Comte di Cockaigne

He/him 21, minors DNI. I like fat furries and writing. This is 99% a horny account but I often put early versions of my stories on here before I polish them up for FA. Unfinished stories will be tagged #cockaignedrafts, Finished stories will be tagged #cockaignefinals

[hasdrubal-gisco]

Stealing this from twitter but I liked the concept: put in the tags where were your 8 great-grandparents from (given modern borders) ?

[comtedicockaigne]

enjoyed SF pride today!!

[paper--machete]

it bothers me that you often don't really hear about people having a "favorite album" the way they might have a favorite movie or favorite video game

[paper--machete]

fuck it. reblog this and tell me in the tags what your favorite album is

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

so what you're gonna do is you're gonna trim the top off a bulb of garlic, using the knife's edge to take off the tip of every individual clove, that's important. you're gonna place the garlic face-up in a square of tinfoil, drizzle with olive oil, wrap completely in foil, place in baking tray, repeat with a copious amount of garlic bulbs. you're gonna put that baking tray in an oven set to 375-400°F, for 30-50 minutes, until soft and browned. you're gonna toast some good bread, slather generously with butter and honey, maybe a tiny lil bit o' salt. and then. you're gonna SQUEEZE. OUT. THAT. ROASTED GARLIC. onto the butter honey toast. and you're gonna eat it. food stolen directly from the plate of the gods. that's what you're gonna do.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

the garlic. it beckons you

[thesweetestsupervillains]

It occurs to me that "1920s gangster doing a cooking show while holding you at gunpoint" is an untapped market.

We've had normal cooking shows. Now we need period piece cooking shows in character.

[kafrizzzle]

they are becoming eloquent

[comtedicockaigne]

Politic Would-be

@chocodile @kwillow

In the bright, noisy light of the music hall, the city of Ironfrost was alive, despite the cold and bitter winds. A Turtle performer took the stage, playing the part of a Knight of the Southern Kingdom. His ridiculous plumed helmet and gaudy tabard - along with the clinking of his semi-translucent chainmail - made Ernest Fletcher, new member for the borough of Old Chancery, uncomfortable for reasons he could not understand. Whatever that strange painting had done to him made his head fuzzy. In this case, he felt annoyed about historical inaccuracies he didn’t even know he knew about.

He felt like someone was riding around in his skull - as if he had a mole, a spy, in his own brain. He idly brushed a fly off his flowery boutoniere. The advice his “patron” had given him had worked wonders - only a month or two into his new life, and he had been sworn in to represent a rotten borough of the Ironfrost City Fathers he hadn’t known existed. The imperious wizard - as Earnest had begun to realize he most certainly was - was idiosyncratic. Although it did not often speak to him, he now knew the name of the depicted… creature. 

Jean-Larèz - and a last name he didn’t remember. The aspect of the painting’s eyes was terrible to him. He tightened his fist around the front of his armrest at the recollection. The strange thing was that the predictions of this chimerical portrait were, thus far, wholly accurate - perhaps, he hoped, it was only good luck. 

The Cat - for he referred to himself as such - was able to deliver his words in a tone that defied defiance and implied a frighteningly absolute certainty. Anything the painting said - said? - had the force of a divine command. It was not a possible future, it was not a likely outcome, it was absolutely certain. He had no choice but to obey.

He was now a member of the Ironfrost City Fathers at only 27 years old. He had a vast fortune - or so he assumed - and a lavish mansion. He could have anything he wanted, and all he had to give was a forged signature, when necessary, and put requests for obscure books into writing. He was also told to listen intently to reports from old scholars - brought there for the purpose - about long-dead mages he did not know and whose names he could not pronounce. The only one he remembered was the rabbit mage Haydn, and that was only because he had heard some gruesome stories about him from his father before he had disappeared. Supposedly, he was the Rabbit who had nearly ended the world and had caused many of the calamities which now consumed it. Sometimes, during a long speech by some dusty book-keeper, Earnest almost wished he had succeeded.

He often thought of his father - a rat he had known as Leonard - when he had to look knowing in front of these grey-haired old men while being totally ignorant of the meaning of their words. 

