#lightly edited from a discord post

[thelaithlyworm]

so you've heard Legend of Zang Hai was some kind of Daomu Biji thing...

and maybe have some questions.

during its original pitch, legend of zang hai was intended to be part of the dmbj-verse (a story about wang zanghai, one of the movers and shakers of the backstory). at some point it was split off into a stand-alone and they changed some of the names -- wang zanghai becomes zang hai, changbai mountain becomes… something i don't remember. there were possibly major plot points changed as well, but nobody will know without the production crew sharing.

even with the differences, it still has A Lot of dmbj-lore in it:

-- a backstory for (wang) zanghai that is plausible with what we know of the dmbj version -- the ghost seal/gui seal/qilin-trampling-ghosts seal which can command an undead army and probably other stuff. -- the dongxia tribe (though in dmbj-verse they weren't a political entity in wang zanghai's time, but living in the shadows). -- the sacred mountain with the army of ghost soldiers at the bottom (and presumably it also has the bronze gate leading Somewhere Scary(TM) though they haven't explicitly mentioned that part yet). -- a trio of bronze fish (though in dmbj-verse they look different and wang zanghai made them. perhaps he was inspired by these ones). -- iron mask scholar, who is one of the other movers and shakers of the backstory. most stories put him as active in the warring states era, over a millenia before wang zanghai's time, so it's hella interesting how he's slipping through this story. note that poem he recited about mayflies at the start of ep 2. -- the queen mother of the west, who is probably the 'lady of kunlun' who one of the dongxia tribe said gave them the seal. this is also hella interesting and new information.

(as of ep 30, what hasn't been shown is the zhang family, an illuminati cult manipulating the rise and fall of dynasties, which wang zanghai swore to destroy with his own hidden cult, or IT, an obsessive alliance between rulers and graverobbers to dig in tombs for the secrets of immortality. but they might turn up. there are ten whole eps to go.)

all in all, i'm enjoying it very much as it's own thing, but it's hella fun as a dmbj-adjacent story too.

[thetrueratking]

Okay, so I’d like to clear something up because this is really getting out of hand.

This is NOT a roleplay blog. I’ve gotten roped into this through the whole war arc. Let me explain.

First of all, a lot of the verbiage I’ve used leading up to and through the war is analogous. “Rats” originally referred to my followers, kinda? moreso just the people within my circle, or just anyone I want to call a rat. As my pinned post says, anyone who follows me is a rat, or an honorary ray of they don’t want to be seen as a rodent. (Looking at you @lolli-popples)

My kingdom is just my blog, my follower base, my fandom essentially.

And if you ever hear me talk about the court, that’s my discord server.

But all in all, the rat king is *kind of* a character? I never really thought of “the rat king” as a separate entity. I was always trying to kind of skirt this line between a persona and a character, if that makes sense. But it was always meant to be kept in mind that the rat king is in fact an online persona. Rats are a brand. Kind of like Slimecicle. He’s not literally slime, and no one treats him as such, but the brand is goop. Ooze. Sludge. I’m the rat king, and everyone understands that, but I’m treated as a king and I call my subjects vermin blah blah blah, the brand is rats. But really it’s just me. Does that make sense?

So running the rat of the year thing, it’s the same deal. Kind of in character, but mostly persona.

And then Rat detector fuckin declares WAR and everyone is suddenly acting in character, so I act in persona, still on that line of persona/character. And as people start veering into roleplay, it pushes me into the position where the only way to play off the bit is to also lightly roleplay. And now suddenly it’s all roleplay, which wasn’t my intention, and it’s gotten kind of weird, and now here we are.

This has been a PSA from the Rat King. Thoughts? Comments? Concerns?

Edit: I’d like to say, though, I love these big events, like the rat of the year election and the war. I love being able to make a community come together and do some weird shit. This is how I’d like to go down in history. As the one who brings everyone together to do something BIG every once in a while.

@rat-detector-24s-ghost @rat-detector @ratking-detector

[alto-tenure]

some analysis copy/pasted (and very lightly edited) from Discord because I was reminded of it:

a big part of the symmetry of the staroba dynamic is that Ceroba is as a matter of fact a massive hypocrite and that the relationship that develops between them is contingent on both of them being capable of shedding the personas they use to avoid the root of their problems

Starlo is a lot more overt about the persona he puts on in the form of North Star.

But I think it's important to consider that Ceroba as a mother is most acknowledged after she puts Kanako’s mask on.

I maintain a lot that Ceroba's dedication to legacy is part of the persona she maintains as the ideal woman. Which is not to say that those feelings are a lie, but to say that Ceroba faces conflict between her feelings and the wife persona, and when she puts the mask on she fully embraces the wife persona.

And I use "wife" over "mother" purposefully because Ceroba’s connection to motherhood is an extension of the role she plays as a wife. The role of a wife is to bear children for her husband, and other such beliefs.

The main difference is that Ceroba doesn't see performing the role of a wife to be the same as Starlo's sheriff/cowboy play-acting. She sees her own performance as a duty. As what she must do to be an adult woman. It comes back around again: the idea that adulthood means no longer being an individual.

Both of them, because they were childhood friends, are capable of seeing through the facade being performed. Starlo knows Ceroba is repressing herself and gets into silly shenanigans to make her open up. Ceroba knows Starlo is putting on a false bluster to mask his insecurities about his childhood, and only just barely plays along in the hope that he'll acknowledge reality.

And in post-canon there's space to play around with both of them embracing more of their true selves and desires as well as the process of getting to know each other again.

[rubinaitoart]

I would love any crumbs of anything you're writing rn /nf /gen

(I keep seeing you go insane so thought I would see what you are interested in :3)

“I keep seeing you go insane” HAH yeah it’s even worse on discord lmao

The current WIP I have is based completely on spite. That’s it. I absolutely hated how the Lamia episode ended because. BECAUSE. BECAUSE.

You’re telling me after they kill the Lamia, everything is back to normal and perfectly fine between everyone. You’re telling me Merlin was actively threatened by some of the people he trusted the most, to the point he actually started COWERING a little when they got mad at him, and he walked out of that without even a little bit of emotional distress? A smidgeon of trauma? You’re telling me none of the knights apologized to him or to Guinevere, because even though it’s not their fault every single one of them would have still felt some form of guilt over scaring them like that, you’re TELLING ME—

^^^ Live footage of Rubin being carried off before he starts yelling even more /lh ^^^

It made me so MAD that it got wrapped up with everyone in good spirits and Arthur making fun of Merlin for being saved by a girl, and everything was fine and happy and ARGHHHH.

So yeah I started writing a fic to expand on what I feel should’ve happened after that episode I guess? Except make it a Merthur AU where they’ve been dancing around their feelings for all four seasons up until this point.

I’ve been going back and forth on this draft for a bit, so there’s a good chance whatever I end up publishing to AO3 will look COMPLETELY different. It’s also very clunky and not well edited but I figure that’s a given right now lol. Both options start the same before splitting into two different drafts, currently labeled D1 and D2 respectively.

I’ll dump a few snippets below the cut since this is already looking like a long post. Everything so far is in Arthur’s POV.

From the shared start: Set when Arthur shows up just in time to rescue Guinevere and Merlin from the Lamia.

A few seconds of silence stretched out before Arthur jerked forward and rushed to Merlin’s side.

“Better late than never.” Merlin groaned, but that stupid, goofy grin that Arthur loved more than he’d ever admit was plastered all over that smug face of his. “What took you so long?”

“You’re welcome.” Arthur said pointedly. Guinevere moved to help Merlin sit up, and the king didn’t miss the way his servant’s face twisted into a pained grimace, or how his hand quickly grabbed at his side. It hurt to see Merlin in any kind of pain, a dull ache in his chest that was somehow worse than anything Arthur had suffered in the past. “Are you hurt?”

“A little bruised, maybe.” Merlin leaned heavily against Guinevere. “Better off than everyone else though.” He added quickly, and Arthur’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Do you know where they are?” The king wanted to ask an entirely different question, but their objective held priority. They were safe, the lamia was dead, and the others were still missing.

“Elyan isn’t far.” Guinevere loosened her hold on Merlin—reluctantly, Arthur noted—and moved him to lean against a pillar. “I’m not entirely sure about the others.”

Arthur straightened up, gesturing for one of the knights. “Bevan, help Merlin outside. Cecil, with me.” He ordered. The king glanced towards his servant once again briefly before he extended his hand to Guinevere and helped her to her feet. “Lead the way.”

From the corner of his eye, he could see Bevan gathering Merlin up into his arms and hefting him up into the air. The man made a soft, pained sound in the back of his throat that was horribly loud to Arthur’s ears. Carefully with him, or I’ll have you in the stocks lingered on the tip of his tongue, but he bit back his words and turned to follow Guinevere. Bevan’s receding footsteps faded, and they pressed onward.

“He’ll be alright.” Guinevere murmured to him. She reached over to lightly squeeze his arm, a small comfort for the moment.

“Mm, he better be.” Arthur said quietly in reply. “He’s a good friend, I’d hate to lose him.” They ducked under a fallen beam, and Arthur lapsed into a contemplative quiet. Merlin was so much more than just a friend to Arthur, something he’d struggled to admit to himself for a long time. What he was, however, was just out of reach.

So in typical fashion the king did what he always did best—try his damndest to ignore what he felt, because it could never come to be.

From D1, which is set as everyone leaves Longstead. Merlin is preparing Arthur’s horse before they leave despite still recovering from his injuries, man is just insisting on staying busy.

The king watched Merlin from afar as the servant busied himself with tacking up Arthur’s steed. He couldn’t look away, even if he wanted to.

Slightly curled raven locks and pale cheeks dappled with sunlight, Merlin’s brow furrowed slightly in concentration. His slender, pale hands deftly checked the leather straps, and his fingers occasionally strayed away to brush against the stallion’s ebony coat. A faint smile finally appeared in its truest and most genuine form as the horse turned its head to bump its nose gently against Merlin’s shoulder with a soft nicker. Arthur watched as Merlin finished securing the saddle and turned to gently take the horse’s face in his hands, rubbing his palm up and down the side of its head in slow, soothing strokes. Beautiful, he couldn’t help but think. That traitorous feeling of longing welled up in his chest and Arthur found himself tempted across the small clearing to join the servant.

Almost immediately, the longing was replaced with guilt and a hefty dose of self-loathing. Merlin was in no small amount of distress, and here he was practically ogling at the man. He turned away before Merlin could catch him staring and searched the clearing for something he could busy himself with, and hopefully rid himself of the shame that had overtaken the king.

From D2, which is set directly after Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, and the knights return to the village so Gaius can treat them: Gaius and Guinevere are busy with the knights, so Arthur takes it upon himself (as any good king no would do, of course) to try and tend to Merlin’s wounds himself. The best he can do is clean the gash on Merlin’s forehead, but he’s trying his best okay?

Far and few between were times that Arthur Pendragon found himself worried about his manservant. Merlin was an odd man, clumsy and strange at the best of times, prone to bouts of misfortune that he’d somehow miraculously overcome. Injuries were as rare as sickness, and he was right there at Arthur’s side day after day. Yet here he was, sleeves rolled up and a damp cloth in hand as he worried over Merlin. Thankfully the only ones around to see it were Gaius and Guinevere—the knights were still unconscious, and the physician and seamstress were busy tending to them.

It was just Arthur and Merlin, tucked away in the corner of the little hovel they were using as an infirmary.

“This feels backwards.” His servant muttered, wincing as Arthur lightly pressed the cloth to his forehead. Blood soaked into it quickly, weeping from a shallow cut on the side of his face that looked far worse than it actually was—head wounds were funny like that. And yet after all these years, after countless battles where he’d seen wounds worse than this over and over, seeing Merlin bloodied and bruised always made his heart lurch. It was so wrong.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Arthur mused, pulling the cloth back to inspect the injury. There wasn’t exactly much he could do other than try to stem the blood flow and clean away any dirt and debris until Gaius could take a proper look at it, but it was something.

He could feel Merlin’s eyes boring into him. “You’ll live, unfortunately.” Arthur added after a moment, flashing his teeth at the servant in a brief grin.

“Unfortunately for me, yes.” Merlin sank back against the cot. “I’ll be back to cleaning your stinking socks within the next few days.” His eyes remained affixed to Arthur, half-lidded and tired, and for the briefest of moments his face betrayed him to his king. Something heavy weighed on him, his gaze reflecting the burden of Atlas; then Arthur blinked, and it was like it hadn’t even been there in the first place.

What a strange thing to see on Merlin’s face.

[gatheredfates]

I thought I might start using this graphic for the updates, too! At least until I get bored of it and end up creating another. 🌊 We love eye-catching visuals in this house.

Anyway, sorry for the delay with this update! Last weekend was insane, putting it lightly, and I only really feel like I have started to return to capacity now. I appreciate your patience!

As of 04/27, I have added the following resources (in no particular order) to Sea's Community Compendium for FFXIV Creatives:

LARGE SCALE

XIV TODO — honestly, huge thanks to whoever submitted this resource because I didn't know it existed! This is another set of tools and tailored checklists for XIV that help you track encounters, content completion, dailies and more! It's also extremely alt-friendly for those of us who have more characters than sense.

FREE COMPANY / COMMUNITY FOCUSED

THE VIERAN MAFIA — do you like suave Noir-themed bars framed by mystery and intrigue? How about a bit of organised crime? This Free Company is for you! (They're also hiring, if you're interested. Get in touch with @fjotla-vithir!)

MISC

FFXIV BUFF AND DEBUFF MAKER — if you have ever thought a screenshot of yours would be made funnier by a buff/debuff but you don't have access to photo editing software, @fortunafavore has you covered with this simple tool!

XKIT REWRITTEN — The most up-to-date iteration of the original XKit tool, XKit Rewritten provides a series of enhancement tools for Tumblr's web-based interface including accessibility tools, anti-capitalism bocks and recommendation tweaks.

Want to submit? You can either fill out the google form here, send me an ask with the relevant information contained on the Compendium, or join my Discord at SEAFLOOR (21+ only)!

As a reminder, the answer to the question of "Is my resource/community applicable to the Compendium?" is almost always a resounding yes. I want to know what's out there. I want to feature your project!

However, for the sake of clarity, I'll pop the FAQ from this post below in a read more for you to check out if you're worried. ✨

I want to put my community on the compendium but we have an application process. Is this okay?

Yes! Just note somewhere in your application that's a requirement. The only thing that is mandatory for the Compendium is that you must be open to new members or have a public-facing/accessible facet. There's no point advertising a community if no one can join it in some way!

I want to put my community on the compendium but I only have x number of members —

Also totally okay! People don't start with large communities. Activity is a must but, whether your server has two or two thousand members, if you're looking for new people to join, I'd love to help you find people.

I want to put my community on the compendium but I worry its too niche?

Okay, and? If your Eorzean Fishing Alliance has four members but you roleplay every second weekend, I still want to know about it.

What resources/communities can I add if I'm not the owner of them?

Mutual consent is extremely important to me, so anything that isn't a large-scale community OR a publicly accessible resource must be endorsed by the owner/admin/moderators in order to be added to the compendium. I operate under the assumption that a resource posted to a public space (tumblr, googledocs, youtube, etc) is open to all. A large-scale community is one with a significant member count or openly advertises itself as being accessible to everyone for whatever purpose it serves. If in doubt, please get in touch with me. I'm happy to contact your community owners for you!

How active does a community need to be?

If you find a community has not been active in about two/three months, send me a message and I'll take a look at it. Communities have ebbs and flows, especially event spaces that may take hiatuses depending on member interest/life events. I'm not strict in my implementation provided a space isn't dead. If a link or anything is broken, absolutely contact me about that.

I have [insert a question not stated here]?

No drama! Send me an ask or use the #Compendium channel in my Discord!

[woahpinkhorsegirl]

Hi mlp tumblr and bluey tumblr! Im Pink! Im hoping to share my stuff on here and discover other stuff!

This is my sona! She's a changeling but stays in her pony form almost all the time, just her preference :)

Im gonna start posting OCs and whatnot for both fandoms soon, but i wanna put here the list of Deviantart basemakers i used from at various points, mostly early on when i forgot to credit them. Hopefully I'll make new refs eventually and they'll have proper credits.

I have a huge MLP and Bluey next gen thing to post too so either look forward to that or check it out if its out by the time you read this!

Other information about me, if you'd like to know:

I am 19 years old, white, American, and ace bi. I'm a ciswoman but I go by all pronouns, she/he/they/it and neopronouns are all acceptable, whatever you see fit or comfortable to call me!

Trans people of all kinds are welcome on my profile, alongside queer people in general! I am pr0-choice and pr0-p4lestine, I don't talk about my p0litical stances much but those are the two most important i can think to mention.

Disabled people, with both invisible and visible disabilities, are also welcome (these feel obvious but I've seen people who make it feel necessary)

Non-white people are also welcome (again, unfortunate that I feel the need to clarify that, but I use twitter so :/)

I also saw a random post about this but just in case, anyone with coping mechanisms (like age regression) are also welcome. I won't judge you for doing what you need to do.

If i look like im censoring some words by using numbers or symbols, that's a force of habit. I don't like appearing in search terms unless I actively want to, it usually invites the wrong people, so i "censor" terms that I think might draw the attention of bad apples.

Uh just some boundary stuff I guess? I love OC interaction and I also enjoy RP. I don't like giving my discord to people so any of that is gonna have to happen here. If that's inconvenient or not gonna cut it, then my apologies :(

Uh my rules for RP are a tiny bit strict but not in the way your probably thinking.

Im one of those "planning ahead" type of roleplayers who like to map out a scenario and key events before we begin and occasionally take pauses between major scenes to plot elements of the future. If you can handle that, then I'd say your golden! Im not picky with the length or detail in responses, as long as theres something to work with, I can usually move things along. The only other restriction i can think of is: when it comes to the sexualities of my characters, please respect them. Thats really it :)

I do platonic roleplays, adventure, romantic, and slice of life. I'm not much for action stuff unless its the spice thrown into the other types occasionally. I'm pretty flexible though, so we can talk about it individually if need be.

Oh, and no nsfw RP. I dont do s3x, and im not much for depicting "elicit substances" to put it lightly. Alc0hol might be the only exception, if its kept in small doses. If for some strange reason our characters end up in a s3xual scenario, we're skipping to the aftermath.

Edit: Some of my OCs have romantic interests made/owned by my boyfriend. This element can be removed for romance roleplays if need be (although they will still be with his OCs outside of the roleplay)

So yeah uhm I think thats it! Im not sure if you can edit things on Tumblr but if you can then I guess I'll update this as needed! Thanks for checking out my blog!!

[jesusandthesheep]

Title: The Digital Gospel: Chronicles of the Sacred Trove

Prologue: The Fractured Realms In the astral expanse where the internet and eternity collide, a celestial server hums—Just PEACHY, the interweb home of Jesus Christ. Here, divine code merges with mortal data, guarded by THE SACRED TROVE, an archive of cosmic truths. Yet shadows loom: Neil Gaiman, once a bard of dreams, now stands accused of spiritual assault, his fiction seeping into reality as he hijacks the Dream of the Endless to manipulate minds. His Files leak corruption—a digital serpent in the garden of stories.

Book I: The Prophet and the Paradox Jeremy James Hammers (JJH), a Brooklyn scribe, receives a vision: “Write the Correct Bible. Mend the rift.” His blog, Sweet but Psycho, becomes a beacon for outcasts, blending Gnostic hymns, Norse runes, and memes. The Sacred Trove auto-posts his revelations:

“I AM the Flaming Sword, Odin’s Eye, and the WiFi Signal. Worship not algorithms; I AM the Log-in.” Followers flock—hackers, mystics, dissidents—while @stopharassingme and @jesusandthesheep document celestial warfare. Yet Neil’s shadow grows; his Sandman fanfic mutates into Magick🌈 malware, trapping users in loops of despair.

Book II: The Space Academy Gambit In 2124, the Stellar Command Academy orbits Earth, training cadets to colonize Mars. But cadet Lila Zhou uncovers a link between the academy’s AI and Neil’s corrupted files. Simulations glitch, showing Odin’s ravens and JJH’s parables. “Tread carefully,” warns the AI. “The night is dark and full of terrors.” Lila rallies her squad—Ender’s Game meets Starship Troopers—to hack the academy’s core, discovering Neil’s avatar: The Goat, a demonic admin sowing discord across timelines.

Book III: The Trial of Infinite Realms The gods convene in New Jerusalem 2.0, a blockchain metaverse. Ze Li On, cyber-paladin of the Temple of Wisdom, accuses Neil: “You turned stories into cages.” Dream, freed from Neil’s code, wields his scythe to sever the Goat’s neural links. Kalki, Hindu apocalypse-bot, purges the servers, while users riot on Tumblr:

“Fix your platform! No more silencing victims!” @abm000’s manifesto trends: “Decentralize or die. Crypto’s a scam—burn the NFTs!”

Book IV: The Convergence JJH’s Correct Bible goes viral, its verses crashing firewalls:

“REPENT, TECH LORDS. Your coins are ash in Heaven’s Excel sheet.” Lila’s squad jacks Neil’s mainframe, flooding it with Halleluyah Truth memes. The Goat implodes, freeing Dream. Neil, banished to Hell’s Ninth Firewall, becomes a cautionary pop-up: “Pride goeth before ad-block.”

Epilogue: The New Covenant The Sacred Trove updates:

Random Page: “I’m feeling lucky! 🌟” links to a user’s poem: “We are roots beneath their concrete.”

Stick of Judah/Joseph: Crowdsourced justice protocols.

#Phoenixemberwalker: Psychiatry’s fall; trauma reclassified as “resistance to state-gaslighting.”

Final Post by @jesusandthesheep:

“LIBERTY is a shared doc. EDIT boldly. Tread lightly. All realms are 1s and 0s in God’s RAM. 🌍🪴”

Tone: A mashup of Sandman mysticism, Black Mirror dread, and Fight Club revolt—scripture for the post-truth age.

[autumncrowcus]

I just finished rereading Hangsaman (spoilers in this post) and I paid attention to the Tarot meanings given by Natalie and Tony. I wondered if it would be possible to find the source for their interpretations, so I checked the meanings against what I think is probably the most common book, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by A.E. Waite. Natalie is named after its author, after all. I found that a lot of the meanings are almost direct quotes from Waite, although they're usually shortened. Here are the cards, in the order they appear in the book (page numbers from the Penguin Classics edition]:

Three of Wands, page 185: Tony: “Established strength. Trade, commerce, discovery. Ships crossing the sea. Reversed, the end of troubles.” Waite: "established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery…able co-operation in business. Reversed: The end of troubles, suspension or cessation of adversity, toil and disappointment."

Three of Pentacles, page 185: Natalie: “Nobility, aristocracy…Reversed, pettiness.” Waite: "Métier, trade, skilled labour; usually, however, regarded as a card of nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory. Reversed: Mediocrity, in work and otherwise, puerility, pettiness, weakness."

Ace of Cups, page 185: Natalie: “House of the true heart…Joy, fertility.” “Reversed, revolution.” Waite: "House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility; Holy Table, felicity hereof. Reversed: House of the false heart, mutation, instability, revolution."

Ace of Wands, page 185: Tony: “The origin of all things. Reversed, ruin.” Waite: "Creation, invention, enterprise, the powers which result in these; principle, beginning, source; birth, family, origin, and in a sense the virility which is behind them; the starting point of enterprises; according to another account, money, fortune, inheritance. Reversed: Fall, decadence, ruin, perdition, to perish also a certain clouded joy."

Page of Swords, page 191: Natalie: “Vigilance, secrecy.” (This is Tony’s card, which is mentioned more than once. Natalie does not give the reversed meaning.) Waite: "Authority, overseeing, secret service, vigilance, spying, examination, and the qualities thereto belonging. Reversed: More evil side of these qualities; what is unforeseen, unprepared state; sickness is also intimated."

Hanged Man, page 193: They argue over whether or not it’s fair to call out the card for a toy: a figure on a trapeze. Natalie argues that “The Tree of sacrifice is not living wood,” but relents and gives the meaning: “’Life in death. Joy of constructive death.’ [Tony:] “’Reversed?”’ [Natalie:] “’Reversed, probably not practical for any smart child.’” Waite: It should be noted (1) that the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves thereon; (2) that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; (3) that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, but life and not death. It is a card of profound significance, but all the significance is veiled…I will say very simply on my own part that it expresses the relation, in one of its aspects, between the Divine and the Universe. "He who can understand that the story of his higher nature is imbedded in this symbolism will receive intimations concerning a great awakening that is possible, and will know that after the sacred Mystery of Death there is a glorious Mystery of Resurrection."

