#I found a new poison river biome ::-) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bogleech · 5 years

Text

Okay here’s the whole entire text of my original pokemon gen concept under a cut (sorry if that screws you up on mobile)

I’ve only ever sketched a tiny number of these (like my fly ideas here), but I can see most of them in my head pretty clearly and might sketch more of them by request someday. I originally set my fan-region in Florida, a place I hated living but still had a lot of interesting characteristics. This changed over once I moved to Oregon, and the thing about Oregon is that it has desert, forest, swamp, coastline and frozen mountaintops that are all pretty vast, ancient and in places relatively untouched compared to the rest of North America. This is not only a perfect setting for some really wild pokemon, but makes a believable choice because our Pacific Northwest is pretty popular in Japan.

The different biomes of this region have "deep" areas where the pokemon change. Some also have "polluted" areas. The region is environmentally themed and heavily deals with human interference on the natural world.

The villains are Team Bio, genetic engineerers lead by a mysterious old woman who narrowly survived the original Mewtwo experiment. Her underlings all use "mutant" pokemon, and she seeks to create a new species of hyper-intelligent, pure-hearted pokemon that will replace humans entirely. Along the way is a strange increase in reports of interstellar pokemon activity... I actually tried hard to minimize how many pokemon in this are just “my kind” of concept, but I think I failed pretty hard. It probably does feel like it leans a little more towards Mortasheen than something Pokemon would actually make, but for basically every pokemon that’s one of my “dream concepts” or “most wanted” I tried to come up with one that I thought would appeal more to somebody else’s taste than mine.

THE STARTERS

Grass Starter: a grass "lumberjack" pterosaur with an axe for a beak. Second stage has more saw-like beak, final stage is a grass/steel quetzalcoatlus (the pterosaur) with a beak and crest forming a chainsaw, no longer flies

Fire type calf whose black cow marks are actually soot. Evolves into cow with craggy black “helmet” and horns of charcoal. Final stage a charcoal-armored minotaur like fire/ground type.

Water Starter is a beady-eyed water shrew with big webbed flipper feet, known to steal shiny objects. Second stage more humanoid, said to dive for treasure. Final stage is water/dark lanky, stripey shrew with a black mask, said to rob boats like a “highwayman” of the river.

Meadows and forest:

Normal type mammal is a spherical porcupine, like a chestnut. Rubs its spines with noxious fruit juices, giving it a multicolored look. Evolved form is a colorful “punk” porcupine.

Early bug is a sticklike inchworm Evolves to cocoon resembling a wooden log on top. Final form is bipedal stick mimic grasshopper, evocative of a cute wooden puppet with a pointed nose.

Basic bird is a hummingbird Evolves to be four-winged and legless, never lands in its whole life. Final hummingbird is a fierce looking hunter that drains energy from grass types like a predator.

Grass type walking bud creature, looks nervous. Evolves to grass/flying orchid-like angelic flower. Alternate evolution is wilted, grey, grass/ghost goth orchid with tattered petals, cute but sad. (evolves this way if it levels up after a battle in which it sustained super-effective damage)

Ground type earthworm sticking out of dirt, cute flower-shaped head. Evolved worm looks like shark sticking out of the dirt, nose looks like its prevo

Electric/dark pikachu-like packrat holding a large coin. Electrically charges its treasure as a booby trap. Actually said to be employed as underlings by the water-type shrew starter.

MISCELLANY:

Bug/poison type grub with fangs. Only encountered in garbage cans. Evolves into a fly pupa Final stage is a gloomy looking, drooling anthropomorphic fly.

Single stage bug/fairy type: a beautiful Maleficent-looking parasitoid wasp. Evolves from any cocoon/pupa pokemon if they're holding a "suspicious egg" item.

Ocean

Water/grass nudibranch with flower on its back. Evolves to a glaucus, each "arm" a colorful flower that absorbs sunlight as it floats.

Water type fish that "sails" on the sea's surface with its fins. Sleepy looking stingray evolution. Final form is water/dragon deep sea fish, combines some traits of anglerfish and viperfish with eyes on stalks. Only evolves from stingray when you're in the sea trench.

Water/flying marlin with huge, dazzling butterfly like fins.

Water type baby dolphin, fuzzy like a seal pup, only evolves if it has fainted more times than the number of its current level. Evolved form is water/dark, shaggy-furred, fierce looking, battle scarred dolphin with legs instead of flippers, a throwback to the doglike ancestors of delphinidae.

Polluted inlet

Water/poison oil slick with two tentacles and beady white eyes, signature ability changes it to water/fire type if it uses a fire move. Evolved form is an oil slick rising into a cartoon octopus with x's for pupils.

Water/steel fish hook with tiny head and eyes, like a barbed metal worm. Water/steel fishing jig, googly eyes and everything.

Barren Island - just a very big rock in the middle of the inlet

Ghost/poison: a greenish "dodo bird" with a face like a biohazard mask, the ghost of a species that went exinct due to sickness.

Sea Trench

Water/fire bristleworm "snake" Water/fire tube worm "dragon"

Water/ghost wailord skeleton draped in pink fuzz and a garden of one-eyed bone worms.

Swamp

Electric/flying bird resembling a lightbulb kiwi. Evolved form resembling a neon light lawn flamingo.

Grass/fairy giant sloth with sleepy face, completely covered in shaggy moss with various flowers and mushrooms. Protector of the swamp, able to control plant life.

Grass/psychic sundew, just a pair of sundew leaves atop a sleepy looking oddish-esque bulb. Evolved sundew is mostly a big circular sundew rosette, but a humanoid flower rotates in the center like a music box to lure prey.

Water/fighting borzoi pup with long legs, acts like a water strider. Evolved form is an elongated, elegant borzoi "ballerina" that dances atop water

Water/ground red leech slightly evocative of a vacuum cleaner. A healer that sucks poison from the body instead of blood. May mysteriously appear in your team after walking through swamp water.

Deep Forest:

Grass/ground banana slug with colorful mold spots, learns spore. Evolves into mold splotched, brown banana peel creature, more like a big squid.

Grass/dark autumn leaf in the shape of a bat, has levitate. Evolved form redder, bigger "vampire cape" leaf-bat.

Psychic/ghost cheshire cat with Meowth-like proportions, bright crescent smile. Evolved form just huge smile and cat eyes hovering in the air, beastly cat body fading into view only for physical attacks or when struck.

Rock type humanoid made of transparent amber with a strange mayfly-like bug sleeping inside. Outer body can "break" at low HP and release faster, more offensive pure bug form.

Rock: incredibly huge, stony looking moose with long white fur draped over its eyes and back. Comes in size variations like Pumpkaboo line and said to never stop growing. A truly titanic one is used as transportation through the deep forest.

Snowy patches

Bug/ice velvet worm that spews a freezing liquid. Silly looking, almost like wiggler from mario.

Ice/flying fluffy white bird resembling a tiny Japanese style snowman. Evolves to resemble western style snowman with clawed bird feet, pointed beak nose. A flightless pure ice mountain dweller.

Electric/ice with levitate: a crystalline "UFO" sky-jellyfish with many colorful lights, core body looks like a cute pikmin-esque "alien" inside. Catch by fishing off of ledges into the sky. Mistaken by locals for alien activity.

Lava Tube Caves

Psychic type bipedal pink salamander with no eyes. Evolves into beautiful milotic-like psychic/dragon blind olm.

Rock/fighting spearhead with feet, eyes are just round holes through blade. Evolves to gain a stick-figure sort of body.

Abandoned town

Normal/bug filthy dog, a shaggy pile of fur with goofy eyes and pink tongue. Little black specks jump about it. Ability changes normal moves to bug moves. Evolved form more obviously a dog but still very shaggy, surrounded by constant cloud of black specks.

Grass/electric "christmas tree" made of holly and lights. Found in a burned down house, glowing eyes peer out from beneath it.

Ghost: has a colorful quilt for a body and a pincushion for a head. Found inside houses.

Garbage dump - accessible through abandoned town, possibly what drove people away (includes piles of toys you may investigate to encounter a banette, mimikyu or klefki)

Water/poison: cartoony fish with blank eyes and humanoid pair of legs. Fish for in toxic green garbage pools. Evolves into ground/poison skeleton fish with four limbs, walking like a lizard.

Steel/bug rusty orange silverfish. Eats junk metal. Evolved form so big it wears a rusty car for protection with just its legs and feelers sticking out.

MICROPOKEMON - enlarged artificially in a laboratory where you can also take your fossils.

