#interesting arcane historical shit

[hexhomos]

The 'Talis' hypothesis

So I think the S2 trailer confirms something central about Arcane I've wondered for a while. This has plot bearings to it, namely what nebulous purpose 'Magic' serves in the story -- how they're changing the role Hextech has in the game lore, incl. its power system & ruleset -- and what kind of hubris is associated with it historically. But it also answers something that has always nagged at me: why the fuck did they change Jayce's name?

So let's talk about this picture. And I'm going to give you the rosetta stone in 5 seconds:

This is Hextech now. Like that is just an incredibly concise and complete descriptor of Hextech-in-Arcane, right. It 'harms' Jinx, it 'protects' Jayce in the snowstorm, it 'heals' Viktor to a degree. It is installed permanently in architecture; the Hexgates ARE the brand.

First off, we have this fucker carrying around a talisman from back when he was 7, and the cinematography of the show agonizes over showing you this throughout all of ep2:

Jayce's bracelet is a bang-on definition of a historical talisman. The way hextech *functions* in the show is inextricable from the promises and rites associated with talismans, a word appropriated/popularized by the French - which I'm going to conservatively argue Fortiche would be familiar with;

Which brings me to the subject of what Hextech is, and how Hextech was changed for the tv show (and what its possibly being retconned to in the game)

Hex'tech' is not technology. The name is a carryover from a bygone era of leagueoflegends speak; Hextech in Arcane, and presumably in expanded lore going forward (given Skarner's rework and other things) - is the study, development, and the building of an industry around the craft of practical Talismans. If you want to understand how this shit works you need to promptly abandon the assumption that it is 'manufactured' magic -- its pure magic. It's raw magic. The tech part is a red herring misnomer.

The beliefs around this already cover links to 'the Arcane' as another, ethereal destination realm with Inhabitants that learn and change, ontop of rune-carving as magical instruction;

This also covers Viktor's impending transformation and the changes made to his character.

IN MY OPINION, via the content released so far and what we've already witnessed in S1, Viktor has been shifted away from becoming 'the machine herald' and re-positioned to become the Herald of Divine Rune Alchemy or whichever name they end up using.

I don't doubt that he'll get the armor at some point, because that's a recognizable visual and as much fanservice as they owe his decade-long fans, but... I would temper my expectations around the thought of machine evolution. It's not what this Viktor does, and it's not what he (or the narrative,) is interested in -- My guess is that the armor comes into play as a secondary way to AVOID overusing limited magical power, as we've seen runes can be depleted, and the hexcore tends to kill things in exchange.

Now that we've established all that, here is the bridge that I'm going to sell you.

Now, for today's homework, I expect you to run off to do something useful and homoerotic with this information.

[ak319]

Unveil

(Gp actress x fem reader)

(Scene# 01)

(your name is Fairoz in the story)

Aman Dagon, the enigmatic, handsome and alluring actress that everyone drooled on. Who wouldn't? Her tall height, black soft, silky hair that one desired to touch, including her co-stars but her cold and mysterious personality intimidated them not to. She was famous for her villain roles especially the ones in which she was in a historical drama playing a distraught, arcane yet passionate lover oh, and how can we forget her iconic mafia lady role. It was her debut role that caused the wave of enchantment among women and men. People also know about her softer side for the heroines as she always acted gentlewomanly around them. This caused her female fans to fall in love with her more. She was always surrounded by paparazzi and everyone wanted to know more about her personal life. Her family owned many different businesses which she also took care of when she was not busy doing movies or dramas.

People were more than shocked when they found out that she was engaged. It all started when a fan made a TikTok about a ring on her finger that seemed different from her usual style and that she began to wear on more than one occasion. The internet went wild and even though her PR team was ecstatic to see that, they were tired of seeing and trying to control baseless and atrocious articles. It was after a month that the team was finally instructed by Aman to confirm that she was engaged. Aman didn't have any socials, which had made her fans more agitated as they had little source material to do research from. People were already jealous at her wife and few were genuinely happy for her. Even her co-stars were shocked as Aman's behavior didn't give the slightest hint about her engagement.

The real truth was that this marriage was hell, to begin with.

(2 months ago)

"Aman ma'am -- what? I mean didn't we already decided the amount to be 5 million? How come you are changing this now?" The director, Usama looked at Aman stunned.

"Mhmm , so you are saying you can't do it? Is that it?" Her deep voice , although calm , still sent chills down Usama's back. Not to forget her father was quite influential in entertainment industry.

"I am - sorry but yes , the contract had been signed prior , you remember right?."

"Do you know I can buy this company of yours and actually don't want your money . I didn't have any interest in doing this movie too but .....I did not do it for money or any of your shit." Yes , this is how she talked when she was annoyed . Her die hard fans would refuse to believe that she can be this egoistic but she was , and she was good at hiding it as well.

"But you do know if I sue you for forging a fake contract and paying me less , you will loose everything ....not to mentions my fans , they will make sure you can't do shit after this. So , all of this can be avoided if you hand me over , oops , haha. I meant , give me the hand of that girl you brought on set one day to me in marriage."

Mr. Usama nearly fainted right there. The girl she just talked about was her niece who was still in college. He couldn't believe his ears. Marriage of Fairoz to a woman like her, this is ...a nightmare.

"Earth to my favorite director" Aman snapped her slender fingers in front of his face, startling him. " I know it's hard to digest. That's why I will give you some time to decide and discuss this with your family and by that I mean ......a date for our engagement pronto.."

"She is my niece and what you are asking for is---I am sorry but --not possible."

"Not possible? Mhm. it has been forever since I have heard that word. Or you can say I am not used to hearing it ." She paused to let out a sarcastic chuckle. " Let me give you even a better one, I hate when people say it to me." Making the man gulp with her slow steps cornering him, she continued "I don't get what is impossible about a marriage? Isn't that the best thing you can get in your whole life? Me as your niece's wife. Pft. Never knew you to be so ungrateful."

Usama pondered over her words . Maybe she is right. What if she is a bit arrogant , that is a pitfall of being in the industry. 90 percent of people Usama had worked with are like her. If only focusing on the pros momentarily , the proffer doesn't sound terrible. Especially in the long term. Fairoz , if this goes well , may live a fruitful life. Just like her parents wanted and if Aman is proposing herself that must mean that she likes his niece.

Heaving a breath in , the words "I'll have a talk with my family . Sure." flowed from his lips which made the taller woman smirk.

"I am looking forward to a cordial response." Usama very well knew that she definitely won't take anything other than a cordial answer anyways.

Little did Aman know that the girl she was probing after would change her life in ways she hadn't had the slightest inkling about.

Unveil part 2

[snufflepup]

I mean it's good, I could've sworn I sent it last night, but I was super tired so maybe not lol. I do wanna get them for completionist reasons, but its likely they wont come back cause theyre collabs with companies. They did a sonic collab before i started playing, and i wish i played sooner cause itd be funny to have sonic and tails and shit. It's really cool! There's these phenomena that just turn back time in isolated spots on earth in random times and kill everyone that gets caught up in them. The mc is the timekeeper, the only person that's able to survive in the storm on her own. She's forced to work for the st. Pavlov foundation to find a way to stop the storms. (Forced, because she started working as a kid, and her immunity to the storm was found out when she tried to escape the foundation with some of her friends and all her friends died because they didnt have her immunity. Its really sad how sheltered they are and how badly they want to actually see the world outside the foundation). There's also this other group called manus vindictae, they're trying to speed up the storms happening to eradicate the humans and leave behind just arcanists that. Humans were historically super shitty and racist to arcanists, so the translation of their name "hands of vengence" makes sense! They used to have the only immunity to the storm, but in the most recent chapter, the st Pavlov foundation managed to find one out too, but their immunity item can protect humans too! God I'm so excited about this game!! The most recent patch (2.0) takes place in 1990 in San Francisco and it's so cool so far! We got the first adult guy character in a bit and he's so so hot and cool! It's gonna be a struggle to save up for him over mercuria, the other 6 star that got released in this patch before him. Oh There's also like a good couple canonical gay married npcs too! I love how casually they mention it and how respectful they are with it. A lot of the characters are girls, which I don't really prefer, but their designs are so gorgeous that i found myself actually liking them a lot^^ my favorite character is an italian half-blood arcanist named pavia! Hes so cool, though hes just a 3 star :P. My favorite 6 stars would be isolde, lucy, spathodea, Joe, and jiu niangzi! A cool thing about arcanists too is that theres awakened arcanists, items born from concepts and arcane! Lucy actually is one. Her core is a cog, and she came into existance when the first steam engine made a sound! And shes immortal as long as the concept behind her creation is alive. her concept would be progression and advancement, and omg thats soo cool to me, especially with how her representation of that concept was the first steam engine!! I could go on forever, i love this game so much, ive played since launch and im so glad i did! Things have gotten better with her, but I still think she's trying to limit how much we talk, so I'm gonna try and talk to her about it in a bit. I went trick or treating yesterday, so I wasn't really able to reply sooner, sorry. Did you do anything for Halloween? I walked around so much it still hurts lol.

-ike<3

aaa maybe ? Tumblr can . be a bit odd sometimes and mess up !! I understand how you feel, theres some games and things I like that I want to have everything in as well ! Those sound really awesome ! I'm sorry you missed out (◞ ⸝⸝ ◟ ) That sounds really interesting ! oh my god that's so sad :(( The manus vindictae group sounds really really cool too, I can understand why they would . hate humans after all that ! The story sounds really really amazing, I'm glad you like it so much ! I think it's nice you are so passionate over it ^–^ He sounds . expensive . good luck getting him and saving for him !!! aaa yay ! That's good then, it's always good when there are canonically queer characters ! Lucy sounds SO cool omg omg ! It sounds like the game did things in a really awesome and interesting way !!! I see. . . It sounds like a really hard situation, but I think you're doubg the right thing by talking about it with her ! It's okay !! Did you have a good time ? What did you dress up as ? If you did !! I didn't really . do anything for halloween . I planned to watch scary stuff, but I never actually got aroubd to it . and by the time I knew it Halloween was over !

[greyauras]

Please read before following:

Introduction: (I'm bad at saying hello.)

I'm Noah. (just go with Grey, maybe.)

creatively, I lack. but I try.

Fuck all is used to mean 'nothing at all'. [very rude, emphasis]

⇓⇓ interests & works below drop ⇓⇓

+DNI'S

:Empty/gimmick blogs will be blocked:

sorry.

I'm fine with people age 15 and up.

I'm not really an explicit person.

