@wandering-tangent / wandering-tangent.tumblr.com
Some physical art I made of @wandering-pteryx's T't'tik, in powder-coated steel!
I don't often get to make or design stuff like this, but this was a fun one-off thing made for a cool friend!
Yeee thank! They turned out super well and look SO cool on my wall.
The engine room froze, people turning to glare at me with a look of, was that fear?
Jay, an enby with broad hips and shoulders so muscled they looked chiseled from stone, slung an arm around my shoulders with an air of false cheer. “That’s a good question, kid! Come a little ways away with me and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Their hand squeezed tight on my shoulder, manually walking me out and a little way down the corridor. When we’d gotten maybe fifty metres away, far enough that the buzz and thump of the engines was lost in the usual quiet drone of space, they spun me around to face them.
“Okay. First thing? NEVER ask that again where the engines can hear you. Understood? Any other question is fine. How to help, what needs to be done next, anything about any other part of the ship even. But never mention ANYTHING about how the engines actually function. Do you understand?”
I nodded slowly, very confused.
“Good kid.” They let go and straightened up, wiping their hand across their forehead. “Now for your answer, we don’t know.”
I blinked. “Wait, you don’t know how the engine works? But, you’re an engineer! You make it work!”
Jay shook their head, resigned. “Yes, and you’d think that would make a difference! I can tell you how virtually everything else on this ship functions. Water ballast, mychorizal radiation shielding, lights, electricity, doors...” they laughed frustratedly. “As far as we can tell, in all the documentation — and believe me I’ve tried to figure it out myself as well, subtly — the engines DON’T work, at least by any systems we understand. It works because the engines think it works, and we go along with it, do all the little apparently arbitrary things that it needs maintained, and everything functions. But the moment anyone starts really talking about how it works, where the engine can hear you? The entire engine just fizzles out and stops working, and can’t be fixed. We’ve lost a lot of good ships that way, and people have been stranded. So we don’t question it.”
I processed that for a second. “... Wait but how do you maintain it if you don’t know what it does!”
Jay shrugged, their hands flying into the air. “Oh maintaining it is easy! We have very good documentation, though different engine versions need different kinds of maintenance. You know those globes on poles that orbit around the central shaft? There’s a teddy bear in one, we brush it’s fur once a week. If you don’t, the engine gets sad, which mostly means it’s sluggish to respond to the controls. There’s a live mouse in another one. It takes shifts: we have a colony of mice and we swap them out every four hours. The engine can keep going without the mouse, but you can’t send it any new commands, so we make sure to keep it fresh. There’s a central compartment that has precisely 3.14159 grams of pure copper in it, that slowly degrades: we have to change it for a new one once it gets down to 1 gram or the engine starts shuddering like a car running on fumes. No idea how it degrades though, or where the copper goes. As far as we can tell it and a couple other elements in there are as close as the engine has to a fuel source, except 2 grams of copper every two weeks isn’t NEARLY as much power as an engine moving a ship this size at light speed should need. Like, it’s a laughably small amount. And yet....!
They threw up their arms and turned in a circle, apparently gesturing to the universe.
“We have fifteen full-time engineers in three shifts of five, all doing these tiny arbitrary things, and it all works. We can tell each thing is doing SOMEthing, because we see the results if they aren’t done perfectly. I’ve been on a ship where it was minnows instead of mice, seaweed instead of copper, or where three engineers had to act out a story with action figures, sing a song, or move a pile of empty cardboard boxes every three hours. I’ve been running ships for twenty years. It makes zero sense, but it uses next to no fuel and is the only thing that can break the speed of light so we use it. I GUESS.”
Shoutout to autistic and adhd people whose special interests/hyperfixations aren't media-related. "autism is about writing fanfics about your blorbo scrunklies XDD" actually autism is about collecting miniature world war 1 airplane models
Yo the catch 22 of birds sounds like an incredibly interesting lecture please elaborate :0
.
YES
Okay so the thing is, feathers didn’t evolve for flight. They were insulation and display first, and they’ve been around since before the dinosaurs: some of the most recent research (1) suggests they go back to or before the common ancestors of pterosaurs and dinosaurs, aka the mid-Triassic or earlier.
