#weird terrain generation

[edwardos]

A weird village I found while running tests on Beta 1.8.

[dumpy-dump]

it's kinda a shame shadow seeds and sister seeds arent a thing in minecraft anymore (think it was 1.17/1.18 that did away with it? bc world gen changes)

even bigger shame that outside that one antvenom video ppl dont seem to know/talk much about it

like, there used to be weird, slightly different parallel worlds for each seed. the idea that not every minecraft world was entirely unique and that each had a shadow and a sister world is (was) fascinating. a bit surprised it didnt inspire more mods/fanworks

[ghouljams]

Okay… I hope this isn’t weird but I really do love cannibal kinks and the symbolism of giving oneself to the other for them to live but also… I like it when they’re deranged as hell.

I remember you talking about Ghost and how he’d definitely survive the apocalypse by going to cannibalism when food runs out and you’re so, so right.

I want to say he doesn't even wait for food to run out but that would be a lie, the man is utilitarian to his core. He stockpiles dry food, canned goods, he butchers the cow and deer he buys from farmers outside the city, stores them in his deep freeze (the one with its own generator). He has meat for months, rations for years, and yet as soon as shit hits the fan his shitty apartment in the city doesn't cut it the way he thought it would. There are too many people, too much noise, too much chaos. Not the sort he relishes in, the kind that crashes into buildings like a wave, attempting to shake their foundations like the horns of Jericho. It's a chaos he knows, the kind that always follows political upheaval, the kind that makes leaving the city feel less risky than sticking around.

So he packs what he can into his car, and to be fair he can pack quite a bit in there, and he gets the fuck out of the city. Takes the back roads, avoids highways and the city center. He pats himself on the back for getting something suited to rough terrain, remembers Soap complaining that he was bringing the military home with him. He finds a cabin out in the middle of the woods, remembers seeing a listing for it on some bnb website while the internet was still up, and hopes no one else had the same idea.

He avoids opening the freezer he managed to stuff in the back seat, digs a cup into a sack of beans, eats them just barely cooked while he checks the ropes on the generator strapped to the top of his car. He chews on jerky while he drives, tries to remember the farms in the area, reasons over whether or not he could nab a cow even just for the milk. Considers setting rabbit traps, nearly grabs a duck from a pond he drives past for the eggs, thinks better of it when he has the poor creature by the neck and isn't sure where he's supposed to put it in his crammed car.

All this to say he's fucking exhausted by the time he reaches the dark little cabin. Somehow all that sleep deprived insanity reaches a peak spotting your little sedan sitting between the trees, the flutter of someone peeking through the curtains... he hardly waits to unload his own vehicle before breaking the door down to see what a suddenly merciful God has granted him. Toys, he thinks to himself as you spit and kick and scream for someone to help, knew I forgot something.

The skin around his eye is starting to darken by the time he gets dinner on the table. Most of the fight went out of you at the promise of food, and you'd even been kind enough to help him get the freezer inside once he'd gotten the generator running. He'd have to get some of the trees around the place limbed up so the solar can keep it running, but he'll worry about that tomorrow.

"What's this," You sniff at the meat sitting nicely charred on your plate.

"Don't remember 'is name." Ghost smiles, the scars around his lips tugging the skin twisted. You grimace and push the plate away, your lip starting to wobble for a second time. "Eat," He tell you, "or it'll be you next."

You give him a long searching look, likely trying to see if he's serious. You must not like what you find, because you drag the plate close and start to pick at the meat. You do your best to hide the gag that nearly slips past your lips, choking down distinctly inhuman meat. Oh well, Ghost thinks, be easier to get you to eat it later.

[yourcutelittlegayfriend]

TRANSFORMERS ONE X READER

Old Title was "Three Birds on a Wire" then got change for general (just letting you guys know)

Not really a fic I'm planning to do anytime soon but it's something that was cooking in my head after the 5th(?) time I've watch Transformers one and I just need to put it somewhere before I lose my mind.

Warnings: few headcannons, angst, Out of Characters moments, Panic attack, mentions of death, torture and familial loss, Bad English/Typos (We die like real AutoBots), sudden change of POV from 3rd to You (Watch out when the sentences either says You or Me/I).

Note: Long ass fic, Implied Reader is a Cybertronian Femme Bot, There's few weird plot holes but Reader is born from a Carrier while some are born from Forging (Transformers lore is fucking up my brain and it shows) and some dialogue might not be accurate since I'm writing this in like 1-2am and lots of cuts basing on the movie.

Pairings: (Main) D-16/Megatron x Reader, (Slight possibly maybe) Orion Pax/Optimus Prime x Reader, (Mentions) Megatronus Prime x Solus Prime and (Jokingly put for plot but like only a pinch) Sentinel Prime x Reader

--

From the Beginning it was always the three of you together, D-16 the stick to protocol one but always finds himself yielding to the shenanigans of Orion Pax, who was the more taking risk bot and the one who always makes trouble and get to be scolded by You, you who was the one looking out for the two bot everyday and takes care of them when the two of them both get caught together.

Everyday in the mines was tiresome and Dangerous frequently taking life or cause more harm to the miners from unstable minings, Cogless bots who were told to be the lifeline of the city and where the only point of being online was to provide energon everyday.

But it was tolerable when you're with the two, especially with your sparkmate D-16 who tries his best to make you happy everday, Giving you compliments and find you valuable scraps to use for things you build after you confess to seeing Solus Prime as your idol and D-16 who admires Megatronus can't help but feel like it was fate that you two love the primes who has the closes relationship together.

You and Orion Pax has the same spark to learn about different knowledge and discoveries which in turn gives you a chance to invent/build stuff and using Orion as your personal test dummy and Orion who just let's it happened as long as you help him get to the archives and not get more scoldings from D-16 since your the only one who could really stop him.

Life was simple, repetitive but happy nonetheless until-

----[0]----

"Second Place isn't that bad-" D-16 reasoned before getting cut off by racing bot who drove/flew by.

Laying on the track I laugh when it happened as I hold my leg that was almost ripped from my socket when we roughly landed.

Now sitting on Medbay after Ratchet took care of our injuries I sat in between the two as they bicker to one another making me shake my head.

"Ok that's enough-" but before I can push D away from Orion a tall black painted femme bot appeared from the open MedDoors and scanned us.

Soon as she scanned us Sentinel Prime appeared shocking us, He called the two bots before noticing me who was still struggling from standing since my leg was newly wielded.

"Please my dear don't strain yourself hahaha" Sentinel said before suddenly holding my arms and gently sat me back to the chair, I can feel D-16 stare so I looked at him and laid a servo on his arm as he side-eye the prime before nodding and sit back a little closer to me.

----[1]----

After getting forcefully sent by Darkwing to the lower levels and meeting B-127, a sweet bot who was probably a little younger than us is helping us get to the surface after finding the distressed signal.

Getting to the train was easy but with Elita-1 discovering us became a little more harder than we thought.

Arriving at the surface we admired the beautiful sceneries with the terrain simingly terraforming on it's own that is until one behind us burst the train and throw us off.

D-16 quickly grab me and the two of us hold to one another as we crash in the ground, a few moments he woke me up and help me stand as we perfectly timed seeing Orion getting Right hooked by Elita-1

----[2]----

Arriving at the cave we saw the offline bodies of the primes laying around with this organic stuff covering them showing how long they have been here......waiting.

Finding Alpha Trion and putting him online as he told us the truth was the most spark breaking thing you have ever felt in your life.

"He......he took our cogs?....w-why? I-i....what about the once born from Carriers?! surely he-.....he wouldn't right?". I asked the old prime who just looked at me with sadness.

"N-no......so all this time.....I thought my carrier......I thought she left me....i-i..." I turn away and kneel to a boulder shaking in sorrow now knowing how cruel Sentinel really was, Killing Carriers with new sparklings for their T-cogs.

D-16 wasn't really doing well either all our life and for the 50 cycles of Cybertron and Iacoon City living under a lie of a fake prime.

I was shaking and almost to a point of breaking down, realiving all the loss we have endure and the miners I have to painstakingly tried to save or build scrap prosthetics to the servos, arms, legs or pedels they loss in mining, all were sacrificed for nothing.

The rest were fighting until D-16 heard be gasping for pain as they look and see me holding my chasis as I try to breath through my vents.

My sparkmate quickly race to me and tried to calm me down as he holds my servos and leaned his helm on mine.

