#partial palisade

[banneduserthedemonworlder]

"It was supposed to be a fun little game as a fundraiser with famous volunteers but it took no time at all to turn into a wild pop-off of bad blood, rivalry, and divine bullshit. It was miracle no one died. "

///

thanks to the fans at the table for letting me do the final remaining pinch hit of secret samol! 🏀

[lizzybeanbutt]

Happy Secret Samol! My giftee was @smallpolar-bear who requested some blue channel crew post ep 29 so I landed on the group reading some Strand Forum Posts™ about the stellar combuster mission at the central hangout spot!

(wips gif under the cut)

Notes: -This was intended to be the final page of a comic buut it was a little ambitious for me so I pivoted to one illustration

-This was my most extensive use of clip studios 3D system for blockout! It helped so much

-That sofa pit was quickly blocked out in blender and imported to get the angle right

-Using the 3D character models were fiddly but again super helpful and I may slide it into my usual workflow

-I was flying basically near refless (ie varying levels of sketches) for these characters, aha

[ahcoffeebeans2]

palisade 38 spoilers

snapshots

[planet4546b]

i love austin walker tm characters cause every fucking time i see one i go absolutely wild within about 20 seconds of meeting them. Partial palisade. Lies down

[robobrainrot]

Gonna re-render and reupload this later...

Optimus to the rescue!

We need this man in LA right now. My area is still safe but the fires are getting closer so I choose to deal with that by drawing my favorite dadbot 🚒

[dailyoverview]

This Overview shows the area scorched by the Palisades Fire, partially outlined by bright red fire retardant that was used to contain the blaze. Two days ago final evacuation orders were lifted as fire containment climbed above 96%. The fire, which began January 7th, burned over 36 square miles (95 sq. km) in northern Los Angeles, destroyed or damaged nearly 8,000 structures, and killed 12 people.

Source imagery: ESA - European Space Agency

[mariacallous]

The giant fires that are scouring Los Angeles have officially become the most destructive in the city’s history, killing at least six people and destroying at least 5,000 buildings. But as the winds driving the inferno have slackened, experts are cautiously optimistic that the blazes can soon be beaten back.

With reinforcements from other states, California firefighters have shifted from defense to offense. Rather than just saving individual buildings, they are now trying to stop the overall advance of the flames.

“Tuesday and Wednesday our priority was saving lives and protecting as much property as possible,” says LA Fire Department spokesperson Margaret Stewart. “Now that we’re able to operate at our full capacity, we’re able to have a more powerful assault.”

In a two-pronged attack, aircraft have ramped up dousing the fires from the air while firefighters and bulldozers starve them of fuel on the ground. At times earlier in the week, planes had to be grounded because of the severity of the wind.

“I would say [the tide] is turning,” says Ken Pimlott, former director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. “Today and tomorrow are really the key windows to get through, the red flag fire weather conditions. Then I think we’ll start to see much more progress.”

Massive fires began clawing through the Los Angeles metropolitan area on Tuesday thanks to a combination of long-standing drought and a bout of strong Santa Ana winds, seasonal air that blows from the high desert of Nevada and Utah into Southern California.

The Palisades Fire east of Malibu, which has burned almost 20,000 acres, was 0 percent contained on Thursday. Celebrities like Billy Crystal and Paris Hilton were among the many people who had lost their homes. The Eaton Fire in Pasadena, roughly 25 miles to the east, was also uncontained, but the fire department has been able to slow its growth. The Sunset Fire that started in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday was quickly hemmed in, and two others are partially contained.

“The only fire that has that potential [to grow] is Palisades, and we have 1,100 people on that,” Stewart says.

The key factor has been the winds of up to 99 miles per hour. They’ve been raking down from the northeast to the southwest, fanning the flames and throwing burning embers half a mile in front of the main fire. Canyons running largely the same direction have funneled and intensified that movement of air, creating what Pimlott called a “blowtorch” that spread the Palisades Fire. The flames have been essentially unstoppable.

“These pressurized winds literally explode out of these canyons,” says Janet Upton, former deputy director of Cal Fire. “All you can do is work to get anything with a heartbeat out of the way.”

But the winds began easing up on Wednesday and Thursday. They were anticipated to reach 15 to 20 miles per hour Thursday afternoon, before ticking up to 30 to 40 miles per hour on Friday, according to the National Weather Service. Firefighters that were helpless against virtually unstoppable wind-driven blazes have been able to return to their normal tactics.

“With those winds being very calm this morning, I believe we can actually make some progress, turn a corner, and start to build some containment on these fires,” Brent Pascua, a Cal Fire battalion chief, told The Today Show on Thursday.

So far the disaster response has been marred by disinformation and controversy. After some fire hydrants ran dry, president-elect Donald Trump baselessly accused California governor Gavin Newsom of mismanaging the state’s water supplies to save an endangered fish.

City employees have now been able to reach three water tanks on hills near the Palisades Fire to turn up the pressure. That allows the tanks to be refilled more quickly so they can keep supplying the hydrants, Stewart says. Each tank can hold 1 million gallons. “We have full flowing hydrants,” she says.

More firefighters have begun to arrive from Utah, Oregon, Arizona, Washington, and New Mexico. Several dozen task forces are on their way, according to Stewart, each with five fire engines plus a command vehicle.

Aircraft began flying again on Wednesday. Twelve helicopters are filling humongous water buckets hanging from cables and sucking seawater up through snorkels. Six planes are also working the fires, including a pair of “super scoop” aircraft that have been skimming across the surface of the Pacific to pick up water. The helicopters and scoop planes dump water on spot fires, letting firefighters close in and extinguish them.

Meanwhile, other airplanes are dropping fire retardant out ahead of the inferno, coating potential fuel with a layer of nonflammable chemicals and slowing its advance. A C-130 cargo plane that Cal Fire acquired from the Coast Guard and retrofitted this summer can dump 4,000 gallons of retardant. That buys time for firefighters to dig and bulldoze firebreaks of bare soil.

