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eldritchtouched · 4 months

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Outer Gods and contact

Mohg is quite unusual, in that he's got direct contact with an explicitly stated Outer God in the text of Elden Ring. Nobody else does, and I find that deeply interesting.

Again, Outer Gods, in works that understand the larger implications of the concept, are fundamentally tied into the very nature of reality. You can't actually get rid of them and have shit function normally in the world. It'd be like if you could turn gravity off for a planet and the inevitable disaster that would follow. There's a whole thing where they have periods of being directly active and perceptible on a human scale, and periods where their influence is not obvious, but that's not them not being there at all. They're still there.

Being in direct contact with one in stories that utilize the concept (and don't just make Outer Gods Discount Satan) is notably rare and the same holds true for Elden Ring and its various larger-scale divinities.

Marika's situation is very interesting because the Greater Will both seems weaker than the term Outer God would imply, by needing a vassal to even have the ability to get to the world in the first place (which is more like a Great Old One like Cthulhu and the various normal aliens with such advanced knowledge that they appear like gods to randos, if speaking of the Cthulhu Mythos), and who the direct contact is with. It's the Elden Beast as a vassal with Marika, and the various pairs of Two Fingers, that everyone's contacting.

The Lord of the Frenzied Flame does not make direct contact, either. You have the representatives of it, Shabriri and Hyetta, and the Three Fingers. But not the Flame itself. And it has to be summoned to a world to begin with, which implies it is not natural to that world from the start.

Malenia is deeply tied to the Scarlet Rot, but the Scarlet Rot is not directly, actively bothering her. Gowry might be a Kindred of Rot, but the description on their ashes implies that they were born of Malenia being divine and seek her despite her rejecting them because they are part of what the hates about herself.

But the Scarlet Rot god merely is, underground, and influencing the world. It has the power to influence the world while its body might be sealed away, unlike the Frenzied Flame or Greater Will (implying the other two are much weaker/younger/not Outer Gods). Though perhaps it is a situation where Malenia actively loathing that aspect of herself and Mohg doesn't loathe that he's an Omen, means Malenia doesn't draw on the Scarlet Rot for power like Mohg does, and could perhaps do something similar if she wanted...

Placidusax's deity left, which becomes a question of whether or not that leaving is of the implied lack of perception found in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos works (which is more like 'they're simply perceived not to be there, but they're still there in some weird interdimensional thing), or from actively leaving entirely (which implies being a smaller scale being/not an Outer God).

The Twinbird's god, likewise, has no direct connection. The Deathbirds are children of the Twinbird, and we deal with the Deathbirds, but that's still not direct contact with the Outer God tied to it. And there's how there's overlapping things going on, where spiritflame/ghostflame/blackflame are slightly different though also tied to the same stuff.

(And the Gloam-Eyed Queen is implied to be a character akin to Marika or Placidusax, so that's also not direct contact.)

The same can be said of the Dark Moon. Aside from its ambiguity/question of if it's even a being at all or if Ranni was merely inspired by the implications of the dark moon as a concept, Ranni is not in direct contact with it, either.

Eiglay is also something closer to a Great Old One in terms of ability and power and overall nature, as opposed to some cosmic scale entity.

But Mohg is in direct contact with an Outer God. Bloodboon and its ritual variant on his spear are explicitly the user of the magic stabbing into her essence and drawing out the bloodflame to use in battle.

Between that and the fact that he has no dual identity (he doesn't go under a different name or identity like Morgott, Miquella, Marika, Godfrey, Godrick...), I think the whole 'mother of truth' title with the Formless Mother might have more merit than people seem to think... Something is going on in the background, between that and how Miquella also has his own ties to blood magic, and also with Miquella's needles being as they are (inserted into flesh).

Which means that I think he's probably more important than how he's gotten written off by the fandom as insane and pure evil. (And the characterization of him being "insane" comes from Gideon, whose motives are deeply suspect. And, like, Rykard's plan is actually the insane one...)

#elden ring #elden ring theory #mohg lord of blood

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rrover · 2 years

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ok headworld ramble post

OKAYR so basically. first of all the entire planet of ethel itself (main headworld) is a goddess taking that form to sustain life. the planet is the original deity and all the other deities aren't as powerful as she is and rely on her

however taking the form of a planet is extremely painful for ethel constantly but she does it because she loves her children etc. the sheer amount of pain she experiences however manifested into a huge ball of energy at the core of the planet. this could be considered "raw magic" and is the origin / natural state of the kind of magic that is usable by mortals , however there are likely other forms of undetectable magic as well as the type of magic that gods use / are made of . the main magic from the planet's core is just the most physically there type of magic so to speak, as in the most grounded in that plane of existence as it heavily affects mortals and is super malleable in its non dangerous form

speaking of that! raw magic is super fucking dangerous to mortals. most of it is highly concentrated in ethel's core and radiates out to the surface, where it is in less high concentrations. most surface magic is pretty safe to be around and by that point isn't considered raw magic, however there are things like geysers and underground deposits with higher amounts of magic than usual and can cause diseases like magic corruption in creatures that don't have a high enough magic affinity to tolerate it.

the actual properties of magic on ethel is that it warps and changes reality. physically it can manifest as a solid, liquid, gas, or as something more abstract. it can be channeled through objects and creatures (depending on the level of magic affinity that creature posseses, basically how much magic is naturally present in their body and how much they can be exposed to before getting sick or dying)

usually surface magic is used for generic magic stuff. like you can make fire appear, summon animals, generic magic spell shit. raw magic is much more unstable and can't be controlled like that, if it's on the surface it'll warp anything in its vicinity into weird shit (part of why it's so dangerous to mortals, will make you melt or disintegrate or start growing plants or extra limbs or whatever else on your skin until you die , etc)

level of magic affinity also dictates how well a creature will naturally be at using magic . it goes like:

humans (can't use magic at all and can only ask gods or other magic users for help. they used to be able to use magical tools until this ability was taken away from them)

sphinxes (they can use minimal amounts of magic but don't particularly rely on it, they used to be more connected to the gods until the fall of their civilization caused the remaining sphinxes to feel disconnected from the gods , so they don't ask them for favors nearly as much as humans tend to)

mages (they're called mages like. as a species and they're all anthropomorphic animals. obviously as the name implies magic figures prominently in their lives, most mages are active magic users and use it in whatever job they may have. they mostly use magic with the assistance of tools but highly skilled/gifted mages and wizards are able to rely less on tools and channel useable magic directly thru their body)

dragons (most magically inclined of all sapient mortal creatures, they use magic directly with their bodies without using tools and are able to tolerate raw / concentrated magic at much higher levels than the others. however their magic is usually used for combat purposes, it enhances their strength and gives them their breath abilities. so most dragons possess a smaller variety of magic based skills however it's not impossible for a dragon to learn spells and use magic in other ways.)

there's also some stuff about how all forms of magic are intrinsically tied to the fabric of reality and that's relevant to minerva and the downfall of the ancient sphinx civilization lol

minerva heavily exposed herself to raw magic while she was experimenting on it and studying it, which slowly warped her body and mind but she was able to understand it in such a way that no other mortal on ethel has been able to figure out and is honestly difficult for me to explain in words just by virtue of the more "deeper" knowledge / aspects of magic being. kind of incomprehensible sorry.

but the gist of it is that magic when understood in a particular way has patterns woven into it that affect the shape of reality . this is why the most prominent type of magic of ethel warps aspects of the physical world / make it malleable . even raw magic / surface magic which i have been talking mostly about is pretty surface level magic stuff as it mostly affects the physical plane and there are more layers of reality than just physical . minerva was somehow able to access the more undetectable deeply hidden forms of magic that i mentioned earlier and observe and piece together the patterns found in all forms of magic and that's how she was able to find the truth of the universe.

anyway. there are some more aspects of the magic system that i haven't mentioned and some more that i need to work out better but. the post is already super fucking long so YAAAA

#warning for extremely long post good heavens. good lird

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mypunkpansexualtwin · 3 years

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For the hurt/ comfort dialogue prompt: 11 and/or 14? 😳🙏 thank you and have a lovely day!

Hey, you know how Strikers gave us all those Protect Oracle fights?

11 - “Just keep breathing. In and out. You’re doing great.” 14 - “Show me where it hurts.”

Yeah. Yeah, I can work with these. Thank you so much! Under a cut cause I rarely write small. Enjoy!

Send me a hurt/comfort prompt and I’ll (try to) write you a thing!

Futaba Sakura was a lot of things; a second year in high school, a prolific Featherman merch collector, one of the most formidable white hat hackers in the eastern hemisphere (possibly the world), and Oracle, the official Gal In The Chair for the notorious Phantom Thieves of Hearts.

She was not a combatant. Not even remotely built for being on the front lines in the middle of all the action.

Really, it was the worst part of these Jails. She never had to leave Necronomicon during a fight for a Palace run or down in Mementos, but the Jails were practically lousy with terminals tied to otherwise impassable walls. Terminals that only she could crack, and only by directly interfacing with them. Oracle trusted the other Thieves with her life, there was no doubt about that. But it was a lot easier to say that when she was cozy in her UFO controlling the flow of battle with just a few taps of her fingers than, say, completely vulnerable hunched over a screen with only four Phantom Thieves between her and an endless, fuming horde of Shadows eager to snap her like a glowstick.

Not only was it more comfortable to be where the baddies couldn’t reach her, it was a lot easier to see when a particularly nasty Shadow was winding up for a full-party instakill attack when she was that high above the action. Down in the thick of it, nerves thrumming with adrenaline and heart pounding a deafening drumbeat in her ears, she had only a split second to register the ominous droning of a Shadow casting Mamudoon. Really, it wasn’t even the sound that tipped her off, not over the din of the battle raging behind her and the rapid-fire clattering of her fingers flying over the keys in front of her and the rising hysteria screaming bad idea bad idea bad idea in the back of her head. No, something about Mudo was pure instinct, the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up as icy dread trickled down her spine and settled like lump of ice in her stomach before those creepy little straw dolls could even manifest. Not only was Mona out of juice and Skull completely devoid of healing abilities, Sophie was in the fight and Joker was using one of his better healer personas, leaving them both weak to curse. Mudo would shred them, and if they went down, everyone else would go toppling after like the world’s worst game of dominoes.

When that realization hit, everything sort of happened at once.

In a heartbeat, Oracle had twisted partway around, one hand on the keyboard and frantically tapping out the last little bit they needed to take the barrier down, the other hand flinging her goggles haphazardly off her face. The next heartbeat, Necronomicon rose in a blaze of blue fire, painting the battlefield flickering teal as vivid green glyphs spread under her teammates’ feet and protective barriers shimmered to life around each of them. Another heartbeat, Mamudoon glanced off of them, curse nails clattering uselessly to the ground and blood-slick handprints sizzling away on contact with the shields, and Oracle almost had time to breathe a sigh of relief. Fourth heartbeat, the hack was almost done, but a shadow fell over her, pain lanced through her abdomen and... she was suddenly a lot more preoccupied with whatever that little point of silver was poking out of her suit than whatever it was over her shoulder. Fifth heartbeat, more painful than the last four as red seeped out around-- ah, that was the tip of a spear. She’d been stabbed clean through her diaphragm. Rude.

And then the world went sideways.

The Shadow--Eligor?--had flung her across the field with his spear still run through her and Futaba was distantly aware of several screams as she’d gone sailing through the air. Her vision went hazy as she bounced off of a wall and thumped to the ground. Man, how hard had that thing thrown her? She was either concussed or just delirious, because the last thing she saw before blacking out was Joker and some little blond girl laying into the enemy with an army of teddy bears with dynamite strapped to them.

The next thing after that was pain. Futaba didn’t so much regain consciousness as she was dropped unceremoniously into it like a pool of ice water and agony. One arm flailed blindly, trying to push away the hands that were holding her down, the other grabbed at her face in attempt to summon Necronomicon in her panic. Utterly blind to the Shadows that had her but if she could just get her persona out she’d be safe there, she’d be away from the fight, she wouldn’t hurt so damn much, she just needed to escape. But her mask was gone, her hand smacked uselessly against her face and pain was overshadowed by terror. Shadows had her pinned, Necronomicon was gone, this was how she was gonna die, wasn’t it? One hand was still free, she ignored the way every rib in her chest screamed in protest to fling one last defiant fist out at whatever had her trapped, and connected hard with--

“OW! Dammit, Oracle calm the hell down! You’re just hurtin’ yourself worse!” Ryuji’s voice snapped as a hand gripped her wrist, firm but gentle. The panicked haze in her head cleared a little and her eyes came into focus enough to see Skull looking down at her. He was rubbing at a bruise on his jaw and pouting hard enough she could have laughed. Theoretically. Y’know, if every muscle in her abdomen hadn’t seized up hard enough to keep her from breathing through the pain when she tried. Instead, all that came out was a strangled whimper and she tried not to focus on her vision going grey at the edges or the black spots that danced in front of her eyes.

“Easy.” Queen’s voice soothed as fingers gently combed through Futaba’s hair. “We had just enough stamina left to fix the worst of your injuries, but you’re still pretty beat up. Thankfully we still have enough medicine to do things the old-fashioned way.” Makoto was off to her left, uncapping a container of weird smelling ointment after she released Oracle’s other hand. Futaba tried to crane her neck to see who had her head in their lap only to have every bruise across her entire left side throb at once at the movement. A choked sob escaped her and her head spun, stomach roiling as tears blurred her vision. Skull’s hand slid up from her wrist to lace his fingers with hers and she squeezed back hard.

Whoever was holding her head and petting her hair stopped long enough to wipe the tears away from her face as they welled up. “Try not to move until Mako-chan has finished,” Haru murmured and ran her fingers gently through her hair again. “Can you move your right arm?” Futaba released Ryuji’s fingers and raised it gingerly rather than try to answer verbally. Why risk her voice cracking partway through or just flat out screaming as soon as she unclenched her jaw?

“Good. Show me where it hurts.” Makoto ordered gently. Oracle winced and released a shuddering breath as she gestured weakly to her entire left side. Her vision blurred again and Haru cleared just it as quickly. Ryuji took her hand again rather than let it drop and hurt her from jostling herself.

“Broken?” Futaba rasped quietly. The searing ache in her ribs every time she even breathed meant she barely managed to force enough air into her lungs to get even that much out.

The beat of silence was broken only by the sound of fabric being shredded as Queen sliced through her shirt to survey the damage underneath, then she finally answered, “no, nothing’s broken. That was the second thing we checked when we got to you.” The hacker managed a quizzical noise in the back of her throat, only to suck in a sharp breath through her teeth as Makoto started applying the ointment. The touch was gentle but still felt like Queen was dragging the knife over her bruises rather than her ungloved fingers. “Your... your pulse. It was weak, but still there.” Queen finally answered, her voice slightly thick.

Futaba managed to huff a weak laugh that time and that medicine was apparently doing its work because she barely even got any tunnel vision when she did. “Hack?”

