#source: humans are space orcs

[zeldathusiast]

Being a human is so funny because like we built civilizations, changed the fundamental way the world works and even made it to the MOON, but despite that sometimes our ancient monkey brain still sees a large, climbable-looking tree and goes "good healthy green tree might have fruit. must investigate. these footholds look strong enough to hold our weight. Must retrieve apple and share with family" and I think that's hilarious

[adaginy]

The Big Guide to Humans: Religion

Like many sapient species, humans have religion: beliefs in how their species first came to be, how they should behave, and what, if anything, to expect after death.

However, like languages, humans have thousands of these, some of which are very different from each other and some of which are nearly indistinguishable.

Broadly speaking, Terran religions can be divided 2 ways: - Number of deities: Zero, one, or several. (Most Terran religions have insisted that their god/s are not just the correct ones to worship, but also the only gods that exist. This is shifting somewhat.) - What happens at death: Nothingness, an eternal reward (or punishment) for the actions of one's soul (an animating essence of sapients), or the re-birth of the soul into another body (with difficult lives serving as punishments). Some combine these last two, with rebirth occurring until the soul is ready for its eternal reward.

"Zero deities" includes atheism, that is, believing only in what can be determined by science, with no belief in a soul. It also includes religions that don't focus on the creation of the world but rather on the purpose of one's actions.

"One deity" includes the most common and culturally powerful religions (this is including several minutely different sects of a few different religions). These have a single, all-powerful god that created the entire universe with humans as his master work. Since the discovery of life beyond Terra, sects have divided further over how to fit non-human sapients into their beliefs. Some sects actually insist their religious teachings do not allow for non-human sapients, at all, and we must be the disguised evil forces of their god's opponent. Luckily, and unsurprisingly, you will not encounter these sects' adherents outside of their home planet. Because these religions have been so widespread for so long, many people who no longer follow the beliefs, or perhaps never did, may still set their calendar by the religious holidays and possibly hold celebrations anyway. There are other, unrelated one-deity religions as well, though none remotely as widespread.

Religions featuring multiple gods have fewer practitioners (though some are still among the largest of Terran religions), but more variety. Some have powerful gods of large domains (e.g. of life or death, of oceans), some have very small gods or spirits of protecting single homes and occupying individual plant specimens, and everything in between. Some also worship deceased ancestors, either specifically by name or in a general sense.

Also common is for a human to have beliefs while not considering themselves a member of any particular codified religion. Or, they may consider themselves a member, while holding beliefs that run directly counter to those of their professed religion. For example: Some manner of belief in spirits or small gods seems common among humans*, even among those who would say they only believe in science or they believe in a single god of everything. While a person who acknowledges believing in multiple gods may make a ritualized offering to a river spirit to ask for safe water passage, for example, a person who insists they do not believe in spirits may still pour a heap of Fruity Pebbles (not fruit or rocks, a sort of breakfast candy, see diet) onto a malfunctioning machine to appease the spirit within.**

If a human's religion prevents or requires certain actions, they will tell you when it is relevant: that they need to wake up early for religious observances, that they can't join you for a meal because they are temporarily not-eating for religious reasons, etc. Some humans are very comfortable talking about their beliefs, others may consider them private. Some humans may be delighted to tell you about their religion because it encourages conversions; you are not required to convert if they ask you to and even other humans will find them rude to insist. Some humans may be curious about your beliefs, and some humans have even converted to religions of other species.

*These beliefs, mixed with human propensity toward empathy, are perhaps the source of "stabby the space roomba"-type incidents; see pets and human hive mind debate.

**This is an actual example experienced by one of our editors. The human was annoyed when the candy was removed and was further annoyed when asked why they were bothered if they did not believe the engine had a spirit.

[ladyironsky]

The aliens don't know what vine is and are too afraid to ask

Human Hailey: He doesn't deserve you. If he doesn't treat you right by now, you're gone.

Human Mary: I'm gone.

Human Hailey: Now go chop his dick off!

Alien Captain: We are not chopping off any appendages.

[cyanidesymphoniesxylophones]

Haso post but about fungi, i feel like fungi exist in any planet, but only Terrans have breached the barrier of cuisine. Cue aliens panicking as their human crewmates eat the brown stalk button happily.

Alien: WHAT ARE YOU PUTTING IN YOUR MOUTH AGAIN XY

Human Xy: ... Shiitake chips?

Alien: Those are brown stalk buttons!!?

Xy: ... YOU HAVE SHIITAKE IN YOUR HOME PLANET.

Alien: Next thing you tell me you eat the dark rootsphere.

Xy: *pulling out a truffle* YOU HAVE TRUFFLES IN YOUR HOME PLANET.

Alien, visibly concerned why Xy is eating animal food: WHY DO YOU HAVE ROOTSPHERE ON YOUR PERSON

[mumblesplash]

do you ever end up accidentally getting super attached to a trope so specific and rare you don't even know how to look for it? 'space aliens failing to understand that a human showing teeth usually isn't a threat display' isn't even an ao3 tag. finding that shit in published fiction or tv shows is next to impossible

[ecrivainsolitaire]

Open Art Guild – Testing the boundaries of collective IP ownership

Experimental release: Dr. T’chem’s Office (authorised for personal and commercial use)

I’ll try to keep this brief (you can read the full thesis statement here) but as we all know, intellectual property law is broken. It’s being exploited from every side and art workers are more vulnerable than ever to automation, copyright theft and myriad other unforeseeable forms of theft from the proletariat. We as a collective need to come together and work towards the creation of a better future.

The Open Art Guild is my proposal for the first of many steps towards a far away but necessary goal: the eradication of intellectual property as it pertains to the arts. It’s based on the open source standard and the creative commons, and the goal is for us to start creating a future where we stop thinking of artworks as private property to hoard, and start sharing the responsibilities and the benefits of their creation with the collective. And as I am proposing the idea, I should give the first step.

Which is why I am announcing the release of my short story series, Dr. T’chem’s Office, into the Open Art Guild license. This is an episodic HFY comedy series about the office hours of a sleazy yet well intentioned xenoanthropologist in charge of human integration into the crew of a spaceship, who happens to find them fascinating. You can read the first few instalments here:

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |

The basics of the license go as follows: I’m giving any artist permission to use the assets of my artwork (in this case, settings, characters, plot lines and other unique concepts) both for personal use and for commercial use, provided they commit to crediting the original artist, giving away 30% of any profit back to the hands of the collective in the breakdown the guidelines specify, and giving the same license to any works they create derivative from this series. Any artist can join the Guild by remixing existing artworks in its database or voluntarily submitting their own works. For the time being this prototype model will have to rely on the honour system, but I have outlined the basic guidelines for a platform dedicated to facilitating the Guild’s business and income redistribution.

The purpose of this experiment is to test whether this system is financially viable, what modifications it needs, and how to enforce it. It’s also a way to study what the community thinks of this model. To summarise the implications, here are the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros:

- All fan art, spin-offs, third-party merchandise and other forms of adaptation become automatically authorised and monetisable, provided both the original artist and the remixer are active members of the Guild.

- All adaptations are automatically non-exclusive and must give away the same rights as the original, diminishing the incentive for massive corporations to try and scam an artist out of their intellectual property.

- It effectively unionises freelance artists of all fields to balance out negotiations with non Guild entities.

- It encourages artists to continue their output in order to reap the benefits of the Guild, by using the redistribution system as an incentive, instead of the current status quo where artists are actively fighting market forces all by themselves in order to make enough time and resources to work on their craft.

