Starry Skies

I should really change my name but hey, worldbuilding and ttrpg blog. Now playing pathfinder 2e.

[gorjee-art]

A HUGE DND PAINTING and Prop design work for hnorfhnorf and their beautiful, beautiful centaur Maverick. FORGIVE ME for letting this take way too long

[yellydany]

Eichlinia calabaza moth dragon commission for touvkka!🦋🌿

[aphractal2]

my brain would not let me drop this

[fantasmadelaciudad]

i'll be honest thinking about las vegas makes me nauseous.

[fantasmadelaciudad]

like this shouldnt be possible.

[sillyspekter]

Every part of Vegas feels like it's pulled out of fiction and is Incredibly off-putting. It's a major city in the middle of one of the world's most inhospitable deserts

Its famous for recreating other world landmarks on a small scale. It uses this as a trap to bait people into making life ruining decisions. It's motto is essentially "never speak of what happened here". Fucked up

[farenmaddox]

I have just found. the COOLEST website???

Lost Kitchen Scrolls

It has a huge variety of historical recipes from different regions, taken from manuscripts, transcribed and translated, and a whole section of notes about the context for the recipe. It's really fun and I AM going to try a couple of these recipes.

Look at how this lamb recipe is presented:

This is just such a fun way to learn more about historical foodways and discover traditional cuisine.

Look at all the filters you can use:

Maybe if I can forage some good blackberries this year, I can make a 300 year old recipe for blackberry wine!

Anyway. Check out Lost Kitchen Scrolls.

[blessphemy]

if you read about any biology you can quickly lose touch with what is astonishing and miraculous vs what is mundane, from animals that steal chloroplasts to become photosynthetic, to cloning technology being old hat, to trees that didn’t biodegrade for tens of millions of years, to naturally occurring lateral gene transfer between vastly different species, to the creation of gametes from adult cells, to the ability of some cancers to induce blood vessel growth, to desert shrimp that lie dormant for years, to the sensitivity of human touch receptors, to the fact that human hardware has a latent ability to see UV but their corneas block those wavelengths, to birds that echolocate and live in caves, to human skin being covered in enzymes that destroy RNA, to individual trees becoming genetic tapestries branch by branch, to life forms that gain energy from the electron potential of metals in their environments, to plants that recognize their siblings and adjust their behavior accordingly when growing next to them, to metamorphosis

which is to say. All of it is miraculous. and all of it is mundane. biology is Chaos vs. Order locking horns forever

[leidensygdom]

That moment a player does an extreme spaghetti at the wall theory and they hit the bullseye with it 💦💦💦💦

[thecollectibles]

I’m listening by Yun Huai Huang

[sleepy-bebby]

If anyone wants to know what a leopard seal sounds like 🦷🩸

[bandydear]

Leopard Seals are what happens when god needs a lizard and all he has is a mammal

[gallusrostromegalus]

I'd recommend turning the sound on. The seal is not screaming. It's not very loud at all, actually, but the noise it's making is Much Worse.

[fishtrouts]

Winter’s Chill - Part 3

This is a continuation of the winter’s chill comics Part 1 and Part 2! The links lead to the previous parts :)

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[beese-churger]

Imagine if sometimes some fucking Ț̷̡͂̀̎͠h̸̜̅͐̄ì̸̩̮̃̃̆n̸̗̰̟͉͐̑͋͆͜g̸̮̻͔̼̬͌ could just crash through the shimmering veil of reality with a trail of fragments from the suffocating void enveloping it, grab whoever's unlucky enough to be closest, and swoop back out like it was nothing. And this was just one of your everyday hazards to worry about. Incredible cosmic horror concept

[stjohnstarling]

Who wants to get fucked up on the green neolithic slime that makes you hallucinate to death?

[bovineblogger]

cattle breed highlight - braford !

THE BRAFORD! THE WONDERFUL BRAFORD! my second favourite cattle breed, only second to the wonderful brahman they were bred from!

looking at their lovely floppy ears and brisket makes me genuinely emotional to the point where i am strugglign to write this. they're crossbreeds between brahman and hereford cattle. look at them

images (x) (x) (x)

[bombcollar]

cleaning some photos out of my phone and came across these beautiful bodies of water.

