#in a world with magic

[mayapapaya33]

Knowledge and Power

I've been thinking about this for a while. They are in Vasselheim now, Is the Horn of Orcus ok? Has it been unsealed? Did someone manage to sneakily steal it when the solstice happened? I NEED TO KNOW MATTHEW!!! I'm mid episode 104. I know we have a lot going on right now, but Matt keeps dropping hints about what's happening elsewhere in the world, like Desirat being released from their prison, all of Vasselheim's dead rising, stuff like that. I need to know about the Horn! Come on Matt, give us a problem for Campaign 4! lol. It's great storytelling, fleshing out the reality that Bells Hells are one group of many fighting the good fight and a lot of shit is currently on fire right now. I've loved every bit of it.

The Horn of Orcus was also the first and most prominent time the concept of dangerous knowledge came up in the game. Not just in a "knowledge is power" way, but in that, by knowing the information you are giving power to something bad and opening yourself up to trouble, literally just by possessing the knowledge in your brain. It's such an interesting concept to explore in a magic setting. How knowledge and worship and power intertwine.

I myself am very anti-censorship Irl, but the very rare times it's justified in my opinion are for things like recipes for horrific biological or chemical weapons, stuff like that. That concept can be broadened in the context of magic, like in C2 when reading that book gave Beau and Caleb magic eye herpes lmfao. Usually I am very much on the freedom of information side of things, so Ludinus threatening to share information was a bit of a meh threat to me personally at first. While it would be very disruptive in the short term, and people may indeed kill each other over it, I do think historical truths should be freely disseminated, not hidden for fear that people are too stupid to handle it. (Even though people ARE often too stupid to handle it, we have a right to our own stupidity I feel).

What I'm wondering is if Ludinus is making a subtler play than they are imagining. Yes divide and conquer is a good tactic, and that information will help him get people disagreeing. But more than that, shaking the faith of mass swathes of people all at once CAN'T be good for a Godly constitution. I don't think it's just about swaying people to his cause, I think he's trying to strategically weaken the God's power base before the big throw down with Predathos. Kind of like what Vecna did/ tried to do in late C1. So stopping Ludinus from sharing this information might end up being VERY important in the grand scheme of things.

Yes people already knew the Gods destroyed Aeor, and I think it was even known that the Primes and Betrayers formed a temporary truce to handle the threat. But knowing that information academically and seeing it firsthand are two VERY different things. Seeing the Primes care about and bicker with the Betrayers like... well...siblings, may come as a slap in the face to the truly devout. Also how many people actually knew that about Aeor or that Aeor even existed? Not everyone is proficient in history nor religious studies. Not to drag this too much into the real world, but how many religious people actually read whatever book they claim faith in cover to cover and know the whole history of it? It's definitely not all of them lol.

I bet there's plenty of religious people in Exandria that don't know shit about Aeor. Most people in Vasselheim probably would, because that place is THE God city on Exandria and survived the Calamity, but everywhere else? Unless they were specifically interested in religious history, why would they know it? So the reveal has the potential to be very impactful still, both for it's visceral feeling in exposing a peak into the God's relationships, and their deeds, and it will still be new info for some.

[mamaangiwine]

I don't think many people realize how much they've been turned into a bunch of casually cynical jerks.

Someone may come to their parents and say "I want to write a book" and their parents will say "it's really hard to get published".

Someone might confide in their sibling and say "I want to sell my art on "x" platform" and that sibling will say "do you know how many people you'd be competing with? Do you know how many shops are even on that platform?"

I know a kid who once told his best friend "I think I wanna start a dnd podcast" and the friend was like "do you know what the word "oversaturation" means?"

Personally, I don't know why any of that matters? And even if it did, perhaps your response should be "Do it! Do it and see where it goes!"

[thestuffedalligator]

The thing was a mound of flesh and mottled skin, as big as a barn and the shape of a pumpkin. Four tentacles as thick as trees hung limp at its sides; teeth ringed the gaping mouth at the top of its head like a crown.

A huge, sad whale eye the colour of wine stared at the knight. She could see her reflection in the jelly surface.

“We don’t know what it is,” she heard. “Some kind of monster that makes a perfect copy of whatever it eats. They think that was how the Dark Lord made his armies, feeding his minions to it so that it would make hundreds of copies of them. Do you recognize it?”

The knight opened her mouth. She hesitated. “Yeah,” she murmured, drawing out the word. “We found it in the Dark Lord’s tower, right?”

“That’s right. That’s where it ate you.”

The knight turned around and looked at her other reflection. This one appeared to be about ten years older, and had doffed her armor for a loose blue tunic and breeches.

She was holding a cup of tea. She had pressed another cup into the knight’s hand when she woke up here. It had been a shock finding herself suddenly out the obsidian dungeons of the Dark Lord’s tower and into this tall room of stone and straw. The warmth of it in her hands steadied her a bit.

