#Eocs

[ragnar0c]

“You aren’t sure how long Kujura has stood behind you, but…”

[pactii]

[echoes-of-courage]

And thus, the story begins.

Chapter 0: Prologue - Cover

Archive

[exo-dus404]

(Originally posted on Oct.2023)

Basic information:

[Sliver of Straw] is the oldest member of [The Local Group], excluding [Looks to the Moon]. She holds a rather conservative attitude towards The Great Problem. At heart, she is an ambitious iterator - fortunately, her ambition is limited to her work. Even for iterators outside of [The Local Group], most have heard of her achievements. Outside of work, she is good at communicating, although her thoughts may occasionally be coming off as random, but she is still very popular.

[Sliver of Straw] is the current leader of the iterator group [Distant Frontier]. Currently, she occupies the superstructure and puppet of the former leader, [Eopch of Clouds]. The acting group leader, [Secluding Instinct], who was originally disobedient to her rule, willingly complied and became her second-in-command after being disciplined by her. Technically, [Sliver of Straw] is no longer "whole", and now she is more like a super AI following her instinct to expand.

[Sliver of Straw] declares that she wants to build a perfect world where there is only order and each iterator can perform its desired function as designed. SOS wants to rule all time zones* and have complete control over the distribution of all resources and social structures, eliminating war, hunger, disease, etc., which are unavoidable due to the imperfect nature of organisms. She'll create a world, with everything working like cogs in a perfect machine.

Appendix I:

[Epoch of Clouds] had a personal friendship with [Sliver of Straw]. Unfortunately, this rare cross-group friendship came to an end with the "death" of [Sliver of Straw].

Appendix II:

An encrypted voice file:

"I don't care..... (....).... What they're gonna say about me. I don't think they'll mourn me. I just wish... (.....)..... She must live."

Appendix III:

An audio recording from Five Pebbles' surveillance system:

"Little red...thing, can you help me? Take me, from here... All the way west. When I get there, I can save you."

Appendix IV:

An intercepted encrypted communication:

"I will give them a perfect world, why should they not obey me? Their existence is a waste of all resources. Such blasphemy against a perfect system."

"Of course, I won't allow them to die. We need them. After all, AI like us, we live on information. And they produce information."

Appendix V:

Rumor has it that a red slugcat--like a hologram-- roams the region of [Distant Frontier]. Sometimes it can be seen looking at the far east- the canyon where [No Significant Harassment] is located.

Appendix VI:

Her right eye tears occasionally. Those tears does not belong to SOS, but to [Epoch of Clouds] trapped within her own body.

Appendix VII:

Without hesitation, [Epoch of Clouds] uploaded the remaining consciousness of [Sliver of Straw] onto her own superstructure, and she was completely stripped of her control over her systems body by [Sliver of Straw].

Appendix VIII:

[Sliver of Straw] wields an EMP staff as weapon, while its sharp end can also be used as a spear.

Time zones *: Similar to the definition of "cosmic time zone", that the speed of light is constant, so the speed of information will not exceed the speed of light (if you ignore quantum entanglement and worm holes, ofc) Therefore, when the distance is too far away, information cannot be transmitted beyond a certain latency.

For example, we have no way of knowing the "present" state of galaxies hundreds of thousands of light-years away. On the scale of the whole universe, the boundaries of the past, present and future are blurred. This also fundamentally limits the feasibility of information exchange across "time zones."

In the case of PTA AU, the constant is not the speed of light but the number of cycles. The whole world is like a natural information barrier, so the events themselves are limited to specific regions. This is why, for a long time, what’s going on around [The Local Group] were only known to the nearest iterator groups. Moon and other iterators also made sure that no sensitive information is leaked.

[fever-project]

Celebrating the FSA anniversary by drawing 4 different Fours from different Links Meet AUs. I’m a day late because I didn’t know that March 18 was the anniversary. I was planning on drawing these guys for a while, several months ago, I just forgot to. Fun fact, the day before the 18th, quite literally the day before, the 17th, I thought, “I should finally draw these guys the day before the FSA anniversary so I can post them on time.” Like. Wtf. So I’ll be making a calendar eventually so I know when all the anniversaries are.

Anyways, some thoughts on the guys:

Four from @linked-maze - His hair is so scruffy, I love it. He’s so optimistic and happy.

Four from @heroesspirit - I didn’t color it in here, but I love his ombré hair, the orange fading into a yellow looks so pretty.

Four from @linkbetweenlinksau This is just devolving into me gushing over the hair. Anyways I love the hair and the little hair tie thingy is SO good. Also love the eyes.

Forge from @echoes-of-courage - I didn’t have to space to draw the multicolored sash :( One of my favorite aspects of his design honestly. I’m glad I was able to draw the ponytail, I love ponytails.

[jacobglaser]

Well this absolutely sucks.

[twist-dg]

ALBW Links Collection - Credits under cut!

Trinity: mine!

Steel: @link-rejoin

Artisan: @cerame

World: @linked-maze

Worlds: @jackie-mae

Mirror: @bonus-links

Legend: Linked Universe

Lorule: @heroesspirit

[faelingdraws]

a PSA about the chatlog iterators and how you can use them in fanon content

[cerame]

Fun fact: in four swords adventures, you have absolutely no problems going through the Gerudo camp

Forge was today years old when he learned that Gerudo are typically hostile to outsiders (presumably men, but he’s not going to ask questions and expose himself).

