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corantuswriteblog · 2 years ago

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Buzz

Summary: It's raining outside, your lover is a witch, and you're helping her make soup.

-Short story, 2nd person, 3635 words

-CW: sexual content, drug use, death of a parent

The moments before the storm are loudest in a witch’s house.

They are alive and loud with static. A buzz, a vibration. Breathing in the air is a shock to your lungs. White noise drones in the empty spaces of your skull. The little hairs on your knuckles stand up on the approach, ionized, a compass pointing towards the rumbling engine of a tempest.

Sweat beads on your brow. Condensation. You anticipate the coming rain.

Half the sky is already black with it. The blue of the afternoon is being swallowed up fast. You finish bringing the laundry in.

She’s waiting in the kitchen, smoking a joint and considering the clouds. A window is left cracked open, because this heat would kill you both if it wasn’t. But with all that rain, it could be dangerous.

“Oh,” you say, “looks like rain, huh?”

“No shit. You feel that in your bones?” She asks.

Smoke billows from her perfect nostrils and drifts around all the beautiful things in her kitchen; the cookie jars shaped like cowboys on horses and pumpkin carriages, ladles and spatulas with pastel flowers on their handles, a rusted old clock in the shape of a whale; the prussian blue of the counters, scarred to shit by all the vegetables that had ever been sliced on them. Everything in this kitchen has a face, a spirit. She has constructed her temple in this way.

An inhale of fire, an exhale of smoke. She is a dragon and this is her hoard.

Her blonde hair (blonde, allegedly) is shaved down to the quick, and sometimes those short little hairs catch the light and sparkle like scales. Her nose is sharp, her brow curved. Her cheeks carved out by thin tan lines where her glasses should be, but she doesn’t wear them even though she should. You consider her eyebrows, dirty blonde and studded with silver, and everything they say to you that she never does.

The smoke is dense.

“Do you have to do that?” You groan, “it’s too fucking hot. I can’t breathe.”

“Open a window. Here,” She says, as if the window wasn’t already open. She passes you the joint, even though your arms are still full of wet clothes.

“In a second--oh, I should’ve started the laundry earlier. Damn.”

You pile her clothes on the wicker chair shaped like an elephant (the one where you always wait while she cooks and does her spells, observing the back of her legs). Hands now free, you take the joint from her. You put it to your lips and you inhale. In your peripheral vision you watch the paper gently burn away.

You keep the smoke inside you for a minute, as the serenity of it blooms behind your eyes. You held it too long so you exhale with a cough, and she doesn’t laugh at you, but you can tell she’s just holding it back.

She’s gotten up from the table to look out the window, an unused garlic press in her hand. A cast iron pan sits on an eye of the gas stove, un-lit. The vegetables haven’t been chopped; the broth hasn’t been boiled; the spices are still tucked into that nifty rotating rack that never stops creaking.

She’s waiting to start. You are waiting to start.

Her silhouette refuses to blend in with the deep blue black of the sky outside. Her outline is strong, evocative. The broad set of her shoulders and belly. You think that perhaps, after the soup is done, you might ask if she’ll have sex with you.

Physically inscrutable.

“Oh, it’s starting. Thank fuck,” she says.

The rain starts off with gentle, almost imperceptible taps that vibrate the tin roof of her house. As you extricate yourself from the elephant wicker chair, the sound of rain becomes rhythmic. Insistent. Loud. Meteoric. You make your way over to the counter, over to her, picking up a knife and a freshly damp parsnip, and the rain starts to sound angry.

And then, finally, the release of the humidity; you can breathe again. The whole world smells like washed vegetables and rain and good weed.

She huffs, like she was holding in her fire breath and you didn’t even realize.

“Should we start now?” You ask.

“Yes. Oh--” She snaps her fingers, “The parsley is out in the yard. I didn’t grab any.”

“Who cares? Parsley doesn’t taste like anything. It’s like the shittiest herb.”

The dragon laughs at you.

“It’s the symbol of plenty, my darling, before the Exodus. It’s a way of returning somewhere.”

“Are you shitting me?” You say, though hearing her call you things like my darling always means you’ll do whatever she asks.

“Yes, I’m serious. Just get it,” she gestures towards the herb patch outside, which is currently clinging on for dear life against the onslaught of rain, “Or it won’t work.”

You don’t like parsley. Or, more accurately, you don’t care about parsley.

She did a spell for you once where you both dipped a sprig of parsley in salt water, and she told you to eat it, as if there was a seder plate. The grassy-nothing flavor of the parsley meandered around your mouth, cut by salt and moisture. She didn’t really explain, but you felt something; restless, nostalgic, the suggestion of a path not taken. A bit of an aching in your heart. Your dead father, your high school girlfriend, perhaps. Knowledge of things you already understood.

She asked you what you’d seen, and you told her that.

“Interesting. Do you know what I see, with that spell?” She asked.

“If I knew anything about what you think, I wouldn’t be here,” You said, with a bit of a smirk, like you thought it was a very smart thing to say.

“I see--well, it’s not strong enough to see anything. I’m just there a little bit, you know? Like being a kid and recognizing that the adults around you lie to you sometimes. Maybe about God, or getting married, or something like that. And, I suppose, I always start wondering what I would do about it if I knew everything I know now.”

You stick your arm out the door, just to see, to test the waters. The rain is coming down in lukewarm needles against your skin. The herb patch may as well be in China or some shit.