"All!......all this time!... all those energons!....everyone!...FOR 50 CYCLES!!-" I screamed and gasp as D-16 shush me and whispered as his optics shining a more orange hue looks into mine.

"He'll pay for what he did to us, to me and to you" He harshly spat as he laid a servo on my cheek as he tilts his helm as I nod.

He helps me stand up as we look to Alpha Tron and received the T-cogs of the older primes, coincidentally I received Solus Prime's T-cog.

As we all upgraded and slightly got bigger, I hear a gasp and turn to see D and Orion looking at me.

"W-what? do I look bad?". I asked as I tried to look at my new form.

"No! you uh look-" Orion tried to say but D beat him to it.

"You....you look just like her.....Solus Prime that is". D looked at me with those optics that I knew so much it's colors slightly lighting from it's orange tinged to yellow before going back.

----[3]----

Running away and trying out our T-cogs me and the rest tried to find away to get back to the city when we got caught and held in a High Guards hidden HQ.

Orion tried to get them on ourside but D was pulling me away to leave as I feel his annoyance and anger through our bond.

"D- wait let's-". but D snap when the guards stop him and he turns back to StarScream and tried to fight him.

It happened too fast and the next thing I know was D aiming a cannon to StarScream who was begging for mercy.

He turned to the rest and pledge his revenge to Sentinel and I stare at him as I hear the muffled chant of the High Guards around me as he stand in front of me before holding my cheeks with both of his servos as he looks into my optics as I see his finally becoming orange.

"Follow me, and I promise you all the pain and suffering you have endured..... I'll avenge you for it as long as you stay with me" There it is, the last part of rite to be conjuxes that I've been waiting to hear from him ever since we become sparkmates, the very last one I imagine where we'll be alone and spending another romantic moment and not surrounded by screaming bots as I see his angry yet desperate face.

I close my eyes before trying not to cry before reaching out and lean close to him, our lips almost touching when an explosion erupted from the roof as D quickly hide me behind his back as he prepared to take fire.

----[4]----

Waking up from my unconscious state I opened my optics and get blinded by brightlights as I turn and see my arms and legs are bound on a metal table.

I look and see Arachnid and Sentinel stand near a panel as they watch me struggle from my binds.

"It's no use in trying to escape my dear". He said as he walks closer and stood beside the table and reach out a servo to my face.

"Look at this, seems you and your little friends got a little upgrade" He smirks as I tried to tear away my face from his hold.

"Tell me how does it feel? to be better and stronger than your old look? feels great doesn't it?" He laughs before shaking my head from side to side.

"Now tell me- where's the rest of your little friends".

----[4]----

As Sentinel arrives to taunt D-16 he tells them about what's going to happen when D-16 stand up to him.

"I got nothing left to lose" He said as he glares at the false prime.

"Oh I sure did- bring her in". Sentinel said to Arachnid who nods and a bunch of bots entered and tossed something at Sentinel's pedels.

"Look at what you made me do to her" He whispered as he kicks you right in the stomach making you scream in pain.

D-16 looked horrified at the state you're in, the new paint from your new form slightly chared and a few sparks flew from your joints and optics as you groan in pain.

Sentinel only looks at him with this sadistic look before noticing the sticker Orion gave him and put on his shoulder.

"Ah Megatronus Prime-" He said before punching D down the ground.

"of course you're a fan, Megatronus is the Coolest bot, Biggest, Baddest and Toughest-". He says before leaning down to smirk down at us.

"That's why after I killed him-" then opened his chasis to show us the red T-cog of Megatronus slotted inside.

"I took it for myself". He said before turning to me.

"He was greater than you'll ever be!". D roars as he watches Sentinel drop a knee closer to me.

"Now that I think about it, It's unny how fate works huh- me having Megatronus T-cog while your little sparkmate has Solus? it was like were meant to be!". He laughs when D trashes and tries to stand up.

"Maybe this cover up story wouldn't be so bad, The traitor's sparkmate running to my arms after she finds out your little plan, and I- Sentinel promise to protect her from the derange traitorous little miner". He laughs before grabbing a hold of my head to forcefully make me nod.

He chuckles before harshly turning my head to look at D who stared back at me with worry.

Sentinel then stands back and rip off the sticker from him and inspect it.

"I'm pretty great myself but I can understand why you wanna wear his face over mine, Here-". He puts the sticker back now on D's chasis.

"Let's make sure it doesn't come off". He grins before Arachnid hands him a laser cutter and proceeds to carve a crude drawing of Megatronus symbols.

I tried to stop Sentinel but Arachnid held me down as I scream for D, feeling his pain too

----[5]----

Optimus arrived by bursting through the window with a train alongside Elita and the rest of the High Guards.

I groan before helping D up and check his chasis that has the still cooling down mark.

"Oh D.....I-i...... I'm sorry". I said as I gently tried to caress it trying to ease his pain.

D only frown and hold my servos before roughly turning me and force me to sit down on the side.

"Stay. Here". D growled before backing away as he looks at the state I'm in with anger and disappointment - to himself or me?-

He shoves off Orion who tried to stir him away from fighting off Sentinel, Orion sighs before seeing me on the side still in pain from what Arachnid and Sentinel did to me after our capture.

"_! Are you alright!". Orion panicked and kneel to me as he checks all my injuries.

"No!.... I'm fine O-orion.. please go and get Arachnid..... She's the only bot that has been around Sentinel.....use her memory and broadcast it out to Iacoon......". Orion looked at me with wide eyes.

"Wait that's-!". He said before I chuckle and cough from the pain.

"Smart? I know......been smarter than you since day one Pax". I smiled as Orion laid a servo on my shoulder pads.

"And you will always be......Friend". Orion said his optics looking sad and his voice sorrowful when he called me his friend.

"Go! I'll stay here with D! Go!". I pushed him away as I stand up and limp to find D, Orion nods before running away with B-127, who after excitedly showed me his knife hands.

----[5]----

Everyone now knew what Sentinel did to us as I watch the repeated broadcast on the holograms and screen shown around the city.

I sigh in relief as I turn to D and tried to reach for him, He looked at me but his eyes has other plans.

"NO! D! DON'T!". I screamed as he tackled Sentinel through the glass and fall through the ledge as I limp and jump after them.

Roughly landing on the platform of where the golded carvings of the 13 primes stand, I painfully watch D rages and tries to kill off Sentinel.

I watch as he aims to blast Sentinel until Orion jump the last second to take the devastating hit.

I screamed as me and D look at him in fear as I see the whole part of his left chasis and arm get blasted to nothing.

I tried to crawl toward the edge where D was holding Orion who fell but I could only look with my sparkbreaking again when D stood back up without Orion.

"No.........". I whispered as I lean my helm down as I covered my mouth to silence my cries.

I force myself to watch my sparkmate, who was kind, calm and sweet become someone that I don't recognize anymore.

Watching him become someone else, watching him become Megatron.

I kneel on the ground as everything around me distorts and get muffled as I hear thudding of heavy pedels towards me.

Looking up I see Megatron, not my sweet D-16 kneels to me and reaches for my cheek.

I should have flinch, I should have tried to move away from him, I should have leave him but.....

I couldn't stop myself from hating him, I couldn't help myself but close my eyes and lean to his palms.

"Stay with me" He says as he moves closer and leans close to me.

I look into his optics now having a deep and angry red and yet still holding an adoring emotion swirling inside, only for me.

"Remember the day we became sparkmates?". I asked him as he keep looking at me not saying anything to stop me.

"I said I'll always stay and love you now matter what.....for better or worse, that was the day I started the rite for us to be Conjuxes.......". I said before holding his face and nod.

D- Megatron smiles, deep inside was my dear D-16 as he held me close as I lean on his shoulder before looking up when I see a blinding blue light flying up in the air.

----[6]----

Looking at Megatron who limps pass now Optimus Prime, He glared at his old friend in anger before turning to me.

"_, It's your choice to follow Megatron but know that you will always be welcome back here with us" Ori- Optimus said as he looks at me with sorrow, I look at him in sadness before saying.

"I'm sorry.....Or- Optimus...for everything". I turn away before reaching for Megatron and putting his arm over my shoulders as I help him to the tracks as he shouts for the High guards and he transformers along side with me as I follow them to back to the surface.

