#worldsong

[usedtobe-elrallin]

Slipping

Jan 7, 2023

I think maybe something has gone wrong. I don’t know, but ever since I turned around in that kitchen and left a corner of my life behind, I haven’t known what to do. Every turn means something different and every time I try to take a step in the right direction, my foot falls in a place I didn’t intend and sometimes I can’t breathe, but the next second it seems things are back to normal.

Maybe, maybe, I don’t know. This isn’t normal.

Am I going mad? I see flashes of colour and things that are not there, hear songs I can never remember and don’t know the instruments, catch snippets of conversation in languages I can’t recognize, smell strange things that I can’t quite put my finger on. All for an instant, and then it’s gone.

Fast, so fast. I don’t think I know what’s going on.

Even though I always have come back safe, it’s frightening. I sometimes wonder if the flashes are getting longer, if each step is taking me closer to something dangerous, that I won’t be able to return from. If I’m getting closer to something unknown and new and frightening. I’m worried. I want the world to be clear again, to be normal, to stay here and to move freely without these visions.

Something is going wrong. Slipping so fast isn’t normal.

We need to stop her, seal the gap she is half walking through.

But sometimes I love this. I don’t want it to end.

[idk-its-just-alien-observations]

Isylhejif - A Deep-Sea Gentle Giant

An easy-going, gentle and easily excitable beast who roams the deeper zones of Autania's oceanic biomes, the Isylhejif's flowing fins and vibrant glows are a sight to behold - to anyone who dares to swim so deep.

(Displayed here - artwork of an Isylhejif from a distance, during the Crest season)

Appearance

The Isylhejif is one of the larger oceanic creatures, considered a leviathan by some, scaling in at over 216 meters (706 ft) in length from snout to tail tip. It has two sets of fins, and lures stemming from the ends of each and underneath its jaw.

The Isylhejif often presents its colors as deep shades of blue, the color varying slightly depending on the season. The membranes are primarily a shade of deeper turquoise, and these also rarely vary. It's bioluminescent markings do change color with the seasons - the depiction above is during the Glowcrest season.

It has lures, similar to many aquatic and semi-aquatic creatures of Autania. The beings tail ebbs off into a large, flowy fin, which runs up the length of its neck. It has a bell atop its head, which is a jelly-filled cap that produces poison and secretes it onto the Isylhejif's skin.

Behavior

The Isylhejif lives in a part of Autania's oceans where the bioluminescent light of lunar fern kelp can barely stretch through the dark, and seeing is no longer a reliable way to hunt or navigate the rockier sea-soil clumps. So, Isylhejif rely on musatehkit, echolocation, and sound cues, traveling through the water to find their way around.

While they are larger hunters, Isylhejif are often found in large pods, and are sometimes accompanied by smaller fish and creatures. They enjoy play and games of hide-and-seek, with the younger, more adventurous members of the Isylhejif pods hiding a bit further out into open ocean to challenge each other. They also engage in games of pretend, to help develop skills for hunting later in life.

Musatehkit

Isylhejif produce passive musatehkit (also known as worldsong) displays, and they commonly display Draping Choirs. Draping Choirs are the long notes of the Symphony, echoing low and resonating with those who hear them for cycles after.

(Displayed here - headshot of an Isylhejif, actively singing below water, during changeover from Crest to Echo seasons)

These passive displays often resemble long, thick ribbons of color, flowing in wave-like rhythms across the dark skies or through water. As Isylhejif are passive displayers, when the entire pod is focused and in-tune with the worldsong, beautiful shows of flowing color will trail through the waters behind them. The resonant frequencies of the Isylhejif's notes can typically be felt ringing through one's ribcage if you're close enough to a pod.

Other creatures

World 5000

(Click the images for better quality)

(This creature was based on @onejellyfishplease so go look at their stuff too!)

[justavulcan]

Backgrounds With Class: Simic Scientist

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer.  So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.  Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

The Simic Scientist Artificer was always a practical sort.  Enamored with the surgeon’s art from his youth and with a fast friend of decades working in the Izzet League, he’s found ways to adopt the other science guild’s technology for medical use on a number of occasions, particularly their chemistry.  The reverse is also true- unbeknownst to those around him, he’s been trading insider secrets for his colleague’s aid.  He doesn’t view this as a betrayal- to his mind, it’s a crime that there isn’t already an exchange of innovation in the regular course of things.  Surely their fields would advance much more quickly with the aid of other points of view.