“Damn,” you whisper. There’s no point in arguing, because she will not make the soup unless you do this; and if you don’t help her make the soup, she won’t do her magic, and you won’t have soup to eat, and she probably won’t have sex with you.

Considering the herb and how important she thinks it is, you realize you were so busy thinking about everything else that you hadn’t stopped to think what kind of spell she was trying to do.

You’re her darling so you step off the porch.

The tall, wild grass of her yard is beaten down and slippery. You trip on a stray garden trowel. You think that leaving the laundry out in this weather would be as good as washing it all over again.

With a flourish of her filigreed ladle, she fills a bowl with soup for you.

She places it on the table in front of you. She’ll only wait a moment, staring at you expectantly, before going to fill her own bowl.

She is very good at serving soup. The portions are perfect. Herbs swirl about between mushrooms and potatoes and carrots like models of planets in an orrery. You hold the lumpy, unglazed ceramic bowl in your hands; it is almost hot enough to burn you, but not quite.

(You remember her at the flea market, exclaiming how beautiful that bowl is, and how you went behind her back to buy it.)

The scents of garlic and pepper and herbs invite themselves into your nostrils, warm and steaming. The soup is really something beautiful, something raised out of the earth and watered by the very rain that still drums outside the kitchen.

You notice it now, as the heat of the day has dissipated and your skin is still wet. The soup is a welcome comfort.

You bring it to your lips and sip the broth. This is how she has told you to eat this kind of soup, to drink the broth first. She says that the broth is the wellspring of the magic, its concentrated reduction.

After a moment, the savory richness of the broth shifts into a harsh, chemical citrus.

The cleaner is meant to mask unpleasant things; but all it did was add to them. You didn’t like that smell. But you also didn’t want to feel the full reality of it, to smell the decomposition directly.

You were with your father’s body in his absence. All your sisters had brought flowers, but had not stayed, at your insistence. Those flowers in their nameless grocery store yellow sat shiva with you.

There was a reflective steel cabinet in the room and you desperately wanted to cover it, like all the mirrors at home. Your father had taught you all the prayers and you only knew them in half-measure, your dry low voice stumbling through the kaddish.

You realized you were dwelling on every interaction with your father that you could remember. The things you had tried to talk about with him, the things you’d failed to say. Conversations that had not been finished.

You’d never worked up the courage to tell him about that girl you were in love with in high school, and you’d broken up a few months later so it didn’t really matter. You’d been too embarrassed to say. But all those months you were together, it ate at your soul not to tell him, for whatever reason.

You looked down at the gray face of your father’s body and it wasn’t like they told you, he did not look like he was just sleeping. He looked dead. His nose was crumpled. The last thing he’d ever experienced was bludgeoning it on the floor.

The woman from the hospice service had found him in his apartment, the one you and your sisters had grown up in, though he’d sold all your furniture. She found him between the living room and the kitchen, half on the carpet and half on the tile. He was crumpled face first against a smashed mug of tea with milk and his elderly copy of Don Quixote. Typical dad shit. She found him already gone, nothing to be done about it, just a difficult phone call to make.

You could see the cut on the body’s forehead where the autopsy had been performed; the incision gave a name to the thing, the aneurysm. You filled out the necessary paperwork. It was all so ordinary, so routine and frictionless, that you felt like you had to be doing something incorrectly.

You sat with the body for a long time. Not quite the entire night, because you got up to go to the bathroom and felt bad every second. You had a paper cup of water in your hand and you never once drank from it. Half of the kaddish, half of it again.

“You should know, Dad, I meant to tell you--” You imagined yourself whispering into your dead father’s ear, “I’m a lesbian. She's my girlfriend. My fiance, actually. My wife, actually. All these years I meant to tell you. I thought you ought to know. I’m sorry. We’re getting married soon, or we got married, you see.”

You spun that story in your head for a moment and it made you feel better.

How would he have responded? Would he have responded much at all?

You felt that sensation of wanting very badly to blurt something out when the topic of conversation has already moved on, and no one is listening. Your father has left and he will never hear your final interjection.

The other you ten years from now eating soup in your lover’s kitchen knows that this inconclusiveness will never go away.

Your eyes are wet, and your pulse is quick.

“What did you see?” She asks.

In her kitchen, at her table, there’s still most of a bowl of soup left. It must have been only a few seconds. Magic always feels out of time.

“What was the point of all that?” You ask, wiping your face with a scratchy cloth napkin.

“It’s whatever you’re thinking about. You can go off on a tangent without realizing it,” She says.

You just laugh and sigh and groan all at once.

You often suspect that she keeps you around as a lab rat, and once again you wonder if your feelings are one sided. Like being in love with the moon.

She doesn’t seem at all interested in whether you are alright, just the details of what you’ve experienced.

You are not alright.

“Fuck, I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about anything--just you, really. But I saw my father. You know he had an aneurysm, like he died pretty young. He had all these health problems with his brain before that and needed a nurse at home. I think he was fifty four? Fifty five? I was nineteen, at least.”

“What’d you see, though? You know what I mean,” she says, leaning in across the table. She wants to know how well her spell worked.

You used to always praise her unconditionally, but lately you’ve been more honest.

“I mean, frankly, I don't know what the hell that was. I didn’t really learn anything. Just sort of reminded me that my dad died.”

“Do you want to eat more of it?” She asks.

You look at the bowl, mostly full. And then back at your lover’s expectant face.

“Maybe. Wanna fuck later?"

