jessicamariexo69

[tlgtw]

If anyone asks I don't like Warhammer. I don't like any Warhammer games. I am not fucking insane for Total War: Warhammer. I am not a warhammer fan.

Please.

Please I'm not a warhammer fan....

[joandelahaye]

Driving Corruption, Puzzling Zombies, Nightmarish Ogres, and Books Galore Await!

Hello, my Freaky Darlings! Salutations from the sunny side of Africa, where the weather matches our country’s knack for surprises. While I’m sipping sunshine, Cape Town is sipping tea under a drizzle. But, speaking of life in South Africa, my last blog post dove into a rather dark and damp topic – the slippery slope of corruption behind our alarmingly high road fatalities. If you missed it but…

[spider-artdump]

[threeravenspublishing]

Do you love Car Wars by Steve Jackson Games?

Do you love Car Wars by Steve Jackson Games?

Then tune in this Friday on TDB Pirate Radio for our panel discussion about the Game and the upcoming fiction that the Ravens are working on. Tune in Friday, January 20th at 8pm eastern at the following links: Facebook Youtube Twitch

[nimonabigbang]

The Cautionary Tales

Written by @bleezebrew | Art by @seanchaidh7

Growing up, Ambrosius had heard all the cautionary tales. Be it witches, ogres, or giants, the dangers that lay outside the walls were waiting for any opening to attack them. From the moment he was born, it was his duty to defend the Realm from such dangers. But after Ballister left the Kingdom with the shapeshifter, Ambrosius found himself more and more faded every day, directionless. It got to the point where he was willing to challenge any monster to find his love once again, no matter how slim his chances of success. He followed Ballister past the wall. Or: Ambrosius Goldenloin goes on a fairy tale journey of self-discovery.

Content warnings and tags below the cut:

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: Gen

Fandom: Nimona (2023)

Relationships: Ballister Blackheart | Ballister Boldheart/Ambrosius Goldenloin, Ballister Blackheart | Ballister Boldheart & Nimona, Ambrosius Goldenloin & Nimona

Characters: Ambrosius Goldenloin, Ballister Blackheart | Ballister Boldheart, Nimona (Nimona), Original Characters, Diego the Squire (Nimona), The Director (Nimona)

Additional Tags: Ambrosius Goldenloin-centric, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, The AU where Ballister and Nimona leave the Kingdom, Fairy Tale motifs, Character Study, Unreliable Narrator, Fantasy and Fictional Setting Racism, Unlearning prejudice, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Panic Attacks, Nimona Big Bang 2024

Words: 37,507

Chapters: 13/13

[oinonsana]

On Posture In Gubat Banwa

So the sixth version of Gubat Banwa's First Edition "returns" to the ideal that HP as a pacing mechanic, an Action Economy limiter, and a resource pressure. As always, in Tactical Combat games, resource management is a major aspect of the gameplay. Management of action economy, management of distance, management of other currency (such as Class-specific Resources). Most of a Tactical Combat Grid game revolves around the manipulation of these mechanics: reducing, regaining, adding, changing, force multiplication/division of these resources, and more. In Tomian Design (that is, Tom of LANCER RPG and ICON RPG), costing.

For the first 5 versions of Gubat Banwa's design, we worked with lower HP values (across the board) and with Dice Pools. The idea was that each dice in a dice pool was an attack launched, or a moment of concentration. Every die in the defense pool was a parry or evasion attempted. While the fantasy of that worked pretty great, the maths on the other hand did not. It worked almost counter-intuitively against the high-flying martial arts x deliberate tactical combat that I was trying to strike a balance for. My white elephant, my Shambhala, was to strike a good balance between that.

The Change

In 1.6, while the Dice Pool didn't entirely go away--much of the game is built around getting tactically advantageous positions so that you can get more dice and a higher chance of dealing greater damage on the target--it went for a more linearly scaling game with the result on the die reducing the target's Health.

It was a hit, mostly, among the inner circle (that is to say, my friends that I run the newer version for). There was an immediate sense of "we know how this game works" now.

On Tactical Video Games

It was more transparent--this information was crucial to making a tactical game work and sing. This is why in video games, almost every tactical game has the "Combat Forecast", like in Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics, that showcased the expected Hit Rate and the Damage Output.

This is absolutely integral: tactical games are decision point games. Without the proper information (doesn't need to be complete information), no decision can be done satisfyingly. This isn't to say that dice pools can't be used for a tactical game of course--I've done it. But it requires a different kind of design principle and design goal that Gubat Banwa wasn't going for. That sense of martial progression, of spiritual strength and eventual enlightenment.

From HP to POS

During the initial playtests, we were still working with HP. Hit Pearls. The idea was that every hit "shattered" a Hit Pearl. This worked with the Dice Pools, because the fiction was that every attack could be parried with Defense Dice.

What was the problem with this? Firstly, the math of this was inherently fraught, unfortunately: on higher levels, Defense Dice were either horribly impenetrable or did absolutely nothing to defend you. It became a binary thing. That was not the goal: for the martial fantasy to come to life, much of the decisions should not binary but rather, on a gradient spectrum.

To me, the destroyer of tactical grid games is when there's a single best strategy that shatters the tension of the game. My favorite parts of Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre were early game moments where the output randomness could make every fight go completely different, even if you redid the same stage more than once.

Secondly, when the outcome of an action is that, really, nothing happened, you used an attack (even worse, the attack was buffed by yourself, an ally, and tactical modifiers) and then the target was able to parry all your hits. The fiction is exciting for a second, but then when you return to the battle grid, nothing changed. The mechanics fed into the fiction, but the fiction didn't feed into the mechanics.

With the math change, the fiction of the Hit Pearls wasn't working because HP values were higher to compensate for the changed math. 12 Hit Pearls could feasibly be visualized as Link's Hearts, for example. But at 48 HP, that didn't work anymore.

Hearkening to the Ancients

So I actually went on a trip to older versions of Gubat Banwa, and found I'd solved that particular problem. Older versions of Gubat Banwa had HP as "Mettle", their ability to stay in the fight. Turning to the game's current version, I realized the Physical Defense stat was perfect: POSTURE. The stance, the guard, the ability to keep fighting, the ability to turn mortal wounds into grazing hits, the ability to ignore the effects of bleeding wounds, of burning pyres, of seeping poison.

Every attack was inflicting damage by chipping away at the target's guard, or forcing their stance into more compromised positions so that they would be open to an actual mortally wounding strike. They were still real hits that the defender was actively still guarding against. And with every attack defended, their guard wore down.

This hit me after watching Donnie Yen's SAKRA (2023) the other day. Reaching back into the high-flying wuxia roots, Donnie Yen's character doesn't even take real hits until after he's overwhelmed because he is such a martial superior against the rest of the Beggar Clan. Because his Posture was so high.

Ten Thousand Earth Shattering Blows

It worked great. Not to mention that it's a great reference to Sekiro, another huge inspiration to the games's intended fiction, which also had a Posture break. Now Staggered for half Posture or lower made sense: your guard is brittle! You court death! Now the Wide Open affliction felt more in genre: your guard is wide open, so you're suffering more!

The Physical Defense stat was renamed into PARRY, while the Magical Defense stat was kept as RESILIENCE (itself a reference to Final Fantasy Tactics A2!) The defenses were there to keep the mechanical bite of an Attack vs Defense interaction, to provide an avenue for another mechanical design space, as well as to shoe in the fact that when an attack targets your Parry you're physically blocking while an attack against your Resilience requires your fortitude and concentration to block against: when your Posture is reduced, when you guard is worn down by these attacks, you know how you were defending.

When enemies hit 0 POS, that attack is the one that gets through their Defenses and kills them outright. When a Kadungganan falls to 0 POS they're not dead, but they suffer a WOUND, which only heals on Downtime (as opposed to POS healing on Repose, ie., short rest).

On Defeat and Victory

While you're Defeated, you suffer the same effects of Stun, but you can still act and do things, even make attacks at full power: you're Kadungganan after all. But every attack against you, despite your PARRY or your RESILIENCE is not met with a stance ready to block. Thus, every instance of damage you suffer, no matter how much, inflicts another Wound. When you eat 5 Wounds, you can pull on your Conviction to stay alive. Otherwise, you are tossed back into the cycle of reincarnation, or into the river to Sulad, or to Lunar Heaven, or to whatever next life your Kadungganan has chosen to ascribe to.

Status Effects

Statuses such as Poisoned, Bleeding, or Aflame, don't break you yet because they must eat through your bodily resistance. But they are still real: an aflame Kadungganan fights on even as flames swathe their body.

They can die later, when they feel the effects of the burn when their POS falls to 0. They can die later, when the Poison finally seeps through and enervates them and destroys their defensive capability. They can die later, when the bleeding takes its toll and they can no longer keep their stance up.

