#? thats his species right. deity

[mlp-natural-2]

Ponynatural: Who is What??

Ponies and similar hooven beasts are human, monster, magic, literally anything can be a mortal where gods and deities have certain forms they perfer to take to walk among ponyfolk

Chuck is a donkey, one of the oldest ponyfolk who still walk the earth. first donkey ponies were made in his image just as angels were, but the archangels were his Alicorn Prototypes and subsequent inspo for humans (Lucifer was soooo mad)

Also because Chuck is an ass (easy joke)

Angels in heaven have three forms, vessel, trueform, or god form (the form they take in front of Chuck to appeal to him the most)

Ponies are human. All mortal beings are called ponies no matter what species. There are deer-ponies, zebra-ponies, pegasus-ponies, unicorn-ponies, earth-ponies, ect.

Nephilim are mules. Abominations in the eyes of heaven as an angel got loose and sown the land with those lowly humans. And like in minecraft, a mule can be a culmination of the best of the horse (pony) and the best of a donkey (angel) but are genetically useless. However in supernatural lore, nephil can reproduce with either angel or human which was a devastating amount of Free Will Potential and uncontrolled power.

Nephilim were a mockery of Chuck, they held his image but had too much free will. Leviathans were created by Eve to look like Nephilim as a nice ‘screw you’ to Chuck, but over time they changed and grew more monstrous looking, more teeth, more goop, more alien.

When Anna Milton tore her grace out to live as human, she was born a full mule and gained her wings when her grace was restored. Because she was human she had made herself a soul. Thats right, Anna Milton is a risen nephilim in ponynatural (self made soul + grace)

Castiel rebelled and made himself a halfling soul, though not intentionally, when Jimmy died because of his free will

Halfling souls are compressed True Forms that are molded into a soul adjacent replica. While strange and looked down on, still considered an angel by all accounts.

Leviathan mutations on Cas became permanent as his connection to heaven was severed fully. His muzzle broadened, his tail became long and whiplike, his ears got taller, his feathers melted off, he very much looked like a bastardized god by the time he came out the other side.

Being human left permanent scars, a crushed wing that healed wrong and featherless, an awkward bend in his tail. But he accepted these as part of himself, as a part of being human (eventually. guys ego was SHATTERED)

By season 15, Cas had effectively made himself into an honorary nephilim since he had a soul (sort of) and angelic form/grace (as rough as it was)

Jack is a nephilim. “But!”, you may ask, “He clearly looks nothing like Anna or Cas or a leviathan!”

ah dear tumblr user, you are very good at looking at things. These are all true. Because he is the offspring of an archangel, he had a create-a-character menu basically with some cosmic options. Jack chose to look like his mother, though his angelic nature could not escape him and he was born an alicorn. But instead of having a plain colored long and thin tail, he has a thick, colorful, and scaly tail like a yellow python (snake in Eden) due to his ties with heaven and Lucifer.

While Jack is a nephilim, I call him a chimera-nephilim since there has never been anyone like him before and he is far more than just a nephilim born of a human and a lower angel. (and also because he rocks)

Which brings us to the true nephilim and star of my discord chats, destiel fanchild oc I made as a joke so people would stop infantilizing Jack Kline as some kind of shitty destiel lovechild baby farthead prop but now I have Lore for, Bon Scott (named after AC/DC frontman because of COURSE) who is just a little guy and looks like a mini Cas. Has yet to grow into nephil features and could easily be passed off as human.

[littlest-bugz]

current hyperfixation? (feel free to infodump!!)

YIPPEEE!!! This made my day FR!! Thank you, mutual <3

ANYWAYS

This is kind of embarrassing, but I’ve been deeply invested by my own OCverse for going on 8 years now. Its my Special Interest, which sucks because,,, im the only one who can make content of these stinkies,,,,,

I really find it hard to hyperfixate on anything else because of the fact Ive been invested for so long (except for Web Design and coding, which I wont infodump about, since its literally all for these stories, deadass).

It is not fun at times because 1) all the characters live rent free in my head and criticize how I write them in my novels [that DID life] and 2) its SO hard to make new projects and get attached to them. Ive been trying for 2 years to make a horror project out of one concept but I seriously cant get fully invested and it SUCKS. Let me make my silly little horror web series damnit!!!!! (@ my brain)

I have 3 novels and one fantasy series im working on so,,,, Infodump time >:3c

TWs: Terminal Illness + brief mentions of (mental institute) hospitalization, murder, war, and some others that I’m not 110% sure the exact tags for them (basically kind of cannibalism, but between nonhuman species). Other than terminal illness, they’re super brief mentions, but still proceed with caution.

Right now, I’m working on one of the books I’ve been writing for nearly my whole time writing. Ive been only working on it since feb 1st (it’s, like, the THIRD draft tho).

Blurb about book

Melissa is a bassist in a rock band she formed with her high school friends. Just as her, and her friends’, career begins takes off, she gets diagnosed with a terminal illness. With a month left to live, and a shit ton of unfinished business, she invokes her best friend’s patron deity who is capable of miracles, Flip. Melissa and Flip make a pact to keep her alive until her business is over, but oh no! Melissa has caught the eyes of another god, and a pretty shitty one at that. How is she going to make her last months peaceful if she’s being hunted down by a god?

The working title is called “Ensuring Your Spot In Hell” because Flip is, essentially, a demon in the universe (rules an infernal ring of hell- it means I would have to explain the worldbuilding around hell and its A LOT), but titles are!!! So hard for me!!!

A list of random facts about the book™️ because I don’t want to write full paragraphs bc I can go on forever if u ask me to:

Flip’s name is a shortened version of his actual name, Fli’pyek. Furthermore, the domain Flip rules over is that of Wrath and Violence

Trinity (Melissa’s childhood bestie, and the friend that worship’s Flip) is a hereditary witch and pagan. Her family has been worshipping Flip and practicing witchcraft for several generations! They literally have their own holy book (generational BoS/Grimoire/whatever u want to call it).

Melissa had been sick with the disease™️ since she was 16. She just neglected the shit out of her own health (me too bestie, me too). It easily could have been prevented if she went to the doctor back when she was, at least, 18 years old, max 24.

At the time Melissa is diagnosed with her terminal illness, she’s 26. By the time she was supposed to die, she would’ve been freshly 27. Has anyone heard of the 27 club theory before? Or is it just an obscure reference I made LMAO

Melissa has extended biological family that worships Flip! It gets super awkward when Melissa visits them with Flip lol

The other primordial god that Melissa finds herself in a predicament with is named Ama, the god of Cruelty and Torture. Not a swell guy to get mixed up with, that’s for sure!

Melissa has an orange and white cat named Cheddar!

Flip always smells like whiskey and freshly cut tobacco. At all times. It’s bc his blood smells like it (and tastes like it too, but why are you tasting it? /j)

Any other facts might be getting into spoiler territory, BUT!! Thats the one Im working on rn, in February. In January I worked on another book, but that one honest to gods might be too triggering for this acc for an indepth thingy like the book I just did. It’s being rewritten to not be so triggering, but bc it’s a throw up of some of our trauma, it’s not an easy task to censor it.

REGARDLESS, Here’s a rundown of ALL of my main novels (minus the one I already talked about)

The Case of Twin Woods [mystery, drama, crime] (the one i worked on January)

Chastity hates her life. She hates her shitty job, she hates her shitty friends, and she hates her shitty family. After opening up too much to an online friend about her chronic suicidality, Chastity gets taken to Twin Woods Mental Institute, the state’s mental institution. There she befriends an eccentric group of patients, then finding out something terrible might be going on with the head warden, Leon Bellamy. She takes it upon herself to find out and solve the mystery, but she may have bitten off more than she can chew.

Untitled One (but leaning towards the name of ‘Jealousy’ or somethin idk) [drama, romance, crime]

Mia has a quiet life. She works at a library, she fosters cats, and by all means, has what could be considered a ‘boring life’. One day, she gets laid off from her job under the excuse of “cutting costs”, leaving her without a job and severance. While scrambling for a job, she finds one at a local cafe, the most frequented one in the city. There she befriends one of the regulars, a cold, quiet man named Zander, and after she unknowingly helps Zander’s brother, she becomes significantly closer to him. However, her boss, a bitter ex of Zander’s, hears about their ensuing closeness and decides she doesn’t like what’s going on. One failed dinner party and murder attempt later, Mia is left scrambling to hide that she killed Angelina in self defense. Will she be successful in hiding the murder? Or will the justice system make quick work of her?

Untitled Fantasy Series (has about 2 actual novels and 3 novellas… a possible third novel too) [drama, romance]

book one

Since his birth, King Sunshine has known his fate. He is to be sacrificed for the greater good of the realm he resides, killing his oppressive father, but losing his life in the process. It’s a prophecy that has been laid out since the beginning of Racktokian history, one King Sunshine was never able to escape due to his father’s unspoken rage at his own murder. After meeting a Vurtock for the first time, a species his father only used as cattle, Sunshine finds himself quickly entangled in a plot to overthrow his own father to liberate the Vurtockian race. He knows what he has to do, but it isn’t easy.

book two

The great war tore apart the country King Sunshine called home. His father left no stone unturned from his rage, and public opinions split the people. In the rubble of his home, he builds a new country founded on the importance of the civilians, only to be elected as a King in place of his father. Living in the palace he always called home, but had tried to escape, he finds that his father keeps sending assassins to make attempts on his life. One assassin, a vurtock with nothing to lose, hits a soft spot in Sunshines heart. After deescalating the attempt on his life, he offers the vurtock to stay in his castle until they’re able to find the proper resources to help him build a life in the new country. Far away from the oppressive dictatorship of his father. Yet, as his guest begins to stay for longer than intended, he sees that yet another step in the prophecy will begin.

Despite how the second book blurb is written, it’s more from the vurtock’s point of view than Sunshine’s. I just had a total brain fart.

The novellas for the fantasy book follow the POV of other important characters, such as the ruler of the Vurtockian rebellion, the POV of other rulers. For a while I wanted to write one from Raphaël’s POV, but I decided it wouldn’t be worth writing a whole book about a piece of shit finding joy in the pain he causes. Like, no thanks, ill pass.

Theres a possible 3rd book that would essentially be an extended epilogue, since the prophecy doesn’t stop at Sunshine’s death. I just haven’t thought as far as the 2 books and 3 novellas, in terms of outlining the books and stuff.

I honestly could give TONS more info on the fantasy books because that part of my universe has been around nearly the whole time Ive been writing. I have maps of the world, maps of countries, maps of even just cities, house and castle layouts, moodboards, art. Visual references galore. Not to mention the playlists for each character + each book. I also made a document called “The Remian Bible” because it has everything about the world in it, including the alphabets of the languages, grammar structures for said languages and literally 5 holy books for the religions even tho they wont evEN BE TALKED ABOUT IN ENOUGH DEPTH (why did i do that to myself /lh j/. It doesn’t help that I still want the write the holy books in their native languages… oo,,, and imagine writing the actual novels in the native languages,,,,). It’s honestly kind of,,, surreal how much time Ive put into this world 🧍 Like??? Damn,,,,

BUT YEAH!!! Those are all the books that take place in my ocverse + some other info!!! The things that are my hyperfixation,,,, My own books and world LMAO— The books don’t include half of the ocs in my ocverse tho, so thats where the website im coding comes in. It’ll have short stories based on the backstories of various characters on it, and Yes, even the background characters will be on it bc Im fucking bonkers and fleshed them out, even though some of them are in one scene for 2 minutes.

That being said, if anyone, or u mutual (if u read this wall of text), found any of this interesting, or wants to read even just the prologue of any of these, DM me!! I’m always looking for beta readers!! Or people to talk to about it too, that’d be fantastic. I really need beta readers, so seriously. DM me if u want to read my cringey stories!! I can give better in depth tws too!!!

EDIT: I need to mention that I go through spurts of hyperfixating on only one book or series. Thats why its both my hyper fixation AND my Special Interest

[halothenthehorns]

I ACCIDENTALLY VAPORIZE MY PRE-ALGEBRA TEACHER

Couple of quick character notes before we get into the deep dive of this, mostly just some pre-apologies so I don't offend anyone.

I am not deaf, though I had a deaf Uncle growing up so I know some very basic sign language but I was really young and most of my understanding is a refresher course from what we know of Hearthstone from the Magnus Chase books. Please inform me if my old memories are inaccurate, and very little actual signing will be described for our dear Elf.

Even less encouraging news for Alex; I'm not genderfluid nor do I even know anyone in person who is, he/ she will be periodically changing genders throughout the series, but in general I'll be writing them as true to their character as the book as I can with no real difference in whichever gender she/ he is at the time because it didn't seem to affect their personality. You can only google so much and I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the subject from that.

If I do or say anything blatantly wrong please correct me as I'd hate to be encouraging any stereotypes.

PJOPJOPJOPJO

It took a couple go-arounds of 'huhs' and 'can you repeat thats' and 'yes that's really a thing' before everyone quieted and accepted to themselves what was happening.

Alex was already sorting through the bag after the first time, apparently unphased or just really good at adapting to the idea there were more than just her Norse gods as she came up with a book in hand. "They want us to read?" She broke into Hearthstone and Magnus' once more silent exchange over some reindeer for some reason. "About the Percy guy?" Without prompting she flashed the book around for the rest of them to see, it was bright orange like the camp shirt Percy was wearing with a blood-red 1 on the spine.

"I don't think the books will color coordinate us," Magnus corrected, finally managing something semi-non hysterical as he watched her. He and Hearth were both very worried about Blitz and what he'd do when they didn't come back to meet him under the bridge tonight, but there seemed no getting out of this any time soon. The uncomfortable notion of having to swim back to the surface was a pretty good deterrent.

Hearthstone felt a little guilty for still not explaining everything to his friend, but had decided one thing at a time as his charge was just coming to grips with the idea of living deities. Him and Blitz not even being children of gods but whole other species was even more than he wanted to explain right now, Blitzen was much better at that.

"Their loss," Alex huffed as she sorted through the rest. She froze though and quickly pulled her hand out of the bag without revealing the rest of her find as she flipped to the first page and said loudly, "I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher. Well whoever this is about certainly knows how to live."

Percy was starting to look a little green around the edges as he looked from Thalia, to Nico, to Will in rapid succession like he was hoping a guidebook would appear for what was happening. As non-disconcerting as it had been to have all this talk of gods explained by her, that had felt inherently natural and easy enough to take in but still not exactly something he wanted to figure out around a bunch of strangers.

If this was how he had to get back to Annabeth though, so be it.

The rest of them had just come to quietly accept this new reality, their life had led them all to the conclusion long ago it was keep up or be killed, and the existence of a whole other pantheon of Gods to know of was just one more factoid now.

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.

If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now.

"Too late for that," Alex huffed.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure everyone in here is a done deal," Will agreed.

"Otherwise you might have been zapped down to see the judges a little early," Nico rolled his eyes. Hearthstone chose not to correct the assumption, he assumed nobody would understand him anyways, even Magnus was only just past the basics of Alf Sign Language. He missed Blitz, his friend would gladly shout at them there were others besides demigods out there.

  Believe what-ever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

Jason huffed he hadn't even been given that choice as he kept watching Thalia like it was her fault while his own useless mind tried to recall anything before this room.

Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.

"So, a lot to look forward to when I get back?" Percy asked without actually expecting an answer other than Thalia's strained smile, and that's exactly what he got.

If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

But if you recognize yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirring inside-stop reading immediately.

"As if I've ever taken advice from a book," Alex muttered as she swung herself in her poof sideways, reading with one leg propped above her head now.

You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.

Nico kept his eyes on nobody, not even Percy or Will now as he recalled how their father had kept them safe by having a Fury look after them and Bianca had still not survived even before she abandoned him. He wished someone had given him this book before he'd lost the chance to save his sister's life.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Percy Jackson.

