Locked Tomb Archives

"It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away.”

- Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

Because some of it brings her fulfillment and satisfaction in spite of the hardship, when it's for him. "You thought it was your agenda? Huh." Because it's her life and she can do what she wants with it, and what she wants is to devote it to him. "I never would have asked for that. I never had rights to that." "Sure. That's why I gave them to you."

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'Broken Tablet' is a game where one artist draws an artwork, then blurs it and sends the blurred image to the next artist, who draws what they see. And here’s what we’ve got! Here's a short post with my thoughts on the project's organization and progress. Thanks to all the participants for their wonderful work!

The participants in order:

Fonserel (Tumblr, Twitter, Telegram channel)

JackAl ( - )

Lutyashka (Tumblr, Twitter)

Dani (Tumblr)

Griddle ( - )

Gemini (Tumblr)

Toooceanblue (Tumblr, Instagram)

Kadzu (Tumblr, Bluesky, Twitter)

Poster (Tumblr, Instagram)

Undermoon walker (Tumblr, Telegram channel)

Lookserratic (Tumblr)

Squonk (Tumblr)

Polemе́stria (Tumblr)

Livmor (Tumblr)

Karakuliii (Tumblr, Telegram channel)

Bespoke horror (Tumblr)

Pyrrha and Paul my beloved 🫶🏻

Apparently my favorite ship dynamic is just 'world-weary, neglected, guilt-ridden sweetheart who masquerades as an asshole due to a deeply ingrained fear of rejection' x 'weird, emotionally-inexpressive, super-powerful being, absolutely riddled with religious trauma stemming from the belief that they are an aberration'.

Also, it's important that they never even kiss.

Yes, it's specific, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Like there's no way they're peeling skin and writing on it, and it would be awful for that. There's no way of doing that and getting a texture that crumples and uncrumples like paper, or rather, no way outside of the one below and then why would you only use the skin? That's extra work for no benefit.

But they ARE absolutely taking and processing human corpses and basically speedrunning it into oil / whatever and turning that into plastic products. Probably not only human parts—I'm sure there are parts of plants they don't have much use for, animal byproducts, etc—but absolutely a high volume of human parts. Gideon's mostly-polymer clothes are surely also a high volume of human parts for that matter. They don't waste resources in the Dominicus empire! :)

So on one hand, nah the "skin mags" aren't just sheets of skin, and the slang term for porn exists independently, but liiiiike... they're not NOT-skin, you know?

And on one hand, it could easily vary by House, but at least on the Ninth it seems like bodies do get to be buried for a while and then exhumed later for use. But then, that might just make it easier to work with? Let them rot in boxes and once everything has broken down you're working with pure thanergy. Allow a "respectful" grieving period and also not waste more effort on converting resources than you have to, win-win.

And! 👀 You make a great point about it not "registering" as organic(/human). Could be a chemical thing, or the non-human elements could typically dilute it too much. Though there IS also Corona's off-hand mention of Ianthe's shuttle class requiring the good stuff, "thalergy-enriched, not just hydrogen blend." Maybe necros CAN basically like, oil-bend. Pal's barrier sure looks like it and necromancy is so incredibly Fossil Fuels 2.0 in general. Maybe flimsy just doesn't carry enough to be useful for anything but reading psychometrically.

Maybe part of the process extracts as much thanergy (and thalergy if there's any left to be had in any materials) as it can, and/or there's just not enough left compared to how rigid the material is to affect harder plastics. Bone is like, THE thanergy-retaining substance and honestly as small as the Houses are I imagine more bones go into manufacturing of different kinds (everything from decor to war ships too!) than made into servants, especially outside the Ninth. They probably only have to replace constructs as they wear out every so often, they don't need a constant influx. But that's a tangent, I was saying because even Harrow is like, absurd with bones, possibly the literal greatest non-Lyctor bone magician in history prior to her ascension, and even with her whole being 200 souls advantage, forming a key out of THE thanergy substance is basically unprecedented and difficult to achieve. So that's another reason even if it's Technically organic it wouldn't be surprising necros don't really interact with it.

in the throes