Bug/fighting flea - spiny black flea with big jagged white teeth. Create from the "pest sample" an item carried randomly by the normal/bug dog.

Poison/fairy germ - fuzzy multicolored mold ball with eyes, stalked suckers. Retrieve "germ sample" from the dodo ghost.

Water/fairy tardigrade - transparent, cute bug stylized almost like a "gummy bear." Retrieve "dew sample" from moss sloth.

Pseudolegendary:

Rock type baby gargoyle creature. Evolves to winged gargoyle with levitate and a few mossy patches. Final form is an elegant griffon-like rock/dragon with an elaborately carved surface

SPACE ARK DRAGON This location is itself a dragon/fairy legendary pokemon so massive you can enter its body. It exists to collect and preserve species from dying worlds. Most common wild pokemon inside is duosion and sometimes Reuniclus. You can also collect "gene samples" from crystalline pods to replicate the ultrabeasts in the same lab you enlarge the microbes and resurrect fossils.

Bug/dark parasitic alien, a little like weird yellow plant suckered to the ground, red flower-like head with an eye on each petal ala the yokai parasite, gyochu.

Bug/dark parasitic alien, a colorful worm with cute eyes and beautiful mothlike wings, a little like the yokai parasite koshi-no-mushi.

Bug/dark parasitic alien, a pale, red and white striped "lizard" with six spindly limbs and a tubular proboscis, inspired by the yokai parasite kagemushi.

Fairy type alien medic, looks like a cute flatwoods monster with heart motif and nurse coat. Flees from all battles unless you have defeated at least one of each of the parasites.

LEGENDARIES:

Dragon/electric: the ark dragon's smaller offspring, looks like an electronic space whale.

Dragon/steel, menacing, sleek black starship creature. Rival to the ark dragon, a "world reaper" that attempts to destroy planets that it thinks are already dying.

Psychic/fairy little white, fluffy mothman-like being, an observer that casts judgment on suffering worlds to call one of the dragons (version based)

Normal type legendary is the most human-like pokemon we've ever seen, a serene floating figure with long hair and black, almond-shaped eyes. A genetic experiment to supplant humans.

Electric/fighting: a hulking humanoid beast, almost frankensteinian with asymmetrical features, a failed early experiment.

A "glitched and scrambled" two dimensional pokemon. The result of the earliest known experiments in digital pokemon transfer. Actually literally typeless.

POISON FUSIONS created in the garbage dump:

Weezodor - poison/flying - Garbodor/weezing hybrid, like a jellyfish bag with smog tentacles.

Mukking - poison/water - Weezing/muk hybrid, like a koffing with slime appendages.

Garmuk - poison/ground - Muk/garbodor hybrid, like a giant slug made of trash.

MUTANT POKEMON: mutations of classic first-stage pokemon into creatures slightly tougher than even their original final stages.

Mutant Caterpie - bug/dragon - huge, dragonlike Caterpie with more menacing eyespots, clawed limbs.

Mutant Paras - pure grass - giant paras with far more mushrooms of different colors, body pure white with no mouth and white sphere eyes, actually made only of fungus.

Mutant Venonat - bug/dark - same old venonat with a big shaggy monster body

Mutant Zubat - Psychic - somewhat larger than crobat, has actual legs and a pair of clawed arms instead of wings. Much bigger ears.

Mutant Voltorb - electric/steel - a Voltorb even bigger than Electrode, otherwise looks normal besides angrier yellow eyes...until it splits open to reveal sharp teeth.

Mutant Tangela - grass/fairy - more like its scrapped Gen II evolution but perhaps a lot taller, with two very very long arms.

Mutant Geodude - rock/fighting - HUGE spiky arms and hands but head/body are the same as always.

Mutant Shellder - water/steel - it's the spiraly slowbro one!

Mutant Exeggcute - psychic/poison - bigger and more plentiful but "rotten" looking eggs with gloomier eyes and dark purple goo.

Mutant Eevee - normal - bigger than any of the eeveelutions, shaggy and beastly with the "camouflage" ability. Learns strong attacks of every eevee evolution type.

Mutant Doduo - fighting type with only one head

Mutant Luvdisc - the only one based on a non-evolving pokemon. Angry "broken heart" Luvdisc with record offensive stats for the series, but even worse defenses than regular luvdisc.

Mutant Trapinch - dragon/bug - giant turtle-like Trapinch, redder, spiny, second mouth inside jaws.

Mutant Dratini - dragon/fairy - huge long dratini with longer feathery wing ears, identical wings down body.

Mutant Larvitar - dragon/dark - big, armored green reptile, still has larvitar type head with craggier, meaner horn.

Mutant Bagon - dragon - huge, more t-rex proportioned bagon, spiked shell on head.

Mutant Deino - bigger and shaggier with a ring of five long-necked deino heads

Mutant Gible - dragon/fighting - only usually seen as a huge sharky fin sticking out of the ground. When it emerges, its body isn't much bigger than regular gible.

Mutant Goomy - psychic/dragon - giant goomy with gaping mouth, antennae are much longer, green and stripey.

Mutant Jangmo-o - dragon/steel - same old head but more ankylosaur-like big body, entirely a dark iron color with more pitted looking scales.

ENVIRONMENTAL VARIATIONS no mechanical or typing difference, but new color schemes and decorations on existing pokemon, totally an aesthetic change. Have their own shiny forms.

SEA TRENCH FORMS: Entirely pale pink golisopod line with closed eyes transparent red tentacool line with darker red nodules dark maroon inkay line with blue lights red and purple feebas line

CAVE FORMS: White, eyeless venipede line White, eyeless magikarp line

DEEP SWAMP FORMS: crocodile-green Sandile line with lily pad on head black shelled "freshwater" shellder line with green algae growths pure red and purple colored bellsprout line

DEEP FOREST FORMS: braviary with more hawklike colors foongus line with no pokeball pattern...the original foongus? wolf-spider colored joltik line

POLLUTED INLET FORMS: Dewpider line with all black body and limbs, yellow glowing eyes in dirty green water Grey wailmer line draped in red algae, clumps of barnacles (presumably degenerated binacle) Wingull line with grey and black oil-splotched feathers, tin can on head

GARBAGE DUMP FORMS: Bounsweet line with only grey, brown and black colors, dark spoiled looking splotches Black bag trubbish line with green trash, copper colored pipes Rusted looking klink line, rotates only once every few seconds.

----------GYM LEADERS -------------- In this region the gyms are dual type, and bring back past mechanics and gimmicks as their focus.

flying/normal: a blind, wheelchair-bound old man who specializes in dog and bird pokemon. Uses a baton pass team.

Steel/electric: an astronaut commanding his gym by remote feed from the station. Uses Magnezone, Rotom forms and, surprisingly, a random steel or electric ultrabeast.

Poison/bug: a germophobic lady scientist ironically obsessed with pollution pokemon, always wearing a biohazard suit. Has weezing, garbodor, the fly pokemon and Yanmega. Uses Z-moves, but it's random whether she uses a bug or poison one and on which pokemon.

Dark/fire: an elderly biker lady. Has no gym and in fact roams around the region. Surprisingly challenges you to a third-gen style beauty contest with her frightening selection of pokemon.

Grass/fairy: witchy pharmacist and botanist who lives out in the woods, all of her grass types are mushroom based. Unusually has you team up with her in a double battle against a random pokemon of unusual size and strength, like Alola's totem pokemon.

Ground/fighting: an extremely frail little nerdy guy who likes amazingly fearsome pokemon, hates bullies but kind of is one. Makes you face a horde battle with all of his pokemon vs. only one of yours at a time.

Dragon/rock: a boisterous monster movie director who dresses his pokemon in costumes, gym is a cardboard city. Uses a dynamaxed pokemon.

Ghost/psychic: a horror author, Vincent Price like, lives in a mansion and makes visitors face scenes from his books. Instead of a single battle, he has you face a series of singular mega pokemon behind each "scene." THE LABORATORY This location is of course secretly associated with the villain team, but you can free it up from them in the endgame. Here you can make fossil pokemon, micropokemon, regional forms from past generations, ultrabeasts and even mega stones, but all require you to spend one or more “gene crystals.” You’re handed a number of these through the storyline but it would be very challenging to farm more than that (think Gen 7 bottlecaps). Spending more crystals at the lab would allow you to finally alter abilities, natures and IV’s at a whim, and for an exceptional cost you could upgrade the BASE stats of any L100 pokemon permanently. This is a percentage increase applied across the board to all of its stats at once, and stops at either 100 total points beyond their normal limits, or a final base stat total of 530 (equivalent to a fully evolved starter) MISC STUFF:

Your mom this gen asks you if you hope to have an easy, challenging, or very challenging adventure. You can return to her at any time to adjust the difficulty again.

