#clan walrus
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Chapter 30: Onto the Icey Blue
The middle of summer was the last time you would expect to see snow. The middle of summer was the last time you would expect to see huge chunks of ice. But that was what the clan found themselves seeing. That ghost from the woods nearby got them all pulled into some arctic cruise, and there wasn't any way to back out of it. It was a bit annoying, they all still had to get the orbital station fixed and off this planet after all.
They couldn't help but be a bit excited though, some more than others. The ship had enough room to hold all of them, even if a couple was going to have to be removed for a bit for it to work. And after the endless summer heat, they would enjoy the colder environment. Although when they got there some did regret it. It was colder than expected after all the heat, and it got some of them worried about if they were stuck on this planet during the winter months.
One of the few that didn't have a single worry in their head was Hat Girl. Even though she was only on the cruise in the past to get her timepieces, she still had fun and often wondered about what it would have been like if the cruise hadn't been cut short by her crashing the ship into an iceberg. She still felt a little guilty about that, but hey, they ended up getting a bigger ship in the end. So maybe it wasn't that bad of a thing?
Plus so many others from this planet were here! She didn't have much time to talk to them when they arrived, but she was excited to find them here. It was going to be a 'long cruise' Snatcher had said, so they meant she should have time to stop by and say hello. She wanted to hang out with some of them for the longest time and now was the perfect chance. She just had to get everything settled in her room first and she is golden.
She pushed her suitcase into the closet of her room with a smile. There! She dusted her hands off and gave a proud smile. She knew she would need to unpack eventually, but she could barely contain her excitement at the moment. She turned around a little too fast on her heel, and almost fell, catching herself with the wall. She gave herself a chuckle and left the room, walking into the living room of the area.
"You got everything to unpack, Hattie?" Reginald asked, looking over from Platinum's charger as she gave a quick nod. She didn't, he knew. But he wasn't going to get on her, that wasn't his job anyway. Hat Girl began to head to the door quickly, but Right Hand Man grabbed her hand before she could just race off. "Easy Righty, she's just excited," Reginald said. "This place has cameras and stuff, she can't do anything too dangerous... I still don't want you trying to walk on the railings, though."
"Come on, we're smart enough not to fall into the ocean." Platinum said, adjusting his sleeves as he sat up from the table. Hat Girl gave a nod and crossed her arms, and Right Hand Man just sighed. He loved these kids but why did they have to be like this? They were going to get themselves killed one of these days. "Like, there's some indoor railings and stuff. And even if I did fall in, I'm waterproof, aren't I?"
"Ya may be waterproof but ya still s'ouldn't jump into any body of water ya see." Right Hand Man said, rolling his eyes as Platinum just chuckled at the response. It was a miracle they hadn't gotten themselves hurt again, the last incident he could recall was the tower of sand. He still felt like something was odd. "Just... ya need to be careful alright. Ya may know t'e people on 'ere but some may still try to 'urt you. I can't drill t'at into yer 'eads enoug'."
"Trust me, Papa. I know who still counts as my enemies on this planet." Hat Girl said, quickly going to the package of water bottles they brought and grabbing one. The group heard a small crash outside their room and Hat Girl raced to the door. She opened it to see one of the seals with a knocked-down cart nearby, the captain letting out a side. "Oh, Hello Captain!" She said as she headed over to him, doing the same salute she used to when she was younger.
"Oh, hello Pup. Guess you didn't change too much." The Captain said, looking over at her with a small shrug. She just gave a smile and went to help the seal clean up, Platinum coming over to do as well. The Captain gave the robot an odd look, then seemed to glance at the camera. Something that didn't go unnoticed by Right Hand Man, who had glanced out the door. "You might want to be careful around the electrons here."
"You mean me?" Platinum asked, pointing to himself and getting a nod. "Nah, I'll be fine. I'm metal."
"I can see that. It's just now and again the electronics here can get an extra, surge of energy." The Captain explained, glancing at the camera once again, which then seemed to tilt away from the group. Right Hand Man gave that camera a glare, based on the others around it shouldn't have been on them that long. "Well, I know you would like me to stay and chat, Pup. But someone got to keep the ship from crashing... again."
"Oh, that's no issue!" Hat Girl said, the Captain raising a brow and the awkward chuckle and sheepish look she got on her face. He seemed to brush it off, however, as he just left. Hat Girl and Platinum finished setting up the cart and Hat Girl glanced at the seal, who gave a smile at her. These seals were still as cute as the day she saw them. "There you go, little fella. Try not to bump into anything else, alright now?"
"I wiww, thank u, miss!" The seal said, and carefully began to push the cart forward. The best they could without any proper arms. You think there will be some sort of cart made so the seals could push them around easier, but no. Hat Girl and Platinum glanced at each other for a moment. They both got a smile on their face and then raced off in different directions. Right Hand Man went to go grab them, but Reginald just put his hand on his shoulder.
"It's fine, Righty, they'll be fine. If they get in trouble, someone will help." Reginald said, trying to shake off his husband's nerves. He knew he wasn't really happy they had to be here, and Reginald did wish they could work on the orbital station more. But then he noticed something off with his eyes as if they seemed a bit odd in a way. "Are you ok? You're having that look where you don't trust something but you don't know exactly what you don't trust again."
"Do I really just 'ave a look in my eyes? t'at's just t'at?" Right Hand Man asked, tilting his head. Reginald gave a nod and Right Hand Man blanked for a moment. He really shouldn't have been surprised, knowing him. He crossed his arms and went back to staring daggers at the camera, Reginald glancing at it as well. "T'e camera was actin' weird, 'nd that walrus told Platinum to stay away from t'e electrics 'ere."
"Righty, are you sure you're not just overlooking things a little?" Reginald asked, and Right Hand Man just gave a nod. Although he did glance to the side a bit, maybe he wasn't completely sure. But after what they've been through so far on this planet, what was there to trust? Reginald sighed and grabbed his husband's hands, looking at him. "Look, it's gonna be fine. Why don't we go sit by the pool or something, it's not too far away.."
"Alright, fine." Right Hand Man sighed. "I'm still keepin' an eye out though, somethin's up."
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It didn't take long to get to the pool once they got what they wanted, it wasn't far from their room. Right Hand Man's cybernetics were waterproof, they had to be, to work with a human body, but both agreed it’d be better to stay away from the pool itself and stay closer to the wall. Gave them more room just to relax and talk, which was what they came here to do. Hopefully, no one would notice, or if they did, they’d just leave them alone.
Right Hand Man still kept giving the nearby cameras daggers, much to Reginald's annoyance. His husband was always more on the protective side, which he loved. But it felt like it went a little too far at times, there wasn't anything in the cameras they needed to worry about. He took his hand and just sighed, Right Hand Man looking at him as Reginald's eyes gave a faint look of pleading. The cyborg soon just sighed and looked to the side.
"I'm sorry, I'm not tryin' to make ya worry, love." Right Hand Man said, looking at Reginald as he gave a nod. He couldn't help but give a slight smile. There were times when he still questioned how he got lucky enough to find Reginald in his life. He couldn't begin to think what life could be like without him. "It's just..." He let out a sigh and placed a hand on his head. "Dunno. Somet'in' just feels like it's comin'."
"Something bad, I'm guessing?" Reginald asked, getting a nod. Reginald knew what it was like. Leading the clan, you had to try and prepare for every possibility so you know what to do. Sometimes he felt if he considered the idea of the government breaking through the window of the airship, he would have had a better plan and Right Hand Man- He let out a small shout as Right Hand Man's cybernetics seemed to glitch a bit as there was a sudden shake. "Are you ok?!" He asked.
"I'me fin3, I t'ink one of those see1s just bumped somet'ing nearby, or s0methin'." Right Hand Man said, knocking the side of his head with his metal hand a few times, he could feel his eye was glitching and the movements in his metal limbs were a bit shakier. He closed his eyes and after another few seconds, they seemed to go back to normal. "Not the first time somethin' like that happened to me, Reginald."
"I know, but you shouldn't have gotten glitchy from a simple bump," Reginald said, pulling Right Hand Man closer to get a better look, his husband grumbling a bit. Reginald couldn't think of anything at first, but then he faintly recalled a crash-like sound at the station last night. He was half asleep, and just assumed it was distant thunder. "Were you trying to do some repairs last night and got your systems hurt?"
"Possibly?" Right Hand Man said. "One wall fell on me and may have messed with my wirein'."
"You could have waited until we got back... I'm going to have to check your wiring later." Reginald sighed, Right Hand Man glancing to the side a bit. He couldn't understand why he would even try that alone... this was his husband, of course, he would. Reginald glanced at the poolside nearby, then sighed and looked at his husband. "Want me to see if I can get a beer from the bar." He was meant with a look "What?"
"Yer not muc' of an alcoholic person Reg, I don't t'ink you drink more than eight s'otglasses in yer life." Right Hand Man said, Reginald, letting out a chuckle at the claim. Not that it was wrong, Reginald couldn't remember the last time he or his husband had some. He knew Righty used to sneak out for some when they first got together, but he seemed to let it go mostly after the kids came in. "..Ya know w'ot, one glass won't 'urt. Just make sure it's light, neither of us needs to get drunk."
"Alright, I'll be back then." He said, standing up and going to look for the bar he heard to be around here. He paused when he finally found it though. The counter was filled with empty glasses, but only the Conductor and Mr. Macbeth were sitting at the bar. Both were drinking quickly, which Reginald knew was unusual at least for Macbeth. He walked up to the train conductor. "Uhh... what's going on here?" He asked as another try of glasses was placed on the table.
"Macbeth thinks he can drink a pecking lot more than me, so I am putting him in his place!" The Conductor said, grabbing one of the glasses and just downing it. Drinking competition, somehow he shouldn't be surprised. Macbeth could already drink much more than an average man in one sitting when alive, and the Conductor just seemed like he got drunk a lot. "Ahh, your eyes are getting swirly, you can't last much longer."
"I'm dead." Macbeth simply replied. "I can go on for as long as I want, I haven't gotten drunk yet."
"Bein' dead does more harm to ye than bein' alive, my friend!" The conductor said, taking two of the glasses before Macbeth could grab one. Macbeth just rolled his eyes, he was destined to win. The Conductor would be drunkenly sleeping by the time he even started to feel off. It was almost a shame but it would work. "I can already see me at the finish line of this whole race of this stuff, ya hear me, Macbeth? Or ye too far gone to listen?"
"I'm pretty sure yo' accent keeps changin', but alright," Macbeth said with a sigh, garbing two of the beers before Conductor could, the Conductor letting out a mumble until some more came. Macbeth turned to Reginald and handed him the glasses. "Here chief, sorry ‘bout this." He said before turning back to the Conductor as he started rambling on some topic. "Sure sure." He said as he took another sip of his glass.
"Thank you, Java," Reginald said, only getting a glance from Macbeth at the acknowledgment of his first name before he turned to head back to his husband. Right Hand Man rose a brow when Reginald came back to the table, handing him one of the glasses as he sat down beside him. Whatever was in the glass didn't look very light. "Don't know how strong it is. Macbeth and Conductor had taken over the bar with a drinking competition."
"Huh, Macbeth finally found a competition game 'e likes then?" Right Hand Man said, getting an eye roll from his husband. He just chuckled and, hesitating at first, drank the alcohol he was given. It was strong and made him back up a bit. Reginald spat some out, letting out a cough as Right Hand Man looked at him. "Where you trin' to chuge it down or somethin'?" He asked, getting a glance from Reginald as he chuckled. "Hey, you know I'm jokin' Reginald... Reginald?"
"Yes, I know darling," Reginald said, rubbing his throat a bit. "You know I could have been choking there and you could have just been laughing."
"Ya think I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between you coughin' and chokin’?"
"Who knows," Reginald said, rolling his eyes a bit as he took a drink.
Right Hand Man just shook his head with a slight chuckle. Why were they both like this sometimes, he didn't know?
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Platinum had, of course, wanted to cause trouble. At first, he tried to find his sister when he realized they hadn't gone the same way, but now they were just far apart and he would have to deal with it. It was fine, he could handle himself. He could turn this whole ship into his field of chaos if he wanted to. If only this place had a tank, it's been too long since he tried to steal one of those, which made him kinda want to be home now.
He eventually found himself in some dining area or sort. Wouldn't matter much to him normally, he didn't need food. But he noticed the tables had to be secured to the floor to help them stay still, and that had quickly given him an idea. He went looking around for a group of empty tables, ones decently away from people, and then went under. He didn't know what he was doing, just messing with the system until the tables became loose.
He smirked once he got it free, quickly hopping out from under it and hopping on top, the movement of the ship making the table slide quickly to the side.
"Wooo!" He called as he threw his arms up. Sure it was simple entertainment compared to all the other stuff he did in his robotic life, but he was proud of the fact he could come up with it. Even if he knew he was likely getting some looks from any nearby tables. He just let out some laughter and adjusted his position when the table went a little faster than expected. "Is that all you got, you can try better than that?"
The ship must have made a sudden turn or something, because the table suddenly just slip out from under his legs, sending him tumbling to the floor. He let out a slight groan as he got up, shaking his head as his systems took a moment to adjust. He could hear some chuckling though and looked to one of the nearby tables to see Adyaln and Cooking Cat, the former behind the chuckling as he crossed his arms.
"What were you thinking?" Cooking Cat asked as he got up, tilting his head. "You are aware that tables aren't rides now, aren't you?"
"I mean, it does look fun," Adyaln said, leaning in the back of her chair a bit as Platinum gave a smile to them. He walked over to the table, dusting his clothing off a bit as he sat down. Pretending he didn't just do what he did in case it could get him in some sort of serious trouble, he doubted it would though. "Hey, have you seen Mu anywhere?" Adyaln asked as she leaned back forward, lowering her voice a bit. "We might've snuck her on."
"Without the captain's knowledge?" Platinum asked, his eyes widening in slight surprise as he got a nod. He could see Adyaln doing something like that, she was part of the lazy paw gang, but Cooking Cat? And Mu seemed like she would hate being snuck on. But at the same time, he wasn't sure if Mu would've been able to pay the price to get on... He shook his head. "No, but I'll be on the lookout. I mean, I'm sure she's fine."
"I know she is." Cooking Cat said. "I just can't help but be a little worried about her."
"This is Mu we're talking about, she can beat up a room full of people easily." Platinum said with a chuckle as he leaned his chair back, only to go too far back and fall off. He bumped into someone on the fall down and shook his head a bit as he stood up. He looked at who he knocked to the ground and paused for a moment. "V-Van!" He said as he bent down to them. "Are you alright? I'm sorry, I didn't notice you were there."
"It's fine. It's fine, Platinum." Van said as they stood up, dusting themselves off as Platinum stood back up. Platinum looked to the side awkwardly, he didn't know what to do. His wires and gears were acting all funny again. Van just looked at Platinum and gave a head tilt, a bit of worry in those pretty blue eyes of theirs. "Are you alright? Y-You, look like you saw something." Van said as they glanced around a bit. "Is it behind me?"