Skull squeezed her hand a little, maybe to comfort her and soothe the fear clear on her face, maybe to force some circulation back into the fingers she was strangling the life out of. “Sophie finished it up for ya. Basically just hit the open button after Joker cleared her a path,” he chuckled, but his smile didn’t meet his eyes. Behind him, the rest of the team--minus Queen and Noir--watched at a distance to keep from crowding her. Mona up on Fox’s shoulder, each of them alternating between watching for more enemies and keeping an eye on their preoccupied teammates; Panther with one arm around Sophie and rubbing soothing circles on her shoulder, although it wasn’t clear whose comfort it was for judging by the wobble in Ann’s lower lip; Joker was a few steps away from the other group, mouth pressed into a tight line and hand occasionally reaching to his side like he would have been flipping his dagger as a distraction if he hadn’t passed it off to Queen. Every single one of them was visibly paler as they watched Futaba receive treatment with red-rimmed eyes and tense shoulders. Oracle’s chest ached in a way that had nothing to do with her injuries to realize how terrified they’d obviously been, even Joker. Maybe especially Joker; he was always so cool and collected and stoic even when shit was about to really hit the fan, so if she could see how scared he was under his mask, especially that far away...

Dwelling on it wasn’t going to help. Thinking about it and working herself up into a panic attack definitely wasn’t going to help. Especially when hyperventilating was probably the worst thing she could have done to her bruised ribs right then. Eventually Ryuji was sent away in favor of Ann and Sophia when Makoto had to start cutting away her shirt past what was decent to get at the rest of her injuries. Sophie brought one of the “armor” pieces they’d leveled past--an oversized hoodie with a nonsense motto in English that Futaba had called dibs on and wouldn’t let Akira sell--as well as Joker’s trench coat, both meant to cover her up when they were done. At Ann and Makoto’s insistence, the boys were banished entirely to the Monabus with no argument. Somehow that lack of argument is what really drove it home for her. It was almost funny, it wasn’t the bruises or the pain. No, the lack of Ann and Ryuji bickering, that was what made it real.

Futaba had almost died.

From there things were just sort of a haze of soft words barely keeping down the panic attack building in her chest while the other girls on the team patched her up. They wrapped her injuries that the medicine couldn’t completely work its magic on, they wrapped Futaba in the hoodie and coat to get her presentable long enough to make it to the next checkpoint, and they planned to wrap up the infiltration for the next couple of hours so everyone could get some rest after running on fumes. Of course, when Ann gave her a hand up, Oracle’s knees wouldn’t support her. Akira was kneeling in front of her in a flash, quieter than usual without the rustling of his coat to give him away, and thankfully kind enough to ignore her yelp of surprise when he materialized.

“I can carry you, it’s not too far--” Futaba didn’t even wait for him to finish his offer before gratefully and bonelessly draping herself across his back. The rest of the group scouted ahead and Mona took over navigator duty to make sure no more Shadows got the drop on them between there and the exit.

“Onward, noble steed.” She mumbled into the material of Joker’s vest, arms thrown loosely around his neck as he shifted her a little higher and a little less likely to slide off onto the ground. Huh, Ryuji was right, Akira did always smell like coffee and curry. He smelled like Leblanc, like home and Sojiro and--oh god, if she’d died, what would they have told him? What would her dad have done without her? He’d closed himself off almost as hard as Futaba had after her mom had died, how would he have handled--

“Hey.” Akira’s voice was low and soft when he pulled her up out of her downward spiral, and she felt it rumbling in his chest more than she actually heard it. “Deep breaths. Match me, okay?” Futaba did her best to follow along with his pattern; slow inhale, hold, slow exhale. It was shaky and still hurt, but eventually she fell into rhythm with it. “Just keep breathing. In and out. You’re doing great. Is there anything else you need me to do?”

“Keep talking, that’s all. ‘S calming.” Futaba added with a weak chuckle, “you should do ASMR, dude. You’d make bank.”

“I’ll think about it.” Akira hummed in thought as she worked on keeping her breathing even. “We can talk about whatever you need after you’ve gotten some rest in the real world, we’re almost to the checkpoint now. I’m sorry...” he trailed off, readjusted his grip on her legs as he hoisted her further up on his back, and started again, “I’m sorry I did this. I knew it was dangerous because we were all exhausted and you all warned me it was a risk but it was my call and I pushed us because I thought it’d be okay. The checkpoint was just on the other side, but then you took that hit and I was terrified I’d just gotten you killed because we were all out of energy and--”

Futaba awkwardly patted the side of his head with one shaky hand and he leaned into the touch while his babbling slowed but didn’t stop. It was kinda cute and a little funny how he acted more like a cat than Morgana did sometimes. But that wasn’t what she was trying to do. After the third pat, she found where his ear was hiding under that thick mop of curly hair and yanked on it.

“OW, THE HELL--???” Akira’s voice was a lot less soothing when it was that loud and the shout made her head pound and the rest of the team whip around in alarm. At least he’d stopped hyperventilating and holding her tight enough to leave bruises. As if she needed more.

“Those are not calming words, Joker.” She grumbled against his back.

“Right. Sorry.” He waved off the other thieves, who all had their hands halfway to their weapons like they were ready for another ambush after he’d yelped.

“We can definitely talk about it later, but I get the first Futaba Almost Died Panic Attack, okay? You can have the second one.” It was meant more as a joke, but once she’d said it, it actually seemed pretty fair.

“Sounds good. Any other requests?” He laughed, although the sound was really more of a quiet little huff, all nerves and no humor.

“Hmmm. I get to pick dinner for the rest of the vacation.” Futaba said matter-of-factly, hoping to lighten the mood until they were in the clear.

Akira sighed and, after taking a moment to readjust her on his back again and catch up to the rest of the group, nodded. “I’ll stock up on curry supplies when we get back.”

#my writing #persona 5 #p5s #futaba sakura #not based on a specific jail we're just going for vibes tonight #i can tag as spoilers anyway at request tho #minimal editing because I jumped right on this #disappointed there wasn't a special animation for oracle's 'keep the party from gettin murked' thing in strikers like there was in 5 #but it's my fic so I'll do what I want #on that note #does futaba actually summon necro like everyone else? like inside it she's not wearing her goggles #but in cutscenes on foot she's wearing them?#so I assume yes???#whatever it's what I'm going with #me: I adore futaba she's my little sister and I'll break the legs of anyone who hurts her!#also me: *writes this*#fun fact. fluff is not my strong suit. angst is.#huxianposts #answers to questions y'all actually asked #again thank you so much for the ask! I hit a wall with wingman the last few days #and have been wondering if there were any words left in my brain at all #and there are! Look at all those words! I just needed a tone shift was all!#metaphorical palate cleanser of pain #this whump is brought to you by losing my mind by mystery skulls #I'm probably gonna drop this on ao3 too cause I'm that happy with it and also i'm a monster

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gronjon44 · 3 years

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Ok so thoughts on MK-2021

I was gonna make a longer more spoilery review but I'm gonna cut it short cause there's one big thing I wanna talk about (so let's bullet point

Kano is and always will be one of my favorite characters in the MK Franchise (with Reptile, Barakka, Noob Saibot, and Scorpion) His character felt like it should and while I originally would've wanted to see Karl Urban as Kano I do really like Josh Lawsons performance.

Lui Kang and Kung Lao were really fun to watch, Lui especially (I'm not fully familiar with Kung Lao so I won't talk about him too much other then the fact I think he's neat)

I'll kinda consider this a ⚠️⚠️SPOILER⚠️⚠️ so if you wanna skip this whole bullet point snd the next one after; The villains were all awesome in this film (Reptile was awesome to see quick as it may have been, Mileena was fucking AWESOME, Reiko and Nitarra were... there? (I don't know either of them so they were just kinda canon fodder to me), Kabal was cooler then I thought he'd be (though I wanted more)

Gorro was awesome to see but he felt... underused? I'll go more into detail at the end.

Jax was alright but I never knew much about him then and I still don't

Sonya Blade was fine until the end and she just kinda felt... crammed in? Like yeah yeah know she has more in the games and she had a presence in the original 95 film, and she was an integral part of the story all the way through till the end but then she *spolier *spoiler *spoiler* with *insert name here* and she just felt like a thematic paper weight at the end.

Scorpion and Sub Zero were FANTASTIC and i have no complaints with either (at least not directly)

Raiden was there and he was played by Tadanobu Asano (of Thor) and was a MUCH NEED improvement over Christopher Lambert

And then Cole Young...⚠️SPOLIER BTW⚠️

...

(I'm doing this in a smaller font to get everything I wanna say) I wanna like his character more I do, and i have nothing against Lewis Tan he's a phenomenal actor, but Cole Young is a weird character for this film.

Hes both underutalized and at the same time completely unnecessary to the plot.

Lewis Tan is the decendant of Hanzo Hasashi (Scorpion) after all of Hanzos family was murdered by Sub Zero, say for one orphaned daughter; throughout the film he's hyped to have this big connection to Scorpion (through glimpses of a Kunai surrounded by far to even Cole seeing Hanzo in visions) and later on we see that each champion has a special power, and Coles "power" is supposedly passed down to him by his familial ties to Scorpion.

Now, from that description I'm sure you'd think Cole would gain the Hellish abilities Scorpions known for, or even his retractable Kunai, but NO, instead he gets these wrapping all across his body that act as a sort of shield to protect him and absorb incoming damage (its basically the Black Panther suit)

He also has a set of Tonfas (one of which is bladed) that appear when he needs them

Now I should point out that early on in the film it's shown to the audience that Cole is a struggling boxer trying to support his family, and if you look you can see these wrapping across his body are reminiscent of the boxing wrappings he put on his ha ds prior to a fight. But here's the thing... WHAT DOES HIM BEING A BOXER HAVE TO DO WITH HIS TIES TO HANZO?

You can argue it shows us he's always had a connection to tournament fighting, and yeah that's valid, but it doesn't change the fact that he and Scorpion don't really share a connection.

He unlocks his armor while fighting Gorro who was sent to hunt both him and his family (which frankly is such a waste of Gorro on it's own but I'll get to that in a minute)

When we see Cole get hit in his armor it glows a Hellish red, similar to the fires of Scorpions Hell based powers, but that's as far as it goes and it shows that the armor has absolutely nothing to do with their connection

If you wanted these two to share a bond in their powers, why not have Cole dress in clothes inspired by Scorpion, and then have his powers be hell based or have him control a mystical Kunai, and maybe have the soul of Hanzo watch over him

And this ties into both of the fights that Cole takes part in (Gorro and Sub Zero)

His fight with Gorro is cool, but Gorro isn't the same menace as he was in 95; he's a goon for Shang Tsung and that's it (they refer to him as a prince but even then he's mostly just a lackey, similar to Sub Zero and Scorpion were in the 95 film) And ⚠️SPOLIER⚠️ Gorro gets fucking wrecked.

And even then there is no stakes between them, other then his family might die; these two don't know each other, they have no beef, hell to Cole I bet Gorro is just a big monster.

And this is where the missed opportunity was with Sub Zero; Sub Zero HAS history with Cole there IS a beef between them (even if Cole isn't fully aware of it) but there final fight is just kinda... meh.

Sub Zero and Cole have a full fight (Sub-Z using his ice powers and Cole with his armor and Tonfas) and throughout the fight it looks like Cole might lose; that is until he cuts himself on a Kunai Raiden gave him (it was the original Kunai that belonged to Hanzo when he died) and his blood beint spilled on that blade actually SUMMONS Hanzo FROM the depths of Hell to help win the fight.

They win, Sub Zero dies, Hanzo is laid to rest blah blah blah.

Now, all of that sounds like a REALLY AWESOME IDEA in writing.

The problem is that it goes LITTERALLY NOWHERE WHEN THEY USED IT

Up until this point there is no physical evidence that shows Cole is Hanzos decendant, hell you could argue that Lui Kang is his decendant and it'd make more sense.

Cole's entire arc has been nullified by the simple fact that there is no physical evidence to show the two are related, and this whole blood feud with Sub Zero is kinda useless.

Now I'd like to propose an alternative plot point to fix this if you'll bare with me

Again, another ⚠️⚠️⚠️MASSIVE SPOLIER⚠️⚠️⚠️

...

Shang Tsung kills Kung Lao in front of Lui Kang, basically setting off that entire arc like the 95 film. Now, here's the alternative I'd like to suggest.

Shang Tsung isn't the one to kill Kung Lao, Gorro is.

Gorro is ordered by Shang Tsung to kill Kung Lao after he ⚠️SPOLIER⚠️ kills Natarra.

And instead of killing off Gorro have him leave with Shang Tsung and the two return to Outworld and Lui Kang is left with a dead Kung Lao.

And to Parralell this, instead of Gorro fighting Cole, have a prelude fight between Cole and Sub Zero, one where Sub Zero actually DOES KILL Coles family (they didn't even die in the film so there)

Sub Zero can battle Cole, Cole can discover his powers, and Sub Zero (in a panic) can just fuckint destroy his whole house with his family inside by summoning a giant ice glacier inside the house.

This in turn adds more weight to the final fight between Sub Zero, Cole and Scorpion; Cole lost his family to Sub Zero, just like Hanzo did before him. And when Cole summons Scorpion in the climax it holds more weight because TWO GENERATIONS OF THE SHIRAI RYU CLAN avenging the deaths of their families in that instant.

And as for Lui Kang make him the main fighter of the ACTUAL TOURNAMENT (they don't even do the tournament in this film they just kinda talk about it) and have Lui battle Gorro for the Title of MK Champion.

Well... that was a long post. I think I'll end it here by saying that while i do have beefs with the film I still want to make it clear I don't hate jt, in fact I genuinely enjoy it.

I just... have some criticisms.

#mortal kombat #mortal kombat 2021 #mk 2021 #MK-2021 spoilers #spoilers #movie analysis

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ninthfeather · 3 years

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You have been offered an exorbitant sum of money to (somehow) remake The Untamed as a mecha series. What Do You Do?

So, this is actually a bit trickier than the times you asked me the same about Detective Conan and Fruits Basket. Both of those stories are ones that I’ve interacted with for a long time and they have cores that I feel work with varying amounts of sci-fi and tech involved as long as certain elements stay stable. Meanwhile, the Untamed’s specific version of xianxia cultivation is pretty heavily tied to its plot. But I think it’s still doable.

Ok, so, for The Untamed, the most central plot is ultimately the one about the dangers of rumors and hearsay, with the theme of the complicated nature of real-world morality being almost as central. Other than those, my favorite theme is probably the whole ongoing narrative of each generation’s actions affect the next. None of this stuff would be out of place in a traditional sci-fi style mecha series set in space.

So, my inspirations here are primarily gonna be Magic Knight Rayearth, Sakura Wars, and the bits of various Gundam shows that involve what’s collectively referred to as space magic.

(this got long so have a readmore)

The concept: this is still, to some extent, xianxia. People still cultivate, they just do it on non-Earth planets and moons (note: if this is something that is specifically not allowable in Taoism I would appreciate someone letting me know). Each of the clans has their own planet/moon, corresponding in climate to the locations we see in the show and presumably named after those locations on Earth. The Burial Mounds is probably a subsatellite of the Yiling moon orbiting Yunmeng. The costuming will not change for the most part, though because space travel exists, there will be space suits—just made of materials available in the setting. I’m picturing some real funky ship designs, and also probably some scenes of cultivation-based metalworking to justify the existence of the spaceships in the first place. The sets would probably also look very much the same, but with occasional modern devices made with obviously ancient methods, thrown in just often enough to be subtly jarring. Tech levels would probably vary by clan—the Jins would have the most, the Lan would have the least, the Jiang would have a few weird things that Wei Wuxian came up with but not much else, etc.

