#or if I'm going to have a hard divide between the locations around the lake

[reborrowing]

Pocket Guides to Zombie Survival, Ch 1

next a couple ghoulish little scavengers discover actual ghoul, unaware that the apocalypse began several months back. ~2k words, horror g/t but the horror isn’t coming from the gt (yet). cw for gore, death, zombies and associated horrors

There was a body at the human campground. 

It was the first human to show up in the woods for months, several weeks past the giants' usual spring return to the woods, and it was dead. There should have been human hikers tromping through their wide, winding trails months ago. There should be families making temporary homes out of the neatly divided lots. There was just the one body, lying in front of its RV for nearly a week.

Bell missed the annual parade of giants and all the bright colors and chaos and treasure they hauled in with them. She was tired of the random, menial tasks around the warren she kept getting assigned in lieu of borrowing and volunteered herself to go investigate the body. She figured a dead giant couldn’t be much more dangerous than a sleeping one. 

Her stomach shifted now that they were actually approaching the body. It was disgusting, yes, a landscape of raw meat and gore, but there was something else too. Something she couldn't quite identify that urged to get away. 

Whatever it was she sensed, Pepper didn't seem to notice it at all. She bounced through the clearing towards the sickening heap. She'd invited herself along and Bell couldn’t complain. Her sister was always itching to do something stupid and Bell had learned early in life that it was best to indulge her before she found worse trouble on her own. It was a bonus that the warren-keepers felt more comfortable giving her investigation their blessing. Borrowers like herself might train to evade humans and navigate their turf, but Pepper was a guard. They trusted her to be able to evade or defend against anything else that might be out here.

"Ew,” Pepper said, “I thought that scout was exaggerating, but ghosts, that's nasty!”

She pointed to the looming mess ahead, as if Bell might otherwise miss it. The giant’s shoulder looked like it had exploded. The top of their flannel was in shreds. Rotting meat sloughed off its shoulder and the left half of its face had been ripped off of the cadaver’s head, hanging on by just a few stringy bits.

Bell edged closer. There were no clean cuts. It was pulpy, a bit like when a crow ripped apart a squirrel, although it looked like most of the meat had been only shoved to the side, not carried off or eaten. What was left was a jagged, bloody horror with piles of rotting slurry that all stank worse than a sewer.

It wasn’t all bad. The body's lower half was perfectly intact, including its jeans. Bell had been hoping to bring back some denim. She would just have to hold her breath for the harvest.

She stepped over a lost clump of hair to have a look at what was left of the poor giant’s face. The half resting on the ground was gray and bloated but otherwise still human. A rough, reddish outline of teeth marred the corpse's forehead, where it still had enough skin to mar. Bell bristled, her fur suddenly standing up on end as if she were being watched. That same urge to get away got louder.

The body had been bit by something big, at least dog-sized. But there was no way it was a dog that had made that mark, or any kind of predator she’d seen. It had wide, flat teeth in front and was made of two nearly even parentheses. She licked her lips. It was a lot like the shape of her own bite, if her canines were duller. And huge.

Her gaze slid across the gory remains to look at the corpse’s exposed jaw, feeling ill. It was supposed to be a ghost story that humans ate people. But she looked at the teeth lurking behind the shredded tissue, she saw that they were close to the same size as the indentations on the forehead. There was at least one other giant nearby, one that had managed to go unnoticed by a half dozen different scouts. One that was crazy enough to try and eat another human.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her sister shouting.

"Hey, Bell! Do you know if humans are poisonous? I mean, if you ate it, could you eat it or would it make you—"

"Do not! Gross!” Bell snapped.

"Not me! No, Ew! It’s just, we’re not the only scavengers out here. He’s been out here for days, how come nothing else is eating him? I don’t even hear any maggots.”

Bell turned as Pepper’s blonde head appeared over the body’s forearm. She had its watch proudly slung over her shoulder. But her quizzical expression suddenly popped into wide-eyed, bared-fangs fear. The dead face shifted with a loud, wet noise. She froze as a rush of air blew over her, sucking at her hair, as the corpse inhaled through its empty cavity of a nose.

