a sort of era with their technology that mixes something of a industrial revolution 1890s victorian london, 1910s america and big cities right before the advent of skyscrapers and cars but also 1920s tech, and 1970s radio tech and all that shit. idk. some fucked up conglomeration

also guy on the left is someone from my de server's oc. i don't know their tumblr otherwise i'd tag!

oh and i tried to capture some kind of how the people of revachol are in general all types of people from many different ethnicities etc. and and the guy in the back looking at harry is one of jean's friends, enzo, who, after getting rejected from the rcm for being too violent (which is a big deal bc the rcm celebrates violence), joined la puta madre and now works to double-cross both lpm and rcm, doing what benefits him best. when jean and harry got captured by the lpm about 3 years back and almost died, it was enzo who saved them. enzo's one of jean's many connections he has in the city. harry doesn't remember him (but he will eventually. he has to figure out at some point where that big nasty scar on his stomach's from).

btw i spent like a wholeass hour or two one day trying to figure out what type of wood revachol would have because the commies use ONLY LOCAL RESOURCES. so i needed to figure out what type of wood they'd have. and i figured it was some kinda' birch with a very specific ashy grey wood. of course you can't see it here bc of the color-grading but yeah. know that i did research on that. ok?

anyways if you read this whole thing thank you very much for reading and congrats on getting thru it hahahaha. i really need to figure out a name for this au bc this is NOT kurwitz's elysium LOL

[mariacallous]

Earlier this week, after warping across the galaxy for 90 hours in a sentient spacecraft, Twitch streamer John Wissmiller realized that Concord was the best first-person shooter he’d played in a decade.

“The gunplay was crunchy, the movement was smooth, and the progression felt rewarding,” he says. “I was even more enthralled by the world the developers had created when I looked into the lore.”

He wasn’t alone. “One of the biggest perks about the game was the absence of toxicity within the player community,” says Kelle Dees, a content creator at KDeesGamez. “Everything about the game was positive and inclusive.”

On Wednesday, less than two weeks after the game’s August 23 launch, Sony announced it was taking Concord offline and offering full refunds to anyone who had purchased it on PlayStation 5 or PC. “While many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended,” wrote Ryan Ellis, Concord’s director at Firewalk Studios, a division of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

“I was completely devastated,” Wissmiller says. “We’ve never seen a first-party title from Sony get this kind of treatment.”

In fact, we’ve never seen any AAA video game get this kind of treatment—and that’s what could make Concord a horrifying canary in the coal mine for gamers and game workers alike.

“It’s unprecedented for a game of this scale to be shut down so quickly,” says Liam Deane, a video game analyst at Omdia. “Usually publishers keep games that struggle at launch on life support for a while, but in Concord’s case the launch was so bad there was clearly no way back.”

Like Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Valorant, Concord was meant to be a live-service game that constantly released new updates over the course of several years. But while those other games are free to play—and rely on microtransactions to make money—Concord cost $40 up front. “It's just very difficult to break into competitive multiplayer games [and] displace the existing top titles,” says Simon Carless, an industry analyst who publishes the GameDiscoverCo newsletter. “These are the kind of titles that players socialize with their friends in, and they're often not motivated to switch games.”

Sony hasn’t revealed how many copies of Concord sold between August 23 and September 3, but the number of active PC players on the Steam platform peaked at just 697 on launch day. That’s abysmally low for a major release that spent eight years in development; Sony’s previous live-service game, Helldivers 2, had over 155,000 players on its first day, back in February, and later peaked at 458,709.

Helldivers 2, though, was a breakout hit that already had an established fanbase. Concord, on the other hand, was a brand-new franchise that didn’t get much of a marketing push and drew the ire of “anti-woke” snivelers who complained about the game’s use of pronouns on its character selection screen.

“For big companies, it's difficult to work out what bets—and how large bets—you should make,” says Carless. “Some of the corporate overexuberance during Covid and low interest rates has meant that large companies overextended, and the pullback has been—and is going to be—painful.”

Over the past 20 years, the brutal blockbuster-or-bust mentality of Silicon Valley startups has spread to executives across the entertainment industry. Movies with $100 million production budgets are considered dead on arrival after a bad opening weekend and are quickly ripped from theaters. TV series are canceled after failing to meet undisclosed performance metrics in their first seasons.

Now, the quick death of Concord, which officially went offline today, points to a similar mindset in the video game industry that could kill creativity, reduce jobs, and shutter entire studios.

“If you have a stable parent company with a balanced set of single-player and [live-service] releases, you should be in decent shape,” says Carless. But “the middle of the market is disintegrating. The games industry is deprofessionalizing in many ways; games as a stable profession will be tricky for many people in high-GDP countries.”

If studio C-suites keep cutting all the buds that don’t instantly blossom, the golden age of gaming of the 2020s—a mix of AAA blockbusters like Elden Ring, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Baldur’s Gate 3, alongside smaller-budget gems like Tunic, Chants of Sennar, and the reimagining of 1997’s Riven—could already be over.

“I think innovation is more likely to come from smaller companies with lower budgets that are happier to take risks,” says Piers Harding-Rolls, who leads the games research team at Ampere Analysis. “This has really been true for many years, but the current commercial environment makes that truer than ever.” Still, even the future of indies is uncertain and may be somewhat dependent on funding efforts like Innersloth’s Outersloth initiative.

Concord may have gotten off to a slow start with gamers (most of whom hadn’t heard of it yet) and critics (who didn’t love the initial character designs), but the same could be said of Elder Scrolls Online, which has since made more than $2 billion, or the Destiny franchise, which celebrates its 10-year anniversary this year, or No Man’s Sky, which has become a cult classic.

If those games were released now, would they survive longer than Concord did—longer than the lifespan of a honeybee? The answer lies with the most ruthless beekeepers in the industry, and all they care about is the honey.

[articskele]

YIPPEEE MEADOWCLAN INFODUMP :D

Basically I took the Tomodachi Life philosophy of shoving all of your OCs and favorite characters into Situations together and applied it to warrior cats to see what would happen and it’s so fun and I already have so much lore akjfldf!!!!

OK SO. Meadowclan! This grassy hilly area with lots of flowers, a river, and a forest off to the side! Cats often decorate their fur with flowers, both bc it’s pretty and to hide their scent so they can hunt more effectively.

Kits batting at butterflies and bees (and quickly learning not to attack the latter lol). Cats mostly hunting rabbits and birds and fish, with the occasional frog or deer or fox.

And then there's the Moontree, this big old cherry blossom tree at the edge of the territory, whose petals seem to glow in the light of the full moon. Maybe there's some water pooled at the roots, and when significant events happen, cats will look up to see cherry blossom petals blowing in the wind ouo

---

Mothstar arc, aka We Didn't Start The Fire:

It's a rough concept but basically there's a prophecy from Starclan about fire overtaking the valley, something about snow and flowers. It's around the time the clan was first founded so Stonestep (Stone) was going to be appointed leader, but he dies under mysterious circumstances.

Mothblaze (August) becomes Mothstar and is appointed leader, though I'm thinking he doesn't get any extra lives? Something something the clan is just starting out, Starclan is quiet, this is new territory so nobody's there to give the lives, I dunno.

He's charismatic and pretty good at keeping the place running since times are tough, but more suspicious things happen and the rules start to get bent and changed. Cats get exiled and poisoned.

Snowblossom (Artic) discovers the truth and tries to expose him for the murder of Stonestep, he tries to start a controlled fire as an exertion of power but it quickly gets out of control (a gas canister near twolegplace?) The fire is stopped and Mothstar gets kicked out, left to wander the forests beyond the territory.

Which actually lines up fairly well with canon August's story; founding a town, creating a well-managed but ultimately corrupt system, messing with forces outside of his control in an attempt to show power, and getting exiled once his lies are exposed.

(Except in the case of canon, August supposedly drives off this calamitous dragon and uses that to emphasize how dangerous the mountains are and that it's safer with him, until Artic figures out that this dragon is herbivorous and only acting this way because of people being aggressive to it and taking its territory.)

Shimmerwing (Estelle) becomes Shimmerstar as the new leader, and is given a second life by her ghost cat husband Stonestep. Also she was the one who discovered the Moontree!

Cherry blossom petals are seen flying in the breeze above camp, and Snowblossom keeps one in her fur ouo

At one point Mothstar tries to come back to take revenge, but Shimmerstar just stares him down like "this is my house now bitch" alksfjdf

I was joking around with a friend about her giving him coal BUT COAL IS USED FOR FIRE SO IT’S LIKE MAKING FUN OF ALL THE DAMAGE HE DID AAAAUGH

---

Birchfall arc, aka that time the Onceler invented cat capitalism. Catpitalism, if you will:

So cat Onceler starts out as a kittypet named Ollie but ends up in Meadowclan. He's loud and clumsy and easily grossed out, pretty rubbish at hunting and fighting, and he keeps sneaking into the medicine den to eat the mallow-

But what he does have is knowledge of twoleg stuff, and he invents a system using herbs as currency. It quickly catches on and spirals out of control, because now cats are picking so many herbs that they can't grow back.

