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zipegs · 2 months ago

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I’m back again with another rec list!! This time, I’ll be focusing on ostensibly lesser-known long fic—for my own organizational purposes, this means a word count of (approximately) 20k+. I will be including WIPs this time around, but they’ll be clearly indicated at such. Recs are divided into two categories—canonverse (including slight adjustments to it) and alternate universe. All fics are Hannigram unless otherwise noted.

Please be sure to heed all archive tags and warnings! Hope you enjoy, and don’t forget to give the authors some love!!

Dolce Far Niente by @avegetariancannibal [E, 20k]

Hannibal and Will have many, many sweet things to say and do to each other.

Technically this is part of a series, but I found it reads perfectly well on its own! 20k of Will and Hannibal being soft, sappy, and incredibly in love post-fall. A little domestic fluff, a little vacationing, and a little smut—the holy trinity tbh.

The Fall, The Flood, The Flight - Hannigram by write_starlight_riots [T, 24k]

Hello! :]

This is mainly the manifestation of a very indulgent inspiration/daydream/thought experiment that seeks to explore what immediately-post-fall Hannigram would be like. And I mean /immediately/.

Also inspired by @/threadsoflacee on tumblr!

I’m a sucker for hurt/comfort, sickfic, and vulnerability, and oh man does this fic deliver! The boys are hanging on for dear life as they fight to take care of each other’s wounds while struggling through their own. Both of them are absolutely hamstrung by their injuries in the most delicious ways, and we also get some wonderful ~feelings~ drama and realizations mixed in with it all. Very visceral and desperate in the best of ways.

Io by cuspid [M, 24k] * WIP

"You look tired, Will. Why don't you rest? I promise I'll wake you if anything should happen." "It's already happening," Will said, and Hannibal's smile widened.

On the way to the cliff house, Will begins to feel unwell.

SUCH an amazing A/B/O AU! Will presents as omega and goes into his first heat while he and Hannibal are driving to the cliff house. cuspid’s writing is STUNNING, and I’m particularly enjoying the way they weave omegaverse into the universe, including the cultural and language differences they include when we get Chiyoh’s POV. It really feels like an intrinsic (and very NBC Hannibal) part of the universe, and they fit it flawlessly into canon. Speaking of, they include some fantastic Chiyoh POV as well as POV from an original character who I fell in love with instantly. Amazingly hot, fantastic characterization, sexual tension... 1000/10 highly recommend. Last updated June 29, 2023.

The Rules of Disorder by @lestatdelioncourte [E, 53k] * WIP

He is falling...

Will Graham falls off a cliff in the arms of Hannibal Lecter, finally accepting the darkest parts of himself. He wakes up, uninjured and in Hannibal's bed in his old Baltimore house. Confused, Will quickly realises something is wrong and has to navigate a new reality: one where Hannibal Lecter is not a killer, where they have made a life together without any of the familiar horrors. It is his ideal world...isn't it?

I’m definitely a sucker for parallel universe/time travel nonsense, and this fic doesn’t disappoint!! It’s so heartbreaking and hopeful and bittersweet—Will finally gets everything he could have had, only to realize it’s not the same as what he wanted at all. Very investing, emotionally rewarding fic! Definitely feeds my hankering for angst while not being one-note painful—it’s got that delicious balance of comfort and pain that I can’t get enough of. Last update was June 2023.

Honzen Ryōri by @terminalfids [E, 54k] * WIP

"I have never felt as alive as I did when I was killing him," Will admitted in a whisper, and it was true. His skin ached with it, felt like he might simply burst from it. It wasn't enough to contain him.

"Then you owe Randall Tier a debt," Dr. Lecter mused softly, still holding on to Will's hand as he cast a glance over the corpse before them. "How will you repay him?"

"I want to skin him," he said after a long moment, dragged out until he could feel Dr. Lecter's emotions swallow his own with anticipation. The man's feelings were bombastic. Loud and inescapable when he let them fly free on his face. It was easy to submerge himself in it, mirror it, until Will felt more of Dr. Lecter in his head than himself. Dr. Lecter wasn't a psychopath. He was more emotionally alive than anyone Will had ever met. He just also happened to be able to act as cruelly as though he felt nothing at all but cold curiosity at the simple flip of a switch. "I need the- the parts. I want to build him a monument. Do you know a place where I might do that?"

For the second time since his release from the BSHCI he thought that Dr. Lecter might kiss him. He told himself that he was relieved when he did not.

Canon-divergent from Naka-Choko. Picked this fic up soon after it was first published my god did I enjoy it!! The very first scene had me head over heels—it’s beautifully written, delightfully intimate, and has just the combo of hurt/comfort, inner conflict, and turmoil that makes me drool. I’ve loved the little changes terminalfids has made to canon so far, and the way they’ve echoed or adapted canon scenes and lines in new, appropriately divergent contexts. Really fantastic characterization and POVs from both characters—I love the insights we get from each of them and am SO excited to see how it all turns out! Last updated on February 2024.

A place you can never go by @det395 [E, 84k]

When things don’t go according to plan, Hannibal makes a wish. He finds himself a year-and-a-half in the past and seemingly given another chance with Will.

His feelings about the situation only get more complicated when he realizes he may not have completely lost access to his old timeline after all.

A Digestivo canon divergence.

I have never ever felt so emotionally conflicted (/positive) while reading a time travel/parallel universe fic! Jen writes these characters beautifully and captures their pain so well. I love the way she uses the memory palace throughout this, and I was hanging on every word. Absolutely stunning fic that has become one of my all-time favorites. She also has written two DELICIOUS timestamps/accompanying one shots, which are part of the same Ao3 series as this fic.

The Storyteller by @gzdacz-writes-fic [E, 188k]

Hannibal has little choice: to eliminate the threat he presents, he must stand by and let illness consume Will Graham. But the brighter Will burns, the more the delusions of his inflamed brain begin to spill onto Hannibal's world, until the boundaries between the real and imagined become faint - and something Other slips through.

Canon divergent from partway through season 1. I will rec this fic until I’m blue in the face. It starts out /painful/—Hannibal lets Will’s encephalitis continue on unhindered with some truly devastating results—and continues on a slow, emotional, bittersweet train that incorporates some truly lovely character moments, some great catharsis, and an incredibly engaging surreal/magical realism–style mystery. Fantastic writing and characterization, incredibly engaging through and through. HIGHLY recommend but be prepared for the road to be bumpy! There’s a lot of caretaking and recovery both mental and physical, in addition to some emotional turmoil 🥰

Callin’ Anybody, Can You Hear Me? by nobetterlove [E, 19k]

Daring to take an Introduction to Visual Arts class, a completely blind Will Graham ventures into The Walters Art Museum for an assignment. While taking the narrated tour, Will isn't prepared for the heavily accented voice flowing through his speakers, flawlessly describing the art that brought each piece to life. Though it was hard to believe, love at first listen sat at the back of his mind.

Two years later, Will visits the museum every other Friday, fixated on both the voice and the beauty and knowledge his favorite museum had to offer. With the right connections and a true talent, Will scores a gig playing for the museum's latest exhibit reveal. When a recognizable voice makes the opening presentation, Will is overwhelmed with feelings and dreamed up possibilities. What happens when the voice becomes a real person, who finds Will just as interesting?

Or - the one where Will falls in love with Hannibal's voice before ever meeting him.

A really lovely piece! The characterizations ring so true to me and I love this portrayal of blind Will Graham. The author does a wonderful job with Will’s inner monologue and really beautifully portrays his perspective and interaction with the world as influenced by both his blindness and his Classic Will Graham character that we’ve all grown to love! The first meeting between Will and Hannibal is so heartwarming, sweet, and charmingly fluffy, and their relationship blossoms quickly—we’re treated to some really lovely dates that beautifully capture that honeymoon-stage flutter and fondness, and there’s a lovely navigation of their mutual loneliness that definitely hit home for me. Though this fic itself is technically complete, it does end on a cliffhanger meant to be picked up by a second installment of the series. If you end at the penultimate scene, though, it can be read as a complete work!

Songs for the End of the World by th_esaurus [M, 20k] Will Graham/Abigail Hobbs/Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Abigail Hobbs

When the infection hits, swift and relentless, turning men into monsters and the world into a wilderness, Will Graham is one of the few who doesn't run. He's lost his wife, he has no colleagues, and Abigail Hobbs has been a ghost for such a long time; the only person he has left in the world is sitting in the dank cells of Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Waiting for him.

A TLOU-inspired post-canon AU written before s2 aired. Really beautifully written, fantastically emotional and heart-wrenching piece that kept me engaged all the way through to the bittersweet end. The characterizations are so good and the prose is amazing—highly recommend! For those who don’t normally read Will/Abigail or Hannibal/Abigail, it is present, but I think even those who don’t normally find that to be their cup of tea could enjoy this piece! There are a few very brief sex scenes between Will and Abigail (really no more than a few lines) but it’s the intimacy and distance and horror and love between the three of them that really shines through!

oh, give no faith to show by videcormeum [M, 25k] * WIP

“Try to relax your shoulders. Be one with your body, do not fight it.”

Atoms separated them. Will swallowed. With a deep, steadying breath, he allowed his shoulders to drop. It felt better, the pull at his muscles easier. His chin lifted naturally. Projecting to the balcony.

Hannibal smiled. “That’s good, Will.”

Dancers are dying at a local ballet company. With local law enforcement convinced it's an inside job, promising FBI agent and ex-dancer Will Graham is sent undercover to investigate. When he meets renowned ballet dancer Hannibal Lecter, it becomes clear that the investigation will be anything but straightforward.

Yes, you need to read a Ballet AU. Trust me. The whole cast is repurposed here as part of the ballet company (except for Jack Crawford, who remains with Will in the FBI camp), from dancers Zeller and Bev to ballet master Hannibal, choreographer Chilton, and Madame Du Maurier. The piece is really delightful and full of emotion, old trauma, and sexual tension while also delivering some really fun company bonding and banter. Really lovely piece, especially for anyone with any interest or experience in dance or performance! Last updated May 2021.

A Trip for Biscuits by anothersummerday (M_hys_a) [E, 26k]

In late summer 1936, Bedelia du Maurier's traveling circus is plagued by a series of murders, and Will Graham begins a brief but passionate affair with a man named Roman Fell.

Wow, a delightful read all the way through! The circus aspect itself doesn’t play too big—we don’t see any performances, so it mostly serves as a backdrop that provides a really lovely traveling outcast feeling. We get an encephalitis-era Will analog here, grappling with having killed Hobbs and facing his canon-typical nightmares and sleepwalking, and then Hannibal, using the alias Roman Fell, shows up smack in the middle of all of it. Delicious repurposing of canon dialogue, lovely cameos and supporting roles from characters like Margot, Reba, Dolarhyde, and Peter, and just really smooth, engaging writing.

climb into your shell of grief by skellytons [T, 37k] * WIP

"There is... a distinctiveness to the way that you carry yourself, Will. It is familiar in people like me and unfamiliar in people like them." Hannibal looks up at the sky, reading the stars. "And people cannot trust what they find unfamiliar."

"Well, what can I do about that?" Will scoffs, feeling quite lost indeed.

"You say you have this man's address."

"Yes."

Hannibal holds out his hand, palm toward the calm sky, "May I have it?"

Will has never been one for support groups. He hadn't planned to stay for long. And then he heard Dr. Lecter speak.

Retired FBI agent Will Graham finally gives in to pressure and attends a grief support group, and one of the members there immediately catches his attention (three guesses who that is). This is definitely a heavy one, so check the tags—lots of angst and hurt/comfort, and the focus really is on Will’s grief and trauma, the background and details of which are fed to us just a little at a time, enough to whet the palate but not give you the whole picture right from the start. It’s also got a fun mixture of canon characters, who poke in from the sides, and unfamiliar ones, who serve as a pleasant, not-at-all distracting backdrop for Will and Hannibal’s interactions. Last updated May 2024.

give it to the dirt by @ropertplant [E, 132k] * WIP

Hannibal gets called in to consult on his second FBI case after The Minnesota Shrike; a string of murders connected to New Orleans. While he’s there, he meets a very interesting tour guide for the city.

They talk. They argue.

And they have much more in common than they may realize.

This is the Hannibal we know from canon—Chesapeake Ripper, psychiatrist, consultant for Jack et al back at the FBI—put up against the Will we know in spirit, if not in exact circumstance. Will has remained in New Orleans and works as a tour guide, living in isolation on the swamp with his seven-plus dogs. There is so much to love about this one!! The characterizations, dialogue, and banter, for one, are delightful and so striking. We get a delicious helping of smitten Hannibal, bitchy/abrasive Dark!Will, delightful inner conflicts, sexual and romantic tension, some hilarious peeks at Team Sassy Science, and more. There are some INCREDIBLY fun and incredibly hot scenes, and there’s great humor throughout along with some really well-done sweet moments. This one absolutely consumed me—once I picked it up I couldn’t put it down! Last updated July 2024.

Symbasis by @bloodripelives [E, 126k]

Anabasis: a journey up away from the coast, cf. Xenophon, Alexander. Katabasis: a journey towards the coast, or, descent to the underworld, cf. Persephone, Orpheus.

The world is being torn apart and remade. The ripper of Carthage thinks to help with the tearing; a desert prophet is ready to be remade.

REALLY fantastic Historical AU that starts out at the end of Alexander the Great’s siege of Tyre, where Carthaginian Hannibal son of Lectis happens to have been stuck along with the rest of his envoy for the past seven months. Meanwhile, this version of Will (Weldjebauend, or Wel for short) is an Egyptian priest of Ammon-Re; he’d been found in the desert when he was a child by Joh (Jack), another priest of Ammon-Re, who’d taken him under his wing and brought him into the priesthood. Will’s encephalitis-induced hallucinations and empathy are repurposed into visions and knowledge sent by the gods, Hannibal is a hoplite soldier as well as a murderer who’s got a blood feud to avenge, and some of our favorite minor characters are woven in throughout, including Beverly (Bacaxa), Jimmy (Jason), and Brian (Briarios). There’s A LOT of history in this, and Alexander the Great and the historical happenings that go along with him definitely do not take a backseat. It’s a bit of a slow burn leading up to Will and Hannibal meeting and getting to know each other in any capacity, and it’s an enthralling ride—tei’s writing is fantastic and the characters are absolutely engaging from the very start!

#mine #mine: fic rec #hannibal #hannibal fic #fic rec #i keep waiting to post this so i can add more onto it which is dumb #bc at this rate i'll never post it LOL #so anyway here she is #might do a poll eventually to see what my next fic rec flavor should be...

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kaitsawamura · 6 months ago

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FICS FOR GAZA

I am proud to announce I will be joining the initiative created over at @ficsforgaza! They, along with all the other incredibly talented participants, are doing some really great work. Thank you to FFG for creating a tangible way for us to help those suffering in Palestine, even if some of us can't afford to offer monetary assistance <3

THIS POST WAS LAST UPDATED 6/25/24

I might open requests in the future but for now, I am accepting proof of donation to sponsor current WIPs only.