The Simic Scientist Barbarian is an experimental direction for the Guardian Project, a soldier with adaptive talents flexible enough to change specialization on the fly or between engagements.  Trained with weapons and spliced with at least a little sluiceway scorpion, she believes wholeheartedly in the assurances of her experimental overseer that she will one day no longer need armaments of steel, as her hybrid traits and experimental mutagenic adrenal glands grow into full maturity.

The Simic Scientist Bard has a job as an educator, putting her keen understanding of biology and biomancy to work in the classroom imparting wisdom to her students.  Adept at teaching by multiple avenues to suit different learning styles, she is always conscientious to mix the practical and hands-on with deep concepts, and takes the careers of her students very seriously after graduation.  In her off hours, she works as a consultant for other matters, both in the lab and on the street, and has started to make a name for herself as one of the public faces of the Combine.

The Simic Scientist Cleric kneels at no altar that the people of Ravnica would know, but many of her peers would understand, if not condone.  The Simic Combine is not a religious organization, but surely they can see that knowledge itself is a thing divine no less than the Worldsong of the Conclave or the Orzhov’s Church of Deals.  While her colleagues view this eccentricity with bemusement and even occasional suspicion, she is more than welcome in the lab, as her work has an uncanny prescient feel to it, often making breakthroughs just when it would be useful.

The Simic Scientist Druid is an oddity even among Simic Biomancers.  Originally a Guardian Project volunteer, this druid is technically a krasis rather than a hybrid, as the ratio of hermit crab to vedalken is too high to qualify her as a simic hybrid.  Still loyal to the combine that reforged her into a clumsy new shell-bearing body, the druid serves the Hull Clade, her defensively-oriented mind an asset to guardian squads in the field and biomancers working with shell, carapace, and scale in the lab. 

The Simic Scientist Fighter is a typical product of the Guardian Project: a disciplined, careful, and tactically gifted elf with latent mollusc traits.  Trained for both long-range and short-range combat, he is being groomed for a position as a squadron leader to field both terrestrial and aquatic threats- a true amphibious soldier.  This flexibility is reflected in his mindset- despite his participation in the Guardian Project and aggressive skillset, he is a Holdfast advocate, claiming it’s far more important for the Combine to ground themselves than to expand aggressively; overreach is a mistake.

The Simic Scientist Monk is an experimental departure from tradition.  Raised deep underwater as a potential Deepsage, their tradition of unarmed combat has met with modern biomancy and medical knowledge to produce a warrior with a literal healer’s touch.  Mastering the flow of vital energies and fluids through their own body and those of others, they are as skilled a healer as a bodyguard, equally adept at setting bones and force-healing contusions as bringing death with a touch.

The Simic Scientist Paladin follows an uncommon tradition among elves, a holdover  from his time among the Selesnya growing up.  While he’s firmly an Upwelling adherent, confident that change is the way forward for the Combine, his own magical tradition is among the oldest on Ravnica, as he swore an oath to life itself to be a light in the world.  Many of his colleagues shake their heads at the juxtaposition, but he’s not dissuaded by their confusion- after all, Upwelling is a resurgence of old matters and ways, not an act of genesis.

The Simic Scientist Ranger is a field researcher, a lab assistant who, after his amphibian hybridization, seeks to assess the results of his guild’s work in the field.  From chill ocean below to lofty aeries above, he ranges to see that the Combine’s work finds its niche, and observe how the web of life on Ravnica changes to fit.  He’s also one of the hunters the Combine turns to when they have need of samples from exotic wildlife, or when a krasis proves disastrous for its environment and must be euthanized.

The Simic Scientist Rogue was part of the Combine’s covert troubleshooting force before the inception of the Guardian Project, and remains so to this day.  Usually dispatched as an investigator or recovery specialist, as the guild has ramped up its preparations for wartime she has found herself more and more involved in guerrilla action against threats preemptively.  Always a proponent of striking harder sooner, she is keen to do whatever she can to keep the Simic at its best.

The Simic Scientist Sorcerer, as a prospective member of Gyre Clade, often finds herself involved in the less physical of the guild’s pursuits.  Be it assessing the mana currents of the hidden oceans or seeking strange weather phenomena to observe the dispersal of energy, her apprenticeship has been anything but dull.  It’s helped to give focus to her talents, though, which run toward the stormy, and often leave her struggling to pay attention to things if she’s not confronted with novelty now and again.

