You Don't Need Anyone's Approval For The Stories You Write And The Art You Create. But It's Also Absolutely

On Theodreseax

Note recovered from the Library of Tarbrind, following the disappearance of it's author, John Heldefson, Field Scholar.

Theodreseax, by his own admission, is a dragon of many flaws: pretentious, selfish, irredeemably paranoid, and unashamedly rude when the occasion arises. He neither favors nor despises humans, treating them with a mixture of distant disinterest and dismissive superiority. Upon our first meeting, I was bound to a contract with my life as its wager, a fact I remain rather displeased with, though there is little to be done now. I cannot reveal his exact location, as that information is under the same.

Theodreseax is a dragon of considerable size, measuring some 450 feet from snout to tail. His slim frame and elongated, spiny horns make him appear even larger than his already impressive bulk. His scales are a brilliant red, with black spines running down his back, and his underbelly shines a softer, burnt orange. His scales, larger than a man’s hand, shimmer like polished gems. While his original breath weapon was a thick, viscous flame, he has since altered himself, allowing him to produce an astoundingly lethal vapor, a trait he learned to protect the unique nature of his hoard. He admits himself to be 495 years old, born on the final day of Emperor Halifax the Tenth, on the fifth day of Malice.

Theodreseax is not a stereotypical (and almost always incorrect) hoarder of gold or jewels that legend makes out dragons to be. Instead, his lair beneath the ruins of an ancient castle is packed floor-to-ceiling with books, manuscripts, relics, and untold quantities of knowledge. His treasure is information, and he brokers it with those who can meet his price—typically another secret or piece of valuable lore. This vast chamber is his domain, a world unto itself where even the air seems heavy with the weight of the knowledge stored within.

Curiously, He does not dwell in solitude. He is attended by a group of beings he refers to as Dragonians or, as some legends name them, Kobolds. These creatures range in height from 4 to 7 feet, their anatomy bearing similarities to humans but with distinct draconic features, including long, lizard-like tails and elongated, snouted faces lined with sharp, triangular teeth. Their scales are small, about the length of a finger, and they appear to be warm-blooded. Their eyes are piercing and bright, and seem to glow with a light from within after the manner of true dragons. While sentient and clearly understanding my speech, they did not converse with me, leading me to believe that their silence is out of duty rather than incapacity. They are dressed in the style of the old imperial maids, who famously refrained from all speech during their duties. I must admit I find this likeness equal parts disconcerting and hilarious. He claims there are more of their kind farther south, albeit they are few in number. I suppose I should not be surprised to find another sentient race beside human and dragon, though I am filled with wonder at this discovery.

Over the course of several days, He and I conversed extensively, during which I was able to purchase invaluable information concerning another topic of interest. He was particularly impressed with my method of locating the Fathomless Tomb, and he did not consider his debt to me fulfilled with the information i requested of him, and he offered me further information free of charge should I ever return. However, when pressed about Celethon or any matters regarding him, Theodreseax was not evasive, but outright refused any information. He seemed surprised and somewhat impressed when I presented the knowledge I had already gained on Celethon, but refused to offer more than correcting me in my physical description. When I inquired about his own secrecy, he insisted he had no interest in the "petty squabbles of such short-lived creatures." I could hardly argue with his perspective.

Upon departing from his lair, Theodreseax directed me through a peculiar wooden door reinforced with wrought iron bars. The door was surrounded by runes I did not recognize, and though I attempted to commit them to memory, I found them fading from my mind like a forgotten dream. Passing through the door, I was astounded to find myself not in some remote wilderness, but standing in a back alley in Tarbrind, many miles from where I had expected to emerge. Truly, Theodreseax is a keeper of endless secrets.

I was worldbuilding two bog standard fantasy species, wise old tree dudes and impulsive little rat guys, when I realized it was far funnier if they had each other's personalities.

The rat guys think fast and talk fast, but they're incredibly conservative and like to cover all the angles before they take any action. This comes with being a prey species: their ancestral environment had lots of clever traps and devious hazards, so you get rat councils wisely working the problem.

The tree dudes speak and move slowly, but they will propose and then do the most insane things you can imagine. They can slot together a rocket in an afternoon and will then use it without so much as a test fire first. They test new potions by quaffing them down, sometimes not even waiting for it to cool (though they're tree dudes, so I guess quaffing a potion just means pouring it over their root legs). This comes from the ancestral selection process too: the tree dudes that won were the ones that took big risks, that grew faster, stronger, and tried new things without worrying about consequences. The tree dudes evolved in an era when they had no natural predators and their only competition was each other.

And this is, of course, initially confusing for any human who makes contact with them. If a giant bearded tree nods at you solemnly and tells you to go through a portal, your first thought is not that he's curious about what will happen to spacetime. And if a hyperactive little rat guy tells you with some urgency that you must accompany him into a ruined city, you won't immediately think that this is step 11 of his branching 27 step plan.

Writing Notes: Realistic Injuries (pt. 3)

Hostile Environments

It’s not uncommon for your characters to find themselves stranded somewhere with less than ideal conditions.