With the ocean constraining the Palisades Fire to the south, responders will try to prevent it from breaking out to the east or west. “The real spread is going to be on the flank,” Pimlott says.

A red flag warning for increased fire risk will remain through Friday, with humidity at only 8–12 percent. California has been suffering an abnormally dry winter, with 40 percent of the state under drought conditions.

“Fuels remain critically dry,” James Magana of Cal Fire said at a Thursday morning briefing. “You can expect to see critical rates of spread, especially on those ridgetops or those drainages that are in alignment with the wind.”

On Saturday, the winds are expected to reverse direction. If firefighters aren’t ready, the heel of the fire could become the front and run off to the north.

Even once they’re able to contain the conflagration within a circle of firebreaks and natural barriers, that won’t be the end of the task. Firefighters will have to stamp out smaller fires within that footprint.

“That’s a critical stage, to mop up these hot spots or anything that could rekindle if the winds were to increase again,” Upton says.

Moving forward, the city will need to clean up debris, restore utilities, and analyze damage to the environment before allowing people to move back. With canyons depleted of the trees and vegetation that hold the soil, mudslides could become a threat once the rains return.

Los Angeles will face the prospect of rebuilding destroyed communities. That’s an opportunity to make them less vulnerable to the next fire, says Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension.

Although houses are in many cases required to be built with fire-resistant materials, California law doesn’t say anything about how they should be laid out. Techniques like clustering homes rather than spreading them out among the trees can make them easier to defend from fire, and easier to evacuate, he says.

“That is part of the hope here, that we can do some of this better, smarter, and safer,” Moritz says.

[64-jungle-planks]

MAFIA CUPS FINAL!

Third photo is for scale to show how big the cups are.

I also made pins! I've posted about them before, here and here. The Sam pin says “Try Dissociating” and it’s based off a pin I have and also the line Paulie says about Sam being able to block it all out. The Paulie pin says “Partial to Paulie, 2020” and it’s based off the 1952-1953 presidential campaign pins that Eisenhower made saying “I Like Ike”. It’s a ref to the tweet that the Mafia Twitter made in 2020 asking who’d you like to have more as your buddy. Obviously I’d pick Paulie. The colors and little lighting bolts are pulled straight off the Hangar13 logo!!!

If you'd guys would like to buy them, 4-5 of them will be on my Depop on January 28th if all goes well. each cup will come with two free pins and a doodle. All proceeds will go to help buy back tools for my mom's partner, who lost his lively hood during the Palisades fire. Please reblog this so more people see.

There are also two "broke" ones. I’m going to try to teach myself the art of kinsugi later this month to try and fix them up to be all pretty again and maybe will be selling them at a later date with a discounted price.

This is what Autism looks like /hj. Hyperfixating on something so bad that you need to build the actual cups from the fake game restaurant and you can’t stop till you get them perfect.

[ninthprime]

in response to yesterday's polycule conversation i would like to present this chart on what i personally believe is going on with the blue channel and various adjacent characters. i am not taking questions at this time (actually i am probably). thank you @violentandmagnificent for suggestions. full id under the read more

[ID: the image depicts a relationship chart with various palisade characters. in the top left corner a color chart indicates red is "definitely romantic", green is "maybe??" and gray is "platonic but important to the dynamic here."

brnine is at the center of the largest block of characters. brnine has a green arrow pointing to lattice labeled "oh you're a nobel haha please like me." lattice has a gray arrow pointing back labeled "random person they met once." brnine and gucci share a red line labeled "most toxic primary and satellite relationship in known history." jesset and brnine share a red line labeled "mostly just friends who support each other but you can tell sometimes there is tension here." jesset and gucci share a gray arrow labeled "Rivals." brnine and asepsis share a gray line labeled "uhhhhhh." brnine has a green arrow pointing to thisbe labeled "thisbe look i'm a cool and good person now haha can we be besties haha." thisbe has a gray arrow pointing back labeled "Brnine is like everyone else." brnine has a red line shared with "Wolf who is not appearing in this season."

gur also shares a red line with "Wolf who is not appearing in this season." they share a green line with brnine labeled "we barely know each other but we almost dated the same person who died so our entire perceptions of each other are inherently fraught." gur shares a green line with figure labeled "hey is it normal for a divine to give you a ghost and for that ghost to immediately seem very invested and insist you're friends." figure shares a green line with thisbe labeled "they're like a plant to her (positive(??))." figure also shares a green line with partial palisade labeled "undead history pals." figure has a red arrow pointing to phrygian labeled "wow phrygian you're so cool i wish i was more like you" with a blushing face. phrygian has a green arrow pointed back at figure labeled "thanks figure you're my friend! (too war weary to think on this further)."

off of the main block of characters, mustard has a green line shared with the divine, arbitrage labeled "[REDACTED]." cor'rina and misericorde are on the next line with a red line labeled "Alise Breka's Among Sharks." misericorde shares a green line with routine labeled "apparently this could happen." routine shares a gray line with midnite labeled "constantly updating her on the miseri situation via text." midnite has a red line connecting her to "various women offscreen." on another line, cori has a green line connecting her to kriminel labeled "#normal #girl #friends." cori then has a red line connecting her to elle labeled "what if we were both blood powered mech pilots and i blamed you for my father's death and also we kissed." under them, a final red line connects kalar to his husband. in the top right corner is a box labeled "'Just Hanging Out' Box." hunting and saffron are in this box.]