"Ha!" Alex paused for dramatic effect as she smirked at Magnus, who managed a tentative smile back and reached for her kale chips. She dumped the rest into her mouth and sprayed him with the green shavings as she kept going.

I'm twelve years old.

'Well that obviously didn't last,' Hearthstone signed to his friend as he stared at the obvious teenager now. Except ASL wasn't so literal, so it was more like he pointed at Percy and used the sign for aging, keeping his palm down as he drew it from his hip up to his chin. He. Aged. Magnus filled in the blanks. 'Why do you think we're reading about something so long into his past?'

'Asking the wrong guy,' Magnus signed back, considering he was still getting used to the fact he was breathing underwater, let alone a Titan had put him down here.

Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.

"Are you a troubled kid?" Jason asked, he sounded almost amused. He wondered if he was one too, if anyone was looking for him like that Annabeth girl who was clearly looking for Percy, both Thalia and him had mentioned her.

"Going off of the few things I now know as facts, I'd say yeah," Percy sighed.

Am I a troubled kid?

Yeah. You could say that.

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan- twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

"Sounds like a blast," Magnus grinned, he wished he'd attended school more.

"Sounds like torture," Alex huffed as she flipped the first page.

I know-it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.

"Isn't this how you met Chiron and Grover?" Thalia asked as she caught up. Annabeth had told her plenty of Percy's start, more than she'd ever asked, but that never seemed to stop her friend, especially in recent times when she'd come to check on her friend in her distressed state. The child of Athena often kept going over her past and as much of Percy's as she could know in hopes to piece together some way to find her boyfriend, whom Thalia had just stumbled across at the bottom of the ocean.

"Who?" Percy gave her a blank look for both names, but he looked sad and muttered something about enchiladas.

"Don't worry, we're getting there," she assured, grateful for the books now instead of her having to retell all of this.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

"This is putting me to sleep," Nico told him, telling himself he wasn't drinking in every word and settling comfortably into the squashy green chair. He'd shadow travel back out of this place any moment now...

"I'm not the one who invited you," Percy said back.

"Come on Nico, you can't pretend you're not a little curious to hear how the great Percy Jackson's story went from himself," Will gave him a friendly nudge and a sunny smile Nico instantly resisted the urge to cringe away from. Staying at the bottom of the dark ocean maybe was his second favorite pick from the underworld so long as he could keep breathing down here, even including present company. He glared at the bookbag the strange green-haired girl still had close to her and knew same as her that if Percy's story was in here, so likely were the rest of theirs too...including some who were only here in memory.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

Thalia raised her hand mock pleasantly as if Chiron were in here now. "I'm taking a wild guess now and saying neither of those things happened!"

Boy, was I wrong.

"Five points for the girl with the magic bow," Jason mock applauded.

"On a scale of what?" She asked back, the two sure were frowning at each other an awful lot, as if swearing they should recognize somebody they'd never properly met. "A Hunter of Artemis always makes a perfect score mind you."

"Out of five then, obviously," he graciously amended. Her weapon had vanished after all and he had no wish to push his luck against her, not when he had questions for her he couldn't even remember but felt vitally important to ask.

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.

"Now there's a story that needs detail!" Alex cackled.

Percy contemplated for a moment before shrugging, "ever felt a malevolent, glimmering light was following you around?"

"Can't say I have," she said cheerfully, waving her hand for him to continue.

"Well, I'd swear it was, though everyone else just called me crazy and it was only a bird. Point is I was worried about touching it, the thing was so hot just from hovering in front of me, so I swung the cannon and somehow it, well," he finished with a needless gesture back to the book.

"Went off instead," Magnus finished for him when Alex waited hopefully as if for more, but when he didn't elaborate she nodded this was an acceptable side story.

"Better than some boring trip to the museum at any rate," she said as she went back to it, doubting there would be any exploding cannons in there. Maybe she'd get lucky and a Michelangelo would at least be described by someone competent.

And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim.

"Well at least nobody would have gotten seriously hurt during that one," Thalia told him bracingly.

Percy gave her a blank look just as a shark swam through the room, more massive than the largest breed just casually skimming over the low-sodium snacks before floating back out. He thought she meant about that and assumed everyone heard the fish's sultry dismay there was no fresh sushi bar today.

Thalia realized her mistake; she'd yet to inform Percy what he'd clearly forgotten, his own heritage, and didn't hold him in suspense of that one. "Son of the Sea God Percy, are you telling me you didn't know that after a trip to the aquarium?" Were the fish not chatting to him like the celebrity he was? He'd said in the past he could talk to aquatic life.

His sea green eyes flashed bizarrely in the room's light, his face turning the color of the kale chips. Having the book refresh his memories one bit at a time hadn't hurt a bit, but that sure had, his head was walloping in time with his heart.

"Percy?" She asked in concern.

"I knew that," he rasped. "Why did I know that?"

She led him over to a beanbag and gave Will and Nico a very stern look, speaking mostly to them now as she calmed her friend, "whatever's going on in your head, I'm guessing we shouldn't be feeding you so much stuff at once. Let's just, let Alex keep going."

Will made the sign for warding off evil and Nico cussed lightly as they exchanged a look and stared uneasily at their surroundings once more. Nobody knew why Percy had lost his memories and they hadn't, but they were suddenly very grateful it didn't seem a group effect and sat down quickly on a couch for the long haul now while she took a seat beside him.

Jason wasn't looking much better and gripped the table nearly tipping all the food over but forced himself to remain calm and keep his own mouth shut, not wanting to end up the same color as Percy and most definitely deciding not to push his own luck for now.

Alex watched the group of Greek kids and considered telling Thalia she was getting a little to trigger happy with her orders for her liking, but she had no real protests against reading still and her eyes were already straying back to the story anyways.

And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.

This trip, I was determined to be good.

'I'm guessing that works as well for him as it does for me,' Magnus signed.

'This isn't your fault Magnus, I'm sure this can only be of help to us,' Hearthstone signed back. He certainly hoped so at any rate, he didn't need the Capo considering this against orders, and he wouldn't mind asking the bossy girl where she'd gotten her bow, especially its clearly magical properties.

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Even Tyson wouldn't eat that sandwich, Percy randomly thought, before his brain sizzled like static and he was already wondering who on Earth Tyson could be.

"First of all, eww," Will frowned, already wondering how much ambrosia he'd have to give someone from that poisonous concoction.

"Second of all, gross," Nico agreed, he wouldn't bring back a ghost stupid enough to die by choking on a sandwich like that.

"But mostly, how did you not knock her flat on her ass already?" Alex and Thalia said together.

Percy was frowning and looking very much as if he agreed with all sentiments. Grover, the name felt as important to him as Annabeth, equal to those surrounding him now in people he knew he could count on as a friend. Even if he didn't know why.

Getting up and shaking off the last of his nausea, he went over to the pile of food and snatched up some more, handing a bag to everyone he passed before slamming back into his seat and telling Thalia, "I hope I do any moment now."

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin.

Nico coughed to suppress a laugh as he knew better and Will did no such thing, laughing with his whole body and making the light at the bottom of the ocean shine brighter for just a moment for knowing the satyr was much older in goat years, but both well knew to heed a daughter of Zeus and Artemis's lieutenant and Thalia in general so did not share the joke when Percy frowned at them in confusion.

On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Magnus gave a wistful look to all the non-salty food in the air above even as he polished off the last of it down here. Hearthstone gave up his own to him after only a few bites and promised he'd eat more later, they weren't likely to let them starve down here but he should still eat his fill.

Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation.

"And why was that?" Alex asked eagerly.

At least he could still recall the things that were being slowly and gradually reminded to him up until this point. He only had to think for a moment before the haze lifted and he was sure of right where this was being plopped into his life, and recalled, "there may or may not have been some jerk trapped on a roof all night that I may or may not have locked the door to."

"Ah, I see, what a mystery," Alex nodded.

 The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"In other words, decapitate her anyways because you're going to get blamed for it," Alex concluded.

"Pretty sure the takeaway wasn't supposed to be that," Magnus frowned at her.

"Eh," she shrugged.

"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.

Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

"And I like ketchup, but not together," Will still shuddered in disgust.

"Whoever thought we'd agree on anything," Nico nodded.

He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.

"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.

"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.

"This book sure likes to build up suspension!" Alex said, glaring over the spine at Percy as if this were all his fault too.

"I didn't write it," he rolled his eyes, "if I could tell you I doubt it would be necessary."

She eyed him for a few moments before deciding not to decapitate him out of annoyance.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

"And that's just the stuff the mortals found," Thalia grinned as she lovingly grasped her bracelet.

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.

Nico arched a very curious brow and wondered about that description while Thalia was trying to hide behind her silvery camo jacket she was making faces, having a pretty good guess who this was as well from more Annabeth stories.

Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.

One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."

"Way to go Grover," Thalia rolled her eyes.

"Wait," Percy looked from Nico's frown back to her and was clearly putting this together on his own. "She's not? He's not?"

"Don't strain yourself Percy," Will said gently.

He looked around once more at all the demigods and the skolopendra that floated into the room, using only its tentacle to clear away the last of the crumbs and sweep back out. It wasn't hard to follow there were more dangerous things than bottom feeders out there after his dealings with those pushy Bargin Mart creatures chasing him across the country.

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"

It came out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

Thalia felt the first hints of unease for mentioning him as Luke came to mind once more and she glanced around as if expecting the lord of Titans to appear, or even worse any of the twelve Olympians. Oceanus had said they'd be safe here while they did this, but it still felt like a bad omen the first name to be invoked and test that theory had been this Titan.

Nothing happened, the air didn't grow any more cold than the murder-inducing pressure it already should have been to them and nobody spontaneously dropped dead, so she forced herself to try and enjoy this ironic mild vacation she'd been forced into.

"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because ..."

"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and-"

"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.

"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-"

"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.

"-and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

"I don't know why, that was pretty accurate," Will shrugged.

Nico couldn't help but correct, "if he'd ever even read the back of a single Mythomagic box that's the basics and not even touching on-" he froze, looking horrified with himself for how much he'd relaxed back into his seat without even realizing it. That was the first time he'd even thought about his old game, let alone mentioned it since Bianca's death.

Will was giving him a curious look as if hoping he'd keep going, but Thalia was already shaking her head and mouthing at him to shut up.

Alex wasn't helping, as she was scowling at the light details and grumbling, "great, because it wasn't hard enough keeping track of the Norse gods and all the shit they get up to, now we've got to remember the difference of all your gods as well!"

Hearthstone didn't follow all of that, since she didn't drop the book from her face for him to read her lips properly, but Magnus was signing as well as he could the big things that were happening and so the elf signed back, 'I don't think she's going to be the pleasant company while we're here.' He had not missed the fact that the girl with the silver circlet had been following along their silent conversation while the others hadn't yet demanded of them why they weren't speaking. His mission to help keep Magnus safe was feeling more doomed by the moment with all of these dangerous teenagers around.

'Maybe not, but I'm not betting against her just yet,' he smiled for her abruptness while already trying to figure out a short-hand sign for Kronos and Zeus so he didn't have to finger spell out all of this, his hand was already starting to cramp and he was missing Blitzen more every moment.

Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"

"Better than a mindless drone asking if I want fries with that," Nico scoffed.

"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover muttered.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.

At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

"That's not, you know, literal is it?" Percy asked his friends wearily.

"Like an antenna? Nah," Thalia smirked without elaborating further.

I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld.

Will looked at Nico curiously, as if hoping he'd engage and share something of that place, but the son of Hades was too busy looking longingly at the shadows again and obviously contemplating trying to leave again, back to his task of coming and going from camp like a lifeless shadow in search of something he clearly wasn't finding. He restrained himself now as he did every time from pulling him closer and offering a tutorial on healing magic nobody but his own siblings could follow and just kept his mouth shut.

On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs,

Thalia and Alex scoffed in unison for that.

the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.

The boys did not bother to defend any such claim.

Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."

I knew that was coming.

I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"

Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go- intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"Oh," Percy murmured for himself, not needing to look at the others this time to know deep down that was true as he locked eyes with the book as if suddenly hoping it would stare back, that this wise old man would be gazing at him now rather than the orange covered spine and tell him what he needed to know now.

"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.

"About the Titans?"

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"Don't worry Percy, you're getting there," Thalia squeezed his shoulder and wished Annabeth were here for the millionth time already. She missed her friend, she wanted to let her know she could stop going even more prematurely gray with worry, and more than anything Percy looked like he needed that connection right now as his gaze intensified on the stranger reading his life as he accepted Chiron's statement as fact right now in this strange place.

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."

I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C- in my life. No-he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

"And you never will," Nico mock promised him as he gave an obvious look at his seatmate as if waiting for him to push him off and roll his eyes.

Will did no such thing, he even snickered a bit and told him playfully, "I was just missing Kayla doing that."

Nico looked too stumped to say anything back while Thalia ignored the two idiots and properly explained, "we all have that problem Percy, it's a half-blood thing. We live these problems and we still have to keep up like crazy to have all those names and facts straight."

"Helps when they start introducing themselves before they kill you, they're far more memorable that way at least," Alex told him in what she clearly thought was a helpful tone of voice.

Percy swallowed even more uncomfortably because he believed her.

I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

Percy now realized that's probably because he was, and it made him feel strangely young. He couldn't be anymore than sixteen, he felt exhausted already and they couldn't have been at this for more than an hour. There wasn't a scratch or blemish on his body for some unknown reason despite the fact a spot dead center in his spine tingled for some reason as he comfortably laid back, and yet all evidence to the contrary promised that been in battles, and his favorite teacher had still seen more.

He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school-the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean-I'm not a genius."

Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"

"What did you want him to say, that you are a genius?" Alex asked dubiously.

"Grover's a good friend, he wouldn't lie to you like that," Thalia told him with a teasing grin.

"I wish I had more apples for you guys," Percy told them with the air of one who promised they would not be handed the food this time.

I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat.

Percy gasped as if finally feeling the crushing weight of the ocean condense all around him. His mom! How could he have ever forgotten her!

"Thalia," he turned pleading to her, "her name, tell me you know my mom's name, please!"

She only hesitated a moment but couldn't deny him this joyous and small bit of information. "Sally. Sally Jackson."

He sighed in relief and thanked her with such heart he seemed to fully relax for the first time as he stopped fighting the constant push of memories and just turned eagerly back to the book to hear more, even the depressing news that followed.

Jason was watching the exchange with increasing frustration and thinking more every moment he wanted to start talking to Thalia too. It wasn't the clear friendship between the two of them, it was just the idea he couldn't let go of he wanted to get to know her too for some inexplicable reason, as if she could answer all of his questions too, but though she still watched him carefully from time to time she made no more move to interact with him yet either. Cautious, a Hunter she'd called herself, this girl clearly did not know him at all and he was looking for something that wasn't there. He'd been dumped in here alone, unlike everyone else.

These Greek names meant nothing to him, weren't connecting to his mind in any way that mattered, if anything while the four of them were relaxing a bit he was getting more wound up at the wrongness of it all. This was not his story, his history, he could feel it in his bones. Even Alex and Magnus felt alien to him right now and were still taking this in stride better, Hearthstone hadn't spoken to anyone. If there was something for him to be doing down here, he wasn't seeing it.

I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.

Percy nodded solemnly as if none of this was news to him even as he absorbed it all like fresh air. Even just this small glimpse of his missing parent felt vitally important to him, as if he could look back on his past now and chastise himself to make up for already knowing he was going to disappoint her again and she'd still love him anyways.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends-I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists-and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

"Don't let Alex meet her, she might eat the girl, wait, that's not a bad thing is it?" Thalia said cheerfully.