In addition to THAT, basically all dinosaurs came from bipeds(2): the big guys like sauropods and stegosaurus were secondarily quadrupedal. As such, when birds started to evolve towards flight, they were already both covered in feathers and bipedal.
There’s a debate (3) on whether bird flight evolved “trees down”, where they evolved gliding first, jumping out of trees and using their long arm and leg feathers to slow the fall, or “ground up”, where they evolved FLAPPING first, using long feathers on their outstretched arms while running to help keep them balanced and help them jump higher while hunting or escaping predators.
Personally, I prefer the synthesis hypothesis which suggests a combination of strategies including using wings to slow their fall, run, and help gain height when getting into trees/cliffs, but that’s not relevant right now.
What’s important is the fact that by the time birds developed flight, they’d locked themselves into having hyperspecialized limbs: legs ONLY for running and jumping, arms ONLY for flying and flapping.
Since they were small, this wasn’t a problem! But it doesn’t scale super well, and to see why, let’s take a brief tangent into pterosaurs.
Pterosaurs are the biggest fliers that have ever existed, with some species having an estimated mass of up to 550lb. Despite this, even the largest individuals would have been able to take off without an assist, for one reason: they got off the ground with a “catapult” launch(4)(5).
Pterosaurs were quadrupeds, but that’s not their biggest asset. They used their wings for flying, as you’d expect; however, they also used them on the ground with a gait that functioned similarly to a gorilla or a vampire bat, “front wheel drive” as it were. With a catapult launch, they “jumped” off the ground primarily with their wings, resulting in the same primary muscles being used across all forms of locomotion.
This means that, if they needed to get bigger, pterosaurs could just keep pumping more energy into making the wings bigger as well, with no impact on their ability to fly or take off: it’s hypothesized that the largest pterosaurs were limited more by their hearts’ ability to pump blood to their extremities than they were by the ability to fly.
By comparison, in order to get bigger birds have to both add more leg AND add more wing. More weight needs bigger wings to lift it, but bigger wings need bigger legs to jump high enough for the wings to flap, but bigger legs need bigger wings to carry them during flight, and so on.
There comes a point where the legs can’t jump high enough to give the wings room to flap, and then they’re stuck. A lot of modern larger birds are partially reliant on gravity/wind assists or take off from the water because they can’t easily get high enough on their own, and these birds are all like, under 40lb. Even with environmental assists, balancing two sets of limbs to maintain the ability to both walk AND fly means that birds have a size limit: the largest flight-capable bird (6) that’s ever existed had a mass of up to 160lb, and probably wouldn’t have been able to get off the ground at all without a strong headwind or a cliff.
Essentially, in order to get bigger birds have to both add more leg AND add more wing but there’s a limit on how much they can add of each before they just can’t get off the ground, and that’s the catch-22 of birds!
1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0728-7
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongonaphon
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight
4. https://youtu.be/9TKgupAZVzE
5. https://youtu.be/ALziqtuLxBQ
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentavis
Communication:
NIAN (Near Instantaneous Ansible Network) works on quantum fluctuation, you connect to an “address” that entangles a pair of hydrogen ions — one where you are, one at the destination — wiggle them to get a binary signal with like, an electromagnetic field, and turn that into data
The actual nian computers are fairly big but they’re not complicated to make. They’re also subsidized so basically every ship, satellite, and town has one
High-powered radio is regulated and significantly restricted: radio is generally the first form of communication that makes it off-planet, so leaving it uncluttered and encouraging use of physical (fibre optic and copper wires), short-range, and NIAN communication allows the space-eu to more easily find new spacefaring civilizations.
This has been 100% successful and every independently-spacefaring civilization on record (including humans) has been found through radio! ….it is possible this is a self-selecting sample.
Also “every independently-spacefaring civilization” is like, 5 times in two thousand years, spacefaring civilizations are extremely rare and most sentient species never even bother to develop significant amounts of industry.
Drives: there are only two known working methods of faster-than-light travel, both of which have been independently invented several times by different species and civilizations.
