I suppose I should have one of these. Might make it pretty/into a proper masterlist later.
Hi! I’m a writer, primarily, but I also draw. I do a lot of reblogging but you’ll find my finished prose under the tag #writs of knowledge, my art under #art all my own, while random stuff involving my world building and such is under #my lore ramblings
Currently working on character, culture, and place profiles, but they might be a while. For now, a list (feel free to ask about any of my guys!!)
WH40k:
Dreameater’s Guild, once Night Lord mercenaries. Current purveyors of fine leather goods, cargo escort services, and the occasional worker uprising.
Tullos, a Dreameater, whose passion is making garish cowboy boots and convincing the idiots who can afford them that they look very dignified indeed. (Mostly because it’s hilarious.)
Errasc, a Craftsmaster and retired Space Marine. Guides and teaches the children of the Guild, particularly focusing on trade skills instead of fighting skills. Has emotionally adopted Tullos and is extremely proud of him.
The Midnight Matriarch, an Instructor. Where the average Night Lord uses fear as a cudgel, she wields it as a scalpel. Easily the most infamous Astartes the guild has ever produced, she is currently semi-retired to spend more time with her wife, Hyparta.
Hyparta, Master Apothecary. Not an Astartes, but a human whose skill in biomancy is so great that the death rate of the augmentation surgeries have dropped to zero. Not all of them are successful, and indeed there are still complications, but there hasn't been a death in decades.
Cresh, Apprentice Apothecary. Psyker. Technically has Thousand Son geneseed, instead of traditional Dreameater kind. An adept biomancer on the clock, prefers making pretty lights.
Taglist: @w-40k-2
If you want to be pinged for anything, lemme know! :)
Hello hello! Not many updates for this week, as I have been busy. Today, I spent the day cleaning and assembling a new dresser, and the lads are exploring. I'm also taking a second to build some more models and organize the older ones that I don't have room for on my shelf!
In other news, to nobody's surprise at this point, Marius and Nabari are very openly together at this point. No clue how I didn't see it like, the SECOND that Marius refused to go back to work so he could be nearer to Nabari.
The Custodes are all downstairs watching Yellowstone at the moment, and I'm not going to go all the way down to bug them, they'll probably just sleep down there tonight. They insisted on critiquing my assembly skills, so they were temporarily banished to the shadow realm. As is required. I've gotta try and get back into doing more art, but I have a lot of things to finish, like two queen-sized blankets and several small crocheted alligators for my friends. Once that's all over though, I'll be freeeee! All of my yarn that is not in active use has been banished to the closet as well, so we have much more space, though I did have to tripple-check that there was nobody hiding in said yarn.
Morty’s discovered permaculture and is making it everyone’s problem.
Lion has to bite someone (possibly himself) in order to stop himself from telling his brothers he would like to engage in common bonding activities, like Chase The Thing You Have No Hope Of Catching and Sneak Up On Unsuspecting Friends and Pretend To Snap Your Sibling’s Neck In Your Powerful Jaws. (to be fair these are all common activities for juvenile lions and humaning isn’t
Lorgar really needs to talk about his religious trauma. however he desperately deflecting by insisting that they should really none focusing on everyone else.
Khan, as the most normal guy here, is watching this trainwreck with horror and fascination. Angron would be right next to him exchanging glances w him if not for the migraine implant
perterabo is building… something. is that a tiny scale map of the known galaxy, each star represented by a speck as small as a mote of dust? he’s paying attention (read: drifting into it when it’s tasty gossip and drifting out when things take a turn he doesn’t like)just adhd
leman is sleeping through it. no shame whatsoever
dorn volunteered to take minutes. see? he’s being helpful!! surely this isn’t avoidance.
magnus assembling 3d puzzles of increasingly complex and distressing shapes. he’s have the time of his life doing field psych research
ferrus has done the bare minimum and will continue to do so. fantasizing about sending someone else in his place. until then he’s heard of a therapy animal and is spending his time drawing up a blueprint for a robokitty
going from ao3 to tungle is so fucking wild. what do you mean i have to wrangle my own tags. what do you mean the search doesn’t function. what do you mean you have to make a masterlist yourself and what do you MEAN sometimes shit gets nuked???
I came to the hellsite for the community bc at least this dumpster fire warms my bones and has nice people around it but like. people who write exclusively on tumblr confuse me
Light blue: cloak goes over shoulder on right side but on the left side merges under the arm
Red: inconsistent cloth edges
Lime: I dont know enough about the character to say if they only own one leg or not! However theyre most likely not
Lime Numbers: inconsistent stalks on the plant they’re carrying. “But I see the fourth stalk right-” if you look at the original that stalk actually blends with stalk “two” on the top
Magenta: lacing going in the same direction goes on top of the cloak the first time and then underneath the second
Yellow, the biggest tell: gold trim is inconsistent on the part of the cloak thats closest to the body.
