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jellazticious · 10 months

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Under the cut is the updated Light Plague lore and also me critiquing humanity in the process

but of course, all deep dives of TLP will have discussions of varying degrees of body horror so be warned. Also it's so fucking long

Place is set somewhere in Europe but the apocalypse got so bad that no one can recognize what it was anymore. Even in near extinction of the human race, these assholes are still trying to segregate each other by groups, some bunkers, some labs, some towns and one is a living mansion on top of a tower wrapped in a garden of corpses surrounded by a wall. So TLP's camera or main focus would be four of the "Scorchers" in a bunker called Palethos. Scorchers are literally people who can be told to do whatever, so scientist, mercenary, assassin, resource gatherer, labrat etc. Human for hire basically and it's seen as a high honour to be one but it isn't. Four of them, Mortimer Tacre, Tak the Oracle, The Plague Kiwi, and Cobalt Roussel are the main focus of the theoretic show. Each of them represents a type of unfortunate person in the real world. Cobalt is the people pleaser who only does it because it's the safest thing to do, not once did he ever had a choice of his own, then PK who has been through tragedy after tragedy that he doesn't believe good exist anymore so why should he now, Tak, one of the smartest people that everybody goes to when they need something from them but would shun them otherwise, and Morter, who has never felt true satisfaction in his life but he came to terms with what was never meant to be so he uses what is left of his time to give the younger ones the happiness he never had.

Their jobs mainly is to play security guard for Palethos and data gatherers for 131, the establishment that protects Palethos. Other than tending to the survivors in Palethos, they should also protect them from the aggressive neighbours and mutations which they all call Dallums. Now here's the main course of TLP. The whole thing with the mutations and their miracle medicine, Chlerocyte.

Chlerocyte is a fungus found within a species of warm blooded cave fish that was discovered at the same time in the arctic. It develops in extreme cold and grows in warmth. The fungus attaches itself to the fish and they have a symbiotic relationship for the fish will provide the needed warmth for the fungus and in return, near immortality. Chlerocyte developed in a way that it will remember the body's average state of health or ideal state and reverts any damage if exposed to sunlight. wounds, lost limbs, impaled organs, brain damage, anything can be cured by it. A dying fish could just so easily swim out the vents and heal instantaneously . However, hubris is a tale as old as time. The fact that it's so easy to harvest without any hard method of applying to humans means that people will get arrogant and reliant on it to the point that even the smallest bruise is a call for Chlerocyte. Overusing and abusing the fungus/drug will warp when it should be active. They are supposed to be activated when there is abnormalities in the body. Compared to the fish that stays in the dark, humans are always exposed to the sun. Let the Chlerocyte wait long enough and it will start to "fix" something because getting activated with the sun is telling itself that the body needs it to do something, anything. And so, Dallums everyone.

Each mutation differs from how the mutated is harmed, their imperfections and sometimes what they touch. One of them was a near sighted man with a lithe frame so the fungus took it as a need to give him eyes all over his body and make his muscles swell. One Dallum was a woman nearly losing her life birthing a dying baby so the mutation gives her a flesh sack full of nutrients in an attempt to keep both her and the child alive, it worked but it's so heavy and the baby mutated with the forming of the sack so now it's part of it as a horrendous lump. Another Dallum, a gargantuan one even, was formed during a stageplay, one of the actors started to mutate and whoever he was touching became part of him and the dragon puppet he was leading with. The Dallum acts like a giant worm that constantly sings, the people it eats will merge halfway but not completely so those people retain their intelligence and memories but they are immobile so all they can do is scream to provide the Dallum's voice. Me designing the Dallums is like, I gotta make them compete with each other, they all have to be equally fucked up or gradually gets more and more fucked up. I mean one of them has his head shoved in a deer's ass and another's skin have so much fish attached to it.

The thing with Chlerocyte is simultaneously "fuck around and find out" and "play stupid games, win stupid prices" but also a jab that such a precious thing can be corrupted so badly but this time, the person who abused it is getting dragged with it.

no yeah, there's nothing anyone can do to revert Chlerocyte because according to it, what it does to the body is already perfect and it's making sure no one tampers with it. AKA you can't kill them and you can't just remove the spores and fungus unless you wanna be the ext Dallum in the files.

Anyway, survivors are at war with the Dallums while also at war with each other. At least most of them but not all. Their common enemy are the rich people living on the sky, watching them all for their entertainment. TV screens and cameras are a common theme in TLP if not the butterflies. Yeah, what you watch is sorta what the rich sky people are also watching except they watch the other bunkers but TLP the theoretical show itself are only focused on Palethos. Anyway, to boost their entertainment, they had this group of bounty hunters from across the entire country thing. They are given targets who are either actual terrible people or unrightfully called a criminal. So they released a bunch of vigilantes in the wild and they compete with each other because capturing their heads will grant them so much money. They're in the middle of an apocalypse and they still have inflation and rent debt, this is just like people still needing to work and go outside even if there was a pandemic.

Anyway, yeah, the Hunters are vicious and some of them are almost magic like Solasso. He can make portals with whips and ropes. No one can see him because if he's not hunting, he's bunking in a pocket dimension praising a sun god that he claims to speak to him but there's speculation that it's just his epilepsy. However, epilepsy could not explain the lasso portals so magic indeed coexists with science in TLP. Where did it come from? Funny story actually

Everyone knows and loves Tastriphe, aka Plague Kiwi. silly goose that man is. Anyway, he was working on a portal that can send resources to the near bunker without having to go up and send a delivery while Dallums chase you. Anyway, he failed at doing just that and instead, he opens up an interdimensional portal that invited a lot of universes over and brought over their beloved Ghost of Palethos, Sal Conspire. He is glitching in and out like he's from Spiderverse, silly goose. Other than Sal, while the portal was spazzing in different entries, some magic creatures, elements, and items slipped through the window and boom, earth has more magic than it already has. Excluding PK and Tak, they're like so magical there's not much explanation for them. All we know is PK is a fallen angel and Tak can see the future and do cool spirit stuff.

Tho, the most important thing to note about TLP in its entirety. It's not a story about the main characters. It's a collection of stories not just from the people of Palethos. Everything runs and flows and ties to each other. All of the characters are meant to be written as if they can be the main characters of their own shows because that's what real life is too, your own show but at the same time, you're part of someone else's. it's a big circle.

TLP should have the genuinity of real life but all of them deals with exaggerated or disguised in a metaphor problems

Oh there's also The Reaper Tree but that's spoiler endgame stuff so I'll leave it here now, tata

#The Light Plague #Jella characters #Jellaverse

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phantasmeels · 1 year

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Metroid Lore/Timeline: The Galactic Federation Military Structure and its History (Sources: The games, game manuals, metroid wikis, and instances of me just making it up as I go)

It all started with the Galactic Federation Police Corps (GFPC). As the Federation initially started as a form of trade regulation between planets, Federal laws would need enforcement, leading to a simple set of space fleets, officers and soldiers for that purpose. These troops and agents would ensure trade transactions and supply lines between planets were legal and secure, as well as lead galactic criminal investigations. As the new federal government grew and centralized into a galactic system of representatives, the use of the Police grew to ensure general order and security outside of the individual jurisdictions of worlds as well as continue to enforce federal laws.

What the new government didn't anticipate, however, was the onset of organized and strategic raids of piracy against trade ships, coming from a new faction that emerged. Dubbing this faction simply as "The Space Pirates", the Federation Bureau elected to expand its military, as the established police force was insufficient to combat the shockingly well-organized Pirates while also trying to lend its member civilizations aid in maintaining order on their own individual worlds where necessary. Thus a new division was established: the Galactic Federation Army Corps (GFAC). The Army forces were deployed on wider scale scenarios of mostly ground warfare on various planets, and had its hands full driving out conquering Pirate forces from member worlds and defending those worlds from future attacks. So full, in fact, that the Federation Bureau even started a new program, one that employed the use of skilled mercenaries and bounty hunters to supplement existing military forces, aid in special missions, and track down retreating Pirates into the further reaches of space. One of these independent contractors was of course the famous Samus Aran, who had gained much vital experience from serving in both the Police and Army Corps before striking out on her own.

Even after Samus took down the immediate Pirate threat on Zebes, however, it became apparent that those Zebesian Pirates were far from the only Pirate divisions. Over the next few years, seeing the need to stop relying so strongly on mercenaries and bounty hunters to keep the galaxy safe, the Federation created two new military factions. With the most advanced training and equipment, and often hiring Army and Police veterans who weren't ready to retire, the Galactic Federation Navy Corps (GFNC) and Marine Corps (GFMC) were established specifically to focus on countering the Space Pirates on a galactic scale and allow some levity for the Police and Army forces. We see the Navy and Marines specifically throughout the Prime games, as exclusively the only Federation military forces depicted in the space and planetside battles. The most advanced the technology used seems to get thus far is seen in the small mechs used by the special Marine squad in Federation Force. We don't yet know how the Prime series ends, but presumably the widespread warfare with the Pirates ends with most of them gone, only for them to make a small surprise return at Zebes in Super Metroid much later.

Once the widespread difficulty with the Pirates seems to be dealt with, the Federation seems to have allowed the Marine division to mostly retire, focusing on making continued use of the Police, Army and hunters/mercenaries for galactic peacekeeping. The Navy, meanwhile, is likely stationed at the edges of the Federation-controlled galactic regions, securing the borders against future pirate attacks, as well as other potential enemy factions such as the Kriken Empire.

In the background for Metroid 2, we learn that a special ops offshoot of the Police Corps, the Special Squad (GFSS), was sent to SR-388 to rescue those who were sent before them to find any sign of the Metroid life forms native to the planet, for the sake of wiping the creatures out. They aren't heard from again after landing planetside, and as we know Samus accepts a contract to investigate and finish the job concerning the metroids.

In Other M, we see that the Army also sends out specialized groups of soldiers for special ops, as Samus cooperates with the 07th Platoon on the story's overall mission.

The standard armor design used in the Federation Army. Optimized for planetside/ground warfare scenarios as well as special operations involving similarly armed and armored opponents. Likely designed with energy shielding and ammunition carrying capacity in mind.

The Federation Police Special Squad, clad in powered armor suits optimized for exploration and protection in hostile alien environments. The armor is likely designed to defend against hard physical attacks, falling damage, radiation, extreme temperatures, etc.

A Federation Navy fleet of flagships and space fighters as seen from Samus's ship in Prime 3.

The standard Marine armor as seen in Prime 2. As they were (according to the theory above) designed to be top of the line in the Prime era in order to combat the widespread, coordinated and intense Pirate attacks, these were likely the most capable and expensive Federation Military armor suits ever produced, as the Marine division was intended to lessen the Federation's dependence on independent contractors.

#metroid #metroid prime #theory #metroid timeline

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blackjack-15 · 3 years

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Ziplines, Blood Ties, and Colonavirus — Thoughts on: The Silent Spy (SPY)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH, TMB, DED, GTH

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SPY; mentions of the “Nancy Games” (ASH-SPY); SAW; mention of National Treasure (2004).

The Intro:

It’s our penultimate meta, and this time, it’s personal.

In every way, The Silent Spy is the culmination of the Nancy Games. Ever since her trip back home in ASH, Nancy has been increasingly featured in the games, showing us more of her personality, her life, and her backstory — all in an effort to lead up to this story, where we actually delve into Nancy’s place in the world and what it means that she lives in it.

And the answer to that is a lot less wholly idealistic than the franchise would have given 20+ games ago.

I don’t mean to say that SPY is a cynical game — it’s honestly fairly neutral, edging on positive — but that SPY accepts the fundamental truth that all of the Nancy games have been leading up to: that Nancy, though talented, hardworking, and connected, is simply another fish when it comes to the sea of life. She’s not unique in any way that really matters – look at her foils in Alexei, in Jamila, in Deirdre, in Jessalyn — and yet she continues to work hard, to solve puzzles, and to right old wrongs.

At least for me, this is a hopeful message. The point of “Nancy Drew, Girl Detective” is not that no one could do what she does, it’s not that she’s the best, most experienced sleuth in the world, and it’s not that she’s the Last, Best Hope of those who call upon her for aid. The point behind her character is that she’s a relatively normal (if wealthy) girl who does what she can, and chooses to do it again and again.

There’s a wonderful part in the equally wonderful movie National Treasure when our heroes are reading a part of the Declaration — the part talking about the right of the citizens to throw off a despotic government like the British had become — and Ben (Nicholas Cage, actually in a good movie for once!) defines it in modern speech:

“If there’s something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.”

In the beginning of the Nancy Drew games series, Nancy is merely an intuitive puzzle solver. She gets her cases through family connections, turns up at places where mysteries happen to occur, etc. etc. As time goes on and she practices, she eventually comes to the point where she’s being hired for bigger and bigger cases, more and more regularly — in short, she starts to live the truth of that quote. Nancy is, at her core, someone with the ability to take action against things that are Wrong. Throughout this series — and most especially, throughout the “Nancy” games (ASH-SPY), she becomes someone who recognizes her responsibility to take action.

And that’s what’s showcased here in SPY. Upon arriving and learning that she’s been led to Glasgow under false circumstances, Nancy is immediately and wholly over her head — but she’s still someone who has the ability to take action to right a wrong. When she’s working against Revenant, warning the scientist, or reading through secret memo after secret memo, she’s not doing it with the intent to Save the World; she’s finishing Kate Drew’s last task. Her loyalty isn’t to Glasgow, to Cathedral, to MI5, or any other player in this story — her loyalty is to her mother, and to the task Kate Drew died while trying to finish.

Which is, in my view, the best possible motivation in a game that’s all about family.

With that discussion behind us, I want to talk a little bit here about the other theme of this game — power. Revenant, as the terrorist group that they are, want to seize power; their goal is to run Glasgow (branching off from there into a wider sphere, of course) through seizing power during a (self-induced) state of emergency — aka, what’s referred to in-game as the Colony operation.

This is, of course, Politics 101 — whip people up into a frenzy, come in promising to Save Everyone, and entrench yourself in power that you can’t be moved from with any amount of ease. And while Revenant planned it for 2005, it would work even better in 2013, when social media and instant, 24-hour news cycles can keep the fear alive far more effectively than Revenant would have hoped for nearly a decade prior.

Both in 2005 and 2013, Revenant nearly succeeds, only to be foiled by a red-head out of her depth but who tries anyway (the difference between the two, of course, is that Kate was isolated and Nancy had backup). The most startling thing — and one of my favorite things about this game – is that it doesn’t end with Nancy ‘killing’ Revenant once and for all, or even stopping the Colony Operation once and for all. Nancy is, in every way, out of her depth here; she’s not used by either side as an agent, or even as an asset — she is, as Zoe reminds her, a tool, valuable for what she might know, not for her skills, not for who she is, or what she works for.

As the games from TOT on have worked hard to expand Nancy’s world and tie it together, SPY shows the benefit of having a wide-open world: that the world goes on, people live and die, and secretive organizations (ATAC, Revenant, Cathedral, MI5…) plot and scheme to remake the world in their image.

This, in my view, is also a great thing. The thing that Nancy Drew books (and a lot of the early games) get wrong is that Nancy fixes (or is party to fixing) all of the problems introduced. The piano-playing girl that Nancy meets ends up with a Grandmaster as a teacher; the inheritance goes to the Worthy Widow and Her Daughter; Nancy rescues her tied-up father AND solves his case for his client all in one brilliant masterstroke.

