#historical scavenger hunt

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

I don't remember if I already asked this but please tell us about Mors' research into the Cosmogeny and the Prophecy, and what he managed to find out about Ardyn.

Ah, no, this hasn't been asked before. And this answer is not as comprehensive as I would have liked, but I've been sitting on it for long enough.

Soooooo

This little project of Mors's started when he found a Cosmogoy written in old High Lucian and it was Different. Translations didn't add up, words had changed meaning.

Mors was no linguist, so it took him quite a while, but he figured some things out. (And it was all because he knew 'morcente' could mean 'gentle', but it was the gentleness of death.)

(Shiva, Hienta, morcente nivi

Shiva, the Glacian, gentle as snow

Shiva, the Glacian, her snow a gentle death)

So what else was different?

This caused a landslide of discovery for Mors. (He hates The Pious for his religious reforms. So much was lost, but the royal archives are large and some things survived despite the efforts of others.)

From burnt and teared out scraps of parchment hidden in distant crevices he found passages of the Cosmogony that detail a story he has never heard.

[...] Bahamut, born out of bloos and sacrifice, cast his eye upon [...] brought light and healing, and plunged the [...] betraying his very purpose.

Those fragments also tell of a man. A Healer. Chosen by the Gods themselves. But context clues tell Mors, that this passage doesn't mean Somnus nor the Astrals. So who...?

[emiliasilverova]

Салат « Янус » (The Janus Salad)

(Or: a Russian Englishman’s twist on the Romanov-era Olivier Salad)

007 Fest 2022, Scavenger Hunt item no. 52: “Design a meal or dish of food representing a Bond character. Explain your logic.”

In the days when Janus used to travel all around Russia in his personal armoured train, the question of food always was a critical one. Of course, the on-board kitchen was well-stocked with quality tins, but one did not simply live on a diet of tinned food—especially when one was the immensely rich Janus.

Therefore, some of the Janus Syndicate’s enforcers were specially assigned to catering. They ordered dishes to the greatest chefs in all of Saint Petersburg and brought them back to base (not unlike a private Uber Eats…); they did the grocery shopping at the historical Gostiniy Dvor department store; they even procured rare and/or exotic ingredients from abroad. None of them complained—as long as they weren’t caught red-handed nabbing some of this exceptional food, the job certainly had its advantages.

Janus, as for him, didn’t complain either. As much as he despised his old friend James in those days, he had very much adopted the latter’s love for good, expensive cuisine for himself. While the local restaurateurs never saw him in person, he paid them so generously they came to look forward to the tough-looking henchman’s next visit. There were worse arrangements, especially in 1990s Russia.

What Janus also loved was history—above all else, Romanov history. In another life, he would have certainly been the dashing Count Vronskiy in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Or, at the very least, a young, ambitious Don Cossack officer, relentlessly gaining power in the tsar’s court through intrigue and connections. But alas, he was born a century too late for that to ever happen. His consolation was to devour all the books he could find on the subject… and infiltrating the young Russian Federation’s politics to steer them away from Communism as much as he could.

It was while reading one of his history books that one day, Janus stumbled upon the story of Belgian chef Lucien Olivier and of his most famous creation—Olivier salad. Like every Russian, Janus knew the Soviet, cheapened-down variation of it, also known as Russian potato salad. He was very surprised to find out that the original was, in fact, very posh. Depending on the versions, it could include such ingredients as hazel grouse, crayfish tails, or even black caviar.

Intrigued, Janus kept searching about this historical salad. Chef Olivier had clung jealously to his recipe all the way to the grave, but fortunately some of his contemporaries had noted down their best approximations. The oldest possible source Janus could find was an 1894 article from the long-defunct magazine ‘Our Food’. For what he had in mind, it was a very good base.

So, one day, he summoned one of his caterers and asked for the recipe to be recreated, albeit with a few alterations of his own. The original recipe was forever lost after all, so no need for complete authenticity. Instead of hazel grouse, he wanted partridge—a very acceptable replacement, according to the 1894 article. If he did live the Cossack life, he’d probably have hunted it himself… but the truth was, partridge had been his favourite game meat ever since James made him try some.

Instead of crayfish, he wanted the sweeter, softer scampi. How English of him, one might say. Instead of meat jelly, he wanted the most buttery, decadent beluga caviar—hopefully not from Valentin Zukovsky's Azerbaijani farm, though. He wanted quail eggs, too. And for a slightly dark, smoked edge, he wanted French duck magret. Again, James’ influence on him might be stronger than he’d ever admit…

Lastly, there was the question of the most mysterious ingredient of them all—what the article called ‘Kabul’ sauce. Back in the day, it was a condiment made by the British firm Crosse & Blackwell, but it unsurprisingly had been discontinued eons prior. The replacement, Janus decided, would be a mixture of good old Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce. Russia had borders with China, Korea and Japan after all. Slightly spicy, with a umami kick to it… that resembled enough the descriptions he read.

The henchman finished noting this down, nodded, and went. Shortly before dinner time, he came back to the train with the customary bliny with sour cream and caviar… as well as this.

‘Delicious’, Janus thought at the first bite. ‘Well worthy of a tsar… I could call it the Janus salad.’

INGREDIENTS

(DISCLAIMER: the author broke the piggy bank for some of these ingredients because she made this dish for her 26th birthday. Do not feel obliged to do the same—that being said, scouring places such as Petrossian or La Grande Épicerie de Paris (a French equivalent to Harrod’s) was very fun.)

Salad (makes 3-4 servings):

2 roasted partridges (can be replaced with roasted chicken)

8 (+1, see decoration) quail eggs (can be replaced with chicken eggs)

5-6 waxy new potatoes (if you’re Janus, you’ll probably want Jersey Royals. If you’re a French frog like the author, Noirmoutiers are an excellent replacement.)

70g smoked duck magret (omit if you don’t have access to it)

Half an English cucumber

1 tbsp capers

10 black olives

Meat from the scampi claws

Scampi broth (if raw scampi are used):

Parsley

Tarragon

Dill

2 bay leaves

1 onion, quartered

1 carrot, chopped

Jamaican pepper (Bond would approve)

Coarse salt

Provençal sauce:

1 egg yolk

1 tsp Dijon mustard

2 tsp vinegar

olive oil (or olive oil + a neutral tasting oil—olive oil has a strong taste)

black pepper

garlic powder

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2-3 tsp soy sauce

For the decoration of 1 serving:

2 scampi (aka. langoustines)

1 lettuce leaf

The spare quail egg, halved

Chives

Black caviar (if you’ve got Janus’ unlimited funds, beluga is a must—since the author hasn’t, she used osetra instead. A good, much cheaper replacement with a similar taste would be trout roe... except it isn't as dark as Alec's soul 😆)

DIRECTIONS

Roast the partridge (or chicken) and let it cool down

Boil the potatoes and let them cool down

Boil the quail eggs for 3 minutes and let them cool down (8 minutes for chicken eggs)

Make the scampi broth. When it boils, add the raw scampi and cook for 8 minutes starting  from when the broth boils again. Remove the pot from the stove and put it in a cold water bath. Leave the pot to cool down, so that the scampi are infused with the broth.

Remove the bones from the partridge/chicken, then chop it up into small pieces along with the potatoes, cucumber, magret, eggs and meat from the scampi claws. Add capers and sliced olives

Make the Provençal sauce. Mix the egg yolk and mustard then slowly add oil while whisking, until texture is firm (an electric hand mixer helps). Add the other ingredients and mix well.

