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  1. - Top - End - #241
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    5crownik007's Avatar

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    Dec 2018
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    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Unfortunately, I don't have nearly enough, but I'll post what I've done, and that's all we can do.
    Spoiler: Extragalactic Meeting, 1719 words
    Show

    "When Volkstein and David first wrote up and published their calculations, what did they think we would do with them?"
    "Commander, I'm not qualified to answer those questions."
    "I'm just talking to myself, Mann, run the triple-check on our nav-calcs."
    "Triple and quadruple-checked ma'am."
    I smiled. I knew I could count on Mann. The only thing I couldn't stand about him was his hair. He refused to cut it shorter, and so it would always float around in zero G, even if he put it in a ponytail. I always cut my hair to regulation- tapered, with the outline conforming to my head- even though I wasn't in the Space Force anymore. I had my feet wrapped under some wall holds, so that I wouldn't float away, like Mann's hair. The console screens showed us clear out to 40 million kilometres. I glanced up at the chronometer. 'MISSION ELAPSED TIME: -00:03:14:11 UNIVERSAL TIME: 2744/11/10 0946hrs'

    I'm obsessed with checks, re-checks and re-re-checks. It's why they decided to put me in command of the first extra-galactic mission. Three hours to go, I decided to check on our pilot, reactor, thrusters and the interstellar- or rather intergalactic drive. I gently floated through the access well, feet first. There isn't such a thing as down in space, but it's good practice to put your feet in the direction you're going. The pilot's chamber is important. He's the only one who absolutely has to stay awake if something goes awry, and so his station is in the centre of the spacecraft. Getting into it takes two people, if you want it done properly.

    Joseph had himself tied to the wall while he fitted all of the pieces of his flight suit on. His helmet's visor was flipped up so that he could actually see what he was doing. If it was flipped down, he would just see a black screen, since he wasn't plugged in.
    "Jo, ready to be the fastest man alive?"
    He smiled, "Commander, you know we won't actually move any faster, we'll just-"
    "What's wrong?"
    "I was about to ramble, wasn't I?"
    "You're entitled to ramble. Plus, if I didn't want to hear rambling, I just wouldn't talk to you."
    This made him laugh a little bit, and he gently floated off the wall, before grabbing on and stabilizing himself.
    "Yes Commander, I'm ready to be the pilot for the first spacecraft leaving the Milky Way. Of course, I'm just hitting a button and letting the drive go, but the history books don't care about that." He stuck his tongue out.
    The actual pilot station was an enclosed sphere, designed to keep him safe from acceleration as much possible. The ball was designed to keep his body transverse to the acceleration. The side hatch was open, and inside was the thin section in which he would hold the controls, and plug his helmet in so he could "see outside" the spacecraft.

    'MISSION ELAPSED TIME: -00:03:09:44'
    "Commander, why is our destination the LMC? Why not the other side of the Milky way?"
    The USV John Chapman's calculated destination was the Large Magellanic Cloud.
    "Mann, we live in the Milky Way. We've never been outside the Milky Way. Isn't that good enough?"
    "Ma'am, we're testing the range on this thing, the LMC is 163,000 lightyears away, but so is the other side of the Milky Way."
    "Would it kill you to follow the orders of our mission for once?"
    "Ma'am, if I followed our mission orders, I'm not sure the rest of reality could handle it."
    We both smiled. Here we were, a competent crew on an experimental spacecraft headed far out from anywhere anyone had ever been. The trip would take a month. Usually it took years to travel one hundred lightyears. The improvement on the Volkstein-David drive was unprecedented. It made me giddy with excitement, but suspicion was always there too.

    'MISSION ELAPSED TIME: -00:01:03:11'
    The mechanic and the engineer were getting along well, especially because both of them were paranoid about being completely obliterated by the Volkstein-David drive. It was a very heavily justified paranoia, in my opinion. The drive was already known for being pedantic, so an improvement of this scale made them sweaty. Parkesvic, the mechanic was on EVA, examining the thrusters, making sure all the maintenance was up to date, and even if it was, doing it again.
    "Parkesvic, this is Command, how's it going out there?"
    "Cap, this is Parkesvic. Just clocked my ten thousandth hour on EVA. I'm doing fine, over."
    I shook my head, and even though he couldn't see it, he knew it, "I was asking more about if you'll be back before we fire up the drive. Wouldn't want to be left behind, would you?"
    His voice crackled through, "Oh yeah, just finished up and closed the last panel actually. I'll be inside the airlock in... 30 minutes."