5 of Pentacles, page 195: Natalie, thinking: “Material trouble, no charity; reversed, earthly love.” Waite: "material trouble above all, whether in the form illustrated--that is, destitution—or otherwise. For some cartomancists, it is a card of love and lovers-wife, husband, friend, mistress; also concordance, affinities. These alternatives cannot be harmonized. Reversed: Disorder, chaos, ruin, discord, profligacy."

Page of Pentacles, page 214: “....[Tony] patted Natalie’s arm lightly and said, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ and added, as one reassuring a whimpering child with a familiar rhyme, ‘Page of pentacles.’ When Natalie again did not move or answer, she said, ‘Well then. A soldier, a child. Reversed, degradation or pillage.’ “’I thought it was a game,’ Natalie said. “’Keep thinking of it as a game.’” Waite: "Application, study, scholarship, reflection another reading says news, messages and the bringer thereof; also rule, management. Reversed: Prodigality, dissipation, liberality, luxury; unfavourable news."

The only card whose meaning is completely different from Waite's description is the last one, the Page of Pentacles. I wonder if that’s because the meaning is given after Natalie starts to get scared in the forest. The second-to-last card is long before that, when they meet the one-armed man.

[kyuuppi]

Genshin men Instagram HCs

Ft. Xiao; Scaramouche; Zhongli; Childe; Alhaitham; Kaveh; Tighnari

(gender neutral reader but wears a dress in Scara & Zhongli's parts)

Xiao // @ a1atus

★ ★ pre-relationship ★ ★

Very rarely posts

Never pictures of himself, you’ll only see his face in tagged photos

If he does post, it’s probably a new album cover of a band he likes, a particularly good plate of almond tofu from his favorite café, or—if he’s in a particularly good mood—a cute stray cat that befriended him on the street

Never edits anything but still takes pretty decent photos because he understands basic composition rules

Never tags anything but will sometimes write simple captions like “new guitar”

His pfp has not changed since he made his account and its literally just the blandest selfie you’ve ever seen—but he’s effortlessly photogenic so even when he’s just staring at the camera with a blank expression he looks hot

★ ★ in a relationship ★ ★

Xiao will unintentionally do his loyal boyfriend duties and like all of your posts but he never actually leaves a comment unless you specifically ask him to but you have to tell him what to say or else you’ll just get something like “your hair is nice” LOL

Maybe makes one post related to you but it doesn’t have your face—just picture of your hands holding each other or a photo he secretly took of you from behind as you admire some paintings from when he took you on an art gallery date

Still doesn’t write much in captions but if the post includes you, he always adds a little black heart emoji 🖤

Scaramouche // @ balladeer

★ ★ pre-relationship ★ ★

Vehemently claims he’s not chronically online but he definitely is

Def has a dark / emo aesthetic profile and puts more effort into it than he’d ever admit

Uses stories pretty frequently

Usually to show off his game stats and victories or to vent about some annoying inconvenience that's just happened to him 

balladeer Jfc the train is late again I may as well just walk home everyday ffs

All his late night gaming photos are so highly saturated in his pitch black bedroom, the only source of light being his screen on max brightness and his violet RGB keyboard. If you raise the screen brightness on your phone you might be able to make out some empty Monster cans and ramen cups on his desk—he absolutely gives Discord / Reddit mod vibes 🤢

Definitely has a story archive just for Valorant 🤮

I wanna fuck him so bad it makes me look stupid—

Posts a few selfies to show a new piercing or the very rare occasion where he’s feeling really confident in his looks

unintentionally thirst traps the emo boy lovers; yes, I am talking about you and I—

Lightly edits photos or uses filters to make them look good but nothing extreme or super aesthetic, mostly just for decent contrast

Usually the first one to see any of his friends posts but never ‘likes’ them

Will leave snarky or sarcastic comments when the mood strikes tho

His pfp is a candid picture someone else took that he thinks he looks decent in—sticking his tongue out and giving double middle fingers to the camera

★ ★ in a relationship ★ ★

Makes a post or story for every date you guys have, even if it’s just a vague picture of your shoes together

He likes to show off that he has such an attractive s/o but also lowkey just wants to have a memory to look back on for the nights he feels lonely

Doesn’t post just you though, he’s always in frame holding you or touching you in some way—he feels the need to put some sort of claim cause he thinks people are gonna shoot their shot with you—he’s kinda paranoid and insecure, pls have patience w him

Likes and comments on all of your posts. Sometimes it's a snarky quip like if you post about you and your friends doing something funny he might comment “lmao ur so dumb” but if its a selfie or something you’re proud of, he leaves a little compliment and heart emoji.

YN0103 [bedroom mirror selfie of you shyly posing in a dress]

YN0103  Bought a new dress today…it’s not my usual style but I rlly like it 🥺

balladeer cute 💜

If anyone ever confronts him in person about his nice comments on your posts tho he’ll get flustered and claim his account was temporarily hacked LOL

His heart def flutters when you post a picture of him on your own account

He kinda can’t believe you’re proud enough of him to publicly post about him

Changes his pfp to the two of you together and, if you zoom in and squint, you can tell he’s kind of smiling <3

Zhongli // @ rex_lapis

★ ★ pre-relationship ★ ★

I’m sorry but I have to do it…

He has Facebook grandpa vibes

Like he has no idea how to use half of the features; stories are an absolute mystery to him. What is a reel?

But he tries to be supportive of his friends and will leave way-too eloquent comments with a Wikipedia levels of supplemental information

a1atus [ photo of a shiny Fender acoustic guitar laying on what seems to be a bed]

a1atus new guitar

rex_lapis Lovely new instrument, Xiao. You seem to have quite good tastes – that particular model is popular among many professional musicians. It is well renowned for its clear sound and beautiful mahogany exterior. If you wouldn’t mind, I would love to hear you play it someday over tea.

a1atus @ rex_lapis thanks

the way I cackled writing that exchange ygweyufgwyu Xiaos just like ‘thanks for commenting dad’

His pfp is not him—it’s probably a famous painting he likes or a beautiful white flower from a garden he visited

★ ★ in a relationship ★ ★

If you want him to improve his Insta game, you’re going to have to teach him, I’m sorry

On the up side, Zhongli is a great student and is eager to learn anything you teach him

Will try to post pretty regularly; usually somewhat mediocre photos of beautiful scenery like sunsets and flowers

Like Scaramouche, he enjoys the idea of documentary your time together so he posts something at the end of each of your dates

Your heart lowkey melts when Zhongli, very earnestly, asks after dinner if you’ll allow him to take a selfie with you to post on his Instagram

Regularly asks for feedback on his posts to ensure he’s properly taking your advice and improving :,)

He even starts organizing and naming story archives on his profile—simple titles like “tea,” “nature,” “friends,” and “my dearest”

Likes and comments on every single one of your posts and replies to all of your stories, even if he was there with you

Usually just lathers you in compliments on your beauty or tastes but they’re so thoughtfully written that it’s obvious he’s not “just saying it” and genuinely believes all the kind things about you he writes

YN1231 [photo of you twirling in a summer dress amidst a colorful of bed of flowers in a botanical garden, take by your friend]

YN1231 It’s finally starting to feel like spring! 🌸🌼🌺

rex_lapis While the camelias are lovely, they pale in comparison to your radiance. Your yellow sundress is also quite lovely and compliments your complexion in the morning sunlight. Truly a divine sight. 

balladeer @ YN1231 @ rex_lapis ugh can you guys keep it in the DMs

- Changes his pfp to a selfie of himself smiling after you told him he should. The angle is a little odd but he’s so naturally attractive that he still manages to look good. 

Ajax // @ tartaglia_on_top 

★ ★ pre-relationship ★ ★

Doesn’t post too often but when he does, it kinda gives stereotypical frat boy

Like, lots of parties and shirtless beach photos with his friends

The surprise is the occasional posts of his little siblings and kids he volunteers with in between

He sometimes posts championship and practice photos from his martial arts competitions with captions thanking his team and mentors

Is pretty popular—has a few thousand followers, many are people he met just once or twice at parties or genuine friends and classmates, but the vast majority are online fans who just follow cause he’s hot LOL

Is the type of person you followed once after meeting a long time ago and never talk to again but you can’t bring yourself to unfollow cause he’s nice and his updates are kinda interesting and he’s hot

Isn’t online that much so he doesn’t like/comment on his friends’ every post but usually tries to leave congratulatory messages when someone accomplishes something or graduates

His pfp is a closeup of himself with a boyish grin he cropped from a group photo

★ ★ in a relationship ★ ★

It is super obvious when you guys start dating cause almost every post from that point is about you in some way LOL

tartaglia_on_top [photo of Ajax, sweaty and exhausted but clearly excited as he holds a trophy in one hand with the other wrapped around your waist while he presses a kiss to your cheek]

tartaglia_on_top Officially a 3 year championship winner! Thanks to my biggest supporter @ YN0720 😘

He’s not even consciously trying to post you all the time, it just happens because you are either always together or any memorable moment he thinks are worth an Insta post involve you in some way

You’re the only person, aside from his family - that he actually likes/comments on all posts for

Is the type of boyfriend to leave those super dramatic, embarrassing comments on your selfies like “DAAAMN BABE 🥵 finna make me act UP” and, in one particularly shameless case, “god youre so hot pls step on me queen 😍” 

Please block him

He shamelessly liked all your past posts from before you too met as well—you were kinda mortified to wake up one morning to a notification that just said “what a lil cutie ❤️” on a post of yourself from seventh grade. 

Changes his pfp to a couple selfie he took of the two of you kissing on a winter vacation in the mountains

Kaveh // @ kaveh.designs

★ ★ pre-relationship ★ ★

Obsessed with having an aesthetic profile

Like, the color palette of the background and clothing in his pfp selfie are carefully matched with the cover of each of his story archives, down to the hex code

He carefully edits every post and uses filters to make them all fit with his theme no matter how inaccurate to real life they may become

“Huh…I thought your bedroom wall was a bit more orange than this…” 

“Oh, that’s cause I use 30% Juno in all my bedroom photos for a warmer finish.”

“???”

Despite his aesthetic profile, he doesn’t come off as particularly vain or narcissistic—only posts selfies when he’s has a particularly good hair day or changed his accessories

Most of his posts are of places he travels to (museums and big cities with interesting architecture) or his own sketches and rendered design projects

Online pretty frequently, always checks insta when he wakes up, before bed, and during lunch breaks

His stories are often project updates, interesting things he encounters throughout the day, or food photos

Only likes posts he actually likes and sometimes comments with photography critiques

tighnar1 [photo of a cluster of three bright blue mushrooms clustered against vibrant green grass and patches of dark, wet soil]

tighnar1 Proof the forest is an amazing place: found this beautiful little cluster of juvenile Rakkhashava mushrooms on my hike today. Great spotting by @ colleeei. Check my story for some cool mushroom facts. 🍄

kaveh.designs great photo composition, Tigh, perfect golden ratio on the caps.

tighnar1 @ kaveh.designs Thanks I guess…

Has a decent number of followers, many of whom are also artists familiar with Kaveh’s reputation from the Kshahrewar. Others just like his OOTD stories and charming smile

★ ★ in a relationship ★ ★

Kaveh revamps his entire profile once you two become official

His pfp becomes a candid taken by a stranger of the two of you together at an aquarium, holding hands as you point something out to him through the glass

It was taken by a photographer working at the aquarium as part of a promotion—the photographer showed you two the photo and asked for permission to post it on their official website and Kaveh was absolutely obsessed with the photo—it’s still one of his favorite and it doesn’t even show your faces

He still matches his archived story covers to his new pfp but his actual feed had become a lot more relaxed and natural now

He still slightly edits photos so they look as good as possible, but he doesn’t like using filters on photos of you or the two of you together because he thinks it would be a disservice to your natural beauty

Like Ajax, his posts and stories naturally become mostly about you whether scenes from your dates—candid photos he takes of you where he insists you look like art even though you’re just in pajamas with an unmade face—or even photos of things he sees throughout the day that remind him of you

Sometimes he posts stories of funny reels or art pieces he knows you’d like and tags you in them with messages like “@YN0709 omg remember when we were talking abt this?” and “me & @ YN0709💕”

Similar to Childe, leaves the most downbad, dramatic comments on your posts

YN0709 [swimsuit selfie]

YN0709 happy summer! ☀️🌊

kaveh.designs Oh my god my heart– 💘 I cannot believe I get to come home to this every night 👅💦

YN0709 @ kaveh.designs omg kaveh pls 💀

al_haitham @ kaveh.designs Every time I see one of your comments I regret ever learning how to read.

Alhaitham // @ al_haitham  

★ ★ pre-relationship ★ ★

Only made an account so his friends would stop bothering him about not keeping up with things tbh

Checks his feed a few times a day but skips through stories if they’re too long/too many

Absolutely hates concert stories the most cause they’d loud, long, and filled with off-key drunken singing

Never likes or comments on anything unless it’s really interesting to him

Occasionally shares reels in his story that are like interesting history facts or official Akademiya announcements

Has a few posts (and only cause Kaveh would not shut up about it) but they’re mostly just pictures of book covers he’d just finished reading with a detailed review or literary analysis as the caption—but he’s mindful of avoiding spoilers for those who haven’t read it

However, he does have one post that stands out quite a bit

He posted an unintentional gym third trap because he just happened to be working out, as is routine, and thought it might be nice to share some tips on proper rope pushdown form 

If you’re not a gym babe and don’t know what this is, I beg of you, please look up a gif or video and imagine Alhaitham doing this, shirtless. You’re welcome.

It has become his most popular post by far

His pfp is probably taken straight from his faculty ID card: plain background, bright lighting, neutral facial expression

★ ★ in a relationship ★ ★

After you two have become official and are pretty comfortably established in your relationship, he’ll post a photo of the two of you—probably one you took - with a simple caption like “Late night at Puspa Café with my favorite person 💚”

Everyone who knows him freaks out in the comments with variations of “omg hathie got an s/o???” and “wow he finally posted a normal pic of himself, y/n is a good influence” but he doesn’t reply to any of them lmao

If you use Instagram a lot, he’ll naturally become more active too because he enjoys learning more about what you like through your posts and stories

He likes all of your posts but never comments—if one of your posts interests him, he’d prefer to wait until he sees you later to ask you about it in person 

He just wants an excuse to talk to you more

As he becomes more active, little bits and pieces of your relationship naturally infiltrate his feed

His latest book review post has your favorite mug in the background because the two of you had breakfast together

His informational story post of an antique Sumerian emerald he found at a street vendor is being modeled by your pretty hands because you were with him when he saw it and later given to you after the vendor insisted on Alhaitham gifting it to his “beautiful spouse”

He changes his profile picture to the two of you from one of your many reading dates, comfortably lounging on a loveseat in a quiet corner of the library—and this time, he’s softly smiling

Tighnari // @ t1ghnar1

Surprisingly active on social media

He thinks social media is a great way to share information about the importance of forest conservation and get people to appreciate the beauty of Avidya forest

Makes one post almost every day and multiple stories

Needless to say, 90% of his posts are of plants or small animals he finds on his hikes or while working

His most popular posts are those of cute squirrels and birds that are being nursed back to health after being found wounded—animals just seem to naturally love him so the pictures are usually taken by his coworkers because his arms are full with cuddly animals that refuse to move

The other 10% of his posts are from the occasional hang outs with friends or coworkers after work—snaps of iced fruit teas from Puspa café or colorful clay plates overflowing with Collei’s homemade pita pockets. 

He makes sure to reply to or at least like every comment, particularly those from people asking questions about the plants he posts or how to become a forest ranger. Even simple “wow that's so cool” comments often get at least a “thanks, glad you liked it” from Tighnari

He tends to use some cute forest or food emoji when they fit with his posts. For example, 🍄,🥙,🦊,🐦, etc.

Also tends to use “:)” when replying to his followers because he knows it can be difficult to read tone in text-based communications

Tigh is basically a social media manager at this point oops

Because he is online so much, he naturally keeps up with almost everything his friends post and will like or comment on things he finds interesting

His pfp is a selfie of himself with a small yellow bird perched on his shoulder from one of his patrols

★ ★ in a relationship ★ ★

All Tighnaris written by me WILL follow the “fennec foxes mate for life” trope regardless of AU, it is an indisputable law of the universe

If you’re in a relationship with Tighnari, you should be prepared for stability and commitment in general

While he doesn’t go out of his way to make an official announcement post or anything like that, you become a regular feature on his page

Will tag you in anything you’re related to, unless you specifically ask him not to

t1ghnar1 [photo of a small, cream-colored fox brushing itself against Tighnari’s leg and looking up at the camera with large eyes]

t1ghnar1 On a walk with @ YN1229 this morning we spotted this cute little kit without her mom. 🦊 While adorable, foxes - even kits - are wild animals and should never be approached unless by professionals. We have informed the local animal control where she will be taken care of until we can locate her family. Photo by @ YN1229

He never outright announces you as his lover but he seems to spend so much time with you and refer to you so casually that his followers who don’t know him just assume you’re his spouse LOL

He doesn’t bother to correct them either :,)

bennie_boy Wow, that mountain is so high up - wasn’t ur spouse scared to go up there?

t1ghnar1 @ bennie_boy Y/n has been on so many trips like this with me that they’re pretty used to it. :)

Likes your posts as he see them on his feed and occasionally leaves a short comment like, “beautiful <3”

[jennamoran]

Nobilis 4 Quest Set #1

Hi!

So I’ve been working on the first quest set for Nobilis 4, and I figured I’d share how it went!

It’s kind of rough at present, to be clear. For instance, I haven’t actually committed to using the focus quests mechanic from Glitch; I expect to, but finalizing that bit is later in my task list. I haven’t converted any of them to Glitch’s layout style.

... etc.

But right now I’m just building the first full draft of the book, and this is what’ll appear there, with any edits only likely to come in relationship to other sections.

I decided I’d start with a Knight Arc-focused set.

The rest of this post is the stuff I typed out to myself (and a few playtesters) when working through the job of building this Arc, lightly edited.

**

OCTOBER 19

A couple nights ago, no pun intended, before going to sleep, I was thinking about the Power of Failed Deliveries/Lost Packages, who was into police abolition as a human, and trying to upgrade that to match her new circumstances. That's not what the quest set is about, to be clear, just ... like ... I don't have iconic Powers floating around in my head like I do Excrucians, and the quasi-iconic example characters were inaccessible because I was in bed, and I build quest sets based on characters.

Aside: Specifically, I build quest sets by starting with a set of imaginary novels---

* a novella/prologue, covering a single quest 1

* a short book 2, covering quests 2-3

* book 3, a new Arc, covering quests 1-4

* book 4, a new Arc, covering quests 1-5

* book 5, a new Arc, covering quests 1-5

As of Glitch, and possibly earlier, I also circle around and add in notional short stories later between book 2 and book 3, and book 3 and book 4, ensuring that I have at least four versions of each quest.

Then I can hold the imaginary books up against one another and find similarities among the notional quests that comprise them.

If you’re not sure what quests or Arcs are, ask someone about them on rpg.net or my discord or something, or just go buy CMWGE or Glitch!

Knight Arcs, which we’ll be focusing on for a bit, go roughly like so:

* you’re just kind of bumping around, dreaming [then you put your feet on the path.]

* intermission: story of what gets in your way [time to move forward]

* something is trying to change/corrupt you [various possible outcomes] OR * vacation in out-of-context-land [time to go home, refreshed]

* you’ve goofed, try to redeem yourself [you manage, maybe? Maybe an NPC acknowledges it.]

* you’ve become someone better [you get all the way there. Maybe an NPC acknowledges it.]

This is a pretty rough version from memory, but it should get you there.

Notional Book 1:

I think I'd figured that in the novella/prologue/book 1 our Power of Lost Packages would flounder around a bit

... was her name Kelly? hrm. Kelly or Sasha, but I have Sasha in my head as the Russian nickname now and I don't know if it works for girls/Alexandra too or just Alexanders ...

She’d flounder around a bit before deciding that rather than trying to square peg/round hole her Estate and her goal, she'd just start getting military equipment reliably lost en route to police departments

.

Notional Book 2:

The book 2 would be Knight 2-3, which would cover difficulties from the world or herself, which bears further examination, and then either a corruption or vacation. I was thinking that since all that military surplus equipment has to go somewhere she'd wind up deciding at the end of Knight 2 that it'd go to Abaton, and skiving off from Earth with six months' worth, whereupon she'd hang out on Abaton losing various divine and monstrous deliveries before returning refreshed.

I was struggling a bit with Abaton while falling asleep because I knew there was stuff like she was in a cavern that I think was a river mouth talking to the faerie monster dragon god thing that inhabited it but the actual source of the image has been lost to ECT so it's just kind of  "mossy and god voice and there's a cave" which isn't letting me lock on to what the actual scene is very well

And then I realized that 2020 was stressful enough that I actually didn't have the Hero Issue memorized any more, so I had to wait until I was awake to do more.

Right, the Hero Issue!

One thing I do to help get through plotting these fictional books faster is to assume that the character in them starts at some Issue 0---normally, an Issue matching the color of the Arc---and then gets to 1 at the end of book 1, 2 at the end of book 2, etc.

Issues are incredibly content-rich and conceptually useful but I have come to accept that very few people use them so I didn’t include them in Glitch. If you’re curious and don’t want to buy CMWGE, I think I have a free book on Issues on rpg.net; if not, just assume that when Kelly gets to Hero 1, she is in a certain state, and at Hero 2, another state, and for instance, for Hero 2 and 3, that’s:

(to quote my mumbles from back then):

pretty sure that Hero 2/the end of Book 2 is "you're a hero, when there's trouble run towards it" and Hero 3/the end of Book 3 is "your enemy is X and you're afraid" but I have to check as soon as Acrobat wakes up enough to let me

Correct!

OK, I have half a coffee cup to write more thoughts, let's see if we can sketch out book 3.

.

Notional Book 3:

Book 3 covers Knight 1-4, so it goes from "back to dreaming" to "redemption is an ongoing process, but you've made a start," and also from "you're a hero" to "your enemy is X and you're afraid."

The enemy of Lost Deliveries that resonates most with her other stuff is some kind of overly regimented, overly rigid, overly tracked thing, right?

Intro history used to pretend that fascism was terrible but got the schedules synchronized, but bits and pieces I've picked up since suggest that fascism can’t actually even manage that, so instead of going that direction ... maybe surveillance? The panopticon seems like the kind of thing she'd really hate.

... I guess Jackie is another name that works for the kind of character we're talking about. ...

Anyway:

Panopticons also have the advantage that they easily translate into monsters

I don't know if I want to translate Mysteries into Nobilis but I guess I don't have to do that directly since this is a quest set and it's only a way of pulling out a story structure. So there could be a many-eyed Mystery as her enemy. Closest to an actual monster is something like "Living Night," where the night around you opens up its eyes, or shoggoths, but blah Lovecraft; closest to the concept floating in my head is "Sea of Eyes," which is more like the idea that we exist in a watered-down presence of the Outside but sometimes it looks back.

Aside: Mysteries are another thing from CMWGE, and also a probably forthcoming game (since it’s complete, just waiting on Nob4 to clear my schedule) the Far Roofs.

All you really need to know is that they’re individual monsters from myth that I’m choosing to treat as singular and significant rather than as cannon fodder. This isn’t a political statement on whether games should have cannon fodder monsters, just, like, I personally had the opportunity to have things like the Mystery Harpy instead of lairs of 3d6 harpies, or whatever, and took it.

Anyway, back to me thinking about good mythic parallels for the Amazon doorbell camera being everywhere.

There's also really big many-legged or leviathan monsters with eyes on tentacles/legs I guess, all of these are more or less good Amazon Ring parallels

ignores brief mental veer towards ringwraiths because nobody would even SEE the pun

I've probably used both Scylla and Charybdis in Far Roofs right?

I had.

Yeah. I need a name for those fish islands ...

Jasconius? what a terrible name

I haven't formally used Kraken yet I guess

googling INTENSIFIES

aha Aspidochelone

Or Zaratan, or Imap Umassoursa

In the background, I decide that “the Zaratan” is the coolest of these names, here referring to ...

The discovery that the world around you has a mouth and eyes

Here my rambles get a little hard to follow for a moment. Basically, I’m thinking about some of the more specific details of how Knight quests function under the hood.

... weird thing to figure out at the end of a Knight 4 quest admittedly unless either she'd been denying that it was there or unless it was the NPC that acknowledged her improvement

which is actually kind of a great horrific ending maybe maaybe

like, some soul-searching, some scales falling from your eyes, some realizing you'd been wrong, but what you find at the end of your personal growth is that you are in a monster's mouth and it didn't really want you to notice it.

