Thread 96644454

Writing General: 'library' edition

Welcome to /wg/, the thread for all /tg/ related writing. Whether you're plotting your campaign, trying to come up with a character backstory, or just trying to write some setting fluff, this is the place to post it. You don't even have a campaign, just an idea you want to develop? You're welcome here. While the rest of /tg/ is arguing over monstergirl mating and which way rivers are supposed to flow, we're here to help you turn your thoughts into an actual finished product.

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The previous thread can still be found in the archive here
>>96042773

And finally an archive of /tg/ fiction can be found here:
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https://1d6chan.miraheze.org/wiki/Storythread

>>96644454 (OP)
Perhaps the most fundamental pieces of writing advice is that if you want to write well, you have to read a lot. So with that in mind: what's on your bookshelf, anons?

How many books do you have? Which one's your favourite? Do you even still buy physical books or have you switched to an e-reader? And do you borrow from public libraries at all?

Personally - and I know I'm going to be called unoriginal - I think my favourite book is the copy of Lord of the Rings that I've had since I was a kid. And I'm a committed Luddite in that I still prefer physical paper over e-readers; I also borrow from public libraries fairly regularly.

>>96644491
Lord of the Rings is a wonderful book.
Last time I counted, pretty sure it was over 300 books. Could be over 400 now. There was a time when I was at flea markets occasionally, and would grab whatever I could find that looks interesting, or if it's an author I heard of, but never read. Or sometimes just books that looked old. The oldest book I currently own is from 1927. Probably a bibliophilic tendency.

>>96644825
Misjudged it, after counting them for whatever reason, I got 340 books.
Roughly, I may have lost count, occasionally…

>>96644491
Any recommendations on good fantasy to read? I have this weird inkling that I want to write a detective/noir story set in a high-magic setting.
I recently bought Sanderson's Mistborn but the size of the book daunts me.
Also a lot of the books I read are more like books on how to write, and not necessarily fantasy. So far I've really liked Goldman's Adventures in The Screen Trade, and Araki's Manga in Theory and Practice. I'm also mostly through Maass' Emotional Craft of Fiction but I'll eventually have to reread it since it's been so long and I've mostly forgotten it.

>>96645545
>I have this weird inkling that I want to write a detective/noir story set in a high-magic setting.
Honestly, I can't think of anything that fits this exactly. Terry Pratchett wrote a few detective stories set in the Discworld (part of The Watch series), but they're not really noir.

On the other hand, the Witcher series has some very noir vibes at points, but they're not really detective stories.

Ironically the only person I know who writes high fantasy noir detective fiction is me. But unfortunately for you, I never get around to finishing them.

>I recently bought Sanderson's Mistborn but the size of the book daunts me.
I don't think I've read that since around when it was originally published, but I remember it being a very quick read. Like, so quick I blasted through it, went back and got the second part of the trilogy, then bought the third part and read that too in like a couple of days. Of course I was pretty young then; I definitely get through books slower now that I'm older. But while Brandon Sanderson has his faults, stodgy prose and slow pacing are not among them.

>>96644454 (OP)

It's more important to write every day than to write well.

Just write every day, write often. At the end of the year, you'll have more than 300 pieces of writing that you can polish and develop.

Just keep practicing. It's simple.

>>96644825
I definitely have far fewer books than you. I've never actually counted, but I've only got one proper bookcase and a mini one to fit them into. I really need to get a bigger bookcase.

I'm also not sure what the oldest book I have is. Probably a Bible from the 1870s.

>>96644454 (OP)
Happy Birthday to 4chan. How many years in the clinker?

I have this cyberpunk story I'm working on, and in it I want to have the characters slowly uncover and (try to) fight some big conspiracy going on behind the curtain. My problem is I can't really think of anything really shocking.
My current idea is that the ultra-wealthy are building generation ships at the edge of the solar system and when they're done they're going to leave Earth to complete collapse. And while I like it the more and more I think about it the less shocking and horrifying it seems.
Any advice, ideas, or things to get inspired by?

>>96658698
Why would society collapse once the rich and wealthy leave?
This makes it sound like you are being subversive and that you want to say that society needs wealthy people, which would be amusing indeed for pro-capitalist people like myself.
But it's probably not what you are aiming for. For some reason, the collapse is set in stone and assumed. Why? Maybe this can be the shocking factor. Why is it collapsing?

>>96662255
>Why would society collapse once the rich and wealthy leave?
NTA but my first answer would be that these same people have put the global economy through some kind of pump-and-dump scheme and they intend to leave with all their gains right before the bubble pops
of course, the snag here is that this requires there to be somewhere else they can go where all this money has actual use, rather than just fucking off into the stars; it would make more sense on a national (or even continental) scale rather than a planetary one, unless humanity has already established nice places to live outside of earth

>>96662255
It's kind of like >>96662562 says. But the idea is that the world is basically ruined, even the space colonies meant to get everyone away from the pollution are breaking down because they were built so cheap and shitty. So those with the resources to do so are preparing to leave everything to it's fate and get out of dodge

>>96644454 (OP)
How do you lads find the inspiration for your characters and settings? My mind is turning up blank.

>>96669576

>Pipe right there to fall on the papers

kek

I'm getting better, according to my well-read friend. Writing stuff just takes practice.

>>96674989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2VLFmQlGjk

even if some fucks are gonna say it's basic, but I found some genuinely really good advice from this

Any good recomendations for Books and stuff with Magitech based settings? I'm trying to write a basic bitch tiny first timer D&D campaign and I want some ideas

>>96645545
>I have this weird inkling that I want to write a detective/noir story set in a high-magic setting.

This might be more difficult than it sounds.

Detective fiction is all about the reader having theoretically the same possibilities of resolving the case as the detective. I mean, yes, you're not gonna have the same brain that Sherlock Holmes has, but the writer should give you the same situation he works on/nudge you in the direction the detective inquires (think of when in a whodunnit he focuses on something that you probably didn't think of as important).
I'll add that he didn't just use his awesome chemical knowledge to bypass this.

In high magic you're presumably gonna have a shitton of magical ways to deduct things. Not even thinking of something like detect evil which probably invalidates the whole point of the genre, but the whole shebang about how the world works. If we have a thief that entered a "safe" room of a dwarven bank, how can I, the reader, even know what makes it "safe" from a magical standpoint? I would assume there are tons of magical sigils, guard golems that can be almost unseen, powders that could make a thief fly. How can i deduct shit or try to, without 100 pages of a Magical Primer for Adventurer Detectives?

I would assume it's more possible in a straight up scifi setting which does presumably have better gadgets, but runs on our science and natural laws (or at least it's not totally absurd to just add something like "oh and we discovered this and that"). Or, of course in a lower magical setting in which the new rules are fewer, if even they are relevant (suppose magical items are just something that makes you better at your natural skills and/or magic is more a thing like casting "special effects" like fireballs).

Mind you, it's an interesting idea, I'm just not sure if it's doable.

>>96645545
Dresden Files is high magic, but modern day, I have trouble thinking a of a medieval detective besides some sort of pathfinder or an inquisitor.

Newfag DM here. Trying to do a VTM game set in 1980s miami during the drug war.
Players are going to be working loosely with the Sabbat or independent factions, but will have the option to choose a bunch of different groups to support.
Basically, here's my idea for the campaign
>Players are working with Sabbat, just arrived, or just independent in 1984 miami
>Sabbat like Miami because they can use the drug cartels to bring in bodies, guns, cars, whatever they need; this is boosted due to how close Cuba is
>Camarilla wants to get rid of the Sabbat and keep Miami for themselves; The Prince (toreador) sees the Sabbat as a plague and Miami as a bastion of different passions.
>Anarchs exist in Miami, wanting to kick out the Sabbat too to keep Miami independent, but lack leadership (more on that later)
>Camarilla moves in and establishes "Rule" which no one really acknowledges. This angers the Prince which leads to him later on contacting the coterie
>Sabbat don't own the coterie, but they can choose to work closer with them to kick out the Cammies/Anarchs
>During a mission, the coterie will be abducted/kidnapped/staked to meet a new independent leader; "The General" (WIP). His story is he's an ex Revolutionary War general for the British. My shtick with this character is he saw how fiercely the Americans fought to be free from rule, where he has second thoughts about fighting for a monarchy that is oppressing people. After he was embraced and woke up in this new world, he sees the Anarch movement as the same idea; he then decides to assist the Anarchs. My idea for his sort of character is a sort of Count Dooku "dangerous gentleman" type
>Other independent groups include a bunch of Nightclubs, one is exclusively blood brothers, one is ventrue trying to profit as much as possible from the greater Miami, one is the Tremere trying to make sure their chantry won't be harmed during the incoming conflict.
>Smaller groups (which players can assist or wipe out) will include
(1/2)