When you beat the game, you can make a custom trainer for online battles using the models of other NPC trainer types, i.e. you can finally be a swimmer/scientist/grunt/etc. You can unlock some popular ones from past generations.

You can select one pokemon as your main partner, which not only has it following you, but involves it a little more in the storyline (special events based on its first typing) and gives it some in-game perks.

A special item attached to any one of your pokemon allows your whole team to “share strength,” meaning that their weaknesses are mitigated for each teammate they share a type with. This allows for type-themed teams to be more viable but wouldn’t completely eliminate their weaknesses, and the effect diminishes proportionately for every pokemon that faints.

You can designate a seventh pokemon to be your “team mascot,” a non-combat role with different effects depending on species/type.

A single team can have either the mascot, a z-move, a dynamax/gigantamax form or a mega, cannot mix these.

Legendary pokemon now suffer a stat nerf for every other legendary pokemon on the same team. A team of six legendaries would actually be somewhat below-average in stats.

#pokemon #fakemon

631 notes · View notes

crimethinc · 5 years

Text

What Is Burning the Amazon? A Plea from Brazilian Anarchists

As the fires in the Amazon rainforest continue to burn, our comrades in Brazil have sent us this analysis of the causes of the catastrophe and how it should inform our vision of the future.

“I worry about whether the whites will resist. We have been resisting for 500 years.”

—Ailton Krenak

Living Dystopia

The scene is gloomy. On August 19, 2019, smoke covers cities across the state of São Paulo, turning day into night at 3 pm. The previous day, in Iceland, people organized the first funeral, complete with a gravestone and a minute of silence, for a glacier declared dead. The smoke that engulfed São Paulo is caused by forest fires in the Amazon Forest far away in the North of Brazil; the glacier has disappeared due to rising temperatures related to the carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere.

Chief of the Tenharim people of southern Amazonas fighting wildfire.

These tragic scenes—almost picturesque, almost absurd—could sound comical if they weren’t real. They are so extreme that they remind us of fictional scenarios such as those described in the novel And Still the Earth, a Brazilian environmental dystopia by Ignácio de Loyloa Brandão. Written in the 1970s during the military dictatorship in Brazil, the book describes a fictitious dictatorial regime known as “Civiltar,” which celebrates cutting down the last tree in the Amazon with a jingoistic declaration that it has created “a desert greater than that of the Sahara.” In this story, all the Brazilian rivers are dead; jugs of water from each of the extinct rivers are displayed in a hydrographic museum. Aluminum can dunes and highways permanently blocked by the shells of abandoned cars are the backdrop of São Paulo. The city itself suffers from sudden heat pockets capable of killing any unsuspecting person; mysterious diseases consume the citizens, especially the homeless.

The author claims that he was inspired by real events that seemed absurd and unusual at the time. Today, these are becoming ever more ordinary.

News of the increased burning of the Amazon has sent shockwaves around the world. Burns rose 82% in 2019 over the same period last year in Brazil, according to the National Institute for Space Research, and new outbreaks of fire are still being reported as we write. The catastrophic images of destruction have fueled the indignation of people around the world who are concerned about the future of life on earth, seeing how important the Amazon rainforest is for climate regulation and global biodiversity. Images of the fires compelled French President Emmanuel Macron to bring the subject to the G7 summit and to exchange barbs with President Jair Bolsonaro in the media after France offered millions of dollars in funds to fight forest fires.

Protest against deforestation in the Amazon, in São Paulo, August 23, 2019.

Since the end of 2018, half a billion bees have been found dead in four Brazilian states. The death of these insects that are essential to fertilizing 75% of the vegetables we eat is linked to the use of pesticides banned in Europe but permitted in Brazil. In August 2019, the court dismissed the charges against a farmer who used pesticides thrown from a plane as a chemical weapon against Guyra Kambi’y indigenous community in Mato Grosso do Sul in 2015. The same month, groups of farmers, “land grabbers” [people who falsify documents in order to obtain ownership of land], union members, and traders used a Whatsapp group to coordinate setting fires in the municipality of Altamira, Pará, the epicenter of fires consuming the Amazon rainforest. As reported in Folha do Progresso, the “day of the fire” was organized by people encouraged by the words of Jair Bolsonaro: “The goal, according to one of the leaders speaking anonymously, is to show the president that they want to work.”

The recent wave of fires linking President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies to attacks against forests, peasant farmers, and indigenous peoples is an intensification of a process as old as the colonization of the Americas. While the Workers’ Party (PT) was still in power, many projects were introduced to expand and accelerate growth, including the construction of the Belo Monte plant, which displaced and impacted indigenous communities and thousands of other people living in the countryside. The approval of the Forest Code in 2012 enabled farmers to advance over indigenous territories and nature reserves with impunity, while suspending the demarcation of new protected lands.

Both left and right governments see nature and human life chiefly as resources with which to produce commodities and profit. The government of Bolsonaro, a declared enemy of the common people, women, and indigenous groups, doesn’t just threaten us with the physical violence of police repression. In declaring that he will no longer recognize any indigenous land, Bolsonaro is intensifying a war on the ecosystems that make human life possible—a war that long precedes him.

A 500-Year-Running Disaster

For centuries, we have struggled to survive the greatest disaster of our time, a disaster that threatens the sustainability of all the biomes and communities on this planet. Its name is capitalism—the cruelest, most inequitable, and destructive economic system in history. This threat is not the result of the inevitable forces of nature. Humans created it and humans can eliminate it.

Anarchists in Sao Paulo on August 23, 2019 protesting against the government and against the deforestation of the Amazon: “Burn fascists, not forests!”

In Brazil, we have witnessed firsthand how this system exploits people, promotes genocide, and degrades and pollutes the earth, water, and air. Even if we ultimately manage to abolish it, we will still have to survive the consequences of letting it go on for so long. The destruction of entire ecosystems, the poisons in rivers and in our own bodies, the species that have gone extinct, the glaciers that have disappeared, the forests that have been cut down and paved over—these consequences will remain for many years to come. In the future, we will have to survive by gathering what we need from the ruins and waste that this system has left in its wake. All the material that has been torn from the ground to be strewn across the earth’s surface and dumped into the seas will not return overnight to the depths it came from.

Recognizing this should inform how we envision our revolutionary prospects. It is foolish to imagine that the abolition of capitalism will expand that the consumer activities that are currently available to the global bourgeoisie to the entire human population; we must stop fantasizing about a regulated post-capitalist world with infinite resources to generate the sort of commodities that capitalist propaganda has led us to desire. Rather, we will have to experiment in ways to share the self-management of our lives amid the recovery of our biomes, our relationships, and our bodies after centuries of aggression and exploitation—organizing life in regions that have become hostile to it.

The ways we organize our resistance today should be informed by the fact that our revolutionary experiments will not be taking place in a world of peace, stability, and balance. We will be struggling to survive in the midst of the consequences of centuries of pollution and environmental degradation. The best-case scenario for the future will look like the situation in Kobanê in 2015: a victorious revolution in a bombed-out city full of mines.

Last stand: neither utopias nor dystopias—revolution!

So What Is Burning the Amazon?

There is a consensus among scientific researchers, government institutions, social movements, and rural and urban peoples regarding the impacts and risks of global warming and increasing industrialization and urbanization. Some of these consequences are about to become irreversible. The deforestation of the Amazon itself may become irreparable if it reaches 40% of its total area.

It has never worked to demand that governments solve these problems for us—and it never will. This is especially foolish when we are talking about the environmental disasters caused by their own policies. Land seizures and the deforestation of the Amazon are inextricably interlinked with the organized criminal enterprises that smuggle and kill in the countryside. Fully 90% of the timber harvested is contraband supported by a vast apparatus of illegal capitalism involving armed militias and the state itself.

Populist leaders like Bolsonaro aim to benefit from the unfolding ecological catastrophe at the same time that they deny it is occurring. On the one hand, they claim that there is no need for action to curb global warming—alongside Trump, Bosonaro was the only other leader who threatened to abandon the Paris Agreement, claiming that global warming is a “fable for environmentalists.” This helps to mobilize the far-right base, which admires and celebrates outright dishonesty as a demonstration of political power. On the other hand, as the consequences of climate chaos and environmental imbalances become obvious undeniable facts, these leaders will opportunistically take advantage of environmental crises, product shortages, refugee migrations, and climate disasters such as hurricanes as pretexts to accelerate the implementation of ever more authoritarian measures in the fields of health, transportation and security. Using authoritarian and militarized means to determine who can have access to the resources they need to survive in a context of widespread scarcity is what many theorists have called ecofascism.

