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schalaasha · 5 years

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Favourite Games of 2019

I don’t like making ranked lists anymore. So here’s a bunch of games old and new I played in 2019 because I was busy catching up due to not playing FFXIV as much as in previous years.

Ciconia When They Cry Phase 1: For You, The Replaceable Ones

I think going in, and even starting to play it, I felt like maybe the game would abandon the WTC mystery game conventions. It ended up not doing that, because the game leaves you with far more questions than answers at the end. The A3W World (“after World War III”) is still trying to deal with political issues and social issues that existed prior to World War III. A global stalemate exists due to the military implementation of the Gauntlet weapon. Eventually things happen where different countries need to deal with a shortage of resources, territorial conflicts, etc which sets off a chain reaction to World War IV. However, the children who grew up in the A3W era, settled into new ideologies and views of how society currently works are at odds with what the older generation wants and requires of them. Along the way, they need to deal with other groups and conspiracies in order to maintain the Walls of Peace.

So in essence, R07 still crafts a mystery for readers to figure out, but it isn’t a murder mystery. It’s an international conspiracy mystery and I am more than okay with that. I think this chapter required a lot of worldbuilding to set that kind of story up and coming out of Phase 1, I understood why the first chapter wasn’t exactly like Umineko’s. I thought that it was handled well, despite some of the purple prose (but if you’ve played a R07 game before, you’re likely used to it). I also thought he really tried to introduce and incorporate themes including gender, generational differences, societal tiers, geopolitics disguised as sports events (possibly mirroring the 2020 Olympics in Japan), etc. as well as he could throughout the story through the game’s cast. Even if the game meanders a bit (and it definitely feels that way towards the start), when it actually starts to roll, I felt compelled to keep reading.

And truly, the game has an incredibly large cast of characters. The TIPS section handles introductions well, and while some cast members don’t have as much time in the spotlight as others, I can see them getting their time eventually in subsequent chapters. Clearly Phase 1 exists to focus more on the children from the Arctic Ocean Union (the “AOU”) as evidenced by the additional stories unlocked at the end of the game so hopefully other chapters have the same amount of character backstory for the other factions. I also genuinely enjoyed that the big international cast of characters allowed for many different types of designs with characters with different types of hairstyles and hair texture or characters wearing hijabs and still managed to make them retain adorableness or a sense of style. I do not recall seeing it as often in Japanese media and I’m very happy to see it here.

I think Ciconia Phase 1 is a very good start to this subseries’ planned four episodes and I hope to see more sociopolitical commentary. It feels as though R07 looked at everything happening in Japan and social media/how news is consumed and decided to write a four-part SFF series about it. I’m eagerly looking forward to the next chapter.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

I backed Bloodstained when it got put on Kickstarter a few years ago. It was shipped to me at… possibly the worst time since Shadowbringers was coming out very shortly after. My fiancé and I played ours for a short bit, felt very positive about the game, then dropped it to play Shadowbringers. We didn’t return to it until maybe September/October? Both of us ended up getting our Platinum Trophies for it so we both played through everything the game had to offer.

Bloodstained is a good experience, but not without its issues. I played on PS4 and I’ve had a few outright crashes or some glitching into walls early enough that I couldn’t come out of them again due to not having the required skill to try to get out of it. I also felt like the game meandered or had a bit of padding in its earlier stages). Later on, you realise you have to put in the farming work to have a better and faster time not unlike its Igavania counterparts, but I did feel like the drop rates prior to actually working towards higher luck stats/drop shards were low enough almost to the point of unfair or deliberately wasting my time. I also felt as though there were too many weapon types; with adequate shard use and shard grinding eventually you can settle into one weapon type that suits your playstyle or eventually use the gun for everything when you get the special hat quest reward).

However, I’m speaking about this game as someone who platinumed it which requires a lot of farming and synthesis. As a player going through the main campaign, I think the maps are adequate. The backgrounds are very lovingly crafted, and the music is absolutely one of the best of the year. Boss design is also fun and rewarding, requiring the player to learn how all the different weapon types work, adequate backstepping and closing in, and boss patterns. If you suck, the game will show you that you suck very quickly and deliberately. Essentially towards the end, I felt as though Bloodstained tried very hard to cater to fans of the metroidvania style of game, and the classicvania style of game. I personally don’t think it completely succeeded but for a first time experience of trying to combine the two into one, it did its job with preparation for another game.

I also feel like some criticism was lobbed towards the game’s narrative for being told in library/book entries, and while I understand that (I actually couldn’t open all of the books for fear of my game crashing), I don’t think elaborate cutscenes and continuous dialogue would work well with this game’s flow. Bloodstained prioritizes gameplay elements and player exploration over anything else, and to be honest, I’d rather it happen that way than with long elaborate cutscenes. I also felt as though I got more out of the game because I’d played the 8-bit prequel as well.

Overall, Bloodstained is a passable experience. I’m glad I played it, and I’m glad I put the work in to try to make the game a better experience. I got what I wanted out of the game for as much as I backed it and I hope they try again with a similar formula because this is a very good first step.

The Touryst

Sometimes when I see a game with voxel graphics, I feel pretty compelled to pick it up because it looks so darn lovingly rendered and it usually ends up being fun. The Touryst does a good job with its graphical style and visiting new islands is a complete delight because of it. It looks like a game with style, and performs super-well on the Switch. It’s also one of the freshest games I’ve played in a while.

Basically you’re playing a blocky dude with a moustache who just wants to have a good time but when he gets to TOWA Monument, he’s told he has to find monument cores to unlock the world’s secrets. And then you can do whatever you want. The different islands have their own little personalities: there’s an island called Fijy which is volcanic, there’s Ybiza with a bunch of dudes chilling on the beach and passed out on their chairs, there’s Santoryn which is just Greece, and a few other places that are essentially recreations of real-world places.

As you explore, there’s a lot of stuff to do. A variety of things to do. There are puzzles and mechanics that don’t necessarily overstay their welcome, you can play footy, you can play spelunker, you can take helicopter rides, you can take pictures, get stuff for a museum, surf, play rhythm games…. It’s your vacation, do what you want. It’s a little like Vegas. Unlike Vegas, you can use your ever-increasing money and diamonds to get new moves for your moustached character to reach new objects.

As a little game where you can do whatever you want little by little, and makes for a smooth experience, I’m glad I picked up the Touryst after asking another person what they thought of it. It has great puzzles, lots of stuff to do and explore and see, and ton of minigames for whatever mood you feel like you’re in. The game is fairly short, but I’m very glad the holiday doesn’t overstay its welcome.

A Short Hike

A Short Hike places you in the shoes of a bird who is utterly determined to walk to the top of Hawk Peak to get signal for her phone. I totally understand; sometimes you’ve gotta do what you gotta do.

But the game allows you to undertake that journey however you want to. You can go right away and finish up and get that darn signal. Or you can take your time and we’ll build that bridge when we get there. There are different types of terrains to explore if you opt to take the scenic route… and it’s rewarding to do so. You can find treasure, you can water a flower, you can talk to the Animal Crossing-esque characters to do some sidequests, you can do whatever you want.

I’m sorry to say that when the game introduced fishing, I spent a lot of my time doing that. Fishing ruins me. The completionist in me wanted to fish. But the whole thing is that you don’t have to do any of this. If you want to finish the game, you can absolutely positively focus on that and the game doesn’t pressure you for it.

And that’s one of the things I like about it. It’s just whatever about the whole ordeal. I don’t feel like I’m completely and utterly missing out if I don’t decide to do something. Even the task of getting Golden Feathers to progress is fine since you only need eight for it, and the game easily gives you enough rewards to get four or five before sidequests or exploration is factored in.

Sometimes you just need to take a walk and kind of think of nothing just to clear your head. And A Short Hike accomplishes that very well.

Worldend Syndrome

In my effort to try to find other games to play in 2019 because I’d fallen a little out of love with FFXIV, I realised that taking baby steps with visual novels and bite-sized games would be the best idea to try to get back into traditional games (particularly since I was, and am, still questioning whether I like games as a hobby or not). On a whim, I decided to download a boatload of visual novel demos one night and tried a bunch of them out. Worldend Syndrome’s demo didn’t exactly grab me until perhaps halfway through the demo when I a) realised that this demo was long af, and b) nothing appeared what it had seemed as I kept going through it and the characters were enjoyable.

So I decided to get the game and dragged my fiancé along for the ride. It’s one of those standard decision-making/pick which girl you want and go down her route VNs but it didn’t really feel skeezy or ecchi other than one particular point in each girl’s story where you get confessed to. You go through the VN as an unnamed protagonist who is visiting his cousin over the summer, and you and your friends get dragged into a school club whose focus revolves around folklore. The town the protagonist finds himself in is haunted by the Yomibito, spirits of the undead who look exactly like regular people but are eventually driven mad enough to kill.

One of the things that drew me to this visual novel was its assortment of animated backgrounds. They colourful and gorgeous. Every CG looks nice and coloured well, and the backgrounds for each area you visit are so beautiful and makes every single location easy to settle into. The cast is also surprisingly decent, where I expected to hate a few people but I ended up being okay with them because they were written well and weren’t as tropey as I had expected. I was also very pleased that the character that you were roleplaying as wasn’t skeezy when put into situations where he could have been, and that he treated the girls very well (though I won’t deny that there are some spots where behaviour was questionable but it doesn’t happen as often). Because the characters were written adequately enough, the game’s true ending route comes together very well and very naturally to a point where I could seriously believe that every character got along with one another to make sure the emotional impact of the mystery was satisfying.

In order to finish Worldend Syndrome, you have to do each route. A few characters’ routes don’t get unlocked until halfway through the game or even until the very end. The game also remembers everything you’ve done when it autosaves the system data on the world map, so if you need to reload a save to figure out someone’s schedule or if you mess up, it’s relatively easy to come back to something you’ve missed. I’ve played a lot of multiple route VNs before and Worldend Syndrome is easily one of the better VNs that allows the player to skip through to something they’ve missed or skip through previously-viewed text for another route.

As it is, Worldend Syndrome doesn’t really try to do anything spectacular, nor does it try to stand out like other visual novels of 2019 have (ie: Ciconia, presumably AI but I only tried the demo and I hated parts of the script, sorry). It does its job and tells its story which has a very good payoff in the end.

Judgement

I bought my fiancé Judgement earlier this year, as I had retired from playing Ryu ga Gotoku after Dead Souls/Ishin, and he was still playing the series religiously. I watched him play through part of it and I felt compelled to get my own copy because the combat looked nice, and the characters were compelling enough that I felt comfortable picking it up.

Judgement follows former lawyer Takayuki Yagami who is now a detective. His tale is one of redemption and conspiracies, reminiscent of some Phoenix Wright games (which this game gives clever nods to when the protagonist is in the courtroom). Yagami is more serious and down-to-earth than Kiryu is so the tone of the game feels quite different than other RGG games (or at least the ones I’ve played).

