#found out mage and scientist go hard together

[dood1e-bug]

Don't care

Explosion + Unstable Formula

[char-writes]

"Dandelion, dandelion. Give me a wish."

Dandelion, Dandelion

Cylindra Nyx doesn't mean to run away-- she only ever means to run towards something, or someone, else.

Genre: Fantasy POV: Third-person limited, present tense Status: First draft completed, undergoing editing

Themes: Desire to escape, Inner versus outer strength, Abuse of power, Change, Holding onto hope, Maturity, Trust, Courage, Finding one's purpose, Platonic love, Falling in love, Found family, Magic as a symbol, Quests, Freedom from captivity, Self-perception, Past trauma, Desperation

Synopsis

Noblemen's daughters are rumored to go mad if left alone, and Cylindra Nyx has lived her life under the shadow of this superstition. While her brother prepares to join the kingdom's war effort, Cylindra is expected to sit pretty and follow the plan laid out for her. After several failed runaway attempts, Cylindra's close to accepting that she'll never be free.

But then a strange girl with desperate eyes runs out of the forest one night, and Cylindra's plans are tossed aside.

Elysia's an immortal on a mission to save the world from a mad mage's plan to steal all magic. Cylindra's a prisoner with every reason to turn her back on the life she knows. Joining Elysia's world of magic and sorcerers was never a question, at all.

With the guidance of two other magical beings, Cylindra and Elysia begin their journey together. Without magic of her own, though, it's hard for Cylindra to understand how she's meant to help-- especially when, after disaster strikes, it seems she's their only hope left.

Characters and other details beneath the cut

Characters

Cylindra: Our main character. A human with no connection to magic or knowledge of its creatures, she's the least prepared for this mission to save the world. She's loyal, though, and she's stubborn enough to fight her way through every obstacle. Running away from home is more dangerous and difficult than she ever planned for, but she's not one to ever turn back.

Elysia: One of the few known Immortals wandering this realm. She's also one of the few people left who's willing to put a stop to Rowan's plans. She's a fighter who sees her immortality as a reason to defend others. She's seen herself as a weapon for so long, though, that she doesn't quite know what to do when Cylindra looks at her like she could be something more.

Faye: A forest-dwelling magic user who has her own reasons to want Rowan defeated. Trapped in the forest for decades as a result of Rowan's spells, she becomes Cylindra's go-to source for answers on magic and mages. She doesn't always seem to understand or trust people, but she relies on Cylindra to undo what wrongs have been done.

Oleander: Faye's closest companion during her isolation in the forest, the only person she's seen since being locked away. Oleander's not naturally magic but, as a result of a curse from Rowan, he has the ability to turn into a bird. Incredibly protective of Faye, he's another human who joins the side of magic.

Rowan: A mage seeking levels of magic never before seen in humanity. He leads a group of other unnatural magic users with an almost cult-like control, allowing him access to the king's favor. We first meet him as he's hunting Elysia for information-- and we see him again when he taunts Cylindra for her decisions to join such a devastating fight.

Excerpt

It’s the giant spiders again. 

Cylindra knows, somewhere in the back of her head, that the scholars and scientists have renamed the beasts— something far more pretentious and less intimidating, meant to add a level of ownership to the creatures’ existence. Cylindra learned about it in her studies not too long ago; still, she prefers to refer to them as giant spiders. Not only is it more fitting, but it has a more adventurous air to the tone when she imagines how she’ll recount her tale on the road— “I faced a pack of giant spiders all on my own.”

Of course, in order to do so, she needs to actually face them.

The spiders stand two horses’ widths away from her, their blackened round bodies low to the ground as spined legs twitch against the grass. They’re not quite as big as Cylindra imagines they’re meant to be, just barely the size of the rose bushes around them, but, well— they’re big enough to be a problem.

Particularly when the problem occurs when Cylindra’s halfway through her family’s garden, a pack on her back and her best traveling dress pressed to her skin. The spiders stand in a line between the pink roses and the red roses, beady eyes watching Cylindra like guard dogs. 

Cylindra wishes her family had invested in guard dogs, but domesticated monsters are the nobles’ new trend, it seems.

Alright, folks, that seems to be everything! Everything related to this WIP will be tagged #dandelion dandelion.

Character intros and such showing up later, so keep an eye out!

If you want to be added to the tag list for updates and more information on this, reply to this post or send me an ask/message. I hope you're as excited as I am!

[popatochisssp]

Undergloom: AU Concept

What if...

Premise

This is a ‘verse where monsters aren’t made of hope--it’s something that they have to get the same way humans do, through positive circumstances and sturdy social support networks.

So...being trapped Underground with no real chance of escape was, in a hilarious bit of understatement, kind of a huge bummer.

In Undergloom, the loss of the Royal Family’s children was pretty much it for monsterkind’s hope.

The Dreemurrs never split—lacking innate internal hope, Asgore was never overcome by anger and never declared war on all of humanity, simply succumbing to his grief. Toriel did the same and so they never argued over war, collecting souls, and falling humans.

Meanwhile, without a goal and the promise of impending freedom to inspire them, monsters have largely given up. Physically, most are very weak and lethargic, on the verge of Falling Down—and Falling Down is a depressingly common occurrence. Monsters are all relatively uninterested in any humans that fall or pass through, making no attempt to capture them. Any Encounters are half-hearted at best.

Not being hunted and killed for their souls, all the humans who have fallen (the six souls Asgore would’ve otherwise collected) are still alive and have made a small community for themselves in the abandoned Ruins. They gradually congregated there upon realizing that there was no way to escape the Underground without killing one of two very sad and polite (if distant) Boss Monsters. Their eventual plan is to wait for seven humans, the amount needed to break the Barrier, clumsily learning what magic they can from disinterested monsters in the meantime. They’re all an assortment of ages now, and mages of varying skill-level, just biding their time until the Seventh Human falls and they can all be free.

Major Characters

Asgore and Toriel: They never officially separated after the death of their children, but the loss caused an emotional rift between them. While they remain married, the passion has gone entirely from their relationship and they stay together mostly as a formality, to best co-rule their kingdom. They perform their duties separately, coming together only for public appearances--or when Asgore is tending to the Golden Flowers and Toriel ghosts in to pick one, leaving just as silently as she came.

Flowey: Doesn’t exist. Asriel’s dust was spread on the Golden Flowers in the palace, but no DT experiments were ever done, so his later incarnation never came to be. He and his adopted sibling Chara are both resting in peace.

Alphys: Without the guilt caused by the DT experiments, the Royal Scientist is actually one of the most hopeful monsters in the Underground. She’s been very inspired by the (ultra-shoujo/shounen) anime she’s found in The Dump and keeps trying to create things that improve the quality of life for monsterkind—if they’re all trapped and can’t get out, they should at least all try to be happy and not give up, shouldn’t they? It’s…it’s hard to believe that sometimes, her hope isn’t unfaltering, but she wants to keep trying anyway. It’s what Mew-Mew would do! She…thinks…?

Undyne: The Captain of the Royal Guard is bitter and frustrated with the whole situation. She thinks that they should be (should’ve been) collecting human souls from the beginning, to break the Barrier—or at least they should’ve harvested one for somebody to absorb and go through to get more! But everybody’s such a bunch of weak sad-sacks that they won’t act, doing nothing at all about the tiny tribe of humans just about everybody knows is living it up in the Ruins. …but she doubts herself too, because it seems like she’s the only one who thinks that way. That’s what bums her out the most, wondering if maybe she’s a bad person for feeling the way she does, but at least… At least all the passion pouring out of a certain (very cute) Royal Scientist makes her feel better, on her worst days.

Mettaton: A discouraged celebrity, once very excited when Alphys built him a new body, thinking that he was finally going to be able to achieve his dreams of stardom, but..well. An Underground of very depressed monsters makes for a pretty cold fish of an audience. He still has a viewership because there’s nothing else on... but his performances just aren’t very passionate these days, getting more and more lackluster by the episode. He wants to inspire monsters to rise up and reach their dreams, but he just doesn’t know how to do that when he’s not even sure he believes in his own dreams anymore...

Papyrus: Another monster who has a little more hope left than most, doing his best to stay optimistic in the face of a really bad situation. He...may be in a little bit of denial, actually? He maintains that somehow, monsterkind is going to be free again! He just! Doesn’t know how! But it’ll definitely happen, just you wait, they’re totally not all going to die down here without ever getting to experience all the neat stuff on the Surface!!! He pretty much has selective hearing about anything related to that kind of hopelessness, tuning it out and not responding to it, mostly because he knows if he dwells on it too long, he’s going to have an existential crisis/breakdown of uncomfortable proportions and noooobody wants to see that mess, hahaha… In the meantime, he’s thrown himself into human studies and analysis, full-on Little Mermaid style because it gives him something good to focus on, and hope that life on the Surface will be good, once they get up there! He’s actually very close friends with Alphys because of their shared interest (though he’s not sure how sold he is on those cartoons…). He’s also trying to befriend Undyne, because she’s Captain of the Guard and seems really cool! And maybe if he could be friends with her, and cheer her up, maybe she could help him spread that cheer a little bit…? Or! Maybe he just makes a cool new friend and at least one person around here a tiny bit happier, which is also good!

Sans: A guy under no illusions that their situation is anything but terrible. He’s very weak and very tired, even for the Supremely Bummed Out monsters he lives amongst. His nihilist sense of humor and his brother are pretty much the only things keeping him from Falling Down at this point—that, and the humans in the Ruins. He’s met a few of them, indirectly, through his knock-knock routine, and he knows that there’s six of them in there now; knows that with just one more, maybe…maybe…? …He tries not to hope too hard, there’s a lot of random chance and timing involved, and humans just aren’t as sturdy as, say, a Boss Monster. Something—illness, injury, old age—could happen to any one of the humans at any time before a Seventh Human can fall… but he still checks on the door every couple of days, thinking that impossible, “maybe…”

Frisk: The long-awaited Seventh Human! They’re greeted after their fall by the six humans who preceded them, and are summarily tutored about Encounters and souls and The General Situation. After that, their quest is to go through the Underground, learning and mastering their magic so that they’ll be able to help break the Barrier. They’re escorted by the other mages, but are mostly on their own, as they want Frisk to learn and strengthen their abilities by themselves. Frisk is pretty safe in Encounters, since monsters aren’t really enthusiastic enough to hurt them, even on accident—but maybe, depending on what they say and do, they could reignite the hopes and dreams of monsterkind…?

Potential Outcomes

No Mercy - Frisk kills all the monsters they can on the way to the Barrier. Once it’s broken, one of the mages (randomly decided each run) will turn on them. They may only be a child, but based on what they’ve just done, they’re dangerous and only bound to get more dangerous as they get older—it had to end here. The last thing Frisk hears is the mages arguing over the morality of it before everything ends… and they have the chance to RESET.

Neutral -  Frisk only kills a few monsters, or doesn’t kill anyone but does not restore everyone’s hope (major characters). When they get to the Barrier, they find that their magic alone isn’t strong enough to help break it…but the other six mages and any befriended monsters will comfort them and assure them that they can just…live down here a little bit longer. They can try again in a couple years, when their magic is stronger, it’s okay, Frisk! That’s fine, they guess, but maybe…maybe they can do better if they RESET?

True Pacifist -  Frisk kills no one and befriends/inspires all main characters. All the monsters show up to cheer them on while they and the mages attempt to break the Barrier. When Frisk’s magic alone isn’t strong enough, the monsters lend their magic too, and all together it’s enough to shatter the Barrier and let monsters and mages finally go free!

Getting the Good Ending

Asgore and Toriel have to be convinced to split--they realize that they don’t fit together anymore, at least not romantically, and after everything that’s happened, it’s time for them to move on from one another and let go of the past.

Alphys and Undyne have to be brought together-- Alphys’ resolve to reach for better things is validated by Undyne’s admiration of her, and Alphys’ belief that she’s not a bad person restores Undyne’s confidence.

Mettaton needs an enthusiastic audience for once. A cheering crowd (even just of one) is enough to make him perform better, which improves his ratings and viewership, which makes him perform better, and so on in a feedback loop of glitz and glamour until he can believe in his dreams and the Underground’s again!

Papyrus is easy-- he just needs to be told of the humans’ quest to break the Barrier. He knew it! He knew monsters were going to be free one day, somehow! And here’s the proof, a band of mages on their way to make it happen as they spoke! Take that, existential nihilist dread, optimism was right!!!

Sans is both the hardest and the easiest-- he needs you to inspire everybody else first, but then it’ll just happen on its own. When he sees all of monsterkind rallying together, having hope for once...it really makes him believe in that ‘maybe,’ more than he ever could before. Ah, hell...he’ll be rootin’ for you, too, kid!

Aesthetic Notes

Mostly muted, washed out colors and plenty of monochrome, big The Neopets Gray Paint Brush vibes.

Monster magic is mostly shades of gray: the default is white but pretty much only children too young to understand everyone’s predicament remain white. The more hopeless a monster has gotten at their worst, the darker and grayer their magic gets. It’s easier for magic to darken than to lighten, so it will take many years of living on the Surface for monster to see their magic work its way back to white, and some may never recover completely--but they can always get just a little bit better! Even if it takes time!

Asgore and Toriel: Very neat and well put together, but overwhelmingly dour--the vibe you’d expect off a very proper and serious Victorian couple. Perfectly respectable black clothing (for mourning), with little to no ostentation. Crowns are pewter instead of gold. Asgore’s hair has faded from gold to more of a dishwater blond, and his beard shows several streaks of gray. Toriel wears Chara’s locket and plucks a fresh Golden Flower every day to place behind her ear, in remembrance of her children.

Alphys: Some of the brightest colors in the Underground--but in comparison to monochrome, even the soft pink and blue pastels she favors look bright. She wears a lot of cute dresses under her lab-coat (sometimes Lolita style), and always has some kind of ribbon tied in her crest or onto her tail-- it makes her feel cute and pretty and she likes the ego boost it gives her.

Undyne: Droopy fins, scales lacking in luster. She wears her hair down, long and loose about her face, but generally has the same fashion and body type as her canon self. Her appearance is one of those things she hasn’t given up on just yet!

Mettaton: A very Apple tech-esque look, clean white and sleek minimalist lines, basically an iPad on wheels. It’s pretty, but...also kinda boring. His Ex form is a lot more fun, still a little bit of a JJ Abrams look, but with a splash of Daft Punk--the Ex form can do rainbow lights and in comparison, it’s mind-blowingly, eye-searingly flashy...and suits him so much more.

Papyrus: No battle body, and not so much of a Strapping Young Lad--he’s a little slimmer in the chest and shoulders, and dresses like the sweet Boy Next Door he is. His magic is a pearly color, almost white but with a faint tinge of gray.

Sans: Not overly different-looking, favors soft and comfy clothes, anything that’s easy to pull on and cozy enough to sleep in. Extra Rounde™, precisely one notch up from however chubby-looking you normally imagine your Sanses to be. Deep shadows beneath his eye-sockets, and eye-lights that match the color of his magic--ash gray.

Not a major character but I had a cool idea for him so

Grillby: Mostly the same, but his flame burns low and rounded, more like a match or a candle wick than a freely flickering fire.

If you made it this far through all of that, thank you for listening to my idea! That’s all I got. :3

-

ETA some other stuff, since I’ve been asked some other stuff! XD

More about Grillby

Muffet and Napstablook

The mages’ powers

Burgerpants and Nice Cream Bunny

More about Frisk and Toriel

Various Skelebros Stuff: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII

Monsters’ reception on the Surface

[chorusnihili]

what is wd gasters past

"A rather broad and invasive question, I'd say, but I suppose I can give you the rundown."

"I was born on the surface while tensions were already high, enough that my parents, assuming that I had them, were gone before I had a chance to remember them. I was mostly raised by a mismatch village of monsters; well-cared for, not the only one that didn't have a specific home."

"I didn't miss living on the surface and never wished to return there, quite frankly. The only thing that made it worth living there is that in my final few years there, I did have something close to an adoptive parent. Who, unfortunately, chose death over leaving their home."

"A lot of monsters like to paint the underground as this hellish, soul-sucking fate worth than death. Personally I never found it that bad. I suppose I never was the type to feel wanderlust or anything of the sort. I was happy merely knowing we were safe and humanity likely had no interest in pursuing us."

"So I dedicated most of my life to making the Underground as good a place as possible. Anything that could make life more bearable. Try to cheer up those affected the worst by the change. During this time, a lot of monsters took up psychology; you can find a lot of studies on stress, despair, and trauma written during this time; techniques for coping and helping loved ones, many of which still hold up to this day."

"Unfortunately given the fact that communication has always been a hassle to me, it ultimately wasn't a field of study that suited me well, although I've been told I'm a good listener."

"So my attention broke from such studies to poking around the world about me. Much of the underground was new and needed to be explored and understood, and, what can I say, I was young and ready to believe that magic could do anything. Except, maybe, restore my eyesight. Heh."

