#it’s a very important piece of snail lore

[buggysmalls69]

Well I'd best explain myself.

Hey. It's milk ✌️

If you know me from being moots elsewhere.. Hi! This is my special interest blog. A real rebloggy blog. For reblogging. And talking about my interests if I feel like it!

Current interests:

In no particular order

- Figures ✨

I collect figures. I have like well over 300 at this point. I don't keep track anymore and this one is slowly but surely subsiding. I will always adore figures and collecting them though. My figures make my room a safe place for my senses. They're all so pretty 💖

- Pokémon 🌈

Oh my god an autistic person who likes Pokémon it's a miracle. Yeah. I started playing Pokémon when I was 3, so 18 years going strong. I originally preferred the toys and cards, but heart gold and soul silver converted me and then I became a mega fan. Tracking releases, learning lore, creating fanart. Mind you I was like 7. There's a deviantart account out there from when I was 6? and yeah that shit Sure Is (you can try and find it I don't really care anymore jfjsjfjg). Anyway!!! Faves are cleffa, whimsicott, blaziken, galvantula, giratina, mimikyu and Registeel. Faves by proxy include lapras, torkoal, lilligant, gengar, rayquaza, mudkip and ledyba. Fave humans are Iono, Caitlyn, Lillie (LillieMoon 💖💖💖), Ingo and Emmet, Allister, N, Erika and Elesa. Gen 5 is currently my favourite but I have played gen 5 a LOT the past few years and a lot of my faves are gen 5. I attended both the Pokémon center pop up in London in 2018, and EUIC 2024 in London, also for the Pokémon center lmao. I have a cleffa tattoo also!!! Planning on getting a large majority of my faves tattooed at some point.

- Bugs 🐛

Woo big surprise it/they user enjoys bugs. My favourites are moths, exact favourites being hummingbird hawk moths and Madagascan sunset moths. Also a huge fan of weevils, worms, snails, beetles, bees and butterflies! I hope to have a butterfly collection one day in frames :3

Hatsune Miku.

- One piece ☠️

Pretty new one but yeah, I'm caught up so I spend a LOT of time thinking about them damn pirates. Faves in no order are Zoro, Luffy, Usopp, Sanji, Robin, Perona, Mihawk, Law, Corazon, Ace, Yamato, Katakuri, Crocodile, Buggy, Doflamingo, Lucci, Okiku, and Big Mom.

- No but for reals Miku 🎧

Fun fact! I've been a Miku fan since 2010. That's 14 years baby!! My first vocaloid songs that I remember hearing are nyan cat (duh), world is mine, Romeo and Cinderella, butterfly on your right shoulder, gugurekasu, and my all time fave, corruption garden. Absolutely underrated banger. This should be a general vocaloid section really because my favourite cryptonloids are Kaito, Luka and Miku and then my favourite non cryptonloids are Meika Mikoto, Lily, Nekomura Iroha, PoUta, Teto and Luo Tianyi! My favourite producers are PinocchioP, Neru, Giga, Kira, Iroha(sasuki) and OwataP!

I went to Miku expo in London 2018, 2020 and I am going in 2024!!! A selection from my personal wishlist for London 2024 setlist :

Paradichlorobenzene - OwataP 💛

Kokoro - Toraboruta 🧡

Kunoichi Demo Koi ga Shitai - MikitoP 🩵🧡

Digital Girl - Kira 🩵

Break it, Break it! - E.L.V.N ❤️

Non Breath Oblige - PinnochioP 🩵

Erase or Zero - crystalP 💛💙

-Minecraft 🌲

Yeah yeah you can laugh all you want. I've been consuming Minecraft since it came out, and I've played it for 10 whole years. I got pc edition 5 years ago now (INSANE). I love Minecraft. I tend to play just random mods shoved in a folder, but I do play with friends sometimes!!! If anyone ever wants to play please tell me I will kiss you.

NON SPECIAL INTERESTS BUT VERY IMPORTANT TO MY IDENTITY

-Dinosaurs (since I was like 4)

-Sanrio (as long as I can remember)

-Animals

-Anime in general

-Art (lotta A's huh)

-Shitty adult cartoons (south park, family guy, American dad, I have encyclopedic knowledge of all 3 and I can recall every episode. I also know family guy season 4 word for word :3)

-Sitcoms (Actually enjoy: Two and a half men, modern family, young Sheldon kinda, does house count? It should. Encyclopedic knowledge: Big Bang Theory, Two and a half men, Frasier, Friends)

THE "SOMETIMES" SPECIAL INTEREST

- Five Nights at Freddys 🐻

I know, I'm so cool. This game has had its dirty grip on me since it came out. Basically I hate it but every time a new game comes out I can't help but go on a self destructive info absorb and I watch like 6 hour video essays on the new lore and implications. It's fun I like fnaf silly Creachure. My fave is the puppet because I'm non binary haha.

-UNDERTALE ❤️

I pretty much tick all the boxes for middle school anxiety huh. Yeah undertale is a beautiful masterpiece and every few years I'll have a mega "aaaaa undertale" phase where I'll just do nothing but play and consume undertale content. I've played the game through at least like 10 times? A few of each ending. I'm still really bad at sans fight.

-Animal Crossing 🐾

I think everyone should have this one. Occasionally I'll just be like "hm being an adult in the real world isn't really what I wanted right now" so I play animal crossing until oops 6 hours passed. I'll then play for about a week before putting it down again. I tend to stick with new horizons, just because it has the best gameplay. Also BUGS heheshhfksjgh. Fave villagers are Lily, Eugene, Beardo, Judy, Merengue, Lolly, Merry and Marina. I also love Flick and Celeste.

Kinning!!

Yeahhh I kin some bitches. Big deal.

- Yamada Ryo

The big one. She's just me for real for real. I love her for realsies. Also um hi bocchi kinnies.

- Rina Tennoji

She's so fucking autistic. I also struggle with expression (fluctuates between under and over!).

- Kokoro Tsurumaki

Genki. I have made it my personal goal to make people happy in recent years and it's really helped my own mental health

- Madoka Kaname

😳🩷🖤

- Kirby

Small, Round, Pink, Poyo

- Flandre Scarlet

Tiny Creachure clinging to childhood (with a dash of trauma).

- Kanna Kamui

I just, deep down. I experience friendship the exact way Kanna does. I have no concept of boundaries. I will crawl into your bed at night.

- Stocking

Sweets, hypersexual, kinky, goth, chubby. Me.

- Yamato

Oblivious, love friend so much, bad family relationships.

