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ariadnelives · 5 months

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Dokkaebi Fire - A Short Story

Author's Note: The bulk of this story takes place during the events of "Force Majeure," directly between chapters 8 and 9, during the crew's time in hiding in Xiagu. It is not intended to be read in sequence. If you'd like to catch up on the series so far, you can do so on ao3 or tumblr.

“Cookie?” Pilar called into the flat as she entered, not waiting to be let in. “It's me today. Ariadne's making final preparations for her surgery tomorrow, but she'll be by as soon as she's back on her feet.”

Aoibheann sat on the armchair in the living room, pointed at the television which appeared to be carrying a local news broadcast from one of Saturn's other moons. She had a blanket draped over her lap, and she watched the news broadcast idly, taking in none of it.

“Remember, starting tomorrow, Ariadne won't remember anything beyond the six-month point in our stay here, and we have to keep it that way, so, be careful what you say around her.” Pilar laughed without joy.

Aoibheann did not.

“You know,” Pilar tacked on, “I'm a complete liar. You could dime out the whole plan and I'm pretty sure me and Ari would absolutely leap for joy as long as it meant you were talking again.”

Aoibheann glanced over at Pilar wistfully, dark circles under her eyes, but said nothing. These little responses indicated their old friend could still hear them in there, that they could get through to her, even if she couldn't muster the strength to respond. She'd barely spoken since they lost the station. She was usually a tightly-wound powder keg, full of fire and passion, and she had to direct it towards her purpose or else she’d explode. Now, it was like all that fire inside her had gone out, and all that was left of her was an exhausted shell of a woman.

She seemed able to move around on her own, but rarely found the motivation to do so. She had grown somewhat thin and gaunt, as she only ate when fed, so every day, Pilar or Ariadne or one of her apprentices would stop by to see her and make sure she ate. Sasha had been spreading herself far too thin on Ariadne's project, but still found time to check in on her and monitor her physical health. Her apprentices had removed all sharp objects, belts, and shoelaces from the premises, but Pilar thought that was overkill. She had known Aoibheann long enough to know she would never physically harm herself. Still, it didn't make it easy to watch her torture herself like this.

Pilar sat next to her, and gently took her hand.

“I hate having to feed you this stuff, Cookie,” she said, opening up a small gray package she'd brought with her. “Replicated MREs. No wonder Baltimore and Beam went to a convenience store twice a week when they were in the army.”

Aoibheann looked with disdain at the lump of meat before her, served with a mush that could only be described as “prepared grain.” She hated eating it as much as Pilar hated serving it to her.

In their small hidden town of Xiagu, all of the food came out of the replicators. Xiagu had a surplus of energy, with its passive solar collection and years of nobody to use the stored power, so nobody was worried about the expenditure of creating food and water from reserves.

Back on the station, they had only managed to earmark power for replicator use two years previously. Like most spacecraft, all of the water fixtures were powered by replicators, generating as much water as needed from a stored bank of energy, which was in turn refilled by a device in the drains which converted waste-water into energy. The food replicator could make prepared meals, but crew members would only be allowed to use it if they could make up the energy cost. This happened pretty naturally, as everybody had to use the bathroom regularly and could credit this to their account, and had the handy benefit of encouraging people to clean up after themselves-- every time you emptied your trash into the energy-reclamation chute, you added replicator energy to your canteen account.

However, back home, most people didn't bother to use the replicators, because truly, Cookie's food was better fresh than anything they could produce, and she loved making it. Here in Xiagu, however, the replicators had nothing but military-grade “Meals Ready to Eat” and raw ingredients programmed into them. When the town was alive, there had been gardens to produce the vegetables, and people to tend them, harvest them, and cook them in the many small restaurants. Now, all that was left was replicators.

Cookie's star apprentice, Yellow, had been put in charge of the replicators while Cookie was indisposed, and had very few requests for anything other than the prepared MREs since they'd been there. Everyone on the crew was required to learn to cook, from Cookie, and nobody particularly felt up to trying to fill her shoes. Everyone had pretty much accepted meals of nondescript lumps of meat, vegetables, and starches on the firm belief that any day now, Cookie would be back on her feet, doing what she loved.

Yellow was the one in charge of food distribution, and had desperately been asking Ariadne to authorize them to reopen Cookie's kitchen, with her at the helm, until Cookie was well enough to resume her post. It's what Cookie would want, she insisted, but Ariadne was taking Cookie's condition unusually poorly, and had refused to allow the kitchen to operate without Cookie present. Yellow was frustrated, but understood. Nobody would feel right about having communal meals like before without Cookie.

Pilar carefully cut up the packaged meal and fed bites to Cookie, who halfheartedly complied with each bite. She offered her a cup of tea, which Cookie held for warmth but wouldn't drink without prompting.

“Look, Aoibheann...” Pilar said, “I know you're not well. I know this has been harder on you than anyone.”

Cookie met her gaze.

“But I don't...” Pilar began, and choked. “I don't think Ariadne will go through with this with you in this condition. She cares about you too much. You know what you mean to her. To me. She's not going to put herself at risk until she knows you're okay.”

Aoibheann looked downcast.

“She needs you,” Pilar whispered. “I need you. Please come back to us.”

****

Aoibheann's mind drifted back to when she’d met Ariadne and Pilar, thirteen years previously. She had been living on the streets for two years and had only passing contact with Pilar. She had been homeless since the Hanguk-Éire massacre, when Susan Weaver’s bombs had incinerated her family’s house and restaurant, left her and her mother destitute, and claimed her father’s life. Her mother had turned to drugs to cope with the loss, and ultimately found herself bleeding out in the gutter after an altercation with a pusher who she couldn’t pay for her latest fix.

She had distrusted the new girl at first. In her experience, another new person living under the overpass was another person who might get to the good scraps before her. She didn’t need any more competition. There was, however, a certain unspoken respect between her and the Aguilar girls. They were the only kids living on the streets of that particular block, and they had to look out for one another. They didn’t talk much, but they had struck up an arrangement. Pilar needed to go foraging to keep Sasha fed, and knowing that she would have to dig through trash bins and steal from loosely-guarded shops to make this happen, she felt it was too dangerous to bring her nine-year-old sister along with her.

So, she struck up an arrangement with Aoibheann: if she kept Sasha safe while she went out on runs, Pilar would try and steal a little extra food so Aoibheann could eat as well. Pilar and Sasha had been squatting in an abandoned house on a nearby side-street, and Aoibheann could crash there in exchange for keeping an eye on Sasha. It was shelter, and food, and it was a better deal than she was getting anywhere else. Under normal circumstances, Aoibheann would’ve developed a mighty crush on Pilar, but crushes were the sorts of things normal girls got to have. Aoibheann needed to focus on staying alive.

The new girl had been Racquel when they met. She had been raving about how the world was going to end, a secret conspiracy to reign atomic hellfire onto the bio-domes. It was the standard fare of the doomsaying lunatic, so nobody paid her much mind, but she’d named Ramos and Ramos specifically in her raving, and that caught Pilar’s attention. Nobody hated the Ramoses like Pilar, although Aoibheann didn’t yet know why.

So, Pilar and Racquel started going out on runs together. Suddenly, they were bringing back more than enough food, not only for the four of them, but they even got to share it with the others under the bridge. One day, they came home clean, wearing fresh clothes, and carrying a bundle of new clothes under their arm. They told her that Racquel’s name was Ariadne now, and that they would be needing her help a lot more often. They’d found some sort of mentor, who would “get them out of here,” but they’d need to spend hours, even days, with her at a time.

Aoibheann wasn’t a fool. She knew that if they succeeded in getting out of here, that she would be left behind. She couldn’t, however, risk being thrown out on the street. She’d watch Sasha and crash on the floor of this abandoned townhouse as long as they’d let her.

Sasha seemed like such a little kid then, although Aoibheann knew on a logical level that she was only three years older.

“If you could be anything in the world when you grow up,” Sasha had asked her one day, while the other girls had been away at their mysterious mentor’s for a few days, “what would you be?”

“I’m just trying to grow up,” Aoibheann said, “if I can make it that far, I’ll see what I can get.”

Sasha scrunched her nose. “You’re not playing the game right.”

“I’m being realistic,” Aoibheann said.

Sasha breezed past this. “I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up.”

Aoibheann considered pointing out that Sasha had a third-grade education and no money, but thought better of it, and instead just sighed. “Well, it’d be a crying shame if you starved to death before then,” she said. “Let’s see what your sister left us.”

Aoibheann looked at the handful of scraps Pilar had left on the table. Pilar had stolen them an entire rotisserie chicken, which Aoibheann had admonished her for-- the abandoned house did not have a working refrigerator, she pointed out, so she’d have to use the meats straightaway or they would quickly spoil and attract flies-- and several cans of diced white potatoes, which Pilar figured would keep Sasha’s stomach full, but Aoibheann pointed out had very little nutritional value. This was, of course, in addition to the six chocolate bars Pilar had, being thirteen years old, been sure to nab on her little excursion.

Aoibheann had nothing in the way of seasonings, except for a variety of salt and pepper packets she’d taken from a loosely-supervised outdoor seating area at a nearby restaurant, as well as, on one extremely lucky day, three sets of cheap silverware and a bottle of hot sauce.

She did, however, have access to a small metal trash can with a lid, water from a neighbor’s hose spigot-- Aoibheann felt bad about this, because water was so tightly regulated on Mars and the owner would surely be steeply charged for the waste, but this was a low priority compared to their survival-- and an old gas stove that the new girl had rigged up to illegally supply them with heat.

Aoibheann had cut the meat off the bones of the rotisserie chicken and plopped the bones into the cold water with all the fat and gristle, and opened up a few of the salt packets into the mixture. She put it on the stove and let it heat up to a boil, then turned down the gas and watched as the mixture turned a translucent yellow. She eventually fished out the bones with her knife, and dumped all the potatoes, and the meat from the chicken, into the broth.

After it had stewed for a while, Aoibheann took a taste. It was thin, watery, and somewhat bland, but it would do for the time being. Using the now-empty potato cans, she scooped out two servings of soup and handed one to Sasha.

“Now, we just have to keep it just hot enough,” Aoibheann said, “and it won’t go bad. We’ll be able to eat this until your sister gets back.”

Sasha took a taste. “It’s…” she had been taught, if she had nothing nice to say, to say nothing at all, so she didn’t finish her sentence. Aoibheann had spent enough time with her to know what she meant.

“It’s a tick bland like this,” Aoibheann shrugged, passing her the hot sauce. “Give it a dash of this, it’ll be a sight better.”

Sasha complied, tasted it, and her face made it clear that while it was in fact a sight better, it still wasn’t quite tasty.

“My mom used to make potatoes with a cheesy sauce,” Sasha said sadly. “They were really spicy. Pilar’s favorite food.”

“My dad was more of a cabbage man,” Aoibheann said. “My mom handled the meats, him the veggies. Hanguk-Éire cuisine is… all about things coming together in the pot.”

Sasha added a little more hot sauce to her soup.

“I wanted to be a cook,” Aoibheann said. “Like my folks, before, all this. My dad was a cook. His dad was a cook. His dad was a cook. And so on and so on, all the way back to our homelands.”

“You could still be a cook,” Sasha said, eyeing her soup. “...someday.”

“Well, we’ll have to get your sister to scrounge us up some quality ingredients, then, won’t we?” Aoibheann said.

The two of them finished their soup, and Aoibheann noted that it was getting late, and insisted that Sasha go to bed. Sasha refused without a story, and Aoibheann tossed back a “tough titties” which was met with an infuriatingly irresistible pout.

“FINE,” Aoibheann groaned, and improvised a story.

“Once upon a time, there was a kingdom,” Aoibheann began. This was how all her stories began, they all took place in this kingdom. “The kingdom, you see, had been through every horror you could put a kingdom through. It had been invaded. It had been burned. It had been taken over and torn in half and put back together again more times than you could count. Every evil overlord you could name had taken the place over, at one time or another. So the people in the kingdom, they were always sad, and they started to wonder, would they ever be free? And then, one day, they found out, there was another kingdom, just like them, halfway round the world, and they decided to join forces. But then, after a few decades of unity and prosperity, the entire world fell into darkness, and the people of the two kingdoms had to run. They ran far away, and found a new promised land in the desert, and built a home there.”

“Then, one day, in the new kingdom, there was a little girl who lived in a little house with her ma’ and her da’, and she loved her life. The dark creature from the old world, it caught up with them. It took her da’, and burned down her house, and she and her mother had to go out into the woods.”

Sasha looked scared. “The woods?”

“Aye,” Aoibheann said, “and her mother dear didn’t last long. There were these flares of Dokkaebi Fire, the goblin lights, and mother dear thought surely she could follow them to safety… Pretty soon, the little girl was all on her own.”

“I don’t like this story,” Sasha said, trying not to betray how frightened she was.

Aoibheann sighed. “Neither do I. But see, the story has a happy ending.”

“Happy?” Sasha asked.

“Happy enough,” Aoibheann replied, “for now. See, the little girl knew not to follow the goblin lights. She ran into the dark, and there she found… a brave, dashing adventurer. A gorgeous girl, noble and good, who’d been lost in the woods herself.”

Sasha’s eyes brightened at this. “Did she have a sword?”

“A little one, aye,” Aoibheann laughed. “And she was on a quest, to find a way out of the woods. But the problem was, she had to look after a sweet, wee little baby, and couldn’t leave it long enough to make any real progress. So the little girl, she’d faced all the darkness in the world. She could handle a wee little baby! She agreed to take care of the baby while the adventurer looked for a way to save herself and the little one.”

“Did she find a way out?”

“Someday she will,” Aoibheann said, “but all she found so far was… a sorceress.”

