#heart of the mountain

[hpowellsmith]

Heart's Choice WIP announcement: Heart of the Mountain by Fay Ikin

Heart of the Mountain is a new Heart's Choice text game by Fay Ikin, the author of Heart of Battle and Asteroid Run: No Questions Asked. It's in the same setting as Heart of Battle, with a new MC and totally standalone.

Play Chapter 1 here! Fay would love to hear whatever feedback you have if you have a moment - either on the forum, or send it to me and I'll pass it on to her as she's not on here.

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The war between the Coritan Republic and Messimera has been over for years, but as a magician you’ll never be free of your duties to your country.

With control over warmth and heat energy, you’ve been sent to a remote Messimeran outpost, where a small group of soldiers from both sides have been tasked to cooperate and guard the northernmost demilitarized zone…where your predecessor went mysteriously missing.

If anyone crosses the mountain pass or the frozen waterway, the peace treaties could fail. It’s frigid, isolated work, and monotonous until a mysterious fellow magician falls at your doorstep hiding dangerous secrets. Will you welcome your kind, or support your colleagues’ suspicions of them?

Everyone has their own agenda - and their own secrets to guard. When their goals oppose each other, who will you support and who will you stand against? Who will you keep close when your magic starts to fail, when paranoia and fear strike the outpost? A mysterious force within the mountain threatens to topple everything your country has worked for. What are you willing to lose to survive - your livelihood, your love, or your magic itself?

Heart of the Mountain is set in the same setting as Heart of Battle, 4-5 years later. All of the characters are new for this game, though backstory elements can have some familiar notes from the previous game. You won’t need to have played Heart of Battle to play this game.

I’m aiming for 3 or 4 chillies - some sex scenes are very explicit, and some will (at the reader’s choice) feature some intense kinky experiences.

As with Heart of Battle, it’s v/v. The MC can be a man (cis, trans or non-specified), woman (cis, trans or non-specified) or non-binary person (AMAB, AFAB, or not specified); the love interests are selectable between cis man/cis woman/non-binary.

There are four characters alongside the MC - everyone the MC interacts with is romanceable and plot relevant, and the conflict between different love interests’ goals and ambitions drives the plot.

All the characters have the possibility of a happy ending, but on some high-conflict routes some characters can become hostile antagonists

There are currently some polyamorous options planned: Eleri/Felician/MC, and Stelare/Theano/MC.

Romance Options:

Captain Felician Resende

GRIEVING OFFICER from the Coritan Republic

Felician’s magician best friend, the MC’s predecessor, went missing a month ago: a devastating loss Felician is still struggling to accept. With bad experiences with magic in the war, and a lingering deep distrust of magic, Felician’s trying hard to keep it out of the way of professional - or personal - relationships.

Best Felician: honorable, go-getting, enthusiastic

Worst Felician: inflexible, manic, controlling

What to say: “I agree, a five mile hike is a perfect team-building opportunity!”

What not to say: “I hope you don’t mind, I’ve made some amendments to your chore chart!”

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Sergeant Eleri Katsaros

CONFLICTED ENGINEER from Messimera

You can’t get secrets out of Eleri with a prybar, but it’s still obvious that Sergeant Katsaros bitterly regrets whatever happened during the war. So now, here’s someone committed to being kind while frozen with shame. Eleri can’t imagine being called a good person, let alone believing it.

Best Eleri: Idealistic, practical, reliable

Worst Eleri: Fatalistic, brittle, volatile

What to say: “Let’s stay up until four in the morning to do inventory. In silence.”

What not to say: “I’ll only give you your toolbox back if you can name five things you like about yourself.”

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Doctor Theano Leventis

MISANTHROPIC PHYSICIAN from Messimera

“Doctor Leventis has the potential to be a shining star of the Messimeran Army…if only Leventis could match talent with compassion”.

