#no way to seaway

[ognimdo2002]

Brontosaurus yahnahpin/Apatosaurus yahnahpin – Thundering Deceptive Skytower

Brontosaurus is the extinct genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in present-day United States during the Late Jurassic period. The third species of Brontosaurus is Brontosaurus yahnahpin (yahnahpin-wearing deceptive lizard), and it was described by American paleontologists James Filla and Pat Redman in 1994.

[tomsmusictaste]

Seaway // Turn Me Away

[serpentface]

Come On Man.

(Extensive linguistic notes for this 'balls in my mouth' comic under the cut)

The extensive linguistic notes for this "balls in my mouth" comic:

Brakul's first language is the West Rivers dialect of the broader Highlands language, which is part of the Finnic language family. It first split from the Proto-Finnic spoken north of the Viper about a millennia ago with migrants traveling south overseas, and further split into what are now the two native Finnic language groups in Wardin (the Highlands and North Wardi tongues). The Highlands language is a dialect continuum- most neighboring dialects are mutually intelligible, but people from opposite ends of the language's home region would have troubles communicating clearly (though the continuum is not wide enough for any to be fully incomprehensible).

Brakul knew some very, very basic Wardi from occasional contact with Ephenni traders as a teenager, and would later become fluent in the South Wardi dialect as a second language. Wardi is from a wholly separate language family than the Finnic languages with EXTREMELY distant common ancestry, and very different in form and function. Wardi is in many ways less specified and direct, having a smaller variety of individual words to communicate emotional/sensory states and instead imparting many layers of meaning to the same words in different contexts, which Brakul sometimes finds difficult and irritating to navigate. This is one of a number of reasons he often expresses himself more fully in his mother tongue.

Janeys is a native Wardi speaker (South Wardi dialect), fluent in 'Seaway Burri' (which is a lingua franca of the Mouth sea powers, many people along the coastal cities know it as a second language), and semi-fluent in 'High Burri' (state language of the Burri Republic), and in the present day has a modest comprehension of the West Rivers Highlands dialect. This takes place 4.5 years after he and Brakul met, and he mostly just knows basic utilitarian conversational terms and parts of speech, and has a decent understanding of the grammar and how to conjugate verbs. After 13 years of exposure to Brakul talking at him and occasionally deigning to explain what he's saying, Janeys can Sort Of hold a conversation.

---

NOTES ON THE POST ITSELF:

I = Sí

My= Sig

You= Mí (casual) Mís (formal)

---

Mí vírim is “I love you”.

The unconjugated form of the verb is vírir. The dead literal translation is “to need”, but "mí vírim" translates more accurately as "I love you" than "I need you". It DOES have connotations of need, it expresses love as a sense of wholeness and natural dependency- you say it to express affection towards someone to whom you owe your existence, to a line of ancestors, to your descendants, to the people you create or provide for your descendants with. It says "you are part of my sense of place in this world, you connect me to something greater than myself that sustains me". It will mostly be spoken between immediate kin (parents, children, siblings), husbands and wives, and in practice of venerating your ancestors. This is a gay as fuck thing to say to an unrelated man.

There's at least three other ways to directly say "I love ___" one of which is an affectionate expression of camaraderie, one of which communicates strong aesthetic appreciation, and one that is used in practice specifically to express affection/gratitude towards livestock (though can be used more broadly).

Janeys comprehends the phrase "Mí vírim" as “(I) [UNKNOWN VERB] you” and he's able to discern from Subtle Context Clues that it's something like 'I love you'.

He guesses the unconjugated verb inaccurately as (v)írer, as -Er and -Ur verb endings are more common than -Ir endings, and -Er/-Ir verbs share all the same conjugated forms.

Wardi languages have no ‘v’ sound to begin with, and the ‘v’ here is very soft, between a ‘vuh’ and ‘fuh’. This doesn’t come naturally to Janeys (or most Wardi speakers in general) and comes out as a 'wuh' on first impulse and a hard ‘fuh’ when he tries to replicate it.

This is something he never gets good at and Brakul is grateful that it’s his brother who was named ‘Vrailedh’ (Vrai-lehd-hh)) and not him so he doesn’t have to hear ‘Wrai-lehd’ or ‘Frai-lehd’ all the damn time by his Wardi compatriots. (Many of them don't even get his actual name right, but it's a lesser sin of not rolling the R and under-emphasizing the -ul)

---

"Sí brūlmim fágh filshíbe" is “I am very gullible”. The use here is not particularly cruel and is more just that his first impulse upon realizing Janeys will repeat anything he says right now is to make a "someone wrote gullible on the ceiling" level joke at his expense.

