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"Alright, what's the situation?"

"Morning, Captain. We've got high-gain jamming, triangulated in no man's land, starting some ten minutes ago. All receivers we had online are slag. We're deaf and mute, as are all forces in the field."

"Enemy action?"

"Unlikely. Distortion patterns suggest it's our equipment, not theirs. Witch Corps," the staff sergeant nods at the specialist stood at permanent attention next to her, "believes it to be one of our pilots."

"Was once one of our pilots, dear," the witch cuts in. "Several of our mechs went down a month back, when we tried to break through opposing lines. My sisters and I believe a poor doll may have survived without being recovered."

"So she's, what, deserted and rigged a jammer?"

"In a manner of speaking. Dolls need regular bonding; the timeline befits tineamorphosis."

"She has wings now, sure. So why the fucking jammer?"

"I believe that it is most likely making a kind of distress call. It wants to not be abandoned. It is screaming to be helped. To be loved."

The captain mutters something about 'fucking dolls.' "Sure. Alright. Sergeant, get on the horn and tell her you love her too."

"Negative, Captain, there's no chance we can be heard through the noise. And any transceiver I switch on will fuse."

"If I may, ma'am." The witch allows just the barest hint of irritation to slip past her practiced neutrality. "I believe the best course of action is to send a retrieval team to recover it."

"Is she still an asset?"

"Militarily, no. There's no process to return it to dollhood, and moths are too unpredictable for service. Certainly not in a mech. But it was mine, or one of my sister's. It should not be abandoned."

The Captain squeezes the bridge of her nose. "Sergeant, do we have time or manpower for that?"

"Negative on time, Captain. We have forces expecting engagement with the enemy any minute now. Each moment they're in contact without radio is more casualties."

"Settled, then. Scramble a bomber, tell them to drop at the epicenter of the noise. Specialist, give me a yield to ensure we have comms back online on the first pass."

The witch is silent for a heartbeat, then two. Her face is carefully placid. "50 tons TNT equivalent, minimum. I built it to last."

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i wanted to make a really big mechanical plural goddess lady (ladies) here you go freaks

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you encounter a normal woman

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i finally finished my one of these

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source - the artist was playing around with a bunch of variants, that I'll repost here on the off chance it starts a discussion

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My feelings about queernormative worlds in SFF is that I can often enjoy it, but I rarely believe it.

Almost everything surrounding gender, sex, and sexuality, and all the different social norms and expectations that different cultures build up around them, derive ultimately from the various realities of sexual activity and pregnancy: who can have it, who can’t, for how long, who does have it, who doesn’t, and what that means for society. I’m not being bioessentialist here, because human bodies are all quite different and different cultures develop different ways to react to that, and rates of and reactions to fertility can be different, and what different sexual and gender roles mean in different cultures and who can and can’t embody them can get extremely different. (Hell, how pregnancy itself even works can be different depending on where you live, what your lifestyle is like, and what your diet consists of!) But like, the reason gender even matters, historically, has been because of reproduction. And the reason reproduction matters, in agricultural societies anyway, has very often been because of property ownership and the need to work on farms.

So I’m totally here for queernormative worlds. But to interest me you have to answer the questions of: okay, but how does your culture work though, and how is kinship structured, and how is reproduction seen, and how is property inheritance understood, and how does gender fit into all this, for me to feel like you’ve actually tried. (And don’t say that there ARE no norms, so no one falls outside of them. There’s no culture where that’s true.)

Sci-fi worlds can get away with this easier than fantasy worlds, imo. Partially because they can posit that it is our future but we’ve gone through all of the Social Justice Struggles already and solved them, but also because technology can really alter all of these topics. The Vorkosigan Saga, for instance, makes it clear that Beta Colony is as gender-egalitarian and free-love as it is because of contraception and uterine replicators, which FULLY decouple “the ability to have children” from “the need for anyone to be pregnant.” This is huge, and the Vorkosigan Saga treats it as appropriately so! Ancillary Justice is another one that thinks a lot about how the genderless culture that decenters romance as a core social organizing principle works. But I read so many low-ish-tech fantasy worlds that are happily queernormative and gender doesn’t matter and they just feel shallow. I don’t believe this world. I don’t dislike it, exactly, I just don’t believe it, I don’t believe people would be like this because you’ve put no effort into imagining a world that works like this makes any sense.

Which is totally fine for people’s D&D games and cute oneshot comics and personal works and such, but when you want me to take your worldbuilding seriously, you’re going to have to convince me! And a lot of it is not convincing.