>>96676673
(2/2)
>Nosferatu who assist the old folk in retirement homes, exchanging ghouling for information they get from visitors. Looking to just survive the incoming violence
>Gangrel pirates who initially assist the Sabbat, they are unique in which the all have protean 3, and all required to turn into sharks as their animal. They assist the Sabbat by attacking US Naval boats and providing recon. They're essentially pawns but they just don't know it yet.
>Cajun Tzimisce fleshcrafters, all in the swamps outside Miami; they keep their land protected by fleshcrafted gators who patrol the area constantly for intruders. Being split between the Sabbat and new growing Anarch movement, there's internal conflict between the newer and older kindred on which side to support.
That's it in a nutshell. The incoming "conflict" is something I need to work on, but my idea is that eventually the Prince will say enough is enough, and start getting blood hunts started for key members of anyone who doesn't bend the knee to his rule. This doesn't go over well with any faction, and every side starts to gear up more and more for war; all this while the US Government is trying to end the drugtrade once and for all.
What I want to do is introduce each player to each of the groups, and let them decide who to back.
Any advise or recommendations would be appreciated; this is my first time running VTM

>>96675606

Literally Umberto Eco

>>96644454 (OP)
What happened to the blue girl?
>>96644491
I loathe my glacial reading pace, does anyone have tips for increasing speed while also maintaining comprehension? I find when I turn off the internal narration in my brain I'm not actually reading.

>>96688538
Savor. Just keep reading. Look up words when you don't know them.
You will get more developed in your ability to comprehend as you go. Don't rely on speed reading techniques.

>>96644491
I visited the library often this year while unemployed. but I'm about to be shackled again so that gets harder to do.
I have three bookshelves I share, latest find is Welcome to the Monkey House. I'm currently reading All Quiet on the Western Front, The Crystal Shard, and last book I bought for full price was Monalisa Overdrive since it's impossible to borrow, looking forward to starting that next once one or both of the current ones are done. I have a hard time chewing on only one story at a time.

>>96688538
>does anyone have tips for increasing speed while also maintaining comprehension?
Well, if anyone ever invents time travel you could go back a couple of decades and make yourself read more as a small child. That's definitely crucial. Although I suppose if time travel existed you would already have done that and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Honestly, like so many skills the key is just repetition. Don't overthink it, don't confuse things with fancy techniques. Just find things you enjoy reading and let yourself pick it up naturally by just immersing yourself in it.

That said, if you have undiagnosed dyslexia or something like that, there are specialised fonts that can help. It also sometimes helps to get your eyes tested; if your vision is a little off it might be forcing your brain to do a bit of extra processing to work out what the words say. It's quite easy to have vision that's good enough to get by in day to day life but could still be improved with glasses. (likewise, if you already have glasses your proscription might be a little off). I mean, it's probably not that, but it's worth checking.

>>96689346
All Quiet On The Western Front is one of those books I've always meant to read but never got around to. Is it any good?

Posting a small excerpt from a /tg/ novel I'm writing, looking for general feedback. I posted it to /lit/ a while back, but it might be nice to hear a fa/tg/uy's opinion.

>>96695420
>Is it good?
It has wonderful prose, and the subject is very frankly explained in a very heartening way.
You are there in the trench and we just said goodbye to our buddy with death on his face talking about what you will do to collect his nice boots before the orderlies steal them.
It is in a memoir style, perfect past, poetic flow. All the things I love for war stories

>>96695886
I have notes for you but let me sleep on it. Consider researching different topics related to your scenes to improve the authenticity of your world.

>>96697864
I can understand that. It's part of my first draft (finished) so now I get to go through and add a bunch of those bits to it. Thank you for the feedback.

>>96695886
There are red, squiggly underlines. It's eggregious to have misspellings in your screenshot.

Avoid flourish.

"found travel effortless"
"every possible inconvenience"
"directed off the road"
"all these events"
"a strange mixture"
"summarily direct them to prepare"
"despite the day being"
"has ruled here, uninterrupted"

Don't add piles of words that say nothing and "sound nice." You're tickled by the sound of your voice. No one else is. Convey meaning.

Read your dialogue aloud as your characters. You've done a decent job, here, of breaking up your descriptions with dialogue. But the dialogue is wooden. It's not bad, but it's not good, yet.

>>96698854
I can understand most of the feedback, though I'd just like to add the context this is a sort of modern man sent to Arthurian-esque land, so the "wooden dialogue" was more an attempt to differentiate between those who come from our world and those who exist in a sort of storybook land. Do you have any advice on a better way to handle that? I wanted to stay away from the "thee, thou, ye" vocabulary.
Also, can you explain a bit more about the direction-based words you specified? Wouldn't that be a concise way of expressing "meaning", or is it more that there should be some further explanation/description ("barked an order", "directed with a silent glare", etc.)?
I don't really have anyone irl to offer advice on this, so I appreciate your feedback.

>>96699998
>I'd just like to add the context this is a sort of modern man sent to Arthurian-esque land,
I picked up on that just fine, actually, so good job providing the context clues to do so.

You want to use your words well. Use as few words as possible to say as much as possible. Want more words? Have more to say.

Let's take one sentence and break it out. I'm gonna pick this one, 'cuz it's a doozy:
>Every possible inconvenience was cleared from their path; children snatched out of the way, wagons directed off the road, their wheels often gouging deep ruts into the mud, peasants scattering at their approach, but one thing connected all these events were the deep bows given by each person along the road.

Let's go clause by clause:
>Every possible inconvenience was cleared from their path
"Every possible inconvenience" means the same thing as "Inconveniences." "Every possible" just slows down the sentence. When you slow down a sentence, you make it more difficult to understand because minds wander. "was cleared from their path" is passive past tense. The real reason you're told to avoid passive tense is because, again: it causes peoples' minds to wander. That's unnecessarily wordy. It's just blah-blah for the sake of blah-blah. This is what I mean by "tickled by the sound of your own voice." You've written more than was necessary and you didn't do it on behalf of the reader. This first clause could be "Inconveniences cleared." Same info conveyed.

If you really want to: "Inconveniences cleared their path." However, since you're about to describe a buncha street scenes, pick a more-exact word like "road" or "street." "Inconveniences cleared the street/road." Same info, no passive tense, no extraneous qualifiers. It's a better sentence.

>>96700146
The next clause follows a semi-colon. A semi-colon connects independent clauses. And you can use one there, although you run into trouble later in the sentence for doing so. But what you're about to convey is a list. So use a colon, not a semi-colon. Especially because you've got parentheticals within your list, so you're going to need semi-colons in just a second. And the bigger truth?

If you can end a sentence? Do.

"Inconveniences cleared the street." Boom--done.

Want to describe the street scene? Perfectly legit for stage-setting and explaining what's going on as the characters progress. Even conveys a sense of motion, which is a good choice.

But you chose to speak in hypotheticals. Don't. Be particular. Immerse me.
>children snatched out of the way,
Don't tell me about the kinds of things that happened. Tell me what happened. Show not tell. Children aren't snatched out of the way. A particular child is snatched out of the way. Wagons aren't directed off the road--a leek-farmer's wagon bounced into a rut. Peasants aren't scattering in general--three dudes in black smocks scrambled outa the way.

Your other problem with the semi-colon is that you've got the following;
>, wagons directed off the road, their wheels often gouging deep ruts into the mud,
"Their wheels" is a parenthetical to the wagons. But you've written yourself into a corner by using a semi-colon instead of a colon. Separating what happens to the wheels from the wagon with a comma is fine, but if you're in a list following a colon, you can then seperate your items with semi-colons and still use commas for parentheticals. Because you used a semi-colon, you're locked into commas to segregate your list items so the parentheticals within your list need to be denoted with parentheses or dashes.

>>96700146
>>96700201
Thank you for this, I'll try to keep it in mind as I revise my first draft. It's 137k words but it sounds like I might be able to give it a healthy trim.

>>96675046
Good anon

>>96675606
There's a long-running Japanese show (I can't think of the name) where the hatamoto to the shogun retires, wanders the country as a cart peddler, and solves murder mysteries along the way.

>>96675606
>I have trouble thinking a of a medieval detective besides some sort of pathfinder or an inquisitor.
Brother Cadfael

>>96697736
>the subject is very frankly explained in a very heartening way.
It's funny how the war stories written by men who actually served in them are always less dramatic than the ones written by people who didn't. Case in point: the most recent film version of All Quiet On The Western Front. It's a good film, but it's approach is very much 'OMG look at the horrors of war! Look at that guy getting lit up by a flamethrower, isn't it gruesome? Isn't war terrible?'. Whereas All Quiet On The Western Front is more matter-of-fact, and you can infer the anti-war message just from the events.

