chorister83 - Tumblr blog

[chorister83]

"ummm you know the writer only included that because they have a FETISH right?" is always so funny to me as a disparaging comment, because imagine if people spoke that way about nonsexual interests. "the lord of the rings? didnt the author only write that because he was interested in linguistics? thanks, i'll pass" "yeah, i used to love spongebob as a kid, but i can never see it the same after finding out stephen hillenburg is a marine biologist :/"

[chorister83]

The Gelatinous Cubes of Highmark

And Surrounding Countryside

The City of Highmark is not only known for its robust trade, well-respected Adventurers' Guild (and, more recently, the Explorers' Union), and being the home of the dragonmarked Houses bearing the Mark of Making, but for its clean streets and high levels of public sanitation.

This is due not only to a well-constructed and -maintained sewer system, but also to the ubiquity of gelatinous cubes in nearly every home, from the poorest shack to the grandest manor. The Temple of Erathis, our beloved Goddess of Civilization, Patron of Bureaucrats and of Highmark itself, is the current administrator of the gelatinous cube trade, and a young cube is often given as a housewarming gift to those setting up their first home.

The first incidences of immature cubes were recorded in the dorm rooms and offices of the Adventurers' Guild, where they were kept first as an unofficial mascot, and their presence soon discovered to keep down both the levels of dust and detritus of city life, and also solved a pernicious bug infestation that the Guild had been battling for several months.

This continued for several years, until the initial cubes were too large to safely share space with, and after a number of methods of cube containment were tested unsuccessfully, city officials had to step in and remove the remaining cubes.

Then followed a period of time where the city experimented with using the cubes within the local sewer systems. This was only a partial success, as while the cubes DID (and continue to) provide excellent sanitation, they were able to eat enough to set up a wild breeding population, which still exists to present day. [1]

Soon after, the Temple of Erathis began to keep their own, mature gelatinous cube for aboveground waste removal, stored within a pit large enough to contain its entire mass, to reduce the cost and danger of retrieving young cubes from the sewer systems. When this also proved advantageous enough to the mature cube to allow it to bud, the newborn cubes (often only an inch in size) were used elsewhere within the temple complex, and soon within other homes and businesses within the city.

Nowadays, the cubes have been carefully bred to reduce their external acidity and make them safer to handle, and many households grow emotionally attached to their cubes, with false eyes and small hats being popular (albeit temporary, given the nature of cubes) decorations.

When a domestic cube is of a size that it cannot remain in a home, owners are encouraged to visit the Temple of Erathis to trade it in for a new, younger cube, and home-cubes over a certain size are punishable by fine. The Temple then sells the adolescent cubes to a variety of local businesses, the most popular of which is a specialized confectioner unique to Highmark itself: the sugared cube seller.

These candymakers take the unwanted cubes and, depending on the quality of the product to be produced, purge the cube with a period of fasting[2] and (optionally) feed the cube items chosen to impart specific flavors, such as fruit, flowers, or herbs. Then, the cube is cut into pieces, rolled in sugar, and allowed to dry. The finished candy is very sour, with a texture that ranges from gummy, to chewy, to quite tough, depending on how it was dried.

These candies are very popular among all levels of the population, with the unflavored and tougher varieties being lower in price, and thus more likely to be found in poorer sections of the city. Visitors to the city are often surprised by its ubiquity, as the candy is often sourer than most non-Highmark residents prefer, and it is a popular inclusion in care packages for those who have moved away.

The Adventurers' Guild was initially suspected of releasing immature cubes into the sewer system, and fined for doing so, but managed to successfully demonstrate in Machel et. al. vs. the Adventurers' Guild of Highmark that the amount of waste produced by the city was more than enough to grow a cube to maturity and budding, and the fine was dropped. This did not stop the Guild from maintaining a regular contract to manage the cube population within the sewer system, culling cubes over a certain size range when encountered, and most sewer maintenance teams employ at least one former adventurer for this reason. The early establishment of the cube population within the sewers also means that they display wild-type traits such as the presence of pseudopod limbs, and are therefore more dangerous than the domestic cubes bred within the temple complexes.

