#eureka gear

[hanajimasama]

☄️A side by side ☄️ it’s not super accurate but I used more patterned fabric for the black pieces and I had to use a hat because mages should have hats: facts.

Using one of my most used weapon in game.

Next one will be Vanguard Anemos which is one of my favourites.

[pumpkinmagekupo]

Mor Dhona was rich in pockets of strange aether. Tapping into those wells of Aether were not advised but Mizuki was curious if she could tap into those wells and harness it.

She had studied aether enough...and to understand the potential side effects. One of the main ones: it could trigger an explosion.

But what is knowledge without a little risk. Mizuki had made sure there was nobody too close to where she was.

If she could harness it or potentially trap the aether into small crystals. She would never have to worry about running out of aether in more dangerous battles: not that she depleted her aether that often, her well of aether was deep.

It would be beneficial for people like Thancred who was unable to use magick anymore. He could use the stored aether to enchant his own bullets. So it wasn't just her that it would help.

So far no explosions. Though it would only take one misstep for it to all go horribly wrong.

Thankfully Y'shtola wasn't in the area or she would notice the change in the flow of aether and Mizuki would be scolded for attempting something so dangerous. Not that Y'shtola could talk about 'safety' after quite literally throwing herself into the aetheric sea.

[rudletoodle]

Doodles…

[lady-harrowhark]

Top 5 anime/mangas, fma doesn't count. go

I love that we all know FMA is in a league of its own.

Anyway, top five non-FMA anime in no particular order:

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Ouran High School Host Club

Anohana (full title is Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai if we want to get fancy)

Eureka Seven

This is cheating but I love them equally so I'm putting two into one slot in part because they are similar in some sort of Quality that I can't describe so I often think of them as a pair despite their differences: Toradora! and Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

[mariyekos]

One day I want to write an AU where Dante and Vergil were actually born a few hundred/thousand years pre-story, which is something Dante tries to hide while Vergil doesn't. I have 2 main ideas for it- DMC1/3 Fusion AU and DMC4 AU. These got long, so I'm putting them under the cut!

In the DMC1 AU, it'd be sort of like a combination of the anime, DMC3, and what you see in DMC1. Dante'd look like he's in his late 20s for this one. He and Lady would meet because they've both been hired for the same job, then encounter each other on some odd jobs before they end up working together on a big one. Maybe Arkham killed Kalina Ann when Lady was a teenager, but didn't manage to enact the rest of his plans right away so Lady's been chasing him for a decade, hunting demons in hopes of finding a lead. Dante meanwhile just likes the human world, so he goes from place to place hunting demons until it gets too suspicious he's not aging and he has to leave. This AU'd have branching paths at the big job they take take together: the Temen-ni-gru or Mallet Island. In both cases Dante and Vergil haven't spoken for a while. Vergil's gone silent for years or even a decade or two in the past, but he'll have a bad feeling about this particular silence (for good reason).

The main difference between the two would be who Arkham allies with. In both cases, Lady isn't aware of how old Dante is, or just *who* he is until partway through. She knows he's part demon, but with the way he acts she assumes he's actually in his late twenties and the kid of a demon that was probably fairly powerful, but unknown. But the truth would come out partway through, which...would maybe change things, maybe not. It would be a shock regardless.

Back to the branches though, in Mallet you could go with the plot where Arkham is trying to revive Mundus, so Dante intervenes. This one would have a Nelo Angelo bit (making Dante feel terrible because he'd just allowed Mundus to do whatever he wanted with Vergil for who knows how long, all because he hadn't bofhered to check up on his unusually silent brother). I might have a sort of B-plot involving Lady, Arkham, and Trish to accompany the Dante, Mundus, and Vergil angle.

With the Temen-ni-gru, it would be your classic Arkham+Vergil relationship, but with a much older Vergil he wouldn't be tricked by Arkham this time. Arkham would think he has Vergil in the palm of his hand until he clearly doesn't and Vergil deals a fatal blow as soon as Arkham pulls off his betrayal. I think Lady would be pissed Vergil stole her kill, but ultimately have to back down for the Dante vs Vergil fight because with that many extra years under their belts, she'd be no match. Seeing them would be an interesting contrast though, because Vergil so clearly clings to the past (he'd be in a more Renaissance style than Dante) while Dante's all about the present and human world. This one...I think would be harder to resolve than the other one, because I'm not sure how Dante would convince someone so set in his ways (again, hundreds of years old at a minimum) to change, but it could be fun to play with.

