#entombed in ice

[groovesnjams]

4 / 50

"Entombed in Ice" by Avalon Emerson

DV:

If there's one thing I love about pop music above all else, more than singalong choruses and emotionally-wrenching details in the second verse and even synths themselves, it's nonsense words. Put "Da Doo Ron Ron" on my grave. So while MG and I both loved Avalon Emerson & the Charm's album, and we nearly put "Sandrail Silhouette," (which has a second verse where Emerson calls her friends' daughters "a reason for an optimistic view," an incredible line) on this list, that song was fundamentally outmatched when up against "Entombed in Ice" and its "Ba da da-da-da-duh." This song addresses someone, a former friend, maybe an ex-lover, fondly but without remorse for what once was. And it gives them direction, if not directions. This is a post-breakup song, maybe the year's great anomaly, full of love but not in love. It's a harsh message delivered in the gentlest way possible. "There are some things you can do for yourself now," repeats Emerson, leaving the things up to our imaginations. But only a little: "rotten hearts will decay" is where the first verse starts, and the blanks are easy to fill in. This song's subject has some shit to work through. But maybe they can! The bridge's "Ba da da-da-da-duh" echoes like freedom. It's possibility, not condemnation. Avalon Emerson stretches to the top of her range, echoing and melting into a short guitar solo, unencumbered by words and saying so much without them. We all have something we can do for ourselves; those syllables sound like they believe.

MG:

Avalon Emerson’s Soundcloud DJ sets are a staple of my household – like toilet paper, iced coffee, or a bed, she is both a necessity and a presence. But also! We only even made acquaintance with her work at the beginning of this very year via both Four Tet and Gorilla Vs. Bear putting “Sandrail Silhouette” on their playlists. I had no idea who she was but it felt like when I first got Napster and I’d search for something and only one, single user had uploaded it – you just know this thing that you haven’t even heard yet is cool. And yes, Avalon Emerson is very cool, so if that’s your criterion, please, stop here and make friends with the whole of & The Charm immediately. I wish I could be like “but if you must know why she’s cool, read on” but some of it eludes me to this day! Not in the emperor’s new clothes way where there’s no cool but I want to project cool on to her so badly that I’m making shit up, but in the way where you start scratching at the surface of a piece of art and it just starts yielding all these layers, some dense and some flaky and some immediately understood and some fleeting wisps of recognition. I continue to be stuck on this interview she gave to Pitchfork where she says (and I will quote the whole thing, not just the part relevant to me):

Since I’ve been involved in dance music, there’s been this arms race toward harder and faster, and it’s not really something that I identify with. This cathartic release that people seek when they go out clubbing, I get it and I respect it, and I participate in it as a DJ. But when I’m listening to music, my idea of a perfect record is a Cocteau Twins record, things that are soft and beautiful. I wanted to make this a soft, pretty record, but lyrically, the things on my mind are dark and sad, and very black-pilled at times. That juxtaposition is important, because something beautiful can also be coming from a place of pain. I think that’s where most good art lies, to be honest.

If anything, I find the way she describes her own ideas here reductive. But the part about it being a contrast to the “harder and faster” of club music is what’s relevant to me. I think “Entombed In Ice,” composed as it is of fragmented thoughts and ideas and sounds and bits that wander in and do their thing and dissolve into vapor or fade into the wallpaper, is a contrast to that club sound but it also does the thing that club music does, it provides a “cathartic release.” To talk back to Avalon Emerson, I’d say that as a culture we’re very hung up on this idea of catharsis as a WHOOSH or a BANG and then silence, nothingness, ending. But I think since we all keep going afterwards, since catharsis is an ending but not the ending, we must also listen quietly for those fragments and appreciate their soft approach and disappearance because that very gentle, loping cycle is also cathartic and we need little catharsis as much as big catharsis. Now back to you, reader. You have to keep listening to “Entombed In Ice,” you won’t get all it has to offer once through. That’s part of what’s cool about it, but just a part.

[kraftwerk113]

Life´s too short for weird music - Tagesempfehlung 16.06.2023

Avalon Emerson / Entombed in ice

Entombed in ice ist eine weitere gute Veröffentlichung von Avalon Emerson in 2023 – allesamt zu finden auf dem Album ...and the charm... - 

[gbhbl]

Live Review: Frozen Soul with Creeping Death, Foreseen and Overthrow at The Underworld, Camden, London (12/02/2024)

Its a chilly Monday night in London and things are about to get a lot colder as we head to The Underworld to check out the icy death metal outfit, Frozen Soul. The Texas based band are a few dates into a huge European tour and this is the first of 5 shows here in the UK with Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham next in line before they head to mainland Europe. Well known for their…

[idiotcoward]

Imperial Crystalline Entombment (I.C.E.) - Ancient Glacial Resurgence

Oh my God this album surprised the fuck out of me. I was honestly expecting to be a little underwhelmed with this release just because I usually don’t have high hopes for older black metal bands coming back with a new release but BRUH! The vocals on this thing got me hype from the first fucking line of the album (not gonna spoil listen to it please) the riffs are that classic screeching and epic black metal sound. The solos are amazing, the drumming is so fucking intense. This thing is WAY better then I thought and I’m definitely going to have to put some more respect on ICE’s name. Holy shit.

[gffa]

PLANET: ILUM Astronavigation Data: Ilum system, 7G sector, Unkonwn Regions Orbital Metrics: 1,078 days per year/66 hours per day Goverment: None Population: 5,200 (support crew 45%, temporary researchers 30%, military 20%, other 5%) Languages: None Terrain: Frozen lakes, mountains, ice steppes Major Cities: None Areas of Interest: Holenesh Canyon, Jedi Temple, excavation sites, various ruins Major Exports: Ilum crystals [Source: Star Wars - Force and Destiny - Nexus of Power - Force Worlds] BACKGROUND: Ilum is a small, obscure world located far out in the Unknown Regions. The fifth planet of the Ilum system, it orbits an exceedingly bright blue dwarf star called “Asar.” Surveys of the system by ancient Jedi scouts show a handful of uninhabited, inhospitable worlds that are either heavily ir­radiated, completely covered in ice, or both. The rest of the system is largely empty, with no asteroid belt and few navigation hazards. Due to its location in the Unknown Regions and its isolation from charted hyperspace lanes, nothing was known of the Ilum system until a wandering Jedi discovered it in the earliest days of the Republic.