Select a vetted donation link. You can find a good list -> HERE <-

Send me a screenshot of your donation through my inbox or in a DM. Due to these factors, donations cannot be anonymous at this time. I will also be sharing screenshots/proof of donation with @ficsforgaza for their records and verification. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU COVER/BLUR ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION ON YOUR PROOF OF DONATION.

I would hope this wouldn't need to be stated but please do not reuse donation screenshots. Make a new donation for each request.

Once you have sent proof of donation and chosen your WIP, you can opt in or out to be listed as a tagged sponsor on the WIP's masterlist. Some of the available WIPs have masterlists already live (I would tag you and repost) and some are oneshots that have yet to be posted (you would be tagged as a sponsor at the time that it is finished and live).

I will label each work individually, but please assume that everything I write will be 18+ MDNI/N*FW at one point or another.

WORD COUNT PER DOLLAR (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

For every $1 donated, I will write 100 words towards your chosen WIP. I.E: If you donate $5, I will write 500 words.

Current Word Count Cap Per One Request: 1000 Words (You can show proof of a larger donation, but this is currently the most words that can be requested per person ☺︎ )

Current Total Word Cap: 500/5000 words (This is currently the point at which I will pause proof of donations until I catch up ☺︎ )

MONEY RAISED: $15.75

Thank you for reading and respecting my rules!

THIS IS CURRENTLY A PLACEHOLDER

SERIES

Donations Made to Sponsor This WIP: 1

SUMMARY: Your life is one that is abundant with family and the magic in small things. But when a great white bear comes rumbling at your family’s cottage door one winter’s night, you are obviously taken aback. Even more so when he speaks to you in a language you can understand and asks for your help. Come away with him, live with him in the ice castle he calls home for a year and day and release him from the curse that blights him. You agree to go with him even if as time goes along, it is very apparent that there is more to this polar bear than meets the eye. There is more to a lot of different things as you learn to love the polar bear as friend and companion during the day but are visited by a mysterious man who insists on sleeping in your bed every night. Can you last a year and a day to save the bear from this strange enchantment? Will you learn the true identity of the man you’ve come to care so deeply for? Will you find yourself (and maybe love) along the way?

Donations Made to Sponsor This WIP: 1

SUMMARY: You need a change, a big one. When your estranged grandfather passes away and bequeaths you his farm in a little town just south of the middle of nowhere, you take it as the sign you needed to make a change instead of waiting for one. The farm, while having fallen into a state of disrepair, is just the thing to cure your modern-world ailments. The people are kind and always ready to offer help, if a bit unusual. They have old superstitions, a haunted community center, and a resident wizard. Spoiler alert: those last two on the list take some getting used to. Yes, things are different here but you have a sneaking suspicion that the slow pace and a certain alchemical practitioner are going to remind you that sometimes, all you need is time and a little bit of magic.

that's just wasteland, baby | Estimated WC: 15K | Current WC: 2.2K | BotW/TotK!Link and Zelda x Reader | 18+ MDNI

SUMMARY: Calamity Ganon has finally been vanquished for good, Link and Zelda have finally managed to break the wheel. But things are not as either of them had hoped they would be. Zelda is soon to be Queen with all the duties of such a position. Link would remain her knight and yet, he is restless. When he hears of the restoration efforts in Lurelin Village, he decides that he must go. He can’t stay cooped up within the castle walls, not after so long in the wild. Zelda and Link are unsure of the new direction their lives are taking but maybe they’ll find that their true north is you.

ONESHOTS

a shrike and a thorn | Estimated WC: 3K | Current WC: 1.2K | Priest!Kento Nanami x Congregant!Reader | 18+ MDNI

SUMMARY: You save everyone but who saves you? You don’t know what makes you step foot in that church. But you do and you spend the next year a dutiful congregant to Father Nanami. Devoted and kind, he’s exactly the kind of man you would expect to be a priest. And none of this would be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that you can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to see him lose his religion between your legs. Unbeknownst to you, the good Father is having the same kind of thoughts. Will the two of you build a new altar at which you might worship?

They Say It's Your Birthday | Estimated WC: 3K | Current WC: 1.6K | Pro Hero!Eijiro Kirishima x Reader | 18+ MDNI

SUMMARY: Strangers to lovers (they meet in the club), birthday smut for the Birthday Boy, I've had this in my drafts for literally three years to post on Eiji's birthday.

The Indomitable Human Spirit | Estimated WC: 2-3K | Current WC: 366 | Modern!Sukuna x Reader | 18+ MDNI

Donations Made to Sponsor This WIP: 1

SUMMARY: No description for this yet either, just wanted to explore the idea of Sukuna putting his claim on you but not in the way you'd think he would, more in like the thing about how a warring alien race comes to earth and is baffled and fascinated by the enduring human spirit.

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#fics for gaza #kait writes #fic recs #bnha #jujutsu kaisen #stardew valley #legend of zelda #breath of the wild #tears of the kingdom #kaits fics for gaza #signal boost #important!

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starshinedragon · 11 months ago

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SSO: WINTERDALE Fan written main storyline

The Map of Winterdale:

The Life Warden Trees of Winterdale:

Story design:

-> This is the updated version of an old post, taking into account the new main story quests and describing the quests in much more detail. -> It takes place after aging Concorde up and escaping Devil's Gap, after all of the main story quests up to 2023 December. -> Part of SSO Rewritten (my writing project of the whole story of SSO until defeating Garnok). You can find the story related posts with the tag "sso rewritten" -> Phases 1-2-3 is the main story so far, here I wrote phases 4-5-6 which are the main story quests connected to Winterdale.

-> The area of Winterdale was established in the Star Stable Winter Riders game and I added elements from SSO (kallters, rangers, druids) to fill in the empty places. The focus characters of the Winterdale main storyline are going to be Katja (as the main opponent), Linda (as she is her rival), Mr Sands (redemption arc) and the kallters. The setup for them is already in the game with the extremely effective hook when the MC spots them in Dino Valley leaving. The thematic guide for the Winterdale story is the rumor of the Ice Witch, already suspected to be Katja. The final confrontation of this phase is tied to Garnok and Pandoria.

So saddle up and get ready for the adventure!

PHASE 4 – Entering and exploring Winterdale

PART 1: Icestorm

Unlocking Winterdale:

-> MC is called to Valedale. At the runestones before the portal spiral leading to the Secret Stone circle, we meet with Avalon, Evergray and the druids who arrived from Winterdale. The leader of the Winterdale druids is Cairn Stevenson (middle aged, but younger than Evergray, white beard, blue and brown robes) and his horse is a white Percheron wearing new brown and light blue druid tack, called Ossian. They came to ask for help, since the storm in Winterdale has gotten worse. Last night a huge blizzard hit the valley and they think it is magical and suspect the hand of the Ice Witch might be in it. They are unable to dispel it and ask for the help of the Soul Riders.

-> We ride with them through Dino valley and they give us some exposition about Winterdale. They say Pine Hill ruled over most of the valley historically. They tell us about the cold micro climate, when the kallters migrated from Dino Valley to Winterdale, and that the current persisting winter storm started many years ago. The storm is sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger, but always present. It cut them off from the other parts of Jorvik as the Frostfire pass leading to Ashland and the Seaview pass leading to Marchenghast froze over and the blizzard halted the works on Northlink tunnel. The Lord of Pine Hill mansion, who has the strongest voice in how Winterdale runs itself does not seem to care anymore. Avalon asks them how did they leave and intend to go back to Winterdale then if there is no way open.

-> MC, the Soul Riders, Avalon, Evergray and Cairn arrive at the Icengate where Nanook and Sedna (kallters) wait for us on horseback. They perform a ritual and open the magical lock on the passage. The team is escorted through the tunnel of ice and rock, made of a similar design as Stonecutter’s vault. Halfway through it Magnus Steinar’s ghost appears as he guards this tunnel. Sedna tells him everyone here is a friend and they are to have safe passage through the Icengate whenever they please. The team exits the tunnel high in the mountains and looks over the snow covered Winterdale valley ravaged by the blizzard.

Fighting the Storm:

-> The team descends on the steep Meander trail (from the Winter Rider game) and arrives in Meander Stables, where the druids set up camp. You are greeted by Eric Lowe, the owner or Meander stables. There you are introduced to the other druid characters of Winterdale by Cairn. They tell you of the situation: the magical storm started some days ago and won’t stop. Katja’s frost powers wreaks havoc, flash freezes sweep across the valley every other minute and the winds, snow and raining icicles destroy houses, stables and threaten to freeze everyone to death. The team is asked to help the valley. MC agrees to help, while the druids try to figure out a solution to stop the storm.

-> MC is sent on four different missions in four consecutive days with the Soul Riders to introduce you to the layout of Winterdale. For each mission, you go to a location in Winterdale to help the people fight the storm by dispelling frost, gathering firewood, saving the animals, etc. To get anywhere, you have to ride through the storm. Each time a flash freeze is coming you have to take cover. Icicles rain on the way indicated by the circles appearing in front of your horse that you have to dodge. You and your Soul Rider partner get there, help out and return to Meander. First, you go with Lisa to Cape Point village, next with Anne to Icewind Station, then with Linda to Pine Hill village and finally with Alex to Anvil Woods Druid Village and back to Meander.

Dispelling the Storm:

-> In the meantime, Evergray and the druids tried everything and figured out that they can’t dispel the storm alone and need help from Fripp. MC is sent to ride back to Valedale through the Meander trail, Icengate passage and Dino valley (there is not an available trailer in Meander yet- not until you open Northlink). You ride to the spiral portal in Valedale and fail to open the way.

-> Katja appears on horseback, cornering MC, tells you that they have blocked your access to the Secret Stone Circle. MC vows to stop her terror of Winterdale, but she just laughs and tells you not if I stop you first – forever! She sends fer frigid powers after you. You race back to Meander the way you came, dodging icicles and also Ice Spectres, that are like shadow seekers, but made of mist and frost and are controlled by Katja. You get back to Meander and tell the druids that Katja blocked you from opening the portal. Evergray is unusually cheerful about this and when they ask him why is this a good thing, he tell you that he figured it out. Katja blocked you from going to the Secret Stone Circle, because the solution lies there. By uniting the power of MC, the Soul Riders, druids and kallters and Fripp, you will be able to stop the storm. Avalon, the forever optimist points out the only problem is getting there.

-> You can actually get to the Secret Stone Circle on foot, however, there is one problem besides the storm, and that is the cursed Nightmare Forest. You have avoided it so far, taking the paths next to the Meander river, but now you have to go through it. As only the Soul Horses are strong enough to go through the storm and the dark forest, Alex, Anne, Lisa and Linda are riding double with Cairn, Avalon, Sedna and Uyarak (the other magic user of the kallters beside Sedna) and MC takes Evergray. You ride through the storm, hiding from the flash freezes and ride into the dark forest. The Nightmare Woods in covered in snow and ice, shadow seekers patrol and dark blue and purple wisp-like spirits drift amidst the gloomy trees. The team takes the path through the abandoned Crescent Lake Ranger Station up to the Aurora pass and then the western road leading up to Starshine Mountain. You ride up the steep mountain path (design based on the Starshine Legacy games) and get to the broken bridge.

-> Katja appears behind you sending an army of Ice Spectres. You run through the narrow path and jump the broken bridge. She stops before the jump and her horse rears, not being able to come closer to the Secret Stone Circle. Fripp awaits you in the circle and tells you don’t worry, no servant of darkness can come into the circle again, because he woke up the guardian tree of the Circle: Astral Crown. You see the formerly leafless big tree towering over the circle now covered in azure and lilac leaves, that shine like stars. The riders dismount and form a magic circle, everyone positioning themselves in front of each runestone. They perform a ritual and dispel Katja’s Icestorm from Winterdale.

PART 2: Exploring the valley

The Roads to Winterdale: Marchenghast and Northlink

-> Now that the storm is gone, MC can properly explore the valley. The Secret Stone Circle’s portal to Valedale is open again. A cutscene takes you back to Meander so you don’t have to ride through Dino valley again. Eric, the owner of Meander stables thanks you for saving the stables and the village and promises to put in a good word for you for each place in Winterdale. The Meander Championship is unlocked, it runs through the Coldstone forest and Frostbitten fields.

-> After the full introduction to the Meander area, it is time to open Winterdale properly for people and the horse trailers. Eric sends you to Cape Point to meet a ranger friend of his (Aiobhinn, the leader of the Winterdale rangers) who will lead you through the Seaside pass up to the Marchenghast Castle. Eric apparently knows everyone in Winterdale.

-> At the Marchenghast Castle they open the gate for you. There are very few people and servants there and MC meets the lord of the castle. He was told that you stopped the storm and asks how. As you can’t say magic, can choose from different stupid options to try to explain scientifically how you stopped a whole blizzard. Whatever you choose, Lord Marchenghast laughs and says he know about magic in Jorvik, don’t worry he just thought you would be better at lying. He opens the gates and grants you safe passage through the castle and estate and sends you on your way. The rocks have been removed from the road in Goldenhills and cars can now access it, opening the trailer options in Winterdale.

-> MC rides to the Baroness and tells her that the storm is over and the work on the Northlink tunnel can continue. You are sent to tell this to the workers. While the main story calls you back to Meander, the tunnel dailies are now unlocked, requiring you to help in the work for seven days to build the tunnel.

Rangers and Pine Hill:

-> Eric tells you Aiobhinn liked you and is willing to properly show you Winterdale, now that the storm is gone. You are led though Coldstone forest with the blue crystals and trail riding pathways and arrive in Explorer’s Rest Ranger Station. You are going with Aiobhinn as she checks on all of her rangers throughout the valley. You help the rangers clear the paths covered by the snowstorm, unlock races. They show you the path leading to Frostfire pass, but it is not accessible, until it melts.

-> Next, you ride north, and he shows you Pine Hill village and tells the gossip about the lord of the mansion, Mr Sands. You meet the people of the village and stables, unlocking many side quests. The ranger shows you the Rimefang woods, but you only ride on the path next to Meander river, because the forest is infested with wolves. Frosted mammoth pine trees, fallen trunks, misty woods. If you go too close to a wolf, it will start to chase you and you need to gallop to lose it. If it catches you, you are teleported out of the woods with the message: “Your horse got you out, but be careful, next time you might not be this lucky!” She tells you there is a hidden kallter village in the middle, but you can’t reach it, unless they invite you.

-> You ride to Icewind station. You meet Henry Stevenson(the old guy from the Winter Riders game), second in command to Aiobhinn and brother of Cairn who is the leader of the rangers at Icewind station. He reports to Aiobhinn and tells you the rumors about the Nightmare Woods and that there are two abandoned stations there. They plan to man them again one day, but not until the woods are haunted. You unlock side quests and races in the Icewind Woods.

