Thanqol

The Namespace of the Rose

@Thanqol

Yes I am! I'm new to the 40k setting but I'm reading the Eisenhorn books, just finished Space Marine 2, and started playing Deadtide. Also I am a huge fan of Disco Elysium, so you really piqued my interest there!

@wanderingwolf

Fantastic, that sounds perfect.

If you're on Discord, add me (I'm Thanqol) and we'll talk things over there. I'll be able to put you in touch with the other player(s) and co-ordinate from there :)

If not, it's a bit of a pain but we can work something out. Let me know.

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

There's a special kind of feeling when humans do magic.

Fox magic feels like smoke and mirrors; tasty smoke, shiny mirrors, but ultimately it's not built on anything solid. Push hard enough against it and it all falls down. Crow magic feels like threats and wonder; dark and solid until it bursts out into a rainbow all in blacks. Fish magic feels like treasure and transitions, the moments when the tide turns and so many wonders are raining down that you don't even know how to pick them up.

But human magic happens when they take a little part of the world and store it inside of their hearts forever and ever.

This is the magic that's coming from Caster now; not his technomagic, or sorcery, or mana-manipulation or any of those things that Casters do. It's his heart, made into a sword and used to carve a place. It overlays and expands on reality, like this place was a little bit of the place inside him and it fits into what's already there perfectly. Rows of tents and pavilions, striped in red and white. The kinds of bicycles you'd need a stepladder to get onto, the kinds of cars you'd need real biceps to crank to life, overflowing bins of candies like glass drops and a five meter map of the world that made you want to explore every last corner.

"This reminds me," said Caster slowly, as though his heart were not shining with that very magic. "of the World's Fair."

The game over screen flashes. He hits reset without thinking.

"It was a place where everyone would gather and show off the miracles they had been making. Cures for disease. Engines that could build roads. Spells to transmit sound over copper. After a lifetime of trying to grip humanity by the neck and haul it into the future, I saw there a place where the future was being built. Where men could be freed from drudgery and labour, where distance did not mean good-bye, where the sick could be healed and the blind given sight. For all my life I tried to be a good king, but I had accomplished nothing compared to the smallest and meanest of those tents."

Game over again. This time his thumb lingered over the restart button.

"What happened to that dream?" he asked, voice pained. "All that science. All that industry. This world has rejected it, fears it, cages it underground. It seems like it does not miss it at all. Did it really turn out so bad in the end?"

The Namespace of the Rose

If there's enough interest that warrants more than one person, would you consider a group game over 1x1?

@wanderingwolf

Yes. Are you interested?

Breathless Dead

A breach in the blue. A carcass tears its way into paradise.

Rainbow light bleeds where its hide has been pierced by the cosmic flock. Silver light shines upon its brow where the mark of Artemis alights still. Its jaws hang loose to reveal an infinity of teeth and a storm of insects wraps it like a veil. Liquid Bronze has come, and the oil-slick chroma of his passage stains the perfection of the Skies. King, slave and madman, he has sworn himself to the Earthshaker and carries a shard of chaos into paradise.

Ahead another storm begins to rise."

"My brother has long sought to subvert this domain," said Zeus, wind pulling at her dress, tugging at her hair. "It is the way of brothers. He demands that some things remain beyond understanding, that the unknown should be feared and supplicated. I have never denied him his desire, but I have always known it to be a folly."

The reborn Plousios shudders as the first strong wind hits it. Crystal sails open to catch the wind, turning the ship and sending it through a garden of floating asteroids, each heavy with mighty trees.

"You do not see the humanity in it," said the Thunderer. "And you are right not to. This is no thing of yours. None of your kindness lives here, no equality, none of the stories you value. This is a place for me. I, who carved the atom from the cosmic ocean. I, who placed every star in the sky. I, who wrote laws of mathematics for their beauty alone. I, who breathed life into dead clay, with no plan or higher purpose than the joy of creation. I was here before my brothers and sisters, and I will be here after they have passed. At the dawn of time, standing atop my father's body, I struck a single blow against the cosmic firmament and all since then has been the ripples. I believed I knew how it would end: the ripples would pass, the lake would still, and this universe that I had created would smooth out to the same perfect flatness as before."

She raised her hand, the distant thunder rising. Her clouds were indigo in the daylight, the atmosphere burning the edges of the storm orange, the sky around it teal, the water inside it halo gold.

"So imagine my surprise," said She, "that this place began to form instead. That instead of a passing ripple, a whirlpool began to form. That a tiny micron would sprout, and flourish, and swarm. That it would re-order its own world, and then its neighbouring worlds, their sun, and then other suns. And I saw, for the first time, the Fates reach up to their tapestry of the galaxy's end and begin to unwind the threads of the ending."

