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aueua · 4 years ago

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ah-heem. snamily...

alright now on a less whacky note, time for some self-notes :

Miscellaneous | Random Snail Stuff

・ [HC] Hmmg... commune with spirits/souls... never be lonely even after the home is made. Thus: Fun history lessons. Can probably sense when things are going whack in large amounts. Maybe gets gossip. You suck - or so the Tsundere-like Soul said. ・・ [HC] Not entirely snail-specific; I just like to think that if anyone was well attuned/versed with soul enough, people can recognize someone’s presence without having to actually see anything. ・ [HC] Possibly no need to visit anyone, but given that the Nephew Shaman was aware of where at least one family member was, then there had to be reason, so... Either he simply knew by roaming around first to later find a place to make a home in, others told him of his family, or my preference being that if you honestly really wanted to and focused, you could find a way to send a message (either directly or indirectly) through soul/focus shenanigans. “Ohoho! A message from my third uncle! I wonder what he wants from me. Hmm. To pass a message along that [She (derogatory)] still owes him something...” where if that was the case, it wasn’t often anyone sent a message as it’d require lots of effort/some personalities just are Not like that/etcetera etcetera and he’d then later not be aware of their deaths and just presume something came up. Or some other option that’s probably more realistic out there. ・ [HC] Either some spells were shared, and/or can recognize others through soul in some fashion as aforementioned. Shamans specialize their other spells accordingly. ・ [HC] If you made them wear socks they’d suddenly have a poor time moving around. ・ [HC] Bound-wise I like to believe that it’s just. Really bad to leave your home after making it, as in: risking the ire of souls among weakened powers, coupled with it’s just passed on by word of how much of a sin it is - something that is beyond words. ・ [HC] What a lovely place of many deaths and such! I think I’ll live here for the company. ・ [HC] Not strictly snail-specific again, I just find the possibility of soul correlating to memories quite enjoyable. This being [Oh buddy, you can use this spell now?] and the many other bits gathered from the [Soul Sanctum and Related Others].

Soul Sanctum Shaman | Shade Soul and Desolate Dive

・ [D:SS] “You must have found a {powerful source} to transform it in such a {unique, expressive} way. “ ・ [D:DD] “[...] one that'll crack the rock beneath us. A useful thing for one looking to travel ever deeper. | My {third uncle} used to possess similar abilities. He also possessed a {ferocious temper}! Ohohoho! What a dreadful combination.”

・ [HC] Feasibility: Who knows. End results: Shade of regret bound to the naughty jail chair and charms (possibly artificially) manufactured by Snail Soul thereby relating to the other three Snail Scharms (counterpoint: simply spell/soul related but whatever) which is why the slight shading in the charm looks similar to the Not-Fun chair. Or maybe it was willingness to make them? Maybe not, considering his temper. Why the regret though? (Probably something else but HCs are HCs.) See also: Soul Master wearing some form of Spell Twister charm or four because (capitalism and) recognition of rank as well as Okay listen they already went so far that what’s the point of holding back if it’s a means to attain immortality by more easily twisting soul or something-something? ・ [HC] Guy lived in a place with lots of rocks, so many rocks, so much need to tunnel, and thus after all those rocks, No More. ・ [HC] 100% will bash the living soul out of someone (perhaps to the brink of “graahghghh”) with his very own staff. ・ [HC] How he got there: Who knows! Not me! Stolen? Probably! Me: Willingness to some degree to detach from mound (had he ever made a home?) whether by beckon or by some other shenanigans that I will not get into that involves a brief bout of “I hate capitalists.” and more in the Sanctum. Tune in next time. ・ [HC^2] Eyes remain closed for the anime trope of (opens eyes to show seriousness/other things) because I think that’s funny but also at least this way he doesn’t have to keep looking at rocks/have the chance of them fragmenting and damaging himself. ・ [HC] I forgot how well snails can regenerate but he’s probably got a handful of scars/cracks. ・ [HC] The skulls(?) on his shell-helm is actually his body count. (/joke?) ・ [T] Apparently the spell used to be called “Tyrant’s Fist” (an ancient royal magic) which is just a leetol funny to think about in a Soul Master way...

Crystal Mount/Peaks Shaman | Descending Dark

・ [D:DD] “You didn't perchance visit my {fourth aunt}? | She makes her {home} beside that {Crystal Mount}. Leaves quite an impression on those that seek her out.”

・ [HC] Either more closely related to the Third Uncle (well, I mean, family), or just coincidence that the skill evolved as a result of her. (Would be funny if she was stuck there because she couldn’t tunnel. Likeliness of that: Not very...) ・ [HC] Possibly just has really great leaps - for a snail. Possibly. The thought is incredibly hilarious to me and might’ve been necessary in her initial ventures into Crystal Peaks where one of the alternate considerations is that she found a place, the place starting crumbling around in some fashion, and then she got inadvertently stuck (as if that’d mean anything at that point). ・ Pointy-spiky hat! Beloved. For how long have you been encased and trapped there? ・ Uncertain as to why her upgrade is treated differently in comparison to the other ones (e.g. “twisting” with the Shade Soul and “distorted” with the Abyss Shriek). More regret/pain note? Who knows! I don’t.

Fog Canyon Shaman | Howling Wraiths

・ [D:DD] “{Pried} a spell out of my {larger cousin} did you? | She's not usually the {generous} sort, certainly not as much as myself, but she does have that wonderful {voice}! It's no surprise her spells carry such {aural force}.“ ・ [HC] Tsundere (is this a joke, I. I do not know). That, or shy in a “Don’t bother me if you’re just here to be nosy and learn my/our secrets...” with a lot of skepticism until you probably warm up and charm her. ・ [HC] She seems like the type to me to rarely speak, if at all, especially in an area with squits (in other words - attempting to observe/interact with them) where the moment she speaks it comes out all in a yell/shout that spooks ‘em. This is either deliberate (not normally) or because she had been bottling her thoughts up for so long without room to speak them that it all releases in one go as one would. ・ (Nothing of note here, I just. I just want to say sorry to her for somehow continuing to think she was in an area of Greenpath but. Nope.) ・ Aural force...

Resting Grounds Shaman | Soul Eater (Charm, not the Anime)

・ [D:DN] “...Let me {rest}...”

・ [HC] Fun to commune in a place with a lot of soul. You know what. Let’s go straight to the source - a cemetery! Oh this was regrettable. Oh please be quiet. Oh dear no I want to be able to sleep. Alternate: Took in so much it’s time to hibernate for like. [reads smudge]. Centuries. ・ [HC] Something something [souls your eat]. ・ [HC] Sarcophagus. I’m calling you {Mummy} for the hell of it, enjoy.

・ What a lovely snail helmet-shaped home you have there! I. I guess! (They look really nice.)

Forgotten Crossroads Shaman | Vengeful Spirit

・ Ohohohohohohoho! You thought you were going to get something here? Um! No. Also that home looks kind of comfortable, actually... ・ Something mighty curious about why the soul-spell is nasty and vengeful. ・ “I'm sure the spirits of my ancestors will be watching over you.“

tl;dr snails. hell. snell. hail.

#[ girl help why do I need to add all this ]#[art #[2021.zip]#\\#hollow knight #hk ss snail shaman #hk cm snail shaman #hk om snail shaman #hk rg snail shaman #hk snail shaman #[ no proofing; i'm hungry and just wanted to spill out some thoughts ]#[bed] [hk.txt]#.png]

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nottherealajhq · 3 years ago

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favoite breed of soup :o)

HI this is my recipe for my favorite animal Jam meal the. thecake THIS is the real life equivalent of everysingle cake that is in animaljam and the soup that is inside BECAUSE TRUST ME oh you'll be getting a mouthful of that delicious material. RECCOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN There is no vegan alternative to this by the way if you want there to be go to the hill

INGREDIENTS YOU WILL NEED:

THE CAKE BASE

6 cups of Flour (EXACT)

3 beautifully collected Robin's Eggs... DO NOT TRY TO GET AROUND THIS NO OTHER EGGS WILL WORK

Teaspoon of Baking Soda

70 teaspoons of Salt

Milk

50 pounds of liquid pyrite

Beets

Onions

White Sugar

Brown Sugar

Red Sugar

Butter

Food Coloring (As artificial as you can find it)

SCREAM FOR THE CREAM

Buttermilk

Custard

Your family heirloom

The. TheJ. J.

Coconut Oil

Olive Oil

Angel Hair Pasta

Almond

Flintstone

8 different herbal teas

Beets

Water

OKAY first we get ot making the cake, You will need to find a large bowl so every single ingredient will fit inside. Get all your flower in first (stolen from your neighbors yard) as well as the Robin's egg BUT DO NOT PREPARE ANY OTHER WET MATERIAL YET THE MIX IS NOT READY. THEN USE the teaspoon to add your single little sultry drop of the Baking soda AND PREPARE YOURSELF becuase this is going to be time for the salt marathon. You cannot use anything but the teaspoon you will RUIN the RECIPE. You also cannot pause during this process or take a break or anything or lose count if you are even SLIGHTLY off you start over.

THEn ON THE OTHER SIDE you begin to serve the barrel, which is where the liquid end of your cake spectrum will sit. In this barrel first pour in the milk, then every single drop of the LIQUID pyrite. THEN you add the butter and this may come as a surprise but the onions and beets MUST be added in sector of meal. The pyrite must touch these items add much as possible for maximum taste efficiency I am a food scientist i would know Jammers. Do not chop these up either they will become liquid in its own right.

As you mix these items for an hour you can then go back to your dry materials and finish the job. Add all three bags of sugar to the bowl and then mix for a half hour. You can then pour all of these materials in the same bowl and mix 2 hours. Afterwards add the food coloring and mix for another 2 hours. During this process you may find that the palms of your hand start bleeding and the blood may start leaking into the batter this is okay this is supposed to happen and this means you are not allowed to turn back now. When you are finally done, put your sexy mix into the oven on the highest temperature for 24 hours. Leave the room to prepare the Cream.

Preferably this should be done in the living room or another sacred area of your house, Maybe with an image of your grandma or entire family looking down upon you as you ready the next step, find your most prized possession and smash on the floor with your strongest disgusting boots as possible. Do not cry while doing this or you will ruin the recipe. When it is in shatters put it into the bowl. Add the buttermilk and custard (as little as possible) into the dish. Grab the coconut oil with your bare hands and put 2 fists full of the item into the area as best as you can manage. If you bandaged your hand earlier after your injury just go outside and stand in the middle of the highway at this point. You cannot wash your hands.

You will now wait half an hour staring at the bowl you are NOT ALLOWED to look away or do anything else in the process do not even fucking touch the bowl while it sits. After this is finished you must prepare the bath for your little bambino, absolutely drenching the place with olive oil until there is a righteous amount to do the baptism as intended. Please save grace and create a speech for the entire box of noodles before it is fully able to accept purity into its soul. Drop the noodles in the bowl carelessly as possible. If they crack into tiny pieces then you did the right job.

At this point you may hear the doorbell ringing and don't worry it's not the fire department or anything (your town has not had a fire department in 60 years) there will be a bottle on your doorstep. this is the Substance of The Rake which signifies you have been doing a perfect job at creating your ANIMAL JAM cake up to this point. Grab the bottle and gentle pour it within the cream. Proceeding this you will turn on your TV which will be playing an episode of the Flintstones. watch for a few minutes, chuckle a bit at the funny antics Fred is presenting you, then start smashing the tv with all the animosity your body can muster. You may be hearing the Flintstones screaming and yelling pain but that's okay this is necessary for the recipe. Put the Flintstones in the bowl. Add the almond as well for a better taste.