Local bylaws state that all cubes must be purged in this fashion in order meet safety requirements for humanoid consumption, but unscrupulous manufacturers have been known to shorten or even skip this waiting period, with the worst among them poaching wild cubes from within the sewer system to further reduce overhead.

[chorister83]

I’ve said this a million times but if your leftism does not come from a place of genuine compassion for other human beings – if you do not accept that all human life is valuable and there is inherent dignity therein – then it’s less than useless

[chorister83]

i am begging all of the 20something usamericans on this website to understand that “disillusioned with us politics” is a constant state of affairs. you still have to vote. you still have to keep the needle as far left as you can. there is literally no other option and every election has echoes of consequence. please please please just fucking vote

[chorister83]

people seem to have trouble understanding why i’m an anti-capitalist, so i’m going to try and put it into simple, real-life terms.

i work at a restaurant. i make $12 an hour, plus tips. minimum wage where i live is relatively high for my country - the national minimum wage is $7.25/hr, and has not been raised since 2009. before taxes, working full time, my yearly income is about $22,000 a year. ($25,000 if you count tips)

at my job, we sell various dishes, with an average price of about $10-$15. we get printouts every week detailing how much money we made that week; in one week, our restaurant makes about $30,000. (one of our other locations actually makes this much on a daily basis!)

i’m not going to go into details, but after the costs of production (payroll for employees, rent for the building, maintenance, and wholesale food purchasing) are accounted for, the restaurant makes an estimated profit of $20,000 per week.

this profit goes directly to the owner, who does not work at this location. the owner of my restaurant has actually been on vacation for a few months, but still profits from the restaurant, because they own it. i have met the owner exactly twice in my year of working here.

to put this into perspective, the owner of this restaurant earns in 2 days what they pay me in one year. and that’s just from this single location - the owner has several other restaurants, all of which make more money than the one i work at. this ends up resulting in the owner having an estimated net worth of tens of millions of dollars, even after accounting for the payroll for every single worker in their employ.

now, i have to ask you: does the owner of my restaurant deserve this income? did they earn it? did their labor result in this value being created?

the naive answer would be “yes”; the owner purchased the location and arranged for the raw ingredients to be delivered, did they not?

the actual answer is “no”. the owner may have used their initial capital to start the location, but the profit is a result of my labor, and the labor of my co-workers.

the owner purchases rice at a very low bulk price of about 25 cents a pound. i cook the rice, and within a few minutes, that pound of rice is suddenly worth about $30. the owner did not create this value, i did. the owner simply provided the initial capital investment required to start the process.

what needs to be understood here is that capitalists do not create value. they use the labor of their employees to create value, and then take the excess profit and keep it.

what needs to be understood is that capitalists accrue income by already HAVING money. the owner of my restaurant was only able to get this far because they started off, from the very beginning, with enough money to purchase a building, purchase food in bulk, and hire hundreds of employees.

that is to say: the rich get richer, and they do so by exploiting the labor of the poor.

the owner of my restaurant could afford to triple the income of every single person in their employee if they felt like it, but this would mean that they were generating less profit for themselves, so they do not.

the owner of my restaurant pays me the current minimum wage of my area, because to them, i am not a person. i am an investment. i am an asset. i am a means to create more money. 

when you are paid minimum wage, the message your boss is sending you is this: “legally, if i could pay you less, i would.”

every capitalist on the planet exploits their workers for their own gain. every capitalist, even the small business owners, forces people to stay in poverty so that the capitalist can profit.

[chorister83]

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

[chorister83]

it's kinda comforting to me when my friends are a little annoying or longwinded or abrasive or tired and inarticulate, or they don't do the exact politest thing in every interaction, and stuff, because I know I'm sometimes annoying, or take up a more than my share of conversational space, or forget to ask them questions, etc etc, and... like, I'm always working to be nice to my friends and to get better and better at friend-ing, but it just makes me feel more human about it :}

anyway I love you friends plz know I'm not counting, in fact I feel great affection toward you even (especially) when conversations go less than Perfectly Ideal

[chorister83]

THIS!