That’s not to say that every story should have all of its threads dangling by the end, but Nancy is simply a smart and resourceful girl, working (most of the time) with her own relatively meager resources. She shouldn’t be the answer to the world’s problems, and I think it’s lovely that, especially in the Nancy games, she really isn’t. Nancy is a helper, and that’s far more valuable than being an omniscient, all-powerful being who can magically fix everyone’s problems just by being there.

The last thing I want to talk about in this introduction is how good SPY is for Nancy’s own personal lore. There’s a lot of fuss every time SPY is brought up about how “Nancy’s mom actually died when she was three!!” which, honestly, tells me that the 60s re-writes (which, yes, if you’re pedantic, started in ’59) did more damage than I had previously thought.

The original Nancy Drew books were written in the 30s by various ghostwriters, and were a little different from the yellow-bound 60s rewrites that most people consider the “old Nancy Drew books”. 30s Nancy Drew was a little closer to our games-universe Nancy; brash, outspoken, punishingly independent, and incredibly capable. She’s also a bit violent and unruly, has graduated from school at 16, lost her mother at 10, and does as she pleases with the occasional call home to reassure Carson or (more often) to ask a question about the law.

Sadly, other than taking out a few racial and societal overtones that weren’t really acceptable after 30 years — mostly by taking out any non-white characters and including different forms of bias, note — the yellow rewrites weren’t an improvement to the stories or to Nancy’s character. Nancy becomes less bold, less independent, and far more focused on describing each meal in punishing amounts of detail. The words “kindly” and “sweetly” were increasingly added after “Nancy said”, she’s far more deferential to authority, and her mother instead passes when Nancy is 3, rather than 10.

In changing the form of the media to video games, rather than books, what would eventually become HER had a choice; they could align themselves with the newest Nancy Drew books — the Nancy Drew Files and Nancy Drew on Campus, both of which were known for being Hotter and Sexier (and, in the case of Campus, ridiculously stupid) — or choose what people called “the classics” — the yellow-spine 60s rewrites, as the once-famous blue books had been all but forgotten in the 90s. In the first (and still one of the last, honestly) brilliant move of the series, HER chose to mix and match the things that made for good game fodder from (nearly, given how much the Campus books suck) every written incarnation of Nancy.

And, to their credit, they chose an important fact from the 30s: Nancy’s mother died when she was 10, not when she was 3.

Losing a parent is a defining moment no matter when it happens, but the exact effect often changes based on (among other things) the age of the child. In order for Nancy to be the kind of person who is influenced by the mystery of her mother’s death, her mother had to have died when Nancy could remember — thus, 3 is right out, as Nancy might remember tiny bits and pieces of the events leading up to and right after, but nothing else.

By taking bits and pieces of contrasting (and often contradictory) lore and making their own out of it, HER (and I’m hat-tipping Cathy and Nik especially here, given Nancy’s characterization spike beginning around WAC/TOT) gives us a version of Nancy that’s similar to the sleuth we know and love from the books and movies (ignoring the 2007 disaster) and, occasionally, TV shows, while still keeping her mostly consistent and showing us a few new flashes that make this character stand out and win her place in the Drewniverse.

Now, with all of that said, let’s move on to this game in specific, shall we?

The Title:

The Silent Spy, as a title, is one that is wonderfully mysterious and really makes you want to know more — right up until the title drop within the game itself, at which point it shifts from quite alluring to desperately sad and foreboding.

After all, “the only silent spy is a dead spy.”

As the game really is about our resident Silent Spy — Kate Drew and her actions and legacy — this is really the only title that the game could have had, and it suits it down to the ground, both with its mystery and with its sadness.

In life, Kate Drew was silenced, and in death, she is obviously necessarily silent — but Nancy reads her words, remembers her speech, listens to her voice, and, of course, hears her song, whenever the world is quiet enough. And I think that’s a wonderful dichotomy for the title to introduce before the game has even properly begun.

The Mystery:

Summoned to Scotland by a mysterious message and guided by a photograph of her mother, Nancy arrives ready to retrace her mother’s steps — only to be thrown into a world of espionage, gadgets, untraceable phone calls, and deadly mishaps. Her luggage (and her best clue about her mother) having been stolen, the presence of an old family friend who refuses to talk, an evasive skiptracer, an excitable local, and a clever intelligence agent all work together to ensure that Nancy is off-balance the minute she arrives.

All, of course, is even less what it seems than Nancy is prepared for, and she spends to game gloriously off-balance trying to keep up with the larger forces pushing and pulling her. She needs to retrace her mother’s steps, escape from certain death, dig deep into the pasts and presents of the people she meets, and do some impressive sleuthing of her own to even make the change from tool to player — and even that might not be enough to keep her safe when the dastardly minds at Revenant come a-knocking…

As a mystery — or as a collection of intertwined mysteries, honestly — SPY succeeds at what a lot of other games tried (and ultimately failed, in one way or another), which is to link all the happenings in the game together under one cohesive plot that grows more and more horrifying the more you think about it. GTH has a fandom reputation for fridge horror, but SPY holds its own easily when you consider Kate’s fatal chase, Moira’s abduction and guilt, the threats that Ewan and Alec operate under, and the life that Zoe leads on the regular.

Every action that Nancy takes benefits someone — whether it be Cathedral, Revenant, herself, or an interested third (fourth?) party — without her really meaning to, and the game is great in including another question in every reveal.

The beauty of SPY’s mystery(s) is that it takes careful reading, paying attention, and honestly replaying in order to grasp the enormity of every action. No matter how many times you play or replay, there’s something new to find — a time-sensitive conversation, an implication in a note, a theory behind the presence of a clue or a piece of (what you previously thought to be) set dressing — it honestly is limitless, and it just helps to contribute to the feeling that this is a world that Nancy isn’t meant to truly be fully immersed in.

And speaking of people who are immersed in that world…

The Suspects:

We’ll begin, for organization’s sake, with our out-and-out (current) agents first, then tackle our other suspects, then our Nancy-related people, and finish off with — for the final time in this series, as this is the last “Nancy” game — Nancy herself.

A new, yet returning character, Bridget Shaw is one of the cover identities of Zoe Wolfe — aka Samantha Quick, who Nancy impersonated in VEN and who helped the Hardy Boys in Treasure on the Tracks.

Prior to SPY, I had money for a very long time that Samantha Quick would eventually come into the game, and I was absolutely delighted with her appearance in SPY — where else would she be so well situated? Zoe is snarky, disillusioned, cynical, and sometimes downright nihilistic, but she’s also someone who took up a job that, percentage-wise, no one wants to or is able to do, because she’s alone:

“I work in the field for two reasons: one, I don’t need any help. And two, because no one would miss me if I fell off the grid.”

I love watching the ND games subvert their own formula, and Zoe is a great example of the “helper”-type suspect who really isn’t like your traditional “helper” at all. She’s there to do a job, and if sticking with Nancy helps her to do it, then that’s what she does. But she’s not there to Right some Great Wrong for the warm fuzzies of it all, or even because it’s Just and Right. She’s there because it’s her job, and her job is to play the game.

“It’ll be brief, painful, and full of garbage…but that’s life, isn’t it? And that’s the metaphor I’m riding into the grave.”

Next is our (kind of) double operative and partial culprit, Ewan McLeod (real name Sean Kent Davis) is a clever operative of Cathedral who decided that he wasn’t valued or important anywhere near as much as he should have been, and reached out to Revenant to supply them with information. Summoning Nancy to Scotland, Ewan is easily able to gain a portion of her trust as the Watcher in the Wires and is her tie to the relative safety of Cathedral.

As a culprit, Ewan is — ultimately — pitiable. Not that he’s not an egotist with a victim complex a mile wide, but when you actually look at the situation he’s in, it’s hard not to feel bad for him, even though he did it to himself. Having contacted Revenant, he’s now attempting to hold a tiger by the tail, praying it can’t eat him — and his worst fears come true, as his loved ones are threatened (“trying to keep my friends and family alive”, remember) and he’s discarded and made a target by the terrorists that he tried to use to make himself important.

Given the rather chilling threats made by Revenant, I’m inclined to believe that when we find him tied up, he didn’t do it to himself. Nancy would have noticed if the knots were too loose to have been done by a third party, and we know Revenant told him several times that if he wasn’t useful, he’d be punished.

While Ewan makes terrible choices, he’s also a pawn being played by a larger force — like everyone else in the game — and that is at least worth pity, if not forgiveness.

Next up is our former Cathedral agent and all-around tough cookie Moira Chisholm. As one of the people responsible for the events that led to Kate’s death — though no one but Revenant is responsible for killing her, note — Moira lives with guilt, regret, and a powerful sense of loneliness that only the loss of everyone you hold dear can bring.

Moira’s guilty of nothing in the present-day calamity, and helps Nancy the very best she can in her own limited power, but is ultimately a character for whom the past looms larger than the present can match. She has her hobbies, but her house is filled with memories of days when people sat on her couch and broke her teacups, not of hours reading alone.

She’s an intensely tragic character, and an example of what happens when your need to know the “truth” can get in the way of doing right by those you love. Moira lost everything to her previous job for Cathedral (who is implied to have left her, an otherwise dangerous free agent, alive because they knew (correctly!) she would become stagnant and docile under the weight of her own guilt, ouch), and yet she risks life and limb to help Nancy —not because she thinks it’ll exculpate her, but because Moira, at her core, wants to help the world, no matter what it’s taken from her.

Our final suspect is Glasgow’s resident skiptracer and unwilling pawn Alec Fell, who, along with Moira, can be traced back to Kate Drew’s death. Originally, Alec investigated a mysterious car crash — the one that killed Kate Drew — and, when he didn’t stop after a warning, had his office ransacked and burned. In the few months before the game starts, he experiences another break-in and his sister is kidnapped, with a message informing him that if he wants to guarantee her safety, to comply with Revenant’s orders.

Unlike Ewan, when pushed into a corner, Alec does his best to raise a little hell while still trying to keep his sister safe. For everything that he does on Revenant’s orders, he also helps Nancy out, finds her suitcase, locates Moira, tells Nancy where the cards are, and does his best to push back in other, little ways.

Sure Alec is guilty of a few things — most notably the fake shooting scare in Nancy’s room — but he’s a very active character, riding the rails and searching for anyone who can help put an end to this situation. It’s not for nothing that he’s a fan favorite, both for this game for the series at large, and his excellent VA and charming dialogue only make up half of his appeal.

On our Nancy side, we’ve got a few returning characters and one (semi) new one, so let’s go through them before getting (for the last time!) to the girl detective herself.

Carson Drew, father and golf model extraordinaire, is here to ground (as in steady, not punish) Nancy as she goes through this mystery. As the other person besides Nancy who was most affected by Kate’s death, Carson is an invaluable source of Kate-related knowledge, but is concerned foremost with his daughter’s safety.

For my money, the most important thing we learn about Carson here is that, well…he married the wrong woman as much as Kate married the wrong man. It’s sort of simplistic to say that their story shows that, in some cases, love doesn’t conquer all, but it’s true all the same.

Carson was happy to jet off to Scotland on occasion to visit Moira and her husband, but being happy to take vacations is a very different thing from a life constantly shifting and changing. He’s a prosecutor, so he has a strong sense of justice, but also has a strong sense of stability — he chose a career with a set trajectory and clearly defined rules.

Kate Austin, however, was a journalist who occasionally consulted for a Spy Organization when life got a little too boring (it’s important to note that she wasn’t a straight-out spy like Moira — she was far too free-spirited for that). She had all of Nancy’s inquisitiveness but more people skills than Nancy will probably ever have, and made friends easily.

It’s easy to see how she would have been attracted to the All-American, hardworking, solidly intelligent, emotionally balanced man, just as it’s easy to see how the slightly flashy, clever, inquisitive, intuitive redhead would have attracted him.

If this is starting to feel like I’m describing two other characters here…well, longtime readers of this meta series already know what happens when I use a paragraph to describe characters without using their names.

Kate is important in the game in that we’re shown her differences from and —more enlightening — similarities to Nancy. Nancy’s actions in this game are reflections on what Kate did (and what she would have done) as much as they show how the daughter diverges from the mother. And while Nancy doesn’t have her mother’s people skills or ease of making friendships, what she does have is her mother’s – and I’m going to use this word purposely — flightiness.

At the end of the day, Carson couldn’t be with Kate when she flitted off around the world, and Ned can’t be with Nancy when she does the same.

(I also find it interesting that we deal in the games only with Carson’s side of the family, and never even have a mention of Nancy’s maternal grandparents. Yes, I know Kate could have been an only child and her parents could already be dead…but I do like the possibility that they blame Carson for Kate’s death (entirely undeservedly!) and thus cut off contact. But this meta is for, well, meta, not fanfic.)

Ned Nickerson plays an important role in SPY in that he tries to help Nancy the best he can, even to the point of breaking and entering in her house (though really, it’s just entering, since he has permission) to find a document for her.

Ned comes off brilliantly in this game, but it’s important to note that his big, impressive (yet charmingly understated) speech isn’t to Nancy, but to Carson. And it doesn’t sway Nancy, it sways Carson. Because, at the end of the day, Carson can relate to lots of the pieces that make Ned what he is, and the situation that Ned finds himself in.

He’s wonderful, as boyfriends go; he calls her, encourages her, offers oddly prescient hints…but he doesn’t go with her. It’d be easy enough to make that a point in the series that, though we don’t see it happen, Ned often accompanies Nancy on her escapades, but instead we’re told — often through contention — that the exact opposite is true.

Ned is solid, true, intelligent, emotionally balanced and kind, but above all, Ned is stable. He’s enrolled in college — in an honors frat — and plays sports, attends his classes faithfully, remembers important dates…the list goes on and on. These are all wonderful characteristics for a boyfriend, but he, like Carson with Kate, ultimately isn’t what Nancy needs out of a relationship — and she is certainly not, like Kate with Carson, what Ned needs out of a relationship.

At the end of the day, both would need to compromise — Ned would need to set off with her sometimes, and Nancy would need to stay close to home sometimes — in order to make the other happy. And, well…nothing we have in any of the games says that either one would do that in the long term. Sure, Nancy returns home after the fight in CAP for ASH…but is in Egypt the very next game — immediately followed by Colorado, Georgia, and Scotland.

And honestly, this is the basis on which I disagree with Ned/Nancy as a couple. It serves neither one and, as we see in quite a few games where they squabble, they can make each other worse.

And speaking of our resident sleuth, let’s talk about Nancy Drew before wrapping up this character section.

In SPY, Nancy is — as mentioned above — a tool, used by both sides to get what they want without caring how it personally affects her. The big thing we learn about Nancy in this — and one of my favorite characteristics about her — is that Nancy is pretty ruthless. To me, it makes sense that, to get the information she wants, Nancy does what a terrorist organization tells her to because 1) it’s not her home immediately at risk, and 2) most importantly, Nancy has done bad things in the name of a good end in pretty much every game.

Lying, stealing, breaking priceless artifacts, endangering others — none of these are really new to Nancy, and what SPY does is brings that to the forefront. Sure, you as the player have the option not to do what Revenant tells Nancy to do…but then you miss out on big parts of Kate’s characterization — and, more importantly, a big part of Nancy’s.

