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75% chance Void Kong tries to become or summon a god.

Not every game or anime about escorting magical girls to mystical realms that can grant a wish involves fighting a god, but it's happened enough that I'm not ruling it out.

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So I had a conversation with my brother about some of this that went mostly like "They're traditional elves and goblins if they were also holograms wielding lasers. Let me backtrack a bit, they're what a crab or rock-person would think of as traditional elves and goblins, that are also holograms wielding lasers."

I imagine them as living glamours/lightwave beings with limited material form that want to experience the joys of material existence. They tend to live in dimensions and pocket-physics that let them interact with physical objects. Malign ones tend to lure in material beings into their realms to siphon their experiences or creativity (to spice up their home realm) or outright steal their body to venture out into the wider universe.

Void Knights: Gentry/Fairies

Another drawing for my brother's Void Knights setting, these are some of the least defined of his ideas and thus are the most non-canon of my takes on them. I was trying to draw something different but it did not really work out I think. They are inspired by the weird creatures in the margins of manuscripts called Drolleries, hence why they take the form of objects with various human appendages or features. Also inspired by the seven deadly sins and their corresponding colors on the rainbow.

The Gentry are photonic lifeforms made of light and wavelength. They are masters of illusion but possess relatively little material presence. However, their glamours are so realistic that they can fool most life into believing they are real. Most Gentry are fleeting ephemeral beings and pose no real threat, coming and going as they please or playing whimsical tricks, but others are malevolent, trapping Locals in lifelike mirages for their own amusement. Due to being light based, members of different wavelengths manifest differently, and are defined by a dominant color. These colors are often associated with alliances and certain demeanors called Courts.

Violet Court: The Violet Gentry are the most prideful and often kidnap Locals to be their servants.

Indigo Court: The Indigo Gentry are the most lustful and fickle, playing tricks on Locals or using them as playthings.

Blue Court: The Blue Gentry are the most slothful and passive, but they can harm Locals by trapping them in dreams and stupor.

Green Court: The Green Gentry are the most envious and often seek to replace Locals and take over their lives for themselves.

Yellow Court: The Yellow Gentry are the most greedy and often cast illusions on material treasures to keep to themselves.

Orange Court: The Orange Gentry are the most gluttonous and their ravenous behavior can drive worlds to famine.

Red Court: The Red Gentry are the most wrathful and often most malevolent, seeking to bring harm to Locals with their powers.

Anyway I do not think these really work for the setting, but at least it is different.

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Still haven't solidified what dragons are like in Void Knights beyond refugess of dead universes, their breath being laws that shape their local physics, and generally keeping a planet or two and their fallen civilizations as their hoards. Here's an interpretation my brother cooked up in the meantime.

I probably wouldn't have all of them as sleepers.

Void Knights: Dragons

Drawing for my brother's Void Knights setting. Once again these are mostly my ideas and they may differ from his vision and thus are not necessarily canon. I was trying to challenge myself to draw something different and I hope it worked out.

Ancient beings, Dragons are great beasts that survived the collapse of one of the many universes that came before the current one. They existed in realms whose very physics differed and within their bodies they continue to carry a piece of these old cosmoses. They expel the nature of these places on their breath, allowing them to alter the foundational laws of the current galaxy within their presence. No two Dragons are the same, and rarely do any two come from the same previous universe. Many dragons consider the current cosmos uncomfortable, finding its physics incompatible with their own, and thus they sequester themselves in lairs. In these lairs they dream of realms they once knew and sleep until one day the current universe comes to an end, and hope that the new one is more to their liking. In their sleep they slowly alter their domains with their breath, turning them into places more comfortable to their nature. Occasionally they may stir and venture out to gather things that remind them of the worlds they once knew, slowly building a trove within their realms. Most Dragons pose no threat as they are content to sleep through the eons, but occasionally they stir and harm Locals on their hunt for treasure. However, some grow tired of waiting and seek to hasten the destruction of the current universe in the hopes of bringing about one more to their liking. The Void Knights often challenge such threats, and many are famous Dragon slayers.

The Dragon depicted here takes the shape of a miniature spiral galaxy, literally carrying their ancient home within their being. This one has claimed an empty patch of space as their lair and is slowly shaping it to something more familiar and comfortable to their existence. They expel miniature planets and stars to populate their lair, and hopefully one day form a new galaxy where they may live at its center.

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I got Aggron. Probably not as powerful as I think, but I'm still gonna wreck the countryside.

spin this list of all of the pokemon. you are now that pokemon.

