#tis bacterial

[dragonquill]

Got a bad infection in my eye but at least it looks cool. Going as this eye for Halloween.

[theresglitterinmydaiquiri]

🎶I feel it in my nostrils🎶

🎶I feel it in my lungs🎶

🎶 sickness is all around me🎶

🎶And so the feeling grows🎶

🎶I feel it in my ears🎶

🎶I feel it in my throat🎶

🎶I’m really, really ill 🎶

🎶And it’s hard not to show 🎶

[nabsthevulture]

Hi, I have this leg bone of a bull and thought you might find it interesting! I believe wire got wrapped around the joint and imbedded and then led to maybe some bacterial or fungal infection? It's wild either way and I've never seen bone growth like this

yo that is fucking insane, what a cool piece!!! It reminds me of the nightmare pelvis, but tis the nightmare leg bone instead.

[sleepyconfusedpotato]

What kind of whump potential did you have in mind for Soap in Alone? 👀 I am intrigued.

Rubs Hands Okay anon here goes nothing

🩸🧼 WHUMP POTENTIAL IN ALONE 🧼🩸

>> Soap got shot, and the bullet went past his right arm, which means there are two bullet holes in his arms. Bro's bleeding from two wounds ‼️

Not that I've ever got shot, but it must've hurt like a BITCH. 🩸We could've gotten some pained grunts outta him !! Make Soap hiss, grunt, moan, whimper, ANY SOUND OUT OF HIS MOUTH. Soap controlling his breaths - I LIVE for those 😭 (Kinda like in Overwatch, if you're on low health, you'd hear the characters' pained sounds. Of course for Soap not all the time, (the Shadows could hear him) but once in a while would be GREAT)

>> He didn't make any attempt to stop the bleeding (Bro could've used his tourniquet, or heck, if not tourniquet, Soap could've ripped his shirt and tied his arms to reduce the blood loss)

An interactive cutscene of him tying his arm up 👁️👁️ mmmmmmm I would EAT that shit up.

>> Blood loss is no joke, and the amount of time he uses his arm to kill the enemies, making the tools to pry open doors, cocktails, heck, the recoils he gets from shooting?? The blood would be jumpin' out of him like a damn hose ‼️‼️

I'm no medic, but you'd immediately get light headed sooner than when the one where Ghost and Soap went,

"Bit light-headed, are ya?"

"Bit shaky, Sir, yeah."

While that bit is such a good dialogue, we could've gotten more from his blood loss narrative. -> Make him have to support himself up with one arm!! Make him fall once again!! Make Soap talk to himself in an attempt to sort himself out ‼️‼️

>> Soap went to the sewers. Idk about y'all, but going under the sewer water with exposed wounds IS NOT A GOOD IDEA Y'ALL 😭. The amount of bacterial infection is going to br crazy. If not treated properly Soap's gonna get a whole fever breakdown and more over hallucinations and shit.

P.S. @lisbetadair made a whump fic about this check it out it's hella good

>> Post-Alone. If he's not gonna treat it himself, let Ghost or Rudy patch him up for Lord's sake 😭 the fact that his wounds just magically disappear made me cry so much. Let Ghost sew him up before entering the Los Vaqueros hideout, let Rudy check his wounds out ‼️

>> During the next missions like 'Prison Break' 'Ghost Team' and 'Countdown', make his teammates like Gaz or Price ask Soap before the actions start, "You're doing okay?" "You solid, Soap?" That'd be GREAT 👍

Feel free to add more because I LOVE in game whumps I crave more of it 😫

[the-king-of-snakeskin]

My take on svtfoe's slimes.

-Their hydras, relatives of corals and jellyfish. They have substantial bodies, but their regenerative abilities allow them to heal from pretty serious injuries, and their known to live thousands of years- abilities that are overlooked by mewmens, who often can't differentiate individual slimes.

-while they aren't made of slime, their bodies are covered in an anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial mucus that serves to protect their bodies on land. It also helps ease the pain caused by a slime sting.

-Slimes are hermaphroditic, and can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Gonad development is triggered by stress and starvation, budding is triggered by warmth and a surplus of food. Unlike most other species, who have gonads permanently, slime gonads develop as needed and fall off once their job is done.

