thecaptnoname

[thecaptnoname]

*sigh*

I can't believe they've sexualised the text emojis! WTF?!

o/ <- person waving

o7 <- person saluting

ol <- person raising hand

o1 <- person scratching head

\o> <- person stretching

[thecaptnoname]

fanfic writers what font do you write in

i know on ao3 it's all in verdana but when you're drafting the fic in word or docs or whatever

[thecaptnoname]

And thus, the legend of the "Short Burst" begun...

You're a hot shot air force pilot, complete with a cool call sign that you're embarrassed by. Today, you're having to explain your call sign to the rookie, and why you hate it so much.

[thecaptnoname]

[thecaptnoname]

There are probably two main genders: little-endian and big-endian.

Could be more, considering it's its own can of worms entirely.

Gender and the Adeptus Mechanicus

Oh boy! Time to probably turn off my inbox two hours after posting this question!

So I am running a Dark Heresy one-shot campaign over Discord, to introduce a good friend to the setting. Said friend has chosen to play a Tech Priest (yay! I love cog-boys!) which is especially fun because it gives me an instant-in for the character, and because they asked me about the topic of gender in the Cult Mechanicus.

I have some opinions on the topic. @a-krogan-skald-and-bearsark said it pretty well, though: "There's great scope for gender fuckery with the Mechanicus that GW has scrupulously avoided exploring." As, you know, they generally do. Because we can't have a mature discussion about LGBTQIA2S+ things in Warhammer, especially gender queerness (or even gender, period) without someone crying "bUt SpAcE mArInEs CaN't Be FeMaLe!!?"

Anyway. Snarkiness aside, I thought I'd throw the question out to tumblr for your opinions! I know there's likeminded and/or queer fans of Dark Heresy and Warhammer 40k here on the site.

Do you have any thoughts on gender in the Cult Mechanicus? Bonus points if they're on the topics of gender transition augmentations (side quest: "transcending the flesh").

[thecaptnoname]

Debatable Utility Magical Boon Item:

Mimic Shell Container

A product of mimicogenesis. Looks like a totally normal item container and retains its basic functionality. Except, it is a shell of a mimic in a form it took before its death from presumably natural* causes.

Depending on your luck and timing, can be either bare empty, full of (somewhat usable) mimic meat or a fermenting mess full of meat fly maggots.

Due to the latter danger, it is generally a good idea to cast either Fireball or Heat Metal onto the mimic shells, even if you know beforehand that the mimic in question is dead. No one wants magically enhanced casadors. No one.

Sometimes may have a more toothy, animalistic design, which is very sought after by certain kinds of decorators, despite it being a potential-injury-begging-to-happen.

Aside from minor-to-serious finger amputation risk, it is a good nature-sourced** alternative to fabricating a chest, pot or drawer yourself, but without the pros and cons of it having an equivalent of a constantly hungry mollusc guarding your contents.

* - See "Mimic Farms".

** - May or may not be true, since sometimes mimics may start growing inside of animated furniture. Ref. "mimicosis" for such process.

a chest mimic but it died from natural causes, so when you open it up theres just a bunch of decaying flesh inside

it's free meat!

[thecaptnoname]

Dead Sector Diplomat

Dead Sector. Such an ominous yet fitting name for this infamous stretch of land. Even the grass and trees here look sickly or dead, as if struck by some malady. It isn't helped by the fact that the border of the sector is lined by stone pillars such that one would be forgiven for mistaking them for gravestones. However, those pillars served a different purpose entirely — to etch the borders of the living and ward the death off, with grass green and alive on one side of them and withered yellow or even black the further it went.

Such a dismal landscape did tend to take a toll on one's mind, which is why only the most valiant and sturdy soldiers got stationed here. Such as Rotomanch.

Rotomanch was the captain of the Hell's Gate — the biggest blockpost placed on the sector's main road. Another relic of the Great War, he remembered, the Great War of Undead and Unaliving.

It was then when the swarms of rotting bodies, half feral with rage, ransacked and razed the neighboring villages, turning those unfortunate to stay into their ilk, led by the Necromancer. Nobody knew their name nor did they learn their reasons, only that with every man down their undead army grew up. So the kingdoms and czarstvas convened and went scorched earth on them, and then staved them off as a united front, with Potoya clan at the spearhead. Rotomanch's own clan.

He turned back towards the green hills, contemplating. In five hundred winters since then, the nature did heal back from the dead quite immensely. It was a much more sorry affair back when the War just finished. People treated these posts as literal graveyard shifts. Some of them wavered and asked for transfer. Some of them took their own lives. Rotomanch briefly wondered if any of his ancestors, despite their grand and hallowed reputation, did something something silly like that themselves, but he shook that thought away. Didn't feel right.

