#rock-cut tomb

[wandering-cemeteries]

Rock cut tomb, possibly Early Christian or Byzantine. A large number of rock cut tombs were carved out at the top of the Ancient Greek Theater. (I went looking for more info. Even Italian sources failed me.)

Syracuse, Sicily

Feb. 2024

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔖𝔬 𝔴𝔢 𝔤𝔬 𝔦𝔫𝔰𝔦𝔡𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔚𝔢 𝔤𝔯𝔞𝔳𝔢𝔩𝔶 𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔱𝔬𝔫𝔢𝔰

𝔄𝔩𝔩 𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔰𝔢 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢, 𝔞𝔩𝔩 𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔰𝔢 𝔩𝔦𝔳𝔢𝔰 𝔚𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔯𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔶 𝔫𝔬𝔴?

𝔚𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔩𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔰, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔥𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔰 𝔄𝔫𝔡 𝔭𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔰 𝔧𝔲𝔰𝔱 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔢

𝔗𝔥𝔢𝔶 𝔴𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔫 𝔄𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔶 𝔩𝔦𝔳𝔢𝔡 𝔄𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔶 𝔡𝔦𝔢𝔡

ℑ𝔱 𝔰𝔢𝔢𝔪𝔰 𝔰𝔬 𝔲𝔫𝔣𝔞𝔦𝔯 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔠𝔯𝔶

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔖𝔪𝔦𝔱𝔥𝔰 - ℭ𝔢𝔪𝔢𝔱𝔯𝔶 𝔊𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔰

𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔏𝔬𝔲𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔗𝔥𝔞𝔫 𝔅𝔬𝔪𝔟𝔰

[impiousgherkin]

A little Crown doodle 😳

[kassiekole22]

𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐

His Angel

𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐

𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐

Pairing: Josh Washington x Fem!Reader

Description: Desperate to save your boyfriend, Josh, you travel through the mines alone to find him, soon to have a bittersweet reunion...

Warnings: Fluff, Angst, Mention Of Death.

Word Count: 735

A/N: The queen of fluff and angst is back, bitches!!! Haha, just kidding. I'm not the queen. 😂 But I am back and plan on delivering some brand new fics to the Until Dawn fanbase to celebrate the remake, starting with this fic here. I hope you enjoy it. 🖤 (Find all my fics at #kassieuntildawnfanfics until I can fix my masterlist, and comment to let me know if you want to be added to the new taglist!)

𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐

She screams his name, her voice echoing off the rocks walls and dirt pathways, traveling for miles through the underground tomb but falling on the deaf ears of the dead. She runs through the rugged maze that is these old mines, while fear grips her heart tightly. But she isn't as afraid of the possible dangers that lurk in the shadows as she is afraid of losing that one person she searches for.

Jagged stones scrape and cut her flesh as she climbs, painting the environment crimson with her blood. The harsh cold air bites fiercely at her skin, freezing through to her bones enough to cause nothing but a painful numbness to course through her limbs. The agony she feels is more intense than anything she has ever been through, but she must keep going. Her love for him fuels her strength as she pushes through and bears it all.

She won't stop until she finds him... Death wouldn't even get in her way...

𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐

He sits with his head in his hands, his body trembling from the freezing temperature and his deep fear of isolation. He wishes for redemption—to see her again and make things right. It is the only thing that keeps him holding on anymore. He chews at his dry and cracked lip while familiar voices echo in his brain. Are the memories? Did he create them? Were they even real? He doesn't know. Though he hopes that some day he can get some answers.

But suddenly—amist the sadist voices swirling around his mind—another voice calls out. It's much sweeter than the rest, with a hint of sorrow and a broken sob mixed within it. Though it still sounds warm, just like home. It takes him a moment before he can comprehend the voice, until she is crouching before him and taking his bruised cheeks in her icy, frostbitten hands.

His pale blue eyes lift up, and a gasp of a shaken breath leaves him at the sight of her. Soaking wet hair frames her dirty face, and a few trickles of blood drip from a wide cut on her forehead and a few more from falling from her lips. Then his eyes glance back down to see even more blood covering her clothes. He wants to ask what happened to her, but he can only muster up one word to speak...

"Angel..." He whispers, which filters through a cold breath, parting his chapped lips ever so slightly.

She smiles faintly at this as her glistening eyes light back up with life. It was a word that always made her heart flutter, just as long as it came from him. She wraps her arms around him, embracing him like it will be the last time she ever gets to. And he rests his head on her shoulder while returning the embrace, sighing happily now that he is right back where he belongs. Although she looks a mess, she couldn't look better to him in this moment. His angel—the girl who had saved him time and time again—was finally back in his arms. He couldn't be more grateful for it.

And she is grateful that he didn't hear it—the screams that tore from her blood-stained lips as her stomach and other vital organs got ripped out by the wendigo. He didn't need the guilt weighing him down any further than he had already sunk. She may have died trying to find him, but she reached her goal in the end. She vowed that not even death would stop her. And even though it tried right before she got to him, she continued to push through due to her overwhelming love for him. 

Now she will watch over him while he waits to be saved, maybe even while he tries to heal in the hospital and longer if she's allowed to leave this place. She would hold his hand while he learns of her fate, even if he doesn't know of her presence. She knows that deep down, he would still feel her near. She would watch him find love again and raise a family like they had talked about in the past. Despite the pain of that future no longer being with her, she would watch with a tearful smile, proud of him for all he overcame. She would continue to protect him from beyond for years—she would continue to be his angel.

𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐⭒𖤐

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned what are the most mysterious places in the world

Marree Man – The fact that there is not a single witness to the creation of the Marree Man speaks to the absolute isolation of central South Australia. Somehow in 1998, one person or a group of people were able to create a 2.6-mile long line drawing of an aboriginal hunter, without being seen. In the midst of barren, arid land in South Australia, the Marree Man is the largest geoglyph and work of art in the world. Cut into the harsh landscape with lines over 115 feet wide and one foot deep, the towering Marree Man is easily visible from space. Thirteen years after the Marree Man was discovered during a flyover, little is known about its origin. Although we may never know the true origin of the Marree Man, it is certainly one of most intriguing modern day mysteries.

Chocolate Hills – Bohol Island in the Philippines during the dry season, you might notice what looks like thousands of chocolate kisses protruding from the terrain. These mysterious conical mounds are known as the Chocolate Hills. There are approximately 1,268 individual hills, their heights ranging from 100 to 160 feet, though the highest is almost 400 feet high. The hills, which are almost all symmetrical, consist of grass-covered limestone and turn brown during the dry season. Despite the abundance of hills, it is unclear how they were formed. There are multiple geological explanations ranging from oceanic volcano activity to limestone weathering. Numerous legends and tales also exist to explain the Chocolate Hills.

Giants Nest – In 1949 a geologist named Vadim Kolpakov discovered a large mound of limestone in the north of the Irkutsk region in southeastern Siberia. The cone is curiously shaped with a crater at the top and a small mound in the center. The mound is about 40 meters high and 100 meters across at the base. The smaller mound at the top is about 12 meters high. The crater was named Patomskiy, after a nearby river, but local residents call it “the Fiery Eagle’s Nest”. Since the discovery of the crater, there have been many theories as to what could have created it. For a long time it was believed to be a meteorite impact structure. Some linked it to the Tunguska meteorite, whose remains have never been discovered. But the crater does not resemble any other known meteorite site. Even now, the origin of the crater is not discovered.