Roughly equidistant from Asar and the system’s com­etary cloud, Ilum is the only world in the system that can support life. “Support” may be too strong a word for the relationship between Ilum and its flora and fauna, however. It is a large, terrestrial world orbited by two small moons and encircled by a wide set of rings made mostly of ice crystals. It is a land of broad continents, towering mountain ranges, and shallow seas locked in a perpetual ice age. Huge glaciers scour the planet’s face, slowly grind­ing the land flat. Where the glaciers have passed, deep snows or sheets of ice dozens of meters thick entomb the surface, making agriculture impossible. Ilum's few seas are shallow and broad, their waters choked with great floating ice mountains and thick sheets of drift ice. In addition to its frozen, snowbound landscape, Ilum has an atmosphere that is a near-constantly churning vortex of storms. High winds, sleet, thick snow, and freezing rain are to Ilum what gentle winds and soft rains are to Naboo.

Life, where it can survive, does so primarily along Ilum's equatorial region. Here, at least, the temperatures are only in the double digits below freezing, which has allowed a small number of native plants and animals to evolve. A few eke out an existence on the planet’s frozen surface, but most live either in the icy seas or deep beneath the ground in the uncounted thousands of kilometers of caverns and tunnels that worm through the planet’s crust. Savage gorgodons, cunning asharl panthers, and the terrifying razhak call Ilum home, along with hardy species of small rodents, birds, and worms. Alongside these are tough plants and fungi adapted to sub-zero temperatures, many of them completely undocumented.

LIFE ON ILUM: To date, no evidence has been found to suggest that sentient life ever evolved on Ilum. There are no ruins, nothing in the fossil record, and nothing recorded in the galaxy’s various ancient data­bases to suggest that Ilum was ever anything more than an obscure, uninhabited frozen rock. Indeed, the planet would have stayed that way until Asar burned itself out if the Jedi hadn’t come along and stumbled onto a discovery that would make it one of the most important places in the galaxy to that ancient order.

ILUM'S HISTORY: Ilum's recorded history begins tens of thousands of years ago with its discovery by a Jedi scout whose name is lost to history, performing Force-assisted hyperspace navigation. As the scout moved through the hyperspace lanes, she was drawn to the Unknown Regions by a particularly powerful resonance in the Force. Following the siren call of the Force resonance, the scout eventually discovered a lonely, hith­erto uncharted system in the far reaches of the Unknown Regions, centered around a bright, blue-white star. The Force was strong throughout the system, but there was something powerful, something special, on the fifth planet, and that's where the Jedi scout focused her attentions.

The first scout's initial reports, as well as those from sub sequent survey teams, reported a barren, windswept world of tall, jagged mountains and shallow, frozen seas locked away beneath dozens of meters of ice. No settlements or ancient ruins were discovered, and all evidence pointed to the world being devoid of sentient life. What the teams did find was a world that, despite its inhospitable environment, managed to support some plant and animal life. Packs of large felinoids stalked the planet's steppelands; huge, slow moving aquatic mammals thrived in the icy seas; powerful and aggressive humanoid reptiles haunted the many mountain chains; and plants and fungi clung to life in shel­tered spots away from the constant wind. These animals and plants didn't explain the planet's strong Force shadow, however. Its presence in the Force was enormous, a fact that the surveyors could not explain until one team was chased into a mountain cavern by dangerous creatures and discovered Ilum's real wealth.

Beneath Ilum's ice sheets and permafrost, the planet's crust is honeycombed by countless kilometers of interlock­ing cave systems. Within these caves, the escaping survey team discovered a motherlode of pontite, mephite, and other kyber crystals—the heart of a Jedi's lightsaber. The discovery of Ilum's mineral wealth quickly changed the char acter of Ilum's exploration from one of curiosity to one of grave importance to the Jedi Council. Upon receipt of the news that Ilum possessed an incredible wealth of kyber crys­tals, the Council immediately dispatched teams of scholars, artisans, and warriors to secure the world and to further study its natural wealth and importance to the Force. To pro tect the crystals, the Council made a decision to keep Ilum's existence a secret from the galaxy at large, and a number of steps were taken to ensure that it stayed that way. Hyperspace surveyors mapped out an uninterrupted, dedicated hyperspace lane from Metellos, a world in the Core region, straight to Ilum's orbit. The navigation of this route was so complex that a ship’s pilot needed to be at least sensitive to the Force, if not a fully trained Jedi Master, to even attempt it. In addition, all references to Ilum in official reports were quashed, and the world was even kept from local, sector­ wide, and galaxy star charts.

DARK LEGENDS: For thousands of years, the Jedi Order kept Ilum and its bounty secret and safe from harm. Generations of Jedi, from the greenest Padawans to the most ancient masters, traveled from all across the galaxy to search for crystals, study the planet and its connection to the Force, and enjoy the mental quiet of the uninhabited world. There is a nearly forgotten legend that speaks of a dark and violent time in the planet’s past, however. Ancient sources suggest that the Sith may have laid siege to the world, eventually taking possession of it for a time.

ENTWINED WITH THE JEDI: With Ilum secure, the exploration of the world and its con­nection to the Force was begun in earnest. Numerous settle ments were founded over the subsequent decades, typically near the sites of important scientific or Force-related dis­coveries. At places with a particularly powerful connection to the Force, the Jedi erected temples that served as train­ing centers or pilgrimage sites where members of the order could go to meditate and heal. In addition, thanks to the abundance of kyber crystals on the planet, the Jedi Council established a massive, baroque temple over the entrance to the largest and richest cavern complex the survey teams had discovered. Once it was completed, the council began sending Padawans to Ilum to harvest the crystal for their lightsaber and to undergo the important training rituals associated with lightsaber construction.

Countless Jedi over the millennia traveled there to build their first lightsaber or to find crystals to build new ones. Eventually, as other sources of kyber crystals were exhaust ed or became otherwise unavailable, Ilum became the Jedi’s sole source of these precious crystals. While the planet remained a place of great importance, the Jedi Council recalled those members who were living on Ilum and shuttered all their settlements and temples save for the main temple used for lightsaber construction. With the world’s inhabit­ants gone, its glaciers and ice sheets quickly consumed the Jedi settlements and research sites, burying them beneath dozens or hundreds of meters of ice. By the beginning of the Clone Wars, there were no permanent residents on Ilum, nor any real evidence that there ever had been, and the main temple stood empty, save for the occasional Jedi pilgrim there to find a new kyber crystal.