“This story has everything,” Sasha said.

“The sorceress was as beautiful as the adventurer, and sharp as a tack, but she was untrained. Powerful magic, but she didn’t know how to use it.” Aoibheann explained, “so, together, they managed to track down the Baba Yaga, a wise but crafty old witch, who could teach the sorceress and adventurer how to find the way.”

“And the little girl?” Sasha asked.

Aoibheann thought about this. “The little girl gets to spend time with the sorceress, and the adventurer, and that sweet wee little baby,” she said, “and she appreciates the time she has with them. Someday, they’ll find their way out, and she’ll still be in the woods, but she’ll always be glad to have met them. The end.”

Sasha crinkled her nose. “That’s a bad ending,” Sasha said bluntly. “The little girl should just leave the woods with them. Then find the creature that took her house, and kill it.”

“And how’s she gonna do that?” Aoibheann laughed.

“The adventurer and the sorceress will help her!” Sasha said. “Maybe the Baby Yaga can tell her some spells!”

“Baba Yaga,” Aoibheann corrected. “Okay, so say she does. Say she tells the adventurer and the sorceress everything that happened, and they go slay the evil creature. What happens next?”

Sasha thought about this. “Maybe they fight another creature,” she said. “An octopus?”

“Why are they fighting an octopus?” Aoibheann asked, still chuckling.

“It’s guarding a treasure,” Sasha said as though it were the most obvious thing in the universe. “You have heard a story before, right?”

“Fair enough,” Aoibheann said. “And then, say, they beat all the creatures. What then?”

“Happily ever after,” Sasha said triumphantly.

“Well, you’re a sight more deft at this than I am,” Aoibheann said. “Let’s get you to sleep, I’ll do better next time.”

Aoibheann swaddled Sasha in the dirty, tattered blanket that they’d found a few weeks earlier, sat out in the hallway, and began to cry.

In the present day, Aoibheann thought back to her sobbing in the hallway. At the time, she was convinced that Ariadne and Pilar would surely abandon her when they finished training with Blue. When they started building their first spacecraft in an alley under the bridge, she’d defended it from thieves and scrappers at knifepoint, even thinking that they would use it to leave her behind. When, against all odds, Ariadne had built a spaceworthy craft, she was stunned into silence when they invited her along.

“Don’t be dumb,” Pilar had said, extending a hand to her “of course we’re taking you with us. We started this crew to keep Sasha fed. How are we gonna do that without a cook?”

And so, Cookie had been born. As the goblin lights lit the way to ruin, Pilar’s hand pulled her onto the right path.

****

Now, Pilar’s hand was busy cutting up bites of nondescript meat and placing them into Aoibheann’s mouth.

“Do you remember… back in our street urchin days,” Pilar asked, “Me and Ariadne would come home from Blue’s, put Sasha to bed, and then you, me, and her would stay up late gossiping. We’d show you all the cool stuff Blue had taught us in our lessons, and you’d take the ingredients we’d stolen for you-- better ones, after you started giving me lists-- and you’d teach us how to cook like you.”

Aoibheann almost smiled, and Pilar saw it.

“Alright, you’re right,” Pilar said, cutting her another bite and placing it in her mouth. “Nobody can cook like you. Don’t let it go to your head. But you taught us to cook better than most people.”

Aoibheann accepted another bite wordlessly.

“You know, Ariadne used to use Blue’s tricks to fix up that abandoned house, Alan’s house, and I used to show you all the martial arts tricks, and you’d be rapt with attention,” Pilar said. “When me and Ari started dating, we had a friendly debate about it. See, I thought you had a crush on her, and she thought you had a crush on me. Joke’s on us, turns out you were more than capable of having both.”

Aoibheann came close to smiling again.

“Funny, that’s a fond memory now. Back then, it was the worst year of our life,” Pilar said. “Wonder what we’ll remember fondly from now, when we’re older.”

Aoibheann’s fractional smile faded away. She couldn’t imagine anything worth cherishing from this time. But then, she couldn’t back then, either.

“And we don’t have to talk about…” Pilar cut herself off. “I mean, the… what we’ve had together… The unspoken closeness between the three of us. Rare as it might be that we’ve acted on it, it’s still special to me. To us.The problem has never been that we don’t feel about you, the way you feel about us. If you wanted... what’s between the three of us... to be more, it’d be yours in a heartbeat.”

Aoibheann looked down at her lap.

“We’ve always loved you, Cookie,” she explained. “And don’t get twisted up on the definitions. Every sense of the word. Whatever you’re thinking I surely can’t mean… I mean it. I don’t know what’s going on in your head. I just hate to think that… I mean… we’re going into the most dangerous time we’ve ever faced. If something happens, to me or to Ari… I just want to know you know what you mean to us. To me.”

Pilar gave her another bite, and Aoibheann didn’t fight her on it.

“Do you remember our wedding?” Pilar asked, and laughed. “Of course you do. Hard to forget something like that. Do you remember how angry you were that we wouldn’t let you cook us a grand feast?”

There was a spark in her eyes that demonstrated that she had not, in fact, entirely let this go.

“We stole the supplies for hamburgers from a local grocery store, and made Beam cook them,” Pilar said. “We actually almost got caught, pulled over for speeding on the way home. Ariadne told the cop her name was Ariadne Baltimore. Small town, local cops, everybody knew their parents, they figured they’d just miscounted the sisters, and let her go. Idiots.”

Pilar sighed.

“You weren’t allowed to cook because Ariadne needed you by her side,” she explained. “You were her maid of honor for a reason, Cookie. Our crew, our marriage, our family… where would we be without you? Would we even be us?”

Pilar offered Aoibheann another bite, and she didn’t take it. Pilar looked concerned. She hadn’t eaten nearly enough to be satisfied yet.

“What is it?” Pilar asked.

Aoibheann opened her mouth, thought hard, her eyes darting back and forth as though she was trying to make sense of something she couldn’t put words to.

“Aoibheann, are you… are you alright?” Pilar asked. “Should I get Sasha?”

Aoibheann shook her head vigorously. She had been lost in her depression for months, wondering if she was really better off waking up in the morning, but suddenly, the floodgates had come open, and she couldn’t wait one more second to let out what had been eating at her and destroying her soul ever since they’d lost the station.

Her voice was dry and raspy. She had not spoken more than two consecutive words in weeks, and her body vehemently protested the sudden change in this policy.

“Was it my fault?” She asked, thinking back to a conversation she'd had with their tormentor years ago. “Did I do this to us?”

****

“Excellent work today, everyone,” Cookie’s voice boomed through the kitchen. “The festivities went off without a hitch. This is an anniversary our captain won’t soon forget.”

“Thank you, Chef,” her crew echoed back.

“Dismissed,” she said to the assembled kitchen staff, and then quietly approached one of the greener pirates who’d recently started the galley rotation that was mandatory for the whole crew. “Libby, a word?”

Cookie ushered Libby into a small room at the back, which she used for prep when she was working on more intimate, personal projects. This was the room where she prepared birthday meals for Spacebreather, Ariadne, and Sasha. This was the table on which she’d painstakingly crafted Ariadne and Pilar’s wedding cake. The small walk-in freezer was the one where she’d had a brief, clumsy tryst with Blue on a rare visit to the station, after Cookie had enraged her by challenging her to a contest to see who could make a better mole negro oaxaqueño sauce, and then winning it.

Libby had been invited into the inner sanctum, and the look on Cookie’s face made it absolutely clear that it was not an honor.She was in deep trouble. Worse still, there was a salt shaker on the table in front of her.

“Do you think this is funny, lass?” Cookie asked. “Is this a fun game to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chef,” Libby said, actually looking somewhat convincing.

“The cap of the salt shaker was unscrewed. One shake, and dinner would’ve been ruined.” Cookie said. “It was your responsibility to set the table in the captain’s quarters.”

Libby got immediately defensive. “Anybody could’ve done that,” she said, “I didn’t do it, it’s totally unfair that you--”

“Anybody could’ve,” Cookie said. “But I gave you a responsibility. You were responsible for the Captain’s table. You signed off on a table with an unscrewed salt shaker on it. That makes you responsible for the salt shaker, whether you placed it there or not.”

“How is that fair?” Libby replied indignantly.

“Lass, why do you think Ariadne requires all crew to complete a rotation in my kitchen before they’re cleared for field service?” Cookie asked.

“She needs someone to cook for her?” Libby asked derisively.

Cookie sneered. She did not care for Libby, and never had. The girl seemed to attract drama. How, she wondered, could someone with so few friends be so perpetually in the middle of a falling out with a group of them? “And why do you think my standards are so meticulous?” Cookie asked.

Libby declined to answer, because she knew her honest answer would get her in trouble, but her face betrayed what she wanted to say: “Because you’re a huge bitch?”

Cookie answered her own rhetorical questions. “The skills you need to be successful in here, will be invaluable to you out there. You didn’t go over your loadout with a fine-toothed comb. You didn’t take the responsibilities you were trusted with seriously. You allowed your crewmates to operate with faulty equipment, that, had I not intervened, would’ve caused the mission objective to fail.”

“To be clear,” Libby said, “the ‘mission’ was serving them dinner.”

“IN HERE IT’S DINNER,” Cookie bellowed, her eyes full of all the rage and fire that she kept tamped down in her heart every second of every day, and slammed her fists on the table, knocking down the salt shaker. The chrome lid clattered off, and salt spilled onto the teak countertop. Cookie wordlessly grabbed a pinch of it and tossed it over her left shoulder. “In here, you fail in your duties and it means dinner isn’t very good that night. Out there, you fail in your duties and your sisters in arms die. That’s why Ariadne makes you work with me before you’re allowed to work for her. You can’t be trusted to handle the stakes out there if your team, and your commanding officer, can’t even trust you to do your job correctly when the stakes are only whether tonight’s chicken will be a little dry. Is that crystal clear?”

Libby looked as though she was about to protest, or accuse Cookie of being melodramatic, but Cookie cut her off. “Think very carefully about what you say next,” she said, “and if you’re lost as to what answer I’m looking for...” She pointed at the band that she kept tied around her head, so that even if one of her brilliant red hairs slipped out of its tight bun, it would still not fall into her face. It was white, and said, in bold black text, “YES CHEF.”

Libby grumbled. “Yes, chef,” she said. “next time, I’ll check the table settings more carefully.”

“Glad to hear it,” Cookie said. “But I think it’s important that you know… I know you put the shaker on the table.”

“What?!” Libby snapped.

“If the Captain, or her first mate, were to be poisoned, I would need to be able to verify who’d done the deed.” Cookie said. “Every step of my meal preparation is accounted for. There is a record of every action taken in this kitchen, cupboard-to-table. If something goes wrong with a meal, within seconds I will be able to identify the point of failure and exactly who was responsible for preventing it. Of course, it helps to have a private video feed into the captain’s quarters.”

Cookie tossed her communications device onto the table, and hit play. It projected a small, but surprisingly clear, hologram of Libby setting the table, smirking as though struck with an idea, and unscrewing the cap of the salt shaker.

“You have… a security camera… in their quarters?!” Libby asked.

“I’m the only person in the system they trust with it,” Cookie said. “I trust them with my life, and they trust me with theirs. Now, I gave you a chance to confess to your little prank, and you decided to lie, to pass the buck onto someone else. I’m afraid I can’t let that slide. I’ll have to fail you for this rotation. Come back at the start of the next one and you can reapply.”

“What?!” Libby snapped again. “I’m two days away from finishing! I have to start my galley rotation over again just because you caught me playing a harmless prank on your little pervy peep-show?”

“Call it pervy if you like,” Cookie said dismissively. “The nature of my relationship with the captain and her first mate is enthusiastically sanctioned and is, frankly, none of your concern. The behavior you showed in here, would’ve only spoiled Captain Ariadne’s dinner. If you showed the same level of carelessness and irreverence out there, it might’ve gotten someone killed. ‘Harmless’ indeed. You’re not responsible enough for field work until you can prove you can handle kitchen duty.”

“This is bullshit,” Libby said, gathering up her things to storm out of the room. “Like it even matters whether that bitch’s little dinner is ruined.”

Cookie slammed her fists on the counter again.

“Captain Ariadne is the greatest woman who ever lived,” Cookie growled, “and if I hear you speak of her like that in my presence again, you’ll lose a hell of a lot more than your galley rotation.”

Libby moved to storm out, but Cookie rushed the door and held it shut.

“Now, you listen to me, you little twerp,” Cookie said, jabbing a finger into Libby’s chest, shaking with anger. “That woman pulled me out of the gutter-- pulled all of us out of the gutter. There is nothing more important than the work she does, and we are the beating heart that allows her to do it. So if you want to be a part of this crew, you’ll show her some goddamned respect and start taking your work fucking seriously.”

Libby looked furious.

“What do I want to hear?” Cookie asked pointedly.

Pilar was astonished. “You think… because you were hard on the Nameless in her galley rotation… that she went totally off the rails, tried to kill us, and drove us out of our home?”

“Yes, chef,” Libby grumbled after a beat, and Cookie allowed her to pass.

****

“She tried to say we were like a cult,” Cookie said weakly. “That we were just minions blindly following Ariadne’s orders. That we turned against anybody who didn’t fall in line.”

“Is any of that true?” Pilar asked rhetorically. “Does the crew actually act like that?”

Cookie let the tears come. “I do,” she said. “What if she… how do I know she isn’t holding my devotion, my zeal, against the entire crew?”

“You… blindly follow Ariadne’s orders?” Pilar asked, entirely rhetorically. “That’s a surprise, I thought you really believed in our mission.”

Cookie was taken aback. “I do!’