It still feels like a regular RGG game where you’re still wandering through Kamurocho, you’re still getting into fights with randos and Yakuza dudes, you date girls, you go to buy food, you play minigames, etc. But it isn’t as big as a standard RGG game; because you stay only in the one area, the cast is smaller, you get a job board to get your sidequests from, and the story itself is fairly short and sweet. I actually prefer that as a lapsed RGG player since it’s easier to get back into the games this way.

Judgement, however, disappointed me just a little in how little you spend in the courtroom. You’re given opportunities to present evidence, do some suspect tailing, use your smartphone to catch a cheating husband, or use a drone to search for evidence. I felt like when you had to use the drone to search for evidence, it ruined the pacing a little. The tailing missions are also reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed, and no that isn’t a good thing! Due to this, I felt like Judgement was not necessarily a great detective game but it did a decent job of trying to mold the RGG experience to a different main character.

Yagami can… fight… for some reason so he can beat up whatever randos come up to him on the streets. He’s actually more acrobatic than I remember Kiryu being in previous RGG games. He can kick off objects, he’s hard to back into a corner, he can do wall-flips, etc. It’s also much easier to earn XP where it’s all in one bar so you can do whatever you want to fill it up like play darts and just put stuff into his lockpicking. As a lapsed fan, the streamlining feels okay. The streamlining for combat also feels good because if you fights go on too long, the popo can come for you and you’d get fined, so emphasis is on finishing fights cleanly and quickly.

Overall, as a lapsed RGG fan, the way Judgement looks and feels and wraps up its twists and turns was really exciting for me. It may not have as many things to do as other RGG games, but honestly I think being a leaner experience was better and thus didn’t make the game overstay its welcome. I also am eagerly awaiting RGG7 since I enjoyed the demo a lot and I think the new protagonist can carry the series the way Yagami carried Judgement.

Cadence of Hyrule

Sometimes, after my fiancé and I bought our Switch, I’d wake up, go brush my teeth, and return to bed just to see my fiancé awake and playing Cadence of Hyrule. I was perplexed as it’s been ages since he’d willingly played a Zelda game, and his hands are super-huge for the joycons so he doesn’t like using them much.

You can easily say that Cadence of Hyrule is just a Crypt of the Necrodancer reskin with Zelda stuff all over it, but feels pretty clever in that it uses stuff from roguelikes and a rhythm game and makes the A Link to the Past world feel incredibly fresh. Bosses, especially, feel very fresh. Enemies move according to the rhythm and have a unique pattern that’s easily memorized so you can fall into the rhythm and take advantage of. If you’ve played Necrodancer, you’ll probably feel at home in this aspect, especially since the maps are also randomised (which leads different playthroughs feeling fresh).

The Zelda feels comes from recreating tunes from older Zelda games in puzzles, the magnificent sprite art, the great Zelda remixes, a simple-enough story, and a standard set of things to find in each procedurally generated dungeon. You also find a variety of traditional items like the bow, the bombs, boomerang… and a spear? It’s a nice blend of Zelda and Necrodancer.

The caveat is that it takes a little getting used to, since you’re not exactly used to not being able to freely move in a Zelda game. But when you do get used to it, it feels good. Everything is pretty expendable and if you die, you don’t feel like you necessarily lose a lot since you can accrue it all easily enough again. It’s unpredictable and that random roguelike nature is something that makes the Zelda experience feel fresh.

Spirit Hunter: Death Mark

My fiancé and I were trying to find spooky games to play for Halloween that wouldn’t make me squeamish because despite my profession dealing with analysis of body parts and human body fluids, I can’t see that kind of stuff on TV or in games in a realistic sense. It grosses me out. At least when it’s in front of me, it’s already out and off someone’s body and in a fume hood/biosafety cabinet and I didn’t have to see how it happened. My fiancé picked up Spirit Hunter: Death Mark on a sale we went through it together.

Death Mark is a tale about horror-themed urban legends and a curse that needs to be broken. People get marked with a crimson bite mark in the game’s H City and they eventually develop amnesia and die. A group of people live and gather at a spirit medium’s mansion (who is dead upon arrival). The only hint to break the curse in this mansion is a little talking doll named Mary. The protagonist eventually goes through several mysteries in an effort to break his curse and stop others from dying.

Death Mark does some surprisingly well-crafted worldbuilding. Each spirit you deal with has a well-told backstory, sometimes especially ghoulish (particularly the bonus post-game episode, the first episode, and the one episode with the telephone booth). The game excels with psychological horror and the enemies involved in each boss battle assist in making the player feel that way as well. The backgrounds also lend well to this as while they are simplistic, the shading and colours used help to execute a sense of dread. One particular chapter harkens back to Japan’s Aokigahara, and the backgrounds used connect very well to that particular location so that it feels super-eerie.

Regardless, Death Mark relies a lot on its text to establish its atmosphere and as someone who reads stuff like R07 VNs and other regular VNs with a lot of text, I was okay with that. The localization was well-done, albeit with some issues that would have been caught in editing but overall it carried the story very well.

There are boss battles prior to the end of each chapter, where you must use each item you find in your exploration segments. You need to use specific items in a specific order (even with the correct party setup) in order to achieve a good ending for that particular chapter (and thus eventually the game). I thought this was an interesting mechanic and while it got a little tired depending on the spirit, it showcased how creepy some of them can be on your screen.

Unfortunately, Death Mark does not have a variety for its soundtrack and it’s almost disappointing that the same piano tunes and boss themes played repeatedly as I felt it detracted from the experience.

Otherwise, I felt like Death Mark was a short and sweet horror experience that played into urban legends and folklore experiences. I loved the little vignettes that eventually ramped up to a central story point. I hope the sequel is good when we get around to it.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

So my fiancé and I are doing this thing where we’ve started buying one copy of a game so we’d both own it together and go through it together. Sekiro and Man of Medan were two of those games this year.

Sekiro isn’t really like Souls. Eventually you’ll come to learn that very quickly when the game throws a boss at you and if you try to play like Souls, you’re not going to get the job done. It will show you that you never learned how to parry properly and you’re going to have to go back and learn it. Or if you didn’t grab a prosthetic that will make the job easier, you’re gonna have to do that too.

The game is interesting in that you aren’t exactly whittling down health bars all the time; you’re striking properly so you can overwhelm their posture bars, find an opening, and go in for the kill. Enemy health bars are essentially secondary to that posture bar. You have your own posture bar so you’ve got to learn how to parry properly. Sometimes you need to parry complete combos in order to deliver posture damage back to an enemy. It’s all about getting into the flow and rhythm of combat. And you must beat bosses in order for you to get a stat boost, so being able to beat a boss lies in your skill, and not necessarily your level/equipment.

Sekiro is Souls-like in its storytelling and worldbuilding. You can run around rooftops and areas to find secrets off the beaten path. You go back and forth between areas and speak to different NPCs to find out their backstories. The plot is also told via NPC conversations with the main characters. At first it’s a little dry but the story opens up eventually. It also has some great voiced NPCs for quests (one quest in particular had voicework that made me feel so sorry for the character that I was like “we need to get the proper item for this guy please don’t make him suffer”).

It feels rewarding to put in the work in order to beat the bosses, make it so you don’t resurrect as often to make people sick, and meet whatever standard Sekiro is throwing at you. It lets the player know that they’ve met that standard, and then throws another boss phase at them so you have to get even better.

Owl I’m looking at you.

Super Kirby Clash

My fiancé and I bought a Switch together this year (which, outside of dinner and movies and clothes, etc. was one of our major purchases together). We downloaded a few demos to try the control scheme out, including Super Kirby Clash. I am aware that this game is probably old, but hey it’s still going and it’s still being supported and I’m catching up.

I’m probably putting it here due to bias, but I think It’s really cute and the hats are super-adorable. I love getting new hats and new weapons for my little Kirby. It’s fairly standard as far as a “mobile experience” is concerned and playing it a little when I have the time to and hacking away at it little by little is rewarding when I get a new hat or new gear. My fiancé and I played it in multiplayer as well, which felt a lot like Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

It’s pretty inoffensive and I haven’t paid real-life money for anything in it, and I still feel like I’m progressing. So as a Kirby game with light RPG elements (ie: something I’ve wanted for years and years), it’s nice to finally see realised.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

An artist I commission very often from convinced me to move this game further up in queue than I originally had it when we were talking about games we were playing after finishing Shadowbringers’ main campaign.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is the spiritual successor inspired by Wonder Boy III, with the formula being modernized for a new era. It feels fast, and it looks soooooooo pretty. The tracks are bumpin’ too. It’s also a little tough but with every difficult section successfully platformed through, you feel really good about it.

You play as a plucky boy named Jin whose uncle is an insano who turns everyone in the kingdom into animals. After you experience sweet freedom as a human boy platforming across things easily for like 15 minutes, Jin’s uncle turns him into a pig. Whoops. From there the platforming gets a little harder and you need to learn how to manipulate different forms and different spells in order to get across various sections.

Different animal forms give you different skills. Pig form allows you to sniff out secrets literally, snake form lets you cling to walls and go through tiny passages, frog has a sticky tongue for swinging, and lion form lets you go through obstacles. You need to use these forms well to platform well enough to get through each area and finish the game. Being successful at platforming in this game feels good and fulfilling and satisfying. As you unlock more, platforming experiences get more and more complex with more obstacles put in your way, so in essence it feels like the opposite of a standard metroidvania. Playing both Bloodstained and this in one year felt like playing polar opposites. That said, the checkpointing in Monster Boy is really good. Game Atelier knew what they were doing.

The bosses by contrast were really easy and it’s nice to take the time to look at the art for each boss. All of the effects are also super-nice. Playing Monster Boy on a 4K TV is quite a visual treat for its boss sections, its town section, and its platforming sections. The colours are off-the-charts. Each animal sprite has its own set of unique animations: the piggy farts and looks like >_>, froggy looking at flies, etc. And the music is so good. If this game were a 2019 game I’d definitely put its soundtrack on my list, but it isn’t. It’s a nice blend of new and old stuff and it’s a delight to hear in-context as encouragement to keep going when you fail a platforming section.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a faithful representation and homage of the old Wonder Boy games. It’s filled with references and secrets and awesome art, and I’m glad to have been convinced to move it up my queue for this year.

Most Disappointing Game: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

I love Final Fantasy XIV. It’s brought me closer to so many people in recent years and I’ve met so many more through it. Playing this game means so much to me and I want the best for it for years to come. It’s one of the reasons why I’m so critical about it. If I hated this game, I would stop playing and honestly, I wouldn’t care about its future. I will say this before getting started: I like Shadowbringers’ story so far (we aren’t going to be finished with its story until 5.3). I don’t think It’s necessarily as consistent as Heavensward, but I think Shadowbringers’ story is the most Final Fantasy story we’ve gotten since perhaps FF10. Truly, it’s the best we’ve seen for the series this decade.

