#I'll fiddle with the formatting later! probably...

[insociometry]

Oh oh i have a scene!!! How about between the last 2 chapters where felix updated the others on his developments with mc and her preferences? Did any of them react interestingly orrrr yk hihi

Thank you both! 🫶

Post-chapter 26 pack shenanigans; no particular tags!

[ Felix changed the chatroom name to "🚨🚨🚨 ATTENTION!! EMERGENCY NEWS!!! 🚨🚨🚨" ]

Hyunjin: Felix! Why are you awake

Chan: Are you quoting the Godzilla emergency alarm??

Han: Omg oh yeah

Han: ATTENTION, EMERGENCY NEWS! IMMEDIATELY ESCAPE, FIND SHELTER!

Hyunjin: 🚨🚨🚨🚨🦖🚨🚨

Changbin: Is that what Godzilla-nim looks like to you????

Hyunjin: 🚨🚨🖕🚨🚨🚨

Felix: Guys

Felix: Help

Felix: [ Image attached of you asleep on Felix's chest, cheek smushed and face mostly hidden by the angle. Still, your brow is visibly scrunched in discontent by the flash that illuminates it. ]

Chan: OH?

Han: Bro????????

Changbin: Our Yongbokkie is bragging???

Hyunjin: Nooooooo

Hyunjin: So cute....

Felix: I'm not bragging this is a cry for help!!!

Felix: Okay maybe I'm bragging a little

Chan: 🧍

Felix: BUT

Felix: She said things to me that were

Felix: ...Worrying?

Han: Uh oh

Hyunjin: Worrying how??

Chan: Ayennie's asleep. What about the other two?

Han: Lino-hyung's usually asleep way before now. But to be honest I'm not going to risk waking him up by checking

Changbin: The real-life Godzilla

Chan: What?? Noooo

Chan: He's more like a cat who's mad he stepped in water

Hyunjin: You're the only one who sees him that way hyung...

Felix: Seungmin is probably asleep? But I can't really get up to check either...

Han: He's DEFINITELY bragging!!!

Felix: You would understand if you were in my position 🤷

Han: I'll have you know we had MAD cuddles when she was at mine

Han: I just don't take photos of girls when they're not looking 💀

Changbin: Uh huh

Hyunjin: Pics or it didn't happen

Chan: Lixie, what was that you were saying? She said something?

Hyunjin: Omg oh yeah

Felix: Right. So

Felix: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. Okay. So

Changbin: Promising start....

Felix: First off, did any of you know she doesn't like her neck touched?

Hyunjin: Huh?? Why were you touching her neck???

Felix: I licked it

Changbin: Hello???

Felix: Wait that isn't why though

Chan: So that was just a flex????

Han: 🤡🤡🤡

Felix: Uhhh. I guess I was just... kissing her neck? Yeah...

Felix: But when I got closer to her mating gland she panicked

Hyunjin: ?? Did you snap your teeth at her or something???

Felix: No!

Changbin: It wouldn't be an abnormal thing to do if you did, Yongbokkie. Like, playfully.

Changbin: People do it all the time

Felix: I didn't, though!

Felix: I don't know, it was really sudden. She just locked up and needed a minute. It was like she couldn't breathe or look at me at all

Felix: It was scary

Han: Sounds like it was scarier for her

Chan: Hannie. Enough

Chan: It sounds like it rattled both of you, Lixie. How should we prevent it from happening again?

Changbin: No neck?

Hyunjin: No neck........ 🥀🥀🥀

Han: She seemed fine with neck to neck scenting before

Felix: Yeah, she liked some of it with me too...

Chan: Okay, let's go with no neck to be safe until someone can broach the topic

Felix: About that. She doesn't like questions?

Hyunjin: ???? We ask her questions all the time

Changbin: Well to be fair she doesn't always like them then either

Felix: With intimacy she said she likes when things just kind of happen. I think?

Chan: You think??

Felix: There was a lot on my mind okay!!!

Felix: Oh god she just nuzzled her face in my shoulder. I'm going to die

Hyunjin: You are

Hyunjin: Because I'm going to kill you and take your place 🔪

Felix: Noooo! Spare me!

Chan: Let's save the roleplay for later guys

Han: Cool cool cool. Cool and casual. We can work with that

Changbin: --he said, like a liar

Hyunjin: Maybe if we just go slow enough she'll just tell us what she likes and doesn't like?