I would not claim that this is ai if I didnt fully believe that this is ai. I want art to be real. I want companies to go by their word.
maybe you didnt realize it was AI but it definitely is. people scam people. its not your fault if you paid for something and didn’t screen it/didn’t realize
but someone that knows how to render like this is very unlikely to make choices like posing the second foot where its almost invisible and makes the viewer wonder where it went, having really weird distances like the house in the back supposing to be next to the same water we see at the foot of the maincharacter here? or not rendering the white tree behind them completely and forgetting to make it visible between tassels.
This post is escaping containment a bit, so I want to add a clarification:
We are a video game studio. This piece was drawn by my colleague, a world-class artist whom I have worked with for years. We collaborated on it together over the course of many weeks with the game’s director and art director to ensure it conveyed everything we wanted to convey about the game (Mandrake). It went through dozens of iterations and we are extremely pleased with it.
“Lord Sanguinius, there is someone here to see you.”
Sanguinius turned to look at the serf before him. “A visitor?”
“They say it’s of an urgent importance,” replied the serf.
Could it be? Had she…returned after all?
“Send her - please!” Sanguinius balled his fists, thinking about what he would do or say if she returned to him. But he took a deep breath. She had been disobedient by leaving, and he would need to correct that after she returned.
“Brother,” Sanguinius was instead met by his brother Magnus, no woman in sight.
“Oh…it’s you. Where is she?” Sanguinius asked, trying to keep his composure - and abstain from sounding disappointed by his brother’s appearance.
“She is back where she belongs, which is away from here. She is protected with me until her husband returns.”
“But you don’t seem to understand, Magnus — the Emperor sent her to ME. She is supposed to be mine! I am the angel, the image of perfection. And she is… almost my equal. He could never satisfy her the way I would!”
“She is your brother’s wife,” Magnus said, flatly.
“But he does not deserve what is rightfully MINE!” Sanguinius said, losing his control.
“While I am… amazed that the three of you agreed to such an arrangement to begin with, I am very surprised by your actions, Sanguinius. Do you not know the lines you have crossed by trying to keep her with you?”
“She SAID she was mine!” Sanguinius’s temper flared, his wings fluttering out in anger momentarily before pulling them back in.
“Did you not agree she would be yours, temporarily?”
“It sickens me to see her with him…”
“How so?”
“That was not part of my plan, Magnus! She was supposed to… meet him, and be… disgusted.”
“She is now carrying your brother’s child. I would assume your plan backfired,” Magnus replied, sarcastically.
“Now what? Am I supposed to go against our father’s wishes, and let her go?”
“Brother,’ Magnus said, brows furrowed in concern. ‘Are you well?”
“She talked about him incessantly! It sickened me to hear her discuss him so much, when she could be talking about me. And I thought… perhaps if I finally introduced them… she would see my brother’s cold, monstrous demeanor and personality. She would realize that I was the better one for her, and we could get on with things.”
“And you didn’t think that perhaps… she did not want you?”
“Magnus, are you hearing yourself? What woman doesn’t throw themselves at my feet? What woman would not secretly covet the sexual prowess of THE ANGEL?!’ At that his wings puffed out, expanding the length of the room to their full width. ‘It’s a joke anyone would find my brother endearing at all…”
“Brother, are you hearing yourself?” Magnus, asked growing more and more concerned.
“Now, now, you think I’m not patient? You think I will not allow her time to realize what a dire mistake it was to not stay here? If anything, my brother will do that work for me. Perhaps, I can sweeten the appeal, but she’ll return, don’t worry.”
“It doesn’t always work that way!” Magnus yelled. ‘Sanguinius, if you decide to pursue this…’ Magnus balled his fists, ‘There is nothing I can do to stop you from the future you set for yourself.”
“The only future I am setting for myself is correction of what was always meant to be.”
“Sanguinius, your brother will fight you for her.”
“As I assume he will, of course,” Sanguinius replied, sheepishly.
“And she will ask that you be decapitated and your head put on a pike. SHE will request it!”
At that, Sanguinius paused, appearing to think.
“Sanguinius, if our Father intended for Lyra to be for you, why would she even want Lord Curze?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.’ Sanguinius stopped again to contemplate this. ‘Such an error our Father has made, hasn’t he?”
