#ancestral appetite

[appalachianfuturism]

“The question led Barton to scholars like David Morgan and Kristen Gremillion, and obscure discoveries in places like Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, a 29,000-acre canyon system in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Before the Gorge finds, archaeologists “assumed that the peoples of this region just sat around passively, waiting for others to send them the gift of agriculture,” says Morgan, director of the National Park Service’s Southeast Archaeological Center. “But that simply wasn’t the case.”

Plant materials recovered by archaeologists in the Gorge in the 1980s and ‘90s led to a historical revision “that fundamentally alters how we think about indigenous peoples of the [precontact eastern U.S.],” says Morgan. A trove of ancient seeds debunked then-dominant theories “depicting early inhabitants as backwater nomads that didn’t acquire agriculture—and thus the markers of complex society—until after A.D. 1, when maize arrived from Mesoamerica.”

Gremillion, a paleoethnobotanist, chairs the Ohio State University department of anthropology and is the author of Ancestral Appetites: Foods in Prehistory. She started working in the Gorge around 1989, using techniques such as direct radiocarbon dating and high-magnification microscopy to study ancient caches of seeds, food stores, cooking refuse, and human feces. She found specimens buried under massive stone outcroppings and in caves—all in remarkable condition.

“We found things like 3,000-year-old sunflower heads and baskets full of seeds,” says Gremillion, who compares the digs to opening storage vaults. The finds were unprecedented, and old vanguard archaeologists were dismissive. “They said the materials couldn’t possibly be so old.”

Gremillion’s research proved them wrong; the region’s indigenous peoples had been farming for more than 5,000 years. The work helped establish the Eastern Woodlands as an independent center of prehistoric plant domestication and agricultural development—alongside areas like southeast Asia, Mexico, and the Fertile Crescent.”

[dailyadventureprompts]

Villain: The Lauding Worm

Born of hubris and old glories gone rotten, this pallid demon of pride exists to parasite those that consider themselves great; Lurking in the walls of their ancestral estates, whispering in their ear, bloating along with their egos, inevitably driving them to cruelty and ruin as it's appetite and expectations grow ever larger.

Adventure Hooks:

The party are travelling through the wilderness when they encounter a richly attired knight exhausted and on the edge of collapse. After helping her recover, she shares that she is part of a noble family renowned for their legacy of dragonhunting, a life threatening challenge she must exceed if she is to honour her family and claim her inheritance. The expectation of this great and dangerous deed has worn heavy on her shoulders all her life, and has become all too literal now that the demon has invisibly coiled about her neck. Fresh off it's latest incarnation, the Lauding worm is small for the moment, feeding off the knight as she destroys herself for the sake of legacy and will not allow her to be dissuaded from her doomed quest. It may infulence the party to join her however, seeing the potential for gorging on greater glory should the dragon slaying succeed. It the aftermath of the battle, or perhaps some weeks later, the Lauding worm will convince the dragonslaying knight that the great do not share their glory, and that she must eliminate the party so they do not tell of her weakness in needing aid, or her shame in not striking the final blow.

Something is wrong with the king, and the whole realm suffers for it. Obsessed with building expansions to his palace he neglects the welfare of his realm and the stability of his court to empty the treasury into ever more elaborate construction. Brigands run wild, his underlings scheme and attempt to seize each other's territory, and all the while the king pours over the plans of his architects and demands they build more. The Lauding worm has gotten to him, it lives and grows in the castle walls, and the more the king builds the bigger it gets. The servants whisper of rumbling behind the walls, and though it is excused as the byproduct of the constant renovations, it's only a matter of time before the demon's growth exceeds what can be constructed and it breaks free to rampage across the land.

The Lauding Worm has a special reward for those who feed it best, realized only in the rare times it grows bored of gorging itself on the pride of others and seeks to enact its own ambitions. Taking the guise of a mortal necromancer it raises it's favoured hosts from their graves and turns their talents towards Conquest.

Artsource

[collapsedsquid]

What I discovered was that he was one of 500 Indian laborers who had been convinced to pay $20,000 apiece to come to the US on legal guest worker visas to rebuild storm-damaged oil rigs, on false promises that they could become green cards – the American dream. The workers had raised that money by selling ancestral land and taking high-interest loans. Turns out they’d been dropped into an American nightmare. They arrived into a barbed wire labor camp, where they were forced to pay $1,000 a month to live 24 people to a room, in trailers placed on top of a dump. They were fed frozen rice and moldy bread. And there were never any green cards.

[...]

I still can’t get over the fact that you managed to sneak hundreds of Indian men past armed guards out of a gated labor camp in southern Mississippi. How did you do that?

Without giving away all the details, over the course of months, we orchestrated this escape that was almost out of a heist film. It started with me smuggling Indian ingredients into the camp for Rajan, who took over the cafeteria and cooked these extraordinary meals that nursed the men out of their blank hopelessness into an appetite for something better.

The escape involved a lot of whiskey, cigars, as bribes for the guards, and then an elaborate but fictitious Indian wedding that let us ferry 500 men out of the labor camp into a hotel room, right under the guards’ noses.

[...]

What we didn’t know at the time was that we were up against an Ice agent with corrupt ties to the company, with personal reasons to cover up the company’s scheme and deport the men. When that became clear, we all realized this was going to be a much longer fight – and it took the better part of four years.

[n3xii]

How to change your energy 》

This reading explores what your energy is at the moment, what your unconsciously manifesting with that energy, and how to change it. Close your eyes, be present with yourself for a few moments, and choose a picture below.

☆°•Pile One

What your energy is at the moment

Your energy is in a void state. Its in a place of rest and reset, youre releasing resistance and softening to new possibilities. What does it mean to soften to new possibilities? It means you're in a place where your imagination has expanded and included new things you've never thought possible. You're in a place where you can manifest anything and everything. Your energy is a blank slate of sorts. The best way to harness this, if you want to, is to think of all the habits and beliefs you want to release and actively challenge those beliefs and habits in your daily life. This way, you're entering your preferred reality without aspects of your past keeping you anchored to thr past. You can't manifest the future if you're still living as your past self.

What are you unconsciously manifesting

You're manifesting power and structure over how you think, and inturn I also seeing you manifesting a new way of communication. You're becoming more powerful with your thoughts and in how you talk. Your manifesting the answers to your own questions. For those who have been confused, lost, feeling choas in their mind, im see you manifest a sense of stability and deep knowing. The sturture your manifesting is within your mind, it's a construct that answers all you questions and keeps you stable. I'm seeing you essentially manifest mental stability and the ability to maintain a modified state of mind that supports your manifestions

How to change or refine your energy

If you're intrested in changing or refining your energy then keep listening. For you guys, changing your energy has alot to do with focusing your conscious energy on noticing the beauty in yourself, in others, and in your enviroment. When you consciously observe beauty, you attract it and become it. You harmonize and operate on the same level as beauty.

▪︎•☆Pile two

What is your energy at this moment

Your energy is a magnet. This means you attract AND repel. What you attract and repel depends on what you believe about yourself. If you have good beliefs about yourself, you will attract good things and likewise repel bad things (what you define as good or bad is up to you, take some time to think about ehat good or bad is to you.) Spirit is showing me that your energy is a magnet. Your attracting whatever your energy is in harmony with, and repelling whatever you're not in harmony with.

What you're unconsciously manifesting

Youre unconsciously manifesting healing on an ancestral level. You're dominating the instincts in yourseld and the sunconcious programing that previously took away your power. You're healing those beliefs and patterns that have been inherited from your parents. You're not letting them have power over you anymore. Instead you're taming them and fining your power in overcoming them.