-Slimes born through budding are seen as superior to slimes hatched from eggs, in part because wealthy slimes are more likely to bud while poor slimes are more likely to produce eggs. Budded children are prioritized in terms of inheritance, partially because of perceived superiority and partially because there's no ambiguity as to which parent should be prioritized, as there is only one. Eggs are still produced by slime nobility for the purpose of both strengthening ties with other slime families and marrying them off to nobles of other species. These marriages are political in nature, and cannot produce heirs.

-Slimes do not experience romantic or sexual attraction, and never marry within their own species. Sexual reproduction happens passively, with no need for either parent to even meet. For arranged clutches between specific individuals, spawning pools(a practice borrowed from frog men) are utilized to ensure parentage, and both individuals stay out of public waterways until the eggs are fertilized.

-Eggs are extremely hardy and, in the right conditions, can be stored indefinitely. A common practice among slime nobility is to store the eggs in an "egg bank" and incubate them as needed. Which family the eggs belong too is often decided via both families bidding on either the clutch as a whole or in individual eggs, with the rights to those eggs going to the highest bidder.

-Although they are devalued compared to their budded siblings, hatched slimes hailing from noble families have a chance to climb society's ladder and found a lineage of their own. This opportunity has historically been denied to lower class slimes, regardless of the circumstances of their conception.

-Slimes are unable to verbally communicate, and important figures within their society often hire interpreters of other species; kappa, Frogman, and septarian interpreters are the most common, but you do occasionally see size-shifters, demons, or even mewmens filling that role.

-Due to their lack of easily recognizable facial features, slimes are among the most dehumanized of the species the MHC has deemed "monstrous", with many mewmens debating if their even sentient due to their alien appearance and inability to speak.

Version with gonads under cut. Note: I doubt anyone could read this as "sexual", given how alien the biology is, but I'm being cautious here.

The nipple looking things are testies, the lumps are ovaries. Most slimes will develop both, but it is possible to only develop one. Slimes see gonad development of this sort as akin to bad breakout of acne- embarrassing and uncomfortable, but hardly explicit.

[tribbetherium]

Daggoths, with their subterranean lifestyles, unconventional limbs and even more peculiar senses, are easily among the most bizarre lineage ever to arise on HP-02017: a clade so derived as to look almost entirely alien. Yet, despite their otherworldy appearance, the daggoths are still mammals: giving birth to live young, and nourishing them with milk, at least for some period of time. And no other species combines the strange with the familiar as the spindled cheeseweaver (Lactarachne brevipus), a descendant of the roof stalac, an insectivore that dwells among the stalactites of the cave's ceiling, a biome obviously absent from the surface world.

Like its predecessor, the spindled cheeseweaver is an ambush hunter, pouncing on insects that it finds among the stone spikes. With long, spindly front digits, yet short, stubby rear ones, it ambles along predominantly with its forelimbs, while arching its back intermittently to secure its grip on another location, in a strange, nine-limbed inchworming gait. Its progress is helped along by broad pads on both fore and hind limbs that are equipped with thousands of tiny, densely packed hairs that allow it to stick tightly to even smooth surfaces, allowing it to negotiate the cavern roof, anchoring with its hind limbs while using its forelimbs to seize insect prey, be it feelerflits that blunder into its outstretched digits or other, flightless bugs that dwell on the rock surface, feeding on bacterial mats and fungi.

But easily the most remarkable characteristic of the cheeseweaver is the namesake ability the females have when rearing their young: they conceal their undeveloped, quasi-larval young in weblike cocoons that they affix to hidden crevices in the cave ceilings. These cocoons, reminescent of an arthropods', are perhaps the most unmammalian feature yet evolved by the daggoths, yet, conversely, is actually what ties the cheeseweaver to its mammalian ancestry: the webs are actually made of modified milk, and further taken to a bizarre extreme thanks to the fermentation and action of several species of symbiotic bacteria living in their mouths and plays a special role in the females.