And with all these herbs being stashed away or constantly in circulation, Nettlefur (Medic TF2 the medicine cat) can't get his paws on the plants he needs to Do His Job.

So it ends with Birchfall getting exiled and he just. Goes back home to being a kittypet like nothing happened akfjakdf

---

Misc character stuff:

- Mothstar is this longhaired splotchy mix of red-orange and brown, with markings on his sides that resemble a moth's eyespots!

- Snowblossom is a small floomfy white cat with blue-gray stripes and little spots on her face like freckles ouo!

- Daffodil is either a birman or ragdoll? She's Snowblossom's mom, currently in the elder's den getting some much needed rest ouo

- Shimmerstar is this sleek black cat with shiny fur that turns blue in the light, like a crow! And the classic white four-pointed star on her forehead

- Nettlefur is a silvery german longhair with the messiest fur alive. He brought a cat back to life once and Starclan HATES him for it

- Stonestep and Thornsong (Cedric) are tuxedo cats but Stonestep has gotten more and more white fur with age, like this! Also Stonestep has a missing arm like in canon + a bobbed tail, and Thornsong has a rose in his fur ouo

- Unlike canon Stone who died before Cedric was born, Stonestep is still alive by that point so he was able to mentor Thornsong and be there for him when his parents dipped out ouo

- Doveheart (Dove) is this cream point ragdoll (white heart mark on chest? White lily in fur?), Maple (Mel) is this BIG floomfy orange and white tabby loner, and they and Thornsong all meet up at the clan borders to hang out. They’re friends your honor

- Cloudpaw (Cloud) is an all white cat, and Dustpaw (Petra) is a sandy brown cat with long ears and a bobbed tail that make her look like a rabbit ouo

- Cloudpaw is super fast while Dustpaw can jump super high, so they work well together! And since they never got separated like in canon, they never had such a strained relationship and they love going on adventures together!

- Their warrior names are Cloudflight and Dustbite! Which is an Another One Bites The Dust joke but also fits the rabbit theme bc dust bunnies!

- Twinkie (Wink) is a red-pink kittypet with a shimmery light blue bow and polydactyl paws!

- Birchfall is a tall, lanky gray cat with white on his belly and socks and face, darker gray stripes on his tail and legs and back, and little freckles hehe ouo. As a kittypet he likes wearing tiny hats

- I haven’t fully decided on a name for Ink but I’m calling him Leafwhistle for now! He’s a calico that was originally a loner, joined for free food, but nothing really changed and he just comes and goes whenever he pleases and nobody has been able to stop him

- Harespring (Springtrap). Yknow that one post about the green cat? He looks like that, but with a lotta scars (including burn scars from the fire), longer ears and a bobbed tail like Dustpaw.

- Harespring is the guy that Mothstar framed and subsequently exiled for Stonestep's murder, but they brought him back after everything gets resolved lol. Currently in the elder's den telling the apprentices scary stories

- Hollypaw (Holly) is one of if not the most reckless cats in the clan- She got exiled during Mothstar's rule for snooping around too much, and she has a habit of eating berries without checking if they're safe

- Her warrior name is Hollydash! Also what if she's the one Nettlefur brought back from the dead bc she ate deadly berries alfkds

- Cloverleaf (Forgetica) is the mediator aka the much-needed therapist

- Spiderfang (Sylvain) is a gray-blue oriental shorthair, very angular shapes. He thinks Nettlefur is the coolest dude ever which is such a bad influence alkfsjd

- Sporeshade (Kieran) is this short and stocky brown maine coon, with a scar over his nose like in canon. He has a rogue partner named Concerto (The Escapist), but nobody knows what a concerto is or how to pronounce it so they just call him Connie for short akjfsdf

- I'm thinking Cloudpaw is being mentored by Thornsong, Dustpaw is being mentored by Doveheart, and Hollypaw is being mentored by Leafwhistle? Also maybe Spiderfang is a second medicine cat

Heeehehehe ouo

[lilietsblog]

Stardew Valley mod rec compilation

this is a regular question asked on the discord so I wanted to put together my own constant pack to link.

These are NOT all mods I use. These are the mods I’m **completely confident **in recommending together, that definitely work well, combine well and won’t create any cognitive dissonance.

(Note that I’m not listing any prerequisites. Whichever mod you’re installing, you obviously need to install its prerequisites too)

(Most of these are on Nexus, but not all. MARGO is on GitHub, for example. Search on Nexus first, then duckduckgo or google it if it’s not there)

Utility if-you’re-modding: (mods that maybe won’t improve your game per se and you don’t want to install Just Them if you’re picking and choosing, but if you’re already using other mods, you want to look at these)

Advanced Save Backup (obvious function is obvious, don’t let mod fuckups permanently ruin your save)

Generic Mod Config Menu (absolutely mandatory if you’re installing like… >1 other mod)

CJB Cheats Menu + CJB Item Spawner (the more mods you have the more likely you’ll need this to recover after glitches. There are vanilla bugs you might want this to help you with too)

Jump Over (or noclip, in case you get stuck somewhere)

Mod Update Menu (fully optional, but might be nice)

Quality of Life (mods that I’m completely confident work well together and will improve your game withough particularly changing it. You do want to meddle in config for many of these though. Increase complexity at your own pace)

Action Sitting

After Midnight Speed Buff

Easy Coal

Balanced Quarry

Better Artisan Good Icons

Better Beehouses

Better Chests

Better Ranching (turn off “prevent failed harvesting” in config, add Fix Animal Tool Animations for that functionality instead)

Bigger Backpack

Collapse on Farm Fix

Destroyable Bushes

Gift Rejection

Grass Growth

Horse Overhaul - Immersive Scarecrows

Immersive Sprinklers

Lucky Rabbit’s Foot

Mail Services Mod

MARGO - Tweex, Tools and Ponds modules

Remember Birthdays

Robin Work Hours

Expanded Big Shed

Sturdier Saplings

Time Speed

Zoom Level

Friendship QoL: (I’m putting these into a separate category because they specifically make one thing easier and might be unbalanced together - but if you want lots of custom NPCs they might be necessary as a breath of air)

Part of the Community

Passive Friendship

Friend of a Friend

Visual (This is specifically the combination I use, that I know for a fact works well and looks good together. These are mods that don’t alter any mechanics or add any content and mostly don’t impact balance, they’re purely to make the game look better)

Custom Menu Background

Better Water

Cuter Coops and Better Barns or Coop and Barn Facelift

Darker Vanilla Crops

Darker Vanilla Forage

Dynamic Night Time

Dynamic Reflections

Happy Fish Jump

Iridium Sprinkler Desaturated or Burnished Bronze Iridium Sprinkler

Less Ugly Spouse Rooms

Medieval Buildings

Simple Foliage

Skell’s Flowery Tools

Starry Night Interface (deleted from Nexus)

Vintage Interface (and this if you’re using Bigger Backpack)

Vibrant Pastoral Recolor

Way Back Pelican Town

Wind Effects

Yri’s Modular Flowers

Eemie’s Dark Wood and Gold Craftables - Scarecrow and Rarecrow Recolors - Climates of Ferngill

Swimsuit Selection

Spritemaster, and you can turn off the smoothing just for faster rendering everywhere with no visual changes

Dialogue + NPCs (Thoroughly vetted - exclusively the mods that don’t create any contradictory lore, fit fully with vanilla, and might make you feel like vanilla was always intended to be this way)

Dusty Overhaul

Community Wednesdays and Community Center Reimagined

David the Hamster

Demetrius Visits Farm Cave Redux

Diverse Stardew Valley

the ethnic wedding outfit collection (Emily Ukrainian Wedding Dress and others with the same naming scheme, entering “wedding” into search is a good way to find these)

Haley Reads Magazines (plug of my own mod)

Immersive Spouses

Jean and Jorts

Social Haley

Unlikely Friends

Immersive Sandy

Make the game more fun (This is a fairly diverse category - these are the mods that will substantially alter the game and give it a decidedly non-vanilla feel and balance, but that I’m willing to vouch for as fun, non-conflicting, non-glitchy and not making your life harder. Some of them are smaller than others)

Walk to Desert Redux

Archery + Archery starter pack

Artista

Cape Stardew

Cat gifts

Deep Woods

Farmhouse visits

Festival of the Mundane

Hot Spring Farm Cave (or another farm cave mod)

If It Fits I Sits

Improved Cindersap Forest (plug of my own mod)

Like a Duck to Water

Lost in the Mountains (or another custom farm map mod) (plug of my own mod)