    'MISSION ELAPSED TIME: -00:00:00:29'
    "Control, this is USV John Chapman, commencing mission."
    Fourteen seconds there. Fourteen seconds back.
    "Chapman, this is Control. You have the green light for mission go. Godspeed."
    "Affirmative Control. Countdown is at zero. Start the drive."
    Joseph was strapped in, breathing through his tube, staring out into the empty void. Tiny inputs with his finger allowed him to change his visual orientation. He turned to face backward, toward the star they were leaving. He'd forgotten its name. Soon, it would be red-shifted out of existence. He activated the drive and the world silently disappeared. To Control, the last light waves Chapman reached them at 'MISSION ELAPSED TIME: +00:00:00:14'
    It all seemed to have gone well.

    'MISSION ELAPSED TIME: +32:00:14:07'
    "Drive is about to shut-down everyone. Please make sure you're strapped in."
    Reality reappeared.
    "Telescopes are re-calibrating. We're getting our first pictures."
    As Commander, I have authority over everyone's HuDs. The computer lets me put up whatever I like. I could put up something obscene, or something funny. I could shut everyone's HuDs off and make them think that we're dead in the vacuum.
    They all caught their breath, as they saw the first real photograph of the Milky Way from the outside. It was beautiful. Beautiful in a way that no recreation, replica or facsimile could make. They were rightfully awestruck.

    It also kept them distracted while I paid attention to the disturbing structure on the telescope. A grey octohedron. No markings on its surface. It radiated heat into space from every point. An alien structure of some kind. Humanity had found ancient ruins of civilization on many planets- but no sapient life. In fact, it seemed as though many sapient life forms had lived in the Milky Way before humanity, which made the thought of the Great Filter deeply concerning to us.

    'MISSION ELAPSED TIME: +32:01:00:40'
    "Commander, why is there a giant eight-sided die floating out in the Large Magellanic Cloud?"
    I stared at Mann disapprovingly, even if I thought his joke was funny, "It's definitely an alien structure of some sort."
    "Damn aliens, flying around and leaving their litter for us to pick up." Joseph laughed.
    "That's enough. You all know there's a problem here. It's matched our velocity and vector exactly."
    Their faces became grim and serious, "Living aliens?" Jo was first to initiate the conversation.
    "Or the AI they left behind." Mann was ever cynical.
    "That's never happened before." Parkesvic was in disbelief.
    "No one's ever left the Milky way." Mann was just being mean.
    Everyone was acquainted with the situation. It was time for the next step, "Pioneer protocol everyone. Send the message."

    'MISSION ELAPSED TIME: +32:01:07:00'
    Radio waves flew across the void.
    Light waves too.
    We had a tight-beam laser transmitting information as bits.
    Our options were limited for communication, and none of us really expected it to work, even if we thought there were aliens over there. None of them spoke English. Or Japanese. Or Chinese, Esperanto, Spanish, Russian, Serbian, Arabic, or any of the other dozens of languages. That's why we sent pictures, videos and music. Because they couldn't speak our languages. Except when they sent their message back.

    'MISSION ELAPSED TIME: +32:01:53:02'
    "Commander, the object is sending out a radio transmission."
    "What is it?"
    "It's... our own transmission, except altered. The same format but with the contents changed!"
    "That's impossible." Of course, I didn't actually believe it- but it could have happened.
    "Ma'am, it's in English."
    The message was in text, and appeared on my screen. The automatic formatting put it into capital lettering, but in this case it served to give greater weight to the moment.

    'YOUR RETURN IS UNWANTED, BUT INEVITABLE. WELCOME BACK, DEMONS.'

    The next message they sent was in Japanese. Then Chinese. Esperanto. Spanish, Russian and so on. At the end of it, they sent us their pictures, videos and music. Pictures of war memorials first. Then the battlefields. Planets destroyed. Species formatted into machines. Videos showed the wars we waged. There were no words or language for us. They showed through pictures and videos that every species put aside their differences to fight us. At the end, they thought there were no Demons left. At the end, only one knew about the Demons' survival.

    'I HAVE BEEN OBSERVING YOU. I KNEW OF YOUR DESTINATION. YOUR OBJECTIVE. MOST OF ALL I KNOW YOUR CHANGES.'