- It provides a safety net where everyone is invested in the continuous welfare of everyone else, giving a sense of class solidarity and facilitating donations and shared resources.

- It motivates artists to invest in each other, as the growth of one means the growth of the whole Guild.

- Eventually, if the project succeeds and the proposed platform comes to exist, it would effectively create a universal basic income for all Guild members, as well as a self sustained legal fund to protect their assets from IP theft by non Guild entities.

- It will give you complete control over whether your art can be used for AI dataset training, on an opt-in, post-by-post basis, so you don’t have to wonder who might be stealing it. If the platform is created, all works whose creators have not authorised to be used for this will have data scrambling features to make sure thieves can’t use them.

Cons:

- It will require all Guild members to permanently renounce to 30% of their profit, in order to build up the funds and distribution system.

- It will have to be built entirely on trust of the collective, at least until a platform can be established, which may take weeks or may take decades depending on lots of unpredictable factors.

- Leaving the Guild will require all artworks shared with the collective to become Creative Commons; once you renounce your right to monopoly of your IP, it’s permanent, no way to go back. This is necessary in order to prevent asset flippers and other forms of IP scabs to join the Guild, extract other people’s assets and then scram.

- Due to banking regulations entirely out of our hands, some artists will have participating in the redistribution. If the platform ever becomes a reality, one of its main goals will be to remedy this immediately.

This proposal requires a high cost, but it provides an invaluable reward. If the system works, it will empower all artists to profit from their work and protect it as a collective. If it doesn’t, all that will have happened is that you will have created a lot of Creative Commons art, which financially isn’t ideal, but artistically is extremely commendable. Even in the worst case scenario, corporations will not be able to hold your art hostage with exclusivity deals. To me, the benefits vastly outweigh the costs, but I do want to emphasise: there will be costs. This is an effort to subvert the entire way art has been monetised since the 1700s. It will require a lot of work, a lot of people, and a lot of time, to make it work. But I believe it can work. If you believe it too, you are welcome to join the Open Art Guild.

Please do read the guidelines for the Guild and the guidelines for the platform before you start creating, and give me whatever feedback you have. If it’s good, if it’s lacking, if I’m overstepping legal boundaries, if you can find loopholes, anything. I tried to make it airtight but I’m not a legal expert. This is not my project, it is a project for the proletariat. Everyone should have a say on what they’re signing on for. And regardless of what you think, share it with all artists you can. This will only work if as many people as possible participate.

Doctor T’chem’s Office’s license

This work has been released under the Open Art Guild license, and has been approved for reuse and adaptation under the following conditions:

For personal, educational and archival use, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, to all Guild members and non members.

For commercial use, provided redistribution guidelines of the Guild be followed, to all active Guild members.

For commercial use to non Guild members, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, with the explicit approval of the artist and proper redistribution of profit following the guidelines of the Guild.

For non commercial dataset training of open source generative art technologies, provided the explicit consent of the artist, proper credit and redistribution of profit in its entirety to the Guild.

Shall this work be appropriated by non Guild members without proper authorisation, credit and redistribution of profit, the non Guild entity waives their right to intellectual property over any derivative works, copyrights, trademarks or patents of any sort and cedes it to the Creative Commons, under the 4.0 license, irrevocably and unconditionally, in perpetuity, throughout time and space in the known multiverse. The Guild reserves the right to withhold trade relations with any known infractors for the duration its members deem appropriate, including the reversal of any currently standing contracts and agreements.

[sparrow00]

hello fellow bipeds, does anybody else get violently suicidal when they get a chemistry question wrong?

[tanoraqui]

In Which Space Orcs are Men

[AO3] A "what if humans are space orcs" take on Dagor Dagorath. (Aka the prophecied apocalypse of Middle Earth. Scifi story accessible to non-LotR nerds!)

Elves weren't really supposed to leave Earth. That's what they told us—the Elves, that is, told people thousands of years ago, when Elves could still be found here and there. When I was born, elves were nearly as much a fairy tale as they’d been on Ancient Earth.

Elves weren't supposed to leave Earth, the Elves said in the fairy tales, and in a few old scraps of records scattered around known space. They literally weren't made for it. They could only do it if they brought Earth with them—Arda they called it, leaves or dirt, water or a rare bubble of air, perfectly preserved in a white crystal. There are tons of tales about Elves losing their lifeline jewels—their hearts, their silimirs—and roping people into epic quests to get them back before they—the Elf—faded to nothingness. 

Even the jewels weren't enough, though. That's why there are also stories about Elves who fell in love with a person or a place and stayed there until they faded, or Elves who charmed someone into following them back to Fairyland on Earth...because whatever they said, Elves didn't really live on Earth. Humans have maintained their home planet as a monitored nature reserve since like the 40th century, open only to vetted research teams and serious Human religious pilgrimages. The most confirmed accounts of Elves that exist are of their ships appearing out of nowhere, with no trace of any tech that would enable it, at random, always-changing points within 100 miles or so of Earth.

Nobody ever came back from trying to follow Elves home. Mostly Elves tried to dissuade people from trying. But there are always crazy and curious people—and Elves usually attracted those, because any Elf who left the home they were "made" for was usually crazy and curious themselves. 

Those were the stories I grew up with. There was a cave near the orphans' creche which was supposed to be haunted by a faded Elf. I didn't really believe it—like I said, the last confirmed Elf was last seen like 5,000 years ago, and not even on my planet. People have met two dozen new sentient races since then. We've discovered that reincarnation is probably real (just functionally untrackable), prompting the Pan-Religious Reform Wars. The last person to see a live Elf was still traveling via natural wormholes—they literally didn't know that you could loop pi.

.

When the Human natal sun started to turn really red, it wasn’t that big a deal at first. It’s a very important, very sad event for any species, but it happens to everyone eventually. It happened to the Hectort just after we invented interstellar flight. There were some unusual gravatic waves around Earth’s Sol, but nothing worth noting to anyone who didn’t already care for personal reasons.

Then the Elves sent us a message.

The local Parks Service picked it up, of course. I bet the Humans meant to hush it up at first—though the Centaurian government still won’t admit anything—but someone leaked it immediately on the intergalactic net. It should’ve only been famous as a joke of a hoax, but…

It was basically just a metal box with rudimentary fire-thrusters soldered on the sides. It contained two things. The first was a recording/replaying device so antiquated that the only way they got it working is that it was already playing on loop, and didn’t stop until someone disconnected it from its power source.

The message was in Ancient Bouban, which some folklorist soon announced is the latest language an Elf could know, since the last known Elf went back to “Arda.” The voice somehow sounded melodic to every species with a concept of music, from the screeching Vesarians to the deep-sea sub-sonic Thinkers, even when translated through cheap, staticky speakers. And to most species, the speaker was audibly distraught.

They said,

This is the final message from the Firstborn of Eru to the Secondborn, and everyone else. The Battle of Battles has come, and we…are losing. If there are any who remember the ancient love and loyalty which bound our peoples, if there are any heirs remaining of Thargalax the Magnificent, of Nine-Fingered Frodo, of the noble Houses of Haleth, Hador and Beor—

The speaker drew a sharp breath, there.

—by great oaths and greater friendship I bid you now to raise your swords and ride to our aid. Ride as swiftly as you can!

We will hold for another year. We will, they said determinedly. After that, it is unlikely that…

Another, shakier breath. A smile forced into a voice which would rather weep.

Fëanáro and Nienna believe there is a way to destroy the Straight Road. If we must, if it comes to it, we will do so, and trap the First Enemy here in this dying world with us. Though I don’t know about—

Hair-aristocrat! a more distant, slightly less perfectly melodious voice called, in a language so dead that they needed computers to decode it. The walls are falling, we need to go!

