#myrmekes

[ship-them-all]

Was not prepared for Apollo, the literal god of the sun, prophecies, medicine, and probably some other shit too, to develop a sud parent-child relationship with a giant queen ant in which he is the child via a magical song about his dead lovers. What the fuck is happening in this book?!

[facinaoris]

Myrmekes, ant-like creatures attracted to shiny objects. 

[citrusreadstoa]

Reading The Hidden Oracle: Chapter 22 (SPOILERS)

"disappearing in the middle of a camp-sanctioned activity--that meant no one was safe." I mean, said camp-sanctioned activity wasn't safe in the first place, talking trees excluded.

"glowering in my direction." What are they mad at Apollo for? He's not the one kidnapping people in the woods.

"You're beautiful and everyone loves you." Hey, this is the motivational speech from the beginning.

"I always use two swords." The best defense is always a good offense! Except when it's not, but hey, it makes for a cool aesthetic.

"I'm not the god of archery or music anymore . . . grabbed a sword." Don't tell me he's actually going to fight with a sword. That would feel so wrong. This oath is already biting him in the back.

"it's a combat ukulele. You can fight with it if you need to." ??? Is its music deadly somehow? Do you just... do you just take it and bash your enemy over the head with its hefty weight? Ok... How can he be sure that its combat usage will disqualify its sounds as music? Wait... If Apollo bashes an enemy over the head with a ukulele, does the sound of the impact technically count as music since it was created by an instrument?

"futures that involved the possibility of death." I don't think Meg's gonna die and now think even less that she will die precisely because this was pointed out. They just wanna scare us~

"That's Paolo's good-luck bandana . . . He believes it will make you invincible." Considering Paolo's multiple unwilling amputations, this seems more like a bad luck bandana, but hey, maybe the bandana is what kept those amputations from being permanent.

"my hand on my sword. (I would have drawn it, but it was really heavy and got stuck in the scabbard.)" Mood.

"'It's a myrmeke,' I said. 'Or it was.'" OH FUCK NO. NOT THE GIANT MAN-EATING ANTS. THE UKULELE IS SHINY! And "whatever killed it must've had powerful jaws to crack that shell"??? Are you telling me they're gonna come across the myrmekes AND its larger, stronger predator??????? Just the two of them??????????

"Feels like a tropical rain forest now." Are they in Peru. They're in Peru, aren't they.

"geyser gods." Okay, good. They're not in Peru.

Okay, Meg has grown on me a lot. I think her backstory was the tipping point, but it's hard to tell. Anyway, she's a good little rapscallion ragamuffin trash princess.

[lityersesly]

“Mom can we have myrmekes?”

“No, we have myrmekes at home”

At home:

[sunnie-808]

Meg vs the Myrmekes

Just imagine Apollo playing sweet Caroline in the background somewhere because I’m too lazy to draw that bit

One day I’ll find a good app that I can use to color and draw on

[imperium-romanum]

Eight Legendary Creatures from Greek Mythology That You Might Not Know About

Ancient Greek mythology is filled with heroes, gods, and epic adventures. The stories told in the myths are interesting and engaging enough that most of us will be familiar with at least a few, and many of their heroes and creatures are a part of popular culture even now.

Ancient Greek mythology is filled with heroes, gods, and epic adventures. The stories told in the myths are interesting and engaging enough that most of us will be familiar with at least a few, and many of their heroes and creatures are a part of popular culture even now.

It is astounding how many of the mythological creatures we are familiar with today are rooted in Greek mythology with the phoenix, sirens, dragons, griffins, cyclopes, centaurs, sphinxes, giants, werewolves, unicorns, vampires, and even zombies making appearances in the Greek myths alongside well-known named figures such as Medusa, Pegasus, and the Minotaur. The list is seemingly endless.

Perhaps the huge number of mythical creatures recounted is down to the fantastic extant literary resources for Greek mythology such as the Odyssey and the Iliad, as well as a wealth of archaeological evidence such as the scenes from mythology presented on both red and black Greek figure pottery.

Whatever the reason, the fact remains – there are a staggering number of bizarre creatures detailed in Greek mythology and not all of them are as well known today as some of their counterparts.

Continue reading

[dwollsadventures]

Dreki and Lindorm's are the Norse dragons. I teased the lindorm way back for the DnD dragons, but seeing as how we probably aren't going to get to them until 2018 I'll just post these two now. Many of the old lindorm depictions make them have snake/cat features, which influenced me into making them huge semiaquatic venom seals. They pretty much control the northern portion of Scandinavia's mountains and seas. Dreki are more common in the South, where they're the stereotypical fire+gold dragons. One German statue of them uses an elasmotherium skull as a base. When Caesar described the Germans and their lands, one of the inhabitants of the Hercynian forest was a strange deer-shaped ox with a single horn. He never mentioned the coloration, so I gave it the white/gold from Harry Potter. Some may say it's impractical for a forest animal to be so gaudy, but then again unicorns are renowned for not being able to be captured and also they're not real. To the Greeks, India was a weird, faraway place where dragons and unicorns and manticores just walked around like any other animal. Some guy would talk about how weird and fantastical tigers are and then make a passing remark about the huge elephant eating drakons. Unicorns supposedly have their origins here, and where imported afterwards. Not sure where the red/black/white pattern came from, but it sounds like something an antelope would be colored. The Indian Ants, or myrmekes but that's just the greek word for ant so it can be referring to any type of ant, are said to be fox-sized ants that collect gold for their nests, but people point out that they could've been Himalayan marmots. Instead of settling for that, why not make them a type of marmot impersonating a huge ant? After all, they were described as furry with animal-like heads. Odontotyrannos "the tooth tyrant" once attacked Alexander the Great. Some people depict them as saurian, but the descriptions all describe something big and horse-like. Obviously a Uintatherium/Paraceratherium hybrid. I've already talked ad nauseam about Indian Drakons here, but so far I've never talked about Phrygian drakons. They are, for the most part, pretty similar to the Hill Drakons, but are noteworthy for being able to hypnotize birds into flying into their mouths.

[citrusreadstoa]

Reading The Hidden Oracle: Chapter 24 (SPOILERS)

Myrmekes are here. Can't say I didn't see this coming from a whole chapter away.

Wait, these are tank-sized? Uhh... nah, they're toast.

"lopping off leg segments . . . Unfortunately, her blades only sparked off the ants' thick main carapaces." I mean, a legless ant is already a pretty harmless ant other than the acid-spitting. Just stay away from the splash zone and you're good.

"Sweet Caroline" "the chances of mutually assured destruction are too great." I've never heard this song or at least heard it but didn't know what it was called. Is it just a really bad or overplayed song? Why is it considered M.A.D.?

Also, we all knew he was gonna break that oath. There's no way in Superhell the god of music and archery was gonna go a full book without playing an instrument or shooting an arrow, let alone multiple full books. I'm curious. Does that mean that now he can do both with no repercussions since the oath is broken anyway or does he get a punishment for each time he breaks it?

"I have a concussion, I thought, but I had no idea what to do about it. It seemed like ages since I had been a god of healing." I think -- and this may come as a shock to you, but I think that that may be because you have a concussion. Not because you lost your powers, but because your head is bleeding out.

"There was no sign of Meg McCaffrey." Aw shucks, the ants took Meg. She'll be fine. She's got, what? Zero swords, a small packet of ambrosia, and a bag of sunflower seeds? Yeah, she's got this.