Richat Structure – In the midst of vast, vacant Sahara desert, just outside of Ouadane, Mauritania, lies a 30-mile wide geological oddity known the Richat Structure, sometimes called the “Eye of Africa.” From space, this natural curiosity forms a distinct and unmistakable bull’s-eye that once served as a geographical landmark for early astronauts as they passed over the Sahara. Once thought to be an impact crater due to its circularity, the unusual formation is now widely believed to have been caused by the erosion of a geological dome formed by pressure from a bulb of molten magma below.

Plain of Jars – The Plain of Jars is a collection of large stone jars interspersed throughout the Xieng Khouang plain in the Lao Highlands. The stone structures are mostly made of sedimentary rock and, ranging from 3 to 10 feet in height, each can weigh up to 14 tons. To date, the origin of the jars is unknown, though archaeologists believe that they were originally used between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago. Many researchers have theorized that the jars may have once served as funerals urns or food storage. As local Laotian legend would have it, the jars were created by Khun Cheung, an ancient king of giants who lived in the highlands. It is said that Cheung, after fighting a long and victorious battle, created the jars in order to brew huge amounts of celebratory lao lao rice wine.

Giant’s Grave of Coddu Vecchiu – Giant’s or Tomba Dei giganti, are megalithic gallery graves that were used as public tombs during the Bronze Age. The massive gravestones were built by the Nuragic civilization, which existed in Sardinia from the 2nd millennium BCE. to the 2nd century CE. Despite the imaginative name, the sites were not the burial site of any giant; they were giant community burial chambers. Though we know the tombs had a funerary purpose, more questions remain. Little is known about the rituals or traditional beliefs that motivated their construction. Were they mass graves? Were they built to facilitate the journey into the afterlife? Since their existence has yet to be justified by scientific research, they have been credited to the supernatural, which has only increased their mystery. Legend also claims that yes, indeed, these were the tombs of powerful giants.

Zone of Silence – Pilot Francisco Sarabia was flying over a patch of desert land in Mexico when his instruments started to act increasingly odd. The man had to make an emergency landing in the middle of nowhere. Little did he know that this "nowhere" would be later dubbed "The Zone of Silence.” Weird radio silence isn't the only oddity of the creepy Zone. Like, what’s that weird trio that locals keep meeting in the Zone? They’re two men and a woman. Every time people see them, they’re wearing bizarre clothing that isn't suitable for a journey in the desert whatsoever. On top of all that, the Zone of Silence is known as a 50 km patch of deserted land where meteorites come crashing down on an eerily regular basis. On July 11, 1970, the US launched an ATHENA rocket from the Air Force base in Green River, Utah. The rocket was supposed to land somewhere in the area of White Sands in New Mexico. Instead, it went off course and, as if being pulled by some external force, crashed right in the heart of the Zone of Silence.

Michigan Triangle – Stretching from Ludington to Benton Harbor, Michigan and to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the Lake Michigan Triangle has inspired numerous accounts of activity that are difficult to explain by rational thought. The mystery began in 1891, when a schooner named the Thomas Hume set off across the Lake to pick up lumber. Almost overnight in a torrent of wind, the Thomas Hume disappeared along with its crew of seven sailors. The wooden boat was never found. After the turn of the century, strange events happened at steady intervals. Of the more mysterious is the case of the Rosa Belle. In 1921 eleven people inside the ship, who were all members of the Benton Harbor House of David, disappeared and their ship was found overturned and floating in Lake Michigan. While it appeared that the ship had been damaged in a collision, no other ship had reported an accident and no other remains had been found.

Alaska Triangle – The Alaska Triangle is a place in the untouched wilderness where mystery lingers and people go missing at a very high rate. The area began attracting public attention in October 1972, when a small, private plane carrying U.S. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, Alaska Congressman Nick Begich seemingly vanished into thin air. For more than a month, 50 civilian planes and 40 military aircraft plus dozens of boats, covered a search area of 32,000 square miles, but no trace of the plane, the men, wreckage or debris were ever found. Afterward, more planes went down, hikers went missing, and Alaskan residents and tourists seemed to vanish into thin air. In fact, since 1988, more than 16,000 people have disappeared in the Alaska Triangle, with a missing person rate at more than twice the national average. These disappearances are blamed on everything from severe weather to aliens, to swirling energy vortexes, to an evil shape-shifting demon of Tlingit Indian lore called Kushtaka, with no scientific explanation to the disappearances till today.

The Initiation Well – The Initiation well is 88 feet deep well located on the land of Quinta da Regaleira. Actually, it was used for ceremonial purposes. There is another small well near this well. Both these wells are connected by tunnels. The larger well contains a 27-meter spiral staircase with several small landings and the smaller well contains straight stairs that connect a series of ring-shaped floors to one another. The smaller well is also called the 'Unfinished Well'. The depth of this larger well is equal to the four-storey building, which becomes narrower on going closer to the ground. It is believed that there is some kind of light comes out from the well inside the ground and comes outwards. Surprisingly, there is no system of light inside this well, then where from this light comes, it is the secret. Anyone who comes to visit here, always raises the question of where the light comes from inside the well? Till today this secret is unsolved.

(Image Source : Google)

Thanks for Reading.

[rwby-encrusted-blog]

Yang: *Punches Jaune* OW MY FIST- What Are you, Made of A Rock or some Shit?

Langosta!Faunus Jaune: ... No.

The Langosta or Langouste is a Central/Southern American species of Spiny Lobster, also known as Rock Lobsters.

~~~~~

Yang: What did you do to your armor?

Jaune: *Wearing the Set of Thorns* ... Nothing ...

Spiny Lobsters are not true lobsters. They lack claws, and instead are covered in sharp spines that cut and carve into would-be predators, hence the common name "Spiny Lobster"

~~~~~

Yang: Are ... Are you going to sleep in that armor?

RK!Jaune: Yeah ... It's ... It's hard to get off, so it's easier to just leave it on most nights.

All Decapods (Crabs, Lobsters, ETC) Grow via Molting. The older they get, they harder their shell is. After a certain point, a Lobster can grow large and tough enough to have no predators.

This is a double edged sword, for if its shell grows too thick, it may not have the strength necessary to molt, leaving it trapped in it's own skin to waste away Slowly ...

Most often, it is not compression, nor starvation that takes these ancient crustaceans, but rather a disease known as Shell Rot, that eats away at their armor, and eventually, themselves, Like mold on the crust of bread.

Their Shell; Their Armor; Their Tomb.

[thehereticpharaoh]

The Great Sphinx

Who Built the Sphinx? The Sphinx Temple Has the Answer by Mark Lehner

Many alternative thinkers claim the Sphinx is much, much older, that it existed thousands of years before Khufu. But our study of the Sphinx and the temple lying just below it—the Sphinx Temple—says no. As certain as we can be about such matters, Khafre created most of the Sphinx. However, Khufu might have started it.

The stone-by-stone map of the Sphinx Temple allowed us to investigate a telltale clue about who built the Sphinx. Quarrymen cut the core blocks (the ones forming the core of the temple walls) so thick—some weigh up to a hundred tons—that many of them include three geological layers. And it was clear that the layers in many blocks were the same as those that run through the bedrock of the Sphinx itself. The blocks had to have come from the U-shaped ditch around the Sphinx. When workers quarried the ditch they left a large block of limestone from which the Sphinx was carved.

