Prae Obscura @praeobscura - Tumblr Blog

omtai

Man I miss free the nipple. Its getting warmer and we don’t even have free the nipple anymore

gramarye

feminism has backslid so hard in recent years people don't even know what free the nipple means anymore

transmechanicus

Enriched uranium sword with a lead sheathe that is rumored to slowly kill its owner in exchange for god killing power.

transmechanicus

League of knights with similar blades all sheathe their weapons in the mechanisms of a dilapidated castle, their power bringing arcane mechanisms to life and unearthing secrets long buried and lost.

transmechanicus

Two selfish combatants duel with these cursed blades, their final mighty clash laying waste to both warriors and their surroundings in an apocalyptic storm of divine fire that sees the land poisoned and cursed by the gods for decades.

b0hannon

“Hark, Lord Bollemer, ye shall taste the steel of my Cursed Blade, and thine doom willst finally be upon you! Ready thyself!”

artificial-cosmos

This place is not a place of honour

hgedits

Eva Stratt:

almostrealzine

The spec bio anthology series is BACK with its sixth volume all about POP CULTURE, and a REMASTERED HARDBACK COLLECTION of Volumes 1–5!

ALMOST REAL: A Speculative Biology Zine returns with the ALL-NEW VOLUME 6 and a remastered collection of VOLUMES 1-5!

Back in the mid 2010s, illustrator and Runaway to the Stars creator Jay Eaton incepted the idea of hosting a speculative biology anthology: a small magazine collecting uniquely-made entries from pool of fellow artists and authors who loved all the possibility and creativity that the world of spec bio had to offer. Together with Hye Mardikian, their idea and collaboration brought forth ALMOST REAL: A SPECULATIVE BIOLOGY ZINE's first volume all the way back in 2017.

In 2018, we took to the skies with our second volume FLIGHT. Volume 3 took you under the waves with AQUATICS, Volume 4 introduced all sorts of inventions from BIOTECHNOLOGY, and legends came to life in from Volume 5's MYTHOLOGY.

Now, in 2026, we RETURN: featuring our sixth volume with 12 new entries all about POP CULTURE and a remastered omnibus of BOOK 1 that collects all 5 of our previous, some out-of-print issues, and we need YOUR HELP to print these books and pay our artists!

Sign up now to be notified the moment we drop!

sombra-conlangs

Recently a handful of people have told me that they really like the way I organize my conlang notes, I use Obsidian (a note-taking app) and I picked a theme to make it look like Wiktionary, so if there's any interest I'd like to make a blank template to share for other conlangers to use. (details below the cut!).

As you can see from the screenshots I have pages for words that include IPA, definitions, and even things like tags. These tags are useful for making automatically updating lists, so if I tag a word as "Verb" it will show up in the list of verbs without me having to manually add it.

And there's a "properties" section at the top, it is a bit tedious to fill out the same info that's already in the text into the properties but it allows you to see those properties on the automatically updating lists, as you can see on the third screenshot.

You can even have a list for transitive verbs specifically by either adding a "transitive" tag, or in my case adding a link to the transitive page (trans.) which also doubles as a glossary so I can click on it and it shows me what transitive means (This lends itself well to noun classes imo).

I use templates so if I want to add a new word I can just click on the template for "Proto-Abyssal Noun" or "Proto-Abyssal Verb" and it will give me a page ready for me to add all the info I need to. This feels like a pretty convenient way for me to keep track of things.

One of the main advantages imo is that if you have several languages in the same world you can easily link between them, for example you can add "this is a borrowing from X language's word: Y" and have actual links between the pages, works with Proto-languages as well.

And if you do have several languages it's useful to have a page for each definition, so you can see what a word is in several of your languages at once, like in the first screenshot if you click "sing" you'd see the word for sing in all of my languages (only 1 has a word for sing atm tho).

Now, of course, anyone can learn to set up their own Obsidian vault, it's not that difficult, but I've found a handful of plugins and things that are useful for beginners, so if you need to change the name of a tag or a language you don't have to manually edit hundreds of notes.

