High Fantasy - Tumblr Posts
Hey you! Yes, you, reading this. Are you looking for something to add to your reading list? Are you in the market for a high fantasy novel that isn’t another bland Tolkien rip off? Because boy, do I have a book recommendation for you, and the book in question is Shadow’s Hidden Blade by one of my moots on here, @alwri-tes! What’s it about? I’m glad you asked, so let me give you a brief run-down of the plot:
Several hundreds of years ago, the world was ruled by two gods, Light and Shadow, until war broke out between the two. Not wanting to use humans or changelings to fight their battles for them, the two gods created puppets, super soldiers whose sole purpose was to fight for the gods who created them. Light emerged victorious, and Shadow was banished. In the present, Isabella, a changeling, goes to the Immortal Circus, where her mother, Tamsen, was murdered several years ago, in the hopes of finding and exacting revenge upon her mother’s killer. It’s there that she meets the ringmaster, Peter, who tells her that a Shadow-worshipping cult called the Eternals were to blame for Tamsen’s murder, and advises that she infiltrate their ranks as a Tool, a low-ranking member of the cult, to find her mother’s killer. The Eternals are capable of resurrecting the dead, however the dead don’t have any memories of their previous lives when they’re resurrected, and come back in a childlike state, requiring lengthy periods of rehabilitation. Things get especially complicated when Ursa, one of the circus performers, also becomes involved with the cult, and as Isabella learns the truth about her mother’s murder, Ursa learns the truth about who she was before she joined the circus…And that Peter isn’t at all what he seems. I can’t say much else about it without spoiling most of the plot, but I will say that I could not put this one down. It was a gripping and fast-paced read from beginning to end, and hands down the best high fantasy novel I’ve read this year. If you wanna check it out for yourself, you can find it on her personal website down below, and if you buy a physical copy, it comes gift-wrapped!
Princess Ciella undressed in front of King Keyna for the first time.
Her butt vitiligo is a butterfly with freckles. 🫴
(Still working out the specifics of her and Keyna's designs, so things will change -)
● Blood Orange
• IV - Overture
It spoke to her in an ancient tongue.
Not a word could she identify nor a sound could she hear dancing at the openings of her torn off ears.
It was an all-encompassing drone of tones, a sound like the gaping maw of a beast grinding its teeth against the brimstone of an umbral body.
Her mind thought in flashes, ones that burned into her eyes, creeped to the edges of her vision, breaking her sight, breaking into the constellations of her weaved memories.
Bowed syllables rumbled through a resounding hum. It spoke through its mouth and from it befell an emotion akin to aching dread.
Her bones dried beneath the wet of her flesh, her skin shriveled, dismantled under a lecherous ooze, eternally mortal against the rage of sanctity withered
She let out a sound guttural and primal, forced to crawl on her belly and eviscerate her consumed sins in a trail of innards, themselves consumed by torment.
It spoke to her in an ancient tongue, and through divinity unbeknownst to the fruits of her mother's womb, she understood.
"Yes." She said.
"Yes." The beast heard to its askings.
"Yes." It understood.
A demiurge of forgotten chaos, ineffable in its existence, understanding of ends and of nothingness, knowledgeable about what there is not to be known, accountable for all that isn't, and all that may never be or has not yet become.
"Yes."
***********************************************
She awoke to closed eyes, like a cadaver put to rest, but unlike one, she sucked the air into her rising chest and leeched at the saliva dried to the roof of her mouth.
Her heart beat to an irregular rhythm, not a fast pace but not a slow one, either. It galloped, stumbled, and caught its footing again before racing off into her body.
A cool breeze blew in and brushed at her wet skin, pooled in her sweat, waves of heat rolled from her head to her feet.
She allowed herself to see, eyes fluttering open.
A rough ceiling dangled above her head. It appeared to be cobbled from sheets of metal, bolted, screwed and hammered haphazard and with haste, a night sky of corroded stars.
