Aww crap! I completely forgot about the NAP repeals! And I wanted to do that yesterday as well! Well, at least today is a work-from-home day, so he has the freedom to move about the neighborhood to do that. Also Gunther woke up from a nightmare about an overly muscular Yammachan. You do get nightmares that interrupt your sleep if you go to bed scared. Gunther’s want is to chat and get to know Rua so that’s nice and convenient for asking for a NAP repeal signature. All of Rua’s work assignments take him elsewhere so I asked Rua and called over Arun and managed to get the signatures I needed.
With that, Gunther and the boys are off to the Arts Quarter! Both work requirements have to be fulfilled there. Eating four dishes specifically at the arts quarter and trying three different flavors at the Bubble Blower, which has a public one at the Cabash Gallery. The food stands we have out there is a produce seller and a tea one. ...don’t know if the tea one would count and also there isn’t a vendor there so, let’s try eating some fresh fruit. Can now confirm that eating a grape doesn’t count! But by the time we ate said grape, a tea vendor arrived! Gunther is more of a coffee person but ya take what you can get! Even if this doesn’t count. It also didn’t count. Dang. I gotta get creative.
There’s a bartender on staff at the Cabash Gallery, so I ask for some food from him. Pita and Hummas, to be precise. There is also a fridge. No oven but enough to make some dishes that don’t require one. So I set Gunther a-cooking! And then, a-snacking! And ya wonder why Gunther gains such weight so quickly. All the while overly eager fans were cheering. If they were truly fans, they would leap to eat food he was making. And then I remembered I had the Laud Meal interaction, which essentially did that. Hooray.
Time to -ahem- blow some bubbles. Depending on the flavor cartages, these can give very good bonus moodlets! I just don’t normally go for them and go for yoga instead if I want buffs because it’s quite a bulky object to have around the house.
But enough of that, it’s time to go home and go to bed early. Those ghosties mess up our sleep schedule and he’s ultra-tired at 7PM. But we’re going to continue on because this’ll be a rather short post. Anyway!
Neighborhood Watch!
Brindleton Bay: The Guzman household recently moved out.
Newcrest: The Rios household recently moved out.
Okay byeeeeeee! Move into a place and swiftly move out I see.
Anyway, I had Gunther use his 4AM wake-up time to go and do some household maintenance. And by that, I mean get rid of the creepy things around the house and check the spiritual volatility. All is well and calm here.
Oh and Gunther has now officially smooched a ghost. Heh! And asked him to be his boyfriend. You go Gunther! And Woohoo’d as well, to finish things off. Heh. Finish. Even got a little achievement for for woohooing a ghost! Fun fun.
I attempted to regain passion before going into work and got the tense moodlet. Eh, let’s try one more day before career hopping. Return home from work, and we got the wants to analyze a book, which’ll give Gunther a nice inspired moodlet, and don’t stumble. So essentially, don’t do strenuous physical activity that much. Got it. He read the book and then I started work on his aspiration again, by skilling a bit more in the logic skill. We got the chess table but hey, it’s actually a clear night so we can go star-gazing once the sun goes down!
...or he could be sleepy at 7PM. Alas. Let’s just get a good workout in and then go to-
...ah. Yep. Say hello to Temperance everyone. She’s an angry ghost who will mess things up!
Including using your séance table to invoke and lower the spiritual vibes of your home to make things more trouble!
Look at ‘em. Look at the angry ghosties. I managed to catch them at a cute picture but they can get MAD. Not that Gunther knows or notices. He’s sleepy. He needs sleep. He chatted with a nicer ghost nearby and everything seemed fine so he’s going to bed.
...to get immediately disturbed by bumps in the night. Ah well.
Anyway, Guidry gives us some handy advice to deal with Temperance. A weird idol thing. I’d set it down but Gunther is busy eating food.
Oh, and we have this weird yellow ghost who will pop up rarely. Just kinda exhudes an aura of awkardness. And here, have a better look at the angriest of ghosts! Extremely sleepy, we send Gunther to bed. Good thing he has no work tomorrow!
Neighborhood Watch!
Nothing of note has happened recently. Check back tomorrow.
1 note
·
View note
I’ve been thinking about drones and just the whole logistics of it all. They’ve got to pick up two contributions from every troll? One after another? So presumably the pails get filled ahead of time. Would a troll have enough time to help out more than one pitch/flush partner if there’s an odd number of trolls total? Or is someone just SOL if they’re on a ship with an odd number of trolls? Oh hell, on the dark carnival there’s sometimes prisoners - and jeez, what about them?? Ah this got kind of dark and now I’m second guessing sending it, but I’m curious about your thoughts, feel free to ignore if you like!
These ARE the questions lol. I've been hammering away and I'm putting together a theory I will call the Tax Fraud Drone Theory and I am figuring pieces of it out as I type this at two AM, lol. CW of course for drone-season/fuck-or-die related discussion because: terrible bug aliens from hellmurder planet.
tl;dr, drones are a basic system that expects to hit up trolls in tribal/village numbers and slowly, methodically iterate their way through. Their system isn't evolved for modern trollish community structures, and often won't have the storage capacity to hit every single troll or couple (especially in a whole city) before they head back to the Mother Grub--so you can gamble and get by with one quadrant. OR even dodge them completely, but the contagious effect of their pheromonal presence will make you real sorry if you do! Further extensive rambling under the cut.