And honestly in my opinion the most tedious part is setting the whole thing up, organizing things into folders and making all of the automatically updating lists work properly, so I think it could be a good idea for me to make a blank template with all the folders and everything in place and share that, as well as writing a little guide on useful plugins for updating tags, properties, etc. as well as tips to avoid future headaches down the road, does this sound like something anyone wld be interested in? let me know!

almostrealzine

The spec bio anthology series is BACK with its sixth volume all about POP CULTURE, and a REMASTERED HARDBACK COLLECTION of Volumes 1–5!

ALMOST REAL: A Speculative Biology Zine returns with the ALL-NEW VOLUME 6 and a remastered collection of VOLUMES 1-5!

Back in the mid 2010s, illustrator and Runaway to the Stars creator Jay Eaton incepted the idea of hosting a speculative biology anthology: a small magazine collecting uniquely-made entries from pool of fellow artists and authors who loved all the possibility and creativity that the world of spec bio had to offer. Together with Hye Mardikian, their idea and collaboration brought forth ALMOST REAL: A SPECULATIVE BIOLOGY ZINE's first volume all the way back in 2017.

In 2018, we took to the skies with our second volume FLIGHT. Volume 3 took you under the waves with AQUATICS, Volume 4 introduced all sorts of inventions from BIOTECHNOLOGY, and legends came to life in from Volume 5's MYTHOLOGY.

Now, in 2026, we RETURN: featuring our sixth volume with 12 new entries all about POP CULTURE and a remastered omnibus of BOOK 1 that collects all 5 of our previous, some out-of-print issues, and we need YOUR HELP to print these books and pay our artists!

Sign up now to be notified the moment we drop!

artbyblastweave

There's a question which the west coast Fallout games are quietly litigating, which is that age-old gotcha about what you do with the remaining orcs once you've deposed Sauron. In the original Fallout, the Super Mutants are basically universally aligned against the quote-unquote "good guys," for whatever value of that term is applicable to the wasteland at large, but subsequent games make it clear that this was an ideological thing, and a product of the political moment of the mutants creation rather than an ontological quality that they have. The game is very aware that this is something that was done to them, and the tragedy of that; the first mutant you're likely to run into is dying scared and alone.

Fallout 2 presents super mutants who've broken in every direction ideologically in the aftermath of the Unity's collapse; the peacemakers under Marcus at Broken Hills, Gond as a member of the abolitionist NCR rangers, reactionary remnants of the original mutant army, genocidal self-hating fascists like Frank Horrigan. Fallout: New Vegas iterates on this beautifully. The mutants dovetail perfectly with the theme of how every faction in the wasteland is trying and oftentimes failing to reckon with the weight of history. Their utopian movement imploded outside of living memory, closer to the apocalypse than to the present day. The survivors- who can only dwindle in number due to their sterility- have been left to reckon with that in whatever way they can. And they have their backs to about a hundred and twenty years of that reckoning not going particularly well, of being the bugbear and boogeymen for bullies and ideologues whose grandparents weren't even alive to suffer from the Unity's actions. The lack of a collective future for mutantkind casts a pall over even the best ending for Jacobstown; humans are collectively resilient within this setting, but through violence, and accidents, dementia and senility, the day will inevitably come when there are no mutants left. And worse still will be the day before that, when there's only one mutant left. Finding some form of satisfaction or contentment within that dwindling window, with the world against you, is a task that falls to the individual mutant. (Take Mean Sonovabitch, for example. He seems to be doing alright for himself.)

