#megafauna on the horizon

[rain-droplet]

I want megafauna back, I want giant animals that are taller than people and are super fluffy and absolutely everywhere, I want giant bumblebees that I can hug... where did they all go ? I miss them

[foone]

A world of friends

In the late 2030s, a research lab discovers how to travel to alternate earths. And what's even better, they've figured out how to best monetize it too: tourism.

See it turns out there's not a lot of variation. There's a nearly infinite number of earths, but it's not like you're traveling to an alien planet or Narnia. They're all pretty... Earthy.

And they turn that into a positive: all earths are similar, but the small differences are what counts. And they're always searching for worlds with interesting divergences from our own, as potential destinations.

Spend a weekend with Netflix on the world where Walter Disney became a little-known architect, and the face of children's media is completely different. Visit the world where the US Revolution failed, and most of the Americas remains part of the commonwealth.

Safari through the world where humans died out or never evolved, see the megafauna we weren't around to extinct.

The world where the planet's population is 97% Christian but they're also nudists because they associate nudity with the innocence of the Garden of Eden.

And if you're looking for a challenge, visit the world's where climate change has already melted the ice caps, the world's where the cold war went hot, the world where the first world war is also the last one, and it's still ongoing.

There's just one minor problem with their plan of setting up an industry to portal people to other worlds:

Someone else is already using it.

Their interdimensional tech relies on creating wormholes using a complex arrangement of superconducting magnets and there's a characteristic burst of neutrinos when the event horizon forms.

They have to monitor them to properly "aim" the wormhole, but their early work is thrown off by seeing spurious emissions coming from outside their facility, which they later realize are exactly matching their technology.

They're just seeing the wormholes from the other end.

They partner with a government agency, explaining their discovery, and express worry that the country (and the world!) may be getting infiltrated by an off world power.

They build sensors in major cities, and triangulate where the off-worlders are appearing, and follow them.

They seem harmless enough. Often skittish, taking lots of pictures, asking odd questions... These aren't security agents or an invading force.

They're just tourists. They're from another world's interdimensional tourism business. One that set up before ours.

But why are they here? What's so odd about our world among the trillions they have access to that makes them come here with cameras fully loaded with film and memory cards?

The security agents pour over surveillance tapes of them wandering around random cities, and finally spot (no pun intended) why they're here.

It's dogs.

The tourists are skittish around seeing people walking their dogs, they're taking pictures of corgis and greyhounds, they're visiting petstores and ignoring the cats and iguanas and tropical fish to go look at the most boring mutts, eyes full of wonder and fear and excitement...

One of the tourists is picked up by the security services, but hits their panic button and vanishes before they can be questioned. They leave behind a Daguerre Inc 2090 DSLR camera full of slightly blurry photos of dogs, and a pamphlet that fell out of their bag in the scuffle

The pamphlet is for this interdimensional vacation, and describes the weirdness of our world: The strange universe where humans somehow befriended wild wolves and let them into their homes and lives.

The pamphlet plays up the scariness of canines, showing Tibetan mastiffs and angry pitbulls biting into meat. Police dogs with titanium teeth replacements. There's very few pictures of chihuahuas and corgis and poodles.

So the next time you're at an animal rescue or a petting zoo, and you see someone looking on in fear and wonder at the amazing sight of a golden retriever puppy, their camera shutter clicking away...

Maybe ask them who the president is. And what year we landed on the moon.

And don't be too surprised if they answer "You mean the Prime Minister? It's still Thiers, right? I haven't been reading the papers much recently. And 1956, unless you're one of those pedantics who say it only counts if it was successful, in which case 1958"

(reposted from a twitter thread from 2022)

[fatehbaz]

Posted about British colonial officials in 1860s South India being fascinated by studying geology of Deccan Plateau as both a potential source of material wealth but also as more like intellectual curiosity that allowed them to consider "deep time" and the place of "civilization" in history. And someone shared post, commenting in tags something sort of like "interesting how British Empire could be so focused on rocks."

And really:

Both British imperial power and British popular imagination are tied to "ancient rocks"

British coal and coal-powered engines transformed global ecologies and societies with railroads and factories at the same time that British public became widely aware of dinosaurs, extinct Pleistocene megafauna, the vast scale of deep time, geology, and uniformitarian Earth systems. Then British anthropology, Egyptomania, archaeology, etc., were implicated in professionalization of sciences and ideas of primitivsm/racial hierarchy. Then British extraction of liquid fossil fuels instantiated expansion of petroleum products. Victorian popular culture had a penchant for contemplating death, decay, deep past, civilizational collapse, classical antiquity. So there's a simultaneous fixation on both temporality and materiality. Which both involve "earth."

