#also shes like. apart of a hivemind cult. so.

[hyrulesfav]

[official-deified-defiled]

What measures do the characters take to keep MC from escaping from them?

for this one im just going to type it out plainly because it would be hard to draw and each one of them are so unreliable of narrators there would be no good answers if they answered themselves. All of them dont even think of the MC being in an situation that is 'escapable'. To Hannah and Adryan you're already dead. Meat. And MJ is so utterly delusional his mind refuses to accept hes keeping someone there against their will. Hannah keeps MC in the 'Shed'. Its more or less a butcher-slaughter/torture shed. How you're kept in there varies. She could have you strung from the ceiling, by your wrists or by hooks imbedded into your muscle, or she keeps you with an inverted sheep dog collar. Inverted so moving or tugging the chain connected is very painful. It's almost like a saw trap. Shes also confident that if you do manage to get out of the shed, she could get you. And she could. Sometimes she will let them out of the shed for moment, only to be quickly hunted or yanked by their chain. Giving and squashing those little bits of hope is important to the process Adryan is also a mixed bag, and it really comes down to the MC themselves. Its hard to get out already since the Manor is a fucking maze and feels like it its always changing. There are familiar rooms that dont change but every other turn of the house feels unfamiliar. Besides that, minus Adryan, its heavily surveilled by cult members and big cats roaming around, apart of his hivemind. The guy doesnt need to sleep. He could always be watching, if he so pleased. For the most part, the threat alone keeps most there. He will always catch you, and the punishment is always something horridly cruel and horrid. And if enough attempts are made theres a good chance MC would end up in the Den, blind, limbless and without their tongues. Or just murdered and eaten slowly by the god himself. He's confident the MC has no chance at escape.

MJ is a delusional mess. Escaping him is actually pretty feasible. At least momentarily. You might get out and get a good distance away before you have a near 7 foot man running at you like something crazed and inhuman. For the most part he's pretty simple. He will keep MC chained or tied to support beam in his home or the banister of his bedframe. Theres few exits to his house, even less that you could access without getting by him or alerting him. The man is also obsessed with the MC. Theres not a large amount of time where he isnt locked in on them. He barely even sleeps, even less to accommodate giving attention to the MC. If his sanity is thinned out enough and hes desperate and dissociative enough he will take more extreme measures like breaking limbs and possibly, very heavy on the possibly, delimb someone. but that is an EXTREME level MJ has to be at.

[hayheadd]

I am incredibly autistic. I have gotten the flu vaccine for 10 years in a row. Autism flows through my blood. Anyways, here's a list of Lemon Demon Spirit Phone songs that I imagine Pathologic animatics to.

Lifetime Achievement Award - The Kains trying to revive Simon while Rubin takes him apart into the vaccine

Touch Tone Telephone - At first it's Aspity explaining to Clara what they both are (brand new species. Big cat. Space nazis. Robert Sack.) and then it's Clara trying to call everyone (Aglaya, Block, Saburovs) to explain her blood cult and convince everyone that it's a great idea

Cabinet Man - Polyhedron (Simon Kain's soul in it?) playing games with the the kids until Aglaya bombs it (very important to include a shot where her dead body is looking very triumphant)

No Eyed Girl - Simon Kain and Isidor obsessing over the plague. They decide to dig it up and kill everyone (they would do it all again)

When he died - Bachelor arriving to town to discover Simon Kain's dead (very important to include a shot of him coming back to Eva's and screaming into a pillow), later Artemy finding out Isidor is dead (and all the wacky circumstances).

Sweet Bod - My favourite. Starts with Artemy brewing his meat soup and taking organs out of people. He proceeds to go graverobbing with the kids. A dude hears about all this and tells the Bachelor. When the gang comes back (after a quick stop at Shekhen), Artemy finds out how to make panacea (it's started rumors of mason jars of sweetness). Everyone is super happy about this and they throw a panacea party in the lair with all the termites and Artemy's friends where they're all drinking twyre brews. Bachelor knocks on the the door, and Burakh greets him (Good god I'm glad to see you) (won't you be my panacea). Daniil gets dragged into the party and is incredibly uncomfortable. He tries to wake up Stakh, who is sleeping on the operating table so he can ask him what the fuck is going on. The animatic finishes off with a big dance off.

Eight Wonder - it's about Murky (extra clever earth bound spirit)! She has hands and she has feet! She follows Burakh around, being all quiet and Murky-like (thou will never know what I am) (she's the eight wonder). Suddenly switches to a shot of the Crowstone scene, Burakh terrified as he understands that the plague is going to take Murky (when you see me, you're paralyzed). Then it shows her backstory, how she lost her family to the plague, and this is compared to how Artemy took in the plague to protect her. I imagine this makes her feel really guilty. The thing is that Murky doesn't talk a lot, but this is how I interpret this part of her story. BUT THEN it's Evil Clara aka possibly plague herself (who tricked her) singing about how SHE'S the eight wonder. And Clara and Murky dance in the void

Ancient Aliens - Clara singing about her nature again. About Worms, Brides, Albinos, Aspity and the plague also (strange things happen).

Soft Fuzzy Man - actually it's really weird that I don't imagine much to this one since it's an absolute banger, but I guess it's Clara with her cult again.

As Your Father I Expressly Forbid It - Artemy forbidding Murky from playing with her friend (Plague) (in an untoxic way).

I Earn My Life - Stakh Rubin anthem. He's overworking, not sleeping for days. At "I'm losing all my hair" his bald head becomes even BALDER. "I learned it from my father and my father never lied" is literally something Stakh would say about Isidor. "I wouldn't be so worried if I wasn't always right". At the end he takes a nice long rest in the grave (Artemy didn't finish his panacea quest) (sad ending)

Man Made Object - Peter imagining, planning and building the Polyhedron (towering over all). I've always imagined if Peter had dream sequences, they would be in purple and orange, like the insides of the Polyhedron.

Spiral of Ants - About the Kin's hivemind. Artemy gets dragged into the Kin's circle and they all dance, create a hurricane, do the Nocturnal ending and decolonise the town.