No NSFW or anything weird (repulsed aceflux),

please do not the dove.

And obviously don't be a fuckin bigot.

~~~~~~~~~~

You could give less of a shit now that the important stuff is out of the way.

Main Interests: Not in order.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2022,

Detroit: Become Human,

Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi,

Venom 1, 2, & 3 (MCU),

Cameron's Avatar, Demons and Angels, Venom, Historical AUs, Hybrids-

Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright.

Others: Not in order.

Lord of the Rings, Deadpool/X-Men, Moon Knight, Daredevil, BEASTARS-

Arcane, The Witcher, Dungeons and Dragons, John Constantine/Hellblazer-

Splatoon 2&3, Death Note, Ace Attorney.

:Some facts and other shit:

Favourite characters: John "Soap" MacTavish-(CoD), Laios Touden-(DM), Gavin Reed/Kara/Connor/Hank Anderson-(D:BH),

Drawing/Writing, Music/Flowers, Mythology/Supernatural, Historical/Fantasy, Superpowers/Abilities,

(and mixing them all together.)

I'm gay. And trans. He/Him. And as I've said up there, aroaceflux but usually demisexual/demiromantic. All of this is unimportant besides relatability.

Not necessarily multifandom but my interests are all over the place.

I take that back, I like a bunch of stuff.

MBTI: ISTP Ennegram: 6w5, it seems to change every now and then, though, but I'd say this is what I am the majority of the time.

I'm a very slow writer and artist.

I'm socially inept and very stupid :D

I tag #shitpost or #shitposting when doing stupid jokes, memes, throwaways, or short personal stories to my own chagrin or about something I grew up with.

Sorry to anyone who's colorblind to red and/or green. It's just easy on my eyes personally, lmao.

My: AO3 | Spotify

Fics: Sunlight/1912 Selkie AU

CoD AUs: Will be Updated? I got ideas I could spill ig.

I'm a deeply uncomfortable person, nice to meet y'all.

[edwinspaynes]

can you tell me more about this magpie series?

lol okay so basically it's called a charm of magpies by kj charles. they are subjectively some of my all-time favourite literary works. they are also objectively among the worst books i have ever read. like, bottom of the barrel.

there's a main trilogy (the magpie lord, a case of possession, and flight of magpies). there also are two companion novels: jackdaw (my personal fave) and rag and bone.

they're short, independently published, and VERY poorly written. they are gay supernatural romances set in the 1800s. they're not the most historically accurate thing ever but in the funniest possible way.

disclaimer: do not read them if you are a minor.

the main trilogy follows a man named lucian vaudley. he's like 30 or so. he inherits an earldom after his dad and brother die horribly because some unknown witch killed them. he needs magical help to prevent it from happening to him.

so he calls in this magical practitioner, stephen day, to help him cope with new supernatural threats. i absolutely love stephen. he has massive beef with lucian's family, but they have to figure out who's trying to kill lucian in a supernaturally horrific way, and they have an enemies-to-lovers thing going on.

both of these characters are very interesting. they're cool people and have an unexpected amount of character complexity for the flimsy premise and genuinely awful writing style. they have a pretty healthy relationship. they make realistic mistakes and have satisfying arcs and growth. this is basically the only purely good thing about the books.

the main trilogy has giant supernatural rats. it has tattoos that move around stephen and lucian's bodies. they eventually learn that they activate magic when they have sex because it's a bodily fluid like blood magic. their cum is literally magical. stephen has arcane power and the cum magnifies it. it's nuts.

besides that, the magic system is really poorly defined. the gutters have huge rats in them that keep attacking. this student goes absolutely crazy at one point before becoming the main character of a spinoff novel. there are magical portraits of characters that will kill the characters if they get damaged. it's balls-to-the-wall insane in a 'you can't make that shit up' way.

the books also attempt to tackle serious social issues like period-typical homophobia, systemic racism, and sex positivity. it comes off as consistently well-intentioned but also really, really terrible. just awful.

it's fast-paced, full of plot holes, grammatically terrible, character-driven in the best possible way, filled with very unrealistic porn, and generally extremely engaging and unique.

0/10, best book, absolutely awful, would recommend

[kiyaar]

SO YOU WANT YOUR BLORBO'S NATAL CHART (WATSONIAN)

So you have a blorbo. You want to gain arcane knowledge of the blorbo's deepest motivations. You want to look at their natal chart. You know in your heart that your blorbo is an earth mars and a fire sun and needs a really traumatic moon placement. It is law. It must be. So where is the chart. How do you find something plausible and suitable for your blorbo? I am gonna show you how to generate a real (here meaning 'possible according to the laws of physics') chart for your blorbo. Natal charts follow rules: planets move at certain rates, certain planets will always be within a few signs of the sun, etc. Fortunately, all this has happened before, and all of it will (eventually) happen again, so we can page through our little planetary history and find what we need.

Here is the tool we'll be using. It's from astro-seek, and it's called the Ephemeris search engine. It's free. It will allow us to page back and forward through planetary time to see what planets were where, when. What you're gonna do first is. You're gonna put in a year range. This is a date range for your blorbo's year of birth. I'll put 1915-1920. My blorbo is old. Or a vampire. Or he fights vampires. Who knows.

You are then gonna put in the planetary placements you KNOW you want your blorbo to have. You know it's true in your heart; let's make it true. I would suggest picking one or two personal planets to be married to to start. Outer placements (neptune, uranus, pluto) are generational placements and move slower (years-deacades). Personal planets (moon, sun, mercury, venus, mars) move the quickest (moon changes sign every 3 days). Saturn and jupiter are 1-3 year transits.

It may not be possible to get every placement you want in one chart, because the planets move at different speeds. (If you are not bound by a date range, this gets easier.) If you want pluto in scorpio in 1918, for instance, you're shit out of luck. Pluto takes 12-30 years to move through a sign, and in 1918 it was in Gemini. My blorbo will win almost every time in a war fight, and he will nurse a grudge in a words fight until it literally destroys him. Let's give him a Libra moon and a Capricorn mars.

I've also asked the tool for a stellium, which just means I'm asking for a chart with 3 or more personal planets/luminaries (sun/moon) in one house. This indicates that my blorbo has an intensity and that the stellium theme will come up again and again in many areas of my blorbo's life. It's a little spice. I think they're fun. I have one in my own natal chart and it's miserable. I have also decided to be mean and ask Ephemeris for a uranus or pluto aspect to my blorbo's moon. I am explicitly asking for conditions of trauma. I'm not gonna specify the exact aspect, because I don't know where all the outer planets were in this date range. It could give me trines (generally nice), or conjunctions (always interesting), or squares (the goal, generally not very nice). If you're going for trauma you might also ask it for chiron or saturn aspects. But we're getting advanced. Back to the blorbo. Click ok.

So. It's telling me my options for this incredibly historical blorbo are all charts during Capricorn/Sag season. I think my blorbo is more of an earth sun than a fire sun, so I'm gonna get rid of the November charts, which leaves me with 3 January charts. From here it gives me three charts cast for noon of that day. Ephemeris also casts the charts for Null Island, where the prime meridian and the equator cross off the West Coast of Africa. For our purposes we can change the time, but not the location. That is Advanced and requires literal hand-drawn math. I'm gonna look at all three charts and I'm gonna pick the one with the most red lines, because those are crunchy squares and we're trying to put heartache, obstacles, and trauma into my blorbo. This one has a grand trine AND two squares so I'm gonna pick that one. Nice.

Next, we're gonna go to the bottom: extended settings. I'm going to change it to whole house, and I'm going to click 'show me the ASC & MC' - this will show you your blorbo's ascendant/descendant line and their midheaven (important for fictional characters because it connotes work of a life, purpose, etc).

Now, we fuss. You can adjust the time backwards and forwards in increments of 10 minutes. This will change your blorbo's ascendant. This might also make some placements crunchier/better/worse as planets move a few degrees. Ascendant changes every two hours. This is why you generally need your exact birth time to get a good reading, unless your reader is specifically doing a rectification for you.

My blorbo is now an Aries rising (ruled by mars), with chiron in the 12th house and an 11th house stellium in Aquarius. He also has his Sun and Mars in a loose conjunction in Capricorn in the 10th. Condolences, blorbo. We have also gained 3(!) squares, and a moon-ascendant opposition, which is going to be super fun for me, a writer, and super not fun for him, a man who is gonna spend his whole life managing some confusion about whether or not he IS his public persona. Smash hit. I don't really have to play with his ascendant, because this works for me - I can absolutely justify his Saturn in the 3rd house and Pluto in the 4th placements. Sad times for a sad, artistic man. I was hoping for an 8th house moon, but the 7th house moon makes more sense for his long term relationship with the US government anyway. All but one of my initial planetary placement wishlist items have been satisfied! My blorbo has a Libra Moon, a Capricorn Mars, and a moon aspected by Pluto and Saturn (though not the aspect I was envisioning, it's one that makes sense). And that's it! Now my blorbo has a chart that actually happened in the sky on a day in 1915. 1915 may not be his real birth date, but it's close enough to his canonical age and close enough that I can make a historiographical excuses for the incorrect data. It also, most importantly, contains placements that I know, deep in my bones, to be true. Voila. Cosmic blorbo.

[testudoaubrei-blog]

It’s pointed out sometimes here that AO3 and Tumblr and fan discords focused on shipping or what have you aren’t the only or even the main manifestation of fandom in culture. And this is true. There are FB groups full of middle aged people and instagram and YouTube reaction videos and a dozen different subtypes of fan subreddit, focusing on ‘lore’ (blech), speculation, and arcane theories, among other things.

But one thing that is interestingly universal is that a lot of really dumb shit across these spaces comes down to people treating fictional characters and stories as real, instead of the conscious invention of human beings. The Redditors will point out ‘plot holes’ - arbitrary points where they can point out that something wasn’t realistic. The ‘Lore’ nerds for fantasy and sci fi will point out contradictions with canon or fanon that doesn’t actually matter. The middle aged men who love some series of historical novels will harp on elements that are ‘unrealistic’. And of course people here will demand that fictional characters and their fictional actions be judged or analyzed like real people with real responsibilities or real psychologies. And these are all forms of treating fiction like reality. It’s always frustrating but it is interesting that a lot of people who engage with fiction in very different ways fall into this. I think it may point to some difficultly in fully engaging with fiction as fiction and stepping out of our visceral experience of it, or away from simple expectations that it simply paints a realistic picture, and think about deliberate narrative choices.

[brightgoat]

What's it like to make good stories? With fans enjoying it, watching it, examining it, etc.? What was it like to start out? Did you think you'd get this far? Do you even feel like this is far? Are you impressed? In awe of your creation? In awe of yourself, who brought meaning into the world? Breathed life into these figures on the screen and page. Do you feel pressure? Do you get the nagging fear that somehow you're not enough? Does that ever go away? Or are you plagued with new unknown fears?