[chorister83]

my scholarly physique and delicate constitution are not well-suited to questing, but they keep me around because i’m very good at saying ominous and unsettling things at significant moments

[chorister83]

[chorister83]

hey there LGBTQ kids who are also Christian/Jewish! If you feel like you’re disobeying God, questioning your faith, or feel wrong and dirty for loving who you love, there’s this fantastic site I found today called hoperemains that accurately and thoroughly combs through scripture and its (many) mistranslations, validates your orientation, and basically let’s you know that you’re not pissing off God. It’s insanely thorough and after reading through every page on the entire site it’s super helpful. Go check it out!

[chorister83]

PCs vs. NPCs

In keeping with my setting’s (Adventure World/Arth) in-world use of game terminology, the terms PC and NPC exist in the world, but they stand for “protected citizen” and “non-protected citizen” respectively. As you might expect, PC species are the typical ones from the PHB (human, elves, dwarves, etc.), and the NPC species are the rest, from orcs and goblins to warforged and goliaths. In-world, the meaning derives from the fact that members of PC species have full citizenship in Nerath and cannot be kicked out of cities in times of hardship, along with other traditional legal protections. Members of NPC species are literal second-class citizens of Nerath and enjoy far fewer protections. This it true *only* in Nerath, though some other polities in the setting have some similar setups. Nerath’s reasoning for this grouping comes from the PC species having been members of the two pre-Nerath empires, Bael Turath and Arkhosia, so it’s basically a continuation of older social structures and just general bias. (Obviously, this is a really shitty setup, and we spent a fair amount of time combatting this system in our first campaign. I wouldn’t say Nerath is dystopic by any means, but it definitely had its flaws.)

[chorister83]

Welcome to Nerath

This is just me shouting into the ether about my homebrew setting, mostly just so I get stuff jotted down somewhere and also for anyone who might want to mine it for inspiration. In 4e D&D, Nerath is the civilization that fell relatively recently to create the “Points of Light” base setting. In my world (creatively named Arth *long* after we’d been playing in it for a while), the Nerathi Confederacy is one of the major nations of the world, a collection of city-states that united after centuries of internecine warfare after the fall of Bael Turath and Arkhosia. They are: - Highmark: The capital and most cosmopolitan city, Highmark is a mining town and industrial powerhouse. (Highmark is kind of the New York/Sharn/Coruscant hub, at least for Nerath) - Grimfar: Grimfar is a primarily dwarven city and the breadbasket of Nerath. (Grimfar is kind of quietly powerful, in that folks tend to think of the dwarves as bumpkin farmers, but they *also* have kind of a mafioso feel in that they control whether people eat or not) - Issenvik: Issenvik used to be a pirate haven, and maintains a steadfastly nautical focus, but has shifted towards more mercantile concerns over the years. (Issenvik still has a major piratical/viking feel to it, and bragging is a *very* common Issenvik pasttime) - Thantopolis: The city of the dead, the necropolis of Thantopolis is ruled by its unliving citizen class, while the living flourish under the protection of their legions. (I tend to find undead fascinating, and Thantopolis is very much influenced by the Scarred Lands setting’s Hollowfaust. It has a kind of Greek/Roman feel to it, in part because the oldest undead hold to more ancient fashions and ways of thinking) - Aethrennar: The fey city of Aethrennar is itself a work of art, crafted over the years by numerous eladrin and gnome artisans. It exists simultaneously in the mortal plane and the Feywild. (This is basically the party town of Nerath. :) ) - Vanilorra: Hidden in a deep forest in the center of the continent, the elven warriors of Vanilorra are staunch traditionalists and steadfast protectors of the wild places of the world. (We jokingly referred to the elves of Vanilorra as “hillbilly samurai”, and it’s not far off) - Yondon: Yondon is a trading city and religious site for the nomadic halfling tribes of the southern part of Nerath. It varies wildly in size depending upon the migration of the tribes. (It has kind of a frontier/Wild West sort of feel to it, mixed with some Vaes Dothrak) - Mythragal: The floating city of Mythragal is built on an earthmote (flying chunk of rock), and is home to the finest mages in Nerath. It is also the mortal plane home of the goddess Ioun, though she very rarely involves herself in mortal affairs. These were the original eight cities. Over the course of the first campaign a ninth city was reclaimed, and two more introduced that would eventually be brought into the nation. - Nachtur: The goblinoid city of Nachtur had been lost to demons due to the machinations of the other cities at the founding of Nerath, but the goblins were able eventually to reclaim their homeland. - Shom: The extraplanar city of Shom was held in temporal stasis from before the Change, but was brought to Arth through the efforts of a group of adventurers as part of the cleansing of Nachtur. - Mag Tureah: The Underdark city of Mag Tureah was long thought a myth until its fomorian rulers staged an invasion of Nerath. Nerath was eventually able to counterattack and topple the fomorian king, inducting the city into Nerath with a ruling council of formerly enslaved cyclopses and fey.