How can you change or refine your energy

By surrending all the things that no longer resonate. You're not giving up, you're just letting it go and deciding its no longer your problem. Limitinf beliefs? Not your problem. You may feel raw in your vulnerability, you may feel like you're giving up, but your simply shifting whatever it is that's holding you back to another power. You're deciding you no longer resonate with it. Surrender the energy in your enrgy field that's acting as a magnet to the things you don't desire it no longer resonates with you and you don't want it.

•°☆Pile three

What is your energy at the moment

Your energy is in a state of lack or hunger. You have an appetite for something more, you have a sense of emptiness and your enegy is operating off this desire to fill that emptiness. In this time, what you feed yourself is what grows stronger. If you feed the part of you that is self hating, co dependent, overly independent etc, that part will grow stronger. This is because your enrgy is in a state of lack or hunger, what you feed is what grows stronger because when you feel a sense of emptiness or incompleteness. Youre not necessarliy gonna be picky with what you use as a tool to fullfill that emptiness. Youre operating from a place that youre missing something, and pile 3, you are NOT. You have to develop the belief that you are whole as you are, when you're not operating from a place of lack, you don't need to constantly accommodate that lack with things or beliefs that may not be up to par.

What you're unconsciously manifesting

What im being shown here is that you're actually manifesting emotionally fullfillment. You're manifesting the power to set things into action without directly doing it yourself. This is a very powerful things to manifestm I'm seeing that people who picked this pile are manifesting the ability to set the boundaries and constructs of their reality. They're creating the limits of what does and doesn't occur in their reality, but especially creating this from a place of ultimate fullfillment. Your energy may not be where you want it to be in this moment, but let's put it this way. No moment exist indigenously in of itself, every moment whether it's the past, present or future is all connected. You're always evolving and becoming what you feed or put conscious energy towards. You're always learning what is and isn't fulfilling in your experience, you're always changing, and always improving. Your enegy may not be what you want it to be right now, but you're always changing because how you think is always changing.

How to change or refine your energy

Stop overcomplicating things. Know why it is you do what you do, and do it. There is purity and power in a single purpose. Stop overcomplicating your manifestions. Stop overcomplicating yourself, what you want, and what you believe. Focus on taking out all the extra details, Stop focusing on minute possibilities and focus on your single intention. What is your desire, purely in its form? You may say "abundance." "Wealth" "for my crush to like me back" "to loose weight" what you really want is to feel worthy of those things. What you really want is to feel like you are worthy enough to manifest what you want. Focus on recovering your self worth. Stop attaching it to external sources, and attach it to yourself. When you believe you are worthy of what you want then you attract it naturally.

[kiivg]

tell me more about your tav??

.I’m so glad you asked 😘💕, I started fleshing out his backstory a while ago to give him more flavour and more reasoning behind his actions and abilities. And in doing that I half made up the idea of him being an NPC and what his major questline would be (considering I do like having both a Tav and Durge). Since I’m out there solving everyone elses’ problems I could at least have my own, or you know, give Tristan his own.

.Tristan, in his own right, is a bard, he went to bard college (Faerun has those right?) and spent a bit of time as a clown, mostly because it was fun for him and there were many happy parents who were… accommodating, shall we say, moving beyond that after a somewhat disparaging breakup with another bard (whomst he would later return to in Baldur’s Gate as a little cosy scene), he left and went adventuring, leaving his clowning days behind and stepping up as a more vulgar jester. Entertaining his audiences dressed in nothing but painted flesh and beguiling quips, and perhaps becoming far too acquainted with fleeing in the early morning hours to avoid angry spouses. Paint on the bedsheets was an easy tell on exactly who had spent the night there.

.His backstory, beyond his own, is that his Great Grandmother travelled to Thay to sate her appetite for necromancy, she wanted power beyond what she had, being something of an exceptional wizard, but not too exceptional that she could ever be considered the best in anything. There she met Buthek Maszim, a man eager to reach pure lichdom, and she was more than eager to help him for a fraction of his power. Or, so she said to him. In truth she wanted the power of a lich without becoming one herself, she was a wood elf after all, and her life would be long regardless. Buthek, however was only human, and his measly 80 or so years would not be enough for him. During the ritual, she sabotaged Buthek, halting the process and stopping him from obtaining what he had worked so hard for, and stole away parts of his body, hoping instead to command him at her will. His bones were forged into a grand flute that would serve as his phylactery and leash.

.A flute that didn’t actually work as intended. The great grandmother left Thay after the debacle, pregnant, lacking the lich power she desired, and unwilling to admit to her mistakes. She returned home and raised her daughter there. Not exactly giving up on her dream of power, but keeping it all hidden from the rest of her kin. Centuries passed, her daughter had a daughter, and Tristan was eventually born. A baby boy would looked so remarkably half-elven than many questioned who his father actually was. Granted he uses this to his advantage in the future, nobody really thinks he’s a true wood elf outside of his home, and he’s flippant enough to just relax into it. He doesn’t have the stigma of being a forest-dwelling hermit in the cities he yearns to explore, and half-elves, well, they’re easy, aren’t they? And Tristan is so very very easy.

.Now, he left home on his 100th birthday, stealing away into the night to pursue his bardic ambitions, giving himself the name Tristan Yarrow, and taking with him the ancestral flute of his family, amongst other things. The one the nobody knew was made from the bones of a lich in stasis. It’s harmless, right? Right? I mean, he thought so, he didn’t know, he doesn’t know (at least until Act 3) that he’s been carrying around a lich phylactery this entire time, he doesn’t know that every death that was even minutely graced by his music had it’s soul stolen and fed into the ever-waiting ever-strengthening arms of Buthek Maszim. A man biding his time until he could take over Tristan’s body, one half tainted by his own magic, and could finally achieve true lichdom.

.Of course there’s three endings to Tristan’s final quest, one good, one bad, and one considerably worse than bad. But that’s a whole other story.

.On a side note, idk anything about dnd elf names so… for now, him baby 🥰💕.

[apokalyps]

Pride and prejudice

You have bewitched me body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. And wish from this day forth never to be parted from you.

The cruel prince

Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.

Red white and royal blue

O, fathers of my bloodline! O, ye kings of olde! Take this crown from me, bury me in my ancestral soil. If only you had known the mighty work of thine loins would be undone by a gay heir who likes it when American boys with chin dimples are mean to him.”

The hating game

Love and hate are visceral. Your stomach twists at the thought of that person. The heart in your chest beats heavy and bright, nearly visible through your flesh and clothes. Your appetite and sleep are shredded. Every interaction spikes your blood with a dangerous kind of adrenaline, and you're on the brink of fight or flight. Your body is barely under your control. You're consumed, and it scares you.

Both love and hate are mirror versions of the same game-and you have to win.

[wizard-news]

We're-Not-Dead edition!

Auxiliary Station Operational

Gamping the Amphibious, temporary head editor.

While our founder and primary headquarters still have not emerged from wherever they went, we here remaining at WIZARD NEWS have finally recuperated from the attack of feral 17th century European nobility.

Dramatic Dog-Duelist Duels Dog

Gamping the Amphibious

A thrilling duel between @greyhound-with-7-wizard-hats and @sewi-li-suwi is ongoing! Our reporters will be on the scene shortly.

What To Do When Your Staff Just Doesn't Cut It.

Cara Carabowditbowdit

We've all been there. There's a big spell you need to do but your staff just isn't enough for the job. And of course nobody wants to get rid of their old staff, that's unthinkable. So what do you do? Here are some suggestions.

Wrap a Golden Fleece around your staff. The natural magically amplifying properties of the Fleece will give you the boost you need.

