whiskeyworen

[whiskeyworen]

All these pics of Asura in comfy sweaters, and all I can think of is that one time I wrote a fic that no one liked that had an Asura in an oversized rock band T-shirt in it. Lol.

#asura #asura comfy sweater phenomena #laughing at myself

[whiskeyworen]

We need long hair styles for Asura! This would be awesome. I love it.

A hair edit I did for Myxxi

She has a lot of hair XD

#guild wars 2 #asura #not my character #asura hairstyles #asura long hair

[whiskeyworen]

Qirri Lore Masterpost

Early Timeline

Her relationship with her sister Rissia

Her relationship with her mother Tixzi

Mentorship with Zojja, part two

Misinterpretations from Zojja's lessons

How she got genius first grade

Garrus and Qirri's first meeting

Her relationship with Sieran

Claw Island and the aftermath

The death of Jormag

That ego

A full list of Qirri's inventions / medical aids

Nebulizer circa EoD

Qirri's mounts

JUICE, her jade mech

The importance of Qirri's hair

Important items in Qirri's inventory

Bonus! Webweaving

[whiskeyworen]

Thinking about stuff.

Not related to gaming or anything. Personal stuff. Back when I was in highschool, I was friend with a dude. Let's call him Dave, for sake of privacy (not that it matters). Dave had a girlfriend. Let's call her Claire. None of these names are the real names, of course. So for a few years, Dave and Claire kept setting me up with Claire's friends. None of them went very well because I just couldn't connect with them. Some of them just plain didn't like me, but went on dates out of obligation to Claire or Dave. Kinda shitty, right? Eventually, me and one of them hit it off for a few months. It was nice. But then I found out she cheated on me. It's understandable; we were both teenagers, looking for experiences. I wasn't the most exciting guy, either. So after me and that girl broke up, I kinda dropped out of the social circle for a bit. It didn't feel right to do things with Dave and Claire when I was the third wheel hanging around. Spare them the fact there was a 'spare' wheel, if you pardon the pun. Thing is, there was one night where Claire called me up. Told me she wanted to go out with me. That she'd always wanted to. She'd seen how badly I'd been treated by her friends, and how much of a good guy I was about it all (her words, I still remember). And how she actually really did like me, to the point she wanted to break up with Dave. I was in a bad place back then. I'd just been cheated on, and it still hurt. I was listening to a friend's SO wanting to break up with them so they could date me. And if I did so, it'd probably destroy my friendship with Dave completely. I refused her. I turned her down. Partly because I didn't want to see their relationship fall apart. Partly because I didn't wanna see my friendship fall apart. Partly because I couldn't process my emotions yet enough to let anyone in again. And partly because I couldn't understand why she would want me. I never heard from her again after that. She did break up with Dave, shortly after. And much to my chagrin, my friendship with Dave fell apart the next year, when he started hanging around with some bad guys. They were using him for school marks, and he thought they were friends. I couldn't be part of that. If I'd known I'd have stopped being friends with Dave mere months later... if I wasn't so badly hurting at that point... I would have taken Claire up on that offer. I think back on it a lot now. And wonder. Would we have been together for a while? A long time? Would she have been 'the one'? I hurt her feelings by denying her, and that still pains me. Where is she now? Is she happy? Did she find someone worth it? Does she ever think back to that time and remember me? Does she remember me at all? I still think about the fact that, back then, I might have entirely blown my one chance... in favor of the future I have right now. Several relationships down the road, many friends lost, and still alone. All because I was still hurting and couldn't accept that someone else might have wanted me. It comes to me every now and then, and it gnaws at me for a while. Thanks for reading this far.

#Personal thoughts #regrets

[whiskeyworen]

There's also a crashed Asura satellite wreck being worshipped by Grawl in Fireheart Rise, if memory serves. They think the glowy reactor core/memory crystal in it is their god. It was a big satellite too, and plowed across the plains there!

So @pyppyn reminded of this, but do you ever think about how there's a straight up satellite dish in Rata Primus.

[whiskeyworen]

Need this right now.

Possibly in audio form, spoken softly by someone. On repeat.

🟢 You are still a writer even when you haven't written in a while.

🟢 You are still a writer even when you feel like you aren't writing enough.

🟢 You are still a writer when you feel like your work isn't good.

🟢 You are still a writer when other people don't like your work.

🟢 You are still a writer when you aren't published.

🟢 You are still a writer when you only have works in progress.