[bronanlynch]

fic: by the still of your hand

ship: Cas'alear Rizah/Zig'ell Barbos (Friends at the Table: Palisade) rated: t word count: 4.5k tags: post-canon on ao3 here !!

my @secret-samol gift this year for @swordbreakerz who asked for Cas'alear and Zig'ell being in love (not quite domestic bliss but it's the prelude to future domestic bliss ft. plenty of devotion (lowercase d) and a not-insignificant amount of fealty (lowercase f))

in which Cas'alear and Zig'ell think about the past and talk about the future OR, Cas reached over to the desk to set down cas’s hot chocolate and picked up a piece of paper to pass to zig, where cas had written snippets of a speech—zig saw phrases like ‘generational injustices’ and ‘rot at the core of the empire’ and ‘Millennium Break can change lives’—which had devolved in doodles of swords and skulls and stylized mechs, the sorts of designs that looked like they belonged on– “Are these pirate flags?” said Zig’ell, studying the drawings more closely. He was partial to one with stylized wings sprouted from the hilt of a broken sword. “Maybe,” Cas’alear said, snatching the paper back. “It’s silly, it’s just… have you thought about what you want to do now?”

[whencyclopedia]

The motte and bailey castle was an early form of medieval fortification especially popular with the Normans in northern France and Britain during the 11th century CE. A single tower was built on (or partially within) the motte or earth mound while a courtyard area or bailey at the base was protected by a wooden palisade and an encircling outer ditch. Relatively quick to build, the height of the mound made the tower difficult to attack while the wall offered a place of refuge from opportunist raiders. For these reasons, the motte and bailey castle was especially useful in freshly conquered territories where the native population was still hostile to their new overlords. As stone resisted fire better than wood and defensive designs improved, castles evolved into more permanent structures with stone circuit walls and towers enclosing a more impressive inner stone tower or keep (donjon).

[chimaerakirin]

SOULSEKAI

It's the end of the world as they know it, and Shigaraki Tomura feels fine. February 26, 6 AM. This is not what he was planning to do today, but he can work with it. Frankly, this might be even better. This is not at all what Midoriya Izuku was planning to do today, and it's a disaster. He's going to miss the UA Entrance Exam! Where are his shoes, and who's this voice in his head calling him Ninth?

Rated M for violence (Soulslike-appropriate) and Language (also Soulslike-appropriate). Later chapters may go up to E, because I will not allow Tomura to be maidenless.

<- First - SECOND

The First Cairn

Tomura walks for maybe an hour before finding anything beyond a few more dead bodies. One of those has the Glyph that goes into his knife, or at least one that can. A coin thing that looks an awful lot like plastic resin but doesn't sound like it when tapped with a nail, translucent with a Tron blue symbol suspended in it, the symbol uses sweeping lines and sharp curls to form a stylized man either sidestepping or running. Or at least he thinks that's what it is. Either way, his knife now has the Quickstep active ability, which eats 4 FP and 8 STA to dash better than sprinting, on DEX scaling. He's not sure whether that scaling increases speed or distance, but he'll find out.

Then he gets to the mouth of the canyon and finds the rock pile. Or maybe a rock stack. Either way, it's a little taller than he is and too big around to hug if he wanted to try, but not by much. And there's a tattered strip of cloth trapped under the top rock like a banner. Well, if that's not important…

The instant he touches it, it lights up, more Tron blue swirling around it then lasering up into the sky with a flash before fading to a beam with a sort of flashlight-in-fog level of brightness. Emphasis on fog, there's little wisps of cloud around it.

[Defiler's End Cairn unlocked], the system announces. In the corner of his vision, his HP and FP bars instantly refill.

"Cairn menu," he tries.

First, there's [Set Sanctuary], which doesn't explain shit. [Fast Travel] is grayed out. Fair enough, there's nowhere to go. [Map] is available underneath it, but it's all black except for the canyon and the narrow cone he can see from here. Under that, there's something that isn't grayed out so much as completely blocked, text unreadable. Next there's [Cache], which is apparently his overflow or deathproof inventory. Then there's [Motes Of Life], which requires something he hasn't found yet but has a grayed out option to [Restore] whatever it is. Finally there's [Invoke Stele], which explains about as much as the Sanctuary thing. There's nothing about leveling up though. Guess that really does require a Fire Keeper.

He closes the menu, then climbs the cairn for a better view. There's an old castle in the distance, a bit crumbly looking, with smoke rising. Guess that's his next stop. He jumps down and starts walking again.

The castle is smaller than it looks, and closer too. He's there in only a few minutes, and he can see that the outer walls have come down in one corner. It's partially made up with log palisades, but there's no gate, just some sharpened stake fencing with an unlit campfire outside. He can see a couple of people patrolling the stone portion of the walls, but that's it, and they haven't noticed him yet, so he's able to get up to the base of the wall and edge around it. He can't get through without being seen though, not from this side, so he skirts around in search of the main gate.

That's a proper portcullis, and it's closed, but it's not watched, it's not spiked, and there's some convenient damage to the stonework around the upper arch. A tricky climb, to the gatehouse window, but not impossible. It only takes a minute, and that only because he has to test the cracks in the stone. The real problem is that the gatehouse window is just narrow enough that he has to take off his hoodie and baldric, turn sideways, and endure the scraping that takes off five HP and three Durability on his shirt. Which requires climbing back to the ground first, because he can't actually use the Equip menu while clinging to the wall any more than he can strip manually, the interface just grays out.

But he does get in, and discovers why the residents are bothering to guard a hole in the wall instead of an actual gate. The portcullis chain is severed, the windlass smashed, and the door barricaded from the inside. The gatekeeper is still at his post, a pile of bones in rusted chainmail and the shreds of a tabard that probably used to be white. There's nothing worth salvaging in his gear, and the weapons in the rack on the wall are trash, but there are a few scrolls that trigger his inventory's Knowledge tab when he picks them up — collection pop-ups tell him where something went when it disappears from his hand, which is helpful — and a small crate of round clay jars sealed with wax, a cord sticking through the seal.

He has to muffle his giggling. Oh fuck yeah. He found the firebombs. Yup. There's like, eight of them. He moves the Lightstones into whatever tab they normally stack in, and immediately replaces them with the firebombs. As far as he can tell, all those rocks do is glow, but these explode and burn. He kind of half-asses the rest of the search, because what could be better than firebombs this early in the game, and takes the ladder up to the battlements on top of the gatehouse with a cheerful "thanks!" to the bones of the gatekeeper. The hatch is locked from the inside, but he got the key off the table, and then he's in the keep.