In both sexes, these bacteria aid in an immune and digestive function, but in females, it contains just the right ingredients to make its silky webs. As daggoths rear their young for only a few days before they leave them, they produce particularly thick and concentrated milk rich in nutrients for their young, with high levels of protein to facilitate their quick growth. This feature is repurposed in this particular species, as when female cheeseweavers lactate, they do so shortly prior to birth, then use their long forelimbs to scoop up the creamy mixture into their cheek pouches. Here, the bacteria begin their work, separating out the proteins into a thick, stringy, and stretchy material after a period of at least 1-2 days that then, piece, by piece, the cheeseweaver female then pulls from her mouth in ropy threads and spins into a cocoon with her four pairs of fore-digits, stretching and spinning and weaving it in a disconcertingly arachnid-like manner into a protective pouch. Once finished, she inserts her rear end into the pouch, births anywhere from six to twelve tiny young each barely 4 millimeters long, and finishes it with a second layer of fibers to safely seal them inside a permeable shell that allows them to respire, as, at this point, the almost-embryonic young breathe entirely through their thin, vacularized skin that directly absorbs oxygen, as their lungs are not yet fully developed.

Once her job is finished, the female cheeseweaver conceals the cocoon with a lick of saliva that masks its scent and firms its adhesion to the surface, and then wanders off with no further care. She can spin several such cocoons during the breeding season, bearing her offspring in batches. The young, in turn, develop safely inside the cocoons, hidden away from predators that hunt mostly by scent. Inside, she has packed into the cocoons as well a rich reserve of the thick, fatty milk, semi-solidified to a soft, jelly-like consistency, to serve as a food source for the developing young. It is during this period that her symbiotic microbes again play an important role: they produce antimicrobial excretions that ward off pathogens and harmful bacteria that may infest the milk and harm the young, but which are tolerated by the beneficial bacteria that are then ingested by the young and become symbionts of them in turn. Once their teeth are fully matured, at the age of about two to three weeks, the young chew their way out of the cocoon and, after consuming the remainder of the empty husk, emerge out into the world, skilled hunters from day one that first practice on microscopic invertebrates before graduating to a diet of bigger insects as they progress toward adulthood.

-----------

And one final late-Spectember entry before schedule conflicts take over again. Sorry again to those who expected much content for Spectember, I hope you don't mind irregular random posting.

[hmslusitania]

See I think when corporatebusinessspeak people refer to “company culture” they think they’re talking about culture in the sense of social customs and the ties that bind a people together

But what they’re actually talking about is the bacterial growth you get in a lab setting when you’re trying to diagnose an infection to make sure you get the right antibiotic to kill it dead

[howtofightwrite]

How realistic is it for someone to survive getting jumped with sticks, and surviving with a finger fracture, that is later treated with surgery. What sequence of events would allow this to happen ? Setting is XVIIIth century France, and the character's hair is long, thick, curled and pomaded and powdered, which means his skull would get some cushioning.

So, this a whole set of different components, and taken together there are some issues.

The two most unrealistic details are probably surviving surgery, and their wig remaining on their head through the attack.

It's pretty reasonable for someone to survive getting jumped by attackers armed with sticks. There's a lot of ways this can go, and it's not a good situation to be in, but this isn't certain death unless the attackers really know how to get the most out of their weapons.

Even if the fight goes badly, if they survive without serious internal injuries, they could probably recover.

I'll admit that I have a modern bias, but surgery in the 1700s was a horror show. A large part of this was because of bacterial contamination wasn't understood until the the mid-19th century. Even while observing the best practices of the time, minor surgery, such as repairing a fractured finger were significantly more dangerous. In fact, with this scenario, it's quite plausible that they'd simply end up with a permanently mangled finger after the attack. If they did seek surgical assistance, there would be a very real risk of bacterial infection and death.

That leaves us with the hair or wig. The eighteenth century is near the end of the peruke (the powdered wig) as a fashion accessory in French culture. Popular culture (especially films) tend to dramatically over-represent the peruke and its ubiquity. These could be quite expensive and fragile. While some have survived, they are quite difficult to preserve. These were most often seen among the nobility, and courtiers, later filtering down into the merchant class. These wigs were not something that everyone wore. More than, the tradition of the powdered wig in France effectively died as a result of the French Revolution, because it was heavily associated with the aristocracy.

The peruke was easy to dislodge during strenuous physical activity. So, if your character was actually wearing a wig, then that would probably be lost (and potentially damaged) during the scuffle. Your character may be able to retrieve it after the fight if their attackers leave them there. For what it's worth, I think this is a good detail to be aware of and consider, just for the verisimilitude of your fight scenes. Lose articles of clothes or other carried items might be lost or damaged during combat, and it can help ground the fight as an actual event in your story rather than a disconnected interlude.

