Prompt 278

You know what I’ve gotten obsessed with and inspired by? Dredge. 

You know what is also fun? Merfolk. What’s even better? Lovecraftian corrupted merfolk. Especially if say, one goes with the Lazarus Waters being a form of ectoplasm. So, in this? Lazarus waters are like lakes, while Amity Park, thanks to the Portal, and the barriers? It is an entire sea. 

There are islands, small areas that were once the tips of buildings that have gathered more landmass around them. There are mangroves, trees not like anything on earth or anywhere else stretching up in canopies dark enough to block out the sun, yet lit by the green waters. 

It goes deep. Mariana Trench deep, despite it being impossible. The GIW have explored for caves or tunnels, they’ve tried to find some sort of explanation, but there isn’t one. 

Now all that ecto? That has an effect on people. They mutate, they change, they adapt. Anywhere else would have been a slow death- something the GIW might have even been counting on. But Amity Park? It was founded by witches, it was the hotspot for the supernatural, even before the Fentonwork Portal. They’ve been dealing with this sort of energy in microdoses from the moment they first began to live in the city in any generation. 

But they begin to adapt. Shift into something… other. Some stay contaminated, clinging to human forms as they form homes on the tiny islands, fishing and farming what they can. Others become Liminal, almost seeming to meld with fish, some similar to ones of the Living and others something just to the left. Similar yes, but not quite… right. And then there are those that have truly melded with the energy of the dead, forms torn asunder by it, ripped apart and made anew by it. 

The first sign back when the barrier was activated, when they could no longer leave and were trapped were the fish in the lake. And now they are the same, with gazes of something Else, with gnashing teeth and a hunger gnawing at where hearts once were. 

But they aren’t monsters. They’re still themselves. Just a little… Other now. 

Selkie AU

Ok so on discord we went off. A lot of this is just paraphrasing or copy pasted from buddies hii guys. It’s honestly a fun concept to play with no matter how you turn it around~ I’ll start off with the version I drew these doodles for but it’s all under the cut because it got so long... There’s also always place for different flavors like if they realize the other’s a selkie immediately or over time, etc etc so this is all just food for thought. Marcille is always the instigator though lol, obsessed with him no matter the universe. As a selkie wants to learn more about this human and as a researcher is chasing after this secretive mysterious sea-guy while he very much tries to escape everyone’s attention.

Fisherman Chil & selkie Marcille

Old sad fisherman Chilchuck… He drinks out at sea even. Divorcee dad who’s got nothing waiting for him on land anymore. He’s on the sea every day to get fish to sell at the wet market or to the butcher, the sky and sea’s grey and everything’s dull and tedious. Seals are nothing special either. The only stuff he knows about selkies really could have some selkie storybooks he reads to his daughters. Meanwhile selkie Marcille… You could go a lot of different routes I feel. You know I feel like being a selkie fits with Marcille and her mom, with that interaction of "you’ll have to let others go and deal with that", like in this AU she’ll always be different and will have to leave people behind for the sea eventually here and there and whatnot…

Chilchuck and worksongs... Fisherman Chilchuck singing sea shanties while selkie Marcille sings her songs of the sea and then she hears him and gets curious and follows him back on land or something…… Tries to blend in with humans just so she’s like. What’s his deal. But them only meeting out at sea is very cute as well. Eventually she gets on his boat and they hang out. Melancholic psychological horror sea tragedy-romance would be fun idk. Maybe he starts hearing a woman sing out at sea randomly and thinks it’s the alcohol. But he’d be a goner already lmao. Like don’t get me wrong it’d take a while of actual interactions for him to actually fall in love, but also ~~he’s lonely~~ pretty blonde woman waaaa. Siren imagery hehe. "Hmmm I didn't know selkies had hypnotic voices as well" (they don't. he's down outrageous and he knows it.) Mr "in denial so bad maybe magic is the answer yep for sure". I want her to hear him singing something he used to for his daughters/wife etc and shes like 👁️👁️ who hurt this man........... (Could also work for selkie Chil) What’s his tragic backstory…..