Druids and Cape Point:

-> Aiobhinn remains in Icewind and Henry offers to guide you through Anvil Woods to meet the druids and his brother. You ride to Anvil Woods and are introduced to their Life Warden Tree, Wise Leaf. They built their village around it. The tree is a gigantic oak who talks in verses, metaphors and talks like an old wizard and is generally whimsical and wholesome. In the side quests, you help the druids fight against Dark Core, as the corporation wants to cut down the forest. The Anvil Bay Championship is unlocked (joint project of the druids and rangers, organized by Henry and Cairn, running through Anvil and Icewind).

-> The druids tell you of their brothers and sisters in the other druid village of Winterdale: Jorwatch. You go there and meet them, unlock quests. They tell you that they guard the path leading to Jorcrater, since noone is allowed to enter as it is too dangerous. Finally, MC is asked to meet Fripp and Cairn in the Secret Stone Circle and you are rewarded with 100 Star Coins (just like at the end of each phase).

PHASE 5- The Kallters and Mr Sands

PART 1: The Redemption of Mr Sands

Secrets of Pine Hill Mansion:

-> Meeting at the Secret Stone Circle. The dark side have been awfully quiet lately and the Soul Riders suspect they are up to something. With Pine Hill Mansion so close, Linda proposes a plan for she and MC to sneak into Pine Hill Mansion (like she did in Starshine Legacy 2) and gather information. MC meets Linda in Pine Hill Village and they wait for nightfall.

-> The hole in the wall Lisa made back in SSL 2 is still there, hidden by a bush, but Linda knows where to find it. It is dark now and you have to find your way through the maze. You do, but there are some guards and dogs outside the house, you have to sneak past them. This time, unlike in the game, you get in through the greenhouse after finding an open glass panel. Linda tells you of the adventure they had here back in high school with Lisa, when she got stuck up in a scaffolding. Luckily, the house itself is empty so you are free to wander.

-> In the main hall, Linda shows you the pictures of the Soul Riders she saw last time here. However, there are four new pictures on the walls, paintings of the Dark Riders (Sabine, Katja and Jessica) similar in style, wearing similar ceremonial dresses. The fourth picture is still covered with a tarp, high on the wall, so you can’t see. MC and Linda get into the library and start looking for clues. Linda finds Sands’ journal. They find out about Rosalind, who was burned at the stake hundreds of years ago for being a suspected witch. She was in fact, a druid and Sands hates the druids because they didn’t save her. He himself turned to dark magics trying to bring her back, but only managed to reach Garnok, who offered him immortality and Rosalind back if he helps the forces of darkness achieve victory.

-> Mr Sands appears and captures them, trapping them in two magic circles. Linda and MC focus their powers (playing a slider-click mini game), but cannot bring his spell. Linda asks him about Rosalind and tells him she understands why he did it, but this is not the way. She manages to upset Mr Sands enough to break his concentration and MC breaks the magic circles. Linda makes a moonlight flash and they run away, escape through the main entrance. Meteor and MC’s horse wait for them there and they escape Pine Hill Mansion.

Saving Justin (again):

-> Katja makes a plan to lure the Soul Riders into a trap. Just like she kidnapped James in Starshine Legacy 4, she now plans to kidnap Justin. Justin has discovered his druid powers since meeting the Singing Yew in South Hoof and has been training. Justin was to meet MC for training in Silverglade, but he doesn’t arrive. After waiting a bit, you get up to investigate. MC finds signs of struggle and uses moon vision to see what happened. You see Katja surprising Justin and even though he tries to fight back, Katja charms and mind controls him, like she did to James. You call the Soul Riders to tell them Justin was kidnapped, but they say Katja already called and gave them an ultimatum: she wants MC to come to Dark Core Platform and bring their Soul Horse.

-> It is an obvious trap, but you have to go. No sneaking this time: you are to meet the goons at the DC ferry in Moorland. MC and their horse are brought to the platform and led in front of the portal, where Katja, Jess, Sabine and Mr Sands wait for you. Katja is keeping Justin in a magic circle at the edge of the platform where he last fell and Mr Sands is not happy about this situation at all.

-> Katja says get on with it, sacrifice MC’s horse to bring Garnok into this world. MC uses her powers to make a shield around them. Katja says fine, then I will push Justin off the platform and time you can’t save him. MC asks Sands if he is going to let this happen? What would Rosalind think of him now? She would surely not want a kid to die so she can live again? Mr Sands hesitates, doesn’t know if he is willing to sacrifice Justin for a promise of Rosalind. MC says Garnok is a force of destruction, not life and he is lying to Sands and cannot bring back Rosa, but Justin lives and he is his family. Katja is waiting for permission from Sands and she is getting more impatient by the minute. She yells at Sands to give the order and he can’t.

-> Katja pushes Justin off the platform and MC can’t do anything from the shield. The Dark Riders laugh, but Justin levitates back up. He says he has been practicing and just like his mother, Catherine, he is also very talented. He didn’t like almost dying the last time and prepared for this case. Katja is furious, and raises her hand at him, saying, cute, but cheap tricks won’t save you from the true power of darkness. She shoots dark energy at him, but a shield appears around Justin, cast by Mr Sands and it reflects the power back to hit Katja. The explosion also dazes Sabine and Jess.

-> Sands shouts at MC to flee and take Justin while they are dazed. Justin jumps on your horse and you also want to take Sands. Before he can react, a blast of dark energy hits him from behind, cast as a joint spell of Jess and Sabine. Jessica says I have always wanted to do that. You have to flee and leave Sands there.

-> You escape the platform and leave with the little boat to Goldenhills. You ride to Jasper’s farm with Justin and meet the Soul Riders there. Jasper is scolding you for getting Justin into trouble, doesn’t like this druid business that took his Catherine from him. You tell the others what happened. Linda speaks up, says I am fine with being the one to say it, but we need to save Mr Sands now. Justin agrees.

Saving Mr Sands:

-> Meeting at the Valedale spiral, going to the Secret Stone Circle, Justin is also there. Reporting what happened to the druids. All druids from Harvestlands and Winterdale met to debate whether to save Mr Sands. The conclusion is that we need allies and intel so we are going to rescue him from Dark Core. The others say we cannot be even sure that he is alive, so Linda and MC conjure up a moon vision to look for him. It shows that he lives, but barely, kept captive in some unknown Dark Core facility. You have to find out where.

-> Spying on DC with Derek. As a government agent, he knows where and how to get the information to find Sands. MC, Justin and Derek go to every possible Dark Core location and follow a trail. Finally we end up at the station above Valedale and manage to find a photo validating that Sands have arrived to the location of his imprisonment. It is not written where as DC is very secretive about him.

-> We meet up at the Valedale spiral and show the picture to the others saying that is all we have found, ready to give up. Lisa looks at the picture and recognizes the place: it is the DC Barricade, where she freed Starshine from is SSL 1. It is located just north from Anvil Woods, but the road is closed so we need a boat again.

-> Going to Cape Point to find someone willing to ferry us there. The Soul Riders and MC all plan to go and we manage to convince Justin to stay in Cape West as it is too dangerous for him to come. With the guidance of Lisa, we sneak into the DC Barricade at night. Linda conjures a vision and now that we are closer, is able to find Sands. He is held in the main building where Starshine was also held. MC, Lisa and Linda are going on foot, trying to find Sands, while Alex and Anne take the horses to a point where we can get on to escape.

-> We go through the Barricade and see many weird Dark Core projects, shipments of drakonium, artifacts, pandorian creatures in cages and imprisoned in a runic circle there is a massive, formless shadow monster. We can only see its glowing six eyes and huge clawed hand. We manage to sneak into the main building and find Sands in the same cage where Starshine was imprisoned. He spots them, but someone is coming. MC, Lisa and Linda hide and see Katja is there to taunt Sands.

-> She laughs. Oh look, how the mighty fall. Held captive in the very cage where you imprisoned the first soul horse. Another failed quest of yours. You could not get anything done even back then. Maybe I am going to be the new general of Garnok now. Sands tells her no, she isn’t going to be as she is nothing compared to Elise. You are weak, Ice Witch. You compensate well with your smarts, but you always were and will always be weak. And you know Garnok only values raw power. You are nothing to him.

-> He knows this will make her lose her cool. Linda realizes this is an opening and attacks Katja. They duel and Katja is too angry to concentrate. MC and Lisa get the cage open and get Sands. Katja wants to shoot him with dark power again, but Sands throws it back at her, weakening her a great deal. Katja uses an illusion spell, but Linda had enough of her magic. She counterspells, makes Katja lost in her own illusion labyrinth. The team runs and gets on the horses. Alex has stolen the remote opening the gates as Lisa instructed and we escape. We get to the shore and the ferry takes us back to Cape Point. Justin meets him and Sands says sorry for everything.

-> Mr Sands reconciles with Justin and the Baroness and moves back to Pine Hill Mansion. The Pine Hill Championship is unlocked. He becomes our ally, gives the Soul Riders important information about Dark Core and the Dark Riders. He promises to help us against Garnok.

-> MC has a vision: Darko has been stuck in the realm between worlds ever since Elisabeth’s sacrifice. Now Garnok needs a new general, so he rescues Darko. MC tells this to the others and Sands warns them that Darko is unpredictable, dangerous, very power-hungry and not to be underestimated.

PART 2: Cleansing Starshade Woods

Gathering intel:

-> The Nightmare Woods are still inaccessible, infested with darkness and shadow seekers. Team meets up in Meander, Linda’s idea is to check on Mr Sands and ask him for help in cleansing the Starshade Woods. MC and the Soul Riders ride up to Pine Hill Mansion and knock. A very grumpy Mr Sands opens the door and tries to send you away. You convince him to let you in, but he continues to be extremely grumpy. He leads you to the library.

-> You ask him what he knows about the Nightmare Woods. He tells you it is was the dark side’s plan to stop you from accessing the Secret Stone Circle, Darko, Jess, Katja and Sabine all kept throwing their worst dark magics to corrupt the forest. Over the years, the Starshade woods got so dark, the druids had to leave, the rangers had to leave and now noone dares to go into the haunted forest. Sands doesn’t remember all the monsters and magic that was thrown in there, so the Soul Riders keep investigating and find lists of them.

-> Sands also tells you, that the forest has a dark secret, but even he doesn’t know what it is. You have to find out if you want to cleanse the forest. Going around Winterdale, asking to people about the Nightmare Woods. Long investigation, eventually you go to Lord Marchenghast, but he only gives you cryptic answers. You investigate the Baroness’ and Fort Maria’s library too to find out more about Lord Marchenghast.

-> You find out what happened in the Starshade Woods hundreds of years ago: that was where the witches (druids) were burned. You and Linda go to Marchenghast Castle to confront the lord about it, but you cannot find him. You go into the castle and get lost in it, realizing it is cursed. You keep wandering and see the pieces of history as it was basically a tragic misunderstanding and the then young and gullible Lord Marchenghast was pressured into ordering the burning of witches. He and the castle was then cursed by one of the dying druids to suffer misfortune until he admits the truth. You and Linda finally find him in the „throne room” of the castle. Linda realizes using her powers, that the visions were not the complete truth, the castle shows you the lies of Marchenghast. You get him to admit he is not blameless in the tragedy and it is his fault as well. When the truth comes out the curse of misfortune is lifted. Marchenghast gives you a diary of the events.

-> The main story continues as you prepare for the Battle for Starshade Woods, but the Matchenghast Castle side quests are now opened. Lord Marchenghast wants to open the castle as a museum for the public and host an equestrian championship. MC is tasked to try to convince people that the curse is gone. You get merchants and horse people to come and organize the first Marchenghast championship. As the name roughly means „dark fairy tale” new magic horse breeds will be available to buy here after you do the introductory fairy tale quest line for them.

Preparation:

-> MC and the Soul Riders make a plan for the Battle for Starshade Woods. Now you know the druid ghosts, that originally haunted the place and the dark creatures the forces of evil put there. You have to find ways to neutralize each. Linda briefs you on the plan: come back every day to decrease the darkness of the woods to a manageable level until we can finally go in to cleanse the forest. You get a progression bar and have to complete daily quests for some weeks like with the Rune Runner grind.

-> You get multiple, various dailies every day. One quest is always soul riding, where you are sent into the edge of the forest to close a portal, vanquish a dark creature, etc. The other two are coop quests with one of the Soul Riders. With Lisa, you sneak in, avoiding the hostile creatures and heal and cleanse plants and animals from the darkness. With Alex, it is basically a sniper mission, you ride to a high point and shoot Shadow Seekers with lightning. With Anne, you use your light powers to dispel the dark wisps, collect their light and use it to cleanse a patch of forest from the darkness. With Linda, you ride to certain points in the forest and dispel Katja’s illusions by playing various mini games.

-> Every time you reach a milestone in the progression bar, you get a quest about the druid ghosts that died or were burned in the forest. The druids were five in total: Nimue, Moria, Lucius, Einar and Rosalind. You have to help the ghosts find peace. First, you find them in the forest, then you solve their murder (for example one was frozen to death by Katja), you make their last wish happen (e.g. take their bones out of the forest and to the place where they want to rest eternally) or bring their descendants to meet them (convincing people to come meet a ghost in the haunted forest is tricky). Lucius was Marchenghast’s friend and now wants revenge on him. MC convinces him to just talk and maybe tell him to go to hell, but Lucius ends up forgiving him and from now on lives in the castle.

-> Rosalind is the last one, who wants to meet Sands when you tell her he is alive to make sure he is okay. You bring Mr Sands to the Nightmare Woods and Rosalind says goodbye and tells you all that now she can rest in peace. The progress bar is completed and the Battle for Starshade Woods can begin.

Battle for Starshade Woods:

-> Druids, Soul Riders and MC gathering in Meander again. As the darkness decreased in the woods, Sabine and Jessica appeared attempting to restore it. You cannot let them undo your work, so it is now or never. The plan is to sweep through the forest, dispelling the final remnants of darkness and cleanse the Starshade Woods for good. The battle takes three days.

-> On the first day, you go into the part east of Crescent Lake station and disperse the remaining Shadow Seekers and dark wisps with the soul riders. The druids march behind you, cleansing the trees and animals. You get to Crescent Lake station, but Jessica is waiting for you there, defending it. Boss fight: she stands in the middle with a magic shield around her, powered by Shadow Seekers she summoned. You have to charge your lightning powers with the „catch a runner” soul riding mechanic and shoot the shadow seekers. After that you can hit her shield and defeat her. If the timer runs out she releases a dark explosion that knocks you out and you have to start again. When you defeat her, she retreats into the dark woods. You have taken the eastern part of the woods back.

-> The next day, you meet up in Cape Point village and do the same dance. You cleanse the part of the forest west of Storm Hill with the druids coming behind you. Sabine is waiting for you at the top of Storm Hill, promising she won’t go easy on you like Jess and makes a circle of fire around her and MC. Her bossfight works similarly to the Mr Anvir fight in Pandoria, except she is the monster chasing you. You have to dodge waves of fire, falling firebolts, gather sparks of power the Soul Riders summon to charge your attack and then run into her. She flees and you have Storm Hill Station.