As for the DMC4 AU, this one would be a case where Nero is still a teenager, and Dante's really surprised because oh boy, who in the *world* managed to convince Vergil to sleep with them when he'd been so uptight for centuries? And Dante's excited to have a family member and can't help but mess with them.

I think in this one it might also be fun if Fortuna was aware that Sparda had children because then you'd have a case where people potentially worship said children, whether or not they realize it's Dante. Maybe Vergil ruled Fortuna for a little while after Sparda left and that meant people knew he existed. Dante hadn't been aware he'd apparently come back, but Nero's proof enough so he's really going to have to have a talk with Vergil the next time he returns from his travels. I'm not set on whether the people of Fortuna would know that Sparda had twins, or if they'd just know about Vergil and thus be in denial that Dante could possibly be the son of Sparda because he's *so* different. In either case eventually people (or at least Nero and Kyrie) would have to reconcile Dante with the figure they'd been worshipping and that would be hard (and for Dante, hilarious). I think in this one I might make Lady part of a bloodline that has fought alongside Sparda since he split the Human and Demon worlds, sort of like the Castlevania series with Alucard and the Belmonts, while Trish would be someone Dante recruited a few decades to centuries ago (importantly, she's younger than him).

In this one I think part of the driving force would be that Dante wants humanity to be able to protect itself/prove its worth, or for Nero to protect them/prove his worth, because if they/Nero don't then Dante's worried Vergil might instead deem humanity a scourge and do something bad.

The plot of DMC4 revolves around humans using demons to fuel their own power, and in this case I think Dante will have found out about what Fortuna was doing too late to erase what they've done, so it's a case where humans need to prove that there are more good humans than bad humans so Vergil doesn't slam down the hammer. Dante can encourage them in the right direction, but he can't carry them the whole way. If he does then Vergil will deem his interference proof of humanity's weakness and do...Dante isn't totally sure what, but he doesn't like how Vergil's been the past few decades and he's increasingly been feeling like Vergil might decide he's had enough of the human world and side with the members of the demon world Dante *knows* have been slipping through the border to speak to Vergil. And while Dante doesn't think he'd *lose* to Vergil, the battle would lead to immense destruction and would weaken them enough that Dante's fairly sure Mundus or some other demon would take advantage of the chance to invade the human world while they're in no state to defend it.

...Anyway! That's two/three ideas for first that I will...maybe get to, one day, once I finish the million other fic ideas I have. I just really like the concept of "totally goofy guy is actually super old" or "frustratingly unserious guy is actually one of the guys you grew up worshipping, somehow." I think there's a lot of room for fun there.

[coconut530]

Bump in the Night Day 15: Creaking Floorboards

[duisarcusxiv]

so so so pleased to have the orthos katana it matches his glam so well

[roguelioness]

every time I log into ffxiv with the intention of taking pics of Aly's glams I end up getting distracted by other things 😂

[impossible-rat-babies]

the peanut brain strikes again of “not everyone has done that much stuff in this game dipshit”

[official-nephew]

Finally made it to Shadowbringers.

give me the serpent

[astrxealis]

shadowkeeper mount got me thinking about cylva again

[tempestarrowhead]

[pumpkinmagekupo]

A 'what if' Mizuki ignored Hydaelyn's call. She remained in Sharlayan a little longer after her graduation before a position opened to return to the Great Gubal Library and become it's caretaker.

Mizuki jumped at the change even though her professors told her she was a little overqualified but she submitted her application and was chosen for the task.

It was news for her master, something productive for her to do. and it got her out the way. Camélia quickly forgot Mizuki was even there to begin with.

Mizuki got to read book all day and practise forbidden magicks without watching eyes.

Still she supresses the weird voice in her head. The affairs of the outside don't concern her much and she rarely goes outside anyway.

