#i look down. and there is the largest spider I've ever seen

[pinksparkl]

Can I PLEASE stop finding spiders in my room in the middle of the night??? Preferably, they wouldn't be there at. all. but I ask this as minimum.

[thevoiceofthebard]

Chapter 12 - Arvel I: Bleak Falls Barrow

Middas, 20th of Last Seed 4E201 Evening

Arvel Swiftpinch

I wasn't always a bandit, you know. I used to be a merchant on Solstheim. Successful. Respectable.

Boring.

So I ran off to Skyrim, hoping to find something interesting to do. Nothing too adventurous, but anything beat counting Septims behind a counter, I thought. But all I found in Windhelm were a bunch of racists with anger issues. At best, I was ignored. At worst... Well, let's just say I joined this group of bandits mostly so I could get back at every Nord I could find.

If I'd known I was going to end up as a spider's diner, maybe I'd have stayed in Solstheim. It was my own damned fault, I suppose. A Draugr popped out of nowhere, and I panicked before Harknir or Bjorn could even react. I'm no bloody fighter; just a gossipmonger with a talent for picking up valuables, which is how I got this damned key in the first place. Its terrifying, rattling breath and strange language unsettled me enough without them jumping off the damn walls, and when I looked over my shoulder to see if it was following me, I ran straight into the largest web I'd seen in my life. The more I struggled, the worse it covered me, so I resigned myself to waiting for my compatriots. So I waited.

And waited

...And waited.

Did the Draugr kill them? I'd never been inside a Nordic ruin before, but surely no undead was sturdy or strong enough to kill two Nords. Every moment that passes is another closer to a pair of pincers in my neck. Was the spider still alive? The web seems recent enough. But why hasn't it come to check on the movement? And where are those bloody Nords?!... What if there was another path? They might have completely missed me. My heart starts beating furiously. I could die down here. No! I will not let Dagon have me! I will survive.

As if by providence, I suddenly hear footsteps from the hall, and voices - live ones. "Is... Is someone coming? Harknir, Bjorn, is that you?" The voices dim, but I can hear them moving about, more hesitant than before. "Look, I know I ran ahead, but the Draugr... I need help!"

Finally, two people appear in the doorway. But neither of them are Harknir or Bjorn. One is a skinny man in robes, and the other is... The biggest bloody Nord woman I've ever seen. Shit. Dagon is truly testing me this day. "Who are you? Oh, never mind. Cut me down before that thing comes back for us!"

"Us?" the Nord scoffs. "The only one I see in trouble here is you, bandit."

I shove aside the numerous curses running through my head; this could all turn to ash if I can't take control of the situation. "What happened to those idiots I left behind? I don't suppose you've killed them." The Nord continued to sneer at me, but the other one acted more neutrally. Whatever they were here for, he was my ticket to living... Or at least to keep the woman from running me through. "I won't lie and say they forced me to help them or anything, but I never hurt anyone! I was just an ear. The worst I ever did was palm a few items from a villager or two."

"Really? Such as a certain golden claw?"

For the love of... Can I not catch a single break? "Yes, yes, the claw. I know how it works, the claw, the markings, the door. I know how they all fit together. Just help me down, and I'll show you."

"Why don't you just tell us now, ash-face?"

Ash-face. How unoriginal. "Because I don't fancy you leaving me to die here while you run off. And the claw is in my pocket anyway."

"He has a point."

"Talao..."

The man - Talao, I suppose - pulls a dagger from his belt and approaches me. "He's one mer, Uthgerd. And covered in webbing. I doubt he'll be any trouble even if he wanted to be." Smug little n'wah. The Nord joins him after a moment, but the webs are absurdly thick, taking much longer to cut than I would have thought. "So," the... Talao says, "I'm a bit curious how you made it through that puzzle trap earlier. It was locked when we came through."

Puzzle? "I've no clue what you're on about. There was no gate or anything when I came through." Although I do remember a loud crash soon after I took off. I'd assumed it was the Draugr knocking over a pot or something.

"Hm. Perhaps it was rigged to close behind the first person to come through. I'm sorry to say it actually killed one of your fellows. Perhaps the last one of them, unless any escaped that Draugr. Nasty buggers, aren't they?" he asks me.

"Uh... Yeah. I was running from one, like I mentioned. Got me stuck here. Frightened the life out of me."

"Is that so? Well, you seem plenty alive to me. Stick with us, and we'll keep you that way," he says, grinning. Charming fellow. I feel calmer already. Another moment passes, and I feel the last rope release me. Finally.