SO: a concept.
The basic function of drones is to follow the pheromonal/scent trail of trolls to a population center and go down the line demanding donations. (Theoretically, hitting different areas of the planet in waves, always coming and going, so the whole population isn't incapacitated at once.)
in situations that would have been natural when trolls were first established as a species, drones would largely find you living in groups ranging from a small travelling clade to a manageably village-sized collection of hives, SO:
In those circumstances, the drones could simply progress logically from iteration to iteration, prioritizing people who haven't contributed and then starting over with the people who have had the longest break since their first contribution, until pitch and flush contributions have been collected from everybody and/or the people who can't keep up have been culled.
(Presumably people who were near the start of the chain and already checked both boxes sometimes find it in their heart/spades to flip pitch or flush with an unlucky straggler, although that's risky if you don't genuinely think you can summon up a compatible enough match to satisfy the drones)
This is part of the reason drone pheromones send trolls into such an altered state, because odds are good you'll have to be in the mood for a hot second while the drones work their way around your community, and also will have to fuck several times.
Plus, I could imagine it's not unheard-of on-planet for one drone to finish up and then another one to show up a day later, attracted by the increased number of trolls and their much "louder" pheromonal signature! If we assume the drones are a semi-sentient purpose-driven messenger evolved to serve the Mother Grub (which I do haha) it's not like they would have a database.
(Drone pheromones would also function as a sort of indirect, auxillary means of reinforcing their purpose--not having quadrants to bone down with when drones are around is harshly physically/ mentally taxing and even if you managed to evade them and/or lock yourself up alone, most trolls will be fucked up enough they'll end up culled shortly afterward anyway.)
While trolls can't produce drone pheromones themselves, they're triggered by it to involuntarily produce a similar substance, which is notably incredibly "contagious" to other trolls around them, so even one drone in an area can have far-reaching ripple effects of Horny Time
BUT: Even prior to the Rebellion of Beasts, in semi-modern Alternia, trolls often lived in much larger cities than the drones' basic biology and capabilities could iterate combinations for, and so they would just continue to fill buckets from the next "fresh" troll they caught a whiff of, preferentially alternating pitch and flush, until all the drones dispatched to the area had reached capacity.
THUS: while it's still crucial to have strong quadrants filled if you want to be relatively safe, not every troll will be necessarily be demanded to consummate both, but WATCH OUT
Basically in the same way that you COULD falsify your taxes, but you could get audited at any time and then you're fucked, you CAN go into drone season with just one quadrant (or even no quadrants at all if you're feeling incredibly lucky and live in a super crowded area). BUT if the drones happen to get to the end of a chain of quadrants and end up next door, and you're the nearest relatively "fresh" troll they sniff out, you're dead meat.
It's also possible to physically lock yourself away from the drones but it requires heavy fortifications--it's also wildly illegal and grounds for immediate culling, and fiercely policed by the community, since every troll that tries that shit makes it that much harder and more deadly for everybody else.
If you get caught by your neighbors building some kind of panic room or something you are IMMEDIATELY under intense scrutiny and you BETTER be seen out and about every single drone season. Or a neighbor is likely to take things into their own hands and take you out of the gene pool themself.
While usually the exponentially-increasing privilege of the hemospectrum makes higher bloods exempt from shit like that, the exponentially decreasing physical numbers of colder bloods means that a different kind of social pressure is leaning on highbloods, a more noblesse oblige expectation that you'll do your part to keep the ruling classes populated with fresh blood from powerful couplings.
That said, a rare few especially powerful or crucial members of the empire can be ruled exempt by the empress, which basically just means she says explicitly that you get to build a bunker and lock your door when the drones come around--along with one or two other trolls For Your Health.
The Grand Highblood, a handful of seadwellers from her court that don't tideally suck, and any especially competent imperial generals of the various divisions of her army tend to fall under exemption, although she'll revoke it off-handed if you fuck up, so there's a lot of impetus to stay on top of your game.
In modern Post-Rebellion Alternia, trolls out on the farthest warfronts have increasing amounts of time between drone seasons, because the drones have to fly out from Alternia, track down ships and then fly all the way back. This is one of the many ways the empire encourages people to get way the fuck out onto the frontlines.
But they could still show up at any time, including to ships actively on the war front, so like. you better watch out you better watch out YOU BETTER WATCH OUT YOU BETTER--
In cases like the Church Fleet as I've written it, where there are prisoners present on-ship, it's just kind of expected that their lives are going to hornily suck absolute shit for several days while the drones are on-board, but the fortifications to keep prisoners secure also do keep the drones out.
In pursuit of not having prisoners die prematurely of dehydration and exhaustion, which is a very real risk if you're just locked up by yourself alone during drone season, I'd guess a lot of ships with prisoners just kind of throw them in groups into cells with extra food/water supplies and come back to pick up the pieces after the drones are gone again.
