#turnskin

[redbourkol]

EDDIE SKETCHES

[madmonksandmaenads]

Ophite Gnosis: Everything is a snake.

Cainite Gnosis: Everything is a horse.

Modern Gnosis: You are a furry.

[rathologic]

Do you know "Baur-meges"? The collection of steppe legends? There is something about werewolfs. A werewolf is able to live for years with you, and then it turns when you do not notice! Then don't be surprised, when your family all at a sudden will be in the cemetery.

Pardon the weird phrasing (it's the 2006 localization; Classic HD renders this as about "turnskins" which I think is a weaker image) but this line from a boy NPC is a part of rubin world to me... we know he's familiar with Kin folklore, so it lends a bit of weight to his ability to believe that Artemy killed Isidor. as not literally about a werewolf, but a parable about failing to notice a person changing or simply holding murderous intentions

THAT SAID. clara and the shabnak are described as "steppe werewolfs" several times in this localization and By God, She Does Turn Her Family To Be In The Cemetery :-)

[krugkorien]

Happy New Year everyone! Today I want to show you my main setting: the Divine World. It’s a dark fantasy world that combines both epic (gods, monsters, magic, saving the world) and mundane (death, decay, bigotry, oppression) aspects of the genre. Worldbuilding and lore is a very important part of DW, to a point where if I could write everything I want about DW it would be one of the biggest books in the history of mankind. But this is an introductory post, so I’ll try to keep it brief!

1. While I’m not going to get into any unpleasant details here let’s still get some trigger warnings out of the way first. As I said DW is dark fantasy, and it’s so dark that Marena came up with the name Macabre Fantasy in order to emphasize how dark DW is and how the aforementioned themes of death and decay play a huge role in it, as well as many other sensitive topics. Aside from what has been already mentioned there's also a lot of cruelty & violence (both interpersonal & socio-political) and also topical problems: sexism, nazism, colonialism, etc. All of this, of course, is not for the sake of being edgy, but to make a lot of important points.

2. The inhabitants of the Divine World are appropriately called Divine Humans [1], aka Homo Mirandum. While they look a lot like regular humans, there are a lot of differences between us and them! They have horns, claws, different hair textures and skin tones, three spinal cords instead of one and are also bigger than us: it depends on a lot of factors and the shortest men are actually not that big, being only 166 cm tall, but the tallest women can go up to 350 cm! And yes, you’ve read it correctly, women are taller! Divine sexual dimorphism is somewhat flipped compared to ours and Divine women are tall, muscular and hairy, while men are short, thin and mostly hairless. Meanwhile their voices are pretty similar and androgynous, and also have a metal (as in material not music) vibe to them.

Physically Divine humans are, for the lack of better word, monumental: they are strong, capable of surviving wounds that would kill a regular human ten times over, have a great memory, but are also stiff and slow, both physically & mentally, for physiological reasons as well simply because they can afford to be — their lifespans can be measured in multiple Earth centuries. However Divine humans rarely enjoy their longevity to its full extent. Outside dangers aside, their illnesses and disabilities are just as monumental as they are. For example, Divine albinism means fully transparent flesh which in turn means complete blindness and high vulnerability towards radiation (levels of which are very high on Mirabilis).

Divine souls are just as physical as anything else. They are also Aetheric in nature, and are another example of Divine sexual dimorphism: white souls belong to men and black to women (with rare exceptions). This plays a huge role in Divine society and became one of the reasons why most Divine societies are patriarchal: men, despite being physically weak, can literally mind-control women when needed. It doesn’t help that too much contact with an aether opposite to your soul can lead to death.

While Divine humans are technically the only race of Mirabilis, thanks to magic they can turn into many various creatures: Demons, Angels, Chorts (lesser Demons, roughly speaking), Bieses (lesser Chorts), Beatas, Vampires, Turnskins (Divine equivalent of werewolves), Beasts, Chimeras, Nocturnals, Urials, Cadavredaxes and so on, many of them having sub-types (for example vampires being living and undead).