Bell ran for the cover of the nearest bush. Behind her, Pepper squealed as the corpse shuddered around her and began to get up. It was clumsy, maybe because so many of its muscles were missing or rotten, or maybe because it was dead, but that was hardly important when it was a few hundred times heavier than the two of them combined.

Bell ducked into the foliage and turned to wait for Coop. She watched in terror as her sister jammed a needle through its palm to no effect.

Anyone knew a needle couldn’t stop a human, hardly anything could, but it was supposed to at least give them pause. But the body didn’t flinch. It didn’t even seem to notice the metal now lodged in its flesh. Its hand slid backwards, knocking Coop along with it. There was a nasty snap as it pushed itself to its feet, back up to its towering height. Coop lay crumpled beside it. 

It swayed for a moment and sniffed at the air like an animal before turning to where Bell was hiding. It was unsteady, with wide and unpredictable steps. Bell hunkered back further into the bramble. It crashed carelessly through the thorny growth, only missing her by chance.

Her heart hammered as she wove through the branches. She pushed herself off the side of the not-so-dead body’s sneaker and back into the clearing for Pepper. The giant stumbled around in the undergrowth for a few seconds before huffing in another breath and turning straight towards her. Bell paled and ran ran faster.

Pepper was curled up with pain. At a glance, her leg was broken and her shoulder was messed up, any other injuries could be assessed later. The important point was that she wouldn’t be able to make her own way back to the warren or some other safe haven. Bell was going to have to carry her, which meant they weren’t going to be able to run.

And if that thing was using smell to see them, ghosts only knew how far it could track them from anyways. She couldn’t leave it a trail back to the whole warren. She swallowed nervously and dragged Pepper under the nearby RV before it caught up to them. It slammed against the side but, for whatever reason, didn’t think to get down on its knees and crawl after them. It shook the whole structure, stubbornly banging against the wall, but Bell and Pepper were able to pick their way up to a gap leading into the RV’s interior.

They would just have to hope it gave up quick.

--

There was a lone human left hiding out at the campgrounds.

There had been four of them when their RV had pulled into the lot last week.

The first, they’d known was sick before they had even parked the camper and set up camp. Markus swore up and down and over and over that it wasn’t the sickness, even stripped down to his boxers to show off that now zombies had caught him. It was just his lungs acting up again, he insisted. They’d been bad for years, and now he was going without any kind of treatment. His brother said he ought to be in the hospital. No one argued. Nick was right about Markus needing professional help, his prescriptions, and bed rest. His old life.

But that was all gone now. Everyone had an “old life” that they’d lost. Survivors lived in a harsher world that lacked all the other essentials of modern civilization. The best, most qualified help Markus could get was Nick’s wife.

She had been a dental hygienist, before. There wasn’t much she could’ve done then and there certainly wasn’t anything for her to have done now.

She was gone too, she and her husband. Kayla didn’t know which kind of ‘gone.’ In the hours between Markus’ death and sunrise, the other virus took his body without anyone noticing. She and Nick went out to deal with the corpse been caught off guard when it rose up to deal with them instead.

Tasha might be dead, undead, or just lost in the woods. She had taken the shotgun. Kayla had heard it fire once in the distance. She could still be alive out there.

Nick was not.

Nick was dead and waiting to kill her, lying right on the other side of the RV’s walls. He’d stay dormant until something got too close or just too loud. As far as Kayla knew, he could wait like that forever. She might be able to sneak out the side if she wanted to find some other way to go. Maybe.

She stared at the door, the thin barrier between her and him. Between her and the rest of the world. She was safe here, so long as her supplies lasted. Kayla imagined she had a while before she starved, since they had been intended to sustain four people. Instead, she had doubts about how long her mind could last, but, well, that had already broken, hadn’t it?

Nothing made sense anymore. 

And then she wasn’t staring at the door at all, she was watching time unwind back to Markus’ dead body. He’d died on the sofa after hours of wheezing and bleeding and coughing and crying. It hadn’t looked like the zombifying fever, he’d been lucid for the whole miserable experience. He’d died. He’d gone stiff, as death intended. She hadn’t heard of that before, someone keeping their mind intact only for it to blossom into rotten undeath once the soul was gone. 