There's not much up here. A pair of ballistas, sure, but he can't equip that and there's nothing to fire them at. Giant cauldron over a brazier full of rotted wood, placed where it can be easily tipped over a slot in the wall, but it's empty. There is, however, a spyglass sitting on a table next to the ballista bolts. He can see the Cairn from here, easy to find with the pillar of light — how have these guys not noticed the blue fucking batsignal, by the way? He can see the NPCs down in the courtyard, enough to count them. Enough to count their pores, the one on the near side of the wall patrol. Ugly fuckers, he knows he's nothing special to look at but these guys got beat with the ugly stick and asked for more. Not undead though. They're mostly dressed in a mix of leathers and plain padded armor, but one of them has obviously better gear, a matched set, and he mentally marks that one before moving on. There's movement in a couple of the lower windows, more bandits probably. Couple of staggering drunks, brief views of heavy-ass wooden furniture, empty hallways, freckle-faced kid—

Wait.

What?

He refocuses on that window. Yep. That's a kid. Like, a middle-schooler at best. That can't be one of the bandits, he's too clean. The kid stares back, wide-eyed, then skitters back from the window and, with a brief expression of incredulity, puts his heels together and raises his arms at an angle, like he's holding up a large sign or a giant beach ball.

Or like he's praising the sun.

"What the fuck…?"

The kid is slowly turning redder, like he can't believe he's doing this. Tomura kind of can't believe it either, but if the kid is doing what Tomura thinks he is, intentionally… He glances back down at the bandits, then at the Cairn in the distance. Then he sighs, hops up onto the battlement ledge, and does the Prayer emote. When he looks back up, the kid is relaxed, if still steaming slightly. Tomura points to him, and gets a clumsy mix of Call Over and Beckon followed by Point Downward in return.

All right then. Tomura nods, sticks the spyglass in his belt's bonus Quickslot, and scans the courtyard again. There, opposite from the side of the gatehouse that he came in through, the stables. He drops over the side of the tower, then off the wall on the stable roof. Clay tiles crunch slightly under his weight, and he drops flat for a moment. One, two, three bandits in this section. He'll have to take them quietly if he doesn't want to fight all of them.

That one first. He comes the closest. Goes all the way into the stable in fact. Tomura hears him mutter something about a stash as he slithers off the edge of the roof, creeps up behind him, then clamps a hand over his mouth and slits his throat. The health bar drains almost as fast as it appears, no damage number appearing, and there's a brief stream of sharp-edged sparks as his Mote counter ticks up to 80. He lays the body on the ground, then checks the position of the other two enemies and skitters over to the next. Eighty more motes, stuffed behind a few barrels for now. Then the third, which has to be dragged all the way back to the stables to be hidden. From there, he can search their pockets. A few more Bone Darts, but that's it. Then he moves to the door.

There's nowhere to hide inside, not really. Big entry hall, military base, not a lot of furniture. But he can stick to the shadows long enough to ambush another bandit. He briefly wishes for a cardboard box, then shakes it off and moves on again. There are two more on this floor, and four on the next. Then he runs into one going up the stairs, because it's a proper defensive design that ascends clockwise. Unfortunately for them he's left handed and has all the elbow room in the world. His knife goes into the NPC's gut, taking off about two thirds of his health bar, and there's a wheezy shout before he can get in another stab.

Shit, that'll bring them running.

All four of them. Well shit. They're spaced pretty well, so he gets the first with Quickstep and a stab to the chest. Pretty sure that's the heart, the way he goes down, but it's just enough time getting the knife back out that he can't chain-kill the next two, which means they start talking. It's not Japanese, but he can understand them somehow.

The usual stuff, 'how'd you get in here,' 'show me your blood,' 'your motes are mine, and so's the rest of you'...

Wait, what?

"That's a bloke, you half-wit!" one of them tells that third one.

"So? He's pretty enough! Not like the raid parties ever bring any wenches back, and I never get picked to go. Neither do you!"

Ew.

"You have a point…"

Oh fuck no. Tomura blitzes them, stabbing three bone darts into one's neck and slapping him with Deteriorate, then slashes the primary pervert's femoral artery, and Quicksteps again to reach the last one. As the final body falls, he checks his Motes. 1200, all of them were worth the same.

Then there's a retching sound and a splatter, and he turns around to see the kid from the window, hunched over and panting.

"Never seen dead people before?" Tomura asks, wiping his knife and checking for loot. More Lightstones, a pack of crossbow bolts… Weird, he doesn't even have anything to shoot them with.

"Nnnot like that," the kid warbles. Japanese. "You… you killed them."

If this kid can't handle that, there won't be much Jolly Cooperation here. "Well I wasn't going to sit there and let them kill me. Could you understand what they were saying?"

The kid nods, swallowing hard.

"I'm nobody's fucktoy, not alive and definitely not dead." He moves to check the other bodies.

"D-dead?!"

"How do you think you get Motes, brat? They're not yen, they're XP. I thought you knew the genre."

"I-I don't, but, um, Yoichi said, if you'd recognize a Sunbro, you'd be good to party up with? Wh-whatever that means…"

"Who the fuck is Yoichi?" That name sounds very vaguely familiar.

The kid looks like he might faint. "I don't even know! He was just there when I got here, in my head somehow! Like I'm haunted! …What do you mean you're technically a Quirk?!"

"Shut up," Tomura hisses. "Don't you know what stealth is?"

The kid claps a hand over his mouth. "Sorry! …Um, he says to tell you… I have sixteen INT, twenty DVN, and a book of basic Miracles. Well, they're called Prayers… We uh, we haven't figured out how to use them yet though… Do you know what Bonfires look like around here? Or what a Stele is?"

"Bonfire's a Cairn, a big stack of rocks thataway." Tomura finishes looting, then stands up and points. "You can use a Stele there, but I haven't seen one on its own. What level are you?"

"Six… Is that low?"