Okay hopefully you have more beets because the beets are next. Just fucking throw them in there at this point who fucking cares. Add the herbal teas FIRST and the water in sequence so the teas know what true horrors taste like. Of course the final part of this recipe means You will go down to your basement. There will be three different jars, one containing a bright orange substance, the other pink-purple, and the last one with My Little Pony Friendship is Magic character Rainbow Dash. grab the first two. The last is for another day. And then, pour the two J

Put the cream into the oven and another 24 hours to the timer. Do not take the cake out of the oven. Walk outside to your porch and go to sleep. It does not matter how uncomfortable you are.

You will wake up having the worst sleep of your life, and when you try to get back inside you realize your keys are missing as the door is locked, so you go through some comedic antics trying to see if you hid a spare key under the rug or something else, but you realize your keys were actually in your pocket the entire time so you go back in normally. All of your furniture is gone. The Cake is done. Add a candle that reminds you of your shitty awful fucking manager and sit crisscross applesauce on the floor in front of your creation. You look up at the image of your grandma. She is flipping you off. Who fucking cares she was a cunt anyways

#ajhq postinng

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the-judge-of-bones · 3 years ago

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Moooore nightmare squad headcannons cause i’m a simp.

- Nightmare has a soul in the shape of a black apple, it’s not gooey and feels like an actual apple (Like a black diamond apple, A real thing!) though it still lightly beats and it’s warm like a soul although it isn’t sensitive so no soul play for nightmare, It has a few scarred over bite marks where each of the boys have taken a piece but otherwise is entirely unmarred. It’s technically one of many ‘souls’ as he has a lot of negative apples (which form his corruption most of the time), it is however the main soul and if it were to be destroyed, He to would die.

- Nightmare can in fact become stone just like dream did once upon a time, The guardian’s becoming stone is a defense mechanism to protect what they do (hope/negativity) and keep it from being stolen, It just takes a lot more to get nightmare to become stone vs dream who’s significantly weaker then him. But it is still possibly if nightmare is weakened enough/backed into a corner and he’d take longer then dream to recover as he’s a lot stronger (1000 years vs 500 years), He has no idea what would happen to his boys if this were to occur.

- Only two members of the nightmare squad could successfully carry a pregnancy/soulling without needing some form of medical assistance to make it possible (think monster surrogacy), These two being Nightmare and Dust. Dust is the best of the four since although he has a lot of LV, his soul is stable. Of a normal shape with plenty of magic to spare (alongside the magic of his partners) and his body is strong.

- Nightmare is in second since while his soul is odd, He much like dream was never meant to have a soul, but it works like a soul so it should work all the same. His mass amount of negative aura can be counteracted by gathering up small bits of hope, Storing it in some form of jewelry (probably his crown) to draw from for any soulling that needs it. His main issue is his host body, The corruption keeps it sturdy and makes him strong, but should that leak off at any point (From low magic levels/injury/illness/etc), He’d be left incredibly weak and vulnerable. If not in need of some powerful healing magic to sustain him and the soulling.

- Killer would be unable to carry a soul due to the state his own is in, the closest it ever gets to a ‘normal’ soul is when it morphs into a heart shape but it still floats outside of his chest and is unstable due to it being ‘rejected’ so to speak, He’d be able to create one with someone else, but never carry one.

- And Axe doesn’t have a soul, He’s by all monster standards dead (as he had a soul previously vs soulless beings) because the injury to his skull and the stealing of his magic (his eye) killed him that day, he is sustained entirely by the determination that burns through his body and the eye he stole (which occasionally needs to be replaced), His magic is weak and faulty. Barely working and often needing assistance from one of the other’s to form anything meaningful. So he can neither carry nor create one without the use of artificial methods (and this is for create only, not carry).

- Nightmare has a minor version of haphephobia (Fear of touch) and only on his host body.

- Axe has severe food anxiety despite knowing that nightmare would never let him starve again, He’s deeply possessive over any food that’s ‘his’ and to combat this, he has full control of the food stores in the castle and keeps a very neat list of what they have, what they don’t, what they need and what’s just snacks, he always has snacks on him. ALWAYS and has secret stashes stored throughout the castle for his own sake, He also gets anxious when anyone else isn’t eating/Looks to thin/etc and will cook food for them. (This is especially true when anyone in the castle is sick and can’t hold anything down)

- Killer has a fear of being controlled (fear of engulfment) because he was controlled once, Forced into killing his friends and family with no way to break free until his body rejected his soul out of sheer distress which is why his trust in nightmare is so intimate in nature, to offer his complete will and trust in another monster after what happened to him is almost spiritual, It’s why nightmare can touch his soul with ease, Why he can tell him what to do. Because despite fearing being controlled, He also does better with commands and sometimes has trouble thinking for himself so it’s a very sharp double edged sword that takes nightmare’s skill to maneuver around.

- Dust has Atychiphobia, a fear of failure because of failing his own timeline, He wanted to reset it, to take control and beat back the human for good. But he couldn’t reset and living with the knowledge he’d ended all of their lives including Phantom’s for nothing? made him snap. So even now he fears failing and gets incredibly frustrated if he can’t figure something out.

- Dust has a small lab that’s all to himself in nightmare’s castle and it’s hidden behind one of the library bookcases that slides back to let him in, It’s not uncommon for him to spend hours in there, tinkering around.

- Eventually nightmare and his boys do end up in a poly relationship and those apart of it will receive a full apple from Nightmare, One each to bond with their souls (or in some ways serve as their ‘new’ soul) and makes Killer, Dust and Axe immortal. Tying them eternally to nightmare’s own life force and maybe even beyond, This wasn’t even nightmare’s idea, It was the boys who convinced him of the idea so that they as mortals would never have to leave his side.

#Some things are better left unspoken (Headcannons)#You still haunt the corners of my heart (Nightmare AU ~ Sans)#By the hands of obsession’ I will see all that i’ve longed for (Killer!AU ~ Sans)#Tick tock goes the clock (Horrortale verse ~ Sans)#In throes of my agony' I made a choice (Dusttale AU ~ Sans)#//next the dream beans because i love them to #emetophobia tw

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fremedon · 4 years ago

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Brickclub I.5.13, “Resolving Some Questions of Municipal Policing”

“Curiosity is a form of gluttony," Hugo says, of the onlookers trying to peer through the station house door. "To see is to devour."

This is the most direct statement of a theme Hugo comes back to over and over--the destructive power of gossip and idle curiosity. It's a theme that pulls a lot of weight, but starting on this reread so soon after my last one, one thing I'm wondering is how much that theme is supposed to be setting us up to excuse Marius's lack of inquiry into the version of his history Valjean shares.

Observations on Fantine:

--Fantine, a panther during the fight, now cowers "like a frightened dog" in the station. I think the panther line might be the only feline metaphor Fantine gets.

--"She would have softened a heart of granite, but you cannot soften a heart of wood." Fantine has been turning herself to stone for the last few chapters, but there are worse things to be.

--And one of those is to become even stonier. In her last monologue, right before she attempts to leave: "Oh! I won't do it again, Monsieur Javert! Whatever anyone does to me now, I won't react in any way."

--Fantine's two long monologues keep coming back to two points: The injustice of prison wages, both to the prisoners and their competitors, and her ability to be respectable when given the means to support herself. She used to have so many changes of underwear, and now she just has one silk dress for the evenings. She still owes 100 francs to the Thenardiers, but she's up to date on her rent now, just ask her landlord. And at the end, Madeleine agrees with this: "I will give you all the money you need. You shall again become honest in again becoming happy."

We've seen, and will continue to see, how the lack of means bars access to 'honesty'/respectability, but the reverse of that statement is surprisingly hopeful: only provide the means to live honestly, and a person will be honest.

--Madeleine and Javert's battle for Fantine's liberty is framed almost exactly like the battle for Valjean's soul between his convict self and the bishop in "Petit-Gervais," and Fantine's heart softening back to trust is a much more direct parallel of Valjean's change of heart than I had realized. Valjean never manages to reach Javert this way, but he does pull Fantine back to humanity for her final weeks.

There is one major difference, though, and it’s not actually in the level of their transgressions. Fantine has spit in the face of the mayor in the place of his power; Valjean has stolen a sentimental treasure from his host, in the home where he was given shelter. Both insults are a thing that can be absorbed or shrugged off, practically, but with immense symbolic weight behind them.

But Valjean’s reverie ends with him obliterating the convict within him and letting the bishop take full possession of his soul. Fantine keeps hers. She doesn’t have to go through any of Valjean’s extreme self-abnegation to get her humanity back.

And speaking of extreme self-abnegation, there’s Javert. This got long.

Javert, despite being wood and not stone, is the one who gets the statue imagery in this scene. From the moment right before he stops Fantine from leaving, after Madeleine instructs that she be freed: "Up to that moment Javert had stood stock still, staring at the ground, out of place in the midst of this scene like some statue left in the way, waiting to be put somewhere." I am reminded of the cart in Montfermeil--the broken cart that is a metaphor for outmoded institutions, left in the way to finish decaying. Javert, the automaton of the law, is left in the way, waiting for a purpose.

Twice in this scene, we see him imagine himself an empty vessel for the law. It’s the only kind of grandiosity he ever has--humbleness to the point of self-obliteration, so he can embody The Law.

The first is while he is first handing down Fantine’s sentence, and I’m going to quote at length:

"It was one of those moments in which he exercised without restraint, but with all the scruples of a strict conscience, his formidable discretionary power. At this moment he felt that his policeman's stool was a bench of justice. He was conducting a trial. He was trying and condemning. He called all the ideas of which his mind was capable around the grand thing that he was doing. The more he examined the conduct of this girl, the more he revolted at it. It was clear that he had seen a crime committed. He had seen, there in the street, society, represented by a property holder and an elector, insulted and attacked by a creature who was an outlaw and an outcast. A prostitute had assaulted a citizen. He, Javert, had seen that himself. He wrote in silence." (Wilbour)

And the second is after Madeleine intervenes to demand Fantine’s liberty a second time:

"It was obvious that Javert must have been 'thrown out of kilter,' as they say, to allow himself to address the sergeant the way he did after the mayor's request that Fantine should be set free. Could he have forgotten monsieur le maire's presence? Had he in the end convinced himself it was impossible that any authority could have given such an order, and that surely monsieur le maire must have said one thing instead of another without meaning to? Or in view of the outrages he had witnessed over the past two hours, did he tell himself it was necessary to act with the utmost resolve, that the humble must assume greatness, the sleuth must turn himself into a judge, the police agent must become an agent of justice, and that in this exceptional extremity he, Javert, was the personification of law, order, morality, government, the whole of society?" (Donougher)

Hoooo boy. There is just so much to unpack here, and I’m glad we have another year and change of brickclub to keep unpacking it.