As I moved about the Sphinx Temple during my first year of the mapping project, I was struck by how the geological layers run continuously in many places, from one block to another, as the layers must have run in the bedrock. The gangs of young men who moved these mighty stones did not have much chance of mixing them up from quarry to temple wall. The Sphinx and its temple must have been part of the same quarry-construction sequence. But could I prove this?

The following year I met Tom, who had the expertise needed to geologically “fingerprint” the blocks and trace them back to the quarry. Tom looked at the Giza Plateau less as an archaeological site and more as frozen sea floors, petrified, pancaked, and stacked into the bedrock layers from which the pyramid builders quarried blocks, created tombs, and carved the Sphinx.

These layers formed during the Eocene epoch—some 34 to 56 million years ago, as a great primordial sea retreated northward. Under its ebbing waters, a colossal bank of nummulites, unicellular plankton-like organisms, built up. A sandbar developed on the embankment, and in the more protected waters behind it, a shoal and coral reef grew. As the sea retreated to the north, the area behind the sand bank became a muddy lagoon, inhabited by burrowing bivalves and sea urchins. A regular sequence accumulated, which petrified as soft, yellow, marly layers interspersed with harder beds.

In carving the Sphinx directly from the natural rock, the ancient Egyptian quarrymen cut a cross-section through the principal geological layers of the southeastern slope of the Moqattam Formation. The hard layers of the shoal and reef, for example, make up the lowest layer in the Sphinx and its ditch.

Tom and I began our Sphinx Temple core block study by examining each layer, or bed, of the Sphinx. We gave each bed a number and marked them on photographs and on profiles of the Sphinx. The beds were easy to distinguish as they weathered differentially: harder beds protruded, softer beds receded. Also, the relative abundance of different fossils varied. Members I and II showed the greatest differences: I is a very hard gray reef formation, while the first bed of Member II, 2b, is one of the softest of the yellow marl-clay layers. Members II and III are distinct, but the boundary is not so clear as between I and II. Aigner, following an earlier geologist, set the boundary between Beds 7 and 8.

The massive fine-grained bedrock of Beds 8–9 made for good sculpting, with far more endurance than the soft-hard-soft sequence of Member II. This is why the 4th Dynasty builders reserved Member III for the more exposed head. Details like the eyebrows have survived wind, rain, and sand for 4,500 years.

But from which beds exactly did they cut the core blocks? Would this tell us where they were in fashioning the Sphinx at the time they built the Sphinx Temple? To answer these questions we logged each block. We recorded their lithic qualities and fossil content, and assigned each block to one of seven types, A through G.

Most of the Sphinx Temple core blocks are Type A and consist of three layers: upper and lower hard massive layers separated by the soft, yellow marl layer in the middle, which runs continuously through separate blocks over long stretches of temple wall. These blocks come from beds that correspond to the lower chest of the Sphinx.

Type C blocks come from beds that correspond to the Sphinx’s upper chest, top of the chest, and base of the neck. In the Sphinx Temple these blocks cluster near the front. The quarry workers hewed the blocks from layers that would become the lion’s upper chest and top of the back and then dragged them to the eastern front of the Sphinx Temple. As quarry workers cut deeper, to the middle and lower Sphinx chest level, haulers and builders composed most of the core walls of the temple.

Block types B and D did not come from the Sphinx ditch. They most closely match strata to the southwest, exposed in the quarry cut for the Khentkawes Monument. They are less frequent and more intermittent in the temple walls than the A and C blocks. This could indicate that the builders stockpiled these blocks and brought them into the walls whenever there was a hiatus in the quarrying, dragging, and placing of the A blocks from the Sphinx ditch.

Khafre’s workers started shaping the Sphinx as they built his valley temple. And they were probably still shaping the lower lion body, cutting it out of its surrounding ditch, as they made the Sphinx Temple, Khafre’s last major addition to his pyramid complex. But they did not finish. They left the Sphinx Temple incomplete, without its exterior granite casing.

[ostermad-blog]

MONSTER GUTS 2e Scavenger Creation

One of the goals of MG2e is to add more "connective tissue" as @ostrichmonkey puts it, giving players more ways to connect with their characters and their Village. There are a bunch of ways that I'm layering that in throughout the game, but it starts right when you make your scavenger.

I'm stealing pick-lists from BOB and some Complication-like stuff from Gubat Banwa, cuz they both rock. Here's a couple examples:

Choose a Look

The bones of your prey; a haphazard assortment of belts and bandoliers; tightly tailored and buttoned-up; physics-defying hair; herb-stained apron and boots reeking of fertilizer; grease-blackened overalls with steel-toed boots; feathers and scales expertly knit together; weather-proof cargo shorts and tank top; fursuit exoskeleton; ghillie mantle; Kevlar vest and kilt; chainmail with nettlecloth tabard; tactical tracksuit

Choose the Origin of your First Weapon

A family heirloom inherited from _____; an old farm-tool shaped to your hand and purposes by _____; scrounged from the ruins of _____’s former home; found in the belly of a beast along with _____’s mentor; a child’s toy given to you by _____, now tweaked and twisted into deadly form; the jawbone of the monster that killed _____’s childhood love; stolen from the tomb of _____’s ancestor; traded to you by _____ for saving their life; tossed to you by _____ when you were in dire peril; a 3D-printed copy of _____’s weapon

Obviously, we're still in draft stage, but I really like how these let players quickly build up the world of MG2e, cut right to the vibes of a character, and bring different characters together. Right now, there are a few more prompts like these for characters and even more prompts to help players create their sentient animal-ish Companion (their Caterpal, Dogepal, Hootepal, or Palline). More on them later.

Want to learn more about MONSTER GUTS 2e? Click the link.

[mushroomates]

gimli headcanons:

likes doing laundry. finds it soothing

history nerd!! loves reading old tombs/biographies of his ancestors

is incredibly intelligent. beats frodo in chess. would beat gandalf but gandalf cheats. has been in a stalemate with aragorn for two and a half years.

well mannered but chooses to forgo his politeness to make a point. especially around elves.

does NOT like horses. not just riding them, which is canon, but actually dislikes the animal itself. the reasons why include (but are not limited to) :

he does not like being not on ground. he does not have a fear of heights so much as a fear of… feet not on ground. as evidenced by refusal to jump, treehouses, and well, horses

he does not like their faces. they are long and have eyes on the side like prey. gimli thinks this is deceiving as horses are very large and can kick in someone’s skull. not his skull.

gimli believes that in a one on one match with a horse, he could easily win. he has thought of several, very specific, scenarios of this and has a detailed plan of attack should this situation occur.

they so easily turned against their home for an evil overlord (read: sauron stole all the black horses from rohan) and therefore cannot be trusted. as a rule, anything that willing you let you ride it cannot be trusted. they can’t be satisfied with this life. they are plotting something.

believes he would be great at drums. it’s just hitting things hard and he’s pretty strong.

ok, another thing about horses: they are fragile to a ridiculous extent. you breath wrong and it breaks. they have bad bones and bad blood flow in their legs, and their legs are all that they’re used for. he doesn’t understand why humans invested so much time into horses when they’re genetically bad at what they are meant to do. he’d feel bad for the horses if they weren’t so awful.

drinks coffee, not tea

takes great with the up keeping of his gear. he sharpens his axes, polishes his boots, shines his armor and waxes his mustache. that’s not gear, but he takes great pride in looking groomed and caring for his belongings.

has an axe for every occasion. battle axe? do you want throwing or slashing. a day on the town? have you seen this intricately carved masterpiece that also is a weapon? digging a hole? PICKAXE. cutting a cake? how about an axe???