I had a lot of hopes and hype for Shadowbringers. I hated Stormblood, for a myriad of reasons: social reasons, gameplay reasons, and narrative reasons. The direction Shadowbringers was going and all the trailers made it seem like it was going to be fresh and exciting and new. My fiancé and I (and a few others) swapped servers+data centers in advance of the expansion for a fresh start, to boot. I watched the Job Actions trailer over and over and tried to decide what I was going to eventually main and gear up because I didn’t really have a main in Stormblood due to the combat changes and how easy things became for certain things.

During a live letter, they mentioned that they’re changing how things work in battle, and that’s when I became a little cautious. I was hoping for the best leading up to release and then I saw the scholar/healer changes and got very worried. I changed mains in Stormblood because playing Scholar was freaking horrible at the start of Stormblood.

I eventually had to change mains at the start of Shadowbringers because I was not having fun playing Scholar. For people who didn’t bother to level a healer at all, the writing was on the wall for healers during Stormblood. Essentially, it introduced an age of healing where you barely ever used your GCDs to heal. You mostly used OGCDs and preplanned shields. 90% of the time if you wanted to be a good healer, you’d mostly DPS. I don’t think I’ve cast a GCD heal at all in SB and ShB content unless things were going super-wrong.

The healing changes introduced in Shadowbringers made us think that things were going to change, that things were going to be harder to heal. I had my doubts, however, because all fights are scripted and if they were to introduce a substantial change to incoming damage, they would have to make it so most people (casual, midcore, hardcore, less experienced newbies, experienced folks) would be used to It and could handle it. There was no way they were going to introduce more difficulty given that subscription numbers were increasing.

And so, healers during Shadowbringers got some damage skills taken away, but in their place, they were given more tools to heal with:

- White Mage came away from this as a very well-rounded healer at launch. It had its damage spells, it had a damage spell with a stun, it finally had long-standing and easily useable mitigation, it has substantial MP recovery, and it has a damage spell that rewards you for using three GCD heals to make up for damage lost. White Mage still making out like a bandit in 5.1.

- Scholar felt dramatically different and didn’t feel as solid as it used to be. It had most of its damage tools taken away, the usefulness of its fairy was decreased because let’s be honest it was super-overpowered, it got one of its fairies and its AoE esuna taken away, and it was given its PvP move to act as an AoE that doesn’t have another effect. I had to completely unlearn everything I did as scholar in the last 5-6 years in order to play current scholar. Current 5.1 scholar is overpowered as heck and I don’t feel as satisfied to play it in SB/ShB content.

- AST LOL. All the cards are balance. MP regen is what. Heals are what. Everything is just what. Other fun skills were removed. That said, I really like AST just because it feels like I have to work twice as hard to achieve the same effect the other healers bring to the table.

So eventually with all of these changes, we had assumed that healing was going to be harder. It wasn’t. It’s the same experience and all we’re doing is pressing one single button all the time. I barely have to heal in dungeons. I barely have to heal in raid unless my party members step in stupid. I just can’t bring myself to play healer every single day anymore, and I love healing in this game. Or I loved it back when it was more dynamic. I just press one button over and over and over and over and over and maybe sometimes another but I just press one button a lot. It’s really sad and it makes me miss old Cleric Stance of all things.

I like Shadowbringers’ story. I felt rewarded playing through it as someone who’s played the game for years and did everything when it was in-content. So for me, it was like a good reunion. There were a lot of points where the story dragged or felt rocky. I felt like the start of the 5.0 campaign was utterly boring and poorly paced. It picked up again, then slowed down again, then picked up again, then got REALLY BAD, then picked up again for a good finish. I don’t think it’s as consistent as Heavensward’s 3.0 campaign, but it was very solid and made up for the 4.0 campaign.

However, story is only 20% of the experience for me. The rest of the time, I need to actually play the game. I actually liked the levelling and crafting changes and new skills they brought in during 5.0 because leveling a crafter never felt easier. I felt like I still had to work hard but the payoff came quickly and my macros still worked as well as they did from during Stormblood. I also used my Stormblood melds and Stormblood equipment for the entire levelling experience and had to make concessions for some of my macros as time went on. I still had to know what my skills did, basically. The 5.1 crafting/gathering changes kind of make me want to craft less since I don’t feel like I have to solve a puzzle anymore and to be honest, everyone crafts now so you make far less money than you previously did. The desynth changes also made it so that most of my markets tanked since what’s the point of gathering half the materials when desynth makes those materials easily accessible. I’m not saying to gatekeep at all, but I feel like the experience should have been a little harder (ie: like the Ixali experience where you had to learn what your skills did or desynth shouldn’t be this easy to keep the market fairly balanced). My server is a crafting server so I am more impacted in general from this. That said, I don’t have anything to spend gil on so it doesn’t matter, I guess. I just feel far less inclined to participate in what was one of my favourite pastimes in XIV.

I mained Ninja which got killed in 5.0. I was already dealing with the servers moving from East Coast to West Coast, so adding a bunch of stuff to squeeze into your TA window in 10 seconds in Shadowbringers utterly killed the job for me. 5.1 Ninja throws me off as someone who played this game since the time Ninja was introduced, and I can’t make myself play it. The current opener is the Doton opener (which is something I didn’t like in SB at all) and I can’t always rely on my tank to bring the thing to my Doton. That, and making it so you do different things per every other or every third TA just makes the job a little unpalatable for me at 80. I’m one of those people who wants TA to go. I don’t like that Ninja’s become the TA bot in recent years. I can still do well with it. People still throw buffs at me, but I don’t find enjoyment in the job anymore and I hope we get a proper retool in 6.0.

I switched back to ranged. Thankfully Bard hasn’t changed as much since SB (though I still prefer HW Bard like a weirdo), and Dancer is one of those “I worked too damn long today and I just wanna do the mindless brainless rotation” jobs. I miss old Machinist oddly enough. It felt really good when you played it well and pulled off a decent wildfire. Now it’s a little easier and I don’t feel as fulfilled playing it. That said, it’s probably the best incarnation of the job since it’s sad little introduction in 3.0.

Even tanking is substantially easier and that’s a mostly good thing. It sucked going into a low level dungeon and having trouble keeping aggro due to the level syncing and your DPS’ stats. Now you can just turn your stance on and go to town without losing any damage potency like you used to. I kind of miss swapping stances after I’ve established aggro though, because you could tell the difference between a good tank and a bad/less practiced tank if they didn’t bother to swap stances in a fight. Tanks came out of this expansion very balanced, though. They might need some work here and there (warrior I’m looking at you), but overall, they came out the best out of the three roles.

Other than that, you have monks not knowing what they should be, samurai continuously getting buffed and nerfed, black mage staying consistent, red mage being lol, summoner getting changed to the point where now it’s overpowered, among other DPS changes. DPS overall don’t have as much synergy so you can take any job you want to into raid and it’ll get the job done. That said if you want to do as much damage as possible, you’re generally going to take the same few classes into the raid if you’re less educated about them. And I feel like the lack of synergy or utility between classes or even the loss of something like mana shift makes the whole experience a little boring. It’s very “f you, I got mine” or the onus is on the player for their own personal burdens and no one’s really helping each other unless you’re a dancer, trick attack bot, dragoon or bard.

I really hope the other pieces of content are substantial but what I’ve seen aren’t exactly what I had in mind. Boss refights with an alternate version is really neat but I didn’t really want that for this raid tier. I wanted something more original given what we had to deal with in Omega. I don’t really care for the Nier Automata crossover because, again, I wanted something original to the XIV lore and the First. I think doubling down on Blue Mage is a bad idea and while some folks like its party-based content now, I can’t bring myself to keep doing the content given that it’s clear they don’t know what to do with it (or didn’t know what to do with it). With one dungeon coming per patch I have to question what’s happening internally or what they’re working on. I know SE is weird internally and I really hope that the kind of stuff I’ve read in previous postmortem articles isn’t happening.

Either way, I’m really disappointed that I want to stop playing XIV so much when it’s the most popular among my friends and followers because it’s so dissatisfying to me and it’s the most accessible that it’s ever been. I hope things get better eventually but going by what I think they have in store and their old reliable formula, I don’t have hope. I’m tired of the formula and I feel like it needs a shakeup. Overall, I’ve been less happy playing FFXIV than I’ve ever been and it makes me feel really sad.

#goty 2019 #ciconia when they cry #bloodstained #the touryst #a short hike #worldend syndrome #judgment #cadence of hyrule #spirit hunter death mark #sekiro #super kirby clash #shadowbringers

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isamenot · 5 years

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Blue Sacrifice - Quick ideas

I, actually, wanted to write a long and elaborate post about it; but since I have a creative rush for my original work and still want to get these thoughts out before the release of the next episode, it's just gonna be a quick collection of ideas.

1.) Eldarya should have been created as an ideal place for faeries with a stable Maana flow that the don't have to suffer from the effects of low Maana concentration that is on earth. E.g. Chrome not mutating into a beast during full moon or Nevra being able to endure sunlight.

2.) Every animal based feary show characteristics of their animal in appearance. The „humanisation“ of appearance is also due to Maana concentration.

3.) Fenghuang do not have any animal/birdlike traits. This may indicate that the always have been able to take on human form without any foreign characteristics, and by extension could always walk unrecognuised among humans.

4,) The Oracle is the spirit of the Great Crystal, which regulates the Maana of Eldarya. The Great Crystal was created along with Eldarya during the Blue Sacrifice. Therefore, dragons cannot be actual children of the Oracle. Unless it is meant metaphorically and „oracle“ was a special title or position within dragon society (like the phoenix of fenghuang culture). Or the spirit of the oldest female dragon was transferred to the crystal during the ritual.

5.) Aengel/Daemons are the hybrid race of fenghuang and dragons – they have birdlike wings (as fenghuang should have as well) and dragonlike horns as connecting appearance features. As there is a chance that fenghuang might be able to hide their appearance (and it was indicated for dragons as well during Vakyon's spin-off?), this might also be true for daemons (Leiftan's usual appearance is the hidden form). The drangon are meant to symbolise strength (physical) and fenghuang wisdom (mental stength). Add both symbols up and you arrive at (social/leading) power, symbolised by daemons.

6.) History is made by the victors and Eldaryan history writing sucks. Everything that is known to the population about the Blue Sacrifice could be completely forged or at least be tempered with. The real truth is problably known only by fenghuang (and even in this case most likely only by those really, really high up/the phoenix – this might then pose to be a potential conflict for Huang Hua if/when she becomes the Phoenix).