Martial Glossolalia

With a simple terminology change, the fiction changed entirely. Now everyone knew it was their defenses wearing down. Swords didn't cut off their fingers, flames didn't burn through their skin. They know that defenses are a holistic thing: your stamina, your constitution, your composure, your reactive ability, your dexterity, your presence of mind, your focus.

"It's not realistic!" The game is not meant to be realistic, and realism is not an inherent ontological good nor is it a goal for most TTRPGs, you will notice. Experiences, feelings. The fiction Gubat Banwa draws upon--SEAsian Folk Epics, Asian Martial Arts Cinema--is filled to the brim with the CLANG CLANG CLANG of sword-on-sword action. Often these clangs happen so quickly that you cannot process them, they are abstracted to you when it resolves in your brain--so is it abstracted by Gubat Banwa. Posture going down is the CLANG CLANG CLANG that resonates across a fight scene. It's not realistic because it's not meant to be, and even then, we must argue what your conception of reality is!

I could be argued that much of Tabletop RPGs (and, I would argue, most of games in general) is an exercise of language. Exploiting its vagaries, its ability to connect. When you go into Gubat Banwa, learning the mechanics of the game is learning a new language. And what is language but the foundation of culture?

[literaryvein-reblogs]

do you have any tips for writing and creating creatures for a fantasy setting? (something similar to the monster hunter franchise)

Writing Notes: Fantasy Creatures

BELIEVABLE

Special character types are abundant in fantasies. Some examples are fairies, giants, ogres, dragons, witches, unicorns and centaurs. We love these characters because they are so different from what we find in our daily lives. However, a good author can shape the character in such a way that the reader has no problem believing that such a being could exist.

PURPOSE

Before creating your fantasy creature, ask yourself: What is the purpose of including this fantasy creature? The reason this is an important distinction is that it will determine how much information about your creature you’ll need. If they’re only in your story for the plot, you don’t need a lot of information on them—just what you need to move your story forward. However, if they’re in the story for a longer, more intimate reason, you’ll need to know things like how they move, what they like, etc.

SELECTING YOUR CREATURE

Selecting a creature may mean borrowing a previously-created animal from myths or stories that are familiar to your reader. Here are sample articles describing common fantasy species and mythical creatures.

Read widely: There are a lot of really interesting myths and stories out there with creatures that might fit your narrative.

Do the unexpected: If you’re going to go with a widely-recognized creature, don’t be afraid to put your own twist on it. This will help your story stand out among the crowd and put your own mark on the genre.

DEFINE THE BASICS

Name: Choose names that suit the world you are building. Consider the culture, language, and history of the fantasy realm the character is from. If you’re finding that you’re a little stuck with what to name the creature you created, it’s okay to turn to other sources. If you already have a fictional language in your story, you might want to create a new word for your creature. If not, you may use this site: www.fantasynamegenerators.com. They also have a generator specifically on Monster Hunter.

Age: Determine the age of your character and how it influences their perspective and experiences.

Race/Species: In a fantasy setting, characters can belong to various races or species. Consider the unique traits and abilities associated with each.

Here is a general checklist for character building, but it might also aid you in making your fantasy creature.

PHYSICAL TRAITS

Appearance: Describe your character's physical features, from their hair/eye colour, height, build, etc. Is it large or small? Can your protagonist ride it? Eat it? How is it killed? All of these will be useful when you describe the creature to your readers. Consider how these aspects tie into their background or culture. You do not have to completely describe your character. Allow the reader to establish a view of the character or use other characters to describe how your characters might look.

Clothing/Armour: The attire of the character can reflect their personality, status, or the realm they come from.

PERSONALITY

Personality Traits: Create a list of personality traits. Is your character brave, shy, sarcastic, optimistic, or reserved? Think about how these traits influence their actions and interactions.

Motivations and Goals: What does your character want? Their goals and motivations drive the plot and reveal deeper aspects of their personality.

BACKSTORY

Origin: Where is your character from? What is their cultural background? How do these factors shape who they are? Backstory is essential, however take note of where and what you introduce throughout the story development.

Significant Events: Highlight key events in your character's past that have shaped them. Traumas, triumphs, and experiences all contribute to their development.

INTELLIGENCE

This is important because it will define how other characters interacts with the creature.

If it’s a minor character, will your protagonist constantly need to be checking in with it and giving it direction?

Or is it able to function on its own with little maintenance?

SKILLS & ABILITIES

Magic or Special Abilities: In a fantasy setting, characters often have unique powers or skills. Is this creature tied to the magic of your world somehow? If so, what kind of magic? How can it use magic? What does this mean for the protagonist and their journey? Define the limits and rules governing these abilities. Set some limitation or something that can prevent the magic to be limitless – even superman has a limitation.

Skills and Talents: What is your character good at? Are they a skilled warrior, a talented musician, or a cunning strategist?

FLAWS & WEAKNESSES

Imperfections: No one is perfect. Give your character flaws or weaknesses that they must overcome or learn to live with. This is part of their growth and development throughout the story. The character growth need not always be positive, they can also become bitter through experiences.

Internal Conflicts: Explore the inner conflicts. These can add great depth to your character and the reader can get to experience the inner workings of the character’s thoughts. Internal conflicts can be moral dilemmas, unresolved issues, or fears.

RELATIONSHIPS

Family and Friends: Define your character's relationships. How do they interact with family and friends? Do they have allies or enemies?

Romantic Interests: If this is relevant, consider the romantic aspects of your character's life. How do they approach love and relationships?

CHARACTER ARC

Growth and Change: Plan the trajectory of your character's development throughout the story. What challenges will they face, and how will these experiences change them?

QUIRKS OR HABITS

Mannerisms: Give your character unique habits, gestures, or ways of speaking that make them memorable. This will help create differences in your characters.

Hobbies: What does your character enjoy doing in their free time? Hobbies can add depth and relatability.

TITLE

Titles or Roles: If your character holds a specific title or role in their world, define it. Perhaps it is a royal title, a knight, or a librarian. Titles can reveal a lot about a character, their traits and personality.

ENVIRONMENT

This is where your creature will be found in the wild.

An creature's environment is reflected in their bodies: moles without sight (unnecessary in the pitch-black underground) have excellent senses of smell and hearing.

Mammals that live in the ocean have blowholes and animals that live in trees have prehensile tails, long, curved claws, or sticky pads on their feet.

What your animal looks like will be informed by where they live.

Here's an article on The Psychology of World Building

AVAILABILITY

Is this creature widely found, like deer, or are they rarer?

What’s caused the abundance or scarcity in their population?

This will affect how your fantasy world sees the creature and how your reader sees the protagonist for interacting with it.

RELATIONSHIP TO HUMANS

Is your creature revered? A nuisance? An almost-forgotten legend? A vital part of the local people’s diet?

Knowing these things will help you to navigate your story.

If your protagonist wanders into a town and they’re tasked with taking care of a local pest problem, that’s one thing. But if they kill a creature in the woods and then wander into town with it, only to find out that this town worshipped the creature, that’s a whole other plotline.

Try to create characters with depth and complexity, allowing readers to connect with them emotionally. The more thought and detail you put into building your characters, the more vivid and engaging your fantasy world will become.

Sources: 1 2 3

Hope this helps! If you find it useful in your writing, do tag me or send me a link. I'd love to read your work.

[esspos]

sooooooo,,,, i’ve finally finished my yuri recommendations list. this is a culmination of about 3ish years of reading yuri manga/manhwa/manhua plus tapas & webtoons and stuff from lezhin as well. i’ve been superrrrrrr busy so i haven’t gotten around to reviewing any stuff in a while or posting stuff so hopefully i can start again soon 😊

- [ ] a monsters wants to eat me (modern) (horror)

- [ ] Bloom into you (modern)

- [ ] mage & demon queen (fantasy isekai but kind of/kind of not) (webtoon)

- [ ] whispering you a love song (modern) (fav romance, puppygirl himari)

- [ ] can’t defy the lonely girl (modern)

- [ ] donuts and a crescent moon (modern, office) (top 5 of all time)

- [ ] kimi to tzuzuru (modern) (extremely depressing)

- [ ] she loves to cook, she loves to eat (modern, kinda serious subject, best couple) (butches 💖)

- [ ] lily marble (modern) (lesbians at the gym, i wonder what they’re gonna do…)

- [ ] a room for two (modern)

- [ ] i’m in love with the villainess (isekai)

- [ ] snow thaw & love letter (modern)

- [ ] my dear lass (modern) (manhua)

- [ ] tamen de gushi (modern) (manhua)

- [ ] a love yet to bloom (modern) (fav currently) (nerdy book lesbians have my heart)

- [ ] goodbye, my rose garden (historical) (manwha)

- [ ] my new friend wasn’t what i was expecting (modern)

- [ ] my food seems to be very cute (modern supernatural) (manwha) (serious and broody femme lesbian vampire x puppygirl werewolf 🐶)

- [ ] beauty and the beast girl (supernatural)

- [ ] hizikan tautology (modern)

- [ ] ayaka is in love with hiriko (modern office)

