Drew these for Blood & Faith, my Trench Crusade TTRPG, some I ended up using, some I didn't
in order: Praetor of the Silk Bed of Sloth, Wretched, Yoke Fiend, infernal Trench Beast, Ur-Witch, Jinn, Leper-Pilgrim and Shocktrooper of the Order of Saint Maurice and Lazarus
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There's this category of TTRPG where the seemingly only selling point besides maybe artwork is giving players permission to jerk off to their own moral purity as manifest from buying the TTRPG.
Candela Obscura is the strawman put forward in this post, but itâs a game that actually exists:
[This was partially written by @ashweather, another member of the A.N.I.M. team.]
Let me preface this by saying that I donât think that the makers of Candela Obscura are morally evil, or that I think less of your moral worth if youâve played or enjoyed this game. Itâs just that, at best, the game has a really obnoxious and cowardly tone and at worst has a lot of shit in it that looks really bad if you think about it for more than 5 seconds.Â
If you think that tabletop RPGS are art (and we do), then they can be analyzed like art. They can have unfortunate implications or reflect unexamined reactionary politics. This post is going to be taking screenshots from both the quick start guide and the full rulebook to make this point - while the text between the two is broadly similar, the quickstart guide is more overtly finger-wagging and hostile, saying the quiet part out loud.Â
The thing about Candela Obscura is that it takes place in a fantasy 19th-century England/USA, but it really wants to pretend that it doesnât. It wants the aesthetics of this setting and almost every trope that comes baked into it, but also wants to act like itâs above all that. It wants to have its cake and denounce it too. Itâs so pants-shittingly terrified that it or the players might say or do something âproblematicâ that it loops back around to being incredibly offensive.Â
To take just a few examples, the text is absolutely riddled with this kind of sentiment:
(What the fuck do they think an âexplorerâ is? Also, I think I have some bad news about 19th century doctors.)
Okay. Look. A lot of this is gesturing at principles that are unobjectionable or even useful to keep in mind when writing a setting like this. Yes, itâs ideal to have a non-Eurocentric historical understanding of technology and culture. Yes, refugees are human beings with their own valuable skills and perspectives. Yes, if you uncritically write an expy of Victorian England or late 19th-century New England, youâre gonna end up with a bunch of insane stereotypes (especially Orientalist ones) that you probably shouldnât just blithely put to the page without thinking about them. And yes, bigotry is a bad thing, obviously.
The problem is twofold: The first is that Candela Obscura feels the need to take a patronizing tone towards its own readers, as though they were incapable of engaging critically with the setting or subject matter on their own terms. The second is that despite all of this finger-wagging, Candela Obscura absolutely does not present a setting with any critical thinking put into its basic construction. (We checked, by the way. None of what we are about to present is supposed to be in-universe propaganda. If it is intended to be, this is not made clear at all in the text itself.)
The game takes place primarily in the city of Newfaire and its surrounding environs - the Fairelands. The Fairelands are prosperous and idyllic, and all but outright stated to be âthe good guys.â All of the âproblematicâ aspects of the societies the game is emulating are either scrubbed without thinking about the implications of scrubbing them..Â
(Donât worry guys thereâs no colonialism here, this version of fantastical New York was settled on a Terra Nullius where nobody lived, right over the ruins of an ancient society with a mix of Egyptian and Mesoamerican coding who practiced strange and corruptive magicks. Remember, reader, this game wants you to go out of your way to avoid reproducing any harmful stereotypes from the era.)
..or are present without any historical or structural reasons for them to be present:
(Donât worry guys, sex work is lawful, profitable, safe, and socially acceptable! Oh yeah all the sex work happens in shady, spooky-looking crime districts that cops monitor, filled with drug-filled dens of illegal vice, though. By the way, there is no brothel listed in this districtâs points of interests, or any further discussion of what sex work in Newfaire is actually like.)
There are so many examples of this that we could spill a novelâs worth of digital ink talking about it. (We just donât have time to get into, for instance, their adventure inspired by the âradium girlsâ where the primary victim of the dangerous substance in question is a customer who is already dead when the adventure starts and not the workers who make the products.) Honestly though, this paragraph says more than we could in a hundred pages:
Here we find out that we are reading a TTRPG setting that has the same understanding of bigotry as the movie Crash. No institutionalized bigotry, just âbad actors who hold terrible beliefs.â Just bad apples, with no personal history or cultural roots to their ideas, who presumably sprung out of the ground one day declaring themselves Republicans. Not only do these bad actors come from nowhere, they donât go anywhere either. They donât belong to any social movements, they donât get organized, they donât push for regressive political changes, and if they ever do, they certainly never succeed at those goals.Â
You see, despite these bad apples, the soil they grew from is pure. And you know something else about the idyllic, almost utopian Fairelands? Theyâre under assault.