Cold

There are the obvious risks of hypothermia and frostbite.

The time for these to set in can vary drastically with temperature and windchill.

In both cases, warming should be done slowly or risk blistering of the skin and other complications such as shock.

Like burns, frostbite is classified into degrees of severity:

First degree frostbite – Numbness and whitening of skin.

Second degree – Outer layer of skin frozen, blistering likely when warmed.

Third degree – Skin is white or blue and blotchy. Skin and the tissue beneath it is hard and cold.

Heat

Risk of heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

Heat exhaustion is caused by insufficient water and salt intake. It is easy to develop without realising it.

Heat stroke is more severe and often follows untreated heat exhaustion. It is extremely dangerous and can be fatal.

Symptoms of Heat Exhaustion

Headache

Dizziness, faintness

Confusion and irritability

Thirst

Fast and weak pulse and breathing

Clammy skin and cramps

Additional Symptoms of Heatstroke

Hot, dry, flushed skin

Sweating stops altogether

Nausea

Disorientation up to and including hallucinations

Abnormal blood pressure

Elevated temperature

Unconsciousness

Treatment focuses on lowering the body temperature and rehydrating the person as quickly as possible.

Oxygen Deprivation

Apart from the obvious – lack of oxygen is rather bad for you (6-8 minutes for permanent brain damage) – the reason for the lack can have side effects of its own.

For example smoke, chemical or water inhalation can do physical damage to the lungs making breathing difficult even when the person is removed to a safe place.

Exposure to Vacuum

In short, your major problems would be…

Oxygen deprivation

Exposure to extreme cold

Expansion of gases within the body – meaning that holding your breath would be a Big Mistake, but not one you’d live to regret for very long

In a sudden decompression there would also be the risk of decompression sickness (the bends) and of getting hit by flying debris during the decompression itself.

Assuming you survived the initial decompression you’d have about 10 seconds of consciousness to do something about it and about one and a half minutes to live.

Parts of the body exposed would suffer from swelling, frostbite, and interrupted circulation.

Leaky spaceships

50% atmospheric pressure is enough to have people suffering from hypoxia (oxygen deprivation).

15% and you more or less, may as well be in vacuum.

Source: Leia Fee (with additions by Susannah Shepherd) More: Part 1 ⚜ Part 2 ⚜ Word Lists (Sick) (Pain) ⚜ Drunkenness ⚜ Autopsy

"In nature, our sacred creed, Honor the rot that feeds the seed. Praise to life that springs from stone, From death to breath, from flesh to bone.

Glory to roots that delve so deep, To rivers that run on mountains steep. Honor the deep where crawlers roam, Bless the soil, our toil, our life, our home.

Praise the worms that break the clay, Where maggots dance and life decay For corpse lays down, and death takes hold, And in the rot, new life unfolds.

Blessed be the fallen wood, In crumbling mold, the world has stood. In dance of birth, decay, rebirth Praise, O Man, the living earth."

When people say, “nature is my religion” are they talking about flies that feed on shit, maggots in decomposing corpses, lionesses with stained teeth and mouths full of blood? Are they talking about floods and fires and things from which we should always run? Are they talking about carcasses, rot, death?

Or do they just mean “this particular copse of benign trees is my religion”

Celethon the Ancient

Note recovered from the Library of Tarbrind, following the disappearance of it's author, John Heldefson, Field Scholar.

A great dragon of the ancient world, Celethon has evaded discovery for many decades. Once a close friend of the Tarbrind King, he went into seclusion after the Great Slaughter. Although the details of his current status remain uncertain, I believe that if Celethon were dead, the consequences would be felt across world. According to historical records, Celethon is approximately 750 years old, one of the most powerful and revered of the True Dragons. He holds a unique position of authority among his kin, serving as the closest thing they have to a leader. Before the Great Slaughter, Celethon was instrumental in founding an elite order known as the Dragon Knights, or Dragoons, under the Tarbrind monarchy. The Dragoons bore Celethon's blessing and symbol, acting as an elite force of warriors and diplomats between dragons and humans, and acted as the hand of Celethon wherever he could not reach himself. They represented the alliance of human and dragon-kind. Nearly all of them perished in the Slaughter, and with Celethon's disappearance, the order collapsed. The survivors reformed as the Firewatch, who to this day carry Celethon's symbol, though they now defend against other threats. Despite his rather pervasive role in history, especially up until 150 years ago, mentions of Celethon, especially physical descriptions are surprisingly sparse, and in some texts, even seemingly censored. I am looking into the matter with the help of the Library of Tarbrind, though I believe there is another who may offer some insight. Either way, Celethon was described as a truly massive dragon, nearly 600 feet in length. His scales were purest black, each one coarse and leaf-shaped, measuring about the length of a grown man's arm. His breath, said to be the hottest fire in all the realms, was used to smelt the impervious metal wolfram, discovered by the Church of the Raven within a fallen star. In personality, Celethon was calm, wise, and deliberate. He was slow to anger, but in battle, he was a force of unparalleled power, capable of rending enemies apart with ease. His might was displayed when he single-handedly slew the dragon Celic the Black, who had razed the city of Oscillia, ripping the rebel dragon in half over the burning city. Hope remains that this titan of the ancient world will one day surface again. Searches have been conducted for decades, although they have become far less frequent due to the lack of results. Personally, I believe he still watches from the shadows, protecting the lands he once called his own.

