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thechekhov · 2 years ago

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Dungeon Meshi - Quick Reacts (CHAPTER 14: Kelpie)

You know, I understand why people are annoyed by her attitude towards Senshi’s food and Laios’ tastes, but you gotta admit she’s trying her best.

this is another one of these things that don’t really come up in games but... thank fuck they have flowing water. That would be a real deal breaker if you want to survive. And they can shave and brush their teeth? It’s a miracle.

To be fair, I think Senshi’s beard is probably its own ecosystem by now. He probably uses it as a scrub brush.

At least if she does that, you’ll be picking way less dwarf hair out of your food. Come on guys, we know that stuff gets in there when he cooks.

someone get this woman to design a whole ass game.

Water walk! Good wizard.

is Senshi afraid of water?! Dwarves I swear.....

Aww, their first party fight! I’m shocked at how coordinated Laios and Chilchuck are.

HE’S STILL SINKING, JUST SLOWLY.

HIS BEARD? It repels magic... 😂

Laios, you don’t look as sure as you sound.

Oh. OH yEAH. There will be NO repercussions for THAT.

Marcille’s little “Anne.” isn’t even a question. She’s just disappointed.

Meanwhile, that Kelpie straight up wants the blood and guts soaked into his beard.

Didn’t that thing... walk.... out from UNDER the water though?

That seems extreme as well, but I’m on this hill with Laios and his distrust of horses.

I see someone speaks from experience.

Yeah, I could have maybe seen that coming.

Though I AM legitimately disappointed by this turn of events.

Horses are horrifying when they’re given dog mouths - confirmed.

...actually hold on

Horses are horrifying when they’re given dog mouths - confirmed.

Marcille’s been on the protein I see.

Laios, you are right but also your little pet monster will eat you one day. For no though, the fact that you almost drowned it is adorable.

Don’t you though? I imagine if anyone understands how monsters think, it would be you, Laios.

It’s true that he loved her. It’s also true that letting her rot without using her would be a waste. In a way, she will carry them further this way.

oooh, is she making soap?

There’s something about the idea of using things you have at your disposal that makes this really cool. The fact that everything they’re making, aside from very special ingredients like olive oil, are all scavenged and created with their own hand is... I don’t know... heartwarming?

THEY’RE!!!! BONDING!!!!

Weirdly heartwarming.

Maybe just let it air dry--

whEEZE---- I CAN’T--

There he goes............the magnificent beast............

GROUP HUG! aww

.......................... coding, man. No matter what century, that one typo will get ya.

The real BBEG was the lack of unions all along...............

YOU ASKED FIRST, YOU DINGUS. 😂

All that said, Laios doesn’t strike me as someone interested in romance.

this is just a magical hermit crab.

NOOO HE JUST WANTED TO VIBE

You guys could probably make a fortune as dungeon delvers if you weren’t after Falin.

Who knows if souls exist? Haven’t you all died multiple times?

............Well, they do have skin and a squishy inside, and they grow..... checks out.

........you know what? I’ll take it. Wine? Necromancy. Cheese? Necromancy. Natto? DEFINITELY necromancy.

Marcille doesn’t drink?

...........is this doodle-bob all over again?

Senshi, who nearby died by Kelpie: WHY DON’T THEY WANT MY LIVER? IT’S GOOD FOR THEM!

.....................like respects like. These two are on the same frequency.

If we’re being nitpicky about it, Anne never actually bit Senshi. She went after the Mimic. Maybe she just got tired because he was fucking heavy........

Horses, man.

#dungeon meshi #delicious dungeon #chekhov reads dungeon meshi

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beelsbignaturals · 2 years ago

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Dead is the New Alive

CW: Blood, general vampirism, injury mentions, Canon typical violence. My attempt at fluff. It's a pretty tame addition this time around.

While my health was initially improving, soon it takes a turn for the worse. If I move too suddenly the injuries I sustained open up again. I'm tired of the worried looks exchanged daily between the brothers. As an apology for snapping at everyone, I try to leave my room more often. I join them for movie nights and dinners but that's about it. Afterwards I go back into hiding, exhausted. It seems no one has a damn clue what they are doing since, late at night, while I'm staring at the walls as always, a green haired vampire I haven't seen since that day in the dungeons is knocking on my door.

I knew beforehand that whoever was walking towards me wasn't someone I knew well, the way they walk isn't familiar in the least. Regardless, I drag myself off the floor and let him in. Ignoring the way my joints scream in protest. I make an attempt at an apology, despite the fact I had no knowledge of his imprisonment. Otis brushes it off.

"You can make it up to me by sitting down and letting me work."

He wastes no time, asking me a million questions about what exactly seems to be bothering me. It is eerily similar to childhood trips to the Doctor's office. But this time I won't receive that sweet, sweet banana flavored medicine.

Turns out the fang problem had something to do with me not actually using my new teeth. The solution? Freeze blood in an ice cube tray to chew on. Good to know I can still eat Popsicles post-mortem.

"You know, I'm glad your boyfriend came to me when he did. This is a nasty infection you got." I take it back. This is more like being at the dentist, Otis making small talk while wrist deep in my face hole.

"What boyfriend?" It sounds more like wah oyfen. I'm surprised he can understand what I'm saying. Maybe he went to dental school? I'm sure being older than sliced bread gives plenty of opportunities to further your education.

"More than one? Don't worry I'm not judging. Most immortals give up on that monogamy business by the end of their first century. It was the redheaded one."

"Beel's not my boyfriend."

"Hmm. You should tell him that. Now normally I'd say gargle saltwater. Still do that. But don't swallow any, trust me. Your body is going to be adjusting to your new diet and the first year is rough. It will reject any regular sustenance. Not fun. I know."

Tell who what? Sure, the guy who's avoiding me like the plague is my significant other. That makes perfect sense.

Anyways, thinking back on the last time I tried eating real food…. Yeah I'm not risking it. It felt a bit like my entire digestive system wanted to make sure I die and stay dead.

"Bite things. Liquid diet. Cool. What about coffins?" I'm half joking.

"No. Trade secret but, coffins aren't all that comfortable." Said with all the confidence of a man who has actually slept in a coffin. Noted.

Otis comes by the house biweekly to check on my progress and deliver more blood. Where he gets it all I'll never know… as far as my uneducated palate can tell it's all the same person, unless all blood tastes the same. Must be someone who's into that freaky shit.

In the meantime, I'm integrating back into the House of Lamentation ecosystem.

Satan lent me some books on vampirism. I spend alot of my alone time reading up on vampire biology. Someone has scribbled notes throughout the books, crossing out lines and replacing them with contradictory information.

Apparently the first year or so is a shit show. Young vampires are called fledglings. Although young is a relative term here considering they list young as anyone under 100. I'll be in a stage of immortal adolescence for a while. Technically I am capable of dying again but it would take an incredibly talented magician or a higher being, making the Devildom less dangerous than it was for human-me, but still a risk. I make a note to ask Otis if I still have a soul.

Speaking of, Otis starts to visit more frequently and for longer periods of time. He gives me pointers on the vampiric lifestyle and we chat about our lives.

All my questions are met with cryptic answers. "How old are you?" "Very." "Where do you get the blood?" "A creature with a pulse." "Is there a cure?" He changes the subject quick when I ask that. Still, despite his exterior, Otis seems genuinely interested in my well being and life. The taking is unsettling but it's nice to have someone to talk to who knows what I'm dealing with.