CRYSTAL CAVES: Home to perhaps the largest deposit of kyber crystals any­ where in the galaxy, Ilum’s crystal caves were said to be the Jedi’s most sacred place by none other than Jedi Master Yoda himself. Winding for countless kilometers through and beneath Ilum’s largest mountain range, the crystal caves were first explored in the ancient past. Within the labyrinth of corridors, shafts, tunnels, and chambers is a staggering wealth of the kyber crystals—mainly mephite and pontite— that make up the searing heart of every Jedi’s lightsaber. Within a few short years of the crystal caves’ discovery, the Jedi Order erected a temple over the entrance to protect the caverns from trespass and to provide shelter and train­ing facilities for visiting Jedi. The caves eventually became a pilgrimage destination for Jedi seeking crystals for new lightsabers and were incorporated into a Padawan coming-of-age ceremony called “the Gathering.”

The stone from which the crystal caves are carved is a smooth, black, basalt-like volcanic rock that absorbs light and is surprisingly easy to work with. The crystals themselves grow unimpeded from the walls and ceilings of the caverns and can occasionally be found littering the floors of corridors and chambers. In many places, the crystals can be removed from the surrounding stone by hand, and even the most stubborn, inaccessible crystal veins require only basic hand tools to excavate. It was this ease of excavation as much as the sheer quantity of crystal deposits that made the crystal caves so valuable to the Jedi.

Despite the millennia in which the Jedi lived and worked on Ilum and the planet’s importance to the order, surprisingly little of the crystal caves’ total area has been explored. Most of the known caverns lie within the boundaries of the temple’s training area, and those few charted areas outside of the temple’s footprint are a warren of dead-end caves, tunnels that turn in on themselves and either come to abrupt ends or plunge thousands of meters into dark cracks, and a confusion of chambers, side caves, and strange rock forma­tions. The sheer size of the cave complex is staggering, with some ancient survey records suggesting thousands or even tens of thousands of kilometers of tunnels and caves stretching deep into the bowels of the planet. In addition, the Force tends to have a distressingly disorienting effect on visitors to the caverns. So powerful is the presence of the Force in the crystal caves that it causes vivid hallucinations in even the most guarded mind. This has led many an explorer astray; countless Jedi have wandered into the uncharted portions of the crystal caves in pursuit of some phantom, never to be heard from again.

JEDI RUINS: The Jedi worked and lived on Ilum for almost as long as they existed as an order. While they never established cit­ies there—it was too remote, too hard to reach, and too sacred to the Jedi for that—they did build scattered small settlements, research stations, temples, observation posts, and other structures on and beneath the planet’s surface. These abandoned sites lie scattered all across Ilum in various states of ruin.

Some are still intact, seemingly awaiting the return of their inhabitants; others are little more than rubble. Most, however, have been buried deep beneath the shifting gla­ciers and massive, slow-moving ice sheets that cover most of Ilum’s surface. Nevertheless, a number of interesting sites can still be found here and there in sheltered mountain passes, at the bottoms of valleys, or within Ilum’s labyrinthine cave systems. One such ruin is the settlement at Holenesh Canyon.

HOLENESH CANYON: Located some five hundred kilometers from the main Jedi Temple at the mouth of the crystal caves, Holenesh Canyon is a deep, sheer-sided cleft in the planet’s surface over a ki­lometer deep that runs for roughly ten kilometers through one of Ilum's vast mountain ranges. The settlement, once home to around one hundred sentients, was built near the canyon’s end in the shadow of the mountain range’s highest peaks. It was established millennia ago to study a strange fluctuation in the Force that seemed to occur only once every few hundred years. Named for the Jedi who first record­ed the anomaly, this small, isolated outpost stood for cen­turies before being destroyed in an avalanche triggered by a massive groundquake coinciding with the reappearance of the Force anomaly. Many of the settlement’s inhabitants were killed as they slept, but some managed to escape with little more than the clothes on their backs or what they could grab in their flight. Further seismic disturbances, combined with freak storms, prevented the mounting of a proper rescue mission, and by the time the Jedi were able to return to the canyon, the settlement was completely covered in snow and countless tons of fallen stone.

In the millennia since the destruction of the settlement, parts of it have been exposed through erosion and seismic activity. While the buildings are barely recognizable as such, their contents were surprisingly well preserved. Thanks to the remoteness of the ruined settlement and the difficulty of reaching it, precious little has been removed from the site. Anyone possessing the skills and courage to excavate the site might unearth any number of ancient Jedi relics.

CREATURES AND CHALLENGES: Ilum's climate is exceptionally harsh. Its land and most of its surface water are locked away beneath glaciers and permanent sheets of ice. Temperatures, even in what are usually considered temperate or tropical zones on other worlds, can sink to dozens of degrees below freezing. These temperatures are typically accompanied by howling gales and blizzards full of driving snow and ice shards. Few creatures, and even fewer plants, live on Ilum. To survive in these brutal conditions, Ilum's creatures and plants are both extremely hardy and extremely dangerous.

ASHARL PANTHER [RIVAL]: Asharl panthers are one of the more common predators on Ilum. They are large, aggressive, territorial felines that make their homes in Ilum's high northern and southern latitudes. Adult asharl panthers average between two and three meters long and stand roughly one meter high at the shoulder. Their four powerful legs end in two-toed feet equipped with nonretractable claws. The creatures’ bodies are covered in dense, smooth fur in shades of white, gray, and blue that holds their body heat in to protect them from the cold and driving wind. They have broad, earless heads with pronounced brow ridges, and their faces are remark­ ably expressive, with short, blunt snouts and golden eyes. The most noticeable feature is a pair of long, tentacle-like sensory organs that grow from their shoulders. Asharl panthers live in small family groups and typically hunt in pairs or in groups of four.

BLISMAL [MINION]: Blismal are small, furry, inoffensive rodents who live in the tunnels and caverns deep beneath Ilum's surface. About the size of a grown human’s hand, blismal have four legs; sharp featured faces with small black eyes, round ears, and long snouts; and short, hairless tails. Their bodies are covered in thick, luxurious, silvery fur that keeps them warm and sheds water and dirt. They feed mostly on cave fungus and insects, and they are happy to be left alone in the dark to live out their lives.

