#taint

[lukeagain5732]

…enticing!!!

[kukuandkookie]

I don’t feel like making a huge post about it right now since it would require me to write and compile images and I just screamed about it at my friends BUT…

If you’re a fan of Black Butler I recommend you check out 《玷染》 (Dianran) aka Taint 👀

And yeah okay I know the English name is a little awkward considering what “taint” means in English slang, but tbh…considering how horny this manhua is, it’s actually a pretty fitting name. 😂

But yes here’s why:

^ …Yeah I could just leave it at “read it for the hot characters” but actually I will add some more context below hahahaha:

It’s got demons, tentacles, sexualization of the church, mysteries involving dark/demonic entities in a European-inspired setting, and a bit of (not a lot just yet but still seems to be gearing up for more!) commentary on the gaps between classes.

We’ve also gotten a few clues to both main characters’ pasts, and they seemingly involve torture, experimentation, demons, deaths, amnesia, and more suffering.

It’s actually really interesting given we’re still early on in the story and we’ve gotten a few big crumbs so far, but they are still crumbs. I’m quite curious as to how all the parts of the backstory revealed so far tie together and led to our protagonists meeting the way they did today. 👀

Also the demon, Cross or Kurose, who has tentacles and is super attached to Eli, a member of the church, is very flirtatious and touchy-feely and even gets tortured and leashed and muzzled…

So you know. If you’re into that stuff, this manhua has a lot of it, even with censorship being in place. I’m genuinely surprised by how much it got away with; like in the most recent chapter (chapter 13 as of the time I’m writing this post), Cross rips off Eli’s underwear. 😂

I hope some people join me in this fandom eventually LGNSKFJSKS. So far it feels like I’ve been bursting to get my friends to read it and share it but I don’t want to be annoying to them haha.

Like if you enjoy Black Butler and I Have to Be a Great Villain and Kiss the Abyss and series like those, this could be up your alley!!

(Of course, do be aware that like those series, this one also contains “dark” content! Specifically violence with blood and all that, some less than consensual sexually tense encounters, and even body horror!)

Although I will say that hell, Cross isn’t that “toxic” or “violently possessive” of a love interest so far. He’s just clearly got his own goals which occasionally clashes with Eli’s, but it’s clear he really really likes Eli and doesn’t actually want him to come to harm, to the point of protecting him. And even when Eli is harsh with him in his distrust, Cross doesn’t mind. It makes for a fun dynamic. 👀

There is an English “fan” translation out there, but the original is on the QQ manhua app!

[moontheoretist]

I recreated my Warden from DAO in BG3. But now I noticed that I made a mistake and didn't remove "history" from her skills. As if lady luck was in my favor, she seems to be failing history rolls that would throw me out of the immersion that I'm playing someone who fakes being Faerunian xD I picked spells for her that are the most similar to DAO starting spells. It's hard to find the exact equivalents but I did it.

I chose a wizard because of the Circle and then at level 2 Necromancer because my Warden Amell is an entropy mage and Necromancy has the most spells related to siphoning life energy and stuff like that (also I wanted to try it). Now only to figure out Arcane Warrior / Battlemage.

I used some mods to give her nice and unique nighty night clothes.

Of course I had to dye them in the typical Grey Warden's colors.

I picked up Shadowheart and funnily we managed to enter the Crypt from the beach, so we went at the crypt first, robbed the sarcophagus, fought the skeletons etc. We just didn't tackle the full robbers party, because when I tried we died. So I accepted that killing 2 was enough and left the crypt and got a funny deception quote xD

"You have awoken me from my slumber - now I crave your blood!"

I faked being the big bad sleeping in the crypt and they run away xD

Then I recruited Lae'zel and Gale. We went to full rest and learned what the fuck is ceremorphosis. Then we went to sniff around the crashed Nautiloid. Astarion tried to kill me (very Zevran of him) and I headbutted him, because why not. I'm a Grey Warden Commander dammit, no elfy rogue will scare me (again). Then we recruited the guy, fought the goblins at the Grove. I used the first merchant as a fake reason why I could equip modded armor in the Warden's colors:

(This is a face of someone who hates being woken up at night).

I asked Astarion who the fuck he is, he said he is a mere Magistrate and then we had to long rest, because I wasted all my spells on goblins and bugbear to save that one Tiefling with the soul coin and look at that, Astarion went for the neck exposing himself right away, because his cutscene is connected to full rest and we had to full rest. If we only had a half-rest he would first go to hunt alone. But anyway, he wanted to drink my blood and I said "Are you mad?" because I play a person who has taint in their blood, so it's dangerous even for an undead to drink it. Who knows what could have happened!? Anyway, thanks to the fact that we have found several copies of the Curse of the Vampyr books in the crypt that contained basic information, we faked knowing what a vampire is, and as of now nobody suspects a thing. Safe!