"No, nothing there. Just uh, looking?" Platinum said, tilting his head to the side a bit as he gave a smile. Why did he have to be so weird here? He just wanted to talk and sometimes he just couldn't. Come on talking is like, one of the main things he was programmed for. He just looked at Van's hat and reached for it. "Here, it's a bit crooked." Platinum said, getting it straightened out as Van took a small step back.
"Thank you, but it's fine," Van said, giving a smile when Platinum glanced at them. Was that a blush on their face-, no he was just miss-seeing things like he tended to. He gave a bit of a chuckle as he let go of the hat and backed up, rubbing the back of his head a bit. Van seemed to look down as they re-adjusted their sleeves. "You don't have to do that Platinum. I can take care of things myself, you know."
"R-Right, sorry." Platinum said, taking a step back as he glanced to the side. "I just wanted to help since I knocked you down, that's all."
"Yeah... I'm going to grab something to eat now. I'll see you later." Van said, giving a small wave before walking away. Platinum let out a sigh before looking over, seeing the table with the two cats who both had this weird, kinda cheeky look. He pulled the chair back to the table and sat down, adjusting the hat on his head a bit as he looked at the two, silently asking what was up with them. Adayln just shook her head.
"You realize you have a crush on that kid, right?" Cooking Cat asked, making Platinum pause for a moment as he processed what she said. Then he frowned and shook his head, crossing his arms. Sure, it might have been true, but he didn't need the whole world to know it. Adyaln had to hold back a laugh, and Cooking Cat smiled. "Hey, no need to feel bad. Almost everyone has these feelings in some way or another."
"I still don't know what you're talking about." Platinum said. "I'm a robot, that means I can't feel love in that way." He said, but they both just shook their heads. "I'm being serious! Why would I lie to you?"
"You just don't want to admit how you feel?" Adyaln suggested. "Come on, you're totally not the only one crushing on someone in your clan. Besides, did you see that blush they got when you helped them?"
"Almost looked as red as a strawberry." Cooking Cat added.
"I'm going to go. Lovely talking." Platinum said, standing up and walking a little too quickly to the elevator nearby. Why did people have to be like that? What were they even implying for him to do, ask Van out like Hat Girl kept telling him to do? Why couldn't people just let him handle these situations in peace?
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Fredrick couldn't see land anymore from the railings of the cruise, nothing but the ocean and icebergs around. It was cold, and he wasn't too sure how to feel about it. It was nice not to have the heat pouring down as it had been, but it felt too cold for this time of year. Guess that could just be him though. He was feeling a little worried about how far they were. What if the ship crashed? The water had to be freezing.
He shook his head and decided to head inside, where it was warmer. Would help him think more clearly. Not think about the ship they were on possibly sinking. He shook his head. He wished he could talk with Sammy but he hadn't found him yet. He looked around the area he was in the reception area. He smiled when he saw Burt nearby, sitting on one of the purple sofas and looking like he was staring out into space.
As he came over he noticed something odd. That group of penguins led by one, DJ Grooves if he recalled correctly, were doing something nearby, a smaller penguin kept in one of those baby gate things.
"Hey Burt, what's going on?" Fredrick asked, Burt, looking over and rolling his eyes a bit upon seeing him. He glanced back at the group, looking around a bit before settling into a certain position. Got a few looks from nearby but he either didn't notice or didn't care. Fredrick had to focus on something else before he said something. "Is that a baby Penguin?" He asked as he carefully pointed to the small penguin.
"Yea, that’s that one's daughter." Burt said, looking at Fredrick as he nodded, putting his hand down. It made sense, he supposed. She was the only other penguin who was blue. Burt soon let out a sigh and he just moved to the side a bit, letting Fredrick sit down beside him. Fredrick gave a smile as Burt rolled his eyes again. "The DJ something guy was planning on using this as a set for a movie eventually and is getting practice scenes in or something." He shrugged. "Having me toss stuff over."
"Huh, I guess it is placed nearby," Fredrick said, glancing at the boxes nearby the sofa. He wasn't sure why that made it Burt's job but Burt wasn't complaining either way. He just was confused about if they were even allowed to do this. Sure Fredrick and the clan were criminals but he had an understanding of the law. "Does the captain know about this? Not sure if he’s ok with a random practice shoot going on."
"Hey, you, bring some of the cameras in the box over." One of the penguins suddenly called, Burt rolling his eyes as he got up. Fredrick got up as well as he looked in the boxes. Why did they bring professional movie stuff here for a practice shoot? He shook his head and just started helping Burt get one out. "Hey, careful how you're lifting that!" The voice called again, and Fredrick had to hold back a comment.
"It's fine, Fredrick." Burt said as he began to head to them. "I can handle it."
"They can be a little kinder. We may be criminals but we haven't done anything to them." He mumbled as they came over, giving the cameras to the penguin to set up. Fredrick started heading back to the sofa while taking Burt's hand so he could get him out of this, but Burt let go and just sighed. Fredrick looked at the birds. "Can't they just use their phones to record?" Fredrick asked. "Do they even have phones?"
"Maybe they do, maybe they don't." Burt said with a shrug, going to the box of cameras again to grab another one. Before Fredrick had time to tell But not to, he seemed to pause and looked around, before mumbling a bit. "Dang it, where did mine go." He said, heading back to the sofa to look around. Fredrick went too close to the box with the cameras so that he could go help him, and Burt could take forever to find stuff.
"Oh, is everything ok?" Fredrick heard a voice, turning to see the one penguin.
"Yeah, DJ Grooves right? Everything's fine, Burt just lost his phone and I should go help look for it." Fredrick said, pulling out his phone to call Burt. It likely wouldn't do much as Burt often kept his phone on silent, but it would help if it happened to go off it for once. He gave a glance at the box full of cameras then turned back to the bird. "Did you really need a bunch of professional cameras for a simple trip?"
"It can never hurt, can it darling?" Grooves asked, pausing when he turned his attention to the little penguin nearby. One of the Conductors grandkids came by to see, at least that's how Fredrick saw it. Grooves smiled at the two, he must not be on bad terms with the kid like Fredrick assumed he was with Conductor. "And I'm sure your friend can find the phone on his own. It's just going to take a bit of time." Grooves said, waving a dismissive flipper.
"Sure he could, I guess... I just get worried sometimes, I don't know." Fredrick said, watching the bird tilt his head in confusion and interest. "I'm not about to get into it, it isn't my place," Fredrick said as he pressed the call button again once his screen showed it had gone to voicemail. He glanced to the side. "I just keep worrying because of, reasons I guess. Burt doesn't think much of himself and I'm sick of it."
"Found it!" Burt suddenly called, his voice going through the phone a bit before he hang up. Fredrick shook his head with a smile as he looked over at Burt, who started to come up over to the group, re-adjusting the hair on his face. Grooves seem to spot something but Fredrick pretended not to notice, watching as Burt looked at him. "You could have tried being a bit more of a help, you know." He said, "that's what you always act like you are.'
"Is there something wrong with your eye, Burt?" Grooves asked, and he was met with silence.
"No, you must be seeing things." Burt said a bit of a defensive tone to his voice as he looked to the side, pulling some more of the hair in front of his face. He looked at Fredrick who just gave a nod and then sighed, turning around with a small huff in his breath. "I'm heading out now." Burt said, beginning to walk away. "Don't bother trying to come after me Fredrick, I'll be somewhere you can't find me."
"Alright then..." Fredrick let out a sigh as he looked at Grooves, who just seemed more confused. He hadn't upset anyone, had he? Fredrick just shook his head and sat down on the sofa nearby, looking out the window at the large ocean they were going to be surrounded by for who knew how long. "Sorry about his attitude. He just... doesn't like things much." Fredrick said with a shrug. "He's a good guy when you get to know him."
"Must be hard for anyone to do that." DJ Grooves said, getting a chuckle as Fredrick shook his head. "I could have sworn something was wrong with his eye, but couldn't put a flipper on it."
"It's nothing like he said. Don't worry." Fredrick sighed as he turned back to the bird. The way he said it only made it more clear it wasn't nothing.
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Should Hat Girl and the other toppats maybe be avoiding the casino-like area of the cruise, probably? But was she going to miss Snatcher messing with the systems and seeing how far he can ring things before he got caught? Peak no. Even if it was wrong, it was fun to watch. It wasn't like he was gambling with souls here... at least not yet. Plus he made quite the show to the other players at the table.
She didn't understand how the game worked yet. She assumed she would eventually when she was the Chief and possibly doing this stuff. They all just kept hoping for a certain number or color or something of that sort. Shadow Kid was at the slot machine Hat Girl was next too. She wasn't gambling, Snatcher wouldn't allow that. She was just messing around with it, pretending like it was an arcade game if you will.
Hat Girl couldn't help but let out a chuckle as she saw Shadow Kid throw her hands in the air over pure joy for something that hadn't happened. It was just like how she was when she was a bit younger.
"I swear I'm doing nothing here, you all have rotten luck is all!" Snatcher said from the table, pointing to a group of players as he let out a laugh, Hat Girl let out a chuckle. Snatcher always seem able to pull off that laugh no matter what, and it always brought so much energy. And fear to those who never heard it before. "Now let's see... Maybe I have good luck as well. I just need to avoid something like a one..."
"You think that be the best number." Hat Girl said to Shadow Kid, who looked over and gave a nod in response. She then chuckled and glanced to the side, before she saw someone she didn't expect. Mu, she was just standing there nearby. With a smile, Hat Girl took Shadow Kid's hand and began to head over to her. "Mu!" She said with a smile, Mu jumping a bit before turning and seeing her. "I didn't expect to see you here."
"Hey, I'm just doing some rounds here is all. Need to make sure no one is getting scammed, or something." Mu quickly said, looking around the place. "What are you doing here? Do your Dads let you gamble?"
"No, they're not like that." Hat Girl said, shaking her head. Even if they would've, which they never would, the seals would likely have stopped her. She just gave a smile as Mu gave a nod in return, glancing around. She eyed Snatcher suspiciously, so Hat Girl stepped to the side and let out a small chuckle. "So, how have things been in Mafia Town?" She asked. "Gotten into any trouble with the mafia again, Mu?"
"Not too much, thankfully," Mu said with a sigh, leaning against the wall as she adjusted the hood on her head slightly. Hat Girl chuckled at that, but she was a little worried. Something about Mu's tone seemed different from normal. Mu must have noticed that she noticed because she just put her hand to her head. "I don't know what it is, but I just can't turn like I used to. And I'm still young, I'm not an adult yet." She started with frustration. "How long will I be able to do this?"
"You'll figure something out, I'm sure of that." Hat Girl said, giving a smile as she turned over to where a bunch of laughter was, Snatcher, having a grin on his face. "Must be doing well." She commented to Mu when she turned back around, Mu giving a slight nod as she rose a brow. Mu let out a yawn as she glanced to the side. "He's going to come over any moment and proudly shared that he won. Just three, two-"
"And that's how you take home the gold, Shadow," Snatcher said as he floated over to the group, Shadow Kid let out a chuckle as she jumped into his arms, Snatcher rolling his eyes as he caught her. He noticed Mu and gave her an odd look, before looking at Hat Girl who gave him a thumbs up. He smiled as he floated above the teens. "Hey, me and Shadow are going to head by the pool to relax a bit. Do you want to come with me?"
"Yup, come on Mu!" Hat Girl said, taking Mu's hand before she had a chance to say no. "It'll be fun."
"Fine, I don't see a way out of your grip either way," Mu mumbled, before letting out a slight shout as Snatcher picked them up, beginning to head through the ship quickly. Mu pulled down the hood of her cloak a bit as she felt the air racing by, Hat Girl holding onto her hat for dear life. Eventually, it started to slow down as she shook her head. "Snatcher, was that necessary?" She asked, looking at him as he shrugged.
"It was the fastest way to get all of us here," Snatcher said. "Now, I wonder if Macbeth's around. That dude has a weird relationship with water." He said, placing the girls down and beginning to look around as Shadow Kid slid down from his back. Hat Girl let out a chuckle at that and Mu just rolled her eyes as she watch Hat Girl head to the water, but just barely stop before actually heading in. Right, she wasn't in her swimwear.
"Wooo!" Shadow Kid said as she jumped in the water, splashing Hat Girl and Mu. Hat Girl let out a bit of laughter as Mu mumbled. "Hey, Papa look!" Shadow Kid called.
"Yup, I'm here if you need anything!" Snatcher called as he looked over at her, glancing around the place until he paused. He finally found Macbeth at the bar, but the bar was a mess. Empty glass bottles and small puddles of beer all over. The Conductor was beside Macbeth, asleep with his head in one of those puddles. Macbeth was wearing a slightly-drunk smile on his face. "Do I need to ask what on earth happened here?" Snatcher asked.
"I won, that's what," Macbeth said, putting his hand against his head as he shook it with a smile. Snatcher looked at all the bottles around and felt some guinea horror. He wasn't sure he could go through this many bottles and not be in a coma. What kind of livers did these two have... at least Snatcher thought it was livers. "He thought he could outdrink me, I would've out drunk him even if I was still alive."
"I see..." Snatcher said as he picked the Conductor up and then threw him into the pool.
The Conductor was quickly awoken by the water and broke the surface. "What in the-," He asked, before growling when he heard Snatcher laughing nearby. "Oh ye pecking ghost, come down here and I'll tear yer peaking legs off, ye hear me ye mother-pecking pool noodle on birdseed!" More laughter was his only response. "Macbeth help me out!"
"Sorry, can't go swim, water is the demon Platinum is scared" Mr. Macbeth shrugged.
"Should we go help Conductor out?" Hat Girl asked, looking over at Mu. "I mean, he most likely
suffering from a hangover right now."
"Hmm... no. I think he'll be just fine." Mu said, letting out a chuckle as Hat Girl rolled her eyes. Shadow Kid and Snatcher did eventually get him out of the water, leaving the Conductor drenched in the water. All in all, a good start to the cruise.
#a hat in time#the henry stickmin collection#hat girl#hat kid#right hand man#ahit snatcher#reginald copperbottom#henry stickmin oc#toppat clan#topbot#copperright#a hat in time fanfic#henry stickmin fanfic#walrus captain#ahit walrus captain#ahit seals#burt curtis#fredrick muenster#original character#shadow kid#shadow puppet#cooking cat#henry stickmin mr. macbeth#ahit conductor#ahit dj grooves#tw drinking#tw gambling
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Great Risk, Great Reward
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PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS FIC CONTAINS: VIOLENCE TOWARDS ANIMALS AND CHILDREN, BLOOD, INJURY, AND ANIMAL DEATH - IF ANY OF THOSE THINGS MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION!
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I want to thank my pal Mons for being a constant inspiration for the PLA Mer AU and for beta reading this fic for me.
Summary: Gaeric finds out that Dawn likes penguins, but their bonding times goes a little awry.
Don't want to read it on Tumblr? You can read it on AO3!
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“Hey-” Dawn began to scramble across the ground faster, very familiar with the voice and deathly terrified to have yet another bad encounter. “Hey, squirt! I’m talking to you.”