Alex let the long empty bag of chips crumple up in her hand one more time before wadding it up and throwing it at Thalia. It floated lazily through the water before a blast of icy ocean zipped it into a nearby recycling bin. Alex shrugged and pushed her green hair all to one side as she kept going, nobody missing the fact she hadn't denied the statement.

I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.

"Literally?" Will chuckled.

Son of the Sea God, Thalia had called him. Percy wasn't so sure he was joking like Thalia just was.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"

"Did I really?" He gasped as he looked again at the literal tons of water around them all. The idea he could manipulate and control something that covered half the planet should have boggled his mind a lot more, but having already spent time casually being where no man had ever dreamt of before and their surroundings doing clean up duty for them sort of pushed most of his surprise into the recycling bin too.

"You know the answer to that Percy," Thalia told him wisely.

Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see-"

"-the water-"

"-like it grabbed her-"

Percy was shaking his head from side to side as if the memory were still floating right on the edge of his mind, too elusive to grasp even now. The whispers from the ocean he'd heard all his life, the odd fact of how he'd always been able to hold his breath for so long underwater and it never bothered him, now this. Like a mist, slippery and thinning more every moment trying to lift the fog away from his childhood and show him what he must have always known to be true.

I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester.

Nico nodded to himself as if he'd been waiting for that very thing to be confirmed. Will gave him an odd look he was agreeing with the book but didn't ask.

"Now, honey-"

"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say.

"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."

I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.

"But-"

"You-will-stay-here."

Grover looked at me desperately.

"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "Now."

Nancy Bobofit smirked.

I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.

"A look I would not recommend being on the receiving end of," Thalia sighed, mock ringing out her jacket as if it were suddenly wet. Percy gave her a sort of chagrined stare, he had no idea why he'd have ever glared at her that way.

Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.

How'd she get there so fast?

Hearthstone made an exaggerated sign, more so then he'd yet done and drawing everyone's attention even before Magnus laughed for whatever that meant.

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

The pale guy with the candy cane scarf suddenly gave Percy a chagrined look and did something else, forming his hand into a fist and rubbing it against his chest.

Magnus said quickly, "he's sorry, he wasn't laughing at you, neither of us were. We were, um, commiserating."

"No problem," Percy assured. He'd spent enough time around bullies to know the difference.

Thalia suppressed her lips and fought back the urge to ask if either of them would like her to give signing a try, but both seemed to be getting along okay and she was still far more distracted taking in Jason and that odd scar on his lip to get involved with those two yet.

I wasn't so sure.

I went after Mrs. Dodds.

Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.

Everyone found that quite odd, it was obvious for even those who didn't know who Mr. Brunner really was this guy knew of their world and was looking after Percy as much as Grover. Why wouldn't he step in then, was he setting up his own sort of test? The kind a bit of chalk wasn't going to get him out of.

I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.

Jason opened his mouth, the comment on the tip of his tongue no teacher could just make that happen, let alone Alex's little lip sneer promising nobody could make her do anything as she said it, but it fell flat as they all knew that wasn't what was really going on.

But apparently that wasn't the plan.

I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...

"I get the feeling it wasn't a depiction of Hades," Nico muttered for himself, though beside him it only confirmed for Will this was not going to be pleasant, as if any monster attack ever was.

"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.

I did the safe thing.

"The first and last time you've ever done that I'm sure," Thalia tried and failed at a grin, wondering just how badly his first fight as a called-out demigod had gone. How badly was he going to get hurt, and she couldn't even mock him for it.

I said, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.

"A new torture never to be presented to your dad," Will whispered back, "this chick teaching math class for all eternity."

Nico laughed without humor, Will had no idea how close to right he was.

I said, "I'll-I'll try harder, ma'am."

Thunder shook the building.

"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

"Less pain, why isn't it ever no pain?" Magnus muttered, one too many street thugs jacking whatever meager belongings he had always said the same thing.

I didn't know what she was talking about.

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

Several of the assembled tried their best to laugh at these little moments of levity, but the joyful noise just wasn't echoing in the bottom of the abyss as Percy's expression grew more stormy by the second. The water began boiling around him as his anger and fear mounted, as if the very ocean itself was churning the pain from his head outwards for them all to see something was happening.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, I don't..."

"Your time is up," she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

"A fury," Thalia hissed in fury, her hands twitching on autopilot to draw her bow which still materialized in her hands even lounging back in a cushion made of seaweed which she managed to make look intimidating somehow.

"How on Earth did you get out of this?" Nico asked in such an awed tone of voice, so unlike the sullen and low tone he'd been using so far Percy gave him an awkward smile for the first time and Nico flushed and looked away without expecting an answer.

Alex didn't know what a fury was, but for the first time she sat in her seat proper, her mismatched eyes more focused on this threat while acknowledging for the first time there was more out there to he known than just what she'd come across so far. Perhaps the company of these strange, other children of the gods should be given some credence.

Then things got even stranger.

'Stranger than your teacher turning into a monster you say?' Hearthstone signed with an odd laugh.

'Better than the garbage guy again, that was a weird day,' Magnus signed back.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.

Thalia sighed in relief. Despite the fact Percy was sitting right next to her and obviously not twelve anymore, she'd still been trying her hardest not to dwell on the eulogy she'd been creating in her head to Annabeth already about finding Percy and then delivering his fate of being dragged to the Underworld in one sitting and Chiron showing back up helped ease that thought away.

"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.

Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.

With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword- Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.

"The first of many you received I'm sure," Will tried to tell him with a joking laugh. Boy this was one hell of a first interaction with a proper monster, one that had felled mightier demigods than an untrained child, even one of the big three.

"You have no idea," Percy agreed grimly, but it was no continued monster fight floating around his mind. Something of the idea of his mom lingered in him even now as he remembered the hateful look his teacher had given him, why he remembered recognizing such a demonic look in any human face at that age directed at him.

My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.

She snarled, "Die, honey!"

And she flew straight at me.

Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.

The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water.

Hisss!

Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.

I was alone.

There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.

Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.

Jason let out a low whistle of appreciation. "Those reflexes must be amazing."

"And he wasn't even near the ocean," Will agreed. "I'm frankly ecstatic to hear more of his adventures."

"At least somebody is," Alex grumbled, but with mildly less grief in her voice than before.

My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or some-thing.

"Only if we're all on the same stuff," Magnus shook his head.

Had I imagined the whole thing?

"Even a child of Hypnos couldn't dream up such a thing," Nico said, "or want to."

I went back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."

Alex paused like a fish had just swam into her mouth and was trying to come out backwards. She tried to unpeal pages together when there was nothing wrong with them.

"The Mist," Thalia helpfully explained. "That rain, the mortals are having their memory wiped of anything magical that just happened, like their teacher being a fury."

"Huh," she said in something as close to appreciation as she was going to show.

I said, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.

She just rolled her eyes and turned away.

I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

He said, "Who?"

"Not cool man," Will shook his head. "Why aren't he and, ah, Brunner telling him everything now that they know for sure?"

He was speaking to Thalia and Nico equally, even Percy as if hoping the water would help jog his memories but clearly still playing along as he'd obviously called him Brunner reluctantly. Neither of them had an answer for him, they'd never been saved from their contaminating knowledge that drew monsters to their presence just by the innocence of ignorance. Both had known all their life their hard fates.

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.

"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.

I went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."

I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.

"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"

He stared at me blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling alright?"

"What a way to get jackslapped from one reality into another," Alex told him while lobbing the book at him. It floated gently through the water and hovered in front of him. Percy still had a grim look on his face as he took it. There was worse in store for him in this thing, of this he knew. Half of him still wanted to demand the crabby seafoam come back and send him back to the wolf-den with Lupa and a race away from those snake-ladies. Fighting and running towards some instinctive goal was at least a task he could do, rather than this inactive reading. Annabeth, he reminded himself, and flipped to the second chapter.

PJOPJOPJOPJO

For those that have read my Reading HP series, you may already know I'm a bit of a nitpicky buthole about plot holes. That being said, I've thought long and hard about how to address them in these books, and my solution is that I'm going to just change the dialogue in the book to make it match as much as possible so the 'characters' won't question it and leave notes at the bottom of what the book text actually says. Some inconsistencies with age mostly. Because if I don't it will drive me insane, and we can't have someone cursed trying to finish this series now can we?

[paintedwarpony]

I’d love to know your thoughts on Luthic worship!

ABSOLUTELY. I would be glad to share! This is something that I started to explore as a player myself (but sadly the DM I had at the time seemed to actively discourage creativity) but then picked back up and continued to explore and expand on as a DM myself when one of my own players wanted to work up more orc-ish heritage culture for his own half-orc.

So typically the god that most orcs and half-orcs are associated with is Gruumsh the One Eye, the Ruiner, who in most instances aint a good dude. Specifically in my campaign, running in Matt Mercer's world Wildemount, Gruumsh is a Betrayer God and known to be a savage and brutal warmongerer and pillager, the orc and half-orc army under his command is cursed with equal savagery and brutality.

So two of the many brilliant things that Matt Mercer's world allows for are:

1. Races/Species historically considered monstrous or evil are given the opportunity canonically to be free of that villainous heritage

2. While there is a Prime Pantheon he built in and has made PLENTY of room for Quasi and Lesser Deities.

 

Alot of orcs and half-orcs in Wildemount turn to Kord the Storm Lord as their chosen deity, using his expectations of challenge and strength and sportsmanship as an outlet for the energy and rage thats left behind when breaking from the cursed influence of Gruumsh but I wanted more, "less aggressive" options.

So while exploring a bit about Gruumsh in older editions of D&D and orcs in the Monster Manual I came across little bits and blurbs about his "wife" Luthic. Of course in the info from the Forgotten Realms and older references she didn't have all the best traits but there was surprisingly ALOT of potential to really use Luthic as a benevolent goddess compared to the Ruiner.

Luthic is the orc goddess of home, hearth, family, fertility, wisdom, medicine and caves (and a few other less ideal things but we cherry pick because we can). Her totem is the orc rune for "home" and her animal is the cave bear/bear. She's referred to as "Cave Mother" which is the common deity name I and my player chose to refer to her by (akin to the Wildmother or the Moonweaver). She most associated with the Life and Nature domains. And while Luthic isn't particularly depicted as being soft or kind, her focus is always shifted to being protective of home and hearth, of family and to the health, prosperity and propagation of the family to carry on strong bloodlines.

Those were the biggest themes I decided to run with when it came to those that follow Luthic is their loyalty and protectiveness of their home and family clan, that orcish clans and families that follow Luthic are far more likely to produce Clerics and Paladins than more war-like classes, almost all Luthic followers have knowledge or home training in medicine and fall back of remedies readily.

Arguably Luthic is the reason half-orcs exist at all. One of the “commands” of Luthic is to go, propagate and bring strong young into the world regardless of heritage. A true goddess of fertility, Luthic doesn’t care about the parentage of children as long as they are strong and healthy. Feeding off that I made it a trait of Luthic Orcs to be far more tolerant and accepting of other Races and Species and especially accepting of individuals that are mixed races (wither orc is one of them or not). They are also far more relaxed and willing to seek partners and mates of any gender in other races and species. This makes for A LOT of diversity and mixing of culture as well as racial traits and physical attributes in Luthic Orc clans and families. In my personal campaign this is part of the reason why Luthic Orc clans thrive so well in Xhorhas and under Dynasty rule, where there is a similar mindset concerning mixed race family units and children. (The Kryn and Dynasty canonically embrace and view mixed race pairings and children as blessings and displays of genuine love). So a lot of Luthic Orc clans are made up of half-orcs of a variety of heritages and origins. The strength and bonds built within Luthic Orc clans start very early but they don’t prevent members from scattering to find their own families and places in the world but there is always a desire to eventually return, either for a visit or to knit two family groups into one. All in all this aspect of followers of Luthic make them exceptionally protective of children, their own and any they cross.

While many a villager or adventurer find themselves pleasantly surprised (or outright lucky) to find that some of the best midwives, surgeons, and healers have the surprising origins of being connected to Luthic Orcs or a Luthic Orc clan by some means, worshippers of the Cave Mother are not soft pushovers. A part of Luthic’s mythos and origins was that she was a general and great warrior of Gruumsh’s armies. While they are not the ravagers of the Ruiner’s followers nor the more aggressive tribes that follow the Storm Lord, Luthic devout orcs and half-orcs will without hesitation lay down their lives to defend their families, clans and homes. Often this protective instinct is so strong it extends to the community and/or country an individual orc or half-orc may be from and Luthic Orcs are often exceptionally fierce and revered soldiers and guardians.  

Within the campaign a few of the symbols and signs of worship of Luthic that had come up are holy symbols and totems in the form of bear claws or teeth, either left whole or carved with runes or turned into beads and charms used in any form of jewelry or ornamentation. The use of a bear pelt to accentuate or ornament clothing or armor, use of orcish runes (particularly ones meaning “cave”, “bear”, “home” and “family/clan”) are often embroidered, engraved or embossed on clothing, weaponry or armor as subtle ways to display loyalty to the Cave Mother. Simple shrines are made and often adorned with home and hand made carvings or crafts made of bone, clay, wood, stone, anything natural in the shape of a bear or a female/feminine figure representing Luthic herself. Her most holy day is the Winter Solstice and followers of Luthic gather up their families and closest friends and clan members for a long day and night of feasting around comfortable, roaring fires where familial and communal bonds are strengthened and prayers offered up for a healthy and hearty year to come and that any babes born are whole and hale (as in the more “primal” communities of orcs the winter is often considered the “mating season” as war bands and ravagers hole up in caves to ride out the worst of the winter weather).

Keeping actual bears is not common practice as bears are notoriously terrible pets and difficult to fully train and tame, though some Luthic worshippers that find themselves wandering the world as an adventurer do occasionally challenge themselves with raising a bear cub. Though any bear dens found in non-nomadic Luthic Orc territory are considered protected and to be left alone unless the animal proves to be a danger to the clan or community in some way.  

NOW that all being said I am only just starting my research into Maori culture and traditions and how I can weave it into Orcish and half-orc culture. The Maori have an extremely rich and deep culture and it has so many unique traditions and aspects. A major part of the Maori culture I intend to borrow from is the use of traditional arts. They include whakairo (carving), raranga (weaving), kapa haka (group performance), whaikōrero (oratory), and tā moko (tattoo). The patterns and characters represented record the beliefs and genealogies (whakapapa) of Māori. Tattoo especially will play in a lot into Luthic worshippers especially for clans in certain regions of (my homebrewed parts and cultures) of Wildemount that will display more diverse and influenced cultural traditions. BUT because I haven’t done all the research I want on that subject yet I will at this point refrain from commenting much further on the use of Maori cultural influence because its really important to me to get it right.

I went off on a bit of a ramble but hopefully this was informative! I’ve had a lot of fun developing this stuff for my campaign, characters and players and am glad to share it!

[monsterqueers]

New Essay Up

New essay up on the website!

props and credit to @shadowfae , whos panel on problematic sources at Othercon 2021 motivated and inspired me to write about morality differences.

Alignments - A Memory Dump Essay

Essay has also been transcribed under this readmore if thats easier to read for anyone.

Morality, in The Before, was different, in the sense that there were Allignments.

I am A Silver Dragon, from a slightly AU-ed Dungeons and Dragons world. Alignments there dictated whether you were good or evil, lawful or chaotic. You may have seen the grid around, the nine squares with things like ‘neutral good’ and ‘lawful evil’ on them. This is that.

When I say ‘good’ and ‘evil’ I mean a different concept than the behavior choices that fall into ‘doing harm’ and ‘helping people’. There were words differing between the two in dragonic, though I do not remember them now, for what I am talking about.