You're at the party - (this one is really weird) The Marble Nest basically. Daniil can't fall asleep because of all the infected people screaming outside. He's having fever dreams, super tired. A crow is shown looking into his window, when the plague lichen or moss looking thing gets into the house he's in. He freaks out, runs up to the window and gets grabbed by a skeletal hand and dragged into some weird dimension, where he wakes up in a coffin (It's a place you've seen before you were born). Eventually he gets into a trance, and just starts vibing out with the tragedians that are there. Meanwhile, in the real world, Sticky walks into Daniil's room and sees that he's uncontious and really really infected. The partying is broken up at "Wake up!" and "Too late!" with shots of Sticky and the kids trying to shake him awake and give him medicine. Suddenly Daniil wakes up. He's sitting on his bed, but the kids aren't there. The crow that was looking in earlier flew in and is dead on the floor, surrounded by executor masks (sun's not rising and the birds are dead). For some reason there's a vial of panacea sitting near the sink, which Daniil runs up to, but accidentally breaks it (half empty bottles in the sink, down the drain). It starts raining, and Dankovsky just realises he can take his face off (your face begins to change), which he does, revealing a tragedian mask under it. Behind him appears a executor, and he finds himself at the start of that night again (Marble Nest time loop). There's clock and handwatch imagery present throughout this whole thing.

Redesign Your Logo - Peter and the Kains designing the Polyhedron AGAIN, this time in a style that kind of makes the whole thing look like blueprints. I don't have much on this one, but when Neil Cicieriga says "Interracial couples" - show Dankovsky and Burakh holding hands. And likewise have a character for every single line in that segment where he lists potential customers. There's also a lot of pathological symbolism to be done here (everything's connected 😲)

(I AM not intending the censor myself on this. This is strictly informational.)

[lobotomy-maybe-bestie]

Consequences for an RQG world WITH magic post-infection

People keep saying that taking the magic away was good because otherwise the world would have been saved without actual consequences. So I have compiled a list of Myriad-is-gone-but-planar-connection-is-still-there consequences that are much more interesting to think about than what we got

1. The Meritocracy, or what's left of it. Okay, so Bolla Smok has been dead a while, Guivres probably dies in the aftermath of the final battle. Apophis finds himself under a hoard of now just normal people and tries to stop them from panicking. But what happens after that? The Meritocracy has clearly fallen, even if the others are still around though I still firmly believe Apophis was the only one left somehow. What's he gonna do? Move in with the al Tahans I guess but like. politically speaking. The Meritocracy has fallen but it nominally still runs the world. That needs to be adressed! If there ARE other Meritocrats still roaming around they might want to continue ruling. And even if they step down semi-voluntarily, they would still be around. It is quite odd to have the rulers of a now overturned government still there without leaving. Where would they even go?

-The Harlequins. They should take over as they ran the world in its crisis but like. Earhart is really the last proper, non-infected Harlequin and she might have died in the airship crash with Guivres. All the other Harlequins are either dead or have just come back from being infected. And besides, what they (and all other Separatist groups) were doing Before was basically trying to find ways to rebel against the Meritocracy. It wasn't like they had the time or resources to establish an actual running government.

-The Cult of Hades. It's been clear that in the resulting power vaccuum, the squizzards are gonna try and gain control. Someone has to stop them and the next tragedy from happening.

-Cult of Mars is possibly also angling for power! Actually, lots of cults may be stepping over their Meritocratic boundaries to try and get a theocracy going. Depending on which cults specifically this might not be as bad, but it is definitely somewhat concerning.

-Also, may I just add: New governments. They haven't been a thing for literally 2000 years! There was only one! There's maybe been local changes but overall a government without the Meritocrats is. not really conceivable to most people? If there was a revolution replacing royalty with democracy at some point, it was probably less "bloody revolution" and more "bloody revolution until the meritocrats put a stop to it and get non-royalty people to rule places". Also, there have never really been full-on wars between countries. If the Meritocratic lands fall apart and every country gets their own sort of government, wars may start happening.

-London may be the new Rome. We've already got dragon fire destruction and powerful planar nonsense. Magic might go weird in London now. How are people gonna deal with that? Are they gonna rebuild the city without using magic or is it left in ruins?

-What about Chaucer? If London is the new Rome, his lich powers start to go extremely wild. Does he hurt himself? Does he hurt others? If London is normal, how does he continue on?

-The hivemind. This poses several problems, but the point is, people are coming out of BEING Myriad. Things are going to be weird for a while. This may have good sides, as everyone can better feel with one another, but it can also pose several problems.

-Lovecraftian madness. Myriad was a being so far removed from all sentience but they were made of normal minds. Everyone who was infected briefly got to understand all of space, time and planes. Everyone got to be Myriad in a way. And now they're just people again. All that knowledge, all those emotions, that transcendence is GONE now. That's literally how cosmic horror works. People are going to be having a WILD time coming to terms.

-The knowledge of planes. This used to be mostly confined to the people who actually spent a lifetime studying planes and hugely debated. Now everyone knows how they work. Someone is inadvertantly going to do a Mr. Ceiling and try to ascend to the Astral Plane/do other shenanigans. People can coordinate this sort of stuff now. The spell Planar Shift exists. Things will be bad.

-Speaking of Mr. Ceiling, people are going to yearn for transcendence more than ever. This wouldn't be a problem in a world without magic, but if the magic stays? It's doable. Henri managed it. Shoin managed it. Tesla, Lovelace and Babbage managed it. It's not easy, but it's dangerously doable.

-Maybe everyone who was in a hivemind together is still connected in some way, like how Wilde, Carter and Sassra are connected since the resurrection. Maybe that connection keeps going after death and people can feel their lost friends in the astral plane, or maybe it cuts off and they are left missing people. Missing lots of people.

-Maybe there are physical aspects of the infection as well- what happens to the blue veins themselves? What about the people who had been kept alive by the veins? Dead? Undead? Alive but hurt?