“Sometimes, you can be oblivious as Lord Curze,’ Magnus said, rolling his eyes. ‘She will not go to you willingly.”
“You didn’t see it, Magnus! You didn’t see her in my arms, letting me touch her, letting me have her…like that.”
“Again, she, you and your brother agreed you would…entertain her for the duration of his time away. Could she have—”
“SHE WAS NOT PRETENDING, MAGNUS! It was real! It was…real.”
“Brother, I do not pretend to know the ins and outs of baseline copulation practices, but… perhaps your interpretation and her interpretations were… misaligned.”
“Misaligned?”
“Perhaps she believed this relationship was just…temporary entertainment for the both of you. And perhaps… you allowed yourself to become too sentimental. As the baselines say, you let ‘feelings’ get in the way.”
“Then why would she—”
“Again, I do not pretend to know baseline copulation practices, but I don’t believe I would need to rescue Lyra from you if she wanted to be with you… Perhaps you let your emotions or your hubris get in the way of you making a more logical decision. It was quite the favor your brother even agreed to this at all, knowing how possessive Lord Curze can be over her.”
Sanguinius trembled, a mix of emotions brewing inside of him, none of which powerful enough to stifle his resolve. “He doesn’t… deserve her. He doesn’t, Magnus! He doesn’t deserve…anything. No one will love him, no one should love him! He will do the Emperor’s bidding, but does not respect our father. He runs around in that disgusting cape of blood, skin and feathers. Lyra doesn’t need such an inhuman… monster as a lover!”
“Yet, she appears quite devoted.”
“Devoted,’ Sanguinius scoffed. ‘For now. While I could normally wait for her to come to her senses—”
“She will not come to her senses for you—”
“Ah, you see now! She is a naïve baseline, and as such, she needs me to get her to come to her senses. And when she does come to me, my punishment will not be so severe. As long as she pledges her submission to me, all will be right with the world.”
Magnus signed in disappointment, massaging his temple with his hand. “I will take my leave, as I have exhausted all logic with you. While I would very much like you to consider my warnings, I see you are passed the point of reconsideration. Therefore, know that when it comes down to all-out chaos, I will not help you.”
“I will not need your help, but when you see me with Lyra at my side, you would do well to respect us.”
“If that happens, I will heartily accept as long as she is happy.”
CHAPTER SERF is a tabletop roleplaying game and adventure, set in Warhammer 40K, where you play those hooded peasant weirdos you sometimes spot in the backgrounds of the art.
Full PDF downloadable >>>HERE<<<
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Here's the pitch:
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CHAPTER SERF is a game about candles.
As a fan of Warhammer 40K, I think about Space Marines a lot. Space Marines are:
Feudal aristocrats, with all the uncaring impunities that affords;
Literal grandsons of God, with monastic habits;
Genetically engineered super soldiers;
Children, kidnapped and brainwashed before puberty.
These are not well-adjusted, fully-developed persons. When do they ever get the opportunity?
What would it be like, to serve such persons? To run their supply chains? Keep their households? Satisfy their desires? Clean up their messes?
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In artwork and cinematics; on miniature bases and in bitz boxes; described in comics and novels, Space Marine architecture is replete with candles.
So many candles.
A Space Marine doesn’t think about where candles come from, or what candles cost. (They think about war and xenos and traitors, stuff like that.)
A Space Marine wants candles—so there should and must be candles.
CHAPTER SERF is a game about getting an emotionally-arrested, casually-genocidal bossman demigod—to whom it would be sacrilege to say no—the candles they want.
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I keep trying to write fan TTRPGs for 40K.
The first was Paper Route, also set on a giant flying cathedral of a spaceship. I never finished it. It was called "Paper Route" because the ship was cargo hauler, transporting a planet's worth of office paper. There were orks with origami guns, and paper-wasp tyranids, and eldar scooped up alongside a whole forest.
Where my mind was at with Paper Route was: "40K should be funny."
The second 40K TTRPG thing I made was for Kieron Gillen / Rowan Rook & Decard's DIE RPG. It was an adventure called "POWERSWORD PURGATORY"---a bunch of 30-year-olds, former regulars at ye-olde-FLGS, get Jumanji-ed into POWERSWORD (ie: not-Warhammer 40K) for one last hurrah.
With "POWERSWORD" I was trying to work through how I felt about the fandom, and 40K's place in culture now. Its drift from Thatcher-era DIY nihilism to corporate-IP neatness; its earnest embrace of "xenophobia is justified actually" power fantasies.
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CHAPTER SERF is my third attempt. And my strongest, maybe?