7.) To create a stable world, the ritual needed both the power of wisdom as well as the power of strength. As daemons/aengle – if they really are hybrids of dragons and fenghuang – have both, it would have been enough to just sacrifice them and both dragons and fenghuang could have survived and maybe even started a new daemon population. Since the daemons boycotted, it would have required both faery kinds to sacrifice themselves for a stable world. The dragons might have been „tricked“ into the sacrifice by the fenghuang, maybe by the use of the Flute of Wesel-Hameln.

8.) The purpose of the Guard of Eel is to keep/protect order in Eldarya – their original purpose in this thought of line was to find a way to stabilise this new world and/or to find/hunt down the traitors for either completing the ritual or preventing them from revealing the truth. This might have beend forgotten as more and more problems occurred throughout Eldarya with the years.

Ok, and this is all I have to say for now.

#eldarya #eldarya theory #blue sacrifice

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relevy · 5 years

Note

So I’m fairly new to Tarot in general; are there any big don’t-do’s or perhaps any tips you might recommend for beginners?

Oh I’m so excited for you! Now these are just my personal feelings and I cannot speak for all readers so keep that in mind.

Do’s

-Try to read a couple times a week for yourself to get used to the concepts. Start out with single or 3 card readings as these tend to be the most straight forward.

- A great way to get to know the cards is to pull a new card each day OR use an app that gives you a random card for the day (I use Galaxy Tarot but there are others) apps in particular are helpful because the explanation of the cards are generally built right in to the ‘card of the day’ feature.

- follow Tarot readers on social media, Tumblr and Instagram have huge Tarot communities but Facebook has some good groups as well.

- Buy a guidebook or a deck that comes with a guide book. I HIGHLY recommend Modern Tarot by Michelle Tea (and I just met her she’s amazing!!!!) and the guide book that comes with The Linestrider Tarot was hugely impactful for me.

- Journaling is very helpful for some people. I am in the process of journaling each card and my personal interpretation but I don’t journal every reading. However, I do take pictures of each draw so that I can reference them later.

Don’t

- Go deck crazy! A lot of people get sucked in to how amazing, beautiful, and collectible decks are. It’s a real temptation to just throw your cash at all the amazing decks out there. My personal rule is I’m not allowed to get a new deck until I’ve really gotten to know the last deck I bought. Each deck has a different personality and if I’m not comfortable with my newest purchase I don’t allow myself another one until I am.

- Delve into Oracle decks. Not right off the bat anyways. Oracles don’t abide by traditional Tarot rules so if you try to get into them too quickly it can muddy the waters quite a bit.

- Read for others until you are confident. I can’t really tell you when that is. For me it was about a year after I started. For others it’s much longer than that. Now, reading for a friend who volunteers to let you practice on them? Different story. People get into serious life questions with Tarot sometimes and you don’t want to feel responsible for guiding them unless you are self assured enough to do so.

- Feel like it has to be an elaborate ritual. I used to only read for myself if I had gone through this visualization stuff with my crystals and shuffled my deck just so. Now I allow myself a lot more freedom and spontaneity which puts less pressure on me and the cards to perform.

If you have any other questions please let me know! I’m sure there’s things I’ll think of later to add to these lists :|

Ask me questions about Tarot!

#tarot #tarotcommunity #tarot reader #tarot blog #relevy answers

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vaguely-concerned · 7 years

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RANDOM OVERWATCH/MCHANZO HEADCANONS

My headcanons are usually global, so to say, so once established they mainly hold true for anything I write in that fandom until canon actively overwrites it (and sometimes even after that if I think the real answer is dumb ha ha). Most of what I’ve already done is the ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’ AU series.

- Shimadamom died during the omnic crisis, since I feel like she would come up a lot more if she was actually around when her sons literally tried to murder each other. (It would also explain why Hanzo shoots the omnic in ‘Dragons’ even as he goes to some lengths to only incapacitate the other guards and why he thinks Numbani sucks, as well as adding a layer of ouch to Genji’s... robo-dysphoria.) Hanzo remembers her better than Genji does, since Genji would have been pretty young at that point.

- Hanzo is a dog person (oh hello there entire alternate wardrobe made up of wolf imagery) and Jesse is a cat person. (Both because of That Scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with the kitten and the hat (!!!!!) and because really he himself is kind of a very affable yet still half-feral tomcat kind of a man)

- In ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’, at least, Jesse started out smoking cigarettes and graduated to cigars as he got older/had more cash, for that Authentic Man With No Name Look. He still goes for cigarettes sometimes when he’s on edge because he finds the little rituals of rolling them comforting. (Hanzo also has a very private Pavlovian reaction to the smell of a certain brand Jesse smoked around the time they started sleeping together. I’ll let you fill in the embarrassing details in your own time.)

- Hanzo usually cuts his own hair - just chops a bit off with a knife or something when it gets too annoying. The first time it was the dramatic symbolic gesture of dishonor ™, but these days it’s just because he can’t be bothered with anything fancier, in the same vein as ‘why even put my shirt on all the way btw did I mention I KILLED MY BROTHER’. (Yes, I know it’s a real traditional archery technique thing, just… let me have this.) Probably also why he wears it up most of the time so you can’t really tell it’s a bit of a catastrophe.

- Jesse taught himself how to play the guitar as a kid and has a wonderful voice for everyday life - it doesn’t belong on a stage but it is perfect for crooning in the background while making dinner or doing chores, stuff like that.

- Jesse is quite ticklish, a fact Hanzo ‘Innate Talent for Strategy and Tactics’ Shimada uses without compunctions when it suits his goals. (His goals usually being a Jesse pink-faced and loose-limbed with laughter)

- Hanzo looks A LOT like his dad but takes after his mum personality-wise - more cynical and closed off except for with their loved ones - while Genji looks more like their mum.

- Jesse’s parents died during the war, quite early on. (tbh this is mostly b/c it breaks my heart to imagine his family would be okay with him having become a notorious killer by the age of seventeen. Like. Bro. I’d rather have someone love and protect him unflinchingly and then having no choice in leaving him. Though if the Deadlock gang had some element of a family business that would mean ANOTHER parallel between them, so if that’s how canon eventually lands I can work with that too ha ha)

- Do you ever think about Jesse at fourteen, coming back from a fight victorious but with new constellations of scars and bruises, curling up somewhere no one’ll find him to watch that scene in For A Fistful of Dollars where the man with no name gets beat up to hell and back and still gets out of it through sheer tenacity and being a tricksy fuck

Because I think about that every day and that’s why I’m constantly on the verge of tears

Anyway not so much a headcanon there as a window into the dark aching corners of my soul let’s carry on

- Jesse is demisexual, Hanzo is gay.

- At first I had settled for Hanzo being bi (what better orientation for a ninja than one that makes you invisible, after all? Who’s bitter you’re bitter) but then there were the White Day lines between Hanzo and Genji and now I’m 100% convinced that he’s gay, if only because it’s so much funnier to me. Let me show my work a bit here:

So as far as I understand, on Valentine’s day in Japan it’s women who give the ~*special men*~ in their life chocolates/gifts. (There’s also an uh ‘tier’ of chocolate that’s completely platonic and is given to friends and coworkers, but from the tone of Genji’s voice I doubt that’s what he’s talking about lol) White day is a month later, and it’s when the men reciprocate the gifts they were given. So essentially what Genji is doing with that line is going “SO… any special GIRLS in your life bro?? *I know you can’t see my face through the visor but you can feel the wink wink nudge nudge through the air*” and Hanzo’s answer is a sort of long-suffering reference to young Genji’s playboy lifestyle as well as a callback to a previous voice line between them, not a slight aimed at any cocoa beans.

Now I like to imagine bb!Genji as a bit of a hilarious dick - like basically sweet and well-meaning, but also hugely spoiled, self-absorbed and easily distracted. It would lend Hanzo’s annoyance so many levels of hilarity if his little brother just… hadn’t realized that the reason he wasn’t dating girls wasn’t just a) he’s been riding a wave of shame, guilt, grief, depression & light alcoholism these last ten years and it’s hard to date with a tight schedule like that, b) he is kind of weird and socially awkward at the best of times, c) his eventual anachronistic weirdo soulmate was running around on the other side of the world doing crazy shit for Overwatch

The reason he’s never dated any girls is that he’s FUCKING GAY

Like it was not as though it was secret, Genji, all you’d have to do was fucking pay attention or hey, ask at any point in the last closing-in-on-forty-years and it would have been EASILY AVAILABLE INFORMATION

FATHER KNEW AND HE NEVER NEEDED TO ASK,GENJI

Anyway I thrive on Hanzo Shimada’s annoyance and consternation because he takes everything so damn seriously and I love him very much

(Obviously in the ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’ ‘verse Genji does know. He’s not THAT massively oblivious.)

- Jesse is mostly ambidextrous but prefers to shoot with his right hand. I think there was some kerfuffle about his holster being put on both sides in official art that prompted this one? I’m not above going ‘*shrug* why have continuity errors when you can have headcanon’

- Shimadadad, intent on his sons not turning into Useless Rich Ninja Kids, made sure they were taught some essential life skills, like cooking and laundry and shit - meaning Hanzo knows how to make a handful of dishes to, like, double Michelin Star levels. He doesn’t actually enjoy it very much, though, so mostly he won’t. Meanwhile Jesse has no outside training whatsoever beyond at one point being shown how to turn on a microwave but figured things out on his own and has pretty good instincts. Hanzo prefers Jesse’s cooking and will happily just do chopping duty (which he’s still proficient at to the point that Jesse’s not sure whether to be unsettled or turned on).

- Jesse learned about horses from an older lady who semi-adopted him after finding him feverish and bleeding in her back garden when he was in his early teens. He stayed on her ranch for a couple of years and then left because he was worried some of the people he’d pissed off would be able to track him down there and burn it all down.

- Hanzo doesn’t like - or really get - giving and receiving gifts as a way to express affection. I’m pretty sure his line of association would go something like gifts ----> money ------> business -----> bribe -----> obligation -------> duty -------> faMILY OH GOD EVERYTHING JUST GOT REAL MESSED UP AND COMPLICATED IN MY HEAD I NEED A DRINK

- Another one where I’ll accept either outcome: I can’t decide from the in-game dialogue if Genji and McCree’s relationship is more bro-like ribbing or if they’re actually a little uh. Adversarial. (“You’re not quicker than a bullet”: a Schröedinger’s playful banter/death threat lol) If they’re mostly friendly that’s great! They can form a harmonious ‘Save Hanzo From Himself’ support group. If they’re more antagonistic? Pure. Fucking. Hilarity. Can you imagine Genji being SO FUCKING MAD because as it turns out the one thing in this world that has ever made his sadsack brother happy is that cocky jingle-jangle bizarro Western cosplay jackass. Like naturally I would prefer it if they were bros but I never turn down comedic potential like that.