That is a lot, hopefully what I write will answer most of it? Also thank you for asking, I might have stuff to get off my chest on the topic.

vvvvvvvv

On one hand, hell yeah. My narcissistic side is in awe of my own goddamn farts. I feel like a million dollars. Holy shit the sun shines for me and for me only.

Now on the other hand, on my SANE side; I don't feel like I am an accomplished or a complete creator. I post art and ideas online, but I've still a long way to go before I can feel satisfied with my creative outlet.

I have created premises for stories, or the beginnings of stories, plans, but I have never completed a single one. And most of these stories, I never posted online. I want to change that with my current project, The Unbound Prometheus.

I'm grateful for the interest people have in my premises and ideas, to be quite honest I am overwhelmed that people would get so invested in just small comics and doodles. I do feel accomplished in the sense that I've amassed a following, to which I am grateful for, this is gonna sound pathetic but my creative outlet online is like... the thing that gives MOST meaning to my life.

That said, the hype I've built up for my stuff, not only to my audience but to myself, does kind of put a lot of pressure on myself. I've had a large following since I was very young and it definitely built up a fragile ego within me, haha.

I'm thankful that you indirectly imply I've done all the things you listed, but it's also true that I have the nagging fear its not enough. It'll never be enough. Nothing I've created will truly ever be enough for me, it's built into my personality to think that way. I'm a rookie writer, a beginner, this is my first project that I genuinely want to make something special out of, and somehow I expect myself to be on the writing level of Arcane or FMA;B, which I'm not, and I will not be for a very long time. My expectations and rationality are at constant odds.

Writing is so difficult... to balance 'show don't tell', being able to communicate a message without it feeling like I'm hamfisting it down peoples' throats, to build a narrative that naturally flows, to know when and where to put certain events. And to be able to keep it within my natural limitations.

And good fucking lord, I've already quit trying to be ANYWHERE near historically accurate, haha.

And I also hope it wont take me too long that everyone moves on. But... seeing my progress so far.... oh lord......

I'm plagued by idealism, fantasies of being great, and I mean GREAT, TOO GREAT for it to be realistic.

I'm not sure if any of this answered any of what you said, but uhhh- it was good to let out.

[tortoisesshells]

For the ship meme - dealer's choice please, for whichever pairing's been on your mind lately, and I'm looking forward to reading and learning about them!:)

Thank you, kind friend, and many apologies for the delay! I’m currently mired in trying to get the actual plot moving in Customs and Duties, after an unstated number of chapters wherein the Main Idiot Duo has not achieved much beyond being Emotionally Shut Down and mired in their own problems and not thinking of each other romantically in the slightest, because James Norrington is too stuck on his past and trying not to let the rapidly deteriorating situation in Boston get out of hand & Nellie Treat is the furthest thing from over her late husband’s death and also trying to keep the good Commodore from finding out about her smuggling business. In the base continuity of the 1730s, some of these questions don't really apply, so I've tried to either answer for an analogous question, or drawn from my stable of AUs of the AU.

Who reaches out to new neighbors?

Nellie's generally a friendlier face, but more importantly, Nellie thinks about community and interdependence in a far more positive, concrete way than James, who, bless his heart, is far too used to bossing people around.

Who remembers to buy healthy food?

Nellie initially, since she's spent years being a Good Mom and after getting small children to eat their greens, how hard could it be to make sure another adult eats his peas? (actually, I have no solid idea what "good food" looks like to an early 18th century Anglo-American colonist. Does she even know what broccoli is? Certainly she doesn’t think of healthy food the same way I do.) Too, providing is her love language, but I'm pretty sure after spending more than a week with Jimothy, realized the man treats food as sort of an irritating necessity of life, probably starts in on spice cakes and drinking chocolate.

Actually, on rereading the last few chapters, every time Nellie has seen James she’s been thinking /someone/ has to give that man a cup of tea that’s more sugar and cream than tea and/or a slice of cake - and she’s still at a point in her relationship with him where she intermittently thinks her life would be much easier if she’d just let him drown several months before.

Who remembers to buy junk food?

Nellie, again.

Who fixes the oven when it breaks?

Neither of them. One of them arranges for someone else to fix something like a blown-in chimney or a damaged galley-stove. Even in the 20th or 21st c. continuities, I'm pretty sure one of them would call Sears or a handyman while the other read the manual and bemoaned that two otherwise capable and intelligent adults have no idea what's going wrong. They're deeply pragmatic people, but in this instance that means knowing that they've never had to learn this, and knowing when they're beat.

Who waters the plants and/or feed the pets?

If there's cat, I imagine Nellie is very much the hardass about not feeding them off the table - which means that James would just do it when she's not looking. 

In the modern AU, Nellie and her family do have a cat named Hotspurr, and I do imagine that Hotspurr very much becomes James’s responsibility. Pets just aren’t really Nellie’s cup of tea, in any continuity; James, on the other hand, I think appreciates the regimen and regularity of feeding animals or watering house plants. 

Who wakes up earlier?

Hard to say. Neither of them have good sleep schedules, and both tend not to sleep when under stress; when they’re not under pressure, I actually imagine Nellie tends to get up first - she’s had many years managing children and running a household, and lucky for James, being a commissioned officer who doesn’t have to stand watch means he gets to keep relatively normal hours.

Who makes the bed?

James. Nellie's just not that neat outside of public spaces in her home. If it can’t be seen, she can’t be judged for it; plus she’s just going to get into bed again eventually, and it’s going to get mussed again, so why bother? Pull the bed curtains if it’s going to be an irritant. James, on the other hand, like order and organization in all things - even and especially if no one else is going to see it.

Who makes the coffee?

Nellie, because even in the 18th century continuity she’s incredibly dependent on caffeine & it’s the luxury she lets herself indulge in consistently. It’s not that she doesn’t trust anyone else to make it to her liking ... but it is.

She may let James make the coffee, or talk her into letting someone else, like his steward, make it. After several years of close observation, and, possibly, locking her out of the kitchen.

Who burns breakfast?

I don't imagine Nellie in any era can do much more than very basic cookery, but what she can do, she does pretty well. I'm going to have to give this one to James, though I really can't imagine him cooking; I don’t think he’d be bad (though, if pressed, I assume James Norrington is a better baker than cook, if only because I associate baking with just following the damn recipe & cooking with arcane arts and hidden rituals  & just making shit up on the fly) so much as it’s not something he’d ever have had much reason to get good at in the main continuity, because yay gender roles (/s) and class expectations(/s).

How do they let each other know they're leaving the house?

This is Quite Difficult to answer in the base continuity without giving away parts of the ending that’s not  the obvious “the truth is revealed & some very Hard Talks happen before they get together” so, uh, have some Modern AU - They’re both practical to a fault, so they both tend to run down the phone-keys-wallet list and ask the other if they need anything while they’re out - Nellie’s job, however, is literally in the store-front downstairs, so she doesn’t tend to leave the house as much? (also, in every era, Nellie’s just ... kind of a homebody. She finds a home and sticks to it.)

How do they greet each other when one of them gets home?

 Announcing it to the house, kiss on the cheek, and probably immediately going into something that happened to them that reminded them of the other that day? Neither of them tends to say “I missed you” about day to day things, but being remembered because someone was talking about Samuel Eliot Morison in the shop or all that trivia about longitude finally came in handy at the law firm is the greatest kind of compliment?

Who brings home little gifts like flowers/chocolates more often?

Nellie - she’s very bad at saying “I love you” or even being openly affectionate, but she loves picking up books or shells or interesting curios as a means of saying “I was thinking about you” -

Who picks the movie for movie night?

No movies in the 18th century, alas - but as far as books or plays, neither of them is actually all that regularly educated, or even into their early 30s had enough free time to develop taste? Nellie went to a dame school for a few years, but irregularly; James got stuck at sea from the age of five and hard a largely practical education that didn’t include much other than seamanship & political maneuvering. Nellie’s the more openly curious of the two, so I suspect she’s the one picking up new books to read out loud. Maybe she’ll even get around to teaching herself (or hiring someone to teach her) the harpsichord one of these days?

Their favorite kind of movie to watch?

In modern continuities? I’m not wholly sure, but I feel strongly that James would have very strong feelings about Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. I think Nellie would like historical dramas, honestly?

Who first suggests a pillow fort?

Nellie, I think, as a coping thing? She tends to curl up or wedge herself into the corner of chairs when she’s exhausted or beyond upset; I think she’d like or benefit from small, enclosed spaces from time to time. Both of them like /doing/ things - certainly, sitting still is not something Nellie tends to do. Ever. Unless pretty much forced to do so.

Who builds the pillow fort?

It’s a group effort, but I suspect this is mostly James’s doing. Especially if the kids/ step-kids get involved.

Who tries to distract the other one during the movie?

Nellie, probably, because ruffling his feathers is just so easy, and of the two of them, Nellie is less likely to take anything not life-threatening seriously.

Who falls asleep first?

Nellie. When not stressed beyond her limits, she can and will fall asleep standing up.

Who is big spoon/little spoon?

Nellie’s little spoon, in part because she’s just shorter (though, not to keep bringing up her late husband - Nellie’s about a foot shorter than James, but she was over a foot and a half shorter than Samuel, so it’s not so dramatic as before) - and in part because she tends to sleep curled up on herself, which she can’t very well do as the big spoon.

[withteeths]

Maybe Steamrolling Games is Bad Actually

Videogames are unique in that they are inextricably tied to corporatism and have been since birth (this is an oversimplification but roll with it). This means that to an extent most companies even since the ’80s have never really cared about proper preservation or easy access to their titles. Nintendo carts were originally manufactured to have their battery die in 3 years so you would have to buy a new one (this failed, but it’s why you still see a lot of dead carts floating around). I think there's a nostalgia issue within the gaming fandom regarding "oh x was great back then" but a lot of the time, games manufacturers have been historically shitty and anti-consumer and it’s just that they now have the tools to execute it much more effectively. Regarding obtrusive DRM, that’s an issue PC games have had since their zenith, where if you lost your original copy of a manual or a small plastic key you could never play a game again because the codes were individualized for each copy and support would refuse to give you a new one. Even back in the arcades, there were particularly batshit examples like the CPS board, which I shit you not was built to explode a battery pack filled with corrosive acid if it detected you were attempting to repair or modify it. There’s a lot to say about the current state of games but what I would likely illustrate is that 2/3 major consoles are racing to decide who will be obsolete first. Games consoles are reaching a point where they are trying to emulate PCs with more restrictions and DRM. We're already seeing interest in steam spike again and it’s likely that eventually, we will see almost a crash for consoles where no one can justify the price for games they can play on a PC rig. The only solution I see there would be a merger between the two consoles which feels inevitable. 