“Oh no, no, no, no-”
Dawn was almost across the room, almost to the same pool that Ingo had disappeared into with Calaba and Irida – where had Gaeric even come from and why hadn’t she heard him? He was so big and, mer or no, seals were not exactly graceful on land. A hand snatched her up with her fingertip’s inches from the frigid water. Enclosed in his warm palm, Dawn felt herself moving through space and mentally preparing for the worst. What was he going to yell at her for today?
To her surprise upon meeting Gaeric eye-to-considerably-larger-eye, he was beaming, looking genuinely excited about… Well, something. Dawn had only even seen him grumpy and tired, and he usually wasn’t awake at this hour.
“I thought we learned from last time,” his tone was chiding, and his expression momentarily reflected the voice, but clearly, he was too excited to permit the disapproving scowl to grace his face. “Stay out of the deeper water without an adult.”
Dawn cringed and shrank in his outstretched palm, edging as far away as she could because her heart was positively slamming against her ribcage with a barely contained anxiety. She was less afraid of Gaeric after that last time Ingo dumped her with the warden. Despite how intimidating she still found him, his coat was very soft and fluffy, which was one point in his favor. It was practically irresistible, many other pups running their fingers through it with a reverent fascination. (And he had been pretty nice to her since then, doubly so after she quelled his noble with her flute.)
Still, this level of excitement for Gaeric was not in character. So, Dawn remained wary even as he propelled himself across the ice toward a different hole. She recognized it. It was a tunnel that led to the outside. A fresh wave of panic swarmed in her head like a cloud of wasps, buzzing irrational thoughts into her ears. She swallowed an anxious whine as it became abundantly clear that Gaeric intended to take her from the settlement. Dawn fiddled with her scarf, keeping her eyes low, and hardly listening as Gaeric chatted at her in amicable tones.
“Ga-Gaeric?” She interrupted him hesitantly. He was just about to set her down so she could follow him, in his excitement, he had even noticed how she was acting. “Wh-Where are you tak-taking me?”
“Hm?”
Oh, he supposed he hadn’t told her just yet. He was just so thrilled, so excited about the news. All the wardens were. Loathe as he was to tell the Diamond clan anything, he also shared the good news with Sabi, who he was sure would find some way to relay that to the rest of her clan.
Now, however, Gaeric was turning vaguely pink. He hadn’t meant to overhear. Honest! People just presumed that he, under his nice, warm stitched walrus skins, was asleep, and often he was dozing off, but it was a catnap like he had seen Lady Sneasler do. Half-conscious but ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice, especially given the strange changes in the sea recently and the encroaching of those humans into their territory.
“I, uh – I heard that you like penguins.”
Dawn’s jaw slackened in disbelief. She had only recently told Ingo of her travels to the northern shores of Hisui, an ice encrusted and ethereally silent snowscape, and witnessed several penguins waddling around. Either Ingo told his fellow wardens, and considering how close to the vest he kept most information concerning Dawn that seemed unlikely, or Gaeric had overheard, which made her nervous about what else he might have inexplicably overheard. Mentally scolding herself for being so careless of her surroundings and tongue so loose as to talk of her secret double-life on the surface.
“Er, yeah! I do.”
A gleeful glint came into Gaeric’s blue eyes, his next sentence actually made her perk up.
“Fantastic! Let’s go look for some penguins then.”
Dawn should have known that it was too good to be true.
The swim to the north shore was actually pretty nice. Gaeric was chatting with her amiably, grinning toothily while she swam around him, his eyes watchful for any potential predators, but they seemed to be getting along famously. That was, until they made it to the frozen tundra, and Gaeric threw out an arm to make her halt.
“Alright kid,” he said, flashing her a broad smile.
He did not notice her decidedly confused expression as he launched into an in-depth explanation of penguins.
“These guys are speedy in the water, but you probably know that already.”
The warden gently nudged her toward the distant penguins torpedoing through the water, zipping after silvery fish.
“If you need air, the clan has already made a few airholes in the ice. Just be cautious of any predators that might be on the ice if you stick your head out to get a look, alright? I’ll be right here if anything happens.”
“Uh, okay?”
Dawn replied, unsure why Gaeric of all mers would be so excited to show her something like this. Lian loved to show and share things with Dawn, but Gaeric? This was extremely out of character. That was when she started to realize things were not exactly as they seemed.
“This is my first time watching you, so don’t be worried about making any mistakes. We all know Ingo’s not the greatest of hunters.”
Hunters?
Did Gaeric… Oh, no.
Dawn felt another insistent little nudge to the small of her back. That’s why he was excited. He was excited to teach her to hunt because she had said she liked penguins. Gaeric was providing her helpful tricks and hints for her imminent hunt and Dawn could feel her insides roiling. Why did he have to suddenly be so encouraging? Her brain was screaming with panic, clutching her hands in front of her and nervously fussing with the edges of her scarf.
Sensing unease, he stopped pushing – some pups had performance anxiety, they wanted to impress or do well on their first hunt, but they got inside their own heads. Maybe that’s what she was feeling with his incessant chatter.
“Hey kid?” She twisted around to glance at him, and he gave her two thumbs up. “You’ve got this.”
With that final encouragement, Dawn swam forward, the warden unaware of the deep grimace etched into her cheeks. He wanted her to – what? Chase a penguin? He knew how bad she was at swimming. Yes, she had been getting better since she learned to dodge the frenzied nobles, but she was not fast, just better coordinated. She was trying to think fast. Gaeric expected her to try, and she had to do something to maintain her façade, so she would at least chase after some penguins. He would eventually get fed up with her failed attempts… but then what?
Gaeric genuinely enjoyed hunting. Not because he was a bloodthirsty maniac or anything (like Dawn seemed to think), he just felt more in his element chasing prey down, when building his sophisticated traps, when launching a spear into the hide of a seal – he said that it tickled the predatory part of his brain that few other activities seemed to even scrape. Teaching pups to hunt was always an exciting prospect. Pups had so much untapped potential that Gaeric loved to nurture. The next generation of Pearl clan hunters was a serious source of pride for the warden and, although Dawn could be a little weird at times, he was just as invested in teaching her as he was with any pup.
Dawn drifted, penguins and fish danced erratically in the water before her like it was some absurd ballet. Maybe if she had been here with Ingo, it would have been amusing, but not under her current circumstances. How could she make this look convincing? She thought about her excursions with Laventon and his advice on how to get closer to their target. A target was basically prey right?
‘Stay low and move slow. Don’t make any sudden movements or noises that might scare them.’
Maintain the illusion. She knew just enough about penguins to know they would quickly scatter once she started chasing them, probably hop back onto the icepack the moment they saw her advance. She dove down where the sunlight couldn’t reach and the water became even colder, watching the white bellies of the penguins flitting around overhead. Without realizing it, Dawn’s body was responding to an instinct she did not think she possessed as a human who transformed into a mer; muscles coiling, pupils blown wide in anticipation, hands curling and uncurling.
The warden watched with an ember of pride burning brightly in his chest. He waited with great anticipation for her to make her first catch.
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Gaeric watched her for about twenty minutes as penguin after penguin slipped through her clutches with startling regularity. He knew she wasn’t experienced, but even the most novice of pups was able to grab a penguin after a couple of tries. Now all the birds were making a beeline for the shore and there was no point for the pup to follow. If she was this bad in the water, she would have no chance hunting anything on the land.
Dawn actually snarled at him when he shifted himself between her and her quarry, the noise frustrated as she tried to dart around him.
“Pup, stop. You’re going to overheat. Go up and take a breath. Clear your head.”
The surveyor didn’t even realize how much heat she was radiating from physical exertion. Her slim chest heaving and muscles quivering – she didn’t realize how much her focus had consumed her. The large mer guided her to the surface, already giving her pointers as she tried to catch her breath. How long was she chasing the Adélies? She was able to recognize the brush tails and distinct two-toned coats from her previous excursions with the professor. She was genuinely trying to catch one… to do what with? She didn’t want to dwell on it, the mere thought made her shudder with a mix of disgust and horror.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” The warden murmured sympathetically, completely misinterpreting her expression as disappointment. “Catching them gets easier with practice. You stay here.”
No argument from Dawn, she felt exhausted as she watched Gaeric disappear into the gloom. The blood pounded in her ears, otherwise she would have noticed how quiet the surrounding water had become as a predator trawled through the sea.
He was gone for a little while, Dawn waiting idly for the warden to return, but making sure to practice scanning around like Ingo had taught her. She was very small and there were a lot of would-be predators like orcas, leopard seals, and polar bears patrolling for a tasty snack like her.
She smelled Gaeric before she saw him, or rather, she smelled the blood. Thankfully it wasn’t his, but it was putrid, clouding the water in a fine pink mist as he approached, which was when she heard the shrieks that sent a cold shiver up her spine. The warden had a woven net over his shoulder that was chock full of dead Adélie penguins, all except one, which was making those horrific noises.
Dawn covered her mouth, feeling saliva pooling beneath her tongue, but it had nothing to do with hunger. No, the penguin looked far from appetizing. A wave of nausea rolled through her, making her skin feel prickly hot and stomach roil when he came to a stop in front of her.
The smell of blood was all around her, sticking to the inside of her nose, bitter and metallic, while Gaeric rummaged through his catch of the day, seizing the sole penguin left alive, and dropped it before her with an encouraging smile. He had the realization that she would not only be hungry after all that swimming around, but she would also want a chance to prove herself to him. He had done a similar tactic with other pups, the younger ones especially; catch something of an appropriate size for them and injure it, then allow the pup to make the final blow. It was a good boost of confidence after a long string of failures.
The penguin flopped around, plumes of blood misting the water darker and darker pink with each flap of the poor creature’s unbroken wing, wailing in fear and agony. The scene was ghastly.
“Alright pup. Now, what you’re going to want to do is-”
The audible gag over the sounds of the penguin made Gaeric stop midsentence and he looked more closely at the tears collecting in her dark eyes.
“Ga-Gaeric, I c-can’t…”
A frown settled on his face. A new predicament. Dawn probably liked to eat penguins, but she had never been hunting before, certainly not with him and presumably not Ingo. This would be her first kill and, occasionally, pups would get squeamish. It didn’t happen often, but they would suddenly get cold fins, and just couldn’t follow through with a kill. He should have guessed that Dawn would be similar. Ingo had had a similar reaction, but he quickly got over it out of necessity. So, he told her the same thing that he had told all the others in the past.
“Dawn, I know it’s hard, but this is something you have to learn to be comfortable with.”
Gaeric gestured to the flightless bird flopping around. When she didn’t look, he lifted her head with a knuckle placed under her chin. Dawn wouldn’t have expected him to be so gentle. Ingo treated her like glass, which was not within the norm with mers. They bit and scratched and roughhoused. This was completely unexpected of Gaeric.
Dawn emitted a sickened gurgle, averting her eyes away from Gaeric, away from the bird – there was nowhere else to look. Gaeric took up most of her field of vision and the penguin took up what remained. Her eyes snapped closed.
“I can’t,” she moaned, more to herself than the warden, “I can’t do it.” Her hands moved to cover her mouth and nose, trying to block out the assault to her senses.
In her head, she was trying to calculate how badly this would make her look in Gaeric’s eyes. Just because she was able to quell his lord and he was treating her with less suspicion than he usually did, Dawn knew he did not trust her. That was when a thought came to her.
She was alone with Gaeric. Completely alone. He could have been grilling her the whole time about her deal, which he had done in the past, but he was so caught up with hunting that he hadn’t. Without that distraction, without that ounce of “goodwill,” Gaeric had her in a very precarious position.
A palpable wave of anxiety rolled through her, her eyes widening and her nearly hidden ear pinning back, whole body eerily still – and the warden didn’t even seem to notice, already steamrolling into a lecture about the necessity of hunting because it was about survival in this dog-eat-dog world. If Dawn wasn’t feeling so sick to her stomach with fear, she would have found a way to tease him about how he sounded very similar to a certain someone in his clan.
“Do you really want this poor bird to wriggle around in the water until a different predator comes around and does the exact same thing? Because that’s what’s going to happen.”
He watched her wince, cowering to avoid looking at the penguin. He sighed. This might require a little more persuasion. What to do… He considered for a moment. By this point most pups would have gotten over their initial reaction and kill their prey, but Dawn was still resistant. He knew she was picky, but this was something she needed to grow out of for survival purposes. It was all well and good that Palina and Iscan and some of the others were trying to accommodate her picky habits, but Gaeric was trying to look at this realistically.
Food was calories and calories kept you alive. Hunting was what kept you alive and, well… death was a part of life. It wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary.
And she needed to learn for her own good.
Gaeric sighed. A deep, weary sigh that made Dawn peek at him through her fingers.
“We aren’t going anywhere until you kill this penguin.”
“B-But-”
“We have all day. If this one dies, then I’m going to get another until you do what I’m asking you to do.”
The horror in her dark eyes was enough to solidify Gaeric’s resolve. If she didn’t want to be seen as a baby by the older mers, then this was the first step, so he wasn’t going to let her wiggle her way out of this with that silver tongue of hers.
He could have predicted the quick dart to his flank, trying to outmaneuver him with her speed, but he was used to pups. She smacked into his palm at full force and reeled back with a dazed oof! No amount of pleading and crying would sway him, and she could tell he meant what he said, they weren’t going anywhere until Dawn killed it.
On a fundamental level, she knew this was a teaching moment that was meant to strengthen the bond between her and the warden and to hone her hunting skills, but Dawn was also Laventon’s research assistant! She had spent nearly two weeks alongside the professor studying all the animals that the mers ate! She couldn’t do it. Not in good conscious to her researcher nature.
She tried anyway. Grimacing at the bird with a tightness in her throat as she turned her gaze to Gaeric, mouth open only to be cut off.
“No.” He said preemptively. “You’re going to do this. I know you can do it – so do it.”
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There was a long stretch where Dawn just couldn’t move, unable to look at the writhing Adélie and trying to ignore it as it made the more horrible screeching noises. She was hoping that a different predator would swoop in and snag the bleeding penguin by now, but Gaeric was an active deterrent.
The warden seemed to possess infinite patience, preventing her escape with such ease that Dawn found it frustrating. Even when she thought she was being slick when she tried to clamber onto one of the chunks of ice when she was permitted to take another lungful of air, he instantly scooped her up and plopped her back in front of the bird.
In a test of wills, Dawn knew who the winner would be; Gaeric could and would throw his weight around to make her commit the gruesome act. She actually started yelling at him when her frustration at the situation boiled over and, still, he remained resolute, nudging her back toward the penguin indifferently even as she tried to push back against his hand with every ounce of strength in her small body.
“Kid, you have to do this. That bird is suffering, you need to put it out of its misery.”
“You’re the one who hurt it!”
Dawn wriggled, squirming between his fingers, but he held her tail fast between his middle and pointer finger. He swung her back around and that’s when she started baring her teeth at her in a poor attempt to assert herself. Gaeric didn’t let that stand. A low growl resonated in his throat, leaning into Dawn’s space, and narrowing his eyes with a snarl on his lips. She wasn’t intimidating him, and she was quick to cower at his display.