[chorister83]

Dungeons and Dragons and the kitchen sink

I’ve been playing D&D since I was a kid, and I love pretty much all the settings, but I remember when Eberron came out, it was a big revelation to me in that it was unabashedly using the tropes of D&D to do its own thing. I don’t remember where it was originally specifically spelled out, but one of the organizing principles of that setting was “if it exists in D&D, it exists here,” and I love that ethos. When I put together my longest-running D&D setting (we’re on the 4th long-form campaign, spanning over a decade now), that was at the heart of it, and it has been really fun to cannibalize D&D canon for it. It started with Nerath, Arkhosia and Bael Turath (from 4e’s Points of Light base setting), and has gone on to steal from Dark Sun (though the name is fudged), the Council of Wyrms (more as inspiration, but it’s there), and the Sword Coast (mostly in name only, but it’s done with love). Most of these things are *wildly* different from their *canon* counterparts, but they remain as touchstones in the world and make it feel like it has history and weight, even if they’re just borrowing. I love seeing this kind of “remix” setting stuff. :)

[chorister83]

Making sense of adventuring as a profession

A while back (like over a decade now, good god time is insane), when developing a campaign for some friends, I realized that without a continuing source of dungeons, there’s not going to be a lot for adventurers to *do* after a while. So, we hit upon the idea that this world was geographically, temporally, and dimensionally unstable (a phenomenon we dubbed “The Change) outside of a few relatively small zones, where most of the world’s population clustered. With only so many resources available in those zones, adventurers were the people whose job is was to go out into the Changing Wilds to locate and recover resources. It’s a dangerous but potentially lucrative profession, the province of the brave and/or desparate, which, surprise surprise, tends to describe a lot of adventuring characters anyway! :) It became very important to the aesthetic of the game that adventuring guilds with their concomitant paperwork, bureacracy, etc. Going along with the idea of the guilds and their bureacracy, we essentially made it so the rules exist *within* the world, as well, so, like, the Monster Manuals exist in the world as the sourcebooks put out by the guilds for their employees reference. (A fun thing to do with this, then, was to alter monsters from what was in the book, either because the guilds got it wrong or this monster had be affected by The Change or whatever reasoning you need) The rules don’t necessarily reflect the actual physics of the world (as they never do), but were the approximation the guilds agreed upon to explain things. The PHB (the Professional’s Handbook in-world) was descriptive; i.e. demonstrating the ability to cast this many spells of this level made you considered an X-level wizard or whatever, and so on. It ended up being pretty fun and allowed a lot of the rules talk that would happen regardless to happen in-character.

[chorister83]

Girls night! <333

9pm: doing each others hair <333

10pm: manslaughter </3

[chorister83]

Awesome map :)

any love for Heroscape?