Through unlocking her senses, the surroundings of her body became clear, her head rested on a pillow, and by the way it scratched at her neck, she knew it to be down.
Her body felt eerily light, she raised her arm and no sounds of tin clanging made its way to her.
She propped herself up on her elbow, almost too weak to bear the load, and just barely missed scraping her head on the rust above her.
Staring down at her body, over which she wore her fleece undergarments, she confirmed her armored weights burdened her no longer.
From hazy peripherals, she caught regular gaps in her vision, a bookcase cut in three by the iron bars that surrounded her.
She pleaded for her mind to think, to process and understand but it was numb even to her own inputs, a fuzziness coated her, it pulsed to life in the tips of her fingers when she moved, needles stabbing into her skin.
Beneath her resting body, a red carpet provided cushioning as well as a covering for the floor. To her left, a soft outline of a door's seam and to her right, nothing more than a wall of iron.
Now that her eyes could see, she found herself in a room of marble and stonemasoned pillars.
The walls were a dull cream, the zones of the floor that were uncarpeted were a white streaked reflection of the chandeliers twinkling above them, and the ceiling was intricately carved with blooming flowers that appeared to weed through battlements and clubs.
Shelves upon shelves of books various and varied plastered the walls, embedded into nooks at intervals between which portraits of oil painted men and drab scenes hanged and glared over low backed seats.
Her feet faced an open window, curtains draped half closed, and through the gaps of golden tassels, she glimpsed a young night.
Behind her, she felt a strong wind blow in the wake of a material scourge, shutters banging against their bars.
Falling back into her feathered head rest, she sank into the white cotton. Her breathing was controlled, but her fear ran wild.
To the side of her head, the door opened silently, making itself known by forcing the pressure in the room to drop as it shut.
Someone taller than the roof of her cage, taller than it allowed her to see through the corners of her vision, walked in calmly, with dress shoes rapping against the marble floors.
"Good afternoon, Isolde. How are you feeling?"
She tensed, her fingernails digging into the carpeted floor. Her pulse sounded from within her throat, one she couldn't suppress even as she swallowed dryly.
"I have not drugged you, and you are not tied up. Perhaps you're shaken, understandably so if you are, but you should be alright, so let us speak."
She forced her head to turn and look directly up towards the disembodied voice.
The dread wished for her not to, but she ignored it and at the end of her rotation she saw a man in a three piece suit, the very one who sat in the official stands, the one who brought Obille to his death.
"My name is Alistair Strauss."
His skin was pale, almost white, but his hight set cheeks were a healthy rose.
He wore a pair of thin spectacles above a hawked nose and below barely visible brows of a blonde as light as his complexion, an almost delicate combination of features that made him appear faint
His short hair reflected shining circle patches as bright as the whites of his dark eyes.
The collar beneath his silken coat had been spilled red, and when he unbuttoned it to drape it over the hook on the door, she could see the grey of his waist coat bore the same stains.
"I do apologize for my attire. It is rather off-putting to the eyes. You can surely imagine how disgusting it is to wear, but suits aren't easy to come by around these parts."
He walked over to the window behind her and peered through it. His every move was being followed dutifully, without rest in the form of blinking.
She guessed that they were likely elevated from the way he looked over and down before shutting the window.
"I don't want any wildlife getting in." He announced to nobody in particular.
There was something uncanny about him, something unsettling that she frantically searched for.
His unfazed face, unsmiling, unaffected, the way he spoke, walked, it was the farthest possible act from malice, evil, or anger, but her hackles raised when his eyes fell to her, a siren blared in the back of her mind and her body wished to flee but her muscles locked.
"It must feel inhumane to be in a cage, but I've done what I can to make it feel less so."
He half bent over and picked up a book from a low table. He made a thoughtful face before placing it back, "To what sick bastard did this chamber belong?" He mused, "That cage was here before I arrived, you know?"
To the front of the thin bar columns, he made his way, cut off from the torso so that she could only watch as his legs walked in front of her.