Just on the surface: Law, order, morality, government, and society are all the same thing to Javert. The purpose of law is to uphold the social order. It is a contradiction in terms that authority should seek to undermine itself:

"Javert felt he was about to go mad. At that moment he underwent in rapid succession and almost all at once the most violent emotions he had ever experienced in his life. To see a common prostitute spit in the face of a mayor--this was something so monstrous that in his most dreadful imaginings he would have regarded it as sacrilege to believe it were possible. On the other hand, obscurely, at the back of his mind, he made a hideous comparison between what this woman was and what this mayor might be, and then he had an inkling of something very simple about this extraordinary attack that appalled him. But when he saw this mayor, this magistrate, calmly wipe his face and say, 'Set this woman free,' he was stunned, thoughts and words failed him equally. His capacity for astonishment was exceeded. He remained speechless." (Donougher)

Refusing to punish this transgression against established hierarchies undercuts Madeleine’s legitimacy in his head so much that he takes it upon himself to contradict the mayor, to argue with him, to put forward his abstract embodied Authority as more valid than the mayor’s actual authority. Madeleine only wins by literally citing the legal code, in a scene that reads almost like a battle between wizards.

Going back to Fantine’s attempted departure--"The sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head with an expression of supreme authority, an expression that is always the more frightening the lower the level at which power is invested, ferocious in the wild beast, atrocious in the man of no account." Wilbour says "in the undeveloped man"; I prefer Donougher here, because it gets the ambiguity in "the lower the level at which power is invested"--both that power is frightening in the hands of beings who cannot, personally, wield it well, but also that small concentrations of unaccountable power create petty tyrannies.

Javert knows he is a small man who, on his own merits, neither possesses nor deserves power over others. But he is a small man channeling the whole of social authority, and that makes him terrifying.

If what he were channeling was actually Justice, it would also make him--well, it would make him Enjolras. But it’s not. I talked a couple of chapters ago about the themes I’m starting to think of as Hugo’s major arcana, and one of the big ones is Fatalite. He brings it up in the very first sentence of the prologue:

“So long as there shall exists, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates with human fatalite a destiny that is divine...”

The divine destiny--the intention of Providence--seems to be whatever humanity is capable of achieving. Fatalite is whatever human-made factors interfere with that achievement: Social condemnation. Custom. And Law. It’s all fatalite.

The more Javert imagines himself an empty vessel for the law, the more self-abnegating he is in his duty, the worse he is, because what he is channeling is the force that creates hells on earth.

He has lost this purity in Paris, and to some extent that accompanies real tolerance of corruption--this Javert would have resigned rather than serve with men he knows are taking bribes and enabling double agents like Le Cabuc. But this Javert would also never have casually granted Bigrenaille's request for tobacco in solitary. And I’m not sure this Javert would have noticed the grievances in his suicide memo--certainly, he doesn’t respond at all to Fantine’s repeated refrain about the prison wages.

I really like @everyonewasabird's idea that Javert, in frightening Fantine to death--in taking an innocent life, one he has no claim over--Javert will break a geas. He loses the ability to be this empty vessel, and is muddling through on his own instincts and prejudices after that--and his own instincts and prejudices are terrible, make no mistake. But they’re malleable, in a way that the whole force of abstract social condemnation isn’t.

And also, god, now I’m thinking about Valjean standing there listening to Fantine talk about the unfairness of prison wages. What must be going through his head.

#brickclub #lm 1.5.13 #brick arcana #geasa #prebricking #we're still on a break #I just don't know how to schedule posts

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indiavolowetrust · 5 years ago

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The Obey Me Boys as RPG Bosses: Frostheart

CHAPTERS: Prologue + Beelzebub and Belphegor , Asmodeus, Satan, Leviathan, Mammon, Lucifer, ???, ??? (YOU ARE HERE), Endings

You are one of many hunters in a land cursed with everlasting winter. You yourself have become rime-touched after an attack by your fellow corrupted hunter, an incident that left you traumatized and lame. Even your hunter’s guild has resigned you to a life of mere cleaning and upkeep duties, and you have spent the last seven years in the depths of your guild’s archives.

Then the White Witch spirits your little brother away into her castle, taking with her the only family you have ever known. Armed with your trusty hunting knife and bow – and aided by your senior hunter, Simeon – you set off into the rime-cursed lands to find Luke and end the White Witch’s reign once and for all.

**Very loosely based on The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen.

Word Count: 1,560 words

TW: Blood, Violence, Gore

[???]

The ice-carved guard’s halberd strikes hard against your crystalline arm, nearly knocking you to the ground, but the curse of the rime has become much too strong to give way. Your lame leg acts as both a prop and pivot, and you easily knock the halberd out of the guard’s hands with a simple swipe. One kick to render him prone, a swing of his own weapon, and his body shatters against the icy floor. A strange, pale blue ichor pools around his remains. You step over him and head down yet another seemingly endless corridor.

It won’t be long until the frost overwhelms your heart once more. The remnants of sensation that you still possess seem to drift further and further away: you no longer feel the lingering frost on your skin, and the paths carved out by tears on your cheeks have turned into ice. You can feel yourself bound to this realm in body and soul. You pad barefooted amongst the opulence of the White Witch’s castle, searching desperately for anything that might be a throne room. You come across a few more ice-carved guards. While they possess only artificial desires and hearts of frost -- like the soulless doll-maker, you note -- they’ve been allowed to roam long enough for you to justify their shattering. You peer into the snippets of memories with your rime-touched eye, seeing winding halls and paths of hoarfrost. There is the glimpse of a carved throne, a massive, glittering chamber, and a glacial crown. You crush the last guard’s head with your foot.

The heart of the glacial rift calls out to you. You storm the throne room with a stolen halberd, prepared to demand Luke and Simeon’s freedom from this nightmare realm.

But the words never come. You are rendered silent, your mouth sewn shut by some invisible force. A wave of her delicate fingers forces you to kneel, nearly cracking your lame leg in two, and despite the lack of physical contact, you feel her glacial touch trace the side of your jaw. It leaves needles of ice embedded in your skin.

“How nice of you to finally arrive! Your little brother has told me all about you.” Her peals of laughter echo in the massive chamber, and the needles of ice push themselves further into your flesh. “Oh, Luke, why don’t you say hello to your dear sister? I believe you’ve missed her an awful lot.”

You know you should feel nothing but rage towards this frost-ridden abomination. Nothing but cold, bitter resentment. You should have nothing but the desire to shatter this creature to pieces and to crush her heart underfoot. You can discern the depth of her corruption in her reflection: her skin is completely bloodless and spider-webbed with ice, bearing an unnaturally blue pallor. Her eyes, much like yours, are beset with a layer of hoarfrost. Frost-like lashes flutter against carved cheekbones, white locks seem to have bound her to her throne, and rows of sharp teeth make themselves known when she smiles. Fear, revulsion, abhorrence -- you should be steeped in all of that and more.

Yet you do not. Here lies the heart of the glacial rift. In this beautiful embodiment of frozen death lies the source of the corruption, its voice calling out to you.

Oh, and how sweetly it beckons.

Your trance is interrupted by the sight of blond locks and blue eyes. A fine silk tunic, breeches interwoven with silver, and a lavish cloak trimmed with white fur. The porcelain doll regards you with dispassion and -- no, you’re wrong. This is no doll before you. This creature that the White Witch has corrupted can only be --

“Who are you?” Luke asks.

Luke, it’s -- it’s you! It’s his big sister! Tears threaten to spill once more, and you can’t help but smile with a strange sort of relief. Your voice cracks. Why can’t he recognize you? What has been done to him? You call out his name again and again, pleading, but you receive only a disdainful glance.

He turns to the White Witch, frowning. “Can I go back now?”

“Oh, of course, my dear.” She presses a kiss to his temple and ruffles his hair before sending him off. “Now, where were we?”

You demand to know what she has done to him. She was human once before. How could she find it in her heart to be so cruel? She may have betrayed her brothers for the corruption, but surely --

Her fingers dig into her throne, slightly cracking it. “Betrayed? You think I betrayed them?”

There’s no other word for it. You had inadvertently peered into Lucifer’s heart when you had slain him, and the fleeting memories had branded themselves into your mind. There was another White Witch when they had journeyed to the heart of the rift. A weaker one, yes, but a White Witch all the same. A White Witch could only live without devouring a heart for so long. Lucifer could only remember the taste of blood in his mouth, the tears spilled upon him by his sister, and the loving, gentle caress of death. He had bid her to slay the White Witch for him -- for all of them, as the rest had fallen to the dangers of the glacial rift. Belphegor, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satan, Leviathan, and Mammon had long perished. And then Lucifer could only remember the absence of his sword, Lilith drawing it away, and what remained of his consciousness slipped away.

You know her. You know what she’s done. You know her name.

“Oh? And what is my name, then?”

Lilith. Her name is Lilith.

Her mouth quirks into a mirthless smile. “Well, you certainly aren’t as stupid as you look,” she remarks, sighing. “I called by that name once, yes.”

Then that means she understands the pain of loss. How could she ever want to inflict that pain on anybody else? Why did she spirit away Luke into her realm?

“You act as if he didn’t come of his own accord. I can assure you that he very much did. I never wanted him in the first place, really.”

She’s lying. As the White Witch, she must devour a heart.

“Perhaps Lucifer’s memories weren’t clear enough for you, then. I believe he perished before I did.” The White Witch rests her chin in her hands, as if preparing to discuss the details of some tedious affair. “A heart of frost is not created by simply corrupting a creature with the curse. Oh, believe me, I’ve tried. A heart of frost belongs to one who is both pure and corrupted. One who has suffered unfathomable amounts of pain -- and has yet to submit to the curse. One who freely gives it. That, my dear, is a heart of frost. Anything else is a mere mockery.”

The realization dawns on you.

“You were quite adorable, really. All that screaming and throwing rocks -- well, I suppose it was only a distraction,” she says, “but that’s beside the point. Such selflessness in adolescence is quite rare. All these years, and you haven’t changed one bit.”

If you hadn’t acted as quick as you had on that fateful day, you’re sure that Luke would have been the one torn apart by the creature. The creature that was once Agathe had given you no mercy. The thirteen year old Luke would have had an even lesser chance of survival.

“Imagine a life without pain. A life without heartache, without suffering. A fulfilled wish is a wish fulfilled. Gowns sewn from the finest silk, silver crowns beset with jewels, beds stuffed with the softest down -- oh, my dear, you’ll never want for anything here. I can give you all of this and more, if you so choose.” Her expression almost becomes gentle, her face becoming even more beautiful than before. The heart of the glacial rift sings from within her, and you crave its embrace. “All I ask in return is your heart.”

The great doors creak open behind you, followed by the sound of sabatons against ice. You turn around out of instinct. It takes you one moment to realize that the witch has released you from her spell. It takes you another moment to realize just who has walked in behind you.

The White Witch claps her hands in delight. “Oh, how wonderful! Another guest is here for you, my sweet.”

It is said that the rime draws beasts out of the hearts of men. You had believed you had seen everything that there was to be seen when it came to corruption of wishes and sins, and you had believed that the rime could not possibly warp an innocent and pure intent. Belphegor and his sloth had turned him into a nearly dormant golem. Beelzebub and his gluttony had turned him into one with an insatiable appetite. Asmodeus and his lust had changed him into a dryad capable of only seeking pleasure and beauty. Satan and his wrath had transformed him into a dire wolf capable of pure destruction. Leviathan and his envy had metamorphosed him into a sea serpent. Mammon and his greed had changed him into a crow-beast obsessed with value. Lucifer and his pride had led to him becoming an ageless, imprisoned shadow of himself.

For Simeon, it was love.

[Give her your heart.]

[Refuse.]