When Gaeric didn’t release her tail and held her in front of the penguin, Dawn knew she was out of options and that frightened her. Her chest and throat grew tighter.
“I can’t – please don’t make me.”
“It’s for your own good, Dawn. Trust me.”
He sensed the change in her demeanor, his perseverance had worn her down, and, although she was trying to stifle her sobs, she was trying to reach for the penguin.
“It’s going to try to snap at you, but you need to take it with your hands by its beak and twist its neck until it snaps. It’s going to seem like a lot more, but also somehow less, pressure than you think you’ll need, but that’s something you get used to.”
She sobbed as she clamped the bird’s beak shut, scooping up the Adélie’s body in up against hers. She nearly vomited as the penguin writhed desperately, its heart pounding so fast and hard that it almost made her drop it in fear. The encouragement over her shoulder was not helping, even if it was meant to be.
Her hands shook violently, unable to perform the motion Gaeric described and unable to open her mouth to beg him to let her go. It was pointless, he wouldn’t, she had to do this. Dawn whispered an apology to the struggling bird and was about to jerk her limbs to get it over with, but that’s when she noticed Gaeric’s grip had loosened.
She cautiously turned her head only to see a look on Gaeric’s face that shook her to the very core. Dawn only saw him in profile, but his ears were pressed nearly flat against his head, his eyes opened wide with dark pupils shrunk to three-quarters of their size, and – she had never seen so many sharp teeth.
Without a word, Gaeric scooped her and the bird up, and moved fast. Dawn barely had time to ask what was happening, he unceremoniously shoved them into a niche in the blue white of the glacial ice.
“What’s-”
“Stay here. Don’t come out until I come get you.”
“But what’s-”
Dawn tried to say, deliberately ignoring what Gaeric had said by trying to slide out, but he was quick to push her back in the crevasse.
“Stay put.” He growled and, this time, Dawn obeyed, fear rooting her to the spot. She did catch Gaeric hissing something under his breath just before he darted out of sight. “Those damn ships…”
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Gaeric was sufficiently deep that the ship sitting atop the wave would have no idea what lurked beneath them. A fury was burning inside him, his eyes narrowing as the ship moved closer in the direction of the settlement. He had been too distracted by Dawn to notice the ship sooner and it was far too close for comfort, just beyond the sheet of ice like they had been following the coastline from their settlement.
The humans weren’t paying attention.
So, he would make them pay attention.
Irida had asked him to deploy nonviolent methods and, thus far, he had obeyed his mentee out of respect for her and for her title as leader. He had dragged many ships to their doom against sharp, rock outcrops and glaciers, some he had capsized with the motions of his massive tail, and other times just used his immense strength to snap off vital pieces to stop their forward progress.
The ships kept coming though. It’s like the humans never ran out of the damn things! He knew Mai had handled one or two that got too close to the Diamond clan and he had disabled or destroyed more than he could count on his fingers, and they still didn’t stop coming.
Gaeric thought it was high time to be proactive about the human situation.
Even at this depth, Gaeric could hear the crew moving along the creaking wood, he could identify each one by the pitch and timbre of their voices. The crew wasn’t large. The water was absolutely silent and eerily still, nothing but he and the ship in the vicinity. The warden edged closer, remaining right beneath the craft, or at least, as much as he could manage. As much as he wanted to bust through the hull and give those arrogant humans a really good scare, he pushed down those instincts.
This ship was going to be demolished, smashed into smithereens to make a point – one that was jagged and razor sharp. His lips were pulled back over his teeth as he watched the prow cut through the glass-like surface of the water. It was a good day to be sailing, or it would have been if the ship had been anywhere else.
He was poised and ready to strike. Every muscle in his body coiled as he went over his plan again in his head. Gaeric would strike with his heavily muscled tail, using it like a battering ram to shatter the ship in two. What about the crew? A voice that sounded suspiciously like Ingo whispered in the back of his head (sort of an oxymoron in itself which helped Gaeric ignore the impending ramifications of his actions). The warden growled under his breath, shaking his head as if to loosen the thought’s hold on him.
Nothing was going to stop him. He would accept whatever punishment Irida dished out because he was doing this for the continued protection of his people. It would be worth it if his clan could survive another day. This ship and every other one that came into their territory – he would break each and every vessel until the humans had nothing but logs lashed together with hemp to take on the rough seas.
Gaeric surged forward with a blinding speed, ready to make his steep descent back into the depths to maximize the damage on the clueless vessel. The silence of the water would have felt deafening, had his ears not picked up a noise that made him stop dead in his tracks. A panic struck the warden like lightning as he heard the noise again. Instantly, his attack on the ship was forgotten, the crew none the wiser of the near miss as Gaeric tore off in the direction he had come from as another scream reached his ears.
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Dawn hadn’t exactly meant for this scenario to be playing out as it was. The second she heard Gaeric saying something about ships, she knew that it had to be one of the Galaxy Team’s, a research vessel or fishing boat. The Ginkgo Guild didn’t head toward the northern shores for much of anything, it didn’t intersect with their trade routes, so it was extremely unlikely to be one of their trade ships.
She panicked.
Gaeric would no doubt be pissed, but Dawn needed to stop him. He had already done a lot of damage and that only made Kamado double down on his efforts to map out the icelands so fewer ships would be lost. It was a never-ending cycle.
She was peeking out of the crevasse that Gaeric had unceremoniously stuffed her into for her own protection. Nothing to see, nothing to hear – the ocean around her was lifeless. It was creepy. Even the penguin behind her was silent, but she was afraid to look around at it. Dawn didn’t want to see if it had finally succumbed to its wounds.
The idea of sharing a small space with a dead animal made her almost as sick as she had been as Gaeric had been encouraging her to snap the penguin’s neck. Blindly reaching behind her, Dawn flapped around to find the carcass to shove it out of there. Over her internal mental anguish, she did not realize there was one sound she was hearing, ears flicking in the direction of it but listening passively.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”
She mumbled, nearly in tears as she managed to get a hand on the Adélie and was about to push it out of the crevasse when she heard the noises that she had subconsciously been hearing but not registering. Dawn jerked her head, a clicking that sounded familiar but also sent a chill down her spine. Ingo made those sounds sometimes. The sharp squeaks when he attempted to communicate with someone (or ones) no longer at his side. If she could hear it, then it was already too late.
All her disgust was instantly replaced with terror, and she wasted no time, grabbing the Adélie and shoving it out of there just as a massive shadow blotted out the light. Dawn slapped her hands over her mouth, squelching the scream that was pressing against her lower ribs. From her vantage, she could see the penguin floating in the water, its form lifeless and slowly sinking. A dark snout nudged it curiously, a second snout appearing on the other side and nudging it in confirmation.
There was a voice in her head screaming at her that was a mix of her own, Ingo’s, Laventon’s, and every other mer she had ever spoken to get out of there. Not safe. Danger. Predator. Move. Escape!
What had Gaeric said earlier? If she needed to breathe, the clan had made air holes.
Dawn raised her eyes to the top of the crevasse and, true to the warden’s word, there was a small shaft of light. Thank Sinnoh for the foresight of the clans. She moved quietly, not that the orcas could do a whole lot if she was up on the ice, but she didn’t want to attract any attention whatsoever. She reached the hole, a smaller one that had partially frozen over but was clearly made for a mers smaller than Gaeric, Ingo, or even Mai and Adaman, and poked her head out, taking a deep breath of cold air.
She was about to put her hands on the ice to clamber out when she felt her whiskers twitch and something deep in her gut told her to stay low. The sheet of ice seemed barren, but something was setting off a danger alarm in her brain.
Time slowed, all other sounds fell away, even the sounds of the orcas in the water, and Dawn heard something crunching the snow under its feet. The crunching got louder, the sound blurring into one as it got closer, and Dawn did scream this time, ducking back into the water and getting as far away from the air hole as an enormous paw reached through to swipe at nothing. A furry paw as pale as the ice around it fumbled for the prey it knew was down there and Dawn couldn’t stop screaming, alerting all the predators around her.
The polar bear was just able to shove its head through the hole, thank the gods it had shrunk from its previous size, and it blinked at her, beady black eyes following her movements as she tried to get further away. The orcas, now quite alert of one prey in the water, and most likely the bear on the ice, were crowding around the crevasse, squeaking and pushing their snouts into the crack. The bear must have also registered their presence, but seemed to hesitate, weighing its options before two-inch long claws began to tear through the ice. The promise of an easy meal that had nowhere to run just below the ice – if it could make a hole big enough for it to get through.
The orcas were of no consequence to the large land mammal, they couldn’t move tons of ice to force their way into the crevasse, but it did make Dawn a sitting duck. All she could do was scream. Trapped between a rock and a hard place, so Laventon was wont to say. Stuck between two mouth loads (possibly more since orcas moved in pods) of conical teeth and four paws decked with razor sharp claws and a mouth big enough and strong enough to crush her skull.
She was going to die.
Ice crunched all around her, the bear’s paw slapping the water as it excavated the ice piece by piece. Behind her, the orcas squealed and kept throwing her into darkness. Fear was tightening around her lungs and heart, making it hard to think about anything due to lack of oxygen. Everything had finally been going so well! She had quelled the frenzied nobles and the seas had stopped slowly rising. Jubilife was safe for a little longer. People had stopped looking at her with suspicion and she finally felt comfortable in the mer communities that had opened their arms to her.
Now it was all about to come to an end because she couldn’t kill an already doomed penguin.
Dawn didn’t realize she was crying, her tears just mixed with the cold water while she sank lower into the crevasse, as far away from either party as she could get from, but it wouldn’t matter. Gaeric was going to destroy a ship in broad daylight and Dawn was going –
Outside, the orcas were squeaking in agitation as she picked up something with her sensitive ears. Something massive tearing through the water at a breakneck pace.
“Gaeric!”
Dawn had never screamed so loud in her life. The sounds of the bear and the cetaceans were drowned out by her deafening cries.
The fear in her voice only spurred Gaeric to go even faster until – there! Two orcas were poised and waiting in the exact place he had left Dawn, the ignored remains of the penguin he had caught drifting into the abyss with their attention focused on the alive and panicked prey hiding within.
Orcas, like all their cetacea cousins, were intelligent. Orcas in particular are adept hunters and they enjoyed playing with their food before they ate it. Gaeric wasn’t exactly sure why. He wasn’t sure if animals were capable of cruelty like mers and humans were, but he knew that they acted beyond what was necessary to acquire prey. This wasn’t a particularly favorable match up, Gaeric was big, but orcas weren’t exactly small, and they had numbers on their side. Admittedly less numbers than would be normal for the species, but Gaeric wasn’t about to question it, and he hoped, in the back of his head, that that didn’t come back to bite him.
He launched himself like a missile through the water, leading with his shoulder to slam into the unprotected flank of the closer orca. By this point, the warden wasn’t even speaking intelligibly, just hissing and spitting and roaring – because how dare they. How dare they attack his little protégé when she was already going through her own emotional turmoil. He had been so caught up with the creaking and sloshing of the ship in the distance, Gaeric hadn’t noticed the threat around him, and by extension, Dawn.
Without even looking, he knew the other orca was coming toward him. They were faster, but Gaeric was smarter. Just a few well-placed hits - claws digging into sensitive spots like eyes and enough whacks with his heavily muscled tail, then the pair would be on their way.
“Gaeric!”
He could hear her yelling, but he didn’t understand why. He was managing the threat. The whales would be gone soon and then he would take her back to the settlement. This and the penguin were enough trauma for one day.
His claws raked into the underside of the orca, tinging the blood pink as it wailed. What he didn’t need was for them to attract others, he needed just enough time to get Dawn and hightail it out of there because taking on a pod was out of the question. Even if he had Ingo by his side, orcas were meticulous and savage when they chose to be.
“Gaeric! Help!”
Can’t divert his attention now! The orcas were falling back, fleeing into the gloom with high pitch whines that were sure to draw in others in their pod.
“BEAR!”
Bear?
That’s when Gaeric heard the low grumbles and huffs, something big splashing into the water. Like it was in slow motion, he saw Dawn dart towards him as the whales fled, only to see her get jerked back violently.
A polar bear.
An old and all too familiar dread suffocated him. His body was moving even before the electrical impulses raced from his brain to his limbs. His fury blinded him, only allowed to because his thoughts weren’t there. Gaeric was lost to time. Frozen in the memory of another young protégé in mortal peril because he acted stupidly.
Gaeric had promised himself – promised himself – that this wouldn’t happen again.
And yet.
No more blood. No more traumatized pups. No more mistakes.
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Dawn was too busy trying not to get mauled to see exactly what Gaeric was doing, but the polar bear was alternatively swiping at her and ripping up chunks of ice to get better access to her. The surveyor just kept screaming for the warden with each swipe that came closer, with every scoop of ice that provided a bigger hole for the arctic predator.
It was getting dangerously close now, its head and shoulders almost squeezing through –
There was an agitated squeaking that only grew more distant. Gaeric must have run the orcas off. She just needed to get to him. Dawn darted for the crevasse, even spotting the blue haired warden beyond, looking uninjured, but quite agitated himself.
“BEAR!”
She shrieked at the top of her lungs, but it was too late. The sheet of ice that had been protecting her finally caved in and the polar bear was in the water with her paddling toward her with urgency. A massive paw slammed into her side, knocking the wind out of her and five claws bit through her uniform and into her abdomen.
The last thing she really saw before a flurry of colors was Gaeric’s expression. She had never seen him look scared before. He prided himself on being strong and brave for the sake of the clan, but that heartbeat before he was on top of the pair, Dawn had never seen that look on his face. A haunted look in those blue eyes.
It was a flurry of limbs, the water churning, and the bellowing that almost deafened her, but she saw it all. Her head might have been spinning because of how much she had been flung around (and blood loss), but she watched Gaeric take the bear’s neck and, exactly as he explained to her with the penguin, twisted it sharply.
The snap was the most sickening thing Dawn had ever heard. It made each individual hair on her body stand up and she did actually vomit this time (although, that also might have been her body’s reaction to the severe trauma). Things were moving much too fast. Gaeric was quick to drag her and the bear away, grab his net load of penguins that was swaying in the current at the bottom, and hightailed it out of there before anything else could happen.
So, Dawn saved a ship, at the cost of having a nasty gash through her uniform, unaware just how bad the injury beneath was.
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Gaeric physically cringed as Ingo got in his face. It was the first and only time the larger warden had ever gotten confrontational with any member of Pearl clan, and it was downright frightening. It was easy to forget just how dangerous Ingo could be if he only chose to. It was easy to grow complacent with that knowledge in mind, that Ingo chose kindness and patience when he didn’t have to be.
Right now, Ingo was not choosing to be anything other than pure rage. A deep, foreign growl resonated in his chest as he demanded to know what happened because his pup was hurt and Gaeric looked remarkably unharmed.