Add two generous tablespoons of Provençal sauce to the salad, then gently mix it all up.

To serve, ideally use a ring mold. Decorate the molded salad with the scampi, egg, lettuce leaf, caviar and chives.

Serve very cold. The 1894 recipe says that it should be ideally done in ‘a crystal vase, like fruit macédoine’.

Приятного аппетита! (Bon appétit!)

SOURCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_salad (good overview)

https://liveuser.livejournal.com/77282.html (the 1894 recipe, in Russian)

https://stale.ru/en/different/olive-s-rakovymi-sheikami-gotovim-originalnye-salaty-olive-s/ (different variations of the original recipe with more complete instructions, Google (?) translated from Russian)

BONUS PICTURES:

Mmm roasted partridge

A good view on that caviar (I certainly am not going to get more any time soon, so gotta show off 😁). Also, six bliny of course.

Little birthday dessert in the same spirit:

Georgian black tea with lemon

Chocolate, lemon, raspberry and mango macarons

‘Cigarettes russes’ (Russian cigarettes), which are Belgian rolled biscuits

Raisin and lemon Scottish shortbread

Apple and honey ‘tulskiy pryanik’, a sort of gingerbread from Tula, Russia

PS: did you spot the three Sean Bean non-Alec Easter eggs in the opening blurb? 👀

[theschalowest]

Tomorrow's job is going to walmart on a weird sunglasses hunting trip

[sparrowlucero]

Strawberry Wyvern showing off it’s markings, which resemble bloodied broadswords; typical of the sort historically used to slay more aggressive species. They play dead both defensively and to hunt scavenging animals.

[flawseer]

On Mudwing Culture

My last deliberation on Seawings and their eccentric insult vocabulary seemed to be well-received, so here is another one of my headcanons:

Mudwings are seriously into food.

I know, pretty revolutionary take when there is only a handful of named Mudwing characters, and two of them love eating so much that it either almost or entirely eclipses their personality.

But Clay and Ochre are not what I am talking about. This isn’t about a love of eating (though many Mudwings admittedly do have that). I’m suggesting that, out of all the tribes from Pyrrhia, Mudwings are at the forefront of food preparation and culinary innovation, to the point where a large part of their culture revolves around it.

The State of Food Preparation on the Continent

Pyrrhia as a conglomerate of different cultures largely sustains its populations through hunting and gathering. The average dragon, when the hunger pangs set in, will make a hasty trip into the nearest forest, cave, or scavenger den and round up some prey animals. In most cases, this prey will go straight from the talons to the mouth, or, if the hunter is a bit more forward-thinking, into the pantry, and then from talons to the mouth.

There are a few variations of this practice; Skywings may give the carcass a quick roast on an open flame before eating it, Sandwings may dry the meat out so the excess moisture does not upset their internal water balance, Rainwings will prefer fruit over meat. Icewings will nearly always consume their prey raw and unseasoned, as their extremely delicate palate is easily overwhelmed by intense flavors that may be released through cooking.

More complex forms of food preparation seem to exist mostly outside the scope of the general populace. The practice of “cooking” appears to be limited to the ranks of aristocracy, with dedicated cooks only found within the court of a queen or in private households of other high-born individuals. It creates a sharp divide between commoners and social elites, between the wealthy and (as Sea Queen Coral once put it so succinctly) the “eel-eating masses”. All exemplified through the differing standards of food.

And yet somehow, standing in stark contrast to everywhere else on the continent, nearly every Mudwing-- from the most low-born runts of the Diamond Spray Delta to the most decorated head advisors in the Queen’s palace --knows how to cook, and will do so regularly.

Why is that, and how did it happen?

Historical Benefits of Cooking

Most things that form the backbone of a culture usually start with some ancient practice that was useful at some point in time and then, as people kept doing it, eventually got absorbed into public awareness and became “the way things are done”.

Mudwings face a unique challenge compared to anyone else, as they are the only tribe whose combat prowess is significantly affected by their environment, specifically climate, weather, and temperature. Sure, you can take any dragon, drop them into an unfavorable climate, and they will generally perform worse than under normal circumstances. But the unique weakness of Mudwings is that they lose their breath weapon when they get too cold. Place an Icewing into a burning room and they will still be able to use their frost breath. Pluck a Sandwing from their dry environment and drop them into the humid, sweltering hell of the jungle, their natural weapons will still function. But make a Mudwing cower between two piles of snow for a while, and their internal fire will go out quickly.

As you might imagine, this is a bit of a liability when you have to defend your territory from Skywings hiding and scheming among the frozen peaks bordering your country.

So the ancient Mudwings had to figure out a solution to their conundrum, and what they came up with was this: They got a large pot and filled it with water, threw in all manner of meats, plants, and herbs, whatever they could find where they were holed up, then boiled it until it was good and filling. The hot food in their bellies helped them stay warm even at high altitudes and allowed them to stand their ground against the northwestern invaders.

Soon it became tradition for troops to share a hotpot the night before battle, and a rich variety of hearty broths and stews developed from there, as these were simple to make from scraps and could be reheated easily. The practice became so popular, the Mudwings kept doing it even during peacetime. Soon, in addition to the hunting of prey animals that was commonplace, Mudwings began to cultivate vegetable gardens to have access to a more stable supply of ingredients. Eventually, their growing understanding of agriculture allowed them to grow rice, which was especially well-suited to the abundance of wetlands found in their territory. Everyone was cooking now.

The Role of Food in Mudwing Society

If you ask several Mudwings which core values represent their tribe best, many would likely put forward some variation of “camaraderie”, “family”, or “loyalty to your sibs”. They are a very social people who form deep bonds with those whom they grew up with, and one of the most direct ways to grow close to someone is to share your meals with them every day. As such, the preparation and consumption of food is a vital part in maintaining cohesion between members of a Mudwing sibling group.

Every one of these groups will have a “Bigwings”, which is understood to be a combination of a leader and caretaker role. The Bigwings is aware of all of their sibs’ culinary preferences and needs and has all of the troop’s recipes memorized. When mealtime approaches, he or she makes the call on what kind of dish will be prepared and delegates roles and tasks to the troop. This is a daily exercise that builds the Bigwings’ authority and communication skills, and reinforces trust and familiarity between all siblings.

Next to the Bigwings is the Gatherer, which historically was a role assigned to one or more troop members who foraged for wild vegetables or hunted more prey if the previous communal hunt did not yield enough. While this is still true today, many Gatherers also maintain a garden or wet patch to source fresh vegetables or grain for meals.

And lastly there is the Communicator, which is a role usually assigned to the most social and charismatic sibling. The Communicator is vital for coordinating battle strategies with other troops, which, while very important, is not really all that relevant for this deliberation. What is relevant however, is the role they fulfill during peacetime, which is to set up joint meals between two or more sibling groups. This practice is critical for maintaining morale, as doing this regularly helps expand the troop’s palette and keep their Bigwings inspired. That way the troop’s collection of recipes stays fresh and innovative instead of turning stale and rigid.

Of course how much each troop values culinary exploits varies between individuals. Some Mudwing groups are outspokenly passionate about cooking and advancing their craft. They might view their work as an expression of art and get very upset or offended if you indicate that thinking about food is unimportant or a waste of time. Some extreme cases may even get angry at you if you waste ingredients or refuse to elevate a dish to its fullest potential by not seasoning it well or doing something else to ruin it. Other groups may be more relaxed and casual about food preparation, and a few might even not think about it much at all.