4. Technology & society-wise Divine civilization can be compared to 19th century Earth: imperialism and nationalism are at their peak, proto-industrial society, recently invented trains & electricity. However Divine civilization also possesses traits more associated with our Middle Ages: religion being the most important social institute, no concept of humanism, plate armor & melee weapons still being main tools of war.

5. Like Divine humans themselves Mirabilis looks somewhat Earth-ish but is actually very different. For starters, when I say that DW is a dark and oppressive world I mean it a bit literally! Mirabilis has high atmospheric pressure (~8 higher than Earth), it’s a much colder and wetter planet, and most noticeably — it has no sun. Despite this, Mirabilis still has light and heat, even if not as much as we do, all that thanks to the White Aether (a very important magic substance) that fills the space around the planet. A Sun’s fire isn’t the only kind Mirabilis lacks — due to the low oxygen level of 15% fire simply cannot exist in normal conditions on Mirabilis.

If the word “normal” can even be used towards Mirabilis — all of the planet’s flora are technically mushrooms and much closer to the meat-side of things, so stuff like bleeding human-eating trees isn’t exactly shocking to Divine humans. Animals are technically the same as on Earth but with a huge caveat — their appearance is based on the medieval depictions of them which means animals like hyperagressive fishes with limbs, talking horses with human teeth, owls with human faces, giant non-arthropodic insects and so on.

While Mirabilis is bigger than Earth, it has only one continent that is sliced in half by the so-called Black Wall —an  impassable wall of Black Aether. The stories I write take place on the western half of the continent, and its inhabitants can’t just cross the ocean to explore the East because of the atrament — a deadly substance that fills the sea and is so dangerous only two western races out of twelve have any level of resistance to it.

The explorers of Mirabilis would be very upset about this if not for the Remnants, mysterious ruins that are both more ancient than anything they have ever seen yet more advanced than anything they could dream of. Exploring Remnants is an incredibly dangerous, often illegal job, but what’s that compared to a chance to learn more about the world? More materialistic folks are attracted by the artifacts that are capable of granting incredible miracles and, of course, even more incredible horrors.

And I think that’s pretty much it for the introductory post! From now on I’m going to repost the stuff I’ve previously posted on my Twitter before but now with all kinds of lore tidbits. There’s other projects we’ll talk about, especially Neon-23, Marena’s cyberpunk setting (that has a crossover with DW we made for fun!) but that’s it for now. Thank you for reading all this! And thanks to @goldporces & ippoteq @ Twitter for beta-reading this text!

[1] — In Russian I call them Дивнолюди, based on an archaic Russian word for “miracle” — диво. “Divine” is a very lucky translation because it sounds similar to the original word and also points at the, well, divine nature of the Divine Humans.

[unhonestlymirror]

In the Belaruthian language and in some Northern Ukrainian dialects, перевертень/пярэварацень - "a turnskin/a werewolf" - is a synonym for a very cunning person who quickly adapts and easily changes his morals and behaviour for the sake of his subordinates as well as his own benefit, a hypocrite but rather with a positive connotation. Often found in descriptions of famous rulers such as Usiasłaŭ the Sorcerer and different Lithuanian Dukes, such a word carries a double, ironic meaning in addition to the usual "he was feared and respected".

[bestworstcase]

Does/Will tdt Cinder practice Khime?

no. although hellebore’s crossing itself is a very mixed community—like a third or so of its full-time population are fauni, many of whom practice khimerism—so cinder is a lot more familiar with what khimancy is than the average human. (one of the people in her contact list in burnt roses ch1 is a turnskin.) which isn’t to say she knows very much in detail, ’cause it’s a closed tradition, but she could define it accurately.

this is also why she recognizes the white fang safety mark on roin’s truck in ch5, since sable rescued her from the glass unicorn situation she’s grown up in an environment where it’s safe for fauni and specifically khimeric culture to just exist openly around their human neighbors. which translates into knowing how to signal that she’s a Safe Person.