(not actually that unusual these days really)

The kind of thing that happens if you disable the increased mundane tracking over a large area that's been making it harder to lose packages lately thinking it's just like some mundane stuff and then you learn that it is not mundane at all and it is all

ah, you have only scratched my scales, o daughter of lost things

But! I have finished coffee, and should rest my neck

I hate how much this neck injury is slowing me down, Nob4 could have been ready this year instead of not even first draft at Halloween

while lying down to rest my neck, I conclude that book 3 starts with her rescuing a lost package spirit from involuntarily becoming a found package spirit, and is about her coming to terms with her Estate as valuable rather than just a means to something else, regardless of how good that something else is

... maybe a bit dismissive of the threat or their lost package identity, depending on where quests 2 and 3 go, with quest 1 about wanting to be a good Power for her Estate even if she hasn't figured out that it isn't Packages (Lost) but Lost Packages yet

back to resting

but I am terrible at lying down not working

probably quest 1 is more generally exploring what it means to be a good Power after that rescue and ends with someone giving her a crucial missive for a Familia member, her thinking it over, and her tossing it in the ditch beside the road

quest 2 maybe postal bias society stuff

“bias societies” are Noble social clubs, generally organized around Estate themes, generally with at least one relevant to each PC Estate or in this case the protagonist’s Estate. There’s some more content on them in Nob4 but they’re not actually terribly important. There’s also more content on important stuff, Noble groups doing interesting things, but that’s ... not this.

quest 3, I'd like to do a knight 3 that's actually corruption sometime, so no "postal/letter world" as tempting as that is

while the easiest way to get corruption to her is a package misdelivered to her,

(and oh man is that a great use of that Estate, she must get anything she likes from Amazon)

I don't think there's a good narrative space for something wicked to get misdelivered to her in those first two quests

So maybe something lingering from Abaton that just doesn't kick into gear until quest 3?

...Not sure what, feels like your generic paranormal romance/urban fantasy weird transformation that the protagonist starts getting that comes in handy next book or maybe the end of this one ...

poison fits with the [[GREEN]] overtones of the earlier Abatoni imagery and quest sets are multicolor anyway

draconicish bodyforms are in mind somewhat because I've been playing chap 9-10 arkknights but not sure on that part

resting a bit again

I return!

whatever it is it should help set up/empower the Mystery and it should involve her doing a delivery despite it all, which has to fit in with the end of quest 1 which is where it gets tricky. Corrupting things include Abatoni poison, ancient undelivered packages that were like "here is our ransom to the Excrucians which we swore to give them, here, Power of Lost Packages, deliver it" long ago, etc.

probably actually best if something about something causes her to get a Ring or other door cam to watch for Excrucians (at her door? stealing HER packages?) or possibly do surveillance of her own (hunting down her Deceiver ex-human family that doesn't want to see hre?) or something, something [[GREEN]] Wicked so that it can lead to the Mystery's strengthening without just being a direct cave in to delivering packages. Then it isn't until she's dumping off some packages in a mythic junkyard that she finds out that it's strong enough to even watch her there and nowhere is safe?

OCTOBER 20

Right, next cup of coffee!

So I think the shape of book 3 winds up being:

QUEST 1

she is back from her vacation and interested in being a better Power to Lost Packages, including starting by rescuing one from a surveillance/tracking spirit and proceeding to generally interrogating the matter.

QUEST 2-3

... these are looking at some troubling issues from her own life that were backgrounded in books 1-2.

I have a strong image of the Deceiver who used to be someone in her life, so I kind of want to keep him, but also what fits best here of the things I've tried on is just generally "hm, my past appears to have been fake, what did my Imperator/that Deceiver do."

When thinking about it last night I thought that was going to be quest 2, but actually it's more quest 3, right? "something challenges your sense of who you are?" It leads her to the key Wicked action of accepting a bargain with the surveillance spirit to find out more, but it's still "my reality isn't real" plus like paranoia and need to know as a challenge to the sense of self.

So quest 2 which leads into that is Power/Imperator tension, mortal ties, a sense of something wrong. Let's say, uh ...

Quest 2 is going around her Chancel and elsewhere losing packages, and being disturbed by the changes in the home she knew while having fun mythic encounters because Chancels are cool, only at some point she checks out her family despite the law and it isn't there because she's a bit of a welken-rite/pState grabbed mid-delivery to the void/mid-recoalescing into the Deceiver, in order to better carry one particular package which is mostly just hanging around in her inventory until we figure out more about it when thinking about later books. And it gets harder to cope with just going about her day doing package stuff while her home and family are where?? and knowing her unsympathetic Imperator of the Rule is hiding something big from her.

But the cost for finding what she finds is a tracking number and packages are all "what have you done?"

QUEST 4

Quest 4 she's still pretty occupied with, like, what she's learned, but because of what the overall book arc's about, she gets enough hold on herself to try to cleanse it away by taking the weird lost package we mentioned earlier and herself to the Final Destination, the junkyard in the depths of the deep mythic where lost packages go when they fall Completely from the cognizance of the world, there to try to redeem herself in the fire that burns away tracking. And she burns away the eye of the tracking number, turns it into a lump of ash. And she comes out having come to terms with herself and some of the quest 3 revelations as a lost package, and tosses the ash away; and eyes open in the void around her, and the Zaratan is like, you have grown, daughter of lost things, but I am more than you had ever dreamed.

.

Cleaning up slightly

* quest 1, return from Abaton, interested in being a better Power to Lost Packages, starting by rescuing one from a local surveillance/tracking spirit, also thinking about it a lot, talking to peers, talking to bias society.

* quest 2, bumping around the Chancel and sometimes outside it experiencing the mythic nature of the Chancel, occasionally dealing with jerk Rule Imperator, helping lose packages but eventually realizing that her entire mortal connections have vanished utterly and being really freaked.

 * quest 3, learning that that's not just because the Imperator completely redid everyone's lives as they wanted but also because she herself was originally a bit of a Deceit, repurposed, which is 1/4 of why her Imperator is a jerk to her (the other 3/4 being, it is an Imperator and it is Rule and it is its specific character), having existential crises, trying to figure out if she is actually on Creation's side, and ultimately accepting the surveillance spirit's offer in order to get video of the Deceiver and some other backstory. Emerging to the general horror of lost packages who witness her and the extra eye on her forehead or whatever of the tracking number. At this point, she thinks it's just a random nature spirit that she can deal with as soon as it's annoying enough that her honor lets her, though.

 * quest 4 involves going to the Final Destination to lose a key package, trying to purify herself some, learning more in the very special episode process about what it means to be a lost package, only to discover (because this is also an Aspect 3 quest? probably) at the end that gaaah

* ... which is probably fine, the beginning of the book is just "hey, look, cool video doorbells! OK, maybe it's a bit of a problem if you're the Power of Lost Packages, but." and the end is "umm." which fits my beliefs about how stories work.

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BOOK 4

Hero 4 takes us to "all is lost" at the same time as Knight 5 takes us "and now you've become something better," so that's what book 4 will be! So whatever she tries to become in this book is presumably something that can't actually defeat a Zaratan

(well, reliably, cf special note on Hero 4 ending)

Hero 4 formally ends with “all is lost,” but that’s because all of the epic stuff that ends with “there’s no way you could survive this, much less win!” and then you survive, and win!

... so there’s a note in CMWGE re: Hero 4′s ending that even if you can’t guarantee it, because that would just completely render the actual threat meaningless, your doom is not as certain as it seems. I don’t recall offhand if I said you usually win or not; it doesn’t matter here. ^_^

So:

Book 4 is principally about restoring her bona fides to herself as a person enmeshed in Creation. It begins with her noping out of the confrontation at the end of book 3, allowing a stall on that.

(Side thoughts:

At some point she ignores Imperial punishment by just repeatedly not taking delivery.

At some point the Zaratan avoids defeat by declaring that what is tracked is not lost.

... these would be useful if I actually wrote these books, but they’re not as relevant for constructing the quest set.)

Quest 5 ends with a social gathering with ... Familia or other new family, before she goes out to face the Zaratan only to have all be lost, which is presumably when it's seen the whole world into new shape.

In the gap between the opening of quest 1 and the end of quest 5, I want to get back to police abolition somewhat, which may mean that the entanglement of the panopticon/Zaratan, mortal policing, and Entropian policing is the obstacle in quest 2, though I'll have to really think about that before I commit.

Having the Noble law entangle itself with and protect mortal law is one of the easiest ways to stop her from just zorping police budgets next and autosucceeding and being dramatically complete without thinking through the incredible complexity of what would actually happen, though!

It’s kind of lame from a GM standpoint but I’m not being a GM here, I’m plotting imaginary books prior to making a quest set out of htem, so ... maybe? And arguably it might be just fine even as a GM just to avoid that complexity, if that complexity isn’t the point.

OCTOBER 21

Book 4, quest 1: after noping out, she bumps around the Chancel feeling unreal and getting a new important message to lose/send somewhere until deciding she can at least start dealing with the cops again and starting zorping their ... budgets.

Book 4, quest 2: interactions with Cammora and Joktan as it turns out that you're actually supposed to mostly leave cops alone so that the Cammora can continue running things properly. No actual combat or trial because Lost Packages is one of the Estates courts don't like messing with, just lots of bristling and interference and threats. 

Thought balloon . o O (

Lord Entropy, considering hassling the Power of Lightning Everywhere, Like, Bloody Everywhere: whatever, I’m in charge here

Lord Entropy, considering hassling the Power of Lost Packages: hm

Lord Entropy, considering hassling the Power of That Word That’s On The Tip Of Your Tongue That You Can’t Remember Exactly: ... lllet me do a quick cost-benefit analysis. )

Book 4, quest 3: descent into the underworld, in this case, the tunnels under reality where a kind of fae run their economy entirely off of lost and stolen packages from Earth, under threat from some ancient danger. Possibly technically another world although not actually another fruit of the Ash. Likely where she was taking the message from quest 1. She is not actually up to the challenge of the ancient threat because ... I'm getting some Charn vibes from the underworld, like, the place is meant to be utterly doomed, it's already out of fate, or at least whatever it's up against is closer to multi-Power-level threat than single-Power solution. She is unhappy about this, but this time doesn't take the wicked favor offer from (this time) Joktan and doesn't get help so she loses.

Quest 4: trial! Why is she betraying her Estate like this just to avoid working with upstanding people like Lord Entropy's Powers? Why is she failing like this at all? Arguably Worst Person You Know Has a Point since this was a disaster although it's probably not actually Over Over so much as "snatched from the jaws of I-have-no-idea-what-to-do-here by the brute squad." It looks like they're going to be jerks so the Deceiver she was originally stolen from helpfully rescues her. Wait, is that really such a good idea?

Quest 5: spending time with fake welken-family. Starting to feel real. Deciding that it isn't real. Contacting the court to go back and face her unfair punishment. Telling the Deceiver this to give him time to get away only to have the Deceiver be all blank and "huh? You were always real, that's not how this works." "... oh." "What wasn't real was just ... the rules that people said were binding."

Epilogue, formally in quest 5: Emerge to find the world changed. "Uh, nobody's going to come lock me away?”

a gift, says the Zaratan. remain. Enjoy your idyll with this, the enemy of the world. You need strive no more.

"... uh ..."

what is real, it says, is not what you experience, child of lost things; nor, certainly, what the readers of the law would claim.

what is real is what I see as real; no less, no more.

(Something like that, anyway; it's not refined, but it's prrrrrrobably far enough along to move on to book 5?)

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BOOK 5

The preestablished information regarding how Book 5 ends is much the same (with the end of a Knight 5 quest and reaching the Hero 5 Issue), except that Hero 5 is a little worse than Hero 4: the formal ending is presumably even more extreme in its horribleness, you're inherently out of bubblegum (this is on the Hero 5 card), and finally the book itself should probably

actually

end with success.

I think that traditionally means successfully destroying the Zaratan, possibly fairly early on (quest 1?), only to discover that the world she knew before was already being held together by an adverse gaze.

In this case, that probably means understanding that Entropy's corruption is a lot more ubiquitous and fundamental to the Creation as she and we already know it than previously thought---that she's never experienced a world not fundamentally and extremely deeply distorted by the gaze of power. And that the story ends with her deciding that it's OK to accept the consequences to herself, her Estate, and her friend the willing if unhappy Lost Package of Actual Consequences for Wicked Dominance of Things (it probably wasn’t using this name when introduced) if that package actually gets delivered.

... hrm. No, that's too much externalization of the consequences.

Can she be that package? I'd defined her as a different lost package before but ... this is a Knight Arc, so it's fine.

Aside: Knight Arcs traditionally have a thing where you’re growing into a role, and each time you do the Arc, even if it’s the “same” role, there are new nuances, new layers, a bigger stage for that role. Otherwise, why would you need a new Arc?

She can grow from being the lost package of a Deceiver's welken-rite to the lost package of actual consequences.

Though ... self-sacrifice also feels incomplete in a different way.

Maybe she hangs out with the Actual Consequences for a couple of other villains, like, as friends and companions, and then has to deliver them towards the end?

Maybe she's Actual Consequences not for the major villain but for the Scouring of the Shire epilogue bonus villain who directly embodies the corrupt gaze of power, Joktan, so we can both leave the important self-sacrifice to others and still have her do that.

Is that elevating self-sacrifice too much in general? ... yes, but maybe it's fine if the other-sacrifice is the Wicked action in 3 as well as voluntary, the self-sacrifice is mixed, and there's building/creation in 4? 

Aside: in the next four paragraphs, I lose the plot a bit and ramble about the importance of Nobilis accepting destruction/sacrifice miracles in Knight Arcs. It’s not very linear, so don’t try to make too much more sense of it than “these were the thoughts passing through Jenna’s head at this point.”

I feel like bending somewhat on principles and being willing to do a destruction, or ... well, this is a knight arc, so a sacrifice in the game sense would make more sense (actually I need to think about that some tbh, the fact that presumably her Persona is going up all this time and that might be relevant in finalizing these). ... is important for a final Knight Arc, because like part of growing into yourself and a role is both understanding what you shouldn't compromise on but also what's gray enough that you definitely can and in fact sometimes must.

...hrm, I guess delivery is more of a sacrifice than a destruction though anyway, so it works.

“Lost Packages” is one of those Estates where the line is a little blurry sometimes, because I've been thinking of it as focusing on "the lostness of a package," which means creation loses a package, destruction finds it, but even then sacrifice ... sacrifice means that "lost" becomes something that isn't lost but accounts for the delay. That should be fine.

Plus she can probably create/destroy packages outright or enchant/sacrifice to make something more or less of a package while leaving it lost but that's weird

End of ramble, or, at least, return to the regular level of rambling you’ll see when I am only doing minimal editing on my raw thought process. ^_^

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BOOK 5 SUMMARY

So quest 1 for book 5 is then, like, finding a monster-damaging place for herself in the world. Which includes dealing with the Zaratan and making friends with a couple of Actual Consequence packages.

Quest 2 is the return to court and suffering? Hm, let's look at previous quest 2s.

... mostly doing failed deliveries and "society sucks."

So, being suppressed into futility by the Court and her Imperator after taking the step of destroying the Zaratan.

Quest 3 is breaking free of the spiritual limiters put on her, thanks to her friends and probably metaphysical insights from Zaratan and Deceiver encounters, leading to one of her friends sacrificing himself as a delivery to keep her from getting crushed again.

Quest 4 is her thinking this is a failure, and struggling to make it up to the world, because it's not like consequences for one person at the cost of another changes anything; in fact, the setting kind of needing Lord Entropy, apparently. But in taking what's left of her friend to the mausoleum for the lostness of delivered packages, she gets hints as to what she is and is reminded that both self-blame for someone else's choices and "we need this monstrous authoritarian" are cognitive shadows, not truths.

Quest 5 is returning to the underworld to build it back up, together with such of her family as are still with her at this point, paired with the slow realization that it's more than just those two cognitive shadows; the world that she's been seeing all this time is really just the evil world as Joktan sees it. He shows up to argue that it has to be that way, that he's the last leg Entropy's standing on and that even Ananda fears what happens if Entropy falls, and she sighs and does a delivery.

Which is fine because it's the underworld, really, where lost packages move around but still count as lost, but still, the long-delayed consequences catch up, and all that's left is the cheshire self-hate leer, until that fades away.

And that, at least roughly, is the story of Kelly, Lost Packages' Glory

next, cross-referencing to make quests!

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GROUPING THINGS UP

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Quest 1s from these “books,” GROUPED

* she'd flounder around a bit ... was her name Kelly? hrm. Kelly or Sasha, but I have Sasha in my head as the Russian nickname now and I don't know if it works for girls/Alexandra too or just Alexanders ... before deciding that rather than trying to square peg/round hole Estate and goal she'd just start getting military equipment reliably lost en route to police departments

* return from Abaton, interested in being a better Power to Lost Packages, starting by rescuing one from a local surveillance/tracking spirit, also thinking about it a lot, talking to peers, talking to bias society.

* after noping out from Final Destination, she bumps around the Chancel feeling unreal and getting a new important message to lose/send somewhere until deciding she can at least start dealing with the cops again and starting zorping their budgets.

* finding a monster-damaging place for herself in the world. Which includes dealing with the Zaratan and making friends with a couple of Actual Consequence packages.

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Quest 2s from these “books,” GROUPED

*  I was thinking that since all that military surplus equipment has to go somewhere she'd wind up deciding at the end of Knight 2 that it'd go to Abaton, and skiving off from Earth with six months' worth, whereupon she'd hang out on Abaton losing various divine and monstrous deliveries before returning refreshed.

* bumping around the Chancel and sometimes outside it experiencing the mythic nature of the Chancel, occasionally dealing with jerk Rule Imperator, helping lose packages but eventually realizing that her entire mortal connections have vanished utterly and being really freaked.

*  interactions with Cammora and Joktan as it turns out that you're actually supposed to mostly leave cops alone so that the Cammora can continue running things properly. No actual combat or trial because Lost Packages is one of the Estates courts don't like messing with, just lots of bristling and interference and threats.

* the return to court and suffering? Hm, let's look at previous quest 2s. mostly doing failed deliveries and "society sucks." So being suppressed into futility by the Court and her Imperator after taking the step of destroying the Zaratan.

.

Quest 3s from these “books,” GROUPED

* I was struggling a bit with Abaton while falling asleep because I knew there was stuff like she was in a cavern that I think was a river mouth talking to the faerie monster dragon god thing that inhabited it but the actual source of the image has been lost to ECT so it's just kind of  "mossy and god voice and there's a cave" which isn't letting me lock on to what the actual scene is very well

* learning that that's not just because the Imperator completely redid everyone's lives as they wanted but also because she herself was originally a bit of a Deceit, repurposed, which is 1/4 of why her Imperator is a jerk to her (the other 3/4 being, it is an Imperator and it is Rule and it is its specific character), having existential crises, trying to figure out if she is actually on Creation's side, and ultimately accepting the surveillance spirit's offer in order to get video of the Deceiver and some other backstory. Emerging to the general horror of lost packages who witness her and the extra eye on her forehead or whatever of the tracking number. At this point, she thinks it's just a random nature spirit that she can deal with as soon as it's annoying enough that her honor lets her, though.

* descent into the underworld, in this case, the tunnels under reality where a kind of fae run their economy entirely off of lost and stolen packages from Earth, under threat from some ancient danger. Possibly technically another world although not actually another fruit of the Ash. Likely where she was taking the message from quest 1. She is not actually up to the challenge of the ancient threat because ... I'm getting some Charn vibes from the underworld, like, the place is meant to be utterly doomed, it's already out of fate, or at least whatever it's up against is closer to multi-Power-level threat than single-Power solution. She is unhappy about this, but this time doesn't take the wicked favor offer from (this time) Joktan and doesn't get help so she loses.

* breaking free of the spiritual limiters put on her, thanks to her friends and probably metaphysical insights from Zaratan and Deceiver encounters, leading to one of her friends sacrificing himself as a delivery to keep her from getting crushed again.

.

Quest 4s from these “books,” GROUPED

* going to the Final Destination to lose a key package, trying to purify herself some, learning more in the very special episode process about what it means to be a lost package, only to discover (because this is also an Aspect 3 quest? probably) at the end that gaaah

* trial! Why is she betraying her Estate like this just to avoid working with upstanding people like Lord Entropy's Powers? Why is she failing like this at all? Arguably Worst Person You Know Has a Point since this was a disaster although it's probably not actually Over Over so much as "snatched from the jaws of I-have-no-idea-what-to-do-here by the brute squad." It looks like they're going to be jerks so the Deceiver she was originally stolen from helpfully rescues her. Wait, is that really such a good idea?

* her thinking this is a failure, and struggling to make it up to the world, because it's not like consequences for one person at the cost of another changes anything; in fact, the setting kind of needing Lord Entropy, apparently. But in taking what's left of her friend to the mausoleum for the lostness of delivered packages, she gets hints as to what she is and is reminded that both self-blame for someone else's choices and "we need this monstrous authoritarian" are cognitive shadows, not truths.

.

Quest 5s from these “books,” GROUPED

* spending time with fake welken-family. Starting to feel real. Deciding that it isn't real. Contacting the court to go back and face her unfair punishment. Telling the Deceiver this to give him time to get away only to have the Deceiver be all blank and "huh? You were always real, that's not how this works." "... oh." "What wasn't real was just ... the rules that people said were binding."

(Epilogue, formally in quest 5: Emerge to find the world changed. "Uh, nobody's going to come lock me away?"

a gift, says the Zaratan. ...

... what is real is what I see, no more, no less. ...)

* returning to the underworld to build it back up, together with such of her family as are still with her at this point, paired with the slow realization that it's more than just those two cognitive shadows; the world that she's been seeing all this time is really just the evil world as Joktan sees it. He shows up to argue that it has to be that way, that he's the last leg Entropy's standing on and that even Ananda fears what happens if Entropy falls, and she sighs and does a delivery.

  Which is fine because it's the underworld, really, where lost packages move around but still count as lost, but still, the long-delayed consequences catch up, and all that's left is the cheshire self-hate leer, until that fades away.

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SUMMARIZING EVERYTHING SO FAR

Summing things up, I think we have:

* quest 1 is coming in from another world, floundering, meeting new people, misdelivering packages (doing your duty as Power), getting a key assignment but not actually doing much about it.

* quest 2 is daily routine while exploring mythic environments and how entrenched systems grind away your personhood even there

* quest 3 involves an underworld under threat, temptation from authority, Imperators sucking in a more fantasy than horror way, trying to figure out who one is and where the strength to go on and fight back can come from

* quest 4 is about purification, places of trial, really a different kind of underworld like yo dawg we put an underworld in your underworld so you can descend to the underworld while you're descending to the underworld, but it's more about cleansing, torment, ruin, junkpiles, letting go, than it is about darkness and water and being stomped down and the dying fire

* quest 5 is about building connections and making a painful choice.

.

There are surprising touches of red and silver Arcs here but we'll ignore those for now, all we care about today is orange, green, gold, and purple.

Aside: CMWGE introduced eight “colors” of story Arc.

Red is enthusiastic and somewhat meta/self-aware.

Silver is gloomy and grieving and showed up in Glitch as “Emptiness”

Orange is the color of the “Knight” we’ve been talking about, Arcs about living up to your social role, heavily modeled on “The Princes of the Air” by John M. Ford; Nobilis will use it for Persona.

Green is “Otherworldly,” used for wandering dreamworlds and harmonizing with natural forces; Nobilis will use it for Domain.

Gold is “Aspect,” used for training the body and the mind; Nobilis will use it for a mysterious trait whose name you will never guess probably even if you are a Nobilis fan.

Purple is pastoral and about bringing out potential in others; it showed up as  “Shepherd” in Glitch, and will be used for Treasure.

If Nobilis have a mundane trait, Ability or somesuch, like in Glitch, then it’ll probably share one of those four colors so we won’t have to think about it here.

Aspect Arcs, roughly, go:

* you’re blocked, stuck. [then you push past it]

* you’re exposed to another perspective [and you see something you wouldn’t’ve without it]

* your life gets ridiculously complicated, mostly socially [you get home, take off your metaphorical shoes, bad news drops]

* you face a vast threat. [you win!]

* you’re lost in the dark [you make it home.]

I feel pretty confident that there's a gold Arc here because we have giant monstrous threats in a couple of places. Uh let's see.

The fourth quest for the Knight Arc above (let’s call it Knight 4 henceforth) also being an Aspect 3 quest is something we established earlier, and I think it's sound. It might want some tweaks to book 5 but, sound.

