#toa rework

[crackship-connoisseur]

Tales of Arcadia rework

The Basics

I can't really write a full summary of the plot because there's not much I have to fix about it except for making the major changes make sense with the general follow-through. With that being said, here are the major changes in my rework that you'll need to know about:

Changelings are now Woodtrolls. While they might be frequently referred to as changelings and still maintain their ability to shapeshift from a troll form to a human form, they do not have any connection to a human familiar, and instead have a divine connection to Nari (hence why they will take on a more tree-like appearance in their troll forms, which I have yet to design). This change is due to the parallels between the antisemitic nature of changelings and blood libel, and its portrayal of it in the show.

Goblins either wont exist, or will also be heavily altered like changelings. I haven't decided how much narrative weight I want the goblins to have in my rework compared to the canon, but if I decide they should, they will get as much an extensive revamp as changelings. This change is due to the general antisemitic nature of goblins.

Jim will become a "changeling" instead of a half-troll. I personally just think him becoming a half-troll defeats the entire message of Trollhunters, and completely disregards all of the foreshadowing that was pointing towards him becoming a changeling specifically. It would also just be more interesting and tie The Arcane Order into the plot much earlier. I also think its a good compromise for people who like both versions of Jim.

Both Seklos and Gaylen are all-powerful G-ds. While Gaylen will still be responsible for creating the Akiridions, Seklos will be responsible for creating The Arcane Order, who will go on to create the earth. Otherwise, the story will remain generally the same. This change is to tie 3Below in more with the other installments, and make it much more relevant than it is in the canon.

Merlin will ultimately be the final antagonist. I feel like I don't have to justify this. He is an asshole and I hate him.

The Arcane Order will get a redemption. Whatever I specifically do to fix Rise of the Titans, it will involve a more complex version of The Arcane Order, where their motivations for the destruction of earth will revolve around the grief of losing their parents, Seklos and Gaylen, rather than just destroying it for funzies. They will also get heavy redesigns to remove any offensive depictions of certain cultures.

That being said, I do not consider ANYTHING RotT establishes as canon. Nobody dies, nobody will time travel, and there will certainly be no offensive portrayal of male-pregnancy.

Every character will generally get more fleshed out and will have better character arcs. I will also put more focus on dismantling the idea of destiny, and how trauma affects people.

I MAY NOT CONSIDER WIZARDS CANON EITHER. If do decide to keep Wizards, it will need a complete rehaul to fix all of the plot holes, but otherwise I just think its a dumb premise in general and the plot holes are quite daunting.

With that being said, I may have Jim, Claire, Blinky, Merlin, etc. stay in Arcadia so they're present for the plot of 3Below. Regardless of what I do with Wizards, this will most likely stay the case so there can be more meaningful interactions between the whole cast.

Everything else is pretty much just nitty gritty stuff like world-building expansion and character dynamics. I don't exactly know what my end goal for this project is, so I don't have anything on an episode-by-episode basis by any means, these are just the rules I'm operating by when I make fan content for this franchise.

Patch Notes

Original magic system changes + plot changes (2022)

Characters

Claire + Jim redesigns (2022), Bellroc redesign sketches (2022), Bellroc redesign (2022), Arcane Order Jimtober redesigns (2022)

Fanfics

Links to be inserted

You can find everything else under #toa rework

[spookedbees]

thalia casting announcement means i have an excuse to redesign her!!!

[thatcatangelwriter]

sometimes when things get too hard annabeth disapears. It's not like she does it on purpose. Being invisible is not something she chose willingly. It had been thrusted on her by her mortal family and athena. It was all she was as a kid. It's what made her survive on the streets.

so she regresses back into that instinct. Fast yet big movements in her navigation. Soft steps. Seizing blind softs. Silence in her movements. Barely audible breathing. Hand always on her dagger. Nobody notices not even herself most of the time

Until after the war

Percy needed her help with something but he couldn't find her. He asks around and nobody has seen her. An hour passes and she's nowhere to be found. He starts freaking out until she pops up behind him like nothing happened. He brushes it off thinking its just the war making him jumpy. Until it happens again and again. After a nasty visit to her mortal family, the anniversary of her running away, the anniversary of the war, conversations about luke whenever things get too emotionally loaded she vanishes.

He tries looking for her asks the other campers around they search but they never find her she always finds them first. He thinks for the longest time that she uses her cap but when he finds it her room and shes nowhere to be seen he gets even more confused.