"I wonder what that voice is? I've never read about anything like this.. Maybe it will just go away..." she hummed.

[anim-ttrpgs]

A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club: Triangle Ageny

We are gearing up to play Triangle Agency in the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club! If you have ever wanted to check out Triangle Agency but haven't had the time or a group to do it with, join our book club! Signups are running from now until September 30th. Target date for the first session is around October 17th, 2024, but scheduling is super flexible, and also you don't have to buy the game to join, even though we encourage you to support the developers (we have made them an estimated $180 in sales already at the time of writing this)

If you want to support us and our mission to save the TTRPG hobby from total monopoly domination, you can join the book club through the link above even if you aren't signing up to play, you can support us on patreon, buy (or just freely download) the beta of our debute TTRPG Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, or just send us a tip on ko-fi!

[yvesdot]

80+ PROTESTERS VIOLENTLY ARRESTED AT UCSC

PROTESTERS ARE ASKING ALUMNI TO PARTICIPATE IN AN EMAIL ZAP: bit.ly/zap-ucsc

& FOR EVERYONE TO DONATE TO THEIR BAIL FUND: (Venmo) pizza_party_1312

[ID: UCSC students waving Palestinian flags and holding protest signs at the base of campus. /ID]

Longer write-up based on personal knowledge, news articles, and multiple direct sources below.

****

For roughly a month, UCSC administrators, including chancellor Cynthia Larive, have been essentially politely asking protesters at the pro-Palestine encampment to "voluntarily disband." I was told personally by members of the encampment that among the demands they were given by the administration, two were 1) to guarantee Larive's safety, in part by not allowing any calls for violence against her, and 2) not to use images of her to make memes. "They specifically said memes," said the protester I spoke to. Additionally, protesters were told the use of the word "genocide" in a public statement by UCSC admin was "off the table."

The consensus among organizers appeared to be that Larive was vainly hoping to "wait [them] out," knowing she was in a no-win scenario: call the police and risk looking evil, or let the encampment stay and risk looking toothless. (It was clear which side she leaned towards.) Additionally, @kiegotakami mentioned hearing from a source at the department that "none of the local cops want the public scrutiny nor do they care abt the encampment so they’ve been avoiding it."

Protesters escalated by first blocking the entrance/s to campus temporarily, then moving their encampment down to the base of campus, beginning an academic worker strike on Monday 5/20, and finally, as of Tuesday 5/28, blockading both campus entrances indefinitely. Classes moved online. There was a dispute as to whether an ambulance was blocked from entering campus to help a child who was choking; protesters maintain that it was police, not them, who formed an obstacle. Larive later claimed again that it was the protesters.

(Larive also characterized SJP's demand that UCSC cut ties with specifically pro-Israel groups as "demand[ing] that we end relationships with organizations that support our Jewish students and funders that support important student success work and happen to be Jewish organizations." (emphasis mine) SJP did not call for the disbanding of all Jewish groups, not even all Zionist ones. They singled out the ones which list furthering Zionism in their mission statements. The conflation of holding a specific political opinion with being Jewish generally is an unacceptably racist one that echoes the "dual loyalty" myth.)

After protesters refused to disband their encampment at the base of campus, 100+ police officers from Eureka, San Francisco, Watsonville, Berkeley, San Mateo, San Jose, Santa Clara, and Riverside, as well as the California Highway Patrol, slowly dismantled the blockade, bulldozed the encampment, and arrested anywhere from 80-100+ people. (Numerous student/protester/organizer sources list more than 100 arrested, as well as greater numbers of police.) The bulk of the conflict occurred between 12 and 9 AM on Friday 5/31 morning, marking the 31st day and a full month of the protest.

Students present at the demonstration say the police were outfitted in riot gear and focused their abuse immediately and especially on women of color at the encampment. Students were "stabbed... in the stomach" with batons, hard enough that some vomited. One was covered in a spit hood for saying the cops' "glasses looked stupid," and thrown to the ground hard enough to give him a concussion.