-And now you have the exact conundrum that Apophis was talking about way back: skilled priests can use the Heart of Aphrodite once, maybe twice a day. That is one artefact, based in Cairo. There may be a few others, but not nearly enough. How do you decide who gets saved and who doesn't? Especially if it's a time-sensitive matter.

-What happens to the Garden of Yerlick? How is Myriad connected to it? Was Myriad the forest or was Myriad the blight?

[fairfowl]

Lie There and Breathe pt 2: A Poor Choice of Watchmen

A horde clone oc story (part one here)

Tw: mild gore, cult indoctrination

The next time that the clone awoke it was to a feeling of coldness. The bandages that were wrapped around his head had become soaked. 

The clone reached a hand up to touch the wet cloth over his face, wondering if someone had poured water over him while he slept, but as consciousness returned to him he realized that it was more likely blood. The wetness had dampened the bandages, and then dripped down onto the thin pillow under his head. It was very unpleasant. 

The emptiness in his mind seemed to amplify the pain from his wounds, leaving the frantic signaling from his nervous system to echo around inside his skull rather than travel outward into the hivemind as intended. He missed feeling his brothers, and being felt. He missed the comforting thought of Horde Prime Feeling him and Knowing him as an extension of his own glorious self. 

It was no wonder, the clone thought, that other species were so desperate and primitive. How could one be anything but when left trapped within their own mind?

He was already tired of being alone.

The clone took a slow breath, and listened for his brother The Breather beside him. He quickly isolated the familiar rasping sound from the chaos surrounding them. The wheezing sound was quieter than it had been, and the clone reached out, hoping that his companion had not been moved further away. His talons at first met empty air.

The clone strained further, partially lifting himself off the cot as he reached blindly across the void.

Eventually he found what he sought.

The soft strong skin of a fellow clone. 

It appeared that while the clone had slept someone had come and propped The Breather up in a half sitting position. The clone noticed that his companion's breaths seemed to come easier from the change and wondered at the improvement as he traced The Breather's arm from wrist to shoulder. 

He scooted as closely to the edge of the cot as he could manage, still too weak to sit up on his own, and rested a hand on his companion's arm.

"You should wake up Brother." He said softly, his voice rough from disuse. "I don't know what's happening but with two of us we will stand a better chance than one." 

The Breather slept on, each breath long and slow. For his part the clone found that he didn't mind.

"That is fine." He said aloud, feeling silly and slightly hysterical. "I will keep watch for both of us, I-" 

The clone stopped abruptly, as the tide of panic lapped at his mind once again. For all that he had been blind since first awakening the darkness seemed to become more menacing the more that he thought about it. The clone shuddered but soldiered on, continuing his one-sided conversation.

"Although I am a poor choice of watchmen at the moment." 

He needed to remain calm. If he kept his wits and didn't panic he and The Breather would still have a chance. 

If he stayed calm then they might survive. 

He did not stop to wonder when he had become they. All the clone knew that he wanted both of them to make it through this, although for the first time he did not know what the future held. It had all seemed so simple before, he would have served Prime for the length of his existence, whether he perished in battle or simply reached the end of his useful life. Now Prime was gone and the clone was still shocked by his own urge to continue living.

On an impulse, the clone stretched further across the void to hold his companion's shoulder bracingly, craving the grounding physical contact-

And promptly toppled to the ground as his cot overbalanced, the wooden frame falling on top of him with a crash.

For a moment all he knew was pain. His head rung like a struck bell, and warmth bloomed upon this wounded face, mingling with the now cold fluids that already soaked his bandages. Smaller sharp pains pulled and stung across his body. The clone was surprised to find that he had yet more injuries, he had been so distracted by the persistent pain from his eye and face that he simply hadn't noticed. Not until he moved.

Still the discovery of his collection of cuts and scrapes was immediately overshadowed by the new bruises that he had surely just gained.

The cot was heavy, pressing hard onto his back and legs, and the chaotic noise of the tent had fallen to a hush.

"Are you okay?" Someone was beside him, kneeling down to his level. The clone briefly considered yelling but decided that it wouldn't help. Instead he simply scoffed and tried to lift himself from the ground. 

After a few moments of futile struggling the clone felt two arms grab him beneath the arms, hoisting him up and righting the cot with a set of practiced movements. His head spun. 

He listened through the relative silence for The Breather and concentrated again on the repetitive rasping noise as he was set down on the cot in a seated position, his legs dangling as counterbalance while the stranger supported his shoulders.

The new person was talking to him, but he did not hear them. The clone was too focused on breathing in time with his companion, slowing his heart rate as his head continued to spin. Eventually he regained control of himself, and tuned head towards the person beside him.

"Hi" they said, their voice low and soft, as though they were speaking to a frightened animal. The clone had already guessed that the person interacting with him was Etherian but now he was sure. They smelled like grass. 

"Hello" He responded, feeling out of his depth. Was this one of his new masters? Did they know the extent of his damage? Maybe they were also someone conquered by the Etherian Princesses and the She-Ra. 

“Hey,” they greeted again, the clone did not understand why but said nothing “You took a pretty bad fall there, do you think you reopened any injuries?” 

Now the voice was hesitant, as though the speaker was afraid of him. Before the fall of Prime the clone would have thought them correct to be afraid, but now he lacked the will to lash out. Truly without Prime he was a pathetic creature. 

“I- I think my face is bleeding again…” Indeed the warmth that had bloomed against his cheek felt as though it was dripping downward, mixing with the fluids that already soaked his bandages. 

“Yeah, yeah those definitely need to be changed.” The Etherian said, a hand still holding the clone’s shoulder to steady him. “What do you think, Master?” 

“I think they should have been changed a few hours ago.” The clone startled as a wry voice chimed in from a few feet away, not far from where The Breather continued to sleep. “This one’s been shuffled off to the corner, but his head wounds will get infected if we don’t clean that up. They might be infected already.” 

“Okay, I’ll rewrap them.” The first voice replied. The clone felt a new hand grip his shoulder, larger and less gentle than the first, as the Etherian on his side hopped up and walked away, their footsteps vanishing into the noise of the tent. 