How does she manage to hide away like this ? The entire athena cabin is looking for her as well and they still can't find her. That is until thalia shows up and finds her in less than 5 minutes. When annabeth is gone and thalia is around shes never gone for long

and that is how percy realizes how annabeth hides away and why. It was all she knew as a kid and now and its why thalia always was the one to find her first because she was the same. That's how they became family and percy can't change that. He can't rewrite her childhood

He'll never find her when she hides so he just has to hope he's enough for her to come back

[falling-hand-in-unlovable-hand]

i just fucking realized something. why didn't jim's MAGIC armor get deactivated by the anti magic beam during the last fight during ROTT??? i can't even

[siren-darkocean]

You know your down bad when you have Bionicle The Legend Reborn playing off your TV in the dark at almost 1am and working on your Bionicle fics

[gigamesh-mocs]

Toa Pohatu revamped, Inika scale V3

After some feedback and experimentation, I have reworked Pohatu who’s proportions are now more similar to his original sets.

[altcissor]

Im gonna get back on toa in a bit with more oc content maybe a redesign or a rework cause i got a friend in the serie heheheheheheh i need more toa moots with ocs raaah

[bioniclemanga]

[ Chapter 2 REVAMP (2023) - Part 2 ]

[ Previous ] -- [ Next ]

So I took out that whole battle scene with Onua in this revamp... while I was reworking the script, I really didn't see how much sense that battle made, and it didn't actually occur in the canon plot. And it was something I had created YEARS ago to add ~*~drama~*~ to the comic. Something to build Pohatu's and Kopaka's friendship. So instead, with this version, I focused more on the character's themselves and added the building kinship between them in the dilemmas that they were put in, rather than duking it out.

Besides... would Onua actually go out of his way to attack someone? Considering that in Chapter 4, he is one of the ones to stay behind and question who the Shadow Toa are.

Anyway, thank you for being patient with Chapter 2's release! I am working on Chapter 8 at the moment, and should return to the weekly updates soon.

–

If you wish to support me regardless, you can visit my Ko-Fi here.

Or, you can consider commissioning me! My commissions will remain open, regardless. But I do require you to ask me about my availability before any payment is done!

[blackjackkent]

As I have done for the last two major patch drops, here's a collection of things that stood out for me in the Patch 7 patch notes! :D

There's quite a lot of them - and this isn't even close to the whole list of changes, so definitely check out the full patch notes here if you're interested.

-----

First of all, the things I'm actively excited about:

Introducing 'Evil Endings': Brand new cinematic endings for the truly villainous playthroughs. (Exciting! I've started pondering what my next BG3 liveblog will be - though I might switch to another game for a while first after Rakha is done - and I am starting to lean towards reworking Alexis, my bard, into an evil-run Minthara-mancer. So... intrigued to see more of this in the future!)

Added our very own Mod Manager, which lets you browse, install, and use mods created by the community. (I don't know details about the existing modding process but the new system seems like it'll be pretty intuitive so - hype!)

You can now start Custom Mode games using Honour Mode mechanics when starting a new playthrough. You'll be able to do this via the 'Ruleset' dropdown. (Neat! I may do this as well on my next liveblog playthrough - not the difficulty changes but just forcing me to stick to my choices with one save.)

The kuo-toa that promised to build you an army will now support you in the final battle. Unless they all died in Act I. (Amazing. I'm unironically in love with this addition.)

The help that the Gondians promised for the final battle will now arrive in the form of a friendly Steel Watcher. Apologies from Zanner Toobin for the delay.

Added a dialogue option asking for a kiss in more paths of Wyll's epilogue dialogue.

A bug that had been preventing Wyll’s romance greeting from triggering has now been fixed, so players in Act III who have a stable, loving, and committed relationship with Wyll will now see his romance greeting triggering correctly.

In Act II, Minthara will now react to you having knocked her out in Act I.

Made the romance scene at night with Wyll in Act III unskippable if it triggers to avoid accidentally skipping it and not being able to finish the romance arc.

To improve her chances of survival, Hope now has a new passive called Last Hope that grants her Death Ward for free when she enters combat.

Fixed a bug causing Dark Urge characters to get renamed after using the Magic Mirror. (This threw me for such a loop when I accidentally did it with Rakha.)

When playing as the Dark Urge, if you invite her, Alfira will now actually join your party as a controllable character if there's room for her in your party setup. Temporarily, of course.

Fixed several issues with the portrait that Oskar gives you. Principally, the image on the portrait will now be that of the active character claiming the reward, regardless of their position on the Party Line. (THANK THE GODS. I'm still not over having so many feels about Hector commissioning a portrait of Karlach to have after she was gone, and Oskar cheerfully handing him a painting of Jaheira to look at instead. XD )

Karlach will now tell you her backstory if you reach the point of no return in the Shadow-Cursed Lands even if you didn't confront the paladins of Tyr.