- Jesse’s greatest fear has to do with being seen and with leaving. He’s very clearly set up a theatrical, elaborate part of his identity between himself and the world - I don’t think any psychologically unscarred person goes ‘well I’ll just wrap myself in this loner/vigilante archetype until it works for me’ lol. It’s a very smart ‘people are going to look at me so let’s make sure they can’t actually see me’ move. Also it makes me sad that me must have, like, reverse abandonment issues: every time he belongs to something - to the Deadlock gang, to Overwatch, to Hanzo in ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’ - he’s inevitably forced to leave it behind. (I guess this is part of why I love the pairing so much; they’re both wanderers now, they can go together ;____;)

Hanzo’s greatest fear is to really hurt someone he loves again. (Remember that time in Junkenstein’s Revenge where Jack looks at Reaper and goes ‘what could turn a man into this’ and Hanzo immediately answers “To be tested, and to fail”? Because I remember that all the time.)

#overwatch #mchanzo #hanzo #mccree #Perhaps there is still a future for anachronisms #meta #idk it was the only way I managed to do some writing so here we go I guess ha ha #I'm just like... filled to the brim with feels that have nowhere to go #My writing

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pendragonfics · 7 years

Text

Unemployment, Ice Cream

Paring: Clint Barton/Reader

Tags: ice cream, unemployment, fluff, deaf Clint Barton, Kate Bishop makes an appearance, Clint needs a hug, and so does Reader

Summary: After New York, your work is trashed beyond insurance repairs. Thus, unemployment! Lucky you and Clint have each other's backs (even if he was partly at fault for you losing your job). At least Kate's here to keep it light hearted.

Word Count: 1,359

Posting Date: 2016-05-20

Current Date: 2017-05-10

Great, you think, kicking an empty Pepsi can across the street walk, one hand on your messenger bag strap, the other moodily shoved into your pocket. Trust my boyfriend's career to end mine.

You were, no, had been, a waitress in a quaint little Italian restaurant on one of the blocks the major part of what was now known as 'The Battle of New York' took place. You'd been stuck in the building during most of the fight, watching the aliens and the mad scramble of the superhero group Clint Barton - your boyfriend, the Hawkeye - was a part of and the police manage the fight. You'd called his cell; up until a day before, you'd been out of contact with him, he'd not returned to the apartment to you and Lucky. When you called the emergency contact, Phil Coulson, he just said it was, in his usual tone, "Classified". So you'd assumed he was on top secret spy business or hiding out until something blew over. It wasn't like Kate didn't practically live with the two of you either; you weren't alone.

But now you were.

Because of that stupid battle because of that crazy yellow-horned hatted man and his crazy weird army, your place of work had been destroyed beyond the compensation of the insurance companies. And thus, Angelo, your boss, had released everyone on staff, each with a parting gift of an A4 paper sized recommendation for your next employment and a stick of garlic bread.

"Great. Now I'm jobless," you huffed, scuffing your feet into the concrete. "Wonder what Clint'll think of that."

As if on cue, your phone buzzed his tone, that mugshot you took on the sly filling the screen. How was it that his resting face looked like he wanted to kill everyone?

"I didn't expect you to pick up, I thought you'd be on shift," his surprised voice filled your ear. At once, at just the sound of his voice and the stress had lifted a little almost instantly from your shoulders. "It's seven, it's it? That's your shift, right?"

You took a deep sigh. "Clint Barton, you are so right, right now," you mused, "and you probably already know why I picked up the phone instead of letting it ring out as if I really were at work."

"You're not at work?" There was a pause. You could hear the cogs turning, practically, "Don't tell me..."

You let out a shaky laugh. "Yep. That battle you were in, made my work shut down. Ruined the premises, ruined the business. Buh-bye employment."

He snorted at your wording. "That is awful, ________. Hey, what about you come home, we'll throw a pity party -,"

You fake retched, "No, no, I'm not having a pity party. That's too sad."

"Then what do you want?" he huffed, playing his pretend annoyed mood that made you want to get him into a headlock and make out with him sometimes.

"Well," you began, looking at your nails, smiling to yourself, "I want you, me and Lucky sitting around in the apartment, just being together. Maybe a light candle if we have one."

There was a pause on Clint's end. "How about Kate? She's already here."

"Sure!" You laughed. "Ask if she has a candle on her...oh, and I have one request."

You could almost hear his smirk through the phone as he replied, "Shoot."

You glanced to the street sign to figure out how many blocks you had to walk until you were home in the dinky, dank apartment, "This situation calls for ice-cream and Love Actually."

"You've got it, boss."

___

"Sucks to be you, doof-face," Kate sympathizes, the first thing that comes from her mouth. You didn't even knock yet, the door was already open, and her arms over your shoulders with a tight hug that lasts as long as it started. She gestures for you to follow her in. "Well, come in, _______, this movie won't pause itself."

You hear Clint groan from the other room before you can ask. As you see him, hair ruffled, white shirt with the ironic, iconic bulls-eye, cute sweats you adore more than his sandy hair, he elaborates, "There was an accident, and we need to replace the remote...all we can do is eject the discs and -,"

"Love you too, Clint Barton," you roll your eyes, planting a kiss on his lips. God, it sucked to be jobless. But it defiantly sucked less to be the girlfriend of Clint. And have Kate around. She was simultaneously like an annoying step-sister and a mischievous, steadfast daughter to you, if that were possible. "And don't worry about the remote, we'll get another tomorrow."

You hear a snort. "You don't have a job anymore, though," Kate sung out from the kitchen. "Some adult you are."

"I'm an adult and can waste my money however which-way I want to!" You sing back to her, kick off your shoes.

"I'm an adult too and I don't know what I'm doing half the time!" Clint chimes in.

Kate hisses. "Shhh, Hawkass, I'm trying to watch Hugh Grant fall for the caterer," she grumbles.

Joining them at the TV, you settle into the couch and the curve that's perfectly _______-shaped in Clint's side. With his arm around you, you're close enough to see he's mouthing along to all the lines the actors on-screen have. It's a thing he does, when watching movies; you found out six months into the relationship with Hawkeye that it improves his memory of the film and lessens the dependency on his hearing aid.

"I love you," you whisper to him, closing your eyes.

Yeah, you had a shitty day, had had a shitty boss who hadn't had the decency to tell you before arrival of your being sacked, had a shitty apartment, but, being with the guy you're spooning, it was worthwhile.

Clint hums, the tone he uses when he didn't quite catch what was said. You take your hands from around his waist, and sign, I love you, right where he could see it.

Sorry about your unemployment, he signs back. Not sorry we get to watch this.

It should be our official workplace tragedy movie. You pause, watching the little boy practice the drums on screen. Knowing us, we'll always have stuff like that.

Clint chuckles, and not at the sappy romance on-screen.

Cut to the credits, and just as Clint goes to stretch and call it a day from the tiny bedroom the two of you share, his hawk eyes see something notable.

"________," he mumbles, waking you from your half-slumber through heavy lids, "Katie's asleep. Don't think I've ever seen her not buzzing around."

He's right. Kate Bishop is a bee who buzzes around socially and antisocially, but her sting is worth the venom of her friendship. You smile slightly, and peer to see where the other Hawkeye has crashed.

On the floor. Just - just on the floor. Head tilted weirdly, curled up like a cat in her purple pyjamas. Snuggled beside her is Lucky.

"Should we move her?" You ask Clint.

He shakes his head, and you know why. Last time she'd fallen asleep in your car, someone - Clint, poor Clint - had attempted to take her into the apartment, only to end up loosing a fist fight. Kate Bishop was always down to fight. Even when sleeping.

"We should go to bed," you yawn.

Clint rubs his eyes, turning to face you. His eyes are bleary, his face drooping in that sort of tiredness that comes from workplace stress and life in general.

"But - but I'm not sleepy," he yawns.

It's been a long day. A long week. A long life, and you know it right now. All you need to do now to finish the ritual of initial unemployment is take your loving, overtired boyfriend who was tired already before watching the two and a half hour romance movie.

"Yes you are," you kiss his cheek, and pull him toward the bedroom. "Time to sleep in until noon tomorrow."

Clint's frown turns upside down. "I can't argue with that offer, now can't I?"

#clint barton #clint #clint barton x reader #clint x reader #hawkeye #hawkeye x reader #avengers x reader #marvel x reader #marvel fanfic #chaotic--lovely #pendragonfics

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thegreenwolf · 8 years

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[I know this is a long one, and potentially controversial. Do me a favor, please and read all the way to the end, and pay especial attention to the italicized bits? Thank you!]

Celtic Wicca. Samhain, the God of the Dead. Witches’ covens that extend back in an unbroken line thousands of years. These are just a few examples of the really bad history that’s been passed around the pagan community, and which has rightfully been skewered by those who have done better research. I came to paganism in the mid-1990s when Wicca was all the rage, and everything was plastered with Celtic knotwork. The Craft, Charmed and other media helped bolster support for aesthetic paganism that was more about looks than substance. A glut of books hit the market, many of which were full of historical inaccuracies from the mildly off to the blatantly awful.

Pagans with a decent background in history began to tear apart the inaccurate material, some of which had been floating around for decades (I’m looking at you, Margaret Murray!) We encouraged each other to go beyond strictly pagan books and explore historical texts, both those written for laypeople and more academic texts. We cited our sources more. And so now, twenty years later, while paganism still has its share of bad history, we have a lot more accurate information to apply to our paths, whether we’re hardcore reconstructionists or not. And we have space for things that aren’t necessarily historically accurate, but which we find personally relevant, like Unverified Personal Gnosis, or UPG (which you can read more about here.)

All this came out of a lot of discussions, along with debates and arguments. Post bad history in a busy pagan listserve circa 2000, and you were bound to get dozens of responses correcting you and offering good research material. And today wrong historical information is still swiftly corrected. What boggles my mind is that a lot of the same people who will throw down over historical inaccuracies won’t bat an eye when someone horribly misuses science. Woe be unto anyone who tries to say that Artemis and Freya are just different faces of the same Great Goddess, but sure, we can say that quantum entanglement proves magick is real without a doubt. Whatevs, it’s your belief, right?

In Defense of Facts

Wrong. Just as history deals in facts, so does science. Yes, there’s room for errors (accidental and deliberate) and updated research, but that doesn’t negate the general tendency of both of these fields of study and practice to deal in the most accurate information we have available to us. We’ve gotten good at pointing out where pagans are over-reaching historically through speculation and UPG. We suck at doing so for those speculating beyond what science has demonstrated to be true or impossible. It’s the same error at play: when history or science don’t have a clear answer–or the answer that you want–you don’t get to just make up whatever you want and say that it’s equally real.

Lots of anecdotes do not equal “anecdata”. No matter how much you really, really, really want to believe that you can make streetlights turn off just by walking under them, the evidence we do have is pointing toward it just being an occasionally blinking streetlight and good timing. It’s also confirmation bias in that you’re seeing what you want to see and that affects your “results”. No one has yet created a substantial, well-crafted study that even remotely suggests a person can affect the electrical flow to a light bulb (other than by physically tampering with the wires, unscrewing the bulb or turning off the power.) A group of people walking back and forth under a streetlight does not a solid experiment make.