Nowadays, though, that stretch of dead land lined with tombstone pillars was a sobering reminder that whatever bickering those warring fiefdoms had, mattered not in the face of literal death. At least, they had some presence of mind to send their finest troops in.

And the Potoyas had the right idea of establishing a new stone castle, just shy of a day away, to host the Unified Defence of the Living.

Except nothing happened in the five hundred winters since. Not a single squad or even a lonely scout — even the birds were a rare sight, since there was nothing to feast upon.

Rotomanch tried to remember the later days of the counteroffensive, but failed to glean the reasons for such a sudden quiet. The Necromancer fled almost as fast as they struck, no arrow or spear was able to reach him with its fatal certainty, so he couldn't've died of any wounds, being the coward he always was. Dying of old age also was out of question — it wasn't unheard of for powerful mages to be able to reach immortality in one way or another, and being able to summon and control the army he was able to amass, he certainly had the right amount of power to tap into lichdom.

~***~

Rotomanch's musings were quickly thrown away at the sound of activity above the gatehouse.

"Captain Potoya! I see a wagon!" was Sergeant-Senior Dubnin's report.

"Right I am!" he acknowledged and ordered: "Grimwald! Take the post while I look up", before exiting through the door and taking the ladder.

Paradoxically enough, the gatehouse was a big beefy stone building, almost a tiny castle in its own right, and looked totally out of place when surrounded by the warding pillars. It was probably reasoned that the gatehouse was to be built first, since the main road provided a good chokepoint and was likely to be raided by a bulk of the undead forces, should they strike again, and the walls would serve to funnel them down into this bottleneck trap. Except when both the castle and this outer gatehouse were finished, the viability of building an entire wall encompassing the Dead Sector was put under scrutiny and in the end, got buried under the weight of international bureaucracy. And now, that very bureaucracy, Rotomanch felt, was going to bury the victims of the next Undead War.

The Captain scaled the ladder with speed and resolve, putting a significant strain onto the straps it was tied with — another siege-proofing aspect of their blockpost — and clambered onto the floorboards, taking a hand offered by Dubnin with a gratuitous nod, then followed him into the open. On the wall, a couple of guradsmen — those being the Hibbers brothers, Liam and Lloyd, — were looking intently into the distance — Lloyd with his squinted eyes, Liam through the mounted telescope, — probably observing the mysterious wagon.

Seeing their superiors walking in, Lloyd pushed himself off the crenolation, straightened up and snapped a salute, discreetly nudging his brother with a knee. Liam stiffled a grunt and turned away from the direction of his brother.

"Sorry, Cap'n, didn't hear ye coming," he bleated apologetically, before carefully moving away from the telescope, as to not bump it off its bearing, and finally gave a proper salute. "Nothing much to report, Cap, just a single carriage, no escort, no nothing, moving strictly along the paving at a moderate speed," he reported, allowing Rotomanch to take the station at the watching tube. "I feels, something's wrong with the carriage, though I can't yet see as to what."

Rotomanch glanced back over his shoulder, processing this information, then nodded in acknowledgement and turned to look through the ocular, while behind his back, the men tensely looked over the wall, hugging its jagged stone teeth.

The landscape was mostly a giant plane covered with blackened thistle of dried grass and occasional hollow husks of dead trees, with rolling black hills starting further away. With such a surrounding, the gray serpentine of a paved road, despite not being properly maintained for over half a millennia, was almost as bleached as a bone blasted with sand. And rolling down this grey, was an even whiter carriage that seemed to be throwing up big clouds of grey dust. Except, the dust from the cracked pavement with rare sprouts of black grass, reasoned Rotomanch, would've looked black or a much darker grey. Besides,...

"Where are the horses?" he asked aloud, looking to Sergeant-Senior Dubnin, then, realising his mistake, turning to face the brothers.

"That is what irked me out, Sir. Not even the skele-horses," Liam replied. "Whateves it is, I do not like the feels of it, Sir."

"Maybe we shoulda send de runnar? To warn de fortress?" suggested Lloyd, gesturing with his eyes.

"Aye," said Rotomanch, "Go tell Grimwald to fortify — gods know what this thing is about."

At that, Dubnin clicked his heels and ran back into the left tower, while the Hibbers bros. waltzed around each other, with Liam running along the wall to the right-hand tower and Lloyd laying against the stone with his blazecaster at the ready. After a moment of deliberation, Potoya unslung and fidgeted with his own as well, affixing it right under the telescope's tube, praying the zero wasn't too far off as it was.