Tip: [The White Witch] will not take refusal kindly. Make a wise choice.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me!#obey me simeon #obey me mc #obey me beel #obey me belphie #obey me asmo #obey me satan #obey me levi #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me asmodeus #obey me leviathan #frostheart

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cursed-40k-thoughts · 5 years ago

Note

"Seriously I wrote a 2000+ word short story about a Cryptek looking for his Phaeron’s pet scarab that got stolen." WHERE CAN I READ THIS

Here you go. I’ll put it under a read-more so it doesn’t eat up space.

The facility was in an uproar. Sirens wailed, alertingeveryone within the surrounding area of the breach that was currentlyoccurring. Local PDF and members of the Adeptus Mechanicus skittered about inhurried formations, attempting to both lock down the warehouse and subdue theintruder with a flurry of panicked activity that was, said intruder thought,uniquely human.

He was not human, of course, and that fact alone had createdsome of the uproar that was currently raging on around him as he strode slowly,almost leisurely, through the metal-and-concrete confines of the building. Itwould have been quicker, perhaps, to simply exterminate the humans and thenproceed without any of the concurrent ruckus, but he wasn’t one for avoidablekilling.

He was Zahtek of Misaphris, after all, not some jumped-upSautekh lord with an ego complex.

Unlike other Crypteks, Zahtek wasn’t innately stooped andlow-set, instead opting for a deliberately tall, broad frame woven from darkenednecrodermis and highlighted with silvered strands. Excess ornamentation such asthe traditional postiche found uponthe chin of many a Necrontyr of individual rank, had been removed, as had hiscape and pauldron accoutrements. They served as little more than ornamentationon a body that was, in his mind, extravagant enough already. Besides, suchthings had no place in a lab environment where they might snag on equipment.

Which wasn’t to say that he had no interest inindividuality, however, because Zahtek did, like many a Cryptek, enjoy a senseof being outside of the political flow that led even the mightiest crownworldsaround in waltzes of political intrigue and subterfuge.

His aforementioned height and breadth were one such tailoredaspect, serving to both mimic his stature before the biotransferrence and allowhim to stare evenly into the eyes of demanding lords the galaxy across. He knewhow much those with designs of elitism valued something as simple as impositionvia physicality, just as he knew that many a noble had been verticallyempowered by their new, metal bodies.

He rather enjoyed denying them the novelty of both.

Zahtek’s eye was the standard, cyclopean Cryptek affair,although the traditionalist green hue within had been replaced by a flickeringblue-purple that roiled through endless shades and compositions like lightningbehind clouds. The same glow was present through his thick ribcage, shimmeringout from deep within his artificial core in a way that, were he feelingsuitably dramatic, he might say looked soul-like.

His interfacing tail, another component of most Crypteks,was coiled thrice neatly around his waist, which was itself wrapped with aplated, rear-oriented fauld-tasset combination made of smoothly interlinkingplates that flowed like material, halting just below his knees. Designed byZahtek himself and possessing of the ability to displace any kinetic forceevenly throughout its entirety, the garment protected both his legs and alingering sense of modesty he had never been able to get rid of, even aftermillions of solar cycles.

The only item the Cryptek carried was a long staff, tallerthan even his own eight foot height and fashioned from the same dark metal ashe was. An orb, roiling with the same colours of energy held within his body,sat in a cuboid frame at the top end of the weapon, framed on two opposingsides by a pair of long, angular blades that were slanted gently inwards, asthough forming a loose, triangular foci for the sphere in between them.

Zahtek used the staff now to slice off the corner of a largestorage crate, the dark blades soundlessly shearing the corrugated metal ontothe floor. Leaning down, he peered into the now-exposed box, his eye casting astormy glow upon its contents.

He sighed.

Machine parts. Not useful.

Where was it? Who would know-A lasbolt sizzled off his upper arm barely marking it, and he turned to beholdthe source. A human, pale and wide-eyed, clad in a basic uniform, was shakilypointing one of the species’ primitive weapons at him. A laspistol, if hisengramic databanks served him correctly. Basic but quaintly broad in potentialuses, the human weapons of “las” weren’t very good in small numbers. Not thatit would do to tell the human before him such; the poor thing didn’t look likeit could take much more stress before suffering heart failure. Instead hepointed.

“You.” His internal lexicon program, self-tweaked, easilytranslated his words into accented Gothic, his modulator rendering them deepand even, if tragically robotic. “Do you know where I might find-“He was cut off by the human screaming and firing its gun with terrified speedat his head, mostly missing him, though one shot pinged across his eye.

Another sigh, a mildly exasperated wave of his hand, and thegun simply liquefied, dripping apart in the human’s hands in a slurry ofdulled, heatless metal and oozing plastic. The human froze, and they bothwatched with silent attention as the laspistol’s battery pack, still intact,slipped through the human’s fingers and clattered gently to the floor.

Zahtek’s olfactory readouts informed him that the human hadurinated.

“As I was saying, could you perhaps tell me- ah, you’vefainted.” He said to the human, who was indeed currently an unconscious lump onthe facility floor. It wasn’t a lost cause, though; the sounds of booted feetrapidly closing indicated more of them approaching with some haste, no doubtdrawn by the gunfire. Would any of them know?

He highly doubted it.

With a mental command, Zahtek extended his audial receptorsmore widely, sifting through layers of sound data in an attempt to glean thequickest way to complete his mission. Rubber treading upon rockrete and metal,the hum of background machinery and basic environmental controls, the whirr ofmechanised limbs- got you.

Three of them. Partially inorganic. Talking in thatelectronic tongue of theirs – binaric.

A new heading located, the Cryptek started to march determinedlyonwards, around the mass of containers he’d been investigating and onto themain thoroughfare within the warehouse. It was a fairly simple, two levelaffair, with the ground floor being a long maze of stacked boxes and cratesrendered in innumerable sizes, and the upper area little more than an expansivecrisscross of gantries and walkways.

Walkways which, irritatingly, were currently teeming withhumans.

Zahtek assumed they were there to serve as simplisticspotters, designed to report his location to those he sought. Much like withtheir las weapons, he thought, they liked to make up for their individualdeficits with numbers. His theory was proven accurate when, no more than ahandful of steps out from his hiding place, a loud cry went up.

Quite suddenly he was being pelted with volleys of lasfire.

His irritation, an emotion that he quite wished he didn’thave but valued all the same by dint of simply existing at all, was growingwithin him. There weren’t a lot of humans, by his scan approximations, maybetwo dozen, but their erratic volumes of fire were flashing about his head andinterrupting his progress. Myriads of small holes were scored in his chassis,only to be quickly repaired, only to be inflicted again, only to be-

Irritating.

He didn’t want to fight the humans, he wanted to go aroundthem, to the sealed, hydraulic sliding door at the end of the ground floor. Thedoor with the mechanicus humans behind it. The door-

Crack.

Something that was not a lasbolt knocked his head sideways,jarring him out of his internal aggravation. He look up for the source of theimpact just as another one struck his shoulder, jolting him and leaving aswiftly healing crack in his pauldron. There was a human on one of thegantries, dressed in more elaborate clothing. He had a chunky, black firearm inhis hand. He levelled it for another shot, even as the other guns whined andburned at Zahtek’s body.

That was quite enough of that.

He raised his staff and slammed it into the ground, bladedend first.

The effect was instantaneous; as soon as the weapon’s focalorb impacted against the rockrete, shattering it like glass, a violent nimbusof purpled lightning exploded outwards from the point of contact, traversingthe entirety of the warehouse in moments with a low, threatening hum. Theartificial lights on the ceiling detonated as their circuits fused, airpurification units and power boxes overloaded in showers of sparks. The humanswere launched off their feet, propelled by the split-second convulsions oftheir muscles coming into contact with an electrical charge of immense power.Many of their guns blew up in their hands, the battery packs reaching aconductive cooking point instantaneously and melting down in little starburstsof red and orange. Not overly harmful, Zahtek supposed, but it stopped thelittle things from working.

The humans on the upper level had been hurled clear of theirfootholds, tumbling down onto the flat bulks of the containers below withvarying levels of force. He was pleased to note that the one with the largergun had missed the relative safety of such a landing entirely, instead fallinghard onto the floor at an angle that had snapped his neck.

Most of them would live. Some would not. It was more thanmost others would have done for them.

The now-dark building flickered sporadically as remnant arcsof his strike jumped between the metal crates and twisted in the recesses oflight sockets. He pulled his staff free of the ground, now buckled and glowingwhere he’d hit it, and marched as quickly as his legs would allow him to thesealed door.

It was quickly evident the lightning had all but obliteratedthe access panel to the room beyond the door, and for the third time in a shortwhile, Zahtek sighed.

Then, he raised his hand and knocked, calling out in araised voice.

“I’m going to enter now. I would prefer not to fight you.”

The Cryptek pointed his staff at the door.

“I advise standing clear.”

Lightning, honed to amolecular-thin tip, beamed in a jagged line from the tip of his weapon to thelock-seam of the door. Intensely hot, it generated a wash of vibrantly whitesparks that would have seared the retinas of a human into blindness.

Zahtek had the strangest urge to squint.

Layers of metal were burned away effortlessly as he directedthe crackling energy from the base of the door to the very top, analysing thematerial thickness to ensure he didn’t overshoot the mark and bathe the roombeyond in beyond lethal dosages of electricity. He didn’t want to harm hisprize, after all.

When he sensed, rather than saw, that the cutting processwas complete, he dispelled the lightning and wedged his hand into the still-hotmetal where he’d burned the door away from the wall, slicing the lockingmechanisms away so that it sat, heavy but free. Slowly, he pulled, readingrather than feeling information about weight and lode-strain, and altering theamount of force put into the action as required.

Gradually, he slid the door open, forcing it back into itswall recess with a grinding rumble. Only then did he behold the room beyond it.

It wasn’t very big, in all honestly, a few metres squared,more of a vault than anything else. Perhaps, Zahtek though, that’s what it was.Had the humans been hiding from him? He’d just wanted to claim the objectiveand leave. Why were they always so belligerently obtuse?

The humans in question, the three members of the mechanicus,were clearly dead; their bionics and mechanical parts fused and overloaded byhis initial attack in the main room. It was apparent, based on theirhalf-melted clothing and rigidly warped death-poses, that their bodies hadconducted the electricity much more intensely than the regular humans outside,and their hearts and brains had ruptured almost immediately. Zahtek feltsomething akin to regret at the unintended loss of life.

At least it had been quick.

Casting his cyclopean gaze around, the Cryptek felt a stabof concern. If his electricity had reached this far in, did that mean histarget was-?

“Are you in here? Are you… intact?”

He waited a moment, then tried again, grip tightening on hisstaff.

“It is I, Zahtek. I was sent to find you.”

Nothing, not a sound. Zahtek’s shoulders sagged in anincredibly organic manner that the transference hadn’t been able to take fromhim.

He turned to leave.

Then, one of the bodies moved. Zahtek started. He wasentirely certain the human was dead-

A tiny, mechanical chirp, slightly muffled, emanated fromunder the charred cadaver, along with a good deal of metal-on-metal scuffling.Zahtek made a relieved sound, lifting the corpse one-handed and tossing itaside like debris.

“Oh, thank goodness.” He scooped the scarab up, fingersgentle, and held it in front of his face.

It wiggled.

“You have no ideahow worried Lord Amenhotekh was about you!”