- Kuromi

*cough cough* *straightens paper* Although Kuromi may look and act tough and punk, she is actually very girly and is attracted to good-looking guys. That is all.

And yeah I think that's pretty much it. Obviously this post will get updated as regularly as it needs it. Hope u enjoy my silly content!!!

[shatteredsnail]

i still stand by the nickelback phase btw

[oscar-isaacs-number-one-bitch]

“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” Movie Review

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the 9th film in the widely beloved Harry Potter universe and the second of its prequels after 2015’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. In this installment, Eddie Redmayne is back as Newt Scamander, a former student of Hogwarts and author of the in-universe textbook which for which the first of these prequel films was titled. In this film, he’s tasked by a young Albus Dumbledore (here played by Jude Law) with going to Paris to find the child Credence (Ezra Miller), who was a problem in the last movie due to his insane and unstable power, because he’s the only one who could conceivably defeat Dumbledore in order to make the wizards rule over humankind forever, a plot all set in motion by Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), who escapes prison and sets out to also find Credence to this end. And if all of that sounds overlong and needlessly convoluted, I’m not even going to begin going into the issue of Credence’s genealogy, a plot point apparently so important, they center the entire reason he could defeat Dumbledore around that very mystery. Oh, and Nagini is here too, I guess.

I enjoyed the first Fantastic Beasts fine enough; it wasn’t exactly the same quality as when the Harry Potter series reached its greatest heights, but I put it about on par with the more subpar entries in that superior franchise. The characters were fun, the lead had conviction, the beasts (though not fantastic) begot a lot of enjoyment, and the additions of Dan Folger and Alison Sudol easily made up the largest highlights of the film. It’s a shame, then, that writer J.K. Rowling has opted to not only entirely abandon any sense of true narrative or plot mechanics, but all but ignore entirely that this movie even needs a story in the first place. The sad thing is, the lack of a general plot progression right up until the very end isn’t even one of the most frustrating things about the movie. What’s truly upsetting is how many opportunities it takes to go out of its own way to show you THIS thing from Harry Potter, and THIS thing from Harry Potter, and THAT name from Harry Potter, until you’re so worn down with Harry Potter references you just wish Rowling had never written the first of these movies.

To get the positives out of the way first, there’s one line that Jacob Kawolski says that actually made me laugh, the performances are all mostly fine still (even though I wrack my brain daily to find out why on God’s green earth Warner Bros is still putting Johnny Depp in anything given that one of their flagship characters movies stars his ex-wife he used to beat, Amber Heard), the visual effects are mostly pretty good…mostly…and David Yates still hasn’t lost touch when it comes to directing a big budget effects blockbuster in terms of how he moves the camera. On the shots where the camera doesn’t move? That’s a different story.

No, that’s it. Those are the only positives I can find to this movie. Luckily they’re positive enough that the film isn’t intolerable, but it only barely avoids being perhaps the worst franchise prequel since X-Men Origins: Wolverine. To even begin to start in on the negatives would nearly constitute having to get up onto a podium in front of every movie theater in America and warn you about how disappointed you’re likely going to be if you have a competent sense of filmmaking mechanics or structure or have ever seen a decent film in your life (and aren’t going to be someone who bends over backwards to praise Rowling’s writing this movie just because she wrote a now-iconic book series a while ago). From the start, the film introduces a minorly interesting idea for this universe and then not only never revisits that old trick again, but essentially makes it the one crime Grindelwald commits for the entire movie, and I’m not exaggerating – “the crimes of Grindelwald” has exactly 0 to do with the actual plot of the film, which (as we’ve discussed) there’s barely any of. And come to think of it, neither do the “fantastic beasts” these films are supposed to be about. There are a total of essentially two (2) new creatures you actually remember that pop up in this installment, and only one of them is an actual creature, whereas the other is a large dragon that’s made of fire but is only the result of a spell, having no physical incarnation in this universe for it to come from or go back to.

This would all be forgivable as a simple mistitling if the plot was at least interesting, but what of the plot there is moves at a snail’s pace while the audience not only has to jump through so many different lore and legend hoops to understand what’s going on (which there’s basically no source for because no books have been written), but is left way too bored to even care that they’re confused about any of it. By the time we actually get to the climax of the movie, Newt and Tina (Katherine Waterson from the last movie) have only just resolved an issue where Tina was mad at him because of a misprinted news article (no, really) and we’re thrown right into an exposition shouting match between all the movie’s important characters. Yes, the first time the movie shows any sort of momentum, right towards the end, it stops cold in its tracks for an overly complicated exposition shouting match between two characters about a backstory to another character that doesn’t end up matter at all.

The largest weakness of this movie, however, is that it abandons its characters and any development they might receive in order to just lay out stuff about the Harry Potter universe for the audience to look at. It’s essentially the Solo of this universe, only Solo did this sort of thing with a lot more style. Sure, retroactively making the series a little more diverse by making Voldemort’s pet snake a Korean woman this whole time is a decent idea in concept I guess, but not once you actually start to parse out the pieces of it or what it represents, not that any of that matters because the character has zero effect on the overall story and is just boring, disposable, and entirely unnecessary. And speaking of things being unnecessary, while I was happy to see him back since he’s the only fun character in either of these movies now, the return of Jacob and Queenie is not only totally random and brushed over in terms of what it would mean (breaking the rules of the last movie) to get there, it’s so bizarrely handled that one wonders what about the actual execution of it made it necessary for them to do it that way.

In fact, all of the characters are worse this time around. Newt used to be charming, but now he’s just a bumbling oaf with no convictions about anything, Tina’s annoying “mister Scamander” routine is back, and Alison Sudol (the best part of the last movie) looks like she dropped some acid right before every single take and they just filmed what happened after. Oh, and did I mention there’s a major twist at the end? Cause there is, and if you’ve been paying attention, it’s gonna piss you off too, because not only is it a complete betrayal of one of the universe’s most beloved characters, it never, not once, comes up in the part of these stories where it would have mattered in even the slightest bit.

Guys, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is bad, but only in the way a big budget blockbuster set in one of the most beloved movie universes of all time can be. Sure, there is one funny line, most of the performances work fine, and there are a few charming moments overall, but that doesn’t make much difference. It will have its defenders I’m sure, just as the Star Wars prequels do, and there are some interesting elements to it, but none of those elements add up to anything compelling, and when Rowling finally does get around to one compelling thing, it doesn’t matter and it betrays a character she wrote! It’s boring, dreary (the whole thing seemingly takes place at night or under cloud cover), it begs you so hard to take it seriously as “the dark one” that you just get annoyed, and it’s so stuffed full of exposition and backstory that doesn’t matter that I’m practically begging them to just stop the Hogwarts express here cause I wanna get off of it. If you’re ever browsing my movie shelf, don’t look for this one, cause it won’t be there. The magic is gone.