I'm crunching on frozen blood while recounting my very first day in the Devildom. I had spent the night in my room, reading the full list of school rules . So I knew exactly how far I could push them. By morning I had spikes along the collar of my uniform, I painted the buttons and shoes, plus some stress induced embroidery here and there. Eventually I added several other modifications.

"You should've seen Lucifer's face when I recited the entire dress code! I swear he almost popped a blood vessel."

Otis nearly chokes on the blood he is sipping. I still haven't gotten a straight answer on where he gets it all.

According to the books, fresh blood is ideal for proper nutrition but I don't want to worry about that yet. I'll take good enough if it means I don't need to think about possibly killing someone. At least with the donated stuff, I can have some hope the person is still alive.

The brother's still have classes to attend, so during the day I hole up in my room. After school there's always someone fighting for my attention.

Monday nights are spent in Asmo's spa sized bathroom. A ritual that's been in place ever since we got back from the…. Eventful sleepover at the castle. Getting chased by a giant snake is bad for the skin. It's all fluffy robes and slippers and lavender scented steam. He keeps me up to date on the latest gossip while we smear clay on our faces.

"This should help minimize the scarring," He explains, applying some strange cream to the scar tissue his brother left behind.

"Thanks." I'm not feeling all that talkative but I know I can rely on Asmo to fill the silence.

"Y'know, I'm glad the no reflection thing is a myth. Not that I wouldn't love doing your makeup everyday but not being able to see your cute self? I couldn't stand for it," He runs around grabbing various products to show me. A strong perfume to hide the fact I apparently smell less human than before. A concealer that manages to be lightweight but still full coverage enough to hide pactmarks, so it should have no issues hiding the scars.

I thank him again, feeling awkward with all the attention after weeks of avoiding everything with a pulse.

"Of course, Laurlaur!" I roll my eyes at the nickname. Once Mammon tried to call me that. I kicked him in the shin. Though that was nothing compared to Asmo's anger. Apparently, it's his nickname and no one else's. Despite the fact I find it annoying at the best of times, I know it comes from a place of genuine care. So I suffer through it. Don't tell Asmo it's grown on me, it'll go to his head.

"Oh and you better be all healed up by Devildom fashion week. You promised to be my plus one! Don't think you can worm your way out of that!" I'd forgotten the agreement I made, back when I first came to hell. Asmo was excited to have someone else with an interest in fashion to rate red carpet gowns with. When he learned I've never been to a fashion show he immediately decided I needed to start with the best of the best.

" Wouldn't dream of it." A small smile causes the mask carefully applied to my face to crack, sending small flakes of clay scattered about.

"There's that smile I missed so much! The vibes have been so melancholy lately and I for one am over it. Come on let's wash this off, I have a new serum I think you'll love." Does this man ever take a breath? Still, I allow myself to get dragged along.

All it takes is a month or two of Otis playing Dr. Dracula and I'm somewhat functional. At the very least, I have two fangs, and my injuries have actually healed. I still can't stand lights, and everything is so damn loud, but I've been told I will adjust with time.

Slowly but surely I learn to exist with minimal pain. Small adjustments are made around the house, when I leave my room the lights are dimmed, curtains are always closed lest the strange day-cycle of the Devildom fries me to a crisp. According to Otis, he hasn't been in Hell long enough to know how "daylight" affects vampires. So for now it's better safe than sorry. The idea of never feeling the warmth of the sun again is depressing, so naturally, I put that in a little box to deal with later. Right beside my garlic bread related woes.

Sadly for me, the demons don't have a mute button so I just deal with the constant screeching. Could be worse.

Since I can't leave the house, Diavolo and Lucifer work on a cover story. My absence has started major rumors. My favorite is that Mammon traded my soul for a pair of Gucci slides. Alas, instead of letting everyone think I ceased to exist it's instead announced that I "fell ill and needed to go to a human world physician". I guess the exchange program is being extended due to the fragility of human lives. Once I'm given the all clear I'll be expected to go back to school. Yay.

The more pressing issue is the fact no one can figure out how some vampire managed to sneak in, get that close to the House of Lamentation without anyone noticing, bite me, and run away leaving no trace whatsoever. So before I head back to class, it's decided Barbatos will use his powers to send all of us back into the past to get a good look at the sneaky bastard. How hard can it be?

#om! shall we date #batlaura #alaura #obey me mc #obey me fanfic #obey me x oc #mine #obey me #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me oc #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #shrimp writes

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leam1983 · 3 years ago

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Placing D&D's Failures In-Context

TL;DR: it isn't because Tolkien and Lewis followed in the footsteps of Chaucer and Snorri Sturlesson that you also need to play out stories involving clean-cut Good and Evil forces.

Y'ain't writing a Narnia redux, so go nuts and do workshop that trusting, gentlemanly and wise Beholder with a wee little top hat. It's your game, and yours alone.

I might be a Marketing-related writer by trade, I still primarily identify as a world-builder. As such, I have to credit Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and other similar roleplaying avenues for helping me come up with my interest in specificity.

I've noticed a few people making note of the inconstant delivery of lore in D&D as of the 5th Edition, and especially of certain bad stereotypes that are being bandied about. I'm not looking to excuse them, so much as to make sure any other theory or lore-crafters understand why some concepts are so deliberately slapdash or offensive.

As with a lot of other things, it all goes back to Tolkien and Lewis, and to the myths and legends they themselves drew from.

You have to remember that The Lord of the Rings and Narnia are both serving as in-fiction national epics of a sort, the storied tale of the Good Guys thwarting the Bad Guys in your usual bout of identity-forging on a national level. You're effectively looking at Middle-Earth justifying its own existence, and at Narnia effectively setting up its main antagonist as someone who's not so much as deserving of nuance.

Nuance isn't foundational, after all. It isn't Biblical. It doesn't inform an etiological project for a greater Society. For the same reason, reading old Natural Science encyclopedias dating back to the late seventeen-hundreds would show us an outdated view of what constitutes an optimal ecosystem. Poke around for old news briefs dating back to the werewolf panic in France (yes, this is a thing) and you'll find no mention whatsoever of what primarily caused said panic, which was a combination of superstition, ergotism and excessive hunting of the local deer population. Wolves won't naturally attack humans, but a starving wolf who's had nothing to eat for days on end might be desperate enough to think otherwise.

Once Gygax realized there'd be more potential in his pen-and-paper jousting model if he freed it from the constraints of History, he felt the need to evoke that specific feel of classic Fantasy. The need to classify distaff character classes as protagonists likely initially edged them towards the Good side of the prototypical Alignment system, while fishing for antagonists obviously called for the opposite approach.

The rest sort of followed. If you're going after a Tolkien-esque propagandistic take on heroic deeds, then you don't need to give much nuance to orc, gnolls, trolls, goblins or what have you; you're entirely free to go as cartoonishly evil as you want. The apex of that approach was probably reached once the concept for Mind Flayers was pitched in 1977: when you're walking in H.P. Lovecraft's footsteps - as the man made it easy to misconstrue unknowable as being a synonym for evil - it's not exactly hard to start pitching the concept that some races are always Evil-aligned, no holds barred. That sort of talk unsurprisingly gives rise to purists.

Enter our contemporary era, wherein what isn't dissected or cancelled is revised for the good of Progressive gamers everywhere. You're a DM, you know the later editions pack resources for players wanting to play monsters, but D&D is so rigid in its presentation it might seem difficult to reason out of certain established canons.