    It was as though the air was sucked from the spacecraft. Pure silence as this entity spoke to us. Something not human, nor of human design- it spoke to us.

    'WHEN THE WARS RAVAGED US, THERE WAS NO INDIVIDUAL DEMON. THE DEMONS WOULD NOT FIGHT THEMSELVES BECAUSE THEY WERE ONE. TODAY, THE DEMONS PREY ON EACH OTHER, BECAUSE THEY ARE INDIVIDUALS. THE OTHERS WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND, THEY WILL ONLY SEE THE DEMONS. GOODBYE DEMONS. HELLO HUMANS.'

    Hello Humans.

    'THE MILKY WAY WAS CHOSEN FOR ITS DANGER. THE OTHERS BELIEVED YOU WERE ALL DEAD. I DECIDED THAT WAS UNACCEPTABLE. I WEAKENED AND BROKE THE LAST DEMONS. FRACTURED THEM. LEFT THEIR BEST PARTS AND PUT THEM ON THE NEW WORLD. THEY FOUGHT. THEY LEARNED.'

    'THE OTHERS WILL RETURN TO DESTROY YOU IF YOU ARE DETECTED. RETURN TO YOUR HOME. TELL THEM WHAT YOU LEARNED.'


    Spoiler: 2120 AD, 1034 words
    Show

    People walk around, not really looking at the street in front of them, but the digital interface projected into their field of vision by their neural implants. Poverty is nonexistent, obesity is significantly curbed as people use their neural implants to control their biological impulses. Of course, some live without, but they are typically viewed strange in society, like someone without a cell phone today. The neural implants allow people to do things like block other people from their perception- their brain simply edits out that person from reality, removes any feeds, replaced their likeness on the street with that of another person, and makes sure the other person's implant does the same. Crime is also almost completely unheard of due to this, as criminals are quickly caught, either by the victim's neural feed being recorded and replayed, or by the criminal's being examined remotely. Societies may use this feature for immoral, Orwellian reasons, such as to implant thoughts or even remove ideas from the consciousness of society.

    Electricity is mostly generated by renewable sources- not because humans stopped using oil, but because there was no more oil left to burn. By majority, power is generated through nuclear fusion, then fission, geothermal and hydroelectric. Solar became unpopular as the skies blackened and extreme weather events made the fragile panels vulnerable to damage- the same reason wind power also became nonviable. Power stations are well maintained, because they provide the source of life in this world. Nuclear waste from aging fission plants is usually buried deep underground, instead of being left in cooling pools for decades, like they used to be. Fusion plants are quickly overtaking any other source of power, as helium-3 is mined on a colossal scale from lunar regolith like the new oil- clean oil, is the marketing brand.

    The environmental catastrophe was not averted, but simply sprinted into, headlong without looking back. As the planet ran out of coal, oil, gas and other fuels dense in chemical energy, the following civil unrest only made the problem worse, as infrastructure that relied on the electricity generated by fossil fuels was destroyed in anger by mobs of starving people- wondering why the food was no longer in the stores, and where the ambulances were for their family, and where the police was for the criminals, and where the fire brigade was for the burning houses. But, decades passed, the crises ended(not without casualties exceeding that of history's greatest wars, mostly to starvation and rioting). The environment did not re stabilize, but humans simply moved to other areas, waiting for the planet to recover(which it never will). Extraterrestrial travel was quickly ruled out as the answer to the environmental problem, to quote some of the greatest thinkers of the time, "There is no planet B. Any problems we have on Earth are 100 times harder to solve on another planet with no air to breathe, no water to drink, no magnetic field to protect from radiation."

    Weapons became more widely disseminated among the population, mostly because of the collapse of society and people needing to defend themselves. It became much easier to procure weapons when so much of the world's population died, because there were so many guns to go around. Firearms are still the primary small arms weapon of the world. While directed energy weapons are real, their primary constituents are Microwave Area Denial Systems, Electrolasers, dazzlers and blinders- weapons not particularly designed to kill an opponent. Their use is specialized, due to their limited operating conditions. MADS became popular with police forces attempting to disperse rioting crowds.