A bolt of lightning split the blue, racing against the speed of light as it continued ever on towards that distant speck of coloured light.

"A better ending? A worse ending?" said Zeus thoughtfully. "Perhaps you have opinions on that. For me, it does not matter. All that matters that the Skies are not the ending I thought inevitable. Daughter Redana, you who seek freedom in your heart, perhaps you of all people can understand me. Every day the Azura continue their work is a day I do not know what the future holds."

In the endless distance the endless thunderbolt struck its target. It burned through to the heart. The roar of thunder and wind, the slash of rain, the speed of the Plousious as it rode the storm - all of this came together into a sense of speed and power, of precarious existence balanced on cosmic edge of paradise.

"Can you forgive me this?" asked Zeus.

Return to Thellamie

Injimo!

Has she fought...?

No, she has not fought Kholessia the Flame Autoklave, who guards the Sealant Hills. She spent those hours sitting by the clock, learning to lunge to one side every nine seconds exactly, just so she would be ready to teach Heron if she ever needed to learn. No, she has not fought Meridiyen Twotusk, the Boar of the Earth, and the month spent learning to walk balanced on speartips was only so that Heron might not fall into her quicksand. And she did not learn to fly because she ever thought this moment would come.

But muscle memory is a hell of a thing.

The hurricane potion hits the ground and she is leaping over it a moment later. Solid rip on the windchute cable at the exact apex of her jump, catching the updraft and hurtling herself up into the sky. Just like she practiced for hours and hours in the mechanical junkyard of the training ground, where creatures larger than life were simulated with conveyor belts, mechanical cranes, and intricate obstacle courses layered with traps. She goes up. Up, away from the floor that is the Morning, who might twist perilously beneath her. Up, away from the branches that are the Morning, who might snare and hold her. Up, away from the eyes of the Morning, who might realize their mistake and see that she is not a hero after all. That edge is all she has to exploit; if the Morning has taken her for Heron, then she will expect a spark of genius in this battle.

She soars high on the most perilous of hopes, based on nothing and demanding everything. That the Morning will not see her stupid, rehearsed attack for what it is: a step-by-step replication of exactly the way Heron fought her the last time.

She nears the apex of her flight and she releases the windchute to whirl off into the sky, a kite in tiger's heraldry. She draws her bow. There will be a second when she ceases to rise but has not yet begun to fall when she will have perfect stability to fire a perfect shot.

And she does.

She could live in that moment forever. All the strength, speed and training of her life abruptly called upon and demonstrated in a single moment of sublime perfection. She can feel it in her muscles, in the callouses on her fingers, on the scars on her back, on the sweat of her hairline, on the surface of her beating heart.

It feels so good that she almost forgets that she is not firing an enchanted obsidian arrow capable of piercing dragonscale, but an ordinary hunting broadhead that will shatter pointlessly when it strikes the rising Morning upon her brow. Perhaps if she had given herself a moment she might have thought up a better plan, one that did not waste her one perfect technique on an attack that had no possibility of inflicting damage. But, as was said, muscle memory is a hell of a thing.

[Fighting her: 7
Take a string
Create an opportunity for an ally]

Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

"It's not about one particular gnome," said Caster, still holding his gnome protectively. "It's about - about what Adam said. Counteracting poverty. Efficiency of scale! Imagine setting up an assembly line to mass produce these - you could have one of these statues in every yard in the country, sold for a profit. Once domestic demand is met, they could be exported internationally, a river of - of gnomes, growing the wealth of the nation. Machines could be procured to free people from the drudging labour of hand-painting them. Such talent should be rewarded, allied to capital, made available to every person in the entire world. Not - not only available as a fleeting moment in a small town flea market. If I'd missed this -" the gnome's bulging eyes and pleasant smile did not at all support the weight of Caster's passion, "- it'd be gone forever!"

The Namespace of the Rose

This is genius

@Penny

Thank you! Would you like to play?

(I could run a few instances if there's interest)

The Namespace of the Rose

The Namespace of the Rose

Hider

Elevator Pitch: A murder mystery set in an Adeptus Mechanicus Factory-Cathedral

Detailed Pitch: The Archmagos is dead. A murderer stalks the halls. The fires of industry have gone dark, and six Magi gather their skitarii protectors defensively around themselves, each fearful that they will be next. An election must be held for the new Archmagos before production can restart but no one will make a move until the killer is found.

The Factory-Cathedral has many secrets. Illicit consortation with aliens, wicked flirtations with heresy, twisted experiments with abominable intelligence, but none of these are relevant to the overwhelming military imperative of resuming production. The Investigator descends through the arcane hierarchy of the Mechanicus, from towers forged of bioengineered ivory to sub-basements slick with coagulated promethium, searching for the corrupting flaw of humanity in this grand and terrible machine.

