Enjoy the Dungeon, Punk!

We collect posts that are inspiring, i include both standard fantasy and culture/folklore, focusing on non-european countries that are sorely underrepresented in fantasy.

[japhers]

is raising a baby tiefling harder than raising a human baby?

OK SO WE KINDA HAD A CONVERSATION WITH THE DM ABOUT THIS ONCE

we called it the Demonic Phase of their development

[did-you-know]

The Japanese Lantern plant, also known  as the Chinese lantern or winter cherry,  is a popular symbol of ‘life within death.’  It blooms in the winter, but when it dries  up in the spring, the ‘skin’ crumbles away,  revealing the red fruit that lives inside its  'skeleton.’ The seeds are also used as  offerings to guide the souls of the dead.  

(Source, Source 2)

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

*me, owning a strange boutique housegoods/book store selling a variety of mystic, occult objects but no one realizes I live there, this is literally my living room*

[suertepls]

How much for this stick I can shake at God?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

10 bucks

[modernsuperhero]

can i get these three backscratchers with a bundle discount

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

15% discount for 3 or more

[honey-pot-hobbies]

How bout this book? I think it’s look cool with a cosplay I’m planning

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

40 bucks but never attempt to read or open it

[muse-meter]

How much is the doll?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Oh that? Just take it. Take it far far away and do not allow it to return

[chameleonwho-deactivated2020031]

How about this?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

$29.99. Just be careful not to leave the candles burning at night, the gremlin comes alive and likes to wander around and go through your stuff

[ahotpeaceofshit]

Hey this chair looks cool, how much?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

the chair chooses its owner. sit down and see if it likes you

[krystal-prisms]

How bout this

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Excuse me that’s my great-uncle, he is family

[blackfox21]

What about this?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

that’s not a sale item, that’s my dang lunch

[fohk]

[afrocentric-divination]

Me as a horse.

[lonelymountainson]

Okay I know it’s beautiful, I know, but here’s the thing: it’s a trap. Because that’s almost definitely like 600% a kelpie, and if you touch it it will drag you into a river and eat you.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Please enjoy this very pretty and Not At All Suspect horse.

[eileenpaints]

"Prior to the 1500s there were no female artists."

Hahahahahahhaha.

Yeah, no, you want to go? LET’S GO.

Bourgot Le Noir • Nun Claricia • Diemoth (also called Diemud/Diemudis) • Agnes II Abbess of Quedlinburg • Anastasia • Claricia • Herrad of Landsberg • Ende • Guda • Abbess Hitda of Meschede • Hildegard of Bingen • Helena of Egypt, daughter of Timon of Egypt • Aristarete • Timarete • Alcisthene • Eirene • Anaxandra • Lala de Cizique • Iaia of Cyzicus • Frögärd Ulvsdotter i Ösby • Maria Ormani • Catherine of Bologna • the daughter of Butades (Kora/Callirhoe) • Lala • Sabrina von Steinbach • Kallo • Cirene, daughter of Kratinos • Calypso • Olympias • Amalasuntha • Laodicia • Herlindis of Maaseik • Relindis of Maaseik • Gisela of Kerzenbroeck • Zaynab al-Maqdisiyya • Fatimah Bint al'Aqra’ • unidentified prehistoric female artists, “Spotted Horses” mural • Onorata Rodiani • Mechthild of Hackeborn 

Also consider that there are a huge number of names missing - women did not always sign or receive credit for their work; earlier art may be pre- written language, may have been lost or destroyed, or may no longer be attributed by name.  Drawings of artists in ancient Greece in vase-making workshops, for instance, show both men and women painting designs.

The nature of white male academia and museum culture has also affected what we preserve and label, and even what we consider ‘valuable’ art, prioritizing the public (large murals and paintings) that Western women were socially not accepted to create over the private such as embroideries that were devalued and demoted to being ‘craft’ because of their associations with women.  Apologies for the primarily white and Western focus in this list, as biases in art historical documentation make it very difficult to properly identify by name pre-1500s female artists of color.

Here, have some essays:

Where Are Women in the History of Art?

Where Are All the Famous Women Artists?

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

The Feminist Critique of Art History

Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence

Examining the Exclusion of Women From Art Historical Documentation

Brushed Off: Women Artists and Their Fight for Recognition

Old Masters: Overlooked Woman Artists

Old Boys Club: What’s a Female Artist to Do?