As far as the mechs themselves, my solution here would be essentially creating a magitech setup, with mechs more along the lines of the ones from Magic Knight Rayearth or Scrapped Princess in piloting mechanics—i.e., they’d have magic bubble cockpits, transfer damage directly to pilots, and run on the pilot’s energy. I’d probably go ahead and have mechs be essentially summons that are exclusive to cultivators and tied to their swords, which adds even more layers to a number of scenes in the drama (people’s swords being stolen, certain people losing the ability to cultivate, the Nie saber stuff, etc.). Maybe people who have spiritual tools like Zidian can use them to power up their robots? Also obviously Wei Wuxian builds himself a new mech in the Burial Mounds and ties it to Chenqing.

I’m seeing the great clans all having very traditional sort of fantasy robot designs (like, Escaflowne/Rayearth/Dunbine vibes), color-coded by clan, with some design variations to differentiate them--I can see the Lans having the most curves, the Nie units being really blocky, the Jin units having extra ornamentation, the Jiang units being sleekest, and the Wen units being the most pointy. And then, just, the robots made through demonic cultivation? Evangelion-type eldritch horrors that are, given how demonic cultivation works, most likely made of organic material from dead bodies and scavenged bits of metal.

So, ok, it’s the Untamed, but everyone’s got robots. The thing is, they don’t only have robots. The show that results from this would probably end up including a mixture of the original series’ sword & cultivation combat and robot battles. There are some fights, for example, that basically have to take place indoors or right next to buildings, and those would probably end up involving sword combat. On the other hand, some fights would be just as fun if they involved two giant robots zooming around in the sky.

Some specific scenarios: a lot of the Sunshot Campaign involving simultaneous space and ground battles, the First Siege of the Burial Mounds starting with a gigantic robot assault before Wei Wuxian knocks enough of them out of the sky for them to try sending in ground troops, the battle between Lan Zhan and Xue Yang in Yi City happening in mechs while Wen Ning fights [spoiler] on the ground. It could be cool. Also, it would really emphasize the difference between people who can cultivate and people who can’t.

I’m not going to go full spoilers here, but I think you can imagine how the feelings of certain characters who aren’t strong cultivators would be even more intense in this type of setting. And how much easier it would be for them to argue that they felt weak, and vulnerable, and threatened!

I don’t think there’s any reason you’d need to add robots to The Untamed. But I think if you did, you could have a lot of fun using them to reinforce existing themes and make situations that were already gutwrenching even worse.

So, for that unlimited budget? The majority would be spent on getting as much of the original team as would be willing to return to make The Untamed: But Robots This Time, or replacing the cast & crew members who were unwilling to participate in this level of nonsense. The rest would go into hiring a robot-focused effects team with a focus on recruiting people who worked on Pacific Rim or Transformers, and then paying them to do a lot of work.

Once again, disclaimer: if I screwed up anything on a cultural level, feel free to tell me. I genuinely do not mean anyone any harm I just like putting robots in stuff.

#mirrorfalls #cql #the untamed #makin' it mecha #thanks for the ask #the spoiler level is low but there's a little bit of into in here #also this can be considered an AU that I'll take questions on #just don't expect fast responses I've been unwell for chronic illness reasons

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rosaguard · 4 years

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i’ll probably make a more official post about all this at a later date but i was talking to verumking about some stuff and since it was already something i wanted to talk about on my blog, i figured i would just post about it here as well. for starters, i don't really like the idea of minerva in crisis core - mostly b/c her existence raises questions the writers didn't seem to consider. for instance, if this being exists to protect the planet, why didn't the planet 'summon' her when sephiroth was running around and shanked aeris? i've been thinking of how i can make minerva not suck ( at least in my eyes ) and one idea is to just continue ignoring her completely while playing with the idea of aeris becoming something more™️ when she dies / enters the lifestream which has been floating in my head for awhile now.

i've seen people say they've made her overly special / powerful in the remake which is weird to me since 1). she was always special - being the last cetra was her big 'special' thing:tm: and 2). she was probably always meant to powerful but they couldn't fully explore it back in 1997. aeris' powers have been unclear in canon as far back as the OG - she can canonically enter cloud's subconscious and they take that ability even further in the remake - but we have no idea if that's a thing all cetra can just do or if she's even more powerful then the average cetra. for the sake of this discussion, i'm going to go with the latter. we already know she helped save the planet even in death; we just didn't know how until maiden that travels the planet ( which i'm constantly confused on whether is canon or not b/c cl.otis and clerit.hs are always arguing about it. apparently the ultmania it was in is getting reprinted so??? ).

anyway, MTTTP basically turns her saving the planet into this 'my friends are my power' thing and all the souls she meets in the novel such as jessie, biggs, wedge, zack, etc. + the other souls within the lifestream itself help push meteor back but i'm also like....what if she just willed it by herself completely? this is essentially a long lead up to me proposing the idea of her and the planet's subconsciousness basically merging together once she dies. i always felt like aeris ( and other characters ) were super active post-death in a way that doesn't really make sense. aeris can be explained as her being a cetra™️ ( but even then i feel like it’s kind of a reach since the cetra are so unexplored ) but zack should've merged with the lifestream by the time advent children happens and it doesn't make sense for him to appear to cloud - at least based on how the lifestream is described in the OG - unless aeris herself willed it so.

i’ve touched on how a lot of the themes regarding the lifestream and the cetra are very similar to many concepts in indian religions before on my blog. one thing i didn’t touch on, however, was how the philosophical concept of brahman reminds me of aeris’ character beyond death:

brahma (ब्रह्म), brahman (stem) means the concept of the transcendent and immanent ultimate reality, supreme cosmic spirit in hinduism.

brahman on the other hand cannot be seen with the naked eye. It can only be experienced. brahman is said to be all-pervasive. It pervades all parts of existence. it is present everywhere. sages of the past have experienced the Brahman and have become realized souls. according to advaita of sankara, all individual souls are parts of the supreme brahman. after getting liberation from the human bodies, the individual souls become one with the brahman. death is meant only for the body and not for the soul.

all of the souls in the lifestream make up one, large collective ( or 'soul' ) which is the planet's consciousness similar to brahman. the way brahman is described, or at least my understanding of it at least, is that it's not a 'physical' thing but something that is felt because it exists within everyone / everything and is present everywhere. this reminds me of not only of how bugenhagen describes the lifestream but also how aeris' presence post-death is handled as well.

bugenhagen: eventually... all humans die. what happens to them after they die? the body decomposes, and returns to the planet. that much everyone knows. what about their consciousness, their hearts and their souls? the soul too returns to the planet. and not only those of humans, but everything on this planet. in fact, all living things in the universe, are the same. the spirits that return to the planet, merge with one another and roam the planet. they roam, converge, and divide, becoming a swell, called the 'lifestream'. lifestream... in other words, a path of energy of the souls roaming the planet. 'spirit energy' is a word that you should never forget. a new life... children are blessed with spirit energy and are brought into the world. then, the time comes when they die and once again return to the planet... of course there are exceptions, but this is the way of the world.

aeris within the lifestream is the last shot you see in the original game ( not counting the post credits ) and instead of hints of her theme playing, the chimes for the lifestream theme plays instead as she smiles. she also helps saves cloud after his fight with sephiroth in the lifestream so aeris not merging with the lifestream and still looking out for the others was a thing even in the original game. in advent children, her presence is constantly 'felt' even though she is not there directly whether it’s tifa being able to feel her presence when it's raining, cloud being able to indirectly talk to her, or even marlene sensing her when sephiroth summons the infected lifestream.

tifa: aeris is here... everyone is here... cloud is here with us!

a lot of these moments are also specifically tied to nature ( or places she was tied to such as the church or her death site ): her leaving a voicemail on cloud’s phone when it’s dropped in water, her appearing in the flower fields in the credits as cloud is traveling the countryside, her showing up while the party is fighting bahamut in the sky, etc. sephiroth’s presence in the lifestream post-game would also work better as them being contrasting rivals because through geostigma, he would be hurting 'her' as she is the planet’s consciousness now. ( it could also explain why she was never like 'hey cloud, i have healing water under my church. go grab a shovel and get to digging fam!!!' because maybe she couldn't reach out to him or something. the real answer is bad writing and fan service but!!! )

overall, aeris becoming the ffivii equivalent of the supreme cosmic spirit is interesting™️ to me. her dying like in the OG isn’t a part of my main canon but the entire concept of this could still be a thing once she dies of old age in my main canon or used for another verse ( most likely the latter ). especially since she seems to just be able to...do things because she simply wills it after death - at least to an extent. for instance, cloud literally dies at the end of Advent Children and she simply went 'no, i don’t think you will' before sending him back to her church alive. she also talks to kadaj as he’s dying and joining the lifestream which again, doesn’t seem to be a general cetra thing but it’s hard to say. it always read to me as if ifalna had already fully merged with the lifestream when aeris was still a child and she couldn’t ‘talk’ to her mother anymore. yet aeris is able to physically manifest herself ( and zack ) outside of the lifestream to talk to cloud ( it was for fanservice:tm: but stuff like that raises questions SE!!!!! ).

tl;dr: she's basically a goddess after dying and keeps zack around because it gets kind of boring monitoring the flow of life sometimes.

#❀ . ━ ❛ blood of the ancients ❪ headcanon ❫ .#they play solitaire and stuff. it's fun:tm:

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akkivee · 4 years

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don’t expect any cohesion out of this outta this by here’s my thoughts and speculations on the hypmic guidebook image. i’m sorry. it’s stupidly long.

alright so at first glance, you kinda gotta panic a little because holy cow, very few of the teams are actually together?? bb and mtr are the only two (2) groups actually in close proximity with each other while mtc and fp are all over the place. which is weird since we just got through fp at least reconfirming that they are each other’s true posse and definitely should not be separated right???

big brained twitter users tho came through and it clicked that everyone is separated because their agendas/goals are vastly different from each other, not because of their weak bonds with each other. so lets take a look at where everyone stands with each other

let’s start with the buster bros!!! it comes as a surprise to no one, but the bros are still together since jiro and saburo are largely following after their big bro. i do have a point to mention about saburo, but that’ll come later.

so on to mtc!! save for probably fp, their group has the widest separation. but given each of their goals, it makes plenty of sense. samatoki wants to bring his sister home. juto wants to bring about the end of drugs. rio hasn’t made any grand movements, but he is keeping an eye out on chuohku. different goals, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t one as a team.

fp!! you could feasibly make the bermuda triangle with how far apart they are! fp’s goals, as of now, do align since they are truly together to prevent ramuda from, y’know, dying, but their individual agendas are separate. in a sense. i’ll try to expand on this in a bit.

next is mtr!! much like bb, they are together as jakurai leads them towards his goal and hifumi and doppo follow out of their desire to support him.

and next we have dh!! their placement pretty much follows what went down in their debut drama track, sasara and rosho have been brought together (by rei) and are determined to make it work as they partner up with rei, whose goals are widely unknown, pretty sus and definitely not aligned with sasara and rosho. and to speculate a little about sasara and his placement somewhat behind the rest of the leaders, i think that it’s because sasara has no clear goal as to why he’s participating in the rap battles outside of wanting to be with rosho. he is right where he wants to be, with rosho and doesn’t have any current goals aside from staying with him. at least, none that we know of.

which brings me to bat. and kuukou specifically. but notice, none of the bat members are together as well, and like so, their individual goals are pretty different from each other. hitoya is here to beat jakurai for once in his life, jyushi has a strong desire to overcome himself and to be a stronger person, and kuukou has barely left any room for jesus between him and ichiro because kuukou, similar to sasara, is here for ichiro. this is my personal headcanon, but i do believe that kuukou actually remembers that ramuda was the one who hypnotised him into breaking things off with ichiro. neither one have forgotten the other (e.g. ichiro naming his new team after his duo with kuukou, kuukou at the end of the bat debt drama track saying “wait for me, ichiro...!”) so i do think how close kuukou and ichiro are reflects their mutual desire to be together as a team again.

another nifty thing i noticed was that there’s a divide amongst the cast, split straight down the middle. you can see it with how gentaro/jyushi, doppo/saburo, samatoki/ichiro, are back to back. and on each side, you have one person posed unlike the rest of them; on the right you rei in the back facing away from everyone. on the left, ramuda sitting on the ground. so, i propose that this divide shows who has goals against chuohku, and those who, while not on their side, are entrenched in chuohku’s plans.

ramuda, as we know, has the biggest chip on his shoulder when it comes to chuohku. they kinda found a replacement for him in his enemy jakurai, discarded him, left him die, that sort of thing. if anyone wants to see chuohku burn, it’s him. anybody on his side of the picture has goals against chuohku.

ichiro intends to ‘break the wall,’ to topple the chuohku regime and his brothers are right by his side with kuukou there with him as his partner, as previously mentioned. again, we don’t know yet of sasara’s goals outside of being with rosho, but in ‘ahh, osaka dreamin’ night,’ rei’s verse states, “teacher, comedian, doctor, lawyer- Those who are being looked up to as pros are all swindlers,” so there is something going on, not only with sasara, but also with rosho. jyushi is kinda unknown, though ramuda expressed quite a bit of annoyance dealing with him at the end of the bat debut drama track. rio is out here with prior knowledge about plot points such as the hypnosis canceller, in cahoots with former military and hacking into chuohku databases all with an illegal gun strapped to his back. like some of these homies wish they had the balls and the initiative.

as for the right side, rei is the definition of an anti hero. he’s not on anybody’s side, he working with whoever has the power to get his goal done. and that’s on par with anybody on his side of this picture; everybody here is balls deep in chuohku shenanigans, whether they want to be or not.

samatoki’s whole schtick is to free his sister from chuohku. as we’ve seen in the finale of the tdd manga, samatoki will willing go along with whatever and burn any and all bridges if that means his sister is safe. jakurai is likely on this side due to chuohku doing their damnest to get jakurai within their grasp so they can harness the true hyponsis mic’s full potential using jakurai’s healing ability. and where jakurai goes, doppo and hifumi would be loathe to leave him alone. juto maybe be a cop, but it’s implied he is a high ranking one given his change in outfits from tdd canon to present time (from a cop uniform to a crisp suit.) he’s high enough on the ladder for ichijiku, japan’s #2 big boss lady, to know of his work and to be summoned to aid nemu, another high ranking chuohku officer, in an arrest. hitoya, dice, and gentaro are all vague in connection. hitoya, however, is again part of rei’s callout verse as mentioned earlier, so he may be a swindler in the sense of not unwilling to work with chuohku to further his goals (defeating jakurai) and maybe making some hard cash. gentaro is shady as hell; he seems to be connected to a group called plunderer, which chuohku has control over. as for dice, hypmic likes dropping hints that he’s related to otome.

i mentioned i had an observation about saburo, and without getting too into character analysis (ichiro/rei/saburo similarities as people), it’s interesting to note saburo is on the border of this divide and the closest to rei, which could be a play into where we left saburo, questioning ichiro, after the events of helter skelter.

last general observation! with all the speculation i just dropped, the majority of characters that tie directly to chuohku are hanging in the back. we have rei, gentaro, juto, dice, and rio. i thought it was a neat detail, but it struck me as weird that ramuda was way in the front when he’s probably the most direct result of chuohku existing. but... it’s not like the leaders aren’t tied directly into chuohku. they were chosen by chuohku to be center stage in battles meant to appease the general populace into focusing their aggression on each other.

so looking at the pic again, i noticed a kind of... border??

the ones with obvious connections made a circle. i say obvious and included hitoya and rosho into this because of rei’s verse that i mentioned before. so i’m wondering... does jyushi have some stakes involved in chuohku?? he is a little further into the middle than gentaro, but he’s in line with juto?? this may be a case of over analyzing, but i did point out ramuda’s strange comment about jyushi being annoying to deal with which could randomly come back at any point in the story. or not lol. anyway i’m done, thanks for coming to my ted talk it was as long as an actual ted talk

#this is vee speaking #like christ i am SORRY this got to be so damn long #fortunately ive literally said everything ever in this word vomit post #so i dont have to spread in the tags #lol i did want to apologize for my ichikuu bias kinda coming out #c: rapping boys

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cyberramblings · 4 years

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Sonic & Tails: Ideas for a new Sonic Plot and Partner System

So, first off, there is a game called Sonic & Knuckles. It is basically just the second half of the overly ambitious Sonic 3. It is not Sonic 4, but it is a standalone game. Anyways, there isn’t a game called Sonic & Tails yet, so let’s make that happen.