To his credit, Gaeric was willing to take whatever Ingo had to dish out at him on the chin. He failed as a guardian. He failed to keep a pup under his watch safe and now she was getting treatment for wounds inflicted by the polar bear. So, he was willing to accept whatever punishment Ingo was inevitably building toward. In all his years of knowing Ingo, he had never seen him so angry, but before this last year, he never had anything he cared so deeply for. Yes, Ingo was loyal to the clan and devoted to his ward, but Dawn was different. For him, Dawn was family, and for Gaeric to be so careless - it was tantamount to something happening to Irida on Ingo’s watch.
Ingo listened to the story, his hands curled into tight fists as Irida watched on, cautioning him by repeating his name because she didn’t want nor need infighting between her wardens, not with how the sea was so intent on swallowing up the region – humans and nobles included. With a shaking hand, Ingo jabbed a finger into Gaeric’s chest, right in the center of his clan crest, and rumbled dangerously low,
“You had better pray to Sinnoh that she recovers.”
They all knew that Dawn would be just fine, Ingo was just veiling his threat – if anything like this happens again, I will not be so forgiving. Gaeric had narrowly avoided Ingo’s considerable wrath. The cavern was silent in the wake of Ingo’s departure, everyone collectively holding their breath until Irida exhaled slowly. Her wardens followed suit. Catastrophe avoided, they all waited for the medic to be done tending to Dawn so Ingo could see her and start to calm down.
#thanks for reading!#pokemon#pla#legends of arceus#pokemon: legends arceus#pokemon legends arceus#pokemon legends: arceus#pl:a#p:la#tw animal death#tw violence#tw blood#tw injury#tw violence toward children#tw violence toward animals#pla mer au#fan fic#fanfic#fan fiction#fanfiction#hopefully the format isn't too weird#pokemon warden gaeric#pokemon warden ingo#pokemon akari#pokemon akari/dawn
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The Frozen Shore is a stretch of coastline that sits on the Bay of Ice, beyond the Wall.
The men of The Frozen Shore have queer names, as they name themselves after beasts of the region, while their women clad themselves in sealskins. They employ chariots made of walrus bone, pulled by dogs as large as direwolves, as transport, and also breed reindeer. Huts of ice are used by some inhabitants of the Frozen Shore, and while most free folk worship the old gods, some coastal tribes worship gods of snow and ice.
There are at least two factions of them, one wearing antlers on their hats and others wearing walrus tusks and the two sorts do not get along with each other. Wildlings from this area have oft raided the Westerosi Bear Island, and prior to Mance Rayder negotiating peace, the men of the Frozen Shore, particularly the walrus men, warred with the cannibal ice-river clans
The Great Walrus is one of the free folk leaders from the Frozen Shore.
❝A savage folk. The men are bad, the women worse.❞
— Tormund to Jon Snow (’A Dance with Dragons’, Chapter 58)
#asoiafedit#beyond the wall#the frozen shore#gotedit#game of thrones edit#game of thrones#skye edits*#perioddramaedit#gameofthronesedit#valyriansource#asoiaf#wildlingedit#free folk#beyondthewallweek2022#beyondthewall#got lore#asoiaf lore#targaryensource
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TMNT (2036): Heroes
TMNT 2036 is my own iteration. I chose the year 2036 because the time span between 2012 and 2036 is about the same as the time span between 1987 and 2012.
Let's start with the heroes.
Splinter
Now, one of my least favorite interpretations of Splinter is when he used to be a rat instead of Hamato Yoshi. This is for two main reasons: 1. It removes the personal connection to Shredder. At best, Splinter hates Shredder for killing his master, with Shredder not really caring. At worst, the two don't give a shit about each other. Shredder is often at his best when his main goal is specifically to kill Splinter and the turtles. He best serves as the turtles' personal enemy. (Though that may be my 2012 bias). 2. A regular, normal rat learning martial arts is too ridiculous. It's literally the fairy vs. walrus situation, where the normal creature doing something unexpected is less believable than the mystical, magic creature existing.
All that being said, I made Splinter originally a rat. WITH ONE KEY DIFFERENCE. His owner was not Hamato Yoshi, it was Oroku Saki. (In fact, I'm not sure if Hamato Yoshi even exists in this iteration). This change in ownership allows Splinter and Shredder to still have a direct connection, though this one will be significantly different than everything that's come before. Splinter was a gift to Saki by his mother, Oroku Miyoko (1987 reference). The two were inseparable, with Saki even taking Splinter to his training with the Foot Clan. While there, Splinter saw all sorts of training and warriors. While he couldn't practice as a rat, he still retained the memories of his best friend training and practicing. Now, I'm not sure exactly how things go down but tragedy strikes Saki. His mother dies. Both Saki and Splinter (who Miyoko had always been kind to) were both devastated. Whether through grief, or anger, or accident. Saki loses Splinter.
The rest goes relatively the same. Splinter stumbles across 4 turtles. Goop attack. They all become mutants. Splinter has a new family, but the pain of losing his old family still haunts him. His memory enhanced by the ooze, Splinter is able to teach himself to fight like the masters Saki studied under. Soon, he begins to teach his sons the same.
After about 15 years, the turtles want to go to the surface. Despite his fear, he agrees and takes them up. Things play out like how @cnwolf-brainrot said, as Splinter (being afraid to lose his family again) accompanies/leads them on missions. This allows me to have the turtles go against much more dangerous and powerful foes in the earlier seasons, while still making it be believable that they can survive. For Splinter is nearly as powerful as his 2012 counterpart.
When he runs back into Saki, Splinter is heartbroken. His best friend is now a cruel criminal. While he despises Saki for how far he's fallen, Splinter still hopes that Saki will change, and become the good man he once was.
Leonardo
As usual, Leo is the most responsible of the turtles. He follows Master Splinter to the letter and never questions him. However, there is a reason for this. Without his loyalty, Leo is unremarkable. And he knows this. He's not as strong as Raph. He's not as smart as Donatello. And he's not as stealthy as Mikey. He has a real middle-child syndrome. He thinks that the best way to stand out is to be the most faithful to his father's wishes and guidance, unlike his brothers. One aspect I want to play with is the turtles' masks. They'll still be all their iconic colors, but I want to add a few little details to each of them. For instance, Leo has the cleanest mask. He takes good care of it and washes it whenever he can.
Donatello
Donatello is sort of a merge between his 2012 and Rise versions. He's anxious to the point of being kinda cold and distant. He's kinda burnt out. There's 1000% going to be an arc of him getting fed up with always being the solution. Often indulges in TV and gaming as a distraction.
Raphael
Raph is going to portrayed as both the "youngest" and the comedic relief in my incarnation. I'm going for that gremlin child energy. He's the shortest of the brothers. Always ready for a fight and hyperviolent, Raph has been known to bite his opponents, constantly. He's what's making me consider having the turtles be different species, though not to the same extreme as Rise. His mask has stitches in it.
Michelangelo
Mikey has the most changes. He's portrayed as the "oldest". He's the tallest. He not super energetic. He's much more chilled and relax. Stoned older brother vibes. Rodrick Heffley if he wasn't a jerk. Still the party dude, he plans on just coasting through life. Mikey is the one who buts heads with Leo the most. Leo takes everything super seriously and Mikey doesn't take anything seriously. Still, Mikey is devoted to his brothers, and would do anything for them. His mask has plenty of stains on it.
April O'Neil
April O'Neil is a highschooler at Eastman-Laird High (since its apparently required to namedrop them). She's an outcast (Mutant Mayhem). Her friend Irma, a massive nerd, has better social skills than her. April is often seen as a nosy and gossipy. However, it would be more accurate to say she's investigative. She currently runs a YouTube channel exposing corruption and crime. Currently, she's hot on the trail of the many, many, many, many unethical and illegal practices of Stockman Industries. She first meets the turtles when they're all captured by Stockman Industries. They work together to escape, and the turtles gain their first human friend. She has dyed red hair in a pony tail, but you can often see her naturally brown roots. I'm continuing the pattern of making April black (Rise, Mutant Mayhem). Suspicious yet curious, April is the perfect in-between for the pedestrian and strange features of New York.
Casey Jones
Casey Jones is the star hockey player of Eastman-Laird High. She's the pride of the school. She's the most popular girl in her class. A real jock. And jerk. She's April's bully. For the first season she's more of an obstacle for April and occasionally the turtles. But by season 2, after seeing all the mutant and criminal danger out in the city, she becomes the vigilante "Skullcrusher". She wears a hockey-mask with a skull painted on, and a crack painted over the skull. Brash and reckless as ever, it's no wonder why her and Raph get along so well. Her appearance resembles more of the earlier Casey Joneses (1987 and 2003). Muscular with long messy black hair. (As much as I love 2012, he's way too skinny). While not the best influence (Splinter is not a big fan of her at first), she's exactly what the turtles need to come out of their shells.
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Words borrowed from other languages in English
Very incomplete list, based mostly on The Languages of the World (3rd ed.), Kenneth Katzner, 2002 + a heavy use of Wiktionary. some notes:
Many of these words have passed through multiple languages on their way to English (e.g. Persian -> Arabic -> Spanish -> French -> English); in that case I usually list them under the first language that used them in the same acception as English.
I generally don't include words whose ancestors already existed in Middle English, unless their origin was exotic enough to be interesting.
The vast majority of borrowings are terms very specific to their culture of origin; I generally only include those that are either very well known amng English-speakers, or of general use outside that culture.
INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY (West and South Eurasia)
Hellenic
Greek: angel, chronometer, democracy, encyclopedia, geography, graphic, hieroglyphic, homogeneous, hydraulic, meter, microscope, monarchy, philosophy, phobia, photography, telephone, and way too many other scientific or technical terms to count
Germanic
Afrikaans: aardvark, apartheid, fynbos, rooibos, springbok, trek, veld, wildebeest
Danish: Lego, simper
Dutch: brandy, bumpkin, coleslaw, cookie, deck, dock, dollar, landscape, freight, furlough, maelstrom, noodle, Santa Claus, waffle, walrus, yacht
German: aurochs, bildungsroman, blitzkrieg, cobalt, dachsund, eigenvector, ersatz, gestalt, hamburger, hinterland, kindergarten, kohlrabi, lager, poodle, quark, sauerkraut, wanderlust, yodel, zeitgeist
Icelandic: eider, geyser
Norwegian: auk, fjord, krill, lemming, narwhal, slalom, troll
Swedish: lek, mink, ombudsman, rutabaga, smorgasbord, tungsten
Yiddish: bupkis, chutzpah, kvetch, putz, schlemiel, schmaltz, schmooze, schtick, spiel, tchotchke
Slavic
Czech: robot
Russian: fedora, glasnost, intelligentsia, kefir, mammoth, pogrom, samizdat, steppe, sputnik, troika, tsar, vodka
Serbo-Croat: cravat, paprika
Celtic [many of these words are shared between the two languages]
Irish: bog, galore, gaol, geas, glen, orrery, shamrock, slob, whiskey
Scottish Gaelic: bard, bunny, cairn, clan, loch, ptarmigan, ?scone, slogan
Italic-Romance
†Latin: [way too many]
French: [way too many]
Italian: allegro, aria, balcony, bandit, bravo, calamari, casino, chiaroscuro, crescendo, contrapposto, fresco, gazette, ghetto, gusto, inferno, lava, mafia, malaria, pants, quarantine, tempo, umbrella, vendetta, volcano
Portuguese: baroque, brocade, cachalot, cobra, creole, flamingo, petunia, pimento, zebra
Spanish: abalone, armadillo, bolas, bonanza, canyon, cargo, chupacabra, cigar, cilantro, embargo, gaucho, guerrilla, junta, manta, mesa, mustang, patio, pueblo, rodeo, siesta, tornado, vanilla
Iranian
Persian: bazaar, caravan, checkmate, chess, crimson, dervish, divan, jackal, jasmine, khaki, kiosk, lemon, lilac, musk, orange, pajama, paradise, satrap, shawl, taffeta
Indo-Aryan
†Sanskrit: brahmin, Buddha, chakra, guru, karma, mantra, opal, swastika, yoga
Bengali: dinghy, jute, nabob
Hindi: bandana, bungalow, cheetah, chintz, chutney, coolie, cot, dungaree, juggernaut, lacquer, loot, rajah, pundit, shampoo, tom-tom, thug, veranda
Marathi: mongoose
Romani: hanky-panky, pal, shiv
Sinhalese: anaconda, beriberi, serendipity, tourmaline
DRAVIDIAN FAMILY (Southern India)
Kannada: bamboo
Malayalam: atoll, calico, copra, jackfruit, mahogany, mango, pagoda, teak
Tamil: curry, mulligatawny, pariah
Telugu: bandicoot
URALIC FAMILY (Northern Eurasia)
Finnic
Finnish: sauna
Saami: tundra
Samoyedic
Nenets: parka
Ugric
Hungarian: biro, coach, goulash, hussar, puszta, tokay
VASCONIC FAMILY (Northern Pirenees)
Basque: chaparral, chimichurri, silhouette
TURKIC FAMILY (Central Eurasia)
†Old Turkic: cossack, yurt
Tatar: ?stramonium
Turkish: baklava, balaclava, bergamot, caftan, caviar, harem, janissary, kebab, kismet, minaret, pastrami, sherbet, tulip, yoghurt
Yakut: taiga
MONGOLIC FAMILY (Mongolia and surrounding areas)
Mongol: horde, khan, ?valerian
SINO-TIBETAN FAMILY (China and Southeast Asia)
Tibeto-Burman
Tibetan: lama, panda, tulpa, yak, yeti
Sinitic [Chinese languages closely related, not always clear from which a borrowing comes]
Hokkien: ?ketchup, sampan, tea
Mandarin: chi, dao, dazibao, gung-ho, kaolin, oolong, shaolin, shanghai, yin-yang
Min Nan: nunchaku
Yue (Cantonese): chop suey, dim sum, kowtow, kumquat, lychee, shar-pei, ?typhoon, wok
TUNGUSIC FAMILY (Eastern Siberia)
Evenki: pika, shaman
KOREANIC FAMILY (Koreas)
Korean: bulgogi, chaebol, hantavirus, kimchi, taekwondo
JAPONIC FAMILY (Japan)
Japanese: banzai, bonsai, dojo, emoji, geisha, ginkgo, hikikomori, honcho, ikebana, kamikaze, karaoke, koi, kudzu, manga, origami, pachinko, rickshaw, sake, samurai, sensei, soy, sushi, tofu, tsunami, tycoon, zen
AUSTRONESIAN FAMILY (maritime Southeast Asia and Oceania)
Western Malayan
Javanese: ?junk [ship]
Malay: amok, cockatoo, compound [building], cootie, durian, kapok, orangutan, paddy, pangolin, rattan, sarong
Barito
Malagasy: raffia
Phlippinic
Cebuano: dugong
Ilocano: yo-yo
Tagalog: boondocks
Oceanic
Hawai'ian: aloha, hula, luau, poi, wiki
Maori: kauri, kiwi, mana, weta
Marshallese: bikini
Tahitian: pareo, tattoo
Tongan: taboo
TRANS-NEW GUINEAN FAMILY (New Guinea)
Fore: kuru
PAMA-NYUNGAN FAMILY (Australia)
Dharug: boomerang, corroboree, dingo, koala, wallaby, wobbegong, wombat, woomera
Guugu Yimithirr: kangaroo, quoll
Nyungar: dunnart, gidgee, quokka
Pitjantjatjara: Uluru
Wathaurong: bunyip