The Simic Scientist Warlock came up from the zonots with the second generation of merfolk to grace the surface.  Having long ago made peace and pact with a great beast of the deep, she quickly found her talents for team support in high demand among Guardian Project strike teams and Crypsis Clade scouting missions.  She’s very protective of the fine abalone necklace she wears loose around her neck; it’s both a mark of her pact and the only thing she brought with her to remember her parents by.

The Simic Scientist Wizard is, by all accounts, brilliant- surgeon extraordinaire and transmuter-scientist of the Fin clade, it seems there is little he cannot do if he sets his mind and hands to it.  Of the two, the surgeon’s path is far more important to him, as he would rather save lives with tools and expertise than work at biomancy- so much so that he’s rejected or missed opportunities for more profitable apprenticeships in favor of earning his surgical license and trying for a private practice.  Unfortunately, the money’s run out, and he’s recently had to turn his mind from clean, sterile lab work to the rough conditions and uncertain developments of field work.

[halfbakedspuds]

Character voice tag

Thanks so much to @illarian-rambling for the tag!

My line: I'm sorry, but you're really tone deaf.

Your line: What happened here?

(Gonna be doing all three my WIP's cause I feel like Children of the Stars has gotten the sole spotlight for too long)

Children of the Stars

Adrian: "Ooo-kay, nice try but your grasp of tone still has a way to go,"

Lyanni: "Please, don't quit your day job. No one's ears deserve that...,"

Echoes of Shadows

Johan: "Hai man, who's slaughtering cats now?"

Anastasia: "You are try, I hear that much. But please, warn before of try near me,"

Sasha: "By the Eyes, if you tried to pass yourself off as a soundworker who specializes in disorientation, you probably could with singing like that,"

Maire: "Wha' in Bozhe's good, golden grace is everyone on 'bout? They sound fine te me!" (Canonically tone deaf)

Hans: "You know, you could have just asked. I would've been happy to teach you how to not do that,"

The Tempest Prince

Jason: "Stop, stop, stop. Sorry friend, but you are legally and officially tone deaf. Trust me, it takes one to know one," (Not actually tone deaf. Just a horrible singer)

Alex: "You sound like our old lead singer. Jesus wept, man,"

Helga: "I have heard the worldsong, stood in the middle of it's maddening symphony, and even that was less terribly discordant than what you just did. You should be proud,"

Leaving an open tag for whomever wants it

[kassil]

hell yeha seasons

The season of Songrise comes after the long cold of Hush, when the suns return to the skies and their light causes everything to begin to warm, the massive plates that form the world pushing against each other and giving rise to the base of the Song, deep rumbling vibrations as much felt as heard. Naturally, as many spent Hush tinkering with musical ideas when they weren't sleeping, there are entire concerts held as the world sings itself awake again. Each town has a festival and a competition to see whose music will take the crown of the Awakener for the year, most of them in elimination rounds that can take a few weeks to complete, by which time the forests have also awoken and added their higher-pitched chorus to the worldsong.

[doctorkaycee]

Moody but Comforting Song

This song has a special meaning. It was one of our WorldSongs that we really liked but somehow never notated or published. I would consider this to be a memorial to Forrest. He passed in 2019. It came from our archive of recordings that we made from multiple improvisations. It will be notated soon. Or if you are a arranger/composer and you'd like to take a shot at notating this on Finale or Sebelius I'd be thrilled and also pay a little $ for your efforts.

[halfbakedspuds]

Thanks so much for the tag, and sorry that I'm only getting to this now.

I'll do this for the Tempest Prince and Echoes of Shadows cause they're the only ones I have where magic exists.

Tempest Prince

Worldsong: old-ass choir that makes sure that physics works right.

High-Divine: the universe's debug menu that even the gods are hesitant to mess with.

Hunter magic/Low divine: side effect of becoming part Dragon, Leviathan, or Bigass Tree

Sorcery: Fuck with this and the universe will pay you back sevenfold with interest.

Echoes of Shadows

Magic: Do the evolution

Sorcery: Shortcut to power dished out as a reward by competing gods.

Open tag for whomever wants it

Thanks for the tag @autism-purgatory!

Magic System, But Bad

Rules: Explain the magic system of your current WIP as poorly as possible. Bonus points if you use bullet points.

