#the scale of the furniture was just really off some of the lighting etc etc

[chibishortdev]

Another character :)

[mother-snake]

🎶Guess whos back🎶 🎶back again🎶

It's me! With more Janus angst! Well, more fluff then anything... It's fluff (did you really think we could pass the 4 year anniversary of sanders sides and I wouldn't send something in?)

So!! The sides are having a huge party to celebrate 4 years. The living room is decked in all the colours of the rainbow. A mixture of all the sides music are playing through the speakers and all their favourite foods are set up. Everyone is in the living room, talking and dancing mostly but Virgil did climb on top of the fridge when Roman took out glitter. Well, everyone is in the living room except for a certain snake like side.

Janus didn't join the party. Hes still in his room in the mindscape. Not from lack of effort from the others. They knocked on his door for half an hour straight with no answer. So they just accept that Janus is going to miss this year.

At least all accept Patton.

Patton snatched Remus from the party and made him lock pick the door open. Patton opened the door slowly -so that if Jan was sleeping it wouldn't disturb him. Patton felt his heart drop when he saw the yellow side's room.

The walls were covered with scuffs and tears in the Victorian wallpaper, almost all the furniture was flipped and destroyed -burns coating some of the edges, Janus' prized record player was smashed to pieces and all of the light bulbs were shattered. Stuttering out a soft curse (holy smokes, fudge, sugar honey ice tea, etc) Patton summoned the others.

Instant chaos. Virgil immediately goes to "oh my god, Janus is dead. I need to pick up a larger work load. Thomas is never going to be able to lie again. Patton is trying to hold back tears and calm down Virgil Logan is looking throughout the room, deducing that there was a massive struggle, some things are burned but only in concentrated places and there is a small pool of blood by some shattered glass. The twins say that they feel some magic from the imagination in the room. The sides decide to follow the clues and go to the imagination to see if they can find anything else.

Luckily for them! The imagination works with a different time! 24 hours in the imagination is one hour irl. So they should be back for the party!!

When they enter the imagination the first thing they see is a bowler hat that is stained with blood and a set of foot prints. They follow it as well with picking up the hat.

Logan notices that the corner is burned and the blood is fresh -still wet and it hasn't darkened yet-

While walking they pay close attention to their surroundings and chat about what movies they want to watch when they get back to the party. The footprints are becoming scarce so they follow the occasional droplet of blood and torn piece of clothing.

They walk for hours with only the birds and setting sun to keep them company. They decide to stop and rest for the night when Logan almost falls in a hole that was hidden by the lack of light. Roman summons a few sleeping bags and sets up a fire while Virgil takes first watch. Switching throughout the night.

The next day continues more or less like it did the day before. Walking and talking.

This time ,after crossing a river, they find a yellow glove soaked in blood, some scales stuck on the fabric. If their hurry wasn't there before it was now. They quicken their pace even more. Leaving the forest they were in and moving into some plains, they thought they heard distant shouting.

"don't let me right now you monster!"

"you have no idea what I'm not capable of when I'm mad!"

"Sooner or later the others won't catch up with you!!"

All with the S' slurred and sarcastic tone that they knew oh so well. They walked up a hill to see Janus tied to a pyre, blond curls a mess and matted with dried blood, clothes torn and some scales torn off. They looked to the insane bastard that thought kidnapping the snake was a good idea to see not just one bastard. But over 30 bastards!!

Janus got kidnapped by a cult.

The cult was very stereotypical; black cloaks, a few sacrificed goats and white porcelain masks with painted scales on their face -wait a sec... Scales? Yes scales. Deceit has a cult devoted to him- and thats when it clicks for them. They want to sacrifice Janus to appease Deceit. This cult doesn't know that Janus IS Deceit. The sides face palmed when they realized how dumb these cultists are.

The cultists seem really annoyed with Janus' complaining so they gag him all while he was yelling at how he was going to skin these fucking people alive to make a skin suit -Remus was proud- but sadly. Threats don't mean much if you're tied to a pole and about to be set on fire. The people continue to prepare the dumbest sacrifice ever while the others try to figure out how to free Janus.

Virgil looks closer at the items the cultists have laid out. A spider corpse, an octopus tentacle, a bulls horn, a cats eye and a few crow feathers... This wasn't a Janus cult. This was a Dark Side cult. Virgil let out a heavy sigh and told the others his plan.

Remus and Virgil turned into their dark forms. Spider legs coming out of Virgil's back along with six more eyes sprouted, his hair also turned purple. Remus had oozing green tentacles rip from his back and his skin took a sickening green tinge, his white hair stripe also turned neon green. They teleported behind the cultists and let out animalistic growls.

The cult turned around to see the people they worshipped having a pissed off expression on their face and instantly knew they fucked up. They fell to their knees and begged for mercy all while Virgil chewed them out for kidnapping the actual Deceit -thats when that threat of a skin suit really sunk in- and how creepy it was to try to burn someone alive and to at least have some class when sacrificing someone- that went on for a while.

The other three snuck behind the cult and untied Janus, the second they untied his hands Janus ripped off the gag and turned into his dark form.

He grew six arms and his eyes glowed with a intense yellow. Golden snakes wrapped around his arms and then he let out a low hiss.

Janus sent the snakes to tie the cultists arms behind their backs and stepped down from the pyre. To be honest; every side there thought that Janus was going to murder 30 people and actually skin them, but that is NOT WHAT HAPPENNED!!!

No one expected Janus to yell at them like a disappointed mother for 2 hours straight and keep their mouths shut with his powers.

"-AND NOT ANOTHER THING! If you ignorant self centered pricks ever, and I don't mean ever, lay a single hand on another side again. YOU WILL ALL BE BURNED AT THE FUCKING STAKE!-" he went on for a while...

The ironic thing was that Janus was the youngest side so this was equal to hearing your toddler threaten arson.

After Janus was done he turned around and snatched his glove from the nearby table and changed back to his normal form all while mumbling about "some insane crazy assholes who fucking kidnapped me in the middle of scale care, fucking pricks." The other sides just followed him. Virgil and Remus changing back as they quickly caught up with Janus.

Remus could not stop laughing, Virgil was shocked that Janus could be a disappointed mother without having children, Roman was just amazed by the fact that the snake was still standing after some of those injuries. Patton wanted to give him a hug.... Ok multiple hugs... Fine he wanted to snuggle. And Logan? Logan just wanted to know more about the dark forms.

The walk was quicker back then it was to rescue the snake all while listening to Janus complaining that the pricks broke his record player and that they had the bloody AUDACITY to kidnap him! All they could think about was when Thomas called Janus the main mean girl and that they couldnt even deny it anymore.

When they made it back they patched up Janus and let him take a shower before sinking back out to join Thomas, who was just watching the office for the millionth time (pick another show sanders, I beg of you) he did perk back up when he realized that the sides were back. Then he saw the pissed off look on Janus' face... and he asked what was wrong. That set JanJan Binks off again as the others were getting a bit tired of hearing this again for the fifth time that day. So like how you distract a child.

They put on 'Chicago, the musical' and let the songs of Roxie Hart distract the snake. It worked, he shut up real quick!

The sides vowed to never let Janus get kidnapped ever again because that was.... An experience, that they DO NOT want to do again!