Pilar smiled. “There’s some of that fire,” she said. “I’ve missed it. Aoibheann… when is the last time Ariadne actually gave you an order?”

Cookie had to think about this, but came up short.

“Exactly,” Pilar said. “This is what’s been eating you, all this time?”

Aoibheann looked afraid to reply, so she just asked what she’d wanted to ask, ever since they were driven out of their home.

“Do you forgive me?” She asked. “Does she… does she forgive me?”

Pilar looked Aoibheann square in the eyes. “Cookie, you’ve never needed our forgiveness. An insane terrorist attacked our home. There’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent that.”

This was not what Aoibheann wanted to hear.

Pilar sighed. “Of course we forgive you, Aoibheann,” she said in a voice that sounded entirely earnest, but using words that betrayed how sarcastic she was being: “for not allowing someone who turned out to be a sexual predator and an actual serial killer tamper with our food and ruin our anniversary. We forgive you for being the most devoted friend we’ve ever had. Because someone else mistreated us, it must’ve been wrong that you treated us right. We will always forgive you for loving us, Aoibheann. You will never lose our forgiveness for that.”

Aoibheann was struck speechless again.

“Don’t go quiet on me,” Pilar said affectionately, “I just got you to talk again! I’ve missed your voice.”

“I appreciate your taking care of me,” Cookie admitted, “while I’ve been… not myself.”

Pilar gently put her hand on Aoibheann’s, and gave it a squeeze, and then told her the most reassuring truth she had.

“The Nameless is a user,” she said. “She wants a bunch of people who act like puppets and put her well-being first. Ariadne spends every second of every day encouraging her crew to think and act for themselves, and to put each other’s well-being above all else. That’s why she thinks Ariadne’s a tyrant. Not because you defended her honor after a sociopath tried to ruin her anniversary and then called her a bitch.”

Aoibheann felt as though she’d just received absolution for something that had been dragging her through the muck for months. How could she not believe Pilar, of all people? She began to cry openly.

“Hey, hey,” Pilar said, “it’s okay! I got you.”

“I’ve let the crew down,” she said, “had them eating this flavorless mush for however many months. I’ll be back at a stove first thing in the morning, don’t you worry--”

Pilar laughed. “Aoibheann… Cookie, I’m glad you’re back but… don’t push yourself too hard, okay? Let your apprentices handle it for a bit. Besides, you haven’t walked by yourself in a pretty long time. It’ll take a bit before you’re seaworthy again, let alone fit to run a kitchen.”

Aoibheann looked downcast. “Well, I’ve spent enough time sitting around like a lump being no good to anybody,” she said indignantly.

“You’re plenty good to us,” Pilar said flatly, “just by being here. We love you, Cookie. You don’t need to… justify your existence by being a devoted servant.”

Aoibheann was uncomfortable with this sentiment, and it showed on her face. This was, after all, how she showed her affection for Ariadne and Pilar. How could she show them her love and devotion without being able to cook for them?

“I don’t know how to…” Cookie began. “Please… Please, just… tell me what to do.”

Pilar sighed. She knew Cookie was far too devoted to her duties to go completely without orders. “She and I will be back in a few hours, for dinner. Let her hear your voice. Tell her you love her, and wish her luck on her procedure. If you have the strength, give her a hug. And, most importantly, just… please, be okay. Be kind to yourself and take all the time you need to get back on your feet. We’ve only got the one Cookie, so take care of her for us, okay?”

Cookie smiled, and squeezed Pilar’s hand back with what little strength she could muster.

Pilar picked up the now-empty tray that the MRE had been on. “Now that you’re back, do I have your permission to start up the kitchens? Let your apprentices do some real cooking?”

Cookie nodded her head.

“Then I guess this is truly an event worth of celebration: you’ve had your last Meal-Ready-To-Eat,” Pilar laughed. “I’ll see you tonight, Cookie. I want to put some meat back on your bones, so I’ll be cooking, and I expect you to be looking over my shoulder and barking orders at me the whole time.”

Cookie looked at her and smiled, and Pilar’s heart melted. It had been a long time since anyone had seen that.

****

Cookie’s apprentices stood in a straight line at the back of the Hotpot Spot, an abandoned restaurant that Sweettalk had identified as her childhood favorite. Cookie, wearing the chef’s coat she’d fled the station in, freshly laundered, and her trademark “YES CHEF” headband, limped into the restaurant, supported by a cane that Sweettalk had fished out of her childhood home, and said had belonged to her grandfather.

Cookie was still not back to full strength, but her apprentices could see the fire they’d come to fear and love had returned to her eyes.

“As you may have noticed,” Cookie announced, the natural loudness of her voice undiminished by her time indisposed, “I have been… unwell, of late. As such, I am unable to resume my duties at this time.”

Her staff turned to her chief apprentice, Yellow, for guidance. Yellow remained silent, so the rest of them did as well.

“It’s alright, kids,” she said, stamping the cane on the ground loudly. “You don’t have to pretend. I’m not my old self yet. It’s fine. I wouldn’t feel right resuming my post here anyhow. This isn’t my kitchen. I’ve called you all here because you are the apprentices most equipped to run a kitchen of your own.”

Yellow nodded in assent.

“As such, I have a new directive for each of you, until such time as we’ve retrieved my kitchen, and I’m back to my usual vim and vigor, each of you is to select one of the defunct restaurants in this town, take your pick of the remaining staff and any available volunteers, and you will run your kitchens to the standard I have taught you.”

Cookie sighed.

“I know what you all think,” she said. “I know what you’ve said to me, in the past. You think your best is only a pale imitation of my cooking. But I need you all to know that… isn’t true.”

“Chef?” Yellow asked.

“I was the fourth person on this crew, lass,” Cookie said. “The first person to join, after the founding members. At the beginning, we had one mission: Keep Sasha Fed. There is nothing I value more highly than that mission. I live for it, and if I’m blessed with the chance, I will happily die for it. We may have expanded the definition of ‘Sasha’ to include everyone we love, but this mission is and will always be my life’s labor. Food doesn’t just sustain us. It is love, in physical form. The Captain and the First Mate have been very gracious to me, in the time we’ve known each other, by allowing me to show them my love and devotion in the way I’m able to offer. Over the last nine months, they have shown me the devotion was not one-sided, and given me the love I was able to accept. So your mission is, as it always has been: get in the kitchen, and show your love to the crew. Fill their bowls with it, in the way only you can, with or without me. And when your cup is empty…”

Cookie choked up a bit, and did a halfway decent job masking it.

“...When your cup is empty, allow those who love you to fill it back up, until you’re ready to pour from it again.”

After a long, uncomfortable beat, her crew shouted back “Yes, Chef!”

“I have been derelict in my duties,” Cookie said. “I let you go this many months without loving one another properly, because you wouldn’t do it without me.”

“Chef, permission to speak freely?” One of her younger apprentices, a quiet young boy who specialized in pastries, piped up.

“Granted,” Cookie said.

“You never ordered us not to run the kitchens without you. In fact, before…” He paused carefully, then opted to leave it unsaid, “before, you always taught us how to take the lead for the rest of the crew, when you had to cook for the Captain’s table. We wouldn’t run the kitchens without your say-so because…”

“It’s okay, lad, no need to be scared of the likes of me,” she reassured him.

“We were ordered not to,” he told her. “The Captain was very clear: ‘There’s no crew without Cookie.’”

Cookie leaned on her cane and looked a bit sad.

“She couldn’t handle it, Chef,” Yellow explained. “Knowing somebody else was doing your work, while you were suffering the way you were.”

Now Cookie could feel her heart melt. “She said that, did she?”

The young baker boy winced. “She said that there’s nothing more important than the work you do, and that everything the crew does, is just so you can do it,” he said. “She said… well, she said she was derelict in her duty to you, and that she couldn’t replace you until she’d made it right. Until you’d forgiven her for letting you down.”

Cookie laughed. “We’ve known each other a long time, indeed,” she said. “The captain is a sentimental one, I’m afraid. She blames herself for all this. For my condition. Don’t tell her I said this, but she’s still more Catholic than she’d like to admit.”

Everyone’s eyes flared at this. Of course none of them would tell her she’d said that, as they all valued keeping their heads attached to their necks too much. Cookie was one of the only people in the system who could get away with saying something like that in front of Ariadne.

“She could never let me down if she tried,” Cookie said, “and even if she did, I will always forgive her. That you can repeat to her. Now, that’s enough prattling on from an old fool. You all have restaurants to open. To work!”

“Yes, Chef!” Her apprentices all shouted, and broke formation to claim their restaurants.

“And remember,” she shouted after them. “If you talk to the Captain, this was her idea!”

She had, in fact, passed her forgiveness along to Ariadne the previous day, before her surgery, and assured her that she didn’t need forgiveness, the same way Pilar had done to her. After her procedure, Ariadne wouldn’t remember Cookie giving her consent to reopen the kitchens, but she was delighted that when she came out of it, she seemingly remembered, on some level, that she had been absolved of all wrongdoing.

She was relieved when, during the fight Alicia staged with her, Ariadne had suggested they put her apprentices to work in the kitchens. Despite being set back several months, she was done punishing herself, and letting everyone else punish themselves with her. It was a do-over many were not fortunate enough to get, and after all she’d lost, Aoibheann was not one to turn her nose up at a second chance.

****

Months later, when all this was over and Sasha’s medicine and a lot of good eating had restored her muscles into mostly proper working order-- she still felt uneasy at times, and preferred to keep the cane on hand, just in case-- they were repatriated to their home, the Nameless had been defeated, and the station had erupted into a celebratory frenzy. Yellow and the kitchen staff had burned the candle at both ends to supply enough party snacks to keep anyone from drowning in all the wine. Two former crew members, Baltimore and Beam, had returned to the station to join in the celebrations. Sweettalk and Sasha had, believing themselves slick, pulled Ghostrunner and her new girlfriend Vigil back to their quarters. Alicia had brought Blue back to the station and, in the haze of wine, loudly announced her intention to start a relationship with her, before disappearing back to her own quarters. Cookie and Blue had, despite their past rivalry, a deep, abiding respect for one another, and Blue was one of the few people who was authorized to do as she pleased in the kitchen. Cookie knew firsthand that after Blue’s enthusiastic and athletic lovemaking, she would likely need something to eat, and a bit more wine, so she’d set a bottle of red and a bowl of fresh mozzarella in conspicuous locations in the hopes that she would find them. Cookie was, uncharacteristically, not in the kitchen that night.

If she had learned anything from the past year, it was that she had to sometimes set the weight of the world down, and allow the people she loved to take care of her as much as she took care of them. So, as had become tradition, once per month, she would retire to the Captain’s quarters instead of her own, and allow her friends to show them how much they loved her. Pilar spent the day marinating meats, just the way Cookie had taught her, and Ariadne had built a heating element into her personal dining table so that Pilar could cook them some of Cookie’s favorite foods.

They would then retire to the bedroom for a night of passion-- Ariadne always had some new device she’d built and wanted to show off. Being married to Spacebreather, she was in the unfortunate position of being a bit of a pillow princess, but not on pillow principle, and so never had anyone else to use it on, and Cookie was the only person other than Ariadne who Spacebreather was willing to touch. They would spend this time laughing, and experimenting, and making sure not an inch of her, or the captain, went unkissed, and then they would fall asleep in each other’s arms, all the while gossiping and reminiscing the way they had back on Mars.

Sometimes, on these nights, Cookie would think back to what Spacebreather said to her, during her episode, about how if she ever wanted something more between them, she could have it.

The thing was, she didn’t want something more. She treasured these nights they had together, but as far as she was concerned, nothing had changed about what they were to her. They were her best friends, and they were her calling in life. She would, to the best of her ability, serve their mission with almost religious zeal. Even unto her death, she would prioritize keeping her loved ones happy and healthy. She had already loved them, more, she believed, than she could ever love anyone else, even when they had started an exclusive relationship with one another, and she was just a heartbroken teenager pining after them both. How could she want something more, when she couldn’t even imagine something better than what she already had?

The first time the three of them had ever fallen into bed together, years after Ariadne and Pilar had made it clear they were soulmates, they had been a ball of teenage hormones, propelled by a raunchy party game that had gotten a bit out of hand. Aoibheann had awoken mortified and furious at herself for daring to succumb to her own desires like this. Her whole life, whenever she’d allowed herself to love something, it was taken away, and that only when she accepted that something was beyond her grasp, would she stand a chance of being lucky enough to attain it. She was sure that by admitting to her wants, and acting on them, she had ruined everything. Except, Ariadne and Pilar noticed her embarrassment and simply chose to behave as though nothing had changed. It had happened only occasionally in the past, and each time, Ariadne and Pilar would wait for Cookie to bring it up. Otherwise, it was completely unspoken.

The one crucial difference was, now, Aoibheann “Cookie” Gyeong, once the saddest girl on Mars, had finally accepted that it was okay to want, and to act on those wants, that this was not following the goblin lights to her death as her mother had. She, who loved her life so much that she shut down for the better part of a year when she feared it had changed irreparably, spent most of her time refusing to acknowledge what she loved about it. She did her job, showed her love, and asked for nothing in return except for the ability to keep doing it.

“You know,” Ariadne said, running her fingers through Aoibheann’s long, smooth, bright red hair, as a sleeping Pilar cradled them both in her arms, “we don’t do any of this for you. We do it because we like doing it. It’s fun for us.”

Cookie laughed. “Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” she quipped.

Ariadne smiled, and told her something she’d waited years to be sure Cookie would be ready to hear. “Thank you,” she said, “for being my friend. For loving me. For making what we do worth it.”

Aoibheann shot a smile right back. “I could say the same to you.”