Astarion went away unhappy none the wiser that he just dodged a possible "turning into a Darkspawn" bullet. Then in the morning we had a conversation where we acted as if being a vampire was totally fine, and I didn't just call him mad for wanting to drink my blood.

I was looking out for you, you will thank me someday.

BTW apparently I can't change +5 to history, because it's fixed:

[thebestcomicbookpanels]

Spider-Man and the Thing in Marvel Team Up #47

[taintedarabesque]

violet harmon inspired playlist

for the living dead girls

[dinathalawriter]

Reblog if you like taints (and yes, the Dark one's taint in Wheel of time counts)

[dylanisdazed]

If I was a villain, I think I'd want to be called

The Taint Tickler

[skrungly-little-faun]

I play ff14 for the plot

[kukuandkookie]

I just raved about this to my friends but oh my GOD I LOVE CROSS ALFJSKDHSJS

He’s such a skrunkly to me!!! Look at him being both scary and badass and unhinged but ALSO SO CUTE

HE’S JUST,,, A LITTLE GUY 🥺🥺🥺

A little guy the other demon calls a pervert/creep (biantai in Chinese, aka the characters for hentai in Japanese) and also full of murder, but still a little guy!!!

He was chasing this other demon down (who also has a nice design 👀) and when the other demon finally admitted some things…

Cross just moves on and tells him he wants to know if the demon can eat the leg he just dropped KDSGJSDJFSHAHA

Cross has depth: he can sweetly comfort you, deeply yearn for you for years even after you’ve forgotten him, be unhinged and yet also hinged, and is also horny as all hell 🤣

On the comforting part, it is genuinely sweet:

Eli: “You don’t have the right to decide what kind of person I am!” Cross: “Naturally. All I can do when a certain someone who’s too much of a try-hard goodie-two-shoes...is give them a hug.” Eli: “You—!” Cross: “I don’t think you were wrong.” Eli: “. . .” Cross: “No matter what you’re thinking in your head, I don’t think you did anything wrong.” Cross: No matter what you become, I’ll always…

BUT THEY GET INTERRUPTED: 😫

(Cross’ mood after the interruption is my mood hahaha)

So back on Cross’ depth, when I say “deeply yearn for you for years even after you’ve forgotten him,” I really do mean it,,, ;o;

SPOILERS BELOW!:

Cross and Eli’s backstory is actually really cute (and sad),,,

I want to learn more 🥺

ELI GIFTED HIM AN EARRING THAT HE CAN USE TO ALWAYS FIND/COME BACK TO ELI,,, Cross asked, “Aren’t we always together?” and Eli said sometimes they’ll still be apart 😭 BUT CROSS REMEMBERS WHEN HE TRIED TO COME BACK TO ELI VIA THE EARRING…:

Cross: “This how you use it…right?” Cross: Cross: “Eli?”

I am truly getting overly attached to this little demon who, upon realizing his memory of the past (?)—where his favourite person was gravely injured—is a nightmare…

He sighs in relief and hugs said favourite person despite them now being “not-as-nice” to him. 🥺🥺🥺

And ELI REALIZES HIS EARRING FELL OFF AND PUTS IT BACK ON HIM 🥺

They’re just so,,,, there’s so many layers to them and I’m so excited to see more of them!! Can’t wait for the next chapter. ;w;

[wordsforyourwip]

Pen

Taint

Gold

Blood

✨

Thank you for your submission! :)

(technically I've already posted 'blood' but we'll let it slide ;P)

[lairofdragonagelore]

Awakening: Drake's Fall

[This is part of the series “Playing DA like an archaeologist”]

Drake's Fall is a series of ancient Tevinter ruins established over a chasm beneath the Dragonbone Wastes.

Legends speak that this is a place where dragons go to die. Tevinter built a city on the bones, and collected what  remained of the primordial dragons. With these bones they crafted items.

The purpose to reach this zone is to go after the Mother: we come to a place with ancient Tevinter ruins that legends claim to be a graveyard of dragons.

Entering the zone immediately shows us the presence of Tevinter statues, as so far the pattern repeats itself all along these post series.

From a design point of view, we can be quite sure that this place indeed is as the legends say: a place where dragons came to die simply by seeing the amount of dragon bones everywhere.

