After scarring myself with my previous art of Arti eating a scav *shivers* I decide to draw her with her pups

I need wholesome content of artificer and her pups dammit

A few gifts for @crazycakeparrotart, I had a lot of fun drawing your slug designs and I hope I actually did good drawing them lol

(Not sure why I decided to do slightly colored lineart for this but it was fun to do for the first time in awhile💀)

Btw click for better quality because tumblr hates my art and wishes to pixelate it

Tsc blog

I love how Cassandra is so down to Earth when it comes to character creation and development. Unlike many other authors, her "heros" aren't the clichè perfect-good guy-always-right type of heros but they are actually relatable and not entirely good just like nobody in real life is. We all have our ups and downs and I feel like Cassandra never fails to give that impression through her characters.

✦ SICK ✦

During Artificer and Hunter's travels through Five Pebbles, Artificer has noticed something strange about Hunter's behaviour these past cycles...

lmao slug angst,, this was sort of an experiment but it turned out really nicely, i think! I especially like Artificer's profile shot in panel 3! Will definitely be doing more comics like this one (hopefully with a more wholesome tone)!

(click for higher quality) hello rain world community have a low effort doodlepage of arti adopting robots. i love the popular fanon of "artificer sees five pebbles as its baby" because its both wholesome and hilarious to think of a slug adopting an immortal machine guy and i think we should extend that to sofanthiel as well. because it is pup sized. that thing is BABY SHAPED !!

I did a thing!!!!!!!!! Is Monk :3

the silly is hereeeee also slight redesign

bit of rambling under the cut

So. Monk. I see everyone keeping them as the wholesome, sweet, younger sibling who can do no harm and wouldn't even hurt a noodlefly on purpose. So I take then and throw it out the window. Monk in my AU is an echo. They were hardened and jaded from the world outside, their youthful innocence gone. It is no longer the naive and sweet lil girl they were before, oh no. They aren't even a girl anymore. Nonbinary. It is violent and cunning, using their smarts to hunt down and kill its prey for sport. This would make for the perfect villain, and it most likely would be some sort of 'villain' if it weren't for Enot. Enot, a bundle of happiness and joy. Instead of using their trauma as an excuse to spread more pain like Monk, (and artificer) He tries to make others happier, knowing the pain that they went through, and not wanting others to go through the same. Enot helped Monk recover and find joy once more, eventually becoming Queer Platonic Partners (QPP). Together they both worked through their pains and struggles, eventually finding peace in one another. But we aren't having Monk have healed trauma and joy yet. You guys are gonna stay and wait for comics or smt then we can have that character arc someday.

dang. So either you read through this and got to the end or skipped all my talking. Welcome to the end. Have good sleep, eat good food, and drink good water. Have a nice day/night.

did all the scugs die of ascension or did they die in other ways?

Most creatures probably die of old age! Or from other creatures.

Ascension is a very difficult path to take.

Spearmaster I'd like to think was told to ascend by SRS, but I can't back up anything with canon.

Artificer either died in bloodshed or old age or a combination of both. She can't ascend for sure.

Hunter is up to how you handle it really!! Personally I'd like to think that little cat is a miracle and made it to the void sea.

Gourmand didn't seem interested in ascension really. I think even Pebbles comments on that. Too many kids to take care of!! Become wholesome chubby gramps <3

Survivor and Monk are up to interpretation. You can argue that since you need to ascend in order to even have access to the other endings, that one is canon. But with Monk, you always meet Survivor at the end no matter what path you take iirc. So if Survivor ascend you'll find them with Monk at the home tree anyway. So really I dunno!

Rivulet could have possibly ascended if you squint, but Moon tells us that the "passage of time" took them. So the stronger implication is that Rivulet died of old age with her, instead of leaving to ascend.

And Saint uh...

Well Saint is messed up hes around!!

@inklings-challenge this is my contribution for today's prompt, "Cheese."

I cook with cheese pretty frequently, but you happen to catch me on a day when I won't have occasion to cook, so here is an excerpt from a review of a meal at a high-class Coregean hotel from respected food (and everything else) critic, Antavia, Duchess of Arclis, Woman Who Hates Things. In the final paragraphs of her review, she discusses the fruit and cheese course, waxes a bit poetic on the subject of cheese, and provides her perspective on the hotel's fruit and cheese.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this review are Antavia's and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of me or this blog in general.