From an anonymous source:

We were thrown to the ground and dragged along the concrete. Our faces were clawed at, masks were ripped from our faces, helmets were torn from our heads so the straps dug into our throats, and our eyes were gouged out. Several of the women had their clothes ripped off, one particular trans comrade who was pleading for the cops to have any form of humanity, had “trick” screamed at her before her skirt was ripped off and she was thrown to the ground. All the while, they laughed. Snickering as people were beaten unconscious. After each one of us was detained, the police took selfies with us, grinning over their trophy. We were shoved into buses and vans where they blared music that rattled the cages we were thrown into until we couldn’t think. This went on for hours. In one of the buses, people were told to go to the bathroom on the bottom staircase. We were organized by sex (not gender) and the cops called non-binary people “x-rays” for the x identification on their license. First, it was the county jail, then a university parking lot, then a university building. The cops, with their hands on their pistols, shouted for us all to sit down. We all sat with our wrists tied behind our backs, the marks of which I still have on my arms a day later. The cops proceeded to play the “good guy” act as though all of us weren’t covered in bruises inflicted by them just hours earlier. Our restraints were cut, and they slowly called us by name. After several hours, my name was called. I was banned from school for the rest of the year, given a court date, and sent out like none of that had just happened.

Despite the brutality, protesters were back at the base of campus by the end of the day on Friday. Morale appears largely unshaken, and (despite bots brigading r/UCSC) student support across online and in-person spaces is at a high.

Some students were asked by KSBW about their arrests. “The people in Palestine are going through far worse than a citation," said Aydan Beavers. "So yeah, I believe it was worth it."

****

Once again, students are asking alumni to support them in an email zap at bit.ly/zap-ucsc, and for everyone to please donate to their bail fund, Venmo @/pizza_party_1312.

Sources: [Sentinel] [KSBW] [SJP Instagram] as well as multiple anonymous private sources.

[redwinterroses]

(part one)

Oakville was, according to Tango, not the closest sign of civilization—which was fantastic, because by Jimmy’s reckoning it would have taken them weeks to cover what the train had in a few hours. Such was the wonder of modern technology.

“We’re only a few hours—maybe five? Maybe five hours out from Eureka.” Tango said, pulling a compass out of his pocket and checking their heading. “Not much of a place, but they’ve got a communicator station and horses. And whiskey.” He sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a drink right now.”

A drink. Jimmy was suddenly aware of the cottony dryness of his mouth—and they’d barely been walking an hour. The sun was down, the night air was cool, but he was already thirsty.

“We, ah—” he half-tripped over a rock. “It’s really dark. Are we going to stop for the night?”

Tango waggled the compass at him, the silver rim catching the starlight. “Moonrise in less than an hour, it’ll be plenty light.” He slipped the compass back into his vest pocket and shrugged. “Anyway, it won’t stop the Greysides boys. They’ll bring lanterns though, we’ll see ‘em coming.”

Somehow, that wasn’t comforting. In the distance, a wolf howled, and Jimmy shivered.

“Normally,” he said, trying to shape his voice in a conversational tone. “Normally, this would be the point where I’d build a dirt hut and wait out the night.”

Tango flashed him a grin that Jimmy could hardly see. “What, you afraid of a little mob action?”

“Considering I’m being tracked, can’t risk my gun, and don’t have so much as an iron sword?” Jimmy grimaced, thinking wistfully of the two shulkers of gear in his carpetbag. Abandoned on the traincar, loot for pillagers. “Yeah, I’d say I’m not exactly looking forward to running into anything.”

Tango gave a little chuff of a laugh, and there was a rustling sound as he dug into the side pocket of his satchel. Because of course he had his satchel.

“There ya go, greenhorn,” he said, and held out a faintly-glowing diamond sword, hilt-first for Jimmy to take.

“What?” Reflexively, Jimmy reached for the weapon, his fingers closing around the hilt before he could consider it. Tango let go of the blade and shrugged, slinging his satchel back to rest on his hip. 

“Can’t have my traveling buddy unarmed,” he said. “Bad look, for an experienced trail boss like myself.”

There was something in the way he said “experienced,” some note of sarcastic self-mockery, that Jimmy did not care for.

“When you say experienced,” he said, holding the gifted sword low to the ground and letting the gleam of enchantment dimly light his way. “Exactly how many—”

“Hey, will you look at that?” Tango interrupted him. He pointed into the distance, and Jimmy squinted.

“Lights?” he ventured, though if that was torchlight it looked almost indistinguishable from yellow-tinted stars.

“That’ll be Eureka,” Tango said. “We’ll get there well before dawn, if we don’t run into too much trouble on the way.”

Jimmy opened his mouth to go back to the question about Tango’s trail experience, but stopped himself. No reason to push for the fellow’s backstory—it wasn’t as if he was eager to share his own.

“Right,” he said. “Right, then. What trouble is out here? Creepers? Zombies?”

“Not too many undead,” Tango said. He rested his hand on the hilt of his own sword as they walked. “Husks, mainly, with this heat, unless you go underground, which I don’t advise. But yeah—creepers are a big nuisance in these parts. Them and the endermen—frontier mob griefing is the worst. I keep tellin’ folks we need to lobby to get an anti-griefing patch out here, but—” he shrugged. “You know how frontier people are. Obsessed with keeping things vanilla. You want luxury mods, go back to spawn.”

Jimmy made a noncommittal sound. 

“I’m not talkin’ like, full-on spawn blacklists or anything,” Tango continued, tromping along. “People want that, they can do things the hard way. I’m just sayin’—”

“Look out!” Jimmy saw the creeper just before it rose up out of the scrub, its eyes flashing a warning.

Tango swore and leaped nearly a block in the air, dodging away from the creature. 

It settled back, glaring at them balefully from its nest of brush and grass, and Jimmy eyed it with wary caution.

“It’s smaller than the ones back home,” he said doubtfully.

“Ehhh—” Tango’s voice was tight with concern, and Jimmy looked away from the creeper to find the man staring over his shoulder. “That’s… that’s cuz that one’s a baby.”

Jimmy froze.

“The… there’s a big one behind me, isn’t there.” He swallowed, and a hint of burning gunpowder drifted past his nose.

Tango nodded. 

Something hissed lowly behind him. A warning—the only one he was likely to get. 

He bolted. Behind him, he heard Tango’s startled yelp, and then following feet. 

“Is it chasing us?” Jimmy shouted.

“Keep running!”

Jimmy chanced a look over his shoulder.

It was a bull creeper—easily twice as big as the feral creatures he was used to back spawnward, its pelt dun-colored and mottled with green to camouflage it in the scrubby grasses. It charged after them, its eyes flickering with anger, hissing as it ran.

“Holy—” Jimmy tripped, caught himself, and kept running, eyes back on the ground in front of him.

“Get to that rock pillar!” 

In front of them, one of the strange, spiky landforms jutted up out of the dark landscape. They were at the base of it in a moment, ducking around the back, momentarily out of the creeper’s line of sight.

“Climb!” Tango ordered. 

Scrabbling up the steep side of the rock, they managed to drag themselves onto the top just as the creeper reached the base. It hissed furiously, but they were out of its reach—and blast radius—and it could do nothing but pace below them, its stubby legs not made for climbing. Thank void.

Jimmy flopped on his back on the narrow ledge, feeling his gun digging into his hip and not caring enough to move. His chest heaved as he panted for air, and cold sweat trickled down his ribs.

He closed his eyes against the stars, hating everything in that moment. Hating the stupid night sky, hating the ridiculously huge creeper below—seriously, since when did they get that big?—and most of all: hating that once again he’d managed to pull someone else into his mess.

“Alright,” he managed, swallowing hard. “Alright—look. You gotta get out of here.”

Tango, crouched on the edge of the rock, making faces at the creeper as he caught his breath, waved a dismissive hand. “It’ll lose interest and wander off eventually,” he said.

Jimmy pushed himself up with one arm. “No, seriously,” he said. “I mean it. I’ll keep its attention—you sneak off the back and head for Eureka. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not leaving you on a rock in the middle of the wasteland, pal,” Tango said, with a baffled laugh. “Like—I mean, no offense. But you’re greener than beans, and I’m at least half the reason you’re not on a train right now anyway.”