You can now return Mol's eyepatch to her when you find her in the Guildhall.

Fixed the Monastic Robes stretching into a violent-looking point when you wake up on the beach after falling from the nautiloid. (Thank god - this happened all the time with Hector and it drove me crazy. Hopefully this means it's been fixed in other parts of the game too.)

-----

And then the changes and bug fixes that made me laugh:

If Dror Ragzlin finds himself inside the spider pit [in honor mode], he'll try his best to befriend the spiders residing there with a new spell called Arachnid Compulsion so they can band together to fight the real enemy - you.

Malus Thorm has a new Legendary Action called Grasping Appendage. ( Oh dear. 😬 )

We noticed some of you hiccoughing bubbles, so the action for washing yourself with soap and sponges is now called 'Use' instead of 'Consume'.

You can no longer cheese the Leap of Faith trial at the Gauntlet of Shar by just clicking the final platform and letting your character pathfind their way there. Shar threatened to smite us if we didn't fix this one.

Fixed Minthara's body sometimes turning invisible on the Level Up screen. (We sorta liked the floating-head-and-hands look, but hey.) (Eyyyy, I ran into this in Rakha's run and it made me laugh a lot. XD )

Added a new idle animation for Minsc at camp - Boo may or may not have taught him some tai chi.

Karlach will no longer brush the shaved side of her head.

If you're in holographic form in the epilogue, Wyll won't automatically assume he's talking to Lae'zel.

Companions should now be more sympathetic to Astarion fleeing from the sun.

Fixed several issues (related to resurrecting characters via Withers, restructuring the party at night, and automatic camp night scenes) that would trap you in an eternal slumber, unable to end a Long Rest.

Fixed several occurrences of Wyll still having an exclamation mark above his head when he already told you everything he had to say. 

Minthara does, in fact, now have something to say about Orin after you kill her.

Fixed the fade-to-black after Karlach's scene in Avernus at the end of the game, which would give you a very brief glimpse of Game Developer Land.

Fixed some issues with Long Rest: Loading a save made during a Long Rest could cause a crash and you could sometimes get stuck in a Long Rest forever and ever, amen.

Fixed a blocker related to Orin's dagger, which will now respawn near the altar if you hurled her into a chasm and a cultist picked it up before you did. (Because it's bound to her, it would zip back to her corpse in the chasm, lost forevermore.)

Monks' Clench of the North Wind spell now targets up to 2 characters at Level 9. They just have to clench a little harder.

Priestess Gut will no longer hit herself with her own conditions. Silly gob-gob.

We've suggested to Yurgir that when he's invisible he should take advantage of it and actually try to move around a little so that he's harder to find.

Fixed some technical names showing up for each of Ansur's limbs. Naming them all 'Ansur' was the ansur.

Raphael can no longer steal souls from creatures that narratively don't have souls, such as Undead and Constructs.

Kled doesn't have Dror Ragzlin's Legendary Actions anymore. Dror's not one for sharing.

Fixed how the Chest of the Mundane handles item stacks higher than its maximum. (It should no longer gobble up your enormous coin stack and spit back a measly 21 cups in return.)

Prevented summons and followers like Glut from being able to consume Noblestalk. Yes, your Mage Hand probably ate it. No, we don't know where its mouth is.

When Withers resurrects an avatar, the Dream Guardian will no longer immediately prompt another nearby avatar to loot them for a tadpole. Similarly, dead, dismissed avatars will no longer trigger this same prompt. Some decorum, please.

When multiple characters in the party discover a trap or hidden item, only one will comment on it. We figured you don't need four people telling you to watch out for the same trap at the same time.

You can now swap out party members by speaking to the companion you want to replace even if the one you want to replace them with is Wild-Shaped. What your companion will think of you replacing them with a sheep is another story.

Fixed multiple spots where Perception checks were being made through solid objects.

Elminster should no longer react to crimes that don't affect him. (We distracted him with some Stilton.)

Fixed an issue on multiplayer where Gale would briefly appear to be in his undies for the client if the host has the Donate UI open and Gale is wearing magical robes that he can consume.

Fixed a bug that would let you waltz your way through destructible walls without actually destroying them. (You could attempt to attack the wall and your character would pathfind right through it in search of a comfortable spot from which to take a swing.)

Bald characters with the Wet condition will no longer have darker scalps.

You can no longer loot the underwear of non-recruited companions when you knock them out. (Justice for Minthara's dignity! \o/ )

Fixed a split screen issue where Invisible characters would sometimes not render at all for a second player joining the game. We need them to be invisible, but not that invisible.