I’m giving “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” a 5/10.

[invokingbees]

Bloodborne Lore Ramblings

Second in a series nobody asked for.

SPOILERS AHEAD PLAY BLOODBORNE BLIND

The terms 'dream' and 'nightmare' are found throughout Bloodborne. Such pieces of dialogue as 'You may think it all a mere bad dream...' from the Blood Minister at the beginning, 'A hunter is a hunter even a dream!'spoken by everyone's favourite memetastic lunatic Micolash and 'Dear oh dear, what was it? The beasts? The blood? Or the horrible dream?' spoken by Gehrman before you fight him. There a number of locations, too, referred to with these terms: the Hunter's Dream, the Nightmare of Mensis, the Nightmare Frontier and the Hunter's Nightmare. Such terminology has led to a number of understandings, among which are the interpretations that the terms 'dream' and 'nightmare' are quite literal, and these places actually exist inside someone's, or something's, head, or heads. Some people think the whole damn game was a dream and that we wake up after, I dunno, a night-long bender on Yharnam pungent blood cocktails, in the city streets. I myself don't believe either, and there's a reason why, all to do with physical continuity and a certain central influence.

Plainly, I believe there is a Nightmare, singular, an alien dimension in or comprising wholly Bloodborne's nebulous 'cosmos', broken up into several totally separate, but also continuous layers. As an alien dimension, it needn't obey the laws of our world in way, shape or form. The Nightmare we explore is made up of five (sort of six?) layers, from top to bottom:

Nightmare of Mensis

Nightmare Frontier

Lecture Hall (this is essentially a liminal space connecting to and from Mensis and Frontier)

Fishing Hamlet

Hunter's Nightmare

Hunter's Dream

I believe it likely, out amongst that vast landscape of fog and ocean, there's more Nightmare to be discovered and traversed. The Nightmare Frontier's name implies as such, that it's the edge of the known Nightmare, an unknown, untamed, unshaped wilderness (except for that curious native Nightmare architecture like Amygdala's tower).

Now, you ask, what of the continuity? Why are they in that order? Well, you can see Mensis in the distance in the Frontier, but not vice versa.

You can see the Hamlet's ship masts in the fog of the Frontier.

You can't see the Frontier from the Hamlet, but you know what you can see under the water at the beginning? The Hunter's Nightmare.

To hammer this verticality point even more, just before picking up the Whirligig Saw in the Hunter's Nightmare, a snail-girl straight up falls out of the sky and lands right in front of you, she can even hurt you with the fall.

How more obvious can it get? And tucked away under it all, is a little slice called the Hunter's Dream, from which we 'Awaken Above Aground' everywhere else, Nightmare AND 'waking world', which has led some people, including myself, to wonder just how separate from Yharnam the Nightmare may be. I think there's every possibility that Yharnam and indeed the world itself, might just be another Nightmare layer. It would certainly explain the bizarre nature of the Pthumerian Labyrinths. The Choir were right, 'the sky and cosmos are one', but they left out 'water'. After all, great bodies of water serve as a bulwark guarding sleep, and what does one do when asleep? Dream. Our skies are their oceans, seas and lakes. Our oceans, seas and lakes might very well merely be skies for realms underneath. Evidence exists in the snail-girl, and of course, the hidden Moonside Lake wherein dwells Rom, the Vacuous Spider. We enter it by jumping in a lake, and falling from the sky.

Now, you might ask, why can't the Nightmare BE a Nightmare? Dreams are strange and have strange logic, oceans can be skies! And to this I see where you're coming from, but I disagree. Bloodborne is quite openly and greatly, but tastefully, moreso than most things, influenced by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, codifier if not flat-out creator of the cosmic horror genre. If you're not familiar with him, he invented Cthulhu, the bobble-head, tiki mug, furry slipper symbol of human insignificance on Earth and the greater universe. HPL also wrote crazy ass fantasy stories set in a place we like to call the Dreamlands, another realm where ancient and alien things from cosmic and terrestrial history seem to just...persist. They still exist there somehow. That's a word I like to use for Bloodborne's Nightmare locations and people: persist.

Bloodborne's Nightmare seems fairly influenced by the concept of a Dreamlands, of a strange alien place where there's really weird shit but also our shit, just in a weird form. Interestingly, HPLs Dreamlands aren't really dreams, either. Humans sleep to go there, but other creatures, namely the totally friendly, super cool and loyal Ghouls, do not, they go underground, as evidenced by the part in the epic Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath where the protagonist is traversing a monstrous subterranean city with his Ghoul buddies and realizes, he's getting too close to the surface, which would wake HIM up. The Nightmare, I think, is more or less the same idea – places persist in some form here, old versions of Yharnam, a now abandoned Workshop, lost parts of Byrgenwerth, but its mixed with its own perfectly native and alien landscape, the Nightmare Frontier, to which nothing there has ever belonged here. Although, little bits seemed to have leaked or bled or crossed over in the Forbidden Woods, where I believe the rest of Byrgenwerth used to be and which later became the Nightmare of Mensis. There's a lot of thought that considers, if the Nightmare actually be a dream in a head, such places to be built from memories. But whose memories are of an older Yharnam?

How people get here is a good question. Our method of Nightmare travel is primarily being snatched by an Amygdala and plopped in the Lecture Hall or Hunter's Nightmare, but we too use Micolash's mummy to get the Lecture Hall. Makes one wonder just exactly how the first people explored or viewed the Nightmare, how Micolash came to persist there. Maybe they really did just go to sleep like Carter in Dream-Quest and that's just our natural access point (after all, the Amygdala Express causes Frenzy, it isn't natural at all), maybe they went diving in lakes and oceans and found themselves plummeting through an alien sky. The mystery makes it all the sweeter, I think.

The finer details, such as why these places, at these times, at these locations? Well, it's cosmic horror for a reason. You're not allowed, or simply can't know everything. Nor would you want to.