What if she was sick too? How could she know?

She could feel herself pulling the latch closed again. The lock clicked. The door rattled as Tasha tried to pry it open. Kayla’s stomach sank with the horror of what she was doing. Coward. Tasha screamed and her gun clicked uselessly. The door stopped rattling. Tasha had run, pursued by her undead brother-in-law. 

Kayla used to like being alone, but now the thoughts that she was left with included fears much worse than a growing sense of personal failure. She shivered and reached for the little emergency radio. She fiddled with the controls, scanning for any signs of life—or so she hoped, the radio had been Nick’s and she wasn’t really confident in her ability to use it. This whole setup was Nick’s.

Eventually, she turned the radio to the only station she knew still had a voice at all and wished it would play something else.

This NOAA weather station is temporarily off the air. Please tune to an alternate weather broadcast or visit weather dot gov for the latest weather information. 

But there was no new information. There was no one left to send it. No one left to research this plague pulled out of a horror movie. Civilization was over and Kayla was alone with death lying in wait just outside.

Until it started banging on the walls.

taglist - @whumpsday @da3dm

[amelias-zelda-calamity-quintet]

Geographic and cultural changes between the eras of GoS and MoaH might be interesting to know more about also

Geographic and Cultural Changes Since the Convergence w/ Princess Zelda (and Hart)

Zelda: "I think I can handle this broadly speaking. I'm sure we could get rather granular, so I will attempt to focus on the basics.

"Initially, as is often the case with the legends, after the successes of the Hero, Hyrule saw an era of restoration and a cultural resurgence of the aspects of chivalry in the traditional sense. The Royal Guard and the Hylian Knights saw serious review under the leadership of the Hero of the Convergence and the Princess of that era. That is a positive aftereffect of the cycle, it tends to inspire people to, well, live Heroically as it were.

"There was also a period in which we saw significantly better relations with our neighbors. After Hyrule was stable enough to maintain itself, the records indicate that the Hero traveled with one of their allies abroad to the other nations to improve relations. Which lasted, for several centuries even. But as legends do, the stories started to become that, stories. And it's hard to inspire someone with something that happened a thousand years ago.

"Presently, Hyrule is caught between a call to uphold tradition, as it's defined by a select few, and tension on its borders. All of which while monster activity has been getting worse. Unfortunately, some of that tradition has become...dogmatic. I would argue against the spirit of the tales but few would listen to me on that point, unfortunately. That's also why our, hm, performance was so easy to pass off to some. Many are more than willing to believe a solution to our problems would be so easy as a Hero rather than doing the work in need of being done to make things better."

Link: "You're really passionate about this, princess."

Zelda: "I would hope so. It's my duty to care about the kingdom. Circumstances otherwise, I would prefer to be taking a more direct approach than sneaking around trying to find answers. But here we are. As for geographic changes-"

Hart: "Oh! I can answer that! Only one here who remembers both."

Zelda: "What? Who are you? How did you get in here?"

Hart: "Don't worry about it, hun. Story's still young. Anyway! (Z: "I beg your pardon.") There are a number of major changes geographically, many of which are going to...hm, how do we say this around these two without breaking time again...(Z&L: "What?") Transition to a...wilder period. Still distant, distant business that. For now, Era of Prosperity, not yet advanced enough for all the big 'beasts' you're thinking of now.

"Specifically, since the Convergence, moving in a bit of a spiral here. Zora's River became less severe, so the canyon cut in that era became shallower. Explanation, magic to a lot of this. Don't think too hard on it. In any case, Castle Town now sits on the south side of Zora's River as a more expected riverbed level, and it now divides the castle off as a moat before its bit of an incline it sits on.

"More broadly, in the south, you start seeing the banks of Lake Hylia moving from its Era of Myth location in the southwest to due south of the Fields. This is because the marshes around Grimvale began to get a little more solid. The jungles in Teromac began to expand over the border. Right now it really only occupies the southern border there. But, you know. Eventually."

Zelda: "You talk as if you know what's going to happen in the future with a lot of confidence."

Hart: "Ah, you'd hope I would, wouldn't you? I am a fortune teller after all. I try to make a good performance."

Link: "Wait a minute."