Thatâs right! Hale (which the Fairelands is a part of) is under assault from the dastardly, corruptive forces of⌠uh, âOtherwhere.â (Yeah, do they all have hooked noses and recessed chins too?) Thatâs where all of the dirty foreigners invaders come from, who want to take away the prosperity of the Fairelands!
Oh, or maybe their whole culture were all coerced into doing it by an evil rock or something, which is definitely less xenophobic. But whatever, who cares what the reasons were. The Fairelands are under attack, and as the dominant power in the world, they need to defend themselves. Against the âcolonists.â With nukes chain lightning.
(That last sentence continues on âtens of thousands..â You get the picture.) So, whew, glad thatâs over! Otherwhere is still really dangerous, though. They might even be developing weapons of mass destruction of their own:
You know, if Candela Obscura were a person, I have a feeling I wouldnât want to hear its thoughts on Israel.Â
You might be asking, where do the PCs fit in this? Well. The PCs are members of the in-universe organization Candela Obscura. They are an enormously powerful and widespread secret society of sometimes-cops sometimes-vigilantes who fight against the corruptive forces of magick to keep humanity safe. They keep dark secrets, âperform questionable acts in the name of the common good,â and operate entirely without oversight or responsibilities to anyone other than this organization. We are assured that this organization has the best interests of the regions they operate in and of all humanity in mind.
Itâs actually fine - cool, even! - that PCs are secret police/CIA agents who engage in morally dubious acts for the purported common good. Newfaireâs society being deeply flawed is fine! The Fairelands as a political entity furthering an explicit narrative of being persecuted is fine! The problem is not that any of these elements exist, the problem is that Candela Obscura is utterly allergic to examining them. The text seemingly does not understand the setting it has presented at all.
The game wants to be anti-conservative, but the only kind of story it can produce is one of heroes who are ultimately aligned with the dominant power of the world, preserving the good and righteous status quo by fighting against corruptive, foreign, magical forces. âGay transgender women of all races can be holy knights secret police fighting to protect the good kingdom democracy from the endless hordes of the evil dark race that has threatened its borders for a thousand in recent years!â
On a first read a while back, I said Candela Obscuraâs gameplay mechanics make it sound like a game more meant to create âactual-playâ shows than to be actually played. On examining the text more closely, thatâs more true than I even realized at the time. The reason the game has all these bits about how not to be problematic - all of these instructions for avoiding engaging with the more controversial aspects of the setting - is because itâs not really intended as a game to be played in a private environment. Itâs intended as brand guidelines for putting on an actual play show. If you google Candela Obscura, the IMBD page for the actual play series appears before the store page for the rulebook.
It seems like the game really doesnât want you to play a character outside of your own culture. And sure, as stated earlier, it is a good idea not to have a mysticized idea of other cultures, or represent them in a callous way. For a private game played at home, though, this is not really something you need to dedicate pages accounting for. Nobody outside the table has to hear a poorly-done accent or contend with a less-than-perfectly researched religious portrayal - and if there is a pervasive issue with someone being bigoted or leaning on stereotypes at the table, frankly, that is a problem that is outside the scope of a TTRPG to address.
However, if you are an actor on a show, portraying people from different cultures comes with a whole different set of (much more justified) baggage. Candela Obscuraâs approach to player attitudes on the setting makes so much more sense as brand guidelines than it does as a codification of how to play a game. "Donât have actors appear in insensitive costumes on camera." "Donât have actors say foreign words they donât know how to pronounce on camera." "Remember not to have your white actor do a Romani 'fortune-telling' scene on camera." "Donât show anything that could negatively affect the perception of the brand."
Weâd like to end this by contrasting this attitude with Coyote & Crow, a game made by indigenous Americans, and one that is also actually meant to be played. Coyote & Crow invites all players to (respectfully, in good faith) create characters from indigenous cultures. The creators have challenged those who avoid their game on the basis that âthey donât want to be disrespectful by playing itâ because that would involve portraying a Native character - in the end, who is that helping? That attitude results in potential players who remain just as ignorant of Native American cultures and - more importantly - donât buy or support their game!
Plague Marine for a Black Crusade campaign. Born on a feudal planet where they worshiped Nurgle as Mother Matagot, a deity of parasites, got taken as a youngling to be made into a member of the Death Guard. Both a warrior and a doctor, the mutated wings are those of his pet giant mosquito, which got fused to him by his deity as a reward.