- [ ] the moon on a rainy night (modern) (a bit more serious)

- [ ] how do we relationship (modern)

- [ ] her tale of shim-cheong (#1 historical yuri) (NOT TOXIC RELATIONSHIP BUT KIND OF, SORT OF, EVERYTHING AROUND THEM IS TOXIC) (manwha)

- [ ] composing spring in this room where cherry blossoms bloom (modern) (fucking depressing jesus christ)

- [ ] introverted gals get out (modern)

- [ ] baili jin among mortals (modern supernatural) (manhua)

- [ ] alcohol and ogre-girls (modern supernatural)

- [ ] maitsuki, niwatsuki, ooyatsuki (modern adult)

- [ ] hana ni arashi (modern)

- [ ] anemone wa netsu o obiru (modern)

- [ ] yamada to kase-san (modern)

- [ ] under one roof today (autobiographical) (these bitches gay, good for them)

- [ ] lillies, voice, wear wind (modern) (ace rep 💖)

- [ ] the two of them are pretty much like this (modern)

- [ ] onna tomodachi to kekkonshitemita (modern)

- [ ] teiji ni agaretara (modern)

- [ ] asagao to kase-san (modern)

- [ ] RUTHLESS (webtoon) (modern) (SHE’S VERY HORNY FOR THE MASC LESBIN)

- [ ] Fatal Kiss (webtoon) (modern supernatural)

- [ ] winter before spring (webtoon) (modern) (kinda depressing)

- [ ] The Greenhouse (tapas) (modern supernatural)

- [ ] Mistranslations (tapas) (modern)

- [ ] Sora & Haena (modern)

- [ ] Best Served Cold (modern) (toxic yuri!!!!)

- [ ] blooming sequence (modern)

- [ ] Getting to Know Grace (historical) (one of the best plots)

- [ ] After the curtain call (modern) (theatre lesbiabs)

- [ ] In my heart (modern)

- [ ] Kiss it goodbye (modern) (baseball masc)

- [ ] Moonlight Garden (historical fiction) (‼️‼️ extremely horny ‼️‼️)

- [ ] A Joyful Life (modern)

- [ ] ghosts of greywoods (historical)

- [ ] pulse (modern)

[txttletale]

having thoughts about your point that players/the gm shouldn’t have to design anything for a good ttrpg and wondering if i’m thinking of the gm’s role using inaccurate terms. what would you call the gm’s responses to uncertain mechanical situations in a given game (e.g. a mixed success in pbta - the onus is on the gm to come up with what that means, following some guidance from the rules.)

it seems like something that people find comforting about d&d is that even though the rules are overly complex (and often confusing), many of the common mechanics have clearcut (and boring) outcomes (such as save or suck, hit or miss, etc), meaning the gm doesn’t have to produce/interpret a result themselves. is the other approach (i.e. rules-light) putting more “design” weight on the gm? or is that thinking of it too formally?

otherwise, good design being the gm’s responsibility seems like it just falls under the umbrella of playing in good faith - whatever the situation, it’s bad faith to create untenable/insoluble scenarios that the players can’t meaningfully navigate

yeah, i mean--PBtA games have a list of GM moves, right? when a player has a mixed success, usually that means they succeed and the GM makes a GM move. and obviously those moves have choices and stuff the GM needs to come up with -- something like Monster of the Week's "Put someone in trouble" or "Separate them" definitely require the GM to think of how that works in the fiction -- but that isn't game design, right? the mechanical aspect of that has been handled by the game's rules text. so i think that if there's more weight on the GM i think it's strictly creative weight rather than design weight, unlike the 5e GM who is forced to mechanize anything they might want to make up and is often left without any mechanical guidance

and i mean, i think in general 5e (and dnd more broadly) give the GM absolutely fucking nothing to work with. there are literally no GM-facing mechanical levels other than enemy statblocks (which also, unlike something like Lancer or even fucking 4th Edition, come with no guidance on how to use them or how to assemble combat encounters with them). it's much, much easier to GM a game with GM moves, because then you have an actual set of mechanical levers available to you--and of course, like the aforementioned "Separate them", these levers automatically lend themselves to telling the sort of stories the game advertise for their genre. here's some GM moves from other PBtA systems that, just by seeing them as a mechanical lever, can push the story into the genre and tone directions the game wants to emulate:

Put innocents in danger (Masks, teenage superhero drama)

Reveal an unwelcome truth (Fellowship, high fantasy adventure)

Make honour and shame real (Sagas of the Icelanders, saga-era viking drama)

Bring their gender into it (Night Witches, Soviet airwomen war story)

Make them teach a class (Pigsmoke, magic-school cutthroat academia)

and one of the absolute best things about GM moves (and similar mechanics, like BitD's consequences, or BOB's setting sheet moves) is that because they are clearly delineated and restricted, there's no self-policing. because a dnd 5th edition DM can, rules as written, say at any point "100 ogres appear and beat you to death", they always have to be navigating a series of unspoken social contracts, creating threats but never threats which can win, introducing problems and consequences at a rate that keeps stakes up but is also fundamentally winnable, make everythign feel 'fair'. and dnd players have learned to accept this all as just the table stakes of a GM role, but it doesn't have to be. because all that is game design, and in a better game, that design is taken care of. GM moves say 'look, we've already thought about pacing and fairness, here's the levers we've pre-designed for you to pull, go nuts and tell a story with them'.

so in my opinion PBtA mixed successes represent a lot less onus on the GM to design the game for the designers than anything that happens in 5th edition outside of individual clearly resolvable combat actions--and it's one of the reasons i started having much more fun with TTRPGs once i stopped GMing 5e and realized that other games gave me actual tools and support to work with instead of expecting me to do all that bull shit

[ultraflavour]

7 Fantasy RPGs to fill the D&D-shaped Hole in your Life

So. It finally happened. Either Hasbro, or Wizards of the Coast, or someone else associated with Dungeons & Dragons finally did something so fucked-up that you've decided to swear it off entirely.

The problem is that for decades, there has been one obvious answer to the question of "What game with Dwarves, Longswords and Wizards in it should we play" and that was D&D, every time. Even their strongest rival in the past couple of decades was just an older version of D&D with a spit shine.

Now you find yourself adrift in a sea of possibility, with no signposts. There are names you've heard, but you have no idea which ones you'd actually be interested in, because you had always just assumed you'd be playing D&D until the heat death of the universe.

So let's take a look at a few games that want to fill that D&D-shaped hole in your gaming life, and examine what they're offering.

Disclaimer: I'm not covering the entire breadth and depth of the TTRPG industry here. I'm specifically going to be covering Fantasy RPGs that should appeal to D&D fans here. So if I didn't cover your favourite indie RPG, sorry. But there has to be a "First step" outside of the D&D bubble, and each of these games should fulfill that need.

The Other "Kitchen Sink" Game: Pathfinder

If you can't bring yourself to keep playing the corporate game, but you still want something that offers as close to that gameplay experience as you can possibly get, your best bet at the time of this writing is probably Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

I say this as someone who very much did not vibe with the original Pathfinder, or its "D&D in space" sister product Starfinder. But at this point, I'd absolutely tell a newcomer to jump into Pathfinder 2E before I recommended they buy any WotC product.

To their credit, the 2nd Edition of Pathfinder does much more to, uh, find its own path by diverging from 3.5 edition and implementing new systems that take it into uncharted territory. The "Two Actions Per Turn" paradigm is often cited by its proponents as being a meaningful improvement over the 5E way of doing things.

The "TTJRPG": Fabula Ultima

One of the biggest success stories of the early 20's was Fabula Ultima from NEED Games in Italy. It came seemingly out of nowhere to win the ENnie Gold Award for Best Game of 2023. Since then it's become notoriously difficult to find in print, though it's still freely available as a PDF.

Fabula Ultima is a "TTJRPG," modelled after Japanese fantasy video games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star, Breath of Fire, etc. While it's firmly planted in the Fantasy genre, its gameplay will also very recognizable to fans of those types of games.

The major benefit of this conceit is that you can probably already picture how combat in FabUlt works in your mind: Two rows of characters take turns jumping and slashing at each other, or casting magical spells to harm, heal, or apply status conditions. There's no concept of "Spacing," but the game still manages to be mechanically intricate with lots of varied class abilities and status effects to apply.

D&D refugees looking for a game where you simply pick a class and fight some monsters, but aren't too particular about how they do that, will find a lot to love here. FabUlt leans much more heavily on storytelling mechanics than D&D does, so players who've been looking for something a bit more "Theater of the Mind" should be well taken care of here.

Final Fantasy Lancer: ICON

Like Fabula Ultima, ICON is a TTRPG that takes heavy inspiration from JRPGs, specifically tactical games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. It's from Massif Press, who also authored the surprise indie Mech combat hit Lancer.