Fixed a bug where your party members would very quickly change out of their armour and into their cosy camp clothes when you talked to them after having left the Astral Plane. We don't really blame them for being so desperate to hit the hay.

Fixed an issue where resurrecting a mind-controlled Nightsong would cause enemies to become allied to you.

During the final battle, backup companions being called upon with ally abilities will now appear with some clothes on for the occasion.

You can no longer use the Active Search feature to bypass the booby-trapped display case in Ramazith's Tower and pick up the key inside it. Smarty-pantses.

Improved Lumbar support: Lumbar will now stand still after you paid him to hit him.

Fixed a bug where interacting with the crate full of explosive toys in Rivington could cause you to get stuck in an endless loop of crime dialogues (being interrogated and sent to prison) and/or in combat with temporarily hostile NPCs.

Fixed a bug where dropping or selling certain items looted from the Lower City graveyard could cause NPCs to react as though you'd committed the crime of moving a corpse.

Fixed Cordrane the Recent being able to raise a zombie in Sorcerous Sundries when he shouldn't be able to, like when he's dead or Silenced.

Shadowheart is now more engaged with the flora and fauna at camp. (I don't know what this means but I hope it means she plays with the owlbear and Scratch.)

A camp night scene with Shadowheart will no longer trigger if she's not in the party and, uh, also dead.

Fixed Gale's 'splosion sometimes not showing correctly, meaning you'd get a Game Over without knowing why.

Fixed your player character introducing themselves with the wrong name when talking to Mizora.

Fixed Avatar Lae'zel behaving like a companion at the end of the tutorial and telling you (or telling herself) to hurry.

Kagha will now be imbibing if she's at the tiefling party. (I didn't know Kagha could even COME to the tiefling party. O.O Is this if Halsin's dead? )

Fixed Abdirak's self-flagellation idle animation. (Game dev must be a weird job sometimes. :P )

Ward Magmar and Ward Pistle, the duergar at Grymforge, will now make a snide remark if you're playing a small race.

Shadowheart and Lae'zel will now have new equipment if it was taken during the nautiloid escape and they have travelled sufficiently far to realistically acquire it before getting recruited.

Benryn will no longer follow you to camp or leave with you through a waypoint while you're in the process of escorting him out of the burning building at Waukeen's Rest.

Fixed Korrilla being killable in the goblin camp prison after she kills Priestess Gut. This was causing her to spawn as a corpse later on in Act III.

Fixed a bug where leaving the Shadowfell could resurrect an unrecruited Shadowheart and have her turn up at your camp anyway. She just liked the cut of your jib.

Karlach's death scene no longer ends abruptly when a non-gith player chooses to leave with Lae'zel.

Fixed a bug where, if you promised Cazador to bring Astarion to him and Astarion was in your party, you could go to Astarion at camp and tell him to replace himself in your party.

Zanner Toobin will now trigger the self-destruct sequence correctly instead of suddenly forgetting he was supposed to be in a panic because of the Steel Watcher Titan.

Told Devella to be more patient and wait until the end of the dialogue before she moves on to Basilisk Gate after being saved from Dolor.

Jogged Nine-Fingers' foggy memory - she will now recognise you when you bring Jaheira to her after she asked you to.

Shadowheart no longer sometimes still thinks that Viconia is alive after having killed her. Poor thing.

Wulbren will no longer comment on Toobin's daughter being dead if Toobin is not present.

Gave Sticky Dondo more lines to yell to sell his wares in the Guildhall. (Thank fuck tbh.)

Fixed player characters and the Narrator talking over each other when interacting with Minsc's relics in his hidden chamber. (MINSC HAS A HIDDEN CHAMBER? I have some hunting to do with Rakha lmao.)

You can no longer open the barricaded doors at the Crimson Draughts apothecary from the inside. We forgot barricades are supposed to work both ways.

Yoinked Sceleritas Fel's hat back from Helsik's desk.

You should no longer potentially see the great empty void of Game Developer Land after starting the epilogue.

Added more lines for Jaheira and Minsc to exclaim during the battle with the Stone Lord.

Fixed a bug where it was possible to get stuck in a dialogue with the Emperor about killing Gortash if you clicked on Gortash's corpse with Karlach (which starts a dialogue, after which she leaves the party and goes to camp) while, with another character, you also clicked on Gortash's body and sent his gauntlet to Karlach via the context menu right before her dialogue ended and she left the party. Yep. You can read it again if you want.

If you fail a pickpocket attempt at High Hall, your allies will no longer become hostile towards you. We reminded them that the fate of the world lies in the balance and that you play a pretty big part in it, thief or not.