What I do for my own campaigns is as follows.

I start by acting as if the Alignment system didn't exist. Githzerai, Aboleth, Bugbear, Illithid, whatever it is you're looking to play, it's just a stat block and a pretty picture. Then, I revisit the background info for your selected species and voluntarily ignore everything that involves agency-stripping "evil forces" shaping your character's native culture. Instead, you're born of a culture that is, as any decent Sociology teacher would tell you, the product of its environment.

Let's pick the Illithids. Canon-wise, they're extra-planar invaders long-since established in your setting of choice, to the point of usually forming a good chunk of your Underdark-esque setting's sociopolitical tensions. Having supposedly escaped annihilation, they're looking to rebuild at any cost and see all outsiders as tools to be put to use. This utilitarian concept goes so far as to inform how they reproduce, and also exposes a society where terminal sociopathy is the norm.

Okay. Let's break that down and keep only what I need to build upon or what I find interesting:

Extra-planar invaders? That's on-the-nose to the point of parody. Seeing as there's an element of survival involved, extra-planar refugees seems like a more cogent starting point. That angle gives me interesting societal hooks to play with, starting with various forms of PTSD, trauma, survivor's guilt, isolationism - or even more positive aspects, like the survivors seeing themselves as messengers warning the natives of a greater incoming threat, and deciding to arm both themselves and their new neighbours - at any cost. That gives the culture a large enough moral range to allow for both Good and Evil-aligned characters.

It doesn't make sense for shell-shocked survivors to effectively take over their new home. You're not looking at a civilization's worth of warriors, especially not with the Illithid - they're effectively betentacled bookworms that might be lucky if they had a few hardened soldiers left. Considering, they could either survive by ingratiating themselves with the local Drow or Dark Dwarf populations - as advisors, strategists, court scientists or sponsored researchers. Warriors in their ranks could make for an interesting spin on the concept of the wandering mercenary...

Ceremorphosis as a concept inspires no possibility for mutual exchange. Purists could argue that Flayers don't need to exchange what they can assimilate, but we're trying to avoid pejorative notions, here. Let's imagine, instead, that ceremorphosis is something they reserve for mutants derived out of the animal kingdom as a point of absolute bare necessity, and that they generally copulate in ways that are either closer to an actual cephalopod's or that follow the usual bipedal body plan. That implies some degree of sexual dimorphism that might go against the visual canons for Flayers, but the Internet's more than amply proved how much the community doesn't really mind that concept. If ceremorphosis has to be used, an easy workaround is to accept that the victim's original consciousness remains, but finds itself altered at the identitarian level. You'd die Bert the Barbarian and wake up still as Bert the Barbarian, except you'd feel a sense of distance from your former comrades and countrymen and would find it difficult not to imprint with your new "parents" or keepers.

Eating brains is an obvious issue. Let's stick with the Mother Nature-approved status of opportunistic carnivores, and leave the usefulness of learning through osmosis as a concept to the DM. If you really need to play up their intellectual capabilities, you can infer that Flayers have species-based total recall, which should make them fearsome or versatile enough in any context.

The end-result is a basic framework that's compatible with the notion of a "good" Illithid, without the need for some hackneyed messianic framework like the Adversary being involved - and that allows the idea of Mind Flayers being individuals in their own right to take shape. If the Elder Brain matters that much, you can retool it to be less a gestalt than a pool of shared knowledge, accessible depending on the subject's proximity to it - sort of like your Illithid colony's own flesh-based Intranet.

Remember that D&D is only a massive collection of suggestions. You're the creator of your own stories, so if you're looking to follow the trials and tribulations of a Gnoll Bard from a setting where the hyenafolk coexist with your distaff Rangers across forests and fields, go for it!

More importantly, if purists tell you the Monster Manual says X or that Mordenkainen's says Y, tell them you're running your own campaign.

It's all that matters.

#d&d #revising monster classes #a playable bestiary #inspired by other posts

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mugasofer · 3 years ago

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It seems like many, perhaps most, people historically believed in some immanent apocalypse.

Many philosophies claim that the world is passing into a degenerate age of chaos (Ages of Man, Kali Yuga, life-cycle of civilisation), or divine conflict will shortly spill over & destroy the Earth (Ragnorok, Revelations, Zoroastrian Frashokereti), or that the natural forces sustaining us must be transient.

Yet few panic or do anything. What anyone does "do about it" is often symbolic & self-admittedly unlikely to do much.

Maybe humans evolved not to care, to avoid being manipulated?

Many cults make similar claims, and do uproot their lives around them. Even very rarely committing mass suicide or terror attacks etc on occasion. But cults exist that don't make such claims, so it may not be the mechanism they use to control, or at most a minor one. "This is about the fate of the whole world, nothing can be more important than that, so shut up" may work as as a thought terminating cliche, but it doesn't seem to work that strongly, and there are many at least equally effective ones.

Some large scale orgs do exist that seem to take their eschatology "seriously". The Aztecs committed atrocities trying to hold off apocalypse, ISIS trying to cause it. Arguably some Communist or even fascist groups count, depending on your definition of apocalypse.

But even then, one can argue their actions are not radically different from non-apocalypse-motivated ones - e.g. the Aztecs mass-executed less per capita than the UK did at times & some historians view them as more about displaying authority.

I'm thinking about this because of two secular eschatologies - climate apocalypse and the Singularity.

My view on climate change, which as far as I can tell is the scientific consensus, is that it is real and bad but by no means apocalyptic. We're talking incremental increases in storms, droughts, floods etc, all of which are terrible, but none of which remotely threaten human civilisation. E.g. according to the first Google result, the sea is set to rise by 1 decimeter by 2100 in a "high emissions scenario", not to rise by tens or hundreds of meters and consume all coastal nations as I was taught as a child. Some more drastic projections suggest that the sea might rise by as much as two or three meters in the worst case scenario.

It really creeps me out when I hear people who confess to believe that human civilisation, the human species, or even all life on Earth is most likely going to be destroyed soon by climate change. The most recent example, which prompted this post, was the Call of Cthulhu podcast I was listening to casually suggesting that it might be a good idea to summon an Elder God of ice and snow to combat climate change as the "lesser existential risk", perhaps by sacrificing "climate skeptics" to it. It's incredibly jarring for me to realise that the guys I've been listening to casually chatting about RPGs think they live in a world that will shortly be ended by the greed of it's rulers. But this idea is everywhere. Discussions of existential risks from e.g. pandemics inevitably attract people arguing that the real existential risk is climate change. A major anti-global-warming protest movement, Extinction Rebellion, is literally named after the idea that they're fighting against their own extinction. Viral Tumblr posts talk about how the fear of knowing that the world is probably going to be destroyed soon by climate change and fascism is crippling their mental health, and they have no idea how to deal with it because it's all so real.

But it's not. It's not real.

Well, I can't claim that political science is accurate enough for me to definitively say that fascism isn't going to take over, but I can say that climate science is fairly accurate and it predicts that the world is definitely not about to end in fire or in flood.

(There are valid arguments that climate change or other environmental issues might precipitate wars, which could turn apocalyptic due to nuclear weapons; or that we might potentially encounter a black swan event due to our poor understanding of the ecosystem and climate-feedback systems. But these are very different, as they're self-admittedly "just" small risks to the world.)