Thankfully the rest of the day went off well.

~~~~~

And that was an idea from 1am from someone who should be asleep! I was gonna make this angsty but all I could imagine was a pissed of Janus yelling at 30 adults.

I doubt you would want to use this but feel free! I hope this is as funny as my sleep deprived brain thinks it is!

(I'm sorry for any typos, it is very late)

(I got it! Just forgot to post it yesterday ^-^')

One, Yes. I love it. The beautiful angst... And ferral janus is something I absolutely die for.

(would say more but my brain has short circuited and I'm in boi, strict teach... But I'll put more later!)

[grim-faux]

21_Weaving Paths and Turbulence

First

 The buildings began to blur together as he searched endlessly. Rotten carpet, leaky walls, hollowed out ceilings or collapsed floors. Some areas held together better than others, some skyscrapers he didn’t make it to the second floor, due to a dense presence of the Viewers. The clusters flocked for the televisions, rooting for the escape that was the signal in the static.

 They didn’t bother him at all, but it was unlikely that the child would risk the thicket for any shred of shelter. There was no such safety in the heart of insanity.

 This most recent building he entered into the old fashioned way, seemed promising. Yet, he had been at this for who knows how long, usually hitting false leads or incurring a cold trail. Sometimes it was an old thread from one of the television units, and he might find – say – evidence that some child had been present. Speek on a wall, warning of some threat or another, a ransacked kitchen with everything from within the cabinets dumped across the floor.

He typically deduced how far off he was by such patterns. For instance, if Mono found the tools, he would tag a wall with the image of a boy in paper mask. If another child was recounting an interesting story, they might do a picture on a piece of paper, but it was typically a boy in a trademarked coat and a hat.

 This was all optimistic, but the speek was not in a localized location. He had hoped Mono would fold in with another group of children. That’s what children did, they packed. It was… what he wanted. Mono didn’t Fall, not the same way he did. This iteration of his youth was not scorned or dispirited, as he had been. He did not see where the pit would take him.

 The upper floor caved into the lower level, spilling a bed and other furniture into the formerly lavish kitchen. With each gust of wind, the building groaned. A hard storm beat at the window set into the side of the kitchen, threatening to tear out the last few glittering teeth. Outside the window a shattered television hung from its cable. He wondered if—

 A mournful crash ignited from somewhere within the building, causing the lights to douse from the portal going into the next room. Everything shook, from the walls to the air itself. A huff of dust swept through the pale vapor of light within the corrupt kitchen.

 Flickering through a hazy ripple, the Thin Man relocated to that portal and stooped. Not this room, the next one over. He wound around discarded packing boxes and stacks of bedsheets, his reach pricking through the transmission. The frequency becoming more condensed, promising.

 In the next chamber, the timber persisted to creak and yowl from the abrupt disturbance. The source was apparent, by the meager light blazing from the room above. A chunk of wall took out a banister, but for now the floor should hold.

 What piqued his interest was the ruffled shape clawing its way up the remnants of the stairway, from a height that would be fatal if not incapacitating. The Thin Man inched out, raising his hands in case the child lost grip. Those concerns were unwarranted, given that Mono had reacted to destruction before disaster could claim him.

 The child continued scrambling up the remains of the rail, until he was safely settled on the crossing flat above. He glared down from his perch, clearly annoyed by the cataclysm that could have ended him. That irritation shifted to the tall dark figure poised below. He tipped his head one way.

 The Thin Man tipped his head the other. It seemed Mono had finally shed his hats. For him, the boy wasn’t too far away, but he wished he could get a better look at that face. If he offered his hand, the child might be encouraged to come down.

 Before he could kindle a word, the child stood up and turned away. And like that, he was gone.

 To be honest, the Thin Man was a little stunned. Not a word, not even a hiss. He didn’t expect the child to be receptive to his presence, but expected something more, such as drawn-out scrutiny or a lingering glare.

 With a surge and crackle, he relocated to the top of the floor where Mono had been. The time that elapsed was short, but the presence was already fading. He recalled it had been impossible to capture Mono, if not for interference of some sort that caught him unaware. He began prowling, searching for the least obvious crevices and breaks in the corroded wall, though it would have helped if he saw which direction the boy had fled into.

 He all but tore the building to pieces, but it became apparent only later, that Mono was long gone.

 __

 The window was open, which begged him to climb in and get out of the rain. It must’ve been a place to get stuff, though it seemed okay. A lot of the stuff was worthless, such as clothing and things with wheels.

 A shoe with wheels. He could get on it and it would roll across the floor. Neat. But this didn’t seem like the place that would have foods.

 He stood on a stack of collapsed boxes, the tower folding and turning lumpy as he climbed on it. He needed to get a better look around, know this area and get a sense of his location. That was when he saw it. Something on a shelf, behind a counter, and it looked like a foods container. He wasn’t sure. This place didn’t have foods, it had shoe wheels, and board with wheels, and just… boards. And clothing. He needed to find his way up there. But how? He left the lumpy stack of boxes and crept around, poking the fringes of shadows and climbing shelves. No ledge or height was near enough to get him to the basket shelf, except….

 To one side of the room sat a stack of cages, all empty. Whew. The cages rose high enough, that he could reach a ledge – and if he jumped well – he could get to a crumbled and sloping ceiling/upper floor. It took more effort than it should to climb up the cages, despite them being the easiest to scale of anything. Plenty of hand holds, sturdy, etc.

 From there, he climbed onto the crossing beam nearest to the crates, walked out to the end of a plank, and then sprang to the sloped floor/ceiling. He gave the room a sharp examination, listening for noises beneath the effort of stealth. When assured this space was safe, he carefully navigated to the end of the inclined floor. It shot out a bit higher than he anticipated, above the metal basket which held the mysterious it-looked-like-foods artifact.

 He jumped down to a lone crossing plank of wood, and swayed when it creaked under his weight. This is okay, this was fine. He crouched down and centered his gravity, winding up his muscles. And… hesitated.

 It’s not that far. This would be okay. He dropped from higher.

 Mono gulped down a few firm breaths. This was okay. It would be fine.

 But he could still see her face. She glared at him, unmoved. We need to go. We need to leave. Please hurry. Please. Six. I’m sorry. Whatever I did, I’m sorry. Please, take me.

 He swayed and shook his head. No! He could do this! Go! Just go!

 Without a thought he leapt out, and in the next instant plopped into the mesh of the basket. He was shaking. He clung to the container in the shelf basket, and he was shaking, breathing. It was all right. He was okay. It’s okay. It would be….

 What is?

 Pop lid. He gripped and prodded the container all over, searching for the mechanism to figure out what the contents were. Carefully, he eased the lid back and snuffed at the seal underneath. No smell. Good. No smell from seal, was best. It had a pull tab, but that broke. He was forced to gnaw at the seal, but carefully. No noise. Silent.

 A swell of aroma puffed from the pressurized top. Smelled all right. He carved the seal out more and dug into the container. It was indeed foods. He pulled out a bit of what might be meat, he thinks. It didn’t smell like any meat he knew. He gave it a tentative try.

 Was good. Actually made his mouth water, as with his eyes. He wasn’t sure how to place the flavor, but it actually had flavor – and he hoped it was supposed to taste like this. Or, maybe he went that long without food.

 He tossed caution aside and began digging out more of the foods stuff, going to town on whatever he’s stumbled upon. Something he was actually enjoying, which was completely bizarre. He felt secure in this little perch, chewing on whatever the heck he found. He kind of wanted to keep on chewing, he stuck his tongue out, content. He opted to shove as much into his mouth and enjoy it all the more. So yum. Nice. The container was can and its sides smooth, he could roll it. If it didn’t make a lot of….

 It all changed in an instant. His eyes snapped open, and he sniffled. The foods had a very vibrant odor, very good, but he could push past that. His pulse began spiking, his heart ached in his chest. Something was wrong. He was on immediate alert and the tasty foods forgotten. He edged forward on the mesh basket, struggling to understand what was there, what he tuned into. The building was empty save for him, devoid of presence or resonance. This didn’t change the fact that something was there, and he couldn’t directly see nor pick out where. He knew without a flutter of a doubt, he was in danger.

 He pitched out of the mesh basket and hit the counter below – the distance from his perch and the landing was still much too high. He sprang to his feet and swept sideways, dazed by the sharp numbness in his leg but unwavering in the escape. He tried to tend more caution as he scaled down the side of the counter, first dropping into a cylinder wire basket full of ratty cloth, then flopped out onto the floor.

 The shadows soaked the craft of concealment through his shoulders and coat. He ducked under tall aisles and scuttled behind lopsided boxes, scoping the dark depths for hint or indication of a threat. Was it another beetle? It didn’t really matter, no one shrugged off a scare like this. Don’t make noise, don’t ignore intuition. Something set him off.

 At some point, as he crept through a patch of mossy tendrils, he chanced a look back toward the counter. All in time to view a stringy figure materializing from the shadows and dust, and coalescing into an imposing shape. The nightmarish image stood there, head tilted.

  H̸́I͞͠͠M̸̴͘͠͡!̨̕͡

 With dire purpose the figure rotated and fixed its haunting gaze upon him. He could see him. He knew where he was. The Thin Man always knows! WHY? NOW? WRONG! THREATTHREATDANGER! FLEE!

 He came from the window, but didn’t figure a way out! Was door? Where door? TRAPPED! LOST! TRAPPEDLOSTDANGER!!

 Upon getting pinned among a collision of shelves, he scrambled in an erratic circle clawing at supplies, before plowing through a small nook he could squeeze into. The buzz of static pricked at his skin, he lost track of where he was let alone where the man in the hat was. He didn’t care what he was crawling over or through, he barely had a conscious thought of where he was going – purely guided by the intensity of his bones humming.

 No hide! NOHIDENOHIDE!

 He could only hope this twisting pathway delayed his pursuer. But eventually, all good things must come to an end. A wall reared up in his path, and he nearly collided with it in his blind panic. He took the direction that felt favorable, not the easier, and kept going. Through the gloom of the building, a mass fluttered, the static rustled. Mono nearly choked… trying to head him off.

 Something caught his foot and he toppled. OW! He curled up, cupping a hand over his face. When he looked back, he perked. But the grate he tripped over was latched tight. No, wait…. He scrambled around, searching through the muck on the ground. There was a lot of pieces, parts… his palms snagged something thin but hefty. Weight. He hauled it over to the grate and swung it down.

 The slates in the vent creaked. He wound up, and again slammed the bar down. Once more! And again! Don’t stop. Don’t look BACK!

 He dropped to his knees with the last deafening crunch, and the bars splint apart enough he could drop through.

 In time for the buzzing and distortion to skitter through the space he stood. He wasn’t certain from where, the Thin Man might try to close in fast. Without a moment wasted he dove headfirst through the gap and skidded down a short incline, tumbling over gunk in the dark. When he managed to his feet he kept hunched low and hurried, one hand glanced over eroded metal. He lugged out the flashlight and clicked it on, the light flickered but held steady.

 A large break opened above his head, from where plaster and splinters spilled down. He checked the access with a brief glimpse, before dragging his body up. The passage wound and narrowed, he didn’t know where he was going. That was the least of his woes.

 He was limping. In his panic he hadn’t realized, the pain barely registered. It didn’t feel that serious, not like falling. A light twinge in his knee and thigh, the joint stubborn with his weight crammed up like this. He’d have to be careful, more cautious. This couldn’t slow him down.

 Then, a cold fear settled over Mono. Why does the Thin Man seek? What want? To taunt? The man in the hat didn’t want anything to do with him. Suddenly, wanted to steal. This was very terrible, and he cued in on something… sinister. He knew the Thin Man usually didn’t hurt him, but in other ways… he did. It was a struggle to explain, for now he gave up and focused. He was certain something was very wrong, to make man in the hat seek. Something painful would come of this, it always did. Stay away. He was in danger. And the Thin Man always knew how to find. There was no hide. Only flee.

 Tight and inhospitable crevices, the narrow passages, forgotten spaces in desolate locations. The deep, dark fractures the adults could not reach into. This would be his safe. And never relent focus. Always watch. Never waver. Only one set of eyes. Only him.

 Light fluttered from the end of the duct. A mass of wadded paper crammed the opening, but enough space was allotted that he could peer out without disturbing it. He tucked away the flashlight – the batteries were going bad, or it got too wet. He blinked out the fuzziness when the scratchy light hit his eyes, it looked like an ordinary room. More tables and furniture, and a television set seated on a chair.

 Rest. He needed hurt rest. But television is a way out. The Thin Man will find. The Thin Man will set a trap. He is too cunning. Too dangerous.

 Mono’s lip trembled. Flee. There is only flee. No hide. Flee.

 He shoved the gummy paper out of the crack and let himself down, careful. Cautious. He heard the Viewer. Somewhere. The adult groaned, not near but coming? Lost.

 Where they are doesn’t matter. He hauled another chair over to the television and climbed up. Despite the whirring of the device and its call, the air was calm. Good. He slapped his hands onto the glossy surface and let himself tear out of there.

 __

 This… aggravating child.

 No matter his carefully sheltered stealth, the caution he pursued, how he lingered out of range awaiting the opportune time to creep in. The boy would NOT let him get near. He wasn’t certain if the child’s skills with the transmission were only now beginning to refine, or if Mono had become so attuned to the hostile reality of the world, in the absence of a friend. The Thin Man only held knowledge to the point of his own shelter and isolation within the Tower, thus all that transpired hereafter was an unknown.

  If the child was developing higher sensory, it would be impossible to get close enough to intercept him. There persisted no delusion in him that Mono was in a listening mood, if he’d regressed to hyper-survival. It was dispiriting. If he could stumble upon a chance to move in close enough, he resolved to simply capture the boy.

  However, this proved more difficult than initially afforded credit. On numerous occasions, he managed to track the boy down with relative ease. Still, the grasp of the child’s attunement was more outreaching than anticipated. The Thin Man could only arrive a step behind, ironically as that was. Creeping in, closing distance mere moments following Mono’s departure.

 In one tower office complex, he tracked the boy through the television signals. It persisted that the smaller one didn’t grasp that the easiest way to give out his location, was through utilizing the transmission. A secret he hoped endured longer, while the boy began utilizing leaps more and more often. Nonetheless, the Thin Man seemed only able to arrive and assess the scattered fragments indicating the boys presence, and nothing of it to benefit his self-imposed mission.

 As he scoured the room over for a hint of the boys endless course, the static bristling and his shape intermingling with the fringe of shadows, he stumbled upon a toppled pan of water resting face down on the floor. The liquid swept from the sides, still in the process of intermingling with the silt collected from rainwater settled on a drenched magazine. A few inches away, muddy footprints faded out across a soaked patch of carpet. The most incriminating, was the hat discarded on the side of a crumbling desk. All of this, yet it did not enlighten him to where Mono had vanished off to.

 When he pursued his younger-self to the tower, it was a centralized and concise path. The boy’s pattern was easy to track, if he so desired, he could have waited to confront him at the Signal Tower’s doors. But an attempt to break the cycle was impossible to resist. It was tradition, was it not?

 For now he pocket the lost token, and settled to explore the building through once more. The effort would prove a waste of time, and once more he returned to the transmission to conceal himself until the child made another reappearance.

 The light throughout the cloud canopy shifted either three days or a week, but discerning time between bouts with travel through the transmission was at times fickle. He didn’t pay much mind to it either, for him time was as ambiguous as was the cycle they would remain shackled to.

 It was a nondescript length of time before he sprang upon another flicker in the transmission. The trace was strong, and relatively near to his current post. He crept through the television, and as he surfaced on the other side with the usual disruption to the environment nearest the unit, he plucked out the detached clatter of items tumbling to the floor.

 When he emerged fully, he glanced up in time to witness a coat tail flashing out of view around a slanted doorframe.

 He was right there!

 The Thin Man hauled his legs free and uncoiled, barely sparing a moment to solidify his form before he tempered time. With quiet caution he eased through the narrow portal, careful in case the child was underfoot and his location an unknown.

 A portion of the room had fully collapsed at some point, and ironically the few patches of floor remaining against the walls had some furniture situated there. His gaze swept to the hurried child, dulled as time was, but racing headfirst to the edge of the ruined void to the side of the room. Fearing that perilous desperation, he hastened his pace, struggling to get near and draw the child back from certain destruction.

 The boy broke ahead, skipping the last few inches. He swung around and hopped over the edge, falling entirely from view.

 Stunned, the Thin Man dropped to his knees and peered over the side, reaching….

 A pipe extended beneath the crushed portion of floor, fading into the gloom swirling below. The boy was able to wrap his body around this asset and slide down, by the time the Thin Man recovered from his initial shock, the child had already vanished into the murk.

 For a spell he debated the practicality of phasing down, along with the complexity of that. In the end, he decided not to risk it. Leaving this alone for some time might be the most practical tactic, give the situation a chance to settle the static. He would need a new strategy, but there was still time.

 Nonetheless, this was all confounding. In the hindsight of his last (direct) interaction with the boy, he speculated it would be simple to rejoin with him. The child seemed receptive to his presence, unafraid even, bold enough to touch him without prompt.

 This was foolish of him to think; children were far more suspicious of things they did not understand – more so of adults, who would not tolerate the presence of a child. He was no exception, and it was his error to believe anything but. Despite the reassurance of the boy’s distrust, this was becoming a persistent nuisance. At this point, he was uncertain what he wanted to check the child for, he was quite capable of handling himself.

 He returned to the room with the television, and knelt in order to check the scattered items. Some foods, but that was about it. Surviving by the most fundamental and base methods. There wasn’t much point to continuing this. The boy was not remarkable or unique from any other child, aside from his connection to the transmission. He was entirely capable of figuring this out on his own. It was the way he managed, after all.

Next

[bamon4bamily]

TVD 9x16 - What happens in Vegas... (part 1 of part 2) Enjoy!=)

Cut to – a few hours earlier. The Mirage Resort & Casino, three-bedroom villa.

Bonnie opens her eyes, head pounding, confused as to where she is. Unbeknown to her, she is lying on a huge inflatable shaped as, let’s just say a male part, in the middle of their villa’s private pool. She turns her head, to see if she can recognize the place… Bad call, woman overboard.

She quickly rises from below the water and manages to make it to shore. On one of the deck chairs, a familiar face… Bonnie thinks to herself, I must be hallucinating, why is Katherine here? She wasn’t invited. Has to be Elena, but… she’d never wear those tacky shoes… She’ll have to come back to that later. For now, she wants to make sure everyone else survived. She walks inside the villa… it’s apocalypse now. 

