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autumnbrambleagain · 4 months

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Hi, first time reader, first time caller. I ended up reading proselytize in between my various beginner runs in qud to keep me motivated. It's really good! You're a very talented writer with a great sense of pacing, character and style! I was just wondering though, do you have default builds for all the daughters of nafpor, or are they more like archetypes?

oh gosh thank you! i am always stunned at how well received proselytize has been, i'm glad people are enjoying it so much

i experiment a lot with them when i play them, so i have a lot saved, although TBH a lot of them are older characters from over a year ago

here's suir softbeast's canonical build, although this is just like. her base, larval form without any of her chimera stuff. there's a mod that lets you pick what your chimeric limbs are when evolving so you can have the exact same suir softbeast experience, the randomization of it means any future suir i play without that mod is going to be a radically different suir

you'll notice her intelligence is like, pretty high! it's said in the game she ends up being one of the best tinkers in qud and just convinces herself she's only good for being a blodshedding hedonist. my suir build strats were pick every physical mutation i could get, get extra limbs, the usual chimera stuff. i used swords as my main for the DV bonus and lunge action economy stacking, and axes in all the other offhands for dismemberment procs

it uses the marshtaur sprite, although i'd wish in a tattoo gun and recolor her in all white and gray. if i ever played her again i'd probably modify the sprite to make her look more like herself

here's tiyu-yutep's last build. psychometry isn't actually Very Worthwhile, but it was thematic and i'm the kind of idiot that will make a build for theme rather than efficiency. this is, in fact, a pretty BAD build, which I think is on its own level thematically important. the daughters of nafpor aren't all supertwinked hyperspecced characters, some of them just Played Good

normally i'd replace her sprite with a cat cherub sprite, but at this point next time i ever end up playing her i'd just make my own sprite for her

in actual gameplay i'd use precog and nectar to reroll mutations so i have a bespoke list of mental mutations stacked up as high as i can, and complement them with a ton of tinkered nonsense. tiyu-yutep's build is about maximizing options in every situation. something bad is happening? that's fine, i have 12 kinds of grenade, 10 mental mutations, and eight guns to solve it.

that's one of my igwashim builds, unlike tiyu and suir being kinda jack-of-all-trades (my preferred style ngl) ig is very much a "scry, teleport in, blast everything to sleep, axe axe axe axe axe axe axe" build

mutation points aren't spent on new mutations at all, and exist just to fill out the efficiency of her existing mutations. i use a mod to make teleport more accurate at very high levels, because teleportation is my nonsexual fetish and i crave being able to pinpoint teleport after i hit level 10

still she isn't just a bump-attack character. maximize information gathering and ambush tactics, never play fair. appearance change wish to turn her tile into a crypt ferret's, naturally, although now that i've started fumping about with modding, i'd just like. actually make a clade so instead of it saying "Mutated Human" it'd say "Mutated Ferret" or something. make it so dromads don't call me human they call me "ferret" or something

her having Socially Repugnant would be appropriate narratively but i never bothered with it since she didn't need it, 10 ego is enough to represent her being a talking animal

i don't have any specific build saved for Savithvyr, she was one of my first Qud characters and was just a Fuming God-Child specced around agility, willpower, and intelligence, mostly using gas grenades of various kinds alongside the billowing conch. also not an optimal build! but it was fun. flood the zone with gas and just sorta stand back and pick at the survivors with a gun or stab them with triple-element gaslight kris

there's a mod that lets you play goatfolk which i used for naara, but in version updates i don't have it installed right now and i'll be honest i don't remember what i did with her much other than mental mutations

ooo-ho-OOO-EEE-ah and Buwofu-gawufoo were actually companions that Savithvyr and Suir picked up in-game, they were never characters i played directly but as companions they lasted so long they felt like they were part of those characters' identities and so they had to make the transition into the game proper.

the brambled fae's original build is NO LONGER POSSIBLE because they increased the cost of horns, which i think is HILARIOUS because why shouldn't it be an actual illegal build?

not that it hasn't had a dozen different builds ANYway. it's my go-to most-used build and based off of one of my fursonas at its core, so it's the culmination of my bullshit jack-of-all-trades obsession.

MILD SPOILERS but ive posted it before on this blog anyway, it DOES have its own sprite since i still play variations on it regularly enough i made a sprite for it

although that doesn't really represent what it looks like in the story

that's getting a BIT closer to what it looks like when we finally get to the brambled pass

#caves of qud #autumn says things #caves of qud fanfiction

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inspector-finebeak · 4 days

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Gonna ramble about my Caves of Qud OC and his two fulcrete friends. Would talk for longer if I could make myself write for an extended period of time.

The main dude is a chimera named Orpheus. He actually grew up outside Qud in a rather civilized area known as Ikit. He even went to college and studied some form of engineering that would help him in future tinkering. He did know about Qud (most people in Ikit have heard of it) and often fantasized about adventuring there. He got that wish when he mysteriously woke up in Joppa one day.