And like Lancer, ICON is a game with two very distinct rulesets: Outside of combat, a "Fiction-first" narrative system inspired heavily by Blades in the Dark; In combat, a grid-based tactical skirmish game reminiscent of D&D 4th Edition. All backed by the gorgeous art of its author Tom Parkinson-Morgan, who also writes and illustrates the comic Kill Six Billion Demons.

ICON separates its "narrative" class system from its combat class system, giving each character two distinct character sheets that come into play at different times. Because those two systems don't have to cross over very much, each can be as intricate or as rules-light as it needs to be to promote the type of gameplay most appropriate for the situation.

The Old-School Gateway Drug: Shadowdark

If you ever took a few steps outside of the walled garden that is D&D in the past few years, you will likely have read or heard of the OSR, or "Old-School Revival/Renaissance." Proponents of the OSR are players who yearn for an older style of Dungeon Crawling Survival Horror game that hearkens back to the early days of D&D, before the players became akin to superheroes.

Shadowdark aims to be a game that bridges the gap to that style of gameplay, without being totally unfamiliar to players who only ever learned 5th Edition mechanics. It's "Old-School gaming, modernized."

Aside from simply being a modern take on a D20 fantasy game, it freshens up gameplay using a mechanic called the "Torch Timer." It turns light into a resource that dwindles in real time. This serves to elevate the tension of the game as every minute that passes is one less minute of light on your torch. And when the torches run out, well... You can probably guess what happens next.

5th Edition with the Serial Numbers Filed Off: Tales of the Valiant

Tell me if you've heard this one before: Wizards of the Coast introduces sweeping changes to its "Open" license model, leading existing 3rd-party content creators to create their own version of an older ruleset to protect the viability of their backlog. It happened in the past, but what are the chances that happens a second time? Ha!

Well... It did happen again. This time, playing the role of the "Paizo" in this scenario is Kobold Press, who loudly declared that they were "Raising the Black Flag" in response. In order to ensure that there would always be a "Core Fantasy" ruleset that would remain compatible with their content, they announced Tales of the Valiant, which would essentially duplicate the 5th Edition ruleset with a bit of a spit shine, in much the same way that Pathfinder did for 3.5 Edition.

Tales of the Valiant will be the game for the D&D player who just wanted a rules refresh of 5th Edition, but also doesn't want to keep throwing money at the corporate hegemony. It should end up being "The 5E you can feel good about supporting," and that matters right now.

Matt Colville's Big Bet: The MCDM RPG

Kobold Press was not the only publisher of third-party D&D content to have a strong reaction to the OGL fiasco. Unlike Tales of the Valiant however, Matt Colville's response was to announce a fully new Fantasy RPG system, with no expectation of backwards compatibility with any edition of D&D.

MCDM's sights are firmly set on the "Post-Kitchen-Sink" future, and to that end their game is explicitly not trying to be the one game for every possible playstyle. It's Tactical, meaning you'll need a grid to play it on, and it's Heroic, meaning characters should feel powerful, and not like they're constantly one critical hit or failed trap-sensing check away from being decapitated.

This approach might seem like a massive risk considering how insanely powerful 5th Edition became at its peak. But a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign backed by over 30,000 people shows that there is at least an appetite for something new, and that there is a like-minded community of players ready and waiting to join you.

The Critical Role Game: Daggerheart

If the Kobold Press announcement was a shot across the bow, and the MCDM crowdfunder was a bomb dropped, then Daggerheart is a full-blown asteroid, streaking straight towards Wizards of the Coast HQ.

Daggerheart is an original Fantasy RPG from Darrington Press, the publishing arm of the Critical Role media company. That by itself should mean something considering how important CR is to the D&D brand, but there's more to talk about here. Though it superficially resembles D&D in a lot of ways, it has some extremely important differences. Namely, its use of "Powered by the Apocalypse" mechanics such as "Fail Forward" dice rolling and "No Initiative" combat.

While "PbtA" has become somewhat of a loaded term in the D&D community, Critical Role has an opportunity to overcome that stigma with the sheer force of their platform. I've made this case already in the past, but if they were to use their power to do for themselves what they did for 5th Edition, it would be the most significant threat to the Hasbro Hegemony to emerge since Pathfinder. Let alone taking just a slice, Daggerheart has the long-term potential to take the whole damn pie.

And more!

The games I've listed here are all theoretically capable of replacing the Corpo game as your "go-to" long-term game. Not all of them are fully playable as of this writing, but they all represent one possible future for the "Sword and Sorcery" RPG genre.

There are of course a whole plethora of other games out there beyond the limited scope of "Medieval Fantasy" that are just as valid and just as viable, if you're feeling a bit more adventurous.

If you're looking for something explicitly tactical like a miniature skirmish game, but still in the RPG genre, and you're willing to expand your choice of genre beyond Euro-centric Medieval Fantasy even further beyond ICON, you might be interested in Gubat Banwa or the aforementioned Lancer.

If you want a game that promotes a slightly more streamlined, less mechanically-intricate approach to combat while still giving you tons of monsters to kick the shit out of, you might want to check out the "Illuminated by LUMEN" family of games inspired by the games LIGHT and NOVA from Gila RPGs. It might even inspire you to write your own RPG!

If you're more interested in the Old-School Renaissance, you might want to check out Forbidden Lands, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old-School Essentials, or MÖRK BORG.

If you like the idea of "Old-School Roleplaying" but are also willing to step outside of the fantasy genre into Sci-fi territory, you might be interested in Stars Without Number, its Cyberpunk sister product Cities Without Number, or Mothership.

Finally, if you just want a game that focuses on telling the best story rather than mindlessly killing monsters and acquiring loot, you might want to check out Blades in the Dark, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Girl by Moonlight, Coyote and Crow, and many more Fiction-First games in the Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark genres.

But most importantly: Just play more games! Don't just buy them, play them! The point of this whole exercise is to replace the monopoly with a plurality, for the sake of the health of the tabletop gaming industry.

Because the next time Hasbro lays off a bunch of WotC employees, there should be a much stronger, more diverse industry for them to land in feet-first. We should all want for the people who build the games we love to feel safe in their career choice. Not just for the sake of the ones who are already there, but for future prospective designers and artists who want to make their mark.

It should be viable to be a tabletop game designer outside of just making more D&D stuff forever, because as we've seen, it's not safe to assume that we can all just keep doing the same thing we've been doing and not get bit on the ass by it.

If we want that future, we have to take it into our own hands and build it ourselves. But if there's one group of people that knows about building something very big from very little, it's TTRPG players.

[yukiyovelle]

Main Trio With A S/O That Loves Reading - A Little Too Much

★Warnings: None ★Characters: Bakugo, Midoriya, and Todoroki ★Reader: Gender Neutral ★Synopsis: just read the title heh

Not happy.

At all.

I’m sorry.

But he’s not.

Having your face being sucked into a book 24/7 doesn’t let you leave with much attention for him.

He’s attention deprived put down the dang book and hug him.

Another reason that fuels his hatred for your love of books is because your behavior reminds him of Deku - like, a lot.

If he wasn’t deeply in love with you he would have tossed you into a garbage can, but he’s Bakugo so he’ll probably do that anyway.

But if it really mattered that much to you, he’d respect it.

And probably take his anger out on Midoriya instead.

I doubt he’ll surprise you with books as gifts, considering the fact that you have every known book in the universe written by every author ever.

But if you ever see a book you like, he’ll buy it for you, even if you already do have twenty different copies of the same book with different covers.

And no, he won’t let you pay for it yourself.

If you even try, he’ll start yelling and angrily threaten to murder the cashier’s entire family if they accept your payment instead of his.

“SHUT UP, I DON’T CARE IF ITS ILLEGAL, IF HE DOESN’T TAKE MY MONEY I’M TAKING HIS GODDAMN LIFE.”

He’ll hardly ever openly show his respect or liking for your hobby ever.

Which makes him the biggest effing hypocrite on the planet Earth.

BROSKI GOES TO BED EVERYDAY AT 8PM.

AND IS SUPER UPER DUPER ACADEMICALLY AND BATTLE SMART.

YOU CANNOT TELL ME THAT THIS MAN DOESN’T READ BOOKS FOR THE SAKE OF KNOWLEDGE.

AND DOESN’T ENJOY IT.

most of the time, at least.

OH YOU POOR POOR SOUL

Yes, dating Midoriya is great and all.

But Bakugo is about to make your life a living hell.

As if one nerd was bad enough for him, now theres two.

And the second one is arguably more annoying than the first.

At least Midoriya can hold a conversation - with your nose in a book at all times, its surprising that you’re in a relationship at all.

Midoriya doesn’t seem like the type to mind at all though.

You are to books, as he is to training.

He fully relates to your obsession with books, he’s obsessed too, just not as much as you are. You >>>> Training >>>>> Books

If you’re into writing as well, and you’re thinking of publishing, he’ll be right there by your side helping you. 