There was a practice of wearing powder directly in one's hair rather than on the wig. Again, in France, this was tied to the aristocracy, and the practice died with the French Revolution. In England it went out  of fashion with the 1795 Guinea tax on hair powder, and by that point powdered hair had connotations of callous wealth.

All of that said, I don't see a powdered wig, or powered hair, offering much protection from blunt force trauma. As anyone who has ever run their head into a solid object can attest, your hair makes for poor armor. It's great as thermal protection, and this was also true of the peruke, but it's not going to save you from a club to the head.

So, how realistic is it? That's really hard to say. There's some parts of this that aren't at issue, and others that are a little questionable. Could it happen? Sure. Can you get away with writing it? That depends on how well you can sell the chain of events. Ultimately, the realism will depend on how believable you can make the chain of events.

-Starke

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[soup-spoonie]

Looks like I have the trifecta again... Covid, thrush and strept C all at once. Viral, bacterial, and fungal infection FTW 🙄... 'Tis the season to be reminded that being immunosuppressed can really suck sometimes.

[gothhabiba]

The discovery that general paresis was caused by a bacterial microorganism and could be cured with penicillin reinforced the view that biological causes and cures might be discovered for other mental disorders. The rapid and enthusiastic adoption of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), lobotomy, and insulin coma therapy in the 1930s and 1940s encouraged hopes that mental disorders could be cured with somatic therapies. Psychiatry's psychopharmacological revolution began in the 1950s, a decade that witnessed the serendipitous discovery of compounds that reduced the symptoms of psychosis, depression, mania, anxiety, and hyperactivity. Chemical imbalance theories of mental disorder soon followed (e.g., Schilkraudt, 1965; van Rossum, 1967), providing the scientific basis for psychiatric medications as possessing magic bullet qualities by targeting the presumed pathophysiology of mental disorder. Despite these promising developments, psychiatry found itself under attack from both internal and external forces. The field remained divided between biological psychiatrists and Freudians who rejected the biomedical model. Critics such as R. D. Laing (1960) and Thomas Szasz (1961) incited an “anti-psychiatry” movement that publicly threatened the profession's credibility. Oscar-winning film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Douglas & Zaentz, 1975) reinforced perceptions of psychiatric treatments as barbaric and ineffective.

In response to these threats to its status as a legitimate branch of scientific medicine, organized psychiatry embraced the biomedical model. [...] The publication of the DSM-III in 1980 was heralded by the APA as a monumental scientific achievement, although in truth the DSM-III's primary advancement was not enhanced validity but improved interrater reliability. Psychiatrist Gerald Klerman [...] remarked that the DSM-III “represents a reaffirmation on the part of American psychiatry to its medical identity and its commitment to scientific medicine” (p. 539, 1984). Shortly after publication of the DSM-III, the APA launched a marketing campaign to promote the biomedical model in the popular press (Whitaker, 2010a). Psychiatry benefitted from the perception that, like other medical disciplines, it too had its own valid diseases and effective disease-specific remedies. The APA established a division of publications and marketing, as well as its own press, and trained a nationwide roster of experts who could promote the biomedical model in the popular media (Sabshin, 1981, 1988). The APA held media conferences, placed public service spots on television and spokespersons on prominent television shows, and bestowed awards to journalists who penned favorable stories. Popular press articles began to describe a scientific revolution in psychiatry that held the promise of curing mental disorder. [...]