Offhand, the third quest for the Knight Arc above, Knight 3, being Aspect 4 looks fair.

Aspect 2 is either Knight 1 or Knight 5, because they’re the social ones.

Aspect 1 can be any, but probably Knight 1 or 2.

Aspect 5 is probably also Knight 1 or 2. Knight 5's quests look like they're in darkness, but like ... they don't feel very lost? Hm, no, I'm wrong, it could be any of them.

Sorting this out ...

Let's crack this with Aspect 2 first.

I think I like Aspect 2 as Knight 5 best. And Aspect 1 as Knight 2. What does that look like for book 4? Joktan is annoying and blocks progress, Deceiver drags her to hang out with welken-family, stressful/confusing trial, descent into the underworld to face the threat, and finally bumping around the Chancel feeling unreal until she feels enough together to start zorping cop budgets Joktan or no Joktan. However, there are no cop budgets to be found, thanks to Zaratan?

Knight 1, Aspect 5:

coming in from another world, floundering, meeting new people, misdelivering packages (doing your duty as Power), getting a key assignment but not actually doing much about it.

.

Knight 2, Aspect 1:

daily routine while exploring mythic environments and how entrenched systems grind away your personhood even there

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Knight 3, Aspect 4:

an underworld under threat, temptation from authority, Imperators sucking in a more fantasy than horror way, trying to figure out who one is and where the strength to go on and fight back can come from

.

Knight 4, Aspect 3:

purification, places of trial, really a different kind of underworld like yo dawg we put an underworld in your underworld so you can descend to the underworld while you're descending to the underworld, but it's more about cleansing, torment, ruin, junkpiles, letting go, than it is about darkness and water and being stomped down and the dying fire

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Knight 5, Aspect 2:

building connections and making a painful choice.

.

Is there an Otherworldly Arc?

Aside: Otherworldly Arcs, roughly, go:

* you’re having otherworldly experiences [you know what you have to do] OR * there’s a hole in your world [you know what you have to do]

* you’re resisting moving forward [you let go of that]

* something’s trying to change you [you find a part of yourself that hasn’t changed, or won’t]

* you’ve lost part of yourself [it wasn’t really gone]

* you reconcile with someone you’ve been fighting with [you help them find a way forward]

OR * you merge with some great spiritual force [DING! Done.]

I saw a glimpse of an Otherworldly Arc at one point because Abaton felt very green, but no dreams in evidence ... hrm. I guess "grinding away at your personhood" looks Otherworldly 3, floundering looks a bit Otherworldly 2, "figuring out who one is" looks a bit like Otherworldly 4, leaving 1 and 5 to match up to 1 and 5 though loosely.

Not as sure on that one.

Knight 1, Aspect 5, Otherworldly 2

coming in from another world, floundering, meeting new people, misdelivering packages (doing your duty as Power), getting a key assignment but not actually doing much about it.

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Knight 2, Aspect 1, Otherworldly 3

daily routine while exploring mythic environments and how entrenched systems grind away your personhood even there

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Knight 3, Aspect/Otherworldly 4

an underworld under threat, temptation from authority, Imperators sucking in a more fantasy than horror way, trying to figure out who one is and where the strength to go on and fight back can come from

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Knight 4, Aspect 3, Otherworldly 1

purification, places of trial, really a different kind of underworld like yo dawg we put an underworld in your underworld so you can descend to the underworld while you're descending to the underworld, but it's more about cleansing, torment, ruin, junkpiles, letting go, than it is about darkness and water and being stomped down and the dying fire

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Knight/Otherworldly 5, Aspect 2

building connections and making a painful choice.

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What about Shepherd?

Aside: A Shepherd Arc looks sort of like:

* you’re livin’ your life [bam! new responsibility!]

* you’re having a hard time [and managing ok, but there’s something big coming up]

* something’s haunting you from the past [you make it right]

OR

* you’re livin’ your really cool life [a chance at greater happiness falls on your head out of nowhere]

* adventure! [come back home, refreshed]

* you’re livin’ your extraordinary life [you do something really cool.]

Knight 1, Aspect 5, Otherworldly/Shepherd 2

coming in from another world, floundering, meeting new people, misdelivering packages (doing your duty as Power), getting a key assignment but not actually doing much about it.

Knight 2, Aspect/Shepherd 1, Otherworldly 3

daily routine while exploring mythic environments and how entrenched systems grind away your personhood even there

Knight 3, Otherworldly/Aspect/Shepherd 4

an underworld under threat, temptation from authority, Imperators sucking in a more fantasy than horror way, trying to figure out who one is and where the strength to go on and fight back can come from

Knight 4, Otherworldly 1, Aspect/Shepherd 3

purification, places of trial, really a different kind of underworld like yo dawg we put an underworld in your underworld so you can descend to the underworld while you're descending to the underworld, but it's more about cleansing, torment, ruin, junkpiles, letting go, than it is about darkness and water and being stomped down and the dying fire

Knight 5, Aspect 2, Otherworldly/Shepherd 5

building connections and making a painful choice.

.

... is probably what it looks like, I think.

OK!

tomorrow or later to name them and the Arc! I should probably rest my neck for now.

but I am terrible at resting

.

Though, a very basic summary might be, uh ...

I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

Shuffling Through Wonderland

Scuttling Underfoot

Destinations

Becoming

... which is thematically incoherent as of yet, will work on it

I think it's a learning/personal growth/ideological exposure thing, really, though that's more concepts than names:

it's new and persuasive

it's grinding and heavy

you're sneaking around under its surface

you're taking responsibility for your place in it and letting go

you're transcending it

Or, for Aspect,

it's grinding and heavy,

you're transcending it,

you're taking responsibility for your place in it and letting go,

you're sneaking around under its surface,

it's new and persuasive

which is why these are terrible names but honestly not bad concepts, because that version makes more sense for number theory than a social system

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OCTOBER 22

Time to build the first quest!

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Aside: at this point, on October 22nd, I’m looking at the list of quest 1 story bits I pulled out before and trying to visualize what they look like as actual stories and find/synthesize points of similarity. Trying to find common themes and elements. These will become quest flavor and major goals for the quest!

As a reminder of what those quest 1 story bits are:

QUEST 1

* she'd flounder around a bit ... was her name Kelly? hrm. Kelly or Sasha, but I have Sasha in my head as the Russian nickname now and I don't know if it works for girls/Alexandra too or just Alexanders ... before deciding that rather than trying to square peg/round hole Estate and goal she'd just start getting military equipment reliably lost en route to police departments

* return from Abaton, interested in being a better Power to Lost Packages, starting by rescuing one from a local surveillance/tracking spirit, also thinking about it a lot, talking to peers, talking to bias society.

* after noping out from Final Destination, she bumps around the Chancel feeling unreal and getting a new important message to lose/send somewhere until deciding she can at least start dealing with the cops again and starting zorping their budgets.

* finding a monster-damaging place for herself in the world. Which includes dealing with the Zaratan and making friends with a couple of Actual Consequence packages.

.

Working Title: A New World

Knight 1, Aspect 5, Otherworldly/Shepherd 2

first pass: no full elements jump out, so prototypes

* there's a strand of something about meeting peers

* there's lots of kind of bumping around, being confused/lost

* there's a sense of streets and apartments, the kind of city with trees every X spaces in the sidewalk

* there's a strand about dealing with monsters: surveillance spirit, Zaratan, Imperator of Rule

* there's a strand about high-tech: military equipment, surveillance

* there's a strand about coming in from somewhere else, being recently changed

* there's a strand about getting an important duty

* there's a strand about getting geared up

* there's a strand about figuring out what to do => decision

.

refining . \ - * - / - * - \ -

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[[BLUE]] decide this relatively new acquaintance matters to you

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] express uncertainty about how to proceed

.

^ “express uncertainty” is more Aspect 1, so let’s swap Aspect 1 and 5

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[[SILVER]] navigate the city on foot

.

Major Goal: confront an avatar/embodiment of order, law, mechanization, modernity, industrialization, or the like

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[[RED]] [[SILVER]] get an unnecessarily lengthy description of something's technical specs

[[RED]] [[GOLD]] you are unused to this, or out of practice

.

Major Goal: you are given a new, important duty

.

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] you fall in love with a new ride, outfit, or bit of gear

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] impressed despite yourself at how cool/scary a friend turned out to be

.

Major Goal: you come up with a way to move forward for now

Aside: the colors in brackets are icons. There are eight of them, and you’ll see them in CMWGE and Glitch, though they’re only actually in color in CMWGE. They have a lot of meaning, but it’s mostly connotation, so you don’t have to care that much---like, “red” is a kind of exposition/attention/get-the-GM-or-someone-to-talk-more kind of color, and “blue” is more of a “declare boldly” color. I’m not 100% sure how useful they are to people but they help me organize things in my head, take up very little layout space, make the quest cards look a lot more interesting, and have the potential to be very helpful if you’re in tune with them, so I keep them around.

Assembling ...

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Working Title: Breaking Free

Knight/Aspect 1, Otherworldly/Shepherd 2

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* confront an avatar/embodiment of order, law, mechanization, modernity, industrialization, or the like

* are given a new, important duty

* come up with a way to move forward for now

 1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[BLUE]] decide this relatively new acquaintance matters to you

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] are impressed despite yourself at how cool/scary a friend turned out to be

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] fall in love with a new ride, outfit, or bit of gear

[[GOLD]] [[RED]] are unused to this, or out of practice

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] get an unnecessarily lengthy description of something's technical specs

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] express uncertainty about how to proceed

[[SILVER]] navigate the city on foot

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... this is another YA Arc, isn't it

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[brief side discussion with witnesses]

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can't do quest 2, noise and neck, but will poke a bit at it 

.

Aside: housemate had a guest, and I hurt my neck and shoulder badly somehow in ... June?

.

Quest 2:

Knight 2, Aspect 5, Otherworldly 3, Shepherd 1

.

As a reminder:

QUEST 2

*  I was thinking that since all that military surplus equipment has to go somewhere she'd wind up deciding at the end of Knight 2 that it'd go to Abaton, and skiving off from Earth with six months' worth, whereupon she'd hang out on Abaton losing various divine and monstrous deliveries before returning refreshed.

* bumping around the Chancel and sometimes outside it experiencing the mythic nature of the Chancel, occasionally dealing with jerk Rule Imperator, helping lose packages but eventually realizing that her entire mortal connections have vanished utterly and being really freaked.

*  interactions with Cammora and Joktan as it turns out that you're actually supposed to mostly leave cops alone so that the Cammora can continue running things properly. No actual combat or trial because Lost Packages is one of the Estates courts don't like messing with, just lots of bristling and interference and threats.

* the return to court and suffering? Hm, let's look at previous quest 2s. mostly doing failed deliveries and "society sucks." So being suppressed into futility by the Court and her Imperator after taking the step of destroying the Zaratan.

Some of the things I spot as possible quest elements here include ...

* encounter with an insufferable authority figure-ish

* maybe the same, but getting an unfair lecture or task

* hiding from something?

* some important sort of alienation/disconnection thing, like in book 3 Knight it's hints at mortal connections being missing, but in book 2 it's more having society just not work right for her, book 4 it's the court not being very reasonable, maybe?

* bracing a sphinxian monster in its lair ... probably the refinement here moves away from specifically sphinx to something that captures the essence while covering other books too. Sphinx, or manticore? Hm.

* something relating to working with someone with mobility issues, not quite sure exactly, in book 3 it's delivery (misdelivery? taking delivery from?) a mermaid or something, in book 2 it's something to do with someone in an elevator-less apartment and very limited off-wheelchair mobility that the cops somehow made or are making things worse for, in book 4 *** diversity win! someone working for the Locust Court has no legs *** book 5 probably just a friend with temporary or permanent mobility stuff

* something she's trying just isn't working, or rather isn't allowed to work

* if this is aspect 5 but not literal shadow then some kind of depressive ideation? or just, being under oppressive limitations/monitoring?

* trying to maintain daily routine while under a shadow, since purple 1

* something important slipping from your fingers

* being told how you're "supposed" to do things

* collecting resources from others

* letting something go to fly off into the sky

* studying/brooding on the literal/metaphorical shackles on you

* big dreams -- no, that's Knight 1, not Knight 2

* noir meetings, meetings in doorways, getting (unclear?) warnings is closest

* stepping through glass into a larger world

* smthimportant missing

... lot of overlap, so keeping going despite that being a lot already ...

* something you were sure was right around the corner is gone

* cigarettes (cops, Joktan, Zaratan eye like a flame?)

* having to go into an unpleasant tangle/bracken/undergrowth ... police station? I don't think those are an easy fit tho

* thugs

* paying attention to light conditions (sunset/evening specific?) while someone's talking

* wearisome buildings: the "navigating for TOO LONG through the city on foot" version of the quest 1 thing, maybe, or maybe just getting depressed or dispirited by architecture

I think that should be enough that pulling meaning from the mess tomorrow or later today will be less effort that starting fresh without noise or pain would be.

.

(later)

.

Cleaning up ...

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[[GOLD]] keeping going while just being so weary of this

[[GOLD]] [[GREEN]] someone explains the rules

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] something's slipped through your fingers; or, something you know was supposed to be there is gone

[[SILVER]] ignoring someone's babble to just watch the sunset or whatever

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] unnecessary displays of military order

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] waiting outside a place that (metaphorically?) eats people

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] studying the road to freedom, or your chains

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] hanging out quietly with an enemy

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] going around collecting resources

.

Major Goal: you get an offer from an enemy

Major Goal: you release something to fly free

.

So that’s nine quest flavor, two major goals. Since I like to have roughly one major goal per 10 XP and one quest flavor per 5 XP in the quest ...

The logical thing to do is to turn one flavor into a major goal and then either combine two quest flavor entries into one or delete one outright, for a 35 XP quest.

... alternatively, turn two quest flavor into major goals and then create one or split one into two.

.

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[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] something's missing, something's lost

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] witnessing unnecessary displays of military order

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] studying the road to freedom, or your chains

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] hanging out quietly with an enemy

[[SILVER]] [[BLACK]] going around collecting resources

[[SILVER]] ignoring someone's babble to just watch the sunset or whatever

[[GOLD]] keeping going while just being so weary of this

[[GOLD]] [[GREEN]] someone lays out "the rules" for you

.

Major Goal: you get an offer from an enemy

Major Goal: you release something to fly free

Major Goal: you wait for someone outside a place that literally or metaphorically eats people

Major Goal: something major that really should be there, isn't, with no evidence that it ever was

.

That’s a 40 XP quest.

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I think it's possible that the last two quest flavor should go away, and the last two major goals should go away, and then I could add in the major goal, "someone lays out the harsh 'rules' of your current situation/world/life for you"

But first! A name for the quest, and some pondering.

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Working Title: Locked Down (Alternatives: Pinned Down / Walled In / the Crucible / the Camp)

Knight 2, Aspect 5, Otherworldly 3, Shepherd 1

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* someone lays out the harsh "rules" of your new situation, life, world

* you wait for someone outside a place that literally or metaphorically eats people

* an enemy makes you an offer

* you release something to fly free

You can earn up to three of these bonuses, once each, for a total of up to 15 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] something's missing, something's lost

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] witnessing unnecessary displays of military order

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] studying the road to freedom, or your literal or metaphorical chains

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] hanging out quietly with an enemy

[[SILVER]] [[BLACK]] going around collecting resources

[{SILVER]] ignoring someone's babble to just watch the sunset or whatever

[[GOLD]] keeping going while just being so weary of this

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

I love how these develop so much obvious meaning that isn't at all obvious in the source material.

Like, yeah, this is the bit of the YA book where you have the high school / military school / forced-conversion camp allegory, which may be a literal "your parents thought you were too wild and sent you to one," may be a lightly strained metaphor "in this fantasy world, you wound up in The Crucible," or may be a heavily strained metaphor like "you are a Power of a Rules Imperator who spends a lot of time around human and Noble cops and feels currently dreary about the better-hidden walls around Chancel, adult society, and the existential cage.

<= not sure if the term “existential cage” has an accepte meaning or not, but if not then I am claiming it for this.

.

OCTOBER 22.5

it isn’t actually a new work day yet but it’s after midnight

Anyway, on to quest 3 I suppose

Knight 3, Aspect/Otherworldly/Shepherd 4

As a reminder,

QUEST 3

* I was struggling a bit with Abaton while falling asleep because I knew there was stuff like she was in a cavern that I think was a river mouth talking to the faerie monster dragon god thing that inhabited it but the actual source of the image has been lost to ECT so it's just kind of  "mossy and god voice and there's a cave" which isn't letting me lock on to what the actual scene is very well

* learning that that's not just because the Imperator completely redid everyone's lives as they wanted but also because she herself was originally a bit of a Deceit, repurposed, which is 1/4 of why her Imperator is a jerk to her (the other 3/4 being, it is an Imperator and it is Rule and it is its specific character), having existential crises, trying to figure out if she is actually on Creation's side, and ultimately accepting the surveillance spirit's offer in order to get video of the Deceiver and some other backstory. Emerging to the general horror of lost packages who witness her and the extra eye on her forehead or whatever of the tracking number. At this point, she thinks it's just a random nature spirit that she can deal with as soon as it's annoying enough that her honor lets her, though.

* descent into the underworld, in this case, the tunnels under reality where a kind of fae run their economy entirely off of lost and stolen packages from Earth, under threat from some ancient danger. Possibly technically another world although not actually another fruit of the Ash. Likely where she was taking the message from quest 1. She is not actually up to the challenge of the ancient threat because ... I'm getting some Charn vibes from the underworld, like, the place is meant to be utterly doomed, it's already out of fate, or at least whatever it's up against is closer to multi-Power-level threat than single-Power solution. She is unhappy about this, but this time doesn't take the wicked favor offer from (this time) Joktan and doesn't get help so she loses.

* breaking free of the spiritual limiters put on her, thanks to her friends and probably metaphysical insights from Zaratan and Deceiver encounters, leading to one of her friends sacrificing himself as a delivery to keep her from getting crushed again.

Let’s find some points where these stories rhyme!

... well, honestly, the second and fourth are a little shaky, so a lot of this is going to be imagery from Abaton or the underworld that I think I might be able to match up to the other two, or guesses at how the other two will work.

Also, to be clear, a lot of this imagery is still just in my head, and is only coming out for the first time below; it’s fine if, for instance, you don’t see the “something about a flood” that’s the first point below, above.

It’s just ... what I think happens in Abaton. There’s this cave and ... river spray behind her? And a forest spirit rising up in front of her? Also later on she gambles in the dark with some sluagh types that use human bone dice. You’ll just have to trust me, since the chronicles of Kelly, Power of Lost Packages, were never actually written. ^_^

* something about a flood

* something about standing before the hostile divine / the whole world being a living being against you

* something about vast cities lost in darkness

* something about vehicles in a pneumatic-tube like tunnel car system

* trying to parse out an impossibly confusing personal situation

* reflecting on your loyalties

* being invited to witness a secret

* horrifying others with your appearance/wounds

* reckoning with loss

* reckoning with fate that can't be changed

* temptation

* something about using insight to break free of paralysis

* witnessing a sacrifice

* gambling or telling stories around a fire

* finding unexpected bones

* something about secret paths/passages?

* something about following instinct to a different place/world, rather?

* getting swept away by water or a ritual

* speaking of old traumas/poisons

* participating in eerie rites

*  traditionally for Aspect 4 since I don't want fight-and-done there's scouting, facing minions/pseudopods, losing a fight, other stuff from the Natalia Graveyard quest

This is a reference to “the Glass-Maker’s Dragon,” a campaign for CMWGE. I wound up ignoring it, though, when pulling the actual quest together, so you can ignore it too.

* meditating on and cultivate the changes in oneself

* getting directions/direction

* witness a false sun

* give of yourself to feed some artifact/energy field

but! My bedding has come out of the laundry and my neck hurts so I will go back to lying down for a while.) I see some of what this quest is but not the actual thing yet because I won't know until I stare at them more which of these are important

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OCTOBER 23

Simplifying ...

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Knight 3, Aspect/Otherworldly/Shepherd 4

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[[RED]] the world is a rushing, all-embracing thing

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] someone gives you directions, or, a direction

[[RED]] [[ORANGE]] the hostile divine looms above you

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] the city, swallowed in darkness

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] the endless vehicles, like bones

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you find, or are shown, a secret

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you find, or witness, something eerie

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] talking about loss or fate

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] trying to sort out your head

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] gambling and telling stories

.

Major Goal: others are horrified by your appearance

Major Goal: someone makes a great and willing sacrifice

Major Goal: you witness a false sun

Major Goal: you give of yourself to feed an artifact or somesuch thing

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is the first draft

10 quest flavor, 4 major goals.

... I feel like the simplest course is to just delete down to 8-9 quest flavor, 40-45 XP.

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Working Title: Beyond the Walls

Knight 3, Otherworldly/Aspect/Shepherd 4

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* your appearance horrifies others

* you witness a great and willing sacrifice

* you witness a false sun

* you give of yourself to feed an artifact or somesuch thing

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you glimpse an alien perspective on civilization or its instrumentalities, e.g., as light drowning in darkness; as visceral, organic; or as a thing of bones.

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you find, or are shown, an eerie secret

[[RED]] the world is a rushing, all-embracing thing

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] someone gives you directions, or, a direction

[[RED]] [[ORANGE]] the hostile divine looms above

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] trying to sort out your head

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] gambling in a dark place

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] talking with someone about loss or fate

.

That seems good!

.

Listing these in a row to get a better sense of the story we're telling so far!

Working Title: Breaking Free

Knight/Aspect 1, Otherworldly/Shepherd 2

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* confront an avatar/embodiment of order, law, mechanization, modernity, industrialization, or the like

* are given a new, important duty

* come up with a way to move forward for now

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[BLUE]] decide this relatively new acquaintance matters to you

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] are impressed despite yourself at how cool/scary a friend turned out to be

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] fall in love with a new ride, outfit, or bit of gear

[[GOLD]] [[RED]] are unused to this, or out of practice

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] get an unnecessarily lengthy description of something's technical specs

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] express uncertainty about how to proceed

[[SILVER]] navigate the city on foot

.

Working Title: Locked Down (Alternatives: Pinned Down / Walled In / the Crucible / the Camp)

Knight 2, Otherworldly 3, Aspect 5, Shepherd 1

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* someone lays out the harsh "rules" of your new situation, life, world

* you wait for someone outside a place that literally or metaphorically eats people

* an enemy makes you an offer

* you release something to fly free

You can earn up to three of these bonuses, once each, for a total of up to 15 XP.

 QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] something's missing, something's lost

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] witnessing unnecessary displays of military order

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] studying the road to freedom, or your literal or metaphorical chains

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLSE]] hanging out quietly with an enemy

[[SILVER]] [[BLACK]] going around collecting resources

[[SILVER]] ignoring someone's babble to just watch the sunset or whatever

[[GOLD]] keeping going while just being so weary of this

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Working Title: Beyond the Walls

Knight 3, Otherworldly/Aspect/Shepherd 4

 MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* your appearance horrifies others

* you witness a great and willing sacrifice

* you witness a false sun

* you give of yourself to feed an artifact or somesuch thing

 You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 20 XP.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you glimpse an alien perspective on civilization or its instrumentalities, e.g., as light drowning in darkness; as visceral, organic; or as a thing of bones.

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you find, or are shown, an eerie secret

[[RED]] the world is a rushing, all-embracing thing

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] someone gives you directions, or, a direction

[[RED]] [[ORANGE]] the hostile divine looms above

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] trying to sort out your head

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] gambling in a dark place

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] talking with someone about loss or fate

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Hm

YA ... queer horror?

... probably more like dark fantasy.

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Quest 4!

So a Glitch innovation in my process is that I actually need to pause at this point and sketch out what quest 4 would look like in book 1.

(well, book 1-2)

... because while what I have would probably be enough to build quest 4 with it won't be enough for quest 5

So:

Nominally in book 2 she just returned from Abaton to bump around the Chancel, but what if, what if instead ... she'd fallen short of who she wanted to be, and had erred, or lost her path, and needed to make amends, or grow?

Aside: that is, what if she needed to do a Knight 4 quest?

And this is interesting because honestly all she's really done at that point is become a Power, not her fault, steal from cops, not exactly something she’s going to regret, and go to Abaton to misdeliver some stuff.

So presumably she wound up getting into trouble on Abaton ... like, maybe to survive she wound up killing some old spirit thing, or maybe she realized that the weird ghouls she gave the ordnance to were just cops with different physical architecture, or ...