"Starting levels in FromSoft canon go from one to ten depending on what class you pick. I'm at nine. What's your name, brat?"

"Oh, um, Izuku. Midoriya Izuku." The kid bows, practically a full 90 degrees.

"…Shigaraki Tomura."

The kid, Midoriya, blinks. "Um… Do you write that like the town near Lake Biwa? Or is it, death-grip-tree?"

Tomura narrows his eyes. "Why?"

"Yo-Yoichi says he uses the latter. His family name is Shigaraki too. I— Huh? Oh. Okay, but— Okay…? He wants to know if you've seen a boss around here."

How does this Yoichi have Sensei's name? He files that away for later. "Maybe. One guy's head and shoulders taller than the rest. Looks like his armor is better than everyone else's too. I want it. Problem is, there's twenty guys running around with him, not counting the two on the walls or anyone outside, and I can't Metal Gear all of them."

"Yoichi says, he's sorry we couldn't find a cardboard box in the Quartermaster's office…"

Tomura snorts. Yoichi knows what the fuck he's talking about, at least. He moves through the door that Midoriya appeared in, dragging the kid with him. "Come on, out of the hall. And I'm pretty sure I found the local equivalent of an Estus Flask earlier, but it's broken. What did you find in there?"

"Well, there was the, the [Empyrean Acolyte's Breviary], it's called? Yoichi says a breviary is kind of a book for daily prayers, and the description says it has three spells. Lesser Restoration, Lesser Cleanse, and Abjure."

Tomura nods slowly. "Probably a Heal, a debuff cleaner, and… some kind of defensive thing. Probably not a de-summon, too early in the game for that. What else?"

"A box of Lightstones — they're little rocks about as bright as a candle, the office doesn't have a window so I could test them. A torch, there's more in there by the way, a [Kindling Kit], a [Provisioner's Tools] and some [Rations], some repair kits, a couple of crafting manuals and some supplies, and… oh right, a map." Midoriya twitches after the last word, then swats the air.

"Wait, a map? Let me see that." After a moment, a roll of paper — no, that's vellum — appears in Midoriya's hand, and he holds it out to Tomura. The instant it touches Tomura's hand, his Knowledge tab pings, and he verbally calls up the map with a wide grin. It's not a world map, that's for sure, just a local one, but since it includes the canyon, he has a decent idea of the scale, and it covers at least a few days hiking in any direction. The fast travel point, an icon of stacked squares with one on top, two pairs, and three on the bottom, is lit up blue, just like the real one. "Okay, the symbol with the eight stacked boxes — can you still see the map in your HUD? — this symbol here, that's a Cairn. This one is called Defiler's End. I spawned at the end of the canyon, which is… about five kilometers, give or take. I was walking for about an hour."

"De-defiler's End? That's… an ominous name…" Midoirya pauses. "Oh. Yoichi says, not really? Was the canyon a dead end?"

"Yeah. Sheer cliff, probably ten meters up."

"He says someone probably lost an army in there. Wait, what? O-oh. A marching formation is files wide and ranks deep, and a defile is a terrain chokepoint that forces fewer files."

Tomura smirks. "So someone marched in, the retreat was blocked, and it was fish in a barrel. I assumed it was just the bandits' gank alley. Six dead guys, not a lot of loot. I hit the fucking jackpot in the gatehouse though."

"R-really? What'd you find?"

Tomura holds up one of the firebombs. "Box of these."

Midoriya squints at it for a minute, then claps his hands over his ears, wincing. "Please stop squealing! What even is that?"

"It's the starting item you pick when you want to cheese the shit out of the first boss," Tomura deadpans.

Midoriya goes slack and blinks at him quizzically. "…You two said that at the exact same time." Another pause. "Do I get context for this? …Fine. He asks, Priscilla, Doll, Anri, Ranni, or Other?"

"Why?"

"...Fu," Midoriya relays uncertainly.

Fu? Oh. Yoichi is a smartass. "Melina. She's the only one that fights with you except Anri and that's a political arrangement."

"He says your heart is true." Midoriya blinks again. "Oh. Oh. Now I feel like I need a rolled up newspaper and a spray bottle. Can we focus, please? We have twenty-two bandits and a boss, right?"

"Which need to be killed, yes." Midoriya flinches, and Tomura narrows his eyes. "Look, brat. If you're gonna have a moral crisis, I may as well ditch you here, heals or no heals. There are no innocents here. These are rape-pillage-and-burn bandits, I'd bet my Cassowary Deck there's another group of them somewhere down the road that will eat their victims on top of fucking and killing them, listed order optional. If there are any technically legitimate authorities left, they're either insane in one way or another, or else actively trying to speed up the apocalypse because the phoenix rises from the ashes, not the fire. It's usually the protagonist's job to help them with that, by the way, Ranni For Prime Minister and shit, and rule of isekai means we're probably protagonists here. And if everything was running smoothly, a starving street kid arrested for stealing an apple would get his hand chopped off because that's the historical standard. These assholes can't be arrested, and if they could be they'd be executed anyway. There's no law, no justice, no police, and especially no fucking Heroes."

There's a long silence, the kid's eyes going slightly unfocused and his face twitching a few times. Then he sags, the way Tomura knows he does when Kurogiri responds to 'don't wanna' with 'Sensei thinks you should.' "All right… I don't like it, but… It's… kinda like the Dawn of Quirks, Yoichi says… Before Heroes were created, there were only vigilantes, and before that, they were freedom fighters. Legally, they were, they were terrorists."

"Huh. I think Sensei mentioned Heroes and Villains used to be the same, but I don't remember him saying they were terrorists."

"…Yoichi says he'll tell us more when we get to the Cairn, if you want. Um… Those firebombs. Are they for the boss?"

"Not unless we're getting fucked. I told you I want his armor, I don't wanna damage it too badly. This is for the mobs. I've got eight of them, and if I have less than three by the time the castle's cleared I'm gonna be annoyed, so we need to get them clustered right."

