#ultimate wilderness

[dailycharacteroption]

Leshy Caller (Summoner Archetype)

(art by AlectorFencer on DeviantArt)

I’ve said this before on the blog, but despite some lamenting them not being very mythos-accurate, I do love the leshies of Pathfinder, just cute little guys created by nature spirits inhabiting cultivated plant bodies. What they lack in overall power they make up in their unique abilities and impeccable designs. (and hey, if you prefer a more traditional “green nature man”, the Green Men monsters are also called Leshy Kings, being connected to them lore-wise. It’s a win-win!)

Leshies got pretty popular though, with not just archetypes related to them, but even expanding the concept of vine leshies into a much more robust and diverse ancestry in Second Edition. (and First if you use my homebrew alternate heritages).

But on the subject of leshy-themed archetypes, we’ve covered a few here and there, but now it’s time to tap into leshies through the lens of the summoner class!

Indeed, these so-called Leshy Callers bond with an eidolon that takes a leshy-like form. This eidolon might be part of an extremely powerful nature spirit, a smaller, more individual spirit, or something else. Either way, they sport-a plantlike form and a generally leshy-like personality.

Such a bond can happen many different ways, just like other eidolons, but the goals of such beings, and presumably that of their summoners, differ a bit, even from wild caller summoners that conjure their own plant-like eidolons.

On a side note, it’s worth mentioning how one can justify how 2e summoners can vary in casting traditions with archetypes like these, though admittedly mechanically they still are arcane casters.

In any case, this archetype offers plenty of planty fun with a leshy twist!

As mentioned above, the eidolons of these summoners are composed of extraplanar plant matter and a natural animating spirit, making them very similar to plants, particularly for unchained summoners.

Their base forms, however, are based on various form of leshy, ranging from cactus,conifer, fungus, leaf, and seaweed, having mostly the core set of forms from the original introduction with the exception of gourd leshy.

Don’t think that leaves the summoner left out, however. Instead of extraplanar monster, they learn to summon natural ones instead, and add several leshies to their list of summons!

While the archetype itself is rather simple, the leshy eidolons can be quite fun and useful, especially when upgraded with evolutions! Aside from having a less utility-driven set of summons, however, there’s not much mechanically that sets them apart from other summoners, so build them as you see fit!

Two important things to remember about these summoners and their eidolons is that while they may not have the exact same powers as their counterparts, these are still the same sort of nature spirits as normal leshies, albeit with extraplanar bodies and a bond with their summoner. With that in mind, try looking up info on leshies of that type and see what resonates when coming up with their persona. The other thing is that while they are leshies, their bodies are much larger and stronger, built for more direct combat over the typically debilitations, stealth, and trickery of their kin, which also might affect their characterization.

Finally, the base forms for the leshy eidolons are actually super simple, so feel free to use them as a template for homebrewing your own to get the other leshy types available, as well as potentially completely unique ones.

Ten years ago, Vana of Woodstone held the guardian of her village, a leshy named Quickening Seed, in her arms as they succumbed to their wounds. Since that day, she has trained to become such a guardian herself, the human developing the magic to summon forth leshies to aid her. Sometimes, she thinks she even feels Quickening’s presence in her eidolon as well.

They say that the Garden of the Ancients is a hidden valley, one where strange creatures such as wolpertingers and other curious beings both benign and dangerous can be found. It is said that nature spirits are born there, and the locals learn to summon them forth when their need is great, and they do, especially when strangers come looking for plunder and lost secrets.

Splitriver the Leshy Gardener bears his title with pride, the brambly-old leshy having watched over and cultivated the creation of more of his kind for generations. Though he doesn’t often take fleshy students, those that do can learn a lot about bridging the gap between the arcane and the primal, as well as how to summon his kind to fight.