----[Notes]----

I ain't finishing this btw, it's all I got and my writing juices are spent hahaha so sorry my fanfiction days are way too over and I just 'go, random bullshit go!' my ass haha.

[moonselune]

Hello! If this request is weird feel free to disregard but could I request something, whatever format you think is best, where Tav has chronic pain/fatigue and they generally hide it pretty well, though they do still lag behind some days- and through some tadpole or magic weirdness someone gets temporarily body swapped with Tav (maybe a tougher member of the group like Lae'zel) and they realize how much harder Tav is working just for basic functioning and masking it. (I love your work, thank you<3)

OOooo this is so interesting!! and thank you so much, that's so sweet! I did this more as a drabble and I hope you like it!

Most days, you keep up.

You’ve learned how to pace yourself, how to push through the pain without letting it show. You lag behind on occasion, but you make up for it in other ways—strategy, quick thinking, keeping morale high when the others start to waver. You may not be as fast or as strong as Lae’zel or Minthara, but you pull your weight. You make sure of it.

That doesn’t stop them from noticing.

“Lae’zel, slow down,” Shadowheart murmurs as the party treks through uneven terrain, but Lae’zel merely scoffs.

“If they cannot keep up, they should train harder,” she replies, glancing back at you over her shoulder. “Strength is something we build, not something we beg for.”

Minthara hums her agreement. “Pain is temporary,” she says. “Weakness is a choice.”

You don’t argue. You could, but what would be the point? They do not understand. They can’t understand. The pain in your joints, the way your muscles ache even when you wake up in the morning, the exhaustion that clings to you even on your best days.

So you grit your teeth. You keep walking. And you pretend their words don’t hurt.

—

The magic mishap happens fast. One moment, you are rifling through a strange arcane tome, and the next, the world shifts and bends in on itself. The feeling is nauseating—like being unspooled and rewoven, like your very bones are rearranging themselves.

And then, just as suddenly, you are staring at yourself. Or rather—Lae’zel is. Because you are now her. There’s a moment of silence as the party stares. Astarion lets out an incredulous laugh.

“Well,” he says. “This should be interesting.”

“Unacceptable!” Lae’zel’s voice rings out, except—no. Your voice rings out, spoken by her, in your body.

She clenches her fists—your fists—and glares down at herself.

“This form is fragile,” she hisses. “We must undo this immediately.”

But magic like this is messy, and Gale is already grimacing as he flips through his notes.

“It might take some time,” he admits. Lae’zel grumbles under her breath.

“Then we train,” she decides. “I will strengthen this form while I am trapped in it.”

But she doesn’t make it five minutes.

The first thing that hits her is the fatigue. Even standing still, she feels the weight of it pressing down on her limbs, making her movements sluggish, her reactions slow. Then comes the ache—a deep, gnawing pain that digs into her joints, curling around her bones like an iron vice.

She tries to push through it. She always pushes through pain.

But no amount of discipline or mental fortitude can prepare her for the constant, grinding discomfort, the sensation of moving through molasses, the frustration of knowing she is strong but not feeling it.

And worse than anything—she remembers. She remembers snapping at you when you lagged behind. She remembers calling you weak.

But this is not weakness. It is not laziness or lack of will. It is a battle, fought every day, in every breath, in every step. She lasts an hour before she stumbles.

Not a dramatic fall—just a simple misstep, her knee nearly buckling beneath her. It is such a small thing. But she suddenly understands exactly how much you have been hiding.

—

By the time Gale figures out how to undo the spell, Lae’zel is seething. Not at you. Not anymore.

She is furious at herself. At her own ignorance.

When the magic finally reverses, and you are settled back into your own body, you turn to face her, unsure of what to expect. For once, Lae’zel is quiet. Her jaw is tense, her posture stiff. And then, slowly, she speaks.

“You are stronger than I gave you credit for.” Her voice is measured, her words precise. “And I was a fool to dismiss you.”

You blink, taken aback. “That almost sounds like an apology.”

She scowls. “Take it or leave it.”

You huff a quiet laugh. It isn’t much. It isn’t even enough. But it is something. And as you continue forward, Lae’zel walking just a little slower beside you, you think—maybe that’s all you need.

a little drabble for y'all, it was so nice to write it, work has been so hectic so this was a nice break. Hope you guys enjoy it! - Seluney xox

If you want to support me in other ways | Help keep this moonmaiden caffeinated x

[fluffypotatey]

okay so:

the year is 2021. the month is june. the new season of hermitcraft, season 8, has just started, and everything is great! the hermits are all messing around, having fun, building insane things within the first week of the server being active, and generally having a good time. everyone's collected themselves into little factions, pranking each other, and it's all the fun, lighthearted, mostly-vanilla content hermitcraft is known for.

and then the split between minecraft versions 1.18 and 1.19 is announced. the delay of new terrain, and especially of new mobs like the warden, considerably disrupt several of the hermits' plans. but it's fine, they'll figure something out, they're professionals, and it mostly goes unnoticed.

about two weeks later, on november 9th, grian turns to mumbo jumbo in one of his episodes, and asks the famous question that would seal hermitcraft season 8's fate:

"mumbo, is the moon... big?"

suddenly, the fans panic. they search back through videos and streams, and realize that the moon had been abnormally large and stuck in a full-moon phase since october 30th. the Moon Big event has begun.

this is where the roleplay really starts. once the moon's size has been brought up, the hermits start a weird combination of scrambling to figure out why the moon's growing, and how to stop it- but also of ignoring it, hoping it won't be a problem, hoping someone else will deal with it. the moon keeps getting bigger, more hermits start realizing it's going on, and a creeping sense of dread starts to grow. but it's fine. it's fine, right? they do little plotlines like this all the time. they'll figure something out, the moon will go back to normal, and we'll laugh about it when this is all over. it's fine.

and then, blocks start flying away. just floating up out of the ground, and falling right back down! like for a moment, a square meter chunk of dirt has decided it's a ballerina and leaped out of the ground! but it's fine, right? the blocks are coming back. no lasting harm is done. they're going to fix it all... right?

the moon gets bigger. it's growing every day- local hermit weirdguy joe hills measures it every stream. the blocks start flying higher. gravity starts getting... weird, with players getting the slow falling effect at random, and being lifted off of the earth themselves. the players form cults and rituals and whatnot to try and appease the moon, convince it to leave them alone, making plans to escape. nothing works. things keep getting worse, and the moon keeps getting bigger. but it'll be fine. these storylines never leave lasting harm, or at least they never have before. they'll be fine.

and then the blocks stop coming back, just floating into the sky forever. the players have the slow falling effect more than they don't now. the moon is now so big it's visible even during the day, and fills the entire sky at night. they start planning their escapes in earnest, and say their goodbyes. some hermits jump into a void hole in the overworld (it was the centerpiece of their village). some flee to the End, some to the nether, some just fly with elytras and hope they can get far enough away in time. one brave hermit, tango, flies himself to the moon in a futile attempt to blow the whole thing up before it can crash.

but in the end, the moon crashes into the server, and everything they'd built was destroyed. and the whole time, there'd been nothing any of them could've done. season eight was over, a full six months before anyone had expected it to end, and season nine wouldn't start until about three months later. and im still not okay about it.

(here's a cool animatic of the moon's crash! honestly i dont think you need too much hermitcraft knowledge to get the gist)

(also the moon crash happened on the day before my birthday lmao.)

….

holy shit

[rayroseu]

Wait this is actually interesting, so from what the story implies, Wild Rose Castle is weaker than Black Scale Castle because it probably has no magical atmosphere that serves as its defense, there's probably fewer troops here, and the fact that its just on a clear meadow makes the terrain not suitable for defenses unlike Black Scale who is atop a mountain and covered in a Valley.

So I kinda think that Wild Rose Castle is a newly built castle in Briarland. After all, Meleanor was a kid only 200 years ago so Wild Briar is probably that age as well (or more), i think that age is young (compared to Black Scale which probably several centuries old?) thats why it has weaker defense facilities.

Maybe Wild Briar is older as Black Scale, but this game says this is Meleanor's castle so I assume she's the one who had built this.

