#Cephalid

[lets-get-bingsoo]

would you like take an adventure to the caverns of mamarun?

mamarun is a worldbuilding project me and my girlfriend were making mainly as a world to place a custom mtg set we were making. the major premise is that it is a world of caves with varying types of people living within it.

pt. 2: cephalids and the society of debate bros and theatre kids and theatre kids who are debate bros

the cephalids are molluscs and have shells which are oft custom crafted and designed for their professional or aesthetic desires. the cephalids are a society inspired loosely by ming and akkadian society but also with a weird twist of greek theatre and modern day debate bro culture because there is nothing more they love than owning others with words so much so the best debater is made the philosopher king of the cephalid. the cephalids often ask quite literally a penny for their thoughts as a large amount of them are nomadic in the search of new knowledge and skill to be able to one up each other. usually these nomadic cephalids will often be traveling musicians recanting tales and stories and debating people on the streets of foreign cities.

(zhenzhu izdubar, a traveling musician with their instrument built from their shell)

The avatar they pray to is the avatar of the theatre, representing their desire to have and their ability to keep attention as their king Jiao so well represents.

(baobing sar, a strange cephalid as they desire the knowledge on how to make the best frozen treats)

cephalids are often very good at being politicians as their abilities of obfuscation and debate make them great at preventing actual work from getting done, so they often find themselves finding themselves in the ranks of goblin politics. the cephalids otherwise do well at paperwork, mathematics, anything nitty gritty as the general societal goal is to become great at these menial academic actions making cephalid society, similarly to goblin society very bureaucratic. to the other groups in the cavern they are often just seen as weird and eclectic most the time and are at best a dear to have around and at worst a mild nuisance.

[beatsandskies]

Theme Deck Review Compendium: Torment “Grave Danger”

I am a huge fan of Black: it’s my favourite colour. So I’m a big fan of Torment’s four theme decks. As they are all black. And not the boring Rugby Union type. (Let’s Gone Warriors!) I’ve only got one of them (Waking Nightmares) built up currently but the other three are near the top of the list to work on next. I think I’d have to do all three of them since it’d be almost impossible to choose.…

[obscura-omenseeker]

Hey, nice to meet another naturally amphibious person on here! I’m a Cephalid btw (cephalopod person). We don’t have merfolk on Capenna, so I assume my species filled the same niche in old Capenna. Some of my favorite childhood memories are sitting on the bottom of a canal, looking at boats go by above. Hope you are ok from the fall!

HEY

I'm Kathera, nice to meet youdsjfhndms,kdfgvbjhvcdnmsf,gvlñvfdsdfglbkjvfmd

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Cephalid Retainer

Cephalids whisper flattery in your ear, put jewels in your hand, spin dreams in your head, and stick knives in your back.

Artist: Tony Szczudlo TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[whatsthatmagiccard]

The sole survivor of the Great Type Update War.

[underworlddreams]

Cephalid Snitch

Artist: Jerry Tiritilli Set: Torment

The cautious are wary of their enemies. The wise are also wary of their friends.

[almostlookedhuman]

[leafdrake-haven]

I get the appeal but if drakes ever got lumped in/errataed to dragons I would be sooooo sad 🥺

Would you or would you not if given the opportunity, "simplify" creature types down to a few dozen. Similar to "Outlaws" of Thunder Junction where "Outlaws" are a couple creature types grouped together. But do this on a mass scale and to every creature type.

An example: Crabs, Fish, Trilobite, Otters, Starfish Jellyfish, and Sharks (and some more relevant types I'm forgetting) would all becomes "Swimming Beast" Krakens, Whale, Leviathans, Octopus, and Serpents could be "Giant Swimming Beast". Apply similar ideas to other large reaching groups of creatures types and consolidate them.

This would help solve certain creature types not seeing "attention" for long periods of time. No need to wait 10 years for your favorite Otter deck to get attention, most if not all sets could have "Swimming Beast" support. Ontop of many old, more niche synergies applying to many, new fun options.

There are pros to that system, but also cons. It’s fun introducing new creature types and using specific words has more emotional impact. Yes, Mammal typal would allow more structural support, but then you don’t get Dog typal.

[txttletale]

thoughts on mark rosewater? he puts up with a lot of shit but it also feels like he can be quite weaselly in his answers sometimes

mark rosewater has earned enough good karma to be forgiven for any number of PR lies by replying to a million people telling him that not having the word cephalid printed on the type line is the death of magic the gathering and never once telling them to kill themselves

[azzie-beastbinder]

The Aftermath of a Reckoning

Satoru Umezawa made a point to expect the unexpected. Omenpaths to backwater planes, hotshot teenagers who left the gang as quickly as they tried to join it, people plotting to take his place as the Hyozan boss – these were all things he was used to.