Regardless of that, I wanted to talk about my vague conceptualizations of a Sonic game plot. I WANTED to continue my thoughts on other Sonic characters, but my stupid brain can’t stop thinking about “what if Sonic and Tails fought?” Again, this is getting into some borderline fanfiction territory, but I write the blog AND the rules.

Piggybacking off my previous post detailing my thoughts on Tails, I had said that I liked the idea of Tails taking over Robotnik’s lab after he is defeated once and for all (or temporarily, I don’t expect Sonic Team to kill off the main villain, as much as I’d pseudo-ironically love Sonic Adventure 3 to open with Eggman’s funeral while Sound of Silence plays like the overly edgy funeral scene from Watchmen 2009).

Now, this is also getting into some serious Marvel Civil War or Batman v. Superman territory, but stick with me. I feel like one of the most underutilized aspects of Sonic as a series is the cast of characters. Maybe it is just me, but I feel like Sonic fans want to see their favorite obscure character return or see as many characters as possible. Even the most trivial characters have a cult following in the weird Sonic fandom. It was really cool to see the obscure Sonic the Fighters characters return for a boss fight in Sonic Mania, even if they were just an illusion. I am proposing a Sonic game where nearly every characters returns to make up the boss fights.

Now, the first issue with this idea is that typically the “rival” battles in Sonic are a bit hit or miss. Fights against playable characters in the Adventure IMO felt pretty flat and uninteresting. Now, 2D Sonic has some better boss battles against the likes of Metal Sonic and Knuckles and the same goes for Generations, so maybe those could be emulated. Regardless of gameplay, I’d like to see all the weirdies like the playable cast of Sonic Heroes, The Fighters, Emerl, Blaze, Gamma E-102, etc. return at least as boss fights, if not as playable characters, even if they are just piloting the mechs that would typically be piloted by Eggman. I get zero excitement from fighting Eggman anymore, but just put Rouge’s model in the cockpit and suddenly its way cooler with more potential for unique boss dialogue.

So far I have proposed a Civil War-style plot where Tails goes a little bit off the deep end and a Sonic game where the boss fights are all the beloved recurring characters. It should be obvious how these two parts fit together. Perhaps the dual story structure of Adventure 2 is overplayed by this point, but obviously it would fit in with these ideas.

To get into the nitty gritty and provide an example of what I am imagining, consider Metal Sonic. I can easily see a plot that starts with Tails reconfiguring Metal Sonic to be “good”. This bring back a classic character in a new way and allows for a lot of angles for the plot to go, of course borrowing from various Iron Man plots and the Buffy-bot from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

One idea from Sonic Adventure that I would really like to see return is the ever-evolving nemesis concept. Even if Sega never really brings back Chaos, I’d love to see a rival that increases in power as the game goes along. This could totally tie in with my previous idea, with Metal Sonic becoming more powerful over the course of the game, possibly with the acquisition of the Chaos Emeralds like Chaos does. Metal Sonic already has been shown to take on a few different forms, such as at the end of Sonic Heroes.

Another story beat that I’d like to see replicated is the end of Adventure 2 where Sonic and Shadow have to team up. Now, in this hypothetical Sonic & Tails game, that would obviously be Sonic and Tails teaming up, but I’d also love to see them bust out Mecha Sonic as a kind of retconned prototype of Metal Sonic from Sonic 2/3 as a last resort too.

I also love the story beat of all the playable characters at the end of Sonic Adventure bringing the depleted Chaos Emeralds to Sonic for the final fight. I would love to see something like this but a little more weighty. I have a clear mental image of something like the Breath of the Wild loading screen that shows your level of progress though the game, but instead with Sonic endlessly walking towards the camera as the game loads, surrounded by more and more characters walking towards the screen as you rescue/recruit them.

Personally, it seems like Sonic games struggle to balance multiple playable characters, so I’d settle for something like Advance 3 where you pick a partner that enables new moves. I would prefer to find a way to include every possible character as playable, but I would settle for a 3D Sonic game where Sonic (and maybe characters that control near identically like Metal Sonic, Shadow, Silver, Blaze, etc.) is the only playable character, with characters like Tails, Knuckle, Amy, Big, etc. are relegated to the partner role, but swappable.

Playable Characters:

Sonic: Everything normal

Metal Sonic: Just make him control like he does in Adventure 2: Battle, so faster than Sonic but with less moves. I don’t think Metal Sonic has ever been canonically playabe, only appearing as a boss fight or playable in racing games or bonus modes, so that would be my biggest request.

Shadow: Just Sonic but slipperier and please give him a teleport instead of a homing attack

Silver: Again, just Sonic but make his double jump more offensive to represent his telekinetic abilities

Blaze: Her name is BLAZE and she has FIRE POWERS in Rush and Rush Adventure, so please just make her control like Sonic but with a fiery homing attack or her fire hover from Rush

Espio: Just give him some kind of limited invisibility or maybe the tornado attack as a reference to Heroes

Mighty: He could probably be thrown in with his moves from Mania, but this is reaching

Jet: Probably asking too much, but he’s never been playable in non-racing game, so even seeing him with his board in a main game as a kind of joke would be cool

Assist Characters:

Tails, Cream, Charmy: Obviously, limited flight with slightly different characteristics. Cream could alternatively have the Chao attack from Advance

Knuckles, Rouge, Tikal: Either a limited glide or the digging

Amy: Piko Piko Hammer as an attack or as a big jump. She could also maybe be a Sonic-like characters, but I feel like she was shoehorned into the speed role in Heroes

Big: I just like seeing this dumb idiot return. It seems like asking a lot for the fishing rod to be used as a grappling hook, so maybe he could just have a big area attack

Fang/Knack, Bark, Bean: I mean, maybe just show up and fistfight some enemies?

Vector: Something music based, realistically

Chaos: Again, this is reaching, but maybe this ties into Tails taking over Eggman’s research

E-1XX Alpha, Gamma, Omega, etc: It is asking a lot to have all the robots return, but I’d love to see them all as slight variants of “shoot a bunch of missiles” or limited hovering

Omochao: Personally I’d love to see this little guy as an assist who just never shuts up, maybe with some hidden secret-unlocking potential

Vanilla: She doesn’t have a lot of game appearances, I’d take anything

G.U.N. Commander: Again, I just think this would be kinda funny. He could summon robots or just fire missiles

Eggman Nega: Not sure why he would help the main characters, but I’m always rooting for weird stuff like this

Wave, Storm: They could function like Tails/Knuckles or grant a temporary board for tricks or whatnot, maybe like the skateboard powerup from Sonic Generations

Tails Doll: This is dumb, but it would be fun to see as a little throwaway easter egg

So, that was a bunch of random nonsense directly from my brain, but you probably get the idea: find a way to include a lot of characters in the plot and the gameplay. Do I expect any of this to ever happen? No. And honestly, I’d prefer to see another game where I can actually play as characters like Rouge, the robots, Amy, and Cream.

ONE LAST THING: There should really be a Sonic rhythm game. They have so much music, both the classic songs as well as the Crush 40 songs, with tons of remixes of both already existing and even more possible. It would fit perfectly with the gameplay of Sonic, you could just have the notes appear as obstacles or powerup boxes. There are a million different ways to slice it, but it just makes too much sense to ignore. I don’t have enough ideas to make a separate post, though. Maybe I’ll make a playlist sometimes of songs I’d like to see included, but the issue is that it would be way too many songs. As with the main point of this post, I would love to see many different playable characters with very slight changes to their properties.

ONE LAST LAST THING: Since Sega hates localizing Puyo Puyo games, they should just make a new Mean Bean Machine with HD graphics and all the various Sonic characters represented somehow and then release it internationally either as Mean Bean Machine or just Sonic Puyo Puyo. Again, I didn’t have enough ideas for a whole post.

FINAL FINAL FINAL RAMBLES: I kinda wanna play Sonic 06 since I actually just recently found out that Rouge, Omega, and Blaze are playable, but the disc is 20 bucks at gamestop for 360. I also kinda wanna play Unleashed, but not enough to buy it. I really get more excited when more characters are playable, which makes me wish I enjoyed playing Sonic Battle more. I also have my eye on Chronicles if I can ever get the patience to actually sit down and play it. At this point, I should just make my own dang original game or story inspired by the things I like about Sonic.

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toooldforfandom-liveblogs · 4 years

Text

RWBY V07E13 - The Enemy of Trust

I can't remember the last time I've felt so reluctant to watch an episode of RWBY. There's no way they'll turn _everything_ around in 20 minutes so no happy ending this season. Who knows who's going to die this episode to satiate RT's thirst for blood and drama.

The other reason I'm not sure I want to watch this episode is that the big moment of last episode fell so flat for me that I fear it'll manage to disappoint me again and this time there'll be no next episode to give me hope for a good ending.

But, the liveblog must go on, and there's still hope in me that even if it's not a happy season ending it's going be a good one.

Last episode ended with:

Clover dead and Qrow and Robyn either about to escape or about to get arrested.

Ruby and Weiss about to go find Winter and Penny

Blake and Yang about to go find JNPR

JNPR about to fight Neo

Cinder about to fight Winter and Penny, with the Winter Maiden in a pod.

Is the Winter Maiden going to die? Who's going to get her powers? Winter? How many minutes into the episode before Pietro dies? Yang vs Neo rematch? How is Ironwood going to be stopped if he's stopped at all? Is Salem going to appear at the last possible second with her flying monkeys?

I don't know so let's do this!

Ooh, there's the aura projection he was supposed to learn this volume. Not as spectacular as I hoped but still works.

This makes me have a ton of questions about how her semblance works. How did she escape Oscar's grasp to make that illusion? Was Neo an illusion the entire time? How resilient they are in that case? She very noticeably didn't get hit at all until now.

Poor Oscar, it's been a long day for him.

I'm trying to figure out if Neo could have disguised herself as someone else in JNPR but the moments they leave the screen don't match with Neo's dissapeareance. I guess she could have been the guard but still, weird.

high poly birds, the true advantage of the new cg engine

Hints to Cinder's backstory?

It's fun to see Penny finally have a match considering she's been a powerhouse the entire season. She _has_ to be disabled in some way though if Pietro's death flags are going to get triggered this season at all and I'm not looking forward to that.

I have no idea when this fight turned into Matrix Revolutions but I'm not complaining.

I'd be more worried about Winter but I'm sure she can summon _something_ to survive.

That's even cooler than whatever I had imagined.

_this_ is what I expected from V5's fight between maidens, and Winter is not even a maiden yet.

Welp, now I'm worried.

Cinder's becoming an expert in that move. Hurt someone, run while they are worried about their "friends"

"but it does to me"

That's even better. Penny has grown so much

Maybe carry the child WITH THE RELIC instead of leaving him off ready to be picked off by either Neo or the soldiers.

Yeah, that's Neo. That expression is too sassy to be Nora.

This must have been so much fun to animate.

Of _course_ she'd use her powers in this way. I hoped she'd turn into Pyrrha at some point but this works just as well.

Ren seems to have realized something. I hope it's more "I care more about Nora than I realized" and less "feelings are a weakness"

I'm loving Neo this episode, she's mute and tiny but that doesn't mean anything when she's smart enough to manipulate everyone around her.

Huh. Interesting. It still could be the "feelings are a weakness" thing and he's crying because he knows what he needs to give up but I'm still holding hope for the other choice and he just feels bad about not being able to recognize the real Nora and everything he's been doing this season.

Her movements are so delicate.

Holy shit. This is the first maiden with a lifetime of experience, Cinder has no chance unless her old age becomes an impediment.

oh no no no

LOL at Winter apparently floating, bad layering there.

Is she blaming herself for not completing the job or worried about Penny? After the whole "I don't matter" thing I'm not sure.

Sure, yell at the one person who's never going to yell back.

I feel this siege is going to be Ren's last chance to decide what he's doing with his life and his friends.

...he's going to go find Ironwood. There's no way _that_ ends well so rip.

Okay, this alleviates my "this is murder" concerns from last episode. She was fully aware of what she needed to do and the sacrifice that it entailed. This line however makes me wonder if she remembers Winter at all.

This _reaaally_ feels like she's going to give Penny her powers, but Cinder is probably just close enough to avoid that. What happens if Penny gets her powers and then someone destroys her? Would she keep her powers if Pietro revives her?

The ultimate "things I want to do vs things I need to do" question for Penny.

WHAT THE FUCK

I was joking when I said RIP a couple of screenshots ago, why would you take me seriously!

I'm just slightly disappointed by Ironwood. So far, even in the throes of his paranoia, he had mostly held back, using "legal" means to do what he needed to do. But there's no way to justify shooting Oscar, an _unarmed_ child. This moves him firmly from well-intentioned idiot to a minor evil just below Salem, just like Oscar said. In fact he's more dangerous than Salem right now because he's already there.

Who gave Cinder's VA voice acting lessons? Whoever it was, they deserve a trophy. That break while screaming, just perfect

I didn't want Penny to absorb her powers because that'd mean she's going to be irrevocably tied down, she's never going to be free. _But_, I didn't want Winter to become a maiden because Ironwood has completely lost his mind and unless she suddenly changes her mind about not following him to the ends of the earth that'd mean that Ironwood would have a relic _and_ a maiden.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

His semblance? Or is it _something_ powered by aura inside the cane?

And that's the end of "Ruby won't be able to use her silver eyes after what Salem said" theory.

...she looks much better with her hair down. And welp, first thing she does is think Weiss did something to deserve being on the run.

I didn't realize Cinder had hit Winter so hard she started to hallucinate. Sure, tell two healthy huntresses to surrender while being half dead.

This is going to _suck_ next season, she's probably going to fall into Ironwood's plans even more since she just lost everyone she cared about in Atlas.