United by their mutual interests in promotion of the biomedical model and pharmacological treatment, psychiatry joined forces with the pharmaceutical industry. A policy change by the APA in 1980 allowed drug companies to sponsor “scientific” talks, for a fee, at its annual conference (Whitaker, 2010a). Within the span of several years, the organization's revenues had doubled, and the APA began working together with drug companies on medical education, media outreach, congressional lobbying, and other endeavors. Under the direction of biological psychiatrists from the APA, the NIMH took up the biomedical model mantle and began systematically directing grant funding toward biomedical research while withdrawing support for alternative approaches like Loren Mosher's promising community-based, primarily psychosocial treatment program for schizophrenia (Bola & Mosher, 2003). The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a powerful patient advocacy group dedicated to reducing mental health stigma by blaming mental disorder on brain disease instead of poor parenting, forged close ties with the APA, NIMH, and the drug industry. Connected by their complementary motives for promoting the biomedical model, the APA, NIMH, NAMI, and the pharmaceutical industry helped solidify the “biologically-based brain disease” concept of mental disorder in American culture. Whitaker (2010a) described the situation thus:

In short, a powerful quartet of voices came together during the 1980s eager to inform the public that mental disorders were brain diseases. Pharmaceutical companies provided the financial muscle. The APA and psychiatrists at top medical schools conferred intellectual legitimacy upon the enterprise. The NIMH put the government's stamp of approval on the story. NAMI provided moral authority. This was a coalition that could convince American society of almost anything… (p. 280).

–Brett J. Deacon, "The biomedical model of mental disorder: A critical analysis of its validity, utility, and effects on psychotherapy research." Clinical Psychology Review 33 (2013), 846–861. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2012.09.007

[itsallmadonnasfault]

Let’s get this out of the way: She looked great. Sure, we could talk about Madonna’s face — about how we require aesthetic perfection from women, demand they stay frozen in amber after 40, then become cruel if they try too hard to maintain the appearance that’s tied to their economic and cultural value — but it’s actually the least interesting thing about her. And if that’s what you wanna talk about, you clearly were not at her Celebration Tour at Chase Center in San Francisco on Tuesday night, because if you had been, the only thing you would say about Madonna’s appearance is: Bitch looked great.

Even more impressive? This show was rescheduled from October, because the whole Celebration Tour was postponed for six months after a bacterial infection put Madonna in a medically induced coma for several days. Then she got better, got back to rehearsals and went on the damn tour, because she’s Madonna.

KQED

[crtter]

My cat Quiche caught a bacterial ear infection somehow while I was spending time at my sister’s house and I returned home to see he had a swollen puffy ear. He’s already doing much better but I just wanted to say that the treatment the vet gave him (along with the meds of course) was giving him a temporary “earring” made out of a tied IV bag tube so his ear won’t build up fluid anymore until it heals fully. The world’s first punk cat.

[marabarl-and-marlbara]

hi mara,

i feel a deep and bittersweet connection to the way that you relate the nature of the 'sinistral,' their material nature, eventual annihilation, separation from the righteous, and betrayal at the false promises of the right-hand. except, i'm right-handed. i sincerely do not believe that i'm promised any kind of absolution or subsumption into the body, yet according to what you've written, i must be. i'm 'dextral.'

this might sound very silly, but i also have amblyopia, meaning my left eye is significantly stronger and more acute than my right. is that relevant? the first time that i heard sinister and dexter in reference to chirality was in the optometry terms, and the asymmetry of my vision has been extremely significant in my life. i don't know if it means anything but i'm very curious to hear your thoughts.

hi jennycrisis;

need you feel connection or favor for faith to take place? i:d been thinking about this today: that faith might best be found in places that go against our wants or favors, that the further one slips away from deeper loves (the types of loves that a person is want to make exception for; ie: (writing like a scientologist disconnectionist) you might want to hold on-to your family and closest friends, but is that what the faith asks of you? or are you asking the faith to bend to your want?), the further one is driven into DESPERATION!, and somewhere in that state is where faith must exist where all-else has become barren and withered.

where the bacterial will has its strongest hold is in consideration of relationship and connection; i fault daily in pursuit of perfectly adhering to the will and etiquette that faith would ask of me: as i hold that, may-be i am absolutely terrified of death, of annihilation, of the strengthening light of Doomsday overhead finding more ways to creep over me in my room; may-be i have found myself in some gross belief that has led me to lovelessness and that i ought to drop it and pursue CONNECTION! and embrace the love of others as they offer it to me; my dear mom, my few friends i (sinfully) make exception for as-though it were a lesser sin for me to grandfather in relationships; occasional music, even. yet there is some part of me so tightly bound to faith that never do those thoughts pass without the chasing thought of "these desires i have are just confusions against the will."