In an unprecedented move, I’m going to reference National Treasure again, and quote part of Ben’s speech before he steals the Declaration:

“[A toast] to high treason…here’s to men who did what was considered wrong, in order to do what they thought was right — what they knew was right.”

To me, that shows us why Nancy does what she does — in SPY, and in every other game where she lies, cheats, and steals her way to the truth. She does it because, at the end of the day, Nancy is a person who is ruthless in her pursuit of her goal. And that’s a valuable trait.

Especially when one is dealing with spies, terrorists, and shady government operatives.

The Favorite:

I love most of SPY, so I’ll stick here with the things that especially stick out to me.

As covered above, I love: what this game does for the lore of the ND world; ‘Samantha Quick’; the many motivations of our suspects, and the emotional resonance that this game has.

Beyond that, there are a lot of little things. I absolutely love that they got the relative of the guy who plays Carson to play Nancy when she was little — that’s adorable to me. I love the cookie-making minigame, the outfit swap for Bridget/Zoe, the voice work for all of our suspects and helpers, and the beautiful locations (especially the spy cabin, both exterior and interior).

My favorite moment in the game is a sad one, but I’m a mercurial kind of person, so you should have really expected that. It’s actually Moira’s log/diary/letter to Kate (it functions as all three) after Cathedral deactivates her as an agent. I love a lot about it — the sad, almost desperate feeling to the words, the pen color changing as the seasons do — but nothing is better done than Moira’s last entry:

“It’s winter. It doesn’t matter that it’s winter, does it?”

My favorite puzzle is probably the zip-lining one. Sure, it’s easy, and sure, the animation makes me a little motion-sick, but it’s just….zip lines are just cool. That’s all there is to it. It appeals to the spy-loving idiot in me, and I think big-woosh-go-fast is stupid cool.

I also have to give a hat-tip to Kate’s letter — turning a fandom meme into a heartwarming story? Nik, you mad genius — and Nancy’s letter to Kate at the end. Both are beautifully written and are the perfect centerpiece to their respective characters, and both always put a smile on my face (and, at times, a tear in my eye) when reading them.

The last thing I really do have to mention here is Logan’s quasi-reappearance. I mentioned this in my “Top 5 Surprising Moments” meta, but I love, love, love that Logan is a Cathedral operative, and that he reported on Nancy during SAW. Not only does this continue to open up Nancy’s world, but it also shows that there are consequences to Nancy’s actions. She’s in rare form as far as rudeness goes in SAW, and SPY weaponizes that against her, giving Cathedral (and Revenant) a way to weaponize her feelings about her mother’s death and her — to be frank — inability to let things lie as they are.

The Un-Favorite:

There are a few things that aren’t quite my favorite in SPY, so let’s run through those as well.

First, in the common refrain of “small visual distinctions are difficult for me personally”, I didn’t like that there wasn’t enough contrast between a plain (on the bottom half) cookie and the orange/purple jelly. The shadow on the screen makes it kind of difficult to tell them apart, especially if there’s sprinkles and/or frosting on top of it, and I found that mildly frustrating, even though I love the minigame itself.

The second thing I don’t like is the option to skip the dialogue. Yes, this is present in most of the newer games, and I don’t like it in them either, but it’s especially egregious in SPY and LIE. Both of these games really rely on hints given in the dialogue (and of course, in the written materials hidden around the game) in order to get a full, clear view of what’s going on. The option is great on repeat plays, but I really do wish that it was disabled if it was your first save file on the game.

The last annoying thing is the Jabberwocky puzzle — or rather, the percentage of the jabberwocky puzzle that the player actually has to do. The puzzle as it stands feels very confusing, and the “hints” you get are quite unintuitive.

The record tells you basically how to create the encrypted message — it’s the first letter from each green word, the second from each orange word, etc., arranged in the order they appear in the poem — but when you start the poem, Nancy has already basically completed this step, and it’s up to you to do the actual decoding just through process of elimination.

It’s a puzzle of letter deduction, like in TMB and the minigame in ASH — and these are normally my favorite puzzles! — but it’s cloaked in the disguise of an encryption puzzle, and for that, it’s incredibly irritating.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Silent Spy?

The first thing I’d do, which you can probably guess based on the above section, is to fix how the Jabberwocky poem is presented. Even a bit of dialogue establishing what the player actually has to do versus what Nancy does for the player would be helpful in working through it without bothering making the encrypted message oneself, and would set the player up to actually know what they’re doing, versus the mass of confusion that comes with the puzzle.

The only other change I would make would to put in one more flashback — that of 10-year-old Nancy’s perspective shortly after Kate’s death, perhaps after the funeral. We spend a lot of time in flashback seeing Kate before her death, and I think it would add to just a little bit more of seeing Nancy’s relationship with her mother if we could see the Drew house with her recently gone.

(And perhaps, see or hear Hannah? Please?)

The Silent Spy is a game that I find, on the whole, to be one of the best that Nik penned, and certainly a fitting end to the series of “Nancy Games” that gives us a little more perspective on our teeth sleuth. There are as many moments of joy as of sorrow, but in the end the player is left with the feeling that Nancy’s world is a little better for knowing more about her mother, and that whatever else Kate did and was, she left behind a world (both in game and breaking the fourth wall) that was better — and had ways to become even better than that — than it was when she lived in it.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #clue crew #the silent spy #nancy drew meta #SPY #video games #my meta #long post

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strosmkai-rum · 4 years

Text

SKYRIM MOD LIST, enb included

have fun!

note: some mods, though very few and for the most part insignificant, were found on the steam workshop. so if it doesn’t appear on the nexus, you’ll find it there.

some general advice for new modders/just reminders -

- always check compatibility. some mods have patches to use in combination with other mods. always read the description too.

- if you’re able, cleaning plugins is always good. i was never able to get a hang of it but that doesn’t mean you won’t have better luck.

- never, ever test mods with an actual playthrough. the chances of corruption are small, but there. start a new game; if you can’t bother with the helgen intro, use Quick Start to skip past it and begin at the cave exit instead.

- load order. can’t go wrong with LOOT or Wrye Bash. imo LOOT is easier to install and use but it’s all up to preference.

OVERHAULS -

Noble Skyrim (a HUGE overhaul of basically all exterior textures. but, if you don’t like the look this gives, i’d suggest 2k Textures for a more vanilla feel but in higher res, or Tamriel Reloaded - Textures and Parallax.)

Realistic Water Two (get the enb textures, with the watercolor effect too. they have a non-enb version as well, if you don’t use enb.)

aMidianborn retextures (i use almost everything. weapons, armor, creatures, dragonborn dlc, except the terrain overhaul. i also use the differently ebony and glass variants plugins, which basically mean that there’s multiple variants of the armor with the different retextures. they’re so cool, it’s a must.)

RUSTIC ( i also use almost everything from this too. alchemy/enchanting tables, daedra, death hounds, dinnerware, east empire company signs (i really don’t know why), elder scroll, monuments/tombstones, nordic murals, pottery, silverware, standing stones, windows, and word walls.)

Immersive College of Winterhold

Book Covers Skyrim (best book cover retex ever.)

More Interesting Loot (adds in so many artifacts/ingredients/loot from previous games it’s unreal. love it.)

Realistic Room Rental Enhanced (a SERIOUS overhaul of inns and stuff. lets you rent rooms for followers, discounts for extended stays, and makes them look nicer! oh, washtubs too.)

Immersive Roads (amazing. beautiful. incredible.)

RSChildren (children remodel)

Moonlight Tales

Breezehome Fully Upgradeable (okay this too. makes breezehome huge. like, now you can have a markarth style tub upstairs, and a decent room for lydia too. plus a secret library, and another way to enter/exit your home outside of whiterun. and a lot of other stuff i’m too lazy to list right now.)

SMIM (DEFINITELY use some sort of installer for this. killed me when i tried to manually install it. totally optional, though.)

Ruins Clutter Improved

Thane Weapons Reborn

GRAPHICS -

Unique Grasses and Groundcovers (Verdant does a great job too.)

Hybrid HD Plants and Herbs Retexture (Tamriel Reloaded flora are gorgeous as well, so are the ones from Skyrim Flora Overhaul.)

AOF Detailed Mountains (my pref, but honestly, almost all of the mountain retex mods are amazing. go wild.)

Designs of the Nords Banners (the sickest retex of banners. ever.)

Skyrim Landscape Overhaul - Stone Walls (the BEST thing you will ever see. note, if used with Immersive College of Winterhold you don’t need the corresponding patch. at least, if this is the only SLO mod you’ll use.)

SLOD Wine Cellar (y'ever have an in-game crippling alcohol addiction?)

SLOD Potions/Poisons

Gemling Queen Jewelry

Barenziah’s Glory (crown and jewel retexs)

Unique Uniques (the reworks are absolutely gorgeous. i can’t even describe them. at this point, unique is an understatement.)

Bellyache’s Dragon Retextures (they’re the hell spawn of akatosh, gotta make ‘em look cool somehow)

Apophysis Dragon Priest Masks (holy mother of god, these dragon priest retextures are beautiful. if you’re more into a horror theme, Unique Dragon Priest Masks will definitely satisfy you)

Natural Eyes

Coverkhajiits Male/Female

Dawnguard Rewritten - Arvak (so many arvak retextures here, pick and choose what you want)

Makers Mark Ingots (an ingot retexture, with minting seals/stamps on them. beautiful.)

Better Shrouded Armor (okay, this. this. if you look at the vanilla armor and say, i hate this, then you’ll love this. the armor becomes more of an armored robe with black/brown touches, and the signature hand print on the front. it’s just cool.)

Stormcloak Revival (awesome retex of the armor)

Nightingale Prime and Nightingale Pride (a retexture for armor and blade/bow, respectively)

Windhelm - Legendary Kings

Alternate Summoning Visuals

Tenets Restored (so you can actually read the damn things)

Auriel’s Bow Retexture

HD Linens

QUESTS/NEW LANDS -

Falskaar

Shadow of Morrowind

Summerset Isle

Beyond Skyrim - Bruma

Beyond Reach

Voyage to the Dreamborne Isles

VIGILANT (there’s an english voiceover and a guide as well in the files section of the voiceover)

Project AHO (you need this. you do. the quest, the npcs, the oh god, everything, is so amazing. download it.)

Carved Brink (from the makers of Project AHO, equally amazing.)

Wheels of Lull (this was the best existential crisis i’ve ever had. funny, immersive, challenging, and very, very real, i’ll be at your door in a fortnight if you don’t install this mod.)

Aethernautics (with Wheels of Lull integration patch)

Gray Cowl of Nocturnal (want some oblivion nostalgia? here you are.)

Spectraverse - Magic of the Magna Ge

Dwemertech - Magic of the Dwarves

Ravengate (underground pit fighting, hell yeah!!)

The Tools of Kagrenac (morrowind fans wya. i have never played morrowind.)

Moon and Star

The Forgotten City (gonna be getting its own game on Steam by the same name!)

Fight Against the Thalmor (all 4 parts linked)

Sinister Seven

Konahrik’s Accountments

Blackreach Railroad (trains. that is all.)

Legends of Nchuak

The McMiller Chronicles

The Notice Board (ah, witcher fans might like this.)

The Paarthurnax Dilemma (for obvs reasons)

Localized Guild Jobs (finally, choose the city you want to do a thiefy job in.)

Missing Apprentices (a college quests never implemented in-game. there’s also another mod for another cut quest called Research Thief, but i don’t use that one.)

Barenziah Quest Markers (am NOT using the wiki again to find those floaty bastards. there’s a mod that puts the stones in quest-locked areas in accessible ones instead, so if you plan on collecting them all and being done with it i suggest Non Quest Locations for Stones of Barenziah.)

Jiub’s Opus Quest Markers (not chasing these down either)

Arvak’s Skull Quest Marker (only available through steam workshop)

an addition, Wyrmstooth, though it’s no longer on the nexus and is known to corrupt save files and cause general issues (i found a version of it, though i’m not very keen on trying it after what i’ve heard. still, if you really want it, it’s not that hard to find.)

IMMERSION -

Timing is Everything (adds in delays between quests. just a little breather in between saving the world, if that even exists.)

Northern Encounters (if you love encounters and spent a lot of time in the snow for whatever reason, this is for you.)

Extra Encounters Reborn + DLC (when you love exploring skyrim, this’ll make your adventures super interesting.)

Citizens of Tamriel (on god this mod is so funny and immersive. if you download this, stop by the abandoned shack. you won’t regret it.)

Honed Metal (lets you hire a smith to temper/craft and enchant armor and weapons for you, so you don’t have to invest in the smithing tree.)

The Hunting Game (y’ever notice how pelts are like, worthless? yeah. this changes that.)

Organized Bandits of Skyrim

Better Combat AI (there’s probably a better mod for combat out there, but this is what i use. also from steam workshop)

Increased Merchant Gold Count (plenty of dif mods for this, all of them should work just fine. also on steam workshop)

Black Horse Courier Reborn (hey, remember the uhh, couriers in oblivion? well, they’re back, babey! the more quests you complete, different editions will be released to talk about the amazing last dragonborn, and there’s a (expensive as hell) book that you can buy from a courier that had all the editions from oblivion in one tidy leather-bound book.)

Take Notes (a journal mod!)

Celtic Music in Skyrim (a music replacer. it’s so calming and atmospheric, but if you want individual tracks replaced with ones of your own choosing, you can download Skyrim Audio Converter.)

Book Covers of Skyrim - Lost Library (adds in books from other tes games too, along with the fancy covers.)

Books of Skyrim (a book store in solitude.)

Touring Carriages

The Thieves Guild: More Thieves (only on steam workshop)

Thieves Guild Former Glory Enhancement

Regifting Lycanthropy: Infinite (on steam workshop)

KJ Tattoos and Lore Tattoos (needs RaceMenu to work.)

Loading Screens with Extra Sarcasm (beautiful mod. doesn’t ruin your immersion at all, actually.)

We Are Legion (nice legion overhaul. workshop exclusive.)

Immersive Patrols

All Merchants Buy Stolen Items

Realistic Crime Radius

Beyond Skyrim: Wares of Tamriel

Morrowind Imports (makes it so dunmer vendors will sell stuff like ash yams and sujamma, just a bit more immersive.)

Morrowind Border Trading Shack (workshop exclusive)

Staves of Skyrim

College Students

Better College Application

Night Eye Overhaul (good regardless if you rp as a khajiit or not)

Enhanced Cities: Docks of Solitude (workshop exclusive)

Towns and Villages Enhanced: Riverwood

Project Populate Skyrim: Winterhold (workshop exclusive)

Raven Rock Expanded

MISCELLANEOUS -

SkyComplete (lets you keep track of basically everything, including quests, artifacts, undiscovered locations and read books. update, it looks like the original file has been taken down. i do have a copy of the file should anyone want it.)

The Choice is Yours (fewer forced quests! woohoo!)

Jaxonz Named Save and Positioner (lets you have named saves, and reposition objects. the best mod for home decorating.)

Unlimited Bookshelves (put anything you want on those bad boys now! coupled with Jaxonz Positioner, the sky’s the limit to home decorating now.)

Follower Map Markers Complete (so you don’t lose them. again. also works for mod added followers.)

Bandolier - Bags and Pouches (you look really cool, and get a bit of extra carry weight too!)