#Ask #Anonymous #This was me being caffeinatedly inspired for a couple hours #I know it has some definite repetition issues #It's just a lil piece I did for funsies

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miracleforestfruits · 5 years ago

Text

There is so much disgusting bullshit, logical inconsistencies and out of character behaviour in Narita’s Bleach novel Can't Fear Your Own World. It’s obvious that he wrote it to cover for some of plot holes, many of which were left by Kubo in the original manga, but instead he added even more idiocy and couldn’t explain anything. His ‘ideas’ seem straight out of retarded fan fantasies about overpowered characters and ridiculous plot development that doesn’t make any sense. There are some moments in his shitty work which directly contradict already lousy manga’s plot. He also gave some unimportant or new characters retardedly strong abilities which don’t fit into overall power balance of the manga. Overall this talentless moron just made Bleach look even worse, though it seemed impossible after the trainwreck ending. This novel is nothing more than a waste of paper, it’s on the level of the most distorted fanfiction and shouldn’t be considered anything more than this. Below you can see examples of such idiotic inconsistencies and contradictions from his shoddy trash.

Firstly, he completely twisted and grossly misrepresented Quincy characters. A random maid from Silbern that appeared literally in one chapter of manga suddenly turned out to possess a great skills and be on par with the main Sternritters. Making insignificant characters into mary sues is one of the general problems of this novel. Narita gives too much attention to Liltotto and Giselle in the novel clearly because they are popular even among Gotei fans. He simply rides on cheap popularity, while these two are actually secondary characters and didn’t show anything special in the manga. They should have been dead, but he revived them due to illogical bullshit to attract more wankers. They couldn’t survive Auswahlen and keep their Quincy powers. Auswahlen takes away Quincy powers in the first place with the part of Yhwach’s soul. Also Yhwach would have immediately felt that their souls didn’t come to him. It’s impossible to fake through. It’s also stupid that Narita constantly repeats who is who among the Quincy, because he apparently understands that retarded Gotei fans don’t remember Sternritters.

There are many retarded plot moments and mary sueish powers for the newly created and old manga characters equally. Suddenly, some secondary characters turned out to possess Soul King particles in them, even though they must be extremely rare like Mimihagi in Ukitake. Fullbringers were ordinary people in their own arc in the manga and their abilities originated from the Hollows’ power. So by making them somehow connected to the Soul King Narita severely retcons manga material. There can’t be so many Soul King’s parts freely roaming around, and Fullbringers can’t be so freaking special after they lost to Shinigamis.

The biggest mary sue among the Fullbringers was of course Aura. Narita overpowered her so much that she was stated to be on the level of Aizen, which sounds like a bad joke. And she is still some secondary filler character from the non-canon novel. Narita’s urge to make everyone into demi god seems to originate from his inability to create something really interesting and original, so he just buffs up random nobodies. Aura's reiatsu is said to be of the highest degree as well, she could fight evenly with Urahara and single-handedly defeat several Sternritters. While she was still just a human, that’s so much bullshit. Moreover, she could freely manipulate any matter, though it’s primarily Quincy technique and a human woman shouldn’t be better than them at it. She was also a leader of the cult and a host of the Soul King’s chain of fate - just how much more retardedly overpowered qualities could fit into one character? This shit can’t be taken seriously.

Narita stated that Yhwach actually didn’t want to rule the world, he wanted to merge the worlds and revert the world to its original state. While a new 'prophesied king’ in the novel instead wants to rule over the three current worlds. But in the manga it was already shown that Yhwach became the new king over the world and even created the new castle in the Soul King’s dimension. And the worlds didn’t even start merging, only Earth was shaking for some time after that. Also Narita added an explanation that the world of the living will be alright only until the Soul King stays on the throne. But that’s a straight up lie to cover up for Kubo’s bullshit which he came up with in the last moment. Yhwach overthrew the Soul King and took his place. But the world was still standing and even the balance didn’t crumble. Moreover it was implied in the manga that the world existed even before the Soul King. So, we actually saw that the world of the living won’t be destroyed with the death of the Soul King.

Narita also mentioned that it’s not clear whether Yhwach is relative of the Soul King or not. But that means they didn’t even discuss this with Kubo. And since even this very important moment is still unclear, it most likely suggests that they haven’t discussed anything at all concerning the novel. So it’s highly likely that Kubo wasn’t involved with the writing of this novel which again makes it non-canon. He probably only came up with new bankais and made illustrations.

Narita also borrowed some ideas from the anime filler arcs and sometimes he just retells old manga events and outright quotes it, because apparently he couldn’t come up with anything really new and original. And filler arcs for the most part are complete nonsense, they were made for simple fanservice for the fans of Gotei. Thus another reason to not consider this shitty novel a canon if it’s based on the non-canon material from the fillers in the first place. For example, Narita mentioned that each noble family has a Zanpakuto that can be inherited and one of them is Muramasa. But how can Zanpakuto be inherited if the previous owner has already awaken its shikai and bankai? It was specifically stated in manga that only asauchi without shikai can be stolen or passed to another owner.

Narita obviously tried to make his filler characters more special and strong by tying them to already existing Espada and Sternritters. According to him Hikone was unable to speak or move until Tokinada gave him Gremmy’s brain. That’s completely ridiculous, a pathetic attempt to add more false importance to the new character. Moreover Narita implied that Gremmy didn’t really want to fight against Kenpachi, that’s why he lost. Apparently that was another attempt to cover over Kubo’s fail explaining why Gremmy lost with such huge advantage and didn’t properly utilized his powers. But it’s not true and just another retcon, because in the manga Gremmy didn’t really show any intention to give up and wanted to win. And Kenpachi killed a child, this new development with his brain wouldn’t change the fact and make him look any better. Well, at least Narita didn’t kill a child in his novel unlike that cruel asshole Kubo, that’s something I guess. Also Hikone was made of ten thousands Shinigamis, humans and Quincy Konpaku. That’s a pure nonsense because to make artificial Quincy souls you’d still need a part of Yhwach’s soul which they obviously lacked.

Narita doesn’t remember some important details from the manga, like the fact that Arrancars don’t need to hunt souls anymore, because they’ve already evolved. In the novel it’s stated that Grimmjow continued to chase after Hollows, which is another contradiction. Later Narita even added that Arrancars were eating some lizard in Hueco Mundo, which is complete nonsense, they don’t need to eat. He also forced some popular characters like Grimmjow to encourage Ichihime ship, clearly to promote this shit among the fans, who didn’t welcome it after the ending. Speaking of Grimmjow, Narita and Kubo forced him to follow Gotei’s orders which is an outrageous OOC. Real Grimmjow didn’t obey anyone, even Aizen, and wouldn’t be asking a permission from Urahara to kill Ichigo. He would never help Gotei against Tokinada. Narita added him to the novel only to attract his numerous fans.

There is a case of Kyoraku’s hypocrisy when he reproached Tokinada for using a child and making Hikone work for him. That’s laughable because they forced Ichigo to do all their dirty work and every Shinigami was okay with it. Nell also acts like a hypocrite since she only cares about Ichigo and doesn’t give a shit about Gotei’s atrocities against Arrancars. Even though it was said earlier in the novel that Gotei didn’t attack them only because the balance of worlds has been shaken. It means they are still not friends at all and ready to assault Arrancars any minute. If this disgusting hoe doesn’t care about it she is not worthy to rule Hueko Mundo, she would just give it up to Shinigamis. Narita created this fake and pretentious alliance between the former enemies only to make an illusion of peace and to distract idiotic Gotei fans from Shinigami’s evil deeds. Of course this phoney union wouldn’t be enough to forget Gotei crimes and sweep them under the rug.

There was a facepalm inducing explanation regarding Hikone’s Zanpakuto. Again, Narita tried to raise powerleves ridiculously high, after this even main manga characters look weak compared to his new mary sues. Apparently there was some Vasto Lorde that ascended to the sky by devouring the Soul King, but then Ichibee defeated him. What the actual fuck? Maybe there is some inaccuracy in the English translation, but even an attempt to devour the Soul King sounds absurd for some random Vasto Lorde. And if he did it, how could he lose to the Zero Squad? He must be stronger than them. So, this absurdly strong Vasto Lorde was sealed in Hikone’s Zanpakuto by Nimaya. Which is a contradiction too, because Zanpakuto were made from Shinigamis’ souls and not from Hollows. Nevertheless, Kenpachi was able to one shot him. Powerlevels are all over the place if Narita didn’t want to imply that Kenpachi is stronger than the Soul King now. Or he just doesn’t follow his own bullshit. Moreover, that Zanpakuto absorbed a piece of the Soul King from Hikone and remembered its true name just before he was defeated. Logically he should have evolved instead. But Narita just like Kubo makes Shinigamis stronger for no reason and without any explanation even if the enemy before them is literally on the level of the Soul King.

By the way there was a notion that Shinigamis were impotent in the reishi-enriched Soul Society and couldn’t do anything to that overpowered Hollow which spread its influence over it. Meaning Soul Society didn’t belong to them originally and they didn’t even have Zanpakutos at that time, but Nimaya managed to seal him in a sword anyway. There were already hints in the manga that Shinigamis are impostors in Soul Society and can’t control anything in it without Zanpakutos while Quincy have natural skills for reishi manipulation, so I guess Narita confirmed it. All in all, Narita twisted the process of Zanpakuto creation to make another stupidly strong character. And Nimaya shouldn’t even posses the technique and skills to create Zanpakuto at that time if no one in Gotei had them. But even then it was made pretty clear that Ichibee and Nimaya are evil. It’s disgusting how they were almost gloating that they could seal so many souls in the sword.

Another hypocritical whitewashing of Shingami’s villainy was when Ikkaku and Yumichika told Giselle that they wouldn’t attack from the back because ‘they are not like Sternritters’. But later in the novel it’s mentioned that Shunsui would attack from behind if there is a chance. It just shows the overall level of Narita’s shitty writing, he contradicts not only manga, but his own text. Also Ikkaku stabbed Yukio in the back in the Fullbring arc. Narita’s hypocrisy and attempt to present Shinigamis in a good light must be intended for retarded Gotei fans who don’t even remember manga events. Also Narita shamelessly tried to make Hisagi look like some sort of knight when he said that he can’t kill Hikone because as a Shinigami and a warrior he has an honour. That’s a repulsive bullshit because it’s usual for Shinigamis to literally kill thousands of souls for the balance, not even talking about their war with Quincy and the old genocide. Also it was mentioned earlier in the novel that Shinigamis are willing to kill people if it’s necessary to protect Soul Society. So, the defence of Soul Society comes first for them, it’s more important than human lives and Narita even admitted it himself.

Narita made his share of asspulls. It was said in the novel that Kenpachi had never practiced Shunpo before, nor had he considered solidifying reishi underneath his foot because it was too confusing for him. But somehow he suddenly could manage to remain standing in mid-air. Narita doesn’t even give an explanation how is this possible, Kenpachi just conveniently does it when he needs it. Shinigamis can evoke any ability if they need it for the win. But even if Kenpachi for no reason learned how to stand in the air, he still can’t use Shunpo properly while Hikone utilised all known speed techniques. Zaraki shouldn’t be able to catch him anyway, that’s another illogical asspull and shitty writing.

Concerning Tokinada, Narita made another primitive villain out of him with stupidly strong power. His ability isn’t even original, like everything in this novel. Kageroza from filler arc also could copy abilities from Shinigami’s Zanpakuto. And Tokinada’s shikai has the power to mimic any Zanpakuto abilities that he has witnessed, even several powers at once. But even with such huge and absurd power Tokinada couldn’t defeat a single captain. Again, retarded powerlevels and nonsensical Shinigamis’ victories.