The Medieval Feminist Art History Project

The Lack of Progress For Women in the Art World

A Woman’s Touch: Prehistoric Cave Paintings Were Made by Women as Well as Men, Scientists, Discover

[auckie]

Yeah well I think dragons suck

[koboldpost-generator]

i will kick your ass so hard your vertebrae will pop out of your mouth one by one like a pez dispenser

[tomhiddletson]

Mythical Creatures:    Mermaids

“A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks and drownings. They can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans.”

[xensilverquill]

so i walked into the lab today and i did a double take because i saw

a friend

a tiny friend

a tiny origiami dragon friend

TINY GOOD GREEN BOI!!

[randomencounters]

Encounter: an extremely small Green Dragon

[doodles-n-dragons]

Design for my currently unnamed centaur wizard. He’s going to be a very powerful, very nervous boy, just like a real horse.

[doodles-n-dragons]

I thought I should update that his name is Vesryn Fairmeadow and he hides behind his strong horse brother. Also he’s an ice themed wizard and his one-shot was in….an ice themed dungeon. He had a bad time but I had a good time!

[typhlonectes]

This bizarre bubble creature is a single living cell

By Bec Crew | April 23, 2019

You know what’s weird? Looking at something large enough to hold in your hand and knowing it’s made up of a single, solitary cell.

WE’RE USED TO thinking about cells as microscopic building blocks of life – more than 37 trillion of them knit together to create humans, and you need about 5 million to make a fly. Of course, we learn in high school biology that there are simple, single-celled organisms, but we’re used to them looking…

Microscopic. Impossible to perceive with the naked eye.

But then there’s bubble algae (Ventricaria ventricosa, formerly Valonia ventricosa), a species that is neither plant, nor animal, and at up to 9 cm in diameter, and is one of the largest single-celled organisms on Earth.

Found in tropical and subtropical ocean waters across the globe, including off the coast of Australia, bubble algae sit among coral rubble and mangroves, their unusual sheen making them appear like giant pearls below the surface…

Read more: Australian Geographic

photograph by Haplochromis/Wikimedia  CC

[darkhei-noam]

All about Harqus! (Or is it harquus? Or hargous? Or…)

I’ve seen some posts floating around on tumblr so I thought I’d address this issue… What is harqus? Who used it? What did it look like? And most importantly, how do you spell it? Check out the article, with lots of pictures and a special focus on harqus in the Jewish community!

Ḥarqus is essentially a gall ink, made from the tannic acid of oak galls and iron or copper sulfate, which produces a intensely deep black ink, lasting for a few days on living skin and permanent on parchment (a very similar ink is used in Jewish communities to this day for writing Torah scrolls). It was (and is still) used throughout the Maghreb, mainly Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia for decorating faces and hands. When made at home, poorer women sometimes used just a simple mixture of soot and oil, but ‘professional’ recipes for ḥarqus show the variety of organic and non-organic ingredients.

Photo: Amazigh Jewish girl in Agdz (Draa valley), ca. 1930, with harqus designs; photo by Jean Besancenot.

[thaqualm]

[Taken from a recent conversation with my regular group …]

The idea of “aasimar are traditionally beautiful humans” only appears more recently; in older settings, they’re far more variable. Races of Faerûn offers the following list of descriptions: “Aasimar look human except for one distinguishing feature related to their unusual ancestor. Some examples of these features (and the ancestors that cause them) are:

golden eyes

silver hair

emerald skin (planetar)

feathers at the shoulder (astral deva, avoral celestial, planetar, solar, trumpet archon)

feathers in hair (avoral celestial)

pearly opalescent eyes (ghaele celestial)

powerful ringing voice (lillend, trumpet archon)

brilliant topaz eyes (solar)

silvery or golden skin (solar)

iridescent scales in small patches (couatl or lillend)”

The same sourcebook says the following of tieflings: “Tieflings look human except for one or two distinguishing features related to their unusual ancestor. Some examples of these features (and the ancestors that cause them) are:

small horns on head (demon, devil, night hag)

fangs or pointed teeth forked tongue (demon, devil)

glowing red eyes (demon, devil, night hag)

cat eyes (rakshasa)

more or less than 5 fingers (demon, devil)

goatlike legs (devil)

hooves (devil)

non-prehensile tail (demon, devil)

furry, leathery, or scaly skin (demon, devil, rakshasa)

red skin (demon, devil)

bruised blue skin (night hag) 

casts no shadow (demon, devil)

throws no reflection (demon, devil)

skin is hot to the touch (demon, devil)

smell of brimstone (demon, devil)”

Keith Baker, creator of the Eberron setting, also offers his own take on the concept here and here.