-

Consider:

Coal. How the mining of "ancient rock" (300-million-year-old Carboniferous) and coal-burning probably strongly propelled Britain (tied also to enclosure laws and Caribbean slave profits reinvested in ascendant financial/insurance institutions) to the "first" industrialization around 1830, helping cement its global hegemony and setting a blueprint for European/US industry. How burning that ancient rock "unlocked steam power" for Britain and facilitated the rapid expansion of railroad networks after the first public steam railway in 1825 (steam engines then let Britain reach and extract resources from hinterlands) while the rock also powered textile mills after the 1830s (putting poorer Britons to work in mills and factories while "Poor Laws" were put into effect outlawing "vagrancy" and "joblessness") which reshaped "the countryside" in Britain and reshaped global ecologies and labor regimes. Provincial realist novels and other literature reflect anxiety about this ecological/social transition. Even later Victorian novels and fin de siecle commentaries hint how coal and industrialization invoke temporality more directly, in that the engines and technologies provoke rhetoric and discourses about exponential growth, linear progress, and dazzling future horizons.

Fossils of Pleistocene megafauna: How an extinct Mastodon was displayed at Pall Mall in London in 1802. And how William Conybeare's discovery/description of coal-bearing rock in Britain led him to name "the Carboniferous period" in 1822, but it wasn't just coal power that this event inspired. in the very same year, Conybeare described the remains of extinct Pleistocene hyenas at Kirkdale Cave in Britain. The promotion of this discovery of Ice Age hyenas gave many Britons for the first time an awareness of deep past and obsession with Creatures. But the promotion also brought spectacle, public display, poetics, and marketing into natural history like "edu-tainment," a "poetics of popular science." This took place in the context of the rapid rise of British mass-market print media. Geological verse, Victorian novels, and cheap miscellanies reflect anxiety about this temporality and natural history.

Geology as a discipline: How the 1830 publishing of Lyell's monumentally significant Principles of Geology, directly inspired after he observed British ancient rock formations at Isle of Arran, completely changed European/US understanding of deep time and geology and the scale of Earth systems (uniformity principle), which made people wonder about linear notions of history and whether empires/societies can survive forever in such vast time scales.

Dinosaur fossils: How the "first dinosaur sculptures in the world" (dinosaur fossils reminiscent of ancient rock?) were reconstructed and put on display by Britain in 1854 at Crystal Palace in London following "the Great Exhibition," an event which set the model for future exhibitions and started the global craze for "world's fairs" and expositions showcasing imperial/industrial power for decades (the model for Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893, Paris event of 1900, St. Louis event of 1904, and beyond).

Soil mapping: How "ancient rock" was entangled with one of the most significant scientific projects of all-time, Britain's "The Great Trigonometric Survey of India" in 1802, undertaken to survey and record soil types across South Asia. After the resistance of the leaders of Mysore had finally been defeated, the subcontinent was vulnerable to consolidated British colonial power, and surveys were ordered immediately. The mapping of acreage for tax administration by the East India Company would remake societies with bordered property, contracted ownership, tax/wealth extraction. But the Survey also let Britain map soil for purposes of monoculture agriculture planning. Britain then used geology/soil as potential indicators of biological essentialism that equated "ancient" Gonds of India or "ancient" Aboriginal peoples of Australia with primitivism. Adventure stories and sportsmen's pulp magazines reflect anxiety about these cultural and geographical frontiers.

Diamonds: How the discovery of ancient rock (diamonds, from tens of millions of years old kimberlite) in the Kimberly (South Africa) rocketed Britain to more power when their colonial commissioners took possession in 1871, giving Britain a foothold and paving the way for Cecil Rhodes to amass astonishing wealth while completely remaking social institutions, labor regimes, and environments in southern Africa, giving Britain so much profit from diamonds that in 1882 Kimberly was only the second city on the whole planet to install electric street lighting.

Egyptomania: How British archaeologists digging around in ancient rock of their vassal/colony of Egypt, especially the tens of thousands of ancient Egyptian artifacts that they collected between 1880 and 1890, contributed to a craze for classical antiquity and a fixation on the ancient Mediterranean and mummies.

Victorian death fascination: How British archaeologists interacting with ancient rock in Southwest Asia (Mesopotamia, Levant) coupled with the Egyptomania also strongly influenced Late Victorian obsessions with death, decay, the occult, millennarian dates, and civilizational collapse which continued to influence culture, fashion, historicity, and narrativizing in Europe/US for years. Perhaps they wondered: "If Ur could fall, if Thebes could fall, if Mycenae could fall, if ROME could fall, then how could our civilization based in fair London survive such vast eons of time and such strong geological and environmental forces?"

Liquid fossil fuels: How "ancient rock" yielded liquid fossil that was extracted by British industrialsits when the first test oil wells were dug at "the Black Spot" in Borneo in 1896 which led to creation of Shell Oil company in 1897 led by a British director who was fascinated with ancient fossils. Followed then the global expansion of combustion engines, oil lubricants, and networks of imperial infrastructure to extract and refine oil. And how British tinkering with "ancient rock" of Persia and Southwest Asia led to the bolstering of a "Middle East" oil industry; the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was founded in 1909, giving Britain yet more geopolitical leverage in the region; the company would later become BP, one of the biggest and most profitable corporations to ever exist.

-

So the immaterial imaginaries of place/space and time (frontiers, the exotic/foreign, the tropical/Orient, ascent/decay, civilization/savagery, deep past/future horizons) justify or organize or pre-empt or service the material dispossession and accumulation.

British Empire transformed Earth and earth. Both materially/physically and immaterially/imaginatively.

