#BUT HEY BRINGING BACK THE DEAD AND PSEUDO IMMORTALITY

[citrusscale-remastered]

Master Rufus: There is a fine line between insanity and genius. Master Rufus, thinking back to both of his apprentice groups: My apprentices snorted that line every day since they first met.

[hanibalistic]

. idea dump. except i actually am writing these two, with an additional universe

1. brother my brother

after long consideration, donghyuck has switcued to hyunjin so i am make obvious 'angelic physical appearance and condemned status' symbolization.

platonic au - hyunjin and reader are pseudo siblings. they share half of each other's heart. hyunjin resents reader for it. currently finished planning for part 1 but I roughly know where this story is gonna go. still debating if i want gruesome things to happen to them or just have it as general angst.

2. vessel felix - from a dream i have!

this story has two archs — search and revive.

magic is gone. the world has gone crazy. witches lost their magic or the ability to siphon from nature. felix has magic? crazy! what is his history? isn't he human? oh jolly golly, let's go find readers' two mothers living in the woods. double golly, they are dead! felix help me find what happened to my mom. of course i will help you, i can't say no to a grieving fellow! chan is blind, minho is mean >:( they are government officials! hey you two kids, we think you are the keys to restoring magic to earth. please bargain with god for us!

two story archs: finding mom (1), reviving magic (2). very long story.

3. pawn shop owner - soulmate au

reader and felix are soulmates. felix die because god pew pew with each other. god is sad, god tells reader sorry here have the arrow that killed your lover. magic arrow made reader immortal. reader set out on adventure to find magic lamp and made themselves most powerful sorcerer. reader set out to resurrect felix through soul switch. reader meets vampire chan, whose soulmate also die but only because he no die. soul switch. chan wants friend back. chan tells felix your soulmate die for you. felix is sad. felix say he will do the same. felix gather magical materials needed for soul switch and bring reader back. reader confused. chan says oh felix died to bring you back. reader is annoyed. what the fuck i died to bring him back why he do this.

humor soulmate au. every member has their own pair.

[rowaning]

The Complete Fiction of HP Lovecraft rated by me, someone who read them all* but has a terrible memory

The Beast in The Cave: uh a guy goes on a cave tour and finds a creature that was like a human that got lost and adapted to its surroundings. 0/10 just because im pretty sure there was another one with this exact premise and neither of them were memorable at all.

The Alchemist: dude achieves immortality and lives in the narrators basement and has pledged to murder his entire lineage or something. 4/10 the alchemy stuff was actually kind of interesting

The Tomb: im pretty sure this is the one where a guy starts hanging out in a tomb and like travels back in time/becomes one of his ancestors? 5/10 if its the one im thinking of i did enjoy reading it

Dagon: guy lands on a mysterious island with signs of a long dead civilization. 1/10 i do not remember what happened in it

A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson: 0/10 i have no memory of this

Polaris: also 0/10 i forgot all about it

Beyond the Wall of Sleep: could be any of the dream focused ones. if its the one about the dude sailing into the void or whatever than 4/10 not too bad

Memory: ironically, i dont remember it. 0/10

Old Bugs: 1/10 for the title god i wish i remembered this one

The Transition of Juan Romero: i got nothing. 0/10

The White Ship: this might also be the one about the dude sailing into the void? i liked that one he lived in a lighthouse and boarded a dream ship and just fucking left it was fun. 4/10

The Street: uh i think really steep street that didnt actually exist. 3/10

The Doom that Came to Sarnath: i wanna say another one of the dream centered ones where a town discovers some old relics and blatantly disrespects them and gets exactly whats coming to it. 5/10 they deserved what they got

The Statement of Randolph Carter: ok this dude shows up several times. i think this one is about how he returns to his childhood home then travels back in time and creates a time loop paradox thing. 1/10 meh

The Terrible Old Man: uh some thieves harrass a weird old guy and get got. 5/10

The Cats of Ulthar: someone is mean to a cat in a dream city, all of the rest of the cats get revenge and are revered for the rest of time. 2/10 (-3 because lovecraft has a specific name he gives to apparently every fictional and real cat he encounters and wow i wish he hadn't)

The Tree: i feel like this is something to do with a person becoming a tree but i cant actually remember. 0/10