Yet paganism is full to the brim with people claiming they can do similarly supernatural things. Look at the proliferation of spells that claim to be able to aid in healing, take away curses, or even affect political outcomes. That’s saying that “If I burn this candle or bury this herbal sachet or say these words over here, that thing or person or situation wayyyy over there will be directly affected in the way I want it to.” Sure, your process was more elaborate than just walking in proximity of your target, but you have no more evidence of causation than that other guy. And look at how many pagans claim that a simple spell is every bit as effective as a complicated one. Doesn’t it follow, then, that the simplest spell–walking under the light with the intent of making it blink off–has every bit the chance of working as something more complex?

Why We Treat Science Differently

But that’s getting away from the point. I think we don’t want to be sticklers for science in the same way that we’re sticklers for history because we don’t want our sacred cows slaughtered. Our beliefs can still hold up when we question historical inaccuracies because many modern pagan beliefs are based in history, and better history means better justification for our beliefs because “our ancestors believed it!”

But many of our beliefs are also based in pseudoscience, as well as bad interpretations of good science (like the misapplication of quantum anything to trying to prove magick is objectively real). When we start picking apart the scientific inaccuracies in our paths, it feels threatening and uncomfortable. If you feel a sense of control because you literally believe that a spell you cast will change a situation you’re anxious about, then you don’t want to question the efficacy of that act because you feel you’ve lost control again. If your connection to nature is primarily through thinking the local animals show up in your yard because you have special animal-attracting energy, the fact that they’re more likely just looking for food, shelter, and other normal animal things makes you feel less inherently connected. So instead of focusing on aligning our paths more closely with scientific research as well as historical research, we instead cling tightly to justifications.

The Rewards of Accuracy

I think that pressing for more historical accuracy has made paganism stronger as a whole, both as individuals and as a community. We’ve spent decades working to be taken more seriously as a religious group, sometimes to gain big steps forward like equal recognition for our deceased military pagans, other times to just be able to mention our religion without being laughed at. Those who want to emphasize to non-pagans that our paths have historical precedent and long-time relevance have more resources to do so. There are other benefits: Those who want to emulate the ways of pre-Christian religions have more material to work with. And history offers more depth to explore; your interest in a particular ancient spiritual path can extend out into knowing more about the culture, people and landscape that that path developed in. If you’re creating a new path for the 21st century, you have more inspiration to work with when you see what’s worked for pagan religions in both the distant and recent past.

Science has a lot to offer us as well. As a naturalist pagan–and a pagan naturalist–my path is deepened, and I find greater meaning, the more I learn about and experience the non-human natural world. I don’t need to believe the blacktail deer outside my studio are there because they have some special message for me. It’s enough that I can observe them quietly from the window as they go about their lives, our paths intersecting by proximity. I do not need to drink water from their hoofprints to attempt to gain shapeshifting powers; I can imagine a bit of what it is to be them when I follow their trails through the pines and see the places that are important to them. And that makes me even more invested in protecting their fragile ecosystem; my path urges me to give back to nature.

When pagans step out of the narrow confines of symbolism, and act as though nature is sacred because we know how threatened it is through the science of ecology, not only do we deepen our connections to nature, but we also show the rest of the world that we walk our talk. It’s just one way in which we demonstrate that, as with our historical accuracy, we’re also interested in scientific accuracy, rather than denying or ignoring facts in favor of our own spiritual self-satisfaction. And rather than getting entangled in self-centered interpretations of nature that elevate us as the special beings deserving of nature’s messages, a more scientific approach to paganism humbles us and reminds us that we are just one tiny part of a vast, beautiful, unimaginably complex world full of natural wonders that science can help us better explore and understand.

Conclusion

As always, I’m not saying don’t have beliefs. Beliefs have plenty of good effects, from strengthening social bonds to bringing us comfort when things go haywire to helping us make some subjective sense of the world through storytelling and mythos. UPG can be a really valuable tool in giving us a place to put the things we believe that don’t fit into known historical research, and I think we need to extend it to hold beliefs that go outside known scientific evidence, too. So keep working your spells and your rituals, and keep working with the deities and spirits that you hold dear. If you derive personal meaning by feeling that the crows are nearby because of some spiritually significant reason and it improves your life, don’t let go of that, so long as you also accept that the crows are just crows doing crow things.

But we also need to be able to make use of critical thinking skills and suss out areas where we’re factually wrong, no matter how we may personally feel about the matter. That way, as with history, we’re able to clearly say “This is the portion of my belief system that matches up with known facts, and this part over here is more personal.” We’ve learned to be skeptical of the claims of people who say that historians are wrong and they have the REAL history; we should be able to do the same for those who claim to know better than thousands of scientists.

What I am also asking you to do is really question your beliefs, their foundations, and where they intersect with and diverge from science (and history, while we’re at it.) If you have a belief that runs directly counter to known facts and you feel it has to be every bit as real as science or history, ask yourself why. What would happen if you allowed that belief to be UPG, or personal mythology? What would happen if you let it go entirely? What would you have left, and what value does it have?

I can’t say where this process of questioning will take you, whether you’ll let go of your beliefs, or recategorize their place in your life, or just cling to them more tightly. Every person’s path winds in its own direction. But just as we have questioned our historical inaccuracies and come out the better for it, I think that as individuals and as a community we can benefit from really questioning scientific inaccuracies in the same way. Won’t you join me in this effort?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider picking up a copy of one of my books, which blend a naturalist’s approach to the world with pagan meaning and mythology–Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up is especially relevant!

#pagan #paganism #UPG #science #Wicca #mine

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janicefosse · 7 years

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Writing Lives: Mica Scotti Kole

I attended the Chicago Writers Conference in 2015. It was my first conference ever, and I was both excited and terrified. Not being a particularly social person, the idea of spending three days mingling with and talking to total strangers with no familiar friends or my husband to hide behind was almost enough to prevent me from attending the conference. But I was determined to enter the writing world, and so I stepped boldly into an unfamiliar bar in downtown Chicago on Friday night for the first mixer of the conference.

Throwing caution to the wind (and ignoring the gurgles of terror in my stomach), I walked up to the first friendly face I saw and said hello. That face belonged to the fantastic Mica Scotti Kole, and I am so glad that I was able to overcome my fears and meet such a fantastic person.

If you don’t know Mica, you’re missing not only a super cool person and a talented writer, but also an invaluable resource for other writers. She is the face behind Free Writing Events, aka @Writevent on Twitter, the clearinghouse for all free writing events on the Internet. Her website has not only the same calendar of free writing events, but also a plethora of other writing resources, from agent lists to conference recaps, writing advice, and more.

She is also the founder of Beta Frank, the “super-affordable editing service where the author sets the price and duration of the services – not the editor.” I had her go over my manuscript before I began querying and now I have an agent. Her invaluable insights and in-depth notes were instrumental in getting my book into its best possible shape, and I would recommend her to anyone looking for a high quality editor (she should really be charging at least triple what she charges – just saying). I decided to kick off my interview series with a writer, editor, and person that I admire and I’m proud to call friend. So, without any further ado, here is my interview with Mica.

The fabulous Mica Scotti Kole!

JF: Tell us how you got started in writing - what inspired you early on, what inspires you today, etc.

MK: When I was little, I used to play with Duplos - like giant Legos with animals - and write stories about the animals' adventures. I just unearthed one of these "books" recently while unpacking for a new house. The animals in my "Miracle Zoo" made hover-cars out of coconut juice. I'm pretty sure I was doomed to write fantasy from the very beginning.

JF: How did you become the queen of writing events?

MK: Aw, thanks! Well, when I first started Twitter, I discovered hashtag games like #1linewed and events like #PitMad, which were fun writing challenges and incredible networking opportunities that I had never heard of before... meaning that piles of other writers had never heard of them, either. I saw a need, and I started filling it, and the response was so stellar that I just kept going, widening my promotions to any events that were free and useful for writers. I'm highly organizational, so the resulting @writevent turned out to be pretty cool.

JF: Name one book that has influenced you in life, as a writer, etc.

MK: I always say The Golden Compass. I remember walking into a giant library, having no idea what to do, and asking a librarian. She gave me that book of the thousands available, and I was sold on fantasy forever... the accompanying His Dark Materials trilogy has it all: diversity, religious questioning, talking animals, multiple dimensions, death, and irreconcilable heartbreak. The Golden Compass taught me that an imaginary world doesn't need to be contained. It can be as big as you want it to be. I dislike writing contemporary to this day!

JF: What is your daily writing routine like? Do you have any particular rituals, must-haves, etc?

MK: I'm one of those one-track-mind people. I'll kick out 20,000 words in a few days, then veer off into another project and forget to write for a week. But my daily ritual involves cereal, loose-leaf black tea, and consuming some type of media: books, anime, or often the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. It takes me an hour at least to get through this ritual because that's how long it takes me to finish my tea (yes, it gets cold). Then I open my laptop, pull up Word, and dive in.

JF: How much research do you do for a writing project?

MK: None during the first draft, except when naming characters or the occasional "What type of feather is at the tip of the wing?" question. I do most of my research in revisions, with a special eye for the diversity-related research. But I do have an aversion to general research due to a decade of writing all A+ papers in every English class ever. I think some part of me believes I've paid my dues. That is not a good thing, lol.

JF: Are you a planner, a pantser, or a plantster?

MK: Depends on the project, but I think that inevitably we all become plantsters in the end - a hybrid. I'll either outline a book and end up down a rabbit hole, or I'll run down a rabbit hole and end up plotting my way out. I leaned primarily toward plotting early on, though, and I do recommend that. Plotting gives you a feel for pacing and structure that pantsing doesn't. You can learn a great deal about writing from plotting, but pantsing mostly just teaches you how to revise!

JF: You’ve written characters from underrepresented groups - please elaborate on the importance of that and what challenges you’ve faced writing these characters.

MK: I could say SO MUCH about this, but will try to limit myself. To start: writing diverse characters terrifies me. So many authors, either white/cis/nonreligious like myself or themselves diverse, have faced incredible vitriol for trying to write diverse characters. The fear that trying to elevate other voices might actually ruin my career - and even my life - is real. The fact is that mistakes will be made if one writes diversity, and writers will be hated for writing diversity no matter what they do. You can't please everyone, and you can only do your best. That said, one's "best" must involve sensitivity readers, research, and humility. Frankly I have said and done insensitive things without any idea I was doing it - and to learn my own failings and misconceptions, and have to apologize, is both painful and important. In addition, #ownvoices books must be elevated above non-#ownvoices books. I cannot possibly write about a transgender woman the way a transgender woman can write about herself, and I need to recognize that. All that said, despite the hate campaigns and the social justice warriors/bullies and all the other risks, if white/cis writers don't at least try for the most basic of inclusion, then our literature will be whitewashed. And white is the most boring color.

