#but no. only the things we have written down and signed by the devs are real
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Fates unironically did the "muhritocracy" schtick better than 3H lol; the vast majority of the playable Nohrian characters are commoners who got into high-ranking positions in the Nohrian army due to being exceptional soldiers and getting rewarded as such, whereas the only commoners on Adrestia's side that aren't turncoats (or fodder soldiers that are stated to exist only in throwaway dialogue from faceless NPCs) are Ladislava (non-character with no screentime, personality or even feats to support that she did anything to help the Adrestian army in any significant way), Fleche (slightly more of a character, still does nothing to help Adrestia), Randolph (does nothing to help and isn't even particularly well-recognized or rewarded for his skills, if him being jealous of his superiors is any indication), and Dorothea (only got to a high-ranking position due to prostituting herself in order to get into Garreg Mach, befriending the crown princess of the Empire, and being made into a general of the Adrestian army due to nepotism from that same crown princess).
What makes it even worse is that Nohr rewarding merit for anyone and everyone, regardless of social class or status, is an irrelevant bit of background worldbuilding, whereas Edelgard wanting to reward commoners' merits is one of her most consistently-repeated ideals, but the only non-nobleborn CF playable character only got so far in life due to (literal) peepee-sucking and nepotism, and even the NPCs are either featless non-characters (Fleche and Ladislava) or complain about not being recognized enough despite his skill/is recognized enough and Edelgard just decided a power-hungry, immoral dumbass was meritant enough to be made into a general in her army (Randolph); shouldn't the order have been reversed? Like, the game where one of the main characters' principle ideals is to recognize and reward anyone who's skilled should be the one to have most of her allies be commoners, whereas the one where the concept of merit is completely irrelevant to the story, themes and characters could have just had the characters be mostly nobles instead of consistently making them commoners just for subtle worldbuilding? It's weird.
Want to see an upstanding posterchild of Nohrian muhritocracy?
Chaos will always topple the ones who don't earn their status. It's folks like you and me who rise to the top.
And the way we do that is by cutting down all our enemies.
I won't stop at captain. I will keep on climbing!
I'll be a king someday. I'll make it happen—you wait and see.
More seriously -
It's all about the what is actually rewarded.
I've already joked a bit about it, but basically Randolph and Nopes!Caspar want to demonstrate their muhrit by... invading countries, killing refugees or randoms who returned in their home after being ousted by the Imperial army.
Much muhrit, very uwu.
Take Whodislava, as you mentioned, bar being a named NPC who as less screentime than Kronya and is supposed to be a sad casualty for war, while being the posterchild of Supreme Leader's muhritocracy, we don't a thing about her. What has she done to be granted the rank of general? What are her achievements?
At times I'm pretty sure TS was partly written to laugh and mock FE16, but Avlora is basically in the same situation, save that Avlora has more plot relevance and exists bar being a sign the devs hold that's written "please feel bad about this character you've never interacted with and only has 5 lines of dialogue and is only here to garner sympathy when she dies I mean even Fates!Candace had more presence than her".
Avlora was an orphan, trained under Groma - a famous general - who continued to train even when Groma retired, became Adre- Aesfrost's top general and defeated Maxwell in a duel. We have her story - she came from nothing - her feats - she defeated the strongest warrior in Glenbrook - and the entire meritocracy angle sticks : Avlora was a nobody made general because she kicked asses.
The meritocratic Adrestia NPCs?
Randolph... tries to get muhrit, but fails as we protect people and only laments about his status in his House (as he is fucking killing people to gain more status, like dude, priorities?) - so in way, both Randy and Flèche are imo, counterexemples of Supreme Leader's muhritocracy : Randolph kills peons and invades an orphanage to demonstrate his "muhrit" because, otherwise, without any muhrit, iirc it's implied he and his sister will be demoted to randoms in House Bergliez (even if Flèche is supposed to be younger than Cyril iirc? Like how the frick do you want a kid of 12 to demonstrate her muhrit, else she'll be kicked out of her house?).
Whodislava... dies heroically, at least that's what we're supposed to get from her very "please cry" cutscene when she dies in front of Supreme Leader in Tru Piss - as Rhea and her family + knights tried to retake their ancestral home and she prevented them from doing so - or it's the same nonsense as "we killed Ferdie professor :(", we are supposed to feel bad about people who were fighting alongside a demonic beast when, in FE16, we fucking know what they are.
Since the FE5 banner released earlier this week, FE5 paints "honorable" Reinhardt as a pitiful man, because no matter how honorable or kickass or kind Reinhardt was, when it came to defect to protect children from being kidnapped or stop the general nonsense the Empire was pulling in Thracia... Reinhardt refused to do so, pretexting remaining by Ishtar's side, and when that became impossible, he choose death over rescuing toddlers. His situation is supposed to be compared to his sister's Olwen, who, when she discovers the truth of what is happening in Thracia, ditches the Empire to help Leif rescue the children - and, imo, Amalda (who's not in FEH yet!) who is also, basically, a commander who plays a larger Camus role as in, she tries to appeal to her Lord to stop the child hunts, her Lord tells her to eat shit, and when asked why she still fights and why she doesn't defect, Amalda says if she does so, her knights will be killed + Amalda appears as a NPC allied unit in a map to hunt bandits to save a village.
So, compared to those ladies who defect or try to protect whoever they can protect - their soldiers AND civilians who are being trampled by their own army - Reinhardt who doesn't do a thing and picks "death" is, as Olwen's ending puts it "pitiful".
Back to your ask anon, even if I disgress from the meritocracy angle - Flèche, Whodislava and Randy are such non-entities compared to characters with 6 lines from FE5 that even if they try to pull the "I have to do this for my family" or the "I came from nothing and still help my emperor because I am thankful to her for having raised me from being a commoner to a general", our Adrestians NPC feel very, very flat.
Are we supposed to cry for Hans's failed dreams of becoming a king when we kill him? No, but Randy and Whodislava's deaths are overplayed with so much pathos that the game is basically telling you "and here you should feel bad because they died" but... what is more important, the fact they tried to unlock a lot of achievments to demonstrate their "muhrit", or what the hell they were ready to do to unlock said achievments?
As for Doro needing to befriend people to enter Garreg Mach, remember that Doro, being touted as another example of the muhritocracy Supreme Leader's Adrestia aims to be, had to engage in sex work from a young age, to reach the diva status - which has very disturbing implications, that are glossed over because that's FE16 for you. Are we supposed to believe Doro "worked hard" to be able to catch the eye of some deranged fucks when she was a pre-teen to become a diva - or, as Manu puts it in a support that cannot be achieved in Tru Piss, muhrit alone doesn't work to become a diva, and it's actually a pretty font to hide the "dark" deeds young singers in Mittelfrank have to do to reach the "diva" status?
Minor tidbit though, Doro is famous enough for being Supreme Leader's dearest friend but she isn't promoted to "general" in Tru Piss, she's only BESF who's not, at least in her bio, a general Post TS.
Imo the question you raise is actually relevant to how empty Supreme Leader's muhritocracy's ideal is - in both game Ferdie has to remind her that to build "muhrit" or for commoners to be able to gather "muhrit" as nobles do, they have to start at the same lever, and receive education as nobles do.
IIRC, in Supreme Bullshit, despite their feats, Hubert tells Barney they're only a commoner - not even a worthy commoner like Doro - but a fucking random - when muhrit wise, Barney should at least be named general!
In both games, Linhardt is a general... but we don't see anything from him, bar his tropey "i want to study crests and nap and i dgaf about anything else" traits - if that's all there is to him, how and why the crap was he made general??
Why, it's almost as if "muhrit" is a smokescreen to hide the fact that the one who chooses/picks who gets to be important from who isn't does it on their own terms just like irl
What is merit, really? Who gets to decide what is merit from what isn't? Or who is the "best" at doing things, from another?
It's another instance of, imo, Fodlan's artificial feel, the game raises a question/issue, and starts some smoke about it, but without tackling said issues seriously we're left with "I agree and think starvation shouldn't exist anymore" milquetoast and cliché opinions that give the illusion this game is "very deep" when it's just, a puff of smoke.
#anon#replies#fodlan nonsense#those games are so ridiculous tbh trying to 'tackle' this issue with a spoon#and then people buy the 'see this game tackles this issue'#you won't drill a hole in a wall of concrete with a plastic spoon#Hans represents muhrit as in ok he can kill things dead yay#but morality wise? No matter how many people he can kill in one day he was arrested because there are more important things than#this 'he's the best at killing' muhritocratic angle#Amalda and Olwen defect when they are given the occasion and learn abotu the Empire's nonsense#but when Whodislava and Ferdie (and the BESF in general) side with Baldo'n'Waldi they don't?#And we're supposed to cry about their deaths when they fucking use mutated humans as fodder?#like I'm not following jjk that well#but i'm pretty sure Doro's not supposed to go full sad uwus “we've killed mahito professor :'( ”#FE5#FE5 bestest game ever#they made me merciless on the Camus archetype lol#I really love Amalda and hope she'll eventually be added in FE heroes#FE16#Avlora kicked ass in TS and even she has the realisation that the fuck she was doing was horrible#and faces consequences for demosntrating her 'muhrit' by slaughtering people
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Valve Series Timeline
Somebody asked me why I don't do a post about all the connections between half-life and portal and all the back story there. The theory being that a lot of other theorists don't get it right.
And they weren't wrong. The problem with most theorists is that they stop at a surface level, where I go real deep into the lore and pick out all sorts of details and connections. Sometimes even to a degree that isn't fully supported by on game detail.
But here's the thing with the half-life series. And valve games in general;
The story and background lore is already plotted out to a near dizzying degree. There is rarely a loose end between games.
Me doing a segment on half-life and portal would just be connected end to end on a path already laid out by valve. It would be incredibly boring. I would have suspected that's why other theorists don't do it. But I'm beginning to think it's just that people don't think about things to the degree I do.
Note I said: "To the Degree I do" not better, not worse. Just not the same way. But probably because I'm more of a completionist.
Anyway to prove my point, I'll simply point out the first Half-Life multiplayer expansion (Developed by Gearbox Studios): Half-Life: Decay
The bonus mission follows a couple of vortigaunts: R-4913 and X-8973. In the game, both share the same character model. I heavily suspect that only R4 was actually modelled, it being a kind of throwaway bonus mission, and the fact that valve only has "R-4913" written in an air duct along with "Code Green". The game Half-Life: Uplink does the same, only referencing R-4913 and *not* X-8973
Now. Let's look at Portal 2's Multiplayer Heros: Atlas and Peabody. Compare ATLAS and R4913 visually. They have the same basic body type. You could boil this down to a simple throwback. But Valve doesn't do things half-baked. Except for a third game. This is intentional on the devs part. All the way down to how they're "just a couple of random a*, but vitally important grunts"
The vortigaunts are sent on a viral suicide mission by the Nihilanth. GlaDOS is a Nihilistic artificial intelligence who sends the same two on a suicide mission, which is vitally important for her plans.
These two are essentially Seal Team 6.
To take things a step further if your rearrange the letters in ATLAS, LAATS, matches up with a kind of l33t-speak interpretation, which was appropriate for the year that Half-Life came out. And Valve and Gearbox being full of a bunch of dumb Internet nerds, makes this incredibly far-fetched interpretation, not so far-fetched. (Considering Ls and Rs is still a thing we do to this day thanks to all the languages that roll them together.)
The same for PEA-BODY or X-8973. I don't know how X converts to P yet... But given enough time and effort I could learn..but it'll probably be easier to ask gearbox themselves.
The implications of this are important; it means that both Vortigaunts and Humans (specifically: dying people [or wounded warriors]) were placed into AI like Caroline into GlaDOS.
This is the exact reason why some test subjects didn't have to sign a waiver whenever you see those waivers lying around.
And, if I'm not mistaken: Why Chell was uploaded in the first place...
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Yeas SNES games had bugs, but they were basically written in machine code, it's acceptable for them to have bugs. Comparing modern game dev to back then is like comparing some unwashed peasant rushing a boar with a spear and you shooting down entire generations of them with a mini gun from a helicopter. It would be understandable if they made the engine from scratch but they don't, they use unreal a piece of well documented software. Day one patches are a sign of laziness.
Do you think every game is made in UE4? Most triple A games companies use proprietary engines, hell people take the piss out of Bethesda for not updating their engine since like morrowind. Most indie games use Unity.
It was impressive what they did then and it is impressive what they do now but day one patches are a symptom of poor production not the developers not caring. People are forced to crunch and work themselves to death for video games which is ridiculous, they're just games.
If the people actually working on the games were given suitable time instead of being forced to work in ridiculously small turnarounds to satisfy higher ups who only see they need to make x more percent this year or its a failure then we wouldn't have them working up to the day of release and then some to make a game that functions.
To call them lazy is beyond ridiculous, do you think these people are killing themselves because they don't care? Because they're lazy? No they're passionate and that passion is taken advantage of to force a disgusting work culture.
And you still have to make the fucking game at the end of the day. That's still work. Things can still break and not work in unreal like what do you think a game engine is?? You just drag cubes together and taadaa a game? OF course that isn't how it works. Things will still break in a perfect game engine like what do you mean?
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Regarding your post about Jubilife's backstory: the residential section of the village (just past the bridge in front of Galaxy Hall) is called Canala Avenue, named after a Construction Corps member according to Bulbapedia. Chop the end off, and you get Canala Ave, or Canalave. Considering Canalave City and Jubilife Village's positions relative to Lake Verity, I think it's feasible that it became its own thing once Jubilife began to expand.