Celephais: yeah no i got nothing 0/10

The Picture in the House: also nothing 0/10

The Temple: nope 0/10

Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family: is this the one where the dude's great grandfather married an ape? i dont think so but im not sure. 0/10, -5/10 if it is that one cause that one was especially shitty

From Beyond: nope 0/10

Nyarlathotep: charismatic dude shows up and is like get in bitches we're going to the void. i love nyarlathotep cause hes the one who directly interacts with humanity and like wears a human suit or whatever so hes just some dude whos like hey im gonna feed you to azathoth 5/0

The Quest of Iranon: got nothing 0/10

The Music of Erich Zann: narrator makes friends with an old musician whos being hunted by supernatural forces. 2/10 because i remember it but it was just ok

Ex Oblivione: 1/10 for the title but i have no clue what it was about

Sweet Ermengarde: lovecraft's sole attempt at comedy. not to my taste like at all 0/10

The Nameless city: nope 0/10

The Outsider: also nope 0/10

The Moon-Bog: sounds cool, dont remember it. 0/10

The Other Gods: dude tries to find the gods of humanity where they live on a big mountain, actually finds them, is immediately smited by the Other Gods who protect the gods of humanity. 3/10 he deserved it

Azathoth: dont recall, 0/10

Herbert West- Reanimator: Arkham man Herbert West and his assistant ressurect the dead with little thought to the consequences, then get murdered by a band of said resurrected dead. 5/10

Hypnos: nope 0/10

What the Moon Brings: also nope 0/10

The Hound: still nope 0/10

The Lurking Fear: again, nope 0/10

The Rats in the Walls: dude returns to his ancestral home, hears rats, excavates the basement and finds out that his ancestors ate human flesh, eats his friend. 1/10 it was an interesting read but can lovecraft please stop calling cats that.

The Unnameable: no clue 0/10

The Festival: nope 0/10

*Under the Pyramids: ok im pretty sure this is the one with houdini which is the only one i could not read. i went into this mentally prepared for lovecraft's bigotry but i was not mentally prepared for him dropping harry houdini, avid skeptic who absolutely would have beat the shit out of him for this, into the middle of his super racist paranormal horror. -1000/10

The Shunned House: nope 0/10

The Horror at Red Hook: also nope 0/10

He: cool title, no memory of the story. 0/10

In the Vault: wow im bad at this. 0/10

Cool Air: still no 0/10

The Call of Cthulhu: kind of all over the place, there was a thing about artists and then a thing about a cop investigating a cult. 3/10 meh but ill give it a bonus for being a staple of horror fiction.

Pickman's Model: uh artist sees some wild shit and draws it and then it eats him. 2/10 i forget the details

The Strange High House in the Mist: if this is the one im thinking of, dude does a dangerous climb to find a mysterious house and meet the inhabitant who is kind of interdimensional and also being hunted by interdimensional things. also maybe the house eats people? 2/10

The Silver Key: another Randolph Carter one, and i think this is actually the one about him travelling back in time so idk what the other one was. 3/10

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: randolph carter goes on a quest in the dream world to find the gods of humanity and ask why they wont let him check out this cool city he can see from his window. lots of action and very wordy and went a lot of different places. 4/10 good read but extremely xenophobic

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: guy investigates his ancestor who looks disturbingly like him, ancestor comes back to life and kills him and takes his place and a bunch of other stuff happens. mostly a dramatized genealogical study. 3/10 not bad, very suspenseful

The Colour Out Of Space: meteor lands on a farm, scientists get weirded out by it, everything in the area gets weird then dead, alien thing gets enough power from draining nearby life-forms to escape earth. fun twist ending. 4/10 bonus for being one of the better ones, detraction for writing out a 'rural accent'

The Descendant: nope, 0/10

The Very Old Folk: nope again, 0/10

History of the Necronomicon: very dry. fake history of lovecraft's fake book thats super important to a lot of the stories. 0/10

The Dunwich Horror: isolated witchy family has a kid who no one likes that grows up real fast. graphic descriptions of renovation. a horror gets unleashed on the area and the local folklore scholars have to deal with it. 1/10 nothing good enough to counter the xenophobia

Ibid: i remember this one. no idea what it's deal was. pseudo-bibliography? it was weird. 0/10

The Whisperer in Darkness: guy has a correspondance with another guy about local folk legends based on evil crab things. other guy gets straight up replaced by an evil crab thing and first guy doesnt even notice. imagine if you followed up on a scam email and didnt realize anything was up until you saw that the face of the dude you were talking to in person was a mask. 4/10 for the comedy this guy would not last in the internet age at all