"I-I think I found the instructions to make those and at least some of the ingredients, I know I've got a bunch of clay pots like that, so it, it may be okay if you run out as long as we win? But, um, Yoichi says we should probably figure out if it's possible to form a party so we can see each other's HP, because we aren't really summoned to each other's worlds?"

Once again, Yoichi shows sense. "Show current status… There's not a Covenant display in the HUD."

"Wait, show current status? Oh! I didn't know you could move those bars around… Yoichi says it's weird that it's showing number values for them. Show attributes. Hmm…" The kid breaks off into mumbling, and Tomura can only catch about one one in three. Then one in five.

"Inventory." There isn't a Key Items tab that he can see. The Spyglass goes into the no longer gray Tools though, when he temporarily shifts it out of Quickslots. "Show Skills… Show Factions? Create Faction. Create Guild. Create Covenant. Create Order." He goes through a few synonyms, but gets nowhere.

"Create Pact," Midoriya says suddenly, then jumps. "That worked!"

"Great, but you're not gonna be the party leader. Create Pact." The window appears. It asks for a name, accepts handwriting touchscreen style (even lets him use a Bone Dart as a stylus), and has a space for a 'Heraldic Badge.' Tomura thinks for a minute, then smirks and carefully sketches in a thin circle wisping with flames. Then he invites Midoriya.

Midoriya squints at the window that pops up. "Miyazaki no Kishi? Yoichi approves…" He taps something, probably the accept button, and the Darksign appears on his tabard, while an extra health bar appears in the corner of Tomura's vision.

Another window appears. "Motes of Life belonging to Pact Members will automatically be transferred to the nearest ally," he reads. "Oh, that's… great, and also shit. It means there's most likely no solo respawn, but respawn is possible, and I know how to do it. All right brat, if I go down, you run to the Cairn. It's straight out through the hole in the wall. You don't stop for anything, you activate it and you pick the second to last option in the menu. You should be able to rez me there, and also do whatever the hell you need a Stele for."

"O-okay. How, how far is it?"

"Couple minutes' walk. Maybe two hundred meters? If we go up to the roof before we fight I can show you through the spyglass."

Midoriya nods. "There's a ladder at the end of the hall."

"Show me."

A minute later, they're on the roof, and Tomura is handing Midoriya the spyglass. Midoriya scans the ground intently, from the Cairn to the courtyard and back. Then he hands the glass back and T-poses against the battlements. He mumbles and points along the crenellations, then sets his heel against the wall and pushes off into a run. He's not nearly as fast as Tomura, but he runs multiple full back-and-forth laps before staggering to a walk, then keeps going a few more before stopping. Then he looks over at Tomura and nods.

"Okay, if you're right about the distance I can make it across maybe two thirds of that field in a straight line before my Stamina runs out and I have to walk. Then I can probably be ready to run again by the last ten meters. But that's only if I don't have to worry about the two crossbows on the walls, and if my green bar is full when I start running. Otherwise I'll have to zigzag. There's rocks for cover there, there, there, and there."

Tomura glances out with the spyglass, then nods, impressed despite himself. "If you can access my shit, borrow my knife and use the Glyph skill. I don't know how far it'll get you per burst, but it scales on DEX." He looks down into the courtyard, watching the movements. "All right, do you know how many are in the castle itself?"

"I didn't go onto the bottom floor, but I think… Ten? Maybe?"

"Twelve. All right, here's what we're gonna do…"

~praise be unto the Sky~

The two on the wall go down easily, if not quickly. They patrol all the way to the gatehouse doors, which are barricaded from both sides now that he looks — makes sense, those doors open outward — so it's easy to get them while they're close to the gate with a drop stab, then shove the bodies over the battlements. He manages five of the courtyard roamers before he gets caught. He throws a bone dart at the alerted one's face and bolts for the keep with a cackle.

"Get rekt, noobs!" he yells over his shoulder. He has to duck under a grabbing hand, but a wild backward swing takes off a few fingers for his trouble.

The big double doors are half-closed, and the closed side is barricaded with benches just well enough to slow the rush, and he throws one of his firebombs just as Midoriya, hidden on the stable roof, throws another. There's a round of horrified screaming as he throws another, then he rushes up the stairs, climbs through the window frame, and jumps to the roof of what he's pretty sure is the smithy. It only takes a minute for them to realize, and he throws another dart at the first one to look through the window.

By now his STA is regenerated, and the Boss appears in his vision and his HUD.

[Ivar, Reaver Baron] is about two meters tall, and in general is dressed like he should have a silver sword on his back to go with the steel one in his hand, although he's traded the Wolf Medallion for a cloth and leather half-mask.

"I don't know who you're meant for, Sacrificial Prince, but once you walked into my castle, they lost you. Surrender, and I'll kill you quickly," Ivar growls, staring up at him.

Tomura blinks, tilting his head. "Who the fuck's a Sacrificial Prince?"

"Rabbit Knight, then. I don't care, you're both dead."

Waaait… Does this guy see his health bar? His name? Is Tomura a boss fight to him? Are he and Midoriya a dual boss? All right then. Tomura cracks his neck and stands up. "Midoriya! You done with the rest of them yet?!"

There's a yelp and a clash of steel in the background, followed by a familiar cracking sound. A few Motes trickle into his counter, then Midoriya's health bar drops by a fifth. "I'm okay!"

"Hurry up!" Tomura stands up and jumps off the smithy roof in an odd direction, forcing Ivar to chase him. Immediately, he uses Quickstep and cuts into Ivar's back. The strike produces a muffled metallic sound and takes off maybe five percent of Ivar's health bar, then he has to duck a swing with the sword. "Well shit. That's a jack of plates," he mumbles.

Ivar glares at him. "You think a Skymarked would be so poorly clad as the scum that cling to us?"

Tomura only bares his teeth in a vicious grin and lunges. "I want it even more now!"