Like the harmless snowfeathers, which live on the surface, blismal have few natural predators. This is largely due to their speed and cautious natures, although they do have a frighteningly effective defense mechanism. When frightened, blismal make a shrill, painful, and sustained shrieking noise to ward off attackers and call for assistance from other blis­mal. When three or more blismal join in, they create a howl loud enough to shatter crystals and cause cave-ins, an ability that Jedi experienced firsthand long ago. The Jedi attributed this ability to the blismal’s close connection to the Force, and were able to counter the effects of the shrieking by manipulating the Force around the creatures. In doing so, Jedi exploring Ilum's cavern system were able to capture blismal, which turned out to be relatively easy to domesticate.

GORGODON [RIVAL]: Gorgodons are, perhaps, the most famous creatures to live on frozen Ilum. They are massive, non-sentient, thick-skinned reptilian creatures with long, powerful arms, short legs, and an axe-shaped head. A thick, shaggy coat of dark gray fur covers them from their shoulders to their feet, leaving only their head, which is a sickly orange color, bare to the elements. Gorgodons are incredibly strong and can with­ stand almost any punishment. It is said that they can even shrug off blaster bolts. They are a dangerous combination of dumb, aggressive, and brutal, and are one of the few animals that attack for no good reason. When the Jedi first arrived on Ilum, the gorgodons were the creatures that gave them the most trouble. Throughout the Jedi Order, the name of this creature was used in threats and curses, such as “thick as a gorgodon” or “as angry as a gorgodon’s mother.”

RAZHAK [NEMESIS]: Among the most fearsome predators on Ilum, these massive creatures are as agile as they are deadly. Averaging around eight meters in length, razhak-are armored, segmented, wormlike creatures that propel themselves using rippling muscle ridges. Their bodies are broad and flat, covered with thick, chitinous plates in shades of white and blue. While they have no apparent eyes, their heads are topped with long, segmented antennae that serve as sensory organs. Their huge mouths feature multiple rows of serrated teeth.

Aggressive and solitary, razhak live in the endless tunnel systems beneath Ilum's surface. They are deceptively fast and, when they attack, they rear up like a serpent and at­ tempt to swallow prey whole. Anything they can’t eat in one bite they tear into pieces by grasping it in their mouth and shaking it violently. In addition to possessing great speed and a savage de­meanor, razhak also can generate intense heat strong enough to rapidly melt solid ice and cause serious burns to exposed flesh. This ability allows them to tunnel through ice as though it were soft sand. Razhak usually build their nests inside of ice walls or densely packed snow, typically leaving the nest only to eat or mate.

Thankfully, while they are terrifying to behold and extremely dangerous, razhak are also easily distracted and creatures of minimal intelligence. Keeping this in mind, a clever opponent can easily outflank them, lead them into traps, or make them lose interest in attacking altogether.

SNOWFEATHER [MINION]: Snowfeathers are small, clever, flightless birds native to Ilum. Their bodies are covered in a dense layer of oily, white feathers that protects them from Ilum's bone-chilling cold and vicious weather. Relatively harmless creatures, they live in nesting colonies built into ice shelves or cliff faces.

Despite their inoffensive nature and inability to fly, snowfeathers have few natural predators, for two reasons. First, their meat tastes terrible and is mildly poisonous, causing painful cramps, bloating, and loosening of the bowels in those unfortunate enough to eat them. Second, they have a connection to the Force that gives them the ability to project an illusion that makes them seem larger and more formidable than they really are. These characteristics have allowed them to survive and even thrive on an inhospitable planet full of savage creatures like gorgodons and asharl panthers.

[soonielo]

One more the little guys. this dude vibing hard. -

The dance enthralled by The Clown. Movement wild as a lover's heart, grace of the cradling sea. The price? A mind entombed in ancient ice.

So dance heartfelt and silly. You young thing have too much celebrate.

[elsewhereuniversity]

The crisp chilling air is calling, I can feel the soft chill of Winter sink into my bones. The air mists with every breath I take, as frost flakes on my glass. Archivist, I must ask, is Winter a cruel being to serve or should I sink deeper into the cold embrace of ice and snow?

The Winter Court is patient, and hungry, and has a long, long memory. It is the brightest of the courts, days too dazzling-blinding for human eyes, nights luminescent with snowglow and aurora. You may find fires, and mulled wine, and singing - but they are all initiated by mortal guests and only tolerated for the comfort of the same. The court's oldest denizens are silent and predator-slow, colorless except for the borrowed color of the light around them, and more often than not they do not speak at all, but howl like the north wind.

The Court's heart, where the ruler lies entombed, is circled by a ring of pitted blue ice columns. Beyond that is the second ring, formed of black basalt pillars. The third and outer ring is ancient, wind-scoured pines. And beyond that is the night unending, the howling, starving dark.

It is not cruel, but it is unforgiving. To bow your back to the Winter Court will pare away all the extravagances and luxuries of kinder times; you will emerge changed, and hungry, and everlasting. Winter endures.

[socially-awkward-skeleton]

tagged by @trench-rot thank you <3

Spicy NSFW snippet below from the vampire!au (if you want to join that tag list opt in here)

banner by @/cafekitsune

warnings for: p in v sex, blood, Rory getting to be just a little dominant (as a treat)

Goddamn tired. He’d been awake for nearly 36 hours straight, finally given a chance to rest after prepping for another mission. The briefings had become the least of his worries, the same old-same old, but still every possible scenario circled his thoughts like he was a bloody clown with spinning plates on sticks, making sure not a single one fell on his watch. Laying back in his bed, Price released a long, burdened exhale up towards the ceiling. Staring at the boring beige paint that was military standard as if he had expected it to change, running his hands back and forth through his hair. Thoughts of pouring himself a drink or perhaps lighting up a cigar for a little stress relief sparked behind his eyes.

And then the door to his quarters creaked open —

It was the silence of the night, the others long since turned in, and while everyone else on base should have been sleeping, he realized he wasn’t entirely alone. 

She appeared like an apparition. The door closing shut behind her with the flick of her delicate wrist, the lock clicking just as he gulped down a heavy swallow, his saliva thick in his throat, his tongue feeling sizes too large for his mouth. 