hates the rain because it ruins his hair and beard. also loves the rain because it ruins legolas’s hair and clothes.

will eat anything. has a great tolerance for spice. contrary to popular belief, dwarves are not shy of seasoning but are very cautious around other races in fear of poisoning their friends

will also eat some rocks. salty is his favorite (halite, hanksite, glauberite) but also likes to add chunks of chalcanthite to his food for a slightly sweet yet metalic flavor. this is also slightly (SLIGHTLY) poisonous as evidenced by sharing his trail mix with boromir

also calls dirt the “local seasoning”

will taste dirt to try and get a feeling for the land. this tells him the acidity, weather, possible wildlife, and also pisses off legolas

actaully genuinely likes the taste of dirt. (note: if you desire to eat clay/dirt that is a symptom of iron deficiency. for gimli, he eats spoonfuls of the stuff like their supplements because as a kid it was fed to him like multivitamins)

OK SO HEAR ME OUT: lack of sunlight can cause really low hemoglobin and ferritin (a blood protein that contains iron) sooo being constantly in dark caves can cause some forms of iron deficiency. because dwarves are conscious of their young, dwarf children often grow up not often being in direct sunlight.

the solution? dirt. dirt contains iron and other tasty minerals that are good for the body. charcoal has natural antioxidants. so does clay. am i saying that momma gimli (unnamed) fed her son ash and clumps of dirt? yes. also bits of broken pottery. it’s good of the immune system.

fr tho clay/dirt/charcoal are the dwarven multivitamins. you have a tummy-ache? here, have a rock. i truly believe this was scientifically proven by dwarves and only FOR dwarves (plz do not eat dirt)

fuckin loves mushrooms. has a mushroom log at home. whenever dwarves find some fungai in a cave they go feral

likes dogs. thinks it’s great that they dig holes. thinks it’s fantastic that the bury things in holes. absolutes loves when they get muddy, and then shake off all water and dirt all over you.

when he came back home with the name lockbearer, a lot of the dwarves thought it was really cool and he has some sort of elven puzzle that requires a code to unlock something. imagine their surprise when he rocks up and is like: no, even better. HAIRS. three of them.

enjoys making mudpies- made them as a kid with his cousins, (mostly with rock slurry) and continues to, even even as an adult.

made them on the fellowship with the hobbits. taught them all about the best types of dirt and the water-to-soil- ratio needed.

while cutting up slices of his pie, he offered one to boromir, who in good nature, took it, clearly thinking it was just part of the bit.

poor boromir was locked in a stalemate after gimli cut his own slice, and began eating it.

to his credit, boromir did brave a few bites, but had to stop once he nearly had a mouthful of maggots

“protein”

gimli is like crazy good at hair. can braid quickly and efficiently in elaborate styles

picked up eleven hair style techniques in lorien (quicker than legolas) and was forced to relay them to the elf through twine as there is no way he’s letting grubby elf fingers to touch his glorious mane that’s been decades in the making

would ask for a drink “on the rocks” and get slightly upset if it did not come back with actual rocks

[oops-all-concrete]

BG3 fandom! I have more headcanons- but first!!

I must issue a very loud

⚠️SPOILER WARNING⚠️

For The Dark Urge playthrough of Baldurs Gate 3! There is no further warning below the cut, so if you care not to be spoiled, do not continue to read!

For those of you interested- ahead lies: Angst, hurt/comfort, canon-typical violence, blood, mentions of death, no MCD or any perma-death anyway, and lots of love. Greif and pain and emotional hurt are heavy themes as well!

Last warning! ⚠️Spoilers ahead⚠️

I've just gotten to this point in the Dark Urge run (where you reject Bhaal and fucking) DIE, and DUDE- I am stunned companions say NOTHING to your LITERAL DEATH after rejecting Bhaals gift or whatever. (Not in the scenes anyway) So, I'm writing how I think they'd respond cinematically, because your lively Durges deserve to be mourned and loved.

(Of course in-game this would be limited to the dialogue, but I've describes how they would be animated anyhow)

Lae'zel -

She's running to Durge the moment they start lifting from the ground, but pauses once their eyes start rolling back and blackening. There's something beyond her control happening, and she needs it to stop- and it does. With Tav hitting the floor eyes black, soul gone. She's immediately yelling at the others to do something, hand her a scroll, something- but nothing is working. Her shoulder slump after a good few minutes. And finally her voice breaks. She holds a hand to her chest as she wails in agony, holding her Tavs body like it's the last time- because to her- it is. "My angel, my moon. My great protector. I have failed you" She hisses, eyes scrunched shut.

Shadowheart -

She's been afraid her whole life. But even in the face of Bhaal, she will not be afraid if it means Tav will be safer. She immediately casts warding bond, if they're in danger, she'll halve it. If you're going to get hurt, so shall she- and she's okay with that. "Hang on-!" And then it all goes black, she falls without a word or scream, but she's content. If she dies protecting Durge, she cannot ask for better.

(After cutscene convo) Once Durge has been revived by Withers, it's up to them to get a scroll and revive her from the bloodied mess on the floor. She's stunned and confused, but the moment she sees Tav okay she couldn't care less. Why did you do that? "It might sound silly, but I was scared that you would be alone through whatever was about to happen. I don't regret it, if you're wondering"

Wyll -

"Gods- NO!" He shouts, a hand reaching out for them as they hit the ground. He's over them in a flash, holding their head in his arms, trying desperately to wake them, find a pulse, wake up himself and have this all be some sick nightmare. But of course, no such thing happens. The Tav he knows and loves just ceased living before his eyes. There's blood soaking into his every apparel and he's crying his eye out. It crosses his mind. Mizora is powerful- even if she can't fix this, she will know someone or something that can. He'd give anything- his whole life, he'd gladly be a lemure if it gave Tav back. He almost calls for her- until Withers starts his speech. (During the 'your rejection of Bhaal has earned you a place among heroes' section of his dialogue, he'll turn to Wyll and add: 'No devil's, demons or feinds required, I assure you')

Karlach -

If she wasn't raging before, she is now. A tomb-rocking scream echoes around the chamber, eyes wide with horror, body shaking and burning all over, engine out of control but she couldn't care less. One of the others will tell her to calm down. "FUCK THAT! FUCK EVERYTHING! FUCK THE GODS ABOVE AND THE HELLS BELOW." She roars. It goes on, swearing, screaming, swinging- and then, finally- collapse. She drops to her knees and punches the hard ground next to Tavs body, sobbing and exhausted. Withers walks in the the most gut-wrenching agonised scream of why

Gale -

He's frozen as it happens. His hands crackle with weave but he can't move. He needs to do something- anything, but time moves without him. All he knows is he can't breathe, all he can smell is blood and he thinks he's going to be sick. He can hear invisible bones cracking, distant blood dripping and their last choke. The wizard stumbles forward, barely making it to their body before collapsing beside them, on his knees and positively glowing from the mark on his chest. The orb can sense his distress and buzzes within him, as though it can smell the death. He pulls and hand to his mouth, kissing it gently- unable to comprehend a kiss goodbye. "Oh- Gods. Oh my love" he sobs, brows furrowed in what looks like physical pain. "I'm so sorry... I'm so, so sorry..." He wheezes out, scarcely finding breath.