It was all gobbledygook to him, but the painting - he somehow knew - relished in it. Even if he didn’t understand what in the world the “First Eastern Emperor” had to do with the “Book of Sands” or the “Hermetic Texts of the Pre-Dynastic Period”, it did. He got the sense that it was using his ears and eyes, but not his brain. He had to commend Jean-Lares for his good judgement in that.

The last time Earnest had seen his father, he had mentioned going to reclaim an inheritance - something up north. He had left that morning, as he often did, and never returned. Earnest suspected he had died on the roads - maybe bandits, maybe rebels. They were safer now than they had been, but not by much. His mother he had never known. She had died in childbirth, he had been told - but he had a vague memory of a large, dark house he associated with her. He supposed she must have worked there.

He had been born in Northcrest but had left before he was able to remember. His father had taken him there once as a boy - he said it was a business trip, but Earnest had known it meant more to him. His father had taken him by that house once and mentioned, bitterly, that it was cursed - that a snow-witch lived there. Earnest had been terrified.

He missed him. He had loved his father. He had always been there for him.

As a City Father, Earnest legally represented… some people, somewhere. Old Chancery was a neighborhood he knew had been bulldozed a few years ago - he had exited it swiftly, pursued by a petty Sheep mobster whom he had fleeced for almost all he was worth. 

He jerked suddenly as a shadow loomed over him. It was one of his bodyguards - the dog again. He felt a strong desire to berate him for insubordination, but he didn’t know where it had come from. 

The guard nodded solemnly as applause finished the performance. Somebody was waiting for him outside - somebody he was supposed to meet. 

The crisply-uniformed Weasel that was introduced was wearing the red collar and stiffly-ironed uniform of a Constable. Fletcher started - then remembered he was no longer a felon, but an upstanding citizen, and this lowly constable’s natural superior. He racked his brain, trying to remember the lines supplied by his painted patron - they flowed.

“So you have a lead on the manuscript?”

The Weasel gave a curt nod, popping up from a 45-degree angle bow.

“Yes, Milord! I have collated the reports. I believe this will be to your satisfaction.”

He proffered a parcel, his obsequious expression an ideal mask of groveling.

“Thank you. You are dismissed.” Fletcher replied, trying to invoke the terse tone of command used by his patron. The Weasel visibly winced as he realized no bribe was forthcoming.

In a disgruntled manner, he sniffed. “Just doing my duty, sir.”

Fletcher turned - as per the instructions - and, nonchalantly, waved away the constable. As the Weasel turned to go he mentioned, casually, that upon leaving he could pick up a present from his secretary. His Secretary, the underling he only knew as the white Hare, knew the rates of the local constables, and was a devilish haggler. Still, the Weasel left mollified, strangely grateful to have received anything at all. 

In his response, Earnest suddenly understood that the petitioners he saw every so often thought of him as a  “great Animal”, maybe some kind of powerplayer at court. They thought he was powerful. He thought of how little of that reputation he owed to his own powers - and the divide, he realized, greatly disturbed him.

[musermatt]

Anonymously or not tell me why you follow me.

[sphyrne]

the sinking of the waakzaamheid

[comtedicockaigne]

incredible. You get it

[chocodile]

Part II of my Amaranthine map project!

Part I - The Old Kingdoms (LINK)

Part II - The Post-Fall World (you are here)

The cataclysm that destroyed the world left behind a very different place. Culture and technology has changed significantly in the last several hundred years...

THE POST-FALL WORLD:

The incident that destroyed the Old Kingdoms is as famous as it is poorly understood. Some say it was the work of the dark wizard Arcturus Hyden IV, choosing to destroy a world he could not rule. Others say it was the Celestials of old choosing to smite corrupt and selfish mages for misusing their gift. Others believe it was a secret last-resort weapon of the Eastern Kingdom, deployed when they realized they were losing the war.

Regardless, the result was apocalyptic. In a fraction of an instant, magic--the lifeblood of the old world--suddenly turned sour. Any object bearing an enchantment--from the Raaja Si's glittering aqueducts to weather-ward talismans worn by rural farmers--exploded. Wizards burned from the inside out as their blood boiled within their veins. Magical fonts exploded like volcanoes, filling the sky with ash and soil and leaving behind a scarred and cratered landscape of destruction.