That being said as interest in the PC space increases again so does attempts at entering the bubble. We have Epic, Origin, Microsoft, Indiegala, Itchio, and Steam all vying for attention, requiring accounts, and offering exclusives to justify the use of their storefront over others. Some people think this is a good thing because it's breaking up Steam's monopoly but it literally is not, if you ever really wanna hear me rant ask me about Leftist obsession with itch being some sort of ethical steam, which it is provably not. In the end, the real sort of saviour figures that work to preserve games are random ass people on the internet. I know people who automatically assume that at the end of the day, companies care about games preservation too, and they usually have a three-pronged argument that cites a) Steam’s ability to allow the redownloading of delisted games, b) retro companies periodically rereleasing titles for modern consoles in compilations, and c) companies doing limited reruns of a game that fans request. All three of these examples are basically an incredibly effective use of diversionary tactics, but most of the time when someone cites these I just assume it’s a misunderstanding and not outright malicious intent because a lot of the time companies will attempt to actively implant these ideas to build brand loyalty.

My main dissertation is usually that Steam is incredibly selective with what titles you can redownload, and most importantly, corporate benevolence is more-so a band-aid on a gaping wound! There’s no contingency for when Steam might migrate to a new service, go belly up, or become obsolete when a new OS is created. That means thousands, tens of thousands of dollars worth of games are just gone, permanently, along with fan mods, DLC, and content. It’s a terrifying thought that not many people bring up when discussing the problems with game storefronts that focus so much on providing a cloud and have DRM attached to every purchase. In a way, Steam preceded the trend of not allowing consumers to actually own the things they purchased, and they’ve avoided criticism by strategic use of silence and creating the illusion of a company being made by the consumers they’re attempting to serve. At the end of the day, Steam is a business, and if you ever lose access to your Steam account, or they decide to up and leave one day, you will not be able to play almost all of those games, even if you have them installed on a hard drive, because if you’re online, they connect with a server to ensure your steam account has the ability to play them. When it comes to other arguments like the limited rereleases or use of compilations to preserve arcade titles, I usually just beg people to look at community-driven options that have existed for years. The Scott Pilgrim game is a big source of contention, but I would point out that for years now, it was playable, for free, with all the DLC, on PCs. Preservationists didn’t wait for the gods of Universal and O’Malley to rerelease it for 30 bucks or save up to snatch the fucking ridiculous 200$ limited edition with shitty paper cut-outs, they straight up just did the work to make the game free and available. RCPS3 has (with a contemporary build) been able to run the game pretty flawlessly for years now, in fact, it was how I played through a majority of the game in high school on my shitty brick of a laptop. If you look further out than this one example then it gets even better, MAME and other emulation backends have been able to play obscure, unfinished, and homebrew titles with 100% accuracy, on almost any setup, for free, for decades! I found out about many of these options back in 2015 or so, certainly late to the curve, but I never really questioned as to why emulation, games preservation, and some key titles being available on PC remained some sort of arcane, unknown knowledge to most people interested in games. In the end, the answer was a highly effective propaganda campaign that combined with strategic use of DMCA takedowns has resulted in the concept of communal games-preservation and emulation becoming some sort of debate, where people will wholeheartedly side with corporations in some sort of quest for preserving things the “ethical and correct way,” which is code for preservation on the condition that it remains profitable for the IP owners.

 I think the best way to illustrate this would be with the community built around the preservation of an infamous PS4 title, PT. The story of its inevitable delisting from the storefront and the messy breakup between Kojima and Konami is well known, so I won’t regurgitate it, look it up at your own leisure. What is significant here is corporate reactions to attempts at preserving the game, which can basically be boiled down to Konami acting with borderline rabid fervour to prevent redownload, redistribution, or recreation of a seven-year-old demo, released for free download. Mentions of solutions to redownload the game have been taken down, fan-made recreations for PC, and archival servers that store a copy of the game for future preservation or emulation. Usually when this is brought up a debate occurs citing that technically speaking, Konami has a right to do this whenever they want, for whatever piece of media they believe infringes on their copyright. On one hand, yes this argument is factually correct considering the current state of copyright and ownership of media, but on the other hand, what compels someone to step into the ring for a multi-million dollar company with the primary argument being “well actually, people SHOULDN’T be able to play this specific video game until it benefits the shareholders”? In my opinion, it’s some sort of corporatized symbiosis where players believe that, if you cull the bad actors and play by the rules of the company, you may be able to eventually play the game a couple of years down the line. Sure, this has happened in the past with a few isolated cases, but it can’t be stressed enough that this is a genuinely dangerous and reductive position for people to take regarding games preservation.

 I have two colleagues, Mariken and Fotocopiadora, who released a short interactive title called Videopulp (playable here: https://fotocopiadora.itch.io/videopulp). It’s a dramatic reimagining of a real historical event, wherein a promotional event was held in 1994 at Lelystad to destroy bootleg carts by a figure in a Mario costume. This perhaps best encapsulates something I am pleading with younger generations to understand, as an archivist, art historian, and creator: corporations are not your friends, and they never will be. With the rise of online circles of leftism, this concept is starting to gain traction but is starting to be polluted with concepts of fandom and tribalism. This has lead to arguments that while *most* corporations are bad how could you say that about Nintendo? Or Valve? Mario is so innocent and characters like Wheatley are beloved by all! I feel some people don’t realize that they can enjoy a select title or character without enlisting in a corporate faction in the battle for “best company” or “best videogame”. It leads to a parasocial kinship with a nonexistent figure that was hand-crafted to ensure consumer loyalty to a certain brand. It’s depressing, terrifying, and should stand as a disquieting example of how the grip of capitalism on works of art has permanently distorted how we think and engage with media today. So, what’s the solution? As always I can never really provide something concrete that’ll act as a cure-all, only things that people in games need to work towards. Bring up conversations about games preservation, create archives for your own work, support archivists and boost their work whenever a new discovery is created, and try to promote optimism and solidarity in your hobbyist communities. I’ve noticed a lot of futility being intertwined with the future of AAA gaming, use of online storefronts, and the inability to own pieces of media anymore, and I feel this should be pushed back against, even in a minute way. Open-source programmes still exist that allow you to hold on to what you have purchased, offline and ad-free options exist for games launchers, e-readers, and media players. The future isn’t bright, but it is not a place without hope, and as long as people continue to enter communities with passion and ingenuity, I think we have a chance at stopping the events at Lelystad, 1994 from happening again. 

[blujaydoodles]

I would like to know about melliwyk 👀

Full Name: Melliwyk Truthseeker Pinsky Louise Arlinetta Darinia Berenokt Gender and Sexuality: female and... I can’t tell if she’s sex-positive asexual or pansexual but just super indifferent about dating lol, but either way it boils down to ‘it’s not that I’m opposed to relationships, I’m just busy right now’ but, you know, all the time Pronouns: she/her Ethnicity/Species: rock gnome Birthplace and Birthdate: her hometown is called Castafao; she was born in the warrens, which is essentially the gnomish equivalent of a chinatown. Her birthday is fantasy!May 29th Guilty Pleasures: her house has a reputation for being haunted, so local kids will sometimes dare each other to go touch the house or knock on the door or whatever, and usually she just lets em, but sometimes she’ll use magic to scare the bajeezus out of them (which, to be fair, rewards their efforts with a really exciting story!) Phobias: I don’t think she has any? She’s very afraid of her research being lost or destroyed, but it’s not A Phobia What They Would Be Famous For: Currently, being A Vale Walker, one of the first adventurers in our floating islands’ history to explore the lands below and return; ideally also for returning the lost knowledge of the process of item enchantment and/ or for functionally inventing the artificer class, or some other breakthrough in her research, IF we don’t all get murdered and our stories ruthlessly suppressed and rewritten by what turns out to have been an evil government the whole time :’D What They Would Get Arrested For: well, we’re currently wanted for kidnapping an archmage’s daughter and insurrection 😒 but in terms of things we’ve ACTUALLY done: breaking into a top secret high-security system of vaults in the palace and looting it (... uh... actually we’ve done this in two separate palaces now??), killing a (different) archmage and her bodyguard, and-- if we’re lucky! insurrection 😎 As for Mel personally, she hasn’t had an opportunity or need yet but she’s not opposed to shoplifting spellbook-inscribing supplies and spell components ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ OC You Ship Them With: none of my own OCs, although she’d get along pretty well with several of them I think OC Most Likely To Murder Them: idk dude none of my OCs are that inclined to murder lol Favorite Movie/Book Genre: True history, historical fiction, comedy Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Any arbitrary plot device, but especially ‘all of the problems come down to characters just not communicating for no real reason’-- unless it’s part of an intentional comedy of errors Talents and/or Powers: Aside from Being A Wizard, part of this adventure has involved finding out she has a divine heritage from Corellon, the patron of arcane magic and magic items; she can attune to magic items in one minute, and she has advantages when attempting to use or craft magic items. She’s also recently been studying the nature of The Weave itself and different ways of manipulating it, through which she’s [mechanics-wise] taken a feat that gives her metamagic and a level in artificing, the latter of which involves a spellcasting method she invented herself. On the more mundane side of things, she’s trained herself to be ambidextrous after an experiment backfired and burned the shit out of her dominant hand Why Someone Might Love Them: she’s enthusiastic; she’s in her line of work because it interests her, so her excitement over her research is rooted in real joy, and it shows. she’s generally very encouraging and supportive of other people’s pursuits and accomplishments, even if they’re outside her area of interest. mostly she’s quite friendly and good-natured. she’s not intentionally condescending about her high intelligence and arcane expertise, and is always very happy to explain things to people if