ergodic-mentality

[ergodic-mentality]

Entry ?? - Follow up on yesterdays ramblings

Good news, we have a working title, and the intro chapter is coming along smoothly while I get everyone's sheets sorted out!

New work to be working-titled:

Rivers Run Red

"Now Raven, that sounds ominous!"

Welcome back, imaginary strawman! I hope the crows are doing well in the field!

Uh, yes, it kind of is. As I was taking my various characters in the ramblings yesterday, converting them all over, and beginning work on the intro chapter, I came to a realization:

They are all bastards, only one of them is free of sin, and she is also doomed by the narrative, so it's blood all the way down.

Anywho, expect the chapter to be out sometime in the next....hopefully by the end of the week? I need to set the weight of deadlines for myself or else i'll just procrastinate ad infinitum. So we'll aim for that, this time next week at the absolute latest.

Look forward to it!

[ergodic-mentality]

Last but certainly not least,

Xandra "Pris" Pollonia

Cursed games: Several attempts at 40k tabletop games, attempts at trying to play her in DnD, one translation of her into a more modern setting using Tenra Bansho Zero. One of the fist characters I ever made for tabletop. Her curse stretches back over a decade.

This is the only real piece of art I've ever done for her. As you can tell, her initial conception was as a techpriestess. More specifically, a biologis and the chirurgeon of whatever group she was a part of. She had very little if any augmentations outside of the necessary bits to be part of the priesthood, very clutzy, and often forgotten about or tossed into a back room somewhere and forgotten on account of her being an untouchable (for those without 40k knowledge, someone who is immune to psychic bullshit but as a consequence everyone innately dislikes them). She's fun. She'll die horribly one of these days if I ever get to actually play her probably. Or not. She's a medic, endlessly curious, and a coward, all admirable traits in the imperium, and incredibly valuable to have in someone unaffected by magic bullshit. In the cultivation story she will likely be filling in a similar niche, healer, bookworm, and strange negator.

Her role in this is that of The Scholar.

Notable traits of hers include:

Passively immune to a bunch of bullshit

Tries to be helpful, not always successful

Knows a lot, skill monkey by tabletop terms, jack of all trades by real life ones. This does not make her good at applying any of that knowledge

incredibly bad luck and an immense clutz

Doomed to always be in a back room until someone comes to get her.

Only useful in combat if by accident.

Entry 8 - New Writing Project

Morning, Afternoon, and Evening

This post is going to serve mostly as a notification, should it get some traction ill go into more behind the scenes character stuff here, but I am starting a new writing project!

Unlike Crown Crown/Magical Life Crisis (in Development for Comic Pitching) and Fatal Wound (Would still like to run that world, but who knows when that will happen), this is going to be solely a new writing project that I will live post updates to. Still workshopping a name for it, but will let all you out there know once I have that figured out. You'll know as soon as I do anyway. Why?

Because I'll be making an AO3 account and posting it there!

Now you may ask yourself why, the main answer is Google Drives is a hellscape and I have no reason to use it as a story sharing medium if I can avoid it.

But Raven, you haven't told us the premise!

Correct, Fake Strawman I have invented for the purposes of asking this question!

What's bearing the brunt of this story creation is two-fold:

I have several tabletop characters over the years I have had to come to terms with are "Cursed" more or less. What does this mean? I find them compelling for one reason or another. I have tried to reinvent them multiple times while keeping their cores intact for different games. Each time I pull out one of these backlogged characters, the game inevitably falls apart at a much faster rate than tabletop games usually do, sometimes not even getting to an initial session. Truly a fate worse than death.

The primary catalyst for this is a character of mine named Vice, full name "Mendicant Knight Of Vice and Virtue" (Why yes, she did start off life as me repeatedly trying to play Exalted with her, how can you tell), for whom I have deep brain worms and at this point just want to write something for.

I am a relatively fresh indoctrinite into Cultivation media. I've read a few things, notably the entirety of Cradle and working on the Weirkey series and Reverend Insanity, and honestly the past few cultivation games I've played have been part of the Curse

So what does this mean?

Simple invented strawman! I have so far taken my various cursed characters, and have decided to GM for MYSELF! Utilizing a brand new technique called "Going Insane" I will be utilizing a tabletop system called Blades of the Immortals - Jagganoth (You can find it here on Itch.io), I will be born into this world and have no idea what's happening next just as much as you, dear readers.