If a Mudwing invites you to dinner, it is paramount to figure out which of these groups they belong to beforehand, so you may get an understanding of how much of a threat this outing may pose to your health, especially if you are an Icewing or Seawing with a limited palate.

Is there any evidence for this in the books?

To my knowledge, there isn't much. Mostly because there isn't much about Mudwings and their culture in general. Across all the books, only one of them has a Mudwing protagonist, and the vast majority of it is spent in the Sky Kingdom, so his roots don't get a lot of exposure. Then whenever another Mudwing comes into the story, they tend to exit it very quickly after, without being able to share more.

I made this theory for myself largely in response to Mudwing culture being such a big question mark. I initially came up with it when I saw a Mudwing gardener in Escaping Peril and thought "That could be a cool direction for the tribe." The guidebook that released recently gave me some additional pointers with regards to a few of the looser points of this theory.

I'm hoping it is interesting, or at the very least entertaining in some way.

[wispstalk]

Some writing advice for hunting, bc I see a lot of hunting scenes in fantasy that make me itch. More under the cut. Don't read if you're sensitive to blood-and-guts discussion or animal death.

Finding game:

- I don't hunt much these days bc I don't feel like getting my ass out of bed at shitfuck o'clock every weekend during the season. Which you have to do, because much of the time you come home empty-handed. Successful hunts come about when you're out there often.

- You don't really have to be a good tracker to hunt, but you do have to know the basics of your prey and you have to be able to interpret the landscape even if it's unfamiliar. It's less likely a tracker is looking for "bent blades of grass" or whatever and more likely they are noticing game trails, sheltered areas where nests and burrows are, a spot of thick vegetation which would indicate a water source.

- Scat and footprints are useful too ofc but to varying degrees. If I'm hunting deer it's just confirmation that they're in the area; more often I use knowledge of their habits to actually find them. If I were hunting something elusive and solitary like a cougar I would pay more attention to the tracks but that's also a reason people hunt with dogs!

Actually hunting:

- Bows are not the only hunting weapons, though would be most common in ur typical medieval fantasy type setting. Spears and lances, slings with stones, and clubs would also be used. And knives and swords but in this hunter's opinion, FUUUUCK that.

- Lung shot is a quick death. Heart shot and head shot too but that is much harder. Other shots might mean tracking a wounded animal as it runs away. This is where things like broken twigs/bent grass are especially telling, and ofc blood. Small game bleed out faster and won't get as far but you might spend quite a while running after an elk shot in the flank.

- This highly depends on the prey but hunting often involves more sitting around than people realize. I bring a small pad for my booty ass bc sometimes you'll spend hours in a strategic spot waiting for the game to pass by. Also hides (the shelter, not the skins) are a thing and most hunters would consider shelter-building an essential skill.

- Hunting seasons are not entirely a modern convention -- there are better times of year to find different animals. But there would be less concern, historically, about killing animals during the breeding season than we have today.

- Even when I was hunting regularly and more confident, I got a huge adrenaline spike EVERY time I had an animal in my sights.

Big game:

- A deer has a lot of meat on it and though it's not a bad thing to leave a carcass for scavengers, your party of two or three adventurers probably will not go to the trouble of hunting deer unless they have some nearby place to cache, preserve, or trade what they can't eat before it spoils. Are they leaving it behind or do they have some way to take full advantage of such a large kill?

- If your character gets a large game animal they're probably going to field dress it: deal with all the blood and guts on site, then quarter it so it can be packed back to the campsite or whatever. My dad is a big burly mutant man and he cannot carry a deer by himself. You can carry game on poles or horseback too but field dressing is pretty typical in a situation where u can't just fling it in the back of the truck and hang it at home.

- I grew up eating bear and when it comes up I'm often surprised how many people don't know that people hunt bear for meat. It's tasty imo, especially makes a good sausage

- I can hunt deer alone, though company is nice. I wouldn't attempt hunting something more dangerous by myself. Large animals especially are better taken down as a group effort. In the TES context for example it would be kind of insane to hunt horker alone. Not that some folks wouldn't try.

Small game:

- A character who subsists mostly on hunting is going to be eating a lot of small game. They are probably going to use traps and snares in addition to actually going out on hunts.

- Look up "rabbit starvation." Small game is often (but not always) lean and going without fat for a long time can cause serious health issues.

- I joke that you don't hunt turkey, you just go get one. Game birds are kind of stupid. I plan a deer hunt, but I have gone out and shot grouse on a whim.

Processing:

- Draining blood, skinning, plucking, butchering, dealing with all the bones and guts, storage and preservation: pretty time consuming and involved. It's a good excuse for social activity.

- The moneyed classes likely would not process their kills themselves, unless they're doing some kinda randyll tarly masculinity flex for the symbolism. Kitchen staff or a local butcher would handle it.

- A good skinning knife is kinda wide and short. Some game knives have a rounded tip which keeps it from puncturing the skin in case of accidental slippage.

- Skinning is done with a light hand bc puncturing the digestive system means you've poisoned the meat. I will say it is less difficult than I expected it to be the first time I tried it.

- We don't eat a lot of offal in the US but a deer liver, for example, would be considered prime meat by many and eaten first. Bear, walrus, and seal liver contain toxic amounts of vitamin A and would be thrown away.

- I've been told every animal has enough brains to tan its own hide, but I think there are some exceptions. It's definitely true of deer and elk. With small animals like rabbits it's hardly worth the effort of getting the brains out and other things can be used but brain tanned leather is soooo soft and nice.

- Hides and pelts are useful and valuable and would be kept or traded if circumstances allowed. You can tightly roll a hide to keep it from drying out before tanning, or you can freeze it, basically indefinitely. You can also air dry it once scraped clean and soften it later, which is what fur hunters would most likely do for efficiency's sake. Tanning is also so so so fucking gross imo. Really slimy process, and tanneries REEK.

That's all I can think of for now and this is already hella long but the takeaway is that it is generally a pretty involved activity and more impactful on lifestyle than I usually see depicted. So there ya have it

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: Along the Road of Nameless Graves

Presiding over a series of forested foothills and mountainous valleys that divide two rival kingdoms, the mist-shrouded barony of Siirvyn has seen more than its share of war over the past generations. Betrayal, invasion, and massacre are all too common motifs in the barony's long history, leaving all sorts of scars on both the landscape and the people who dwell within it.

Adventure Hooks:

Rumours of a treasure draw the party to Siirvyn, apparently concealed in a vault beneath the ruined castle of a long dead baroness Taviaa. Surely it won't be too hard to locate a single ruin in a land frequently beset by war, right?

The party arn't the only one combing across the barony looking for something. A hardluck knight seeks her brother after he vanished on a foolish quest, and might be willing to help the party out of jam if they aid her in search.

Folk of the barony tell of Grimcackle, a great black winged beast that moorlands that's sometimes heard laughing over the desolate battlefields but is only ever seen by the lost and the desperate. To heed the old stories it plunders the old battlefields of it's choicest riches, hoarding the wealth of the dead over centuries of war.

Subquest 1:

The party's hunt for riches gets complicated after arriving in the region to find that there has been no less than eight baroness Taviaas over the past century(backwater fiefdoms do like tradition after all) with five castles between them. Most have been destroyed by disaster, neglect, or siege, leaving the party to trek across the land checking checking out each option (though a clever party might narrow their search by hitting the local archives and cross referencing historical accounts).