I think marcille also deserves to go silly and catch a carp between her teeth, giving it to chilchuck batting her eyelashes like teehee... I'm such a good assistant right... He needs them undamaged if he wants to sell them but he still makes use of her gift anyway... Puts it in a stew and shares it with her... Something we made together..… Marcille being able to taste human food with actual spices and actual heat and actual cooked meat... His home is the warmest place on the surface. His hugs are more comforting than even the water’s. AGH and how long hasn’t he eaten a real homecooked meal you’d bet 😭 Marcille notices he’s underweight and is like "he’s always fishing though??? Does he just need like, a lot??" and takes it upon herself to bring him more fish to feed him. "He NEEDS to blubber up. I know it." Do you think when his wife was still there he'd come home to the smell of cooking.... but now there's nothing......... He’s on his own, he sleeps in the boat… It just smell like fish all day. The stench gets to him and even the burn of alcohol in his nostrils is a kinder hell. NOW he comes back to the stench of roting flesh and he's like :))) ahh.... my gi rl firned 💖 /j

Selkie Marcille getting onto his boat out of nowhere and slapping the beer bottle out of his hand. It’d go hard if he’s so drunk once that he’s leaning over the railing with his bottle hanging down from his grip and the beer goes into the sea and she tastes it and is like. Now what the fuck is this. Ew. He doesn’t look so good maybe I should splash him with water. She could save him from drowning... Girl who puts him on a rock somewhere until he wakes up and hides in the water as soon as he comes to… Peekinh at him from the surface of the water because, oh dear we're shy now because it's face to face… Drawing parallels between swaying (drunk) and swaying (motion of boat on the sea). She sways his world…… Makes him feel dizzy in a nice, light airy way…… He crashes into his bed in his home and still feels the rocking of the waves under him, and he falls asleep thinking of her…

Go out to the sea in a storm because you can’t stand feeling useless. The sea is your livelihood, it's where you're good and useful. On land you never know what to do with your hands. Maybe he should just let the sea pull him under. let it sweep him away.  Marcille does exactly that, but it's not something that erases him. It's not something that swallows him whole. It's something that shows him a whole other world- The coral reefs, the schools of fish that exist below, the lush seaweed forests that Marcille treasures so much. It's all been there for him to see, theres so much beneath his feet. And all he had to do was let her take his hand. This world full of fish and creatures he's caught and gutted... that he gets to see in a different light…… The idea of him trusting her enough to let her lead him underwater... I think the time that Marcille leads him into the water should be on one beautiful evening, with the water shimmering, and the sun casting rays onto the waters surface- enough that it's still scary at first, enough that Chilchuck still struggles against the salty grasp of the waves, but when marcille takes him under he can see just how the light of the sun casts its spotlight on the seafloor- and how even in the shallows therein lies a thousand wonders, ones he's stepped right over before. I'm just obsessed with chilchuck experiencing a whole nother world in there. Give me childlike wonder. Give me a Marcille who wants to show her grump fucking fisherman boyfriend the cute fishies and the minnows, the pretty hermit crabs. Something about the sea looking different from beneath the waves... The parallels of him on the beach stepping over shells and urchins in the shallows with his boots and just crush them right over, not even noticing he did from force of habit and routine having dulled everything… Him working on the sea all the time but never really seeing it because he’s so absorbed in his own shit and he always just uses the harbor so there’s never real contact with it anyways. When the sea water laps at his forearms when he reels the net in but they feel like lashes of frost against his skin. She'd look really pretty with her hair flowy in the waves............ Marcille’s hair should get used for creepy compositions more… In the water she takes him under and her hair tangles and latch onto him against his skin. Her hair is long, underwater it could engulf him probably, he likes blonde hair he'd be happy with that… Not the lowkey suicidal ideation of letting the sea take him and how he’d be happy suffocating in her hair when doing a dive wow ok