“Everyone else in the party was worried, but then it started making copies of you,” the copy went on, staring up at the tentacled thing. “And all of the copies helped fight against the Dark Lord, and we won, and peace was restored across the land, but then nobody could figure out how to kill the damn thing or just to make it stop. Dozens of copies of us in a day, hundreds in a week, and then someone decided that the only thing we could do is just bring the thing here, seal it off and hope it starved to death.”

She sipped her tea. “Anyways, that was two-hundred years ago and it’s slowed down a bit. It can only make a new copy of us every few weeks now.”

The knight looked down into her tea. The copy had also draped a blanket over her shoulders.

“I have so many questions,” she said.

“I figured.”

“How can it be two-hundred years? I can still remember breaking into the tower. That feels like it was just minutes ago.”

“It was, basically. Your brain is a perfect copy of the original you’s brain at the exact moment she was eaten.”

“But the quest is just — done?”

“Yep. You missed some of the things that needed tying up afterward. There was a war, and a dragon, and some business about a ring.” She waved a hand. “It was before my time. Things are pretty settled now.”

“My parents?”

“Passed away about a hundred-and-fifty years ago. I’ve been told that they were very proud.”

The knight nodded. “Um. I don’t know if you know — we had an elf in our party—”

“I’m aware.”

“I — right. Obviously. Um. It’s just, after everything was done, I was going to ask her—”

“One of us did. She said yes. She outlived her. A couple of us have tried to reach out since then, but she wants to be left alone for a while.”

The knight considered this. “Uh — right,” she said eventually. Her fingers tightened around the tea cup. “Um. What do I do now?”

Her older copy shrugged. She had let her hair grow out again, the knight noticed. There were a few strands of grey against the black. “That’s up to you, I’m afraid,” she said. “A lot of us are finding work as soldiers and sellswords. We’ve done it for so long that most armies know we’re reliable and don’t tend to turn one of us away. Most of us are just sort of spreading out, wandering the world. Some of us keep in touch.”

The knight frowned. “What do you do?”

Her copy paused, tea cup half raised to her lips. “Sorry?”

“You said it only makes a new copy every few weeks now. So you just stay here and wait for a new one to show up?”

She lowered the cup. “Well,” she said. “I guess I just — I know what it can be like, waking up here in the dark, and it — it can be horrible trying to figure all of this out on your own.

“So I thought that what I’d do is just stay here with a pot of tea, and whenever I see myself again, I tell her that — that she’s not alone.”

“We aren’t?”

“Of course not. We’re all in this together, you know.”

[shionaster]

Blue screen of death

[flyingfrogillustration]

Sick Sad World

[avadaniels]

HAPPY 40th BIRTHDAY AABRIA IYENGAR! Happy Mother's Day to our beloved Magic Mommy and Queen Tumblrina @quiddie 👑

[fisherrprince]

it’s not necessarily that I hate the themes most prevalent in fiction set in the real world and it’s not necessarily that I don’t like stories revolving around real people or relationship drama or interpersonal issues it’s more like im a dog who doesn’t recognize that a pill is still a pill if it has peanut butter on it. I need like the little peanut butter spoonful that is aliens or robots or monsters or time travel or something fantastical and not at all down to earth real life so that you can approach me and be like “this story is about how friendships can deteriorate over time and also how this guy feels bad for being a bad friend and causing his buddy problems with their girlfriend” and then look at me making a face at you and be like “AND! they’re all aliens who are doing all that across spacetime” and I’ll be like OHHHHHH OKAY YAY (shlop shlap shlup the sound of a dog horking down peanut butter pills) wow what a poignant story

[ok-pop-1]

i dont wanna be a magical girl...

fanart for @kianamaiart! background image credit here

[downfalldestiny]

Calm 🔥❄️ !.

[painted-lemon]

um can we make this a real thing??????

please tag any other fandom that could use this meme format

[j0celynh0rr0r]

[xosiren]

- ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ᴛᴏᴜʀ ( 2016)

- ʀᴇɴᴀɪꜱꜱᴀɴᴄᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ᴛᴏᴜʀ (2023)

- ᴄᴏᴡʙᴏʏ ᴄᴀʀᴛᴇʀ ᴛᴏᴜʀ (2025)

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Young Hero Sent On A Quest meets other young heroes also sent on various quests—only to discover they're all being used as free child labor by the same flaky wizard as a scam to collect magical artifacts.

the Young Heroes' collective new "Quest" is now to Unionize.....

[anbaisai]

alternative mer au where jamil is a seasnake classmate who is deeply fascinated with flying but assumed he'd never experience it, until mayu offers to show him something special one day

[euphorictruths]

The World Beyond- Sergey Kuznetsov