-> The third day, you help Lisa and Anne first in pushing the front in Crescent Lake, then you fight with Linda and Alex in Storm Hill. In the middle you find Darko who is ready to unleash a massive dark creature he borrowed from Garnok. The thing is standing behind him in a cloud of darkness and you can only see its glowing evil eyes. Darko says if the forest can’t be theirs then it will be noone’s and the creature will have it. Mr Sands appears and taunts Darko. He says maybe you got what you wanted but it is not as easy being Garnok’s general as he thinks. Mr Sands counterspells Darko and the creature attacks its master. Darko teleports them both away in a panic and we win. Linda asks Sands if Darko is dead, but Sands says probably not, he has proven quite difficult to get rid of. -> The Nightmare Woods are cleansed and it returns to its original state: the Starshade Woods. It looks similar to the Hollow Woods, but with blue wisps flying around and also has a mother runestone and quests. Now we can get to the Secret Stone Circle on foot and the Winterdale rangers send people to the Crescent lake and Storm Hill Stations. The Starshade Championship is unlocked.

PART 3: The Kallters

The Blizzard:

-> Katja appears once again and unleashes a blizzard, but only on the Rimefang Woods. MC and the druids want to help, but noone can reach the kallter village unless they are invited. MC goes into the blizzard into Rimefang Woods anyways, trying to dodge the wolves. They start chasing MC and you run, but end up cornered in a gorge. A kallter girl Erika and her wolf Idun appear and save you. She leads MC to their village.

-> You meet the kallters: the council of leaders are Takuraq, Sedna, the high priestess and Uyarak, the spiritual leader (kind of a druid) whom you already met in a previous quest. Erika is the daughter of Takuraq. You have already met Nanook, who is a horse breeder. Malina and Anniq are the twins of Sedna, girl with golden hair, boy with silver and they do a little moon and sun circle magic. Kauyar is the main wolf trainer and Nasami is his wife.

-> MC is led into the communal hall and the council of elders accept your help against the wolves and Katja, but you have to gather reputation before progressing with the main story. Erika introduces you to the kallter village. It is in the middle of the Rimefang woods, next to a small lake. You have fishing dailies here. All of the kallters have their own tame wolves that keep the wild ones away from the village.

Gaining their trust:

-> In order to be able to properly help them and move around in the forest, you need a wolf. MC is sent to speak with Kauyar, who helps you bond with a wolf. They will run next to you in the Rimefang Woods and keep the wild wolves away so now MC can go wherever in the Rimefang Woods. You name it like you name a new horse you buy.

-> MC gathers firewood in the forest, helps repair the village walls, lights fires that the storm estinguished. In the forest, you have to hide from the flash freezes and dodge icicles, like in the first storm when you entered Winterdale. You have chores in Nanook’s stables for the fjords. You are introduced to Silver Runebark, the kallters’ Life Warden tree, that keeps Katja’s storm from destroying the village. When running around in the Rimefang Woods, you can sometimes see a wolf bigger and meaner than the others watching you. The kallters tell you it is called Amarok, but are strangely secretive and refuse to tell you more.

Fall of the Ice Witch:

-> Once you gathered enough reputation, the main storyline continues. The wolf pack of Amarok attacks and MC helps Nanook protect the kallters’ fjord horses. Katja is there, helping the wolves wreak havoc and using her ice powers. She says she has finally come to have revenge. MC helps stop her from freezing the village, but Nanook is cornered by the wolves. He turns into a bear and fights Amarok. The wolves are driven back and Katja flees.

-> Sedna and Nanook tell MC, that Katja is half kallter and hates them, wants to destroy the village. Nanook and his brother were cursed by Katja into a form of a bear and a wolf. MC agrees to help break the curse. The brothers have to trust each other again to break it (Amarok thinks Nanook betrayed him). Sedna and the twins help MC.

-> You have to find clues on how to break the curse. With Erika, you sneak into the den of the wolf pack using your magic. You find the writings of Amarok that he wrote before going crazy and permanently becoming a wolf. It tells you the full story of how Katja became like this. For looking different, having strong powers and being only half kallter the villagers treated her like an outsider and blamed her for every bad thing happening. She eventually got recruited by Garnok and destroyed the kallters’ previous village in Dino valley, making them leave for Winterdale to find a Life Warden Tree, that can protect them from the monster they created.

-> You confront Sedna and Nanook with this and they admit it is the truth. Nanook also chose the village over Amarok at one point and he is bitter. Amarok in turn used his wolf form to hurt Nanook’s horses and the cycle goes on. Erika says this is stupid we cannot be like this or the village is done for. Katja appears in front of the gates. She says now you see MC, I have a good reason for doing this. Help me get justice. MC says no and Katja unleashes the strom, blasting open the gates and the wolves pour in. Nanook changes into a polar bear and fights Amarok again, wins. Katja wants him to give in to hatred and strike Amarok down. This way he would complete the curse and stay as a bear forever because of his hatred. MC shouts to him not to and Nanook realizes. He changes back into a human and holds out a hand, saying i forgive you brother and hope you can forgive me as well. Amarok has managed to change back to human as well and takes his hand. The curse is broken. Katja shrieks impossible, but she cannot do anything. MC and Sedna unite their power and dispel the storm and Katja flees. Amarok returns to the village and the wolves of the Rimefang woods are no longer hostile.

-> Unlocking the Kallter Championship. You are rewarded with 100 Star Coins as it is the end of a big main story phase. The Wintersoul grind: the second "free" horse, like the Rune Runner. Now that you have completed the kallter questlines, you can start the soul riding-like grind and reputation collection with Uyarak. The Wintersoul is a special silvery-gray kallter fjord horse with ice blue kallter markings and it wanders in the Rimefang Woods. It was created when the a remnants of katja’s evil storm was trapped in a horse that ran away from Nanook’s stable. It has part of Katja’s power, freezing parts of the forest around it, needs to be tamed and who better to take care of it than MC.

PHASE 6 – Apocalypse

PART 1: Ashland and Sabine

Frostfire:

-> The dark side is properly angry now, that you have defeated every one of them again. They gather more dark power and openly attack Winterdale, sending Sabine to wreak havoc with her fire powers. Sabine always wanted to prove herself as best- now she wants to prove herself to Garnok, drunk with power.

-> The siege lasts a week, Sabine attacks different magical parts of the valley each day, until she depletes the powers she got. Every day MC gets called to a location and has to stop her. She brags about showing you all, that she is better, stronger, than Katja, who failed, just like Sands. Once the week is over she leaves and noone like the calm before the storm. The Soul Riders decide you have to figure out where she went, but before you could get on with it the earth shakes and there is a plume of smoke rising from Ashland.

Ashland:

-> This is bad. You have to get there to stop whatever Sabine is doing before she makes the volcano erupt and destroys half of Jorvik. First, you five are taking Avalon, Evergray and a Winterdale druid and ride to Explorer’s Rest and a ranger escorts you to Frostfire pass, but it is still frozen over. The druid says there is another way into Ashland. You ride to Dino Valley, but of course the path is still frozen.

-> The druid directs us to go talk to the Life Warden Tree of Dino Valley in the summit. Glacier Heart is peacefully slumbering still and we debate how to wake her. Before the team decides on anything, the ground shakes again and she wakes. At first she gets angry at you, but you manage to explain to her, that this is not your doing and you want to go to Ashland to stop it, but the path is frozen. Glacier Heart sighs: Do I really have to talk to her? Can’t you people just melt the ice of the road? The druid tells her respectfully that we are in a hurry, trying to stop the volcano from erupting and covering half of Jorvik in ash. That does it, because Glacier absolutely does not want warmth in her valley.

-> You can hear the telepathic communication between the trees. Glacier Heart calls out to her sister, Fire Glory in Ashland. She is very chatty and very ADHD and very excited about everything. It takes some tries for Glacier to explain to her that people want to go to Ashland, but the road is frozen. Fire Glory is very excited that she will get visitors and says hold on one second. She uses her fire powers to melt the ice on the road and the path to Ashland is finally open.

-> The team rides to Ashland and arrives in Ashfall village. There is a small community living there, some families and druids. The people grow extraordinary fruits and plants in the volcanic soil and the druids are stationed there to watch the volcano. Ever since the first quake, ash is falling from the sky like snow and the ground shakes here even more often. You ask about Sabine, but they didn’t see anything as they had to hide. You leave your druids in the village and go to ask Fire Glory about her.

Firefall:

-> Meeting Fire Glory, who is on one of the surrounding peaks, overlooking a valley. She likes the warmth in here, can’t image living in a cold place like like Dino and won’t shut up about how much she finds the fires beautiful. Linda politely shuts her up saying surely she would not want the valley to burn tho. She says no and we ask her is she saw Sabine. She did see her.

-> First, Sabine went to the caldera, and tried to control the fires to empower herself, but could not. Glory then saw her running around in the valley looking for something. We ask if she knows what, and the tree tells us about the Firestones. Hundreds of years ago, then the mysterious meteor shower rained pandoric stones, many landed in Ashland. Along the years they collected the fire energy of Ashland, and their pink glow turning to orange, they have become Firestones. Sabine is probably looking for these.

-> The Soul Riders and MC run around Ashland to collect the stones before Sabine does. Two progression bars show your and Sabine’s stones collected. When you found all you can, you return to Ashfall village as the druids found some more firestone locations. You go out, get them and now you have more stones, than Sabine.

-> When you return to the village however, you find the Soul Riders locked in anti-magic nullification circles. They tell you Sabine came and she was stronger than the four of them and she kidnapped Avalon. Alex tells MC that you are the only one still strong enough to defeat her, that’s why she attacked them separately. Sabine called you all to the volcano to surrender or she throws Avalon into the volcano.

-> You five ride up to the caldera. Sabine is at the edge, holding Avalon with magic over the lava. She’d drawn five more anti-magic circles and orders you to stand in it and surrender. Your lives for Avalon’s. The Soul Riders and MC all do, their powers are useless now.

-> MC has a plan to play on Sabine’s weakness. You kneel before her and admit defeat, saying she was right, she achieved what Sands could not, succeeded where Katja failed and Dark Rider Malumi is really the strongest opponent. The Soul Riders look at you like you’ve lost your mind and their reaction sells it to Sabine, who lowers her guard. Then you push Sabine and blast her with lightning and reach out for Avalon, barely catching him. Sabine falls into the lava and as her concentration is broken so are her magic circles and the Soul Riders help you pull Avalon up. Alex says nobody tell Fire Glory, but I fripping hate this place.

-> You collect Sabine’s firestones and go back to the village. As you have no use for them, you take them all to Fire Glory. She is very happy and melts the ice blocking Frostfire pass, opening the final blocked path to Winterdale. You ride back there.

PART 2: The Fall of Pandoria

Spying:

-> With Sabine gone, Katja weakened and Darko hurt by his darkness creature the Keepers of Aideen decide it is the perfect time to strike. Council meeting in the Secret Stone Circle, making a plan for how to defeat Garnok. Fripp tells us that he found the weakest point of Garnok’s prison: the Pools of Pandemonium in Devil’s Gap. He tells us that as of right now, he is imprisoned between the dimensions, that’s how he is able to access both Earth and Pandoria and that is how he was able to get Darko out of there. We debate different plans, but no decision yet.

-> The Soul Riders gather in Fripp’s rooms below and say that Linda and MC should scout DC using visions. You sit down to meditate and a series of cutscenes take place. First you see Darko standing in front of the portal, talking to a shadowy figure in it. They talk about Garnok’s return approaching, but the plans have been set back, since Sabine fell. The dark figure says my return also nears, you just have to buy some time. Darko asks what strategy you suggest and the dark figure says: They are so trusting in each other, it is disgusting. Time for some doubt. Conquer and divide, sow discord, make them make a mistake.

-> Darko’s evil plan, what we don’t see, is to make the Soul Riders send Garnok to Pandoria, where he will gather even more energy, will be stronger than ever and will be able to finally anchor himself to Earth. Darko knows MC is spying in a vision and he stages a scene. MC and Linda see him and Jess talk about how they must stop the Soul Riders from banishing Garnok to Pandoria.

-> We tell what we have seen to Fripp, not knowing this is a trap. Fripp thinks it makes sense. We have to sacrifice one world to save the other. We tell this to the druids and they agree to the plan, believing Garnok will be powerless and unable to reach Earth anymore if we manage to banish him to Pandoria. However this decision really divides the good guys, as a lot of druids believe Pandoria is not evil, there are creatures living there and the Keepers swore to protect all life. Evergray doesn’t like it either: How would you feel if someone decided Earth has to go, just so your world can live?

-> Ydris appears: How indeed. I believe one would feel quite resentful towards said people and would swore never no help them with anything ever again. Some druids ask him how did he get in here, but he just point at the runestones. I am pandorian you imbeciles. Typical humans. You surround yourselves with the magic of my world, take what you want and let the rest rot. Don’t count on my help when Garnok comes to destroy you all. Zee rears and they vanish.

-> The druids still go ahead with the plan. MC and the Soul Riders are piecing together the ritual that they will use to imprison Garnok in Pandoria. You go to the libraries of Silverglade, Fort Maria and Pine Hill with Linda to study magic circles. You gather magical herbs with Lisa, practice portals with Anne and go to Pandoria with Alex to gather crystals.

-> Now you only need to go to Devil’s Gap and convince Sive to let you do this. Linda stresses the whole way how will you convince Sive to give up the ancestral home of the vala (even if they drew power from Garnok’s prison), but when you get there she’s nowhere to be found. The Chaos Vortex is worse, than ever, a storm is raging above the gorge and lightning strikes. MC goes well that was easy, but Linda says easy never meant anything good for the Soul Riders. You go back to Fripp to report that you are good to go. Your final quest is going with Anne to close all of the portals to Pandoria.

Devil’s Gap:

-> Arriving at Devil’s Gap: the team still debates wheater they should do this, but settle for yes, they won’t have another chance like this. Using the many narrow, winding stone pathways of the valley you draw the lines of the magic circle. At certain points you carve pandorian runes into the rock walls as makeshift runestones. You make the whole valley into a big magic circle to open the gate of the prison for a moment, then banish him to Pandoria. The success of your mission relies on the fact that he is technically still sleeping.

-> Once the magic circle is done, however, Garnok stirs. MC has to ride with each Soul Rider to four different points of the valley and help them activate a rune, before riding to the middle. While riding through the pathways Garnok’s tentacles appear (like in SSL 4 and when you escaped Pandoria after finding Anne). You activate the four runes and manage to ride to the middle to complete the ritual. Garnok roars, a portal opens and the dark presence leaves the Pools of Pandemonium and is sent to Pandoria.

-> The good guys think they have won, but trouble hits immediately. Darko appears on one of the rocks above you, laughing at how you fell right into his trap. He meddles with the spell. Linda and MC have a vision of Garnok turning Pandoria dark blue and purple, breaking the islands and laughing, deep as an earthquake rumbles through the doomed world.