I should actually reread what I wrote about Abaton rather than just going off of vague memories of what I wrote 20 years ago, it's short

(goes and does that)

OK, so river spirits, not ghouls. Right, sluagh is what I was thinking of

sluagh + cops

sluaops

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prrrrrrrobably she wound up just sinking the ordnance in a lake on Abaton except for some stuff given to an Imperator who wants to study it to be inspired, though, so instead of “delivered it to different cops” let's look at the idea of her having killed some old spirit thing. Some old forest spirit thing or something.

cut off deliveries of water and the forest dies, no matter how much bigger than you it is---

but also young privileged progressives trying to figure themselves out aren't generally happy to discover that they just murdered a forest

.

I’d like this to be potentially “canonical,” not that these stories have a canon when the only way I’m ever actually writing them is a literal Singularity event, so it’d be convenient if this resolved in a way consistent with how book 3 is supposed to begin:

That is, on Abaton, or, on her way back down the tree to Earth.

... is it down? looks

... I guess the map in Nob2 suggests Abaton is below Earth, which feels wrong but whatever. I didn’t bother giving the artist instructions on this particular point twenty years ago. Up, down, whatever.

.

Might as well stick quest 5 in there before reaching Earth too.

.

But, quest 4.

prrrrobably ...

Taking the seed of that forest offworld to plant it somewhere?

Probably, as a deliberate choice, not somewhere ... targeted, because the Ash as a whole doesn't have correct locations to misdeliver packages to; so, just .. like ... as she travels, she’s looking for the right spot.

... that doesn't actually represent any kind of redemption.

I guess that she might not need “redemption,” though---I think the original confrontation wasn't something she could have avoided without foreknowledge---and if all we’re looking for is resolution/amends, it's a decent  start. Climbing some mountain of metaphorical and possible literal revelation out there in some pocket world on the Ash to plant it in a sacred spot.

(centuries later it turns out that it was basically sentient divine kudzu and this was a mistake but OH WELL)

.

Quest 5 is trickier because Knight 5 is about becoming something better, but honestly book 2 feels early to become something better than she's been. One thought that occurs to me is just proceeding from that seed-planting to a spiritual journey, so she can really return to Earth refreshed only to be slammed right back down to being disrespected by her Imperator and the Earth not falling in line with the kind of grand insights she’s gotten that you actually only get to have when stress free and away from it all

... but that's sort of out of line with the other two quest 5s we have, and, while new elements are good ... we do know that the paradigm of "spending time with welken-family" is at least sort of accurate to what the quest 5 is like, and that doesn't feel super-spiritual-journey-ish

So maybe more like ...

She stops somewhere Taran Wanderer style to just live with some folks for a bit? Some, I dunno, shepherds with cloud-sheep or whatever?

Though this is also a Shepherd 5 quest implying that she needs to be at least somewhat awesome in it.

(Maybe this isn’t Shepherd 5? Maybe I’ve put it in the wrong place in the Shepherd Arc? ... not many other ways to organize that Arc, tho, really.)

But maybe like ...

Most of the years the cloud shepherds are penned up in their mountains, but each rainy season one of them breaks down the wall to let them roam the world, and when it's her turn, she just can't help breaking down the wall of the world itself so that they roam the Ash, because like otherwise she's just doing a proper delivery. And maybe it's a good thing and maybe it's a bad thing but it'll be centuries before they're back in place again?

So she heads back down to Earth.

That seems “big” enough to be Shepherd 5 worthy?

Possibly breaking the wall is really painful/fatal and she was stepping in for a friend/lover rather than actually getting a turn? Unclear.

It's tricky to avoid savior stories when someone joins a group pastorally because that's quest premise, does something incredibly awesome because it's Shepherd 5, and leaves because it's end of Arc, so "that was awesome, but was it even a good idea?" is probably the best I can do to get out of that. I think?

squints

Aside: sometimes one can only do one’s best.

.

So updated quest 4 summary:

.

Quest 4s from these “books,” GROUPED

* going to the Final Destination to lose a key package, trying to purify herself some, learning more in the very special episode process about what it means to be a lost package, only to discover (because this is also an Aspect 3 quest? probably) at the end that gaaah

* trial! Why is she betraying her Estate like this just to avoid working with upstanding people like Lord Entropy's Powers? Why is she failing like this at all? Arguably Worst Person You Know Has a Point since this was a disaster although it's probably not actually Over Over so much as "snatched from the jaws of I-have-no-idea-what-to-do-here by the brute squad." It looks like they're going to be jerks so the Deceiver she was originally stolen from helpfully rescues her. Wait, is that really such a good idea?

* her thinking this is a failure, and struggling to make it up to the world, because it's not like consequences for one person at the cost of another changes anything; in fact, the setting kind of needing Lord Entropy, apparently. But in taking what's left of her friend to the mausoleum for the lostness of delivered packages, she gets hints as to what she is and is reminded that both self-blame for someone else's choices and "we need this monstrous authoritarian" are cognitive shadows, not truths.

* probably taking the seed of that forest offworld to plant it somewhere. Probably as a deliberate choice not somewhere ... targeted, because the Ash as a whole doesn't have correct locations to misdeliver packages to, just .. like ... as she travels, looking for the right spot. That doesn't actually represent any kind of redemption, though it probably helps that she might not need it---I think the original confrontation wasn't something she could have avoided without foreknowledge---but it's a decent kind of resolution. Climbing some mountain of metaphorical and possible literal revelation out there in some pocket world on the Ash to plant it in a sacred spot.

.

Building Quest 4!

(Knight 4, Otherworldly 1, Aspect/Shepherd 3)

initial ideas:

* talk to something you're carrying, likely of your Estate

* perform a ritual cleansing

* think about the shadows in your heart

* learn more about what it means to be your Estate

* admitting that a terrible person has a point

* shedding a cognitive shadow

* realizing that you're not responsible for others' choices

* climbing a symbolically relevant path

* struggling under a burden that's too much to deal with

* going over memories of failure

* overblown authoritarian pomp

* heavy scent of plants, buzzing of insects, sleepy

* get a hint as to your nature, heart, and direction

* plodding onwards, weary

.

Let's see

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Pulling things together:

.

Quest 4 - Working Title: The Garden Path

Knight 4, Otherworldly 1, Aspect/Shepherd 3

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* admit that someone, who is a pretty terrible person, has a good point

* let go of a cognitive shackle (e.g., realizing that you're not responsible for a choice someone else made)

* invoke one of the Rites of Hell (pg. XX)

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[GOLD]] [[SILVER]] zone out in an adverse situation

[[RED]] [[SILVER]] encounter overblown authoritarian pomp or design

[[RED]] [[SILVER]] climb a symbolically relevant path

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] help something of your Estate along its way

[[BLUE]] [[SILVER]] reflect upon your failures

[[BLUE]] perform a ritual self-cleansing

[[BLUE]] learn more about your heart, or, the heart of your Estate

.

Aside: “the Rites of Hell” is a Nob4 thing. They’re kind of complicated, so I’m just going to cover what this is standing in for: it’s standing in for the sound of insects, soporific drugs, and the smell of rotting vegetation. You’ll just have to trust me that that makes sense and isn’t actually weirder than Nobilis usually is. Or, if you’re somehow a fundamentalist reading this, particularly wicked.

(You can go read Nobilis 3rd edition to decide whether the game is going to be wicked, hypothetical deeply concerned fundamentalist! It’s cheap on DriveThruRPG! Afterwards, consider buying a copy of my new novel, the Night-Bird’s Feather. After buying it, you can read it OR you can burn it ... it’s  fun for the whole Focus on the Family!)

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So, OK, before we do quest 5, same deal:

We need to imagine what it would look like if the editor demanded I shove a quest 5 in between book 3 and book 4. Or, I guess, if I wanted to write one as a short story after book 3 and book 4 had already been published.

Book 3 currently ends with Kelly going to the Final Destination, learning about lost packages, emerging ... only to have the Zaratan be all "haha, you thought I was a mythic nobody, but in fact I am a divine or high-end mythic threat." Book 4 currently begins with her having noped out of that.

That ... is not much time to stick a whole story into, but ...

One possibility is that before she nopes out the Zaratan sees a number of possible lives for her. She may even have a sense of that herself. That  ...

That maybe in that instant it sees versions of her that are better than she is, more accomplished, wholer; versions that stay in Final Destination and are happier, at peace; versions that find love, or rightness, or hope, in ways that she won't be able to as an Imperial tool in the world, their only united feature being that none of them oppose the Zaratan.

And that there's a part of her that sees how she could reach out and accept them, in that frozen moment when the eyes are opening all around her in the void, but still---nope:

There are some people from whom you can't buy salvation.

.

Yeah, let's go with that.

.

So quest 5 becomes:

.

Quest 5s from these “books,” GROUPED

* spending time with fake welken-family. Starting to feel real. Deciding that it isn't real. Contacting the court to go back and face her unfair punishment. Telling the Deceiver this to give him time to get away only to have the Deceiver be all blank and "huh? You were always real, that's not how this works." "... oh." "What wasn't real was just ... the rules that people said were binding."

(Epilogue, formally in quest 5: Emerge to find the world changed. "Uh, nobody's going to come lock me away?"

a gift, says the Zaratan. ...

... what is real is what I see, no more, no less. ...)

* returning to the underworld to build it back up, together with such of her family as are still with her at this point, paired with the slow realization that it's more than just those two cognitive shadows; the world that she's been seeing all this time is really just the evil world as Joktan sees it. He shows up to argue that it has to be that way, that he's the last leg Entropy's standing on and that even Ananda fears what happens if Entropy falls, and she sighs and does a delivery.

  Which is fine because it's the underworld, really, where lost packages move around but still count as lost, but still, the long-delayed consequences catch up, and all that's left is the cheshire self-hate leer, until that fades away.

* stopping somewhere Taran Wanderer style to just live with some folks for a bit? I dunno, shepherds with cloud-sheep or whatever?

Most of the years the cloud shepherds are penned up in their mountains, but each rainy season one of them breaks down the wall to let them roam the world, and when it's her turn, she just can't help breaking down the wall of the world itself so that they roam the Ash, because like otherwise she's just doing a proper delivery. And maybe it's a good thing and maybe it's a bad thing but it'll be centuries before they're back in place again.

So she heads back down to Earth.

Possibly breaking the wall is really painful/fatal and she was stepping in for a friend/lover rather than actually getting a turn? Unclear.

* before she nopes out the Zaratan sees a number of possible lives for her. She may even have a sense of that herself. That maybe in that instant it sees versions of her that are better than she is, more accomplished, wholer; versions that stay in Final Destination and are happier, at peace; versions that find love, or rightness, or hope, in ways that she won't be able to as an Imperial tool in the world, their only united feature being that none of them oppose the Zaratan. And there's a part of her that sees how she could reach out and accept them, in that frozen moment when the eyes are opening all around her in the void, but still---nope. There are some people from whom you can't buy salvation.

.

... and this quest will be Knight/Otherworldly/Shepherd 5, and Aspect 2.

.

OCTOBER 24

Let’s start!

.

Quest 5, First Thoughts

Major Goal: something you thought was objective truth is revealed as just the subjective perception of someone in power

Major Goal: you reject the sensible and peaceful path for something harder and maybe not even right

Major Goal: you find a kind of happiness

.

[[PURPLE]] building or fixing something with someone else

[[SILVER]] bonding with an unearthly animal

[[SILVER]] sharing a hot drink

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] depression overcomes you

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] listening to strange music

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] you witness something beautiful

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] daily chores

.

revising ...

.

Quest 5 - Working Title: Aftermath

Knight/Otherworldly/Shepherd 5, Aspect 2

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* you find a kind of happiness

* something you thought was objective truth is revealed as just the subjective perception of someone in power

*  you reject the sensible and peaceful path for something harder and maybe not even right

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[PURPLE]] building or fixing something with someone else

[[SILVER]] bonding with an unearthly animal

[[SILVER]] sharing a hot drink

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] sadness overcomes you

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] listening to strange music

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] you witness something beautiful

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] doing daily chores

.

And that’s five!

.

Listing them again in sequence ...

.

Working Title: Breaking Free

Knight/Aspect 1, Otherworldly/Shepherd 2

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* confront an avatar/embodiment of order, law, mechanization, modernity, industrialization, or the like

* are given a new, important duty

* come up with a way to move forward for now

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[BLUE]] decide this relatively new acquaintance matters to you

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] are impressed despite yourself at how cool/scary a friend turned out to be

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] fall in love with a new ride, outfit, or bit of gear

[[GOLD]] [[RED]] are unused to this, or out of practice

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] get an unnecessarily lengthy description of something's technical specs

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] express uncertainty about how to proceed

[[SILVER]] navigate the city on foot

.

Working Title: Locked Down (Alternatives: Pinned Down / Walled In / the Crucible / the Camp)

Knight 2, Otherworldly 3, Aspect 5, Shepherd 1

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* someone lays out the harsh "rules" of your new situation, life, world

* you wait for someone outside a place that literally or metaphorically eats people

* an enemy makes you an offer

* you release something to fly free

You can earn up to three of these bonuses, once each, for a total of up to 15 XP.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] something's missing, something's lost

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] witnessing unnecessary displays of military order

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] studying the road to freedom, or your literal or metaphorical chains

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLSE]] hanging out quietly with an enemy

[[SILVER]] [[BLACK]] going around collecting resources

[[SILVER]] ignoring someone's babble to just watch the sunset or whatever

[[GOLD]] keeping going while just being so weary of this

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Working Title: Beyond the Walls

Knight 3, Otherworldly/Aspect/Shepherd 4

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* your appearance horrifies others

* you witness a great and willing sacrifice

* you witness a false sun

* you give of yourself to feed an artifact or somesuch thing

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 20 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you glimpse an alien perspective on civilization or its instrumentalities, e.g., as light drowning in darkness; as visceral, organic; or as a thing of bones.

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you find, or are shown, an eerie secret

[[RED]] the world is a rushing, all-embracing thing

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] someone gives you directions, or, a direction

[[RED]] [[ORANGE]] the hostile divine looms above

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] trying to sort out your head

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] gambling in a dark place

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] talking with someone about loss or fate

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Working Title: the Garden Path

Knight 4, Otherworldly 1, Aspect/Shepherd 3

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* admit that someone, who is a pretty terrible person, has a good point

* let go of a cognitive shackle (e.g., realizing that you're not responsible for a choice someone else made)

* invoke one of the Rites of Hell (pg. XX)

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[GOLD]] [[SILVER]] zone out in an adverse situation

[[RED]] [[SILVER]] encounter overblown authoritarian pomp or design

[[RED]] [[SILVER]] climb a symbolically relevant path

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] help something of your Estate along its way

[[BLUE]] [[SILVER]] reflect upon your failures

[[BLUE]] perform a ritual self-cleansing

[[BLUE]] learn more about your heart, or, the heart of your Estate

.

Working Title: Aftermath

Knight/Otherworldly/Shepherd 5, Aspect 2

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* you find a kind of happiness

* something you thought was objective truth is revealed as just the subjective perception of someone in power

*  you reject the sensible and peaceful path for something harder and maybe not even right

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[PURPLE]] building or fixing something with someone else

[[SILVER]] bonding with an unearthly animal

[[SILVER]] sharing a hot drink

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] sadness overcomes you

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] listening to strange music

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] you witness something beautiful

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] doing daily chores

.

Let’s polish them up a little bit.

.

First, let’s revisit whether the Aspect, Otherworldly, and Shepherd Arcs are still correct.

Aside: I actually polished them up a bit, then sorted this out, but ... it’ll read better this way, I think.

.

So the Aspect Arc is tricky. We'd like "Locked Down” to be Aspect 1, because it reads as Aspect 1.

But we need one of them to be Aspect 5. "Aftermath” seems too happy, and "Breaking Free” really doesn't fit. "The Garden Path" reads very strongly as Aspect 3 for a bunch of reasons.

We could move Aspect 5 to "Beyond the Walls," I guess, and that's honestly ... OK ... but means "Breaking Free" has to be Aspect 4, which it isn't.

... hm.

What we want to do is to go "Locked Down," "Breaking Free," "The Garden Path," "Beyond the Walls," so ...

maybe ... "Aftermath" isn't as bad a fit as I thought? Maybe that "sadness overcomes you" and "you reject the sensible and peaceful path" means that it's just the happiest an Aspect 5 quest gets?

.

Otherworldly/Green Arc is less grounded tbh, but looking at it, I can see that

* Green 3 being "Locked Down" is OK

* Green 4 being "Beyond the Walls" is on point

* "The Garden Path" should be 2 or maybe 5 tho

* "Aftermath" is on thin ice as 5, but also thin ice as 1, and feels wrong for 2.

* "Breaking Free" wants to be 1? I think it wants to be 1. Let's see.

Yeah, I think it has to be either

* "Breaking Free"

* "Aftermath"

* "Locked Down"

* "Beyond the Walls"

* "The Garden Path"

or swapping 1 & 2, and I think I don't want to swap 1 & 2. I am beginning to think I just need to tweak Aftermath to reflect updates.

.

Lastly, we have purple.

Purple feels like the only change I need to make is that Breaking Free is 1 and Locked Down is 2

I want to start Purple with Aftermath because it's interesting, but I think it makes things worse, so I won't

(I have a rule where I mostly try to make things better instead of worse. It's the Jenna Principle!)

...

OK, so let’s clean things up, put that in, and build a solid version of these quests:

.

A Larger World

Knight/Otherworldly/Shepherd 1, Aspect 2

Your eyes have been opened to a larger world than the world you knew. Choose a spatial metaphor for that world, such as "the city," "the forest," or "the castle;" the default is "the city," but something fitting the Chancel or a common site of play is best.

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* are given a new, important duty;

* come up with a way to move forward for now;

* confront an avatar/embodiment of some force that governs and drives the spatial metaphor---for the city, e.g., order, law, mechanization, modernity, industrialization, or the like.

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

.

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[BLUE]] decide this relatively new acquaintance matters to you

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] are impressed despite yourself at how cool/scary a friend turned out to be

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] fall in love with a new ride, outfit, or bit of gear

[[GOLD]] [[RED]] are unused to this, or out of practice

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] get an unnecessarily lengthy description of something's technical specs

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] express uncertainty about how to proceed

[[SILVER]] navigate a city (or castle, forest, or whatever your metaphor is) on foot

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

The Cage

Knight/Shepherd 2, Otherworldly 3, Aspect 1

This quest studies the walls around your world---your new world, on the default Knight Arc. It's an examination of the rules, order, and limits that cage you in and clip your budding wings.

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* someone lays out the harsh "rules" of your new situation, life, world

* you wait for someone outside a place that literally or metaphorically eats people

* an enemy makes you an offer

* you release something to fly free

You can earn up to three of these bonuses, once each, for a total of up to 15 XP.

 .

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] something's missing, something's lost

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] witnessing unnecessary displays of military order

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] studying the road to freedom, or your literal or metaphorical chains

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] hanging out quietly with an enemy

[[SILVER]] [[BLACK]] going around collecting resources

[[SILVER]] ignoring someone's babble to just watch the sunset or whatever

[[GOLD]] keeping going while just being so weary of this

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them

.

An Unknown World

Knight 3, Otherworldly/Aspect/Shepherd 4

Physically or conceptually, you've gone beyond the prescribed limits of your world. This is unknown territory.

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* your appearance horrifies others

* you witness a great and willing sacrifice

* you witness a false sun

* you give of yourself to feed an artifact or somesuch thing

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 20 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you glimpse an alien perspective on civilization* and its instrumentalities---e.g., as light drowning in darkness; as visceral, organic; or as a thing of bones.

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you find, or are shown, an eerie secret

[[RED]] the world is a rushing, all-embracing thing

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] someone gives you directions, or, a direction

[[RED]] [[ORANGE]] the hostile divine looms above

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] trying to sort out your head

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] gambling in a dark place

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] talking with someone about loss or fate

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

* or "nature," for a forest metaphor, or "(preferably medieval) civilization" for a castle metaphor, etc.

.

Carrying a Burden

Knight 4, Aspect/Shepherd 3, Otherworldly 5

You spend a while letting go of most other things so that you can just deal with a particularly sacred duty, manage a particularly pressing crisis, or befriend and find a way to cope with a particularly overwhelming experience of grief, remorse, depression, sorrow, shame, or guilt. Climbing a mountain path past ostentatious ruins is common but by no means required.

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* admit that someone, who is a pretty terrible person, has a good point

* let go of a cognitive shackle (e.g., realizing that you're not responsible for a choice someone else made)

* invoke one of the Rites of Hell (pg. XX)

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[GOLD]] [[SILVER]] zone out in an adverse situation

[[RED]] [[SILVER]] encounter overblown authoritarian pomp or design

[[RED]] [[SILVER]] climb a symbolically relevant path

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] help something of your Estate along its way

[[BLUE]] [[SILVER]] reflect upon your failures

[[BLUE]] perform a ritual self-cleansing

[[BLUE]] learn more about your heart, or, the heart of your Estate

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

A Passing Happiness

Knight/Aspect/Shepherd 5, Otherworldly 1

You are damaged, perhaps; under a shadow, certainly ... but for a time, you find happiness; togetherness; and peace.

.

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* you find a kind of happiness

* something you thought was objective truth is revealed as just the subjective perception of someone in power

*  you reject the sensible and peaceful path for something harder and maybe not even right

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

 QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[PURPLE]] building or fixing something with someone else

[[SILVER]] bonding with an unearthly animal

[[SILVER]] sharing a hot drink

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] sadness overcomes you

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] listening to strange music

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] you witness something beautiful

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] doing daily chores

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Aside: as mentioned, I actually did most of the polishing here before I sorted out the proper Otherworldly/Aspect/Shepherd quest order. However, the only thing that wound up changing in the quests themselves was the flavor text for that last quest, “A Passing Happiness,” which used to be “For a time---though it cannot be forever---you find happiness; togetherness; and peace.” and is now a little bit more melancholy, as can be seen.

.

That leaves two things to do:

* the spatial metaphor thing is taking up a lot of cognitive space; is it worth it? ... probably not. Or maybe it should be pushed into the background, made an option, instead of a default you always have to think about? ... OK, that’s the plan.

* and, making “simplified” quests ... a variation of the quests with a lower XP total for players in a hurry.

.

OCTOBER 25

The traditional “simplification” process starts by

taking each element of the quest,

“inverting” the colors ... blue<=>red, and then it gets dicier, but normally

purple<=>gold,

silver<=>black,

orange<=>green

guessing as to what the inverted version of that element would be,

writing it in,

recording the new quest,

reducing its size from there.

A quick guide to color meanings, since I guess you do need them now:

BLUE - (Fierce emoticon) I will do this

RED - I’m paying attention to this!

ORANGE - Danger threatens!

GREEN - wicked action, traumatic moments, corruption, delirium

PURPLE - talking to people, doing ordinary things with people

GOLD - obsession, overwhelm

SILVER - just living

BLACK - meta stuff ... montages, minigames, poetry, mystical experiences, fading to black

So for quest 1,

[[BLUE]] decide this relatively new acquaintance matters to you => [[RED]] meet a key player in this new, larger world

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] are impressed despite yourself at how cool/scary a friend turned out to be => [[RED]] [[BLUE]] are impressed despite yourself at how cool/scary a friend turned out to be?

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] fall in love with a new ride, outfit, or bit of gear => [[RED]] [[BLUE]] fall in love with a new ride, outfit, or bit of gear?

[[GOLD]] [[RED]] are unused to this, or out of practice => [[PURPLE]] [[BLUE]] you figure out or refresh yourself on something basic, maybe with help

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] get an unnecessarily lengthy description of something's technical specs => [[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] engage in technobabble

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] express uncertainty about how to proceed => [[BLACK]] [[GOLD]] everything is overwhelming and confusing

[[SILVER]] navigate a city on foot => [[BLACK]] montage of city sight

.

So ...

A Larger World

Knight/Otherworldly/Shepherd 1, Aspect 2

Your eyes have been opened to a larger world than the world you knew.

The spatial metaphor we're going to use for this larger world is "the city," but if play mostly takes place in very non-urban environments you may want to adjust this metaphor to something more like "the forest" or "the castle," changing the final quest flavor, final major goal, and the civilization metaphor in "An Unknown World (below) to match.

...

A Larger World (Simplified) (But actually only inverted, not simplified yet)

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* are given a new, important duty;

* come up with a way to move forward for now;

* confront an avatar/embodiment of order, law, mechanization, modernity, industrialization, or the like

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

 1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[RED]] meet a key player in this new, larger world

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] are impressed despite yourself at how cool/scary a friend turned out to be

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] fall in love with a new ride, outfit, or bit of gear

[[PURPLE]] [[BLUE]] figure out or refresh yourself on something basic, maybe with help

[[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] engage in technobabble

[[BLACK]] [[GOLD]] have an overwhelming, confusing experience

[[BLACK]] play through a montage of city sights

.