"Master…" He said slowly, concentrating on The Breather's quiet rasp as his heartbeat quickened. Fear coursed through him but he refused to relinquish control. "Are you to rule over us now that Horde Prime is dead?"

The very words felt blasphemous, but after so many hours of lying blind and helpless with no idea what was happening The Clone found that he had to know. 

"Oh! No!" The person beside him replied, his hand tightening against the clone's sore shoulder. "No no, not until you're no longer my patient at least."

The gruff voice chuckled. 

"I am a Master Healer of Mystacor, you may call me Master Mendus, or just Mendus if you’d prefer.” The clone nodded, unsure of the meaning of most of the words he’d just heard but doing his best to absorb them anyway. “Dawn, the one who helped you up, is one of my apprentices. I’ve assigned you to her care.”

As if on cue the footsteps returned, and the soft voice with them.

“I got the supplies. Master, can you hold him up while I unwrap his face?” The second Etherian—Mendus—said nothing, but the clone felt him shift, and the air moved as Dawn stood directly before him.

Slightly overwhelmed by the sudden attention of two alien beings the clone felt himself stiffen up, holding himself as straight as he could manage although still relying on Mendus’s hands to keep upright. Panic still hovered at the edges of his consciousness like a threat, but he held himself together to the best of his ability. 

If he lost control now he could be punished or taken away, and The Breather would be left alone. He would not leave his helpless brother to the mercies of their captors. 

Dawn’s gentle hands reached up to his face and the clone suppressed a flinch as he felt her slowly begin to unwrap his bandages. Throughout his entire stay within the healing tent he had seen only darkness, swathed in bandages and blood, but as they were peeled away light shone through his right eyelid, green and dim but present nonetheless. 

His heartbeat quickened, and the clone felt his claws scrape wood as he gripped the edge of his cot. 

Layer by layer the bandages unwound. They stuck over his left eye, but each time they did Dawn sprayed them with a cool liquid that wet them enough to come apart without pain. Eventually cool dry air touched his face and scalp for the first time, and the clone found that the only thing covering his eyes and wound was a gauze pad that stuck there, held by the gore beneath it.

“This might hurt.” Dawn warned, spraying more of the fluid directly onto his face. The liquid penetrated the bandage and stung as it entered the wounds on his left side, he could feel fresh blood welling up and dripping down his cheek. The clone could also feel himself beginning to shake as the gauze pad was carefully peeled away, exposing the wreck of his face to the open air.

And for the first time since Horde Prime’s defeat the clone opened his eye.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for tuning in to the continued adventures of Chamomile and Calamine the clones (AKA the clone and The Breather)

This time Chamomile actually speaks although he hasn’t much to say, we also meet two new characters

Master Mendus is exactly what he says he is, a healer from Mystacor who has taken responsibility for the hospital tent where our heroes currently reside. He’s a good man...or a good fawn as it were...

Dawn is one of several of Mendus’s apprentices and is currently responsible for both Chamomile and Calamine, she’s a dutiful gentle young doe. She will be Chamomile’s first real link to the Etherians and will help him and Calamine as they go on. Despite her sweet nature she is isolated from her family and seeking out connections

[snaxpo]

fuck it bugsnax/s4m au notes

alternate title: i’m at that point in liking something where i have to combine it with everything else i’ve liked previously and today i’m making that everyone else’s problem. 

- base premise is a lil different! instead of being a journalist who was invited personally to the island by the expedition leader, you (or FK if you consider them a separate character from the player) are tasked with investigating the habitat, a budding commune on snaktooth island that may or may not be devolving into a cult. there’s just one teeny tiny problem - the commune’s leader and also your main suspect, boris habit, has been missing for weeks by the time you arrive. 

- now it’s a matter of gaining the inhabitants’ trust/getting them to come back to the habitat while hunting and subduing the bugsnax, who seem increasingly eager to launch themselves at inhabitants at quite literally dangerous speeds, in a battle of wits to keep your newfound companions fed while documenting the strange creatures. and of course, the question of just what happened to boris habit still lingers in the air. think like... talentless nana where the protag pretends to be all cute and unassuming (complete with flower motifs!) but really they’re there on Super Secret Spy Business. but of course there’s less murder. 

- oddly the bugsnax seem to have only become more aggressive after his disappearance. i’m sure it’s nothing. 

- yes everyone is still a grumpus

- there isn’t really an interview “mechanic” so much as it is a Lot of cozying up to everybody in pursuit of whatever information you can find on habit/potential group rituals/events that led to his disappearance; you get it by bits and pieces rather than a single structured interview. there is of course a lot more interactions between characters than there is in s4m’s base game bc thats like 60% of the appeal of bugsnax and i would be a fool not to think of it.

- time for ideas for specific characters! kamal is the vice-mayor of the habitat and has been habit’s right-hand grump for as long as any of the inhabitants can remember, despite their relationship becoming increasingly strained ever since their arrival on the island, and especially before habit’s disappearance. i imagine you still find him passed out but instead of collapsing from starvation he’s like "please.... toothpaste... a breath mint.... some pepto bismol. i’ve been able to taste my own breath for weeks." has been trying to divide his time between looking after the habitat and looking for habit himself (and also his best friend wallus) but the dispersal of the habitat has left him a tad Demoralized, to say the least.

- i feel like trencil would play a wambus-adjacent role in the sense that he's the one taking care of the sauce plants and also one of the first townspeople you meet. you convince to come back with you not necessarily bc he'd be able to continue farming in town but bc he would probably have an easier time looking for his daughter if he got some sleep first (but only if you look for her in his stead)

- gillis is like. a wannabe chandlo. makes you capture a bunch of snax that he Says he's gonna use to get stronger but eventually you find out he's been releasing them or keeping them in like lil makeshift pet houses bc he always takes one look at their big googly eyes and turns to mush. but EVERYONE'S eating them so naturally if they find out he's not they're gonna think he's some kinda wuss so he just pretends. 