The Alcubierre drive (“longhaul” ships or “longhaulers”)
The tesseract drive/jumpdrive (ships are referred to as “hoppers”, “jumpers”, or local equivalent)
On navbeacons
The tesseract drive/jumpdrive requires navigation beacons to jump, since it runs by a form of subspace that requires entangled particles on either end. Navigation beacons, primarily, are a NIAN transmitter with a cache of hydrogen. For each jump, it entangles a hydrogen ion with a hydrogen ion on the scheduled ship, then ejects the ion off in a safe direction.
The ship’s tesseract drive creates a subspace bubble around the ship, rendering the ship’s in-universe mass to be functionally zero, then hijacks the quantum entanglement to fluctuate the subspace bubble to the precise location of the destination ion, appearing with the particle inside the ship.
The inertia and relative orientation of the ship is maintained: when the ship heads out of habited space on the departure system, it’s the navigator’s job to make sure that the orientation and speed match the targeted system as best as possible.
Since no-one’s made it out of the Milky Way’s Orion arm yet, systems share the same galactic inertia, so the navigator only has to orient with the relative inertia of the targeted system/planet/station itself.
Made these a while back, just found this video in my camera roll! The wings are mostly made of corrugated plastic, fabric, and craft foam.
Work-in-progress articulated bat wings! I’m planning on redoing the hinges on each joint with a custom 3D print in nylon, once I finish the printer enclosure so I can print nylon without warping.
Short film concept [mywriting]
Person comes home from college and has to deal with a flood of memories of childhood abuse
SCENE: child’s bedroom, evening
MOM (offscreen): “I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE AN ADULT NOW — DON’T YOU LEAVE WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!”
*slam, distant angry muttering, footsteps coming closer*
A young adult, JESS, trips into the room, dragging a small half-zipped suitcase and closing the door behind them. They hoist the suitcase onto the bed (it falls open), stare at the contents for a second, then fling themselves down beside it, lying on their back with their hand over their eyes.
(beat)
JESS sniffles, then says to the ceiling “I thought it would be different when I came back.”
JESS rubs their eyes, then stands up.
MEDIUM CLOSEUP, FOLLOWING JESS: they run their hand over a nearly-empty bookshelf, tapping book spines and smiling slightly in remembrance.
JESS: “I remember you. And you...”
They jump as a door slams somewhere else in the house, looking back over their shoulder with fear, then continue their investigation of their old room.
OVER THE SHOULDER SHOT Then, they open the closet. INSIDE, there is a warped and shattered hole in space, completely at odds with the rest of the room.
REACTION SHOT: JESS flings themselves backwards to the bed and tries to hide behind their suitcase. It is not effective. Then, slowly, they get up and creep towards their closet. The SHATTERED VOID is still there.
(beat)
JESS gets up cautiously, and peers at the VOID. they poke their hand into it.
SCENE CHANGE: a void like room full of shattered mirrors.
MATCH ON ACTION: JESS’S hand comes out the other side, then they follow into the new room.
JESS looks around the room: as they look, the mirror shards come alive, showing a child-them (dressed femininely) having various confrontations with their mother.
MIRROR-MOM:
⁃ You’re not trans, you just need a better bra!
⁃ You call this clean? Do it again!
⁃ You’re done when I say you’re done
⁃ Where were you I needed you to watch your siblings how could you just leave me
⁃ Why do you hate me I guess I’m just the mean mommy who works you to the bone
⁃ That never happened stop lying to me
⁃ Etc
These continue and build, and image-shadows start flowing from the mirrors, onto JESS: when they touch, JESS gets smaller and loses saturation, becoming a washed-out greyscale slightly transparent shadow image of their younger self from the mirror
JESS curls into a ball, until all the mirror images have absorbed.
The room becomes just a black void.
Then, Jess speaks, calmly, almost abstractly. “I’ve been here before.”
They unclench, run their fingers through their hair (which changes from the long child-self haircut to their own short cut, gaining back some colour and saturation)
JESS: “she doesn’t get to say who I am, I make myself.”
