- Pronouns
- They/Them
But yeah, remind me in the morning and I'll write it up.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Nah
I just wanted you to know that I knew.
The true face of evil.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Don't mind Tenfolds, he's just grumpy because the latest cactus is spinier than he expected.
This is what Omicron is thinking of.
This is what Omicron is thinking of.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Be kind to the creature that guards your door. Do not mock its broken, bleeding face.
It will never help you in return. But I assure you, some day you will be glad to know that you were kind to something once."
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AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Shit like this is why we need the Technocracy to watch over us. To banish those that would prey upon our race.
: V
Edit: But seriously whenever I read stuff like this I'm like "Ohhh, Ahhh, wondrous. Dangerous. How do we control this or kill it?"
: V
Edit: But seriously whenever I read stuff like this I'm like "Ohhh, Ahhh, wondrous. Dangerous. How do we control this or kill it?"
Last edited:
I have to admit, my first thought with the scholar's story was totally "That's stupid, I totally would've done better."
Not that I actually would've, though.
(... Hubris is more of a Mage game thing anyway)
Not that I actually would've, though.
(... Hubris is more of a Mage game thing anyway
)
- Location
- Nowhere
Cool tales. Not like those that Wwolf frote in the fiction between chapters from NChangeling, which was of variable quality. I remember one which had a young kid being bullied by bullies who dumped him into a trashcan, is taken by a Fae who has him fight into an arena until he becomes strong enough to best his own captor(having gained dragon-like features in the process), then returns to the real world (being lucky enough to have only a few minutes passed), challenges the bullies with newfound determination... And is laughed upon and dumped into a trashcan again.
Reminds me of one of my reactions upon I finished reading the Promethean books.
"These guys could be the perfect soldier if minor changes were made to their psyches and bodies. What would an enterprising Mage/Cheiron directive do?"
Reminds me of one of my reactions upon I finished reading the Promethean books.
"These guys could be the perfect soldier if minor changes were made to their psyches and bodies. What would an enterprising Mage/Cheiron directive do?"
Watch as their lab complex was wrecked by the Wasteland. Go crazy from Disquiet.
Never even find that a qashmal is encouraging and/or sabotaging them.
shenron
Marengo crossing the Alps
I'd figure the potential things they could do with Vitriol/Azoth would interest Cheiron's scientists far more than just making super soldiers. Safer to, since that would stop a Wasteland from forming.
Speaking of, are their any Compacts/Conspiracies dedicated to hunting the Created? I'd assume not, since they're meant to be quite rare but some of the super SCIENCE that people get upto when they get ahold of Azoth has a lot of interesting implications for an Endowments.
Speaking of, are their any Compacts/Conspiracies dedicated to hunting the Created? I'd assume not, since they're meant to be quite rare but some of the super SCIENCE that people get upto when they get ahold of Azoth has a lot of interesting implications for an Endowments.
A Bedtime Story
- Pronouns
- They/Them
A Bedtime Story
Once upon a time, in a kingdom in the middle of a vast empire, there was a man who came from the merchant classes, who knew his way around money and was, as is the custom for these strange people, educated for many years before he made his way out into the world. He was intelligent, and admired by many for his looks, and many said he could sell anything and so he said 'That is what I will do.'
And yet, what was most important about this man, though he did not know it, was that he was a hunter of beasts. One who, as this strange people's customs went, put on a suit of orange so that nobody would shoot him by accident and ventured out into the deep woods and prairies of his land in hunt for that which could be, put simply, mounted upon walls or eaten or whatever struck his fancy, though he was quite wasteful.
One day, when hunting by himself with his rifle, he stumbled too far into the woods and made a wrong turn. The woods of that land were tame, or at least they were not the dark primeval forest that he now strode through, confused and afraid. Which is when, in the distance, he heard a girl scream.
He did not run in the direction of the scream, because looking doubtfully at the tangle of roots and darkness he had no doubt it would be a good way to break his leg, but he picked up his pace, heading straight for the danger, and when there he saw a cottage and a vile beast, a wolf with a slavering jaw, leering over a girl in a red cloak. It was strange, because it seemed as if he had read something about this, but when he tried to cast his memories back, there was something shadowed. He was confused, but he knew what he had to do, and he shot the wolf.