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doodled a harpy

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houseplant type friend

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[Emily] spiderfolk we came up with! the boys are smaller and lighter and also they wear makeup so girls will pin them down and ruin it. as a courtship thing.

spiderfolk can spin silk from their fingertips, using their hand-pairs like a loom to weave complex designs.

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I have got to start sexualizing how much it disgusts me when girls whimper weakly after offering minimal resistance

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i mean, like, academically and on my resume, the time i spent as a body without self after getting abducted by the alien hivemind was a disaster, you know? and then the trauma of it all informs every decision I've made ever since being rescued and having my old personality surgically reasserted.

but you've gotta admit i look hot in those old pictures where I'm the nameless emissary ordering entire urban centers to stand down and accept assimilation into the whole, right?

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can someone please remind her how to perfectly balance herself

i mean look at her wobble.

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3e: Backwards, on Rocket Skates

A few months ago I saw this artwork, on Tumblr, described as:

Deemed “impractical to the point of idiocy”, the “Wand Cannon” was later used to devastating effect against the very wizards that had dismissed it.

Art by Sketchbot9000

I, at the time, said something to the effect of ‘oh yeah, this is a thing you could do in 3rd edition.’

Let’s talk about it.

The conventional wisdom around 3rd Edition and D&D 3.5 was that the most powerful class available was the wizard. This is a pretty true thing, with a little asterisk next to it. For example, some interpretations of the rules allowed the Cerebromancer or Arcane Theurge to step into that spot, by taking the wizard shell and simply adding to it. Yes, the Cleric and the Druid were very, very powerful (because they could do everything), but the Wizard was very, very powerful because it could make everything about what it was capable of doing.

The Artificer, first appearing in the 3.5 book Eberron Campaign Setting, states that they engage with magic at a purer, higher level, because they could take any magical item, and influence that. And influence it they do, with a system of not-spells called infusions. Oh, they behave like spells and they did spell-like things, but they weren’t spells; they were interactions with the magical items of the universe that treated them as material things which could be made to follow rules. Which they were and that should work, so that’s very cool, but it still is a little funny that the rules say ‘An artificer is not a spellcaster, but they do follow all the rules for a spellcaster.’

The Artificer has a split spellcasting need; they need intelligence to determine their highest level of infusions available, and they need Charisma to drive the Use Magic Device skill that lets them use the magical items they’re messing with. This is the point at which the Artificer is about as reasonably normal as you might manage; the sort of concession that displacing the wizard can’t be done for free. The Artificer has its own reserve of special crafting XP, and what’s more, you can feed that reserve by breaking down other magical items into pieces. This means that you can turn the not-worth-the-effort-to-carry +1 swords of a gnoll ambush into a pile of XP that you can then turn into, say, wands.

And wands are important.

The doors come off when the Artificer hits level 6. That’s when Artificers get the ability to spend extra charges out of a spell-trigger item (like a wand) to apply a metamagic feat they know. Wands, by default, come with 50 charges for, say, a wand of a level 1 spell. Let’s take an example of a level 1 offensive spell, Ray of Enfeeblement. At 50 charges, this can be 50 uses of a level 1 spell that deals 1d6 strength damage, which is 50 of your actions to deal 50d6 strength damage. Or, because you have access to Spell Trigger Metamagic, the Artificer can instead empower it, then empower it to double its output —

You can apply metamagic feats multiple times, y’know —

and that means instead of 1d6, you’re getting 2d6 strength for 5 charges. And you choose how to apply these when you use the item. Which means hypothetically, for, say, a level 3 spell like Fireball (11,250 GP cost), you take the first, base charge, Heighten Metamagic to lift the spell level up to level 10 (9 charges) meaning the fireball now is a 10d6 blast, and that leaves you with 20 empowers – or, increase the damage by 10d6 10 times. An Artificer can take a single fireball wand and basically immediately snap it in half to do 110d6 damage, or ~385 damage, in an area, save for half. As an example, assuming everything saves all the time forever, that can instantly nuke multiple monsters of high challenge rating, like the Frost Worm (147 HP, CR 12), Cloud Giants (178 HP, CR 11), or the Death Slaad (142 HP, CR 13).