But I have this HC that this castle is actually built because of Levan. For his diplomatic mission between humans. Building a castle in an easy terrain would make sense to make it easier for magicless humans to transport in. Because I don't really expect(?) Maleanor who is a military commander, which she probably has knowledge of strategies, to not see how disadvantegous this location is considering its close to humans

But I also think Wild Briar was built as like a refuge for the faes that live far away outside Dragon City(I wont call it dragonopolis lol)

Wild Rose being a few centuries old also kinda makes sense since the Silver Owls only recognize Meleanor as the only ruler in Briarland, they probably arent aware theres a queen named Maleficia because she's ancient(?) atleast I didnt caught any silver owls mentioning her iirc(?) They went to the mountains near Dragon city yes-- but like it was to pursue General Lilia and not to besiege Black Scale as well even they kinda had the potential to do so since they took down Maleanor and Silver Owls' is implied to be very greedy--

I actually think its more interesting to not summarize Maleanor's cause of death as just her overestimating her win against Knight of Dawn-- I actually think its because of several reasons such as:

"Wrong time" in working out the diplomatic relations between the conflict between humans and faes, Levan's plan to educate wasn't pointless effort, but I wish the story states as well what he did to counter the fact that the faes hates humans not because of a misunderstanding, but because of their mistreatment towards faes(the story literally implies rhe humans kills faes meanwhile we have yet to see a royal guard fae that killed humans the story only tells us they chased them away), Levan does this when its clear that the Silver Owls was getting hostile, like objectively speaking, this was kinda not the right time to communicate and Meleanor was the receiving end of the build up hostility of the Silver Owls

This is kinda countering my first point, but Meleanor's decisions was kinda weird too in the story lol, why send your best Generals to the enemy fortress.... 😭💥 But I actually think this is interesting as well, because its likely a reference to the wars in LiveAction Maleficent... I remember watching that movie especially Maleficent 2: Mistress of Evil and just wondering why the Moors never plans (and even if they do its very simple, just charge in and overpower the enemy with strength), they just charge in instead of treating it "like a chess" where you save your best pieces in dangerous situations and everyone has a role in dispelling the enemy. They also hold this belief that only the strong ones would guarantee their success and heavily relies on them. Meanwhile, Queen Ingrid used deception and control to subdue all the faeries. Like Meleanor/Faes vs Humans, the faes never thinks about what the human enemy plans, they rely on raw dodging it lol probably alluding to the fact that the faes have trouble thinking like a human.

And lastly this point lol, poor choice of headquarters, the terrain is easy for humans to invade in, and the castle is still weak, also the fact that Wild Briar was alone in fighting several human nations was a factor as well because it couldnt get back up in time because it was too far away from Black Scale Castle, kinda adding Wild Briar was outnumbered too atp

[fraux140]

König Headcanons

General, relationship, and NSFW. I hope you enjoy these! It's my first real post :)

General hcs

Had a cleft lip as a child and was part of the reason he was bullied. It was surgically repaired but there is still a scar

One of his parents is German and the other is Austrian which might explain why he has no Austrian dialect (lets pretend this is canon instead of activision just clumping all German speakers into one category lmao)

He has auburn hair but buzzes it so often that its hard to tell

LOVES Minecraft. He plays creative mode when he's trying to make masterpieces like city replicas or fantasy worlds, but loves the challenge of survival mode if he's playing with friends.

He was a total mama's boy as a kid. When his father tried to get him to 'man up' his mother was always there to protect him. Another reason he was bullied.

Chronic mansplainer but its unintentional. If you're discussing a topic he knows a lot about he will hijack the conversation and unload a bunch of info to you. He doesn't mean it maliciously.

Undiagnosed ADHD - explains why he has trouble staying still and was a bad candidate for being a sniper. But it isn't so bad that it is noticeable. He can mask it when he needs to.

Again with the ADHD thing. He hyperfixates on topics he finds interesting and even his job. Mission plan is memorised. Terrain? Memorised. Enemy info? Memorised. The ever-changing locations and nature of his job mean that he doesn't have to worry about succumbing to the boredom of monotony.

When he isn't deployed he is a beer drinker - particularly Stiegl Hell. A total beer snob as well. Any kind of American beer? Throw it away. Carling? Fosters? Sagres? Get that second rate crap away from him and prepare to be mansplained about how much better Austrian/German beer is than any other.

Has an apartment in the same neighbourhood as his parents' house so he can visit a lot when he's not deployed. His apartment is very basic and he stays there so his parents have their privacy. Their house is his home.

His mother is a seamstress and his father was a mechanic in the army. This man knows how to sew and how to keep his car healthy.

Unironically reposts alpha male quotes - not because he's a misogynist but because he genuinely believes he is the definition of an alpha male.

Teeny tiny bit of a superiority complex. Arrogant af. Stems from his size, strength, and skills. Finished Jagkdo selection second in his 'class'. It haunts him every day. Second place is the first to lose.

Is a genuinely unsettling guy. Not in a creepy way. He kind of just stands around and stares when he enters a place before deciding what to do. For example at the pub, he walks in and stares at the bar before deciding where to sit. Or if he sees somebody new, like somebody he thinks is particularly weird or someone attractive he will stare at them. It is a bit more intense than the typical 'German stare', and more off-putting because of his size.

Relationship hcs

If you're dating König, the first stages of your relationship will be spent trying to figure out how to be comfortable.

Like I said before, he is unsettling and might say something as such, coming across a bit too strong.

For example, if someone is annoying you at work he might offer to kill them. "I could hide the body no problem, schatz. Just ask." And he is very hard to read, so you can't tell if he's joking or not.

If his weirdness didn't scare you away and your relationship progresses, he unintentionally tries to manage you.

Packing a suitcase? You're doing it wrong. It's more efficient to fold the clothes like this to maximise space. Want to go for a walk? Not in those shoes. Function trumps fashion every time. Ordering at a foreign food restaurant? Let him do it for you, you're probably pronouncing it wrong. He's your passenger? You had time to pull out, liebling! Go for the overtake! Change lanes! Ffs schatzi, pull over and let him take the wheel.

Unintentionally condescending. You worked really hard on a new recipe? It's good, but he's had better at this restaurant. He recommends adding this and that...

You're complaining about how stressful your job is? Babe, you wouldn't know stress if it hit you in the face. Have YOU ever been shot at? Narrowly dodged an explosion? Being chased by enemies who are actively trying to kill you? Yeah, didn't think so...

Eventually it gets too much. You're on the verge of breaking up with him because he makes you feel like crap. He diminishes your achievements. Undermines your emotions. It's too much and being with him is making you hate yourself. And you don't deserve to feel this way.

After you tell him, he is mortified. He didn't think that his matter-of-fact way of speaking could be so mean and make you feel this way. He's so sorry, baby. Give him another chance? He'll show you how special you are to him!

After you forgive him and he agrees to change, life is much better. He gives more compliments, he listens more attentively and he tries to be more emotional instead of 'logical'. He comes to respect that you can feel a certain way about things happening in your life and doesn't have to compare it to himself.

He takes you hiking very often. So often that your legs are noticeably more toned. He buys you all of the expensive gear you need to hike in any terrain.

Sometimes sews little trinkets for you or embroiders something on your clothes - a skill he picked up from his seamstress mother.

When you tell him his alpha male quote sharing is cringe and makes him seem like an asshole, he begins to question how you see him. Don't you see how big and strong he is, baby?

When he finally gets it, he slowly starts to lose the façade. This front he puts up? It starts to come down. You want to be the big spoon? Go right ahead.

The new König loves to be doted on. Rub his belly. Run your hands through his hair/over his head if he's buzzed. Hug him. Cuddle with him on the couch. Tell him how big and strong he is - he eats it right up.

Loves working out with you. He likes showing you he's strong enough to protect you. Sit on his back while he doe push-ups. See? No problem. Look at how much weight is on this barbell! He can lift it no problem.

You told him that he can't live on ordering food from fancy restaurants every night. He needs to learn to cook. He's annoyed at first because he can afford it for both of you, but you make him learn how to cook. This time learning together in the kitchen brings you closer together. There is something beautiful about working so hard on a meal and enjoying the results together.

Sometimes he wants to surprise you when you come back from work with a new dish he'd invented. Wagyu steaks sautéed in lager and seasoned with rosemary and turmeric. It was disgusting. You couldn't find it within yourself to tell him.

NSFW hcs

When he was insecure and in his 'alpha male' stage, he was a total dom. Not that you didn't enjoy it.

Now that he's grown, he still loves fucking you in doggy or missionary or any position where he's in control. But now he'll let you ride him for as long as you want.

