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Fantasy Addict
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My brother, BlueBirdHay. Available on twitter with that username. I commissioned him to make these art pieces:
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Fencepost problems are genuinely tricky! There's a reason why off-by-one errors are classically one of the two hard problems of software engineering, along with cache invalidation and giving things good names.
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
curiosity: wheres this'un from?
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
I'm guessing Wales.
I have no idea. I do remember doing some weird arcane games with name translation to encode it but I haven't been able to reverse-engineer my thought process. This is why I usually take a lot of notes about this sort of thing.
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@Boney I had a question. Not entirely DL related, but possibly quest related. Are you a Sci Fi/Science Fantasy fan? If so, then what settings do you like/recommend? I'm in a little of a Sci Fi mood. And another one, I think you would make a killer Sci Fi setting. Have you experimented with one in your GMing days?
Which is surprising since typical association is usually Wales->Celtic->Druids->Jade. Not Celestial.
It's been a long time since I last delved much into sci fi, but off the top of my head: the Murderbot Diaries are amazing. Vorkosigan Saga is great. The Ciaphas Cain series is my favourite of all writings in the 40k universe. Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is generally good, though it gets more and more soapboxey towards the later books. Does Animorphs count as sci fi? If so, read them and have your mind blown that these books were for kids to read. The Laundry Files are my favourite take on Lovecraft. Project Hail Mary is great.
Recommended with reservations: if the phrase 'what if Horatio Hornblower with spaceships' appeals to you, Honor Harrington is exactly that, but if not it's probably not worth taking a swing at it. The General series by David Drake I enjoyed but I think you have to be at least kind of a milhist nerd to get much out of it. I never managed to get into the Culture books but I love them in the abstract for being an actually well thought out take on a genuine utopia, including the inherent problems. And the Sector General series is fascinating for being sci fi written by someone who did not see computers coming at all.
I GM'd in Shadowrun and Rogue Trader.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
They must be from Albion.
After a quick google, I've determined that Seisyllt is a name that means "Sixth" in Welsh, and is related to the English name "Cecil". Gwilym is simply the Welsh version of "William". So Seisyllt Gyilymsson could be translated to "Cecil Williamson". Another quick google tells me that in 1951, a British screenwriter, film director, and Neopagan Warlock called Cecil Williamson founded The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, which is in Cornwall. Cornwall is a traditionally Celtic nation, although very few people speak Cornish anymore.
Holy hell, this guy's life is wild. As a young boy, Cecil learned divination from the various witches he befriended—which is probably why Seisyllt is a Celestial. At 12, he cast a curse on a school bully, breaking the bully's leg. He had a tobacco plantation in Zimbabwe, where he learned "African Magic" from a servant. He was friends with Gerald Gardner (founder of Wicca) and Aleister Crowley. During the Second World War, he led the Witchcraft Research Centre, an MI6 organisation created to counter Nazi occultism. He actually tried to build his museum in several places (including Stratford-Upon-Avon and the Isle of Man), but various factors forced him to move until finally settling in Cornwall.
So yeah, Seisyllt Gwilymsson is probably a reference to prominent British occultist Cecil Williamson.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Quite frankly, David Drake's RCN series does "Horatio Hornblower with spaceships" better than Weber does, though it would be more precise to present that as "Aubrey and Maturin with spaceships." There are several key differences, notably (1) Weber doesn't know how to write his protagonists being wrong about anything important and Drake does, and (2) Weber isn't any good at writing non-idealized viewpoint characters with opinions significantly different from his own and Drake is.
It's only Sci-Fi-adjacent since it's current-day-hidden-supertech, but if you enjoy the parts of DL about nerds doing science while surrounded by nerds you could check out some modern SCP stuff. One subseries I can recommend, that is coincidentally also pretty queer, is called OnGuard43 or something similar.
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- They/Them
Yeah there's a Canons system now that lets you avoid the themes you don't enjoy which is great. I'm a sucker for Sarkic stories.