"I was not the one that undressed you, if you were wondering."
The points of his boots turned away from her, and suddenly, the cage creaked under a weight.
He crossed one leg over the other, and his suspended foot shook to a regular rhythm.
"I am waiting for a few associates of mine to return, in the meantime..." She heard the sound of a sparking flint and then a faint sizzle, followed by a poignant grey smoke so heavy that it fell to the floor.
"Please, do allow me to ramble." He said bluntly, voice slightly muffled.
A deep quiet followed, one neither captor nor prisoner had any desire to break, but the crackling puffs inhaled through his cigarette did not hold the same concerns.
"I imagine it's the gruesome sight of so many deceased that has you silent. For all its worth, my intention was not to murder Obille."
"Why did you do it?" She just barely whispered.
"He broke our deal. He was never meant to call for your execution, but there is no sum of money greater than a larger sum of money, I suppose. It's unfortunate that Balic had amassed more wealth than my sponsor's generous funding."
While the smell that emanated off a freshly lain corpse had just barely been forgotten by her senses memories, the sight of the bodies ripped to shreds and mangled had not yet become dull.
"Have you ever heard the story of a woman named Eyisbe?"
Her silence was followed by a sigh and then a gentle rapping on the steel over her head.
"N-no."
"Well," He pulled the red tip of his cigarette closer to his lips, "It's a short one. We've got time."
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
"Eyisbe was a peculiar girl who appeared in a small village one day.
She was filthy, spoke in tongues, had no family nor possessions, and not as much as a single cloth to cover her skin.
Despite this, the village and its people came to love her dearly and accepted her as one of their own.
The men could not resist her, and neither could the women. Even the animals of the forest took a strange liking to her.
When she came of age, the list of those that wished to wed her had grown longer than a river.
On one rainy day in particular, they found her alone in the forest, speaking to the trees, using their fallen leaves to cover the body of an injured deer.
The villagers couldn't believe what they had witnessed.
The trees shed their leaves to her whim, and the deer, still alive, did not flee from her.
She garnered the attention of one and all, from villages afar and even to beasts that man had feared for ages.
She committed miracles unthought to the minds of the villagers, things they could have never imagined.
From fruitless trees, a full harvest would bear, and from the lifeless soil, grains like golden rods would grow to the sky.
Soon, a young man named Jeles would grow jealous of the attention.
He was unable to see the appeal the others did, and he spread false rumors to the other young men in the village.
On the night of her twentieth birthday, they invited her to a barn in the woods.
From the rafters, they hanged her by her neck, and they stripped her from head to toe.
They had their way with her, screaming unheard by the village and its people.
The boy, Eles, took a rusted knife and thrust it between her legs.
They filled a cup with the virgin blood that poured from her thighs, and they shared it together."
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
He finished speaking, and Esandolyn was grateful. Her stomach had twisted into a knot that painfully unwound itself.
The tone of his voice and the words he spoke were not synonymous. They drove an icy stake into the base of her neck.
"It was said that Eyisbe was the personification of nature, our mother, a way of saying, by the hands of man, nothing is sacred."
There was a gentle knock at the door, a triplet pulse followed by a polite enquiring voice, "Mister Strauss, may I enter?"
"Yes, you may enter."
A sharply dressed man, as slender as the curl of his forked coattails entered the room, his one hand grasped at the door handle, and his other balanced a silver tray topped with a fine glass tea set.
He hurriedly set it down on the table and, with no time wasted, set two fingers atop the tea pot's lid and poured a rich liquid into two bulbed cups.
"How many sugars do you take, Miss Esandolyn?" His bushy mustache, curled at its tips, jumped up and down as his lips moved.
She mouthed the words he spoke to repeat them to see if she had understood them correctly.
"I will leave you with the sugar so you can take as much as you please."
He gently raised the saucer and cup into the air and handed it the man that sat above her, who replied with a polite, "Thank you, Rosenthal."
"Always a pleasure, Mister Strauss." He set down a cup in front of her as well, along with a bowl of heaped sugar in which a small spoon drowned.