🟢 You are still a writer if all you write is fanfiction.

[whiskeyworen]

Every* Type of Mecha

*Not Actually Every Type.

Something I spent WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much time on lol. This is entirely just riffing off of the many 'kinds' or 'tropes' in mecha design I found. Feel free to suggest more of them.

Might make a document providing examples for each one, but idk. I think most of these are pretty self-explanatory.

Tell me your favourites below

[whiskeyworen]

More thoughts on Secrets of the Obscure

....Has anyone realized that, to the rest of Tyria, the Commander just 'disappearred' one day? Like, Ivan got a call from them, and gave them an investigation job that SHOULD have taken about a day. And they never came back from that. Just dropped off the map. For minimum say, a week, maybe a month. Then Taimi gets in contact with them, but they're refusing to talk about where they are, only that Zojja is there. Zojja, who ALSO dropped off the face of the planet somewhere after Heart of Thorns, during Path of Fire. And then nothing. Does Ivan wonder why the Commander never called them back to say 'hey yeah I found out the mystery in Garenhoff. Don't worry about it. If you see the locals, tell them there's nothing to worry about and the Tower is okay. It's just moved somewhere else.' Everyone else is busy with their new lives, but they must be wondering just where the hell the Commander went. You can almost hear the conversations. "...haven't heard from them in a while." "Usually see them around town..." "Do you think something has..." "No... No if there were trouble, and the Commander was in the thick of it, they'd give us a call... right?" "Just doesn't seem right with them not around. Should we try calling them? I got a weird busy signal last time..."

#gw2 #gw2 soto #rant #thoughts

[whiskeyworen]

concept I was thinking about... what if soulbeasts inherited traits when they merge lol

[whiskeyworen]

I'm someone that believes that everything in GW2 is 'condensed' for sake of saving asset space as well as time. So everything we see is 1:10, 1:100, 1:1000 scale...maybe even higher. And that includes populations. Towns might have 'three' houses, but clearly there should be a lot more, you know? But for brevity of gaming, there's just kinda placeholders. Like Divinity's Reach is basically 6 full cities in themselves, within the walls of a megacity. In another game, it'd be a non-polluted MIDGAR. That kind of scale. If we had 1:1 scale, the size of cities would be mindboggling. Imagine having to take a full IRL week or longer to cross the Crystal Desert from Amnoon to the Temple of Kormir, passing through the outposts along the way. That said... Divinity's Reach: Minimum 3 million people or more. As stated, it's like, 6 major cities (in the wards) combined, along with the 'towns' built onto the bridges, and the giant ring-wall cityscape which clearly has a ton of growth on it. It's a megacity, and I'm honestly probably playing the number down because it's hard to think that large. Think Midgar from Final Fantasy 7 Remake; hundreds of kilometers from rim to rim of just the outer walls. Black Citadel: Probably about the same at 3-4 million charr. But because it's more of a military base capital, the population fluctuates a lot as legions and warbands come and go. Charr population might be up to 10 million, spread across everywhere we can see, and maps we don't have like the Blood Legion Homelands. The central structure is basically a Death Star that looks directly towards Divinity's Reach, despite a mountain range between them. I always wonder if you could look out the Imperator's window with a telescope, and see the spires of DR in the far distance, between the peaks. Rata Sum: You'd expect the Asura to pack themselves in with a really high population, but they have a sense of space and balance. It's still the capital city that everything sprawls from, and I expect they expand the cube in sections as the city grows, so I'm gonna say 5 million Asura at any given time. Amnoon: 300,000 or so. It's a major city, and trade post. But it's not the highest population in Elona. Still gotta give that to Vabbi. Vabbi: Absolutely huge city...but it's been depleted by Joko. Where I feel like it should house populations of millions, it might be down to JUST 400,000. And most of those are the remaining noble houses. If things dragged out further and Joko had bled them dry further to bolster his Awakened armies, the place could have ended up a ghost city; empty buildings everywhere, just mind controlled Awakened wandering around. New Kaineng: Oh boy. Another megacity that puts anything in the Real World to shame. Minimum populating might be nine digits. This is a population that not only has condensed and fortified, but has been continuously growing within their borders for the last 250 years, with little to impede them compared to the mainland counterparts. Old Kaineng might have had double the population, but the Zhaitan wave might have cut a bunch of that down. But they BOUNCED back. If you took the entire country of Japan, and say, five of the biggest NA cities, and put a gigantic floodwall a few miles thick around it.... that's new Kaineng. They are an absolutely massive population just within the city itself. Real powerhouse. Honestly, the thickness of that wall reminds me of Megacity-1 from Judge Dredd. A city with that kind of scale, but without the rampant pollution, thanks to alternative energy sources. New Kaineng could easily be a Hive city in a Warhammer 40K setting. That's kinda my thought. I sorta wish everything was 1:1 scale so we could see just how frighteningly huge some places could be... but that'd eat the heck out of all our computers. LOL