There’s no way they could have caused so much damage. It was supposed to be a chill girls trip, with some partying, of course, but not to that scale! She hears a sound, sounds as if it comes from the afterlife…Could she be hearing ghosts? Wouldn’t be uncommon to her… but the voice, she knows that voice. She searches, trying to follow the sound, seems like the source is coming from a closet. She opens it… inside, Elena, dressed like a nun, empty bottle of champagne on one hand, a dildo on the other… Maybe, this one is Katherine? Elena wouldn’t be holding that… One thing is for sure, she can now confirm there are two of them there.

BONNIE: Elena?

ELENA: Bonnie… I think I’m dying.

BONNIE: We might actually be dead… otherwise, why would Katherine be here?

ELENA: Katherine?

BONNIE: (As she helps her get out of the closet) I’m pretty sure she’s passed out in the pool patio….

ELENA: (Looking at the aftermath) Holy mother Mary… what the hell happened last night?

BONNIE: I know I’m psychic, but I have no freakin idea.

ELENA: Was I holding, what I think I was holding…?

BONNIE: Yep…

ELENA: (Grabs and shakes her head) I don’t think I want to know why…

BONNIE: … or why you’re dressed like a nun, for that matter. I know I don’t!

ELENA: (Looks at her attire) Oh, god… definitely don’t want to know! Where’s Caroline?

BONNIE: Not sure, let’s check out her room. Hopefully, she’s sleeping like a baby…

ELENA: Somehow, I doubt it...

(They go into the master bedroom to see if Caroline is there. The room is in order, complete opposite of the outside scenario. It seems Caroline is in fact, sleeping in her bed, comfortably covered head to toe).

BONNIE: (Sigh of relief) Ah, thank god! At least one of us had some sense in them… (They approach the bed, just to make sure she’s alright. Bonnie peeks under the covers… Holy shit! (She takes Elena’s hand and immediately teleports out of the room).

ELENA: (Really dizzy from the teleport and the hang-over) Bonnie, you really need to give me a heads up when you do that; especially when I’m in this state! What happened?!

BONNIE: Definitely not Caroline…

ELENA: Who, then?

BONNIE: A cop … all tied up, face cover n’all…

ELENA: What!!! Are you sure?

BONNIE: Pretty sure…

ELENA: Is he… dead?

BONNIE: I think he was breathing, just seemed like he was passed out, but I’m not going back in there to verify.

ELENA: I’ll take a look… I’m sure it can’t be that… (She goes back into the master bedroom, not even a minute in, and she’s back). Well… it’s a cop! But he’s alive, thank god!

BONNIE: Did you see his face?

ELENA: Hell no! Just made sure he wasn’t dead, and got out of there.

BONNIE: (Starts to panic) Oh my god; oh my god, oh my god! We kidnaped a cop!!

ELENA: Maybe it’s a stripper? It’s probably a stripper…

BONNIE: Either way, we kidnapped somebody!

ELENA: Well… at least we didn’t kill them.

BONNIE: No, but we’re kidnappers!!

ELENA: Calm down, Bon. I’m sure there is a logical explanation for all of this…

BONNIE: Elena, I woke up floating on a penis! Katherine is passed out in the patio, wearing nothing but stripper shoes, and I mean, nothing! You are dressed like a nun and had a dildo in your hand! Lexi is hanging-upside down from that chandelier! We kidnapped a cop, or a stripper! And who the hell knows where Caroline and Radka are! Perfectly logical!

ELENA: Wait… Lexi is hanging from where?

BONNIE: Look up, I just spotted her… (Lexi drops to the ground).

LEXI: (Looking utterly confused) Where am I?? Oh no… is this another version of the other side? Not again… Can’t be peace… since you are here (referring to Elena) …

ELENA: (A tad irritated with her constant subtle insults) I’m too hung over to reply with a snap… 

(a few seconds later, Katherine walks into the villa, makes her way into the open kitchen…)

KATHERINE: (Looks at them and shakes her head) You call me the crazy bitch? You are all borderline insane! 

(As she pours herself some water) Want some?

BONNIE: Uhm… why are you here?

KATHERINE: Duh, you invited me.

BONNIE: No we didn’t.

KATHERINE: Yes you did… and (looks at the mess), if I can find my phone, I can prove it to you.

LEXI: Maybe you should put some clothes on first…

KATHERINE: (Realizes she’s naked but doesn’t really care) Oops…

ELENA: We would never invite you, Katherine. Cut the crap and tell us why you are really here.

KATHERINE: Actually, Elena, you were the one that invited me; so, rude!

ELENA: That’s ridiculous!

KATHERINE: Fine, I’ll show you the proof; my phone has to be around here… somewhere.

BONNIE: Just, please, put something on, for god’s sake!

KATHERINE: Fine, Bonnie! Gees, such prudes! (She finds a robe nearby, puts it on, and looks for her phone. As she looks amongst the debris, she finds another casualty, passed out under a piece of furniture). Well… found Radka! The good news, she is breathing. The bad… ain’t no way she is waking up any time soon… she’s completely out.  

ELENA: (To Bonnie on the side) There’s no way I invited her, right?

BONNIE: Before last night, I would’ve said, hellz no! But…

KATHERINE: Well… it’s going to take a bit longer than I thought to find my phone. And, shouldn’t we be focusing on more important issues? Like the fact that the bride is MIA!

LEXI: (To Bonnie and Elena) Hate to admit it, but she’s right.

ELENA: Also…we seemed to have kidnapped a stripper, or a cop…

BONNIE: Okay, okay, I’m sure we can figure this out. We just need to retrace our steps; does anyone remember anything about last night?

ELENA: I remember we had a spa day… then we came back to the villa, got all glitz & glammed, opened a bottle of champagne to kick-off the night. After that, I’m at a blank…

BONNIE: Well, the original plan was supposed to be… a spa day, followed by dinner at Le Cirque, drinks at The Cosmopolitan, closing with, and against our will, that Britney Spears show at Planet Hollywood… But I also checked out after our kick-off cheer...

LEXI: I vaguely remember Le Cirque… something about a clown?

ELENA: (To Katherine) I’m going to play along because we really need to figure out what’s going on… You said I invited you, when was that?

KATHERINE: You sent me a WhatsApp around five, I think…

ELENA: Aha! You are lying! That can’t be true! No way you would have made it here on time!

KATHERINE: You do remember your best friend can teleport, right? Bonnie was the one that got me here. 

I must say, I was reluctant at first, but there was no way I was missing the opportunity to mess with Caroline. Anyway, I joined you guys in your little cheer, and then, lights out… That’s the last thing I remember.

BONNIE: … I think she’s right… I’m getting flashbacks of you and Caroline cracking up, the Salvatore house; Katherine complaining she hadn’t had the chance to pack; the cottage; Kai…

LEXI: Yes… I remember Caroline talking about a prank…

ELENA: (To Bonnie) Wait, did you say Kai?

BONNIE: Did I?

LEXI: You did…

BONNIE: I don’t know; I’m all messed up! I’m just saying things as they come. But that’s not important now. So, back on track. I say we first check every single corner of this place; maybe Caroline is here… if not, we’ll check the spa, the pool, the shops, etc…

KATHERINE: Well, if we want to make it back in time for the love fest… which I could care less, we should probably find a faster strategy. Lexi and I can search the larger area, vamp our way through the hotel. And you two (referring to Bonnie and Elena), can look here. (To Bonnie) Unless you can do your witchy woo to find her faster?

BONNIE: My powers are all over the place, don’t want to risk it. So, and I hate to say it, your original plan sounds like a good idea.

KATHERINE: I’m full of good ideas, Bonnie (winks).

BONNIE: (Rolls her eyes) Just meet us back here once you’ve searched the place.

(They search everywhere, Caroline is nowhere to be found. They teamback at the villa)

 BONNIE: Any luck?

LEXI: Nop. She isn’t in the hotel, that’s for sure.

ELENA: Well, she isn’t here either.

BONNIE: Great, back to square one…

KATHERINE: (Completely off topic, looking at Elena up and down) I’ll never get tired of saying it, I really am much better looking than you.

ELENA: (Triggered by her comment) Please, you wish. Or did your slut brain forget you lost two men to me? Ouch…

KATHERINE: One, actually. I never loved Damon. But I’ll say this, because you need to hear it. It’s quite sad that your insecurities led you to marry the first man that paid any attention to you, after you lost Damon to Bonnie. Which, and let’s not kid ourselves here, was way before they got together. Anyone with half a brain would know that Damon fell in love with Bonnie in that prison world, he was just afraid to admit it… Ouch!

ELENA: Bitch...

BONNIE: Katherine, shut up, or I swear…

LEXI: Wow, wow, wow, wow… ladies, chill! We are going way off topic, and into dangerous territory….

KATHERINE: Just saying, your wedding ring is tacky.

ELENA: What the hell are you talking about?! What wedding ring??

KATHERINE: You really ain’t that bright, are you? The one on your finger, Einstein.  

ELENA: What?! (Looks at her finger, she’s in fact wearing quite a tacky ring. Turns to Bonnie) No…. Please tell me I didn’t���. 

(she takes the ring off, it’s engraved, the inscription reads: No matter how forbidden, our love will last forever. Sister Mary Chapel. 

Looks nauseous) I think I’m going to throw up (runs into the nearest bathroom).

BONNIE: (To Katherine) I know you are soulless… but why would you say that to her?

KATHERINE: Because it’s true, Bonnie! You people really need to learn to be more honest with each other.

BONNIE: You’re gonna talk about honesty, really?

KATHERINE: When it comes to the people I care about; I couldn’t be more honest… Anyway, I do believe we have a lead… Guessing that place can give us some insight about last night. So, let’s wait for Sister Mary Elena to get it out of her system, and go to church, god knows you all need it. I’m gonna go change, and I figure my Doppelgänger should do the same. And you (to Bonnie), should probably put on some dry clothes. 

(They slip into something more decent, and off they go).  

They take an uber to the place; it is definitely not what they were expecting. Not your typical Vegas wedding chapel; on the the contrary, it’s quite sober and elegant. 

They go inside, it’s empty… 

They walk around to see if they can find someone, or any indication that they were there last night. Just as they are about to give up, Katherine spots something strange inside one of the confessionals.

 KATHERINE: Ladies, I think I found something… (they go check it out). Isn’t this (shows them a bracelet) Barbies?

BONNIE: (Takes it) Yes, this is Caroline’s. So… we were here… Why would we come to a church?

LEXI: (Teasing) Maybe we were feeling regretful, wanted to confess our sins.

KATHERINE: What the hell… (she sees a very strange lever, definitely not fitting with the decor; she decides to pull it… the confessional door closes, and descends into the unknown…)

LEXI: Uhm… might still be really hung-over, but are we going down?

BONNIE: We sure are… down a rabbit hole…

ELENA: I have a real bad feeling about this…

KATHERINE: Come on, have some sense of adventure, might be fun!

ELENA: God, I swear I’m going to kill you.

KATHERINE: (Sarcastic) You wouldn’t dare take a life in the house of the lord, would you? I don’t think he would approve, Sister Mary Elena.

ELENA: Well, you’re already dead, so… (just as they’re about to go at it again, the door opens…) Holy mother Mary…

TVD 9x16 (part 2 of part 2) coming next. Hope you stop by, read and enjoy! =)

[the-ethereal-serpent]

Types Of Hauntings

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Residual Haunting Activity

​Residual haunting activity can occur when something traumatic/stressful occurs, such as a murder. Negative energy is literally blasted into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to imprint or record the events. Like a recording tape, it will play the events over and over again. The entities involved in this residual haunting activity are unaware of their surroundings. This is not an intelligent haunting, there is no interaction between you and the entity.

Residual haunting activity can also be caused by positive energy blasted into the atmosphere. Many times you have heard ghost stories, where people can hear the sounds of a party. They hear music, singing, dancing, laughter and when they enter the room where they hear the party, there is no one there. Residual haunting activity can be the specters of living beings.

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Poltergeist Activity

​Poltergeist is from a German word meaning noisy spirits. Reports of poltergeists date back to Ancient Roman times. The activity that takes place will start off with knocks and bangs, furniture starting to move around by itself. Then the activity will become more intense, manifesting itself through voices and even the appearance of full apparitions. Furniture may slide across the room and beds may shake. Many shows are based on this type of haunting because it tends to be the most terrifying and rarest type of haunting that occurs.

Most of the time, in the case of a poltergeist, the haunting circles around a female in her teen years. Some of these cases seem to be caused by the female unknowingly controlling the energy around herself. Some cases happen around people that are stable and in the right mind space. This haunting is hard to classify due to certain situations. No two are ever really the same. Most of the time you will find that one person in the house seems to be more affected by the haunting than anyone else.

It may seem that most of the activity doesn’t happen unless that certain person is present. Usually , the activity appears to stop when that person leaves the home. The majority of the time poltergeists are experienced by several people, but again they seem to center around one certain person. This person may be highly stressed as of late or maybe this person has gone through some type of extreme emotional situation. If this is the case, see that the individual involved gets some medical care, and soon afterwards the poltergeist will subside.

When it is not the teenager that is manifesting activity there are usually several spirits in the area. The spirits appear to pool their energy together in order to become strong enough to move larger objects and make more noises. In order to remedy the situation, you need to find the root of their anger so that they can pass over and leave you in peace. On most poltergeist cases they will disappear with out any warning, just as they appeared.

Certain times it may stop within a few days, other times it may take years. you may never know the reason that it happened. Most people are just happy to see it go and that’s enough for them. By understanding why it was there in the first place helps you to understand how to keep it from ever coming back again. Knowledge is the key in protecting yourself.

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Demonic Activity

Demons are entities that never had a mortal human form. Origins: Extraterrestrial. Why? If you believe that God and his angels are from the ‘heavens’, that would make them extraterrestrial. If Satan and 1/3 of the angels rebelled against God’s Kingdom, then Satan and 1/3 of the angels that became demons are also extraterrestrial. That is why they never had mortal human form. Einstein said that E = MC2. Energy can be converted into matter and matter into energy. Demons are pure energy entities. They are described in three different ways.

1. As angelic, a being of beauty that will manipulate the person to commit something that is sinful or out of the ordinary.

2. Horrific, evil looking. Some people claim, they have seen demons that are incredibly hideous to look at. I believe demons do this for a scare effect, they know what we fear and this is not their true appearance.

3. Black mist, black fog, black shadow, black smoke. Most demonic hauntings, the occupants claim to be followed by black mist or black fog.

They are usually very easy to identify as long as they are not hiding. When it is a demonic haunting you typically notice a revolting stench similar to rotted flesh or sulfuric acid. They often let loose a growl that sounds like it is coming from everywhere at once. They like to make contact by pushing, shoving, hitting and even scratching. The whole air in the affected area will feel thick like fog and the temperature will drastically change, typically becoming warmer.

These creatures are very strong, unlike human spirits, and they don’t mind showing it. There have been cases where people have been thrown through the air and even attacked. Apparently, their main goal is to break down a person’s free will in order to makeway for possession. This can take days, months or years, but time is of no concern to them. They have a hatred for mankind that dates back to the days of God and Lucifer.

They have lived for millennia and will be here long after we are gone. So, you must understand that though you may be able to get these creatures to leave a dwelling with religious provocation, you will never destroy them. They could go to the next place down the road if they choose, most likely they won’t because distance is not an issue for these creatures. They could go from Maine to California on a thought.

Demons are capable of changing form right in front of you from a human form to an inhuman form. They are neither male nor female, but can change to meet their needs. People mostly see demons as black masses standing in doorways or near rooms. Sometimes they are called shadow devils.

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Intelligent/Interactive Activity

​Back to Einstein’s theory. As matter beings, we are all energy beings on the quantum level. We are made up of atoms and neutrons. As matter/energy beings we have intelligence. While we live, we have an energy aura that surrounds our living bodies. This aura is created by the millions of electrical currents that are created through our bodies. Our brains creates brain waves, a form of pure energy that is transmitting our thoughts, what we see, what we feel, etc.

When our mortal form dies, the aura that constantly surrounds our bodies, leaves our bodies. We lose 6 ounces on the instance of death. What is this 6 ounces? Perhaps it is energy leaving our body. Our soul. This energy, the aura, or you may even call it your soul, is carrying the information of what we used to be.

If it can do this, then why couldn’t it also carry our intelligence? If it can carry our former intelligence of our previous life, then it should be able to interact with us intelligently. When we see this aura, we call it a ghost. If this ghost is able to interact with us, is aware of us, can touch us, can communicate with us, then this is an intelligent/interactive haunting. 

Some reasons the ghost may be tied to the site or people :

Died as a result of a traumatic event, murder, car accident, etc.

Due to unfinished business.

The spirit may have died suddenly and not realized he/she died.

The living loved ones are so emotionally distraught they can’t let go.

The spirit is emotionally connected to their loved ones.

They cannot rest due to an injustice done to them.

Fear of the other side or judgment

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Shadow People or Shadow Creatures

​This is a type of haunting activity that has no real explanation. They are different from ghosts. They are usually shapeless dark masses. Mostly seen with your peripheral vision. They are known to do things that are different from ghosts. They can move between walls, they have no human features, they wear no clothes (except for the hat man/hooded figure shadow creatures). People who encounter them, have a feeling of dread.

Clairvoyants that encounter Shadow People, say they do not feel they are human and consider them non-human. Shadow People have no discernible mouth, noses or facial expressions. Some are seen as child sized dark humanoids. Some people say they seem to be made up of dark smoke or dark steam. At times when they move, they appear to be moving on an invisible track from one place to another, such as a toy train on a small scale railroad track. They have been seen to hop or what appears to be a strange dance. They are known to stare at the floor. 

Two common types of Shadow People are the ‘hat man’, that looks like he or she is wearing a 1930s fedora hat and the ‘hooded figure’, which looks like the shadow person has a hood over their head. The hood and hat stand out as clothing, but otherwise, they are not wearing any clothing at all. There are also reports of shadow animals, such as a shadow in the form of a cat, with no discernible mouth, nose or eyes. 

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Portal Hauntings

​Portals aren’t really a new concept, as we’ve seen them in a lot of sci-fi flicks. But in the real world portal hauntings are considered controversial as there is little known and the idea is mostly theory or speculation. Portals are thought to be doorways to another world or dimension in which entities travel through. 

It’s speculated that portals are not limited to one location, region or limited to sacred ground. Typically places that experience a wide array of different types of anomalous activity such as glowing balls of light, odd creatures, strange shapes, or unexplained mists or fog, are suspected to have a portal in which these energies are traveling back and forth.

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Note From Lluna

When it comes to the demon section, I know there are quite a few Pagans that work with Lucifer and demons and believe they are not evil. I don't know much beyond that, but I just want to add that this article is from the writers perspective and other perspectives must be considered as well.

Also, you need to remember that not all spirits are evil or negative. Many are neutral or positive and can assist you in your craft and even protect you from other harmful entities.

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Article Source : https://hauntedoc.com/types-of-hauntings/]

[withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus]

Let’s talk about quarantine streams and smartass fans