"My purpose in telling you that story, heaven forbid you're thinking to yourself 'goodness, what an odd fellow this Alistair is,' was an admittedly feeble attempt at an explanation."
The steel groaned, relieved to be free from the weight as his boots returned to the carpet.
"I don't believe killing to be sin, nor I do believe lying, thievery, greed or lust to be blasphemous deeds."
He took a sip of his tea instead of a breath between words.
"A sin is an offense to divinity, a complete transgression against the laws set up by our lord." He paused while turned away from her, his hand clasped at the small of his back.
"The day mankind slaughtered a God was the day we committed our first true sin. It was the day our creators left us."
A sinking feeling had fallen on the net of her beating chest and brought it down to the base of her stomach.
"Rosenthal, please wait outside for Rawsthorne to arrive."
"Of course." He moved to the exit and bowed once before letting himself out, slinking through a thin gap.
He turned to her, and his face had not lost its effect on her instincts.
"You must have many questions, so ask away. I'll answer what I can, I mean to be nothing but honest with you."
"Where have you taken the queen?" She had been itching to ask and jumped at the opportunity now that it arose.
In the time it would take a hummingbird to flap its wings exactly once, his face rippled with an expression of surprise, then the waters stilled, and his calm demeanor returned.
He smiled, but only with his mouth, the flesh of his cheeks pushed his eyes to close, but they remained fixed on her. "So it's true, after all. I must say I'm relieved."
She felt that she had made a mistake, and with just a few more thoughts, she swore softly to herself for being so stupid for allowing the situation to muddy her logic.
"I won't tell you where she is."
"Then tell me what I'm doing here, why did you take me?"
Whether she shook from rage or from fear, a combination, perhaps, she did not know, but her words were still sharp.
"You are very special, one of a kind in the truest sense. To some others, you would be a clairvoyant, a soothsayer, a..." He gestured to the air, searching for a word through half closed eyes, "... A prognosticator, perhaps, if you want to be fanciful."
"And what am I to you?"
He smiled with raised brows, "Exactly right, you are."
Dropping himself onto the arm of a low backed cushioned bench upholstered in a velvet red, he set the cup and saucer to balance on his crossed legs.
"To me, you are a prophet."
"Wh-What? What does that mean?"
"Definitions can be so pedantic. Let's not get lost in detail. All those words mean the same thing, but "prophet" has the connotation of someone chosen to be a voice for the voiceless."
"A voice? What am I a voice for?"
"To figure out the answer to that question is precisely why I need you."
"Why does it have to be me? Why can't it be someone else, a different prophet? Leave me out of this!" A sliver of rage broke through into her words.
"Who else could it be but you, Isolde. There has only ever been one prophet at a time since the age of divinity, passed down through descendants...chosen at their death... it matters not, you're the only one, its a terrible unluck and certainly nothing personal."
She stared at the brown water of the still tea. She could just barely see her eyes over the rim, and she felt the same as her reflection, that she too might sink deep into something that would swallow her whole.
"Then why kill all of those people just to get to me?"
"It's upsetting, I know, but it's not in vein. I'm only willing to do what's necessary to accomplish this. While I was not planning on it, we're conveniently ahead of schedule." A voice sickeningly pleased rang out from the rim of the cup pressed to his lips.
"How many have you killed?"
He looked into her eyes, studying them, studying her face, so much so that it felt as though he had stared right through them, into her mind and soul.
"How many do you see, Isolde?"
"How many...?" She asked, brows furrowed, concerned and confused.
Any excitement etched in his face slowly faded back to his regular neutrality.
"Don't worry, it is still early. But back to the root of your question, we simply need the bodies."
"Wha-"
"Mister Strauss," Rosenthal interrupted through the door, "Rawsthorne has arrived. She says the preparations have been made, and we can leave at your earliest convenience."