Potential ruins include:

The delapidated lair of the local owlbear

Huanted by the ghost of one of the baronesses Taviaa,

The Hideout of a gang of smugglers with far reaching ties

Thoroughly cursed by a battlefield savaging spriggan who deals in cursed weapons.

To make matters even more complicated, one of the castles has been restored by the current baron Arkolo who would likely not take kindly to a band of renegade sellswords pilfering riches from under his nose, forcing the party to avoid it entirely or risk getting thrown in the dungeon if caught.

Subquest 2:

Ser Riley of Breakbridge never expected to inherit the family title, her father favoured her elder brother Rhys far more, and when the old man died in the last war there was no question who his holdings would pass to. Then, a couple of years ago Rhys got it into his head that he needed to reclaim the family's ancestral sword which was lost in the same bloody battle that did their father in, crossing the mountains to scour old battlefields and not being seen since. After righting the mess Rhys caused by his chivalric absence, Riley has come to Siirvyn herself to drag him, or possibly his body back from his foolhardy quest. The party may run into her requesting aid from the Baron, seeking advice from the local shrine to Tyr, or drinking off another unsuccessful trek through the wilderness at the local tavern. She'd welcome their aid in her search, and would gladly pay them back by lending her blade to theirs in their search (or using her influence to spring them from the baron's dungeons, should they have been caught).

Rhys' trail snakes all across the barony (including leaving a journal in one of the ruins the party wanted to search), but terminates in the great barren battlefield that was his father's last stand. While searching these moorlands the party & Ser Riley will run into a band of armed scavengers apparently conducting their own body-hunt for one of their fallen comrades. They served on the opposite side of the war from Riley's family, and if that wasn't bad blood enough, they apparently came to blows with Rhys a little under a year ago and aim to settle the score with his sister.

Regardless of how the standoff plays out (talking the scavengers down and exchanging favours or beating the information out of them) the Next step is to find Grimcackle's nest. By now (especially if you're playing with my affliction system and the party is tired out from all their wandering across the countryside) the party will have realized that the only way to see the great raven is to be nearing the edge of death, whether through actively dying, being poisoned, or just being exhausted to the bone. This is because the great raven is infact a psychopomp, tasked with sorting out the dead from the region's innumerable wars. Once the party find the particular tor the dread raven uses as roost, they'll find him quite chatty in the way of most birds, happy to trade gossip or play show and tell with his many finds. Rhys did indeed come to challenge Grimcackle for the sword, an act of daring rudness that forced the psychopomp to drag the knight's soul to the purgatory it rightfully belonged.

Resigned by the love she bears her brother, Riley insists she must venture into the shadow to save him, leaving the party with the choice of convincing her to abandon her quest, leave her to her fruitless pursuit of honour, or risk it all alongside her for the sake of an idiot who thought he could convince an aspect of death to respect his pedigree.

Subquest 3:

After their harrowing adventure the party return to town to find that Baron Akolo has been assassinated and all of Siivyrn has been thrown into chaos and suspicion. Fingers point and depending who the blame lands on it might spell civil war or invasion for the backwoods barony once again.

Background: Both neighbouring powers wish to control who moves through the region's winding passes, and expend great effort in both war and peace to ensure the barony is favourable to them. While occupying armies and vassalage have been all too common in the past, the region's ostensibly independent ruler Baron Arkolo is a puppet in all but name for the winning side of the most recent war. Little more than a bandit leader during the conflict savaging battlefields and attacking supply lines on both sides, Arkolo saw the way the wind was blowing before anyone else and made himself indispensable to his current patrons before their inevitable victory.

Little more than a strongman at first, the newly elevated baron managed to ingratiate himself to his subjects by leveraging his outlaw status to cast himself as a hero fighting against the great powers rather than ruling on their behalf. All the while the canny old bandit was of course playing both sides, toadying to the victorious kingdom while helping to run the smuggling operation for their rivals.

Clues & Consequences:

The baron had a stormy relationship with his son and prospective heir Kalo, who came up raiding alongside his father. After the war however, the young man felt he'd had enough of violence renounced his possesisons and joined the secluded temple of Tyr as a means of making peace with his bloody past. Arkolo never approved of his son's taking the cloth, refused to name another heir and would frequently make pilgramage to the temple just to argue with him. Despite their years of contention however the had seemed to reconcile in recent months, becoming closer than ever. Kalo is not taking his father's murder well, and has decided to dust off his old bandit skills alongside his newfound connection to a wargod as a means of finding the killer. Like an angered bull, he's liable to charge at whoever draws his attention, a weakness the real culprit might use to direct him onto the party's trail.

Gareth Gosdown, the baron's advisor and castilian is an agent of their patron kingdom, sent to keep the former outlaw in line and the kingdom's garrisons well supplied. In the wake of Arkolo's death, he's less interested in finding the killer than he is reinforcing his masters' hold over the barony in case of a new invasion. Known for butting heads with the Baron's more slapdash ruling style he's the one the common folk are most likely to point to.

Taviaa (ninth of that name) was born to the Baron after he'd claimed the region and married one of the local nobles. Though still young, she has a cutthroat attitude and a mind for politics, which made it all the more frustrating when her father refused to give up on her pious half brother as heir and name her instead. She knows she's the obvious culprit, the case made all the more convincing by the fact that she's recently been paling around with emissaries from the other kingdom.

Art 1

Art 2

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I would say, your response to an ask saying Seerow "taught the Yeerks Andalite Imperialism" feels a BIT like putting too much blame on Seerow. From what we know, all he gave the Yeerks was the tech to go to other plants. Them deciding to conquer other species never seemed like something they got from him....though, now I DO wonder what got the Yeerks on their path to conquest? Like, I feel like there's a legit interesting story about how they went from Simply being able to go to other planets to mind controlling other races. Especially since they may not have even known they COULD brainwash other races. After all, the Geds were a species they had a symbiotic relationship with. How in the world did they figure out they could control other species too?

There was an excellent fic (which I must find but can't remember the title or author) that speculated that the yeerks were originally scavengers, until a living gedd fell into a pond and a yeerk discovered the ability to crawl into its ear and control it. From then on yeerks would sometimes ride around in gedds for a few hours or days at at time, then exit back to their pools when they got hungry, but there was no philosophy behind it. Their rationalization for this was as nonexistent as the tapeworm's rationalization for starving a human. It just happened on occasion, mostly by luck.

However, (as Aftran points out) humans went from hunters to factory-farmers, and invented elaborate justifications for that decision. And yeerks at some point went from using gedds as an occasional opportunity to hunt or joy-ride, to having a whole culture built around enslaving other species. My argument is that Seerow may have played a role in building that justification, however accidentally.

Sort of like how it'd be both false and racist to say that Europe taught Japan imperialism, but it is true (and part of the historical record) that Japan moved to conquer Korea and China because its government deduced that imperialism was the way to compete in this new global world. Japan's imperialism wouldn't exist without England's, even though neither country invented the idea of invading other countries to kill the locals and steal their resources. Yeerks' imperialism wouldn't exist without andalites', even though no one told yeerks to enslave their hosts.

[micewithknives]

Forgive me Archaeologist, for I have sinned: when I was 10 years old, I found a shard of pottery with paint on it in the ground at the campsite where my family was having a picnic (this was in the American Southwest, in an area known for ancient civilizations who made painted pottery), and instead of leaving it there, I picked it up and excitedly took it (with the best of intentions!) to the park ranger's station to show them, and they were very annoyed that I had removed it from the site. 😞😭

No 😭😭 Archaeological site foiled by the excitement of children yet again!!