MARGO - Combat, Professions and Taxes modules

Stardew Druid

Swim Mod

Wren’s Expanded Greenhouse (or another greenhouse mod)

Animals Need Water

Even More Secret Woods

NPC Adventures (and content packs for it)

Map Editor Extended

Free Love pack (This is for the people who think SV is nice in allowing the player to date multiple people, but unnecessarily restrictive in allowing them to only marry one of them. I’m putting other romance/marriage/parenthood mods in this category also) necessary: (these are the mods you need to make a multi-spouse household function smoothly, period. Need extensive configuring, usually, so pay attention when you install them)

Bed Tweaks

Custom Spouse Patio Redux (this one can glitch, but Map Editor Extended has fixed it for me fine every time)

Custom Spouse Rooms

Free Love

Wedding Tweaks optional: (these are the mods that can substantially improve your personal life if you’re into them, but Free Love functions fine without them)

Platonic Partners and Friendships

Bachelors and Bachelorettes stay friends

Fourteen Heart Events for All

Gender Neutrality Mod

Not In Here By Yourself (plug of my own mod)

Hugs and Kisses

Multiple Spouse Dialogs (+Tia’s and Liliet’s packs for it) (plug of my own mod uwu)

Planned Parenthood

Swimsuit Selection

Unique Children

Unique Children Talk - T’s Spouse Room

[punemy-spotted]

WIP Wednesday: 16 Tons

It's Wednesday, my dudes, and therefore I'm getting in the spirit to share a new WIP... because I can.

Please enjoy a preview of a new Curtis Everett fic set in my Down Here, in this Valley universe. Featuring Miner!Curtis, a Witch!Reader, and a whole lot of Lore™

Warnings: discussions of death; a relatively brutal murder scene; burn scars; my limited understanding of how medicine works; exploitation of workers; the fic is dark because the content is; THIS IS A HORROR FIC; Dead Dove: Do Not Eat (MIND THE TAGS)

If you would like to be tagged in updates, please check out my (new and improved) taglist and sign up! I have also created an archive where just my fics and drabbles will be reblogged (and tagged), over at @punemys-library. It's a little under construction, but we're working on it.

Curtis Everett is going to die. ‘Course, everything dies, eventually. Much as you loathed sittin’ through your daddy’s sermons, you knew the truth in ‘em — death is a prize every livin’ being, regardless of sapience or the desire to be, ought to aspire to. Death is the gift of all gifts, your daddy would proclaim from his bone-an’-antler pulpit, the final gesture of our loving Lord and Savior — an’ you, your sisters, your momma, your daddy an’ a few others your daddy claimed were kinfolk on his side were all the guides meant t’introduce all manner of worldly beings too blind t’understand just how precious that kinda oblivion was to the glory of that final, permanent end.

Still. Curtis Everett is going to die. Curtis Everett is going to die in your kitchen, his own pickaxe embedded in his chest, the final desperate pumps of his pierced heart pouring blood all over that pretty linoleum you didn’t actually like keepin’ in your kitchen an’ probably would tear up after you came to terms with never feelin’ like you could scrub away the remnants of him.

You watch it play out before you like you’ve done plenty of times before, the course of Curtis Everett’s life written in scars yet to be earned, bruises waiting to bloom on flesh that has known little more than the danger and dread of coal dust for as long as you have known him. You also watch him sitting in your clinic, for once not complaining as you finish cleaning and rewrapping the thankfully not festering burn he’d been dutifully letting you treat — per your own professional orders — for the past week-and-a-half, Looks like it’s healing nicely, but it’ll probably scar.

It’s not the first scar he’s earned in Snowpiercer, but it’s certainly not going to be the last. You’ve been counting down the months — and injuries — to that particular worry for a while. The ones you can help him avoid — the ones he listens to you about — you warn against, and the ones he can’t escape, you patch up. The same as you would anyone in Snowpiercer, being the company’s own doctor as you ar. Your momma’d scold you up, down an’ sideways if she knew what you were doin’ interferin’ with the predestined path of men as you watched ‘em struggle, suffer, an’ eventually succumb. But your momma wasn’t here to know, and even if she were, your momma’d never be able to understand just what sorta poison of a gift it was she’d saddled you with.

Death is a Rogers daughter’s birthright, even if they themselves were more often than not denied the majesty of its truest gift. You were not born into this life to die, but to be a guardian of it, to guide the walking dead makin’ their way beyond the borders of that ol’ Holler you’d been born in through the trials of judgment and that ultimate verdict. You were not, your momma would have reminded, meant to shield ‘em from the pains of life — an ‘the lessons to be gleaned from ‘em.

Anything you want me to do with it? Curtis Everett’s question breaks you out of your bitter ruminating, reminds you of the more pressing responsibilities you chose. You turn to watch him a moment, looking as if you might just need a moment to remember the exact instructions you ought to give for his wound care. Except that’s not what you give, is it? Instead, you look over Curtis Everett’s work-weary expression, the quiet dread in his eyes at the prospect of needin’ to manage yet one more thing, one more purchase at the Company Store, one more burden to bear, Just come by every evenin’, I’ll keep the coal dust outta them wrappin’s for you.

You know full well you’ll need to work late to take care of it… and clean the coal dust outta your clinic, but it’s better you than him — at least that’s what you tell yourself as Curtis Everett’s shoulders relax, relief flooding those work-weathered features you’ve almost started memorizin’ by this time, makin’ the sleep you will almost certainly lose tomorrow and the remainder of this week worth it.

It must always be worth it.

[hazel-of-sodor]

The Cronk and Harwick: Founding to 1914

Who wants Hazel Au lore for a railway you've never heard of? No? Too bad you're getting it anyway.

May I proudly present:

The Cronk and Harwick Railway

------

Founding 

1850-1870

The Cronk and Harwick railway was established in 1850, with the ambitious goal of connecting the port city of Harwick in the North West of Sodor to Cronk in the Mid-South. Built to the gauge of 2ft 3 inches in the hopes of one day connecting with the Skarloey railway, the original owners made it twelve miles to the valley of Ooyre before declaring bankruptcy in 1951. This would have been the end of the line, if not for the village of Cregwir

 The village of Cregwir was a farming village, cut off from the rest of the Island by mountains and hills, but the same hills that isolated them contained slate as well as coal. They had just never possessed a way to bring their products to market. As the journey to Harwick took a full day in one direction. The railway could change that. The line had stopped construction just beyond the village, and would drastically shorten the journey.

The village banded together and purchased the abandoned line. The Cregwir mining company was founded, and the first quarry opened in 1852. A team of horses was purchased and used to carry stone and slate from the quarries on Ooyre valley to the docks at Harwick. The Horses were given the numbers 1-4 depending on their place in the team. While it is known the Horses also received names, it is uncertain which belonged to the original team, and which belonged to later teams. For nearly twenty years the horses plodded along the line, delivering slate and stone to the harbor, as well as any passengers making the journey. Passengers would ride in the slate wagons or on top of their load, depending on the direction of travel. The village grew as workers migrated to take the new jobs offered by the quarry. The other villages along and near the line, such as Droghan-y-Claghan, quickly followed suit and the valley soon was home to multiple quarries. The increased workload soon began to strain the team of horses, even when a younger team relieved the original four. A new form of motive power was needed. In 1869, the Cronk and Harwick contacted Hunslet Engine Company and placed the order for their first locomotive, Sapphire.

------

The Lone Engine

1870-1914

The discovery of a coal vein near Cregwir in 1864, and the opening of a mine in 1865, played a vital role in the decision to purchase a steam locomotive. It was an expensive venture for the small railway, but necessary if the line wanted to preserve its future.

The engine ordered was a precursor to the more famous Alice class built 16 years later, and indeed bears a striking resemblance to this day.

The engine arrived on the Harwick docks in the spring of 1870 and was pulled up the line by the team of horses. Villagers crowded around as the locomotive was steamed for the first time. The Cronk and Harwick number 5 opened her eyes for the first time surrounded by the village she would serve.

Named Sapphire by the village children, No.5 would quickly prove her worth. When compared to the horse team, she was capable of hauling loads twice the size in half the time. Sapphire proved to be a responsible and easygoing engine, happy to be useful however was needed. When she wasn't pulling trains, she could often be found surrounded by children, telling stories. If being the only one of her kind bothered her, it never showed. 

In 1883 the passenger traffic on the line had grown enough that 4 coaches were ordered for passenger work, primarily carrying workers to the quarries. These coaches were designed and built specifically for the Cronk and Harwick. Although any record of the coaches' builder has long been lost, it is believed they were built by Brown, Marshalls Nd Co. Ltd, as the coaches bear a distinct resemblance to those used on both the Talyllyn and Skarloey Railways. Named Arawn, Llŷr, Beli Mawr, and Brigid, the coaches are still in service with the railway today. Although it is doubtful that any of their components are original.