- dallas keeps asking for sweet n colorful bugsnax to give to mirphy to impress her (sweetieflies, instabugs, etc etc.) but by some streak of bad luck they always end up being her least favorite. he tries to see if Maybe he can use them to make some new bugsnak-exclusive pigments, but like in canon they always end up turning into mush before he can get very far. mirphy meanwhile is far more interested in preserving them for a potential display, but similar to dallas, she never gets very far.

- i imagine the kid habiticians are like. a roving band of semi-feral children bc if anyone's gonna keep them in town it's definitely not kamal.

- i wanna do something with wallus SO BAD like you find him somewhere up in frosted peak but i have no idea what he would even DO its fucking killing me

- those are all the ideas i have For Now; s4m has more characters than bugsnax so there’s a lot to be done w/ them lmao. if i think of any more i’ll probably put it in another post or if anybody wants to spitball with me.......  👀

- and now we get to The Big Guns: habit.

- he was fun to work on w/ this au mostly bc despite being the rough equivalent of lizbert he’s a way different type of flawed leader than her; where liz is responsible to the point of martyring herself without a second thought and not thinking to delegate any tasks to the other snaxburg residents, which is what ultimately causes them to fall apart once she disappears, habit's deal is that he wants the position and appearance of an authority figure because it'll keep him safe, but he kind of sucks at taking responsibility for anything he does wrong because he’s spent most of his life acting according to what other people (namely his family) expect of him and being met with a negative reception no matter what, so he doesn’t really believe he has power over anything, including his own actions, despite being such a control freak for most of his own game. so his arc would need something that’s kind of antithetical to what liz had, wouldn’t it?

- so what i got so far is that au habit was tryin to covertly start a bugsnax cult bc he sees being asborbed by the snax as a sort of ascension and was eventually planning to have everyone be absorbed; it’s important to note however that bc information on bugsnax is so obscure he doesn’t actually 100% know how absorption works so tl;dr: habit became the bugsnax monarch willingly and then 5 seconds later he was like "oh no wait this fucking sucks. what have i done. shit. fuck."

- unable to cope with the realization that he was once again forced to act in accordance to someone (or in this case something) else's desires, he shuts down emotionally, becoming an empty husk of a grumpus while the bugsnax above run rampant thanks to the extra fuel and absolutely no restrictions until the Big Climax when habit is finally moved to take back control of the snax and by proxy Take Some Fucking Responsibility for knowingly luring people to cthulhu island. however this does leave the obvious question of if he was such an empty shell for most of the game why didn’t they just. eat him.

- the answer i eventually landed on was that his self-preservation instincts were still kicking on a subconscious level and during the aforementioned climax he eventually realizes that he does not in fact want to die, he just doesn’t want to keep living the way he is now (as part of an ancient hivemind beyond his understanding) or the way he was before (you know.)

- also fun fact: i was thinking about what his monarch body would be based off of bc the snakdragon, while cool as shit, didn’t feel right for him, and then i remembered that blooming onions exist. i imagine he’s in the middle acting as the flower’s “stigma”

- as for endings i’m thinking like. in the neutral ending kamal joins habit but its left ambiguous whether or not they'll ever be able to leave the island or if this is even a permanent solution (call that the paw in unloveable paw ending). in the good ending you bust habit outta his queen body after fending off enough bugsnax together and it’s super gross bc the undersnax as a whole is super gross but hey at least everyone’s leaving alive. i don’t know what a bad ending entails except most if not all of the cast is dead and habit is left alone on the island surrounded by reminders of his spectacular failure.

- hell i can even think of a sequel hook for the good ending like in canon bugsnax; some time after the ending/credits you ask habit just Where did he get the information on bugsnax that led to him being like “you could make a religion out of this” and the screen fades to black before you hear his answer. there.

- its almost midnight.

[alternis-dim]

I’ve never played terraria what is it about?

to be completely honest, Terraria isn’t a super story driven game. it’s one of those things where you can go through and not know a single thing about the lore without losing out on anything, y’know? it’s just sort of fun to dig around the flavor text and the developer comments to see how the world works. the amount of depth they put into what’s basically a roguelike sandbox is impressive!

there are all sorts of weird, nitpicky details, so tldr: the universe of Terraria is one where the forces of the world try to maintain a perfect balance of light and darkness, and this balance is messed with by the interference of an elder god. the player confronts bosses linked to said god, gathers npcs, and generally just tries to survive for a while. the game is advanced into a hardmode when you kill the world’s core, which releases spirits of light and dark that it was protecting the world from. this triggers a massive shift in the map, as well as a series of boss events which eventually lead up to a godly confrontation.

long and SUPER info-dumpy version under the cut (I am so sorry)

lore released by the developers explained that the setting of “Terraria” is really more of a multiverse than a single setting (which is a fun way to do a game where you can generate multiple maps and do multiplayer, imo!). each potential “world” that exists in the multiverse is sentient and strives to maintain a balance of light and dark- a rule which had been established by the Gods in order to ensure fairness for all creatures. the sole purpose of this sentience was to ensure that the balance was maintained, and this desire for balance resulted in the existence of some strange environments (biomes in the game).

the first two of the three are the only ones relevant before hardmode, and only one of those two will generate in any given world. one of them is the Crimson, which in reality is a sentient creature whose “body” is composed of all Crimson in the multiverse, creating a hivemind across universes. the other is the Corruption, a barren wasteland created from the sins, negativity, and vileness of living creatures. both of these environments balance out light with dark in separate ways: the Crimson has the singleminded goal of restoring balance to the multiverse at all costs (and has consumed many worlds in this process), while the Corruption knows nothing but causing pain and desolation.

beyond this worldbuilding, the actual “lore” of Terraria begins with an elder god, Cthulhu, whose origins are a mystery and whose only goal seems to be the subjugation of all life. this dude absolutely tore up the multiverse for a while, but was eventually held at bay when the Dryad race took him on head-on; their connection to the planet made them uniquely equipped to deal with him. they weren’t able to kill him, but instead incapacitated him by tearing his body apart, separating his organs, bones, brain, eyes… what remained of Cthulhu fled to the moon in an attempt to recover, and the shreds of his body are sort of just Around. all but one of the Dryads died in the conflict, and the last one hasn’t been seen for a very long time prior to the game.