Han: Honestly I'm still not clear on the details of all this. Is she definitely in for all of us orrrrr...??

Felix: Yeah Channie-hyung sorry I only kind of skimmed your text? We were busy playing Animal Crossing

Changbin: Oh, very important work

Han: Calling it a text is generous. It was an essay

Chan: Don't bully me I had a lot to say 🧍

Chan: I guess we just have to... wait and see? What she wants?? From each of us individually???

Hyunjin: Ughghh

Hyunjin: I'm so TIRED of waiting and seeing

Hyunjin: I want a kiss nowwww

Changbin: I'm right down the hall wifey 💋

Hyunjin: YAH!!!!

Felix: Okay I kind of accidentally saved the worst for last

Chan: There's more?????

Felix: Okay maybe not the worst. The neck thing was pretty bad

Felix: Uh. So

Felix: She said she liked me. And she kissed me

Han: Oh??? 👁️👄👁️

Changbin: And this is the worst????

Felix: And then she said, "This is all a casual thing, right?"

Hyunjin: ????????????

Hyunjin: HUH?

Han: What did you say?????

Felix: Nothing! What was I supposed to say!!!!

Felix: She called it PRACTICING

Hyunjin: ????? FOR WHO....

Han: For no one. Tf🧍

Han: Til death do we part and even then. Who knows 🧍🧍🧍

Chan: Practicing... practicing.......

Changbin: Okay wait wait wait wait wait

Changbin: Context???? Context will surely help????

Felix: There's no context she literally just said it

Felix: One second staring adoringly into each other's eyes and the next boom

Felix: 💥💥💥🔥🔥❤️‍🔥🔥🔥💥💥💥 ⬅️ My heart burning in agony btw

Chan: Oh....

Hyunjin: I wasn't properly prepared for this. They should come up with an emergency alert worse than the one for Godzilla

Felix: Oh she did say something else actually

Hyunjin: 🔍

Han: 🔍

Changbin: 🔍

Chan: 🔍

Felix: She said it's ideal anyway because we're too busy to date and she doesn't like commitment

Hyunjin: Too busy to date?????

Han: ???? 😭😭😭

Han: OUCH.... 💔

Hyunjin: I could never be too busy to date the most beautiful girl I've ever seen?????

Chan: Too busy to date...

Chan: But we haven't been... too busy to court her? Right??

Changbin: It sounds like she hasn't been seeing it as courting

Changbin: We've been pretty friendly right?

Han: Pretty "casual", I guess

Chan: Okay well there is literally nothing casual about how any of us are about this

Chan: But whatever I'll put the wedding invitations away I guess

Chan: Is that everything Lix? Any other catastrophic updates?

Felix: Mhm one

Hyunjin: No... My tender heart can't take any more

Felix: [ Image attached of you asleep on Felix's chest, face more visible this time. Your mouth is slightly open, a tiny wet patch appearing on the fabric of Felix's shirt. ]

Felix: She's drooling a little 🥺🥺😭🥺😭😭🥺🥺🥺😭🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

Chan: Ahhhhh

Changbin: Aw look at that

Chan: AHHHHHHHH

Han: I just heard like a record scratch. But in my heart

Hyunjin: God I have seen what you have done for others 🛐🛐🛐

[arimiaromage]

well guess I'll post the NeaPasta fic I won't finish lolll. I'm not used to writing in this format (I normally write in 1st person script format) so apologies for the scuff

a Bookman and a Noah find themselves together one moonlight night...

"Bookman, show me how to dance."

Allen turned around towards the voice with a wry look on his face. His expression was only somewhat hidden underneath his wide-brimmed glasses and the low lighting of night. Nea was leaning against an illuminated window sill, arms crossed. But instead of his usual cocky grin, a thin scowl hung on his lips.

"...Why?" The words left Allen’s mouth cautiously.

Allen squinted at him, trying to discern what kind of trick this was. This was Nea we’re talking about, after all. Despite being raised as a noble with more confidence than a king, Nea didn’t have an elegant bone in his body. The Noah—and Katerina—had long given up trying to set him up with a lovely lady. This had to be a joke.

Nea’s scowl turned into a grimace.

"Because the Noah want to have some kind of damn ball for our 17th birthday."