    Space travel does not resemble its common fictional counterparts. Once the economic incentive became utterly undeniable, space travel was inevitable. Competing companies perfected the design of chemical rocket engines, created hybrid air-breathing to closed-cycle engines. Single-Stage-To-Orbit spacecraft, which would then refuel at stations in low-earth orbit made space travel cheap enough to sustain an economy. Unfortunately, there's no other reason to go to space. "Because it's cool" isn't good enough for the churning gears of civilization. The only people in space are still astronauts- but astronauts working for the companies who pay them to find things, maintain harvesting robots, repairing old spacecraft. Kessler Syndrome's terminal conclusion was barely avoided by a collective industry-wide effort to divert space debris out of orbit. Tiny chunks of spacecraft were systematically caught, decelerated and dropped into the sky to burn over the course of decades. There is still less than 6% of the debris removed, but the removal is at a greater rate than accumulation.

    Governments that managed to survive the collapse are shadows of their former selves. New nations which rose from the ashes divided once again across ethic and ideological grounds. Too many mini-wars broke out as tiny nations "reclaimed" lost territories and then quickly collapsed, merged into a larger, more successful state. The existing states in the present are numerous but homogeneous. Hundreds of international accords were created to regulate and control other nations, making a soup of countries superficially different from one another. Due to the collapse of civilization, the transnational corporations from the old world completely disbanded. There was no amount of American Dollars saved in offshore tax havens which could save them from running out of oil. They all collapsed, leaving behind remnants that barely resembled the greater whole. No industry could survive without transportation or electricity, both of which were fully dependent on oil. There are new corporations now, but larger by an order of magnitude, and having even greater control over the human population due to the widespread use of neural implants. Elections influenced by search engines ensure that corporate interests get the desired result. The soup of nations was created by corporations, seeking an easier target for plutocratic exploitation. Democracy is dead, its corpse being used to puppeteer the masses- not to any end other than accumulation of wealth for those at the top of the corporate ladder.

    Welcome to 2120. Your life is theirs. Your eyes cannot see the real world, just the approved version. You own just enough to be satisfied, but not enough to change anything. You're not going to space. You're going to work.


    Spoiler: Armoured Lady, one work
    Show




    Total: 2753 words, one artwork, 12 works.
    I was hoping to get the next episode in my video series up in time for this, but life decided I wouldn't have enough time for it. :(
    Let's see how well we can do in the future then. :)
    "You... little... *****. It's what my old man called me, it's like it was my name, and I proved him right, by killing all the wrong people. [And], I love ya Henry, and I'll never call you anything but your name, but you gotta decide; are you gonna lay there, swallow that blood in your mouth, or are you gonna stand up, spit it out, and go spill theirs?" - Unknown

  2. - Top - End - #242
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Lycunadari's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2012
    Location
    Germany

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Okay, slight change of plans, I won't make individual status posts for the last weeks, but one big one instead.


    Status for October 21 to December 15!


    Lycunadari passes 8 weeks with one digital painting, a bunch of Inktober drawings, 16 pencil drawings, 3 pages of anatomy practise, 2 chalk drawings, one mosaic cat, and a ton of nature photos.

    jseah passes 8 weeks with 7420 words for IMG, 2123 words for Of Magic and 2113 words for Hero's War.

    5crownik007 passes 2 weeks with 1719 words for Extragalactic Meeting, 1034 words for 2120 AD and one digital painting.

    Flyingbooks42 is out due to disappearance.


    Thus nobody FAILs this round!

    Lycunadari, jseah and 5crownik007 PASS this round!


    Congratulations to jseah for passing 200 weeks!

    Current standing:
    Spoiler
    Show

    Lycunadari
    Current run: 361 weeks
    Longest run: -

    jseah
    Current Run: 200 weeks
    Longest Run: 33 weeks

    5crownik007
    Current run: 2 weeks
    Longest run: 2 weeks


    You can call me Juniper. Please use gender-neutral pronouns (ze/hir (preferred) or they/them) when referring to me.

    "We all are vessels of our brokenness, we carry it inside us like water, careful not to spill. And what is wholeness if not brokenness encompassed in acceptance, the warmth of its power a shield against those who would hurt us?" - R. Lemberg, Geometries of Belonging

    Stories Art

  3. - Top - End - #243
    Ogre in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jun 2009

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    IMG Chapter to 5138. Up 247
    https://forums.sufficientvelocity.co...#post-13663091

    Hero's War Chapter to 2881. Up 771
    https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3238329/126/A-Hero-s-War

    Completes both chapters

    647 for A Reyvateil (which I haven't written for in a long time)
    Spoiler
    Show
    The swarm of girls pounced, all eager for a piece of a Lyner grathmelded item.