If you never hear from us again, and no sudden discord arises among you, you will know we succeeded, the first speaker said quickly. If otherwise…I am sorry. Either way, I bid you all only, remember us! Oh beautiful flames, remember us, as we have ever remembered y— 

There was a sudden screech of tearing metal, a defiant, musical battle-cry, and a jarring silence. Then the message restarted.

And that wasn’t even the strangest thing in the box. The strangest thing was the recorder’s power source, which was powering the whole tiny rocket mechanism as well. It was an Elf-jewel right out of a fairy tale, a fist-sized, translucent not-quite-diamond—but instead of rock or water or a much-loved scrap of plant, the only thing it held was light.

...Kind of. It isn’t normal light. It arguably isn’t light at all, as we know it—scientists now think it’s technically some sort of plasmoid aether, except it only acts like a plasmoid aether about half the time. 

It has no detectable source within the jewel. It fully illuminates whatever space it’s in, no matter how big. Its visible radiation is a frequency, the scientists say, that matches a hyper-accelerated version of what the universe must’ve sounded like in the split second after the Big Bang.

It makes people remember things, when they see it in person or sometimes even across a holo. Some remember a similar light in a strange traveler’s eyes. Others, dreamily enchanted valleys where spring never faded, or tall castles, bright swords, and stern and glorious lords and ladies. And some of us got hit with a whole lifetime of memories in one go: an identical gem on the brow of a sober forest king, friends who slipped through trees like shadows save for their merry laughter, an impossibly beautiful gold-haired maiden dancing in a glittering cavern...

(And all the pain and loss that came with them.)

And some people just remember the sight of a distant star—in another world, in another lifetime.

Reincarnation was provable but untraceable…until now. 

The Thinker ambassador on Astrolax Station 5 was the first to kick up a fuss. Most Thinkers never leave their home planet, they're too huge and aquatic. But like I said, there's always crazy and curious people. The ambassador started bellowing the second che heard the message, without even seeing the light, because, "I know him! My Wisdom! We must send aid!" That made some news, and random other people shared their own, less dramatic revelations, and soon a compilation swept the net with timestamps showing that most of them were organically independent, not just jumping on the bandwagon….

Even that might've gotten written off intergalactically. The Thinkers are big in reincarnationist circles, on account of how they claim that deep in their planetary ocean they can hear echoes of their past lives. But being mostly planet-bound means they're not really influential on a big political level. Or it would've sparked another surge of the Reform Wars, and everybody would've remembered the rock, but not the recording. Or there would’ve been a fight over this potentially infinite energy source (though that is so last giga-annum)….

But first it was shown in person to the current Director of the Admiralty of the Astral Alliance, President of the X-ee Empire and Matron of the House of S,sh, Ch’ees/i’i S,sh. I was actually there—I was Captain of her ceremonial Alliance guards, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage my career after Zanzibus. Very ceremonial, considering the X-eee have laser-proof shells and pincers and I have, what, opposable thumbs? Vestigial tusks?

I wasn’t paying attention at first, too busy being suddenly assaulted by all my own memories. So I missed the President freezing mid-step and gasping (in X-eee), “Mother.” I also missed her rising alarm call of an attempt to speak Ancient Elvish without an Elvish tongue or lips.

I sure didn’t miss her snap back to X-eee for a sharp call to attention, and everything that followed: the call to arms! The rousing of the Alliance! A tour of the galaxy, to find anyone and everyone else in whom the Light could awaken ancient memories! And for the love of X'eeh, why had nobody figured out how to get back to Fairyland with this thing yet, and every warship in the quadrant?!

If I believed in the One Behind, or in any other creator god or gods—I'm not saying I do, but if I did, if there really is something out there all-powerful and all-kind—then it'd be because out of every soul in the entire universe, the probably one in the best position to act on the Elves' message turned out to have, from a past life, two parents and a much-loved twin still in Fairyland. Like, that's insane, right?

I stayed with the Director's ceremonial guards for the whole tour, actually more than ceremonial for once—it was the weirdest mission of my life, and I've been on a lot of weird missions. Or supposedly routine missions that got weird (and usually disastrous). My friends joke that I'm cursed. S,sh requisitioned an Inquiry-class ship, so the science boffins could study the Light and jewel along the way, and we started wormholing at weft speed, hitting a new planet every week. Sometimes every day. In each major spaceport and ground-city, S,sh stood with the jewel on the highest available point and gave a recruitment speech for going to save the Elves and fight the oldest enemy of all reality. 

Honestly, it seemed a little redundant? The Astral Alliance was made for this sort of rescue mission (and for escorting trade convoys). But I was...if not happy, then sure as hell more self-certain with my ancient memories restored, and most people who joined up seemed to agree. It was mostly people who remembered, when exposed to the Light, who joined—so before long, we had a whole tag-along trail of mostly civilian ships, trying to get up to Alliance Fleet standard on the road in less than a year.

Three different religious sects tried to kill S,sh for "profaning the mysteries." Five others tried to steal the jewel because we were apparently appropriating a holy object. The boffins announced that, bar the can't-prove-a-negative possibility, the evidently sourceless Light should be counted as an infinite energy source, and at least seven different groups, ruthless financiers and sustainability idealists, immediately tried to steal it for that. And I still don't know what the rival thief-queens of Likkiliani were about, except that I got tied up upside-down from a palmdar tree for two hours trying to stop one, the other paid me 700 cron then threw me off a cliff, and in the end they recognized each other from past lives and just made out on worldwide live-holo before joining our growing fleet. 

It turned out they were the Director's past life's great-grandparents, and a Canid pop princess was her niece. The Thinker ambassador was some sort of ancestor, too. Crazy extended family. 

Most people who remember just remember the sight of a star in the sky. A buddy of mine from Fleet Academy remembered looking up at it as a Human sailor. The historians—and you’d better bet we picked up some Earther historians on this mission as well!—say this jewel or one like it was probably astrologically conflated with the planet Venus by early Humans.

(The more time I spent around the jewel, the Silmaril, the more I remembered, of my first life and more. Lifetime after lifetime with bad luck dogging my steps, killing loved ones in my arms, destroying cities I was supposed to save… One restless, haunted night, I met a Rigilic in the cafeteria who’d been awake with some of the same nightmares, who’d been my dead older sister once.)

The tour was cut short when word came from the Earth system that there was a black hole growing in the center of their reddening sun. 

No, the sun wasn’t compressing into a black hole millennia ahead of schedule—one had just spontaneously manifested within it, like it’d teleported in. No, not literally—that was impossible. We were pretty sure. No, the sun wasn’t falling into it…somehow. Yet. The black hole was only 17 quectometers wide, but it was growing at an erratic but unceasing rate. If their best estimation of the pattern held, it would consume the sun 2 months before the Elves’ deadline, and the Earth 4 to 950 minutes later.

We pulled back to Earth—well, to the dwarf planet Eros, on the edges of Earth’s star system. That’s where the nearest shipyard of any note was, and we were gathering the whole Astral Alliance. This is exactly the sort of thing the Alliance is for. 

I was released back to ship duty. Zanzibus was still a black mark on my record, as was Jorab, and really everything on the AAS Endeavor…and that thing in third year of Fleet Academy… But no matter how bad my curse, I was an experienced captain and one of the best pilots in the Alliance. For this, we needed all the best.

