lyndztanica

[lyndztanica]

✨Contributor Spotlight✨

Introducing @lyndztanica, who'll be joining us as an Artist!

Bluesky: lyndztanica

Tumblr: lyndztanic

[lyndztanica]

Ivresang's Demo (Ironsworn Supplement) is OUT!

If you haven't seen me lately, it's because I've been writing. Some of you may know, some of you may not know, but I'm also a writer! And I write tabletop role-playing game material! A lot of it! I'm happy to share Ivresang's demo with you today. It's PWYW if you want to help the project, but you can also download it for free. It requires knowledge of Ironsworn to play, which is also a completely free pen & paper game.

I wanted to thank all my friends for their support and their hype, fostering my own in return. Putting this out in the world has been a relief. I'm really looking forward to presenting the full version with an even better layout and design. DOWNLOAD IT ON ITCH.IO, PWYW!

[lyndztanica]

happy birthday FFIX! here are some things i've drawn for you over the years in various stages of completion

[lyndztanica]

[lyndztanica]

[lyndztanica]

superior by design

[lyndztanica]

We begin our (non-Pankrati) tournament arc next session, so my pilot Emma and her NHP Sam remodeled the Lich and went with punk-pro-wrestler-sonas to put on a good show. Sam is possessing an android subaltern and insisted on an 8-pack because...well that's just how Sam is.

They're calling themselves the Midsummer Nightmare. :P

[lyndztanica]

[lyndztanica]

Your blood, what matter is it made of? Do you feel it travel in and out your heart?

[lyndztanica]

un hombre de verdad y aunque tenga una carcacha

[lyndztanica]

drink deep and descend

[lyndztanica]

[binary star]

[lyndztanica]

Your blood, what matter is it made of? Do you feel it travel in and out your heart?

[lyndztanica]

un hombre de verdad y aunque tenga una carcacha

[lyndztanica]

the thrum of the machine sounds like a heart

The seconds creep like minutes, and the minutes like hours. Move, aim, fire, plod across this field until suddenly the entrance is there, a hair's breadth away. Until he’s standing outside of it, frozen in place. It’s the adrenaline, he thinks, grateful it’s detached him just enough from anger to be rational. Anger makes you stupid. He couldn’t afford that right now.

July doesn’t bother to ruminate – he just steadies his aim and fires, knocking another mech clinging to Baccara away.  

Shep was the adult in his life who taught him how to shoot. His grandpas taught him how to play games, how to look for tells and count cards. His father taught him it was a fool’s game to work for a company so large you didn’t have a face or a name to those who held your life in their hands. His uncles taught him to get the fuck out of dodge before he got too old to forget the previous lesson.

Shep had taught him how to aim because July at the time had been a snot-nosed kid barely out of his teens who was quick on his feet. But there would always be someone quicker, he advised. There almost always was.

So one early morning, when the arena was quiet before the evening’s lineup of Lancer fights, Shep set up a few targets, handed July his own handgun and got to work. 

Line Your Sight. 

Breathe. 

Fire.

Diamondback’s guns didn’t have a recoil he could feel – it was all automated, and when the Raleigh was fine-tuned the mechanized joints moved buttery smooth. Even as his fingers danced a nervous jitter on one button or another, inside all you’d generally feel was a little nudge, scarcely stronger than a shoulder tap. No real friction to it compared to a human body. 

When he won his first license in a card game it was Shep’s idea to join the bouts. Why not have some fun, he’d said, Crowds love a scrappy underdog story. July took to it – the betting payout was always bigger than counting cards. The thrum of the machinery, the cheers, having to study his opponent to outwit them.

Fuck, how old was he then? Twenty-three? Twenty-five? Nah, maybe not that old. Still, shit.

The situation is getting worse, not better. More targets appear, Feren shouts something about Halcyon panicking that sets off his worst suspicions but they’re too high up and she’s in rodeo. ERIS births a star on the field that’s set to go nova – and maybe it did when his view of the world became a black void empty of everything. 

No visuals, no outside sound. Just him, the glow of monitors and the duet of his own breathing with a recurrent beep warning him of heat levels. Did the Toku have one of these things? Or did JW just uninstall it. Either way they seem pointless in a Harrison, and in the Raleigh it’s drilling into his skull to take the place of everything. Minutes feel like hours, too long for him to sit with nothing. Nothing to line his sight, breathe, and fire at.

What are we doing? Trying not to die before we enter uncertain death, he thinks. He reaches for a cigarette he knows isn’t there; the pack sits empty in his pocket.

Before he can feel angry again the void recedes; he can see the newly made wasteland. Frames reduced to slag. The few who aren’t he helps eliminate until his weapons jam. More and more mechs crawl out of the woodwork and towards the hole in the wall. Nowhere left to go but inside.

Is this why he’s thinking on all this now? No light at the end of a tunnel, no life flashing before your eyes. Just ruminating on memories that come to mind, people who come to mind. Mercedes would make a good arena fighter, he thinks. Maybe Shep would pitch it to her when July was gone. Maybe he should have pitched it before now, in a time and place he’s pretty sure his slate doesn’t work correctly outside the immediate area.

None of his life lessons, from Shep or anyone else have prepped him for this. He wasn’t a man for metavaults, for the paracausal. There was already enough ‘-causal’ bullshit to deal with out there. That was still true. Nobody could have prepared him for this.

He didn’t know what to do when you gave too much of a shit the idea of being left behind chafes more than leaving. Of having to deliver bad news. Of surviving something alone, left to fend for himself. After all those insistences and overtures. Especially when they were the type to throw themselves into a fire. For what? A cause? A belief? A misplaced sense of duty? This wasn’t an adventure – if it was more people would respond to metavaults with excitement. At least his parents did it for something that made sense. At least they left him to fend for himself for something he could understand.

Instead he’s here. Outside a doorway to hell with a binary choice. Hang back and go it alone or throw himself after someone else. The seconds creep like hours. The thrum of the frame sounds like a heart against the metavault’s ribs.

[lyndztanica]

[binary star]

[lyndztanica]

drink deep and descend