"The migration through the underground was relatively linear. The forests of Home, the snowy landscapes of Snowdin, the rainy marsh of Waterfall, the deep caves of Hotland, and finally, the empty caves of New Home. But New Home was the end. The final stop. Assuming a vaguely dome-shaped barrier forming to the shape of the mountain, we had found it on all sides; the entrance at Home, the exit at New Home, the presumably small entries in Waterfall that human trash falls through, the tunnels in Hotland that the lava flows through. We reached the end; there was nowhere else to go."

"Monsters began to fan out, build permanent civilizations. Asgore and Toriel chose to build their castle and kingdom right on the cusp of the barrier; why, I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps it was meaningful, to them. A sign of having conquered the humans, something to put them at ease. I never asked, it never seemed appropriate."

"Although many monsters seemed disappointed that there was nowhere else to go, I found a sense of satisfaction from it. We had discovered everything; there was nothing else that might creep out from the shadows. We had an understanding of the world we now lived in, a map from top to bottom, left to right. And now, all we had to do was reshape it into the world we wanted it to be."

"Much of my early life was uneventful. I spent a lot of time in theoretical research, interested in the topics of how and why magic worked, but specifically, the interaction of two magical forces. Why some attacks seemed to be so devastating and others seemed to do no damage at all.  A spent a fair amount of years analyzing magic, categorizing it, writing formulae for the so called Stats, for LOVE, EXP, HP, ATK, DEF, INV, et cetera, et cetera.  Frankly, the field is incomplete; close enough for most situations, I think, but not perfect.  I found it wasteful to continue efforts on it.  I believe that the main goal of science is to improve life; if the science cannot be applied to do so, then I do not see the point in continuing it.”

“My studies were broad and varied.  Sometimes I’d dip into the health sciences, sometimes I’d dip into architecture.  I’d do odd favors for people, look into anything that caught my interest, sometimes even take up tasks for the King himself; ones of minor interest that he didn’t want to bother the Royal Scientist with.”

“But, the focal point of my studies always came back to energy.  What could we do with it?  How can we harness it?  All monsters are made up of energy, of magic, it’s inherent to our souls, the way we express ourselves, even our body is made of magic, turns into magical dust due to a complicated chemical reaction when HP is depleted.”

“This, of course, lead to my most famous accomplishment.  The idea of using magic to power things had been around forever, before recorded history.  But there was always a mage or monster involved, directly or indirectly powering the thing in question.  I sought to cut out the intentional casting of a spell to induce power.  After all, this entire Underground was full of ambient magic; from previous spells, simply from Monsters existing; recycled, reused, breathed in and out, baked into food and released again:  Why couldn’t the world itself power things?” 

“It turned out to be more complicated than expected; failure after failure taught me that it simply wasn’t feasible to use magic without a soul casting it.  But, we found another way--and to be fair, it wasn’t exactly an idea so much as exploratory research, but research with very promising results.  Promising enough to earn me another scar on my face, heh.  Had one of the other scientists not pulled me out of the way, I might have been destroyed by the CORE before the CORE was even a thing.”

“Nonetheless I was far from discouraged.  I was actually very ecstatic.  Enough so that Asgore had a very hard time calming me down and getting me to explain what had happened and why I had a new crack down my face.”

“I started work on the CORE immediately.  Sketching out blueprints and gathering people to start building the skeletal structure of the building while I put together the intricacies of the mechanism that would create and convert pure energy that could be harnessed and used for whatever purposes we desired.  It took a very long time, but it’s no doubt one of my greatest creations.  Asgore asked me to take up the position of Royal Scientist not long after.  I accepted, of course, I wouldn’t think of declining, but it was a very strange thing to me.”

“It wasn’t long after that when the human child arrived.  I remember hearing about it, one of the other scientists telling me that Asriel had chosen to keep the child.  Keep the child, I had thought, like a pet, like a person would choose to keep a dog or a cat.  I thought it frankly ridiculous, but having the human child around brought a new era of hope to the kingdom and, I, ... couldn’t resist being pulled along.  I personally thought that the idea of peace between humans and monsters was ridiculous, but it was such a pleasant idea and the people were so happy...”

“Of course, it didn’t last.  In a single night, both the human child and Asriel had passed away.  The duo had broken through the barrier, only to seal their own deaths.  It was a travesty.  A whirlwind of horrors, one after another.  The devastation, the despair--it was unlike anything I had ever experienced, even when humanity had first sealed us underground.  At least then, we had the relief of peace.  Now, we had nothing.”

“The King declared war on humanity.”

“It was a dark time.”

“The peaceful life I had was replaced by one of fear and anxiety.  I knew what humans were capable of.  I lived through it, I wore the mark of their hostility on my skull--and Asgore wanted to willingly throw us back into that over revenge?  We wouldn’t survive.  There was no way we’d survive.  But if there was any chance of giving us any sort of fighting chance, I was going to find it.” 

“My research turned from finding ways to make the underground better to combat.  Once again, energy proved to be my friend.  I revisited old research about LOVE and EXP and ATK and DEF--and wrote up a hypothesis about another state.  ITK.  Intent to Kill.  Unlike LOVE and EXP, which are slowly, solely increasing values, ITK rapidly fluctuates and acts as a modifier on attack.  Even a soul with a LOVE of 1 can do an extreme amount of damage if they, in a particular moment, are filled with the desire to kill the one they are striking.”

“Monsters aren’t made for war.  In general, monsters aren’t made for hurting each other.   It’s one of the many reasons we were slaughtered so mercilessly.  So I created a ... weapon.  That could circumvent that weakness.  The ITK Blasters, as I called them, could take even the smallest ITK and multiply it to do horrific damage.”

“I did other research on the topic as well.  How to convert HP into a temporary boost of ATK.  With these two advancements...even a monster as relatively weak as I am could be incredibly strong.”

“I wanted to perfect the techniques before I tried teaching them to anyone.  But, such things never came to pass.  Asgore lost his will to continue seeking war.  He knew that he had only declared war in a fit of rage and to give his people hope.  So rather than continue killing, he wanted to find a different way to bring everyone hope.  He wanted to find a way to break the barrier without anymore bloodshed.  He asked me to research the human souls.”

“...”

“I wanted no parts of it.  We got into a ... rather nasty fight.  I said a lot of things I regret.  I called him a coward for bending to the will of his people instead of doing what was right.  I told him that any attempt to breach the barrier would result in the complete extinction of our species.  I told him that it was his job as king to protect us, not lead us to our death.”

“I was angry and afraid, and I took it out on the wrong monster.”

“It’s about at this point that you really cannot understand my history without a basic understanding of how time flows.  I’ll spare you the lecture of multiple timelines and parallel realities, but at the very least, you must understand that the flow of time is... well, it is inherently linear, but, consider it like a... I want to say a Turing Machine.  Or perhaps, a VHS Tape.  The same segments can be replayed again and again, can be overwritten, can change from iteration to iteration.”

“So the fact that Asgore died in this timeline...and is still alive in the current timeline...it may at first seem contradictory, but it is not, I assure you.”

“Asgore’s death hit the Underground hard.  Undyne took over as Queen, but the knowledge that the last remaining member of the Royal Family was gone still loomed over everyone’s heads.  Undyne was more determined than Asgore ever was to free the monsters and I felt like there was nothing I could do.”

“So...There was little I did.  I was overwhelmed with grief and hatred.  I kept at the research.  I honed the abilities, again and again and again.  I drove myself to exhaustion, I isolated myself.  I barely slept and ate.  I neglected my duties and while the others understood I was grieving, it eventually got to the point that Queen Undyne delivered the ultimatum that I had to either get my act together or surrender my position as Royal Scientist.  I resigned without any argument.”

“Much of the time is a blur.  Most of my studies and research done with poor practices and hardly documented.  The research that lead to me creating Sans falls into this. I wished to know if...  

“Of course, two monsters can create another soul.  This much is obvious, monsters reproduce on a regular basis, enough that in the modern day, there’s an ongoing population crisis for monsters that need certain environments.  But I wanted to know if ... a monster, could theoretically, singularly donate a portion of their soul and create another living monster out of it.”

“This is probably a piece of research that very much fits the criteria of not stopping to think whether or not I should try to do so.”

“It required extracting part of my soul.  Which, to do so without killing the monster, requires a massive power source...luckily, or unluckily, I had the entire CORE at my disposal.  So I constructed a machine that could, indeed, extract part of my soul.  What resulted was the most painful experience of my life and left me comatose for six months.  It’s also the cause of the circular scars in my palms.”

“I hadn’t intended to extract two pieces of my soul, but, it happened, whether through oversight or simply as a matter of how the procedure was carried out.  I used the smaller piece to create Sans; intending to keep the larger piece for further study.  I destroyed everything used in the experiment afterwards.  I felt it was something that no monster should have the power to do.”

“That’s not to say I regret creating them.  I don’t, and nothing will ever change that opinion, even knowing some of the terrible things they’ve done in other timelines.  But I do regret the methods that lead to their creation.”

“I don’t know why Sans is so weak.  And I resisted the urge to try to figure it out.  There’s a fine line between a healthy interest in your child’s health and treating them as a science experiment, and I ... wanted to stay as far away as possible from that line.  He’s fine the way he is.  He doesn’t need to be fixed.”

“That didn’t stop me from using the second piece of my soul to create Papyrus to look after him, though.  Or teaching him magic to the best of my ability, even teaching him how to use the Gaster Blasters.”

“Having them...helped.  A lot.  I won’t say whether I was very good at it, but I enjoyed being a father very much.  The grief was still heavy, but I was able to start returning to a somewhat normal life, and even start following what was going on in the Underground again.  I learned of Doctor Alphys’s research on the human souls, and though I personally disagreed with it... decided to look into it in Asgore’s honor.”

“My immediate thought was that her ideas about Determination could mesh well with my previous research about soul extraction, albeit with a few modifications--although I had destroyed the equipment I used for the process, I remembered it well enough.  So I got to work on a theoretical DT Extractor; but the further I got with it, the more horrified I became.”

“I simply couldn’t tolerate the idea of it.  Humans or not, already dead or not--the mere idea of extracting the literal lifeforce out of a soul...  No.  It was not a process I would condone.”

“I had just finalized my decision to destroy the blueprints when I fell.”

“It was... a laughably simple mistake, really.  The CORE is designed to rearrange itself to prevent the wear from the heat from causing too much damage in any one area.  The doors pneumatically seal themselves to prevent egress during this time but...  I was simply too distracted by the blueprints and I opened the door, and walked through anyways.”

“There were no further safeguards.  There was nothing I could do to save myself.  It was over before I had a chance.”

“...”

“I don’t regularly talk about my time in the void.  Not because doing so bothers me, but because it’s simply... indescribable.  When I awoke, I couldn’t breathe.  I couldn’t move.  I couldn’t speak.  There was no me, but my consciousness existed.  I could see and hear thousands of timelines at once, as if I was standing in an arena, with each and every seat filled with a television playing a different movie.  A jumbling mess of information.”

“I have no idea how long I was there for.  It was like learning to exist all over again.  Step by step.  Learning how to move closer to visions of interest.  Learning how to seep into those visions.  Learning how to block out the immense noise.  Learning how to speak without a body.  Learning how to see the void.  Learning how to construct a body out of it.  Learning how to hunt down my timeline.”

“In many ways, it was a rebirth, and with each and every step, I lost more of myself.  I lost myself to the aching hole of my soul being missing.  I lost my conscience, I lost my heart.  I dedicated everything to the endless goal of stitching myself back together again.”

“I learned so much about the reality I live in.  How malleable it and time is.  I evolved into something grotesque, something that shouldn’t be alive.  I gained power that no monster or human should have.  Things, and even souls, could be changed at my whim.  And yet the one thing I truly wanted seemed to be impossible.”

“I did a lot of terrible things while I was stuck like that.  Some were intentional, some less so.  Many were reset thanks to Flowey, others will never be fixed.”

“I have Sans to thank for finally helping me to achieve the goal, even if not fully.  He built a machine that gathered enough of my soul that... I’m able to manifest my original form and can think clearly once again.”

“Even so...  It didn’t change the fact that my soul is still shattered, somehow held together by the tug-of-war between Determination and Void, and that my fall into the Void reset the timeline into a state where I never existed.”

“And that leads us to now.  The Gaster you currently speak to exists in a timeline that has made it to the surface, though I’m not particularly fond of being up there and generally hide in my lab in the CORE.”

“Well, I certainly hope you didn’t expect even a rundown of over a thousand years to be short.”

“...Or, were you posing the question to someone other than myself...?”

[lostinthewinterwood]

AU Exchange 2020

Hey friend!

Looks like this letter’ll be going out on time, for once in my life.  This one’s very long; there’ll be a list of fandoms after the general info so you can hop around and not get bogged down in the details that don’t matter for what you’re going to be writing.

Treats in any medium are welcome, my other exchange letters are here, and at the bottom there’ll be tags for each fandom I’ve requested, if you want to see whether I’ve requested them before and what I’ve said about them.  Good luck, have fun, and thanks for writing for me!

 General DNW non/dub-con; non-canonical major character death; heavy angst; hurt no comfort; graphic depictions of deliberate and methodical self-harm*; graphic depictions of suicide; smut; gore; grimdark; complete downer endings; character bashing; incest; cringe comedy; a/b/o; mpreg; graphic eye trauma; graphic and/or permanent hand trauma; issuefic; unrequested identity headcanons; a focus on unrequested romantic relationships**. *I don’t include things like, say, punching a wall in a fit of emotion under this. however, something like cutting would not be appreciated. **canonical levels of canonical ships are perfectly fine; background non-canon ships that I haven’t dnw’d are okay too (unless otherwise specified—see below for fandom-specific notes).

  General Likes

– I really like plotty fics

– Secret identity and disguise shenanigans, the more layers to them and more absurdity the better.

– Crossdressing for whatever reason and gender disguises, also for whatever reason.

– A focus on family and/or friendship, especially characters realizing they’re not nearly as alone as they think they are, and just generally characters who like each other and enjoy spending time together

– Found family; families of choice

– Character studies

– Worldbuilding

- explorations of how whatever AU you pick to write affects the characters and/or plot, and the ways in which it doesn’t

  Other General Notes:

If there’s an AU I’d especially like to see on its own, without any other AU in combination with it, I’ll mention it—outside of that, feel free to combine the AUs as you see fit.

All the times that the Dragon Rider au is one I asked for, I’ve framed it in my prompts as a sports story thing—while that would definitely be great, don’t feel pressured to make it be like that; it’s just where my prompting muse is at right now, so if you want to take it in another direction go right ahead.

  Fandoms in Order of Appearance:

Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl

Harry Potter

Mother of Learning (x2)

Day Break Illusion (x2)

  Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl (Manga)  

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Terazaki Kaoru (HOwaGG)

·        Ousaka Nanami (HOwaGG)

·        Group: Terazaki Kaoru & Ousaka Shouko (HOwaGG)

·        Group: Terazaki Kaoru & Ousaka Nanami (HOwaGG)

 Fandom-specific dnw: sexualization of Kaoru’s crossdressing, romance between Kaoru and Nanami beyond light shiptease à la canon (unless the AU chosen is a romantic fairytale, in which case go right ahead), full justification of Kaoru’s fears re: Nanami’s dad, heavy gender dysphoria.

 Overall I love these kids and their friendship, and I also love how much Shouko feels like a mom to Kaoru even though he isn’t hers, even though he’s keeping secrets from her—he doesn’t seem to have that much parental support overall.

Whatever AU you pick, I’d appreciate that being preserved.

  ·        ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

·        All: East of the Sun and West of the Moon Fusion

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        ALL: Magic is a part of everyday life

·        ALL: Magical Girl Fusion

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

 For this set of tags, I’d love to see something that fuses the AU elements to canon, or replaces canon elements with them—maybe instead of gamers, the kids are magical girls!  Or maybe there’s just magical elements wound seamlessly into their lives, or they instead live in a fairytale world, or…

Basically, this is my more generic magic!au set.

  ·        ALL: Characters met as children

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

·        ALL: Mute Canon Characters

·        HOwaGG: trans girl Terazaki Kaoru

 These are the generally mundane AUs—if one or both of the kids is disabled in some way, how does that affect them?  If they’ve known each other longer than they have in canon, or used to know each other—how does that affect them?  If Kaoru is a trans girl, is that something that she knows before their canon meeting, and maybe that’s a point at which she’s already begun transitioning?  Or does the crossdressing give her a revelation?

  ·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

 I like daemon!aus a lot, though I’m not very good at writing them myself—if this world has daemons, what are the kids’?  Are they fully settled yet, or not quite?  Most people have daemons opposite to their sex—is it obvious that Kaoru’s daemon is female, and if so, does that pique Shouko’s interest?  Does his daemon get him recognized by people who know Kaoru-the-boy even when he’s out looking like a girl?

  ·        ALL: Dragon Rider AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

 Sports aus!  One mundane, one distinctly less so… what’s it like, if they’re dragon riders? Is it a whole other world, or just our world +dragons?  If it’s figure skating, what kind of skating do they do?  Singles?  Pairs? Ice dance?  Are they just casual about it or competitive?

  ·        ALL: Platonic Soulmate AU

·        ALL: Soulmates - Soulmate Mark Appears At First Touch

·        ALL: Soulmates Share Scars

 These are probably my three favorite kinds of soulmate AUs—run with them!  Tell me about the kids and their dynamic and the world they inhabit, with soulmates thrown into the mix!

     Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Percy Weasley (HP - JKR)

 Fandom-specific dnw: non-canon ships.

 I’ve phrased this so broadly because it’s generally better safe than sorry on these things—essentially what I especially don’t want is non-canon ships between people on opposite sides of the war, e.g. drarry, harry/Voldemort, etc. If you want to toss in background, idk, Pansy/Daphne or something, or relationships between various Ministry people, that I don’t mind.

 ·        ALL: Underground Resistance

·        HP: Percy Weasley is a spy for the Order of the Phoenix during the war

·        ALL: Character Is a Secretly a Spy for the Other Side

 There’s really one thing I want here—spy!Percy!  He spends so much of the war in the Ministry, surrounded by Death Eaters and their accomplices and enablers, to all appearances the black sheep of the Weasley family and not much of a threat.  Now, this could be genuine… but it could also be him playing them; I want to see a world where he, at some point—maybe after he chooses to stay with the ministry instead of his family, maybe before—decides to be a spy for the Order et al.

What are the risks?  What can he accomplish?  Can he help people beyond simply passing out information, perhaps with seemingly-inconsequential little acts?

     Mother of Learning - nobody103   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Kirielle Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

 request-specific dnw: physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family, significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction, romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian.

 ·        All: Character has a secret identity

·        All: Identity Porn

·        ALL: Possessed by time travelling future self

·        MoL: Kirielle as a Branded One

 I’m fascinated by the idea of Kirielle somehow getting wrapped up in the time loop—what’s it like to live years and years of your life while your body stays nine?  What does she do, what does she learn?  Are Zach and Zorian still Branded Ones, or is she taking one or both of their places?

If you go with this, I’d rather not have her gate!soul erased—either let her escape, or don’t go far enough to need to address it, please.

The identity bits here are mostly leaning on the idea that, with her only being nine, Kiri would need some kind of identity obfuscation to do half of what Zach and Zorian do in canon, so…

  ·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

 Nothing particularly profound here—but! Daemons! How does this affect things? Is Kiri happier with someone to talk to who isn’t her siblings or parents or village children that her parents mightn’t approve of?  I’d imagine her daemon hasn’t settled yet—what forms does it like?

  ·        All: Changeling AU

·        ALL: Fairy Tale AU

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        All: Historical Fantasy AU

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Nature Magic

 The setting and/or mood change AUs—give me Kirielle-the-faerie child, or Kiri in a fairytale, or shift the setting more historical and into our world, or change the nature of the magic—the canonical magic system is fairly hard as magic systems go, which works well for the story as it is, but I also really like softer magics.  What about a world where there’s simply small everyday magics present, or where Kiri has an affinity for green growing things quite beyond the natural?

  ·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

 How does Kiri’s life change, if she’s born deaf or becomes deaf?  How does her role as Cikan Kazinski’s only daughter change?  Does Eldemar have a Deaf community?

This could play into her desire to go to Cyoria, too—I wouldn’t expect Cirin to have much in the way of resources or community, but maybe Cyoria does; maybe that’s why she wants so badly to go.

  ·        ALL: Finding Peace/An End to the War

·        ALL: Legal Drama

·        ALL: Magical environment/species conservation scientist au

·        ALL: Magical horticulturists

 This set is more likely future!fic than anything else—Kirielle’s growing up into a country on the brink of war; what’s she going to do when she gets older?  Maybe she’ll be involved in that, or with the law—or maybe she goes to school and learns to be a mage, and then goes on to a career as a conservationist or horticulturist.

    Mother of Learning - nobody103   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Zorian Kazinski (Mother of Learning)

·        Zach Noveda (Mother of Learning)

 request-specific dnw: physical parental abuse within the Kazinski family, significant exaggeration of canonical emotional neglect/abuse/general family dysfunction, romantic and/or sexual Zach/Zorian (unless in a romantic fairytale au).

 ·        All: Changeling AU

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        ALL: High Fantasy AU

·        All: Historical Fantasy AU

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Nature Magic

 Again, setting and/or mood changes—turn one or both of these two into a changeling child, or push them into a different setting, or change their world to feel a little more magical than it does in canon.

  ·        All: Character has a secret identity

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Legal Drama

·        ALL: Magical environment/species conservation scientist au

·        ALL: Magical horticulturists

·        ALL: Role Swap AU

 This set is a combination of probably-post-canon things and things that could slide into the canon timeline—what if one or both of them went to more effort to construct a second identity, either in the loop or out of it, for anyone’s benefit?  What if one or both of them was deaf—if you go here, it’d be interesting if you combined it with deaf!Kirielle too.  A role swap—what if Zorian got there earlier and the angels didn’t think him unworthy, and Zach wound up his tagalong instead?

And the other three are basically what-ifs for the post-canon world—there’s Zach’s court case to be dealt with, and these two are both skilled enough to do basically whatever they want to, if it’s to do with magic.  Why not become a conservationist or horticulturist?

  ·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

·        ALL: Regency AU

·        All: Robin Hood Fusion

·        ALL: Spies & Secret Agents

·        ALL: University AU

 This is a whole grab bag of different AUs—they’re all fairly self-explanatory I think, though I will say that you shouldn’t feel pressured to keep the overtly mundane-seeming AUs mundane, if you don’t want too—I’d like the mundane versions of course!  But there’s plenty of interesting things you could explore with, e.g., magic!figure skating, so.  Go wild.

  ·        All: Tam Lin Fusion

 In a weird way, MoL already has its characters in the roles they need to be in for a Tam Lin fusion, though the structure is of course very different–what is Zach if not a sacrifice against Panaxeth’s release? What is Zorian if not the one who fights nigh-impossible odds to save him from that fate?  I’d love to see a fic that goes into this.

    幻影���駆ケル太陽 il sole penetra le illusioni | Day Break Illusion   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Tsukuyomi Luna (Day Break Illusion)

·        Taiyou Akari (Day Break Illusion)

·        Shirokane Ginka (Day Break Illusion)

·        Hoshikawa Seira (Day Break Illusion)

·        Group: Tsukuyomi Luna & Tsukuyomi Serena (Day Break Illusion)

·        Group: Hoshikawa Seira & Shirokane Ginka & Taiyou Akari & Tsukuyomi Luna

 fandom-specific dnw: heavy gender dysphoria.

 ·        All: a character is transgender (binary)

·        ALL: Alternate First Meetings

·        All: Character has a secret identity

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

·        ALL: Street Rats

 This is basically the AUs of mundane level things; the broad strokes of canon are perfectly compliant with any of these, or at least they could be. What changes, if you go for any of the AUs listed above? What stays the same?

  ·        All: Changeling AU

·        ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

·        All: with the right postage you can send letters anywhere anywhen

 Different flavors of fantasy—for the changelings, is the character we know from canon the stolen child, or their faerie replacement?  Are their daemons affected by them fighting the daemonia; what happens to a daemon when the human is consumed by a daemonia?  How do their powers and battles work in a world that’s more overtly magical? For the last—who/where/when would they send letters to?  Would Akari send one back in time to Fuyuna, Luna to her sister, Seira to her friend? Forward to their future selves? How does this affect the timeline; do you have to be careful, lest you irrevocably change things, or are future-letters already set and immutable?  Is this common or rare—what’s the price to send a letter through time?

  ·        ALL: Character Journeys To The Underworld to Rescue Their Dead Friend

·        All: Journey to the Underworld to Resurrect Loved One

 Who are they rescuing?  How are they going about the rescue?  Are they bringing back Fuyuna?  Seira’s friend?  Luna’s sister, if it turns out she’s dead not just vanished some other way?  Ginka herself, if we suppose that she died in the annihilation rather than going to battle elsewhere?

If a Daemonia’s victim is resurrected, does everyone remember them again? Either way, what are the consequences of bringing back a person who’d been erased?

  ·        ALL: Dragon Rider AU

·        ALL: Fencing AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

 Sports aus!  Two mundane, one not.  I’d love to see the kids in some kind of competitive something—are they teammates? Competitors? Is Sefiro Fiore a sports organization in this world, or are they both athletes and tarot users?

  ·        DBI: Daemonia hosts aren't erased from the timeline when killed

 So, one of the generally convenient things in this world—even if it’s not a particularly nice thing—is that none of the characters ever have to deal with the fallout of the deaths they cause; the daemonia’s victims are erased.  Ret-gone, if you will.  But what if they weren’t?  What would the effect of that be; how would that change things?

    幻影ヲ駆ケル太陽 il sole penetra le illusioni | Day Break Illusion   

·        Fanfiction (Medium)

·        Group: Hanayume & Lymro & Mama Nagataki & Taiyou Akari (Day Break Illusion)

·        Group: Hanayume & Lymro & Mama Nagataki (Day Break Illusion)

 fandom-specific dnw: heavy gender dysphoria.

 ·        All: a character is transgender (binary)

·        ALL: Deaf Canon Characters

·        ALL: Disabled Canon Characters

·        ALL: Found Family

 So, again, this is the more mundane aus—add these in!! tell me how they affect things, or how they don’t affect them!

Found family is… kinda canon? But there isn’t really much focus on that aspect in canon so I’d love some more here.

  ·        All: Changeling AU

·        ALL: Character was Stolen by Fairies as a Baby

·        All: Fairytale Fusion

·        ALL: Fantasy/Magic Royalty and Palace Intrigue AU

·        All: Historical Fantasy AU

·        ALL: Magic is a part of everyday life

·        ALL: Magical Realism

·        ALL: Regency AU (no homophobia)

·        ALL: Regency-Inspired Fantasy AU

·        All: with the right postage you can send letters anywhere anywhen

 And these are the magic and/or setting AUs!  How do these elements change their lives; what stays the same regardless?

See my previous set of Day Break Illusion requests for my thoughts on the letters tag.

  ·        ALL: Daemon AU

·        ALL: Daemons in Canon Divergent AU

 Just—daemons!  What are theirs?  For Hanayume—what gender is her daemon?  I’m sorry I’m running out of things to say at this point…

  ·        ALL: Dragon Rider AU

·        ALL: Fencing AU

·        All: Figure skating AU

 So, in canon, Hanayume, Lymro, and Mama Nagataki are kind of Akari’s fortune-teller aunts/mentors; if we change it so that Akari’s thing is fencing or figure skating or dragon-riding, why not bring her aunts along for the ride as her mentors in that sport, or, if we’re not including Akari—competitors themselves, perhaps, or maybe generally teachers?

   If you made it all the way down here—first of all, wow, this letter was way too long so good on you for making it—second of all—thank you again for writing for me!! Good luck!!

[lucalicatteart]

I am absurdly not so great at stuff like logo/symbol design since I have an unshakable sketchy disorganization inherent in everything I do (if it wasn’t evident from my handwriting, which I am trying SO hard to make it look neat ghghg), but... here’s some vaguely sloppy versions of possible symbols across the realm! I was thinking about how different organizations or groups may represent themselves and what all the different meanings behind the symbols would be and etc. Especially since flags and stuff are generally a part of worldbuilding I tend to accidentally overlook lol..  ( short explanation of above referenced groups under the read more )

----

This isn’t going to be very long or detailed info about each group, since most of them I plan on having their own separate posts, but I just wanted to define them really quick since some of them I haven’t mentioned before!

The Collection Of Southern Jhevona: 

Though the Jhevona aren’t really represented by any one group in particular and tend to live in separate smaller scattered territories without many allies, The Collection is probably the closest thing to a unified alliance of Jhevona that exists. Jhevona are thought to have originated as a species from somewhere down in lower Nanyevimi, and a lot of the oldest, largest, and most powerful cities/countries/territories/etc. of them exist in that region. The Collection is basically just a group of these civilizations who formed a sort of loose alliance, usually for the sake of helping other Jhevona groups with trade or conflict. 

The relatively small size of the species, their historical conflicts with certain powerful groups of elves (thus it’s easy for a conflict with them to end up impacting your entire reputation across many different areas, etc.), and other issues specific to them (like species wide problems with premature death, disease, and infertility due to higher levels of magic expose),, means that many Jhevona groups can tend to exist in a somewhat vulnerable state. The Collection seeks to... help them with that, lol.. 

While The Collection was started by and is mostly made up of only like five primary countries/groups/etc. of Jhevona, you don’t have to be a part of the organization to still receive aid and cooperate with them and etc. They form casual alliances and help out pretty much any group of Jhevona, regardless of it they officially join the collection or not (of course excluding like, if some random jhevona group was trying to start a genocide or something that obviously most jhevona wouldn’t be okay supporting lol). Really they just exist to help promote the interests and safety of their species as a whole, whenever and wherever they can, despite how diverse and un-unified most  groups of Jhevona tend to be. 

(I also referenced some things about “multi-realm theory” and etc. in the description of their symbol in the image of above, which I won’t explain here, but for clarification on why those symbols are important to them, there’s more info on the Jhevona species and culture HERE (link))  

---

The Elven Alliance:

I’ve talked about them before in a few other posts lol, but this is basically the main influential group of elves in the world. About 10,000 years ago or so, many of the most prominent elven societies at the time decided that it’d be helpful for them to all ally together and mutually aid each other (sharing resources, technology, giving money loans to smaller elven countries to help them build,  defense aid, etc.), so they formed The Alliance. Though, there were disagreements on a few big issues (notably the interpretation of the elven religion, but some other things as well), so while it was initially meant to be for ALL elves, it ended up becoming more exclusive. 

Now there’s kind of a pretty distinct cultural line between countries/groups/etc. of elves that are inside of the Elven Alliance, vs. outside of it. Any group of elves is still allowed to join the alliance at any time they want, but they have to meet certain cultural and religious standards, and must be approved by a vote of all current elven alliance nation representatives. There are about 38 countries/groups in the elven alliance at this date, though of course not all of them are the same size or have the same amount of political influence. 

Since elves are the majority population in the world, and also most of the groups within the Alliance are like.. very big very rich very powerful nations, the Elven Alliance is probably the most influential group in all of Nanyevimi, at least in terms of global politics and trade. Though of course, Nanyevimi is so scattered and isolated, it’s kind of impossible for any one group to control too much lol.. Like, they’re the most influential compared to everyone else, but everyone else usually barely has any influence at all. There are still plenty of groups down south (most elven countries are up north or near the middle of the globe) that are entirely out of reach of the elven alliance, or at least can ignore them without much consequence. However if you live in or near the primary elven territories of the world (or if you are elven, even if you live far in the south), it’s likely their activities and policies have a much bigger impact on your life. 

The Alliance is GENERALLY seen as neutral (depending on who you ask), though they do have a bad reputation in certain places due to various historical events (the fact that Fanyin is still allowed as a member of the Alliance just because they helped found it despite the government of the country being  known as like.. a conflict-hungry dictatorship that has an insane class system and 0 rights for like 70% of it’s citizens.. A group of Alliance allied scientists/mages almost killed the entire world by introducing a magic plague one time whilst trying to engineer biological warfare against a relatively small defenseless group of people over a religious conflict lmao... The primary technology that brought the Alliance to have most of it’s shared wealth and power (Iriminel crystals, which can be used to basically generate magical electricity) was later found to have been stolen from a group of Jhevona after they were murdered just because they wouldn’t agree to let a group of elves mine crystals from their lands.. you know, stuff like that..). 

There are plenty of groups within the alliance who disapprove of the past actions of other alliance members, who work to do good across the world, etc. But people usually still end up questioning their intentions. There are so many moving parts and complex dynamics within the Alliance, it’s hard for people to have a concrete opinion on it as a whole (since most of the groups within it are pretty different from each other), but needless to say, their reputation across the realm can be quite controversial.

(For more info on the elven religion, there’s a post HERE (link), which could clarify stuff like who Inaashi is and why it’s a part of the symbol of their flag )

---

International Union Of Non-Allied Elves: 

Basically kind of like the Elven Alliance, except for ... made up of elves outside of the Alliance. They function very similarly to how the Collection Of Southern Jhevona operate, in the sense that they basically are just a loose collaboration of elves who ally with each other for resources and protection, and really seek to help all elves in general. Unlike the Alliance, there are no guidelines or regulations you have to meet to join, or for them to come to your aid, basically any group of elves is welcome. 

Since there are no cultural or religious guidelines to join, non-alliance elves tend to have MUCH more variety in their religious practices, general daily life, diet, technology, customs, etc. since it’s not regulated by a central power like in the case of Elven Alliance countries. Though this does mean they generally have less cohesion, less stable defense/resources, and less sense of collective unity, they still usually stick together pretty well if needed. 

Though you would think so, there actually isn’t much conflict between Alliance vs. Non-alliance elves. The only things would probably be religious disagreements (the alliance having adopted a new monotheistic version of the elven religion, while non-alliance groups still practice having many gods and are much more open to wide variations on rituals and interpretation), and also certain cultural disagreements (elven cultures in general tend to focus a lot on glorifying their own history, proud of the advancements of ancient elves and etc. etc. So BOTH groups want historical artifacts, ancient religious texts, etc.  But since the Alliance is the more powerful group of elves, they basically kind of get to hoard all of that stuff. Non-alliance elves end up weirdly distanced from their own culture and lacking any meaningful connection with their history (despite desiring it), since Alliance elves have kind of taken control as the One Single Authority On All Things Elven and basically own nearly all historical records and information on the elven species. Which of course non-alliance groups aren’t always happy about, especially since some of them are not keen to just trust whatever historical ‘facts’ the Alliance puts out there when they’d rather just have access to the records or other resources that would allow them to explore the information for themselves). 