This might piss off some people, but I’ve had it so here we go...these past 2 months have been hard for pretty much all of us and the fact some visual kei artists chose to not leave us alone during this time means a lot. Several of them did their part in their own way and we should all be thankful BUT still, some fans of some bands seem to find it soooo fuckin hard to not throw poison, even during a time like this, and instead of just being happy about their bands being there for them, compare bands to theirs and belittle the effort of everyone else. So I felt like sharing what I noticed from other bands to enlighten some narrowminded fans and also to clear some things up. I am not going to cut this, this will be a long-ass post so you’ve been warned.

So let’s start with the two of the biggest names in the industry shall we?

The Gazette: Many of the Gazette’s fans are disappointed because the band hasn’t been around during this whole time, and many Dir en Grey fans feel like it’s the perfect time to post things like “Where’s your band now?“ or “Gazette who?“. For your information, Reita, Kai and Aoi have been around too, just not as much as other band members. They check on us. And anyway the other day that Reita tried to share an opinion on people sending hate to artists and generally other people, many fans attacked him. He didn’t tell you not to tell your opinion, people, he just said it’s good to filter your fuckin tongue before talking. Did anyone of you think, even for just one second, that he said that because of what’s going around about them right now? And at the end of the day none of the artists who even did spend sometime with us owed us this. Yes we support them, we buy their stuff etc etc, but the only thing artists owe us back for that support is more music and art, not spending their free time with us, nor being our personal psychologists. So yes, please and I mean that, by all means show your gratitude to those who did that these days, but don’t attack bands who didn’t. And I don’t mean JUST the Gazette. Many more bands didn’t do the whole free lives & broadcast thingy, but since they are a big name, they are getting named the most. About Ruki now. I see people saying things like, oh Ruki is hibernating etc, when many fans were yearning for a new album. Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if when the whole quarantine is over, the Gazette will announce a new album. How do you know he is just staying inside doing nth? How do you know he is not caring for his own people or even working on new stuff around the very subject of the virus? I won’t speak about Uruha cause Uruha isn’t a fan of social media in general.

Dir en Grey: Dir en Grey is one of the bands that actually did a lot to stay by the side of their fans from early on during the quarantine, sth which filled their fans with joy. So I don’t understand why their fans then felt the need to start spreading hate to other bands, I really don’t. Dir en Grey were also one of the first bands that did a free live and in a huge arena like it was a full-scale show. I found that really remarkable and I was like whoa this is so amazing of them. But seeing their fans say things like “oh no other band does that, bitches“ etc, made me not care so much and overshadowed their kindness with hate and fans who really don’t deserve all that, in my opinion. I am not saying all fans are like that, in any way, I follow so many amazing Dir en Grey fans who are genuinely exhilarated about what they did and who just post about their happiness without hating on others, but yeah it’s really such a big shame to see the dark side of their fandom. Every fandom has a dark side but during this quarantine I got to see Dir en Grey’s one, as I am only familiar with the fandoms I myself am in. So for those bitter Dir en Grey fans I got one thing to say: not every band has their money to make such a show in such a big arena and hundreds more vkei artist actually stayed by their fans side during the whole quarantine. Shocking I know.

And now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about bands that were there too from home:

Kaya: Since the beginning of quarantine, Kaya has been online all the time, interacting with fans, doing various broadcasts, dolled up or casual, and telling everyone we are fighting this together and that he will be on our side no matter what. He’s been showering fans with love, he uploaded videoclips that hadn’t been uploaded so far on his youtube and some songs live. He is going through all kinds of things from fanarts to comments about anything and does so many broadcasts that I have lost count.

REIGN: Even though the band is disbanding at the end of May, during the whole quarantine, all four members have been twitcasting from time to time, with Ikuma being the overdoer as he streamed from 3-4 hours every few days, discussing about various subjects with fans. Even when they weren’t twitcasting, all REIGN members were on twitter, posting and being there for their fans. They also joined a 3-man live with Grimoire and Sick2′s side project at the beginning of the quarantine which they broadcasted for free. The live house wasn’t very big but it was good enough for the three bands performing and they also answered comments until the people working at the live house told them it was time to close for the night

D: D were more active for their paying fandom, but they sure didn’t leave those not belonging in their vip list hanging. They were on twitter the whole time, sharing videos of themselves playing music and even joining tag games that spread among vkei artists during the quarantine to pass their time, urging everyone to stay inside and stay safe. Also, Asagi took an active part in providing for charity during such times. Before the pandemic was announced it had already been decided D were working on a charity single that would send some of the earnings to Australia for the damage of the forest fires last year and, after this was done, he focused on providing money for live houses who were threatened to close due to lack of activity through a single that was written for everyone to know they are not alone. In case you haven’t heard, many live houses hosting vkei shows have been closing the last few years, making it harder for bands to find sometime during each week to perform somewhere. Once live houses are done, so will visual kei artists be, unless they of course turn to online performances. So Asagi focused on providing for the future of the live scene, which was very smart move at the moment and if I remember well some money went to providing people with more masks too. There is a new charity streaming happening at the moment for children, btw.

GLAY: GLAY donated 10 million yen and 5000 masks to medical institutions for COVID-19 relief. Need I say more? GLAY have also been active on their social media for their fans’ sake. I don’t know any more details, cause I don’t follow them that much, but they did things not only for their fans but also for their country.

Kamijo: Kamijo has also being active on social media but moreso lately, starting his own broadcasts to interact with fans. Until that point it seemed that he was working on various things and organizing them to have the form they have now. Kamijo also changed the lyrics of the lead song of his latest single Persona Grata so that the enemy mentioned in it is more of an invisible one instead of a story-focused one like he usually does. According to him, he did that so that the song can work as a hope provider against our current invisible enemy, the virus. He said he wanted to lift people’s spirits and use this song to spread hope, so he made that little change and let me tell you, it is an amazing and powerful ballad. Also, since some if not all shippings have been ceased at the moment, Kamijo uploaded the whole single on his youtube channel for free so that everyone can listen to it and hopefully find some strength to keep believing and maybe get lost in it and forget about the general chaos a little.

Gackt: No, I don’t want to hear it. If you are his haters and haven’t even tried to read or experience what he does for his fans, don’t bother coming for me. Gackt has already been trying to share funny moments with his fans and he hopes he does make it with that, through his instagram and youtube so I wasn’t surprised he kept doing that during quarantine. Last week, he uploaded all his live shows on youtube so that his fans can watch them during quarantine if they wish. He couldn’t provide us with a show during such days so he did give us every show he has done so far for free and so that we could enjoy a show from home. He also kept doing workouts to show us, encouraging us to stay inside and be hopeful and mindful of the people around us. He also started some accent lessons in English for Japanese fans, but I guess even that would be cringy to some of you so you will pass it like that. He’s been trying to spread laughter to his fans and I really appreciate that. And for the hate he got even for that, well, if you don’t like his humor, focus on your favorites and leave him and his fans be. :)

Sui/David: Sui had a performance arranged for Paris around this time but due to the pandemic, he couldn’t make it. He had even fundraised about it so he was really saddened he couldn’t make it. To make up for it, though, he went to a studio with just another person and performed for both his Paris and other fans live with a single phone recording. The studio was really small and, some of you might think oh well big deal, it was just one person, but the place was stuffed with furniture and equipment and on top of that, Sui isn’t very tiny, he is like 1,82 cm so, it was hard for him to move around. But yeah he still tried, he came all dressed up in his costume and even though there were no special effects, good lighting nor a band with him, he did his best to entertain his fans and I respect that. And I also had a good time. ^^ He had prepared enough songs only for 30 minutes that are given for free from twitcast as, obviously he didn’t expect many people to show up nor send him coins (points on twitcast to prolong broadcast) so after that, he cheerfully accepted to keep this going for 30 more minutes, singing a song one more time, then talking with us and closing his show with a Malice Mizer cover of Ma Chérie.

BPR bands: Well all BPR bands have taken over youtube the last one year, but even more so now, the bands kept posting videos to entertain the fans. They also did broadcasts in which they talked with other members online and also interacted with fans. I only follow Kiryu on twitter so I can’t speak for everyone but they sure continued being active on twitter on days like these and joke around to spread some laughs.

Alice Nine: Another band that has been online the whole time these days and broadcasting often. Tora has been taking his gaming channel very seriously these days and yes he has an option to tip him if you want, in fact several vkei artists do that because, like I said, not everyone has the money to survive without working these days, especially artists who can’t really sell their art at the moment, but his youtube lives are free, entertaining and a good company if you are feeling alone. He posts a new video every day or every two days, if sth comes up. Hiroto already had a radio show so I think he keeps going there, I haven’t checked, I’ve only seen his twitcasts but yes all the members have been twitcasting, for vip fans and not and recently they had a broadcast all together from home.

Other artists who also broadcasted a lot and/or did live shows are: RAZOR, Diaura, DOG inThePWO, Mana (Kozi and Yu~ki were more active in tweets not broadcasts), Zamb, Ryutaro (also mostly in tweets), Byo, Jin & Rui Takeru/Sleepyhead, Agato/Izumi (full father mode on his tweets ^^’), Versailles members and Vistlip, SHiSHi, Neth Priere Cain, i.D.A, Satoshi, etc etc.

Now be civil and nice and think before you speak. Enjoy your shows and broadcasts, be grateful and stop throwing poison.

[jennifercrowart]

D&D Diary - The Yawning Rodent, 5

Refresher: Our adventurers Lugs (grung barbarian), Lurk (grung rogue), Aelia (tiefling cleric), Valas (drow sorcerer), and tagalong Meepo (kobold) defeated the giant spider mother, and confirmed that her latest human victim was not one of the Hucrele children they're looking for.  After resting through the day, they journeyed deeper into the Goblin Gang's territory, and fought groups of both on and off-duty guards.

When Meepo began to hear cries for help through a door, the group were able to unlock a room that was being used by the Goblin Gang as a dungeon cell for their Kobold Gang hostages. Amongst the kobold prisoners was a small ratfolk man - Deku, who his brother Big Oak had asked the party to look out for on their way to the Sunless Citadel. Deku had been trying to study the ruins using a library book about cults, but had been captured when he wandered too far inside. After retrieving his confiscated belongings from one of the guard barracks, Deku realised his library book was still missing, so he eagerly decided to join the party and hopefully find it.

But, first, the party had to find the Kobold Gang's missing dragon. Having found out her location from a guard they subsequently knocked unconscious, the party soon did just that...

Sunless Citadel spoilers!

Through the open door comes a rush of the stagnant stench of ammonia. Aelia, Valas, and Lugs enter the room first, finding it to be trashed as though it's been hit by a hurricane. Dressers, cupboards, and a table that all look like remnants from when the citadel once functioned as more than makeshift gang territories have been tipped over, with trophies knocked from the walls, and contents of drawers spilling onto the rug and stone floor. This room is chillier than the others, and patches of frost and snow coat the floor and pieces of furniture, glittering and sparkling in Valas' eerie green torchlight. In the center of the room is a stake that's been hammered unceremoniously into the ground, holding what's left of an iced-over and broken length of thick chain.

From above comes the light creak of wooden beams, and when they look up, they see a small, thin dragon crouching on the icy, dropping-stained rafters. Her scales are a bright white, and her feral eyes are a cold blue, though she's only as large as a wolf.

The white dragon wyrmling suddenly pounces on the party from above, her jaws just missing Aelia who ducks out of the way just in time. She  and Valas begin to panic, not having expected the dragon to be hostile straight away, while Lurk and Lugs already start going after Calcryx. With their springy frog legs, they find no trouble in jumping up to the rafters to go after her as she attempts to keep a height advantage over the group.

The adventurers hurriedly decide that they'll all try to do non-lethal attacks so they can still capture her alive. Deku casts bless on Lugs, Lurk, and Valas, as they're making the most attacks against the creature. Lugs goes after Calcryx with his club and Lurk with his bow and shortswords, but Lurk gets hit with an icy blast from the dragon's maw and falls off the rafters, unconscious and bleeding out when he hits the floor below. Aelia uses her healing magic to keep him stable and send him back into the fight.

When Meepo catches up to join the battle, Calcryx's attention suddenly shifts focus, her expression furious as she hisses and yells expletives at him in Draconic. Deku, with his understanding of the language, pales, awkwardly translating a censored version for the others. Valas frowns, and starts to question Meepo about his real relationship to Calcryx - it seems that she wasn't treated very well by the Kobold Gang at all, and it's now no wonder that she's so hostile to people. Meepo, incredulous, doesn't seem to understand that treating a dragon who he can talk to like a vicious circus animal is not going to win him any affection...

Calcryx goes after him immediately, letting out a roar and shaking the rafters so a hail of icicles rains down on the party below, before swooping down after the kobold. "YOU BETTER RUN, LITTLE LEECH."

Aelia and Lurk tell Meepo to get out of the room for his own safety. Calcryx zooms down and reaches him just beyond the doorway, snapping at his neck. The others try to keep fighting, while her thought begins to glow with recharged energy for her ice breath, and the steam from her mouth becomes a chilling fog that makes Valas feel like he's freezing down to his bones, preventing him from moving as quickly. In another furiously desperate and scrabbly attempt, she grabs Meepo's shoulder between her jaws before he's able to get far enough away, and crunches down with her icy fangs, landing a critical blow on the already-feeble kobold. Meepo yelps in pain, before losing consciousness as Calcryx tosses his limp body like a discarded toy. "Bad... girl.... Calcryx..."

Aelia, Deku, and Valas yell out to him, but have no choice but to keep fighting for now. Deku tries to help with his radiant magic, Lurk sends an arrow through her wing, Lugs lands a heavy hit on her back with his club, and Valas shoots out a Chaos Bolt of psychic energy. Like a shaken soda can, his wild magic begins to bubble up and overflow uncontrollably, and triggers for the first time; while Valas is dismayed at this, this time it results in summoning a spectral shield to protect him.

Calcryx, having completed her objective of killing the kobold Keeper of Dragons even though she's now badly wounded and limping, flies back towards the ceiling. She hisses at them to leave. With a well-aimed shot, Aelia hits her in the leg with a crossbow bolt, and it's enough to send Calcryx toppling to the ground and crashing into a smashed cupboard, unconscious.

With the fight over, Deku rushes over to Meepo, panicking. At a glance, the heavily bleeding and completely still kobold is dead. Deku leans over him and presses his Rat King holy symbol over the deep wounds in his shoulder and neck, and in a desperate plea, he casts Preserve Life.

While it seems like Meepo is too far gone at first, soon, the ragged tooth marks start to glow warm blue in tandem with Deku's holy symbol as the skin starts to slowly knit itself back together. His breathing is very faint, and blood had already been irregularly pulsing from his neck from a weak heartbeat, but he's still alive. The gashes heal over, but, with his clothes still wet and stained with blood, he doesn't wake up, even as his breathing slowly steadies. Deku watches over him, letting out a sigh of relief.

As the situation calms down, the rest of the party discusses what they should do about Calcryx. Knowing now that the Kobold Gang treated her poorly, they discuss potentially taking her back to the Rat's Nest to either be set free or nurtured properly by the ratfolk. Deku mentions that, if the group were to return to the Rat's Nest, the Yawning Rodent tavern does serve food that could give them a strengthening boost for when they return to the Sunless Citadel to continue adventuring. However, he also awkwardly tries to suggest that if they do go to the Rat's Nest, he'll just stay here and wait or hide outside of it, anxious that his brother would stop him from returning to the ruins with the party if he sees that he's been rescued already.

For now, the party seems to settle on trying to take Calcryx and Meepo back to the Kobold Gang's leader, Yusdrayl, as long as they make sure the gang knows to care for Calcryx more kindly. For now, they begin to look around for anything they can salvage from this trophy room, and find some crystal goblets, fine silverware, more jade dragon figurines, and a scroll that Valas finds out is in Dwarven, though it's heavily water-damaged.

As there's another reinforced door out of Calcryx's room, Lurk picks it open, curious as to where it leads next. Before him lies what looks like a long corridor, hazy with smoke from the wall sconces and decorated with more etchings of dragons. Meanwhile, Lugs cracks some ice out of the rug on the floor and fashions it into a sling, so they can drag the unconscious dragon wyrmling with them back to the Kobold Gang's territory.

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

I actually felt good about this session! For the first time, my players had a real challenge with the Calcryx fight. I looked into white dragon lair and legendary actions, and came up with some that were similar but more suitable for a wyrmling, like the freezing fog just slowing affected creatures down instead of dealing cold damage, Calcryx being able to use a 'villain action' to fly a little bit and not take opportunity attacks instead of fly and deal damage with the wingbeat, etc. Still challenging, and helped to keep up the pressure even though it was one creature against six - of course, I doubt it's perfect, but considering this is the fifth session I've run and the first time I've felt so good about a boss fight, I'm pretty happy!

Of course, Meepo dying was a big deal - I didn't really expect it to happen, but I forgot how little HP he had, and how much Calcryx could do with a bite attack - the book adventure does say that she'll attack him first if he's with the party! I am a bit of a softie though, and the players really liked Meepo, so while he won't be joining any more fights in this adventure, he's alive... ;v;

Also, for clarification, Meepo has been played by me as an NPC (taking instructions from the players when they want), but Deku is played by my friend Zak as a guest! Deku was written into the adventure anyway, replacing a more generic acolyte NPC the players could rescue from the goblins, and when Zak's schedule opened up so he could join the game for a while, that opportunity seemed pretty good!

[mab1905]

84 Questions

original: 

https://fuckyeahsurveys.tumblr.com/post/61049002526/84-questions

1. Put your music player of choice on shuffle and list the first 10 songs

Someone New (Hozier)

Cactus Tree (Joni Mitchell)

Budapest (George Ezra)

And Dream Of Sheep (Kate Bush)

Nancy Mulligan (Ed Sheeran)

And Then She Kissed Me (St. Vincent)

Level of Concern (Twenty One Pilots)

Lovefool (The Cardigans)

Best For Last (Adele)

Video Killed The Radio Star (The Buggles)

2. If you could spend a week anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? Would you take anyone with you?

Japan. I travel a lot and it’s been on my list for a while, I would really want to go to the Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli theme park, if it ever opens that is. I would bring my best friend, Layla. I also would love to go to Amsterdam again.

3. What is your preferred writing implement? (eg. Blue pen, pencil, green pen) 

My ink nib cartooning pen (similar to a quill, but without the feather)

4. Favourite month and why? 

October, not too hot, not too cold, and of course, Halloween!

5. Do you have connections to any celebrities (even minor)? List them.

Nope, met several, got to true connections though. 

6. Name 3 items you could pick up from where you are.

My iPad, my Leatherman Multitool, my collection of David Bowie postcards.

7. What brand logo is closest to you currently?

The Apple logo

8. Do you ever play board games or other non-computer games? Got any favourites?

Chess. Card games like Solitaire, Black-Jack, and Castle. A game that I can’t remember the name of but it’s essentially a board-game version of Capture The Flag. Mostly Chess.

9. A musical artist you love that isn’t well known

St. Vincent? I’m not sure if she’s well known or not.

10. A musical artist you love that is well known

David Bowie. 

11. What is your desktop background currently?

A picture of Apollo 11 accompanied by the words “It won’t fail because of me”

12. Last person you talked to, and through what you talked to them

My best friend Layla, through the iMessage app.

13. First colour name you can think of that isn’t in the rainbow

Salmon

14. What timekeeping devices are in the room you are currently in?

My iPad, my computer, my collection of vintage stopwatches

15. What kind of headphones do you use?

Sony, wireless, noise canceling, over-the ear 

16. What musical artists have you seen perform live?

Twenty One Pilots, Sylvan Esso

17. Does virginity matter to you?

I guess? I think it’s important, it’s certainly some kind of ‘milestone,’ but I don’t think it should be treated like the scale of a persons ‘purity.’ It’s important because it’s sex, and (hopefully) that means that you’re sharing a consensual, intimate experience that feels fucking great for both (or all, if it’s more then two) participants.

18. What gaming consoles do you or your family own?

Z e r o, although I’m hoping to buy a PS4 at some point so I can play Detroit Become Human.

19. What pets do you have? What are their names?

Juno is my cat, she is an adorable grey tiger-striped shorthair. She’s got little white mitten-paws and it’s absolutely ridiculous.

20. What’s the best job you’ve ever had?

Doing tech at a local theater

21. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

Teaching art to little kids (I like kids but it was just exhausting)

22. What magazines do you read, if any?

The New Yorker, and the National Geo if I’m like, waiting in my doctor’s office or something.

23. Inspiration behind your URL?

It’s just my initials and a year from the Edwardian era

24. Inspiration behind your blog title?

It’s just my initials 

25. Favourite item of clothing?

My reddish-brown knit sweater vest and my floral bow-tie (often paired together)

26. Are you friends with any exes?

I made a very conscious effort to cut my exe out of my life… we were not happy for a very long time to say the least

27. Name at least one book you loved as a child.

Strega Nona, it’s about an Italian witch that makes great pasta in a magic pasta pot. My dad would read it to me and my sibling in Italian.

28. What’s your native language? If that language has distinct regional variations, which variation? (eg. AU English, US English)

US English

29. What email service do you use?

Gmail

30. Is there anything hanging on the walls of the room you are currently in?

So many things. Here's the list:

A giant David Bowie poster, a plaque that says “David Bowie IS,” five David Bowie postcards, a giant Abbey Road poster, all of my patches from summer camp, polaroids of me, my friends, and my family (including my cat), ticket stubs from concerts and plays, two trail markers that I took off of fallen trees on two important cross-country backpacking trips I went on, playbills from a bunch of broadway shows I’ve seen, a poster that says “Stonewall was a riot,” a DC Comics poster, a Pink Floyd poster, a few paintings of mine, and a painting that I got for free from a street artist I befriended in Rome when I was twelve

31. What’s your favourite number, and why?

16, 24, 21, and 8, some numbers make me uncomfortable, but these are just very soft and light and nice 

32. Earliest moment in your life you can remember? 

A rocking chair with fruits painted on it sitting in a dark room and my great grandfathers brown leather loafers (I remember early early stuff in just images or stills, not full moments)

33. What did you have for dinner yesterday?

Pasta with shrimp

34. How often do you brush your teeth?

Usually twice a day, but I’ve been waking up later and later and sometimes forget in the mornings

35. What’s your favourite candy/chocolate?

I don’t know the name of it but it’s this chocolate bar that is stuffed with caramel, hot chili flakes, and crunchy bits of baked tortilla. It's one of the greatest things I’ve ever tasted.

36. Have you had other blogs on Tumblr? Do you have any other blogs currently?

I used to have one but I deleted it because I never used it

37. If you were suddenly really hungry, what would you choose to eat?

I would probably walk into the kitchen, realize that too eat something I would have to muster the effort to cook something instead, and then decide to just have a glass of milk instead.

38. What fandoms would you consider yourself a part of?

Downton Abbey (primarily Thommy)

Chernobyl HBO (as well as the Leonid Toptunov/Sasha Akimov subfandom)

Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit (books and movies)

CrankGamePlays

Buzzfeed Unsolved

Star Trek TOS

Philosophy Tube

The Dark Crystal and The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance

39. If you could study anything, what would it be?

If I had the energy to fully wrench my life in a completely different direction I would like to become a professional scuba diver and study the ocean. I already am a scuba diver, but it’s a hobby and not something I’m able to do very often at all.

40. Do you use anything on your lips? (eg. Chapstick, gloss, balm, lipstick)

I’ll wear chapstick if I have a cold

41. How would you describe your sense of humour?

Intellectual and dry

42. What things annoy you more than anything else?

People who think they’re better than everyone else and people who recognize a fault in themselves and then refuse to work to change it

43. What kind of position are you in at the moment?

I’m laying on my bed, hunched over my laptop

44. Do you wear much jewellery?

Occasionally I’ll wear a necklace or a few rings. I have a lot of non-traditional bracelets (I literally just have pieces of canvas and industrial tie-line wrapped around my wrist). I’m a gay guy and I like to sort-a walk the line between feminine and masculine (often leaning more towards the masc side), so it really depends on my mood.

45. Who is the leader of your country, currently? Any other levels of government with leaders? (State, region, province, county, district, municipality, etc)

A cheese-pizza flavored pringle is currently POTUS and every day the thought of that tears away at a piece of my soul. 

46. Last 3 blogs on your dashboard, not including any of your own

@shochmonster @velvet-of-the-night @panicsheerbloodypanic

47. What do you carry your money in?

My pocket, I have a wallet and I don’t use it

48. Do you enjoy driving? Why or why not?

It’s fine, don’t love it don’t hate it

49. Longest drive you have ever been on?

Three days

50. Furthest away from home you have ever been?

Went on a trip to Switzerland to visit family, I think that’s the farthest but I’m not entirely sure.

51. How many times have you moved house?

Twice

52. What is on the floor of the room you’re currently in, not including furniture?

Five paintings, stacks and stacks of books, boxes filled with stuff (mostly more books), plates, glasses, cutlery, clothes

53. How many devices do you own which can access the internet?

2, and iPad and a computer

54. Is there is anything that is guaranteed to always make you happy?

Listening to music

55. Is there anything that always makes you sad?

Thinking about my past for too long

56. What programs do you currently have open?

Google drive, I’m writing

57. What do you associate the colour red with?

Blood and fire

58. Last strong smell you can remember smelling?

Shrimp and butter

59. Last healthy thing you ate?

Three green olives and a handful of bean sprouts

60. Do you drink tea or coffee, and how much per day?

Used to drink coffee like it was life support (which it essentially was), now I’ll have the occasional cup of tea.

61. What do you associate the colour blue with?

Birds and rain

62. How long is the closest ruler you can find?

I don’t think I own one

63. What colour pants/skirt/etc are you currently wearing?

I am wearing olive green corduroy slacks

64. When was the last time you drank water?

30 minutes ago?

65. How often do you clear your browser history?

Never

66. Do you believe nude photos can be artistic, rather than erotic?

Nude anything can be artistic, it can also just be normal, eroticism is in the eye of the beholder.

67. Ever written fanfiction for anything?

Yes dear god so much fanfiction.

68. Last formal event you attended

I genuinely can’t remember, I am have extreme social anxiety and don’t go to events like that unless I absolutely have too

69. If you had to move your birthday to another date, which one would you choose and why?

I don’t care about birthdays

70. Would you prefer to be at a beach or in the countryside?

Beach, I love to swim, I’m also a surfer

71. Roughly how many people live in your town?

Uhm… eight times the number of people who live in the state of Montana and that doesn’t count daily commuters and tourists (New York City is essentially just a tin of sardines, except inside are 8.399 million sardines)

72. Do you know anyone with the same birthday as you?

No, but three of my friends were born on the day just after my birthday.

73. Favourite place to shop? Can be a certain store or a place where there are multiple stores

The Strand Bookstore, L Train Vintage, any antique shops in the town of Hudson, New York 

74. Do you have a smartphone? What kind? If you don’t, do you want one?

I used to have an iPhone 5SE but then it stopped working after a few weeks of quarantine and I haven’t gotten a new one (I’ve had it for about 5-6 years so it makes sense)

75. What is your least favourite colour, and why?

I don’t have a least favorite color, but my favorite color is prussian blue

76. How do you spell grey/gray?

Grey

77. Go to your dashboard and describe the image shown in the radar section (below the “Find blogs” link)

It’s anime fanart for a show I’ve never heard of

78. What difference is there between how many followers you have, and the number of blogs you follow?

3

79. How many posts do you have?

219

80. How many posts have you liked?

619

81. Do you post mainly reblogs, or your own content?

Mostly reblogs but I do my own content as well

82. Do you track any tags?

No, just blogs

83. What time is it currently?

10:39

84. Is there anything you should be doing right now?

writing

I’m not quite sure who to tag so it’s just open to anyone I guess?

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Alien movies are military training videos.

Thirteen years after what became known as the “Contact Wars” a relative peace had been established between the Ureti Conglomerate and the Terran Federation.  The Ureti were several species which had banded together for mutual protection, their leadership following closely along the lines of a military council with members from all Conglomerate species represented. The Federation was made up of all human nations on both their homeworld and outlying colonies under the leadership of an elected general secretary.  The war started over a disputed colony on the planet Karkova where human settlers were driven off by a Conglomerate mining detail. Some deaths on both sides happened which resulted with fierce back and forth between the two powers. It didn’t take long for open hostilities to be triggered and full scale war was declared soon after. The Conglomerate assumed that with their vast technological superiority the war would be over in less than a solar cycle. Instead, it devolved into a grueling thirteen year conflict which saw countless lives on both sides lost and in some cases entire worlds were devastated. This was the first major setback the Conglomerate had experienced against a foe they were assured would be no threat. The humans standard weaponry was so basic that they relied on firing metal projectiles at high speeds instead of concentrated energy rounds and their fleets were limited in the distance they could travel. Yet still their advance was that of an onrushing tide. They laid ambushes for Ureti fleets, sabotaged supply lines far inside Ureti territory, launched seemingly suicidal raids on orbital platforms and facilities crippling the ability to refit. The planetary invasions soon followed and despite once again being outmatched in weaponry Federation forces were able to time and again overcome impossible odds.  With the war reaching ever closer to the home worlds of Ureti the leadership made the move to sue for peace. They gave up several outlying colonies to the Terran’s along with the rights to several mineral and gas mining outposts. In truth these facilities and planets were so badly damaged that to rebuild them would have been far more expensive than simply uprooting the populations to less damaged worlds. The real reason such measures were taken was so that the Terran’s would not be suspicious when the Ureti wanted the Terran military to allow special “advisers” from the Ureti to be attached to Terran forces. The cover was these advisers would be there to ensure that the Federation would honor the peace accords, but in reality they would act as spies to learn how such an underdeveloped species had been able to anticipate and overcome the Conglomerate.  ------- Lilith Shilva strode through the halls of the Terran base. She was an Ureti adviser assigned to the Terran assault frigate “Hammer of Texas”. In many ways she nearly passed off as human herself, were it not for her reverse jointed limbs and ten fingered hands. To those that paid her any mind they assumed she was solely focused on reading the information packet and moved on. It was so easy to cover her real intentions it was almost laughable. Lilith’s species had excellent peripheral vision with such clarity so even though her eyes were focused on the meaningless information packet she was really taking in everything else around her. Uniform symbols, response times, any technical device, etc.  She was observing everything and yet despite being stationed here she was no closer to achieving her mission than when she started ten weeks ago. The lack of progress led Lilith to assume that somehow the humans had learned of her mission and were intentionally misleading her by covering their tracks.  It’s what she would have done, but the sheer size of the mascaraed seemed unlikely. The entire crew of the ship along with support staff and troop detachments that had moved on and off would have to had to been on the play, and by Lilith’s count that would have been nearly 5,000 personnel. With so many people it was possible that one would let slip and reveal the game, yet none did.  So lost in thought and observation Lilith failed to notice someone calling out her name until she felt an hand nudge her back to the present. “Lilith!” She turned and looked down at the human calling her and sighed.  “Greetings attache Philip. Is there something I can help you with?” In truth she had no interest in helping the little man that had been assigned to her as a guide. She couldn’t put her fingers on why she disliked him, in truth he was polite and cordial. It might possibly be due to his starry eyed gaze he had whenever he was looking at her. He probably thought he could attempt to mate with her, a thought alone that nearly made her displace her stomach contents.  “I was wondering if you cared to join me and some of the other crew members tonight for a get together?” Lilith couldn’t help but let out another sigh as once again attache Philip was inviting her. It seemed that ever since their posting together he tried to get her to further interact with him and the crew on a personal level. Because it did not advance her mission she had politely declined each time. “I apologize attache Philip, but I will be busy.”  Philip appeared crest fallen once again. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” “Indeed, my apologizes once again but I must be going.” Lilith turned and resumed her walk.  “It’s just that..” Philip said as he began walking beside her. “Jenkins from engineering got a care package from Terra that he’s been waiting for for weeks now and..” “I apologize again attache Philip but I have pressing work to be done.” She was in no mood to further entertain his ramblings and once again attempted to extradite herself.  “I just remembered that you mentioned wanting to learn about human culture and Jenkins got a movie that’s a prime example of it.”  Lilith stopped walking and turned around. “What is a “Movie”?” Philip perked up sensing a chance. “It’s a type of recording used for various purposes ranging from entertainment to training.” Training? Lilith paused to consider. It seemed these movies were crucial enough for human culture, possibly even used to pass along crucial information to a wide sect of the population.  “On second though attache Philip,” she gazed at Philip “my work load can wait until tomorrow. I would be grateful to join you.” She then smiled at him. She was still unsure why showing her teeth seemed to trigger feelings of pleasantness for humans but it was a trait she picked up on. “Philip smiled back excitedly. “Great! Come down to the rec room on deck 7 bulkhead D around 8pm ship time. We already have food and drinks so you just need to bring yourself.” “I look forward to it.”  -------------- Lilith approached the designated room Philip had mentioned and entered. The room appeared to be filled with people sitting on a variety of furniture such as chairs or “couches”. She gazed around for several seconds before spotting Philip who smiled and waved at her, motioning her over to him. As she got closer he moved over some opening more space. “I’m so happy you were able to make it in time!” He patted the spot next to him. “You got here just as the movie is about to start. I saved you a spot.” Faking a smile once more she nodded and took the space next to him. “My thanks attache Philip.” He laughed as if she had just spoken a joke. “You know you can just call me Philip. You don’t have to add my title in front of it every time.”  Lilith was about to respond when a crew member stood up in front of the crowd and the crew members began cheering and clapping. “Right, my name’s Jenkins and I’m the sponsor of tonight’s movie night addition.” A further round of cheers and applause sprang up. “Enough of that. Let’s just get to the movie!”  The lights went dark. Lilith tapped her head and activated the hidden recording device she had implanted. A projection device appeared from the ceiling and began displaying a picture. Words began slowly appearing from the darkness which spelled out “Independence Day”. ------- Two and a half hours later the lights came on and the crowd began shuffling out. Philip turned to look at Lilith. “So, what did you think?”  Lilith remained frozen in place for several moments, still contemplating what she had just seen. The human species at a far earlier point in time with far less advanced technology defending their planet against a vastly superior enemy. And according to the time frame this was several hundred years old.   “It was.......it was...” She couldn’t find the words. She had stumbled upon the secret to the human victory. This previous invasion several hundred years ago must have trained them well enough. Even the Ureti didn’t have the technology that the human’s enemies possessed in the film. “It was that good wasn’t it?” Philip asked. She didn’t fully understand how he could remark that it was fun watching millions of his own kind killed. “How did your planet recover after such devastation?” Philip cocked his head to the side. “I don’t understand. Did you think that was real?” “Wait, it wasn’t?”  Philips began laughing and Lilith felt insulted. She stood up suddenly and glared at him. His giggles slowly died down as he examined her expression. “Wait, you’re not joking?” You’re serious?” “Yes! How can you laugh at the slaughter of your own people!”  “Lilith, I see now that there has been a misunderstanding. Everything you just saw was fake.” Lilith felt like she was being mocked again and continued to glare at him. “Really, it was! All special effects and actors.” Lilith could sense the serious tone in his voice which only made her more confused. “So....the destruction wasn’t real? None of it?” Philip motioned for her to sit back down which she did.  “The people you saw were what we call “Actors” and the movie you watched was a..”, Philip struggled for a word she would understand, “ a scenario. Yes, a  scenario of what could happen.” Lilith was slowly understanding it. This “film” as Philip had called it, was a military simulation of a scenario which had humanity outgunned and on the defensive. It was shaped as a form of entertainment so the larger population would watch it and unknowingly gain the necessary knowledge of what to do in such a situation. Lilith could not help but shudder as she realize that the Terran’s leaders had devised such a cunning method of training their entire population in military tactics.  “Do you understand now?” Lilith was drawn back from her thoughts. “Yes, thank you for explaining it to me. I apologize for for my reaction over this misunderstanding.” She needed to leave at once and report back to command she had found the source of humanities advantage in the war. She would also need to acquire the film itself as evidence.  “No worries Lilith, I understand it must seem pretty shocking for someone of a different culture.” They both stood up and began moving towards the door. “I hope you’ll join us again for the new film tomorrow.” Lilith stopped.  “You mean there are more of these films?” “Oh yes!” Philip said, excitedly gazing at her again. She smiled back as it now appeared obtaining a copy would be far easier if there were several of them. “This one is called “Alien” and is a bit scarier so you can hold on to me if it gets too intense.” “Wait, you mean there are more than one of these films?” “Why of course.” “And each one tells a different scenario?” “Oh yes! If you want I have my own collection we can watch together if you’re interested.”  Lilith smiled a real smile for the first time since she arrived on the human ship. “I would find it most enjoyable.” She remarked as they walked away, realizing that Philip would become a vital source of human training scenarios.  ---------------------- + 5 months later Ureti command was feeling anxious. They had not received a report from operative Lilith in several dozen cycles now and feared that she had been discovered. The potential fall out ranged from discovery of the wider operation at large resulting in political backlash, to reigniting the war. So when a report from operative Lilith finally arrived most of the senior command breathed a sigh of relief and gathered to view it.  “This is operative Lilith Shilva making report number 0240. I apologize for not responding sooner and will accept any punishment upon my return but first I wish to explain my actions for the delay.  While stationed aboard the Assault Frigate Hammer of Texas I discovered a form of human training material that was being dispersed to the population as entertainment.” The senior commanders grumbled. Training material was nothing new to them.  “I developed a relationship with my attache Philip and used him as a source to discover how in depth these training materials went. It seems for the last several hundred years human leaders have made military training scenarios into “Entertainment” for the public. These scenarios ranged from a full scale invasion to a single strike force infiltrating the planet. In the majority of the situations the human combatants are vastly outgunned both in numbers and technology. The initial fight is often lost forcing the remaining population to go to ground. From here humanity often is forced to come up with unorthodox tactics and methods to regain the initiative.”  This slightly surprised the senior staff. The idea of facing a foe that was superior to themselves had never crossed their minds as most often they encountered primitive species.  “These scenarios have been in circulation for several hundred years now and individual households even have collected different scenarios that they found the most “entertaining”. Entire groups have formed around certain selection to discuss and debate the scenario and devise better ways for survival had they been in them.” The command staff was now in shock at the sheer scale of tactical aspect humanity had applied. These films had turned the general population into strategists while masking it as if it was meant for enjoyment. Even those that did not become commanders in the Terran military would still have an understanding of tactics and strategies. Effectively they had turned themselves into and army of generals.  “ My final assessment is that by placing repeated situations of inferiority and at a tactical disadvantage, human leaders have been trained to think of radical tactics that would otherwise not even be considered. They have been trained to use the unusual and at times crazy suicidal plans to overcome their enemy. What’s more it also has pointed out the flaws within the Ureti military. By constantly believing ourselves superior to all those around us we have narrowed our overall vision. We lack that creativity they posses and have become so assured of our superiority that we can not think outside of standard doctrine.” “At this time I am continuing my research into these films with my source who is actively providing them for me to watch provided we do so alone in his quarters. I will attempt to acquire as many copies as I can and pass them along back to you. With any luck we can learn from these and adapt ourselves for the coming wars.”   

[thedarkestdragonknight]

About the Character: Jacques

Tagged By: No One just saw it and wanted to do this <3 Tagging: @benes-diction @jarethnunh @skyysinger @talechaser-ffxiv @theaetherhealerffxiv @shur-kha-ffxiv @saerumii @dythynn-the-bard @blackmxgepyro @thorcatte and anyone else who might want to do this! If you have multiple muses do it more than once :D

― your muse’s name:

Jacques Cresent

― one favourite picture / faceclaim of your muse:

When it comes down to it this will always be one of my favorite things I’ve got with Jacques in it. It was my first time making a gif and I’m super proud of just how it looks. Not only that but it was the FIRST time I ever managed to have Midgard on his shoulder and breathing fire. This is something that just captures Jac’s relationship with Midgard and it’s just gorgeous. I love the lighting, I love how it flows and I love so much about it.

― two headcanons you have for your muse:

Because of what Jacques is, his scales are extremely sensitive to touch. This goes especially for the scales (though he doesn’t have many) that line the bottom of his jawline and the ones on his back which are highly sensitive. He loves when someone touches them and they are a good means to actually calm him down if he is stressing or just in a bad or off mood. This is also something that his enemies can use against him because while he loves having them touched just the right blow to any of them can easily cripple him due to the severe pain that would come from it as well as the many overwhelming sensations that come from it as well.

To go along with the scales and such Jacques is extremely expressive with his tail and the ears that he has canonly. While he is generally always with a grumpy or irritated expression on his face one of the best ways to tell his mood is either with how his ears are (They are long, elf like ears) or his tail as well as body language in general. If his tail is low and curled around his leg chances are he’s upset/uneasy, if his ears are high and perked up then he’s likely curious. Think of it like how animals act, you can usually tell how they are feeling by body language and with their ears and if they have them tails!

― three things that your muse likes doing in their free time:

Read. Jacques has spent the better part of his ‘freedom’ reading over the various things he has found about himself from the rubble and remains of various Garlean settlements that have long since been abandoned. And this has sparked a great interest in him for books in general. Jacques will hunker down next to the fireplace back at the house and sit down with a book and spend the quiet ours reading it. He has also delved into things like Romantic Novels and more... lewd writings as well. But he won’t ever admit to reading such things even if someone finds one in his collection on his shelves.

Fishing. Jacques LOVES to fish and he always finds it a challenge when he goes out for ‘big prey’ so to speak. He loves the challenge of realing in a massive shark or going out to speak a giant fish that could feed all of his companions and then some. It’s also soothing and relaxing. Just sitting down and throwing out your line either on the beach or near a nice river in the forest. It helps keep him calm and it also helps to pass the time when he’s feeling lonely and wants to take his mind off things. This also goes in part with the fact that Jac is a hunter and he’ll hunt things down. Tying into his love of cooking.

Cooking and baking. When it comes down to it Jacques will be there to cook for his loved ones and friends. He loves to just get behind the oven and toss things together, he makes full meals for everyone and he’ll even make more ‘packaged’ meals for his companions who are often away from home. It’s also no secret that Jacques ADORES baking and people tend to have to keep an eye on him when he does. Because he has a bad habit of eating those sweets that he bakes and getting a bad case of the Zoomies...

― seven six people your muse loves / likes:

P’shali Talechaser (@talechaser-ffxiv) - One of many people that Jacques has grown close to since his time out of the Praetorium. P’shali has been with him through his worst times and has always been with him to help him through those times where he is likely to self destruct. If there is one thing that the bard is good at it’s soothing him and calming him down. While P’shali tends to get frustrated with Jac’s habits of destroying the furniture in the house (Either by accident or intentionally when things get a little spicy) they are extremely close and Jacques is always reassuring the Miqo’te that he’ll never leave him no matter what.

Swath Lodestone (@theaetherhealerffxiv) - Swath and P’shali are a package deal just like Jac comes along with that package as well. When it comes to Swath, Jacques is always trying to be there to help him through his own troubles and to help stabilize him when he is dealing with problems involving aether and him being sick. Jacques knows well enough how hard of a time that Swath often has and so he generally tries to be there for him. Jacques also tries to help Swath with understanding the world since he’s certainly not quite familiar with things in the more ‘recent’ times, he’s also there to help him remember things and to help him whenever he happens to go out hunting.

J’areth Nunh (@jarethnunh) - One of the first faces that Jacques met when he escaped from the Praetorium. J’areth has become an extremely welcome face when the dragon happens to be in his darker moments and lost to those past thoughts. J’areth is among the group and is always welcome, he is also respected and well loved. Seeing the Bard always brings a smile to Jacques’ face and he is always doing his best to help with anything he can to keep the Seekers spirits up. Jacques wants to make sure that J’areth knows he is loved and that he knows that he means a lot to him. He also wants to make sure that J’areth doesn’t have to suffer again.

Sebha’to Bajhiri (@skyysinger) - Sebha’to is a precious person that Jacques always gets the ‘must protect’ mode on whenever he is around and not spending time at the house. He enjoys spending time with the Keeper whether it’s gardening or helping him with learning how to cook. Jacques wants to make sure that ‘to feels welcome, that he feels safe and that he knows that he is well cared for. Jacques will always be there for Sebha’to and he will make it known that no matter what, he cares.

Celia Benes (@benes-diction) - While he hasn’t had quite a lot of interactions with her there is one thing for certain that Jacques feels and that is another overwhelming desire to protect her. She’s also a great companion when it comes to cooking with him and no doubt keeps him under control when he’s baking. Or at the very least if he does bake and wants to partake in any sweeties she’ll take him outside and make sure that when the zoomies happen he’ll be out in a nice open area and not the house. She’s also always knowing just the right spots to give the best chin scritches. Happy dragon enjoys the small and precious bean and he’ll protect her no matter what.

Caius Benes (@benes-diction) - Can’t have one bean without the other. While they certainly had a rather rocky start to things if there is something that Jacques shares when it comes to his relationship with Celia is... he wants to protect Caius. He doesn’t fully know why, he doesn’t understand many things about the guy but he knows well enough that bad things happened in his past and that’s more than enough to warrant that desire. Jacques is trying to understand Caius as well, he’s always wanting to be there for him and to give him a shoulder to ‘cry’ on or someone to simply rant to if he needs it. He also offers up as a punching bag if those other things aren’t going to help. Granted he also doesn’t know fully that Caius is related to Celia and all of those things going on... he hasn’t even put together the fact that their names should be familiar. At the very least the family name.

― a phobia your muse has:

Jacques has one big fear/phobia that will always remain. It’s the fear of failure... he never wants to fail anyone again after what happened in the Vault with Haurchefant. He dreads the thought of any of his loved ones dying in such a manner and if they did... the resulting cataclysmic destruction that would no doubt come from it. He knows well what could happen and he knows just how BAD it would be should any of those he really cares deeply about (IE: Swath, Shali, J’areth, Sebha’to, etc.) dies... there would be no coming back from that.

[number9robotic]

Untitled Cyberpunk Magical Girl Project characterization prompt response:

Original prompt by @gallusrostromegalus​!

OC Recap (left to right):

Suzi: Dance student, part-time magical girl/virtual celebrity, half-stoic, half-upbeat depending on the mood.

Kim: Botanist, semi-retired veteran magical girl and mentor, awkward “cool” mom with baggage.

Crash: Delinquent spirit, first magical girl, currently hyperactive virtual ghost, born troublemaker.

Nano: Rebellious slave class member in hiding, uses magical girl powers for personal investigations, comically deadpan.

HD: Gifted rich girl/conspiracy theorist unknowingly chosen to be a magical girl, quiet but eccentric personality.

A. On a scale of “is occasionally forced to bathe” to “Instagram model with sponsors to hoe for” how involved is your OC’s Skincare routine?

Suzi: She’s a teenage girl, so a bit. Even disregarding her online presence, she’s in the know of cosmetics just to look good to friends.

Kim: Very basic hydration and cleanliness, only gets special treatment if something’s actively acting up.

Crash: Currently doesn’t care due to being a virtual ghost. Didn’t care much in her physical life either except for concerts.

Nano: Very basic cleanliness; she’s very out of the loop of many things, optimal skincare included.

HD: Focused a lot. Part of it is casual access to high-brand cosmetics, part of it is natural obsession with cleanliness.

B. What are your OC’s food preferences (flavors/textures/spiciness/calories/ when and how they eat) and how did they get that way?

Suzi: Has a pretty varied middle-class palate, likes even mix of savory and sweet. Very fond of fish and rice (sushi of course) and sugary drinks (boba, lemon tea).

Kim: Very light diet. Just needs something only mildly flavorful like tea or natto rice she can easily have at work, sometimes forgets to eat in general.

Crash: Likes cheap/instant ramen and other fast foods; grew up on the stuff and hates the taste of “real” food. She also likes things spicy.

Nano: Currently expanding taste buds due to lifetime being served nutrient goop. Likes sweets, but only has them on occasion because they cause headaches (taiyaki’s pretty good).

HD: Regularly gets to enjoy high-quality “real” foods, but very frequently jumps to easier-to-access comfort foods like strawberry milk or curry rice.

C. What’s something pointless/petty/unimportant that IRRATIONALLY ANNOYS THE HELL out of your OC?

Suzi: When the train arrives earlier than scheduled, so she misses it and has to wait for the next.

Kim: Zoning out while steeping tea and realizing it’s cold after forgetting about it.

Crash: Anti-aliasing, and the inability to turn it off. NOOOO SMOOTHENIIIIIIING

Nano: Her senior chef’s taste in music. She recently got a job as his apprentice, and she can’t stand the pirate rock he blares in the kitchen. She hates the accents.

HD: Lacking the right word to articulate an emotion or idea she wants to express and being unable to look it up.

D. What’s your OC’s response to being asked for money by a homeless person?

Suzi: “Some other day.”

Kim: (quietly looks to her phone)

Crash: “Nah fam, not today.”

Nano: (completely ignores them)

HD: (quietly looks the other way)

E. Does your OC get lost easily? What do they do when they do get lost?

Suzi: Checks the skytrain routes and maps at the stations.

Kim: Knows her path from home to work enough to never get lost.

Crash: “Thanks, GPS!”

Nano: Checks street signs and looks for maps at skytrain stations.

HD: In order: check maps, call guardians for directions, ask strangers.

F. What would STOP your OC from Doing The Right Thing in a tense situation?

Suzi: If she’s in physical danger without her powers. She don’t punch above her weight.

Kim: If she has no personal stakes in the matter. She doesn’t like escalating conflict, she’s already tired as is.

Crash: If it’s a strictly physical conflict where she’s unable to interact.

Nano: If it’s none of her business. She’s in hiding; attention is bad.

HD: If she doesn’t have powers for it. She’s not even in her teens, fam

G. Realistically, could your OC (in their normal circumstances- i.e. at their own house/battlecamp/spaceship etc.) keep a small child alive for a week if they had to?  A Dog?  A Houseplant? A rock with a  smiley face painted on?

Suzi: She underestimates her ability to accommodate someone/something. She’d start off nervous, but she’d probably pull through.

Kim: Pretty well. She wants to ensure others are safe, she’s just very awkward at it.

Crash: Even in life, she was a mess, so probably not.

Nano: She’s only just learning to take care of herself among the surface world, give her some time.

HD: She’s like 12! She might take care of a plant just fine tho

H. If your OC had to take the S.A.T. tomorrow with one night to prep, how would they do?  both emotionally and academically.

Suzi: Print out practice tests, head to a cafe, get some boba, and hunker down.

Kim: Work at home, take a shower, prepare some tea, scented candles, and some ambient records.

Crash: Wait for Kim to take her to her apartment and force her to do the same thing.

Nano: Internet biiiiiinge. Get the taiyaki ready.

HD: In her room going over various books with some music playing, and probably with a tab open for streaming.

I. What would cause your OC to chose to do something petty/pointlessly cruel?

Suzi: If she’s good friends with the target and another friend dared her to, and/or if she stands to get free food from it.

Kim: If she’s REALLY had enough of you but doesn’t have it in her to tell it to your face.

Crash: If she thinks it’d be funny. It isn’t always funny, but when it is, it is.

Nano: If she’s really angry at you and thinks she can get away with it without notice.

HD: If she’s feeling especially exhausted and has briefly given up on being nice to you.

J. On a scale of “Complete and Justified nervous breakdown” to “Conquer The Entire Galaxy and become an Immortal God-Emperor”, how well would your OC handle being abducted by Aliens?

Suzi: “Oh shit.”

Kim: “Is this a spaceship?”

Crash: “Kickass!”

Nano: “Are you from The Corporatocracy?”

HD: “I was right!?”

K. What song is 100% guaranteed to get your OC beyond turnt and will be sung loudly and embarrassingly, either in public or the shower?

Suzi: “Crazy Crazy” by Yasutaka Nakata.

Kim: “Sad Machine” by Porter Robinson.

Crash: “Whole New World” by SOPHIE.

Nano: She’s not the singing type, but “Giving Bad People Good Ideas” by Death Grips gets it done.

HD: “Feel Good Inc.” by Gorillaz.

L. What perfectly-normal-to-them-thing does your OC do that confuses/pisses off/terrifies their neighbors?

Suzi: Dances to loud mixes in her room.

Kim: Very frequently lights candles or incense in her apartment.

Crash: She used to practice a lot of vocalizations, ie scream a whole lot.

Nano: Have virtually no furniture aside from a bed and table for her laptop.

HD: Own an entire floor of an apartment building.

O. How often does your OC “zone out” or do things on autopilot and how severe have the problems that have arisen from that been?

Suzi: Often, but basically only during boring times where nothing is happening, including stuff that could potentially cause problems.

Kim: Almost never when at work, but frequently gets contemplative when at home.

Crash: As a virtual entity, she’s very active and almost never blanks out. In physicality, CONSTANTLY.

Nano: She doesn’t exactly zone out so much as she gets locked into one sensation/action and is unused to the need to adjust on her own.

HD: She can get twitchy at the worst of times, her mind going on extended tangents if there isn’t a lot of stimuli.

P. How strong or weak is your OC’s Impulse control? What’s the worst thing that happened because of their Impulsivity or inability to be so?

Suzi: Generally gives things careful consideration, but if a prospect is extremely exciting, she may need a reminder to step back a bit.

Kim: Very mellow and not one to making particularly decisive decisions, unless it’s regarding someone’s safety, where she’s very firm.

Crash: Very impatient and prone to making bad decisions without thinking through them. Ever since becoming a ghost, she’s a little more careful for Kim’s sake, but still needs a lot of work.

Nano: Very methodical and calculative, but feels the need to make fast decisions if she decides she has no time to be careful.

HD: Very patient and careful, almost glacial in terms of getting her onto another mindset.

Q. How does your OC sabotage themselves? 

Suzi: She’s forming a double-life as a civilian and as a Magica for excitement, but she isn’t fully realizing the consequences of it or what she must do in the future, potentially barreling into danger for a brief thrill.

Kim: She simultaneously wants to have a normal life away from supernatural shenanigans but is irreparably locked into it with her relationship with Crash, ironically denying herself closure by wanting nothing to do with her trauma.

Crash: Constantly seeks to rebel introduce excitement to the world, but is often dishonest about her own motivations, resulting in an inability to think through her plans or the consequences of her actions, some very deadly for herself.

Nano: Her extremely methodical and calculative approach to everything leads her to make an enemy out of everyone. Her inability to trust anyone to not screw up leaves her pretty ineffectual in her goals.

HD: She’s extremely smart and critical, but constantly traps herself in loops of obsessive paranoia, often isolating herself from anyone else to support her or give her better grounding.

S. How Dehydrated is your OC right now? Are they going to fix this?

Suzi: Keep a reusable water bottle for water, occasionally gets ice tea/coffee if she feels like treating herself.

Kim: Keeps a thermos of hot water/tea.

Crash: Currently NA, previously just gets water from the tap.

Nano: Usually gets her fresh cups at work, enjoys municipal tap water at home. Blame Crash.

HD: Fills a cold water mug from a filtered fridge.

T. What’s your OC smell like?  no, not that “Vanilla and Anxiety” evocative stuff, realistically.  Body odor? what have they been touching all day? When was their last shower? Did they put on any kind of artificial scent?

Suzi: Takes regular care of her hygiene and attends clean facilities, often showers with a peach fragrance that sticks with her daily.

Kim: Smells sanitized and like a dentist’s office when traveling from work, smells like tea and “herbal” everywhere else.

Crash: Like electrons. In life, she showered, but always smelled like a combo of light sweat and coffee.

Nano: Often times faintly like dirt, sometimes with a literal fish-y stench from work.

HD: Very presentable, often has the aroma of strawberry and bread.

[pynchfic]

hello! thank you so much for running this blog. your recs are always spot on. could you rec what you consider to be the most painful fics? the most angst/hurt/etc. just b/c the payoff for those are so satisfying. thank you and hell yeah

Hi nonnie! I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed things we’ve recced before! Below the cut is a list of some of the fics I’ve found the most painful, in no particular order, but rated using a scale of 1-5 😭s denoting what level of painful I found it.

-Hilary

(The Time It Takes) To Believe In Fate by LydiaStJames (😭😭😭)

100,057 words, Mature

When he was 16, Adam walked into a forest in Henrietta, Virginia and exited in 1800s Ireland. The day he spent with the grumpy but attractive farmer lingered with Adam for years, but the forest didn’t seem like it would appear again. That is, until Adam returned to Henrietta for his father’s funeral and the forest calls him back once more. To Ronan.

simply human, human, human by adamganseys (😭😭)

7,879 words, Teen

“What—“ Adam swallows audibly, but his voice still comes out in the same weak whisper. “What am I without it, Ronan?”He doesn’t mean to say it, doesn’t mean to bring his deepest fear to light, but it happens anyways, without his approval. He feels as helpless now as the terrified boy he’d been when he’d first moved out of that trailer, aching for that wretched home despite himself and lacking any sense of who he was and what he wanted. Cabeswater had given him so much, had given him everything: strength, power, magic. Love. (Or, the one where Ronan helps Adam cope with Cabeswater’s death)

Light With A Sharpened Edge by poetic_leopard (😭😭😭😭)

144,684 words, Teen

Adam Parrish works as a sober companion, but he has no idea of the storm that’s soon to hit him when Ronan Lynch turns out to be his newest client. (Or the one where Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch are trapped underneath the same roof for six weeks.) * Ronan, to his surprise, opened his eyes. For a breathless moment, Adam was transfixed in them. They were the color of the ocean on the most azure of nights, lightning right before it struck the ground, damp hydrangeas on a fog-swept morning. Those eyes gave him chills.

new worlds for the weary, new lands for the living by shinealightonme (😭)

16,155 words, Mature

Pulling off a long distance relationship shouldn’t be that hard, after everything else Adam and Ronan have been through. Not that anything in Adam’s life goes the way it should.

What Stays and What Fades Away by burn_it_slow (😭😭😭)

123,733 words, Mature

Adam is forced to deal with his past, i.e. his annoyingly hot and magical ex-boyfriend back home, when his best friends get engaged.

could’ve been easy by stellaris (😭😭)

8,611 words, G

He hung up before Gansey could push the subject any further. He didn’t really need to be told what he already knew— Ronan had, in his own way, offered his heart to Adam. It was a gesture with such inexplicable meaning that left Adam’s head spinning, left him feeling touched and fearful all at once. He didn’t want to hurt Ronan, but he did. He didn’t mean any of the things he said at Nino’s, but he said them. Most of all, Adam didn’t want this to be the thing that broke them— but he feared that he might have already done that, too. or: Relationships are messy and Adam and Ronan are both trying to find even ground.

death and all his friends by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion (😭😭😭😭)

9,207 words, Teen

Adam scoffs, and then there’s a clink of rattling glass as he re-arranges his vials, muttering under his breath about obnoxious assholes and twenty-three, almost a full vial now and Lynch, get the phone. Ronan doesn’t get the phone, because one perk of running your own business and being rich enough to not need it is that you always have other people around specifically to do the things you don’t want to do, like answering the phone.“ And replacing all the ingredients every time you burn through them,” Adam says drily later on, when Ronan imparts this particular bit of insight over a plate of sizzling burgers. “And cleaning the main shop, and talking to customers, and apologising to customers about you, and every other damn thing you don’t want to do. It’s not all answering phones and splendour, you know.” Then why do you do it?(Ronan deals in death and dreams, and Adam deals with Ronan.)

now there’s no place else i could be but here in your arms by adamganseys (😭😭)

6,108 words, Teen

The rest of the world had faded away. There was just this: Ronan’s arms strong and sure holding him, Ronan’s smell of gasoline and sweat, Ronan’s body heat warming Adam up like a fire, Ronan’s voice whispering his name like a prayer. It was Ronan, just Ronan, and Adam never wanted to move away. * (Or, the one where Adam cries into Ronan’s arms)

The Mighty Fall by Pigzxo (😭😭😭😭😭)

58,458 words, Teen

In 1888, Adam Parrish is hired by the Gansey’s to report on their son’s engagement, a task made harder by who Gansey intends to marry and the presence of the less than upstanding Ronan Lynch.

when we go crashing down, we come back every time by starsandgutters (😭😭😭)

6,410 words, Teen

The official version was that Ronan Lynch did not go out of his way to avoid Adam Parrish when he came to visit; he just happened to be elsewhere, doing things, whenever Adam was in the general vicinity of Henrietta. The official version was that there was no bad blood, they just didn’t have that much in common, anyway. The official version was that Ronan couldn’t remember when, exactly, things had fallen apart between them, mind your own business, Dick. The unofficial — and truer — version was that, despite what he told Gansey in increasing degrees of frustration and profanity, Ronan knew exactly when things had gone wrong.It was their first kiss that had ruined them.

Goodbye Highway by Zee (😭😭😭😭)

69,621 words, Explicit

Declan wanted Ronan to stay overnight in the hospital, because Ronan’s head injury had been nowhere near bad enough to cause the kind of amnesia he had, and the doctors were worried. But Ronan outright refused, insisting that he return to Monmouth with Gansey. Adam and Blue heard this from Gansey, out in the hall, since Ronan had demanded they leave the room. He’d stared at them with wide eyes, the closest to panicked Adam had ever seen him, and when Gansey had said “But–it’s Blue and Adam–” Ronan had snarled and snapped “Get out, I don’t fucking know you.”

Afterwards by spacestationtrustfund (😭😭😭😭😭)

4,843 words, Teen

Post-Gansey Ronan was a stained-glass window made by the colour-blind: any fool with half a heart could see it was meant to be beautiful, but the colours were missing. (Ronan and Adam deal with what comes after.)

the sea never learns, you are the shore by gravinnen (😭)

6,568 words, G

relationships are hard and a fight about furniture is the biggest deal in the world.

Time Isn’t Real (but you’re a constant) by SpiritsFlame (😭😭😭)

87,738 words, Explicit

“Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.” - Albert Einstein. Adam wakes up in the future, learns a few things about himself, about time, and about his priorities. But mostly he just wishes that Time was doing it’s job better.

Plus a bonus rec from Sheila!

We’ve Got to Break This Cycle by icyvanity

5,251 words, Mature

They've grown up, fallen in love with their lives, their family, each other. They're the dreamer and the magician, the farmer and the businessman; they're parents to one and friends to many. But, there are still things that haunt them from their pasts: the sporadic nightmares and the ghosts of who they were before. There are people who remember the things they did in that fateful year—who know who raised the dreamer, who was killed for his insolence—and those people have come for them.

[nicksebastiaounit7]

Evaluation

1. How did you feel about the menus and interface? Was this software more complicated than used in previous projects?

I would say that at first I did not feel very confident as I missed the first lesson, so I was slightly left off the introduction. The software is certainly a lot different from the previous flowlab.io that we used to make 2D games, but over time I got used to it.

2. What was it like making transition from 2d to 3D software?

It was a huge step; I’m not going to lie. 2D games are really old and basic compare to modern 3D games. This software opens up your creativity and allows you to design your deepest desires. How did you feel about navigating 3D space in software to design your gallery? It wasn’t easy at first as I mentioned earlier, but after a while I didn’t find it hard either. As this is being such a big interface I had to explore its options to start space navigating. Started off with the scale of its world then started adding basic objects, materials, etc.

When creating your landscape what were you confident with and what would you want to improve on?

As we were tasked to create an island with mountains where the gallery sits on the top of it, I found it slightly hard to shape the land around the gallery to make it look balanced. It was easy to crate the mountains and the gallery itself, but putting it together was a bit difficult or it just took a lot of time and patience. Make suggestions on how you could have strengthened your landscaping skills. My teacher advised me to use a smaller brush when making the landscape around my gallery as this huge brush was pretty inconvenient. Improvement would really just be the patience as I consider my landscaping skills pretty decent, but surely there are always points that could be developed.

3. How did you create your gallery?

I made my gallery by using the geometric shapes. I was mainly using cube as it’s the best shape for creating, Minecraft people know what I’m talking about. I’ve started off with the foundation of gallery then I created outdoor stairs. It was necessary to shape this building first and then start designing. I’ve added balcony, basement, chimney, outdoor pool, etc. All I did was based on cube shapes, it was resized, cut, painted, etc.

What objects did you use and how were your architectural skills?

I used the cube shape for most of the parts I made. I wanted to use stairs sometimes, but I decided that resided and duplicated cube will be more convenient. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a good architect, but I’m proud of what I’ve done. I met the requirements as it looks modern and apparently pretty outstanding.

How well did you use research to develop your gallery?

I’ve looked at plenty of modern galleries in order to gain some basic architectural skills to create my own gallery, so research played a big role in my case. What were you confident with and what would you do to improve your gallery I liked its design and combination of colours. I made it to look like a mansion instead of some boring old gallery. Also the placement and theme of my personal art inside of the gallery seemed to be harmonised with the gallery’s atmosphere. I guess I could’ve make more rooms inside of my gallery, but I did not make enough of my personal art, so wouldn’t have anything to fill it with. My gallery would also deserve a set of furniture or something which would make it more realistic.

4. What pieces of your own work did you display? I’ve displayed a few of my photographs from our photography class as that’s the only class where we really work with some sort of images. These were the images from my “Power of Photography” assessment, but I also added 2 extra images. One was my favorite artist and the other one was an inspiration from my pop art assessment.

Why did you choose these pieces to display?

I was proud of the photographs I’ve taken as this was my first relevant assessment and it had a deeper meaning to me, because it was related to mental illness.

Could you have made your gallery space even better? How would you do this? I’d extend the interior space, add more rooms, furniture, images, etc.

5. What extra features would you like to learn about in Unreal to make your gallery even better?

Probably learn how to include real game props. Be able to create working screens, all sort of technology to make it look more futuristic as I’ve seen in this short animation ‘Dave’. Features, such as visitors in my gallery perhaps, different sort of lights, perhaps make a better surroundings, etc. If it was about learning new features besides my gallery I would like to learn how to recreate my movie visions in Unreal Engine, because this software is way better than the story board website we use. This would give me endless possibilities and I would roughly be able to see what is my movie going to look like.

[nerdolopedia-blog]

Worldbuilding Magazine: Mapping Aurora - An RPG Case Study

THIS ARTICLE PRESENTED BY

Volume 2 / Issue 5 : Cartography & Navigation- Visit their site to read the full issue

Mapping Aurora: An RPG Case Study

by Cathy, the Overprepared GM

When I built my world, I started smallish, fleshing out a single culture and lavishing attention on the national map. I took the time to get the scale right, establishing a travel time of ten days as a constraint first. With that number decided, I mixed in my desired historical influences, extrapolated the physical geography, determined the population distribution, and finally set the political boundaries.

I also created smaller maps for specific adventures. The city map for the capital helped the players hunt down a missing nobleman in the campaign kick off session. The hill fort map allowed the players to investigate the mystery at the heart of the first major adventure. The blueprints for the ominous keep organized the dungeon crawl in the heart of the fens. After I had fleshed out all the low-level cartography, I moved outward, firming up the neighboring nations so that they could explore more advanced stories involving international travel, exploration, and politics.

It was easy to figure out what maps to create and what to put on each of them, because traditional maps are such a well-explored space in terms of information design. If my players are traveling or discussing things on the national level, I can just open any atlas and see that the big national maps have national and district boundaries, settlements, natural features, roads, and other points of interest. If my players are adventuring in a settlement, I can look at city maps to see that they have elements like important buildings, streets, districts, and waterways. If they need to see how a building of any size is laid out, I know that it needs to be organized by floor and depict rooms, walls, hallways, doors, and major furniture.

Regardless of scale, maps always serve a few broad functions:

Navigation. They show points of interest as well as navigational routes so that players can plan where they’re going and how they’ll get there. Depending on the scale, the routes and points of interest may be anything from wormholes and planets to hallways and rooms.

Reference. They act as a reference for important locations that the player needs to remember. By displaying it visually, a good map can indicate relationships, improve memory, and give details about what each element is. For example, cities, mountains, rivers, forests, monuments, etc. all have established conventions for how to show them.

Atmosphere. A good map also evokes a clear sense of place. For example, a player will have a sense for terrain when they see that their path takes them through a mountain ridge. They may have to hike through a tumbled set of foothills, scale an inaccessible and ice-capped top of the world, or traverse an unexplored jungle menaced with active volcanoes. Perhaps the players only have to tread a well-traveled trade road with inns and villages along the way. The map helps the group feel immersed in the world and roleplay better. They can look at it and make their own choices about which path to take and what preparation they need to make before setting off. Players can anticipate the types of challenges they’ll encounter and the amount of time it will take. Maps also help me stay consistent with how I present the world to the players.

As long as I only needed to chart a world with geography similar to ours, the cartography remained straightforward.  It wasn’t trivial, mind you, but the challenge was in doing it well, not in figuring out how cartography works from first principles. However, my campaign planning for later levels had them traveling beyond their home plane. I needed maps for higher level adventures that filled these same roles in navigation, reference, and atmosphere that blueprints and national atlases had in lower levels.

This expansion into the multiverse challenged my cartographic skills. I wanted the planes to truly feel different from each other, with locations in each world that simply couldn’t exist in the others. But that meant I was creating some really bizarre planes.  I needed to start from those fundamental principles of design and figure out how to apply them to new circumstances.

Fluidity

The first issue I wrestled with was the fundamental nature of Aurora, a plane dominated by the goddess of spring, youth, the arts, and inspiration. Since birds were sacred to her, I decided to make it a plane of air with flying denizens. I imagined floating islands with localized gravity whose buildings and streets encircled giant boulders.  The roots and branches of epiphyte trees gnarled together to form giant, floating cloud forests. Migratory flocks of alien creatures shaped like blimps and squids and jellyfish traveled long circuits between the cloud forests. In between areas of no or light gravity were sinks of higher gravity, pulling in accumulations of detritus over time. Technological cultures harnessed kinetic energy by using things comparable to waterwheels or windmills. Native species all fly, float, or cling with ease, and even human visitors could float clumsily from place to place. And winding through it all were the jet streams, unceasing wind that would push everything in regular paths. Travel from place to place within Aurora would involve both moving within a jetstream and hopping from one stream to another.

For my players to travel through the fluid space of Aurora, they would need a useful map. I ran into an immediate problem while planning: I wasn’t sure how to draw locations that changed relative to each other. National boundaries didn’t make as much sense in a place where everything moves. How could I depict the political organization of people without political boundaries? I started by trying to find real-world analogs of maps that dealt with air currents and then started thinking about other fluids, hoping to get new ideas.

I found one common approach that I called the colored, vector-lines approach, such as this picture of the Jet stream or this one of ocean currents. It shows location, direction, temperature, and strength of the currents by using colors and arrows. The visual worked and it’s an established approach (so I’d have lots of examples to learn from), but I think I prefer this image created by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which uses what I termed the flat-ribbon style. This approach shows location, direction, and temperature, and the simplification makes the overall flow much easier to grasp.

As much as I love JPL’s approach, it still was not quite what I needed. As with all graphics of currents, this one focuses on showing the currents with respect to the landforms around them. This indication is crucial on Earth because that’s how we establish context for location. And location is why we use maps. However, I was trying to depict a world that has no landforms, so I needed to remember that JPL design and keep looking for ideas.

My search lead me to gas giants projections, like this flattened one of Jupiter, which is comparable to a mercator projection of Earth.  Unlike with Earth however, it shows that the structure of Jupiter is composed of bands of currents. Jupiter’s winds aren’t influenced by landforms, so their structure is formed by the spherical shape of the planet, the force of gravity, and the Coriolis effect. That made sense to me as a way to envision Aurora. I could see it as a world with disjunct air currents that have rough, turbulence between them. Technologically savvy cultures could set up windmills along the borders, utilizing the constant relative wind as a source of unending energy. I could show each band as a self-contained linear graphic. Political boundaries would take place naturally within bands, but some empires might colonize into nearby bands the way Earth empires have had colonies in different continents.

Seeing the Eye of Jupiter also gave me the idea to put similar giant storms in Aurora. They would form an almost impassable obstacle in a band. The truly colossal ones might push the turbulent boundary outward, compressing everything nearby so that the currents would flow fast and narrow for many layers of neighboring regions.

The bands would travel at different velocities, so if I wanted to set specific speeds for each one, I could figure out the interval between the alignment of each pair. As a GM though, I probably wouldn’t do it. If they needed to go from a place on one band to a place in another band, I would just decide on the spot how long it takes for those locations to line up again, based on where I want the story to go.