Fágh is a word used to emphasize an adjective and some nouns, functionally close to 'very' but used specifically for non-physical/non-sensory qualities (emotion, personality, etc). You could use fágh in the sentence “I’m so sorry” "he's such an asshole".

Brūlmim is "I am" in present tense. The unconjugated form is brūlmur, meaning 'to be' in a permanent sense, as a matter of nature. Other verbs are used for ‘to be’ in a purely transitory sense (“I am tired”) or describing a prolonged but impermanent state, usually past tense (“I was a stupid teenager”).

Filshíbe straightforwardly means 'gullible'.

The 'h' at the end of fágh is vocalized as an exhale, sounds a little like 'fog-uh' with a VERY soft and breathy 'uh'. The '-e' at the end filshíbe is also exhaled, coming out as a quick, soft 'eh'. Neither of these sounds are natural to a Wardi speaker (especially the breathy 'eh', most -e ending words are pronounced with a strong '-ey').

Janeys is comprehending “I’m (very/so) [UNKNOWN WORD]” here, and his face is being touched so softly so [UNKNOWN WORD] is very compelling and he's learning new things and is kind of in the zone so might as well say it back.

---

"Mísig uns drótes vísti sig bahrég, s'vaige do mi?" means "Your balls in my mouth, please?". What makes the sentence Particularly funny to Brakul here is that it's Excessively polite (using a formal and deferential 'your' and very gracious 'please') and jarringly accompanied with lowbrow slang for testicles. A more tonally accurate english translation would be "Sir, may I please perchance take your fat fucking sack in my mouth?"

Mísig means 'your', but specifically implies deference- it's a word you would use to address an elder or authority figure, or to use while being very, very polite. (Mís is the equivalent deferential 'you').

Uns drótes is one of several slang terms for testicles. This one uses the word 'boulders', and is thus Specifically implying 'big balls'. It's lowbrow and a very mild expletive (in the same degree 'ass' is in English).

Vísti means 'in' or 'inside', as a physical state of something being inside of another thing- you would use it for 'there's a bird in that cage' but not 'there's fear in my heart'.

Bahrég means 'mouth', which is almost always used in the purely anatomical sense. The other word for 'mouth' in the language more commonly refers to the mouths of animals (might be better translated as 'maw') and also gets applied to non-anatomical objects (ie 'the mouth of the cave').

S'vaige do mi means 'thank you' (dead literally 'my gratitude to you', the S in S'vaige is a contracted sig/'my') but is translated here as 'please' for clarity. There isn't actually a word that directly correlates to 'please' in the Highlands language, a polite request is accompanied with a 'thank you' instead (IE: "Could you pass the salt, thank you?"). This is one of two direct ways to say 'thank you' and this is the more intensely polite of the two.

Janeys will have understood this sentence as "(polite 'Your') [UNKNOWN WORD] (in? inside? within?) my [UNKNOWN WORD], please." This one throws him off, but he's pretty sure he's about to be kissed on the mouth for the first time in his life so he's willing to go with it.

[judgemark45]

The largest warship to ever transit the Great Lakes. The 8-inch gun Heavy Cruiser USS Macon came through the Seaway in 1959 to officially open the new waterway. She is seen here in the Eisenhower Lock. Note the missing radar antenna, removed in Boston to allow passage through the Seaway 's lift bridges due to her high air draft. The ship had all sorts of problems rubbing bottom and bumping into walls on her way through due to the large size, powerful engines, and the open ocean design of her hull.

[zerogate]

What was almost more remarkable than Paul’s journeys was the breathtaking rise in infrastructure and transport that enabled him to make them: in other words, the roads, grain ships, seaways and highways of the Roman Empire. Read the accounts of Paul’s travels one way, and they are a chronicle of awesome faith; read them another, and they are a chronicle of the even more awesome efficiency of Roman transport networks.

Paul might be famous for those 10,000 miles but, as the historian Wayne Meeks has pointed out, that distance is puny in comparison to the distances that others travelled in this period: the gravestone of a merchant found in Phrygia, in modern Turkey, records that he had travelled seventy-two times to Rome – a trip that is perhaps 2,000 km in either direction.

This is not to say that travel was wholly safe: it wasn’t. People consulted interpreters of dreams about travel anxieties almost more than anything else, and not without cause: as the parable of the Good Samaritan clearly shows, being beaten up and left for dead while on the road was a well-known hazard. But, nonetheless, in this period travel was being revolutionized. Within the empire, Meeks writes, people ‘travelled more extensively and more easily than had anyone before them – or would again until the nineteenth century.’

[...]