Allen put a hand on his hip. "And you didn’t protest?"

"..."

Nea’s eyes darted away.

"Mana agreed to it."

Allen sighed. There it is. Mana "agreeing" to it probably meant Mana thought it sounded fun, and with Mana so happy-looking there was no way Nea could just not go along with it.

Nea scoffed, fiddling with his cuffs. His eyebrows were upturned, but there was something more begrudging about his demeanor tonight. Something more... impatient. High strung.

Oh my God, Allen thought. He’s serious.

Allen sighed, "...And you think I’m going to teach you? Why not ask your family?"

"Not going to happen", Nea glared.

Allen rearranged some of the books on his desk, looking downwards to hide his grin.

"I’m sure Road would be happy to help."

"No."

"Why not wing it like you normally do, stepping on people's feet until no one offers a dance?"

"I’m leaving."

"Wait!" Allen interjected.

His voice was a little too quick, a little too loud. Nea stopped in his tracks but left Allen speechless.

A stillness overtook the room as the two silently stared at each other. Allen’s heart quickened by the second.

"...Fine."

He straightened up, pressing against his vest and fixing his posture. A silent sigh. Calm down, he thought—the two had pledged to save the world together, so how bad could a late night dance be? Nea was more than capable in a fight. A few choreographed steps shouldn’t be that hard for him.

Still... There was something rising in his chest. Apprehension? Trepidation?

Allen stepped towards a table against the wall where his record player was. A few moments later and a quiet hum filled the room as piano keys started to play.

He exhaled once more, slower this time. And then he smiled.

"This’ll be good for my notes. ‘Can Noah pick up any new skill or are they helpless to change’?"

Nea held his hand out, his typical confidence returning.

"We’ll see about that."

Allen took Nea’s hand in his, becoming self conscious at how warm Nea’s were compared to his own clammy hands. Despite all of his physical training, Nea’s fingers weren’t coarse—they were smooth and slender, just like a pianists’ should be. As if he’d never had to fight before. As if he really was just a rich kid. The feeling in his chest only became more pronounced.

Nea cleared his throat, making Allen almost jump. "And?"

Allen brought his gaze to Nea’s shoulders, but couldn’t manage any higher. It’s because Nea had such a strong gaze, especially up close- yeah, that’s it, Allen told himself.

"One person puts their hand on the other person’s chest or shoulder-" Allen laid his hand on Nea’s right shoulder. "-and the other puts their hand on the person’s back, below their shoulder blade."

Much to Allen’s chagrin, Nea cupped his waist in his hand.

Allen fixed his own posture. "Stand straight."

Nea muttered a curse under his breath.

Piano notes from the major key spun around in the moonlit room. Allen took the first step. He guided Nea past his desk, each step precise.

Allen's quaint study had at first seemed too small for the pair, but with his careful guidance, the room felt like a ballroom. Two steps to the left, one backwards, one right, two forwards, and so on. As the music calmed his nerves, he eased up and let the rhythm take control.

A Noah and a Bookman, hand in hand, for none of the world to see except the moon.

In the corner of the room, a haphazardly thrown together suitcase sat open. One half had books & snacks neatly strapped down while the other side had clothes strewn about.

Nea looked back at him. "Aren’t you leaving at the end of the month?"

Allen sighed, "I was, but it looks like I’ll be leaving this weekend instead. The sooner I’m gone, the sooner I’ll get back, though."

His gaze wandered off, looking past Nea.

"Another country, another war."

"..."

He feinted a small laugh.

"If my train gets delayed any, the war might be over before I even get there."

The pair made a turn together, maneuvering around a large oak desk. A glint crossed Nea’s eyes as he opened his mouth.

"What will your name be this time?"

Allen narrowed his eyes at Nea with a thin smile on his lips. "I can’t tell you that."

Nea frowned.

"Why not? I won’t be anywhere near the place."

"You’re not involved with the record. I’m not breaking tradition."

"What if I guess it?"

"Hmm... No."

Nea leaned closer.

"I bet you haven’t even figured out a name yet."

Allen paused for a moment. Bullseye.

"...I won’t be telling it to you, so what does it matter?"

Nea threw his head back and laughed.

"What does it matter? You’ll be on a train coming back to Edinstown before you come up with a name you like! You’re so damn picky!"