In some ways, a better way to spend the drone season than most free trolls, because you're locked up and don't have to worry about the drones! But also: kind of a nightmare hahaaa @_@ And also you're still a troll prisoner so like. You're going to die eventually anyway.
It's not good! But like, what about the Alternian empire is tbh. Hell society of the murder-bugs.
Bonus concept I'm chewing on: pheromone trails are a workable sollution on-planet, but basically impossible to follow all the way out into space--the reason the drones can find you no matter how far away you run to set up a colony is that the Mother Grub and her drones actually folded the Glb'golyb into a symbiotic relationship early in Alternian history/troll evolution. Her psychic connection to every troll in the empire means that they can get general positioning data from her and then hone in by smell when they arrive within direct sensory range. The Mother Grub gets to fulfill her purpose, and Glb'golyb basically farms trolls and lusii for food, taking her tithe of flesh from the Mother Grub's worker bees trolls (the general population).
85 notes
·
View notes
Venetia Blue, my MC from @barbwritesstuff very wonderful werewolf action-adventure-romance, Blood Moon. It has amazing characters who are dynamic, flawed and deeply lovable with a variety of personalities and beliefs; it has paranormal politics of several flavours; it has magic and amazing side characters that are impossible not to love; and it has a terrific end-game showdown that is very satisfying. I've been kicking my feet and giggling, gasping in outrage, and generally enjoying the variation within the story for a few days now, and Venetia's been the winner of "most canonical run". A slightly babbly profile under the cut
Name: Venetia Jaqueline Blue
Pronouns: She/Her
Height: 155.5cm/5'1"
Age: 26
Appearance: a short, curvy woman with fair, freckled skin and green eyes. Her hair is a natural light blonde, slightly wavy, falling to about her collar bones. She usually wears in a single braid or if she takes the time, vintage waves.
Venetia prefers fairly practical dress, with a lot of purple, brown, and denim. She can be easy to spot on cooler days though, thanks to a strange and distinctly quirky patchwork jacket she likes to wear (she made it herself).
As a wolf, Venetia somewhat curiously most resembles a Husdon Bay Wolf, with a smaller build and light yellow-and-white colouring. The first time she shifted in front of the pack Marco declared her "barely toasted marshmallow" coloured.
Biography
Born on Oct. 31st, 1993 to a small but relatively wealthy clan Venetia's childhood was very pleasant. Owning a private fig farm, the pack managed to keep well funded without interacting much with the outside world, bar farmer's market's and deliver drivers come the advent of internet selling.
Venetia herself grew up relatively alone, a quirk of the pack's generations meaning she was born a decade behind the older children and a decade before the youngest. She spent much of her time with the pack elders, who were happy to encourage a voracious learner. They encouraged her so much in fact Venetia was the first in the pack to attend post-secondary school. She left school after only two years however, as the pack's official educator passed somewhat unexpectedly leaving behind several young students.
Venetia served as the pack educator herself for three years, a job that was a good fit as she's always liked children. It all came crashing down however one day when she returned from an early-morning hunt-slash-run. When she got back, armed with a couple of pheasants, she found only the smell of death and rotting flowers, an unusual heavy frost, and a damning silence.
Venetia spent the next three years as a stray, haunted by a formless loss. She preoccupied herself initially with dead-end investigations, which eventually gave way to her disappearing into a national park. She came back to herself after three months in her wolf form, when she found herself following not a deer or rabbit, but an unwitting camping family. Horrified, that was the moment that lead to her core conviction:
She's a person, not a monster and she will not the wolf of the moon win.
Not that Venetia is a self-hating werewolf, no she quite likes her wolf, so long as it's her and not the moon driving her. It's a balance she didn't really find until Alek and the pack accepted her in however, for the preceding two and a half years in fact Venetia resisted shifting except for moons for the most part.
During those years, she coped with her loneliness the only way she knew how: hobbies. Sewing, car repair, fixing radios, carving, learning French, etc. Venetia jumped from item to item, stubbornly conquering skills and projects before moving on to the newest thing. This does make her a very handy packmate: it's likely that even if Venetia doesn't have an exact skill needed for an odd job, she something transferable (and she's great at finding resources to help her learn).
In the city, Venetia saw it as a sort of job to really help out as her time as a stray often meant coming into bigger cities to avoid wandering into another pack's territory. Her decision to try for Alpha--and the reason she got it, was similar. Smart and patient, Venetia's only priority was keeping the pack together and thriving, even when she only had a handful of moons with the pack under her belt.
Fun Facts
her native language is Welsh, she didn't learn English until she was around 12 years old
her mother named for a novel she once read, despite hating the novel itself
grew up on the coast so has a taste for fish and shellfish
worked at over 32 different places during her stray-days, but the bulk of these (more than half) were "work for board" style planting/harvesting operations
her longest stray-days job was as a yoga instructor at a Wiccan run spa-retreat, they were very sympathetic to her need to take full moons off
is allergic to bug bites, to her IMMENSE frustration
18 notes
·
View notes