Notably, should anyone accuse this of literary malpractice or cheating, I would like to point out that a similar method was used to write the entirety of the critically acclaimed novel "Man in the High Castle" by Philip K Dick, though notably that involved more Chinese fortune telling and the coming down off of all the drugs he did for A Scanner Darkly than I will be participating in, but the heart of the problem remains the same.

Expect some reblogs of this massive post over the course of today with brief character bios of each of the Cursed Characters!

[ergodic-mentality]

Alright, next on the list, first of the ones from a game outside of cultivation media who is being reworked:

Nikita "Nick" Maret

Her cursed nature is from World of Darkness games, where she has unsuccessfully been introduced in Mage The Ascension (never took off), Chronicles of Darkness (Primarially VtM) as a Sorcerer (game crashed and burned after just introducing her, was playing successfully for a long time before that with another character), Deviant the Renegade (where she was initially made for), and a SECOND MtA game focusing on Sorcerers (made it through the equivalent of session one before it crashed and burned too)

First one was a modified trace job, second was freesketch of me trying to put her in the Eddie Brock fit

Her whole deal in the games was a war vet cursed with near immortality and the consumptive essence of a god turning her into a living avatar of War, consuming metal and weapons being slowly integrated into her scarred flesh. French as fuck. Big divorced dad energy. I love her to death.

For the purposes of our story, her role has been assigned as The Inheritor.

Ill obviously have to do some tooling of this concept to make it work, but the idea of a cultivator whose whole thing is an uncontrollable urge to integrate divine treasures into their body in a weird body horror eldritch avatar of conflict kind of way is fun. It definitely comes at odds a bit with the other characters, especially being all business, but should be interesting. Might just come up later as a side character before being integrated properly.

Important design language:

Smokes a lot, specifically cigarillos. Always described them of smelling of burning diesel and war chemicals. Always seems to have spares.

Extremely scarred right side, usually with weird shrapnel still sticking out of it. The shrapnel is usually part of whats embued her with the god powers, and is tied to whatever divinity has cursed her. Usually alive and grows in a weird organic way, think Iron Man Tetsuo (dont google that if you dont know what it is and are squeemish to body horror)

Tall as fuck, lithe, walks everywhere with a terrible hunch and scowl, talking like comical hunch. 5'8 -> 6'4 when straightening out her back levels. Makes a terrible sound.

Always Ex-Military, sometimes still soldier. Casualty of war, superiors and the Military Industrial Complex are always responsible for her state.

Entry 8 - New Writing Project

Morning, Afternoon, and Evening

This post is going to serve mostly as a notification, should it get some traction ill go into more behind the scenes character stuff here, but I am starting a new writing project!

Unlike Crown Crown/Magical Life Crisis (in Development for Comic Pitching) and Fatal Wound (Would still like to run that world, but who knows when that will happen), this is going to be solely a new writing project that I will live post updates to. Still workshopping a name for it, but will let all you out there know once I have that figured out. You'll know as soon as I do anyway. Why?

Because I'll be making an AO3 account and posting it there!

Now you may ask yourself why, the main answer is Google Drives is a hellscape and I have no reason to use it as a story sharing medium if I can avoid it.

But Raven, you haven't told us the premise!

Correct, Fake Strawman I have invented for the purposes of asking this question!

What's bearing the brunt of this story creation is two-fold:

I have several tabletop characters over the years I have had to come to terms with are "Cursed" more or less. What does this mean? I find them compelling for one reason or another. I have tried to reinvent them multiple times while keeping their cores intact for different games. Each time I pull out one of these backlogged characters, the game inevitably falls apart at a much faster rate than tabletop games usually do, sometimes not even getting to an initial session. Truly a fate worse than death.

The primary catalyst for this is a character of mine named Vice, full name "Mendicant Knight Of Vice and Virtue" (Why yes, she did start off life as me repeatedly trying to play Exalted with her, how can you tell), for whom I have deep brain worms and at this point just want to write something for.

I am a relatively fresh indoctrinite into Cultivation media. I've read a few things, notably the entirety of Cradle and working on the Weirkey series and Reverend Insanity, and honestly the past few cultivation games I've played have been part of the Curse

So what does this mean?

Simple invented strawman! I have so far taken my various cursed characters, and have decided to GM for MYSELF! Utilizing a brand new technique called "Going Insane" I will be utilizing a tabletop system called Blades of the Immortals - Jagganoth (You can find it here on Itch.io), I will be born into this world and have no idea what's happening next just as much as you, dear readers.