Astarion -

He doesn't let their head hit the ground. He's swift as he catches them, but frantic as he sets their head on his thighs as a pillow. He pulls open their eyelids only to find a blackened core beneath, animalistic and distinctly unfamiliar. "Wake up, damn you...not after all this! You don't get to go!" He yells sounding genuinely furious- like he was going to get violent. If any of the others approach he doesn't notice. "We still have a cult to cull, we have a brain to control- I need you!" He yells, voice raw and eyes wet, the anger melting into greif. He makes a sheild of himself over Durge when Withers walks in, dagger/shortsword in hand, teeth bared, despite his damp face.

(Withers greets Astarion: 'Cry no more Spawn of sanguine- the universe is finally in your favour')

(Only Halsin is romanced for obvious reasons, but closeness is still implied for Minsc and Jaheira)

Halsin -

He catches Durge on the way down, their head on his chest as he lays them down over himself. "My heart? Can you hear me? Please say something" He begs hands glowing with healing magic, eyes aglow as well. He tries for a little, but then his breathing changes entirely, a small hushed gasp sounds from him, his he starts shaking his head, eyes wide. "Oh- oh Gods- Silvannus, please- I cannot bear to lose- oh Gods" He gasps, breath becoming harsher- finally letting tears fall. "Oak Father- please, wherever they go- keep them safe" he prays, teeth gritted in agony.

Jaheira -

She looks away as Tavs life is sapped away, unable to watch another Bhaalspawn friend suffer. When all falls still and silent, she looks among the other companions, shocked and frozen. "They're at peace now. Take comfort in knowing they chose to keep you all safe." She says with a proud nod- but her eyes are wet and her nose scrunched a little with a sniff.

Minsc -

There's small squeaking in the berserkers ear, before he sighs, almost a sob and speaks with a tired voice. "Wise words, Boo. I only wish our friend could hear you" Before he turns away, unable to look at them on the floor. "I am proud to have called them our friend. We should make them proud in return"

Hope you enjoyed! To the lovely people who have made requests, I will get to them as soon as I can!! Thank you for the requests, and please feel free to send me more!

[lassieposting]

So in the wake of my post on Astarion and cptsd, have another concept I've been thinking about lately:

Tav/Durge (or an origin character, but I'm gonna use Tav because there are so many potential ships) using magic on him - with his permission, of course, they're not a complete monster - to help him cope with the symptoms.

I feel like there's a lot of potential here? But I haven't really seen anyone using it in fics, so. Here are some ideas I've been turning over.

Spells Tav Can Use On Astarion:

Calm Emotions: magically subdue intense emotions.

So.

I have a fond headcanon that while Astarion is still in survival mode during the game - the worst symptoms of his cptsd are on lockdown and he's mostly able to keep it together well enough to be functional and clear-headed - there is an incident where Tav sees him have a panic attack.

Like. Maybe they're attempting to sneak around patrolling guards in enemy territory, or edging around hostile wildlife in the Underdark. They're alone, the party split into two pairs with different tasks, and some threat is headed their way. They don't want to raise any alarms, so Tav drags Astarion back into a narrow crevice in the rock, or a chest loaded onto a supply wagon, or something, to hide until the threat has passed by.

And. Astarion has never mentioned that he's claustrophobic. He doesn't show weakness unless he's forced to, and at this point, he hasn't told Tav about being sealed in a tomb for a whole year. So the first they know of it is when they're crushed up against him in a cramped hiding spot and they realise he's shaking. They try to calm him, but his eyes have gone unfocused and glassy and he's starting to hyperventilate, a wounded animal noise brewing in his chest.

And Tav has to make a split second decision, because he's going to get them noticed. So they try to comfort him and instinctively cast Calm Emotions - and it works. It cuts the panic attack off, and once the threat is audibly moving away from them, they're able to emerge and carry on undetected.

He's angry, on and off for a while, that Tav used magic on him without his consent, even once he understands what they did and why. But the thing is, it did work. It helped him get his fear under control. So down the line, as they get closer, and he begins to really trust Tav, he agrees to them using that one on him when he really needs it, when he's crippled with the panic of 200 years' worth of obediently withstood torture sessions, when he feels like dying is the only way to escape the fear. They're both aware though that Calm Emotions is a deferral, not a cure - it won't help him work through the panic attacks, and it won't stop him having them.

Heroism: instill the caster or an ally with courage

I like to think Tav uses this one on him a few times as the group approaches the city, when he's fretting about being back within Cazador's reach. They're not ✨sleeping together✨, but they are sleeping together - he has an open invitation to share Tav's tent at night, just to cuddle and rest a little easier with someone he trusts close by to watch over him. They know he's scared, and they know he doubts the group's ability to protect him if Cazador tries to take him back. Heroism here is essentially a stand-in for anti-anxiety medication - it stops him ruminating on what-if scenarios the group is determined not to ever let happen.

Enthrall: capture the attention of a creature, making it look at you

Another one that could be useful in a panic attack situation, though it's far too similar to Cazador's control to ever use on him spontaneously - it would need to be something suggested, discussed and agreed upon while he was clearheaded, to see if it was useful for him. Making him focus on Tav stops him focusing on whatever is causing him to nosedive. It's the, "Astarion, hey, look at me, just focus on me, breathe with me," spiel taken to a level that actually yanks him out of his fear spiral when just their voice won't do it.

Dancing Lights: creates magical orbs of light that brighten an area

Sometimes, Astarion struggles to switch off and unwind at bedtime. The "trying to get to sleep" gap can be a fucking horror show when you have a condition like cptsd - everything goes quiet in preparation for sleep, so it's the perfect time for all your intrusive thoughts and ruminations and spiralling to dogpile you, the way it struggles to do when you're compulsively keeping busy in the daytime.

A Tav who can create Dancing Lights is essentially giving him Candy Crush. A mindless, no-complex-thought-required distraction that shuts up all those bad thoughts long enough for his eyes to start closing.

Light: makes an object shed light in a small area

He's not afraid of the dark. The dark is a vampire's natural habitat, after all. But he is, in the early days, sometimes afraid of what might be in the dark - he has nightmares of Cazador lurking around the outskirts of the camp, waiting to snatch him up. Shifting shadows against tent fabric can warp and twist into horrors to a groggy, fresh-from-a-nightmare mind. He would rather die again than ever ask Tav to magic him a nightlight. But if an object bespelled to cast a soft, grounding glow inside his tent happened to be left beside his bedroll, well, finders keepers and all that. Of course he uses the damn thing, darling, if he leaves it off for one night Gale will probably eat it.

Detect Thoughts: telepathically link to unprotected minds and hear the thoughts of targeted creatures while talking to them.

I like to think this mostly happens when he's struggling to express something and getting frustrated.

Sometimes, it's a vocabulary issue. Faerûn is a medieval-esque setting - Astarion doesn't have terms like "trigger" or "dissociation" or "flashback" to express what's going on in his head. He has to cobble together not-quite-right-but-close-enough explanations out of the words he does have, and that shit is hard.

Other times, it's because he's trying to recount a memory that gets stuck in his throat or between his teeth. Because he can't bear to voice the humiliation, or the dehumanization, or the violence that goes with it. Putting it to words makes it real in a way that he can't deal with anymore. He wants Tav to know what's distressing him, but he just...can't say it. He can't.

And once upon a time, he would've just shown them through the tadpole, but that's no longer an option, so Detect Thoughts it is. Tav can either hear him, or he can visualise the memory and show it to them - or flashes of it, anyway. And it can be a quiet understanding between them - no stumbling over his words, no tears, no shaking voice.

Hold Person: hold a target humanoid in place.