Call a friend! There's no shame in needing a little assistance sometimes.

Give your staff something to eat! Very old staffs can develop metabolisms and appetites that should be filled. Consult a Virgamancer to see what your staff is craving.

Seventeenth-Century European Nobles on the Prowl

Toast Astly

Over the last few months feral nobility have been stalking the woods and attacking anyone they encounter that they deem "too peasant-ish". They cannot be reasoned with, but they can be distracted with gold or political treatises. Authorities believe that their hive was disturbed by recent events which has caused their recent aggression. It is suggested that civilians do not try to find the hive themselves. If you are going out in the woods, attempt to be ostentatious.

First Annual Worldwide Banjo Competition

Capulet the Sporting

Get your banjos ready folks! The recently established Banjo Guild (A subgroup of the Bardic Collage of Associated Guilds), has announced their First Annual Worldwide Banjo Competition. If you own a banjo at any point during the next two weeks, be prepared for a panel of judges to appear in your home and request you play your best. The winner will be awarded three selected pieces of banjo paraphernalia (in gold of course).

Memory-Erasing Miscreant Spotted!

Gamping the Amphibious

The Lost-Day Thief was spotted as they attempted to do what they do best, that being erase people's memories. We do not know the identity of the thief, however. The victim, Bron Phobos, says that they were woken up from their hypnotic stupor by a loud twang and swearing. They only saw the back of the thief, but they described the thief wearing a pea-coat over a knee-length purple dress and carried a lute. It is theorized that the thief uses the lute as a method for erasing memory, and that the loud twanging was one of the strings breaking.

Vampires and Werewolves are Fighting. Again.

Boring N. D. Vitual

Yes, the ancestral struggle of beast versus fancier beast begins again. In the subterranean tunnels that are the designated battlegrounds we already can hear the sounds of furious struggle. They're very loud.

On Fire Again

Jerry the Jerry-est

The dragon Lord Fire the Flaming has set the eastern and western forest on fire again, endangering wildlife and putting smoke into the air. Fortunately, the noble knight Sir Water the Wettening has taken up her lance once more.

[brutlist]

" hey . " what comes to follow is a spoon , steaming with the chunks of something hearty , something he's never tried before ; robustly appalachian and ancestral . and he's worried it'll be all for not faced with the temperamental appetites of four choosy children , this two hour toil --- he needs a guinea pig . " pretend you're five years old and try this . "

@celesteye // one liners

[phlve]

The Introverted Intuitive Type // Inferior Extraverted Sensation

The introverted intuitive type has the same capacity as the extraverted intuitive for smelling out the future, having the right guess or the right hunch about the not-yet-seen future possibilities of a situation. But his intuition is turned within, and therefore he is primarily the type of the religious prophet, of the seer. On a primitive level, he is the shaman who knows what the gods and the ghosts and the ancestral spirits are planning and who conveys their messages to the tribe. In psychological language we should say that he knows about the slow processes which go on in the collective unconscious, the archetypal changes, and he communicates them to society. The prophets of the Old Testament, for instance, were people who, while the children of Israel were happily asleep - as the masses always are - from time to time told them what Yahweh's real intentions were, what he was doing now, and what he wanted his people' to do. The people generally did not enjoy hearing these messages.

Many introverted intuitives are to be/found among artists and poets. They generally are artists who produce very archetypal and fantastic material, such as you find in Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra or in Gustav Meyrinck's The Golem and Kubin's The Other Side. This kind of visionary art is generally only understood by later generations, as a representation of what was going on in the collective unconscious at that time.

The inferior sensation of this type also has difficulties in noticing the needs of the body and controlling its appetites. Swedenborg had a vision in which his reports have to be treated with the greatest care. Though he does not lie consciously, he can tell the most appalling untruths, simply because he does not notice what is right under his nose. I very often distrust ghost reports, for instance, and reports about para-psychological facts for those reasons.

Introverted intuitives are very much interested in such fields, but because of their weakness in observing facts and their lack of concentration on the external situation, they can tell you the most appalling nonsense and swear it is true. They pass by an absolutely amazing number of outer facts and just do not take them in. I remember, for instance, driving with an introverted intuitive type one autumn, and in the fields the potatoes were being dug up and there were bonfires. I had noticed that for quite some time and was enjoying the sight. Suddenly the driver stopped the car in horror, sniffed, and said: " Something is burning! Is it coming from outside? " We looked at the brakes, and everything was all right; then we decided it was outside after all, it was the bonfires! The bonfires were everywhere, and to me it was obvious that the smell of burning came from them! But an introverted intuitive can drive for an hour through the country with such phenomena all about and not notice a thing! And then suddenly he will be struck by the fact and make completely incorrect deductions. His inferior sensation has the quality which all inferior functions have, namely that it comes up into consciousness in islands; sometimes it functions, and then it disappears. Suddenly a smell is intensely realised, whereas three-quarters of an hour before it was not realised at all, but then suddenly it is taken in with great intensity.

The inferior sensation of an introverted intuitive is extremely intense, but it breaks through only here and there and then fades again from the field of awareness. The introverted intuitive has particular trouble in approaching sex because it involves his inferior extraverted sensation. It is most tragically mirrored in the works of Nietzsche, for instance, where, towards the end of his career, shortly before he went insane, very coarse sexual allusions penetrate his poems and also appear in Thus Spake Zarathustra. When he went insane, he apparently produced material of that kind, which was destroyed after his death because of its absolutely distasteful character. Inferior extra-verted sensation in his case was very much connected with women and sex, in a completely concrete way, and he didn't know how to deal with the problem at all.

The positive aspect of inferior extraverted sensation in the case of an introverted intuitive is to be found in an interesting way in the illumination expe rience of Jakob Boehme, a German mystic and an introverted intuitive type. He had a wife and six children for whom he never earned any money. He was in constant trouble with them because his wife always said that instead of writing books about God and fantasying about the inner development of the Godhead he would do better to see that his family had something to eat. He was absolutely crucified between these two poles of life. Now his greatest inner experience, a revelation of the Godhead upon which all his later writings are based, came from seeing a ray of light being reflected in a tin plate.

That sensation experience snapped him into an inner ecstasy and within a minute he saw, so to speak, the whole mystery of the Godhead. For years he did nothing except slowly translate into discursive language what he had seen inwardly in one minute, in one second! His writing is so emotional and chaotic because he tried to describe this one experience in so many ampli-fications. But the actual vision was set in motion by seeing a ray of light striking a tin plate on his table. This implies extraverted sensation - an outer sensation fact started off the process of individuation in him. Here one can see, besides the inferior aspect of extraverted sensation, this strange character of wholeness, the mystical aspect, which the inferior function often has. It is interesting that even Swedenborg's over-eating connected him with the Godhead. His inferior sensation was connected with his deepest and greatest concern.

(A period of questions and answers follows.)

Question: I would like to ask whether the ecstatic state is usually connected with the inferior function.

Dr. von Franz: Yes, it is connected in that it is normally started off by an experience of the inferior function.

Question: Would you say that the intuitive types tend to be more sensitive to what we call subliminal stimuli?

Dr. von Franz: Yes, in general I would say that both intuitive types are. They have to be, for they have to keep their consciousness constantly unfocussed and dim in order to get those hunches. They are sensitive to the atmosphere of a place. Probably intuition is a kind of sense perception via the unconscious, or a sort of subliminal sense perception. It is a way of operating through subliminal sense perception instead of through conscious perception.

Ouestion: Both the extraverted intuitive and Jakob Boehme seem to have distinctly introverted sensation. Shouldn't the introverted intuitive have a more extraverted sensation?