How are ogres different from trolls? He’ll research. When were bees domesticated? He knows. What is the weight and size of the average fictional fairy? research again

“Okay but does it really matter if you’ve been using the wrong tense over a couple chapters? Just tweak it a bit an-HEY NO DON’T DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN I’LL HELP YOU FIX IT.”

With him by your side, you’ll never make any stupid spelling mistakes.

But if you start reading too much and disregarding your studies, he takes it upon himself AS HIS DUTY AS YOUR BOYFRIEND TO KINDLY DRAG YOU AWAY FROM YOUR BOOKCASE

He appreciates your interests, but won’t let you fail school.

So don’t even think about it.

uh

I seriously doubt he sees the root of your interests at first.

He’s understand right away if it were textbooks for school - cause its educational.

But fantasy books and the like? I doubt he’d get it immediately.

Whether you like books or not he’d treat you the same either way.

He’s a mix of Bakugo and Todoroki.

He would never let you fail school.

And at the same time, buys you all the books you want.

With the money he took from Endeavor’s wallet.

“Huh? Oh don’t worry about the cost. Its not my money anyway.”

You’ll never need to worry about paying for your books again.

Besides, if his dad does find about him stealing the money he’ll emotionally guilt trip him into giving him allowance.

Its a win/win anyway!

You get a book and he gets to annoy his dad.

He loves seeing your eyes light up as you glimpse at your new book and watching your grin getting progressively wider.

His house is huge too, so I bet they have a library or at least a ridiculously large bookcase. Either way, he’d take you to his house and while he works on his homework, you skim through the books.

He loves those moments near you - even if you aren’t talking or touching, you’re just there, and thats all he needs.

Hiiiiii :> This is my first post on this blog, although I have been active on my other blog, which is a total train wreck of multiple fandoms. Heh.

Please feel free to interact about anything and send requests too :)) I’d really appreciate that. Have a lovely day or night, wherever you are <3

[imyourbratzdoll]

Warnings and Reminders - Please do not plagiarise, copy, repost/republish, adapt, or translate any of my work on any social media platforms, apps, or third-party sites. The only platforms I post my work on are: Tumblr and Wattpad. I do not own any character of any franchise (Marvel etc.) All my works are fiction and may be dark or triggering content: READ ALL WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING.

𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄 where monsters that are said to be something of a fantasy come to life to destroy you, wrecking you for any other person. no matter where you are or where you go, they will always find you.

18+ only please, do not copy, repost or translate my work. You are responsible for your own media consumption.

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halloween masterlist 

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warnings will be added story, a big thanks to @shadeysprings and @alovecraft for helping me

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𝒔𝒉𝒆'𝒔 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒇𝒖𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 ft count dracula lucius malfoy x human reader.

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𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒐𝒐𝒏 ft werewolf logan howlett x omega reader.

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𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒓𝒖𝒎𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒆- 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒅 𝒅𝒆𝒆𝒑 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒄𝒌 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 ft bigfoot kraven kravinoff x clueless reader.

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𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅𝒏'𝒕 𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒑𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒅𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒄 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌𝒆𝒓 ft demon jefferson x huntress reader.

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𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒅 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒔, 𝒘𝒂𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒇𝒆𝒄𝒕 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒘𝒂𝒚 ft grim reaper morticia addams x naive reader.

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𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒃𝒆 𝒉𝒊𝒔, 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒐𝒓 𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 ft death ichabod crane x innocent reader.

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𝒃𝒆𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒎𝒂𝒅𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒘 𝒂𝒔 𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒇𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒇𝒊𝒆𝒍𝒅 ft scarecrow sweeney todd x oblivious reader.

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𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒐𝒕𝒉 𝒑𝒖𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒊𝒏, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕𝒔 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒂 𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆 ft devil klaus mikaelson x purely sinful reader.

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𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒃𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒏 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒆𝒂- 𝒐𝒉, 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒅𝒚 ft ghost captain jack sparrow x lost reader.

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𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒇𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒆𝒃 𝒅𝒐𝒆𝒔𝒏'𝒕 𝒔𝒆𝒆𝒎 𝒔𝒐 𝒃𝒂𝒅 ft black widow spider jane smith x clumsy reader.

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𝒔𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒂 𝒅𝒖𝒎𝒃 𝒉𝒖𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆 ft ogre curtis everett x dumb reader.

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𝒂 𝒇𝒖𝒏 𝒈𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒛𝒆, 𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒔 𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒐𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒚 ft minotaur sam wilson x astray reader.

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𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒊𝒓𝒕𝒉𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒈𝒊𝒓𝒍, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕- 𝒐𝒉, 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂 𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒕𝒐 ��𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 ft clown damon salvatore x birthday girl reader.

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𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅𝒏'𝒕 𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒂 𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓, 𝒔𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒅 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒓 ft frankenstein bucky barnes, frankenstein’s monster edward scissorhands x indecisive reader.

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𝒏𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒊𝒕 𝒊𝒔, 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒑𝒕 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒆, 𝒆𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒐𝒓 ft wizard maxwell sheffield x student reader.

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𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒚𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒄𝒌𝒆𝒅, 𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒇𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒎 𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒎𝒂𝒈𝒊𝒄 ft witch santana lopez x victim reader.

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𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆'𝒔 𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒕 𝒎𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒅𝒚 ft siren rosalie hale x entranced reader.

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[world-of-warhammer]

Alright. Onward we go to the themes and elements I enjoy about Greenskins, what I feel could be done better, headcanons, and such.

Perfect faction in all settings 0 notes....

Only joking.

Honestly, the hardest part about writing this particular series of posts on what I like and dislike or how I'd prefer things be written is difficult for me.

On the one hand, the Orks live for violence tropes and Orcs aren't super bright tropes wear on me. Anyone and everyone in real life has a unique set of experiences and skills. Seeing any fictional species of sapient reduced to something as simple as "All Orcs do X" oftentimes grates on me a little because of that.

I feel Skarsnik is a good example of how they can (within their setting and the rules they have established as GW) write or make an interesting and smart Greenskin work. The thing that bugs me, is that they need to write these *specifically* as *the* exception.

Now I'm not saying to make every Goblin, Orc or Ork an engineer or physicist; I'm just frustrated that there's very little that lends itself to a diverse set of experiences that matches the tapestry of real life.

Similarly, the retcon to Warhammer Fantasy to make Greenskins fungi as they are in 40k was neat and a cool nod to the uniqueness they have created in their Orks. I do however wish this meant they matched fungi a bit closer and could have more fungible accessories, buildings, weapons, etc.

It'd also be nice to have girl Orc/ks and Goblins. Let us have a diverse array of fungi based reproduction. Some fungi reproduce asexually and some don't; so the line about them all being male-coded as a result of "kultur" makes some sense, but for there to be no other distinction or cultural variance is frustrating. (I'll spare everyone my rant on this for now, but we will touch on elements of this again with Ogres, Skaven, and Lizardmen)

As far as thematic elements I enjoy, the brutal metal in their equipment, the basic love of violence, the lack of understanding (or even trying to understand) how or why other people's do things differently, the latent psychic phenomenon (or belief magic in fantasy), and the Waaaagh are elements I enjoy greatly. Orcs getting larger as a result and preparatory measure for rebellion, the infighting, and the might-makes-right are interesting to explore and would make for neat things to do in and around the Greenskins.

I feel like looking at Orcs from just about any other longstanding fantasy setting informs a lot about what I'd like to see from them in Warhammer overall. Warcraft, LotR, and wherever else you find brutal fighty Ork and Gobbo peoples. I just also want more variety and for them to be less of a monolithic culture.

[cadmusfly]

The Dream That Dreams Once Dreamt Of

Summary:

“… many of Napoleon's senior officers have become characters of folklore, if not downright fiction. His marshals, especially, have been so bedaubed by careless writers' ink that the true personalities of some of them remain almost unknown.” — Swords Around A Throne, John R. Elting

A strange surreal fairytale about a man-eating ogre and a heroic knight with legs of stone.

Relationship: Napoleon Bonaparte/Jean Lannes

Characters: Napoléon I de France | Napoléon Bonaparte, Jean Lannes, very brief mentions of the following: Michel Ney, Jean-Baptiste Bessières, Andre Masséna, Charles-Victor Perrin

Fandoms: Napoleonic Era RPF, Historical RPF

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Body Horror, mentions of cannibalism, Mentions of Ensemble Cast

Words: 3,076

Chapters: 1/1

[softandwigglybones]

And it's done!

@aromanticsky this one is for you, I hope its an enjoyable read. (also, thank you for the suggestions, they made one of the hardest parts of writing much easier)

If you want to read on not-tumblr, I've also posted it here:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/75608/short-stories-for-practice/chapter/1731876/the-ogre-a-myriorama-inspired-short-story

Lastly, a few of my thoughts:

I'm starting to notice 2 issues with my writing.

One, about halfway through I completely lose the plot and have to make up something on the spot. I'm not sure if it's noticeable (it probably is), but I began having problems right around the second forest clearing.

And two, I keep falling into world-building. It would probably be a good tendency to have for anyone else, but I keep introducing random facts about things and creatures, and I'm afraid its detracting from the story.