In this world, ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘lawful’ and ‘chaotic’ - the dragonic forms of these words, were not behavior descriptors, nor intention descriptions. They were factions, and many species simply could not choose their born faction or change it very much if they could. These factions were generally due to god interference in the creation of that species, and it meant certain magics worked or did not work against/for them or they had traits that were often seen as harmful. The correct translation for ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is more accurately ‘darkness’ and ‘light’, though lawful and chaotic are close enough to ‘things that follow order’, and ‘things that reject order’.

These alignments said very little about the behavior they exhibited or the morals they had. The dragonic word for ‘evil’ as in how people here use it to mean ‘does harm to others’ could be retranslated as ‘being an asshole’. A person aligned lawful good could regularly commit tax fraud and beat their wife, and a person who was chaotic evil could be a pacifist who gardens and is passionate about healthcare reform.

For some of the littlefolk (the Polite translated dragonic word for humans and elves and the like), this was more flexible, and generally littlefolk would not consider those who did large amounts of harm to their in-group to be good aligned, nor people who had never done harm any worse than neutral, despite this not being the case magically speaking. It could make things rather confusing when talking to the layman, as much of the littlefolk could simply choose whatever faction they liked and often could jump ship whenever they liked too.

There were other various littlefolk somewhat limited in their alignment choice however- a Drow could not be ‘good’, and Aasimir could not be ‘evil’, for example. Usually this was split down the good and evil, rather than lawful and chaotic, as the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ deities held the most active sway.

Think of it like nationality, I suppose. Its the closest equivalent. Some people can't ever gain citizenship in a country other than their country of birth even if they want to, others can do so with a bit of work.

Dragons, however, didn’t have this sort of choice. All true dragons were born a specific alignment to do with their species, and inherent instincts to follow the tenants generally professed by that faction. This is one of the major traits that separated a True -also known as Greater- Dragon from other dragonic creatures, such as fairy dragons, wyverns, and rust dragons, actually. Other dragonic creatures had some wiggle room.

Chromatic dragons were all evil aligned, Gem dragons were all neutral aligned, and Metallic dragons were all good aligned. Planar dragons, while true dragons, were another matter and their alignments were to nothing on the scale as their origin points and commitments were beyond the gods of that my former plane’s influence. Lung dragons were a type of Planar dragon in my canon, instead of their own category.

The individual species of those groupings each had a assigned further spot. A Gold Dragon was ALWAYS Lawful Good, whether they are an abhorrent entity or not, and a White Dragon was always Chaotic Evil.

The individual species were as follows(* for ones that are AU to dnd 5e canon but are true to mine):

Chaotic Evil - Red, Black, Yellow, White

Neutral Evil - Brown, Purple*, Gray

Lawful Evil - Blue, Green

Chaotic Neutral - Topaz, Crystal

True Neutral - Amber, Amethyst, Obsidian*, Prismatic

Lawful Neutral - Emerald, Sapphire

Chaotic Good - Copper, Mercury*, Brass

Neutral Good - Silver*, Iron*

Lawful Good - Gold, Bronze, Platinum*, Steel

So I was and am a Silver Dragon. Bahumat created metallic dragons with the intention of combating His sister Tiamat, who created chromatic dragons in turn. The deities of Law and Chaos- neither touched my kind deeply. We could use all magic aligned with the light or neutral powers, and none of the dark. There was little magic that was specifically aligned with order and chaos, but all of that was accessible, provided the spell was not of the shadow. Things that repelled creatures of the light could keep me out.

The more ‘good’ creatures that existed in the world in relation to ‘evil’ ones brought more and less power to Bahumat and Tiamat in their eternal fight. So long as one ‘good’ or ‘evil’ creature existed, neither god could die and they were driven to wipe each other out. The same could be said of the law and chaos deities.

Of my life, the beginning is murky. Once I was grown enough to roam, I first Adventured with a elven rider companion and then lived upon a mountain lair until my death. Towards the middle and latter end, the towns at its base paid me rites and respect for my guardianship. These rites did technically elevate me to a minor god* capable of working greater magic. I also had a village much closer to and in my lair, one where I took those who asked my asylum who perhaps needed greater safety or guidance.

I would defend my territory and would help those who asked. It was a good life, and I hold little to no exotrauma from it.

*not to be confused with Greater gods, which are what effect Alignment or embody big concepts, minor gods are just those who are Believed in by enough people- and thus given power from that collective Belief

The divide between what was and what is is deeper and more shallow that one would expect, all at once.

I’ve started tentatively identifying as a walk-in relatively recently, my selfhood simply showed up one day and the original, whos interests, opinions, demeanor, and identity was different than mine disappeared shortly thereafter. The system has many theories on how exactly this happened, the origins thus such, and how much of the original’s ego was made into me, and also exactly when. The transition was rather seamless and there was much brain weirdness to muddle it all and convince me that I have always been here. None of us know the answer, and it generally doesn’t matter in practice.

The experiences of the original that I inherited gave a large amount of distance to this life. For reference, I Awakened as a Silver Dragon ~2014 perhaps 2015 -time is muddy- or so- having finally put together all the noema and shifts and assorted feelings that were not my cat theriotype into what they were. I had been in the body for a good handful of years previous to that, however. It gives me a distance from that life. My memories and retained selfhood from that life are dull- a botched reincarnation. I remember just enough- I experience just enough bleedover that it upholds a pillar of my identity and I still identify as the being of that life, but not so much I am exactly as-is.

I want to do a little disclaimer- The statement that this definitively IS a past life and I AM a walk in and these ARE memories of a past life is a theory, not fact. I do not and cannot know if my theory is right, and I have a healthy dose of skepticism in regards to this. My experiences could be sourced to many things, however I experience my draconity in a fashion that is similar to how others describe their past life experiences. It fits accounts better than the accounts of people who are not past-life otherkin. It feels right to describe these experiences as such, and so I do. Perhaps one day my understanding of this may change, but for now it is as such.

Returning to the topic at hand; its a point of frustration to me almost to the point of dysphoria, how good and evil, and moral and immoral are used in society here and how. Good and evil denote both the ingroup-outgroup AND the moral standard, equating sinful with strange with harmful behavior. Evil no longer means ‘entity supporting or created by Tiamat’- who is night and shadow. Good no longer means ‘entity supporting or created by Bahumat’- who is day and light.

The congruence of good with helping and evil with harming is far more intense here, Bahumat and Tiamat as I know them hold no power here- as they shouldn’t. Their place was in my old reality and that is as far as those entities reach. The assignment of moral values to enjoyment of a thing or thoughts, rather than actions is wholly new, and honestly quite unpleasant.

Evil here, becomes ‘entity that enjoys harming’ and often ‘anyone I don’t like’

Good here them also becomes ‘entity that enjoys helping’ and often ‘anyone I do like’

There will be people who insist to ignore people that do that last part and claim that it doesn’t matter- that the social realities of how others assign you do not matter, but I disagree.

Being queer, kinky, mentally ill, neurodivergent, disabled, and a strong leftist among other things means people will think me evil for existing quite a bit. Stigmatized minorities are othered, our traits become evil no matter how kind we may be.

Society calls us evil, has designated us evil- alright, how is this a bad thing?

Disassociating Evil from moral allows one to reclaim Evil. Ok, we are Evil now, but oh, no less kind. No less caring. Take the words slung at you and make armor out of them.

And also no matter how kind you may be, by this metric if you enjoy causing pain and destruction, you are evil.

This… is a thoughtcrime thing. No matter how you conduct yourself in life, if you enjoy pain you are evil to society at large. So as above, unlink Evil from Moral, and it is reclaimable.

How people assign you is a material reality you can choose to make hold no power over you. You can make it your own scales.

It is for the reason of words changing meanings, of the fact that my god I was born to does not reach here and thus frees me from obligations, that I no longer identify as Neutral Good. It simply does not mean the same thing anymore and I can now choose my alignment besides. Bahumat was no terrible god to serve or anything, but I would have appreciated the choice if it was not hardwired into my dragon brain at the time to be devoted to such a being.

I take joy in harm and at the same time take joy in helping, I think the absence of care of society is not something I can do, nor do I think rigid obedience is right.

Thus I would consider myself in the alignments of this world today as True Neutral.

Not to mention I have chosen the service of a True Neutral god in Cernunnos, so by my former world’s standards I am True Neutral now as well.

It feels right, to identify as such now. Society considers me evil enough I am too sin-stained to be good, but I have too much love of creation and helping to be wholly evil.

I believe that rules are necessary or we get Situations that cause harm to others, but at the same time am too Anarchist-leaning to not chafe under absolute order.

Still, the... Dissatisfaction with how people use alignments here persists.

[olivyh]

Into Wonderland Chapter 3: Octavinelle Part One-

Does anyone know how to do a dropdown thing? I feel bad about these posts filling up a chunk of the tag ;;;; Also sorry for the spam! I’m trying to publish what I already have done so I can finish it quickly!

They choke on sand that fills their mouth, sputtering and coughing as they gag. Seagulls screech ahead, diving into the water that crashes just a few feet short of their feet. Mc groans, rubbing their head as they look around. They seem to be at the bottom of a rocky cliff, at a beach.

About as far from the Savanah they'd been since they got there. They stand and look around frantically. Dread filling their gut as tears prick at their eyes.

"Nonono-" They mutter, pulling at the tunic they were gifted by Leona just hours ago. "Leona!" They yell, choking on their tears. This can't be happening again- They think hopelessly. "Jack!" They scream, running along the shoreline, hoping to find a way to get on top of the cliff, hopefully they'd see all the beastmen standing there and scolding them for doing something stupid again and- I'm never going to see them again. It's just like what happened in Wonderland. "Ruggie!" They choke out with a harsh sob.

"Ten years!" They yell to nobody in particular, hoping that whatever deity that keeps doing this to them will hear and start counting their days. "Ten fucking years! I was only in Wonderland for a day and a half! But ten years?!" They groan, doubling over and letting all their emotions out via screaming at seagulls, the ocean, and an unfortunate crab that might crawl by.

"Hey-" They gasp hearing a teenage boy's voice behind them. They jolt, Savanah instincts kicking in and making them accidentally bitch slap the blue haired boy.

"Oh my gosh I'm so so sorry-" They run over to the boy, who nurses his red cheek with his hand, wincing. "I'm just lost and something happened and I woke up here- Deuce?"

Laughing sounds from the top of the shore bank, and the two of them look up to see a redhead boy laughing to the point of tears and pointing at the blue haired boy. "Ace?"

That makes both of them stop in their tracks. "How do you know my name?" Right, world switching logic.

"Uhh- I knew someone back where I'm from with the same name and you look alike-" They decided to leave out the part where they both had rabbit ears.

"Right..." Deuce interjects. "Anyways. I'm Prince Deuce Spade and this is my advisor, Ace Trappola-"

"Oh my god I just slapped a prince-" They gasped, hands flying to their mouth. Ace laughs.

"Eh kinda helped me out there. You have no idea how many times I want to hit this guy but I can't-" Barking interrupts him from going on any longer. They turn their attention to a white wolf standing on the bank. Is that-

"Oh! And that's Jack!" Deuce introduces them. "Normally we're not allowed to have pets at the castle but I found him when he was a pup and took him in-"

"Thats because you don't have to clean up after him-" Ace mutters.

"Jack..." They smile, glad to at least see a form of their companion of the Savanah. Thinking of the beastmen feels like a knife to their chest and they gasp, tears trickling down their face.

"Hey! Hey!" Deuce is at their side in an instant as they apologize and wipe at their eyes with the backs of their hands. "What's the matter? Did- Did we say something?"

They shake their head. "It's not- it's not that. I just- I'm from really far away and I- I might never see my friends again, at least not for a long while," Jack walks up to them and nudges against their leg, allowing them to pet behind his fluffy ears. They laugh weakly, more tears streaming down their face at the familiarity.

"Jack reminds me a lot of one of my friends so I guess that got me-"

Ace and Deuce stare in shock, Deuce being knocked out of his trance before the former. "I-I'm so sorry-" He stammers before pausing for a moment.

"Hey, why don't you come with us on a trip?"

"What?!" Ace shouts.

"They're clearly upset about being away from their friends!" He defends the stranger. "Besides, we're going to see the neighboring islands and they might know something about where they're from-"

"But it's a stranger! They could try to kill you!" Ace groans.

"Jack trusts them-" He points to the dog, who still happily accepts Mc's head pats, bushy tail wagging behind him.

"He's a dog!" Ace groans as Deuce leads them across the beach. They walk for what feels like forever with the two bickering next to them, until they hit a dock with a giant ship floating at the end.

"This thing is huge..." They gasp in awe, almost tripping over their own two feet as they ascend on to the ship.

"Of course. It's a royal vessel-" Jack runs ahead of them. They talk for a bit, finally setting sail and going on their long awaited journey.

What happens if I do find them? Mc asks themselves, doubting their own hope. I hope they're okay, I mean- Leona almost died! They go on with their worried about their friends, replaying those last moments over and over in their head until it spins.

Until they hear a wet smack and a pained groan from the side of the ship.

"Ow!" A boys voice yelps from the side. Mc rushes over, leaning over the railing and making eye contact with the redheaded boy who clings to the side of the ship, his sea green tail flopping uselessly against the harsh winds of the ocean.

"You're-" They gape.

He lets out another yelp, slowly turning. His worried sky blue eyes crinkle as he offers a nervous smile. "I'm- I'm sorry! I shouldn't be here y'know maybe I shouldn't be talking at all I should be gone by now-" He rambles until Mc cuts him off, sitting with their back to him.

"Don't worry I won't rat you out-" They try to joke. "I'm just curious."

"Oh! I'm curious too!" As the boy says that his eyes trail over to the navy haired boy, who laughs and dances with the other teens on board. Jack sits across the deck, ever watchful eyes keeping track of anyone who might look suspicious.

"Of... Deuce?"

"Is that his name?" The boy sighs. Mc nods, looking between the two. "Name... Oh! I'm Rielle!" The boy extends a cold hand towards Mc, who hesitantly shakes it, careful of the soft webbing between each finger.

"Mc." They nod, looking at the boy.

"Hey uh.. quick question-" Mc starts. The boy turns his attention to them once more, tiktong his head. "Are there... eel... uhh..."

"Eel mers?" Rielle finishes.

They nod vigorously. "Yes!"

"Well... there's mers of every kind I guess. It's hard to find a strictly eel mer... or a mer of just one species for one!"

"What do you mean?"

"Most mer, like myself, are mixed so much that our tails rarely match up with one species of fish. Though, if you live in an area with a lot of sharkmer you'll probably find a pureblooded sharkmer, a place with a lot of cecaelia you'll find a lot of octomer-" The boy pauses, beaming. "I'm glad I remembered all that from those boring lessons-"

"Oh-" Mc starts, unsure of what to do with all the information they just received.

"Why do you ask?"

"J-just curious-" If they could avoid it, they'd like to stay out of the way of the twins they'd met back in Wonderland.

"Oh okay!" The boy chirps, going back to watching the humans dance on the wooden deck. "Can I ask you a question?" He whispers, voice soft.

"Yeah?"

"What's it like to dance? Or to walk or to-" The boy stammers a bit before sighing.

"Well it's-" They're cut off by a sharp jolt of the ship. On instinct they reach down and hold on to Rielle's forearm, the little bit of slime and small scales making it hard to grasp.

"I'll be fine!" He yells up after the ship screams and threatens to crack. Thunder booms overhead as it rocks and Mc slams against the railing, falling with the mer into the icy water. They let out a scream at the shock of the cold, choking on the water. Rielle grabs their arm and pulls them to a piece of driftwood. They can see the ship on fire out of the corner of their eyes, hazy with smoke and probably the concussion they had from hitting the water at that height. They can hear Deuce yelling, followed by Jack's pained yelps from the burning ship.