Insanitys Celtic Katana

Better Training (no more level req bs here)

No Required Perks (workshop exclusive)

Lightweight Potions and Poisons

Lightweight Scrolls (because half a point for a scroll?! it’s paper, not rocks, dammit)

Weightless Soul Gems

Telescope

Thieves' Guild Bounty Clearer

Scoped Bows

Font Replacement (i use fertigo pro but you know, preference)

City Forests (just adds a few trees in a few cities, this, combined with Noble Skyrim and the enb i use makes all of my screenshots.)

Save the Dark Brotherhood (saves your tears, too.)

Hold Border Banners

Lost Books of Voryn Dreleth (adds in a few books, scattered throughout skyrim. i don’t know, they’re nice to read i guess. totally optional.)

Halls of Dovahndor (an amazing house mod set in…sovngarde! that’s new!)

The Library of Paarthurnax (always thought this was mad cool)

Sacrificial Hunter (for the boethiah quest. also known as, when you’re too attached to your followers to kill them)

No Killmoves/Killcams/Killbites (totally optional, i just don’t like the animations.)

Big Leather Backpack (it looks cool. plus extra carry weight. bags are cool.)

Colovian Leather (just a lil extra set of armor)

Elder Scroll on Back

More Salt

Open Face Guard Helmets

Faction Crossbows

INTERFACE -

SkyUI (the menu layout give me a headache though, you can use SkyUI Away to restore normal menus)

Immersive HUD

A Matter of Time (compatible with iHUD)

Warburg’s 3D Paper World Map (forget the old poorly rendered map. a new paper one, a lot more simplistic and minimalist. but, if you do want the normal skyrim map, A Quality World Map is the way to go.)

Main Menu Background Replacer (oh, there’s a lot of these. so choose your favorite. but i like this best.)

No Bethesda Intro Logo or a replacer, the one i use was taken down but went by Ironclad Bethesda.

RaceMenu

Amazing Follower Tweaks

Follower Trap Safety (miiight be included in AFT, but not sure.)

FIXES/PATCHES -

USLEEP

Fuz Ro Doh (needed for some quest mods, something abt silent dialogue.)

No More Blinding Fog (if you have that issue)

Mindflux Particle Patch (if included)

Darker Dungeons for ENB (if included)

Revamped Exterior Fog

FOR ENB:

okay, here’s the thing. i’ve been modding skyrim nonstop for three years now. i’ve gone through, a lot of enbs. the big ones, the small ones. rudy, tetrachromatic, project enb, you name it. and here’s the one that i finally found that works great, lots of customizability, awesome fps, and looks fucking fantastic.

it’s called seasons of skyrim. easy install, easy uninstall if you don’t like it. nothing else. includes further darker dungeons as well as revamped exterior fog.

my configuration’s here.

but let’s assume you don’t want to use an enb. that’s fine! there’s a lot of other ways to get dynamic lightning too. i used to use Climates of Tamriel, or ELFX, or Realistic Lighting Overhaul. note that i’m almost certain that RLO hand places light sources, so i don’t know how altered cells would go. you might be able to avoid conflict by loading the changing mod after RLO? but i don’t know for sure.

if you want help with installing anything/with enbs or are new to it, i’m always down to help.

other stuff i use -

SKSE is an obvs one.

LOOT

Save Cleaner

7zip (it’s basically a free version of winzip. cause i’m not about to pay for anything, and i manually install everything.)

wow, you made it to the end? congrats! i spent longer on this than i did sleeping last night.

#skyrim #modding #a lotta mods lmao #tes #still...modding...three years later...

28 notes · View notes

shy-magpie · 3 years

Text

RQG 157

these things get long and are by definition one spoiler after another, so live blog under the cut

pre episode nonsense:

My hopes for this episode are mostly just the obvious: For Zolf to pull out of his spiral; for Azu to talk to someone about how she's doing; for Hamid to find his footing with the Kobolds (loving that they are devoting a proper arc to using unearned privilege/power rather than pretending it doesn't exist); more Cel lore; a Wug; and for someone to shake answers out of the Brorb. Not sure Alex is going to let us get to know the kids individually which makes sense as juggling 7 new NPCs would seriously cut into everyone else's screen time. I think we will get more of Skraak & Hamid working through their issues, and Skraak's helping the kids through recovery. If we are very lucky maybe Zolf & Skraak will talk rather than just have Zolf resent the Kobolds for putting Hamid in a place to fall into old habits. Okay lets hit play!

Episode live blogging:

Intros are quick: Zolf sounds low, Ben sounds higher energy than he was.

Oh the Brorb drawings come better when the other half is distracted but not thinking about the real topic.

Krakens are through out the globe, unknown numbers, not true instances of Shoin, network is down.

Cel and I both react to having Shoin be the one to come closest to a truly non physical form.*

Krakens are cloned brains in robot bodies. Specifically said Daleks not Jurassic Park.

Shoin thinks he sent a ransom note using the Kraken as a threat against the world.

Does not handle it well when Zolf hones in on that no one knows who he is, much less trembles at his name.**

Hamid follows Zolf's lead and twists it towards boasting about beating the Infection. The talking half doesn't seem to know how he did it as clearly as the drawing bit. Unfortunately its strictly surgical which would be hard to reproduce at scale even before you consider the side effects.

Quick huddle with the rest of the team:

Cel always wanted to go to London?

Zolf wants to ask more about how the infection works so they could prevent infection. Wilde thinks he is suggesting using Shoin's solution, I get Alex has to catch people up but I don't like Wilde being a paragraph behind me or underestimating Zolf.

Bryn wants to review the diary. Alex confirms the diary says he had a possible way to "end it" as a whole.

They go back and Cel feigns being extremely impressed that Shoin might have a way to stop the infection. I think having time to regroup cut him off from his memory of the infection again. Alex spells out Shoin loses coherence whenever they bring up the infection/the time period around when he was infected.

Heal check time. Zolf crit fails. Azu got a 29 and can see where his theory was better than his surgery. It may be an aphasia (issues to with communication. can't get to certain words, some can't be spoken even if he understands the concept; others he can't understand if he hears them even if he uses the word/concept himself. Brain trauma, memory problems more severe the more recent you get, sounds like unable to store short term memory properly so anything longer ago than a week but after surgery likely lost.)

Cel switches to the simulacrum. He verbally dismisses it as a waste of time. His hand keeps drawing based on the previous question re:stopping the infection.

Alex calls for a sense motive. Zolf & Azu see the latest drawing is a landscape using technical notation. Its a barren mine. Yes! it's the entrance to Svalbard. Cel can see its a circuit. Alex makes us/Lydia wait until after he's done with the simulacrum stuff.

Shoin thinks using humans as your base design to improve from is the wrong approach, gives some credit to Francois Henri for taking a different approach.

The circuit maybe to transmit something, it needs an organic component. Cel couldn't roll much better then that so they probably need to kick it towards the Harlequins to set a team on.

Shoin is moaning about paying the bills. Took on the contract to provide Simulacrum fluidics to Damascus for the money.

Drawings change shape get less technical and focus on the cavern entrance. Ben catches it sounds yonic, Alex was trying to not go there but did he really think you could go from cave imagery to seed imagry without stopping there?

Hamid tries to get more on how he caught the infection.

Bryn and Alex spell out that to get answers you ask a real question he won't answer verbally but will answer with his hand, with a decoy to keep the talking him distracted while the hand answers.

Decoy question is about Harrison Campell.

Concept drawing of a person, overwhelmed by an image of a huge figure with lines going from the small to the large? Is he suggesting they plant someone they prepare to be infected, and have them infect it back?

Proofs? Minor changes between the proofs and published version of early Campbell books.

Another review session upstairs. Hamid's red string wall got cited as being useful! Cult of Hades/Wellington may have been the one to hire Shoin to make parts for Damascus. Zolf and Hamid talk briefly, about work and as dry "stick to the subject" as possible but they are talking productively.

Oh Ben finally gets in that the interrogation is hard on Zolf's knees because he has to keep his legs out of the cell. He snaps a little at Cel when they comment on cell vs Cel. Carter suggests "naughty box" which nicely derails that point of tension. Cel refers to Shoin as being more pleasant to talk to than Carter. Not sure if that undermines the tiny Cel/Carter ship or fuels it with tension.

Cel asks who hired Shoin to make Sim parts. He can answer directly. Well directly for him, it seems to be mostly justifying stealing Tesla's work on the basis that Tesla wasn't going to implement his theory. Hamid snipes him with a shot praising Edison to get him back on topic. Shoin says Edison was being backed by a big investor. Is it to much to hope this is Alex finally consolidating the factions? If Hades is Edison's investor (leaving Edison & co as effectively their minions, rather than a faction of their own) and the factory owners we can cut down on sides considerably.

He goes on about how he spied on Henri, religion as money maker. Shoin was directly approached by Hades lot. Shoin made sure his bits won't work since he didn't want competition. Wellington was his contact with Hades. Wellington always had a pair of cloaked figures. Vinegar + squizard = funny? Could be useful.

Do not follow what is going on with the hand.

Shoin is still unstuck in time and thinks he is going to connect them. Cel unplugs the speaker on his villain speech. Cel induces a dream state by powering him down

~break~

Cel suggests painlessly killing him. Zolf seconds the idea because its immoral to keep him like that. Hamid points out the longer the keep him around the more likely it is for someone to be infected. Wilde rules they should kill and seal it off.

Cel & Zolf have an argument about having the Kobolds handle the remains. Cel calls Zolf out on his inconstant stance on whether the Kobolds can be infected because if he doesn't believe that then he is risking them.

Wilde is moving on? Cel suggests letting the Brorb die, putting it in a bag of holding, keeping the bag in the anti magic field.

They can't just call Einstein because using unofficial channels is bad when irregular behavior is a sign of infection(?)

Alex's unhealthy attitudes about productivity are called out when he refers to the time Wilde spends thinking/planning before getting their transport arranged as "working" (with the inverted commas) rather than considering it part of the work.

They work out possible paths if teleporting is off the table.

And the boys are snapping at each other again. Zolf, you can't flip out every time you are reminded that Hamid doesn't have the experience or expertise of a seasoned sailor. Yeah you did leave the team without your skills and maybe the kid was a bit green for a field promotion; but you know what? He did a fine job, and the other choices were Sasha, who wouldn't lead, and Bertie, who shouldn't. Just because stepping down was the right thing to do, doesn't mean you get to lose it when you are confronted with the mere allusion to the idea it had consequences.

Barnes tells Hamid why going over the pole is a really bad idea. That Azu's suggestion is carrying Hamid has troubling symbolism.

Zolf actually comes more or less to Hamid's defense by pointing out that all their options are bad options, so having a go at Hamid's idea in particular is unwarranted.

I'm not going to bother listing out options. They will pick one or won't need to pick one. If we have been a very good fandom Alex may reward us with Earhart coming back as their preferred transport.

There we go, Hamid suggests her, Zolf seizes on the idea compliments Hamid on it, and immediately takes it to Wilde. Thank God he isn't so far down he can't do that. If he isn't compulsively shooting down any hope (especially from Hamid) then he really is on the upswing from the low brought on by quarantine stress.

Lydia isn't happy that there isn't going to be an American chapter. Then again we wrote off Svalbard, so don't give up!

Its the Northwest Passage and its so weird realizing that not everyone has it as a cultural reference. Wonder if it's an Oregon thing or a US thing.

Yes it would have been cool, but I think Alex is not going to let us have cool new story arcs when we haven't played with the ones we have at home.

Einstein and Earhart are our two best transport options. I am a happy fan. Especially if Zolf has to use his family and Earhart’s reaching out to him near the end of the journey to appeal to her. I mean we did get more on Zolf's relationship with his family than I expected after Paris, so I'm not going to sulk if they don't pursue this, but it would be nice.

Conflicted as a fan, its hard to remember that this taking months extra is a bad thing when the end of the series is feeling too close for comfort.

Zolf, look at you leveraging your experience with moving even when things feel hopeless!

Cel I love you, kraken as submarine is brilliant. Air kraken is suggested by Carter.

Hamid plays with the ideas while Alex goes "why?". Because you are going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than that if you want Hamid to see it as a no win situation rather than proof he needs to redouble on cheerful creativity. Feeling like he had no options led to the worst parts of Hamid's life, the things he is truly ashamed of; having few losses outside of those, he is going to make Kirk's Kobayashi Maru hang ups look amateur.

Zolf is heading to the beach.

Cel is checking on their village.

Hamid wants to contact Einstein himself, Zolf says he should talk to Wilde about that. Hamid wants Zolf with him for that meeting. Zolf either doesn't want to be a safety blanket, wants Hamid to get used to dealing with Wilde directly, or completely missed Hamid offering a chance to work together because he is incapable of seeing Wilde as an opponent. He does say some nice things about being a team.

Hamid tells Cel to say hi to Jasper for them. He is good at the people side of leadership. Remembering names and relationships, knowing how to show he cares because it's important to Cel without overstepping. If Zolf can learn to let go of the rank stuff, they could be an unbeatable team of co leaders.

Zolf nods at Azu. Azu smiles proudly back. Alex jokes about not liking giving them time to heal because they coordinate.

Hamid offers hugs to both Cel and Zolf. Because this entire character is a "fuck you" to toxic masculinity and he is not afraid to openly show affection to his friends.

Cel gives him a great hug.

Zolf hesitates but gives him a pat on the shoulder. Hamid's has high enough charisma to make that not awkward. Good kid, accepting that Zolf is reaching out as far as he can.

Hamid talks to Skraak. Hamid is worried about taking the kids. Maybe Skraak can convince them to stay & help Jasper with science. Because RQG loves us and wants us to be happy, they are considering a fantasy some of us harbored since "science" as a serious possibility. Could solve the issue with Alex not wanting the kids to take up too much screen time too. Skraak is the perfect character for Hamid to have as his second. He believes in Hamid, and can be confided in, but isn't going to take an ounce of self pity or bullshit.

Alex that village better be okay. Smoke? Controlled burn. Ben lightens the mood. The tank is still guarding the village. The barricade is up but they are guarding about as well as a village of level 0(1?) characters can be expected to.

They are having a party and there is a bon fire. Because Alex knows we wouldn't have trusted him if there wasn't a little scare with the smoke. !puns

The village is visibly healing since the weather is fixed. They thank Cel but know better than to ask.

Jasper! Jasper is looking good. He stepped in as a leader of the village. Cel and I could burst with pride. Jasper thinks Cel is coming to stay, Cel tries to explain they are going to help save the other villages around the world and mentions that Jasper would like the Kobolds.

!puns

* One day I need to hunt down the right corner of SF because there has got to be a decent amount of trans humanist fiction for trans humans out there somewhere.

**Not sure if I should feel bad for hoping this gives him a safe target for his destructive tendencies. Ideally Zolf would get past that point without indulging his dark side lest he reinforce bad coping mechanisms. Ideally Zolf would have weekly therapy without the fate of the world on his shoulders too. Its the more personal version of looking forward to a fight after Hamid's been stressed because he seems to find cooking baddies cathartic.

#Rusty Quill Gaming #live blog thingy #RQG 157 #RQG Spoilers #RQG Season 4

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hartsgold · 4 years

Photo

𝐀𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨. 𝐕𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐥𝐨. 𝐎𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫.