That being said, Floaro Main Street does reference Floaroma Town, which ends up north of modern Jubilife, so that doesn't really line up. Still, all the similarities between Canalave and Jubilife Village do convince me of this theory, personally.
Considering all the signs in the game, maybe there was just some miscommunication between the writers and marketing?
I had already considered this, but yeah, as there’s references to other towns/locations in Jubilife village it’s hardly definitive proof of anything either way as far as I’m concerned.
I have a fair bit more research on the topic that I’ve omitted from the first post to cut down on length, but maybe it’s time for a part two. There’s geography/other clues that also point to Jubilife Village becoming modern Canalave City, as well as a few points against.
See, I have a separate fan theory/headcanon that builds off of this one, so that’s why I’m so invested in finding canon evidence. Short version is that Galaxy Hall becomes the Canalave Library, and/or the book “The Sea’s Legend” was written by Iscan of the Diamond Clan. (I’ll do a full post on this theory one day)
As for your last point we can only speculate. Both are considered canon sources, so it’s difficult to say for sure without clarification from the devs. Honestly at this point, unless we find some concrete evidence, we get confirmation from the devs, or we get new information in the future, and with conflicting canon sources, it’s impossible to come to a satisfactory conclusion that doesn’t at least have some problems.
But yeah, best guess at this point basically boils down to
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I feel like a broken record talking about this again but: things not being completely spelled out for you in the story doesn't mean they're not there/"just interpretation"/not "canon". this doesn't even go just for queer and/or romantic themes. like for example, sherlock being a very emotional person who has created an image of himself as a "high functioning sociopath" to protect himself is the reality of the text. people will still pretend it is not because no one in the show ever explicitly says that's exactly what he's doing. even though they literally couldn't make it any clearer at this point, it still gets purposefully misunderstood because people refuse to engage with the text as a complex and multilayered medium, instead viewing it as a superficial set of dialogue to be taken at absolute face value and out of context which constitutes the "canon" whilst everything else is made up of inconsequential and apparently accidental material that only exists to fill the space between statements. when in reality every text conveys its meaning and story though multiple variations of subtlety which of course at some point become more and more ambiguous, which still does not mean they cannot be clearly interpreted, only that they offer more ways to do so. anyway, all I'm trying to say is that: if a text very distinctly communicates something through understated means, it is still communicating it. it doesn't have to and should in fact not spell everything out explicitly and directly because that would be very much to the detriment of the medium.
#I'm just so tired of this#it's the same in the de fandom like#the game could not make the romantic tension between harry and kim any clearer without explicitly stating it which it Did Not Want To#because the character you are playing is not ready to accept this#same goes for harry being queer like#how is that even still worth discussing of course he is queer#but because the gane never explicitly states it like it does with Kim it's somehow 'not canon' but 'just an interpretation'#when the reality is that He Is Not Ready To Accept This About Himself#he's still coming to terms with his own identity that is the story#but no. only the things we have written down and signed by the devs are real#it's like you're at the lawyer's#or I'm reading the goldfinch rn which could not make it more obvious that theo is a repressed queer kid#but people will literally say no he's not he's said he's not so he can't be. end of story#it's literally driving me insane#and of course this happens with queerness most often but not solely#anyway#my stuff
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I broke down and wrote the essay. No, I did not and will not proofread it. I don’t waaaannaaaa
There’s Only One Winner For Isengard
In a perfect world, in a world with no meta requirements that could bend to the will of the player, we would roll up to Isengard level-capped, no debuffs, with one quest-marker on hand: Ruin Saruman’s day. But this is a pre-written sequence of events in which we are only along for the ride. We, the player, and a Ranger are shipped off to Isengard with only one conceivable goal: survive. On a meta level we know what Saruman is capable of. At level 70 or 80-something at best, even we are aware that we are no match for a wizard with a canon fate. Not to mention our Ranger companion! The Grey Company has been through enough (though we don’t know the half of it yet) and we are reasonably distraught at the possibilities.
This is why we, the player character, will lose the game of Isengard.
Beyond the meta rules of the game, where quest objectives are whatever the devs wanted them to be (looking at you, Mordrambor) the player character can not defeat Saruman in any way that’s meaningful. And (again on a meta level) in order for us to get to experience the action at Helm’s Deep and Rohan at large, we have to get out of Isengard. We’d get bored of waiting for Theoden and Co. We’d hurl insults or slap fish at Saruman and realistically incur wrath. Honestly, with the set of circumstances presented to us, who could survive imprisonment in Nan Curunir?
Only one of the Company ever could: Lothrandir of Suri Kyla.
To begin with, none of the Rangers we have any real information on could have done it. Anyone who’s spent time in Angmar is at a disadvantage due to the prevailing dread (game mechanic or otherwise) that can be manipulated by Saruman. Any Ranger that has a major traumatic past is at a disadvantage (sorry Mincham) because if nothing else, Saruman has proven to be a master of illusion. Even Halbarad for all his leadership ability has a pretty exploitable weakness: eventually Saruman can crack the code with a vision of Aragorn’s demise, the one end Halbarad must fear above all others. Or what bond could more easily be exploited than that of a leader and his men? Lheu Brenin’s in the gang now after all. All Saruman would have to do was send for a few more incentives.
But Lothrandir comes built with a few key advantages that make him the only Grey Company Ranger qualified to come out of this battle of wills on top. His specific strengths, mindset, and personality traits combined with the circumstances that the game sets up going into Isengard make him the clear choice of Rangers- if a Ranger you must have- to stay behind in Nan Curunir.
Lothrandir wins because he changes the game. From ‘go’ our co-prisoner does something that either puzzles the player character or sends them into an anxious fit. Lothrandir declares himself fearless and sprints recklessly into the ring. Any way you figure it, this seems like a poorly calculated move. He doesn’t stop to survey the enemy. He doesn’t gather intel. Heck, he doesn’t even bide his time to see if he’ll be killed before he even reaches the dungeons. Lothrandir sprints right in without so much as a thought or a plan. Saruman doesn’t know it yet, but from that moment on Lothrandir has him on the back foot.
Consider for a moment Saruman’s MO. He’s a wizard, and he uses a great deal of magic, sure, but time and time again we are reminded of the power of his voice and his words. He calls down a storm on Caradhras (in the movies for darn sure), he via-Wormtongue whispers poison into the ears of King Theoden. He doesn’t lead with any kind of grandiose display when trying to sway Gandalf. No, he leads with a persuasive argument. Later on, he nearly talks Theoden back around, after failing to wipe out all of Rohan. After killing the man’s son for goodness sakes. He nearly talks himself out of that one!
But Lothrandir has already changed this from a game of wits to a game of wills. There will be no vying for favor, or biding time, or compliance, or even giving Saruman a chance to ‘talk it over friendly’ first. He’s already spitting on the shoes of everyone he sees. The accomplishment in this is twofold, and it makes a major impact on the rest of his time in Nan Curunir.
Firstly, by establishing a new game, Lothrandir sets Saruman up for a whole lot of assumptions. He does not display any signs of diplomatic ability, wisdom, or even common sense. He very intentionally projects an attitude of reckless disobedience. In the player’s own eyes, it seems as if he ‘doesn’t know any better’. This gives Saruman a clear path to take regarding Lothrandir. He assumes you can’t reason the typical way with someone who has shown zero inclination for listening. The player character demonstrates that the Grey Company (or least their associates) are capable of compliance. For all intents and purposes, this Lothrandir doesn’t appear to be. He’s contrary, fool-hardy, and evidently dumb enough to dive in headfirst and get himself killed. You beat that kind of guy into submission… don’t you?
But Lothrandir has changed the rules of the game. Saruman is no longer fighting with his best weapon, but with a tool to be found in any old villain’s arsenal. When he took the approach of reasoning with the player character and disregarding Lothrandir, he set the victor’s foundation on our snow-pilgrim’s greatest strength.
Secondly, by establishing a new game, Lothrandir makes this a battle of physical endurance. Unbeknownst to Saruman, this is the one thing that makes him stand out from the rest of the Grey Company. He has walked through the frozen north lands and the fiery south lands and come out unscathed. He has mastered the unarmed combat style of the Lossoth by joining in mid-winter wrestling matches in a place that took down many Elves, Angmarim, and notably one King of Arthedain! Lothrandir has conceivably spent his entire life training for this matchup. Any endurance he has built up, any fighting he can do without access to a weapon, all are assets to the kind of game he just made Saruman play. Lothrandir is uniquely built to survive any physical torment Isengard can throw at him, or at least, better equipped than any of the others.
To say Lothrandir is the best choice, we also have to rule out the others. Corunir was thwarted by the Rammas Deluon and for all he learned from that, it’s a weak spot in his proverbial armor. Golodir too, resisted a fair degree of torture (palantiri based, even!) in Carn Dum, but it won’t be hard for Saruman to suss that one out and make our old man’s life a living nightmare. Even Radanir, serious and seemingly unattached to any social bonds now that his good pal Elweleth has gone sailing, would be a poor choice. He is too serious, (for lack of a better term) too genre-savvy, and even if he is spitting blood and delivering a witty one-liner, that’s Saruman’s foot in the door! ‘I’ll never betray my friends and kin, you kaleidoscope hack’? You’ve just told him your weakness, Radanir! No, he can’t keep his mouth shut to save his (or Saerdan’s) life. Radanir is the wrong choice too.
We don’t know a significant amount about the others (except Ranger death would move Calenglad to tears, we can’t put him through this) in order to pinpoint their fatal flaws in the Isengard encounter. But, the game puts us in the incredible position of having seen Lothrandir’s Achilles’ heel and letting us take that disadvantage away.
Lothrandir of Suri Kyla is uniquely equipped to survive any physical encounter that Saruman throws his way. Now, who’s to say the wizard won’t change his tune and go back to his old tricks? In an incredible twist of fate, we are. The game sets us, the player, up to play Saruman’s game from the get-go. We keep our pixelated head down, try and fly below the radar, and express just enough concern over the fate of our fool-hardy pal to get Saruman to cement his estimation of Lothrandir as a pawn in the game in stone. By making ourselves the better target for the words of a wily wizard, Saruman decides that the best way to deal with the spare prisoner is by playing right into his hands. As we all know, the player character escapes. While that might seem bad for someone who Saruman has earmarked for corporal punishment only, it covers Lothrandir’s one weakness.
Aside from being the only significant unarmed fighter, Lothrandir is also never painted as a loner. He spends his time in Suri Kyla, hanging out with the Lossoth and sharing their campfires. In the new questline in Forochel, he jumps at the chance to make a new Dunedain friend and takes to King Arvedui like a duck to water. They’re instant best pals. It’s minutes before Lothrandir is telling him Aragorn’s life story and pledging to go with him on a buddy adventure to seek peace for a regretful shade. And if that’s not enough canon for you, Lothrandir bears the brunt of the Falcon clan aggression on the way to Isengard. He does it for you, his friend and companion in suffering. It’s a bit meta, but we have to assume in the internal universe he knows you a little. You’ve run your merry adventures to a degree where, were this not a video game, Lothrandir would at least consider you an ally if not a friend outright.
He exposes his weakness unwittingly to the Falcon clan, but he leaves it at the gates of Isengard in an extremely well-timed move. By sprinting through the gates without a care as to what’s going on with you or anyone else, Lothrandir establishes an emotional distance between you both in the eyes of any onlookers. Whatever affection you have for him, it doesn’t seem reciprocated. This isn’t a major weakness for Saruman to exploit, then. You’re not one of his kinsmen. If he did want to pursue that line, he could always send to Tur Morva for one, right?
This is where the game comes back in to shift the tide in Lothrandir’s favor. We escape. We play the game, we nearly lose the game, and had we not been given an out the power scaling makes it difficult to conceive of an outcome where we the player can win Isengard. Sure, we’ve been released from prisons before (Delossad to name one) but this is the climax of Dunland. We make a daring escape, and move south towards the Gap of Rohan and all sorts of bad times.
Back in Nan Curunir, Lothrandir is getting the daylights beat out of him, and taking a victory lap. He’s cemented his position as ‘the prisoner we’ll break with violence’. The uruks have seen him insubordinate and disorderly. In the Lothrandir interlude, there’s not only the canon (stated outright!) reality of past and present torture. There’s also zero hesitation in Lothrandir taking that one on the chin. There are no other objectives on his mind than making the next few minutes as miserable as possible for everyone around. He has no other goals. And he doesn’t need them. Nobody is surprised that Lothrandir is signing his death warrant within nanoseconds of being presented an offer to comply. He spits on the offer. He tips over the slop bucket. He beats bloody any orc (and gameplay purposes aside there are very few that dare come forward) that actually tries to kill him for it outright.
He’s built up a non-rapport with Gun Ain. She talks about killing him and he doesn’t say anything. They’re all playing his game and he’s winning. In the conversation with Saruman, we’re not given the opportunity to watch Lothrandir ‘resist’ in the same fashion the player character did. We don’t need to. Saruman has bigger and better things to worry about- killing a prince, wiping out a nation- than one Ranger who he’s just going to order well-flayed again. By setting himself up as the punching bag, Lothrandir has managed to fly beneath Saruman’s priority threshold. He’s been relegated to the responsibility of Gun Ain, and still with somewhat protected status because they haven’t wormed anything useful out of him yet.