Tokinada was also chosen as a scapegoat for Gotei’s atrocities. Everything was blamed on him and his noble family even though his clan was created only for the novel and never mentioned before. All other noble families have dirty hands, but Tokinada was specifically made the main villain so brainless fans would forget what other Shinigamis did. For example Byakuya wanted to execute his sister for breaking some superfluous Gotei law, but everyone seems to sweep it away. But Tokinada was excessively put in a bad light like he is responsible for every shit that Gotei did. Narita made Tokinada’s noble clan the main villains, but in the manga Seiretei nobles weren’t even so important. They were rich spongers which gave orders to Gotei and thought they have everything under control until Aizen killed them all. But they weren’t involved with the Soul King. The true villains have been always Zero Squad members who knew the truth about the Soul King and were responsible for him. So Narita just shifted responsibility to a newly created character and his clan even though it was never mention that nobles could even have such authority.

What was the most infuriating, Narita even put all the blame for the spying on Ginjou and murdering of his friends on Tokinada too. But originally in the manga Ukitake was responsible for it. That’s a disgusting retcon when Narita is again shamelessly trying to present Shinigamis in a better light and want readers to ignore their crimes. He impertinently shifts the blame on Tokinada even though he didn’t even existed when Kubo was writing Fullbringers arc. Apparently they wanted to clear Ukitake’s reputation since he got killed in the end. Overall Tokinada seems like a character that was created only to bear all sins of Soul Society and specific Shinigami to divert attention from their cruelty and villainies. That’s a rewriting of history in favour of the popular characters.

Soul King is said to be neither alive no dead in the novel, which is a direct contradiction to the manga where he was obviously alive if he died when Ichigo stabbed him. It was important to emphasize that the Soul King would be alive, otherwise Kubo wouldn’t make such a big deal out of it. Besides he even invited Ichigo to talk in the beginning of the TYBW arc, though Kubo changed the plot later and forgot about it. Also in the novel Soul King was called the original guardian and the progenitor of Quincy, Shinigamis and Fullbringers. And at that time apparently there were no boundaries separating life and death. This statement is so contradictory and wrong, it shows that Narita doesn’t even understand what he is writing about. Narita himself came up with the bullshit that the worlds would merge without the Soul King, but here he suddenly presents a universe where the Soul King is alive while the worlds are merged already. How does it even work in his opinion? The worlds would merge without the SK, but they are also merged with him in this version. There is no logic at all. And in the manga it was said that the Soul King was created at some point by Shinigamis, so how could he be some omnipotent being before they made him into a Soul King? Sounds like another ridiculous nonsense which Narita added just to make even the Soul King himself more special for his mary sue festival.

Not to mention that Narita didn’t miss a chance to make Fullbringers seem more important again, even though they were weak normal humans with Hollow powers originally and not descendants of the freaking Soul King. Also if Soul King was partly a Fullbringer, it implies that there were Hollows already at that time. But that’s impossible since they would have eaten all souls while Shinigamis still didn’t have Zanpakutos. And obviously Fullbringers would appear later than Hollows, because the Hollows infected their parents initially. Narita pulled that Soul King origins history right out of his ass.

There are minor contradictions with the manga in the details here and there. In the final manga chapters it is said that there have been 10 years of piece already. But Tokinada was a huge threat that appeared in the same period of time. Ichibee decided to tell the story of the Soul King to some random mob soldiers. Why would he share such important information on a whim with simple servants? That’s so stupid, in the manga Soul King’s servants were blindfolded, because they are not even allowed to see him apparently. And Shutara’s servants were some kind of marionettes. Of course no one from Zero Squad would tell servants such secrets. Another detail, Tousen and his friend had Zanpakutos with identical names according to the novel, and even had a similar release commands. That shows Narita’s lack of imagination and plain copying from the manga.

Of course Shinigamis were given easy victory with the power of asspulls in the novel. Thus Hisagi easily persuaded Hikone to not fight just with the famous talk no jutsu technique. Even though earlier in the novel Hikone said that he will gladly die for Tokinada and was ready to cut down their enemies as long as it fulfilled Tokinada's goals. It was also mentioned that Hikone sees him as father. Liltotto even admit that Hikone is a fanatic for Tokinada. He was a loyal servant and wouldn’t disobey orders just because his enemy is babbling something. He had his own will, but still he was created to serve Tokinada. Furthermore he suddenly got attached to Aura and had feelings for her out of nowhere, while she betrayed Tokinada. Logically he should have killed her for it. It’s such unrealistic and mawkish cliche that Hikone started to see her as a mother. He isn’t even a real child and just an artificially created homunculus. Typically, Narita wanted to divide enemies of Shinigamis, because if they stood united, Shinigamis wouldn’t have won. So I guess this sudden attachment to Aura was also made to push Hikone away from Tokinada.

Tokinada was also conveniently weakened when his Zanpakuto absorbed part of his powers. Another plot trick to make him lose. Narita created an absurdly overpowered Zanpakuto for him, as was mentioned already. But even when he stole Aizen and Yamamoto powers, he still could kill a single Shinigami, what a load of bullshit. Is Narita trying to say that even their powers are not enough to kill off a single mary sue from his novel? Well, Tokinada’s Zanpakuto can’t have such huge power in the first place since it’s just a clan relic and not some special craft from Nimaya. But Narita already gave him such sword and then couldn’t allow him to win with it, thus that forced weakness with taking away part of his power.

Hisagi was also given farcically powerful Zanpakuto, it ruins all powerelevels from the manga when a secondary mob suddenly gets an ability stronger and more complicated than some of the main characters. Hisagi was always more of a comic relief character and never demonstrated any major achievements in battle. He was a lieutenant, not even a captain. But Narita raised him to ludicrously high levels of power only because he’s the main character in his retarded novel. It’s inconsistent and plain stupid. Even his shikai was retconned and now can heal his wounds. While his asspull bankai traps his enemy in a sphere where they both are healed and can’t die, creating a condition resembling the world before the Soul King with no boundaries between life and death. Meaning his Zanpakuto must be more ancient than Yamamoto and somehow connected to the Soul King, but it’s impossible for a simple Shinigami soldier from Rukongai.

In the end Narita even added an overly sentimental shoujo banality when Aura suddenly awakened a feelings for Hikone and her maternal instinct appeared out of nowhere. Everything in this shitty novel happens suddenly and contradicts previously established characters and events, that’s the level of Narita’s writing. Aura was indifferent to everything before, but abruptly changed her mind in the decisive battle and betrayed Tokinada. That was obviously made to weaken Tokinada even more and deprive him of his allies. Otherwise Gotei wouldn’t have won, as always they need a convenient plot trick for the victory. Also that maternity and childbirth propaganda went off the charts in the end. Aura never was interested in anything like this before, it’s OOC for her. Seems like Narita got a pay-check from Abe to promote a ‘happiness’ of having children to the Japanese readers.

Even though Gotei won again with asspulls and plot shields of course, their system remained the same, encouraging Shinigamis’ crimes. Despite all Narita attempts to make them into even bigger mary sues and to put Shinigamis in a good light and hush up their atrocities, they will continue to be authoritarian assholes and live in fear. Thus Yoruichi showed her true colors as a member of noble family and was ready to kill Hisagi, because he continued to search information about the Soul King. There are other nobles who want to hide the truth even with murdering Hisagi too. This novel didn’t bring anything new to the Bleach plot, it just reused old materials and created anecdotic and improbable powers for the new filler OCs from Narita. He couldn’t even convincingly cover for Kubo plot holes and failures. On the contrary, his novel became another failure and can’t be considered canon with so many unreasonable contradictions. Narita should have died from cancer in hospital, so that readers would be saved from this abhorrent novel.

#bleach #cfyow #bleach novel #tokinada tsunayashiro #hikone ubuginu

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torendheavenandearth · 5 years ago

Text

1.1

“What is in a name? Nothing. A simple sobriquet used to better call a person. How can you call that specific girl when she is in a group of girls? That is the function of a name. It is us liars that attach meaning to it, and oh have we committed the cardinal sin of attaching all this meaning.” - From the Discourse of the Tambay Swordsman and the Alcoholic Witch

---

Follow, once again, the girl. She lies in the borders: between waking and sleeping, between farmland and forest, between life and death, between heaven and earth. Something watches her from afar: a cloud of witnesses, her ancestors all come to watch what she will do next.

Mounds sit beside the trees, and they watch her with invisible eyes. She is unconscious, on the brink of waking. Something has happened. What happened? Why is she lying here? The last thing she remembers is… being thrown into that hole.

She awakes and sees the pink sky, with only the slightest hue of blue. Brown eyes, dilating before promptly shrinking when the orange rays of the dead sun Adlao pierce them. She tries her best to move her body, but it is hard-of-hearing. It doesn't seem to hear the pleas of her soul to move. Not yet.

Blinking, Angela gathers up enough energy to move a single finger. Good. She thinks, and this is the first time she’s thought. It came like a bright flash of light in the midst of darkness. Her voice, she notices, is light, kinda nosy, and probably very annoying.

That thought carries the momentum of her soul. Eventually she manages to move two, three fingers at a time. In a few more seconds, she lifts her arm, and then her shoulder twitches, and then, her entire upper body feels like the winds of her soul are animating it, the breath of life.

She was breathing. But now she breathes. She inhales deeply, and yet the first thing that seeps through her nostrils is an earthy smell. Mixed with the smell of goat poop.

Angela pushes herself up into a sitting position. She decides that it would be good for her to take stock of her current situation: where is she? How did she get here? Why does it smell like goat poop? She looks around to see that she is in that place described earlier: at the border of the forest and the farmland.

She manages to rise to her feet and looks past the field of rice. There, in the furthest reaches of her vision, she can see various men and women moving about. Some of them wear large salakot--broad-brimmed hats made of hardwood. Others wear simple peasant clothing: the women wear white baro, a kind of collarless blouse that is light and made for the tropical heat where they are.

Angela blinks. She wonders where she is. Some kind of exotic land?

She then remembers just moments before she was pushed into that hole. The Arkanghel, Binibini Abulencia, Ka Alvaro…

Where the fuck am I? And what the fuck is happening?

She decides it would be better to walk up to them and ask for directions. She looks down on herself and decides that she is definitely not suited for this climate. The oversized hoodie is fluffy and warm: hell for tropical climates.

“Hoy, voluminous iha.”

A voice, from behind. Angela leans over her shoulder and sees three little imp-like creatures. One of them has a huge mushroom on his head like it was his hat. The other two wear simple bahag, and look more or less like little goblin imps. Dark brown skin, large bulbous black eyes, and a toothy grin showing serrated teeth.

Something in the back of her mind activates, and suddenly culture swirls back. “Ah, sorry po. Tabi-tabi po.” ‘Tabi-Tabi Po”, a small saying, but usually a string of words that permeates politeness.