Dr von Franz: Yes, but Boehme had! My "horse man" (to describe him brief-ly) realised inner depth and became silent through his experience; he hasn't even told me much about it - he has only made allusions that something deep was going on. Boehme, on the other hand, exteriorised his insight - constructed a system of outer reality, of God and of evil in the world. He made a whole philosophy of it, but turned outwards, while personally he was very introverted. He was a shy little shoemaker.

Something else very interesting about Boehme is that as long as he was crucified between his nagging wife, who said he had better make good shoes and feed his six children, and speculating about a Godhead, he was very produc-tive. But after his first book was published, a German Baron felt so sorry for him, and felt so strongly that he was a great seer, that he took all his outer troubles away by paying for his family's support. From then on Boehme's writing gets full of resentment and repetitions. It sterilised his creativeness.

As you know, on his tomb is an image of the Godhead like this: ) (. This is really tragic, as it shows that he could not unite the light and the dark sides; that remained an insoluble problem to him. In my experience, this is connected with the very simple fact that he accepted money from this Baron, and by that escaped the torture of his inferior function. To be crucified between the superior and the inferior function is vitally important. I can only warn you that if you ever feel like saving such artists or prophets, for God's sake look at the case first very circumspectly and see how much you can afford to help them. If you buy them off reality, then they lose all sense of it. You have not helped them in the least. This type will beg you to help them out of their trouble, on their knees they will beg you to save them from the torture of outer reality with which they can't cope. But if you "save" them, the creative core of their personality is de. stroyed. That does not mean that if they are starving you cannot give them something to survive, or give them help from time to time when the situation is bad; but don't let them off the problem of reality because, strangely enough, that sterilises the inner process as well. That happened to Boehme and because of it he was not able to unite the opposites, not in his system nor in his life. What Baron von Merz did was really to destroy him by unwise charity.

Source: Von Franz on the Four Irrational Types

[mordoriscalling]

Assurance and Authority (4/25)

Post-BOTFA Persuasion Au: Bilbo returns to the Shire after the Quest, having rejected Thorin’s proposal of marriage. For years after, he struggles with regret. When he and Thorin meet again, he knows better than to hope. 

Chapter 4 also available on AO3

(Ch 1) (Ch 2) (Ch 3)

The Great Smials in Tuckborough, the ancestral home of the Tooks, was a system of numerous smials connected by a multitude of tunnels, in which the Tooks had been residing for generations. The place was a remarkable piece of construction, which constituted a home to many a dozen families and still allowed them to host guests. Despite that, the Smials were typically rather crowded on normal days, but there were times when the place was nearly packed to the brim with hobbits, which occurred if many guests were visiting at the same time.

Such was the case when Bilbo took Primula up on her invitation. Prior to his arrival, Primula had come to Tuckborough from Buckland together with her husband and son, two sisters Amaranth and Asphodel, her mother Mirabella and her father Gorbadoc Brandybuck, as well as half a dozen of their relatives. The reason for their visit to Tuckborough was both a familial and a diplomatic one - they all wished to see their Took relatives, and Gorbadoc, the Master of Buckland, wanted to meet with his nephew Fortinbras II, the current Thain of the Shire.

With the Great Smials so overcrowded, there was scarcely a chance of not bumping into any hobbit after leaving one’s room. Bilbo, when he passed someone in the corridors of the Smials, more often than not ended up seeing one of Primula’s immediate family. This was not unfortunate in itself, but the problem was that they all liked to confide in Bilbo about their problems and tiffs, which often concerned Primula’s husband Drogo.

"My dear Bilbo,” aunt Mirabella told him one morning on their way to breakfast, "I must say that I did promise myself not to meddle in the affairs of any of my daughters, but bless me, I have no very good opinion of the way Drogo intervenes with how Prim rears Frodo. He always has objections to how she encourages his curiosity and lectures Frodo about what’s respectable. The lad is just a little fauntling, for goodness’s sake!”

"Bilbo, my dear boy,” uncle Gorbadoc said when he and Bilbo chanced upon each other in a pantry, "Since you’re the head of the Bagginses, I wonder if there’s something you you could do to arrange for Drogo to have more earnings? I’m sure he could use more money to indulge his appetite better. Why, he dines with us at least twice a week, and he always eats for three every time! Not that I mind, but I’m sure it would put him at ease to be able to buy more food for himself.”

"Whilst you’re here,” Amaranth murmured to Bilbo while they helped with washing the dishes, "Could you possibly give Drogo a hint that it would be better if he didn’t try to take precedence over papa? We know you Bagginses are an esteemed lot, but Drogo has no authority in Brandy Hall, Baggins or not.”

‘No matter how much Drogo insists on them, papa doesn’t care about proper table manners,” Asphodel said while she and Bilbo were baking lemon cake, "It’s good food he cares about.”

Primula herself had a thing or two to say as well. "I can take care of Frodo just fine without Drogo’s lectures,” she grumbled to Bilbo one evening over tea. ‘I know our boy is a Baggins and with that come certain expectations, but he’s just as much a Brandybuck as he’s a Baggins!” She sighed. "And I wish you could have him assured that nothing would happen to him when boating if only he allowed me to teach him how to swim. Perhaps you could talk some sense to him, Bilbo? Swimming is really something that one should be able to do.”

When Bilbo tried to raise these concerns with Drogo, most of his attempts were futile, as Drogo had just as many issues to complain about.

"Oh, Bilbo, you have no idea how relieved I am!” he said once when they enjoyed a smoke by the Great Door. "To have a Baggins around who understands me! Really, Brandybucks are too strange for me sometimes. How can they go boating, I will never understand. It can’t be safe. And to think Primula wanted to take Frodo boating too! To endanger our boy so! You must try to tell her to be more reasonable, Bilbo.” Another time, he said, "The very thought of going boating makes me feel ill. You have seen Brandywine, you know how wide and deep that river is. Merely being near it makes me uneasy, and living next to so much water makes my joints ache. I swear, it’s all because of that moist river air. I’m so relieved to have come here, I feel better indeed. I wish I had another Baggins with me in Buckland, then I’d be seen and heard. Perhaps you could talk to them in a way that would make them understand me?”

The unsolicited role of a mediator began to tire Bilbo profusely. His only respite from it was being outside of the Great Smials altogether, which was why he took to long walks most eagerly. Often accompanied by Primula, Frodo and many other fauntlings, Bilbo would wander around the green hills of Tuckborough, exploring its colourful meadows, charming groves and little brooks.

When not busy entertaining or watching the little ones, Bilbo found his mind wandering as much as his feet did. He tried his best not to dwell on the past, instead turning his thoughts to the problem at hand. It was not the first time that he bore witness to all the disagreements stemming from Primula’s marriage to Drogo. Since they had been wed six years ago and welcomed their son into the world a year later, the couple had been facing a problem of not seeing eye to eye on certain matters with one another and each other’s relatives. That was not to say they were unhappy together; they were greatly fond of each other, loved their son dearly, and found as much charm as fault in each other’s differences. Rather, Bilbo worried that, because of their financial circumstances, they were too dependent on Primula’s parents and thus, having no prospects of moving elsewhere, they were always bound to living near disapproving family members. Such conditions fostered only conflict and could not be beneficial for their union in the perspective of decades. Bilbo believed that the situation was likely to lead to unhappiness, and Primula’s well-being concerned him greatly; the lass, eighteen years his junior, was one of his relatives that were most dear to him.