#core story #lgbt

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opttwoodrow · 1 month

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The Ballad of Bighole

Prelude

The Myth of Magnaformus, known to locals as 'The Ballad of Bighole', is a retelling of the events of the Bighole gangwar of late M41. This gang war, while not more than a footnote in the annals of Necromundan history, became legend among the drudges of the House of Iron, eventually being turned into the eponymous ballad sung by road gangs across the planet as they traveled the ashroads. Here follows its inciting incident:

Vivian Merdena is missing, and gang warfare is kindling throughout Bighole. Nobody knows for sure where she has gone or what has happened to her, but everybody has heard a rumour or two and has an opinion to share

Some say she wasn't happy with a stationary life and has run off with a Roadboss to live life on the roads of Necromunda. Others say that a Delaque assassin put her down in one of the cavernous ore silos that dot the upper levels of Bighole. And furtive whispers are passed that she is making a move against her father, laying low to bait him into an ambush.

But no matter the cause of her disappearance, it has left a power vacuum that gangs of every house are scrambling to fill. From the lowest flooded sump level to the highest enforcer compound, all have something to gain from the coming anarchy. And all the while, a strange signal has been detected emanating from the toxic depths of the pit, could this have something to do with Vivian's disappearance, or could it signal something more esoteric is afoot? Is this the start of a new golden age or the first signs of rust tearing into the settlement of Bighole?

The Ballad of Bighole is a Necromunda 2017 Dominion campaign with narrative elements set in Magnaformus, a settlement carved into the side of an ancient pit mine north of the Primus Cluster, known by the locals as Bighole.

This campaign features 4 players and their gangs:

The Mavens of Magnaformus- Escher

Rad Watch - Van Saar

Corpse Wives - Corpse Grinder Cult

An as yet unnamed Delaque gang (how fitting)

This campaign is a long time in the making and really was a call to action for a different and much grander project i have used as daydream fodder for many years now. But with my regular play partner soon to be emigrating to Australia, it seemed like it was now or never for a narrarive campaign of some kind, and Necromunda was there to scratch the itch.

To show the kind of stuff i have been accumulating for the evenual dream campaign, here are some photos of my accumulated '40k adjacent roleplaying minis' featuring lots of different factions, civilians and hangers on, and a few wee beasties for good measure. There is a whole extra pile of shame dedicated to this project that will remain unphotographed.

So to prepare for the camapign, as its host and architect, i needed terrain. I already have plenty of 40k style terrain, but its a bit too 'ruined cathedral' for my needs. Plus to fill a necromunda board I would need much much more. Perhaps make my own out of cardboard and other crafty type mateials? Maybe, but i needed this quick as my emigree friend and I are known for our wandering eyes when it comes to big projects and i would have to learn from scratch if i was to do thia. So how was I to do this quickly, but without breaking the bank?

My plan was simple: cheap on the bulk, spend on the details. i.e TTCOMBAT MDF terrain for most of what I needed, and then a few GW kits thrown in to give it that truly 41st millenium feel. This would allow me to have a variety of terrain that could be used in different ways and would all be of a similar scale. So I got to work. I could go through all the details, but here is a photo montage of putting together and painting the core of the terrain.

With the gangs gathered and enough terrain to play a game, we gathered arms and had a day of gaming! I shall go into detail about the test game and the 2 propper battles we played in a different post as I have run out of photos allowed in the app, but the Ballad of Bighole has officially begun!

#warhammer #warhammer 40k #necromunda #tabletop games #miniature painting #escher #miniature terrain #The Ballad of Bighole #TBOBH #warhammer 40000 #TBOBH0.5

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mapsontheweb · 8 months

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The Burgundian state, 1364-1487.

« Atlas historique mondial », Christian Grataloup, Les Arènes/L'Histoire, 2e éd., 2023

by cartesdhistoire

In 1363, the king of France, John the Good, gave Burgundy as an appanage to his son Philippe the Bold. Duke until 1404, he became master of a vast area, including Charolais, Artois, Franche-Comté, Rethel, Nevers and Brabant. His power made Flanders independent and it was a solid base for expansion in the Empire, continued by Duke Philip the Good (1419-1467): Namur, Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland and Luxembourg ( in addition to a nebula of satellites like the ecclesiastical principalities of Liège, Utrecht and even Cologne).

The Burgundian “State” is therefore made up of two blocks of territories, both shared between France and the Empire: Burgundy (France) and Franche-Comté (Empire) are governed from Dijon; from Lille then from Brussels from 1430, Flanders, Artois (France) and the Netherlands (Empire). The frequent meeting of States within the framework of each province allows regular taxation, which makes the Duke one of the richest sovereigns in the West, the bulk of his income coming from Flanders and the Netherlands. The administrative structure is close to that of the French monarchy (aids, Chambers of Accounts, states, Parliament).

Duke Charles the Bold (1467-1477) tried to reunite the two blocks, barely 60 km apart after 1441. He centralized, increased taxes and borrowed enormous sums from banks to obtain an imposing army and artillery. He then aimed for Lorraine and the archbishopric of Cologne but his ambitions united his enemies against him: Louis XI, the emperor, Lorraine, Savoy and the Swiss. In 1475, the Swiss crushed Charles's army at Grandson and Morat then the duke died in 1477, trying to retake Nancy. He is succeeded by his daughter Marie who married Maximilien, son of the emperor. She died on March 27, 1482 and on December 23, the Treaty of Arras divided her inheritance between Valois and Habsburg.

#maps #cartesdhistoire #igsourced #france #14th century #15th century

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honourablejester · 22 days

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Some random pieces of Starfinder worldbuilding from the Pact Worlds setting book that bring me joy:

From the Burning Archipelago, a network of force bubbles holding a city inside the surface of a sun:

“Tethers of energy hold the bubbles in an unchanging formation, but they also serve as the backbone of interbubble transport. Ferries known as linecrawlers hug the tethers, using them to traverse the turbulent solar atmosphere between the bubbles. […] In practice, the senate operates more like a negotiating society than a legislative body, as major trade guilds, especially the powerful Linecrawler Operators Union, can speak freely at senate meetings.”

This little nugget about ferry ships hugging force tethers inside the surface of a sun and the powerful union that runs them. Like. When you imagine that? As if you were a tourist experiencing it for the first time, climbing onto this bus and watching as it heads out of the force bubble that is all that stands between you and immolation inside a star, hugging to a line of force that nobody knows how to repair, and the guy driving the thing knows your awe and your terror so well, because it’s what he and his union bank on to give them a voice in government. Just. Awesome.

From Aballon, the machine-world closest to the sun:

“Between millennia of robotic excavators crafting perfectly aligned subterranean tunnels and the organic “diggers” of the Ice Wells crafting their own networks, Aballon is rife with internal transit routes. Unleashed in the wake of the First Ones’ departure, the excavator robots began work constructing a series of pathways to connect the planet’s various settlements. Sometime during the Gap, these excavators completed their work, and the anacites installed complex, magnetically charged rail systems. The mag-rail network allows high-speed transit beneath the planet’s surface, freeing up the skies for city-sized bulk landers to collect goods from the anacite-run forges.”

I have a fascination for logistics and transport systems, okay, especially in sci-fi, and Aballon’s mag-rail system running underground between massive machine megaplexes, organic undercities hiding in the craters beneath them, and the jungles of the ‘Ice Wells’, deep impact craters that protect from the burning sunlight and allow the presence of water, is just … It’s just the imagery? This machine-dug traceries running beneath the surface of the world.

From the permanently frozen dark side of the tidally locked Verces comes the Fastness of the Ordered Mind:

“A cluster of linked fortress-temples, the Fastness houses the Ascetics of Nar, one of the oldest monastic societies in the Pact Worlds. Within its walls, the ice-obsessed scholars undergo bizarre rituals in order to further their mystical study of the cosmos, seeing in the crystalline structure of ice a blueprint for the inherent order of the multiverse. For some, this means using melting shards of ice to carve magical sigils into their flesh—thus supposedly taking the ice’s order into themselves— while others meditate unprotected on exposed glaciers, letting the cold ravage their bodies. The most aggressive of these allow frostbite to take all of their limbs, and these honored individuals, called the Clarified, are either wired permanently into starships or joined psychically into neural networks with their cenobites in the Fastness’s most secure heart, helping take the order’s research of the universe to new heights.”

Because Verces’ dark side is the setting of the Thing and Event Horizon and Hellraiser, and I love it so much. And the detail of the frostbitten Clarified being directly wired into the heart of starships as their pilots is just exactly the sort of gruesome horrifying science fiction detailing that I enjoy.

From the pirate-and-mystery laden asteroid belt of the Diaspora:

“The ysoki trade frigate Farabarrium is a salvaged ATech Immortal left adrift by the Knights of Golarion after a brutal confrontation with an Eoxian cruiser several years ago. A group of ysoki salvagers called the Shirsask Kaia laid claim to the damaged ship and were able to bring the vessel back online within 2 years’ time. With the significant firepower and space provided by the Farabarrium, the Shirsask Kaia decided to put down roots in the Diaspora and operate as a trade hub and salvage way station. The Shirsask Kaia were quick to negotiate a lucrative protection deal with the Free Captains in return for offering priority maintenance for all Free Captain vessels. Now the Farabarrium is a well-known hot spot of trade activity within the Diaspora and a noteworthy pit stop for travelers scouring the forgotten reaches of the asteroid belt.”

The Farabarrium is easily one of my favourite parts of the setting. There’s a lot of the old school Star Wars book EU in her. A salvaged warship that’s been converted by ratfolk to serve as a mobile salvage and repair station among the pirate asteroids of the Diaspora. She has that blue collar science fiction sensibility that I just delight in.

From Eox, the blasted undead world that destroyed itself in the process of shattering two worlds into what would become the Diaspora asteroid belt:

“The vast, flat, northern reaches of Eox are known as Lacustria Hollow, the basin of what was once the arctic Lacustria Sea. Though no major settlements exist here, the area is littered with the wrecked remains of airships, diving spheres, sailing vessels, submarines, and underwater cities from the time when it was a thriving ocean beneath an eternal ice pack. What appear to be centuries of experimental ships, shattered strongholds, submerged ports, and wrecks suggest that before the planet was devastated, the Lacustria Sea was extremely active and saw trade, naval battles, eldritch wars, and even attempts to settle the seafloor.”

From both an archaeological and also a cosmic horror point of view, Eox is fascinating. They wiped themselves out and literally turned their entire planet undead, but before that, they were apparently already having Cthulhu-esque exploration and wars and attempted submarine colonisation efforts in the icy seas beneath their polar ice caps. There’s a ghostly city mentioned later on called Grim Reach out here that appears to be a pre-cataclysm city at the bottom of this sea, but that isn’t built as an underwater city, but an open air one, so what the hell happened up here?

From the gas giant of Liavara, one of my favourite planets in this system … actually, there’s a couple of things from Liavara, I love this place, so a small sampling:

“The only true settlement on Liavara is the floating city of Roselight, a series of transparent aluminum and polycarbonate domes atop a mechanical thruster platform, built almost exclusively as a carefully managed gas-mining outpost. […] Although it exists solely for Liavara’s tightly controlled gas-mining industry, Roselight is a surprisingly beautiful city—a floating platform of steel and polycarbon capped with transparent aluminum domes of varying sizes that catch the light filtering through Liavara’s peach-colored clouds to shimmer like giant soap bubbles. The tight restrictions on the city result in an environment not dissimilar from a space station, as everything in the city, including air and water, must be recycled.”

“Deep Station. The depths of a gas giant are a fascinating subject for researchers, and this research facility, complete with a tiny shrine to Yaraesa, floats at a depth where the pressure is too intense for most structures to retain integrity. Deep Station was built with a sturdier infrastructure than most vessels transporting staff and supplies to and from the station, so while the station could go deeper into Liavara’s atmosphere, it would then be unable to receive support. The pressure and electromagnetic fields at such depths usually wreak havoc with standard communications systems, but recently transmissions from Deep Station have stopped altogether. Colleagues at Deep Station’s partner institutions would deeply love to find a starship crew with a ship hardy enough to brave the gas giant’s depths to investigate.”

“Old Hulk. Before Roselight was established, gas mining on Liavara was conducted from a scrappy mechanical platform built sometime during the Gap. It had already failed by the time history resumed, abandoned and left to deteriorate within the planet’s depths. Its buoyancy engines, however, retain at least some level of functionality, and the platform bobs between the upper and lower layers of the planet’s atmosphere. This erratic elevation means that sometimes the derelict structure “surfaces” from the clouds below, like the corpse of a mechanical whale, floating for a few hours or days before sinking back into the unbearable pressure of the planet’s depths.”

While the moons of Liavara are fascinating, it’s the installations and cities within the atmosphere of the gas giant itself that fascinate me. Possibly you can blame Lando Calrissian and Cloud City from Star Wars, but there’s just something about the imagery of a gas giant and the flying/floating cities within it. It’s a weird combination of sky and ocean, of clouds and storms and massive winds, but also crush depths, canned air, and resource management. Deep Station being lost to the depths, the ragged ghost of the Old Hulk rising periodically like a shipwreck, the Flying Dutchman, while Roselight shimmers like a soap bubble and bristles with port-slash-industrial city concerns. Liavara is such a fantastic picture of a planet.