Notably, should anyone accuse this of literary malpractice or cheating, I would like to point out that a similar method was used to write the entirety of the critically acclaimed novel "Man in the High Castle" by Philip K Dick, though notably that involved more Chinese fortune telling and the coming down off of all the drugs he did for A Scanner Darkly than I will be participating in, but the heart of the problem remains the same.

Expect some reblogs of this massive post over the course of today with brief character bios of each of the Cursed Characters!

[ergodic-mentality]

Up next, the last of the characters from whom come from a cultivation game or something cultivation adjacent!

Drake, The Indomitable Wyrm

(I dont have art for her, I'm sorry. Yes its that bad)

In her true form, from a game of Anima, well, multiple that never got past session one or even to session one. Even the one that got to session one only really got through half a session cause it ended early due to external circumstances. Brash, Loud, a BIG personality, she mostly just wanders around getting into fights. Her main thing is being a descendant of True Dragons, in the main universe that mostly meaning a direct tie to creation in the universe and the realization and physical manifestation of dreams and fantasy.

Her role in this story will be that of The Ascendant.

Notable Design Elements include:

tall

built

horns

sharp teeth

some scales

tail

for some reason more bestial looking than the actual Beast

confident

look she's probably the least developed out of all the characters cause i was really hoping to feel her out more in the games but she ended up being a massive bimbo (lovingly) who just likes to get into bar fights, she dont got a whole lot going on upstairs just think female kamina and youre on the right track

Entry 8 - New Writing Project

Morning, Afternoon, and Evening

This post is going to serve mostly as a notification, should it get some traction ill go into more behind the scenes character stuff here, but I am starting a new writing project!

Unlike Crown Crown/Magical Life Crisis (in Development for Comic Pitching) and Fatal Wound (Would still like to run that world, but who knows when that will happen), this is going to be solely a new writing project that I will live post updates to. Still workshopping a name for it, but will let all you out there know once I have that figured out. You'll know as soon as I do anyway. Why?

Because I'll be making an AO3 account and posting it there!

Now you may ask yourself why, the main answer is Google Drives is a hellscape and I have no reason to use it as a story sharing medium if I can avoid it.

But Raven, you haven't told us the premise!

Correct, Fake Strawman I have invented for the purposes of asking this question!

What's bearing the brunt of this story creation is two-fold:

I have several tabletop characters over the years I have had to come to terms with are "Cursed" more or less. What does this mean? I find them compelling for one reason or another. I have tried to reinvent them multiple times while keeping their cores intact for different games. Each time I pull out one of these backlogged characters, the game inevitably falls apart at a much faster rate than tabletop games usually do, sometimes not even getting to an initial session. Truly a fate worse than death.

The primary catalyst for this is a character of mine named Vice, full name "Mendicant Knight Of Vice and Virtue" (Why yes, she did start off life as me repeatedly trying to play Exalted with her, how can you tell), for whom I have deep brain worms and at this point just want to write something for.

I am a relatively fresh indoctrinite into Cultivation media. I've read a few things, notably the entirety of Cradle and working on the Weirkey series and Reverend Insanity, and honestly the past few cultivation games I've played have been part of the Curse

So what does this mean?

Simple invented strawman! I have so far taken my various cursed characters, and have decided to GM for MYSELF! Utilizing a brand new technique called "Going Insane" I will be utilizing a tabletop system called Blades of the Immortals - Jagganoth (You can find it here on Itch.io), I will be born into this world and have no idea what's happening next just as much as you, dear readers.

Notably, should anyone accuse this of literary malpractice or cheating, I would like to point out that a similar method was used to write the entirety of the critically acclaimed novel "Man in the High Castle" by Philip K Dick, though notably that involved more Chinese fortune telling and the coming down off of all the drugs he did for A Scanner Darkly than I will be participating in, but the heart of the problem remains the same.

Expect some reblogs of this massive post over the course of today with brief character bios of each of the Cursed Characters!

[ergodic-mentality]

Next up on the Cursed Character Listings we have:

Rhea

originally made for a greek/roman inspired cultivation game that lasted a single session, and every game since that i've propositioned her for have failing before it began, the woman with the furnace heart! (Artistic nudity ahead, and not even well done so I am sorry, it was mostly a trace job with modifications)

Born with a heart of active flame, a living pill furnace that turns anything she eats into material for cultivation. Hunted as an auspicious beast of legend for the benefit her core could have to any aspiring cultivator.