His knife bites into Ivar's sleeve above the vambrace, and the health bar chips again, but the cloth doesn't show a tear. The sword that slices into his own shoulder despite his dodge does equally little visible harm to his hoodie, and although pain flares to match the lost chunk of HP, maybe a sixth, he doesn't feel any blood running down his skin. He Quicksteps out of range just as Midoriya comes running up, and he starts circling as Ivar's attention turns.

Midoriya doesn't look great, pale and sweaty with bile around his mouth, but he hasn't lost any more health, and his grip on his mace is steady. "I-I'm here!"

"A child?" Ivar scoffs. He raises his sword for an overhead slash, despite the multiple meters separating them.

"Ah shit." Tomura Quicksteps in again and jumps onto his back, slashing at one raised wrist, kicking at the back of a knee, and clawing at the side of Ivar's face from an awkward half-assed chokehold all at once. Whatever ranged slice was about to happen is aborted, and Tomura gets grabbed by the back of his hoodie and thrown like a ragdoll for his trouble, landing on his back with a whoosh of breath.

He was even more of a distraction though, because Ivar ended up half-kneeling, and that gives Midoriya time to run up and swing his mace like a baseball bat at Ivar's shoulder. He gets a second swing in too, before Ivar grabs the shaft of the weapon and stops it cold. Midoriya can't rip it free… So he lets Ivar take it and stabs his dagger into the same arm instead before running away.

And Ivar's health bar, reduced to half, starts to very slowly drain.

Tomura, back on his feet, rushes in again as Ivar hurls away the mace, and goes for a thigh stab, rolling away from a downward swing, then rolling back and stabbing again. Midoriya reclaims his mace with a yell, and Tomura manages a cut across the face that immediately starts to visibly bleed. As fast as he can, Tomura tags the Bleeding boss with his free hand, triggering Deteriorate and causing blood to literally spray out.

Ivar howls, probably more in shock than in pain, and slams the hilt of his sword into Tomura's chest to shove him away, then retreats. Tomura chases after him, circling around with Quickstep, and successfully drives him into another strike from Midoriya's mace, causing him to drop his sword, which Midoriya kicks away.

"Surrender!" Midoriya shouts.

Ivar swears and retreats again, one hand going to a strange sheath across the back of his waist and the other digging into a pouch on his belt. He comes up with a golden glass bottle.

"Oh shit!" Simultaneously, Tomura and Midoriya rush him. With Quickstep, Tomura gets there first, and he manages to hit the wrist and knock the bottle away while taking off another chunk of health bar, but he pays for it when the boss draws a set of fucking Wolverine claws with his other hand and hacks into his ribs.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" screams the kid, rushing in with his mace raised while Tomura staggers away, health at a third and getting lower with blood on his hand.

The mace strikes once, simultaneously with the claws, and both of Midoriya and the boss lose a fifth of their health. The mace strikes again, and another fifth goes down. Midoriya's at about forty percent. Ivar is at one.

Then Deteriorate finishes working, and before either of them can swing a third time, the Reaver Baron falls over dead. Over a thousand Motes appear on Tomura's counter, he's too busy bleeding to track the exact number, and a blue light appears over the boss's corpse.

"Shigaraki-san!" Midoriya yelps, scrambling over to him. "The bleeding, what do I—"

"That gold bottle," Tomura snaps.

"A-ah, right!" The kid scrambles some more, and comes back with the intact Vital Flask.

Tomura, at ten percent health and dropping, chugs it instantly. It tastes like sunlight, cough syrup, and that stuff Nintendo sprays game cartridges with to keep toddlers from eating them — in short, fucking awful — but his HP shoots back up to near full in seconds. And keeps draining. "Current Status," he rasps. There's a Bleed icon under his health bar, slowly desaturating. By the time it grays out completely and the debuff ends, he's back down to three quarters of his health, and Midoriya is hovering anxiously.

"Are you okay, Shigaraki-san?"

"I'm fine brat. And call me Tomura, it's faster."

"O-oh! Then you can call me Izuku!" The kid beams.

Fucking hell. Tomura needs some sunglasses. "Turn off the spotlight, dammit. All right, let's get our loot and head back to the Cairn."

[thecurioustale]

Urban Fires Are Heartbreaking

Los Angeles is currently experiencing the worst fire I remember it ever facing in my lifetime. Wildfires are common in the Los Angeles area nowadays, but almost always they exist in the backcountry and at the wildland–urban interface. But today's fires—and there are two separate major ones, the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, and several smaller ones—have penetrated the interface threshold and are now inside the city proper. (The urban zone, not the city limits of Los Angeles itself.) To give you a sense of how critical the situation is, this disaster is one of those rare "all TV commercials and regular shows are preempted for round-the-clock local news coverage" moments.

Urban fires are scary, like all uncontrolled fires are. But more than that, they are heartbreaking. Thousands of buildings have burned; news footage shows block after block of wreckage and ruin. I was watching the webcast of the news coverage of one of the big Los Angeles networks (FOX 11), and the scenes are so surreal: a pile of unidentifiable ruin with a charred washer and dryer in the middle; a sign that is a cheery picture of a smiling tooth, with no trace of the dental office it once belonged to; an Aldi still in good condition but abandoned to its fate by firefighters, and burning live on air as the reporter speaks; a tourist mural saying "Altadena welcomes you" on a brick wall next to a collapsed building; fire trucks rushing by houses fully engulfed in flame, without stopping.

I thought this Altadental sign was cute, and it was really sad to see it standing next to a smoldering ruin.

The same Altadental sign.

These images make me so sad. In my old age I just don't have the psychological resiliency anymore to look at it with a stiff upper lip. I know that many of these homes are affluent people's homes, and I suppose that's preferable to fires sweeping through working-class neighborhoods, but I guess the bottom line is that, first of all, most of the victims are not especially affluent (particularly in the Eaton Fire zone), and, more importantly, I'm not a piece of a shit like some of the anti-capitalist folks who are so loud on here about wishing for days like this one, or the MAGA folks who are besides themselves with glee that this is happening in a deeply liberal area. At the end of the day, we are all human beings together, and I find more humanity in the video reports on the ground than I do in the online clown show. Losing your home or your business in a fire is awful. Even the people who can easily afford to bounce back from it, do not deserve it.

