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on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

casual survey: reblog if you want to kiss a girl right now

Reblog to make him lose another 200 billion, like to make him lose 1 billion

Time for

Revelations with Res

(Regarding: Godfrey, Marika, and the Hornsent)

The Secret Rite Scroll says: "A lord will usher in a god's return,

and the lord's soul will require a vessel."

Based on Miquella's interpretation via the stuff with Radahn and Mohg, it means that the Lord and another must be sacrificed, and then the Lord's soul needs the body of the other one sacrificed to return, with the God in tow.

At first I thought that this being a "Secret Rite Scroll" means that Marika didn't have anything to do with it, that it's some Secret Third Way to use the divine gateway to ascend. But no, now I think Marika did use it.

On Godfrey.

And she sacrificed a random, nameless Hornsent to put his soul into.

Now, my first thought was "why would someone who played such an important part have no name or mention", but then I remember... Mohg is basically a "random nameless nobody". Gideon doesn't know his name, or even that he's an Omen, just that there's a shardbearer calling himself the "Lord of Blood." When Morgott is naming demigods at the thrones in Leyndell, he says nothing about Mohg at all. It seems everyone knows more about Ranni, and Ranni's entire thing is keeping a low profile. Mohg is basically a ghost, and maybe that works out, because then, presumably "no one" would miss him or notice he's gone.

Furthermore, for Marika's part, why would a sacrifice - and a Hornsent, at that - ever be enshrined in a history Marika controls the narrative of?

This could very well be the "seduction and betrayal" it was talking about in the trailer. She suckered some poor Hornsent into getting close to her. We know not all the Hornsent were down with all the shady shit that was going on in the gaols, etc. After all, the Greater Potentate's Cookbooks talk about it, so one of the would-be sacrificial shamans manipulating a Hornsent into becoming a sacrificial goat in turn isn't farfetched. Especially via "seduction" - which also would explain why the Hornsent grandam calls Marika a "strumpet" (an old timey word for "slut" for anyone who didn't look it up). The fact she's so focused on Marika's sexual proclivities, instead of Marika's bloodthirsty genocide-war is kind of telling, in that regard. Almost like what Marika slept with... might have been a Hornsent. It might have even been one of the Sculpted Keepers, considering Godfrey's later affinity with lions, or that could just be a happy coincidence with Serosh just happening to be a storm lion.

Note: She could just be a cantankerous old woman and calling Marika a slut a gendered insult, because old lady and inter-women aggression, but I still feel like there are better insults to call the bloodthirsty despot that's murdering and oppressing your people than a "slut". The line from the trailer could be metaphorical, still (Marika was "seduced" by the power the Greater Will offered her.) But this feels direct and personal, like the Hornsent Grandam was privy to some kind of information.

Anyway, she killed the hornsent, and Godfrey, and returned as a God.

And because Godfrey's body is now a Hornsent...

It explains why he has the Crucible Knights. It explains why his children with Marika ended up developing aspects of the Crucible. (I don't think Godwyn is an exception, actually, considering his piscine appearance. His traits either were suppressed or manifested after death. The DLC is clear that horns, wings, and tails are NOT the only Crucible aspects that people can develop; there's frog tongues, and flower blooms, and whatever Devonia's weird taur-form thing was. Fish scales and gills and weird clam-faces are not out of the question.)

It explains way too much about what happened with that first generation of demigods.

Yes, Godfrey doesn't have external horns, but I think I can explain that, too:

Not all the Hornsent develop huge horns. In fact, given the Tanglehorn Bairn description, it sounds like a lot that would just die in infancy. Most of the little Hornsent commoner dudes you see just have a few small horns poking out of their heads. Mohg definitely developed a grandiose "tanglehorn" sort of look, but when Radahn took over his body, all that remained were a few poking up around his arms and legs. Would make sense that a "lesser" hornsent's horns would disappear entirely. But that doesn't mean the effect is gone, something that people with no concept of "DNA" or "alleles" could know about.

Speaking of which: The Hornsent think tanglehorns "invoke divinity" which makes me think the choice of Mohg as the sacrifice was deliberate - He is very, VERY evocative of "tanglehorns". Therefore, according to Hornsent culture, he'd probably be a very spiritually powerful Hornsent. And there seems to be some truth to their claims.

The most powerful Hornsent to be sacrificed, to host the soul of the most powerful demigod as a Lord, to usher in the most powerful Empyrean as the - presumably - most powerful God.