The music changed time signatures. Their steps quickened to match the new pace.

"I’m not picky! I just refuse to be called anything that’s not... fitting."

Even though he tried to choose his words carefully, Nea lunged at the hesitation.

"So is ‘Allen’ a fitting name or just something you settled for to shut me up?"

Nea’s eyes were penetrating. Although there was a smile on his lips, it was sharp, his words ready to cut any indecisiveness.

Allen stepped back, leading Nea with him. He tried to scoff the idea off.

"I went with it, didn’t I?"

Taking the lead, Nea guided him back towards the window. Their faces were illuminated by the moonlight, only further showcasing Allen struggling to come up with words.

"Because I insisted?"

Nea hadn’t insisted and knew he hadn’t, but it backed Allen up even further into a corner.

When the young Bookman junior had traveled to Edinstown several years prior, tasked to document the unnatural occurrence of the Earl going missing, he hadn’t a name for the mission. Each story required a new identity to go with the record- a new lie for himself to adopt that would be solidified as the name of the record. And yet, when he arrived in Scotland for presumably the longest mission of his life, he couldn’t decide.

Bookman had always told him not to get sentimental, that names were things to pick up and throw away at the drop of a hat. The only part of it that would stick was the name of the record. But even after years of having heard it, "Allen" found that hard to swallow. If anything, his travels made it harder for him to accept it as fact.

Names were gifts. They gave people not only a sense of belonging in their communities, but a sense of self. They cemented their existence.

"Allen" had long since thrown away countless names, but the people he had encountered in those times hadn’t. Of all of the people he had met prior, there had to be at least a couple that still remembered him by those discarded names. Right?

That brief sense of existential dread is what lingered over "Allen" as a young boy when he first walked through the town. What would he want to be known as for however many years he was here? For all he knew, he might spend the rest of his life working on this mission—the Earl was 7000 years old, after all.

Despite all of his late night pondering, he was introduced to the young twins without a name- something Nea couldn’t fathom.

"Why don’t you have a name?"

The Bookman junior shifted uneasily but made an effort to put on his best face.

"I’ll have a name soon."

Nea didn’t buy it.

"You weren’t born with one? Why didn’t your parents give you one?" He questioned.

Had it been an adult asking him this or a child even younger than him, the Bookman junior would’ve shrugged it off. But being pestered about it by someone his own age was something new and uncomfortable.

"They did! ...But I...I want to go by a different one."

How could he explain the intricacies of a Bookman’s life? He had seen enough to understand that his life was a completely different existence than other humans.

Seeing the Bookman junior’s discomfort, the older twin interjected.

"When you know what you want us to call you, just let us know."

Mana’s smile felt a tinge sweeter when put next to his brother’s uncouth look.

Nea flippantly shrugged.

"Yeah, yeah. Just don’t take too long."

And so, the junior stayed with the Campbells for a time without a name. A proper name, that is, as Nea bombarded him with nicknames, each sticking less than the previous one.

"If you don’t give us a name, I’m going to put ‘four eyes’ on all of your stuff."

The junior swatted Nea away.

"I told you to call me Bookman! Why isn’t that good enough for you?"

Nea just folded his arms.

"That’s not a name, that’s a title."

From across the room, Mana chirped in.

"We call the older man Bookman, so why don’t we call you Junior?"

He shot a glare at Mana.

"No. I’m not going to have people my age call me just ‘junior’."

Nea grinned.

"Sounds just like something that a junior would say."

The Bookman junior jumped to his feet and chased Nea around the room, trying to hit him with his book. It was hard to hear what he was yelling at him over Nea’s own laughter.

...

A strong gust from the North rippled through the wheat field, making the golden sea shine extra bright in the sunlight. Sunny days like these were soon to be a rarity as fall set in, but for the moment the boys enjoyed their time outside under the broad limbs of Cornelia.

The young Noah stretched out, yawning.

"I don’t wanna go."

He said this lazily, almost aimlessly noncommittal, throwing his hand out in swishing motion.

The Bookman junior sighed.

"The Noah clan invited you to dinner. It’s best if you attend."

Nea groaned, "But I don’t like them!"

The junior readjusted his glasses, trying to come up with the quickest way to end this conversation- the same conversation they’d already had several times over.

"You’re a Noah now. You can’t just avoid your family."

Nea snorted.