There's also the small point of the Great Ones who inhabit the Nightmare. Throughout the game and DLC, we experience a victory message every time we defeat a boss: Prey Slaughtered. However, there are three unique instances in which we get a different message: Nightmare Slain. These messages, I believe, are markers of the only time we meet actual true unique Great Ones. That would mean beings like Rom, Amygdala and Ebrietas aren't unique specimens, they're types, individuals of a species. There's a Rom-like entity in Ebrietas' bossroom, the Altar of Despair, the Upper Cathedral Ward is crawling with conspicuously infant-looking forms of Ebrietas (all of whom point towards her location, too) and there's Amygdalae all over Yharnam, Cathedral Ward and Yahar'gul. The three unique Great Ones, the true Great Ones, not just alien species we encounter are Mergo, the Sweet Child of Kos (that black sprite on Kos' corpse after you defeat the Orphan) and the nameless Moon Presence. They are, too, all encountered in Nightmare locations, Mergo in Mensis, Sweet Child of Kos in the Hamlet and Moon Presence in the Hunter's Dream. Now, a lot of people believe they somehow created their Nightmare locations, but I don't. I do think they have control over them, to the extent a human would control over its world. I mean, it's not like Mensis or the Hamlet cease to exist when Micolash (whom some people think Mensis is in the head of), Mergo or the Sweet Child of Kos are expunged. I think they're merely just the most powerful or important beings in these places.

Anyway, I'm rambling way past the wee hours about new ideas of the higher plane here. I hope that made at least a bit of sense. Please feel free to ask questions or suggest topics!

[terryblount]

Darksiders Genesis PC Review

Every so often a game comes along that completely redefines whatever we thought was possible within its genre. Sometimes it finds a highly innovative use for a simple mechanic, or invents a new form of gameplay altogether. Either way, this game leaves players floored, and it sets a new standard for the genre from then onwards. Well, nothing in the Darksiders series has ever been that game.

Instead, the main selling point of the Darksiders franchise has always been how tried and trusted mechanics within the hack-‘n-slash genre could be joined in the best, possible combination. Whatever their faults were, the gameplay in Darksiders I through III always tried to engage the player on multiple levels of gameplay. They were the very definition of becoming more than the sum of their parts.

The final Horseman, Strife

Therefore, I find myself not quite sure what to make of Darksiders Genesis. Airship Syndicate made a substantial departure from the third-person, Zelda style of the previous games, and tries to embrace an isometric, dungeon-crawler design. Unfortunately, Genesis fails to commit towards this new direction in certain ways which makes it difficult to recommend over other more established games of this sort.

To Hell and Back

The overall narrative and lore of the Darksiders franchise has become so vast that the games have spawned their own Wiki site. Genesis, to its credit, is perhaps easier to digest than previous titles, but that’s like saying a fractured femur is better than a fractured skull. I still had only the vaguest idea what was going on despite this being a series first with a codex for the characters and events in the world.

What I eventually learned (after enough research on the Darksiders Wiki to warrant a PhD) is that Genesis is a prequel to the first game, though I have yet to discover what exactly ‘Genesis’ in the title refers to. Anyway, the story follows two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – War, and newcomer Strife – on their mission to confront none other than Lucifer himself in the realm of Hell.

Strife gets a berserk mode with his guns where they switch to maximum power for a few seconds.

For the unacquainted, The Four Horsemen are enforcers of the Charred Council – a multifaceted entity that has taken on the task of ensuring a balance between the realms of Heaven, Hell, and the kingdom of mankind. It seems the demon lord Lucifer, naughty boy, has secretly been smuggling powerful artifacts out of Eden as favours to four lesser demon lords residing in Hell.

The Charred Council therefore sends War and Strife to see what ol’ Lucy is up to since they fear the demon overlord could represent a serious threat to the balance if left to his own devices. As you’d expect, the two Horsemen yet again find themselves in the midst of a theological soap opera in which every step closer to Lucifer adds increasing complexity to their mission.

The game is as such divided into 16 chapters where the player completes one dungeon mission to the next with puzzles, boss fights, secrets and loot to gather. It is the classic, dungeon crawler modus operandi, really. Thankfully, you don’t have to complete missions to save your progress as the game will happily drop you right back where you left off for players who need a coffee break.

In between missions, the player yet again has the option to trade currency with one of my favourite characters, Vulgrim, and his new accomplice, Dis, for all sorts of damage perks and combat moves. The classic arena mode also returns where facing off against several waves of enemies allow players to hone their combat skill, but also to farm some currency like souls and creature cores.

Literally between angels and demons

What sets Genesis apart is not just the withdrawn camera, but also the fact that there are two, playable horsemen for the first time in one game. Throughout all the dungeons and areas of Hell for the player to explore, there is always the option to switch instantly between either Strife or War. This holds true even for boss fights, and players also have the option of joining with a co-op partner.

From a single-player perspective, the interchangeable nature of the Horsemen adds to the variety in combat. War deals more damage through melee strikes up close and personal with his colossal sword. A surprising number of classic combos and attacks from Darksiders have accompanied War’s appearance in this game which felt pleasantly nostalgic during the moments I switched to him.

Strife, on the other hand, is the ninja of the duo with quicker and more agile sword moves, which go with a choice of several ranged attacks from his guns. It is upon switching to Strife that the gameplay in Genesis begins to lean towards the more classic, ‘bullet hell’ type shooter. Strife can use several different types of ammo, but the charge shot and the ‘laser beam’ remained my best friends for the most part.

The purple and orange globes are the creature core players can grind in the Arena. You need several purple shards to make one core.

My general take-away from the combat is that it plays… fine I guess. The combos offer a decent variety of attack possibilities, and the option to swap between two protagonists ensured that I always had access to an alternate strategy to mix things up. Unfortunately, it is when comparing this system to others in this genre that the shortcomings in Genesis’s structure go from negligible, to glaring.

On those sticky points

My main issue with Darksiders Genesis is how it feels suspended between two genres. It plays like a classic in the original series by THQ Nordic, but it is as if Airship Syndicate decided at the last minute that Genesis should be an isometric action game, so they shifted the camera angle without fine-tuning the rest. The result is a game which has feet on both sides of the fence without really enjoying the green grass on either side.

Take the environments and graphics, for example. Genesis is practically just as gorgeous as any non-isometric Darksiders game, and the levels have a similar scale which favour a flat design. Both War and Strife therefore often became obscured behind certain environmental objects, and even on my 24 inch monitor, the viewing distance made me forget which horseman I was playing sometimes.

Don’t try to hide from me!

I know that fans of the game have been very vocal online about the fact that Genesis is not trying to be Diablo… but perhaps it could learn a thing or two from Blizzard. Diablo III is a masterclass in isometric level design as the paths sort of curve in on themselves to imbue the game’s dungeons with a sense of verticality and depth.

In Genesis, levels feel more one-dimensional and linear, which in turn make them less interesting than they could have been, and combat suffers from a similar issue. A particular advantage of having a withdrawn camera is that the player can visually appreciate their character’s badass moves more holistically. You feel empowered as you get a full view of how the protagonist’s fighting affect everything in their surroundings.