-

Actually i have a lot of thoughts on stuff like this! Its the sort of easy accident that happens all the time, especially with kids. I feel like this is actually such a genuine area of excitement and interest that we dont do a good job at interacting with.

Particularly with artefacts like you described, theyre super easy for people to identify and get excited about. But if they dont know what the appropriate course of action is, sites can get harmed.

And honestly i feel like National Parks and public access areas which have sites, or the potential for site, should have... like, something similar to a scavenger hunt type form available.

Something that lets them like mark on a map where they think they are, describe things what they've found and what they think it might be, and to draw pictures or take photos. And then they can excitedly take their "actual archaeology work" back to the park stations. That way when kids actually find sites or historical materials, Parks staff is actually notified, and the sites are less disturbed.

Kids (and even adults) are so excited about archaeology stuff, we've just got to teach them how to be excited about it in a helpful way, and teach then what looking after a site actually looks like!!

[chimaerakitten]

So the Temeraire series doesn’t do the Pern-derived magic/telepathic bond thing, and it’s nice to have some variety on that count since the telepathy thing is pretty widespread. But there’s this passage in crucible of gold that’s like—

Wait, my thriftbooks order arrived, let me go grab the quote

Or, Temeraire thought, he might as easily have gone alone--more easily, in fact; he had to carry Forthing cupped in his talons, and it was not at all convenient to always be looking to make sure he had not dropped out; Temeraire was not aware of him in quite the same way as of Laurence.

(Emphasis mine)

And this combined with the number of times it’s mentioned that (Russians aside) aviators just don’t seem to be capable of fearing their own dragons (and not just aviators who raised the dragons from the egg—it’s the same with inherited dragons) indicates to me that there’s something really interesting psychologically/biologically going on “under the hood,” there, so to speak.

And maybe this is just me and all those anthropology classes I took in college but that actually makes a lot of sense?

The historical record in the series dates the intentional breeding of dragons to a couple thousand years in the past, in china, but there’s a lot of evidence that there’s been a looser symbiotic relationship between humans and dragons a lot longer than that. Namely the domesticated elephants and the dragons in the Americas being the same species and of the same attitudes towards humans as dragons in Eurasia. So that’s likely at least 20 thousand years of symbiosis/mutual domestication, (if we assume they migrated together, which I do because it’s the simplest explanation) and it could well be much longer than that. That’s a long ass time. Like. The spread of IRL lactase persistence took less time than this.

And much like the benefits of being able to drink milk as an adult, the benefits of mutualism with an intelligent dinosaur-sized flying predator would absolutely have selective pressure on human populations. That’s just a given. I would talk about early hominins being third-tier scavengers here and Pleistocene megafauna and the canonical prevention of malaria via dragon proximity as compared to sickle cell anemia, but nobody wants me to regurgitate my entire biological anthropology 215 class in a tumblr post. Just trust me on this one.

Basically, the entire human species in the Temeraire universe will have been under a lot of positive selective pressure to be good symbiosis buddies to the dragons, so it’s no wonder aviator attachment is so intense.

This is likewise true for the dragons. A lot can be put down to intentional breeding in the last couple thousand years, but the foundation of dragons being prosocial with humans would have to be laid before then. Humans have domesticated predators IRL, but dragons are like 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than wolves and it took a long time to get dogs. The romans wouldn’t have had any luck if the dragons weren’t already partially on board. My theory is that this would have started way back. Australopithecus times, way back, because— [Anth 215 sneaks up behind me whilst the jaws theme plays] ANYWAY there’s a few benefits I can guess at for dragons having assistance hunting from small bands of persistence predators on occasion. I also think this would have intensified post-Pleistocene as the megafauna that would have been the dragons’ main prey went extinct and eventually agriculture would be the only way to replace— [Jaws theme intensifies] JUST TRUST ME BRO.

All this to say that humans being able to very quickly lose all instinctive fear of the dinosaur-sized flying predators they spend their time around and said predators developing not only attachment to humans but particular awareness of their humans specifically so as to prevent any possible accidental harm makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary biology perspective. It’s evidence of the same mutualistic relationship biologically shaping both species across the broader time spans that the series hints at.

[zenosanalytic]

Something that really struck me about Scavengers Reign(***SPOILERS*** Btw), and which is REALLY RARE to see in any sort of media, is how it presents facility with violence as something Dangerous and Bad, and incompetence at/refusal to use/hesitance with violence as a generally sympathetic quality.

Like:

Sam has his knife and he reaches for it allot, but mostly he uses it purely as a tool. IIRC(and I might NOT be), he only uses it as a weapon twice and the first time he absolutely gets his ass kicked(tbf: he's fighting a sealouse the size of an elephant at the time), and the second time, while he Murks an Aquatic Murderlemur like a Boss, he's, effectively, (and again I really cannot emphasize this enough: ***SPOILERS***) an Undead Super Soldier being driven around by a parasiteseed latched into his heart&nervous system, and it tries to take advantage of the situation to infect Ursula. So like: this historically good dude's facility with violence, while it saves Ursula from being drowned and eaten, is IMMEDIATELY followed by something deeply sinister.

In a flashback we see a rando named John using a rifle to hunt food, and he turns out to be under the influence of the same Parasiteseed Sam is, so once more we have capacity for violence being narratively near to something sinister about the character.

Ursula uses violence(I think?) a grand total of Once in the entire season, during the aforementioned Giant Sealouse Fight while it's feeding on Sam, and she totally gets lucky with it: She flings herself onto the Louse's back, manages to grab onto Sam's knife sunk there, then flips the louse on its side and guts it before it can get up again.

Azi is interesting because at the start of the story she's well-equipped, including a homemade Guandao(which: Respect u_u), and quick to use violence but she's ALSO presented at this phase of the story as Kind of a Dick, spcl to Levi, her robot companion. BUT!!! She still sucks at fighting. She tries to use the Guandao to take on some Giant Tonguecrabs and they just kind of bully her out of the way until she manages to get one of Levi's flares and deploy it(and blow her and Levi up a little). She uses it a second time to fight Hollow(a psychic monkey thing that Just Wants Some Food, Guys, he's cute and misunderstood and Did Nothing Wrong, Guys <:[ ) and she's not AS incompetent this time, even manages to get a hit in, but she still gets her ass totally handed to her, and almost dies. Later she attacks a REAL asshole named Kris, succeeds, and IMMEDIATELY gets bonked in the head with a rock for her troubles. Her most successful confrontation is near the end, confronting Kris for the final time when, in the process of threatening her with a knife, Azi chooses to stop and appeal to her better nature instead. It doesn't change what Kris is going to do, but it convinces Barry, and they both leave to save Ursula and the Passengers.

Barry loathes violence and conflict, tries to talk people out of it when it comes up, and is good at throwing rocks to stop it.

Kris is one of two(three?) characters we see being consistently competent at violence, and every single time she does it's presented as something sinister which alienates her from others and herself. She's unambiguously presented as a selfish, lying, self-damaging, manipulative villain, and she very much gets the end you'd expect from that.

Kamen is another of the two(three?), and he uses that most human of super-powers, The Ability to Throw Stuff, to kill a bunch of animals and feed them to Hollow. This Does Not Go Well. Kamen's presentation becomes more nuanced later in the series, but for most of it he's presented as a selfish, angry, corner-cutting fuckup and his use of, and facility with, violence is presented as part of this.

