Antarctic Termite

The Cancer that Breathes

To-do

-Distant Dance
-Lexite Melee
-Voice of the Painter
-Some Imagen
-Gaia

-Jvanic Heartlands
-Filter Cities

Transfer 2

fuck man whatever let's just do the thing

Whisper found something funny when we came back from the last dive.

It was a pretty long dip, maybe six hours. Mother takes us down for longer and longer each shadecircle. Maybe it's because she's grown so much. Old Grandma told us the Arks would grow and she was right, oh god, she was so right. They're both swelling up and changing shape, even though I've never seen them eat anything but ice and Rock. But, hey! Mother's big enough to swallow a reef-lily whole anyway! I've seen her do it! There's probably nothing to worry about. Father's pretty huge too.

Then again, maybe it's us who've gotten big. I shrank a little when I laid, and Wander only looks bloated because she's carrying, but my daughters doubled in the first radian since they hatched. Tripled by the end of their second. Watching them grow like that- Listening to them laugh, and tussle...

Have you ever loved someone so much that you feel like you can always see them, even if the sun falls down and blinds you forever? That your life doesn't even exist anymore outside of holding on to them?

Forget what Whisper found for a moment, I need to tell you. I have nine daughters. Nine! They're never lonely. Six haven't chosen names yet, so we call them all Diaphane Little. One chased a fish on our first dive and decided she was Ocean. Another spends time around Father and asked us to call her Diaphane Brother, so we did, and now she's our sister-brother, like the jetlets who have mothers and not-mothers but still make one family. Wander spends time with one who likes noise, so she's Diaphane Loud. I love her. I love them all. They give me life.

Speaking of. The more we dive, the more living critters we find down on Galbar. Whisper's the only one who knows how to deal with spirits, and sometimes she catches them deep in the liquid-ice or in the blueness, and holds them still for us to eat. Wander says they taste indescribable, and she looked really happy about it. She'd grown a bit, too. We'll find more soon enough, I think.

There are other things too. Birds die when you put them into liquid for long enough, but we still find some really big flightless ones out to sea. They perch on shells made of tree bones, which are solid, but kind of sit around on top of the liquid because they're not dense enough to get gravity-stuck. Tall grey things that'll sting you with light if they startle, but I like them. They taste exotic.

Heh, I keep getting sidetracked. It's good stuff, though. But yeah. What Whisper found.

It was shaped like an organ I once found inside one of the grey birds in the floatshells, one that pumps that runny blood they have. A flying thing, like a jetlet, with six propulsion siphons and four other limbs. It was fast, maybe the fastest thing I've seen other than Mother- And Father, of course. Whisper said she saw a whole shoal of them, but even with Wander's help she could only corner one. It tasted sweet. A sweet heart.

It looked like this.

Artist

Since then we've spotted them a few more times. Mostly around Mother. Sometimes in her. We've tried to chase them out but she closes herself up and locks us out when we try. Suits me. Means I don't have to clean all the stuff she sheds. They're better at eating it, anyway.

My daughters can't get enough of those sweethearts, though. I've shown them how to kill pretty much every imagen that isn't more than double their size- And they're already figuring out how to kill the ones that are! Each one takes a bit, like a fin or an arm, and pulls in different directions as hard as they can. But sweethearts are... Tricksy little shits.

They keep dodging. They whirl around you when you least expect it and each time we see them they're a little better at it. Even Wander's realised she can't catch them without slowing down to plan first, and even then she needs help. Worst of all, there's something in their bite that actually burns, even when I'm dissolved.

So I guess the three of us are going to try and take them together, as a pack, even though we're all grown up. We'll signal our directions and fly in a flock, like jetlets do. Practicing our turns and sprints. If they're a challenge, then game on.

I've never found anything I can't hunt. I've never found a problem I can't learn to solve. If my daughters want this, then by god, I will give it to them.

----------------------

Transfer 2

A dubiously useful section?

Mother River is wise. She knows that for all things there is a flow. There are rapids and there are meanders. As she walks to her final resting place, she slows, becomes tired and heavy; And dies, like so many others, at the feet of the Sepulchre.