Her Role in this will be that of The Beast.

Notable Design Elements include:

Glowing heart area

Frequently dressed in little, lives like the beast she is treated as

Absolutely fucking RRRRRIIIIIIPPPPPEEEDDDD

Eats literally anything and everything, sees the world in cultivation and nutritional value

Inspiration taken heavily from the myth of Romulus and Remus, particularly since the name is taken from the wolf mother who supposedly raised them. I don't really know a lot about rome or care honestly, just latched onto that as a bit of mythology for the character concept

i love her tiny eyebrows i think they're a nice bit of cute on an otherwise very brutish design

Entry 8 - New Writing Project

Morning, Afternoon, and Evening

This post is going to serve mostly as a notification, should it get some traction ill go into more behind the scenes character stuff here, but I am starting a new writing project!

Unlike Crown Crown/Magical Life Crisis (in Development for Comic Pitching) and Fatal Wound (Would still like to run that world, but who knows when that will happen), this is going to be solely a new writing project that I will live post updates to. Still workshopping a name for it, but will let all you out there know once I have that figured out. You'll know as soon as I do anyway. Why?

Because I'll be making an AO3 account and posting it there!

Now you may ask yourself why, the main answer is Google Drives is a hellscape and I have no reason to use it as a story sharing medium if I can avoid it.

But Raven, you haven't told us the premise!

Correct, Fake Strawman I have invented for the purposes of asking this question!

What's bearing the brunt of this story creation is two-fold:

I have several tabletop characters over the years I have had to come to terms with are "Cursed" more or less. What does this mean? I find them compelling for one reason or another. I have tried to reinvent them multiple times while keeping their cores intact for different games. Each time I pull out one of these backlogged characters, the game inevitably falls apart at a much faster rate than tabletop games usually do, sometimes not even getting to an initial session. Truly a fate worse than death.

The primary catalyst for this is a character of mine named Vice, full name "Mendicant Knight Of Vice and Virtue" (Why yes, she did start off life as me repeatedly trying to play Exalted with her, how can you tell), for whom I have deep brain worms and at this point just want to write something for.

I am a relatively fresh indoctrinite into Cultivation media. I've read a few things, notably the entirety of Cradle and working on the Weirkey series and Reverend Insanity, and honestly the past few cultivation games I've played have been part of the Curse

So what does this mean?

Simple invented strawman! I have so far taken my various cursed characters, and have decided to GM for MYSELF! Utilizing a brand new technique called "Going Insane" I will be utilizing a tabletop system called Blades of the Immortals - Jagganoth (You can find it here on Itch.io), I will be born into this world and have no idea what's happening next just as much as you, dear readers.

Notably, should anyone accuse this of literary malpractice or cheating, I would like to point out that a similar method was used to write the entirety of the critically acclaimed novel "Man in the High Castle" by Philip K Dick, though notably that involved more Chinese fortune telling and the coming down off of all the drugs he did for A Scanner Darkly than I will be participating in, but the heart of the problem remains the same.

Expect some reblogs of this massive post over the course of today with brief character bios of each of the Cursed Characters!

[ergodic-mentality]

Alright, to start off the great Character Listing, we shall begin with the Inciting Incident herself!

Mendicant Knight Of Vice And Virtue!

originally beginning by stealing a face claim of LunyDoobles Sho, Vice has gone through many a change in design from my own shitty attempts at art:

two early shitty drawings of her, followed by the current designs, of As Child, and As Young Adult:

As you can see, the drawn medium is not my forte.

Vice to her friends, her core is ultimately a person trying to figure out who she is when all she's known is attempts at escape through vice, and tough decisions in order to live.

Her Role in this story will be The Assassin.

She is a dark cultivator, not by choice but by circumstance, as once you are on a path, to grow stronger is to embrace it, for we are the sum of our situations and our choices, not what fate has thrust upon us. Regardless, the path she finds herself on is a Slaughter Path, distilling the blood of other cultivators into wine to process in her core, ingesting flesh (yes, she partakes in cannibalism), and regularly imbuing herself with poisons through the pipe she smokes. She has attachment issues and can be a bit obsessive.