My heart.

So, does Cinder think offering the relic up is going to be enough to get into Salem's good graces? How long before Neo tries to put a knife into her back?

IT'S A FLYING WHALE

IT CAN'T END LIKE THIS

---

That was a lot. First things first: I've never been so happy about being wrong, that was a _great_ finale. I'm not incredibly happy about it being such a cliffhanger but it works.

For full disclosure, I'm writing this review a couple of days after watching the episode since I was too tired to continue due to insomnia.

V7 is probably RWBY’s best executed most coherent volume so far. It’s also probably in the bottom half of the list of my “favorite” volumes.

When I say coherent I mean how every single character and action has been laser focused in justifying Ozpin’s monologue at the end. Everything important everyone did has been because of Fear. Overcoming fear, falling to it or causing it. Ren’s try at being a fash, Yang and Blake’s “betrayal,” Ironwood’s (and the council’s) whole thing, Penny’s acceptance of the Winter Maiden’s powers, Watts and Tyrian’s objective, Salem’s appearance and its effects in both Ironwood and Ruby, and a lot of other things I’m probably forgetting.

I don’t remember any other volume so focused in a single theme. Sure, they _have_ themes but V7 is relentless in making everything fit.

It has a great plot throughout that explores themes that have been teased but not fully explored in the past, with some interesting less than black and white issues and a ton of threads that converge mostly gracefully by the end. It’s not RWBY’s most ambitious season, I think V4 still has that distinction, but it’s probably second place _and_ it accomplishes what it wants and almost everything it does better than any other season before.

And for as much as I don’t find the fights interesting, they are _really good_, I think there’s not a single one this volume where I’d be able to complain about the issues that bothered me in past seasons. They are interesting to watch, with creative uses of everyone’s abilities and great choreography and cinematography.

So, on paper I should love it. It’s a _great_ season. But I don’t.

I think that my main issue with V7 is that it’s too real. I distinctly remember feeling weird watching it after everything that happened in my country, the social unrest due to the inequality that reigns supreme.

It was weird living through that, with the military on the streets trying to repress and contain what had been festering for years, _and_ watching a show where something similar was going on but with what felt like sympathetic authority figures. It probably did a good job at that but by the end I wasn’t interested in giving them sympathy, killing most of the emotional weight of the climax.

It doesn’t help that there are very few moments where Mantle’s problems are shown directly on screen. They talk, rant and cry about it but it’s always people unaffected by what’s going on discussing what to do. Even Robyn, who’s supposed to be the voice of the people, feels detached from the people she’s supposed to represent since she has no personal motivations. And when the people of Mantle are shown, it’s mostly after Tyrian’s attacks so it feels like the early episodes are trying to make us feel bad about Mantle but not _too_ bad because it’d cast Ironwood into too much of a bad light.

Brooklyn 99’s quote of “cool motive, still murder” describes Ironwood’s (and Atlas’s) entire plot line for me, and since _everything_ is tied to that it leaves me without much to like.

That’s not to say I hated it, I enjoyed it moment to moment as my liveblogs can attest but the end result is not something I’d like to rewatch unlike other volumes.

The cliffhanger worries me. Or more specifically, _when_ they decided to finish the season worries me. If the cliffhanger had been after Ironwood had raised Atlas his fall would have been definite but since he hasn’t done that yet there’s still a chance he won’t do it. It feels like the writers weren’t sure how far they wanted to take him and decided to postpone making that decision as long as possible (even if him getting redeemed would be incredibly weird after trying to kill Oscar, Ozpin’s speech aside).

Worries aside, I have high hopes for V8 if only because this season was so good besides its particular topic that if they keep that level of quality I'm bound to like it, especially if it doesn't try to redeem the Atlesian military.

I think that's all for now, until next time!

#rwby #rwby liveblog #rwby v07e13

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salavante · 5 years

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If you're still doing the OC asks, Patroklos?

So Pat is actually @saltineofswing‘s character, so I drew him, but Jacob filled out the questionnaire. And it’s super duper beefy - it’s pretty much an entire rundown of what the Threnghelleon muses are, how Patroklos operates, what his powerset and backstory is. So if you’re in the mood for some world building written by my better half and Co-DM, indulge. (My questionnaire for Wybjorn was filled out like five months ago, before Patroklos existed in the fiction, so I’ll take the opportunity now to say that I also am very into Pat and Wybie as a couple).

Full Name: Patroklos, Poetic Muse of the House of Camaraderie

Gender and Sexuality: Male, Bisexual

Pronouns: He/Him, but like with a couple of the other stranger members of the Threnghelen sphere of divines, probably wouldn’t be put off by They/Them

Ethnicity/Species: Patroklos is a Threnghelen Muse, a race of beings that were created by the Threnghelen Pantheon and tasked with bringing inspiration, hope, motivation, and sometimes madness to the mortals of Threnghelleon and its Dominion. The race of beings known as the Threnghelen Muse is assumed by all members of Threnghelen society (save a very select and clever few) to be some sort of lesser deity; in the same way the members of the Circle of Glory were born when Jovix Diocunigast first experienced various emotions and conceptualized various ideas, the Muses supposedly popped up when mortalkind began to conceptualize complex ideas.

This is not true.

The Muses are actually a strange race of ‘quasi-real’ beings from the Unknown that feed off of emotions and other similar existential experiences, which is hard to explain; they can’t manifest in the physical world and can only be seen by gods and other divine beings. They’re really more like tulpas than anything else. Threnghelleon has a series of Houses and Bloodlines into which the Muses are organized, based on the domain over which they hold sway (and therefore the things they feed on); the Bloodlines are Dramatic, Poetic, Sacred, Epic, and Tragic. The Houses are the House of Pain, the House of Conflict, the House of Camaraderie, the House of Love, the House of Lore (or ‘history’), the House of Innovation, and lastly the House of Fear. Muses of the Epic and Tragic bloodlines are naturally more powerful than the others due to Threnghelleon’s system of values, and Muses of the Sacred bloodline become more powerful when tasked by a divine being.

The Muses of the House of Fear are the oldest Muses on Threnghelleon... and are also the strangest and most powerful. They’re the ones responsible for creating the others, developing the lie about what their race actually is, and had some very interesting early influences on Threnghelleon. More about that another time.

Patroklos is, as mentioned above, the Poetic Muse of Camaraderie; he is Also, incidentally, the Sacred Muse of Camaraderie. It’s not super unusual for a Muse to have two domains, but Pat is a bit special because Sacred, Epic, and Tragic muses are rarely double-classed, so to speak. He also doesn’t know that he’s actually a descendent of an extradimensional eldritch thoughtform.

Birthplace and Birthdate: Some time in the early ages of Threnghelen mortal history, after the conveyance of a spark from the Flame of Kaer Rhûndor to mortalkind and before the Red Age that spiraled out of the Bloodbath of Warns. Like many other Muses, Patroklos was created when some of the members of the Circle of Glory had a ‘spark of inspiration’... in other words, the Muses of the House of Fear planted the idea in the heads of the Threnghelen pantheon. As far as the Gods know, the Muses were ‘crafted’ in a secret forge somewhere on the White Hill, aka purgatory. The truth is a lot weirder and more gross.

Guilty Pleasures: Patroklos is not a terribly guilty person. He is very Shakespearean (all of the Muses are, they’re kind of like a Shakespearean chorus) in his temperament and preferences, and has sort of a classical stage actor’s grace and manner. Patroklos is effectively a phantasm, a being that lives exclusively in the Veil who is unable to directly manifest on the Mortal Coil, and so he’s never experienced eating or drinking or sleeping or any of the things that flesh-and-blood critters require.

But, Patroklos is very fond of watching people; the Muses have nothing to do with their time besides watch people, and if that sounds creepy it very much is! Patroklos is very nosy, he likes to eavesdrop and is a bit of a gossip, and watches people he likes more than he probably should. Whenever Patroklos and Wybjorn talk, because it’s usually in a dream, Patroklos usually goes on one ‘You won’t remember this when you wake up, BUT’ tangent and gossips about stuff he shouldn’t. Patroklos likes to watch people living their lives and going about their day-to-day. It’s something he, as an incorporeal spirit, doesn’t get to experience, and so he lives vicariously through others.

Phobias: Dying! Patroklos is in kind of a precarious spot right now. Threnghelen Muses can be killed, it’s just very very hard to do – and not only that, you have to kill them not once but twice. First, a Muse must be killed, usually by a divine being or enchanted weapon. They then become a Choral Spectre, trapped in the Veil or the Astral Plane, and they slowly lose the ability to leech energy off of their associated domain. In this state, a Muse is not only vulnerable to all of the nightmarish beings in the Unknown (where thoughtforms are made as real as anything in the Unknown can get), but also slowly starves to death. Patroklos is Once-Dead after appearing to Ethem-Cailo in a dream and trying to convince him to return to a more righteous path, and Ethem-Cailo had a tantrum and accidentally ‘smashed’ Patroklos with Mjolnir. Now, Patroklos is trapped in the Unknown, hiding from both the Helmsman and the many ghosts, horrifying Leviathans, and other monsters that the Glorious Incandesca attracts as the Wild Hunt skips from dimension to dimension.

Patroklos is also deathly afraid of being forgotten, as most Muses are; this sort of ties into his fear of death, but a ‘Forgotten’ Muse will eventually become a Choral Spectre and die anyway. Patroklos and the other Muses of Camaraderie were mostly utilized by Ethem-Cailo during his glory days as the God of Aspiration, but Patroklos saw less and less play as time went on and Ethem-Cailo became more bitter and nasty until he stopped being called on by Ethem-Cailo at all. By the time the Wild Hunt rolled around most of the Muses went undirected by the Gods, doing whatever weird bullshit they wanted and inspiring mortals however they saw fit, and Patroklos was kind of seen as an oddball by his siblings because he never indulged that chaotic impulse and preferred to be summoned before meddling in the mortal world. As a result? Not a ton of friends.

What They Would Be Famous For: Patroklos is, as all beings in the Threnghelen Pantheon, revered by the mortals of Threnghelleon. Patroklos was one of the more popular Muses of the House of Camaraderie, especially before and after the Red Age, and had a couple of shrines devoted solely to him – an honor usually bestowed only upon Epic and Tragic Muses, and Muses that were direct children of one of the Circle of Glory. This is partially because of his frequent partnership with Ethem-Cailo; the two were very good friends, and Patroklos was the Muse responsible for helping him with the famous Squiring of Raske Callhand – an extremely famous championship boxer/wrestler and the first mortal to receive a favor from the gods.

Additionally, Patroklos was one of the main Muses who helped Ethem-Cailo to develop the Art of Bardic Knowledge ability, by which an individual can tap into the poetic narrative of a ‘real-world’ event and verbally convey it with a magical visual accompaniment. The other involved Muses – the twin children of Awnrah, Feste and Fidele, Epic and Tragic muses of House Lore – were plenty helpful and ostensibly more powerful than Patroklos, but Patroklos put in the most time and effort on the project, who really wanted to bring Ethem-Cailo’s vision to life. As a result, he is usually cited as one of the primary creators of the art, even to this day.

What They Would Be Arrested For: Trespassing, evading/resisting arrest. Probably can’t get ARRESTED for this per se, but he might be the type of person who could get in hot legal water for breach of nondisclosure contract.

OC You Ship Them With: Wybjorn, full stop. Patroklos had a thing for Ethem-Cailo way back in the day, an unspoken crush that he never acted on and then squashed when Ethem-Cailo began so aggressively and pointedly denying his attraction to men after the Raske Callhand Fiasco. He never really got over it, even when Ethem-Cailo joined the Wild Hunt and started becoming a shittier and shittier person; Patroklos sees Wybjorn as another chance to connect with an old friend, in a way, and Wybjorn has a lot of the best aspects of Ethem-Cailo that made them such good friends in the first place. When Wybjorn tells Jovix-Cailo that Jovix-Cailo is the one who ‘stole his life’, and not the other way around, Patroklos is one of the things included in that umbrella. Now that Wybjorn is free of Ethem-Cailo’s influence and is developing into his own person, Patroklos can reforge a relationship with a person he has missed dearly, and who has in turn missed him just as much.

Patroklos also risked his life to bring Wybjorn back from the boundary to the White Hill after Jovix-Cailo almost killed him in the massive battle at the end of the Hunt, painstakingly breaking into the afterlife to drag Wybjorn’s soul away from death like some kind of super-romantic Orpheus and Eurydice bullshit. As seen in this illustration. If Patroklos had been noticed by Yawg-Cherogmoth, Keeper of Souls and guardian of the afterlife, he would have been exorcised with extreme prejudice.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Ethem-Cailo killed him, on accident, in a dream – which as described above has actual consequences for a Muse. But aside from that, Patroklos spent a LOT of time hiding from the Helmsman and other gods who could see into the Veil or the Astral Plane; if the Helmsman had caught a whiff of Patroklos skulking about in the Unknown while the Incandesca traveled from dimension to dimension, he probably would have pulled Patroklos apart just for funzies. Wybjorn was also genuinely concerned that Corvicarius, the Head Bitch In Charge God Of The Unknown Everywhere on Road-Prime, might just squash Patroklos like a bug for having rode in with the Wild Hunt and being a foreign being. Corvicarius assured Wybjorn that, especially because Patroklos helped save Wybjorn, Patroklos was safe so long as he didn’t fuck around with anything too important.

Favorite Book/Movie Genre: Anything with an extremely strong through-line of friendship and camaraderie. Patroklos enjoys a good romance as much as the next person, but he just loves it when two characters have that Unbreakable Bond and don’t need to have a romantic tryst in order to validate their relationship or dedicate their lives to one another. It’s literally the equivalent of fine dining to him.

Least Favorite Book/Movie Cliche: When someone is only providing love, friendship, and support with a clear sexual or romantic motivation. That shit is scummy. He also doesn’t like when one person has a painful crush on their best friend, but lets it go untended and then dies or loses their chance and has to live with the heartbreak. That one just hits kinda close to home.

Talents and/or Powers: The Muses all have a really peculiar selection of powers, and Patroklos is no exception. Most of the Muses’ powers are more suited to subterfuge and manipulation, and don’t really lend themselves to an out-and-out fight.

For starters, Patroklos’s natural state is one of invisibility and intangibility; if Patroklos somehow makes his way into a physical body he’ll lose his ability to become invisible, but the ability to become intangible is one he’ll never lose. Even then, he’ll still be very talented in the art of astral projection.

As a Muse of the House of Camaraderie, Patroklos has an affinity for ‘inspiring’ others in ways that bolster friendships and forge bonds. Individuals may find, while Patroklos is around, that diplomacy becomes much easier to achieve, group infighting is at a minimum, and compromise becomes easy. He is good at soothing tense situations and his suggestions, as they pertain to building positive bonds/smoothing over aggression/stabilizing relationships, are supernaturally difficult to ignore. But that’s not all he can do – it’s just what he prefers to do. All Threnghelen Muses are capable of, effectively, performing inceptions on people; planting a seed of an idea in someone’s mind, so seamlessly and flawlessly that they can’t distinguish it from their own idea, is the truest and most sinister power of a Threnghelen Muse, and Patroklos has used this power to his advantage and the advantage of Ethem-Cailo liberally in the halcyon days of Threnghelleon’s society. A Muse’s silver (golden) tongue is nothing to underestimate. At their most powerful they could even ‘inspire’ oh, I don’t know, the most powerful and Glorious god in the universe...