While the pièce de résistance of a truly great meal will invariably come as an entree or perhaps an especially decadent dessert, I wish to put in a good word for the humble fruit and cheese course. Trifling though it may seem after an evening of feasting, there is something sacred in it. The diner has appreciated a seemingly endless array of works of art crafted by some master chef. He—or, as the case may be, she—has savoured combinations of ingredients with orchestral exquisiteness, perhaps to the point of weariness. Perhaps the last mouthful or two of the ice has gone down with reluctance. But suddenly the dessert plates are whisked away and transformed into platters of fruits and cheeses. Nothing could be simpler; all culinary artifice has been cast aside. The diner is left with the remembrance of what food is at its soul—natural, pure, wholesome—and at once the stomach gratefully finds a way to open up for one last hurrah. For who can decline fruit or cheese?

Cheese, in particular, is one of the divinest blessings. It assures the diner that the world is filled with pleasures ready for us to indulge in. It exists in such versatile states that one could believe that there is a cheese for every individual, each with its own subtle, fascinating character. I have recently made the closer acquaintance of a noble specimen by the name of Gruyère, in which I have found the most sensuous delight, and fully intend to extensively cultivate this familiarity in future. I am told that there are nearly two thousand varieties of cheese in existence; my desire is to experience every single one.

Therefore, a cheese devotee such as myself welcomed this final course at the Sambaudia with open arms. Imagine my shock when I was presented with not a platter of tastefully arranged variety but a plate of grapes accompanied by an alarmingly conventional sight that I thought I had left far behind me in my school days—cheese indeed, but melted atop slices of bread.

Upon inquiry, I learned that this item is a recent specialty of the Sambaudia, intended to be a more sophisticated reinvention of a familiar and comforting dish. I am not an unreasonable woman. I invite innovation and the unexpected. I was ready to allow the chef to pleasantly surprise me with the unconventional. Thus I did not return this course untasted to the kitchen but undertook the experiment.

The bread was a typical baguette, white and pristine and soulless. It formed an adequate-enough foundation for the flavour of the dish but lacked the pillowy crumb and charred edges that strongly characterized the toasted bread made over school study fires on the end of a fork. A thick layer of Hollandaise sauce swamped its top, mingled with enough minced garlic to kill a vampire and what appeared to be an entire garden’s worth of thyme, rosemary, and savory. The result overpowered the melted cheese, but perhaps that was fortunate, for the cheese itself possessed the all-too-recognizable taste of disappointment. Where the cheese of my school days heightened its flavour with slightly burnt edges and the smoke of the open fire, this cheese lay limp and pale in defeat, without a hope, uncharred, tasteless, and uninspiring. The result was so jarring unlike what bread and cheese ought to be that I could not swallow more than a bite or two, not even of the utterly insignificant grapes, and it ruined the rest of my evening. Regardless of the sumptuous fare which the Sambaudia provided me, I sat through the theatre performance that I attended afterward with disenchantment in my heart and dyspepsia elsewhere. As valiant an effort as this dinner may have been, I will not be allowing it an encore.

Rant I texted to my friends and feel the need to share:

ArtixGormxRiv is the best rain world ship. Let me explain: You get everything good about Bathbomb, in which the dynamic is two chaotic sillies causing problems on purpose. You get the traits of Seafood, the dynamic is smol and crazy x large and find’s the other’s craziness cute. You get the traits of Barbecue, where the dynamic is traumatized tired and chaotic x calm, caring shoulder to lean on. All in one ship! Many people who like Heartwarm will say the dynamic is the same, but Hunter is almost never characterized as chaotic in the way rivulet is. Rivulet being in the ship makes it lose the ombre effect, but it gains chaotic wholesomeness in the process. In combining the best aspects of their respective ships into a polycule, the vibes triple. In conclusion, Rivulet, Artificer and Gourmand would be in a relationship.

Is there a name for that ship already? If not, @moistrodent has dubbed it hot sauce and I nominate him and myself to be cocaptians of the ship

ok after reading what you wrote about korin this Idea popped into my head while out and about korin finds a younger lightbearer mage who gets attached to him and when they meet damien they just click and start bouncing ideas off each other and making crazy inventions

all platonic of course

think of it like this a mage/artificer the chaos potential is limitless

Korin, Lightbearer! Mage! Platonic!reader, and Damien!

You know, at some point Korin had imagined what it would be like to have kids. 

Not even necessarily a spouse, just, taking care of kids, being an instructor maybe. 

It didn’t seem likely, Korin was awkward and tended to talk to children the same way one would talk to an adult. 

Then he met you, a bright young mage who was fascinated with alternative ways of using magic, and was absolutely enchanted with how his arms worked. Innocently, he thought it would be nice to invite you to meet Damien. 

That was the start of the end. 

You and Damien got along like a quickvine in a compost heap, which is to say, excellently, uncontrollably and things spiralled out of control very quickly. 