They stand up, tense but calm, and walk back through the void into their old room.
They zip, then pick up their old suitcase (CLOSEUP on their hand on the handle: when they touch it, their hand gets its colour back, like it’s coming from the suitcase)
They walk calmly out of the room, regaining colour and adulthood as they go.
MOM (offscreen): “oh good you’re back I’M NOT DONE—
JESS: “I’m sorry I’m not the daughter you told me I was. I won’t pretend to be her anymore.”
MOM: “what-WHERE ARE YOU GOING”
a door closes in the distance. A moment later, (seen through the bedroom window) JESS walks to a car outside, puts their suitcase in, gets in, and drives away.
FIN
When I first started here, I called myself Ada, because my wordpress as a teen was adamantiumhalfdragonx523 and it was the first thing I thought of when they said I should pick a nickname.
…I know, it’s kinda ridiculous, and I was hoping to present a somewhat more mature persona at college. But at least Ada is an actual name, and I could claim it was after Ada Lovelace instead of my RP blog.
Anyway, I dove into class quickly. Engineering, with an accidental minor in physics: I liked the required courses so I took a few electives, then realized I was only like nine credits away from qualifying for a minor so I went for it. Got immediately bogged down by homework as usual, barely scraping C minuses through humanities requirements and getting extensions wherever I could. I’ve never been good with time management? It’s the adhd.
What do you do when you're super tired and haven't been able to sleep properly for days but trying to sleep gives absolutely zero results?
What I always do is lay down, and just focus on breathing. Not sleeping, breathing. Eventually you'll a) find out what's bothering you or b) sleep.
Meditation and mindfulness I have tried
Idk maybe I'll make a hot cocoa and lay on the floor for a bit
1) Put waterfall-related white noise on computer (I like mynoise.net for its wide and customizable variety of sounds).
2) Put a nature documentary on on Youtube in a different tab, loud enough that you can make out what’s being said without too much effort but not loud enough that it’s, y’know, loud. Bonus points if it’s David Attenborough.
3) Put Youtube video with mildly-engaging imagery on the tablet or smartphone. For this you want something like a massage/treatment video where you can watch relaxing things be done to a person, or a “travel forward” type video like a road trip through excellent scenery, or a drone flight video, or a driver’s-view video of a locomotive trip. Something that features a changing fractal pattern or something else like that might also work, as might crafting videos where someone is silently making a leather wallet or hand binding a book or building a shelter out of tree branches.
4) Lie down someplace comfortable in a fairly dim space.
Now you’ve got physical relaxation and a variety of mental options that are neither too taxing nor too boring, and you can shift your attention from one to the other at whim.
(The white noise is useful because the voices are not so pronounced against it; they don’t command attention the same way, at least for me.)
5) Remember that Mythbusters tested and found out that time spent lying down in a dark comfortable space and relaxing, while not as helpful as sleep, was better than continuing to work without a break at all, and so you don’t have to agonize over any continued failure to fall asleep that you’re aware of, you are doing the right thing for yourself and not failing. Try to enjoy the relaxation interlude on its own merits, whether you fall asleep or not.
My advice is kinda weirdly the opposite of this? I find that if I do “relaxing” things I either find them annoying or my mind just wanders and starts thinking of stuff to keep me awake. So, I’ve got two things that work pretty well for me.
1. Muscle tension. Lie on your back under covers in a comfy bed, and squeeze sets of muscles as hard as you possibly can for about 5-10 seconds, then relax for 5-15 seconds before moving to the next set. Start with the muscles in your toes, then curl your toes, then squeeze all the muscles in your feet, then your ankles, then calves, knees, thighs, butt, hips, stomach, ribs, shoulders, work your way down your arms, make your hands into fists, then go up to your neck, chin, mouth, cheeks, eyes, etc. Move your way up your body, finding the smallest number of muscles you can squeeze at a time.
This gives your brain something pretty intense to focus on, with the counting and isolating the feel of different muscle groups, but is also rhythmic and repetitive. Also, it’s easy to forget how much tension you’re holding in your body: squeezing your muscles as hard as you can tires you out, and makes it obvious when you are actually relaxed. If you go through the entire set and you’re still feeling awake, go back down, from your face to your toes.