But other than those two things, relations between The Alliance and non-alliance groups like the Union really aren’t too strained (of course this depends on the group). The Alliance generally also wants to support elves just because they’re elves, and at the end of the day they want to help the success of their own species, so they rarely mistreat non-alliance groups, and if anything usually are overly welcoming to them, since they aim for all groups of elves to eventually join the alliance as well, and don’t want to scare potential members off lol. They’re actually known for reaching out to non-alliance groups, giving them gifts, offering them aid (mostly with no strings attached), but of course this is met with mixed reception, and sometimes suspicion. 

-

(also, random note: none of these names are like.. actually what they’re called in the species’ native language. I’m writing in english so I’m just giving them easy to remember English names but, they’d all have their own actual names for themselves. 

Like for example “The Elven Alliance” in the actual elven language would just be “The Alliance” referred to as “Ane Kiivastye” or just “Kiivastye”. ‘Ane’ meaning ‘Those/they/a group of people’, ‘kii’ being a prefix to mean ‘inside/within’, and ‘Vastye’ meaning something along the lines of ‘grace/good faith/favor’. So basically ‘Those who are in grace’, implying ‘Those who have good favor with the gods’ , since one of the main reasons for the split was religious disagreement. Likewise, anyone outside of the alliance would be natively called something like ‘Ane Nekiivastye’, or ‘those who are outside of grace/those who do not hold good favor with the gods’. 

So basically all the names would be different in the actual languages of the people I’m referring to, but I’m just using these since it’s much easier to remember and reference lol)

-----

Nanyevimi Global Representatives: 

Like mentioned before, the entire world in general is VERY scattered, mostly made up of small isolated groups that kind of just mind their business. Most people just stay within their own territories and generally there isn’t a lot of global cohesion, for a lot of different reasons. But, groups like the Nanyevimi Global Representatives are some of the few that actually seek to better unite the realm.

It’s kind of just an alliance of a few different governments from various places worldwide, who seek to do things like: maintain trading routes that span the entire world, construct global areas where many different people can come together and trade/communicate, provide ease of access for those who seek to travel (like keeping international roads safe, giving out language learning resources and compiling info on local cultures, etc.), promote conflict resolution/peace and easy communication between various disconnected groups in the realm, sharing of technology and resources worldwide,  etc.  This is also the group that sets standards for/manages both Global Learning Centers and Global cities/areas in general. 

Despite being able to accomplish a lot in the realm (even introducing one or two cohesive trade routes is a miracle, considering how isolated everything tends to be), The Representatives still really don’t have that much power. The governments that make up the group, while extremely varied (from all different species, areas of the world, etc.), really aren’t big political powers or anything. The group doesn’t have much wealth or influence, but simply gets by on being able to communicate goals and collaborate with others effectively. All of their projects are basically just people working together for their own benefit of their own will. 

Like instead of coming into an area with an army and being like “Hey, we’re making a trade route here, you idiots” and paying off/threatening a bunch of locals to let them do it.. It’d be more like, a handful of various diplomats show up and have a long talk with the locals about if they’d want a road through their territory, if so what it would look like, what area they’d be comfortable with it passing through, them explaining to the group what benefits they could see from it and how it could help them access more resources, etc. then all cooperatively working together to build it if enough people decide they’d like to, no use of force or monetary incentive required.  

So they have a good bit of connections all across the realm and are very skilled at reaching out to groups and communicating in a peaceful and understandable way, but they’re not necessarily the most influential group around. Though, they are the only organization that’s even been attempting stuff like this, and the fact that they’ve been able to make the progress that they have (introducing  multiple global areas and learning centers, maintaining a few patches of neutral and safe trade routes, etc.) is considered by some to be impressive. 

( Information on what a global learning center is HERE (link), and information on the state of the world as a whole/what global areas are HERE (link). ) 

---

Council Of Navyete:

This is the primary government of Navyete, the homeland of the Avirre’thel/vampires and where most of the members of that species live. I obviously plan on making a separate post about this sometime soon, so I don’t need to explain much lol.. Also just... the council system is really complicated and it’s going to be extremely long whenever I do explain it ghgjhgj.... But it’s basically just the main group of people who exist to make certain final decisions on law and policy and help with the functioning of Navyete. 

There can be 600 - 800 council members at a time, who all specialize in particular areas, and also don’t have that much power. They exist more as a mediating group who can help other groups communicate with each other, represent their people when meeting with outside governments, resolve conflicts between groups who can’t resolve it on their own, aid in the ease of distributing resources, etc. They don’t necessarily rule anything, as much as they just help manage the whims of the country and try to keep things running smoothly.  

Ultimately the people hold a majority of the power (most actual decisions are made on a local level by smaller councils of the citizens who live in a particular area, or other affiliated groups (like if people do labor, they collectively own their workplace and make decisions and rules about it, generally having nothing to do with involvement from the higher council, etc.)) , The Council just kind of helps aid the citizens rule their own country, providing a bit of extra cohesion and organization so it’s easier for all these smaller governing groups to communicate between each other and do things collectively as a nation. 

Despite their somewhat minor role in terms of actually controlling Navyete, since they do represent the entire country (like at meetings with foreign governments and etc.) and also because of the circumstances and purpose under which they were originally founded, the Council still is kind of seen as a symbol of Navyete and of the Avirre’thel as a whole, and are often interpreted as very significant. A version of the flag of the council is also the flag of the country (which is also often used to represent their entire species), and the people of Navyete are culturally generally proud of the progress their species/ country has made since their rocky beginnings, so they also see the Council as a positive representation of themselves, and kind of allow it to take on the symbolic meaning that it has.  

(for more information on the Avirre’thel to understand some of the symbol meanings referenced in the flag thing , their info directory is HERE (link)) 

---

And that’s pretty much everything lol.. Of course there are a lot more groups in the realm that would have their own info and flags and etc., but I just focused on a few that I already knew a bit about lol. Sorry my writing on the flag images is probably like.. barely legible.. hopefully the information is still clear enough ggh

[zombiekillerky]

{Rythna} : Misery

Rythian walked around the somewhat dark forest, of course he had to run out of supplies for his new magic when it was getting dark out and all the mobs were starting to spawn. His violet sword was held close in his bandaged hand as he walked smoothly through the path. Making sure he didn’t trip on any thing like roots or rocks. The mage sighed as he bent down and removed from red glowing crystals from the earth and placed them in his mended pouch that hung around his shoulder. With a grunt he stood back up and dusted his knees off slightly. Not even prepared for what he was about to come upon later on.

The Mage heard a cry of pain coming from the North after a big blast, he has never heard the sound before from a creature of night. Maybe it was a new mutated endermen he wasn’t sure at all. The Mage’s feet carried him fast and swift towards the direction. Wanting to figure out what made the cry of pain was and the loud banging sound that came from a far. 

Rythian stood against a tree as he came to a stop and watched through the opening of the leaves and bushes. Finding a small crater that a human being would probably make and a fast pace in to the earth from such large strength. 

There sat the blonde scientist he ever so hated trying to get out of the crater he had made with a large blast hole in his calf and some gashes on his arm where his lab coat ripped to shreds. The Scientist cried out as he moved slowly up the crater as much as he could with the rest of his strength. Not holding back any tears at that point in time since there was really no point in doing so.

“Stupid Sjin....god why can’t he just listen to me....fuck this hurts so bad....I have to get back to Kim, fuck Kim!” he shouted as he put his hand up to the microphone in his ear. Making sure it was still impact since the blast destroyed some things he carried on his body. Starting with his blaster gun strapped to his side.

“Kim come in Kim are you alright.....Kim answer please.....?” No answer, Duncan tried to stand up once more but the pain was to much in his leg. Why couldn’t his shield cover all of him the whole blast. He would have died if it wasn’t for it which he is thankful for but still. It limited him to so much he needed to do at the moment, stress was building up with in him.

“Kim please answer me!.....Please answer I need to know if you’re okay Kim....Please....please” No answer, Duncan screamed in agony and defeat as he laid their the the grass in pain, exhausted from all the damage he took. . Muttering things that no one could understand from a far away distance. He sat up where he was, wiping some tears away from his eyes as he sat. There were to many thoughts in his mind, he didn’t know what to do. The scientist tried to stand up again but was brought back down from the amount of pain that shot up his leg. He let out a groan but soon leaned on his almost broken sword succeeding in standing up almost all the way.

“I know someone’s out there, being in three wars doesn’t make you stupid you know. Come out a just fucking kill me if that’s what you want....SJIN! Is that you! Come and finish the job you wimpy bastard” Duncan cried out as he moved a foot, letting out another cry in pain as he forced his body to move. Giving up at about four steps from how much pain he was in, he hasn’t even seen how bad his leg looked. 

Rythian sighed as he walked up from underneath his tree and out in to the opening. Duncan only chuckled as he looked him up and down, running a hand through his tangled blood hair. Feeling blood run down his forehead from a large gash in his skin. But that didn’t stop him from smiling at the mage in front of him, it had been so long since he had seen him. He was surprised how good he looked.

“Long time no see Mage” Duncan said as he tried to walk once more, failing instantly since he almost fell on the the ground since he didn’t lift his foot up from the ground all the way. Duncan tried to look in his pockets for a potion of healing or at least something for his leg but no luck. All of his stuff was ruined from the explosion the farmer caused back at his base.

“Well here is your chance Rythian....just get it over with and fucking kill me already....Sjin is probably already torturing Kim right now and I can’t even fucking walk let alone go and stop him....I’m useless....done for....just fucking do it” the scientist said, starting to feel light headed from the pain fully kicking in and the adrenaline going away from it’s little burst.

 As much as Rythian had been waiting for the moment to finally kill him something in his mind changed. He didn’t have full hatred for him any more....more like sympathy for the ruined man in front of him. He felt bad for the scientist? In all of the years of their hatred for each other it just went away. Maybe it was because he was dealing with something similar to when Zoey had died. Just something clicked in Rythian’s head to make him stop. 

Rythian walked closer and Duncan flinched as he heard his footsteps coming closer to him. He wanted to vomit at the thought of finally dying by his hand. He needed to save Kim but his body wouldn’t move from it’s spot on the grassy floor. He needed to move but his body was just done for....he didn’t have the will to move anymore. He looked up and smiled as he saw Rythian’s teal eyes, but what he didn’t see was hatred in them like he has always seen from before more like sadness. Duncan’s brow knitted together as he looked up at him, wincing in pain from standing for so long with weight on that leg.

“w-what are you waiting for?” Duncan asked as he bent down, blinking hard to regain his clear vision since it was starting to become blurry.

“I’m not going to kill you Lalna”

“Let me suffer then *Chuckle* I like your s-style��

“No Duncan......I....I’m going to help you in this little situation you have here” Duncan stared at the mage in pure confusion, why would he pass up on this opportunity to kill him. Duncan let tears flow down his cheeks, a mix of pain, confusion and anger towards everything really. He just couldn’t understand anything right now, everything was so blurry and confusing to the blonde.

“Why Rythian? I can’t fucking do anything, my leg is in to bad of shape because of that damn farmer blowing me up not to mention he is probably after Kim since she wasn’t at the base tonight....I’m glad she took a trip in to the Twilight other wise she would be in the same situation as me right now.....fuck me please....put me out of my misery” Duncan cried, Rythian sighed as he took out a small vile and stabbed the scientist’s neck with it. Injecting him with the liquid to knock him out.

Rythian picked the scientist up with all of his strength, focusing all his energy and teleported back to his base. He laid down the scientist on his bed and cut his pant leg off to look at the wound even closer. The mage sighed as he left the scientist in that room, grabbing his even better swords from his weapons chest. Lalna could survive I need to find Kim Rythian thought as he walked out his front door and glanced around him. Thinking of what Duncan had said, she was in the Twilight forest....she was probably back by now then since it has been around an hour from what happened to Duncan.

The mage used his power and focused himself towards Duncan’s house, opening his eyes and found himself there. Looking at all the destruction in the area, half of their base was ruined and there were several laser holes in the material. Crater’s covered the ground in several spots but luckily the portal to the Twilight was fine and in a force field that Duncan must have put down to protect her. Rythian sighed as he walked over and glanced down at the portal, taking a deep breath before entering.

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

Duncan woke up with a groan in a surprisingly soft bed. How did he even get here in the first place. All he remembered was Rythian right in front of him and every thing went black after ward. Duncan sighed as he looked around, grabbing some bandages on the table and a needle and thread. Rythian must have left as soon as he brought him there then? Duncan sewn his leg up and started to wrap the bandage around the large wound, along with taking sips of the healing potion on the counter so it would make the healing process work even faster then it normally would.

He knew he shouldn’t but he stood up from the bed, There was little pain which was good but he needed rest in order for the potion to kick in fully. He grabbed his sword and limped out of the room, glancing around at everything. The pictures he had up, the weaponry everything really. There was even an old picture of him and Rythian on the wall still surprisingly. Duncan sighed as stared at the picture with guilt.

“Where have the times gone Ryth?” Duncan muttered as he made his way to the front of the base. He walked out of the small base and back out in to the night air. The moon only went by a tiny bit so he was probably out for around an hour or two which was good. But that still meant Kim was out there alone and hurt probably from that monster. Duncan needed to find her, that was what he was pushing his body to do. She was his responsibility, his apprentice, his friend that he cared for like family. He can’t let her life be ruined as much as it already is by the flux that he had caused. 

As he took a few steps outside a hand was wrapped around his neck, shoving him against the side of the house with ease. There Sjin stood, an evil look in his eye as he held him. Purple liquid dripped from his nose, his pupils had a light purple glimmer in them as he stared Duncan down. He had been infected with something, it looked to be another form of flux. One that made one zombie like almost.

“Why hello there Lividcoffee...nice to see you are still alive after all I have done to you....Nice to see the mage didn’t see all the burn marks I left on you from the previous fight we had shared” Sjin said as he shoved a blade down Duncan’s shoulder blade. The scientist cried out in pure pain as he was held against his will.

“Fuck you Sjin, fucking kill me just leave Kim out of this”

“Oh you should have told me that around an hour ago”

“What the fuck did you do you bastard, What did you do to HER!”

“I....had a tiny....bit of fun with her” That’s when Duncan snapped, he took the knife out of his shoulder and stabbed Sjin in the stomach. Sjin grasped his shoulder and took his sword Stabbing Duncan as well until the end of the sword hit the house. Duncan gasped for air as he removed the knife from Sjin and stabbed him again. Watching his body fall to the floor. Revealing Rythian with Kim right beside him.

“Duncan!” Kim yelled as she ran over to him, cupping his cheeks to make sure he was still with them. She hugged him as tight as she could and started to sob as she clutched his lab coat.

“Rythian....Rythian please help him” She sobbed,

“Kim....I’m fine” Duncan said quietly, blood started to drip from his nose and mouth. He looked up at Rythian with a soft grin, coughing slightly as Kim backed away from him and stood next to the mage.

“One last c-chance Ryth......you going to end it?” Duncan asked, his vision starting to get blurry and his chest heavy from the lack of breath. Rythian placed his hand on his shoulder, a blue light emitting from the palm of his hands.

“No Duncan.....I told you, I’m going to help you”“ Rythian replied as he used all of his magic as he pulled out the sword with his hand and healed as much of his organs as he could. The scientist fell in to his arms, surprisingly he was really light for his height.

“Told you I was going to help and that was a promise....hopefully we can stick to this kind of friendship from now on” 

[yogsbog]

Yogswap AU

its au time baby! 

Yogswap is a basic Role Swap AU that I made with @weepingalaxy ! Some are entire groups switched, others are just a simple teacher-student swap. More details undercut! 

Zoeya is a super cool scientist from the future! An overall master at all things SCIENCE, she’s worked hard to perfect her craft, and decided to bring her gadgets and gizmos to the past in order to bring forth peace and harmony! Though, there were a few issues and after the reset, she wanted to forget all conflict that occurred in the Old World and kept pushing for a new lifestyle of peace and forgiveness.

Though, due to the conflict in the Old World between Parvis and Nano, she has very mixed feelings about Magic. She doesn’t exactly understand how it works, but she’s seen the effects of darker magic at work and believes that its far too dangerous to be used.

Rythian is Zoeya’s apprentice, agreeing to help her with sciences and peace building so long as she’d help him on his quest to defeat the Ender Dragon. Science is a bit difficult for him to understand, but he’s patient, and enjoys the time spent with Zoeya even if he doesn’t quite get the lessons she’s teaching him. The two joined together to make Fort Awesome-sauce White Rock Laboratory!

On the opposing side, Nanosounds is a highly skilled witch who is slowly weaving technology into her studies. Having been one of the two responsible for the destruction of the old world, she keeps a strong rivalry going with Parvis, and has no real intention in playing along with Zoeya’s peacekeeping. She lives in a large mage tower rather than a castle.