Hollow is the Third(?) of the Three(??) shown to be competently violent, and he is presented as an Unambiguously and Terrifying Antagonist in the later half of the story, and wildly Destructive to the "protagonists". He even "Kills" Levi; the sweetest of Robots! BUT! It's ambiguous what's really happening here. To begin with, Hollow doesn't commit violence until having watched Kamen do it Allot to feed it, and when it DOES it's first violent act is done to save Kamen's life(though even then it's a pretty sinister scene). Secondly the extent to which Hollow compels Kamen to violence is ambiguous; Kamen's initial killing spree DOES occur while his eyes are glowing(a sign of Hollow's psychic influence), but Hollow is FLABBERghasted by being presented with his kills; they still EAT them, but if Hollow was compelling him to kill, that he killed wouldn't be so surprising. It's possible Hollow compelled him to "get food"(this seems to be what Hollow's species does; compelling animals susceptible to their influence to pick berries and nuts they can't reach for them, and that's the first food-related thing Kamen does for them), and Kamen interpreted that into hunting when getting fruit was too hard for him. Third, the closer to Kamen Hollow gets, the more violent it gets, and the more protective of its connection to Kamen. Fourth, while Hollow is psychic, it's not really clear how much it understands human minds and thinking. The initial impulse is to assume psychic things are smart but I think it's important to remember this is just how these creatures eat. While WE see the visions Kamen experiences to manipulate him, for all we know Hollow is just Pushing Buttons and Pulling Levers in there. Clearly it knows the image and voice of Fiona, Kamen's ex-wife, but does it understand what those things mean to him, or what it's "saying" to him through those things, or is it just inducing emotions and impulses? A good example of this is its destruction of Levi. Levi was programmed by Fiona, and she gave it her own voice(which: they did this real cool and subtle gender thing with this which I loved :>). Kamen's motivation throughout this is his anguish over Fiona and desire to save her, so why would Hollow destroy Levi? Is this an act of jealousy, or does it only understand that this voice causes Kamen pain, and attacks it as a threat? The series never clarifies. After Avi's final confrontation with Kamen/Hollow leads to their separation, she scares Hollow away by just... throwing a rock near it like it was a raccoon or something. The question of how much of Hollow's actions are intentional vs instinctual is never clarified.

so Anyway:

I just Thought This was Neat :>

[thatwobblychair]

CoD Baddies as Bears!

What if the bad guys were also bears! Part 3

See part 2 and 1 for 141 and good guys as bears

Even more bear facts because bears are love, bears are life. 🐻🐻‍❄️🧬

Makarov: Ussuri Brown Bear "Russian Grizzly Bear"

Ursus arctos lasiotus

Also known as the Ezo Brown bear or Black Grizzly bear, this subspecies of Eurasian Brown Bear is one of the largest, with some individuals approaching the Kodiak Bear in size.

Similar to the Kamchatka Brown Bear, it differs with an elongated skull, longer nasal bones, elevated forehead and is darker in colour with some individuals being pure black.

Siberian (Amur) tigers and other bears are it's only natural predators, with documented tiger and bear interspecific competitions. Ussuri brown bears will often scavenge tiger kills and or kill smaller tigers, while Tigers are known to hunt young and sub-adult bears (bears making a significant portion of their diet).

Graves: Louisiana Black Bear

Ursus americanus luteolus

A subspecies* of the American Black Bear (U. a. americanus), the Louisiana Black Bear has been historically found in Louisiana, Mississippi, East Texas and Arkansas.

It is not substantially different from the American Black Bear, though it has a longer, flatter, narrower skull and larger molars in comparison. It's colouration is typically black, though some individuals have been known to be brown/red-brown cinnamon. It is Louisiana's official state mammal.

*The validity of this subspecies has been repeatedly debated.

Valeria: Sloth Bear "Indian Bear"

Melursus ursinus

A native species to the Indian Subcontinent, this medium sized bear feeds on ants, termites and fruit. It is also called the "labiated bear" due to its long lower lip and palate which is used to eat insects.

It's fur is pure black aside from the white "Y" or "V" patch on its chest though this can be absent in some individuals. They are similar in size with the Asian Black Bear though distinguished with it's shaggy mane, white 'sickle' claws, and rangier build.

This species is the most aggressive to humans with the largest number of recorded attacks due to a combination of close human cohabitation and a theorised predisposition to aggressive behaviour from constant attacks by tigers, leopards, rhinos and elephants.

Captain Williamson in his Oriental Field Sports (1819) wrote of how sloth bears rarely killed their human victims outright, but would suck and chew on their limbs till they were reduced to bloody pulps.

They are not known to be man eaters despite attacking humans. One individual in Mysore (Mysuru), India was recorded to have killed at least 12 people and mutilated 24 before it's death in 1957.

Shepherd: Koala "Koala Bear"**

Phascolarctos cinereus

**not a bear

An arboreal marsupial native to Australia that feeds primarily on Eucalyptus leaves. Koalas are asocial with bonding only taking place between mothers and dependant offspring. They are largely sedentary and will sleep upwards to 20 hours a day.

The word "koala" came from the Dharug word "gula" - no water. The 'u' sound was originally written phonetically as 'oo' and then became 'oa'. The three syllable pronunciation may be erroneous as a result.

White settlers adopted the 'koala' indigenous loan word in reference to the animal, where it was also referred to as, the "native bear", or the "koala bear" due to its supposed bear-ish resemblance.

+

Info from Wikipedia. Please let me know if I screwed up somewhere. 🐻

[cnnmairoll]

Dates They'd Take You to

Character(s) : Jing Yuan, Sampo Koski, Dan Heng a/n : Wanted to try to write for HSR, apologies if this doesn't reach your expectations! I'll try to write more hsr in the future so I can improve! Also this is the first time I write for multiple charas </3

Jing Yuan takes you on a leisurely stroll, embracing his laid-back nature and preference for low-energy dates. He suggests a delightful outing that doesn't demand much effort. Picture a tranquil afternoon walk around the charming streets of Central Starskiff Haven or a romantic moonlit escapade in the enchanting Exalting Sanctum. Alternatively, you could savor a cozy tea session together, engaging in heartfelt conversations that deepen your connection.

It does not matter when or where he takes you, every single day with Sampo Koski is an adventure, and that does not exclude your dates. Sampo's philosophy revolves around creating unforgettable experiences. Whether it's treasure hunting, embarking on a thrilling scavenger hunt, or any other exciting activity you can think of, he's up for it! And as a sweet gesture, before every adventure begins, Sampo never fails to present you with your favorite flower

When you go on a date with Dan Heng, you can be certain that books will be part of the equation. Given his love for reading, he would likely plan a delightful library date, where you can explore shelves together and share literary discoveries. Museum dates are also on his list, as he enjoys providing insightful explanations about historical events or intriguing artifacts. It's worth mentioning that Dan Heng has a unique habit of documenting your dates in a private file within his personal data bank, preserving those special moments for his own recollection. Rest assured, only he has access to these cherished memories.

[bestworstcase]

How likely is it do you think that there are/have been Grimm-based cults? I can't imagine there's Never been Grimm cults, and I'm particularly interested in the idea of there being Grimm cults or even just organizations who Actually Understand the Grimm and safely live alongside them. I think it's such a fascinating idea, I'm very tempted to come up with a mysterious faction that respects/admires the Grimm (like how people did/do respect forces of nature in religion) and (mostly) safely lives alongside them. Any thoughts?

two obvious paths. whether the second is viable depends on how well you trust my basic reading of the grimm as sapient beings who reflect back what they’re given—dark mirrors—but the first is textually sound without any extrapolation required.