I had to do Journey's End at school, a British WW1 play. There is not a single scene with combat, it's all just men sitting in a trench waiting for the death they know is coming and can't escape.

>>96710807
If there's one thing to take from the memoirs of different conflicts I've been reading lately, it's that civilians severely overestimate just how much time in war is spent actually fighting it.
I feel like a lot of anti-war media falls flat in its delivery when it's made by people who don't have firsthand experience (and haven't read enough accounts from those who do), and while I'm still not able to explain it entirely, this is probably one of the major factors: if all they know is the violence bit then it's all they're able to represent, without the endless destitution, deprivation, and boredom that would generally take up the vast majority of a soldier's service, so the message just comes out as "omg did you know people heckin' DIE in war!?"

>>96710807
The book and the movie are doing very different things to shortcut into sympathetic projecting, and I like both of them. They were effective at doing exactly what they should for their respective medium.
One is drawing from your emotional core telling stories you'd hear from buddies around a fire, and the other is harrowing with physiological impact that you are experiencing with the character as it happens.
The movie is shot in a specific way to control when and where the viewer feels relaxed and often disrupts it, leading you to get to this heart rending place where the young man singing in the woods feels genuinely cathartic. If you don't sink into it I don't think you'll get that same reaction as I did, but my point is only, that both forms of this story, as different as they are, do a great job for very very different reasons.
Personally though, when it comes to horrors of war stress movies there's no better than Come and See

>>96710807
>>96711538
>it's that civilians severely overestimate just how much time in war is spent actually fighting it
If you haven't already read it, check out "Storms of Steel" from Ernst Jünger. It's one of my favorite books and despite the martial name, a good chunk of it has nothing to do with the actual combat. Instead, it's a lot of waiting, passing time, getting drunk. Indeed, there is some humor to be found in this book. Some scenes in the trenches in that book are genuinely funny.
But there are also combat scenes and they are some of the most intense shit you can read
Holy fuck, that battle of the Somme at the end, the guy is magnificent

>>96718096
>"Storms of Steel" from Ernst Jünger
>It's open access on Internet Archive
Oh fuck yeah, on the list. Thanks for mentioning it.

>>96644454 (OP)
I dunno, ask >>>/lit/

>>96718023
The movie missed the main point of the book, though (admittedly I say this as someone who hasn't actually read the book, but still).

The point is that Paul dies and nobody notices. There isn't some grand battle, he is not part of a heroic struggle. His death is not even a footnote in the history books. Whereas in the film, Paul's death is part of a final assault on the 11th, ordered by callous and vainglorious old men, which ends the war in apocalyptic scenes of carnage. Remarque was trying to show his reader that war is not some dramatic struggle that on might derive at least some meaning from; you just get slowly ground down until you're picked off without fanfare. The movie started off well by showing the uniforms being recycled, but it was clear that the people making it didn't really understand what Remarque was getting at.

finished a WIP I had laying about cause people tell me I don't finish my stories
https://voca.ro/1o2Mn6knEEjN
"A Kobold"

>>96644454 (OP)

I need your wisdom for the direction of my story. The medium is a crpg so I am not entirely sure I am in the right place, but I am at least in a place I respect.

>main character wakes up surrounded by arcane sigils in an empty room
>talked to by a disembodied voice, telling them that his presence have freed them
>that is because the body crash-landed into the place where the spirit was bound, but that is not up to reveal yet
>the sprit tells the character that they will stay in their body and keep their blood pumping (something the body cannot do on its own apparently) if he keeps walking and gets them out of here
>Facility is a little high-tech, and very destitute. There are decaying security drowns walking about, and being hostile. (Human-shaped drones for rule of cool)
>Eventually cornered as the facility gets to full alarm and the remaining drones are closing in, but then is rescued by a some other characters
>The take him home into an 80s punk-style city, and have a doctor check up on him
>Doctor tells him that his body is breaking down, and needs an expensive enzyme to stop it

So the thing is that in a book, or a movie, this would be two nice thick plotlines to follow. Maybe even discovering the feelings and thoughts of the main character about their predicament. In a crpg though, it might be just dividing the attention, as people get interested in one, but not the other. Especially since players go around and discover what makes them curious. Instead of having the follow the motivations of a character.

So I figured one has to go, but I am not sure which one.
Getting rid of the voice would mean I don't have to write an inner voice that comments on everything for the story, and getting rid of the "you're falling apart" plot, means I don't need to worry about some timer or anything, or the lack of it as a dissonance.

What you guys think? Any advice would be appreciated.

>>96736502
Possession by a spirit clashes with a 80s punk sci-fi city. I would say it makes more sense for the protagonist to wake up in an abandoned lab with a bunch of medical devices rather than arcane sigils, escape the facility by killing the drones, find a doctor to see why he doesn't remember anything, and get told his body is breaking down. The driver of the plot then becomes to find out what the lab was doing to him, involving investigating shady corporations and mad scientists.

Or if you preferred the arcane half, ditch the doctor and the body breaking down part and the main plot becomes about getting rid of the spirit possessing him before it takes over his body entirely.

I think either could work. And to be honest, if you played it right you could pull off your original concept, if you just say that the body is breaking down because of the spirit possession. Then the player has to look for a way to remove the spirit, while finding enzymes to stabilise himself until he can accomplish this. However, it would be a lot harder to balance the clashing settings of arcane urban fantasy vs 80s sci-fi punk.

>>96739401
The enzymes are actually just a red-herring, because it is the only way a medical professional could rationalize the process of a magically created artificial body breaking down on a cellular level. Since this golem-person was unfinished.
Which now I guess I realize it might be just overcomplicating things for a twist nobody will really care for?

As for the clashing, I'm trying to follow the sort of genre casserole that fighting games all seemed to have agreed on; anything goes as long as two dudes can fistfight with it. Monsters, wizards, cyborgs, or just guys who did a lot of pushups and situps.

>>96734308
Please give me text, thank you

>>96740737
Is that one of Berkey's pieces? It looks amazing.

>>96739401
>>96740218
I had a night to sleep about it. Thanks I think I'll go that way by removing the spirit.

Damn, once I was able to start writing around 20:00, enough time to finish a session, then watch, play something, read a book and go to bed.
This rhythm is broken, it takes me way longer to start writing, and only stopping once it's almost time for bed. Shits fucked.

>>96747130
I will start now
I will start NOW
I WILL START NOW
Okay, first, we look for some good music… then…

>>96740737
>>96734308
That image is fantastic, made me want to listen to anon's work. Unfortunately the voocaroo is ded

>>96756357
It's not related, was for eye catch but I hope anon sees it and posts story.
>>96740997
It's an homage to Berkey, from Vampire Knight Requiem issue 7. I haven't read it yet but it def has rule of cool
Got the sauce if you're interested
>zipcomic dot com slash requiem-vampire-knight-issue-7

>>96760891
Thanks, fampai

It's been a while since I've written anything so I thought I'd have a go at something quick.

>>96644454 (OP)
A thousand thousand halls and all in silence. All filled with books, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. In places even that vast space hadn't been enough to contain them, and they had overflowed; there were tunnels like mine-workings where - seeing that there was plenty of unused area above head height - extra shelves had been added spanning the gap, creating a new ceiling which groaned under the weight of paper so that props had to be wedged under them to stop it all collapsing. In the depths of the stacks there were even passages where - with the overspan unable to bear more weight - new bookcases had been lain flat, and gantries strung over them, so that prospective borrowers had to walk over them or even crawl, where the ceiling had got low enough.

The library of the Damascene. In some parts of the world he was called a buddha (not *the* buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, but a walker on the same path), for he had been enlightened, although sources differed on whether by meditation or divine revelation. Further east still, he was referred to as a sage, although only by a tiny sect consisting of less than a hundred people whose ancestors had, at one time, been Manichaeans. How he became part of the Manichaean corpus was unknown even to him, although given that they managed to integrate Jesus Christ into Zoroastrianism and Chinese folk religion, it should hardly have been a surprise.

The Damascene may or may not have been spiritually enlightened, but there was one thing he was lacking, and that was knowledge. He just couldn't hold onto it. Maybe it was *because* he was so in touch with the spiritual realm, but every fact he learned about anything relating to... well, reality, which is to say everything to do with anything we would recognise, flowed straight out of him.

>>96768570

Which was a shame, because he was immortal, and therefore learned rather a lot. It took him a long time to decide that this was a problem, and even longer to work out a solution. How long exactly was another of those facts that had been lost to him. But eventually, after an unspecified period of time, he built his library, and he built it in such a way that when a slippery fact escaped his mind it was caught and preserved in the pages of a book in the great and strange geometries of his library.