By the 1890s Sapphire was considered a village elder, and was often trusted to watch over children on her own on days she wasn't working. She was noted to be fond of her non-sentient co-workers, and, unusually, the horse team was reportedly fond of her as well

In 1898, Sapphire met another engine for the first time. The quarry and coal mines at Cregwir had grown to such a size that a dedicated shunter was needed. A 0-4-0st of Bagnall design was purchased and Sapphire collected the small engine from the docks. While Sapphire was a smaller engine even by narrow gauge standards, the shunter was smaller still, quickly earning the name Bitsy from the workers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sapphire and Bitsy soon formed a friendship, and the two could often be found chatting while Sapphire waited on her train to be secured.

The turn of the century saw little change for the small railway, with Sapphire reaching thirty years old receiving more attention than the fact it was 1900. The first decade of the century passed quietly, with Sapphire puffing up and down the valley as she had seemingly always done. It is often hard to place pictures from this era, as the line seemed almost frozen in time.

------

[foxglove-the-never-fairy]

Fairy Names Pt. 2

Fly with you! It’s been a while hasn’t it? Anyway, I’m here for a second part of one of my most popular posts.

The first post listed fairy names that were used in the DS game “Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue” in the create-a-fairy section of the game. While the names provided were feminine, I have pulled all of the masculine fairy names from the original Pixie Hollow game. Some names are repeats from the original post, but I kept them in as I wanted to get this out as soon as possible. I hope you enjoy. Here’s the original post.

~🧚🏻‍♀️🔥 Foxglove 

First

Aaron

Ace

Acorn

Agate

Ajay

Alabaster

Alder

Alec

Aleron

Alex

Anchor

Andrew

Archer

Axel

Badger

Bailey

Baker

Bale

Banjo

Barclay

Basil

Benjy

Bert

Bevel

Birch

Bo

Boomer

Boone

Brock

Bruce

Brynn

Buddy

Burr

Burton

Buster

Calder

Casper

Cecil

Cedar

Chance

Chase

Chip

Clay

Cliff

Coal

Cog

Comet

Cosmo

Cote

Covey

Crag

Crane

Cyan

Dale

Dane

Darius

Darrin

Dawson

Decker

Deon

Devlin

Dewey

Donner

Drake

Dug

Dunn

Dustin

Dusty

Echo

Eddy

Edward

Elk

Emery

Erik

Ernie

Errol

Fennel

Fincher

Finn

Fir

Flint

Ford

Francis

Garnet

Glen

Gourd

Gourdie

Grove

Grub

Gull

Hale

Hare

Harris

Hawk

Henry

Heron

Hob

Jacob

James

Jasper

Jay

Kernal

Koto

Lance

Lark

Leaf

Lore

Lute

Lyric

Martin

Maze

Mica

Michal

Nadir

Nester

Oak

Ollie

Onyx

Otter

Peat

Pier

Pine

Quake

Quarry

Quinn

Rain

Ranger

Reed

Richard

River

Robin

Rook

Rusty

Rye

Sage

Sam

Scout

Sean

Seth

Shale

Shoal

Skimmer

Skyler

Spike

Spruce

Sterling

Stone

Tad

Teak

Thatcher

Thistle

Timber

Tiny

Toadstool

Tobey

Todd

Topher

Torn

Torrey

Vail

Valiant

Vern

Vic

Wedge

Wes

Wren

Wynn

Zak

 Middle

Air

Almond

Apple

Aspen

Autumn

Badger

Bark

Beacon

Bear

Bitter

Brave

Bright

Brisk

Broom

Bumble

Candle

Cedar

Chilly

Citrus

Cloud

Cloudy

Clover

Cocoa

Copper

Cricket

Crow

Cub

Dapple

Dash

Day

Drift

Eagle

Elm

Evening

Falcon

Far

Fern

Fig

Fire

Fleet

Flicker

Foggy

Fox

Frost

Frozen

Funny

Garlic

Green

Hail

Hasty

Hawk

Hickory

Holly

Hurry

Ice

Ivy

Jelly

Jumpy

Lemon

Light

Lightning

Lime

Little

Lock

Lotus

Magic

Mango

Maple

Merry

Misty

Moon

Morning

Moss

Mossy

Mountain

Muddy

Never

Nickel

Night

Nimble

Oak

Orange

Otter

Parsley

Pear

Pebble

Pepper

Pine

Plum

Pollen

Pumpkin

Purple

Quick

Rain

Rainy

Rock

Rumble

Sage

Sandy

Sea

Shy

Silk

Slight

Snow

Sour

Speedy

Spider

Spring

Squall

Star

Storm

Stout

Strong

Sugar

Summer

Sun

Swift

Tangle

Thunder

Tiny

Toad

Tumble

Twisty

Water

Whiffle

Wild

Wind

Winter

Wrinkle

 Last

Beam

Bee

Bell

Berry

Breath

Breeze

Bug

Button

Buzz

Chill

Chime

Cliff

Cloud

Clove

Crash

Curl

Dale

Dance

Dash

Dew

Din

Drop

Dust

Ear

Elbow

Eye

Feather

Field

Fig

Flame

Flap

Flash

Fleck

Flight

Flip

Flipper

Fly

Fog

Foot

Forest

Freeze

Fruit

Garden

Gem

Glade

Glimmer

Glow

Gourd

Grace

Griddlee

Gust

Heart

Hill

Hop

Horn

Hush

Jewel

Knee

Lake

Light

Lock

Loop

Lull

Meadow

Mello

Mint

Mist

Moon

Muddle

Muse

Newt

Noise

Nose

Peal

Pebble

Petal

Pin

Plume

Pond

Pool

Ray

Ripple

River

Roar

Root

Row

Ruckus

Rumble

Sand

Shadow

Sky

Smash

Song

Spark

Sparkle

Sparrow

Speck

Spirit

Splash

Spring

Sprite

Sprout

Stem

Stone

Storm

Stream

Stripe

Swamp

Swirls

Thistle

Thorn

Toad

Tree

Twill

Twist

Vale

Valley

Vine

Weather

Web

Whirl

Whisk

Whisper

Willow

Wind

Wing

Wings

Wink

Wish

[valley-crest-lines]

Serene Southern Rail Lines Lore

In the early 1880s, a small line of track was constructed south out of Sacramento. Since rail travel was updating as quickly as it was, there turned out to be plenty of old timers and ancients doing less than their fair share, given they were already worn the hell out. This meant that a line running down California's spine would have all the motive power it needed, so long as you didn't need to go faster than about 60 miles per hour and had enough coal to last an eon.

That said, this little upstart going South to admire the Serenity of California's farmland and valley was preserving history, which some roads took a keen interest in, and so, garnering good will with the surrounding mounting behemoths, as well as freight and passenger contracts not worth the time and effort of said railroads, and even some repair jobs on equipment and trackage owned by competitors, the Serenity & Southern Railway, then the Serenity Southern Railroad, and finally the Serene Southern Rail Lines at the turn of the century, was in business.

At the southern mouth of the valley is a town called York, this will be important. That said, the SSRL built down to it, then promptly turned East before realizing that it was still too far north to run out of the valley. It then loosely abandoned this project before again running southmore still, towards San Diego. It reached and passed the border by the turn of the century, now having its main main line constructed, opting to build two more, one south into Baja California and one East towards Texas's border at El Paso New Mexico.

By the '20s, it continued its arrangements as with railroads far and wide to improve, maintain, and in some cases operate their equipment, running trains that would be considered competition with the other railroads in the area if they weren't as helpful as they were. Both wars came and went with little fanfare, war traffic increased, but being one of the secondary routes, it wasn't as notably effected. As dieselization crossed the nation, the Serene Southern opted to not care and continue operating steam from every corner on their metals.

By the '80s, they were the final railroad still operating steam in revenue earning service, having gathered many larger examples from other railroads, as well as experimental designs that could have changed the future. It wasn't to be however, as with all its effort to keep its engines in tip top shape and rising prices on top of less passenger, freight, and mail traffic, the Serene Southern couldn't keep running. Upon its most recent acquisition, its books closed for good. Without the traffic flowing from other railroads and now the other forms of transport, it couldn't survive. It's motive power and remaining rolling stock and trackage was auctioned off to museums and other railroads, leaving quite the collection behind to the best of its abilities, becoming a cautionary tale to some, and a hero's story to others.

[huntikfan1017]

OHSAA - Division III - Region 11 - 2024-2025

Western Pike Athens Scioto Portsmouth West SOUTH COLUMBUS Waverly Eastern Pike New Albany Bloom – Carroll Beverly Ft. Frye Grove City Christian Willow Wood Symmes Valley Galion Northmor Sarahsville Shenandoah Lore City Buckeye Trail Columbus West Central Bainbridge Paint Valley Coal Grove Granville Linden – McKinley Columbus Indpendence Scioto Portsmouth Norte Dame Morgan…

[shapes-den]

I have news! Ourkan and Xaasa's first puppy, Quohau'ru, is now grown up enough to get her very own boyfriend. She's been drawn in by a good-natured and respectful young male, who loves to tell her amazing stories (but always forgets at least half of it).