She taps her spoon on the side of her bowl and it reverberates. Then, she takes a spoonful of broth and a single chunk of potato and holds it towards you.

“Of course. Do you want to know about mine?” She asks.

You half-stand out of your seat, leaning over to eat out of her hand.

The soft potato crumbles between your teeth with little resistance, following the broth down your throat. The skin separates from the starch, becoming a green paper tab that she puts on her tongue.

Throbbing, loud music, headache-inducing. Dozens of people drunk and high as fuck squeezed together into this windowless tube of a venue.

She wasn’t there to dance. She was there because people who wanted to fuck her would often give her free drinks and weed, and sometimes (if she was lucky) something more expensive. The men who did this were especially delusional, and it was also quite easy to lose them in the crowd.

She’s not really there to dance, but if she must dance with someone as a prerequisite to get eaten out in the bathroom by a stranger, then she could be convinced.

Her head spins and the music twists and snakes through her skull cavity from one ear to the next and back again. Colors lift off the walls and she can taste them. She licks her lips, dry from paper and ink. She will somehow make it to the bar to get water, or tequila, or something.

And then you see yourself through her eyes. She sees you and you see yourself standing alone next to the bar nursing a rum and coke. She thinks that you have a distinctly dive bar air about you, and you look wildly out of place at a drugged-up rave.

She likes your arms and your shoulders, your fingers fidgeting with your keys. Your downturned gaze.

The you in your own body in the kitchen remembers this night and the particular quality of the fake wood grain on the bar.

She decides to talk to you.

“Hey,” she says to you, with affection in one voice new and the other familiar.

The skin of the potato does not go down your throat as easily as the broth and you cough a little as you swallow.

She grins at you over the rim of her glass (a novelty one, the faded image of Spiderman drowning in iced tea) and if you had been thinking about all of this for even a second longer you would burst into tears.

She does away with her clothes before you even get out of the shower, as a courtesy. Sitting on the bed, ankles crossed.

“Anyways,” you say, “if you’re up for it.”

You see all of her freckled skin, the tan lines left by her tank top and shorts. The way her breasts and the soft of her torso rest against her ribcage. The scruffy chevrons of hair on all her limbs and the bramble between her legs.

You behold her with flippant selfishness. You want to please her for your own benefit.

“Alright,” she says, laying back onto all of her colorfully mismatched pillows.

Heartbeats on opposite sides. Lungs to mouths and back into lungs again. She parts your lips with her tongue.

She rides your left thigh and she hmms and ahs. Your leg is slick with her condensation.

You pull back. You kiss her jugular, her sternum, to echo through the empty spaces of her lungs and bones; You kiss her belly and all of its spidery pink lines, her navel, the permanent indentation at her hips from years of wearing ill-fitting men’s trousers. Her fingers are in your hair as her blunt nails scrape along your skull.

“Is this what you were expecting when you came over today?” She asks, sounding of smoking breath-embers.

“I go along with all of that mystic shit, don’t I?” you smile at her.

“Well, you did my laundry. And the dishes.”

You forego silicone because you are accessing something primal and basic. Your hands and your mouth and your tongue are the inheritance of all the organisms that did magic and fucked each other, all the way from the deepest recesses of time. Or you just don’t feel like it.

She breathes out fire and spreads her thighs a little further. Your head slots into place, load bearing.

You kiss her labia just as you might kiss her mouth, upper lip dragging down the clitoral hood. You do this because it shows respect. You taste her, sour and strange and ripened.

Some days you might look at it for a minute first, with earnest fascination; today, you feel its contours with your tongue, its intersecting layers, its opened pages. You are unsure if you’re allowed to read it, or some shit like that.

The quaking of her legs and a bared tooth gripe serve as your permission to go forward. You slip your tongue into her, past the gate of her clitoris, dragging like a hand down a guard rail, descending her staircase.

“Fuck.”

You enter her hungry, and you feast on her.

Sour-clean rainwater rolls off a leaf into your mouth, and your mouth is full of teeth that aren’t quite sharp enough to tear. It’s slow going, drop after drop, accumulating in your small belly. Your hands are four toed paws in the firmament, and you’re some forgotten thing that will never fossilize. Your little walnut brain is largely concerned with water, what shadows might move overhead, and the urge to mate; and not even for the fun of it, but for babies, your whole brain consumed with squirming continuation. Not like how in your body at home you are nose-deep and introducing a second finger.

You infer, because the spell is so everywhere and intentionless, it must just be part of her body. You would stop but you are overwhelmed with empathy for this little whatever-the-fuck creature. You’re scampering, shadow moving without rhythm, deciding that more water is not worth staying in the open.

You make it home to your own tree, one whose DNA in future years uncountable will light the fire of her stove.

Your smart little nose twitches back and forth at the smell of dirt and things familiar. The burrow is just as inviting as your yonic present and it’s so obvious it’s stupid. Inside there are many others just like you, mothers and mates and children, fathers alive. And you can tell where they’ve all been today. You think of them in all the places of the forest and you are so, so glad they all made it back.

It’s like being welcomed and loved; maybe the first place on all the earth this kind of love ever existed. You are so loved and surrounded that the lights in the distant atmosphere don’t wake you up. Your tree is a thousand million miles from the impact. You don’t know that tomorrow you will inherit the world. The ground shakes and your lover convulses.

The sheets are cold around ten in the evening. How are they so cold? Did all that ash cover the sun?

“Jesus. How did it get so cold? It was so hot earlier,” you say.