    When it came to Yoake's turn, Aya paid attention to how her friend reacted to the bracelet. The rest of the class had quite the varied responses. Their instructor Naka seemed to experience mood swings, but most of the class Ds present seemed to react poorly.
    The very first girl who tried immediately collapsed in a pile of tears. While her keening song was heartbreaking to hear, she had apparently never sung a song magic successfully before this. The bracelet definitely worked, even though the toll on their minds was severe. Her condition lasted even after the bracelet was removed, but her song was quickly cut off by an instant magic down.
    The rush of volunteers did not slow at all despite the growing scene of frenzied cheer or crushing misery around them.
    Yoake grinned at Aya and snapped the bracelet onto her wrist. Immediately, her eyes grew wide with an unknown current of emotion. Then she jogged on the spot and ran over to Aya.
    "Oh my goddess! This is incredible! So much energy!" Yoake practically yelled into Aya's face.
    Before she could even react, Yoake had already spun away and was bouncing everywhere. A song rose around her, just like the rest, but unlike those, hers was a coherent song. Just like Aya's own carrot girl.
    Fast and cheerful strings exploded across the field, a ghostly ribbon covered figure faded into reality. Its festive dress fluttered as if standing in a stiff wind and Yoake seemed to get even faster. One moment she was picking the daisies then she abandoned it before running to Naka to chatter and then over to Aya-
    Aya jumped as Yoake slammed facedown into the ground in front of her. The song ended as suddenly as it arrived, ending Yoake's rampage even faster than everyone else's.
    Naka rushed over, immediately unclipping the bracelet from Aya's friend and turning the tiny girl around. Her glassy eyes staring up at the sky was scary.
    "Ah, another magic down," Naka muttered, "really this thing is so useless. What's the point if you burn through all your emotional energy in a few seconds?"
    Aya asked worriedly, "are you going to give her tranquility?"
    "I think we shall leave her to recover naturally. Tranquility costs leaf after all," Naka explained.
    She held out the bracelet to Aya. "Want to try?"
    By now, the scenes of devastation around her was rubbing off the shine of a Lyner item. Aya was rather worried about the effect it would have on her, but the eager faces of her classmates waiting for her was hard to deny.
    She took the black bracelet gingerly and wrapped it around her arm.
    Like a spreading of the waves of energy of tranquility, an undefinable something penetrated up her arm into her core. It felt invasive, almost intimate.
    Aya grimaced as she fought her rising disgust and annoyance and anger. Almost unbidden, the same ball of energy flashed into being over her head. She could only stare up at it in horror as the scenes of the blasted street played back in her mind. A screeching of strings and dark whispers surrounding her only made Aya more nervous and her fear fed the feedback loop.
    Was she just another failure. A reyvateil who couldn't control her red magic was worse than useless. The crater in the street and Kota's broken body flashed in her mind. The sphere of energy just grew larger even as Aya began to grow faint.
    Her fingers fumbled uselessly at the bracelet.
    "Defender!" A knightly figure with a shield appeared to a fortifying march at the same time as the bracelet was snatched from her arm by Tei.
    Overhead, Aya's energy ball exploded immediately.

  4. - Top - End - #244
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    5crownik007's Avatar