Introducing a complete himbo of a wolf, Wuros!*

Poor Wuros's has quite the tragic history, but remains optimistic. His pack did the bare minimum to keep him alive. They gave him a barely acceptable name, insulted him often, and taught him few things when he managed to survive until adolescence. Upon learning this, Xaasa immediately declares a feud against her son-in-law's birth pack.

A bit of context: In the north, year old wolves are encouraged to leave their birth packs, and will pass through most relative's territories with ease. They may then return home or strike out on their own, forming a new pack. Saying that, different packs have different tolerance levels for wolves during their roaming (part of their yearling celebration). Ourkan, for instance, had finished his roaming just before meeting Xasaa.

Had Wuros's pack not done the bare minimum, any yearlings passing through would have carried gossip about the mistreatment. Equally, if they had allowed an adol to roam freely, or even chased him away, any wolves finding him would be obligated to return him home, or start a feud with his birth pack. Wolves treat adolescence as a time of great learning, and making it past puppyhood is seen as passing the test of survival. Therefore, neglecting an adolescent/older puppy is considered extremely callous and disrespectful among the Northern wolves.

*Wuros' name means: Self-centered, gullible, full of useless wisdom, a pretty face with nothing to show for it. This shocks the CVP wolves, as giving a pup such a negative name is nearly unheard of in wolf society.

[elliotakita]

I've finally decided on my starting lore for wolvden early access. My chosen ID is #828, and I'll be calling my wolves the Coal Valley pack ^^

First is Ourkan (pronounced or-can), my breeding male, and he's a displaced young male wolf from the "Fool's Spring pack", who live to the north of Coal Valley. He didn't travel too far from his family, preferring the comforts of a seasonal salmon supply and familiar prey. He is a bit of a baby, and can't quite bear to cut off contact with younger siblings from his former pack. Here's some of my art based on his design ^^

Next is Xaasa (zah-suh) who is a plains wolf many miles north of her original home. She's a slightly older female, with a love of adventure and discovery, who (until meeting Ourkan) found it hard to settle in one place for very long. Her wanderlust often leads her into many sticky situations. She doesn't have any art as of yet, but she'll be my lead wolf.

The Coal Valley is a region along the Fool's Gold River, dotted with abandoned mines. The story goes that gold was found in the river, leading to a flood of mining activity along the Valley and the founding of Allswell, a half-abandoned town situated between a popular fishing spot to the north and large lake to the south. Very little gold was actually found in the mines, and the supply in the river soon dwindled, but what the miners did find, was coal. Lots and lots of coal. The Gold River colloquially became the Fool's Gold River, eventually leading to the original name falling out of use entirely, and the valley was named by the fortune seekers hoping to regain some of their lost earnings. Over time, the Coal Valley mines caused massive subsidence in the area and were all abandoned, with the town changing it's primary industry to camping and tourism.

The wolves are under conservation protection, and Coal Valley is considered a site of historical importance, so they are rarely bothered. However, all the nearby packs are very avoidant of the town and lake during the summer months, when tourists and wannabe hunters flock to the area. The Coal Valley pack raise their pups in a half collapsed mine entrance that Xaasa dug out. A large, sturdy beam of wood lies collapsed, held up at one end by a jutting piece a rock, which shelters the entrance to their den. A clearing of flat packed earth lies just outside the mine, with the wolves using the old human paths to reach it. Young Coal Valley pups are not allowed further down the hillside, as an unusually narrow and fast stretch of the river lies below the park's chosen den site.

[dustedmagazine]

Lingua Ignota — Sinner Get Ready (Sargent House)

Photo by Lisa Birds

SINNER GET READY by LINGUA IGNOTA

There’s a truism you hear about Pennsylvania that some people find hilariously pithy: “Philadelphia on one end, Pittsburgh on the other and Kentucky in the middle.” Like many truisms, it has circulated far and wide because its cleverness communicates a small measure of accuracy, as a side-effect of its desire to score cheap points. But it sure as hell isn’t funny. Spend some time in rural Pennsylvania — you’ll see. The intensities of fiery religious fervor and of old-growth-forest darkness run deep in those hills and valleys. Combine them with the struggle and immiseration created by the American economy’s shift away from manufactory production and coal mining, and the ongoing punishments sustained by the independent family farm, and the energies you feel, if you tune into them, are potent and thick, often infernal. Kristen Hayter, who records and performs as Lingua Ignota, spent some serious time in the Pennsylvania countryside during the pandemic. She tuned in. The consequences of her experiences are in part represented on her new record, Sinner Get Ready. It is intense, infernal and spiritually alive, in ways that are both ecstatic and frightening. It’s terrific.

Much of Hayter’s work over the past several years has been perceived and categorized as metal, or at least metal-adjacent. Early support from label Profound Lore and from the Body (with whom Hayter has collaborated, on that band’s records and side projects) has underscored the perception, and her previous LP Caligula (2019), which featured sounds from the Body’s Lee Buford, Full of Hell’s Dylan Walker and Uniform’s Mike Berdan, seemed to solidify her relation to the genre. It’s also the case that her music’s themes share metal’s prevailing interests in violence, extremity and religions’ conceptions of evil. Thematically Sinner Get Ready continues and sharpens her explorations of that dangerous terrain, and comes close to literalizing it. “Perpetual Flame of Centralia” references the Pennsylvania mining town, now almost entirely abandoned due to the coal-seam fire that has been blazing beneath it since 1962 (if not for considerably longer). Hayter sings, “I am covered in the blood of Jesus… / I rest my head in a holy kingdom / Mine is the venom of the snake of Eden.” Seemingly a straightforward deployment of Christian symbols, it’s complex stuff: “mine” has at least two potential semantic and syntactic functions. In a material sense, the coal mine, its products and their climatological effects have wreaked havoc on human habitations, both local (Centralia, which as of 2017 had only five remaining citizens) and global. Venomous, indeed. 

At the record’s close, Hayter refers to another, smaller and less notorious Pennsylvania town. “The Solitary Brethren of Ephrata” locates the listener in Lancaster County’s Amish country, and it also gestures back to “Perpetual Flame of Centralia.” A CNN soundclip captures people in argument, likely over COVID-period considerations: a man asks, “Aren’t you concerned you could infect other people, if you get sick inside?” A woman responds, “No, I’m covered in Jesus’s blood.” When the man protests further, she asserts that she’s “in Walmart” and “Home Depot” every day, but she’s not afraid of the virus because she’s “covered in his blood.” The other people she encounters? She seems less concerned for their welfare. And a sinner like me? She’d probably be quite content to consign me to illness and death. Throughout Sinner Get Ready, Hayter inhabits the cruel, harshly judgmental ethos of Christian fundamentalism. On “Repent Now Confess Now,” she sings in a chorus of multitracked voices, “No pleasure in this year / No wound as sharp as the will of God… / O he will knock the breath from you / He will ram your eyes with glass.” It’s fierce, harrowing.

Of course, inhabiting and performing that ethos is different from endorsing or celebrating it. Hayter has a long, intimate relationship with Christianity, but she doesn’t proselytize. As she situates her lyrics in Pennsylvania, she similarly situates her lyric speakers and her songs in that place and its volatile ideological and cultural environments. Musically the environment is registered in the instrumentation and the compositions, which gesture toward folk traditions, gospel and chorale. The industrial and metallic dissonance of Caligula has been supplanted by the wooden feel of fiddles and pews, of ploughs and churchyards and forest. But it’s still a Lingua Ignota record, and those resources often create feral, livid noises, complementing the power of Hayter’s resonant voice. Even at its most spare, Sinner Get Ready feels mighty. On “Many Hands,” she plucks and bows what sounds like a cello, layering the drones and zings, and sings, “Upon your pale, pale body I will put many hands / And rough, rough fingers for every hole you have.” 

In much contemporary Christian rhetoric, being filled with transcendent glory is represented by the term “joy.” In the couplet from “Many Hands,” Hayter figures the feeling of being filled (all those “fingers” and all those “holes”) with metaphors that conjure a related and more densely complicated idea: jouissance. That is a state ultimately beyond language, so we can only gesture toward it. Elevation and subjection, unifying and shattering, searingly pleasurable and obliterating — jouissance is those things and more, and all at the same time. The Pennsylvania she sings about is similarly complex, simultaneously post-industrial and verdant, desolate and vibrant. Hayter’s voice admirably performs that complexity on Sinner Get Ready; it’s a beautiful instrument that will fill you with terrible woe, and then terrible wonder. 