it’s been a long time since said battle, but in that time a strange cult started to rise to power with the goal of reviving Cthulhu. they started to set about this by abducting the Mechanic, an unparalleled technological genius, and forcing her to construct mechanical replacements for his body. as of the beginning of the game, she’s finished everything but the brain.

you, the player, exist in one of Terraria’s worlds! the first npc you meet is the Guide (explained in the lore to be part of an order dedicated to the preservation of knowledge in hopes of protecting people and the world), and he guides you through the process of surviving in a setting where many things want to kill you, while also instructing you on how to attract various npcs to live with you and help out. certain events throughout the game will trigger battles with various parts of Cthulhu’s body (the Eye of Cthulhu, the Brain of Cthulhu, the Eater of Worlds (implied to be his spine, I believe?), and Skeletron (the skull and arms, bound to an old man cursed to guard the entrance of the dungeon in which the Mechanic is trapped). 

The final challenge of pre-hardmode is descending to the Underworld, which has a fun bit of lore which the Guide tells you nothing about; throwing a voodoo doll of him into the lava summons the Wall of Flesh, the guardian of the world’s core and the only thing that stands between the world and the ancient spirits of light and dark it has imprisoned. (several bits of lore imply that the Guide is straight-up a human avatar for the Wall of Flesh; using a voodoo doll of the Clothier does not summon him, and an npc later in the game calls the boss the “wall of [guide name]”)

killing the Wall irreversibly shifts the map into hardmode, in which whatever dark biome you have will start spreading virulently. remember how earlier I mentioned that the world always attempts to keep light and dark balanced? the world compensates with the generation of a new environment called the Hallow, which is the realization of complete purity. this makes it equally as dangerous as the dark biomes, though. The Hallow is so “pure” that it’s sterilizing, and it spreads just as virulently as the dark biomes and is equally hostile to the “imperfections” of the world. both the dark biome and the Hallow will eventually overtake the map without player intervention, though this does take a while. triggering hardmode also releases a whole bunch of harder enemies, new npcs, and other fun stuff. 

in hardmode you have to battle the body replacements the Mechanic built, and after clearing a couple more world-related bosses you’ll be able to start finding cultists around the dungeon. killing them triggers a boss fight which then leads to a map event where you have to destroy four Celestial pillars which rain down godlike power on your map. once they’re defeated, you have to confront the Moon Lord. (the details on the Moon Lord haven’t really been cleared up by the development team, but based on the fact that the Cultists are involved in triggering his summoning event, he’s missing several body parts, and he comes from the moon which the lore stated was where Cthulhu fled to recover, it’s very likely that he’s a weakened Cthulhu.) defeating him is considered endgame.

there’s all sorts of other weird and fun lore, too. the game seems to heavily imply that the setting of Terraria is post-apocalyptic, considering the existence of abandoned houses and civilizations, functional mineshafts and minecarts, swarms of undead underground (including ones wearing mining equipment), apartment complexes in the Underworld for some reason, floating islands with abandoned homes, technology such as wiring and phones, and an explicit statement from the developers that the denizens of the dungeon used to be a thriving society until a curse caused them to live beyond their bodies and become mindless monsters… that last one’s interesting, since it’s very possible that the Mechanic and the Clothier come from that civilization.

WOW THAT GOT LONG I AM SO SORRY I JUST THINK IT’S NEAT

none of this is necessary at all to know to play the game, I just like flavor text and reading

[geek-patient-zero]

Part 1, Chapter 7

Or: Lameth the Suburbanite Schlub

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

St. Louis—March 11, 1994

When we last left Dire McCann, he had three problems: the mystery of the Red Death and what connection he could have with the rising Nictuku, Flavia figuring out that he’s secretly an ancient and powerful Methuselah possessing a human body, and Rachel Young, the singer from The Club Diabolique and suspected assassin of Tyrus Benedict, stealing his mail from his office while he was out. Now he’s leaving his office and going home to have a drink, think about those problems a little more, and hit the hay.

For the first two pages, the narrative further establishes how the World of Darkness is a Harsher, Crueler Version of Our World, and how cautious, suspicious, and prepared McCann is as a result. He waits ten minutes and spends more money for a security guard to get his car out of a city-run underground parking lot.

Despite security cameras and motorcycle patrols, muggings, rapes, and murders were common occurrences in these parking garages. Rumors had it that the security patrols were the ones responsible for many of the crimes. No one knew for sure, as dead men told no tales.

Evil rent-a-cops aren’t the only plague on the city.

McCann didn’t mind spending the extra money if it avoided unnecessary confrontation. The city was a dangerous place. Urban America was increasingly becoming a jungle in which only the strongest and smartest survived. More people died these days from gunshot wounds than from any disease.

But don’t worry. Our government’s hard at work making sure preventable illnesses come in at a close second.

The government claimed that crime was under control. But nobody believed the politicians. The truth was on the streets.

Survival depended more on recognizing the perils that haunted daily life and adjusting to them than on superior firepower. A fact of life in the nightmarish world of modern society was that someone else always possessed superior weaponry.

Good to know in the Stark, Desolate Landscape of the World of Darkness, with all it’s vampires, werewolves, and wraiths, gun violence is still the bigger problem. ‘Murika!

McCann lives in the suburbs, instantly losing some cool points. I bet you thought, after all that talk about Urban America being a jungle where only the strong survive, he’d live in a shitty apartment in the city where you need to have street smarts to survive just getting to your floor. Nope. Suburbs. It makes all the stuff about how dangerous the city is sound like a sheltered suburbanite repeating something Tom and Susan told them in hushed tones at the Nelsons’ yard sale.

But McCann doesn’t want to live just anywhere. He wants somewhere private and secure.

McCann lived in a small brick home in a new development a few blocks off Highway 80. Located on a wide lot at the end of a quiet street, it was surrounded by a wrought-iron security fence, isolating the building from the rest of the block. Which was exactly what the detective desired. He wanted to be left alone. In these troubled times, no one considered his security measures the least bit unusual.

