#time period: 1800s

[qbdatabase]

As a master of disguise, Thomasina Wynchester can be a polite young lady—or a bawdy old man. Anything to solve the case. Her latest assignment unveils a top-secret military cipher covering up an enigma that goes back centuries. But when Tommy’s beautiful new client turns out to be the highborn lady she’s secretly smitten with, more than her mission is at stake …

Bluestocking Miss Philippa York doesn’t believe in love. Her cold heart didn’t pitter-patter when she was betrothed to a duke, nor did it break when he married someone else. All Philippa desires is to rescue her priceless manuscript and decode its clues to unmask a villain. She hates that she needs a man’s help—so she’s delighted to discover the clever, charming baron at her side is in fact a woman. Her cold heart … did it just pitter-patter?

[highmagician]

been hyperfixated on Cthulhu media and accidentally created an entire au/story about it

Dr. Arthur James Kirkland is a professor of archaeology who is assigned to help excavate a recently discovered cave with strange artifacts strewn about, but most notably an old yet entirely intact book. It's written in an unknown language, resulting in a globe spanning investigation to discover an origin and translation. after a few months of studying the book, though, he slowly becomes consumed by it. it speaks to him, showing him strange visions and eventually granting him the secrets locked in it, translating the text before his eyes. slowly, he loses track of reality and slips into the madness that radiates from the dark grimoire, almost fully consuming him.

I based it mostly off of the ttrpg mechanic-wise while using the mythos as a backdrop for everything else. currently, the other investigators are surface-level ocs who have their own place in the story alongside him.

idk I just think it's neat and I need somewhere to put my shit so here-

[thedevilscarnival]

shout out to daan fear and hunger for being a (textually) male character whom is narratively a woman. orange really hit it out of the park with that one

[ranticore]

Hi has anyone ever told you Ice Storm Over Kosa has impeccable vibes and feels incredibly innovative and fresh!

In terms of the towns and communities, what types of infrastructure connects them? What kinds of technologies are common vs cutting edge in the setting’s different time periods?

hehe thank you.. i really like how the setting tag is just one of the character's names so it looks like you're saying He has impeccable vibes

<3

So there is a huge huge almost insurmountable limiting factor when it comes to the growth of towns and communities, which is that large aggregations of living creatures will attract the crawly beasts and they pollute the earth, make crops wither and die away, kill livestock, kill people, etc, and humans can't even touch them with protective gloves on since the crawlers' fluids eat through leather

humanity (and monsters) were forced to spread out over a larger surface area. villages and settlements are small and have to be actively defended almost nightly. there has been a slight stagnation of the march of progress, as just fighting off this threat takes up so much of everyone's resources, and forbids institutes of learning and the like from forming. so most of the technological advancements we see, they are in the field of long-range communication, weaponry (falconry too), and material technology that might repel crawling beasts

in prehistory, the land now called "the Ama plains" hosted a gigantic city with a hundred thousand people living in it, called Amphora. it was very advanced for its time period, with working plumbing, hot and cold water even, mass production of cloth and food, etc (not to mention the magic). Amphora no longer exists and most of its innovations were lost.

in the early time period after the arrival of the crawling beasts, humanity and monsterkind are scattered. the only established settlements are those guarded by wyrms, but it took many centuries to reach that point. human towns are ruled by small feudal lords who may form loose alliances with one another but typically rule their land as if it's a lone island in the middle of a vast sea. this is the time of Revelation's march. the most established settlement is the city of Onozar in the far west of Ama, which is ruled by a king who has a hold over many of the neighbouring towns and lords, by virtue of Onozar's size and relative safety. technology levels are low; no firearms, trebuchets and crossbows are cutting edge.

in the time of Twist and Flicker, there is an age of unprecedented cooperation with monsters (Revelation's march might have had something to do with this change). This means that towns and villages are now usually protected by something other than a wyrm - this ranges from willing cooperation to cruel self-styled 'monster tamers' who force monsters to do their bidding. This is the dawning age of harpy falconry as described in the lil story i wrote about Ice Storm of Kosa himself, though back then the old method was to make a contract with an adult harpy and cooperate that way. The infrastructure is still not very advanced; they're still struggling with plumbing and sewage systems, because crawlies come out of the ground and their poison can seep into aquifers. Anyway communication between towns is usually done by pigeon (or pigeon harpy). The ground is not a safe place to be, so houses are typically built on short stilts, or at the very least, residential rooms are upstairs. Water supply is often provided by elevated aqueducts; wells are a last resort, but often the only choice for impoverished villages. There is a culture of fear surrounding large gatherings and groups - sometimes it's unavoidable, and human/monster nature, but that anxiety is always there.