What the Damascene was unaware of at first was that his design for his library was a little too good. It was perfect at its appointed task - that is, capturing and storing his wayward memories - but it also began to catch other things too, like a drag net sweeping up porpoises. Any free-floating bit of information was fair game and a great many things that had nothing to do with the Damascene were sucked up by the library's bibliographic vortex.

Hence the issue of space. The Damascene had learned enough in his time - knowledge he was now able to consult his library to apply - to be able to bend the laws of physics a bit. In fact the library, while technically real, was not quite as much a part of the world we all know and love as, say, the room you're sitting in right now (if you're sitting outside, go back inside immediately. The outside is no place for a reader, much less one who reads fantasy short stories. It's dangerous out there. There are *allergens*). However, you can only bend the laws of physics so far before they break, and so he'd been forced to resort to simply cramming them in any which way he could.

>>96768583

This was far from the only, or indeed the worst problem with the library. The ever-present danger of shelf collapses, book avalanches and the like was a mere trifle compared to the existential threat of actually trying to read a book. Without precautions, at least, although even with precautions you were still taking your life in your hands. More than your life, perhaps. The library hoovered up any stray piece of information, but that wasn't limited to ordinary - for want of a better word - free-floating facts.

Sure, the full stats for the 1978 Minneapolis softball league were in there, and the secret recipe for McDonalds mayo, and the admissions Lavrenti Beria had made about his blackmail of many western politicians before his execution (don't ask, but if you know who Lavrenti Beria is you can probably guess what he was blackmailing them about). But if you opened a book at random you were equally likely to get the stray thoughts of an eldritch being older than space and time, whose very name could unhinge the human mind. Or, the plans for a machine that hasn't been built yet and can't be built in our reality *unless* you bring the plans with you when you leave and then... well, then you find out why the very idea of the machine had been excised from that other reality and cast into the void. Or the echoes of your future self warning you not to open the book you're going to open later but also, somehow, carrying the shadow of the contents of that book back with it until you have to find the book just to warn your past self not to send the warning back...

Suffice to say, the Damascene does not permit casual visitors to his library. Only scholars who have proven themselves to be as dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge as he is are even considered, and of those only a handful have ever passed his rigorous safety training.

>>96768598

For the ambitious researcher there are many hidden treasures hidden amongst the stacks. The lost drafts of Shakespeare's final play, the original notes Fermat jotted down once he ran out of space in the margin, the Rosetta stone for Linear A (which is in fact a papyrus written by an Egyptian trader by way of Cyprus). And treasure in the more literal sense, like the log books for the Spanish treasure fleet lost in the great storm of 1717, or the train timetables that list the route for the train that carried the Amber Room away from Konigsberg in 1945. Not that any researcher worthy of the Damascene's exacting standards is interested in anything so crass.

The Library of the Damascene would be considered one of the great wonders of the world if more than a handful of people knew it existed. But don't make the mistake of thinking it's the only arcane library. There are stranger beings than the Damascene in the endless halls of our multidimensional reality, and many of them have their own archives. The Damascene is unique only in that he occasionally allows more mortals access to his collection. And perhaps the most dangerous aspect of his library is that it has details of the others. How do you think I learned about them if their masters don't permit mortals? That's right; maybe I was a little careless, wandered a little too far through the stacks. Or maybe I wanted to find that catalogue that didn't belong even in the esoteric spaces of the Damascene's little pocket of reality.

>>96768607

Imagine what wonders the others contain. Or rather, don't. We humans have a fairly tenuous grip on sanity already, in the grand scheme of things. There are books out there...

No. Don't even think about it, not even to warn others. Because there are some libraries out there where you don't have to go looking for a book. The book will find you. No, better not even to think about it...

In trying not to think about it, I thought about what I wasn't supposed to think about. Which is a mouthful, but you get the idea. And now there's a book on the table in front of me. I didn't put it there, but a leather-bound book there is. And although I know that I should close my eyes, turn my back, and try my very best to forget that it's there, at the same time...

Knowledge has a weight to it. You think that library shelves creak and groan because of the mere mass of paper? No, knowledge has its own substance, and its own gravity. It draws you in, and the more knowledge there is the harder the pull. I can feel it already.

Maybe if I just looked at the cover. Just to see what it's about. Surely that couldn’t hurt...

>>96644454 (OP)
I keep reading lorebooks for games I will never play just so scenarios I set in my head are lore friendly
What stage of autism is this?

>>96785479
The 5th stage of astral Autism

>>96768570
>>96768583
>>96768598
>>96768607
>>96768614
Imagine being alive because you can both offer nothing of value to it so you're never swallowed up, and lucky.
There you are, in the great akashic plane, permitted insights into the vastness of knowledge because you are too dumb to die.

>>96786905
That's a really interesting idea actually: a library only the ignorant can access because the knowledgeable will be eaten by it.

>>96644454 (OP)
What rumours do your characters have?

>>96800437
>"It had to be a dead ostrich..."

>>96800437
We don't gossip.

>>96801282
Would that be the one some bloke named Archie Duke shot because 'e was hungry?

>>96804434
Baldrick was alright, but Tony's best work is The Worst Jobs in History

>>96804449
Maybe, but they both that and Blackadder have the problem that they were written by Boomers who don't really know anything about history.

>>96658698
>My current idea is that the ultra-wealthy are building generation ships at the edge of the solar system and when they're done they're going to leave Earth to complete collapse. And while I like it the more and more I think about it the less shocking and horrifying it seems.
"People trying to leave" is only horrifying if they take something with them we need here, can't leave without fucking something up here, or there's something greatly detestable about it that warrants emotion and reason to attempt to stop it like their ships are powered by anally raping little boys or something.

Guy went to job, was rejected, only if "be an ass at Artelier and Co" - "no, I'm not weak, I'll go to war". He went by "proved means", killed every boss ever, by 10^7 years at 10^777 planets, at instance, etc, did everything man can do. Gave Kiroshi Super Corp to nature and provided information with protection. How he handled it- he could. So, it.

>Sandbox Campaign
>Vampire Raiders to the South
>Dragonborn in the North East
>Fall of a nearby Empire, think Firefly almost
>Across the globe Super Volcano is blowing
>In the Desert a wild technocrat is building a bomb to destroy EVERYTHING
>The Gods are in a War, each with Tons of Power given to Warriors
>If none of that intrigues them, you can do little fetch quests in the starting village until they get bored.

Too much? Too little? Most is fleshed out slightly, just waiting to see what my new group bites onto.

>>96819670
>Sandbox Campaign
You're a braver man than I.

I think the best advice is: be flexible. Get too specific with the setting and you can end up railroading your characters, but do too little and it doesn't feel like a real world. I think your approach is good: flesh out each area a little and then wait to see what your players do before getting into the nitty gritty of the details.

>>96811418
wat

>>96800437
Honestly, I have like a page of backstory for my character that hasn't come up at all because every session is 90% combat and 10% arguing with an NPC over payment.

Give me a good McGuffin guys. better yet, some sort of table to generate them

>>96834216
i should add: i do not care if the mcguffin is reachable or not, i just want something like the One Piece, that can drive a plot eternally

>>96834216
>>96834262
Honestly, I'm not sure I've ever created a macguffin. I'm a firm believer that the object of the story should always have some relevance to something, even if it's fairly obscure.

For example, a macguffin might be a huge diamond that the hero has to get before the bad guys kill his girlfriend.

A bad way of making it not a macguffin would be to make it the same diamond their father recovered from an ancient temple, before it was stolen from him. That gives it emotional relevance to the protagonist but in a fairly hacky way; dead parents are a pretty cliché plot device, and the diamond itself still isn't actually doing anything.

A better way to turn it from a macguffin into something more might be to make the character's background a jewel thief, who's been chasing this diamond for so long it becomes his white whale, but when he finally gets his hands on it his specialist knowledge of diamonds allows him to see that it has a flaw in its centre that means it'll shatter into a million pieces if anyone ever tries to cut it. He gives the diamond to the bad guys, let's them tell their boss they have it, then strikes a note at a specific frequency, causing the diamond to shatter; the bad guys are in trouble with their boss and he uses the distraction to get away with the girl. In that scenario the diamond has emotional relevance to the protagonist, as it's the apex of a career of jewel thievery, and it acts on the plot (by shattering).

Okay, so that's just the best I could come up with in five minutes of writing this post, but you get the idea.

>>96834216
>>96834262

>>96840356
I would say the best examples of a macguffin that's more than a macguffin are the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Holy Grail in Indian Jones and the Last Crusade. Finding the Ark of the Covenant is the culmination of Indy's lifetime of study as an archaeologist, and it ends up killing the bad guys. The Holy Grail is also meaningful to an archaeologist, and it's significant to his relationship with his father, and it kills the bad guys. That's why Temple of Doom fell flat: the magic stones are just ordinary macguffins, with no significance to Indy and no particular action on the plot (okay, they kind of do something by burning their way out of the bag, but that's not much). Well, that and Spielberg made his girlfriend one of the leads.