The codex found here tells us that even when a dragon is dead, there is power coming from their bones, so the Tevinters made use of this power: they built these ruins here, where the draconic power kept emanating from the corpses, and they also used these bones to craft weapons and armours.

This codex brings a curious concept about phylacteries used here as a means for immortality, pretty much like a standard DnD lich. So far we know in DA lore, phylacteries are made with blood magic  by the Chantry to track down mages that go rogue. However, we find in DAO another kind of phylactery: the dark ones, the ones that once broken, release a revenant. And Revenants are undead that are supposed to be made by the possession of a demon of pride or desire, so it's not so strange that in this codex, a Tevinter Archon uses the concept as a way to reach immortality.

There is yet another kind of phylactery, unique in game: the one that we find in DAO which contains the last knowledge about the arcane warrior arts. This phylactery works differently to the others in game, and it's related to elven magic. We also know that elven magic is usually associated with immortality or Uthenera. Maybe these Tevinter phylacteries are the Tevinter imitation of the elven ones, and Tevinter had its own way to reach its own Uthenera.  After all, it's important to remember that Tevinter seems to have learnt/stolen all its magical knowledge from the elvhenan.

I'm not sure but probably this detail of Tevinter phylacteries associated with immortality will have more info in the book Tevinter Nights where conscious undead are introduced in the lore.

Coming back to the game, as we explore the place and reach The Mother, we find another high dragon here. I'm not sure if we can infer this is a guardian or another dragon that was waiting to die. I can't find any item that would help me to incline to one of the both hypothesis.

As we follow the path, we keep seeing in a consistent way all the statues and elements that the game has been pointing out as Tevinter, over and over. The same men yielding swords or staves.

When we enter to the spiralled tower, we find floors with more Tevinter statues but this time with some patches of red textures and “tentacle”-like shapes.

One could suspect this is, like in Kal'Hirol, another element that DA:A has provided us before being explicit about the presence of the red lyrium. Along these patches, we find “flesh pods” from where we can extract crystals with Tevinter runes that we can be used in diagram sockets on the ground

We have seen these diagrams in the Magi Circle of Ferelden and in the Fade, but they tend to be spiralled; the only place where it was not, was in the Blackmarsh. On each circular surface there are swirls that glow like lyrium, and for first time in the game, we are “told” that these circles are sockets to put enchanted crystals. [honestly, how much of this is just a mere re-use of elements I can't tell. I can't trust much the interpretation of these diagrams]

As we keep exploring the tower, we find more flesh pods

This could mean nothing, but in this bridge we see a dragon skull, from where this red stuff with tentacles (suspected to be red lyrium) comes up, and covers part of the bridge. On  it, more of these flesh pods appear. They are different ones to the ones where the Children come up.

At some point we face the Architect.

from his speech we learn some lore concepts that those who read the book The Calling are not surprised to learn. These can be summarised as

Darkspawn seek the Old Gods out of a compulsion. They can't help it.

Darkspawns are not ambitious, they don't want power, it's all about the command of the Old Gods.

The Architect perfected  a system where darkspawn can pass through a process similar to the one that Wardens undergo in order to acquire resistance against the call of the Old Gods. This last point is interesting because Avernus gave us a hint that he is having a second calling beside the usual one: one that makes him want to find answers in the Black City. Probably this is the only codex in DAO-DAA where we are told explicitly to link the Archdemons, who call the wardens during their waking time, with the forces residing inside the Black City, who continue the song during the time of sleep, and, one could imagine, closer to the Fade.  This is a potential, interesting link about this duality we saw and was hinted, again, in the Blackmarsh: the material body of the Archdemons are dragons in the Deep Roads, their spirits are trapped in the Fade.

Once free from the call of the Old Gods, the darkspawn become sentient again: they think, speak, and act by themselves.

The mother has been freed by the Architect when she passed through this system. However, the lack of that song drove her mad.

The architect continues

The Architect talks a lot about choices and compulsion and nature. In the book we know he has a sense of loneliness so I think his search for releasing his brethren from the effect of the song is not just mere altruism, it's also accompanied with a desire of finding company in his own kind. Or at least, what he thinks it's his own kind. We, players, are aware that the Architect is an ancient Magister like Corypheus, and we know from DA2 that Corypheus is more than a mere darkspawn.

After our encounter with The Architect, we find, oddly, a vestments of Urthemiel in a flesh pod: this is most probably a robe from a Tevinter worshippers who followed the archdemon that the Warden has just defeated in DAO? It seems a weird place where to find it. 

Finally, we reach the lair of the Mother, where, again, we find the same elements we had been finding all over Kal'Hirol: what I'm supposed to think it's the first (silent) introduction of red lyrium in the games.