The Mahd Estuary that filters around the base of the Forsaken Craglands is a pale thing, weighed down by opaque silt, but in its twilight half-life it is still stronger than it appears and deeper than men fare to guess. Another detail, were it needed, highlighting the height and strangeness of the wanderer's grave.

Another veil to hide Old Skinstitch.

Brown darkness, then pitch. A cruel undercurrent with no solid forms to hold on to. Only mud in which to sink and stay.

A slim tentacle forces itself against the blind press of water. Plucks, effortlessly, a small, lost object from its ever-flowing path to the grave.

Touches. Feels. Examines.

It's a doll.

Crafted by human hands. Loved by them, too. Burned in them, upon a pyre just large enough for a child. Charred.

The Emaciator releases its prize. It knows.

In a porcelain carcass-shell wrought with bismuth bones, Heartworm stalks into the mud, and tastes cold dreams of Vetros.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

*Checks the thread at the start of page 395, ignorant of the context*

OH, GOD DAMN IT TERMITE!

@Muttonhawk

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@Antarctic Termite How the hell did you pull Vore from that?

@Dawnscroll

Food/overfeeding? I guess 'inflation' is more accurate in this case, but they're a set of art styles that tend to go hand in hand.

Shit, should've known to keep the bad fetish banter out of public eye.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

*hugs Kho tightly* Logos is gonna feed TOBIA all of the royal jelly... and when Vowzra comes back, he's gonna find his ant FAT.

@Dawnscroll

logos is into vore pass it on

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

FKN' FINALLY FRIDAY NIGHT

Can't decide if this week was productive or not BUT I'm nearly caught up on reading and I have a bunch of half-finished posts everywhere so I'll see if I can do SOMETHING interesting with my characters this weekend for once

Before I begin, can anyone tell me what souls were taken and used? I believe that Arguis' soul was taken by Vestec, right?

@Lugubrious

Maize's corpse was tossed into the Crystralline Dragon tomb, but I wrote that before I realised what the souls were a reference to, and I'm pretty much done with the optic fiberlings arc anyway (bar Violet), so we can safely ignore that.

Can we assume that the pheromone angel and pilgrims Jvan sent to follow Slough were left behind or killed as Slough entered the Venomweald?

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@Cyclone, a question: do there exist female elementals? So far, all elementals that I remember have been masculine in form. I'm unsure whether this is a coincidence or whether it is something fundamental to their nature.

@BBeast

The Gneiss collab mentioned a female elemental named Notus, so they do exist. That was a while ago, but Cyclone said something along the lines of their gender being defined by their traits, with most taking after the EXTREMELY MANLY PRIMORDIAL BEING who created them.

Transfer 2

nada

* * * * *

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

So what should the overall population of Amestris as a whole? Would somthing from 5,000 to 10,000 people be a stretch. Then in terms of millitay strength, which I need to reorganize, I imagine about 15 to 20% of the population wouldn't be a stretch since Sin is sporting both a fulltime Pro army and a conscripted army.

@LokiLeo789

Not sure about the overall population (seems fine) but the militarised proportion is too high unless it's predominantly reserves. Full-time soldiers need food and supplies and don't contribute too much to the economy (maybe brute labour in strength training?) so the city needs to support them as well as itself.

So it would probably depend on directly on how high Amartia's taxes are and how much industry is in his payroll. Say a tenth of each family's production in a city of just under 10,000, assuming each family is self-sufficient. Atrocious maths aside that's ~~9000 producers feeding and clothing 900 government workers total, ignoring extra demigod expenses.

That number obviously gets way bigger assuming that Amartia also gets tax from the surrounding countryside (he will), but the bigger the army relative to the city, the more the city needs to be organised like a massive barracks, which needs even more infrastructure (ask Kangutso) or the more the army needs to be based on an elite core and a moshpit of reserves.

And now I just got ninja'd by Cyclone who said basically the same thing. Goodness.

17,500 characters are on the post so far though, so when it finally does come out it might be something worthy of what Termite would make.

@Cyclone

I'm extremely excited and also mildly scared

DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT GUYS I'M A REALLY BAD ROLE MODEL ;-;