The bugs part got heavily inspired by these two posts
Of all the weird contrivances that superhero media have by virtue of genre, I think the no-kill rule is one of the easiest to justify. "Why don't these paragons of virtue extrajudicially murder people?" fuck dude, I wonder.
every day I learn bot comments on ao3 are stooping lower and lower
anyway if you get a comment like this, chances are that they are bot and their goal is to do whatever it takes to get you to delete your work, most certainly (from what Iâve heard) itâs because they want to âsafelyâ steal your work, use it to train their ai without you being able to rightfully claim ownership of your work since âthereâs no proof that the work was stolen/was posted elsewhere first by youâ because the original source has already been deleted.
THEY ARE ALL BOTS. at first it was âao3 is deleting fics and your entire account will be affected unless you delete the fics yourselfâ then it was âthis work contains contents that are illegal and they have already reported you and your fic to the policeâ (yes, thatâs how desperate these bots are), and now itâs this.
report their comments to ao3 for spamâin this case, specifically, I think you may be able to report them for harassment tooâand donât pay attention to them, most importantly donât delete your works, donât feel discouraged by their comments. remember that they are bots and they mass comment something like this on peopleâs works at random to get people to delete their works. (or even if theyâre not bot, they are still pathetic bullies who donât deserve your time or attention.)
MORE ABOUT BOTS AND SCAMS PLAGUING AO3âS COMMENTS SECTION HERE
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Praetors and Yoke Fiends are blasphemous hybrids borne of fallen angel and beast, but never of man. The Nephilim, offspring of angels and man, are grave violations of the Covenant of Hell, and any attempt to conceive them brings forth the wrath of the divine. But if the celestial blood is diluted with that of beasts, hybrids may be created by coupling with the children of Eve.
Known as Quaestors, these craven hybrids are neither Bound by the Laws of Creation nor enjoying True Free Will, trapped between their abhorrent nature and the denial of salvation. It is rare for a Praetor to claim their bastard children, too disgusted by the humanity they hold. The mortal servants of Iblis instead are honored by their presence, and see them as living idols of their Infernal Patrons and something to aspire to. Scorned by the hierarchies of Hell, they inevitably either become slaves of the Court, or soldiers for the Heretic legions, taking their anger for existing onto the creation of YHWH.
A Demonic little freak I sketched for my Trench Crusade TTRPG Blood & Faith
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I think that the Tawkin creations of the Iron Sultanate should have more variety than "fleshy" in appearence. I doubt that they use human flesh as raw materials for them (Islam forbids mistreating human corpses), so I think they should have some more animal-looking parts.
Anyway, this particular Lion was commissioned by a noble of the Sultanate to protect and keep company to their Daughter/Wife, and at some point decided to identify as a woman and wear the veil. Haven't figured out a name for her yet
Worldcat is my bestie and my one true love!! Not only does it tell you what library a book is at, but it also price compares different used book sites against each other for easy view! It's how I got Tarot For the Master for $10!!
Oh, and since I have your attention: z-library (books and textbooks) and sci-hub (gatekept scientific journal articles.) I just ripped a textbook for class off z-library and snatched a required reading from sci-hub. Life is good and education should be accessible at every stage and station of life.
Ax'senaea the Thrice-Possessed, the Executrix Primaris of Laodomida
Ax'senaea the Thrice possessed is my favorite minor 40k character, a woman so vainglorious she received a nod of true admiration from Slaanesh. The entirety of her lore is on page 359 of the Dark Crusade Rulebook, plus a name-only cameo in the Siege of Terra.
Ax'senaea was born as the last member of a lesser noble house in the Calixis sector, in a world dominated by petty rivalries between nobles. By the age of thirty, she had gotten rid of all the competition and seized power over her world, and started to call sages and strategists at her court, gaining their knowledge and then killing them. Among these sages hid a Chaos Sorcerer, who taught her a spell to summon a Keeper of Secrets, hoping she would get possessed. However, Ax'senaea's self-obsession and overwhelming willpower managed to crush the Greater Daemon, granting her the daemon's powers (mind you, she wasn't a psyker, so it was a feat of pure, unadulterated mental strength)
Ax'senaea was obsessed with total control over her domains and her own psyche, so over the course of the next decades, she used her new warp-powers to gain more and more control over her planet and her subjects, abusing the daemon within her to fuel her ambitions and maintain her youth until she fully consumed its power, so she decided to summon and bind a new Keeper of Secrets. Over the next century, she consumed a second and third daemon, and gained total control over the whole system. When she performed the ritual a fourth time, Slaanesh shemself granted her daemon princehood, both to mock shem servants who had failed, and out of admiration for her work in twisting the minds and souls of billions with her dark perfection.
The entirety of Laodomida and its population was dragged in the warp, and to this day is now nothing more than an extension of Ax'senaea's will, who, in her derangement, is convinced the beings of the warp are rogue aspects of her nature, in need to be controlled.