From the incredibly turbulent skies of the gas giant Bretheda:

“Eyes of the Ancients. For ages, three cyclones of epic proportions have churned in a symbiotic maelstrom in the southern hemisphere of Bretheda’s turbulent atmosphere. Mentions of these storms appear in records dating long before the Gap, even among societies with only the most basic of telescopic technology, and the violence of each storm is enough to tear apart even the sturdiest of vessels. Yet satellite imagery shows an apparently calm center cradled between the three, with faint signals suggesting that there might be some kind of settlement or structure nestled within the clouds here. Worshipers of Triune, citing the trifold nature of both their deity and the storms, insist that the structure must be a shrine to their deity, while others point to the inscrutable nature of the signal as fitting for a site holy to Ibra. More skeptical voices dismiss both claims as far less likely than the structure being nothing more than a remnant of a starship caught in the storms and eventually swept to the central area— though for a ship to have survived the crushing power of the Eyes would require an extraordinary quality of construction, likely beyond that currently seen in the Pact Worlds. Regardless of which theory, if any, is correct, no pilots have yet managed to navigate the Eyes or succeed at a direct descent from orbit into the center.”

You know in Event Horizon, that ominous first shot of the ship herself hanging above the eye of a storm in the atmosphere of Neptune? I feel like this mysterious object very much has that vibe, to the point where I wonder if it was a direct inspiration. But man, I really want to discover a survivable way down to this thing so I can poke at its mysteries (and possibly die horribly to them).

The gas giants in this system are so fun. And, again, it is probably noticeable that I grew up on the likes of Alien and Event Horizon. And Star Trek, you’d think there’d be more influence from that, but I just … I like cosmic horror and I like blue collar science fiction. I like transport systems and unions and logistics and air recycling systems, and I also like mysterious objects hanging in impassible planetary storms and evidence of Lovecraftian wars beneath the vanished seas of a death world.

This is such a good setting. Such a good setting. I love the worldbuilding so much.

#starfinder #pact worlds #setting #lore #science fiction #horror #worldbuilding #this is such a cool setting

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freetheshit-outofyou · 10 months

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Must be Thanksgiving, the one day everyone wants to stick up for Natives. And the one day in a string of many days that those mouth breathers are wrong. Folks, as a Native I have deep feelings about how Natives are treated, how reservations are run and how the U.S. "Manages" Natives but I don't hold the Found Fathers responsible for the butt fucking Natives have taken for most of their history. Homo habilis comes into the fossil record about 2.4 million years ago in Africa. Like most "homo's" until about 12,000 years ago they were nomadic. That's right for about 2.3 Million years and some change most of the planet was nomadic not static as we are now. Boys and Girls, an unpopular fact is about to hit you.... ALL lands today belonged to someone else for the bulk of the planets history. Our counties, our boarders, our governments are a VERY new thing in the history of humans. FACT. I'm not saying that our planetary system is bad and we shouldn't have boarders, countries and governments, nationalities and the like, I prefer them to moving all the time. I'm just saying it's newish to the history of humans. Natives, were behind the technological power curve of the time when they met Europeans, not much has changed in the last 500 years either. By the time Europeans started establishing hard settlements in North America they had hundreds of years of governments and negotiations, taking North America and South America from the indigenous peoples was like taking money out of a bank guarded by a toddler. We were not on the same level as the Europeans, hell not even on the same level as the Vikings when they established a settlement in 980. Failure to evolve, failure to grow as a people doomed the Native populations just like it has done to every group who evolved slower than those around them.

#me

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reasonandempathy · 11 months

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"Palestinians shouldn't have voted for Hamas"/"Palestinians all support Hamas/terrorism"

I'm not really expecting anyone who will find this to uncritically and unironically endorse the quoted arguments above, but you should know, everyone should know, exactly how bullshit it is, and it's really easy to demonstrate. I'll give you a few ways.

First, the last election in the West Bank was in 2006, which is when Hamas was put into power. Hamas did not get a majority of the vote. They have a parliamentary system, so they ended up being able to secure a majority with other parties in the West Bank, but the actual vote totals were:

Second, the legal voting age in that election was 18. That would mean that, by definition, anyone who voted in that 2006 election would need to be 35 years old now. How much of the Palestinian population is 35?

Turns out, more than two-thirds of Palestinians weren't even able to vote in that election. Not "could vote but didn't," or "voted for Hamas but regretted it." I would've gotten an exact number, but for some reason statistics are hard to get at the granular level there. Of the exact numbers I have, 64.2% of Palestinians are 25 or less with the bulk of the 26-54 demographic being under 35, combining the data. It's pretty reasonable to think that a full 3/4ths of Palestinians couldn't even vote in that election.

Third, Hamas and its actions don't even have popular support in polling.

While the majority of Gazans (65%) did think it likely that there would be “a large military conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza” this year, a similar percentage (62%) supported Hamas maintaining a ceasefire with Israel. Moreover, half (50%) agreed with the following proposal: “Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.” Moreover, across the region, Hamas has lost popularity over time among many Arab publics. This decline in popularity may have been one of the motivating factors behind the group’s decision to attack.

The majority of Gazans have wanted the PA to replace/supplant hamas for years.

With there being more popular support for the social democratic Fatah than Hamas

Overall, 57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas—along with similar percentages of Palestinians in the West Bank (52%) and East Jerusalem (64%)—though Gazans who express this opinion of Hamas are fewer than the number of Gazans who have a positive view of Fatah (64%).

#gaza #israel #palestinian #hamas #politics #genocide #original content #democracy #news

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vlad-theimplier · 19 days

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WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

In which Jensen is privileged to carry Pritchard's voice in his ear through the Palisade Property Bank. For more Pritchard, visit https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

“Banker’s hours” were a foreign concept to the Palisade Property Bank. In early evening, the lobby still bustled with account holders and staff. Then again, Jensen supposed, the VIP treatment included round-the-clock access for customers unused to being told no, flying into Prague from time zones the world over.

He made some inquiries, inventing a family heirloom that unscrupulous relatives had tried to pinch while the estate ground slowly through probate, and asked to look around at the secure vaults. They let him wander: the vaults were guarded by Tarvos guards and automated defenses alike, so a sightseer would be hard-pressed to make serious trouble.

A normal sightseer, at least. As Jensen made appropriate polite impressed noises over the physical security, he got a call.

“Jensen. You do like to keep things interesting, don’t you.”

“Wouldn’t want you getting rusty, Pritchard.”

“No fear. The above-ground floors were easy, all public record. The vaults, though, took some digging. I had to break into the outskirts of their security system anyway, so you’ll see on your HUD where they’ve marked out shoot-on-sight areas. Hopefully those are signed as well.”

He checked—a dashed red line of warning ran along the floor in front of the security office and across the lower lobby. “They say ‘Restricted Access.’”

“Well, they mean ‘We have carte blanche from the Czech government to murder you if you come in here.’”

“Noted.” He hadn’t even worn his armor. If he was spotted in the bank, he was sunk anyway. The dermal would have to serve, in a pinch. “Anything you can do about the countermeasures?”

“Afraid not. They’re all on an internal network air-gapped from everything else—I can’t even see them. You’re on your own from here.”

It was no more than he’d expected, although it made for a hell of a challenge. Even with his cloak, the frontal approach was right out. A laser grid on the stairs slowed him not at all, but the whole floor was scrutinized by a web of intellicam-linked turrets positioned with a care that filled him with grudging respect for the Tarvos security team. No slowly-panning cams with blind spots underneath for Palisade: they’d set two turrets looking down each length of the catwalks that joined the office spaces, one from each direction. Every blind spot was thus covered by two other cameras, and the walls were built sheer and smooth, with no alcoves to hide in and recharge. He’d lose cloak power before he hacked through a door and made it to cover again, unless he ran fast enough for the patrolling Tarvos team to hear him. Hell, these guys were good enough they might have set the cameras to cue on door motion, too.

But no one thought of everything. Smart vision let him identify the security terminal in the executive office, just at the limits of the millimeter-wave radar’s range, and a vent grille in the wall across from it. Suspiciously close to where the elevator let out, in fact. He backtracked down the stairs to the lobby and crossed to the ground floor elevator door.

Another sweep with smart vision revealed an access grille hidden behind a vending machine. Jensen looked around, saw no one nearby, and hefted the garish bulk of the vending machine carefully in his overpowered arms. Just an inch off the ground, and a little to the side, and down—with a shockingly loud crunch and jangle of cans.

A Tarvos guard stuck his head around the corner and asked in a boarding-school British accent whether everything was all right.

“Sure,” Jensen improvised frantically. “It was just sticking.” He waved his wallet past the RFID reader and jabbed a key at random. The soda fell into the slot with betraying promptness. The Tarvos guard gave him a dubious look.

Jensen held up the soda. “See? It’s, uh, lemon-lime. I wanted… orange. I thought maybe the chute was blocked or something.”

“Well… okay,” said the guard. “Just be careful. I used to work with a guy, he almost got crushed by one while he was trying to get a candy bar loose. Wouldn’t want that to happen to you.”

“Be real tragic, yeah. Good advice. I’m gonna make do with this.”

The guard nodded and walked away. Jensen pocketed the soda and slipped inside the vent feet-first, pulling a trash can in front of the opening before he closed the grille.

#deus ex #wip wednesday #adam jensen #francis pritchard

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dailyanarchistposts · 4 months

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G.1.4 Why is the social context important in evaluating Individualist Anarchism?

When reading the work of anarchists like Tucker and Warren, we must remember the social context of their ideas, namely the transformation of America from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist society. The individualist anarchists, like other socialists and reformers, viewed with horror the rise of capitalism and its imposition on an unsuspecting American population, supported and encouraged by state action (in the form of protection of private property in land, restricting money issuing to state approved banks using specie, government orders supporting capitalist industry, tariffs, suppression of unions and strikes, and so on). In other words, the individualist anarchists were a response to the social conditions and changes being inflicted on their country by a process of “primitive accumulation” (see section F.8).

The non-capitalist nature of the early USA can be seen from the early dominance of self-employment (artisan and peasant production). At the beginning of the 19th century, around 80% of the working (non-slave) male population were self-employed. The great majority of Americans during this time were farmers working their own land, primarily for their own needs. Most of the rest were self-employed artisans, merchants, traders, and professionals. Other classes — employees (wage workers) and employers (capitalists) in the North, slaves and planters in the South — were relatively small. The great majority of Americans were independent and free from anybody’s command — they owned and controlled their means of production. Thus early America was, essentially, a pre-capitalist society. However, by 1880, the year before Tucker started Liberty, the number of self-employed had fallen to approximately 33% of the working population. Now it is less than 10%. [Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, p. 59] As the US Census described in 1900, until about 1850 “the bulk of general manufacturing done in the United States was carried on in the shop and the household, by the labour of the family or individual proprietors, with apprentice assistants, as contrasted with the present system of factory labour, compensated by wages, and assisted by power.” [quoted by Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, Common Sense for Hard Times, p. 35] Thus the post-civil war period saw “the factory system become general. This led to a large increase in the class of unskilled and semi-skilled labour with inferior bargaining power. Population shifted from the country to the city … It was this milieu that the anarchism of Warren-Proudhon wandered.” [Eunice Minette Schuster, Native American Anarchism, pp. 136–7]

It is only in this context that we can understand individualist anarchism, namely as a revolt against the destruction of working-class independence and the growth of capitalism, accompanied by the growth of two opposing classes, capitalists and proletarians. This transformation of society by the rise of capitalism explains the development of both schools of anarchism, social and individualist. “American anarchism,” Frank H. Brooks argues, “like its European counterpart, is best seen as a nineteenth century development, an ideology that, like socialism generally, responded to the growth of industrial capitalism, republican government, and nationalism. Although this is clearest in the more collectivistic anarchist theories and movements of the late nineteenth century (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, communist anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism), it also helps to explain anarchists of early- to mid-century such as Proudhon, Stirner and, in America, Warren. For all of these theorists, a primary concern was the ‘labour problem’ — the increasing dependence and immiseration of manual workers in industrialising economies.” [“Introduction”, The Individualist Anarchists, p. 4]

The Individualist Anarchists cannot be viewed in isolation. They were part of a wider movement seeking to stop the capitalist transformation of America. As Bowles and Ginitis note, this “process has been far from placid. Rather, it has involved extended struggles with sections of U.S. labour trying to counter and temper the effects of their reduction to the status of wage labour.” The rise of capitalism “marked the transition to control of work by nonworkers” and “with the rise of entrepreneurial capital, groups of formerly independent workers were increasingly drawn into the wage-labour system. Working people’s organisations advocated alternatives to this system; land reform, thought to allow all to become an independent producer, was a common demand. Worker co-operatives were a widespread and influential part of the labour movement as early as the 1840s … but failed because sufficient capital could not be raised.” [Op. Cit., p. 59 and p. 62] It is no coincidence that the issues raised by the Individualist Anarchists (land reform via “occupancy-and-use”, increasing the supply of money via mutual banks and so on) reflect these alternatives raised by working class people and their organisations. Little wonder Tucker argued that:

“Make capital free by organising credit on a mutual plan, and then these vacant lands will come into use … operatives will be able to buy axes and rakes and hoes, and then they will be independent of their employers, and then the labour problem will solved.” [Instead of a Book, p. 321]

Thus the Individualist Anarchists reflect the aspirations of working class people facing the transformation of an society from a pre-capitalist state into a capitalist one. Changing social conditions explain why Individualist Anarchism must be considered socialistic. As Murray Bookchin noted:

“Th[e] growing shift from artisanal to an industrial economy gave rise to a gradual but major shift in socialism itself. For the artisan, socialism meant producers’ co-operatives composed of men who worked together in small shared collectivist associations, although for master craftsmen it meant mutual aid societies that acknowledged their autonomy as private producers. For the industrial proletarian, by contrast, socialism came to mean the formation of a mass organisation that gave factory workers the collective power to expropriate a plant that no single worker could properly own. These distinctions led to two different interpretations of the ‘social question’ … The more progressive craftsmen of the nineteenth century had tried to form networks of co-operatives, based on individually or collectively owned shops, and a market knitted together by a moral agreement to sell commodities according to a ‘just price’ or the amount of labour that was necessary to produce them. Presumably such small-scale ownership and shared moral precepts would abolish exploitation and greedy profit-taking. The class-conscious proletarian … thought in terms of the complete socialisation of the means of production, including land, and even of abolishing the market as such, distributing goods according to needs rather than labour … They advocated public ownership of the means of production, whether by the state or by the working class organised in trade unions.” [The Third Revolution, vol. 2, p. 262]