Paralyzing Ray: paralyzes the target.

Otiluke's Resilient Sphere: enclose a target in a sphere of shimmering force...blocking all incoming and outgoing damage

These wouldn't really come into play until months or even years postgame, once Astarion is safe and settled and finally processing all the horrors he's been through - if he has an era where the flashbacks are so vivid, he might not recognise Tav, or might even mistake them for Cazador or Godey. The era where, sometimes, through no fault of his own, he might be a danger to himself and others, Tav included. What's a fantasy protagonist to do with him, when he's beyond reason? Pop him in the rage cage - where he can't hurt himself or anyone else - until he comes back to himself.

Spells Tav Has Tried And Failed To Use On Astarion:

Cure Wounds: heal wounds through touch

Probably the first spell they ever try on him, and one he could've sorely benefited from. The extra impetus to start associating touch with pain relief instead of pain itself would've done him a lot of good. But, according to the wiki, undead are immune to virtually all healing spells, which is a deeply angsty bummer.

Sleep: make a conscious creature fall into a deep slumber

As a high elf, he's immune to sleep magic, but he gets the elven equivalent of night terrors, and days on end of broken rest will leave anyone drained and exhausted. Tav has absolutely offered to try and put him to "proper" sleep, a deep sleep, so he won't dream. I've never actually played dnd, so I don't know how much leeway there is here for creative interpretation of immunity, there are certainly ways you could be creative with it - maybe his fey ancestry protects him from being put to sleep specifically in an attack context, or from being put to sleep unexpectedly, or by unfamiliar and potentially hostile magic. Maybe, if he knows it's happening and his innate magic recognises the magic of the caster, he's able to lean into it. Like the difference between being shot from behind with a tranquilizer gun and popping an ambien before bedtime.

Also! These could even be scrolls! It amuses me to think of Tav popping over to the pharmacist Gale's tower in Waterdeep to get Astarion's monthly anxiety prescription scrolls of Calm Emotions

[fiddles-ifs]

[ID: A banner-style graphic featuring a coyote's open mouth on a dark black background. Orange all-caps text near the bottom of the image reads: "happy birthday Greenwarden." /end ID]

Happy birthday to my firstborn problem!! I'm trying really hard to not think about how long it's actually been, but to celebrate Greenwarden being mysteriously old I'm posting a former Patreon snippet! I'm also announcing that 1) I quit me day job, and 2) I'm going to be compiling a bunch of Greenwarden shorts that would have gone up on Patreon if I had kept it up. More on that to come when I get all my ducks in a line.

GRAVEROBBING AND NECROMANCY FOR DUMMIES

Marianna & Tracker. 16+. Grimdark Fantasy AU. Scofiddle Pepper Rating: Bell Pepper.

Content Warnings: Blood, minor wounds, implied mind-control, mentions of death.

Mausoleums always have a certain smell — mold, mildew, cracking damp stone. The decay of rock and mortar, but never flesh. The sarcophagi are tightly sealed with both wards and wax, partially to keep the smell at bay. No air, nor Light, nor hands will ever creep inside them. The Silent Mercies do their grim work and do it well, keeping them locked up tight. Then they leave — that's the extent of their dues to the dead.

They can count themselves lucky. Corpses don't exactly make great company. Particularly when some of them are itching to come back.

You can't help but feel like there are eyes on you, your torch cutting through the dark, damp guts of the tomb. An intrusion. Indigestion. The violent, flickering orange light makes the shadows greasy. You'd use a magelight, but you're already dancing on the razor-thin line between bravery and stupidity; you don't want to risk waking something. Someone. 

They were people once, allegedly, but you know what pride morphs people into.

Particularly powerful necromancers resist even the cleansing fire of holy Light, their sentience existing in each molecule of ash, slowly piecing themself back together with sheer will and hate. It may take hundreds — maybe thousands — of years, but eventually they will come back. So, the Temple does what it can. The liches are bound, still conscious, and placed in a sarcophagus. The sarcophagus is sealed — with prayer, with wax, with chains and locks both physical and magical — and a mausoleum built around it. The Silent Mercies make their rounds indefinitely, strengthening the wards and installing ever more complex locks. Hundreds of years turn into thousands.

The hopeful end result is a stark raving mad lich warlock that will, if all goes well, blissfully prefer the judgment of the Light before they suffer one more second of silent, unmoving, stagnant solitude. Time and again the methods of the Temple are proven effective. Terrifying, and effective. Most choose to vacate their own bodies than live in the dark for an undetermined amount of time. Unable to move. Unable to see. Slowly withering away, mummifying, rotting in your own skin. Whatever you’re going to find will not be human anymore – if it was ever human in the first place.

You cross the dusty, time-ravaged stone floor to the sarcophagus at the far end of the room. It's a short walk. Mausoleums are traditionally small, most especially the ones outside of temples, reserved for the vilest of the old guard, the lichkings who dared to try and defy death. Beings that rejected humanity, even rejected immolation, and should not under any circumstances be within spitting distance of a residential area.

Zoning laws: the bane of all undead tyrants. 

There's only one — which is nerve-wracking. It sits placidly on a raised dais set with small, half-melted candles, as if it’s waiting for you. A frozen slime trail of old wax meanders down the dais, caught in time. The thrum of magic tickles your fingertips. Brushing, like a cat would, up against your palms and skittering up your arms. Both a beckoning and a warning. Temptation.

It's wrong. A singular coffin is like finding a singular roach. Not wholly uncommon, but it sets your teeth on edge. 

It means one of two things: either the Temple managed to burn the master’s undead servants, even the stubborn ones. Or, worse – they’re afraid of what it might do with nearby corpses, even sealed away.

Your arms itch. You set your torch in a conveniently placed wall sconce and start working to get your mind off things.

The Temple of Light may not like to admit it, but what they do is magic. The prayers wielded by their paladins and clerics are incantations; the talismans created by their monks are charms, woven out of somewhat less mathematically inclined sigils. Magic. They hang and burn people for it in the streets, but it keeps their mausoleums tightly locked and their church in power.

Like any spell, a prayer can be broken with a little bit of reverse engineering. And you are very good at breaking things.

Maybe it's the uniqueness of your situation, or maybe you were just created with something special, but seeing the patterns in the weave and weft of magic comes second nature to you. Almost like a physical thing. A golden projection of arcane artistry.

It's a complicated spell; the Woodsman lived hundreds of years ago, long enough that even its very name was forgotten. The ward is centuries of layers, each one getting more and more complex as the Silent Mercies learned what incantations and motions were most effective at keeping the dead at bay. Trails of cold, melted wax dripping down time. A beautiful puzzle, just for you. You're always half-giddy, knowing that you may very well be the only one who can truly see the work, the history behind it, and that you might be the only one smart enough not just to break it to pieces, but coax it open.

Enough. You need to be fast.

Your forehead tenses, brows knit as you start reversing half a millennia of spellcraft. Delicately, slowly, you work out the motions, but in reverse. A twist of your hand, fingers curled, your arm moving in hypnotic diamonds and stars and spirals. Shapes designed to trap and contain. The fingers on your other hand open and close in the same fractal rhythm half a canto ahead, parsing out the right steps in the dance before you walk the dancefloor.  You're a conductor, ripping carefully crafted sheet music to shreds. The torch flickers.

There's no sound but your own short, elated huff of laughter when your hand slides into place at the ward's terminus. Deep in your hindbrain, a lock falls open with a satisfying click!

“Don't move.” 