If you ever find a room full of Death Slaads, you can just wipe ’em all out in one action. Pretty cool. Of course, you’re not going to see that happen, but the thing is when you need this, this is an incredibly cool trick to have access to. Plus, that’s just _one _of your wands; when you have the feats and the skills, you can do this all the time, and you can just select a different single-target spell if you want to do something else. Consider that cannon from up above? Find the right metamagic feats and pump it through wands of the spell Shatter. One of my favourite tricks for an Artificer who wants to be an assassin is to use Quicken Spell and a Wand of Power Word Pain – free-action, hand-in-your-pocket _kill _most non-heroic NPCs, for the low low price of 40 GP.

Now this is a pretty extreme example, and not even the best spell for the purpose. It’s a demonstration of the process in the simplest form, using purely Players Handbook equipment. Spells that avoid spell resistance and don’t give saves are the most desireable. Metamagic feats that multiply effects — twin spell, quicken spell, elemental admixture — are really strong. Metamagic feats that change the relationship to time (like hi there, Persistent Spell) are really valuable, too.

A charge normally takes an action to get its effect. There are 50 charges in a wand which means that 1d6 strength damage wand can do hypothetically 50d6 strength damage. The problem with that is that that takes 50 actions. Turning those 50d6 over 5 full minutes into 10 free action shots using Quicken Spell is a lot more efficient use of your time, and at 50 charges for 750 GP, you can weigh up those prices. 15 GP per shot, vs 75 GP per shot — are these meaningful amounts of money? Would you spend 60 GP for an extra free action? Plus, the artificer can craft the wand themselves, using their craft reserve, which means that each of these wands is kinda half-price, _and _you’ll sometimes get random wands out of monsters and the like, picking up ammunition from the space around you and blasting your enemies with it.

This isn’t even about everything the Artificer can _do! _At level 10, they get the ability to do this with spell completion items (scrolls), and since a scroll doesn’t have charges, the Artificer gets to goose its level and improve the effect through a skill check, which is one of the easiest things for a player to goose really high! Being able to turn spells like say, Divine Power (a level 4 spell) into an instant cast buff (DC 44) or worse, persistent all day (DC 56) is just something they can do, and while you may think ‘hey those are high numbers,’ I want to remind you that Skill Bonus Items exist, and it’s _very _easy to pump those numbers up very high. This then means anything you can do to improve your Charisma or your skill in Use Magic Device is _incredibly _valuable. There’s even a feat that lets you can even take 10 on these checks if you’re not hurried, so you can’t even risk rolling badly!

Oh oh and this is just core too! Because there are other infusions that let you boost skills more, or infusions that let you apply metamagic feats _without spending more charges! _The Artificer has extra feat support! It has _items! _It has _wand loaders _in the expanded rulebooks! Imagine a forearm bracer, loaded with a bunch of free-swapping hot-pluggable wands! There’s even (craftable) magical items that let you ‘link’ wands together, meaning that if you jam 5 wands into it, instead of 5 wands of 50 charges, that can be treated as _one _wand of 250 charges, the mathematics of which I will leave as an exercise for the reader, but remember, you could get 110d6 out of a _single _wand of Fireball.

This was nominally to make sure you don’t wind up with wands with 1 or 2 charges left in them, but y’know, you can use one action to blow **all **those charges at once! Like, you know, the Wand Cannon up top!

It costs 56,250 GP to fire this cannon one time,

A long time ago I said that anything a cleric or wizard was capable of doing, the artificer could do earlier, backwards, on rocket skates. Everything I’ve been talking about here is an Artificer taking a big pile of money and slowly melting it to take the shape of a Wizard, doing the things the Wizard can do without spending that much money. They can get there earlier, they can overtake the wizard, but the wizard catches up and exceeds them, eventually.

But if you wanna make a big cannon out of wands? The Artificer gets that.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

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shh. stop trying to give me situation reports. can't you see my helmswoman is sleepy? look at her, so peaceful. now leave us. let her rest.

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no no no you don't understand we have to come over the horizon framed by a halo of aircraft just so or what's even the point of bringing an aircraft carrier. am i the only one taking this theater seriously? i even had to title MYSELF the "saintess of the western seas" because none of you would do it for me, do you realize how embarrassing this whole debacle has been for me? if you really wanted to make up for it you'd have launched those jets already.

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so what if i'm a "political appointee" have you noticed we're winning? i've noticed we're winning! and who do you think made that happen, hmm? the surface battleships who have to close within a paltry, what, 30 miles? wars are won over the horizon, darlings!

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Hell yeah man this princess war is AWESOME I just cast the sign of universal conquest with my fingertip and a full batallion of bright eyed naifs became infertile as their homelands were reduced to footnotes in the annals of history. I think I just heard a protagoness hesitantly cast “power word: duty to retreat” I gotta get the fuck in