At The Mountains of Madness: guy whines about penguins and how awful it would be if there were civilizations that predated humanity. also commits grave desecration. i get hit by the realization that if lovecraft was less of a racist coward he wouldve made a great speculative sci fi author. 3/10 i would love to watch that old asshole get absolutely torn to shreds by the monster fucker community

The Shadow over Innsmouth: Fish People! Leave Them Alone! Or Else! 5/10 the protagonist gets to live the dream by escaping human society and becoming an immortal fish person

The Dreams in the Witch House: dude rents an objectively haunted room, doesnt listen to people trying to help him, gets murdered by a weird rat. later they find a shit ton of bones in the attic. 2/10 meh

Through The Gates of the Silver Key: Randolph Carter transcends time and space, then de-transcends time and space and immediately gets stuck on another planet in the distant past, makes a long and difficult journey back to earth to find that his estate is being divided amongst his heirs. the comedy potential of a man stuck in an alien body dealing with a legal system that has declared him dead is not examined. 2/10

The Thing on the Doorstep: narrator's good friend marries a fish person witch who steals his body. thats basically it. 3/10. at this point im like wow these narrators really refuse to believe the heavily foreshadowed supernatural explanations that turn out to be correct huh.

The Evil Clergyman: dude is in a room. some ghosts (?) show up. dude has a UV light for some reason. Gets his face stolen i guess and just has to live with it. 5/10 for being absolutely buck wild and refusing to explain anything

The Book: nope 0/10

The Shadow Out Of Time: dude gets his body stolen by ancient scholar species. agonizes about it for a while. finds archaeological evidence of said species. finds a book he wrote while living with said species. almost gets eaten by something. 3/10 more cool speculative sci fi but lame protagonist

The Haunter of the Dark: you'd think id remember it bc this was the last one and i read it last night. oh wait, nvm i do remember it. dude finds an old box in a run down culty church and unleashes a horror that then comes and fucks him up. 1/10 meh.

[whatisspelljamming]

Manara, the Lich of a Thousand Violent Deaths

So I’ve been quiet, I know, but I’ve got an excuse: Not really. I’ve got things to do, I’ll post more about Neogi SoonTM, but I’m super excited about this miniature. A Reaper miniature that was custom painted by the talented Four Realms of Chaos team (https://www.instagram.com/fourrealmsofchaos/?hl=en ) this is not just a lich, this is Manara from Nigel Findley’s “Skull & Crossbows”.

Out of all the roving pirate ships in that Spelljammer sourcebook, her ship “Nex” and the entire idea behind Manara is just fantastic. A former curious adventurer who went into a crystal sphere that was populated by partying demigods that have super strong implications that these demigods were ah, performing some “celebrating good times” (they were bangin’). 

Manara is like, “Okay that’s happening, just gonna keep exploring,” and wanted to go on her merry way.

The demigods went, “You need to get out and also never talk about this cause Velsharoon is rubbing oil all over his bald skull and-”

And Manara laughs it off, thinking they’re just being ridiculous and keeps exploring. And then the demigods decide screw it, punish her with eternal life. Totally a Ancient Greek tragedy idea of hubris then and there, a relatively innocent gesture that causes a huge consequence because gods are drama queens/kings. 

So how does Manara die initially? The gods send a fleet of giffs to kill her, kill her crew, destroy her ship, resurrect her crew as zombies, reform her ship and bring her back as a lich with a bigger hitch than usual: She comes back regardless of her phylactery. Manara cannot die unless she dies in a fight where she tries her best, and the demigods as a majority decide that yeah she did her best in the fight- but this is super subjective. So arguments between these petty, bickering demigods who want their party crystal sphere hidden (all mentions of it and its locations have been erased by the demigods), and they channel their divine will into Manara to maintain a pseudo immortality that she doesn’t want. And Manara goes slowly crazy, from sparing people who she bested in fights to just slaughtering everyone because she can’t take her terrible existence and is jealous of the living, and any and all who die by her, by her ship or by her zombies, are taken by the gods and forced to become a part of her crew.