Oh. That's a sword — you feel the tip of it caressing the nape of your neck. Slowly, carefully, you raise your hands to the sides of your head. You’re unarmed, and thankful you have gloves on.

“Turn around.” 

It’s not like you have room to argue.

You’re face-to-face with the tip of a shiny, well-polished blade. The silver coating makes your back teeth itch. You feel it vibrating, still coming down, hypersensitive to atomic changes in the air. You’re also face-to-chest with an extraordinarily tall cleric in their classic white and gold armor. An immediate, violent chill settles into your spine.

She’s hard-faced, hair cut bluntly short; she gives you the impression that her only expression is scowl. You prepare yourself to fire and run. It’ll set your research back months – maybe even a year – but you’ll live.

“Explain yourself.” You’re taken aback by that – you do a quick three-point look around the room and with your head and then spread your hands out a little further.

“I mean,” you say, “I think we both know I’m not supposed to be here.”

She doesn’t like that. Her hands choke a little tighter around her sword grip, leather squealing and platemail clicking as she shifts even deeper into a fighting stance. The sword gets a little closer to your face. A sweat breaks out between your shoulder blades.

“You’re a mage.”

“And you’re a cleric.” Impasse. Stand off. Stare down. Neither of you are willing to make the first move – maybe she’s hoping for a peaceful resolution. That you’ll go gracefully to the stake.

Fat chance, but something changes when she opens her mouth to reply.

You don’t like the look that falls over the cleric’s face – wide eyed, eyebrows to the hairline, mouth half-open. The blood leaving her face. The slight tremble in her steady hands. Fear.

Slowly, you twist your neck to look behind you.

The Woodsman’s coffin is open – a deep, yawning blackness slides out of it, liquid trapped inside thin film. On the coattails of the light-drinking sludge, a skeletal hand slides, damn near leisurely, out of the sarcophagus. What follows is a horror of ancient science. Half human, half… something else.

The antlers crown its head, but the head is canine, deep pinpoints of light inside empty sockets. Mummified skin knits across bone, thin as paper and patchy in places. Its teeth are bare to the world and yellowed with centuries. You watch the slick, black flesh form an amorphous mass beneath the skull, the arms nothing but bone haphazardly slapped onto an overgorged slug.

You were hoping it wasn’t in there – everything you’ve learned told you it had probably vacated its body years ago. There had been no activity for so long – no plague of nightmares, no major possessions, no strange activity in the flora and fauna  – and yet. The Woodsman slithers out of its unlocked tomb on a tide of melted void-flesh, rises on it until it has to bend, its shoulders scraping the ceiling of the mausoleum. It opens its mouth wide – skin and gristle clinging to its jaw in loose strings – and shrieks.

It’s shrill and piercing. You’re concussed, briefly, slapping your hands over your ears. You feel it – in your head. Scraping the inside of your skull, dark wordless whispers in your hindbrain. It knows you. It sees you. It’s in your head.

The cleric pushes you behind her, nearly to the door in the tiny mausoleum. You’re confused – still concussed. You don’t run.

“Go!” She shouts, swinging and hacking at the growing sea of rotting flesh. She swings too wide – the silver-steel scrapes against the walls of the mausoleum and sparks. The Woodsman just keeps growing. One by one, the candles and torch are swallowed whole. A deep, endless black. A tidal wave of nothing. 

You’re not about to argue. You turn tail and run out the door.

Two steps past the tomb, you stumble to a stop. A quick, hard-breathing glance behind you lets you know that the cleric already isn’t doing well. She’s fighting like an animal, punching what she can’t cut. Every slice is swallowed up by more reeling, lightless flesh. You still feel the Woodsman’s scritching little claws, furrows in your soft, pliant brain. Every iota of you recoils away from it. But that cleric – she let you go. 

You look down at your hands. The dark leather gloves, fingertips worn, the edges frayed.

Shaking, you slip them off your hands and leave them in the grass.

You grab the back of the cleric’s breastplate and yank her back into fresh air, swapping places in one smooth transition. You don’t know what she sees. If she notices the dark, blue-black corrupted skin of your hands or the bright runes squirming over your arms while you reach deep in yourself for something destructive. The bands around your wrists and throat mark you as a Thing – something broken loose. The Woodsman tugs at your tattered ghost leash with an interested spiritual hand, head cocked. Your programming demands you kneel for consumption, and your knees twitch before you get yourself back under control. You almost see a wink of recognition.

Little homunculus, the Woodsman whispers, curling around the base of your skull like a cat, so far from home.

“Shut up,” you say, and light up the room.

The Temple of Light has claimed the lichkings reject holy fire and immolation – they just haven’t tried something hot enough. Your fire is pure destruction, white with heat, blinding against the greasy black corruption sludge coating the walls. The Woodsman shrieks – pain, rage, confusion. Spikes of pain explode behind your eyes, and you burn them away too.

You wade through the muck, scorching it all to ash, beating the Woodsman back until it tries to seek refuge again in its sarcophagus, huddling in the pit. A child taking refuge in a cellar.  Curled at the back of a cell. Useless, useless.

You reach out with a flame-licked hand and clamp down hard on its muzzle.

“Shut up,” you hiss, and watch fire make cracks in its skull. It rakes your arms with bony claws, opening bloody gashes in your flesh. The blood sizzles and evaporates almost instantly. 

The Woodsman’s head explodes with a loud crack, bone shards ripping through the skin of your cheek. The rest of it goes limp in a heap. What’s left, you turn to coal dust, just in case. When you’re done, all that’s left of the Woodsman is a greasy soot stain coating the floor, walls, and ceiling. It’s a little gruesome. Reminds you uncomfortably of blood.

You coax the flames back in, lower and lower, wobbling with exhaustion, until a comfortable, warm dark swallows you. There’s light in it – ambient, soft reflections of the moon outside. The sarcophagus is a welcome resting spot, using its high lip to stay half-standing. Even then, you see little spots in your vision, the edges going blurry. A few drops of blood slide out of your nose and splatter on the ground. Your ears are ringing.

“You’ve got red on you.” You jump.

The cleric is standing there, wiping blood and slime off her face. One of her eyes is nearly glued shut, an open wound on her brow pouring red down her cheek and under her collar. You give her a once-over before you weakly tilt your chin up.

“So do you,” you say. She nods – holds out her hand.

“Marianna.”

Cautiously, you cross the floor on shaky legs to take it, and give her your name. The one you picked for yourself – it feels nice. To introduce yourself, for once. She almost crushes your hand. You’re comparatively weak.

“You saved my life, mage,” Marianna says. You grin with a mouthful of bloody teeth, an acknowledgement.

Then, your body finally gives up. You’re blissfully unconscious before you hit the ground.

[aspiringsophrosyne]

Critical Role’s fights cannot be as long in animation as they are in the stream. They just cannot. And even if they could, they shouldn’t, because it’d be a massive slog in that context.

However.... some battles need to feel long, even if they’re not. They need to feel tense and dangerous, like you just want them to end already. Not in a boring way, but in a suspenseful, scared for characters you love way.

The final battle of campaign 2 is an obvious pick. But there are others in that campaign that come to mind besides that one.

Let's talk about one of them.

(Spoilers for Campaign 2, specifically the last arc, below.)

More than almost any other fight in Campaign 2, we need the one between the Nein and the Tomb Takers from episode 123 to feel long.

And there’s something we can do to get us there. We can make the fight feel longer without actually making it longer if we inter-cut the fight with other previous scenes.