Whether or not most Romans paused to think much about it, the scale of the trade that travelled through their empire by land and by sea was staggering. Archaeologists, who have used the number of shipwrecks found at the bottom of the Mediterranean as a guide to the number of ships that once sailed on its surface, suggest it was not until the nineteenth century that Mediterranean trade regained its Roman levels.

Greco-Roman traders gained such detailed knowledge of other lands that they could write authoritative guidebooks on the quality of the water in Indian ports and what sold well there (Italian wine was, apparently, considered a particularly exotic delicacy). International trade with the subcontinent grew so much that Roman writers fretted about the trade deficit that existed between it and Rome. ‘At the very lowest computation, India, the Seres, and the Arabian Peninsula, withdraw from our empire one hundred millions of sesterces every year,’ wrote Pliny, adding, primly, ‘so dearly do we pay for our luxury and our women.’

The number of coins in circulation increased in this period, as did the production of metal. Analysis of the ice caps of Greenland show that air pollution, caused by the smelting of such metals as lead, copper and silver, would not reach Roman levels again until the sixteenth or seventeenth century.

Another measure of the high levels of trade in this era is the amount of ancient packing material that remains – in other words, of Roman pots. Amphorae, which in Roman times were used to transport more or less everything, were produced on a colossal scale. To understand quite how colossal, travel to Rome, walk southwards down the Tiber from the Colosseum, and you will see a mound, patchily covered in grass. This fifty-metre-high hillock – which is known as Monte Testaccio – is made entirely from broken oil amphorae. Inside the mound lie the fragments of an estimated fifty-three million amphorae, in which an estimated six billion litres of oil were imported into Rome.

Not only did people travel far; they also travelled fast. The speed of Roman travel, particularly for the wealthiest, was astonishing. Early in its imperial history, Rome’s emperors had set up the Roman imperial post – probably in imitation of similar systems that had been read about – and envied – in ancient accounts about Persia. This was not a post system as modern minds might imagine it, to be used by everyone, but was for imperial messengers, and its infrastructure duly demonstrated imperial ambition and grandeur: every twenty-four miles or so was a rest station; at each station, forty of the finest, swiftest horses were stabled, along with a proportionate number of grooms. A courier could therefore arrive, switch horses and set off again, and travelling in this way might cover ‘a ten days’ journey in a single day’ – in other words, it is now thought, 160 miles.

As the historian Procopius explained, emperors had set such a system up so that if there was a war, mutiny or any other disaster anywhere in the empire, the news could reach Rome fast – and it seems to have worked. The evidence for this is unusually good, because, while such disasters may have been unpleasant for the emperor experiencing them, they have been splendidly useful to later historians, since imperial deaths and assassinations tend to appear in histories with careful time stamps. They can thus be used to calculate how fast ancient travel could, in extremis, be. And the answer is: very fast indeed. After the death of Nero, for example, a messenger travelled from Rome to Northern Spain (a distance overland of around 1,800 km) in a breathless seven days. Probably that messenger did the bulk of the journey over the sea. Nonetheless, it is very, very fast.

It wasn’t just people who were on the move, either. Head to a fancy Roman dinner party and the supper on your plate could easily be as international as the guests reclining at your side, for, as one satirist put it, the ‘bottomless gullet’ and ‘tireless gluttony’ of Rome was perpetually on ‘eager quest of dainties from all quarters’. A single gourmand might, for their dinner party, source ‘a peacock from Samos, a woodcock from Phrygia, cranes of Media, a kid from Ambracia, a young tunny from Chalcedon, a lamprey from Tartessus, codfish from Pessinus, oysters from Tarentum, cockles from Sicily, a swordfish from Rhodes, pike from Cilicia, nuts from Thasos, dates from Egypt, acorns from Spain...’

-- Catherine Nixey, Heresy

[proflambeovt]

Paleovember 2023, Xiphactinus!

Also known as the X-fish or the Bulldog fish, Xiphactinus swam the Western Interior Seaway during the Late Cretaceous, and  was probably one of the most terrifying fish to ever exist. Not only did it grow up to 20 feet long, it turns out to have an attitude as ugly as it's face; specimens have been found having choked to death on fish way too large for their gullets, and it's likely that their own kind would have been on the menu as well.

[applin-bottom-jeans]

third sweater...

this one had a weird history. i finished the back, then the whole bottom part first because i thought getting the self striping thing for the front to match would be easier to figure out that way, then i realized that when i bound off the bottom that cast on the the wrong number of stitches for my size and i had to frog it, so i did the grey sweater, got back to this one, and now the bind off for the bottom edge is a lil too flarey but by this point i don't care.

Me having no brain aside, this was a nice simple pattern to do. I like how simple it feels and how the cables add a lil somethin. I'd like to make this pattern again in a different color sometime in the future. Pattern is Seaway Pullover by Hailey Smedley.