His heart thundered in his chest, pounding in his ears, silencing any of his previous worries. White noise blanketed the gray matter. A haze as thick as fog blurred his vision, tunneling it until all he saw was her – everything else was just background noise. Non-existent. 

Her lithe form crawled up from the foot of the bed. The mattress creaked, bending to her weight, and his stomach dropped as something feral coiled inside him. Survival instinct. Fight or flight. Nerves fired, synapses screamed every red flag and siren and they died away before his body was even given a chance to react. Years of experience, training, battle readiness, all made into myth as big, beautiful hazel doe-eyes locked onto him from under long, dark lashes – the gleam of a predator within them. Hunger. A starving beast. Stalking towards him with the sleek sway of a panther. Slithering up the bed, an adder – deadly, dangerous. Intoxicating. His breath came in short and heavy. Sitting up against his pillows, his whole body felt like it had been entombed in earth, muscles unable to move without the use of brute force, and he’d been made docile under that singular stare, crushing him beneath it. His chest compressed, suffocating, squeezed tight until it hurt just to breathe. Pale, slender fingers stretched out, and with the reaper’s touch, they pushed him down onto the mattress, forcing him down. His struggle, entirely futile under her feather-lite touch. The strength of a two tonne tank contained in her fingertips and total control slipped through his fingers the way the fibers of the sheets within his fists did. A shuddered breath tumbling over his lips before he sucked it back in through gritted teeth with a labored hiss. Frozen hands traveled down arms that could toss a man over his shoulder or throw them over a barrier wall, and he’d never felt so unbearably pathetic. Held captive, imprisoned in his own bed like a child who’d woken from a terrible nightmare and didn’t even have the strength to scream. Soft palms drifted along his limbs, marble-smooth, stone-cold. Shivers slid down his spine, fractals of ice freezing the blood, spreading through his veins and making each pump of the work-horse muscle in his chest painful. Fingers slipped around his wrists, manacles that made his own digits lock like the blistering wind of a frozen tundra had chewed its way through his gloves and began to gnaw at the skin below. His jaw clenched, heels digging into the mattress in some feeble attempt to break free from her hold as she settled herself on his lap, straddling him, milky-white thighs trapping him between them and each desperate attempt to flee only caused the blanket covering him to slip further down his hips, revealing the dark curls that bordered the root of his cock. He bit his lip, chewing on the flesh as his hips bucked, groaning, deep and low from the back of his throat. “Christ, Ror. Please, darlin’...”

“Please what?” She purred, leaning towards him, her mouth inches away from his. Testing him, toying with him. Her soft breath ghosted over his lips like a cool breeze in summer, chilling the heat that simmered beneath his flesh, sending yet another shiver coursing through him as the sweat that began to slick his skin and dampen the hair on his body was wicked away by her frozen touch rather than the evaporation of body heat. The soft swells of her breasts pressed against him, but there was no heartbeat there, the cavity may as well have been hollow below. It didn’t rise or fall either, her lungs lying as still as the grave. “Fuck, woman, can’t just come in here and tease me like this,” he gruffed, teeth gritting together, brow furrowed. With each lift of his pelvis, he would grind against her, stroking his thick length against her velvety soft folds, and despite the icy temperature of her flesh he still hardened to the stiffness of a glacier in return. She giggled and it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard – it was bloody torture. He was more worked up than usual, desperate and aching after days without rest, and she was playing him with the gall of a cat whose claws had managed to curl themselves around the tail of a rat. Lifting his arms above his head, manipulating and maneuvering him like he was a fucking posable doll, she pinned his hands above his head and brushed the tip of her nose against his, paying extra attention to the little mole that sat there. “Gonna get you back for this, sweetheart. Mark my words.” Her hum in response vibrated through his skin and rattled his chest. “Promises, promises.” That sweet voice of hers melting his urge to flip her over and take the upper hand, conquering her gorgeous body – not that he could if he would, she was much too strong for that now.

Growling, his eyes narrowed at her, the piercing blue stare holding her dead to rights. “You’re bloody cruel.” “Oh, shut it,” she said with that goddamn smirk of hers curling her mouth and awakening her angelic dimples. 

The nip at his lower lip, her pearly white fangs pricking against him, caused another groan as his hips rolled towards her. Trying – and failing – once more to lift his arms from beneath her grasp. “So impatient, my darling. Think I never get you off with the way you’re acting.” Brows knitting together, he looked up from beneath them with a darkened expression. His mouth scrunching in frustration, his square jaw cut with sharp edges as he lifted his chin defiantly and a low rumble built like rolling thunder in the distance. “Do not give me that look,” she scolded him, “You’re the one who asks for these bloody games, love.”

His brow cocked and a short huff fluttered the dark waves that framed her face. Much too fucking pretty a face. “Am I not allowed to indulge in a little fantasy, my girl? How many men get to say their lady is a bloody vampire? Doesn’t mean I want to be left in the cold though, Ror. Driving me mad here.”

“Party pooper,” she muttered before capturing his mouth in a deep kiss. Each press of her lips to his seemed to last forever, languid and slow, as sensual and seductive as the very aura that surrounded her since being turned several years back.

Her lips, like the cool side of the pillow, were refreshing, invigorating. The taste of her was sweet, the spoonful of sugar that made the shitshow of life go down a little easier. Grunting as he shifted beneath her, her hardened nipples brushing over his chest and she whined into his mouth.

“Sweetheart…” He hated to plead, hated how weak it made him sound, hated giving anyone that sort of power over him but Christ, if she couldn’t pull every little whimper and moan from him like it was second nature to her. “Oh, my darling,” she cooed, pulling away, her lips glistening with the sheen of his saliva upon them. “You really must be suffering.”

He’d give anything to break free, to run his hands up and down the smooth curves of her waist and over the round of her hips, squeezing her firm little arse cheeks in his rough palms. To be able to grip her tight and drive her back and forth on his shaft, directing her, watching pleasure wrack her body, making her moan the way only he could; but instead, he was stuck there like a bug pinned under the glass in some hobbyist’s collection. 