The old kingdoms fell completely and the world descended into ruin. Cities crumbled, ash turned the skies cloudy and gray, countless plants and animals died, and an unnatural pall seemed to fall over the land. It was as if the world itself was losing its will to live.

Those that survived built a new world over top of the ruins of the old one. With their old way of life gone and nearly all wizards and nobility dead, the new world belonged to peasants and nomads--scrappy survivors who knew how to adapt to hostile lands.

The majority of those who survived the initial event were those dwelling outside major cities. The destruction each city endured seems to loosely correlate to how much magic was in use. Therefore, Westhaven and Whitefell were particularly decimated in the West, while Raaja Si and the rest of the ring of cities around Mani Bay were utterly obliterated.

Those in the northern region of the Western Kingdom fared better than most. The surface of the earth seemed to dampen the cataclysm's effects, meaning northerners in root cellars, caves, and mining tunnels survived. Already accustomed to cold weather survival, northern language, culture, and cuisine became dominant influences in the post-fall world.

Initially, resettlement seemed fairly straightforward. Survivors attempted to repair and build anew as needed. Construction looked different without magic, though, and mundane technologies began to rapidly develop to fill these new technological gaps.

But the world wasn't done cooling. It grew colder by the year, and many fledgling towns collapsed when their pre-fall economy turned out to be impossible in the new climate. People headed south, where it was warmer, or grouped up into larger established cities. Eventually, like the Western Kingdom before it, one consolidated power came to stand above the rest: The Ironfrost Empire.

These days, most of the continent is comprised of tundra and snow-buried ruins. Though the southern edge of the continent remains habitable, the cold season feels a little longer and the sun feels a little weaker each year.

Major Post-Fall Locations:

Ironfrost - The walled city-state at the head of the Ironfrost Empire and a land of stark inequality. Ruled by a hereditary ruler known as The Iron Queen and located above a cave system fueled by the Dragon's Fire geothermal magic font, Ironfrost's fierce leadership and excellent strategic location allowed it to grow into an industrial and military power at a time when its neighbors were struggling with basic survival.

Ironfrost demands mandatory military service of its citizens, taxes from its vassal states, tolls from its roads, and obedience from its people. Though their demands are often seen as excessive, allyship with Ironfrost has significant benefits in the Post-Fall world. The Ironfrost Great Rail Line makes travel and trade feasible across the tundra, and soldiers keep the roads fee of highwaymen and beasts. Foods such as chocolate can be produced (almost) nowhere else. It is a bargain nearly all of the surviving towns in the region have been forced to accept. Even those that maintain independence, such as The City of the Sun, usually have some kind of trade deal.

The Train Graveyard - Running trains on the tundra is risky and dangerous. A massive railyard of decommissioned and damaged trains, snowmobiles, and other vehicles sits on the edge of the city, just outside its industrial district. Twisted metal bones curve into the sky and piles of frozen, rusted scrap litter the ground. Blackened by soot from the smokestacks yet also warmed by their residual heat, squatters will sometimes set up camp here if they lack the funds or credentials to make it through Ironfrost's gates.

Pinebrook (Ruins) - A former timber town that was consumed by the tundra. Much of the Great Rail Line's timber came from here. It began to decline around 30 years ago and was fully abandoned about 10 years ago, when the forests began to die and even the summers became inhospitable. These days, it sits abandoned, frozen in time and covered in ice.

Stonedeep (Ruins) - A small community located in caverns under the foothills of the Dragon's Jaw range and Alex's hometown. Insulated from the brutal cold above ground by same geothermal heat font that once powered the northern bathhouses of the old kingdom and somehow survived the Fall, Stonedeep's strange, dark, honeycombed cavern structure made it a surreal place to navigate for all but those who grew up there. Most of its residents were bats, whose wings and ecolocation abilities made navigating the dark, strange caves easier. Like many unincorporated towns, Stonedeep was relatively isolationist. Hunters and trappers would trade with nearby communities when needed, but they attempted to minimize their contact with Ironfrost or its infrastructure.