The girl was quite grateful, for her mom did not raise any ingrates, thank you very much, and she offered to let him stay with her and her mom, who was unfortunately out of town.
Now, he wanted to get home, and perhaps if he walked long enough he could find it, but he needed to protect this girl.
Which is when the granny crawled out of the wolf's belly and he realized that perhaps there were strange things out there. But he left, and so he never saw what happened with the wolf.
The town was small and quaint, and in great need of someone who could hunt and chop down wood, and so he set himself to the task, and his memories of the old world do not disappear so much as grow vague with time. How much time? Even that is a little bit vague, it must be admitted, but he learns many things, such as how to use an axe.
And though his gun is marvelous, far better than the muskets of the other hunters, there are only so many bullets and so he learns to use his axe.
And having saved one girl he figured he might, if he stumbled upon the worst monsters of the woods, get rid of them ahead of time.
Thus it was that he slayed a vast panther, a bloody-mouthed bird, and all manner of strange things that haunted the woods. And as he walked the woods he heard something whisper in his ear, but he ignored it.
He didn't listen...but he did hear, and slowly something occurred to him.
He could kill monsters with his axe and make things better. So when a boy was found down a well, drowned, and the Woodsman that he was found out that it was a cruel old man who lived at the edge of the village, near where the road disappeared and thorns grew, he came on the man with an axe and slayed him.
He saw that it was good, for what old man could stand against his strength and righteous fury? But his beard had grown out, and his senses felt sharper, and there were claws on his hands. But he trimmed those with a knife and shaved the beard, and all was good, though now he could smell blood.
But it was the blood of the guilty and evil, and walking in the forest he decided that he shouldn't feel guilty.
So when it was that Farmer John was abusing his wife, cheating on her and beating her and the kids, he came up behind Farmer John and gave him a few good wacks.
The beard grew back, and some claws, and his chest was quite hairy, and there was the fact that he now liked his meat a little bit rare, but he shaved his chest and cut the claws again and got rid of the beard. And the hair on his head that had grown out, strangely grey-black. But he could dye that, and it was good work.
So when it turned out that a young boy had stolen a lot of firewood, which might be needed for when winter came--surely it would, though it had not come in a long time--it wasn't...well, why was youth an excuse for his crimes, he muttered to himself as he dragged the body into the woods to hide it.
He talked to himself a lot, by that point.
And then there was the town drunk who always caused problems ranting and raving.
He was hunchbacked by that point, and more and more the people viewed him strangely, and yet he was the heroic Woodsman, so surely he was safe, and so when Robert, a hunter whose laugh he'd always found annoying and who boasted too much, offered to go out with him to hunt a little, he said yes.
He brought his rifle.
For, in a good world, there would not be loud and boastful people who were annoying, he thought, grinning to himself.
It was a clean shot. Then he ruined it by furiously clawing at the man's throat, on all fours, devouring the man.
He was tasty, tasty, and the Wolf stalked off, forgetting piece by piece all but the vaguest memories of his old life.
He wanted to leave, because he remembered that he could, but he needed to eat! And so he ate many things, innocent children out to play and men, and he took joy in suffering and laughed a wolfish laugh at the stupid hunters with boom-sticks that tried to kill him.
And then one day he came upon a cottage and ate the old woman there, and found that she was such a treat that he lay down and sleep in the bed, and when a stupid girl in a Red Hood came, he leapt to eat her too…
Only for a strong man, big and bearded and dangerous, to enter the fray.
He fought with the vicious cunning of a horrible monster, and he lost.
He lay there, dead. And yet he could still think, and the confused and muddled memories called out to him. He was dragged away for a time, to a sacred grove deep in the forest, and there he slowly began to remember things.
They tore out his fangs and purified his blood in a pool of water, and without his fangs he had to hunt by cunning, and as he did he came across old, discarded books that he began to read, and so soon he was a smart wolf, who walked on all fours, but stooped over.