Magic and the Second Realm (Part 1)

The following document is transcribed from the heavily damaged original printing of Divine Theory, etc., By Magnus Helderon, Pioneer of magical research. This is the translated and abridged introductory section, for the magic lithograph, and unabridged text, refer to the branch headmaster of the Tarbrind Royal Library, Historical Division.

Introduction to the Text Magnus Helderon is a difficult to track figure. No one knows when or where he was born, or when he died. Only a single small portrait of him was made during his brief visit to Tarbrind. His grave is located in the royal crypts, after his exhumation from an obscure village in western Dragonspine area in 1368.

Magnus, a "folk wizard" hailing from the relatively unsettled southeastern region, was, by most accounts an "esoteric madman" who practiced some slight degree of what is commonly referred to as folk magic. He was reportedly taught by his grandmother to cure warts and witch for water and rain, among other things. He is believed to be the first person to discover the utility of the "Ember" found scattered across the world after the great cataclysm in 1253. Rather than share his findings, he delved into hermitage and studied the phenomenon ceaselessly. Despite having almost no formal teaching, He produced a 1758 page codex known as the Divine Theory, Of Magics, Embers, and Dragon-bone. It was written entirely in the Oldspeake, and was nearly unintelligible in handwriting. He personally delivered the book to the miniscule magician's guild of Tarbrind, only six months after the conclusion of the great famine, where it sat in storage for nearly a decade, completely unread.

The tome was recovered while the guild was preparing to relocate, its numbers bolstered by the recent emergence of ember magics following the incineration of Horus Tob some 18 months prior. By this time, the book was heavily water damaged. It rested in the hands of the Scribe's guild for nearly 3 years before the readable portions were translated and compiled into the Theory of Magics, a textbook used in teaching the fundamentals of magic to this day. (approx. 150 years later)

The first section, and final third of the book, some 700 pages total, were completely beyond recovery for several more years, before more advanced recovery techniques were developed. While some sections remain lost to history, What was recovered changed the fundamentals of magic forever.

Here is an audio transcript made with ElevenLabs. AI was NOT used to write this document.

I got an ad in my dream. :(

Because a few have asked

Teaboot's Super Okay Guide To Developing A Brain That Makes Art Work

Or: How to get your eyes to talk directly to your hands without your brain micromanaging you

Or: How to draw better

⚠️ Warning for super fast gifs cause they all gotta be 5 seconds or less or else my phone shits the bed ⚠️

1. Do the following exercises. Don't just think about doing them or figure out a clever way to not do them, just do them. Yes even the boring ones and the ones that look ugly

2. If you have any pride, crush it. Kill it. Crunch it up into itty bitty bits and feed it to the ducks at the park. You have no talent and don't know anything and everything you make is hot garbage. Believe that. Make yourself believe that. That is where you live now. Surrender any indignation or shame you have to the void and embrace rock bottom.

3. Read step 2 again and actually do it this time. My methods will not work if you try to make this process pretty. Don't.

4. No drawing from your imagination on these. Actually draw from real life. If it's boring like eating day old oatmeal in in beige room but your usual art still feels wonky then I'm talking to you specifically. You can't write poetry until you learn words and yes learning words is as dull as horseshit sometimes but do you wanna be Robert Frost or not

5. Pick up some cheap paper and a ballpoint pen. Grab a small object, between the size of your hand and the size of a microwave. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Put the tip of your pen to the paper and press "start".

Now without looking at your paper, only looking at the object, draw the object in as much detail as you can. Do not break contact between the paper and the pen tip until the timer goes off.

This is a continuous line drawing, and you're doing it in pen because you need to know what rock bottom looks like and rock bottom looks like no eyes no erasers no shading no do-overs.

6. Sit down in a public place. As someone walks by, draw their their body in as much accuracy as you can before they are no longer in view. Once you can't see them anymore, the drawing is done. No adding details. Pick someone else and do it again. No "base sketch". Just them. If it barely looks human you're doing great

7. Get a black pen. Put a small object on a dark, flat surface. Now draw the surface without drawing the object. Don't draw the outline of the object. Don't do a sketch. Just draw the surface that is visible around the object until only a silhouette remains. No time limit just do it.

The ability to draw accurate proportions from sight comes from learning to see what exists between a thing and the absence of a thing and if that hurts to think about then you need to do it more

8. Keep doing these until you are Ready.

9. You will know when you are Ready. It will make sense when you are Ready. You will Understand.

10. Unwind with some goofy shit so you don't forget why you wanna improve to begin with