In my experience, War and Strife feel too underpowered. On normal difficulty War would chop away enthusiastically at even some of the weaker enemies only for their health bars to drain at a complete snail’s pace. Strife is even worse. In a game that was supposed to be his debut, I actually preferred to avoid playing as Strife because he is surprisingly ineffective in close quarter fighting.

This is War’s chaos form where he gains immunity from damager and delivers maximum damage too. Strife turns into a giant scorpion with a tail mounted machine gun.

My point is not that Genesis ever felt overly difficult. The problem is that this type of gameplay would have been more suitable for a traditional, third-person fighting game where stats are less important than your timing and your fighting techniques. To place fighting that requires this much input from the player into an isometric game seems like forcing a square peg into a round hole.

The rough in the diamond

So the point is therefore to explore dungeons, find loot, grind it out in the arena, and then apply them to your character, right? The thing is that loot in Darksiders Genesis is not that interesting. The levels can offer good replay value since the abilities that War and Strife will gain later act as metroidvania-style keys to finding new items.

Yet, the loot that I did find throughout my incessant explorations of all the dungeons felt like it had a very subtle impact on gameplay. Enemies mostly drop health, ammo or souls, and I never felt like I stumbled upon that truly rare or ‘legendary’ piece of loot. What I did find mostly felt like it was passively adding small increments to abstract numbers running in the background.

Newcomer Dis who sells extra moves and combos to War and Strife

Where’s the fun in that? A varied and robust loot system is an utterly crucial component of all dungeon-crawlers, and the rather limited variety in Genesis shows its importance for the incentive to explore. Also, don’t get me started on the skill tree and the creature cores I meantioned earlier. It is dull, it is unintuitive, and I barely noticed a difference in gameplay.

Back to the drawing board then

Frankly, I am not the biggest fan of isometric RPG’s. It just happens to be a genre that I inexplicably neglected in my portfolio as a gamer, and all I can put down as experience is Diablo III, and a healthy dose of the Divinity series. The faults in Genesis are probably more obvious to me than players who have more patience and investment in this area of gaming.

I am, however, utterly fanatical about Darksiders, and I am sorely disappointed that this is how they chose to give Strife his debut. He was the most mysterious and most anticipated horseman for players to meet, and this game does not do his introduction to the series justice. As a long-time player, I must be honest and say Genesis leaves too much of what made previous games enjoyable behind. I feel absolutely no connection to it as a fan.

Yet, Genesis cannot rightly be called a terrible game. In fact, I might even have difficulty calling Genesis a bad game. Forgettable is perhaps the defining word I would use. By itself, Genesis would have made for a decent hack-‘n-slash title. It’s true moment of failure is trying to squash itself into an isometric, action mould: It simply doesn’t fit.

Nice graphics

Great voice cast

Great settings

Arena mode

Boss fights

Lackluster loot

Buggy combat

Repetitive enemies

Strife’s debut

Too different from other games

          PC Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an XBox One controller

The post Darksiders Genesis PC Review appeared first on DSOGaming.

Darksiders Genesis PC Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[kayawagner]

13th Age Glorantha Review

Many classic, imaginative worlds came from the dawn of the tabletop RPG era. For anyone that was around in that time, the names of some worlds were well known, even without personal experience with the products. It may not seem quite as impressive in the modern information age to be aware of a wide variety of product lines, but in the era where gaming news came from word of mouth or publications like Dragon Magazine, it is a bit more noteworthy.

The product I’m looking at today is 13th Age Glorantha, a melding of the much more modern 13th Age game system with a game world that goes back almost to the beginning of fantasy roleplaying, Glorantha.

Glorantha’s publication history is too in-depth to go into in a review like this, but the setting is originally associated with the RuneQuest RPG, which was first published in 1978, but elements of the game world first showed up on board games years earlier.

The Translation Made Manifest

13th Age Glorantha is a hefty tome, being 466-pages of material. This review is based on the PDF version of the product. The physical copy of the book releases in July.

The book shares a lot of the same formatting choices as the 13th Age books, but with a slightly more classical feel to the fonts used. The artwork ranges from pieces that are more historical and representational in appearance, to more modern photorealistic images.

This mix of art styles could lead to a lack of a uniform feel, but the formatting is strong and creates unity across the various art styles. Much like the setting, it takes inspiration from Celtic, Norse, and South Asian themes and symbolic elements.

Chapter One: Initiations

This section is a primer on the big concepts of Glorantha, as well as presenting a summary of what is in future chapters in the book. The book is very careful to, from the beginning, point out that this product is about a specific time period in Gloranthan history, in a relatively constrained region. While this product can be used for creating multiple campaigns, the goal of it is to serve as a broad introduction to a place and time where players can sample a relatively pure sample of the setting.

Chapter Two: Creating Characters

This section outlines the standard checklist for character creation in 13th Age, then introduces the differences between the standard game and 13th Age Glorantha. In addition to introducing several tribes of humans, Ducks, and Trolls, there is a detailed description of runes.

Runes replace the Icons from the standard form of 13th Age, with each character having several personal runes that govern how they interact with the world. Unlike the Icon relationships, runes can be triggered to narrate how a particular challenge is overcome, and a roll is made to see if there is a complication. The way the complication is subverted must be in keeping with what the rune governs, and runes generally can’t be used in structured combat situations.

Ducks are people that look like . . . small humanoid ducks. They are associated with fighting the undead, and rumors exist that they were a human tribe that is suffering under a curse of some kind. Trolls are big lumbering monstrous humanoids that live underground, and while they don’t exactly love humans, they hate Chaos, the big primal cosmic force seeking to ruin the universe, so they make alliances in troubling times.

The chapter also mentions that the setting of Glorantha has a whole lot of other beings that could qualify as player character choices, but as an introductory product, the human tribes presented, Ducks, and Trolls all represent some pretty foundational Glorantha lore.

Chapter Two: Running Glorantha

This chapter tackles a lot of topics, most of which relate back to how running 13th Age Glorantha differs from running 13th Age. There are headings for narrating runes, combat rules, gear, heroquest gifts, and how to use traditional 13th Age magic items in a 13th Age Glorantha game.

A lot of the last chapter spent time explaining the most common runes, and this chapter dives into the topic with even more detail. Not only are there examples of narrating runes in a scene and how complications might play out with different runes, runes also play into runic gifts. Runic gifts are magical abilities associated with various runes that an adventurer might acquire for accomplishing important tasks. While the setting may have “normal” magic items, runic gifts fill a similar role for player characters. Runic gifts have similar categories, but with slightly different trappings. For example, the gift of Striking appears across many different runes, but what the secondary powers you may gain from the gift later may be will be flavored by the rune.