Oh boy, this should be fun >:)

Sorcery - funky-shaped enzymes let you blow things up, but Watch Out, you might get speed cancer

Book magic - shittier magic for the price of a PhD

Divine Chosen - you're god's favoritest boy

Whatever the Fuck is Going on in the Desert - whatever the fuck is going on in the desert

I'll tag @somethingclevermahogony @halfbakedspuds @tildeathiwillwrite @phoenixradiant and anyone else who wants to give this a try :)

[djjoeltjamkam]

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A post shared by Joel.T -Jamkam "Touring Sound" (@djjoeltjamkam)

He couldn’t manage the #Italiangirl 🤔😂😂 #WorldSong 🌎 Watch the #Antics 👀 . . . #activatethegirldem 🎬🎬 . @sparkydiva_ 💥💥 . . Song: #GoodazAnthem 🎵🎵 By: @terryfiremusic @zekedon1 @djjoeltjamkam . . WHEN SONG BAD 💥💯 #GoodazAnthem 🎵🎵 . . #footageyuhwant #yuhwahfootage 🎬 🏆 . #Tnz #tnzalbum . “TnZ Album dropping soon” . . #Fldhqs #nycdhqs #dhqnyc #fun #dance #Jamkamstudio #dancehallqueen #dhq #dancers #dancehalldancers #djjoeltjamkam Tag a friend 🤸🏾‍♂️ . . . (at Queens, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4yvnsZgBLz/?igshid=1xaczrzecepcs

[usedtobe-elrallin]

Tagged by @taketwoinink!

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have wips. (You can make your own post or reblog this one!)  I have deemed that this isn’t just for writing either. Sketch titles? Comics? Dnd campaigns? If you have an unfinished project, it counts!

Oh dear xD Here goes

Daily Freewrites - January

Fallen to Ashes

DJune

Ghost and Vy

Stolen Starling

Magic is not Kind

Mixed Works

Once, We Were Dragons

Ruins

Trial and Error

Trials of the Red Dawn

Warlord

Of the Mountains

Variant

Worldsong Info

Poetry

Saved

Gold Coin Moon

Hallucination

Metalbound

Zara-Sonili

There's a bunch of random short docs but I'm not gonna go through rn I'm sleepy

Tagging: @gryphonlover, @starsaroundsaturn, @composterhedgehog, @quinnick, @catkin-morgs

[eleilinnrallin]

Ember heard the drones before she saw them. Crouched behind a broken wall in the ruins of an old building, she slowed her breath and listened.

So first lines of the first chapter!

Not gonna be posting much of the actual writing as I go, mostly just parts I'm proud of, and whild I'm very aware that this will need a lot of reworking at the beginning, I'm much happier with this start than the one I had before!

Wrote for the first time in a while! 138 words, not too much, but I have a better start to ERD3 C1 now

[justavulcan]

Backgrounds With Class: Selesnya Initiate

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer.  So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.  Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

The Selesnya Initiate Artificer has kept an ear to the Selesnya’s Worldsong since she was young.  As a mason and sometime healer for the Conclave, she’s not as attuned to the song as some, but her ear is still beyond reproach in some ways; one day, as she was putting the final touches on a life-sized wolf carving, it begun to sing the song of all living things, and came to life under her hand.  Now convinced this can’t be the only time this has happened, she roams eagerly, listening for more stone that sings with life.

The Selesnya Initiate Barbarian has always been...excitable.  Not well-suited for guard duty, meditation, or tending gardens, this centaur has instead put his overflowing font of energy into training to become a ledev guardian.  His dream is to run the roads on his own, spreading the joy and passion of the Conclave's Worldsong to all who will listen and take that righteous ecstasy as a weapon to those who wish harm to his fellow travelers.

The Selesnya Initiate Bard has always been fascinated by dryads and their ways- after all, sharing a soul with a tree is such a foreign thing to one only of the flesh.  Ever since he was young, he has sought after them and their ways, and eventually met forbearance in a charitable soul who took the time to explain to him not just the way she and her tree were connected, but how all life was in the Worldsong of the Conclave.  Ever since, he's taken it on himself to sing it aloud- such that those who do not know it by heart may hear the call and, perhaps, become one with the Conclave he loves.

The Selesnya Initiate Cleric is a pacifist by nature, and the blessings he finds pursuing the worship of Ravnica’s own natural life have not changed that.  Far from opposed to combat in defense of the helpless or the Conclave, he instead prefers to incapacitate his foes by nonlethal means, or by placing them in positions that they must hurt themselves to harm others.  Every time he sheds blood aggrieves him, but the lesson is slowly coming to him that sometimes nature is as red in tooth as it is green as leaves.