Then we slide on over to the east coast games, where the mutants are.... morons. Cannibals. Marauders. And when you meet one who isn't, the game throws itself a ticker-tape parade for containing such an audacious twist. To go back to the orc thing, it's like if The Hobbit had contained a lengthy, empathetic subplot about the rich internality and fleshed-out-if-deeply-flawed ideology of the orcs, and then there was a pivot to treating them like a monolithic block of ontologically evil marauders in LOTR. While staring you straight in the eye the whole time, unblinking. Daring you to say something

cosmossystem

i hate the way so many systems/system spaces only want to talk about experiences and validation or whatever like being plural is the least interesting thing about us personally. how about instead of compartmentalizing every single possible experience we have, you try getting to know our members as people. just a thought

cosmossystem

there are places for trans ppl to just hang out without having to deal with the constant barrage of bullshit (r/transgamers comes to mind) and i rly wish plurals had that too cuz i wanna know other plurals but i don’t wanna talk about being plural cuz i dont care really

onlyscarcelyscaly

Here's what I've been up to lately! Three years after I created the original version, here's a revamp of the first planet I mapped out for @jayrockin's "Runaway to the Stars" project, the homeworld of their Centaur aliens. This post covers Phase One: Geology.

Firstly, the Equirectangular elevation maps with and without the color gradient layer, and tectonic plate map. This color gradient marks sea level, of course, and while there are inland areas that are *also* below that elevation, I have yet to determine which of those basins have lakes and seas therein, and how their shorelines compare; *that* will be seen once I figure out the climate : ) As for the Plate map, most of the smaller, oblong plates without any rift boundaries represent island chains or continent fragments that accreted onto larger landmasses; discretely marking those was helpful for placing and shaping the mountain ranges.

Next, the Poles-Centered Perspective maps, made possible with Photopea's Polar Coordinates tool. The planet's Southern hemisphere, centered on the south pole, is seen at left, and its Northern hemisphere is seen at right. Like the previous set of three, this set includes the color elevation map, greyscale elevation map, and solid color tectonic plates.

Last of all, the basis for the planet's current appearance: it's tectonic history! These gifs, in six frames, cover about 200 million years of continental drift, starting with the breakup of two Supercontinents, and was primarily achieved in Blender. This isn't my first time trying to reconstruct a tectonic history, but it *is* my first time doing so this quickly and efficiently, thanks to the process I developed here using this planet's continents as a test case.

There will be more phases in this project completed and shared in the coming months, thanks for checking out this one! Also, I've already shared these maps on Reddit, where you should be able to see them in even higher resolution. Photopea and Blender, 2025

onlyscarcelyscaly

Half a year later, and here's a compilation of climate map sequences for Phase Two of the Centaur Alien Homeplanet commission, for @jayrockin's Runaway to the Stars worldbuilding project. Here, also, are links to the reddit post for this video, and to the associated gallery of high-resolution static maps.

Climate maps digitally painted in Photopea, primarily modified from datasets created by Nikolai Lofving Hersfeldt (WorldBuildingPasta) and based on my own geological maps from this project's previous phase. Video assembled and exported via Blender, 2025. Soon to come (in relative terms) will be Phase Three of this project, to feature satellite-style maps, a realistic Blender simulation of this planet seen from orbit as of a given season, and some part-of-the-pipeline maps which will have made the final satellite maps possible.

jayrockin

Just mind bogglingly impressive work

onlyscarcelyscaly

A preview of the now-finished product! This is the planet as of January, seen from 51 degrees above and below the equator, respectively, as it completes one rotation. There's plenty more where this came from, now it's just a matter of exporting the footage from Blender and putting a couple different videos together : )

onlyscarcelyscaly

o o o o o u u u u g g g g g g g g g h

onlyscarcelyscaly

I think I can say that this particular video is complete now, soundless and a little fast though it may be. Although this third and final phase of the commission is done, this is not the last you'll see of it, as I will *also* be sharing the flat maps which I textured the globe with as well as some of what went into creating that sequence. Stay tuned for those!

jayrockin

Everyone look at this superbly beautiful ball

I am cross-posting my resource list for the Noemata zine here.

Alas, if you lose this post, you must endure the long journey of searching for where else* I have linked them.

(*The updated description of the zine page.)

------

Conlanging

PolyGlot: Spoken Language Construction Kit - Free software for keeping track of multiple conlang projects in a single database.

Quothalinguist - The personal website of Jessie Peterson, the professor of linguistics who created the well-known Conlang Year question set.

Dedalvs and The Art of Language Invention - The personal websites of David J. Peterson, also an accomplished linguist.