The last thing they see before they black out is Deuce throwing Jack off the ship into a lifeboat before plummeting to the sea, to where Rielle's fiery red hair waited just under the surface.

They wake up to a claw poking their cheek. "Hey-!" The claw pokes harder. "Ne- Jade- I think they croaked-"

"Nonsense. They're alive. Look, their tail is moving."

"Hey!" They get a firm smack to the forehead. They gasp and jolt awake, their forehead smacking the one hovering over theirs. The boy yelps and swims back. "Hey! What did ya do that for?!"

"I'm sorr-" They rub their own forehead and look over to see the same pairs of mismatched eyes that haunted their dreams of Wonderland. Really, universe?

"Oh, I'm glad to see your awake-" The softer twin steps forward. "How are you feeling?"

"Good I think-" The go to swing their legs over the ledge of the rock they were laying on, only to find it difficult to separate them. A tail swishes to the side where their legs should be and look down in horror to see that it had replaced them.

"What?!" They shriek, patting at the tail with their hands. Their hands also look discolored, now set with claws and thin webs between their fingers. They gasp and feel water rush in from the sides of their neck.

The twins watch in amusement, with Floyd laughing hysterically and Jade grinning behind his hand. "I hope you don't mind but we took the liberty of testing out a new potion on you. It's rare to get a human specimen around here. I do hope you understand-"

"I- a- po- Specimen!?" They yelp, hitting their head against the roof of the cave as they try to swim with their new tail. They try to stand upright but end up smacking both twins, making them both laugh again.

The human- well, used to be human- hides their face in the hands, humiliation kicking in. "Please stop-"

"Nope~!" Floyd laughs, circling Mc until his tail was tightly wrapped around theirs. His arms wrap around their throat, covering their gills. They try to shimmy out of his grip but end up making him squeeze them tighter instead.

"Can't-" They choke out. "Breathe-"

"Floyd." Jade warns. The other boy pouts but lets them go, not before giving them another rib crushing hug.

"I can't help it! They're so squishy in their new form! They look like a little minnow ready for me to sink my teeth into-" He lets out a high pitched giggle and chills run down their spine.

"We won't eat you, right, Floyd?" The calmer twin swims towards Mc, who still struggles to swim upright to look him in the eyes.

The other twin lets out a long, pained groan and rolls his eyes dramatically. "Riiiight-" He grunts as he flops into a bed of seaweed. "'Zul's orders-"

"Zul?" Mc asks.

"Azul Ashengrotto. The man who made your potion and now, your new boss."

"Boss?!" They yelp. "I never agreed to anything of that sort!"

"Hm? I thought it was fair." Jade hums, grabbing their arms and making them stand upright, moving their tail manually until they can swim straight.

"I mean, ya get to live after that shipwreck, and you get a free potion too-" Floyd begins.

"So it's only fair that you work with us." Jade finishes his twins sentence. Mc sputters and follows them as they leave the cave, swimming haphazardly through the open waters and ducking between large rocks and fish. Floyd practically crushes Mc with how tightly he holds them so they won't run off or swim into something else.

"B-but Rielle was going to save me! He told me to-"

"Rielle?" Floyd interrupts them, making them grumble and wriggle a bit in the eels hold. "Hey, Jade, why does that sound familiar?"

The other twin merely chuckles. "Thats the boy Azul was helping earlier-"

"Helping?" Mc asks. "What happened? Is he okay?"

"Oh he's just great~!" Floyd giggles. "Came into 'Zul's office all lovey dovey and traded his tail and voice for legs!"

"Oh..." Mc sighs. "He did ask me before what it was like to dance-"

"Before?" Jade asks. "This is interesting."

"Mhm!" Floyd laughs as they approach the shoreline. The surface of the water is clearly visible now, and they can see something floating above them. They can see other fish twirling around the boat as if dancing, and soft humming coming from the boat above.

"Floyd." Jade instructs.

[dartiri11]

Since the Beginning of your World

Hey Guys! This is a little special on my channel. So its a onepart. Its about the history of the Fierce Deity. In my fic it will have the name Kishin but thats not my idea! I love the name but i didnt create it. Well the Deitys history is a mystery no one can really solve. So i made my own story! I hope you like it. And ps: Horror Kid and Taya are still better names than Skull Kid and Tatl!

Warnings: Blood, pain and aaaaall the creepy stuff from Majoras mask :)

Was it over? He didn’t feel it anymore. He just felt pain. But not the pain he felt when it started. The pain he felt was a relaxing one. His throat hurt so much from screaming. Link tried to open his eyes but they shut again automatically. He tried once again and saw the bright sunlight. It burned in his face. Specially at his forehead and his cheeks. No, that wasn’t the sun. It was something different. But what?

Link tried to say something but only a silent groan came out of his mouth. When he looked around he saw a silhouette sitting infront of him. He was scared and wanted to run away, but his body hurt too much. Especially his shoulder. He felt blood running down his left arm. Link just lay there breathing. Completly exhausted.

He stared at the person who was sitting there. Is was the Happy-Mask-Salesman. He was holding something. It was purple with colorful spikes and freaking big eyes. Then his memories came back.

He was fighting inside the moon with a horrifying creature named Majora. He was loosing. The creature had its tentacles around him and choke him. It threw Link away like he was nothing. The Hero of Time was laying there as good as dead. In his last power he pulled out the mask he got a few moments before and put it on. Suddenly a deep pain ran through his body and he was screaming. Link never felt a pain like that. At that moment he felt like he was dying over and over again. It was so painful. But in the whole pain he felt power too. A power like the pain. New. A new expierience he never had before. And the young hero had seen a lot of things.

He could see nothing. Only white. But why white? A tall figure appeared infront of him. He looked like a knight. But much scarier. He had blue and red markings on his face. And white hair. The figure also had a tunic a bit like his own. Not in green, in white. Around the tunic was a shiny armour. On his back the man carried a huge sword and when he slowly came closer, Link tried to step back. But in his exhaustion he couldn’t keep his self and fell back down.

The person came closer.

And closer.

And closer.

Until he stood really infront of him. Link could see his eyes. There was nothing in his eyes. They were empty.

He was so scared. So he put his hands protecting infront of his face in fear he would die every moment. Where was Taya? Where was Navi? And where the hell even was Link?! He was alone in here. Alone with the scary person wich would kill him now.

But nothing happened. He looked at the person and saw a hand infront of his face. The hand probably was five times bigger than his own. The man was just standing there. Reaching for Links hand. He slowly put his hand into the mans and he pulled him up from the ground.

Now they were standing there hand in hand. Then the man started to talk. His voice was so strong and sounded not really human. It echoed like a ghosts voice.

"Lets beat this demon together, my child"

But then his memories clicked out.

It was over. Whatever happened, he defeated Majora. He tried to sit up and rubbed his head. His face was still burning but it was weaker than before.

"What happened...?" He asked tired and confused.

Then a fairy rushed over to him when it heared his voice. "Link! You finally woke up! I was so worried about you!"

He couldn’t belive his eyes or eares. "N-Navi?!" But with a short look his dream broke and turned into disappointment. Anyway he was happy Taya was at least there for him. Navi just left him...

No! He couldn’t think about Navi that way! She was Links partner and best friend. It hurt when she left him after their adventure. Like the others. He felt tears silently running down his face.

"Link? Are you okay? And who is Navi?" Taya asked and flew a bit closer to him.

He hastily wiped his teares away and tried to smile at Taya. "Nothing. Im fine, Taya."

"Ok? If you say that? Anyway, after you put on that mask, you grew and turned into a huge guy. And man, you fought that beast like a god. And i was not afraid! I fought on your side! Yeah... enough of my braveness. We saved everyone!"

The moon over the Clock Town was gone and all the people were save. He did it.

Link suddenly heared a quiet sobbing. "Im sorry. Im so sorry, Tael and Taya. I was a terrible friend, but you never left me! I can understand if you dont want to be my friends anymore..." a little Horror Kid cried.

Another Fairy appeared next to Taya. A black one. "Comon Sis, we should forgive him. He didn’t-"

"After all he did? He almost destroyed the whole country and if we hadn’t stopped him, hundrets of people would be dead!" Taya said angry, what made Horror Kid let his head hang down sadly.

"But that wasn’t really him. It was the mask! You know him. Horror Kid just wants to play. Dont be so strict, Sister." Tael said and Taya sighned.

The both fairies flew slowly over to the weeping Horror Kid. He hugged his friends and really started cry. For a few moments Link was just sitting there, watching them. He felt happy and sad at the same time, because it reminded him at Navi. Horror Kid calmed down a bit and let go his fairies from his tight hug.

"Lets go back into the woods. Then i can show you my home." He said to his friends. Horror Kid then looked at Link and almost flinched. "Thank you for stopping that creepy mask and saving me." The little woodcreature smiled. "You remind me at someone. Are you Kokiri?"

Link hastily shook his head. He wasn’t a Kokiri. Not anymore. Well he has never been. And he hated to think about it. Ok since his first adventure, he hated to think about everything that had something to do with his "home".

Taya came back to Link. "I think that means our goodbye. I- It was- Thank you Link." He just smiled.

The young hero decided to continue the search for Navi in the woods. It was late and he noticed Epona was tired, so they made camp. She looked so adorable when his little horse was sleeping. She moved in sleep a bit more than usual. But Link couldn’t blame her. The last three days were horrifying to Epona too.

At least his horse had a bit sleep. In that night he didn’t close an eye. He just sat there staring in the dancing flames of the campfire ignoring the pain in his shoulder. It was a deep bite. Whatever bit him there was huge. The for others scary sounds in the woods remembered him at all the nights he couldn’t sleep like now and played then hide and seek with his friends in the dark forest. But then a voice broke the silence.

"You are broken. What is it?"

He jumped back and looked around. "W-Who is there?" He slowly reached for his sword.

It was silent again. Epona just turn on her back with a soft snoring. Was that real? Or was he just so tired?

"Dont be afraid. I won’t hurt you."

When the voice appeared again, a low shine came out of his bag, wich was laying beside the campfire.

He slowly went towarts to it and carefully opened it. There were only his masks and other items.

"What are you waiting for? Take me out."

The shine and the voice came again. He dropped the bag and steped back. A few masks landed on the ground. Among them a glowing one. It was the scary one with the marks and the white hair. Was the huge man talking to Link?

It lost its shine and he picked it up. "Uhm... Hello?" He asked the mask suspicious.

"Hello, my child. I was waiting for you since the beginning of your world."

"Who are you?"

"I can tell you if you want."

Link looked at Epona. She was still sleeping like a rock. He sat on the ground and looked at the mask in his hands. Everytime it talked it started glowing.

"Ok? What do you mean with 'since the beginning of your world'? How old are you? Wait, and why do you call me 'my child'? That sounds stupid!"

"My name is Kishin and you already met Majora, right?"

He shook his body a bit as he thought about the creepy demon-mask. He just nodded and Kishin started telling a story Link would never have guessed.

"Once apon a time there were three godesses in the middle of nowhere. They had a plan together. To create live.

The three friends planned and laughed with each other. Until a universe was originated. The universe was empty yet. And they wanted to change that.

One of that three godesses was Hylia. Well i think you at least know her, right? Good, but im sure you dont know the others. Well the second one was Majora himself. And I, Kishin also known as the Fierce Deity, was the third one."

"Wait, Wait. Wait! That thing in the moon, WAS A GODESS LIKE HYLIA?!"

"You didn’t let me finish."

"Ok sorry, continue."

"Hylia was always the nice one of us. Majora was the absolute oppusite. He was more childish and cunning but he always made us laugh. I always knew how annoying he could be but Majora always has been our friend. He always called me a grump after he annoyed me a bit too much and i stopped him.

When we all started with our main world we planned for the universe, we gave our best to make the world so beautiful we can. Majora made all the dirt, rocks and fire. Hylia made all the coloures, air and water. And I made the spirits, feelings and lifes. A land was built piece for piece.

But how sad it was we never had the chance to finish like we planed. Then Majora loved the world we were creating together and wanted to have it for himself. But at that time he hid it and pushed that thought away.

Then, when Hylia was helping me designing a special species with technical skills, it happened. Majora just wanted to help me too but i didn’t want a guy like him designing the humans. He was my friend but i didn’t really trust him. He was sad and angry now. We were a lot arguing and the construction of that world was interrupted. A simple dispute turned into a real fight.

I fought with my sword and Majora with something he called Dark Magic. One of his crazy inventions. Hylia always held herself out of our problems, but this time she begged us to stop and just wanted to save her friends. But in his anger Majora attacked Hylia and i tried to block it. She was alright but i got deathly injured.

The shock to hurt a friend so bad let his power grow. He couldn’t control it anymore and his mind broke. My best friend turned right before my dying eyes into a demon. I knew that wasn’t Majora anymore. With my last power i grabbed my sword and killed it to protect Hylia. The last thing i feeled in my own body were tears running down my face and my friends blood burning on my skin."

"Whoaaaaa! Thats deep! What happened next?! Wait, do you even know that? Why can you know what happenes next?"

"Im a dead god."

"Ok that makes sense..."

"Would you please let me finish?!"

"Ok, sorry. Im just a bit disturbed that the thing that threw me against a wall was a dead god."

"Anyway, after her friends died, Hylia was very sad and missed us. And to save our souls she banned us into masks. And our little projekt? She couldn’t make it alone so Hylia created three other godesses to finish the world and create the things she couldn’t do alone. She called them Farore, Din and Nayru. They should show Courage, Power and Wisdom.

When it was finally done she called it 'Hyrule' and she also planted the humans i made but never had the chance to make them real. I don’t know why but Hylia sometimes does something i cant understand. She reincarnates us.

I think she sometimes creates a great evil and someone who can kill it, to see the evil fail. One of that evils is called Ganon. And dont freak out Link! The one to slay it... are you-"

Everything froze for Link and he felt tears well ing up in his eyes. He knew it. The Hero of Time was just another figure in nothing else than a game.

"NO!!! I won’t do this all anymore! JUST LET ME GO!!!"

He threw the mask in his hands onto the ground before it could even answer and started running. Running, just running. It was all he could do at the moment. He ran deeper into the woods.

It was cold, and he felt the cool nightair blowing into his face. The tears in his face felt freezing while he rushed through the forest. The woods used to be his home, but at the moment they were scary.

He was still running, until a root stopped him. Link fell with his face to the ground. He kneeled up and felt a tear falling down his face. One tear bacame two tears. He started sobbing. He felt all the pain and loss coming again and he cried it all out. He cird for Navi, for Taya, for all the people he saw dying infront of his eyes and for all the creepy things he saw ripping his soul out of his body. But most of all he cried for himself.

The deep night got colder and he started trembling. But that didn’t matter. He deserved it. He couldn’t save Darmani or Mikau or even the dekubutlers son. Or all the people of Termina. Link saw all of them die often enough. He was just a useless failure.

But suddenly he felt arms around him and his trembling got stronger. "Its ok kid. Everything is okay. You’re save." He looked up and saw the person that held him. It was Kishin.

-----

He knew the story would be confusing, but Kishin told him too much. The kid stood up and threw him away. Link shouted at him and ran away into the woods. He tried to stop him but the kid already was too far away. Damn mask! He couldn’t move!

His mask lay now directly next to Links little horse. It was awaken by his shouts and was now looking into the direction where the kid dissapeared. It was asking its self if it should follow its friend.

The foal didn’t notice the mask laying next to it. Maybe... well it was his only chance.

He started shouting and yelling at the horse. And it jumped up and neighed scared. The horse started kicking around and stood at the glowing mask. Yes! Finally!