Notable design elements include:

Hat isn't a normal wicker farmers hat, but a large kintsugi sakazuki sake cup. She does regularly use it to catch wine that spills from the gourd on her back to drink, even mid combat.

Has multiple knives on her person, most notably twin cleavers on her hips, two stilletto needles holding her hair up, a sharpened end on the mouthpiece of her pipe, and her sword of choice an Odachi sheathed in a massive wine gourd covered in sealing tags and formation markers.

The massive wine gourd on her back is actually an artifact of her cultivation practice. While she isn't the only one on this path, they are the only ones willing to take her in after her initial life incidents that set her core on the path she is walking. The gourd acts as a refinery and is what turns cultivator blood into the ichor wine she consumes for her cultivation.

The path she walks is one that is highly dangerous to the user, involving tempering the body a thousand times over in poisonous and corrosive substances. As a result she not only has a notoriously high tolerance for things she's tried before, but also a tendency to over indulge and test limits.

Entry 8 - New Writing Project

Morning, Afternoon, and Evening

This post is going to serve mostly as a notification, should it get some traction ill go into more behind the scenes character stuff here, but I am starting a new writing project!

Unlike Crown Crown/Magical Life Crisis (in Development for Comic Pitching) and Fatal Wound (Would still like to run that world, but who knows when that will happen), this is going to be solely a new writing project that I will live post updates to. Still workshopping a name for it, but will let all you out there know once I have that figured out. You'll know as soon as I do anyway. Why?

Because I'll be making an AO3 account and posting it there!

Now you may ask yourself why, the main answer is Google Drives is a hellscape and I have no reason to use it as a story sharing medium if I can avoid it.

But Raven, you haven't told us the premise!

Correct, Fake Strawman I have invented for the purposes of asking this question!

What's bearing the brunt of this story creation is two-fold:

I have several tabletop characters over the years I have had to come to terms with are "Cursed" more or less. What does this mean? I find them compelling for one reason or another. I have tried to reinvent them multiple times while keeping their cores intact for different games. Each time I pull out one of these backlogged characters, the game inevitably falls apart at a much faster rate than tabletop games usually do, sometimes not even getting to an initial session. Truly a fate worse than death.

The primary catalyst for this is a character of mine named Vice, full name "Mendicant Knight Of Vice and Virtue" (Why yes, she did start off life as me repeatedly trying to play Exalted with her, how can you tell), for whom I have deep brain worms and at this point just want to write something for.

I am a relatively fresh indoctrinite into Cultivation media. I've read a few things, notably the entirety of Cradle and working on the Weirkey series and Reverend Insanity, and honestly the past few cultivation games I've played have been part of the Curse

So what does this mean?

Simple invented strawman! I have so far taken my various cursed characters, and have decided to GM for MYSELF! Utilizing a brand new technique called "Going Insane" I will be utilizing a tabletop system called Blades of the Immortals - Jagganoth (You can find it here on Itch.io), I will be born into this world and have no idea what's happening next just as much as you, dear readers.

Notably, should anyone accuse this of literary malpractice or cheating, I would like to point out that a similar method was used to write the entirety of the critically acclaimed novel "Man in the High Castle" by Philip K Dick, though notably that involved more Chinese fortune telling and the coming down off of all the drugs he did for A Scanner Darkly than I will be participating in, but the heart of the problem remains the same.

Expect some reblogs of this massive post over the course of today with brief character bios of each of the Cursed Characters!

[ergodic-mentality]

Entry 8 - New Writing Project

Morning, Afternoon, and Evening

This post is going to serve mostly as a notification, should it get some traction ill go into more behind the scenes character stuff here, but I am starting a new writing project!

Unlike Crown Crown/Magical Life Crisis (in Development for Comic Pitching) and Fatal Wound (Would still like to run that world, but who knows when that will happen), this is going to be solely a new writing project that I will live post updates to. Still workshopping a name for it, but will let all you out there know once I have that figured out. You'll know as soon as I do anyway. Why?

Because I'll be making an AO3 account and posting it there!

Now you may ask yourself why, the main answer is Google Drives is a hellscape and I have no reason to use it as a story sharing medium if I can avoid it.

But Raven, you haven't told us the premise!

Correct, Fake Strawman I have invented for the purposes of asking this question!

What's bearing the brunt of this story creation is two-fold:

I have several tabletop characters over the years I have had to come to terms with are "Cursed" more or less. What does this mean? I find them compelling for one reason or another. I have tried to reinvent them multiple times while keeping their cores intact for different games. Each time I pull out one of these backlogged characters, the game inevitably falls apart at a much faster rate than tabletop games usually do, sometimes not even getting to an initial session. Truly a fate worse than death.