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Post-Apocalypse Oceans

I was discussing some Post-Apocalypse stuff with my brother, and I had the observation that of all the post-apocalypse stuff we were aware of (admittedly I can only remember a handful of films and games) maritime life and travel aren't really discussed. Like Water World and this one anime we were watching focused on oceans, but those two things were flood apocalypses. There's rarely a non-flood apocalypse situation that's interested in maritime stuff.

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Void Knights and the Star Kingdoms: Steel, Technology, and Wizards

So I have a pretty broad definition of technology. Colloquial usage is is typically like tools and machines and shit, but I like to include what I tend to call cultural technologies: laws, gift-giving, social norms, animal husbandry (borderline case, I suppose), accounting, etc. They're all things people have made to solve problems.

As such, Steel is one of the Sources that characters can wield in my Void Knight setting. It's generally the Source used by cyborgs, robots, and people who delve in technology, but it also includes understanding and maneuvering in social conventions and structures, albeit not with the kind of intimacy that Star might.

Wizards are the foremost wielders of Steel, typically robots or cyborgs that hold up in or turn themselves into vast towers and satellites who spend their time fiddling with novel technologies or unraveling the mysteries of Steel. I want to explore a few things with them. I tend to encounter what I call the 'meme' wizard: a sort of hermit that barely respects their peers much less non-wizards or society in general, causes problems on purpose, ultimate power, etc.

And like there are like wild hermit wizards or wizards who spend half their time being hermits, but looking up and asking around about pre-modern wizards, there's a number of people who are involved in temporal affairs and politics. Merlin's a bit half-and-half, advising Arthur when he's not disappeared from the plot. Several kings, Solomon in particular but also Odin and Math fab Mathonwy if you include gods, dabble in magic. Medea gets married to several princes and kings. A few are minor lords or landholders.

Plus Steel is about social and cultural stuff as much as machines and such, so I figure you're just as likely to see Wizards who are all about society or their various obligations as hermits who dabble in and spam ultimate power.

I like the mental image of like a robot wizard tower who has a blood oath to a king (ancient or modern) and they are 100% about that blood oath. Or it turns out the robot that just died has an estate that is now caught up in an inheritance dispute.

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There's a post that came up on my dash that's annoying me because it's proposing a treatment for a perceived problem that realistically I don't think it can actually alleviate and will probably make it worse, but I can't tell if it's like a for real suggestion or if it's just a dumb fantasy that I should leave alone.

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Medieval and Mythological Wizards and Political Participation

So I'm trying to look up wizards, magicians, and wizard-adjacent characters in like mythology and folklore and there are a few that, rather than being like wild men and tower hermits, do serve in some political capacity.

Granted a number of these wizards are also kings (Solomon, Math fab Mathonwy and Gwydion, Odin if you count gods). Merlin tends to split the difference, being a royal advisor who faffs off most of the time. Medea gets married to several different princes and kings.

I'm more interested in finding wizards that serve in a political capacity that aren't kings, especially if they have control over an estate and people.

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Void Knights and the Star Kingdoms: Stars and Destiny

Still trying to come up with a succinct paragraph to describe what I'm going for. Star is one of the Powers or Sources* that a PC can wield in the setting. In fairy tales there's someone who has to leave the familiar, venture into the fantastic, and claim some manner of wealth or rule. Usually it's a third prince or princess, but a lot of tales are just about a seemingly random child who manage the same fate. I wanted to represent both ends of that to a degree.

Star is the Source that gives the Star Kingdoms their name. It covers concepts of charisma, destiny, chance moments and opportunity, social roles and positioning, constellations, the places in the cosmos we make for each other, etc.

Most everyone manifests a little Star magic, even Wielders of other Sources. Wielders tend to come to wield Star either through a destiny they've fallen into, a social role they are trying to fulfill, or an opportunity they seized that became a window into the magic.

There's a kind of jumble of concepts that I'm trying to explore here.

Destiny as politics and history. The idea that destiny is an emergent property of people and their efforts rather than set-in-stone decrees from gods. Magical bloodlines have to come from somewhere; they stay magical because people, for one reason or another, invest in it and will vanish if the beneficiaries fail to make society care about it one way or another. Rightful kings aren't going to get the throne without doing politics. Or exploring all the bits of history, society, etc. that had to come together for a moment to happen.

The charisma and gravity of either your social role or destiny that Star exudes is meant to be palpable but not sufficient in having events happen in your favor.