[sexymikayla3]

[siriusfelis]

Something I think about very frequently. Modern au both Laios and Falin have fursuits. Laios is more active online than Falin is, he draws furry art commissions and has a presence in furry and therian circles. Marcille finds his social media one day and is like “Falin. Be honest. Is this Laios.” And Falin is like “lol you would not believe this” and walks out of her room in a fursuit.

Then Marcille commissions Laios to draw her a cutesy little fursona. I don’t think she’d actually be invested in it but she’d think the concept of having an animal character that represents you to be fun and she wants to support her bestie.

[thecrowslullaby]

camping creatures

[shortnotsweet]

QUIET ON THE OLD FRONTIER (excerpt from THE THRILLING AND NOT AT ALL REPETITIVE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MAN AND KID DANGER: “A CHRONOLOGY OF ENTIRELY TRUE AND HEROIC EVENTS COINCIDING WITH THE END OF HISTORY”) [1] [2] [3] [4]

Well, you know how it goes down in Hollywood: the sun never sinks on the West Coast, and no one can ever die for real.

[ Henry’s expression is frozen, part acceptance, part trepidation. A stallion stands in the forefront of the second panel, backlit by the stretch of desert and a yellow sun. The horse’s front leg is dotted with red; below, Ray is mid-grin with his arms outstretched, hands cut out of frame. The horse, mid-motion, flees toward the horizon. It won’t make it. ]

“I just can’t quit you,” is the kind of thing he would say, big hands outstretched to clasp the back of his neck or to fit over Henry’s windpipe like a noose. It’d be a bit, with a Southern drawl and eyes not quite meeting his, but there would be just enough substance that Henry could pause and think, Well. Maybe you should.

Somewhere underneath that ego is a person capable of letting go, of cutting their losses. Henry’s seen the Old Westerns in their grainy film and open desert, and knows the kind of look good men get in their eye when their horse buckles. It’s the same guarded expression he wore when Drex came barreling back in, looking like Henry might in a few years time—angry, bitter, and stuck in the same place after all those years. Drex came back on his own, but still holding the old reins. Maybe that’s a difference between Ray and the good man; when Henry breaks his leg, he gets benched and pulled from the field. He’ll be back out again the moment his femur mends because he won’t see the break for the escape it could be. A fracture is never just a fracture, and a boy is never just a boy.

A horse with a bum leg gets taken into the field. It can’t return because it never leaves. Oh, well. It was a good beast, a good ride while it lasted.

PANEL NOTES:

The first chapter of the fic “bite your tongue” by ao3 user irregularsatanist (slavishtrust) motivated this significantly, although this is not explicitly lifted. I am obsessed with their mind! Every time I read and reread, my fingers get the itch to storyboard. Much to say, and more to come, surely. (I’m actually being so, so, so serious, the levity of their work is what incepted me into this hyperfixation and every version of the characters I have in my head is inadvertently colored by the blueprint of trauma, codependency, and exploitation in the aftermath of young adulthood that their continuity of portrayal has lain out. I’m not kidding I’m being so real about this rn)

Something about the Wild West motif is just really, really compelling to me: empty space, inherent isolation, man in nature, evocative of incoming change sweeping into the country and devastating those that lived before and in the now and yet still feeling stagnant in the hugeness of the land, and the kind of vulnerability that the wilderness digs out of you. There is no difference between the civilized and the uncivilized here. I don’t think I’m super subtle about it.

There is an anonymous mark on Henry’s neck in the top panel. It could be blood, a bruise, dirt or dust, inflicted or coincidental, etc.

Three instances of hands, or hands in omission: Ray’s hand gripping Henry, the implication of his hands extended outward/upward, and the hand holding the gun in the bottom right panel. In the former and latter, they are highlighted with yellow lines.

Henry does not reach back for Ray, but he doesn’t retreat, either.

Henry and Ray’s respective paneling colors differ.

The horse represents freedom & captivity, cyclical tenancies, dehumanization, and escape into the natural.