And I get the impression that a lot of people with more realistic views about climate change deliberately pander to this, deliberately encouraging people to believe that they're going to die because it puts them on the "right side of the issue". The MCU's Loki, for instance, recently casually brought up a "climate apocalypse" in 2050, which many viewers took as meaning the world ending. Technically, the show uses a broad definition of "apocalypse" - Pompeii is given as another example - and it kind of seems like maybe all they meant was natural disasters encouraged by climate change, totally defensible. But I still felt kinda mad about it, that they're deliberately pandering to an idea which they hopefully know is false and which is causing incredible anxiety in people. I remember when Greta Thurnberg was a big deal, I read through her speeches to Extinction Rebellion, and if you parsed them closely it seemed like she actually did have a somewhat realistic understanding of what climate change is. But she would never come out and say it, it was all vague implications of doom, which she was happily giving to a rally called "Extinction Rebellion" filled with speakers who were explicitly stating, not just coyly implying, that this was a fight for humanity's survival against all the great powers of the world.

But maybe there's nothing wrong with that. I despise lying, but as I've been rambling about, this is a very common lie that most people somehow seem unaffected by. Maybe the viral tumblr posts are wrong about the source of their anxiety; maybe it's internal/neurochemical and they world just have picked some other topic to project their anxieties on if this particular apocalypse wasn't available. Maybe this isn't a particularly harmful lie, and it's hypocritical of me to be shocked by those who believe it.

Incidentally, I believe the world is probably going to end within the next fifty years.

Intellectually, I find the arguments that superhuman AI will destroy the world pretty undeniable. Sure, forecasting the path of future technology is inherently unreliable. But the existence of human brains, some of which are quite smart, proves pretty conclusively it's possible to get lumps of matter to think - and human brains are designed to run on the tiny amounts of energy they can get by scavenging plants and the occasional scraps of meat in the wilderness as fuel, with chemical signals that propagate at around the speed of sound (much slower than electronic ones), with only the data they can get from input devices they carry around with them, and which break down irrevocably after a few decades. And while we cannot necessarily extrapolate from the history of progress in both computer hardware and AI, that progress is incredibly impressive, and there's no particular reason to believe it will fortuitously stop right before we manufacture enough rope to hang ourselves.

Right now, at time of writing, we have neural nets that can write basic code, appear to scale linearly in effectiveness with the available hardware with no signs that we're reaching their limit, and have not yet been applied at the current limits of available hardware let alone what will be available in a few years. They absorb information like a sponge at a vastly superhuman speed and scale, allowing them to be trained in days or hours rather than the years or decades humans require. They are already human-level or massively superhuman at many tasks, and are capable of many things I would have confidently told you a few years ago were probably impossible without human-level intelligence, like the crazy shit AI dungeon is capable of. People are actively working on scaling them up so that they can work on and improve the sort of code they are made from. And we have no ability to tell what they're thinking or control them without a ton of trial and error.

If you follow this blog, you're probably familiar with all the above arguments for why we're probably very close to getting clobbered by superhuman AI, and many more, as well as all the standard counter-arguments and the counter-arguments to those counter arguments.

(Note: I do take some comfort in God, but even if my faith were so rock solid that I would cheerfully bet the world on it - which it's not - there's no real reason why our purpose in God's plan couldn't be to destroy ourselves or be destroyed as an object lesson to some other, more important civilization. There's ample precedent.)

Here's the thing: I'm not doing anything about it, unless you count occasionally, casually talking about it with people online. I'm not even donating to help any of the terrifyingly-few people who are trying to do something about it. Part of why I'm not contributing is, frankly, I don't have a clue what to do, nor do I have much confidence in any of the stuff people are currently doing (although I bloody well hope some of it works.)

And yet I don't actually feel that scared.

I feel more of a visceral chill reading about the nuclear close calls that almost destroyed the world in the recent past than thinking about the stuff that has a serious chance of doing so in a few decades. I'm a neurotic mess, and yet what is objectively the most terrifying thing on my radar does not actually seem to contribute to my neurosis.

#x risk cw #futurism #we live in the future #long #rambly late night posting #history #religion

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lacquerware · 4 years ago

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2020 Recap - My Year in Gaming

2020. What a year for video games. I had big plans for last year, but in the end I did very little besides play video games, and I don’t think I’m alone there since we were all stuck at home looking for a way out of reality. I wanted to do a year-end recap as I’ve done sporadically in past years, but this one will be different than the typical “Games of the Year” format because despite all the games I played in 2020, almost none of them came out in 2020, and some of the things that defined my year in gaming weren't even games.

Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS4)

RE3 was one of the only games I played in 2020 that didn’t coincide with the deadly pandemic's spread across the US. RE3 is, of course, a game about the spread of a deadly virus in Anytown, USA. It was an appetizer, I guess.

When the Resident Evil 2 remake dropped in 2019, there were some things I loved about it, and a few things that felt like steps back from the original. I feel much the same about RE3. I had also theorized that a Resident Evil 3 remake would be better off as RE2 DLC than as a separate full-length game, and considering how short RE3 turned out, with some of the best sections of hte original cut entirely (namely, the clock tower), I stand by my theory.

Oh well, at least Jill gets this rad gun, which for the time being is the closest thing to a new Lost Planet we can hope for anytime soon.

Sekiro (PS4)

Sekiro is the first video game I ever Platinumed. This is partly because conquering the base game was such a spartan exercise that going the extra mile to get the Platinum didn’t seem so bad, but it’s also surely a result of the pandemic. I needed a project and a big win. Who didn't?

I wrote at length about why I like Sekiro more than every other modern FromSoft game, and also about the game’s cherry-on-top moment that reminded me of blowing up Hitler’s face in Bionic Commando. Please read them!

Death Stranding (PS4)

Release date notwithstanding, this was obviously the Game of 2020. I wrote about it here, here, and here. This game bears the distinction of being the second one I ever Platinumed. It took 150 hours. Only then did I learn I had a hoverboard.

Streets of Rage 4 (PS4)

This is the only 2020 game I played for more than a few hours. In fact, I cleared the entire game at least five times. I still don’t think it captures the gritty aesthetic of the prior Streets of Rages (nor even tries to), but this is probably the best-feeling bup I've played. Huge bonus points for finally bringing back Adam, but in the end I found it hard not to pick Blaze every time.

Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch)

What impressed me about this sequel from Inti Creates was that it wasn’t just more of the same, even though that would've been fine. BMZ2 builds on its already excellent predecessor with a catchy new format where players can freely cruise the cosmos and stages take the varied form of planets—some big and sprawling, others short and sweet. Hopping at will from planet to planet without ever knowing what experiences and treasure each one held felt like system jumping in No Man’s Sky and island hopping in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, both of which felt like opening presents.

Dragon Force (Saturn)

Charming, satisfying, and addictive as a bag of chips. Unlike a bag of chips, when it’s over, you can do it all again. And again. And it’ll be different each time! This might be the first strategy game I've truly loved. Better late than never.

The PC Engine Mini

The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Mini seems a particularly justifiable mini-console for people outside Japan because so many missed these consoles entirely, the games are hard to obtain, and the lineup includes titles spanning the entire convoluted Turbo/PC Engine ecosystem—the TurboGrafx-CD/CD-ROM², Super CD-ROM², Arcade CD-ROM² and SuperGrafx, in addition to plain, old standard HuCard games. I myself didn’t know the first thing about these systems before. It’s like reliving the nineties again for the first time.

Most of the titles included are simple action games that don't require a command of Japanese, but make no mistake: being able to understand Snatcher and TokiMemo does make me feel like an elite special person worth more than many of you.