-> You have to act immediately. MC and Anne open a portal to Pandoria and the Soul Riders go there to stop him from destroying all of Pandoria. Once he’s done, he will also come for Earth, your only luck is that he is too busy breaking Pandoria. Linda directs you to make a binding rune, similar to what you did in Devil’s Gap. Riding around, dodging his powers. You manage to contain Garnok in Pandoria, but the realm now answers to Garnok and tries to kill you. Escape from Pandoria, the portal is collapsing. Some sun circle druids sacrifice themselves, staying behind to stabilize the portal, while we escape.

PART 3: The Hope of Pandoria

War effort:

-> Pandoria is off-limits now. All the portals are closed and the locations are guarded by druids to alert us if anything tries to come through. Garnok is empowered by Pandoria and even through he cannot come to Earth, his evil magic can reach it. Garnok-effect appearing everywhere in Jorvik, the sieges led by Katja, Jess, or Darko. MC has to fight it with soul riding quests.

-> Chaos in Ashland, a fiery entity terrorizes the valley. The Soul Riders are sent there to investigate. Sabine returns as a flying fire-ghost entity(the ghost model is like in the picture in SSL 3's Pandoria) and she is really pissed at you. She joins the sieges.

-> This cannot go on, we need a plan. MC suggests to use Jessica. We need information, have to find out how to defeat this kind of void power and how to seal Garnok back to sleep. Jess has a rivalry with Katja and still wants to outdo her to show Garnok she is the stronger one. We organize an ambush: Anne is the bait. When she attacks her, all of us appear and say we just want to talk. We manage to strike a deal with her- in exchange for information, she will have a victory over us that Katja did not. Some druids and Anne are against this plan, but they have to make a sacrifice to have a chance.

-> Jess tells the info we need right away. Anne is suspicious, says she must be lying, why not wait until we fulfilled our promise? Jess says because she can count on the good guys being disgustingly honorable and if she told something useful, they will surely make good on their promise. Jess reveals that Pandoria can be saved if we bring Garnok back to Earth to his prison. The prison ship also used the dimension between world to keep him imprisoned. If we manage to do this, his generals will lose a good deal of power also. Linda still uses moon power to see the truth and announces that she’s not lying.

-> Agreeing on the plan: the Soul Riders are to attack the DC Barricade, pretending that we are trying to free the creatures and get the artifacts. Now we cause all kinds of havoc in DC territory. Katja and Jess arrive to protect it. MC and the Soul Riders have set a trap for Katja and we imprison her in a circle. As Darko arrives Jessica attacks us and we pretend to fall back to put on a show for him. Jess got a good point from Darko for defending the barricade, while Katja failed again.

-> We tell the information we got from Jess to Fripp and he agrees to the plan. We need to try and save Pandoria even if it means endangering Earth, as we cannot let another world be destroyed by Garnok. We just need to convince the druids of it when we get the chance.

Shadowfrost

-> Evergray calls us to meet in Valedale. Why hasn’t Sabine come back to her human form? Evergray suggests the Dark Riders can be defeated by the combination of their own power and their opposite Soul Rider’s. For Sabine it was fire and lightning. Jess must be defeated by darkness (in Pi’s swamp) and Anne, Katja by ice (in Dino vale) and Linda. We plan to make these happen. We split up: MC helps Anne and Lisa defeat Jess first, while Alex and Linda prepare to defeat Katja. If we manage they too will turn into elemental ghosts (shadow and frost), like Sabine. They will still be able to fight us, but without human consciousness, just as primordial powers. Until they get their bodies back, this will leave Darko alone in fighting us.

-> Anne and Lisa lure Jessica into Pi’s Cauldron Swamp, playing on her pride. Anne can go all in, make it seem like she gave in to hatred, then when Jess is sure she will win, Anne reveals Jess has walked into a trap pursuing Anne. She stepped in the darkness seal made by Pi, which draws power from Jess’s magic. Lisa, Anne, and MC focus their powers on Jess, she disappears, a dark ghost flies away from the swamp. This was the easy part.

-> MC, Alex and Linda go to Dino Valley, but Katja knows already what happened to Jess, she is angrier than ever. Finding her at the Ice Witch portal, she attacks us. 1st race through Dino: to lure her to the frozen lake, where we can fight her. 1st phase: Soul-riding-like bossfight in the frozen lake, Katja has a frost shield. Dodging icicles, Linda helps see where K’s magic will hit, so MC can dodge it, Alex shoots her shield with lightning. MC has to keep them ice-free, free them if they are iceblocked. Without Linda, MC can’t see where the ice will hit and without Alex it is only her shooting the shield. After removing half of her shield here, Katja starts breaking the ice on the lake.

-> 2nd race: to the higher valley, through the pine forest. The 2nd phase of the fight takes place amidst the ice columns, same fight, lightning strike her, remove her shield. She is defeated, but with the last of her power, summons illusions of many characters, hides herself as one of them. Linda and MC is find the one and point at it for Alex to blast it with lightning. When Alex turns, the illusion wears the body of James. Katja begs Alex as James not to hurt him, but Alex collects the storm from above the valley and lightning strikes her. A frosty ghost flies away. Cutscene: Darko roars and curses before the portal of DC platform as the three elemental ghosts hover before him silently.

Saving Pandoria

-> Soulriding stuff all over Jorvik, fighting the three Dark Rider entities. The Keepers try to agree on the plan. The options: A, Fully sever G’s connection to Earth and get rid of hom for now (he still may find a way back later) and let Pandoria die, or B, Save Pandoria by bringing Garnok’s full consciousness back to his Earth prison, just like Jess said. The alliance finally decides to try to heal Pandoria, sever Garnok’s link to it and defeat the monster on Jorvik for good.

-> MC and the Soul Riders are going to the Garnok-ruled Pandoria: instead of pink, it is dark blue now. We are trying to stay hidden and set up a base camp. Anne really hates being here, we have to talk her into not breaking We have to avoid Shadow Seekers and corrupted creatures. We manage to heal a small bit of Pandoria.

-> Darko notices this and comes to confront us. He siphons power from corrupted Pandoria and gives the Dark Riders their human bodies back. They are so empowered, they are just toying with us. We take part in the three bossfights for each of them, losing in each. Our Soul Rider partner magics us to safety every time, but ultimately, it seems like we have lost. Our Aideen magics start to weaken as Garnok gets stronger. His giant silhouette appears on the horizon in the distance in an epic shot.

-> MC still wants to try and fight Darko, but he blocks all your pathetic attempts at magic. The Soul Riders are on the ground, giving up. Even Lisa says all hope is lost. Then, Ydris appears with the Hope of Pandoria to save the day. For him it transforms from a fridge into a pink and golden blazing Sun and flies up to the sky its searing rays of light burning away garnok’s darkness. The low roar or a kraken reverberates from the distance.

-> Ydris combines his power with the Soul Riders’ and MC's, but Anne is still on the ground. He shouts at Anne: Stand up Sun of Pandoria and help us send him back to his prison! Concorde walks to her and holding onto Concorde, Anne is pulled to her feet. She guides the spell, and we banish Garnok from Pandoria completely, back on his prison ship on Earth, fully anchoring him to Jorvik. Darko and the Dark Riders are also sent back to Earth.

-> Linda walks up to Ydris to thank him, but he says he is still angry at them for doing this to Pandoria. He only helped the world, but still won’t ever help us again. Pandoria is accessible again, but parts are still corrupted and in ruins. Garnok is banished from Devil’s Gap and the Chaos Vortex disappears.

-> Victory, end of main storyline in Winterdale. You get a reward of the final 100 Star Coins upon returning to the Secret Stone Circle and the druids talk about possibly soon heading north to meet their brothers and sisters in Spring Valley.

TO BE CONTINUED!

THE OTHER PARTS:

SSO Rewritten 2nd Part: Springvalley https://www.tumblr.com/starshinedragon/716459529087401984/sso-rewritten-springvalley?source=share

SSO Rewritten 3rd Part: Summerplains https://www.tumblr.com/starshinedragon/726343248992419840/sso-rewritten-full-story-series-summerplains?source=share

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wulvercazz · 1 year ago

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🤖And Secrets Untold🗝️

A little written-only Android!AU update before the next (and last) art post for the AU💕✨ Hope you enjoyyy

(Previous~)

Some tags; some mild robot gore, murder/murder scene descriptions

Grimmjow didn’t elaborate further after that. In fact, Grimmjow didn’t speak much at all anymore after the memory core lit up in place and flooded the android with the knowledge of a synthetic life lived.

He brooded. Glared at Ichigo when he tried to press further, answered with scoffs and rolls of his eyes when he asked about Professor Jaegerjaquez. It’s definitely not how he expected things to go when he had the idea to search for Grimmjow’s memories in hopes he’d know where to find the genius who created him.

So much for a victory.

“I’m doing this so I can repair you—“ Ichigo huffs out after one more scoff from the droid, his pliers clanking on the table, irritated. “He’s dead, fine, but maybe you can remember who he worked with? If he had a partner then—“

“He worked alone.”

Ichigo’s almost startled when, finally, there’s an actual response from him; “right… well, then… maybe you watched him work? With your kind of memory… anything he may have told you about you is stored somewhere-“

“He told me nothing.”

Grimmjow sure knew how to extinguish any sort of attempt at hope like ice cold water.

“All the old man did was drink and regret ever making me.” It’s the quiet harshness behind his voice, the subtle hue of pain, that once more trouble Ichigo; real enough that they tinge his heart with sorrow for the half-functioning android on his worktable. “Guess he was as disturbed by how not human I am as you are.”

No. No, that’s not it. He’s not disturbed by his ‘lack of humanity’, the contrary, in fact. Terrified that anything this human can exist outside human flesh; so much so that his existance within this room doesn’t fill his home with the empty chill that the mountains of appliances and other androids he’s paid to repair give him.

He’s terrified— because that means either he’s truly lost his sanity to this cold hellhole he calls a home, or what he knows about reality is about to be re-written by an android that should not be possible by nature’s rules. And it’s just now becoming more and more abundantly clear that he’s still, at least, more or less sane; the revelation that Grimmjow’s been quietly attempting to figure out Ichigo’s perception of him, only make his cold white plates and metal bones feel as human as his own.

“Grimm, I don’t— you are-“

“My name code is Grimmjow.”

“Grimmjow, I don’t... feel disturbed by you.” And Ichigo stutters when the android raises an accusatory brow, “n-not the way you think. I don’t know what the fuck was going on through Professor Jaegerjaquez’ mind when he created you — alright? — what I know is… there are no androids like you. You are… more real than anything I ever thought was possible from an android; if he expected anything more than you already are… the guy might as well have wanted to become a god, and he might have already grazed divinity as is.”

Grimmjow’s quiet pondering, and his eyes practically scanning Ichigo’s face bring sudden heat to his face. He’s not sure what exactly he just called the android, but he’s pretty sure it’s something near worship. The android’s eyes close finally, and almost sags in his place, “you’re more of a loser than I thought.”

Eh?

“Hah??” Is the lone indignant sound Ichigo gets out his chest, “I was trying to— you know what, fuck you!”

The small, shit eating grin that curls Grimmjow’s white lips is just as mocking and rude as all he’s ever been since he brought him here; and yet… Ichigo’s never been more entranced by a smile before...

“I said: I can tell you where he worked.” Grimmjow’s tiny brows twitch with annoyance, and Ichigo’s horrified by how welcome Grimmjow’s nasty attitude is in comparison to the quiet brood of before. Clearly, he got lost for a second too long in the implications of a grin for the android’s taste.

“I never left the facility, but I know the coordinates.”

The place Grimmjow’s coordinates point to is not far from where he found him, unsurprisingly; deep in the abandoned foundations of the city where people used to live before that too became unlivable for anyone not filthy rich.

Figuring out which building exactly is the one professor Jaegerjaquez hid out in to do his work, is a challenge in itself. It took him days of going back and forth between buildings with crusty tinted windows, of peeking in cracks of doors jabbed in place by layers of crust and abandoned crap. He finally knew he was in the right place when he peeked inside one last crashed window and saw messy footprints followed by a heavy path towards towards him rubbed off the dust on the floor. He hoped whoever did this, because it was clear now that Professor Jaegerjaquez didn’t die without help, had the decency to take the body with them.

His boots hit the floor with a choking cloud of dust rising around him; Ichigo patted down the bits of broken glass that came off with him when he sneaked inside and tried not to cough the dirt off his lungs too loudly. He lit his work glasses on and pulled out a supporting flashlight to guide him inside, following the tracks left on the dusty ground.

It seems simple enough. Walks in to the rest of the building, past the lonely apartment he came in through, and into another that looks less lonely than the whole structure itself. But the tracks stop here; not enough dust to reveal much of anything.

The place is a mess of papers and empty bottles of cheap alcohol, flies buzzing off dirty dishes that not even the automated washer in the kitchen could ever deal with. It takes everything in him not to gag upon the first breath. The man was… clearly unstable. Grimmjow’s short words in his regard were pretty accurate.

But he wasn’t here trying to solve anyone’s murder, not here to try and understand the madness, but rather what it created, and this.. doesn’t look anything like what he’d expected to find.

Ichigo flashes his light in every direction, to the sweaty, alcohol stained couch and the fly ridden tubs of take-out, to the likely just as dirty bathroom and the crack in the door to what he supposes was the man’s bedroom.

There’s just as much crap littering the room, except, for once, it’s not simply trash and scraps of food. It’s… printed pictures, the type not many people keep anymore these days; dimly lit faces covering the floor and the bed and, upon opening the door, the blood chills in his bones as walls scribbled dark meet his view.

Guilt written with trembling, disturbed, hands scratched on the walls; countless different renditions of “I am sorry” haunting the room, he’s almost afraid to shine a light, but curiosity has him doing just so. Leaning in more to look at the pictures on the bed and realizing, with horrified certainty, that the face repeated on every picture is the same he’s been looking at these past weeks. Different places, stages of life, ones where he is taking the picture himself and ones where someone is taking it for him. There's a healthy tint to his youthful skin instead of clinical white, but they’re all those same blue eyes, same strong jaw and high cheekbones, same blue hair too in the most recent-looking pictures.

What the fuck. What the fuck.

A million horrible ideas running through his head make him stumble back a few steps, like he’d run out the room any second and forget everything about the android and this fucked up place. And he might just, until his stumbling lets him see the disturbed pictures behind the other side of the bed; like the dust in the other apartment, shoved out of it’s deranged, but meticulous, order by something dragged heavily out of— the wall?

His hands fumble with the pictures still blanketing the floor, shoving them this way and that until the dimmest of lights shines through the line where the wall meets the floor; he scratches and nudges at the edge with gloved hands until it catches on and more of that light cracks into the room.

Inside is a mess of equipment, screens and computers crashed on the floor, metallic scratches on furniture toppled over by something with enough strength, or weight, to put clear dents on them too. It’s a violent scene only highlighted by crusted black marks smeared on the floor and dragged all the way to the hidden panel door behind him.

He feels guilty when his brain sighs a calming: ‘at least there’s no body’.