#1: the grimm as gods of war

these are the salient facts:

the grimm follow groups of bandits around to scavenge in the wake of their raids

criminals in mistral sometimes use captive grimm to execute members of rival gangs

grimm are more strongly drawn by violent anger and hatred than by sadness, fear, or other negative emotions.

it’s possible (per ‘before the dawn’) for one side of a conflict to "ally" with the grimm in battle if the other side is, er, tastier

ok. imagine you have a region where most of the people live in small nomadic groups—perhaps a steppe or a desert, their subsistence base is herding—with smatterings of fortified towns and villages around the edges of the region where there’s arable land enough to support a larger sedentary population. the nomadic groups can’t produce their own weapons/armor (mines, smelters, and forges aren’t portable), so they’ll need to either raid or trade with the towns for that. and conflicts between these nomadic groups over territory and other resources are inevitable.

how do the grimm figure in this region?

well a) the grimm are going to be following the nomadic groups around, with more warlike groups attracting more grimm, and b) grimm will fight alongside people against a common enemy if their "allies" are calmer or otherwise less appealing.

this is like… a perfect storm for the nomadic groups to start venerating "their" grimm as war-gods, in tandem with fostering warrior-cultures that prize tranquility or joy and mercy in battle; there is no honor in hatred or rage or taking pleasure in killing (our grimm turn against those warriors who lose themselves to bloodlust), so a good warrior must be calm, decisive, and swift, and never prolong a fight unnecessarily. but it’s also beneficial to make one’s enemies fearful and angry, or provoke them into hatred.

all it takes is one or two warriors who kept a cool head in battle noticing that the grimm ignored them to go after another warrior who went berserk and then interpreting this as a moral judgment. historically, we know grimm were thought to be the vengeful or corrupted spirits of animals, or animals possessed by demons; both are understandings that encourage this sort of thinking. these are animal spirits that cannot rest because someone killed them without giving due respect, and now they seek to punish those who commit such wrongs… so we’d better take care to treat our adversaries in battle and the animals we hunt with honor and mercy.

and oh, we should pay our respects to the grimm, too. perhaps make some offerings. they eat the corpses of the slain after a battle, so… a) we mustn’t be wasteful when we hunt, it isn’t respectful, and b) we should consider the grimm in our funeral customs.

this is a very basic. BASIC human impulse. humans will try to propitiate the fucking sky because we’re so good at pattern recognition and also anthropomorphizing things that we’ll find patterns and read meaning into the most random coincidences. take that and add it to the fact that it legitimately is possible to form alliances with grimm… fgrhjsv

under these conditions grimm-worship probably tends to look something like:

warrior cultures that prize moderation, calmness, efficiency, and clever mockery or intimidation of the enemy in battle,

funeral customs that ritualize feeding the dead to grimm, and/or ritual sacrifice of captured enemies,

grimm viewed as battlefield psychopomps and/or patron spirits of warriors, whether as a class or as individuals or both, and

incorporation of grimm-like designs or motifs into armor and clothing of warriors, to intimidate enemies.

with wide variation in the details and elaborations. the reason for this common set of foundational practices is that religion is practical. it’s not arbitrary. it isn’t pretend. prayer and ritual are things people do because it works, or it’s believed to work, and the right methods are figured out through trial and error long before they coagulate into tradition. so with something like grimm, whose behavior really can be meaningfully influenced, similar patterns will emerge across different cultures because whether a given practice does or doesn’t work is a) more than random chance or coincidence, and b) extremely easy to identify because if it doesn’t work the grimm will attack you.

& #2, the grimm as nature gods

these are my presuppositions, based on extrapolation from the text:

the grimm have a physiological need for aura, which they can get by siphoning; they eat their prey in order to extract aura from the remains.

grimm attraction to emotions is akin to our attraction to the aroma and taste of food; strong emotions herald deep auras or excite aura so it’s more "nutritious" for the grimm, so they hunt by following emotion.

because aura/soul separates from the body at death, siphoning aura from a living person is much more efficient than killing and eating; grimm will prefer to be fed aura by someone alive over hunting if possible.

because aura can be channeled outward through tools, clothing, etc, it can also be channeled into a repository and stored for a while; this seems to be how the grimm lures in arrowfell work.

grimm are intelligent, emotional, social creatures who can learn to recognize certain groups of people as 'safe' or as friends/allies, without salem.

grimm reflect back the emotional energy they’re given; they’re not "attracted" to anger or pain per se, they just mirror it. bristle and draw your weapon at a grimm, and the grimm will charge at you. remain calm and retreat slowly, and the grimm will keep its distance too.

if all of these presuppositions are true, you can propitiate grimm by saturating an object with aura and leaving that out for the grimm on the regular. i imagine that organic/living things that naturally have aura would work best for this purpose; sacrificing an animal or a portion of your harvest is intuitive, and if fervent religious belief alone isn’t enough to infuse something with aura, then priests or religious officials whose auras have been unlocked and trained will do the trick.

if aura-saturated offerings aren’t possible, then you’d need someone with aura training to channel aura to the grimm through, like, a stick, or bare-handed if they were brave enough or confident enough. this is a more uncomfortable option (like physically) but we have a canonical example of a character doing it: she found it disconcerting, but not painful, and it’s implied that the grimm didn’t attack her at any point during. so a) it probably doesn’t do any more harm than having one’s defensive aura break, and b) stopping the flow of aura to the grimm by moving away won’t provoke the grimm to attack.

as unpleasant the prospect might seem, if it clearly worked to reduce or eliminate grimm attacks on the community, people would do this. people would absolutely do this. the big hurdle lies in discovering that this is possible—like you’d need someone to willingly approach a grimm, lay a hand on it, and channel aura into it without knowing what will happen, and the kind of person who would even think to TRY that is very rare—but once it was known? religious belief motivates people do all sorts of unpleasant, uncomfortable, or even outright painful and harmful things to themselves. fasting. self-flagellation. hermitage.

like… waves hands. if it’s a known thing in a community that grimm won’t attack anyone if a few people go into the wilderness every morning to stand there and pour aura into grimm who pass by until they’re tapped out for the day, lots of people will be fully willing and able to do that. far more than are willing and able to become huntsmen: it’s not dangerous or difficult, it’s just going to tire you out on your assigned days. and if you have say, a village of a hundred people of whom ten are able to do it, you can rotate so no individual has to do it more often than thrice a month. NBD.

and if nothing else except the emotional mirroring thing is true, then you can… more or less propitiate grimm by doing whatever, because in this case what makes propitiation effective is community belief that it works: if you and everyone else around you believes that wearing pendants carved in the likeness of grimm and pouring a libation of wine outside the village gates to entreat the grimm for safe passage through the wilds is effective in making the grimm leave you alone, then no one’s going to panic or raise the alarm upon seeing a grimm wandering around in the barley field, and the grimm won’t freak out either.

if you believe that a grimm is a being that can be appeased and you cross paths with one in the woods, you’re going to do what you believe will keep you safe; for a huntsman, that’s "draw a weapon and attack," but for you that might be "hold up your grimm pendant and recite a prayer to politely wish it well and ask for its blessing in return," which—if the grimm just reflect your emotional energy back at you—will probably make the grimm pause and look at you for a moment before continuing on, which confirms and reinforces your belief that this is the correct way to deal with grimm. This Is How Religion Works.