The intervention of foreign states in the Amazon forests according to their own economic interests is simply the continuation of the colonialism that began in 1492. No government will solve the problem of fires and deforestation. At best, they might slow the impact of the exploitation they have always engaged in. Neoliberal capitalism demands endless growth, mandating the transformation of forests and soil into competitive consumer goods on the global market.

So what is burning the Amazon—and the entire planet? The answer is clear: the pursuit of land, profit (legal or not), and private property. None of this will be changed by any elected or imposed government. The only truly environmental perspective is a revolutionary perspective seeking the end of capitalism and the state itself.

Mundurukus warriors without state support set out for direct action to expel loggers from the Sawré Mybu Indigenous Land in Pará.

Exercising Our Ability to Imagine

The dystopian images of And Still the Earth and George Orwell’s novel 1984 were intended as warnings: exaggerated projections of the worst that can happen if we fail to change the course of history. Today, with cameras around every corner and our own TVs and cell phones carrying out surveillance on us, it is as if these dystopian novels are being used as a handbook for governments and corporations to bring our worst nightmares into reality.

Dystopias are warnings; but utopias, by definition, represent places that do not exist. We need other places, places that are possible. We need to be able to imagine a different world—and to imagine ourselves, our desires, and our relationships being different as well.

We should use the creativity that enables us to picture zombie apocalypses and other literary or cinematic calamities to imagine a reality beyond capitalism right now and begin building it. Today, as reality surpasses fiction, our activities are largely characterized by disbelief and passivity. But you cannot be neutral on a moving train—especially not one that is accelerating on a track into the abyss. Crossing your arms is complicity. Likewise, acting individually is insufficient because it maintains the logic that has brought us here.

We have to rediscover revolutionary reference points for self-organized and egalitarian collective life. We need to share examples of real societies that have resisted the state and capitalism, such as the anarchist experiments during the Russian and Ukrainian Revolutions of 1917 and the Spanish Revolution of 1936. We should remember, also, that all of these were ultimately betrayed and crushed by, or with the connivance of, the Bolshevik Party and the Stalinist dictatorship that followed it, which carried out unprecedented industrialization and the mass displacement of agrarian peoples. This illustrates why it is so important to develop a way of imagining that does not simply replicate the visions of capitalist industrialism.

We can also look to contemporary examples like the Zapatista Uprising in Mexico since 1994 and the ongoing revolution in Rojava in northern Syria. But in addition to the examples offered by anarchists or influenced by anarchist principles, we should learn from the many the indigenous nations around us: Guaranis, Mundurukus, Tapajós, Krenaks, and many others who have ceaselessly resisted European and capitalist colonial expansion for five centuries. They are all living examples from whom anarchists can learn about life, organization, and resistance without and against the state.

If there is any fundamental basis for solidarity in response to the attack on the foundation of all life in the Amazon, it is the potential that we can build connections between the social movements, the poor, and excluded of the world and the indigenous and peasant peoples of all Latin America. To put a halt to the deforestation underway in the Amazon and countless similar forms of destruction that are taking place across the planet, we must nourish grassroots movements that reject the neoliberal resource management of soil, forests, waters, and people.

For a solidarity between all peoples and exploited classes, not between paternalism and the colonialism of governments! The only way to address the environmental crisis and global climate change is to abolish capitalism!

Another end of the world is possible!

55 notes · View notes

daniellarsson89 · 3 years

Text

Valheim

Warning! Spoilers of game included ahead. If you wish to experience Valheim without knowing much about it read no further. If you have played Valheim before and/or want to know my journey in the game continue reading.

So I did not know much about this game when I started. I looked on some streams to see what kind of game it was. Then I noticed my friend was inside the game on Discord and I wrote to him about it and the game was really starting to grow on him. Few days later I bought the game and me and my friend took the journey to Valheim together.

We got left of by some Valkyries or whatever the angel-like or so thing that dropped us off in the world is called. Then I think you could pickup stuff and that way got stone and some wood and you could do your first axe and/or stick. Cant remember exactly was sometime ago. A bird helped out by telling us about things in this strange world we had entered. Then we picked some berries and ate them for the stamina and health buffs you get from them. We continued hacking on wood and then it was time to find shelter because it got cold during the evening. We made a campfire and got roof on it and repaired our equipment. When the night was over we continued hacking on the nearby trees and scouted out a location for our base.

After building the base I think we went to the location of trophy and there we found our first stone Vegviser(I think it was called that) marked the location of the first boss. Yes you read right, we got bosses in this survival game! We continued farming the nearby woods and fixed food, gear and staying away from skeletons in the black forest that we also encountered this early on. Damn they hit hard! We then thought it would be best to go to the first boss because we had been farming quite sometime. My friend had already found the spawn location which was on another spot then the marked we had on map. We went to the spawn location and I got to check what was needed to spawn the boss. The stone was marked with a deer so I thought, maybe a deer trophy and I tested it and it worked. Cant remember really if I spawned him without help from friend or not but we both was ready to fight the boss. And Boy it was a big deer that spawned. So I stayed a bit far off trying to learn its attack pattern. My friend just stood there or near him. Here comes the sad part. Appears you can just block the attacks. So that was what my friend was doing, when learning that I entered the fray as well and blocked attacks. Hit. Blocked. Hit. Checked what way he was turning and then hit again. Basically that was it until the boss died. Which was quite lame first boss, but hey its a boss at least. We got the trophy from boss and took it to the trophy stones so we got a power Eikthyr that was really nice to have during long runs and/or climbs on mountains later on.

We then started our journey into the black forest and met some skeletons and trolls. The trolls was big and nasty. The first troll we met held a tree in his right hand and made large swings with it that I couldn't avoid. I think it was a one shot. On me that is. We then went into our first Burial Chamber. Here there was a lot of cramped space and you had to check twice before entering any of the rooms inside because they could be swarmed with skeletons. By swarm I mean like 2-3 but it felt like a swarm. We found some nice loot that we could then build some things in our base. We got back and built portal I think and some other stuff, then we continued on in the black forest and mined a lot of ore that we upgraded our weapons and axes with. Cant remember exactly when we found the Vegviser or whatever it was called that marked the location on the map. Appears the boss was on another island! By now we could build our first boat so my friend made that and then I got to steer the boat on our first boat journey.

Turns out steering the boat was a nice system. You can turn left and right with A and D and a indicator on how much you turn is shown in the game UI so you don't have to hold down the button to steer a lot which is nice. You can set speed in four steps I think. Back, paddle(one), two or three. That number is how much the sail is curled up or let loose. With three being full sail. Hard to explain but something along those lines. Okay so we went east and were out on water and then we came to a river that we wanted to try sail through because the second boss was on other side of a landmass so we tried. We hit some stones but all in all it went good and we got through. Then it got interesting. We continued and saw some new areas and we heard a strange sound. All of a sudden my friend just said on Discord “I died” and I was like “but how?” Then I saw a large mosquito flying hitting the boat, apparently it had one-shot my friend just because he was standing up in the boat. I tried my best to survive and get as far away I could from the bug. I was stressed out but I made it. Then I turned around and got most of my friends loot. I had to turn back and forth again three times until I got the important stuff because my inventory got cluttered with less valuable things. Then we decided I had to go opposite direction of boss to try rendezvous with my friend and so this journey continued. I got past some new scary looking areas and some black forest then appeared. I got hit by something big and scary though and after awhile the boat just got destroyed. I was in black forest and quite long away from our main base but I moved towards that location at least. During this time my friend was going in another boat to the west instead of east that we took before. I came to a Meadows(first biome) area and there I build a portal. My friend got the boat near me and we relaxed some. Then we continued the journey to the second boss. We got there finally after quite along boat trip.

Time for the second boss. So, Yeah. I got the job to figure out what spawned the boss so I tried all kind of stuff. Trophies, food and other stuff. Then I was about to give up when I asked my friend for advice. He had done it on other character. But I asked if the things on top of the pillars was a clue and he said that it was. I got back to base and then I noticed the things on the pillar resembled an item we had in our base. So I went back to the summoning place and tried it and it worked with the Ancient seeds. A huge tree spawned and we were in trouble. I held my distance trying to read what the boss did. Noticed he spawned many arms, tree arms that I didn't know what they did. But I got it when I closed on them that they hit hard. So tried to avoid those whilst getting closer to the boss. I did bad in the start and had to use healing potion. Then after sometime I got closer to him easier and got some hits in. We continued fighting and then he got down, without any of us two dying so that was nice. Got trophy and went back to trophy stones, his power was quite lame though. Faster/better woodcutting, hello? that is so situational. The one from first boss is so much better and versatile at least between those two.