And he tried to hunt only bad things, and the forest whispered its approval and slowly he grew taller and less hairy, until at last one day he stumbled naked into a copse of woods and found clothes and a shiny new axe, and thinking that perhaps he could go to the town and try to be a woodsman, he picked them up, only to hear a scream.
This time, it was further in the woods, where Red Hood had run, having seen through the wolf's tricks, but the ending was the same. He killed the wolf, and saved the grandmother, and realized that Red Hood was a girl who really needed watching over, for he vaguely remembered that this had happened before.
So when he went to her house he immediately found and killed the rats, and repaired everything that needed repairing, because the world was a dangerous place.
And he made a gate, and he made it higher. After a while he forbid her to talk to anyone, and he'd yell at any who tried to approach her, because they would harm her. Not like him. He'd keep her safe. He wanted to leave and come back home, because he still remembered that this was not home, but he NEEDED to protect her.
Red Hood grew up to be a beautiful woman and had many suitors, but none were good enough for her and he humiliated them and yelled at them, and shaved his growing beard and dyed his greying hair.
And then one day he learned that Red Hood had been sneaking out with a neighbor boy to do...well, he knew what, and it made him furious. Red Hood was too good for anyone who wouldn't...wouldn't protect her!
So he went up to the boy and tricked him into his garden and then hit the stupid boy in the head with a shovel and buried him in the garden and made a show of mourning his disappearance with his daughter, even as he began to take stones and sticks from the forest and build a tower.
When, of course, she asked why, he told her that he was going to lock her in there forever so that she'd be safe, because nobody in the world deserved her, and yet thoughts crossed his mind when he walked through the woods, but the first step was a tower.
Now, Red Hood knew when enough was enough, and she yelled at him and he confessed proudly to having slain her true love and she ran off, hoping that granny could sort him out, and he chased her, first on twos, then on all fours, and caught up to her and held her in his teeth as they went to the cottage.
He ate the grandmother first when he had the perfect idea.
Once Red Hood was safe in his belly, nobody would hurt her ever again...except him.
He was the one who was made to hurt her, and he moved to do just that when, by this point it should have been expected, a shot ran out and a brave Woodsman saved the day and again the wolf was dragged away and…
*****
This repeated far too many times, and I know I'm boring you and it's far past your bedtime, so let me say that the Woodsman and the Beast did many things. Once he married Red's mother and fell in with drink and womanizing, and other times he did far worse, trying to burn down the forest or declaring himself the King of the Town and killing anyone who dared to criticize his decisions, or he…
There were many things done, for while the basic story stayed the same, there were many ways to play on the same theme, and as a wolf he even once, yes, wore women's clothing to full a surprisingly near-sighted Red Hood. And his redemption too took different forms: once he was the wolven companion of a kind blind boy, and another time he saved the grandmother from a monster and became a hanger-on of that aged lady. There were many stories, and many memories.
But one thing he always remembered was that he wanted to go home.
But one thing he always thought was that, for one reason or another, he needed to stay here.
Until one day he was standing in the clearing, newly human, and he heard Red Hood scream out.
His memories were a confused muddle, and the Old World seemed like a distant dream to him, and indeed he'd have adapt to technology and indoor plumbing when he returned, but he realized something.
He desired to leave.
So he listened closely to the direction the scream came from, making sure to know exactly which way it was.
And he went the opposite way, and he kept on walking until at last he was done with the forest and done with the town, and until at last he was back, and he found that less time had passed than he might have thought. Months, almost a year at most.
******
There are three endings to this story, and while I know your mother will get after me, I think that you're wide-eyed for all three.
First, this Woodsbeast, this Man and Beast, learned or thought he had that desire and want are the most important things in the world. A man makes choices, as to what they want, and what they need. The only burden a person should carry are those he chooses to carry.
And so he fitted in well with the Spring Court of those like him, Changelings, who had wandered off and found their way Home. They were the court of desire, and he was not vengeful enough for Wrath, and not truly afraid.
He honed himself, became a man worth knowing. For he knew how to sell everything, and he was very charming, and he read many things, becoming something of a philosopher of desire, though also of other, darker emotions. Handy in a fight, he also learned Onieromancy, the art of dreams, and grew skilled at it.