Her hands squeezed around his wrists a little tighter, constricting the blood flow, the flesh growing hot and red below as his life’s essence pooled in place. Closing her eyes, she sat there silently, unmoving – like a corpse. She used to only be able to read him by memorizing his tics and tells, perceptive in her approach to dealing with him. Now, she could hear his heartbeat, the change in his breath, smell his sweat, feel the blood pump in his veins through his very skin. It had been an unnerving development at first, the woman he loved becoming an undead lie detector with blood-sucking instincts. “Rory,” he husked her name, a quiet whisper traveling in the space between them. Her full lips curled into a half grin and she gazed down at him, her eyes warm and brimming with life despite her circumstances. “You really want your hands free, don’t you?”

Price nodded, jaw tense, his throat bobbing as the pulse point in his neck hammered so hard it nearly strangled him. “Can only take not touchin’ you for so long, darlin’.”

Pulling her hands away, she sat back, her back arching in a gentle curve as she leaned away from him. The entire swath of her silky flesh available to him to roam his callused hands against, appreciating every inch to his heart’s content. Sitting up, moving with the reflexes that made him so dangerous in the field, he wrapped his arms around her, gripping her tight and pulling her against his chest. “Lift up, sweetheart,” he ordered, slipping a hand between her legs and teasing the entrance to her core with the head of his cock. As she lowered onto him, his breath hitched. Taking all of him, every last inch, they groaned in unison. “Fucking hell, love,” he purred in her ear as her hips started to roll against him, her slick coating his shaft as tight walls clenched against him. His eyes fluttered shut and his head rolled back, exposing the flesh of his neck, releasing an inaudible moan. One arm coiled around her waist, pressing her body to his, as the other slid up her back, his hand delving into the strands of her hair, bunching it up in a fistful. Straining to maintain clarity of thought, his whole body stiffened, his tendons all standing in stark relief.  

She gripped his shoulders, snaking her arms around the back of his neck. Her body rocking against his. Hips grinding, rotating. He was faced with Heaven on Earth while buried deep inside her. Price nuzzled in against her neck, breathing in the decadent scent of her perfume – sultry, heady, unfathomably deep. His mouth trailed along the smooth column, laving his tongue over the cool flesh as his beard rasped against her. 

“So damn beautiful,” he mumbled, lost in the feel of her undulating, of being inside her. Trapped in a daze of passion, a dark paradise with a woman cursed with everlasting life so long as she had a constant food source, he was lost in the sensation of reaching the precipice she was leading him towards in her thrall. Losing track of time and space, her soft lips grazed against his artery and the barely there touch of pillowy flesh pulled him back into reality. 

With his jaw cupped in her hand, holding him in place, her thumb brushed softly through the whiskers of his beard and the stubble of the five o'clock shadow on his neck and jaw. The quiet hiss of her parting lips was the only warning he received before the tip of her tongue flickered out tasting the beat of his heart. Fangs descending against his skin, she dragged them gently and pierced the flesh with all the pain of the prick of a needle. Gasping, he gulped air like he was drowning. The pinch of her bite soothed by her plump lips wrapping around the wound and sucking on the flesh, drawing out more of his blood that bubbled to the surface.

The hushed slurp of her open mouth wrapped around him reminded him of biting into a ripe peach in summer and the juice that ran down the chin with it. Succulent, sweet. And as her hand caressed his jaw, gentle and tender, coaxing him deeper into her maw, he was sure that was how her brain had learned to rewire itself with her change so she could stomach what she was forced to do for sustenance.

His fingers dug into her, searching for but never finding any source of heat while warm blood trickled down the contour of his neck and over his barrel chest, pooling where their bodies met as she continued to drink. The suctioned sensation was just enough to keep him from falling over the edge, maintaining at least a portion of lucid thought before the lightheadedness started to creep into the corners of the little world they had created together. “Rory,” he murmured, knotting her hair in his fist as he tried to pull her mouth away. It didn’t take much for her to get the hint, panting as she tore herself away from her source of fresh blood, drips of it curling down her chin from the corners of her mouth. “Sorry, love,” she breathed, her tongue darting out to clean her lips as she wiped the traces of claret from her face with her hand. “‘S okay,” he rumbled before pulling her in for a kiss, tasting himself on her tongue. 

He redoubled his efforts to reach his climax and hers, the metallic tang lingering in the air and in his mouth, clinging to his gums and inside his flared nostrils with each heaved breath. 

NSFW taglist: @roofgeese @efingart @josephseedismyfather @g0dspeeed @cloudofbutterflies92

@imogenkol @inafieldofdaisies @raresvtm @evvie-a @clicheantagonist

@rc-dragons @la-grosse-patate @direwombat @statichvm @cassietrn

@lady-eudaemonia @voidika @strangefable @simplegenius042 @writeforfandoms

@elligatorrex

[microraptorreactor]

No shade at Devsis (for this, specifically) but seriously there are a lot of characters in this game who are a) female, b) have a relationship with another woman that is VERY easy to interpret as queer, and c) are deeply traumatized. Don't get me wrong I love 5/6 of these character's episodes (I only dislike Ice Queen's because Icicle Yetti's voice got really grating on me very quickly) but is everything good at Devsis?

(explanations for my non-cookie run moots under the cut. Cookie Run lore is wild, y'all.)

from top to bottom, left to right.

Frost Queen is a god of frost who froze to death in the arms of her 'best friend' in a past life. She goes on to use blizzards to balance out life and death. (I think. I watched a breakdown and some cutscenes. in order to get this information you have to play an hour with the most annoying cookie available)(I do not like Icicle Yeti)

Moonlight Cookie was created to observe the dreams of mortals/watch over the city of wizards. She has a close relationship with the god of the ocean but can't leave the city to kiss her girl. Eventually, all the wizards leave the city and Moonlight is left to watch over it on her own.

Black Pearl Cookie was a gem mermaid who had a close relationship with a 'maid', Frilled Jellyfish Cookie (second from the right on the bottom row). She is bisexual however, and falls for the worst possible man after running away from home because she didn't get magic powers during the sea magic ceremony thing. The dude steals her kingdom's magic pearl (or maybe he gives it to her? I don't remember the specifics) which starts a war and kinda just fucks everything up. Black Pearl goes to Sea Fairy for help, but Sea Fairy starts a space program instead of helping so Black Pearl turns emo. Also, Frilled Jellyfish dies due to the war. (I said Cookie Run lore was wild)

Sea Fairy Cookie is really down bad for Moonlight Cookie and (unintentionally) makes it everyone's problem. She ignores the sea cookies while they are actively fucking dying and sorta just sits around for the entire plot. She is one of my favorite characters. Like go off girl make your lesbian pining an actual threat to everyone's safety.