Jonathan Shaw

[lailoken]

“The Pwca, or Pooka is but another name for the Ellylldan, as our Puck is another name for the Will-o'-wisp; but in both cases the shorter term has a more poetic flavour and a wider latitude. The name Puck was originally applied to the whole race of English fairies, and there still be few of the realm who enjoy a wider popularity than Puck, in spite of his mischievous attributes. Part of this popularity is due to the poets, especially to Shakspeare. I have alluded to the bard's accurate knowledge of Welsh folk-lore; the subject is really one of unique interest, in view of the inaccuracy charged upon him as to the English fairyland . There is a Welsh tradition to the effect that Shakspeare received his knowledge of the Cambrian fairies from his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price, of the priory of Brecon. It is even claimed that Cwm Pwca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glen of the Clydach, in Breconshire, is the original scene of the Midsummer Night's Dream '—a fancy as light and airy as Puck himself. Anyhow, there Cwm Pwca is, and in the sylvan days, before Frere and Powell's ironworks were set up there, it is said to have been as full of goblins as a Methodist's head is of piety. And there are in Wales other places bearing like names, where Pwca's pranks are well remembered by old inhabitants. The range given to the popular fancy in Wales is expressed with fidelity by Shakspeare's words in the mouth of Puck:

‘I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round, Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier, Sometime a horse l'll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire; And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.’

The various stories I have encountered bear out these details almost without an omission. In his own proper character, however, Pwca has a sufficiently grotesque elfish aspect. It is stated that a Welsh peasant who was asked to give an idea of the appearance of Pwca, drew the above figure with a bit of coal.

A servant girl who attended to the cattle on the Trwyn farm, near Abergwyddon, used to take food to ‘Master Pwca ,’ as she called the elf. A bowl of fresh milk and a slice of white bread were the component parts of the goblin's repast, and were placed on a certain spot where he got them. One night the girl, moved by the spirit of mischief, drank the milk and ate most of the bread, leaving for Master Pwca only water and crusts. Next morning she found that the fastidious fairy had left the food untouched. Not long after, as the girl was passing the lonely spot, where she had hitherto left Pwca his food, she was seized under the arm pits by fleshly hands (which, however, she could not see ) and subjected to a castigation of a most mortifying character. Simultaneously there fell upon her ear, in good set Welsh, a warning not to repeat her offence on peril of still worse treatment. This story is ‘thoroughly believed in there to this day.’ I visited the scene of the story, a farm near Abergwyddon (now called Abercarne), and heard a great deal more of the exploits of that particular Pwca, to which I will refer again. The most singular fact of the matter is that although at least a century has elapsed, and some say several centuries, since the exploits in question, you cannot find a Welsh peasant in the parish but knows all about Pwca'r Trwyn.

The most familiar form of the Pwca story is one which I have encountered in several localities, varying so little in its details that each account would be interchangeable with another by the alteration of local names.This form presents a peasant who is returning home from his work, or from a fair, when he sees a light travelling before him. Looking closer he perceives that it is carried by a dusky little figure, holding a lantern or candle at arm's length over its head. He follows it for several miles, and suddenly finds himself on the brink of a frightful precipice. From far down below there rises to his ears the sound of a foaming torrent. At the same moment the little goblin with the lantern springs across the chasm, alighting on the opposite side; raises the light again high over its head, utters a loud and malicious laugh, blows out its candle and disappears up the opposite hill, leaving the awestruck peasant to get home as best he can.”

—

British Goblins,

Wirt Sikes, 1880

[punemy-spotted]

Dead Trees like Lavender Fields Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Dirt Always Tells

Pairing: Old One!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Elements, Dub-Con, Soft!Dark Characters, Dark! Characters, Cult Elements, Human/Animal Sacrifice, Religious Elements, Blasphemy, Cosmic/Dark Horror, Stalking, Possessive/Obsessive Characters, Appalachian/Mountain Gothic, Gothic Horror, Descriptions of Death and Rot and Poverty

Chapter Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Elements, Dub-Con, Somnophilia, Smut, Oral Sex (F-Receiving), Soft!Dark!Bucky Barnes; Allusions to Abuse/Corporal Punishment, Religious Manipulation, Religious Abuse, Allusions to Drugging/Drugged Food, Demonic Influence, Demons, Use of Psalms, Alcohol Mention, Food Mention, Tobacco Mention, Monsterfucking If You Squint, Shadow-Monster, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT YOUR CONSUMPTION OF MEDIA IS YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY AND IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE CONTENT THAT IS BEING PRESENTED, PLEASE DO NOT READ

Chapter Summary: Your mother might have taken you from the mountains, but blood flows back to the heart eventually.

These are the oldest mountains in the world, and how dare we think we could break the skin of a god and try to dig out its heart without bringing forth blood and darkness.

— Old Gods of Appalachia, Episode 0: Prologue

Notes: Okay. This took longer than I expected. The problem with being inspired by existing lore is that I just want to listen to the podcast for hours instead of actually writing. Huge thanks to Old Gods of Appalachia for (1) existing and (2) being exactly the kind of cosmic horror I need to get through the day.

All of my work is 18+ Only, Minors DO NOT INTERACT. I do not consent to my work being posted anywhere besides Tumblr or Ao3 and I post my work there myself. Do not copy, translate, or repost any of my content.

Eliza-Anne Tucker runs.

Eliza-Anne Tucker runs like Hell itself was nipping at her heels, like the ground was tearing open behind her, like the trampling underbrush following her frantic feet was planning on devouring her and the baby in her arms. She runs and she does not look back, does not wait to see if the coal-fire eyes were still on her, if her world was still crumbling to ash and dust all around her. She runs, because she can do nothing else.

The woods are thick and dark and smell of rot, of decay, of the things she will become if she stops, if she is not careful, if she does not silence the siren wail of the babe in her arms. She runs, presses her child to her breast, presses the memories of a soot-stained church and a horned Pastor and the true face of the God she almost gave the precious life in her arms up to.

Behind her, the shouting stills, barking dogs fading into the distance, silence filling the void left behind their chase and she — legs aching, lungs burning, heart breaking — pauses. Long enough to see where she is, in a clearing she’d never been before, in green-walled loneliness and still-air silence, Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death… she remembers to pray, but remembers then which foul tongue it was that taught her them prayers.

Around her, the woods whisper warnings, tell her to be careful, tell her she is alone, tell her she can never escape.

The brush cracks and she presses herself against a tree, watches moonlight filter through the leaves above, waits to see who or what will wind its way past the trunks and clinging vines. She presses her girl to her chest, soothes the faint babble of fussing with a tap to the cheek, lets a tiny mouth suckle the salt from her fingers just long enough to stay silent.

Silent, in these loud, loud woods.

Silent.

Shadows shift and move and coalesce into shapes she’s never seen before and Eliza-Anne Tucker, a good Godly woman who was about the only reason her good-for-nothin’ fool of a husband ever went to Church ‘stead of the bottom of a bottle of Old Number Seven, knows about demons and haints and all the things that call these woods and these here hills home. Ain’t she the one who spent hours — pregnant enough t’pop and sweatin’ like a pig all at once — painting the nursery the right goddamn shade of haint-blue just so her baby girl’d be safe from all the creepin’ things at the windowsill?

Eliza-Anne Tucker knows all about them demons and haints and the cruelest, meanest, darkest of them all is the man everybody’s been calling the Pastor. ‘Course, she can’t tell none of ‘em, not anyone in that haint-damned holler out looking for her and her baby, not when they’re the ones telling her to let them shadows press hands on her pretty girl, her bright little girl, so good and sweet in her arms.

Good and sweet and alive, alive and made of light and she wouldn’t let that shadow-man or his coal-faced cronies take her sweet girl, no matter what her good-for-nothin’ Eugene or his brother Cletus yelled at her, at that retreating, sprinting back when she snatched the only good thing that ever done came out of this hard life in these woods off the bone altar she ain’t ever seen before in all the Sundays she spent in Bell’s Holler after marrying Eugene. Should never’ve let that damn fool sweep her off her feet and right into the Holler.

And all the while she’s thinking about how she’s gonna keep her baby alive, far away from all this rot and lying, if only she could get outta these woods, the shadows around her shift, and move, and shape.

Shape into something looking like her, looking like a scared young woman carrying a baby and praying to a different lord.

Now there’s moonlight in these woods — nobody goes out if there ain’t moonlight in these woods, haint’s stronger in the darkness — and the silver light around Eliza-Anne Tucker is enough. Enough to give the shadows strength, and depth, and life. Enough to make the dark-mirror of the shadow-woman before her real as the tree it she it stepped out of, enough to be noticed.

The woods are death still and silent and Eliza-Anne Tucker — who, as you know, was a good Godly woman who knew all about the demons and haints in these here woods — watches the shadow-witch open her featureless mouth and screams and screams and when the Pennsylvania State Troopers come down to the clearing to investigate why they got about twenty-seven anonymous 911 calls in as many minutes about a cryin’-baby-that-definitely-wasn’t-no-goddamn-fox they find Jane Doe and her baby asleep in a clearing about three feet from the woods.