The Selesnya Initiate Druid wasn’t born, they were awakened.  Pulled from a place of rest for defense against a Gruul raid on Selesnyan holdings, they did not lie back down and return to being inanimate dirt.  Instead, they’ve remained awake and surprisingly self-directed, volunteering in the vernadi gardens and fields to commune with the plants.  As a living patch of grassland, they’ve proved to have an intuitive grasp of the land’s needs and will, and have become a personage of importance for the other initiates.

The Selesnya Initiate Fighter was a cadet in the Boros Legion whose sergeant was a bully.  Sickened by his exposure to the abuse of authority in so crude a figure, he left for the Conclave.  There, his training was more evenly supplemented by a sense of community and fairness that left little room for the kind of deliberate fear-mongering he saw.  Now he trains in maneuvers as part of a unit, enabling his allies and striking with precision and teamwork unlike that the Legion showed him.

The Selesnya Initiate Monk was trained by a ghost.  Her mentor, one of the ancient Quietmen of the Conclave, was once an extension of the Worldsong’s will, a weapon in body alone and a witness for the Conclave’s parun.  They were supposed to be destroyed, after their treachery during the Decamillenial almost led to Mat’Selesnya’s destruction.  Forced to keep her master’s secret while balancing the needs of the Conclave, she finds a growing tension within her, a tension that only violence has helped resolve- hardly the attitude of one nominally seeking peace of mind.

The Selesnya Initiate Paladin was brought up in the Conclave, but over the last few weeks, starting with a friend leaving the guild in favor of the Boros Legion, he’s started to doubt.  Is this really the life for him?  What other paths might he pursue?  Surrounded by the comraderie of other squires and soldiers, the only time he really feels the Worldsong is in battle, fighting along like-minded souls.  With the day for his oath drawing near and his meditations bringing him no feeling of welcoming, doubt and curiosity might form the wedge that splits him off from the Conclave too.

The Selesnya Initiate Ranger is, like many of the Conclave’s dryads, not actually bound to the tree that she calls her heartwood and home.  Free-roaming and imbued with a greater-than-average share of her people’s magic, she wanders the roads as a ledev trainee, a gifted traveler and guardian of those who travel Ravnica’s highways.  Trostani herself oversees the promotion of ledev guardians from among the Selesnyan cadets, and she yearns for the recognition of this most elder of her kind.

The Selesnya Initiate Rogue serves as one of the Conclave’s covert investigators.  An odd pursuit for a vedalken, but one they take to with relish.  Part of their community as much as or more than any other, they don’t take their training as an investigator as a way to stay separate, but a way to stick together to their friends.  Picking up on the subtle clues of when someone is not at their best or may be hiding a danger to the conclave and licensed to pursue the investigation where they wish, they serve covertly as an in-house problem solver at worst and a counselor and therapist at best.

The Selesnya Initiate Sorcerer’s family has always been rumored to have some connection with the boros legion’s angels.  Certainly her statuesque beauty supports this notion, but the true testament is her sorcerous powers.  A gift of the celestial blood running through her veins, they’ve proved valuable on more occasions than not, as she lays hands on soldiers protecting Selesnya interests and blesses them before battle.  She is proud of her power, and those elder around her murmur that she has real potential as an evangel or hierarch someday…if she can reign in her ego.

The Selesnya Initiate Warlock is fortunate enough to have a direct connection with Trostani herselves.  Having sworn herself to their personal service, she benefots from a taste of their fey magic- a taste she hopes one day to grow into a glut.  Her aspiration is nothing less than to become Trostani’s rightmost hand.  She has a long way to go, but the tiny wooden drake that clings to her is proof she has the talent to bring life to the lifeless, demonstrating her aptitude with Trostani’s gifts.

The Selesnya Initiate Wizard was, like so many others, not born a part of the Conclave.  She was born and raised until quite recently among the stacks and papers of the Azorius archives, trained in defensive magics as an on-call riot squad member.  Unfortunately, first contact with the enemy- a golgari tenement filled with more desperation than criminality- tainted her impression of the cold, sterile law in favor of something warmer and more communal.  The Selesnya welcomed her compassion with open arms, and as yet have only ever asked to help or protect others- even those outside the Combine.