The boffins had pretty quickly mastered limited manipulation of the Light, using modified aetheric resonators, and every day they came up with something new for us to test. They focused the Light into a laser cannon like no one has seen before. They laced it through plasma shields until a fully shielded ship glowed like a distant star. They managed to nearly replicate the Silmaril’s crystalline structure, so they could make “copies” that shone like the original for first a few hours; then, with refinement, a full week…

The one thing they couldn’t pin down with any real confidence was how to get to Fairyland. The frequency of the Light resonated with large bodies of Earther saltwater in a particular way, and models suggested that if the Light source moved horizontally along the water within a certain range of distance and velocity, the resonance would create a wormhole-like ripple in space—but wormhole-like, was the key word, and models suggested. The closest anyone had seen to that spatial distortion was in a logbook of dubious veracity from the Delta Quadrant, four hundred years ago. Alteia, my Academy buddy who’d been a Human sailor, took the Silmaril in an M-wing on a series of highly monitored test flights above the Atlantic Ocean, and space did repeatedly start to hollow in front of bom—so bo had to stop every time, rather than risk vanishing with our single, maybe-one-way ticket.

Then Earth’s moon stopped shining in the sky. Its albedo just dropped nearly to zero, from one night to the next. There was nothing wrong that anyone could figure out—nothing with the orbit, nothing with the surface rock, nothing with the artificial atmosphere. Inhabitants reported feeling colder by several degrees, but no measuring equipment recorded anything.

The black hole slightly off-center in the middle of Sol was now 844.9 zeptometers, and growing more steadily.

We didn’t have time to keep testing. We needed to raise our swords and make our ride, even if we only got one shot at it.

I was given command, for seniority, skill, and because I was the one who managed to talk S,sh out of leading the fleet herself. (If my lives had taught me anything, it was the importance of having someone, anyone, ready to be emergency backup.) Ironically, I was back on the Endeavor, with most of my old crew—though we got permission to rename the ship, in honor of the mission. A lot of people did. Alteia was now commanding the AAS Elendil on my right flank, star-friend in Ancient Elvish. That Canid pop princess had taken over a hospital ship and renamed it Rivendell. An Earth Park Ranger, of all things, remembered being my dad—briefly—and he was leading the Rangers plus my Rigilic drinking buddy on the EPSS Elfsheen. 

We weren’t sure if any ship but the one with the Silmaril would get through. The fleet numbered in the hundreds in battleships alone, not counting scouts and scuttlers. Twelve races had sent ships on top of their typical Alliance Fleet tithe, and S,sh had brought about half the full force of the X-ee Empire. We all just locked tractor beams and hoped. 

I was piloting as well as captaining, with the Silmaril between my forehorns. It was held in place by about a dozen wires and other connectors to the ship, like an old-timey pilot’s headset. We took off in orbit around Earth, as close as possible to the surface—not very close, in warships of Class S and higher, but within range of the oceanic resonance. A Likkilianian thief-queen stood at my shoulder, ready to advise if anything “Musical” started to happen.

Think about what you’re trying to get to, and why, the boffins had advised, so I did—bright-eyed kings and dancing maidens; lost friends, families, cities, planets and all. The jewel got warmer against my skin and shone brighter with every pulse of the engine, brighter than we should’ve been able to see through.

The silver-gold Light twisted and diffused as space did around us. But there was no familiar rippling wormhole boundary—instead, spacetime thinned to a curtain like driving rain, like Vesarian silver-glass.

A ghost appeared next to me. She looked like the oldest, grumpiest writing teacher at the crèche, though I knew that was only in my head.

“There you are,” she said, impatient and relieved like I’d been hiding in the sandbox again, rather than coming to class on time. Her sewing scissors went snip snip snip as she darted them around my body—and a chain on my soul faded into guiding threads.

Before she’d even disappeared again, I punched the engine and blasted through the silver-glass curtain.

Fairy tales said there’d be a peerlessly beautiful land on the other side, green with eternal spring, full of endless light and laughter. They said there’d be sunlit shores and shimmering waves, with welcoming docks for sea-ships, sky-ships and space-ships all…

We flew into the worst battlefield I’d ever seen, in any lifetime. It was more desperately vicious than Jerusalem V at the height of the Reform Wars, more ruined than Glaurung’s wake, more desolate than Zanzibus after the nuclears fell.

Either a massive supercontinent or a small moon had been shattered, leaving nothing but a roiling debris field. The brand-new meteoroids ranged from pebbles to rocks the size of a small space station, and included space-frozen corpses, forests, and what might have once been city blocks.

I gave the helm back to my Pilot Officer—zer had, I can admit, slightly better reflexes for dodging debris—and focused on captaining.

Most of the life signs were clinging to the larger rocks. There shouldn’t have been atmosphere for them, but walls of thunderstorm wrapped around every shard with even a single life sign—wind and water desperately hand in hand to safeguard the last of the Elves. The only thing visible through the impossible storms was the Light of a second Silmaril, on a meteoroid shaped like half a broken eggshell.

A corpse lay at the epicenter of the explosion—what might’ve been a corpse, if it wasn’t also shattered. The broken pieces of a massive stone humanoid, taller than my ship if it’d stood beside her, still bleeding lava so hot that it burned even in frozen space. Another titan knelt at the shards of its head, a figure of towering bark and leaves, wailing with grief even worse than the end of the world. 

A slimmer tree-woman stood with one hand on her shoulder, comforting, and the other wielding a skyscraper-sized club spiked with incandescent wildflowers. Guarding her sister’s heartbreak, she fended off a swarm of bat-sized monsters with wings of darkness and whips of flame. 

Bat-sized relative to the gods of Elves and ancient Humans. About the size of an M-wing, in flight.

Countless more of the bat-things flung themselves at the storm-bubbles, like carnivores chasing the prey hidden inside. They were fended off by an equal army of creatures with wings of light and swords of lightning, led by a towering figure who seemed to dance from one bloody battle to the next.

The biggest battle by far was the farthest away, over where the sun had been. In this dimension of stories over science, Sol was another woman-shape, smaller than the others but burning just as brightly as her star. Also just as blood-red. The light was centered on a fist she kept clenched at her chest, and instead of containing the black hole, the unseeable thing that it was here surrounded her, striking at her with a thousand hungry jaws and grasping legs, and she had only a one-handed whip of a solar flare to fend it off—

But she didn’t fight alone. A warrior tore at the Darkness’s spidery limbs with his fists, image on the cameras flickering impossibly between every hero I’d ever heard of. A snarling figure bit at it with jagged teeth, gored it with horns, shredded it with claws and talons, and generally made every ancient prey-instinct in me scream. And a queen with a crown of stars, a shield like the night sky and a sword like a streaking comet, stood dauntlessly at the sun-holder’s side. 

With all that, and with the speed of even her most exhausted strikes, I thought the sun-holder could probably have gotten away if she’d tried. But I knew how a person fought when they weren’t willing to leave a friend, and a smaller, silver figure lay at her feet, unmoving and drained of light.

But even the battle for the sun wasn’t what grabbed my eye. No—all my attention, all my guiding threads of fate and the quick temper that always used to get me in trouble, before (and sometimes after) I learned to leash it in an Alliance uniform— All of that took me straight to the fight happening orthogonal to the stone giant’s corpse.

It was another one-versus-many. Morgoth, the First Enemy of Elves and Men— Master of Lies, Maker of Chains, Sonofabitch Curser of Bloodlines—towered over even his fellow gods. His shape changed constantly, sickeningly, but it was always black-armored with eyes like dying stars that hated you personally. His maul dripped with lava and every other kind of blood.