The Fierce Deitys Mask broke and he felt free. Kishins vision grew. He looked at his self and couldn’t believe his stupid plan really worked. He wasn’t sealed anymore. He had a body!

The tiny horse infront of him looked afraid at him and ran away into the forest as well. He would get it back later but at first he had to find the kid.

He rushed away from the camp into the darkness. It felt amzing to run with his own feet. He stopped when he heared a small whimper and looked around. Kishin found the little kid kneeling on the ground. He was trembling and brokenly sobbing. Kishins heart hurt when he saw him like that in the creepy cold forest.

He came closer to Link and kneeled down next to him. The kid seemed he didn’t noticed the huge man sitting next to him. Kishin wrapped his arms around him and pulled the boy closer to him.

The Hero of Time tried to fight against something he hoped he never had to see again. His brother. And the next to Majora tiny child wouldn’t win. Link was a good fighter, but nothing against that deamons torture. Majora could have killed him with one hit, but he was defenitly playing with his victim. That really looked like his brother. But more violently. Kishin tried to help the kid but he had no chance. He was trapped in this mask. He couldn’t even speak to him. When the child was almost defeated he finally pulled out his mask. Finally! He could help him! Link put on the mask.

The kid was in his mask as well. His forestgreen tunic stained with blood. He looked scared. Kishin helped him up and tried not to seem terrifying. "Lets beat this deamon together, my child." He said and Kishin felt power and freedom in him. His vision vanished and appeared on Majora again. He stood up and got the Helix-Sword from his back.

"Kiii.......shiiin...." The creature infront of him hissed. It stood there ready to fight. Where should have been hands, there were long tentacles. They were colourful like its whole body. The deamon used them like whips.

Before he got...that... Majora used whips as well. Like Kishin had his sword, or Hylia had her bow. He also had a trident. But it was just his second weapon. Majoras trident was far faster than Kishins sword but it was less powerful. To his luck, the savage beast that was once called his brother didnt show to have a trident. Just whips.

On its chest was a colourful symbol of two terrifying eyes staring at him. Around the eyes there were markings. The same markings Majora had in his face. Evey god has markings. He had red and blue stripes. Even Hylia has markings in her face. Under her eyes were some things similar to wings. He even made her a gift. He created a animal wich should be the symbol of her markings. She loved it an called it a 'Loftwing'. Kishin would never forget her beautyful face. And he could never ever forget Majoras true identity. How he was before...before Kishin ruined everything.

He looked at Majoras awful appearence and felt his heart hurt. 'Its all my fault' he thought.

"Never...thought to see...you-" Kishin saw Majora charging and made himself ready to jump away. "-AGAIN!" Majora attacked with one of his whips but Kishin could dodge it.

"That isn’t you, Majora! I know it! Please!" He begged. But Majora didn’t answer him and awfully screeched at him. The dead deity didn’t care but suddenly felt the kids body flinch. He started running towarts Majora and jumped at him. Kishin rose his Sword and tried to hit the creature. But Majora blocked him perfectly and hurled one of his whipes at his former brother. The whip hit Kishin and wrapped itself around his ankle. The deamon god threw him through the whole room, or moon, he didn’t knew exactly. He violently hit the wall.

Kishin stood up and picked up his sword again. 'I hope the kid is alright...' he thought. He stormed to him again and dodged the whipes coming towarts to him. Kishin waited for the next whip trying to hit him and cut it off. Majora screamed and they both looked at each other. Exhausted and fierce at the same time.

"Why...why did you do that all? Why did you enter Termina? And why do you want to destroy it?!" He asked the deamon in rage.

The only response was a screech. But it this time sounded like laughter. Majora was laughing at him. Ignoring the blood running down his body and falling onto the offcutted piece of his left whip laying on the ground. Then he bagan to speak. "My original...plan.....to destroy....what created!" More screeching laughter was to hear and a wide grin appeared on his friends face. "I...created world and moon...want them see...destroying...EACH OTHER!" Majora jumped at him again. This time it was more unexpected. But he dodged it again. "Hyrule...to well protected...Horror Kid...to weak..." Majoras breathing was loud and strong, but it was ratteling too. "Hylia knew...would destroy...her loved Hyrule...Pathetic! Brought Horror Kid...my mask to Termina....also courage and you...to KILL ME!" Majora yelled at him in rage but he didnt attack.

"Courage? You mean the kid?"

The deamon stared at him and a wide grin rose on his face. "Kid? You...like it?"

Kishin froze. He said too much, but he tried to stay cool. The savage deamon shouldn’t know his weakness. Useless. Majora already knew.

The beast sprinted towards him and threw his one whip at Kishin. He dodged it and was ready to attack his brother. But the creature threw his whip again. And the Fierce Deity was too slow this time.

The whip wrapped itself around his shoulders and choke him. He couldn’t move. With his only weapon left now, Majora dug his sharp large teeth into Kishins shoulder. He screemed without even noticing it. Kishin himself didn’t feel the pain, but he felt the kid feeling it. That was enough to make his heart hurt. Well if a dead god could have a heart.

Kishin tried to swing his sword but could barely move. The small move he was able to do was enough to cut off Majoras other whip. The creature screeched and let go of his shoulder. The god used his chance and rose his sword. It slided through the coulorful flesh of Majoras chest. His last scream was fierce and screeching. It almost hurt in Kishins or the kids ears.

Majora sunk to his knees and his screaming stopped until everything that was to hear was exhausted breathing. Coming from both of them.

"You...know......you’re........weak..............to...weak....but.......although...you’re..............weaker.....than...me..you....always.......manage....it....to................protect......someone...............h-how?!" Majora said with exhaution in his voice.

It hurt to see his brother like that. "Because i don’t want to hurt anyone. But you hurt the kid. And the kid also just wanted to protect the people." He said cold as ice but a part of him knew that he was failing to seem cold.

Majora rose his head to look into his brothers face. "Thank.........you........" he said with a diffrent, clear vioce. Less demonic. Everything froze for Kishin. The look Majora gave him was warm. Well as warm as a savage deamon could be. That was not the deamon he fought. That was his brother.

Kishin wanted to help him but in that moment everything began to shake and Majoras body started to glow.

The room vanished and he started falling. The whole started spinning until he hit the ground.

"Its ok kid. Everything is okay. You’re save. You have gone through enough for now." He said and felt the child trembling in the cold of the deep night

[heroquills-a]

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 / 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒.

Tagged by: @team-phantom​ Tagging: @masterprotector​ @skyfcx​ @powderbluestreaks​ @rosehammcr​ @heartfelt-silver​ @lightdash​ @umbrrage​ @fishing-purple-cat​

𝒃𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒄𝒔.

name: Sonic the Hedgehog! nickname: The Fastest Thing Alive, The Blue Blur, Blue Wind, Pincushion, Rat, Faker, Sonny, Sonny-Boy age: early 20s species. mobian hedgehog

𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍.

morality: chaotic good religion: sonic has a weird relationship with religion. he knows supernatural deities exist and respects them, and has even come to befriend a couple of them. but he doesn’t necessarily pray to them or look to religion for guidance. he follows his own path and his own light. sins: greed ⁄ gluttony ⁄ sloth ⁄ lust ⁄ pride ⁄ envy ⁄ wrath virtues: chastity ⁄ charity ⁄ diligence ⁄ humility ⁄ kindness ⁄ patience ⁄ justice known languages: english, sign language, vague bits and pieces languages he picked up from his travels around the world.

𝒑𝒉𝒚𝒔𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍.

build: scrawny ⁄ bony ⁄ slender ⁄ fit ⁄ athletic ⁄ curvy ⁄ herculean ⁄ pudgy ⁄ average height: 3′3 and a half scars ⁄ birthmarks: small nicks on his chest patch, arms, muzzle, feet, and his right ear.  abilities ⁄ powers:  Super speed with a huge variety of speed, wind, and air based attacks and moves. Sharp, powerful quills, excellent hand to hand combat skills, lightning fast reflexes, and is acutely sensitive to chaos energy. restrictions: relies on range and the ability to move, vulnerable without rings, susceptible to injury,  what he makes up in speed he lacks in brute strength, wild attention span 

𝒇𝒂𝒗𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒔.

food: chillidogs, sushi / sea food, raspberries, cherries pizza topping: everything. dessert: any kind of pie but fruit pie especially color: red, neon  music genre: rock and metal (both classic and modern), and any song of any genre thats upbeat fun and catchy movie genre: action, comedy, horror curse word: shit

𝒇𝒖𝒏 𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒇𝒇.

favorite song: into the wind - crush 40  hobby: adventuring, running and parkour, playing guitar, break dancing, videogames sings in the shower: absolutely. likes puns: of course!

[hasty-touch]

33. Does your character respect nature, or would they stomp on it if it meant their benefit?

For “FFXIV deity asks” meme!

This one you’ve picked is, I think, particularly interesting, especially for Rosaire.

Pretty much all my characters love and/or respect nature to some degree. Some (Viviko) do so in a more sentimentalized, naive way, where “loving nature” means loving birds and flowers and vistas without really understanding the breadth, complexity, and danger that nature contains. Some (Hyacinthe, Mrhael, etc.) understand well that danger and darkness, that civilization and nature struggle against each other, but still respect it and believe in the importance of living harmoniously with it (because that is in civilization’s best interests). Some (Valroit) similarly understand that nature is harsh and cruel, but also see in it the sublime and beautiful, and that nurture, kindness, and creativity exist in nature too – and so love and honor it, and believe earnestly in growing civilization together with nature in the least harmful, most mutually beneficial way. Across this diversity of beliefs, none of them would really feel right about heedlessly exploiting and harming nature. Even those who are pretty OK with the exploitation of nature, out of self-interest and/or belief that it is Spoken’s Twelve-given right to enjoy nature’s bounties (i.e. Denisot), still care about preserving it for future generations, which means respecting an ecosystem’s balance (even if the character might not have the vocabulary to say that with sophistication).

Besides Rosaire, Kharadai probably has the most developed and interesting view of nature – along the lines of, “nature vs. civilization is a false dichotomy, every being is a part of the world and simultaneously in harmony and discord with other beings.” He’s deeply suspicious of narratives along the lines of “we live in harmony with nature, the same as our ancestors have since the dawn of time, unlike [those other tribes]”, instead suspecting that all organisms are selfish and will exploit each other for their own ends. Spoken just have the advantage of being able to see the bigger picture, and it’s in their best interests not to upset the balance of the star – which is bigger than all of us and not necessarily benevolent.

– Anyway, if you thought that was long-winded, I’ll describe now Rosaire’s conception of nature and man’s relationship to it.

Rosaire is Ishgardian Orthodox and deeply religious, even if his beliefs aren’t quite as orthodox (har har) as some might imagine. His beliefs about nature follow from his faith, chiefly his belief in the covenant made between Halone and Thordan’s people.

Coerthas is the Promised Land, and (as the knight Loanne says in the quest “The Pecking Order”) “the Fury has given us dominion over all creatures of this land.” To Rosaire, however, this is not a privilege that can be complacently assumed: it requires that Ishgard’s people worship the Fury and preserve Her Church. Further, Rosaire believes that if Coerthas is Halone’s gift to the Ishgardians, it is sacrilege to defile and abuse that gift.

In truth, Rosaire is a city man who spent most of life indoors, even before the Calamitous winter; in his twenties and thirties he was involved in a few covert missions in the countryside and the Dravanian forelands, but even he sometimes has a hard time believing that on a few of those, he actually camped out in the wilderness with a bedroll. Him! Yet while it is true that he feels close to Halone in the chapels in the city, and he goes to look upon Her statue in Saint Reymanaud when he aches for Her guidance – in truth, it is in the Coerthan countryside – sometimes gazing across the summer meadows in blazing green or the autumn fields in dark gold, but most oft when looking up at the white-topped mountains, majestic and sublime, graceful, brutal, sharp blades sweeping up to the sky that at the same time gently cradle the vales between – that he has felt Her presence most strongly, the divine hand that sculpted the most perfect land in all of Hydaelyn.

That land was not intended by Halone to be preserved in the state She created it. When dominion over it was given to Thordan’s people, it was Her intention that they cultivate it to support the civilization that would practice Her religion. But the correct way of life for the Coerthan people is one that fit harmoniously into the environment that She sculpted, not one that tries to impose the lifestyle of their southron, plains-dwelling ancestors. The Coerthans farm the lowlands and graze livestock on the alm, drive pigs through the forests, hunt and fish its wild beasts, and pick the fruits of their mountain orchards. Such practices are their divine right – and it is their Goddess-given responsibility to preserve and cultivate the riches of the land for future generations.

Such feelings are one of Rosaire’s motivations for devoting this part of his life to the Alpine Greening Institute. To most people, he tends to emphasize the Institute’s humanitarian motives – the need to restore dignified livelihoods to displaced Coerthan farmers, to lower the damn price of bread, and ultimately to relieve the overcrowding of the Brume. (To self-interested nobles, he tends to emphasize how these moves work to their benefit as well, and how something must be done to head off starvation if they want to preserve Ishgard’s social stability.) But there is this religious motive, too. Coerthas was given to the Ishgardians by Halone, and they cannot give up on it. They must adapt, just as their ancient ancestors must have struggled and adapted when first moving to Coerthans from the southron plains – ideally, they will be able to preserve the most important parts of the traditional Coerthan way of life, but above all they cannot cast aside their agreement with Halone that they will steward this land.

And “stewarding the land,” to Rosaire, means shaping it for the benefit of its Spoken inhabitants. He has an implicit belief in a Great Chain of Being, with Spoken superior to all other creatures; therefore their needs supercede all others’, and they have a right to rule over and exploit the rest. (As a tangent, Rosaire congratulates himself for his enlightenment in thinking of this category as “Spoken”, not “the Five Races” or “[Alpine] Elezen”, believing himself exceptionally anti-racist, while you and I would probably consider this more of a bare minimum. But this is a topic to ramble upon another day.) Spoken, of course, are inferior to the gods, and ideally the Spoken will rule over lesser beings -- the gods’ creation -- with sensitivity, compassion, and care. But if it is necessary, those beings can be manipulated, tamed, and culled for Spoken benefit. It is his hope, therefore, that the Alpine Greening Institute will be able to restore the old livelihoods of Coerthas with minimal change needed -- but if their research indicates that radical changes are necessary, possibly with dramatic side-effects for the environment, he would stand in support of them.

So ultimately Rosaire has an attitude to nature with echoes of -- hm, not sure if this is exactly accurate, but I think I’d say -- a mixture of 17th-18th century European (especially English, probably ‘cause thats the language I speak) ideas and aesthetics. There is an idealization of nature, but it is a sort of nature that is tamed and ordered by the hands of man and God(dess). “The land of Coerthas” is a priceless, treasured gift, and yet Rosaire is troubled little by dam-building, wood-clearing and artificial plantations, introduction of foreign species, etc., as long as these are in harmony with the religious ideal of the land. The idea of the picturesque resonates with Rosaire and I often try to pull on the surrounding tropes -- the idea of the medium between untamed, awe-inspiring nature and the order of a mannered garden, applied to an entire land, and how that resonates with Ishgardian national identity. They are the city-state of poncy nobles who fought a thousand-year war, who survive in the harshness of the rugged highlands and there built an ornate and even decadent religion and culture, much like the very temple of Halone built on the mountain that rises from the Sea of Clouds.

When working on Greening Coerthas stuff, I think a lot about how Rosaire’s attitudes would differ from ours -- “green” is a buzzword for us, too, as is “climate change”, but these mean something different to us, living in the time and place we do. I think about the brazenness that I see in the European inventors and agriculturalists of the Industrial Revolution (and other places/periods like the atomic gardening movement) -- there’s a fascinating mix there of foolhardy confidence in human ingenuity, grotesque entitlement to the land, and yet also optimism, hope, and vision. I think about how those sorts of beliefs and feelings might emerge in an Eorzean context and try to blend that in to my roleplay, so we’re not just roleplaying “farming in Eorzea,” but “farming in Eorzea”, embedded emotionally and ideologically in the landscape of this setting.