With this increased cooperation between humans and monsters, people are able to gather in larger groups. this enables more learning, more apprenticeships, more farmlands, and a more rapid development of technology. It also means a more centralised ruling system begins to form; it takes a lot of resources to supply a pack of wolfmen or a harpy flock to defend a town, so small towns must make petitions to their more prosperous neighbours, and this develops into a Government of the entire region. firearms develop in this time as a means to kill crawling beasts; they are not that successful, and it takes a while before people realise you can use firearms to kill other things, too.

A century later, developments are progressing well enough. Firearms are still rare but starting to spread. Harpy falconers have developed a new, effective technique for their art, it's called "kidnapping"; steal an egg, and raise the chick to imprint on its human parents. that way it won't want to leave. There is a sense of teetering on an edge; humanity leaning more into forcing monsters to help, instead of cooperating. But this is not the progression; the success of the Kosa flock helps convince many falconers that the kidnapping method isn't the best after all. technology is still uh bad, but this is an era where writing materials are finally becoming more mainstream, literacy rates are slowly rising. the printing press is the hot new thing. they have water towers now to provide the plumbing at a safe elevation. communication between villages is still very dove-based, since flight is the safest method of travel.

fire is the only thing that both kills and neutralises the poison of a crawling beast. by this time, progress has been made to develop "automatic fire machines". so all the R&D people put into guns in the real world was put into flamethrowers instead. it's easy enough to rig up a system that pumps out burning oil, but these devices are usually stationary, heavy, and fixed at the gates of the various more prosperous town walls.

[sweaty-clouds]

1600s

Drew both Piris in the 1600s, but in their much fancier wear :D Their attire is very Lusong (Tagalog + Kapampangan) since they're pretty much under Maynila's care for most of the time here though the rest of their accessories are from other provinces.

[tinycowboybro]

so.. y’all like cowboys ?

inspo for second pic: x

aaa!!! this has been cooking in my brain for a while, i feel like the mafia plot could transfer over in some ways to western cattle rancher type drama

a system of cattle ranches for the major and minor family

instead of bodyguards it’s ranch hands that have been taken in by the heads of the house and live on the property to tend to the ranches (brings in the devotion to the family that way)

from there you can add the power struggle conflict and all that with the smaller ranch wanting to have control of the system

just think about how fun that would be ! i’d like to draw more of the characters /expand on this eventually but idk what do y’all think ? :0

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

also like why r ppl confused about the technological jump in lok it’s literally the same as happened irl. avatar takes place in the rough equivalent to the mid 1800s, it’s not medieval or anything. lok takes place roughly equivalent to the early 1900s. that is, in fact, what happened irl in the seventy odd years between, say 1850 and 1920. like it’s literally just historically accurate.

[dyrewrites]

I did it, got the sips up over on @sipofsnips

Now I go get lost in sad vampire some more because the happier version of him is being a pain in my ass.

[rain-on-wax-feathers]

louise's friends throughout the years

[qbdatabase]

Lawrence Browne, the Earl of Radnor, is mad. At least, that’s what he and most of the village believes. A brilliant scientist, he hides himself away in his family’s crumbling estate, unwilling to venture into the outside world. When an annoyingly handsome man arrives at Penkellis, claiming to be Lawrence’s new secretary, his carefully planned world is turned upside down.

Georgie Turner has made his life pretending to be anyone but himself. A swindler and con man, he can slip into an identity faster than he can change clothes. But when his long-dead conscience resurrects and a dangerous associate is out for blood, Georgie escapes to the wilds of Cornwall. Pretending to be a secretary should be easy, but he doesn’t expect that the only madness he finds is the one he has for the gorgeous earl.

Challenging each other at every turn, the two men soon give into the desire that threatens to overwhelm them. But with one man convinced he is at the very brink of madness and the other hiding his real identity, only true love can make this an affair to remember.

[sgsketchbook]

sometime way back then

[goatsandgangsters]

another one of my little pedantic pet peeves is people thinking regency = historical, rather than a specific historical era, and calling literally anything regency even if it's like a solid 100 years later

[hiero-green]

when people talk abt like the 1700s or smth and they’re like “they wouldn’t even understand you anyway bc they speak old english” i’m like oh my god. please. please read a single wikipedia article. old english is OLD, like 12th century and back. SHAKESPEARE write in EARLY MODERN ENGLISH which only differs mostly in some antiquated vocabulary and some slight grammatical differences but is overall comprehensible to us, i just. i. hhhhhh

[scentofpines]

ready for the most boring lecture 🫡

[villalunae]

Are you an academic lesbian? 👀

unfortunately yes

[myimaginationplain]

imagine Alina wearing one of these to some fancy palace party or political dinner

x , x , x