Opportunity. I remember reading a description of a light novel where the description emphasized a sort of Discipline vs Talent dichotomy, and I noticed that a lot of the characters with opinions on the matter were from wealthy families with like resources and a knowledge base on the powers at hand. I feel like that's a bigger factor in how powerful they are. The idea that people wind up where they are because of their circumstances, people who helped make things possible, or even seizing a moment that opened up avenues, as much as some innate quality or hard work. This is how a lot of people stumble into the magics of Star.

Among other concepts.

*The Sources being Aeon (Time, Ideals, and Knowledge), Glamour (Lasers and Illusions), Miasma (Ghosts and Radiation), Star (Explained Here), Steel (Machines, Culture, and Techniques), Void (Dreams, Negation, and Paradoxes), Wellness (Health and Gravity), and Wild (Survival and Communion)

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Void Knights

These are Void Knights for my brother's science fantasy setting. He describes them as beings called from the void to the material universe to save the Star Kingdoms from their various perils, such as wandering Giants, malicious Daemons, powerful Beasts, and ancient Dragons. He gave me a vague description of them which I worked off of for these drawings. Basically they are armored warriors but they are generally "off" in some way, not always adhering to proper anatomy or symmetry. If you try to look at their parts without armor all you can see is a deep abyss. The example he gave to me was a seemingly normal-ish knight at first glance, but on closer inspection has two arms on one side and a void within their helmet which I drew on the left. I added the detail of a bifurcated leg. I then tried to make another, this time a centaur Dullahan Void Knight with a hollow torso. He told me that Void Knights can make squires from the Locals, imbuing them with some of their abyssal nature, so I drew this Dullahan with a young ward who holds her helmet head for her in reference to this post he made.

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Void Knights and the Star Kingdoms: Aeon and Daemons

I'm mostly writing this down in case I ever forget any of the details for it.

Daemons and part of their implementation were suggested by my brother as a dunk on a certain kind of real world thought/politic and it needed some work done to fit into the pop Fairytale/Knight Fantasy in Space thing I'm reaching for. I borrow a bit from Gnosticism and Platonic realm of forms type stuff for this.

Daemons are living knowledge, most of them are emanations from some mysterious realm they refer to as the "Ideal Kingdom" or "True Form." They lack physical bodies, typically possessing grimoires, tapestries, calculus mechanisms, and other items that can store and manipulate information. They are driven to make the Star Kingdoms they inhabit more like the realm they are extensions of, typically by manipulating other powers in the setting.

Aeon is the name of the power or Source that daemons wield, though it's not exclusive to them. It's their ability to control information and data, hack machines, and simulate time perception and manipulation.

Those who experience Aeon see a realm that isn't their own: A realm full of symbols and meaning. This realm hasn't happened yet for some. For others it's as if the world they inhabit is some echo of the realm they see. Aeon lets them insert those symbols into this world. Oracles can use Aeon to sense how the world aligns with the patterns of the realm they see. To the extent that they can manipulate time, it's a time that moves on the axis of the realm, making things more or less like itself.

The first mystery for the wielders of Aeon is that every wielder, arguably even the daemons, sees something different. None yet know if they are seeing different parts of the same realm or different competing realms. The second mystery is the nature of their vision: if it's the future or a spiritual plane among other possibilities. The only thing shared between them is that their visions are those that the seers believe in.

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ecto economicus

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Nice thing my brother did for me. Something that I left out when talking about these things, and that's on me, is that giants do wear things. Like my main vision were like silhouettes with antler helmets and fur capes (ultra dense fur capes, but still), and only visible eyes. I did mention the antler thing, at least, which my brother here interpreted as twisting around the giant (nice touch there).

This is a pretty neat interpretation, though.

One of these days I really got to get back into drawing. I've been out of practice for decades and I was never any good, but it'd at least help with communicating some of my expectations/ideas/whathaveyou.

Void Knights: Giants

This is art for my brother's setting Void Knights which is a science fantasy setting where cosmic knights summoned from the void encounter various fantasy tropes with science fantasy trappings. Note: While I have a write up below for them which contains my own ideas, my brother has final say and my description may not be 100% in line with his vision.

Born in the crucible of the galactic core, Giants survive in gravity and pressures that would crush even planets. They are beings of such super dense matter that they can bend light, matter, and gravity to their will. In recent centuries they have slowly migrated out of their oppressive homes to wander the less intense stars where they feel as light as a feather and as powerful as titans. The giant depicted in this image draws matter to their super dense body that forms an outer crust on their being. Just below this layer the matter they absorb condenses into lava under the pressure of their personal gravity. As they move their outer solid shell cracks and buckles, exposing the lava underneath only to reform and crust over once more during periods of inaction. As they walk they draw up and rip open the earth underneath. A master of gravitational forces, they can manipulate and crush objects from afar, bend light to become distorted invisible or devour it completely, and condense space itself to step between worlds.