(There's one more sweater that i have to finish out of the "i listened to the dark side and bought enough yarn for a sweater Multiple Times god i'm never doing this again" from last year/early this year. And then i am done with knitting for a bit...)

[arcalt]

That being said i am actually really hoping they add more unique locales into mhwilds

Because, sure, big desert, giant forest, and secluded island are kind of staples within monster hunter, and they are cool and all, but man. Itd be cool to see something else as well thats a bit more intricate and adds more depth to the battles in some way. Something like ancestral steepe or rotten vale and coral highlands or frozen seaway pretty much

Obligatory: "underwater combat and underwater ruins locale are cool too"

[ognimdo2002]

Brontosaurus excelsus – Thundering Living Skyscraper

Brontosaurus is the extinct genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in present-day United States during the Late Jurassic period. The first and only type species of Brontosaurus is Brontosaurus excelsus, and it was described by American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1879.

[gremlins-hotel]

After driving about 8-9 hours yesterday, man I had some thoughts.

Do you ever look at the names on the billboards and highway signs you pass by? The people of the small blink-and-you-miss towns that in the mind of a driver only seem to serve the purpose of breaking up the monotony of the road. Names that if you were to search them would most likely bring up no results except for an obituary and a grave marker. Who were they to those towns, who were they to their families and the people around them that wrote about them, what made them so beloved so as to rename the streets or have a sign made in their honor?

And as your tires eat away at the miles and the minutes do you ever gaze out at the roadside and wonder how it came to look that way? I can sit and know and tell myself that yes, Texas was once part of the seabed of the Western Interior Seaway, which split North America in two, and that is why we have so much limestone and why our elevation is so low. Why we have the Edwards Aquifer as we were molded into a bed of karst at the tail end of the Great Plains. But what specific current made it so that we were perfectly hilly as you reach the Edwards Plateau? And how goofy must we look as you go from the tall, straight pines and forests of the Eastern Woodlands to the yawning deserts several hours west, having to cross through every biome in between. What winds and rivers and floods and storms shaped my seabed home into the geographical crossroads that it now occupies?

Do you ever think too much on how that influenced the way people lived when they came to live in those places? In all of Texas’ rivers it brings the alluvial floodplains that would later feed crops, then commercial farms as the course of history took. The draws formed by rains and that were used to hunt bison that would also one day break hooves and ankles in the age of the cattle trails. Who knew mesquite had so many uses? And though so many of them lay still and dormant half the time, the fact that we have enough wind for people to sport the great twisting turbines in an effort to try and be green.

I know I’ve never gotten to really travel outside the United States but honestly I wonder how I could answer these same questions if I did. What would I find if I looked long and far? And even driving through my home country, they still stand. What of the ontogeny of the Appalachians? The windward caress of the Rockies that made the Pacific Northwest? The evidential meteor that may have influenced the Chesapeake?

[serpentface]

An interaction between Kulyos, the legendary founding hero of the collective Hill Tribes, and the wildfolk witch Bernike, as depicted in folklore.

The collective Hill Tribes all descended from a single population (informally called Kulyites) who migrated south across the Viper seaway from what is now Finnerich, prior to their written history. Here, they found themselves in a new landscape and in both conflict and cooperation with its preexisting inhabitants (a broad collection of tribes, many of which would eventually coalesce into the Wardi and Wogan peoples).

The detail of why this ancestral group fled their homeland depends on the specific tradition. In some cases, it’s a cultural non-issue- they’re here now, have been for hundreds of years, and will be here for hundreds more. In other cases, they describe a local war, a famine, barbarian invaders from the northwest (likely Dain-speakers, possibly a distant leg of the first Burri empire, maybe both), or a combination of all three. All sources agree that cattle and horses were brought on ships with the migrants, though they differ on whether they already had a khait riding tradition or if this (or khait themselves) were adopted from the native population.

The Kulyites were small in number and had neither the power to gain territory by force or negotiation, thus having to settle in some of the few uninhabited territories, the rocky highlands of the northwest. These were difficult lands, far from ideal for farming and grazing, and much of the founding mythology surrounds the first Kulyites learning the ways of this new land and how to thrive where no one had before.

It is said that this original group was led by a young chieftain named Kulyos (this name comes directly from the word 'kulys', the thick mountain plant with yellow flowers seen here, which is important in the regional diet for its fruits and use in tea, and as a symbol of hardiness). He is credited with leading his people to their current lands, establishing many of their core traditions and ways of life, and settling conflicts with the local mountain spirits, thus allowing for his descendants to live there to this day.