a life born of spirit will die as spirit and become yet immortal, despite these feelings temporary; a life born of earth will die as earth and become yet lost to the pit sloughed down deep within that place where the potter had marred his first creation in favor of the successor; the fear of death and desire to live does not dissuade death from honoring its covenant with us; nor heaven; nor sheol.

the eye and the hand: this is background detail in the silly little Gracecon story i wrote tied around a silly background detail about the first prophet May of The Great Confusion (succeeding The Great Controversy), leading to sight of the garden with which the potters discards and successes (us persons left and right, holding residue and liquid respectively) and the knowledge of a true technology with which the illusion and garden each may be bridged and the test of material can be ascertained: as-is: the assessment of chirality is imperfect and based off of earliest preference for handedness as closest accurate 'tell' of this material. as stupid and simple as it is; chirality (may-be inaccurately used here; but preference for left/right) expresses itself through eyes and brains and hands and feet and such-and-such, but somehow through bizarre common cultural contexts 'we' popularly always go by the hand.

take care; some sermon notes for you.

[buggbuzz]

You should be allowed to kill during the exam. Just 1 person

this is actually really funny cause it's reminding me of how the professor said she added a couple problems just because my friend kept asking her specific questions

and everyone turned to look at him and he was just like "...everyone gets one kick 😞" LMAOOOO

anyways the exam wasn't objectively terrible, it was lowkey my fault for letting my stardew fixation get in the way, but wow talk about a thorough ass test! the short response wanted a full flow chart of the process of RT-PCR (with enzymes and temperatures) and the long response wanted a full explanation of how i would synthesize a hormone (EPO) excreted from the human kidney that required glycosylation with thorough details on how each step and technique worked and why i picked them 😭😭😭

i actually got a perfect score on the short response and almost a perfect score on the long response but i was so unsure of how exactly cloning worked and didnt wanna say something false that i glossed over that which cost me 8/10 points for that part💔💔

since i really wanna talk abt this tho cause im lowkey proud of what i came up with:

since a human hormone is probably produced by a pretty large gene i'd want something bigger than a regular plasmid or bacteriophage. since i need proteins to be produced, a cosmid or ti vector are also off the table (because the viral capsid and plant cell wall would greatly interfere with extraction), and since i need a post-translational modification (glycosylation) performed i need a eukaryotic vector, eliminating bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs), which leaves the best vector as a yeast artificial chromosome (YAC).

then, because i figured if any gene was gonna have alternative gene splicing it was gonna be the one for some fancy human hormone that regulates blood synthesis, i wanted to extract an mRNA transcript (if i'd just said i would isolate it from a pig kidney or smth i would've gotten more points😭😭😭) that i'd then synthesize cDNA for through RT PCR to eliminate any introns.

since that was like 90% of what i could guess was necessary without more information about EPO or yeast transformation, i kinda just picked random extraction, chromatography, and verification techniques for the rest of it. i said i'd assume that the yeast would excrete the protein like the kidney cells would, meaning i'd just extract the buffer, use some salts to dehydrate the buffer so the hydrophobic proteins would clump together, centrifuge it to make them collect into a pellet, use size-exclusionary chromatography to isolate the presumably-large EPOs from the other proteins, then use X ray crystallography to verify the protein extracted was indeed EPO. i really wanted to mention western blotting but i wasn't very sure of how i'd describe it beyond the double antibody thing (which i LOVE) so i didnt wanna risk it lol.

[etherhart]

Hey, you seem to know about warhammer 40k right? I have a simple question about it. What are the basic factions? I want to get into the lore, but I don't even know of anything other than the imperium of man. Could you please help me? (This is an invitation to infodump btw)

Oh my god someone ASKING me to infodump??? This website is amazing ok so

The Imperium of Man is the biggest one, and the one most people know. A whole lot of humans who worship an emperor who may or may not be alive as a god, most live in huge hive cities on planets loosely held together by nightmarish bureaucracy and fascist cruelty. Space marines, Sisters of Battle, The Inquisition, all them. They’re led by a council of lords from earth, and as a rule genocidally hostile to anything that isn’t an emperor worshipping human. Tied to the Imperium is the Adeptus Mechanicum, an allied faction obsessed with ancient technology based out of mars. They worship a machine god and try to replace their own body parts with implants as much as possible, in addition to maintaining colossal war robots called titans.