One of those homeowners, huh? There’s at least one house on the block that has security cameras or a pack of doberman guard dogs or something, even in the safest neighborhood. Who knows, there could be an “urban” person a few blocks closer to the highway just waiting to case your home.

He had bought the house for cash less than a year before, when he first decided to settle in the St. Louis area. He knew none of his neighbors and had no interest in meeting them. He worked at night and slept during the day. The few times he had seen anyone he had raised a hand in greeting, but said nothing. McCann considered his home a safe place to rest and relax. His office served as his base of operations. He socialized in neither of them.

Someone’s never watched The ‘Burbs. Buying a house with cash, surrounded by a wrought-iron leave-me-the-fuck-alone security fence, working and sleeping at odd hours, and never speaking to anyone? All while living near people often stereotyped as gossipy rumormongers who never mind their own business and spy on anyone “unusual”? A private person like McCann should never be able to rest and relax. He’d live in fear that somehow, someday, Tom Hanks would break into his house and discover all his World of Darkness secrets.

Alright, enough talking about suburbs like I don’t comfortably live in one. McCann parks his car in the garage but before he enters his house, he checks on his real security system by placing his hand on the wall.

Certain arcane rituals from the dawn of civilization imbued a home with the personality of its owner.

McCann’s house is also a smug secretive jerk who thinks it’s the greatest and wisest schemer ever. Aww, look, he’s comforting the sexy white house across the street whose neighbor burned down. Oh no, it accidentally gave away its biggest secret!

A master magician, and McCann was among the greatest ever to walk the Earth, could immediately sense any disturbance in their dwelling.

I know I said McCann only knew simple parlor tricks to barely pass as a mage, but I might’ve downplayed the true extent of his powers. A bit.

There was none. McCann was safe. At least for the moment, neither the Red Death nor the mysterious Ms. Young had discovered his hideaway.

Shame. It would’ve been funny if he went inside and scary ol’ Red Death was casually relaxing on his couch like Darkseid.

Later, McCann’s sitting in his sofa, drink in hand, listening to Billie Holliday on the stereo. We get a description of the room, and it’s nothing special. Sofa, coffee table, no TV. McCann believes in “simple comforts” but the real point is that he doesn’t have many valuable possessions because he moves around a lot, never staying in one place for long. Reminds me of a friend of mine. He said he had wanderlust, but I suspect he just didn’t know what he wanted to do in life, chasing one passion before getting distracted by another. Lost track of him somewhere down in Florida. McCann moves around for a very different reason, though. His wandering was necessary for his “complex scheme.”

But as he relaxes, he wonders if all his moving around and plotting is even worth it anymore.

At times, he wondered why he still bothered playing the game. So many of his kind no longer struggled. Some had plunged into the great unknown from which there was no return, while others had retreated from cruel reality into a dreamworld of their own creation. He was among a handful who continued fighting. In truth, the prize hardly seemed important any longer. It was the diversion that kept him amused.

The detective shook his head and finished his nightcap. He had engaged in this mental exercise a thousand times and never arrived at a satisfactory conclusion. He was like Ol’ Man River, ‘tired of living, but scared of dying.’ For those like himself, there were no easy answers. Just more questions.

McCann finishes his introspective episode and thinks about the group he learned the Red Death was part of thanks to his bullshit telepathy power; The Children of Dreadful Night. He’s never heard of them before, but the “Dreadful Night” part makes him suspect they’re a Gehenna cult. They’re typically groups of vampires who either want to prevent Gehenna or find a way to save themselves from the Antediluvians when it begins. Then there are the ones who want to help bring it about, but the narrative is focusing on the ones who fear Gehenna for one reason or other. Technically the Sabbat is one huge Gehenna cult, but they’re much more powerful and influential than the smaller groups the term usually refers to. More cults have been springing up lately.

As it did many mortals, the approaching end of the millennium frightened them.

Oh right, the Y2K bug. I doubt that’s calming the Kindred down either.

McCann used to think the cultists were just a bunch of fringe crazies, but now, with the Red Death...

Speaking of, remember when McCann used his brain probe on the Red Death and learned that he both recognized him and had a pretty awesome counter for his psychic powers? He’s worried about that too. It means that Red D. knows his true identity somehow. He’d kept a low profile the past few decades, presumably while separating his Dire McCann identity from whatever one he was using just before that, and preferred “to forward his schemes through unsuspecting agents.” Whatever those agents were doing, no one should have suspected McCann was involved.

He felt certain no evidence existed associating the human detective, Dire McCann, and Lameth, the Dark Messiah of the Kindred.

Wow, okay, so that’s one of the floweriest wannabe impressive not impressive fucking 90′s Image Comics titles you can give a shmuck like McCann. Not to mention redundant. We already had ~*~The Dark Angels~*~, did we also need ~*~The Dark Messiah~*~ too?

The funny thing is, I think Weinberg knew that title was over-the-top. Back when McCann was thinking about the Children of Dreadful Night, there’s a line about how “Kindred possessed a bizarre fondness for nicknames.” Like he thought that if he didn’t show at least a hint of irony, every nerd, geek, or corporate suit that worked on nerd and geek franchises would rise as one, like a perma-virgin hivemind, and institute a cross-genre ban on “The Dark” as part of a character’s title, rank, or nickname. And then where would vampire fiction be?

Shaking his head, McCann wondered if Anis was behind the attack. She was one of the few Kindred who knew many of his secrets. And, like him, she continued to plot, undaunted by the centuries.

Hold up. I know what you’re all thinking. Anis is a perfectly legit Arabic name. Quit giggling.

McCann considers the other weird things that happened last night. Ms. Young was genuinely terrified of the Red Death, convincing McCann that they weren’t working together, but he still believes she killed Tyrus Benedict, stole the Baba Yaga photos, and later stole his mail from his office. And there was that phone call he got, the one warning him of the attack before it happened, made from an out of service phone booth, whose information was erased from McCann’s recording devices the moment it ended. Or, as the narrative puts it:

Reality had twisted immediately after he received the warning, which hinted that an extremely potent mage was at work.