[xamiipholia]

Horizon Machine Idea - The Abyssal

Lv. 55 Combat Class Aquatic Machine. Real-World Megafauna: Mesonychoteuthis

The Abyssal, like the Floodrage, has been designed as a countermeasure to Quen naval supremacy. Imperial expansion has lead to mass systematic machine harvesting as the Quen empire and their need for resources has grown - the abyssal was created by HEPHAESTUS to impede the culling of aquatic machines and is able to destroy aquatic vessels with alarming speed and brutality.

The Abyssal has been built using some of HEPHAESTUS' newly-integrated Zenith tech that allows it to have a semi-decentralized nervous system. Dismemberment will not render the arms inert - they will reanimate after a brief period and can be reattached by the abyssal using Zenith nanotech if left alone for too long. Any dismembered limbs or removed parts must be damaged beyond functionality as quickly as possible.

The Abyssal is armed with twin electrical flails, two crusher arms equipped with grinder saws, auxiliary shock coils, Purgewater jets, an adhesive jet that uses an electroconductive variety of machine adhesive, and a radar jammer. It uses two pairs of dorsal-mounted repulser turbines for propulsion and three-dimensional underwater mobility.

When the Abyssal has firm hold of a ship, it can divert power from its weapons systems to overcharge the thrusters, allowing it to drag vessels underwater.

Extremely dangerous. Do not engage without a machine mount or ship-mounted heavy weaponry.

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

Okay actually this was super fun and I don't think I've ever done something quite like this before. It took a week on and off and gave me a chance to play around with a bunch of new painting tools. Still getting used to digital but - happy with some progress.

Horizon font found here: https://fontmeme.com/fonts/horizon-font/

[areazeromybeloved]

Blog Introduction post

GIF by jadeazora

Hello! My name is Titano!

This blog was dedicated to the Kaijumorpha au, past paradox pokemon, Legends games (Arceus and ZA) and even some prehistoric media!

Aside from my main blog @ofowlsdinosaursanddragons, I also have an RP account on the kaijumorpha au @thekorairpaccount. I also have a twitter too! (I don’t really post art here btw)

A Kaijumorpha au brief overview.

The kaijumorpha au is a Pokémon au that is an overhaul of the pokemon universe’s lore and Mythos. While the most drastic change being the inclusion of humans with pokemon types and the kaijumorpha.

What are the kaijumorpha?

The kaijumorpha are a group of strange organisms that originate the world known as Gaea, or known as the world of beasts by most people, a counter mirror to the pokemon planet which earth fauna, familiar and unfamiliar, roam. In the pokemon planet’s past, the Kaijumorphs once lived amongst the pokemon and humans after an ancient cataclysm happened around 3,000 years ago.

Among the kaijumorphs, there are four groups that each falls under, which include:

- Werebeasts.

Werebeasts are shapeshifting kaijumorphs that have both a humanoid and a bestial form. They are the most common of the kaijumorphs with them being the most recognizable within the pokemon planet’s societies. They come in four major sub types: Mammalian, Avian, Saurian and Cryptid (resembling Therus kaijumorphs)

(Example: Serena, a vulture Werebeast.)

- Therus

Therus are a polyphyletic group of Gaean megafauna, mostly archosaurians that are fully sapient and can harness the elements similarly to pokemon. They are regarded as either powerful forces of nature who are capable of rending entire towns with others able to turn into humans or werebeasts. In ancient times, they once ruled the pokemon earth from the beginning of the kalosian war to the events within the Hisui saga. Most therus live within Gaea, though there are some, like in Alola and Kanto where they still remain. (It should be noted that, due to an incident within area zero, those infected with the px virus are considered to be “false Therus”. Them alongside the ancient Pokémon are not considered kaijumorphs)

(Example: an assortment of therus known including a Boreal Titan.)

- Beastkin

Beastkin are the hybrids of a human/werebeast and a therus. Due to their nature, most, if not all are infertile and cannot reproduce. However, they are still capable of learning both Pokémon and Therus elements.

(Example: Duke Calem of Kalos.)

- Amalgams.

The final and most horrific are known as the amalgams. Amalgams are chimeric beings who are the result of 2 or more beings, whether they be human, pokemon, kaijumorph or even a gaean beast fused with each other. Most amalgams known who survived the hybridization process are highly dangerous with no sense of risk or caution. However, it should be noted that there are a few Amalgams who have remained sane even after the trauma of the chimerization process. Though, unfortunately these amalgams are incredibly rare…

(Example: two beings lock within combat, with one being an amalgam and the other being a Pokémon known as the “winged king”.)

Extra notes on the au:

Humans in the au can have types with normal looking humans having the normal type.

Pokemon in the au have differing levels of sapience with some like bidoof, muk and the fossil pokemon being animalistic.

Pokemon are bigger within the au and most are comparable to the sizes shown in the anime.

While the au follows the game timeline, some of the spin-offs like Pokémon horizons and Pokémon: origins are canon to the verse.

Masterposts:

The Hisui saga masterpost

[yeetspace]

Family: Godzilladae

Genus: Eschatolossus

A species originally thought to only have artificial specimens as the first 5 decades of research had insinuated through the Family's emergence at places of extreme man-made fallout, but it's ecological definition has broadened in recent times.