Ichigo spends a ridiculous amount of time shuffling through broken pieces of metal, attempting to find what little salvageable from the computers’ hard drives, if at all; checking every corner for anything worth something.

There’s not that much hope in his scavenging, nothing stands out to him between all the broken pieces except that there’s nothing near close to what he pulled out of Grimmjow. Not the organ looking pieces of machinery, not the the gut-like cabling or the meat-gel… he’s missing something.

Oh, this man was clever. He clearly wasn’t always deranged and guilt-ridden, he didn’t build Grimmjow at the same time as he was praying to the walls for forgiveness; that came later. The man that worked on Grimmjow’s composition chose too this location and built this hidden laboratory by himself. That man is probably still hiding things. Things that whatever thugs dragged his lifeless body and his creation out of here definitely didn’t find and trash as the rest of these useless piles of junk.

Ichigo turns to the nearest empty wall and begins patting all about the panels of it, pressing and scratching at the seams like he did on the door; pushes an empty rack that’s standing on his way and continues to search the walls. He probably looks insane, and, honestly, for once he’s not worried he’s gone mad; he hasn’t felt this alive in years.

With a satisfactory click, a panel in the wall finally gives, and from the narrow door pulls a quiet android body, laying flat and dead like this is a mortuary drawer.

He’s almost afraid to touch, wondering if this thing will be just as alive as Grimmjow is. Except… the face is all wrong, flat and robotic. nothing like Grimmjow’s tender sculpting; this is but a test. Perhaps Grimmjow was too, but this one does not compare in the slightest; the body is similar, but when he eventually pokes at it he finds himself calming down at he discovery that there’s no power core at all. The mechanical heart missing under the metal ribcage.

It does, however, have all the other parts Grimmjow needs… he’s going to feel a little dirty about performing android grave-robbery, but he’d be a fool to not at least bag as many of its internal components as he can. He’ll figure out how to bring back the heavy replacement limbs another day.

Next~

#Android AU #ichigo kurosaki #grimmjow jaegerjaquez #Android!Grimmjow #ichigrimm #一グリ #robot gore

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turtletaubwrites · 3 months ago

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Numbers Game Extras ~ Suitor Dossiers

Hello, stars! Thank you so much for your patience for Chapter 32. It's almost done, but it's a big one! I was planning to put these into the chapter as well, and I still might, but I figured I'd share some details about the suitors since you have all been so patient and kind! I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to know who your favorite is! This post includes a poll to share who you'd like to see more of during this little game. 9 guys is a lot, lol. I want to make sure that I give special attention to yours faves! (Not changing their motivations though, so I hope you like what I have planned for them 😈🤭)

!!! SPOILER WARNING !!! ~ If you haven't read Part 31 yet, I highly recommend finishing that first before looking at the dossiers.

Image descriptions are located at the end, as the dossiers are on images.

What's this?

It was rare to find trash on the ground at the Oak Roots Estate. Curiosity got the better of you, and you picked up what looked like a brochure.

Oh...

Are you fucking kidding me...

Image Descriptions: Alternating images and text in the form of a brochure shows each of the nine suitor's faces with some personal details, and a quote. The format is laid out with snooty cedar leaves, the sun shining through trees, soft greens, exaggerated font, and images of arrows (as in bow and arrows).

Dossier Text: Each picture includes the phrase "Which hunter will claim her?" The final picture also includes the phrase, "Make your bets now!"

Giberson

Age: Couldn’t Recall

Height: Misplaced Measurements

Birthday: August 14th

Title: “Warehouseman”

Favorite Food: Rye Whiskey

How he plans to win: “I’m sure the lovely lady and I will have a delightful time. You don’t get to be my age without learning a few tricks.”

Ichiji

Age: 21

Height: 186 cm (6'1")

Birthday: March 2

Title: Prince of the Germa Kingdom

Favorite Food: Strawberries and Whiskey

How he plans to win: "I’m a Vinsmoke."

Niji

Age: 21

Height: 185 cm (6'1")

Birthday: March 2nd

Title: Prince of the Germa Kingdom

Favorite Food: Blueberries and Scotch

How he plans to win: “She’s coming with us. If I don’t win, there’s two more Vinsmoke’s.”

Yonji

Age: 21

Height: 194 cm (6'4")

Birthday: March 2

Title: Prince of the Germa Kingdom

Favorite Food: Green Peas

How he plans to win: “I wouldn’t mind ending up with a woman like her, so I’m gonna turn her into a princess.”

Iceburg

Age: 40

Height: 199 cm (6'6")

Birthday: January 3

Title: President of the Galley-La Company, and Mayor of Water 7

Favorite Food: Curry Made by an Old Friend. A Drunk, Old Friend.

How he plans to win: “Mm, well... I suppose I’ll win because I know her best.”

Fukaboshi

Age: 24

Height: 604 cm (19’10”)

Birthday: February 4th

Title: Prince of the Ryugu Kingdom

Favorite Food: Abalone Steak

How he plans to win: “I hope that she carries peace in her heart. If she does, I will stop at nothing to earn her love.”

Cracker

Age: 45

Height: 307 cm (10'1")

Birthday: February 28th

Title: Sweet Commander of the Big Mom Pirates, and the Minister of Biscuit

Favorite Food: Biscuits. Dislikes Kimchi and Carbonated Drinks.

How he plans to win: “Easy. I’ll outdo them all.”

Katakuri

Age: 48

Height: 509 cm (16'8½")

Birthday: November 25th

Title: Sweet Commander of the Big Mom Pirates, and the Minister of Flour

Favorite Food: Doughnuts. Dislikes hot ramen.

How he plans to win: “I will win because I must.”

Red Haired Shanks

Age: 39

Height: 199 cm (6'6")

Birthday: March 9

Title: Emperor of the Sea

Favorite Food: Kimchi Fried Rice and Lobster. Dislikes Blueberries.

How he plans to win: “Just gonna show the cutie a good time.”

End of Image Description.

WIP Update I hope you liked this little tease! Chapter 32 is 8300+ words already, and I still have a few more outlined scenes to finish, including the smut. If y'all didn't crave the smut every chapter it would have been out by now, lol. There's a lot going on at the Oak Roots Estate! 🌲 Life is lifeing, but I have received word that the major factor keeping me from my usual writing schedule is fading, and I'm so happy because this story dominates my brain, and I miss all of you so much! Thank you for your patience, I can't wait for you to read the next update! See you soon! Lynna 💜✨