In a sense, the destroyed businesses are even more heartbreaking than the destroyed homes, because small businesses are the manifestation of a community. Along with schools, businesses are the key way that individual households interact and coexist together in this social space of ours we call society. Most small businesses are the embodiment of people's dreams and much very hard work, and of the work and toil of their employees—now jobless. Even the chain stores have local workforces, and franchisees are also small business owners, even if they have a big corporate logo. Destroyed businesses are very hard on a community, and hurt its ability to bounce back, doing injury to everyone.

The fires are not contained; the dry northeast winds remain relatively high; the fire hydrant infrastructure is partially inoperative; and shortly it will be nighttime again. A very rough night lies ahead for many people, and that's before the long and painful aftermath even begins. The only good news is that the official death toll is still very low, just five people—and that's very good news, considering the scope of these fires.

[planet4546b]

gotta say that theres something wonderfully cathartic to me about the stomach turning dread of the way palisade is twisting tms legacy and history. like yes get in there. rip it up

[theinstagrahame]

This is the post where I show off the stuff I've gotten in the last month-ish. And it's been another good one!

(I mean it's always a good one, I have excellent taste)

Coffee and Chaos: I'm tickled by the concept of a coffeeshop AU, and I know that this game isn't explicitly for that. But it's also not *not* for that. Comes in a like conference-style folder, with all the bits you need to play tucked into the sides, which is also a great presentation that I felt deserved a shout-out!

Far Horizons Guide to Cults: I'm friendly with some Far Horizons folks, but wanted this book because it's awesome. A book containing notes and pre-made cults that have goals and drives beyond just "Be A Cult". I am intrigued by the occult, and I hope this gives me more nuance.

Neurocity: Picked this up on vibes alone, but I'm hearing more and more rad things about the creator. It's dystopic, a little cyberpunk, and the book is dripping with style. Can't wait to dig deeper.

You're In Space and Everything's Fucked: Station and Struggler's Guides: The title alone sold me, but I like what Dinoberry Press puts out in general. This is a solo survival space horror game with a cool respawn mechanic. I also splurged on the fancy version because the covers are very cool.

Dead Belt: The pleather folio for this honestly is what sold me, but the game itself is really cool. Salvage ships by laying out cards, exploring, and managing your air and tool resources. Try not to die. I haven't really succeeded at that last part yet...

Exquisite Corpse in the Maggot's Keep: Technically, this isn't a TTRPG, but it's go so many TTRPG folks in it that it might as well be. It's a choosable path adventure written by a variety of people in (if I remember the pitch) exquisite corpse style.

Best Left Buried: Throne of Avarice and In Calamity's Wake: As we already know, I'm a SoulMuppet fan (as in, I've written for their other big series, Orbital Blues). The main book, Throne of Avarice, was written by a creator whose work I've been trying to get more of. I haven't read Best Left Buried as fully as a game, but I am really excited by the excuse to dig in.

Between Clouds: I like air islands and big monsters and found family. Partially, I grabbed this because a friend got really excited about it, and it seemed like it could be fun to run a campaign with them, but I'm also curious about the Year Zero Engine, and glad to see people using it.

Kitchen Knightmares: Grabbed this as an add-on for the You're In Space crowdfund, but I'm glad I got it because it's loosely inspired by This Discord Has Ghosts In It, and that game rules. I might be able to pitch this to my friend group, who enjoyed Discord Has Ghosts.

In a Mirror Brightly/Handbaskets: First off, plug for the RTFM podcast, because it's very good. This two-games-in-one book is created by the two hosts of that show, who are great designers and seem really lovely. But, two wildly different vibes in a single volume is a great idea.

You Meet in a Tavern, You Die in a Dungeon: I've been following the creator for this since some of my earliest days in the RPG scene, so I was happy to help make this a reality. Feels very tropey, and I mean that in the best way possible.

In Other Waters: Tidebreak: Honestly, I have barely scratched the surface of In Other Waters, the PC game this is based on. But this is a Mothership solo hack that returns to that world, and it had me curious based on that pitch alone.

Aaand because I'm a doofus who forgot to include it, here's one more book! PLUS A guest appearance from my new desk mat.

Teeth: Been into Forged in the Dark lately, and as much as I enjoy Monster of the Week, the pitch for this seemed like it was more my speed. You're monster hunters, trying to keep the occult under wraps, while keeping secrets of your own. Plus, horror comedy!

The mat is the cover art from Friends at the Table's current season, Palisade. It's an Armor Astir campaign following up on some of the characters from their Partizan series.

[eclecticopposition]

which of ur fics would you recommend to someone who hasn't read any yet? (Partially asking from the thing you rb'd partially cause I just wanna know)

a great question! a lot of our stuff is unfinished, and most of our onboarding has actually just been us infodumping in a group chat for several hours straight. why that keeps working, we don't know.

(does kalrin's playlist count? maybe the answer is we sit in a voice call together and listen to that while cal and i explain at length what each song represents. a very normal way to spend two hours.)

fic writer asks

we'll go on the record as saying that Wire Guy is our best fic. but if you don't want to commit to 74000 words and counting, you could always check out six sunday! it's got bite sized samples of both palisade and original content, so it's a solid place to start.

(alternatively, if fic compilations aren't your thing, you can check out our sangfielle fic Asbestine Infelidel. it's cute, it's pretty self-contained, and it's got a weird priest!)

we made a piece for @jupitermoths' birthday called Merry Go, Merry Gone. it's pretty good! if you don't know connor and nora, you should change that. we'd say that it has a lot in common with wire guy, if fewer microaggressions. it's full of unreality and fun atmospheric descriptions and yes, we promise the mixed tenses are on purpose.

as for other onboarding spots, standalone pieces, or perhaps some stuff involving OCs.... watch this space. :}