[medievaljournalist]

scientists have made a breakthrough in the cultivation of christobacteria from samples left on the holy grail, bringing us one step closer to a vaccine against divinity

[average-smoothie-enjoyer]

My favorite “humans are space orcs” idea is that trope where aliens kidnap some humans for their zoo, except it ends up like Jurassic Park. And the poor Alien Humanologists who were invited to the park are like:

“You mean you locked up a pack of curious, highly competitive persistence predators with NO enrichment in the enclosure? You FOOLS! If you had bothered to throw a basketball or half a box of Legos in there, KE-X9 would still be alive!

“Well of course they climbed the retaining wall! Did you think to study their evolutionary lineage AT ALL?”

[what-even-is-thiss]

The humans would find a way to use the basketball and legos to escape. I mean one time a guy somehow escaped from a prison in Mexico without breaking any laws so his escape would be legal so honestly given enough time the Jurassic park situation is inevitable.

[elidyce]

Jurassic Park would be awesome, but now that I think about it I also kind of love love the idea of humans as the alien zoo equivalent of those octopuses that climb out of their tanks and wander around taste-testing other exhibits or throwing sub-par shrimp at handlers. 

Like they’re totally unable to figure out what’s happening because the cameras keep going out, but every night things get moved, or stolen, exhibits are disappearing, WHAT IS GOING ON, they’ve moved facilities twice and it’s still happening, are they haunted, are the ancestors angry, WHAT IS HAPPENING!?

And then a weary humanologist is all ‘… your humans are getting out’. 

“That is impossible.” 

“They’re getting out.” 

“That enclosure is COMPLETELY SECURE.” 

“And yet somehow they’re getting out.” 

“THE HUMANS ARE NOT GETTING OUT.” 

“Oh yeah? I bet you twenty glarks they’re getting out. Stay after closing time with me and I’ll show you.” 

*next day*

“… the humans were getting out.” 

“… why did they keep going back in, then?!”

(In a deeply embarrassed mumble) “They said they weren’t going to escape until they finished their behavioural experiments. Uh. On us.”

[weaselle]

two things come to mind:

1 - at our own zoos the MOST notorious jail breakers are the orangutans, who exploit all manner of methods, including literal lock picking. One orangutan, Ken Allen escaped several times WHILE THE ZOO WAS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC without getting caught by watching Zoo employees, even when they tried to disguise themselves as tourists to catch him at it. While he was being “secretly” surveilled, he managed to escape AND show the other orangutans how to escape. They finally found out he was doing some thought-to-be-impossible rock climbing to escape. To fix it, they brought in a team of human rock-climbers to locate all possible methods of climbing out. So. Humans would absolutely be the worst to try to keep contained. Like, “escape rooms” are currently seen as a fun date idea. I’m sayin.

2 - animals that escape most often return to their own enclosure (after all that’s where their beds and dinners are, and if the zoo is any good it is the place best suited to their species-specific needs for miles and miles) after they have had sufficient excitement. Ken Allen the orangutan would escape and wander around the zoo looking at the animals like he’d bought a ticket. So if the keepers were nice, and formed a bond, and the set up was comfy, once the human knew they could get out if they really wanted, they’d probably go back, depending on how uncomfortable/dangerous the alien environment was.

I mean if they were raised in captivity. Wild-caught humans, all bets are off; depending on age of capture a return home could be a full blown obsession, the sabotage of engineering from mechanisms up to entire facilities is a strong possibility, and they may go on a murder spree with improvised or stolen weapons if desperate.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Humans consider an Escape Room to be a Fun Courtship Ritual

[railroadlion]

Pond-backed Salagator 🐊

Lurking beneath the surface of murky swamps, pond-backed Salagators are bizarre ambush predators. Their elaborate spikes and nasal horns resemble the knees of cypress trees, and help them blend in to their overgrown environments. To protect their young, parents raise their tadpoles in shallow pools on their backs.