"Ah, perfect timing! We'll, I assume since you knew of the Queen's kidnapping," He said to isolde, "you would have known of this too, and I assume you left behind an indication of sorts."
She remained silent, and so did he, watching her as she watched him in return.
"Someone you know made an appearance today, funnily enough, though it was unrelated. These obelisks are making quiet the splash amongst you knightly figures." He smiled slyly.
She perked up at the mention of someone she might know, "What did he look like?!"
"She, actually. Sorry to disappoint, but dark hair, small build, yellow gems in the armor she wore, she may fetch quiet a hefty sum..." He said thoughtfully.
"Gen...?" She said quietly, confusion on her face.
He heaved himself off from the seat with a groan and placed his still steaming tea aside, "Well, we have to be off Isolde. It was lovely to officially make your acquaintance, I am terribly sorry that you can not bathe or get a proper change of clothes beforehand, but I will give you a pair of shoes before we leave."
With that, he walked behind her to an area blocked out from her vision.
She heard the rattling of chains and the friction of them being pulled taught accompanied by the grinding of old gears.
With a shudder, the cage lifted from the floor, leaving behind railed dents in the carpet.
Rosenthal was waiting for her once it rose completely, arms neatly tucked behind his back and a pleasant expression on his weathered face.
He gently took her by the arms and guided her to her feet, making sure not to hurt her.
"That's it, Miss Esandolyn..."
She thought to struggle, thought to fend against the two men knowing she would emerge relatively unscathed, she was trained after all, but her hopes were shattered under his vice like grip.
Unnaturaly strong, he pressed her flesh to to her bone, and to her skin, he brought the cold point of a knife that whispered persuasive threats that warned her to stay put.
Two more people entered the room, dressed as though they were attending a cabaret, blacks and whites in cottons and silks.
They swarmed her, tightly holding on to her arms and clothes, dragging her by chains made of her own limbs.
"Let us be off, Isolde."
More Cursed to Charm doobles! Also formally introducing Birdsong Birget, a retired, and childless gnome that is 50 yrs old in gnome-years. Her shtick is that she kinda just, quietly adopts these two dorks as her grandkids. She's rlly chill so nobody really minds lol. She's a great grandma-figure and bestie 🙏
So, didnt have a lot of progress to talk about on my new game since i had taken about 2-3 weeks to work on other things, but heres some of the work i`ve been putting into the world map and struckture.
So here we have what i call "zone maps" which consist of rough drawings of what areas are planned and how they are placed and connected. Since the game is themed around fire and wilderness, most areas are fiery twists on common fantasy environments and explore the many forms that heat and fire can take.
Some notable areas are:
Great caldera/Caldera outskirts: (dark red) Since flamebearers are highly resistant to heat and fire, it was an interesting subversion for the first area of the game to be a volcano. Boiling ridge/Boiling caverns: (cyan) The water area of the game, featuring harsh cliffside battered by a raging sea and plenty of geysers and thermal vents.
Pyrewoods: (bright red) A perpetually burning forest. The trees have adapted a thick insulating bark to protect themselves from the flame. Ashen highlands: (pale grey) An expansive plateau, located above the smoke of the forest. Deposits of ashes from the forest and caldera, fertilize the ground, making it a suitable place to build fields and villages. Sundered plains: (bright orange) A deadly desert, with plenty of glass structures formed from the scorching heat battering the sand.
City of cynders/Charred city (brown) The capital of an ancient civilization, burnt to the ground in times long past. Now only rubbles of sandstone and glass remains, and many myths of how exactly this city may have fell...
Frostburn pass: A gnarly canyon where frost and flame meet. Located between the great caldera and the ashen highlands. Brimstone bogs (dark green) ADark, smouldering swamps, where monstrous creatures lurk. A place long abandoned by the flamebearers and left to rot. Fuming crags (purple) Toxic fumes emanate from ancient fissures in the ground, rendering this region extremely dangerous to korugues and flamebearers alike. In the distance, an old castle lurk, long abandoned by those who used to call it home.