She had always been a curious spirit ever since she had been little, and when she had been old enough to speak, she would always seek Bilbo out during family gatherings, at the time when Bilbo had been past his second eleventy birthday and everyone had already labelled him as quite a bit of a recluse. Little Primula, being a tiny fauntling, had not cared about the general opinion of him and befriended him right away. She had stayed constant in her liking of Bilbo for all her childhood, and the two had formed a strong connection, similar to that of siblings. Once Primula grew older, their bond had been nurtured by them both, which Bilbo could not have been more grateful for, especially since it had been Primula more than any other who had helped Bilbo overcome the grief of becoming an orphan.

Due to their closeness, Bilbo worried about Primula’s happiness a lot, so much so that one day he did ask her about it outright.

“Are you happy, Prim?” he said during one of their outings, on a sunny afternoon at the beginning of Wedmath. They had played hounds and hares with Frodo and a dozen other fauntlings earlier, after which the whole group enjoyed a picnic. Now that the children had had their rest, they were up again, playing leaf flutes at the top of the hill, which Bilbo and Primula were slowly climbing.

“Of course I am, Bilbo,” she replied. “I have a family of my own now, a healthy child, whatever else could I wish for?”

Bilbo frowned, displeased with her answer, for he knew far too well what one with family and a child but no place to call their own would dearly wish for. “Primula,” he said, “If you ever find yourselves in need of a different smial to stay, Bag End’s doors are always open to you, for as long as you wish.”

“Why, Bilbo, I could never impose on you so!”

“Come, now, Prim, it’s an invitation freely given. Besides, I’m sure Drogo would find the comforts of Bag End most beneficial to his health.”

At that, Primula laughed out loud. “He would indeed. There would be nothing better for his joints than the ability to run a hot bath at will!” She sobered. “Still, you’re too good, Bilbo. I cannot find it in myself to abuse your generosity like this.”

“It’d be no abuse! It’s simply the least I could do. I wish you to take me up on this invitation.”

“Bilbo, please. You must realise that it’s not easy for me to accept charity.”

“Charity? It’s not charity. I’m much more selfish in my offer than you can imagine.”

“How so?”

Before Bilbo could reply, one of the fauntlings above shouted a question about whether the group could go play in the creek on the other side of the hill, which Primula gave them permission to do.

“My adventure has changed me very much,” Bilbo said once the little ones disappeared from view. ‘Before, I was more than happy to eat my dinners alone. Once most of my grief of losing mama and papa passed, I loved my solitude. Then, my adventure showed me what I had been missing, and now I can scarcely like lack of companionship.”

“I see,” Primula replied, and that was all they said on the matter.

They walked in companionable silence, reaching the top of the hill. Bilbo began to imagine what it would be like to have Primula, Drogo and Frodo live with him and he found the idea exceedingly pleasing. He had always believed that his father had built Bag End for it to be full of laughter; the smial standing near empty seemed to be a terrible waste that had been weighing on Bilbo’s heart and mind for some time now.

When Bilbo and Primula were about to descend the hill to join the fauntlings at the creek, a call from behind them caught their attention.

"Mister Bilbo!”

It was a tween lad, running up to them together with another boy, whom Bilbo recognized to be Hamson and Halfred, the two oldest children of Bilbo’s gardener Hamfast Gamgee. The boys were visibly red in the face even from some distance away.

"Mister Bilbo!” Hamson cried again. "We’ve been looking for you!”

The two lads finally stood before them, panting heavily.

"Papa sends us,” Halfred said. "There were three dozen dwarven soldiers marching through Hobbiton before noon, and a few of those dwarves knocked on Bag End’s door! They even asked him where you were, mister Bilbo. Papa said you’d want to know.”

"Are they friends of yours, mister Bilbo?” Hamson asked.

“I don’t know,” shocked Bilbo replied, as was the truth. “Perhaps.”

Bilbo had indeed invited the Company to visit his smial anytime. He had told them at what time tea was and even not to bother knocking, when he had bidden them farewell. Thus, Bilbo dearly hoped that the dwarven soldiers in question were some of his friends, but at the same time feared the heirs of Durin might’ve knocked on his door, even though the likelihood of that event was exceedingly small. Alas, before he could ask the boys if they knew anything about how the dwarves looked like, Frodo’s pained cry carried in the air.

[bracketsoffear]

Since my submission didn't make it I'm pasting it here because I need people to know about the trollhunters book and how fucked up their version of Gunmar is

First up he looks like this:

Titles include: Gunmar the Black, the Hungry One, He Who Sups of Blood, the Untangler of Entrails

He's a troll trying to invade the human world to "feast at will".

Him and his followers kidnap and eat humans with a preference for children (190 of them the last time he tried to take over). He's about the size of a building, his spit is boiling, he can retract his spine and he sits on a throne made from their bones. Other trolls' bodies mutate just from being in his proximity. They've rebuilt the Machine, a giant meat grinder with pipes leading directly to Gunmar's maw, which are at that point filled with 45 year old kids meat mixed with rat meat (and other body parts, there's teeth in there).

When the protagonists cut open his belly there are hundreds of tinier versions of him inside.

Some body parts of his can move despite being separated from him (like his eye) and can latch onto other living beings giving him partial control over them, also like all trolls unless his gallbladder is destroyed he can completely reform his body.

The entire book starts with a page-long paragraph on how You are Meat and the later descriptions are just as visceral:

'You are food. Those muscles you flex to walk, lift, and talk? They’re patties of meat topped with chewy tendon. That skin you’ve paid so much attention to in mirrors? It’s delicious to the right tongues, a casserole of succulent tissue. And those bones that give you the strength to forge your way in the world? They rattle between teeth as the marrow is sucked down slobbering throats. These facts are unpleasant but useful. There are things out there, you see, that don’t cower in holes to be captured by us and cooked over our fires. These things have their own ways of trapping their kills, their own fires, their own appetites.'

(Gunmar quotes)

'It is believed that Gunmar chose to center his clan in San Bernardino specifically to spite the self-satisfied pacifists who populated the local underworld. Whatever the reason, he and his minions wasted no time stealing children. One per month for the first three months. Then one per week. By the time 1969 began, several children were disappearing every week in San Bernardino, each one of them dragged screaming to a hidden underground labyrinth and caged for weeks before being grilled over an open flame and eaten.'

'The Killaheed Bridge had been the ancestral home of Gunmar the Black in the far northern region of Scotland known in Gaelic as A’ Ghàidhealtachd . It is where he murdered every blood relative, erasing his surname in favor of “the Black,” and began the Gumm-Gumm cult with himself as the principal deity.'

'It was the soggy voice of one who’d spent decades gnawing on his tongue. Gunmar the Black, the Hungry One, saw me, smelled me, wished to eat me. From somewhere within the pupil’s void I could hear the splintering whack of what I knew was his wooden arm. He was aching to add another few slash marks of conquer, and as much as he’d prefer to do it in person, he wasn’t strong enough yet, so he’d just use this handy, four-ton puppet.'

'Even without the plateau, the Hungry One would’ve outsized us all. He sat upon a throne of yellowed bones collected from the 190 kids who died during the Milk Carton Epidemic, and with long icicle teeth he gobbled at the meat that spattered across his face and chest. The “Black” of his title was metaphorical; his skin glistened a deep, blistered red. With each swallow, his limbs convulsed along several unexpected joints—two elbows to each arm, a scabby, wrinkled knee on each leg, and all of them adept at bending in any direction. His crooked spine elongated and retracted like a periscope, rifling the thick porcupine spikes that ran from the back of his head all the way down his back. Luxuriously he spread the six arms that sprouted from his sinewy chest, each of which was encumbered with seeping tumors, except for the topmost left arm, which, as promised, was a weathered block of wood marked with his numerous kills. Gunmar’s jaw dropped open to reveal the mangled tongue that he’d been chewing on in resentment for over four decades.'