All of these moves have culminated to an impasse. Saruman is not winning points in the game like he expected. One ‘meathead Ranger’ has managed to resist all the torments of Isengard, and he’s gained nothing from this. The other prisoner escaped, word had doubtless reached him that the Tur Morva Thirty-Odd are free and raring to be a thorn in his side again. He has no external leverage to apply on Lothrandir and it’s become increasingly obvious that our Ranger friend is not engaging like the player did. But still, Saruman has his pride. It’s his downfall in the end, and it’s his downfall in his fight against the one Ranger who’s already beating him. Lothrandir can’t be killed outright because Saruman hasn’t won yet. And with that guarantee of protection, Lothrandir can coast all the way to the conquest of Isengard.
He can keep playing the game and stalling for time. It’s morbid, but what better way to waste someone’s time and energy than convincing them slow, drawn-out torture is the way to go? A little extreme, Lothrandir, but it’s still his game to lose. He wastes Saruman’s time. If he is eventually rescued, total victory. If he’s killed in the end, he definitely didn’t give the wizard the satisfaction, so a less resounding victory but one in the win column nonetheless.
With a little help from our usually Ranger-cidal devs, Lothrandir reprograms Saruman’s game of chess to a boxing match. He takes out all his disadvantages, gets Isengard to attack from a point of... if not weakness then at least neutral ability, and then devotes his every waking breath to violent disobedience.
Sure, you could have taken any of the Grey Company with you to Isengard. Lheu Brenin could have swapped out for Braigar or Amlan or Mithrendan or Culang- but only one of these guys has the brute strength, commitment, and sheer audacity to pull it off.
You take Lothrandir to Orthanc. There’s a different prisoner of Nan Curunir when he leaves.
#lotro#long post#lothrandir#did i spell check or add accent marks? absolutely not#this is very fully baked but limited by my ability as a writer#lol who cares it's nearly midnight
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What are your thoughts on all the survivors that weren't mentioned in ilm? Like bill and zarina?
Well, I’m under-informed on a few of them. If I wrote a story including Bill, Heather/Cheryl, and Ash, I would do more research first, because I only have their DbD paragraphs and a little personal knowledge to go with, but I’ll still give you my current takes haha.
I’ve never played Left 4 Dead, but from his perks and the little I do know, Bill seems gruff and rough around the edges, but like he’s got a good heart and while his paragraph describes him as wanting someone to fight more than anything, I’d argue it reads a lot more like he wants to see people protected more than anything. (I mean, considering he’s quite literally died for his friends before, and some of his perks are based around survival alone, but he’s also got Borrowed Time, one of the most altruistic survivor perks in the game).
Heather I feel bad for more than anything else. Poor girl goes to hell once and what do you do? Ya send her back. It ain’t fair. I’ve /seen/ Silent Hill and never played it, so again I have very incomplete information, but I liked her, and mostly I just felt bad for her that her life was super messed up. Poor kid is extremely traumatized, but I greatly admire the resilience and how powerful she is when most people would pretty understandably curl up and die.
Ash, I’ve /only/ seen the first Evil Dead film, so I only know him as baby Ash/the world’s single biggest himbo. I’m losing it. In that film, he really does see a friend turn into a demon zombie (not the first time it’s happened either), attempt to murder him and another friend, then get decapitated but still be chattering on the floor, and when he asks what they’re gonna do now and his other (kind of dying at this point) friend says they have to bury the zombie still living corpse thing, dumb hoe really does go “But we can’t bury her! She’s our friend : (”. He’s so stupid but I loved him. The movie was kinda too grody for my personal preferences--kinda icked me out--but I really enjoyed poor stupid Ash. I am lead to believe he is much more charismatic as an older dude though, so I’d have to do more research to have an accurate opinion on DbD Ash.
Yui I really like. Actually, I try not to play against Yuis when I play killer, or to like, at least not play Legion or Myers against them (I main Wraith/Myers/Legion, although I’m also learning Huntress, Nurse, Hag, & Spirit), because this poor girl got assaulted by a nasty stalker boy with a knife & half her character is about speaking out for women who get stalked & abused and thus I like, don’t feel super comfortable knifing a character who is written as a figurehead for “don’t abuse women or stalk/kill them” down as a slasher boy in-game? (Kind of a weird choice by the devs tbh). I like her a lot though. It’s cool that she rebelled against gender stereotypes even though it made home life really hard, and did it in a society where that’s even more complicated than where I’m from, and that she carved her own path despite a lot of obstacles, defended herself against a guy who was entitled to her body because he’d seen her, beat him, and then went through PT and recovery and got back to racing and was kind of a figurehead of speaking out against violence against women and had a whole biker gang devoted to that. She’s very hardcore.
Zarina is also cool. I like her whole “search for the truth” freedom fighter thing. Her perks are really neat & I think the way she’s tied to Caleb is cool. It’s been a while since there’s really been a connection between killer and survivor (I mean, ST I guess, but the Demogorgon has no personal connection to those two, it’s just from their world, so to me it’s been since like, Jeff), and this is an interesting way for them to be connected. You’ve got Nea having trespassed in the Nurse’s workplace, Benedict went looking for answers at the MacMillan estate, and Jeff having been friends with Legion in highschool, but other than that and the licensed survivors who get taken with the monster hunting them (Quentin, Laurie, Tapp, Heather, etc), most survivors have no connection. It’s neat that she went looking for truth and trying to see if Caleb was a monster like history paints him, and that’s why she got taken. Kinda sad too, because part of what made Caleb end so violent was that the justice system was super unfair to him, and probably if he knew all of Zarina’s history, he would appreciate her and get some weird small amount of solace from it (I’m not about to suggest he’d like, reform or something, but like, it would probably matter to him, and he’d probably take it easy on her in trials, even if his life didn’t fundamentally change much), but he’ll almost certainly never know that. Her backstory is brutal but kinda real, and it sucks a lot for her that her whole life has been unfair, and then she got snatched by the Entity too. : / I like her though.
Nancy & Steve I like, although it’s weird to me they were the pair taken lol. It would have made more sense if it was Nancy and Jonathan, or Steve and his bff Robin. ST seems like a weird addition to me, because I don’t think of it as horror, but that said, I really feel like they missed out by adding Steve & Nancy as their survivors period, even though these are both characters I like in the show. See, almost without fail before that, the licensed characters taken were either from stories finished being told, or dead/presumed dead, and that was really cool (I mean, Halloween I guess not, but Halloween doesn’t count because it’s already got like 6 timelines going--what’s one more?). It was great to see Quentin get a second life through DbD, and Tapp just dies offscreen presumably in Saw 1, so he was a great pick for someone to develop further in a different story--same reason he’s the first protag of the Saw video games. That was a really cool way to do things, and I think they should have stuck to it. It was smart, and awesome, and a lovely idea. ST, however, isn’t even finished getting seasons. And especially with that being the case, it’s weird to just have some totally undeveloped and unmotivated AU where part way between seasons...2 & 3? Nancy calls....Steve? And just Steve? To help her look something up? And they go missing together? Like, if you wanted a ST episode, which could have been really amazing, I’d have way preferred you stick to your OG, really cool guns & drag in a dead or underutilized character and give them new life than create an unmotivated AU where some probably happy in main-stream canon character is now trapped in hell for the publicity grab. I’m not actually, like, bothered about them being in-game or smth if that sounds harsh, I just am a little bit sad they didn’t go with their old modus operandi and do something really cool! Like, ST has a terrible track record for killing off characters for no GD good reason post season-one and DbD YOU COULD HAVE UTILIZED THAT FAILING SO WELL. You could have done amazing things!!! Like, Alexi gets to have a second life in DbD? Sign me the fuck up, he was my favorite character in Season 3! I fkn DIG that. OR UH. GIVE ME FUKCING BOB. I WOULD NEVER PLAY ANYONE BUT SEAN ASTIN AGAIN. I”M JUST SAYING. WHY TF DID YOU NOT PICK THE MUCH BETTER OPTIONS AND DO WHAT YOU USED TO DEVS I HATE IT.
So anyway none of this is revolutionary but here’s my short form thoughts on the other survivors that weren’t in ILM. Thanks for the ask! ^u^
#dead by daylight#ask#anonymous#long post#bill overbeck#zarina kassir#yui kimura#ash williams#nancy wheeler#steve harrington#heather mason#spoilers
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[ a fic written for @mine-sara-sp‘s shadow people au, specifically the “season 7 shadows” au-of-an-au. fun fact, simplysarc did a series with zedaph once. ]
content warnings: possession.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 00
Okay, so they’re still working out all the issues with the shadow mob - apparently it wasn’t supposed to become a new form of artificial intelligence, who’d have thunk it? X managed to do some admin stuff and port the old shadows over, though, so I’ve still got Merino.
A lot of the new shadows have turned out, uh, concerning though? Bdubs got a plant monster even though the whole nHo plotline was two entire seasons ago, Grian’s is - well I don’t know what Grian’s is, but it’s got wings and eyes on it. Honestly, even Joe’s new one seems sort of off-putting for some reason. Keeps staring at me.
Or maybe there was just something on my face that day and he was too polite to point it out?
Whatever the case, I kind of want to get my hands on some shadow equipment as soon as possible, mostly so I can fend off Grian’s double-trouble shadows. Which means I’ve gotta head into the shadowlands as soon as possible, and I figure I’m gonna do it right now before my new shadow ends up sentient and has back pain from me trying to get a full armor set.
Also, I’m taking notes, because that’s the difference between science and screwing around.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 01
I have to admit, I was really worried about going into the shadow temple and doing the whole summoning thing considering that so many people have gotten big spooky monsters as their shadows. I guess the devs wanted to buff them because some of the stuff that happened with people’s shadows, like Shadoc and Murmur?
But, you know what? Everything went great! Sort of. Okay, so I didn’t actually see my shadow because I double-summoned it as quickly as possible and then leapt right on into the shadowlands. I’m sure it’ll be fine - it seems like you can hit any yellow-colored shadow with the scythe to get out, and guess what I got on my first run of the shadow boss! And… the second one. And the third one.
I think it’s probably a guaranteed drop.
I had to leave after three fights, though, because it turns out they definitely nerfed the livability of this dimension when they updated the Nether to be more homey. If you stick around for too long, you start getting slowness; stick around even longer, you get a really slow version of wither. Supposedly there’s a third drawback, something about the bottom of the shadowlands. I didn’t read the update notes too closely.
Anyway, I’ll have to go back soon, I want a full armor set and I only managed to get the chestplate - you know, the piece of armor I probably won’t use most of the time. Oh well, having spare scythes isn’t that bad.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 03
Full armor set obtained. Also, I think the third consequence for staying in the shadowlands too long is bugged. I got the slowness and wither effects in the middle of finishing off the last boss, and when I headed back to leave, it looked like something was rising from the bottom of the abyss?
But the animation sort of… looped, glitchily, like the amorphous blob of shadow was only consuming the bottom layers of the shadowlands repeatedly and not actually advancing upwards. So, yeah, it might be bugged.
I did get hit with a killer headache when I left the shadowlands this time, though. But hey, I don’t actually have to go back there for a good amount of time when I have the full set of gear, so I don’t have to worry about getting a post-shadowlands-exploration headache for a little while.
Merino’s been staring at me like there’s something wrong, recently, I’m not sure what’s going on. I tried to ask them and they just said it was nothing.
I guess it’s nothing to worry about, then. Maybe they just want me to get back to herding sheep so they can kill them again, like old times. I’ll do that.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 04
Okay, maybe there’s something to worry about. Thing is, Merino’s not the only shadow that’s been staring at me. Now it’s Joe’s new shadow - Joyful - tailing me, and Puzzler - Grian’s brand-new bastard - is always watching me specifically when it’s not being creepy at Grian.
I’d assume they’re jealous of my really cool clothing, but the shadowvex are normally all over that kind of thing and both the old and new ones are… I think they might be avoiding me? Which would be super convenient if not for the fact that it’s very out-of-character for them to outright avoid people.
The other thing is that… I still have that headache from exiting the shadowlands. Maybe that’s the third consequence, is a really long-lasting headache that can’t be cancelled out by milk? Either way… ugh. Just, ugh, I’ll start seeing what might cure it.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 05
I’m going to talk about the not-interesting part of today first, because I know someone’s reading these notes and I think it’s more fun if I add narrative spice to their poking and prodding.
Yeah, that’s right, buddy, I’m talking about you. I don’t know who you are but I know you’re reading this. (Are you Joyful? I think you’re probably Joyful.)
Anyway, boring parts first! I went into the shadowlands again to test something - turns out, the headache debuff might be a thing that happens when I’m not in that dimension, because the moment I teleported there, it went away. That was a real relief, honestly, because I’d had a rough morning. The glitchy stuff at the bottom of the abyss was still glitching, everything seemed as normal as a weird dark hellscape could be.
So, about the rough morning…
I was heading out to the shadow temple to do more shadowlands testing when someone grabbed me by the back of the collar. Biffa’s old shadow, Apex - I could tell it was him and not the nearly identical new one, on account of his visor being up and his eyes being blue. And, y’know, him lifting me up by the collar.
Basically, we had a talk - apparently, according to him, there’s something very bad in the bottom of the shadowlands. He called it the “old shadows” and told me that since I was there so often, I should be extremely careful.
He said even the Vex were scared of it. I told him that the old shadows seemed to be glitched, because last time I saw them they were only rising up to a certain point (and my trip inside later proved it). Apex just dropped me, and shook his head, told me to be careful again.
So yeah, Joyful, there’s your juicy tidbits for the day. While you’re reading these, d’you mind helping me clean my desk? It’s the least you could do in exchange for me letting you snoop around my stuff.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 06
Something really weird happened.