Frilled Jellyfish Cookie has been mentioned already but she's just the sweetest little thing. She just wants to see BP happy, man. She does everything in her power to try to console BP and it just gets her killed in the end. Her dying words are her telling BP to leave her and get to safety, and that she will be fine. BP should have just kissed the jellyfish girl why'd she have to fuck around with Oyster :(

Golden Cheese Cookie. She's my favorite character. So for the sapphic part, she's weirdly flirty with Black Rasine Cookie (another desert-themed cookie with bird motifs) and I'm team 'the ancient heroes were poly' so if you ask me she was smooching White Lily and Hollyberry at some point in the past. For the tragic part, here's one of the wildest backstories this game has! Basically, GCC founded and ruled the Golden Cheese Kingdom, which I'm gonna call Cheeseypt because that's what it is. Cheeseypt is a relatively secluded kingdom, mostly interacting with the wider world through trading. At one point, Golden Cheese leaves her kingdom to fight in the Dark Flour War alongside the other Ancient Heros. What happens while she's out? Dark ENchantress (who happens to be GC's ex-close-friend) FUCKING NUKES ALL OF CHEESEYPT. Not even a 'oh they had to flee and they are still rebuilding :(' no ALL OF GOLDEN CHEESE'S FRIENDS ARE DEAD. Consumed by grief, because you know, everyone she loves is dead, GC buries them all under the kingdom and connects their souls to a digital city before entombing herself with them. She tunes the digital city so that everyone's wishes are granted, and all her citizens live lives of comfort and wealth because, for as much as she values her gold, her real treasure is her friends.

I would stop it here but the way the game ends GC's ark is also just fucking insane? so one of her close friends betrays her (for good reason tbh) and destabilizes the entire city. Faced with leaving everyone she loves behind, GC breaks down because there's nothing for her in the real world. Black Raisen cookie comforts her but explains that this eternal dream is going to end someday anyway. So what does GC do? She explains to her citizens that it'll feel like falling asleep, and shuts down digital Cheeseypt. The characters we met in Cheeseypt don't come back, by the way. There's no loophole. They are just possibly dead for real. (or definitely dead in Burnt and Cheesenburg's cases.)

[aurelion-solar]

Legends of Runeterra: Coven Spells

Coven Ahri's Charm

Coven LeBlanc's Mirror Image

Coven Lissandra's Ice Shard & Entomb

Coven Ashe's Crystal Arrow & Flash Freeze

Coven Evelynn's Last Caress

Coven Morgana's Dark Binding & Soul Shackles

Old God Malphite's Unstoppable Force, Ground Slam & Rockslide

[silentmoth345]

Entombed in Ice

[iamthecomet]

Okay. Headcanons. Bear with me (I'm really high ily)

(COMING BACK FROM THE FUTURE TO SAY THIS GETS TURNED INTO OMEGA ANGST IDK LMAO))))

Ghouls.

What are they? In this essay,

I hc them as lower-level service creatures when they're Below more than anything else, at least the ones contracted to the family Emeritus. As such, they have no elemental alignment when they're down there. They have more of a...passive compatability, let's say, with every element. Their main alignment is assigned upon summoning. (Multi/hybrid ghouls are a lot more common than a lot of people think, but majority of them can only truly channel one of their elements.) Because of this, no Papa is ever quite sure what he's going to get when he summons a new ghoul.

Except, of course, for his very first summoning.

Every Papa, from the beginning, has first summoned a quintessence ghoul. They act as a metaphysical link between realms, Above and Below. A direct line of communication to Lucifer's court itself, so their Dark Lord can check in and make sure his Word is being spread.

In my head, the breakdown is (summoner->ghoul):

Nihil->Special

Primo->Omega

Secondo->Aether

Terzo->Cowbell

Copia->Aeon

The quintessence ghouls are deeply connected to their summoners, tend to attach themselves at the hip to their respective Papa for the first few months of their time Above. Even when power shifts - like when Omega started reporting to Secondo instead of Primo, or when Aether took over in the middle of all the upheaval - they remain close and loyal to their summoning Papa. Always reporting back with news of goings-on around the abbey, even long after their bodies are entombed.

Omega is, perhaps, the biggest exception to that rule.

When Primo was alive they would eat lunch together every day. Since his death, though, Omega has only been back to see him...well, not enough times, he's sure. Not that the old man is alone, Omega has seen Mountain visit him on a regular basis, but he really should be better about it.

Because look, it's not like Omega had planned to have Terzo get all smitten with him. Being the right hand of the eldest brother Emeritus had come with exposure to the family, though, and Omega knew from the moment he saw Cardinal Terzo that he was done for. It had taken exactly one midnight mass for Terzo to corner him in a confessional booth, to taste sin and humanity on his lips, and, well, that was that.

So, every evening, he visits Terzo in his black marble mausoleum. Accented in gold and rich purple, lit by eternal candlelight courtesy of the fire ghouls. He tells him about his day, reads a book out loud, or sometimes sings. Just breathes a little life into the space. Just for an hour or two, after his shift in the infirmary. He used to stay longer, but he's so tired these days.

He knows why. Knows why there's new streaks of white in his jet black hair, and why his horns are starting to crack. He can feel it in his bones, his vessel starting to give. He's seen it before, of course. Many ghouls before him have passed like this. It just feels too soon, like he should have more time.

Some part of him, though, feels grateful. Especially when he visits Terzo. When he can lay a hand on that glass casket and imagine he's touching his face instead.

Omega knows that he's down there, Below. He's known it for years, since the day Special shoved that needle into his throat. He felt it in his chest, like a little ball of ice caught between the valves of his heart. He knows he's down there, knows he's waiting - or perhaps that's more of a hope - for Omega to join him again. The family Emeritus is well cared for downstairs, kept happy. Omega still gets regular status reports long after Aether and Aeon come to be, and selfishly he hopes that will earn him some sway. That it won't have to be a fight to see Terzo's handsome face again, his sparkling eyes and cheesy grin. That all it'll take is a few choice words for Omega to have him again.

He supposes he'll find out soon enough.