The primary catalyst for this is a character of mine named Vice, full name "Mendicant Knight Of Vice and Virtue" (Why yes, she did start off life as me repeatedly trying to play Exalted with her, how can you tell), for whom I have deep brain worms and at this point just want to write something for.

I am a relatively fresh indoctrinite into Cultivation media. I've read a few things, notably the entirety of Cradle and working on the Weirkey series and Reverend Insanity, and honestly the past few cultivation games I've played have been part of the Curse

So what does this mean?

Simple invented strawman! I have so far taken my various cursed characters, and have decided to GM for MYSELF! Utilizing a brand new technique called "Going Insane" I will be utilizing a tabletop system called Blades of the Immortals - Jagganoth (You can find it here on Itch.io), I will be born into this world and have no idea what's happening next just as much as you, dear readers.

Notably, should anyone accuse this of literary malpractice or cheating, I would like to point out that a similar method was used to write the entirety of the critically acclaimed novel "Man in the High Castle" by Philip K Dick, though notably that involved more Chinese fortune telling and the coming down off of all the drugs he did for A Scanner Darkly than I will be participating in, but the heart of the problem remains the same.

Expect some reblogs of this massive post over the course of today with brief character bios of each of the Cursed Characters!

[ergodic-mentality]

ENTRY 7 - Project Clown Crown Update

Howdy all, and an update on my script I posted a while back.

So for those who don't know, or this is the first they are hearing of it, a short while back I posted up a rough draft script for an idea I had called Project Clown Crown. I also made a follow up post for it saying that I would be shelving it for a bit as it might be turning into something More.

The good news there is that it IS becoming something more!

We're making it a comic pitch!

And I do mean the royal "We"! Thanks to some friends and friends of friends, myself and a few others are now working on making it into a proper project and pitch! As such, it also has a proper name now! Drumroll please...

The new title is:

Magical Life Crisis!

(at least for now)

As the writer and creator, naturally my friends doing the art find it funny to keep me in the dark for most of it as long as possible, so I'm not sure I'll have a whole lot of updates there until they also are making them for the public, or the pitch is closer to completion.

BUT!

I'll definitely post about it as I can in the meantime and while I'm working on stuff in the background for if the pitch gets picked up. As soon as I am able I will post the pitch and link the artists responsible for enabling me and my ideas, and I hope you follow along for the time when those get revealed.

In the meantime, expect more posts. Trying to be good about my journaling here, have thoughts on various games and writings in my life ill share.

I may even be posting behind the scenes things on an ARG project I'm cooking up...

Anyway, till next time.

[ergodic-mentality]

he's free now

[ergodic-mentality]

Entry 6 - The Fatal Wound - Worldbuilding

Howdy! It's been a while! Sorry about that, things have a way of getting busy and out of hand from time to time, you know how it is. Anyhow, today's subject on the Fatal Wound, something I'm not sure that I've gone into yet:

THE ECONOMY

Terrifying, I know.

So, how does a world running on blood and madness purchase goods and services? Do they purchase anything? Surely shared trauma and a hungering mass of flesh that warps reality just beyond most cities borders would bring people together, no?

Yeah, no, unfortunately not. In fact, things have arguably gotten worse.

In a world driven by practicality, where it is difficult to procure your own goods and caravans are required to haul various goods and services between settlements, Trade is big, even if standard beliefs of currency have changed. We skimmed over it a bit in...I want to say either Entry 1 or 2...but to bring light to the details, just as the blood of men is one of the only sources of fuel and method by which to fight the nightmares, so too has it become the primary currency.

Yes, it is just as grim as you are imagining that to be.

Blood typing remains the same as it does in the modern day: Universal Donors to Universal Recipients and all the good and bad that comes alongside that, just that once outside the body blood becomes metallic. Arguably, the new poisonous properties of blood have actually aggravated the usual typing charts, and resulted in rather...strange, twisted, and terrible social strata.

Universal Donors are seen as a rare sign of privilege, status and wealth. Their blood is good to be spent anywhere and anyone can receive it. It lacks most of the poisonous property, and has as such created a stigmatism of those with high self worth, and perhaps even actual material worth. Their blood is usually a brighter red and polished as though a ruby.