But a three-in-the-morning visit from a “rival” Reckoner boss and a squid-looking man casually strolling into his office when he had just shut off his datapad was not high on the “expect the unexpected” list.

“Question one,” Satoru began, suddenly craving coffee to put up with this, “how the hell did you get in here, and question two, why three in the morning?”

“Answer one, we used the car,” Koda said, stepping forward so he was firmly on the other side of the desk between the two Reckoner bosses, “and answer two, we just broke into and out of prison and busted your Hyozans out. You and I need to talk.”

That was when Satoru finally noticed the thick folder in Koda’s hands. The younger man dropped it on the desk and shoved it closer to Satoru. Satoru felt his blood run cold when he saw his own name on it. His metal prosthetic didn’t shake as he turned it around and flipped open to the first page, only to be greeted by a picture of himself, at a mere fifteen years old, training under Ayame Hayashi – Koda’s mother.

His mouth felt dry. “Who put this together?”

“Sakai,” Koda spat. “I murdered him yesterday. Him and every Futurist in his branch. For what he did to me, to Mom, to Benkei-” Koda stopped, closing his eyes. His nostils flared for a second, but he did a remarkable job of not snapping or yelling.

The cephalid moved forward, joining Koda on the other side of Satoru’s desk. “First of all, the car – a Capennan Hoard Hauler – is in the hallway with all your guys we busted out of the prison. Got it through with my Omenpath. Second, you don’t have to be secretive, I know the whole deal with all of this between you and Koda. I downloaded most of Koda’s important memories along with his medical knowledge. Mind magic is great. Lastly, Koda’s evil grandparents – on the human side, not the oni side – sponsored everything Sakai did. He found that out after he did his whole stabby-stabby thing. Very cool, very satisfying to watch from my lenses. Sakai was paralyzed the whole time, which was a while.”

Satoru blinked a few times, then turned his attention back to Koda. “Where did you get this guy” – he gestured to the cephalid – “and can you get me three more?”

“I didn’t find Vasro, he found me,” Koda deadpanned. “And New Capenna doesn’t make any more Vasros. He hit all of the important notes, except for the vampires who want to crusade against the Imperial Court for how they treat Reckoners like us. The only thing stopping them at the moment is the giant evil bat god in their home plane who’s trying to bring in an age of everflowing blood and who honed in on my kinks instead of my insecurities like an amateur.”

Satoru leaned back in his chair, steepling his metal fingers together as he processed it. Someone who could create Omenpaths was certainly helpful to have around, and the fact that this Vasro had agreed to break into an Imperial prison with Koda in order to get Satoru’s own Hyozan Reckoners out said leagues about his willingness to help Koda. That was when the oni part finally caught up with Satoru. “You’re what, Koda?”

Koda sighed. It was the kind of sigh that only someone who had looked in the face of a god recently could make. “Yeah, turns out the reason Mom kept my father’s identity quiet is because he’s an oni. Which I only found out through a series of increasingly more bullshit events. Please tell me you have coffee, I am running solely on spite, period cramps, and part of a party hoagie.”

Well, if there was one thing that could be said about Satoru, it was that he would never pass up information. Nevermind the fact that it was usually gossip. He shoved the dossier into one of his desk drawers to go over later, then stood up. “I’ll put on a pot of coffee, come on,” he said, moving around the desk to head towards the door. He didn’t miss the bit of magic that Vasro did before the younger men both followed him.

Sure as shit, there was a strange vehicle sitting perfectly parked in the hallway outside of Satoru’s office. Satoru kept his back pressed against the wall as he moved past it to get towards the breakroom. Thistlefur – bless his aged heart – was already checking the freed Hyozans, leaning on his cane. Satoru nodded in respect to the nezumi healer who had raised him as he passed with Koda and Vasro, and Thistlefur nodded back and gave Satoru the “we’ll talk later” look that he had learned to dread since he was six years old.

The breakroom, thankfully, was a lot less busy than the infirmary now was. Satoru put on a pot of coffee and leaned back against the counter while the three of them waited for it. He gave Koda a pointed look and crossed his arms. “Okay Hayashi. I’m not going to ask you to start at the beginning, because knowing you, you’ll go back two hundred years in history, if not further. So start at the most important part of the oni thing. How did you figure this out?”