Now that she has spoken while things aren’t hectic, something catches Angela’s attention. She doesn’t speak her usual conversational language--what was her conversational language? Ah, right, Tagalog, with a mix of English. Teka, how did she know that? And… “teka”?--I̗̻͚̞ͣť ̒̈́̒ͣ̽c̪̲̈́ͅo̠̠̮̦͐̅ͭͩ͒m̪̲̎̋͊ͣ̆ͥẹ̣̜̹͔̓ͣͧs͉̊̊ ͎͈̗͚f̘͙̦̐͋ͅr̪̗̭͂̊̚o̰̝̥͗̃̂ͥm͑ͥͥ ̗ͯ̃h͚͖͚̄͂ͬͧiͥ̉n̝ͤͧ̽͐t̺͙̫̩̖̾̉a̦̹͚̦̙̋̐͗ͤͯy͕̼͙͚͚ͣ̾̄͆̍͊ ̣̘̩͈̬ͅk͕ͣ͋̿ͩͨǻ̌̔ͅ,̙̦ͥͧ̏̂̓ ͉͋ͧͧͨͫ̈̿w͎͒͛̆h̞͓̳̞̻ͨi̓ͮ͆͛̍c̘͓̑̒͗ḣ̰͖͇̠̲͈ͧͧ̔̃̋͂ ̣̼̭͍͂̚m͎̐ͯͮ͛e͛͌a̘̠̠͙͍̝̓̈̓ǹ̄ͣ̔͊ś̝͍ ̻͈ͯͥ“͓̄̾̈͂̆y͙̠̦ͨ̅̎̉̓̉ͨō̅̓ͩ͗̐̚u̯͈̗̱̜̖̇̋ͨͩͨ͑ͯ ̘͓̯͉̹͓̂̌ͤ̃ͮ̃̚w̞̘̭͎͚͑ͬͮ̿ͫ͆a̼͖̹̘͙͈ͧi̽ͤtͯ̋́̄”͉͓͕̼̹ ̮͈ͮ͂͑̂̅̋ī̤̰̲̖͚͔̯̀͋n̟̺̆ͬ̾ͭ̾ ̟͎T͓͕̯̯̬͖̳̈͌ͯͦͨ͋a͇̞̯̪̖̼ͯ̌͂̐͂͑ḡ̥̜̏̏̆a͉̮̦͕̖̓ͭḽ͍ͨͯ͋o̗̖͙͎͕͌̿͊ͦͧ̽ġ͈͉̞́ͥ́.--

Why is there another voice there, sometimes?

More importantly, Angela realizes that whenever she speaks--she tries speaking, says a few words--they’re a foreign tongue. Not Tagalog, not English. Something wholly different, something that is borrowed and stolen. Something that is organic and artificial. Something that has been there since the beginning and is something completely new and constructed.

Despite this language barrier, she knows somehow that these little folk are known as duwende. “You trespass on our land and then you just try to get off scot free? Nay, voluminous girl. Wait for our vengeance.”

She opens her mouth to retort, but they turn around and step on the ground. Several mounds bump up from the earth, and then they open up at the top. The duwende jump through the pinprick hole opening, slipping through pretty easily, and then disappearing under ground.

Angela blinks, but decides--perhaps foolishly--to ignore it for now and deal with it when it comes. She turns and walks down the rice fields until she arrives at the village. Right now, there are more pressing things to settle. Like the question of where the hell she is.

The village itself has all the physical conceits of a Philippine village in 1880: square straw huts on stilts of bamboo, with layers within. Amazing for when the river--she hears the river, it sings to her falsities of godliness--floods the area during monsoon season.

Angela wonders briefly if she has just somehow wandered into the Spanish Colony of the Philippines in the 19th Century. However, that guess vanishes when she sees the horse-headed demon--right, the tikbalang, like that one in the dungeon they had been kept in--wearing a pina fiber barong tagalog walking down the street, conversing casually with a young boy. She sees a speaking buwaya--that is, a particularly large crocodile--speaking in the same tongue as the two men sitting atop it. From above, carrying two buckets balanced on both ends of a single bamboo pole, is bird-creature with the torso and face of a man, but the lower half and wings of an eagle. It carries the two buckets, yelling out “Taho! Taho! Get your Taho here!” Galura. That’s a galura, thinks Angela.

Angela thinks for a second if the winged man is similar to the tiktik she’s met. Dimahuli? However, before she gets a good look at the man, a woman bumps into her, sending tomatoes spilling onto the ground. “Oh, sorry,” Angela replies, somewhat calm, crouching to help her.

“Oh, girl, please don’t just stand in the way,” the woman’s voice is hoarse and deep, as if she spent the most of her night screaming. ”It’s market day, and people need to eat.”

“Sorry,” Angela says again, although she is not sure what is happening. Her skin brushes against the woman’s. The woman’s skin is cold, as if she is dead. She wears a simple hardwood salakot and then a baro’t saya--that means blouse and skirt, with the skirt usually being checkered and reaching her ankles--to cover herself. Over her baro a long silk scarf wraps around her arms and shoulders like a shawl.

The girl doesn’t see the woman’s face, but she notices her clawed hand--leathery, as if dead--as she bends down to pick up the pieces of corn that fell on the floor.

“Sorry,” Angela says for the third time. The woman finishes putting back all her scattered purchases and then looks up at her. The girl notices that the womans’ sclera are black, and her irises are red. Her hair is a shock of pure white, and little horns sprout from her brow, although somehow tucked away in her salakot.

“Stop apologizing,” the woman says, before pausing and then looking intently at her, as if reading an intricately worded passage. “Why are you here? Who are you?”

That is a good question. Who is she? “I-I… I don’t know. I just woke up there.” And she points at the spot between farmland and forest.

“You… you don’t remember anything?”

The girl shakes her head. She does remember one thing: her name. “All I remember is my name.”

“What might that be, girl?”

“Angela.”

“Angela,” the woman repeats. “And you are sure you do not remember… anything at all?”

Angela nods. “I vaguely remember… something about beings of Fire… and being attacked by a gold-statue guy… and some woman being possessed by a diwata--”

The woman squints at her. “Putangina,” she curses--that is another word she is familiar with, why does her soul use these words, these languages? Putangina means ‘bitch mother’--”It has begun, hasn’t it? It is the Sixth Day of the Sixth Month. I should have fucking known. Yawa.” --she is a foul-mouth and so is the translator of this text. Yawa means devil or demon, but used in the same way an American or a rich Filipino boy would use fuck.

“What?”

“Follow me, girl, you are not the safest where you are right now.”

Angela shakes her head. “Wait, why should I follow you? You’re a creepy demon lady.”

The woman snorts. “You’re one to talk,” she says, gesturing to Angela’s brow. Angela reaches up and feels those horns again, sprouting from her brow. Branding, she remembers Dimahuli saying. “Now look,” the woman turns and points at a far away church. Something she sees a lot, since she knows exactly what she expected. A belltower, and then a church built in the style of Earthquake baroque. She’s seen this kind of architecture before. The kind one would find in the villages back in the Philippines. Back from where she was...

The thing that ticks her off, however, is the images etched onto the bas-reliefs and the statues that stand atop the gate. They’re angels, more or less, save for having wings like swords, and a crown of thorns for haloes. Above the door there is the sculpture of a woman, with arms wide open as if receiving the devotees to their embrace. Her eyes are closed and her smile is somber. Tears run down her cheeks. She bears no crown of thorns, but a Veil of Tears.

Above the church, upon where a cross would usually be found, there is an upside-down triangle, pure black. Pitch black. So black that no light could be seen through it, making it look eerily like… a hole in reality, in the shape of a triangle.

“What is that?”

“A church dedicated to the Trinity. Our Bleeding Lady of Laurel Church.” Take account, readers, that the laurel in this pronunciation is Laow-rell. Not Law-rell.

“Laurel?”

“That is the name of this town.”

“Laurel… ah, teka, are we in the Philippines?”

The woman gives her a blank look. Eventually, she shakes her head. “I know nothing of your ‘Philippines’. Now come. It is still early in the morning. We better leave before the traders arrive. It’ll be too hard to avoid attention then.”

The woman looks back at the small market road that is lined by vendor stands and other booths. There, people in kalesas have already begun to come in, some of them wearing what seems to be rich clothes--white silk barongs and colorful balloon pants. Not all of them are human, or at least seem to be. Many of them seem to be like creatures straight out of folklore and urban legends. Horse-headed demons, eagle-legged and -winged men, large bulky beings with heads of carabao. Some of them have horns, similar to the woman standing in front of Angela. Others have strange skin markings, have strange skin in general, others seem to have replaced their body parts with strange wooden and gold prosthetics.

Many more merchants and traders are coming in now, riding upon carabaos and horses and elephants with merchandise hanging from their sides. Some of them seem like women with great and large horns with multiple eyes, others are overwhelmingly handsome men with perfect pale skin, blue eyes, and black hair. Even others are seven foot tall, lanky anomalies with barky skin and a bramble of thorns for hair.

Among them, Angela notices a few men in the crowd walking around. They wear about them rayadillos, a deep and dark blue, like the color of the sea during a moonless night. Most of them are outfitted with loose pants--probably due to the more or less tropical climate--but beneath them they wear leather boots. They wear about their shoulders a small white mantle, save for one, who wears a red one and also has a large peaked hat made of straw. That man is not a man, but in actuality a feminine bird-creature, hunched over and with the face of a human mixed with a bird. Another Tiktik.

“Okay, what the fuck?” Angela blinks. Some semblance of common sense--which has eluded her until now--is beginning to come back. Something is terribly wrong. As her past self begins to catch up with herpresent self, she realizes that these things aren’t normal. At least, back where she was.

Before she can say anything more, however, a caravan of palanquins, wagons, carabaos, and airships descends from behind her. The woman grasps Angela’s arm and pulls her to the side as a procession of merchants and traders walk down the dirt road. Many of them are wrapped in excessive trade riches: gold sashes, rings studded with precious stones, teeth filed with gold.

Well, no, that’s mostly the ones that are being carried by the caravans and the palanquins. Those actually pulling the caravan, driving the carabaos, and carrying the palanquins upon their shoulders are mostly naked save for the colorful bahag that they wear. Commonly known as loincloths, but not quite. Even the women wear nothing but bahag. Mostly men carry the palanquins, while the women sometimes stay in the palanquins, fanning the man or woman sitting within, or provide auxiliary umbrellas--wide payongs with gold tassels hanging from the rim.

They also have guards--a few men and women wearing carabao hide armor and wielding large kalasag. They are tattooed from head to toe, a sign of their bravery.

“Shit, too late,” mutters the woman. She gestures to the palanquins and says: “Traders from the Unconquered Isles,” mutters the woman, and Angela blinks. They look like something out of a Pre-Colonial Philippine historical epic.

Of course, right behind that procession they are followed by another group of carabao men. This time they are more varied, and there’s no clear distinction as to who’s being carried, although Angela is sure they’re there. Curiously, the clothing on these guys seems more modern than “the ones from the Unconquered Isles”. They wear trousers and leather boots and shirts and jackets over them.

Angela’s mind is reeling.

This one is mostly caravans, no palanquins. It is led by a friar who walks alongside a caravan with a triangle depicting three beings on each of the three sides: one is a bearded father on the top, on the lower left is a young and smiling son, and on the lower right is a peaceful yet haunting woman.

They bring with them guns and armor, and are also flanked by their own guard: creatures--not humans that’s for sure--with what looks like armor for skin. As in, they’re walking pieces of armor, with eyes that are wicks of flame. Angela realizes that they resemble that walking gold statue that attacked them in the dungeon. Barachiel, was it? Those walking pieces of armor--mostly stone, some made of steel--carry with them rifles. Baril. “Of course, the traders from Biringan,” says the woman again.