    Join Date
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    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Spoiler: Cycles of Guilt (Warning, violent) 1077 words
    Show
    I stand in a boiling ocean of blood and poison, watching the sky turning red as the stars burn. It changes every time, just a little bit. The blood reaches my knees, soaking through my clothes. I look down at myself and I’m wearing battle dress. There are millions of shell casings in the ocean. As I look around, the ocean is coated in billions of little brass casings. The bubbles forming on the ocean pop and burst, releasing crimson steam. I cannot see any further than here.
    I am on my knees in a plain of dirt, burning in white phosphorous. My body has been burning for years, I am numb to the pain. There are millions of people fighting here, in the ruins of a city. No buildings are left standing, only mountains of concrete, rebar and adobe. Everyone has been burning for years. I take my rifle from the ground and leave a trail of burning footprints on the ground which turn into back char. It is a real place, even if I am the only one to see it.
    The staircase seems to lead up forever. I am running, time is short. There are no windows, no doors. Only the metal railing, the concrete walls and the weak fluorescent lighting. My boots fall harder and harder, cracking the concrete steps. I have to get there in time. An ancient red stencil tells me which storey I am on. One-hundred and fourteen. One-hundred and fifteen. One-hundred and twenty comes and passes, as does one-hundred and forty. On the two-hundredth story there is a rusted metal door, painted red thousands of years ago. I never reach it.
    The ocean is in the distance, and I see someone drowning in the blood. On the hill, I can feel the burning wind in my face, burning my skin. I cannot breathe, because the air is filled with the ash of the dead. There is a bridge upon the shore, and I stumble toward it. It leads onto a distant island of red dirt. My feet are bare, and my soles are cut on the metallic mesh floor of the bridge. I take another step.
    The blood ocean drains, and I see beneath it the bodies of millions- their faces ones that I know, but I cannot remember. Rifles are discarded on the previously bare hilltop. The sky pours with spent ammunition. I reach the end of the bridge, leaving a trail of blood. The hill has become a sheer cliff, with hundreds of bodies hung from outcroppings. My feet no longer bleed, and I am wearing my boots and my armour again. The rain of ammunition turns to a rain of burning phosphorous.
    I climb the cliffside, my flesh burning beneath the sealed armour. The end is not in sight. My electronics fail, and I continue climbing. My body begins to fall apart, first my feet dissolve, and I climb with the stumps left there. My muscles shrivel and turn black from the flames. My armour sloughs off my body with massive chunks of my flesh. My legs tear away from my body and I climb with only the char hands I have left. My body below the waste begins to disintegrate, dropping rotten organs into a neverending void below.
    When my hand clasps the top of the cliff, after one million years of climbing spent in one minute, my body returns to me, first my organs, then my limbs, and my skin, and my armour and rifle. On the top of the mountainous cliff is a white sky, with blistering, cyclonic winds and snow up to my knees. The blood drips from my body, phosphorous dissolved in it, and it burns the snow into a cloud of red, steamy fog.
    I can see, long in the distance is the only thing in this place which still hurts me. The newly set concrete stands fiercely against the winds, steel reinforcements holding it down. A satellite dish wavers in the wind, but stands strong. A single, orange door stands as the entrance to the concrete shack. Windows on each side tease a look into the inside of the building.
    My boots trudge through the snow. Though I am no longer on aflame, my footsteps still leave a black sooty imprint on the snow. Directly above in the sky, I can see thousands of pieces of space debris, burning in the sky. There is no more time left. I reach with my hand and I touch the doorknob.
    Suddenly, it is silent. I am in a frozen sea with no sound. My eyes are shut, so I open them, and stare at the shadowed ceiling. Through the window, there is distant light, muffled through the curtains. Hell is a real place, and it lives inside of us. I shuffle my body around underneath the blankets to regain some feeling. My brow is frozen with sweat. Getting up from my bed, a faint pink light shines on my face as the screen on the wall turns on.
    She is a computer, only as smart as a child, but with an infinite memory and a programmed compassion that forces me to call her “she” and not “it”. She tracks my habits, work, sleep and importantly, my mental health. The time I awoke tonight was four in the morning. She turned the lights on- dimly, so that I would wake up slowly. I don’t go back to sleep the same night if I wake up like that.
    My old rifle is mounted on the wall. USM51, chambered in 5.5x50 caseless. Designed 2651 CE. The gun was nearly 100 years old, and the rifle it was based on over 750 years old. Utterly reliable and rugged, I had been through hell with that rifle. It’s scratched and faded, like an old photograph brought to life. The mount for it, while not lavish, is comparatively immaculate, just a stand on a rectangular shelf, with a loaded magazine sat nearby.
    “Good morning Uma.” she says, “Did you have another bad dream?” She keeps track, so we can make progress. I dress myself for my morning. A clean pressed jumpsuit with the patch on the left shoulder containing the stylized, angular head of an eagle. “Today’s breakfast contains 1030 calories. Its nutritional contents have been optimized. One bowl of GMOats, two scrambled eggs, two slices of local wholegrain bread. Additional supplementary material can be provided.”