Grian’s been menaced by Puzzler a lot lately, and I sort of ended up running into one of those menacement sessions? I figured I should chip in and help out, so I butted into the conversation and tried to be obnoxiously cheerful, as Puzzler plays nice around anyone that isn’t Grian.
The second I popped out of the bushes with a “he-LLO guys!” though, purple shadow jerk’s eyes widened - all of them, even the ones on its wings - and it took a step back. Eyes flicked from me to Grian and then back again.
“He’s dangerous,” it told Grian, and then flew off.
I have no idea what that was about, because it’s not like I’m particularly skilled at PvP or even PvE, and I don’t have a special creepy shadow like Joe (or any shadow besides Merino, actually). Grian didn’t seem to know what was going on, either, but he thanked me for the help.
My headache flared up as soon as he approached… went from background annoyance to full-on migraine. Grian seemed worried, but I told him it was really just a me problem and that I’d be fine.
After that, I headed out to the shadowlands for a bit, because my head just wouldn’t stop pounding and I needed a break from it. I didn’t do any dungeon-crawling this time, just sat on the uppermost layer and stared into the abyss.
It didn’t stare back because, y’know, it’s a pit, pits don’t have eyes, but the cool air made me feel a lot better and when I returned my headache was less bad.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 07
So apparently the person reading my notes isn’t Joyful, because I confronted him today and he seemed… super, super on edge, but about something entirely else. Apparently, he’s got some sort of outcome-controlling power, except he can’t use it on me. He says that he blanks on the words whenever it comes to me.
He said I should be careful. And then my headache flared up again, particularly badly this time, and Joyful got concerned and said he’d leave me alone for the time being.
I tried to track down Puzzler again, since it seemed to actually know what was going on with me, but nobody’s seen Grian’s shadow around in a while, even Grian himself. From what Grian says, Puzzler might have gotten desummoned somehow, and nobody really wants him resummoned except for the shadowvex.
I really hope I don’t run into desummoned Puzzler in the shadowlands next time I go, because that would be even worse.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 07.1
Maybe the old shadows are rising. The glitchy abyss seemed to have risen up a little more than before - I was going to leave off the week’s entry before, but I wanted to make note of this before I forgot to do so.
I didn’t see Puzzler anywhere, though.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 08
Still no sign of Puzzler. Good riddance, Grian says. But now, in addition to the other shadows, even the jerks like Apex and Jigsaw are starting to avoid me, and I’m really not sure why. I don’t think I’ve changed much as a person, and none of the other hermits have come up with anything.
Joyful used to sort of watch me from around corners, and now he’s intensified that activity. If he wasn’t reading my notes before, then he definitely is now. So, uh, hi - please stop staring at me, and actually talk to me? I promise I’m not going to start a fight.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 09
I woke up and my mouth tasted like oil.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 09.1
Okay, I don’t remember writing the first part of this entry, so I guess I must have woken up really early, written it, and then immediately fallen asleep again? Best guess, I might actually be sick - between the headaches and now me feeling a little woozy while in the overworld, I’ve probably gotten a very mild version of the bends.
So I stayed in bed today, drifted in and out of sleep as a couple of the other hermits stopped in. One of them - the guy that stuck around the longest - was Joe.
Apparently nobody’s seen Joyful around for a few days…
I’m not an idiot. Something’s wrong.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 09.2
Snuck out of bed to check the shadowlands. The old shadows rose another few blocks. I watched the abyss for a few minutes, glad to be rid of all the weird illness symptoms, and then I felt a hand rest on my shoulder. They didn’t push me, so I just let them leave it there for a minute more…
And then I turned to look up at them, and there was nobody there. The hand still felt like it was on my shoulder, but nobody was actually there.
I should probably not go to the shadowlands again.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 10
So, I’ve abstained from going to the shadowlands for a while now, but shadows keep vanishing, and my bends keep getting worse and worse. It’s the new shadowvex, this time, they’re just straight up gone-gone. Can’t be summoned even to go into the shadowlands.
Man, this new mechanic is really buggy.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 10.1
I caved.
The abyss has risen higher.
It’s not staring back yet.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 11
I keep waking up places that I don’t remember going to sleep. I’ve decided this is way too dangerous, because I’m pretty sure I’m the reason that shadows keep vanishing. So far it’s been mostly the mean ones. I don’t want them to get at anyone else, either one of the nice shadows or one of the actual hermits.
I also don’t remember writing the entry for 10.1, so it’s safe to say that something is horribly, awfully wrong. And it’s probably my fault…
I have a dumb idea - I’m gonna see if jumping into the abyss does anything. Maybe it’ll reverse all this if I die to the mechanic? Also, it’d be my first death on this new server, and that’d be a pretty neat way to go out.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 11.1
So I’m standing there, fully prepared to yeet myself into the abyss, when I feel a hand on my shoulder again. And this time, when I turned around, there was something there.
I’m pretty sure it was my shadow, because it had the same proportions as me, only it was absolutely as pitch-black as the abyss below. I couldn’t make out any details besides yellow eyes and the glint of sharp white teeth when it spoke.
“Not yet,” it told me.
And now I’m back in the overworld somehow. My mouth tastes like oil again.
ZEDAPH - S7 - 12
Xisuma’s gone.
...My eyes have always been yellow, right?
ZEDAPH - S7 - 13
It told me, one last thing, the place I should go when it’s all done.
Craterville.
I’m going to see an old friend.
#THIS IS NOT CANON BECAUSE IF IT IS THEN HC WOULD BE OVER.#RIP THE FUCKING SERVER#yt#txt#shadow people au#zedaph
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23:32
[Author’s Note: Similar to some of the other things I’ve written, this is based off of something from a roleplay I’m part of on Twitter. My writing partner has a headcanon she wrote about and incorporated into CuriosCat answer, and I saw a wonderful opportunity for angst. That being said, feel free to check out what sparked this by clicking the link. She also wrote Nadia’s version of everything. Enjoy!]
To say it had been a long day would be an understatement. Lucio had been in a mood, cursing and damning anyone and anything that had the misfortune of crossing his path. No matter what Julian was doing, he had to drop it for it was Jules this and Jules that. Oh, how he despised that name. Jules. And in that godawful accent of his. However, it was better than hearing him whine when saying his full name. There were days where hearing the Count just breathe would spark the most annoying headache and today had quickly become one of those days. Due to Lucio and his tantrums, it had become impossible for Julian to run off to meet with the Countess, per their ritual. He almost didn’t have time to write a note in place of meeting her, explaining why he couldn’t and how he’d make it up to her.
He could’ve used the excuse of being a doctor and needing to check on the Countess, but Lucio wasn’t entirely stupid. He’d catch onto that eventually and then when she’d actually need him, he wouldn’t be able to assist. Now wasn’t the time for the doctor to burn the only bridge he had with Lucio, no matter how one-sided their relationship was, as Nadia was expecting and needed a physician ready should anything happen.
In fact, that was one of the reasons he decided to spend most of his days at the palace. It was to watch over her. He knew from the moment her symptoms started to show that this wouldn’t be easy on anyone involved, but she was determined. Both she and Lucio seemed excited, and that was all the doctor needed to push aside his feelings and be professional. He had made the decision to cut back on their activities, but he couldn’t cut ties completely, so he had settled with daily talks and occasional kisses. Nadia had become his addiction and letting her go cold turkey would’ve ended badly. Plus, it would’ve looked suspicious to everyone else if he were to simply disappear once it was announced the Countess was with child. However, he had a feeling Lucio knew but didn’t care. Much like how Nadia knew of her husband and Valerius.
Lucio had clung to Julian as he tried to leave for the night, trying to get in bed with him by saying “C’mon, Jules. You’re the doctor. Don’t you know that this is the best way to make me feel better?”
Julian let out a heavy sigh as he managed to free himself from the Count’s grasp. “Lucio, no. I’m not in the mood to hear you talk about how great you were—“
“But you admit I’m great, right?” At that, Lucio had the smuggest smirk on his face, putting his hands on his hips in victory. What the doctor wouldn’t give to wipe that smirk off his face…
Julian deflated a little, bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose as he closed his eyes. “Shut up, you twit… Not today.”
The Count’s smirk quickly turned into a pout and then a sneer as he finally waved the doctor off and turned on his heel, walking away. “Fine, I’ll go bother Valerius. But don’t think this is over, Jules! I’ll remember this attitude when I finally—“
“Yes, yes, I know! Now good night, your royal highness,” he retorted with a role of his eyes and middle finger.
Finally free of the childlike count, Julian cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, letting out the biggest sigh. He stood there in silence for a moment or two before draping his long jacket over his arm and walking out of the palace. A hand came up to rub his face as he walked, mind shutting off from all of the useless work he was made to do throughout the day.
Maybe that was why Lucio kept him busy. The fact he knew and could potentially be jealous wasn’t something the doctor gave much thought to until now. In fact, he was mentally kicking himself for not thinking of it sooner because Lucio was childish enough to get jealous of his wife getting into the doctor’s pants when he couldn’t, despite having Valerius on the side already.
It was moments like this where he wished he had his sister or even aunt around, so he could talk about the things going on in his mind. But alas, he had made the decision to leave them behind years ago to study medicine. Now he only had Mazelinka who spent more time scolding him than anything. However, she had her moments when it was clear something was bothering the man. Part of Julian was hoping she would be home when he showed up and the other part hoped she wasn’t so he wouldn’t feel bad going to the tavern to drink the night away. Or maybe he’d actually get some sleep tonight.
The idea of sleep seemed far more attractive to the doctor than staying at the tavern. With that in mind, his feet took him down the paths through Vesuvia, avoiding most of the remaining evening traffic by slipping through dark alleyways. He knew the city like the back of his hand and found himself walking with his eyes closed for most of his journey.
By the time he reached Mazelinka’s cottage, he didn’t have the energy to take the window like he usually did. He was emotionally worn out and all he wanted to do was lie down. He opened the too-short door and called out for the owner.
“Mazelinka? Are you awake?” he closed the door behind him, hanging his coat on the hook next to the exit. He looked around, not seeing any signs of life, which either meant the old woman was asleep or out.
After checking behind the curtain that led to the small “bedroom,” if one was to even consider it that, and crouching down to check the cubby in the floor, Julian pressed his lips into a line before teeth sunk into the bottom one.
“Must be out raising Hell…” he murmured as he stood, knees cracking from the change in position.
He ran his hands through his hair as he walked back to the “bedroom,” falling face first onto the mattress. Arms snaked themselves under the pillow as he buried his face into it, eyes closed and mind completely off before he even landed.
The next thing Julian knew, he was being shaken awake by Mazelinka. He had no idea how much time had passed or when she had gotten back, but all he could focus on was how concerned she looked. He quickly sat up, any remaining tiredness being left on the pillow.
“Mazelinka, what happen—“
“There are guards… From the palace. What did you do, Ilyushka?” The woman’s voice dropped to a hiss as she questioned the doctor, hitting him in the shoulder.
He blinked repeatedly as he rubbed where she hit him. Guards from the palace? At this hour? He glared at the woman, reaching out to stop her hand before she could hit him again. “Stop. I didn’t do anything. I told you I’m just a friend and the leading physician.”
His voice trailed off as it finally hit him. Nadia.
He pushed the older woman onto the bed as he launched off of it, making his way to the door as fast as possible. He threw it open and was met with two out of breath soldiers.
“Dr—Dr. Devorak. You’re needed…”
“It’s the Countess!”
Julian didn’t need to hear anything else they had to say, nor did he say anything to Mazelinka before he took off running out of the cottage. Of course something would happen on the one night he tried to sleep! This was just his luck. Now he had to run as fast as he could through Vesuvia and pray to God she was still alive when he got there.
“Dr. Dev-Devorak! Wait up!” the two soldiers called for him, but he wasn’t listened. There were only two things on his mind at the moment and they were to keep running and prayers that Nadia was OK.
In his panicked state, he had made it to the palace in a third of the time it would’ve normally taken him. The gate was already open, presumably so that the soldiers who went to fetch him could make a hasty return.
There was no time for pleasantries as he ran by guards and burst through the doors leading into the palace. He looked around and saw one of the midwives who kept him updated on things as this was most definitely not his field of expertise. She was nervously chewing on her thumbnail as she paced from wall to wait. He came to a stop in front of her, breathing heavy. He tried asking where she was, but the words just wouldn’t come out. He was aware that he looked more like the distressed partner than the professional doctor, but he didn’t care. Part of his job, especially here at the palace, was to make sure nothing happened to his patients, and now something was happening to his dearest patients.
The midwife pointed in the direction of Nadia’s chambers and the doctor took off once more. This time, he didn’t run, needing to catch his breath before he ran into anyone else. He needed to keep his hands busy, so he decided to roll his sleeves up. His jaw was set as he made his way through the corridors, not stopping to talk to a soul until he reached the wing where everything was happening.
His breath caught in his throat as he saw the chaos flowing in and out of the Countess’ bedroom. He placed a hand on the wall to steady himself, taking a few seconds to pull himself together. He took a few deep breaths before he started walking towards the room.
“Someone update me. Now.”
His voice caught the attention of some of the maids that were hovering around. Those who turned to look at him looked as distraught as he felt, but he didn’t dare let that show now.
“M-milady… She said she wasn’t feeling well earlier…”
“So she… She retired early.”
“Then the next thing we knew, she was screaming for help.”
Julian listened to the women as they talked, trying to figure out when the Countess could’ve retired for the evening and if he was still here or not. There was good chance he was and that annoyed him. She knew she could always tell him if she wasn’t feeling well, so what stopped her this time?