This, like other performance reviews, Theano has disregarded as ‘pointless sap’. There’s little point in babying other people’s emotions when there’s any number of things to do instead: music, reading, gambling, scientific analysis…you name it, Theano can do it. Unless it requires a bedside manner.

Best Theano: Creative, progressive, perceptive

Worst Theano: Bitter, destructive, dismissive

What to say: “Why would we be emotionally vulnerable with each other when we could get drunk and pass out instead?”

What not to say: “I’m sorry, but the future of the outpost relies on your ability to give me a convincing hug.”

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Stelare Belmonte

FLIGHTY MAGICIAN from the Coritan Republic

Magic academy washout, army washout, an Illustrious’ magickeeper’s washout, an arena designer washout…is there anything Stelare can’t get fired from for ‘wilful disobedience and lack of adherence to basic safety’?

Stelare has telekinetic magic: the application of force to move and manipulate the world. But instead of being indispensable, Stelare has happily embraced the label of ‘massive liability’ and the freedom that comes with it. But what exactly is the plan on this remote, classified mountaintop?

At their best: Passionate, ambitious, protective

At their worst: Unpredictable, careless, vindictive

What to say: “I made you some hot chocolate, the others are so jealous!”

What not to say: “You don’t scare me…you’re just mediocre.”

[sixcitiesofficial]

The Heart of the Mountain

Long ago, in the depths of a mountain that had yet to be named, there was a god, and that god had questions. 

It was an odd thing for a god to have questions, because it was a god. It possessed limitless power based on manipulation of cosmological forces. It didn’t need to ask why the sun rose. The sun rose because the god’s sister had birthed a great and fiery dragon. In several millennia, the god would approve as an elven sage became so incensed with this explanation that she would ascend in a ball of incandescent magic to argue with the dragon for the rest of time, and there would be two suns. But at this moment, there was only one sun. 

If the gods were all abstract concepts made manifest and given limitless power, did anything truly exist. If all of creation was a reflection of the limitless power of the gods, why then was it bound by seemingly mundane laws, such as gravity? The Mountain paused, and made note of the notion of gravity, because it had noticed that things typically only fell in one direction, drawn towards a greater mass.

Understandably, the other gods sometimes needed a break from their querulous sibling. 

Still, the Mountain had questions, and it needed someone to help it look into these questions. Someone had to understand the workings of reality -- insofar, it noted, as reality existed, and was not just a consensus reached by observation, a mass delusion that all living beings agreed upon in order to not go mad in the face of the infinite -- and, more importantly, make notes on reality. 

At first, the Mountain considered recruiting some of its siblings’ creations for this very important task of Making Notes On The Nature Of Physics -- the Mountain paused, and wrote another note reminding it to invent physics, and then while it was at it, the other sciences, and also mathematics. But some of these projects might take more time than was allotted to its siblings’ creations. Worse, while the abyss would take their souls and return them to new bodies, the newly returned souls wouldn’t remember where they’d left off in the process. 

No, the Mountain decided, as it made a series of other notes about things like chemical interactions and the use of acidic compounds, and why some rocks radiated a dangerous energy, and tucked those away for later, it would have to take matters into its own hands. The Mountain made a note to determine if it did, in fact, have hands, or just the abstract concept manifested in the most functional form for its purposes. It was, after all, a god, and therefore could have easily just moved the matter with its will.

When the gods had made the world, they had populated it with a variety of living things. Some of those things were relatively hairless and bipedal, and the Mountain’s siblings had quite leaned into that form, just tweaking little things to suit their needs. The Mountain dismissed the humanoid form for its purposes. There were only so many variations before one ran out of ideas, after all. It did consider the notion of a long-lived slime mold capable of advanced calculations but suspected that, while this would be efficient, it would also be quite disgusting.