And also, as you have come to realize by reading all the way to the bottom here, it is a terrible mistake to send me asks for ask memes because I can and will talk endlessly and meanderingly about these things. WHOOPS.

Photo above is "Hintersteiner See with the Alps in Tyrol, Austria" by Uwe Schwarzbach('s mom), CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

[autel-luna]

I’m not a ranter..

I don’t rant on platforms anymore, sometimes in my journal.. to my deities but today.. I just got to get this out on here just so I know I’m not the only person who feels this way.. 

So we’re sitting at lunch at work and somehow the conversation turns to the topic of transgender/transsexual..

Of course, there are differing opinions about when that kind of change should be decided on and other things.. through all of them, even though they made me uncomfortable, nothing set me off until a guy said “well they can do what they want, but it doesnt make them a man or a woman in reality/on paper after that change.”

I’m sorry, what? That did not settle well with me.

He continued onto saying, that they are a still the man or women they were at birth, because you cant change what you were physically given. That it cant be a mistake if thats what you were given.

I asked him to tell me who told him it cant be a mistake? His answer because nature made it so...

Consciousness is so fucking mysterious.. there is so much beyond the what we can see, or feel with our senses that we dont understand.. we can hardly fucking understand how our brain creates thought.. so why not our consciousness being born into the wrong physical form? 

There are cultures with 3, 5, even more types of gender.. which I explained to him and he just said “why dont they live with those tribes then”?

He even decided to use a comparison of just because he believes in unicorns it doesnt make it true.. my response again, why the fuck not?

If it is in our conscious field, in our thought process, why not? why the fuck not? because its not a physical piece of paper... once upon a time it was on a piece of paper that black people were the lower species by their DNA.. because they were black.. that’s not true? So what the hell does a piece of paper have anything to do with anything?

What made me mad most is that this person is smart, open-minded.. understands that this universe is mysterious.. especially human consciousness... or consciousness in general..

And it’s like my brain understands logically the whole “we gotta let people ride out on their journey” but right now I’m just pissed.. like so pissed I almost started crying a few minutes ago.. 

meh... thats it. rant over.

[tumblunni]

Ah, here’s the pillowsnake! It’s called Rashab, I totally forgot!

beware, like 40 paragraphs of long rambling about the game below:

I never realized how the naming schemes actually work. All the different variants of a particular genus share a name ending- Nushab is the weird 8 shaped long neck snake, Rashab is the super rectangular chubby one, and Mukshab is the sticklike one that just looks like a real snake but with the trademark weird head that this monster has. And then the sub-breeds of each sub-breed have a totally different naming scheme! Only the main Rashab is Rashab, the other three elementals are all something-moaj instead. And Nushabs are something-oots, and Mukshabs are something-mines. Its an interesting way to do it, though it’s pretty hard to actually figure any of it out ingame when all the pure sub-breed forms only appear as enemies and you’re gonna be fusing your own variations for your party. I think pretty much anything fuses well with the snakes, they look awesome with any texture! And when they fuse with bugs they can actually gain lil wings and look like Dunsparce!

OH OH OH and ALSO I love how monsters in this game actually grow up! Like, they dont evolve, they just grow up like actual animals! They have very very subtle model changes in size for the first 20 or 30 levels, to symbolise reaching maturity. Its hard to even notice it happening unless you compare save files! And often you’ll be fusing monsters rather than keeping them in your party for a long time anyway. So I’m glad that the Shabs have some of the more noticeable changes! Their baby selves start off looking a lot more similar, and they only gain their giant variation in body shapes when they’ve matured. (Though you can still tell what one its gonna become)

OH AND ALSO ALSO The shabs look even cuter in the concept art, yo!!! Ingame it maybe loses a bit of the appeal cos of the low resolution and how everything is textures rather than model detail. (A necessity considering how the fusion system works, yknow?) On the concept art their faces look less like an eyeless snake with dot patterns, and more like a snake with eight buglike eyes. ITS REALLY CUTE!! Thats why I said they look like leeches! Cos they have the super light coloured undersides and the three-pronged jaw and the bug eyes! They’re scaly big leeches! they’re leechly small snakes! THEYRE THE BEST OF MY TWO FAVOURITE LONG ANIMALS!!!!

OH AND its good worldbuilding but I’M SAD The shabs The shabs get the honor of being in the worldbuilding in A SAD WAY The basic MP restoration item is called a Shab Liquer :( Yeah, its nice to know that they thought about how these magical monsters might be a part of everyday life even outside of a battle setting. But its sad to think about how they’re killed and used in medicine! And you have to use hundreds of this medicine, there’s no way to survive without MP restores! I DONT WANNA MAKE MY SNAKE FRIEND A CANNIBAL Tho I do appreciate how the name Shab Liquer just implies a lot of worldbuilding on its own. Like, you don’t just know that they make a medicine from the snakes, its implied its quite literally a snake oil. Like, does that mean snake oil is an idiom for a totally reliable and true thing in this universe? And Liquer is just a rather archaic and fancy way to phrase it, it fits very well with the setting! But seriously WHY DO I HAVE TO FEED MY SNAKE BABY DEAD SNAKE BABIES TO KEEP THEM ALIVE

OH OH OH AND that reminds me of another Fucked Up aspect of the worldbuilding! Your most reliable way of gaining money in this game is selling the monsters you catch. Which is dumb and impractical anyway cos I mean YOU WANNA FUSE THEM ALL!! And you get more money from selling your ones that you actually already fused and levelled up, like NO WAY am I doing that! I love them!! Even if I’m not using them, I’m just gonna keep them at home with Mahbu! NO MAKE ME SELL MY SNEKS But the REALLY FUCKED UP PART is that its explicitely said that by selling them you are killing the monsters.

...Okay so.. this kinda needs some explanation of more of the worldbuilding first...

The way you catch monsters in this game is by using magical cocoons, hence the name of the story. Monsters are meant to be like spiritual creatures, they’re called Minions cos they’re literally the minions of this setting’s deity, Elrihm. The religion of this culture states that humanity (or ‘The Beasts Of Knowledge’) committed a great sin in the past. We were god’s attempt to grant free will and intelligence to animals, but we used it to do evil and he decided the whole species was beyond saving because of the actions of a few. So he created these monsters/demons/avenging angels in snake form, and their mission in life is to destroy all of humanity so that the world can be reset. Which is why minions attack humans on sight, yet coexist perfectly peacefully with animals and plants in the forest. So like... humanity obviously Did Not Want to all die for the sins of one or two dumb kings, yknow? We stubbornly persist! We hold out our vanguard and keep our little towns amidst the Doom Forests, living life as normal with just the Doom Forests being a thing in the background, yeah. Defending against occasional attacks of minions banding together into swarms and chewing on the walls a little, but yeah, no biggie. And sometimes one of them manages to get in and eat some of our garbage or something. People live normally in these fortified wall villages, and the religion still worships Elrihm, and revolves around begging his forgiveness and trying to prove that humanity deserves to live. And never advancing too far with industrialism. lest we be punished again! And I mean, maybe that actually IS how everything happened, or maybe its just a story and Minions have always existed as a natural part of the ecosystem and they’re not evil things destined to destroy us or whatever. Its ambiguous! Even when you get to see Elrihm’s avatar at the end of the game, it’s just a big magical tree that the monsters come from, you never get any idea if it’s sentient and you’re not able to ask it if our legends have the right idea about it’s role as god. (Or if its gender is actually male, or if it even has one XD)

Anyway, that’s the legend of where the monsters come from, and it kinda explains why people might be a bit callous towards them, if they can be tamed as cute friends but also the wild ones are such a big threat to civilization. And if mythology says their threat to civilization is the natural order of existance, that they exist to kill us under orders of a god who abandoned us centuries ago... But yeah! Anyway! There’s a bloodline of magical people called the Nagi who have the power to purify the anger out of minions and make them friends. And the game has a cool way of keeping the usual mons show aspect of ‘catch a monster inside a certain item that has a limited amount of uses’, while making it fit with this ancient times mythological setting! Instead of the pokeball equivelant being some sort of manmade machine, it’s... cocoons! Since Minions are spiritual creatures, they can be like.. de-manifested and have their souls stored, to be re-summoned later. And for whatever reason, the way the magic works is that their souls have to be contained in cocoons. It’s... actually never fully explained? Where do the cocoons come from? Is it like you take any cocoon from a regular bug, and you seal the monster soul inside? But how would you even get an EMPTY cocoon? Is there a special bug in this universe that makes cocoons not for metamorphosis? or do you like.. fuse the soul with the bug inside the cocoon, and thats why all the monsters in this game are inspired by bugs? But they have the same bug-inspired designs even when you find them in the wild before catching them. So is it like the Nagi magic can create magical cocoons and you use those? or is it like you dont actually carry the empty cocoons, you carry something or other that turns into cocoons when a monster is sealed inside it? the catching animation is very vague, the protagonist is only holding his magic flute and a nebulous white glow in his hand. Then the cocoon forms around the monster and its sucked into his hand... ANYWAY I’M GOING OFFTOPIC SORRY! The point is that Nagi people can purify minions into friends, fuse minions into new powerful forms and (probably?) create the magic cocoons that can catch them in the first place. But it doesn’t mean that Nagi people are actually equipped to fight and catch the monsters themselves! the usual setup is a married couple where the Nagi can stay at home and focus entirely on their magic, and the regular human partner learns warrior arts and catches the monsters for them. Also catching monsters requires magic music, so you need to be a damn good bard too! I liked that they even showed that different Cocoon Masters (official name for peeps like the protag) can use whatever instruments fit best with their soul. The protagonist has an ocarina and [important endgame character] has a fancy lute guitar thing? I wish the game had told me what those are called... I think a name for an ancient japanese string instrument is a shamisen but i have NO IDEA if the one shown ingame is actually that or there are more different ones..? I mean its only shown in cutscnes so there’s no good ref image for it- I’M GOING OFFTOPIC AGAIN Anywaaaaaayyyy, its also in the worldbuilding that (for some reason) Nagi men are unable to use magic, and thats why the mages are always the wives and the warriors are always the husbands. Its interesting how this mythology is kinda presented as an opposite of adam and eve, too! Men who try and use magic are sinful and will be punished for stepping out of their assigned roles by becoming demons. Its the sad story of the protagonist’s parents, alas! His mother was the previous Nagi priestess of the village, but her husband committed the ultimate sin and then all we know is that his corrupted self fled into the forest and was never seen again. And everyone marks you as a failure for what your father did, so becoming the new cocoon master is quite hard at first. And its SUPER DUPER SAD cos your dad did it because performing minion purification is painful for the Nagi, and he couldn’t bear to see his wife hurting herself for his sake. So even though he knew the risks, one day he just tried to purify his minions himself so she could get some rest. And.. like.. ultitmately it did work. Cos she could never bear to remarry, and thus the village didnt have another cocoon master until their son grew old enough to marry. At least he succeeded in letting his wife never have to do magic again, even if it was because she stopped doing it out of grief for him.. :(

ANYWAY Now i’ve explained that worldbuilding and why it is cool and awesome and sad, I can explain the worldbuilding of a random gameplay element and why it is also cool and sad! So yeah, like I said before LONG TANGEANTS... The only really reliable way to make money in the game is to sell your monsters. And it makes me feel SO BAD! Cos the game very much outright tells you that selling them is killing them. And I guess it makes sense cos I mean, only Nagi wife-husband pairs can actually summon the monsters, there’d be no point trying to sell living ones to anyone else. So, since minions are sealed inside cocoons, in order to sell them you spin their cocoons into silk thread. This village’s primary export is weaving, so you can sell these silk spools to the big ol building of spinning wheel people and make money to keep going on your journey. Apparantly silk infused with monster souls is higher quality and can grant various effects and stuff, hence its value. Its a shame they didnt make a crafting system with this! Instead its just a standard ‘more powerful weapons and armours appear at the shop as the plot advances, for no real reason’. I mean, wouldnt it have been cool if you could add your monsters’s particular resistances to your main character’s armour? i would feel less sad about betraying them so utterly if they could protect me from beyond the grave. BECAUSE SERIOUSLY THIS IS SO FUCKED UP Seriously! These monsters faithfully served you! You purified them of their anger against humans, and instead of taking that opportunity to love them and show them the good sides of humanity, you just kill them! You kill them after they gained free will! You specifically HAVE to give them free will in order to kill them! Poor babies... I mean seriously I know that animals have to die to provide humans with food and materials and stuff, this is just how society works. But there’s something so much more viscerally terrifying about imagining taking an animal and literally weaving its SOUL into thread, then wearing it! There’s so many metaphysical questions that need to be answered before you can even figure out how much pain they would experience! And like.. god.. even the way they do the gameplay is so.. even more sad. Like, you can’t just hand the monster to someone else and its implied that they kill them. You have to hit an actual button to turn it into a sellable item. You have to cull it yourself. The death blow is on your hands, even if someone else weaves its dead soul into a nice scarf... So yeah, I pretty much always deliberately play ‘hard mode’ on this game, and refuse to make any damn money. Well, I mean, you can still find items in forests and sell them, but its infinately harder that way. You really are supposed to be selling your monsters to progress. I SAY NO! Big ol giant interface option sitting there on the menu unused forever. I love my sneks. You will not take them!!!

Oh but MAN I do really like the moral ambiguity of this worldbuilding, aaaaa!! The whole setting is so.. like.. realistic. There’s the dark realities of life in an ancient times setting. They take care to establish how the society functions and what their main trading export is, and what role monsters play in a non-battley setting! And seriously even the lil Shab Liquer thing! The casual implication that other villages might have different industries with their captured monsters, and someone somewhere out there found a way to make this medicine out of snakes. it manages to imply a wider world even as you’re confined to this one single village and the long forest that divides it away from every other human settlement. Plus.. like.. I really like the ambiguity it gives to HUMANITY. That seems like the MOST realistic of anything! Seriously, the game starts off establishing that in mythology humans are said to be evil, that the creation myth says we’re living in a post-fall society as the corrupted form of what true humanity should actually be, that god has abandoned us and we follow religion because we have to prove ourselves good enough to regain our former status. Like.. seriously, its refreshing compared to how boring and samey a lot of fictional religions are! They’re often just copies of existing religions, or of the general most popular religion template of There Was One Or Two Creator Gods And They Made Humans And Humans Are Destined Important And Animals Were Made To Serve Us. Instead in this game humanity’s mistreatment of animals and the environment is our absolute sin, and the definition of holiness is to be more similar to animals. And big scary demon monsters are GOD’S HOLY CREATIONS, SENT TO PUNISH US! No stereotypes here! No corner-cutting bullshit stolen from real life religions! And then like.. its nice how ambiguous it makes humanity nowadays, even beyond the ambiguity of the mythology and history. Humanity is trying to redeem itself, humanity is following this religion worshipping the god that cast them down for being corrupted. But still, it shows that some people believe in this doctrine, and some people believe that the things that are ‘corrupt’ about us are actually good. Cos it shows how some people believe that like.. ALL progress is sinful, any sort of machine is sinful, any attempt to improve society or change on what’s traditional. And it shows how some people who believe this are the bad guys, and some people believe this in a way that actually makes sense. And similarly, some people who follow the traditional ways are good- like Mahbu and her grandma. But then there’s the village chief who just follows religion blindly and doesnt seem to actually understand what’s morally correct at all, he’s just like ‘if I do what I’m told, I’ll be freed!’ instead of getting the goddamn lesson. And he tries to pretend to be a reasonable authority figure at first but then he gets more and more corrupt as the game goes on. He’s the representation of how forcing our two heroes into an arranged marriage is a morally ambiguous thing, even though they actually were in love and would have got hitched anyway. They’re still way too young to get this destiny of being the only ones who can save the village, AND keep the economy alive by spinning poor lil monsters into silk! And then he keeps giving you more and more orders, and they go from the actual duties of a cocoon master into just fullfilling the chief’s own greed and paranoia. And its interesting that him and the vizier lady who represents ‘lets abandon the rules and do everything for the benefit of humanity’ actually end up teaming up in the end and becoming even more goddamn corrupt together. Excessive progress and excessive stagnancy are both evil, and honestly they both have very similar selfish motives! Tho I do think the only problem is that they put a bit too much emphasis on this whole ‘these two looked like reasonable authority figures but were really evil’ thing, and don’t have enough good people in the town representing the other side. So its harder to care about saving this place when its literally just your wife and your mom who represent the goodness of the human race. And like.. technically I dont want the asshole lil kid to die, cos even though he’s a jerk he’s too young to be 100% responsible for his own actions. Even if I dont like him as a person, I’d still rather wanna take him away from this trash town and hope he can get raised by better people...