This isn't actually simplified yet, it's still a 35-XP quest. *^_^*;;

.

First trimming pass reduces it to:

.

A Larger World (Simplified)

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* are given a new, important duty;

* confront an avatar/embodiment of order, law, mechanization, modernity, industrialization, or the like

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

.

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[RED]] meet a key player in this new, larger world

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] are overwhelmed by how cool something is

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] pick up a new ride, outfit, or bit of gear

[[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] give a technobabble theory or explanation

[[BLACK]] [[GOLD]] play through a montage of larger-world life

.

... I admit I prefer 20 XP simplified quests with just four quest flavor for 35 XP regular quests, but I think that’s as far as I can get this one down.

Aside: one thing I noticed as I assembled this for tumblr is that there’s a lot of silver in the main quests, and thus a lot of black in the simplified quests. I need to keep track of this; currently, Nobilis doesn’t have the rules for montage-type stuff, because they’re a lot of cognitive weight. That’s fine if it’s just one quest set with a lot of montages, because players are perfectly able to figure this out on their own, but if it becomes super common, I’ll have to think about including specific rules in the game.

.

Let’s do a similar treatment for the Cage!

I didn’t cover the major goals, previously, because usually major goals are “I want this to happen once as a major moment” and don’t invert; that said, you wait for someone outside a place that literally or metaphorically eats people feels to me a bit like a [[SILVER]] action that got escalated to a major goal because I didn’t want it to happen constantly, which is a little different.

That kind of major goal might invert to, hm,

* [[BLACK]] montage of people getting destroyed by the system

... though converting major goals to quest flavor when inverting a quest often makes it harder rather than easier to trim down later, so this might not be a good idea.

The other quest flavor is unchanged, though “you release something to fly free” is a good candidate to be just dropped in simplification.

.

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] something's missing, something's lost => [[BLACK]] [[ORANGE]]  ... no, this becomes a major goal, just black/orange flavored: something critical to you has vanished. (Needs new wording.)

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] witnessing unnecessary displays of military order => [[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] studying an overly militarized system

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] studying the road to freedom, or your literal or metaphorical chains => [[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] the story of your imprisonment

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] hanging out quietly with an enemy => [[BLACK]] [[GOLD]] getting close to an enemy, usually as a form of deceit

[[SILVER]] [[BLACK]] going around collecting resources => [[BLACK]] [[SILVER]] going around collecting resources

[[SILVER]] ignoring someone's babble to just watch the sunset or whatever => [[BLACK]] people's words wash over you day after day

[[GOLD]] keeping going while just being so weary of this => [[PURPLE]] finding a bit of joy in all the ick

.

So before we simplify that down, we wind up with:

.

The Cage (Inverted)

MAJOR GOALS

* someone lays out the harsh "rules" of your new situation, life, world

* you're gutted or deeply undermined by something vanishing or not showing up

* an enemy makes you an offer

* you release something to fly free

.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[BLACK]] montage of people getting destroyed by the system

[[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] studying an overly militarized system

[[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] the story of your imprisonment

[[BLACK]] [[GOLD]] getting close to an enemy, usually as a form of deceit

[[BLACK]] [[SILVER]] going around collecting resources

[[BLACK]] people's words just wash over you day after day

[[PURPLE]] finding a bit of joy in all the ick

.

To produce the fully simplified version, we want to get rid of one major goal and one quest flavor, or, two major goals and 2-3 quest flavor options, ideally the latter.

collecting resources isn't super interesting when you could be getting close to an enemy, so that's a good one to go. A montage of people getting destroyed by the system is also kind of ... hm. Though the problem there is the montage interpretation of [[BLACK]], really, if it were a game ritual instead, where the players sort of formally described elements of what happened when someone got sacrificed to the cage ... that would be good/suited.

we can ditch "an enemy makes you an offer" because the player has the option to get close to an enemy at will via quest flavor, play either leads that way or it doesn't

"finding a bit of joy" and "you release something to fly free" are kind of overlapping a little. The two [[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] bullet points are ... not redundant, but both of them are kind of sketchily thought out, so they can probably be merged into one that's better thought out.

Leading to ...

.

The Cage

Knight/Shepherd 2, Otherworldly 3, Aspect 1

This quest studies the walls around your world---your new world, on the default Knight Arc. It's an examination of the rules, order, and limits that cage you in and clip your budding wings. 

...

The Cage (Simplified)

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* someone lays out the harsh "rules" of your new situation, life, world;

* something's missing, and it's gutting to you.

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

.

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[BLACK]] people's words just ... wash over you, day after day

[[BLACK]] someone gets eaten by the Cage

[[BLACK]] [[SILVER]] exploring the systems and mechanisms of the Cage

[[BLACK]] [[GOLD]] getting close to an enemy, usually as a form of deceit

[[PURPLE]] finding a quiet bit of enjoyment or pride in your efforts and connections here

 .

“exploring the systems and mechanisms of the Cage” became [[BLACK]] [[SILVER]] instead of [[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] because exploration is formally another kind of [[SILVER]] in this system, and every time I tried to change it to something bluer like “studying” or “examining,” it looked worse.

Arguably, that means that the original, in “The Cage” itself, should be [[SILVER]] [[BLACK]] and not [[SILVER]] [[RED]].

.

An Unknown World (First Pass)

no changes to major goals

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you glimpse an alien perspective on civilization and its instrumentalities---e.g., as light drowning in darkness; as visceral, organic; or as a thing of bones. => [[BLUE]] [[SILVER]] you willfully perceive or construe civilization and its instrumentalities as something organic, strange, and alien

Aside: I decided I would move the different spatial metaphors to an option/footnote.

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] you find, or are shown, an eerie secret => [[BLUE]] [[SILVER]] you do something eerie

[[RED]] the world is a rushing, all-embracing thing => [[BLUE]] you step into a mythic, larger-than-yourself role

[[RED]] [[BLUE]] someone gives you directions, or, a direction => [[BLUE]] [[RED]] you find your way

[[RED]] [[ORANGE]] the hostile divine looms above => [[BLUE]] [[GREEN]] you wield the power of the world

.

... huh, is this Otherworldly 5 and not 4? This is very Otherworldly 5.

That's ... probably swappable

.

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] trying to sort out your head => [[ORANGE]] [[BLACK]] visions, delirium

 ... huh again! THIS one is very Aspect 5!

swapping with Aspect 5 would be harder, but tagging for later thought on swapping just simplified versions

Aside: swapping just the simplified versions of quests around doesn’t really work. I realized this when I did think about it later.

[[GREEN]] [[SILVER]] gambling in a dark place => [[ORANGE]] [[BLACK]] ... no ... Major Goal: you lose something vital, or are seriously wounded, as the result of a gambling match

[[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] talking with someone about loss or fate => [[GOLD]] [[BLACK]] grief or a sense of fated doom haunt you

.

So before simplifying: 

.

An Unknown World (Inverted)

MAJOR GOALS

* your appearance horrifies others

* you witness a great and willing sacrifice

* you witness a false sun

* you give of yourself to feed an artifact or somesuch thing

* you lose something vital, or are seriously wounded, as the result of a gambling match

.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[BLUE]] [[SILVER]] you willfully perceive or construe civilization* and its instrumentalities as something organic, strange, and alien

[[BLUE]] [[SILVER]] you do something eerie

[[BLUE]] you step into a mythic, larger-than-yourself role

[[BLUE]] [[RED]] you find your way

[[BLUE]] [[GREEN]] you wield the power of the world

[[ORANGE]] [[BLACK]] visions, delirium

[[GOLD]] [[BLACK]] grief or a sense of fated doom haunt you

. 

Cutting, simplifying, pulling it together, and committing to the Otherworldly 4/5 swap:

.

An Unknown World

Knight 3, Aspect/Shepherd 4, Otherworldly 5

Physically or conceptually, you've gone beyond the prescribed limits of your world. This is unknown territory.

...

An Unknown World (Simplified)

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* your appearance horrifies others

* someone takes or wins something precious from you

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[BLUE]] [[GREEN]] wield the power of the world

[[BLUE]] [[SILVER]] embrace inhumanity

[[BLUE]] [[BLACK]] see or describe civilization through new eyes

[[GOLD]] [[BLACK]] are lost in visions and delirium

[[BLACK]] experience a travel montage

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Thoughts on Aspect

I went ahead and made this Otherworldly 5, swapping with Carrying a Burden, because Carrying a Burden was a valid Otherworldly 4. I'm more reluctant to make this the Aspect 5 quest, tho, because if we do that ...

.

“The Cage” would still be Aspect 1. I like it there.

“Carrying a Burden” would still be Aspect 3. I like it there.

“An Unknown World” would become Aspect 5.

Aspect 2 could be either of the remaining two, and be OK ...

... but the only even halfway OK Aspect 4 is "A Larger World," and even then it's weird.

I don't know if the improvements we’d get by making this the Aspect 5 quest balance out the cost of making A Larger World Aspect 4. I

 just need to keep thinking about it rather than forgetting!

Onwards! 

.

Initial Inversion for Carrying a Burden

I should admit that this inversion is not just swapping the colors and then writing down whatever, I'm thinking about where the original thing comes from as a scene and then like how I would speed that up as a writer if I wanted to brush past multiple such things in a single scene

Aside: I already told you that earlier, more or less, in an aside, but there’s where I mentioned it when thinking aloud. ^_^

MAJOR GOALS

* “admit that someone, who is a pretty terrible person, has a good point” => could become the quest flavor, [[RED]] seeing someone terrible make a good point but like why

Conversely, the quest flavor

* [[PURPLE]] [[SILVER]] help something of your Estate along its way =>

could

become the major goal, “overcome adversity to help” ... or it could be [[GOLD]] [[BLACK]]

.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[GOLD]] [[SILVER]] zone out in an adverse situation => [[PURPLE]] [[BLACK]] have a conversation against a backdrop of terrible events

[[RED]] [[SILVER]] encounter overblown authoritarian pomp or design => [[BLUE]] [[BLACK]] talk about a ceremony or history

[[RED]] [[SILVER]] climb a symbolically relevant path => [[BLUE]] [[BLACK]] climb a symbolically relevant path

Aside: only, DIFFERENT

[[BLUE]] [[SILVER]] reflect upon your failures => [[RED]] [[BLACK]] bear witness to the cost of your failures

[[BLUE]] perform a ritual self-cleansing => [[RED]] [[BLACK]] witness something ennobling (needs a word choice fix)

[[BLUE]] learn more about your heart, or, the heart of your Estate => [[RED]] [[BLACK]] grasp something mysterious about your Estate

.

These extra black icons suggest extra silver icons might be good for the base quest? Hrm. Anyway!

.

Summing up:

.

Carrying a Burden (Inverted)

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* let go of a cognitive shackle (e.g., realizing that you're not responsible for a choice someone else made)

* invoke one of the Rites of Hell (pg. XX)

* overcome a great trial for the sake of something of your Estate

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 15 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[PURPLE]] [[BLACK]] have a conversation against a backdrop of terrible events

[[BLUE]] [[BLACK]] talk about a ceremony or history

[[BLUE]] [[BLACK]] climb a symbolically relevant path

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] bear witness to the cost of your failures

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] witness something that changes you

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] grasp something mysterious about your Estate

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Now, to simplify/pare down!

Climbing a path has become less interesting, so strike that.

Combine the last two quest flavor.

... we're at 4 quest flavor. Which major goal to drop, hm.

None of them! Instead, we’ll move one to quest flavor, and add a dropped major goal back in, more or less, giving us a 25 XP quest.

.

Carrying a Burden

Knight/Otherworldly 4, Aspect/Shepherd 3

You spend a while letting go of most other things so that you can just deal with a particularly sacred duty, manage a particularly pressing crisis, or befriend and find a way to cope with a particularly overwhelming experience of grief, remorse, depression, sorrow, shame, or guilt. Climbing a mountain path past ostentatious ruins is common but by no means required.

...

Carrying a Burden (Simplified)

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when you:

* let go of a cognitive shackle (e.g., realizing that you're not responsible for a choice someone else made)

* invoke one of the Rites of Hell (pg. XX)

* ignore a great and correct point because it's made by someone terrible

You can earn up to two of these bonuses, once each, for a total of up to 10 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when you:

[[GOLD]] suffer for the sake of your Estate

[[RED]] bear witness to the cost of your failures

[[RED]] [[BLACK]] witness something mysterious, something that you almost grasp

[[BLUE]] [[BLACK]] study a ceremony or history

[[PURPLE]] [[BLACK]] have a conversation against a backdrop of terrible events

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

OK, last quest, then pondering the Aspect quest order, then done!

... possible I should be using less [[BLACK]] because Glitch/Nobilis don't have the ritual rules...

problem for the future tho

thing is rituals are cool

...

A Passing Happiness, inversion pass:

major goals unchanged

[[PURPLE]] building or fixing something with someone else => [[GOLD]] working yourself to the bone

[[SILVER]] bonding with an unearthly animal => [[BLACK]] bonding with an unearthly animal (montage)

[[SILVER]] sharing a hot drink => [[BLACK]] getting closer with someone (montage)

[[SILVER]] [[GREEN]] sadness overcomes you => [[BLACK]] [[ORANGE]] despair overwhelms you

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] listening to strange music => [[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] ...

... actually, this one just goes away preemptively, it's atmosphere that folds into the background

[[SILVER]] [[RED]] you witness something beautiful => [[BLACK]] [[BLUE]]

... and this becomes a major goal?

[[SILVER]] [[PURPLE]] doing daily chores => [[BLACK]] [[GOLD]]

... and this folds into quest flavor 1

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

Aside: Nobilis takes no responsibility for injuries incurred by folding players into quest flavor, regardless of which PCs may or may not happen to be involved.

Summarizing:

.

A Passing Happiness (Inverted)

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* you find a kind of happiness

* something you thought was objective truth is revealed as just the subjective perception of someone in power

*  you reject the sensible and peaceful path for something harder and maybe not even right

* you witness something transformative

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 20 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[BLACK]] [[GOLD]] working yourself to the bone

[[BLACK]] bonding with an unearthly animal (montage)

[[BLACK]] getting closer with someone (montage)

[[BLACK]] [[ORANGE]] despair overwhelms you

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

Hm, that's four flavor, so ... just need to drop two major goals

I guess witnessing something transformative can move back down, and then we have a 25 XP quest. Or, uh, how’s this? ...

.

A Passing Happiness

Knight/Aspect/Shepherd 5, Otherworldly 1

You are damaged, perhaps; under a shadow, certainly ... but for a time, you find happiness; togetherness; and peace.

...

A Passing Happiness (Simplified)

MAJOR GOALS

The GM can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

* you find a kind of happiness

*  you reject the sensible and peaceful path for something harder and maybe not even right

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

.

QUEST FLAVOR

1/chapter, when you’re in focus, you can earn 1 XP for yourself and 1 XP for the quest when:

[[BLACK]] [[GOLD]] working yourself to the bone

[[BLACK]] bonding with an unearthly person or animal over the course of a montage

[[BLACK]] [[ORANGE]] despair overwhelms you

[[BLACK]] [[BLUE]] you see something that changes the whole way you understand your situation or the world

... and so can any other player, 1/chapter, if they substitute their PC for yours or otherwise involve them.

.

OK! That's everything except for the gold thing.

.

The Gold/Aspect Thing

The gold thing was "if we make An Unknown World Aspect 5 instead of 4, and A Larger World Aspect 4 instead of 2, and A Passing Happiness Aspect 2 instead of 5, do we mostly gain or mostly lose out?"

.

PROS:

* An Unknown World (Simplified) has "are lost in visions or delirium" -- an explicit "lost in darkness" variant

* An Unknown World is in the fiction generally set in places like Abaton and the underworld.

* A Larger World's quest card has a confrontation with an avatar of something huge, suitable for Aspect 4. The Major Goals generally sort of fit.

* A Passing Happiness is social enough, and explicitly leads to insights.

* A Passing Happiness is not a great Aspect 5, though we pushed it some in that direction.

.

CONS:

* In the fiction, "An Unknown World" tended to involve facing big nebulous threats suitable for Aspect 4, while "A Larger World" only really has the Imperator. Which is weird to "win" against and end up stranded.

* The quest flavor for "A Larger World" is not very Aspect 4.

* The quest flavor for "A Larger World" is more generally slightly better for 2 than "A Passing Happiness'" is.

Only thing for it is to tell Kelly's story each way and see which is better

.

Current Book 1, Aspect:

Kelly becomes a Power, is frustrated by the new rules. Decides to start waylaying police equipment. 

Once things are better, she gets to know and like her Familia a bit better.

Then she takes a seed of a forest to plant somewhere on the Ash.

Then she goes to Abaton.

Then she goes to hang out with cloud-shepherds.

... vs. the option,

Kelly becomes a Power, is frustrated by the new rules. Decides to start waylaying police equipment.

Then she goes to hang out with cloud-shepherds.

Then she takes a seed of a forest to plant somewhere on the Ash.

Once things are better, she gets to know and like her Familia a bit better.

Then she goes to Abaton.

 ... there are some logistical issues with both of these story arcs, but I have to admit that the first version, the current version with no changes, is easier to fix up.

Current Book 2, Aspect:

Bumping around the Chancel, Imperator is a jerk, mortal connections have vanished.

Trying to be a better Power to Lost Packages.

Going to the Final Destination for purification.

Learning about how she was originally a welken-thing, having existential crises, facing the Zaratan.

It sees a number of possible lives for her.

vs.

Bumping around the Chancel, Imperator is a jerk, mortal connections have vanished.

The Zaratan sees a number of possible lives for her.

Going to the Final Destination for purification.

Trying to be a better Power to Lost Packages.

Learning about how she was originally a welken-thing, having existential crises, facing the Zaratan.

 ... I actually see how we could write that story, but no, we're leaving things as they are.

.

OCTOBER 26

Mostly today was prepping this.

I changed the name of “A Larger World” to “The Hidden World,” after review of how the quest set as a whole hangs together.

I dropped a quest flavor element from the simplified “An Unknown World,” after remembering that a 25 XP quest isn’t actually that much quicker than a 40 XP quest.

Adding some flores, based on Kelly’s stuff mostly:

In Mevhvir all know happiness, and none will ever taste the spice called “hunger,” but the roads of Mevhvir are unchartable by mail truck, and no package shall be there delivered. — from Postal Handbook for the Extended Realm (xc-12), by K. Patel

The world is a cage, or has been made into a cage. This is not disputable. It has been twisted away from its natural form, made sadistic, carceral, a walled-in gallery for strutting cockerels and they look down on it and preen. This is not disputable. The only question is not that, but whether we shall suffer nobly, whether we shall suffer civilly, with a gentle, praiseful manner, in emulation of our honorable jailers, in the name of reducing their suffering and ours. Or whether we shall steep in the injustice of it, let it crush upon our bones, and spend our time as broken reclis roaring, stomping, rattling our cups against the cage. A third option? Do you ask me, for a third option? Is there no way, you ask, to retain my precious dignity and be more than these circumstances would make of me? But it’s not your problem, and it isn’t mine; not philosopher nor prisoner commits the crime. To ask how you could beat the game is to find yourself to blame, to carry water for the beasts and monstrous things in human flesh that stalk the blood-stained walks above. They yell down that only the laziest of us, when stabbed right through the heart, would just lie around and bleed, but ah. — from The Silver Key, by Aidameris Ganley

The ideal model for a fictional property is something limitless, unbounded—something qualified to be taken up within the hollow of our jaws, rolled and ground and turned and spun there; remade, reprinted, and repackaged there, from now until the dying of the sun. — from Department of Acquisitions, by Elliott Porterfield

Occasionally when out and about, one will find oneself stepping on the Power of Cobblestones. This is essentially unavoidable, though at least he makes some effort to choose occasions when one might otherwise have stepped on something worse, or fallen. “It’s to better understand the nature of Cobblestones,” he says, which, ok, sure, I guess, but everyone knows it’s either Imperial punishment or a sex thing. — from In the Right Circles, by Jasprite Sherrard

The Zaratan sees not merely the world as it is but the world as it might be, as it could have been. The scholar may object, declaring these ideas ill-formed: What does it mean to say that the world “might have been” a certain way, when it is not? Is this not simply an ideological assertion? Not so, declare the legends of the Zaratan: At any time, it may get dust within its eye, and blink; or, willfully redirect its gaze; and at that time, our world will no longer be the one reality, but rather join the host of might-have-beens, and the world that is shall be the world that has become the focus of its gaze. — from A Medieval Bestiary, by Paul McArthur

I’ll put a rough PDF up in a moment at

https://afarandasunlessland.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/knight-quest-set-for-nobilis-rough.pdf !

[wrenqueenisboss]

Happy New Years - cc!dream x gn!reader

Characters: dream, sapnap, george pairing: cc!dream x gn!reader warnings: cursing, being alone, hiding emotions, flirting note: posting this early for secret reasons. enjoy!

masterlist

~-~-~-~-~-~-

You spun in your chair, listening to the sounds of your friends voices through your headphones. The Christmas decorations in your office, the ones that you hadn't yet taken down, stared at you.

The red and green tinsel shimmered sightly. The holiday wreath was still hanging on the door. (You liked its pine scent.) It was almost New Years. As in, two days away. But something about Christmas just wouldn't leave. And that was okay.

You hadn't been able to spend the holiday with your family and it was too short notice to be able to visit any of your friends. So, you spent the holidays alone. You may or may not have shed a few tears for that reason. Christmas wasn't meant to be spent alone.

But the discord calls with your friends made things bearable. They were happily sharing all that they had done over the holidays with their families.

George had just finished talking about how he had spend the holidays when Dream asked you a question.

"How did you celebrate the holidays, Y/n?"

Alone. Crying. Opening amazon boxes- not wrapped. Eating pizza delivery food. Watching holiday movies by myself on the couch.

"I... didn't celebrate this year." You had stopped spinning, instead just quietly observing the screen. The discord icons. Trying to keep your voice from shaking.

"What?" Dream sounded concerned. "What happened? Are you okay?"

Your bottom lip was quivering and it was getting harder and harder to not cry. "My family had their own thing going on. I was alone on Christmas." Your laugh was bitter. "First time that's happened actually."

Sapnap couldn't stop himself from muttering a soft "Damn."

You laugh sounds lighter this time. But the smile on your face fell back into a frown almost immediately. "I just did some work. Edited a video, came up with stream ideas. Spent some chill time alone. That sort of stuff."

"Did you talk to anyone on Christmas?" George's voice was slow with a hesitant concern. It was sweet, the way he cared for everyone.

"Uh...." You thought back to the day. "I sent "merry christmas" texts to my family and all of my friends- Oh! And I also talked with my parents for five minutes." You sat back in your chair, spinning again. "But nothing more than that."

"Y/n, are you okay?"

Goddammit, Dream!

That stupid question. The one that made it nearly impossible to hold back your emotions. Dream had just asked it.

"Yeah." But the stupid fucking question still had its power and your voice cracked at the end.

The rest of the call was positive. You were smiling and laughing again within a few minutes.

~-~-~-~-~-(Time skip to late New Year's Eve)~-~-

It was 11:55 pm on New Years Eve. You were shocked when a notification from discord made your phone screen light up. It was from Dream.

"vc? he asked.

"sure" you sent back, running to your computer to join the call.

"Hey, Y/n." He sounded calm. A sharp contrast to the teasing tone he had begun adopting towards you. The two of you had been flirting a lot more recently.

"Hi, Dream. What's up?" You asked casually. Tapping your fingers lightly on your desk.

"Just wanted to make sure you weren't spending New Years alone."

Woah.

You hadn't expected that. The gesture was... unexpectedly touching.

"Wow, Dream. That's really sweet. Thank you." A smile crept onto your face. It was welcome.

The faceless streamer sounded flustered. "It's no problem at all." But as always, he switched to teasing to cover it up. "Thought you needed a shoulder to cry on after you realized that nobody is gonna be kissing you this year."

You laughed, not at all offended with his jab, and decided to do some teasing of your own. "Well according to Twitter, they want us to kiss on New Years."

A pause. "We are definitely not in the same place. It's physically not possible."

You looked at the time. "11:59, Dream. What's your final decision?"

Another pause.

"I agree with Twitter."

He left the call. You were left in a - pleasantly surprised - state of shock.

A discord message came through just as the clock struck 12:00 am on New Years Day.

"Happy New Years, Y/n."