You should never have come here, to this town that didn’t exist on any map you could find except the one which your Uncle Cletus sent you after your mother died. Hell. You didn’t even know you had an Uncle Cletus — you didn’t know the names of any of your mother’s family except you and your stepfather and frankly you were starting to understand why — not until you got the letter six days after the funeral, alongside a Family Bible you didn’t know you had either.

It was the photo — the one that fluttered out of the bible — that did it. That was all the proof you needed. That picture of her — a spitting image of you now when you look into the mirror — holding a baby still in swaddling clothes.

See, the thing is, you’ve got the exact same one, hidden away in that album your mother never let you look at while she was alive. Just that picture, just so she could show you, on the nights she felt the eyes on her, the nights she saw the carved symbols in the walls and never explained their meanings to you. Should never have married your pa, she’d tell you, not caring how your little ears tolerated her swearing or the way the Mountain Talk would come pouring from her tongue, all the way out in the plains of Kansas, Should never’ve let ‘im move us t’that haint-damned holler.

Haint-damned. You’re so used to that term and yet you still don’t know what it means, even here where the sun shines green through the woods — woods, not forest, you know well enough not to call them that, they ain’t that delicate — and the moon grins like the Devil through the leaves.

You should never have come here, to this place your mother must have run from, so young and afraid, warning you against the woods, You listen here an’ you listen good, girl, you can’t trust ‘em, ‘em coal-boys with their soot-soaked lies an’ their lantern-lights. Don’t you dare go out into the woods alone, ain’ nothin’ good for you there, ‘cept bein’ seen. You never wanna be seen, girl, you hear me? Don’t let none of ‘em see you.

You should have listened.

It’s so… easy. To cling to these things, to the notion of family, to having more around you than just the ghost of your mother and the shell of your stepfather. Bell’s Hollow — or Bell’s Holler, if your Aunt Ethel-call-me-Estus-darlin’-lord-knows-the-whole-town-do’s way of saying the name was the more accurate one, and it was, judging by the way Aunt Estus and Uncle Cletus looked at you and laughed the moment you opened your mouth and let the words fall from your tongue — was your mother’s home, was your connection to something beyond all the anger and loss, was answers in the wake of a funeral that left you full of questions.

See, dead might be dead but the living still gotta go around dealing with it. And just like with the lady at the funeral home who handed you the pamphlet about turning ashes into something to immortalize, when that letter and Bible landed on your front doorstep, you latched on.

And now with your mother hanging around your neck, you watch Uncle Cletus saucer his coffee and listen to his tobacco-graveled voice rumble curses about the woman in the photograph you brought back — aged in that one, unrecognizable, different from the one who left these woods with you in her arms — to be memorialized amongst the others lost in the wake of her departure.

You gotta run, girl. Run and don’t look back.

You should never have come here.

You stand, but the scrape of your chair on hand-laid wood boards is drowned out by the slam of a door and Aunt Estus’s impressively colorful swearing, the older woman clutching her heart and leaping back with all the dramatics of an opera singer — lord knew she had the voice of one, but you can’t remember how you know. And just who the Hell d’you think you are, bangin’—Sergeant Barnes!

The icy hand on your spine tells you not to turn around and your mother whispers warnings in your ear, You been seen, girl. You been seen.

It’s a pull. Your spine still crawls and your mother’s voice grows ever-frantic and still you turn around, pulled. Pulled to face the man in the doorway, who stands half-breathless and grinning at the sight of you.

Whole mine’s been buzzing, he drawls, low and slow, chewing on the honeysweet satisfaction of knowing, not bothering to apologize to Aunt Estus — who, upon recognizing the man slamming open her kitchen door, rather changed her tune, all smiles and nods — while his eyes train on you, Said Eliza’s girl’s come home.

That’s not her name.

You say it before you can think about how terrible an idea it is to say it, pausing only when a roomful of eyes fixate on you, watching you with something like curiosity and shock. You blink. Blink, take a step back, and breathe, collecting your wits.

You spoke. You spoke out of turn and it’s too late. Too late to be the prim thing at the Cotillion Ball, quick to mind your manners and your mama. These people don’t know her, don’t know what she’s done, and now you’ve spoken and now all eyes and ears are on you and you might as well shore up that spine she taught you to have before you take that running leap into the deep-dark of the unknown.

That’s not her name.

It is and it isn’t — Eliza-Anne Tucker died in the woods, barefoot and afraid, clutching a baby to her breast and praying to the only God she knew, even after seeing the true face of Him and running. Nobody buried me cuz there weren’t nothin’ left to bury, an’ there won’t be nothin’ left t’bury when I’m gone this time either.

The woman she became, hard-planed and angrier at the world every day, that was someone else entirely.

Uncle Cletus opens his mouth first, growling out something about ungrateful whelps and the destroying of God-given names but you don’t hear it. Not when you’re too focused on his hand rising up, ready to feel the sharp sting of an axe-calloused slap against your face.

It never comes.

Blood thunders past your ears like R&P Railroad might just have come rumbling through the Hollow and you find yourself returning to the sight of Sergeant Barnes holding aloft a wizened hand, thick fingers wrapped around a wiry wrist. No need t’lose your temper, Cletus, she don’t mean no harm.

Harm. You open your mouth to protest — the truth can’t be harmful, surely — but the Sergeant’s eyes stop you. Dark as coal and burning all at once, embers in dark sockets and boring into your very soul and he’s… watching you.

Warning you.

Sometimes you just need to learn when to close your mouth.

So you do, even if you aren’t cowed, even if you could still dare Uncle Cletus to raise his hand against you again. So you close your mouth, close your mouth and try not to look so hypnotized by the burning gaze boring into you.

Aunt Estus surges forward, reaches for her brother’s arm, holds him back from giving into his temper and babbles something about not being rude to guests — you’re not listening, not to anything but the thud of your heart and the frantic whispers in your ears, understanding suddenly what the-woman-who-was-once-Eliza-Anne meant by being seen.

You don’t, not until a hand reaches out to you, pick-calloused and soot-stained, inviting and warm and dangerous all at once. The low tenor of his drawl is a crackle somewhere deep inside you, alight and flickering under your skin, Y’alright, kitten?

You’re not cowed, you insist. Not really, not the way Uncle Cletus wanted you to be when you saw him raise that hand against you, threatening the softness of your round cheeks, not even as it drops and Aunt Estus draws her brother away. You’re not cowed, but the hand before you — and unbidden, you almost imagine the way it might feel to have that hand touch your cheek, touch your bare skin, touch something plush and quivering at the core of you — makes you shudder anyway. And Sergeant Barnes… watches you. Watches you with a tombstone smile, waits to hear the sharp ring of your voice, so quick to speak and now so quiet, watching.

Waiting.

In your mind, you can see that smile stretch, wide and arrogant and hungry, demanding something more than you are willing to name. You’re somehow smart enough to avoid touching those grasping fingers, just smart enough to offer him a marketing-manager smile, I’m fine, thank you. I just didn’t expect Uncle—

He stops you, stops you and just shakes his head and takes his hand back, recognizing rejection when it meets him face-to-face. There was more to say, more to unearth, but Aunt Estus’s voice cuts through something heavy and smoky and bloodstained, Sergeant Barnes, why don’t you stay for supper?

He says yes.

Supper is… something. A rush you barely remember, a brush of time folding and pressing against you and all you can remember is the way Sergeant Call me Bucky, kitten Barnes watches you, eyes dark with something you cannot and will not describe, lest it sink claws into you and drag you down into that abyss of too-confident grins and hungry, gnashing teeth.

Somewhere, you acknowledge that you met your cousins, but their names fall away into the chasm of your memories and you try not to focus on it. Try not to think on it.

And then… it ends. A blur, and then… nothing.

I should go home, you attempt to demur and once more, you realize you’ve said something very wrong as Aunt Estus grips her own chest and looks positively affronted.

Why, sweetheart, this is your home! And you don’t believe her, just yet, but you… don’t have the strength of will to argue. Something about Aunt Estus’s cooking — excellent, you’d be sure, if you could remember exactly what it was you’d eaten — made you too tired, too sluggish to insist on driving out of town and settling into that hotel you’d checked into the night before driving out to the Holler in that fancy car of yours, now muddy and in need of a good washing before you could think to show up to work with it.

I wouldn’t want to impose, you try to insist still, blinking back the fog of exhaustion and you know you ought not drive, not like this, not when the mountains are winding and the roads are crumbling and night-driving was never reallyyour strength and —

Ain’t nothin’, you’re family, sweetheart. I got your momma’s old room all aired out an’ set with new linens for you, don’t you worry.

And she does.