The melting pot: A loathsome pit of molten sludge, the heart of a twisted curse that cannot be destroyed or contained...
- Since were giving some building here, lets also describes some faraway lands that exist i nthe lore, but wont be seen in the game. South west: Nameless islands The great sea house many archipelago, conquered by the descendent of the flamebearer of the sea. South east: The frozen continent A distant landmass, overtaken by the ruthless cold. Ruled by the descendent of the frostbearer who could channel its power into cold instead of flames. North west: The endless peaks Towering mountains, reaching higher than the eye can see. Conquered long ago by the flamebearer of the sky and her children. North: Desolated expanse The sundered plains make way for a great wasteland. Long ago, the flamebearer of earth crossed through the desert and was rumored to have found habitable land on the other side, but very few dared cross the waste to verify those claims. East: The dark lands Lush forests cover the landscape, but those lands have long been forbidden. It is said that none of those who ventured to the east, not even the eldest and strongest son of the original flamebearer, was ever heard from again. My goal with these was that i wanted to imply a much bigger world beyond what is seen in the game (compared to irredeamable, almost claustrophobic worldbuilding) This next game will have plenty of distant lands and families to speculate on. I probably just wont do much with them myself. Anyway, all that stuff is subject to change as i work on it. The maps i provided are already pretty inaccurate, but that just means there will be much to discover when the actual game comes out.
art by richard corben from "doomscult" published in "1984 almanaque" 1981
i’m sorry, ‘dating’? movie night?? coffee-and-get-to-know-each-other??? what is this. bring me the three heads of the chimera terrorising my kingdom with famine then answer an impossible riddle as a symbol of your official courtship of the crown or get the fuck out of my DMs
Absolutely need this for creating the next town in my dnd campaign
a list of 100+ buildings to put in your fantasy town
academy
adventurer's guild
alchemist
apiary
apothecary
aquarium
armory
art gallery
bakery
bank
barber
barracks
bathhouse
blacksmith
boathouse
book store
bookbinder
botanical garden
brothel
butcher
carpenter
cartographer
casino
castle
cobbler
coffee shop
council chamber
court house
crypt for the noble family
dentist
distillery
docks
dovecot
dyer
embassy
farmer's market
fighting pit
fishmonger
fortune teller
gallows
gatehouse
general store
graveyard
greenhouses
guard post
guildhall
gymnasium
haberdashery
haunted house
hedge maze
herbalist
hospice
hospital
house for sale
inn
jail
jeweller
kindergarten
leatherworker
library
locksmith
mail courier
manor house
market
mayor's house
monastery
morgue
museum
music shop
observatory
orchard
orphanage
outhouse
paper maker
pawnshop
pet shop
potion shop
potter
printmaker
quest board
residence
restricted zone
sawmill
school
scribe
sewer entrance
sheriff's office
shrine
silversmith
spa
speakeasy
spice merchant
sports stadium
stables
street market
tailor
tannery
tavern
tax collector
tea house
temple
textile shop
theatre
thieves guild
thrift store
tinker's workshop
town crier post
town square
townhall
toy store
trinket shop
warehouse
watchtower
water mill
weaver
well
windmill
wishing well
wizard tower
JACK FROSTTT
(High fantasy designs!!!!!)
Pt (1/4)
The fantasy world of flowers and light will soothe your soul.
I was about to say, that sounds like Rusty-rambling. :D
So one of the other Tapas writers rambled about armor in the medieval world in the Tapas discord server, and I figured I should share it with you all because it's some really good stuff!