“Coming through!” The head midwife called as she pushed through the door, carrying a small bundle, both her and the bundle covered in blood.
He swallowed hard as he took a step to the side, but the woman stopped in front of him anyway. “It’s no good,” she said. “Poor thing just wasn’t meant for this world…” While her voice had sadness to it, it also held a sense of professionalism as if this wasn’t the first time she had delivered a stillborn, and it probably wasn’t. “Dr. Devorak, while you’re here, can you declare her deceased?”
“A little girl, huh…” his voice was quiet as he carefully took the bundle from the midwife and examine her. He used the cloth she was wrapped in to wipe the slime and blood away, not wanting any of it to get on his hands if he is to go check on the Countess after this. However, doing so provided him with quite the shock. That wasn’t blonde hair underneath it all. It was red.
Oh, God. He felt sick.
“Dr. Devorak?” the midwife asked, noticing the change in the doctor’s demeanor.
“O-oh, yes… Uh… I—she’s gone. I can’t find a heartbeat and I cannot detect any signs of her b-breathing…” He turned his head into his shoulder and coughed into it, clearing his throat. Grey eyes scanned the hall for a clock, “Time of death 23:32.”
The midwife nodded as she carefully took the bundle from Julian. “I’ll take her down to the morgue for now. What should I tell the Count?”
“Don’t tell him anything. He’ll want to hear it from me. The rest of you can go. I’ll take care of the Countess for the rest of the night.” He grabbed the handle of the door and stopped, turning to look at the women. “Actually, one of you go and find Lucio. If he says he’s busy, tell him I sent you and for him to find me immediately.”
He stared each one of them down until he received some form of sign that they heard him and walked off. Once they were gone, he turned back to the door and pressed his forehead to it, taking deep breaths. It hadn’t crossed his mind that there was possibility of the child being his. He just assumed that it was always Lucio’s as he and the Countess were together more often than he was with her. He felt the tell-tale tickle in his nose and burning in his eyes.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
His knuckles tightened around the handle as he took one more breath. He needed to pull himself together for her. He was her doctor, for God’s sake! So without hesitating any longer, he opened the door and walked into the dark room. It looked like Hell had fallen upon it and he was sure everyone felt it had.
He motioned to the door with his head, signaling for the remaining maids to take their leave. “It’s okay. I’ve got it from here,” he tried to keep his voice soft, not wanting to disturb the Countess, but judging by the way she jumped, she wasn’t expecting him or anyone to speak up.
He stood off to the side as the maid’s finished gathering all of the soiled sheets and blankets, having laid fresh ones out for the Countess but were being kicked out before they could finish the job. Nadia was curled up in the chair, facing the balcony. Truth be told, he had never seen her so vulnerable and it broke his heart.
“Nadia, my dear… Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling well?” he asked quietly, gently, closing the door once the final maid had left with an armful of bloodied blankets.
There was a small sniffle from the Countess, serving as the only response he would get from her.
He frowned as he walked over to her and carefully lifted her up. “C’mere, love…” he cooed, taking her spot in the chair, now holding her on his lap. He kept his arms around her tightly as she buried her face into the crook of his neck. She wasn’t a woman who broke down easily and she never wanted the world to see her tears. So it didn’t surprise him that she shut down like this.
A hand rubbed soothing circles on her back as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He murmured sweet words to her. “Everything will be OK… I’m here.”
However, his words barely scratched the surface of his own emotions. He knew Nadia was going through something he could never understand and the last thing he wanted was to make her feel even worse by asking if she had seen it to. And he didn’t want to say anything else for fear she might blame herself for not calling for him sooner or blame him for not being here when he should’ve known better.
His thoughts were interrupted by Nadia’s soft voice after what felt like ages but was closer to thirty minutes. “Nadira…”
“Hm…?” He hummed, pulling back enough to look down at the woman in his arms.
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “That’s what I want to name her… Nadira.”
His heart either stopped or skipped a beat, he couldn’t tell. He smiled softly at her before nodding a little. “I think that’s a beautiful name, Countess…”
#nadian#nadia satrinava#julian devorak#ilyushka devorak#thearcana#content warning#trigger warning#stillbirth#loss of child#angst#the arcana drabbles#drabble#my rp partner answered a question and it prompted this
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How Dragon Age Has Changed Me
This probably isn't as epic an essay as it should be, or as I would like it to be, but I'll try to make it coherent at least.
I first fell into Dragon Age around the time that DAII was new. My best friend and I were at the video game store and I saw the games on display, and casually mentioned that someone I knew from online had been talking about some guy named Fenris. My BFF bought both of the games and, a few days later, informed me that I needed to play the first one in particular because it was going to hook me. I demurred for a bit, but finally broke down and tried it; we were staying at my parents' house while they were on a trip, taking care of their animals and pretending to throw wild parties, and I fired up the BFF's PS3 while she went to bed.
Just one more cutscene, I kept telling myself. I have to know what's coming next. Just one more... wait, is that the sunrise??
I should note that Alistair in particular reminds me a bit of my real-life husband, and I suspect that this was part of why my BFF insisted that I play it. She ended up buying me my own used PS3 for my birthday that year, just so I could play the games whenever I want.
Dragon Age gave me an extra means of bonding with my best friend. It also gave me a means of bonding with the person I consider my second closest friend, whom I dragged into the fandom purely as a beta reader for my fanfic and who has stayed in it with me ever since. It gave me a new creative outlet for my writing. I love it for the same reason I love Skyrim, and the Zelda games - as a person with invisible disabilities, I'm probably never going to save the world or be anybody's hero; but when I step into Thedas, I get to be the person I've always wished I could be.
But above all else, Dragon Age gave me Varric.
Varric is the character who - well, who has ultimately helped me to feel like it's okay to be myself. No, I'm not a snarky and charismatic dwarf (though how fun would that be?), but he and I have a lot of things in common, almost a disturbing amount. Some are a little too personal for such an essay, but we're around the same age and have a number of similar incidents in our respective pasts. We are also both writers, and we write our stories in very much the same way, by letting the characters dictate to us and by feeling like we’re never quite alone inside our own heads. Honestly, I feel like he lives in my head anymore, because I’ve written so many stories with him as my narrative character, and because I relate to him so strongly it feels very natural to write from his perspective.
Varric honestly means more to me than any other fictional character ever has, and the fact that he is so flawed and so burdened, and yet so determined to do the right thing as much as he can, helps me to feel like it's okay that I'm all these things too. I've written to Mary Kirby about how much I love the dwarf, and discussed him with her on Twitter; I imagine she probably wonders about my sanity, but she's always been extremely gracious with me. I'm the only person I know who has a signed copy of Hard in Hightown!
So thank you, Bioware. Thank you devs, writers, artists, and everyone who is in some way connected with the creation of these beautiful games. Thank you for giving us our own Golden City to visit, and the fantastic cast of characters who greet us when we arrive. May we always bare our blades and raise them high.
Submitted by Lady Norbert (https://ladynorbert.tumblr.com)
Thank you for joining the celebration!
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2019 October Update
Woops, I slipped by my stated blog date since I thought September had 31 days for some reason. So here's the end of September update, 1 day late.
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Writing... And more writing.
That captures the majority of what transpired the last 2 months. The biggest cutscenes have been scripted as well as most towns, so we're really close... I estimate that the writing will conclude within the next 3 *weeks* and we will actually have a game that can be played from start to finish... Don't get too excited though, because then begins the game's vigorous playtesting phase and more polish. And since I've never launched a commercial game before, the next steps (PR, marketing, lot checking, ESRP rating application, trailers recutting, release date finding, etc) are uncharted territory. The only experience I have is launching a flash game 5 years ago, and that was a lot quicker and a lot less complicated... And so, I can't gauge how long it'd take nor give an accurate release date yet. However, as soon as I do know, it'll be sure to post it here first!
--- COMPUTER BROKE DOWN ---
Among the events that transpired in the last 2 months, my computer actually broke down. It would manifest as the computer shutting off about 10 minutes after turn on. And this was really worrisome because if my computer croaked, it would be a huge blow to the game's development. The time it would take to restore the specific dev environment I had set up would be considerable...
Luckily, it was repaired after 4 days of intense troubleshooting. I'll spare you the long list of events that transpired, but eventually my brother and I were able to narrow the problem down to non-spinning fans on the graphics card. I was able to zippo-tie two chassis fans together, and insert them below the Gfx Card's heat sink. Much cheaper than replacing the whole graphics card!
(please hold until the game's done)
--- MORE PLAYTESTING CHANGES ---
I'll discuss here some additional fixes/changes to the game based on my brother's previous playthrough (still going through that list, heh...)
F. Remember you can climb roots
I remember from a public demo I attempted (3 years ago?), that a lot of people got stuck at these roots, not realizing they could be climbed. Since then, we did a few things to ensure that the first encountered roots would be climbed. The roots' colors were brightened so they would stand out. A character, Ernest, comments that others have climbed the roots. And finally, standing in front of the roots will cause the "Press UP" tutorial prompt to appear.
So how did my brother fare when I did the playtest 2 months ago? He climbed the roots, thankfully. He climbed the next few sets as well. However, later on, in a dungeon, he forgot that climbable roots were a thing. Back to square one. So there's a lesson here... Even if you teach a player something, there's no guarantee that it'll stick.
So in the picture above, you can see my next attempt at an invisible hand to remind the player. In the red circle, notice there are 4 blue dots. These blue dots pulsate wherever there are climbable roots (They're a lot more visible in motion). The idea is to tie an unusual image to an action. I anticipate when the player sees 4 pulsating dots, they'll react by attempting a variety of actions, before eventually concluding that you can only climb them. And that this experience will be more memorable for it - to be conjured up whenever the player sees 4 blue dots. I look forward to observing what happens with the next blind playtester. (Btw, in reading this blog, you have disqualified yourself from playtesting :P)
G. Instant Food Eating
As stated in a previous blog post, the player can't eat from the menu. Food must be eaten in real-time. It's up to the player to find a safe spot to eat, away from interruptions. Some foods can be eaten more quickly, proving more valuable in a fight.
However, what about on the world map?
You can't use tools or items on the world map, which means no healing at all! I saw my brother opening the menu and tinkering around, confident that it could be done. Because why couldn't you?
Indeed... he didn't say anything, but I wrote it down as a feature to be added. And after adding it, found that eating from the menu was fun! After years of using the new system, to have the old flash system's implementation of healing again was refreshing.
And so I decided to add it as a possible new characteristic of food. There's now a special class of food, "candy", that actually can be used from the menu (world map or no). Rest assured, candy items will be balanced - costing more than regular food, and their healing effects will tend to be less than other more timely items.
(the “eat” subcommand appears for "candy" class items. The candy icon on the bottom-right denotes a candy class item)
H. Fishing Hud finally updated
This wasn't something discovered through playtesting, more of an unfinished task that sat around for far too long.
(Old fishing hud on left. New fishing hud on the right)
In the old fishing hud (perhaps an example of minimalism taken too far), the fish's health is represented by 10 white dots. In the new fishing hud, the fish's health lines up and mirrors the player's own stamina. Whoever outlasts the other wins!
I had actually been sitting on the finalized graphics for over a year. For some reason, the last 10% implementation of a feature tends to be the most boring. In game development, I find myself jumping around often, working on whatever can catch my interest. That's good for ensuring that the game's development is always moving forward in *some* capacity. But now at the tail end of development, only the most boring tasks are left...
--- WRITING ---
So I mentioned writing. One of the things written in the last 2 months was the entirety of the "monster" village's NPCs. This time I also roped in Pirate (formerly artist, now also writer), since she's quite familiar with their lore having drawn them and their town.
When I wrote trolls, I wanted to give them a unique speech, not unlike the Mr. Saturns from Earthbound. My idea was to capitalize all words and then strip away as many unnecessary words as I could, while keeping the meaning identical.
Pirate then took the result and improved upon it, establishing rules their language could follow to be consistent:
Simplified negatives (no instead of not/don’t/can’t/etc);
Object pronouns replace subject, possessive and reflexive pronouns (me/name instead of I/my/mine/myself).
No ‘be’ verb or it’s conjugations (am, is, are).
No verb conjugation.
No articles.
(A sample of troll language. Harpy language is similar, but no caps, and a few other variations.)
Another neat thing that happened naturally over the past two months was a construction of a "timeline". The timeline takes the form of a 2D chart, with the major players lined up on the left, and the years up top. There are new characters this time around, and having the timeline as a reference, helps to make sure the lore is on point.
(the timeline, blurred. An internal tool to aid writing)
--- FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY ---
Speaking of which, it was the game's 5 year anniversary this past August 20th. Thank you to Firana for reminding me!
Five years... Five Years... T_T (I thought I'd be done by now)
It'd be neat to do a longer in-depth retrospective on this game's long development, but I'll wait for the game to be properly finished first.
--- FAN ART ---
We have 3 lovely fan arts that came in the past 2 months.
(Art by Amaury Lorin)
I like how this picture selectively colors the night sky, comet, and fire. Very artistic! Amaury also submitted a poem (in French). Here it is!
Parmi cette clarté que la nuit seule émet,
Au-dessus des radis géants qui s'épanouissent,
Nonobstant sans souci les herbes qui frémissent,
Sous un ciel calme et sombre, un village dormait.
Éprise de liberté, une puki part
Là-bas, quelque part où des prés plus verts la tenant.
"Oh, s'écrie un enfant, une étoile filante!"