"Sure I can. I’m doing a pretty good job at that now."

With the strong shadows underneath Cornelia’s branches and Nea’s head being turned, the junior couldn’t make out his expression.

"...I don’t want to go without Mana."

Nea’s gaze was set on the far off horizon, ever out of reach.

His voice was quiet as he muttered, "Why am I a Noah?"

He reached his hand out. His fingertips grazed the golden wheat fluttering in the wind.

"What’s the point of me having a near immortal body if Mana can’t even leave the house?"

The junior looked down at the book in his lap and silently closed it. He’d heard people curse the heavens; he’d seen people pass away; he’d even been witness to mindless violence, all in the name of recording history. But there was something about Nea’s small voice that made him feel a tinge of shame.

He wasn’t a doctor, but... Sitting here under the broad shade of Cornelia, with the vast blue sky cloudless in front of them...

"I feel so helpless."

The words were uttered once and carried away in the wind as soon as they left Nea’s lips. They were never meant for anyone’s ears but the junior heard them regardless.

"..."

Allen looked out over the vast field ahead of them and then back towards the house where Katerina was attending to Mana. Out here, the problem seemed so far away...

"Then live for him."

Before he knew it, he was trying to comfort Nea. They managed to shift the conversation away, talking about the flowers blooming and what boring event the Noah would drag Nea to and even what was for dinner. Anything to get their minds off of Mana's looming sickness. —Anything so Allen didn't have to record those tears.

[nictelsm]

In addition to my MSPA ideas

Prison Part 2, also known as Jailbreak: Extended Play, is basically a different version of the Jailbreak adventure, including dialogue, animation, narrative shiftings from 1st person to 2nd person between characters, and even interactive pages... IF I CAN CODE THEM. Each stick figure character will be named, and some will look distinct.

This is the "Beyond Canon Mockery" adventure I mentioned on my previous post, also known as "Homestuck: Beyond Fucked Up" or "Beyond Awful." It's a changearound of Beyond Canon's story, with worsened content, but mocked in a self-aware way, has a lot of pop culture stuff, also mocks the controversy and culture around Homestuck, and introduces a character named " The Story Wizard," an obnoxious, plot fiddling, story changing, retconning, King of Town alien who's always here to make the story worse. In this adventure, John actually hates everything around him, probably just me making fun of his descent into depression, wheras in the original comic he's an emo James Rolfe, while here, he's nihilistic.

Freeplay is an adventure with no plot, no story, no gods, no masters, no author, just fun, but a few set of rules. You can do anything you want here. It's the infinite canvas of MS Paint Adventures, with loads of creativity for one simple panel.

There are a trinity of commands, however. NULLIFY will reset everything, REGRESS will revert a command that someone has submitted, and DISORDER will scramble the story you create into random, inconvenient places.

Nepal Silo was an adventure I was thinking about earlier this year. It's about a group of young researchers who live on a cold, snowy landscape, sometimes peppered with aliens and oddities. It's gonna have the same style as Homestuck, but it's not gonna have that "There's a teenager in his room and he shall be named, plus a world ending supergame" bullshit.

I was also planning to give this adventure a Kelly Bailey inspired soundtrack, obviously because of the planned influence from Half Life.

And here is one I dare to create. Adventure Boy! Planned to be an adventure about some kid (oddly looking similar to Zoosmell Pooplord) in a fantasy world that doesn't know him at all. The main, titular character is extremely joyful, almost stereotype joyful, and yet the world he's in ranges from dark to careless. Yeah, it's obviously one big trope made into an MS Paint Adventure, but I don't care.

Another one I'm thinking about is this oddball. It's a story about your favorite spider bitch doing really stupid stuff towards every other troll in the style of a Homestar Runner storybook (See: Sbemail 100 or Homestar Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest). Later in the book, the protagonist redeems herself off of being too mean.

But least could we forget, another project in the making. It's been done before, but we'll do it again. Comedy gold, adequate. Irony, stunning.

SWEET BOR AND HELLA JYEFF VIDYA GAEM DUDES INNERACTIVE COMIC made by ya boy Dave s. with iorny

Yes, I'm doing a Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff adventure. This one is more gaming based than slice of life or adventure. Think of it as early SBaHJ.