He fought against three great gray figures who moved as one. The tallest wielded a star-studded scythe with swift, efficient strokes, and wore the dark gray of corpse-shrouds. The shortest shimmered with more colors than even a Stamotapadon could dream of, and his weapon shifted likewise. The third was the clear, clean gray of skies after rain or tears run dry, and fought with only a shield—and hit harder with it than either of her brothers.

Around their heads darted the only Elves on the battlefield, in small fliers more like sea-ships than aircraft. But they moved fluidly, pestering the Dark Lord like flies, pricking his skin and threatening his burning eyes.

Until Morgoth swung his maul with a roar of fury that traveled even though soundless space. My ship and heart both shuddered. The gray gods all staggered back, and the Elves fell from the no-longer-sky—all but their leader, more fire than flesh, who wore the third Silmaril. Morgoth caught him in one massive black hand and with sharp claws plucked the jewel away, as easily as a ripe berry from a tree—

“All power to fore-cannon and fire,” I ordered—and the jewel on my brow shone bright again as several stored months’ worth of infinite Silmaril-Light slammed into Morgoth’s chest with all the force that the best scientists in the Astral Alliance could engineer. 

He stumbled. He dropped both the jewel and the elf-king (who’d been trying to bite him). The Lady of Mercy tossed her shield to catch them, staying low and out of sight—though she needn’t have bothered. The so-called “Lord of All” had already found his next enemy.

“All ships, move forward and join shields,” I ordered, and met his burning stare though the viewscreen. “Then broadcast me on all external frequencies.”

The wires on my forehead shimmered as we shifted Light-flow to the shields—and to my right, so did the Elendil, and to my left, the Cosmian Blade, and all around us the Minas Tirith, the Elfsheen, the Muse, the Rivendell, the Heart of Zanzi, the Longbottom Leaf… They were still soaring out of the silvery distortion behind me, tractor- and Silmaril-towed: sleek Rigilic eels-of-prey and Centaurian cruisers full of Humans eager to fight for their homeworld, Betan mine-ships and Canid X-M-wings and my own Hectoan starlighters, a full third of the X-ee navy with their X-eee–shaped six-engine dreadnoughts, and hundreds more. 

“This is Captain Pel Cinia, once Túrin Turambar, of the Astral Alliance ship Gurthang,” I said. My words were broadcast from every ship on every frequency in every language that the people of Arda might know, as the Fleet assembled from forty-plus different worlds flew into position. Our Light-infused shields blazed and locked together, until we formed a seamless wall right in the Enemy’s face, with the Elves and their other allies safely behind us.

I’ve never felt more proud to recite the most cliché line in the Fleet:

“We got your distress call. We’re here to help.”

[feliosfarkus]

just had a humans are space orcs or humans are deathworlders or whatever idea hold on

So, you know how humans are persistence predators, right? We aren't the fastest, the stealthiest, or the strongest, but we have endurance that is not topped by anything. Imagine that but space warfare. Our ships aren't the fastest, we don't have the biggest guns or the best cloaking tech or the best shields. But our engines are the most efficient in the galaxy. And we hold a fucking grudge. So, imagine some aliens try to do a hit-and-run assault on our fleet. They get some of our ships, and then they speed off. While they're refueling their ships, they see us appear out of hyperspace, and so they have to leave with their ships only half full. We don't have to refuel. They try to refuel, they see us, they leave with ships quarter full. We don't have to refuel. They are scared, we're the new kids on the block, and we have an imperial fleet running with their tail between their legs. The whole time, we're making contact with the galactic community at large, establishing new colonies, discovering new technologies, new fuel sources, and making our ships more efficient. We name our first off-planet built ship the Tortoise, like tortoise and the hare. They may be faster, stronger, smarter, but we don't stop.

[krakenartificer]

Today in "I understand why it happens but it's still frustrating"

I've been looking into topical magnesium, more commonly known as an "epsom salt bath". And, like, on the one hand, "alternative medicine" is a great source of ideas for treating medical conditions, and basically every single existing non-alternative medicine has been the result of doing some science on "alternative medicine" techniques. And on the other hand, the placebo effect is both strong and very real, and humans are terrible at understanding randomness, which is why we even invented science. You really do gotta check, you always gotta check. AND, back on the first hand, humans are eerily good at finding patterns, to the point where there probably ought to be a Humans Are Space Orcs story about it, and a lot of humans, whose conceptions of reality have been put through some pretty intensive stress testing, believe that epsom salt baths work. AND, on the second hand, we invented science, we have science, we ought to use science.

So anyway, several studies have looked into whether topical magnesium has any effect, and in 2017 someone went through and did a meta-analysis of it, and admittedly some of the studies were insufficient to draw any conclusions from them, but still, none of them showed any kind of evidence that there was enough happening here that it was worth looking into further. Since (despite our best efforts) you can't test everything, it makes sense to prioritize doing real amounts of research on things that are showing promise in the initial trials.

EXCEPT

none of those studies, nor the meta analyses, acknowledge that (quoting directly from the National Institute of Health)

Assessing magnesium status is difficult because most magnesium is inside cells or in bone. The most commonly used and readily available method for assessing magnesium status is measurement of serum magnesium concentration, even though serum levels have little correlation with total body magnesium levels or concentrations in specific tissues [https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/, accessed 2023-03-28]

All of them checked whether topical magnesium influenced the amount of magnesium in the blood. And it does not. But that result is entirely consistent with the expected result if topical magnesium is absorbed into the skin: if your soft tissues, which hold 39-49% of your magnesium, are deficient, then you would expect it to stay in the nearest tissues, and not make it to the blood.

Which is not to say that this proves epsom salt baths work: this is the same result you'd expect if they don't work at all. Which is to say, the experiment would be expected to have the same result regardless of whether the hypothesis was accurate or not, which is to say, this was bad science. It tells us absolutely nothing. And it's especially frustrating because an experiment to test the actual claim would have been quite a bit easier -- measuring range of motion and muscle pliability is much cheaper than taking blood samples. A double-blind, randomized controlled trial would have been actually quite straightforward to carry out.

All of which is to say, I'm kinda thinking about buying 100 lbs of magnesium sulfide and finding myself some test subjects

[silvereternitywrites]

Don’t let your (Human!!!) Mechanic make Mixtapes

Writing Prompt: A pirate ship boards, the human crewmate uses the coms to blast music trough the ship as a terror tactic.

Prompt Source: user fire-sword; subreddit Humans Are Space Orcs

The Captain had listened to this remix exactly once in its entirety and labeled it a terroristic weapon of mass morale destruction before locking it in a drawer.

To be honest, the human crewmate was perhaps a touch more thrilled than she strictly should have been to be given permission to actually use it.

It was horror-rock, falling into that delightful "creep" tune category with synthetic violins that wailed between high and low notes and a bass strumming heartbeat that artificially raised the pulse rate of the listening parties. Aliens... well, she'd found out aliens responded to that unconscious cue WAY more than humans did.

The fact that she knew every beat and bounce and hitch of it, well, that was where the morale destruction came in.

The pirates had boarded in a specific hallway- and they had been subtly guided to this door for a reason.

It was the maintenance crew hallway. The entire floor had holes big enough to reach through or climb through, and the human crewmate? She fit through them, being lanky, tall, and double-jointed. The ceiling had the same grates on either side of the walkway, to allow for access when the gravity was turned off, making it a catwalk surrounded by bolt holes.

The voice was soft at first- only someone who knew the song would know the words. But Human Jazz played them out perfectly to make the Pirates regret ever trying to raid this ship.