The Chaos Gods or Ruinous Powers are 4 warp beings so powerful they have become able to spread their influence into real space, and have become immensely influential by doing so. Their societies are generally made up of corrupted humans and demons (manifestations of tiny fragments of a particular god) and exist primarily to spread the power of the warp. The four are Khorne, god of war/violence (and the blood god of skull throne fame), Nurgle, god of life in the bacterial sense, Slaanesh, god of excess, and Tzeentch, god of ambition. They were the Imperiums main threat for a long time and caused the state of decay it is now in.

The Eldar or Aeldari are space elves. They live a long time, control warp magic better, and some of them can see the future. They were once the dominant power in the galaxy, but their society was corrupted by excess in post-scarcity and they gave birth to slaanesh, killing most and destroying their home worlds. The three surviving groups were those who avoided the disaster - the Craftworld Eldar who had flown away on huge ships, preserving their way of life through discipline, the Dark Eldar or Dhrukari who escaped into pocket dimensions and preserved their way of life through torture orgies, and the Exodites, who had already fled to custom planets populated with beautiful nature and dinosaurs.

There are the Tyranids, an impossibly vast galactic invader hive mind that just wants to consume everything it finds. Mostly just Zerg type space bugs, but they do have “gene stealers” that infiltrate human planets and create cults designed to destabilize before an invasion.

The Necron were once the most powerful beings in the galaxy, slept for 60 million years on tomb worlds, and are just now waking up to recreate their empire. They are soulless killing machine robots for the most part bc of some ancient mythological trickery, but the few nobles with personalities are typically pretty funny.

The T’au are a relatively minor faction that get a lot of attention because they are so unique - they are technologically advancing, which is rare, and tolerant of other species in their society, which is UNHEARD OF. They aren’t very big, but they get a lot of fanfare because (they’re cool) they figh alongside humans and other alien species as the only diplomats in the galaxy.

The Leagues of Votann are space dwarves - they’re also very new, and have not been well established. They are led by ancient AI that knew everything but is now going senile, and have a grudge book they hold forever.

There are also thousands of rogues, one of planets, strange ancient enemies, etc. these are just the big ones.

Feel free to ask if you have specific questions :)

I love talking about this shit

[thegoldenappleofdiscord]

writing a plague will fic (first fic and i'm vaguely terrified) and i was brainstorming some schematics for his plague powers. canonically, we know that his powers are triggered by emotions like loneliness and jealousy (he recalls those memories before unleashing hay fever on nyx), but mostly anger - "he had no real plan. he just had anger."

i'm also curious about what kinds of sickness he can inflict? before reading the book, my personal headcanons were that will could either

a.) give living things illnesses that are mostly eradicated and/or have a cure - because gods' powers and state of being are inherently tied to their image and presence in mortal art, literature, etc, and Apollo's influence is more linked with the arts and medicine than plague - so i figure that this lesser known power of his would make it so that it is both rare for his children to possess plague abilities, AND make it so that the plagues they can unleash are of diseases that don't have as much an impact on our societies anymore, similar to how that aspect of Apollo doesn't have much influence on society. (idk if that makes any sense at all but it went through the brainrot meat grinder and came out semi-conherent so that is a firm win.)

...or b.) take preexisting disease and heighten its effects and/or spread it! like if someone were to have a cold, he could escalate their symptoms until they have a flu or smth.

a slew of more random questions that writing this fic has conjured up:

- could will heighten certain parts of a condition? if he were to give someone bubonic plague, could he control the rate at which the disease spreads? could he increase said person's state of delirium - which would blur some lines, since plague is defined as a contagious bacterial disease and delirium is a syndrome??

- can he control animals that carry plague/disease? communicate with them? ( omg. younger solace freaking out on nyc subways bc the rats won't shut up; him never being bitten by mosquitoes because they avoid him...)

anyway that's the end of my spiel (for now.) i've just had so many questions about plague will (would love to hear yall's own hcs and explanations!!!) since the book's release and uuggggHHh it frustrates me to no end that it wasn't brought up again. like. do you know what you've done to me??? this is worse than the goddamn carrot on a stick charade, y'all took the carrot, cut it up, and offered my starving ass 1/100th of a portion and expected me to be full!!!