Wiradjuri: kookaburra
Yagara: dilly bag
AFRO-ASIATIC FAMILY (North Africa and Near East)
Coptic: adobe
Berber
Tachelhit: argan
Semitic
†Punic: Africa
Arabic: albatross, alchemy, alcohol, alcove, alfalfa, algebra, alkali, amber, arsenal, assassin, candy, coffee, cotton, elixir, gazebo, gazelle, ghoul, giraffe, hashish, harem, magazine, mattress, monsoon, sofa, sugar, sultan, syrup, tabby, tariff, zenith, zero
Hebrew: amen, behemoth, cabal, cherub, hallelujah, kibbutz, kosher, manna, myrrh, rabbi, sabbath, Satan, seraph, shibboleth
NIGER-CONGO FAMILY (Subsaharan Africa)
unknown: cola, gorilla, tango
Senegambian
Wolof: banana, fonio, ?hip, ?jigger [parasite], karite, ?jive, yam
Gur-Adamawa
Ngbandi: Ebola
Kwa
Ewe: voodoo
Volta-Niger
Igbo: okra
Yoruba: gelee [headgear], mambo, oba, orisha
Cross River
Ibibio: calypso
Bantu
Lingala: basenji
Kikongo: ?chimpanzee, ?macaque, ?zombie
Kimbundu: ?banjo, Candomblé, gumbo, macumba, tanga
Swahili: askari, Jenga, kwanzaa, safari
Xhosa: Ubuntu
Zulu: impala, mamba, vuvuzela
KHOE-KWADI FAMILY (Southwest Africa)
Khoekhoe (Hottentot): gnu, kudu, quagga
ESKIMO-ALEUT FAMILY (Arctic America)
Greenlandic Inuit: igloo, kayak
Inuktikut: nunatak
ALGIC FAMILY (Eastern Canada and northeast USA)
†Proto-Algonquin: moccasin, opossum, skunk
Cree: muskeg, pemmican
Mikmaq: caribou, toboggan
Montagnais: husky
Narragansett: ?powwow, sachem
Ojibwe: chipmunk, totem, wendigo, woodchuck
Powhatan: persimmon, raccoon
SALISHAN FAMILY (Pacific coast at the USA-Canada border)
Chehalis: chinook
Halkomelem: sasquatch
Lushootseed: geoduck
IROQUOIAN FAMILY (Eastern North America)
Cherokee: sequoia
SIOUAN FAMILY (Central USA)
Lakota: teepee
MUSKOGEAN FAMILY (Southeast USA)
Choctaw: bayou
UTO-AZTECAN FAMILY (Southwest USA and north Mexico)
Nahuatl: atlatl, avocado, chili, cocoa, coyote, chocolate, guacamole, hoazin, mesquite, ocelot, quetzal, tamale, tegu, tomato
O'odham (Pima): jojoba
Shoshone: chuckwalla
Yaqui: ?saguaro
MAYAN FAMILY (Southern Mexico and Guatemala)
Yucatec Maya: cenote, Chicxulub
ARAWAKAN FAMILY (Caribbeans and South America)
†Taino: barbecue, cannibal, canoe, cassava, cay, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, manatee, mangrove, maroon, potato, savanna, tobacco
Arawak: papaya
CARIBAN FAMILY (Caribbean coast of South America)
unknown: curare
Galibi Carib: caiman, chigger, pawpaw, peccary, yucca
QUECHUAN FAMILY (Andes)
Quechua: ?Andes, caoutchouc, coca, condor, guano, llama, mate, poncho, puma, quinine, vicuna
AYMARAN FAMILY (Andes)
Aymara: alpaca, chinchilla
TUPIAN FAMILY (Brazil)
[borrowings are often shared between these two languages]
†Old Tupi: ananas, arowana, Cayenne [pepper], jaguar, manioc, piranha, tapioca
Guarani: cougar, maracuja, Paraguay, petunia, toucan
CREOLE LANGUAGES (worldwide, mixed origin)
English-derived
Chinese Pidgin English: chopstick, long time no see, pidgin, taipan
Jamaican Creole: dreadlocks, reggae
Chinook-derived
Chinook Jargon: potlatch
EDIT 08-01-24: added lots more examples, especially African, Asian, and North American languages. Still not done.
EDIT 17-01-24: finished adding examples, more or less.
EDIT: 18-02-24: apparently not (cheetah).
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George clearly has a fascination with cannibals and cannibalism lol
In that darkness, the Others came riding, she used to say, dropping her voice lower and lower. Cold and dead they were, and they hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every living creature with hot blood in its veins. Holdfasts and cities and kingdoms of men all fell before them, as they moved south on pale dead horses, leading hosts of the slain. They fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children… (Jon VII, AGoT)
--
Arya would have given anything for a cup of milk and a lemon cake, but the brown wasn't so bad. It usually had barley in it, and chunks of carrot and onion and turnip, and sometimes even apple, with a film of grease swimming on top. Mostly she tried not to think about the meat. Once she had gotten a piece of fish. (Arya V, AGoT)
--
And there were folks fiercer even than Varamyr, from the northernmost reaches of the haunted forest, the hidden valleys of the Frostfangs, and even queerer places: the men of the Frozen Shore who rode in chariots made of walrus bones pulled along by packs of savage dogs, the terrible ice-river clans who were said to feast on human flesh, the cave dwellers with their faces dyed blue and purple and green. (Jon II, ASoS)
--
"Give him three days, then inform him that Hamish the Harper has broken his arm. Tell him that his clothes will never serve for court, so he must be fitted for new garb at once. He'll come with you quick enough." He grimaced. "You may want his tongue, I understand it's made of silver. The rest of him should never be found."
Bronn grinned. "There's a pot shop I know in Flea Bottom makes a savory bowl of brown. All kinds of meat in it, I hear."
"Make certain I never eat there." Tyrion spurred to a trot. He wanted a bath, and the hotter the better. (Tyrion IV, ASoS)
--
When the flames were blazing nicely Meera put the fish on. At least it's not a meat pie. The Rat Cook had cooked the son of the Andal king in a big pie with onions, carrots, mushrooms, lots of pepper and salt, a rasher of bacon, and a dark red Dornish wine. Then he served him to his father, who praised the taste and had a second slice. Afterward the gods transformed the cook into a monstrous white rat who could only eat his own young. He had roamed the Nightfort ever since, devouring his children, but still his hunger was not sated. (Bran IV, ASoS)
--
"Shade-of-the-evening, the wine of the warlocks. I came upon a cask of it when I captured a certain galleas out of Qarth, along with some cloves and nutmeg, forty bolts of green silk, and four warlocks who told a curious tale. One presumed to threaten me, so I killed him and fed him to the other three. They refused to eat of their friend's flesh at first, but when they grew hungry enough they had a change of heart. Men are meat." (The Reaver, AFfC)
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"One of the captives was always begging food," Rafford admitted, "so Ser said to give him roast goat. The Qohorik didn't have much meat on him, though. Ser took his hands and feet first, then his arms and legs." (Jaime III, AFfC)
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"My old ma used to say that giant bats flew out from Harrenhal on moonless nights, to carry bad children to Mad Danelle for her cookpots. Sometimes I'd hear them scrabbling at the shutters." (Brienne II, AFfC)
--
Biter's mouth tore free, full of blood and flesh. He spat, grinned, and sank his pointed teeth into her flesh again. This time he chewed and swallowed. He is eating me, she realized, but she had no strength left to fight him any longer. She felt as if she were floating above herself, watching the horror as if it were happening to some other woman, to some stupid girl who thought she was a knight. It will be finished soon, she told herself. Then it will not matter if he eats me. (Brienne VII, AFfC)
--
Their cold flesh would be taken to the lower sanctum where only the priests could go; what happened in there Arya was not allowed to know. Once, as she was eating her supper, a terrible suspicion seized hold of her, and she put down her knife and stared suspiciously at a slice of pale white meat. The kindly man saw the horror on her face. "It is pork, child," he told her, "only pork." (Arya II, AFfC)
--
Meera Reed was turning a chunk of raw red flesh above the flames, letting it char and spit. "Just in time," she said. Bran rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and wriggled backwards against the wall to sit. "You almost slept through supper. The ranger found a sow."
Behind her, Hodor was tearing eagerly at a chunk of hot charred flesh as blood and grease ran down into his beard. Wisps of smoke rose from between his fingers. "Hodor," he muttered between bites, "hodor, hodor." His sword lay on the earthen floor beside him. Jojen Reed nipped at his own joint with small bites, chewing each chunk of meat a dozen times before swallowing.
...
"You said no fire," he reminded the ranger.
"The walls around us hide the light, and dawn is close. We will be on our way soon."
"What happened to the men? The foes behind us?"
"They will not trouble you." (Bran I, ADwD)
--
The wedding guests gorged on cod cakes and winter squash, hills of neeps and great round wheels of cheese, on smoking slabs of mutton and beef ribs charred almost black, and lastly on three great wedding pies, as wide across as wagon wheels, their flaky crusts stuffed to bursting with carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, mushrooms, and chunks of seasoned pork swimming in a savory brown gravy.
...
True to his word, Manderly devoured six portions, two from each of the three pies, smacking his lips and slapping his belly and stuffing himself until the front of his tunic was half-brown with gravy stains and his beard was flecked with crumbs of crust. (The Prince of Winterfell, ADwD)
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Asha had been as horrified as the rest when the She-Bear told her that four Peasebury men had been found butchering one of the late Lord Fell's, carving chunks of flesh from his thighs and buttocks as one of his forearms turned upon a spit, but she could not pretend to be surprised. The four were not the first to taste human flesh during this grim march, she would wager—only the first to be discovered. (The Sacrifice, ADwD)
--
And almost every day they ate blood stew, thickened with barley and onions and chunks of meat. Jojen thought it might be squirrel meat, and Meera said that it was rat. Bran did not care. It was meat and it was good. The stewing made it tender. (Bran III, ADwD)
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At Hardhome, with six ships. Wild seas. Blackbird lost with all hands, two Lyseni ships driven aground on Skane, Talon taking water. Very bad here. Wildlings eating their own dead. (Jon XII, ADwD)
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The largest and oldest of the wild dragons was the Cannibal, so named because he had been known to feed on the carcasses of dead dragons, and descend upon the hatcheries of Dragonstone to gorge himself on newborn hatchlings and eggs. (The Princess and the Queen)
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A huge, hairy, foul-smelling folk (some maesters believe the Skagosi to have a strong admixture of Ibbenese blood; others suggest that they may be descended from giants), clad in skins and furs and untanned hides, and said to ride on unicorns, the Skagosi are the subject of many a dark rumor. It is claimed that they still offer human sacrifice to their weirwoods, lure passing ships to destruction with false lights, and feed upon the flesh of men during winter. (The North: The Stonemen of Skagos, TWoIaF)
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Farther south, the trappings of civilization fall away, and the Brindled Men become ever more savage and barbaric. These Sothoryi worship dark gods with obscene rites. Many are cannibals, and more are ghouls; when they cannot feast upon the flesh of foes and strangers, they eat their own dead. (Beyond the Free Cities: Sothoryos, TWoIaF)
--
Lo Tho, called Lo Longspoon and Lo the Terrible, the twenty-second scarlet emperor, a reputed sorcerer and cannibal, who is said to have supped upon the living brains of his enemies with a long, pearl-handled spoon, after the tops of their skulls had been removed. (The Bones and Beyond: Yi Ti, TWoIaF)
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Are there only clans among Freefolk who involved in raiding, looting and raping? Do they have any other groups who involved in trades and agriculture as source of living?
Yes. The clan that many consider most similar to those south of the Wall appear to be the Thenns, who despite joining the raiding party, were only there because they were unable to fight the Others. The fact that they have more dealings with giants than other humans and don’t speak the Common Tongue well indicate they don’t regularly go south to raid. Instead, they keep to themselves in a fertile valley and farm. There are also several mines in the area for tin and copper, which they smelt to make bronze for armor and weapons, rather than stealing.
Craster’s Keep has a pigsty, sheepfold, rabbit hutch, stables, and a yard. So they farm and raise livestock there.
Varamyr Sixskins mentions that “A dozen villages did him homage in bread and salt and cider, offering him fruit from their orchards and vegetables from their gardens.” (ADWD, Prologue). So there’s settled villages that have access to salt mines (or salt for trade), gardens for fruits and vegetables, farms for wheat (and at least handheld mills to grind the wheat into flour for bread, plus some kind of oven to make the bread), and cellars/barrels (require special technology to make the staves) for the cider. They’re self-sufficient villages if they’re able to give Varamyr some of their surplus.
Wildling villages aren’t uncommon in the Haunted Forest, although most we see are abandoned by canon era. Ygritte and Longspear Ryk are from the same village, there’s at least three villages south of the village we see the most of, Whitetree. Considering Craster is an old man but was born at Whitetree, it has been settled for at least 50 years. At the center of the village is a well for water and a sheepfold, so there’s at least raising livestock and maybe gardens. Speaking of abandoned villages, Hardhome was 600 years ago something approaching a town, with many wooden houses, a deep natural harbor for ships, and plentiful wood, stone, fish, and seals.
The people of the Frozen Shore, despite raiding Bear Island sometimes and fighting each other and the ice-river clans (to the point Tormund calls them “a savage folk”), breed reindeer and dogs as large as wolves, construct chariots of walrus bone, wear hats and sealskins, and presumably fish and hunt walruses/seals in the Bay of Ice. We know that some Free Folk even trade with passing ships, as the Cobblecat traded weapons in exchange for furs and other goods (probably amber)
The point is, there’s more to the many Free Folk clans than just raiding. Just as in real life, the stereotyped “raiding cultures” did fish, hunt, farm/garden, breed different types of animals, build permanent houses, mine, trade, and even bake and smith in order to sustain themselves. It’s just not sustainable to get all of one’s food/clothing/shelter/armor/animals by repeatedly raiding the south, so it makes sense that the Free Folk make their own. That they’re shown able make a sufficient or even good living off of hunting, agriculture, and mining indicates that they can be allies of the North in the right circumstances.
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International Day Of The Seal
International Day of the Seal takes place on March 22. It is a day set aside to raise awareness about seal conservation around the world. It’s also a day for us seal lovers to honor this amazing sea mammal. Seals are not only adorable and attractive, but their presence in the world today has a significant impact. They are also the most targeted marine mammal on the planet. These creatures are in danger of soon becoming extinct. Humans have always posed a significant threat to them, as people capture them for feed, blubber, or pelts. As a result, this day is observed to emphasize the importance of preserving their population.