𝚖𝚢 𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚞𝚍𝚎 𝚟𝚘𝚗 𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚗. 𝚒 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚎𝚒𝚛𝚘𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚝𝚎, 𝚏𝚘𝚍𝚕𝚊𝚗, 𝚊𝚗 𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚣𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚍𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚊𝚌𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚖𝚒𝚌 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚜𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚌 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚕. 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚝𝚎, 𝚛𝚑𝚎𝚊, 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚎𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚘𝚢𝚎𝚍 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚘𝚞𝚜 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚜𝚝, 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚕𝚢 𝚙𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢.

i’ve been working as a researcher at the institute for four years now, and am familiar with most of our significant contracts and projects. most reach dead ends, predictably enough, as incidents of the supernatural, such as they are - and i always emphasize there are very few genuine cases - tend to resist easy conclusions. when an investigation has gone as far as it can, it is transferred to the archives.

now, the institute was founded in 1818, which means that the archive contains almost 200 years of case files at this point. combine that with the fact that most of the institute prefers the ivory tower of pure academia to the complicated work of dealing with statements or recent experiences and you have the recipe for an impeccably organized library and an absolute mess of an archive. this isn’t necessarily a problem - modern filing and indexing systems are a real wonder, and all it would need is a half-decent archivist to keep it in order. my predecessor was apparently not that archivist.

from where I am sitting, i can see thousands of files. many spread loosely around the place, others crushed into unmarked boxes. a few have dates on them or helpful labels such as 86-91 G/H. not only that, but most of these appear to be handwritten or produced on a typewriter with no accompanying digital or audio versions of any sort. in fact, i believe the first computer to ever enter this room is the laptop that i brought in today. more importantly, it seems as though little of the actual investigations have been stored in the archives, so the only thing in most of the files are the statements themselves.

it is going to take me a long, long time to organize this mess. i’ve managed to secure the services of several researchers to assist me. I plan to digitize the files as much as possible and record audio versions, though some will have to be on tape recorder, as my attempts to get them on my laptop have met with… significant audio distortions.

that’s probably enough time spent making my excuses for the state of this place, and i suppose we have to begin somewhere.

𝚊𝚞𝚍𝚒𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚢 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚞𝚍𝚎 𝚟𝚘𝚗 𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚗, 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚜𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚎𝚒𝚛𝚘𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚝𝚎, 𝚏𝚘𝚍𝚕𝚊𝚗.

𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙩𝙨: photography / texture art / tma s01e01 blurb & transcription.

Hello! If you’re reading this, welcome to the hell that is The Seiros Archives. I’m hoping to make this as comprehensive a series translation as possible without integrating too many spoilers/telling the stories of characters that aren’t mine (save Sothis and Rhea, who seemed lore-mandatory additions). For example, I don’t have a character to fulfill [Gertrude/the past Archivist’s] position, simply because I can’t think of one and would prefer not to kill anyone off that might want to use this as an AU base. (Feel free to, btw! Just let me know/tag me in your verse thoughts, I’m so excited to read ‘em!)

Spoilers below. Additionally: please peruse the Wiki pages with caution. There’s a trigger list for TMA episodes/general content warnings located here.

Essentially:

The Seiros Archives is an institution that’s existed for two centuries, currently under the jurisdiction of one Rhea, who claims to have come into control of it within the last decade or so. Obviously, this is not true. Rhea’s been alive since the founding of this institute, as she had it built order to resurrect Sothis/The Beginning/The Beholding, [her mother].

Sothis is both a God and not. In TMA, Gods are also known as ‘The Entities’, or The Fears. They are described, on the wiki, as such:

The Entities are various aspects of an amorphous force of fear that exists next to reality. Their influence upon reality manifests as supernatural happenings - all supernatural phenomena in the world are simply extensions of them. These phenomena can take various forms such as people, animals, monsters, books, objects, or places.These entities do not simply feed off of our fear, rather they are our fears made manifest. “These things... these forces, they are our fear. Deep fears. Primordial. Always looking for ways to grow and spread.” Not all their actions inspire fear, they are simply a part of the process, a means to an end. (cont. This link includes a list of the Fears and should be read with caution, as there is some horror imagery, etc.)

In this verse, I’m going to conflate Sothis with The Eye, or The Ceaseless Watcher. She is an Entity of Fear manifested specifically as “being watched, exposed, followed, of having secrets known, but also the drive to know and understand, even if your discoveries might destroy you. Fear that you’re suffering for the sake of something watching.” I think her relationship with being able to control the flow of time and know results of the past and future translate well here. It’s terrifying to consider someone who Knows what might happen in the far future can directly alter it as well.

Let’s say that Sothis’ “death” in this verse was a failed “Ritual” of The Eye. Centuries ago, Rhea attempted to bring her mother’s Entity to full power above all the others.

Rituals are ceremonies held in order to empower The Entities. “Most entities have their own ‘ritual’, a symbolic act that, if completed, will allow the entity to merge with reality, changing the fabric of the world as it exert its will and nature upon reality. These rituals have the potential to bring other closely-tied entities along with it. It requires centuries for each Entity to build up the power needed for its ritual, and if it is stopped, it cannot try again until it rebuilds that power base. No ritual has ever succeeded” (x).

When Rhea’s Ritual for The Eye was thwarted, the Entity lost a great sum of its garnered power. I imagine she was an Avatar of the fear, and her connection with her mother was severed to an extent. As a result, she began to construct the Seiros Institute as a means of rebuilding power for the sake of The Eye.

Avatars are essentially vessels for spreading the influence of The Entities. “Some humans can become attached to an Entity and become empowered by it, gaining supernatural abilities related to their patron, but losing some or all of their humanity in the process. Most people fall to the powers through love or fear, though it can happen for other reasons such as debt. Avatars and agents of a power retain their agency but can become physically dependent on it, suffering withdrawal effects, including death, if they go too long without feeding the entity that empowers them” (x).

People influenced by, or who encounter Avatars are often Marked by them, and other Entities alongside their Avatars can sense this fact.

In building The Seiros Institute, Rhea hopes to give Sothis enough power through a ritual to “merge with reality”/live again/to be able to communicate with her once more.

The former hired Archivist stopped countless Rituals of The Entities, and was eventually killed as a result of attempting to quell Rhea’s efforts.

There are tunnels underneath the institute in canon, which I’m going to say is the equivalent of the Holy Tomb.

Characters, once employed by The Institute, are unable to quit/be fired. Literally. This is a canon mechanic, where they can’t even say the words.

TL;DR: This is set in a modern Fódlan. I imagine it as something of a large city interconnected with several other neighboring states, such as Almyra, Brigid, Dagda, etc.

Are there tense relations between these places? Of course! Is The Empire probably allied with a different Entity and is aggravated that Rhea is doing what she’s doing? Very likely! Are Those Who Slither In The Dark likely allied with one as well, or are experimenting on people in the attempt to complete a Ritual? Why Not!

The Entities create very viciously real manifestations of their respective fears, so people have supernatural encounters of all kinds. Vampires––weird lore, but yes. People being replaced by doppelgängers––Oh, Yeah. Circus people who steal voice boxes and dance around with mannequin limbs? Uh huh. Worms? Don’t forget the worms. As weird as you can think of it!

So this modern Fódlan is rife with the eccentric and the supernatural. At the moment, The Seiros Institute is simply an academic place set on recording and understanding those supernatural occurrences!

I’m setting Khalid as the current archivist because he seems the appropriate “linchpin” figure that Jon is in the main series, having been marked by several Entities. As the most knowledge and balance-hungry of the Three Lords, he fits the part. Obviously there’s something to be said of Byleth’s potential role as an Archivist, but the Archivist does a lot of talking, much like Khalid. He also interacts with everyone giving statements to the Archive, and I think Khalid’s canonical tendency to disarm others in exchange for secrets and stories is par for this course.

Nonetheless, if you do want to use this AU as a base for your Byleth or any other character, please don’t feel restricted by anything!

Whether your characters are employed by the Archive, is an Avatar for a Fear, or is simply terrified by whatever the fuck is going on here, please feel free to get in on this! Write it with me! Ask me any questions you might have and I’ll do my best to spoil myself on this wonderful podcast further so I can answer you to the best of my ability! [I’m about 75 episodes in right now, but am content to spoil myself, truly...] So please hit me up anytime. I’m really excited about this and would love to plot things out with you!

#❛ ・ﾟ the watcher’s crown and king — tma. ✧#feel free to reblog!#what have i done.

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riizev2 · 4 years

Text

The Living Timeline of Riize Wintersong

RPing is hard. Keeping track of nearly three years of continuity is harder. Here is my organized timeline of Riize’s life for those interested in RPing her now that I’ve returned. I recognize that this is based primarily on my own recollection of plot events, so I have chosen to tag in as many blogs as possible for those interested in hearing the other side of these stories.

However, times change. A lot has happened in two years and my recollection is far from perfect or impartial. In that vein, this is going to be considered a living document. It may change as new information is brought to my attention. Furthermore, some of the people mentioned here are not on good terms with each other (or with me lmao), so take some of this with a grain of salt. This might end up being more for me than for you.

That leads to what’s in brackets. Certain story beats that happened previous have been decided to be written out of continuity for a variety of reasons. Out of respect to the wishes of those involved, certain characters have been omitted even though they did have canon interactions with Riize previously. If I feel that the scene in question is still required to understand Riize’s current characterization, I will leave them in with brackets. The names and occupations of those involved will be changed for the sake of obscuring the identities of those involved and to open up future revisits to old topics now that I have more control over certain elements of Riize’s past.

I’m organizing it by patch because using the IRL timeline might awaken Blizzard’s lore department. Bold information was originally supposed to be proper nouns and important events but it got a little bit away from me. Just fucking kidding I deleted one word and half the hyperlinks broke and all the bolding disappeared so nothing is bold now. Also Tumblr ate this post twice so I’m kind of trying to get it up before it happens a third time. If edits need to be made, I will write a reblog with the changes as they happen (unless it is basic grammar or more comprehensive formatting)

With that said, let us begin.

Backstory:

Riize Wintersong was born in Darkshore to a priestess and a druid. Her childhood was largely uneventful, training under her mother as a Priestess of Elune while spending her spare time exploring the coastline. As she grew older, she decided that her true love was the sea and became a sailor. Travelling around Western Kalimdor, she became a rotating member of various trade ships that provided food and supplies to other kaldorei settlements on the continent.

In the lead up to the Third War, Riize joined the Alliance Navy and sailed much of Azeroth. During this period she learned much about dwarven and gnomish engineering and worked to maintain the components of ships. While only obtaining the title of Seamen, these years kindled her love for tinkering.

Riize left the military after fulfilling her tour of duty in Northrend. Like many she did experience whispers of the the Old God Yogg-Saron, but did not yet begin her study of the Void until far later. During her time as a civilian she fished and sailed for recreation purposes. After the Cataclysm she returned to the sea as a hired hand on any vessel that would take her. This began her integration into less savory groups.

Riize’s status as a sailor-for-hire was the status quo leading into her playable first appearance in...

Patch 7.3

At this time, Riize is a member of the pirate gang the Dreadwing Vultures. Operating under the professional alias of ‘Nine,’ she sailed with the group for fun and profit. While occasionally brushing against the machinations of Unit Eight, her time with the group was generally enjoyable. Around this time is her first meetings with Corine Blythe, Saelkath Alzarah (@saelkath-alzarah) , and Kat Hawke (@kat-hawke).

[During this period Riize would begin dating one of her fellow Vultures. The two of them would spend long nights getting high and listening to vinyl records. While their life trajectories eventually moved in two different directions, she still values their time spent together greatly.]

Riize begins to make ties with the independent intelligence agency The Silent and a few of its high ranking members through their establishment at the Golden Keg. She begins to take up the place of one of their previous agents as an informant within the Dreadwing Vultures. This position does not last long, as the Vultures soon move to Ironforge and afterwards shutter completely.

Shortly after this event, Riize begins to study under Saelkath in the ways of the Void. Reaching into the darkness, Riize’s exploration is noticed by beings lurking in the Void and mentally affected irreparably. While initially curious, she finds herself drawn to understanding the Void and the denizens within with more fervor. She convinces Saelkath to reveal to her the rituals of the Cult of C’Thun and soon becomes a member herself.

[However, shortly after reemerging with her new focus on the Void, Riize is captured and held captive by a masked Light zealot in the Hinterlands. Detained and tortured for over two weeks, Riize was eventually able to escape into the woods. While too weak to fight, she swore revenge on the one who imprisoned her.]

Patch 7.3.5

While examining a job board in Stormwind Riize comes across a flier directing people towards Easterly. After communicating with The Silent, Riize chooses to enter the newly reforming House Draconis on an information-gathering mission. She meets the House’s heir, Strixena Draconis, and begins to establish a friendship with her. She completes her induction after kidnapping a priest of the Light out of Stormwind on Strixena’s behalf. She is initiated into the House shortly after. While initially believing she escaped Stormwind without notice, Riize ends up crossing the Warden Elyza Morrowbranch (@morrowbranch) who was more than capable of overpowering the newly minted Lady’s Hand. Beating aside, Riize chooses House Draconis over her previous bonds and affirms her loyalty to Strixena.

Riize’s involvement with House Draconis does not go unnoticed by those who knew her and soon she finds herself interrogated by Director Hawke. Remaining affable post-kidnapping, the two enter a tense truce. Working with Saelkath and her previous student Iceilla Nightbane (@iceillanightbane), Riize partakes in off-the-record assistance on a small handful of missions on Unit Eight’s log.

During a heated argument between the two of them, Riize slices Strixena’s face and leaves her permanently scarred. Agreeing that her delving into the Void is making her lose control of herself, Riize is isolated within the barren White Room deep under Easterly’s catacombs. She is kept in solitary confinement for six weeks, with her only outside contact to the world being twice daily visits from Strixena to bring her food. While originally planned as an act of love, Riize begins to go mad. Her connection to the Void deepens in secret. When she is released she rekindles her vow of loyalty to Strixena and is rechristened as Riizen Draconis, the Phoenix of Easterly.

While working as a founding member of House Draconis’s intelligence branch, the Lady’s Hand, Riize meets the Arbiter of Dead Sun Harbor Eilithe Duskbringer (@eilitheduskbringer). While working together during the opening of the House’s gunsmithing store in Stormwind (Dragon’s Breath Smithing) the two kaldorei would develop a lasting friendship. Fulfilling her duties to the House, Riize recruits Joskinar Soulshread (@joskinar) into the Lady’s Hand. Near that time she also meets Aurelia Voidsong (@smoke-and-stilettos), Headmistress of Sordasa Academy. The Academy would act as the research division of the House, providing a vast bevy of knowledge to those who would seek it. Riize, Jos, and Aurelia would soon form a polyamorous relationship.

Patch 8.0

Strixena and other key members of House Draconis are jailed by a mysterious figure. Riize is not targeted, though the time spent away from Strixena eats at her. She tries her best to maintain the organization in her stead but is slowly pushed further and further out of power by inter-House politics. She settles into running the House’s business ventures while awaiting her sister’s return.

During a Unit Eight expedition to Ahn’Qiraj with Saelkath and a mage in SI:7’s employ, Riize witnesses the full power of her teacher’s magic and is horrified. Barely able to push through the ritualist’s powerful psychic influence, Riize helps destroy the artifact they came to collect to free Saelkath from its hold. While the trio are able to return to Unit Eight’s headquarters safely, Saelkath’s mind is shattered and she loses all memory of Riize. Heartbroken, she leaves her teacher in the medbay and disappears into the night. Riize never sees her beloved teacher again.