Hart: "To the west, you'll see the border of the Gerudo Desert is a little, eh, shifted? The Scar still exists, but it is slowly getting filled in with time. Currently, it's the last outpost before heading into Rahaal. In the north, the Frostbite region would change to the Hebra region, after Hebra Peak. The Dreeka have also headed this way, their current temple at the edge of the Tabantha area. Bit of a canyon developing there. And to the northeast you have Akkal now Akkalan and will be, well, you know. These things take time. Kakariko Village is also beginning its journey south as the Sheikah go through a, hm, cultural shift with the Dreeka.

"A big one left is the Deku Forest. Until the jungles reach a little further, the Koroks are still in their more traditional southeast region off of Hyrule Field. Oh, and Zora's Domain moved back east, though the remnants of the city's waterfalls are still there from the Convergence, feeding Zora's River near Goron City."

Zelda: "That is all...incredibly accurate. How do you know all that? You said you were a fortune teller?"

Link: "You were in Lake Town! Who are you?"

Hart: "Ah, you're not ready for that one yet. Well, I should get going."

Link: "Wait, no- They're gone. How did they do that?"

Zelda: "Very Keaton energy that one. I need to talk to Impa about our security, she shouldn't have been able to get in."

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

Mark of a Hero (Updates on Tuesdays & Fridays, 1 of 9)

Hyrule is at peace, or so the Royal Family would have its people believe. Something is afoot in the kingdom, and someone needs to do something about it. Least likely would be Marksmen Link Sayre- a mercenary and monster hunter doing his best to get by. Until a job goes wrong, and he gets roped into the secret plans of Hyrule's princess. Now Link must play the part of the Hero to dive deeper into the mystery, and maybe stumble into a legend of his own.

AO3 - Wattpad

[taurustony]

Bayonetta and Jeanne are from Basque Country

Couple of weeks ago, someone on reddit made a thread about Vigrid's geography As a fan on how Gotham City sits on a bay that has no island on this world, I disagreed with with OP, but I wanted some hard info. And I found out that I too was wrong, and the most probable interpretation is much more awesome. But let me get back to the beginning.

You see, since first playing the game, I always figured Vigrid was a stand in for either Prague or Italy. During the prologue, Enzo calls Vigrid Heart of Europe, and Europe in my head is actual continental Europe, so I'm talking about all the land from the Atlantic all the way to the Black Sea. I'm also bad at geography, so Prague felt to me like a city right in the middle of Western and Eastern Europe and with a good historical importance, which fits the all the connotations Heart of Europe could get. And I thought about Italy because the Lumen Sages are an obvious stand in for the Catholic Church. and one of the stages is on a freaking coliseum. However, the aforementioned reddit thread sparked my curiosity, and since maps are a big theme on the menu of the first game, I looked for a prologue gameplay on youtube and went to find out exactly where the game points the probable location of Vigrid. Have I mentioned I suck at Geography? During the whole Heart of Europe dialog, the game shows that Bayonetta took a plane from America to Eastern Europe, going through Asia, and arrived at Vigrid by train, showing the train overlapping the map of western Europe.

HOWEVER, the very last frame just before cutting to Bayo herself, it shows a very specific region:

South of France. Way far from Prague or even Italy. At first I tought it could be a micronation, like Andorra or Monaco. But here is the thing.... Bayonetta is called Cereza right? That´s Spanish. But Jeanne, her umbran sister, has obviously some french in her. So we are talking about a nation smack dab between Spain and France, that is probably divided between both countries on our world..

So yeah. Now names like Cereza and Rosa makes sense. Jeanne probably comes from the northern/french part of the country, which is the reason of the French sounding name. Balder is a norse name, but being a sage, he doesn't need to be from that region. The witch hunts fits right in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition Era. And the Sages being behind the Holy Roman Empire, which extended all the way to Sweden and other norse countries, fits the games narrative quite well. I'm not saying Charles Magne was a Lumen Sage, but I´m not not saying it either. plus, Spain/Basque Country is one of the few countries to have a northern coastline, as Vigrid does

"But Tony" asks the chesire in the back"That region isn't that mountainous and where is Isla del Sol?" (Isla del Sol... another spanish name) That is the beauty of a fictional country. it does not really need to follow strictly our geography. Remember how the Island of Gotham City doesn't exists here? this fictional Basque Country not only is a separate entity from Spain and France, but also way more mountainous. And Isla del Sol is obviously an artificial island, created with the specific purpose of the resurrection of Jubileus. This would fit with the city around Fimbulventr on the second game: The water traps and aqueducts show that that lake is probably artificial as well. And this is why Bayonetta is a spanish, Jeanne is french, Dante and Vergil are Half Spanish-Half English and Nero is Half-Italian-1/4 Spanish-1/4 English.