I keep thinking about the Dredge AU… The video game yes yes. It’d be a mess but ohhh ohh the sea and its wonderful world but also its dark secrets, Marcille researching the depths and finding dark powers and idk the tragedy of a man at sea who can’t forget what he’s lost and the mythical gf he made that was never meant to be and it’ll destroy them both idk idk. Bc of Marcille helping him fish from below as a selkie, Senshi like YOU ARE OVERFISHING YOU ARE DESTROYING THE ECOSYSTEMMM @ them lmao You are feeding the whole town and making big bucks but you’re fishing so much that some fish are starting to get stale without being bought, the sea is bleeding and the leviathan is hungry

Maybe one time, one of them gets upset at the other and holds the seal fur hostage, its sooo mean but it also feels very them. When I think selkie I think of the movie Song of the Sea and in that movie the father of the protags loved a selkie, the mother, but she had to leave at one point for the sea because that’s her nature etc etc, but he didn’t want her to leave so he hid her skin which like. Ruined everything and hurt her. And ohhh the parallels… Leaving him… Just food for thought.

Selkie Chil & marine researcher Marcille

The reverse of that where Chil’s the selkie, Marcille’s fascination for him has the reverse angle, almost like admiration too. Crying she’d be like "who’s this mysterious guy, why’s he look kinda ethereal(selkie fairy blablabla)?" and investigates meanwhile he doesn’t want anyone to see him transforming and such so he’s like "leave me aloneeeeeee!!" Selkie chil? secretive man who just wants to chill gets grabbed by the most enthusiastic fairytale-obsessed girl out there. She WILL almost drown trying to say hi. C’mon mister mythical let’s have a storybook romance <3 Jumping in da water and he has to rescue her and immediately gains 100 grey hairs. She gets her storybook ‘saved by the merman’ moment but at what cost. "WHAT ARE YOU DOINGGG" screaming, she gets scolded very much but it all goes in one ear out the other tbh. Selkie Chilchuck is even better with his secretiveness... How do you get around the fact you’re a seal? Iunno I’ve never been a seal Obsessed with the implications of his family in this. Except if his wife and daughters were humans and so his work travels are instead selkie shenanigans going out at sea for months on ends, I imagine they’d be selkies too… Did they get separated? Die? Is Chilchuck’s cowl in this one Flertom’s fur? :(   Once more mentioning sea shanties Chilchuck btw, Roll the Old Chariot comes to mind… Ooough Song of the Sea from the movie that he sung to his daughters <33 I’m fine

With the researcher angle actually being pushed there are interesting plots and scenes you could think of obvi, but uh we kind of went off on the fisherman Chil Marcille selkie AU instead haha. It’d be cute if she ends up teaching him how to live on land in the end. Dresses him up like a funky lil guy. I went with tallman Chil when drawing it and selkie Marcille’s more elf-like, and for selkie Chil I’d imagine it’s the reverse where she’s tallman-like and he still looks like a halfling… Sea-related AUs are my weak spot <33

No matter how you turn it, Marcille is the instigator lol. Selkie Marcille: this little man… I want to know more about this human! Selkie Chilchuck = tries to avoid everything but this Marcille keeps chasing him! It’s her job to, Chilchuck minds his business!! He sees a sliver of something weird out at night? Not his job nope keep your nose out of that it’ll only bring you trouble. It’d have to really itch him at him for him to crack I think… Honestly he’d make a great lovecraftian horror protagonist lol. We love a girl with no chill and her nose in everyone’s business

Shout to to @dayundying, @cabinette, @soappox and @lucky-fydraws!! These people were there for the brainstorming and the writing of the scripture…

OCEANS CALLING

A HC10 Dredge inspired AU

Overview:

There’s something in the water by Gem’s base that’s affecting the residents of Magic Mountain and beyond. What’s the price of a single mending book?