Again we find some red tentacles in this place that may be related to the “root”-like shape that red lyrium can acquire. We also see fallen ruins in the background, and some Tevinter statues.  On that matter, at first I thought those structures were ruined Tevinter buildings, but if you look them carefully, some of them are upside down. The only place where I've seen something similar is in the Shattered Library, in DAI, which is a place in between the Fade and the waking world. What is this?

This zone, though, it’s not new. We could see it with some detail when we looked for Morrigan in the DLC. As it can be seen in the following images, it’s a place with a lot of dragon bones, Tevinter ruins, and a whole building upside-down

if we turn the image, it’s easier to see:

Anyways, this place is filled with flesh pods, which are also strange: we see that these things apparently develop closer to those red rocks (potentially red lyrium). It's strange because so far we knew in DAO, the broodmothers were female humanoids turned into darkspawn that only give birth to more darkspawn. Hespith and her song is a proof of it.

First day, they come and catch everyone. Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat. Third day, the men are all gnawed on again. Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate. Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn. Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams. Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew. Eighth day, we hated as she is violated. Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin. Now she does feast, as she's become the beast. Now you lay and wait, for their screams will haunt you in your dreams.

This, plus the Art of Thedas books give us a better explanation for this oddity:

It’s as we thought: darkspawn reproduce like mammals, the exception somehow is “The Mother”. Probably she is so special that her children come from pods instead of her womb, and the game silently hints us that this is caused by the presence of red Lyrium.

Then again, in Kal'Hirol we learnt that the Children, who are born within these flesh pods, are unusual darkspawn. Are the darkspawn changing because the presence of Red Lyrium? Can Red Lyrium corrupt even further the Taint carried by the Darkspawn? Or this is the result of The Mother’s resistance to the song? Once more, we cannot know if this is a mere reuse of graphical elements, or there is hidden lore here.

When we get closer, we can finally see The Mother first hand.  From her we learn some little extra bits summarised as

Reinforced idea that the free darkspawn are mad because they stopped hearing the song.

Here it is addressed in the game for the first time that one of the other motivations for why the Architect is trying to free his people is because he feels lonely: an outcast. A detail that we only know if we read The Calling.

The Architect wants to correct the darkspawn [meaning, making them sentient so he won't feel like an outcast]

In the endings we can highlight that some wardens know that the Architect survival is a guarantee of a Blight, may be a hint to what we learnt in the book The Calling: The wardens had always known where each of the archdemons were sleeping. They even had a map. One of the wardens who knew this map by heart, was sent in his final quest into the Deep Roads to complete his Calling, but instead of dying, the Architect convinced him to work for him. So now, we know that the Architect has a detailed map of the underground with the location of the remaining archdemons, and since he is a darkspawn himself, he can travel these roads without fearing any attack. This is certainly a very bad news for the highest ranks in the Wardens who knows this info.

But so far the darkspawn are calm in the deep roads. The ending obtained for Kal'Horl says the same: the darkspawn are mostly gone. It is also in this epilogue where we can read that the dwarves ar exploring this particular Thaig, which was filled to the brim of red rocks. I dont know if this is a lore mistake [since it was always implied that the first discovery of Red Lyrium was made in DA2] but this also could mean that the red lyrium was accesible to Orzammar first, which developed a trade of it exclusively for Templars, and therefore, the wide spread of red lyrium problems in DAI

[Index page of Dragon Age Lore ]

[s3-izures]

Redraw of Taint (belongs to @aoartmthebitxh) from 2021 (started in 2020)

SLIGHT RANT BELOW because im salty with this one

Okay so. I'm going to be very honest. I do not like this piece, this was me spending way too much time on one drawing while suffering artblock.

The pose feels a bit too stiff for my liking and I don't really know how I feel about the whole thing. I was gonna give up but I lined the whole thing already so might as well.

Don't got time to redo probably 😭 this is the best I can dooooo

ughghgh at least im t r y i n g I DIDNT DO HER JUSTICE H E L P HAHAAGGGGGHHHH

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ Other accounts | Commissions My art may not be used, edited, traced, reproduced, or reposted (without credit) in any way without my permission, thanks.

[u1tra-vi0let]

once you die in this house, you dont get to leave.

[wack-ashimself]

Taint...

is a state of mind...

[itscrystql]

i wish i were kidding you when i say these are the opps and their looks arent the most interesting about them and they dont have to try very hard are naturally feminine elegant eloquent and emotionally intelligent and humorous and also cunning and witty and hurtful with all the inexplicable empathy and daydream of a girl .