You become Damien’s best friend. You start learning more about Wilder magic and Damien’s unique ideas of biological technology, while Damien learnt academic magic, the ideas of a thesis, and the fundamentals of how magic worked. (“So that’s why my juice machine exploded! I thought it was the pressure of all the fruit!”) 

As wholesome as it sounds, it also led to a massive increase in strange inventions. At least they explode less, but have you seen a giant self-driving wheelbarrow hurtling down a hill and almost crashing into the Lucent tree? 

The herbalist Dylan begged Korin to fix the mess he created, and so Korin ended up being a supervisor for the two of you. Sometimes he gets to be the test subject, his spear allows him to push buttons at a safe distance. 

He also becomes a mediator when the two of you argue. He can’t understand what exactly the two of you were arguing about, but he can appeal to your emotional sides and push for better communication. It works, surprisingly well, and soon the two of you are off making chaos again. 

Damien’s “promise” of getting Korin new arms rapidly gets fulfilled. He starts putting them in a small chest, he’s not sure what he would do with a set of “windmill arms” but maybe they will come in handy at some point. 

At some point I imagine you could bring some of your fellow students to Damien. It was a weird sight for the dusk patrollers to see Damien giving a lecture to a group of fervently listening people at least twice his age, all of them scribbling notes. 

Damien is having the time of his life! He goes over to Korin to thank him, sincerely, even giving him a hug. Korin froze and patted the kid’s head awkwardly. He felt…oddly warm, inside. 

remember when kit was so adorably nervous and excited for his wee date with ty when they went to the shadow market? that was the sweetest

i've been loving your au comic! binged through 80% of it in one day.

i wanted to ask though, do you have any lore for artificer's previous partner? they were brought up once in passing during the boat episode in a sort of "we don't talk about them" way, and I was curious about it.

Also i just gotta say the way you handle each character's gender is super unique.

thanks for making the comic! it's pretty fun and wholesome, i like it!

Simply met each other and doesnt really have a built relationship. Honestly, very similar with @twocakesinacup 's arti partner. Doesnt even acknowledge they have pups. Just a regular slugcat.

Hah i am extremely guilty of projecting my identity onto theirs.

Thank you

i have been asking tumblr rain world artists everywere would saint and artificers be friends or enemies

big text! ill write it out in plain text because its kind of hard to read:

i have been asking tumblr rain world artists everywere would saint and artificers be friends or enemies

its interesting, isnt it? theyre total opposites (kill everything because youre already damned versus never raise your own hand to ensure your ascension) and they intrigue me. it hinges a lot on if you see artificer as internally tortured or mindlessly violent, and the same for saint if you see them as thoughtful and rational or a closeted maniac (if you might be inclined to see saint as improving artificer or artificer as worsening saint). personally, ive drawn them as enemies twice now, actually, in the artificer in the cold/bald saint comic and the tictoc animatic. the way i personally depict them is; artificer is in a lot of agony by the weight of her own emotions and her inability to cope with what has happened to her. it does not make her a good or reasonable person, but her aggression comes from a major source of pain (which is still not forgivable/justifiable (said because it paints a lot of tone when talking about her), but is interesting). i depict her as frantic and boastful but not flat, its to hide and constantly run from how she feels. saint i write as genuinely wholesome in the sense that it is pursuing enlightenment and little else, there is no hook or malice when it moves (as others might write it as delighting in a heel turn), just a cold detachment from the world, it moves on instinct over thought and is only mildly tapped into whatever happens around it. (and in the end, saint is a less than positive figure with how it sticks to the karma system)

i think a major .. light going off when i think about saint and artificer is how interesting it must be to coax someone to allow themself to be killed in repetition with no end in sight (as artificers karma and scavenger reputation is locked) for religious fulfillment to a goal of no longer being extant. its so delightfully ghoulish, how can you look at someone who has lost everything and demand that they remove even their ability to- at this point- defend themself? and to that goal of no longer being (personally, id write saint as pushing for ascension for all others in counter to how its unable to do so itself; do what ive failed and toiled to do, hysterical from my own struggles. it also certainly seems like a cleaner solution to whatever artificer struggles with than whatever she plans for right now). (i dont think, in rebuttal, artificer would personally sway saint to violence. i dont like to imagine it delights in anything, much less harm. it removes the weight of doing what you must or the inexplicable pull to exert extreme violence upon creatures you dont care about except for your own belief in how you move them)

i did plan a good while ago to make a sort of short comic..? not really comic, interconnected images with dialogue- of artificer (in the background depicting her dying in repetition) bemoaning the futility of pressing forward to gain karma. saint assures her she has to keep moving towards that goal and that it will get better than this. when artificer asks how it can know this, in parallel it shows a frame of saint rising and falling in karma as it heavily dismisses her question- its so interesting, to press for someone to pursue something youve failed at. it has seen that yes, there may be an end, because its seen it and fell back. it cannot admit that it has gotten there because if it did get there it shouldnt be here to assure her. in the end its all the same to keep dying as a mortal and to keep circling as an immortal

to circle back to the start- theyre kind of the same, arent they?