The first set of verses were about "burying" something, and every time it said "buried it" Jazz dropped uninterrupted from the ceiling to the floor. Just at the edge of vision, without touching the holes or making a sound, timing her catch of the bars below to the thump of the drum.

And once they were good and spooked, on edge...

She added her voice to the ship speakers, a roar that made the walkway vibrate under their feet for the chorus.

"RUN! AWAY! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, BEFORE THE MONSTER- MONSTER IS INSIDE! THOUGHT IT WAS DEAD! AND GONE! BUT YOU WERE SO WRONG! HASN'T BEEN SO LONG; YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU'D SEE- SEE, SEE THE DEAD WALK!"

Screaming from above and plasma lighting up the walls told her it was working.

What a shame for them- the pursuit would continue until morale improved. Her morale, or course. All that light would make this more troublesome until it cooled.

The next verse was about what had been buried coming back to bury the singer- it was time to change tactics anyway.

Now her hands reached up through the tiny holes and grates throughout the verse, grabbing and yanking on legs, tentacles, weapon barrels, whatever was in reach, heedless of the burns she was getting or the catch of nails on fabric and skin. Her fake-claw nails were just acrylics, she'd replace them after this, and some bloodstains from a ripped cuticle or two would really sell the idea that something dead and gross was trying to get at them on top of the “detached fingertips”.

As they were coming up on the second chorus, she pulled both hands back down and put them on a panel instead, directing one of the repair-bots with their dozens of arms to dance to the tune, the lyrics printed on it's glowing screen that loomed up out of the dark.

She already knew what she was going to do with the bridge- it talked about disease and parasites, so she was going to yank body parts under the grate and "bite" them with needles full of weak general anesthetics from the first aid kit. She didn't need to actually like, poison or paralyze them, the imagery from the song would make their minds do that for her.

Except-- the thunder of movement, out of sync with the music, headed back up the catwalk at an honestly dizzying speed, and suddenly it was absolutely quiet except her, the repairbot who had now started the fix the plasma damage to the walls, and the music on the ship speakers.

Poking her head up from the nearest access hole, the pirates were gone- with the exception of one, who'd been hog-tied with their own tentacles and blinded with their Captain's hat. Left as a sacrificial offering to the monster for leading their crew into a deathtrap, probably. Well, Jazz didn't want them to think they were too hasty and come back...

She bared all her teeth in the widest, meanest grin, including her sharper-than-normal canines, and whipped the pirate's hat off, the light of the repairbot's torch illuminating her from behind in only brief flashes.

"Buried what I thought would die, don't got no alibi, I buried it," she sang at the alien's horrified face, "I FUCKING BURIED IT!"

The pirate's scream was a noise she couldn't have replicated in a million years. Yeah, driving it home was a good idea.

"RUN! AWAY! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, THE MONSTER'S ALREADY INSIDE! THOUGHT IT WAS DEAD! AND GONE! BUT I WAS SO WRONG cuz it had been so long and life went on thought it was done I never thought I'd live to see THE DEAD WALK!"

‐-------------------------------------

"I still don't think you needed to render the enemy so terrified they entered an involuntary coma state," the Captain scowled at the human crewmate, who was slung sideways in her work chair. Again.

"It's not like I knew their species can even DO that, Cap! Besides, it was a bloodless battle that successfully repelled the enemy, right? And we haven't been bothered by pirates in that entire sector since!"

The Captain squinted angrily with all their eyes.

"We're a terror-tale in that sector now," they replied flatly.

"Wait, shit, did I accidentally Flying Dutchman our ship?! Aw fuck, Captain, I’m sorry."

The Captain sighed- finally, she understood the gravity of the iss--

"If I'd known that was gonna happen I'd have picked a better song! Dead Walk is kinda underground, how are other ships supposed to lean on the legend with an obscure Earth song?"

The Captain gave up and left to go drink their 400-year old heirloom spirits. They had never worried they were going to be the Onelle to finish off the 'drink in case of headache-inducing disaster' bottle but it looked more likely by the day.

Song: Dead Walk by RedHook Note: the remix featured here doesn't actually exist because I can't make it. Will update and link if that ever changes!

[fluffle-writes]

Twisted Wonderland - Alien Abduction AU

Alien AU where Yuu/Reader is a human who accidentally gets abducted by aliens when they land on earth. The human end up staying with the TWST cast for a while because the guys who accidentally yoinked them were barely able to make it past all of the galactic patrols keeping aliens away from earth (the death world) in the first place

The 'humans are space orcs' trope can be applied to this - aliens not having adrenaline or resistance to caffeine etc.

Some aliens are scared of the deathworlder human creature hanging around, some want to challenge them to a battle for glory, and some just wanna poke and prod at them to see what makes them tick (gestures wildly towards Jade and Rook)

Some of the guys (like Riddle, Epel, and Lilia) are species that are much shorter than others whereas some of the taller guys (Idia, Malleus) are larger species etc. which makes the height differences between characters more pronounced

Everyone can sort of be in the same space station for research work - the resident human helps with heavy lifting and small tasks around the station like cleaning etc. Whereas the twst cast all have more specialised areas of work.

There are seven main branches of the space station, along with a smaller group of general leaders, dedicated to different sectors within the station; Heartslabyul, Savannaclaw, Octavinelle, Scarabia, Pomefiore, Ignihyde, Diassomnia, and the Administrators.

Riddle is the head of Heartslabyul and is in charge of training newer members to investigate and explore new planets to search for useful materials and interesting flora and fauna that can be documented.

Trey and Cater are a duo who work on high-profile exploration jobs such as scouting for planets with life that can be approached.

Ace and Deuce are trainees with a penchant for trouble. They're probably the ones who accidentally landed on Earth and let a human wander onto their ship before they flew off again.

Leona is head of Savannaclaw and takes charge when it comes to defending the main space station and training the residents in his sector in both ranged combat and hand-to-hand combat. there's often at least one member of Savannaclaw accompanying Heartslabyul in excursions as protectors.

Ruggie is the most skilled marksman on the station and Leona's right hand man - he's the quickest to react to danger and man the laser cannons on the station in the event that there's a aggressive life form threatening the station.

Jack specialises in hand-to-hand combat and is higher in ranking than some of his fellow members of Savannaclaw despite being a newer recruit.

Azul is the head of Octavinelle, which acts as the main commercial face of the space station - managing the amount of cargo, where it's sold or sourced from, and managing the bookkeeping for the station. He's always precise in his work and never lets a single number out of place

Jade is Azul's right hand, standing in for him at meetings and conferences if he is unable to make it due to having other plans, or a sudden influx of work. His large stature and carnivorous ancestry makes it easy enough to intimidate business partners into working alongside the space station, preventing Azul's job from being more difficult than it needs to be.

Floyd works mostly within the station, assisting Azul in preventing any interference with the money or cargo within the station - such as investigating issues that may have revealed themselves in Azul's calculations or tracking down someone who hasn't paid back what they owe for any under-the-table 'deals' that Azul makes.

Kalim's sector, Scarabia, works closely with Octavinelle by providing a more direct face to the trade of goods - managing stores, warehouses, and stalls wherever the station decides to dock. His experience as the son of a wealthy merchant know widely across the galaxy makes him perfect for the position!

Jamil is present on the station to keep Kalim safe and on top of all of his responsibilities, meetings, and paperwork. He's the one who's kept Scarabia running so smoothly all this time - working in the background as he always does.