Otherwise, Patroklos has a minor ability to manipulate certain probabilities; he can influence events to maximize the amount of ‘camaraderie’ that is displayed by the individuals involved, such as altering the path of a bullet just enough to keep someone from dying in the act of sacrificing themselves for another, or ensuring that a strike made to avenge or protect a fallen comrade hits true. He could influence the ease with which someone rushing to the aide of a friend or loved one arrives at their destination, or keep someone with ill intentions (or bad timing!) from screwing up a tender moment between friends by impeding their progress. This power is relatively weak and can be easily superseded by more powerful divine domains – such as Glory’s ability to never lose, or Derog’s influence on the outcome of a conflict, or Ethem-Cailo’s ability to ensure someone achieves their aspirations. But this particular ability skyrockets in effectiveness when he is tasked by a divine being... which is why he and Wybjorn/Ethem-Cailo made such a good team.

Patroklos is capable of appearing to people in dreams and, while doing so, can control their level of lucidity and what they do or don’t remember about what occurs while he’s visiting – as I mentioned earlier, he starts a lot of really catty gossip digressions with ‘You won’t remember I said this when you wake up, BUT–‘.

When it comes to stuff that doesn’t have to do with his House or Bloodlines, Patroklos is an incredibly powerful teleporter – he can teleport almost indefinite ranges across spacetime and, more impressively, interdimensionally. Patroklos teleported from The Veil outside of Road Prime all the way to the Threnghelen afterlife without making a pit-stop in the Threnghelen mortal coil, which is an extremely difficult and precision jump that he was able to pull off (there and back, in fact) intuitively, without assistance, and without screwing up.

(Fun fact: when a Threnghelen muse teleports, their body goes first, and their eyes and teeth go last – so for a moment as their body fades away like a ghost, their giant golden eyes and teeth remain hanging in midair before they, too, disappear.)

Patroklos is technically a race of being native to the Unknown, and not hailing from any particular planar cluster; as a result he has an innate knowledge of how to travel in the Unknown. Which might not sound very impressive, but consider: the Unknown is a literal nonsense place, where the laws of physics conditionally rely on the perception of the individuals moving through it. The Unknown works off of dream logic and is endless. If you get lost in the Unknown, you are doomed to wander aimlessly forever until you forget who you are, where you came from, and what you were doing in the first place. So, the ability to intuitively find your way in the Unknown is an absolute necessity to traversing it.

Touching on the above, Patroklos can also just... make people get lost. He discovered this ability while hiding from monsters in the Unknown. You could be standing in your front yard and walk to the mailbox... and then you’d find yourself saddled with the unsettling horizontal vertigo of not knowing where you are or where to go, and wander the perimeter of your lawn for an hour and a half until the fugue state wore off and everything was suddenly familiar again.

Patroklos is also a talented shapeshifter, capable of transforming into a near-flawless imitation of any person that he has seen before, regardless of how much taller or shorter they are (within reason); he can also mimic voices so long as he’s heard them, and although it’s not part of the power set Patroklos is a naturally gifted mimic – he’s good at picking up body language, verbal and physical tics, and mannerisms, and that’s just a personal trait of his. The one problem with his powers: no matter who he changes into, his insides will always be made of gold. This is an ability that didn’t see much play back when the Muses were confined to Threnghelleon, but out in the Unknown any advantage is an advantage. Patroklos does have a ‘True Form’, additionally; it’s something rather terrifying, to the point that Patroklos explicitly told Wybjorn not to look at him while he tore his way into the White Hill to save his soul from crossing over. Based on the horrific ripping, grinding, and clicking noises, Wybjorn gauged later that obeying this request was the right choice.

(We’re almost done here, I promise, but I’m a perfectionist with this stuff.)

As long as Patroklos is in a spectral form, he is actually capable of possessing a mortal or a weak enough divine being or manifested spirit. It’s a difficult thing to maintain, and he can’t do any of his other tricks while possessing someone, but even in his current state it’s very doable.

LASTLY, Patroklos is one of the best in the game at utilizing Bardic Knowledge. By invoking Bardic Knowledge, Patroklos is capable of tapping into the ‘narrative’ of an event, a conflict, or the history of a person/place/thing. In this way Patroklos has a sort of limited omniscience; he can ‘feel out’ how things are going to go, or why things have happened, especially as it pertains to interpersonal conflict between friends. Like a lot of stuff that is related to or touched by the Unknown, Patroklos is very good at Knowing Things He Shouldn’t as a general sense, but it has a lot to do with the choral element of his being and his Bardic Knowledge – the narrator needs to know a lot of what is going on, and when Patroklos inhabits the role of the Unseen Narrator he can grasp the narrative in a very complete way, even if he isn’t completely omniscient. This is also helped by his ability to invisibly watch people from the Veil and his ability to move from place to place almost instantaneously.

Why Someone Might Love Them: Patroklos is unfalteringly loyal, has a great (if slightly strange) sense of humor, and is extremely supportive and optimistic. He’s really FUNNY. He’s got a rapier wit and has a very complex grasp of wordplay and humor. He’s very charming and crafty, but he is not very pretentious or self-inflated and is quite humble. In familiar company he’s boisterous and fun-loving, even if he’s a little shy around new people. He’s very good at conveying information and loves to tell stories. Patroklos has big theatre kid energy, he’s very dramatic and playful. He tends to be very earnest, is open with his feelings, and listens very well, but he’s not blunt and does his best to phrase things positively instead of negatively.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: Patroklos is a HUGE gossip. A detrimentally huge gossip. Although I think he could keep his lip zipped if somebody told him some kind of huge secret I think he would have a really hard time keeping it to himself. Patroklos usually gets away with this because he can make people forget the stuff he tells them but that’s only when he’s invaded somebody’s dreams. The downside to him having a very open and earnest personality is that he doesn’t hide his feelings well, which can be problematic if he’s also too shy or humble or nervous to voice an issue he has. He’s kind of noisy, which can rub people the wrong way – not everybody has a high tolerance for loud and high-energy people. He also goes through moods where he can be very eldritch and strange, displaying his fickle and fae nature and doing weird shit just to amuse himself (‘Here, hold this’, he says apropos of nothing, and pulls a live centipede out of his coat and hands it to you). He is absolutely the type of person who points and laughs when somebody does something dumb or embarrassing and wouldn’t be above talking circles around someone because It’s Funny.

How They Change: Patroklos has gotten quieter, for sure. He’s matured a lot after his ordeals in the Unknown, and although he hasn’t lost his goofy side he has become much more mild-mannered and melancholy. He’s also taken quite a hit to his bravery; I wouldn’t call him a coward, but he’s become much more practical and keen to avoid fights, for obvious reasons. When he lived on Threnghelleon he was very immersed in their culture, and since being trapped in the Unknown his strange side has really taken over. Patroklos doesn’t really miss his home, although he does miss some of his siblings and the people he was friends with. Overall, though, Patroklos is a very new character; I only created him about halfway through the campaign when we were kinda fishing for more content to stretch it out with. How he’s going to change is largely contingent on how he’s treated and what happens to him; Wybjorn is going to go on a very romantic quest to figure out a way to return him to life, so I’m sure that will also have an effect on him.

Why You Love Them: Patroklos is just a lot of fun! He’s kind of swashbuckling and dramatic – all the Muses are named after Shakespeare characters, and I did it on purpose to inform the kind of feel I wanted them to have. They’re kind of meant to evoke that strange, ethereal, fun weirdness that some of that old theatre stuff is so rife with. I also really enjoy playing around with his weird-ass powers and his nebulous, lovecraftian undertones and behaviors. Patroklos is also a really cool character to bounce Wybjorn off of, he brings out certain qualities in Wybjorn that I think are a bit underplayed when Wybjorn is in other situations where he’s not the main character and provides a very interesting pathos to play around with between these two ancient beings that, in some ways, have wrapped all the way back around again to young men.

#solrika

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monstersdownthepath · 6 years

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Mega Milestone Monster: The Voice of the Damned

CR 25

Neutral Evil Large Outsider

The Complete Book of the Damned, pg. 170~171

The people have spoken, and what a Voice they’ve spoken in!

If you’ve ever needed a face to go with this blog, I think this one serves the purpose rather well, or at least one close to it. I love the aesthetic this creature has, as well as its ominous name (which can be further shortened to simply “The Voice,” which is a powerful title in itself), but it doesn’t 100% fit this blog’s tone; The Voice of the Damned is just that, you see, the “librarian” or even the “face” of the Book of the Damned, a tome so hideously vile that Good-aligned folk can’t even look at the thing, and die instantly if they so much as brush their fingers along the cover. Don’t even get me started on what happens if you actually read it, either.

The great tome continuously catalogues every evil act both great and small across the entire multiverse, constantly updating itself to assure any being that can survive thumbing through the pages has proper, accurate information regarding any and all evil entities, artifacts, locations, acts, and ideas. Once per day, anyone in possession of the Book of the Damned can enter a special demiplane within the book, where they can access a true and proper library protected from the ravages of the world and the passage of time… But care should be taken in this accursed place, because the Voice dutifully guards this hoard of knowledge from those who wouldn’t misuse it

Merely meeting the Voice’s gaze is enough to slay weaker foes, anyone making eye contact with the malevolent, swirling portal that serves as the page master’s face taking 8d10 untyped damage and 1d4 Strength damage. Success on a saving throw only stops the Strength damage, but the corrosive effect of its gaze cannot be resisted without averting one’s eyes. In a similar vein, the Voice can utter a Blasphemy at will, potentially dazing, weakening, paralyzing, or even killing foes too far below its own Hit Dice to bother with and instantly banishing any Good-aligned Outsiders back to their home planes if they fail their throw. It tends to begin each battle with Blasphemy to hew out weaker enemies and intruding angels instantly, but can use the spell at-will if reinforcements are summoned later in the fight.

And speaking of reinforcements… Once per day, the Voice can call in a favor that many of the greater evils of the multiverse are compelled to respond to, allowing it to summon a Pit Fiend Devil, a Balor Demon, or (not “and,” thankfully) an Olethrodaemon to serve it, each of which are CR 20 threats and powerful, final-boss-esque adversaries in their own right. AoE doesn’t work out as well within the demiplane of the Book due to all the invincible shelves that can be hid behind, but each of those three beasts have plenty of melee power and mobility tricks to distract the enemy frontlines while the Voice itself uses either its at-will Dimension Door or Greater Teleport to get up close and personal with the squishy members of the team attempting to flee.

The Voice possesses eight natural attacks it can make, each of which are rather weak on their own: two claws (1d6+14), four slams (1d6+14), and finally two wings (1d6+7). Seem underwhelming? It is, especially for CR 25, but the real might of the Voice’s melee power is all the nasty things it can do once it has a victim grappled. The Voice has no Grab on any of its natural attacks and no Improved Grapple, but this exists to balance out the creature’s positively unfair +54 Grapple modifier (which it gets from its Tenacious ability) to assure that anyone not build to directly counter such a thing will fall into its grip.

Once it has someone clutched between its pages, the Voice can first make their life miserable with its Blasphemous Embrace. As a swift action once it has someone grappled, it can cause the pages comprising its body to loosen and flit around the target, flensing them for 8d6 slashing damage and potentially nauseating them if they fail a saving throw. Notably, the Voice does not have to keep grappling a target for Blasphemous Embrace to work, the pages swarming the target continuously so long as they remain within 5 feet of the Voice. The wording on this whole ability is somewhat ambiguous, but it seems that the victim remains grappled even while the Voice can move (somewhat) freely, which makes this ability more akin to painful paralysis than anything else. The Voice can only hold one victim in its embrace at a time, but if they remain trapped for an entire round, that exposes them to the next ability in line: Consume.

The Voice can Consume any creature trapped in its embrace, pulling them into the howling hell within its form, where the accumulated heresies are so thick and toxic that they become physically corrosive, tearing at targets for 8d6 untyped damage each round. Nonevil creatures exposed to this vile vacuum must make a Will save every round or be driven insane by this experience, and there’s no cutting your way out of this mess like you can with a normal beast’s belly; a successful Wisdom check vs a DC of 20 is needed, twice in a row, to escape. Failing to escape for long enough may see a victim exposed to the Voice’s Malevolence, an ability that traps the victim’s soul within the Voice’s inner hell but allows the Voice to possess their body, possessing them utterly for up to 25 hours. The Voice cannot leave the demiplane within the Book of the Damned unless it’s possessing a host via Malevolence, usually using this specific escape clause to protect its tome by using Greater Teleport to move it somewhere more... Interesting, than any prison it may be contained in. As written, there’s actually nothing stopping it from summoning one of its high-level devils and commanding them to submit for possession, then popping out of the book to confront whatever fool has taken hold of it.

You may be thinking: Yes, its grapple tricks are certainly nasty, but how does it deal with a whole team of adventurers at once? Allow me to count the ways: 1/day Weird, Greater Shadow Evocation (which allows it to cast nearly any Evocation spell it desires) and Mirage Arcana at will, and Symbol of Death as a swift action once a day. It can also use Symbol of Fear at will and both Symbol of Insanity and Symbol of Weakness three times per day. While Symbol of Death as a swift action will likely give the d6 hit-dice party members pause, the rest of those may not sound particularly dangerous, and usually aren’t while in the middle of battle... But the Voice is Master of Symbols, capable of using all of its Symbol spell-likes as standard actions and carving them in midair, bypassing every weakness the Symbol spells usually have: costly materials, lengthy casting times, and the need for setting fiddly triggers that basically require someone to trip and fall into them. The demiplane within the Book isn’t exactly a wide open battlefield, and the Voice can rig the air itself with its Symbols to shut off entire sections of its library for up to four hours. Symbol of Death is especially lethal in this regard, floating ominously as it awaits a victim to drop below its hitpoint threshold, but Symbol of Fear and Symbol of Insanity will also continue to ping everyone within their range until the victims finally fail their saving throw and leave themselves open for the Voice to deal with.

With the weak-willed and unlucky sent reeling from the Voice’s Blasphemy or its myriads of Symbols, the horror is free to close in on those who actually managed to succeed and begin peeling the flesh from their bones to use as new pages and covers for its library. And, by the way, yes: The Voice’s existence is intrinsically tied to the survival of the Book of the Damned, an artifact already so hard to destroy that ripping it into pieces just made four smaller, slightly less evil books; it will continue to resurrect itself every 24 hours until the actual tome is finally destroyed. Not that putting it down once is especially easy, since it can use Quickened Heal three times a day, instantly restoring 150 hitpoints and removing every negative condition from itself.

This thing really IS evil!

You can read more about it here.

#long post #Milestone Monster #Mega Milestone #CR 21 to 25 #Pathfinder #dungeons and dragons #Monster Spotlight

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thesffcorner · 6 years

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Dishonored Retrospective Part 5: DLC Changes and the Knife of Dunwall

The first four parts of this retrospective covered the base game. Part 5 will look at the DLC, specifically its changes in the first installment, the Knife of Dunwall.