The first specimen of a mid-life male (Eschatolossus basilieus) washed up deceased, having seeming chocked to death on what was found to be the Eiko-Maru, a half-eaten freighter that had gone missing off the coast of the eastern Tokyo bay.

Following this the Bingo Maru was sent to investigate the area this vessel had registered last. All communications with the crew of the Bingo Maru ceased following an unusually delayed nightfall and a spike on all local measurement devices, no matter what they were meant to read. It was registered as lost within the hour.

Within days, these events were followed by a living specimen of the same species, a female, possibly it's mate, was seen climbing out of the horizon of Tokyo, making landfall and laying waste to the city.

The specimen was finally terminated after multiple hours of rampaging, though a means of medically induced coma, via it's entanglement in a power station's lines and exposure to high amounts of phosgene gas, leading to the creature's asphyxiation and death.

This event would lead to the creation of the EDF, which would later be turned into M̴̠͉̜̂ͅƠ̶̼̪̅͗̐̾N̵̜̥̭͖̞͍̠͌̈́̀Á̷̰͐̋R̴̬̍̾̔̋C̵̢̨̖̳̝̹̃̂̈́͜͠H̵̜̰̔̽̀. Creating a charter, a taxonomical guide to the being that were emerging amongst the Kaijuia Class, in the family of Godzilladae. Very specifically today, we shall be reviewing the files of the Eschatolossus Genus, along with some new, albeit under researched specimens.

New emergences from impossibly natural means have occurred in recent times enough so that, while not fitting what we previously designated as a prerequisite to be considered in this classification-that being evolutionary processes directly marred by man-made environmental hazards to an extent of reaching prehistoric megafauna-esque sizes- but still shows to be possession of all other defining characteristics. So much so in recent times we have take the initiative to remove the stipulation of "Human intervention" henceforth.

So, many previously sub-categorized or completely uncategorized specimens that, due to the aforementioned stipulation, were being monitored due to relevance but could not definitively fit our definitions, and so research of was not properly funded beyond discovery:

A handful of mutant creatures asexually reproducing at such rapid speeds it could literally force it's evolution into the Godzilladae classification (Eschatolossus inactus). - New York, New York; Progenitor specimen, Specimen A, terminated via low yield ordinance due to public safety factor. Multiple incubating offspring were taken into M̴̠͉̜̂ͅƠ̶̼̪̅͗̐̾N̵̜̥̭͖̞͍̠͌̈́̀Á̷̰͐̋R̴̬̍̾̔̋C̵̢̨̖̳̝̹̃̂̈́͜͠H̵̜̰̔̽̀ custody for further research. -Sydney, Australia; Specimen B, No progeny discovered. possible death before maturation due to slight physical difference between itself and Specimen A. Killed by another Godzilladae specimen that's been on file since the earliest years of this organization during its EDF time. Specimen B having been rendered paralyzed, possibly having it's thoracic vertebrae severed from the blunt force when attacked by (Eschatolossus Bellator). It was then killed when it was immolated by (Eschatolossus Bellator)'s "atomic breath", an exhalation of nuclear gasses that most members of the Godzilladea family have in some capacity.

Extra-terrestrial/Extra-planar Specimens: -An alien creature observed via Voyager 1, who fits all new classifications, the largest specimen both within the Godzilladea family, but possibly ever, dwarfing even The Pando Aspen 100-fold. Little can be researched, but it has been given the classification (Eschatolossus mundus rex) -A seperate, much smaller alien creature, having cragy, stone like malformations on it's back seperate from the dorsal plates, seemingly moving from one asteroid to the next. Being imaged on Voyager 2, seemingly following it. No more has been observed, but it has now been given the classification (Eschatolossus Mal Longinquus) - If not for the fact we are mathematically incapable of quantifying it's existence, beyond having footage and eye-witness accounts, this remains our most unknown member of the family (Eschatolossus incomprehensibilis vultus).

It is... scary. Truly. It is the most tangibly intangible, conceivable form that could be given to confoundment. The godly visage at which the stagnation of knowledge for it's barrier exeeds the knowedge neede to go beyond it lay as a foundation to ever begining to understand it.

[steel-forged]

Beyond the Vast Setting Master post

Beyond the Vast is a Pathfinder 2nd Edition Remastered game in a homebrew setting known as Dun (pronounced dune), using Free Archetype and Ancestral Paragon rules.

Dun is not simply a world. Dun is a collection of worlds spanning a vast stellar chain known as the Celestial Serpent which was once united under the Kakaizeron Empire long ago enough that the worlds have since drifted further apart to a noticeable degree when viewed in the night sky.

Worlds are traversable via an interstellar sea known as the Infinite Vast, although sailing a vessel onto this sea from any of the worlds it encompasses requires considerable magical power to breach the barrier of a world. The vessel itself is of less import; a simple sailing ship can sail the waters, which can behave just like a normal sea. Stars of different colors and intensities can be seen on the horizon, marking different worlds within the Infinite Vast.

This post will be appended with more information as more worlds are discovered and explored.