Now, to figure out how best to ditch these fools.

Click-click.

Azura be praised.

I don't even need to fake the fear as a monstrous spider descends from the ceiling, finally drawn to the struggling of its trap. I scream "oh gods, don't let it get me! Kill it!" They both turn to face it, the woman drawing her weapon. When she charges forward, I accidentally trip Talao as I run further into the ruin, screaming loudly. Perfect. I keep my eyes firmly ahead, searching for any more webs I might run into. Now all that's left is to get to the wall, open it, and find out how to lock it behind me. Then I'll have all the time in the world to...

Snap

What was tha

Chapter 11 - Uthgerd III: Bleak Falls Barrow x Chapter 13 - Uthgerd IV: Bleak Falls Barrow

[shrivveledradish]

Bug tour part 1: Starting with spiders!

This is going to be a series of posts to show my current invertebrates

I will start with my 3 baby T. georgicola. These are the offspring of my late wolf spider, Zorua. They were all born 7/1/23

The first baby is Aspera.

She is a very confident spider with very pretty coloration. She is the largest of my spiders, which is odd because I feed them all at the same time.

The second baby spider is Fel.

I originally picked them out because they looked the most like their mother. She was the first to take down live food instead of the pre-killed mealworm I was offering when they were tiny. She loves food and has even attacked the tweezers when I dropped food in because she mistook it for food.

The last of my 3 baby T. georgicola is Leto.

She looks very similar to Aspera and while I originally selected the babies I'm keeping in hopes of having them all look different I really like this coloration. I am not sure if they will keep this coloration as they age or not. She is also very food motivated and is a bit more shy than the other two.

I do have a fourth baby wolf spider but they are not one of Zoruas babies. I think they are a Hogna species. I have not named this one yet.

This baby burrows a lot more than my other wolf spiders. I have them in a smaller display enclosure and I like being able to look over and see them.

My next spider is an old black widow named Doris

She is the first widow that I ever caught and I am very fond of her since black widows are some of my favorite inverts. She did not used to have any white on her but as she's aged and laid eggsacks, she's gotten more white. She also had 24 babies hatch today.

The next spiders I will show are Doris' babies.

There are 24 total. I originally crushed a lot of the eggsack in hope only like 5 or 10 would hatch out because I cannot care for a hundred baby widows at the moment. 24 is better than 100 though. I will probably leave them together for a bit and they might cannibalize each other but once I notice them cannibalizing I will separate them.

My last spider is a baby fishing spider named Pebble.

Pebble is a bit of a challenging spider. I have her set up with a little water container and some fake leaves to chill on and she will be upgraded as she grows. I can only ever get her to eat moths and not mealworms or darkling beetles and I've never caught her eating, I've just seen her prey dead.

That wraps up the first part of my bug tour, my pet spiders. I am going to start writing the next part now.

[red-the-dragon-writes]

Today's post is not on the usual "writer blog fare" side. Instead I am going to introduce you to several fun facts about various animals on our planet and then talk about worldbuilding.

1. Lampreys are a kind of "living fossil"- a not-really-so-scientific term for a creature that has lived unchanged for a very long time, so long that we have fossils of them looking the same way they do now. They don't have proper jaws, just a circular sucking mouth with teeth set into it and a tongue designed to strip flesh off of what it touches. They're finless fish, look quite a bit like eels, and have this really alien, uncanny vibe to them.

[id: a long, slender bluish-silver lamprey sitting among rocks. It has a long snout, an eye, and then six small perforations in its side arranged at an even interval sitting behind the eye. The environment it is sitting in is very yellow and green in comparison. end id]

[id: an image of a lamprey from below. The snout ends in a round, flat mouth which is studded with teeth in four concentric circles. The teeth are smallest near the outer edge and largest in the middle, and look like very sharp round points. In the center of this ring is another, smaller circle, where the pointed, tooth-like tongue can be seen, as well as a hole for the lamprey to actually ingest food with. Its eye is visible, as are some of the perforations on its side. This one is a more mottled gray than the first one was, and less shiny. end id]

Sea lampreys, which are the kind i've sort of not really kinda researched, are a major pest in the Great Lakes, where they regularly attack fish. They can get up to two feet in length. Despite this, they are not particularly dangerous towards humans.

2. Horseshoe crabs are also "living fossils." They've been around and virtually unchanged for millions of years. They're not true crabs, and are more closely related to chelicerata species, like spiders and scorpions (and many more). There are a lot of cool features of horseshoe crabs, but one of their most extremely cool, to me, is their blood.