Eventually Strixena reemerges before the House as a Death Knight, a specter of vengeance unleashed upon the world. House Draconis begins to act again, though with far less of Riize’s input. Not long after, Dragon’s Breath Smithing is shuttered. The intelligence branch that Riize helped Strixena found is scrapped as well, resulting in her joining Aurelia in Sordasa Academy.

Things grew more dire over the coming months. War loomed on the horizon and the temperament of her sister grew even more volatile. The final straw came in the one-two punch of the closing of Sordasa Academy and the ultimatum that re-entering the House’s inner circle would require letting go of her attachment to her partners. Riize, Aurelia, and Joskinar would all leave Easterly for the old Voidsong Manor in the dead of night. She never saw her sister again.

Patch 8.1

The War of the Thorns escalated further, far from Riize’s gaze. The Void’s hold on her grew ever deeper until the Burning of Teldrassil snapped her from her stupor. Journeying to Darkshore, Riize learned that her parents had evacuated to the presumably untouchable kaldorei capital only to be lost in the fire. Riize had not seen her family in decades and never got to say goodbye.

Patches 8.1.5 through 8.2.5

AKA the period I wasn’t playing WoW

Riize, Joskinar, and Aurelia married in private far from the world. The trio would spend the following year together in seclusion, enjoying relative peace together far from the world and the war raging around them. While it was peace at the cost of ignorance, it was a much needed reprieve from the pain that had preceded.

Patch 8.3 through Past and Present

The rise of N’Zoth and the emergence of Ny’alotha took an unseen toll upon the Void-Blessed Night Elf. Visions began to infiltrate her mind showing her memories of lives unlived and roads not taken. In time it became impossible to distinguish the visions from reality. The usually energetic kaldorei would soon spend hours of the day bedridden, barely able to navigate through the illusions that danced before her eyes.

Now

Riize re-enters a world that is unfamiliar during a time of uneasy peace. The public has turned its hatred upon the Void-aligned and allies have become few and far between. Familiar faces have disappeared, replaced by an endless stream of vitriol. Still, Riize searches for answers and closure to a life that has escaped her...

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radioromantic-moved · 4 years

Text

a study in semantics

(hey, does this look familiar? it should! because i fucked up and it got deleted for a little while. things are okay now)

i came up with the headcanon that frank calls me a ray of sunshine initially sarcastically before it evolves into an actual affectionate nickname. and yeah, that’s what this is.

word count: 1650

They say in the business world that first impressions are everything.

Nyx probably didn’t get the memo. Actually, they probably got the memo and promptly chose to purposefully ignore it.

They show up to interview for a position at Toy Zone wearing all black, with a close-cropped mess of blond hair as the main splash of color in a wardrobe that would probably camouflage them in a dark room. The way they cross their arms over their chest and stare across the desk they’re sitting in front of, Frаnk feels vaguely like he’s the one being interviewed.

“Aren’t you a little ray of sunshine,” he mutters to himself.

They level a bright green stare at him. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying, I’m guessing ‘cheerful’ isn’t one of the reasons you’re going to list as to why I should hire you.”

“I’ll have you know, my close friends find me delightful.”

He can’t tell if they’re joking. They deliver everything in the same sort of dry, vaguely amused sounding tone, as if they’re watching a somewhat-interesting movie.

“We have a uniform here, you know,” he says. “It might clash with your aesthetic a little.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that from what you’ve got going on.”

They gesture at his bright red polo, name tag dangling conspicuously from it. “I can handle the shirt,” they shrug, “as long as I can still wear this coat. I feel like I’d have a case to sue if you guys didn’t let me wear this coat.”

It is a cool coat.

“There isn’t anything in our rulebook about letting you wear a coat over the shirt. Just don’t let it cover your nametag. But back on track, we still have to figure out if we’re hiring you at all. Do you work well in a team?”

---

It’s been a few weeks.

And yes, he hired them.

People aren’t exactly clamoring to work at Hatchetfield’s one toy store smack in the middle of a shopping mall, but he wasn’t going to tell them that.

Supply and demand notwithstanding, Nyx is on the team now. They get along surprisingly well with Leх (actually, not that surprising. They seem to be someone who never grew out of their edgy teen phase anyway), and whenever they’re on break the two of them engage in spirited discussions about--

“No, I’m serious. You’ve got the vibe.”

“Dude, I’m a high school dropout. Aren’t they all, like, cheerleaders or prom queens or something?”

“What? No! Don’t you know your lore? In the real kitschy ones, cheerleaders and prom queens die first.”

Frаnk stops dead in his tracks. “What in the world are you two talking about?”

“Leх would be the final girl in a horror movie,” says Nyx. “She doesn’t believe me.”

“Have you met me?” protests the younger of the two cashiers. “I’d probably run right into the middle of some shitstorm of a situation and get myself decapitated or something because it was a panic response.”

Frank shrugs. “I’m with her on that one.”

Nyx scoffs. “You’re just petty because you’d be the first one to die, Frаnk. Actually, scratch that--” they stare at him for a few seconds with that weirdly intense gaze of theirs-- “second. Final response. You’d die second in a horror movie.”

“Man,” he says, shaking his head, “you really are a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”

Leх pats Nyx on the back. “Damn straight.”

---

bossdude: Can I ask you for a favor?

me: okay shoot

bossdude: Something came up. I’m not gonna be able to open on Sunday. You’re the oldest staff member I have, so consider yourself officially temporarily promoted.

me: whoa whoa whoa

dude

you want ME to open

on SUNDAY

bossdude: It’s one day. You can handle it.

me: alright but don’t blame me if people are dissatisfied with my subpar customer service and lackluster welcoming skills

so dissatisfied that it translates into anger

and eventually a boycott

and eventually you won’t need to find sunday replacements

because our store will be only a fading memory in the greater hatchetfield consciousness

why did you let me open on sunday?!? why?!?

bossdude: For the love of--

Always a ray of sunshine, aren’t you.

I’ll see if Leх or Alice can help out.

You type fast.

me: awwww, thanks

---

Nyx groans, resting their head on the counter. “I did not get enough sleep last night. I’m dead tired.”

“Well, you better snap out of it,” he says. “We’re already down one pair of hands today because you insisted you’d work overtime if Leх took the day off to watch her sister.”

Nyx lifts their head. “Of course I did. Her sister’s got a fever. I may be weird and creepy and kind of mean sometimes, but I’m not a monster. Workers have to assist one another when the corporate millstone attempts to grind away our humanity.”

“Still a ray of sunshine, I see.” He sets down two coffee cups next to them on the counter. “Maybe this’ll help wake you up. I went across the street before you came in and picked them up. The one on the left’s yours.”

They take a tentative sip. “Hey, a white chocolate mocha. How’d you know?”

“You were talking about getting one after work last week. I remember it since it seemed like a weird order for you--you know, with your everything.”

Nyx grins. It’s a small one, but somehow, it seems to light up the whole store. “What? I think it’s a perfectly reasonable drink for a ray of sunshine such as myself.”

With that smile, he thinks, they could almost live up to that nickname for real.

He doesn’t say that out loud.

“Oh, and, um, thanks. For the drink, I mean. It was surprisingly generous of you.”

“No problem.”

---

“Now that was what I call a successful day.” Frаnk places a hand over his heart in faux-affection. “I love rich kids’ birthdays.”

Nyx looks up from rearranging the cash register. “Little Jonathan is sure gonna be occupied for...uh, maybe two days, before he gets bored and starts asking for more stuff.”

“Nice to see you’re as much of a ray of sunshine as ever,” he says, and there’s something suspiciously like fondness tinging his voice.

“Well, it’s not that I’m not grateful for the bonus.” They slide the cash register shut. “I can finally treat myself to a ticket to that alien invasion movie I’ve been wanting to see.”

“Aliens. Why am I not surprised?”

“Oh, and I’m sure your taste in movies is so highbrow.”

“I never said that. I like alien movies. You know, I was also planning to go see that at some point. And, you know, I guess today is as good a day as any.”

He didn’t think that. He has no idea why he said that.

They raise their eyebrows. “Are you asking me on a date?”

WHAT.

“What?! No, I was just, you know, bringing up the fact that I like alien movies and I might see that one on my own time. Maybe today, maybe some other day--still vague. Still working out the details. You know how it is.”

“Ah. Now everything is much clearer,” deadpans Nyx.

“But you know, and I’m speaking from a business perspective here--seeing as we both want to see the same movie, and we both have free time and the means to see it today, it would be convenient for both of us if we...in a strictly platonic sense, here--if we saw it...together? Assuming we’d be paying for our own refreshments.”

“Well, how can I say no to such a captivating offer?” says Nyx with a shrug. “You’re paying for your own ticket, too, though.”

“Aww. Can I suggest--?”

“You cannot.”

---

Frаnk enters the supply closet and confirms a long standing hypothesis of his.

“If it weren’t for the hair, I wouldn’t have known you were in here.”

“The dark is my natural habitat. One day I will return there for good,” says Nyx without turning around.

“Sometimes I think you’re just screwing with me.”

“Yeah, that one was a joke,” they admit. They swivel around to face him. They’re sitting on a box.

“Any particular reason why you’re in here and not, you know, doing your job?”

“Mrs. Monroe’s in again--she wanted me to check the back for one of those dinosaur puzzles. The longer I’m in here, the more time she thinks I’m dedicating to her request. And I just needed to take a breather.”

“I could issue a write up for that, you know.”

“Well, I could be looking for a puzzle and be taking a breather at the same time.”

“We don’t have any of those puzzles.”

They place a hand on their cheek in mock-surprise. “Oh, really? I wonder what I was taking so long for! I was sure a sold-out item would magically appear in the back once she asked about it!”

“I see you’re a ray of sunshine as usual today.”

They scoff. “Oh, you could have used that earlier. A single sarcastic comment is a waste of ‘ray of sunshine’ compared to the ‘I will return to the dark’ thing.”

“Didn’t you say that was a joke?”

“Well, yeah, but a purposeful one. I gave you the setup and everything. C’mon.”

“I’ll--I’ll do better next time?”

“Oh, how the tables have turned,” Nyx remarks.

---

He calls Leх a ray of sunshine once and never again.

It feels wrong coming out and only more wrong when Leх looks at him sideways. “Don’t call me that. It feels creepy.”

“Yeah, I’m...not doing that again.”

“You’re lucky Nyx wasn’t here to hear that,” says Leх as she organizes stuffed animals. “Might have made the whole thing lose its meaning.”

“What--there’s no meaning to it, and it’s not a whole thing.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” says Leх with a rare smile.

It’s more of a smirk, really.

#sorry to subject all of you to this again but. uh. you know. it's here again #the most unrealistic part of this is that none of them try to kill each other #ship: your annual entrepreneur #nyx writes #lex tag

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thanksjro · 4 years

Text

Eugenesis, Part Six Scene Four: Xenon Info-Dumps For Five-And-A-Half Pages

Alright, back to bullshit.

Galvatron is being a rude little turd to Xenon, calling his robot collection old and dusty, but Xenon’s too wrapped up in the Quintesson/Cybertronian lore to be bothered. Ultra Magnus just wants to know what the fuck he’s done with the Matrix.

You heard the man, out with it.

So, back when the Quintessons first started out, they were known as the Progenitors- yeah, I know- a quasi-organic race who went from caveman-level intelligence to full-blown hard sci-fi sons of guns at an incredibly rapid rate.

Problem is, they didn’t get any further than that. They tried, sure. They tried real hard, for millions of years. Then, once their inspiration had run out, they started looking to other races to try and figure something out.

This just in, god is dead and James Roberts killed him by turning him into a glorified OS.

So, P.R.I.M.U.S. is encoded onto these geodes, and they become sentient. Sometimes they think they’re god.

Just like everyone else in this story.

Now that the Quintessons knew about these little god-doodads, they wanted one for themselves, to try and reverse-engineer the secret to immortality. They hired some guys called the Weavers to nab one for them.

This is some serious nerd shit, y’all. Galvatron agrees with me- he’s never even heard of any of the things Xenon’s droning on about. Neither have I- this is all Roberts at this point.

The Weavers brought back two geodes to the Quintessons, who promptly hid them away until the Masters cooled off a bit, since they were a little miffed about the thievery and whatnot. Then they noticed a couple problems: A) the geodes were encrypted to the moon and back, and B) if you so much as looked at the thing wrong it would purge the Lifecode completely.

Didn’t Optimus throw this thing at Unicron a couple times? Maybe the geode just doesn’t like you, Xenon, ever thought of that?

In order to decode the geodes, the Quintessons needed massive computers. Y’know, like God. But before they could really get a head start on that, the Masters’ nanobot enforcers showed up, blocking out the sky like a giant swarm of angry wasps. They wrecked shopped on Quintyxia- the old one, not the new one- and the Quintessons ran for it. They headed for the planet where they’d buried the other geode, but something went wrong with their hyperspace drive, and they didn’t arrive until two million years after they’d set off.

They dug for the geode, hit something metal, and that’s when the quakes started. The Quintessons left, thinking the planet was unstable.

At this point, Magnus is begging Xenon to just get on with it.

The Quintessons headed back to Quintyxia, to find that their lush, green world had been turned into one made of metal. Cybertron. Quintyxia is Cybertron. New Quintyxia is Quintyxia. It’s like that time Prince named himself the Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

Of course that leaves the question of why the nanobots didn’t just destroy the planet instead of… doing whatever they did to make Cybertron Cybertron.

So, Cybertron is a planet-sized computer, tasked with the sole purpose of decoding the meaning of life.

You know, I remember reading somewhere- and don’t quote me on this, because I can’t for the life of me remember where exactly- that Roberts has never read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now, either he’s lying- which I don’t know why he would, the guy loves references- or this is just a weird thing the collective brain of the English population does, where they all jump to the same ideas in absurdist sci-fi.

When the Quintessons showed up on Cybertron, they were met with the results of the cracked Lifecode- the first Transformers (but they couldn’t transform, that was a thing that developed alongside the war.) They couldn’t do much of anything, really.

Well, now we know where the protoform babies in IDW come from.

The Quintessons, not ones to squander an opportunity, decide to use these fragile, helpless proto-beings as slaves.

Yeah, the Quintessons have kind of been the worst since day one.

They build brain modules, stick them in the ground- Seedlings, Xenon calls them- and watch as the planet wrapped living metal around them and built bodies.

The Quintessons get pretty good at making the Auto-Bots, and get to a point where they’re drafting up blueprints for each solitary one. Blueprints that Xenon apparently kept, since he’s got all these copies in the pods right now.

If you couldn’t tell already, we’re going with the “the Quintessons made the Transformers” creation myth.

Of course, you make a big enough species, they’re going to need some corralling- that is, if you want to be an awful, controlling, overbearing parent. And the Quintessons definitely wanted that. So, what’s one to do?

…Look, it’s not that I necessarily disagree on a base level, but-

Xenon, you fucking neckbeard.

Because the Quintessons forgot that religion is not a one-set-outcome game, they were surprised to find that it had given their creations hope and will, things you really don’t want your enslaved masses to have.

The Covenant drove off the Quintessons, then fucked off into deep space to spread the message of Primus, with Maximo at the head of things. Maximo was the leader of the Cybertronian Empire and Megatron’s progenitor in the Marvel UK comics. They did leave someone behind to keep the masses within the faith- Primon. He’s important in the comics, just trust me on that.