Stonedeep was destroyed roughly 30 years ago by an unknown threat, rumored to be The Shadow. Many of its key tunnels have since collapsed and scavengers have picked over the ruins. It is occasionally used as shelter from the cold by squatters, but the place is said to be too cursed to risk staying in for long.

Northcrest - Located in the small strip of the continent still able to have a growing season, Northcrest and its surrounding farmlands support Ironfrost with foodstuffs in exchange for relative independence. For hundreds of years, Northcrest has held the caput baroniae of the North family, a lineage of mage nobility that have managed to cling to their land, title and continued survival despite the fall and rise of nations around them. The ornate tracery, delicate arches and twisted wrought-iron metalwork typical of Northcrest architecture are beautiful, aging relics of a more prosperous time. Over the past decades, Great Barrens-born blights, harsher winters, the loss of working-age citizens to industrialized cities and trade competition from the City of the Sun have threatened the traditional Northcrest way of life. Time will tell whether the city will survive the family that shares its name.

August Cannery Company is the largest canning company in operation and either directly or indirectly supports much of the city's workforce.

Brimme-on-Bitterun - Also known as "Brimme"--Bitterun is the name of the river that runs through it. A chilly, gloomy industrial port city, one of several located around the the rim of what was once the Valledor coastline. Fishing is a critical industry in the Post-Fall world, with fish pulled from the seas and processed at port cities like Brimme before being shipped up to the frozen lacklocked Ironfrost imperial core.

The City of the Sun - The only place in the world still blessed by the ancient Celestials, where darkness and winter ice gives way to lush greenery and the warmth of the summer, guarded by an immortal god-king who brings his subjects prosperity and peace. At least, that’s what the City’s emissaries would have you believe. Foolhardy travelers willing to brave the forbidding tundra journey to its borders will see nothing but its miles of towering walls. Only those invited are permitted to enter. Even if you disregard tall tales about divine kings and magic plants, there is certainly something unique about the City of the Sun—the fruits, vegetables and plants it trades in can be found nowhere else on the continent. A tenuous peace agreement between the City and Ironfrost allows trade between the two regions and the flow of luxury goods such as chocolate and fruit wine to outside world. The City’s export of exotic peach fruits, once thought to be extinct by Ironfrost experts before trade opened between the two regions, are only served at the most exclusive of events.

Though located in what used to be the Old Kingdom's northern territory, The City of the Sun draws architectural inspiration from both its divine ruler's homeland of Valledor and the beautiful arches and mosaics of Raaja Si, which its founder is said to have seen with his own eyes back in his youth.

The Tundra - A vast snowy wasteland that stretches all across the former Western Kingdom. It probably has some formal name, but nobody bothers with it… it's so featureless and bleak that naming it feels pointless. Its coldness and vastness makes travel by foot impossible--snow mobile is the norm. There is little to differentiate any one part of the tundra from any other, beyond mountain ranges in the distance and small stands of pine trees. Small villages--usually built over the ruins of Old Kingdom cities or over caves or geothermal vents--dot the landscape, but far more lay uninhabited and in ruin. Many towns were abandoned when the cold crept far enough south to consume them. Others fell to bandits, beasts or disease. A few were abandoned when taken by The Shadow. Those that survive are generally those that have given themselves up to the Ironfrost empire, paying taxes and tributes in exchange for trade, safe travel, and protection. The Great Rail Line connects major towns, offering a relatively safe and fast alternative to travel by snowmobile.

The Rising Dawn Research Outpost - A tiny outpost built into the caves under the northern tundra on the far western edge of the Dragon's Jaw Mountains. The bitter, bitter cold and extremely remote location makes it inaccessible for most of the year, even to those who know its location and are in possession of sufficiently kitted out Prowlers.

It was set up to study magic and The Shadow far away from Ironfrost's prying eyes and is staffed by a skeleton crew lead by Alex and Ridge. There were more of them at one point, but several were arrested or killed (or maybe worse).

