#ALSO HEY UNRELATED BUT I CAN MANUALLY CHANGE THE COLOR OF THE TEXT IN THE HTML NOW

[cepheusgalaxy]

what we have as of now!

[plain text: what we have as of now! /end pt]

Espa worldbuilding wise i mean. i was supposed to be working on it but I wanted to do a quick recap :)

(No i barely have anything noteworthy yet. Don't matter!) (Forget what I said I got quite the ramble)

The state - The state the story takes place in is a fictional brazilian state located in the Northeast, awkwardly placed between the states of Bahia, Sergipe and Alagoas. No it does not make sense. Proceeding: The name of the state is Ipabara, and its capital is the city of Anaconda. Ipabara's current governor is a guy whose name I think could be really funny if I put a little bit more of thought into, so I'm not gonna say yet, and Anaconda's mayor is Enísio Souza de Góes.

Ciça's town - Ciça, from the start of the story, lives in a small town about an hour (by car) from Anaconda, not exactly in the seaside so there ain't any beaches there. The town's name is Sebastião da Graça and its mayor is [insert obsenely long name here]. Ciça's house number is the 11 btw. The place Ann and Espa, for their mission, are settled on is 129B, a few streets away.

(below, tw for mentions of human trafficking-and very brief forced prostitution-and child soldiers)

The corp - IT DOESN'T HAVE A NAME YET. But it will. What I know is that it's also known as "the Dove". When influent people say "a little birdie told me [important and redacted piece of information]", the 'little birdie' is 100% the Dove.

Their hierarchy is divided in five positions: The leader, their council, the management, the field staff and the servants. The field staff is divided between handlers and weapons, although I should probably give them a better name. The weapons are the child soldiers and the handlers are the ones they answer to. The servants are also victims of human trafficking who are forced into domestic slavery for the higher members of the Dove. They have the least autonomy, but their immediate "superiors", the weapons, don't have it much better either. The weapons don't have authority to order the servants around. Just the handlers and higher ups can.

The weapons have an internal ranking that divides them into "Canaries" (top soldiers), "Vultures" (the hella good), and "Cranes" (average Dove child soldier). It doesn't grant them any privileges or authority to be of a high tier though. That is just a classification of their overall usefulness and value (which, inside the Dove, is very much defined by their usefulness) so management knows which missions to assign them or if they are worth the trouble saving if they get badly injured. Treats and privileges are granted arbitrarily by handlers and the most respected (the closest thing to authority a weapon is granted) weapons are the senior ones who've been there for the longest.

The servants are also the ones responsible for patching the weapons (and handlers) up after missions and cooking their food. Handlers get full meals three to four times a day, every day, but the weapons get a weird gross soup (their 'rations') with the suplements and nutrients they need, with an actual meal being only during breakfast when they eat the same as the handlers. The weapons can't cook for themselves. They don't know how. The higher ups like to keep it that way.

Regarding punishment for the weapons, everything is pretty loose, but there are a few guidelines in place. Every misbehavior on the part of a weapon is classified into four categories: Minor, mild, major, and capital. Severity of punishments is applied accordingly (although the handlers can sort of do whatever they want), with capital punishments being things like 'permanent damage' or injuries that take very long to heal from (which normally even a major rule-breaking wouldn't earn! because the Dove wants them in working conditions most of the time after all!), death, or refurbishment.

Refurbishment is a whole topic on itself, because it's something the weapons are taught to fear and do anything to avoid, a fate they should not get close to no matter what. Its threat keeps them in line. Now, what is it?

Selling them!

The Dove has many partners, including some illegal/unethical brothels and other trafficking ring businesses. When a weapon commits something that is so hedioundous that the Dove will not keep them anymore (like a big rebellion which could be repeated in the future if they don't get rid of them), they throw the problem away to one of them. The weapons aren't 100% sure of what would happen to them if they were refurbished, but they have enough of an idea to know to fear it. Sometimes, if they are just too badly hurt, but not to death, they are sold out too.

Every weapon has a brand as well, somewhere in their body, in the shape of a dove. To signal property. They are branded as soon as aquired and their initial training is over. The handlers also have tattoos (although they are just. consensual of course) in a slightly different shape, to signal they belong with their fellow Doves. I'm not sure what is the brand's design but I'm not in a rush to define it.

The weapons also have three training sections a day (unless their current mission interfers with that) and have a strict sleeping schedule to be maintained in their best form.

The weapons are often referred to, in a more 'veiled' or secretive context, as "company assets".

They also have sort of an uniform that is not very strict, but is all black. Nobody minds it if they customize it. Hence why Espa can wear that bright yellow cape over hers. There is alsoa variation of it that is their "stealth uniform" for when they need to be more subtle, but I haven't gotten around to design it yet. Overall, clothing is not very rigid, and in many occasions they need to be dressed casually to blend in anyways so it's not like the higher ups care.

The weapons are also trained to be able to sleep anywhere.

The Shelfes - The Shelfe family is a powerful one from Anaconda, and their riches come all the way back from when slavery was still legalized. The couple made their money exploiting enslaved Afro-descendants and passed their resources to their oldest son, who started his very own lawyer firm. After merging it with plenty others, it became one of the most powerful of the Northeast and he settled himself as one of the wealthiest people in the state. He married to a Proper, Beautifull woman, and together they had three children. The oldest of them followed his father's footstepts and started his own business (with lots of help), a large cosmetics company; the middle one took over her father's firm and is its new CEO (can you tell I don't know how lawyer firms work. I will search it up later); and the youngest started working as a high executive of a chocolate company and rose up its ranks with his family's influence to become the co-CEO.