The Mountain began to review its notes on the various living things in the world. Not trees, it thought. Though they were long-lived and very good at recording their immediate conditions, they were also immobile, which would make observing things not near them very difficult. Fish were similarly restricted to aquatic observations, and as the Mountain looked deeper into the oceans, it discovered that it was in fact quite concerned about what life had gotten up to in the trenches, and decided to leave all of that alone, even if a squid could take notes on ten different topics at once. Birds did have the advantage of exceptional mobility and eyesight, but the Mountain’s preliminary experiment to see if birds could take notes on the wing did not end well. Also, the crows kept writing naughty words instead of taking notes. 

After much deliberation and careful experimentation, the Mountain reached the conclusion that the optimal form for research and development was something with clever hands, a diligent work ethic, and ample fat stores to survive long-term stays in a library or other academic setting. With much solemn ritual and even more solemn observation of lab safety, the Mountain bestowed upon the creatures of the woodlands the light of knowledge. Unto the humble creatures of the field, the mice and rats, the foxes and badgers, the beavers and squirrels, the moles and shrews, the Mountain gave wisdom and understanding. It granted them the ability to ask questions of the natural world, to dig as metaphorically deeply as they had previously done quite literally. It granted them exceptionally long lifespans, so that they would have plenty of time for their experiments. It also made necessary biological adjustments so that they could properly handle lab equipment -- once they had invented lab equipment, of course, and the Mountain made a note to impart through a prophetic vision the concept of a laboratory. 

Unfortunately, the Mountain only realized too late that it had left a little bit of the light of knowledge lying around, and that, while that was on a very high table, and the Mountain had only turned its back for a moment, that was long enough for the raccoons. If nothing else, the Mountain supposed, the raccoons would ask questions that no one else dared to ask. There was, of course, a reason why no one dared to ask some of these questions, but the Mountain rationalized this by telling itself that at least the raccoons smart enough to not be blown to smithereens when they discovered white phosphorous would pass that knowledge along to their descendants. 

The Mountain could have hidden the white phosphorous deep beneath the earth, of course, but while it had been chasing down the raccoons, the moles had invented a preliminary mining process, and the squirrels were well on their way to a well-organized storage system. This pleased the Mountain. Though progress might bear casualties, someone would write down what went wrong, and eventually find a solution

[alexandria-is-my-firstname]

Inktober, Day 9: Nest

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Hervor & Hannes stuck under the feathers of a bird creature, the tv-lit house Hervor and Hannes are in being the bird creature's nest. Hannes tries his best to not alert the bird's curious eyes while shutting up Hervor,,,

[viva-la-topknot]

Some covers for short stories I've written. Not sure how to share original stories online, if anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them! 🎨 General art tag. 💫 Knights of Nodd 

[klinefelterrible]

GIMLI OFFERING HIS FAMILY’S TRADITIONAL HEART-OF-THE-MOUNTAIN ANAL BEADS TO LEGOLAS

LEGOLAS:

[anthonysperkins]

Brokeback Mountain (2005) dir. Ang Lee The Living End (1992) dir. Gregg Araki Dry Wind (2020) dir. Daniel Nolasco Fireworks (1947) dir. Kenneth Anger The Sergeant (1968) dir. Dennis Murphy Tom at the Farm (2013) dir. Xavier Dolan God's Own Country (2017) dir. Francis Lee Lonesome (2022) dir. Craig Boreham Moonlight (2016) dir. Barry Jenkins Wandering Heart (2021) dir. Leonardo Brzezicki

[zegalba]

Jasper National Park, Canada

[carebeardean]

Charles has always left Edwin little notes slipped between the pages of his favorite books, in his science equipment, places he knows Edwin loves. Just silly things—post its that say “hi Edwin :)”. doodles of Edwin with his nose stuck in a book. reminders to stock up on wolfsbane. but.

Then, post canon, Edwin tentatively starts dating people. And it’s ridiculous, because Edwin’s right there, all the time, but Charles..misses him a bit. And his heads a mess, and he can’t sort out what the hell he’s feeling most of the time, and whenever he tries to say any of it out loud it comes out rubbish.