Here, Henry may even identify with the gun itself. Ray’s hand over his face + neck mirrors the grip over the firearm, and the line where flesh meets object (or, in this case, Henry) is highlighted by the same line work.

The horse envisioned is a wild one that was groomed into captivity and subsequently domesticated. In most ‘horse’ narratives, the struggle culminates in the question of freedom—or return to nature—as opposed to the human need to keep. By allowing a creature of nature, which was not born into civilization but rather introduced into it, to return to its motherland is a humanist act and therefore a rejection of corporate or urban conformity. The horse exists as an objectified commodity, one to be used or paraded. To relinquish the horse demonstrates more than love, arguably something more important: respect. To respect nature is to relinquish the grip of expansion.

I feel like this is the moment when Henry returns and they both reunite with one another after a period of time. Ray’s expression, while still ambiguous, is much easier to parse than Henry’s. Henry, of course, considers himself the defective horse, and weighs the three possible routes: escape (back) into the wild, to be taken into a field and shot (real Old Yeller style), or to be ridden again. Each carries their own merit and implication of autonomy.

The reality of each unfolding is still dependent on Ray: if he lets him go, if he decides Henry must be discarded, if he utilizes him still—or, if he is defective at all.

Ray’s problem isn’t that he’ll be tempted to shoot the horse, but instead that he wouldn’t. The good man takes the creature out of its misery if he can’t heal, house, and release it. This guy would rather have a bloody horse in his house until the end of time than admit he shouldn’t have had it in the first place. From Ray’s perspective, the reunion is best characterized as the return of the prodigal son. To Henry, this is more of an ego death in slow motion.

Ego Death: “The disappearance of an individual’s sense of self, or the removal of one’s perception of oneself as an entity separate from one’s social or physical environment.” (Britannica)

Prodigal Son: “…a man or boy who has left his family in order to do something that the family disapprove of and has now returned home feeling sorry for what he has done.” (Cambridge Dictionary)

The chapter title, “QUIET ON THE OLD FRONTIER” is a reference to All Quiet on the Western Front, the English title of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel about the traumatic aftermath of World War I. The term, “all quiet on the Western Front” is a colloquialism referring to a lack of progress, or stagnation. “Front” is interchanged with “frontier”, Americanizing the phrase to refer to the Old West and settlement. California, on the Western Coast of the U.S., is assumed to be in close proximity with the location of the narrative.

Of course, “I just can’t quit you” is the iconic dialogue between cowboys Jack and Ennis in Brokeback Mountain (2005), the epitome of the modern Western movie (based on a novel of the same name). Here, the context is not exactly the same, but still (uncomfortably) adjacent. Sometimes, quitting is good. It can help you grow up big and strong.

[quietwingsinthesky]

the only time i can vaguely get into love triangles is the idea of a doctor/companion romance thing (requited? pining? they’re just Weird about each other?) happening, and then when those two are at their most intense, that’s when the master shows up and it becomes very clear that. whatever is going on between the doctor & their companion. is not even a third of what is between the master & the doctor.

and then cue the angst because how. how. are you supposed to compete with someone they’ve known forever, who they’ve defined themself by for centuries, who knows every little detail about them and then some.

[vee-creatation]

i really wanna maybe do some kind of writing project set fully within the world of Creatation, maybe from the perspective of some kind of researcher trying to catalogue the bizarre oddities of this STRANGE fucking world they find themselves in. I'm not exactly a Practiced writer, but it could be cool :P I'll post more stuff here if this idea develops

[fullmetalscullyy]

.

[besiegedhunter]

You mentioned Lappland being "lone wolf", but it's interesting how in the end of Siracusana it said that she's no longer can be called one, and that makes me think about that contradiction in her character where she's the representation of wilderness, but in the same time the thing she despise the most is mafia aka wild part of Siracusa.

Also that part in the end with "Never again will Siracusa have a place for her" makes even wonder if she actually will be in next Siracusa event or if she suddenly will appear in some other plotline.