So over the centuries some of the demigods actually start to feel guilty (I’m guessing the nicer demigods, they are never actually named but you can pull a page from any prime material plane’s lore), and they plot to figure out how to make it seem like Manara tried her best so they can vote for her to finally rest. Unfortunately, Manara’s got centuries of constant combat under her belt, and she alone is a hard fight, never mind her crew of 50+ zombies, ranging from soldiers to umber hulk zombies who all have their abilities that they had in life. Seriously, taking her on head on with a party is pretty much a death sentence for any party, you need a small army.

I think what I really like the most is even if you kill Manara, break her “phylactery” ,which is a cheap glass gem necklace, and you stand triumphant- I just have this visualization where you stand in front of a tribune of demigods and you gotta argue why she deserves to stay dead. Nigel Findley did not have such an idea, and has a more straightforward solution, but hey I like Phoenix Wright what can I say?

Anyhoo, that’s Manara- she’s a 14th lvl wizard/lich, and in AD&D that meant real business compared to 5th E DnD. Not an insult to 5e, but AD&D’s spells definitely had a bit more...holy shit in its effects. One of her spells is the 6th level Death Spell, there is no saving throw, 1 round/standard action cast time, and when she casts it she rolls 4d20 (d20′s!!!!), and she will automatically kill that amount of creatures/players/monsters in HD. It’s a nuclear version of the sleep spell. Just imagine, automatically killing 4-80 HD worth of people without a saving throw. Granted it has a stipulation that beyond 6HD+, the spell takes an additional 10 points from the 4d20 dice to kill that creature but also you have to calculate some values for HDs between 3-5. I don’t blame 5e for removing this spell because seriously, no save throw, 4d20′s, fucking party wipe as a getgo with weird stipulations. And you know with the premise that she has to showcase she’s trying her hardest so she can die? You can bet her theme song is Megalovania, start off with her best spell to wipe you out. 

But she has 7th level spells, right? So what does she have? Finger of Death. With all honesty, I really think that the spell levels should be reversed, as FoD has a save throw even in AD&D, but can theoretically kill anything of any HD, while the Death Spell is just an AoE insta-death zone that could kill a lot, or kill nothing. MR could still of course negate it all, but seriously, the concept of Manara and Greek tragedy and her pursuit of wanting to find a “good death” just creates a wonderful lich antagonist that isn’t necessarily cackling evil for the sake of cackling evil. Leave that to the Neogi.

[kingsofchaos]

I had an idea, and it kinda made sense to me. What if the cops are also immortal? Or maybe not all of them but Key members, and they and the fakes have been doing this dance for centuries. They chased Geoff through the French Revolution, caught Jack a few times Stealing planes in WW1, so on.

Oooh! I actually thought about bringing in immortal cops (would be probably the only way I’d have RT people in the LSPD because I don’t want to kill them oops) but I tend to always consider it as more of a purgatory type situation, all gaining immortality at the same time in the cursed hellscape that is Los Santos. I love your version, with the long term historic kind of fahc immortality, because there are just so many ways it could go.I mean

1. You could go for something really ridiculous and full on, something like immortality itself being stolen in the first place, because humans were never meant to live forever were they? Were never meant to have this kind of power, but where something of great importance exists there will always be people willing to steal it. It’s an object of the Gods, maybe, of the Devils, perhaps, something ancient and terrible, something forgotten and far too tempting to stay that way forever. Not when people like the man who would one day be Geoff Ramsey exist to find and steal it, when the original iteration of Jack Pattillo is around to share it with, not when Ryan, still James, kills them both and takes it only for the dead to track him down and take it back. Not when Gavin has always had sticky fingers, always been a thief, or when any version of Michael would follow him into hell and back, not when Jeremy was always going to jump headfirst into action, touch strange glowing objects first and worry about the ramifications later.But objects like that don’t stay forgotten forever. Objects like that aren’t left unattended. Others have touched it before, of course, immortal beings who were meant to stand guard, who return to their post to find the object missing. Who comb the earth to track the thieves, playing at law enforcement to avoid detection, avoid even more mortals stumbling across secrets they should not know, but while the criminals are found over and over across history the object is never recovered. Even when the FAHC settle in one place, choose fight over flight and demand answers to some questions of their own, even when the trackers infiltrate the LSPD and raid every place the Crew owns, even then the object remains hidden. Because immortal beings the pseudo-cops may be but the FAHC are human, at least mostly, in all the ways that count. Human in their creativity, their deviousness, their cruelty. Human in their their unlimited ability to adapt, to learn and conquer, to outwit anything and anyone no matter how old, how timeless. So war is waged right under the nose of society, each side keeping their secrets but neither concerned with collateral damage, a city turned battleground for those who cannot die, the nightmare that is Los Santos.Then again:

2. It could be far more simple, where immortals just somehow happen at some point, with no connection to one another, except perhaps some sense that there are others, an odd pull to one another. In the way of humanity throughout history the divide between these immortals is simply human nature, the inclination of some to use their advantages selfishly while others look to protect the greater good. The Fake’s, of course, are individuals who upon realising their own immortality quickly work out that they are now in a better situation than anyone around them, that they can do just about whatever they want with no real consequences, and go wild with the power. Thieves and mobsters, criminals and cult leaders, notorious names in history and unknown puppeteers - over the years the one-day members of the Fake AH Crew have done it all.  They meet up eventually, hundreds of years apart, perhaps temporarily as rivals but overlapping interests and shared ability quickly sees them joining forces. Sees them becoming the most dangerous group history has ever seen. That history keeps on seeing, in many different forms and under many different names over the years but never any less formidable. The eventual immortal members of the LSPD, who’ve been everything from soldiers to international intelligence to vigilantes themselves were never any less dangerous. There have always been famous detectives, always been soldiers who survived the unsurvivable, law enforcement who’ve gone above and beyond, and like the Fake’s these individuals are eventually drawn together under their shared quest for justice. Imbued as they are with a sense of virtuous purpose, assured their role on earth is to police the corrupted immortals and prevent them from raining hell upon normal people, these officers have long been just as merciless as the criminals they hunt. They’ve dogged the Fake’s wherever they’ve gone for centuries, first individually and now as a group, set up for the long haul in Los Santos, doing their very best to curtail the criminal behaviour and prevent the death of those who will not come back to life. It’s a battle they are all locked into now, a duty for the police, a defiance for the FAHC, bloody and vicious and all kinds of unforgiving, on and on into eternity.Or alternatively:

3. For the less serious sort of version of the FAHC - immortal criminals vs immortal justice seekers, still at odds of course, always pitted against one another as the Fake’s fight for selfish gain and power and the cops fight to keep them contained, but maybe it’s all become a bit mundane. Maybe eternity has given them all a bit of perspective, thrown them together for far too long to stay entirely objective, to keep themselves separate. They are all the only immortals any of them know, after all, the only ones stuck in this loop, so maybe they’re on opposite sides but they’d have to talk to one another now and again. Eventually learn more than names, learn like and personalities, not friends, no, but certainly a kind of camaraderie, a familiarity that could almost be fondness in the right light, inevitable after countless lifetimes in each other’s presence. Inevitable when there’s no end in sight, no grand finale, no true winner or loser in this never ending pantomime of life and death. Sure, no one likes dying, no one enjoys the pain or the inescapable flicker of fear, no one wants to explain away their lack of injury or, when the death is too public, create a whole new identity, but you can only take murder personally for so many centuries. Can only hold onto anger for so long before it becomes a little trivial. A little childish. No matter how much Hollywood loves to romanticise supernatural grudges the reality is far less passionate - do anything on loop for 500 years and the fire is sure to dwindle, the emotions mute, shit gets fucking boring.The never ending battle wages on, the conflict between two sides that will never see eye-to-eye, and the ever-changing nature of society and technology keeps the fights themselves from growing too stale, but when you run side-by-side with someone for this long there are only so many righteous monologues you can make before you start feeling a little silly. Sometimes you’re going to see Geoff and Jack at a cafe getting breakfast, or Lindsay and Jeremy at the store debating hair dye brands, and you just have to keep walking. Sometimes you’ll sit down next to Michael and Gavin getting drunk at the bar, will see Trevor and Matt filling a shopping trolley with energy drinks and candy bars, spot Ryan wandering around without that ridiculous mask he’s picked up this time around, and just move on.Because you’re enemies, yes, and tomorrow you’ll be back at war, but today you’ve got a date or tickets to that one movie or haven’t had a coffee yet. Today you’re tired or hungry or just need to talk to someone who isn’t Frank because honestly fuck Frank anyway he’s been hung up on that one ruined shirt for seventy goddamn years, Christ almighty. So you look away, or they look away, or you exchange awkward nods that are perhaps less uncomfortable than they should be, silent acceptance that you’ll pick this fight up another day. Because hey, there will always be another day.