they’re interested Why Someone Might Hate Them: she’s not averse to risk-taking, and she tries to confine those risks to only herself, but she’s also not as good at risk-assessment as she thinks she is, so she can be a danger to not only herself but also those around her. she’s genuinely very nice, but she’s also chaotic neutral and sort of a big picture person, so she’s made some Ethically Questionable choices in terms of things she’s willing to do or overlook or be complicit in. She can be really cold and biting when she’s angry and isn’t inclined to being tactful about her grudges (for example, in the way she talks about our fighter’s Really Horrible mother in front of the fighter, whose own feelings are naturally very complicated) How They Change: she’s a little more cautious now, and less impulsive. She’s certainly much more suspicious and jaded after finding evil conspiracies almost everywhere we go. It still frustrates her to sometimes Have to rely on anyone else, but she’s growing more and more sure of the value of teamwork and supporting one another. Something I’ve actually been thinking about a lot lately is her alignment; I think Nice, but Not Good is really interesting, but the circumstances of the campaign feel like they keep pressing towards, you know... Genuine Evil is afoot. Do you want to do something about that, or not? I feel like avoiding evil is one thing, but actively choosing to align yourself against it is another. I feel like she’s seen enough suffering firsthand that it’s not as easy for her anymore to say ‘well that’s pretty fucked up but it’s none of my business’, which she had done a few times early in the campaign. Unlike Elyss, who mostly just doesn’t care about people she doesn’t know and whose neutrality is a conscious life philosophy, Mel’s feels like it was more based in being out of touch, which is less and less a justifiable excuse for her. Character growth....? Why You Love Them: OH man well for one thing I love playing her because I in real life want to collect ALL THE LORE and ALL THE MYSTERIES and she’s the perfect avatar for that in a campaign full of lore and mysteries. She’s really excitable and good-humored, and she has sort of a wry sense of humor. There’s a lot about her both as a person and as a character that’s really funny to me? Also I can’t think of a way to describe this but she just has Appealing Vibes. Her vibes, I like them, I like her

Ask about an OC :3

[your-turn-to-role]

new opinions of the cerberus assembly (etgw spoilers!!)

somewhat inspired by the conversations the other day, bc it’s reminded me i have a lot to say about these motherfuckers

let’s start with the obvious:

Master Trent Ikithon, Archmage of Civil Influence (Chaotic Evil Human)

Book Text: [Trent is respected as the acclaimed Propagandist of the empire and the third oldest member of the assembly. Once an instructor at the Soltryce Academy, he only returns every few years to collect young students for his experiments in the mental conditioning that he calls “awakening.” Many of these students go mad and are locked away, but those who endure become zealots for the assembly and join the Volstrucker, an elite group of arcane thugs commonly known as Scourgers, who perform the assembly’s dirtiest work under Trent’s direction.]

Most of this we knew. I hate this guy. Though, as a point of interest - Caleb’s for sure not the first person this has happened to. They account for a certain number of aspiring Volstrucker never completing the program, Caleb was just another statistic. Which means somewhere in Vergessen is a lot of other people with the same backstory who never managed to escape. That’s, something worth looking into, maybe.

Martinet Ludinus Da’leth, Archmage of Domestic Protections (Lawful Evil Elf)

[Ludinus is the oldest and only original member of the assembly, as well as the master of warfare and conflict. Charged with overhauling the military structure of the Dwendalian Empire, Ludinus directed the construction of the garrisons on the Xhorhasian border and often oversees their maintenance. He was one of the mages who survived the destruction of Molaesmyr and fled to Bysaes Tyl, but he saw the opportunity to achieve greatness within the empire and left his culture behind to continue his arcane pursuits. Wise, if emotionless, he bears a deep hatred for the Kryn Dynasty and spares no effort gathering information on their weaknesses and secrets. Ludinus spends most of his time developing arcane weapons of war and shoring up the military might of the empire, while subtly challenging the leadership of Crown Marshal Damurag.]

This guy’s old. That's the scariest thing about him really. Like, this guy's been in the empire since it was half its current size. This guy saw the destruction of Molaesmyr, and knew many of its residents. But he also rejected that society, purely for his own ends. He's at least 400 years old, more likely at least 500, and for the past 3-4 centuries has been focusing entirely on magic and warfare. That's a long time to hone those skills. Ludinus may say it's hard to compare power in the Assembly, but if I had to pick one of them for an end game boss, it would be him, no question. Trent's more of a wild card, sure, but he's only like 60, 70 years old. He's a baby compared to Da'leth. Keep an eye on this dude, and under no circumstances trust him.

Lady Vess de Rogna, Archmage of Antiquity (Neutral Evil Half-Elf)

[A public recluse for most of her life, Vess is both a brilliant mage and dedicated historian. She assumed this post after replacing her criminal predecessor, Lady Delilah Briarwood. As an instructor at the Soltryce Academy for over two decades, Vess has studied and unraveled a number of historical mysteries and pre-Calamity riddles — and hoarded some of the spoils for herself. Always eager to pursue forgotten lore and artifacts of eons past, Vess has been known to quietly vanish to Xhorhas for weeks at a time, returning with fewer guards and more uncovered secrets.]

Canon confirmation that this is who took over from Delilah Briarwood, and from what we’ve seen, they’re rather similar people. They're both scientists and historians, ruthlessly efficient, far more concerned with what they can learn and what they can do than what's good or safe for those around them. Liable to be found breaking the law in the name of science and progress. At least Vess has lasted longer than her predecessor.

Headmaster Oremid Hass, Archmage of Cultivation (Lawful Neutral Earth Genasi)

[The current headmaster of the Hall of Erudition in Zadash, Oremid is tasked with watching and grooming the next generation of mages and arcane specialists outside Rexxentrum. While he himself is a gentle soul who adores animals, he puts on the façade of a strict man with no sense of humor, which is further enhanced by the elemental influence of his earth genasi blood. He teaches students that failure is not an option, and that emotion is a barrier to one’s true ability. Equally feared, respected, and privately loathed by the students (and some instructors), Oremid personally dismisses those who break under his school’s curriculum and heaps joyous praise on those who endure their training.]

So, I've had teachers like this. And they stick in your mind, because, even a decade later, I still have a hard time getting over their instilled fear of failure. I can believe that, in general terms, Oremid's not a terrible person. I think he looks the other way on a lot of things, which precludes him from ever qualifying as good in my books, but he hasn't committed any major acts of torture or murder himself. Still though. You don't teach like that if you view your students as people. You teach like that if you view your students as potential assets. So like.... not as bad as some of his colleagues. Potentially someone they could work with if they had to. But still probably someone to stay away from.

Headmaster Zivan Margolin, Archmage of Conscription (Lawful Neutral Human)

[Zivan Margolin inherited the position of headmaster from his father, the late Jorma Margolin. Zivan has been the headmaster of the Soltryce Academy in Rexxentrum for nearly twenty years. Calm, patient, and quietly imposing, Zivan walks the halls of the Academy with a keen eye for talent. He is in charge of the curriculum and also watches for any latent powers that may be worth grooming as future allies of the assembly, dangers to be monitored, or prospective minds for Ikithon to conscribe into the Volstrucker. Zivan has rarely had the opportunity to demonstrate his full power, for he is typically busied with keeping the peace between the feuding members of the assembly. Those who have witnessed his true might, however, now know that his words are backed by some of the most powerful magics within the Cerberus Assembly.]

I think @lostsometime said it best, having the archmage of conscription be in charge of your elite magic school really sums up everything wrong with the empire. Like, if that's out in the open, your problems are unfixable. Get a new government. Jeez.

Master Doolan Tversky, Archmage of Dysology (Chaotic Neutral Gnome)

[The second-oldest member of the assembly, Doolan is in charge of the study and understanding of abnormal creatures and deviants of arcane creation that might threaten the empire’s way of life. She is an absentminded yet brilliant gnome who is obsessed with all beasts, aberrations, and creatures of legend. Doolan imports creatures from around the world to study, disassemble, and use in her attempts to revolutionize magical practices. She resents the Library of the Cobalt Soul, as her reputation has caused them to bar her from their facilities. She wishes to catalog the unstudied horrors of Xhorhas and has covertly obtained the services of the Myriad to retrieve new specimens.]

Now, Doolan is fascinating to me, not because I think she's a good person, but because she's just so delightfully weird. She's probably done some evil as fuck shit but she's also a gremlin of a gnome who loves weird fucked up arcane experiments and magical meteors that created eldritch ducks and all sorts of bizarre things like that. I'd love to see more of her, because there's always room in fantasy stories for more weird morally ambiguous old ladies who are banned from libraries on the grounds of "is about as likely to eat the books as she is to read them" and "last time we let her in here she somehow combined five forbidden rituals and created a new species of demon that haunts the halls of the rexxentrum archive spreading toxic slime everywhere and we can't figure out what it wants or how to make it go away".

Lord Athesias Uludan, Archmage of Diplomatic Union (Neutral Good Human)

[Athesias’s charm and bombastic personality serve him well as a diplomat. His duty is to foster a positive relationship with people of power both within and beyond the borders of the empire. He was originally one of the most effective instructors at the Soltryce Academy, but his penchant for spectacle and his rampant narcissism made him a difficult ally to trust with state secrets. When the office of Diplomatic Union opened, he was quickly and quietly reassigned. Athesias finds great pleasure in ruining or usurping the plans of his counterpart in the Crown’s employ, Emissary Lord Zeddan Graf.]

We’ve talked a bit about Uludan already - the Gilderoy Lockhart of the group for sure. Though I’m sure he has layers to him, so I’d be interested to find out what exactly they are.

And, saving the most interesting for last,

Baroness Jenna Iresor, Archmage of Industry (True Neutral Doppelganger)

[One of the younger members of the assembly, Jenna is known for her business acumen and her extravagant lifestyle. By hiding her nature as a doppelganger and using memory-altering magics at a young age to fabricate a false past, Jenna constructed her human persona from the ground up, leveraging her powers of deception to essentially write herself into history as a Clovis Concord expatriate. She helps oversee central guild business in Rexxentrum under Guildmaster Kai Arness, and helps Exchequer Aethia Drooze organize the collection of tithes through starostas across the empire.]

I am, insanely curious about how a doppelganger ended up in the Cerberus Assembly. She’s definitely ambitious for sure, doppelgangers already have a fair bit of innate magic - they’re natural shapeshifters and have a fair amount of psychic powers (like reading minds of anyone who happens to be near them), but to get here she had to be extremely committed. Which means she probably has plans for this position, or had plans that she’s already put into motion. Very interested what those are, especially for the archmage of industry.

[kyilliki]