So, in this evolution of socialism we can place the various brands of anarchism. Individualist anarchism is clearly a form of artisanal socialism (which reflects its American roots) while communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are forms of industrial (or proletarian) socialism (which reflects its roots in Europe). Proudhon’s mutualism bridges these extremes, advocating as it does artisan socialism for small-scale industry and agriculture and co-operative associations for large-scale industry (which reflects the state of the French economy in the 1840s to 1860s). With the changing social conditions in the US, the anarchist movement changed too, as it had in Europe. Hence the rise of communist-anarchism in addition to the more native individualist tradition and the change in Individualist Anarchism itself:

“Green emphasised more strongly the principle of association than did Josiah Warren and more so than Spooner had done. Here too Proudhon’s influence asserts itself… In principle there is essentially no difference between Warren and Proudhon. The difference between them arises from a dissimilarity of their respective environments. Proudhon lived in a country where the sub-division of labour made co-operation in social production essential, while Warren had to deal with predominantly small individual producers. For this reason Proudhon emphasised the principle of association far more than Warren and his followers did, although Warren was by no means opposed to this view.” [Rudolf Rocker, Pioneers of American Freedom, p. 108]

As noted in section A.3, Voltairine de Cleyre subscribed to a similar analysis, as does another anarchist, Peter Sabatini, more recently:

“The chronology of anarchism within the United States corresponds to what transpired in Europe and other locations. An organised anarchist movement imbued with a revolutionary collectivist, then communist, orientation came to fruition in the late 1870s. At that time, Chicago was a primary centre of anarchist activity within the USA, due in part to its large immigrant population… “The Proudhonist anarchy that Tucker represented was largely superseded in Europe by revolutionary collectivism and anarcho-communism. The same changeover occurred in the US, although mainly among subgroups of working class immigrants who were settling in urban areas. For these recent immigrants caught up in tenuous circumstances within the vortex of emerging corporate capitalism, a revolutionary anarchy had greater relevancy than go slow mutualism.” [Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy]

Murray Bookchin argued that the development of communist-anarchism “made it possible for anarchists to adapt themselves to the new working class, the industrial proletariat, … This adaptation was all the more necessary because capitalism was now transforming not only European [and American] society but the very nature of the European [and American] labour movement itself.” [Op. Cit., p. 259] In other words, there have been many schools of socialism, all influenced by the changing society around them. As Frank H. Brooks notes, “before Marxists monopolised the term, socialism, was a broad concept, as indeed Marx’s critique of the ‘unscientific’ varieties of socialism in the Communist Manifesto indicated. Thus, when Tucker claimed that the individualist anarchism advocated in the pages of Liberty was socialist, he was not engaged in obfuscation or rhetorical bravado.” [“Libertarian Socialism”, pp. 75–7, The Individualist Anarchists, p. 75]

Looking at the society in which their ideas developed (rather than ahistorically projecting modern ideas backward) we can see the socialist core of Individualist Anarchism. It was, in other words, an un-Marxian form of socialism (as was mutualism and communist-anarchism). Thus, to look at the Individualist Anarchists from the perspective of “modern socialism” (say, communist-anarchism or Marxism) means to miss the point. The social conditions which produced Individualist Anarchism were substantially different from those existing today (and those which produced communist-anarchism and Marxism) and so what was a possible solution to the “social problem” then may not be one suitable now (and, indeed, point to a different kind of socialism than that which developed later). Moreover, Europe in the 1870s was distinctly different than America (although, of course, the USA was catching up). For example, there was still vast tracks of unclaimed land (once the Native Americans had been removed, of course) available to workers. In the towns and cities, artisan production “remained important … into the 1880s” [David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labour, p. 52] Until the 1880s, the possibility of self-employment was a real one for many workers, a possibility being hindered by state action (for example, by forcing people to buy land via Homestead Acts, restricting banking to those with specie, suppressing unions and strikes and so on — see section F.8.5). Little wonder that Individualist Anarchism was considered a real solution to the problems generated by the creation of capitalism in the USA and that, by the 1880s, Communist Anarchist became the dominant form of anarchism. By that time the transformation of America was nearing completion and self-employment was no longer a real solution for the majority of workers.

This social context is essential for understanding the thought of people like Greene, Spooner and Tucker. For example, as Stephen L. Newman points out, Spooner “argues that every man ought to be his own employer, and he envisions a world of yeoman farmers and independent entrepreneurs.” [Liberalism at Wit’s End, p. 72] This sort of society was in the process of being destroyed when Spooner was writing. Needless to say, the Individualist Anarchists did not think this transformation was unstoppable and proposed, like other sections of US labour, various solutions to problems society faced. Given the commonplace awareness in the population of artisan production and its advantages in terms of liberty, it is hardly surprising that the individualist anarchists supported “free market” solutions to social problems. For, given the era, this solution implied workers’ control and the selling of the product of labour, not the labourer him/herself. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the “greatest part [of Liberty‘s readers] proves to be of the professional/intellectual class: the remainder includes independent manufacturers and merchants, artisans and skilled workers … The anarchists’ hard-core supporters were the socio-economic equivalents of Jefferson’s yeoman-farmers and craftsworkers: a freeholder-artisan-independent merchant class allied with freethinking professionals and intellectuals. These groups — in Europe as well as in America — had socio-economic independence, and through their desire to maintain and improve their relatively free positions, had also the incentive to oppose the growing encroachments of the capitalist State.” [Morgan Edwards, “Neither Bombs Nor Ballots: Liberty & the Strategy of Anarchism”, pp. 65–91, Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty, Coughlin, Hamilton and Sullivan (eds.), p. 85]

Individualist anarchism is obviously an aspect of a struggle between the system of peasant and artisan production of early America and the state encouraged system of capitalism. Indeed, their analysis of the change in American society from one of mainly independent producers into one based mainly upon wage labour has many parallels with Karl Marx’s analysis of “primitive accumulation” in the Americas and elsewhere presented in chapter 33 of Capital (“The Modern Theory of Colonization”). It is this process which Individualist Anarchism protested against, the use of the state to favour the rising capitalist class. So the social context the individualist anarchists lived in must be remembered. America at the times was a predominantly rural society and industry was not as developed as it is now wage labour would have been minimised. As Wm. Gary Kline argues:

“Committed as they were to equality in the pursuit of property, the objective for the anarchist became the construction of a society providing equal access to those things necessary for creating wealth. The goal of the anarchists who extolled mutualism and the abolition of all monopolies was, then, a society where everyone willing to work would have the tools and raw materials necessary for production in a non-exploitative system … the dominant vision of the future society … [was] underpinned by individual, self-employed workers.” [The Individualist Anarchists: A Critique of Liberalism, p. 95]

This social context helps explain why some of the individualist anarchists were indifferent to the issue of wage labour, unlike most anarchists. A limited amount of wage labour within a predominantly self-employed economy does not make a given society capitalist any more than a small amount of governmental communities within an predominantly anarchist world would make it statist. As Marx put it, in such socities “the separation of the worker from the conditions of labour and from the soil … does not yet exist, or only sporadically, or on too limited a scale … Where, amongst such curious characters, is the ‘field of abstinence’ for the capitalists? … Today’s wage-labourer is tomorrow’s independent peasant or artisan, working for himself. He vanishes from the labour-market — but not into the workhouse.” There is a “constant transformation of wage-labourers into independent producers, who work for themselves instead of for capital” and so “the degree of exploitation of the wage-labourer remain[s] indecently low.” In addition, the “wage-labourer also loses, along with the relation of dependence, the feeling of dependence on the abstemious capitalist.” [Op. Cit., pp. 935–6] Within such a social context, the anti-libertarian aspects of wage labour are minimised and so could be overlooked by otherwise sharp critics of authoritarianism as Tucker and Andrews.

Therefore Rocker was correct when he argued that Individualist Anarchism was “above all … rooted in the peculiar social conditions of America which differed fundamentally from those of Europe.” [Op. Cit., p. 155] As these conditions changed, the viability of Individualist Anarchism’s solution to the social problem decreased (as acknowledged by Tucker in 1911, for example — see section G.1.1). Individualist Anarchism, argued Morgan Edwards, “appears to have dwindled into political insignificance largely because of the erosion of its political-economic base, rather than from a simple failure of strategy. With the impetus of the Civil War, capitalism and the State had too great a head start on the centralisation of economic and political life for the anarchists to catch up. This centralisation reduced the independence of the intellectual/professional and merchant artisan group that were the mainstay of the Liberty circle.” [Op. Cit., pp. 85–6] While many of the individualist anarchists adjusted their own ideas to changing social circumstances, as can be seen by Greene’s support for co-operatives (“the principle of association”) as the only means of ending exploitation of labour by capital, the main forum of the movement (Liberty) did not consistently subscribe to this position nor did their support for union struggles play a major role in their strategy. Faced with another form of anarchism which supported both, unsurprisingly communist-anarchism replaced it as the dominant form of anarchism by the start of the 20th century in America.

If these social conditions are not taken into account then the ideas of the likes of Tucker and Spooner will be distorted beyond recognition. Similarly, by ignoring the changing nature of socialism in the face of a changing society and economy, the obvious socialistic aspects of their ideas will be lost. Ultimately, to analyse the Individualist Anarchists in an a-historic manner means to distort their ideas and ideals. Moreover, to apply those ideas in a non-artisan economy without the intention of radically transforming the socio-economic nature of that society towards one based on artisan production one would mean to create a society distinctly different than one they envisioned (see section G.3 for further discussion).

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growthgoddess · 2 years

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Looming Lamia

Lamia had always been loyal to Dr. Vander. From the moment she had met him while she was at her lowest, she knew that he was unlike any other man she had ever encountered. He had a vision for the world, a new order that would break free from the constraints of society's norms.

She had joined him without hesitation, becoming his first henchwoman and his most trusted confidante.

Together, they had pulled off some of the most audacious heists in recent memory, hitting up corrupt banks and syndicates to fund their operations.

As Dr. Vander's organization grew, so did his reputation. People began to take notice of him, and his ideology began to inspire others to join his cause as henchmen.

But with success came attention, and soon the government had taken notice of Dr. Vander's unlawful activities. They began to hire the elite soldiers of the private military Liberator Corps to hunt him down.

At first, Dr. Vander had managed to stay one step ahead of their pursuers, but as the Liberators closed in, his schemes began to fall apart.

Lamia had been with him every step of the way, even when they had been caught in a crossfire with the Liberators.

She had nearly been killed in the conflict, but she had managed to survive. And she knew that she would do anything to protect her master.

Seeing his closest supporter almost lose her life for him changed something in Dr. Vander, and he slowly become more reckless, more desperate. It was when their lair, hidden in a volcano island, was soon to be cornered that he had hatched his most audacious plan yet.

He would use all of the resources at his disposal to create a growth ray that would turn him into a giant, allowing him to take on the Liberators himself, without risking any more of his henchmen's life.

Lamia knew that it was a risky plan, but she trusted Dr. Vander and would follow him to the end.

As they worked to build the growth ray, Lamia could feel the tension in the air with her fellow teammates. She knew that this was their last ditch effort to fight back against the government, and that their lives hung in the balance.

As soon as the device was ready, they wasted no time in preparing to activate the device for their master.

But as the growth ray hummed with power and supercharged its capacitors, disaster struck.

The entire facility's power ran out, leaving them with enough energy to power the growth ray.for a single shot. However, just as Dr. Vander descended from the control room, the Liberators arrived.

Bombs went off in the ceiling and troopers rappelled down, attacking the group.

Several henchmen died fighting to protect Dr. Vander, who was desperately trying to get in place for the growth ray. Lamia did her best for fight off most of the elite troopers and leading the henchmen.

But as the chaos raged around her, Lamia was blasted to the growth ray chamber and pushed Dr. Vander aside just as he activated the device.

Lamia was bombarded with energy that was enough to power their entire lair. She grit her teeth to endure the pain. She knew the plan has changed with this new development.

When the process was over, Lamia felt something strange happening to her body. She looked at her hands which had static electricity travelling between her fingers.

But before she knew it, she was growing. Her uniform tightened around her body and she saw her gloves tear apart as she was still looking at her hands. She outgrew her clothes, her chest overdeveloped under her leotard which began to strain, and her thigh high boots burst at the seams trying to contain her muscular thighs.

Her body, which was already athletic to begin with, bulked up further with her muscles bulging with newfound strength. She also felt her thighs growing thicker than tree trunks.

Lamia saw her perspective rising higher and higher, she looked at Dr. Vander to seek his approval with this development and he validated her with a serious face and a nod.

Lamia nodded back and focused on growing, but a sudden gunshot sound resounded across the lair which broke her trance.

She looked at herself for any pain, but there was none. But she slowly turned her attention to her beloved master, Dr. Vander, and... He was standing expressionlessly looking at her with blood pooling from his chest. He choked blood but took out his gun and tried to buy her as much time to complete her transformation.

"Alpha Mike Foxtrot, tango sighte-" the soldier was unable to continue his call as Dr. Vander blasted his head off with his sonic cannon.

Lamia screamed wanted to rush to her master's side. She tried to protect Dr. Vander, but her transformation was too powerful and she had to double down in tears as her body ached alongside her heart.

Dr. Vander dragged himself to the control room where the troopers were pouring in, and he threw a thermal grenade in to decimate the enemies inside.