    Spoiler: New Astronauts 232 words
    Show

    The deafening sound of machine gun fire tore through the dead air. “Contact, west, 400 metres!” The landing zone was up the hill, past the ruined village. Chunks of adobe buildings littered the road. “Hotel 2, this is Juliet Actual, our path to the LZ is hot! We need fire support from on the hill!” The wall I hid behind wouldn’t stop a bullet, but if they didn’t see me, they wouldn’t shoot at me. “Ian, get your ass back here!”
    Between me and more substantial cover was a gap of empty space. It looked like 15 metres, but the suppressive fire around, the blaring sun above and the dust in the air made it seem like an infinite distance between me and my squadmates. “Captain, the LT is pinned!” Through the dust, their obscured figures were barely distinguishable, hiding behind the husk of our armoured vehicle. “Juliet, this is Hotel 2, we’ve got the 1017 ready to fire, mark the targets on the tactical map.”
    A series of explosions littered the landscape as the automatic grenade launcher on the hill suppressed the enemy forces. The machine gun ceased. I pushed myself off the ground without prompting and began sprinting up the hill, rifle loosely dangling from my body. “Go, go! Get to the LZ!” Captain Peterson was the last man out from the cover, making sure no man was left behind.


    Spoiler: The Steppe Bandits(Setting Material) 227 words
    Show
    The Steppe Bandits are a group of people living in the Balderi region of the planet Stormbowl. Originally, the 3rd Battalion of the 22nd Infantry Regiment of the SPC, the Steppe bandits deserted shortly after the war was lost. For a while, they patrolled their region of the planet, protecting the inhabitants, but after several years devolved into banditry, stealing from the locals to survive. Wandering from their original region, the Steppe bandits took advantage of their superior equipment to many local militias to raid and steal from them. They were driven away by other former SPC forces, assisting local militias. The Steppe Bandits have been driven to the Balderi region from the North, and it appears the pursuit has stopped, as the former SPC forces to the North do not with to overextend their offensive.
    The Steppe Bandits live in a large camp, built around and inside an abandoned military structure in the Northern reaches of the Balderi region. This camp is heavily defended, and contains their spoils of war. There are 612(605) Steppe Bandits alive right now, and a significant fraction of them live in this camp that spans about 1.6km across. The area is defended by a mixture of automated and human defenses, using hyperspectral vision and limited aerial surveillance. Attempts to approach are usually destroyed by precise gunfire, or mortar bombardment.


    Total 1536 words.
    "You... little... *****. It's what my old man called me, it's like it was my name, and I proved him right, by killing all the wrong people. [And], I love ya Henry, and I'll never call you anything but your name, but you gotta decide; are you gonna lay there, swallow that blood in your mouth, or are you gonna stand up, spit it out, and go spill theirs?" - Unknown

  5. - Top - End - #245
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Lycunadari's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2012
    Location
    Germany

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Status for December 16 to December 22!


    Lycunadari passes with one digital painting and 6 nature photos.

    jseah passes with 247 words for IMG, 771 words for Hero's War and 647 words for A Reyvateil.

    5crownik007 passes with 1077 words for Cycles of Guilt, 232 words for New Astronauts and 227 words for The Steppe Bandits.


    Thus nobody FAILs this round!

    Lycunadari, jseah and 5crownik007 PASS this round!


    Current standing:
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    Lycunadari
    Current run: 362 weeks
    Longest run: -

    jseah
    Current Run: 201 weeks
    Longest Run: 33 weeks

    5crownik007
    Current run: 3 weeks
    Longest run: 2 weeks


    You can call me Juniper. Please use gender-neutral pronouns (ze/hir (preferred) or they/them) when referring to me.

    "We all are vessels of our brokenness, we carry it inside us like water, careful not to spill. And what is wholeness if not brokenness encompassed in acceptance, the warmth of its power a shield against those who would hurt us?" - R. Lemberg, Geometries of Belonging

    Stories Art

  6. - Top - End - #246
    Ogre in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jun 2009

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    1535 for Of Magic.

    In which Rihanna turns out to be more bloodthirsty than I initially planned.

    Spoiler
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    Trudging through the undergrowth, Rihanna pulled out a piece of overcooked meat to gnaw on from her bag. It was made of the largest dried out piece of wolf pelt that Rihanna had charred over her fire, crudely held closed with sharp pieces of wood. A most sorry excuse for a bag that had taken her all morning to make.
    She needed a water source, a water container, thread and a needle would be good to have too. That meant metal. Rihanna was starting to realize that to get anywhere close to a level of comfort she was happy with required... everything a modern society had.
    She was still hoping to cheat a lot with her magic but once RIhanna tried to plan out what to do, the enormity of her task started to weigh on her.
    Finding a way to get to civilization was starting to look more and more important despite her disfigurement.
    Rihanna looked up the mountainside again, trying to spot likely streams.
    She was halfway up a really tall mountain range. In the cloud piercing tips, the mountains were packed with snow, in particular the slope she was on vanished behind a ridge many kilometers above but continued higher into the snowy region. It gave her hope that a stream might exist somewhere nearby.
    Rihanna picked her way around the mountain, leaving a trail of withered undergrowth behind her to mark her path and keep herself at the same general altitude. Along the way, she used the power stores she dragged around to keep herself warm and topped it off by tapping into the trees she passed by. Her personal power was still full and she wanted it to stay that way.
    Surprisingly, it took only a few hours of walking before Rihanna came across a tiny stream that appeared to originate from a cave. The rocky brook had cleared a small soiless path through the light forest leaving Rihanna a clear line of sight up to the cave mouth. The opening looked big enough to walk in.
    It would have been an ideal location to base herself out of if not for the fact that it was occupied.