lonán is a practicing khimancer (albeit one with no formal training); roscoe march and raymond altansarnai are as well (both formally trained); rue has khime for religious rite-of-passage reason, but she’s secular and not really interested in pursuing the art itself. the other fauni students in the spring class (bella marshal, garth saille, scar tybalt) don’t have khime. roscoe is REALLY GOOD bc he learned from his mom, who’s a turnskin.

cinder’s religious Situation is smth called strigism by like. religious scholars. it doesn’t have a name though, the people who practice it just refer to it as ‘our way’ or similar turns of phrase—it originated in the vitrine peninsula (where hellebore’s crossing is) and is more or less only practiced there.

and then oak is a kairoist—which is the dominant religion in anima, although a plurality of mistral’s urban population are draconites in some form, kairoism is Much Older (as in, predates ozma’s first reincarnation by a couple thousand years). [pyrrha is not in burnt roses because she is eleven but kairoism is conceptually just an elaborate riff on the mantra she uses to unlock jaune’s aura in canon, to give a sense of the vibe]

gretchen’s religion is folk draconism (<- the brother-cult) pejoratively called sanctimony by normative draconites because it is WILDLY HERETICAL and revolves around worship of various ‘saints,’ largely regional folk heroes syncretized into draconism as sacred heroes who inherited or otherwise obtained slivers of divine power after the dragon-brothers, who became mortal through the act of creating the world, died. (WILDLY. HERETICAL.) (fretting abt folk draconism keeps ozpin up at night.)

larkspur and rani both grew up reform draconites (<- aka the lucent church. reforms happened under king osiander and mainly involved imposing a separation between the valean aristocracy and the church and pushing a much greater theological emphasis on peace and inclusion. this got him briefly excommunicated but proved so popular with the common people that the church had to walk that back to save face. orthodox draconism is the radiant church. the vermeils were the only noble family to support the reforms and that was partly a political move to empower themselves over rivals and partly because the winter maiden at the time was a vermeil.)

filemot is an indifferent madagian (<- worship of the four maidens) which means he attends services on the equinoxes and solstices and that’s basically it.

and sacnicte practices ixtuan ancestor worship, which is very funny for her for reasons that we’ll get to Later. :)

[defectivegembrain]

Trick or treat!

A little guy made of twizzlers walks up to you and says:

There was a word between 1831-1871 "turnskin" meaning a werewolf!

[rinarin-karimel]

I was thinking that if we looked at the story from Mizuha’s point of view, without the first part of the manga, it would turn out to be a classic shojo with cliches that everyone is tired of: there is an ordinary ordinary high school student girl, who is suddenly chased by a handsome turnskin-boy with divine forces, and who began to bring her dresses and shoes, and fulfill her whims and all her desires, make sure that nothing happens to her, stalk her, save her all season, and the audience would shout: “How long can you go on?” I don’t believe it’s like this out of the blue?” And then this ordinary schoolgirl girl would turn out to be the receptacle of the local Alien Queen* and the reincarnation of their “Saint” and the viewers/readers would have their lower back burned from this cliche....

[ainlifun]

Malal and Beastmen

Beastmen are largely loathe to interact with the forces of Malal, be that his mortals or his daemons. They are chaos by nature, leaning towards perhaps one god or another, therefore Malal's creed is anathema to their entire existence. Commonly enough, the Daemons of Malal and Beasts of Chaos battle over supremacy of the Forests of Men. Malalians have the power, but the Beastmen by far outnumber them as well as have a natural knowledge of the wilds that Malalians do not.

However, when Beastmen do take the fifth path, it is almost always the lowest among them who turn: Brays, Turnskins, and Ungors. Because of this, and on top of their general weakness and lack of horns, these particular beastmen are relegated to the bottom of the pecking order where any treachery is the least damaging.