In episode 121, while traveling with the Takers, the Nein takes watch. Jester with Yasha, and then Fjord with Beau. During these shifts, Jester and Fjord reveal their kiss, and Yasha and Beau reveal their upcoming date. Everyone is excited by these developments.

I say, don’t show the romance talks when they are supposed to happen in the timeline. Skip them. Then, during the fight, flash back to them.

Like so:

Beau slams down off the back of a giant eagle into the snow among the Tomb Takers, popping several of them in the face one after the other. We cut away to:

Beau: No, on that note, I kind of — We were in, like — We just walked through a creepy forest and we were, like, a mile beneath the earth and I kind of asked Yasha on a date. Fjord: You did what?! Beau: I know. Fjord: You asked her out on a date? Beau: Yeah, yeah. Fjord: What’d she say?

We cut back. Lucien stalks up to her while she’s still swinging and unawares. When she turns, he puts his hand to her throat. His eye tattoos glow. Her head rocks back, but not out of his grip. Blood gathers in the corners of her eyes like tears.

Beau: She said yes. She said yes. That she was— Fjord: Shit!

As blood pours down out of Beau’s eyes, out of her nose, as she gags up a thick trickle of blood from her lips, as Lucien’s grin widens in sadistic satisfaction, we don’t cut away. Instead, this audio plays over him Rending her Mind.

Beau: She was, like, really excited. She was like, “I’m happy about this because, like —" I don’t know whether it’s — I just want a fresh start with Yasha because we’ve been through so much.

[...]

Beau: So it just felt like maybe, maybe a date.

She sucks in a desperate, blood choked breath.

Caleb and Cad crawl backward through the snow, frantic and trying to get their magic to work. Yasha swoops down towards Beau in her eagle form. Just before she gets close enough to make the grab, we cut away:

Jester: But did you give her the poem? Yasha: Well, I was working on it and then I just sort of ended up writing her a letter. I still have a poem, but I just ended up writing her a letter. It felt weird and it felt like really I wasn’t ready yet. So I just wrote her a note and yeah, and then she asked me out on a date, yeah.

Yasha makes the grab, Beau’s free.

Later, when Fjord’s on the opposite side of the battle field from everyone else, he brings his blade down on Lucien’s back. It's blocked without him even turning around. As he does turn and the two lock blades, Fjord’s eyes travel to the rest of the group and we see-

Fjord: Hey, I meant to tell you, I-- I told Jester how I-- how I... Beau: You did? Sorry, Caduceus. Caduceus: (snores) Beau: You did? Fjord: Yeah, on the-- real, yeah. Beau: How’d it go? Fjord: It went okay. I was pretty nervous. Beau: Yeah? What do you mean okay, though? What’s okay? Fjord: No, it was good. I-- uh. We kissed. Beau: (gasping) Sorry, Caduceus. Sorry.

He’s struck, he teleports near Zoren. He’s closer to the rest than he was, but he’s not there yet.

....And I mean, I think you get the idea at this point. You'd maybe want to pace it out slower or a little differently, but this is just to give you an idea of what you could do.

What also could be cool is intercutting this fight or later ones with scenes where the Nein talk about the city; what’s coming to Exandria if they die in Eiselcross without stopping the Tomb Takers. Remind the audience what’s at stake on a macro level (the city coming to swallow the world) and a micro level (the Nein have started more intimate relationships and might not get the chance to experience them) to keep tension high.

This is just one example, but you could use it for multiple important fights. Other good candidates include both Iron Shepherd fights, the King’s Cage fight, the Cathedral Fight and one or both fights against the Sea Spawn that come for the orb.

Sometimes you really don’t need a lot of fancy effects or animation. Sometimes just some creative storyboarding and/or editing can elevate a story in a way you wouldn’t expect.

[theladyofrosewater]

Diaries tied in the poll so it gets 3 character design sheets the first being of course Lady Aphmau, or Aphelia as I think I'm going to call her in my rewrite (I think the name is original but if its not I'll link to whoever else came up with the name). the other two for MCD will probably go to Laurance and Garroth unless I get a suggestion for who else to do.

Notes under the cut

The text on the drawing reads

"Lady Aphelia, 5ft 2, Physically 20-25 during Season 1, Cheerful but emotionally intelligent, Decently strong but more skilled in Magicks, Do not let her adopt anymore animals there isn't enough room in her house."

It's not visible in the reference sheet but in my rewrite it's customary for Lords to wear some kind of jewelry or article of clothing to represent their head guard and for Aph she pierced her ears multiple times so she can wear one for each of her inner circle of guards but she still has to switch some of them out sometimes

Her outfits are her everyday one and her special occasions one that Cadenza made her. She didn't have a winter outfit since Phoenix drop is relatively warm and will just borrow someone's cloak until Zoey insisted she at least get some long sleeves but I'll design that outfit later

She adores flower crowns but is terrible at making them so it usually falls to Garroth or Zoey to make them, pro tip if it has more greenery and smaller flowers Zoey made it, but if it's mostly made of large flower Garroth did.

She has a weakness for shiny things and that includes things like rocks or even fish scales or glass so Laurance will just find the WEIRDEST shiny thing he can find to send it to her so far the record is an absolutely cursed wvyren statue he found when he fell into an old tomb(don't ask)

Kiki put a ban of her getting anymore pets because if Aph got anymore they wouldn't have enough room to be happy 5 dogs two cats and horse is enough pls girl

She would definitely have a baby sling for Levin that's just a repurposed cloak (5 gold if you can guess who she "borrowed" it from)

[prosymnusfaunus]

Lycian rock cut tombs of Dalyan, Turkey

[ilynpilled]

sorry, i know you said you already said why but i cannot really find it, but why do you dislike jc double death?

this is gonna be short and fast sorry and also ig why i personally think it is not all that likely

1. jc delusion narratives are being deconstructed by the books. them dying together, as much as there is functional irony considering they cause each other’s death in some way (more directly or not lol), still cements aspects of it which works less well in my eyes. not moved by “womb to tomb” personally

2. do not like its impact on jaime’s individuation arc. not even redemption (again. ppl’s lives have meaning not their deaths. view a character holistically) whatever who cares wise but more-so ‘jaime is his own individual with an identity that is cemented as separate from his sister obviously now that he is out of his limbo state’

3. asos dream has cersei leave with the dead lans (tywin and joff and they go to the ancestors) with her flame before jaime who remains there w brienne w his own flaming sword. he is left in the dark with something terrifying and then gets his trauma packaged in long night imagery. jaime’s light going out sure but cersei says ‘as long as the flames burn ull live’ and brienne’s flame is giving light, and she essentially replaces the torch that cers was holding: ‘the only light in the cavern the only light in the world’. ofc all this is up to interpretation i just think there is deliberate open endedness

3. widow’s wail is in kl rn (plethora of shit there indicating that he will be the one to wield it lol. i mean who else? this is smn the show also confirms ig. he is gonna have to get that damn sword in his hand somehow) is he gonna go back and forth? how long is cers gonna live?

4. this is just a funny and silly issue bc i truly dgaf atp but like how is it gonna happen exactly? cersei stabs him at the same time? (silly to me. also not the point of valonqar imo from cersei’s angle esp) a rock falls on him after? he gets dragon fire nuked right after? he gets a heart attack at the same time? he kills himself? (alright this one is funny)

5. it could cut things short and make a lot of things/interactions i wanna see happen and imo been set up to happen not possible