'The braids of their hair were hardened by dried blood and their bodies had mutated from residing too close to Gunmar: scabs birthed extra eyes, sores sprouted extra fingers, rashes gleamed with newly grown teeth.'

'Gunmar’s humungous jaw grinded and the stake-sized teeth fought for placement. His single eye blazed as he rose from his throne. Six sausage-stained arms, including the wooden one, spread open as if preparing to greet his attacker with an embrace. The Eye of Malevolence leapt from Gunmar’s shoulder and scuttled in gleeful circles through its master’s boiling drool.'

'But the spines along Gunmar’s back sprung outward like a regiment of bayonets and I heard the excruciating sounds of several of Blinky’s tentacles being torn in half.'

'What was not expected were the dozens—no, hundreds—of tiny trolls that fell from the opened cavity. The first few thumped off Jack’s helmet, wiggling and mewling, and Jack just stood there, shocked stupid. But as they continued to pour, Jack backed away, picking the parasites off his armor and flinging them to the ground in disgust. In seconds, the little trolls were everywhere, writhing in the grass, blinking tiny new eyes at the strange world around them.'

'Each was the size of a baseball and an exact copy of Gunmar: glistening red body, six little arms, a cape of quills flexing experimentally along its back. Worse, each of the beasties appeared to grow larger with each breath, as if the smell of so much human meat were enough to fortify their young bodies. Gunmar shook his torso so that a few more babies fell to the field, and he grinned down like a proud papa.'

'Blinky was struggling to his feet to our right, but the three of us still looked pretty wretched when compared to Gunmar, who stood shivering above us as if sobbing over the destruction of his infernal litter.' (they got lawnmowered)

'Gunmar lorded above us, blood streaming from between his teeth and down a torso that, emptied of babies, flapped with loose flesh. He’d lost control and was flailing about, stamping his feet like an infant, flogging himself front and back with his double-jointed arms, quills extending and flattening with the sound of a hundred falling guillotines. He spread his limbs and swooped down at us, big as a fireworks finale.'

'Gunmar the Black had waited forty-five years, but here it was at last: the final demolishing of the trollhunters, no more difficult than a little kid’s squashing worms on the playground. Afterward, he and his kind would infest the surface of the earth, gorging themselves on the meat of man and growing fat and surly in the way of the Old World. He lifted a foot over the nearest trollhunter—me—aiming so that when my runny guts squirted out they would bleed into those of the hundreds of his slaughtered offspring.'

'Gunmar’s body swayed and his six arms tried to push his skull back together to cover the exposed brain. His manifold hands, though, became confused and tussled with one another before giving up. Then the mighty lord of the Gumm-Gumms, the Hungry One, He Who Sups of Blood, the Untangler of Entrails, Gunmar the Black wavered in place for a long moment before dropping to his back with all the ceremony of a chopped tree.'

'It took only a few slices to carve out Gunmar’s heart; the leathery, tubed organ skipped around in an attempt to dodge my blade.'

(The Machine or Meat quotes)

'We climbed over a berm of melted steel and found ourselves behind a conveyor belt, a crudely sewn patchwork of stained textiles that shuttled cargo into a large tin funnel. At the moment the belt was empty of everything except greasy stains, but nonetheless I followed the progress. The funnel fed into a thundering box the size of a treehouse, held together with railroad spikes and constructed from miscreant metals: a dented go-cart frame, a child’s red wagon, a neon sign from a strip club. Scorched wires snaked in and out, while virulent fumes poured from electrical circuits gone haywire. The box shook like a laundry machine about to explode and I could hear from inside it the whirring of saw blades and the music-box plinking of a grinder churning through gristled remains. It all led to a spout on the other end.'

'A corroded pipe held aloft by spindly stilts ran from the Machine, and from inside it I could hear the squish of pulpy matter. It stunk like death, but I leaned toward a section of pipe that had been rusted away. Inside was meat, a lumpy sausage equal parts red muscle, white bone, and gray tendon mashed together with the multicolored gristle of internal organs. The fleshy sludge slugged through the pipe in uneven spurts as the Machine shoved it along. The kaleidoscopic viscera dazed me, and so I was caught unaware when the meat squirted forward and revealed something else sunk into the ground flesh.'

'I couldn’t help but see what he wanted me to see: loose teeth, embedded in the meat, white as pearls. This made me all the sicker until the meat rolled and I saw that the teeth were tiny and pointed. “Rats!” Jack shouted. “The meat is mostly rats!” Within the threads of muscle I saw a long pink tail. “Can’t you smell it?” Jack demanded. “This meat is ancient. Left over from the last war. He’s had to cut it with animal parts to keep him strong until the Killaheed is finished. Which means your friends aren’t in there, not yet.'

'From the open end of the pipe, clods of meat plopped like wet dog food into the open mouth of Gunmar the Black.'

'Their mouths were crusted with unidentifiable slop, evidence that Gunmar had been fattening them with tasty stuffing before making sausage of them in the Machine. These children and teens hadn’t been buried, they’d been planted so that the rich dirt and underworld clay could properly season their bodies for the troll palate.'

'yummy tubes of fresh meat packed into shirts, pants, jackets, and hats.'

This book could be a Flesh Leitner

.

[jedimaesteryoda]

Justin Massey is being sent to Braavos to treat with the Iron Bank on behalf of Stannis and recruit sellswords.

"It will not win you friends amongst the queen's men," said the She-Bear. "Have you lost your faith in red R'hllor?" "I have lost faith in more than that," Massey said, his breath a pale mist in the air, -ADWD, The Sacrifice

However, we got signs that he is losing confidence in Stannis's cause. On the march to Winterfell, he notes they don't have the provisions for a siege nor the numbers to storm the castle given they have around the same number of men as Roose and the defense multiplier of the castle increases that to ten. The odds don't look favorable.

He also lost his ancestral lands and either wants them back or another seat.

“Do not prate at me of history, ser. Daemon Blackfyre was a rebel and usurper, Bittersteel a bastard. When he fled, he swore he would return to place a son of Daemon’s upon the Iron Throne. He never did. Words are wind, and the wind that blows exiles across the narrow sea seldom blows them back. That boy Viserys Targaryen spoke of return as well. He slipped through my fingers at Dragonstone, only to spend his life wheedling after sellswords. ‘The Beggar King,’ they called him in the Free Cities. Well, I do not beg, nor will I flee again. I am Robert’s heir, the rightful king of Westeros. My place is with my men. Yours is in Braavos. Go with the banker, and do as I have bid.” “As you command,” Ser Justin said. “It may be that we shall lose this battle,” the king said grimly. “In Braavos you may hear that I am dead. It may even be true. You shall find my sellswords nonetheless.” The knight hesitated. “Your Grace, if you are dead—” “—you will avenge my death, and seat my daughter on the Iron Throne. Or die in the attempt.” -TWOW, Theon I

After the Pink Letter, the news is going to go out that Stannis is dead. Massey will then find himself without a king. He said that exiles never return to Westeros, however, Stannis proves to be wrong as the winds have blown back the Blackfyre pretenders.

Massey wants the wildling princess too. He once served my brother Robert as squire and acquired his appetite for female flesh. -ADWD, Jon III "He wants my lands," Asha replied. "He wants the Iron Islands." She knew the signs. She had seen the same before in other suitors. Massey's own ancestral holdings, far to the south, were lost to him, so he must needs make an advantageous marriage or resign himself to being no more than a knight of the king's household. Stannis had frustrated Ser Justin's hopes of marrying the wildling princess that Asha had heard so much of, so now he had set his sights on her.  -ADWD, The King's Prize

More importantly, the Beggar King's sister Daenerys (whom he doesn't even acknowledge due to his misogyny) is set to come back.