These Lesser Gors occasionally tire of the abuse heaped on them by the Gors of the tribe and strike out on their own into brayherds made of only their own kind, with the strongest of the Un-gors, called a Half Horn, leading them. However, these spitefully splintered groups rarely last long. Does tend to pair off with the strongest of beastmen for protection's sake, and so even un-gor does are loath to join their brethren. The original herd will inevitably go seeking this rebellious splinter group, forcibly beating them back in line and killing any leaders. If not them, then another herd-- the dexterity of the Ungor makes them invaluable to Brayherds as they are the only ones who can fashion armor and weapons.

Thusly, ever Half Horn Chieftain knows that he lives on borrowed time and that if, or more like when, the original herd catches up to him his fate will be grisly indeed. In order to avoid reprisal from the mother-herd, some Half-Horns will call upon the Hierarch, forsaking the Dark Gods. And sometimes, Malal will answer: he will send a Champion to lead the Herd or perhaps even mutate the current Ungor Beastlord and some of his warriors into a powerful creature of Chaos in order to fend off the aggression of Beastkin who search for them.

He marks his chosen with fur of solid black, solid white, or black and white patterns.

[ao3feed-ateez]

Фамильяр для чародея?

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/VdC2h10 by Etan_Scarabey - Фамильяра завёл? И когда только успел? Сонхва ошарашено смотрит на травницу и вздёргивает брови, даже есть перестаёт и не реагирует на возвращение её сына с сумкой с вещами: - Какого фамильяра? Words: 4289, Chapters: 1/1, Language: Русский Fandoms: ATEEZ (Band) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Choi San (ATEEZ), Park Seonghwa Relationships: Choi San/Park Seonghwa Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Hurt/Comfort, Sorcerers, Turnskin, Werefoxes, Fantasy read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/VdC2h10

[svyat0s]

Hi_from_reality

Art&concept by Ol Albireo Feel free to write your stories and name arts. You also can do not only write, but draw, sing, create music and sculptures, translate into other languages you learn for practicing (and never simplify text when you translate it!). Show us that you did.

Offensive miracle

Did she believe in miracles? She really wanted to believe in them. Hiding with an indecently fairy-tale book in her hands, in which everyone was beautiful and happy, she wanted to believe that she would end up like that too and suddenly become just like everyone else. She would also be happy as enthusiastically, completely and amazingly as the heroes of fairy tales. Yes, she wanted to believe in that, but she knew too well that this would not happen. Her difference with these heroes was too obvious. They were beautiful, so that it was impossible to take your eyes off them, and she knew that she was not beautiful too well. She wasn't ugly, but she was ordinary, if to take away her wings, among the golden-haired girls you won’t recognize her, she will get lost in the crowd like an ordinary gray mass. She remembered well the only time when she cried indecently about this. She so wanted to dance, she so wanted to be liked. It was a big festival of Phoenix; for the first time she entered the hall not for children, but for adults. In this huge majestic hall, full of light, the creator’s love spilled out through the luminary. The first time when it seemed like the whole world was in front of her. And it was then that she realized that she could be a princess even a hundred times, but they would prefer the Virgin to a lower title, because of her grace, beauty, and individuality. She understood this with all sincerity, after several dances, when all the debutantes already danced, more than one dance in a row, and she was still standing alone from below admiring the flights of the couples, then Rime approached her. Rime! Yes, the best man she knew, a bastion of security and tranquility, someone she could snuggle up to in hours of uncomfortable melancholy and always hear: “Everything is fine, sweetheart.” But it was like a father would come up to save his daughter. It was then that she realized how uninteresting she was, so even the title and possible blessings did not help her to be attractive in the eyes of the Wings. If only she had ever plucked up the courage and asked Rime someday why he had approached then, even if it was to confirm her bitter thoughts, then the turnskin-spider would have answered, he thought that many would dance with her, even if many did that for her status, and when he saw that everyone was acting like a mouthful, and the princess wanted to dance, he approached her. Rime was never guided by mercy or tact. He would have said that he would have invited her again, but Ito ran away immediately after the dance. But, of course, Ito never asked Rime about this. I am here, AlbireoMKG

[redbourkol]

I didn't post Eddie here, wtf?! THERE HE IS!