Fixed Gortash's title potentially reverting back to 'Archduke Nominee' when reloading a savegame after the ceremony.

Wyll will no longer talk about hunting down Mizora when she's, like, right there.

The 'Embrace Your Potential' quest will now close if you choose to squelch the Astral-Touched Tadpole beneath your toes like a sentient little grape.

Jaheira's journal could at times say she had something to talk to you about, but then she wouldn't discuss it. She's a bit less tight-lipped now, so you know what to do in the city.

Someone pulled the ol' switcheroo on the Eldritch Knight and Battle Master subclass icons. We've switchereed them back.

Fixed a bug where examining a character and then examining an item would merge both character and item into a monstrous model in a single Examine window. The character would also be T-posing and naked.

Removed the turrets from the ground floor of Wyrm's Crossing since they weren't supposed to be there in the first place and never worked.

Fixed an unreachable fruit porridge in Wyrm's Rock. Makes you wonder how it got there in the first place.

Moved an unreachable book ('On the Greater Healing Potion') at Last Light. (Unironically this has driven me crazy on every playthrough.)

If Minthara's camp trousers get blood on them, the spatters will now be spread across them more tastefully rather than concentrated between the legs. (Holy shit.)

Kerz, the half-orc hireling, was wearing clothes that didn't fit properly. We found a tailor and everything's looking spiffy now.

Fixed some particularly intense and alarming-looking smoke coming out of the chimney at the Rivington General.

Gave a skirt to the chicken lady who mentions a skirt.

Companions in Wild Shape at camp will no longer perform their idle animations as though they are still humanoid.

Companions in Wild Shape at camp will no longer perform their idle animations as though they are still humanoid.

Fixed the animation for the Crawling Claw's footsteps. (Fingersteps?)

Fixed Brynna's clothes clipping through her arm and revealing her armpit. She informed us she was not, in fact, begging for a tickle.

Fixed the Graceful Cloth and Mighty Cloth looking like crop tops on male halflings.

The magicians outside of Sorcerous Sundries were yelling and casting spells so loudly that it was hard to hear your companions over them if you spoke to them nearby. We've toned this down and cleaned up the mix.

Added death vocals ('uurghghhh's) for dragonborn and half-orc NPCs.

Fixed the name of a decorative pot in the Colony, which was lying about being a cookpot.

Tweaked the spikes on the artefact in the dialogue where it passes from Shadowheart over to you so it doesn't look like it's impaling you.

Fixed your hand clipping into your face while smearing poo on it.

Told Wyll he doesn't need to hold his sword threateningly close to the chest of small races during his recruitment dialogue.

Fixed Mizora's body popping when she comes to pay Wyll a visit at camp. Save the popping and locking for the club.

Fixed Volo's hand clipping into your head while he performs his highly professional and sanitary surgical intervention.

Fixed the Dream Guardian's leg getting all jittery when they kneel down to let you stab them. The facade of stoicism breaks a little when you can see their legs turn to jelly.

Fixed a bug where biting off Crusher's toe and then defeating him in a fist fight would result in a cinematic where the toe was still present. An embarrassing inconsistency in an otherwise realistic chain of events. (I noticed this on Rakha's run and was judging you so hard, Larian. XD )

Fixed Shadowheart sometimes turning her head concerningly far over her shoulder during her recruitment dialogue at the Emerald Grove.

Fixed minor pops when playing as Avatar Shadowheart if the artefact explodes and kills Lae'zel. (This can happen???)

Fixed your character snapping their body backwards and wibbly-wobbling around as though trying to pass beneath a cursed limbo stick in the cutscene where Kar'niss approaches you in the Shadow-Cursed Lands.

Fixed the chalice that you hold when talking to Jaheira at Last Light vibrating suspiciously after you set it down on the table.

Fixed a Reconstituted Duellist's line getting cut off prematurely. He really, really wanted you to hear him finish saying 'come to my inner chambers'.

Dark Urge characters who have not cured themselves of Bhaal's influence or who have embraced Bhaal at the end of the game will no longer appear in Karlach's final scene as though they didn't just stalk off on a mad hunt for blood.

During Gortash's inauguration, Ravengard's head, sword, and legs will no longer leave his body suspended in the air behind him when he walks down the steps. (😱 )

Fixed a cinematic bug where the submersible would approach the Iron Throne and, the moment it arrived, would nope out and appear to reverse back to the surface.