~***~

As the carriage continued creeping closer, more details eventually became visible: two people sitting on a bridge atop of it, one most likely at the helm, and another seemed to be holding a staff, which he, at some unseen signal from the former, fidgeted with, in order to unfurl a banner. A white banner.

Second-line Lieutenant Grimwald looked on via his spyglass directed into the peepslit, when he heard the Captain's footsteps growing closer to his left. The moment they started rounding behind his back and approaching from his right, there couldn't be any mistake: the Captain is coming to his post.

When the door opened and Potoya entered (strangely, with Dubnin's borrowed blazecaster), the LT regarded him with a nod and briefly continued observing, before turning to Captain.

"Have you seen it, Sir? They've unfurled the banner," Grimwald asked, lowering his spyglass.

"Aye," nodded Rotomanch, "They are rising a white flag. I wonder at the meaning of that."

Grimwald shrugged in response. "Let us just hope this isn't some trick to breach unabated," he half-muttered, putting away his looking-glass and turning to slot his caster into the firing port. Rotomanch nodded in agreement and vacated himself from the guard post.

Outside, a small contingent of troops was already inspecting their gear and affixing sabernettes to their blazecasters, ready to repel a possible invasion with all of their power. Steelate cuirasses with maroon phoenix emblazoned on their chestplates — a symbol the Potoyas picked to represent the undying resolve of the humankind — and armoured kneeboots shimmered dully in the sunlight due to their matted finish making them a good compromise between the weight, the mobility, their protection and visibility. Everyone had their capellinas' faceplates risen up so as to be able to see better before they truly had to join the fray.

Finishing, everyone stood at attention — left foot up, arm to the shoulder, step, right foot up, caster grounded, step, — and waited for their Captain's orders. Rotomanch smiled internally, seeing how perfectly their backwater garrison followed their drills.

He stepped in front of them.

"Soldiers of Fort Phoenix!" he addressed. "Finally, in 450 winters since its establishment, we are seeing some sights of activity in these here dead waters." Some soldiers quietly snorted at the wordplay used. "A single carriage is driving right here, from the Dead Sector, with white banner raised as a sign of a peaceful delegation," he continued and shifted to look over the troops. "Considering a total lack of any interaction with the undead, aside from the infamous Great War, assume hostile intent possible. Prepare to fight rigorously, but DO NOT engage, until provoked! Pay attention to the flanks and inspect the wardstones as necessary." Rotomanch took a pause to look at the stationary clock they had. "The carriage is going to arrive in two wick burns, so that doesn't leave us much time to prepare. Together we rise!"

"FROM ASHES AND FIRE! OORAAAH!!" bellowed the troopers in unison, before the Lance Sergeant started blowing his whistle and barking his orders, distributing the foot riflemen and mountees into groups.

"Whickelmacht!" Potoya shouted through the commotion. "When you're done here, join me on the outside!"

"AYE, CAP'N! SCOOT IT!" replied the portly Sarge, wasting no time to shoo the troops into action.

~***~

From the outside, the gatehouse looked like an intimidating hedgehog of stones and spears, either pointed up as a toothy fence, or forth, like bristles of a scared animal. Foot soldiers and mountees inspected both the border's barrier and the new arrival, with mountees' caster carbines slapping gently against their hip holsters.

From the other side, a single white carriage rolled, with two guys sitting on its bridge, with one of them holding a large flag. From a much closer distance, one could certainly see that the carriage was indeed white — or rather ivory — due to its exterior being fashioned out of bleached bone plates, with green oxidized copper lining its contours with some quite artisanally impressive lines, especially — the flats of the wheels, and that both of the people on the carriage's bridge were indeed some sort of skeletal folks dressed in some pretty classy suits made out of dyed leather. As to where the leather and some of the dyes could be sourced from, that wasn't the question anyone wanted to dwell upon.

As the distance shortened even further, one could see that the clouds that were formely mistaken for dust, turned out to be some kind of a light smoke or vapour, and an increasing warbling whistle accompanied by an erratic rumble left no doubt that the wheels were spun by some kind of an engine — whatever unholy abomination they managed to devise.

Some short length of road away, one of the skeletal folks, the one with a flag, exchanged some hand signals with the other, who jerked and twisted some levers, making the carriage to creak, groan and stop with a loud hiss. After a moment and a few more lever manipulations, the warbling and rumble quieted down, but not died off entire — the driver was idling his engine, obviously. The flagbearer skeleton turned halfway in, bent down and knocked onto a previously obscured window, which soon slid away. The flagbearer started gesturing to someone behind the window, while the driver skeleton glanced at them with what must be a bored look.