The first block of fulcrete Orpheus befriended is Nano. While exploring the rust wells, Orpheus found a can of Spray-A-Brain, the label of which had long since faded. Orpheus assumed it was spray paint and tested that theory on a fulcrete wall. Turns out cans of Spray-A-Brain fire the entire payload after one squeeze of the trigger. This particular can was designed to make the resulting sentient object into a slave of whoever fired the can, so Nano just kinda started following Orpheus and helping him. Orpheus was adamantly opposed to having a slave and made constant effort to treat Nano as an equal, so Nano eventually developed some sense of free will. By that point, they were friends and adventuring partners anyway.

The other block of fulcrete is named Nysh. She's a fun sort of crazy. Somehow, she has wings and some other chimera mutations I'll get into when I talk about personalities and fighting styles later in this post. Nysh met Orpheus and Nano during Orpheus' first and least successful attempt to get a scrapped waydroid from Golgotha. She helped them escape that shitshow and joined the team at Orpheus' request for funsies.

Okay, personality time. Nano tends to be quiet, perceptive, and philosophical. Nysh is inspired by Nicky from The Virus Within, and like Nicky, she's often saying and doing absurd shit, which results in a wide variety of reactions from those around her. (As you may be able to tell, Nysh isn't the most fleshed out character right now.) Orpheus is somewhere in between these two and often holds the crew together in a similar way to Coach or Bill from Left 4 Dead.

These personalities are reflected (kind of) in their weapon choices. Nysh uses her four arms to make numerous attacks with daggers, often speeding around a fight and dodging attacks. Nano fights with slow, tanky tactics, using his shield to take blows for the team and dishing out heavy blows with his carbide folding hammer. Orpheus is again in the middle, using two axes, two bucklers, and light armor.

Remember when I said that I suck at extended periods of writing? Yeah, that's kicking in now. Hopefully I add on to this post later.

#caves of qud #caves of qud fanfiction

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ectafoole · 3 months

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Sweet Scarring

The following is a fanfiction of a fanfiction, an imagined conversation between a character from @autumnbrambleagain's Proselytize serial story and an NPC from the game. It's not canon or even fanfic-canon but contains spoilers both for Autumn's fic and also Caves of Qud.

"Hold, Child of Man."

Annaface felt her heart lurch, most likely visibly, upon hearing the words and accent. The soft lilt of Oudin's aristocratic mein degraded with distance from the heart of the Putus, but this speaker learned to speak somewhere not far from that shriveled heart. That voice radiated an authority installed in her from birth that chilled her putatively-pure blood.

She turned to see who it was, and that just made her heart lurch worse.

It had been a long time since she saw a Murmur, and the sharp edge of the memory had not been dulled with time. Of the places she might have expected to find a remnant of her past, why here in—what had Tiyu-Yutep called it? An anarchist collective?

The costume was recognizable at once. Where the Murmurs of her past wore a coat of rags and garbage, this one draped themself in pieces of metal and synthetic fabric. They wore a mask made not of bone and leather, but of broken scraps of gentling mask. Even stranger, they were armed to the teeth: her optical scanners picked up the hidden outline of an ontological anchor, a crysteel sword, a pair of hand rails. Penetrating radar glowing where eyes should be in a partially-collapsed head.

So Templar, but so not.

The stranger noticed Annaface's hesitation. For a moment they stopped turning the crank of their instrument, cutting off a drone that she hadn't quite realized she'd been hearing. They reached down to the fullerite shield that leaned against a palladium strut and turned it so she could see the front, its conspicuous lack of the dread Holy Rhombus.

"We are of a kind," they said, still in that deceptively soft aristocratic accent. Or was it deceptive? Could that be actual gentleness in the kind of voice that never carried it? "Come sit, if you have the moment to spare a fellow Pariah. I shall play you a tune."

"I've never seen an instrument like that," she said, gradually convincing her body to divert its course toward this avatar of bad memories.

"The hurdy-gurdy," said the murmur, turning the crank on the instrument once again. "It originated in the far North eons ago. I used to carry an oud, but I didn't care for the memories it evoked."

"Yet you wear the Murmur's kit," Annaface said, screaming internally at her own candidness.

"Trenchant." The stranger paused for a moment, though the rich molasses groaning of their instrument continued. "I didn't wish to… reclaim the oud."

"You're. You're Une, aren't you? I've heard of you."

"I am Une," replied Une, "though I am given to understand that the Sons and Daughters do not refer to me as such."

"The squires know your name. We would call you The Wretch in front of our superiors, but there were stories. I'm not sure I believed you really dressed yourself as a Murmur. I… lost a friend to that festival."