She eventually stumbles upon a rather curious yet unexperienced Lalna, making him her apprentice and teaching him everything she knows about magic and science. It’s a lot to take in, but Lalna happily sticks with her, at least up until she pushed him he fell into a glass sphere containing a dangerous viz node in one part of her tower. Then he gets locked away at the very top of the tower until Nano can figure out something to do about the flux.

Meanwhile, Xephos is a simple spaceman, exiled from his time, who crash landed one day and sought out aid from the dwarf kingdom of Khaz Modan. He met and befriended Honeydew, learning the local language from him before the two eventually parted ways. Now Xephos is just a simple adventurer, living out in the woods, helping out people whenever they need, and y’know, bees. He’s got bees!

Honeydew was never exiled from Khaz Modan, but rather left on his own terms after hearing about the wonders of futuristic space technology that Xephos told him about. He seeks out Xephos after leaving home, and the two work together to start YogInc. The main idea of the company would be to “Light up the world”, but they have an awful habit of getting sidetracked with big weapons and cool gadgets. They work together with Nano for help with both magic and science, though it tends to be mostly with magic stuff. Eventually after the completion of YogInc, Honeydew heads off to start DewLabs. Where they dew science. Haha! Fun, right? 

On the other side of things, YogInc’s main rival is Strife Solutions. A rather shifty company that “solves” problems, but also goes out of their way to create problems for them to solve as well. Even so, their solutions are a bit shitty and half-assed. All complaints about their solutions will be met with a large bill. Unfortunately, their one of the best suppliers of rare, hard to get items and technology, which makes dealing with them profitable.

The face and brains of the company is none other than Strife himself. Duh. A spaceman who only cares about making and keeping his money, he comes off as a condescending prick, but brings word of futuristic technology that outshine what YogInc is trying to recreate. He has the same energies as a certain vine.

At his side is Parvis. Just a lad with bland origins, who may have had a big hand in the destruction of the old world. A former blood mage and definitely a big chaotic being, Parvis happily works along side Strife and makes plenty of problems for them to fix! He’s just glad to be here, and when the company eventually gets put on the sidelines, Parvis runs off to start a ranch. Strife isn’t too happy about that.

Those are all the ones we figured out more details about! Ones that are less developed are probably open for your own thoughts about it.

Ridge, Lying and KirinDave are swapped with HatFilms. Yes, that makes HatFilms basically gods. Yes, that’s fucking terrifying. We agreed it was awful and hilarious.

Lomadia and Nilesy are swapped with Minty and Ravs. Lom and Nilesy run rival bars! But it’s a friendly rivalry, and they regularly visit their competitor just to hang out. I don’t know the bar names yet. On the other hand, Minty and Ravs work together preserving wildlife, but have a tense rivalry that they just pretend isn’t there. Ravs works mostly with chickens, and Minty is a florist.

Aaaand that’s about it! If you have any questions about events, relationships, etc, please feel free to send in asks! And any art for this AU can be found over at @weepingalaxy, though I did draw Rythian here! I’ll also probably doodle for some asks, if I feel like it [dabs]

Thanks for reading! 

EDIT: forgot about sips and sjin like the FOOL i am! find their info here!

[withercat-writes]

To Lose It All

So I got inspired, prepare for angst and Flux Buddies Spoilers, done in my usual rambling style! Its based on the idea I had on what if Blackrock was after Flux Buddies! Ao3 Link

Lalna was never the same after that fateful moment in Mother’s dimension, he wasn’t sure where The Doctor had dumped him to scold him, not that Lalna remembered anything really from this time, every moment from leaving that dimension was a blur, all he knew was eventually he found his way back to the others. He never let himself get close to them though, building a new base and locking himself away. The others tried to get close, to talk to him, to get him to at least acknowledge them more then mildly, none succeeded, Lalna didn’t want to risk getting attached again. He never tried to get back to the tower, Lalnable could live there for all he cared, better away from him then nearby anyways. Hopefully Tiddles had long since ran away from the maniac.

He knew Nano told him to be good, to be better then this, but he just couldn’t find it in him to care. It’s not like she could see, she was gone, poof, vanished, no respawn, someplace Lalna may never be allowed to reach, and with that fact in mind, it could be so hard to care. So he tinkered away, building and making mild pleasantries at Xephos who just wouldn’t leave him alone. He found himself quicker to violence, though it both sickened him, and intrigued him how little he cared anymore about the pain of others, he did his best to resist this sure, but sometimes the apathy would claw at his heart, and he’d go looking for a scrap to just feel something.

Soon his hands had him build that same weapon that killed Nano, and a faint wonderance past in his mind, would if he detonated, would his respawn fail? He couldn’t bring himself to test it, but he could never bring himself to take it out of his inventory either. So there it sat, before eventually the apathy clawed too much and he went out to look for a scrap, and saw Sjin. Everyone knew what happened next, the two got too heated, literally, fire burning all around. Lalna couldn’t stop, the adrenaline like wine to a dehydrated soul. It kept getting worse, explosions and death. He saw Rythian eyes wide in shock as one of Sjin's arrows plunged his throat, before another shot through his head, killing him instantly, he felt nothing to it. He saw Zoey take an arrow through the heart through the corner of his eye, and he felt nothing to it as well.  

And why should he care anyways? They’d just respawn, they’d be fine, no worse for wear, maybe a bit annoyed, but who cares about that. There was no real consequences for them dying, they wouldn’t suffer, wouldn’t truly die, so why would death matter? They’d still be here, like Nano should have been, but she wasn’t. Nano wouldn’t be proud, but she was gone, so why care about that either. He wished they would permanently die for a moment, so they could never realize the curse they were all under.

He set down the explosives and set them off, retreating back a bit, he wasn’t fully ready to die, natural aversions to that and all that. It unfortunately did not kill him, and soon he noticed Sjin in his base and he rushed to fix the damage, he wasn’t trying to blow up literally everything, fucking Sjin! He was too late though, and the world turned white, and he couldn’t stop the smile. 

Alas, he woke up all the same, a new world yes, but he knew it was just more of the same, he clutched the sapphire in his pocket tight as he couldn’t stop a few tears. He got back to work though, building up a castle, throwing himself into his machines. No one cared beyond a few dirty looks about the end of the past world, and why should they? Everything that mattered was fine, they were alive, unharmed, with infinite potential, instead of gone, lost, dead. Everyone still had there friends, and loved ones, the lucky bastards.

He isolated himself once more in his castle, he decided this time to craft it to remind him of the first base with Nano, to hopefully inspire some emotion as he kept to himself again. This time no one cared about this isolation, it seems they’d finally given up on him, and he grew further into apathy, he learned Rythian wanted revenge, he shrugged it off, okay whatever why should he care? Then he learned about Zoeya.

Then rage bubbled in his chest for the first time in months.

How DARE he do this, how dare he come to face him for revenge with an apprentice that FELL FROM THE SKY, with an apprentice with a CHEERFUL GO LUCKY ATTITUDE, an apprentice EAGER TO LEARN, an apprentice with UNIQUENESS and OPTIMISM, and still SASS. Really the only way Rythian could have made it worse is if he gave her a sapphire, he shuddered at the thought, hand clutching her sapphire again.

How dare he get revenge with someone that reminded him so much of Nano. Revenge he could ignore? But this? THIS?? This was an insult, a grave cruel insult! To rub it in his face that Rythian has what he lost, that Rythian could do it so much fucking better, what a joke, what a piece of shit! He threw himself into his research, fine, it had been too long since he felt anything anyways, and rage and sadism was something familiar. A part of him wondered if this is the kind of thing that created Lalnable, Lalna crushed those thoughts, no, he was better then that, he would always be better then that.

He ignored every warning, buried himself even more in his castle. Came up with the ingenious forcefield idea. Then he waited, and waited, but the first one at his door was not an angry mage, but a girl, so fiery for a second he saw Nano. He blinked it off though and gave her the warmest smile he could, he wished he could say something new bubbled in his chest, but they didn’t the now well known rage and sadism just souring more, as he thinks about what could have been as he pretended everything was alright for her. The dinosaur he just kinda, ignored for the most part, gave him the creeps.

He was surprised when he heard she and Rythian got into a spat though, ha, he’d never have thrown Nano out for being a technomage, really Rythian was terrible, an awful mentor, couldn’t even give his apprentice the attention and knowledge she clearly needs, and just LETS HER SUFFER and SLOWLY FADE, doing NOTHING TO STOP, because he's a COWARD. What a terrible mage, a terrible friend. Truly Zoey deserved better. Not that he’d really be a better choice, he could pretend, but he knew they’d end up crawling back together, it’s not like anything could keep him and Nano from each other for long. Even if Zoey deserved better.

He cheerfully dodged her interests and set about crafting a gun, a gun for a dinosaur, hm past Lalna would have been thrilled, the dinosaur also seemed a bit familiar but hey what does he know. He acted how he knew he was supposed to act, cheerful if a bit distrusting, he didn’t want to drive her away after all, she’d be safe in his castle, plus it’d rub it in Rythian’s face, oh the hate Rythian would feel at the thought that stupid flux mad scientist, the dangerous warped scientist who broke respawn, was doing a better job protecting her then he could, ha. 

He handed over his laser to her, that, he didn’t know why, he did never use it though, so he didn’t really think it over, it was, kinda nice talking to someone, but he knew it wouldn’t last, besides he preferred to be alone, alone was safer for everyone. It was almost easy to forget he was explaining things to a stranger, not to Nano as he talked about his forcefield, but he didn’t forget, he couldn’t forget. So he just kept playing his part. 

This went on for a few hours, but soon, his moment of true reckoning began, and Rythian had fallen into his forcefield trap. He hoped this would be short, that he could get Rythian away before he truly gave into his anger, his one mercy, Nano would be proud. That changed, though, when he started talking, and his anger grew into a full blown rage in his chest.

Retribution????? Justice????? What a laugh! Everyone was fine, no one lost anything real, nothing tangible, what Rythian were you upset that you lost a few pieces of wood?? Pathetic. He kept his cool though, nothing would be achieved if he lost his top, worst of all Rythian might just start pitying him instead, and augh he hated pity.

He bantered with him, shoved it off on Sjin, and he knew Rythian was buying it, buying his faux calm. He internally aughed as he kept going, if no one else cares Rythian, that means that maybe they understand things more, that maybe you’re just a mad man screaming about a loss of a base, that everyone’s long past. He couldn’t resist name-dropping Zoey.

Oh how Rythian’s face just fell, oh yes it felt good, a sadistic glee curling in his chest, the pain in his eyes. Rythian always thought his eyes were guarded but it was so easy to pry them open into pure emotion. Rythian truly did understand nothing about this world, about respawn, about being a mentor, and about love. He wasn’t even the one who killed him, Sjin did that.

He rubbed his face as Rythian just kept going on and on about murder, bullshit that was. Utter bullshit, he’d only murdered one person and that wasn’t Rythian that’s for sure, Rythian dared to equate his minor inconvenience of respawn to what happened to her? Bastard. Murder no one comes back from, murder permanetly erases people. If Rythian had been murdered, this conversation wouldn’t even be happening. 

Rythian hurled accusations of him, accusations of evil, of planned cruelty, of going down the same path, all from what? A force field designed to keep a clearly vengeance driven mage away? The fact he had a castle? Really at this point Lalna was pretty sure at this point everything he would ever do to Rythian, could easily be ruled self defense. He let himself smile, good, the nuke was already planted anyways, he got bored and it was too easy, sure he hadn’t armed it yet, it originally was supposed to be an empty threat but he could do that later. He brought it up, see how far enraged he could make this mage, a new project really, an experiment, and he was a scientist after all, sure it had been a bit, but he was.almost curious.

Smirking he went on and on about how he just needed insurance, that he can’t get rid of it, and loved the horror in his eyes, sure he couldn’t really feel emotions, hadn’t for what, a year now? Making others feel them though he found? Was pretty close of a substitute though, he liked that substitute, made him feel warmer, he poked fun at a mage fish take, and watched Rythian desperately try and make his way out, how silly, how fun, it felt good to have control, as he ignored Rythian’s edgy talk about trust.

Seeing Rythians face at the comment about him eating grass, he rushed in for the kill, talking about how he didn't know how he’d get Rythian food, not that food mattered either, a lack of food wouldn’t kill him, he knew that one personally, not eating would hinder you greatly, but alas, you’d live. Food was just one of many luxuries in this world, enjoying the horrified and sick look Rythian gave him, a face one would only make at one truly evil, that was wrong though, Rythian didn’t understand evil. Never met evil, he was just a child, a child whose mad his sandcastle got kicked, never felt true heartbreak, spoken to any truly rotten, he was just, too big for his britches. He wandered off, planning to return in a few hours, he hoped Rythian had noticed it was easy to shut off the forcefield, it was never meant to be permanent after all, like he said, talk, in safety of forcefield, that was all. 

He rubbed his face but couldn’t stop a mad grin when he found Rythian gone a few hours later, escaped, seemed he knew more about tech then he let on, good, it’d be too easy if he just let himself be caught forever, that’d be boring, no that’s not what he wanted. He’d make Rythian understand Retribution and Justice, he’d make him learn what it means to lose it all, what it means to truly feel pain and sorrow and loss. To truly understand. He felt so good reveling in Rythian's emotions, he wanted more! He wanted to truly be the scientist he knows he is and finally research into what breaks apart respawn, what sets a skeleton’s arrow apart from an explosion to kill Mother.

Alas poor Zoey though, she didn’t deserve what he was planning, to be in pain, to understand what he feels. This wasn’t about her though, and Nano didn’t deserve what Mother planned either. The fiery ones just always seemed to be the ones to burn out the fastest, what a shame, this story would not have no happy ending, his didn’t, and Rythian wasn’t allowed his either, and maybe it’d prompt the endermage to teleport him to hell.

Lalna couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next as he put on his favorite sapphire necklace.

[grandconquests]

EVENT 001: BEGIN

Hello everyone! Event 001 for grandconquests has begun! The land of Embla is plagued by a random overflow of magic that will lead to ruin if it's not dealt with! Veronica and her heroes must work together to figure out what happened and stop the overflow! Right now, Embla is plagued by an icy death looming over them all, that will eventually spread to an unprepared Askr.

Who knows how far this will stretch after Askr and Embla are consumed? Would it stretch as far as Nifl and Muspell? What about the other realms yet unexplored. Helheim? We just don't know! To prevent ruin to Zenith, we must complete this event successfully!

IN ADDITION: We are now officially and fully accepting Three Houses characters!

You can read all of the details regarding our event below!

Embla, usually a cold and muted land, was now filled with an overabundance of magic. Even those without the ability to sense the flow of it under normal conditions could now feel the fluid course of it throughout Embla. The heat was diminished by a frigid air that crept from the countryside even into the capital. The further out into the countryside, the colder it became. Almost as cold as winterstorm in Nifl! Those unlucky enough to be situated outside of a decent village would find a hard time surviving the cold. Veronica knew that should this overabundance of magic coursing through the land continue, people would die through the actual winter. Embla needed this summer to last so they could continue increasing food and cotton stores for the winter.

They would not survive if Veronica allowed this damnable winter to stay.

With that in mind, she gathered every scientist, mage, and hero she could. She gave them express commands to get to the bottom of this overabundance of magic, where it's leaking from, and how to repair it. She gave them express directions, even a marked map, on where to go to explore for each party that she set up. She planned on taking a small express amount of heroes with her to the deepest point that she could sense, where the magic was at it's strongest. They would set up base camp there, and stay for however long was required. Veronica would return once a day weekly to the palace to inquire about new information from her search parties, restock whatever supplies the camp needs, and return.

[ EVENT 001: DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS? ]

EVENT 001 DETAILS Start time: August 4th, 2019 End time: September 4th, 2019 New group mechanics: Fire Emblem: Three Houses muses have now been unlocked! Participating categories: DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS? [ EVENT] Participating channels: only the channels in DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS? [ EVENT ] Group buffs: 2x the gold! All non-event replies are worth 100g, all event replies are worth 300g

Randomized prizes - An additional character slot (MAX OF 3 CHARS) - A free pet and supplies for a month, any pet of your choosing - OOC buff: All replies earn 2x the gold (stacks with the event for up to 400g per non event reply and 600g per event reply) duration: 1 week - OOC buff: additional thread slot for a max of 5 thread slots. duration: 2 weeks - event creation potion: you are allowed to create 1 event of any type! whether it be serious, silly, focused on character development, or anything you please. you are allowed to create a prize list with one restriction: you cannot give out a character slot - community gift potion: you will be allowed to create one free gift to give to everyone on the server, whether it be 6k gold, a free item from the shop (bar the character slot), give everyone the opportunity to add more shop items with no restrictions, among other things! there is only one restriction.