Some fun details from her Dark Crusade Stat Sheet:
She wears a Flesh-fused Power Armor, and amusingly, she is noted to not wear an helmet
Her only non-combat Talent is Disturbing Voice, which increases her Intimidation but reduces Charm, Intimidation and Survival are her only non-combat options seemingly, which makes sense considering her personality and other abilities.
She has a Fear Rating of 3, meaning anyone who meets her for the first time may take intense psychological damage. For compairison a daemonette is Fear 2, a juggernaut Fear 3, and a great unclean one is Fear 4.
She has a size of 6, which is the same as a Krootox or a Sentinel Walker
She wields the Whip of Perverse Agony, which is capable of striking at lightning speed, can't be parried, and penetrates armor.
Finally, she has an ability called Subjugation at First Sight: Anyone who looks upon Ax'senaea is so taken with her majesty that they must defend her. Anyone who looks upon her and fails a Willpower Test will be unable to move as they stare upon Ax'senaea in dumbstruck awe. Especially weak minds instead will immediately move to defend Ax'senaea against any attackers. The text itself advises to keep one's eyes closed when attempting to fight Ax'sena
TL;DR: local woman so self-obsessed that she snorted three greater daemons, and Slaanesh was forced to make her a Daemon Princess to prevent her from doing it again
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Marisella and Scroc, our PC for a humurous one-shot we had some time ago. An orc sorceress obsessed with magical girls and a half-orc half-elf rogue, both shunned by their tribe of proper orc pillagers
@ everyone in the notes talking about physical performance: if that were the case, then sports would be divided by physical performance. thatâs a thing you can measure. thatâs a thing that varies by individual. a weak man and a strong man would be an unfair fight in boxing/wrestling/MMA, which is why they divide those sports up into weight groups based on physical performance. but they also further segregate them based on gender. chess is segregated by gender for no reason but sexism. if itâs actually about skill and physical ability, then measure those and separate people by those metrics. donât do some bullshit gender segregation and pretend like men and women are inherently on different levels no matter their individual abilities.
Remember that time male swimmers were pulled out of training because Kate Ledecky was leaving them âbrokenâ by swimming better than them? Remember how she didnât even notice, because she was busy actually training?
Shooting is a sport that has no reliance on strength and so any allowance for gender variation is irrelevant.
The last time there was a mixed competition (1992) a chinese woman named Zhang Shan won it.
this is why they drug test Serena like crazy. the believe no woman should be that good. let alone a black woman.
and black women have always been considered âmanlyâ and less feminine.
also can we talk about how surfing is segregated as well? like how the dude who won this years international surfing cup or whatever was given $30,000 worth of prize money, while the woman who won the womenâs comp was only awarded like $16,000 of prize money???? or whatever it was. but I know it was either half or less than half of what the man won. like why canât they get the same prize money and when theyâre competing internationally in the same competition? they surely have the same level of skill and talent.
The pay gaps, not to mention lack of sponsorships for women athletes who donât look like models is insane. If you weigh over 250 pounds, no one will sponsor you. Itâs why most female Olympic-class weightlifters live in poverty/out of their cars.
Reminder that in international (and usually national too) womens athletics anybody with 5m/mol of natural testosterone or higher is disqualified. (See legal case of Dutee Chand vs IAAF.)
Do you or somebody you know have PCOS? You are banned from international womens athletics because you are supposedly in posession of an unreasonable advantage in sports.
Folks disqualified for hyper-androgenism in womens athletics.
Francine Niyonsaba
Caster Semenya
Dutee Chand
Margaret Wambui
And more
-
Why are those disqualified overwhelmingly black and brown? Because testing is case by case when an athletes performance âraises suspicionsâ. They overwhelmingly test athletes of colour, for being too fast and not meeting white expectations of femininity.
Racism and intersexism(discrimination against intersex people) in sports is abject evil. Desegregate sports.
I wanna add that sports have never been fair, never will be by their very nature, and nobody ever expects them to be until it gives them an excuse to be racist, intersexist, and transphobic (especially transmisogynistic). Like, even with the physical ability division proposed in the posts aboveâwhich, TBC, I agree with wholeheartedly, i just wanna prove a pointâeven with that, sports would still be unfair. Letâs say we have like, height classes in basketball. Nice and simple, letâs assume this 100% evens out all height advantages. Thereâre other physical differences. Maybe one player has longer arms or legs, which make them better at some things and worse at others. And then you get into the financial angle; one of the biggest predictors of someone getting better at something like this is whether they have enough time and money to train. And the way to get time is to have money, because the more money you have, the more convenient you can make things, which gives you more time, and if you donât have enough money, you need to focus all your time on getting more money.
So basically, we should abolish capitalism and sort sports by stats rather than perceived sex. But also sports arenât fair. Theyâre not an even competition. Thatâs not a bad thing, but what is bad is when that truth is denied and sports are misrepresented for the sake of attacking marginalized people (see posts above).