History of International Day Of The Seal
This international holiday was established in 1982. Since then, the holiday has been observed yearly on March 22. The total number of seal species was already declining at the time. Seals were increasingly becoming victims of humans. This is because humans hunted seals for their pelts, blubber, and meat. To put an end to this brutality, the day was proclaimed the “Day of the Seal.” The United States Congress established the worldwide holiday to raise awareness among Americans about the plight of seals. They developed several projects to raise awareness about the importance of protecting seals.
A seal is classified as a pinniped, which means “fin-footed” in Latin. The walrus and sea lion are two other pinnipeds. Seals are distinct from other pinnipeds in that they do not walk with their flippers. They frequently move about on their bellies when on land. Their flippers assist them to move quickly in the water. Seals are also calmer and smaller than sea lions and walruses.
Seals are located around the north and south poles. They are preyed upon by predators and hunters. This has put their population at risk. This day was established to raise awareness about how they might be saved.
This day is observed all over the world. Although seals dwell in the Arctic Circle and Antarctica, millions of people around the world adore them, and so this holiday is observed globally.
International Day Of The Seal timeline
1811 Pinnipedia
Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger names both a clan and an order Pinnipedia.
1886 The Extinction of the Seal
The animal is considered extinct until a little group is discovered near the Yucatán Peninsula.
2001 The Link Between Sea Lions and Seals
Genetic analysis reveals that the north fur seal is more closely linked to many sea lion species.
2021 Recognition By the I.U.C.N.
Thirty-six pinniped species are recognized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (I.U.C.N.).
International Day Of The Seal FAQs
Seals descended from what animal?
The earliest progenitors of seals and sea lions were mammals that evolved from land to sea. The ocean began to cool around 36 million years ago, near the end of the Oligocene, causing major changes in ocean circulation.
Is the seal a friendly creature?
Seals look attractive and sociable, which they are. Most zoos and marine attractions portray seals as trainable, clever, and human-friendly.
Do seals have fur?
Northern fur seals have the second thickest fur on the planet, with 300,000 hairs per square inch.
How to Observe International Day Of The Seal
Attend a public awareness event
Watch a documentary about seals
Visit a seal exhibit zoo
During International Day of the Seal, many naturalist organizations and zoos host awareness events. Attend a presentation to learn more about these wonderful creatures.
There are numerous videos and reading resources available about seals and their habitat. Spend the day learning about how climate change affects these seals.
Seals are related to sea lions and walruses, which live in the Arctic Circle and Antarctica. However, you don't have to travel to the poles to meet these magnificent creatures. To celebrate the festival, you can visit a zoo and learn about them.
5 Interesting Facts About Seals
There are various species
Their skin helps with temperature
They can detect prey
They live up to 30 years
They are heavier than us
There are 33 kinds of seals.
Blubber is the layer of fat beneath the skin of seals that keeps them warm in frigid water.
A seal’s whiskers aid in the detection of prey in murky water.
Their life expectancy is 25 to 30 years.
Smaller seals weigh 100 pounds, while the largest weigh more than 7,000 pounds.
Why International Day Of The Seal is Important
It’s a week to achieve something worthwhile
It encourages study
It encourages conservation
All animals are important. International Day of the Seal allows us to perform important conservation work and identify solutions to help the planet.
International Day of the Seal encourages people to learn more about seals. It is a means of making people more aware of their place in the larger scheme of things.
The importance of conservation of vulnerable animals is emphasized on this day. Contributions to this cause are encouraged.
Source
#Point Arena#Monterey#Elephant Seals of San Simeon#habor seal#USA#summer 2022#2017#Northern elephant seal#Pacific Ocean#fauna#animal#Elephant Seal Vista Point#wildlife#International Day Of The Seal#22 March#InternationalDayOfTheSeal#InternationalSealDay#California#West Coast#original photography#tourist attraction#flora#landmark#nature#beach#travel#vacation
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Out of the woods (ft. My OCs)
Characters are:
Kopa
Ghosty (the white demon-like wolf with the cape in that cave)
Fate (the brown black wolf with 6 legs)
Zak (the brown blue cat from the dreamlands, kinda a wolvden OC)
Astral (the blue fox from the dreamlands)
Lexi (the black lynx)
Flare (the black blue-ish fox)
Hundi & Ars (the 2 brown wolves puppies with the blue butterfly wings in the nest)
Mela (the sand cat with the black shirt)
Teefo (the walrus)
Uno (the fennec kitsune, in shadow monster form/the shadowy black fox)
Ultra Necrozma
Explain time:
So i took those nature pictures somewhere, and then i said “wait, those might fit into this video!” And drew my characters on this images, theres some new guys, Ghosty, Lexi & Fate are from the Squiberia culture, from clan of immortality, Zak & Astral are from the dreamlands (working as w**res, there its a bit different than our world, its also legal), Hundi & Ars are just 2 puppies who mysteriously ended up there (also from the dreamlands), Teefo is a guy from team chosens and part of the “Mechablim roosim” army (armies in the lore are like groups that battle other groups as training/fun, battles are a legal sport) leaded by master islam (the crocodile), his actual name is Teeth but he wanna sound more like a maniac so his name is Teefo, Mela is one of the elemental sages of Squiberia, she’s the sage of sand
#furry#ocs#animation#fantasy#my writing#furry oc#pokemon#ultra necrozma#flightrising familiars ocs#wolvden ocs#wolf#lynx#novabeast#novabeast oc#fox#cat#walrus#out of the woods taylor swift#animation pmv
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TELL ME ABOUT THE HAT CATS NOWWWWWWW
GOES CRAZY AND JUMPS UP AND DOWN
I WILL GIVE YOU THE NAMES OF THE SILLIES FOR NOW, ALONG WITH SOME EXTRA INFO. I SWEAR I WILL BE MORE DETAILED IN ANOTHER POST IF I CAN
Sparkpaw - Hatkid
Cinnamonpaw - Bowkid
Foxpaw - Mustache Girl
Ryepounce - Cooking Cat
Sturgeonstar - Mafia Boss (Leader of TunaClan)
Owlthorn/Owlstar - Conductor (Leader of OwlClan)
Feathermelody/Featherstar - DJ Grooves (Leader of MoonClan, or PenguinClan if some people don't like the use of Moon)
Blazefern, but also simply known as The Snatcher. Occasionally referred to as Blazestar due to his sort of leadership role in the forest - Snatcher
Moonjumper stays the same, since their name works as a warrior name
Iceheart/Icestar - Vanessa (Was leader of RoseClan, which is now gone due to similar happenings to in-game events)
Alpine Skyline is still a work in progress
I wanna say Shadowmask for Badgeseller, but if anyone has a better suffix for that lmk
Smokestar - Walrus Captain (Leader of GlacierClan)
Lightningstar - Empress (Leader of GoldClan)
Any other characters that don't have proper names and such can just be other cats within the clans. (Ex: Mafia, Owl Band, Moon Penguins, etc.)
#miles answers#a hat in time#warrior cats#ahit warriors au#warriors au#i aint taggin all those characters
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huge jotunheimr worldbuilding and biology + culture headcanons post
compiling the worldbuilding ive done for a wip i have that will probably never actually be completed. sort of comics based but not necessarily relevant to comics in any way, just largely contradictory to movie canon and predicated on the idea of a loki who knows his heritage and didnt come to live in asgard until he was a school-aged child
-jotun weapons and jewelry are traditionally made of stone or bone. asgardians take this as evidence the jotun are primitive savages barely capable of craftsmanship, but this is entirely a practical consideration: mining is hardly worthwhile when the ground is frozen solid. traditional jotun bone jewelry is quite elaborately carved, and there are many skilled artisans, highly respected in jotun society. but metal weapons and trinkets are not unheard of on jotunheimr. jotun engage in some trade with the dwarves of nidavellir, exchanging pelts and whale oil (which the dwarves use for their lamps) for weapons and jewelry, and these steel weapons are coveted status symbols among the jotnar.
-jotumheimr ecology based on svalbard. tundra and permafrost make agriculture unfeasible, and as such, jotun are largely carnivorous. most of the flora is moss or lichen. there is some rather scant forest near the border with asgard. native animals include polar bears, caribou, arctic foxes, voles, puffins, seals, walrus, whales, fish, and migratory birds that spend the winter in asgard to the south.
-the primary occupation of most of the population is herding (of caribou), fishing, and hunting. as a small child, before he was taken to asgard, loki was quite an accomplished seal hunter (hunting seals involves sitting silent and still above a hole in the ice for sometimes several hours, waiting for one to surface so that you can spear it. thor was astonished at his new brother’s ability to sit so still for so long, a skill that, on asgard, young loki mainly put to use in games like hide and seek and in pulling pranks)
-shapeshifting is common and natural to the jotnar. its so widespread that its considered distinct from “magic,” which needs to be studied and learned and practiced. not every jotun can do it, but it’s common, no more remarkable to them than genetic quirks like red hair or being “double jointed” is to us. however there is no precedent among jotun society for conspicuous switching between male and female, even if it is possible. there is no “genderfluid” “role” jotun in society
-the jotnar are an oral culture, with no system of writing. This, like their lack of metallurgy, is seen by asgardians as primitive, but actually they have a very extensive oral tradition of skalds and storytelling and poetry. Story and magic are inextricably linked in jotun culture, and this is probably what loki would have been doing if he hadn’t been taken to asgard.
-loki could read and write before he came to asgard. he demanded his older cousin’s elvish thrall give him lessons in her spare time, and he would buy books from traders and devour them eagerly, didn’t matter what they were about, he wanted them. he surprised his asgardian tutors, who initially despaired the idea of teaching letters and sums to a “primitive savage”
-jotun pointy ears. jotun nictitating membranes
-jotun and asgardian royalty are much more closely related than either of them would like to admit, thanks to a long, tangled history of intermarriage, war brides, and dalliances. thor and loki are actually blood related; bestla and laufey are cousins, making odin loki’s second cousin, and thor loki’s second cousin once removed (as a side note, while incest is taboo on asgard, the population there is so small that cousin marriage is not considered incest and is occasionally practiced)
-prior to the establishment of the monarchy, jotunheimr was ruled by a loose coalition of clans and family groups
-jotun monarchy is a bit inbred LOL due to a lack of desire to forge marriage alliances that would dilute the power of the family. this is a contributing factor to loki’s small stature. jotun can be just about any size, but shortness is recessive compared to being giant.
-jotun put on weight in cold weather and lose weight rapidly in hot weather. this is a large part of why loki is scrawny compared to asgardian standards, he can’t bulk up in the temperate asgardian climate
-it’s also stressful in other ways, he gets migraines from the heat and its customary for prince loki to retire to his chambers for several hours in the afternoon and not reemerge until dinner. part of why he develops a disdain for physical combat is that sparring for hours in the hot sun is difficult for him to tolerate until he becomes advanced enough at magic to use tricks to regulate his temperature
-jotun cannot digest several common food items on asgard. loki’s first week in asgard involved a lot of trial and error and a humiliating amount of time spent in the privy. conversely, jotun can stomach a wider variety of meats, including raw meat, than asgardians
-jotun highwaymen are common in the unincorporated territory north of asgard and south of jotunheimr. but so are asgardian outlaws. the area is dangerous for both asgardian and jotun travelers. thor and loki sometimes ventured there as foolhardy, cocky teens, usually getting into a lot of trouble and more than once nearly starting an international incident
-farbauti didn’t know she was pregnant with loki until she was literally going into labor. despite the small size of the fetus, it was a difficult labor and nearly killed her
-farbauti dallied with some asgardian soldiers during the first war, just prior to loki’s birth. laufey knew about his wife’s infidelity and it hurt his pride significantly, and he became suspicious, even paranoid, that loki wasn’t his biological child (note: he is)
-after the second jotun-asgardian war, which resulted in odin’s victory, jotunheimr became a territory of asgard, ruled by a board of asgardian governors. it was, originally, odin’s intention that after loki came of age he would return to jotunheimr to act as a puppet king
-the jotnar practice harsh manhood rituals that involve, among other things, trekking out into the wild naked and killing a polar bear with your bare hands. as a symbol of manhood, after completing this ritual, the mature jotun has his teeth filed into points. asgardians are not generally aware of this custom, and those who have only met jotun on the battlefield think this is a natural feature of jotun physiology. the first time thor and loki were left alone together thor demanded to see loki’s fangs. this ended in a tussle, after loki hotly insisted he didn’t have fangs and thor sheepishly asked how he could drink asgardian blood if he didn’t have fangs, and loki told him he would show him. loki did his best to draw blood in the ensuing scrape, though obviously he didn’t drink any of it. both of them were flogged for this, and the shared indignity of the punishment made them forget their quarrel and established the foundations of camaraderie between them
-odin decided that the jotnar would be more accepting of prince loki’s return to them and his reign over them if he had undergone the traditional manhood rituals, so when loki was a teen, he was sent home to participate. thor was given a cursory explanation of what it entailed and he was worried sick about loki, sure that loki would be killed. when loki returned to asgard unharmed, thor was relieved beyond words. he concluded that loki must have used magic to kill the bear, because surely loki wasn’t strong enough to do it by hand. when he voiced this to loki (not actually meaning to cause offense but not really thinking how it sounded) loki was furious and their subsequent fight and estrangement lasted months
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Mance had spent years assembling this vast plodding host, talking to this clan mother and that magnar, winning one village with sweet words and another with a song and a third with the edge of his sword, making peace between Harma Dogshead and the Lord o' Bones, between the Hornfoots and the Nightrunners, between the walrus men of the Frozen Shore and the cannibal clans of the great ice rivers, hammering a hundred different daggers into one great spear, aimed at the heart of the Seven Kingdoms. He had no crown nor scepter, no robes of silk and velvet, but it was plain to Jon that Mance Rayder was a king in more than name.
Jon II - Pg 209
Jon learns the history of Mance Rayder’s success as the King Beyond the Wall through politicking and networking with all the tribes.
I really couldn't think of a good way to do this. Since I really couldn't think of a good literal way, I focused on a figurative interpretation. I showed Mance Rayder leading the assorted tribes of Wildlings through the northern wasteland. Most of the people in the foreground are people we've already seen. I included the other tribes mentioned by name as best I could. I stuck with arctic cultures for my references. Most notably, I used an Inuit parka to represent one of the Walrus Men.
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Hypothetically, how do you think the young children of the various free folk leaders (Tormund Giantsbane, Morna Whitemask, The Great Walrus, etc) would turn out if they were sent away to the various castles of the North (and maybe even a few First Men families in the Vale and Riverlands) as wards/hostages, after being let through the Wall and migrating into the Gift? This is assuming these kids get the full highborn hostage treatment, but imagine that due to the successful throwing back of The Others, they get to return to their families once they turn 16 - how do you think this process changes or affects them?
Hi anon!
Ward and hostage are not interchangable terms. One is based on a voluntary alliance and is supposed to signify a mutual trust and obligation. The other is a show of force and a constant implicit threat.
Ned in the Vale was a ward.
Theon at Winterfell was a hostage.