Oooh. Honestly I didn't remember that but yeah, it's quite interesting and I honestly really like how it plays into her character. Like, she despises Siracusa and everything about it because of how her Father showed her no affection and cruelly raised her to become the next Don of the Saluzzos, which he succeeds in.

I'll have to reread Il Siracusano again as well as her files etc to see how this impacts her character but I think that Lappland seeing Siracusa as a swamp and Texas telling her that she needn't be leashed to Siracusa herself and then Lappland going to her Dad for the last time is due to this.

She is the "perfect Siracusan" because her Dad seared Siracusa into her very being. She couldn't escape Siracusa because she is Siracusa. This makes her integrally tied to her family which doesn't want her, making her a Lone Wolf defined by being apart from her Pack and why she goes to her Dad to cut ties for good she's no longer a "lone wolf."

Which is just a thought I've not ironed out.

One thing though is she seems to be following Texas's steps exactly. Her in IS-ST-4 is the period of time where Texas left Siracusa and was alone in Columbia till Emperor met her, which perhaps Zaaro meeting Lappland is meant to mirror.

Idk. Tis but another thought lol but I am curious, cause translate this into the civilization vs wilderness allegory and yeah. Lappland hates the mafia, the wilderness and is herself the wilderness, an overgrowth in Zaaro's words but is finding herself in the pure, unfiltered wilderness now at the end of IS-ST-4 so who knows what they're doing with that. Unless Lappland's heading towards an acceptance moment like Texas finds in Il Siracusano, if we continue that.

Also on the second part, I am of two minds. Like I think it'd be really interesting to see Lappland doing things in another place like Higashi but on the other hand I kinda don't think that they'll do it.

Like, she could find her own PenLog but I feel there's so much history and tightly knit bonds in PenLog that'd be hard to just recreate in an event and it feels like they wouldn't try to make a new group for Lappland to fit into when she already has an established connection to PenLog and most notably Texas.

Also perhaps more importantly is the themes of Siracusa, Lappland, Texas and Zaaro's presence. Take her from Siracusa and she loses so much themes. Texas despite being exhausted of the mafia and resentful like Lappland returns and accepts Siracusa. And Zaaro, while interesting if he is taken elsewhere I feel that a lot of things significant about him and that he'd have an opinion on would be lost.

Buuuut to go back to "Lappland following in Texas's footsteps" they could do something hilarious: Zaaro following in Emperor's. Him leaving Siracusa and learning more of the world, opening his eyes to new opportunities and putting the swamp that is Siracusa and the Signore dei Lupi's rigid game behind him would be interesting.

And it's not like they wouldn't have a 6* foreign to the setting. Prime example is Ideal City. Will we get Durin operators? We'll get one and instead, the six stars will be from Sargon and Ursus lmao. So it's certainly possible.

I also would love to see a Lappland in Higashi event but only time will tell where she goes.

[boneempress]

thinking back on the "contest" between Lottie and Nat in s2e4, one of them DOES eventually return to the cabin with food, just not within the bounds of the episode - and she is rewarded for it with fealty from the others

[dailycharacteroption]

Leafshifter (Shifter Archetype)

(art by BangBooDoragon on DeviantArt)

Mimicry is a common adaptation among life across the planet. If you’re soft and vulnerable, mimic something that your predators fear. If you’re fearsome and scary, mimic something harmless to draw other creatures in, and so on.

This extends even to plant life, with many plants finding way to mimic animals or other plant species. Many flowers have parts that mimic pollinating insects to draw the real deal in, or mimicking other plants to avoid being eaten by those that fear the toxins of others, and so on.

With that in mind, the ghorans, a plant species that hyper-evolved a humanoid form and behaviors to convince humans to stop exploiting them as a food source, have a conceptual link to not just this concept, but the shifter class as well.