We could then go into the next area which was a swamp, and boy it was so lame. We managed but it was so hard for me at least, my friend was bit better at knowing what the enemies did. I hate the poison blobs and it was annoying with the Draugr archers, especially the star marked ones hit so freaking hard. So we got a swamp key from second boss and we used that to enter some Swamp ruins and mined from ooze that contained leather scraps and ore. We then made few runs back and forth with that, but it wasn´t a major spot we was at. We then found our way to another swamp and built a base there, where we upgraded most of our gear from I think if I remember right. We also found the way to the third boss which was in another swamp, so we had to get there. We travelled and built a outpost with portal and then headed for the boss. There I had to try figure out again what it was and the hint from the runestone at the summon said something about “Burn its remains” or so and I tried with skeletal fragments and skeleton trophy which didn't work, also tried other things I had on me. I then went back to base and checked for something “bony” and found Withered bone, which I returned with and that worked. This fatty was so hard though. Around the location of the boss was a lot of water. So when the boss spawned minions and also spit out gas we were in trouble. The gas itself wasn't an issue cause we had resistance potions for that but in combination with the water that limited our movement and the adds and the boss itself it got quite hard to recover. The boss itself was probably not hard but all this in combination made it super hard. Also. A Wraith joined the party and I died. Then ran back, and my friend died too and ran back and I think we then took the boss after we died each one time. That sucked, because it should probably have been easier with more land around the boss. We got the trophy from the boss, which we turned in at trophy stones for physical damage resistance buff, and also some weird magical bone.

The weird magical bone could be equipped and the bird told us we could find silver with it so on to the mountains it was. It was so cold up there you had to use frost resistance potion or you would freeze and take damage. So we got some potions and ran up. Met some wolves that we killed and De big Dragons also which we shot down with arrows. The dragons hit hard with their attacks but when I learned that you could roll away on them it was quite easy to dodge when you saw them and you were ready. Which wasn´t all the time of course. We went over the first mountain. No way to boss. No silver. We then went to the second mountain. Same thing. No silver. No way to boss. We then took our boat on a journey and found another larger mountain, where we finally found silver. We then shipped that back to nearest base and smelt some and made weapons and upgrades. We then went ahead and found another new mountain where we found not one but two silver veins and one of those was big as hell. There we mined it all and was like “Do we really need this much?” my friend said second vein was the biggest vein he had seen also which was quite nice. We saved all the silver there and then went another way with the boat. There in the horizon we saw it. A huge mountain appeared an we were like “This have to be the boss mountain” when we climbed it. We got all the way to the top and scouted. This is a shot I took.

No silver vein. We saw no structures. So we moved to another top and then there it was. My friend saw it. A structure! I said “Where?” “Over there” he said. “Where I shoot my arrow” And I saw nothing, turns out it didn't render until I was bit closer. Inside that structure was the pin pointer to the next boss. We took the boat and went on our way. To the mountain. And boy was it a big mountain. Pretty much the same as the one before and it took sometime to get to the top. During this time and when we mined silver we had found some dragon eggs and both me and my friend thought that this had to be what you summoned the next boss with and when we got to the altar it seemed that both of us was correct. But. You needed three eggs! damn son. That was annoying but we had one egg with us and two of the other we could take on this mountain we was at so that was okay. We then spawned the big Mother dragon and fought. We had to shoot it when it was flying and it shot ice down on us that we had to roll out from. I rolled twice when my friend rolled one big roll but I thought it was safer to roll twice. We also ate frost resistance potions here. With our capes we had built from silver we didn't take cold damage from the weather though which I forgot to say until now. Back to the boss, we shot arrows on it when it was in the air and when it got down it bugged out sometimes. Its attack pathing was weird when I and my friend was on opposite sides of the dragon attacking it, it “spazzed” out. Jerked its head back and forth basically. But with that said it got dark and we had adds and I died from a star wolf and a werewolf that wanted to join in on the fun. We had the boss at 20% when this happened and that led to my friend dying too. All seemed lost. We thought the boss would de-spawn. But it didn't. so we got back and got our corpses and took frost resistance potions and fought on and the dragon finally died. We got trophy and turned that in at the stones, the power we got was that we could have tail wind on sails when sailing, which is quite nice on long sea journeys. We then built some upgrades and continued on to next biome.

We had already found the next biome before so we just went to a base with plains nearby and explored from there. The Deathsquitos(Mosquitos) was deadly but they didn't one shot us this time. Which was nice. We also met some furry large creatures that we killed, we could block these so that helped. They also dropped large meat that we could grill and get quite nice food buffs from. We also met a lot of goblins that hit quite hard too but without stars they was quite easy. You pretty much blocked at the right time so they got staggered, then you hit them few times and then blocked again. I was so bad at this but I am starting to learn. You also sometimes cannot block attacks from one or two star marked mobs, which is annoying. This depends on how strong your shield is I think. The ones with stars hit a lot. Suddenly I heard my friend. We were in luck. My friend saw the stone that pointed to the boss and apparently it turns out the boss was on the same island we were at! in the same area we now were in. Look at that! So we continued in that zone. We went ahead to the boss area and we think that we will spawn it with some totems. On the ritual altar there seems to be five slots available so we think you will need five totems to spawn him so we will try to gather that. We then went to a nearby village and tried to hunt some. Damn was it hard. A star marked berserker were going at my friend so we were out of luck, but my friend didn't die. I then died out of nowhere to a two star marked goblin that one shot me. So I ran back with full food buffs and rested and got my gear. You get a corpse run de-buff when you get your corpse that makes you almost invincible so I just spammed attacks on the berserker which then went down. Bam! Hurray for corpse run buff. We then went back to our Outpost 4, yeah did I mention we have 7 Outposts?. And we thought that we should build another base inside the plains so that we could sow some seeds on the new stuff we found, I think it was called Barley. At least the things we could make with the new ingredients were so huge so it would be worth it to have a supply of those materials inside plains. Other thing was fish that also gave pretty good buff so I did some fishing when my friend was expanding the base some. I think I finally got 20 something fish, but man it was boring in this game. Sometimes the fish wouldn't hook so it took ages and/or I had to move position and the fishing minigame wasn't that fun I think. You didn't have to do much but it was so slow and if you sent out the line to far the fish might escape, yeah I just didn't like it. But back to the plains, we were in our Outpost 4 base and prepared things to expand and make a Outpost near the fifth boss. But it got quite late so we were going to bed for the night.

We begun thinking we want a base in plains too so we would be close to the boss and also so that we could grow some barley. So we started building. When we had a shell my friend said “Wouldn't it be better to have it closer to the sea” and I could just agree. So we moved it closer to the sea and begun building. Which took quite sometime. We had stone walls and tree for roof. We also deconstructed Outpost 4 and went with all the mats to Plains base. Boy was it rough. You cannot teleport with some materials in this game, so we had to go by cart. And the cart gets stuck in terrain sometimes so you have to clear the area and sometimes go another way to be able to go forward. So yeah it was rough and after dying sometimes we got to the Plains base, phew! We then farmed some more totems and head for the boss cause we wanted to try it. I told my friend we should have fire resistance potions with us so we had that. Then when we were about to spawn the boss I didn't have full food buffs yet, but he said that I could eat during the fight so we spawned the boss. And Boy was it a boss. A large skeleton appeared that only had his torso and up I think. We began trying to fight. I was far off and he shot out a fire beam which from him and I rolled off, then he made a move with his hand and all of a sudden I took damage from no where. He had shot down meteors from the sky! My friend died from that or other damage. I went in for a hit, but he made area fire damage too sometimes, but apparently that did not tick for much damage so you could just stand in it my friend said. We continued trying to fight and he got his corpse and I died and we rotated like that, then we noticed the boss healed too and we just said. No. We wouldn't be able to take him like this. So we tried to get our corpses and then ran off to base. Seems the boss tried to follow us so we ported to our main base. I hope the boss doesn't ruin our plains base, but we have to see during our next gaming session.