But seriously goddamn THOSE FUCKIN ASSHOLE CHIEFTAIN AND VIZIER PEOPLE!! Even after me and mahbu just saved the city from a deadly disease, after like 12 hours of gameplay and three forests worth of fighting for my life against monsters, where I’m expected to have sacrificed like 30 monsters to feed their stupid fuckin silk industry, even after ALL THAT they show no gratitude! The opposite of gratitude! The chief is still paranoid of the Nagi people for being foreigners, even though they dedicate their whole damn life to leaving their families and going on journeys to settle down in different cities and give their power to protect un-magic humans. And they’ve been doing this for all of history despite persecution, and like.. they lost their home and now the only ones who exist are the nomads and various half-nagi children who’ve never seen anyone of their own race before and are losing all the culture. Mahbu is an orphan who was just found by her ‘grandma’ and raised here, the only other Nagi in the village are the protagonist’s mum and technically the protagonist is half Nagi. (Tho like I said, the worldbuilding is that men cant use the magic, so protagonist is classified as a regular human and would just pass it on if he had a daughter.) So seriously Mahbu is a GODDAMN ORPHAN who was raised here all alone and hated by the village even as a kid! And the protagonist was her only childhood friend cos he could understand the feeling of being hated for having this blood, so no wonder they ended up falling in love. And then their love is at risk cos they were forced into this political marriage when they’re really young, and now have to risk dying everyday to protect this town that still hates them. And they work so hard to prove they don’t deserve to be hated, they don’t even think ‘the town is assholes’, they think ‘this is my home and i love it and it must be my fault everyone hates me so i have to work harder’. And the game doesn’t give you any option to do otherwise!

And it progresses even worse than just not getting gratitude! After you save the village from the disease, the evil chief and vizier wreck the day that you just saved, by pulling their goddamn bullshit evil plan! The chief decides to cut down the god-tree because of his paranoia, the vizier decides to cut down the god-tree because of her greed. And like... GAHHHH but its SO GOOD cos its all moral ambiguity still! The evil duo are definately evil, but they get to be evil for different reasons. They represent the two darkest sides of humanity, and no matter how much you represent the light of the world you cannot change them just by passively obeying them and hoping they’ll react like goddamn rational people! But you can understand why the masses might be tricked into following them, yknow? Humanity has been living in this tough life for as long as human memory, and mythology says that we’re being punished for the sins of our ancestors and we’re just BORN EVIL even though we weren’t the ones who did that shit. So you have good reasons to be angry against god, even if the evil duo DONT have good reasons, and they’re not doing something that will actually help.

Anyway so yeah thusly they trick mahbu and the protagonist into helping them trap the god-tree so they can cut it down. Again its a lil annoying that the game doesn’t give you a choice, though! And they dont even bother writing it a bit more ambiguous so the player could be fooled too, its pretty damn obvious you’re being tricked yet the only way to progress the game is to keep going. So you accidentally end up casting the evil magic on the god-tree and its like HOLY SHIT NO! And as you run back to the town you cant get back in time to stop anything, and you just get to see cutscenes of what’s happening while you’re gone. The evil duo cross the line EVEN FURTHER by MURDERING MAHBU’S GRANDMA! Mahbu’s grandma is the BEST CHARACTER, you fucking fuckface! She was such a nice helpful mentor and one of the only people who genuinely treated you two like human beings even though she wasn’t related to you. And she tries to stop the evil duo from doing their evil plan, she tries to reason with them, and she even gets desperate enough to try and reason with them within their own logic. Even if they’re sacriligious and selfish enough to not care that they’re trying to kill god for personal gain, they should at least understand that their plan WON’T FUCKIN WORK, and they’re just gonna bring god’s wrath and ruin humanity’s only chance at redemption! You’re gonna lose all your goddamn money and power if you get bitchslapped by the heavens, dumbass! AND you;ll kill the rest of us too, who never did anything to deserve it! And they ignore all her attempts to be reasonable, and ritually sacrifice her to try and save their own asses once their stupid attempt to kill god backfires. FUCK YOU TWO, SERIOUSLY!

And then something I really like is the revelation of grandma’s backstory! Cos seriously, who exactly was this mysterious woman who found this orphan and rescued her from the forest? She wasn’t a citizen of this town, she just stayed here to raise Mahbu once the town residents acted like assholes and tried to kick the poor kid back out. It turns out that grandma is actually the mortal incarnation of one of the minor deities! She’s basically this world’s psychopomp. The evil duo were actually RIGHT when they said she was a demon in disguise, but NOT when they thought that she was the evil one and they were good. The psychopomp figure of this mythology is hated, but it seems to be that she gained that reputation because she disobeys Elrihm and tries to help humans. She saved this Nagi girl from dying like the rest of her people, and even bound herself in human form in order to try and redeem this town of jackasses. And even though she was part of their village for so long and did nothing but try and protect them, they still ultimately betrayed her... And it was a very vague plot element that was only casually mentioned here cos its Endgame Time and we have to move very fast now. But it was implied that the chief and vizier are the reincarnations of the original evil king and evil sorcerer who did the same sinful nonsense all those centuries ago to get humanity kicked out of god’s domain in the first place. I dunno if its just meant to be that they’re naturally stuck in a cycle of reincarnation as punishment for their sins? But I always liked to interpret it that psychopomp grandma chose to never take their souls, because no matter what they do to her she still believes that one day they might be able to be redeemed in their next life. I feel like maybe she’s gambling with god, she’s keeping humanity alive by holding this one last wager to prove that they’re worth saving...

And then spoily endgame stuff happens and ultimately the protagonist fullfills some ancient prophecy and calms god and etc and MAKES UP FOR THE BULLSHIT ADULTS RUINING ALL THE SHIT, SERIOUSLY And seriously i haaaate how abrupt and rushed the ending is, and how that in this abrupt rushed ending they had time to show that the trash town comes back to life but not show that Mahbu does! You’re told beforehand that she will, but like.. with how many times you get lied to in this game, it would have been nice to get some damn confirmation in the end. Plus seriously, I cant even be happy seeing the town come back! Thats not a very climactic ending! Seeing protagonist smooch his poor long-suffering girlfriend would be way better! Seriously SERIOUSLY everyone else fuckin died cos of their own fuckin fault cos they MURDERED A GRANDMA my nice sweet ETERNAL GRANDMA, the ANCIENT DEITY OF ALL GRANDMAS, the fuckin DEATH GOD SATAN FIGURE WHO SACRIFICED HERSELF TO BECOME A GRANDMA AND PROTECT US AND THEN THEY KILLED HER, AAAAA they fuckin deserved to all die and be frozen in stone unable to even find peace But Mahbu’s life was instead in danger because she used too much magic purifying monsters IN ORDER TO SAVE THE DAMN TRASH TOWN And after all that they had the goddamn gall to be ungrateful and just cause a second disaster and ask us to fix it again! THAT is why mahbu was gonna die! Because she was a good person who listened to your bullshit and tried to save you, and loved me, and just SERIOUSLY SO MANY EMOTIONS you repayed her by KILLING HER GRANDMA

And i mean seriously her form of death was quite literally death from being TOO HOLY AND MORAL. She wasn’t strictly ‘dying’, it was more like a death of personality, I guess? Becoming something holy and leaving this world, when she didnt want to leave you. Everyone called the painful Nagi markings ‘cursed’ and shamed her for it and made her cover them up so their poor goddamn eyes wouldnt be offended by having to look at them. And poor mahbu was worried her goddamn love of her life would be disgusted with her if he saw! So it was like.. simultaneously cathartic and sad to learn that tradition was wrong in this respect. That it was still a BAD THING, but it was holy markings instead of a curse. Nagi priests who succum to the ‘curse’ are just shedding their humanity as a reward for their service, because from Elrihm’s perspective this is a good thing. So Mahbu becomes a tiny fairy angel type Minion, and then its just sad and intense because soon she’ll lose the ability to speak and forget about you and grandma :( So you have to seal her inside a cocoon in order to halt the spread of the holy markings, and can only let her out to talk to her for very short amounts of time in case it starts up again. And then you have to face the gauntlet of the penultimate dungeon alone without the ability to fuse monsters, until you get through it and find the original Nagi hometown whose demise was greatly exaggerated. And then nobody there has any time for character development cos its endgame time, but seriously it was thematically really damn cathartic to walk through that door and see the place! And meet this actual good guy chieftain who actually finally answers some goddamn questions and helps you! Even if its super sad to have to do fusion with these new stranger shopkeeper twins, instead of the wife you’ve grown to love. And also SERIOUSLY just imagine how fuckin atmospheric that whole penultimate dungeon would have been if the player character got to have a voice! It was all atmospheric to me cos I got really into it and imagined it, but I wish it coulda been canon, yknow? I’m just imagining the poor protagonist dude fighting through this horrifying gauntlet all alone with his final team of monsters, struggling to keep up without any of the magical reinforcement they usually get, unable to restock the last few items he has left in his bag. Fuckin DESPERATE HORROR, fuckin having to sleep overnight in the forest for the first time, fuckin terrified. Fuckin.. clinging to the soul of his wife sealed in a cocoon, keeping it safe against all costs, fuckin wakes up in the middle of the night and just how terrified he’d be that he can’t find her, until he remembers what happens T_T And then like.. imagine him summoning her and only getting a few minutes to hold her tiny fragile fairy self in the palm of his hands, and strain to hear her quiet voice as it gets fainter and fainter, and she struggles to remember herself. Thats somehow EVEN SADDER than if you could actually use monster-Mahbu in your party to fight alongside you! (tho that would have been AWESOME) I felt so bad that after all the horror these two had to go through, we never get to see the happy ending they earned, and instead the game wastes time showing the trash town coming back and just... GAHHH

oh and also that is THE ONLY THING about the sequel that i agree is bad! I liked the sequel a lot! And.. I mean.. in theory its a very interesting concept to have the protagonist of the last game be this sadman morally ambiguous broken mentor man. But seriously fuckin hell give the man a break! They literally say that he got blessed/cursed with immortality cos he fullfilled the prophecy in the first game, so Mahbu died long ago and he desperately wants to die too. Thats such a fuckin sick thing to do to your protagonist! And I mean, he doesnt even look like the same person anymore, and so much about the gameplay and the setting and etc are wildly different so it doesnt seem like the same world in th future, why even bother trying to claim its the same world in the future... I mean even.. monsters come from eggs instead of cocoons now, and you cant catch them or merge them, only buy them in stores! Shoulda just made it a separate game and let it stand on its own merits, it would have actually succeeded. I love all the characters in JC2, there’s no problem of ‘man i dont wanna save these guys’, the only character I dont like is fuckin... SADMAN FORMER PROTAGONIST WHO WANTS TO DIE At least in the ending after spoily stuff he gets to pass away. But lets just say the spoily stuff spits on the poor man’s legacy even more, sheesh...

ANYWAY I FEEL A LOT OF EMOTIONS FOR PROTAGONIST AND MAHBU And this game has great worldbuilding and i love it even if the ending is rushed and you’re forced to fall for stupid villain assholes’s stupid tricks ok end of bunni’s rambling

[projectnero]

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE: THE SEAFARING SUBHUMANS SECTION 1: THE CAPTAIN

Given that our job requires transport to many different continents, we have recruited a different number of sea-faring crews consisting of non-humans to bring them together and provide Project:Nero with only the best naval support.

The flagship of the fleet is a heavily modified Destroyer-Auxiliary ship that also serves the purpose of acting as a merchant ship. The Captain of the ship, also known as the Admiral given his position, is the subject of this psychological profile. Given there are four other admirals serving under him on the ship, each of them coming from specific backgrounds, this is only the first part of the profile on the Sailors. Besides, they all act like they only have 3 brain cells between them, and all 3 belong to The Captain.

NAME: Captain Owen Burrows (according to him, his first name is actually Captain)

RANK: Fleet Admiral and Director of Project:Nero’s naval operations, dubbed Project:Caligula

ALIASES: Captain, Admiral, Heathen (only close friends may call him this; I found this out the hard way), Seraph (Dean will fight you if you call Owen this)

SPECIES: Undead (Subspecies: Angelic Spirit)

HEIGHT: 7′10″

WEIGHT: 500 lbs. 

NOTABLE ABILITIES: 

In Captain Owen’s past life, he was a talented captain of a massive 300-person Norwegian Drekkar. Yes, you heard right, we are dealing with a fucking viking here. His alias has been lost to time, but according to him, he fought in the Legendary Great Heathen Army in the Invasion of England in 865, serving under Ivar the Boneless as a Hersir. In other words, Captain Owen was a general involved in organizing one of the most legendary viking raids in history, and the only reason he died was trying to claim Wessex for Ivar. Do you know what this means? It means Owen not only proved himself by rising through the ranks of a somewhat chaotic militant system as a HUMAN, and then commanding them with ruthless efficiency. Of COURSE we made him the fucking Fleet Admiral.

As one who is in-between the stages of life and death, Captain Owen does not have a true physical form. That is to say, he does not have a face, and gazing upon him for too long can lead to prolonged eye strain, blindness, madness, or death. That’s only when he isn’t trying. If the Captain so wished, he could emit so much light and heat from his body that any single mortal gazing upon him would be completely incinerated. 

His numerous experiences in battle and skill with any types of weapons makes him a versatile fighter if the situation were to ever come to fruition. 

Owen has an undeniable charisma and commands a level of respect from everyone he meets. Even the comparatively arrogant Collective knelt in front of Captain. Let me say that again. A self-important hive mind KNELT in front of this man.

Owen’s tactics and stratagems are so complex and well-detailed that if he had existed at the same time as Sun Tzu, I am certain he could have gone toe-to-toe with him and won. I am glad that whatever deity came to claim Owen’s soul saw how bright his mind was and let him stay for a while longer.

NOTABLE WEAKNESSES:

Due to his many, many, MANY victories, Owen has developed a bit of an invincibility complex, which is ironic for a man who has already died once. The only one keeping his hubris in line is the lovely Cassandra Baptiste, his partner. Regardless, arguing about tactics with Owen is futile.

Owen is, unfortunately, not one for being left out of combat, and in the case of invasions, he will jump off the fucking ship just for a chance to fight up close and personal. I suppose it is fortunate that all of his companions come from fellow raider backgrounds.

Thats it. Thats all I can fucking think of. This man is a beast.

MENTAL DIAGNOSES:

PTSD.

Hyper-Aggression.

High-Functioning Autism.

OCD.

An Insane IQ of 234.