[tiredspacedragon]

I'm currently in the process of reworking my adaptive Nuva MOCs into Inika builds for a combination of lore, parts-availability, and just-to-see-how-I-like-it reasons, and it's going alright for the most part. The limbs are take 'em or leave 'em in some places, but that's fine. In an ideal world, I'd probably opt to go with custom articulated Nuva limb parts for them all anyway, to keep them connected to their original forms and go for that unified aesthetic. Figuring out what, if anything, to do with Pohatu's hips is proving bothersome, but otherwise I'm very happy with how the torsos have turned out. They've got this lovely armour harness arrangement going on, it's lovely.

What's bothering me is their heads. More specifically, their masks. As it turns out, Inika torsos and Kanohi Nuva do not get along. The shape of the torso's shoulder-pistons just does not mesh with the shape of the masks, leaving it looking like the Toa have no necks. It's great until the masks go on, but then everyone gets uncomfortably beefy, ironically except for Onua and Pohatu. Onua is spared thanks to his unique neck connection, and Pohatu pulls it off because the Kakama Nuva just doesn't have this problem. Don't know why that is exactly, it just doesn't look nearly as squashed on there as the rest. Go figure.

So now I'm stuck with having to decide between just running with beefcake city for the other four, swapping out the masks for custom variants (at least in my imagination, where I could afford to do such a thing), or reworking the heads to give everyone longer necks, which runs the risk of looking kinda uncanny and potentially making them too tall, but it'd probably level out to something decent so idk. I like the Inika torso more than most, but those shoulder pistons are really not friendly to a distressing number of masks. If you've ever tried to give an Inika build character a Great Rau, then you know what I mean.

Stupid realistic shoulder profile turning everyone into football players...

[your-local-squip-fanatic]

So I think I figured out why I'm having such a rough time writing the AU aside from, y'know, creative block: the fact that I'm basically doing it as a rewrite more than making it my own writing more. Trying to rework something in the books to fit DLAU is HARD, and it's only going to get worse once I hit TDP.

So yeah... in short I'm still going to kind of follow the events in ToA, but I can't just make it be that I slap Lester into a scene from canon and call it a day. I've got to do more when I get to original scenes not in the books. Right now trying to get the motivation to write is a pain but hopefully approaching the AU with a new strategy can save myself from gray hairs in my 20s.

I do apologize for taking so long with Ch 5, but sometimes the brain just goes "nah." I'll try to get it out sometime soon- hell I'm aiming to release it on April 8th along with some art for the occasion, hehe def a reason why that day- though again, I'm shit with my own deadlines.

Tldr, im still working on the au my brain just fucking hates me

[theofficersacademy]

Happy August! And happy four-year anniversary to The Officers Academy! We wouldn’t be here without our wonderful community! Our anniversary event is slated to begin soon - stay tuned!

Housekeeping

Current Month in TOA: Lone Moon

Here's where we usually go 'Instead of a Mission Board, we will be running a month-long event!' Of course, we are still running an event (more details below), but this time around the June & July Mission Board will be extended to run through until the end of August. The Unaffiliated requirement remains in effect for the Unaffiliated & Faculty-specific tasks.

The event will run from August 1st to August 31st. Signups are now closed - stay tuned for more information tomorrow at noon EST!

Our monthly submission limit on the site that hosts our event signups has been reset so everyone is free to take the quiz for fun now.

We will be announcing a second Fourth-Year Anniversary activity on August 4th. This will not require IC participation. Stay tuned for the details.

Please don’t forget to leave feedback on our feedback poll for this month! We do check the responses regularly, so if you have concerns during the event, the feedback poll is an appropriate place to pop in. (Alternatively, the mods' dms are always open.)

Important Updates

This year, in lieu of suggestions and voting for a select number of rank chart & class additions to TOA, we're adding a whole bunch of new prizes to expand the rank chart. Ree's been hard at work coming up with a delightful spread of goodies to choose from.

You can check out the new additions on the rank chart itself, or read on for a summary of additions!

General updates

All new personal weapons and lord event classes have had stats added to the manual, and old ones have been rebalanced

All swords now have a base 15% crit

Swordmaster now grants a new ability, Pursuit, along with Astra, and anyone who has mastered Swordmaster can automatically add it to their stats page. This ability grants a 40% base chance for the unit to make a followup attack, which increases the more points of speed they have, independent of the enemy's speed

Air Superiority now grants +2 speed just by having it equipped

Tantivy has had its dex buff removed and now grants +1 strength and +4 avoid as long as the unit is not under the effect of any ally passives, heals, or rallies

Hagakure Blade has been reworked to have the brave sword stat line, but deals magic damage and keeps its effectiveness against magic wielders/classes. Removed its HP cost and the Miracle ability

Archer now only grants Hit+. Bowrange+ has been moved to Sniper mastery. Anyone who has currently claimed Archer mastery will lose Bowrange+ unless they have Sniper mastered

Great Knight now allows the choice of B+ Lance or B+ Axe to access

Sword Avoid+ has been moved from Dancer mastery to C rank sword and its buff lowered from +6 to +4. If you have mastered Dancer, you will have Dazzle and Refresh, but will no longer have access to Sword Avoid+

The War Monk class has been granted Brawl Avoid+ as an additional mastery reward. If you have mastered this class already, you may add this to your stats page.