So he was rich, happy, and powerful, and having a lustful disposition one couldn't deny that area of success either, and to cap it all off, he eventually became the King of Spring itself, the Woodsbeast rose far, and so it was a happy ending after all.
*****
But there was another story. Sometimes he remembered. Always he remembered, eventually, as his Wyrd, his magic, grew greater and more powerful. He had done horrible things and justified it as good when it was evil, and so he swore not to play pretend anymore.
So, he was an evil man because he had done evil, even if the Wolf had taught him to believe in redemption, in the possibility of a better tomorrow.
So he drank, and he flitted from relationship to relationship, and he had nightmares so bad that he became an Oneiromancer, and one of the better ones in the area, with any number of tricks...all to solve it. And in dreams he can fight the same battles again and again. Can try to work towards...something?
There's therapy, and it helps, but there's also alcohol, which doesn't. And politics, which definitely doesn't, since it sometimes seems like the art of selling your soul for the best price possible.
But, as was often said of the Woodsbeast...he could sell everything.
******
But the third end is far more simple, but to do so I have to tell you about someone.
Once, in the city of Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States in the late 1970s there was a man named Hans Pederson who was a businessman of repute, with a quality degree in business, a good head on his shoulders, and a keen sense of both politics, economics, and just how to connect to people. He owned pawn shops and small chain grocery stores, he dabbled in everything and everyone said that he was a lucky man.
Hans Pederson laughed at that and joked about his life, and one of the things he joked about was that despite being a rather skilled hunter, he'd once gotten lost for hours in the woods and stumbled out confused.
He laughed at this and made sure to take a map with him every time after that, and he of course made sure to wear orange because that way he wouldn't be shot by a hunter on accident.
He was kneeling down to check the map, bright orange, an easy target even to a beast, and he never even saw the man who shot him.
A single shot, through the heart, a single kill.
Dust and leaves scattered over the ground, all that remained of Hans Pederson, and yet Hans Pederson also walked out of the woods, wearing the man's clothes which almost fit. A little loose, a little bit of excess fat, but that could be explained away.
And the wind picked up the leaves and pushed them around for a while, and soon there was no sign left that there had been two men there.
And so it goes.
Now, it is time for bed, and dream happy dreams of good things you shall do, and not nightmares of the evil you have done.
Goodnight.
****
A/N: And that is the story of Hans "Woodsbeast" Pederson, the Spring King of the Freehold of a Thousand Trods (Kansas City)
Once upon a time, in a kingdom in the middle of a vast empire, there was a man who came from the merchant classes, who knew his way around money and was, as is the custom for these strange people, educated for many years before he made his way out into the world. He was intelligent, and admired by many for his looks, and many said he could sell anything and so he said 'That is what I will do.'
And yet, what was most important about this man, though he did not know it, was that he was a hunter of beasts. One who, as this strange people's customs went, put on a suit of orange so that nobody would shoot him by accident and ventured out into the deep woods and prairies of his land in hunt for that which could be, put simply, mounted upon walls or eaten or whatever struck his fancy, though he was quite wasteful.
One day, when hunting by himself with his rifle, he stumbled too far into the woods and made a wrong turn. The woods of that land were tame, or at least they were not the dark primeval forest that he now strode through, confused and afraid. Which is when, in the distance, he heard a girl scream.
He did not run in the direction of the scream, because looking doubtfully at the tangle of roots and darkness he had no doubt it would be a good way to break his leg, but he picked up his pace, heading straight for the danger, and when there he saw a cottage and a vile beast, a wolf with a slavering jaw, leering over a girl in a red cloak. It was strange, because it seemed as if he had read something about this, but when he tried to cast his memories back, there was something shadowed. He was confused, but he knew what he had to do, and he shot the wolf.
The girl was quite grateful, for her mom did not raise any ingrates, thank you very much, and she offered to let him stay with her and her mom, who was unfortunately out of town.
Now, he wanted to get home, and perhaps if he walked long enough he could find it, but he needed to protect this girl.