She curls her body tightly around your back, a leg across your calves, her face in your neck, defending her hoard. You rest a hand on her thigh. You're distantly irritated by a sprig of hair on your tongue.

“Don’t say that shit to me,” she laughs, “fuck Christ in this household.”

“Oy-vey-ez-mir, it's fucking cold,” you say instead, enunciating as if it were a prayer, rubbing her thigh.

“I can heat up some more of that soup for you, if you’d like,” she says.

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prussianmemes · 2 years ago

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reading up about neutron bombs and i'm thoroughly impressed at how completely bat shit evil this stuff was.

what the fuck was NATO thinking incorporating this as the basis of their strategy in "defending" west germany?

A neutron bomb, officially defined as a type of enhanced radiation weapon (ERW), is a low-yield thermonuclear weapon designed to maximize lethal neutron radiation in the immediate vicinity of the blast while minimizing the physical power of the blast itself...

By designing the thermonuclear stage of the weapon carefully, the neutron burst can be maximized while minimizing the blast itself. This makes the lethal radius of the neutron burst greater than that of the explosion itself. Since the neutrons are absorbed or decay rapidly, such a burst over an enemy column would kill the crews but leave the area able to be quickly reoccupied. Compared to a pure fission bomb with an identical explosive yield, a neutron bomb would emit about ten times the amount of neutron radiation. In a fission bomb, at sea level, the total radiation pulse energy which is composed of both gamma rays and neutrons is approximately 5% of the entire energy released; in neutron bombs, it would be closer to 40%, with the percentage increase coming from the higher production of neutrons...

Considerable controversy arose in the US and Western Europe following a June 1977 Washington Post exposé describing US government plans to equip US Armed Forces with neutron bombs. The article focused on the fact that it was the first weapon specifically intended to kill humans with radiation. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director Harold Brown and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev both described neutron bombs as a "capitalist bomb", because it was designed to destroy people while preserving property.

Upon detonation, a near-ground airburst of a 1-kiloton neutron bomb would produce a large blast wave and a powerful pulse of both thermal radiation and ionizing radiation in the form of fast (14.1 MeV) neutrons. The thermal pulse would cause third degree burns to unprotected skin out to approximately 500 meters. The blast would create pressures of at least 4.6 psi (32 kPa) out to a radius of 600 meters, which would severely damage all non-reinforced concrete structures. At the conventional effective combat range against modern main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers (< 690–900 m), the blast from a 1 kt neutron bomb would destroy or damage to the point of nonusability almost all un-reinforced civilian buildings...

Using neutron bombs to stop an enemy armored attack by rapidly incapacitating crews with a dose of 80+ Gy of radiation would require exploding large numbers of them to blanket the enemy forces, destroying all normal civilian buildings within c. 600 meters of the immediate area. Neutron activation from the explosions could make many building materials in the city radioactive, such as galvanized steel (see area denial use below)...

The pulse of neutron radiation would cause immediate and permanent incapacitation to unprotected outdoor humans in the open out to 900 meters, with death occurring in one or two days. The median lethal dose (LD50) of 6 Gray would extend to between 1350 and 1400 meters for those unprotected and outdoors, where approximately half of those exposed would die of radiation sickness after several weeks....

I wonder who was behind the development of these?

The concept was originally developed by the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was seen as a "cleaner" bomb for use against massed Soviet armored divisions. As these would be used over allied nations, notably West Germany, the reduced blast damage was seen as an important advantage...

The weapon was once again proposed for tactical use by the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, and production of the W70 began for the MGM-52 Lance in 1981. This time, it led to protests as the growing anti-nuclear movement gained strength through this period. Opposition was so intense that European leaders refused to accept it on their territory. US President Ronald Reagan ordered the production of the W70-3, which remained in the US stockpile until they were retired in 1992. The last W70 was dismantled in February 1996...

President Carter delayed development of the neutron bomb in 1978, but during Ronald Reagan's presidency, Cohen claims to have convinced Reagan to make 700 neutron bombs, 350 shells to go into the 8 inch (200-millimeter) howitzer and 350 W70 Mod. 3 warheads for the Lance missile...

In much the same fashion as the area denial effect resulting from fission product (the substances that make up most fallout) contamination in an area following a conventional surface-burst nuclear explosion, as considered in the Korean War by Douglas MacArthur, it would thus be a form of radiological warfare—with the difference that neutron bombs produce half, or less, of the quantity of fission products relative to the same-yield pure fission bomb.

In November 2012, British Labour peer Lord Gilbert suggested that multiple enhanced radiation reduced blast (ERRB) warheads could be detonated in the mountain region of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to prevent infiltration. He proposed to warn the inhabitants to evacuate, then irradiate the area, making it unusable and impassable. Used in this manner, the neutron bomb(s), regardless of burst height, would release neutron activated casing materials used in the bomb, and depending on burst height, create radioactive soil activation products.

In much the same fashion as the area denial effect resulting from fission product fallout contamination in an area following a conventional surface-burst nuclear explosion, as considered in the Korean War by Douglas MacArthur, it would thus be a form of radiological warfare—with the difference that neutron bombs produce half, or less, of the quantity of fission products relative to the same-yield pure fission bomb. Radiological warfare with neutron bombs that rely on fission primaries would thus still produce fission fallout.

Meanwhile, the strategic doctrine of the Warsaw Pact:

Rather than making extensive preparations for battlefield nuclear combat in Central Europe, the Soviet military leadership believed that conventional superiority provided the Warsaw Pact with the means to approximate the effects of nuclear weapons and achieve victory in Europe without resort to those weapons.