The Apocalypse spell has been updated

Rank Chart Expansion

New Intermediate classes: Martial Monk - C Gauntlets D Faith | Mastery: Qi Adept Lance Fighter - C Lance | Mastery: Backup

New Advanced classes: Wolf Knight - C Sword, Lance, OR Axe A Riding | Mastery: Hobble Dread Fighter - B Sword OR Lance B Reason | Mastery: Chaos Style Halberdier - A Lance | Mastery: Seal Speed Enchanter - C Sword B Gauntlets | Mastery: Convoy

New Master classes: Martial Master - A Gauntlets A Faith | Mastery: Diffuse Healer High Priest - B Gauntlets B+ Faith B Authority | Mastery: Self-Healing Griffon Knight - C Sword A Faith A Flying | Mastery: Clear the Way Mage Cannoneer - A Reason A Heavy Armor | Mastery: Let Fly

The Mage Cannoneer class comes with a completely different set of 14 weapons built-in, but cannonballs have limited uses and this class cannot use any other kind of weapon. As a tradeoff, cannonballs do not take up an inventory slot for the Mage Cannoneer class and they have access to all 14 at any given time

New Sword additions: Georgios (A rank) Cinquedea (A rank) Alacrity (A rank)

New Lance additions: Flame Lance (C rank) Venomous (A rank) Adaptability (A rank)

New Axe additions: Hurricane Axe (A rank) Merciless (A rank)

New Bow additions: Lendabair (A rank) No Distractions (A rank)

New Gauntlet additions: Shielding Art (C rank) Flashing Fist Art (A rank)

New Reason additions: Nova (A rank) Resonance (A rank)

New Faith additions: Freeze (A rank) Fracture (A rank)

New Authority additions: Battalion: Garreg Mach Youths (D rank) Battalion: Veteran Duelists (C rank) Battalion: Brigid Hunters (B rank) Battalion: Opera Company Volunteers (A rank) Dual Assist (A rank) Keen Insight (A rank)

New Heavy Armor additions: Arms Shield (A rank) Resolve (A rank) Allied Defense (A)

New Riding additions: Momentum (A rank) Reforge (A rank) Pivot (A rank)

New Flying additions: Air Raid (A rank) Pincer Attack (A rank) Detoxify (A rank)

Other

August Mun Birthdays: Arden (9th), Ren (20th), Maxie (28th)

August Muse Birthdays: Julius (1st), Ephraim (1st), Eirika (1st), Zelkov (2nd), Laslow (7th), Lumera (7th), Alfred (8th), Patty (10th), Yuri (12th), Roy (14th), Ares (14th), Eldigan (14th), Edward (15th), Lyn (21st), Lachesis (22nd), Corrin (M) (25th), Frederick (26th), Sophia (27th), Soleil (31st)

First-year mun anniversaries this month: Kano (4th), Serena (24th), Kristopher (31st)

Third-year mun anniversaries this month: Soji (8th), Maxie (9th), Mirae (21st), Lilly (29th)

Fourth-year mun anniversaries this month: Ree (5th)

First-year muse anniversaries this month: Linhardt (4th), Sophia (4th), Seliph (10th), Anankos (19th), Camilla (23rd), Michalis (28th), Lloyd (31st)

Third-year muse anniversaries this month: Marth (8th), Farina (9th)

Muses who have been in the group for a solid year will also be granted an Academy Brooch to put in their inventory. It doesn’t do anything. It just lets others know your character has been around the block. These characters are also granted a new opportunity to change houses if they wish to do so.

- The House Leaders

[mayuichi]

WISHING EVERYONE A HAPPY NEW YEAR EVEN IF YOU DONT CELEBRATE IT!! HOPE THIS YEAR WILL BRING MANY GOOD THINGS UPON YOU AND IM SURE YOU CAN GO THROUGH ANY HARDSHIP!

