#ranger quake champions

[luxlightly]

Two seconds later he would ask whose sick severed hands these are and if he can have them. Later he'd remember neither interaction. That's a real cosmetic in the game for Death Knight, btw. His wife's hands.

(painted, just in case you forgot these are LADY hands!) Shub Niggurath plagued him with visions of madness that drove him to kill his wife and unborn child. Eventually the madness would claim him entirely and he'd trade his soul to Shub in return for being eternally at war.

[narklos]

Why are you still in the tournament, ranger? 🤨

[mrcomrade]

Sometimes the world doesn’t need another hero. It needs a monster.

[emilienblanchard]

ranger from Quake Champion

[expvrgction]

(no other thoughts, only beej getting pulled into quake-related shenanigans)

[wjbs-aus]

The Quake series is weird because it has three different identities (Ranger's interdimensional funtimes (Quake I and its expansions), the Strogg War (II, IV and Enemy Territory), and the multiplayer subseries (III, Live and Champions)), and only one of them (namely the multiplayer subseries) is explicitly connected to the other two.

[pikkish]

OOUGH I AM GRABBING YOUR FUCKED UP RANGER HE LOOKS SO DISGUSTING I LOVE IT!!!!!!!! I love a corruption arc sooooo much!!! How did it happen, did Quake finally capture him and change him, or something else?

Thank you, he's been really fun to draw! I kinda think I'd like to make him even worse, or be kinda malleable with his design, but as it turns out I'm not actually great at coming up with lots of ideas for body horror, n what I've got so far is about the limit of my imagination eheheh

As for what happened to him, no, he was never captured and corrupted or anything! All of his physical changes are self-inflicted, though he doesn't realize that, and could easily be reversed, though he's not aware of that, either. The short version is, he's come into contact with an immense amount of arcane energy, both from handling the runes that make up the fabric of the universe (with his bare hands, no less!!) and in slaying all the most powerful entities that could possibly call themselves Quake- Shub, Armagon, that dragon in Dissolution of Eternity, and Cthon for the second time in Dimension of the Machine. Through conquest, through will, through the steady accumulation of achievement (and arcane runes,) he has become the most powerful entity in the sprawling, nightmarish realms of Quake, and Champion of the Machine besides. Effectively, he IS Quake, and with the power to warp reality to his will, he could do anything he wants.

The problem is, he doesn't realize this. Oh, he has some understanding that the runes are powerful and grant power to their weilders, and some vague impression that the Machine isn't a realm itself, but a place between, a connection between realms, but he doesn't know that he controls it. The slipgates always lead him to some new nightmare realm full of monsters because that's what they've always done in his experience, so that's what he expects them to do, and so that's what they do. And the monsters in those realms have always attacked him, so that's what he expects them to do, so that's what they do. He is, unknowingly, commanding the very world that he controls to be hostile to him, simply because he is unaware that he could do anything else- or that he is doing it at all.

In theory, this could go on infinitely unchanging, endless slipgates to endless realms, until he eventually made his way back to the Machine, only to begin again with a new slipgate. The problem, his physical change, began when he started to wonder if he was entirely human anymore. It started out just as wondering if he ever would see another living, friendly human again, because aside from just being all hostile, all of the even vaguely humanoid things he comes across are still distinctly not human- not even the ones that definitely were human once, like the Operation Counterstrike zombies. Then he began to think how strange, or coincidental, or unlikely it was that he was the only human that should be there.

Then he began to wonder if, maybe, it wasn't actually that strange at all that he was the only human, because maybe, he wasn't actually all that human anymore. How long had it been- centuries? Millenia? Longer? Humans don't live that long, he was pretty sure. And he didn't know exactly what those runes were capable of, but he'd held them, felt their power as it made his skin rupture and blood burst from his veins, as they forced arcane secrets into his head. Surely, that would leave some sort of lasting effect. And simply existing in the space of the Machine- a place that bends and breaks the rules of what he knows- humans couldn't exist there. They simply couldn't.

So he wondered if he was still human, or if he was changing, or when the change had begun, or when the signs of it would start to show.

By the time he was injured- arm nearly slashed off- he was quite convinced that he couldn't be human any more, because a human couldn't survive that, and he was certain, at any moment, the physical changes would start manifesting themselves.

And because he was the one in control, and he expected it to happen, it did.

So now, here he is, changed, grotesque, very much not human, all of it by his own hand, and all of it undoable, if only he realized he was the one who did it.