Lamia felt helpless in the chamber, unable to help Dr. Vander, her body stuck bent down as it began crashing through the glass walls and tearing down the machines inside. She glanced at Dr. Vander who activated the intercom to tell her:

"Lamia... Vanessa, you look glorious... and I am proud of you-" he wasn't able to finish his sentence as a flashbang grenade detonated behind him. A loud explosion deafened the poor doctor and he collapsed writhing in pain on the ground.

A woman with shades entered the room and blasted wasted no time executing Dr. Vander with a single shot to his head.

Lamia was devastated, she screamed at the top of her lungs and forced her massive body through. But it was too late, the woman left the room just as the giantess broke through the observation window.

As she held unto Dr. Vander's lifeless body against her gigantic chest, something inside of her snapped.

Lamia forced herself to grow as big as she could, kicking through the lair's cavernous hallways and pushing herself higher and higher. She will not let them escape!

Now as a giant woman that nearly filled the evil lair, Lamia exacted her revenge on the soldiers. She smashed them and kicked anybody whom her body came in contact with, each blow was powerful enough to send them flying across the room. And as she continued to grow, she mourned for the loss of her team and her beloved master.

The Liberator leader, the mysterious woman, flew above the lair in her helicopter and watched how Lamia was outgrowing the whole volcano. She activated the detonator she was holding and observed how the thermal charges set under the lair exploded to trigger the volcano to erupt all around Lamia.

Lava gushed upward from underneath Lamia's massive body. The temperature was intense and she knew that she had to get out soon to avoid getting cooked.

She was a force of nature against another. A giant among men. She stood up triumphantly over the ruined remains of the lair and crushed the entire island underfoot to seal the volcano.

And as several of the Liberator choppers flew off, she gave chase, determined to take down anyone who dared to stand in her way.

She reached out and clenched her fist, an audible crushing sound is heard as she crumpled an entire transport chopper. The others tried to gun her down while escaping from her grasps. The high caliber rapid fire hit her but to no avail.

In the end, Lamia was able to take down the backup choppers, but the leader got away to the safety of the city's defenses. She stood alone, the last of Dr. Vander's henchmen. But she was something more now, something greater. And as she looked out at the world, she knew that she would never stop fighting for what Dr. Vander believed in.

No matter the cost, she will continue his legacy.

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orangameelectronics · 21 days

Video

youtube

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janetjacksonseo · 11 months

Text

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magicwithclass · 2 months

Text

Veteran Bodyguard was printed in limited edition Alpha so that means it also has printings in beta, unlimited, and revised. Furthermore, veteran bodyguard has printings in collector's edition and international edition as well as Magic 30th anniversary edition. In this post, I will be discussing the revised edition as that is the cheapest tournament legal printing of the card. I will discuss my thoughts on these other printings at another time. It shocks me that there are any reserved list cards in limited edition that are bulk or near bulk. While revised had a much larger print run than some other reserved list sets, I still believe that these cards are undervalued. There will come a day when even revised, reserved list cards will break the bank. Currently, veteran bodyguard can be purchased for between one and two bucks. Since the card is still budget friendly than the card must be unplayable as a gamepiece, right? I do not agree with that statement. A 2/5 for five is below rate in terms of stats but the ability seems under costed. Redirecting damage is not a commonly used effect. Very few cards redirect damage in the modern era and this is a static, continous effect. Surely, mtg has printed the veteran bodyguard effect on more efficient creatures. A quick search shows that this is not exactly true. Pariah is an aura that offers this ability for three mana but you need to provide your own creature to enchant. Palisade giant and protector of the crown also offer the same effect with upside but those cards cost 6 mana so the mana cost if less efficient. Likewise, weathered bodyguard can morph on turn 3 and flip on turn 4 but that is 7 mana total across two turns. Thus, veteran bodyguard has never really been power creeped. It is so strange that they have never made a more efficient version of the bodyguard effect when the card came out 30 years ago in alpha. The card has never been considered overpowered but this effect is not in favor so I am not sure if we ever get this ability at 4 mana. Can we also note the flavor? A bodyguard jumping in front and taking the damage for you is just spot on. Giving Veteran Bodyguard indestructible is also a strong synergy. Tapping the veteran will turn off the ability which is an issue that some of the other versions of this card do not have. There are not many decks that can utilize this card or this effect. Jared carthelion true heir has a similiar theme and stuffy doll decks may have a need for this. Rune tail kitsune ascendant commander decks work perfectly with veteran bodyguard and it seems like a staple in that deck. Unfortunately, rune-tail decks are not particularly popular. I did not even know the commander existed until today but I do enjoy a flip commander. The card did spike in 2018 to 3 dollars which is still relatively low but there were some reserved list cards that remained flat. The fact that this card did shoot up means there was some interest. 9.50 was the high in 2021 and I still think that is low. Should any playable reserved list card in limited edition be under 10? I think this card is one competitively viable commander away from spiking. Just look at the effect bloomburrow has had. Seeds of innocence was also the most efficient version of an effect and it was still bulk for years even after seeing legacy sideboard play. Will this follow that same trajectory?

#magic the gathering #magic the card game #commander legends #youtube #commander #mtg #blogatog #arena #mark rosewater #reserve list #reserved list #magic the gathering arena #magic arena #magic card game #commander legends collector box #tolarian community college #rudy #alpha investments

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gokartkid · 2 years

Note

maxiel + reality tv headcanons (like love island or something equally insane hahaha) ? if you’re doing them!!

omfg love this!!!

everyone knows you go on reality dating shows for the pr, and to get your name out there, EVERYONE. max, is not actually a contestant, he's an assistant reality director - which is a fancy word for someone who tells people where to be and only kind of what to say. he really wants to break into movies and producing and directign, but this is the strongest avenue he's got, even if he hates it. daniel's a contestant, and he's banking heavily on that australian charm, which to be fair, does work. audiences love him, he says g'day, etc. max doesn't think he will get along with any of these, to him, vapid buff hot 20 somethings

him and the other writers agree that daniel is definitely going to make it in the show, so they have to start constructing a compelling storyline from him. this means max pulling him aside for heartstring pulling interviews about leaving his family in australia to pursue acting, how difficult its been not being able to see them, how he's just looking for the one. max is feeding him lines occasionally, and he puts his weird feelings down to a purely physical crush on a guy who is being paid to be hot

at one point daniel starts talking about how inauthentic he feels the process is and max rolls his eyes and says something mean about why he's here in the first place then, and daniel with a remarkable amount of insight compares their two situations - desperately fighting for a 1% chance at making it. max is mollified.

daniel gets along well with almost all the contestants, and max again, studiously ignores the weird feeling he gets when charles and daniel are flirting (they are a power couple for the audience, charles is very good at pulling off batting-eyelashes-naive-stupid and daniel pokes fun at him in a nice way.) they do set up a plotline for them to be alone on one of the dinner nights, but instead of confessing any feelings, daniel starts talking about this guy (?!!??! wrench in the plans) that he likes and charles is nodding along and being very sympathetic and nice and they hug (people do go crazy for it on twitter but definitely not in the way the production team is wanting. seeing brotp next to their couples tag means the drawing board gets scrapped)

a lot of things happen too much for five bullet points but basically daniel sabotages himself from being very much in the lead and max catches him after the main bulk of the shoot and is like what are you doing partly because it's really annoying now they had the confessions and everything planned for the next coming days and daniels messed all that up but ALSO because max knows him now, properly, and knows what the money would do for him, he's been seeing his instagram blow up more and more by the day and- he never thought he'd be rooting for anyone but he is rooting for daniel and he takes maxs hands and says listen, if i won, i'd have to date george for a bit otherwise i'd look like a complete dick, and i'd be fine with doing it but the thing is max i'd be thinking about you. and max is like ??!?!?!!??! because he isn't stupid he knows that he's had feelings for daniel for a good bulk of this process now but he just thought maybe that's how daniel was because his job WAS to flirt with the islanders and maybe he just was that way to his friends, and then they get together and at some point daniel posts max to his instagram and somebody digs up max's imdb and posts a photo of his production credits for love island and it's a bit of a moment

bonus: lewis is the production director and does on purpose schedule max to assist daniel a lot of the time. also he himself is trying to woo director of cinematography (if you can call it cinematography) seb. background plot.

#this would be fun i think..... can anyone else see the vision #5 headcanon aus #maxiel #max/daniel #mv33 #dr3 #my fic #f1 rpf #asks

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cerastes · 2 years

Note

Do you have any tips for raising Operators in Arknights?

If you're a newer player, don't focus on one character. It's tempting, maybe even muscle memory, because that works out in the majority of other mobile games: You just make a Fuckhouse Supreme and stomp the hell out of maps. It'll work in Chapter 0 because that's just a tutorial chapter and most every map is just a single point to defend with one lane or maybe two lanes and convenient tiles. It will Not Work in the rest of the game because of the way the game is designed to test different units and capabilities: The most versatile unit in the game, Thorns, can definitely carry you far mostly by himself, but even he will run into things he can't do just by himself.

A good idea? Look at the 3 stars. They make a solid, foundational team. They cover the fundamentals of Arknights. Playing with 3 stars is playing the most undiluted, pure, honest Arknights you can. I'm not saying "use 3 stars", I'm saying "Look at them": What roles do they fill? What units are available to you? What do they do? Now ramp up the rarity to make it fit with the rest of your roster, and start assembling your preferred team, covering your bases. Raise your team equally. (Of course, the 3 stars are good! I'm just saying that it's good to look at them to get an idea of what a fundamental team looks like, but if you wanna play 3 stars, go for it!)

After that, I'll say: Don't stick to the same 12 units. You get some people that complain the game is too hard for them and then they tell you it's because they only like using the same team that's always worked for them so they don't want to try anything else. You're free to do that, but you don't get to blame the game, that's on you. Don't let it be on you. The more options you have, the better you'll fare later.

Now, onto Logistics: Your top priority should be to upgrade your base as much as possible. Once you max out your base, you generate a significant amount of passive money and EXP, and it builds up like a nice and fat piggy bank. Initially, you'll do the Supply Missions for cash and EXP tapes, but eventually, you just let your base do the dirty work (you farm mats instead). That's your road plan.

I'd say it's important to raise your favorites as well, I mean, we're playing this game for a reason, right? Nothing better than clearing content with units you legitimately love, even in they aren't "good" or "meta" (you want a super powerful gamer tip? Don't pay too much attention to tier lists, and by god do not listen to Gamepress). Like, this isn't me saying "Strong pokemon, weak pokemon, that is only the selfish perception of people" yadda yadda, I'm saying that tier lists are legitimately a wack thing to have in the context of Arknights because content is so varied that a simple list cannot cover how good or bad a unit can be in every single situation, plus, every Operator is viable so long as you can make it happen, so Go For It.

Last thing, just make sure you're well rounded out to begin with. Phys damage, Arts damage, burst, bulk, healing, utility, fast-redeploy. You can go for fancy challenge comps later, but have your fundamentals set up first, and move out from there.

#arknights

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liodain · 9 months

Text

drip down the bluff

The Forsaken and the Forsworn | Bad Years era Hugo/Gabriel | 3.3k words | Explicit | !! CNTW !!

T4T, Ex Sex, Violence, Hatefucking, Power Plays, V V V V Dubcon, Watersports lets gooo

Hugo shakes his hands, droplets spattering over the lake's bright surface. He's tempted to piss directly into it, since the thought of Gabriel drinking it unawares while he refuses to let Hugo dip his cup is about as poetic as such a thing can be.

The sunlight slants low through the trees as evening draws closer, syrupy light dripping through the rustling fronds and pooling dappled shade over the beaten trail towards the oasis. It might hold a certain idyllic appeal, if Hugo cared beyond the relief that the sun is turning its incinerating gaze elsewhere, and that the encroaching evening means that Gabriel has set his campfire.

He makes his way cautiously along the trail, rapier pommel under one palm and irritation buzzing around his head in much the way that insects did not on this unearthly, gods-cursed isle. One would think that it was sizable enough for two men to coexist, if not peacefully, then with at least some small sum of privacy.

Then again, Gabriel never was much for respect, or boundaries, or decency.

It's far less charming these days.

His stomach is empty, his mouth parched, and now that wisps of smoke are rising from the far side of the island, Hugo will take his shot at the fresh water. Gods willing, he won't have to contend with his former first mate cross-armed and barring the way with his imposing bulk, nor the infuriating assertion that he's staked full claim to the oasis, so if Hugo wants to slake his thirst on more than leaf dew and what he wrings out of his coat of a morning, then tough shit.

Finders keepers, indeed.

At the lake, Hugo finds the surroundings empty of hard-headed holy terrors, and so allows himself to relax an inch. As he crouches at the bank to scoop a double palmful of the muddy-smelling water, his belt digs into his abdomen, and another pressing matter arises instead.

He's ignored it for as long as he can for a variety of reasons—foremost being the risk of Gabriel catching him literally with his pants down—but as he gulps a handful of water, cool droplets rolling over his chin and down his neck, his bladder makes its fullness known with a dull ache.

The idea amuses him the more he thinks about it, and if that's how he's going to play things then it stands to reason he should satisfy his own thirst first. He makes a ladle of his hands and brings them to his mouth—and hears a sound, almost lost in the trickle of the water through his fingers. A recalcitrant stomping in the undergrowth.

Wonderful.

"And what the hells do you think you're doing?" Gabriel emerges from the foliage with sweaty belligerence, his imposing frame backlit by the lowering sun. Dark ink writhes over his biceps as he folds his arms across his chest.

Hugo clenches his back teeth and lets out a long, tired breath. "What does it look like I'm doing."