The drone stopped for a moment, and Une turned to look at her dead-on with those blue-glowing eyes. It occurred to her that this stranger could probably see almost as well as she could. They could probably count her implants. They could probably count her TEETH.

"So it's true," said Une softly. "There are outposts that execute their murmurs. I still have work to do, clearly."

Annaface shivered. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?" Une resumed turning the wheel-fiddle's crank.

"Kinslaying," she said. "You sound so confident, so certain. Is it so easy for you as it sounds?"

"You fear becoming a monster," they surmised.

Sighing, Annaface turned her eyes away from the lumpy slope of Une's deformed skull. "You make it sound easy."

"For me, it was," replied Une, keying out a mournful tune over the steady drone of a continuous note. "But I was born a wretch. When you are born a wretch, becoming a monster is not so daunting. I'm not afraid to be a monster, I am afraid to be the 'human' my family revered. Ere I slew them."

She shuddered. "You make it sound like a privilege."

"It is," they said. "I do not envy you the task of learning to destroy the tyrants of your past. My path to monstrousness was prescribed for me, but you must find your own alone."

"Well," Annaface said softly, "not… alone."

She nodded, and the voice of Une's instrument rose over the din of her thoughts.

"Let your tired heart rest, Annaface Probelle," said Une, "and I will play you a tune of sweet scarring. A tune for who we are today. Would this please you?"

#caves of qud #fanfic fanfic #autumnbramble

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weepingchoir · 6 months

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IF THIS TOUR DOESN'T KILL YOU I WILL, a serialized Caves of Qud fanfiction.

A band of unsustainably extravagant stylings crosses the Mogrha'yi in search of fames long past. What's the use of recognition in a world of easy death? Metal will never die! Starring an almost entirely original cast!

#qud #caves of qud #mine

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ohnoproblems · 8 months

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curious to see how this stands currently so, q girl?

General opinion/How much I care about them: she's the moment i fell in love with caves of qud as a game. she's showed up in the vast majority of qud fics i've written. love her to pieces though her position in relation to the protagonists of my current active fic series means i have to bully her and that's been fun too.

A ship I love: well you see, she simply loves Weary Paw Mara, the Canonical Protagonist of Caves of Qud. when i wrote mara saying that she'd crawl back from death a thousand times for the taste of her, well, i meant it. also ereshkigal the mainframe. she's fucked that mainframe. no doubt

A non-romantic relationship that I love: well the thing is, i wrote a callous and morally-ambiguous centaur scientist-chef with tremendous martial prowess, and i wrote her to be Q Girl's acrimonious former research partner, and then that centaur made it into the game. it used to be a bit romantic to be sure but not any more!

The NOTP: if anyone's out there playing caves of qud as a character they think is a dude, she's not gonna fuck you bro

My biggest headcanon about them: vapes. heavily autistic (does this count as a headcanon? it's downright textual).

An idea for a fanfiction I would like to write/read about them: (if I have none in my WIPs I'll make one up on the spot!) stay tuned for treatise on the peregrine phoenix book 3, because the gals are going to grit gate

Something that makes me think of them: (a song, a character in another fandom, an animal, anything) quetzal!

#caves of qud #emberlily

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amneiger · 7 months

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@resonance-reblogs asked, and sure, why not.

Last song: Yesterday, I was listening to the Carrion OST because that fits my current writing project...but immediately before opening Tumblr today, I put on Two Steps From Hell's Battlecry album.

Favorite color: Blues and whites. Bright green too - natural sunlit green is okay I guess, but I will also accept Hollywood Radioactive or Computer Blinkenlights.

Currently watching: Oh dear. When was the last time I actually watched a show? It must have been years before Game of Thrones. Probably a better question would be what I'm reading and playing. Right now I'm reading Acceptance (the third book in the trilogy the Annihilation movie is based on), and I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077 to try out the changes to the gameplay systems.

Last movie: Another oof. See above.

Sweet/savory/spicy: Savor the world and all it's splendor.

Relationship status: Unmarried.

Current obsession: I recently spent a weekend morning Googling various sources tracking outcomes of some contrasting political philosophies and compiling them into a doc I can copy and paste as needed. For things slightly less real-world related, I made an alt account to do the Seeking Mr Eaten's Name quest in Fallen London, and I've written fanfiction (kind of) for Worm.

Last thing googled: According to my browser history, I used Google to find the Caves of Qud wiki. (I was answering a question about skill points.). For the sake of my respectability, I also wish to point out that before that I Googled an article about the UAW article that my phone sent me a notification about that I read and then decided to put it in my browser history just in case.

#if you blinked at the phrasing of the Game of Thrones sentence that was intentional

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autumnbrambleagain · 2 months

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today's very special episode is about plurality, i guess

#caves of qud #caves of qud fanfiction

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autumnbrambleagain · 2 months

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on today's episode, Annaface gets told a fairytale

#caves of qud #caves of qud fanfiction

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