It turns out one of the weird magical signals they were picking up was, in fact, the very same infamous Old Kingdom wizard who is said to have caused the cataclysm in the first place, in magical stasis and buried under the ice. They hadn't budgeted the supplies to comfortably take on someone like Hyden, but they managed to make it through the winter with a minimum of tantrums.

The Great Barrens - The cataclysm that destroyed the Old Kingdoms ruptured the magical font powering the Great Forest. At the moment of ignition, the magic inside every tree in the forest exploded simultaneously, razing the entire wood to the ground in an instant. What remains is a scarred, burned wasteland pocked by mile-wide craters, massive shattered stumps, and the woody, splintered remains of the great trees. Though it is far enough south to experience a mild warm season, the souring of the magical font that formerly powered the land seems to have suppressed new plant growth, too. The land now is a quiet, still world of death and gentle snow, preserved in time.

The Dragon's Jaw Mountains & The Sea of White Teeth - The icy sea north of the continent has begun to solidify into a solid ice-mass. It is hard to tell where the landmass ends and the sea begins, as the whole region is now a solid sheet of white, broken by occasional steep cliffs and frozen bays.

The Dragon's Jaw mountain range remained relatively intact. Its warped, twisted peaks are as steep and perilous as ever, but the "Dragon's Fire", the geothermal heat source/magical font below the mountains, seems to have been far enough below ground to avoid being soured by the cataclysm that destroyed so much of the rest of the world's magic.

Without the Dragon's Fire acting as an underground heat and power source, life on the northern tundra would be truly impossible… for all but those in The City of the Sun, of course.

The Ruins of the East & The Shattered Sea - If it truly was a secret Eastern Kingdom weapon that caused the cataclysm, it must have been a poorly deployed one. During the cataclysm, a great magical font explosion obliterated the continent. The land fractured along the Bhati Range, and the low-lying landmass east of it broke apart and sunk into the Jeweled Sea.

Lured by rumors of lost riches and magical treasures, particularly foolish crews sailing out of Brimme sometimes trawl the shallow seas inside the shattered continent for scavenge. However, the destruction of the Eastern cities was even more complete than those of their Western counterparts (likely due to their heavy reliance on magic) and both land and sea is lousy with sour magical fonts. A few groups of pirates and Ironfrost-resisting Eastern-descended isolationists carve out a meager existence among these rocky islands, but the rocky, windswept islands are not capable of sustaining large settlements. It is generally agreed that only the most desperate (or perhaps those with something to hide) would venture into this cursed, barren place.

Fishing boat captains passing by the coast will often encourage new shiphands to pick up a pair of binoculars and point them toward the ruins of Mani Bay. The ruins of Raaja Si's ornate aqueducts can still be seen poking out of the shallow sea.

[dwarven-beard-spores]

Starting a gofundme for my friend Bunbury who's a terrible invalid,

[muffindemirtilo]

Well, I'm starting a gofundme for the funeral of my brother Ernest, who died in Paris of a severe chill,

[comtedicockaigne]

starting another gofundme bc my friend Bunbury has been exploded :(

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

the only future of the internet is the following tab of tumblr. death to "for you." Death to algorithmically generated content that exists not to spread humane values or accurate information but only to monetize your attention.

In the future the internet will be dead except for the weirdos who hang out in the post-algorithmic, cratered-out ghost towns, and then and only then will the social internet finally achieve its potential.

[afloweroutofstone]

Orbán down 🎉

[chamomile-teabag]

WHAT ARE YALL READING RN you must tell me

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[scout273021]

You’re talking about the Walton family inheritors, y’know those yacht people who’ve never worked a day in their lives

[busket]

he's gonna die one day soon and it wont fix everything but it'll feel great and the whole world is gonna fucking party together

[busket]

no it applies to one man and you know exactly who I'm talking about

[normalerfem]

Can you name 5 ballets and 5 operas WITHOUT looking it up

yes 🩰🎼

no 🫤

Voting ended onMar 26

If yes, which ones?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

*jingling the jester bells i obtained from the jesters i hunted &killed, but specifically bc im trying to reestablish traditional jester mating grounds as part of ongoing jester conservation efforts (so I can eventually return to hunting& slaughtering jesters for sport)*