And now for the story:

In the lands of Duskellfan, things were often not as they seemed. It was a land of fantasy and mystery, filled to the brim with various kinds of mystiques.

Well, for the most part, that is. Some places, places like the small village of Gnirsk, the day to day life was quite mundane. People ate, slept, worked and celebrated, and in general simply lived a good life. Yes, it wasn’t always perfect, nothing is, but the people of Gnirsk pushed through it all and held together during the tough times.

There was only one issue, one stubbornly persistent thorn in their side that the villagers couldn’t get rid of. One that they never managed to figure out the solution to. Every day, at seemingly random intervals, a deep and disconcerting rumble could be heard from deep within the forest. It happened multiple times a day, and nobody knew the cause of this disturbance. And worst of all, it wasn’t even unusual for it to sound out in the middle of the deep deep night, waking the whole village and causing unrest.

Frankly speaking, the whole of Gnirsk’s peaceful village life was turned on its head due to the forest’s strange rumble, so the villagers decided something had to be done. First, they sent a message out to a nearby town, a proper city. Surely, someone there would known what to do, right? But the messenger returned crestfallen, with no help whatsoever.

Deciding to take matters into their own hands, the people of Gnirsk assembled a small expedition, one to penetrate deep into the heart of the forest and see what was causing all the commotion. Once there, they’d put a rest to it, violently if necessary.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. For the first time in the village’s history, its complete and utter mundanity came as a detriment. As if by magic, the whole expedition got turned around within the forest and exit in the exact same space that they had entered it. But so convinced were they of the non-existence of the magical that they refused to believe anything strange could be afoot. So naturally, they tried again. After all, surely it must’ve simply been a failure on the navigator’s part, they thought. And yet, the same thing happened over and over again, no matter how many times they tried to mount an expedition.

Time passed, and the villagers were forced to get used to their daily disruptions. Simply put, the unfortunate situation would have to stay.

That is, until many moons later, when a new development occurred. As it so happens every now and then, a caravan was passing through the village of Gnirsk when the forest’s rumble resonated through the air. Now, the villagers had mostly gotten used to it by that point, some more than others, but the same could not be said about the caravanners.

Understandably, some of them panicked. Only once they saw the villagers going about their day as usual, as if nothing strange had happened and everything was normal, did they calm down. Things then continued mostly as you’d expect them to. The people form the caravan asked the people from Gnirsk some questions about what had just happened, shrugged their shoulders, then proceeded to go on with their trading.

But this is where we stop following the larger picture and instead focus on the story of one person in particular. A caravan child by the name of Sorramyna.

Now, Sorramyna wasn’t really a child. But being the youngest member of the caravan, plus having also grown up with the caravan not helping the matter, everyone else on it continued to refer to hir as kid, kiddo, or some other variant of that. But I digress.

Sorramyna had, naturally, also heard the deep rumble. How could ze not? After all, it rang out far and wide, louder than any bells of worldly make. And ze was curious. What could make such a strange and unearthly sound? A dragon, a creature ze had heard so much about on hir travels? Perhaps an otherworldly demon, trapped in the overworld? Or maybe even an Ancient, a true creature of legend?

It stood without a doubt that Sorramyna was curious. Curious and young, the deadliest of combinations. It therefore also stood without a doubt that, as a consequence of said curiosity, ze would want to find out more.

Later that night, when most of the others had already gone to sleep (some due to less natural causes than others), Sorramyna got up and quietly snuck outside. Outside the caravan, outside the village, and still further out ze went. It didn’t take long for hir to arrive by the forest, its deep depth almost physically alluring to the adventure-starved Sorramyna. With a deep breath to steel hir nerves, Sorramyna stepped forth into the arboreal labyrinth.

For a time, nothing much happened. Simply a normal walk through a normal forest. Admittedly, yes, it was night out which made it somewhat scarier, but still normal. As far as Sorramyna could tell, it was just a regular old forest. This illusion, however, did not last long.

With one slight misstep, Sorramyna’s foot caught on a protruding root, and ze fell. Surprisingly enough, at least for hir, the ground did not break hir fall. No, instead, just as ze would have impacted with the forest floor, something parted in front of hir and swallowed hir whole.

Now, worry not dear reader, for this is not the end for our intrepid adventurer. That being said, feel free to take this moment to pause, consider the story up until now. Maybe go and have a drink, get a snack, take any meds you may need to, or even go for a short walk. And when you’ve done that, return here and see the fate of Sorramyna.

A little bit of time passed and Sorramyna woke up in a strange and unfamiliar space. More unfamiliar than the forest already had been. The sky was, luckily enough, still dark, stars twinkling across it. Not much time could have passed. Nonetheless, Sorramyna grew worried. Ze didn’t know where ze was, and especially not how to get back back to the village. All ze could see were strange plants as far as the eye could see, which wasn’t particularly far this deep into the forest. It had practically transformed into a jungle. The plants, other than being strange, were also somewhat snake-like and covering almost every available surface. Moreover, about half of the snake-vines were also overgrown by a lush moss.

Still, there was no use despairing. As much as Sorramyna was unprepared for this adventure, ze knew from all the folk stories ze had grown up listening to that giving up was not an option. So, with a deep breath, ze stood up and once more stepped forth into the unknown.

This time, the journey was much more arduous. No longer was it a nice hike through a tame forest. Instead, Sorremyna had to force hir way through. Climbing over natural barricades, crawling beneath fallen trees of immense proportions, and in general avoiding all of the forest growth that somehow, inexplicably, always seemed to go into hir face.

But the young mind is nothing if not determined, so ze persevered. At last, ze broke through a truly dense wall of greenery to reveal a small, quaint little clearing. At the centre of which grew a truly majestic and enormous tree, thick enough that it’d take at least half a dozen people to encircle it.

Of course, Sorramyna approached it. And when ze was only a few metres away from the tree, the deep rumble that had lured hir there sounded out. Only, it was no longer a dulled and distant sound, coming from deep within the forest. No, it came from right above Sorramyna. Ze looked up, and stood shocked frozen.

The tree was not a tree at all, but the leg of a truly ginormous creature. There, right above Sorremyna, stood a humanoid that could not be described as anything other than giant.

It was an ogre, a people rarely seen in these lands. How could one have arrived here without raising a huge stir, our adventurer wondered. Ze didn’t have long to wonder, as it was right around that moment that the ogre itself spotted hir.

It started to bend down to get a better look at Sorramyna, but halfway through it stopped and let out a pained bellow. That was the sound the village had been hearing all this time. The rumble was the ogre’s cry for help.

In place of bending down further, it simply pointed deeper into the forest where a faint column of smoke could be seen rising into the sky. This did not answer many of Sorramyna’s questions, if anything, it only brought up more. Be that as it may, ze went on following the ogre’s directions regardless. Ze had come too far already to turn back now. Besides, following the ogre’s directions could only provide more of an explanation, and maybe ze would even be able to help out.

Only once Sorramyna was passing by the ogre’s leg, what ze had presumed to be the trunk of a tree, did ze see the ogre’s foot. Coincidentally, it had been entirely hidden behind the leg, but now ze could see that indeed it was no tree. The foot was so large it was almost comical, the only exception being the overgrown nails which did not look healthy at all. Still, there was no use dwelling on such things.

Into the dense jungle it was again. This time, even more obstacles came into Sorramyna’s path, and ze was sure that ze had already seen that one boulder at least a couple of times now. Yet, no matter what manner of magic and tricker was afoot, ze stayed on hir path and pushed forth.

Once more, ze pushed through a wall of greenery, and once more a clearing revealed itself before hir eyes. This one, however, did not house a huge foot disguised as a tree. At the other end of the clearing, a cosy little hut stood nestled by some trees.

The hut, more of a small cottage really, only had one single window next to its door, through which a warm light was escaping into the clearing. It would appear someone was home.

Sorramyna, ever the embodiment of the adventuring spirit, approached and fearlessly knocked on the door. For a second, there was nothing but absolute quiet. Then came some slow steps from the inside and finally, with a slow creak, the door opened.

There, in the doorway, stood a small and hunched over figure. A witch, Sorramyna thought. And while that may very well have been true, you never talk about the identity of witches, especially not in the presence of one. Sorramyna therefore smartly kept quiet about that thought and instead politely inquired about the ogre that had sent hir this way.

The witch that may not be a witch did not looked pleased by that at all. Seeing their crinkled face and gradually furrowing brows, Sorramyna did the reasonable thing and took a step back. And what good luck it is that ze did so, as in the very next moment the door slammed in hir face, and what followed would have certainly flattened hir into the earth.

Sorramyna was leaving the clearing, about to head back to the ogre, when ze heard a loud sort of cracking sound behind hirself. There, the old hut gradually rose from out of the earth, revealing itself to be stood on one massive chicken leg. The hut then promptly hopped away, heading in the direction of the ogre, bulldozing all the plant-life in its way.