Remember that Massey's forebear originally sided with the Targaryens against Storm's End in Aegon's Conquest. His taste for women's flesh and opportunism is shown in him trying to court Asha Greyjoy, self-proclaimed Queen of the Iron Isles, his desire to marry Val and it will undoubtedly make him more deferential for the famously beautiful Daenerys. She'll also command a larger army than Stannis ever did with higher quality like Unsullied, and more to the point, she has dragons. She'll look like the best bet, and he'll likely go over to her, Stannis's cause be damned.

Justin Massey will fight for the king's daughter after Stannis's purported death, but by a different king.

[rossemboss]

"On rainy afternoons, embroidering with a group of friends on the begonia porch, she would lose the thread of the conversation and a tear of nostalgia would salt her palate when she saw the strips of damp earth and the piles of mud that the earthworms had pushed up in the garden. Those secret tastes, defeated in the past by oranges and rhubarb, broke out into an irrepressible urge when she began to weep. She went back to eating earth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity, sure that the bad taste would be the best cure for the temptation. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in her mouth. But she preserved, overcome by the growing anxiety, and little by little she was getting back to her ancestral appetite, the taste of primary minerals, the unbridled satisfaction of earth in her pockets, and ate them in small bits without being seen, with a confused feeling of pleasure and rage, as she instructed her girlfriends in the most difficult needlepoint and spoke about other men, who did not deserve the sacrifice of having one eat the whitewash on the walls because of them. The handfuls of earth made the only man who deserved that show of degradation less remote and more certain, as if the ground that he walked on with his fine leather patent boots in another part of the world were transmitting to her the weight and the temperature of his blood in a mineral savor that left a harsh aftertaste in her mouth and a sediment of peace in her heart."

- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

[thekatebridgerton]

ok, AU idea, imagine Ghost Bridgerton (the way you see them as the books) getting murdered and stripped from their happily ever afters and are angry. Vengeful. Envious. Centuries past, the modern day, each of their loves were reincarnated and falling in love with their descendants (show bridgertons but with a hint of book Bridgerton in them too) The modern Bridgerton inherited the family’s ancestral home and unknowingly to Kate, Sophie, Penelope, Simon, Phillip, Michael, Lucy, and Garett, the ghosts of their love’s ancestors processed their descendants. Anthony’s sudden vanity worries Kate. Benedict’s sudden sloth nature alarms Sophie. Colin’s angry outbursts scares Penelope. Daphne’s sudden greed is something Simon frowns at. though Philip would always stand behind Eloise her sudden overly pride concerns him. Francesca sudden lustful appetite would have been a dream come through but Michael can’t shake off the terrifying wicked glint in her eyes. Gregory’s envious nature as he speaks out has Lucy questioning. While Hyacinth gluttony appetite set alarm bells in Garett. What has happen to their spouse/partners? Somehow, it’s linked to their ancestors home and selfishly possessive ghosts.

You have been hanging out with my seven deadly sins post haven't you? Because that sounds like my seven deadly sins au and it's awesome!!

I love the whole reincarnation AU being the book Bridgertons who are both more mature and more volatile. Being the ones who died without a happy ending. And the show bridgerton's being their reincarnated versions. Who are a little bit more immature but also have better self control.

While their spouses are more or less the same people. I like to think that in this scenario it could be like a family curse. Not these ghosts have been haunting the Mansion until they find their loves again and then they see their modern versions royally messing up. And just have to take over your bodies and do a whole hostile takeover possession thing.

Because really book Anthony never went as far as proposing to Edwina and the moment the girl sees that show Anthony is doing this travesty there would be some very angry ghost possession to force him to propose to Kate.

Same with Colin who never dared the shame Penelope in public. The moment he sees Colin going after Marina, the ghost just loses it. And tries to get inside that body because really the personlly have a thing that's so wonderful and isn't really appreciating what he's got with Penelope.

And same for the rest of the family.

Again I like to think that the curse of the family gets resolved when the modern Bridgertons get their heads out of their backsides and treat their spouses the way they deserve to be treated. Cuz the Ghost Bridgertons had to outlive their true love's for centuries.

Bonus if the witch that curse them was Cressida because we don't like her.

So what do you guys think about this reincarnation au mixed with the 7 deadly sins au? tell me. I'd love to hear your thoughts

[idanwyn-et-al]

There was a fair maiden/she lived all alone. (The Nixie's Tale, Part 2.)

For Eras, a geas binding the Nixie has prevented from revealing her story in full. As her current crew and friends continue to unravel this geas, the Nixie creates these crystalline memories; they are available for any to access within the ship.

((♪ ))

I was a magician.

This is what I remember, second. Lullabies: a babe’s first memories, dim and wordless like moss beneath the towering boughs of one’s mother. The spark of aether: a babe’s second impressions; a connection to life itself, freedom and cage in the same roving package, like one’s father. Scents of one’s first surroundings; the cleats that secure the mooring ropes of recollections, separating one from mother and father, becoming one’s own person with one’s own perspective.

Gentle, everyday gifts from the gods; the hallmark of the Age of Prayer, when I was born. They lived in everything around us: the crackling embers of the hearth; the eddies of wind that heralded weather’s changing; the thousand-thousand songs of mycelial filaments connecting plants beneath rich black soil. Too, they lived in spears of levin that rent blossomfruit trees asunder; the rustling of carrion birds picking scraps of scaled flesh from my father’s skull; the spiderwebbing cracks of ice across the waves that heralded the return of the Autumn Queen’s reavers. The shamans of my island walked closest to the gods and all their boons and burdens, but to know the gods was all of our birthrights. Yet another gift of ours that the reavers claimed as their own.

If only I had known that they were not alone in their rapacious appetites. That in comparison to the great Empire that fished me up from the sea Eras later, the Autumn Queen was no greater than a hedge witch. But even though I was a magician, the gift of clairvoyance was not bequeathed unto me, when I still walked the land to which I was born.

My final act as Himawari, the girl with cedar-green skin and sand-white scales, was to trap the Autumn Queen’s fleet within the shamans’ great undersea temple, calling upon the nixie-spirits of the river delta to aid me. The ships are still there today; suspended, half-broken, their crew members frozen for thousands of years within my song, augmented by the ice they carried in their northern blood. Because I was not a shaman, I, too, was trapped in this song of my own making; rolled within clear blue crystal like a grain of sand within an oyster’s protective pearl. I was cast away from my ancestral home and foes alike, trundled by the ocean’s currents along the seabed, the last glimmers of sunlight above receding until all that remained was the dim blue glow of my self-made prison.

I thought every thought that my mind could conjure. I clung to language; to spells; to lullabies and roving freedom and the smells of home and hearth. I tried to remain who I was; tried to remain part of the land and all its gifts, even as the great, silent beasts of the dark drifted past me, testing my crystal-pearl with teeth and tentacles. Finding it unbreakable, some carried me as an aegis; others carried me as a lure, using me to draw in half-blind creatures of darkness starving for light. Over time, I forgot my shape; I was nothing but blue crystal, born of a now-lost tribe and the spirits they shared life with. There was neither past nor future; only each moment, stretching out in blue-tinted darkness, its unbroken sameness occasionally jostled by some leviathan of the depths.

