My blog is generally about the stuff I like, but you'll find a lot about my Iron Warriors and various other army projects I have going on, like my Custodes, Disciples of Be'Lakor and Dark Angels Dreadwing. I might also fangirl about my wife and I love answering asks. You can ask me anything. Messaging me is hit or miss, if I suspect a bot you can guarantee that I'll be rude. If you aren't a bot, and have read my bio, send a gif you'd think I'd like. I'll give out my name and age to people I think are real.
I am so happy to live where I do right now. I have a day off, I'm sat on the sofa looking out the window and I can see blue skies. Clouds roll past quickly and all I can hear is the sounds of the wind rushing through the trees. It is quiet and peaceful. I am content.
There’s a theory that early Europeans started saying “brown one” or “honey-eater” instead of “bear” to avoid summoning them, and similarly my friend has started calling Alexa “the faceless woman” because saying her true name awakens her from her slumber
English has an avoidance register used in the presence of certain respected animals, which sounds fancy until you realize it’s spelling out w-a-l-k and t-r-e-a-t in front of the dog.
Iceland does! They are the illhveli, literally “evil whales”, and they live to kill you. They love nothing more than killing and eating humans and sinking their ships. Their greatest enemy is the steypireydur (that’s blue whale to you), which is the greatest of the good whales and the protector of sailors.
All evil whales are, well, evil. So evil that if you speak their name at sea, they will hear it and home in on you. So instead you use all sorts of euphemisms for their names. Also if you try to cook their meat it literally disappears from the pot. That’s right, they’re so evil, you can’t even eat them.
They include such types as the hrosshvalur (horsewhale), with big eyes and a red mane and tail. This is probably the best known and most feared of the lot.
The raudkembingur (redcomb) is especially cruel and bloodthirsty even by illhveli standards. If you manage to escape it, it will die of frustration.
Good luck escaping the mushveli (mousewhale) though, it has legs! And will clamber onto the beach in pursuit!
Or what about death from above? The stökkull (jumper) leaps high into the air and pile-drives boats to pieces.
Meanwhile the skeljungur (shellwhale) sits in the path of boats and lets them get wrecked on its shelly hide…
… while the sverdhvalur (swordwhale) slices through boats with its dorsal fin.
The katthveli (catwhale) is relatively harmless though. It meows.
The same can’t be said of the lyngbakur (heatherback), a classic island fish that lets sailors get on its back and then dives, taking them to a watery grave.
The nauthveli (oxwhale) on the other hand specially targets cattle, attracting them into the sea with its bellow before tearing them apart.
How can you avoid all these murderous whales, like the taumafiskur (bridlefish) here? Any of a number of ways, including getting a steypireydur to help. There are substances, ranging from angelica to sheep dung and chopped fox testicles, that they find abhorrent. And you can distract them with loud noises and barrels.
For more, I assure you this link will answer all your questions.
There were some among the common citizenry who called
the Sisterhood the “Daughters of the Gates”, partially in respect to the half, three-quarter or full helmets they wore, fashioned in designs after the portcullises of archaic castles, but the name also came in respect to their mission – to stand as the barrier between the rampant insanity of unchained witches and the safety of the Imperium.
(с) James Swallow "The Voice".
I was breaking my head trying to imagine how does this portcullises helmets look. And i am still not sure. But now i can say i've tried.
Sir Terry Pratchett was not remotely in the vicinity of Fucking-Around, and had never even heard of that ridiculous thing some of his esteemed colleagues referred to as “Chill.” (1)
(1) In point of fact, he had heard of it, on numerous occasions, most often when a friend or well-meaning-but-politely-horrified acquaintance advised him to locate some, but he always studiously ignored this in favor of a much more productive righteous fury, which he kept hot enough to boil the kettle for his afternoon tea. If the world was not going to work as it should, then damn it all, he would create one in which people had some blasted sense for a change. And he did. Spite, as it turns out, makes for an excellent motivator.
Solarpunk has failed. It's time for the Solar Gothic. Show me an environmentally conscious world that is haunted by its past; where its failures still intrude upon the present. Where the characters live in the shadow of a decadent but much more materially wealthy past whose crumbling edifices mock them with the waste and the missed opportunities they represent. Show me characters who remember the promise of modernity, the story of ever-growing progress, and either lament that it is not for them or continue to cling to it like madmen. Show me a world that's trapped, claustrophobically, in an anthropocene that they are only gradually learning to manage, and where all former illusions of mastery or permanence have been dispelled.