He LOVES laying back and watching you use his dick to get yourself off. Another reason he loves cowgirl is because he loves watching you struggle with the initial stretch of sinking onto his fat cock.

You tried to convince him to let you peg him once. He outright refused. Maybe he wasn't there yet.

Call him dirty all you want, he loves fucking you after you have worked out together. And you don't mind it either. Seeing him all hot and bothered and out of breath is a huge turn on for you.

Can be aggressive. He likes biting you but not to the point it draws blood.

Sends absolutely horrendous nudes when you're in public with no warning when he's deployed. You'll get a whatsapp notification and you open it to see a picture of his raging hard on while you're at work.

He gets creative with the angles. He tries different lighting. In a strange way you found it very romantic. His captions are atrocious though. 'He misses you', 'I wish I could shoot my sperms into you instead of bullets into my enemies', 'My cock is harder than my job'. They are honestly so fucking weird. But you have grown to love his weird little quips.

Likes roleplay. He likes to be a policeman while you're a petty thief. He's a burglar and he'll leave you alone if you give him something else.

Loves overpowering you. Sometimes when he's fresh home from deployment he will drive you two to the woods at night. He will give you a head start and then hunt you down like a predator. He was in the jagdkommando, darling, didn't you know that means 'Hunting commando'?

When he catches you, the adrenaline gets to the both of you and you fuck like wild animals. Biting, scratching, howling and begging. He always cums inside of you on nights like these, breeding you like a true animal

When you get home and after you've showered (he washes your back for you and kisses along the nape of your neck), he's showering you with kisses and cuddles while you settle into bed and watch something together on TV.

[maplemaplemaplemaplemaple]

minecraft terrain generation breaking haunts me in such a strange way. stuff like the farlands or the seeds with constantly repeating features give me a weird guttural feeling akin to the uncanny valley. minecraft’s terrain normally does such a good job at cohesion and semi-realism to where seeing these familiar landscapes contorted in a way that’s very obviously not supposed to happen is so beautiful and jarring to me. i wish i could articulate it better but i feel so strongly about this

these are like angels to me

[edwardos]

[bullet-prooflove]

I had a dream the other day about Shawn/Abbott and it involved him being really competitive. Could you imagine Faye and Jack being competitive? Like do they try to race against each other when on a run (or something like that)? Do they place bets on things (whoever looses has to make food for a week - like the most stupid bets)? I hope this isn’t weird it’s just a little thought I had.

I don’t think its weird at all, I think it’s kinda fun!

So I've always had this thing that before Faye, Jack used to run on a treadmill. It's just something he's always was done because he likes to keep himself to himself. He has single minded purpose which is to hit whatever milage he deems acceptable that day.

Faye however has always been an outdoor runner, always through green spaces because it's really beneficial for her mental health.

When her and Jack get together, he decides to go with her because he’s quite protective and he really starts to enjoy being outdoors and having a companion to run with, which then turns into races.

I think they figure out that there are certain terrains where Faye is the better runner because of Jack’s prosthetic but Jack enjoys the challenge so will push himself. Due to Jack’s time in the military and his rehabilitation he’s the better/speedier runner in general on tarmac and concrete. They both fucking hate sand.

They absolutely love competing against each other in this arena and it always ends up with them getting hot and bothered and having sex in the shower. Prizes are usually stuff like dates or chores. Jack has to do something that Faye really wants like go out to see a play or a movie and Faye gets to take out the trash or something like that. Sometimes it’s who will pay for dinner, or who gets to decide the next place to eat at. Faye loves trying new things so it’s always a fun experience when she wins, which sometimes takes Jack out of his comfort zone.

I think they’re too similar to bet on things outside of that as they have similar views/opinions on things so there’s no real competition. They did not take part in Robby’s Betting Pool out of respect for him and Allegra.

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: What must be done

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps) (meeting screens fizzle on one by one)

High Commander: Thank you all for attending this alliance conference.

High Commander: I know many of you are scattered across the quadrant, so this conference will have to do for now.

Volgond: Is it not unwise to meet over a transmitted conference?

Vologond: Our enemies could hack into the signal and gain a tactical advantage from our discussions.

Primary C: (In robotic voice) This outcome is unlikely.

Primary C: My people are encrypting the signal with an ever morphing signal frequency that not even our enemies most advanced machines could detect.

Primary C: Only a Cythogen can detect and translate the signal for it to be understandable.

High Commander: To which we are grateful you have contributed your people’s talents to the war effort.

Vologond: (Grumbles) I would still insist our next meeting be in person.

High Commander: Noted.

High Commander: We shall begin with updates along the northern front with Sun Bearer Arthrix.

Sun Bearer Arthrix: We’ve made great strides in recent months in the Hepestus cluster. Three systems have fallen to our forces there but our supply lines now are dangerously spread thin. Our enemies have taken note of this and begun raiding our supply convoys with ever increasing ferocity stalling our campaign.

High Commander: I will dispatch the 4th and 5th reserve fleets to begin escort duties which should alleviate the pressure. In the meantime consolidate the new territories you have captured until you are ready for continued operations.

Sun Bearer Arthrix: It will be done.

High Commander:  Now (flips through some pages) for the ongoing battle for Merina, have you made any progress General Anthony?

General Anthony: The world now rests entirely within alliance hands.

(Several gasps and looks of surprise among the gathered alien commanders)

High Commander: You can confirm this?

General Anthony: Aside from the occasional squad or two of enemy forces that escaped the final battle all major installations and population centers are under terrain control. The previously mentioned scattered survivors are being hunted down now.

Taskmaster Folgar: I find this unbelievable.

General Anthony: Careful now, I may take that as an insult.

Taskmaster Folgar: It took me over a year to establish a beachhead on that planet and my forces were nearly wiped out by the automated defense systems employed. Yet you come along and relieve me of my command and suddenly the planet falls within a month?

(murmurs of commanders heard over the background)

High Commander: While it begrudges me to ask this, can you present proof of the conquest?

General Anthony: (says nothing as screen changes to live feed from Merina)

(The feed shows Terran soldiers patrolling through the shattered remnants of once proud cities that had been protected by advanced sky energy domes that blocked orbital fire and walls lined with powerful automated plasma cannons that annihilated enemies from several miles away

Walls of the fortress cities were cracked wide open and shattered in many places. Many of the fierce automated guns now lay broken and battered on the ground and the ones that still were atop the battlements were being dismantled by terrain engineers to send back to their R&D departments)

General Anthony: Our enemies became complacent while they hid behind their walls; so assured of their durability that once they were breached they lacked the ability to mount a suitable defense.

Primary C: How did you breach the walls?

Taskmaster Folgar: I wish to know this as well.

General Anthony: It was rather simple really.

General Anthony: While observing the enemy we noticed that the automated guns would not fire on an area if they detected one of their own within to projected blast radius.

Primary C: No doubt a safety feature built into the weapons targeting parameters to prevent friendly fire incidents.

General Anthony: (Nods) That is what we figured as well.

General Anthony: So over the course of a month we captured as many enemy soldiers as we could-

Taskmaster Folgar: (Scoffs) We tried interrogating them before and they gave up no useful information.

General Anthony: (Glares at the taskmaster before continuing)- and loaded them on to trucks packed with explosives.

High Commander: You did what?

General Anthony: We then remotely controlled those same trucks to drive directly into the base of the wall segments our engineers determined that if damaged would trigger a structural collapse of the entire-

High Commander: YOU DID WHAT?!

General Anthony: These interruptions are quite tiresome now.

Taskmaster Folgar: Do you have any idea the violations of war you have committed?

High Commander: You will be stripped of your rank for such actions!

General Anthony: And what of you then, High Commander?

High Commander: Me?

General Anthony: When you gave me the order to relieve the Taskmaster you told me that you wanted Merina captured by any means necessary.

General Anthony: (Emphasizing) “By any means necessary”.

General Anthony: I followed your orders to the letter and captured the world; so it is you yourself that has ordered any such violations.

High Commander: Do not think you can twist my words to get yourself out of-

General Anthony: (cuts in) Primary C, would you not state that my actions were the most efficient method to bring about the end of a costly conflict?

Primary C: (Silent as it calculates) 

Primary C: While removing the organic factor of “honor” and “morality”, I compute that your actions did resolve the matter of Merina without further losses to manpower and resources.

General Anthony: And taskmaster, dear taskmaster; when you spent over a year attempting to crack the planets defenses how many of your men did you lose?