Hey friends, I'm really curious, reblog this and tell me what you think the population numbers of the cities in the game are. You are highly encouraged to go into details about your thought process

[whiskeyworen]

About the Heart of the Obscure

Okay... this has been bugging me since the launch of SotO. The Heart of the Obscure device/item. In terms of gameplay, it make sense; give the players an item to open rifts, track rifts, summon bosses, and close rifts, as well as open certain kinds of locked chests, and act as a universal macguffin for the Anet writers to use in whatever way they want. Right now it opens chests and closes rifts. Maybe next it'll 'evolve' to summon allies. Or any number of things. Thing is... plot-wise, there's only ONE of these things. ONE. The ultimate offense/defense against sneaky Kryptis attacks, the one and only way to Depossess someone, and possibly the key to it all. Something the Astral Ward should be striving to manufacture en masse so that every Astral Ward member and their Rift Hunter companions can SCP some Kryptis so they're no longer threatening Tyria. And this unbelievably rare item, this one-of-a-kind item... is just kinda idly tossed to the Commander by Zojja, 1.5 seconds after they get yanked out of a horrific nightmare realm where psychic contamination is a significant threat. The entire counter offensive and continued defense of Tyria, Amnytas, and beyond... was just given to a 'stranger' outside their little secret organization. Someone most of the higher ups are distrustful of or, at least disdainful of at first. Someone who, until a few months ago, was high up on the 'Potential Target Elimination' list. And might still be. It's not like Jadebots, which are manufactured in huge numbers and just kinda given out to anyone who wants one. There's only ONE Heart. No one knows how to make another. They don't even know what it's MADE of. Or what it's capabilities of. All the players you see using them in game? Pretend they aren't there. Pretend it's just YOUR commander, and everyone else is just Astral Ward. These people fight back against the Kryptis when they can find them, but their success rate at pushing them back without a way to shut the door means high attrition and constant guarding. They are pinning all their hopes, now, on that you'll get to where they are in time, and shut the doors, so they can be redeployed elsewhere. It just bothers me that the Heart is a one-of-a-kind, which only the Commander has. Everyone else seems to have knowledge of what it's like to use it, hence our training with it... but no one else uses it. Why didn't Zojja use it? Or anyone else? Why did they bother turning it over to us, except as a gameplay mechanic for the new area? Why sacrifice such an important rare item on not just an Unknown, but a Unknown: Potential Threat? I can't even come up with a good metaphor for what it's like. Or why it frustrates me. Maybe it's just because it's a one-of-a-kind item that probably could be used in a wide function, and they give it to us to stamp out little 'fires'.

#gw2 #gw2 soto #spoilers #rant

[whiskeyworen]

Y'all I've always thought it was hilarious what Anet did to warbands.

So. you have Rytlock, who in Edge of Destiny said he had "about a dozen" brothers and sisters each. so including himself, that's 25 in a warband. The wiki says a warband is 6-25 members, so Rytlock was on the high end, and average would probably be 12-18 members.

and then every warband in the game proceeds to have BARELY 6.

you have 5 options to choose from for a sparring partner. Rox's old warband had 6 members (or maybe 7). We've still never met more than one of Rytlock's 'bandmates. Almorra gets one 'bandmate mentioned by name.

most charr in the entire game, including top-ranking tribunes and imperators, are not with their warbands, do not talk about their warbands, do not go places with their warbands. Tribune Bhuer Goreblade shows up with a small handful of 'bandmates in the charr level 10 story.

You do not see groups of 12-18 charr warbands roaming around Ascalon with fascinating life stories and 'bandmate dynamics and mourning the latest one(s) who died, with mementos, with stories about how 'my sparring partner saved my life' and 'this member of the warband whom I know least of all my bandmates would die for me and they proved it last week' and 'Im unhappy with bandmate X but I would kill for them' or 'bandmates Y and Z obviously love each other. wanna join the betting pool?' and the legionnaire who confides in you about their tough decisions of who they're picking to be their second/replacement. All within the same warband.