Koda grumbled under his breath for a moment, then began his explanation. “So, the plane of Ixalan is having a problem with a giant bat god that created the vampires there, and he’s been trying to fuck around in my dreams and tempt me with empty promises of power, like he fucks around in everyone’s dreams to tempt them with empty promises of power. When he made me have the dream, though, I kind of...appeared as two people at first. A human that looked like Ayame, and an oni. Both had my tattoos, and the oni half resisted the bat bastard’s whispers more than the human half. When they both finally came to an agreement, I was just me again.”

“That’s just the confirmation,” Vasro butted in. “It really all started with my boss, Raffine, who told him he was ‘halfway to being like Kagemaro’. So Koda researched Kagemaro in one of the Living Historians’ libraries but an emergency pulled him away from the book he found, and when he came back, the book got checked out, so I stole the book, had it copied, and returned it to the person who had been checking it out without them noticing. But then all the notes he took from the book destroyed themselves, so I made him write an essay to bypass it, then I gave the essay to my boss Raffine and she rewarded his 92% by giving him a riddle. Also, Kagemaro was a human so evil he turned into an oni, and my boss is a sphinx that tells the future and runs a crime family. We play psychological warfare chess about every other week.”

Satoru blinked twice. “You wrote an essay?” was all he could think to ask.

Koda groaned. “That’s the wrong thing to focus on, Umezawa.”

Satoru shook his head and refocused. “Right. Okay then. What was the riddle?”

“It was ‘A syllable for each unspeaking mouth / The cold peaks call from home / Blood is cast like shadows’,” Koda repeated. “We know that the second line has to do with the Sokenzan mountains, but other than that, I’ve been hitting nothing but dead ends. Mostly because my main priority is the evil bat god trying to lure me and others into his grasp.”

“At least you have your priorities straight?” It came out as more of a question than Satoru intended.

“It’s the straightest thing about me,” Koda deadpanned once more.

That was when the coffee pot finished warming up and spat its contents into the pot underneath the nozzle. Satoru grabbed it and reached up into the cabinet to grab some mugs, muttering curses under his breath when he realized that some had been put back dirty. Of all the things in the safehouse, one would think that Reckoners understood the importance of clean mugs for coffee. Once he found three that were clean, he poured the coffee into each and handed one to Koda and the second to Vasro.

“So what’s the plan?” Satoru asked, holding his own cup. His prosthetics didn’t transmit information about temperature to the rest of his body – the downside of him having to figure out on his own how to make prosthetics. “Because you’ve always got schemes in that head of yours, Hayashi.”

“The downside of you knowing me from the day I was born,” Koda chuckled before he blew gently across the surface of his coffee. “Yeah, I’ve got a couple things in the air. Highest priority is the evil bat god thing. High priority is handling Tatsunari since he went nuts. Medium priority is hunting down everyone else that Ichiro and Yuna have been funding in order to keep things shitty for us all. Low priority is finding out more about what oni fathered me. Lowest priority is taking a nap.” He sipped his coffee.

“Don’t make me put you in a chokehold again, Hayashi.”

“Eat shit, Umezawa.”

Satoru sipped his own coffee and promptly scalded every tastebud in his mouth. He tried not to make it obvious as he spoke again. “What do you need from the Hyozans, Koda?”

Koda, apparently unbothered by how hot his own coffee was, drank heartily before he finally surfaced for air to respond. “Information. I need your network digging into anything and everything related to oni and any historical half-oni. I’d have Azzie digging for it, but they’re with Zenkuro and Goro-Goro making sure that the evil bat god doesn’t come through an Omenpath in the Sokenzan mountains. Goro-Goro has been exploding the god’s followers with lightning.”

“...I feel like the danger of another fucking extraplanar invasion probably should have been higher on the list to warn me about, kid.”

Koda let out a long, exhausted sigh. “It’s been a long couple of weeks. Also Yuriko is dating a Futurist from Otawara now.”

Satoru’s sigh was equally exhausted. “You’re shitting me.”

“I’m not. Eishi. It’s apparently under Katsumasa up there, which means that Haruko’s taking personal offense to this mess.”

“Then where’s Haruko?” Satoru inquired, raising an eyebrow. “Usually you two are attached at the hip. Or...I guess the arm, more technically.”

“Partying on Ravnica,” Koda said, as if the idea of a minor god partying on another plane was normal. “We’re trying to do better about the whole...codependence thing.”

Satoru made a non-committal hum and took another moment to assess Vasro. “So...what’s your deal, exactly?” he finally asked. “You’ve mentioned a boss you play psychological warfare chess with, you can control Omenpaths, and you’ve been helping Koda. Why?”

Vasro shrugged. “Koda’s chill and I like helping people. I also like information. Eventually I’ll know everything and become a god. Pretty simple.”