Taskmaster Folgar: That is not the-

General Anthony: How. Many?

Taskmaster Folgar: (Remains silent)

General Anthony: That is what I thought.

General Anthony: (Turns to address High Commander) You cannot give me an order and ask it be completed by any means necessary and not expect me to follow your instructions to the letter.

High Commander: Do you not have a soul?

High Commander: Do you feel nothing for those you sent to their deaths?

General Anthony: Such is the nature of all those who hold positions of power.

General Anthony: But if you must know I was the one who escorted the prisoners to the trucks myself, and they were quite enthusiastic about it.

High Commander: What?

General Anthony: Yes. I told them that they were going home and they hopped right in.

[tunastime]

15? 👀

-🍂

hi leaf!! finally getting the ball rolling again with these :3 this song is just so wonderfully DBHC etho coded that I couldn't not write him. I hope shep doesn't mind. he's in my head forever amen.

(509 words)

Etho does as Etho does best: stand around looking productive. 

Okay, well maybe that’s a lie. He’s off to the side of the Horse Course, squinting at a section of dirt that’s been ruffled completely incorrectly. If he’s being honest with himself, it’s more of a coarse dirt mound, or a freshly dug spot for new shrubs than it is an additional hill. So yeah, right now, Etho is standing around looking productive. He’s back-burnered the schematic he and Bdubs had made earlier that week in favor of looking it over with his eyes. To Bdubs, that phrase would certainly bounce around his head with no actual meaning. To Etho, it’s favoring an aesthetic over analytical approach. Which was pretty important to the whole “make sure the terrain looks good, Etho” request that Bdubs had made for him. Not a command, per se, but Etho still felt an ever-so-slight twitch to perfect what he was working on. He just wanted to do a good job. That’s what he was telling himself.

Besides, he kind of likes being helpful. Being useful and helpful gave him something to do, aside from standing around waiting for someone to tell him what needed to be done. He could work alone on his projects without someone standing over his shoulder and giving him a list of tasks to complete. Sure the whole idea of generating tasks for himself was still weird, still tricky to keep himself occupied, it offered a chance to step back and critically examine what he was doing. Which came in handy for something like this: making sure his hill of dirt that was hiding lines of redstone underneath the Horse Course actually looked like a hill and not like a landslide, and right now, it was looking very much like the latter. He sighs, letting go a rush of hot air through his mask. The sun is still high in the sky, just barely cresting over the steeples of Bdubs’ buildings. Etho glances up for a moment to make sure the sun is where it should be, that his internal time is running right, and pauses for a moment.

He wonders how Bdubs got up there without breaking his neck. Etho wasn’t there to help the whole time—he was busy carting supplies back and forth and subtly fixing Bdubs’ redstone when he wasn’t looking. Something clicks very slightly in his chest, uncomfortable for just a moment as Etho studies the tops of the buildings with the schematics up. He frowns. 

Turning back to his dirt, Etho picks up his shovel again.. It weighs a little heavier in his hands as he digs it into his mound of dirt—soon to be a hill, with grass and flowers and clover, and it was going to do the job he needed it to do, which was hide things. He lets the schematic come to front view as he works, and tries to shake the tight feeling in his thirium lines. 

Maybe he should go in for another diagnostic. When Doc gets the chance.

(send me a number 1-100 and I'll try to write a little something based on the song!)

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Civilisation 1 (Video)

Watch this video on YouTube

Script and thumbnail below the fold!

In 1991, Sid Meier released Civilisation, starting off a habit that didn’t really get kicked at any point after that. It’s kind of hard to underestimate the legacy of Civilisation as a game, as a genre.

It isn’t that no game of its ilk happened before, that’s not how history works. We rarely are given hard ‘starts’ for some thing, since, you know, there were all sorts of games being made by developers and never ‘released’ to a greater market, so instead we have to kind of point to places where specific, defined, observed events based, annoyingly, on markets and capitalism.

There were probably videogames about running countries before 1991, possibly games with even more elaborate structures and systems and different ideological perspectives, and they probably had wholly text prompts and were run on some truly abysmal software system like COBOL, Decay mention for the bingo card. The thing is, most of them didn’t succeed to the degree that Civilisation did as a commercial product, and the upshot of that is, generally speaking, it’s a common way to see Civilization 1 as the ‘start’ of the genre.

That’s kind of the nature of the game, too. There’s a lot of stuff that just starts in it, around the same time. If you’re not familiar with the genre –

HOW?

but in this game you play an immortal leader overseeing a cultural identity that expands across territory, builds cities, claims land, trades, researches, all that stuff, and eventually retires at a ripe old age of 6,100 years old. The game lets you play a civilization from a small selection of appropriate civilisations, which have their own personalities and biases. Anyone not covered by these options – Romans, Russians, Babylonians, Zulus, Germans, French, Egyptians, Aztecs, Americans, Chinese, Greeks, the English, Indians, and the Mongols – is just… barbarian tribes.

This makes it a game where you can build Jerusalem, Mecca, or Brisbane, but not be any of the cultures that actually founded those cities, it’s an interesting unintentional statement. Still I’m not here to retread the old conversations about how Civilisation views the question of ‘who gets to be a civilisation’ or even ‘what does it mean to be civilised.’ That’s something other people have done, often better than me, and with a broader context of other Civilisation games.

I haven’t really played any of the other ones after the first. I’ve installed them, I’ve run a few of them, and even played through the tutorial on one of the more recent ones ��� five, I think? but they all bore me and I just find myself wanting to come back to this one, with its systems.

Part of it is just mental headspace. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to care too much about the specifics of each new game, the way things are almost but not quite the same. It’s just too much and I don’t really feel the absence of those things in the game I like to play. And I do not really understand what’s in this game at all – my knowledge of Civilisation 1 is pretty patchy for a game that I’ve played this much.

What is remarkable about Civilisation 1 is how it scales. When you start playing Civilisation you’ll be introduced to its wide variety of systems without a lot of clear explanation.

You start with some starting technology, some starting units, and a starting location that may or may not feature free resources, units or good terrain and you’ve got to make the life out of it. For example, I literally just before reading this learned how the corruption mechanic works, and that the enemy units were doing things I thought impossible wasn’t because I didn’t understand how to do them, but because the game just cheats.

One thing I remember from my childhood years was that developing technology seemed the best way to ‘succeed,’ because that’s what gave you military units you could use to fight and protect. I had this weird sort of hypermilitaristic state where all my cities would endlessly produce just defensive units, until most cities had sometimes six or eight military units guarding a population of 2-3. Which you might be wondering ‘what’s the point’ or, more likely, ‘what do you mean?’ because you aren’t familiar with a thirty-five year old videogame’s intricate systems.

Cities can be built, they can be defended, they can grow, and they have populations, and all of those terms bring with them a new subset of mechanical information that can be expanded on further, and which brings with it a new layer in the very specific way Civilisation, the videogame, thinks of being.

I came back to it as an adult, as a sort of idle game I can appreciate in a small window while I’m doing other things.

And y’know what?

Civilisation turns out to be a startlingly easy game to break. Not even with cheats or exploits – the game gives every single city square a certain ‘base’ advancement, meaning that making a new city will typically yield more results than letting a neighbouring city develop that square themselves. You need some limit on it because you don’t want to go haywire but the general idea is that if you control an area, you can probably get a really good output of all the stuff you want by ensuring that about a quarter of that area is covered in cities, rather than giving those cities the much larger non-competitive territory they can hypothetically control.

The upshot of this is that you can leap up the tech tree at a speed that makes even the most optimistic monkey wonder why they ever bothered throwing the bone if you’re going to mock the teleology of technological progress like that. In one such game, I had access to superconductors before we even hit the Anno Dominis, just because the game doesn’t do anything to slow you down. And why should it?

It’s just trying to let you play with emergent systems. Anything else would be ridiculous.

There’s no inherent reason any given slick of land should have another civilisation on it, meaning to meet with other cultures and engage in the hypothetically important civilisational struggle, you have to develop both transport boats and the units you want to send, and have a civilisation that appreciates that kind of military adventurism.

Even if you just want to go say hi and discover other nations and see how they’re doing, you have to construct something that can fight to do it. Even a humble settler!

And each city can only support so much in the way of units and their presence in the world, meaning that you basically have to dedicate a city or two to supporting the task of ‘finding someone else’ when all you can gain out of it is an opportunity to smush some loser underfoot. Why bother? You can wind up in the later stages of a successful civilisation, with heavily developed technology and nobody to talk to.

