Some People Think Writers Are So Eloquent And Good With Words, But The Reality Is That We Can Sit There

Malyarova Olga Couture

So, let me guess– you just started a new book, right? And you’re stumped. You have no idea how much an AK47 goes for nowadays. I get ya, cousin. Tough world we live in. A writer’s gotta know, but them NSA hounds are after ya 24/7. I know, cousin, I know. If there was only a way to find out all of this rather edgy information without getting yourself in trouble…

You’re in luck, cousin. I have just the thing for ya.

It’s called Havocscope. It’s got information and prices for all sorts of edgy information. Ever wondered how much cocaine costs by the gram, or how much a kidney sells for, or (worst of all) how much it costs to hire an assassin?

I got your back, cousin. Just head over to Havocscope.

((PS: In case you’re wondering, Havocscope is a database full of information regarding the criminal underworld. The information you will find there has been taken from newspapers and police reports. It’s perfectly legal, no need to worry about the NSA hounds, cousin ;p))

Want more writerly content? Follow maxkirin.tumblr.com!

Changeling Boyfriend

Given that the town you live in is tiny and isolated, the amount of men you could court is awfully small. As the other girls begin growing into womanhood, the boys started to be snatched up faster than you can blink. Given that you had very little interest in marriage, much to your father’s chagrin, you ended up getting the leftovers of the pot when you were finally convinced to settle down.

It is not as though you don’t like any of the boys, you just don’t see how you can raise a family with them. Deciding who to spend the rest of your life with, for better or for worse, is no small task. Your mother calls you overly picky, but how can anyone blame you?

After quickly shifting through the others, you manage to start courting one of the Miller boys. Duncan has a mop of red curls, his skin peppered with countless freckles. He is a few inches taller than you, strong from carrying bags of grain to and fro, and has the most charming laugh. There is the slightest limp in his walk from an accident at the mill, barely noticeable to anyone who does not know him. Maybe not the most handsome of the town, but certainly reliable.

Keep reading

Geology of Natural Disasters and How to write them into your fictional universe.

So, you want to write about a natural disaster to advance your plot and torture your players/characters even more? Let me tell you how, accurately.

I feel like unless it is a volcano, natural disasters are a pretty slept on plot drivers, and some of them are really cool and unique! Today, I will talk to you about land slides, earthquakes (And earthquake related disasters), and volcanoes.

Landslides: Probably one I see the least in stories, but one that would be incredibly interesting to write into a plot where they believe in curses. Landslides can happen along ocean bluffs, slightly hilly areas, and highly mountainous areas, this means it is something that can happen in most landscapes. But what can trigger a landslide? Mostly all you need to trigger a landslide could be just abnormally large amounts of rain, excessive deforestation (with a little bit of rain), or an earthquake. If you don't want to use deforestation or an earthquake as a catalyst, a really cool indicator that the land is slipping and may be prone to a collapse is J hooked trees.

This indicates that there is soil creeping slowly over time, and it may lead to a major landslide.

2. Earthquakes: Probably one of the easiest things to write, earthquakes can happen anywhere, but they are most common in places that are tectonically active areas. There are about three types of environments you can expect earthquakes to be common. The first is just rugged mountains, if your landscape looks like this, you should write in earthquakes. Associated hazards could be landslides, avalanches, and large falling rocks.

The next landscape could be a thin mountain range, next to the ocean, very scenic, but very dangerous. Essentially, I am describing a subduction zone environment.

Earthquakes in these areas could equal a couple different associated disasters. Scenario one: A very large earthquake happens, and the ocean begins to recede. This is a tsunami, enough said. If you are writing a tsunami though, please, please, do not write it as a large wave, thank you. Also, a common way people are hurt by tsunami's are from them going into the ocean because they don't understand a tsunami is going to happen.

Scenario two: A large earthquake happens, your characters are in a valley and suddenly the ground begins to liquify as the ground shakes, once the shaking stops, the ground becomes solid like nothing ever happened, except everything has suddenly sunk into the now hard ground. This is called liquefaction and it typically happens in areas that have loose dirt or lots of saturated soil.

Scenario three: There are a lot of small earthquakes, they do not cause a lot of damage, but you begin to notice that one of the isolated mountains has a plume rising. Earthquakes can indicate lava moving underground and the filling of magma chambers.

The next environment that can host lots of earthquakes would be regions that have a lot of really deep valleys and small mountain ranges (not cone volcanoes), but overall seems pretty flat.