Main tag: #oceans calling au

This AU is based on elements from indie horror fishing game Dredge, which Gem has decided to use as inspiration this season, and will contain elements of Lovecraft horror that may not be suitable for all readers. Content warnings include: possession (mild), unnatural rot/decay, implied bad endings, and the ocean as a malicious entity. If there are any content warnings I’ve missed, please let me know.

Because of the Dredge inspiration, parts of this AU will spoil the plot of the game. If you wish to know what goes on in the game before you read this au, the link to buy the game is here, and Jacksepticeye’s playthrough is here if you don’t want to buy it.

The development of this AU is happening parallel to the events of Hermitcraft and does not have a planned ending. It will not be a 1:1 parallel to the events of Dredge either, and certain characters from both realms of inspiration will be excluded.

CCs present on tumblr are allowed to interact with this AU, but do not spam members of the hermitcraft server with this AU and do not let this AU influence the planning of the rest of the season. This is strictly for fun and enjoyment.

Fics:

Gem

Etho

Doc

Grian

World building:

Gem vs. Grian

Pearl’s Salmon Head

Mumbo’s Strangeness

Magic Mountain

Etho’s specific deal

More about Grian

Iskall, Cleo and The Neighborhood

The Thing’s Intentions

Grian and The Shrine

The Painting

If you have any fanart or ideas, feel free to send it my way! They will be displayed here :3

Works inspired by this AU:

Gem meets the collector by @wren-kitchens

Also while I'm sharing Talas scribbles. Here's one from when I put him in Dredge while I was playing that game too

I've only heard a lil about y'all's Dredge characters and I am BEGGING to hear more about yours. I was GLUED to that game when it came out

Dredge!Araw is but a simple fisherman.

Everything starts out fine, but things slither on the ship, you know? Hard pests to always beware of, and whats a man to do when hes hungry and all his fish keep whispering to him?

Based off the Decaying Blackmouth aberration, he's slowly just rotting. It starts with his fingers, makes them black and has his finger nails splitting. He cant really feel it, so he doesn't care. Thinks he must have just stuck his hands into squid ink and hes not getting enough fruit in his diet or smthn. The fish taste better by the day. He's sun burnt to the extent of someone who absolutely needs to go inside for once, so when his skin starts peeling, starts feeling more like fish scales, slowly taking over his limbs and back, he guesses he'll stop by town and get a salve and sunscreen if they have it. It always seems to slip his mind...

@whimsy-biome HFMDH YAY dredge has to be one of my favourite games ever it’s so <333

anyway i’m kind of obsessed with the timeline of this KHFKDHJ mostly because i’ve managed to squish two of my favourite things together: dredge and empires s1 LNFLDN

this does have like. hints? of dredge spoilers, just in case you don’t wanna spoil anything at all. nothing is a 1:1 ratio though, I mostly took half the dredge plot and warped it a little HLFDN (under the cut ooo)

everything basically starts at the rapture in what used to be mazelea. joel has just watched his whole life’s work crumble to the ground, and now his wife and best friend have both vanished, and the oceans are almost gone completely. he’s.. a little desperate, in all honesty, and is willing to do anything to get his old life back.

so, he makes the trek to crystal cliffs and manages to find gem before she leaves for somewhere better than the hellscape that their kingdoms have become. joel begs for her to help him, to do anything that might bring back jimmy and lizzie, and she reluctantly agrees to make him a spell that would bring them back.

gem comes to him, frantic, with the spell written in an old grimoire of hers, and tells him that joel can bring jimmy and lizzie back with it. she tells him though, that to bring two deities back into the world would have an enormous cost. something like the rapture, but amplified by thousands. the world would become uninhabitable.

they both agree that there is no way the spell could ever be used, and they cast it out to sea in the hopes that it’d be lost forever

and it was! for a time

the thing about minecraft worlds is that, once the landscape has changed enough and all old builds are reduced to ruin, they get reused. after all, it’s a lot more efficient to reuse worlds than to create a new one every single time someone wants, when there are thousands of worlds that haven’t been touched in centuries!