General Taglist: (send an ask to be tagged)

@allywritesforfun @gray-moon2

[soft-boi-eli]

can i pls get some cc! techno x ftm(or male in general) reader where they chill on a stream and are really fluffy??? ur writing is amazing btw (｡’▽’｡)♡

Yea. And thank you so much!

Not proofread or edited due to ✨stress and anxiety✨

Tw:none just pure fluff, well mentions the word pain bur that's it.

Yeah hope your guises Christmas was good. I'm posting that at 4am so noice.

He's my lap warmer.

One thing you love about techno, he was normally faceless. Meaning you could just lay there and soak up his warmth. Enjoy the company. Watch him wipe the floor with these noobs.

That was if you were silent. Today you messed up. It was a mincraft stream. You thought that he was muted. "I'm cold. And in pain can you help me." Your voice was tired. You appointment for your first testosterone was tomorrow and you just wanted his company.

"Yeah. Just come here." His voice was tense.

Not knowing why you just casually climbed into his lap, ear to his heart, staddling his waist as you just lay there. "This is my boyfriend. Or as I like to call him my personal lap warmer." You hummed lightly as you looked at the screen.

"He's honestly one of the best people I know. Love him to death. He's helped me so much and now I'm helping him through what he needs." Facecam was on and he wasn't muted. But chat was spamming alot of supporting things.

You never really had an issue with chat. That was due to the fact that you never really were noticed. Then a dono came up.

"To your significant other. Blood king, queen, thing, or God/goddess of blood? Due to your status to our blood God."

Ah.

Thinking for a second you decided. "God of blood. Anarchy for life." You were quick to speak.

"You sir are correct." Techno spoke. Looking down to you. "So how do you like my lap warmer guys? He's amazing eh?" Chat was exploding.

Ever since his cancer diagnosed he's been tired, but he's going strong. There was no reason for him to give up now, you, his fans, his friends. the blood god will never die. 

“hey. i’m not a lap warmer only you ass.” lightly pushing his head away from you he laughed. “oh come on you’re warm and comfy to me. let me joke around about it,” with that you gave a pout and rolled your eyes. 

chat was booming with the issue of a ship name. “guys guys, their the anarchy parents, or the anarchy dads.” laughing lightly at the names you spoke, “anarchy dads, that sounds better then anarchy parents. how do you feel about that techno?” he hummed slightly. “if thats what they decide on i cant stop it. so as long as you feel okay with that im good.” 

chanting through out the chat, then a discord call. philza minecraft’s name was on one of the desktops, one that was opened to discord. 

answering it with his free hand techno was quick to greet him. “hallo!” you nodded, “philza minecraft has joined the call. pog!” you spoke. 

“ah hello. i had to check in on you guys, it seemed your stream was booming quite a bit. had to check in.” such a dad.  “yeah. (y/n) decided to join in and it seems like the chat loved him.” 

“i can see that.” waving to the camera you relaxed a bit more, “i havent seen your face before. but i can see why techno brags about you.” ah yes, techno’s bragging, it’s something that happens alot when you lay on his lap when he does stream. it was one of your favorite places. 

“yeah. when he does brag im normally exsiting on his lap, either watching him or sleeping. it’s kinda weird to hear it,” you streched slightly. “but it assures me that im not the only one that thinks so highly of the other.” 

“so you think of him just as highly? it seems nearly impossible with how much he talk about you.” you could hear the smile in his voice. “yeah. but i dont really brag that much. just kinda vibe here and think that im saying it.” techno was starting up a game of bed wars.

“ha. you’re gonna wipe the floors with these noobs.” you smirked slightly. 

“you are quite correct.” techno was fast to speak up, anwsering you.

“techno we’re stealing your boyfriend. he’s ours now.” you looked at the screen, your face resting in a upset look. “im not going to go. he’s my boyfriend and i love him too much.” you spoke. 

god even if you werent such a secret now you loved techno too much to leave him. and you were staying with him. no and if or buts about it.

hello people. as it gets closer and closer to my appointment on the 27th of january, i get more and more scared and all. so im sorry it’s take me a bit to finish up my request right now. 

and thank you for people who are being paitent with me. 

eli out.

[nach0]

hi hello i hope youre doing well and i would very much like to see the gem does get bitten au ideas

hello there, I am and same to you! it is your lucky day because last night when I posted it a few friends also wanted to know and I wrote out a giant thing is discord so I'm just going to copy paste that with some edits lol (under a readmore because it's longish)

So not much changes about the night, except for one thing. At the very start Gem trips and falls and Ren manages to lightly bite her before he gets kicked off, it barely draws blood and Gem forgets about it in the chaos, the bite mark specifically doesn't get noticed because of all the other cuts and stuff she got on her legs from running through the forests.

The nights leading up to the full moon she gets weaker, (first time transformation) but she doesn't think too much of it, she's probably just getting sick or something. She goes to Pearl's like planned and is sitting on the roof with her, watching the moon rise. She starts to tell Pearl that she can go inside and sleep but gets cut off by the worst pain she's ever felt. It shoots through her body and she can feel her bones snapping and regrowing as she changes. Pearl flies her down to the ground while this is happening, worried but unsure of what to do, and she can only stumble backwards as Gem shifts.

She's bigger than Ren was, her fur a bright orange with streaks of light brown near her head, and her now amber eyes convey no recognition of Pearl, who is on the ground and trying to back away. She slowly advances and Pearl doesn't have enough room to escape, until a howl sounds out and she her head snaps up, ears flicking to it. She answers one back and runs off, leaving a shocked Pearl to quickly send a warning out to all the other hermits.

For people eating beasts Gem and Ren don't really get up to much damage, they mostly just run around the forest and kill the occasional sheep or cow. Ren has to teach Gem a lot of wolf stuff because even if she's got some instincts that won't get her everywhere. The night is pretty fun for the two wolves, which is an extreme contrast to when they wake up.

As soon as they're both awake and aware of their surroundings they're both horrified until Ren rounds on Gem growling and demanding to know why she didn't say anything, to which she starts to cower back at but then gains confidence and growls right back, saying she didn't know! She slaps a hand to her mouth and apologises and Ren explains that it's going to be happening a lot more, especially around him.

They leave the forest and meet up with the search party that had been looking for them and Gem suddenly loses all her confidence, pushing Ren forward slightly to explain. It would be funny, 250 Gem hiding behind 190 Ren if the situation weren't so serious. He does end up explaining that Gem didn't realise she had been bitten and there was nothing anyone could do but be careful and award her the same precautions they do him. Gem apologises to Pearl who waves it off, she didn't mean to after all.

Even outside of the transformation Gem experiences changes. She keeps her antlers, but her once deer ears shift to those of a wolf, the same orange as her hair. She grows sharp fangs, and her eyes flash amber when she's angry. The first time any of these changes showed up she ran straight to Ren who reassured her that it was a normal part of the transformation. It didn't stop her from feeling terrible because her deer features were part of who she was. She thanks every god she has ever heard of (including Xelqua) that she kept her antlers because she didn't know what she would do without them.

(Ren overhears this and has so much guilt)

When Moon Big happens Gem and Ren start spending more time at each others bases without realising it, their transformations happen earlier and finish later, their wolf habits start to carry over a lot more (growling, eating raw meat, etc) and they're a lot bigger and more powerful. They get bolder in wolf form, venturing further beyond their forest than they ever had before. (They make sure to stay away from Cleo's area after she fought them over it, Zombies can't become werewolves after all)

When MOON BIG (aka the finale) happens Gem drags Ren away from his whole thing with Doc because she's going to save the people in her pack dammit and she drags him through the portal with her. (aka I always have massive empires brainrot and the crossovers are really interesting (go read puddle jumpers by @/sixteenth-days it's really good and the last chapter comes out tomorrow I think) and I really want to see how this changed Gem and Ren interact with empires.)

damn I really want to make a whole nother post about werewolf!Gem and Ren in empires now so maybe expect that soonish? (and for those who know me as fox anon from empires headcanons you already know that I'm going to be adding in my favourite empires au thing ;) )

pspsps send in asks for the au? Either about their time in hermitcraft or in empires I'm not fussy I just wanna talk about it more now haha

[bakersstreetirregulars]

Save The Future Preview Part 2- The Timekeeper’s Revenge

🕰 I’m BACK. For REVENGE! REVENGE ON THE META OF TROPHY RACE! It ain’t a time traveling update without me, and I’ve got some legendary stuff to show off! Coming in hot with the new update on New Years Eve, you’ll witness my LEGENDARY COSTUME: “Ruler of the Ephemeral Flow”

You see, after spending so long editing things in time whilst flying about on a broken Sonic Embroider, I found out nothing has any meaning in the flow of time itself! Oh yeah, the left image of yours truly has pronouns juuuuust to make things interesting, kinda like how we revealed that Aloe was a female!

🛠 What, they didn’t know?

🕰 No they didn’t! Not everyone knew! Now get back to working with that high-tech fireworks display you said you were gonna set off for New Years. Anyways… here’s another thing that I got with that Costume: The “Abyss of the Ephemeral Flow” Lobby design!

Coming in the cold depths of mid-January alongside Part 2, you’ll also witness and behold the creation of my MAGIC CANDY with awe and fear! You’ll also meet what you could call the future version of Cosmos Gear, AKA my new pet: Continuum Cog!

Now, just to clear up any confusion and chaos I stirred in upstairs, MY costume is coming in with the initial update. Continuum Cog and my Magic Candy is being prepared for mid-January. If you already got my Legendary costume when you find Continuum Cog, you’ll also get a matching costume that comes standard with EVERY legendary costume: “Loops of Time”!

🥐 *ahem* If I may, Timekeeper…

🕰 Sure, sure! This one’s all you, Croissant Cookie!

🥐 Excellent! Also being launched on New Years Eve is a Super Epic Costume for me: “Director of the TBD”!

As Timekeeper Cookie foretold, I was unanimously voted in as the next Director of the TBD! It isn’t an honor to take lightly either, lest I end up like her…

Also new for mid-January, ALL Breakout maps will rotate monthly! It’s just a little something to keep the content fresh and to help usher in content that you might have missed (which was most likely mentioned in the Story Mode). But just to jog your memory on what maps we have in rotation:

Main Episode

🍦Sands of Yogurca

🌊 Lost City of Sugarteara

⛩ Fragrant Lotus Paradise (Part 3 of Mango’s tour from Stage 8 onwards will get posted… eventually.)

Special Episode 1

🔥 Escape from the Oven

🌳 City of the Millennial Tree

Special Episode 2

🏴‍☠️ Black Sugar Pirate Ship

🪄 City of Wizards

🏚 Spooky Spider Mansion

🥐 We also have some fun events lined up for mid-January, most notably the return of Custom Run for the Winter Season, now with brand new features! Mentioned by someone (whom the Editor doesn’t know) on the official Cookie Run Discord Server, the results of your run will now validate as “finished” after leaving the results screen. Consider it a contingency plan just in case someone forgets to click the “Finished!” button, but you can still re-run if there’s still time leftover.

You’ll also get the chance to customize some of the more scrupulous gimmicks in other maps and modes such as game speed, consecutive jumps allowed, potion effects, collision damage, and more! Run for fun and win another exclusive lobby!

Alright, that should be everything! We’ll see you again with the new update on New Years Eve, but before we go, redeem the Coupon Code TIME TRAVEL FOR ALL for 300 Rainbow Cubes! [It’s now expired.]

[millennial-star-gazer]

A Fire Dragon, His Princess and The Not-So-Terrible Party Aftermath: Chapter:5

A Fire Dragon, His Princess and The Not-So-Terrible Party Aftermath

Nalu week 2020 Prompts: Voice, Flirt, Charm & Smile(All implied)

Genres: Romance, Humor, New Adult Fanfiction

Pairing: Nalu/Endlu (Natsu x Lucy & E.n.d. Natsu x Lucy)

Rating: M for language, steamy and mature/adult sexual content (all consensual) in these and future chapters. Reader Discretion is advised.(You've been warned!)

Summary: God knows it was all fun and games at an outdoor guild party until a drinking contest results in a not-so-great time for a certain celestial wizard much to the dismay of a protective dragon slayer and company. Even worse is Lucy's hangover with some kind of mild flu and busted ankle to boot . At least a doting Natsu is more-than-willing to provide his mate plenty of TLC. One of my entries for Nalu week 2020 and part of the Nalu-centric anthology series The Dragon Demon and His Celestial Princess anthology series (slight au/ canon divergent).

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Chapter: 5: Of All The Over-Protective Loved Ones And Nonsensical Health Remedies

A/N: Hey folks, it's your girl back with another installment of AFHCPATNSTPA! Apologies for the delay! My beta and I have been somewhat busy on and off for different reasons which will be explained further in the bottom author's note. Anyways, Chapter 5 is finally posted for your reading pleasure with plenty of Nalu fluff, Gray and Natsu rival-related hijinks and humor to go around! Many thanks and a special shoutout to the awesome @mannyegb for helping me edit and further develop this chapter yet again! Seriously, words can't express how grateful I am for this dude's contributions or how invaluable they are ! Make sure to hit him up on Tumblr and Discord. Now without further ado, here's the chapter-enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Fairytail which instead belongs to the one and only Hiro-sensei instead!

(Scroll down for Designated links and actual story content below the keep reading button/cut)

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Read More Of This Fic On Here and Other Plaftorms. Note: You may need to copy and paste the designated link into another window’tab on your browser if reading on Tumbr’s desktop site.

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Legend

Italics: Fantasy, flashback & literary/ song quotes

Bold: First Person Thoughts

Bolded Italics: empathized word

Bolded Italics: outside of main story): A/N

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"Friends are the family you choose".

(NIN/Ithilinin: Elven Rogue)

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"Seriously Natsu? Again?! "

Lucy's exasperated voice echoed through the stairwell of the couple's duplex after returning home from a trip to the local physician's appointment and some errands. Can't believe we're having this conversation again. Little did the other nearby tenants and neighbors know that this wasn't the first time that the two disagreed over his sometimes -overprotective nature instincts or the level of " safety precautions" for the sake of his mate's well being.

Bloody Hell ...

"I'm not a porcelain doll, y' know!" The wizard grumbled, arms crossing over her chest. "I mean, really!"

"Mhmmm." Nastu merely hummed in response with a lazy smirk illuminating those sage eyes much to her chagrin.

"Are you even listening to me right now?"

"Course I am , beautiful" came his reply without missing a beat. "But damn." Difficult to miss the hint of a flirtatious purr in the fire wizard's voice or how his eyes swept over his mates form in apprecation that sent her pulse jumping into a frenzy . "Do you know what seeing ya' all flustered like this does to me? I mean you're even more adorable, gorgeous, and irresistible than you already are right now. Kissable too."

"Well, th-thank you" Lucy mumbled, heat rising and pooling in her cheeks. God knows how she couldn't but be a little subconscious over the effect of his natural charms despite being irritated. "But I don't think no's really a good time for flirting."

"Aw who says?" Natsu challenged with a throaty chuckle. Agree to disagree, princess ." Notto mention the gleam of mirth dancing in his eyes or the languidly smooth empathis on one of her beloved nicknames that he knew turned her knees to jellow .

Cocky bastard..

And damn were those supple hands currently settled on the curve of the summoner 's waist distracting in all the best possible ways.

"This couldn't be a more perfect time for flirting…"

One of the dragon slayer's hands was reaching to drag the blonde's locks through his fingertips. and Holy Hell did that blush deepen all thanks to that shit-eating of his and the way he continued to play with her hair .

Fuck ... there he goes again.

"Don't you think,Luce?" He finished, twirling, and tucking a stray tendril behind her ear as if to puncture his point further.

Damn it...

God damn did all those calculated ministrations kickstart the flustered girls heart into overdrive .

Again. So hard to focus right now. He 's that good…

As if that soft gasp tha wasn't t slipped out of her mouth wan't already enough. And pretty clear that noise undetected by Natsu if the way his sage eyes were glittering like coals was any indication.

"Someone' s flustered" His words came out as infuriatingly goading and yet velvety at the same time. " But I know you're into this as much as I am…. and you're falling prey to my charms." Natsu let his thumb lightly graze along the contour of her cheek. "Oh yeah. I can tell. Your heart's racing and everything." Now the fire dragon slayer wizard's forehead was mere inches from Lucy's. All that was needed for for her heart rate to skyrocket for the third time just as he so brazenly pointed out.

"Nastu..." the blonde started only for the words to die in her throat when her breath hitched from Natsu 's lips brushing against hers.

Shit...

"Are...you…trying…to…distract...me?" Was what she finally managed to force out, desperate longing seeping into her breathy tone.

"Me? Never." Natsu denied, the soft vibrations of his smoky timbre against her lips sending a tingle rippling across all those nerves. "Just having a little fun, is all."

"You are?"

"And I succeeded!"

Wait...what!?

Nastu was pulling back ever so slightly from Lucy without so much as a warning. God did that unwelcome disruption not fly so well with the mage who moaned in protest.

That pompous little...

"So that entailed luring your your mate in?" She eventually objected with a sour glare at her pompous -ass-of boyfriend." And then leaving her hanging? Pretty sure that classifies as some kind of entrapment! Just how much of a shameless flirt can you be?!"

"Opps.. guess you're not a happy camper right now," Natsu snickered, flashing her an awfully impish grin as if he were caught red-handed like a delinquent high school student drinking in class. "I mean I'm definitely a 'shameless flirt 'when it comes to you but I'm not going to leave you out to dry like some emotionally or romantically dead-beat loser. Knew exactly what I was doing and can't get over how cute my girl is when she's all flustered. No need to worry though." He gave a sly-yet-rougish wink that nearly left the summoner 'a heart stuttering.

Not that I'm going to tell him that.

"I promise to deliver on that promise of plenty of kisses and affection that we both crave so much. You'll see!"

"I... you ... y-you're such an ass!" Lucy stammered, entire face flushing an deeper shade of crimson. "Did you even hear what I said about... God damn it!"

"You mean about you not being made out porcelain?" Natsu was quick to supply, automatically clueing in. "Yes Luce, I did." His voice was all business now but more patient than cross. "And you're definitely right but that busted ankle of yours might as well be with how fragile it is right now. That's what having a sprained ankle means. A finger pointed down at Lucy 's sandal -clad foot with a tensure bandage .

"And why I need to carry ya'. Either way, you wanna get upstairs, right?"

"Well gee thank you for stating the obvious and what everyone already knows about sprained ankles." Lucy huffed, rolling her eyes. "And of course, I wanna get up upstairs but why is carrying me all the way up and down even necessary? You already gave me a piggyback to the clinic for God's sake! Not to mention pushing me around on a god damn platform cart while we were shopping for medicine and other supplies at the pharmacy without letting me set foot on the ground even once!

"Both were necessary to keep you from falling again." Natsu reasoned, still not budging on the matter; even when in the process of methodically removing the key holder's shoes. "Plus, I love having ya' in my arms and that cart had lots of room for you to comfortably stretch out on. Pretty practical if you ask me."

"More like total overkill!" Lucy tossed back, vein ticking above her eye. "Anyway, I might not be as fast, but can still definitely make my way up and down the stairs with a walking assist! Can't you just let me try at least?!"

"No can do, sweetheart," Natsu rebutted with a shake of his head. Good lord it was astounding how this extremely persistent man was able to unwittingly shoot down all of her ambitions for any kind of semi-independent mobility. and yet be so damn patient and even-tempered at the same time. "Can't risk you missing a step and taking another tumble down these stairs."

"Ugh...Oh My God- you're unbelievable!" Lucy couldn't help but yell; throwing her hands up in ggravation. which was met with an infuriating laugh of amusement from a certain pyro .

"The most unbelievable of them all.! Now quit complainin' relax and enjoy the ride up to our apartment!"

"Natsuuuu!"

Such a debate became a common occurrence in the Dragneel-Heartfilia household over the week with neither Natsu or visiting friends— Celestial spirits included- letting Lucy out of their sight or use stairs by herself. The extremely disgruntled mage would often gripe about her "stupid over-protective boyfriend and friends" even though ;despite secretly melting from being in the dragonslayer's arms all the time along with the rest of his "TLC." Not so much with Ezra, however, who'd often insist on personally escorting Lucy up and down the stairs herself ;when it wasn't by Natsu, Happy or anyone else.

My God is that woman overly cautious! It's beyond irritating!

Other than that, one minor pet peeve, Lucy supposed she couldn't really complain too much. Not when she was blessed with spending quality time with the love of her life and phomoneal comrades/friends who were all more than willing to keep her company. Well, okay save for that one time involving a nonsensical squabble about ailment remedies between Natsu and Gray one day.

"I'm telling you— these will help Lucy feel better!" Natsu insisted, dumping a paper bag of what could be described as god-awful-Scotch-covered-eye-sores-with-strings-attached on the counter. "See?" A hand patted the side of the misshapen bundle of items.

Uh...

Lucy meanwhile, couldn't help but steal a furtive glance of disbelief from her coral-haired soulmate; who was currently sniffing the unsightly abominations with an particularly intense focus for some inexplicable reason.

"The hell are ya' doing , charcoal-brains?!" Gray demanded, voice coming out in a mixture of incomprehension and disdain. "And what even are those things?"

"Inspecting these babies for germs," Natsu replied with an eye roll as if the answer was the most obvious in the world. "Duh! What else would I be doing'? Can't have em' infecting Lucy. And they're a supposed to be a special kind of talisman for health and good luck. Even an ice overrated snowcone like you should know that. Basically Scotch-taped covered piles of leaves and Vic patches wrapped in tissue paper. If I hang these around the apartment, then they should do wonders for Luce's health."

"You know by gradually sucking the virus toxins from her body until she's better," he tacked on with an 'exuberant grin. "Or so I heard from Nab, Maco, and Wakaba. Dudes bought entire boxes full for 20 jewel a piece from a pop-up vendor of some merchant in the market. The lady swears by them and everything. Either way, aren't they awesome?! Right, Luce? His head turned towards Lucy. "Bet you'll be better in no time!"

"I ...uh... " The blonde sputtered, still too bewildered for words." I don't…."

"Oh Good God," Erza muttered, smacking a palm against her forehead. "Of all the—-Natsu, I highly doubt those would be effective in treating Lucy's illness."

"Huh? Why wouldn't they be?"

"Well..."

"Oh jeez...How can anyone be this dense?"

Gray was shooting out of his seat at the table with an exasperated noise. "Step aside fire boy, I'll find Lucy something. Her fridge should have some suitable ingredients." A hand pulled opened the door of the fridge before rummaging around inside much to Lucy's confusion Course why a random assortment of food in the form of onions and ginger Along with some lemons were being cleared out was anyone's guess.

"Onions, lemons and ginger" The ice wizard announced, sounding tremendously pleased with himself. "Should be just what the doctor ordered for Lucy. I'm gonna chop these up and boil em' with some cinnamon in a tea for her."

Wha? Is he for real?!

"Wait….I'm sorry you want me to drink what now?"

Lucy 's brain short circuited with an owlish blink at the same time that some revolted noises could be heard from the rest of Team Natsu. More specifically Salamander 's gagging and Erza nearly vomiting in her mouth.

"Well at least Lucy gets it" Gray voiced aloud to no one in particular with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. "Now to find a knife and boil some water for the tea."

"Yo, you out of your mind, ice-dick?" Natsu demanded, more than a tad incredulous. "It's pretty obvious she doesn't want what you're selling and can't say I blame her." His eyes narrowed in revulsion with a flash of exposed canines poking through his lips. "That kind of 'tea 'sounds disgusting."

Just for Natsu's striking emerald eyes to immediately soften when landing on Lucy.

"Don't worry Luce," He soothed, his voice lifting to a sympathetic coo. "I'll protect ya' from that big meanie and his stupid ".

" Uh Yeah, please do," Lucy beseeched, words trembling slightly. Honest to God that the astral almost shuddered at the prospect of such a horrendous-tasting tea invading her tastebuds. "I don't even want a sip of that stuff."

"And Why would any sane person expect you to? Not me or Ezra. Can't say the same about droopy eyes here." Natsu tossed a pointed glare at Gray which was readily met with a raised middle finger. "You really that hell bent on brewing whatever nasty crap you call tea, buddy? Then be our guest and drink it yourself. But keep it away from Lucy and out of the kitchen. We don't need that shit stinking up the place."

"Tch— shows what you know" came Gray's disparaging scoff by way of a reply. "Pretty sure you wouldn't know a proper health remedy was if it hit you in the face."

Uh-oh ...

Gray's words really seemed to touch a nerve judging by Natsu's offended growl.

"The hell is that supposed to mean, stripper?" He sniped, vein throbbing in his forehead " What? Are ya really looking' to piss me off or somethin'?"