Then at some point, a trireme shows up to your civilisation which is developing the cure for cancer and they wonder if you’d like to learn how to do pottery. This is in cities that are doing nothing but making caravans to contribute to wonders, or building barracks that you sell, because buildings need upkeep and only change your stats in that city, and if you’re happy with only making enough and not making everything, then you suddenly don’t care about giving yourself 50% extra happiness off your temples or whatever.

Suddenly you’re left with no real reason to want to build most of anything in a city. People don’t need a coliseum to be happy, they need more people in the city doing the important job of making entertainment and doing cool art.

The solution to every problem in a city, more or less, can be developed by just growing more, and that rewards growth more than anything else, and the systems that let you grow the most are the ones that discourage you from doing anything military, but that’s okay because going and finding people to fight is a pain in the bum.

But and this is where things get really interface-weird, you can’t just sit back, develop tech, and goof around until the space race kicks in, because the way you build things in this game is to tell your cities to build them, and you do that through a menu. This menu cannot handle a game state where you have access to every piece of technology to build with, or even most of it. It splits into two menus when the menus get too busy, but if there are too many wonders and nobody’s built them… it just stops. You open up the build menu to make something – like one of those wonders – and you get a blank menu of nothing. You have been locked out of all production for the rest of the game, or until someone else develops your technology level, makes some wonders, and shrinks what appears on that menu.

But the AI opponents aren’t likely to do this because wonder building is really slow and annoying and a lot of the benefits are transitory, especially if you’re the tech powerhouse of the world learning the hell out of everything. The game rolls dice on whether it makes a wonder, and it seems to avoid making wonders that aren’t useful any more – It’s fine to have a Great Wall of Newark but if I’ve already developed gunpowder, the game’s not going to bother taking it off my plate.

The game doesn’t actually play by its own rules. It feigns playing fair in a moment to moment, looking-at-the-enemy way, but the enemy civs just behave in really banana ways that replicate the appearance of following the rules, but really don’t. They build faster, earn more, and in some cases teleport to ensure they can oppose you. That’s not even accounting for the way the game can have technologically outmatched units win in combat against seemingly much more powerful things. Ever seen a phalanx with spears destroy a stealth bomber? The math says it can happen so the game lets it happen. There, the game is willinng to ‘play fair’ with its math.

That’s the funny thing about this game, to me. All these years later, as I play it, knowing the game now, the priorities of how to play have shifted. I could make it harder by avoiding this strategy, but I like playing this way. I like how silly it makes history. I like going to space with a civilisation that doesn’t know what a king, a pot, or a horse are. I like the distorted way it works and the mid-game challenge of making wonders quickly enough to not break the end game menu.

Basically, Civilisation wasn’t a game made that ever expected you to be good at it. In fact, Civilisation was a game with a lot of expectations and assumptions about what made the world work in the ways it did, and those historical assumptions are… a thing.

Look, this is not a new observation. Back in 2002, Matthew Kapell wrote in Popular Culture Review the article ‘Civilisation and its Discontents: American Monomythic Structure as historical Simulacrum.’ It’s a short article, not really a paper proper, but it’s a good analytical examination of the game and assumptions that are evident in the text, particularly as they relate to how you tell the story of history and whose history you’re telling.

Kapell talks about the idea of CIvilisation telling a fundamentally American style of history, and not just history but mythic history. In Civilisation 1, know where the game talks about slaves across all the cultures it represents? ‘Cos I don’t, and I’ve played the game a lot.

What Kappell describes in Civilisation that many have observed since is that the vision of games Meier poplated around this time was fundamentally a treatment of the world as a frontier. There is free land and resources waiting for the person to take best advantage of it, and you do so only in competition with other equal parties trying to do the same thing. It is a place for capitalism, free enterprise, and a spread of progress.

This vision of the world as frontier, and the civilisation as a simple relationship to resources and one another does a great job of feeling like it’s about history while skirting around all the murder and genocide. That’s why monomythic: This is the story of America that America tells itself. All history becomes part of this, all of the story is not about representing the world as a place for America to be but rather a world that looks the way America needs it to for it to be correct in how it views itself. The leader of America in Civilisation 1 is Abe Lincoln, not George Washington.

I don’t even necessarily want to talk about civilisations and identity in this though. The thing that stands out to me about this game is the fascinating ideology underpinning how it thinks governments are run and the weird moments of cynical realism it expresses in that.

In this game, you can run your country under a specific system – despotism, monarchy, republic, democracy, or, supposedly, communism. These all have special rules that change the way you relate to resources in your cities.

To unlock Communism, you need to research Communism, which you get to after Democracy and Philosophy. Communism then gives you the government system of Communism, which works identically to Monarchy, but with a special, unique perk: Your people can be oppressed with military presence in the city, and, corruption is omnipresent and equal in all cities.

This is a vision of communism that is not about Communism – the description even takes time out to explain that it hasn’t improved lives for workers – but is really talking about specifically, Stalinism – and like, Stalinism of maybe the 1950s, which had a shelf life of Not Long because Stalin himself didn’t exactly rack up a high score in getting through that decade.

Oh and once you have Communism, you can unlock Labor Unions. Labor Unions let you build a tank.

That’s it.

That’s all labor unions are for, in the idea of Civilisation 1.

But let’s roll back and look at that world that breaks the game.

I’m building as many places as I can for people to live in. When populations grow, I make a new place, and immediately connect it via infrastructure. I don’t build military units at all – unless a place is being attacked, military units are bad, and I don’t want them. If I do have them, I can’t use them to go on military adventurism, sending them out to go beat people up, because that makes the people who are supporting them unhappy: my people don’t support a military exploratory force.

I don’t make money. My tax rate is zero, because I want to work on science instead. Cities grow close together so when the population gets too big, they can’t process more of the land around them, and instead are limited to only about 4-5 squares around them and everyone else in the city takes on jobs of being entertainers, artists, or scientists. And I’m not building the buildings that demand more resources to maintain; people are left with their own goods, so they can use them in their own community. If people are mad about the government for more than one turn, that government collapses.

It’s very hard to argue that the ‘democracy’ outlined here is anything like the democracy the game was sold under. Can you imagine if being mad for a year resulted in an overhaul of everything? Can you imagine being able to impact the military operations in your country and indeed, discourage them? Can you imagine a society that only turns to expressions of force when someone else comes in and takes over a city, turning it into a temple-building military outpost? Can you imagine a place without police where people vote and throw parades and have a nice time? Can you imagine a community that doesn’t know what kings are?

The irony is that the optimal strategy of this frontier strategy is a peaceful anarchism that both does no harm and takes no shit.

No, it wasn’t intentional. But that doesn’t stop it from being funny.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[theresattrpgforthat]

This is kind of a weird one I guess but do you have any recommendations for urban fantasy games with crunchy combat that can utilise battle mats or terrain? ideally ones where the general population don't know the fantasy elements exist. Something with a vibe like fighting monsters and gangs in abandoned malls and subway stations instead of dungeons.

I wanna build terrain for an urban fantasy game but all the ones I see seem to be ones where combat isn't a huge focus, or they're very rules light, or combat is super deadly so you don't have an opportunity to screw around with positions a lot.

Thanks -w-

THEME: Urban Fantasy w/ Combat.

Hello! This is a pretty tall order, and I think that what you're looking for is closer to a war game than a ttrpg. I'm going to include a few tabletop games here, since that's my thing, but I'm also going to show you a little bit of what I found from the Wargame Vault, in case you find that to be a little more in your wheelhouse.

CAIN, by Tom Bloom.

Humanity is cursed, host to a roiling psychic sea barely understood or controlled, a phenomenon arising purely from the darkest portions of the human soul. While most humans are blissfully unaware of its presence, others are more sensitive. When it grows wild in these hosts, SINS appear, terrifying supernatural monsters that are anathema to reality itself.

CAIN is the solution, the global supranational shadow organization dedicated solely to the hunting and execution of sins. It’s mission is clear, its purpose steadfast. Is there anything better than a good hunt? Just think, you’re all set to slaughter to your heart’s content.

YOU are an exorcist, a powerful psychic soldier and tool of CAIN, honed and wielded for one purpose: WIPE OUT THE STAIN.