so all that to say, as long as i’m correct about at least one of these presuppositions—the one with the strongest textual evidence, no less—then propitiating the grimm will reduce their aggression dramatically if not stop it altogether. and if that’s the case then i’d imagine grimm-worship is quite common and also varied in more remote regions where human-grimm encounters are frequent.

the shape of that worship will evolve out of how people in a given community figured out that you can do this with grimm. if one person tries a certain thing and it works, and then more people try the same thing and it works for them to, then that is going to become known as the Thing That Works and it will be gradually refined and elaborated on from generation to generation. and on the other side of the mountains they might be doing the same process but with a completely different thing that also worked the first time.

so you might have a village making huge ritual productions of preparing a feast for the grimm with a portion of the harvest, orchestrated by a coterie of priests who fill the offerings with aura… and in the hinterlands a few hundred miles away you might have a group of nomadic herders who leave the bones of every sheep they eat for the grimm and also have elaborate coming-of-age rituals where you go into the wilderness to prove yourself to the grimm by baring your soul… and up north on the coast you might have a whaling town where sailors pray to something like the leviathan or the feilong as a sea-god because their ancestors happened to stumble into a symbiotic relationship with a giant grimm that preys on whales and realized these little guys in boats make better hunting partners than they do snacks. etc.

basically if you accept a presupposition that the grimm aren’t "soulless evil monsters whose sole purpose is to kill humans" and consider them as beings that have some rhyme or reason as to when they’re aggressive and when they’re not, and the rhyme or reason is something humans/faunus could plausibly figure out how to accommodate and/or influence, there are a lot of ways to build a grimm cult. ’cause religion is at its core humans trying to understand the world so we can keep ourselves safe, healthy, and comfortable; worshipping grimm is just a cultural framework for a threat management program.

think about it in those terms, and take however you think grimm work and ask "what could people Do to lower the risk of grimm attacking them?" and "what might people Do that doesn’t really have an effect but seems like it maybe does?" and then start to elaborate from there with "okay, what stories do people tell to explain why they do these things and how they learned to do these things? how do they conceive of the grimm and their relationship to grimm? how does this shape the social and moral values of this religion?" etc.

praxis comes first, belief second. and the praxis develops through trial and error with the basic goal of "how can we make the grimm leave us alone?" so things that clearly don’t work will be discarded. (with ‘clearly don’t work’ meaning "we did this and grimm immediately attacked us"; people will tend to take "we did this and grimm didn’t attack us for two months" to mean "it worked! we should do it every other month!")

[lsdoiphin]

Hares, as you may already know if you've been following my better half @broncoburro or @forevergoldgame (if you're following neither, you're missing huge amounts of context for the setting!), are nothing like the hares of the real world. They are massive leporids from Northern Vestur and one of the few meurian animals remaining after a historic event known as the Great Hunt where humans wiped out most of the planet's remaining meurian species in order to harvest their meur for relics about 350~ish years ago. They are obligate carnivores and known to hunt humans when the opportunity arises.

The baku is a large, lumbering omnivore with a similar ecological niche somewhere between a panda and a regular bear. They're a rare species, endemic to a single far-flung region of the world, having only just barely escaped extinction. See, while the Great Hunt was headed and funded by the Tri-Kingdom, its reach spanned the entire known world - but the further from Vestur it travelled, the less discriminatory the hunts became. The local peoples who were paid to hunt on the Tri-Kingdom's behalf had little idea of what meur was and what meurian animals were actually useful, leading to mass to mass culling of "useless" meur-touched animals like the baku, whose unusual sleep-inducing abilities cannot be wielded by humans. Regardless of their uselessness, the damage had been done to the species, and only the mundane offshoot survives - though rumors persist about meurian baku.

Sphinxes are scavengers that can be found across the deserts and savannas of the mainland. Unlike their meurian cousin, the manticore, they never evolved meurian flame breath, and their 'stinger' is no more than a vestigial sickle buried beneath the fur of their flowing tails. Instead, they specialized further into human mimicry, using their ability to copy human speech to hunt domesticated animals, naive children, and drunkards.

Now you might be thinking: "why would a teenage girl want to own any of these as pets? None of these sound like animals that should be pets." Well, first off: you'd be hard pressed to find a young girl that doesn't want a wolf or a tiger as a pet, that's just how they are, c'mon.

Second, there are three primary reasons Rhea thinks this is a more realistic idea than it is:

Exotic "pet" owners among the upper class: While exotic pet ownership isn't big in Vestur as a whole, it has a notable presence among the Southern upper class, both noble and common. Rhea is the duchess of the Southern Kingdom so she is well aware of every instance of somebody paying excessive amounts of guilder to import something they shouldn't and stick it in their courtyard. As I've mentioned before, this is a sin Ancha is guilty of, having gotten swept up in a past "teacup baku" craze/scam some 4 decades ago. Unlike her peers, however, she kept her baku, Fig, even after he outgrew his alleged "adult size" of 1'9" at the withers. Others culled theirs once they became large enough to cause mass property damage. Ancha knows Fig is a massive, terrifying wild animal and does not recommend anyone repeat her mistake, but being raised in captivity he cannot be returned to the wild and so she's committed to caring for him for as long of his estimated 70~ish year lifespan that she's here for.

Haretouched Northerners: The "haretouched" is a strange phenomenon that exists in the North. Now, we haven't posted a formal explanation of what exactly being haretouched means yet - I'll save that explanation for Dan to write at a later date. In the meantime, to very briefly summarize what it means: occasionally, a hare will bond with a specific human. Those who have bonded to a hare are said to be "haretouched" - or more bluntly, cursed. The haretouched are treated as pariahs by broader society, though they are begrudgingly tolerated in the North itself and destigmatized by Northern nomad clans. While Northern nobility has done its best to keep the haretouched out of their bloodlines (save for the Lord of the Nomads, who is seldom acknolwedged, much less counted), occasionally a fluke will occur regardless and you end up with someone like Quincy or Lamonte. Rhea, of course, is just a Southern bystander who thinks the idea of having a murder-bunny for a friend would kick ass.

Captive beasts performing in circuses: Self-explanatory. Sphinxes especially are a popular choice for exploitative entertainment because of their mimicry abilities, and are often trained to have "conversations" or "sing."

[rokhal]

Video games resist adaptation because their plots have to be contrived around the fact that they're all giant scavenger hunts. (I'm talking specifically about Resident Evil.)

Grab the three dog head statues. Or the three chimera heads. Or the two historical figure heads. Find the locker combination. Go upstairs to program the keycard you will use two floors down and three floors up. Look around for a specific gear to make the door work. You need a crank. No, different kind of crank. Maybe it's embedded in the flesh of a monster you'll have to kill!

Which serves its specific task in the video game: encourage the player to take in as much of the map as possible, engage with as many enemies as possible, make the speedrunners' hobby really really hard. Environmental storytelling works best when the player is actually exploring the environment.

But in any other medium, this would be distracting. Why build a door activated by gathering three statues inconveniently scattered around the mansion? What are the security implications of a universal key that is made up of a matryoshka doll of other, less complex keys? Why haven't the magical healing herbs hit the mainstream dietary supplement market yet? Why is there ammunition in this writing desk? WHY DO THE BIRDS HAVE CASH ON THEM?

But all this videogame nonsense is baked into the plot from the beginning. You'd have to completely reshape the story to make it make sense, unless you decide to just roll with the absurdity.

There's an ounce of gunpowder in the Ming vase. Yeah, okay. Let me smash this other one, maybe this'll have a bundle of scrap metal, and then I can hand-craft some 9mm cartridges. Like you do.