This indicates a transform fault like the San Andreas. If you want to hint at there being earthquakes in the area, you can show fence posts that are suddenly several feet out of line at a dilapidated farm or something similar.

(These earthquakes are different because they are cased from sideways movement, not an up-and-down movement this hint can only be used for this environment). Volcanoes would not be found here, but liquefaction and landslides could still occur here.

4. Volcanoes: If you thought earthquakes had a lot of information, volcanoes do too. First you have to ask yourself, what kind of volcano you want to have, what kind of eruption style? So lets break down the kind of eruptions you can have and what their landscapes look like. Hawaiian Shield volcano: This will produce a smooth fast lava, the landscape typically is pretty flat, but there will be small cones and the rocks can have a ropey or jagged texture and the rocks will be almost exclusively black to dark red.

Stratovolcanoes: These will be solitary mountains, typically, that look like perfect cones (Picture shown in earthquake section). These will have large ash cloud eruptions and pyroclastic flows, they may have some lava, but typically most damage is done from the pyroclastic flows (think Pompeii). Some hints of these, other than describing the cone features (which can be hidden by other mountains), would be to talk about petrified wood! Trees can get fossilized in the ash and I imagine it would be very strange to find this rock that clearly looks to be a piece of wood, but its a rock. Subcategory- Calderas: Used to be a large stratovolcano, but they erupt so explosively that the entire cone collapses and creates a basin.

There are a lot of kinds of volcanoes out there, so forgive me for just putting an infographic and then talking to you about these really rare types of eruptions that I feel like people should know about.

Okay lets talk about blue lava (kind of) and black lava

You will notice the lava is still red in the middle of this image, during the day these would look like a normal eruption, but at night the burning sulfur would make it appear blue. Some cool features other than this, would be that any water in the area would become very acidic and burn the skin due to sulfuric acid. This would again be really cool if you are trying to describe a 'cursed' land.

Black lava: This happens only in the east African rift I believe, but it is a carbonatite lava, but if you are writing in a rift valley (where the continent is tearing apart to form a new ocean) this might be a cool feature. The lava will cool white and will quickly erode, it makes for a very alien landscape!

Anyway as always, this is supposed to be an introductive guide for the basics of writing geology to create cool landscapes/features into dnd or fictional universes, if you are a geologist please understand my oversimplification of tectonics, I didn't want people to run away.

Lacencu

Something a little different, I tried to make a monster inspired by an art! Here it is!

The illustration below is by one of my favorite artists, Abigail Larson. Enjoy, please!

~

Lacencu

Lacencu (la-SEN-koo) combine traits of centaurs, succubi, and lamia, but their origins are murky. Lacencu might be related to all three of these species, or none. To date, investigations have proved inconclusive; it doesn’t seem like the lacencu remember their ancestors well, nor do they care. Rumors abound, but their most popular origin story involves a tribe of centaurs trapped underground, never to see the sun again. Ill-suited to the endless caves, these centaurs made pacts with various eldritch powers for survival. Over time, fiendish influence and the Underdark’s unusual conditions molded the centaurs into lacencu, charming but paranoid masters of enchantment.

Observers are shocked at the lacencu’s agility; their ponderous centaur-like physiology doesn’t look suited to climbing or flying, yet the lacencu do both with elegance. The lacencu seem to dance about the rocks, switching between hopping like mountain goats, climbing with their arms, clawed wings, and prehensile tails, and flapping short distances with fluid ease.

The lacencu are typically friendly, and they love to hear stories of the surface world. But the lacencu know their numbers are small compared to other Underdark races; lending some credence to the “lost centaurs” theory, they fear extinction, and know danger lurks around every corner in the Underdark. So the moment a visitor displays any violent, duplicitous, or otherwise untoward behavior, the lacencu employ their innate magic to turn these visitors away, back into the darkness of the underground. If magic manipulation fails, or if the lacencu fear this enemy will come back with a vengeance, they’ll take up arms as a tribe and slay the interloper.

Despite their embedded fear of extinction, most sentient residents of the Underdark have no quarrel with the lacencu – except the drow. Lancencu raid drow outposts and city outskirts for supplies, artifacts, weapons, and fashions. The lacencu pick on the drow partly out of necessity; out of all their Underdark neighbors, drow are the closest in body type (from the waist up) compared to the stout duergar, the diminutive svirfneblin, or hulking quaggoths. Most items made with drow in mind, the lacencu can use too.

Lacencu

Large monstrosity (sapient), typically neutral good

Armor Class 13

Hit Points 78 (12d10 + 12)

Speed 30 ft., climb 30 ft., fly 50 ft.

