Seán

Shadows & Sorcery #178 This week, we follow the one-armed warrior Kastaine as he descends into the Crypt of Ice, we join a reluctant Veney as he searches the Profaned Depths, and we walk alongside a lone knight as she seeks...

No one who seeks out the mountain comes prepared. But then, who could possibly guess what else has been compelled to quest within the Dragon's Deep? Join a knight who finds out in...

shadowsandsorcery.substack.com/p/shadows-an...

#Fantasy #FlashFiction #ShortFiction #ShortStories #IndieAuthor

Chapter 33 of The Path of Poison is coming along NICE, 2000+ words in, and we're the waterfront of Farhaven where very soon things are gonna kick off👀

In Silverden (and practically nowhere else) it represents order, sublimity, deep connection. It has legions of monks, venerates (vener-aht, not vener-ate), and sages who study these things. It has saints, too, and the dead as its ordinators. It has no temples save for the world itself!
2/2

#MythAugust
9. The World Serpent, when associated with Voerlund, is as a guardian with its landwights and saints--the most influential view of the deity. It protects its people, their vows, oaths, bonds, and aspirations, and it protects the landscape. Its temples are round and domed. 1/2

#PretendPanel
Absolutely not and I think the concept has become an absolute scourge in the field as a whole. For the love of ART stop conceptualizing yours and other people's work as a checklist of narrative devices and story beats. Some people need to be beat over the head with Duchamp's Fountain.

bookish checkpoint 🕯️

🔸 last book you read: Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Grammarye by Arthur Gray
🔸 your current read: Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard
🔸 last book added to your tbr: you expect me to keep track of that?
🔸 next read: maybe The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

So this results in a remarkable similarity of beliefs in the Sun wherever it goes: to most cultures, even wildly different ones who've never met, to whom it is an important figure, light is a guide, it reveals things.

Kinda yeah! The other funny thing about this is that people's perceptions of things in the world are for a *reason*. There is a creator deity, the Demiurge, which envisioned meaning and purpose for everything it made, which people pick up on, and add to in their own ways.

Ah the relic isn't even has good as the normal one😭

I have an alternate answer to my own: Prospero and Roger in The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs. They're both very sweet and silly wizards. They have that quality implicit trust and comfort that close friends of many, many years have.

Oh boy they gave him more AOEs...whatever will From think of next...

Shadows & Sorcery #178 This week, we follow the one-armed warrior Kastaine as he descends into the Crypt of Ice, we join a reluctant Veney as he searches the Profaned Depths, and we walk alongside a lone knight as she seeks...

No one who seeks out the mountain comes prepared. But then, who could possibly guess what else has been compelled to quest within the Dragon's Deep? Join a knight who finds out in...

shadowsandsorcery.substack.com/p/shadows-an...

#Fantasy #FlashFiction #ShortFiction #ShortStories #IndieAuthor

#MythAugust
8. The World Serpent might be my most developed deity. It's the only one with distinct denominations and interpretations. In Voerlund, it's a distant guardian deity who mostly works through intermediaries. In Silverden, it's an all-pervasive ordering force. In reality, it's kinda both.

YouTube video by Behind The Movie Music 26. Seekers ( Sekiro : Shadows Die Twice Complete Score )

Good god that Senpou Temple battle music is next level

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp3w...

Close up of my calico cat Callie with her face completely smooshed into a blanket, she's VERY comfy

My calico GOBLIN Callie standing in her hind legs peeking around a doorway, I can't believe she's real

My late stray cat Deebs standing on some floor tiles with his little tail curled up beside him, he looks attentive and polite

My late stray Deebs standing on a windowsill behind some blue blinds on a sunny day, looking quite pleased with himself

Happy #InternationalCatDay to my nearly 19 year old little beast Callie, who's recently discovered a second kittenhood, and my little guy Deebs who passed away recently

Pretty happy with how quickly and effortlessly Carloman and Casimir became buddies in issue 100 of Shadows & Sorcery. It can be accurately summed up in the below image. Common goals and dark enlightenment nets you friends!

I yearn for a rot god who also doesn't sneak in "rebirth" as some kind of attempt at being complex. Absurdly single-minded beyond reason. Everything that bubbles up from the filth is born decaying. Entropy with no heat death. An unsustainable and impossible force.