So depending on the type of armor, how you'd process it for reuse varies pretty heavily. Mail, for instance, is fairly easy to resize for someone else because you can add or remove links fairly easily. Same goes for repairs. A good thrust can bust through even riveted mail, but the damaged links can be replaced easily enough. Well, I say fairly easily. It's a pain in the ass to work with. But it's still cheaper on the whole than plate armor, and it's far more likely that someone who isn't a member of the nobility can get their hands on it. Plate armor can range from a simple cuirass to a full set. A full set is usually bespoke to the person, so you probably wouldn't try to steal the whole thing. It would take ages to remove it from a corpse, and if they ended up dead whilst wearing it, the stuff probably isn't worth the effort to begin with. A chestplate or helmet that's been stoved in by a warhammer isn't exactly a candidate for the "it'll buff out" treatment. Then there's the fact that the previous owner's family might reasonably expect this expensive and time consuming investment of theirs to be returned with the freshly minted corpse. So, take the good bits that you can get off in a hurry, but stripping the whole set is ill advised. You expect a helmet to go missing, but if someone's taking the time to remove, say, the codpiece, there will be questions. Recycling any sort of armor into weapons is probably not the best of ideas. The steel you'd want to use for armor is different than the steel you'd want to use for swords. Swords, especially around Europe, North Africa, etc, were typically through hardened and made to be flexible. Armor needs to be more rigid, so it would go through a different heat treat process and would need different carbon content. Not that medieval smiths knew what carbon was, exactly, but they had their own ways of grading steel. It can be done, but there are a lot of things that can be done that you wouldn't necessarily want to. I can, if I was so inclined, go to the shooting range in a tactical maid outfit. That doesn't mean it's a good idea. Full plate would be the equivalent to rocking up to battle in an M1 Abrams. Cool as hell, but waaaay to expensive for the average man at arms. Just about everyone would have a helmet of some kind, and there were all kinds of variations on armor that were more affordable to peasants pressed into military service. Gambesons, as you mentioned, were surprisingly effective. They could be augmented in a lot of useful ways, too. If you want a really good reference for historical arms and armor, there's an anime called Maria the Virgin Witch that gets a lot of stuff right. Not only in terms of styles and types, but how it was used and how one might reasonably expect to fight against it.
This all was written by Rusty! He's a great writer and has a whole bunch of novels out if any of you guys want to check it out!
(You guys should totally reblog this to help those who could use this information to see this <3)
Chapter 11. The Informant is live now!
In which we learn more about Captain Felix Vance, Elodie's father--and his treasure that the world's turned upside down looking for.
OF SINNERS AND SEAS
A WIP INTRO
A story to be co-written by: @lady-grace-pens & @isabellebissonrouthier
STATUS: planning and outlining
GENRE: adult. high fantasy. dark fantasy. dark romance.
CW: some gore. strong language. sexual content.
VIBES: glaring eyes. statues. piracy. the vast expanse of the ocean. violence. sin. bloodshed. candles hungry for a midnight ritual. bruised knees. crystals. tarot cards. silent gods. gazing at your enemy through a pair of wine-stained eyes. bloody lips. hunger pangs and loneliness. black magic. cults. sacrifice. cannibalism. the bitter backwash of betrayal. music in the night being echoed by the wind. history aches while the future shrieks. casual affairs. being drunk and aimless and young.
THEMES: fate. prophecy. trust. purpose. cults. spirituality. identity.
Seven pirates. Seven deadly sins. Seven acts.
All vie for dominance over their fantastical world, thinking themselves to be as close to immortal as could be. But the question of what exactly they are remains elusive.
Magic drips from their fingertips: control over the sins that rule each of their lives. With fates and visions spinning through their minds, each of the Sins grapple violently with the questions of their purpose.
How far will they go to search for the truth? Maiming and torturing, fucking and fighting, killing for a single word from a silent goddess.
And how can they expect to maintain allies when only one can live in the end?
What began as a simple roleplay has spiralled into a sprawling, character-driven tale...
Welcome to OSAS.
—
Taglist: @the-inkwell-variable
Pinterest Board | YouTube Playlist
—
MEET THE SINS:
Envy | Pride | Lust | Greed | Wrath | Gluttony | Sloth
EXPLORE THE WORLDS:
Eiffel | Polarys & Lorallyn | Geldour |
If you want to post, you have to start somewhere, right?