Kulyos is very likely to be a based on a real person (possibly the actual chieftain of the original Kulyites, but more likely one of their sons or grandsons), but the details of his life are lost, his history interwoven with myth and allegory. He is usually characterized as well humored and supremely wily, a good leader and beloved by his people, overcoming most challenges with cunning and cooperation rather than brute force. He is wise in the ways of the mountain gods and spirits, and often escapes trouble by means of proper respect to the gods and calculated (if risky) dealings with spirits. He is a mostly venerable figure, but often cast as comically flawed (notably, being lecherous and prone to lying).

One of the most popular and widespread legends is his theft of the wildfolk witch Bernike’s deer and magic cloak.

---

Bernike was the greatest sorcerer of all the Wildfolk, unmatched in power and likened to a god. Her secret was her feather cloak, obtained in a pact with the storm goddess Ariakh and made from the goddess' very own black feathers. Ariakh agreed to provide Bernike with great power in return for routine sacrifice of fine livestock which her sons, the winds, would tend among the clouds. (This likely references practices of some of the proto-Wardi, who may have venerated a form of Ariakh in similar ways). The other condition was that all of Bernike’s magic arts would be contained within the feather cloak, making her powerless without this artifact (this would prevent her from challenging the goddess herself- being made from her body, it could not be used against her).

Bernike ruled over the highest mountain, which had a small pass critical to travel in the area, and took glee in torment of the new human additions to the region. The best grazing in the highlands was upon Bernike's foothills, and this was where the Kulyites settled. In their herding and trading, they would often have to traverse her mountain pass, and she would stop them and demand tribute (usually in form of cattle).

The reason for Bernike's demands was her herd of a hundred scimitar deer, her greatest prizes. These deer were magical in nature- strong enough to be used as mounts and plow animals, faster and more surefooted than any other hooved animal, and their milk could cure disease and impart longevity in those who partook (Bernike herself was over 5,000 years old and as spry as ever). Now that new people with cattle, khait, and horses had entered her lands, Bernike had a new source of livestock for the goddess and no longer would have to offer up her own precious herd.

She would be greedy and merciless with the settlers, demanding exorbitant offerings and inflicting them with terrible curses when they refused. The people all learned to live in fear of her, but had no other option but to submit to her demands in order to pass through her mountain.

After a few years of this, Kulyos had grown quite tired of her demands on his people, and aimed to level the playing field. He had his wife, Brunil (herself a major character in this mythos), disguise herself and take a herd of cattle and ox-drawn cart through the pass. Bernike, of course, appeared and demanded tribute- the woman would only be allowed to pass if she gave the witch her choice of two of her finest cattle, and otherwise would be turned into a biting fly. Perhaps a sparrow, if she was lucky.

Brunil sorrowfully conceded, and begged that Bernike at least be quick about making her choice. Brunil said she was on her way to her sister's wedding, down in the village to the south of the pass. The cattle were to be a gift, and she also had a cask of the finest mead with her that needed to be delivered on time for the ceremonies.

Just as planned, Bernike immediately lost interest in the cattle and instead demanded the mead. Brunil put on a great show of hesitation and sorrow, but eventually relented and allowed the sorceress to take the entire cask. Brunil was allowed to travel onward (‘my sister will be so disappointed’), while Bernike eagerly set about drinking.

Kulyos had followed his wife from a distance and now watched and waited in a copse of trees. The witch drank enough mead to kill a man before she even began to get tipsy, and drank enough to kill two more before she fell into a deep, drunken slumber.

Kulyos then crept up upon her and took the cloak from her unconscious body, donning it over his shoulders. He then approached her deer, which did not flee, recognizing the scent of their master. He mounted on back of one of the bucks, and used it to drive the rest of the herd back down the mountains.

The next morning, Bernike awoke on the hillside, finding herself without her cloak, robbed of her deer, and with a nasty hangover.

She was outraged. This was not the first time she had dealt with Kulyos, and she recognized his scent in the air. She knew exactly who had robbed her. If she were in full power, she could have hunted Kulyos down and turned him into a flea, or made him impotent, or given him dysentery with a mere wave of the hand. Without her cloak, she was powerless, having no magic at all and no more physical capability than any other small (unusually spry, 5000 year old) woman.

She finally relented and contacted Ariakh herself, expecting the goddess to be furious at the theft. Ariakh was indeed furious, but not so much at Kulyos. The man had shown nothing but the proper respect to her, and she was unwilling to punish him for his deed. It was Bernike's failure, and would be up to Bernike herself to put things right. Still, as a favor to her most devoted follower, Ariakh agreed to give Bernike one of her magical arts back to help her along- the power of shapeshifting.