Not even one warband like this. Much less the multiple that charr culture deserves.

Even in IBS, the, at least half-way, charr-centric story, our main focus warband is Ryland's Steel warband. Who has, predictably, 6 members. And like 10 fresh-faced, unnamed recruits who have 0 history or dynamic with the Main Cast. even the 6 named members, who have vibes and character and a bit of a dynamic, are stupid shallow. (and tbf they didn't have time to explore it much, but really?)

We do not see Bangar's 'bandmates. We do not see Rytlock's 'bandmates. We do not hear anything about Almorra's old 'bandmates. We do not see Ember Doomforge's 'bandmates. We do not see Smodur's 'bandmates. We do not see Malice's 'bandmates. We do not see Efram's 'bandmates.

We see a lot of 'cubs this' (with Rytlock and with Efram), I heard a lot of speculation about 'cubs that' in fandom spaces, we see a lot of 'ohoho relationship/mating drama' (from Rytlock/Crecia and also Almorra/Bangar). We do NOT see ANYTHING about warbands, supposedly the building-blocks of charr society.

Even the charr player's old warband is mostly disbanded/defected to Dominion.

I have yet to see any real warband dynamics in canon.

Even in the books! Rytlock's 24 'bandmates are fair game because they're offscreen. And Anet has consistently refused to show any of them. Even Rytlock's dynamic with Crecia is pretty much just "we're old exes" and never "we grew up together. we fought together. our bonds are deeper than those of biology, than the fact we have a cub. I stabbed you once and you knew I didn't mean it because we are 'bandmates." Sure, Crecia mentions once "ohoho we used to see the ice elementals here as cubs."

But in the books! Sea of Sorrows for instance! iirc the majority of Sykax's warband is unnamed! Ember Doomforge, again, no mentions of warband! Rytlock nor Malice nor Almorra talk about inter-warband relations!

we never see any warbands larger than 6 members.

And this is all because, OBVIOUSLY, who wants to come up with 12-18 whole characters when it's just the one who's relevant to the story? Coming up with 6 is hard enough it only happens in special occasions. which doesn't include the legit actual player character.

(the player character, whose warband is decimated to TWO flaming members (including yourself!!) in the tutorial, and! yay! fun lorebuilding! you get to rebuild the warband. this adds a flaming total of TWO members. now you're at flaming four. FLAMING FANTASTIC. the player-flaming-character gets FOUR 'bandmates. this is atrocious!! and tbf if you compile all the options across all the branches you might end up in the (low end, probably) of 12-18. which is fair!)

but like. I do sympathize. I really do. characters are hard. names especially! which would be the bare minimum yknow. have an 18-member warband with zero dialogue but! they do have names! that wander around Ascalon. not even an event chain just average-sized warband representation PLEASE.

like. I did it myself. I invented a warband and I BARELY got them to 6 members. I had name, gender, profession for each of them. they were minor characters so they didn't even get the development that Ryland's Steel got. names, professions and the vibes from that. I felt so bad for only giving them 6 bc I was reinforcing the stereotype!!

but, so, uhhhh

I have been handed an OC. from a friend. who has given me full creative license to write abt them in my story.

I gave him 23 'bandmates. They all have names and genders. They're split up into who is whose sparring partner and who bunks with whom. That is all.

I also get VibesTM from each member's name. I'm slowly building relationship maps. (mostly just. from character A's PoV, ranking who they are closest with. Then doing it from Character B's PoV. it's WILDLY fascinating.) I have three charr 'bandmates who have their own little niche, they three are besties, they're each other's sparring partners and bunkmates and everybody (main relevant characters at least) knows them as 'those three'. and I know their names. none of the characters I'm writing about know them very well (relative to the rest of the warband ofc. ofc each one would DIE for them and probably knows their struggles and combat strengths and weak points and so on. but I haven't invented any of those yet) and that's all. I don't have a single bit of info about them except that and the vibes of each name. but hey!!!! WARBAND DYNAMICS MY BELOVED!?!!