Today’s subject, the leafshifter, is one of two archetypes that cause the shifter to take on plant forms instead of animals. The other, the verdant shifter, we have already covered, but while the verdant shifter specializes in actually shapeshifting into plant monsters, the leafshifter instead shapeshifters into forms that blur the lines between animal and plant. Like living topiaries, their animal forms are composed of plant matter, gaining the benefits of the form on a macro scale, and the benefits of plant physiology on the micro scale.

Now, this archetype naturally meant for ghorans first, but as always, I’m of the opinion that unless a so-called “racial archetype” (or perhaps ancestral archetype is more appropriate now) specifically requires a certain trait to function, there isn’t any reason why other ancestries can’t take part too.

Regardless of how you handle it, however, these shifters present an interesting way to blend mimicry with the true nature of the plant beneath for surprising customizability.

Rather than grow claws, the basic weapon morph of these shapeshifting warriors is to harden their limbs like bramble-covered tree branches.

While they gain aspects like any shifter, they do not gain the normal minor form associated with that aspect. Instead, they gain a planty aspect of their choice, representing the base plant species that they take on the form of, which is later reshaped into an animal-like form when they invoke the major form. These minor forms can include an assassin vine’s grappling, the punishing thorns of brambles, the climbing skill of a creeper vine, the camouflage of a giant flytrap, the toxin resilience of a mushroom, the immovability of the oak, the senses of the giant shrieker mushroom, the lightweight airy nature of the spore, and even the buoyant aquatic mobility of the water lily.

Essentially, as these shifters grow in power, they get to pick and choose their minor aspects to go with their more familiar animal forms. You might recognize the names of those minor aspects as being the same as the plant focus abilities of the plant master archetype for hunters, which makes sense with how the core shifter aspects of the base shifter work. Regardless, these aspects provide lots of mobility options as well as close combat options, so this archetype might be useful indeed for the shifter as a whole. Beyond that, you can pretty much build them however you like.

Even though they don’t necessarily HAVE to be ghorans, the angle of mimicry is a very strong tie for that people, especially since in the Lost Omens setting, they hail from a land where their species was once engineered as a food source, and those of the mystic arts already hold so much political and social power over those that do not. If you can’t beat them directly, fool them. Of course, not every mage requires such deception, and not every ghoran lives in such a situation, but the concept is there, especially since ghorans live with the constant shadow of knowing that some may view them as nothing but chattel.

The iron mining and smelting town of Jusso has had it’s fair share of troubles with the local ghoran population, who take offense at the pollution wrought by their industry. However, when a scanderig wanders out of a pocket of elemental earth deep in the mine, the two forces must set aside their differences to bring down this forgefiend, with combined might of steel and bestial plantlike forms.

It is impossible to say for certain, but some have speculated that the leafshifter technique has a connection with the curious plant monsters known as living topiaries. The ghoran inventors of the technique are quick to dismiss such suggestions, though some would say they are hiding something.

The Jinoge clan of adaro have developed a fascination for the kelp forests surrounding their territory. Such places are prefect for setting up ambushes, especially during their sacred thunderstorm hunts. Some have even learned to tap into the sargassum and take on predatory aquatic shapes composed of kelp and sea grasses.

[sexymikayla3]

[sailermoon]

wait I’m sorry if sukuna is gone gone fr that’s gonna be like. really anticlimactic

[hobisexually]

x

[gen-is-gone]

Jack wasn't even the *Doctor’s* first gay kiss, let alone ~first gay kiss in all of dr who~ 😭

aint no WAYYY THEY JUST TRIED TO SAY THAT. not even "the doctor's" but doctor who's in general 💀💀 so now that they have a disney contract every single gay thing (which they've had for fucking decades) is gonna be a huge big huge first gay thing ever!!1!1!1!! event??? like yeah there's a very specific significance to it i get it but what the fuck do you mean😭 jamie pull up the files

[noisycowboyglitter]

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