#the shi

[paketfriedpaper]

-Mother of All Monsters-

"Born of Scarlet and dressed in Pale, she leads her children to their doom in Her honor."

[new-california-veteran]

I think the best explanation for The NCR's power armor in Fallout Prime is The Republic commissioned The Shi to refurbish and modify a suit they recovered from The BoS. That makes more sense than The NCR suddenly having the ability to create a suit of power armor from scratch.

[twosides--samecoin]

13 and 20 for the Fallout Asks, please!

13. Which companion quest did you enjoy the most?

RJ. Only because it kicked me in the ass to start writing fanfic and to be a creative person again after a really long hiatus. It was left unfinished, for me to finish it and lay it to rest. His story is deserving of a game of its own, let alone a DLC-sized adventure to actually complete the story. I kinda don't care that it's canonically left unfinished anymore because I made his story mine.

20. Which is your favourite faction? Why?

Shi in Fallout 2 are a faction that inspires me a lot. In my fic, Long Time Running, my two Sole Survivors Jack and Olivia have a background in melee combat. Jack was a successful boxer and met Nora when he was not quite yet a champ, right when she started law school. Olivia grew up in Vault 150 and they had a dojo where her father was the judo sensei. She is worried about getting her red belt (basically a master's ranking) and Deacon points out to her that she can get training in Chinatown on the west coast. He's referring to the Shi.

The Shi are kind of the one example of the games really showing off hand-to-hand combat in the worldbuilding. Like, yeah, we have Veronica Santangelo using a power fist in FNV. You have baseball bats and super sledges. There is always unarmed/melee available but it's largely up to the player - It is a "hey you can do this build if you want". The modern games don't show unarmed as part of a lifestyle in the world, when martial arts/hand to hand combat really is a part of you. I was in judo as a kid and really loved seeing the Shi - these games are much quicker to encourage gun use.

Who else, faction-wise? F3: The Little Lamplighters, obviously. Love those rag tag kids :) Bonus: When the Hubologists appeared in Nuka World my mouth dropped. I really cherish the shoutouts to F1/F2 in the Bethesda titles, rare though they are.

[fragenherrdoktor]

One of the things that always messed me up about Hellsing as a series the most is Mina Murray Harker. She’s one of the most important characters in Dracula, and her presence shapes the manga, Hellsing: The Dawn, and OVA.

The Modern Maternal Woman

In the novel, Mina is a brilliant, well-educated woman dedicated to caring for others. She embodies the idea of the “New Woman” that describes more progressive, financially independent women in the 19th Century. She’s introduced as having earned her own income as a teacher prior, and regularly studies Jonathan Harker’s law work. 

Mina puts her intelligence to use by cataloging all the information available on Dracula after Lucy’s death. This is what enables the crew to hone in on Dracula and creates the epistolary novel itself. Without her, the tale of Dracula wouldn’t exist as compiled. Mina also spends a lot of her time caring for others, cementing her role as a mother figure. 

All of her efforts revolve around helping those closest to her. Her studying is done to aid Jonathan after they wed, and her efforts to organize information aids the other protagonists. Heck, she lets Arthur Holmwood cry on her after Lucy’s death and travels to nurse Jonathan back to health after his near-death experience in the castle.

The Link to the Dragon

Aside from being the central organizer of the novel, Mina is also the primary connection to Dracula after he forces her to drink his blood. And of course, he is what threatens her almost angelic maternity. Saving Mina becomes the main driving force for the second half of the book. 

Although Van Helsing notes Mina is starting to change after drinking Dracula’s blood and is even burned by holy items, like the communion wafer, she still manages to guide the crew to Dracula to slay him due to their blood connection. 

Twisted Ending

Originally, Mina is saved when Dracula is killed. When the novel ends in the 1890’s, Mina regains her humanity and later has a son with Jonathan. But Hellsing hinges on the idea that Dracula never died, so that means she is stuck under his curse to some degree. 

In Hellsing, it’s revealed that Van Helsing took Dracula’s body and revived it through strange, magical experimentation to turn him into an undead weapon: Alucard. Because of this, Dracula’s essence lives on in Mina’s cells, even after she’s dead and buried. Exhuming her corpse and experimenting on her remains is what allows Millennium to create pseudo-vampires. 

It’s shockingly devastating to see Mina depicted in Hellsing because everything she was in the original novel is either corrupted or stripped away. Mina is still one of the most important characters in the storyline because of her connection to Alucard. But it’s because she’s become a literal vessel, not due to any agency of her own.

When we first see Mina in Dawn chained to a wall, she cuts a strikingly sympathetic figure. While it’s said Millennium exhumed her corpse, the way The Doctor talks about the nature of his experiments makes the vampire ‘essence’ in her seem alive, and her contoured body makes it look like Mina is struggling, even in death. After all, why would you need to chain something down in the first place if it didn’t move? Bound and (mostly?) dead, Mina has lost all of the independence she once had.

Mina remains a maternal figure in the most twisted sense in that she’s become a “mother of monsters.” It’s through her that Millennium is able to create a new kind of supernatural soldier. And there she remains, the original material, the original chronicler, being sampled away until she’s all but bone. She’s recycled completely into something new, and horrifying. 

SHI is the source because, well, she IS Mina Harker. Dracula and therefore the events in The Dawn and Hellsing would not exist without her. She is literally the original source material being transformed.

Monsters and Men

It’s tragic what happens to Mina. 

I feel like her fate in Hellsing: The Dawn and subsequent materials adds more complexity to The Hellsing Organization. Alucard’s enslavement and the inception of an organization designed to protect against supernatural threats inadvertently created the loophole that allowed Millennium to develop and launch one of the most horrific occult attacks in history of the series. 

Not destroying Dracula caused the original protagonists to fail to ultimately save Mina Harker, and thus, created a pathway to allow greater devastation to fester in Hellsing. Blah blah, been paging through the manga again and thinking too much about original Dracula.

[thewattz3thousand]

Made some maps, one from cannon (best I could), and others from speculation/own head-cannon.

Here’s an album of all of the png county overlays

Original map credit goes to Okiir, got a lot of good flag and map stuff, check them out

[paketfriedpaper]

-The Empress's order-

[new-california-veteran]

I keep having ideas about what the relationship between The NCR and The Shi Empire is/was. I have a particular idea that there was some kind of cold war between the two, especially after The Republic consolidated control over NorCal. There's no real basis for that thought, I just like the idea.