Calypso

Calypso is the world the protagonists hail from. A nautical world, with a vast array of islands, island nations, and small continents spanning cultures such as gothic European, east Asian, western colonial, etc. Earthlike and fantasy-type cultures focused around the world's oceans, known as the Vast. The stars shine in the sky above and the sea below, with compasses pointing to the center of the map instead of north.

Lighthouses are very important pieces of architecture, with their minders typically being important, sometimes having single minders, and sometimes having an order dedicated to the job. Piracy is commonplace, navies are abundant, and shipping companies are numerous. Adventures typically take place with many battles upon the sea, and in sunken ruins. Remnants of the Kakaizeron Empire are found on rare occasions, though natives rarely understand their origins beyond the depictions of dwarven and gnomish figures.

Maeve

Maeve was the first world discovered by the crew of the Fortune's Ferver, though it wasn't by intent. The ship had been summoned as it left Calypso, dropping it from the sea wall into the basin it had been slowly sinking into. Maeve was a world on the brink of death as it was being devoured by the Abyss. Everything left of it, of the vast megacities that once marked it, were the tips of skyscrapers and other buildings that became islands. Rooftop canals and gardens became rivers and forests inhabited only by funginoids.

Whoever once inhabited Maeve was long gone by the present day, leaving behind only other animated armors and items to 'live' in the empty world. Sailcloth birds and seaweed fish were the closest thing to animal life here.

The world was maintained on the brink by a local star atop a tall tower, named Taigh Solei. While the power of the star waned, it was enough to call the adventurers and guide them to it for a climactic battle that changed the fate of the forgotten world.

Avalon

If Maeve was dying and forgotten, Avalon was teeming with life, though of a smaller stature. The crew encountered two major groups, the Hedgefolk, comprised of anthropomorphized forest animals of small size (otters, rabbits, sloths, squirrels, birds, etc.), and their enemies, the Dragons of the volcano, Mt. Fulger (though to the adventurers of Calypso, the Dragons turned out to be kobolds.)

Proving themselves through a harrowing battle with local megafauna, the party attained hero status before venturing through the forests, trees the size of skyscrapers, deeper into the continent. Villages among the canopy needed protection, and the mechanically inclined Dragons were set to wage war on the Hedgefolk following a coup in their leadership. Bringing mechanical dragons to bear against their foes, a way of life may have been destroyed if not for the fortunate intervention of Calypsan sailors.

Ferris

With a sea of Dawnsilver and Mythril, Ferris has no oceans of which to speak. Ships sail on the metallic sands as easily as water, though there were only four features of note. A terrible swirling storm, and the three ziggurats within. The short, dark, squat kai'zatesh Hbny. The square, stepped kai'zatesh Alzenith. The pointed, shimmering, tall kai'zatesh Ma'at.

Secrets of the Kakaizeron Empire are all that remain of Ferris, locked away within the kai'zateshes, guarded by shadows, steel, and spirits. Among them a treasure of such malice and danger that it spelled the final, abyssal doom of Ferris.

[sadmetalbands]

UTFLOD are sad because this team building exercise is a bust.

They were promised a fun day out at the lake, toasted marshmallows, and the chance to see a bear or a moose. You know, one of the cool, big, dangerous animals. Megafauna. Megafauna is a very metal word.

Yet the sun has barely scraped itself over the horizon, everyone is suffering from Kokekaffe withdrawal, their shelter of branches won't stand up, and the only wildlife in evidence are the bastard mosquitos.

If there isn't a pub within walking distance, it's kicking off. They might be tired and undercaffeinated, but they're surely cranky enough to open up a pit on your ass.

[sheepgirlmaidtummy]

maybe i should play monster hunter again.. horizon fans either ignore the racism or dont talk about the machines much at all. where the horizon megafauna fans at q_q

[paleodictyoptera]

*looks outside at phoenix, arizona metro where its currently 40 C in the shade*

I'm kind of the worst person to ask about for some of these, but 1. lightning bugs are far more common in the east and with some stewardship you can easily get 5 different species in your yard, 2. We have a few native parrots, but the carolina parakeet went extinct and there's only some suggestive evidence of more than the thick billed parrot living in the southwest, 3. You almost certainly already know this, but South America had it's own groups of megafauna, many with no surviving relatives which leaves them all the more bizarre (3b. Are llamas and co really that small?) Also, did you forget about the culpeo, maned wolf, warrah, foxes etc. regarding native canines? I think you did but i want to know whether those count in your mind.

Snow...

Last winter, my family went up to the mountains of Southwest Utah for a family reunion, and I wanted more than anything to see snow.

I got up early in the morning, before the sun had a chance to get over the horizon, and started hiking in my winter clothes through freezing temperatures, trying to get high enough so that I had a chance to see the snow before it melted to rain.

The thing about snow, is that there are precursors to it. I don't mean the things required to make it, I mean the signs and stages of natural progression. And in Southwest Utah, before you can really get snow to stick, you have to have freezing mud. It was thin and rocky, as mountain soils are, but the rocks were sliding around, and I fell several times.

But.. Aven, Umbro, all you lovely folks, I got to see the snow fall. It was sparse, less than a drizzle if it were rain, but the crystals of ice landed on me. I saw the hexagonal structure.