A piece of media: This is a complex story where no one is evil and no one is a saint. People are a reflection of their world, their life experiences and trauma. Morality depends on context from which you view the character. You are not supposed to find every character good or even likable. You can take sides and find real life parallels but the biggest point is to make you think and maybe recognize the flaws in yourself as well as the goodness in those you hate.
Tumblr: okay so THIS is the bad person and THIS is the good person. This is the oppressor and this is the oppressed. This is the abuser and this is their victim. If you like this EVIL character you are clearly the same as my asshole dad who reminds me of this character. Not taking a moralistic stance on a fictional story means you are amoral. Analysis is actually about figuring out who the bad-est person is so you can disavow them and who the good-est person is so you can root for them. The media you consume reflects your values and the characters you find interesting are clearly the ones who are exactly the same as you.
Tumblr flagged this post as sexually explicit and it's literally just a trans dude in high fantasy art.
Make it make sense.
God is real and I watched him pick his nose last week
Art by @wildegeist!
While most of the worlds I build explicitly have no gods –at best, powerful god-like entities– there is one where the opposite is true: Crundle.
Tarsweh, the creator-god of the Crundlean realm, is verifiably and undisputedly real. He is visible in the sky at all times, no matter where you are on the planet. But the funniest thing is that he doesn't actually fucking do anything.
Without even intending to, I have created the purest inversion of how most people treat capital-G God IRL:
instead of "we don't have any proof that he exists but oooh here's a bunch of miraculous inexplicable things he's done, probably"
Crundle has "yeah he's there, everyone can see him, but we have no evidence at all that he does, has done, or ever will do anything except stare blankly at the world and sometimes stick a finger up his holy nostril."
Heads Up Seven Up
Thanks for the tag, @the-golden-comet (here)! Let's go with a snippet from The Crystal of Ash, for this one! (:
"You said you hated humans." Declan piped up from where he'd trudged up to walk beside their strange half-Leavathian guide. He'd never been this close to a descendant of the feyfolk before. And honestly, it was quite frightening.
The cantankerous, pointy eared girl did not look at him as she grumbled, "I do."
"Then why are you helping us?" Declan asked, with a tilted head and furrowed brows.
"I'm not." She said through gritted teeth, "You guys are just the tools to help me achieve what I want."
Declan had opened up his mouth to question what she'd meant, but behind them, Nikolay piped up before he had the chance, cheery voice laced with curiosity.
"And that is...?"
Emrin, the half-elf, shot him a sharp glare, "Paying up an old debt to someone dear to me." She paused with a growl, "And stopping that idrash'tah abomination from gobbling up my realm."
Despite himself, Declan found himself asking "What does that word mean?" and immediately regretted it.
"It means human magic." A ghost of what could be a smirk crossed her lips - and it dawned on Declan that she found her words to be quite humorous, "Elves also use it to refer to common filth."
"... Good to know." Declan answered, before stammering, "Wait, aren't you like half human? Isn't that... insulting to yourself too?"
Emrin chuckled angrily at him, "Yes, I believe that's the point," She said, before muttering under her breath, as she stalked forward and away from him, but the young man could not help but hear it "It's not like I'm fucking proud of what kind of magic runs through my veins."
Tagging (gently): @kaylinalexanderbooks, @smol-feralgremlin, @oh-no-another-idea, @littleladymab, @winterandwords, @eccaiia,
@the-letterbox-archives, @illarian-rambling@agirlandherquill, @anoelleart,
@ray-writes-n-shit @writernopal, @anyablackwood, @unstablewifiaccess,
@forthesanityofstorytellers, @finickyfelix@i-can-even-burn-salad
@cauliflowermaterial @thepeculiarbird,
@clairelsonao3, @memento-morri-writes,
@starlit-hopes-and-dreams and OPEN TAG
A reference sheet of my oc Aelka. Not my most well-drawn work but I am proud of her design. Nontraditional Farie designs have always been cool to me so I wanted to try my hand at one(though she does look more like an elf)