I was a magician trapped within my own threads of magic. An errant appliqué separated from the greater tapestry of the frozen reavers and their vessels, my physical form unravelling within the crystal-pearl, my flesh taking on qualities of the life that surrounded me. I hungered like they did, you see; to remain alive, despite the improbability of such a goal in crushing blackness.

One day, an unfamiliar sound scraped my crystal-pearl, harsher and sharper than teeth. I remembered a sensation I had forgotten; that of ascent. I was rising through the waters, clutched in some sort of shining claw. My crystal-pearl rotated within the claw until my eyes faced the surface, and I saw light. Impossibly-bright after the abyss, it grew nearer and nearer, partially occluded by a dark form riddled with red and blue lines of a different sort of light. I was pulled above the waves for the first time in centuries, and onto the deck of what I would later learn to be a battleship of the Allagan Empire.

They studied me, the men and women of the Empire, from outside the crystal-pearl. I was moved often, far from the sea, sometimes even into the heavens above. I could not understand how this was possible; at first, I thought these were the gods I dimly recalled from my youth, wearing elaborate robes and examining me with what I assumed to be holy relics. Once, I saw myself projected onto a screen in the middle of the air. I would not have known it was me if the tattered remnants of my colorful island robes hadn’t been floating around my… fins?! I had begun to change; to take on the physical qualities of the depths in which I’d tumbled for so long. My legs had begun to fuse into a finned tail, just like the nixies of the river; my pale scales were now the same color as my green skin; the webbing between my fingers, always present on those from my home isle, had grown larger, and each finger was tipped with squid-beak claws.

I did not know what they sought from me. After hundreds of years in the ocean’s solitude, there always seemed to be too much happening at once; my mind could not keep up. They spoke to me, sometimes; drilled tiny holes in my crystal-pearl and fed snaking tubes within them to reach me. I did not feel any pain; I had not felt anything since my own spell collided with the Autumn Queen’s protections and trapped me within my crystalline home. I did not understand the Allagan language, at first; but they kept me for so very long, and eventually I understood more than I did not. I watched some of their researchers, as I learned they were called, go from youth to old age before vanishing, replaced by a new crop. Sometimes, there were copies of the same researcher over and over again; clones, brought about in the Empire’s later years. It is difficult to recount these things now with the knowledge that hindsight brings; at the time, it felt like being in the deep sea all over again, with no concept of past nor future, only the brightly-lit chaos of each day, self-contained.

I was a magician, and now my magic was theirs. Another rapacious empire, come to claim the gifts of my birth.

Of all those who researched me, one was preeminent. I do not know what he looked like before he wore the elaborate plumed hat, the silver skull-like mask with chains for a mouth, the riotous varicolored coat. Amon, he was called, and he assured me he would give me purpose. He said I was a special being, indeed; that I would assist one Master Sari in his most holy endeavor; to lay enemy magicians to waste, that the Allagan Empire might reign forever more.

Amon gave me a voice; the voice I still bear to this day, when I am not in my own domain. It is not Himawari’s voice, I do not think; but then again, I do not remember what I originally sounded like; only that I was a musician, and a magician. Over the centuries, my crystal-pearl had absorbed the endless droning of the clipped-emotionless-mechanical voices around me; now, my voice was another in the chorus. My physical form within the crystal-pearl continued to grow and change; I knew this because the researchers became smaller, more distant, until eventually, they built walkways, each a story apart, so they could access all of me.

Master Sari took over the project. He was a magician, too; a powerful one, who had learned how to conquer what he called summoners, magicians from another isle, now under Allag’s yoke. I knew that I should be upset about this, but the grain of sand that was Himawari had not yet had time to lament this ironic twist of fate. As he settled me carefully within the center of a half-constructed ship tethered to an isle floating above the clouds, he told me of my great duty, zealous rapture enlarging his eyes. I was to bear his own summoners into battle against the remaining Meracydian insurgents. I would be a living ship’s core that could connect with each carefully-crafted soldier, tribes of summoners conscripted and corralled, their birthrights used against their former countrymen.

“It will help them to be able to refer to you by name, my dear. What is your name, exactly?” He paused, hands above the console, his self-constructed summoner’s horn pointed right at me. It was the first time any Allagan had ever asked me that question.

I was a musician, long ago. I was a magician, more recently, but still long ago. I could not remember my name, but I could remember my magicks. “Nixie”, I replied, in the voice Amon had given me; the voice for a creature molded in equal parts by the ocean’s ink-black crucible and the empire that had harnessed the sun's refulgence.

[flamingkorybante]

Announcing: AMA with Rocket and Alder of the Agdistine Order! - Saturday June 17th, from 5-7 pm ET

Hello all! Saturday June 17th, from 5-7 pm ET, we will have an AMA with Rocket and Alder of the Agdistine Order.

Description of the Agdistine Order:

The Agdistine Order is a liberatory spiritual project working to build a transcendent mystery tradition that meets the needs of modern transgender and gender nonconforming practitioners. It honors the Anatolian mythological figure of Agdistis, a nonbinary Earth daemon with a powerful appetite for pleasure, and strives to provide practitioners with tools for transformation of trauma, shame, and dysphoria as well as a shared focus for ancestral veneration. This is accomplished through a mix of ekstasis and enthousiasmos, using both ancient and modern techniques. The Order is a work in progress, with particular attention on crafting effective rituals, while also not forming the bad kind of cult. The dramatis personae of The Order include Dionysos, Cybele, and Attis, all of whom had mystery cults in antiquity, but far as we know, Agdistis has never before had a mystery cult of their own. You don't have to be trans to venerate Agdistis but we make no guarantee that you won't be trans when they finish with you. If you'd like to do the reading before the AMA and come with questions, you can find the essay, "The Passion of Agdistis: Gender Transgression, Sexual Trauma, Time Travel, and Ritualized Madness in Greco-Anatolian Revival Cultus," first published in "Queer Magic: Power Beyond Boundaries" in 2018. The piece includes very frank discussions of transphobia, transmisogyny, violence, and sexual assault, so please take care while reading.

Some info about Rocket and Alder:

Rocket is a cultist and mage of the Agdistine Order and the founder of the Anarcho-Surrealist Wizard Brigade, fully dedicated to 1) Cybele Magna Mater, and 2) being the weirdest pervert in the mystic groupchat and the weirdest mystic in the pervert groupchat. On the clock, Rocket can be found destroying the institution of marriage and teaching at law schools, and the rest of the time, they write poetry compulsively, glue rhinestones to things, organize with other leftist weirdo Jews, and push the flesh to its limit for art, magic, and pleasure. Rocket’s writing can be found in the Queer Magic Anthology, Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic, the Texas Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Advocate, and the Brill journal of Religion and the Arts, and Rocket can be found on Tumblr at @ flamingkorybante and in meatspace on a trans commune on unceded Lenape land. Alder Knight was raised as an animist and got into witchcraft in 1998. They began their work with Dionysos in 2012. As neither a classicist nor a reconstructionist, they rely heavily on divination, personal connection with the divine, and trial and error in their Dionysian practice. They are an herbalist and a rootworker, with a focus on local plants and a light touch, and they prioritize using their skills and resources to seek out healing, community resilience, collective liberation, and the ecstatic. A mystical experience in 2014 propelled them into intensive work with the transgender dead, which culminated in the annual Transgender Rite of Ancestor Elevation, @ trans-rite on Tumblr. Similarly, a mystical experience in 2015 planted the seeds of what would become The Agdistine Order. Their day job is in clean energy and climate education, and they live with Rocket and others at the all-trans intentional community they co-founded in 2018 on unceded Lenape land. You can find them on Tumblr at @ thegodwhocums.

Looking forward to this AMA! Mark your calendars!