Captain Potoya and Lance Sergeant Whickelmacht (who stood the gate alongside Gefreiter Lonnitz) watched the scene unfold.

"What is that all about?" boomed Whickelmacht's deep whisper.

"No idea, Sergeant," answered Rotomanch, standing easy and internally wincing as the flagbearer skeleton fumbles to catch the white banner he almost dropped due to his furious gesturing.

Finally, the carriage's window slit shut, the flagbearer made a couple more gestures to the driver, who killed the engine, and started clambering down from the bridge.

"Everyone! This is the moment of truth! Steady!" shout-whispered the Captain to the troops behind him.

"Ready!" was whisper-reported back, with Lonnitz and Grimwald saying so with uncanny synchronisity, and Sergeant-Senior Dubnin leading the target with the scoped blazecaster.

~***~

The flagbearer skeleton, dressed in a red sort of leather camisole, black leather pants with a single large bleached stripe along the seam, a black tricorne and black leather sabots, touched down the road, leaving his white banner up on the bench, and rushed to open the door for the passenger section of the carriage. The driver, who was dressed quite similarly, sans the stripes and with a simpler wide-brimmed hat, meanwhile, glanced down and then looked up at the crenolated wall. Out of the carriage stepped, one after another, a total of five similarly thin leather-clad figures, after which the door was swiftly closed by the tricorne-wearing adjutant, who then retrieved the flag and allowed the small posse to march in front of him.

"Wowzers..." gasped Gefreiter Lonnitz in awe, earning a side-eye from Lance Sergeant Whickelmacht. His reaction was totally understandable: one does not expect the rotten beasts of the Dead Sector to look this impressive.

The undead dignitaries all wore leather clothing, of course, but with differing colours — greens, blues, brown, black — embroided by gold and silver linings, according to their tastes, and some added gemstones for extra shine. But what was, perhaps, more alien and probably perturbing, is the decorative spikes, splints and perforations in their openly displayed bones. And at least three of them were wearing some sort of collars around their necks — two of them had ornate gold and sapphire scarab-shaped bulbs under their skulls, while the third — worn by a modest looking he-skeleton in green-and-silver camisole, and black-and-silver trousers, slippers and cylinder cap — had more of a brass finish and boxy shape about it. It also became apparent that those skeletons also had glass spheres encased into their eye sockets, with some opting for various gemstones in place of their irises and some — like the brass-collared fellow — having them outlined with some wire.

The head of the delegation, a smartly dressed skeleton with swirls and vines etched into his face's left, gold ornaments on black leather, emerald pupils, gold scarab collar and an emeral pin in his side cap, looked over the militarymen guarding the gatehouse.

"No spells fired? That's very promising," he concluded, before going just a step closer and nodding a restrained bow. "Good afternoon, gentlemen! I hope, our arrival didn't startle you too much. My name is Grechtebald vid Moommel, and I, along with my companions, am hoping to broker peace and open borders for both of our nations!"

Your bloodline has guarded the boundary between the kingdoms and the world of the dead for 500 years. Since the Great War nothing has happened. Today something came through. Not an army, but an undead diplomat and a small entourage.

[thecaptnoname]

>“explained in detail”

>less than a minute per variant

[thecaptnoname]

Oh yeah? Well could a corpse do this-

*Lays perfectly still and starts to rot*

[thecaptnoname]

If House came out in the 2020s there would absolutely be an episode where House steals a vape from a teenage patient with the intent of mocking them and ends up getting really into it. Cuddy tries to stop him from vaping in the hospital but it turns out there’s a loophole in the anti smoking rules that mean e-cigs aren’t technically banned.

While Cuddy is on a mission to fix the rules, House is collecting the grossest, sweetest vape flavours he can find. Foreman’s pissed because House keeps blowing smoke in his face, Chase finds this really funny and Cameron is unsuccessfully trying to stage an intervention. Wilson just puts his hands on his hips and asks that House refrains from vaping in front of his lung cancer patients.

Somehow the episode ends with the reveal that cotton candy vape juice was the only thing keeping the patient alive and House’s vaping habit was actually genius medical research. Cameron and Wilson are relieved House doesn’t actually have a new addiction. Episode ends with House taking one last puff of his vape and then going to put in it the bin before reconsidering and pocketing it. This is never brought up again

[thecaptnoname]

Debatable Utility Magical Boon item:

Spoon of Hydrokinesis

Upon downward (bulgeward) thrust, attracts the affected fluid into its built-in fluid basin.

