#he's so Creature-able

[leopardmask-ao3]

NHH 2022 Day 23: The Wolves in the High Tower

Link to the challenge Today’s Word is: Werewolf Characters: Bdubs, Ren, Etho Season: HC9 Other tags/warnings: animal attack mention Word Count: 757

Summary: There are two wolves inside you. Actually, they're inside your house.

Read it on ao3 or

Bdubs wasn't sure at first what made him jolt awake in the middle of the night. He looked around his little bedroom, halfway up his tower, and in the bright moonlight shining through the window, he couldn't see anything amiss. Something echoed in the back of his mind, something he might have heard in his sleep, or maybe in a dream...

A shadow moved, cast on the wall of the staircase that led upward.

Bdubs let out a small gasp, watching the shadow warily. It kept moving, slinking downward, closer, closer. Until soon, the shadow was followed by a big, brown wolf, filling up the stairwell. Its blue eyes immediately landed on Bdubs.

"O-oh. Um, hi? Goodbye!" Bdubs carefully got out of bed and tried to creep around the edge of the room, headed for the stairs down.

He hadn't even reached the first step when another wolf rounded the corner coming up.

Bdubs could have guessed where the first wolf came from, but this one, he knew. A white wolf, with a scar across one eye... he shouldn't be surprised, really, that it could operate a piston door.

He looked toward the window, but it was quickly blocked by the brown wolf. In the tiny room, it was easy for the two pack animals to guard every entrance at once. They both growled.

"Guys-?"

The wolves both pounced at once. Bdubs screamed as claws dug into his arms and chest and stomach. Teeth snapped shut around his neck.

Sunlight streamed in the window.

Bdubs blinked at it, briefly confused as to where he was. Everything seemed normal... had last night even been real?

He swung his legs out of bed - and cringed at the bloodstain on the floor. Okay. Parts of it had actually happened. But had he just gone back to sleep after respawn? Bdubs had definitely dreamed something after that, but any memory of the contents of the dream had faded with the morning.

Wood creaked in the stairwell, and then Ren was trotting into the room. "Good morning, Bdubs!"

"Yes, good morning," Bdubs replied.

"Erm..." Ren shifted from foot to foot. "B, can I ask you a bit of an awkward question?"

"Sssure. Go ahead."

Ren's ears flattened guiltily. "Did, uh... did either of us bite you last night?"

"Bite-" Bdubs glanced sidelong at the blood on the floor again. He remembered that part well enough. Claws and teeth both, for sure. Bdubs had no idea who had done what, though, and Ren looked so guilty already, and Bdubs didn't want to make Ren feel worse... Besides, it was Bdubs who had separately invited two werewolves to live in the same house as he did, so he was bound to get mauled eventually, and it was all fine now, anyway. "N-no, I don't remember any biting. Just a lot of clawing, yes. But no hard feelings, right? It's not your fault that I make such a tasty... I-I mean, uh. Such a, uh, an appealing guy to... tear apart. Sure. Let's go with that."

Ren laughed, his embarrassment somewhat dispelled. "That's good, that's good. I'll let the big E know everything is fine and dandy with you, and we'll, uh, be more careful next time, yeah?"

-

Bdubs couldn't seem to calm down enough to go to sleep. Was he worried? Tonight was a full moon, after all, and even though Ren and Etho had promised to shut themselves in more securely, werewolves had a way of breaking loose in surprising ways when they needed to get out and run.

Yeah, that was probably what was making Bdubs jittery. Remembering the last full moon, how they had cornered him... the thought of even trying to sleep tonight made him itch.

Bdubs was in his room as the sun set, but he still wasn't tired. He wasn't sure he was thinking clearly, either, though, so he probably needed the rest.

Bdubs was downstairs as the moon peeked into view outside. He scratched at his side with one hand, while he lit the candles that opened a secret entrance with his other.

Bdubs was upstairs as the moonlight reached the upper windows. He had fallen a few times getting up here. He rubbed at fur behind his ears as he unbarred the door.

Two wolves met him at the halfway point of the tower, watching a cracking, rippling, shifting.

Three wolves dashed out of the Monolith. One with brown fur, one with white, and one slightly smaller wolf with fur as black as the night sky.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 155

So, Booster would have loved to know that becoming the equivalent of a Time-Cop would mean meeting what is apparently the primordial being of Time itself. He would have also loved to know it apparently also came with an adoption. And a small child that was apparently supposed to be sixteen but there was apparently some sort of accident in the dimension he (was the kid a boy??) came from. So. 

He had a kid now. He… well shit, he had no clue what to do. Actually, he knows exactly what he’s going to do, he’s going to call Ted. Who will probably have an idea on what to do. Or what a four- oh you’re five? He’d probably have an idea on what a five year old might need. 

He himself would push this hysterical breakdown over the fact he’s apparently now adopted by Time Itself to a later time. A later time when he’s not holding a fragile small child. 

[layraket]

i had a vision...

I like the idea of the chain just being little creatures and/or animals. I almost did Four like a minish but he being just a tiny rat is more funny

Close ups

[unexpectedbrickattack]

I bet Gustavo knows how’s exactly small he is and uses his charms and adorableness to get tips , and it’d work

Peppino pays Gus very well (esp after postgame) so theres no need to have tips. He lets Gus have the jar there anyway, but at the cost of having Pep occasionally come up behind him and catch him conning these poor customers

[hermanunworthy]

CHOOSE UR CHARACTER!

tysm for 100 followers!! i decided to finally solidify my hermie designs and make a fun little reference sheet of sorts w all of them!