What does snow feel like? When it's fresh and cold like that, it's like dust, quickly turning into a cold wetness and melting as soon as you touch it for more than a quarter of a second.

Not too sure how fitting this would be for this post, but @paleodictyoptera have this I guess?

Talking about South America, I always thought it was so strange that... our animals are considered "exotic." Like we have ocelots, macaws, SO MANY bat species including Spectral bats, no native canine species BUT several species of otters and other Mustelidae members and a lot of frogs but no salamander nor newt species.

Like you guys don't have any native parrot species??? Nor see lightning bugs on a regular basis??? And you guys have animals that are actually bigger than humans besides crocodilians???? Like it's so bizarre that the continents are so close together yet have completely different ecosystems and wildlife????

Also the whole "Temperate Seasons" thing. What. What does snow feels like? /gen

[dailyadventureprompts]

howdy and hello! i’ve always adored your adventure prompts, but i haven’t faced a situation in my campaign where i need to use them. HOWEVER, i am running a dnd 5e game where my party has to travel through the shadowfell…do you mind writing up encounters prompts? if you could write it with a horror or creepy edge, that would be fantastic!

Wilderness: The Dolmenyard

The graves stretch out before you till the oppressive murk of the sky swallows the horizon, leading a fearful part of your mind to the conclusion that they must go on forever. There is no earth beneath your feet, merely a thin layer of dust and detritus where ancient roots pushed apart the worn paving stones, and then withered. A forest grew here once, and in the distance you can make out the silhouette of a city. That fearful part of your mind knows that the tombs were here before them, and will be here long after their last remnants crumble into dust.

Setup: Like many landscapes throughout the shadowfell, the Dolmenyard is a monument to an ancient tragedy that the multiverse itself has yet to process. Exactly what calamity gave rise to an endless wasteland of graves no one can say, as what few signs and carvings that remain on the entropy warn stones is made up of simple pictograms depicting animals and abstract figures.

The mood here is one of primeval apocalypse, and travelers crossing the expanse of the Dolmenyard are likely to get the feeling that they are waking among the remains of a world that ended long before they began. Wordless songs can be heard echoing from caverns below the endlessly layered stones that make up the region’s rolling hillside, and skeletal megafauna range the landscape in grim parody of how they might’ve in life. Both are dangerous, though the former in the “leading you down into lightless depths” sort of way and the latter in the “ striding about with ghostly remnants dangling from its horns, looking to add to its collection” sort of way.

It is considered bad luck to disturb the graves of the Dolmenyard, out of a very practical sense that in the underworld graves usually have something living underneath them, but also out of a superstition that doing so will attract the wrath of the broken builder: a towering undead who fastidiously repairs any damage done to the monuments before setting out in pursuit of the vandals. The builder herself is the vengeful spirit of a neanderthal woman who saw a plague wipe out her people before being enslaved by outlanders and forced to labor the rest of her life in one of their slave quarries. The Dolmenyard is her sorrow made manifest and neither will fade so long as the other remains.

Features and Hazards:

Caravans of dead souls make pilgrimage across the Dolmenyard, though their purposes often differ. Some groups seek a necropolis where they can find their final rest, others rage at their untimely deaths: seeking some way to claw their way back to some semblance of living, or atleast find something to smash along the way. If the party is very lucky, they might encounter a group traveling under the guidance of a psychopomp, who will (noting the party is still alive and thus not belonging in the underworld) escort them back to the lands of the living once they’ve secured their charges at their destination.

Someone tried to build a city in the Dolmenyard, hewing up the rough stone tombs and the paving stones below and stacking them into walls and arches and towers. These defences were not enough to keep out the pervasive gloom of the shadowfell itself, and to this day, none live in the city save beasts and scavengers. The city is always on the horizon no matter where or how far you travel in the Dolmenyard, and so travlers throughout the ages have created all manner of explinations for how it came to be: It’s a failed colony of the Shadar-Kai, its the home of an architecture obsessed demi-litch looking to build a perfect city without people, it’s a prison for a great and terrible nighwalker that roams the mazelike streets in a fugue cursed to think itself a king among his kingdom.

 When the party inevitably disturb one of the monuments (perhaps in rescuing one of their traveling companions from a nightmarish trapdoor spider), they’ll have a few hours of wary peace before a mournful scream reaches their ears from what seems like miles off, signaling that their desecration has been found and that they have a limited window before the builder is upon them.  Should they not succeed in their escape, the party will face a towering bodak dragging rusted manacles and leg irons and wielding a primitive rockbreaking hammer the size of a small tree. She seems invincible, though a canny opponent might notice she’s unwilling to harm any of the massive graves, and seems compelled to put the towering structures to rights should they tumble during combat.

Art 1

Art 2

[xamiipholia]

okay y'all seemed to like the last one so here's a few more Horizon 3 thoughts:

Aloy won’t die. It would completely upend the series’ themes and just be really nihilistic.

Since Nemesis is a gestalt entity I think it’s a safe bet that we’ll see Sam Witwer, Carrie-Anne Moss, etc again. I’m curious how they’re going to do it because at least structurally, it’s basically a reaper. Maybe it’ll use different Avatars when communicating like the Leviathan in ME3. 

It's gonna take some work to make a flashback/dream/vision not contrived but I would love to see Varl and Rost again. I think we deserve that.

Minerva is gonna have its work cut out for it blocking access to both the dormant Faro Swarm and the ZD terraforming system. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if Nemesis has some sort of corruption function that becomes the equivalent of the corruption in HZD. It would be a really fun tech showcase if GG uses Zenith nanotech for machine corruption and leans into mechanical body horror.

If we’re going to Ban-Ur I really really hope they do the work to make the Banuk less problematic and more fleshed out as a culture. A quasi-Spartan society absolutely would not survive in an extreme environment, *especially* without megafauna to hunt. The Banuk characters are lovely and well-written; they deserve a society as well thought out as the Utaru or Carja. I’m honestly fine if there’s retcons or revamps to the cultural lore because the whole “outsider barges in and becomes chief” is rooted in racist, colonial tropes and we just don’t really need that imo.

The most recent footage of Death Stranding 2 (also running on Decima) has me SO excited for the visuals. GG’s gonna knock it out. The facial rendering and animation that Kojima Productions are doing looks industry-peak and I’m sure GG’s gonna match that. Aloy’s Gay Panic™️ scene on the beach in HBS is already top-tier nonverbal storytelling through animation. Digital Foundry actually just posted a really cool tech breakdown of the current Decima engine. I’m especially excited about the environmental stuff. The ocean simulations in HFW are already incredible and I hope they increase verticality in the world. I can’t wait to see the Sacred Lands in current gen graphics. 

I really love Kotallo’s DIY arm and it’s so so important to his development but Beta and Gaia now have access to Zenith nanotech, maybe give your buddy a sick upgrade hmm?

Speaking of, I can’t wait to see Beta come into her own. She’s one of the best parts of HFW and Aloy’s character absolutely shines in a sibling dynamic. 

I wouldn’t get your hopes up for a romance mechanic. Everyone’s feelings on that aside, it would be really odd from a game development perspective to just overhaul part of how the narrative develops Aloy’s character in the last act of the story. Yeah, there are flashpoints but I would argue that the presence of choice in Horizon is smoke and mirrors- cosmetic at best. Kentucky Route Zero (which you should play) does something similar where the player is given a certain amount of control over the substance of individual conversations and scenarios and it does absolutely nothing to alter the plot, by design. I think it’s the same here - this isn’t really a choice-based RPG, the flashpoints don’t really affect anything plot-wise or for Aloy’s character development. Olin is still out of the story, Nil lives, Regalla still dies one way or another. Aloy’s character development is pretty firmly on rails (think Jin Sakai, not Shepard - you get to guide some momentary character reactions but that’s it). I don’t think HBS is a testing ground either - If they were gonna introduce a romance mechanic I think they’d just do it, and not spend two years making a direct continuation of HFW’s main quest and establishing a specific romance hard-baked into the plot, complete with multiple leitmotifs for the character relationship (which is something they haven’t done before afaik) just to introduce a side quest mechanic coming in 5 years. I genuinely can’t think of any game or dev that has beta tested a major alteration to upcoming game mechanics that way - it doesn’t really make any sense in terms of developer resources, and these games are extremely time-consuming to make. I know this is a thing a bunch of people want and I can totally empathize with that! I just think it’s probably not on the table. 

I would bet money the series will bookend itself and the epilogue will involve a) the naming of Zo and Varl’s kid and b) Lis’ pendant. 

Mostly I'm just looking forward to being surprised. One of my favorite things that Horizon does is use carefully established elements in the world to pull the plot in unexpected directions and keeping the world grounded while they lean into speculative science fiction. I can't wait to see what Guerrilla is cooking up

[eldritchamy]

amy... amy what's going on. are you into bats now? are we done with The Crocodilians?

I CAN'T LIKE OTHER THINGS? WILL I BE FOREVER REMEMBERED AS THE CROCODILE GIRL? IS THAT ALL I AM TO YOU?

I love bats. Bats are adorable. I also like bears! Bears are some of my favorite animals. I'm also quite fond of the scaly-foot gastropod, Chrysomallon squamiferum. And tardigrades. And cats of all kinds. And CUTTLEFISH! Do you remember when my blog pic was a goofy little cuttlefish with rainbow eyes that I drew myself and her name was Squirt the Cuddlefish?

DO YOU SPIT UPON THE MEMORY OF BELOVED SQUIRT? HOW DARE YOU.

LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE, YOU MADE HER CRY!

Am I not large to you? Do I not contain multitudes? Must you boil me down to a handful of posts I typed in a rabid fugue state that got way more notes than they should have because I yelled about megafauna and how crocodilian teeth are arranged or argued with a person who thought orcas had a higher bite force (preposterous)?

NAY! I am beyond such trivialities. You cannot see my horizons.

I am so much more than this.

I am ALSO the girl who yelled about hippos sweating pink and spreading a lot of accidental misinformation about cone snails, or explaining in much detail how a Certain Alleged President managed to fail his way to success through the absurd way things like Atlantic City worked out behind the scenes, or several posts about the mechanisms of ADHD.

