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The Iron Age Kitchen, The Scottish Crannog Centre, Loch Tay, Scotland

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Craig Celynin Ancient Landscape, nr. Rowen, Conwy Valley, Wales

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"Red-headed goddess" - statuette from the early Neolithic period (archaeological site Donja Branjevina, Odžaci, Vojvodina, Serbia)

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Prehistoric Petrosphere, Alford, Aberdeenshire, 3300 to 2000 BCE, Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow

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Iron Age Textiles at The Scottish Crannog Centre, Loch Tay

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say what you will about the side of “evil” but at least we’re hospitable. what do you always see in the antechamber right outside my lair? that’s right, a healing fountain. sometimes some mana potions and a cool sword in case yours broke on the way to my tower. do you think i get that when my dark forces are storming the princess’s castle? think again. i get guards with +2 radiant broadswords rearing to play the “let’s see who can break the geneva convention fastest” competition. un-fucking-believable

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Quiet Beacons

'It's lonely, but hey, atleast I got the fish keeping me company.'

Prints | Ko-fi | Patreon | Bluesky

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for the past two years i have been sponsoring a tuberculosis detection rat in tanzania, her name is carolina. she sniffs sputum samples & alerts her handlers when she detects TB. recently she turned 8 & aged out of the program, so they held a retirement party for her & sent me photos.

while carolina moves on to live a life of rest & luxury in the retirement kennels, her role is being passed on to her successor, tamasha. she is 2 years old & was named after the grandmother of one of her handlers.

(with her handler priscus)

here is a description of tamasha:

"Tamasha is also quite playful! She enjoys jumping, climbing, and sometimes does a joyful little dance when placed in the TB evaluation enclosure – as if celebrating her enthusiasm for the work ahead. She’s also a big fan of avocado, her favorite treat for a job well done."

im not afraid to admit that this email made me cry like a stupid baby. you can sponsor your own big beautiful TB- or landmine-detecting rat through APOPO HeroRATS. they send you an update on how your rat is doing each month, including photos.

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For some reason, even though there are much more spherical cacti out there, this post forced me to remember the existence of the nipple beehive cactus

its crazy that cacti can be as rotund as they are. saw 4 over the past few days in the middle of nowhere wilderness with what i could describe as softball type shit going on. an optimal form of creature is an orb in the desert with like 3 huge flowers and you cannot even touch it btw (in case you were unaware of the dangers)

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You shouldn’t date or become serious friends/partners with someone if you can’t stomach the thought of being stuck in a car or train with them for 16 hours.

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Something so profoundly fucked up between the inverse ratio of shrinking middle class and ever increasing aggression of advertisement

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inspired by @prokopetz‘s post here

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“That should have worked.”

“What were you trying to do?”

“Turn you into a frog! Obviously!”

“Oh. Well, that explains it.”

“What do you mean?“

“You can’t turn someone into something they already are.”

“You are most definitely not a frog.”

“Well, not physically, no. But after I rescued the Frog Princess, their Queen adopted me as a member of the royal bloodline – so in the eyes of God, I am, in fact, a frog.“

“… I’m sure that’s not how it works.“

“And yet here we are.”

“Does this mean we’re actually going to have to fight each other?”

“Or you could surrender.“

“I could never live down surrendering to a frog.”

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Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

There are many species of lizard that live in burrows, but some are far fancier than others. The yellow-spotted monitor is known for its large, spiraling burrows; a single burrow can reach up to 3.6 m (11.8 ft) deep, making them the deepest of any known vertebrate!

(Image: A yellow-spotted monitor (Varanus panoptes) by Aaron Bean)

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Is that a giant rabbit? 👀 Nope, it’s the Patagonian mara (Dolichotis patagonum)! Weighing up to 35 lbs (15.9 kg), this long-legged rodent is built for speed. In fact, it can run faster than an Olympic sprinter—reaching speeds of up to 45 mph (72 km/h)! Found in parts of central and southern Argentina, this critter inhabits open grasslands where it spends much of its time basking in the Sun and foraging for food. 

Photo: biovipah, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

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Dude I LOVE learning about stuff like this

So I drew this pug knight (a character from the Uprooted podcast– I used the official art as reference images), and I'm genuinely really curious what your opinion is, as someone who knows WAY more about armor and armaments than I do

A gorgeous pupper! I wish him the best of luck on the lists!

I'm not an expert on armor or anything of the sort, but I do have some knowledge of some armor pieces and sets, and I'm going to off of that. Here I marked the armor parts to the best of my understanding.

As you can see, the most confusing part is the neck. I found these two images of what I assume is the same character:

In the first one he has neck protection in the form of an oversized brigandine neck. It looks uncomfortable and poorly fitted to me but, admittedly, I do have a history of poorly fitted brigs suffocating me in battle, so I might be biased. In the second pic it looks to be a separate piece of neck protection that loops around the head, though I hesitate to call it a gorget. Is it metal? Is it fabric? Could it perhaps be chainmail? Many questions left unanswered. His arm protection looks to be made of the same material but it's just one piece for shoulder, upper arm. If it's metal, how does he move? If it's fabric, what kind of protection even is that? Oh boy.

Another thing your drawing is missing is a couter. A couter is a piece of elbow protection between (and over) the rerebrace and the vambrace. You can see it in the first reference pic. Your image looks as though the vambrace goes under the rerebrace, which isn't the case. You can wear arm protection without a couter - and I personally did at the only small tournament I've ever been in so far; my arms are short and my arm pieces were too long to stick a couter ontop of - but the pieces won't go one under the other. If anything, the lower arm part would stick out over the upper arm to allow you to bend your elbow.

The gauntlets seem a bit small to me, especially for a polearm wielded. I have very little experience with a polearm but I do know that you end up catching blows with your hands a fair bit. There's no cross-guard there to protect you, little dog man!

The sabatons your guy has are rounded, but the other images have the pointy kind. I only ever wore the pointy ones so I'm not sure which is more comfortable. The rounded shape, from what I've read, is a 16th century thng, and my club is mainly 13th-14th - maybe that's why we don't have those. I think the pointy ones are cuntier but that's just me. Also they should have more pieces to them. They're not solid metal pieces usually. You need flexibility in your foot. That's not directed at your drawing, that's for the other two images. That dog needs to move his toes before someone shield-bashes him and throws him off balance.

Not an armor detail, but wide belts are more of a modern thing. Back in the day leather was a valuable material and thinner belts with smaller buckles were more common. You'd also want to hide your buckles because they break easily. A big buckle in the middle of the surcoat looks great but might not survive for too long in battle.

That's all I got! Love the drawing, hope you don't take my observations as criticism because it's definitely not the intent. I just love having an excuse to ramble about armor and combat, so thank you for giving me one!

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No dice, ever. You get up and do a physical action to make a check.

Charisma? Seduce the DM.

Athletics? How many backflips can you do?

Dexterity? *Loads gun* Dodge.

­LARP but it's fucking awful.