Seth Shelfe is the oldest "son" (they are not a boy at all. Not like their mom cares.) of the middle daughter, the lawyer, and has five cousins on their mom's side and a younger sister.

The Shelfes don't like the Dove very much. In fact the main conflict going on is of the family going against the corp. They have ties with the government and it is on their best interest to destroy the Dove. The Dove, of course, crafts a plan to anihilate them first, and that's where Ann and Espa come in. They are the most recent couple of weapon and handler sent in to nearest town (Sebastião da Graça) to subtly meddle with some warehouses the Shelfes own and get into their bank account to steal some good money.

Or that's what they are supposed to do, anyway.

*context (spoiler alert) || also, the masterlist

All this to say. I'm working on it. Praying hands emoji. I'm not leaving it like the others, I'm working on it! And we are getting close the writing stage! Just a few more things on the corp (like its goddamn name. im accepting suggestions if you want to give any) and the shelfes, and we'll be ready to go. I also already have an outline of most of the story but can't share it because spoilers. That's it!

[v-mundi]

Options and Evolution cards part 1. Here’s where we get to edits done in the name of fidelity. Either in the sense of accuracy by using the actual materials in Digimon intended to be referenced by the cards, or by bumping up the fidelity on what I wanted it to try to depict.

Metal Armor was a 2D frickin image again. So now I’ve gouged the metalmamemon model out of the armor part (do not ask) and brought just the shell for your viewing pleasure.

Giga Hand used to be called Giga Cannon. Funny story, the “Giga Hand” card in the PS1 Digimon World: Digital Card Battle (Arena) game is the same card as the previous “Giga Cannon” I had. But because I only knew dub names and attacks, I didn’t know it was actually Mugedramon’s Mugen Cannon. Also I used totally unrelated art, like wow. So when I went to fix the art, I mistakenly gouged the vertices of a Mugendramon off its cannon and had it all done up nice when I remembered I should rename it. Then I remembered why I kept “Giga” in the first place! So I quickly ripped the hands off a Gigadramon. It’s less gorey than it sounds.

Short Lance is finally an actual Piximon’s Fairy Tale instead of a random trident.

Scummon’s Curse is finally a...uh...well a real looking poop. I used the poop model from a Digimon game...but it gets better. I edited the texture and did a ton of 3D rendering effects to make it more realistic. This one poop took me an entire solid day of effort plus another next morning to make look...well not good. Just look. I think i hand-drew the previous one? I don’t remember but it didn’t fit the aesthetic. As poop often does not.

Chainsaw can EAT A BASKET OF DICKS. Nothing on this list was as hard or time-intensive as chainsaw. Not even the cursed poop card. It took DAYS. I had to source a giromon model which is basically impossible. None of them are rigged. I had to clip every vertex away from its hands manually and I have never done that before. It was the week I finally learned Blender. Eventually, I exported it rendered with a ton of matcaps so I could get the perfect look. It took even more hours in post. That card was really tough. It has gone through the most art changes of any, as I scrambled to find accurate 3D chainsaws for some time.

So Beam Gun is now the actual vademon gun. That’s about all there is to that. It was some atrocious, irrelevant garbage before. I color graded it to look cooler.

Okay is Heap of Junk something I modeled? No. But is it something I at least rendered myself? Also no. BUT is it a free asset? I don’t know. Okay but listen, the fridge full of eggs thing...that had to go man. Eggfridge is out, actual goddamn heap of junk is in. Aesthetic chosen based on the PS1 Digimon World style.

Training manual is a fun one. I figured out Photoshop can convert 2D stuff into 3D extrusions and went to town. So that’s actually some bs vector art of a clipboard I colored green, wrote a bunch of Japanese and english translations of the Hyper Coliseum “Training Manual” card effect texts on, and then extruded to 3D.

Mystery Egg now looks like the damn mystery egg in the PS1 game instead of uh...some weird volcano dragon egg fuzz thing. Look, in all fairness to me 2015 was a weird year. I made almost the entire base release of 200 cards in a few months while high as a kite, and did all the cards in numerical order. So Options were last. And I was getting tired and lazy about it. And I had zero intentions of this ever being seen by strangers. It was made for playing with at home in all intent. That last fact is also why you see such bad art to start with, t-poses, and downright uncredited renders from other people! Absolutely classy. But hey, without that monumental laziness and give-no-damns attitude, this game actually would not exist. Base Release would’ve never been finished until I learned all the immense skills required to make all this art that I do now, which I learned on the way through the last 5 years out of necessity...so basically it would’ve never happened if I thought other people would see it or I needed it to look good and not take random art.

Miracle Ruby is a heart shape still but actually good instead of a terrible photoshop garbage fire mess. I don’t know why the heart does it for me. I guess cause it’s a 1-UP? I didn’t even try to be faithful to the original card. And I could. I could absolutely load up blender right now and have a cut-gem looking ruby in about an hour. But I don’t want to. The heart makes me feel good.