And you don’t. Not yet, at least, not with sweet potato dreams still pulling you towards it.

The room is your mother’s, you recall. Or, really, it was, once, when your birth-father still lived and loved her. Your mother’s and yours, all at once.

The room is your mother’s, but the presence in it is not.

Something heavy sits on the bed with you, fills your senses with a sleepy haze and you try to shake clarity into your thoughts while you whisper your goodnight to the red stone that once hung around your neck, whisper your goodnight to the silent thing in your company and let yourself sink into hand-sewn quilts and linens arranged Jus’ right, sweetheart, so you’ll be mighty comfortable!

Comfortable.

Comfortable is the way soft and warm slides up the curve of your thigh as you turn, drifting into a state you cannot remember having been in before, somewhere between awake and not.

Comfortable is the beam of moonlight in your window, fluttering curtains from the entering breeze that does little to cool the heat brushing over your skin, a whisper of breath as something like warm lips burn against your shoulderblade. Marking you. His.

Comfortable is the dream.

The shadow is warm and cool all at once, stoking something like fire in your core with the brush of a calloused hand, the soothing touch of cold metal to feverish flesh and you shift, whimper in your sleep.

Something presses between your thighs, something warm and cold all at once, pressing you open, pressing you down, pressing you vulnerable and you dream of a man with a fire in his eyes, dream of fanged smiles and hungry voices, Mine mine mine mine mine, the whispers hiss, low and drawling and echoing.

You turn. You turn and twist, draw the quilt over yourself, whisper a low curse under your breath and shake your dream before you sink again, slow and languid into the heavy dark.

Your mouth tastes of pine, of soot and maple, acrid and saccharine and cold, like ice past your parted lips, tongue pressed down by something that — even in your sleeping mind, so malleable in the summer heat — feels like inspecting fingers silencing any protest you might have considered making if you were awake. But you’re not. You can’t be, this… this can’t be real.

This, this heat on your skin, and the chuckling softness against your ear, this can’t be real.

The July heat rings over your skin, hands that are yours and not yours all at once pushing the quilt from your sleeping form. The cotton of your tank top rises as if pushed too, or perhaps just moved by your writhing and arching, dreams made active and alive, here in this moment.

And what do you dream, you who should never have come here, to this place? What does the summer heat bring to you, in a bed that is not yours but is in this night? You dream of a mouth — warm, lush, the striking of a match on the kindling of your unconscious desire — kissing up the smooth skin of your delicate torso, chest slowly bared to the sweltering night and lips wrapping around a pebbled tip, a warm tongue laving over sensitive flesh. You dream of moans muffled by metal fingers still pressing around the plush warmth of your mouth, you dream of a whispered Sweet for me growled like the turning of gears and grinding machinery, vibrating the very bed you lay on, your quaking form trembling with want.

You dream of greed, of hunger, of a mouth at the very apex of you, of your clothes pushed aside like nothingness, the wards of modesty crumbling like ash. And as something like warm fingers begin to press into the heat of your sex, as something like a burning kiss is pressed against your inner thigh, you whine again and try to wake, try to push yourself out of this heavy dream and do something other than drown in wave after wave of a need that is and is not yours all at once and Be still, little rabbit rumbles through the whole of you, grasping hands pulling you down, down, down and you are drowning, are plush and slick and sweet as you keen something muffled and breathless, feel your muscles become not your own, feel your hips arch as if to give the devouring mouth at the core of you all that you can, feel yourself succumb.

And then you wake.

A rush of air to fill lungs that had once forgotten to breathe, bolt upright in the humid night, the moon just starting its set as even the night-creatures begin to quiet. The air is still, with the faint hint of pine blown in by the open window, sticky with the humidity of summer. No quilt would be of use to you here, tossed aside in your fitful slumber and you let it stay there as you turn, lay on your side and try to drift into something dreamless, something comfortable.

You don’t see the man in the shadows.

But his eyes, burning bright, see you.

[poetnumber17]

III: In Time Familiar

In place walketh by foot falls near

Broad city scape like yesteryear

Walks man whose face dawns liken some

A noble jaw defined and from

An age not long in minds might reck

For he might be at Empress beck

Though crowd around him compliment

He looks nothing the the twins by pure assent

Each town he cross asks privacy

Less and less their words touch delicacy

Wait look you see, this man can’t help

Those princes would not suffer whelp

His beard not long and coal like theirs

With gossip he avoideth stares

In cities large he disappear

While strangers crick their necks to hear

Eelion no place to rest

Skills forgot could not impress

A woman stops to touch his jaw

Words drop into voiceless maw

Smile slow lights on her face

‘Forever wait to meet your grace

Younger still than last I gazed

Now aged still I am not amazed’

‘A thousand words of ‘pology

I crave forgive my modesty

I am not he you think I might be

For the elder two are not of three

my mother lies dead in her rest

Orphan born of kingdom west

I walk out far of Empress lies

For doubtless guards have wanting eyes’

She pause and ask long to forgive

He ducks, perhaps to longer live

Thrust walls reck high in kansen town

Its olden name of some reknown

A place familiar, brain correct

Forgetting bird all had deep affect

Each step onwards take to the tell

She with skull read deep as hell

He Know the one with future see

Visions brought mass to their knees

To follow path her place of work

The third born work those alley ways

Last humbled king and common priase

She speaks with wisdom prophet led

A truth  last usual that ahead

His hand rasps door in knocking kind

To wait reply for greater mind

As opened still by guardian

Who named him rightly still Tristan

‘What future still would look upon

Strange man, the one called Eelion

Though known by many still Tristan

With all still fell in this lifespan

No name for you, strange royal blood

I know that’s not the start of all you loved

What ask you of my honest skill?

You know the skull-tells true until

The question breach the future known

All for your truth to be made shown”

Long time they sat the pair in ire

To contrast fate and present fear

The man in full denial bring

The future plans left to unstring

With answer think he venture out

Wisdom is gained skull-tell without

What more to know from place in time

Stealthily he pace by darkened side

Forgot to go down road now wide

Where strangers pass they still glance twice

The prince must find th second vice

Face turned away so none might pass

He sprinteth far through limits sheer

With those pursued him thoughtless clear

Where can you stay, my pricely kind?

Without thought he despair and find

The one friend left still first to speak

Those left to him come rally bleak

Kyver to ‘foll and Ali too

They truth speak hours through despair

Till midnight giveth pure sweet air

‘No use run from your well known face”

Says she the even keeled and canted place

“Mistake common there is not to do for it

This ‘Prince’ they say flawed not omit

But avert the eyes  and let them say

He did terrible things, monster did slay

He loved like known knew before

Whatever man may think of lore”

The two find rest in City of Bells

Weherer silver greets on every morning well

In several days next to follow

A woman not he knew swept ‘pon

Begging the healing one to raise her son

Flsutered, Eelion could not offer help

Spent days and hours rent consumed in self

Who was this who he resembled like

And how was they turned war-like?

The words spoken just touch arch of taunt

No harm can fall you here within

Though others crave their deepest sin

The city barely studied those inside

And the princess not for longing for her farm again

Are you really a princess, he asked one night?

Words twist for fun and your better fright

They trade sarcasm like blades left out late

And susprisingly this was all would take

While there are tales of those who lie in the north

And that he would be third or fourth?

She has the good humour just to laugh at life

Gossip rumour all them stay the knife

Instead while he worries, she stays calm

The sail and anchor written over song

That women still not past clear known

And the man desperate to make himself a heal and hole person.

What mgith have it been life before these days

And I some mother with children stays

And you some prisoner of war

A fate that shakes many to their core

Has thou the sight to realize this was now?

Had not we left our birthplace how?

The named and nameless worthy still

To story heard o’er rain and plain kill

For what judgement have we against princess type?

Take propsect now when time seems ripe

From poet’s glance time before in all the lines

But for you in place, it’s only forward times

So while Eelion takes his palce in early moving forward still

Ali holds them steady brill

The last time in the two years spent in city

They needed this time to find the real

Set themselves built in steel

A man all lost of memory war stole

Somewhere in the skin lies heart and soul

Though I can’t be the one to find it there

No doubt Arosha was the one to be thanked

After all, she made him once against to speak

And for Palisade, the princess in name alone

Abhors the moniker is solid shun

There is not much to do but continue in fun

Truth if I stare at the face of Eelion

Who I see is someone’s son

From dam who cares like she for worms

Despite heart I know he earns

The face a man let be

Once strong and bold and troubled man

Of left scar where hand played can

And the woman whose feet walk bare

Smile never lost all fair

Long hair a gift of reckoning

In green space  you could hear her sing

Sister to a prophet, daughter of the stars

Her place come with in valley strain

Left home and farm venture again

These two so different met on that road

Even I the author could have foretold

Hast thou to know a better visage

The reflection seen between the twins

The family resembled each other more

Those found the pair with truest mirror