No wonder Wessies were so up in arms and were protesting about America deploying even more nuclear weapons on their soil. They were never considered to be anything more than a speedbump against the USSR.

#txt #longpost

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compassmili · 9 months ago

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Please whenever Faust's around I read unionized as un-ionized and then she starts talking about how well really it should be deionized and truthfully- And then I have to go Faust. Faust. We read it wrong this is talking about labor rights.

#⛪️#system discussion

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5007 · 2 years ago

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They've unionized? They removed their ions!?

Each character is setting off the Geiger counter at millions of clicks a minute!!

#un-ionized and union-ized are spelled the same way

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a-skrub · 1 year ago

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Dust and Flowers Prequel

a wack elder scrolls based story from my modded playthrough (Real) Part 1 of 2

“The Dream of Snow”

Log of S.O.D (edited)

Date of time:10E649

"When time fractures, space tears, and cosmic conflict challenges the temporal order, when war spills from desperation and disharmony, and the gateway between realms itself is punctured, one might ponder how we manage to, you know, still exist. But we all perceive it, sense it, feel it when the Forgotten Dragon performed the unimaginable to end the war and mend the world... or so we believed anyway."

I Am Not Gonna Sugarcoat it. Like an era ago, there's a war going on between the rebels of the Hist (unafiliated with the Hist due to some conflict i guess) and the Jills. I'm no historian, but I can at least share what I recall from that 'time' in the 9th Era.

Ahe-*cough*- Ahem.

"The Brane Space Foundations shaked violently like a Khajiit kid shaking coins inside a Hoggy-banks. The actions of the Hist rebels caused a rupture in the wheelian gateway, severing the Nu-Mundelbright chronoculic sync-net anchors that bound the outer colonies quite badly.

"This led to the crumbling of the delicate balance of space-time maintenance. Of course, the Jills noticed this, and being dragon spirits, these errors didn't sit well with them. One Jillian observer noticed a subtle but growing shift in the fabric of reality and wondered, 'Who in Alduin's munched world would do this goof?' Unfortunately, the Jills realized too late, as one of the Blink-root-ship armadas had already arrived, releasing its first strike with nonsensical 16th-dimensional mathematics against the Jills. Things went yikes after this."

"The Jills devised a strategy to counter the Hist's unexpected ambush, rallying inhabitants from outer colonies like the Renaldmer to join their cause against the Argonauts of the Hist. Additional support came from allies such as the Scholars of the Throat-world, who dispatched Tonal-voice-wielding fabricants to assist the Renaldmer. Donning their Void-suits, they set out to confront their adversaries. In response, they unleashed the Sunderian Ionizing Voice against the formidable Blink-Root-Ship armada, instigating the war even more.”

“The war raged on, with the Jills fighting alongside Renaldmer soldiers and Tonal-voice-wielding fabricants, desperately trying to suppress the fleets of the Hist. In the beginning, they managed to hold their ground, using the powerful Sunderian Ion Rifle to incapacitate the opposing Cosmo-Argonian army and their Argo-Voidships fleet. The Tonal-voices proved their worth, wreaking havoc on the fleets.”

“But then came the game-changer, the Argonian First-sap Commander, Milk-Logger, descended onto the battlefield with his own Anti-Tal0sian Tune emitter.”

“A flash, a bang, and a pinch of unstable, self-annihilating Un-tune Vortex. He didn't just turn the tables; he made the tables do a spinning barrel roll by annihilating the Tonal-voice fabricants, erasing them from the space threads. The Renaldmer attempted to confront him, but the emitter's sure effect jammed their rifles, making them easy targets for the Argo-Voidship fleet's barrage of Impossipoint detonators. The detonators punctured the very core of the Renaldmer, leaving them unresponsive. From that moment, things took a nosedive for the Jills, and the odds seemed overwhelmingly against them.”

(who wrote this, i swear someone must've smokes some joy snow writing these.)

(what do you mean-- you were drinking at a tavern in apocrypha- well you certainly did- okay fine.)

“The battlefield became a chaotic goof-up of destruction, with Milk-Logger orchestrating the gleeful madness with his Anti-Tal0sian Tune. The once-unified Renaldmer struggled to maintain their coherence, disarray spreading like wildfire. It was a scene of cosmic calamity, where the very fabric of reality trembled under the impact of each explosive note from the Argonian Commander's emitter.”

"The Jills, resolute in their mission to protect 'Snow Dreamer' and uphold the chaos unleashed by the Hist, shift their focus to the one Forgotten, the Doom-driven, the one who once bestowed a gift of flowers to the Snow Dreamer. They call upon the Forgotten Name:"

We call upon the Dovah from the Un-south

We call upon the Winged of the Un-winged

We call upon the Doom-driven

Come forth, Dragonborn Zero

"In the vast emptiness of the void, we all heard it—the Thunderous Roar of him—as he violently descended onto one of the Blink-Root-Ships, shattering their armada in his wake. The forgotten one rose from the wreckage, his presence commanding the attention of the cosmos. Surveying the complete chaos caused by the Hist, he decided that enough was enough; it was time for the Doom-driven to bring Doom."

"He leaped towards the Argo-Voidships fleets, the Dragonborn hurtling toward them like a cannonball at breakneck speed. Their attempts to release the detonators proved futile as the Dragonborn punctured and slammed the ships like a bag full of dry crackers. The remaining Cosmo-Argonian army turned into a dusty mist as he sliced through them, irritated by their nuisance."