Oh man, we’re finally getting some answers.

Xenon admits that the Quintessons didn’t come up with everything; there were parts that they just straight-up ripped out of the geode’s owner’s manual.

Oh. Well. That’s… underwhelming. Xenon’s really just dumping the entirety of the Cybertronian religion into the trash at this point, isn’t he? This info-dump has been going on for five pages, and we still aren’t done.

Turns out that kill switch code was pulled from the geode too- 4/11.002983712 is its serial number. That’s like if you called your dad by his first name and then immediately died afterwords.

But whatever happened to that second geode the Quintessons buried on the other planet?

Yeah, that turned into Unicron.

Turns out the virus that wipes the Lifecode from the geode messed up, and made the geode want to kill literally everything in the universe just for being alive.

Well, isn’t that all just fine and dandy~!

Because the Quintessons didn’t realize what Unicron’s whole deal was at first- the vore-planet had learned how to lie at some point before they met up- they worked together for a time.

At this point the Quintessons had gone from being quasi-organic to something more cybernetically-dependent, so that might have also made things a little difficult in the baby-making department. Or not. I don’t fucking know, things are just happening at this point.

MOTHERFUCKER DO YOU KNOW WHAT BOOK YOU’RE IN

THERE WILL BE NO HAPPY ANYTHING

Storytime’s over, back to the present day. Xenon’s going to take these podded robots and populate New Quintyxia with them. They won’t fight, they’ll be actual, normal people who don’t wage war.

Xenon must have gotten some new glasses, because that’s one hell of a rose-tinted worldview he’s got there.

Ultra Magnus at this point just asks for the Matrix back so they can go home. Xenon says “nah, but check this out tho” and powers on the pod-bots.

Xenon, that’s gross. Don’t make Galvatron and Magnus watch you be weird with the power of granting life, man.

All the robots wake up, stand, and stare up at Xenon, who’s floated up to the ceiling on his power trip. They… aren’t supposed to do that.

Turns out the Matrix is a friggin’ liar, and only promised power because it’s actually Unicron in there. Well, damn.

Galvatron shoots Xenon. Good.

Shoulda sprung for the waterproofing on your Uggs, Mags.

Galvatron’s on a roll, now. He aims at one of the zombies and fires, and they all go down, thanks to their interlinked minds. Crisis averted, I guess.

Magnus, though not happy with Galvatron’s wanton destruction of innocents, has bigger fish to fry at present; he’s convinced that the Matrix is still inside God. Boy oh boy, is he wrong, but the narrative demands he at least tries. He sticks his hand into the computer, up to the shoulder. That’s not good heavy-duty machinery safety.

Well, shit. He’s been possessed by a higher power.

You know, now that I think about it, there’s a good chance that Xenon putting the Matrix into God messed up the killswitch code, and that’s why Prowl had to use a wasting disease to try and end it all. Not really relevant at this exact moment in the story, just a thought I had.

Galvatron, having had enough mystical bullshit for one day, shoots his arm clean off, severing the connection. Magnus drops like a stone, and Galvatron bolts as everything starts coming down around them.

Oh no, Magnus is gonna be our first victim, isn’t he?

Magnus follows after Galvatron, leaving his arm. Hope he doesn’t run into any aqua fortis on the way back to the Trident, because his Pretender shell is beat all to hell.

Then Xenon pulls himself together and stops being dead.

Sigh.

This was ONE section.

#transformers #jro #eugenesis #part six #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #prose writing

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ostrichmonkey-games · 4 years

Text

RPG Highlights: Shadowrun

Ah, Shadowrun. I have a lot of complicated feelings about Shadowrun. This one might be is a bit rambly. Shout out to the anonymous suggestion for this one.

So, first off, I’ve mostly played 5th edition with some slight dabbling in 4th. So those editions are what informs my opinions on Shadowrun.

What Is It: Shadowrun is a d6 dice pool, skill-based, fantasy cyberpunk/corporate dystopia rpg. You can play an ork decker (hacker). Or an elf marital adept. Or a chromed up street sam(urai). Get hired as corporate disposable assets, but a shit ton of gear, and go cause a ruckus.

The Sixth World (the world of SR) is, easily, one of my all time favorite rpg settings. For those not familiar, SR is a fantasy cyberpunk. The long and short of it is that in 2012, magic came back into our world (though the timelines between the real world and that of SR split a bit earlier than that, mostly concerning the rise of megacorporations). It’s very fun to just, get lost in the SR wikis or peruse the more setting focused books (which is all of them really). Everything you’d expect from modern cyberpunk you can find in SR. Now just add fantasy. Magic, orks, elves, overpowered mages, etc, etc. (There’s arguments to be made that, the “punk” part of a lot of current cyberpunk products is kind of lost, and its more of a “corporate dystopia”, but there are better informed people out there who can write a lot better on that than me. Minimum, SR contains at least the aesthetic you’d be looking for in cyberpunk)

At one point, an actual dragon was the president of the “US” (technically UCAS if I’m remembering my lore correctly, but you get the idea). It’s a blast. That being said, there is some, problematic writing. Again, I’m not the expert on this, but you will probably come across some stuff that leaves a sour taste in your mouth One major examples is how the game mechanically deals with cybernetic augments. The more chrome you pick up, the less Essence you have. In-lore, Essence is more or less described as one’s “humanity” or connection to the earth/world. The lower your Essence, the less “magical” you are. If you get too much chrome, you can go full “cyberzombie”. So, from a pure gameplay mechanic, I get it. You need to balance cybernetics with magic otherwise you’d have chromed up mages running around and it would probably be a mess. But it’s, kinda messed up that if you want just a regular not-fancy prosthetic leg you have to mechanically lose some of your humanity.

There’s a few other bits and pieces of lore writing that is also not super great, but I also don’t have any of them on hand, so just kind of a warning. There’s a tone of cool stuff in SR but be prepared to come across some not as cool parts.

Playing The Game: Okay, so moving on to the mechanics as I understand them. And I am by no means an expert.

At it’s core, SR is a pretty simple classless d6 dice pool. You make skill/action rolls which are based off the points you have in an attribute plus the points you have in a skill. It can be remarkably flexible. I honestly like this core.

On top of that, when you build a character you have a massive pool of positive and negative traits to play with. You can make very unique characters, and a lot of them. I mentioned classless but there are some general archetypes you can build toward, like mage, adept, street sam, decker, and others.

Where things can get messy is where the more, “simulationist” begins to come into play. So, your character is just as much defined by the gear they have as the skills they possess. Gear is very important mechanically. And it’s also once you start to get into gear (and to an extent the pos/neg traits) that you begin to run into a lot of the situational modifiers that makes SR difficult to learn. There are rules for, a lot of things. Rules for different bullet types, firing mechanisms, explosive calculations, magical strain, summonings, astral projects, falling, jumping, skydiving, basically an entirely different game for decking (hacking), and more.

This sort of style suits some people! If you love to optimize and get really granular, there’s a ton to work with here! But for me, this is where the game starts to break down. Just personal taste.

All the extra rules and exceptions is also where mechanically, the game can start to feel kind of broken. In my experience, mages are overpowered, with adepts being even more overpowered. I never really look for a perfectly balanced game (if such a thing is even possible), but it can get out of hand in SR, again at least in my experience.

The RAW intended “core loop” of SR (if that idea can be applied to ttrpgs) is basically, get a job, do the job, try not to die, get paid (hopefully), buy knew gear and repeat for as long as you’re having fun. And let me be clear, you can easily have a blast in SR. I had fun, even with all my personal issues with the mechanics. Just keep in mind what kind of game it is if you’re thinking of picking it up. There is also Shadowrun: Anarchy, which is billed as a more rules-lite and narrative focused version of SR, but I’ve only barely skimmed it so I can’t offer much on it.

Production Values: So, the SR books look nice. Plenty of nice art, interesting layouts, packed full of lore and world information. They’re nice to read like a book. Where they utterly fail is a game tool and resource. The books are riddled with errors requiring pages of errata, are horribly, unintuitively organized, and occasionally hide rules and mechanics in little sidebars. You will be flipping through the books a lot when making a character. The whole book. Hope you’ve picked up a character builder too.

Why You Should Play It: The cyberpunk base provides a unique foundation for telling stories. Cyberpunk can be a lot of fun to explore, the addition of fantasy just helps set SR apart from other cyberpunk products. But you can also just put on some mirror shades, straighten up your pink mohawk and have some wild adventures if all you’re looking for is explosions and action. That’s totally cool too.

End of the day, SR is worth checking out. It will require some effort, Catalyst Labs doesn’t make it easy. And it may not be the system for you. But the setting can carry it pretty far. Also, I recommend checking out the podcast Neoscum if you want an actual play example. It’s on the zanier (pink mohawk) side of things, but it is seriously great, and an equally great examples of what you can do with SR.

Where You Can Get It: Various editions of Shadowun, including the most recent sixth edition are available on DriveThruRPG and Catalyst’s website.

#rpg highlights #this has been sitting in drafts for an age now #time to post

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machene-ffxiv · 5 years

Text

Machene - LFRP (Balmung)

The Basics –––

Age: 23

Birthday: 13th Sun, 3rd Astral Moon

Race: Elezen (Duskwright)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Marital Status: Single

Server: Balmung

Physical Appearance –––

Hair: Red/Pink Tint with Blonde Highlights

Eyes: Left - Blue /Right - Silver

Height: 6’1/185cm

Build: Slender, muscled/athletic

Distinguishing Marks: Beauty mark by right eye.

Common Accessories: Earrings, Big Axe, Good luck Moogle Charm

Personal –––

Public Profession: Airship Captain/Art Collector

Profession: Smuggler

Hobbies: Reading, Travel, Fixing anything with machinery, Magitek

Languages: Common Eorzean/Doman

Residences: Airship - Phoenix; Usually found in Inns as she travels a lot.

Birthplace: Ishguard

Religion: None

Fears: Losing herself to loving one person, Familial obligations, Losing her freedom

Relationships –––

Spouse: None.

Children: None.

Parents: Father: Michelangelo Mikiene (Soldier/Tactician)/Mother - Helianatrix Fountaineau (disowned from lesser Wildwood family/Ishguardian noble house)

Siblings: One older brother

Other Relatives: None yet of any relevance

Pets: None.

Traits –––

Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

Disorganized / In Between / Organized

Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

Calm / In Between / Anxious

Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

Cautious / In Between / Reckless

Patient / In Between / Impatient

Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

Leader / In Between / Follower

Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

Traditional / In Between / Modern

Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

Cultured / In Between / Uncultured

Loyal / In Between / Disloyal

Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

Additional information –––

Smoking Habit: No

Drugs: No

Alcohol: Fond of wine occasionally.

RP Hooks –––

Airship Captain/Lover of all things machine - She has a gift for flight as well as a passion for all things to do with airships, particularly her vessel, the Phoenix. She has a penchant for getting into machinery, magitek or otherwise, and is a practicing engineer.

Criminal activity - She has ties in the criminal world, underground, etc. Dealings in smuggling art and other goods keep her busy from time to time as well as other things that may interest her as profit is a welcome boon to her world.

Hired for a job - Her services are available for the right price and circumstance. Skills of the martial sort sometimes come in handy at times, besides her skills in being a cipher and other less savory expertise.

—More Information—

What I Am Looking For –––

Long Term Story Opportunities - I do enjoy the one off and shorter role play scenarios, but i am also looking for longer term story/plot possibilities with other characters. If you have any ideas, interest, and think that my character may fit with your’s or vice versa, feel free to contact me.

Pre-existing Relationships - This can be interesting, and if you have an angle that works, let me know.

In game/Discord/Tumblr RP - I like in game RP as my first choice, but I am open to RP via DIscord too as I started in an entirely text medium back in some day. Tumblr is also one that I am willing to look into, though that is still not something that I have done much of.

Types of Roleplay - I am fairly open-minded about types, though relationship/love role play is not the first option that I seek. Lust and other stuff can happen, though ERP (which I am not against if it fits into the story/RP/whatever) is also not my first or even last thing that is sought. I like intrigue, enemies/rivals, strong friends/allies, humor… and well, the sky can be a limit.

Communication/Good vibes OOC - Even if our characters are bitter enemies or whatever IC, I like to think that the ‘out of character’ stuff can always stay civil, amiable and so forth so all involved have a good time in whatever direction RP goes. I am always willing to listen to communication if a story direction/idea is not working for others involved in the RP and open to changes if agreed upon by all involved. It is about the journey for me, not the destination.

About RP style –––

Paragraph role player - I tend to articulate myself in longer sentences though I am not one abusing the thesaurus either. I am fine with shorter sentence and just dialogue as I have adjusted to RP styles in MMOs. I just love a good story/plot/scene and so forth.

Lore - I tend stick with the stuff that fits the setting, and I am still refreshing my knowledge on that at times. If something I do does not fit or make sense, let me know.

Why so serious? - While I adore intense, serious role play at times, I believe humor does the body, mind and soul good, so I enjoy having fun at the expense of my own character at times and perhaps others, but never in a non-fun way (at least OOC non-fun).

Availability/Contact Information –––

Discord: Ask me for this. I tend to just want to put out there on tumblr, etc, but am willing to add people for conversation/plotting, etc about the RP, and of course, possibly doing some RP on Discord.

Balmung Server - This character is on Balmung. However, when the open world Crystal crossing over opens up, I am more than willing to do RP/collaborate with others from other worlds.

Timezone - HST (Yes, Hawaiian Standard Time) - Does not always work for everyone, but I tend to be on often during the week in the evenings of my time zone with. Better availabiilty on weekends as I am off work then (I get on earlier) .

Tumblr DM - @starlogica/machene-ffxiv

Tumblr - https://machene-ffxiv.tumblr.com/

@mooglemeet @balmungrp @ffxiv-balmung-rp @ffxiv-crystal-rp

#Balmung #Balmung RP #Balmung Roleplay #FFXIV RP #Final Fantasy XIV Roleplay #Balmung LFRP #FFXIV LFRP #Character Background #CHARACTER;Balmung #lfc #Machene Mikiene #Machene-FFXIV #Starlogica

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xaz-fr · 5 years

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@deadpool-scar-bro @hikayelastoria @cornsnoot-fr @redlion-fr @mushroomdraggo @murdoch-fr @tales-around-sornieth @frxemriss @rainhearts-hatchery @rexcaliburr-fr @starry-ampelope @plainstriderbard @reanimatedfr @voltaic-ambassador @sirensage-fr @journey-taken-fr @ally-fr @golden-lionsnake @rookfern-fr @fr-dew (let me know if you’d like to be added to the lore pinglist)

If you’enjoying the lore be a bro and reblog

So just a brief overview of Jess and Amun before we get into their arc that I apparently am never going to properly write their arc out either SIGH

Jessabelle is the clan’s trader. She runs the general store where all traders come through to trade their goods to the Hall and get goods from the various factions of the Hall. She takes care of all trades and gives most of the gold and gems she gets from these trades straight to Johanna to help keep the Hall running. The rest she can keep for herself to keep her store running. She's a nice Southern lady so to speak. Well mannered, well spoken, well educated, crafty when she wants to be, used to getting her way, and is one of the few dragons who don't live on North Face who call her ma’am because that's just how she is. She's also got a SERIOUS affection for Amun even tho he doesn't deserve it AT ALL.

Amun is the Hall’s scavenger. He goes out into the world all over and collects things. Jessa usually gives him a bit of money to make trade purchases with other clans or get things they might want but for the most part he's a free agent who goes and does what he wants and comes back to Jessabelle’s shop and drops off all his things. She pays him some for the services but mostly she just acts as a middle man between him and Johanna who originally hired his services. In return for Amun not having to worry about organizing or cataloguing the things he brings back and giving it to Jessabelle to deal with (which she doesn't really like because for as much good stuff he brings home he brings home double the garbage like sand or gravel (junk material items basically)) he and Jessabelle struck up a deal. The deal was that they'd have a nest together and Jessabelle would help him out. Amun is quiet, stoic, and utterly uninterested in most dragons of the Hall including Jessabelle. He has no real feelings for her and instead has very strong feelings for Layali, the Hall’s progenitor.

So basically Amun and Jessabelle have a relationship where Amun is gone for weeks or months, comes home to the Hall, drops his shit off with Jessabelle, might have sex with her, goes and spends most of his time with Layali, but sleeping in Jessabelle’s home and maybe having sex with her some more until he eventually leaves again. It is pretty fucked up and Jessabelle knows it but she just… likes him and hates that she likes him. She'd much prefer she not like him because Amun is pretty much an asshole lols.

And this is the rest of their arc (to a point) I didn't want to write lololol

Jessabelle wakes up next to Amun in dragon form. She came to sleep with him because she knows it hurts a lot and his constant changing has exacerbated the issue of his bones and joints hurting during the change. She helps him get up and makes him some food and in general is really soft with him and she can tell he really likes it and likes her taking care of him in his fragile state. Then when he's more on his feet he says he's going to the Cypress Tree and jessa is kinda… heart broken. Cause he never just stays with her. He always leaves.

Amun goes to the Cypress Tree and is hanging out with Lianna and Layali. He's just so hard core crushing on her because she's so nice and sweet and pretty. Lianna is reading Layali a storybook and Amun is just sitting listening and watching Layali. Then he goes ‘can I talk to you?’ and she goes downstairs with him. He confesses to her and she's just O.O because what and goes ‘what about Jessabelle?’

‘what about her?’

and Layali is just like ‘look, I'm flattered but I don't like you like that, I'm sorry. You're just my friend’

and Amun is CRUSHED. But he's also like ‘It's okay q.q I understand’ and she goes back up to Lianna but Amun leaves. He feels so bad and now knows how Jessa feels with having feelings for someone who doesn't like you back.

He goes back to Jessabelle and is just like ‘I'm sorry I don't like you back’ and she's so shook and kinda upset.

‘What happened?’

‘I told Layali how I feel and she doesn't feel the same so I'm sorry I'm an asshole’ and she's upset for him and his hurt feelings. Then he's like ‘I'm going now. I need to be alone’

‘what about our nest?’

‘what about it?’

‘You're just going to leave because you got your feelings hurt?’

‘I need to lose myself in some work and figure myself out’

‘so I guess your feelings are the most important thing than’

‘yes’

and for “some reason” that makes her furious. ‘fine! Then go out and when you come back find someone else to take your garbage!’ and slams the door on him. Amun is really bewildered and knocks a few times but Jessa doesn't open the door. Eventually he just shrugs a little and goes off.

Jessabelle, furious and hurt, goes to her nesting room where her nest is and just sort of collapses next to them. She curls around them as she starts crying. ‘It's okay. We don't need him. Even if Amun always leaves I won't’.

———————

Amun comes back from his adventure and scavenging and finds Jessabelle’s home locked. He knocks a bunch, looks around for her but can't find her at all. He gets worried and goes to Aya’s. Gemini answers the door and there's Jessa and Aya sitting in the living room having tea and chatting. Jessa notices Amun first and they both stop chatting and turn and glare at Amun. ‘oh, you're okay, I was worried’

‘Oh were you’

‘the house is locked’

‘yes’

‘why?’

‘why do you think, asshole?’ and Amun is so confused because what????

Gemini is just like ‘Amun, you should just leave’

‘what? But I wasn't doing anything’

‘Amun, get off my territory before I make you’ and Amun takes it as a legit threat because Gemini is an actual warrior. Amun might be scrappy but he's no match to training with Johanna all the time.

He leaves and goes to the Cypress Tree where he sees Lianna and Layali are. Layali doesn't welcome him like usual or ask where he's been, what he's seen, and if he brought her a present. Layali stays right next to Lianna and after some dodged conversation goes, ‘you should go, Amun’

‘what? Why?’

‘because I don’t want you here after what you did to Jessa’

‘… uh? I didn’t do anything to Jessabelle’

and Lianna is just like ‘yes you did, you’re doing it right now. Layali asked you to leave, so leave before I get Johanna’.

Amun is VERY confused and also a bit annoyed but goes back to Jessabelle’s shop and goes right in cause he’s mad and just like ‘what did you do??’

‘get out of my shop’

‘what did you do Jessabelle?’

‘I said get out of my shop’

‘What did you SAY to everyone that they hate me now?!’

‘just the truth’

‘bullshit’

‘I’m sorry you found out others don’t like you when they find out who you really are’

‘What did you say to them!?’

‘That you leave all your shit with me, leave me with children and then fuck off; all the TIME. I went and talked to Layali too. She’s a child Amun. She might be older than you but she’s hardly more than a girl. You’re disgusting.’

‘I am not’

‘you are in love with a CHILD. What else does that make you? Especially when she has nothing for you. Has given you nothing. You made her so uncomfortable with your confession because you thought your feelings were more important than hers. They’re not.’

‘That doesn’t explain why Aya and Gemini hate me too’

‘I don’t know, maybe because I’m constantly left alone with our nest and you never want anything to do with your children’

‘you’re the one who wanted them! That was part of our deal. Don’t get mad at me because I am following through with our deal’

‘I said A nest Amun. One. Singular. But you still come back every time you get done leaving your garbage with me and have sex with me. And you knew how I felt about you. How did you think that that was okay????’

‘I thought that was what you wanted’

‘WHY WOULD I WANT TO BE USED LIKE THAT?! GET OUT OF MY SHOP!!!!’ and Amun flees because Jessabelle is PISSED and shoots a bolt of light at him that chars the frame of the door.

Only then does Amun really realize… he fucked up. Not only did he fuck up but he's insanely selfish. He made the girl he loved uncomfortable and the woman who loved him, basically unconditionally, hate him. He realizes he doesn't deserve either of them and they shouldn't have to put up with someone like him. He leaves a message with Vrej, if anyone cares, that he's leaving and doesn't know when he'll back because he actually needs to… like figure shit shit out for reason. And not for himself like last time. He needs to figure his shit out so he can be a better him for those around him. He leaves immediately.

#flight rising #Fr lore #Fr lore share #Lore share #Cypress hall

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ncfan-1 · 6 years

Text

ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives: S1 EP022 (’Colony’), EP023 (’Schwartzwald’), & EP024 (’Strange Music’)

In which a lot of plot material is dropped on us.

No spoilers past Season 1, please!

EP 022: ‘Colony’

- So we’re back from where ‘Freefall’ left off, with Martin retelling his close encounter with Jane Prentiss. What happened with the container full of worms that he presumably brought into the Archives, I don’t know.

- Jonathan’s silence after Martin says he can vouch for his sanity is so awful it winds up being hilarious.

- Martin picked up on the same thing that I picked up on the first time I listened to ‘Arachnophobia’—namely that the description of the worms rings a bell.

- It says something about how sketchy the Archives has become to me even at this point that I didn’t bat an eye that Martin regarded breaking and entering an acceptable part of “due diligence.”

- “I get closer, and I see that it looks more like a worm of some sort, maybe an inch long, with a silver, segmented body that goes black at one end, almost like it’s been burned.” This is a description of the worm. It stood out to me, and I’ll explain why at the end of the section.

- I wonder—did the edges of Martin’s shadow move because worms were moving in it, or does proximity to the Flesh Hive (or a host of the Flesh Hive) by itself have that effect?

- Oh, Martin, Jonathan didn’t once think about it in terms of you having disappeared.

- Because I have a slightly dirty mind, I assume Jane Prentiss was naked under that coat. Obviously, the holes in her body and the general state of decay her body was in would have distracted from that. Those images from Planet Earth of different species of cordyceps growing out of different species of animal corpses is firmly impressed upon my mind.

- I wonder how much of Jane’s mind is even left at this point. Like, by the season finale, I can only assume that she’s dead and the Flesh Hive is running around with her corpse, but was she even properly alive anymore at this point? I honestly don’t know.

- If I’d been trapped in my home by Jane Prentiss and the worms for thirteen days, I would have been screwed. Like Martin, I keep upwards of a week’s worth of food on hand, but a lot of my stuff is frozen. Also, since we live out in the middle of nowhere, if we lose power, we also lose running water, and about the only thing I drink anymore is water.

- I imagine Martin doesn’t want to think about it (and who could blame him?), but I wonder if, while Jane and the worms were stalking Martin’s home, any of his neighbors tried to stop by. Or any of their pets. Does Martin have pets? (Did he have pets?)

- It’s a testament to how seriously Jon takes Jane Prentiss that he isn’t nasty to Martin at all after he’s done making his statement, that he volunteers to ask Elias to hire extra security, and goes so far as to offer Martin the use of a room in the Archives until the danger’s passed.

- Martin’s stunned stammering when Jon says all this is kinda heartbreaking.

- “Keep him. We have had our fun.” Y I K E S.

- Now, I talk about the worms—namely, the description of the worms, and why it stood out to me that these worms, the manifestation of an entity that hates the Magnus Institute, look the way they do.

Let me tell you about the silverfish. The silverfish is a small insect, ranging in size from half an inch to one inch long. It has a silver, segmented body that’s darker at the head, and it looks like this:

It doesn’t look exactly like the worms. It has legs and antennae; it’s not a worm at all. The funny thing about the silverfish, however, is that it’s the bane of many an archive in a humid climate, because among other things, one of its favorite things to eat is paper. I wonder if this was an intentional choice on Jonny Sims’s (the writer’s) part.

EP 023: ‘Schwartzwald’

- This is my favorite of the set I’m doing today, and it’s one of my favorites of Season 1. It’s just so lovely.

- So, was Jonah Magnus of German descent? Von Closen remarks upon his very strong opinions about the German confederation, and I get the impression that it is (or was, or possibly still is) much in use as a Germanic and a Scandinavian given name and surname.

- I listen to von Closen’s description of the Black Forest, and I wonder how it compares to the forests I know. I’d believe that the trees are taller, but the forests here are very dense, and the undergrowth can make them very difficult to navigate.

- I’d say finding a cemetery in the middle of the woods is incredibly creepy, but old, small family burial plots are so common in the South that it’s not out of the question that you’d stumble across one if you started walking across the backwoods in a really rural area. You can see a lot of them in farmland, far from the road at the tree line. My family’s old burial plot is in a cow pasture. One of the raised tombs is broken.

- Okay, I’ve read enough ghost stories to know that when a creepy old man tells you it’s dangerous to do the thing, that’s your signal to turn right back around and forget about doing the thing. From a more practical standpoint, even discounting supernatural elements, you shouldn’t do exploration of the kind von Closen is doing by yourself, because of the risk of being injured so far from civilization is a very real one, and it’s worse if you’re by yourself.

- And we have an intermission with Martin! And it turns out that Jonathan has been coming to the Archive well before seven in the morning for a while. Yeah, that’s not unhealthy at all.

- I would not be surprised if the books von Closen found in the mausoleum are of the same class of book as Jurgen Leitner’s stuff. Most of them were damaged past the capacity to read them, and the world is a better place for it. The fact that the one book he took away from the mausoleum is unaccounted for is… worrisome.

- A wall seemingly made of (probably evil) books molded together is a nice, evocative image.

- More eye imagery.

- The fact that the book von Closen found was probably in Arabic is kinda funny to me, because in Lovecraftian lore, the author of the Necronomicon was Arabic, and I think that’s the original language of the text.

- The text on the coin von Closen found, “Für de stille,” made the recording go staticky. It’s German for ‘For the silence’, if Google Translate can be trusted, and yeah, I know that’s a tall order.

- The date on the coin, 1279, is the year Ulrich II, Count of Württemberg, died. He was twenty-five.

- And now we get a story behind the creepy mausoleum. ‘Johann’s steps’ seems to carry on a long tradition of egregiously risky childhood games. And, indeed, what was it they were seen by?

- I can’t tell if Johann von Württemberg is supposed to be a historical figure or not.

- I love the detail about the old man being able to see despite having no eyes, and his head jerking up like a hunting dog’s responding to a signal. It so effectively signals that the only human thing about him is his appearance.

- The stinger is great—apparently this friend of Jonah Magnus’s nephew is the ancestor of another collector of the arcane, Mary Keay, and her son, Gerard Keay. Mary’s birth date struck me, though, the fact that she was born in 1924. Gerard was described as being in his late teens, so somewhere between seventeen and nineteen, in 2002 (‘Old Passages’)—I’d assume the reason Dominic Swain assumed him to be in his late thirties ten years later in ‘Page Turner’ was down to rough living. That means that Mary would have had to have been in her late fifties or even her early sixties when Gerard was born. It’s not impossible for a woman to have a child (and apparently her first) at that age, it’s just extremely rare.

EP 024: ‘Strange Music’

- I’m like Leanne; I’m not scared of clowns, but I don’t think they’re all that funny, either. Dolls can occasionally be creepy, but for the most part, they’re not—at least, not by themselves.

- Budel is a town in the Netherlands, it turns out.

- A loft is an… interesting place to keep something like a calliope organ. The fact that the organ and the steamer trunk full of mutilated dolls are the only things in the loft makes me think that Nikolai was hiding them there, like he couldn’t get rid of them but wanted to forget they were there.

- One does wonder how exactly the broken calliope organ played.

- The clown doll sounds like a Pierrot-style doll. I think the clown doll from Poltergeist was like that as well.

- The only way I have ever heard Calliope pronounced is “Cuh-LIE-oh-pee.” I’ve never heard it pronounced “Call-ee-OH-pee,” and I’ve certainly never heard it pronounced “Call-ee-ohp.” Who exactly pronounces it “Call-ee-ohp?”

- “Faster, faster” sounds vaguely demonic in origin. Just something about how frantically fast it is and how completely carried away Leanne gets while playing it, how lost in the music she gets. That and the fact that playing it immediately gets the clown doll’s attention.

- Wonder what Josh did that proved him to be “just another asshole.” From the context, it sounds like he cheated on Leanne or stole from her or something like that.

- I also wonder what it was that made the entity of the episode decide to target Josh and not Leanne. I really doubt it respects the fact that she’s the granddaughter of the person who owned the calliope organ.

- And some sinister delivery men (gee, I wonder who it could be, she says sarcastically) broke into Leanne’s house just to get at the organ and the trunk.

- And it turns out Leanne’s grandfather Nikolai Dennikin was an organist for a creepy circus called the Circus of the Other. Given that name, ‘Circus of the Other’, I expect that to come up again.

- And the stinger of this episode is that the sinister calliope organ has somehow ended up in the Archives’ artifact storage room. Which is a good stinger, I’ll admit.

#ncfan listens to The Magnus Archives

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