2. Visualizing a scene. It’s closer to actual meditation, but with a twist: here, the focus isn’t explicitly relaxation, but (to use a computer analogy) to overload your processor by rendering extremely detailed visuals until it crashes, sending you to sleep.
Think of a complicated, static scene. My go-to is an abandoned forest city with weather that changes with my moods, full of trees and skyscrapers, roads winding up around branches and branches going in and out of buildings. Imagine yourself in your scene, but not just in a “okay sure I’m in a forest” way: imagine the walls you can see, where the light is coming from, how cold the air is, the texture of the ground. See how many things you can hold in your mind at once, like trying to balance a bunch of stuff in your arms: can you feel the air AND see the ground texture AND keep the tops of the trees in sight all at the same time? Can you add another sensation, like the smell of rain? Can you move through the scene to a different vantage point, watching how everything changes with perspective?
There’s no way to do this wrong. If you can only hold visuals in your mind, see how complicated you can make them. If you find them boring, add something you like: maybe the scene is a comic convention. Maybe it’s a spaceship. Maybe it’s your living room. If your mind starts wandering, add another element of the scene in to keep it busy.
I dunno, it works for me. Might be worth trying.
What is the age of majority in your world?
In my scifi optimistic-future Terraship setting, I’ve got a system called the “graduated adulthood” legal structure and ID
Juvenile: under 15. Has a guardian, is a minor. No legal consent. No drugs/alcohol. Media restricted for adult themes by age, unless guardian marks an exception. (ie. ESRB ratings.) No taxes or financial obligations, no work required. (Basic income can apply, depending on circumstances). Can access automatic vehicles and public transit, but only within city limits, and none with manual capabilities (only on set roads). Basically, focus on growing up.
No permanent record for any crimes committed. Consequences for the juvenile and their guardian/s may include therapy and parenting classes respectively, restricted movement, community service, etc. Consequences do not last more than a year after the juvenile’s 16th birthday.
Parents/guardians give name. No gender listed, biological characteristics connected (not listed) for access by medical professionals. Pronouns are always gender-neutral-unknown (they/them) in all legal contexts.
Youth/student: 15-25. Legally independent. Can legally consent to people only in the same age bracket, or people in the adult age bracket up to five years their senior. Can use recreational drugs/drink/gambling, can access mature media. Can use all vehicles, including ones with manual control if they have the license for them. No taxes, but full basic income.
No permanent record for any crimes committed. Is tried as an adult, is fully culpable for crimes committed, but consequences must not last more than three years, and no more than two years past their 25th birthday.
Name change and gender/pronoun listing offered for free when ID is first issued. Subsequent changes can be requested at any time, for a small processing fee and a several-week wait. Biological details accessible by medical professionals. If preferred pronoun is not listed on ID, neutral-unknown is used (they/them)
Adult: 25 and up. Legally independent. Can legally consent to people only in the ‘adult’ age bracket, or people in the youth bracket up to five years younger than the individual. (IE. a 23/27 or 27/35 couple would be fine, but an 18/35 couple would not be legal.)
Pays taxes depending on income. Full basic income. Full access to all vehicles, with appropriate license.
Crimes go on permanent record. Tried as an adult, faces consequences as an adult, which can be permanent.
Name change and gender/pronoun listing change offered for free when ID is first given, and every twenty years after that, when ID is renewed. All other times, name and gender changes can be requested at any time, for a small processing fee and a several-week wait.
Biological details accessible by medical professionals. If preferred pronoun is not listed on ID, neutral-unknown is used (they/them).
Notes:
- Legal system focuses on rehabilitation and resolving people’s problems, not incarceration, and the majority of people are out of jail in under five years. Only cases involving things like planned murder or systematic taking advantage of people (ie. corrupt politicians, amoral ceos, rapists, abusers) tend to lead to longer incarceration, because rehabilitation takes way longer when people do things in cold blood. There is no way to buy your way out of jail. Based on my sketchy understanding of Scandinavian jail systems.