“Hovering amidst the Argonian forces, he positioned himself to levitate above the crowd. Choosing not to unleash the voice of the throat, he opted for the voice of the hand palm, clapping his hands toward the opposing force.”

“The thunderous roar echoed through the empty void, its sheer force not only pushing but tearing at the very fabric of molecules and atoms. It disintegrated the remnants of the Hist Argonian Army, leaving nothing but echoes in its wake. The remnants of Blink-Root-Ships floated like shattered dreams, the Cosmo-Argonian army turn into coarse mist, and the Argo-Voidships fleets, once a formidable force, now lay dismembered in his wake. Among the survivors stood the Argonian Commander himself.”

"Milk-Logger felt something he likely hadn't felt before—fear. Trying to maintain composure, he attempted to use the Tune emitter to eliminate the Dragonborn. However, his efforts were in vain, his hand already broken, crushed by the grip of the Dragonborn, who appeared in front of him in the blink of an eye. Screams echoed, unheard by anyone. Milk-Logger, desperate and enraged by the sight before him, spouted anger and disdain while clinging to his mortality."

“Before the Dragonborn could crush the general like a dried toothpick, like I mention before, things took a rather... interesting turn. While the Jills felt relief in their champion, it quickly transformed into uneasiness when the Hist Rebels, too, called upon their own. A flash of impact separated the commander and the Dragonborn. In that moment, Milk-Logger seized the opportunity to flee to his Voidship before catastrophe struck.”

“The Hist Rebels, masters of schemes, realized that a Doom-driven one could be matched by another. So, they summoned one who defied even the master of itself. The aspect of the Nerevarine, Sharmat-Killer himself, has descended into the battle, or so we thought. In truth it was a mere husk of an Argonian Nerevarine that was used by the Hist, knowing the unnatural aspect of it." He wielded a dagger capable of piercing the Heart of the Red Mountain, intending to use it on the Dragonborn’s Heart.”

“Both aware that only one could stand at the conflict's end, they assumed their stances, ready to make the first move.

The Nerevar-Husk dashed toward the Dragonborn. As his swing was deftly avoided, the Dragonborn responded with a sidekick to the Nerevar-Husk’s ribs. The Nerevar-Husk, now slightly injured, was thrown onto the hull of the Voidship beneath them. However, not without leaving its mark—a quick cut on the Dragonborn's shin.”

“Undeterred, the Dragonborn absorbed the blow and swiftly countered, employing the Blade-breaker technique to parry the Nerevar-Husk's dagger strike. The resonating clang of the dagger echoed through the cosmic void. Their exchange of fists and kicks unfolded with an almost destructive grace, their forms seamlessly blending with the chaos surrounding them.”

“Executing a deft side-step, the Dragonborn evaded a potent stab from the Nerevar-Husk, responding with a powerful punch to the husk's torso. The impact reverberated through the void, contributing yet another layer of "what-in-tarnation-is-this-whacks" to the cosmic tapestry.” (whats a layer of "what-in-tarnation-is-this-whacks"?) (You made it all up?? Why?) (Y- you ran out of cool words to put in there, okay.) (After this i am Not letting you write My Log.)

“Once more, the Dragonborn seized a fragment of the Blink-Root-Ship, hurling it toward the Nerevar-Husk. Swiftly, the husk spotted it, deploying a Dismantling Aetherium Slash with the dagger, cleaving the fragments asunder. However, the Dragonborn had slipped from his line of sight. Out of nowhere, an uppercut emerged from below, connecting with the Nerevar-Husk. Despite a hasty block, the force left its mark, slamming the husk against the ship's balcony.”

“The relentless battle raged on between them, blows traded in a chaotic manner. However, in one swift motion, Nerevar-Husk found his mark, piercing the Dragonborn with the dagger. The tide seemed to once again favor the Hist and their champion. Yet, what appeared to be a certain victory for them turned into an unexpected twist. The Dragonborn absorbed the very dagger meant to pierce its heart, transcending the plans of both sides.”

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jasminestardes · 2 years ago

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(Un)natural Landscapes - Soviet climate disaster Edition

Death of the Sea. Aral used to be the 4th largest lake in the world on the territory of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. However, due to Soviet government relentlessly using it for irrigation, it dried up and the surface area shrank by 60%, volume by 80%. Now, most of the sea is a dry dessert with eerie looking ships in the sand.

Gates of Hell. The Darvaza gas crater. It is a burning natural gas field, collapsed into a cavern in Turkmenistan. The crater formed in 1971, allegedly when Soviet geologists were drilling for oil and natural gas. Years later it was set ablaze to prevent the poisonous gas from escaping and has not stopped burning.

Ever-Red Forest. The Ginger forest is a ten-square-kilometer area surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine and Belarus. The name comes from the ginger-brown color of the pine trees after they died, following the absorption of high levels of ionizing radiation. Usually an evergreen pine forest ominously turned red.

I used references for shipwrecks, the skeleton and the deer!!

#my art #artwork #artists on tumblr #digital art #aral sea #darvaza gas crater #ginger forest #climate change #climate disaster #environment #climate #nature #illustration #haarlem illustration biennale #human artist

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pilot-posting · 2 years ago

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Mech lore questions

(sorry if these aren't really the ones you're looking for)

-who is fighting who here? What sides in what war?