[halfbakedspuds]

You know what, tell me about your stories. I wanna know all of them. Also is there 2nd ch of children of star?? We a re mutuals and we don't interact cause I have shit personality and you don't need to answer this

Thanks for asking and giving me an excuse to go on a tangent! And don't worry about interacting, as long as you're willing to put up with my ESL self occasionally forgetting how to speak English, you're welcome to do so.

There isn't a second chapter of Children of the Stars just yet. Mostly because I'm in my matric year and have been stuck with quite possibly the worst case of writer's block I've had in years. Two factors which have been making it quite difficult to write further, but I managed to partially get my jive back this week so progress continues!

Starting with the Tempest Prince, which is very blatantly inspired by me reading Percy Jackson and the Mortal instruments books during my first playthrough of Bloodborne. It used to be just one book, then I realised that I might need three to tell the full story (Which is when I started calling them the Saga of Storms). Soon, the Saga was five books long and then I realised that this universe still has a ton of loose ends after the story ends, and so five books became 21 split across five saga's, each told from a different perspective and dealing with a different thing that's been left unfinished. I will not milk this for content. There is no content, there is only a story that needs to be told and the 21 books it will take to tell it.

Worldbuilding wise, Earth in this universe exists as a result of five different layers of reality sitting on top of each other. The border realm, realm of chaos and entropy, has quite a visceral reaction to humanity seemingly existing to create order and reacts by corrupting living beings into beasts to kill us (Humans are sort of immune to this, but that's a long story). The higher the density of people, the more often these things manifest. Several thousand years ago, someone figured out that penguins who are corrupted become what humans call Dragons, and the bones of dragons can be made into weapons and infused with the wielders blood to become harder than steel, and immediately grant the bonded all the necessary instincts to wield it: the most effective weapons for killing beasts.

Thus were born the hunters, silver blooded super-warriors who were as much their weapons as their weapons were them.

With time, the hunters realised that with enough concentration, they could manifest runes to perform simple arcane tasks, and that chaining them together could create spells. At the time, people thought these runes were the language of dragons, and called it "Draconic magic". Later, the mages who dedicated themselves to its study realised that these runes were part of something far older, far more ancient. A theorized choir whose words maintained the universe, aptly named 'the worldsong'.

Fast forward eighteen thousand years, past a literal apocalypse, a civil war, and a complete reset of human- 'Redblood' -society to make it seem like the hunters never existed, and you end up in Vereeniging, South Africa, 2021 CE, where two unsuspecting brothers named Jason and Alex bear witness to a greatbeast manifestation (like a beast but considerably harder to kill), and despite having never ascended to become hunters or even having known that the supernatural even existed, the pair fought the beast and despite having not a drop of silver blood in them used actual magic (Which even they didn't know they could do).

Some shenanigans follow, the pair agree to become hunters, and Jason (being the oldest) finally reached the day where he'll ascend and begin his formal training. All the other candidates smear their drakespine (dragon bone) weapons with their blood, submerge them in water, and then pull them out to reveal perfectly refined weaponry hewn with silver veins. He follows their example, except when he pulls it out, the veins aren't silver...

... they're gold.

And nobody, not even the people responsible for prophecies and things, knows what that means.

After that, a mysterious group catches wind of the ordeal and begins scheming in the shadows, Jason and his new friend Helga start doing their training at the Academy of Allyria, with him deciding to study to become a Mage because he's honestly kinda dogshit with a sword, and her studying to become a medic to disprove that demihumans are too brutish to be in a position of caring for the injured.

Out of the blue, Alex is abducted by a group who knows the meaning of golden blood and wants to use it for themselves, and Jason, angry as he is that someone dared to mess with his family storms off to find them, with Helga offering to tag along and help the only person other than her mother and her girlfriend who's ever treated her as a person, as more than a barely sentient animal.

That's about all I can say without spoiling.

Children of the Stars follows Lyanni Sverik, a former noblewoman who was set to inherit the ruling title over an entire Barony who witnessed the genocide of her people. In her anger, she began learning the forbidden knowledge of alchemy and of the arcane. When the temples learnt of this, she was arrested, branded a witch and made a mere slave of the state.

After she meets the patron Angel of her people, Adrian, she eventually learns that he's not divine or supernatural at all. He's simply an alien, a human from the Terran Empire working to uplift her people that decided that the mask of an angel was the easiest path to his goals. All the miracles his kind performed, the arcane might they showcased, were merely spectacles of technology so advanced that it was indistinguishable from magic.