Because it isn't a piss-take. There are jokes in it, of course. It wouldn't be 40K without jokes. But I am taking the Warhammer 40K setting seriously. I'm not being meta, nor winking at the reader.
I finally have something genuine to say, through all that grimdark set-dressing---about the weight of inhuman institutions crushing ordinary humanity, and what we make of the scraps soul left us:
Forcing a mother to betray her own son;
Saving a labourer from lobotomising servitorhood;
Arranging the funeral of a Space Marine's discarded lover;
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Design-wise, I am most pleased with CHAPTER SERF's favour mechanic.
The Imperium of Man is an extremely feudal network of bickering fiefdoms, each with iron monopolies on different facets of far-future life.
It made sense to me, to link what stuff you can have with how much factions like you. Buddy with the Mechanicus and you get access to fancy bionics and lightning guns. Piss off the astropaths? No psychic powers for you.
This is essentially a gear list married to a faction / major NPC relationship map. I like it because it removes the need for players to worry about dollars and cents---a thing that makes no sense in most 40K TTRPG framings.
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I hope people find CHAPTER SERF a fun idea. I am pretty proud of it! I particularly enjoyed writing the various vocations / professions---thinking up what sort of servants Space Marines would want / need.
I started making some sketches for it, but I can't really spare the time to make all the art that I need---so the PDF is text, only, I'm afraid.
I did the layout myself, in Google Slides, which I know is the least efficient way to do things---but hey! If that isn't 40K I don't know what is.
"autistic people need instructions for every simple task" okay how about we talk about the neurotypicals not following clear instructions. what do you mean it didn't work the way you wanted, i gave you the instructions. oh you didn't follow them? you didn't see where i clearly indicated the directions you were supposed to follow for this task? and you're shocked it didn't turn out right? you decided to pull a Jared I'm 19 and go rogue? you're surprised the road less travelled isn't fucking paved because no one travels it? do you get off on this
Anybody who has spent any time working in retail, hospitality or IT can tell you that a not-inconsiderable number of NT people cannot follow a fucking instruction if you wrote it down on a piece of paper and stapled it to their forehead
Probably a hot take, but sometimes I feel like the people supporting fanfic writers (writers in general) here are other fanfic writers most of the time.
I dedicate this year's pride knight to my community. My trans family, friends and loved ones are beautiful, resilient and amazing and we will continue to thrive like the weeds society treats us as.
Anyone carrying a bladed weapon carried oil. (More on that in a sec) Oil is what you use to clean and condition steel, especially, since water will rust it.
Many people in the Middle Ages used scented oils for their skin and hair from noblemen to lowly serfs.
Oil was incredibly abundant and quite cheap. The TYPE of oil however does matter in this.
Sheep oil (rendered from their fat) was very common and used for all manner of things from making soap to treating skin conditions. Rendered sheep fat has a very light texture and is a decent carrier oil without too pungent of a scent. Unfortunately it did rancid fast so it was common to add lots of herbs to it to help preserve it, especially rosemary, borage, marjoram and citron peels. This is how it became a common “perfume” oil used to scent hair skin or clothes. Nearly anyone would have had this handy somewhere.
Rendered pork oil was very common too and was most popular as a cooking oil.
Vegetable oil made from walnuts, almonds and flax seed was by far the most common non-animal oil. Nearly anybody had a bottle of almond or walnut oil in their pantry or on their person. These were by far the most popular oils used for conditioning steel, with walnut oil preferred because its tannins also gave armor a patina that kept it better. Only the absurdly wealthy ever wore polished armor. Everyone else blackened it to make it keep better. Walnut oil is good at doing that.
Walnut oil also works well as a lubricant. People back then DID use sexual lube by the way. No prostitute would be caught dead without it. Their favorite types were walnut and olive oil, though almond oil might be used in a pinch. They also used watered down acacia gum in southern Europe, which was sticky but slick and easy to re-wet.
Olive oil though was THE oil in Europe. It was expensive, comparatively, but obviously people considered it well worth its cost because it was found everywhere south of the Seine and frequently seen in even minor lordly houses or knights quarters much farther north. Considering quite a few people of the time thought it had aphrodisiac qualities when applied as certain way (likely because raw olive oil has a warming effect) I think you can imagine the most common reason it was sought after by men in particular.
Olive oil was also used in medicine and just about any church had some floating around somewhere because it’s conveniently good at treating minor infections and is wonderful for toothaches.
So the mysterious vial of oil isn’t at all mysterious and even if he were carrying it around with the sole intention of using it for sex, that wouldn’t actually be that strange either.