Dishonored got two story expansions: The Knife of Dunwall was the first, followed by the Brigmore Witches. Both are set in Dunwall, and in both you play as the assassin Daud.

The expansion starts a lot of trends and improvements that become staples of the latter games, like the villains, the inclusion of some sort of gang conflict, the introduction of corrupt/black bonecharms and favours/contracts.

The first and most notable one is that we no longer have a silent protagonist. I like this change a lot, not least because it would have been incredibly weird to have Daud voiced in the original and not in the expansion. Michael Madsen reprises his role and he’s even better in this DLC; he gets more lines and more time to shine and develop Daud’s voice and character.

There is a lot of debate surrounding voiced vs silent protagonists, but personally I prefer the latter. It helps cement the character’s personality, and actually allows for dialogue and real interaction. Instead of pressing 1 of two prompts in response to someone just standing in front of you and talking at you, you can have an actual ‘scene’ with dialogue and personality and ‘gasp’ character development.

The change from Corvo to Daud marks another improvement. While you technically can still play as Corvo in Dishonored 2, it’s clear that Emily is the intended protagonist, which makes each instalment have a different lead through which we experience the world and story.

Speaking of, let’s quickly go over that!

Story:

The Knife of Dunwall (KoD) takes place right after Jessamine’s murder. Daud is already having second thoughts, not helped by a visit from the Outsider who mentions the name Delilah. He starts trying to figure out who or what Delilah is, and this quest takes him from the bowels of the ports to the glittering streets of the Financial District.

Brigmore Witches (BW) takes place directly after and sees Daud go on the offensive, for his final confrontation with Delilah, now that he knows who and what she is.

Unlike the original, the story here is more of a mystery rather than a revenge, which I really like. Daud has already done the deed; not only has he killed Jessamine, he has had an entire lifetime of killing that he can’t easily (or at all) make up for. So figuring out who Delilah is and how she ties in with Hiram Burrows and Jessamine isn’t just for the player’s convenience of having a plot; it also literary is about saving Daud’s soul, whether you chose to play a redemptive or destructive path.

Gameplay:

The chaos system is the same from the previous game, but the extremes have slightly changed. In the original, doing a non-lethal playthrough earned you an achievement called Clean Hands, whereas here it’s Cleaner Hands. It’s fitting, both because Daud is after all, as assassin, but also because from what I know you can’t do an entirely non-lethal playthorugh.

On the flip-side, high chaos still allows you to destroy everyone and anything, and gives you a different ending. I don’t know how different the ending is, since I’ve never played on high chaos, but I do know that the ending is already hard on low chaos so I don’t need or want an extra challenge.

In terms of gameplay, there are a lot of small changes that I found really improved the experience. First off, Daud has more weapons that are non-lethal. He has his chokedust, and his electric bolts, and his shock mines, which are ironically, more options than what Corvo had. Additionally he doesn’t have a crossbow; he has an Assassin’s Creed style launcher in his sleeve.

Daud, like Corvo is marked, but his abilities are slightly different. His Void Gaze combines Corvo’s Dark Vision and the heart, highlighting both enemies and runes; Blink teleports Daud in a slightly different way, by slowing time; and Summon Assassins which again, similarly to an ability in Assassin’s Creed summons Assassin helpers.

Like Corvo, Daud also can upgrade his abilities with runes and bonecharms, except this is the first time the developers include corrupt and black bonecharms. These give advantages but also have downsides, like wasting more mana or depleting health or generally having some downside that the player has to balance out. I personally don’t find bonecharms that useful outside of a collector standpoint, so I’ve never had an issue with the balancing, but I do think it’s a neat addition, especially on higher difficulties.

As for the enemies, there are quite a few new ones. For starters KoD doesn’t have any Wheepers, but instead there are Overseers, City Watch and most importantly a new gang called the Hatters. We’ll talk more about both of these when we get to characters.

In BW, Wheepers make a return, along with more Overseers and City Watch, as well as two new group which I absolutely adore, because as I said in my Dishonored post, this is the first time we get female enemies! The two groups are the Hatters’ rival gang the Dead Eels, and Delilah’s coven of Witches.

Characters:

Daud is our protagonist, and he is a more interesting presence than Corvo, if only because he actually talks. He makes quite a few jokes too; my favorite is him telling two of his assassins who want to betray him to the Officers that he’ll come quietly.

Daud’s main conflict that follows him through both expansions, is his misgivings on killing Jessamine. He starts questioning the life he has lead and wondering how much of what he has done has been his own choice and how much has been subtly guided by the Outsider. There is a lot of debate about whether his decision to go after Delilah and stopping her from taking over Emily is really altruistic or motivated by a selfish, shallow need to ‘redeem himself’, and either way you land, the fact that there is this much discussion in the first place speaks of good writing. While there is some question of how ‘good’ Corvo is, you can actually play him entirely non-lethally and it’s easier to get on board with a wrongfully accused character than a man who has spent a good 30 years of his life killing. But I like that a lot about Daud, and the questions that he himself raises about faith and responsibility and regret are all fascinating themes that are way more interesting than anything raised in the base game.

Other important characters are: Delilah, Billie Lurk, Lizzy Stride, Barister Timsh, Thalia Timsh, Burndry Rothwild, Nurse Trimble, and the Old Geezer.

Level Breakdown:

The Knife of Dunwall has three levels, while the Brigmore Witches has four. Like before, we have a mix of city levels and single location levels, and some of these, like the first level of KoD and the third level in BW are on par with Flooded District in length.

The game starts with a short cut-scene and a visit to the Void. The Outsider is not happy with Daud; it’s clear whatever affection or relationship the two have had has long since ended, and it’s especially funny as the Outsider is about to mark Corvo to essentially replace Daud.

There is no Hound Pits Pub-like area where Daud can relax and shop, so you start each level with an upgrade screen. This is where we are introduced to Favors, a concept that gets even further developed with the Black Markets and Contracts in the sequel.

Favors are small things that Daud can pay for to make the game slightly easier or open up different paths of playing, such as purchasing extra tanks of whale oil to be put in a specific location or having a bonecharm hidden somewhere in the level. They are useful and can sometimes be done without, but sometimes, especially on medium chaos they make the job a lot easier.

A Captain of Industry:

The first level sees Daud breaking into the Rothwild Processing Plant and Refinery. The man who owns it, Rothwild is a ruthless businessman who is in the process of rather brutally crushing a workers strike in his factory. What Daud needs from Rothwild is actually information about his boat called Delilah.

The roofs outside the factory is where we first meet Billie Lurk, hands down the best character in this entire series. Billie is one of Daud’s assassins and point-woman, the best and smartest of all his Whalers. She is a snarky, no-nonsense person who will question Daud and banter with him during and in between missions.

For now, she informs Daud that punch cards are revoked because of the strike, making it difficult to get inside.

This is a good time to talk about the new enemy of this area: the Butchers. They are an imposing, lumbering yet fast gigantic enemies who kill you in a really gruesome way by burring their circular saws in your flesh. These enemies were horrifying the first time I played this level; their design is genuinely great, and makes for a fun contrast with Rothwild once you actually get to see him. The game sets you up to think he will likewise be a gigantic butcher, but instead is a skinny man who looks less intimidating than Piero.

Entering the Slaughterhouse isn’t easy and required you to acquire a punch card. This also potentially lets you see the prison where those who dared go on strike are held; again some rather gruesome imagery which at this point is par for the course for this world.

The Whale Butchers are like the regular Butcher’s jacked up cousin. They have a gigantic saw in the front and the engine of a tallboy in the back and are one hell of a monstrosity to fight. Best to avoid or bolt them. The Slaughterhouse itself is huge and contains a lot of interlocking rooms; it’s a perfect example of a single location level done right.

There are several side-quests to be completed here, one of them being putting a whale out of its misery in the Refining Room where he is being slowly electrocuted and leaking oil and bodily liquids on the floor. This space is incredible and grim as hell; the Butchers, the sounds the whale makes, the enormity of the room, it’s all a brilliant piece of world building. It’s probably my favorite area in the whole DLC.

The rest of this level involves Daud exploring the Slaughterhouse and finding Rothwild involved in an argument with Abigail. Abigail is a union representative, sent to deliberately start the fire that was the strike to undermine Bundry. Her involvement in this level gives you a ton of options as to how you want to deal with anyone. It also presents you with an interesting choice.

If you decide to play non-lethally, you will be met with scorn and resistance from everyone you encounter, especially, at the start Billie. Here, Abigail mocks you for the decision not to do what she asks, which is essentially, not just killing Bundry, but also blowing up the Refinery along with every single Butcher that’s still trapped inside. Talk about overkill lady!

In return she offers to tell you about Delilah, but there is another way. You can knock her out and then take Rothwild to the very chair he has been using to abuse his workers and shock him until he talks. Then you can put him in a crate sent to the western part of the Isles and be on your marry way.

Well… sort of. Additional enemies appear as you exit, and if you avoid them, you get to experience Overseer’s music box. This was a weapon that appeared in the base game but wasn’t utilized much (other than the first level). Here it appears quite a lot; it dulls the assassins’ senses and makes it impossible for Daud to use his powers. A chokedust grenade will be enough of a distraction to let Billie escape the Overseers who have her trapped.

Eminent Domain:

With the information Daud got from either Rothwild or Abigail, you now know that the boat used to belong to Barister Timsh, a friend of Hiram Burrows who was Delilah’s lover. However recently he has been trying to get rid of the boat and a lot of other things, and learning that you are suddenly interested in Delilah, prompts his niece, Thalia to seek you out.

The level starts with you and Billie taking out some guards. Thalia is waiting for you on the other side of the wall of light, so you have to make your way there.

SHUT IT OFF. That’s the main advice I’ll give you, because if you don’t, there is no way to get back to the Waterfront, and you will essentially break the game. Do it and save yourself the frustration.

Thalia is waiting for you in a small square, harassed by a Hatter. This is where using Void Gaze really helps, because if you take out the Hatter immediately, you will be ambushed by two more who, if you’re not careful, will start a gang war.

Disposing of the Hatters lets you talk to Thalia. She will tell you that Timsh was so obsessed with Delilah, he rewrote his will to leave his entire estate to her. She wants you to kill him and replace the will which is maybe a problem if you’re playing Cleaner Hands.

Before you can worry about that though, there is the slight issue of getting into the Financial District. You need a key, and the key has been promptly stolen from the City Watch by the Hatters. This brings you into Hatter territory, where stealing the key from Chauncy is a lot harder than it sounds. Depending on your chaos level Chauncy will change location and getting to him can be tricky. Once you do manage it, you can enter the Financial District.

Since the assassins have been planning a hit on Timsh for a while, you have a scope location already set up where you can talk to Billie and stock up on weapons and gear. Before you do that, it’s good to save one of Timsh’ former ‘friends’ from some City Watch, since he gives you an alternative to killing Timsh. Essentially Timsh seized the friend’s property unlawfully, and he wants to repay the favour, using some forged documents and a bag of dead rats.

This is also the place where you can talk to the Outsider. Billie will make some snarky comments about your face while talking to, as Daud calls him “the black eyed bastard”, and now you can really go after Timsh.

Let’s talk about the way I did it. Blinking from the apartments across to Timsh’s fourth floor will land you right in front of the room with Delilah’s statue. Because Timsh wanders the house, there is a good chance he might be on this floor too. Knock him and the guards out, steal his key and replace his immunity document with a forgery. Use Delilah’s statue to talk to her; this is your first interaction and she’s pretty great at self-aggrandizing.

Now all you have to do is take the will and dump the rats in the air duct in the basement. You can watch General Turnbull hilariously arrest Timsh and you are done my friend. Return to the sewers (though beware the Butchers who will appear as revenge for what you did to the Slaughterhouse).

I love this level. It’s a lot of weaving from building to building, carefully knocking out or avoiding enemies and some very entertaining scenes between Delilah and the Outsider. I like city levels the most because they are best at showing the world, and seeing the rich part of Dunwall was immensely entertaining. It adds another level to the world building we got in the base game. While I did love it there, most of the city levels were set at night and crawling with City Watch; it’s nice to see that Dunwall was still a functioning city while Corvo was out killing people.

The Surge:

And now, we get to the third and final level of the KoD. I won’t lie, the first time I played this level, I hated it. It’s very hard and it combines a lot of my least favorite things. It’s a single location level, that reuses a location (the Flooded District) and it’s a level full of enemies. For playing Cleaner Hands, this was a nightmare.

However, the plot here is good and it’s probably the best-known beat of the whole series, and it informs so much of what happens in the BW and the sequel games. So let’s start.

Billie Lurk informs you that the Overseers have taken over the Flooded District; someone has betrayed you and your base, and Daud’s first priority will be to find out who. You climb out of the chain and follow Corvo’s footsteps and get to see the massive number of Overseers. There are two main goals of this level; getting to Overseer Hume and freeing as many of the captured assassins as you can.

How you deal with the Overseers is a personal choice that I won’t even attempt to influence; I started out painstakingly taking them out one by one, until I figured out chokedust works really well to disorient groups and then either shoot or choke the Overseers while they are distracted. This goes double for Overseers who carry the music box, because they can only be attacked from the back.

You locate the assault plans in the house next to the makeshift platform and find out that Hume was tipped straight to your hideout. To take Hume out, it’s best to use the three story building directly opposite the hideout and use the open window. Once you take the letter he carries you can return to the roof and order your assassins to either kill or knock out the remaining Overseers.

And now we get to the moment. Billie reappears and informs Daud that the Overseer Hume moved too early; more Overseers should be on their way, but with Hume defeated it’s too late. Daud asks again how the Overseers knew where to find them and Billie admits to betraying you.

I love this moment. That Billie betrays Daud was unfortunately something that was spoiled for me, but I still thought it was a great beat. Billie has been your point woman the entire time, bouncing off ideas and plans in every level. To find out that she and Delilah wanted to kill you all this time is a big blow, especially because Billie doesn’t seem sorry to have done it. She explains that she thought Daud’s refusal to kill has made him weak and she was going to take his place. But seeing the change and his defeat of the Overseers convinces her that he isn’t and deserves better.

Delilah bamfs out, with a ridiculously over the top warning that she will “crush your cold heart and walk into your skin” and you get a choice; spare Billie’s life or kill her.

I said before that I didn’t like the DLC’s ending choice, and that’s in great part because of this one. There is a different weight to deciding Billie faith when you are Daud; she directly betrayed you, and if you died a lot in this level like I did then you have a lot of personal reasons to be angry with her. It’s a better motivated choice, and the weight of what decision you make, will really inform the way you interpret Daud’s character. Either he really is starting to change, and is sick of killing, or he is still just the same vindictive man he was before.

Another big debate is what type of relationship Daud has with Billie. The game leaves this open to interpretation, and honestly, I think it’s for the best. While I do lean a lot towards the fatherly, there is a case to be made that their attachment is romantic, but at the end of the day I think it’s irrelevant. They cared for each other, and being betrayed by someone like that will be a heavy blow, no matter how you interpret this attachment.