So we started playing again and talked about what to do, the boss hadn't ruined our base, but he started following us when we went to it so it was hard to be there. We decided to build a little farm elsewhere so we set out with the boat. We built a farm some distance away from our main base. We did not see any Sea Serpents on our way over there. So we decided to go further west toward the end of the world, and soon we saw a Serpent and we killed it. It just dropped some meat, turns out you could make some pretty good food out of it, but nothing more. Then we went to try check out Mistlands which we had seen before and I was wondering what it could be. I thought it was a sea area only, and suddenly we had a area that was called Ashland. We went ashore and then built a outpost and started exploring, it was just small Surtlings there. Then we found a deposit that we mined of Flaming metal, that we wanted to see if it gave something new that we could build. So we began a journey to try to find a swamp with Iron in it, turn out the island we were at didn't have any swamp on it. We went with boat to any swamp we could find and set ashore there. My friend found some green things on tree that was glowing and tried to shoot on them, but it didn't do any damage. I tried to make a stair to it and hit with sword but no luck, a bit later he did the same thing but with axe and it worked. Turns out you could build a bow from it so we farmed some more and did that. We didn't see any Sunken Crypt here with Iron in it though, so we went to another swamp. That took sometime to find but finally we were there and my friend found a Crypt pretty fast that we made a small outpost outside and farmed some Scrap Iron. We did a smelter for the iron and I stood stomping there waiting for the 10 Iron to be smelted and then made a Blast Furnace. When I took up the smelted Fire Metal I was sad, it didn't give any new recipes..so sad. So next time we will probably try to cheese the fifth boss with bow and arrow, lets see how that goes.

We did a short session, where we took the iron back to base. We both had the Mother buff that change wind on the sails so that went quite smooth. We then upgraded some gear and grew some Barley for our food supply. My friend farmed some Lox for their meat also. Soon it was time to go to bed, so we decided to stop there without doing much more.

Today we farmed more food to prepare for the boss fight, and my friend fished some and I got some more Lox meat. Together with Barley we now had three large buffs, Lox meat pie, Blood pudding and Fish wraps I think. After thinking about it we then went to the boss, because with 300 frost arrows each we should probably be able to take down the boss by range. So we started the fight and drank a fire resistance potion each. We then fired arrows when we could and as soon as the boss raised its hand we knew the meteors would come down so then you could run in another direction with sprint and it was fine. Even though I was slow sometimes so one or two meteors hit me, at least it wasn´t lethal. My friend got most of the beams that he did, probably because he mostly was closer to the boss. We continued firing arrows from a distance and my friend went in for some melee hits here and there, thus also triggering the AOE effect that the boss did when you was close. I also went in for some hits with sword and it seems he was vulnerable to that kind of damage, or at least we though so. I mostly did damage with bow though. All of a sudden my friend said “Is that poison arrows?” because he saw a green trail from my arrow. I was like, “oh it probably is”. Seems the game took that automatically instead of my frost arrows when a stack was depleted. It was kind of funny. So we continued to hit the boss and even though it regenerates, we had the continued damage so in the end he got down. We did not die a single time during this try, which was very satisfying.

We now have roughly 80 hours in Valheim together, damn that went by fast. All in all it is a good game even though it is only in early access, so I hope that the team developing the game will be able to create a greater experience now when they have the resources to increase the team if they want to because of the many units sold. I had a blast. Some smaller things may be annoying, like enemies being inside rocks, which makes it harder to hit them. Or inventory equipment showing as grey bar instead of white fully repaired in certain slots. But that only happened once though. And as the game is in early access I can ignore the little faults and see the greater picture and still have a good time.

With that I want to end the post with a screenshot from the fifth bosses trophy. Enjoy!

#Valheim #Spoilers #Survival game

1 note · View note

amidst-the-storm · 5 years

Text

(This is going to be a very long post under the cut since I’ll be copying and pasting portions of Leashed Emotions.

Warnings: burns, torture mention, possession, split personalities, permanent scarring, Tempest’s past, semi-graphic descriptions of three deaths. And: There’s a fluff portion near the end so bear with me.)

YOU ACTUALLY DECIDED TO READ THIS?.... Okay well thank you. This is all crap that I’ve written, and it’s stuff canon to Tempest’s past on this blog. If you want to give her story a look-see, please use the above link to Leashed Emotions. Book Two, Drowned Out, is currently a WIP and thus anything beyond book one’s timeline (so most of this blog’s persona) is subject to change as the ‘past’ gets written into existence.

Anyway TIME FOR SOME TORTURE N’ FLUFF HAVE FUN AND IN WE GO!

Time frame: Timeline two, Sonic 06, forest, Tempest is 19 years old (+12 extra hours thanks to time travel).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"....-t.... T-em...-pes-t?..." The broken words reached her ear like a whisper. Tempest stopped instantly, Sonic's next words falling on nothing. Her head turned to a large area of dirt, breathing in shallow breaths. "..... Tempest.....?" Her father's question was so low, so lost.... The two adults were huddled together in the middle of the clearing. Tempest didn't even think. She ran to them, dropping to her knees the moment she was close enough and hugging them. That lump came back to her throat as she clutched her parents tight. She wouldn't let them slip through her fingers. Not ever again. "Mom! Dad!" She whimpered. Something inside her fell away, a wall she had long ago created. Her parents hugged her back, weakened by whatever had happened to them. ".... Where'd you-... Go...?" Tempest's question was met with a quiet and sharp gasp. She raised her head, eyes dilating as she fell back. Her butt hit the ground as she stared in horror. Her father tried to speak, but blood bubbled forth from his mouth. Both of her parents choked on their own lives. A single piercing round of crystal had ripped through the chest of her father, into her mother, and then arced into the ground. It pulsed and glowed with an ominous purple aura. Sunbeams ripped into her skin, oceans drowning her breath out. Someone was talking to her, but she heard nothing. A sort of liquid- was that-.... A 'tear'?.... Formed in her eyes, blinked back. A cut deeper than any knife or metal could create plunged into her chest. Lava bubbled and phantoms screeched. It took a few seconds for Tempest to notice that the screeching was her own. Her head had tilted skyward, no longer focused on the image her parents' bodies offered. The agony- it was awful. Someone was plunging a knife full of venom into her heart, twisting until the organ was soup in her chest. Something sliced open her cheek. Tempest barely noticed the pain, until more slices appeared. Purple smoke obscured her vision as the pain exploded from every location. Nothing existed except loss. All that was felt was pain. They were in so much agony. They were in so much pain.... They were so.... So.... ..... Hungry......

[/|\]