Glorantha is a bronze age setting, but most of that is reinforced through narrative, rather than extensive rules for how gear works. This shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone that has seen how equipment works in core 13th Age, but as an example — heavy and light armor is redefined for the setting. No real change in how either category works, just some notes on what each class of armor looks like in context. There is also a feat that you can take that just says you have more advanced iron armor and weapons on your person. No separate rules for how they work, just a feat to say that having advanced iron arms is part of your character concept.

One of my favorite concepts in this chapter is the heroic return. Instead of having magic that raises the dead, anyone can narrate a heroic return. Because the setting is a one that reinforces the mythic, characters might just sneak or fight their way out of the underworld, and find their way back to the land of the living. This gets easier the more heroic they are (or in game terms, at higher levels), but the difficulty of the check increases for each other time the character escaped the clutches of death. It is simple to resolve, and yet very mythic feeling.

There is a discussion of how some of the core 13th Age rules work in the setting, how they change, and how some of those rules should change in the 13th Age core rules as well. In general, I love the conversational tone of 13th Age books, since you never really need to worry about what the designers were thinking or how they expect something to be used. On the other hand, something that amounts to errata is very hard to follow in that same format.

Chapter Three: Classes

This section introduces Glorantha specific 13th Age classes, as well as some classes that get some remodeling to make them fit the setting more accurately. The following classes appear in this section:

Berserker

Earth Priestess

Hell Mother

Humakti

Orlanthi Warrior

Rebel

Storm Voice

Trickster

Wind Lord

Some of these classes look like they might have more direct analogies from 13th Age, but there are a lot of mechanics that go with them that make them a distinct class. Berserkers get lots of god flavored magical powers and effects that trigger on their own special die, for example.

Other classes, like the Rebel, are much more closely aligned to a class from traditional 13th Age. While the Rebel gets several pages of new powers, it is essentially a sneaky warrior that gets some powers to make it more of a skirmisher and less of a thief/assassin.

I’m going to take a few moments and address the Trickster here. It is a very integral Gloranthan concept that Tricksters exist to introduce randomness into the universe because of the blessings of Eurmal. A lot of this class is set up so that you draw damage to yourself instead of your allies, you set up allies to do more damage, and you can heal people that have dropped by begging them to get up. I am at once happy with how they mechanize playing this kind of character, and still not even the least bit enamored of the trope of characters that are accidentally competent.

There is a section at the beginning of the chapter that discusses how easy the various classes are to play, and I think it is worth reading through. My general impression is that the classes that are more complex to play tend to have a few more bells and whistles to them than the complex classes that appear in core 13th Age.

Chapter Four: Enemies

This chapter starts out with a list of existing 13th Age monsters, with notes on how they might be tweaked to represent existing elements of the setting. The remaining monsters are organized by what rune they are associated with. There are some encounter building charts that don’t replace previous versions, but do provide a little more granularity in determining how many monsters should go where for what kind of challenge.

This runic association is both thematic and helps when determining elements of things like heroquests and complications. I would go into some of the creatures outlined, but Glorantha has some very strange and very distinctive monstrous entities. If you like a setting where cultists have extra powers based on the severed heads they carry, there are bears with jack o’ lanterns on their heads, and dragon snails are very much what you would picture them to be from the name, you should probably at least look at what Glorantha has to offer.

Chaos creatures have whole tables of extra features that might be added to the base creature to make it unique. Some of these features make them less effective, some more effective, and some just shift where their strengths and weaknesses are. Chaos creatures can also steal the escalation die. For those unfamiliar with core 13th Age rules, the escalation die is a d6 that counts from 1 to 6 in combat, and goes up each round, allowing the adventurers to add that number to their attacks, representing the momentum that the adventurers have towards victory.

Chapter Six: Campaign World

This chapter has sections for Aspirational Feats, the outline of the default setting of 13th Age Glorantha, and a geography section organized by rune.

Aspirational feats are feats that you take to represent your connection to the setting, such as who your famous ancestor may have been. Each level after you take the feat, you roll to see if the gifts of that feat trigger, however, if you do a specific thing in the campaign, that will also cause the mechanics of the feat to engage. In other words, you are declaring a thing about your character, and if you do a thing in the game that plays towards that declaration, you get a reward.

The period chosen for the game is a time after most of the foundational myths are in place, but in a time that has enough murkiness to it that all kinds of PCs could have done important things, but it won’t seem too odd that they didn’t show up in later Glorantha lore.

The geography section is interesting, because while it gives very brief descriptions of a lot of locations in the Dragon Pass area, the locations are grouped by rune, giving a flavor for the kinds of threats or complications that might arise in stories that take place in that area. It’s a great thematic way to convey information, but it is also a tad confusing when you are still getting used to the runes, and cross referencing the map, the name, and the runic section the description falls under.

Chapter Seven: Heroquests

This section gives a few example heroquests, and provides some structure for how to build them, what kind of rewards they provide, and how to determine if a character just barely completed the quest, or did so in truly, well, heroic fashion.

Heroquests are one of the Glorantha concepts that I love the most coming out of this book. Essentially, mythic actions that have shaped history are super important. Between the mortal realm and the realm of the gods, there is the Hero Plane, where myths resonate. People of Glorantha sometimes enter the Hero Plane to reenact the myths to be strengthened by them, and to gain benefits from them.

The trippy part is that sometimes chaos gets into the Hero Plane, and if they mess with a myth, people forget it, and history may subtly change. Even if regular heroquesters screw up too often reenacting a myth, its importance may fade.

I really love the concept that myths can change over time, and that change can alter how history is viewed. It’s a huge meta-concept made literal in the game world, and as soon as I started reading about it, I wanted to apply it all over the place. But we’ll just look at it in context for now.

Heroquests often come up when a local area has fallen on hard times, and having someone perform the heroquest will provide a boon for the local area. It may be that adventurers are about to do something similar to what a god once did, so to prepare for their enemy, they heroquest to get into the same mindset as the god.

This section has a few way to structure heroquests, including marking the midpoint and ending scene of them, and how to score them to see how well adventurers completed them, which may have both campaign effects, and specifically effects on the kind of heroquest gifts the adventurers receive for completing the quest.

Some heroquests are presented as something characters can do at multiple levels, with scaling challenges, while other heroquests are presented as a big thing that they will only do once, when they have already proven themselves to be among the biggest movers and shakers.