(update this is so old now and ive made quite a few changes to my hermie designs since this agkdj)

[chrisrin]

some fun quick doodles of d&d pcs and npcs from the campaign i'm dming!

bonus! my little guy:

[sysig]

I have an idea for the requesttober, could you make Scriabin like an endermen? I feel that Scriabin would be an endermen if he were in Minecraft's world

Day 11 - No eye contact >:(

[sapphireswimming]

I just!! Am Screaming!!!! Sean said they were just going to keep sending him back into the field one more time just one more job you gotta do until he was dead but he never said no! he could have left Candela Obscura at any point, after any job, but he chose to stay there! even after he'd reached the end of his rope! and everyone else continued to stay with him! for him!! Marion told Sean he was only there because of him. Auntie Bee admitted she was only there to stay near him. if he ever said he wanted out they would have not only let him but left with him! and if Sean and Marion were both out, Jean would have been to! Nathaniel would have followed as soon as he paid his debt to Allison! they didn't want him to keep going until he broke! they were trying to be there with him for him by him beside him because that was literally all they could do for him! they all could have been happier outside of Candela Obscura but Sean was there so they weren't going to leave! they loved him!! the love was there!! the love was there the whole time and it mattered of course it mattered but it didn't do anything!!!! it didn't do anything except keep them all together until it was too late! and I! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[meeeeeeese]

So I want to talk about the altar of Glaust, because it's incredibly important to the story and yet it almost never gets brought up.

What I think most people know about the altar is that its a forgotten artifact that was responsible for Glint, and by extension, Aurene being freed from the yoke of Kralkatorrik. While you can visit it in Arah, it kind of exits the story from there with no character ever thinking to use the sole artifact with the power to grant corrupted creatures free will again. However there's a few details that I think a lot of people miss that I find kind of interesting at least.

The first thing is that the altar itself is only a part of the process, it's just a component of a spell or ritual that does the actual work of cleansing the corruption.

Secondly, the spell needs to be performed at Arah. Though I don't know whether that's simply because the forgotten built the required altar there or because Arah is special somehow.

Personally, I think that there's something special about Arah that's required for the spells function beyond the mere presence of the altar. Zhaitan's presence indicates that it's almost definitely a ley-line nexus, and something about the land there was special enough to call the gods to tyria. So I think it'd make sense that they'd have to do it in Orr (which also suggests, given the forgotten attempted to purify Kralkatorrik, that ol'Kralky used to be active in Orr during the last dragonrise before flying up to the blood lands for his nap)

I think that would go some way as to explain why we're not using this incredible power, as the only way to do so is to venture through an unchained-infested city all the while lugging about whatever corrupted creature you want to cleanse.

And while I'm on the subject of why the altar isn't in the story more, there's also the fact that making corruption being curable more of a thing really changes the nature of dragon minions. Where before they're poor victims who can only be put down for everone's safety, the altar's presence makes them victims who, if you put in enough effort, you could save. Which would probably change the focus of the story quite dramatically as we have to weigh protecting still uncorrupted people against trying to save the corrupted from their fate.

(though imagine if we used purified branded to create living dragonsblood weapons, warriors uniquely suited to fighting branded who are immune to corruption because I don't think Kralkatorrik can brand them twice)

(as a sidenote, if you haven't done the forgotten path of the ruined city of arah you might not know that the altar is blimmin huge, check out the pic below with risen giants for scale)

Finally, just an interesting/annoying note is that we never got any explanation as to how the forgotten purification works, does it block the elder dragon from issuing commands to said minion? Does it work to nullify the dragonvoid lurking at the heart of the creatures magic? Replace the corrupted dragon magic with more benign ley energy? Who knows! Not us, and we likely never will now that we're moving away from the dragon storyline. And I promise I'm not salty about that.

So yeah, that's pretty much it, the altar's a pretty cool object and, for how little it comes up, a really important part of Aurene's ascension to non-mad elder dragon. Hopefully it'll one day get more attention, if only so we can have the commander go "Wait why haven't we been using this the entire time"

[karizipan]

ermm scanned some stuff... some of the orv in my sketchbook + tidbits of my silly merfolk yjh au

[squidgirlautism]

in the purely hypothetical sense that if a shark gained human sentience and intelligence of someone over 20 years old, and wanted to convert to judaism, would it be allowed ? like, it’s basically a human but a shark and it cant like verbally communicate but it probably could right

[puppetmaster13u]

Blame the Sims for this but-

Poly Bruce/Clark/Lois scenario with Vampire batfamily, save for Tim whose a werewolf, and of course Alien superfamily. Lois is also completely human. Probably. No one knows for sure.

Bonus Danny Phantom crossover of them getting together via them trying to adopt ghost child and ending up coparenting instead.

[pebblezone]

She was Twelve I don’t care how mature she was she’s going to feel emotions

[enchantedlantern]

Victor Frankenstein is only 19 when he makes the creature and I think that context explains a lot about him actually

[greensaplinggrace]

Can I join the club of wanting the darkling to be more monstrous and an eldritch horror cause damn if that isn’t super fun to explore

hhhhh yes!! eldritch horror darkling is so interesting like I am always thinking about just how far his powers can go and the effects being a shadow summoner could have on him at a deep, primal level. like I love the idea of him acting just this side of human, but he always knows when you're approaching he can feel you in the air he can grab you from anywhere he is a shadow creature but not because he is master of shadow and they all bow to him. anyways...

[dnangelic]

i also do sometimes imagine how things might have gone for daisuke had he not fallen in love again, but also made the conscious choice to pursue it. for him in particular it could easily have been that he got rejected by his first crush, transformed for the first time, and then was never able to transform back if he actually had succumb to his fears. there's his tendency to isolate, to hide and run away, and then the canonical line of himself thinking that if it was 'too difficult to ever accept developing feelings, then it'd be better to be without them at all.' real beauty and the beast scenario. daisuke could've lived in ppl's walls or under the floors of the opera house terrorizing people