Adrian is what I like to call my little bundle of incredibly fucked up. Like the amount of trauma this man has makes him a minefield to navigate.

The first person he ever killed was trying to kill his mother and succeeding in strangling her (A feat in and of itself, she was practically a one woman army on a bad day). His solution was to smash a shop window and grab a shard of glass to slit her assailant's throat with because Callistoan honour meant he had to protect his own. What's fucked up about this? He was only nine when he was forced to make that decision. His family helped him work through most of the trauma thereof, but even twelve years later, after fighting in a war and watching most of his family die because of what he believes was his mistake, after getting half his body blasted off and becoming a supersoldier for a few years before he was handed an honourable discharge, one of his remaining silent mannerisms is an absolute aversion to anything like a knife or a shard of broken glass.

Ironic then that his eventual girlfriend (Lyanni) usually has at least two of the things on her. Two knives and enough random chemicals to start making bombs and corrosives at a moment's notice.

The thing that's very interesting to write so far is the fact that both my protagonists are horrible people. Hell, they only need to be reframed slightly to be seen as the villains of the story (And only one aspect of the worldbuilding needs to change for them to actually become the villains),and yet they try and succeed in being better people for each other's sake. Also they're the first couple I wrote that got someone's approval for being well made, so yippee!

Other than that, a lot of politics, and a lot of speculative socio-political commentary (regarding topics that won't even have a chance to be controversial for at least another century), but it's fun to write at least.

Echoes of Shadows is based on our world as it was between 1895 and 1902. It's a fantasy world where magical control of the environment is tied to how well you understand what's happening around you. Understand the processes behind combustion well enough and you'll develop pyrokinesis, understand the properties of metal and why they exist well enough and you'll develop ferrokinesis, etc.

The point is, with general human knowledge growing as fast as it is, and the improved public access to such resources, almost half the population are mages with varying degrees of power in various fields.

The fictional country that the book is set in, Ost-Rietland, and its sister state, Zuurveldt, are based on the IRL Boer Republics that historically were one of the few peoples that the British Empire got its ass kicked by and gained respect for even after their subjugation. Ost-Rietland is based on the Transvaal Republic (The province I live in actually used to be part of their territory over 124 years ago), while Zuurveldt is based on the Orange Freestate Republic.

The city of Zuidpunkt is actually based on both Cape Town and Durban with inspiration drawn from photographs of Johannesburg in the 1880s.

The culture of most people outside of the five in the main group is just a slightly different portrayal of my own, down to the incredibly satirical personality of its people (If you've ever seen South African ads, you know what I mean, we make fun of everything- especially social problems- as a way to cope. After all, if you can laugh at something it suddenly doesn't seem so bad, and sometimes lifting that uneasiness helps spur discussions on how to fix it. Nandos is famous for this).

This universe actually came to be while I was giving a crash course on worldbuilding and I was creating a setting from scratch to show my method in practice and some problems that may arise from it when I thought "Hey, this could make for a cool story actually". Unfortunately, I have barely touched the writing for it, so not a lot to comment except that I'm a bit too proud of myself for my method of only portraying the eldritch by only revealing enough about how they look for your mind to do my job for me.

Also, all my WIPs actually share a multiverse. Adrian, Johan and Jason canonically ended up meeting when the veil between their worlds got especially thin, and you can see a different POV of the resulting fight in each story (plus, I have plans to maybe bring all three together for a crossover book at some point, but that's still years down the line if it happens at all)

Sorry for rambling, but thanks again for the ask!

[kevtymusic]

Thank you @groovinmood for adding our ( @joelingtonmusic & @kevontyrremusic ) song to your Playlist #WorldSongs on @spotify .. Get the link in their bio or with a screenshot! #RnB #covid #Collaboration #JoeLington #KevonTyrre #International #ItsGonnaBeAlright https://www.instagram.com/p/CYjtmutpMbM/?utm_medium=tumblr

[muratyilmazmu]

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Beyaz Giyme Toz Okur-Murat Yılmaz #türküler #türkülerimiz #music #sound #turkishmusic #turkishfolkmusic #türkmüziği #folk #folkmüzik #folkmusic #folkmusician #folkmusik #folkmusic #folksong #folk #livemusic #bağlama #song #songs #worldsong #worldfolk #müzik #müzikler #etnicmusic #amatörmüzik #canlımüzik #livefolk #worldsong #cover #homemusic @amatormusic @instamuzikler @folkmuzikyapim @turkishmuzic @osesturkiye @music @soundcloud @amator_muzigim @coverpiakustik @amatormusics @redmuzikd @8dmuziktr @8dokuzmusic @birkoradyo @canradyoizmir #müziksokakta #ethnmusic #worldmusic (Seferihisar, İzmir) https://www.instagram.com/p/CEoQI_bgLqh/?igshid=5v6pq67v7k17