I don't think any of that was an accident.

- - -

Side note: I know this doesn't help the Miquella accusations, but Radahn coming back with visible horns might have actually been part of the plan. I do think Miquella intended to uphold the promise he made with his Hornsent follower, and an Elden Lord with visible Crucible traits could have been seen as part of that - he was honoring their idea of divinity in the form of a "tanglehorn".

Furthermore, by using a horn-encrusted Radahn to fight Messmer's Inquisition, it might look like some kind of repentance for Marika's aggressions. A son of Marika fighting another son of Marika with a horned Lord could elicit a positive response from the Hornsent... and Radahn would get the "endless war" he wants against Messmer. There's not actually a reason to mentally manipulate the inquisition, since they were all there voluntarily; they're not the ones suffering, and they weren't fooled into being there.

*Mario Voice* Damn that's a thick toenail

OMG?!???!!

Dumb NPC ideas to use when your players decide to explore that town you didn't prepare anything for

A scholar that is clearly lost, however you're not sure how he is someone important at all. It even looks like he's glad that he didn't manage to arrive at the event on time.

An old lady (of a race that has a long lifespan), that knows a little way to much about the party's adventure... She doesn't spends much time talking about it though, do you want to buy her pots?

A kid. Just a kid. Make them annoying.

A knight that is very proud about their job and duty, but they just want their shift to end so they can go home to their wife.

A merchant that has a cart in the middle of the fair, however everytime the party goes to another shop or stand he pops up from behind the counter. Turns out the town doesn't receive many merchants so he has to supply all of their needs. He's stressed.

A teen dragon that discovered how to transform into a human, problem is they definitely look 30 but they still are just a teenager, and a moody one.

A shop owner that fucking hates commerce. She's in it because of her family, so she tries to sell the goodies pratically for free and she really wants you to take all of her items. The catch? It's a feather shop. Not magic feathers, not pens, just normal feathers. Probably from a bird that died that morning.

A janitor from a library or big shop that is just too aware of everything. Like, they point out the players class or race without barely batting an eye. They comment on how they "had never seen a chaotic good one in real life". And indirectly disses the players choices they made 2 sessions ago? (Basically a character for the dm to rant a little while not completely breaking the 4th wall)

A woman in her mid-40s (or the equivalent) that is just really excited to meet the party? Her dream was to be an adventurer when she was little so she is definitely asking some weird questions.

A blacksmith that makes weapons purely for the aesthetic. He really doesn't care if it's functional or not, he's just doing cause it looks cool.

A bard that got kicked out of their band or caravan. At first you don't know why but after their 3rd performance of a one-person musical you get it. He wants to stick with the party though. Good luck.

A doggie!! It's cute!! And fluffy!! And it talks!! And it talks? A DOG THAT TALKS!!!!

The most ripped person the party has ever met, they have tons of skulls of big animals on their shoulder. They polish them. They hang them on a wall and start to take notes. They are an archeologist.

A magician that is really not magic at all, he's just so good at card tricks that the town thinks he's a sorcerer. He's freaking out.

A girl that is immune to all kinds of poison, however that is making a little bit hard for her to pursue her cooking career. Apparently poison ivy is not a good seasoning for most people.

An artist that is just really calm and friendly but everyone's afraid of them. The party has no idea why.

poems I loved in december

Paruyr Sevak, "To Go Mad"

Anne Sexton, "December 18th"

Ted Hughes, "Lovesong"

Chris Abani, "Ritual is Journey"

Franz Wright, "Untitled"

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "A Prayer"

Willie Perdomo, "Maybe Under Some Other Sky"

Osip Mandelstam,'You took away all the oceans and all the room', (translated by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin)

Osip Mandelstam, "Tenderer than tender" transl. D. Smirnov-Sadovsky

Richard Siken, "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out"

Michael Miller, "December"

Vladimir Mayakovsky, "A Cloud in Trousers"

Mohja Kahf, “Most Wanted”

Louise Glück, "Winter Recipes from the Collective"

Vladimir Mayakovsky, "Listen"

Fear, Czesław Miłosz, Robert Hass (translator)

Hope, Czesław Miłosz, Robert Hass (translator)

Charles Bukowski, "a vote for the gentle light"

Marina Tsvetaeva, "I Opened My Veins" (translated by Elaine Feinstein)

I love accidentally starving myself. :). Life is so easy now that i am recovering from accidentally starving myself. :).