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Return to Void Knights and Star Kingdoms

My whims have brought me back to this, and I'll be on it until something else catches my attention (probably Mario and Luigi: Brothership).

The Star Kingdoms find themselves in a perilous era. Many rot from within as the corrupt seize power. Others find the wilderness surging around them, birthing great guardians and predators to reclaim the cities. Others still are at the mercies of warlords both local and from strange realms beyond. In this era, beset on all sides, it seemed that nothing could answer the Kingdoms' prayers.

So nothing did, congealing knights, priests, and rogues to answer the call of the Star Kingdoms. Armored in people's dreams and nightmares and wielding illusion-cutting blades, gravity-piercing spears, and time-shattering hammers, these strangers aim to fulfill the hopes of those that summon them.

You play one such Knight, or perhaps a Local who has managed to wield one of the many Sources found in the Kingdoms and other strange realms, who can fight at the scale of giants and fairies, questing for the means to save the Star Kingdom you call home.

Who Can Be Found in the Star Kingdoms

The Locals, of whom no generalizations can be made, for Star Kingdoms and their citizens span the galaxy and come in many forms.

The Void denizens, who sheathe their form in dream and nightmare to exist in the material universe, seeking to aid those who call upon them. The Void's relation to the material cosmos is strange and often paradoxical. It is not uncommon for two knights acting in the area to be from two different eras of the Void.

The Beasts, who are exemplars of animal kind. The wilderness's perfect guardians and monsters, though their natures are as varied as their forms.

The Giants, nomadic masters of gravity and space, who were born, lived, and finally escaped the galactic core. Their forms are shrouded from the light, and they can 'walk' between planets without traversing the intermediate space.

The Gentry, living glamours, are masters of illusions and laser alike. They have limited material form outside their own realms, and so take to luring outsiders to them or stealing their forms.

The Daemons, mysterious oracles of time and idea, who dwell within grimoires, tapestries, calculus mechanisms, and all that store and manipulate knowledge. Together they seek to shape the Star Kingdoms into a form only they understand.

The Wizards, ancient mechanisms secluded in or otherwise forming towers that dot the Kingdoms, where they refine technologies to sate their curiosity.

The Dragons, refugees of a bygone cosmos, who collect lost worlds and civilizations as their treasures that they might rebuild some lost glory. Their breath is law, shrouding their lairs in an ancient physics.

Writer's Notes

Star Kingdoms exist all over the galaxy, but I expect campaigns and antagonists to be localized largely within a single solar system, maybe two.

I'm not going to be doing space combat this iteration. Space travel happens, but a lot of stuff there is going to be handwaved. Adventures happen mostly on foot, as it were.

'Kingdom' is used mostly as an aesthetic term. Nothing stops a Star Kingdom from being a republic or some other structure.

You don't have to be human, indeed I don't assume there's humans at all, but being a centaur, robot, or having x-ray vision isn't relevant unless you take a widget for it. In-universe, it is mostly assumed that you have like the lowest level of that thing.

I assume that sufficiently people-like things are capable of moral reasoning. Benign fairies, giants, dragons, daemons exist; malign Void Knights and Local also exist.

Shout out to @chirons-mortar and @frostedfluorite for some of their input/being a sounding board for some of my thoughts.

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Looking at dullahan art, and it usually has the dullahan* carrying their own head. You'd think a ghost knight would have like a ghost squire doing that job, but maybe I'm not finding the right art.

*Dullahan romance art is probably the exception here.

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Sees the new Layton trailer

So something I liked from some of the early Professor Layton games is that Layton is presented with a seeming science fiction or fantasy situation only for the solution to be supposedly mundane but actually more ridiculous than the fantastical facade. The most jacked of Scooby Doo hoaxes, basically.

Which is to say the antagonist of this new game, a ghost of a wild west gunslinger, better turn out to be a phenomenally stupid hoax.

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Finished Emio, The Smiling Man

It was a pretty alright journey, though I feel like some of the later elements came in as a bit of a swerve and the epilogue could have been integrated a bit more evenly into the main story.

There's about 10 more days until the new Zelda comes out and so I might try and re-familiarize myself with the prequels or try and pick up Ace Attorney Investigations Collection.