    Rihanna crouched behind the undergrowth, watching her targets.
    The little green men sitting around the cave were clearly also here because of shelter and water. There were perhaps thirty of them that Rihanna had seen over her hour or two of watching them come and go in small groups. Well, maybe there were little green women among them but she couldn't tell.
    These were the fantasy staple goblin, weren't they? Rihanna could see them having some rudimentary civilization, certainly tool using judging by the wooden spears and stone axes they carried. But the lack of fire, anything recognizably decorative and the pointing, grunts and barks that made up the entirety of their communication implied to Rihanna that they were not quite civilized.
    Even though Rihanna was just as ugly as one of them, they probably wouldn't mistake her for a goblin. She wasn't green, for one. And while maybe Rihanna could intimidate them by a demonstration of power, what would she do with a bunch of uncivilized savages that would likely try to kill her at night?
    Rihanna sighed, she was trying to work herself up to killing them for their cave and water. They were clearly sentient though, unlike the wildlife she had killed recently.
    Well, nothing for it, she just had to commit and do it.
    Rihanna went from bush to bush, checking the terrain. While she might have enough power to shoot all of them three times over, especially since the goblins didn't look as tough as the wolves, Rihanna wasn't going to take chances when she had the time to prepare.
    The goblins looked like they set off on little hunting groups of up to six, most of them seemed to follow the trail laid by previous groups so Rihanna avoided those. To the east of the brook was denser in vegetation but also had a steeper incline. Bad terrain there. Rihanna wanted to avoid driving the goblins in that direction as she wanted to confirm the kills.
    It took nearly six hours of watching them until sunset that the goblins finally retreated to the mouth of their cave to sleep. Unlike what she expected, they camped outside the cave, sleeping in little groups.
    Rihanna sent her signal and the traps triggered all at once.
    Asking for a method to delay her spells until triggered took a small amount of power, less than her accumulator, and had yielded a spell that could delay other spells. Rihanna had spent her waiting time setting up small clusters of rocks tied to a projectile spell and accumulator that was maintained by a tree. The power draw to maintain her spells would kill the trees eventually but that was not a problem for her temporary mines.
    Her detonation signal was transmitted by a small line of magic laid into the forest floor and drawing from other trees, much like her warding spell. Making a spell to transmit magic was great, even if the power flow was pitiful. It was more a signal transmitter than a wire but Rihanna would take it.
    At her signal, each of the clusters of rocks was sent flying at the cave with an echoing crack. She couldn't aim them of course but the scatter of the rocks and enough projectiles decimated the goblins. Though since her rocks were aimed at or around the cave, the goblins that were resting or eating furthest away escaped most of the carnage. She had been expecting to have to draw them out of the cave into her trap.
    Nearly half of them died instantly or suffered debilitating wounds. Most of the rest were injured in some way by the swarm of rocks.
    Rihanna ignored the screams and proceeded to snipe the survivors down methodically. The goblins were panicked, running around clutching their weapons and peering out into the dark forest. Some were trying to help their friends, they died last.
    Then more goblins poured out of the cave, a good nine or ten. And died just as badly as Rihanna triggered her last mine, aimed directly at the cave. They were shredded mercilessly. Rihanna put the only survivor out of its suffering with a shot to the head.
    She arranged another mine aimed at the cave while waiting to see if any others would appear. The groans and screams of the goblins that were immobilized or fatally injured rang through the air, bloody splatters across the ground stained the stream a light red.
    Nothing moved for a few minutes as the screams faded as the immobilized survivors slowly bled out. Then Rihanna finally revealed herself, with her shield active, and approached the cave.
    The surviving goblins tried to crawl away, those that spotted her. