#the visuals of a house that gradually gets more and more decrepit as the play goes on would have SLAPPED

[finelythreadedsky]

oh to know if/how the earthquake in the bacchae was staged...

[salavarte]

Short version: A lil sketchy exploration of the Uluth, the psychic hivemind squidpeople who are part of the antagonistic regime in my ttrpg current game. Lelu & Zwyo are members of the resistance. Really this was just so I could draw Lelu w/ some context. Lelu is a cutthroat negotiator and interrogator that uses the fact that they look like an adorable vinyl toy to throw people off. Zwyo is 1/2 of a pair that creates a series of political protest art (she does typography) & is involved in her community’s music scene.

Long version (copied from my patreon) w/ some extra art:

“A little bit of sketchy nonsense that I decided to color as a warmup. "Uluth" have been part of The Road's TTRPG lore for awhile (tumblr archive says 3 years but I think longer than that) - the races on The Road and the setting were something my partner made before we met so a lot of the world was set in stone by the time it became a collaborative project, and like many custom fantasy settings, have 'classic' fantasy race parallels (halflings, dark elves/orcs/trolls, and liches, the latter of which we aren't coy about).

I was running a very BPRD-esque game in a haunted hotel with some eldritch horror undertones when I conceived what I felt was my contribution to The Road's races (sort of, I'll elaborate later). The Uluth, a very loose homage to mindflayers, but turned on its head a bit to create a "good" (like, speaking alignment wise) version. I actually cribbed the leg design from the way I used to draw Mindflayers. A race of humanoid, psychic squid-ish people that were all linked up to pockets of collective consciousness that served as their gods/monarchs.  An Uluth has a lifecycle that goes gelatinous egg -> larvae/tadpoles -> something that looks more like a baby -> fully ambulatory child with a large rudder like tail -> juvenile (starting to express adult characteristics like definition in their fins, tails are shrinking into pretty much a nub - think teenagers) and then adult, with no tail, their final colorations (if they didn't have em already) -> and then finally, when their physical body dies, their ""soul""/psionic self ascends into the Overmind to contribute to the collective consciousness. At the time I made them, in the prime timeline of our games, Uluth had immigrated to The Road several hundred years prior to the current age (1974) as a Roman-level civilization, but their naturally pacifist nature, frail bodies that were susceptible to stress, etc. led them to be killed off by another similarly developed species to the point of extinction.

Originally, I never intended to draw a living Uluth or think much about how they looked like normally - they were viewed solely through the lens of the ghostly, psionic selves that had slowly gone insane and created a mad, fractured overmind, the psionic abilities of which had caused strange labyrinthine passages and other weird shit to spontaneously form in the hotel (....I really liked "House of Leaves" as a teenager, ok). But my player was running a very mad scientist-y character at the time and managed to rehydrate Peklam's (second image) mummified body and shove his soul back inside it, so all of a sudden we had a walking talking Uluth. Peklam was then one of my PCs for a game we did later with the same group of characters! The image of Peklam was done during that time, but I still like it, it was done when my art style was loosening up.

When we started doing AU games, we did a setting ran by me called Mindrunner in which the Uluth not only survived the cull, but partnered up with another race to become the dominant culture on the planet, and by 2035 The Road is highly technologically advanced with a lot of progressive things regarding universal healthcare and public resources, but has suffered in other ways, mostly regarding the dehumanization of a "undead race" that most Uluth, as creatures that never REALLY die, treat with a lot of fear/disgust/disdain. This sentiment is shared by eh most people. I would explain it further but I feel like this is already kind of rambly and dense. But suffice it to say, this other species, the Annubi, which a lot of our other characters are, have a similarly complicated lifecycle where they are normal, gradually get more decrepit but more powerful (and mentally unstable) as they age with NO UPPER LIMIT, creating Liches, and all of the psionic pressure on the road from so many Uluth is accelerating the process. Not to mention the stress of being treated like shit. Not that the current regime would accept that maybe they should be helping these people instead of shooting them in the head and calling it a day.

Needless to say, we are playing the game from the POV of the insurgency, because the government sucks in the real world so it's cathartic to overthrow a fictional one, lol. Not all Uluth feel the same - the two named characters here, Zwyo and Lelu, are members of the resistance. Zwyo assists another character to create political protest art (Zwyo does typography and layout, the other guy, Mandrake, does the art) and Lelu uses their psionics to be a master interrogator, and utilizes the fact that they look positively adorable to catch people off guard. They are in fact quite cutthroat, and used to be a bit of a con artist before joining the resistance movement. 

 Funfact: Uluth are super into "athleisure" type clothing because it dries quickly and does not restrict their movement. Another fashion staple is transparent accessories, like sleeves, jackets, bags, etc. Zwyo is very into the underground music scene in her home, and is a little more into "human music" and fashion.

This is really all just because I wanted to draw this NPC Lelu, who I had no idea how to design, as I hadn't thought a lot about what "young" uluth look like. Lelu is an adult Uluth who's body never got larger or lost its tail, and retains many juvenile characteristics (big ol eyes and head, short muzzle). They mostly take it in stride and are a small bastard.

That's it! Back to more important matters. Uluth are not the most visually exciting things in the world, they aren't as "weird" as I prefer my alien races to be, but for the setting, I find them visually appropriate and think they're cute. They are a throwback to an alien race I made when I was, like, 15. 

[i-built-these-headwalls]

Dream Journal 1

So sometimes I have really long, vivid dreams, and I like to write down what happened since I think it’s interesting, but as long as I’ve been doing it I’ve had constant anxiety that for some reason my notes app would just wipe itself or something and I’d lose everything. So I’ma just start recording some of them here cuz I feel like it’s more permanent.

And just to make it more interesting than a wall of text, I’m gonna make visuals of some of the more stand-out moments. And since I don’t wanna go buy colored pencils and sit here being self conscious about my bad art, I’m making them with minecraft.

OK so

I dreamed I was on a road trip, driving back roads, trying to find roadside attractions cause I think they’re neat. I was driving through this sub-desert sort of environment, approaching the crest of a hill with a guard rail overlooking a cliff. There were sporadic cacti, and a clear dusk sky. 

I knew it was getting late and wanted to find somewhere to sleep for the night. On the way up the hill I saw a funny little motel, which I knew was also a known roadside attraction! So I pulled into the parking lot to ask about a room. It had a simple lot with two rows of parking spots, surrounded by a fairly dense pine forest. The place was cozy and rustic-looking, like an old house that had been converted into a bed and breakfast. It had blue siding, one of those garages that was renovated into a living space; all very suburban-looking with a manicured garden lining the sidewalk to the front entrance. 

Inside the main business entrance was a little gift shop, with a row of shelves built onto each wall. Toward the rear, the floor stepped up just in front of the shop’s check-out counter, which doubled as the motel check-in. Behind the desk was a picture window, and to the back left was a break in the counter and a door to the rear of the building. A nice lady was manning the desk so I approached her; she happily checked me in.

She gave me my room key and told me about the amenities I would have. The only caveat, because it was such an old building, the rooms only had a sink, and the toilet was in an outhouse out the back door. And, I should be careful using the outhouse because it was reportedly HAUNTED. I somehow knew that was the aspect of the whole place that attracted me to it as a roadside attraction in the first place, so I threw my bags in my room and went right back outside to go see the haunted outhouse.

The back yard was expansive, a clear, green space with a wide, shallow pond framed by grass and flowers. Pine trees and majestic mountains bounded the area. Walking out the back door, to the 2 o’clock position was a tall, thin, concrete building with a sloped outhouse-type roof. Straight ahead was a gradual staircase made of modern steel grating, which led up and over the pond to an elevated walkway, wrapping high over the pond and giving a beautiful vantage to the scenery. But, I somehow knew that the walkway was only built to act as a physical barrier for poltergeists trying to leave the outhouse. 

I got on the walkway and headed toward the outhouse. I barely stopped to admire the scenery before reaching the double doors leading inside.

As I walked through the door, I found myself on a wooden platform overlooking a deep cavern. To the left of the platform was decrepit wooden stairs leading down along the wall to a large room at the bottom. Looking over the banister, I could see nothing in the room deep below, except for the outhouse’s toilet, sitting on a wooden platform. I stood at the banister, not needing to use the toilet, but expecting to start seeing some ghosts.

After a minute standing alone in silence, apparitions started appearing as just faint balls of mist. Before much longer, they became gray, solid-looking figures of children with proportions like Precious Moments statues. They were playing with the environment, and with small toys which appeared with them.

I watched them for a couple minutes in awe, wonderment and unease, until eventually one actually noticed me. We looked each other in the eyes for a short time, trying to gauge the other’s intentions. Soon, the child ghost moved started moving toward me, floating up directly toward my platform. I allowed it to get closer, although afraid and apprehensive, ready to turn and run out the door with any sign of hostility. But as it turned out, it just wanted to play. It sat against the wall near the stairs, and I sat down next to it and played with the toy it had. After a while, I motioned that I would leave, and I got up and walked out the door and back along the platform toward the motel. The ghost followed me out a short way but couldn’t make it very far along the elevated walkway before disappearing. It was night, and the sky was clear and starry. I made it back to the motel and went to my room to sleep.

Then a whole other dream plot line happened that I don’t remember much of, I know I was on some kind of overnight train crew, sitting in a yardmaster’s office in the middle of a busy industrial port, waiting for a train to come that I was supposed to take over on.

But after a while of that I somehow ended up back at the motel with a few friends who I wanted to show the outhouse to. We went through the same motions I had gone through alone earlier, and similar to me, they were amazed by the ghosts once they finally appeared. Again in a similar way, we all ended up playing with the ghosts and having a grand old time, since by then I was more comfortable with the situation.

And then I woke up.