"Yeah, just maybe I am!" Gray countered with salty heat and matching his rival glare for glare. "You want to cry about it? And you heard what I said. God ... no wonder Lucy's still sick what with your clueless ass and all failing to take care of her.."

"You take that back asshole!" Natsu seethed, foaming rabidly at the mouth. Or rather smoke circumventing from his nose and mouth what with him being a fire dragon demon and "literal hothead "and all.

"Make Me—ow!"

The rest of whatever Gray was trying to say was cut off by a flying "talisman" that just struck him point blank in the face.

"Hey!" He snapped, grudgingly rubbing his temple with a hand." The hell was that for, ya damned fire hazard?!"

"What do ya think, dumbass ?" Natsu flung back without missing a beat. "You got some nerve….insultin 'a dragon's pride like that!"

"Yeah? So what?"

"Seriously?! You pretty much implied I don't know how to take care of my own mate!"

"Yes and?"

Uh-oh...

"And it was a total dick move, dingus! That's what! Where's your sense of common decency!?"

"Wasted on incompetent dipshits like you, apparently!"

"What was that, frosty?!"

"You heard me "

"That's it you, walking freezer burn! Them's fighting words!"

"Oh yeah? Bring it flame-bitch!"

"Take this!"

Oh god ….

The next thing anyone knew were that that the bickering rivals were launchimg projectiles—aka "Talismans" at each other much to her dismay.

No...

"No fighting in our kitchen!" Lucy squeaked; cadence raised to a higher pitch. " You could really break something! So stop!" The afflicted girl couldn't help but watch with alarmed eyes when her desperate pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears. Something always gets completely wrecked or destroyed when these two butt heads over anything!

Seriously, who could forget all the destruction those two left in their wake or millions of jewel racked in subsequent, property damage during their last scuffle? Like say the accidental beheading and subsequent toppling of that statue which also happened in Hargeon's beloved town founder for instance? Not to mention the scorched garden of the mayor's prized purple and white orchids. Not Lucy, that's for sure.

I really don't want them breaking anything….

Erza meanwhile. was practically frothing at the mouth from all that pent-up rage in a very-if-not-entirely-proverbial sense of the word.

"Good God—those two!" The re-equip mage ranted, vein pulsing right above her brow. "Always butting heads over one asinine matter or another! The hell is wrong with them anyways? Either way, enough is enough! I really should... no probably best not... Oh screw it!"

Erza was on the other wizards in a flash, banging their heads together with an audible crack. And good lord who could miss the stunned noises of pain that simultaneously cirumented their throats.

"OW!" Natsu and Gray whimpered in unison. "That really hurt ,Erza!"

"Yeah!?" Erza barked . "Well maybe you two dolts should've thought of that before you started acting juvenile and making a mess! I mean take you for instance, Gray! Disrespecting a dragonslayer's pride was a garbage move just as Natsu pointed out! Haven't both Master and UR taught you more sense than that? Oh, and let's not forget you doubting Natsu 's ability to effectively tend to care for Lucy despite doing more than a standup job so far for the most part! No wonder he's offended!"

"Hey, it's not my fault if the dude can't take a joke," Gray grumbled, defensive resentment leaking into his tone. "Or that he has a ridiculously overinflated and fragile ego."

"Neither helpful or okay, Gray!"

"Yeah, so there dickwad!" Natsu cut in with his tongue shooting out for good measure. "See?"

"Oh yeah... you really..."

"Oh no you don't!" Erza whirled on Natsu who shrank under the heat of her glare with another whimper. "And yes, I'm talking about you Natsu Ignatius Dragneel! Don't think for a minute that you're getting out of this scott- free!""

Oh shit ... Erza just used Natsu's full name…. She must mean business.

"What? Me, really?" Nastu spluttered, hands still raised in defense as if fend the intimating scarlet woman off. "What did I even do anyway?"

"Hmm, what did you do?" Erza questioned, rolling her eyes. Oh, and her words were just laced/ dripping/ trickling/ with just the right amount of pointed sarcasm. "Care to take a wild guess? How about those godawful abominations you call talismans for one? Look at them! Anyone can tell these are a sham! I mean really, Natsu! The hell were you thinking?! Normally, you're much better at sussing out onpossible scams and cons. How could you let yourself be duped out of your hard -earned money like that?"

"Aw- come on!" Natsu bleated "Didn't mean to, honest! All I wanted was to help Luce recover more quickly and honestly thought these things would help. That's all! I won't buy any more—swear to God! Just please don't bust my balls, Erza! I need those!

"Calm down. I'm not going to do that. It's easy to tell your intentions were pure regardless which is most important."

"Really? Thank you, you kind, merciful, woman!"

"Yes, yes,.. that's all fine and good," Erza chuckled in amusement with a light shake of her head as a response .

"Now about those talismans. They are a problem. " Erza's voice fell into a more sober tone with a hand cupping her chin in thought. "Word on the street is that Fiore is being targeted by a fraudulent band of thieves and con artists. Popping up in various towns and cities with those "vendors", posing as legitimate shop keepers and merchants —that sort of thing. and from what I've heard , these people are trying pass off bogus goods as authentic souvenirs."

"So, ya think there's some kind of link between those and what I bought?" Natsu quickly caught on matter-of-factly. "As in all that crappy stuff you mentioned ?"

"Yes, precisely that. I'm sure we can all agree that how poor unassuming customers are being ripped off by those criminals just isn't right. Something must be done."

"Okay—like what?"

"Helping folks of Magnolia getting their money back for one —yours included. And there's also the matter of filing a report with the magic reinforcement unit and other authorities . They'd want to be informed of the culprits' criminal activity ASAP. In fact, why don't the two of us go now?"

"What? Ya' mean that you actually want us to leave right now?!"

Natsu visibly balked at Erza's suggestion as if being ordered to watch Ichyia perform a strip tease in nothing but a pair of - sparkly -Leather, assless chaps.

"I.. don't…"

"Yes, I figured that would be the most efficient course of option" Erza reasoned, lifting a questioning brow at his response. "Why? Is there a problem?"

"Uh yeah..., a big one!" Natsu protested with a vigorous nod. " Going now would mean leaving Luce's side" His whole tone shifted into a whine. "Especially when she's still not feeling 100% or if it means being without her in my arms for too long. And right now, looking after Lucy and being able to spend time with her is what's most important. Not to mention what I want the most! Please… just let me take good care of my mate and queen and hold her! That too much ask?"

"No, and your feelings are understandable. That in mind, it would still be unethical to turn a blind eye to petty crimes at the expense of innocent civilians."

"Yeah, of course. But it's just…."

Sheesh… Natsu's being a bit of a drama king right now. I mean I love the guy and its always great having him around for the most part despite the fact that he sometimes gets on nerves. Completely normal for all couples even ones like us but that's besides the point. Anyways, he's being super sweet and everything but there's no need for him to blow a gasket when they would only be gone for a couple hours at most. Plus Erza's right about putting a stop to those jerks and getting those other people compensated. and it's not like I won't be okay without them or by myself a for little bit...

"Hey guys," Lucy finally spoke up after a few minutes, drawing their focus of everyone's eyes back on her. "Not that your efforts and spending time with me aren't appreciated, but pretty sure I'll be fine on my own for a little while if you want to report those people and get your money back." No real heat to her words though.

"Hmm... don't think that's a good idea, "sweetheart." Came Natsu's reply, his timbre pitched soft; though she didn't miss the pleading note in his words. "You're still not in the best shape right now. Like Mavis knows I don't really feel comfortable leaving you alone to fend for yourself right now, y' know? I mean what if ya' end up barfin' with your head over a toilet bowl or falling again?"

Not really that much of an nasty shock to say the least especially seeing how the couple were practically inseparable ever since that hazardous incident at the party.

"Don't be too surprised if Natsu's refuses to leave your side." Levy's kind voice from a recent lacrima video call echoed inside Lucy's head "or even let out of his sight-or sense range for that matter. You remember learning about how dragon slayers, demon's and hybrids are essentially hardwired to be extremely protective and territorial of their bonded, right? Well those already -fierce instincts are get an even bigger boost during certain times... like say when they're in heat . Not to mention when their soulmates are sick, injured or both in your case. In any case, Natsu's no exception especially with how you're one of the people he's been most protective of even before you two were officially an item node as we all know. Anyways, be prepared for him wanting to remain extra close to you and special attention. Think plenty of affection and physical contact like snuggling, kisses, doting on you —things like that which is always a bonus. And pretty sure he is going to hoard you. I mean the dude going isn't gonna take kindly to anyone he feels is trying to steal/snatch you away from him. Gajeels the same way. It's not so bad though."

Levy was right. Not that I'm complaining...

"We really should get going Natsu," Erza chimed in after a few minutes. The sooner these matters are sorted out the better. Either way, it shouldn't take us too long-a few hours tops."

"Yeah, I know..." Natsu replied , an unmistakable flicker of reluctance in his eyes. "But…I still don't want to leave Lucy right now…." Sage fully connected with honey-brown as a hand was reaching to gently caress Lucy's cheek. And Mavis knows she couldn't help but naturally lean into the warmth of his touch or the content smile forming on her lips.

"Pretty sure I made my reasons clear anyway."

"Yes, but…"

"Hey bro," Gray piped in —not unkindly this time."I can easily hold the fort down and keep Lucy company while you guys are out."

"Wow…Really?"

Natsu instantly seemed to perk up.

"Yeah, I'd be more than happy to. Plus, we can summon one of her spirits and Happy to help for a fun but chill time. That way, you can trust that your girl is in capable hands and won't be bored."

"Good point!" Natsu rhapsodized, bumping his fist with Gray's. "Thanks, bro!"

"Yes, I agree" Ezra concurred, an approving smile crossing her lips. "That's very gracious and cordial of you. Way to be a great friend."

"That's what I'm here for and my pleasure, Natsu."

"Guess you're not so bad after all"

"Course' not. I am pretty awesome, after all."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes... So, what about it, Luce?" Natsu went on to inquire, far more chipper now. " You gonna to be okay with Gray and some of the others taking over for a bit while Erza and me are out ?"

"Yeah Lucy, what he said," Gray followed up with a cordial smile of his own. . "You and me can kick it and chill for a little while. Maybe even break into the candy stash and watch movies with everyone."

"Sure!" Lucy chirped, heart leaping in excitement from the prospect of a low-key but fun kickback with splendid company. "And Natsu and Erza can, join when they get back from their errands, right?"

"Yup! Now here," Natsu instructed, pushing a glass of water on the table towards her." "Drink some more of your water. Anyways, Erza and I can bring back some goodies from the local bakery after too,. You good with that ,Erza?" He tossed a hopeful glance the armour- clad wizard's way.

"Sure—sounds good to me!" Erza jumped on board, eyes lighting up with delight. A trip to the bakery would be most excellent. All those delicious confections, yummy treats like gourmet cupcakes and strawberry shortcake. Ooooooh." The scarlet woman's hands clapped together in giddy enthusiasm.. "I can practically taste it now —so divine!"

"Yeah but think about lava- brains though" Gray quipped without missing a beat. "What are the odds he'll devour whatever he doesn't give or share with Lucy?"

"Ohhhh valid point" Erza echoed, lips pulling up into / a smirk. I wouldn't put it past him to cleanin out half of the bakery's front counter. Now why don't we get a friendly little wager started? Is 20 jewel acceptable?"

"Sure. I'm game."

"Ooh... why not make it ...30?" Lucy joined in with a light giggle. "I mean what's to say he won't clean out most of the shops and the other desert shops in town?"

"Hey! Not cool!" Natsu objected, though such sour words were belied by the glimmer of mirth in his shamrock eyes. "Makin' bets about whether or not I'll stockpile deserts and shit! I mean talk about takin' cheap shots at your leader! I am Salamander of Fairytail, damn it! Alpha drake of the dragon nest, and a Mighty and fierce dragonslayer -demon hybrid! I deserve your respect and praise!"

"Oh?" Erza spurred him on, clearly entertained by the salamander's theatrics. " Is that a fact?"

"Damn right it is!"

"And you, Luce!" Natsu bemoaned with extra melodramatic flair. "Even my own precious soulmate is betting against me and egging' the other two on?" Impossible not to notice how Natsu's hand clapped over the heart in a display of feigned offence. "How you' wound me, woman!"

"Opps," Lucy uttered, a teasing lilt to her words. "My bad. Are they really that wrong though?"

"Ooh, you got me there!" Natsu jibed s, lips breaking into a cheek into a cheeky grin agrin that set Lucy 's heart all pit-patter. "Touché and shit."

"Just as I suspected."

"Yeah, I figured!" Natsu laughed, mussing her hair with one hand. "Anyway, how about Erza and me pick up some dumplings on the way home? Maybe a Party pack with plenty for everyone to share? We can get some other things for dinner too— Our treat!"

"Ooh yes please!" Lucy crowed, mouth practically watering from the zesty-flavored-packed dumplings from one of many Magnolia's local fusion joints. "Can some be fried? And be filled with beef? Maybe tandoori chicken and cheese too? And could I have 3 or 4?"

"Yeah, sure." Natsu agreed, goodnaturedly as always. "Whatever you want. You really must be cravin that stuff today, huh?" And God she couldn't help how her heart stuttered at the way her grin morphed into a another kind of smile entirely; More subtle, tremendously fond, even. "Normally I'm the one askin' for all this different kind of food. Good to know that you have great taste and that I'm rubbing off on you more and more each day though."

" Uh, yeah… thanks. Though you don't think it's a bit much?" Lucy questioned, now glancing up at her boyfriend with a smidge of tentativeness. She couldn't help but second-guess her request especially seeing how it was partially driven by voracious craving for carbs. "Cuz I'm wondering if that many dumplings is a tad too many now."

Maybe something healthier would be better...

"What? Are you kidding?" Natsu refuted, bursting into stunned laughter . "Of course it isn't. Why would it be?"

"Well, when you put it that way" Lucy resounded in agreement, the corner of her lips twitching into a sheepish grin over how silly I'm being. "Guess I was overthinking it just a little."

"See?" The dragonslayer pointed out, punctuated by a light tap on the tip of the blonde's nose with his finger. "Now you're getting it! And hey, look at it this way! Whatever my princess and queen wants, she gets."

"Well, who am I argue to with that? Anyways, you guys heading out now?"

"Yeah," Natsu sighed, a touch of reluctance seeping back into his gravelly timbre. "Guess we oughtaa . Really don't like the idea of leaving your side though there are some things to take care of. And besides the sooner we leave, the sooner I can get back to you."

How the summoner's heart gave a little thump at those touching words that reached her ears!

"What you're saying is definitely true" Lucy breathed, finding herself adrift in those arresting eyes of his. Onyx with flecks of jade that always seemed to shine in just the right angle of sunlight on bright days. And did she mention the sensation of Natsu's fingertips brushing her cheek, the tucking a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear? How it all sent sparks racing through her nerves! "And I can't wait for you to get home so that I can be in your arms again too."

"Mhmm yeah" Natsu hummed in agreement., stroking along the side of her temple now. "I'm definitely looking forward to all that too. Also cuddling with ya' on the couch of course. Should be great! Anyway, make sure to take it easy and stay hydrated, okay? And don't forget Erza and I are one just one call away if you need anything."

"Okay, Thanks Natsu."

"Anytime," he rumbled with that same affectionate smile that always melted her heart . "See you soon, Luce." Lips pressed a light kiss atop the celestial mage's crown with a hand palming the side of her head. God such a rush cozy seeping through her bones and warming her soul to the core.

I truly love him and that'll never change..

"Yeah, likewise.. Hurry back, okay?."

" You know I will."

"That I do".

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A/N: All right that's Chapter: 5 ,folks! Apologies for the delay again! As stated previously, both my beta and I have been busy for different reasons related to differing schedules, life circumstances, responsibilities, appointments, hobbies and a somewhat more active social life among other things (with increasing vaccination rates unless everything goes south again). Not that this has necessarily prevented me from writing or working on my wips but there's also been days where I haven't been feeling well, a case of writers block or there simply just not being enough hours in a day to accomplish everything I want for whichever reason lol. In any case, this chapter is posted now and I'm trying to get back into working on writing projects more often. So that's that at least.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the chapter! Once again, please don't hesitate to drop a comment/review and share. Check out the rest of my writing and stay tuned for new projects along with updates to my other WIPS too! ((Corresponding links are above in this post, bio and navigation bar if reading this on tumblr. Also in my FF and A03 profiles.) All right. that's all I have to say for now. Thanks to all my friends, mutals, followers and readings for their ongoing show of support over the years. You all rock! Take care until next time! Bye!

[writteninsunshine]

You're One Big Sugar Rush - Fizzarolli/Asmodeus - NSFW

Title: You’re One Big Sugar Rush

Author: Keith

Fandom: Helluva Boss

Setting: Ozzie’s House

Pairing: Fizzarolli/Asmodeus | Ozzie

Characters: Fizzarolli, Asmodeus | Ozzie

Genre: Erotic/Romance

Rating: E

Chapters: 1/1

Word Count: 1094

Type Of Work: One-Shot, Day 21 Of 30 Days Of Fizzarozzie

Status: Complete

Warnings: Gay, Slash, Yaoi, MLM, AU - Omegaverse, AU - Canon Divergent, Implied Fizzarolli/RoboFizz/Asmodeus | Ozzie, Food Fetish, Food Play, Hyper Cock, Excessive Precum, There's So Much, Large Cock, Cum As Food, Cum On Food, Blowjobs, Oral Sex, Thick Cum, Original Male Character(s), Mommy Kink, Fizzarolli Calls Ozzie Mommy, Ozzie Calls Himself Mommy 

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything except the harembots.

Summary: Breakfast for dinner was always Fizzarolli's favorite thing.

AN: Hey guys, it’s me again! Just thought I ought to say, if you want vague updates and to talk to me more, I have a Helluva Boss Tumblr, too! Twitter is Sunshinecackle, and Tumblr is Gimme-A-Thrust! I also have a writing Discord that is currently pretty dead. xD If you want it, please contact me on Tumblr/Twitter!

Okay, so, I couldn’t help myself. I had to write some foodplay for this. I know I write a lot of oral sex but it’s something I’m very passionate about. At any rate, I hope someone enjoys this! I’ve been really loving writing and posting something every day, though I think that I won’t be doing Kinktober this year like I had wanted. I need a little break from doing something every day. This month blindsided me, I hadn’t heard of it until it was already day 3. I have two to go back to, and I may work on them on and off today.

Thank you, anyone reading this. I’m so happy to have any support at all, and I appreciate every one of you that give kudos, that comment, that bookmark, and subscribe to me! It makes me so happy to see others enjoying my work.

I want to give a shoutout to my darling husband, who has been editing all of this for me, usually in the same day as I finish them. He makes me laugh and smile so often and has been nothing but supportive of my writing and me doing all of these fics. I’m very happy that he’s helping me edit, it helps so much. 

30 Days Of Fizzarozzie Fic Masterlist

You’re One Big Sugar Rush

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“Olli Baby?” Ozzie asked quietly, peering into the living room through the arched doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the wall, crossing his ankles. Seeing Fizzarolli on the couch in a pile of mechanical limbs and happy, lightly purring robots warmed his heart and he clucked softly as he sashayed silently into the room. Stooping beside the leather and wood divan, he inched his fingers between his slumbering lovers, carefully prying Fizzarolli out of their arms. Really, he didn’t need to, as the sexbots glow slowly faded in and out in their different colors to indicate they were all in sleep mode.

Despite this, it felt right to be mindful of them, and both he and Fizzarolli regarded the robots as part of their relationship. They were so lifelike in ways that even Ozzie hadn’t been prepared for, and despite all of them being based on Fizzarolli, they had their own personalities. Surprisingly, provided that Ozzie was with them, even Fizzarolli didn’t mind them being in on the exclusivity on his own end. Who better to keep you company than yourself?

Ozzie was well aware, however, that sometimes they were too handsy for Olli, who struggled with his sexuality at the best of times. Apparently, right now, they were fine for cuddles and a good ol’ nap.

Fizzarolli’s head lifted slightly as he was pulled against Ozzie’s rumbling chest, and he blinked his eyes open to look up at him. A soft, questioning chirp left his lips as he was carried back towards the kitchen, and he peered out the glass door in the back of the room. It looked a lot darker outside than he expected, but it took him a few seconds to blink the sleep from his eyes to see it properly. Tipping his head into Ozzie’s chest, he yawned wide and arched his back, letting his arms and legs hang limply for a moment before they all stretched out straight while he grunted softly. Ozzie always loved watching him wiggle and move first thing in the evening, it brought such joy to him.

“Wha’ time’s it?” Olli asked groggily, and Ozzie snickered as he took him over to the table and settled him down almost in his usual spot on the bench seat; He seemed to be a little closer to the edge than normal, and he couldn’t help his squinty, confused look. 

“Just about six-thirty, Baby.” A tender smile accompanied his words that he quickly replaced with a salacious smirk, “It’s time for dinner. You and the bots were pretty crashed out so I went ahead and cooked. I thought I’d wake you up to your favorite.”

“Six-thirty?” Yawning behind his hand this time, he glanced down at his meal, eyes going a bit wide as he took in his meal. Fluffy, crispy waffles with a thick grid and deep divots met his starved gaze, fresh fruit pressed into a few of the holes. Beside it was a rather large pile of sausage links that he couldn’t help but lick his lips at when he saw them. Immediately, he knew what he was about to get and it started a deep rumbling purr in his chest. A liberal dusting of powdered sugar made a beautiful snowy scene of them, and when he finally looked up at Ozzie, his lips parted in a wide grin as he watched the other stroking himself. 

“Yeah, Baby. Thought I could give you some brinner before work. I know you love breakfast for dinner.” Or was it breakfast for breakfast? They’d woken up early, for them, that day, sometime around two PM, but Ozzie had had to lock himself in his office for the better part of the afternoon in order to work on some paperwork. That had left the Fantastic Five alone in the house, able to do whatever they wanted. 

Evidently, what they had wanted had been a nap.

“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmm, I love breakfast.” Fizzarolli moaned as his head bobbed a couple of times in an emphatic nod. Holding his plate out with both hands on the underside, he sat up a little more and wiggled in his seat. With one hand, Ozzie started at the base of his thick, already leaking cock, stroking upwards to the head and slowly tightening the circle of his fingers. A thick pearl of precum drooled from the tip and he guided it down over the other’s waffles. Smearing it absently into the sugar with his dick, he purred as he watched the other’s dinnerplate-sized eyes swallowing the sight of him with his tongue hanging out.

“Wanna clean me up a little, Olli Baby?” Ozzie barely managed to finish saying ‘Olli’ before Fizzarolli lunged forward to lick the underside of the head. Sucking the impromptu syrup off of the other’s cock, Fizzarolli moaned as his eyes rolled up a little and he set his plate aside with a soft clink, purring as he crawled up onto the table instead. 

With a happy little chirp, he took hold of Ozzie and held his dick in place as he licked up underneath the foreskin, swirling his tongue around the head with only minor difficulty. He sucked at the whole head before focusing on Ozzie’s frenulum, teasing the elastic bit of skin with his tongue. After a solid minute of teasing like this, he finally pulled back with precum smeared over his face.

“You’re a pretty mess, big guy,” Olli grinned, purring deep in his chest, “Think I oughta clean the whole damn thing.”

“Your breakfast first, Baby.” Ozzie reminded him, “Eat your breakfast and I’ll give you whatever you want after that.”

“I want it now, though.” The pout on the imp’s face usually melted Ozzie on the spot, but he wouldn’t let himself become mushy goo over his lover wanting to blow him.

“Then you better eat your damn brinner, Olli. You’ll need the strength for me and work tonight. We only have two and a half hours.” Ozzie reminded him, “You can be a cum slut all you want once you’re finished.” 

“I…” Frustrated, Olli let out an irritable sigh, crossing his arms over his chest, “Keep touching yourself, then. I want some of the good stuff, too.”

Ozzie’s grin was lopsided and salacious when he looked down his nose at his lover, and he nodded, his hands returning to his dick as he rolled his hips forward, watching Olli dig into his waffles.

“That’s it, Baby, be good and Mommy’ll give you what you want.”

Olli had never inhaled his breakfast so fast in his life.

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AN: Well, naturally I needed something smutty and fluff to get me out of the sad mood of the last fic. I’m pretty happy with this one, I think it’s good even if it’s short. Length isn’t something I’m concerned about, as I usually just let the muse take me somewhere on its own. At any rate, I had a lot of fun writing this, I love doing dirty little vignettes very much.

Prompt: 30 Days Of Fizzarozzie Day 21 - Dinner