- There are still problems, of course. No system is perfect. But it works pretty well.
Goals:
- Normalization of name/gender changes. (They’re not strange if everyone has to address them regularly, even if the majority of people submit the same name and gender every time.)
- Built-in protection against sexual predation for children and young adults, while still allowing as much freedom of expression as possible. It’s hoped that people over the age of 25 will be experienced enough to avoid it on their own.
- Allowing a learning period for young adults, so they can go out and have responsibilities (IE. jobs, their own houses/apartments, freedom of movement) while still having a safety net to fall back on and some protection, so when/if they fuck up while learning it won’t have permanent consequences
The ferry seems normal, at first glance, a small ship with a ramp at one end captained by a single individual. It looks big enough for a couple cars or maybe two small campus buses at a time, and I guess it runs on a pretty consistent schedule because it’s always there in under five minutes from when I get to the dock.
However, I’ve noticed a couple discrepancies.
The Wolf That Eats The Sun (AKA, winter/wild animal/thief)
specifically, in zero-g.
A small clear plastic globe with a metal die inside and a weak electromagnet: to roll, shake the globe for a sec then turn on the magnet. The die will stick, and the top number can be read normally. The globe has a lid so it can be loaded with whatever die is appropriate: dice are kept in a compartmentalized tray with single lids so they don’t float away, with a built-in demagnetizer.
For non-metallic dice, adhesive mats are available: roll the die in a similar globe, then uncover the opening and slam it down on the adhesive mat. It will stick, and the number can be read. There is some discussion over whether this gives a more accurate roll over the course of the game than the magnet variant. It’s less expensive, but less user-friendly, and requires more maintenance as the adhesive mat tends to attract dust and particulates.
A D&D homebrew monster type. (very much WIP)
Setting: Blearrow, a Lantern Fey-infested town. They’ve been there for about 8 months. NOTE: aiming for a level 6 party: Pawn encounters should be easy, Knight ones should be moderate-challenging, the final boss Lantern Heart should be deadly but still super possible. Going for tricky puzzle-solving style combat, lots of variables that I will hopefully be able to keep track of.
LANTERN FEY:
Appearance: The Lantern Fey appear to be diamond shaped lanterns made from something resembling blue stained glass, with a pulsing light in the centre. When calm, the light is blue: when enraged, the light is red, causing the lanterns to glow purple.
Lantern Pawn: small, approx. 1.5 feet high
Lantern Knight: medium, approx. 4 feet high
Lantern Heart: large, approx. 9 feet high
Lantern Pawn
Small fey/extraplanar, lawful evil
AC 20, or 14 if the attacker is crossing/unfocusing their eyes.
HP 10
Speed 40 (flying)
STR 8 (-1)
DEX 18 (+4)
CON 14 (+2)
INT 4 (-3)
WIS 8 (-1)
CHA 10 (+0)
Senses: darkvision
Passive perception 9
CR: 1/2
SPECIAL ABILITIES:
Slam: the Lantern Pawn makes a shove attack, contested strength (athletics) roll. On a success, the target takes 1D6 damage and is pushed back 10 feet.
Ethereal nature: Lantern Pawns exist half on the ethereal plane, and are very hard to spot intentionally if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Perception checks to spot a Lantern Pawn are reversed: roll under a DC of 14 (passive stealth).
This DC can be sidestepped by intentionally crossing one’s eyes or looking out of the corners: the more blurred everything else is, the clearer the Lantern. (disadvantage on checks involving sight if your eyes are blurred: crossing and uncrossing one’s eyes more than once a round may result in a headache)
Pacify: at will, target 1 humanoid, DC 14 charisma saving throw. 1 action casting time. Has the effect of “calm emotions”, making the affected indifferent to everything. Duration 8 hours, or until the affected takes damage.
Call for Backup: as a bonus action, the Lantern Pawn lets out a loud harmonic screech, summoning all Lantern Fey within 120 feet. This sound travels independent of air, passing through walls and ground.
Phase: The Lantern Fey can phase through objects and structures at a speed of 5 feet per round. When inside an object, the Lantern has full cover, and has 3/4 cover on its way in and out.