Participation prizes: - Successfully figuring out the puzzle of the event and stopping the flow of magic will award everyone 4kg and unlock new shop items and one new group mechanic! - Just participating in the event will award you 500g just for rping - Failure to figure out the puzzle and complete the event's bad end will award everyone with a pity gift of 200g and a random surprise item. - You get 300g per RP reply with this event. The goal of this event is to RP to find clues as to why the overflow of magic broke out and has sent Embla to an icy grave. Once per RP you can ping @☀ Veronica￤Deirdre to ICly type up a post in your thread with possible clue locations and clue details. Your characters will be able to spot the general location of these clues and will be able to interact with them next reply, no need for rolling to find the location or anything like that

On August 31st and every day after until event conclusion, muses should be using #moongem communication to share the clues that they have found to try and come up with a solution to the problem. When they feel that they have come up with a viable solution, you may ping @☀ Veronica￤Deirdre ICly to suggest what course of action to take.

Veronica will then attempt that solution ICly in the main rp channel, #main-lake. If the solution succeeds, the changes will be immediate. If the solution fails, nothing will happen and a new solution must be met.

If you have questions or concerns, you can use the OOC channel in the event category for inquiries.

[snowkatze]

A Vampire in Kinky Boots

Genre: angst, a bit of fluff Summary: Simon runs his father’s shoe factory, but the business is not going well. Fortunately, Baz Pitch is here to help. Whilst working together, things don’t always go as they hoped for… Based on the musical Kinky Boots, which you don’t need to have seen to understand the story.

Chapter One , Chapter Two , Chapter Three , Chapter Four , Chapter Five

Chapter Two - Step One

I grip the edge of the table behind me as I lean against it. I can feel my breathing go irregularly and my palms go sweaty. I close my eyes, just trying to gain some calm. My heart is beating so fast, I think it might leap out of my chest and betray me.

Baz is here. I don't know what to think or do about that. I just know that I can't even look at him because I'm afraid he'll vanish if I look at him properly instead of just out of the corner of my eye. I'm afraid he'd see right through me if I did.

There's a messy storm inside of me and I want to close it all away, put it back into the box of Pandora that he opened.

I haven't seen him in so long. I thought we'd never meet again. I lift my gaze just for a second, just to avert it again as quickly as possible. He's still standing there, looking like a king. A king in high heels. There are so many questions I want to ask him. But I'm at a loss of words. I'm hoping that Penny will do the talking for me.

“What do you mean?”, she provides helpfully.

He sneers at me, like a tosser, and I know that, even though his appearance has changed, he's not different.

“I mean,” he starts, “I have a plan.” I'm so startled that I do look up and frown at him. What is he plotting? We're already on the brink of bankruptcy. All he can do at this point is give us the final blow.

“I think I know how to save your factory.” Save?! Something is not adding up here. Baz Pitch? Wanting to save something? That can't be. All he ever does is destroy; he doesn't go around saving things. Is he lying?

Suspicious, I raise an eyebrow, trying to put all my disapproval into one simple glance. I don't trust him one bit.

“I appreciate the notion, Baz,” Penny says, “but people just stopped buying our products. There's nothing you can do about that.” “Sure I can,” he smirks and steps closer. He sounds so sure of himself that I almost believe him. But I know Baz. Even after all this time, I know the way he plays the game. I know how he can twist anyone around his finger... and turn their heads.

Baz sits down on one of the chairs around the desks and props his feet up on the surface. Even though he attaches great importance to manners, he'll always go out of his way to infuriate me. Penny shoots him a glare that would terrify anyone else, make them take their feet to the ground and stumble out an apology, but all Baz does is stare back at her until she sighs and looks away.

“See, the problem with your products is that there is no demand – no one wants to buy ugly hiking boots. So, what if you were to produce a different kind of shoes. You'd have next to no concurrence, a niche market that'd be all yours – sounds good, doesn't it?” “And what kind of market would that be?” I chime in.

“Oh,” he says, keeping his eyes on me. “And there I was thinking you'd lost your ability to talk over the years.” “Baz!” “Oh right. You never had one to begin with. My mistake.” “I thought you were here to help us.” “I am,” he explains,”but that doesn't mean I have to be nice.” “Baz,” Penny says, trying to get back to the point. “What are you talking about?” “I'm talking about boots. High heels. For men.” “Like...”

I glance at his red boots.

“Like those?” “Exactly. It would be great to have boots made specifically for men – and made to carry the weight of a man. A mostly unexplored market. What do you think?”

“What's in it for you?” I ask instead of answering. There's got to be a catch.

“I'm gonna be your business partner. Sort of. I can help you in the making of the boots and organize some models for you. Also, I'm part of the target group. Don't worry, Snow. You can be assured that my proposal is entirely selfish.”

I'm not entirely convinced by that, by I choose not to push it. “First we'd have to find a technique to make these kinds of boots,” Penny remarks.

“We'd have to readjust the whole factory,” I add.

“Yes,” Baz says and leans forward. “Its gonna be hard. You're gonna have to do a lot of work and put in a lot of time. But are you in?”

I look at Penny and I know what we're both thinking. Could be risky. Could be a complete flop. But I know what it is for sure – our only shot.

I have a weird feeling about this – especially since it is Baz who suggested the whole thing. I grip the table a bit tighter. I see Penny nodding, only slightly. She's giving me the go.

“Alright,” I say. “We're in.” The next morning, the whole thing still feels like some sort of fever dream, but when I arrive at the factory, Baz is waiting for me. Instantly, my heart starts beating faster (Damn it.). But... I'm kind of glad it was not a dream. Even though his idea sounds absolutely insane, his confidence makes me hope that he's right, that we can still save this factory and all the jobs it provided.

The first thing we do is call a few of our workers back. Some of which can help us develop and design new shoes, and some who can do some marketing research to ensure we're not taking any unnecessary risks. If we want this to be successful, we're going to have to distribute our products the right way and make sure to use our marketing tools properly.

By midday, everyone is at work and in need of a coffee. Baz volunteers to get some.

“I need to get out of here,” he mutters.

“I'll come with you,” I say quickly. What? No. What is wrong with me?

Before I know it, I hurry after him. As expected, he ignores me completely, but I won't give up that easily.

“So you think this will really work?” “Of course it will work. After all, I'm here.” “Yeah, but... why are you doing this, really, Baz? What have you done, all these years, I mean, we haven't heard of you in so long... And... you've changed. I think.”

He pauses and looks at me for a moment, with a sad expression that I'm not able to read.

“Isn't that a good thing?” “I- I don't know.” He picks up a faster pace and I stumble over my feet.

“Look, Baz, I wasn't trying to offend you or anything, it's just... I thought you'd made something, I don't know, more than this.” “I don't have to listen to you judging me, Snow,” he scoffs and pushes the door to the bakery open.

“No, I wasn't... I mean...”

I take a frustrated breath. Why can I never express myself the way I want to?

“I mean that you used to have dreams, Baz. You wanted to graduate, I mean, you did graduate on top of the class. Shouldn't you work as a manager, or... I don't know... scientist, building a rocket, or something. Something smart and clever, making lots of money. Maybe even a footballer, I don't know. You were... are good at so many things. Shouldn't you be, like, in some sort of high position, in the middle of taking over the world? What happened to you?” “Simon Snow,” he smirks, raising an eyebrow, “are you concerned about me?” “Oh, sod off,” I murmur and feel my face turning red. Aleister Crowley, I shouldn't let him get under my skin like that. Not after all this time.

I take half of the coffees, he takes the other. Just when I think he's not going to answer my question, he replies in a really soft silent voice that I've never heard of him before and that makes my heart ache in a strange way.

“Let's just say, things didn't go as planned. And not everyone is as confident in my abilities as you apparently are. But I'm alright, Simon. No need to worry.”

I search his gaze, but he doesn't look at me and suddenly I have the urge to take his hand. (What the fuck?)

“Um... Baz?” “Yeah?” “I just wanted to say... Thank you.” All out of a sudden, he smiles at me. Really. Genuinely. Wow.

“No problem, Snow.”

After hours of working our asses off, I lean back in my chair. Most others have already left (Baz, too) and it's just me and Penny. I look at our notes and smile at her.

“I think we've got this,” I say.

“Me, too. And we have Baz to thank for that. Who would've expected that?”

“Not me,” I whisper.

“No, not you. Maybe you've underestimated him.” “Me?! Underestimated Baz? How can you say that? I never underestimate the enemy. I'm always a step ahead, I know what he's plotting! I know that... he's always plotting something.” “Yeah, but he was plotting something you didn't expect. And he's not really your enemy, is he?” “No, I guess not...”

I smile to myself, when suddenly I notice today's newspaper laying under a few documents. It's the headline that catches my eye. It reads “Dracula on the Loose?”. Alerted, I push the documents aside to take a closer look on the article.

“Inexplicable attack happens in small town. A corpse that died of blood loss is found with strange marks on their neck. Or is there an explanation? Read here an interview with expert on the Supernatural.”

What is this all about? A vampire attack? Here?

I quickly read the article. Oh no.

“Penny,” I say. “Look at this.”

She frowns and picks up the newspaper.

“How could this happen? Do you think it's like, the real deal? Shouldn't the coven be taking care of this?” “Yeah, but it's not like you can rely on them anyways. I should investigate this.”

“No, Simon. Come on. This is not your responsibility.”

“Yes it is! We're mages, Pen. We're the only ones who know that vampires really do exist. And I'm the mage's... I'm... the chosen one... I mean, I was, and I can't just get rid of that sense of responsibility. You know I have to take care of this, Penny. Please.” She sighs.

“Fine. But, Simon. Be careful, alright?” “I always am, aren't I?” She doesn't bother to correct me.

[saiphirre-art-blog]

Seeking role play partners!

Hello everyone. I want to make this quick but it’s probably going to end up long anyways. Lol. My name is Saiphirre and I’m 29- I am a school bus driver for a random factoid lol. And I’m a momma to a beautiful little four year old girl. I actually tend to have a lot of time on my hands because of all of these things. I would really like to find someone else who also has a lot of time on their hands. I can write miles to simple one or two paragraph posts. Really I tend to go with what my partner does. But I would really like someone who can post on a daily basis. Perhaps multiple times in a day? I tend to lose interest if it moves too slow. Of course I understand people have lives and stuff. Like communicate with me and everything is cool yeah. Okay so here’s more of what I’m looking for. I want fantasy/ sci-fi. I like to torture and break my characters. I like mature level rping. I also like humor and playful rping. I really am not to hard to please. I have a huge imagination so I tend to like to share it. My characters tend to be in depth. Strong. Weak. I like to make them grow. Romance is a must. I love that lovely dovy crap lol. Like I obsess with it. I have a high preference for mxf. I don’t mind trying mxm but I’ve never tried it so I might suck lol. I do not rp furries. I love to play bois. Like love to play them. I will play girls but my main character is Always a boi. Idk why. It’s just fun to step out of my skin I guess lol. I would like to rp on either discord or google docs with discord ooc. I tend to forget about Gaia lol and I use my phone so those two platforms work best for me. As for ideas. Well I have pairings and such but I’m really one to make up my own things and my own worlds. I’ll throw some ideas, word vomit list thing, and if none of them strike your fancy and you have your own idea throw it at me yeah? - (What I call plots because it’s literally not well put together lol) Fallen angel - Angel falls for Guardee to protect them from the other angels because they want to destroy the guardee to prevent the apocalypse they may very well cause. - Girl is kidnapped by stalking obsessed demon to add to his collection in the demon realm. She’s brought to a cell where she Mets an angel he’s also collected. Finds out she has some sort of power that she can use against said demon to escape, but can only activate it when drinking angels blood. (Not for the faint hearted clearly) - Angel falls to try to stop Guardee from committing suicide and fails. Loses their wings in response and is found by a new friend. Slowly fallen angel is starting to lose their mind and go psycho so they set out on a task to try to restore angels wings. Demon (such a vast world) - Barbarian girl-princess-whathaveyou sees a strange deer and follows said deer into a portal to another realm full of magical creatures and gods. The realm of immortals. She meets the owner of said deer a demon with his own heavy curse for going against what he is. - Theres a strange person in college. One who seems to keep to themselves, hides under a hoody and hats as well as thick clothing. One day a classmate runs into them in the street in the middle of night just as all hell breaks loose and mystery person reveals themselves as a demon to protect them. - Two best friends decide to go into a haunted psych ward at night to attempt to summon a demon. They weren’t exactly expecting to be successful and what’s more is they just happened to save this demon right before they were executed. Were- (whatever) - Mad scientists experiment escapes into the world and wakes up in the middle of the forest once returned to their human state, laying in front of a tiny little cottage where a witch apparently lives. Fairy/fae - Girl gets out of a really bad relationship and looks in the paper for a roommate. Little does she know her new roommate is secretly the Winter Fae prince. - A village noble guy/girl has always lived under a strict rule as has everyone else in the village. Don’t go into the forest. It attacks you. The noble decides to one night break the rule after seeing some beautiful glowing eyes looking back at them through the trees. Mages/witches/wizards - A young woman follows something strange in the forest and ends up finding a strange staircase in the middle of the trees. They decide to decend the stairs out of curiosity and happen upon a Wizards prison where a man lays frozen in time with his words stolen from him. A single touch awakens him and then they set off to help him find his lost voice. Vampire Don’t have anything for this one but would love to clash heads yeah? Siren/mermaid - A girl has always had a strange key. She doesn’t know what it’s for but she’s kept it safe and secret beneath her regal gown. One day she gets kidnapped by pirates to hold her ransom from the king. She ends up meeting a strange magical man on the ship who she manages to escape with and set off on an adventure to find out what her key unlocks. Super hero’s??? (I’ve not done super heroes before even though I’m a fanatic lol. Shame) -several young children went missing when they were young. Only to somehow return one day adults. They have no recollection of what happened to them but find they suddenly have strange powers.

[light-spires]

— the story so far… (07/05/17)

A couple of days pass in Phandalin as the friends take some well deserved breaths. Bran spends some quality time with his boyfriend Eoghan, Rurik tries to talk more to her cousin Nundro but the poor dwarf remembers almost nothing from his time as a prisoner of the orc band, Eddie finds some time for contemplation and experimentation with the bloodstones and Bree makes sure she has time to interrogate “Mean eye’d” Joe.

As Bree and Rurik decide to do the good cop-bad cop routine, Joe seems unimpressed, even when slapped in the face. Bree is determined to find out why Joe tried to kill her a year ago, but she also wants the woman dead and is not afraid to follow through on her promise of death. Joe seems reluctant to say much, but eventually reveals she was protecting Glasstaff from Bree, who she believed was out to get him. Glasstaff had apparently started working with someone Joe calls The Black Spider (who the group figured was the same person as “some spider guy”) about a year before the assassination attempt on Bree. At that point, he’d become more focused on his work and locked himself away for longer hours than before, which had caused Bree to show concern for him and what he was doing, something that Joe had found very suspicious for some reason. Since Glasstaff had given Joe the job to protect him from potential harm, seeing as he might not have trusted the Black Spider completely (?), she’d taken this as a sign that she should probably get rid of Bree, as she deemed it apparent that her behavior was suspicious. She also said she’d killed others, for the same reason. After this she refused to tell them anything else, saying Glasstaff was still out there, and that she needed to protect him. When Bree realized she wouldn’t get anything more out of Joe, she refused to let her live a moment longer and stabbed the woman straight through her one good eye, leaving her dead in her cell. RIP Joe.

Joe’s accomplice Gloria, the mage, was left to stew in her cell until the group’s return.

The group, together with Eoghan and two horses, was now to set out on their journey to the ruins of Thundertree. Eddie casually asked that they please be back within 14 days, which the others agree to, and they set out on the three day trek to the ruined village, taking the route through the planes stretching out between Neverwinter wood and the High road. On their journey they stayed at some farms to take shelter from the cold and the beasts and bandits lurking about. One of the families were particularly hospitable as they realized they had a noble man staying at their barn. The group also convinced six goblins to go join the woodcarving goblins over by the old cragmaw hideout. In all, they had quite a pleasant trip.

As the day became evening on the third day, they arrived at Thundertree, only to find it eerily quiet and calm. As they approached the first couple of houses, they spotted a sign on a pole, reading:

“Danger! Monsters ahead!! Turn back!”

Did they turn back? No, no they did not.

The village, abandoned about 30 years previously when smoky quarts crystals had suddenly burst from the ground, quickly followed by undead, was mostly rundown with more than half of the houses without roofs, trees growing inside and crystals glistening in the evening sun. The group approached the first house, one of the better kept ones, only find that someone was still using it as a makeshift home. Could this be the house of the druid Reidoth they were searching for? They decided to leave a note on both the doors, asking if this was him and explaining they needed to speak with him.

Seeing as no one seemed to be about, the group decided to press on, to try and find the man before the dark set in. Making their way up the overgrown path, toward the tower which was resting on the hill in the middle of the village, they suddenly fund themselves entangled… in a web. Two huge spiders attacked them as they were trying to free Bree from the clutches of the net but the group quickly work of them before the spiders could do any real damage. Eoghan destroyed their web and acted as a cheerleader of sorts. Good teamwork.

When they were discussing where they should go now, a man suddenly appeared from behind them,  a small, white bearded man. No, not Gandalf. He hurriedly told the group to not be so loud and assured them to come with him without further explanation. “Hey, we’re five on one” Eddie and Bree shrugged and the group decided to come with him. As they approached the cabin they’d visited before, they realized this man must be who they were looking for, especially when he gave them a questioning look as he saw the message they’d left on the door.