[captainkupo]

some rambley thoughts on quake as a franchise's identity and continuity

the quake franchise is a strange beast in regards to identity. its largely been iterated on the mechanics from the first quake but whatever form that takes will wildly change from game to game. you can clearly see even if it was meant to be a new ip that quake 2s gameplay and design are developed off of how quake 1 plays, whether just becaues of the engine, an id house style that had started developing. whatever you want to call it

but something quake champions and call of the machine for quake 2 bring in regards to continuity is the idea of all of quake existing in the same "multiverse" . a bunch of different worlds connected to each other, sharing connections to lovecraftian dimensions or what have you. that the strogg have some deeper arcane connections to "quake" as a nebulous entity/dimension. that different planes of reality exist whos playable characters in quake champions have reached the 4 dimensions that existed in quake through different means (artificial slipgate for ranger, black hole generator explosion for strogg & peeker etc) (basically just applying narrative cohesion and context for quake 3's arena eternal

as much as multiverses as a concept are a worn out trend thats largely been used recently for endless fanservice (in cases both good and bad), its very much the perfect idea for a franchise like quake, where its entire concept and influences are built around different worlds and universes and planes of reality, but instead of being excuses to have a billion spidersmen or to bring back some actor who played some character one time its to provide context for potentially infinite play spaces and level themings (trending towards horror obviously) like a really good example is something like arcane dimensions or to an extent the machinegames quake expansions. theyre presented as vignettes designed by different people with different design styles and themes and content. but provided in context of quake and the start level you reach all them from, it presents the idea that theyre all worlds that could exist in continuity, diifferent realities with their own histories and cultures and magics and technologies. mods in general for quake kind of seem that way to me (probably biased based on my experiencec with quake mods being mostly AC and the MG sets). it could be any of an infinite number of realities that ranger has ended up in and has to fight his way through. id like to hope going forward that whatever game studios end up working on quake in the future keep leaning in that direction. despite only getting one proper game and a mp title, the lovecraft setting feels so much stronger and with so much more potential than the humantiy strogg war we've had across two full games and a mp spinoff. if they even wanted they could do a completely "new" setting and ground it within quakes multiverse if they wanted, though its not what id perfer

it does kind of suck that doom 6 is creeping pretty hard into quakes territory with a more medieval fantasy setting, but in practice it still feels -more- modern doom than quake, and id hope its not a sign that quake is being largely abandoned (id's shooters do trend towards a "house style", even with the new dooms being developed by completely new people, its still following alot of those same design and thematic elements that got codified in the 90s).

[doom-nerdo-666]

I think the idea of Marathon being used for a "Tarkov-like" PvP "extraction shooter" would've been less worse if:

They first released a single player/campaign based modern FPS game as a revival of the series.

Made the Tarkov copy crap into a sidemode alongside said singleplayer fun experience.

Remember that people thought Doom 16 was going to flop because the marketing focused heavily on a divisive MP mode and then people started to get hyped when they saw more of the singleplayer.

Quake Champions has some good reception partially because of that "Doom is SP, Quake is MP" bit but the game had some things people enjoyed and even got used to the new iteration of the Ranger but QC still had better days and most people want a Quake singleplayer revival.

Marathon as a series is less popular and was much more dormant, then you have the fact that the 3 first games are free and there's a modding scene.

Most hardcore old FPS fans and Bungie fans are the ones that know Marathon, so you don't just have the issue of potentially disappointing old fans but also putting up with people that never heard of Marathon.

It's also clear that multiplayer as a concept can be easily exploited in games, due to greedy tactics like MTX: Never forget that 2017 period when companies got into sorts of controversies and EA tried really hard to claim "singleplayer is dead".

After all, "online" means the game will always be on life support so it needs a "hook" but it's not an issue for a singleplayer game if the game is good enough.

Maybe someone will say that Marathon shouldn't get into singleplayer anymore because of Infinity's ending and i guess in case a new game would ruin the abstraction set by the presentation of the originals.

Still, Bungie could've easily gotten a hint from Doom Eternal and indie titles like Ultrakill.

If you're gonna chase trends, at least look at the ones that people like so much that even skeptics like.

[i-eat-your-pancakes-art]

If you've played Quake Champions, then you've probably noticed that Ranger is kind of melodramatic, bless his heart. I headcanon that Doomguy is a good listener and Ranger vents to him a lot. But sometimes he gets carried away...

[luxlightly]

When you sell your soul to an Old God to always be killing people and then end up in the Always Killing People Dimension. Alternatively: "Death Knight Heaven is Everyone Else Hell. It's a very efficient system"

[mileena--kahnumm]

!!!👀

[imx-doomer]

LEGO Quake Champions by flynn600

[devilrose]

Alright so now I’m done printing everything, I have added a few more things to the first batch, mostly fanart (including something that’s not Pokemon, GASP). As always you can find all this stuff in my store :D

rludovico.storenvy.com