Just wanted to share my head canon: contrary to canon, Dr. Cullen is a 5/10 physician, historically. He diagnosed women with hysteria for wanting lots of sex, he bled people to death, he gave prescriptions for cocaine/laudanum, etc. He isn’t an innovator, he’s a big believer in whatever is trending in medicine. He probably also treated surgeons like shit for a lot of his career.

Honestly, I think this headcanon is a very plausible reading of Carlisle.

In my view, the Brilliant Vampire Physician character needs most of the following traits: 

a belief that humans can be dumb and wrong (so they trust themselves and their knowledge above established convention) 

Little interest in money and status (so they willingly operate at the margins of society, applying all that arcane medical knowledge) 

actual altruism (to explain their interest in working long, miserable hours and helping often-ungrateful people in dire situations) 

innovation/a streak of frenetic genius (as you say)

Carlisle is more or less the opposite of this description. He really likes human institutions, his whole cover-story rests on money and prestige, he’s not unusually committed to his patients, and he’s not that curious. These aren’t necessarily bad attributes, but they open him up to replicating the historical biases of the medical profession. 

[teratonomy]

How did you come up with all the binomial names?

By drawing a pentagram on my bedroom floor and sacrificing a goat to some eldritch monstrosity, in exchange for arcane knowledge.

Honestly, my approach to creating binomen varies from monster to monster. I always set out with the intention of keeping the names as grammatically correct as possible, in line with the declensions for Greek and Latin. I do my best to adhere to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, but at the end of the day, I’m just one nerd with no formal training. I’m very much an armchair linguist, and while there’s nothing wrong with being an autodidact, it does make me prone to second-guessing. Doesn’t really help that I don’t have a list of acquaintances to consult, who would actually be able to give me reliable feedback.

Sometimes, though, I think a little inexperience makes the naming process more authentic. Because scientists are people, and you can never underestimate the capacity of people to be Extra As Hell.

Let me give you a few examples:

In 2004, entomologists Kelly B. Miller and Quentin D. Wheeler reclassified a genus of leiodid fungus beetles as Gelae (/ˈdʒɛli/). Yes, it is pronounced exactly the way you think it is. The species in this newly-christened genus include G. baen (“jelly bean”), G. belae (“jelly belly”), G. donut (“jelly doughnut”), G. fish (“jelly fish”), and G. rol (“jelly roll”). The authors said that they were merely wordplays without any taxonomical jargon; a “whimsical arrangement of letters.”

And then there’s the lovely Heteropoda davidbowie, described by Peter Jäger. The name was selected for a few reasons: (1), the colors and patterns on the spider’s face resemble the painted face makeup David Bowie wore in his early career; (2), the name references the song “Glass Spider,” as well as his album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars; (3), the species has an estimated 500 individuals left, so Jäger hoped that giving it a catchy name would draw headlines and help with conservation efforts.

Allow me to introduce you to a trilobite described by Samuel Turvey in 2005. Its name? Han solo. Turvey called it that because a couple of his friends dared him to name a species after a Star Wars character. And while you might roll your eyes at that, the name is actually really clever. The generic name Han is a reference to the Han people, the largest ethnic group in China (where the trilobite was found); the specific epithet solo refers to the fact it’s the sole species belonging to that genus; and like many trilobites, the fossils tend to be extremely well-preserved, similar to how Harrison Ford was preserved in carbonite.

I could literally go on for days. There’s even a website dedicated to compiling all of the ridiculous names out there called Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature. The person who does the heavy-lifting is a bloke named Mark Isaak, and they deserve mad respect.

There’s a point I’m trying to make, I swear.

You see, if professional scientists with degrees can get away with making nerdy references and butchering the grammar of Latin and Greek, THEN SO CAN I.

Sometimes I’ll give monsters really cool or epic-sounding names that try to capture a quality about them, whether that’s their appearance, geographic range, behavior, or some historical fact pertaining to their discovery.

Some of my favorites include:

The verdant qurupeco, Cantio sirenius. Its name means “siren’s song” in Latin, a reference to the high fidelity of its vocal mimicry.

The dire miralis, Pyrothalassion basileus. Its name translates to “Greek fire emperor.” Its generic name comes from an incendiary weapon used by the Byzantine navy. Remember the wildfire from Game of Thrones? It’s basically that. The name felt pretty appropriate for a sea-dwelling dragon that breathes fire.

The black nargacuga, Xyrafiptera cervarius. Its name means “razor-winged deer-hunter” in Latin, a combination of physical descriptors and behavior. It also sounds rad as hell.

And then…we have those names.

The disufiroa, Apparentia absurda. You can take a wild guess what that translates to. I mean, just look at this thing. It’s got weird, inverted, spike-things on its chest. No idea what the fuck those are for.

The harudomerugu, Retentio incredulitatis. Its name is the closest I could get to “suspension of disbelief” in Latin. By now you might have noticed that scientific names are basically my way of bullying the Frontier monsters, because seriously, what the hell, Capcom?

The baruragaru, Stercusanctum currite. Okay, so this one isn’t me taking the piss out of the Frontier design team, because I actually like this monster. Its name is based on my reaction when I first saw the G3 trailer: Jesus Christ, what is that thing? The baruragaru was given the dubious honor of being named “holy shit, run,” because if I saw that thing in real life I’d be trying to put as many doors, walls, and preferably continents between it and myself as possible.

The great jaggi, Magnaraptor ebrius. Also known as the “drunken great thief.” Full disclosure: I’m a big fan of NCHProductions and wanted to sneak in a fun reference to their videos. Whenever they animate the great jaggi it’s always drunk, so I named it in honor of its alcoholism.

The pariapuria, Haustranguis amphibious. Its name means “amphibious bucket dragon” in Latin, and there’s a reason for that. You see, The Encyclopedia wasn’t just intended as a fun creative exercise, but as a learning tool for people interested in zoological classification. In taxonomy there’s this thing called a wastebasket taxon—when a species is incertae sedis, or of uncertain placement, it might get dumped into a poly- or paraphyletic taxon. Academically, this is what’s known as “this thing is weird and I don’t know where it goes, so for now I’m putting it in time out.” When I first tried to classify the pariapuria I couldn’t really figure out what it was related to: The tigrexes? The nargas? Neither? And then it hit me: I didn’t have to have an answer. Instead, I decided to put it in a wastebasket taxon. It’s meant to be a nod to the harrows of IRL taxonomy, and just how much of a clusterfuck it can be sometimes. As for why it’s called “bucket dragon,” and not “basket dragon,” well. I couldn’t exactly find a translation for “basket” in Latin, so I asked myself, “Okay, what’s the next best thing?” And thus we have bucket dragon.

Isn’t taxonomy fun?

[c-is-for-circinate]

It occurs to me that I promised y’all I’d tell you stories from the D&D campaign I’m running, and it’s now been a week since the first session, so I should definitely do some of that!  I can already tell it’s going to be a fun-as-shit campaign.  If nothing else, my party and I are collectively five variably-queer ladies who met at knitting group and range in age from “haven’t played D&D since 2e at GenCon in the 90′s” to “too young to remember fandom before AO3 existed”.  We’re real fucking cool.  I am going to have to explain, in detail, so many textiles and other interesting crafts.

I am a WORDY-ASS MOTHERFUCKER, so the whole tale will probably get pretty long in the telling, but: welcome to the continent of Nokomoris, on a world that probably has its own name but I haven’t decided on it yet because naming things is hard, dude.

[here’s where I will probably link game session posts in the future once they exist]

Hark, a backstory!  (And, our four players)

IF YOU RECOGNIZE THIS CAMPAIGN INFO BECAUSE YOU ARE PLAYING IT, CONSIDER YOURSELF UNDER DM ORDERS TO BACK OFF AND STOP READING.  I KNOW YOU FUCKERS ARE ON TUMBLR TOO, THERE IS A REASON I DIDN’T GIVE YOU MY HANDLE.  (I love you all very much and yes, there are spoilers in here.  Go away and text me now.)

Eastern Nokomoris, where our story takes place (or at least begins) is in a prosperous age of thriving city-states and collapsed kingdoms.  Most trade, culture, and even centralized government is based among the Nine Cities, massive metropolises located around the Attiks Sea and nearby lands.  Nearly a million people live in the nine cities, which are connected to each other via well-established sea and land trade routes, and also by what many are calling the most important technological/magical development of the modern age: a network of massive permanent teleportation circles, thirty feet in diameter.

The circle network is big enough to carry large trade wagons, livestock, huge parties of people, and even troops and war machines.  Sea and land trade has dropped by half between the Nine Cities in the past fifteen years, and continues to decline.  The cities themselves are thriving and prosperous, and it’s easier than ever to get beef and leather from Karna Vi, wool from Yefira, pottery from Celkan or metalwork from Tiers no matter where you live.

Outside of the cities, it’s another story.  Dozens of once-prosperous kingdoms, and even the whole of the Trava Empire, have fallen in the past seventy years: first during the Church Wars, and then in the yeas of chaos and rebuilding once the Wars were over.  Small towns everywhere that once paid taxes to a crown, and were protected in turn by royal troops and much-needed aid in times of hardship, have been left entirely to stand or fall on their own.  Some have thrived, becoming local centers of trade for whole coalitions of abandoned towns nearby.  Others have disappeared, died out, or simply faded into the wilderness, forgotten.  The great open plains of Highnorth where the Trava Empire once ruled, the endless golden sea of the Southgrass, the peaks and valleys of the Thavine Mountains, the deep many-colored forest of the Iris Peninsula--who knows what’s out there any more?

And in the Midlands, where the worst of the Church Wars took place...well, precious few towns even survived to rebuild in the first place.  Land that once held the most fertile farms in all Nokomoris is desolate now, scarred and cursed.  Most of the battlefield has been picked over by intrepid adventurers and out-of-work soldiers in the six decades since the Wars ended, already raided for magic and treasure.  The ruins remain, and the valleys where nothing will ever grow again, and the eternal shadow over the once-Holy City, and who knows what sorts of twisted things living in places people no longer go?

But it’s been sixty years since the Church Wars ended, and for most people, life is good.  Small-town farmers may no longer have the protection of any crown, but small technological advancements in plow design and crop rotation mean that they can produce more food than they need and sell the extra in the nearest city for coin.  More and more young people, freed from heavy labor on their parents’ farms, have learned reading, writing, history, and some amount of arcane talent.  The Grand Universities in the nine cities are thriving, full of scholars of all ages eager to learn and advance the course of knowledge everywhere.

Of course, there are ten times more scholars in the Grand Universities than there are professorships or other high-ranking positions to hire them to...and that is where our story begins.

.

Our intrepid party thus far includes:

Marion, a human paladin of indeterminate gender, whose human family stands among the nobles of the great city of Karna Vi, where our story begins.  Marion is an acolyte of the Church of Lost Things, which concerns itself with every god that does not easily fit within the purview of the other seven Churches, and also with every god that has been erased or forgotten by time (for all gods deserve worship, and all gods are capable of smiting those that neglect them, sooner or later).  They’re also a math major, largely because computer science hasn’t been invented yet.