There's also gonna be a few new "bros" introduced into this comic. One's with a green shirt whom I call "THAT DUDE," and a pink shirt named "STAN-SO-CASH." Does Geromy count as a bro? WHO KNOWS!

At last, we have this.

An MS Paint Adventures adaptation of Homestar Runner's "Thy Dungeonman." This is basically gonna be a warm-up to everything else I'll do on MSPFA, sort of a practice to see if I can actually work on what I can correctly. I ended up doing Jailbreak: Extended Play first. The command system of Thy Dungeonman would be really hard to replicate in the MS Paint Adventures format, so suggestions will be sent one by one. Or I could just do the Bard Quest treatment.

So uh, BYE!

[eccentric-nucleus]

anyway wrt 'other projects i am thinking of working on' here is a kind of enormous worldbuilding document about Setting Stuff

sorry for some of the formatting; the tumblr editor seems to be literally incapable of handling paragraphs inside of lists, whether that be in markdown or in actual html; you have to go to rich-text and then manually fiddle with stuff. this is also the only way to add a readmore now, i think?? god why is the tumblr editor so bad. i should just post this on my dreamwidth tbh

so it's a desert planet overall, inspired in some mix of... dark sun's athas, kenshi, morrowind, trigun, gears of war, westerns generally, etc. there's a big crater at one pole (at least one pole) that's a water ocean; it's called the sea of fog b/c the actual ocean is hidden beneath hundreds of meters of local cloud cover. there's an equatorial acid sea & the overall landmass is more-or-less divided into northern and southern halves. there's probably an isthmus somewhere that connects the two but it's kind of out of the scope of my current worldbuilding.

mostly my current worldbuilding has focused on one specific region that i'll say is 'roughly the size of russia'. the 'great desert' (tho as you can tell from the planet description, it's mostly desert all over). loosely: bounded at the north when the desert turns into steppe and corn fiefdoms start to dominate around the polar ocean; bounded at the south by the acid sea; bounded at the west by a huge mountain range; bounded at the east by... less discrete geographical features, but eventually there's perpetual sandstorms and huge unstable fissures that are difficult to pass.

(yopa, in the new hive, is in some variant of this setting. as you might recall, they're down south a few days travel from the acid sea. that's the southern border of the world map! arguably i should have had 'acid rain' as a weather type instead of 'sandstorms', but w/e there's plenty of other things i'd tweak now if i could. weird how i say going north leads to a lowland instead of a highland. that would be below sea level!!)

also there's likely gonna be some level of procgen integration for any game i make with this setting, & so i'm not really 100% on whether this is gonna be a template to build off of, in terms of 'these are the kinds of organizations and cultures you'll see emerge' vs. a specific idea in a specific world. it depends on how good i get at world history simulation, really.

a few notes on the various peoples that inhabit the great desert:

the corn kingdoms of the north. on rolling prairie/steppe with occasional rocky obstructions erupting through. very scattered trees, w/ more cultivated around villages. corn (or a corn-like grain, you know how it is with fantasy worldbuilding) is their staple crop, and pretty much every little village has their own heirloom variety. corn patterning is a highly political subject. every time some new attempted-ruler tries to unify the disparate fiefs and villages the big visible symbol of that is them growing their preferred kind of corn. food tithes only desiring the proper kind of grain or demanding more if it's 'unsuitable varieties', that kind of thing. one of the major strains is a bitter, rich cyan color that needs heavy nixtamalization to be particularly edible & only grows well in the regions immediately ringing the sea of fog; outside it grows pale and reedy from nutrient deficiency. meanwhile another one is a sweeter, mealier red variety that grows well in southern desert soils. i have a whole document on corn varieties and the political implications of growing each one. this is very much inspired by like... japan pre-unification, warring clans kinda situation. they probably have a higher % urbanization than most of the other peoples on this list b/c they actually do food importing i wrote a bunch of stuff on them and only later realized that even if the planet overall is hotter & so they're only just approaching temperate regions at the poles, they're still at the poles so presumably they have like 18 hour nights at winter or w/e. i don't know how that's gonna work out as a farming society. i might have to do some math about axial inclination and revise this section some. occupation-wise: lots of farmers. lots of lawless roving bandits from released conscripts after one clan or another had a military offensive collapse. that kind of thing.