Once safely inside, Rurik used her sweetest manners as she threw her arms out to her sides and asked, in a booming voice “Do you happen to be Reidoth the great??”. The man seemed embarrassed by this and mumbled something about “I don’t know about great, but yes”, confirming the friend’s suspicion. He was now wondering what they were doing here, seeing as this was not a common tourist destination. They explained they had heard he might know the location of the Cragmaw castle, and that they needed to go there to save Gundren, Rurik’s cousin. Reidoth was reluctant to point the castle out to them, seeing as he didn’t like sending them to their death and all. He had seen them fight the spiders though, and was impressed by their skill. He proposed a deal. The friends help him deal with the young Green Dragon that had settled down in the tower in the middle of the village, and he’d point out the Cragmaw castle on their map. He also told the group about the bandits “or whatever” that were camping out in the eastern parts of the village. He was worried they’d been causing disturbances and that they might provoke the dragon if they weren’t careful. Maybe they could try do something about those black cloaked people as well?

The friends reluctantly agreed to this and set out that same evening to go and investigate the weird people who’d for some reason set up camp in the outskirts of the village. First they tried for like half an hour to see who was lying on the floor inside a smaller house on the way. Turns out it was two undead and the friends decided to slowly back away after Bree locked both the doors to trap them in there.

They came up with a plan to trick the bandits, or whatever they were, by saying they were of some secret order or dragon worshippers or something to make the bandits maybe help them fight the dragon. It wasn’t really clear if everyone was completely clear about what they were going to say, but they left most of the talking to Rurik as she went to knock the door of the house furthest away from the dragon, where they suspected the people would be. The door was opened by a man who seemed very distracted by Rurik’s many hand gestures and didn’t want to tell them much, even though he was partially convinced to believe them. When Rurik slipped up, calling the friends a cult, instead of an order, the man quickly said he’d wake their leader up and have them talk to him instead. He closed the door on them and they heard a muffled conversation, where only the line “Why can’t you just please tell them to go away??” was heard clearly. A while later, the leader showed up. He wasn’t very happy about being woken up and tried to make the friends leave, saying he didn’t believe their lies. Eddie and Bran then tried to convince him that no, they weren’t a part of a dragon cult, but that instead they were a research team, or something and that they wanted to share information with other researchers…. Scientists? The man seemed reluctant to divulge too much, saying his work was top secret, but he did tell them they were studying the undead, their behavior in the wild, how they were affected by their surroundings and if they could multiply their numbers somehow. When Bree asked him about the Black Spider, however, he grew cold and almost angry, asking how they knew that name and saying he had nothing more to say to them. He didn’t want to hurt them, but it was best they leave.

The friends then had no choice but to face the dragon, unaided.

Really, you would think a dragon would be hard to beat, but for some reason, this dragon wasn’t having a good day. Maybe he was too young and inexperienced to deal with four feisty, but tired, companions, or maybe it was a stroke of fate that allowed the group to kill it before it managed to properly kill any of them. Even though Eddie fell unconscious to the ground once and Bree was bloodied, they were quickly saved by Rurik’s healing magic and Bree proceeded to climb the dragon’s scaly body as she stabbed it repeatedly, killing it. Very cool.

It was a tired group of friends that found loot in the dragon’s lair, in the tower room. A tired group of friends that were happy to still be alive to tell the tale.

[alwaystrustinbooks]

This book was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

17.10.19 / Fantasy / Hot Key Books / Hardback / 528pp / 978-1471405495

About Sebastien De Castell

Sebastien de Castell had just finished a degree in Archaeology when he started work on his first dig. Four hours later he realized how much he actually hated archaeology and left to pursue a very focused career as a musician, ombudsman, interaction designer, fight choreographer, teacher, project manager, actor and product strategist. His only defence against the charge of unbridled dilettantism is that he genuinely likes doing these things and that, in one way or another, each of these fields plays a role in his writing. He sternly resists the accusation of being a Renaissance Man in the hopes that more people will label him that way. Sebastien lives in Vancouver with his lovely wife and two belligerent cats.

Website / Twitter / Facebook / Goodreads

About Crownbreaker

The sixth – and final – instalment of the inimitable SPELLSLINGER series.

The game of war is always rigged . . .

Kellen and Reichis are settling into their lives as protectors of the young queen. For the first time Kellen feels as if he’s becoming the kind of man that his mentor Ferius had wanted him to be. Even Reichis has come to appreciate having a noble purpose – so long as no one minds him committing the occasional act of theft from the royal treasury.

But thousands of miles away a war is brewing that the Argosi always warned could destroy the continent. An unexpected source brings word that there’s one way Kellen can prevent a hundred years of bloodshed, and all it requires is a little murder . . .

Now Kellen and his sister Shalla find themselves on opposite sides, and neither love nor loyalty can protect them from the choices they must make.

Perfect for fans of The Dark Tower, Firefly, Guardians of the Galaxy, Terry Pratchett, Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher.

Pick up a copy here: Hot Key Books / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Goodreads

Q&A with Sebastien De Castell

Thank you Sebastien for taking some time to answer a few questions about the last instalment of your incredibly popular Spellslinger series, Crownbreaker.

It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Could you give us your own personal overview of what readers should expect within the book?

Crownbreaker begins with Kellen, a former outlaw spellslinger, who has finally found a place in the world as tutor and protector to a queen whose decency is beyond doubt, being asked to commit a horrible crime to defend her throne. That very first question: would you do something terrible to protect someone you care about, only grows more and more complicated as Kellen uncovers a winding conspiracy meant to start a war that will reshape the continent. The people Kellen loves will either end up enslaved or in power, and it all comes down to just how far he’s willing to go and what atrocities he’s willing to commit.

Where did the initial inspiration for narrative, and Kellen, in the Spellslinger series come from?

When I was sixteen years old I was standing at my locker at school before the first bell. The halls were filled with people coming and going and as I watched them I started to realize something terrible: I wasn’t the strongest kid in my school. I wasn’t the smartest. There was no pursuit, not sports, not music, not anything, in which I was the most talented. I didn’t even have the best personality. Despite all the fantasy novels I’d read, all the comics and all the movies, it turned out I was not the chosen one. I had no grand destiny, no secret magic powers. I was ordinary. Luckily for me there were real-life Ferius Parfaxes around who – rather than placate my ego by assuring me I really was special – informed me that being special isn’t something you’re born with. You have to earn it by exploring yourself and finding all the little, interesting parts of your being, working hard to cultivate them until somehow they all coalesce together and make you someone worth knowing. That’s what Kellen goes through in Spellslinger, and his journey to becoming someone special, someone worth knowing, is what kept me wanting to write the books.

Could you give us a few more insights into what Kellen has to face during the events of Crownbreaker?

Crownbreaker is the culmination of everything that Kellen’s been discovering on his long journey since leaving his home and became an outlaw. It’s about the ways in which the quest for power – no matter how easily justified as necessary for the defence of one’s family or nation – can become twisted into the pursuit of war. It’s about competing notions of duty and loyalty, and how even something as basic and essential as the idea of family can put us at odds with our own values. In the end, it’s about how our answers to those questions reveal who we really are.

What was the most challenging part of writing the last book in a six book series and how do you feel now it is finished?

At first I thought the most challenging part of writing the last book would be wrapping up all the threads that wound their way through the rest of the series. But that turned out to be easy – dangerously easy, in fact. In this age of books, movies, and video games so often being driven by the notion of “fan service” – that is, giving the fans what we think they want – an author risks churning out the equivalent of their own fan fiction. Something about that felt wrong to me, not just because I had worked so hard to make Spellslinger a meaningful fantasy adventure and not just wish fulfilment, but because doling out endless convenient happy endings robs the reader of the chance to let their own imaginations take over once they turn the last page. So I had a lot of conversations with my editor about how things would turn out, which characters would return and what would happen to them and to Kellen. I feel really proud that we found the right balance between tying up the story in a satisfying way while also keeping the integrity of the characters and their journey.

How does it feel to be compared to Terry Pratchett, Ben Aaronovitch and the works of Stephen King and Marvel?

Such comparisons feel like huge and undeserved honours. They also happen to be things you have to make yourself ignore while writing. Nobody can replicate Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, or any of the others for that matter. Every author has to search inside themselves, their experiences, and their questions about the world to find something to put on the page that is genuinely theirs rather than simply a variation on some already successful work. On the other hand, if anyone’s asking, I’d be delighted to write the next Marvel blockbuster.

How did you come to be so passionate about fantasy and magic?

I came to fantasy the same way so many other readers do: out of a desire for the experience of wonders that can’t be found in everyday life. What changed when I became an author myself was that I realized the real challenge of fantasy is to write stories that don’t just offer a temporary escape from reality, but instead the desire to re-enchant our own world. I think that’s why it was so important to me that most of the real magic in the Spellslinger series is about very human things: music, dance, trickery, daring, love, and above all, friendship. Those are the spells that have brought genuine wonder into my life, and those are the things I’m passionate about exploring in my writing.

Over the course of six novels, what aspect of your writing do you think the readers have connected with the most?

I fear I may have created an entire market for those who long for genetic scientists to create the first talking squirrel cats. Alas, this would be a terrible idea; squirrel cats are definitely not meant to be pets.

The most interesting and unexpected result of having written the Spellslinger books are all the letters I get asking me about the Argosi. These readers want to know how it all works and how to become an Argosi themselves. What’s fascinating is that it’s not as if they’re confused about what’s real and what’s not, it’s just that, despite what reality television tells us, not everyone wants to be a famous celebrity or wealthy executive or sports star. I think what appeals to readers about the Argosi is the idea that each of us has a unique path that has to be discovered, pursued, and given a name by the individual.

That wasn’t something I’d intentionally set out to write as the series began, but was instead the answer I came up with to Kellen’s dilemma (and my own, frankly) of realizing he was never going to be the greatest mage or warrior or anything else, and that there had to be an alternative to forcing oneself into such categories.

Is there a part of Crownbreaker (or the series as a whole) that you are particularly proud of? Do you have a favourite quote you can share with us?

Whenever the advance copies of the books arrive at my house, I take one and stick it on the shelf next to the previous ones and just stare at them a while, kind of marvelling at the sight of them as I’m someone with a long history of not finishing things. There’s never been anything I worked so hard to get right than these novels, and with the Greatcoats series, which was about swashbuckling and idealism, and Spellslinger, which is about self-discovery, I fought hard to ensure every book was both entertaining and stayed true to the integrity of the characters.

How long did it take you to write Crownbreaker compared the other instalments?

When we first set out on the Spellslinger journey, my publishers and I agreed to a six-book series released every six months. That’s a pretty aggressive schedule, but it meant readers were never left having to wait too long between books. That said, the opening scene in Crownbreaker was literally the first thing I ever wrote with Kellen in it back when I was first exploring the idea of the series with a friend of mine. I think I wrote that scene back in 2011, so technically, Crownbreaker took eight years to write!

Did you always plan on Crownbreaker being the last book? Are you considering continuing the narrative in any way?

When you’re pitching a series, you have to come up with book titles and synopses to show there’s a proper arc to the overall story. That meant I had to come up with all these working titles and pretend descriptions for each book that I never really expected to follow. Oddly, all six books ended up pretty close to those initial, completely instinctive thoughts about what the books would be about.

As soon as the enigmatic Ferius Parfax and her wandering ways began to appear in print, I started getting letters from readers wanting to know more about the Argosi, their tricks, training, and philosophy. I realized then that I, too, wanted to take to the long roads with Ferius and find out more of those things that I had to keep out of the Spellslinger series. So I’m writing two books that answer those questions. Readers can expect Way of the Argosi and Fall of the Argosi to come out next year.

In terms of continuing Kellen’s story, it’s important to me that there be a reason to write more Spellslinger books beyond just racking up more sales. These six books were an exploration of what it means to find your place in the world when you discover you’re never going to become the person you thought you’d be, and nothing you believed about yourself or your people turns out to be true. Kellen was, for me, the perfect character to follow on that journey. So while I have loads of ideas for other books featuring my favourite outlaw spellslinger and his murderous squirrel cat business partner, I first need to allow myself a little time to find a new thematic landscape for them to travel.

Did you always have your eye set on being a writer/author and what sort of books did you grow up reading?

Like a lot of kids out there, my first exposure to fantasy was The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. The Narnia books left a hunger in me for other worlds that never really went away. As a teenager I started reading what were sometimes called New Wave science fiction and fantasy authors like Roger Zelazny who wrote, among many other classics, Nine Princes in Amber, and Steven Brust, who still writes the Vlad Taltos series. What was most compelling for me about these authors was that they eschewed the old pseudo-Medieval style “thees” and “thous” in their writing, and instead borrowed more from the noir writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. I think that’s why my own novels have always had some element of detective story embedded within the fantasy narrative.

Then when I was sixteen years old I was camping by myself on a little island off the coast of British Columbia. I read a book by the Australian author Keith Tailor called BARD and from that moment on I wanted to become a wandering, storytelling, sword-fighting musician. Such jobs rarely appear in the help wanted ads, so I kind of had to cobble it together over a lifetime of playing in bands, travelling everywhere I could, fencing, and now, of course, writing novels. So I got there eventually.

Have you got a hobby/activity you do to wind down from all the writing?

I still perform in rock bands which is a great change of pace from writing. I love being on stage in front of an audience, creating music in the moment with other players, knowing you’ve only got those brief moments to either make the song come to life or have it fall flat. You can imagine how different that experience is from sitting alone in front of a computer screen pondering every word, knowing you’ll have as many drafts as you want to make it right.

My writing space also has a couple of keyboards and guitars right next to my desk, so often I’ll take a quick break from writing to just bumble along on the piano and loosen myself up before going back to the book. Music often informs my writing, shaping the emotional arcs of scenes and opening me up to different pacing choices. I’m not quite sure how I’d write without it.

Finally, have you read a book/article recently that you would personally recommend to the readers of this post?

For those who aspire to write their own novels – and I genuinely believe we all have at least one novel in us – pick up “Writing Into The Dark” by Dean Wesley Smith. This is a guy who’s written more than two hundred novels in his career and still loves doing it every day. Unlike so many craft books, Into The Dark focuses on trusting your own creative voice and letting it lead you where it may without fear, without ego. I grew up thinking I didn’t have the talent or drive to be a novelist because it always seemed like a pursuit meant only for those special souls who droned on and on about how writing was as essential to breathing for them. Me? I could breathe just fine without writing. And yet, when I finally allowed myself to try, to just go out there and write my first novel, it changed my life for the better long before I ever sold a single book.

CROWNBREAKER by Sebastien de Castell is out now in hardback (£12.99, Hot Key Books, Bonnier Books UK)

Crownbreaker (Spellslinger #6) by Sebastien De Castell [Author Q&A] @decastell @HotKeyBooks #Spellslinger #Crownbreaker #magic #fantasy #series #hotkeybooks #sebastiendecastell #interview #booktalk #blog #amreading This book was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 17.10.19 / Fantasy / Hot Key Books / Hardback / 528pp / 978-1471405495…

[seawolvesanddragons]

Stranger Things Season Three Thoughts (SPOILERS)

I watched the first four episodes of ST3 with my cousin over a period of two nights, then binge-watched the final four today. Some assembled thoughts:

-sadly, I knew from spoilers from news articles on my phone (which I literally couldn’t avoid because I can’t take them off my screen, which pissed me off, so thanks Buzzfeed and other online magazines) that someone was going to die and found out in between the first four and the last four that Robin was gay. I’m thrilled Robin is lesbian, but irritated that those scenes got ruined for me because magazines can’t keep spoilers out of their freaking article headlines.

-on a whole, season three was...pretty good. I’ll stand by that. However, I think I liked season 1 and 2 better. This season was clearly more about character development then action, which can be really great, but then when the side-plots and action scenes they used to fill the episodes between character development just felt really, really slow.

-they spent a lot of time on side characters (Ms Wheeler and all that lifeguard nonsense, the Mayor, random scenes of the carnival) that took time away from main characters story time, which I didn’t like

-literally every time I see Ms Wheeler and Billy interact I feel physically ill

-El and Max friendship is wonderful

-The kids are some of my favorite characters in this series, and I was sad that we really didn’t get to see them interact a lot as a group. Even when they were all in the same room, it was only when there was a lot of action. We saw the boys interact. We saw eleven and Max be friends. We saw the couples interact. But I would love more scenes like when they welcomed Dustin home, or odd pairings: Lucas and El doing target practice together, Will and Max kicking ass at video games, Dustin, Max and Will going to see a movie together via Steve. Just...we had to just kind of assume these kids are all friends instead of them really SHOWING it

-Then we had the Big Fight between Will, Lucas and Mike (with Dustin thrown in there at times) because...all they care about is their girlfriends now, which sucks and really isn’t healthy, and the whole episode showed that Will was still feeling out of place, like something more than the Mind Flayer changed. And then, for the rest of the season they just...forgot about Will? He suddenly barely had any lines, hardly interacted with anyone - and I don’t get why. It’s like they don’t know what to do with him when he isn’t possessed. The others have clear roles - Lucas the Prepared Ranger, Mike the Leading Paladin, Eleven the Mage, Max the Healer/Cleric, Dustin the Rogue/Bard, Nancy and Johnathan the Detectives, but with Will, they just...left him there. Which was very frustrating

-I loved The Scoops team (though Erica got on my nerves a little at times) but I wish Dustin had been able to interact more with the other kids. I get they were fighting, but some occasional radio contact would have been nice. The duo of him and Steve is great, no argument, but not at the total expense of him with his buddies.