Which is when the granny crawled out of the wolf's belly and he realized that perhaps there were strange things out there. But he left, and so he never saw what happened with the wolf.
The town was small and quaint, and in great need of someone who could hunt and chop down wood, and so he set himself to the task, and his memories of the old world do not disappear so much as grow vague with time. How much time? Even that is a little bit vague, it must be admitted, but he learns many things, such as how to use an axe.
And though his gun is marvelous, far better than the muskets of the other hunters, there are only so many bullets and so he learns to use his axe.
And having saved one girl he figured he might, if he stumbled upon the worst monsters of the woods, get rid of them ahead of time.
Thus it was that he slayed a vast panther, a bloody-mouthed bird, and all manner of strange things that haunted the woods. And as he walked the woods he heard something whisper in his ear, but he ignored it.
He didn't listen...but he did hear, and slowly something occurred to him.
He could kill monsters with his axe and make things better. So when a boy was found down a well, drowned, and the Woodsman that he was found out that it was a cruel old man who lived at the edge of the village, near where the road disappeared and thorns grew, he came on the man with an axe and slayed him.
He saw that it was good, for what old man could stand against his strength and righteous fury? But his beard had grown out, and his senses felt sharper, and there were claws on his hands. But he trimmed those with a knife and shaved the beard, and all was good, though now he could smell blood.
But it was the blood of the guilty and evil, and walking in the forest he decided that he shouldn't feel guilty.
So when it was that Farmer John was abusing his wife, cheating on her and beating her and the kids, he came up behind Farmer John and gave him a few good wacks.
The beard grew back, and some claws, and his chest was quite hairy, and there was the fact that he now liked his meat a little bit rare, but he shaved his chest and cut the claws again and got rid of the beard. And the hair on his head that had grown out, strangely grey-black. But he could dye that, and it was good work.
So when it turned out that a young boy had stolen a lot of firewood, which might be needed for when winter came--surely it would, though it had not come in a long time--it wasn't...well, why was youth an excuse for his crimes, he muttered to himself as he dragged the body into the woods to hide it.
He talked to himself a lot, by that point.
And then there was the town drunk who always caused problems ranting and raving.
He was hunchbacked by that point, and more and more the people viewed him strangely, and yet he was the heroic Woodsman, so surely he was safe, and so when Robert, a hunter whose laugh he'd always found annoying and who boasted too much, offered to go out with him to hunt a little, he said yes.
He brought his rifle.
For, in a good world, there would not be loud and boastful people who were annoying, he thought, grinning to himself.
It was a clean shot. Then he ruined it by furiously clawing at the man's throat, on all fours, devouring the man.
He was tasty, tasty, and the Wolf stalked off, forgetting piece by piece all but the vaguest memories of his old life.
He wanted to leave, because he remembered that he could, but he needed to eat! And so he ate many things, innocent children out to play and men, and he took joy in suffering and laughed a wolfish laugh at the stupid hunters with boom-sticks that tried to kill him.
And then one day he came upon a cottage and ate the old woman there, and found that she was such a treat that he lay down and sleep in the bed, and when a stupid girl in a Red Hood came, he leapt to eat her too…
Only for a strong man, big and bearded and dangerous, to enter the fray.
He fought with the vicious cunning of a horrible monster, and he lost.
He lay there, dead. And yet he could still think, and the confused and muddled memories called out to him. He was dragged away for a time, to a sacred grove deep in the forest, and there he slowly began to remember things.
They tore out his fangs and purified his blood in a pool of water, and without his fangs he had to hunt by cunning, and as he did he came across old, discarded books that he began to read, and so soon he was a smart wolf, who walked on all fours, but stooped over.
And he tried to hunt only bad things, and the forest whispered its approval and slowly he grew taller and less hairy, until at last one day he stumbled naked into a copse of woods and found clothes and a shiny new axe, and thinking that perhaps he could go to the town and try to be a woodsman, he picked them up, only to hear a scream.
This time, it was further in the woods, where Red Hood had run, having seen through the wolf's tricks, but the ending was the same. He killed the wolf, and saved the grandmother, and realized that Red Hood was a girl who really needed watching over, for he vaguely remembered that this had happened before.
So when he went to her house he immediately found and killed the rats, and repaired everything that needed repairing, because the world was a dangerous place.
And he made a gate, and he made it higher. After a while he forbid her to talk to anyone, and he'd yell at any who tried to approach her, because they would harm her. Not like him. He'd keep her safe. He wanted to leave and come back home, because he still remembered that this was not home, but he NEEDED to protect her.
Red Hood grew up to be a beautiful woman and had many suitors, but none were good enough for her and he humiliated them and yelled at them, and shaved his growing beard and dyed his greying hair.
And then one day he learned that Red Hood had been sneaking out with a neighbor boy to do...well, he knew what, and it made him furious. Red Hood was too good for anyone who wouldn't...wouldn't protect her!
So he went up to the boy and tricked him into his garden and then hit the stupid boy in the head with a shovel and buried him in the garden and made a show of mourning his disappearance with his daughter, even as he began to take stones and sticks from the forest and build a tower.
When, of course, she asked why, he told her that he was going to lock her in there forever so that she'd be safe, because nobody in the world deserved her, and yet thoughts crossed his mind when he walked through the woods, but the first step was a tower.
Now, Red Hood knew when enough was enough, and she yelled at him and he confessed proudly to having slain her true love and she ran off, hoping that granny could sort him out, and he chased her, first on twos, then on all fours, and caught up to her and held her in his teeth as they went to the cottage.
He ate the grandmother first when he had the perfect idea.
Once Red Hood was safe in his belly, nobody would hurt her ever again...except him.
He was the one who was made to hurt her, and he moved to do just that when, by this point it should have been expected, a shot ran out and a brave Woodsman saved the day and again the wolf was dragged away and…
*****
This repeated far too many times, and I know I'm boring you and it's far past your bedtime, so let me say that the Woodsman and the Beast did many things. Once he married Red's mother and fell in with drink and womanizing, and other times he did far worse, trying to burn down the forest or declaring himself the King of the Town and killing anyone who dared to criticize his decisions, or he…
There were many things done, for while the basic story stayed the same, there were many ways to play on the same theme, and as a wolf he even once, yes, wore women's clothing to full a surprisingly near-sighted Red Hood. And his redemption too took different forms: once he was the wolven companion of a kind blind boy, and another time he saved the grandmother from a monster and became a hanger-on of that aged lady. There were many stories, and many memories.
But one thing he always remembered was that he wanted to go home.
But one thing he always thought was that, for one reason or another, he needed to stay here.
Until one day he was standing in the clearing, newly human, and he heard Red Hood scream out.
His memories were a confused muddle, and the Old World seemed like a distant dream to him, and indeed he'd have adapt to technology and indoor plumbing when he returned, but he realized something.
He desired to leave.
So he listened closely to the direction the scream came from, making sure to know exactly which way it was.
And he went the opposite way, and he kept on walking until at last he was done with the forest and done with the town, and until at last he was back, and he found that less time had passed than he might have thought. Months, almost a year at most.
******
There are three endings to this story, and while I know your mother will get after me, I think that you're wide-eyed for all three.
First, this Woodsbeast, this Man and Beast, learned or thought he had that desire and want are the most important things in the world. A man makes choices, as to what they want, and what they need. The only burden a person should carry are those he chooses to carry.
And so he fitted in well with the Spring Court of those like him, Changelings, who had wandered off and found their way Home. They were the court of desire, and he was not vengeful enough for Wrath, and not truly afraid.
He honed himself, became a man worth knowing. For he knew how to sell everything, and he was very charming, and he read many things, becoming something of a philosopher of desire, though also of other, darker emotions. Handy in a fight, he also learned Onieromancy, the art of dreams, and grew skilled at it.
So he was rich, happy, and powerful, and having a lustful disposition one couldn't deny that area of success either, and to cap it all off, he eventually became the King of Spring itself, the Woodsbeast rose far, and so it was a happy ending after all.
*****
But there was another story. Sometimes he remembered. Always he remembered, eventually, as his Wyrd, his magic, grew greater and more powerful. He had done horrible things and justified it as good when it was evil, and so he swore not to play pretend anymore.
So, he was an evil man because he had done evil, even if the Wolf had taught him to believe in redemption, in the possibility of a better tomorrow.
So he drank, and he flitted from relationship to relationship, and he had nightmares so bad that he became an Oneiromancer, and one of the better ones in the area, with any number of tricks...all to solve it. And in dreams he can fight the same battles again and again. Can try to work towards...something?
There's therapy, and it helps, but there's also alcohol, which doesn't. And politics, which definitely doesn't, since it sometimes seems like the art of selling your soul for the best price possible.
But, as was often said of the Woodsbeast...he could sell everything.
******
But the third end is far more simple, but to do so I have to tell you about someone.
Once, in the city of Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States in the late 1970s there was a man named Hans Pederson who was a businessman of repute, with a quality degree in business, a good head on his shoulders, and a keen sense of both politics, economics, and just how to connect to people. He owned pawn shops and small chain grocery stores, he dabbled in everything and everyone said that he was a lucky man.
Hans Pederson laughed at that and joked about his life, and one of the things he joked about was that despite being a rather skilled hunter, he'd once gotten lost for hours in the woods and stumbled out confused.
He laughed at this and made sure to take a map with him every time after that, and he of course made sure to wear orange because that way he wouldn't be shot by a hunter on accident.
He was kneeling down to check the map, bright orange, an easy target even to a beast, and he never even saw the man who shot him.
A single shot, through the heart, a single kill.
Dust and leaves scattered over the ground, all that remained of Hans Pederson, and yet Hans Pederson also walked out of the woods, wearing the man's clothes which almost fit. A little loose, a little bit of excess fat, but that could be explained away.
And the wind picked up the leaves and pushed them around for a while, and soon there was no sign left that there had been two men there.
And so it goes.
Now, it is time for bed, and dream happy dreams of good things you shall do, and not nightmares of the evil you have done.
Goodnight.
****
A/N: And that is the story of Hans "Woodsbeast" Pederson, the Spring King of the Freehold of a Thousand Trods (Kansas City)
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Wait, why would that evolve in the first place? I don't even mean the right angle stuff, I mean – hunting humans is a ridiculous niche to have, and functionally impossible unless you're prepared to engage in the kind of pack tactics that primitive psychopathy largely precludes. It's easier and more energy-efficient to hunt pretty much anything else, why would they even become a subspecies?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
That's the part you latch on about? And not the 'their genes are in autistic children and so people brought them back and then gave them anti-seizure medicine'?
Autistic children.
The only wellspring for the genes of psycopathic vampires that hate civilization and right angles.
I think an autistic child might have kicked his knee at some point and he just held a really, really, epically pathetic grudge.
Autistic children.
The only wellspring for the genes of psycopathic vampires that hate civilization and right angles.
I think an autistic child might have kicked his knee at some point and he just held a really, really, epically pathetic grudge.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
"This work of science fiction whose narrative revolves around fictional science contains nonsensical fictional science" is legitimate criticism which with sufficient severity constitutes a reason to reject the work.
"This work of fiction appears to display problematic attitudes on the part of its author" is also legitimate criticism which with sufficient severity constitutes a reason to reject the work.
Both criticisms are worth spending words on.
Blindsight vampires are not specifically human predators - and aren't specifically blood-drinkers, either. "Vampire" is really a misnomer. They're really more like a subspecies of movie super-smart serial killers. Like, their baseline is that they're Hannibal Lector or Jigsaw.
Basically, the thought exercise with them is "what if consciousness is a handicap because it means you're wasting brain cycles on things like self-doubt and the like". You don't have to agree with it, but the axiom that Blindsight runs with is "human intelligence is a mess of kludged together compromises and repurposing of existing systems, so we can't assume that everything humans think is important for intelligence is actually necessary for intelligence". And so Blindsight (which refers to the phenomenon of blindsight, where people with certain kinds of brain injury which means they can't consciously see despite having working eyes will still react to external stimuli despite insisting they don't see a thing) works with the idea that... okay, what if a human subspecies in pre-history evolved a slightly different way of thinking so they were smarter than us, but didn't have something we think is vital for being a person.