Back in the village, the deer were already showing their worth. Just two bucks had been put to the plow, and they had turned a field in three hours that would have taken an oxen three days. The animals were docile towards their new owner, even letting themselves be milked, and this was the most delicious milk any had ever tasted and could be fermented into the finest of murre.

Kulyos was quite pleased with his theft, but knew this would not be the end of things, and he kept the cloak on his person day and night. He took great care of it, and left out offerings of murre to Ariakh each night that he had it in his possession, to show his continued and utmost respect for the goddess he may have insulted as a byproduct of his theft. He went about his life, always watching and waiting for Bernike's inevitable return.

And so she came, though she was crafty and subtle, and did not make herself obvious. She first took the form of a bat and attempted to fly in through his window and take the cloak as he slept, only to find herself entangled. Those familiar with the legends would know that Kulyos had already bargained with the queen of the spiders to send some of her children into his village, who had cast their webs over the windows and happily ate all the bothersome flies and mosquitoes that had previously plagued his people. Humiliated and harassed by hungry spiders, Bernike fled.

The next day, she took the form of a viper, perfectly camouflaged and waiting in the grass to bite him as he tended to his herds. Kulyos indeed approached, but it was his little son who came near to Bernike. No matter, she thought. She would bite his son and seize the cloak when Kulyos tended to his child's wounds. Ariakh herself was offended at the aggression towards the child, innocent of Kulyos' crime and for whom he had prayed protection, and she sent a crested eagle (a snake eater) to swoop straight overhead.

Kulyos wisely realized a serpent must be in the area, and told his son to stay still. He used his spear to part the grasses in search of it, and at the sight of snake-Bernike, pulled back to stab her. In her panic, Bernike changed shape into a gazelle and fled, thus revealing herself and losing the element of surprise. Now, Kulyos knew for sure that she was after him, and knew she would come in the form of an animal.

Bernike was not stupid, she knew she had lost her advantage. So she waited a month for him to let his guard down, and took the form of a huge, beautiful aurochs bull, trotting and bellowing among Kulyos’ cows as if looking to mate. Surely he would be tempted by such a handsome and valuable animal, and she could take the cloak from him when he got close. And it seemed to have worked, for he excitedly approached with a lasso and slung it around her neck, speaking softly and soothingly as one would to such a wild prize. But instead of trying to lead her off, he tied the other end of the rope around a tree and walked away.

Bernike waited patiently for his return, no doubt in her mind that he was simply getting assistance in leading such a powerful animal away. Instead, Kulyos came back alone, leading his own prized bull (the giant white beast, Pyliod) along with him. As soon as Pyliod caught sight of what he perceived to be a rival bull, he became enraged, and charged at Bernike. She was chased around the tree ten times before she turned into a lion to face him down. The great bull was only more enraged at the sight of a predator, and chased her ten times more (and giving her a nasty jab in the hind, she is said to still bear the scars) before she gave up, turning into a sparrow to slip the rope and flying away. (The trunk of this tree still stands today, with the frayed remnants of an ancient rope around its base).

Now, Bernike waited another month, and took the form of a beautiful young woman, barely-dressed in riverfolk garb and tempting him from the edge of a creek. This attempt would have worked, but Brunil herself, quite annoyed, interceded by chasing the girl away with her staff and giving her husband a stern reprimanding. (“I knew it was her,” Kulyos insisted. "I had a plan.")

Finally, Bernike threw subtlety to the wind and took the form of a huge king hyena, the most powerful beast in the land, and came rampaging into the village. All the people feared this great animal, and even the most powerful warriors would hesitate to approach such a beast head-on. But Kulyos had known the witch would lose her temper at some point or another from the very beginning, and had tasked all the mothers and young children in the village with weaving a great net, so wide as to hold the largest beast, and so finely woven that not even a flea could escape.

Seeing the beast approach, he called to his his three daughters to fetch the net. He stood at the center of the village as bait, running and dodging from the beast while his daughters prepared the trap between two huts. His eldest, Aylian, whistled her signal, and Kulyos ran straight for the net, diving through the small space beneath. The witch in catform was far too big for such a maneuver and barreled right into the net, and Kulyos and his daughters wrapped it around her, trapping her in its clutches.

She fought the net with everything she had, turning into everything she knew how- a great bull, a lion, a tremendous riverdrake, a giant leviathan, a tiny songbird, a mosquito, and so on, but there was nothing she could do to break through. Finally, she turned back into her original shape, a tiny, bearded old woman, and demanded Kulyos approach.

He offered her a deal. If she would swear an oath in front of Ariakh herself of nonretribution and to end her demands of tribute from his people, he would return the cloak and all but two of her precious deer (a doe and stag), and his people would leave offerings of mead and murre at her pass every year on this day to grant them safe passage. Utterly defeated (and finding this offer quite appealing, in spite of her wounded pride), Bernike agreed, and called the great goddess forth.