Inspiration: The Name of the Rose, Canticle for Leibowitz, Brazil (1985), Disco Elysium, Mechanicus (game)

*

Your character is an investigator of some sort - anyone from any Imperial agency with the clout to be brought in as a detective for this critical work. Mechanicus Magi, Arbite, Inquisitor, Astartes, Rogue Trader - anyone with enough reach could fit into this role. Detective style could follow any of your favourite detectives; you could come in as a Colombo type who's kind of got it figured out already and is just looking for the proof, or a DuBois type who's never met a Mechanicus adept before.

Only a small amount of familiarity with the Warhammer 40K setting is required - you can basically get what you need by looking at some relevant art, and I'm happy to fill in any details. Reliability is preferred over speed, a couple of posts a week at least. Romance and adult content is on the table if you're looking for that and it fits the story. I love moments of humanity shining through amidst the grandeur and terror of the setting. If you've experienced any of the inspiration works you'll understand what I mean.

PM me if you're interested.

Space Soldiers(wolfsujiyama & Thanqol)

Alright, don't think we're going to vibe together. Thank you for your time, good luck in the future :)

Space Soldiers(wolfsujiyama & Thanqol)

I mean, there is style, and then there's right and wrong. There are objectively correct ways to do writing, going all the way down to spelling things correctly. It's an art form. In painting you sometimes get modern pieces that are highly abstract experimental slashes of paint or jumbles of patterns, but the people doing those generally understand the basic mechanics of how to cut paint with water, how to clean their brushes, and when to use an oil-based paint as opposed to an acryllic. It's the same with writing; some things are style, but not knowing the fundamentals isn't a style.

Like, take this:

One of the Commanders then stops Sarah and says, "Oh by the way, your room will be in the East Wing of the ship Room 100, and you'll also be the Scout Squad One Leader." Sarah started to get angry as she says, "You have got to be kidding me! Why am I in a Scout Squad, and Leader at that?" The Commander shrugs and says, "Don't know, I'm just passing on the message from the higher ups, letting those know that those who have been assigned to the Scout Unit." Sarah walks off pissed as she says, "Fine."

Literally no published author of note in the past one hundred years writes dialogue like this. The accepted format going back arguably to Shakespeare is to add a line break after each piece of dialogue. This is all one solid brick of text in the middle of a huge brick of text and it's basically impossible to unpick.

One of the Commanders then stops Sarah and says, "Oh by the way, your room will be in the East Wing of the ship Room 100, and you'll also be the Scout Squad One Leader."
Sarah started to get angry as she says, "You have got to be kidding me! Why am I in a Scout Squad, and Leader at that?"
The Commander shrugs and says, "Don't know, I'm just passing on the message from the higher ups, letting those know that those who have been assigned to the Scout Unit."
Sarah walks off pissed as she says, "Fine."

Like, this still isn't good, but it's at least readable. From there we've got the real basic problem of - Show Don't Tell is a cliche that people hear in year ten creative writing classes, and it's frequently something people have to unlearn later once they're more developed, but you really gotta know how to show and not tell. You just flatly state that she gets angry without the smallest flourish; no detail, no colour, no flavour. What does it mean for someone to go from a standing start to being angry? What does that mean for this person? Does her voice raise, or does she get cold and severe? Does she clench her fists, stomp her foot, literally anything?

More broadly, there's zero colour or life in this writing at all. You've talked about the ships without describing the interiors, you've talked about the commander without detailing anything about his look, his uniform, his vibe, his tone of voice, there's just nothing here. Like:

some of the armor looks interesting, intimidating, or just plain cool,

No colour, no shape, no detail. Nobody knows what you think is interesting; writing isn't about telling people things are interesting, it's about making people interested in something in the exact same way that you are interested in it.

It genuinely feels like you've got no passion for writing, that you're disinterested in it as an art form, especially if this is how you've been going for two decades.

E: Just as a reference point, here's how I introduced Hades in one of my games:

"Re...da...na..."

The scarlet light flickers like your heartbeat. Water runs down on your head unsteadily from ruptured pipes, just as your blood runs unsteadily from ruptured veins. You're so tired and there's so, so, so much road left to go.

And above you stands the God of the Dead. The ceiling light casts him in a dusty blue halo - red bow tie like a bloodless slit across his neck, black and white waiter's dress making it seem as natural for him to take your coat as take your life. When you look at him all you can think of is how easily he would fold up; he gives the impression of a sheet of origami paper, so loosely tethered to this world all of those angular joints might bend and crease and sweep him away on crane's wings.