When the shock wore off and the dust had settled, all that remained of the hut was a half-rotten stump of a tree in its place, along with a rusty old axe wedged inside.

Adrenaline pumping, Sorramyna hastily ran over to the stump, grabbed the axe, and hurried after the escaping hut. It wasn’t difficult at all to follow its tracks, what with the trail of destruction it had left behind, and soon ze had arrived back in the ogre’s clearing.

The clearing was almost unrecognizable. For one, it was much larger than the last time Sorramyna had seen it. Numerous trees along the edge had been torn out of the earth leaving behind naught but dirt holes. Only a lucky few trees even had stumps remaining, the rest were nowhere to be seen. In short, it was the sight of a wasteland that greeted hir.

The ogre itself, towering over the trees and now with both legs visible, stood near the middle of the carnage. It was scanning its surrounding, cautious and maybe even afraid.

When it spotted Sorremyna, it froze for a single instant. Sorremyna hirself was likewise rooted to the ground, shocked by what ze what seeing. After all, just minuted prior this had been a beautiful forest clearing and now, now it was this.

In that one instant, they both reached a silent understanding. Sadly, the moment would not last long. A familiar looking building sped out of the forest, hurtling itself at the ogre. It was the witch’s hut, propelling itself with its one giant chicken foot.

But a witch hut is not a normal hut, no matter how mundane it may look. And even once it has revealed its unusual attributes, like let’s say a chicken foot, there’s still always more to it than one may expect.

Just when the hut was about to collide with the ogre, it split horizontally in half and revealed a slobbering toothy maw. The witch was nowhere in sight. All that aside, the ogre was about to have a bite taken out of its flesh.

Or it would have, had it not known what was about to happen. The battle had been going on for some time when Sorramyna arrived, and this wasn’t the first charge the ogre had to fend off. It lifted a hand, revealing a hardy tree in its grasp, and positioned the improvised shield between itself and the hut.

The hut, unable to stop at the speed it was going, bit into the trunk of the tree. At that point the ogre lifted it alongside the tree and swung. Both of them, the tree and the witch’s hut, flew through the air far far away. There, they crash-landed and for a while, it was quiet.

Now, Sorramyna was understandably still quite shocked by this. Ze had been just a normal caravan kid not too long ago. Nothing had prepared hir for anything even resembling such a situation. Despite all that, despite being fully out of hir depth, Sorramyna acted.

Ze heaved the rusty axe and ran over to the ogre. Which was a poor choice and ze was lucky the ogre didn’t mistake that for an attack. Then, ze shouted as loud as ze could, “How do I help?”

Normally, such a shout would be futile. The ogre did not speak the language of humans, and even if it did it had not the vocal cords to reply. Normally, communication would have crashed right there and then. Normally.

But as we all know, few things are truly normal. And in it that moment, the ogre understood. What else could the little creature want but to help? What else could that hopeful look in the little creature’s eyes mean? Such did the ogre think, and so it acted accordingly.

It bent down, letting out a slightly muted bellow of pain, and held out its hand, palm up. Sorramyna tentatively laid one foot onto the palm, and when the ogre didn’t do anything, stepped fully onto it. Suddenly, ze was ascending through the air. With a groan the ogre rose to its full height, many times larger than even the tallest trees, and gently put Sorramyna onto its shoulder.

The view was incredible. All around, an emerald sea of trees extended until it met with the horizon. It as breathtaking. Except for one tiny imperfection. In one far off spot of the forest a dust trail that extended even further away could be seen. And it was getting closer. It was the witch and their hut.

With a startling realization, Sorramyna realized that all around the clearing, like the spikes of a sea urchin, there were numerous other dust trails that were only slowly settling down. The ogre must have fended off at least a dozen of those charges, ze thought.

The ogre, in the meantime, reached over to the edge of the clearing and tore another tree out of the earth. All the while it did not move from its spot one bit. Truly, ogres were a massive people.

Sorramyna was thrown out of hir reverie when the ogre made a gentle grunting noise, a decidedly different sound to its pained cries. It made a gesture with the tree, as if it was defending from the hut even though it was still minutes away. Then it pointed to Sorramyna and then to the phantom hut it was defending from. It repeated the motion a few times, making sure ze understood, before locking its sight onto the fast approaching dust trail.

Unfortunately, Sorramyna did not understand. Ze knew it wanted something from hir, but that may be was a mystery to hir. Ze wouldn’t get much time to consider it. Next thing ze knew, the hut once more dashed out of the forest, heading straight for the ogre.

Almost perfectly, the scene from before repeated. The hut split open to reveal gnashing teeth, the ogre positioned the tree trunk in front of it, and the hut bit onto the tree. However, the throw did not follow. The ogre made no move to fling the little monster house away, and the hut realized it too. Its nasty, big, pointy teeth began to churn, slowly chipping away at the tree shield.

The ogre made a panicked sound, urging Sorramyna to do what it had asked of hir, and with horror, Sorramyna realized what the ogre had been asking hir to do. But time was running out, the beastly hut was almost through the tree, and there was no room for hesitation.

Sorramyna closed hir eyes, and jumped.

The landing was surprisingly soft, the hut’s roof not the hard wood one would expect but an almost elastic material. Sorramyna took a moment to orient hirself. The hut was shaking in all directions as it was gnawing through the wood, causing hir to scramble to hold onto something or risk falling off.

With not much to hold on to at all, Sorramyna did the only reasonable thing ze could. Ze grasped tight the rusty axe and embedded it inside the roof. Then, two things happened.

One, an unexpected spray of a foul liquid burst out of the axe inflicted wound.

But more importantly, two. The hut went into a frenzy. The pain woke it up from its wood demolishing trance, causing it to realize there was something standing right atop it. Like an enraged bull, it let got of the ogre’s almost entirely demolished shield and started thrashing, trying to throw off whatever it was that had hurt it.

Meanwhile, the thing that had hurt it was not having a good time at all. Sorramyna, now completely out of hir depth, was doing everything to just hold onto the axe. Ze couldn’t even see what was going on around hir, the thrashing making everything a blur.

The ogre, on the other hand, finally had a brief bout of respite. However, it knew that if it did not do anything, said respite would truly be brief.

So, it did what it had planned to do from the very beginning. It took advantage of its huge size and neutralized the hut in one simple move.

One moment, an old hut on a chicken leg was raging around the clearing like a mad bull, the next it hung upside down, held by the very same chicken’s foot. Like that, it could not do anything, not even scratch at the hand holding it. Sorramyna, once ze calmed down, let go of the axe and dropped down onto the ground.

Seeing that its helper was safe and sound, the ogre lifted the hut higher into the air until it stood face to maw with the ogre. At which point it started shaking it up and down. Up and down it went, soon causing the hut to let out gurgling noise after gurgling noise. Still, the ogre did not stop.

Sorramyna watched on with wonder, and a fair bit of bewilderment. Mostly bewilderment.

At last, the hut had had enough. With one final gurgle, it opened its maw wide disgorging a small, shrivelled figure, along with a bunch of miscellaneous stuff. The figure, soaked in strange digestive juices, slowly stirred awake.

To Sorramyna’s shock, it was the witch from earlier. Except that they looked much weaker that before. They were even smaller than when ze had seen them in the hut’s door, their face much more wrinkled, and skin a sickly pale, almost green.

The ogre once more reached out, but to Sorramyna’s surprise it did not squash the witch like a bug. Instead, it gently took them and laid them on a soft patch of grass that miraculously remained untouched by the battle, away from the fluids the hut had regurgitated along with them.

Now, Sorramyna was truly confused. Had the witch not caused all of this? Should they not be punished, held accountable for the unrest they had caused? But the ogre knew the full story, and so it waited, hut still held high and prevented from doing a thing.

Time passed and sunrise came near. Sorramyna had long grown bored of the wait and retrieved the axe from the hut, to at least somewhat amuse hirself by chopping into one of the fallen trees.

At last, with the first rays of the sun, the witch awoke. They looked around confused at first, but once they saw the ogre holding the hut, a rueful look washed over them.

The ogre, on the other hand, let out a loud bellow. For the first time, Sorramyna heard it voice something other than pain or distress. The ogre laughed.

Only then did the witch spot Sorramyna. Ze hirself had no idea what to do, and by the looks of it neither did they. Luckily, the ogre was there to facilitate conversation.

The witch seemed to understand its strange grunts, moans, and bellows. But they did not reply with the same, nor in a language Sorramyna spoke. It truly was a strange sight for hir.

Eventually, they both reached some sort of understanding and the witch turned to hir. “Thank you for helping us, and apologies for all the trouble my mistake must have caused,” they spoke. “I can’t give much in return now, but if we ever meet again, hesitate not to ask for assistance,” they paused for a moment, as if considering, and then added, “In the meantime, remember this: Huts in woods are very strange, I beg you to not engage. Beware please of mimicry, lest it not go swimmingly.”