Universal Recipients, however, are seen as wild, savage, cast off to the fringes of society in terms of social standing, but seen as nonetheless necessary for the continued function of said society. Their blood is especially potent to monsters and is thus prized by all those who wish to brave the maelstrom. It generally has less spending power on its own, due to most being unable to directly funnel it into their body and thus require glass vials to store it. Their blood is usually a darker color, almost like that of a garnet, and due to having to keep most of their "money" in glass vials, they often become prime targets for loan sharks and predatory businessmen, who want nothing more than to use their unique anatomy to hook them up as an ATM for the rest of their lives.

An interesting thing should be of note though, that often times these perceived social roles are tossed on their heads when it comes to the caravans themselves. It is often times seen as a sign of good luck to have a universal donor on board, a more efficient fuel source for their engines and a good backup should anyone become injured, but its seen as doubly lucky to have a universal recipient as well, an ordained angel as it were guiding them to safety amongst the sea of vile threats. It is said that some caravans will even pay handsomely for the services of such individuals, enough so that there exists a market of fakers and impersonators, and just as many dead caravans to match.

To have both on board however, is auspicious indeed.

[ergodic-mentality]

Concept: cursed blade rehabilitation center. Destroying a sentient weapon is expensive and highly unethical, so adventurers bring them to the center where highly trained staff can care for them and eventually find them forever homes. It turns out most cursed weapons are products of trauma and are not strictly evil themselves. Some blades turn out to be fiercely protective companions. Others don't even want to be weapons at all, finding joy in simple work like blacksmithing or farming. Most blades just need to be loved.

[ergodic-mentality]

Dragongirl kidnaps a maid instead of a princess by mistake; comes back to her lair after a hunt to find the coins and gems in her hoard have been organized into neat piles sorted by type, value, and kingdom of origin.

[ergodic-mentality]

Shared this to my friends (outside my dnd table) and they asked for explanation on the names, so here goes:

The Final Breath - Current Campaign - Player Character, An Elderly Crystal Dragonborn - Planescape module

So I have a lot of fun as the dm just throwing bullshit at them. One of the things I threw out early was the teeth of Dahlver-Nar, funny artifact, doesn't see a lot of use. One of the teeth you can pull from it is a red dragon tooth, which the elderly dragonborn did manage to pull and implant into his mouth. Gave him a super strong fire breath attack at the cost of 2 exhaustion levels (DC 24 Dex save, 26d6 fire damage). Proceeded to use it 3 times in a row in a confined building to vaporize a whole horde of demons, and resulting in his own timely death (6 exhaustion levels is instant death). A caveat in this campaign is the players each play 3 characters that cycle when one dies, so he does still eventually come back. Very funny to constantly bring up.

Stormcaller - Same campaign - Different Player Character, Male Witch with a touch curse

Due to Various Happenings, the party found themselves in a tavern concert in Glorium on the Edge of Valhalla for a Girl Failure Pop Idol. While near the crowd, due to some failed-forward/succeeded rolls, the witch gets hauled up by the mosh pit to crowd surf and get tossed on stage (much to his own protest). This results in many people touching him, and many people getting cursed. SOMEHOW most of them lucked out and didn't get any obvious curses EXCEPT FOR THE FINAL GUY who not only botched his save and got cursed, but then rolled "INSTANTLY GETS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING". So yeah, instant lightning strike into the middle of a mosh pit, massive boom, people go flying (but somehow survive), lands on the stage holding a piece of paper out to the idol in front of everyone embarrassed.

The Immortal Herald of Heaven and Hell - One-Shot, My character, Wild Magic sorcerer.

Ended up in a room full of enemies. Several spells were up. Get knocked unconscious. Due to trigger on DMs side to call for wild magic roll, instantly calls for a wild magic roll as my conciousness begins to slip. Roll a 1 on a d100. DM rules the "Roll on this table at the start of each of your turns for the next minute" all go off at once. Several things instantly happen:

A modron (pentadrone) is summoned

2. Maximize the damage of the next damaging spell you cast

3. Maximized Fireball goes off centered on myself, vaporizing everything in the room (and nearly instantly killing me)

4. Illusory butterflies and flower petals flutter in the air within 10 feet of you for the next minute.

5. A unicorn is summoned

6. I gain a regeneration effect, saving me from death and bringing me back up into consciousness

He wakes up to a room full of dead enemies, flower petals and butterflies flying around, a unicorn suddenly prancing, a dead interdimensional cop-bot, and everything on fire

Mage titles like "Lord of Lightning" or "Child of Darkness" are no different from army nicknames: They're usually based on inside jokes. You didn't realize this until you got one.