[whiskeyworen]

Cyrus seems to be experimenting with new combat techniques. A combination of Canthan tech, Asura levitation technology, and kinetic boosters have let him turn his War Machine hammer into... Well... I'm pretty sure he can launch it like a KEW or gauss rifle shot at an enemy. Just wind up and fling it at Mach speeds, for an earth-shattering ka-boom. In a way, it'd be like those White Mantle knights that fling their hammer, only WAY faster. And possibly leaving a blast channel along its path. Truth be told, I'd been using the Heart of the Obscure and got attacked, so the weapon got pulled out but the animation for the Heart hadn't finished. And never did. I ran around for like 20 minutes, fighting, flying, gliding, using mounts, jumping, getting knocked down... And Cyrus kept 'conjuring' his weapons.

#gw2 #gw2 screenshots #my characters #Cyrus Sigismund #Untamed Ranger #Funny glitch #Wish I could use this

[whiskeyworen]

This tickles me. I like it. Lol.

Imagine if there are people protesting the Mists War after the whole Elder Dragon thingy...

Recruiter: You're wasting time by standing here, go fight in The Mists and help our world!

Some random Charr: We can't even solve our problems at our own soil; the Branded, the Ascalonian Ghosts, the Separatists, and you expect us to fight for you?

Recruiter: None of these problems will matter if our world is being invaded by warmongers from The Mists-

Some random Charr: It matters for me, and my hands are full. Go figure out your own problems.

-----

Citizen: So...why are you trying to fight them? Couldn't you just...leave them alone?

Recruiter: These threats will not go away on its own! We need numbers to defend our own lives and the ones you care about!

Citizen: But that doesn't answer my question...why are you trying to fight these 'threats'? You wouldn't need to defend yourselves if you don't attack-

Recruiter: Am I talking to a brick wall? You have no idea what it's like there.

Citizen: And how do YOU know what it's like there?

Recruiter: You clearly haven't been into the Mists War yourself.

Citizen: And I have no interest in joining your war.

-----

Angry Citizens: SAY NO TO MIST WAR!

Angry Citizens: MAKE PEACE, NOT WAR!

Angry Citizens: DO NOT TRUST MIST WARRIORS!

-----

Dude 1: You wouldn't believe it but...one of my friends isn't from this world.

Dude 2: Really? What's it like to meet them?

Dude 1: She's just like the rest of us. Same look, same language, same everything.

Dude 2: If that is true, why are we even fighting?

Dude 1: You tell me.

-----

Citizen: I was told that we waged war against other Tyrias for resources?

Recruiter: That...is true.

Citizen: But what for? We are not under the terror of the Elder Dragons anymore, we don't need to invade their worlds.

Recruiter: No, that's...not...we are not 'invading' anyone's worlds. We are defending ours.

Citizen: If you think that, wouldn't you believe that others will think the same from the other side? And if that is true...what would be the reason for war exactly?

Recruiter: Look...if what you say is true, we wouldn't be standing here fighting against the Mist Invaders.

Citizen: Or maybe you fight as long as you do because you ARE the Invaders yourselves?

Recruiter: What? No, that's ridiculous...I would never...no...

[whiskeyworen]

Wensa sketch because I can

[whiskeyworen]

I'm in immense amounts of pain this morning but I just want to ramble about something that doesn't get talked a lot in the community and I wish people would consider because it's one of the most tragic and fascinating parts of asuran lore, and that's the fact that their culture is cobbled together from the bits and pieces of what they could carry brought by refugees who fled a home overrun by monsters hundreds of years ago.

I feel like the norn have similar issues, but with their tradition of oral storytelling, it may be less prevalent. (On the other hand, who knows how many skaalds they lost when they fled the north.)

The asura have their technology. Some of it came with them during the exodus. But they lost immense amounts of knowledge, huge chunks of their own history, and unfathomable cultural practices that just couldn't survive while they were trying to stay alive themselves.

I honestly think it may be one of the reasons they come off a little insular as a culture. They've lost so much and have had to fight tooth and nail to rebuild what they have now. And then they lost some of that again, to the very organization that had been formed to preserve their history and knowledge, in the Thaumanova disaster.

Like. I don't think it gets talked about enough. It's significant that the asura are a race of refugees. They do not belong here. They are painfully aware of this. Hell, it's in the opening crawl when you make a new asura.

We are the asura, lords of the deep domains that are now denied to us. Overwhelmed by numbers, power, and brute force, we have been forced to this open sunfilled world and forced to recreate our civilization. That we have succeeded is a testament to the indomitable spirit and innate intelligence of our people.

They lost nearly everything when they fled Quora Sum. Who knows how much they truly lost. And that eats away at me so much you have no idea.

[whiskeyworen]

art trade for @ratasum qirri is the best girl