Veille, enfant : pour tes grands yeux curieux seuls, ce soir,
Indifférente au sol précipité sur elle,
L'étoile tombe... Écoute, enfant, elle t'appelle;
L'étoile : "Suis-je un ange, un messager du ciel?
Avec mes feux, suis-je augure, ou suis-je étincelle?
Gloire d'un monde haut, d'une nuit éternelle...
Et j'arrive!" --Dors, enfant, tes yeux ont sommeil...
...mais demain...
(Art by LittleLys Owo)
Gale smiling and flashing the peace sign. Nice! I like the skillful use of vectors to draw the lineart.
(Art by Shafiyahh)
Shafiyahh, who also drew fanarts in the last update, returns with this cool picture of Gale sporting the katana, a hidden weapon that... JK. I Love the composition of characters, and the flashy background - very anime-esque!
That's all for now. Next update will come at the end of November!
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Yes, we’re down to the last few days of the Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter campaign, and backers have been talking full-time with developer Eric Zawadzki about all the options contained in the previews AND in the Stretch Goal projects. It’s been really great seeing folks come up with how popular (and unpopular, for that matter) characters in various media can be replicated in Deviant.
There’s been a ton of them, and it’s just awesome how flexible the character creation section is! Dave Brookshaw’s extensive process and playtesting is really paying off with a system that absolutely shines.
So, c’mon! Check it out while we’re still rolling and if you pledge you’ll be getting those sweet Stretch Goal projects as well as Deviant itself with your pledge!
And while Deviant is the last KS standing right now, our joint Creature Collection KS with Handiwork Games ended over the weekend with a satisfying amount that’s over 400% our funding amount, a great number of backers, and a fantastic 224 pages (we started with 160).
A huge round of thanks and appreciation to Handiwork and Jon and all his team over there! It is really one sweet project they put together – and even before the KS was over they had hired new writers and artists to start on the added sections. Our Creature Collection is in good hand(s) – iwork.
OK, even I think that’s a groaner, but I wrote it and it’s staying in as I gotta move on to the next topic!
They Came From Beneath the Sea! art by Brian Leblanc
Over the weekend, I also attended the SAVE convention in Harrisburg, PA. Not only was I joined by Eddy and Dixie, but surprise guest Neall Raemonn Price showed up! He was able to join us on panels, and we had a lot, I mean A LOT, of discussion of upcoming projects – tons of Scion talk, but also a couple of upcoming and currently secret projects.
SAVE itself was bigger than ever, and Saturday it was packed in the gaming area. Even more interesting to me, was the education and therapy tracks (as opposed to the game design and gaming ones I was in), because these were also packed with folks wanting to discuss and learn about how our hobby can be used to build understanding and help with therapeutic efforts.
What a fantastic place we are now in where we don’t have to only mention those anecdotal stories of roleplaying helping folks in their real lives, we now have real, practicing therapists and educators stepping up with methodologies. Very proud of my friends in the Bodhana Group for being forerunners in this effort!
On a personal gaming level, Friday night at the convention I stepped up and DM’d my long-time D&D world for the first time for adults in about thirty years. I just felt like if we’re publishing so many D&D 5e based game lines, I needed to be able to talk about them with experience, not just from playing a few campaigns.
So I girded my loins, converted an adventure I’d written that was published in White Wolf Magazine #15, and sat down with Eddy, Dixie, Neall, and Jen, Jack, and the Captain, from Bodhana. It was extremely fun, and very satisfying – even if we roleplayed so hard the party never actually got into the dungeon part!
They did however talk themselves into a free room at a very nice inn due to some high charisma dice rolling and simple chicanery, burn up two enemies and part of a pine forest, and team-work the hell out of young Frost Giant.
I’ve received a fair number of requests to continue the game, so that’s a good sign, and I’ll just have to see what I can do. Dunno if I’ve shaken off all the rust from decades of not running a game, but I also hate saying no to people who want to join me in my imaginary world. So….
Aeon Aexpansion art by Gong Studios
Last week also saw the release to the public of one of our secret projects: the phone app version of Pugmire! The folks at DTRPG used Pugmire as their first premiere project and worked up an awesome version of the core book, that they then offered as a free download – and I understand that they’ve had over 7,000 of those downloads!
Here’s a direct link:
https://phone.drivethrurpg.com/phone-pdf/?affiliate_id=4451
There’s are also some great games from other publishers on there, and we have at least one more project to add – again, one of the things we’ve been doing behind the scenes – you’d be surprised at how many of those are bubbling along right now!
Now for some useful sales info!
First, DTRPG is having their big Halloween Sale on DriveThruRPG and Storytellers Vault starting Wednesday the 16th and running until Halloween. Most of our Chronicles of Darkness PDFs will be on sale on both sites, plus there will be some Halloween Treats (i.e. free PDFs) hidden around the sites.
Here’s a link to a teaser for a Geist 2e game being run by Eric Campbell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GOzzE8b3Wc
Here’s a link to this very cool Scion teaser announcing the project is being translated and published in Spain by The Hills Press! We think it’s an excellent video, a super teaser, and we just couldn’t be happier to be working with these folks!
Maybe the next line should be “Many Teasers, One Path”… maybe not. Let’s stick with:
Many Worlds, One Path!
BLURBS!
Kickstarter!
The Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter has ONLY A FEW MORE DAYS to go and it’s vengefully slamming through Stretch Goals now! So far, we have the classic Backer T-Shirt, unlocked the Deviant Screen and Deviant wallpaper, added the Beast and Demon core book PDFs and Dark Eras PDFs to the CofD PDF collection, and added four sections of the Clades Companion book! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deviant-the-renegades-a-tabletop-roleplaying-game
Next up: Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition!
Onyx Path Media!
This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features last week’s Call-In Show – it was live at the time and undead now, so check out as our trio and some special call-in guests answer chat questions and chat with questions!
We’ve really increased production of content for our Twitch channel in the last week! Every day has new content, every day has a different game, and much of that content is now being transferred to our YouTube channel.
I’m going to link both here in case you’re not following / subscribed to them.
www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath & www/youtube.com/user/theonyxpath
It really helps us to have subscribers on our Twitch channel, and you can do so for free and catch premieres as they go up if you have an Amazon Prime account. Just type Twitch Amazon Prime into Google and you’ll be shown how to subscribe for free.
Also on our Twitch channel, we’ve been proceeding well with Character Creation Month, having created characters for Scarred Lands and Deviant: The Renegades. Also tied into those two games, Eric Zawadski has run a two-parter Deviant chronicle which will soon be transferred to YouTube, and Matthew Dawkins ran a very fun Scarred Lands meatgrinder, to show off some of the monsters from the Creature Collection. A different character dies in every scene!
We have so much fun content coming out soon, with this weekend hosting a Trinity Continuum character creation session, so please catch that if you’re at all interested in Trinity!
Remember, if you miss any content on our Twitch channel, some of it finds its way to our YouTube channel here: www.youtube.com/user/theonyxpath Don’t forget though, that some of that content is Twitch exclusive or belongs to the Storytellers running their games, so don’t miss out and remember to follow us!
Meanwhile, our fans keep creating excellent content for us, not limited to:
Occultists Anonymous for your Mage: The Awakening needs:
Episode 51: Portents of Doom
The recovered grimoire is returned to the Adamantine Arrows, but Wyrd the Seer discovers some concerning information.
https://youtu.be/_2UJbimcc_c
Episode 52: Rocks Fall…
Wyrd shares a surprise revelation before the cabal leaves for Peru. In Peru, the cabal searches for local Pentacle mages.
https://youtu.be/R56aMsiT81M
The Story Told Podcast for Exalted:
In the Fall of Jiara episode out this week, we hear a dramatic combat between Dragon-Blooded and Solars!: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/fall-of-jiara-16
Caffeinated Conquests wrapped up their actual play of V5: https://youtu.be/nCqrC3PPunI
Red Moon Roleplaying continue with their fantastic actual play of The Sacrifice for V5 over on their website: www.redmoonroleplaying.com
Maybe the most exciting news of the week is Eric Campbell will be running Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2E! Catch the teaser trailer here: https://youtu.be/3GOzzE8b3Wc
So much fantastic content, and more every week.
Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!
Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!
Electronic Gaming!
As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)
On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!
You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).
If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!
Our selection includes these fiction books:
Our Sales Partners!
We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire
We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game
Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost
Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!:
https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands
Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online
Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/
And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!
As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!
The big Halloween Sale on DriveThruRPG and Storytellers Vault starts Wednesday the 16th and runs until Halloween.
Most of our Chronicles of Darkness PDFs will be on sale on both sites, plus there will be some Halloween Treats (i.e. free PDFs) hidden around the sites.
On Sale This Week!
We’re releasing new Trinity Continuum: Aeon journals on our RedBubble store on Weds!
Conventions!
GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd
PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th
2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th
And now, the new project status updates!
DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):
First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)
Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)
Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)
N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)
Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)
Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)
Redlines
Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)
Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)
Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)
M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)
Second Draft
Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)
Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)
Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)
Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)
Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)
Development
Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)
City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)
Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)
TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)
Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)
Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)
Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)
One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)
Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Manuscript Approval
Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)
Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)
M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)
Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)
Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)
Post-Approval Development
Trinity Continuum: Aberrant (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)
Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)
Scion LARP Rules (Scion)
Editing
Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)
Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)
Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)
Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)
Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)
Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)
Legendlore core book (Legendlore)
WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)
Post-Editing Development
Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)
TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)
Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)
City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)
Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)
W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)
TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)
Indexing
Dystopia Rising: Evolution core (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)
ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!
In Art Direction
Contagion Chronicle – Sending out contracts.
Trinity Continuum: Aberrant
Hunter: The Vigil 2e – Sam on the fulls.
Ex3 Lunars – Contracted.
TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers
Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Workin’ on it.
Ex3 Monthly Stuff
Trinity RMCs – Contracted.
Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Contracted.
Chicago Folio – Looking for one more artist.
Mummy 2 (KS) – KS stuff in progress.
City of the Towered Tombs – Contracted.
Let the Streets Run Red – Right after Chi Folio art is in.
In Layout
They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Template created… system chapter done.
Dark Eras 2 – Aileen working on it.
Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds
VtR Spilled Blood – In progress.
Geist 2e Screen – Need notes from developer.
Proofing
C20 Cup of Dreams – Heading off for WW approval today.
M20 Book of the Fallen – Josh finishing cover.
DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – At Eschaton for approval.
Memento Mori – Layout proofing as art comes in.
At Press
Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.
TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.
Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.
Trinity Core – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.
Trinity Aeon – At Studio2 – shipping to backers.
V5: Chicago – Printing.
Aeon Aexpansion – Prepping for PoD.
DR:E Jumpstart – PoD proof ordered.
W20 Art Book – Backer PDF out to backers, PoD proof ordered.
Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Getting print files ready.
DRE Screen – Getting print files prepped.
Today’s Reason to Celebrate!
Today is the five year anniversary of Impish Ian Watson’s line of Social Justice Classes t-shirts, with Social Justice Paladin and Social Justice Wizard being particular favorites. You can find them at:
https://www.redbubble.com/…/c…/328337-social-justice-classes Congrats, Ian!
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Omg
People need to stop using what they think are intellectual arguments to try to shade at shit while COMPLETELY MISUSING IT.
Example: There was a cross in the reunion episode!
Okay, great, let’s look at all the other uses of crosses. Oh look, episodes about faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, and faith. Right after not believing in anything, not backshadowing him with the cross, reuniting, and then having the cross, only to later confirm he now has faith.
Thing someone thinks is occam’s razor: It could mean anything any time and at any moment could mean something totally different without any regard to the base themes being employed literally every time. It could just mean resurrection like jesus!
What’s actually occam’s razor: The cross is tied to faith theme episodes. Like, I don’t know. The episode Faith.
Y’all stop. It’s like arguing from an angle of belligerently intentional ignorance.
And losing your patience with people who have no idea what they’re talking about downtalking at people who know what they’re talking about, after fucking up and making their own bed to begin with while they stomp around like a child and get other angry bitter people stomping with them to make a fuss -- getting annoyed, at any point, is in no way the sign of being the More Logical Person. Sometimes you’re so illogical you piss everybody around you that knows what’s up, off. See: Kelios.
If your only victory point is staying calm while you piss off people that know better, you’re not smarter. You’re just annoying. You know how there’s that “annoying stupid Republican” idea floating around out there where they just can’t say anything without being annoying or infuriating? It started somewhere. And it’s not because Someone Lost To Them. It’s because ain’t nobody got the time for their Headass.
PS: It’s not “stuck up” to cite your actual career, education, or whatever else after already being driven up a wall by a bunch of bitter fansplaining from people who can’t grasp concepts like the above. If someone’s talking on an elementary school level to a person who works in an industry, the person will first gently tell them how it works, and when the child starts kicking and huffing and throwing insults, will call a parent, but if no parent’s available, they get “you’ll understand when you grow up” and that’s essentially what’s happening here.
Being intentionally fucking numbskulled about things because someone wants to be bitter and act like they understand a business, when they literally do not understand the business, and have shown they do not know the business, and continue to insist to yell down at people that know about the business, eventually makes people who know the business go “You do know I’ve done this for a living and you’re totally on crack, right?”
If all of the people with Actual Experience are saying a thing, maybe you should stop trying to Fansplain or Hobbysplain shit to them and actually consider adjusting your perspective instead of acting entitled all the time.
Imagine trying to be a trainee in a workplace with this attitude.
Machinist: Okay, these are the lathe codes. Just use these, and avoid this one.
Trainee: What’ll happen if I enter this instead.