I'm not going to post any images of what I consider to be animal cruelty, so you'll have to take me at my word here, but this is a bottle of horseshoe crab blood. If you're sensitive to images of animal cruelty, I don't recommend looking for proof, but if you aren't, there are plenty of images of the blood coming out of the creature for you to verify this with.

E[id: a bottle of slightly frothy, opaque blue liquid. It is sitting in a row with several other bottles of the same material. end id]

I am a sucker for blue blood, I just think it's neat, so that's all I'd need as an excuse to slam some horseshoe-crab-inspired nonsense in my exceptionally gory and fucked up wips, and if you've been reading along with WiB you may have noticed that blue blood does come into play at some point! But that's not all that's neat about horseshoe crab blood. Unfortunately for the horseshoe crabs, but fortunately for us, their blood is literally the only source of an important compound used for detecting the presence of dangerous bacteria in certain pharmaceutical drugs. (Fortunately, there are replacements that will hopefully become more popular in coming years.)

Now that we've gone over all that, onto the worldbuilding!

I worldbuild by Rule of Cool. Let's just get that out of the way. Every so often people will ask me how my worlds get so expansive (not WiB, WiB i made up on the fly by cribbing from fanfic and like... BBC Merlin. Assume very little of this holds true for WiB) and the answer is largely that I take every interest I have ever had in anything and smash it all together and throw it at my wip to see what sticks. and then I just... like... reasonably attempt to figure out what the natural conclusions will be.

So: we have lampreys. We have blue-blooded ancient sea creatures with spectacularly important and valueable blood. We are writing this into a story that takes place on land, somehow.

- The first option, and the one I'm going to talk about most because I did it, is just to rule-of-cool it into a character. (Or a place, or an item, or whatever, but largely I do rule-of-cool on living creatures and think harder about the world around them.) If you've been keeping up with WiB, you may have noticed that (spoilers) Zero Point is some kind of fucked up magician with a lamprey mouth in their hand who shapeshifts and bleeds blue. This is where I got those inspirations from (along with, like, some other stuff. I promise there are no lamprey assassins, but- continuing in the trend of stealing from sea creatures- the bobbin worm is a spectacularly beautiful, spectacularly deadly creature if you're within its weight range. which is like, goldfish size, but. And cuttlefish are known to disguise themselves as other animals, and can change sexes if the male:female ratio where they are isn't ideal.)

So you can take the elements you like, and just kind of slam them together haphazardly, which is what I did with Zero Point. The trick to this kind of worldbuilding is just to avoid looking too closely at it. The magical assassin has a fucked up mouth in their hand? Yeah, okay, that seems kind of fucked up and creepy. What do they do at all times? They hide it under a glove. So the protags Just Straight Up Never Ask. And voila; it never gets explained, and it never has to.

Same with the blue blood. It shows up, it functions as a plot device because only Zero Point has blue blood; it is never explained or even delved into with much detail. And if it were, it would fall apart instantly, because the justification is literally just "i thought it was neat. No, no one else is like that. I don't even know why they are. i just felt like it"

- The second option is to consider the effects of the things that you're working with, and then work off of that.

Let's take Zero Point again. Strip them of their context (weird assassin with magical powers) and just like, consider the fact that this is a creature with blood that regularly retails for over $10,000 USD, is intelligent as fuck, shapeshifts, has a mouth in their hand that may or may not be their actual mouth, and can exist on land so long as they have suitable access to water. What does that mean for our setting? Surely they're not the only person like that; so you have a whole species of people who are sort of but not really amphibious, shapeshift, and maybe have magical powers, who knows. They can't shapeshift their fucked up lamprey mouths, maybe. That seems like a reasonable limit. So their blood is highly valuable- what does that mean for their relations with other people, or their culture? What kind of foods do they eat? How do they create a sense of culture as shapeshifters; is there even a way that they represent themselves in art? How do they interact with the world? Do they have a "true form" or not? Every one of these questions will spawn new questions. If you answer all of them you'll lose your mind, but if you answer at least ten you'll spawn a much more background-heavy world that can help to shape your story much more effectively than trying to just craft a narrative will. Sometimes it works very well for a story. Sometimes it gets you lost in the weeds.

- The third option is to reference something else, and build off that. Again, let's use Zero Point as the example.