The stuff presented in core rulebooks is meant to be a “jumping-off point” but they sure as hell don’t show you in the core books how flexible it is. RoF also introduces the fey’ri, elf tiefling, and tanarukk, orc tiefling.

@enemyofentropy also said:

I personally have accidentally become like… an aasimar connoisseur because I always play them and yeah tend to just the sort of normal human but with distinct features so in one case metallic hair and silver eyes but otherwise just a normal person and in the other case eyes that light up under strong emotional states and look like they are burning (they are burning) (my character is literally melting inside please help her)

[golgak-the-goblin-deactivated20]

A great treat for your Goblin

Rock candy is amazing. Looks like tastey rocks. Has a stick for to use tool things do. Has ball. Use as mini club for to hurts cause candy spiky. Colors. Cronch Cronch. Looks like rocks. Taste like sugar rocks.

[barksport]

op this post inspired me

his name is gobstopper

[feebledungeons]

I love you both

[rpgsandbox]

[thecollectibles]

Art by Rocío Espín Piñar

Ancient Cities:

◆ Atlantis ◆ London: The Great Fire ◆ Constantinople 360 AD  ◆ Atlantis City (for the book “Plato’s Caribbean Atlantis”) ◆ Carthago ◆ Londinium ◆ Hattusa

[tranxio]

Spectacular Neon Blue Lava Pours From Indonesia's Kawah Ijen Volcano At Night (PHOTOS)

You've heard of "red hot" and "white hot" to describe searing temperatures. But what about "blue hot"?

[bogfox]

[wacheypena]

NO MORE RED AND ORANGE LAVA IN MOVIES! FROM NOW ON WE HAVE BLUE, GREEN, PURPLE OR EVEN PINK! STOP HOLDING BACK! ESPECIALLY IF ITS AN ALIEN DAMN PLANET! NOT ALL CORES ARE THE SAME!!

[watermeloneverything]

It’s the blood of Unicron

[ardatli]

I can’t. Every single sentence in this could not be more wrong if the author deliberately set out to be the wrongest person in wrongville. I just. 

I don’t care what else might be useful in this book, if your introduction is as fundamentally incorrect as this, the reliability of everything else you’ve ever said and that your editor has ever touched is immediately thrown into question. 

Monochromatic MY ASS. 

[hearthburn]

I… that is… such bullshit. Wool and silk are arguably the easiest fibers to dye. Cotton’s a stone bitch to color. (Let’s not even get into ‘change clothes irregularly’, that’s bullshit too.)

[ardatli]

I know, right?? Protein fibres suck up dye like no-one’s business; it’s cellulose that hates it. 

And as for the others… linen bedsheets, bitch. And linen and silk woven so finely as to be practically transparent. And I’d like to take my records of inventories with 100+ linen shifts for one person, because of multiple-changes-per-day, and shove them up his grant. 

[bemusedlybespectacled]

It’s like he assumes that without cotton we also wouldn’t have, like, modern inventions and techniques? “Wool is hard to clean” I mean yeah you have to use Woolite on the gentle cycle and air dry but that’s not that much harder than using normal detergent

[brunhiddensmusings]