Machinist: Don’t, that jams up the machine for some reason.
Trainee: That doesn’t make any sense! You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Machinist: Look, kid. Just don’t. If anything goes wrong, hit this emergency stop button.
Trainee: I’ve read online that some of those buttons break the machine
Machinist: I... look. Hit emergency stop if anything goes wrong.
Trainee: Don’t tell me what to do.
Machinist: I been working here 30 years kid.
Trainee: That doesn’t matter, you’re just pulling the experience card, I’m skilled too.
Machinist: .....
[ 2 hours later Trainee punches in code he’s told not to and bores at a bad angle and burns out a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar machine because he didn’t use emergency stop, loses his job ]
Ask me how I know a story like this, while we’re at it.
Frankly, no. Alone, a degree doesn’t count for a whole lot. There’s an assload of educated idiots that manage a passing grade and then never see the profession in the real world. But when the people who have been out there, in the real world, dealing in an area, are telling you what they know, maybe you should give it some consideration. But when that degree is, say, a double degree lit professor, or that degree is someone in marketing that’s also run all levels of the actual industry for years on end, maybe they might know a little something about something that your basic lit course or bitterness aren’t taking into account.
Apologies to you, random blogger #89234 with an interest in a thing, but if the accumulated hobby information you’ve collected is outright in conflict (see machinist example) of How Things Actually Work, you cease being a supreme authority, and if you start acting like a little prick about it to people who actually know the ropes, well -- we can’t fire you from the internet (as appealing as that sounds at times), but we can deadass tell you “you have no idea what you’re talking about.” HOW DO U KNOW “BECAUSE I’VE DONE THIS FOR A LIVING.” HUrRruUrURRRr thAT donT meaN anyTHING
Yes, yes it does. It means I’ve been there, I’ve watched things be set up, be destroyed, transition, be debated over, been in the heart of it. It means I’ve watched friends lose their gigs and get sidelined and others take off so hard we barely maintain contact anymore. It means I’ve had to listen to marketing groups piss and moan over working titles because it’s not X enough for Y demographic (you want to know a pain in the ass? marketing test group runs for pagan mythology LGBT friendly content in a southern religious conservative region --and you know what, I can release that, because it’s mine and a discontinued project now; unlike, say, if one of us happened to land at a CW/SPN marketing test group somewhere and happened to have to sign an NDA about what they were polling about).
It means I watch when a TPTB family member posts in a private facebook group and it means I talk to the sound dev crews about how they make certain things -- not some one off room-mating or the occasional DM or whatever, because we can all talk actual shop and not fanbuzz; in fact, I’ve BEEN a roommate people tried to get stuff out of and they probably walked away thinking they were super in-the-know while there’s a thousand things I didn’t/couldn’t say but they’d never know; and it means I know which of my fandoms have shared PAs you guys never knew by name; it means they can actually break out about the kind of lenses and audio devices they used to perform a certain shot and the abstract methods they attained it and I can actually come back with a suggestion that doesn’t embarrass both of us to sit out there in the air; it means I know how to appeal to a shifting demographic and discuss the problems in limited circulation.
It means that I know how the gears of a machine work and don’t just sit from the outside going “well maybe it’s-” no, it’s this, this, and that. No, you don’t get to pontificate what you think Actually Is In It when I literally know What Is In It. That isn’t how reality works. Well you can, but the reality of it is that no, your opinion or Hot Take(TM) aren’t equal. I don’t care if you’ve gone to teaparties with them, I really don’t.
The quickest way to get someone from a creative team to disengage from actual content conversation and instead feeding you fluff is when you obviously have no idea of the machinations involved and are coming as a fan or hobbyist. You don’t think people can tell the difference. You think you sound like you’re exceptional. But when you open your mouth it takes about two seconds for us to know.
I can turn a regional studio owner’s ear in the middle of a freaking dollar general by saying a few things; or a major music producer; why? Because we’ve been there. And we’ve been there long enough when y’all try to come up talking like you know shit.
Reality: You don’t. I don’t care how many clickbait articles someone has written. I literally have 0% care for how much public facing PR you’re fed. Or anything you think is non-public facing that they were willing to give You, the general You, a fandomite or hobbyist or yes, reporter. Hell, the latter list of LOL tends to think X rando directing assistant or whatever will have All The Secrets at a business level. Thing is, when I was any kind of PA or adjacent, I sure as hell didn’t delude myself into knowing everything going on above my head, just what I needed to know. Do it long enough and yes, you learn the business mechanics themselves but no one person beyond the upper executives is gonna know everything. Each knows what their job specification is.
Frankly, again I say, if you want to really know what’s going on, you check out what marketing is polling, because that’s what Big Business is putting in discussion, and really, that’s that. Then again, if you get into the groups, enjoy that NDA, and not being able to tell anybody about anything about it, and just waving your arms emphatically about an idea that people try to lol about.
Am I talking SPN? Am I talking something else I worked on or attended or know about? In the end, does that really matter?
Not all topics come down specifically to experience and expertise within a subject, but some do, and if you’re out here acting like a twidiot over it, eventually, the people who work in it go, “look y’all bless your heart but we actually do this, so sit down?”
Nobody’s saying you CAN’T meta or lit crit without a degree or experience, but if you’re out there being a shady fuck towards people who literally know what they’re doing, with minimal to no actual substance to your shade, just convenience to those who want to believe you, then yes. The people who actually know what they’re doing > the people that don’t and are just ass speaking or throwing “what ifs” or “it could bes” on hunches regardless of the follower counts attached.
A lot of people do good meta or spec without a degree or experience, because they just have a good reading and, I don’t know, understand what shit like Occam’s Razor actually means. It’s not mandatory. But if you’re about to start swinging on someone, son, just because you’re piloted by bitterness and aren’t even thinking to 1+1 this charade, you should probably check your narcissism points if you’re butting off at-random against people who do have experience and a fairly synchronized understanding.
Or at least more than piss-poor long-disjointed sub-par disembodied and fractal arguments that sum to nothing, their captain wank planet forces combined.
There’s a pillar or two of meta and Destiel meta fandom I avoid like the plague because I can read it’s pure fluff and completely uncorroborated with an actual basic application of Occam’s Razor. That doesn’t mean I spend my time shading them or dragging their crap out or picking fights with them or just being a bitch about it on my blog.
A few people could learn from that.
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I need to get some things off my chest...
For the last 2 months I have been in school taking a web dev course, i came from working in retail for 8 years straight and was hoping to change my “career path”. But all kinda sorts of weirdness are going on in my school...
Before i start writing about the weird stuff that goes on in school, i want to say that I have realised on my own that web dev is not for me. I need something a bit more creative, a bit less technical... maybe web design? who knows... that’s not the point. I’m just saying this to preface that school didnt make me “give up”, it just helped.
Right so... I go to a school for adults that teaches lots of techie stuff like web dev, app dev, ui/ux design, etc... They use a lot of more modern teaching styles, one of them being that they heavily rely on self-learning. They also focus a lot on the job market, meaning school work is done the way it actually should be done if you were a web dev in a company.
The school also requires a 90% attendance rate in order for you to receive your certificate at the end of the course. The catch is tho if you are 30 mins+ late, you get written down as having missed a half day of class. if you are 1hr+ late, on paper, you have missed a whole day of class. So if you have really bad luck with traffic/trains/busses a few times, you could essentially be f*cked...
So first day we all agree that we should text our group chat when you’re running late, just a sign of respect towards your teachers and other student. ✔️
-Cool, i definitely agree with that.
This works wonderfully for the first 2 weeks, everyone is texting when they’re running a bit late and so is the teacher.
Then one morning, my comrade students and i are waiting for our teacher but he’s already 10 mins late... no text... and he ended up being 2 hours late.
And the next day again...
This keeps going on for a while... people pay a minimum of 10k for these courses and after i got a bit fed up i did the math and turns out for every hour we don’t have a teacher in, we each lose aprox. 50£.
But hey, i have a friend who works at the school so i decide to talk to her about this issue. she’s very understanding of the issue and tells me she’ll bring it up during their next staff meeting. but she says she’s sure all they will answer is that “well this is a course that is heavy on self-learning, this is what they signed up for”. 🤷♀️
-Fair enough lads, but hey a text like we agreed upon couldnt hurt then maybe...
Then things get a bit weirder, we are in a building that houses many different companies and there is common areas with a kitchen and seating, meeting rooms etc...
suddenly all the admin staff, including my friend, are sitting in the common areas all the time and my friend lets me know the school will be moving theyre renting a new building. the admin staff will already be moving there in a week so they didnt renew the rent for their offices.
The next week comes around and admin are still sitting in the common area, my friend complains because they promised theyd have the keys to the new building by now and could start moving their offices.
- We’ll come back to this later
it’s a few days after this or a week maybe? and we all receive an email where we get asked to rate our experience at the school so far. We get all the students togheter and we get told by one of our instructors “fill out the score email, oh btw you need to rate atleast a 9 if you’re having a good time, anything below that is not acceptable“
Another student and i look at each other and make a weird face, because why are you telling us how to rate our experience?
Anyways i get petty, ask them if it’s anonymous (it was) and rate them a 5 and tell them i’m not impressed with (at this point) teachers being late everyday without letting us know and using self-learning as an excuse.💁♀️
From the next day on, i follow class from home via video call for about a week because my lumbago+sciatica had gotten rly bad. near the end of the week my friend texts me “hey, has someone come in and talked to the class yet?” and i’m like “oh hey, i havent been in this week bcause of health issues so i dunno?” and she tells me she doesnt work there anymore and my brain is just like “??!🤯?!?”
She goes on to explain to me that she had been working so hard, hitting all her targets, so when the big bosses came in and called her into a meeting room she thought they were going to praise her but instead what she got was “you’re no longer needed” together with almost all of the other staff...🙃
So i get back to school, my back is a bit better, i ask students about those ppl that came and talked to them and so basically the school is calling it quits. Now i only have a front-end web dev course, one of my friends in school has a full-stack course and now they won’t be receiving the back-end (or second half) of their course and finding a back-end web dev course is not going to be easy and will be very expensive.
And throughout the day i hear so many other students talking about this and freaking out over what theyre gonna do...
so we’re the next week, monday was a bank holiday, tuesday morning i go in and i’m there all alone... so i text the group and apparently theres no class today because there’s no teachers available... so i text my usual teacher to see what the plan for the week is and basically he can’t find any guest teachers and we’re essentially off all week unless anything changes (it didnt)
so at this point we haven’t had class for a week, this is a short course, a week of missing information is critical...
However in that week i’ve realised that this just isn’t for me, i don’t have the right way of thinking and problem-solving, it’s a bit sad but it’s fine. if it’s not for you, it just isnt.
and guess what... it’s monday and i’m in my bed writing this petty review of my school experience because there’s no class again...
I have so much more to say but this is already so long...
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Dapper Dan fails to think things through.
Warning: this is a very long story.
I graduated uni a few years back and immediately started looking for a job in my chosen field - marketing.
Marketing entry level roles were thin on the ground, so when I found a role which was hybrid of marketing with sales support, I took it.
The company was a medium sized business which specialized in recruitment, contractor hiring and head hunting. They also subcontracted work for a recruitment technology provider, which matched up perfectly with one of my other passions - technology.
I absolutely loved the role. I got to do all parts of the marketing and sales lifecycle, I got to work with suppliers, event organizers, clients, staff all across the company, meet new people and do really exciting things.
I had two managers - the one who managed the sales team and the one who managed marketing.
The marketing manager was a kindred spirit; the sales manager was oldschool sales. An arrogant and headstrong late-forties man who lived for making deals and boasting about them. Shiny shoed, silver-tongued. I’ll call him Dapper Dan. We were not friends.
For about 18 months, things went swimmingly. I’d do marketing half the time then divide the rest of the time between sales support and billable work. Billable was building custom careers / job sites to host the recruitment system front end. A steep learning curve but with the help of some web dev friends I got pretty familiar with simple site builds.
Being tech-aligned meant I was always looking digital first, bringing the company into the age of social media, SEO / SEM, website optimisation and multi channel marketing.
Dapper Dan sneered at such things. He saw digital as a waste of money. However, we were always able to justify the spend on digital by offsetting the billable website work.
The marketing manager eventually moved on to bigger and better things. Rather than promote me or hire in a replacement, the company moved the marketing responsibilities to Dapper Dan.
Dapper Dan’s changes were immediate and far-reaching. He removed the digital budget. He required that 50% of my time would be sales support, to ‘better enable the sales team’. He incorporated the billable work with his own team’s revenue. He rewrote my annual objectives to align purely with sales targets, rather than marketing. When I voiced my objections, he took me aside for a ‘friendly chat’ and told me if I didn’t like it, I could always leave.
Naturally I went and complained extensively to the departed marketing manager over drinks. After listening sympathetically for 45 minutes, she held up a hand, said ‘Stop’, and shared some life advice. ‘Each job pays you twice. You get your money now, that’s your wage. You also get experience now, that’s how you get paid in the future. So. Are you still getting paid? Yes? Are you still learning? No? Figure out how to keep learning, or leave.’
Taking the advice to heart, I busted my ass for the next year. I worked on digital outside of office hours. I made friends with the tech provider’s support and dev teams. I went to developer group meetups, attended conferences, studied for and acquired industry qualifications. I joined the national marketers and digital marketers group. I dug through blogs, articles, emailed people, took every opportunity to cross skill, upskill, to learn.