[madmonksandmaenads]

The Northern Witch of the Quadriga: *Scowling* You're really wearing that to the Witch's Sabbat?

The Western Witch: 👀

The Southern Witch: 🤭

Me, dressed in a fursuit, that is now covered in leaves and twigs from the hike out to the Blood Acre: Well, excuse me, I thought we were exalting the mysteries of the Turnskin.

[lailoken]

“In his book The Return of the Dead: the transparent veil of the pagan mind Lecouteux exposes us to older definitions of ‘body’ and ‘soul’ that are ultimately heathen in origin. He shows in detail how Christianity went about ‘de-corporealising’ the soul and making it into an immaterial thing. To our ancestors there was no such thing as an ‘immaterial’ thing. Everything had a kind of body; some of them were just denser and more easily perceived by humans than others.

Emma Wilby also touches on this when she speaks of the question posed by many witch-interrogators: ‘did you do all this in your body or in spirit?’ Although Christianity was long established in Scotland by this time, these ancient ideas seem to have lingered on up until at least the seventeenth century. Today we feel very clear about what is meant when someone says ‘body’ because we are in the habit of believing that we have only one. We also believe that whatever the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ is, it is something that forms the natural opposite to the body and has less reality value.

If you can try to imagine that your mental universe does not have a concept of something that is ‘without substance’ then you will find it more possible to understand how the notion of ‘more than one body’ could exist. Not only were people able to send out a Double of themself, a less dense body that could travel great distances while the other body slept, but they were also able to expel an animal form from their body.

This notion of the animal form has come down to us in modern Traditional Witchcraft as the ‘fetchbeast’ or ‘familiar’. And for those who experienced the presence of one in the past, the animal was believed to be a tangible part of the body that could be expelled through the chest or the mouth of the sleeper and cause literal effects in the world, including being seen by others.

This close connection of the animal self to the person is particularly pronounced in ‘were animal’ phenomenon, where the person experiences an actual transformation of their physical body into the form of that animal. The real, though highly plastic animal form was able to impose the experience of itself over the experience of being a physical man. So that whilst a scientist would say that the man had not transformed into a beast in his body, a person at the time might have seen a ‘man-wolf.’

It is easy to see when we think about this, how the appreciation of something like a werewolf requires at least two people, or preferably a community. It requires a man who experiences his fetch-beast’s form over taking his man form, and it requires someone to perceive his beast form as altering the status and meaning of his man-form. Today we seldom have two such individuals in one space to be able to comment on these things that were understood parts of life for our predecessors.

So let us dig a little deeper to try and better understand the older way of seeing the body and soul and the Double that goes forth. In Eva Pocs book Between the Living and the Dead she describes how the ‘Double’ of a person was a believed to possess substance, a literal ‘second skin.’ As she puts it: ‘According to the documentation, the alter ego is imagined to be a physical reality. This means that it was not a soul but a second body; and while it was of a more spiritual nature, it also had physical reality.’

But not all visitations from the dead or travelling witches was a case of this ‘second skin’, there was also the notion of ‘the Shadow.’ The term ‘Shadow’ was in the past applied to the soul that lives on after death and can become detached from the body dreams or after death. Some records on witchcraft are unusually precise about what part of the spiritual complex of a person they are referring to. In one case a woman went into the room ‘and there she could not be experienced in her person, she just walked as a Shadow.’ Or: ‘Not Mrs Moricz herself, but her image walked with me as a Shadow.’

So when it is claimed that something happened ‘in the body before the eyes’ this may often refer to the second skin that was believed to be tangible. Not all dead people or all sleepers who roamed during their dreams seem to have possessed this second skin or perhaps to have known how to detach it from their other body. The Skin was often given to the witch by a spirit, such as in the case of the gift of an animal form that a witch may henceforth project her Shadow into and go forth.