JF: What would you suggest as an essential bit of reading for aspiring writers?

MK: The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho will inspire you to chase what matters. This is my favorite book, and no, it's not a book that tells you how to write. For better or worse, I don't believe those kinds of books have ever helped me personally. Although if you're fresh to the writing scene, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is a must-read, and absolutely hilarious to boot. She'll warn you about all those things you need warnings for...

JF: What is the most useful writing advice you’ve ever received? The most destructive?

MK: Useful? To structure according to the Hero's Journey (or the 3-Act Structure, whatever works). This is such a game-changer and has helped me write better first drafts and get a keener eye for story... although, as I said, over time plotting may become more instinctive. And the most destructive advice, for me, was specific advice from an agent on how to redo my opening. The advice itself wasn't bad, but taking her word as gospel caused my opening to founder for ages. To that end, I'd advise second opinions if a change doesn't sound like it would work for you... remember, you know your book better than anyone else! But do pay attention if the second opinion matches up!

JF: The publishing world is a strange one right now - what do you see for the future of publishing in your genre?

MK: I see more diversity. They're afraid, now, to take these books on... but those that have succeeded, have done so very well. And as much as people love the same old tropes, a blurb about a police shooting or a Muslim teen catches the eye and sets the book apart more than "oh look, another clumsy female protagonist in a love triangle." Publishers want a hook, and that's the key: do you have a hook? I also see a shift toward YA over adult books in most genres. Virtual Reality storytelling isn't too far off, either.

JF: What do you suck at?

MK: Humor. At least, putting humor into things. I lean toward dark stories, and I need to work on the comic relief. I also struggle with getting the reader to connect to the main character early on. I work much harder on voice than I used to, and it still seems like it isn't working - but I have improved, and will continue to do so. Like Lisa Scottoline said about writing, "You never hit your stride."

Check out Mica on Twitter: @MicaScottiKole

Be sure to follow Free Writing Events: @Writevent

Mica Scotti Kole’s website: Micascottikole.com

Beta Frank Editing Services: Beta Frank

via Blogger http://ift.tt/2AM0i57

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largando · 7 years

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EMO_OSR_AfterDeath

Header: </style><a style="font-family:arial; font-weight:normal" >Death is only the Beginning<br><br>Dying really sucks most of the time. In some genres real death is rare like with superheroes. Modern espionage agent probably not. In Cthulhu, if you're lucky you just die in ignorance. Being resurrected in Cthulhu is not so great. Fantasy and mythology have stranger options and D&D and RuneQuest have always had a few direct options. I could envision a party TPK where they awake in underworld and fight their way back to the land of the living and restore their own lives, which is pretty legendary stuff.<br><br>When you are killed, hopefully your chums will recover your body and take it to the church for <i>raise dead</i> or at least a sanctified burial in a ghoul/necromancer-free graveyard.<br><br>Sometimes this does not happen and the party leaves your corpse in a stinking dungeon. Imagine finding fallen friends body in a dungeon a few days later, the joy!<br><br>You may think being undead and your soul being in heaven presents a difficulty but Egyptians and Tibetans have elaborate theologies of souls where different parts do different things after death.<br><br>from Elfmaids and Octopi<br></a><a style="font-family:arial; font-weight:normal; font-size:75%"><br>elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2013/09/death-is-only-begining-part-one.html<br>elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2013/09/death-is-only-begining-part-two.html</a><hr>

use: common/nbos/Tools.ipt

prompt: Show me: {What price doth the reaper charge?|What price does the healer pay?|What happens to your soul on death?|A funny thing happened to my corpse|What price is your life?} What price doth the reaper charge? prompt: Soul happenings modifier {|-9|-8|-7|-6|-5|-4|-3|-2|-1|0|+1|+2|+3|+4|+5|+6|+7|+8|+9|+10|+11|+12|+13|+14|+15|+16|+17|+18|+19|+20|+21|+22|+23|+24|+25|+26|+27|+28|+29|+30|+31|+32|+33|+34|+35|+36|+37|+38|+39|+40} 0

;table: x ;a--{mod==10}[@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, yes, 0]\n\n& ;b--{mod==10}[@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, no, 0]\n\n& ;c--{mod==10}[@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, yes, -50]\n\n& ;d--{mod==10}[@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, no, -50]\n\n& ;e--{mod==10}[@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, yes, 50]\n\n& ;f--{mod==-40}[@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, yes, 0]\n\n& ;g--{mod==-40}[@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, yes, -50]

set: judging=no

table: Start <style>ul \{margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;}</style>& [when]{rep}=1[do]{showdesc=='yes'}{showtitle=='yes'}[end]& {choice=='[@GetInitials with {$prompt1}]'}& {mod=='{$prompt2}'}& [#{choice} ChooseTable]

table: ChooseTable type: dictionary WPDTRC:[@ReaperPrice] WPDTHP:[@HealerPays] WHTYSOD:[@SoulAfterDeath] AFTHTMC:[@CorpseHappenings] WPIYL:[@HealerPrice]

table: ReaperPrice [when]{rep}=1[do]& Resurrection for me is the ultimate; it restores life for the long dead and even the undead. But raising the dead has a cost. I've seen a few different versions in play but possibly different cults, relics, or machines could have varied side effects. Also make them age 1d4 years if they fail a CON roll.<hr><br>& [end]& [@ReaperPrice2]

table: ReaperPrice2 Muscles atrophy and seize up - lose a STR point Nerves and reflexes dulled - lose a DEX point Lose a CON point (finite number times for most, might lose HP) Not all there anymore, brain damaged - lose an INT point Part of inner self gone - Lose a WIS point Grow darker inside and aged - lose a CHA point Lose a level (not usable on zero level types like commoners or children) Lose 1d4 HP permanently (might kill the weak all over again) Otherworldly beings (demons?) will cause mischief every game Given a Quest by the power source Given a curse by the healer's power source (possibly a taboo thing) Shift alignment one step towards the healer. If already equal, reroll.

table: HealerPays [when]{rep}=1[do]& Just to make life harder, make the priest feel some reason to not raise the dead. Perhaps when you raise an idiot or enemy just to question them or for some trivium the god gets mad. An Item with a cost like this could be handy.<hr><br>& [end]& [@HealerPays2]

table: HealerPays2 Must battle the dead spirit that tries to resist life Must fight the spirits or demon that took the spirit to the beyond Rebuked by god, given an atonement Quest Responsible for raised person's conduct and behavior Priest is rendered unclean and needs purification from peer Lose a year of your own life Cannot raise the same person more than once Take 1d3 damage per level of the raised person Halves STRl, for a duration of one hour for each level of the raised person Lose one level, for a duration of one hour for each level of the raised person In a coma, prayer or ritual, lasting of one hour for each level of the raised person, required [#{1d11} ReaperPrice2]

table: SoulAfterDeath [when]{rep}=1[do]& <style>table \{border-collapse: collapse;\}tr \{border-bottom: 1px solid black;\}</style>& You can apply the following modifiers with the "Soul happenings modifier" prompt:\n\n& <table><col width="50"><col width="1000">& <tr><td>+1</td><td>per 2 levels, or per 1 level if priest</td></tr>& <tr><td>+1-3</td><td>for each matching alignment step\n(eg each part of compound alignment like lawful evil)</td></tr>& <tr style="border-bottom: none;"><td>-1-3</td><td>if total jerk or mismatched alignment step</td></tr>& </table>\n& You could also roll here for what a raised character experienced while dead<hr><br>& [end]& [@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, yes, 0]

table: GetRoll {oldTableName=='{tableName}'}& {oldPct=='{Pct}'}& {tableName=='{$1}'}& {useMod=='{$2}'}& {Pct=='{$3}'}& {thismod==mod}& ;{tableName} {useMod} {Pct}\n& [when not]{usemod}=yes[do]{thismod==0}[end]& {ts=='[@RevisedTableSize with 1, {tableName}]'}{newTS==ts}& [when]{Pct}<0[do]{newTS==floor({{ts}*{Pct}*-1/100})}[end]& [when]{Pct}>0[do]{newTS==floor({{ts}*{Pct}/100})}{newTS=='{newTS}+{ts-newTS}'}[end]& {roll==1d{newTS}+thismod}& ;ts{ts} newTS{newTS} mod{mod} thismod{thismod} {roll} & [when]{roll}<1[do]{roll==1}[end]& [when]{roll}>{ts}[do]{roll=={ts}}[end]& ;{newTS} {tableName}: {roll}\n& [#{roll} {tableName}]& {tableName=='{oldTableName}'}& {Pct=='{oldPct}'}&

table: RevisedTableSize {tname=='{$2}'}& [when]{{tname}_Size}[do]{{tname}_Size}& [else][@TableSize with 1, {tableName}][end]

table: SoulAfterDeath2 Absorbed into the bosom of chaos Slowly digested, helpless, in the belly of an outer god for aeons In the underworld, fused into a huge mass of screaming tortured souls Turned into a [|tool|weapon] used by beings of evil to inflict suffering Turned into a helpless pool of liquid filth that demons bathe in Turned into a wailing, starving ghost begging for dung and dust to eat Turned into a wandering shade, mad with loneliness Local ghost lord claims dominion over you and sets you to haunt a location Turned into an invisible speechless phantom, wandering the world, seeing all, missing out on in life Bullied and beaten by other spirits in spiritworld In the underworld, become a human-faced worm being tortured in the pit In the underworld become an imp, bullied and enslaved by greater powers In the underworld become a small familiar monster feeding from the scraps of others In the underworld become a minor devil or demon in army waging eternal pointless war Reborn again and again as cattle of the underworld and butchered daily Tortured constantly by devils in a pit with pitchforks Tortured constantly by toad devils molesting you in every way Tortured by [|imps|worms] living inside you and biting you constantly Tortured constantly by devils boiling you in [|oil|blood|sulphur|water|tears] Tortured constantly by devils using mockeries of your vices Tortured constantly by devils with illusions and temptations Tortured constantly by devils using dungeon torture equiptment Tortured constantly by devils with execution and dismemberment daily Tortured constantly by devil lord as his special plaything and slave Tortured constantly by devils locking you in dungeon madhouse Demons of darkness torment you in an eternal void of dispair Demons of putrescence swim around you in a quagmire of vomit and excrement Demons of [|fire|ice] strip your body of flesh then rebuild you daily Demon succubi/incubi abuse you and raise your demon spawn to torment you Demons hurl you into the great abyss of madness and chaos Servitors of the outer gods use you as fuel for a machine in agonizing process Servitors of the outer gods dine on you alive and refine your pain into rare wines Servitors of the outer gods warp your spirit into a monster then send you back to the world Servitors of the outer gods use you to feed their parasitic offspring in a nest Servitors of the outer gods experiment on you in multidimensional space Trapped in tavern of lost souls with other miserable adventurers and drunks Trapped in city of despair on the bottom social rung in a city of the dead Trapped in the citadel of a great underworld lord as a bottom-rank house servant Trapped in the stable of an underworld being as a mount, ridden hard Trapped as a hunting beast and used to hunt wayward souls, led by hunt master Sent as a [|spirit|devil] to claim the souls of mortals Become a formless spirit in a ethereal infinity Trapped like an insect in amber, frozen in a block of pure Law but maddeningly aware Placed in a queue for processing in a formless void Trapped in a formless void to be judged at the end of the world 20:[@GetRoll with Reincarnation, yes, 0] 5:[@Judgement] 10:[@GetRoll with Paradise, yes, 0] 5:[@GetRoll with GodHalls, yes, 0] Given a job in celestial bureaucracy in the underworld Given a job in celestial bureaucracy monitoring a natural process on earth Given a job in celestial bureaucracy under the sea in the court of a sea lord Given a job in celestial bureaucracy monitoring adventurers on earth Given a job in celestial bureaucracy in the heavens, among the stars 5:[@Offer] Gods affronted by your death, return as undead Gods affronted by your death, return in a new body Gods affronted by your death, return in the body of a different species Gods affronted by your death, not part of their plan, return to the land of the living Apotheosis - gods make an example of you for better or worse; become a minor divine being