TAKE CARE OF YOU AND ILL SEE YOU SOON WITH EITHER SOME REWORK OR NEW POSTS (since i have a whole winter list on standby)

LOVE YOUUU !!! <3<3<3<3

appreciation art toward my besti once again! you draw so well pook PS: SUSUCRE, SUSHI, TOA, I LOVE YOU! YOURE THE BEST DONT EVER CHANGE ♥

[coldgoldlazarus]

Tales Of The Masks is such a funny book to me.

---

Because if you look at it from the perspective of its framing device? I'm not a fan. The mask hunt conceit worked well in 2001, when the Toa were just starting out, needed to learn to work together, etc. Then repeating that the next year with the Krana felt a bit more forced, but was still sorta acceptable. But doing it a third time with the Nuva masks felt deeply stale, even as a kid, and on top of that felt like it ran counter to the premise of the Nuva Masks being one-of-a-kind upgrades brought about by their transformation. That's not even if you also consider the whole thematic angle of the mask's power extending to those in their vicinity, something something Unity something.

Looking for masks that really shouldn't make sense to exist in the first place, somehow got overlooked when they were searching every nook and cranny in 01, and just felt on some level sisyphean after gaining and then losing the Golden Masks that had all that stuff in one nice package anyway, just never really sat right with me. And now I have an extra layer of frustration from it given how some people point to that as proof of the early years being shallow and kiddie, unlike the later years with their edginess and violence.

But at the same time, when you actually read it, Tales Of The Masks also kind of embodies a lot of what made the early years so great; the fun dynamics among the Toa, the island's many mysteries and more and more signs that the Turaga knew so much more than they were letting on, and just some genuinely sweet moments of development of these initially-simple characters, taking advantage of the breathing room afforded to them by the lower stakes, that the Ignition years just couldn't or didn't make time for.

---

Idunno. It's frustrating to me, because I've seen people lately dismissing 01-03 as nothing but shallow collectathons, and honestly it feels like G2 made that same mistake to some extent. And on some level I can understand where they're coming from, because yeah, it did lean on the collection aspect a little too hard at times, to its own detriment at times. (See again, all my complaints about the Nuva masks.)

At the same time, I feel like painting it as just "good guys find masks, fight bad guys, end of story" is just, a painfully reductive and bad-faith reading of those years, when they had so much else going for them.

The worldbuilding wasn't as broad and expansive, but it felt more intimate, with the MNOG games in particular really fleshing out the Matoran culture and day-to-day; while also leaving enough open to the imagination, paired with the pervading sense of mystery and unknowns waiting around every corner, to use that as a launching-off point.

The characters were pretty simple, yeah, but they worked great as part of a dynamic, with distinctive and enjoyable personalities thst could be played off each other to fantastic effect - and still are, given a lot of the posts that circulate the Bonkle corner of tumblr.

And heck, even the supposedly simple "good versus evil" conflict wasn't what it seemed at first glance, with the Rahi being innocent animals under Makuta's control. The Bohrok ultimately turned out to have a good and important purpose, that whole conflict only happening because of the series of catastrophic events that led to the Matoran being displaced to where they weren't supposed to be in the first place. And even Makuta himself was supposed to be more sorely misguided than genuinely evil, until his rework in 2004. (Whereas the later years, if anything, felt a lot more straightforward and shallow about that a lot of the time, even if the presentation was more visceral. Why do the bad guys do the bad things? Because they want power. Why do they want power? Because they're the bad guys.)

---

Point is, I feel like Tales Of The Masks is kind of an interesting case study of both some of the best and worst aspects of the early years' writing both evident in full force. For many years I considered it my least favorite of the Chronicles books just because of its framing device, and it was only on revisiting it more recently that I was able to re-evaluate my opinion, and appreciate the genuinely good stories contained within. I just wish certain others would give it that same reconsideration.

[crackship-connoisseur]

FUCK I TOTALLY FORGOT I CAN JUST POST THESE HERE MY GD anyway here's "canon" junter with their kids i haven't talked about my toh and toa reworks here yet but i'm planning on it these are part of that

I FORGOT TO WRITE THE KID'S NAMES ON THE REF but their oldest is Kalev and their youngest is 'Avigayil ❤️

[quillowisp]

Tomb of Annihilation Racial Issues

I'm working on Tomb of Annihilation right now. I'm quickly realizing that I'm going to have to try and work around some racism issues in the original text. Mainly I'm going to need to add a ton of lore. I'm hoping through my research I'll find some rework that someone else more qualified than me has already made.

But until then Imma have to do it myself. If anyone knows of any resources for this sort of thing feel free to dm me.

I have to pick a real world culture to make up some additional lore from, so far I've heard ToA is trying to imitate Zulu? But I'm also thinking somewhere in the Congo area would work