Also, at the very least you've got to tell us whether you're working with a sci-fi or fantasy setting. It's no good me giving you a magic orb if you're working with space ships and lasers.

>>96837346

War? War never changes?

Get outta here. War changes all the time. Whoever said that has obviously never been in one.

I know war. I've been in more than one... a lot more, actually. Wars can change from one day to the next, never mind year to year, or century to century. Take the Jovian Wars. Start of that, it was just a couple of miners throwing rocks at each other. They brought us in to keep the peace. Next thing you know, Earth is involved, and suddenly all hell's broken loose. Those two years... well, one thing we were never short of was changes.

I suppose whoever came up with the phrase 'war never changes' meant that humanity never learns. We just keep killing each other. But I say, if humanity didn't learn from its mistakes then I'd be out of a job. Used to be that if there was a war then some poor schmuck with a wife and kids got drafted and sent to fight and die for reasons he wasn't even all that sure of.

I don't got no wife. No kids either. I'm here of my own free will and I know exactly what I'm fighting for.

I'm fighting to get paid. Humanity learned that men fight a lot better when they're well-compensated for it.

Mercenary Unions. They're new as well. Used to be that if you wanted to get paid to kill people you had to join a national army first, where you'd make less than you would have if you'd stayed home waiting tables; if you survived that, maybe you'd get picked up by a private security company. But they didn't really get involved in wars, they were for dealing with the aftermath. When one nation state sent its army into another nation state to 'liberate' it, private security contractors ensured that all that newfound liberty didn't get in the way of business.

>>96846932

Or back in the old, old days, when it was all knights in shining armour, you joined up under some nobleman and he got most of the profit. Riding around northern Italy fighting for Milan this year and Florence the next, fighting to line the pockets of some sociopath and the bankers he works for. That's right, I know my history. Which is another way war has changed, because I'd wager most people who ever held a sword, spear or rifle wouldn't have known the difference between the Roman Empire and the Mongol Empire.

In a modern Mercenary Union you're part of a professional army, not a group of hired thugs, but unlike the old armies you get paid commensurate with your abilities. Officers are elected, and we have a legal department back on Earth to negotiate contracts for us. There was a time when soldiers were men who fought so that corporations could make a profit for people sitting in offices thousands of miles away. We cut out the middle man. Now instead of bribing the government to send its soldiers to do their dirty work, the corporations pay us directly, and they pay us what we're worth. I fought in the Centauri campaign, trying to secure the phosphorous mines. The corp we were working for tried to welch on their contract, so we just held onto the mines. And the management who'd been running the place. You know what they tried to do? Corporate headquarters on Earth tried to hire another Mercenary Union to boot us out. Except they couldn't find anyone up for the job; not anyone worthwhile, at any rate.

>>96846943

You know how the old empires - Byzantines, Persians, Tang China, and so on - used to deal with steppe nomads? When one group of nomads raided them, they'd pay another group of nomads to fight them. Sometimes even from the same tribe. The nomads didn't care; they'd kill whoever they were told to kill just so long as the gold was good. But things don't work like that now. Paying mercs to kill the mercs you're trying to screw out of their hard-earned money... well, why would a merc want to help with that? They might get paid in the short term, but they'd only be making business worse for themselves in the long term.

There are no more tribes anymore. You think a Celt from five hundred BC would recognise an army from the Roman era, never mind today? He wouldn't, and that's why you don't have many Celts these days. He was a warrior, who fought alongside his family, his clan, and his tribe. The Romans were soldiers, who fought as part of a legion under the orders of the Senate. And they wouldn't recognise a multi-arm, integrated service Mercenary Union. Never mind the weapons, the whole concept would be alien to them. Fighting for a legal entity they had no emotional attachment to; just a job, nothing personal. The wars they fought in, if you lost you and your entire family would be enslaved or killed. War was always personal for them.

Tell the prehistoric graves full of women and children that war never changes. That humanity never learns. I think, if given the choice, they'd have very firm ideas about which century they'd have preferred to be born in.

>>96846952

During the Martian Civic Wars my Union got contracted by Cassini City to provide security to their ore convoys. Ended up fighting a pitched battle against a Union working for the Ares Alliance, criss-crossing the sand with tanks and mechs, throwing rockets at each other and ducking back down, hurling plasma charges across the red wastes so that when they burst the iron-rich surface lit up so bright it was like the whole planet was covered in blood. But when our battle spilled over outside the initial combat zone, and we found ourselves fighting out near some Martian family's farmstead, we called a truce and sent in a fast carrier to evacuate them.

Of course, we would get fined for causing collateral damage to Cassini's citizens, and our opponents likewise for anything that happened to members of the Ares Alliance, so it was in our interests to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. But we would have evacuated them anyway. We're professionals, not barbarian marauders.

Which is not to say that things are all rosy in the 22nd century. War has changed in other ways. My most recent deployment, for example, all the way out to the new colonies around Vega. Some group of techno-religious zealots had decided they didn't like the laws against body-modification, and had turned on the other colonists. They weren't as well-equipped as a professional Mercenary Union but they made up for that with a whole lotta crazy.

All the colonies were underground to protect them from the radiation, so it was close-quarters fighting in tunnels. No tanks, no mechs, just good old-fashioned man on man. Or man on something that used to be man. We fought guys with six arms, or no head, or two heads. Something like a mechanical centipede with a human brain behind its antennae, and a little girl with flamethrowers for arms. Not that that stopped us from killing them; a little weird, sure, but our bullets ripped them apart no matter what shape they were.

>>96846961

Then they realised that with their brain-link technology they could rewire corpses, tap directly into the brainstem and use that to control the body even after the cortex was long gone. They started sending our own dead back at us. Not one or two at a time, either, no, they waited until they had a good few bodies saved up, for maximum effect. You think you've seen it all, and then you're fighting hand to hand with the corpse of a guy you had breakfast with yesterday, while your living buddies mag dump into a horde of techno-zombies.

Had to use my knife for that one. It'd been a while since I had to get it bloody, but I remembered my training. Sawed the thing's head clean off, and even then it kept trying to bite me, but I got through it. We kept our nerve, and when it comes down to it an army of the dead isn't good for much more than spooking your opponent; turns out, a soldier without brains is no soldier at all. Still, not one of my favourite campaigns.

Try explaining that one to Caesar, or Napoleon. Your own soldiers coming back to life and attacking you. They'd never have guessed that'd be possible one day. Hell, even back at the start of the 21st century when the first brain links were made, I bet they never thought where it would lead.

War never changes? War *always* changes. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but the only thing it *never* does is stay the same.

Still, keeps things interesting, doesn't it?

>>96675434
Almost all humans are neutral evil. Detect alignment wouldn't help at all.

>>96695886
one thing connecting all these events. not connected. did you proofread at all?

>>96846971
Don't quit your day job.

>>96644491
a lot of spanish intellectual property law desu being a lawyer forces you to read plenty

"We weren't good enough for the metal-men?" A toothless voice spoke, gummy and shivering with some uncertain mixture of desert night-winds and fear. We hadn't seen drop pods come down like had been heard and see in the vox-reels of the last few months, the reports coming from imperial couriers who sent to ring the alarum bell of doom and stir us into preparation (sans any material support, however).
I chuckled, and ran my fingers into my great-coat for a cig before I remembered Von Wasel had ordered them all confiscated under threat of finger mutilation in order to prevent visible lights at night. Wouldn't have made a difference.
All that had been seen or heard was that soldiers, human like us, had been pouring out of the spaceport in Jurenta since it's capture. Marching. Day and night. We waited for the rattle of tanks, the shattering of silence that came from the barrels of artillery- nothing.
Our motor pool hadn't been used in a week. We were ordered to sit here, wait, bring to full readiness anything not properly repaired, consolidate troops at this position, and watch.
We weren't good enough for the tin-men, their rattling hand-cannons that could blow a man's torso off, or their burning orange rays that would turn someone to ash. but still I was worried.

And sometimes, you just write 500 words during your session.
It should be okay. It's okay for sessions to be just okay, sometimes.

>>96866807
I'm assuming this is 40k. It's pretty good.

>under threat of finger mutilation in order to prevent visible lights at night
Ah, a *merciful* commissar.

>>96868268
You know what 500 words is a lot better than? Zero words.

It's okay for sessions to be okay. It's even okay for sessions to be bad, sometimes. Just so long as you're still writing.

>>96846932
Funny how the Merc-WIP pic of all the pics got a story...