Sonic's jaw dropped. He had tried to scream, run to Tempest and pull her back.- But something stopped him. A wave of fire burst out from her, slamming him into the tree he'd been leaning against. He grunted from the hit, cracking his eyes open by the smallest fraction. If there was any chance of helping her, of saving her parents- What he saw wrecked every line of thought. A purple and white hedgehog was being absorbed by her. She was lifting into the air, surrounded by a tornado of flames. The hedgehog's crystalline structure melted away like ice cream in the sun. Tempest herself was still screeching, but it was changing. She was growing exponentially in size, skin altering color as something grew on top of it. Her back warped and twisted, before bone-like wings burst in an explosion of blood from her. Light burned into his retinas. Sonic shut his eyes tight, turning his head sideways as the intensity broke through his flimsy eyelids. Everything fell away, replaced by the searing pain. He tried to squirm, but found his body was pressed up against something. The light began to fade, leaving the hedgehog temporarily blinded from it. Sonic wriggled a little longer, before noticing the cut of small pebbles into his skin. He opened his eyes. The world was absolutely wrong.- Chunks of it floated above, biomes ripped from the ground up. The sky was an endless cascade of dark purple webbing, energy coursing through it. Everything smelled like nothing. Sonic breathed in, jumping upright. He had been laying on the cobbles of the New City district. "Sonic!" Tails rushed over, his hands fidgeting in worry. "What happened???" "A bright light happened... And a headache." Knuckles groused, stomping over from a fountain. He shook his head in annoyance, before realizing what was above. He stared, mouth opening slightly in shock. ".... Wait, what?!" "..... Where are we?..." Amy stumbled out from behind a building, appearing better for wear than Knuckles. At least she wasn't clutching her head and tapping a foot in annoyance. ".... What's going on...?" "The Chaos Emerald has disappeared...." Silver whispered, looking between his hands. "It's all because of Solaris." Rouge stepped into the group, that normally sassy tone of hers gone. Shadow nodded beside her, while E-123 Omega simply... Stood... Silently... Behind them both.... Not creepy at all. "It seems we were all caught by the spatial distortion." Dr. Eggman noted from nearby, sighing as he did. "..... I figure that this land will soon collapse into nothing... And that will be the end of it." "Not if I can help it." Sonic smirked, throwing out a thumbs-up. "Any ideas-" A loud growl shook the world. It echoed in every bone, shot through every vein, and distracted every thought. "..... What....?" He looked up. That bright light was centered above them, burning a hole into the protective shield. Sonic lowered his head once more. "..... Mephiles played us all for fools, in order to break Iblis' Seal..." Eggman chuckled. ".... If we weren't in mortal danger, I would congratulate him... He caused that girl to be so consumed with despair that she cried... Breaking the Seal." Eggman clapped his hands together. "And now that Solaris is alive, it will inevitably destroy what remains of this world in its desires to eat." "Then we need to stop it." Shadow grunted. "So how to do we do that?" Eggman waved his finger. "No, no. Defeating Solaris here- now- would do absolutely nothing. Solaris is a creature that exists in the past, present, and future all at once." "I don't care! If that's what it takes- past, present, and future- I'll destroy them all at once!" Silver clutched his fist. He planted one foot forward, glaring Dr. Eggman down. "Solaris will be stopped, today." The man huffed, crossing his arms. "I suppose, if all three of you were to attack Solaris at once- your combined energy of the past, present, and future would be able to stop it.... But..... It would require a massive amount of power..... Such as the Chaos Emeralds, which are far too scattered to be collected in time." "Pfff- really, Egghead? C'mon, you know me better than that by now." Sonic danced from one foot to another. "We'll have those Emeralds in a sonic-second!" Eggman glared over his bushy mustache. "..... Fine.... But if you die in the attempt, then we are doomed." "Whatever, Eggman.... Just point me in the right direction, wouldja?" "...... Its all of our necks, hedgehog-" "Just give us the directions already." Shadow interrupted. Eggman glared at the ebony hedgehog, before sighing. "...... That way." He raised a finger. Sonic was gone in a flash of an instant, leaving Eggman with several would-be helpers... It didn't take long for him to relinquish the other gems' locations.

[/|\]

Sonic flashed away from one of the growing tears in reality. It had taken a few minutes to grow used to the dim neon-colored landscape, but once he did, it became recognizable. What had been a discolored and glowing metropolis now vaguely resembled one of the off-shoot merchant wharves Sonic had seen a few days ago. He did his best to avoid the green and glowing water. What had once been a peaceful land was now being torn apart into nonexistence. An invisible force slid him towards another crack in reality. He sped up, jumping away from certain death. If he could just find a Chaos Emerald, get back to the others... ... Tempest was probably in that thing, somewhere..... But it was destroying Mobius.... And he had to stop it, even if one of his friends was the monster. He was going to save Mobius..... He had to.

[/|\]

It all combined. A million realities convulsed and writhed in an endless screaming expanse. Their mind stretched into the infinite. The past, present, and future all exploded in a whirling firework of insanity. Solaris’ memories flared like solar winds, ripping away the veil of time itself. For one brief moment of eternity, they all understood. Mephiles’ ambition cut through the moment, erasing that beautiful second of clarity. Everything plunged into death. The dust of enemies long past filled their senses. The iron stench of spilled blood permeated their collective nonexistence. The uncontrollable desire to rule poisoned their mind. Tempest’s life flowed over the poison like a river. A million milliseconds of life flashed and sparked with locked feelings. In a torrential wave of emotion, it burst forth. The power of the Iblis Flame scorched them all. They fell into a soup of memory and thought. Everything was nothing. The endless expanse of reality was before them, unveiled like a finely printed map. They reached out a hand, scratching a million souls out of existence. They swallowed them all, breathing in deeply. A low roar echoed from their vocals, burning into the universe. There was so much possible energy here. A swipe was made at some of it, greedily devouring the freely offered energy. She was so hungry, so starving.... She would eat until she could feast no longer.... Not like this world would offer him enough food, anyway.... They drank with gusto from the wine of time, cracking open a million planets like they were fortune cookies. The energy of every star was siphoned into their gullet, burning as it went down. He would never stop eating.... But he had to... He missed his parents... But she would not stop. She would eat. She had manipulated him, after all. Yet he had destroyed him.- They were unsure, but that meant nothing. So what if they could no longer determine whose memories were whose? They had a massive supply of food. Nothing would stop them from eating until they were full.

[/|\]

Sonic stood in the circle of Chaos Emeralds, facing both Shadow and Silver. His eyes were set on the two, mouth a firm line. "Let's do this." He raised his hands, one facing Shadow and one facing Silver. The other two hedgehogs copied his movements, before the Chaos Energy began to flow into them all. Sonic didn't even flinch as the familiar power washed over him. Silver on the other hand stumbled, surprised by the pure ability that flowed into his veins. Shadow barely blinked. All three were encompassed in a blinding light, their fur brightening and turning gold as their eyes sharpened. All senses went up, powered by the universe itself. Three sets of ruby-red orbs shot open. The three leaped into the air. They soared towards their goal. Sonic narrowed his eyes, trying to focus on the goal. Save Mobius. Save Mobius. Save Mobius. ..... Save Mobius... .... And try to save Tempest. The three broke through the light that had previously burned. Now, it was a dim flash of luminescence that barely phased them. Silver and Shadow vanished from Sonic's physical line of sight, but in a way, he could still 'see' them. Shadow now fell to the past, already prepping a surge of a Chaos Blast. Silver echoed down from the future, telekinesis a light in the dim reality. Sonic surged forth, trying not to look at what he was fighting. He spun away from a surge of blue fire. The monster before him roared in ancient anger. Its eyes were purely white, black hair floating up above as if caught in an endless wind. Six bone pieces flapped behind it like wings, crystalline skin reflecting the flames that burned eternally on all the wing fragments, connecting them. The thing had no clothing, but it was so smooth that its gender was unknowable. The only hint that Tempest was in there was the black coloration of the hair. "Temps-!" He shot right. Six funnels of crystal turned to follow him, flames igniting in his wake. One hand outstretched to snag him. Sonic flashed between the fingers, slashing upwards as he did so. Chaos Energy ripped into the skin, spurting blood momentarily. Sonic shot up into the stars, his red eyes staring down at his friend. But this thing wasn't his friend. This was Solaris. His friend was gone. .... But she couldn't be. Sonic plummeted. One foot kicked down, both hands lowered. The world lent him its energy, coalescing into the point he wanted. "Hƨiɿɘq llɒʜƨ llɒ!" Sonic was smacked left by a backhand. Solaris laughed. It was creepy- filtered with a million voices, a million words. All of time itself was in that voice, all voices ever made echoing in its timber. Sonic yelled out, covering his ears.

[/|\]