[thymika]

The Weight of a Crown 3: Bubble World

I was never fond of diaries until I wrote the first word into this notebook. A diary is something most girls carry around, it's usually a pink notebook with a bunch of notes about their prince charming. They protect their diary with their lives and lose their minds if someone reads it. I'm personally sharing this diary with all of you for different reasons. Our world is filled with heroes, those that have flashy superpowers and otherworldly strength. Many can fly, are agile, shoot arrows with perfection, and others are simply gifted. A hero isn't defined by their ability to carry a car over their shoulders or be able to destroy a meteorite. A hero can simply be an ordinary person, with an ordinary job, and with no superpowers. That's why I'm writing this diary, to possibly convey a message of inspiration.

I'm not going to lie; Yes, I also have my princess charming, and also write stupid things for no reason. I'm a mortal, what do you expect? This diary might be for inspirational purposes, but this is still my diary and I have every right to write my own nonsense. I'm just trying to be funny, bear with me...

Continuing with my story, it's time for a little bit of history. For thousands of years, our country Emerald Woodland has been divided into two sections. Recently, it has been officially stated that the North and South are separate countries, both carrying the same name with the exception of each side having the title North, or South. The North is filled with darkness because they abandoned their nature as Moon Elves. The South is where the good guys live, or that's how I used to call it. The Tree of Life is located near the Moon Lake, which is sort of in between the North and the South. My great grandfather decided that the Moon Lake belongs to us Moon Elves, therefore the Tree of Life and Moon Lake are still inside our Southern territory.

Now that I have explained some boring facts about my country, we can move on. My life was surrounded by every sort of luxury. As a royal child, my siblings and I led comfortable lives inside the palace at the Tree of Life. Suffering was something that never crossed my mind. Yes, I struggled because I am not the perfect son, but none was compared to the pain I witnessed at the young age of seven. I held tight on to Karina's hand till she stopped crying. We were exposed to some sunlight because I remember seeing Karina's damped face and reddened eyes. Her hands trembled and were cold. I felt helpless, unable to fight back or do anything to make her feel better. Uncertainty was waiting, and danger as well. I grabbed her face and quickly kissed her left cheek, close to her lips. The surprised girl widened her eyes and immediately stopped trembling. I did it without thinking, without analyzing the situation. With all the innocence in the world, she smiled at me and I couldn't resist the urge to smile back. Yes, we were scared and sad, but during those seconds, we felt happy.

The car stopped, and we felt how the sack was lifted and thrown somewhere. Our legs crashed against a hard surface, and both groaned and cried in pain. Someone opened the sack and a hand grabbed me by my hair. He pulled me up till I felt like my hair was ripping off from my head. The man threw me inside a dirty cage, Karina was treated equally and the man slammed her against my body. I felt dizzy from the impact, and slowly tried to regain my conscience. Our cage was hanging from a chain attached to the ceiling, there were other kids in cages. Some were crawling on the floor like dogs, they had thick collars around their neck. I couldn't comprehend the situation, the panic was swallowing me and taking over my body. I heard howls and screeches from the neighboring kids, the smell was pungent and triggered my stomach. I wanted to get out as soon as possible. I turned to Karina, expecting some sort of comfort, but she looked as if she had given up. "We have to get out of here," I said, pulling from her wrist, "it's too late," "what? Too late for what? We can't stay here!" "They won't let us out. These people do bad things to children."