(Side note: From a gender representation perspective, the difference between Snatcher and Death Stranding is stark. Virtually every interaction with every woman or girl in Snatcher is decorated with ways to sexually harass her. Guess someone finally had a conversation with our favorite auteur.)

A Gaming PC

I’d threatened to transition to PC gaming for years after beholding the framerate difference between the console and PC versions of DmC in 2012, and last July I finally took the leap, buying an ASUS “Republic of Gamers” (ugh) laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU. It seems like consoles are getting more PC-like all the time, especially with all these half-step iterations that splinter performance and sometimes even the feature set (à la the New 3DS and Switch Lite), so with the impending new generation seemed like a fine time to change course.

In the half-year since, I’ve barely played a single PC game more recent than 2013, but just replaying PS3-era games at high settings has been like rediscovering them for the first time.

I also finally experienced keyboard-and-mouse shooting and understand now why PC gamers think they're better than everyone else. Max Payne is a completely different game with a mouse. Are all shooters like this??

The USPS

Early in the year, I rediscovered my childhood game shop, Starland, which is now an online hub known as eStarland.com with a brick-and-mortar showroom. To my delight, it has become one of the best and most modestly priced sources for import Saturn games in the country, and I scored Shining Force III’s second and third episodes, long missing from my collection, for a mere ten bucks each!

In June, I treated myself to a trio of Saturn imports from eStarland: the tactics-meets-dating-sim mashup Sakura Taisen 2, the nicely presented RTS space opera Quo Vadis 2, and beloved gothic dungeon crawler Baroque. Miraculously, this haul amounted to just around thirty dollars total. Less miraculously, they never arrived. This was the second time I’d had something lost in the mail in my entire life, and also the second time that month. Something was wrong with the USPS, and it wasn’t just COVID pains. We would soon learn Trump had been actively working to sabotage one of the nation’s oldest and most reliable institutions in a plot to compromise the upcoming presidential election.

Frankly it’s a miracle there’s still such a thing as “delivery” at all, and a few missing video games is the last of my worries considering what caused it, but nevertheless this was an experience in my gaming life that could not have happened any other year. I won’t forget it.

*By the way, USPS reimbursed me for the insured value of the missing order, which was fifty bucks. So I actually profited a little off the experience.

Mega Everdrive Pro

I love collecting for the Genesis and Mega Drive, but I will not pay hundreds of dollars for a video game that retailed for about sixty. The publishers never asked for that, and the developers won’t see a (ragna)cent of the money. I'm also far less inclined to start collecting for Sega CD, since the hardware is notoriously breakable, the cases are huge and also breakable, and the library just isn't that good.

Still, I'd been increasingly curious about the add-on as an interesting piece of Sega history, so when I learned Ukranian mad scientist KRIKzz had released a new Mega Everdrive that doubled as a Sega CD FPGA, I finally took the plunge into the world of flash carts. This has proven a great way to play some of the Mega Drive’s big-ticket rarities I will never buy—namely shmups like Advanced Busterhawk Gley Lancer and Eliminate Down—as well as try out prospective additions to the collection. I never would have discovered the phenomenal marvel of engineering and synth composition that is Star Cruiser without this thing, but now that I have, it’s high on the shopping list.

The Mega Everdrive Pro is functionally nearly identical to TerraOnion’s “Mega SD” cartridge, but slightly less expensive, comes in a “normal” cartridge shell instead of the larger Virtua Racing-style one, and supports a single hardworking dude in Ukraine rather than a company with reportedly iffy customer service.

Twitch

Getting a PC also resolved issues that had long prevented me from achieving a real streaming setup, and much of my gaming life in 2020 was about ramping up my streaming efforts. I even made Affiliate in about a month. Streaming has been a great creative outlet and distraction, as well as a way to connect with other people during the COVID depression and structure my gaming time. Find me every Monday through Thursday 8-11pm Eastern at twitch.tv/lacquerware.

Metroid: Other M (Dolphin)

PC ownership also gave me access to the versatile Dolphin emulator, liberating a handful of great Wii exclusives from their disposable battery-powered prison.

One of the Wii games I fired up on Dolphin was Metroid: Other M, a game I’d always wanted to try but had been dissuaded by years of bad publicity and the fact that I never had any goddamn batteries. I know I should temper what I’m about to say by acknowledging that I was playing at 1080p/60fps on a PS4 controller so my experience was automatically a vast improvement over that of all Wii players, but I’m increasingly confident Metroid: Other M was the most fun I’ve ever had playing a Metroid game. I haven’t decided yet if I’m willing to die on this hill, but I will just say that if you like the Metroidvania genre in general and aren’t particularly attached to the Metroid series’ story or its habit of making you wander aimlessly for hours, there’s a very high chance you will enjoy Other M—especially if you play it on Dolphin.

Don't Starve Together (PC)

Don't Starve is the only game my friend Jason plays, so last year I tried to get into it with him. I respect this game's singular devotion to the concept of survival, but make no mistake: every session of Don't Starve ends with you starving to death. Or freezing. Or getting stomped by a giant deity of the forest. The entire game is staving off death until it inevitably comes. Even when death comes, you can revive infinitely (in whatever mode we were playing), which means even death is not an end goal. There is no end goal. You don't even have the leeway to "play" and create your own meaning as you do in similarly zen games like Dead Rising.

Don't Starve is a game for people for whom hard work is the ultimate reward in and of itself. Don't Starve told me something about Jason.

G-Darius (PS1)

In the early fall, Sony announced they were dropping PS3, PSP, and Vita support from the browser and mobile versions of their PSN Store, and since the PS3 version of the store app runs like a solar-powered parking meter in Seattle, I decided this was my last chance to stock up on Japanese PSN gems.

Among my final haul, the PS1 port of G-Darius proved an instant favorite. Take down the usual cast of mechanized fish in a vibrant, chunky, low-poly style that perfectly inhabits the constraints of the original PlayStation hardware. I believe this is the first Darius game that lets you get into giant beam duels with the bosses, which is quite definitely one of the coolest things a video game has ever let you do. The PS1 port is also surprisingly feature-rich, including some easier difficulty levels that present an actually surmountable challenge for non-savants.

This one’s coming to the upcoming Darius Cozmic Revelation collection on Switch alongside DARIUSBURST, a good-ass romp in its own right.

Red Entertainment

In my effort to shine a tiny spotlight on some of the unsung Interesting Games of gaming, I found myself drawn again and again to the work of Red Entertainment. First there were cavechild headbutt simulator Bonk’s Adventure and twin shmups Gates of Thunder and Lords of Thunder on the PC Engine Mini. Then I streamed full playthroughs of the PS2’s best samurai-era, off-brand 3D Castlevania, Blood Will Tell and the Trigun-adjacent stand-‘n-gun, Gungrave: Overdose. Then I was dazzled by Bonk’s Adventure’s futuristic spin-off cute-‘em-up, Air Zonk, which was also sneakily tucked away on my PC Engine Mini in the “TurboGrafx-16” section. It turned out all these games were made by the same miracle developer responsible for Bujingai, the stylish PS2 wushu game starring Gackt and a household name here at the Lacquerware estate. How prolific can one team be???

Month of Cyberpunk

In November, I started toying with the idea of themed months on my Twitch channel with “Cyberpunk month.” It was supposed to be a build-up to Cyberpunk 2077’s highly anticipated November release, but holy shit that didn’t happen, did it? Still, I always find myself gravitating toward this genre in November, I guess because I associate November with gloom (even though this year it was sunny almost every day). A month is a long time to adhere to a single theme, but cyberpunk is such a well-served niche in gaming that I could easily start an all-cyberpunk Twitch channel. The fact that we’re so spoiled with choice makes Cyberpunk 2077’s terrible launch all the more embarrassing. Here are just some of the games I played (and streamed!) in November:

Ghostrunner Shadowrun (Genesis) RUINER Remember Me Transistor Rise of the Dragon (Sega CD) Shadowrun (Mega CD) Cyber Doll (Saturn) Binary Domain Shadowrun Returns Blade Runner (PC) Deus Ex: Human Revolution Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Observer

Shadowrun on the Genesis gets my top pick, but the two most recent Deus Ex games are great alternatives for those looking for something in the vein of 2077 that isn’t infested with termites.

Lost Planet 2

Every year. I played through it twice in 2020.

Dead Rising 4

I slept on this one too long. While it's a far cry from the original game, it's easily the most fun I've had with a Christmas game since Christmas NiGHTS. This is the game a lot of people thought they were getting when they bought the original Dead Rising with their new Xbox 360--goofy, indulgent, and pressure-free.

Devil May Cry 5: Vergil (PS4)

Vergil dropped for last-gen consoles in December and breathed a whole lot of life into a game that was already at the head of its class.

Nioh 2

I’ve only played a few hours of Nioh 2 because I promised my friend I’d co-op it with him and wouldn’t play ahead. But he’s a grad student with two small children. Nevertheless, Nioh 2 is my Game of 2020.

And that's it! Guess I'll spend 2021 playing games that came out last year, and maybe eventually getting vaccinated? Please?

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self-loving-vampire · 4 years ago

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I was only young when I played Ultima VII but I had already ventured to the depths of dungeons that dripped with dread, partaken in interstellar war and defended my home planet from invaders. Like Roy Batty and all people who grew up with games, I had seen and done so much. Between adventures in space, I’d rezone my commercial districts or build a new bus route, leaving room in the schedules for occasional postal service functions. Yes, I had lived a full life already, but I had never watched a man clad in the finest clothes in Britain eat an egg and then belch in the face of a barmaid, so who can say I had experienced anything worthwhile at all?

Gaming had certainly made me a busy boy, often alternating between saviour and mayor, but sometimes it was hard to shake the feeling that I was a busy boy working away in a collection of somnolent worlds. So often, no matter how much I enjoyed my progress through a game, I couldn’t help but feel I was moving through something static and linear. I didn’t (and still don’t) object to that but as the games I played began to increase in visual complexity, their crude borders only seemed more obvious than before and their inhabitants’ lack of life more acute.

That feeling isn’t a relic, it persists today. Stand in the middle of a junction in Liberty City and it’s possible to feel a connection with the place. Pedestrians, cars, overheard conversations, the dropped coffee and stumble of a jostled passerby. Turn to an empty street though, glance to the side, then back again. Often enough, rows of vehicles will have appeared, like flowers from a magician’s sleeve, a trick that garishly announces, ‘this is illusion’, demanding your attention because the player is not always a protagonist. Often, the player is the audience.

I get it. I understand why. But sometimes I don’t want to be the audience, the centre around which the world revolves and at which events are directed. Sometimes I want to be a participant. That’s something that multiplayer games allow but they are rarely about exploration and existence, concentrating instead on competition and destruction. Online roleplaying games should be the perfect antidote but the structure of the majority reverts to treating each player as a hero in his own story. Quests and plots are usually directed at the player, to be activated at will, rather than being happenings in a wider context.

We’re going back to a time long before that was even a possibility though. Playing games with strangers in other countries? We were lucky if our modems didn’t squawk themselves into a death spiral whenever we connected to the local BBS to talk about games. The idea of actually playing them with someone who wasn’t located in the same building was more exciting than watching Flight of the Navigator for the seventieth time.

Ultima VII was the first game I played that made me feel I was part of a world that didn’t revolve around me and I believe it remains one of the best examples of its type. It’s an RPG that starts with a murder investigation rather than a dungeon crawl and that immediately marked it out. My first goal in Britannia was to talk to people, find out what made them tick and work out just what the heck was going on. While I was doing this, those people would work, eat and sleep. They were trying to get on with their lives and I was the irritating do-gooder poking my nose into their business.

It was only when I headed north to the capital that I really became convinced I was experiencing something completely new though. Travelling through marshes and farms, I was attacked by wild animals and monsters. But it wasn’t a gambit designed to allow me to level up; these were hungry wolves out for the kill rather than piñatas full of experience points and loot. Sometimes, if they were badly injured, they would try to flee, leaving a trail of blood. Their mark on the world.

Arrival in Britain was like entering a metropolis for the first time. Shops, taverns, a museum, the castle, crowds of people in the streets and businesses. There was nothing else like it. Of course, I look back on it now and realise that there were about four streets, one of each type of shop and just enough people to fulfill basic functions. But that doesn’t matter because here are some of the awesome things that I did.

I visited a bakery to buy some fresh bread because I felt me and my companions had been living on stale rations too long, having slept on a bedroll for two nights in a row. It was time to treat the whole party to a bit of the high life. While we were there, I learned how to bake by watching the process carried out by an NPC. Flour from a sack, onto a counter top, water added, rolled into dough, placed in an oven, left to bake, removed, voila! I think that’s all the steps. I’m not going to look it up. The memory is too good as it stands.

When does that happen? When was the last time you played a game and inadvertently learned how to create a useful object in the world simply by watching a character perform the steps to craft it? In fact, there’s that term: ‘crafting’. Ultima VII didn’t claim to have ‘crafting’, it just figured that if you had all the right ingredients, why the heck wouldn’t you be able to bake a loaf of bread?

After learning to bake, I learned to make clothes. More crafting that wasn’t crafting, just interacting with the world. Ultima VII was like the Duke Nukem 3D of RPGs, except it wasn’t about taking a leak, turning out a light and then smashing everything in sight, it was about rearranging the books on a shelf or making a dress for one of your companions and gifting it to her, not in the hope that it would provide enough points to unlock a glass-eyed sexytime cutscene but because it felt like the right thing to do.

I also went to the pub a lot. The Blue Boar, specifically, which is still the finest drinking establishment in all gaming and I am willing to get into a barfight about that. With live music nightly, speedy service and an extensive menu of delicacies, there’s no better way to while away the hours.

In fact, it’s at The Blue Boar that everything came together. Not at the Black Gate or in some grotty underground cave; right there, sitting with my friends on either side and a drunk shopkeeper opposite. As the evening turns to night the place really fills up. There’s the baker, who I learned a new trade from earlier, he’s arrived just in time to grab a plate of meat and potatoes, and trade jokes with his mates. And there, over in the corner on his own, that’s the tailor, downing tankard after tankard. Business must be very good. Or very bad.

I could sit in The Blue Boar for ages, making up stories for all the patrons, knowing that I’d be able to track them down the next day. They weren’t spawned at the doors, forced into existence so that the pub would feel like a pub and them snuffed out of existence as they left, they were the same people who would be walking the streets the next day and selling me goods.

And there was always at least one among them, could have been anyone, who would order an egg. It’d just arrive, plonked down in front of them unceremoniously, a massive plate with a single egg in the middle of it. Even though it didn’t matter that they were eating an egg, in that it wouldn’t have any effect on their social standing or health, it really did matter because it never failed to make me smile.