Marion’s really hoping to be able to build and program a simple computing machine, a la Babbage’s Difference Engine (or Arthur C. Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God), to tabulate and generate all the possible names of every god ever to exist, which seems much more efficient than just combing piecemeal broken historical records trying to find them.  It has not been going well.  In a Church system where paladins are often more concerned with protecting people from the gods than for the gods, cracking this problem will let Marion figure out who the gods even are like nobody ever before.  But there are variables missing, and theomathematical constants they can’t even identify yet, let alone calculate--and they’re not going to find here.

Three interesting facts about Marion, as per their player: 

They once spent an entire week holed up in a lab over a holiday break and were declared missing-presumed-dead.  Police searches were involved.  It was a little bit of a scandal.

They are by far the most unremarkable and constantly forgotten member of their entire family.  (This perhaps says more about their family than about them.)

Everyone on campus is fairly sure they interfered with the campus clock tower specifically to give students more time on finals last semester.  This is false.  They were trying to run a different experiment entirely, messed with the clock tower by accident, and didn’t actually notice it was finals week even after it was over.

Kevin, an elf barbarian sportsball champion, hero of the university’s sportsball team for the past ten years straight.  Kevin is a foot and a half taller than any self-respecting elf ought to be, not to mention twice as broad.  He’s finally starting to acknowledge the fact that there is, in fact, no NFElf, and you can’t be a “professional sportsballer” within the Elven Ascendancy, and his bemused parents would really like him to do something with his life beyond playing those little games with the ball and all of those...non-elf people.

Kevin is also an art history student, mostly out of desire for an easy major that’ll make his parents happy while he happily spends most of his time out on the sportsball field.  He’s got high strength, basic middle intelligence, and negative wisdom.  He’s sat through more history classes than the entire rest of the party put together.  He understands approximately none of it.  Still--he can’t do sports forever, and art history makes his parents happy, and he might as well go on a quest to uncover lost art and artifacts and maybe prove he’s an actual adult sooner than later, right?

Three interesting facts about Kevin, as per his player:

Back in his home city playing little league sportsball, there were definite (and accurate) rumors about this wild elf that could and would straight-up squish opposing players.  That’s how the college recruiters found him in the first place.  It’s definitely why they wanted him.

He has so many groupies.  So many.  They come in so many different species and genders and Kevin is on board with every single one.  (On board?  On bed?  On convenient flat surface?  Does it particularly matter?  Not to Kevin!)

Kevin is covered in tattoos, and there are all sorts of rumors about what sort of eldritch magic they hold--like, that panther is probably a real panther bound by elven magic, right?  A pretty persistent rumor suggests that the tattoos all commemorate individual opposing team members he’s...either hospitalized or fucked, or both, literally nobody is sure.  (In point of fact, none of the above are true, and Kevin just has terrible taste in tattoos and a pretty stunning lack of both impulse control and supervision--but why quash the stories?)

Kou, a halfling bard whose girlfriend just left three weeks ago on a research expedition of her own, taking with her approximately 85% of Kou’s impulse control.  In theory, Kou is an alchemy major, studying science to make her scholar parents happy.  In practice, she probably spends more time sneaking into music seminars and/or busking on the street for spare change than actually doing alchemy, but her girlfriend was a Good Responsible Influence who made sure Kou didn’t get kicked out of the department, and to be fair, alchemy can blow things up sometimes so that’s always good.

Kou doesn’t so much have plans for the future as vague, contradictory aspirations, but that doesn’t mean she’s not smart.  She’s learned enough magic to use a set of recording stones to play, loop, and modulate beats or bits of music, thereby making her Nokomoris’s very first DJ, and she really wants to be a professional musician someday.  She just hasn’t figured out how to reconcile her dreams with her parents’ wishes, the lives they’ve worked so hard to create, or a halfling cultural legacy that has more to do with riding around snowfields covered in furs waving spears than it does with brightly-colored house parties.

Three interesting facts about Kou, as per her player:

Kou very definitely once spent a full day dressed up in halfling traditional garb, furs and all, including a very fuzzy fur hat.  It wasn’t until that evening that somebody saw the hat move and everyone realized she’d been wearing a curled-up live fox the whole time.

She once managed to create an incredibly destructive compound in alchemy lab out of ingredients that should not have actually been able to react that way.  She found out it was corrosive when she accidentally spilled it on six months’ worth of a different professor’s lab notes.  (She got an A anyway, because her lab professor hated the other guy, but that has more to do with Professors Ayanova and M’tiersi than Kou, really.)

She absolutely goes down to counter-protest every damn time those Family First assholes try to rally downtown in favor of child-producing (read: heterosexual, single-species) families.  Rumor says she once broke her guitar over a protester’s head, which horrifies her--Kou’s guitar is the most expensive thing she owns!  She used their own protest sign, like a sensible person.

Reigenleif, a mostly-female-probably gnome rogue known around campus as “Beer Run” for her skills at somehow always having access to better and cheaper beer than anyone else, and her general willingness to deliver to parties (for a small additional fee).  Reigenleif’s parents are small-time forgers who ended up mostly working for a local crime organization after a series of bad luck and political upheavals brought them to Karna Vi a few decades ago.  They really want their kids to go clean, avoid all the uncertainties and occasional jail sentences/executions that accompany a life of crime, and maybe make a little something of themselves.  Reigenleif, who has zero interest in staying on the right side of the law, mostly does odd jobs for a different, not-technically-rival criminal organization, and carefully does not tell her parents about it, ever.

Technically she’s an engineering major, and she’s more than got the brains for it, plus the accompanying curiosity about metallurgy and arcane artificing.  Still, she spends most of her time helpfully involving herself in other peoples’ projects rather than running her own.  (Her own projects have a lot more to do with figuring out new forging techniques and criminal tricks, and don’t look very good in the end-of-year department report.)  Enjoys causing trouble, not being in it.

Three interesting facts about Reigenleif, as per her player:

She absolutely owns a copy of the provost’s signet ring, which she can and has used to create documents allowing herself access to all sorts of University resources.  Like most things, she’ll share the use of it, quietly, for a price.  (She also owns a copy of Marion’s family signet ring, which is a much longer story that I as the DM do not know yet--can’t wait for that.)

Once captured and maneuvered a live swan into somebody’s office to cause as much chaos as possible so Reigenleif could get up to something somewhere else.  Is a little bit of a legend for it.

Aside from her not-actually-that-impressive family legacy of crime, Reigenleif’s spread a quiet rumor around school that she’s descended from the famous marauding pirate, Thrand Slender-Leg.  It’s possible that Thrand Slender-Leg never actually existed.  It’s possible that nobody had ever heard of him before Reigenleif made him up.  She’s certainly not telling.

[shadow-gear]

And with out further adieu, I present you the first chapter in whatever this is that I am writing

Chapter 1

They say the world would be better without magic, that magic is the root of all evil. The thing is, humans will always find something to latch onto, and blame, for their own selfish reasons. They can never look past their self indulgence and see that they are the cause, their rapid expansion of kingdoms and their endless wars always end up hurting the other races that have to live with this cancer, so thought, Detective Amzer Bright. His tall slender Tiefling form towered over the crime scene. The flashing lights from the police cars blocking the alley flashed across his wet blue skin. He looked up as the rain began to fall more, causing what remaining cigarette he had left to finally burn out. He sighed as he took the butt of his cigarette from his mouth and flicked it down the street.

“Do we know who this bloke was?” He asked his partner who arrived at the crime scene about an hour before him.

“We do sir, it appears he was the Mayor of Black Hallow. His name was…” She trailed off as she quickly stumbled through her notes. The rain continued to fall down as big drops hit her notepad making the pages stick together. Her long white hair drenched in water reflected the building lights. Adie was a good kid, Amzer had to give her that. He was reluctant at first to take on a partner so soon after his last one, but something about her changed his opinion. Those piercing glowing golden eyes seemed to reach into his soul. It could be because she was an Aasmir and he was a Tiefling. Historically speaking, they shouldn't be getting along. He remembers the first time Adie walked into his office foundly. Adie walked right in and sat at his old partners desk like it had always been hers. He let out a small smile, uncommon given his personality he lets show at work, as he heard her outburst of success finding the page she needed.

“Here it is, Leo Schifter. Human, male, age 31. According to the sheriff, he came into town about 2 months ago and declared himself Mayor with promise of bringing Black Hallow into a busy tourist town.”

“Well it looks like someone wasn't ready for spring break.”

Amzer kneeled down next to Leo and looked him over. Leo’s expression tells Amzer that he was attacked by surprise, he was frightened by whatever he saw. Leo’s cold blue eyes stared up into the sky as rain fell and rolled off them.The body has yet to smell, could be the rain keeping the smell down, either way this murder was recent. The multiple puncture wounds across his chest seemed to coincide with small weapons like a short sword or a dagger. No magic seemed to be involved, Amzer was relieved. He noticed Leos shoes seemed to be a bit muddy, odd, considering they are in a paved ally. He noted this detail for later review.  He waved his hands in a rhythmic fashion as arcane symbols flashed at the tips of his fingers. A translucent purple hand fades into view, he commands it to search the body. The purple hand thoroughly searches the body first, starting with his shoes, then the pockets, then all the way up to the mouth. As the fingers gingerly open Leo’s mouth, thats when Amzer notices something. A piece of paper seemed to be stuffed in his mouth. The translucent purple hand takes the paper out and floats to its caster. Amzer takes the folded wet paper from the hand and hands it to Adie by holding it with two fingures.

“Found something.”

Adie quickly takes the paper from Amzer “Was that magic, sir? I thought we needed authorization from….”

“I won't tell, if you won’t.” Amzer slyly says to Adie with a wink.

Adie unfolds the piece of paper, expecting to see some kind of note, but is greeted by a drawing of a flaming skull with a green snake crawling through the mouth and out the right eye socket. She shows it to Amzer waiting for his input. He returns with a shrug of his shoulders and turned back to look at the body. Adie folds the paper back up and sticks it into her notebook as she stands up.

“I suggest we talk to the sheriff and see if he knows anything. I met him earlier when I first arrived here. Something felt off about him, I had that feeling again like last time.”