With that cryptic message, they and the ogre nodded at each other. Both of them turned towards Sorramyna, bowed, and the witch said one last thing, “I am the watcher of the forest, making sure none are left malnourished. ‘Tis my guardian eternal, protecting from the infernal. Remember us and speak our names, if you ever need some avails.”

Then, as if by magic, they disappeared.

It was another strange sight, one to add to the many ze had seen that night. With both the ogre and the presumed witch gone, or the watcher and the guardian as they named themselves, Sorramyna had no more reason to stay. There was utterly no trace left of them, not even the hut or its regurgitate. The only hint was the devastated clearing, but as ze watched on, even that began to slowly grow over.

Only one, well two, things hadn’t disappeared. The rusty old axe, and the piece of wood ze had been cutting into with it.

Perhaps it was unnecessary, maybe a complete waste of time, but Sorramyna brought both along with hir. If nothing else than to convince hirself that what had happened that night was not a dream.

Once ze returned to the village of Gnirsk, things quickly fell into old rails. Ze returned an hour or two after sunrise, when the caravan was slowly preparing to head off. The others from the caravan asked hir where ze had been, but Sorramyna simply half-heartedly shrugged and said in the forest.

So, the caravan left. They had done the trading they wanted and there was no reason to stay. It would be a while until the villagers realized the forest’s bellows had stopped, and even longer for Sorramyna to inspect the metal of hir rusty axe. But that is a story for another time, and the mystic rune that appeared on hir axe would remain hidden for some time yet.

[krsnaradhika]

A snippet from Krishavyayam hehe-

Small points to be noted before you get started—

Kamalnayani/ Hridayaa/ Mohini are the same person. The same oc has multiple names.

Mohini is also Hari here, as we know. Hence, Mohini and Mohini it is hehe-

Please if this offends you, tell me and I'll pull it down. This is purely fiction and does not intend to offend any religious beliefs and sentiments.

You'll find the whole book on Wattpad, so cheers! ✨

She was bewitching. The woman before whom demons swooned and caelitis were rendered wordless. Dark as the zenith hour of dusk and as radiant as a nymph who rose from the cerulean waves, she had her wife in a daze for she had poof-ed out of the blue (god).

Kamalnayani looked half amused, half moonstruck as Mohini grinned at her, winking notoriously. She sported a red and black lehenga of chiffon, diamantes stuck to the flowy fringes as well as her kohl-lined eyes and she swung a vial of mead in her willowy fingers— all too coquettishly.

Why, you ask?

"Because I last saw her so long ago," Hridayaa accentuated, sheepishly batting her eyes at Kanha and linking an arm of his to hers. The latter had mirth dancing in his very handsome features and it wouldn't be wrong to say he missed those precious moments either.

Ogres raced hither and thither for one touch of Mohini who swaggered through the waves, effortlessly charming all. Flowy tresses wrapped in the whiff of lotus and pearl ornaments dangled on her voluptuous form. She was beautiful and lethal. Woman and vulpine.

"And I miss her."

He snorted out a laugh, tendrils jumping up to his forehead to kiss them and then he obstructed them with a rake of his sculpted fingers, "I am literally right here, Hridayae."

"No, Mohini." She whined, almost hopping in her place but he disciplined her with quasi glare. Krishu pouted, seeming more of a child than a mother— as if demanding not a woman but a candy. "I want Mohini! She can give me excellent company these days and you know we're nearing the due date. Also she had a kid so she can give me great parenting tips meant for mothers. Kanha pleaseeeeee?"

"As my queen pleases."

And so, Mohini and Mohini were now face to face after ages— giggling vivaciously and maniacally at each other's sight.

"So where should I escort you now, wife?"

"Jhumka shopping!" Krishu tugged her, then waddling around to the brass and copper caskets to arrange for casual robes for herself. Mohini hummed and slipped herself in the quilts of the soigne bed, then spat her beverage right through her mauve lips out of pure whammy when the whims of Kamalnayani surprised her again.

"And we're hitched. We are begetting a kid through the blessing of an austere sage. I don't want anyone ogling at you in the marketplace, hmm? They don't have any right to."

She shortly inclined her head in a yes, inarticulate. Of course, they were married.

"Right. Only you do." The goddess simpered through the chalice sitting on her mouth. Then she clipped her bracelet against her dainty wrists, kissing where the pulse chanted the name of an archeress.

───  ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅  ───

"This for Bhadra Jiji, this for Lakshu Jiji and oh— Jambavati Jiji adores teals and turquoise!"

Oxidized silver bracelets, bronze armbands, floral rings and arabesque silks brimmed the tawny stalls on wheels as the two goddesses stirred past them, riveted by the grandeur of the city that was their latibule. Krisha and Mohini walked hand in hand, occasionally picking a bloom or two to profess their love in dramatic whispers as their secretive chortles became the fantasies of little girls who watched them from afar.

The ivory and maroon turban with pearl motifs caught her attention and then she waved her hand at her husband- urhm, wife.

Kamalnayani smiled at the lady vendor who beamed at her with gentle eyes. "What do you expect?"

"A healthy baby. Nothing more." She shrugged cordially, looking over her shoulder to find Mohini partially veiling herself as she peered at the bustling streets through the rich translucence of her raiments.

"She seems new here. Do you know her?" The genial old woman squinted, "Why would she do that? Does she not know it's not normal to mantle her face in Aryan practices?"

"She's new here, Kaaki," Hridayaa answered in a jiffy as Mohini sprang to catch up with her, flashing the gleam of her cloaked dagger to the bandits who gawked at her. The bunch inhaled sharply, going about their own businesses when they recognised her as a beguiling mirage. An elusive dream.

Women with lethal beauty were to be feared. It was doltish to trust her who had other eyes trailing on every gait she took.

"Mohini. She's enchanting and gravitates a lot of attention to herself she doesn't wish for."

"Oh. Your friend?"

"This is my wife, aunt." Mohini giggled instead as the seller flushed, then ducked her head while murmuring a small apology. "No worries."

"Exquisite couple, best wishes to both of you." She fished out a leaf of tamarind from her purse, then slid the velvet turban from the honey-eyed woman to the one whose smile was as sweet as it. Kanha— now Mohini, brought a pair of suryakanthi jhumkas and slipped in Hridayaa's lotus palms.

"Pretty moms make pretty babies."

Kaaki Sulochanaa— with eyes as pulchritudinous as her name— chuckled once again at the flushed women who squirmed a little closer to each other, surreptitiously stealing gazes and then shuffling in opposite ways, the presents never seeming enough.

"Oh, so you both aren't yet out of the mushy-mushy phase?"

───  ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅  ───

The dusk and the moon and their realm in Dvaravati wasn't exotic to their ardor for each other. It was the atelier of the art they painted each other in.

The scarlet roses and ivory jasmines embraced each other in the curls of the enchantress who sat between the legs of her wife, inclining her swan neck to the side as her eyes shut themselves when ivory fingertips skimmed through her scalps and skin. The sleek obsidian waterfalls and warm breaths of the woman of flames fondled her nape and Mohini wanted to flee into the aisles to escape from her namesake, but she knew the sacred smokes and ambrosia would chase her still. For the woman who carried their child was said to have seized the sense of a thousand men too around her.

"You are seducing me, good lady Kamya?" She crooned, her voice as soothing as the psithurism of the forest they promised to be each other's.

"Keep dreaming. I have always wanted to do your shringara," Agneyaa murmured lying through her teeth and when she felt a frisson run down below her touch she smirked. "Hesitate for nothing though, darling. I am quite a charmer I am told."

Mohini let out a shuddered breath, rolling her eyes and then she caught the hand of Mohini who was yet sniggering at her. "Enough now. Your skills are laudable. I have never looked this beautiful." Her gaze traversed to the mirror which gaped at two women like long lost lovers. The stones of lapis lazuli and rubies and diamonds were bestrewed upon her lithe physique like stars on the ether. A spark birthed in her guts and she was an art. An art to be ravished by her lover.

Kamalnayani giggled and pressed a chaste kiss to the cheeks of that beauty who turned pink. Then she filled the dips of the curves of Mohini's spine with her fingers binding the kamarbandh, husking near her earlobes, "Lies."

She stifled the throes of her heart and an amaranthine smile stayed on her visage. As they multiplied and she was unwavered, she was the epitome of every mother. Mohini whisked around and pulled her in a slow dance, unhurried and buoyant as their limbs swayed in poised waves— grinning as they found forelsket again and again.

Afterall, nightmares were dreams too. The heart of Keshava was living a vision of a lover for now.

───  ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅  ───

Kanha found blue roses, azure water lilies and peacock feathers all tied together by a string as a gauzy navy robe enveloped them. "They reminded me of you, love." The whimsical note read, stuck to the spruce wood table and he grinned plucking them from it.

"And oh, I loved being with Mohini."

He was a fuchsia yet again.

The setting was an atelier of a picturesque art in making— born of the love of an archeress and the chakradhaari.