With KoD over we can go over to part 6 and the Brigmore Witches.

part 4 < > part 6

#dishonored #knife of dunwall #moni talks #dishonored retrospective

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mundungus-whoisleft-blog · 7 years

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recruitment || late june 1977

To say Mundungus was nervous being called back into the headmaster’s office was a bit of an understatement. The summons had been folded and unfolded so many times that it was starting to wear through in certain places. Truly, who could blame him? The last and only time he’d been there had gone so poorly for him, and his gut told him this wasn’t going to be a fond farewell.

More than likely, he was thinking it had to do with the favor he was desperately hoping had been forgotten. That seemed the realistic option, but at worst, he was worried he’d been caught in it again. What would that entail? He probably couldn’t get expelled. His NEWT scores didn’t matter all that much to him. Could the headmaster blackball him in some way? Seemed entirely possible with the connections he had. Worst case for sure. He needed a job while he figured out how exactly things were going to go with his business. There was a lot of uncertainty, and living with his grandma was all well and good for breaks, but forever? Didn’t seem ideal.

He took a deep breath, folding the paper into the smallest square possible. God, it would have been nice to take a hit before this. Just enough to take the edge off. But no, he had decided it was for the best to be sober and early. Not a good combination for his nerves, not in the slightest.

Suddenly, the gargoyle next to him started to turn and rise. He looked around—like there would be anyone—and was forced to assume it was for him. What would happen if he didn’t show up? Probably be tracked down, that’s what. Could he hide for two days? That was all he needed. Unless Dumbledore was an exception to their no non-‘Puffs in the common room rule…and even if he wasn’t, Sprout could get him.

Best to get it over with.

He stepped onto the still moving staircase, holding onto the railing and trying to ignore the weird lurching feeling that came with it. Just a glorified escalator, that was it. Nothing to be concerned over, even as it jerkily stopped and he had to climb the last few steps with his late start. This was far from a place of comfort.

Mundungus knocked stiffly and heard the muffled, “Come in.”

He did so reluctantly, making his way slowly over to the headmaster’s desk, his mouth too dry for the moment to produce a greeting. Off to a great start.

“Have a seat, Mundungus,” he invited. Nicety? Confirming this wasn’t going to short? He sat anyway. “Do you know why you are here?”

“No, sir,” Mundungus answered, forcing himself to put the note into his pocket for the time being. Still fiddling, not doing himself any favors. Doing his best in the circumstance. Definitely not about to incriminate himself.

“Let us call it an exit interview,” he said in that way that made Mundungus wonder if he had planned it or pulled it out of thin air. Was it even true or for his own repetition later? He hadn’t told anyone about the meeting entirely because of the chance he was guilty and the uncertainty that came with them.

“What are your plans in leaving here?”

It felt much more like something Sprout would be interested in than the headmaster, yet it still made his palms sweat. He rubbed them on his pants as he thought through the answer, trying to come up with something acceptable while still being true. Lying to Albus Dumbledore? Not an option in his book.

“Um, I s’pect I’ll head home,” he started. “Look for work there ‘n all. Dunno ‘bout my prospects. Don’t have the strictest plans.”

“What would be the ideal route?”

“Well, I guess…” That had never been asked of him. It’d always had a realistic twist. “Somethin’ that keeps me near the action. London or somewhere. Job that m’good at—maybe involvin’ Herbology but not too much Potions. Probably only ‘nough of that first one.” Still rubbing his hands, still slow to come by answers. “Kinda lets me come and go as I please—flexibility? Sounds like it.” He followed it with a half-hearted chuckle, trying to break some of the tension he, at least, was feeling.

Professor Dumbledore seemed focused on one of the papers in front of him by the time he finished. He didn’t know when he had started talking to his hands instead of him, but looking up again, it sure didn’t seem like he was being paid attention to; a rarity judging by their sole conversation.

“I am sure you remember our arrangement,” he said after a few long seconds. How did these questions relate to each other? Where was it going? He felt cold with this one, that’s for sure.

“Yessir,” Mundungus managed, mouth dry again.

“And you are aware of the current climate brewing? Particularly beyond these walls.”

“Hear a lot of stuff. From all sides.” Product of his work, how he could disappear well enough when he stayed in certain settings. He wasn’t one to pass judgment on it, though.

That seemed to please Dumbledore as he folded his hands in front of him and stared at him. The eye contact was penetrating and unbreakable, much as he wished he could look away. Whatever he had said…maybe it was something right for once. He’d never been good in these situations.

“What would you say you think about it?” he asked, more engaged than he had been about his plans from the looks of it.

“Dunno. Haven’t put a lot of thought into it.” Compared to some of his classmates, that’s for sure. It didn’t mean he was completely opinionless, though. “My da’s a muggle, can tell ya that much. He doesn’t seem all that different, and a lot of what I hear ‘bout what people think of ‘em and the muggleborns doesn’t seem honest. Can’t say I ‘preciate it.”

He also wasn’t doing anything about it. He wasn’t riled easily, and he wasn’t going to come to arms unless it directly affected his wellbeing. He was a survivor, not an activist. In an ideal world, he would keep clean of it and be the beneficiary. So far, people of all thoughts seemed to keep him around at that. Easy to look past his background when he was a good source and a silent observer.

“I am looking for someone with your particular set of abilities for a resistance group.”

“My what, sir?”

“Your blend well into any number of groups. You have ties on all sides. I suspect you hear things you are not supposed to.” He seemed pretty certain of that if you asked Mundungus, had to come from last year. “A utility man would be of great benefit to our cause.”

“Yer fightin’ for the muggleborns,” he said, slowly putting it together.

“We desire an equal world regardless of status, a fact I am sure you appreciate, simplicity of the statement aside.”

“M’not lookin’ to be part of that. M’just lookin’ to get by, yeah? This is—it’s too much for me. M’not the guy you want on that.”

“You can refuse.” Good. He was already starting to stand but froze when he continued. “I must ask before you go. How is business?”

“Business? I don’t…” He knew. Of course, he still knew. Back to the favor, back to being caught. If he didn’t know, he did by his reaction and the fact he wasn’t refuting it.

“I would hate to have your help on a favor alone. There will likely be a time I call on it based on that should you say no. For now, where do your loyalties lie?”

It hit him pretty immediately that they were with the man seated in front of him. Fuck did that ever make this harder. Couldn’t be some simple arrangement. He’d rather have his scores thrown out and an inability to work in the magical world right about now. It didn’t seem so bad as having his world rocked by a simple question and an advanced proposition. He couldn’t even tell if it was tied to the debt or not. The fact that he talked to him with a bit of respect, then and now, really struck him. Appealed to him.

“What’d y’want me to do?” he asked. The question terrified him and came out quickly but steadily. It wasn’t eager, but there was a degree of commitment behind it. If he got to keep doing what he was doing and work for him—there were worse things. Much, much worse.

“Alas, I cannot yet give you those specifics. You can know that it would involve passing along what you know in your usual circles along with assignments.” He pushed forward a folded slip of paper. “You will need to report to this location at the given time for more. Memorize it. Burn it.”

“What if I change my mind?”

“It’s in our best interest to not discuss the provisions that we would take.” He suppressed a shiver at those words, feeling like they were a threat in some way or another. His gut told him hiding wouldn’t be enough to escape at that—memory charms? Probably. They wouldn’t…harm him. After all, he was supposed to have the option to refuse.

“Alright,” he said. “Anythin’ else ya need me for?”

“Not immediately.” Dumbledore returned to the paper in front of him. “Have you considered Felds and Ranton Antiques in Diagon Alley?”

“No, sir.” The paper was placed on top of the slip. Apparently, he was meant to take both.

“I hear they are in need of a new shop hand. They will be expecting you for an interview. Should things go well, there may be a job for you there.”

“Oh, um. Thank you.” Not exactly what he was expecting and there seemed to be strings if he’d ever heard them, but it was definitely something.

“Enjoy the feast.”

He stood and went to the door with another mumbled “thanks”. He had too much to think on, new papers to fold into smaller and smaller squares, and a prevalent pit in his stomach that made him wonder just how much he would.

#don't mind me and this heinously long; overdo; self para #had to be done #spara #cd

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liesonthefloordramatically · 7 years

Text

Okay, NWM recap for those who care about what happened to Bea (extremely condensed despite the length and probably missing a lot, because I don’t think I had more than about five consecutive minutes of downtime).

Spoilers for overall semester two plot to some extent; best to avoid if you’re playing in the next few weeks:

- had to watch her best friend Vita get “fixed” by her mother and was totally helpless to do anything

- nearly started sobbing when Vita turned into a perfect Unsoiled lady and started referring to Bea solely as “Hamilton”

- then helped lead a ritual to bring back Vita, using a combination of unorthodox healing techniques, mind magic, and Vita’s sister’s memories

- found out Vita knew her mother was going to do this and let her whammy her so she could gather evidence

- had a little bit of a panic attack

- THIS WAS ALL THE FIRST HOUR OF THE GAME

- participated in the Dan Obeah house ritual and bound herself to the house in a moment that was nice and good and definitely not setting up for her to be a self-sacrificing disaster child

- led a tempus magic study group that accidentally summoned a slagerod from another time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- couldn’t send the slagerod back because it was magically tied to her mentee, Ari, who was definitely not evil and she could trust with her life

- gave said slagerod to the care of Ari, which was a fine and safe decision

- was handed a postcard during morning announcements by Bastian and suddenly gained his magical ability (and could not find Bastian to figure out what the frick he’d done)

- spent morning cursebreaking class surreptitiously making an artifact for the ritual to separate Ari from the slagerod

- was mostly a reasonable person during ethics class but kept being distracted by Bastian’s magic being a fricking pain

- skipped PE to go to ritual magic, in large part because I could not find the PE classroom for the life of me (also neither Bea nor I wanted to do PE)

- went to track down Bastian

- found out that he had switched his prophecy with hers (and his prophecy was tied directly to his magic)

- demanded that he change it back

- when he refused to, tried to mindbreak him but aborted that partway through when she accidentally discovered that he’d done all of this because he cared about her and didn’t want her to die and knew that she wouldn’t do anything about her prophecy unless he had it

- Bea had a really bad Friday morning

- also people kept coming up to her and being like, “You’re going to DIE???? What the frick, Bea????” and she was like, “It’s FINE; I just need my prophecy back because BASTIAN isn’t allowed to DIE”

- found out that Ari had lent the slagerod to Savia

- freaked out a little bit

- performed a ritual to sever Jae and Ari’s connection to the slagerod

- found out Ari had a gorecaster mark because she was being controlled by an evil version of herself from an alternate timeline

- freaked out a lot

- had to go to mind magic class, where Bastian showed up and was smug and terrible and also had Bea’s tick for dealing with anxiety and mindreading overload which made her profoundly pissed at him (”He has my tick! He stole my tick!”)

- accidentally found out Barius had a crush on her leading to some PROFOUNDLY AWKWARD CONVERSATION

- was terrified of everything in cryptozoology class and then failed a crypto quiz very, very hard

- was there for Jay’s mom showing up and shielded Savia using tempus magic before yelling, “I don’t want to do this again! I don’t want to do this again!” but fortunately was not set on fire this time

- got a new, actual wand made by Lee

- managed to change her prophecy with the help of Bell and the Artificier Association and The Trickster so that she wasn’t fated to die anymore

- discovered that if she just handed Bastian the postcard back their fates would be switched back

- everyone else turned around while she punched him in the face

- had a conversation with Barius about being ace which was just...nice

- sent back the evil version of Ari to her original timeline after separating it from the real version

- was promoted to house president with Jayden

- wrote letters of recommendation for Robin and Ari to join the Tribunal

- performed a forensic ritual with Prof. Oxendine and Vita to track who had been using the slagerod the study group accidentally summoned

- was having an okay and fine time with Jay when suddenly Jason showed up possessed by Thanatos Akeldama and started raising revenants and wreaking havoc

- sprinted to the ritual room to inform The Conclave

- helped coordinate the defense against Thanatos

- shielded the ritual to exorcise Jason with tempus magic since she was the only tempus mage there powerful enough to pull it off

- getting to swap over from “tempus minorum” to “tempus majorum” (which she had never cast!!! Bea, don’t do this) when she realized that she wasn’t casting with enough power was a danged cool moment for me that I don’t think was noticed by anyone else (this is what fic is for)

- gave up at minimum 2 1/2 hours of her life in order to shield that ritual (that was the calculation we came up with at the time; in hindsight, I think it was actually significantly more than that, given the number of people involved and the amount of time she was holding that danged spell)

- accidentally unstuck herself from time because she way overextended ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- was fortunately brought back to the present by her friends (although not without saying some Extremely Weird stuff about their futures) and then yelled at for being a self-sacrificing disaster child

- led the ritual to induct new members of The Conclave, including two members of her tempus magic study group!

- had an Extremely Bad Time during her first astromancy exam because she had to face the three Fates and A. she’s terrified of prophecy and B. they were Not Happy that she’d been messing with fate (however unwillingly) the previous day

- got a prophecy that happiness would always be just beyond her reach

- was very chill about this because she was like, “Well, I wasn’t expecting to be happy anyway” (calm down, Bea)

- was bound together by Fate to three other students, leading to the creation of the Fantastic Four

- also found out that her death would be totally useless and accomplish nothing

- came back to a slagerod sitting out in The Pit and spent a couple of minutes in panic mode, watching Ari to make sure that she wasn’t going evil again

- then had a complete and total meltdown because pretty much all of her self-worth was wrapped up in her utility to others and also she blamed Bastian for messing up her fate (she would rather die young and useful than live a long, useless life; yikes, Bea)

- fortunately was talked down/yelled at by a whole bunch of people

- basically, she spent 2-3 hours sobbing on Saturday morning; good times

- had a surprisingly okay second astromancy exam, probably because mindreading is what she’s really good at

- helped Milo plan a ritual

- confessed to Barius that she’d been self-medicating with tempus magic for pretty much the full year

- helped shield aforementioned Milo-led ritual by calling on her connection to the school wards because she’s smart but not, like, THAT smart

- found out that channeling the school wards by herself is doable but extremely painful; wound up limping for the rest of the event (OOC my entire left leg gave up on life so I’m glad I had an IC reason to be limping)

- confessed to Milo and Hana that she’d been self-medicating with tempus magic, which freaked them out a bit

- Milo convinced her to go to addiction support group with him

- also had a nice conversation with Milo about being ace

- found out that Jayden had been hiding some pretty substantial secrets and was planning on leaving the school for good

- freaked the frick out but also offered to help them escape even though she knew it meant she would have to lead the house alone

- attended graduation and teared up through pretty much every speech because she kept thinking about Jayden

- took Vita to the dance

- was made house president during the dance because of legal technicalities

- Jayden told her that staying was a mistake and Bea said, “If that’s a mistake, it’s one I want to make” THEREBY FULFILLING HER CHANGED PROPHECY

- I’m still in awe that that worked out like that what the frickin’ heck

- Jayden stayed

- Dan Obeah didn’t win the house cup but Bea was super proud of her house anyway!

Anyway, brace yourselves for so much fricking fic. It’s going to happen. Brace yourselves.

#Queenie actually says something on this blog #apparently I was stressing people out just by how stressed Bea was at all times #this is DANGED LONG; I apologize #and I could have written even more lskjdlfkjafkhdaskjfhakh #THIS IS WHAT FIC IS FOR #New World Magischola #addiction /

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