.........anyway this was supposed to be about why I think the ghouls should be able to have sick magickal powers but HAVE THAT I GUESS

MIASMA. MIASMA I LOVE YOU AND YOUR BRAIN. I'm not going to add anything to this because it is beautiful and sad and you all just need to read and appreciate it as it is because AHHHHHHH and WAHHHHHH. Oh, Omega. I'M SO GLAD YOU SHARED THIS WITH ME. but also yes, ghouls should be able to have SICK MAGICKAL POWERS.

[familyabolisher]

do you have any favorite quotes or passages from the locked tomb series?

mmm i don’t really think about prose in terms of “quotes” (not trying to sound like a snob i just find it difficult to make value judgments about a piece of writing when it’s isolated from its broader context!) but i think some of my fav bits of prose in the series are:

like, the whole of john 1:20, but especially the creation of alecto—’from my blood and bone and vomit i conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in, i was terrified you’d find some way to escape before i was done,’ ‘adam and eve, galatea, barbie, frankenstein’s monster with long yellow hair,’ ‘i hid you in me i hid me in you’ etc. just a really really good sequence lmao.

the couple of parts of the john chapters where tm drops the monologuing conceit to have john & harrowlecto do some like rapid-fire dialogue (‘“[...] i couldn’t do a damned thing” / “so what did you do” / “a damned thing, didn’t i” / “i still love you” / “you always say that, harrowhark”’; ‘“do you remember what you said to me once i had done it? when we stood here together? / “yes” / “you said, i picked you to change and this is how you repay me?” / “what else did i say?” / “you said, what have you done to me? i am a hideousness” / “what else did i say?” / “where did you put the people? where did they go?” / “i still love you” / “you said that too”’) are really good.

the final few pages of nona before the epilogue where alecto’s memories start bleeding through into the present-day action (and the splicing of kiriona killing crux with the entry into the tomb + alecto’s memories of entombment … Screaming and throwing up) have some good turns of phrase—’the scrap of black-eyed meat had asked for it—the chain of a kiss: the ice that burnt the flesh of the mouth that had stuck to the mouth that was frozen. the teardrop on the hand. the hand that john had fashioned.’; ‘most human voices sounded alike, after all. they were not beautiful. the waters parted for her and it became possible to walk, crunching through the bones at the bottom. the bones at the bottom; what did they make her think of?’ ‘the terrible face with the terrible arms and legs and the terrible middle part, the terrible hair, and the terrible ears: the nose too short, the ears too brief. [...] her own edge had been pushed out, her swinging edge, her toy.’ walking a VERY fine line between lyrical and overwritten and actually landing it. 

really fond of varun the eater and nonalecto’s exchanges—’green thing, green-and-breathing thing, big ghost, the drinker, transformed, what will you eat now? where will your body go? what did he do to you to make you this way? [...] they are coming out of their tower, salt thing. i will pull their teeth. i will make it blank for you.’ REALLY goes. ‘what did he do to you to make you this way’ immediately after asking nona if she ‘loves’ and nona saying ‘ i don’t know what it means, did i ever know what it meant?’ and ‘john loves alecto, john needs alecto’ as the thing that forces alecto’s ‘return’ of sorts … every day i get emails

‘the shimmering white figure of the dead kiriona gaia’ is a very satisfying turn of phrase. i am fond of it

nona epigraph poem (‘you told me sleep, i’ll wake you in the morning / i asked what is morning and you said / when everyone who fucked with me is dead’ etc)

some of the language used in gideon to describe canaan house sets off my little fictional house sensibilities so bad. ‘castle that had been killed,’ ‘the look of a picked-at body [...] a beautiful corpse,’ ‘abandoned and breathlessly waited to be used by someone other than time.’ horrid horrid house i love her so much.

arm scene, obviously. incidentally—and this is present throughout harrow but i think i notice it more in scenes like the arm scene—i really enjoy how much harrow moreso than the other two is written in a voice similar to that of lolita, wherein you have a protagonist with an incredibly affected pretension which the narration pokes fun at them for but which also enables a kind of indulgence in pretension even whilst painting it as such. anyway—'an exquisite conglomeration of bone beneath skin and meat, pocketed in the middle with soft treasures of parenchyma and muscle [...] you were able to see her skeleton as though she had shyly undressed herself for you, as though in the orange hues of the daytime light she’d sloughed capillaries and glands off the budding rose of her scapula’; ‘prayed for a woman you loved to assist you in disrobing a woman you did not’ (insane line sorry); ‘the lovely cup of the radius, the forked embrace of the ulna.’ cowards will call it overwritten but not ME i love sex scenes

& finally, the descriptions of alecto in harrow (which, incidentally—something to be said for the text of harrow referring to alecto predominantly as the Body and the text of nona referring to kiriona pretty heavily as the corpse prince—anyway) but especially the ‘that night the body consented to embrace you’ bit spliced in with john bringing up annabel fucking lee for the first time. deranged.

[veshialles]

Mass Effect 5 teasers: These dead Reapers have been sitting entombed in ice for long enough to become part of the landscape. Liara, notable member of a species known to live for a thousand years, is old enough that she has wrinkles now. This new scouting ship seems to share influences from multiple species design philosophies. Human civilization (or at least a group within it) is heavily implied to have advanced enough to illegally build its own mass relays. Readable distress signals are being received from the Andromeda galaxy (probably received through the quantum entanglement comm buoys the arks were leaving behind during their voyage). This new N7 Armor variant looks even sleeker and more futuristic than anything we've seen before. There is a hidden Angara man and a Geth platform wearing clothes in this poster

Mass Effect fans still for some fucking reason: omg does the N7 means that Commander Shepard could still be alive?? 🤯🤯🤯

[pumpkinmagekupo]

Day 14: Serpentine

Mizuki had battled several serpentine creatures throughout her adventures and none of them were pleasant. As she started up at the wall of ice that entombed Valigarmanda, she couldn’t help but think: why do I have a bad feeling about this.

And her bad feelings were seldom wrong. 

Valigarmanda was freed and twas up to the ever valiant hero to thwart the beast. She’d be lying if she said it was easy and she wasn’t completely and utterly exhausted.

The Yok Huy sang their praises of having defeated the ‘Skyruin’ Mizuki smiled whilst trying to fix her hat whilst nursing several wounds. What she wanted to say was: I would rather have not fought a huge winged serpent with mastery over many elements and the tenacity of those bees… 

But that monstrous serpent was felled and it was no doubt going to become another addition to the long list of achievements attached to her existence.

prompt list