As a long term plan for ensuring compliance by the wildings settling in the Gifts... it might work, sort of, but it might also create more problems than it solves. It sets an ugly tone for a relationship that should be mutually beneficial. Ned wanted to revive the Gifts with settlers. The wildlings and the North have a tense history, true. But would hostages help that, truly?
We know the perspective of exactly one hostage, and that’s Theon, and even though he lived with the reasonably friendly Starks, it left him emotionally traumatized.
Would it be different for the children of the wildlings? They would be culturally alienated from their families, be marked by experiences and relationships that their own families cannot at all relate to. Unlike with a wardship, which is voluntary, safe and practiced among cultural peers, generally, this is a divisive move forced on people who had been allies, if they had fought and defeated the Others together.
The mountain clans are familiar with the practice.
The northmen glanced at one another. “Hostages,” mused The Norrey. “Tormund has agreed to this?”
It was that, or watch his people die. “My blood price, he called it,” said Jon Snow, “but he will pay.”
“Aye, and why not?” Old Flint stomped his cane against the ice. “Wards, we always called them, when Winterfell demanded boys of us, but they were hostages, and none the worse for it.”
“None but them whose sires displeased the Kings o’ Winter,” said The Norrey. “Those came home shorter by a head. So you tell me, boy … if these wildling friends o’ yours prove false, do you have the belly to do what needs be done?”
Ask Janos Slynt. “Tormund Giantsbane knows better than to try me. I may seem a green boy in your eyes, Lord Norrey, but I am still a son of Eddard Stark.” (ADWD, Jon XI)
Jon refused to murder the old man at Queenscrown and he thinks he'll murder an innocent kid for the crimes of their people? Really? And what would that do to him? What does that do to any lord holding a hostage?
The mountain clans have an ambivalent take on the practice, Norrey more than Flint. The Kings of Winter are three centuries gone, and still he remembers. And the Starks used to make good on their threats, too. Yikes.
We know who Eddard Stark's hostage was. We know what it did to him. And what he did to them.
I don’t think this would be a good move, copying from the past. It worked with the mountain clans more or less, but it decidedly didn’t go well with Theon, and I don’t doubt it would leave a lot of people traumatized and relations grim for a long time.
Actual wardships, voluntary and safe, would work much better at forging personal bonds that create long-term stability. The kids would visit home, could leave if they wanted, form friendships without fear, and still know their own roots to be respected. Like Ned or Domeric in the Vale, or Ned Dayne serving as Beric's squire, or even the Walders at Winterfell (if they had proper adult supervision and guidance...)
I'm sorry if this is a boring answer without the kind of speculation you may be looking for. I just can't separate the concept of hostages from what GRRM has been implying about it so heavily in the books: it's bad.
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I posted 445 times in 2022
That's 41 more posts than 2021!
119 posts created (27%)
326 posts reblogged (73%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@geckosquid
@lostlegendaerie
@niallblogs
@pandoramusicbox09
@birbmania
I tagged 390 of my posts in 2022
Only 12% of my posts had no tags
#animal crossing - 96 posts
#animal crossing fish explained - 88 posts
#fish - 84 posts
#science in video games - 80 posts
#marine biology - 78 posts
#animals - 71 posts
#animal crossing pocket camp - 68 posts
#pokemon - 43 posts
#acpc - 41 posts
#art - 32 posts
Longest Tag: 135 characters
#what they should do is remake ingo's model so that he's still wearing his pearl clan stuff under either a new coat or his ripped up one
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #164
Brought to you by a marine biologist who is very tired...
CLICK HERE FOR THE AC FISH EXPLAINED MASTERPOST!
Work has just been kicking my ass. I could definitely do like a seal and just lay around until I’m hungry. Unfortunately for seals, they have to get into the ocean to find their food (I just have to walk to the fridge). Despite their large size and agility underwater, seals have to contend with the fact that they aren’t at the top of the food chain and need to be wary of bigger, scarier things (like killer whales and sharks). Now, you might be surprised to find out that not all seals are built the same way. Today I’m going to use Phineas as a great starting point to talk about pinnipeds - the seals, sea lions, and walrus.
Phineas was an NPC in AC City Folk and New Leaf that gave the player things - either balloons or other cute toys or, in New Leaf, badges for completing some milestone. Unfortunately he doesn’t show up in ACNH, which is a shame, but understandable - Tom Nook now gives you all of your achievements and those toys are given out by Isabelle or some other seasonal NPC.
Anyway, Phineas is definitely a sea lion, *not* a true seal, and I will explain. So, all of these sea-puppy animals are in the clade Pinnipedia, which means “fin foot”. Pinnipeds are closely related to mustelids - like the sea otter and river otters we have covered - and the two are closely related to bears. So, if you think seals are cute and cuddly, they are the first thing, but maybe not the second thing. They can be aggressive, large, and fast, despite how awkward they are on land, and they have very sharp teeth and claws on their flippers. Give them a wide berth if you see them at the beach. Pinnipeds can be split into two neat groups - eared seals and true seals (the walrus falls under the first category, but we will talk about them when we cover Wendell). As the names suggest, eared seals (family Otariidae, sea lions and fur seals) have ear flaps and true seals (family Phocidae) do not.
There are also a great many differences between the groups, such as the way they swim and walk. True seals are much more adapted to the aquatic lifestyle than eared seals - their hind legs are held backwards and they cannot bring them under themselves to walk like other Carnivorans (the Order that includes lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!). So, to get around on land, they scooch about on their bellies. They are really great swimmers though and they collectively dive deeper than eared seals.
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37 notes - Posted February 12, 2022
#4
Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #156
Brought to you by a marine biologist with a not-jellyfish...
CLICK HERE FOR THE AC FISH EXPLAINED MASTERPOST!
I think this is finally where I’m going to throw up my hands and say right at the beginning that I don’t know what species these are. I would need a lot more information on these comb jellies than what the sprites give me, so we’ll have to make due with going through this group, as fascinating as it is, and learn what features they might have.
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38 notes - Posted January 6, 2022
#3
Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #170
Brought to you by a marine biologist and another we’ve done already...
CLICK HERE FOR THE AC FISH EXPLAINED MASTERPOST!
I’m totally fine doing fish we have kind of done already. I just hope none of ya are bored. Writing one of these only scratches the surface of information about that animal, and I try to pick a trait or behavior that I can expand on in general. Believe it or not, it’s only gotten *slightly* more difficult to find something to talk about in general...or maybe I just find every fish wonderful. Who knows...
Anyway, today I will cover two fish at a time because they are the same fish - the Red and the Black Wakin Goldfish!
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57 notes - Posted February 21, 2022
#2
Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #209
Brought to you by a marine biologist with different fish, same name...
CLICK HERE FOR THE AC FISH EXPLAINED MASTERPOST!
So, today we will cover the Silver Arowana, and I know what you’re thinking - gee, that sounds familiar. Didn’t we already cover the Arowana way back in like 2020 or whatever? And, yes, we did, but it was a different species, and I’m here to be wildly accurate and complete in my coverage of all the fish and aquatic friends in this franchise, so here we go!
The Silver Arowana first appeared in AC Pocket Camp in June 2021 for Fishing Tourney 39 that featured fish named after precious stones or metals - so that tourney also included the Black Ruby Barb we covered just a few entries ago. The Silver Arowana is a mostly tropical species, native to South American rivers. So, it’s pretty cool ACPC released it in the summer. Makes sense.
Anyway, so we all know that there is a species of Arowana in AC New Horizons - I covered it already and found that one was the Super Red color morph of the Asian Arowana. Both the Asian and Silver Arowanas belong to the same Family of fish - the Osteoglossidae, or the bony tongues. The name is derived from a sharp, toothed bone at the bottom of the mouth that can grind against teeth at the roof of the mouth. The family is tiny, comprised of just the arowanas and arapaimas, for which there are only about 14 species. The arowanas are divided into two Genus - the Scleropages, which is where the Asian Arowana comes from, and Osteoglossum, which today’s Silver Arowana (Osteoglossum bicirrhosum) resides.
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69 notes - Posted July 3, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #155
Brought to you by a marine biologist and another fish tied to a legend...
CLICK HERE FOR THE AC FISH EXPLAINED MASTERPOST!
Figured I’d go with this “mythos” theme until I can’t anymore or I get bored. Whichever comes first, really. So, today I bring another Pocket Camp friend who’s gorgeous pattern may just be its undoing - the Achilles Surgeonfish.
This is a summer time fish in Pocket Camp’s Saltwater Shores. It first appeared in July of 2018 and returned for the late summer to fall of 2019. Which makes sense. In real life, the Achilles Surgeonfish, or Achilles Tang (Acanthurus achilles) is a tropical reef fish, common around reefs throughout Oceania and across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii. They are chiefly algae-eaters, grazing algae off of the coral reef, which benefits the corals immensely by preventing algae from smothering them. Just like it’s cousin the Regal Blue Tang we covered a long long time ago, the Achilles also has a sharp, scalpel-sharp spine by the base of its tail, helping to form the corner of the striking orange, tear-drop pattern.
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100 notes - Posted January 4, 2022
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Stratus Saturdays — Selkies (Races pt. 2)
Diverse, skilled, adaptive, savvy and rich in tradition, selkies are as much a part of Akaiya as the world is a part of them
Selkies are a magical humanoid race native to the ocean planet Akaiya. They have existed for centuries, alongside the Nekai fishfolk and the Aladephi featherfolk. Over generations, selkies have especially felt the ebbing away of magic in the world; more and more selkies have nonmagical children, eventually leading many families and even whole clans dying out as they lose their magical edge in protecting their homes, territories and cultures. To combat against the unknown reason as to why magic is fading, many clans adamantly and fiercely cling to their values, traditions and people to avoid their worst nightmare: being destroyed and left floating out aimlessly like regular humans.
Selkie magic is the attunement to light, and expressed in two ways: lightcasting and transformation.
Lightcasting is the bending and transformation of existing light into different forms, or changing how light interacts with an object. This lower level of light magic can be attuned to and practiced by non-selkies.
Examples include: illusory magic, blinding explosions, fireworks, small-scale auroras, diffusion and concentration of light into beams, changing colors, signals, portable glowlamps, anti-piracy lasers and lighthouses.
Transformation is unique to selkies and cannot be attuned to, and a selkie that attunes to another type of magic can still transform even if they can no longer lightcast. Selkie forms (called an ukaa) are hereditary and require a selkie to have attuned to a favored clothing focus (called a hano'ukaa), which could be any durable, organic wearable and range from actual coats, cloaks, hats, scarves, gloves, boots, belts, jewelry, pauldrons and other armor, and even undergarments. Selkie transformations are described as a "true form light": their human form, like a beam of light, is focused through a "prism" (their ukaa) to broaden, narrow and change their shape into their animal form. They have the physical capabilities of the animals they turn into, but the actual animals and people can recognize them as being different as if having an uncanny valley effect.
While all selkies acknowledge each other as kin, they divide themselves into clans, traditionally by their aquatic form. Selkies in Rose Stratus aren't limited to just seal transformations; most semiaquatic mammals can be a selkie form! Some clans found in Rose Stratus are:
Larpueneq (Ribbon House) - a larger clan of ribbon and bearded seals
Kuuvi (Tusked Warriors) - Walrus and sea lion folk known for their bravery and stubbornness
Itaayo (Blackfish Wearers) - a travelling clan of killer whale and pilot whale forms
Aw'nari (Toothed Lightweavers) - a smaller clan of narwhal selkies that are more in tune with lightcasting and mysticism, living under the auroras of the frigid northern seas
Rorikai (Finned Tricksters) - Roguish dolphin selkies that are adept at illusory lightcasting
Koyabaana (Gentle Fat Swimmers) - Manatee and dugong selkies known for pacifism and kindness that live in estuary port towns
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Dnd explained White Dragons
The smallest least intelligent and most animalistic of the chromatic dragons White dragons dwell in frigid climes favoring arctic areas or icy mountains. They are vicious cruel reptiles driven by hunger and greed.
A White dragon has feral eyes a sleek profile and a spined crest. The scales of a wyrmling White dragon glisten pure white. As the dragon ages its sheen disappears and some of its scales begin to darken disappears and some of its scales begin to darken so that by the time it is old it is mottled by patches of pale blue and light gray. This patterning helps the dragon blend into the realms of ice and stone in which it hunts and to fade from view when it soars across a cloud filled sky.
White dragons lack the cunning and tactics of most other dragons. However their bestial nature makes them the best hunters among all dragonkind singularly focused on surviving and all dragonkind singularly focused on surviving and slaughtering their enemies. A White dragon consumes only food that has been frozen devouring creatures killed by its breath weapon while they are still stiff and frigid. It encases other kills in ice or buries them in snow near its lair and finding such a larder is a good indication that a White dragon dwells nearby.
A white dragon also keeps the bodies of its greatest enemies as trophies freezing corpses where it can look upon them and gloat. The remains of Giants, Remorhazes and other dragons are often positioned prominently within a White dragon's lair as warnings to intruders.
Though only moderately intelligent White dragons have extraordinary memories. They recall every slight and defeat and have been known to conduct malicious vendettas against creatures that have offended them. This often includes Silver dragons which lair in the same territories as White dragons. White dragons can speak as all dragons can but they rarely talk unless moved to do so.
White dragons avoid all other dragons except White dragons of the opposite sex. Even then when White dragons seek each other out as mates they stay together only long enough to conceive offspring before fleeing into isolation again.
White dragons can't abide rivals near their lairs. As a result a White dragon attacks other creatures without provocation viewing such creatures as either too weak or too powerful to live. The only creatures that typically serve a White dragon are intelligent humanoids that demonstrate enough strength to assuage the dragon's wrath and can put up with sustaining regular losses as a result of its hunger. This includes dragon-worshiping Kobolds, which are commonly found in their lairs.
Powerful creatures can sometimes gain a White dragons obedience through a demonstration of physical or magical might. Frost giants challenge White dragons to prove their own strength and improve their status in their clans, and their cracked bones litter many a White dragon's lair. However a White dragon defeated by a Frost giant often becomes its servant accepting the mastery of a superior creature in exchange for asserting its own domination over the other creatures that serve or oppose the Frost giant.
White dragons love the cold sparkle of ice and favor treasure with similar qualities particularly diamonds. However in their remote arctic climes the treasure hoards of White dragons more often contain walrus and mammoth tusk ivory whale bone sculptures figureheads from ships furs and magic items seized from overly bold adventurers.
Loose coins and gems are spread across a White dragons lair glittering like stars when the light strikes them. Larger treasures and chests are encased in layers of rime created by the White dragon's breath and held safe beneath layers of transparent ice. The White dragon's great strength allows it to easily access its wealth while lesser creatures must spend hours chipping away or melting the ice to reach the dragon's main hord.
A White dragon's flawless memory means that it knows how it came to possess every coin gem and magic item in its hoard and it associates each item with a specific victory. White dragons are notoriously difficult to bribe since any offers of treasure are seen as an insult to their ability to simply slay the creature making the offer and seize the treasure on their own.
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