In the original story that the WiB ensemble is from, Closerverse, which may have some mentions on this blog but honestly I have no idea, there is a city that I've done quite a bit of worldbuilding on. This city is called Hudson, and one of the major important features of it is that it is partially underground. (This is a reference to the DFZ of Rachel Aaron's Heartstrikers series). Hudson is intentionally run to be the worst, most unpleasant city in the world, and one of its features are its wildly intelligent, dangerous forms of aquatic life. The lowest level of this city is partially submerged, and all of these creatures plague the people who live down there.

Closerverse was also set during a period of early industrialization, and Hudson heavily referenced US history, especially 1900s-1920s labor history. Tenements, pollution, zero protections for workers, et cetera. Hudson is a nasty, miserable place, and everyone who lives there can feel the jaws closing in on them.

Anyway, in Closerverse you got these fucked up massive eel-like creatures (lampreys, but with extra features) that due to some rather significant meddling wound up growing legs and then got really massive and started eating people. They have blue blood, glow in the dark, and make fairly decent eating as long as they aren't eating you. And they're intelligent. Given the whole "mutual eating each other" thing, the eels and the people of Hudson have some pretty major animosity going on.

Most of Zero Point's stuff is really just me referencing the Hudson Eels, because I fucking love those. They're some of my favorite worldbuilding elements ever. But given that no one else in WiB has ever seen a Hudson Eel, let alone seen their blood get dry on things, or whatever, everything about Zero Point is wildly out of context. And that almost makes it better, because the whole deal with them is that they're mysterious and weird, and having them be a mysterious and weird reference to something no one but I know about most likely is like, fun and neat.

There are, of course, other modes of worldbuilding as well, but I typically aim to stick to the first two as much as possible. The cooler you make something, the more possible questions it raises; the more questions something raises, the deeper your world gets.

Although, a word of advice: sometimes animals just do things. Sometimes bodies just have features. Who would invent fingernails? But having them is mighty convenient, isn't it? For that matter, who would come up with a deeply logical and reasoned explanation for eyebrows- but not having those would be very strange, to us. You can get away with doing a lot by just having that be how it is, and not having the characters comment on it.

Also, the more "shaped" a thing should be, the more you'll want to take the second approach. For house design, something intentionally built, you'll want to know why it was built, and what purpose is this and that room, and why is it painted such and such colors. But if you're talking about adding a second moon, like... fuck dude, who needs to know why there's a second moon? Maybe if you have sailors you have to know what it'll do to your oceans, but that's the kind of thing you can kind of just say exists and move on. You'll figure it out; it gets pretty intuitive.

Anyway, happy worldbuilding!

[bobshollyworld-blog]

Weekly Roundup #4

Happy Monday, everyone! I told myself that I wouldn't hunt as hard this week as I did the week previously, and wouldn't you know it... I failed. 😫 I failed hard. I failed so hard. I didn't mean to get carried away, but I saw one thing that I liked and then another that I could use for project A, and then I couldn't get this without also getting that. You know how it goes. This week's haul was massive. Thirty-six, count 'em, THIRTY-FUCKING-SIX figures in what is the largest bounty so far. ost of them were in multipacks, but that just means I got more bang for my buck. I also got a few things that aren't figures this week as well. That's rare for me, I know, but when yer crafting a tiny plastic world of imagination, you need to, you know, actually craft that world. That's enough of the jibber-jabber; let's check out the haul for Weekly Roundup #4:

First up, we have a single loose figure. He's some sort of knight, judging from his armour, and I'm going to use him as a background piece. He's cool looking. No articulation other than his axe that goes up and down in his hands, but since he won't be the focus of any scenery, he's not hindered by his limitations. This is a Schleich figure, and is probably the only one I've ever owned.

What year is it? 2018? Then why do I keep buying twenty year old toys? Because they're my heart and soul, that's why. I actually already own a Black Cat, loose out of the package, which I bought eight or so years ago. She came in her packaging, so I have all her accessories and everything. I didn't buy these off of eBay for Black Cat. No, I bought this lot simply for the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman. I have this same figure, but the dark blue and white Julia Carpenter version. I don't know if I've mentioned it previously, but I'm not a fan of Spider-Man AT ALL, but I own more of his action figures than any other character. That collection includes his allies and villains, of which this is my second Jessica Drew figure, with the other being an older Marvel Legends figure. I'll likely resell the Black Cats just to free up space.

I'm not super pressed on these WWE zombies, but I told myself that I would buy all of the third wave so I can make an awesome Halloween diorama. I would've waited until closer to that holiday to scoop them up, because Five Below has a healthy stock of them, but as you can tell from the photo these were on clearance at Target. Sure, I only saved a wee bit over a dollar for each figure, but that's three plus dollars that can go towards something more important. I'm only missing one of the set of six and that's the 'Phenomenal One'. I'll own him soon enough and I'll get started on that diorama.