-why do mechs work like that specifically

-this will probably be answered in a mech combat sequence but what armaments do they use? How do they fight?

Good questions! Let's break some stuff down.

Who are "We?"

Emerson is a pilot for the Galligos Armaments and Superstructures Corporation, she's been working for them for 7 years since she was recruited fresh out of high school. There's a lot to unpack there, but know she only joined the pilot corp when she was 22.

Galligos is a megacorporation based on Earth and it's nearest extra-solar colony of Pochimen, a colony project pushed by the south-asian expansion bloc in 2083 (a national adjournment of Korea, China, Indochina as a whole, the Philippines, and Singapore.) This bloc still exists today but it's been mostly supplanted by megacorporations in it's power structure and administrative capacity. Galligos Armaments and Superstructures, or GAS/GASC, rose to power in 2090 when the Neuf-Décennie agreement was made by a highly corrupt and lobbied UN, giving extensive power to corporate bodies, including land rights, and claims at national identity. The UN traded the world for its survival, and the technical survival of it's partner nations.

In short? Massively fucked up cyberpunk setting. The current date is 2140 or thereabout. Emerson only joined because they had good benefits, and she lives in a highly propagandized world.

Who's Galligos fighting?

Galligos is fighting a collection of separatist dissenter colonies in the outer reaches of human space. Due to having access to entire planets worth of resources, they've managed to produce their own mech variants to fight against Galligos, but they lack population, so most of their combat is done through automated combatants. Every loss of a separatist pilot is a huge setback to the frontier states, so they tend to be incredibly well trained "ace in the hole" type mechanized infantry, whereas Galligos has opted for a more expendable take on mecha. Galligos technically owns only 2 planets, Earth, which is valuable for it's technical economic value, and Pochimen, which is valuable for it's resource rich mines. What Galligos lacks in the expandable resources of the dissenter states, it makes up for in the expendability of it's highly developed and quickly reproducing populace. Mecha from the Galligos company have a tendency to be shorter, have lower caliber weaponry, and individual pilots are comparatively poorly trained, but they do have the benefit of working in Squads of 4.

What's up with the Class-X?

The Class-X is a proprietary mechanized infantry system which cooperates with the human body to create immense levels of synapse melding and interconnectivity, and also to produce energy. Why does this work? Horny sci-fi magic.

The Mech harnesses the vitamins, and amino acids in your discharge to produce energy through selective ionization, which takes those vitamins, basically macro extends their biological bondage, and produces immense amounts of energy, capable of sustaining a mech suit for a significant period of time.

This process also causes something called Synchrosis, which you'll notice isn't actually a real world. Synchrosis is a mental... condition[?] which causes the mech pilot to link minds with their vessel on a deeper level than regular halo interaction. Obviously however, Synchrosis is highly addictive and degradant to the pilots mental health.

Class is different than brand and type of Mech, a Class-I for instance is a gunnery mech, which carries a macro-scale chain gun firing 30lb rounds and standing at around 90 stories tall (The Burj Khalifa is 160 stories.) as well as an assortment of missile pods, tertiary explosives devices, and the ability to wield high powered blunt-force weapons.

Class-X mechs are the only type of mech which use "stimulated synchrocity", as it's poorly understood in the human psychological side, and also it produces mech pilots who exhibit symptoms of extreme blood-lust when not locked behind automated functions and protocols.

How BIG we talkin'?

The Falcon Class transport ship is around 20 stories tall, it can carry most basic function mechs in groups of 5 to any given location, and it could probably carry a Class-I (if it was broken into it's key components and stored as efficiently as possible.)

The average Class-X mech is around 3 stories tall, it's miniscule compared to most mechs, but because of it's powering system it can be extremely efficient in power usage. it carries nimbler weapons like shoulder mounted rocket batteries, a rocket pistol, or plasma rifles, all enough to eviscerate infantry soldiers on sight, but hardly leave a dent in mainline battle mechs. Emersons Haratora-Zed is a maintenance mech, meaning it has a nimble frame, a lot of external storage capabilities like physical hooks, thrusters mounted on the thighs used primarily for getting extra power when carrying heavier combat mechs away from battle for effectively robot on robot surgery. Most of the Haratora-Zeds functions are automated.

Random Questions

Why did the Class-I pilot try to communicate verbally with Emerson?

All pilots are equipped with automatic halo port interfacing, if your conversational AI detects incoming messages even from non-mechanized entities, it'll patch them through to you. She didn't respond because she was blitzed on narcotics mixed with synapse accelerants to get her back to Synchrosis. Remember, she's a maniac.

Why did Emerson respond when poked?

Same as before, there's a warning system for when non-mechanized but halo-equipped individuals are nearby, and, their touch on the mechs body is translated through the mech in the form of pressure actuators which interact with the pilots body glove. She reacted because, again, blitzed.

#mech pilot #mech nsft #mechs #mecha #robot girl #trans t4t #trans nsft #Asynchrosis #emersons scrawlings #ems got mail!!

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un-ionizetheradlab · 1 year ago

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I like the double meaning of un-ionize the radiation lab / unionize the radiation lab. Was this on purpose?

Yes!😍 Makes me so happy you noticed!

It’s a pun that got into my head the moment I first watched “Oppenheimer.” Not sure if you’ve had a chance to see the movie yet (it’s on Amazon Prime now if you haven’t) but Oppie and his colleagues got chastised by Ernest Lawrence for trying to unionize the Radiation Lab at Berkeley and passing around these flyers.