Chapter Eight: Adventures

The adventures section has several example adventures across different level ranges for characters. While it isn’t quite an entire campaign, some of the adventures are more open-ended and can provide more time to advance than others. The adventures are:

The Horn of Snakepipe Hollow

Duck Point Venture

The Epic of Gagix Two-Barb

Against the Crimson Bat

Ascending with the Eleven Lights

The first adventure presented has the PCs performing a local heroquest for a community, the second involves an open sandbox area with a few key encounters and a few potential heroquests to go on, the third is the culmination of some hints dropped in other adventures, and Against the Crimson Bat is a multi-step adventure that is all geared around climbing onto a monster and defeating a cult living there, then coming back to actually take on the monster as a monster later on, instead of just using it for terrain.

The final adventure is actually an extended series of roleplaying scenes with an organization that doesn’t have the usual perspectives of some of the established groups in the setting, which can make for a contrast, not just to combat focused adventures, but also to the mindset already established in the setting from other adventures.

Sample adventures are one of my favorite ways to see exactly how I am expected to use a product, and by providing a wide range adventures across multiple levels, it feels like the answer is, “there is no right way, but here are a few different angles you can try.”

Appendices

There is a lot going on in this part of the book. It’s got more notes on adapting core 13th Age classes to the setting, alternate multi-classing rules based on runes, summaries of the major gods, and reprints all some of the more important charts in the book. There are also some size comparison silhouettes for  visualization purposes.

I like all of the summary information in this section, but I have to say, I wish more of the class information had been in the actual class chapter. It feels like it might be easier to transition 13th Age players to Glorantha with more direct conversions than with the newer classes that are very steeped in Glorantha tradition, and it may be easy to forget this section in the back with some of the simpler, if less satisfying, conversions from the base game.

Restoring a Lost Myth

There is a lot to like in this book. Compared to baseline 13th Age, I think I like the rune mechanic better than the Icons mechanics, just because it is flavorful and easier to adjudicate. I am in love with heroquests and the entire concept of the Hero Plane, and I think the implementation of it in this book is great. The idea of heroic returns is something you could easily port to other games, and like the best aspects of the system, is giving simple mechanical resolution to something that drives a more detailed story element. The conversational tone of the rules means that you never have to wonder why something was done in the game.

Runic Complication

 The best summary I can make for this book is that it is like a starter set, except that instead of providing material for an adventure or three, or taking characters through the first tier of play, it has enough to run several campaigns before expecting the group to look at decades of other products. 

While I love the conversational tone, when using it to address things like updated rules, or even more complicated resolutions, it’s easy to lose track of exactly where you saw something, or how that rule interacts with other rules presented elsewhere. There are times that the thematic presentation of the book may conflict with ease of use, while conveying intent. The geography section springs to mind, but even decisions like separating character creation from classes, and then adding more pertinent class information in the appendix, can be daunting. While it may vary from reader to reader, the digressions on how great elements of the setting are that will not be detailed in this book, and the number of references to the other sources, may make this book feel less satisfying.

Qualified Recommendation — A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

The best summary I can make for this book is that it is like a starter set, except that instead of providing material for an adventure or three, or taking characters through the first tier of play, it has enough to run several campaigns before expecting the group to look at decades of other products.

While this product offers a lot to people interested in Glorantha and in 13th Age, people that are more interested in the book for general setting information will probably be able to find better sources. Even with that disclaimer in place, as with most 13th Age products, the insight into game design gives extra value, but you may want to weigh that extra value against 466 pages of material.

Have you seen newer material that introduced you to a long established game or setting? Have you jumped into a setting with a lot of lore for the first time recently? Let us know in the comments below! I’d love to talk with you about your experiences.

  13th Age Glorantha Review published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

[readbookywooks]

Deep in its heartwood the Luggage was troubled. It had been spurned. It had been told to go away. It had been rejected. It had also drunk enough orakh to poison a small country.

If there is one thing a travel accessory needs more than anything else, it is someone to belong to. The Luggage set off unsteadily across the scorching sand, full of hope.

‘I don’t think we’ve got time for introductions,’ said Rincewind, as a distant part of the palace collapsed with a thump that vibrated the floor. ‘It’s time we were-’

He realised he was talking to himself.

Nijel let go of the sword.

Conina stepped forward.

‘Oh, no,’ said Rincewind, but it was far too late. The world had suddenly separated into two parts - the bit which contained Nijel and Conina, and the bit which contained everything else. The air between them crackled. Probably, in their half, a distant orchestra was playing, bluebirds were tweeting, little pink clouds were barrelling through the sky, and all the other things that happen at times like this. When that sort of thing is going on, mere collapsing palaces in the next world don’t stand a chance.

‘Look, perhaps we can just get the introductions over with,’ said Rincewind desperately. ‘Nijel-’

‘- the Destroyer-’ said Nijel dreamily.

‘All right, Nijel the Destroyer,’ said Rincewind, and added, ‘Son of Harebut the-’

‘Mighty,’ said Nijel. Rincewind gaped a bit, and then shrugged.

‘Well, whoever,’ he conceded. ‘Anyway, this is Conina. Which is rather a coincidence, because you’ll be interested to know that her father was mmph.’

Conina, without turning her gaze, had extended a hand and held Rincewind’s face in a gentle grip which, with only a slight increase in finger pressure, could have turned his head into a bowling ball.

‘Although I could be mistaken,’ he added, when she took her hand away. ‘Who knows? Who cares? What does it matter?’

They didn’t take any notice.

‘I’ll just go and see if I can find the hat, shall I?’ he said.

‘Good idea,’ murmured Conina.

‘I expect I shall get murdered, but I don’t mind,’ said Rincewind.

‘Jolly good,’ said Nijel.

‘I don’t expect anyone will even notice I’m gone,’ said Rincewind.

‘Fine, fine,’ said Conina.

‘I shall be chopped into small pieces, I expect,’ said Rincewind, walking toward the door at the speed of a dying snail.

Conina blinked.

‘What hat?’ she said, and then, ‘Oh, that hat.’

‘I suppose there’s no possible chance that you two might be of some assistance?’ Rincewind ventured.

Somewhere inside Conina and Nijel’s private world the bluebirds went to roost, the little pink clouds drifted away and the orchestra packed up and sneaked off to do a private gig at a nightclub somewhere. A bit of reality reasserted itself.

Conina dragged her admiring gaze away from Nijel’s rapt face and turned it on to Rincewind, where it grew slightly cooler.

She sidled across the floor and grabbed the wizard by the arm.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘you won’t tell him who I really am, will you? Only boys get funny ideas and - well, anyway, if you do I will personally break all your-’

‘I’ll be far too busy,’ said Rincewind, ‘what with you helping me get the hat and everything. Not that I can imagine what you see in him,’ he added, haughtily.

‘He’s nice. I don’t seem to meet many nice people.’

‘Yes, well-’

‘He’s looking at us!’

‘So what? You’re not frightened of him, are you?’

‘Suppose he talks to me!’

Rincewind looked blank. Not for the first time in his life, he felt that there were whole areas of human experience that had passed him by, if areas could pass by people. Maybe he had passed them by. He shrugged.

‘Why did you let them take you off to the harem without a fight?’ he said.

‘I’ve always wanted to know what went on in one.’

There was a pause. ‘Well?’ said Rincewind.

‘Well, we all sat round, and then after a bit the Seriph came in, and then he asked me over and said that since I was new it would be my turn, and then, you’ll never guess what he wanted me to do. The girls said it’s the only thing he’s interested in.’

‘Er.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine, fine,’ Rincewind muttered.

‘Your face has gone all shiny.’

‘No, I’m fine, fine.’

‘He asked me to tell him a story.’

‘What about?’ said Rincewind suspiciously.

‘The other girls said he prefers something with rabbits in it.’

‘Ah. Rabbits.’

‘Small fluffy white ones. But the only stories I know are the ones father taught me when I was little, and I don’t think they’re really suitable.’

‘Not many rabbits?’

‘Lots of arms and legs being chopped off,’ said Conina, and sighed. ‘That’s why you mustn’t tell him about me you see? I’m just not cut out for a normal life.’

‘Telling stories in a harem isn’t bloody normal,’ said Rincewind. ‘It’ll never catch on.’

‘He’s looking at us again!’ Conina grabbed Rincewind’s arm.

He shook her off. ‘Oh, good grief,’ he said, and hurried across the room to Nijel, who grabbed his other arm.

‘You haven’t been telling her about me, have you?’ he demanded. ‘I’ll never live it down if you’ve told her that I’m only just learning how-’

‘Nonono. She just wants you to help us. It’s a sort of quest.’

Nijel’s eyes gleamed.

‘You mean a geas?’ he said.

‘Pardon?’

‘It’s in the book. To be a proper hero it says you’ve got to labour under a geas.’

Rincewind’s forehead wrinkled. ‘Is it a sort of bird?’

‘I think it’s more a sort of obligation, or something,’ said Nijel, but without much certainty.

‘Sounds more like a kind of bird to me,’ said Rincewind, ‘I’m sure I read it in a bestiary once. Large. Couldn’t fly. Big pink legs, it had.’ His face went blank as his ears digested what they had just heard his lips say.

Five seconds later they were out of the room, leaving behind four prone guards and the harem ladies themselves, who settled down for a bit of story-telling.

The desert rimwards of Al Khali is bisected by the river Tsort, famed in myth and lies, which insinuates its way through the brown landscapes like a long damp descriptive passage punctuated with sandbanks. And every sandbank is covered with sunbaked logs, and most of the logs are the kind of logs that have teeth, and most of the logs opened one lazy eye at the distant sounds of splashing from upstream, and suddenly most of the logs had legs. A dozen scaly bodies slipped into the turbid waters, which rolled over them again. The dark waters were unruffled, except for a few inconsequential V -shaped ripples.

The Luggage paddled gently down the stream. The water was making it feel a little better. It spun gently in the weak current, the focus of several mysterious little swirls that sped across the surface of the water.

The ripples converged.

The Luggage jerked. Its lid flew open. It shot under the surface with a brief, despairing creak.

The chocolate-coloured waters of the Tsort rolled back again. They were getting good at it.

And the tower of sourcery loomed over Al Khali like a vast and beautiful fungus, the kind that appear in books with little skull-and-crossbones symbols beside them.

The Seriph’s guard had fought back, but there were now quite a lot of bewildered frogs and newts around the base of the tower, and they were the fortunate ones. They still had arms and legs, of a sort, and most of their essential organs were still on the inside. The city was under the rule of sourcery … martial lore.

Some of the buildings nearest the base of the tower were already turning into the bright white marble that the wizards obviously preferred.

The trio stared out through a hole in the palace walls.

‘Very impressive,’ said Conina critically. ‘Your wizards are more powerful than I thought.’

‘Not my wizards,’ said Rincewind. ‘I don’t know whose wizards they are. I don’t like it. All the wizards I knew couldn’t stick one brick on another.’

‘I don’t like the idea of wizards ruling everybody,’ said Nijel. ‘Of course, as a hero I am philosophically against the whole idea of wizardry in any case. The time will come when,’ his eyes glazed slightly, as if he was trying to remember something he’d seen somewhere, ‘the time will come when all wizardry has gone from the face of the world and the sons of, of - anyway, we can all be a bit more practical about things,’ he added lamely.

‘Read it in a book, did you?’ said Rincewind sourly. Any geas in it?’

‘He’s got a point,’ said Conina. ‘I’ve nothing against wizards, but it’s not as if they do much good. There just a bit of decoration, really. Up to now.’

Rincewind pulled off his hat. It was battered, stained and covered with rock dust, bits of it had been sheared off, the point was dented and the star was shedding sequins like pollen, but the word “blizzard” was still just readable under the grime.

‘See this?’ he demanded, red in the face. ‘Do you see it? Do you? What does it tell you?’

‘That you can’t spell?’ said Nijel.

‘What? No! It says I’m a wizard, that’s what! Twenty years behind the staff, and proud of it! I’ve done my time, I have! I’ve pas - I’ve sat dozens of exams! If all the spells I’ve read were piled on top of one another, they’d … it’d … you’d have a lot of spells!’

‘Yes, but-’ Conina began.

‘Yes?’

‘You’re not actually very good at them, are you?’

Rincewind glared at her. He tried to think of what to say next, and a small receptor area opened in his mind at the same time as an inspiration particle, its path bent and skewed by a trillion random events, screamed down through the atmosphere and burst silently just at the right spot.

‘Talent just defines what you do,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t define what you are. Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.’

He thought a bit more and added, ‘That’s what makes sourcerers so powerful. The important thing is to know what you really are.’

There was a pause full of philosophy.

‘Rincewind?’ said Conina, kindly.

‘Hmm?’ said Rincewind, who was still wondering how the words got into his head.

‘You really are an idiot. Do you know that?’

‘You will all stand very still.’

Abrim the vizier stepped out of a ruined archway. He was wearing the Archchancellor’s hat.

The desert fried under the flame of the sun. Nothing moved except the shimmering air, hot as a stolen volcano, dry as a skull.