Enthrall: the Lantern Pawn acts as a relay in a grid network of Lantern Fey. Every 8 hours, all entities within 120 feet of a Lantern must make a wisdom saving throw (DC 12) or take a point of Enthrallment. Enthrallment stacks like Exhaustion, with 3 levels, that have effect for as long as the individual is within 120 feet of a Lantern:
One point of enthrallment can be removed by lesser or greater restoration, by taking a short or long rest outside the influence of a Lantern, or by stepping into ground covered by a Hallow spell. It is a charm effect.
Behaviour: the Lantern Pawns are relays and watchdogs for the Lantern Fey. They cover the entire township of Blearrow in a grid, 90 feet apart, at about 12 feet above the ground. They’re fast little buggers, but fragile, and also pretty dumb: if anyone shows signs of not being Enraptured (AKA moving too quickly or not smiling), they’ll drop down to them and use Pacify until they act Enraptured. They are easily fooled.
Lantern Knight
Medium fey/extraplanar, lawful evil
AC 16
HP 60
Speed 40 (flying)
STR 10 (+0)
DEX 18 (+4)
CON 16 (+3)
INT 8 (-1)
WIS 12 (-1)
CHA 18 (+4)
Senses: darkvision
Passive perception 11
CR: 3
SPECIAL ABILITIES:
Slam: the Lantern Knight makes a shove attack, contested strength (athletics) roll. On a success, the target takes 2D6 damage and is pushed back 10 feet.
Ethereal nature: Lantern Pawns exist half on the ethereal plane, and are very hard to spot intentionally if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Perception checks to spot a Lantern Pawn are reversed: roll under a DC of 14 (passive stealth).
This DC can be sidestepped by intentionally crossing one’s eyes or looking out of the corners: the more blurred everything else is, the clearer the Lantern. (disadvantage on checks involving sight if your eyes are blurred: crossing and uncrossing one’s eyes more than once a round may result in a headache)
Pacify: at will, target 1 humanoid, DC 16 charisma saving throw. 1 action casting time. Has the effect of “calm emotions”, making the affected indifferent to everything. Duration 8 hours, or until the affected takes damage.
The Lantern Knight casts “Synaptic Static” at 5th level. Range 120, 20f sphere, INT save 16.
“You choose a point within range and cause psychic energy to explode there. Each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make an Intelligence saving throw. A creature with an Intelligence score of 2 or lower can’t be affected by this spell. A target takes 8d6 psychic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
After a failed save, a target has muddled thoughts for 1 minute. During that time, it rolls a d6 and subtracts the number rolled from all its attack rolls and ability checks, as well as its Constitution saving throws to maintain concentration. The target can make an Intelligence saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.”
Roll 1d6 every round, recharges on a 6
Puppeteer: as a bonus action, pale iridescent blue-purple tendrils emit from the Lantern Knight like beams of light, passing into a humanoid. Make a con save (DC 16): on a failure, the individual is possessed by the Lantern Knight. The Lantern floats above it, and has its own turn: however, it can only move or stop puppeteering as an action. The effect ends when the Lantern Knight takes damage, or moves more than 30 feet away from the individual. It is unaffected by damaging the individual: however, if the puppeteer individual goes unconscious or dies while being puppeted, the Lantern Knight is stunned for one round.
Phase: The Lantern Fey can phase through objects and structures at a speed of 5 feet per round. When inside an object, the Lantern has full cover, and has 3/4 cover on its way in and out.
Enthrall: the Lantern Knight acts as a relay in a grid network of Lantern Fey. Every 8 hours, all entities within 120 feet of a Lantern must make a wisdom saving throw (DC 12) or take a point of Enthrallment. Enthrallment stacks like Exhaustion, with 3 levels, that have effect for as long as the individual is within 120 feet of a Lantern:
One point of enthrallment can be removed by lesser or greater restoration, by taking a short or long rest outside the influence of a Lantern, or by stepping into ground covered by a Hallow spell. It is a charm effect.