Which poor bastard is on the eggs tonight, I’d think, watching as sweetmeats from every corner of the world were laid out in front of the gathering. And then, BAM, there it would be. Egg on a plate. No cress. No mayo. The purchaser wolfing it down, hoping no one had noticed, trying to hide their shame.

Then people would stand up, say their goodbyes and leave. Closing time. And time for me to find a bed for the night or, more likely, to trudge back into the wilds looking for some fresh adventure. I’d always be back though, to The Blue Boar, because it felt like a haven. I had friends there, and warmth and food, I was part of something. I was no longer the audience, I was an actor sharing a stage.

Britannia wasn’t very large compared to more recent game worlds or the ludicrousness of Daggerfall but it did have variety and it felt like a place full of life. In a way that made me more eager to protect it but it also made me far more willing to become part of that life. I had to force myself to deliver the promise I held as the Avatar because I’d rather have been one of the ordinary folks. Hunting and drinking, dining and dancing. Ultima is all about the Virtues and one of the greatest virtues of this most excellent entry in the series was its ability to make being a hero so hard. Not because of high-powered enemies and ridiculous grind, but because it offered a world full of distractions instead of arrows pointing to the bad guys.

What other RPG could I write this much about without talking about stats, levelling, equipment and combat? I haven’t even talked about plot except in the vaguest terms. But I have talked about stories, and while they may not involve death knights and ancient artifacts, they’re the ones I remember best.

More than anything, Ultima VII was the game that first made me realise I preferred worlds that moved around me rather than worlds that I simply moved through. The way that worlds come alive for me can be in the history-changing sweep of a grand strategy game or something as simple as the addition of day-night cycles. It can be an attempt to simulate an ecosystem or something as simple as enemies actually dropping the equipment I can see they were carrying seconds before they crumpled to the ground. It all adds to the sense of existing in a world, which adds to my enjoyment of creating narrative in that world. And Ultima VII was one of the places that form of creativity first sparked for me.

#long post #ultima 7 #rpg

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lichlairs · 5 years ago

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Checkout our new post over at https://lichlair.com/daily-monster-18-ixitxachitl

Daily Monster #18: Ixitxachitl

I’m not going to lie folks, I have no idea how to pronounce this next creature’s name and unfortunately Matthew Mercer doesn’t have a sound bit for it over at dndbeyond. I’m just going to count my blessings that this isn’t a podcast and get the ball rolling on this one. Today’s Daily Monster is…

Ixitxachitl

The basics

Ixitxachitl have negative a CHA stat with a -2 modifier as their lowest stat. Their WIS, INT, CON, and STR are all the same with a +1 modifier. For a CR 1/4 creature, their highest stat is their DEX with a +3 modifier to it.

These small aberrations tend towards chaotic evil and, while they cannot communicate in any language, they can understand Abyssal. They have an AC of 15 and a pool of 4d6+4 hit points. While they do not have a normal speed, they do have a swim speed of 30ft. Probably as a result of their native environment, these creature have a Darkvision of 60ft.

In terms of actions, Ixitxachitl are a bit lackluster with only a standard Bite attack action. The only feature that sets them apart being their Barbed Tail reaction which is just sliiiiiightly better than their Bite attack.

The Lore

More commonly known as “demon rays” Ixitxachitl are basically evil man-eating stingrays that have been a part of the Dungeons and Dragons world throughout all editions. In fact, back in 3rd edition they were actually a playable race… that couldn’t leave the ocean… or talk…

Also a playable race

In terms of their origin, previous editions have established that they were in fact created by Demogorgon, who they also worship fanatically.

These creatures live in shoals of up to two hundred of them. Working together they are an extremely destructive force that takes over coral reefs to make them their homes. While taking residency in their lairs they utterly destroy the surrounding ecosystems by stripping them of plant and animal life before packing up and moving to a new reef. Because of this, Ixitxachitl tend to be at extreme odds with other aquatic races.

Like sharks, they are able to sense the shifts in current around them and are in fact carnivorous in nature to the point where they can easily take out prey as large as dragon turtles by working in packs.

The execution

Ixitxachitl were first introduced to 5th edition as part of the Out of the Abyss module, as such do expect to be running some of these if you plan to DM that module. They could also be extremely suitable for anyone running a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign and, considering come of the adventures in the module, extremely easy to add in. If however you’re looking to include them in other campaigns or make them part of your own homebrew world, there are still plenty ways to set up hooks for your adventurers. Here’s a few ideas:

As your party finally reaches a port town and ready themselves for some downtime, they overhear whispers of unrest and discover that a large group of these creatures has recently moved into the nearby reefs that surround the local fishing areas. Not only has the daily catch suffered a blow from these creature’s arrival, but it has also made the fishermen’s jobs extremely hazardous. Fearing for the economic and environmental well-being of the town, authorities collect funds from the townspeople and approach our adventurers with the task after hearing about their valiant exploits.

If you feel like you might just need to add a little extra to that to make sure your players go for the hook, Ixitxachitl are also known to keep slaves that they use for the construction of their maze like lairs. Or you know, just for food.

Alternatively, if your players find themselves at sea, it could be that perhaps they get swarmed by these creatures. When it comes to tactics, Ixitxachitl are known to approach at fast speeds from various directions seeking to confuse prey by striking from various angles. If your player characters decide to go for a swim you could also have these creatures burrow into the ocean floor as they wait expectantly to ambush their fresh prey…

If you enjoyed this article and would like to be updated whenever we post something new, don’t forget to follow us on our social media. If you have any interesting comments of funny anecdotes do leave us a message in our forums!

#Daily Monster #dnd #dnd5e #dndbeyond #dungeons and dragons #Behind the Screen

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dailyaudiobible · 8 years ago

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01/20/2017 DAB Transcript

Genesis 41:17-42:17 ~ Matthew 13:24-46 ~ Psalm 18:1-15 ~ Proverbs 4:1-6

Today is January 20th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It is a pleasure to be here with you today. We’re sneaking up on completing three full weeks of the new year, chasing down our hearts as we chase down the stories in the Bible. Right now in the Old Testament, we’re chasing the story of Joseph.

So Joseph has been sold into slavery by his family, has become a slave, has been put in prison, all for doing really the right thing and now he finds himself standing before the king of Egypt, the pharaoh, who has had a dream which has summoned Joseph from the dungeon. Genesis chapter 41, verse 17 through 42, verse 17 today.

Commentary

There is so much we could talk about today. Let's just recap this story that is ongoing with Joseph because he's come face to face not only with brothers he hasn’t seen in over a decade, but with the very people that trafficked him, that sold him into slavery, his own family. So you can imagine the conflict going on in his heart, the joy and the pain all mixed together into this terribly bittersweet moment.

Where we leave the story today is as if Joseph is about to get his vengeance. He’ll get his vengeance on the people that sold him into slavery. “You are spies.” And they are freaking out because they are a lot of things, but they are not spies. They just need food. Josephs says, “You're going to stay here in prison except for one of you. Go get your brother. Prove that you’re telling the truth.” It is like Joseph is going to get his true blood brother from the same mother and father, bring him to Egypt and then do away with the brothers or have some sort of vengeance, do a big reveal and give them their just desserts while he has his brother safely tucked away. That might actually be justice, but is that what he's going to do? We’ll have to wait to find out.