Slugcat lineup and some headcanons to go alongside them!

Survivor and Monk are the children of Gourmand!

Monk has a folded ear! For no reason!

The reason that Hunter, Spearmaster, Rivulet and Saint have pupils is because they were artificially created by their respective iterators.

Hunter has hair (fur) because No Significant Harassment thought it would be hilarious, no other reason. Spearmaster has fur because Seven Red Suns thought that NSH had a good reason for giving Hunter hair. This is why you shouldn't copy other people's work.

Enot was the first test version of the Saint, created by Sliver of Straw as a 'prototype'. The experiment was largely unsuccessful. What Sliver of Straw didn't know was that Enot could lay concerningly powerful eggs every cycle.

Nightcat got stuck with Enot after their cycles met, and they eventually formed a very wholesome, if not slightly cursed, sibling-ship.

If Gourmand and Saint were to meet, Saint would be about to ascend Gourmand before they see what a beautiful community he's built amongst the slugcats. Saint would find themselves learning to appreciate the deeper nuances of life rather than being on a quest to ascend everything. Gourmand and Saint would have a mentor/apprentice relationship.

(i forgot where i saw this headcanon, but i love it) Rivulet vibrates for no reason. They'll be standing in place shaking for no reason.

Looks to the Moon will find rubbish to throw for Rivulet so they can run after it and catch it. It's the only way to tire them out other than making them go on fetch quests for her.

Artificer has really sharp claws!! Like really really sharp!! Unlike the other slugcats, her claws literally cannot retract, but she uses them to maul scavengers.

Smoke comes out of Artificer's mouth when she's getting ready to attack.

Five Pebbles and Artificer have a very 'found family' type of relationship, two broken people (cough computer and a fucking slug) finding each other. Artificer has essentially adopted Pebbles and she treats him like her own slugpups.

You know what, I see alot of people talking about other slugcats alot, but no one seems to really talk about Spearmaster for some reason.

They're probably one of the most interesting slugcats out there, being the first in the timeline, an absolute abomination and just generally being cool as hell.

I mean first off, the whole genetic weirdness with them. I mean there's the obvious stuff, like how they don't have a mouth and how they create spears using their tail and wow isn't that so weird BUT I HAVE MORE TO SAY ABOUT THIS BEAST. Something I've noticed is how, out of all 9 playable slugcats, they're the only one who can actually listen to broadcasts. This is incredibly weird seeing as all other slugcats can collect every type of collectable, meanwhile Spearmaster is the only one who can collect this specific type. Meaning that this weird beast probably has a RADIO SIGNAL IN THEIR BODY or some other kind of strange and unexplainable adaptation.

Also, that isn't even the end of the weirdness this thing possesses, as in their campaign when Five Pebbles rips the pearl out of your chest a white liquid can be seen coming from it. Now this could just be a little cool affect with no actual lore, but it could also mean they have WHITE BLOOD. The weirdness with this creature never ends.

Even if you don't care for strange little genetically modified creatures like I do, this beast also has some pretty messed up subtext that, if you don't read alot of the broadcasts, you can miss pretty easily. In their campaign Five Pebbles rips the pearl out of your chest. It's violent, it's horrifying, what more is there to say?

But if you listen to some of the broadcasts afterwards it changes the scene alot. In a conversation SRS has with NSH, you can hear them talk about how last time Spearmaster came to Five Pebbles he was alot gentler with the messenger and how they're worried Five Pebbles killed it.

This doesn't seem like alot but when you connect the dots you can kind of get why I feel so bad for Spearmaster.

So, imagine you're Spearmaster for a second. Your creator seems extremely worried and stressed, you have absolutely no idea why, until one day they order you to send a message to their friend, who you've gone to before. You head over there, expecting him to be just as nice as he was before, only to be physically mutilated and thrown out with no consideration for your well-being, and you just have to keep going on like this, with a most likely extremely painful scar on your chest.

I just think this creature deserves alot more love. Like sure, I get it, the other slugcats are cool and all. Artificer is angsty, Gourmand is wholesome, Rivulet is a speed mouse, Saint is strange and mysterious, but I feel like Spearmaster only ever gets any sort of attention when talking about SRS, or when they're being shipped with Rivulet, and I think they should be loved on their own.