Antarctic Termite

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

@Antarctic Termite Oh, I see, so the nihilistic wormbot gets to rationalise things on principle now, does he?!

@Muttonhawk

pls do not bully the AI it has enough problems already okay ;-;

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

Shout-out to Cyclone for finishing that summary for me when we both procrastinated and tried to passive-aggressively pawn off the job on each other!

In this installment: Like two pages worth of uncomfortably intimate descriptions of Heartworm in pain for a single word of shoehorned poignance, none of it remotely proofread.

Only side note to add is that when HW says 'I do not destroy', what it means is 'I do not create a vacuum'. Destroying for experimentation or to send a message usually gets a pass because those are considered creative acts.

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

Why didn't you say so earlier! We have some prime real estate in the area. Beautiful place really!

@LokiLeo789

How about some strategically important areas? Resource rich area in particular? I am looking for some good areas to build some great communities.

@Lauder

y'all mean the Venomweald, right?

That place ruled by a psychic ogre king and his elemental-augmented ogre legions?

Uh huh.

You are going back to school/college and discover the above avatar Is your teacher. What do you do?

Ugh, what the hell, can't get worse than that one French professor.

Hit me up with that alien firearm training and massive robo-pecs.

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

Some features we do need more of, that aren't too hard to fit in-

-Inland seas! Think of the Aral, Dead and Caspian seas.
-Lakes! Lakes everywhere! The Great Lakes, Lake Baikal, Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Lake Malawi... Big lakes are awesome, guys!
-Rivers! Rivers can be used as highways, provided they don't have rapids or waterfalls serving as a chokepoint, and are a lifeline for cities.
-Volcanic islands, archipelagos, and atolls! The west Pacific is riddled with islands! Think of Polynesia, Micronesia, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Caribbean, Japan, what have you!
-Reefs! Where did the Drenched Flowerbed go? It was our resident Great Barrier Reef analogue.
-Mudflats? Sure, why not?
-Salt pans! Possibly as a result of a failed attempt at making a sea? That said, though, there's not much civilisation-wise you can do with a salt flat other than trade the salt.
-Trenches... Actually, we don't need trenches, the whole south-center of the Fractal Sea practically is one. Plenty of space to be deep, dark and spooky. THAT SAID they do tend to pop up around islands and undoubtedly contain Blood Wells...
-Cenotes! Vakarlon made a cave system that riddles Galbar and the Submaterium presumably connects to it, so having some giant flooded holes in the ground would be awesome.

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

We also need a larger map because soon we will have more and more named important cities.

And what is up with you and the creation of more and more oceans? Are you team aqua?

If anything we need islands is the seas (exception being Jvan's since she is a islaphobe.)

@Double Capybara

Islands are good. Do we have an Iceland or Hawaii yet? More volcanoes! More islands!

Also, I don't think we need a different map size so much as we need to start thinking about scale. The Ironheart mountains, particularly the southern stretch of them, is where our civilisations tend to concentrate- We have Amestris, Shalanoir, Alefpria, Rulanah, and the Metera Valley, plus the Hilt and Bormahven. We can zoom in on that, for example, if we need to- We don't have to look at city-states from a global scale.

@Antarctic Termite bout dreams, I think J-girl could quite easily create some sort of wiretapping (actually neurontapping) in the brains and get what she wants. She could quite easily induce bad dreams.

But remember, no taxation without representation.

@Double Capybara

I'm not looking at dreams, don't worry. Or anything. It's still a distant work in progress.

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

I feel like I read too much into it when I see the word 'anxiety,' however. I have a counsellor in my family and the definition of the anxiety is certainly broadened when you talk to such people enough. In a scholarly way, anyway. If you're just doing phobias or unease with alien stuff, though, I'd say horror speaks for itself as a word.

@Muttonhawk

Rest assured, it has nothing to do with social anxiety or anxiety-related disorders. Horror is very much what I'm going for- A sense for the alien and unnatural, fear of the unknown as opposed to fear of incoming harm.