[ergodic-mentality]

Entry 5 - Housekeeping

Howdy Howdy.

Ok. So.

As someone with LONGTIME diagnosed ADHD (If I didn't self admit this, trust me, it would become apparent with time) I cannot stress enough how much having a digital recreation of a physical map for story writing helps with executive dysfunction. Highly recommend.

Context:

As a longtime Dork, a fan of Weird Fiction, and an Oldhead by internet terms, it should surprise no one that Remedy is one of my favorite game developers, and I am DEEPLY attached to Alan Wake as a franchise purely off of its deep analysis of the craft of writing and psychological analysis.

When playing Alan Wake 2 (Minor Spoilers for game mechanics I guess?) as the titular title character Alan Wake, you are stuck in a nightmare dreamscape shaped by your own art. As such, you constantly return to his Writers Room where, partially because its a real tactic, and partially because its a video game, you rearrange story elements on a massive chalkboard to effect the game world itself.

Image attached for all my visual learners out there:

Now, I've struggled a lot sometimes with my drafts and organizing my thoughts. I've loved writing for a long time. The closest I ever got to seeing something like this in media before was, admittedly, being shown the Always Sunny clip of the Pepe Silvia rant. While funny, being shown someone's mental shattering it turns out, not the most effective way to teach a writer a valuable tool.

Turning it into a puzzle mechanic utilized by an actual writer however? Very Cool.

Where am I going with this?

As it turns out, there are several programs out there that allow you to basically replicate this kind of visual story mapping out there if you just know where to look. One of the better ones, admittedly, I actually did not find out about until after college, where in my corporate job someone pulled it out (A business major friend of mine) as a part of a team building exercise.

Behold, my Miro board:

(This is not a paid advertisement)

What it is, I hope, a call to those who did not know about it that it is THERE. What it does is give you a nice big infinite void, and allow you to not only draw lines and flow tables and make nice little titles on things, but as you can see, toss digital physical sticky notes around and map things out VISUALLY.

I cannot stress how much this has helped.

Everything to the left of the center line was initial plot building for future drafts of Project Clown Crown. Side characters, plots, building up little color coded stacks of each note so that I know what corresponds to what.

Everything to the right? That's two days of manic work baby. As it turns out, much to my friend recently pointing out, Image and Dark Horse accept open pitches so long as you have an artist team, an elevator pitch for the work, and a solid 5 pages of sequential story telling that summarizes what you plan to do in the first arc.

This normally probably would have taken me a month of staring at a blank google/word doc until I came up with some kind of nigh-incomprehensible bulleted list spanning for pages. Instead, I can pump these ideas down visually now in a couple of hours, rearrange them, note them in shorthand and physically place them in space on timelines for my story.

I haven't felt this kind of power as a writer in ages. Admittedly, part of it is probably a friend actually thinking I have something worth pitching. Part of it is an own sense of self accomplishment and actually being able to visually SEE progress, rather than it just be abstracted word counts on a page.

Am I saying Miro is the only solution? No, I'm sure there are other tools or even better tools out there. All I'm saying is that this worked for me, and I will probably take a lot of my other drafts that I've been struggling with and do something similar with them. If you're like me, and you're struggling with writing or you've hit a wall and haven't tried visually mapping things out, give it a go. Can't hurt to try.

Anyway, I suppose I broke the surprise from Entry 4.1 early here, but yeah, looks like I might be trying to turn Project Clown Crown into an actual piece of media. About damn time I try to publish something. Can't call myself an Author without some body of work.

'til next time.

[ergodic-mentality]

Shits sick as fuck. I AM taking notes.

Doing traditional art with my sticker printer now hehe

[ergodic-mentality]

Entry 4.1 - Update on Project Clown Crown

First off, Thank you to the person who saw the draft and followed from it. I appreciate it. I hope you enjoy my mix of genuine world-building posts, drafts, and reblogging shitposts. Now to the reason for this post: Might be moving forward with this into...Something More™️. If anything comes of it, I will update in other major posts.

Will try and get another world building thing for Fatal Wound or one of my many writing projects soon.

[ergodic-mentality]

i love poison omelette