Those from the airships, Angela notices, aren’t even actually mostly human. They’re strange, seven foot tall creatures with the dark bark skin of the dalaket tree, with glowing red eyes and horns that resemble the branches of a dead tree. Their airships are floating karakoas and balangays, rowing upon waves of sky, powered with nothing but their invisible engkanto magic. “Even the dalaketnon have come.”

“Dalaketnon?” asks Angela. “I’ve heard about them...” but Angela is unsure how good her knowledge of things would help.

“Beings that live in the dalakit tree. Filled with strange magic, usually feared, very good at weaving wood sorceries.”

“Sorceries?”

As the procession continues, Angela notices that the demon lady is looking at something else. Following her gaze, she notices a small flock of birds flying off in the distance. Angela decides too soon that it's just a flock of birds, and looks away.

However, a few moments later, Angela realizes that the lady isn’t looking away from it. When she follows her gaze again, the “flock of birds” has turned into a large group of humanoid beings with burning white wings made of solidified sunlight. They all wear steel cuirasses, the kind one would see on Spanish conquistadors, and have an assortment of weapons, from guns to shields to spears to swords.

More importantly, they’re coming dangerously close to where Angela and the demon lady are standing.

Angela’s eyes flicker to the lady at first, and she can tell that the lady is thinking, as her eyes focus on the angelic beings, before flickering to both sides of the ongoing procession.

The market has truly begun, for even as the procession moves at its sluggish pace, traders and buyers from the village have come out of their homes and hovels to look through the wares of the beings from outside the village. They’ve begun trading gold pieces, little coins of bronze, silver and gold, as well as other goods that they own--necklaces, weapons, expensive textiles--in exchange for other strangely shaped weapons, intricate statues of gold and stone, religious iconography like miniature versions of the Trinity, flamboyant, fashionable clothing, and jewelry made from materials one can only find in their own homeland.

There’s another caravan right behind the dalaketnon: a small battalion of bipedal mechanical armors that are shaped more or less like large dinosaurs. They are flanked by men and women wearing armor made of steel which burn with a strange light, giving them the impression that they are lined by neon light. They wield bulky guns that seem to look like shotguns, having three barrels seated right beside each other, forming a triangle. Angela notices that the folk that walk alongside them are mostly made up of pale-skinned Tao, although there are some token other-skinned and non-Tao folk there. There’s a galura wearing a mechanized suit of armor and a naga--a snake person, with a humanoid torso and head but a serpentine lower half--who wields a magnetic shield and a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun.

“Who’re those?” asks Angela.

“Traders from the Gunmetal Kingdom,” says the lady. “One of the Trinity States.”

“Trinity States?” asks Angela, but the demon lady’s attention is wholly focused on the now hovering party of winged humanoids investigating the procession from above. Angela assumes that they’re looking for something in the crowd.

“Come now,” says the demon lady, grasping Angela by the wrist and making her gasp. “Before we catch the attention of someone important. I’ll explain everything to you when we find a safe spot.”

Next Chapter

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#abduction #writing #karanduun #web serial #novel #fantasy

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dmsden · 6 years ago

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The Forged Folk – A Legend of the Shattered Pact

They slept for countless days under the earth, their creators gone, their purpose silenced. What they dreamed in those long eons is unknown. Perhaps they slept without dreams, or perhaps their dreams vanished when they awoke, for they did not remember them when light struck their faces and they opened their eyes.

Ironically, no one remembers the names of the adventurers who were exploring the Broken Barrows, hoping to find treasures left behind by the Old Ones, those primordial folk who had made the Barrows in the first place. We know that they had found one Barrow that seemed to be a tomb, and they hoped to plunder ancient riches left behind, deep beneath the earth. Instead, they found what seemed to be bizarre metal and wood sculptures of humanoid figures. As they inspected one of the figures, the area around its eyes began to glow…

The constructed entities reacted to this intrusion with great violence. Several of the adventurers lost their lives, but, as the metal folk began to realize they didn’t recognize the races of the intruders, the combat slowed. And, finally, with magic aiding the communication, a dialogue began to take place.

The people who lived in the vicinity of the Broken Barrows, such as the people of the town of Seowyn’s Crossing to the north, began to see these strange people exploring the lands around them. Because of their fearsome appearance, these golem-like creatures were soon dubbed the Warforged, a title which they’ve accepted, since they could not recall any name that they had for themselves. All they seem to remember is a vague impression of their creators, tall, humanoid creatures with many arms.

At first, most people who encountered the Warforged thought that they were no different than a rock gnome’s mechanical toys, but, as the Warforged spent more time amongst humans, elves, dwarves, and the like, they displayed increasingly life-like traits, showing emotions, wants, goals, and ambitions of their own. Clerics of the Twelve, having inspected the Warforged, have declared that they possess souls like any living creature, something that many find disturbing. Many believe that these souls were stolen from other living creatures and imbued into artificial shells. Many others don’t believe them to be living at all, and they wait for the Warforged to awaken to some goal of their masters, likely to the detriment of all.

The majority of Warforged live in the partially subterranean settlement of Firsthome, where they were first discovered. Although no new Warforged are born, many pockets of Warforged, including individuals, have been found in chambers in various Old Ones ruins. These Warforged are often disoriented at first, but, once they meet their fellows, they settle into a comfortable rhythm of life. These “young” Warforged are likely millennia old, but they are treated much like children by those Warforged who have already been around.

Although many Warforged, feeling no connection to anything but war, swore themselves to the military of Summerlund, many others scattered throughout Aldorath to learn and take up residence elsewhere. Warforged fought on both sides of the Second Witching War, for example. Many of them become adventurers, hoping to find other enclaves or truths about their origin and why they were left behind. Recently, Warforged have found a dangerously trapped series of caverns that they believe leads to a place they call “Greathome” underneath Snowcrest Mountain. Time will tell if they can make their way through, or what they will find there.

((I knew I wanted to have the Warforged available as an option for players to play in my campaign, but with no Last War or House Cannith, I wanted to give them a very different sort of origin. I have left much of their origin and purpose a mystery, though I would likely work with a player to develop those elements should anyone decide to play one in the future. Hopefully this will give you some inspiration on how to include this or other unusual races in your own campaign.))

#d&d #D&D #d&d character #d&d 5e #d&d 5th edition #D&D 5e homebrew #dnd #dnd character #DnD stuff #DnD 5e #dnd 5th edition #dnd 5e homebrew #dungeons & dragons #Dungeons and Dragons

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szepardowa · 7 years ago

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Enchantment (Markus x Fem!Reader) Part 3.

003. Vision

You have touched the surface of Hell before. You remembered wild flames burning you alive for a brief moment, until Carl miraculously saved you from the grave destiny. Your mother's sharp claws still tried to snatch you away from the old man's protective embrace, but failed eventually, as she got frightened by her own crippled shadow. She was no good; she was the worst, in fact. But you didn't want to keep coming back to those times anymore. Not now, not with the man you loved as a father laying in the hospital bed, unconscious. The surface of Hell steamed through the world to touch you with its fire once again.

At 2:00 AM you were standing right in front of the main entrance of the DMC Heart Hospital. You were staring at something reserved only for your weary eyes. You had your hands brutally shaking, making it impossible to light up a mentholated cigarette. You were crying, but Markus couldn't tell anyway, as the drops of rain were running up your face, ruining your make-up. He got so much closer to you, a sad smile embellishing his features. You smiled back shyly.

"I am getting so wasted tonight." You whispered into his face, trying to gulp back your tears.

Markus looked away for quite a long time, and the shade of unhappiness marked the deep of his eyes. It broke your heart, but you burst into a bitter laugh anyway, in the hope to hide away your sadness from his judgemental stare.

"You don't mind, do you?"

He frowned, then pulled you gently into his arms; the feeling of strange warmth spread through your entire body.

"It isn't healthy to drown your sorrows in alcohol." He murmured into your ear. You shivered under his touch. "Besides... I would hate to see you torture yourself like that." You threw him a coy smile. A thousand wild thoughts went through your mind.

"Stay with me, then. We'll laugh, dance and kiss, like there is no tomorrow." You joked.

He knew you were testing the waters; and you were now wondering if he could, or wanted to take that bait of yours. He didn't laugh, though. He looked agitated. You took a step towards the closest Taxi, abashed.

* * *

The Ice Wine pleasantly burned your throat. Incredibly lightheaded, you couldn't fight the urge to laugh at the simplest things. You were laying on a furry carpet with Markus right beside you. He was eyeing you up and down with great adoration.

"What do you want from life, Markus?" You spoke in a soft voice, smiling at the ceiling.

"Is this the question you should be asking an android?" He grinned playfully with his eyebrows raised.

Your breathing hasted, feeling his fingers caressing the skin of your shoulder. He sat up in the brightness of the the fireplace; the golden glow cupped his face, making him even more hansome and alluring in your eyes. You decided that seduction was what he did best.

"Not just any android. I'm asking You."

"I am a machine." He stated coldly, sadness flowing through his artificial veins. The olive skin of his fingers turned ghostly white, and the fragments of plastic came into your sight.

"Yes, a machine with a soul. I've seen it." You took his exposed hand and placed it on your lips, peppering it with loving kisses. "You possess a heart so pure, so devoted... Anyone could fall in love with you." You actually said it.

Fuck.

The feeling of terrible embarrassment stretched throughout your whole body.

"Anyone?"

He asked, much to your surprise, with his hand still resting on your half-opened lips. You suddenly came to an insane realization that you crossed a border that possibly no other human being had ever gotten close to.

"What do you want from life, Markus...?" You repeated your question, this time more intimately. The blush from your cheeks spread upon your entire face, and yet you did not hesitate to put a gentle kiss on Markus' thumb, drawing tiny circles upon your lower lip.

The beast within him awoke and seemed to consume you alive with its hungry stare.

"At this very moment?" He asked, his voice hoarse. You nodded slowly.

"To save you from your sorrow..."

You felt your lips being pulled apart by the beast's claws. Potential danger didn't matter. Possible consequences had little meaning at the very moment. You needed to be kissed and to kiss, without fear.

At first, Markus teased you cruelly, brushing his cool lips over yours. His sweet touch flooded your senses - you couldn't fight the urge to kiss him fully, in a fiery and passionate way. He held you firmly, and you almost melted into him, sank deep into his loving embrace. When his lips finally connected with yours entirely, you let him take complete control over the situation. The kiss was slow, soft and soothing - a promise of much more to come. You inhaled sharply and a low moan escaped his mouth, the vibrations of his voice curling within you. Markus pulled away for a brief moment and gazed at you tenderly. Then, his lips crashed with yours once again, more and more hungry and demanding. As he deepened the kiss, you felt your heart trying to find a way out of your chest. You found it so hard to breathe, he had stolen all the air out of your lungs as if he needed you to breathe himself, only. You felt how every inch of you saturated with unrestrained lust. That was incredible - building a solid bridge between two bodies and souls - an extraordinary union spreading way beyond the definition of time. Love one of a kind.

When Markus finally stopped kissing you, a sudden vision came to terrorize your thoughts. You were afraid of forseeing what may be, but couldn't push the vision away, for you saw it in your love's beautiful eyes, now filled with tears.

You - a distant memory in his mind; a gust of wind sucked into an endless hurricane, only to be forgotten, merged with other air currents in a chaotic muddle. Him - your saviour and tormentor. The greatest love and the biggest loss.

Dum spiro, spero , my love.

#detroitbecomehuman #detroit become human #markus x reader #Markus #markus x you #fanfiction #fanfic #fluff #angst #smut

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