Codex
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What I like most about Sci Fi is explorations of Xeno Cultures. Concepts relating to the intermingling of the infinite diversity of outer space, with entire species of entirely different conceptions of reality and who live very different lives and the interplay between them. Part of what I love about DL is how much Mathilde loves to explore and understand other cultures without the judgement that inherently taints exploration of other cultures in comparison to your own. The fact that Boney does a pretty good job of making the other species "human" while also recognisably different is a large part of what I like about the worldbuilding. That's why I thought Boney would do well in a Sci Fi setting.
And to be honest, while I like sci fi, I think I actually prefer urban cyperpunk-esque setting a little bit more because I like the grungy aesthetic and the commentary on social inequalities that often arises from punk subcultures. What I love most is when those two things mix, which as far as I know is rarer than I would like. But then again, I only know mainstream stuff.
And to be honest, while I like sci fi, I think I actually prefer urban cyperpunk-esque setting a little bit more because I like the grungy aesthetic and the commentary on social inequalities that often arises from punk subcultures. What I love most is when those two things mix, which as far as I know is rarer than I would like. But then again, I only know mainstream stuff.
I'm not a huge Sci-Fi reader (I find it easier to get into fantasy) but off the top of my head I'd recommend Iain M. Banks, Ursula K. Le Guin, Adrian Tchaikovsky*, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ann Leckie, and Aliette de Bodard for high concept "society" Sci-Fi. A lot of people have recommended Cixin Liu and China Mieville to me, but I haven't read any of their stuff yet.
Cyberpunk isn't something I actually read much of, which is weird because I love both the aesthetic and the themes of it. William Gibson and Philip K. Dick have both been on my reading list forever.
*I've only read Tchaikovsky's fantasy stuff, but he's most well known for his Sci-Fi stuff, which I need to start reading myself at some point.
Cyberpunk isn't something I actually read much of, which is weird because I love both the aesthetic and the themes of it. William Gibson and Philip K. Dick have both been on my reading list forever.
*I've only read Tchaikovsky's fantasy stuff, but he's most well known for his Sci-Fi stuff, which I need to start reading myself at some point.
- Location
- Earth
Thirding the Iain M Banks recommendation, the Culture's large scale worldbuilding is great, and worldbuilding is what I like most about sci-fi and fantasy.
- Location
- New Zealand
Children of Time is about the evolution of a highly intelligent spider society, which might be of interest to readers of this quest.
And his first series, Shadows of the Apt, is basically a classic epic fantasy, but instead of the traditional races, everyone is an anthropomorphised bug person (mantis people, moth people, wasp people etc).
I think he likes his creepy crawlies.
glyph
completely and utterly fine
If you like xeno cultures you may enjoy (beyond the obligatory Iain M. Banks recommendation):
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine is far-future first-contact with a hivemind alien (the "alien and unknowable" kind, not the "assimilation goes brrr" kind of hivemind). It is, however, the second part of a duology. The first one, A Memory Called Empire is part murder-mystery, part political thriller.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (and its follow-ups) are slice-of-life explorations of space-faring utopias. The first one was great, the latter ones I found a bit repetitive and drawn-out.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is a revenge story from the perspective of a sentient spaceship seeking revenge for the destruction of its crew.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
Are you familiar with Mage the Ascension setting? Whole Old World of Darkness is a commantery on counterculture really but MtA is the one where wizards, cultivators and reality hackers fight against the army of terminators, men in black and ghost busters in the mean streets. Or in deep space where Startrek style space ships have to content with magical triple decker ships when they are not keeping an eye out on the pests like xenomorphs or busy with punching the Cthulhu in the face.
And if you don't want to get in to the setting as a game there is awesome quest on this site called Panapticon Quest. Read the thread and you will know what you need to know.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Heck yes seconding this. I love the main character so much, and the range of soft/loud in the writing and situations is very well done.
It's a lot like Boney's quest as well, in that I understood the setting much, much better afterwards. And I say this as someone who read the sourcebooks.