Vil leads the Pomefiore sector, focused on science and discovery - from learning more about newly discovered species of fauna and flora, to synthesising medicines or cosmetic products from unique properties found in resources they find. Vil manages the labs alongside an apprenticeship programme where he hand-picks promising students to train in the lab.

Rook is Vil's most trusted co-worker and the first person to have passed his rigorous training to work in the labs with him. He's particularly fascinated by creatures captured on different planets for study and re-release, with the more dangerous encounters being his favourite.

Epel is the newest recruit within the Pomefiore sector, and Vil's only current apprentice. While he dislikes being cooped up in a lab instead of being able to explore new planets or work alongside security, he is quite skilled in the sciences and thrives under Vil's tutelage.

Idia is the head of Ignihyde, the sector that manages the servers and intranet aboard the station, along with cybersecurity. His job is to make sure that the station can connect to other spacecrafts, stays safe from any hacking attempts, and keeps an eye out for potential up-fuckery in terms of digital security - protecting the money in the space station, and any sensitive information that's best kept from potentially dangerous individuals.

Ortho is an advanced robot created in Idia's likeness, who attends all in-person meetings in his stead. He is constantly connected to, and aware of, the statistic of the space station servers, intranet, and connectivity status - and will be able to not only notify his brother of any issues, but even deal with them himself if necessary.

Malleus's sector, Diassomnia, is quite odd in the sense that it has two jobs - both healing and combat. Members of the Diassomnia sector are in charge of managing the infirmary and dealing with any injuries, as well as assisting Savannaclaw against outside enemies through the use of strong fighter ships and weaponry.

Lilia is Malleus's right and and specialises in combat - often holding training sessions with any of the employees aboard the station, regardless of sector or species, on how to fight an enemy who may have infiltrated security and boarded the station.

Silver works mostly in the medical part of Diassomnia, often being found in the infirmary. While he's seen sleeping quite often, as is a quirk of his species, Silver is always quick to rouse if someone needs medical attention from him. He's also trained in rescue, able to carry injured people away from combat areas safely and swiftly.

Sebek, as the newest Diassomnia member, splits his focus evenly between both responsibilities of the sector. He's often seen training in different offensive and healing skills - aiming for mastery of both fields to try and serve Malleus as well as he possibly can.

Map of the space station from the Bottom floor (F1) to the top floor (F4) - subject to change (I'm bad at floor plans)

[the-quiet-fire-of-defiance]

Te Hōkioi, and Speculation on the Dietary Habits of the Great Eagles

He Hōkioi, i runga, he Hōkioi, i runga, hū.

(The great eagle, from above, made a booming call)

Kei te āputa koe, nā, o te rangi, e noho ana,

(In the open space, there, in the sky, it dwells)

Te hoa moenga, nō whatitiri mātakataka;

(Death's companion, with crashing thunder)

Hei aha, tērā, e tararua mārire, ona hikumaro?

(Why, then, do its tail feathers no longer split the quiet in two?)

Rua maro tonu, ona hakikau;

(Two fathoms wide, its wings;)

E huhū nei, i runga te rangi,

(It called, above in the sky)

Hōkioi, Hōkioi.

(The sound: hōkioi, hōkioi.)

- poem/chant by the great Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha

For @tolkienofcolourweek, I'm spending seven days bringing Māoritanga and mātauranga Māori to the world of Tolkien! Starting off on day 1 with: what did Manwë's Eagles eat?

Such massive animals, especially flying ones, would have required a huge caloric intake. We have little evidence about what potential prey may have existed in Beleriand and Middle Earth. The Hobbit mentions them eating sheep, and it seems likely that they would hunt other large animals, such as deer or bison. But there's nothing in our modern world that compares to or fills an ecological niche like Manwë's Eagles.

This is where I draw on Māori oral history of the largest eagles to ever live.

In English they're called Haast's Eagles, but in Māori there are several names. Probably the most well-known of the Māori names is pouakai/poukai, but my people called them hōkioi.

They were massive, weighing as much as 17.8 kg (about 39 lbs) and with wingspans as large as 3 metres (about 10ft). Their feet and claws were the size of modern day tigers, capable of punching through bone. They hunted prey more than fifteen times their own size.

(Granted, the eagles of Manwë are much larger than even the hōkioi! Still, it's similar enough for me to draw inspiration.)

[Left image: an artist's rendition of a hōkioi perched on a rock. Right image: an artist's rendition of a hōkioi attacking the neck of a giant flightless bird.]

The hōkioi's primary prey was the moa, large flightless birds similar to ostriches or emus. With no large land mammals on the islands, hōkioi were the apex predators.

Then, circa 900 CE, large mammals came to Aotearoa for the first time. They also preyed on moa, reducing the hōkioi's food supply. So perhaps it was natural that the hōkioi began to hunt these mammals as new prey.

Unfortunately, those mammals were us.

[Left image: an artist's rendition of a hōkioi attacking a Māori man who holds a spear. Right image: an artist's rendition of a child running from a hōkioi.]

Our stories of the hōkioi, or pouakai, tell of giant birds that could swoop down from the sky to kill and eat even strong warriors. They were also known to carry off small children.

I'm not saying that the eagles of Manwë ate elves or humans. (I think they were probably given firm instructions not to!) It would make sense for them to prey on orcs and other creatures of Morgoth, though. And there's one other group who we know were hunted like animals in Beleriand, due to... misunderstandings. A group who the Eagles may not have initially recognized as sentient creatures. A group who would have been an ideal size to pick up and carry off as a snack.

I'm just saying, I think there may have been multiple reasons that dwarves chose to live underground.

-

(Sources for further information about te hōkioi:

The man-killer that fell from the sky

NZ Birds: Haast's Eagle)

[aurumacadicus]

There are still a week left to read A Darker Shade of Magic, but we’re voting for our next book now so we have plenty of time to get it for the first day of reading on December eleventh! Book summaries are under the cut! Each new title is in bold for clarity.

If you’d like to join the book club, now or for the next book, feel free to send me an ask and I’ll give you the link to our Discord!

(We'll also be voting for our January book immediately after this poll ends because we're doing our first themed month: Author Debuts! Some of the choices are very new and we'll need time to source them, so we're voting on that one early!)

Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites by Joy Demorra

Captain Nathan J. Northland had no idea what to expect when he returned home to Lorehaven injured from war, but it certainly wasn’t to find himself posted on an island full of vampires. An island whose local vampire dandy lord causes Nathan to feel strange things he’d never felt before. Particularly about fangs.

When Vlad Blutstein agreed to hire Nathan as Captain of the Eyrie Guard, he hadn’t been sure what to expect either, but it certainly hadn’t been to fall in love with a disabled werewolf. However Vlad has fallen and fallen hard, and that’s the problem.

Torn by their allegiances—to family, to duty, and the age-old enmity between vampires and werewolves—the pair find themselves in a difficult situation: to love where the heart wants or to follow where expectation demands.

The situation is complicated further when a mysterious and beguiling figure known only as Lady Ursula crashes into their lives, bringing with her dark omens of death, doom, and destruction in her wake.

And a desperate plea for help neither of them can ignore.

Thrown together in uncertain times and struggling to find their place amidst the rising human empire, the unlikely trio must decide how to face the coming darkness: united as one or divided and alone. One thing is for certain, none of them will ever be the same.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it.

But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn’t so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl… Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg.

She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time.

The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success – not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won’t be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined – every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute… and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas

“Only the most powerful and honorable semidioses get chosen. I’m just Jade. I’m not a real hero.”