Remember, Blindsight is a hard-sci-fi horror novel.
(And real life blindsight is super-creepy. Someone who's sure they can't see anything, who swears blind that they're blind, can be coaxed to walk down a hallway littered with obstacles and traps and they'll dodge them and evade them while insisting they're walking in a straight line. You can sit them in front of a TV, have the TV display someone who looks like they're going to punch them, and they'll flinch. Their consciousness isn't in full control of their body.)
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No, Blindsight vampires explicitly need to eat people. They trapped themselves in a narrow ecological niche because Humans have an enzyme that helped the development of their savant-like skills, and in turn increased intellect made them incrementally better hunters , so they locked themselves in a loop of needing to eat humans to better eat humans. When their favored prey became unavailable they died out.
@The Laurent: All human beings have the genetic data to be turned into vampires, it's just that it was first discovered while attempting to cure autistic children through gene therapy, then later refined by experimenting on sociopathic and psychopathic US prisoners. When the process has been perfected they are created in vitro.
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didn't you make a sheet for kaneki once?
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Yes, I once wrote a character sheet for a magic ghost warrior patterned off a surgically-created cannibal mutant.didn't you make a sheet for kaneki once?
lo, my protestations of scientific implausibility are slain
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Meh, many real-world evolutionary oddities look implausible. We just can't say "this is bad fiction!" because we can see them in real life. If they didn't exist IRL but were found in fiction, people would complain about them being implausible. Recall what happened with the first report of a platypus?
Reminds me of people with split brain. The two halves of your brain can have startlingly different responses to stimuli when they stop talking to each other. One guy had to fight off one of his own arms attempts to strangle his wife because his right hemisphere decided that aggression was the best way to deal with her upsetting him.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say. Split-brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Vindictus
XENO
- Location
- Texas
"The fuck is this shit even, is it a bird or a mammal or what the fuck"
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Actually I was talking about the fact that other scientists immediately accused the person who brought back the dead platypus of playing hoax on them by sewing together a fake implausible animal.
Another example of highly implausible-sounding evolutions would be the set of the more 'inventive' parasitic setups. I think some of the nicer ones can already be found in the Nope! thread.
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Platypuses are quite functional in their native environment. Their evolutionary adaptations are bizarre, but functional.
The same is the case with parasitism.
The evolutionary niche of a solitary human who eats other humans is a pretty massive dead end, though. Even ignoring the right angle thing, serial killers aren't exactly known to be reproductively prolific.
And the thing about natural selection is that it doesn't favor ability or strength or skill or speed or ruthlessness. It favors banging. In the evolution, the ability to win a fight doesn't really matter much unless it's a fight over a member of the opposite sex with nice looking parts. Evolution favors those who have mastered the steps of the horizontal tango, the sluts and the whores, the bimbos and the himbos.
An ultra-creepy cannibal sociopath is an evolutionary dead end because no one is going to fuck him or her. It's rather that simple.
A subspecies semen vampire who can't live without human sperm would be more plausible.
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vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Well, Echopraxia hints that the whole 'ultra-territorial solitary' thing is not how things really were back in the old days, contrary to what the claims that are spread through the public. I also personally have a suspicion that the combination of (a) all of vampire genome being present-but-dormant in modern humans and (b) vampire ability to superhumanly manipulate humans are somehow related to the vampires' reproductive strategies.
Hybridogenesis is a real-life reproductive strategy of some species. Perhaps Echo/Sight vampires had something similarly tricky. The books seem more focused on implying things than telling them explicitly.
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Eukie
Powered by furious Canadian redheads
Peter Watts said:
Peter Watts said:
I think the weakest link is actually how the mutant vampires came to evolve at all; it seems so contrived that they'd just suddenly realise that eating humans was right way to solve their problems. Perhaps if the initial mutant strain arose among practitioners of ritualistic cannibalism? That and just how convenient it is that they can hibernate to reduce their need to eat humans all the time.