the nomadic tribes of the great desert. there are a bunch of them (12? 13?) but i only came up with names of some of them major tribes. each tribe has a specific variety of weird mask that they wear as face coverings b/c of cultural beliefs about not showing yr face to those outside yr immediate family. the ash tribe wear masks of pitted volcanic rock that are just like, weird rocks. the masks are like a 'public face' in the same style as having a public name vs. a private name, & they consider everybody else to be weird uncivilized faceless demons each clan is made up of several smaller tribes, & they loosely confederate with each other as needed. the clan names get translated into other languages as things like "ash" or "vulture" or "fire-eater", but in their own language there's a chunk more nuance that's not really translated well. each one is associated with a loose constellation of concepts & there's probably some kinda inflectional state that refers to ones own subtribe or family lineage within the larger clan that tends to get removed in translation. anyway they travel along routes in the desert between various oases & are generally considered to be bandits or evil spirits by many of the other peoples who try to inhabit the great desert. there's a lot of king of dragon pass style "it's just friendly social behavior to sometimes raid a nearby camp and steal their goats" activities going on. sure, you don't want to murder the people you're raiding but sometimes they get a cracked head and that's just the cost of having sociable relations. this is how they figure out their relative ordering of power among themselves, but this behavior is not well regarded by the settled villages that get raided. they're just evil bandits who steal their stuff. occupation-wise, i have these put down as producing an awful lot of witches. witches, poets, warriors/raiders, artists. presumably also animal caretakers and scouts/foragers/rangers, too

very far south, along the edges of the acid sea, there are stilt-villages of fisherfolk who catch the weird things that live in the acid shoals. they build from some kinda tree-like acid vegetation and they have to cover everything they build in thick layers of resin pitch to make it acidproof. lots of waxed leather raincapes. pretty much everybody has pitted acid scars all over regardless. there are probably some villages out on islands in the acid sea that are totally disconnected from everywhere else save for like, shingle-bottomed resin boat travel over the acid sea. these are the only peoples who might plausibly have traveled to the other continent. if we're assuming the world used to be more watery & then the oceans sublimated away leaving behind mostly acid, these people would be living on what was formerly the abyssal plain. but maybe that's not what happened!

there's some striped canyons somewhere with big cities carved into the walls & bridges made between them. not a lot of notes on these people aside from lots of artists and bards

there are also the big mesa-temples. big mesa. hollow it out! temple complex at the top. big warren cave-city. they worship families of great beasts they consider to be divine messengers. brulvundojn is from here! it's not great. they're very eugenics-y in their attempts to breed humans into a great beast lineage. generally it doesn't take. when i was rereading the ancient nanowrimo novel that brulvundojn is actually from, i was like "oh noktigo is great" so i guess in this continuity he would be one of the rare true chimeras to come out of the breeding program, & his response was to immediately get the fuck out of there. i'm not sure if brulvundojn is 'from there' in the sense of being some offshoot of a royal lineage, or if he's from there more broadly as in he was once a peer to one of the lineages that got fixated on breeding themselves out into the world & he got out before anybody started worshipping him. the thing with the great beasts is that they are less, like, physical animals that are big and weird, and more like a physical embedding of a physical rule or structure. well, 'the new hive' is an extremely low-fantasy take on things so nobody in that really has magical powers. but in general. brulvundojn embodies the principle that those who trespass boundaries are doomed to death for their violation of the natural order & he doesn't really like being that very much. usually when a great beast breeds w/ a human you just get like, a human with some claws. whatever. sometimes you get another great beast, who is less a separate individual and more a different facet of the great beast's concept. a true chimera who has some of the conceptual nature is very rare. they're also very dangerous b/c great beasts are kind of circumscribed in their capacity for free action by the strictures of their concept, & chimera don't have that. they just have spooky powers and the capacity to do whatever they want with them. anyway some of the older lineages of great beasts are no longer living in a mesa-temple with their families so much as they are unweaving the conceptual boundaries of reality and reweaving it into something more aligned with their conceptual judgment. you can think of it as a pocket dimension if you like. or like the oblivion dimensions in the elder scrolls.