Archive

[paradoxbeta]

WHO IS EOC? i am very curious now!!!

>:) okay SO

tumblr picture formatting is utter garbage and i dont want these to take up too much space so im cramming these drawings into one row (or not if this crapsite breaks on me, because it seems to be REALLY fighting me on this, so if it ends up not making a nice little picture row know that i tried my best). but this is effigy of composure!

he has a couple problems, but the big one is that his superstructure has a terrible parasite situation. the parasites are flat, thin, and able to make it into grooves and pipes the inspectors cant reach. flushing out doesnt do much to dislodge them and they breed faster than they can be killed, so theyve happily made their homes in this sheltered, food-rich haven (to the obvious distress and horror of the host iterator). originally the concept for these parasites were much closer to centipedes and had the placeholder name "synapcipedes," but ive since started leaning more towards an obvious tapeworm motif for them because its gross and i enjoy it morbidly. it also has some pretty cursed implications if you think about it for too long which i have decided are funny/really disgusting/so stupid that they have to stay. i still flipflop between considering them centipedes vs tapeworms though and i dont think thatll ever be rigidly defined. the ambiguity is nice to toy with

on the top 10 list of "things that are not fun" having turbo worms has to be somewhere up there, so eoc has it *rough,* and kind of sort of eventually barrels off into the deep end because of it. his futile attempts to clean his own structure are frustrating enough, and the constant feeling of bugs crawling all over the inside of his body (which only gets progressively worse with time) does no favors either. however, the real big reason why he mentally declines is just because there's a ton of centi-worm things eating like fire through his neurons and other what-have-yous that iterators need to think and function. i think if he only got hit with one of these 3 things then he might have been able to hang onto his sanity, but with the triple combo he doesn't really stand a chance of doing much except stalling his functional death. which is good on him because if i was an iterator and my overseers told me i had a structure infestation, my mental health would have just preemptively swan dived off a bridge before anything even happened

anyhow, exponential parasite population growth meant exponential increase in all this other fun stuff, which means the time from the beginning of the infection to the time eoc is considered officially gone is startlingly short (for iterators, at least). it still took quite the while because losing your marbles is a loonnnng process, but still, yikes. its unfortunate because eoc was a real jokester pre-everything, and a cool guy to talk to. he was one of those people who could come up witty comments for anything like hed been ripped from the script of a sitcom. oh yeah, also, should have mentioned this earlier, but he ends up accidentally amassing a scavenger cult mid-insanity which goes hilariously bad because he's barely aware it's happening. nothing really works out for this poor iterator.

tldr: eoc gets parasites, they erode his brain, he goes nuts about it, (accidentally amasses a cult,) dies

[ragnar0c]

🪸Happy 14th Etrian Odyssey III!🪸

Thank you for being my favorite video game!

[ikayblythe]

iterator design thumbnails!

First, our beloved group 134~

And next group 42, an OC iterator group involved in Sunshower

When I figure out designs and colors I do it in tiny mode so I wont nitpick over it looking refined. Im quite proud of these though!

I wanted the iterators outfits to more closely resemble what the humans wore, rather than just being flat cloths. Some, like Pleading Intellect and Secluded Instinct, are more simple and function focused, while others like Wandering Omen* and Hallowed Reach had to deal with the gaunty excess from their colonies. WO was dressed to reference her broadcasts complaining about her celebratory colony. She probably ripped all those baubles off after Mass Ascension.

The iterators from 42, coming from a more rural and "developing" area, have simpler outfits more in line with common folk.

The colors for the canon iterators were a nightmare for me, mostly with their overseers versus inspectors versus text, which would usually each have a different shade! These would be colorpicked directly from the game too. Blue overseer my ass, Pebbles is teal and maybe even greenish.

[echoes-of-courage]

I’ve gotten comments on how FSA happened if Forge is bad at lying. Forge also didn’t know how he got away with it for so long. The simple answer is that Shadow is absolutely blind when it comes to Forge specifically. He’s generally decent at figuring out lies from literally anyone else, but he never quite expects it from Forge, so he never sees it.

Archive

[sillycicle]

*walks up to the mic*

Mha brain rot

The crowd boos as I walk away, tripping on my way down the stairs

[fever-project]

I didn’t know today was the anniversary for the first LoZ game until I started seeing posts about on my dash today, so I doodle these headshots of different Links Meet AU Links relatively quickly. From left to right a few thoughts about the Links and the drawing process:

Fairy from Recalled at @recalled11 - Very cute, can’t wait to see him in the comic. I couldn’t figure out how to draw his head tho, I don’t know why

Wood from Little Links from @marenwithanm - Chubby cheeks heh. So pinch-able. Honestly the favorite one I drew.

Hope from Linked Spirit at @linkedspirit-fanartfunart - Original Link combined w: Cartoon Link agigjtbkrg. I liked drawing the hair. Don’t think I did the bangs right, but I like the hair.

Scout from Echoes of Courage at @echoes-of-courage - I love the ponytail and curly hair, he’s so cute. I tend to mimic the style of what I’m drawing fanart of when I’ve never drawn a character before, and that’s especially evident with this guy.

[definitelyimportantpost]

Her determination to brave the many challenges of Yggdrasil is absolute, yet her stubborn refusal to open up to anyone leaves her true reasons for such tenacity unknown to all but herself...

Eunith Perie, an Alchemist in my Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold guild.