I grasped on to the bars of the cage and shook them, "let us go!" I yelled, but nobody came to rescue us. Karina pulled me from my shirt and frowned, "no one will help us!" "Someone should," "no one cares!" "People should care! There are kids everywhere!" She stared at me for a moment and then slowly lowered her head, "not everyone does—" My world suddenly collapsed. Everything I learned at home wasn't entirely true. Not everyone was nice, not all said please and thank you. Not everyone was polite and mindful of others. That's when I realized that there were bigger things that I didn't understand despite my years of reading hundreds of books. I was living in a bubble far away from the real world.

I held on to Karina's trousers and replied, "but I care." I remember her stare, her eyes twinkled with some sort of hope. There were humans, orcs and some others which I couldn't recognize, kids from all over were stuck in cages like us. A human boy swung his cage and said, "whoever gets out from here wins." I didn't understand his words, therefore I leaned over and said, "how do we get out?" "Those guys will pick someone and take us out, eventually," "really?" "Yep. It's like being adopted, they take the best-behaved kid. We should behave." The rest of the kids smiled and stayed still. I didn't understand what he meant back then, but now I do. He was the eldest of the group and wanted to calm the younger kids who were struggling. Our situation was no game, and no one was being adopted. Somehow, we played along due to our innocence and managed to stay positive through our difficulties.

The room was flooded with smelly red and black paint; now I understand it wasn't paint, but my mind couldn't wrap the thought of blood surrounding all of us. I kept playing along with the kids and we all sang songs and told jokes. One little Orc said that he wanted to be a police officer like his father. A nightcrawler said that she wouldn't like to work, an elf like me said that he wanted to be an astronaut. The human boy who was the eldest said, "I want to be a hero," "why?" I asked, "heroes are never afraid," "heroes can sometimes be afraid," "yeah, but they do their best to keep smiling for the sake of others." I didn't think much of it, but it made me feel better, "what about you? What do you want to be?" I thought for a moment, then replied, "a strong king," "king? That's nice. What about you?" He pointed his finger at Krina, "me?" "Yeah, you," "I want to be happy," "that's a boring answer!" All of the kids laughed.

Our little moment of joy immediately vanished when a man suddenly entered the room. He had a mask over his face and wore strange-looking clothes. He approached one of the cages and abruptly took one of the kids out, the one who wanted to be a hero. I closed my eyes as I heard how he was being punched. He was dragged into the next room and his screams eventually became silent. I was petrified and tears began to roll down my face.

I looked up and stared at the ceiling. There was a ring attached to it, but the ring had a little opening. The chain that held our cage had a possibility of being tilted over if we could somehow separate the chain from the ring. I swung my body until the cage freed itself from the ceiling, we then crashed against the floor. We were surprised and got hurt, but as expected the cage opened by itself. Karina immediately ran towards the exit, I grabbed her arm and stopped her, "wait! Karina!" "What? They will get us!" "Let's help them first!" She stared at me in amazement and then agreed to help me. We opened every cage and freed the children from their cages. An Orc stepped down from his enclosure and hugged me tightly, "thanks bro," he said. The nightcrawler did so too, and some others. They weren't any different from the kids back home. I did not understand why the grownups couldn't have peace with neighboring countries, and why they hated Orcs and nightcrawlers so much. My innocent mind saw those kids as kids, and I didn't label them as anything else.

We left soon after, but I had this strange feeling hanging around, "Estes, what's wrong?" Karina asked, "I don't think I want to be king—" "why not?" "I would... like to be a hero," "hero?" "You saw how amazing that was? We saved those kids!" I was all excited and couldn't stop jumping all over the place. I really wanted to become a hero like the boy who appeared to be having fun. I won't forget that boy, he really gave me hope and cheered me up despite everything.

I fondled Karina's hair and said, "since I will become a hero, I can protect you too!" "M... me?" "Yeah, you said you are running away, didn't you?" "Mhm—" "that means... I can help you out," "how?" "Come and live with me!" "Really?" She smiled brightly, "I have this big room and a big bed and—" I suddenly remembered that she was a girl. I swallowed my words and flushed red in an instant, "and... and, well! I have plenty of space." I did stutter like a loser, but that didn't bother her at all. Karina smiled at me and I gave her a crooked grin, it seems like she noticed my funny expression because she kept on giggling here and there.