The revenant (a potent type of ghost) also had this corporeality, something derived subtly from its corpse, which was deactivated if the dead body was destroyed or dismembered. As it was not unusual for the medieval and post medieval person to believe in Shadows and the real occurrence of dreamed events (more on this below) we are hitting upon a crucial point here. This ‘second skin’ that belonged to the witch, either in the form of a Double of themselves or an animal form, is one of the things that makes the difference between a witches nocturnal adventures and those of the ordinary dreamer. The ordinary dreamer goes forth in Shadow form, something that is generally invisible but may sometimes be perceived by those with The Sight, whereas the witch is able to project the Shadow into forms, as it testified to by the old term ‘dressed in forms.’

The expression ‘turnskin’ makes a lot of sense when one considers that to our forebears this meant the literal donning of another secret Skin. It also helps us to make sense of the notion of witches appearing in ‘someone else’s form’ or ‘riding’ them. We know revenants were able to use some subtle part of the corpse to send forth a second skin and that this only worked so long as the corpse remained intact. So we can deduce that all humans have such things but that only some humans have the gift of separating it out from the other body during life. We can deduce this because of the large amount of evidence to suggest that witches often stole or borrowed other people’s ‘Skins’ to get about the countryside disguised as them. This may have been simply for revenge or to implicate somebody else other than themselves but the tiring effects of being ‘hag ridden’ suggest another purpose behind this ‘skin taking.’ It is likely that sending forth the second skin requires a large power output from the witch and that, therefore, to send the Shadow out to occupy someone else’s and use their vitality instead has its advantages. To illustrate this I will present a detailed folkloric account of a witch attempting to ‘ride’ a man. The story was originally recorded in Appalachian dialect but I’ve rendered it in standard English:

‘I’m doubting if anyone can help me now. But I’m telling you this because when I die, I want you to know what killed me. Now, you know I never believed in witches but I’m afraid a witch is going to make a ghost of me. Every night of my life for the past three months, a witch has come through the keyhole [typical for a Shadow] to my bedroom. She changes me into a horse and puts a bridle on me and leads me outside. Then, she puts her witch saddle on my neck, plaits my mane into stirrups, jumps on my neck and rides as hard as she can till daylight. Then she brings me back to bed all petered out and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

This concept of being ‘hag ridden’ is in fact a form of possession, of a living person by a living person and the notion of riding the second skin allows us to explain the difference between standard dreams and ‘big dreams.’ We all know that there are some dreams that we have which seem quite insubstantial; our forebears would say that these dreams were true but that we only attended in our ‘Shadow.’ But those of us who feel called to witchcraft have often had experiences, open eyed experiences, lucid dreams or visions where we feel that we saw with, or were still in, our body. The ‘second skin’ separating from the physical skin and becoming filled with the Shadow, something that typically feels ‘very real’, can often explain these experiences of doing seemingly impossible things. It appears, given that the Shadow of a witch is attested over and over again to inhabiting the ‘Skin’ of other people, that the Shadow is the sentient part and the ‘Skin’ a kind of vessel.”

—

A Deed Without a Name:

Unearthing the Legacy of Traditional Witchcraft

by Lee Morgan

[rarts]

Super Galaxy Elise (skin): League of Legends (LOL) game draw [by ZeroNis]

[unhonestlymirror]

Nadia Lipes:

There was another terrorist attack in Israel today.

A mortally wounded policeman was able to neutralize his killer.

They won't talk about this in the States. A certain поц named Schumer spoke there today and said that the government in Israel urgently needs to be changed because it is out of touch with the aspirations of the people. And if it weren’t for Netanyahu, then everything would be humane in Gaza now, and humanitarian aid would not fall on anyone’s head.

Perhaps he hasn’t confused the country he’s speaking about with anything else?

P.S. Does everyone understand that if the word поц is there, then we are talking about another Jewish "turnskin"?