“Do you want to take the lead on this then?” Amzer asks as he stands up while dispelling his magic. He could feel Adie’s golden eyes staring at him before he could confirm his suspicion. A smile appeared on her flawless olive skin face and he knew she was excited. This is what she was training for, to be a real detective and lead, not some lacky who follows. He believed she was ready, it has been a year since they became partners. He watched her walk back to the entrance to the ally and he soon followed shortly after. The police that guarded the ally moved aside to let the two detectives through then moved back as soon as they passed. The rain seemed to bounce off the pavement, it was really starting to come down hard. Amzer does a rhythmic motion with his hands, slightly different than before as arcane symbols seem to flicker at the tips of his fingers. The rain around the area of Adie seems to hit an invisible surface and fall around her keeping her body dry. She doesn’t seem to notice as she continues walking.

Black Hollow, a thieves town, some may call it. Most of the buildings have fallen apart and are only held together by driftwood found by the near by lake that are used for patch jobs at best. The buildings around Black Hollow are mostly log cabin type produced by the nearby lumber mill, due to the heavy taxations the residents can't afford repairs. There are some brick buildings in town but most of them have fallen into disrepair and the only one left standing is the tavern. One can tell that this town really has been let to rot but out of this carelessness a community has grown and made it its own.

Amzer noted the one tavern that serves as an inn. This tavern sits in the center of what the locals call the shopping district. The shops are not buildings but more tents lined along a long stretch of road lined with crumbling buildings. One of them that is still left standing is a three story building that is the tavern and across the street is a decaying temple that once served as a place of worship to one of the old Gods. Amzer wondered why they were called out here to investigate a dead mayor in a dying town. This was a bit of a stretch for the kingsguard, especially since Athewen doesn’t control this far out anymore. Its been 50 years since they had control over this town. Something smells of foul play, but he’ll play along for now and let Adie take the lead.

After what felt like hours of walking in the rain, Adie suddenly stops, motioning to Amzer to stop as well. She looks down the ally to the left of her and then takes off running. Amzer tries to stop her before that happened but he was getting slow in his age. No choice but to follow her, he makes his way down the damp dark alley.

“Why did you run off like that?” He asked while pulling out another cigarette. As he lights his cigarette with a match, the glow of the flame out lines four small silhouettes. Luckily, Amzer can see in the dark from his heritage. He never really liked to acknowledge his deadbeat infernal dad for all the shit he did to his mother. The one good thing he did get out of him was good eyesight. Those small silhouettes soon became clearer and he could see they were only children.

Dirty, wet, and scared children was not on the list of things to deal with today. The four children seem to be a mix of races, one was a half orc around the age of 12. Short and chubby boy with his skin a light shade of green. One of his tusks could be seen holding down their top lip. In front of him, shielding the small boy was a tall slender human girl. Short blonde hair with a scar over her left eye. She looked around the age of 15, the oldest it seemed. The other two in the back were twin gnomes. Short brown hair and purple eyes that have seen far more than they should have at their age. They also look around the age of 12 or 13 in human years. They appear to be less dirty than the other two, maybe a recent addition to the group. The half orc child inches closer to the human girl and looks up at her.

“Shroud, are they here to take us away?”

“I won't let that happen.” Shroud says staring at Amzer. “We wasn’t doing anything wrong, you hear. I won't let you take my family away from me, not again.”

“I saw them tagging the same picture that was on that note we found on the mayor on that wall behind them, sir.” Reported Adie, ignoring Shroud.

Amzer pushes pass the kids towards a brick wall. He held up the note that was stuffed the mayors mouth, it was indeed the same picture. What does it mean and why are these kids spray painting it on a back alley. He glances back at the kids who are now in a defensive stance.

“How do you know of this drawing…..Shroud, was it?”

“Yeah,” Shroud says trying to be tough, brushing her arm against her nose. “Why are you so interested in some native art?”

“Native art? Are you saying this death omen is a popular art piece around here?”

“N-No,” Shroud stuttered. She was clearly trying to backtrack. “It's my own personal design I use. You could say it is my call sign around here.”

Amzer wasn’t buying it, but that wouldn’t stop him from humering her. He turned around to face Shroud who was now standing in front of the half orc, protecting him. Amzer lifted the note with the same skull art in front of Shroud.

“So you are saying, you drew this. We found this at a murder scene, in the mayors mouth. If what you are saying is true…..”

“Sir.” Adie interjecting, with a stern look on her face. Amzer quickly glaces up to her and saw the look on her face. He did it now, brought out her bad side. He’s going to hear about this one later for sure, probably going to have buy her dinner for a week again. He quickly looked back to shroud, ignoring Adie golden eye stare.

“If, what you are saying is true, I can safely assume you killed the Mayor.”

Shroud glaces down to the ground, her face in rage with anger. She clenches her fist for a short while before relaxing it, the anger slowly fading away she finally quietly speaks.

“The drawings not mine. I found something similar at the old church ruin. It was partly faded and I thought it looked cool so I started tagging walls across town with it. Soon it became our family’s crest, and I marked it at places we hit. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? STUPID.”

Taken back by the sudden outburst from Shroud he couldn't help but smile. This little girl has some spunk in her for a street rat. He pulls out his wallet and takes out some money and gives it to Shroud.

“It's not safe here for you, or your family. Take this and get yourself to the capital. Find a man named Frank Heavens, he will be in North Viffin. Tell him Amzer sent you. He will get you a meal and a place to stay.”

“....You are pretty nice, for a tiefling I mean.”

“I get that a lot, now go.”

Shroud happily takes the money and gathers her family and the eventually leave the alley. Amzers looks at Adie who is still watching the kids leave, her long white hair soaking the heavy rainfall as his spell ends.

“She’s right. You’re a good man, Amzer. Even if you don't believe it yourself. Your past, or your heritage, that doesn’t define who you are. That's why you wanted to be a detective was it not? To help the victims that didn’t have a voice?”

“Maybe so. We should get going. The Sheriff is not that far.”

They walk out of the alley and head towards the sheriff's office. It doesn’t take them long to get there. As they walk closer to the building they hear two men shouting. It sounded like a heated argument that was coming to an end.

“I know it was you, where is my auditor?”

“For the last time, it wasn’t me. All you have is shotty evidence at best, and you are blinded by the fact that you never liked me when we first met.”

        “That may be the case but I have my reasons. I'm not leaving this town untill I find him, mark my words.”

Amzer and and Adie enter the building as soon as one of the shouting men were leaving. They awkwardly get out of the man's way to find that the station was empty besides the Sheriff who was just ready to sit back down in his chair.

“What was that about?” Amzer asks while holding up his badge. The Kingsgaurd badge was nothing special. Just a black leather wallet with a gold emblem of the kings crest. Which in its own right was the most detailed object on the badge; a winged Lamia with several silver daggers pointing down under each wing. The Lamia itself was heavily armored while crawling up a long silver sword.

“My boys told me you detectives would be coming about. Sorry about that mess, just a disgruntled local. I assume you have questions to ask about the Leo?” The Sheriff asks as he sits back down in his chair. The interior of the building was a lot smaller then Amzer thought when he saw it from the outside. There were no rooms either, it was an open floor plan with several desks about with the jail cells in the back of the building. The sheriff’s desk seemed to be in the front of the building overlooking the cells and other desks. It almost reminded him of a classroom the way things were laid out.

“Yes, uh, Sheriff Steelchaser was it?” Adie asks flipping through her notebook. Sheriff Steelchaser looked human but Amzer knows in this world, looks can be deceiving he thought, looking at Adie. Sheriff Steelchaser was around the age of 50 with a receding hairline. His brown short full face beard and hair had specks of gray, probably stress due to the job. Sitting down Sheriff Steelchaser was probably around five foot six.

“My father was a Dwarf, but I ended up inheriting a lot of my mothers traits, which is why I look mostly human and tall. Ended up taking on my fathers drinking habits though.”

“Haven't we all.” Amzer responded with a soft chuckle.

“Sheriff, I heard you were a recent resident here in the town of Black Hallow?” Adie questioned.

“Yes, the Mayor was a good friend of mine back in Furness. You see, I was part of the Queensglaive at the time. I wasn’t really doing much at the time other than a glorified seat warmer. Leo offered me a deal and I took it. I left the service of the Queen and made a life for myself here.”

“Did Leo have any enemies?”

“Yeah, the whole town hated him for the tax increase and the lies he used to justify it. Everyone knows he used the taxes to increase his salary. I mean have you seen town hall?”

“Mark the whole town as suspect.” Amzer jokingly told Adie.

“Do you know anything about this drawing?” Adie asks while showing the sheriff a sketch in her notebook. “It was found on the Leo’s body, it might have something to do his murder.”

“There was a gang, or cult, depending on the sources you talk to. It was mostly used to mark safe houses or meeting spots. A local group of kids have been going around using it lately.”

“We ran into those group of kids on the way in, is this a growing problem?”

“I’m a bit embarrassed to say this, but with the lack of support from the Empire I don't have the personal to cover all these missing person reports. Folk seem to keep disappearing around here and leave there children on the streets. In fact, I was even surprised you Empire folk are even down here.”

“Are you not the one who called us in?” Amzer asked in disbelief.

“No, I assumed the Empire didn’t take kindly to a murder close to their borders.”

“Thank you for your time Sheriff.” Amzer quickly respond while putting away his notepad

“Sir, we….” Adie looked at her partner with a confused look.

“We’re leaving Adie. Sheriff, we will be in touch as we continue our investigation.”

Amzer and Adie hastily make their way out of the Sheriff’s building. Outside they see the other man who they met coming in. A small man with an average build, around his late 40. He had black slicked back hair and a clean shaven face. Definitely human. He spotted them walking out and started to make a beeline toward them.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come out. You are Kingsgaurd are you not? My name is Gunner Anderson, I work for the King as well, in a way. You see, I am in charge of the division that handles everything relating to taxes or the lack thereof. I sent one of my best man out here because I suspected the Mayor of evading taxes. About a week before my mans report was to be sent, he disappeared. No one around town seems to remember him even being here, and I know that Sheriff had something to do with it. My auditor had a suspicion and now he's gone.”

Amzer sighs heavily. “We really don…...wait why are you looking into tax evasion? Black Hollow is not part of the Empire.”

“This town may not be part of the Empire now, but it once was and still is being taxed by them.”

“Very well, we will look into this matter as well. What was your auditors name?”

“His name is Dorhik Bilner. He's a Gnome, quite friendly, can't miss him.”

“You head back to the capital and give your report to the King. Adie, it seems our stay may be longer than planned.”

Adie nods in agreement “Where are we heading now sir?”

“I’m curious about that old church. It could be promising. I’ll go check it out. Why don't you go check the the Mayor's house and see if there are any clues there.”

“Yes, sir.”