Here's that bit of random that I have to get every week. I saw these little toilets in Five Below one day when I was with my kids, but they were five bucks a piece, and the way my wallet is set up... Let's just say that they stayed where I saw them. Then I saw more at a different store, and they were cheaper, but I couldn't justify the price still. When I saw them in Target on clearance, I grabbed two. I don't know if that's enough. I bought them simply to set up some bathroom scenery. Their for 5"/6" figures, so my new favourite childeen won't get to experience them, but you can't have yer cake and eat it too. The Ready Player One figures were bought at FYE, for dumb cheap. For those not familiar with the slang, in this case "dumb cheap" translates to just over two bucks for them. I had been eyeing them in Target for a few weeks, because they're 1:18 scale and they're not what most people collect, but they were too much at Target, even after they hit clearance. I'm glad I saw them when and where I did. I scooped them right up.

I was trying to post these photos from least excited about to most excited about, and to a certain extent I've succeeded at that, but I'm actually very excited about this lot. They were all bought at Collectors Corner, as was most of the remaining items. I bought both the Mace and Lando as potential fodder for modifications to the Rage I bought a few weeks ago. Sadly, I couldn't get Lando's head off, and Mace's didn't fit onto Rage's body, so I still at the drawing board with Rage. They're cool figures. The Lando is probably my second or third favourite figure that I bought this week. He's damn cool. Lieutenant Yar was just a random purchase. I have some ideas for her, but we'll see.

So here's the thing: you can't collect 3.75" figures without at least getting a whiff of G.I. Joe. That brand is inarguably the one that made the 1:18 scale line what it is. With that being said, Joes are dumb expensive. Like, really bloody expensive. And they're hard to find in the wild. That's why lines like Lanard's The Corps, which has been riding the wave of Hasbro's Joes almost since the beginning, is an excellent fill-in. The two three-packs of figures weren't even twelve bucks. I'm not sure right now, but I don't even think they were ten bucks total. That's insane. Then there's the US Army figures. I didn't even care too much about them, but I wanted their accessories and setting. They'll blend in perfectly with the other soldiers.

We're getting down to the nitty gritty here. Fun fact: I've never typed the phrase 'nitty gritty' in my phone prior to the previous sentence, but auto correct knew that that was what I was going for after only typing in the first word. I digress. If you've been paying attention to the way I do the photos, I typically keep DC figures with their brand, and I do the same for Marvel. This week I've got a healthy amount of each, and I wasn't entirely sure which brand deserved to go on last. Ultimately, I went with Marvel because of volume. Simple as that. Now that that's out of the way, I would like to add that these DC offerings are fine figures. The Hawkman is fantastic. As the same with all the DC figures I've bought, I notice that they lack the same size and articulation as Marvel, but that doesn't stop them from being good toys. Hawkman looks cool in animated form. I honestly can't imagine him being in a more realistic sculpt. By the way, everything in this photo is from Collectors Corner. The last time I was there, there were three of the Green Lantern film two-packs, but this time there were only the two. I honestly only went back to pick up all three. The other characters were Kilowag and Ranakar. I'm disappointed that I missed out on him, but I'll get him eventually, along with some other Lantern Corps members.

Another thing Collectors Corner had an abundance of the first time I went was 3.75" Thor-related characters. Last time I picked up a bunch, but they also had multiple actually Thors that I didn't pick up because I didn't really like the look of Chris Hemsworth. They didn't have any this time, although I had decided to buy them if they had. While I was searching high and low for Kilowag, I came across most of what you see in this photo buried at the bottom of the bin they were in. The Spider-Men are meh, but the Lokis are amazing, and the Daredevil is the best figure I got this week. He actually was on a peg, so he was easier to find. The Spider-Man Homecoming two-pack was found at TJ Maxx, and what a find it was. There were three of them, and I was contemplating getting at least one more but decided against it. I haven't seen that film, but the suit Spidey is rocking is fucking sexy. Vulture is Vulture, and he's cool, too, but I was more impressed with the Spider-Man. It's crazy; although I don't care about Spider-Man, he's still managed to be the most numerous figure in my quickly growth 1:18 scale universe.

Well, there you have it folks. Another week, a other crazy, THRIFTY haul. I'm proud of myself, and I mean it this time when I say next week I'm going to take it easy on the figures. I'll be super busy with work so I won't have any time for figure hunting. 😉. Have a good week, y'all.

-Bob Hollywood, 6 August, 2018