>>96852994

Esther could hear the crows talking again.

They were always chattering away to each other. Squawking, cawing, croaking, gossiping like washerwomen down at the river. Esther had always heard them, when she was out in the fields bringing the cows in, when she was out in the orchards picking fruit, when she was out in the meadows gathering wildflowers... there were always crows about. Sometimes just two or three sitting on a fence, sometimes a whole flock of them rustling in the trees, but they always had something to say to each other.

She saw them in the forest too. Dark shapes flitting from tree to tree. But Esther didn't go in the forest, like her father told her in his big stern voice. So she didn't hear them talking there, but she assumed they did.

Esther had always heard the crows squawking at each other, and she'd never paid them any mind. Most people when they heard a crow in the fields would chuck a stone at it, keep them away from the crops; it did good to put the fear of man in them. But Esther just let them be, as she didn't have enough meanness in her even to throw a stone at a bird. So the crows cackled away at each other, and paid her no mind neither.

Except lately, Esther had started to get the feeling that someone was watching her. When she was out in the fields, the orchards and the meadows, she felt the wind in her hair and the sun on her face and the eyes, the eyes always following her. But when she turned around, all she ever saw were the crows.

The crows would look at each other and caw, and that was all normal as far as crows went except...

Except lately, Esther had started to think she could understand what they were saying to each other. Which made her as mad as the magic man out by the mill but she couldn't help thinking it all the same... that when the crows gossiped together she could catch her own name in their chattering. She knew it couldn't be and yet... she knew they were talking about her.

>>96881942

And the more that she listened the more sure she was, and she started to think she could hear other things as well. The crows had a lot to say to each other, and she started to listen, and the more she did, the more she heard. Not all of it, but more and more. And the more she heard, the more certain she was she was going mad.

Out in the fields, checking on the cattle, Esther could feel she was being watched. She didn't even turn around this time, she could hear the crows behind her.

Esther could hear the crows talking again.

She ran on home before she could hear what they were saying.

* * *

The cattle were getting sick. Esther's parents were fretting day and night, tied up in knots by worry, and so were other families in the village. The herds were their milk, their meat and their money, and they were dying one by one. Cattle were getting sick all over, and no one knew the cause.

Except Esther. Esther knew because the crows had told her. Or, they hadn't told her, but she'd overhead them chattering. They didn't think she could understand them, they thought their secrets were safe from the villages. But Esther could hear the crows talking.

There was something in the forest. Something coming from the forest was making the cattle sick. There was something old, something angry out there. The crows knew its name but they wouldn't say, they were scared of it. They watched, and they told what they saw. The cattle that died, and the villagers tearing out their hair and shouting curses and pleading for the plague to stop. They told it all to whatever it was that lived in the forest.

They told it about Esther too. That was why they were watching her. Something deep in the forest had bade them to, and they obeyed.

>>96881955

She could hear the crows talking again. Talking about her. They were in the tree above her, as she gathered branches for the fire, and she thought that maybe she should drive them off but then she thought, no. No, better that they don't know that I can hear them.

Esther knew she had to do something, or the whole village would be ruined. But she didn't know what. If she told her mamma and her pappa that she'd heard the crows talking they wouldn't listen to her, they'd send her to the priest, and maybe her father would give her a beating first.

The crows were saying that the thing in the forest was getting impatient. They were afraid that it wouldn't stay in the forest much longer.

There was only one thing Esther could think to do, and that was to go see the one person madder than her. The magic man out by the mill, who some called wise and some called a fool. If anyone knew what to do about the secrets of crows, it would be him.

She tripped, and dropped all the firewood she'd gathered, and it fell with a clatter and startled the crows. They took flight in a flap of black wings, squawking in fright, and Esther thought it served the little spies right. But then she had to pick up all the branches again.

Esther made up her mind to go out to the mill the next day. To ask about how to stop the thing in the forest from making the cattle sick. But above all, she wanted to know why it would have set the crows to watching her.

* * *

Esther tried not to turn her head as she walked up the path to the mill. She knew the crows were behind her, she could hear them chattering away, but she couldn't do anything about them. Even if she threw stones at them, they could fly higher than her arm could throw.

And she still didn't like the idea of throwing stones at them. For all their mocking, she felt sorry for them. They were afraid of the thing in the forest. Just like her.

>>96881965

Esther was carrying a basket of apples from her family's trees, taking them to the miller as a thankyou for his kindness, for when the cattle had started getting sick he'd kept grinding their grain without asking for his daily milk. He met her on the doorstep, with the rushing of the water below and the creaking of the great wheel, and talked about how the village fared. And although the news was bad, at least she couldn't hear the chatter of the crows. She went inside and left the apples on his kitchen table, then slipped out the back, looking around nervously; no crows in sight.

There was a little patch of woodland just down the stream, not part of the forest just a little stretch of land that no one used because it was next to the river and flooded every now and then. Except there was one man who used it, the magic man, the wise man of the woods. He had a little hut built on stilts, and he sat on his porch in his coat of rags, puffing on his pipe. And no one in the village much liked him, at least amongst the adults, but and all the children liked his tricks, and every so often men would go to him and ask for advice, though Esther knew she wasn't supposed to know that. She understood; when common sense fails, why not ask a madman?

She found him amongst the trees, sitting by the stream in the dappled sunlight; in fact she smelled him first, the acrid smoke from his pipe. There were no crows here. She didn't dare to call out to him, but as she neared he spoke to her without even turning his head.

He asked her if she'd come to see a trick, and she said she hadn't but he showed her anyway. He held up his hand and it was empty, then he closed it into a fist, passed his other hand over it and muttered magic words. When he opened his fist there sat a butterfly, bright and brilliant in peacock colours, that flexed its wings once then flapped away, dancing back and forth then disappearing between the trees.

Despite herself, Esther smiled.

>>96881977

But beautiful butterflies were not what she'd come for, and the wise man of the woods knew that, although he was quite patient with her as she tried to find the words to say what she'd been trying not to say for so long. Eventually she managed to tell him. Tell him that she'd heard the crows talking. Tell him what they'd been saying.

Esther thought he'd call her a liar, but instead he just looked at her appraisingly. That she'd gleaned the secrets of the crows, that was a surprise, for he thought only he could catch their meaning, and they were careful not to say anything important near him. But the rest of it... the wise man nodded and looked sad, and said it was as he'd feared.

The witch. It was the witch's doing.

There was a witch who lived deep in the forest, and he'd hoped that the sickened cows had come down with some ordinary disease but he'd feared all along it was her. To make animals sick, to make crops wither and die, that was well within her powers. The crows were wise to fear her, and it wouldn't to anyone else amiss to do the same.

And though Esther was frightened, she was relieved as well. For now the burden was no longer hers, and there was something that could be done. Use your magic, she told the wise man. Make the cattle well again, drive the witch back into the forest where she belongs. And she wanted to add, 'and kill her if you can', but she couldn't quite bring herself to say it.

The wise man smiled wryly at the optimism of youth. He told Esther that his little tricks were no match for the witch's powers; she was well beyond him, he knew just enough about her to know that. There was little he could do, except for give her some advice.

>>96882004

The witch kept to herself, for the most part. The forest was hers, and so long as no one bothered her there she left the village alone. That had always been the arrangement, going back long before the wise man had settled here. She wouldn't have turned her attention on the village unless something had angered her greatly.

Find what had riled her so, and set things to rights. There was no guarantee that that would stay her wrath, but that was the best advice he could offer Esther.

Esther begged him to help, to find out what had set the witch on them. But the wise man shook his head and told her: I'm not the one the witch sent crows to watch. Whatever this is, you're at the heart of it, and that's where no one would want to be but that's where you are. Being wise as I am, I'm going to stay out of the witch's way.

Esther wanted to curse him, but in truth she didn't blame him. She snuck back up to the mill, and when she set out again on the path with her apple-less basket, the crows were still there. Watching.

* * *

The forest shadowed her all the way home. Esther had never noticed how large it was, how long the shadow it cast; having grown up with it there, she'd never much thought about it. It was strange: mile after mile of hunting and foraging, so close to the village, and no one ever went in there.

Well, now she knew why.

The crows didn't follow her, for they were smart birds. She'd leave one lot behind, and then around the next corner there'd be another two perched on a fence, as if they just happened to be there. But they didn't come to close to her family's farmhouse, wary of her little brothers' slingshots. She checked, despite telling herself not to give away that she was fearful of being followed, and saw the crows, but they were over in a large oak in the middle of the field. They could see her, but they wouldn't be able to hear.

>>96882009

So she went inside, and she told her mamma and her pappa everything. Everything she thought they needed to know, at least. She told them she'd been to see the magic man down by the mill, and he'd told her there was a witch in the forest that was making the cattle sick, and that if they could just make peace with her she might leave them alone, but they had to find out what had made her angry...