What if the seasons didn't follow a a pattern. Overpopulation Spring > "everything is dying" Autumn > Summer's "Abundance of Nothing" > cold, dark Winter Necropolis Land.

Things need to be Born to be Abundant, and then to Die to be Dead. But the forces governing that are out of whack!!

Shadows & Sorcery #178 This week, we follow the one-armed warrior Kastaine as he descends into the Crypt of Ice, we join a reluctant Veney as he searches the Profaned Depths, and we walk alongside a lone knight as she seeks...

They're after uncovering something that shouldn't exist during the Bray Lane renovation work. Veney hasn't slept in days and now he has to deal with it! Typical.

shadowsandsorcery.substack.com/p/shadows-an...

#IndieAuthor #FlashFiction #Fantasy 🤏📚

Cover of the Dark Adult Fantasy novel, Merchants of Light and Bone. A massive serpentine monster skeleton dominates the right side of the artwork. It has a crystal with a light in its mouth, posed in profile. Many tropical fish and birds appear to be moving from the bottom left to the monster’s skull. Beneath, there are many tropical trees and plants, plus capybaras and elephants with jewels on their face. The MCs, Amiere and Su are near the bottom, looking forlornly over the ocean. Their mushroom-dog stands nearby, looking in the opposite direction. A crevice of blue crystals is poking out from underneath. Overall, the cover is dominated by yellows and oranges.

Today is this book's second birthday and I am always sad I couldn't market it. It deserved more attention, and I have no idea how to push it for readers. It's utterly impossible to talk about it in any appealing way. It's dark and sad, but also heart warming, and it's also deliberately slow-paced

#AugustWorldbuilders
8. This world is mostly non-theistic. Their "divine" is:
-the thoroughly broken Nature shamans talk to
-remains of ancestors who survived the Apocalypse of the Mountains
-the stars that magicians seek escape to
-the thing on the Throne of Night that vampirists secretly worship

8. Yeah I had to google "enneagram". I'm not really one for personality category quizzes (I don't particularly like the concept, and I don't think Carloman would either). Now give him a good "what [x] are you" uQuiz and we'll talk.

What if the seasons didn't follow a a pattern. Overpopulation Spring > "everything is dying" Autumn > Summer's "Abundance of Nothing" > cold, dark Winter Necropolis Land.

Things need to be Born to be Abundant, and then to Die to be Dead. But the forces governing that are out of whack!!

Just some ✨️ideas✨️

God of Spring: unending and unchecked growth, constant birth

God of Summer: abundance, the sun, noontime, light, fire, the field and furrow

God of Autumn: unending and unchecked decay, no birth

God of Winter: silence, stillness, sleep, midnight, the moon, dark, burial grounds

In truth, the Serpent was always present and close by, but it did distance itself from most human affairs, so people would have to make things happen themselves, and not rely on its guardianship. It was, and is careful about what it takes into its care. Its touch is subtle but profound.

2000 years ago in what became Silverden, a monk had a vision of the Serpent's immanent power, and started a schism. To them, the Serpent's coils are akin to a Tao-esque, quasi-animist force that orders the world. Their ancestors are ordinators, and their saints have seen the Serpent in its fullness.

This resulted in landwight and saint cults which persist to this day. Landwights are spontaneously manifested lifeforms which serve as minor tutelary deities and "agents" of the Serpent's protective power. Saints are those to whom the Serpent granted rare direct protection.

A long time ago, it was far more present in the world, directly protecting the deeds and aspirations of the ancient Voerlunders to see them to fruition. Only the Voerlunders started repeating bad habits of their primordial forebears. The Serpent began to back away at this.

#MythAugust
8. The World Serpent might be my most developed deity. It's the only one with distinct denominations and interpretations. In Voerlund, it's a distant guardian deity who mostly works through intermediaries. In Silverden, it's an all-pervasive ordering force. In reality, it's kinda both.

Well I just feel there's only so many times I can say "and this one's fuckin stupid too, just write short fiction where none of this applies, NOVEL-SLAVES!!" before I'm blocked en masse😂😂😂

Ya'll are lucky I'm so profoundly self-conscious, I swear