[djjoeltjamkam]

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Still one of my Favorite #GoodazAnthemClips 📸 . . BEAT THIS 🤔. #SheBad + TAX @i.ashley.b 🧨🧨🔥 . . #WorldSong 🌎 Watch the #Antics 👀 . . . #activatethegirldem 🎬🎬 . . Song: #GoodazAnthem 🎵🎵 By: @terryfiremusic @zekedon1 @djjoeltjamkam . . WHEN SONG BAD 💥💯 #GoodazAnthem 🎵🎵 . . #footageyuhwant #yuhwahfootage 🎬 🏆 . #Tnz #tnzalbum . “TnZ Album dropping soon” . . #Fldhqs #nycdhqs #dhqnyc #fun #dance #Jamkamstudio #dancehallqueen #dhq #dancers #dancehalldancers #djjoeltjamkam Tag a friend 🤸🏾‍♂️ . . #NextUp from #TNZ @terryfiremusic & @zekedon1 New song to follow WATCH THE ANTICS 🧨🧨🎬 . . (at New York, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2m1haVgRqO/?igshid=alnb81fzhakn

[thelightfluxtastic]

Wandersong, Centaurworld and Consequences

This post is based on the song preview for Centaurworld season 2 released on youtube by Netflix Futures, and also the ending of the game Wandersong, so consider this your spoilerwarning.

In the game Wandersong, you play as a bard who wants to save the world. To do so, you need to collect several pieces of a Worldsong. It's told to you from the beginning that the world song isn't as simple as just the right musical notes, it's about the whole planet being in harmony. Through game design, in order to get a song piece, you generally need to help people in some way- reunite families, fix a toxic workplace, stop a brewing war. At the end of the game, you actually don't get the last song piece, but because you made the world more unified, everyone you've helped sings a new world into being. It is impossible to get a bad ending on a first playthrough. However, in a second playthrough, one already knows the songs and can sing them at the right ritual locations without doing the quests. So one doesn't help people or get the character/relationship development. In such a playthrough, the game just ends after you fail to get the last piece, because the world ended- it was in disharmony and you didn't fix it, even if you technically did the magic rituals. Based on what's been revealed so far in Season 2, I think Horse essentially inadvertently gave herself a Bad Ending. Consider the lyrics Waterbaby sings when describing the quest to get the key pieces: Those war tactics you know, they got no utility And the key to unlock the gateway that joins both our worlds Is to be a unifier A bridge who’d connect those rejecting what needs to be done Every piece is scattered, its magic unfurled And we can stop this war When you open the door, open the gateway Open your heart and your mind And that is the Key Convince each one of what needs to be done And each shard that they guard will be yours Waterbaby wants Horse to end the war. But she's not talking about key pieces. She's talking about being a unifier, a bridge, connecting other people, opening heart and mind, convincing and communing. Horse got the physical key, but she often didn't convince people of her cause. She broke the tree shaman, stole the sash. And from Horse's and audiences perspective, this is entirely reasonable at the time! She's on an important quest, all these other things are silly, or people are outright rude, mean or unfair (Horse did win the sash first before stealing it). But now, in season 2, the consequences are being reaped. The tree shamans don't want to help her with the war, neither to the cattaurs. (Why the merfolk don't is a mystery to me). Horse got the physical parts of the key without doing any of the unifying, so she got what she needed to open the rift but not stop the war. If she had found ways to convince and work with the centaurs she met along the way, she'd have both by the time the gate opened. And this is just a bigger version of the lesson Horse learns through season 1! In the Taurnado episode, Horse is so caught up in being Brave and Cool that she doesn't appreciate she's put others in danger and that they're risking themselves to help her. Horse learns this lesson- of not sacrificing others for her personal needs and goals- but she only applies it to the herd, not the background characters of the rest of the world. (Again, totally expected from a meta perspective- every story has ignorable NPCs). But I find it interesting. A very cool Into the Woods style 'consequences of act 1 in act 2, you can't just Act Like a Protagonist and expect everything to work out for you'. Looking forward to hopefully seeing this developed through season 2.