To whomever decides to.make the next pretty iteration of the Galbar map, please consider shrinking down many of the geographical features. Things are beginning to get crowded and we are still meant to be working on a huge, Earth-like planet.

I would also suggest moving the map edges more westward, closer to the changing plains. Mesathelassa is better developed at this point.

And hey, an idea for a cataclysmic event? Sea level rise. We could actually have separated continents to work with if that happens :D

@Muttonhawk

I... Don't think we should do another major change to landmasses. The prettiness of the latest map did do some unnecessary shuffling and resizing of features, but even so, we've been kicking around this planet for a while now and if we try to force in more empty space either things are gonna go bump again or there's going to be a conspicuous stretch of empty forest.

Although, if some god wants to cut open Galbar like a grapefruit and adds in an extra slice because they've run out of space, be my guest, because that would be hilarious.

My graffiti is thoroughly more offensive and messy, sorry!

Anyway, the one main thing I want to emphasize is that I really, really don't think we want or need those land bridges. Land bridges don't make the world more accessible. Seas and rivers make the world more accessible the minute you invent the sail. Once you start thinking of oceans as a way to get around, land bridges are actually just giant walls that block you from sailing where you want to go. There's a reason people dug canals through Panama and Suez- Just a thin stretch of land in the way can add massive amounts of time to a voyage.

Other features that were lost or altered in this map-

-What happened to Jvan's peninsula? She's somehow ended up at a channel between the southern ocean and the fractal sea? She's always been at the northernmost point of an isthmus stretching up from land, specifically so that you can reach her on foot or horseback from both east and west; Somehow that got turned completely inside out.
-The Mangrove shrunk substantially and the Forgotten Craglands inside it went AWOL.
-The Shimmering Sea changed shape, deleting a section of land to the south of it (which promptly got resurrected as a land bridge enclosing an inland sea?) as well as making Vetros almost coastal.
-The Venomweald grew quite a bit, so the Valley of Peace is kind of fusing with the Ironhearts- That's not much of a problem by itself, but the connection between the Steppe and the Valley is growing thinner, which makes Angelblood Ridge hard to place since it took place in the foothills.
-The north of the Fractal Sea is growing bigger and lumpier over time, as well as marching steadily west. That vaguely phallic top bit should be a long, narrow inlet directly above Jvan, at least at the very top.
-Rivers, people! Where did those Mesathalassan rivers go?

Details added-
-Volcano squashing the northwest Metatic acalya outbreak. I should've put it more inland, whoops. Also, Acalya forests have containment zones guarded by Jvan's conglomeration of intelligent species.
-The Metera Valley civilisation has probably fused with the Rovaick settlement that was closest to Bormahven.
-Forgotten Craglands reappeared- A nest of cliffs and highland weirdforests pierced by the Mahd, in which lies the grave of Slough.
-Angelblood Ridge somewhere-or-other.

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

Also, I have a new headcanon for Jvan's voice.

Here we see Lifprasil and Vestec interrupted by J-girl herself, on the topic of human feelings.

Hider

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

Uhuh...

@Muttonhawk

Well, not quite! The conscious perception bit really is important here.

Imagine the day when Jvan expands her telepathic network until she can see into the deepest, strangest phobias of mortal men, and take inspiration from them, drawing power from human horror until she can reach out through their dreams and make them real.

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

I just remembered that I was planning to introduce martial art to some other failed project species as a free action

Because

Martial art

It's a weapon turned into an art form

Performed with the body

It's beauty of the flesh

The Lexite Melee is change-eaters creating purposeful diversity with their ability to shapeshift

I could've done that for free, damn it. I'll keep it the way it is, though. Let's just say it's Really Quite Good.

Consider that one Might spent towards claiming Beauty (Performance), including martial art, dance, and sex. Since Sculptors are designed to do two out of three of those things, the Might spent in making them probably counts too. That makes three different Beauty portfolios I have an eye on! One of them is Beauty (Horror), defined as an anxious emotional response to something that is strange and new rather than a positive emotional response, as constitutes conventional beauty. Both Inversion Scribes and Sculptors will count as Might spent there, since they purposefully create art with the intention of having an unconventional beauty.