Esther trailed off. She could see from the way her parents looked at each other that it was not news to them that there was a witch in the forest. Her father said sternly that she shouldn't have been to see the vagabond fool who lived by the mill; what did or didn't live in the forest was nothing to do with her.

The witch can't be reasoned with, her father said. She's evil, and she'll do her mischief come what may. He told Esther that whatever she did, she must stay away from the forest. The witch might not stop at cattle.

Esther almost told them about the crows. But her father looked so grim standing there, his thick arms crossed, broad shoulders set square, that she knew there'd be no arguing with him; she'd only get herself in more trouble.

Her mother hugged her as she was leaving for her bed. Stay safe, my darling, my only daughter. Stay safe out there. And that wasn't so odd, except for the look in her father's eye. The only time she'd seen her father scared was when her youngest brother had caught a fever and almost died. He had that look now, and it was like he wanted to hug her too and hold her tight and never let go but he stopped himself, giving nothing away, or so he thought, but she saw the look in his eye.

Esther looked out the window before she went to sleep, searching for the crows. Looking for dark feathers in the night, which was more of a fool's errand than trying to get her mamma and her pappa to see reason. And yet, just a for moment, she saw a dark shape flitting across the moon.

A crow... at least, she thought it was a crow.

>>96882058

Esther didn't sleep well that night. Not because of the crows, if they were out there they were silent. But she could hear the wind in the trees, the whole forest whispering. And she plugged her ears, afraid that like the crows if she listened too closely she might start to understand what it was saying.

* * *

More cattle sick. And fruit rotten on the branch now. If things kept on as they were, they would all be hungry come winter. People were frightened, and Esther could feel it. She wanted to tell them about the witch but she knew they'd either think she was mad, or like her parents tell her it was no concern of hers.

But she couldn't just do nothing. So out on her errands, she started asking: has anyone been in the forest recently? Does anyone know if someone's been hunting out there?

And everyone she asked looked at her askance, and told her no, of course not. No one goes into the forest. Esther explained that she was worried they'd be short on food, with all that was going on; if there was someone who took game from the forest, it would be good to know. Her family might be willing to buy from them.

Maybe they believed her, but she could tell she'd made herself strange in their eyes. No one ever went into the forest, and no one even talked about it. Her mother would hate how they looked at Esther, she always told her to try and fit in. But Esther couldn't just stay in the background now, not when danger was so close.

>>96882083

So she kept asking, and she kept asking, and got no answers. Until she asked one of the old men, who gathered near the smithy for the warmth of the fires, and he laughed, and he told her if any man knew it'd be her father. And she looked at *him* askance for that, for she knew her father had been nowhere near the forest; she or her brothers would have noticed his absence. She told the old man as much, and the old man smiled, and said 'maybe not these days'. But he wouldn't say more, even when she pressed him, and eventually he got a nervous look in his eyes, and told her to run along.

Esther kept about her errands all day, and as long as she was in the village the crows wouldn't come too close. But still, when she went out to see the old brewer's widow, she heard them chattering; they'd noticed her talking to more people than usual, though she didn't think they knew what she'd been talking about. But they'd noticed there was something different with her, and that made her afraid. The old brewer's widow accepted her apples with thanks, but when she bit into one it was wormy and rotten, and when Esther cut open the others over half of them were the same, and the widow was gracious about it but it made Esther even more afraid.

But it just made her more determined to find an answer, so she kept asking. Only where the crows wouldn't hear, though; she stuck close to the village, until the sun was almost setting, and she realised she had no choice but to go home. She'd have to hurry if she wanted to beat the darkness.

The quickest route was through the fields, along the edge of the forest. Esther thought about what her parents had said, but so long as she didn't go into the forest, surely it would be okay? She meant to check on the cattle anyway, see if any more were sick. So off she set, with her empty basket swinging in her hands, and a dark cloud of crows soaring overhead.

>>96882098

The sun was swallowed up by clouds, and the last light of evening filtered through the grey, and the forest was dark with shadows that were darker still with the little bit of light left around them. And as Esther walked, the wind got up again, and rushed through the trees so they danced and swayed...

And whispered.

Esther could hear them talking again. The crows, the trees, everything. It seemed like everything had something to say and she couldn't understand any of it. She could hear it, but she couldn't understand. She just kept walking through the fields, and tried to concentrated on the cows, but they wouldn't stop and she couldn't stand it and at last she turned to the forest and just shouted:

"What do you want from me?"

And suddenly, all was silence. For a moment Esther hoped that that was the end of it, but deep down she knew it was the very opposite of that. She'd acknowledged it openly now. She'd crossed that final line.

But nothing happened. She was about to continue heading for home, when she saw a single crow gliding out of the forest, wheeling round to come towards her, midnight black wings cutting smoothly through the air. Her eyes followed it automatically for a moment, but then she glanced back at where it had come from.

Esther saw the white figure floating just above the tops of the trees. Impossibly, hanging in the air. A woman. A woman with moon-white skin and night-black hair. She was so still that for a moment, Esther thought that it must just be a trick of the fading light.

Then the witch came towards her, and Esther knew it was *the* witch in a way that she couldn't have explained. She rode a branch with the twigs still on it and she was naked with tattoos coiling round her arms and legs and she had antlers, deer antlers, jutting from her dark hair. And even if there had been other witches in the forest, Esther would have known that this was the one who'd set the crows on her.

And she was beautiful.

>>96882103

The witch came gliding down, following the crow, until she was a stone's throw away even for Esther's arm. And she said:

"Daughter, daughter... come to me..."

Esther gazed up and her for a moment, in fear and in wonder, at this beautiful, terrible creature.

Then she turned and ran.

* * *

Esther ran for home feeling the witch at her back, expecting that any moment she would swoop down and take Esther like an owl diving on a mouse. She didn't look back, she didn't dare, but she could feel her there. Heart pounding, lungs burning, she ran.

She reached her family's farm, to her great surprise. And when she was within the safety of the farmyard walls and she finally found the courage to look behind her, there was nothing there. And she was tempted to tell herself that there had never been anything there, and she had dreamed the whole thing.

But Esther knew that would be a lie. And Esther was tired of lies.

Her father and brothers were back from the fields, and her mother was cooking dinner, and Esther stomped into the room and said in front of all of them: I saw the witch on my way home.

No one mocked her. No one dared. Esther was surprised that her father didn't scoff and her mother didn't scold her and her little brothers didn't laugh. Her little brothers fell quiet, and she saw fear in their eyes, and she wondered what tone she'd spoken in to get that from them, who'd never listened to her in their lives.

And her father and mother looked at each other. They sent her brothers out of the room, and then they bade her sit, and tell them exactly what she saw.

Esther told the truth this time. All of it, even about the crows. And then she demanded that they tell her the truth. Her mother looked and her father, and her father looked at his shoes. But finally, he spoke.

>>96882112

He told Esther that when he was much younger, and a lot more foolish, he started going into the forest to look for game. It had been a hard year, and the pantry was turnips and swede and not much else, and even the milk was thin. He was a cocky young lad, and although he didn't always get away with breaking the rules he did it enough that he thought he was special. He thought to himself, why should he go hungry, when there was a forest full of game right on their doorstep?

A pheasant, a pigeon. That was all it was at first. No much. But then he saw a young boar, and he brought it down with just a bow and a knife, and he was even cockier after that. He was careful to make sure no one saw him go into the forest, but he boasted to his friends, and word began to get around. He denied it, and no one had any proof, but the older men warned him he was playing with fire. He should have listened, but he didn't.

He took a deer next, a beautiful doe, and he could have stopped there and had meat for himself for the rest of the season but he thought, why not get something for my ma and pa too? So he went back into the forest a few nights later, when the moon was high and the trees shone silver.

He wandered for a while, not seeing anything, and he was almost ready to go home when he saw it. The white stag. Its antlers were great and its coat almost glowed in the moonlight. Just standing there, amidst the trees. And he levelled his bow at it, and drew back his arrow...

>>96882118

Then he saw that the reason the stag was so still was that its foot was caught in a fallen trunk. And he was about to kill it, but it was so fine a beast, that he couldn't bring himself to do it. Not while it was trapped, there was no fairness in that. So he came forward, slowly, fearful of its antlers, but it was peaceable with him and didn't move as he used his knife to cut away the wood around its hoof. When it was free it bounded off into the forest, and he realised he'd just lost months' worth of meals, but he wasn't sorry for all that.

When he turned around she was there. The witch. Skin white, hair black. She'd been waiting for him. She'd sent the white stag there to lure him in, so she could punish him for his presumption, and what he'd done to the animals of her forest.