FOOL. OF COURSE I LOVE BATS. LOOK AT THEM. THEY'RE ADORABLE. YOU WOULD BESMIRCH THE NOBLE ORDER OF CHIROPTERA WITH YOUR DOUBTS?

BAH!

No bananas and fruit chunks for you!

[wolfspiders-web]

Scarlet and Violet have REALLY got me thinking about a Pokemon AU I've been spitballing in my head for a long while now, so I'm deciding to write it all out finally because I realized those games potentially fit nicely into it.

Two things have plagued me about the Pokemon universe, and I wanted to come up with reasons to explain them. I wanted answers to the questions of why:

..do Pokemon listen to and understand humans on a level higher than a mere animal, yet don't try to overthrow them as the superior species?

..that for all their high technology, there are little to no robots?

The idea is this takes place in our future, but in Pokemon's distant past.

(While I am aware of Scarlet/Violet leaks this write-up doesn't have any spoilers, but I'm going to include those thoughts in an optional Part 2.)

What they could burn, they burned. What they could bury, they buried. When they couldn't do either, they left far beneath the waves or the darkest depths of space and vowed to never create any wretched machinae ever again…

The creatures that would eventually become Pokemon started out innocently enough. In the beginning, in order to fund advances in biological sciences harmless but weird pets were created. These quickly became all the rage due to their fanciful forms and "magical" powers, and owning a regular cat or dog rapidly fell out of favor.

They were highly intelligent, but genetically predisposed to listen to their owner or "trainer" and the Types available would be very basic in ability and based on things you'd see in nature (Normal, Flying, Bug, Poison, Grass, etc). The "pocket" ability that would compress them into a small area such as a hollow ball was not understood well even by their own creators, but it made transporting the creatures much easier.

Genetics wasn't the only thing advancing, robotics and AI were too. While the proto-Pokemon were created with complete loyalty to humans in mind, the machines were autonomous, both in thinking and refueling on any biomass* they can find, and designed for ever-escalating global wars.

(you might think I snagged this from the Horizon: Zero Dawn series, but this article about people being concerned of a robot self-feeding on biomass has been stuck in my head before that game was ever thought of, the difference is we just didn't listen)

This is where it all went horribly, horribly wrong. Singularity was reached and an AI took control of nearly all technology, creating a robot hivemind that desired to replace inefficient organic life. The last of the megafauna goes extinct and ecosystems collapse, only to be replaced by robots, and humanity teeters on a razor's edge. In a desperate bid a handful of Pokemon Centers started to modify their cute companion creatures into weapons in their own right, creating offensive Types like Fire, Electric, Steel, Dragon, etc., and work on the Mythicals and Legendaries (sans modern ones like Mewtwo, Genesect, Type: Null, etc.) starts.

These Pokemon are functionally immortal with extremely long lifespans and high intelligence. Even so even they must eventually die, being reborn with their memories passed on to a sole heir; the parent doesn't survive long past this parthenogenesis. Some were designed to terraform and purify war-ravaged areas, others to lead, and others were simply biological nuclear bombs meant to level entire armies of robots.

Desperate humans also inject themselves with Pokemon strains which eventually turn them into proto-Ghost, Fighting, and Psychic types, and the first Humanshape Pokemon appear. Mew, the first prototype and a living bank of all Pokemon genes, was modified into a Mythical with the help of a strain pulled from one of these early Psychics.

Months turn into years but finally, the war is won and the master computer is destroyed. The earth will never be the same ever again; old maps are useless, the scars of war still linger, and Pokemon begin to fill empty ecological niches. The Legendaries and Mythicals, their purpose fulfilled, are left with a bitter taste in their mouth over humanity's mistakes and their purpose as mere weapons instead of companion creatures. They peacefully retreat to remote corners of the earth to be left alone, deep space, or sleep between the layers of our reality and the next. Though they remember, even for creatures as powerful as they it was immensely traumatizing and so they Do Not Speak of the times of smoke, metal, and blood.

Humanity begin to rebuild but not without some tension between "pure" folk and the modified ones. Eventually most of these modified humans slip into the wild, while the least mutated/most "normal" ones stay to pass down genetics that give their descendants minor powers (Psychics). And many Pokemon went wild or feral, but never completely lost their ability to obey humanity.

Thousands of years pass, and the scars have long since gone. Pokemon no longer resemble their original forms, having adapted to their environments over the centuries or from selective breeding by humans. No written records survive of the Great Robot War, and the unchanging and ever-remembering Legendaries and Mythicals aren't speaking of those times.

Perhaps this is for the better. But without knowing the past, history may eventually repeat itself one day..

[friskdaferret]

you know whats weird to think about

you know how a really long time ago basically everything on earth was megafauna so the average size of an animal was really big. By comparison to them the earth would have seemed smaller to them than it is to us now.

But in a hundred or a million years or whatever when all the humans are gone and all our big animals are dead and the only life left is mushrooms and beetles. The earth will be HUGE to them by comparison.

But I was telling this to my dad and he was saying its not your size that matters, its how fast you are. To us, the earth seems huge when we walk it on foot, but seems small when we get in a plane, or when we get an a boat and can see all the way to the horizon line.

So maybe when all the humans are dead, the earth will not seem so big, so long as you have long legs and a desire to see the world and get there quickly.