Author’s Note: All of the character details above are from Oda, except for the quotes and the missing details for Giberson. I found them on the One Piece Fandom Wiki if you’d like to go check out more about the character’s history. I live on that site, and have to give those fans the credit for compiling all those details! I already spend hours searching for specific parts in the anime for things like lines for speech patterns and such, I’d be lost without the wiki!

~~~🌲🌲🌲~~~

#numbers game #turtletaub fics #more like turtletaub fics extra features I guess?#i loved making these #now back to 32!

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icegirl2772 · 6 months ago

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My Intro and Fics

Note: This will be edited as I continue working on my stories.

I've been lurking on Tumblr on and off for years now. But I've been getting more active on here that I've really gotten back into writing fanfiction. So, it may seem silly, but I felt an intro was in order.

I'm IceGirl2772. You can call me Ice or Icey. I've been writing fanfiction since I was 10 or 11. If you look at my FFN stuff... be prepared for the cringe. But nowadays, I am much more active on AO3.

Here is my profile link (AO3). Since the post is gonna be lengthy, as I provide a bit of background for the fandoms I write for and the stories I have, I'm adding a Read More. But in short, I write for the following fandoms (in alphabetical order): Big Time Rush (TV Series), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Case (video game), Harry Potter, Loonatics Unleashed, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012 series), Thunderbirds (1965 series) and Transformers: Prime. Everything is fandom blind friendly.

Just a fair warning: I list a lot of the tags my fics have, and a few of them are NSFW. I'm also gonna be updating this as I go, so it's subject to constant change.

I'm gonna do my fandoms in alphabetical order for simplicity's sake.

Big Time Rush

I have three fics in this fandom to date:

Take a Shot in the Dark | Teen and Up | No Archive Warnings Apply | James Diamond/Original Female Character, Background Kendall Knight/Jo Taylor, Background Logan Mitchell/Camille Roberts, Brief Original Male Character/Original Female Character | Kendall Knight, Kaelyn Knight (OC), James Diamond, Logan Mitchell, Carlos Garcia, Katie Knight, Gustavo Rocque, Kelly Wainwright, Palm Woods Kids, Jennifer Knight | Kendall Has a Twin Sister, Songwriting, Childhood Friends, Male-Female Friendship, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Chaos, Other Additional Tags to Be Added | 16 Chapters | 129k Words | WIP

She was always along for the ride. The twin sister. The best friend. But now, Kaelyn Knight was about to become the heart and soul of Big Time Rush as Gustavo takes her under his wing.

Going to Hollywood is certain to change the boys. But how will it change Kaelyn?

This fic holds a special place in my heart because I went back and forth on this idea for years, and it was actually through some of the friends I met here on Tumblr that I got the courage to post it. So... thanks.

Better Than Neil | Teen and Up | No Archive Warnings Apply | James Diamond/Original Female Character | James Diamond, Kaelyn Knight (OC), Original Male Character(s), Background & Cameo Characters | Teen Romance, Teenagers, Can Be Read Standalone, Snippets, Not Beta Read, One Shot, Fade to Black (kinda), James Diamond is Actually a Great Boyfriend | 1.4k Words | Complete

Kaelyn thinks of all the ways James is a better boyfriend than her ex.

aka an idea that would not leave me alone. :P I also wanted to gift this to @myloveforhergoeson because she's been a massive support to me as I write Take a Shot in the Dark. Thanks for everything, mate. :)

We Do (But Friends Don't) | Explicit | Underage | James Diamond/Original Female Character | James Knight, Kaelyn Knight (OC), Kendall Knight, Carlos Garcia, Logan Mitchell, Jennifer Knight, Gustavo Rocque, Kelly Wainwright, Palm Woods Kids | Horny Teenagers, Adolescent Sexuality, Teenagers Having Sex, First Time, Safe Sex, Multiple Sex Positions, Multiple Orgasms, Blow Jobs, Oral Sex, Jealous James Diamond, Friends with Benefits, Idiots in Love, Characters Are 16 Years Old, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Might Be Out of Character | 4/24 Chapters | 15k Words | WIP

Neither of them meant for this to happen. For James Diamond and Kaelyn Knight, the rules were clear. It was meant to be just sex. They were best friends first and foremost. It would stay between them. No feelings.

But neither of them considered the feelings that were already there.

Yet another idea that wouldn't leave me alone. I was about to let this idea wither away and die, but I met some... very corrupting influences. (You know who you are. ;)) And here we are. Special shoutout to @partiallypearl for helping me with the title. :)

Planned Fics in This Fandom:

First Sequel to Take a Shot in the Dark - takes place during Season 2 of Big Time Rush

Second Sequel to Take a Shot in the Dark - takes place during Big Time Movie

Third Sequel to Take a Shot in the Dark - takes place during Seasons 3 and 4 of Big Time Rush

Odd one-shots

My Secret Santa gift (which I am keeping under wraps ;))

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

I only have one fic in this fandom to date:

Butterfly | Teen and Up | Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings | Past Nick Stokes/Original Female Character | Nick Stokes, Kadelyn 'Kady' Stokes (OC), Original Characters, Warrick Brown, Gil Grissom, Catherine Willows, Sara Side, Greg Sanders, Jim Brass | Nick Stokes Whump, Nick Stokes as a Single Father, Father-Daughter Relationship, Family Feels, Family Bonding, Season/Series 01, Past Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added | 8/24 Chapters | 12k Words | WIP

There was no denying the life of a CSI is a hard one. Different horrors every night shift. Different monsters emerging from the shadows. Always a new crime - some more horrific than others. Nick Stokes has always been one of the most empathetic CSIs, so he was often one of the most affected on the night shift.

But then, he thinks of a little girl waiting for him at home, and remembers his determination to make the world a better place for her. For his daughter. For Kadelyn. And the weight of the world is instantly lifted off his shoulders when he says two words: 'Hey, butterfly.'

This fic is a rewrite of a very old, very cringey fic I had up on my FFN. All of the chapters are very short and focus on a moment between Nick and his young daughter before, during or after an episode.

Planned Fics for This Fandom:

Stories of a similar vain to this one - all focusing on each season of the show. All named after butterfly in different languages.

Criminal Case (video game)

(There's literally no GIF for the fandom)

I have four fics in this fandom to date:

The Adventures of Avery Samuels: Welcome to Grimsborough | Mature | Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death | David Jones/Player Character | Avery Samuels (Player Character substitute), David Jones, Samuel King, Nathan Pandit, Grace Delaney, Alex Turner, Eduardo Ramirez | Season 1: Grimsborough, Police Procedural, POV First Person, Co-Workers to Lovers, Male-Female Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Minor Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Miscarriage, Implied Sexual Content, Innuendo, Suicide, Bombs, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Heteroromantic Bisexual Character, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Implied/Referenced Torture, Racism, Past Character Death, Death of a Child (referenced), Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Sad Ending, Other Additional Tags to Be Added | 74/122 Chapters | 612k Words | WIP

After completing her education at the police academy, Avery Samuels is ready for her career as a police officer in the Grimsborough Police Department to begin. She is assigned to work with David Jones, her older brother's childhood best friend. How will things unfold between the two of them as Avery navigates her new job and her new life?

This is something I originally wrote on Wattpad, and I wanted to save it when I deactivated my Wattpad account. So, I transferred it to AO3 and kept it going. It is certainly going to be a wild ride.

Nothing For You Here | Teen and Up | Past David Jones/Charlotte Jones, Brief David Jones/Player Character at the End | David Jones, Charlotte Jones, Background Original Character, Cameo from Player Character at the End | Set After the Conspiracy, Regrets, Rejection, Whumptober 2024, r/FanfictionExchange, Rated T Because This Author is Paranoid About Ratings | 2.6 Words | Complete

Charlotte had always feared rejection. It was why she waited this long to go to Jones and tell him she wanted him back. But even if a small part of her was prepared for the rejection, it didn't make it hurt any less.

r/FanfictionExchange Whumptober 2024 Fic. Prompt: Rejection

I'm taking part in the r/FanfictionExchange -tober fest because I wanted to challenge myself. I'm doing four one-shots responding to Whump, Fluff, Kink and OC. This is my Whump Entry.

Something Right | Explicit | David Jones/Player Character | David Jones, Avery Samuels (OC/Player Character) | POV First Person, Porn with Feelings, Porn with Plot, Oral Sex, Couch Sex, Penis in Vagina Sex, Missionary Sex, Friends to Lovers, My First Attempt at First Person POV Smut, Female Perspective, r/FanfictionExchange, OCTober 2024 | 4.5k Words | Complete

When Avery comes home from a trip, she wonders if she did something wrong leaving Jones with easy access to her journals to tell him what she couldn't. But she finds that she did something right.

AKA when Jones and Avery would finally get together if The Adventures of Avery Samuels unfolded differently.

r/FanfictionExchange OCtober 2024 fic. Prompt: Friends to Lovers

I'm taking part in the r/FanfictionExchange -tober fest because I wanted to challenge myself. I'm doing four one-shots responding to Whump, Fluff, Kink and OC. This is my OC Entry.

Welcome to the Rest of Your Life, David Jones | Not Rated (TBD) | David Jones/Player Character | David Jones, Avery Samuels (OC/Player Character) | Minor Character Death, POV First Person, Friends to Lovers, Retelling of a Story Through Someone Else's Eyes, Rating To Be Determined, Other Additional Tags to Be Added | 1 Chapter | 7.1k Words | In Progress

It was meant to be a punishment. At least, that was how Chief King had described being assigned a rookie officer to David Jones. But then, he walked into the office and saw not a punishment, but the beginning of the rest of his life.

Or 'The Adventures of Avery Samuels: Welcome to Grimsborough' told from Jones' POV.

This was something I was toying with for a while now, and I just finally decided to take the plunge. Besides, I had a lot of fun doing the couple of chapters from Jones' POV. So, I thought to myself, 'Why not?'

Properly Improper | Explicit | Arthur Wright/Player Character | Arthur Wright, Emily Campbell (OC/Player Character) | 1890s, Season 4: Mysteries of the Past (Criminal Case), Older Man/Younger Woman, Office Sex, Alternate History, Somewhat Quickie, Not Beta Read, The Author Regrets Everything | 3.3k Words | Complete

Alone in the chief’s office aboard the airship, the usually uptight Chief Arthur Wright finds it can be fun to be properly improper with his young bride.

This is me making a very interesting introduction to my new Criminal Case OC. This is Emily Campbell, and she is Avery’s ancestor. I’m setting her up for when I start writing a fanfiction for Mysteries of the Past. I was planning to wait until I finish Avery’s story in World Edition, but I could end up bringing it forward because I’ve basically got everything set in stone for the whole series. I’ll decide in the New Year. :)

Planned Fics for This Fandom:

The Adventures of Avery Samuels: Welcome to Pacific Bay - Title subject to change. Sequel to Welcome to Grimsborough. Follows Avery in Pacific Bay.

The Adventures of Avery Samuels: Save the World - Title subject to change. Sequel to Grimsborough and Pacific Bay. Follows Avery during her tenure in the Bureau.

Mysteries of the Past: The Adventures of Emily Campbell - Spin-off focusing on Avery's ancestor Emily Campbell as she moves from England to Concordia. Based on Season 4 of Criminal Case.

The Adventures of Avery Samuels: A Final Conspiracy - Follows Avery as she returns to Grimsborough. Will be the final story in the series. (I'm not doing Seasons 6-8.)

Some one-shots of varying ratings.

Harry Potter

I have two works in this fandom:

Just a Man | Teen and Up | Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings | No Romantic Relationships | Unnamed Hufflepuff Student, Background & Cameo Characters, Various Characters Mentioned But Not Seen | Voldemort Dies, Past Character Death, Second Wizarding War with Voldemort, Battle of Hogwarts Aftermath, More Book Than Film Based, POV First Person | 575 Words | Complete

The thoughts of an unidentified Hufflepuff student in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts.

This is my very first work in the Harry Potter fandom. I'm a Hufflepuff, so this was born out of me wanting to shine a bit more of a spotlight on the house.

It was a question that many Hogwarts students asked, regardless of whether they were planed in Gryffindor or another house. It was certainly asked as the dark days loomed. When certain events brought that question to the forefront more than ever.

What did it mean to be brave?

I wrote this thinking of a message by a local antibullying organisation: Speak - even if your voice shakes.

Planned Fics for This Fandom:

My plans are very fluid. I am hoping to write more one-shots. I don't see myself writing a mutli-chaptered story in this fandom.

Loonatics Unleashed

I have two fics in this fandom so far:

A Million Things | Teen and Up | Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings | No Romantic Relationships | Ace Bunny, Brylee Bunny (OC), Lexi Bunny, Danger Duck, Slam Tasmanian, Tech E. Coyote, Rev Runner, Zadavia, Various Character(s) | Childbirth, Character Adopted at Birth, Interspecies Family, Found Family, Ace Bunny as a Big Brother, Diabetes, Menstruation, Coming-of-Age, Canon-Typical Violence, Bullying, Other Additional Tags to Be Added | 20/27 Chapters | 108k Words | WIP

Brylee Bunny is a million things. An orphan. A teenage girl. An aspiring photographer. A diabetic. An outcast. A... superhero? Brylee is thrust into her new life: a life where she has superpowers and she, along with her adoptive brother Ace and five other individuals, save the world from evil on a daily basis. How will she adapt to her new life as a superhero? Especially when it brings up even more questions about the family who abandoned her at birth?

I started writing this on FFN several years ago and decided to bring it over to AO3 when I decided to make AO3 my main fanfic site.

After certain events unfolded (re: defeating your boss's evil brother), Brylee decided that two certain bunnies need to pull their heads out and tell each other how they feel.

r/FanfictionExchange Flufftober 2024 Fic. Prompt: Love Confessions

I'm taking part in the r/FanfictionExchange -tober fest because I wanted to challenge myself. I'm doing four one-shots responding to Whump, Fluff, Kink and OC. This is my Fluff Entry, and I decided to use this opportunity to pay tribute to my original OTP.

Planned Fics for This Fandom:

A Million and One Things - Sequel to A Million Things. Follows Brylee during the events of season two.

A Million More Things - Sequel to A Million Things and A Million and One Things. The final story in the Brylee Bunny trilogy.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012 series)

I have three fics in this fandom so far:

In the Darkness | Teen and Up | Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings | Leonardo/Original Female Character | Leonardo, Alina Herber (OC), Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo, Hamato Yoshi / Splinter, April O'Neil | Canon-Typical Violence, Interspecies Relationship, Interspecies Romance, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Other Additional Tags to Be Added | 18 Chapters | 82k Words | WIP

They introduced her to their world, now she can introduce them to hers.

What can possibly go wrong?

Something I started writing eight years ago and originally got abandoned, but renewed interest thanks to review exchanges on Reddit (along with rewatching the show) got me back into this.

Mine | Explicit | No Archive Warnings Apply | Leonardo/Original Female Character | Leonardo, Alina Herber (OC) | Mating Cycles/In Heat, Porn, Knifeplay, Aged-Up Characters, Leo in Heat, Yeah I'm Doing My Own Take on This, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Sex, Oral Sex, Multiple Sex Positions, Multiple Orgasms, Does This Count As Rough Sex?, Characters Are 18 Years Old, Pussy Slapping, My First Attempt at Interspecies Sex, First Time, Light BDSM, dom!leo, I'm Bad at Tagging, No Concrit Please | 4.6k Words | Complete

Usually, Alina stayed away when the Turtles were in heat. Well, at least from Leo, who was most affected by her presence. That changed in their eighteenth year.

Same ol' story. An idea wouldn't leave me alone. Met some bad influences who encouraged this. I wanted to see if this was something I could explore down the line in my current Leo/Alina series, so this also served as a... test balloon of sorts.

Leo and Alina sequester themselves away from the world as they work through Leo's heat together, making some surprising discoveries about each other.

Somewhat sequel to 'Mine', but can be read standalone.

r/FanfictionExchange Kinktober 2024 Fix. Prompt: Praise Kink.

I'm taking part in the r/FanfictionExchange -tober fest because I wanted to challenge myself. I'm doing four one-shots responding to Whump, Fluff, Kink and OC. This is my Kink Entry, and I decided to use this opportunity to do a somewhat sequel to Mine.

Planned Fics in This Fandom:

First In the Darkness Sequel - follows season 2 of TMNT 2012

Second In the Darkness Sequel - follows season 3 of TMNT 2012

Third In the Darkness Sequel - follows first half of season 4 of TMNT 2012

Fourth In the Darkness Sequel - follows second half of season 4 of TMNT 2012

Fifth In the Darkness Sequel - follows some of season 5 of TMNT

Potential for various one-shots focusing on Leo and Alina

Thunderbirds (1965 series)

I have six stories in this fandom. It's by far my most active:

The Thunderbird and the Doctor | Mature | Graphic Descriptions of Violence | Scott Tracy/Original Female Character, Background Alan Tracy/Tin-Tin Kyrano, Background Virgil Tracy/Original Female Character | Scott Tracy, Tracy Family, Indiana Evans (OC) | Based on Original Series, Scott Needs Some Loving, They Need a Doctor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Narcissism, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Murder, Kidnapping, Birth Control (one chapter), Pregnancy, Brief Descriptions of Labour | 50/50 Chapters | 292k Words | Complete

There was a missing component to International Rescue, Jeff Tracy felt. They needed a doctor. So, he found one. Dr. Indiana Evans was one of the best-known trauma surgeons. She wants to make a difference. Little did she know how much her life would change along the way.

This baby was what got me back into fanfiction writing full time. So, seeing this complete felt very bittersweet. In many ways, it's my first baby.

The Thunderbird and the Doctor After Dark | Explicit | No Archive Warnings Apply | Scott Tracy/Original Female Character | Scott Tracy, Indiana Evans (OC) | Porn, Porn with Feelings, Some Plot, Blow Jobs, Oral Sex, One Shot Collection, Additional Warnings in Author's Note, Unprotected Sex, Masturbation, Multiple Sex Positions, Hand Jobs, No Dialogue (some chapters), Cunnilingus, Mutual Masturbation, Medical Kink, Sexual Roleplay, 5+1 Things, Cockblocking, This Author Sucks at Dirty Talk, Temperature Play, Restraints, Blindfolds, Aftercare, Bathtub Sex, Light BDSM, Couch Sex, Birthday Sex | 23/25 Chapters | 55k Words | WIP

The missing scenes from The Thunderbird and the Doctor. What exactly do Scott and Indiana get up to behind closed doors?

This is my smut collection. It's the missing sex scenes from the main story, but you can read it without reading the main story. Especially if you're just looking for some smut.

The Thunderbird and the Geologist | Teen and Up | Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings | Virgil Tracy/Original Female Character, Background Scott Tracy/Original Female Character, Background Alan Tracy/Tin-Tin Kyrano | Virgil Tracy, Arizona Adams (OC), Tracy Family | Sequel, References to Previous Story, Past Character Death, Falling in Love, Happy Ending, Might Contain Inaccuracies, Child of Death Adults (CODA), American Sign Language, Other Additional Tags to Be Added | 8 Chapters | 25k Words | WIP

Sequel to 'The Thunderbird and the Doctor'.

We saw Scott find his missing piece. How about Virgil? It was pure fate that saw Virgil meeting Dr. Arizona Adams, a world-renowned geologist who also happens to be Indiana's childhood best friend. Will their road to happily ever after be smooth sailing?

This is the second story in a series I'm planning focusing on each Tracy brother and their love story. It's early days, but I'm happy with it so far.

Jeff reflects on the sacrifices he's asking his sons to make for his dreams, and is resolved to do what he can to rectify that.

I wrote this one-shot on a plane trip actually (personal note: never write on an iPad again). I actually posted it on the anniversary I started posting The Thunderbird and the Doctor, which made it even more special.

A Tropical White Christmas | General Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply | Tracy Family, Original Characters, Penelope Creighton-Ward, Tin-Tin Kyrano, Background & Cameo Characters | Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Snowball Fight, Snow on a Tropical Island, References to Canon, Pregnant Character | 1.5k Words | Complete

Brains had given the Tracy family a great gift this Christmas. One they were determined to make use of.