But she hadn't expected him to free the stag. And just as he had, she looked at this fine specimen that was trapped, and she could not find it in her heart to kill him. Too fine a specimen indeed, with his thick arms and his broad shoulders... so she took another price from him, and it was one he was more than happy to pay.

He lay with the witch for one night. And when the sun rose, he was at the edge of the forest, and he knew better than to ever try his luck there again.

He thought that was the end of it. But nine months later he heard a baby's cry outside his door, and when he opened it there was Esther, lying on the doorstep. And out in the field with the treeline at her back stood her mother - her real mother - already further from the forest than she felt comfortable with. Even though she didn't shout, he heard clearly what she said.

The child is half human, so she should be raised among your kind. But be warned, the day will come when my blood wakes in her, and when that happens you must send her to me. Send her into the forest. When you see the white stag again, you will know that it is time.

>>96882143

Esther's father paused, and looked at his wife, the woman Esther had thought was her mother. He continued, telling Esther that he married so that he'd have a woman to look after the baby, but he grew to love her and she grew to love Esther like her own. So when he saw the white stag again a few months ago, he could not bear to rob his wife of her happiness, nor lose the daughter he'd raised. He knew that he'd been a fool, to rile the witch up so, but he couldn't bear to send her away.

He'd been a stern man all her life, her father, and now he did something that Esther had never seen before: he wept.

And though she'd been angry at his lies, she forgave him, and the woman who'd raised her too, who'd been as good to her as any mother and better than many. She hugged them, and she took their apologies and held them just as close. And there was nothing more she wanted in that moment than to keep her family always exactly as it was.

But when that was done, she stood back, and told them: with your blessing or not, it is time for me to go.

They wept again, but they did not stop her, for like Esther they knew it was the truth. Her brothers were asleep by then, so she kissed each of them on the head. And then she walked out into the night.

>>96882151

Esther returned to the edge of the forest and called out again. And her mother - her *true* mother - came to her again.

"Daughter, daughter, it is long past time you came. I set the crows to watching you so I would know when it was time, but your father's still a fool. Your power is awakened. You draw the life from cattle and suck the sweetness from the fruit, and still he did not send you. Why are men so?"

"My father loves me. Will you do the same?", Esther asked.

"I will my daughter, though mortals are better at that than I, and for that I left you with them in the first place. But be it my nature or not, I will do it, for you are my blood; I will love you more than the forest itself, for as there is a piece of the forest in me, so there is a piece of me in you. Now come, for I have much to teach you. How to draw life, and how to give it, each at its proper place and time. Come, and I will show you what you are."

So Esther went with her mother, and the crows were silent at last.


--- The End ---

>>96882161
Well, hope you enjoyed my spooky tale. Happy Halloween, anons!

>>96878432
I've been trying to write more, and it caught my eye. Also, although I don't always bother to use my trip a lot of pics are posted by me, and personally I think it's more of a challenge to write for a picture someone else chose.

>>96882676
Happy halloween man, thanks for keeping these threads alive.

Any anons doing NaNoWriMo this year? Anyone do it in the past? I've always loved the thought of participating but I've never felt like I have any ideas I can spin out into a full novel.

>>96883806
If you don't have any ideas for a novel, why do you want to write? The story, the characters and themes should be the biggest motivator.
You could focus on finishing a couple of short stories or lore. Or write blurbs based on various prompts.

>>96883335
I know it's just me and one or two others who care about these threads, and sometimes I wonder why I bother, but as long as one person's interested I think it's worth doing.

>>96883806
>I've never felt like I have any ideas I can spin out into a full novel.
Same. I am very much a short story writer.

>>96883806
After they awarded AI shit, no one does it anymore who is serious about writing.

>>96882676
>I've been trying to write more, and it caught my eye. Also, although I don't always bother to use my trip a lot of pics are posted by me, and personally I think it's more of a challenge to write for a picture someone else chose.
Good, I personally can't do it these days.

>>96901673
>only for my sins
Then how do we know how raise him?

>>96917324
I see you are a man of culture.

>>96912926
Explain how skeletons down fall and crumple into a pile of bones.

>>96901673
I'm working on something for this one but it's going to take me a while.

Seems like a place to ask. This is obviously for a /yourdudes/ army, but figured I'd get some feedback. It's Warhammer so it's meant to be stupid grimdark, but otherwise does it work as an easy introduction?

>>96929530
Second pic with rest.

>>96929546
Rereading it, Skivare's section needs a big rewrite. Many errors there.

Also, the font I used is why it's all's capital letters.

>Fantasy setting with magic and such. pretty generic
>Main antagonist of setting is soulless construct
>Desire to make humanity immortal leads him to turning people into machine abominations
>Said abominations are 100% loyal to the construct
>I still haven't found a reason why that isn't "lol magic"

Any thoughts? I thought maybe they could be soo insane from conversion that they just blindly follow him but that also seems kinda off.

>>96929999
I'd say, lean into them not being 100& loyal. It makes them more three-dimensional, and allows characters like dissidents to appear and backstab the antagonist.
The reason for why they are still be 95% loyal to him could be good propaganda, them wanting to be turned into automatons. And maybe, he provides them with what they need to stay "alive", like fuel, repairs, new cool tech.

>>96929999
>Soulless construct
Make it a God container. They aren't machine conversions, but converted cultists.

>>96930308
>>96930386
I could try this. Up until now I have gone into this making 99% of the converted against their will but maybe it being a thing people do seeking power would be a better idea.

>>96929999
On the one hand, they are immortal now. I don't see why they wouldn't be happy with that if they volunteered to get immortality. Maybe they just think that all the downsides are worth it and humanity really would be better off as machines.

On the other hand, maybe the transference isn't perfect and now they're just missing the part of their mind that would have recognised that the antagonist isn't a good guy.

>over 100,000
It's ultimately just a meaningless number, but milestones are nice. It's nice to get them done.
Now, pray for me that I can finish this before Christmas, so that I can laze off during the holiday. Might end up being 130,000 words long.

>>96644454 (OP)
In the distant future, a corporation "won" the corpo race and created a near global monopoly and a hyper intelligent AI. However as the 8 original board members gain more and more power, they become paranoid, fearing that one day, someone would appear and made them face justice. Their paranoia caused them to commit an unspeakable crime. Using all the technologies available to them, they shot down all the satellite in the sky and ascended in a space rigged, manned by a hyper intelligent AI that was supposed to run their corporation. The AI's goal is to maintain life support and keep them immortal. From their throne in the sky, they rain down nuclear holocaust, reducing human back to the stone age, ensuring that no one would be able to pull them off their ascended sky throne. However as the age passes, a clear problem arises. Mankind wasn't supposed to live forever. A few of the 8 wanted to die, but the hyper intelligent AI can't allow that to happen. This the culling game started every 100 years in the hope that it will give them back the ruthlessness that they crave. Every 100 years, the AI will choose a region of the world, still populated by primitive human, and then it will force them to kill eachother until only one survives. The killing will be live broadcasted into the board members brain implants, hoping that it will stir them. Still, this measure only work for a time. To up the excitement, the AI found a perfect solution. By temporarily erasing the memories of the original 8, and upload their mind to spare bodies that participate in the culling, it manages to keep the 8 members entertained and engaged for a long, long time. So, as we speak, as the culling is happening in the world, "Gods" might also be participating in the upheaval...

Though perhaps without their memories of their later years, those people would be completely different from what anyone expected. And maybe, they hold the key to the salvation of the human race

>had an unreasonable amount of fun writing that one female character crashing at some other female characters place
I guess, I should just write yuri-adventures from here on.

I like to rewrite entire swaths of Warhammer 40000 lore in my head canon
>Warhammer 40000 takes place in the same universe as Warhammer Fantasy and is just the Warhammer fantasy world in the far future
>no ties to our world or real world geography or names
>Astartes, Custodes, Primarchs, the Emperor, Thunder Warriors, etc are a separate race of giants/super humans who rule and protect the rest of humanity instead of being genetically enhanced
>Astra Militarum aren’t fucking weak and are almost always successful in defending/reclaiming worlds. Barring the most ridiculous world ending Chaos/Xenos invasions
>most planets live in relative peace. The galaxy is fucking unfathomably gigantic. It’s impossible for EVERY SINGLE planet to be war-torn/dedicated to feeding the war effort
>etc
Any else do this?

>>96958185
Not to this degree, but I like it! The only head cannon I have is around advancing the Plot (Emps is awake again and this is a Bad Thing) and stuff with the Lost Primarchs.

>>96958185
>Any else do this?
It's a real pity 4chan doesn't support PDFs anymore or I could give you a lot of reading to do. I hated the 5th edition necron re-work so much I wrote my own lore instead.

>>96959438
Pastebins exist.