Upon upward (pitward) scoop, propels the fluid backwards, relative to position of its bulge.

Strength of the hydrokinetic force depends on wielder's power invested into the scoop. Chance of spillage and splash damage decreases with higher impulse control.

Higher levels of control can be attained through continual use and attunement to user (ergonomics).

A spoon's only objective in life is to make soup go upwards, and it knows this. That's why when you put one under a running tap it blasts the water way high. The spoon thinks there's suddenly TONS of soup to deal with and it freaks out.

[thecaptnoname]

When you write a book, I need you to tell me IMMEDIATELY so I can buy it!

If I ever write a book, I'm going to build a tower just to shout about it. Never found the knack for anything but short stories though.

I think the longest story I ever wrote was like, 5k words? Not terribly long. But it's here if you desire.

(And thanks for being a fan. Really. People like you are why I kept on this hobby for five years now.)

[thecaptnoname]

The Highway of Pearl Hailstorm

Bank of Sapphire Cold?

[thecaptnoname]

I'd imagine some of the tracks would have the electrical lamp buzzing at the background. Or maybe the metronome ticking. And maybe, as you listen in closely, you notice that its signature changes just so slightly, to mess up with your perception of time.

And now the drums feel off the beat. But the truth is that the drum rhythm is perfectly constant. It's the beat that's off.

Also, imagine how one can play a metronome? Will it be a kind of a stand with a paddle hooked to a rubber band that gets pulled and rubs some wheel, which slows it down ever so slightly? If so, how would one go about speeding the ticks up? It would take a lot of precision to shift the weight on the go while also imperceptibly slowing the pendulum down with the gentlest increase of the pedal pressure before releasing it all at once.

I have crossed oceans of sleep to bring you this concept: a genre of music called timepunk. No idea what it sounds like, but I dreamed about it, and it seemed pretty cool.

[thecaptnoname]

You guys are talking about actual officially existing games and not, like, "Super Mario 16 (actually Joe & Mac reskin)" or "Adventure Island II but with Mario"?

Most of the good games I've got to experience were either direct bootleg copies or 999-in-1 comp cartridges where they somehow managed cram in up to about half a dozen games AND add a boot menu to mix and match some parameters.

Either that or a game about pirates, which, as it turns out, was financed by pirating games from abroad, so... Yarr? 🏴‍☠️

slightly more serious less flippant version of my post from yesterday: whether you ar doing so from a point of pro- or anti- nintendo or video games it is so silly to talk about whether 'video games are more expensive now' 'video games have always been this expensive' when what you're talking about is exclusively big-money titles that you're buying on release day at full price. that's not "video games". that's "video games made for current-gen hardware by activision/nintendo/EA/etc". its like saying "Movies nowadays all have Iron Man in them"

many of the best video games of all time are made by one weird trans girl and available for free Free on itch.io. many more are made by two autistic finnish guys and available on steam for like $10. the "video gamse used to be even more expensive adjusting for inflation" thing is only true about usamerican kids who were playing the new nintendos at the time, to me as a kid "video games" were like ~$8 from a guy with a cd burner or when i was slightly older like $20 for three from the second-hand ps2 games bin. like get some fuckin perspective on the medium god damn

[thecaptnoname]

The powers, being hinted at by my name, don't seem to be heroic, but rather befitting those of a supervillain or an anti-hero.

How does one go about pinpointing that one man whose name no one remembers or doesn't even know in the first place?

Or, better yet, they're blending in so perfectly due to their masterful mediocrity, as to not cause anyone to question that that one Joe Schmoe before them even belongs at where they're at - they seem like a piece of backdrop, a part of the routine - so they can easily slip through cracks so tiny that atoms barely fit.

Imagine being that and not trying to pull off that one Toshiba wages heist.

[thecaptnoname]

Pros of having a house made out of doors:

+ Excellent ventilation - just open this door and that door and now the air flow is more than double of what any windows could give!

+ Multiple entry points - if you've lost your primary (door's) set of keys, you can open your secondary door with another set!

Cons of having a house made out of doors:

- Multiple entry points - any door can be attacked and picked. Bonus points if they all can be opened with one master key.

- Less structurally sound - less interlaced material = weaker structure. Also leads to "Hope you didn't open this load-bearing door :)" kind of situations.

It's 1am and I'm buying 120m of wood on the internet because I needed a door so I'd say adulthood is going alright