From the same person who brought us Kill Six Billion Demons and Lancer, CAIN is definitely focused on the hunt of something that regularly, everyday people can't see. The game uses d6 dice pools, and draws on a lot of narrative cues that I've seen in places like Blades in the Dark, so I don't know if it's necessarily as map-oriented as you'd like, but there might be something tactical in the choices your characters might have to make.

CAIN also puts a fair amount of stock in something called a Category, which is a scaling system to help you determine how effective any given action might be, depending on your character vs the type of supernatural power they are up against, as well as an exorcist's level of skill, the number of people involved, or how much of an area one might need to cover. The game definitely feels like it will reward you if you manage to attain some system mastery, so if you like that kind of challenge, you might like CAIN.

Majestic 13, by Snarling Badger Studios.

MAJESTIC 13 is miniatures-agnostic tabletop wargame where you command an elite team of alien hunters in a secret war to protect the Earth.

To the public, the modern era of alien encounters started in Roswell, New Mexico, on July 8th, 1947, with reports of a downed alien craft, which were quickly retracted and replaced by the story of a weather balloon. The public remains suspicious but accepts the story and moves on. Conspiracy theorists claim the government absconded with alien bodies and technology and hid everything from the people. Both stories are, of course, wrong.

Secrecy? Check. Monsters? Check. Terrain & combat? Absolutely check. Majestic 13 is not necessarily an urban fantasy game, but I think that you could swap out the aliens for fantasy monsters and you'd be pretty darn close. This is also a war-game, so it's definitely focused on the logistics of a drawn-out fight, rather than narrative beats. I think perhaps one of the biggest drawbacks of this game is that it's designed for only 1-2 players, so it would be difficult to bring this to a larger table.

Mad as Hell, by SoulMuppet Publishing.

Mad as Hell is an anti-capitalist demon-hunting exploration of activism and community. Play as Radicals, members of various Communities, banding together to fight the literal demons of capitalism.

The only way to kill demons is to understand what quiet violence created them in the first place, work out how to solve that problem, and turn it into a weapon. You might kill a demon of mouldy water with a purifier, a demon of poison-laced diet drugs with its own reflection, or a demon of bigotry with a pride flag. Unless you address the root cause of the problem, the wound in the world will continue to fester, and the demon will be reborn, free to wreak havoc. To defeat the demon truly, you need to make meaningful social change in your communities and help those around you.

Mad as Hell is rules-light, but it's also a combat game, where demons are representative of the evils that have arisen from a wounded world full of damaging power structures. You hunt these demons to protect the communities you are part of, and also to help combat the distress that arises from living in such a fraught environment.

I'm recommending this game mostly because it carries the fantasy setting that you're looking for, as well as focusing much of the game on conflict, although the conflict is probably less about a strategically-managed battlefield, and more about using what resources you have to solve what problems you can.

Right now the game is preparing to kick-start later this year, but the quick-start (linked above) is free to download. You can also download the Radical's Handbook if you want some in-world commentary from various contributors.

Dark Streets & Darker Secrets, by Old Skull Publishing.

Dark Streets & Darker Secrets is a Street & Sorcery Rules Light Role-Playing Game with an Old School spirit, just like its predecessors: Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells and Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells.

It’s a game about modern adventures in the world we live today, only with a layer of supernatural weirdness and horror. Characters are people who have found out about the mysteries and horrors that exist in the world and have decided to do something about it, be it battle it, join it, or simply explore its possibilities in any way they see fit. They will battle evil cultists, corrupted ghosts, bloodsucking vampires, and frenzied werewolves, or maybe they will be the horrors of others.

Dark Streets & Darker Secrets feels like a great option for GMs who want a bunch of tools to help them generate interesting adventures for their players. The game itself feels liked it draws from quite a bit of OSR sensibilities, which means that if there is strategy, it will mostly revolve around creative uses of your environment and the items on your person.

I'm not entirely sure whether or not terrain is something that would add to OSR-style games or not, but combat in this game system is pretty comprehensive, with rules about movement, cover, multiple attacks, and using spells. If you want to learn more about this game, you can check out this review on Questing Beast about the game!

The Secret World, by Star Anvil Studios.

An age is ending, and the darkest days are already here. Ancient enemies cast their avaricious gaze upon our world, threats both mortal and cosmic–once thought merely myth, but horrifically all too real–reveal themselves as the clock counts down towards apocalypse. Now, the “Bees,” the Chosen of Gaia, must step forth to defend the Earth against these dire threats. At the same time, they must work with secret societies who support the bees in their efforts to save humanity from unspeakable horrors.

In The Secret World: The Roleplaying Game, the players are those bees.

The Secret World requires the Savage Worlds core rulebook in order to play; it's a setting more than it is a standalone game. It's all about secret societies fighting against apocalyptic forces. Mechanically, I find Savage Worlds to be "crunchy" and I certainly wouldn't call it rules-lite… but it's also not exactly tactical in nature. Mechanical bonuses are awarded to characters depending on how you as a player role-play, and characters are built through a point-buy system, rather than through an advancement path often seen in class-based games.

That being said, the fact that the game tracks movement through pace means that having some kind of map or terrain to track your progress would be very helpful. The kind of weapon your character holds determines how much damage you might be able to do, and you roll for damage, meaning that you can't count on dealing the same amount of damage every time. If you like trad games, I think there's a lot you might like in both Savage Worlds and The Secret World.

When Nightmares Come, by Osprey Publishing.

When Nightmares Come is a tabletop miniatures wargame about modern day monster hunting and occult investigations. Players will form a team of paranormal vigilantes; self-taught occult specialists and monster hunters who call themselves the Nightwatch. These self-appointed members of the ‘watch look to tackle the supernatural horrors and investigate the strange disturbances that plague their city.

The core of the game, using the Action Dice Pool with its multiple die types, is fast and bloody, with tiered enemies, flexible player classes, quick combat resolution, and straightforward mission objectives.

When Nightmares Come also contains a roleplaying element that allows for non-combat challenges and dramatic encounters. This system uses the same dice types as the core game’s Action Dice Pool and emphasizes quick resolutions. This narrative system adds a fresh dimension to the core miniatures experience, particularly in longer campaigns where the promise of different foes and new story lines encourages long-term play-ability.

This looks like an excellent game for folks who like to play the underdog, combining the combat of monster-hunting with an investigation that point to plenty of mystery and hidden enemies. The publisher of this game also mentions a narrative system, which allows for dramatic encounters that might allow this game to straddle the line between war-game and TTRPG. Another great thing about this game is that appears to be some supplements designed by to community to help you get started, such as The Loa of Lockwood Court, and Gang Tags and Elder Signs.

Finally...

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[jetra4ivor]

What I love about MCSM is that it takes the meta conventions of the game and makes it textual in an Eldridge Horror style way.

What if there actually was a block that could warp and control all of reality. What would you do with that much power? Would you use it for good or selfish reasons?

What if there were portals that took you to different worlds? Would it be fun, or would it be terrifying that you’d never find a way back home?

What if you spawned on a skyblock challenge map and had no concept that the world exists below you?

What if you could die again and again and there were no repercussions? And what if in that world an authoritarian government forced you to become a gladiator?

What if you spawned in the word with the powers of an Admin and could literally reshape the world to your selfish whims?

What would the implications of a real mob grinder be?

What are the implications that exploring the world beyond your initial spawn results in updated things that you’ve never seen before? Would it be better to be an explorer or would you rather hunker down in a permanent home where everything was safe?

What if an Eldridge god literally buried the entire world in darkness forcing you to fend for yourself amid the hybrid of mobs that naturally generate in the dark?

What if someone stole your skin and wore it to pretend to be you?

Like all of these things are Minecraft things fans do. You can change your default skin. You can build mob grinders. You can use command blocks and admin controls to reshape the world. Updating versions allows for new terrain to generate. You can play in spleef and skyblock challenges. You can play on different servers with different rules to your own world.

What makes MCSM so great is that they don’t try to explain who the Piglins are, or why there are so many Zombies, or anything. They just treat Minecraft’s weird mechanics and rules as FACT, and build the story around the things we as players DO with those facts.

And they treat them completely straight and not as gimmicks. THAT is the power of MCSM. That is why this series has outlasted Legends and Dungeons. THAT is why fans like this series. Like… They don’t have to explain why a crafting table works, it just does because it’s Minecraft and that’s how crafting tables work in Minecraft!