The creeper was snuffling around the base of the tower, and Jimmy had the sudden horrible notion that it might figure out how to climb. Or Tango would fall off the edge. Or Jimmy would trip and knock him right into the creeper’s paws.

He glanced down at the sword. “Sharpness?” he asked, squinting at the runes carved into the blade.

“Obviously.” Tango turned away from the creeper and gave him an evaluating look that was far too sharp for Jimmy’s liking. “It’s just a creeper, James, it’s not like it’s gonna—” his foot slipped on a pebble and he flailed his arms for balance.

In an instant, Jimmy shot forward and snatched at Tango’s arm, yanking him down toward the middle of the stone platform. Tango fell to one knee, yelping in surprise and pain. 

“Hey!” he exclaimed, yanking his arm out of Jimmy’s grasp. “What was that—”

Before Jimmy could second-guess himself, or even stop for half a heartbeat to consider why he actually cared—why he still cared, after all this time—he rolled off the rock toward the creeper.

He landed with a thud on its sloping back, and the thing gave a startled HISS that buzzed in his bones, the smell of sulfur flooding the air. With a shout, Jimmy gripped the sword in both hands and drove the blade into the back of the creeper’s head, exactly where the spine met the skull. The point of the sword—enchanted as it was—met little resistance, driving straight into the creature’s brain.

The hiss turned to a crackling gurgle, and the monster went limp underneath him.

Jimmy staggered away, catching himself against the base of the stone pillar, letting the sword fall to the ground with a flat clang. 

He heard scrabbling above him, and looked up to see Tango half-climbing, half-falling down the cliff. 

“What kind of damn heroics are you trying to pull?” the other man demanded, his derby knocked askew and a look of baffled fury on his face. “That thing would have detonated in your face! You’re lucky you—”

“Not lucky,” Jimmy cut him off, exhausted. 

“—didn’t hit… what?”

The adrenaline jitter in Jimmy’s arms—what, the third rush of the night? I’m going to sleep for a week—felt like it was going to shake his skin right off his bones. 

“Not lucky,” he repeated, spitting out the word.

He stared past Tango at the dead creeper. Already, it was starting to curl in on itself, desiccating in the wasteland heat. By tomorrow night, it would be nothing but a pile of super-flammable ash. 

Tango paused. “Not… not lucky?” He tilted back his derby and peered down at Jimmy's face, rant kicked off its rails. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jimmy cursed every unlucky star he’d been born under, and double that for Sausage. For a long moment, he considered not answering. Nothing, nevermind, he could say. Let's just get to town.

In for a penny...

“I can’t die,” he said, meeting Tango’s eye. “And I don’t expect you to believe that, but the fact is: people around me die. Constantly. Never me, though.” 

A bitter laugh crept out of his throat. “If I hadn’t got that creeper…” He shook his head. “I dunno. It would have got you somehow. Or you’d have fallen and broken your neck. Or the pillagers would have appeared before we got down. Any number of things. You’re not safe until you’re away from me.”

Tango took this in. Jimmy could see him weighing the words—and probably dismissing them—but all he said was:

“Why?”

With a shrug, Jimmy pushed himself up, and retrieved the sword from the dirt. He wiped the point on a knob of scrub brush. “You saved my bacon on that train, I think,” he said. “That’s enough to tie us.”

He held out the sword to Tango. “Look—you go ahead. I’ll just… I dunno. Camp here for the night, I guess. You get far enough away, for long enough, the curse seems to… disengage. You’ll be fine.”

Tango didn’t take the sword. He looked at it, then looked at Jimmy.

“You know I don’t believe a word of this, right?” he said.

Jimmy’s heart sank, but he wasn’t surprised. “Yeah,” he said. “I figured.”

“Great.” Tango glanced over his shoulder toward where the lights of Eureka flickered in the distance. “Let’s… let’s just get you to town,” he said. “Get some water in you.”

Get a horse, Jimmy added internally. Hit the road. Put a thousand blocks between me and here.

“Right,” was all he said aloud. “Water.”

Tango kicked the creeper’s shriveling carcass and started toward Eureka, and Jimmy followed behind, still holding the enchanted sword. 

I should have just chanced the train.