So. He writes down some of the shit he can’t say right, and because he’s a coward, hides them so he doesn’t have to see Edwin’s face when he reads them.

then Edwin starts writing back.

Neat lilac blue little envelopes appear in Charles coat pockets. In his bag. Once, in his shoe? Some nights, Edwin will clear his throat and mention something from a letter, offhand, like they’re just picking up conversation, and Charles can pretend they are. That they always have talked about the basement, the belt, the nameless fear that chokes him every time Edwin walks out the door with someone else on his arm.

Sometimes he can’t. The words get stuck in his throat. Edwin’s not mad, he’s maddeningly, stubbornly kind about it, which is worse.

Some nights they trade. A secret for a secret. Charles learns about the novels Edwin used to hide under his mattress, about all the lonely years before Charles got there. About Simon.

Meanwhile, Edwin is losing his mind, because Charles has accidentally stumbled onto what was a fucking courting ritual in his time. Love letters were something engaged couples treasured for years, kept and reread over and over. (Edwin does. keep them in a special box, will take one out and trace the words, tuck it in his breast pocket for courage).

Edwin would rather have to reattach a limb again than lose Charles trust, all the dark and beautiful things he shares with Edwin only. He knows—knows Charles doesn’t mean to make him fall more in love with him.

[saturnvs]

under the starry skies, where eagles have flown

[halosmoon]

good soup 👁️👄👁️

Jack & Joker: U Steal My Heart | behind the scenes

[hpowellsmith]

It's really cute that you and fay play each others' games - couple goals fr 😭 Who did you romance in your wife's games and who did she romance in yours?

Awwww

The first time I played Asteroid Run, I romanced Oscar. But the most recent time I played it, I romanced Shiori and also had a fling with Victor on the side. (My wife says Shiori would be OK with it becoming a full-on affair in the future, it's fine lmao)

I can't remember who I romanced when I first played Heart of Battle, but last time I played, I romanced Eryx and Remi polyamorously.

The first time I played Heart of the Mountain, I romanced Felician. The most recent time I played, I romanced Eleri. When she finishes the draft, I will probably romance them polyamorously.

I'm pretty sure Fay romanced Nico in Blood Money, but I think she also did a playthrough where she didn't romance anyone but was very good friends with and aligned with Silvian.

She romanced Hartmann on her first Creme de la Creme playthrough, and when she did a post-release playthrough she got engaged to Rosario (which she was very proud about because it's not that easy to do!).

She romanced everyone in Noblesse Oblige because it's shorter to play, but she felt most emotionally connected with Rys.

She romanced Beaumont and Trevelyan on her first playthrough, then Beaumont at some point, and on her most recent one she romanced Asher. I'm pretty sure on the most recent one she became close friends with Javi.

When she most recently playtested the full Honor Bound game, she romanced Savarel and Denario, but she was SO slowburn and emotionally restrained with Savarel that she triggered a bug where the romance didn't get fully switched on when it should have, so she had a not-very-romantic late-game time lmao. (this resulted in me doing a massive shakedown of all the slowburn romance triggers just before the beta testing started!) (it also resulted in me adding a bunch of final-chapter stuff for people who are romancing those two 💖)

[slavhew]

i reread this scene and i could just. picture it. so vividly.

[alexandria-is-my-firstname]

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Redraw of Prude eating a burger, cause food are the best couple in ♡♥︎valentines♥︎♡,,,

[ravensvalley]

#RedFox

Canadian Red Fox at dawn walking the Mountainous Parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

@BenAdrienProulx October 14th, 2024.

[entelodontidae]

I always go into queer media thinking “oh this is just a silly show about pirates” or “oh this is just a silly fanfiction of the bible” or “oh it’s a goofy horror podcast” and then it turns out to be the most emotionally devastating piece of media I’ve ever seen

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

blasting my two favorite interests into each other because i can