Ariakh descended in the form of a dragon (a legendary beast with the head of a horned serpent and body of a bird), alighting on the roof of a hut. She plucked a single, massive feather from her breast and threw it to the ground, and Kulyos and Bernike both laid hands on it and swore their oaths. A vow before a goddess would have unspeakable consequences if broken, even for such a mighty sorcerer as Bernike.

Bernike donned her cloak and took her favorite form, that of a gigantic gray eagle. She took to the sky with a fearsome screech, circling the village three times, and then led all but two of her deer, a stag and a doe, back into the mountains.

And with this, the conflict was ended.

---

These deer are said to have become a great boon to the Kulyites. The herds they produced were eventually lost to the people and none of the Hill Tribes have herded deer ever since (that's another story), but their impact lives on. Being magical animals, they could breed not only with each other, but with khait, and produced the small, hardy khait stock still used as mounts and plow animals by the people to this day.

Bernike had only sworn nonretribution and an end to the tributes from Kulyos' people, but she did not swear to never harm them again, and as such all people who claim descent from the Kulyites avoid her mountaintop to this very day (with many more legends describing the consequence to those that do not), and are always sure to bring their yearly offerings of mead and murre to ensure continued safe usage of her pass.

Bernike also only swore to end tribute from his people, and other legends involve her stopping entire invading armies from navigating her pass with (often mischievous and utterly impossible) demands of tribute, and great consequences when these demands are not met.

Bernike is an ambiguous figure in the cultural schema, being feared and respected, an annoyance in her neutrality in (or active inflaming of) conflicts between the Hill Tribes, but credited as a protector of the collective peoples of the highlands. She is often cited as one of the reasons that neither the Burri empires nor the contemporary Wardi empire have ever seized the inner highlands, and no invader ever will.

[klonoa-at-blog]

From: Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil Official Guide Book (Published by Famitsu/Enterbrain - 2001) (Pg. 206)  

~Messages from the Klonoa 2 Staff~ Lastly, we would like to show you messages from those who were involved in the development of Klonoa 2 to the public. You'll find hard work, inside stories, and a few positive ones(?!) here and there! ......So, thank you all for your hard work!

Asuka Sakai Profile: ● Age: 26 years old ● Blood Type: A ● Responsibilities: Music for Joilant (minus the Haunted House and Tat), Ark, Polonte, King of Sorrow, and staff roll. ● Comments: I struggled to create a song that would fit the characteristics of each kingdom so that the world of Klonoa would come to mind just by listening to the song. When I was making the music for Joilant, I myself was cheerful and upbeat, but the theme for King of Sorrow, the last song I made, I was crying a lot. I still cry when I listen to it. (Or rather, a song that makes me want to cry??). ● Favorite character: Leptio

Yuji Masubuchi Profile: ● Age: 24 years old ● Blood Type: A ● Responsibilities: Sound effects, Volk, etc. ● Comments: Thanks to the nap room and my jerseys, we were able to manage 1,000 sound effects without incident. By the way, the voices of the creatures and bosses are the result of Mr. Go Shiina's enthusiastic performance. Hooray for strange noises! In the initial setup, a mad scientist named Garlen was  someone who would have said "Hooray for Volk! Woohee!” while operating Biskarsh. Of course, I put on my lab coat and started composing, and after some trial and error, I completed the groovy tunes. However, that day I learned that Garlen had been removed... ● Favorite character: Klonoa's ears (a feeling I would like to have as a pillow)

Katsuro Tajima Profile: ● Age: ? ● Blood Type: Eh...?! It’s a secret. ● Responsibilities: BGM and sound effects (Seaway, Quenchless Curiosity, etc.) ● Comments: I think the fantastical elements have become even more intense than in the previous Klonoa. The more you play, the more you discover new things and double the fun! ● Favorite character: Moo

Go Shiina Profile: ● Age: 26 years old ● Blood Type: A ● Responsibilities: Sound (Music, Voice Editing) ● Comments: I am a voice actor in various places, so please listen to me. For example, the elephant in Jungle Slider? ● Favorite character: Joila-kun (Joilant mascot)

Hiromi Shibano Profile: ● Age: ?? age ● Blood Type: B ● Responsibilities: Music ● Comments: I was in charge of the background music for the "Maze of Memories," "Noxious La-Lakoosha," and "Folgaran" (Boss 1). It was quite picturesque working through the night, watching the sun rise over Yokohama Harbor through the condensation-drenched windows. ● Favorite character: Popka

Kohta Takahashi Profile: ● Age: Secret ● Blood Type: Secret ● Responsibilities: Leorina related, named the insert song (Music composer) ● Comments: Well then, farewell everyone. ● Favorite character: Leorina

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

USS Macon

The largest warship to ever transit the Great Lakes. The 8-inch gun Heavy Cruiser USS Macon came through the Seaway in 1959 to officially open the new waterway. She is seen here in the Eisenhower Lock. Note the missing radar antenna, removed in Boston to allow passage through the Seaway 's lift bridges due to her high air draft. The ship had all sorts of problems rubbing bottom and bumping into walls on her way through due to the large size, powerful engines, and the open ocean design of her hull.