not to mention, whilst players’ memories and bodies may change from world to world, their code stays exactly the same. now generally this is fine, but when your code has been corrupted by something—let’s say a rapture—the word does not take kindly to that. I mean, why did you think s8 ended so forcefully? gem and pearl, of course.

after the hermits realised what their code had done to the world, they removed the aspect of the rapture from their codes. unfortunately, this also removed some of their memories from after the rapture. which also includes gem’s memories of the spell and the book. i’m sure this will have zero negative consequences at all!

so, whether it be coincidence or incredible misfortune, the world for season ten of hermitcraft just so happens to be the same world that season one of empires smp inhabited. which means the book is still there

and the book would very much like to be used.

its like a horrible mirror

Lil peek at something I probably won't finish, mans is having it rough out there, he's hearing whispers in the dark

Vander

Dredge AU

"Intak, I caught another of the weird fish! I didn't think we'd see any out here. Do you think they're having problems or something?" Taeyang hears thumping footsteps and turns just in time to see Intak approaching. All he can do is watch as Intak pulls the fish off the hook and throws it back into the water, the unnaturally translucent scales flashing in the sunlight with colors that leave Taeyang dazed. He stumbles, and it is only Intak's hands that keep him from falling.

..

"You get up at night. Your eyes open but don't see. Did you know?" Taeyang shakes his head, sitting in his bunk with Intak towering over him. "It's why I slept with you. To keep you down. You would walk onto the deck and stare. That's bad. I had to keep you down." It feels familiar, dangerously so. They're going to run aground again. "We cannot stay."

"I don't want to go back," Taeyang whispers. Intak's jaw tenses and his fists clench, but he shakes them back out.

"We cannot stay," he repeats. "You can't force me. I won't." He swallows thickly, closes his eyes before signing the next bit. "But we can go. I choose where." For a moment, Taeyang sits there and wonders why Intak had closed his eyes. The only thing he can think is that Intak doesn't want to see his reaction.

"Okay," he says, trying to keep his voice light. "You pick, and we'll go there." Intak nods, his eyes still shut, and then he turns around and heads for the stairs. "Intak, why... don't you like it here? It's beautiful." He pauses, nods. He doesn't look surprised by the question. He raises his hands up over his shoulders, and when he signs, it is tense and a little awkward because of the way he's doing it, but the message gets across.

"Beauty is dangerous." He turns towards Taeyang, his eyes opened now. "You are dangerous. But we are... netted. So, I help. Even when you are dangerous."

Day 16: Fangs :)

Prompt 288

Once more, Dredge Inspiration, because I am weak. 

See, the Realms may be Infinite, but Amity? Definitely not. So all that energy has to go somewhere- sinks into the cracks and into the ground and air and waters in the city and around it. And then? Not only is there ambient energy, but then literal Ancients come through. 

Great storms and earthquakes tearing through the already cracked and ecto-soaked ground. According to official records? Amity Park sank into a sinkhole after a series of heavy flooding after several natural disasters. 

Which sure, there was a sinkhole, but they sure as fuck wouldn’t have sank if there wasn’t a damn ghost shield up thanks to the GIW. It would have taken at least several more years for most to get ecto-contaminated as much as they were, but no, let’s add a shield that prevents the ecto from leaving and instead bounces it right back into the city. 

So perhaps the people start becoming a bit off. Perhaps there’s some parts of the Pit that has grown sentient, living and vicious in possessively protecting the people inside. So maybe it’s infected people, slowly dragging them farther away from humanity. So maybe the entire class can no longer be counted as human. 

It’s fine. It’s okay. Everything is fine and safe and no one can get inside, even if they can’t leave. So what if they can’t recall how long the barrier has been up? So what if the people who aren’t becoming liminal are becoming sick? That’s fine, they don’t need help… right? 