This is written in reference to the Thunderbirds episode Give or Take a Million, where Brains made it snow on Tracy Island. So, the boys enjoy it the old-fashioned way. This was written as part of the Winter Fest on the FanfictionExchange subreddit and gifted to @kristylime, a good friend of mine and co-mod who gave me the idea. Thanks, mate.

Two people experiencing an unlucky day meet at a train station, and their day looks up.

I wrote this in response to the Fate and Luck Fest on the FanfictionExchange subreddit.

Planned Fics in This Fandom:

The Thunderbird and the Photographer - Gordon's love story with photographer Mirabel Marks.

The Thunderbird and the Author - John's love story with author Adalyn Rowe.

The Thunderbird and His Sweetheart - Alan's love story with Tin-Tin

Odd one-shots

Not in this fandom, but I am thinking of doing a fic based on the reboot with a new OC, but similar to The Thunderbird and the Doctor

Transformers: Prime

I have two fics in this fandom:

Save You | Explicit | Graphic Descriptions of Violence | Jack Darby/Original Female Character, Optimus Prime/Arcee | Talida Prime, Jack Darby, Optimus Prime, Arcee, Ratchet, Cliffjumper, Bumblebee, Bulkhead, William Fowler, Starscream, Decepticons | Kidnapping, Torture, Teen Romance, Rewrite, Amputation, Aftermath of Torture, Psychological Torture, Implied Sexual Content, Pre-Canon, Might Contain Medical Inaccuracies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Is This a Dead Dove Fic? | 23/23 Chapters | 64k Words | Complete

What if Jack somehow discovered the existence of the Autobots earlier than planned? His best friend has disappeared and he soon discovers that there is more to her disappearance than meets the eye.

This is a rewrite of a story I brought over from FFN, which is in turn a rewrite of my original Talida Prime series. I wasn't happy with what I was doing and had done, so it led to this.

Zombie | Explicit | Graphic Descriptions of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage | Jack Darby/Original Female Character, Optimus Prime/Arcee | Jack Darby, Talida Prime, Original Characters, Optimus Prime, Arcee, Bulkhead, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Cliffjumper, Miko Nakadai, Rafael "Raf" Esquivel, William Fowler, June Darby, Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Other Character Tags to Be Added | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Past Torture, Past Abuse, Flashbacks, Season/Series 01, Amputee Character, Teen Romance, Eventual Smut, Characters Are 16 Years Old, Is This a Dead Dove?, Slight Alteration to Canon, Other Additional Tags to Be Added | 8 Chapters | 32k Words | WIP

Sequel to 'Save You'.

It's been two years. The Decepticons have retreated into the shadows. Talida is haunted by her experiences, but is slowly moving forward with the help of her loved ones. But the tranquility is disrupted when the Decepticons make a dramatic return to the scene, causing a significant blow to the Autobot forces and marking the resumption of a war that has haunted Talida since birth. The Autobots gear up for another fight alongside old and new allies, but will they all emerge unscathed?

As mentioned, this is a sequel to Save You. This follows season one of the show, but some changes will have to be made because, in this series, Jack knew about the Autobots before the show's canon.

Planned Fics in This Fandom:

Sequels to Save You and Zombie. Unknown titles. Unknown if any other fics will crop up.

20 notes · View notes

kakita-shisumo · 1 year ago

Text

In which I sound off for much too long about PF2 (and why I like it better than D&D 5E)

So, let me begin with a disclaimer here. I don’t hate 5E and I deeply despise edition warring. I like 5E, I enjoy playing it, and more, I think it’s an incredibly well-designed game, given what its design mandates were. This probably goes without saying but I wanted it on the record. While I will be comparing PF2 to D&D 5E in what follows and I’ve pretty much already spoiled the ending by the post title (that is, PF2 is going to come out ahead in these comparisons most of the time), I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about my position or intention. My opinions do not constitute an attack on anybody. For that matter, things I might list as weaknesses in 5E or strengths of PF2 might be the exact opposite for other people, depending on what they want from their RPG experience.

As I said before, 5E is an exceedingly well-designed game that does an exceptional job of meeting its design goals. It just so happens that those design goals aren’t quite to my taste.

# A Brief History of the d20 RPG Universe #

I’m going to indulge myself in a little history for a second; some of it might even be relevant later, but for the most part, I just want to cover a little ground about how we got here. By the time the late ‘90s rolled around TSR and its flagship product, Dungeons and Dragons, were in trouble. D&D was well over two decades old by that point and showing its age. New ideas about what RPGs could and even should be had taken over the industry; TSR had finally lost its spot as best-selling RPG publisher to comparative upstart White Wolf and their World of Darkness games; the company even declared bankruptcy in 1997. Times were grim.

That, however, was when another comparative newcomer, Wizards of the Coast, popped up and bought TSR outright. Flush with MtG and Pokemon cash, they were excited to try to revitalize the D&D brand and began development on a new edition of D&D: third edition, releasing in August 2000.

Third edition was an almost literal revolution in D&D’s design, throwing a lot of “sacred cows” out and streamlining everywhere: getting rid of THAC0 and standardizing three kinds of base attack bonus progressions instead; cutting down to three, much more intuitive kinds of saving throws and standardizing them into two kinds of progression; integrating skills and feats into the core rules; creating the concept of prestige classes and expanding the core class selection. And of course, just making it so rolls were standardized as well, using a d20 for basically everything and making it so higher numbers are basically always better.

At the same time, WotC also developed the concept of the Open Gaming License (OGL), based on Open Source coding philosophies. The idea was that the core rules elements of the game could be offered with a free, open license to allow third-parties develop more content for the game than WotC would have the resources to do on their own. That would encourage more sales of the base game and other materials WotC released as well, creating a virtuous cycle of development and growing the industry for everyone.

Well, long story short (too late!), it worked like fucking gangbusters. 3E was explosive. It sold beyond anyone’s expectations, and the OGL fostered a massive cottage industry of third-party developers throwing out adventures, rules material, and even entire new game lines on the backs of the d20 system. A couple years later, 3.5 edition released, updating and streamlining further, and it was even more of a success than 3rd ed was.

At this point, we need turn for a moment to a small magazine publishing company called Paizo Publishing, staffed almost exclusively by former WotC writers and developers who had formed their own company to publish Dungeon and Dragon, the two officially-licensed monthly magazines (remember those?) for D&D. Dungeon focused on rules content, deep dives into new sourcebooks, etc., while Dragon was basically a monthly adventure drop. Both sold well and Paizo was a reasonably profitable company. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly.

Except. In 1999, WotC themselves were bought by board game heavyweight Hasbro, who wanted all that sweet, sweet Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon money. D&D was a tiny part of WotC at the time and the brand was moribund, so Hasbro’s execs hadn’t really cared if the weirdos in the RPG division wanted to mess around with Open Source licensing. It wasn’t like D&D was actually making money anyway… until it was. A lot of money. And suddenly Hasbro saw “their” money walking out the door to other publishers. So in 2007, WotC announced D&D 4th Ed, and unlike 3rd, it would not be released under an open license. Instead, it would be released under a much more restrictive, much more isolationist Gaming System License, which, among other things, prevented any licensee from publishing under the OGL and the GSL at the same time. They also canceled the licenses for Dungeon and Dragon, leaving Paizo Publishing without anything to, well, publish.

At first, Paizo opted to just pivot to adventure publishing under the OGL. Dungeon Magazine had found great success with a series of adventures over several issues that took PCs from 1st all the way to 20th level, something they were calling “Adventure Paths,” so Paizo said, “Well, we can just start publishing those! We’re good at it, the market’s there, it will be great!” And then, roughly four months after Paizo debuted its “Pathfinder Adventure Paths” line, WotC announced 4th Ed and the switch to the GSL. Paizo suddenly had a problem.

4th Ed wasn’t as big a change from 3rd Ed as 3rd Ed had been from AD&D, but it was still a major change, and a lot of 3rd Ed fans were decidedly unimpressed. Paizo’s own developers weren’t too keen on it either. So they made a fateful decision: they were going to use the OGL to essentially rewrite and update D&D 3.5 into an RPG line they owned: the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. It was unprecedented. It was a huge freaking gamble. And it paid off more than anybody ever expected. Within two years Paizo was the second-largest RPG publisher in the industry, only behind WotC itself, and for one quarter late in 4E’s life, even managed to outsell D&D, however briefly. Ten years of gangbuster sales and rules releases followed, including 6 different monster books and something over 30 base classes when it was all said and done. It was good stuff and I played it loyally the whole time.

Eventually, though, time moves on and things have to change. The first thing that changed was 4E was replaced by D&D 5E in 2014, which was deliberately designed to walk back many of the changes in 4E that were so poorly received, keep a few of the better ones that weren’t, and in general make the game much more accessible to new players. It was a phenomenal success, buoyed by a resurgence of D&D in pop culture generally (Stranger Things and Critical Role both having large parts to play), and its dominance in the RPG arena hasn’t been meaningfully challenged since. It also returned to the use of the OGL, and a second boom of third-party publishers appeared and thrived for most of a decade.

The second thing was that PF1 was, itself, showing its age. RPGs have a pretty typical life cycle of editions and Pathfinder was reaching the end of one. It wasn’t much of a surprise, then, when, in 2018, Paizo announced Pathfinder 2nd Ed, which released in 2019 and will serve as the focus of the remainder of this post (yes, it’s taken me 1300 words to actually start doing the thing the post is supposed to be about, sue me).

There’s a coda to all of this in the form of the OGL debacle but I don’t intend to rehash any of it here - it was just like six months ago, come on - beyond what it specifically means for the future of PF2. That will come back up at the very end.

# Pathfinder 2E Basics #

So what, exactly, makes PF2 different from what has come before? There are, in my opinion, four fundamental answers to that question.

First: Unified math and proficiency progression. This piece is likely the part most familiar to 5E players, because 5E proficiency and PF2 proficiency both serve the same purpose, which is to tighten up the math of the game and make it so broken accumulations of bonuses aren’t really a thing. In contrast to 5E’s very limited proficiency, though, which just runs from +2 to +6 over the entire 20 levels of the game, Pathfinder’s scales from +0 to +28. Proficiency isn’t a binary yes/no, the way it is in 5E. PF2’s proficiency comes in five varieties: Untrained, Trained, Expert, Master, and Legendary. Your proficiency bonus is either +0 (Untrained) or your level + 2(Trained), +4 (Expert), +6 (Master) or +8 (Legendary). So if you were level five and Expert at something, your proficiency bonus would be level (5) plus Expert bonus (4) = +9.

Proficiency applies to everything in PF2, really - even more than 5E, if you can believe it, because it also goes into your Armor Class calculation. You can be Untrained, Trained, Expert, Master, or Legendary in various types of armor (or unarmored defense, especially relevant for many casters and monks), and your AC is calculated by your proficiency bonus + your Dex modifier + the armor’s own AC bonus, so AC scales just as attack rolls do. Once you get a handle on PF2 proficiency, you’ve grasped 95% of how any game statistic is calculated, including attacks, saves, skill checks, and AC.

Second: Three-Action Economy. Previous editions of D&D, including 5E, have used a “tiered” action system in combat, like 5E’s division between actions, moves, and bonus actions. PF2 has largely done away with that. At the start of your turn, you get three actions and a reaction, period (barring haste or slow or similar temporary effects). It takes one action to do one basic thing. “Attack” is an action. “Move your speed” is an action. “Ready a weapon” is an action. Searching for a hidden enemy is an action. Taking a guarded step is an action. Etc. The point being, you can do any of those as often as you have the actions for them. You can move three times, attack three times, move twice and attack once, whatever. Yes, this does mean you can attack three times in one turn at 1st level if you really want to (though there are reasons why you might not want to).

Some special abilities and most spells take more than one action to accomplish, so it’s not completely one-to-one, but it’s extremely easy to grasp and quite flexible at the same time. It’s probably my favorite of the innovations PF2 brought to the table.

Third: Deep Character Customization. So here’s where I am going to legitimately complain just a bit about 5E. I struggle with how little mechanical control I, as a player, have over how my character advances in 5E.

Consider an example. It’s common in a lot of 5E games to begin play at 3rd level, since you have a subclass by then, as well as a decent amount of hit points and access to 2nd level spells if you’re a caster. Let’s say you’re playing a fighter in a campaign that begins at 3rd level and is expected to run to 11th. That’s 8+ levels of play, a decent-length campaign by just about anyone’s standards. During that entire stretch of play, which would be a year or more depending on how often your group meets, your fighter will make exactly two (2) meaningful mechanical choices as part of their level-up process: the two points at 4th and 8th levels where you can boost a couple stats or get a feat. That’s it. Everything else is on rails, decided for you the moment you picked your subclass.

Contrast that with PF2. In that same level range, you would get to select: 4 class feats, 4 skill feats, two ancestry feats, two general feats, and four skill increases. At every level, a PF2 player gets to choose at least two things, in addition to whatever automatic bonuses they get from their class. These allow me to tailor my build quite tightly to whatever my idea for my character is and give me cool new things to play with every time I level up. This is true across character classes, casters and martials alike.

PF2 also handles multiclassing and the space that used to be occupied by prestige classes with its “pile o’ feats” approach. You can spend class feats from class A to get some features of class B, but it’s impossible for a multiclass build to just “steal” everything that makes a single class cool. A wizard/fighter will never be as good a fighter as a regular fighter is, and a fighter/wizard will never be the wizard’s match with magic.

Fourth: Four Degrees of Success. 5E applies its nat 20, nat 1, critical hits, etc. rules in a very haphazard fashion. PF2 standardizes this as well, in a way that makes your actual skill with whatever you’re doing matter for how well you do it. Any check in PF2 can produce one of four results: a critical success, a regular success, a regular failure, or a critical failure. In order to get a critical success on a roll, you have to exceed your target DC by 10 or more; in order to get a critical failure, you have to roll 10 or more less than the DC. Where do nat 20s and nat 1s come in? They respectively increase or decrease the level of success you rolled by one step. In practice, it works out a lot like you’re used to with a 5E game, but, for instance, if you have a +30 modifier and are rolling against a DC 18, rolling a nat 1 nets you a total of 31, exceeding the DC by more than 10 and earning you a critical success, which is then reduced to just a normal success by the fact of it being a nat 1. Conversely, rolling against a DC 40 with a +9 modifier can never succeed, because even a nat 20 only earns a 29, more than 10 below the DC and normally a crit failure, only increased to a regular failure by the nat 20.

Now, not every roll will make use of critical successes and critical failures. Attack rolls, for instance, don’t make any inherent distinction between failure and critical failure. (Though there are special abilities that do - try not to critically fail a melee attack against a swashbuckler. The results may be painful.) Skill rolls, however, often do, as do many spells with saving throws. Most spells that allow saves are only completely resisted if the target rolls a critical success. Even on a regular success, there is usually some effect, even on non-damaging rolls. That means that casters very rarely waste their turn on spells that get resisted and accomplish nothing at all. It also doubles the effect of any mechanical bonuses or penalties to a roll, because now there are two spots on a die per +1 or -1 that affect the outcome; a +1 might not only convert a failure to a success but might also convert a success to a crit success, or a crit fail to a regular fail.

# What About Everything Else? #

There is a lot more to it, of course. As a GM I find PF2 incredibly easy to run, even at the highest levels of game play, as compared to other d20 systems. The challenge level calculations work, meaning you can have a solo boss without having to resort to special boss monster rules to provide good challenges. I find the shift from “races” to “ancestries” much less problematic. PF2 has rules for how to handle non-combat time in the dungeon in ways that standardize common rules problems like “Well, you didn’t say you were looking for traps!” Everything using one proficiency calculation lets the game do weird things like having skill checks that target saves, or saves that target skill-based DCs. Inter-class balance, with some very specific exceptions, is beautifully tailored. Perception, always the uber-skill, isn’t a skill at all anymore: everyone is at least Trained in it, and every class reaches at least Expert in it by early double-digit levels. Opportunity Attacks (PF2 still uses the 3rd Ed “Attack of Opportunity” - but will soon be switching over to "Reactive Strike") isn’t an inherent ability of every character and monster, encouraging mobility during combats, and skill actions in combat can lower ACs, saves, attacks, and more, so there are more things to do for more kinds of characters. And so on.

Experiencing all of that is easiest just by playing the game, of course, but suffice it to say PF2 has a lot of QoL improvements for players and GMs alike in addition to the bigger, core-level mechanical differences.

# The OGL Thing #

Last thing, then. In the wake of the OGL shit in January, Paizo announced that it would no longer be releasing Pathfinder material under the OGL, opting instead to work with an intellectual property law firm to develop the Open RPG Creative (ORC) License that would do what the OGL could no longer be trusted to do: remain perpetually free and untouchable for anyone who wanted to publish under it. The ORC isn’t limited specifically to Paizo or to Pathfinder 2E or even to d20 games; any company can release any ruleset under it and allow third-party companies to develop and publish content for it.

Shifting away from the OGL, though, required making some changes to scrub out legacy material. A lot of the basic work was done when they shifted to 2E, but there are still a lot of concepts, terminologies, and potentially infringing ideas seeded throughout the system. These had to go.

Since this meant having to rewrite a lot of their core rules anyway, Paizo opted to not fight destiny and announced “Pathfinder 2nd Edition Remastered” in April. This is a kind of “2.25” edition, with a lot of small changes around the edges and a couple of larger ones to incorporate what they’ve learned since the game first launched four years ago. A couple classes are getting major updates, a ton of spells are either getting renamed or swapped out for non-OGL equivalents, and a couple big things: no more alignment and no more schools of magic.

The first book of the Remaster, Player Core 1, comes out in November, along with the GM Core. Next spring will see Monster Core and next summer will give us Player Core 2. That will complete the Remaster books; everything else is, according to Paizo, going to be compatible enough it won’t need but a few minor tweaks that can be handled via errata. So if you’re thinking about getting into PF2, I’d give serious thought to waiting until November at least, and maybe next summer if you want the whole Remastered package.

And that’s it. That’s my essay on PF2 and what I think makes it cool. The floor is open for questions and I am both very grateful and deeply apologetic to anyone who made it this far.

#RPGs #roleplaying games #d20 #d20 history #pathfinder #pathfinder 2e #pf2 #pf2e #dungeons and dragons #D&D #d&d 5e

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