-I’ve known Billy was doomed since I heard his name (people with “B” don’t last long in this show) and honestly? I really don’t care that he’s dead. I feel bad for Max, who had to witness it. I understand that Billy was abused by his father, and had hard prepubescent and teenage years. But Billy also abused and terrorized people, and Season 3 did not show that he had changed. It was not his sole fault he became an abuser and a bully, but he is not absolved of his actions. Also, it would have been bullshit if Billy survived when every other person the mind flayer got was killed off.

--Hawkins as a town has GOT to be suspicious of what is going on

--Robin a wonderful and I love her

--Erica as a math genius!

--The latter half of this season had some steller Nancy-Mike interactions, which I had missed in season two and the first part of season 3. I’m glad the Duffers finally remembered they’re related

--Hopper had some serious temper problems this season that had me very wary of him as a character

-I know a lot of people are angry because of Erica’s capitalism (which...she’s ten. It’s the 80′s. She’s repeating what she has heard her father and the news say.) and the whole coke thing and the evil Russians but I really am just too tired of fans to care about it. The first two seasons had evil Americans. Hell so did this season. Russia and America were locked in an arms race. I never cared about Coke to begin with. Let me just enjoy the show.

-I liked that they had to take lengths to split the groups up in this season. Scoop Troop was out of range underground. Hopper and Joyce were on the run. Nancy and Johnathan did manage to get a hold of the kids. My thoughts when Will realized the Mind Flayer was back while Joyce was learning magnets don’t work and Nancy discover rats were rabid was “now, given all the crazy shit that happened the last two years, why wouldn’t they immediately get the whole gang together to solve this more quickly. They know how this works by now.” And there was a reason that they, for the most part, couldn’t do that.

-I understand this is the 80s and summertime, and it’s explained the Wheelers just...don’t keep up with their kids (again, your kids were both caught up in some sort of government stuff less then two years ago. WHY aren’t you keeping up with them?) but Erica says that her mom would be keeping tabs on her (at least, if not her and Lucas) and Dustin JUST got home, surely his mom is trying to spend time with him? They were 100 percent gone for over 24 hours from their homes, every one of them. Why were the Hendersons and Sinclairs not looking?

-Hopper ain’t dead. No body, the American at the end, and also I just don’t buy it. He’s coming back.

-Why the FUCK would Joyce move her kids away at this point? I get she doesn’t want anything else bad to happen but...her kids were traumatized and also they developed a support system out of the friends that shared that trauma, or at least witnessed it. There is NOWHERE that she can move to where El and Will could find the support that their friends would give them.

-That being said, I hope this means we get awesome siblings El and Will next season, when the Byers move back to Hawkins. Because that is happening damn it.

-Stop killing off Joyce’s love interests. Let her be happy

-Joyce’s house survived the season (probably to let her sell it) and while I kind of wish it was destroyed so she couldn’t move - which is what I thought would happen - I’m kind of glad for the house.

-I kind of wanted to see the kids in high school - like, taking down bullies by using language and techniques both from their dnd games and their upside down adventures. Nancy and Johnathan setting straight any kid that dared mess with their little siblings. Steve giving advice to all of his children, but especially Dustin. Max joining the Basketball team.

-JUST LET THEM PLAY DND

-I know most people probably loved the inclusion of the Paranoid guy who could speak Russian being back, but honestly I found most of his scenes unnecessary. I kind of liked him in Season 2, with Johnathan and Nancy, but he just irritated me this season.

-Lucas and Will’s little smirks when Mike said he loved El were adorable

-Actually, there were a lot of good little Will and Lucas friendship moments this season

-I felt there was a lot of focus on Hopper and Joyce’s storyline, at the expense of the other two/three or “kids storylines” and I wish they hadn’t. For one, their storyline was very straightforward - it wasn’t so much a “mystery to solve” as it was a “outrun the enemy” storyline, and it took away from time they could have given to showing the kids interacting and developing.

-the COLORS this season I really did love all the cinematography

-is there any explanation for the green acidic goo?

-Detective Byers. I love it. Make it happen.

-how did the mindflayer get in El’s leg? Is it after her because she...opened it? Because it want’s her powers? Is it going to go after Will at all?

-no one found how quickly this Mall went up to be suspicious at all? It’s been like...8 months since the scientists got booted out.

-Can Steve, Nancy and Johnathan PLEASE interact?

-Nancy and Robin for the next female bffs please

-I love how Robin tried to be all “Nancy Wheeler is a Priss” and Steve Harrington, who has seen Nancy Wheeler, certifiable badass, fight monsters and take down governments, is like “no, no she really is NOT.”

--Not only did Stranger Things kill a LOT of people this season, they had their characters kill as well. While none of the kids did (thank god) both Nancy and Johnathan killed in self defence at the hospital. Hopper killed (though that isn’t super unusual) and Joyce was 100 percent prepared to kill. Steve (after finally winning a fight) was tortured. That’s a great deal of trauma for the older set to go through, on top of everything else, and I wish they would acknowledge it.

-look I just need all the fanfics now of all the kids/older teens interacting and being friends in middle and high school.

[terryblount]

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition – Review

The Tales of, or just Tales, series has always occupied something of a weird blind spot in the résumés of even the most hardened JRPG fans in the West, and I am no exception. Indeed, these games have faithfully preserved so many of the most recognisable motifs of this genre through release after release. Yet, somehow, they have slipped under my radar time and time again.

When the definitive edition for Tales of Vesperia was announced, it felt like fate reaching out its hand. While the game initially launched during the glory days of the Xbox 360 and the PS3, Namco Bandai has now made their 2008 classic fully compatible with current-gen platforms. They also sweetened the deal by adding extra goodies that were originally exclusive to the Japanese release.  Suddenly I could no longer ignore the signs that my moment had finally come to dive into this beloved series.

The world of Terca Lumireis is overrun with monsters, and each city is protected by a barrier generated from a blastia.

After spending what felt like a 59-hour holiday in the mystical world of Terca Lumireis, the adventures I had with Yuri and his band of misfits have left me with fond memories. There were certainly more than a few opportunities where I couldn’t help but sigh with frustration. However, a potent combination of confident storytelling, some unique mechanics and characters that I could actually care about made me question why it took so long for me to try out a Tales game.

Heads and Tales

Tales of Vesperia is truly a master class in how to retain a player’s focus on the main story line. Much like Dragon Quest XI, which I reviewed a couple of months ago, the plot in Tales of Vesperia is what acts as the key driving force behind the gameplay since everything seems to feed really naturally into the overall adventure. Completing every objective always felt like I was adding more pieces to the puzzle of a bigger picture.

This is Yuri, and there is an old guy at his local pub who keeps mistaking him for a girl…

Given that this game could easily take around fifty hours or so to complete, the story is understandably something of a slow burner, which could potentially be a hard sell to some players. Rest assured though, it is written very well, and several exciting twists turns in the narrative will undoubtedly feel more than rewarding to players that are willing to stick with the game’s more placid narrative pacing.

The actual plot is centered on Yuri Lowell – a dishonoured knight from the imperial legion in the capital of Zaphias. While lounging in his bedroom window like only an anime teenager can, his downtown neighbourhood was abruptly flooded with water. Seems some lowlife pinched the ‘aqua blastia’ which is a magical device needed to regulate and control the water supply to the slums. He wakes up his pipe-smoking dog, Repede, and the duo set off to where the culprit might be hiding.

Seriously, his dog smokes a pipe, and how this poor pooch somehow succumbed to a tobacco addiction still leaves me sleepless with questions at night. In any case, retrieving a magic stone from a petty thief should be a cakewalk for an ex-knight right? Wrong. What is any JRPG without some unwitting hero stumbling into a major calamity?

The Imperial City of Zaphias, and this is the ‘impoverished’ part of town. Anime’s can be so idealistic…

Somewhere during his efforts to capture the thief, poor Yuri ends up in the slammer. However, no prison can hold him, and it is during his escape that he meets a noblewoman, named Estelle, who shares his passion for running from the authorities (and bizarrely coloured hair). She urgently needs to find a mutual friend of Yuri’s named Flynn, who happens to be located in the same direction as the thief’s getaway. The duo, along with Repede, therefore decide to make an impromptu little road trip together into the wilderness beyond the city.

From here, the little fellowship travels from one location to the next only to find themselves constantly one step behind both Flynn and the blastia thief. It’s not all bad since every location reveals more to Yuri and Estelle about a deeply entrenched conspiracy surrounding both the stolen blastia, and the iron fist of the Zaphias Empire. Needless to say, they soon find themselves unavoidably drawn into a much bigger mission in which the very fate of Terca Lumireis might be at stake.

Estelle trying her best to give a high five.

As per usual, the friends that help them throughout their travels ultimately end up joining their little clique until the group is big enough to form their own guild. They decide to name their guild ‘Brave Vesperia,’ and first to join is Karol, a young boy exiled from another guild and thus eager to prove himself as a fighter. A feisty blastia scientist, Rita, joins the group shortly after since she sees their journey as an opportunity to learn more about the blastia.

Flynn also joins once the gang finally catches up to him, along with three other characters named Raven, Judith and Patty. I cannot disclose much about the these characters without giving away some crucial story moments, but it is worth noting that the writers did a superb job of keeping me uncertain with regards to their true identities and intentions. It certainly set the stage for some rather interesting surprises later on.

The devil is in de-tales

If I had to summarize Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, I would say that it plays like entering your own anime epic. Many aspects of the game, from its narrative mechanisms to its combat style, impart a distinct cinematic and theatrical feeling to the player. As such, the game is generally a mix of pretty standard JRPG content, but with a distinct visual edge which has always given the series its unique identity within the genre.

The most obvious implementation of its anime pedigree lies in the game’s visuals. Tales of Vesperia has been rendered in a colour-popping, cel-shaded style which, even ten years later, looks great. A few shockingly bad in-game cut scenes have unfortunately survived the transition to the current generation, but they are few and far between thankfully. Besides, you are bound to forget about them entirely when you see how well the game’s graphics complement the fully animated cut scenes (also equally gorgeous).

Yuri fighting his buddy Flynn, but I won’t spoil why

The visuals are accompanied by an arousing and diverse soundtrack that is always in sync with what’s on screen. Combat scenarios generally received thumping rock beats, while exploration was augmented by classic orchestral symphonies, but the cherry on top is the opening song. It is called ‘Ring a Bell’ by Bonnie Pink and trust me, it will be firmly stuck in your head by the time the game is done. Go give it a listen.

True Commitment to Story-telling

As I mentioned, Tales of Vesperia shows its commitment to being a cinematic-driven adventure in how the game takes a more linear narrative approach. Whether it involved infiltrating a mansion of a corrupt official, or helping a town repair the blastia that upholds a protective barrier against monsters, every objective represented a key albeit sequential component in how the story plays itself out.

This effectively means that the game offers very little side content outside of the missions related to the main story, and I can imagine fans of fuller and more ‘looter-centric JRPGs’ might be left wanting here. For me, on the other hand, it was refreshing to play through a role-playing game that placed its story so front and center. Besides, if you ever get tired of blastia and the cast prattling on, there are recipes to create, battle strategies to refine, and ample opportunities to fight monsters for some extra XP on the side.

Apparently this is a series known for its beautiful and lush graphics.

Speaking of prattling on, Tales of Vesperia has got one of the chattiest casts I have ever encountered in a game. It is not exactly a problem (unless this kind of thing irks you) since the dialogue and interactions between characters have been written and localized rather well. The lengthy conversations between Yuri and the gang is in fact one of the most crucial ways in which the game conveys their personalities to the player, as well as colouring in the lore and history of Terca Lumireis.

The interactions between Karol and Rita were particularly a highlight of the game since they were really funny. Karol constantly pipes up with something stupid to say when the adults are talking only to be silenced by Rita with a firm head jab. It represents the kind of slapstick comedy I used to love while I was watching the Bleach anime series.

And here we have the resident mage Rita. This is one of the few scenes she is  not assaulting/teasing/whacking/chasing Karol.

Of course, additional but entirely optional interactions between characters are presented to players via the ‘skits’ that have become a fan favourite in this series. These are essentially delightful little intermissions in which the different characters have a brief tête-à-tête with one another.

Classic example of the skit

The skits could involve one character sharing their knowledge on a certain area or just throwing some good old fashioned shade at one of the others. They serve only to endear the characters to the player and are totally skippable, however I laughed my way through nearly all of them since they exhibit the same quality of writing as the rest of the game. It is yet another aspect of this game that demonstrates that classic Tales dedication to making its cast memorable and relatable.

The Linear Motion Battle System

The combat is where things get a little different, and, as any Tales veteran will be happy to tell you, it is here where the series makes its sharpest departure from the rest of the genre. Whereas all the heavy hitters from the JRPG founding fathers opted for the classic turn-based gameplay during battles, Tales games have since their SNES days had a more active system that looks like a permutation from a hack ‘n slash game.

In the case of Tales of Vesperia, it means the player must attack, guard and use magic against the enemy in real time, usually with the help of three squad mates. The battles are not random, and like many modern games of this kind, players can circumvent (read: run away!) from enemies that you would prefer not to engage.

A typical scenario would involve you seeing an enemy either in close quarters or in the over world map. Once the enemy has been engaged in combat, the game then moves everyone into an arena of sorts, with the camera adopting a side-long perspective not unlike a fighting game. The player then locks onto any chosen enemy, and proceeds to pummel them with a mixture of light melee attacks, as well as more powerful, magic-fueled assaults called ‘artes.’

Your rating is based on how much damage you avoided, combo hits, damage given, etc.

There are even rudimentary combos to be chained from connecting your character’s light and heavy attacks, and the higher Yuri (and the others) level(s) up, the more artes and finishing moves become available to him. Several short cuts have also been added to the D-pad which allowed me to change the overall strategy of my party on the fly, and you can really get into the nitty-gritty of tailoring your own unique strategy. By the time the game places you toe-to-toe with the boss enemies, changing between strategies is utterly indispensable.

For example, Rita is primarily a mage class with magical attacks while Estelle is a powerful healer. During normal grinding and lesser enemy encounters, they can certainly hold their own right next to you with sword and shield. However, during boss fights I tailored a preset where both characters kept their distance while focusing on the party’s health once their own HP dropped below 75%. Once I got the hang of all the systems and subsystems at work in the combat mechanics, the action-packed fighting became a delightfully intellectual affair much like a menu or turn-based system.

Alas, even once I began to feel sorry for the Pokemon-esque monsters for the swiftness at which I was mowing them down, I couldn’t get over how clumsy the system felt at times. If Yuri was not specifically locked onto the enemy closest to him, he often missed with his sword which left him striking stupidly at thin air in the middle of the battle arena. Making matters worse is that the controls are not the most responsive either meaning that combos are more a question of luck rather than skill.

Lastly, I also found most boss fights to be somewhat unfairly difficult in comparison with the rest of the game play. This is a matter easily solved by simply switching the combat difficulty to ‘Easy’ in the in-game settings (which I did a lot). Still, it feels like the developers could have done a little more to prepare the player for the jarring contrast in difficulty that so many of the boss encounters represent.

The 3D over world map. You can even camp out in the open for one night.

These are not exactly deal-breakers in the grand scheme of the combat system. Yet, it is disappointing to know that with a little tweaking and refinement, the already decent and unique trademark of the series could have elevated a great game to a nearly perfect status.

To be or not to be…

Tales of Vesperia is like the paradox of JRPGs in that it hosts so many familiar elements of the genre, yet it clearly shapes its own identity through its stylistic choices. Whereas other JRPGs feel like the seasoned old business magnates in their crisp suits, this game feels like the new, hip kid on the block wearing urban fashion.

Some more senseless violence! The ring on the left shows the edge of the combat arena.

This is not the first JRPG to be so consistently driven by its story, nor is it unique in its presentation. What I feel is special in Tales of Vesperia is how gracefully it pulls all of these elements together. This game will never allow you to become too preoccupied with one particular aspect of the overall experience on offer. Instead,  it is a well-rounded adventure which demands to be consumed in big, greedy chunks at once.

If you have been playing turned-based JRPGs since the days you were still using a potty, and you feel no immediate rush to venture too far out of this landscape, you might have a hard time warming up to this one. However, if you believe variety is the spice of life, and you are willing to test the barriers of what this genre can do, look no further. This game is in no rush to overwhelm you with complexity which makes it a compelling choice for old hands and newcomers alike.

  Supports up to 4K resolution

Cel-shaded beauty

Engaging story

Relaxing gameplay approach

Strong characters

Excellent score

Brilliant localisation

Several cut scene animations

Combat controls

No option to quick save

Difficulty spike with bosses

          Playtime: 57 hours total. For the single player campaign

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an Xbox One Controller

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition – Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/