And I sat with a smile on my face in the sales meetings as Dapper Dan delegated dumb do-work to me so his team of sycophants could make the company’s growth figures look spectacular. Spectacular they were, to the point that the company was acquired, and Dapper Dan betrayed me.
You see, managers have the discretion to assign a pool of shares to high performing staff. The shares have no real value and can’t be traded, but in the event of a management buy out, they would suddenly have value - and quite a lot of value.
Dapper Dan felt it appropriate to reward every SALESperson in his team with a generous parcel of shares. As a SUPPORTperson, I would not be the beneficiary of such kindness. I’d had a verbal agreement with the previous marketing manager that the pool would be shared across the entire team so was pretty shocked to discover I’d been excluded from the pool.
I queried him on it, per the previous agreement, and he said (verbatim) ‘Well, an verbal agreement is only worth the paper it’s written on. You don’t make any sales, you haven’t built the business, you don’t get a cut’.
'If you didn’t like it,' he reiterated, 'you're welcome to leave.'
That is EXACTLY what I decided to do. Except I didn’t tell him.
The way the contract handover works in this instance is that all staff cease employment with company X on one day. The following day, they commence employment with company Y. Annual leave is paid out and begins to re-accrue at the new employer. Other arrangements - salaries, incentive arrangements, length of service - may be transferred to the new employer.
About six weeks before the handover, Dapper Dan passed me my new contract. I waited a week, came back with some enthusiastic queries on the new benefits, which took him two weeks to follow up.
Three weeks away from drop date, everyone’s frantically running around getting all the deals as close as possible to closing and employment contracts are the last thing on his mind. I go back to him, I tell him I have a couple more things I need to check out and I’ll email them through to him before I sign it.
A week passes, I fire off a couple of really complex questions around the transfer of benefits. He obviously forgets about them, then in the week of the handover, catches heat from the HR team about the outstanding contract and pulls me into a meeting room to berate me about not having signed the new contract.
I explain I’m waiting on his feedback on those specific points before I’ll commit, that I don’t want to be disadvantaged moving into the new role, call out the lack of a share option as an example. Clearly frustrated, he drops the words I’ve been waiting for. ‘If the signed contract is not on my desk on Friday, don’t bother coming into the office Monday.’ He paused for dramatic effect, and reiterated ‘I mean it. You won’t have a job.’ I replied that I completely understand and that I’ll have everything he needs on his desk by close of business Friday.
On Friday afternoon, Dapper Dan leaves the office early to attend his normal ‘client networking’ visits which typically involve long lunches and alcohol.
At 4.45pm I save the final set of forecasting and reporting to the share drive, send an email to the IT team passing over access to the Marketing lastpass account which contains the global database of usernames and passwords for all digital assets (including client sites), an Excel workbook containing my reporting macros and the location of all my documentation. I redirect my phone to Dapper Dan’s desk number, lock my laptop and leave it on his desk along with my ID card.
Over the weekend I update my work history and add my contact details to my LinkedIn profile, switching it to 'Actively Searching' mode. I figure my holiday pay will cover me for a couple of weeks of downtime before I have to go diving back into the workforce.
On Monday, I’m enjoying a long walk in the spring sunshine with my dog, who’s incredibly happy that his human has not disappeared down the driveway at 0720 per normal. We stop for coffee at a local cafe and my phone begins to ring. It’s one of the sales drones at old company; I ignore it and thoroughly enjoy the freedom of being able to amble through a park without anywhere to be. The phone buzzes another eight or ten times by the time I get home. The poop has well and truly hit the windmill.
I check my voicemails, ignoring those I know from my previous employer and returning the phone calls of two ex-clients to let them know that my contract has ended and to check in with Dapper Dan for work in progress - or contact the technology provider for support requests.
Shortly afterwards I got a call from a bemused contact who works at the technology provider who’s been fielding support calls that I’d normally handle. He listens with increasing interest as I explained the situation, then tells me he’d call back shortly.
Ten minutes later he’s back with the Head of Product on the line, asking about my lunch preferences. She arranges to meet me at a nearby Thai place. Over a delicious red duck curry, she cheerfully describes the wonders of a career as a contractor. She also mentions the day rates for highly qualified, industry-certified staff, mentioned that Tech Provider were really struggling to find such staff and gives me the number of a senior manager who may or may not have been on Tech Supplier’s preferred supplier list. I call the recruiter on the way home.
Meanwhile, my collection of voicemails from Dapper Dan was growing by the hour as he came to grips with the breadth of the problem that he’d generated. At some point in the late afternoon, HR must’ve clicked to what had happened and I received a polite SMS from the personal number of the regional HR Directory asking if I was available for a quick chat.
I call through and discussed the options presented to me by Dapper Dan on Friday, and that I felt I had no option but to follow his instructions. They probed for more information and it became apparent they were unaware that Dapper Dan had pulled an ultimatum without first engaging HR. They then informed me that to benefit from the sale of my shares, I would need to transfer to the new company and remain in their employment for a full year.
When I explained that I had no such share options, there was a full four second silence. It transpires that this, too, was not adequately communicated to HR. I mentioned that I’d appreciate it if Dapper Dan could discontinue his voicemails to me as I found them unprofessional and had no intent of recommencing employment under his management. We ended the call politely, I wished them all the best and regretted the conversation had to happen under such circumstances.
My contract for Tech Provider came through via the PSL agency at 11pm that evening and was signed and returned the following day.
I was deployed to client site that Wednesday.
Post Departure... I met up with one of the old IT team at a conference three months after it all went down. He was ecstatic to fill me in on what had happened.
The first notice anyone got of it was the service desk asking who they should route my LastPass account to and why I’d be passing it around. One of the techs came up to my floor to find me, then found an empty desk. Asked around for where I’d moved to and noone knew. That was the first call, from one of the Sales drones trying to locate me.
The tech went to Dapper Dan’s desk and found my laptop with my ID and post-it note taped to it. He put two and two together, went back downstairs and checked the access logs and realised the last time I’d logged in was Friday. He then locked my account for security purposes and went to HR to check if there was a leaver form.
HR checks, no leaver form AND a great big red cross next to 'employment contract received'. HR calls Dapper Dan, who’s not in the office. Dapper Dan says ‘No, contract should be on my desk, it was on there on Friday, I’m out on the road at the moment, give me till lunch time and I’ll sort it out’. Obviously thinking that I’m grandstanding. Starts to call me and leave messages then gets progressively agitated as he realises I’m not coming back.
When he gets into the office, he can’t find the contract either so he goes to HR and ‘explains’ what has happened, says I have been stonewalling them and it’s cool, he’ll get it sorted, it’s between me and him. HR says erm, no, this is our thing now, and the HRD sends me the SMS.
Shortly after my phone conversation the HRD walks into a sales meeting and very abruptly pulls Dapper Dan out. They disappear into a meeting room where it may only be assumed that Dapper Dan was required to spell out exactly what had occurred and address the comments that I had made. I suspect he came completely clean at that stage.
Dapper Dan was subsequently reamed as only HR and senior management can ream a manager who’s f*cked up. He was demoted, decoupled from Marketing, his budget reduced by half and a new, separate Marketing function created.
His team were collectively put under review and forced to carry out their own reporting, tracking and metrics, which lacked the coherence and consistency that I’d been able to deliver. This reduced the capacity of the team. A couple of them left and they missed out on some key deals.
In the fallout they completely dropped the ball on the client website builds. They went to market to try and find a resource who could fulfil these builds, and Dapper Dan was reportedly astounded to discover that experienced technical marketing staff are both hard to find and expensive to recruit.
They were unable to fill the role and the builds were taken back inhouse by the tech provider, who now had an experienced resource to deploy (me). I ended up working on three of these at full utilisation rate, which was paid by the new company. I’m pretty sure Dapper Dan would’ve seen the funding arrangements for these and would know my day rate - which is substantially higher than his.
Much later... As the sales lead, Dapper Dan had to bear the displeasure of his superiors for the full twelve months before he could claim his share payout. It would’ve been a really, really shitty twelve months for him. He resigned within two weeks of the anniversary of the purchase, and the company enforced a six month notice period and another 12 month no-compete clause. Any benefit he would have received from the share payout would have been consumed over that 12 months unless he switched industries or moved cities. Last time I saw he was on the job market.
As for me? Happily living the life of the contractor. I get paid for the hours I work and I work the hours I want.
My old marketing manager is now VP of something at a large multinational. I’ve used her speech several times when giving young, frustrated staff career advice.
TL;DR Old school sales manager attempts to call my bluff. Hilarity ensues.
(source) (story by DanishProtestPig)
#prorevenge#by DanishProtestPig#pro revenge#revenge stories#pro revenge stories#pro#revenge#revenge story
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“Watch 'em scatter when you start asking questions, like why we always in the wrong direction? Shame, such a shame, but you're doing it again. You don't wanna know more, and you've been down this road before, so leave it alone. Just leave it alone,”
AMOS DIGGORY / TWENTY-EIGHT
BLOOD STATUS: HALFBLOOD
OCCUPATION: EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT FOR THE CONTROL AND REGULATION OF MAGICAL CREATURES FOR THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC.
ORDER STATUS: MEMBER
GENDER: CISGENDER MALE
PRONOUNS: HE/HIM
↳ INTRODUCTION
Questions run through your mind on an endless loop. Should you have said something sooner? Were you the only one to notice? Could you have stopped all of this? You blame yourself for your silence. Now, yet again you’re left questioning your peers, your safety and the future. But what can you do? You’re just a coward with a hero’s mouth, spouting off ideas without any follow through. Your heart keeps you on your toes, ready to run away with the ones you love at a moment’s notice, but you can’t help but wonder if once again you’ll be too late.
AMOS DIGGORY IS CLOSED.
↳ STORY
Three pieces of paper, written up on front and back in messy, smudged handwriting, are all Amos knows about where he comes from. He knows nothing about his mother other than her name. The pages tell him little more of his father, who died suddenly when he was just two years old. Little Amos cried and cried, trapped for days inside his childhood home with his dead father. Finally, a neighbor heard his screams, and Amos was torn from the life he could have had and forced to live in uncertainty. As a child, he was moved between different foster homes, which he tried his best to fit into. After a few missteps, Amos learned very quickly that he needed to impress them if he wanted to stay. So he helped with household chores and shared his toys with other children; he complimented his foster parents and told them how appreciative he was, but it was never enough. Nothing lasted, and no matter how hard he tried, soon he began to see each home as only temporary. At least, until one woman promised him that one day, only when he was comfortable, he’d call her his mother. Nora Diggory was a peculiar woman. When her husband died, the other purebloods gave her a nasty nickname: the collector. To them, Amos was just another one of the many strange artifacts she’d accepted into her home, hoping to fill the hole in her heart. Unaware of their snide comments, in time Amos came to love his adoptive mother. He couldn’t believe how kind she’d been to him. For once, it was as if someone was trying to impress him, to accommodate his needs instead of the other way around.
For a time, Nora kept Amos away from the other pureblood families, not that he even knew the difference between purebloods and muggleborns at the time. Amos grew up without magic, and when Nora adopted him, she swore to do the same until he came to discover it on his own. The last thing she wanted to do was shock the boy when she was trying to win him over. When Amos finally showed signs of magic, Nora finally revealed that she was a witch. “I had a feeling about you,” she told him. Two years later, he was on his way to Hogwarts. Nora told him it would come to be his second home, but having only just settled into what he felt was his first, he hardly believed her. As soon as he stepped foot in the great hall, he felt the same warm feeling he felt from his adoptive mother. For seven years, Amos donned his Hogwarts robes with pride, and befriended anyone and everyone he could no matter their house. Many of the other pureblood children were curious about the Diggory boy, who’d been hidden away for so long. Some of them teased him, but most of them just wanted to know more. After all, despite how strange his adoptive mother was, Amos was still one of them.
Amos’ friendships blinded him to the coming war. The innocent children he’d grown up with had became young adults with dark secrets. He watched from his window each night as they left their homes one by one, the moonlight shining down on them as they headed toward Malfoy Manor. Soon, it seemed they had all gotten the same ominous tattoo, although Amos had only seen quick glances of it, when it slipped out from under their sleeves. An endless amount of questions rattled around in his mind, but instead of asking them he buried himself in his work, kept to himself and moved into the countryside. He surrounded himself with strange little creatures and plants, and spent most of his days painting and writing detailed journals about the his pets, only apparating to London for work. Amos still kept in touch with some of his childhood friends through letters, but their exchanges were often brief. Meanwhile, the headlines in the Daily Prophet were only getting darker and darker. A war wasn’t coming; it was here on the wizarding world’s front doorstep, and a pit in Amos’ stomach told him his friends had something to do with it. He finally worked up the courage to ask his questions, but only got a reply from one person. Alice Longbottom wrote back without any answers, but with six simple words, “I’ll tell you in two days.”
Sure enough, two days later Alice knocked on his door. He’d be lying if he said he was shocked to find out what his old friends were doing. Still, Amos had separated himself from the war so much, that he barely knew what was happening, and had only heard whispers of the Dark Lord. When Alice asked him to come with her, to join a group that wanted to fight back against him, he wanted to say no. Amos was not built for war, but seeing his friends fighting for their lives, he was left with no other choice. Less than a month later, he was thrust right into the thick of the war, when the Order’s headquarters was attacked. To this day, he’s still not sure how he made it out alive. While he’s grateful for what appears to be a temporary ceasefire, now that the Order has relocated to Godric’s Hollow, he can’t help but question whether anyone knows what they should do next.
FACE CLAIM: DEV PATEL (non-negotiable)
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