"What it looks like is that you're helping yourself to something that don't belong to you, Commodore. But that can't be right, 'cause I'm pretty sure you forsook your thievin' ways when you turned your back on me and the rest of the fold."

Hugo rises to his feet with a scoff. "Proclaiming the oasis yours doesn't make it so."

"Anything saltwater touches belongs to Xeheia, and what's hers is mine. Ain't a place on this island that you can't hear the ocean so you're lucky I'm letting you stay on dry land at all."

Hugo opens his mouth to point out that the fresh water is clearly not touched by salt, as that is, in fact, what makes it fresh water, but spies the twitch at the corner of Gabriel's mouth and narrowly saves himself from being baited into a particularly idiotic argument.

"Whatever, I ain't here to get into a pissing contest," Gabriel says when denied the rise he was angling for, and Hugo barks a laugh before he can stop himself. "Yeah? What's so bleedin' funny?"

"Very little at present." Hugo subtly shifts his weight onto his other foot. Things have gotten somewhat urgent since he decided to relieve himself and was immediately stymied, and yet he can't resist needling Gabriel now that he's here. "I notice you were as quick on my heels as a whelp starved for scraps. You must have been watching for me."

"Yeah, I was," Gabriel says easily. "Not like there's anything better to do around here. May as well amuse myself how I can."

"Well, if you're done being entertained..." Hugo rests one hand on the hilt of his rapier and sweeps disdainfully with the other: go away.

Gabriel laughs, a low rumble of mirth precisely calibrated to make Hugo bristle, as is his decision to invade Hugo's personal space instead of leaving like a reasonable person might. His folded arms press against Hugo's chest; he leans in close enough to kiss. Waves of hair that have escaped from his braid brush Hugo's face.

"C'mon, Hugo. How do you think this is gonna go? You ain't caught me slack in the stays this time, and we both know you need to get the jump on me to stand a chance."

"Hm, how do I think this will go." Hugo drums his fingers on his sword hilt as though giving it some contemplation. "I think that your soul's so rinsed with blood and brine that whatever shred of decency you had is long since sluiced away. I think you will resort to unrepentant bloodshed before you'll afford a man enough grace to take a drink and wash his face. I think, Berthelot, that you are so consumed by the Fury's zeal that you believe such petty malice to be a righteous act. But mostly what I think is that you're only starting another gods-bedamned fight because you're that desperate to get down in the dirt with me again."

As gratifying as it is to watch Gabriel's smug grin melt into a black look, Hugo knows this is a course charted in crimson. But his only other option is retreat, and his pride demands that he tolerate neither going thirsty nor Gabriel's self-satisfied crowing.

"Bold words coming from a man who sold himself out to the navy. You scrub the sin out of your own miserable soul with your watered-down rum ration?"

"Unfortunately, no. So you should have known that things would go like this."

Hugo swiftly draws his rapier along the length of his body, belting Gabriel in the nose with the pommel. He was aiming for the underside of his jaw, but it lands with a satisfactory crunch nevertheless.

Gabriel staggers back with a bellow of pain, hands flying to his face. Blood streams from between his fingers and patters onto the slope of his chest as he glares at Hugo, wide-eyed with wrath.

"Godsdamn rotten son of a—" he manages, before Hugo charges into him shoulder-first, hitting low and hard with all his strength, moved by a blistering anger he's become fast reacquainted with on this island sojourn. Triumph flares in him as Gabriel loses his footing and lands hard in the gritty sand, even if he pulls Hugo down with him.

What follows is little more than an undignified scuffle. Hugo scrambles astride Gabriel, taking an elbow to the jaw that fills his mouth with the tang of blood. He spits while he rides out a round of enraged bucking. They roll, his sword tumbling out of reach, and for a delirious moment he's crushed under Gabriel's weight, shark's grin filling his vision and sweat dripping onto his face.

A vicious knee to his gut and a shove with the strength in his thighs rights them again. He fends off Gabriel's grasping hands as he tears at his coat and mashes his face, managing to pin one to the sandy ground. The other he restrains under his knee to a fresh chorus of fuck-yous.

"Don't worry," Hugo says, panting as he unfastens his belt buckle one-handed. If he has any hope of getting away from here unmangled, he will need a head start. "A broken nose always suited you."

He whips his belt from its loops. It brings dangerous relief and further urgency to the situation.

Gabriel eyes the belt wildly, blood trickling from his nose and soaking his beard, a hectic flush to his cheeks. A slow, insidious heat coils in Hugo's gut. Just like on the beach, the sight brings a long-steeped desire surging back, black water brimming up and only the finest tension preventing its spill.

"This again already? Didn't get enough last time you tied me up, huh?" There's a curl to Gabriel's lip, but his attempts to unseat Hugo have become noticeably half-hearted. Enough that he manages to cuff one wrist without much difficulty, pulling it tight enough that the belt leather indents Gabriel's skin. "Pathetic."

"I'm not the one who's angling for another fuck. I know you missed me, but it's a little embarrassing." Hugo lifts off Gabriel enough to turn him onto his front, shoving his head down and kneeing him in the kidney when he acts up, then twists his arms behind his back, lashing his wrists together while he thrashes and curses about it.

"Drown in an inch of piss, asshole," he spits. "I'll sheath my blade in your guts. I'll skin you alive."

"You always know just what to say." Hugo yanks the buckle tight, and satisfied that Gabriel's restrained enough for the time being, releases his white-knuckled grip and springs back.

Gabriel rolls over to glare up at him, powerful shoulders flexing as he tests his bonds. Given an hour or so he could probably loosen things enough to free himself, but his immediate response is to try and get up.

Hugo shoves him back down with a foot to the sternum.

Gabriel flashes his teeth at him, huge hairy bare chest heaving under his sole, nipple piercings glinting in the retreating daylight. "Come on then," he says. "I already know the navy didn't teach you any new tricks, so how about you just shove your Imperial-issue cunt in my face and get it over with."

Tempting as that is, there's an ache between Hugo's thighs that he can only partially put down to arousal. Abruptly he knows how this is going to go, an idea that tugs in his belly like a fish hook embedded.

If what Gabriel craves is some novel debasement, then he can have it.

Dry mouthed, he lets his unbelted breeches drop, kicks them away and plants his feet either side of Gabriel's thick waist. Gabriel's blood-smeared face is a picture of puzzlement, until Hugo shoves down his underwear and spreads himself with the v of his fingers.

Then he figures it out.

"Oh, nah, you—"

It's delicious to let go. Physical relief, and a compelling transgression as well. Hugo is no stranger to urges that both repel and allure, though the navy's gimlet eye and his own efforts at reform have left him scarce leeway to tread that line in recent years. There's wild satisfaction in the way his water arcs from between his spread legs and rains down onto Gabriel's chest, how it streams over the swell of his breasts, his chest hair slicked in the direction of the flow. It drips off his body to soak into the sandy loam around him, its acrid scent dominating the air.

The last of the sun makes it glimmer, drenching him in liquid gold, but for once Gabriel doesn't appreciate his share of the wealth.

"—filthy godsdamn dog!"

Rage and desperation and rage again, fury in him always, Gabriel sputters in wordless apoplexy. He flattens his feet to the ground and twists, halfway managing to turn over, then obviously realises that exposing his bondmark will only get it pissed on and so throws himself onto his back again, snarling.

His furious humiliation is real, but so is the dark eclipse of his eyes, the hitch of his breathing. Turned on, despite his vehement objections, but then he's used to being covered in Hugo's fluids. There was always more than blood spilled between them.

A rivulet of piss streaks down Gabriel's stomach, soaking the soft hair beneath his navel. He glowers like a thunderhead as a wet blossom spreads into his sash. In a fit of spite, Hugo drags his fingers so his stream hits the crotch of Gabriel's slops instead, drenching the loose fabric until it grows heavy and clings to the telltale jut of his cock.

Not that Gabriel has anything to say about this particular development besides blasting more vitriol in his general direction. "I'll pull out your innards and strangle you with 'em! You son of a bitch, I'll crush your bones and pick my teeth with the splinters!"

Hugo smiles thinly. "You've been failing at something of the sort for years. It's not the threat you think it is."

"Eat," Gabriel says, "shit."

He's lucky that Hugo is almost through or he'd rinse his mouth out for him. As it is, his flow's ebbed to a trickle and arousal has surged to the fore in a hot wave. He dips his fingers to his cunt lips, gathers the different kind of wetness there and idly rubs his clit, scattering the last few droplets where they may land.

Mostly over Gabriel's face. Some of it trickles down his nose and into the corner of his eye, and he attains glorious incandescence.

Hugo's ready for the vicious kick Gabriel aims at his cunt, though barely; he was more expecting him to go for a knee. Always practical in his violence, but occasionally overambitious.

"Craven-ass bastard... if you ain't got the guts to untie me, least admit you only want one thing here. Like you only ever wanted one godsdamn thing from me."

Hugo's stomach twists like a nest of eels. He should wash himself down, retrieve his breeches and make himself scarce, but he already knows he won't. It's been so long, and Gabriel is... so very Gabriel.

That he's not going to leave things here is bad enough. Even worse that he's going to prove Gabriel right, in his eyes, but it's not as though amends are on the table.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Gabriel's temper blunts as Hugo comes to a kneel above his face, bitterness cooling its glowing edge. His eyes are dark as Hugo courses his fingers through the waves of his hair, grips a handful and pulls his head back. "Same old fuckin' view."

Of course, sometimes Gabriel has the general effect of a tropical malaise, sapping Hugo's energy and making him desperate for a way to keep him quiet. He hovers over him, bearing down and pressing the heel of his hand to his lower belly, finding a last reserve in his bladder. It patters over Gabriel's bloodied chin and beard, running over his lips and his bared teeth, amber dewing him.

Hugo doesn't give him time to complain. He straddles Gabriel's mouth, cunt pulsing at the coarse scratch of his beard against his inner thighs and the sharp prick of his focus beads, the muffled indignation that vibrates against his lips. Then comes more furious bucking, as predictable as the rising tide. Hugo clenches his thighs to keep from being ousted.

"Done?" Hugo asks once he's exhausted this latest outburst. "The sooner you let me finish, the sooner you can wash yourself off. Give me your mouth or lie here reeking in the dirt, your choice."

Gabriel's breath comes in hot gusts through his nose, glaring up at him red-faced, animosity glittering in his eyes like precious gems. He growls deep in his throat, a rumble of distant thunder, but doesn't relent. Hugo yanks his hair, yanks again, yanks until angry tears bead at the corners of his eyes, until finally the heat of Gabriel's mouth engulfs him, the flat of his tongue questing along Hugo's soaked folds, heedless of why they are so wet.

It's no surrender, but it's an improvement. Hugo shifts, leaning forward to roll his hips into Gabriel's face, grinding down hard. It used to be that he'd never accept anything less than worship from his first mate, and even here, fucking in the ashes of their relationship, Gabriel's presence flensed from his soul, that hasn't changed.

Not when Gabriel still fights him for it. Not when he still yields with such animal hunger.

He ignores the collapsing emotion that strains inside his ribs, the slow crush of a wreck under a hundred fathoms of ocean water, and shifts so that Gabriel can distract him with a roll of his tongue against his clit. It makes his thighs jolt, portent to the lightning that shears down his spine when Gabriel flicks it, then widens his mouth to envelop Hugo's mound, damp curls of hair and all, and sucks fiercely. Hugo's back snaps into an arch without his say-so, sensation mounting too swiftly for him to fend it off, and with a guttural exhale he comes all at once, hot pleasure pouring through him with bone-shaking force.

Seems he has a drop more to spend; he releases in a flood over Gabriel's mouth and chin. He feels Gabriel's throat spasm as he struggles to breathe, his panting exhales bubbling against his overheated flesh, and lifts off him enough to see his shining lips, the moisture darkening his beard.

Gabriel licks his lips, wrinkles his nose, and with a defiant scowl, spits onto Hugo's cunt. Hot saliva lands on his folds and slides off them in a slow viscous drip.

It takes every ounce of his willpower for Hugo to get up instead of smothering him, or worse, grabbing his chin to delve his tongue into his vulgar mouth, but does manage to leave him snarling while he kneels at the lake.

He splashes water into his face, then cups a series of handfuls to sluice his thighs and belly, and a handful more to quench the raw heat between his legs.

"If you don't untie me, Melançon," Gabriel says, "I swear on the Fury's—"

"Swear on whatever part of her you like, it makes no odds to me." Hugo cradles a palmful of water to his mouth and drinks. "I'll think about untying you once I'm done with your precious lake. Was it worth all your posturing? Did you get what you wanted?"

"What I wanted?" Gabriel's voice is hoarse with affront. "You markin' me like I'm your godsdamned property after you gave me up... where the hells do you get off?" A vast shuddering breath. "Let me free!"

The goading was easier to deflect. Hugo lets his handful of water drop back into the lake.

The sun has pitched below the horizon. It's darker here than on the beach, thick foliage blotting out the light of the moon. Stray stars scatter the lake's surface, but their cold spark is barely enough to see by. His breeches are a ghostly crime in the sand. They cling accusingly to his skin when he pulls them on. Every inch of him feels humid with use.

He loosens Gabriel's bonds with the kind of caution he'd reserve for freeing prickly, poisonous sea life from a fishing net, and retreats to the beaten path while he struggles to get the rest of the way untied.

"I hate you!" Gabriel hurls the words after him with all the heated passion of a love confession, halfway twisted in the damp sand, the curve of his shoulder gleaming wet.

"So I hear," Hugo replies, but doesn't say it back.

#the forsaken and the forsworn #hugo melançon #gabriel berthelot #hubriel #my writing #it's always kinktober in this house #anyway don't @ me #deep queue sea

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