This started with “Dean totally has orange cat energy” and just kept going and now I’ve lost all control???? Also nobody tells you cat anatomy is WEIRD. Why so bendy???

Special thanks to @lordcrowcifer for his suggestions for Crowley & Gabriel! (He made a strong case with the perfect photo of an angery looking Scottish Fold 😂)

More suggestions are, of course, welcomed because I have nothing better to do than draw dudes in plaid as cats.

Please ask me about my Dredge!Hermit headcanons I’m going to lose my mind if these thoughts stay in here

The thing in her cargo hold is looking at her again.

Really, Gem should have sold it by now. If the fishmonger had refused to take it--and really, it seems unlikely, Gem thinks, that the fishmonger would refuse to take it; he has taken and carved up and made meals of far stranger fish than one with a human face and hands and torso--she could have easily sold it to the man on the train, who takes exotic catches for his zoo. She could have even taken it to Grian; it's not a mending book, but it's the sort of thing he'd like to make fun of her for catching, instead of anything she's after.

Really, she should have. The longer she keeps the thing in her cargo hold, the more it starts to look properly human to her. She should know better. She has caught far stranger fish, and none of them have been human. It's another trick these seas have been playing on her, she thinks.

Long nights alone do that to a woman.

She ignores it. Instead, she opens the lid of the tank and starts depositing salmon. "It's a really weird request, that I keep them alive the whole time. You won't eat them, right?" Gem says, knowing the thing in her cargo hold can't answer. "Because if you eat them, this time, I really am going to sell you to the fishmonger. Or maybe I can figure out how to get fillets from you on my own? I've certainly eaten weirder fish..."

The thing in the cargo hold continues to stare. It has eyes that look like little moons, and brown hair, and it is smiling for some reason. Gem huffs.

"Don't give me that look! You are a fish. I am a fisherman. If mere human faces stopped me from doing my job, I would have gone mad a long time ago."

The thing in the cargo hold smiles wider. The lights flicker. Gem rolls her eyes and finishes putting salmon in the tank. As though to spite her, the thing in the cargo hold immediately lashes out, grabbing one in the claws on her otherwise-human hands and then tearing it apart with razor-sharp teeth. Blood rises on the water. Gem sighs.

"I have a harpoon in here somewhere, or at least a very sharp knife," she says to herself. She doesn't really want to use her nice knife, the one she always keeps on her belt, but she ought to have another knife around with which she can finish the job, right?

The lights flicker and go out. When she looks across at the tank, there are two silvery-moon eyes looking at her.

Gem pulls a wire. Gem turns the lights back on. She takes a deep breath.

"I really should have sold you by now, really. If the fishmonger won't take you, then the zookeeper would love you," Gem says.

The radio crackles. Gem startles. Very, very few people ever contact her on the shipboard radio, but if she's getting a signal, that's more important than a grudge match with a fish. She heads over to answer the call.

An amalgamation of voices responds:

YOU ARE FUNNY. I HAVE A MESSAGE. A DELIVERY. YOU'VE TRAPPED ME THOUGH.

Slowly, Gem turns around to the thing in the cargo hold.

"This won't stop me from treating you like a fish," she says. "If messages from the ocean stopped me--"

A terrible, crackling laugh sounds from the radio.

I AM THE MOON'S PEARL. YOU WILL NOT HOLD ME FOREVER. WE WILL SEE WHO EATS WHO.

Gem wags her finger. "We'll see, for sure, as long as you don't eat my salmon. That man in the fish-scaled suit was VERY insistent, you know."

TELL ME MORE.

"You're tying up my radio. What if there's another ship? What if there's something important?"

OH GEM. YOU KNOW THERE WON'T BE.

Gem swallows.

The thing in the cargo hold is staring at her.

"I need to sleep. I need to go to shore," she says.

YOU WON'T, the radio says.

She won't.

An Unwelcomed storm

Some lonely sailor art for a potential lighthouse keeper