table: Offer [when]{judging}=yes& [do][#{roll[|+|-]5} SoulAfterDeath2]& [else]{judging=='yes'}[@Offer2]& [end]

table: Offer2 Offered a chance to pass to paradise if an obstacle is overcome: [@OfferResults] Offered a chance at life if a quest on earth is fulfilled Offered a chance at paradise if a quest on earth is fulfilled: [@OfferResults] Offered a choice:<ul><li>Return reincarnated (DM: [@Reincarnation >> lower]), or<li>[@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, no, 20]</ul> Offered a choice:<ul><li>Reincarnation-free annihilation, or<li>Be reincarnated (DM: [@Reincarnation >> lower])</ul>

table: OfferResults <ul>& <li>If you succeed, [@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, no, 20 >> lower]& <li>If you fail, [@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, no, -50 >> lower]& </ul>& {judging=='no'}

table: Judgement [when]{judging}=yes& [do][#{roll[|+|-]5} SoulAfterDeath2]& [else]{judging=='yes'}[@Judgement2]& [end]

table: Judgement2 1:Judgement from the first ancestor: [@JudgementResults] 1:Judgement from ferryman: [@JudgementResults] 1:Judgement from the reaper: [@JudgementResults] 1:Judgement from lord of dead: [@JudgementResults] 1:Judgement from the great beast of the pit: [@JudgementResults]

table: JudgementResults <ul>& <li>If positive, [@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, no, 50 >> lower]& <li>If negative, [@GetRoll with SoulAfterDeath2, no, -50 >> lower]& </ul>& {judging=='no'}

table: GodHalls 20:Admitted to the halls of the gods to be their plaything and object of amusement 20:Admitted to the halls of the gods, get to be a servant of a god 20:Admitted to the halls of the gods, get to care for the pets of the gods 20:Admitted to the halls of the gods, get to be a god's champion in games and contests 20:Admitted to the halls of the gods, shrines on earth bear your name

table: Paradise 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, put in army for eternal cosmic war 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, put in administrative position 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, get to be a messenger for a divine being 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, get to study and train eternally 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, get to feast and party eternally 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, live a happy family life forever 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, where a divine being takes you for a lover 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, where divine lovers attend your need 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, see friends and family 10:Admitted to a minor paradise of your religion, become divine being

table: Reincarnation 5:Reincarnated as a [|tiny creature|bug] 5:Reincarnated as a small creature 5:Reincarnated as a plant 5:Reincarnated as a [|monster|goblinoid] 5:Reincarnated as a medium farm animal 5:Reincarnated as a medium wild animal 5:Reincarnated as a large animal 5:Reincarnated as a huge animal 5:Reincarnated as a peasant 5:Reincarnated as a well pampered pet 5:Reincarnated into the body of an adult in great crisis 5:Reincarnated as an elemental being 5:Reincarnated as one of a minor outer plane race, which one depends on alignment 5:Reincarnated as anewborn [|elf|dwarf|gnome] 5:Reincarnated as a monk 5:Reincarnated as a [|nymph|satyr|nature spirit of the forest] 5:Reincarnated as a [|nymph|mermaid|nature spirit of water] 5:Reincarnated as a member of the aristocracy 5:Reincarnated as a minor divinity, living a life of otherworldly pleasure for aeons

table: CorpseHappenings [when]{rep}=1[do]& Mostly bodies rot or are eaten but this could be handy alternative if abandoned in a dungeon for any period. Roll again if you think ending not enough or definite.<hr><br>& [end]& [@CorpseHappenings2]

table: CorpseHappenings2 Infected by horrible parasitic worms Infected by rot grubs Infected by flesh boring snakes Infected by kyuss grubs Infected by giant maggots Dragged into lair by giant invertebrate for food Dragged into lair by giant invertebrate to feed young Covered in cocoon and dessicated by giant arachnid Covered in cocoon and dessicated by giant arachnid Dessicated and used as bait by giant invertebrate Eaten by humanoids, scraps left Gnawed on by humanoids, tastiest bits missing Mutilated for fun and collectibles by humanoids Head collected by humanoids or monster Humanoids have corpse on a spit, being roasted Flesh removed in gory heap, skeleton animated Become a zombie Become a ghoul Become a wight Become a shadow Become a phantom or haunt Become a angry spirit seeking body to possess for vengeance Become a poltergeist Become a greater undead type for inept disguise or ritual Parts used in a flesh golem or other construct Humanoids turn into sausages and cured meats Humanoids skin and make into human suit Humanoids use for bizarre puppet show to entertain kids Humanoids use as bait to catch monsters Humanoids use to feed monstrous pets Necromancer students abuse body for perverted fun Necromancer students loot certain organs or fluids Necromancer students perform public dissection Necromancer students turn into revolting tools, equipment or instruments Necromancer students turn into hideous artwork Gnawed by rodents Gnawed by dogs or wolves Gnawed by lion or bear or similar creature Gnawed by gremlins or goblins or kobolds Gnawed by wildcat or hyena Pecked by ravens, crows or dungeon chickens Torn apart by vultures or giant bats Eaten by ghouls Occupied by evil spirit on a mission Eaten and replaced by mimic Dissolved by gelatinous monster Covered in toxic mould with dangerous spores Infected with green slime Covered in giant shrieking fungi Covered in giant explosive fungi Covered in chaos mushrooms that cause mutations Covered in fungus that turns into mushroom zombie Covered in poison fungus Covered in hallucinogenic fungus (possibly magic visions or crazy illusions) Covered in magic fungus gives spirit sight, healing or other effect Humanoids flay skin and turn into throw rug or nail to wall Humanoids crucify, mutilate and cover in graffiti as warning Humanoids cut off head and stick on pole or spear as warning, roll again for rest Humanoids burn body and scatter ashes Humanoids dismember body in series of party games Buried in ditch and looted by other adventurers or demihumans Buried with full honours and most stuff by other adventurers or demihumans Taken to nearby settlement by adventurers or demihumans Looted and dismembered by adventurers or demihumans who fear undead Taken and dumped by roadside by adventurers or demihumans Found by clergy who bury in sanctified location Head or other part removed to claim a bounty or reward from someone Cremated by clergy to prevent rising as undead Found by clergy, beheaded, staked and buried under rock or sealed crypt Found by peasants chucked in lime pit Found by weirdo taxidermist (possibly not human) Turned into zombie for use as slave or in sweatshop Found by maniac who chucks in a well Thrown in river or sea, roll again Thrown in river or sea, eaten by fishes Thrown into peatbog as sacrifice Thrown into sea or lake or well as sacrifice Thrown into pit with monster as sacrifice Thrown into ghoul pit as sacrifice Exchanged with local humans for monster or humanoid bodies for burial Crushed into bone meal for ogres bread, flesh scraps eaten Thrown in mass grave with other victims Necromancer keeps to study decay Thrown in acid pit Erected in standing position with weapons as grisly guardian (possibly undead) Cultists collect and perform ritual to feed soul to otherworld masters Dismembered and sold as fake relics Dismembered and sold in pies or sausages or cured meat Turned into jerky for monster rations Mummified or Embalmed for practice or teaching by humans or monsters But in a sack for later collection Bricked up or put under foundations for ritual Taken to local morgue to await collection Cooked in a big pot for monsters dinner Taken to have spirit questioned by some spell casters Raised by monsters or villains so they can torture and question you Raised by demihumans - given quest Raised by clergy - given quest Resurrected by clergy - given quest Resurrected by divine beings - given quest

table: HealerPrice [when]{rep}=1[do]& When a priest or god return you to life they dont just do it to be nice. Most demand some price if not from the recently deceased then from whoever partitioned them for help. Some may not suit some faith so reroll till something more appropriate if DM deems it.<hr><br>& [end]& [@HealerPrice2]

table: HealerPrice2 Convert to the faith of the god if not already a member (if so re-roll) Donate 10% of everything you make, for life Donate 10,000 gp Donate 100,000 gp Donate 1,000,000 gp Reclaim a lost [|temple|shrine] Find a lost [|priest|missionary] Find holy scriptures Find a holy relic Find a holy artifact Find the remains of holy person Free an imprisoned holy person Free an imprisoned outer planar servant of god Free a petty god ally of the faith Slay an enemy of the faith Recover stolen goods of the temple Slay a traitor to the church Burn a rival church Build a temple in a new territory Guard a shrine from harm for one year Cleanse the local [|village|graveyard] of meanacing undead Guard worshipers on pilgrimage Guard missionaries in new lands Rescue a holy person from imprisonment Cleanse a town of a vice frowned on by the religion Accept a [|brand|tattoo] of the god on your [|face|hand] for life Abstain from an action or vice frowned on by the religion Donate land to church Spend a year as a hermit in prayer Make peace with a traditional enemy Must devote spare time to charitable acts and deeds Must concvrt 100 persons to the faith Must convert 1000 persons to the faith Every monster you kill, do so in name of the god in public Must always protect members of the faith Dedicate souls of the slain to the god Must marry a member of church Must raise your children as church members Give one of your children to the church Go on a crusade killing enemies of the faith until released from service by the church Explore and find new lands for missionaries Kill monsters that will not convert to the faith Find long lost outpost of the faith Preach to carry faith into the hearts of nonbelievers Reclaim a holy site [|occupied|built on] by another faith Commemorate holy days with substantial feasts, donations and charity Sponsor yearly [|missionaries|pilgrims], [|1000gp if possible|10% total wealth] Scourge self with flagellation, scarification and self-harm Free slaves whenever possible and insist they adopt the faith Offer enemies a choice to convert or die in battle

0 notes