Oh great. Actual mages.

Then there’re the assassins. We already know that Makish hired them on the Red Death’s orders, but McCann doesn’t yet. 

He still has the billfold he pocketed from one of the assassins.

Except for the money he had removed earlier, it was absolutely empty. However, that didn’t mean that it couldn’t reveal secrets.

The detective rested the leather billfold on the coffee table. Placing both hands on it, he let loose the full power of his mighty will. The air wavered with titanic energies. Squeezing his eyes shut, McCann concentrated on a solitary word. Find.

Despite that whole thing about the air wavering with titanic energies, what he’s doing is most likely The Spirit’s Touch, a power from the third tier of the Auspex discipline, which let’s you use an object’s “resonance” to learn things about it and its owner. Pretty basic, and you don’t have to be a Dark Messiah from the dawn of time to use it, but handy for detective work like this.

This is also the second time that a Kindred discipline being used is described as someone using their “mighty will.” I know some powers were namedropped earlier, like Fires of the Inferno and Body of Fire, but it makes me wonder how many listed disciplines actually have names in-universe. If a player has their character activate Awe, in-universe does the character think “I’m using Awe, the first tier Presence power”? Or “I will extend my mighty will to get everyone’s attention”? Like how Superman’s laser vision is just called laser vision and not “Burning Gaze of Rao.” 

Not that Weinberg should’ve used the discipline name every time. “The detective used Auspex” would be much duller writing.

The detective learns that the billfold’s from Washington, D.C.  It was stolen from a government file clerk by the assassin, just so he’d have somewhere to keep the money McCann found in it. We learn about the Kindred’s political situation in Washington. The part of it that doesn’t involve the spreading gang wars.

The nation’s capital had long been a source of friction between the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Though the Camarilla controlled the city, both organizations had agents in the suburbs.

Must be like a cross between Desperate Housewives and Cannibal Holocaust out there. A bit of Weeds, too.

The constantly shifting population also brought in new Kindred. Each sect controlled politicians and lobbyists.

I always had my suspicions about the Long Pig Lobby.

However, the frequent changes in government officials thwarted their ambitions for absolute domination of the government.

That darned democracy, making life in Washington for the vampires inconvenient. Someone should do something abou- Actually, no, that joke doesn’t work. Certain officials come and go in the capital even faster nowadays.

The city was a potential battleground between the cults. The Camarilla held it, but Sabbat forces surrounded it. Sooner or later, warfare between the two groups was bound to explode.

McCann had carefully avoided the city. He disliked being too visible anyplace where the balance of power was in flux. He worked best when in the shadows. However, this assassination attempt hinted that perhaps he had made a mistake by ignoring the metropolis.

After much time spent thinking and thinking, the detective’s all thunk out and decides to go to bed. He mentally checks his magic defenses on the way to his bedroom. And one other thing.

With a wan smile, he rested one hand on a small, detailed sculpture resting on the end table in his bedroom. Carved from sandstone, it depicted a man’s face remarkably similar to his own. Not particularly large or impressive, the statue originally came from Egypt and was over four thousand years old. It had been with McCann for a very long time.

Did you get that Dire McCann is super old? Need it hammered in a little more? You dumb bastards?

If you got rid of that last sentence, this could be a nice little moment for McCann’s character. Him looking at the statue, briefly allowing himself to feel nostalgia for an age and people gone by. A moment where he drops the master schemer act and let’s the old man out. A little heartwarming. A little sad. But the last sentence turns it into another reminder of something we already know.

Eh, maybe I’m being too nitpicky. Looking too hard for flaws.

The detective grinned, remembering Flavia’s tale of Masqueraders. It was an entertaining fable. He wondered how she would react to the truth. Maybe, someday, he would tell her.

No, fuck it, this one I have something to say about.

Back when Flavia was explaining her “tale of Masqueraders,” this was how McCann reacted:

McCann laughed, trying to appear amused. “What utter nonsense.”

and

McCann forced himself to remain quiet. He had said too much already.

And when he’s back in his office, reflecting on his conversation with Flavia:

McCann, sitting behind his desk in his office an hour later, sighed heavily. The detective folded his arms across his chest. For all her grief, the Dark Angel had not stayed in mourning very long. He trusted Flavia not to reveal her suspicions to the Prince for as long as it suited her purposes, and not a second more. If not handled properly, the Dark Angel could prove to be as dangerous to him as the Red Death

Those aren’t the actions and thoughts of a guy who a few hours later would be thinking “Silly bitch, what an amusing fable. Maybe one day I’ll tell her what I really am.” That’s someone whose intimidated by what she knows, and wary of what she’ll tell her fifth-generation vampire boss.

Flavia said that Masqueraders are Methuselahs who possess mortal bodies while in torpor in order to experience life like a mortal again, while giving them some Kindred powers to protect them. McCann is secretly a Methuselah named Lameth, over four thousand years old and notable enough to earn a title like “The Dark Messiah.” We’re also told that his current body is mortal, aside from a few Kindred powers. A detail we’ll learn in a few chapters may complicate things, but for now the similarities are spot on, and back in Chapter Five McCann knew that.

Flavia may be the very definition of what feminist media critics call a Strong Female Character (i.e. a character whose presented as a well-written woman because she’s physically strong and capable of *gasp* holding her own against a man, but in the overall narrative is a satellite character revolving around a male character, often used as fanservice, a love interest, or a prize to be won despite her “strength”) and maybe it’s a leap of logic to get “secret ancient vampire” from a human who can stop one of her attacks, but she more or less figured McCann out, and he knows it. The detective shouldn’t get all haughty or dismissive now because she might not know every detail. Or because she doesn’t know he’s actually ~*~Lameth, the Dark Messiah of the Kindred~*~ and not Sven, the Socially Awkward Apostle of the Kindred. She got your number, dick.

Anyway, the smug bastard goes to sleep and the chapter ends.