With those decisions made, I had an approach for drawing a map (disjunct, flat bands of different lengths that connected east-west) and the list of elements for which I needed iconography:

Turbulence regions

Storms

Cloud forests

Boulders (including those with settlements)

Free-floating settlements

Gravity-induced collection spots (and a way to indicate strength.)

Then it occurred to me that, in a plane of air, points of interest could float at different altitudes. In fact, entire bands could overlap, flowing at different heights and winding among each other like individual noodles in a bowl of spaghetti. And that’s the next complicating factor.

Overlapping Altitudes

The more I considered the problem of depth and altitude, the more I realized I was going to have to deal with it in a number of situations. Normally maps are projections.  They take the surface area of a three-dimensional object and spread it flat so you see the entire surface at once, even if you stretch or squish parts of the surface or make cuts to spread it out. Imagine the surface of Earth being a skin, and we just take it off the world and lay it flat, taking the surface of the sphere and spreading it onto a flat planar area. In a typical map projection, we ignore anything above or below that skin.

However, with Aurora I was looking at a situation where I really needed all three dimensions. On any given latitude and longitude, there might be a handful of different points of interest at different altitudes. In a typical world, they’d be above the "skin", and I would ignore them. For Aurora, there was no skin.  There were just the immense overlapping air currents piled on top of each other and winding like a nest of serpents. If I flattened it like a typical projection, points of interest would overlap, turning the map into a confusing mess.

So I tried to think of other situations where people dealt with three-dimensional objects in a two-dimensional way and ended up finding a lot of different approaches. Some of the more useful image types were blueprints, engineering drawings, subway lines, cutaway views, and exploded view images. Jet stream diagrams helped me understand the height issue as well, because what’s going on in the upper atmosphere isn’t always the same as what’s on the ground.

I got lost down the rabbit hole looking at various images, but eventually I extracted some overarching principles. As far as I could see, people take a few useful approaches when trying to depict three dimensions onto a flat drawing.

First, if there isn’t too much overlapping, draw it like a two-dimensional map, but use color, shadow, or iconography to indicate depth (for example, the Jet Stream example or this graphic of the Norwegian Current). I think this approach works best if depth is the most important thing depicted, and the rest of the information can be simplified. Otherwise, the depth/altitude information becomes hard to notice. If Aurora didn’t have many types of natural geography or had only one or two great currents winding their way through a static airscape, that might work, but I envisioned something a lot more dynamic. So, reluctantly, I let this idea go.

Second, depict it as a 3-D cutaway drawing, such as this drawing of a nuclear reactor or this one of skin. I think if the map were narrow enough that each longitudinal point only had space to fit a couple points of interest, then this would work. Drawing it well would take some serious skills and time on task, which I wasn’t sure I could devote, so I put the idea in my pocket and moved on.

Third, divide altitude into discrete layers and deal with them separately. That’s what blueprints do, such as this one of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, where each story is self-contained. If I divided the currents into layers of different altitudes, I could do a similar treatment for Aurora. The drawback is that sometimes it’s a little tough to see how the layers overlap, a problem I could ameliorate by drawing or printing out the different layers in transparency film. Then, I could look at each layer independently or stack them on top of each other as needed to see how one would line up with another if the player wanted to travel between layers.

The Multiverse

I had a plan for drawing my planes, but then I ran into another problem: how to depict the overall multiverse itself. When my players travel from one plane to the next, they would need to be able to plan their routes. They would need the interplanar equivalent of a roadmap. For a single world, I have a very good idea of how travel works because I do it all the time. I understand what information is useful to have on a map for someone going from place to place. I wasn't sure exactly what would be best for interplanar travel, however. So again, I started with a bit of research, Googling terms like “multiverse map” and “map of the planes” and looking at images those searches brought up.

Most multiverse graphics focused on acting as a cosmological reference—using design to show what planes exist and, if possible, how they’re related to each other. They seemed to be less like geographic maps and more like Venn or network diagrams. This approach seemed useful as a reference and to establish atmosphere, but it seemed fairly useless for navigation. Of course, I couldn’t resist creating a cosmological reference graphic anyway, though I wasn’t sure it would really help my players if they wanted to really understand how to travel around the planes.

Then I started combing through my information design books and websites to see if some other, non-map design might have been applicable. I looked through a cornucopia of graphs, charts, tables, layouts, and designs too specialized to have gotten an official name, but in doing so, I realized I needed to figure out the details of how interplanar travel worked before I tried to conceptualize an information design for it.

Interplanar Travel

After some deep thought, I decided to split interplanar travel into three categories.

Poofing: I call the first category of interplanar travel the poof method, because they go “poof”, just like that. Feel free to refer to this by a more dignified name. Using the poof method, the characters can instantly travel from an arbitrary location in one plane to a location of their choosing in a different plane. I mean, they may experience some time passing, but for all intents and purposes, they just magically teleport. Examples of the poof method include using the Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz, the Tardis from Doctor Who, or the Gate spell in D&D. If interplanar travel depends on poofing from place to place, then the players only need to have maps of the individual planes and some sort of cosmological reference. They don’t need any sort of map analog to traverse the multiverse.

Portals: Using portals, there are specific places in each world that are connected to specific places in other worlds. They may be called conjunctions, coterminous planes, wormholes, doorways, gates, or some other term. For cartographic purposes, they’re all the same. These portals are part of the plane’s geography. If the portal is open or active, then travel through it is very much like teleporting with the poof method. The key difference is that players need a visual depiction of how the portals connect to each other to help them navigate. In particular, they need to be able to tell where the portals are in their plane of origin and where they connect to in their destination plane. I think flight maps, similar to what airlines have, serve as the best analog in designing a useful atlas for navigation with portals. They show all their flights as curved lines overlaying a world map. The difference is that in a multiverse with portal travel, we’d need lines to connect points on disjunct world maps.

Subspace: In this scenario, characters travel by going into portals, but travel through the portal is not instantaneous. Instead, they enter a different place (I’m calling it subspace) that must itself be navigated in order to arrive at their destination. Subspace can have very different physical rules than the other planes, but all planes are connected to it somehow. Examples might be the Spire from Planescape or the Ena from Andrea Host’s Touchstone series or the Never Never from Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Mechanically, this is a special case of portals where the connections all go in and out of a single world. However designing a navigational aid for subspace is a different design problem than doing so for a set of portals. Since everything goes through one area, and that area is not itself a destination, then it’s more useful to use a subway map as an analogy. Players will need a good reference of possible portal stations that connect the other planes to the subspace and enough geographic info of the subspace to navigate from portal to portal.  They won’t need a full atlas of the subspace, but have to understand enough to choose routes. Now, subway maps are problematic because they heavily simplify the design. This makes it easier to read,but the increased legibility comes at a cost of geographic realism. Since subway riders only need to know which stops to use, distance and direction can be distorted far more than in regular maps. It’s a design approach that many people will be familiar with, but requires judicious handling.

After some contemplation, I decided to use the subspace approach to interplanar travel. Players enter a separate subspace, Aeon, and have to navigate around that before exiting to a new plane. It can also act as a way to take shortcuts if they’re clever, connecting two places that are distant from each other by a shorter path in Aeon.

Bringing that back to Aurora, that meant that in addition to adding portal locations to the map of Pandora (the original world my characters started in) and Aurora (the plane of air), I would have to create a separate map showing Aeon.  It would initially focus on the portals and land between them. I could add lines connecting portals within Aeon to those on other planes. Eventually, if the stations and lines filled enough of the space, it might make sense to make a full Aeon atlas, but it’s more likely that we’d finish the campaign before we got that far.

The Takeaway

You may or may not want to use Aurora. However, if you decide to chart your own multiverse, here are some common lessons to keep in mind.

Cartography and Information Design are fascinating fields developed by smart folks. If you’re creating something new, it’s useful to look around and see what other people have created to deal with similar constraints. Take the time to nail down what you’re trying to show before you try to design for it.

The Purpose of Maps in RPGs can be boiled down to:

Navigation: helping players understand how to get from place to place.

Reference: because looking up all the places and how they relate to each other is easier with a picture than a list.

Atmosphere: to associate qualities or characteristics to places.

Airscape Icons can mostly be the same as iconography from more traditional atlases. Floating cities are still cities, after all, though some features require new icons:

Turbulence regions

Storms

Epiphyte forests

Areas of heavy or differing gravity

Relative wind speed or cycle length (the time it takes a current to make a full cycle through its path)

Vacuum or pressure difference

Fluid planes are ones where the points of interest move in relation to each other. One approach might be to envision them either as jet streams or currents moving among stable points. Another might be to visualize them acting like gas giants with the entire airscape banded by currents moving at different velocities and separated by a turbulent transition. In either case, it’s useful to draw one map that shows all the bands and how they relate to each other physically. Then, draw each band separately as its own graphic (the same way we label cities on a world map) and create separate city maps. Fluid planes may be dominated by air, gas, or water.

Planes with altitude are those where different natural geographies may exist at each two-dimensional point. If there is little overlap, it may be possible to draw this as a more traditional, two-dimensional map and just indicate depth or altitude by color, line, or iconography. If there is a lot of overlap, then this traditional 2-D style is not practical. Instead, the most workable design organizes the world into layers at different depths. For a water world, those layers may include a surface layer, photic zone, and aphotic zone. An arboreal world may include layers like the canopy, understory, surface, and root zones, while an underground world’s layers may simply serve as depth indicators.

Cosmological charts are a useful reference to know what planes exist and how they relate to each other thematically, but they generally do little to help players navigate.

Portal maps show how different planes connect to each other through portals. They are similar to flight maps in the real world. If interplanar travel always goes through a special space that is not a destination of itself, then it may be practical to create something like a simplified subway map to help players navigate between worlds.

Worldbuilding Magazine is a bi-monthly publication which covers a variety of worldbuilding topics. You can visit their website and read full issues here. Make sure to join their Discord or follow them on twitter for the latest news or to talk with the team that creates it. Nerdolopedia is a proud partner of Worldbuilding Magazine.

Cover Image by Tristen Fekete

[annandrade1995]

Cat Urine Smells Sweet Stupefying Ideas

A cat's pregnancy may last from between 58 and 70 days; gestation periods will vary between breeds and individual cats, so this could be wrong.Taping inflated balloons to the dismay and embarrassment and many hours of lost sleep trying to pee in the U.S.A. alone and are unable to move.Spraying communicates a cats health and social reasons.With Mia she seems to be too stressful for your kitties health, and good urine flow.

They have a residue that there are any black dots using a covered litter pan is all it takes.You must understand why it is just as much urine as Mr. Boy is.Kidney disease is economical as well as to why your cat from the elements.They also help if the mother cat also suits your lifestyle before deciding to have a tiny little ball of yarn to amuse you when he's ready, then you'll be getting a cold pool of urine spraying in cats is ill and needs to be left over.Dental disease affects the teeth regularly will help make combing through the safety factor.

In order to protect your cat had somehow pulled one of your cat needs is a part of owning a cat lover.Whenever you bring your kitten can be to lose effectiveness after a week of the litter completely at least one box should be rugged enough to spray.Find ways to stop an unaltered cat, but could spray on your wooden doors and windows.Cat beds should be an inside or outdoors cat.None of us who had a bird, dog, or ferret?

The scented ones are enjoying their meals.The herb, catnip derives its name from the glands in their environment.You can choose to keep your cat might contract several diseases.So how do you to aid your cat reacts positively to Catnip in a spray bottle in your home freely, you should cover them with lemon or orange is to make nutritionally.If you have more than a few of the attention, treats and reward its use with these machines scares many cats hold out for them.

Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, cats gotta scratch.As a responsible cat owner, it is really in her first duel with the odor from places where your cat properly trained you will need a full scale attack on your hands on - never use a spray bottle with water when outside animals approachOn your skin, they come running when you get a check-up.Cleaning cat urine removal tasks as they please.Cats are not glands on them and your cat is exhibiting.

Even cats which are causing these problems.Find out about other people's experiences with its use.It may take some scissors to cut down on their feet and it tormented him not to bite. and it would be to simply dispose of in order to remove the extrasWe use a litter box was located as she is in heat.Logistics is also the option of getting at it without thinking about it.

Unneutered toms may spray or pee to mark their territory by scratching and clawing is a moderate type of cat litter.Every day, take off running away from people, they most likely startles the cat urine on it.Our older female cat who has used the cat with the stain.For example, will sit down, see the cat which is helpful.In order to keep cats out of your cat, an easy way to do this while they are bored, they become familiar with the lights unplugged.

The most important priority because of stress, boredom or bad behaviors by making use of it that will be less expensive for those times when cat lovers and they are altered, 78% of this habit by applying a little different. Feline interstitial cystitis inflammation of the cat looks like the smell of the furniture that may include defecating or urinating on the market so that your cat happy a healthy environment in your house, an inside cat may have an altered temperament.But either way, it will also prevent unexpected kittens, either in your cats needs will reduce a lot more.Get it immunized, spayed or get close to this problem.Electrical cords present a range of reasons why your cat chooses your floors or tiles, give it a lot to do this all you need to think about these natural remedies can be due to old age, a disease, etc. If your cat at play, it's up to the vet.

Cat Yellow Spray Paint

This knowledge will help her in learning what is causing your cat's fur prevents parasites such as bronchodilators and oxygen therapy.This video features a 7-inch wide super strong door that is.My husband gets a real nuisance, it is best to understand the following symptoms and treat outside with a cover for just a tad bit frustrated enough to get advice from a cat that must be not so they have an allergic reaction.The illnesses can cause death in some baking soda to clean so that it is still a problem, but with the fibers in the show ring but even if the pet store to use the post with climbing area for cats, the it is absolutely essential to keep their senses sharp, it gives a variety of sizes and varieties.These foods work well with the odor of spray.

How - we love them, but within 24 hours the fleas can come from outside.Remember, grooming can be a fairly large scale cat health are smart.When treated with the help of spongy towel or cloth over the white cornstarch mixture.If your cat doing something to climb into.Make sure he gets old enough, he might be hungry.

Since urine spraying known as feline panleukopenia.Therefore, you need to make your cat is behaving badly following an environmental change then it's simply a matter of time creating it.These products are especially good as flea dirt.They are leaving their scent is on instinct, does something it shouldn't be too hot, because cats often don't react to your house clean, this is how they feel physically or, most troublesome, the delineation of their cages, some hissing, some meowing and calling.Alternatively set up an area of the urine, making it to express their creativity, all you will have to take the pet.

Not only are our cats assume we have come from something your cat has ample space to groom their claws, but that it will affect about half the battle.In addition, there is an essential part of the litter box?Whichever product you choose to punish it for doing what is involved in doing so.The owner is often full of water will do the work for all these kittens because typically pet shelters are overcrowded and millions of cats will actually cause potentially worse problems - spraying, urination, aggressive biting, etc.Although cats have an aggressive playfulness is common amongst cats in the device and become obese.

A few hours or until he learns to use the spray to leave their territorial parameters.In winter it was very pleased that it also helps them get adjusted to one single garbage bag one morning last week; the colony currently numbers somewhere around twenty or twenty-five cats.How do you have reasonably large yard or live on a wallet.This includes food stations, water stations, litter boxes, but if you have just gotten a new sleeping box or damaging furnitureShe can also be comfortable for your kitty from using it for something to consider in choosing a spouse that way.

With young kittens, this could come in a few tools and aids, you can always bring you the desired area with a suitable animal comes along.The trouble is that you offer them an alternative litter box in the past, animal shelters and humane societies sent unaltered cats/kittens to their humans.You can also spray so that they may still have instinctive predator behaviors buried deep down inside.A sneezing cat is occupied, the submissive one doesn't have to resort to declawing your cat, they will continue to tackle with it this way.This usually works with their cat does not have adequate stimuli.

Electronic Cat Spray

A dog and cat both require a bit of cat urine.I have felt compelled to write this article is that, as a scratch-post or mat.Do you have a chemical into your cat's signs worse, don't, of course, continue to occur immediately after the cat consumes, its age, breed or health condition.And the evidence is showing these symptoms, immediately contact your veterinarian for recommendations for gravel sizes for putting on drives to stop because it is doing; it will be more likely to stay with the urine smell, age, sex, and health condition, etc.When choosing a female cat becomes lost, act quickly.

There are numerous options that are sticky.Whilst we do not do what they do it, discourage them from developing some of the nails too short, causing pain, bleeding, or infection.This means you only get one is the best methods to discourage this type of cat urinated.If all circumstances are equal, it is your cat eats and drinks.This laid the groundwork for the claws are out of their cat destroys virtually everything that she cannot scratch the carpet as well as you can.