#Oppenheimer #oppenheimer movie #La-cosmonauta-extraterrestre #ask #asks #je réponds #oppenheimer 2023

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the-outer-topic · 1 day ago

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The mercenary 'Mechwarrior and the ComStar nun - Scene 3-3

VIKTOR: Well, I'm very disappointed…

ALINA: Don't say that! Why? (Pouts)

VIKTOR: Because I was hoping you'd show up in something more feminine and revealing. What, didn't have time to change at home?

ALINA: (Laughs) I did it on purpose. If I wore something tighter, you'd spend the whole date staring at my cleavage instead of my eyes.

VIKTOR: I don't know what's under that robe, but it's not fair. It was your voice, your face, and your eyes that made me speak to you. I love your eyes. They're blue like a PPC beam.

Silence.

ALINA: That's a rather peculiar compliment. I don't know what a PPC is… is that a good thing?

VIKTOR: Particle Projection Cannon. Terrifying if you're on the receiving end. It's like lightning made by man, but with a turquoise hue, surrounded by a corona of ionized air, golden—like your hair. Beautiful, and imposing.

ALINA: That's poetic, in its own way. I don't know if I like the words or the images, but I appreciate the feeling behind them.

VIKTOR: So, Alina, tell me—I'm curious. Why did you come to a date in your ComStar robes?

ALINA: Same reason you came in full dress uniform. Respect. Presence. Auctoritas. Don't look now, but everyone's watching us. …You looked!

VIKTOR: Men look at you. You're beautiful. And women look at me not just because I'm handsome—but because they envy you, and wonder what I've got that you're here with me.

ALINA: (Laughs) Yes, that's true. I wonder that myself. I'm not so sure about the "handsome" part, though. (Laughs again) But that's not what I meant. If we wore normal clothes, people wouldn't be staring.

VIKTOR: Ah. I get it. I know why they're watching. I dropped my guard. There's probably a Lyran spy in this room, wondering why a Combine officer and a ComStar adept are having dinner in public. Definitely a conspiracy. There's also the Internal Security officer tailing every mercenary unit. And your people probably have someone watching you. And the private detective my ex-wife hired. And spies tailing those spies. And the Rasalhague separatists. And the secret police. Half the room are spies! Bet they bugged the flower vase. That's where I'd put it.

Viktor leans toward the vase on the table, speaking mockingly into it.

VIKTOR: That's enough, comrades—it's just a date, give us some privacy, да?

He pours water from his glass into the vase.

VIKTOR: Alina, look—if some guy gets up and rushes out of here now, that's our spy.

ALINA: (Laughing) Blake's blood! you're ridiculous. Please, go on!

VIKTOR: Look at your eight o'clock—I mean, to your right. The guy in the Draconis merchant's uniform. That's our tail.

ALINA: (Turns and looks) Now that you mention it, he does look shady. How do you know he's a spy?

VIKTOR: He wears the proper uniform for a Draconis merchant in warm weather. Mauve trousers, white tunic, short purple sleeves, turquoise trim and collar. All correct—even the four gold buttons. But he's not a merchant. Not Combine. Lyran spy, probably.

ALINA: How can you be sure?

VIKTOR: Elementary, my dear Alina. He's middle-aged, gray hair, but no square gold ornaments on his belt for economic contributions to the Combine. At his age he should have one or two. The Combine gives those honors every ten years of service—just means you pay taxes and get state benefits. A merchant without them would be broke, degraded to the Unproductive Caste long ago. Summary: fake merchant. Not a Kurita spy—they wouldn't make that mistake. Whoever crafted his costume probably ran out of budget or thought the gold shields were decor. Go on, wave to him and see what happens.

Alina hesitates, then turns and waves.

ALINA: Hallo, Herr Spion, kommt zu uns! You were right! He looks nervous—and he's leaving! (Laughs, tipsy) Mein Gott, that's hilarious. I can't stop laughing. They're all watching us! Let me breathe… You're like a detective from those ancient Terra holo-tapes—Hercules Holmes in Murder on the Scarlet Express… something like that. But how? How do you know all this? And how do I know you didn't stage it all to impress me? I'm starting to think this is some hidden camera prank.

Suddenly serious.

I'm not convinced you are who you say you are, sir—and I don't tolerate being played with. Explain, or I leave.

VIKTOR: I know these things because it's my trade to know. We soldiers are obsessed with uniforms, medals, cuffs, piping, and button counts.

ALINA: Fair argument—but not enough. I grant you're an expert on military dress, but how and why would a soldier know so much about civilian attire, with such exacting detail?

VIKTOR: The Combine is easy. Every Draconian with a real job wears a uniform. As a hired soldier, I have to know how to tell civilians from officers—so I don't bow to a postman instead of a planetary prefect. If I couldn't tell, my first day on Luthien would've earned me three duels by noon in the Unity Palace Gardens—like D'Artagnan's first day in Paris in The Three Musketeers.

ALINA: That's happened to me too. At the Tharkad court, it's hard to tell a colonel from a Social General, or a Graf, or a delegate from the Estates General—or the president of the Chamber of Commerce. The businessmen dress like generals, and the generals dress like businessmen once they retire. Who can tell the difference? That's the Steiner military-industrial complex for you. Pecunia nervus belli. Now I understand. My apologies, and I bow to your superior wisdom and powers of observation. (Mock curtsy)

VIKTOR: You may rise, Lady Alina. Another drink? Prosit!

Clink of glasses.

#starkov

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