[pareidoliaonthemove]

WIP Wednesday

I don't usually do WIP Wednesday, partly because pulling a presentable piece out of whatever I'm working on is a weeklong task, and I don't make reliable progress on my WIPs; and mostly because I always work Wednesdays.

But, courtesy of a late start, and having to kill a few paragraphs of a story, because it doesn't work within the storyline, there's already too much talking in the piece, and there's too many references that would need to be explained for it to be coherent.

And yet I really like it - mostly because I'm a Titanic geek from way back, so rather than kill this piece outright, I'm going to cast it adrift in a liferaft, in the hope that it somehow survives. (Explanations for the Titanic references are under the cut.)

Fawn huffed. “It’s launching a luxury cruise liner. What’s the World President so afraid of? Some tabloid will find out how many bathrooms his new yacht has?”

Captain Grey frowned. “GWW Shipwrights have a major hand in designing core components of the new World Navy ships, including the sensor arrays and consoles. And because of that they have many retired senior Naval personnel acting as advisers. Not to mention Najmat Bayda Seaways have a long history of poaching Captains from various Navys to Captain their ships.”

Fawn blinked. “Najmat Bayda Seaways?”

White sighed. “Yes, Doctor. If you had paid any attention at the briefing, Najmat Bayda Seaways are the cruise line company taking ownership of their new flagship, the MV Eimlaqui…”

“I’m sorry? Did you say Najmat Bayda are sailing a ship called the Eimlaqui?” Fawn’s voice was strangled.

“Yes.” White frowned. The man looked about to burst into laughter.

“Is it ‘unsinkable?”

White sighed. “If you could please get yourself under control, Doctor, we’re nearly there.”

The Doctor took several breaths, each time managing to breathe in deeper until he had reached his equilibrium.

According to Google Translate, ‘Najmat Bayda’ is Arabic for ‘White Star’ and ‘Eimlaqui’ means ‘Gigantic’ – or ‘Titanic’. GWW Shipwrights references Gustav Wilhelm Wolff, who, in partnership with Sir Edward James Harland formed a shipbuilding business: Harland & Wolff.

And in keeping with that naming theme, Captain Schwabe took his name from Gustav Wolff’s uncle, Gustav Schwabe, a financier who funded one Thomas Henry Ismay allowing him to buy the bankrupt White Star Line. There was a condition to Schwabe’s deal: Ismay had to purchase any new ships for White Star from his nephew’s business.

[avalonbestiary]

We start off the southern coasts of new avalon a pod of boxer whales (a small but suprisingly agressive rorqual) are acompanied by the equally intolerant sea bears (large walrus relatives also fairly agressive). these two species usually highly intolerant of other creatures close to them but along the southern artic seaways and south avalonian coasts these two surly giants come together to feast on the vast schools of fish and other sea life that gather in these cool waters. initially this relationship seems one sided as the sea bears school the fish into tighter and tighter bait balls allowing the boxer whale to swallow them in one easy gulp leaving the bears the stunned individuals from that but the boxer whales are pulling their weight, as even though the sea bears are large Being nearly as big as their living earth relatives here on avalon there's always predators large enough or tenacious enough to hunt them especially in the open ocean but few predators will risk the wrath of a pod of boxer whales while smaller than a lot of their earth cousins they make up for it with a agression going out of their way to attack anything that might be a threat which since the arrival of humans has included boats hence has made studying these feisty beasts a difficult task

(Swear i haven't forgotten this blog just had a hard time actually knuckling down and making presentable works and updating old models i made an age ago)

[sainamoonshine]

#like st lawrence baby im so sorry they’re doing this to you Marie what?!? Do people call it the St. Lawrence river? Nooo! It's the St. Lawrence Seaway! It's way too cool to be a river! Also Seaway is such a great term and I never get to use it otherwise. Boo to the people calling it a river!

…….. am I now learning this now, after translating my entire book wincing every time I called it a river because that’s what google, antidote, and every damn dictionary in the world told me to call it

Have I failed at being a Canadian…..