As each new decade begins, the Sun’s power must be replenished so that Sol can keep traveling along the sky and keep the evil Obsidian gods at bay. Ten semidioses between the ages of thirteen and eighteen are selected by Sol himself as the most worthy to compete in The Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all—they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body used to fuel the Sun Stones that will protect the people of Reino del Sol for the next ten years.

Teo, a 17-year-old Jade semidiós and the trans son of Quetzal, goddess of birds, has never worried about the Trials…or rather, he’s only worried for others. His best friend Niya—daughter of Tierra, the god of earth—is one of the strongest heroes of their generation and is much too likely to be chosen this year. He also can’t help but worry (reluctantly, and under protest) for Aurelio, a powerful Gold semidiós and Teo’s friend-turned-rival who is a shoo-in for the Trials. Teo wouldn’t mind taking Aurelio down a notch or two, but a one-in-ten chance of death is a bit too close for Teo’s taste.

But then, for the first time in over a century, Sol chooses a semidiós who isn’t a Gold. In fact, he chooses two: Xio, the 13-year-old child of Mala Suerte, god of bad luck, and…Teo. Now they must compete in five mysterious trials, against opponents who are both more powerful and better trained, for fame, glory, and their own survival.

[cyanidesymphoniesxylophones]

humans are space orcs, our stomachs.

Are literal nuclear reactors. We can eat almost anything.

Genuinely don't see why there aren't more "humans are energy sources" considering we are walking flesh mechs of radiation and electricity.

[sonicasura]

Different Universes of Energy

After the multiple times of collecting energy being a goal/plot point in various Transformers media, I couldn't help but write this. A list that involves different energy sources from different fandom universes. The ones I'll be choosing are either very plentiful or have a large variety.

Marioverse

Oh yeah. We're starting with the series that has a clusterfuck of magical items. Mario practically beats everything on this little list from how many alternate power sources any Transformer can gather. Cat Shines from Lake Lapcat, Shine Sprites of Del Defino, Power Stars to Grand Stars found across the stars and the latest Power Moons scattered all over the world.

I ain't forgetting about the spinoff games either which has their own flavor for powerful collectibles. These are also the easiest to attain since there are many ways to acquire them. You can find one out in the wild, purchase from a store(Power Moons), win through competitions, etc.

Team Autobots wouldn't have much trouble following these rules. In fact, it's probably a fun break from the usual hardships as scavenging in the midst of a war is difficult. Getting coins is easy since coin blocks are common to find and some bots such as Bumblebee would find the games fun.

The Decepticons would have to follow things by the Marioverse rules though. I ain't joking either as there are many ways for inhabitants to send them packing. Powerups especially the Mini Mushroom, Mega Mushroom, Giga Catbell and Super Star.

One little Mini 'Shroom is enough to shrink Megatron to the size of a guinea pig then shove his ass into a cage. A bloke can become a giant through the Mega Mushroom or gargantuan sphinx via Giga Catbell and yeet Starscream across the kingdom. Can't forget the Super Star's invinciblity as Decepticons drop like flies thanks to pure rainbow power.

Every bit of technology in this universe is more advanced but also sometimes mystical. There's literally a vacuum cleaner capable of sucking up ghosts, go-carts that can ignore the laws of gravity, actual magic, to even stars that can grant wishes.

There's also the kingdoms who won't take invaders too kindly either. Bowser definitely gonna declare war and he's got a wide array of technology to pack a nasty punch. The Koopa King is quite a threat when you look at the spinoffs such as the RPGs. Plus he has teamed up with Mario multiple times should the need arise.

Speaking of the plumber, he definitely get involved alongside his friends. The Mario and Luigi RPGs to even Mario + Rabbids shows he can do more than just jump. Latter series literally gave him a gun which later got upgraded to dual blasters.

Best play nice or get your ass kicked by someone no bigger than your little toe.

Knackverse

Next up is the PS4 launch title series, Knack! There are two different types of energy sources that are very very abundant: relics and sunstones. Everything technological in this universe are powered by either one or both sources.

Sunstones are crystalized sunlight that can be found about everywhere. Caves, mountains, grass plains, and even in someone's backyard. They are often used to generate electricity whether through generators, electrical plants or even lamp posts.

Now relics are a bit harder to find. These can be found underground or in ancient structures so mining might be required. Relics produce relic energy which is often used to power vehicles, generators, weapons, etc.

Everything can be obtained without messing with the locals. Although either faction might have to go through a scrapheap to see how relics are used to generate power. They definitely be a bit confused for awhile as these ancient artifacts are essentially spun around akin to a hamster wheel.

Decepticons will have some very painful retaliation if they try to steal relics and sunstones from the populace. The Crystal Wars is proof that humans here act like space orcs but also still do. Ryder and Doctor Vargas literally threw hands with goblins the size of them. The same goes for the latter.

I don't think goblins would be too pleased with otherworldly invaders taking their resources either. Advancement in technology can also prove these aren't people to mess with. Airships are more common, vehicles don't drive on tires, there are tanks that can create forcefields and fire lasers.

Ancient goblin weaponry have been rebuilt. Every one remains a force to be reckoned with. Cannot forget about the people's protector: Knack. He has fought a lot of mechanical foes in various sizes(for both parties).

Decepticons will be fighting on his turf and that's a huge disadvantage on its own. Super Sunstones to grant temporary invinciblity, the Ultimate Move which can destroy barriers/forcefields, super moves that range from solar lightsabers to even a relic tornado. Knack is a crafty motherfucker and can pummel any Cybertronian who dares disturb the peace.

I'm pretty sure a relic haymaker to the faceplate will be hard to dent out.

JNDverse

Last but not least, we have Eco from the Jak and Daxter series. The closest in comparison to Cybertron's Energon from their respective origins but also diversity. Each has different unique properties depending on the color. Their origin being from a long lost civilization/creators now cascaded in mystery.

Eco is very abundant and manifests all over the world. The main source being Eco Vents which constantly spurts it out in a gaseous form. Large liquid pools can also be found but it's highly likely that its Dark Eco, the most corruptive of all types.

Crystals are another way to gather it so mining will be required. Even various wildlife drop eco upon death but not much. There are many ways to gather the stuff without stirring a fuss.

Huge advancements in technology is very common as the most common transport are hovercraft style vehicles like zoomers. Dune buggies are utilized in the deserts with some being capable of jumping large gaps or bust down fortresses from sheer firepower. Eco can also power weaponry.

Weapons powered by this natural energy can have all sorts of abilities that depends on the color. Short range shockwaves, gravity inverters, ricocheting bullets, etc. They don't lack on firepower especially if one has a Morphgun which can use all Eco types by switching cartridges.

Now the Decepticons will face retaliation by disturbing the peace but here it varies. Some cities such as Haven have too many civilians and incompetent military forces to properly protect themselves. *Looks at all the missions alongside lack of self defending NPCs in Haven*

Areas such as Spargus will retaliate immediately since EVERYONE has been trained to fight and is armed. It makes sense because most of the city's population are people exiled to the wastelands by Haven. Can't forget about the Demolition Duo.

Jak and his companion has tackled a variety of opponents including giant robots. The latter were made with Precursor metal which is very hard to break through and probably more durable than Cybertronian metal. Both had wrecked it.

Jak has a variety of Eco cartridges for his Morphgun but can also rely on his Eco Channeling abilities. He can transform into powerful forms through Light and Dark Eco. The destructive animalistic Dark Jak or the angelic time stopping Light Jak.

It's best to be wary unless you want a Dark Eco blast through the spark chamber.

That's it for now! Until next time folks, I'll see you later! Transform and Roll Out!