STR 14(+2) DEX 16(+3) CON 13(+1) INT 15(+2) WIS 16(+3) CHA 17(+3)

Saving Throws WIS +5, CHA +5

Skills Acrobatics +5, Athletics +4, Nature +4, Insight +5, Perception +5, Survival +5, Persuasion +5

Damage Resistances psychic

Senses Alignment Sense, Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 15

Languages Infernal, Sylvan, telepathy 100 ft. (only works with other lacencu), Undercommon

Challenge 4 (1,100 XP)

Proficiency Bonus +2

-

Innate Spellcasting. The lacencu’s innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 13, +5 to hit with spell attacks). It can innately cast the following spells, requiring no components.

At will: detect magic, detect thoughts

3/day each: scrying, suggestion

1/day each: geas, sleep

Flyby. The lacencu doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks when it flies out of an enemy’s reach.

Actions

Multiattack. The lacencu can make multiple attacks: either 1 each with hooves and spear, or 1 hooves and 2 wings.

Clawed Wings. Melee Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., 1 target. Hit: 6 (1d6 + 3) slashing damage.

Hooves. Melee Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., 1 target. Hit: 11 (2d8 + 2) bludgeoning damage. Lacencu can also attack backwards with their hooves by bucking.

Poisoned Spear. Melee or Ranged Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., thrown 20/60 ft., 1 target. Hit: 8 (1d10 + 3) piercing damage plus 6 (2d6) poison damage.

Charm. One humanoid the lacencu can see within 30 feet of it must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or be magically charmed for 1 day. The charmed target obeys the lacencu’s verbal or telepathic commands. If the target suffers any harm or receives a suicidal command, it can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on a success. If the target successfully saves against the effect, or if the effect on it ends, the target is immune to this particular lacencu’s Charm for the next 24 hours.

The lacencu can have only one target charmed at a time. If it charms another, the effect on the previous target ends.

Bonus Actions

Aura Reading. Detect magic and detect thoughts are bonus actions for lacencu.

~

DESIGN NOTES

Yes, I came up with the name by remixing the syllables of centaur, succubus, and lamia.

Took me way too long to realize I should give these folks darkvision and a climbing speed, since they live in the Underdark, and there’s stuff in the flavor text about how they climb good.

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

Amazing day to night time-lapse of a Ghost fungus.

It has bioluminescent properties and is known to be found primarily in southern Australia and Tasmania

Behold, birds who have lost the ability to can!

Just kidding, guys.  These birds are just trolling the hell out of ants.  I really, really wanted to show you this clip of a Galapagos finch or something harassing the shit out of formica ants and then being all “Yes, yes, bathe me in your fury!  Your chemical defenses are now my own!  Mwahahahaha!”, but the closest thing I could find is this video of David Attenborough pissing off some wood ants.  It was basically like that, only instead of an Englishman with a stick, it was a bird stomping around with its wings spread just being an absolute asshole about everything.

This behavior is actually called anting, and there are two types of anting that birds can engage in.  One is just anting, where birds will rub ants all over themselves to get that precious, precious formic acid all up in their feathers.  They’ll also do it with mothballs, cigarette butts, and certain sorts of beetles and millipedes.  The other one is passive anting, where a particularly lazy bird will find an anthill and just flop down on it with all their feathers spread and puffed and annoy the ants until they hop to and try to make them leave, at which point the bird rubs its wings together and goes “Yeeeeeess.”

They do this to get rid of external parasites, because external parasites are annoying.  Ant-eating birds who do this are getting a two-for deal out of it, because they get the ants to empty their acid sacs in a beneficial location (the bird’s feathers) and then get to eat them without having to deal with the acid in their crops, so it’s basically like if your bug-spray or deoderant came in a bacon bottle.

Formica ants get the brunt of this, because they’re super-common and quite frequently spray the acid instead of trying to inject it, so the bird can get itself doused and then preen it into its feathers.  Considering the spraying of acid is like the ant way of saying “Oh my god go away you dickhead I hate you we all hate you why are you still here jesus christ what is wrong with you,” we can be reasonably sure that they’re not super-thrilled by this bird behavior.  Since the birds keep doing it, we can be reasonably sure that they don’t care about the ants’ feelings.

More ways I paint plants! This is how I paint to make my plants look less muddy. I use bolder colors to help me out. Again, this is how I like to go about it! 😀

YE!!!!

Super proud of this one!!! ^w^ The eye crowns especially I really loved working on :D