"Hƨiɿɘq llɒʜƨ llɒ!" The universe rolled and rocked. Insanity flitted through every word, every memory snapped and torn. They were in so much agony. They were never made for this. They didn't have enough. They reached out to the galaxies, wiping out civilizations as old as time in favor of food. Nothing would stop their conquest.... They would feed.... Until it was all stripped bare. "Tempest!!!!" That voice. He recognized it. She hated it. She missed it. He reached out, blind and fumbling. He pulled her back. The three struggled, burning a hole through three planets in their annoyance. How dare they be disrespected? They were a god- goddess- whatever it was!- Solaris roared. Their hand struck out, smashing into the golden nuisance. At the same time, they deflected a bolt of energy. A third destroyed rocks as they sailed towards them. "ƎM ƎЯOᆿƎઘ ⅃⅃Aᆿ ⅃⅃IW UOY!!!" Flames shot forth, atoms ripped asunder beneath their onslaught. Millions of them combined into the main three, screeching. Their hands shot out, flames bursting forth, feet kicking. They refused to be met with defeat. Each of them fought with the same burning velocity, one of them succeeding in breaking a fragile hedgehog bone. Silver grunted, but continued fighting. Shadow's bolts shot into their eyes. They screeched, backing up with a deafening scream. Shadow didn't pause. He aimed straight for the heart, breaking through the skin. That Solaris vanished, its remaining energy bursting into its two remaining forms. They redoubled their efforts, slamming everything they had into Silver and Sonic. The golden hedgehogs dodged each attack, Silver firing projectiles of rock back while Sonic just kept dodging. They were so angry.- Everything had culminated into this. They were going to win. They refused defeat. Teeth grit beneath the skin, power siphoning from all the stars in the universe. Fire flowed to their hands, burning away sanity as it sharpened. Smaller. Sharper. More dangerous. They slashed their fire-sword out. A rock projectile crashed into their windpipe. Solaris gasped. Solaris cut apart atoms. Nuclear explosions encompassed their body. Blue flames burst into a cage of death, shooting out. Silver crushed their windpipe. That Solaris vanished, energy collapsing into the final form. Beneath it all, she was screaming. It hurt so much. He wanted it to end. He would never give up fighting. She had to give up. But she couldn't give up. She had come this far, found all the answers- he had done so much.... They engulfed a galaxy, breaking it apart beyond the base level. A golden streak made it by their line of sight. Something cracked against their skull. It drilled deep into their brain, beyond the crystal and fire. No blood came from the wound- the energy was so powerful, that it cauterized the injury on contact. Solaris released a mute gasp. "..... I've got you......" He didn't want to die- she didn't want to die- why had they not foreseen this- why- why- y- the final Solaris form screeched to a halt, staring into nothingness. Deep within, Sonic gathered all the power he could find. Flames scorched his nerves as he breathed in deeply, curling into a ball.... "KshhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHOOOOOOOM!!!!!!" Everything went up in a blast of unbridled, unrestricted power.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Agony. That was all she could think to call it. Something was tearing into her ear drums, while lava destroyed her back. It burned and seared, breaking down the skin. She could feel it going into the nerves. She couldn't scream. Her lips were frozen shut, freezing from nothing. Mephiles' laugh echoed in her broken ear. It was healed, before fresh pain ripped into the shell. Tempest struggled, trying to get away. His laughter never stopped. It was everywhere in the nothingness. "GET AWAY FROM US!" Mephiles roared. Acid spewed into her veins, racing into her every nerve. Tempest whimpered quietly through her unopened mouth, wanting it all to end. She felt tears slip from her eyes unbidden, falling into the void. A soft golden light slowly materialized before her. The pain ebbed, her ears recollecting themselves and becoming whole once more. Something went wrong with her back. Tempest screeched, ripping open her mouth. Those wounds healed in milliseconds, but her back- oh heavens above- "STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!!!" She convulsed. Something settled on her back. The pain grew even worse. Tempest screamed even louder. She was pulled up slowly, carefully, as she continued to writhe from the damage. Her eyes now refused to open. She saw only red, with faint traces of gold. ".... It'll be alright....." Something cool flowed over her back. Tempest came down from the pain high one bit at a time, screams transforming to gentle whimpers. She was in so much pain.... Her body ached... Her back burned like wildfire.... Her veins felt acidic.... But she couldn't prevent anything. She was helpless. "..... I'll find you...." "..... Hel....p....." "..... I'll find you...."

[/|\]

"Tempest, you'll be late for school dear!" She opened her eyes. The ceiling was above her, but... It was far too high. She went to move her body, only to silently reel back from what she received. Something on her back was aching.... And her nerves... They felt... Too short.... Tempest sat up and clambered out of bed. She dropped from the side with a quiet 'thump!', hitting the ground. In her haste to meet her mother, she barely noticed. "Mom??" She jumped upright and bolted from her room, down the hall, beyond her parents' room. The girl ran into the kitchen, spotting her mother making breakfast. Eggs and pancakes. "Yes dear. Now go get ready- unless you want to be late for your first day of kindergarten." The woman winked. Tempest blinked back in shock. "Kindergarten-? But- mom, I'm nineteen." She spoke calmly, those accursed phantoms already beginning a slight swirl around her head. She bit into one of her fingernails, looking at the floor. It was really close- and her feet were-... Really... Chubby.... "Of course you are, but you still need to get ready." Her mother's feet appeared in her vision, before a hand rubbed her hair. Tempest shook her head, ridding herself of the offending appendage. ".... Bu-...." She looked up, only to be met with a slightly stern glare. Tempest silenced herself. She turned and slowly trekked to the bathroom. The counter was above her. Tempest glanced to the toilet, before lowering the lid and clambering atop it. Then she hopped onto the counter, and finally looked herself over. ..... She was a kid. And not just any kid- she was a small kid. Herself, maybe... Four years old? She blinked at her bare chest, feeling her heart stop. Two gray streaks- indents of sorts- ran down either arm, all the way from somewhere behind her to her elbows. They were.... Weird. She tapped one, feeling a normal touch sensation in her brain. It was as if her arm had just- sunken in at the indents. It reminded her of-..... Mephiles. Tempest gulped silently and quickly turned. She stopped when her back was to the mirror. Two burn scars- one at either shoulder blade- rested on her back. They were filled with gnarled and light yellow flesh. She experimentally tapped one, feeling limited sensation from the area. "..... You can not escape what you are..." Tempest jumped off the counter. "Are you getting ready?" Her mother's voice echoed from the kitchen. Tempest did not dare look at her reflection again. She covered her left eye as she left the bathroom, darting to her room. She quickly found a shirt and pulled it on, careful not to catch it on the edge of the indents in her arms. "Yes mom!" '..... What is this....'

[/|\]

Twelve years, come and gone. Tempest picked up the book from the University's library. She knew she was stealing it- she was destined to steal it. Nothing in any world would ever stop her- any where she existed, anyway.... Too many years had drifted by with no word from the others... Tempest had never doubted that it had happened. The scars on her back and the indents in her arms were evidence enough of its occurrence.... It didn't help that she had nineteen years worth of memories... Of a time that never happened. But when that purple ray filled the sky, and the planet shook.... Tempest knew for certain it had been real. Keeping it to herself for so many years had been hard- she had always failed to act her age, and.... Well, that was apparently just as much a reason to ignore a kid as them being emotionless. Still. Tempest sped over to the hatch that she vaguely recalled, a silent smile crossing her face as she climbed up the bookcase with ease. A second chance at reality had taught her a lot... And hurt her a lot... But that was best not to focus on at the moment. Tempest heard voices as she pushed open the hidden hatch. She jumped up and raced to the edge of the University's roof, heart racing. She could barely breathe. Her burn scars ached just as much now as they had every second, of every day, of every year... For a long time. The moon glowed from above, dropping sweeping swaths of glowing light upon the city. Spagonia hummed lowly, old cobbles stretched and worn thin from many years of use. Buildings stretched lazily to meet the sky. Streetlamps waved to the stars, a wind of dust and pine trees drifting through each and every alley. It felt like home... A very old, very familiar home. "Hey!" A deep, gruff, and slightly smoked voice called out. It wasn't threatening like last time, though. Tempest looked up at the moon without turning around. The fateful book was held tight in her grasp- 'Evidence of a Gaia', by one Professor Pickle. It felt different, yet the same. The summer winds rippled around her dark gray hoodie, hiding what had happened from reality. ".... Temps?...." The question was broken and quiet. Tempest turned slowly, feeling tears prick at her eyes. A smile that could put the sun to shame fixed itself on her face. She ran full-tilt into the werehog, hugging him tight. More drops of salty water fell from her eyes as Tempest breathed into his fur. ".... I-it's been a w-while...." She laughed breathlessly, feeling like her heart would break out of her chest at any moment. ".... I-I've mi-issed you..." Two very fluffy and furry arms slowly wrapped around her. They pushed gently against her hoodie, before getting tighter. Sonic released a quiet laugh. Tempest could feel the sunbeams radiating off of him as the two shared that moment. ".... I missed ya, Temps..." Sonic and Tempest separated at a snails' pace, neither wanting to forget the other. "... What am I missing here?" Chip's voice was like a stone at glass. Tempest's eyes slowly turned to face the small god, staring at him. More tears filled her eyes. Was this what it was like to cry?.... It felt so nice.... She waved, trying to keep her voice in tact. ".... I-I'm an old friend of Sonic-c's." She laughed. "C-Chi-ip, I missed you s-so much..." "..... What?" Sonic smiled, patting Chip on the back with a furry hand. "I'll explain in a few days." He grinned mischeviously. "Don't worry." The hedgehog turned his face back to Tempest, a very, very familiar smirk on his face. He stretched out one hand to her. ".... Wanna join us?" She didn't hesitate.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANYONE WANT TO CRY ‘CAUSE I JUST RE-READ THESE PORTIONS AND I’M READY TO CRY-

Gosh above I forgot how much I loved writing this... This is why I can’t. Re-read. My own. WORKS. WHY’D I DO THIS TO MYSELF-

#[outside eternity:the mun]#[burned thunder: tempest]#[pencil and paper: writings]#tw: trauma #tw: negativity #tw: murder #tw: head trauma #tw: torture #tw: body horror

0 notes