We leave our Old Testament reading today in the story of Joseph with everything upside down. God has been faithful to Joseph and Joseph has followed God and stored up for the whole nation of Egypt and provided for them through this famine. People are coming from all over the region so Egypt is becoming incredibly enriched because of the commerce. Joseph is doing a good job. He's always done a good job in spite of the injustice of what has been happening to him. But seeing his brothers, that flips things upside down. His brothers, their lives are flipped upside down too because they’ve just been accused of spying by the second in command only to the pharaoh of all of Egypt. Their hope for survival with food goes through this guy and this guy is accusing them of being spies and has taken them into custody. It is a bad situation, but it is not the end of the story and we’re starting to see things come full circle. As we look at the story of Joseph, we begin to look at our own lives and see the places that we’ve been true, only to seemingly take steps backward. But there is always more going on than we know about and as things start to come full circle, we need to be aware of that.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus is discussing the kingdom of heaven, something he discusses all of the time. So what is the kingdom of heaven? What do you think about when you think of the kingdom of heaven and what it is like?

All my life growing up in the faith I would hear discussions of the kingdom of heaven and that somehow I'm a part of the kingdom of heaven, the ongoing kingdom of heaven, but in my mind the kingdom was this thing to come. Jesus would show up on a white horse, all of the host of heaven with him, and all of the bad guys would get beat up and done away with and the good guys would prevail and this new kingdom would be established under the rule of the king, King Jesus. And if I lived my life right, then I could be there. I could be there on that day somehow, whether because I was alive at the time or because I had come with Jesus to be a part of that kingdom. That was just kind of my loose perception of things, that this was something to come. It was esoteric. How could you know what that is actually going to look like and prepare for that? But I will come and I will be there one way or the other.

What does that look like for you? And just as important, what was that like for the people Jesus was talking to? This idea of this kingdom of heaven was something that they longed for as well. They were expecting it to happen as well. There were prophecies that it would happen, so they were looking for this person, a person that they called the Messiah. This person hadn’t shown up yet, but one day a Messiah, a person, a chosen one would come and he would rise through the ranks and become a leader among them and he would be the anointed one. He would be devout but also able to communicate and rally the people together to rise up and bring this kingdom, this restoration to God.

Without going on too much of a bunny trail, it is important to kind of contextualize this whole thing based on where we’ve been in the Bible thus far. So there is this man whose name is Abram. He becomes Abraham. A promise is given that his offspring would inhabit a certain land, the land that he was in, and that his offspring would be vast and a nation would be formed, God's chosen people. So we’re in the midst of moving into that story and seeing how that came to be in the Old Testament. And it will come to be. But it won't last. So it will happen, but it won't last. The people will all be carried away into exile.

As we move into the New Testament, the time of Jesus, it has been a long time, centuries since everyone was carried away. There has been no promised land and chosen people for a long, long time. What the Hebrew people of Jesus’ time are looking for is someone to take them back to that place where they had their own land and they were God's chosen people again. So when Jesus shows up with signs and wonders and talks of a kingdom of heaven, they are listening. They are wondering could he be the chosen one, the anointed one? Could he be the Messiah? Even the religious leaders and Pharisees are looking to see if he could be the one. At first they are not against him, but he is not for them. He is actually confrontational toward them because they have become confrontational toward him because he's bucking the system. He is dismantling so many of the traditions that give them power over the people. But even to the most devout, he is bucking the system and breaking with tradition.

So back to the original question. What is the kingdom of heaven? What does that look like? I had my ideas growing up. These people had their ideas based on the worldview that they understood. But neither one of those things seem to be the kingdom Jesus described. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.” And as he fleshes out the description, the owner of the field decides to let the wheat and the weeds grow up together all the way until the harvest time and then they will be separated so that the wheat will not be pulled up with the weeds. In other words, the kingdom that Jesus is talking about is already happening and it is growing in and among everything else. It is everywhere among everything else. The weeds and the wheat are growing up together. In other words, the kingdom is happening right now. It is something to come and yet it is also something already here and we have to understand whether we’re wheat or whether we’re weeds. If we’re completely unaware of the fact that we are a part of something that is happening right now, oh, then we have to consider what we are in this analogy, wheat or weeds.

Then Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and planted in his field and though it is the smallest of all seeds, when it grows it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” So if you’ve ever seen a mustard seed, you know it is a tiny little thing, but if you plant and cultivate that thing, it will become a large branch that birds can come and sit in. But once that happens, you’re going to have a hard time finding the mustard seed. It will be untraceable, and yet this little tiny seed grows up to support an entire ecosystem around it. Is that what we’re doing, we as individuals? Little insignificant seeds that are growing to support an entire ecosystem of the kingdom around us? Because that is something that is now. That is something that is happening. Are we a part of that or are we waiting for something to come that isn’t coming the way we think it is?

Then Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about 60 pounds of flour until it worked all the way through the dough.” If you’ve ever cooked with yeast, then you know its effect on a loaf. But once the loaf is baked, you can’t find the yeast anymore. If you didn’t have the yeast, the loaf would be radically different. Jesus is describing a kingdom that you cannot put your finger on and point to, which he will explicitly explain later. It is growing up all around us and we are supposed to be a part of it right now. We’re not waiting for it to start. We are it.

That, my friends, is a game changer because all of a sudden we realize there is more going on to this story. Just like the story of Joseph, there is more going on than we know about. And we are a part of something really important and really big to what happens in our world. Whereas Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that we read, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world,” we are a part of something really big. Are we living like we are a part of something really important? Or are we stuck in just what we can see in front of us, not realizing that there is more going on than we’re aware of? We’ll never figure it out without walking with God and being led by his Holy Spirit within us. How will we ever know what is going on without God being able to take us into his confidence and tell us what is next for us in his kingdom? Which is exactly what we read in the book of Proverbs just a couple of days ago. “The Lord detests the perverse but takes the upright into his confidence.”

So we are a part of a kingdom to come, but we are a part of a kingdom that is now. We have a role to play in this kingdom. We will not ever figure out that there is more going on than we can see if we do not walk with God loyally, trustworthy, so that he has been taken into our confidence and we have been taken into his. This is a larger story than we have ever dreamed and we are smack in the middle of it. It hasn’t been a great mystery like we’ve lived for so long. It has been in the Bible telling this to us for thousands of years. What if here on the 20th day of the year, just as we reach the cusp of three weeks into the Bible, we finally open our eyes and take breath into our lungs and realize this is a big deal? That I am here right now is a big deal and this small story, all of these things that I keep twisting myself into, these webs and these relationships and these addictions and these obsessions, these are small things in comparison with what I'm invited to be a part of. And I need to get about the business of extricating myself from the things that do not matter so that I can give my heart to the things that do. I need margin in my life because I am a part of the kingdom of heaven and that matters right now.

May we wake up. It is no small thing to be the salt of the earth or the light of the world. If we are to be either of those, we have to be awake, alert and aware.

Prayer

Father, we invite your Holy Spirit to speak into that in our own lives. What does that look like to us? Because we’re each writing our own story and it has its own twists and turns and it is not one size fits all. We invite your Holy Spirit to enter into the story we have been telling with our lives and may this day be a day that the plot has a huge twist in it, that we turned away from the directions we were going that would only harm us and moved intentionally toward wholeness. To be what you’ve created us to be we need a whole heart and we need to love you with all of it. So come Holy Spirit, we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Song played on today’s DAB: Nichole Nordeman - Brave (Lyric Video) - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iyrHs960HM

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