the walled oasis cities! they're also in the middle of the great desert, maybe a little on the northwestern-ish expanse. these are the most dark sun aspect of the setting really. ancient mages, maybe responsible for the ruin of the world, decide to set up a civilization to serve them. the big capital city-states all have the mage's domain (big tower, w/e) at the center, & the entire industry exists essentially to serve them. over time they've allowed lesser mage families to spring up (they need somebody to do the weak magic, after all) and those sometimes establish smaller cities with their own mage towers at the center. most of the original mages have retired from public position as official dictatorial mage-emperor for life, b/c they're perfectly capable of keeping the society tuned to their needs without also having to do any of the actual work of running it. meanwhile, all the citizens in the cities are like "wow we sure are lucky to be born in the only true, free society!!" while they are busy having their labor exploited and having their unions crushed by mage-knights and dying young of poverty and sickness. i feel like it's a little too on-the-nose tbh. architecturally they're very persian-influenced oh yeah so a few centuries ago a mage constructed some helper workers in the form of chesspiece/chaturaji golems. pawns to do simple menial labors, and then rooks/boats for building, knights for scouting, elephants/bishops for simple magic and the management of other golems, and then finally royals to create new golem pieces. then the royal pieces killed him because he was the last remaining inefficiency in the perfect automated world he had built for himself. that's how the cautionary fable goes, at least; maybe their true motives were different. anyway now there's a whole subspecies of chesspiece golems & i have a big gay romance outlined between a black knight & his childhood friend. they lived in some outlying mage-compound that ended up collapsing & most of the servants escaped and became outlaws. theyre gay fantasy cowboys.

there was at one point an empire of the frozen phoenix, though its lands have receded extensively & its former lands are mostly a few handful of former-peasant tribes picking out a rough existence in the ruins of former cities. only a handful of their cities remain, with more splintering off into rebellion each day. in the remixed version of 'the new hive' the defecting soldiers will probably come from here, which is maybe a problem b/c in my docs i only really have about one line about them, like: 'phoenix empire: former empire, decayed/decaying.'

one of the eastern borders is a land of unstable ground where fissures that ooze blood and rotting meat break open. sometimes acid springs seep fumes down into raw meat and send up charred fumes. there are small, scattered villages of rot-fishers, who live on the edge of the more stable fissures and fish up chunks of meat. they're pale and red-eyed and frequently have bizarre bloated deformities. a lot of people consider them to be harbingers of plague and pestilence. sometimes instead of growing old they metamorph into sinewy flesh monsters with intense psychic powers. i'm sure it's fine.

another one of the eastern borders is a land of perpetual sandstorm, kept going by spells from an order of witches, to hide away their lands from outsiders. how mysterious. wonder what they're up to.

there are moon-rabbits who say they came from the black moon. they live in warrens in the hulls of ancient machines that are strewn across the wasteland, and almost never leave. they're very nervous and conflict-averse. they have a prophecy about the end of the world they've read in the movements of the planets. there's a splinter race of jackalopes who are bigger and much more likely to travel outside. also, they have horns. occupations: engineers, glassblowers, astronomers, artificers.

the northern foothills of the western mountains are sparsely covered with vegetation and sometimes broken up into karst mesas, and clinging to the tops of some of them are the remnants of old forests. they're inhabited by remnants of some druidic order, mostly goatmen and humans, and they mostly stay to themselves and aggressively attack any outsiders

the western mountains proper are the eastern edge of some vast and sprawling orc / ogre empire. there are small outposts on the mountains themselves, and vast machine-cities on the far foothills over the main mountain ridge. the springs on the western side of the range seep black oil instead of water, & there's a sea of ichorous oil even further west, beyond the mountains

there's some cenote-cities along the mountains too, probably in the southwest expanse as it peters out for the descent down to the plains of the acid sea. natural cenotes of lightly brackish, highly mineral water have been expanded and cultivated into tiered cenote-cities, mostly inhabited by reptile-people. maybe a bridge to the underground. like the underground with the gheist in it?? we'll see how things shake out

these get shorter and shorter as i go further b/c i want to be closer to the end of this post. i haven't even touched on whatever astau is. anyway.

broadly speaking this is a world where the vast majority of it is rocky, dusty inhospitable wasteland, with scarce outposts of habitable land. travel between the regions is uncommon, though it does happen, and large-scale travel, like with an army, is pretty much unheard of due to the lack of supplies. it all comes back to logistics.

anyway this is the setting/project that a lot of the things i've been talking about over the past few, uh, years have been about? or at least circling around. guess why i was trying to work out medieval crop yields in the first place. i want some numbers here for population and arable land!!