Satoru took a sip of still-too-hot coffee to mask himself frantically trying to figure out what the hell any of that had to do with each other. Once he was done, all he said was “Okay.” He briefly wondered if New Capenna had ADHD diagnoses. Or if this was just how all planeswalkers were.

“Point being,” Koda said, “I need as much information as you can get about oni cults – modern or historical – in the Sokenzan mountains, particularly any oni that have multiple mouths and something to do with blood. I’ve already got people investigating the akki warrens to see if they find anything.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down much,” Satoru mused. “...Eh, what the hell, sure. Not like there’s been a lot for me to do as of late. Not as many borrowers and not as many operations since...” He trailed off, trying not to think about the hardest loss the Hyozans had experienced during the Phyrexian invasion.

“I know,” Koda said, because of course he already knew. “I appreciate this, Satoru. More than you know.” He set his empty mug in the sink and turned back to Vasro. “Back to Torrezon?”

Vasro set his own coffee aside, practically untouched. “Back to Torrezon. Meet you there.” He vanished from sight immediately. Koda offered Satoru a nod before vanishing into the shadows himself, as though he were a ghost.

Satoru stood alone in the breakroom for a few moments, then sighed. “I’m going to go grey early if I keep putting up with that kid.” He ran some water into his own empty mug, turned off the coffee machine so it wouldn’t burn the building down, then headed back towards his office. He was relieved to see that the car was gone and that the infirmary sounded busy.

He sat heavily in his chair and took a deep breath, then grabbed his datapad and opened an encoded chat. Nari, let me know when you have a minute. There’s something important that we need to look into.

[violant-apologia]

man i love your guys so much i had to do three of them. they're all so fun and i found great matches for the lot of em:

they introduced the detective type super recently so it was really just a matter of choosing which detective card best fit doe, and melek was a pretty obvious answer! doe fits WU pretty well, and the typeling "weird detective" is pretty appropriate lol

for BOOTS, there are a lot of legendary cats, but not many of them have red (which i would definitely say is boots' primary colour). marisi fit nicely, mostly just so i could graft incredible violence abilities onto them.

darcy gets to be a zombie!!!! first one i've done, so THAT's cool. also he gets to blow up all humans, AND has a recursion ability (plus the cleric type) which are pretty evocative for a surgeon.

i'm proooobably going to get some more FL magic cards printed at some point, and i was thinking: why do only my ocs get cards? that doesn't seem very fair! flumblr is such a big part of my FL experience now that it would honestly be disingenuous to cut it out of my deck.

so, that being said, reply/reblog if you'd like me to make a MtG card of your guy(s)! i'll make the cards and post them, and then probably post them all as a group if i get them printed.

(also feel free to suggest canon characters if you want! more guys for the pile is always appreciated)

[beatsandskies]

Theme Deck Review Compendium: Odyssey “Liftoff”

There’s certainly been a good number of RG Beats decks already while I’ve been working through these posts, but it’s a bit slow going in terms of proper WU Skies decks. There are White Blue decks which include flying creatures, sure, but they’ve not quite fit the criteria. This is another tricky one to judge, too. Maybe the reviews will help? Let’s see what can be rustled up for it! Deck name A…

[obscura-omenseeker]

Consequences of Boredom

Vasro is bored.

This is a very bad thing.

Well, not for him. but for one Aurelio Vazante.

The cephalid sits up off of the seat in his room on Torrezon. Being grounded sucks. He doesn't exactly know if he is technically grounded, with how Koda took most of the blame, but it doesn't hurt to stay on Lazaro's good side, or stay off his bad side, specifically. That stare was terrifying. However, a good reason for staying in does not solve the problem of his boredom.

He needs to DO SOMETHING to do that.

And, as usual, something means blackmail. He hasn't collected some good old fashioned blackmail in a while. Even with Braras, the blackmail wasn't even used as blackmail! it was just... released! like a tabloid! No. he wants to do this right.

He starts the basics of the procedure. The very basics. before gathering documents and leaving fun little ominous letters, he has to do some scouting. With his lenses, of course.

So, with practiced precision, he pulls out a few lenses of the city near Aurelio's current abode, and begins to scout. And scout he does. The entire resort and grounds. He does everything he can to get lenses into every visible hallway and nook and small hole into potential places of depravity.

And finally, he can begin to watch and wait.

@dusk-legion-diplomacy

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Cephalid Coliseum

Artist: John Avon TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[dailymtgflavortext]

Shuko will forever remind me of my old Legacy Cephalid deck that I rarely played. Seems like a lifetime ago, now.

It's wild to see this card brought up again all these years later.

[underworlddreams]

Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor

Artist: Christopher Moeller Set: Odyssey

"No one can fight the tide forever."