wool being excellent to dye is its other great selling poin besides warmth- which is why ‘black sheep’ became a derogatory term, as black wool could not be dyed and thus was worth less as it would only ever be dark grey historical perspective on the fabric alternate reality he proposes- linen was durable but not easy to dye, but you largely didnt care as it was undergarments or bedsheets where you wont be publicly showing off the linens- who other then nobility cares if their bedsheets are vibrantly colored? the reason you wore linen undergarments is that they breathe and protect you from any itchyness (wool that had been properly treated by a fuller {one of the worst jobs in history} would not have been very itchy either) of thick wool clothings and to keep you from getting sweaty or stinky, not to show off your bright red skivvies. linen is still freaking awesome, its comfortable, durable, breathes. i wish i had linen undies instead of cotton ones that get stretched out and threadbare after a few months. i wish i had linen and wool shirt options instead of only paper thin cotton shirts the statement that sheep would require all the land ever- the deal with livestock through human history is that not all land is created equal, and livestock is how you used the areas that were sub-par. the fertile land you farmed crops, but there is far far more land thats unsuited for vegetables but grows grass just fine, as we cant eat the grass we set out animals like cows and sheep that CAN eat the grass and let them go wild chewin their cud and poopin on the ground while the humans are busy ploughing and harvesting on the more valuable land; allowing the ungulates to convert that grass into usable products like wool, cheese, meat, leather. there’s reasons some areas are covered with sheep and cows EVEN TODAY- either its not usable as croplands or the population nearby is so low that you couldn’t effectively organize labor to exploit farming. new zealand and australia have absurd numbers of sheep for this reason- the land is either too sparse, hilly, or remote, but wool can be exported for profit just fine. however areas like iowa and california have very few sheep as the land is better suited for grain and seasonal vegetables and using it for grazing would be less effective further the statement that wool and linen are more labor intensive then cotton- theres a reason the cotton industry historically relied on slavery when wool and linen were historically a cottage industry people did in their spare time while being a full time farmer. you let a sheep out on the lawn to do its own thing, it grows the wool, once a year you shave it and spin it into thread- it produces more sheep and tasty mutton as well. linnen is made from flax plants, which are harvested with a sickle and then left in some water to rot for a week, split open, and the fibers inside spun into thread- teams up well with beekeeping as flax produces huge fields of beautiful flowers. in both the hard work is done by animals and a pond, not human hands. cotton however required you to not only plant it but spend time to pick individual bolls off of the flowering buds after it went to seed in the summer sun one at a time instead of mowing with a scythe like flax in an afternoon, which then had to have someone pick all the seeds out of each boll individually before spinning, theres no side product and it depletes the soil like a sonovabitch

pictured- super easy, giving a sheep a haircut would be so much worse right? im sure the man on a horse with a whip and gun is there to make sure everyone is having a good time and finally the primary dumb part of the highlighted segment- the assumption that if cotton didnt exist you would sleep on a pile of straw. what? is this talking today or talking medieval times again? flipping NEOLITHIC folks were bright enough to lay a blanket on top of their straw pile before they took a nap on it.  even back when straw beds were common you didnt lay on the straw, the straw was a filling for a leather or canvas bag so that you didnt get poked, and even then chances are pretty good you stuffed your bed with feathers because if theres something an agrarian society has more then enough of its poultry. if you are talking today i challenge you to go to a matress store and find a cotton filled bed- theyre filled with springs or foam, and for all points and purposes the foam is just a high tech version of straw that doesn’t rot. that, and any modern mattress is synthetic fiber to combat body odor and sweat absorption

this is not how beds work

these pre-cotton folk seem to be pretty comfortable, even if they hadnt invented perspective yet. as there is no crown im pretty sure they werent importing their fabrics from india or egypt

oh, look, pre-cotton comfortable underwear, soft sheets, and a bed that looks excessively comfortable with no straw or furs in sight a world without cotton isnt a world without soap either jackass

[systlin]

I love everyone in this thread thank you. 

[critter0139]

please someone shown me multi chromatic dies, are y'all insisting middle ages was a buncha tie died serfs?

[ardatli]

Given that tie-dye was one among many resist dye methods popular in India and Indonesia in the middle ages, yes. Not in Europe, necessarily, but boy did tie-dye ever exist pre-1600. 

As far as Europe is concerned, they hadn’t figured out how to dye cotton and get anything even remotely similar in quality to the hundreds of colour-fast styles they’d later run into in India. But they also knew how to weave brocades. And stripes. And repeat patterns. And a lot of them liked obnoxious colour combinations.

(This one is a cheat b/c it’s a European image of a woman in Persian clothing, but I love her stripe combinations too much to leave her out.) 

And have some plaids, parti-colours, checks and stripes for good measure:

[madgastronomer]

Also, if we hadn’t had cotton, at least in the US, we’d have a ton of HEMP fabric. Which, if you use the right variants, is just as soft and more durable. A large chunk of the reason we don’t have much hemp fiber production in the US is that cotton growers had enough political clout to quash it.

And yeah, who the fuck thinks COTTON is easier to dye than wool or silk?

[october-rosehip]

Somebody who’s never tried to do it. People love running their mouths about (and looking down upon) the arts.

Sigh. Another thing, one of the reasons we think wool is scratchy is we’re weaving it wrong. Our modern fiber treatments are built around cotton (much like modern farming techniques are built around having machinery, whether or not you have the machinery. Garden rows are for gigantic plows. Down with rows! Ahem.) and cotton has a different length of fiber than wool, so it just doesn’t go that well.

Anyway, modern clothing sucks.

The middle ages especially were loud and bright.

[sca-nerd]

I would offer to clean up the mess from this slaying, but I wouldn’t want to stain any of my fabric.