Language Construction Kit v.2 - A website that walks you through various aspects of conlanging. See also: How to create a language by Pablo David Flores and Essays on Language Design by Rick Morneau.

Neography.info - A website dedicated to constructed writing systems.

The World’s Writing Systems - A link hub for web pages about different writing systems.

The Language Creation Society - The designated conlanging society, with a number of hosted conlangs sites and educational pages available.

ConWorkshop - A combination wiki-and-forum; this is a solid resource for looking at conlanging projects made by others, as well as sharing your own.

Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global by Laura Spinney

The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building by David J. Peterson

------

Conworlding / SpecBio

Speculative Evolution JCINK - A general-purpose forum focused on speculative evolution, including their surrounding conworld projects.

The CBB - A forum for conlanging and conworlding, as well as discussion of natlangs.

After Man: A Zoology of the Future by Dougal Dixon

Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future by Dougal Dixon

All Tomorrows: The Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man by C.M. Kosemen

Alien Worlds by Wall to Wall Media

Future Evolution by Peter Ward

Scavengers Reign by Titmouse

Runaway to the Stars by Jay Eaton

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel

An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi

A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters by Henry Gee

#alterhumanity #nonhumanity #noemata #reconlang #exoconlang #respecbio #exospecbio #reconworld #exoconworld

transmandrake

Pro tip for conlanging. Dont start with basic words like 'air', 'speak' 'animal', etc. Start with really specific complex stuff and work back.

Maybe you want like.... 'ephemerality'.

How does that break down? Is it formed from other words combined, or is one base word altered?

State of change -> Changestateness

Change gives you a word for alteration, movement, time maybe.

State gives you a word for form, shape, the present.

You can break them down further now.

Forms and shapes, relates to the body. Body conveys material, flesh.

Movement, can come from walking, running.

Walking -> legs, feet.

Material -> crafts, harvesting, processing.

Now you have lots of words!

If you do it the other way round you will have a set of words that all come from a handful of basic words and so all sound the same and are bloated from using the same words over and over.

Speaking from experience.

dedalvs

The Comparative Literature Department and Linguistics Program cordially invite the Brown community to join us for Conlangs in Media: Invente

Jessie and I are speaking at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island on Tuesday, April 7th. If you're nearby and have the time, come by and say hi!

What are noemata, and how do I begin to catalogue mine?

Look at my beautiful zine that is only slightly propaganda to convince you to consider speculative biology and conlanging as an alterhuman, nonhuman, system, etc.

#zine #zine promo #alterhuman #plurality #itch.io #pluralgang #otherkin #noemata

jayrockin

I was on a podcast! Thanks so much to Quinn, Chris, and Chris for inviting me on Failure to Launch to ramble about alien design, evolution, and an odd mockumentary adaption of one of my favorite books; Alien Planet.

If you like the speculative technology in Runaway to the Stars and you're interested in the sordid history of aerospace and its many, many terrible ideas and fraught innovations, I recommend listening to more of Failure to Launch.

stromcuzewon

this is probably my favorite tiktok of all time and I finally got around to showing it to my dad the other day and now he comes home every day and tells me about all the places he saw crumbling concrete and says "guess they didn't add enough chinchilla flakes"

thatdisasterauthor

My dad has worked in construction is whole life, primarily with a company that does concrete foundations, and I immediately sent him this back when I first found it on TikTok, and he IMMEDIATELY shared it with everyone he worked with. They apparently still quote it on his job sites to this day.

misomythus

The narrator of this video is aspirating all the W's. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone do that before, it sounds really hweird to me

uququ

the parallel w/ germanic bear is interesting but it must be said that "brown one" is vastly inferior to "cutie pie"

datasoong47

"He doesn't attack people" is also pretty good.

alpha-beta-gamer

PROSPICE is a horror driving indie game where you transport cursed cargo across an island that's built on the corpses of rotting gods.

Prospice blends tense driving and atmospheric horror as you haul cursed cargo across a haunted island, where the terrain hungers and every r

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Prae Obscura