The Lantern Knight is the guard/enforcer of the Lantern Fey. They patrol the town and guard the Fort: as a default, they are all puppeteering an enthralled level 1 human fighter, from the town guard. (actions: crossbow +5, 1d6+3, longsword +5, 1d6+3, AC 15, HP 14). If the puppeteering is broken, the human will fall out of combat due to the enthrallment.
When protecting the Lantern Heart, the Knight gives up on pacifying aggressors and just goes for the offensive.
Lantern Heart
Large fey/extraplanar, lawful evil
AC 15
HP 160
Speed 0/40 (flying)
STR 8 (-1)
DEX 18 (+4)
CON 20 (+5)
INT 4 (-3)
WIS 16 (+3)
CHA 18 (+4)
Senses: darkvision, blindsight 30feet
Passive perception 13
CR: 8
SPECIAL ABILITIES:
Summon: As an action, the Lantern Heart creates two crystal diamonds (range 90 feet, HP 5). After one round, they warp into Lantern Knights.
Protectors: the Lantern Heart is guarded by all present Pawns and Knights, physically preventing attackers from nearing it.
Enthrall: the Lantern Heart is the source in the grid network of Lantern Fey. If it is killed, the entire network shatters, and the Lanterns are banished to the ethereal plane.
Lair: Immobile and non-responsive, the Liege lord sits in his throne, crusted in fractal crystal, Purple-blue-red iridescent tendrils of congealed light dig into the walls, shifting and warping the stone where they hit. The walls are shrouded with fractal crystal, jutting out into the middle of the room, connecting the floor to the walls to the ceiling. In the air, fragmented flashes of blue and purple indicate the presence of other Lanterns, waiting to defend their leader. And above it all the Lantern Heart floats, connected to the walls by oddly-organic veins of light.
(also, since this place is halfway extraplanar, lantern pawns and knights are completely visible.)
Lair actions: (one per round, at the 20 count)
Crystal Spear: sharp spears of crystal jut out of the walls, floor, and ceiling. DC 16 Dex save, 4D6 damage, half damage on a success.
Shift gravity: gravity shifts at a right angle, causing a wall to become the new “down”. At the beginning of each turn, non-flying creatures must make a dex save (DC 10) to hold onto something: on a fail, they fall 30 feet towards the new floor, taking up to 6D6 damage (bc the room is 60x60x60, but also full of criss-crossing crystal webs to grab onto)
PLACEHOLDER something something something should go here
When you have a near-death experience, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Death comes to your deathbed to take you to the afterlife, but you beg the immortal being to let you live. Reluctantly, Death agrees, but it comes at a price. Every time you reach a moment where you should have died, you officially owe Death one date. This is your 18th date, explain how the conversation goes.
”Oh hey! Sorry I’m late for class, I got kidnapped by fairies because I stepped on a sidewalk crack? Anyway, just spent like three years fighting my way out of the light dreaming dancing halls, finding solace only in the brief puddles of dark the unseelie leave as refuge to lost travellers. Long was I there, snow-blinded by the truth-lying Seelie Sidhe, told I could leave if I did this, and this, and never reaching the end of the task. Until finally I realized my weariness, took note of my dance-bloodied feet, found salve for my eyes for to see past the glamour. Then I saw the frenzy, the toothed eyes, then I saw the charm, the child bones on the floor, but still I hid, for to tell Them I know their truth is to court death.
Then I found strength, stole magic and Sight where I could find it, learned the pattern of the shadows where Their light cannot reach, dug my way up out of the light, and took those who I could with me. Three years I fought. I don’t know how long I was there before that, a year? Two years? Four years, danced to the bone, following every command of the Sidhe? Then three, fighting, my ally the Friendly Dark, friendly only compared to the light. The dark Unseelie will not mislead you. The dark will eat you up, swallow you whole, but it will tell you that’s what it’s doing, not hide it like the Seelie Fey. The dark does not pretend to be your friend. You can work around honest hunger, find agency and places to hide. The light will blind you slowly, tell you pretty tales, take small bites and keep you for later, and only after will you notice the bleeding wounds. If there is an after.
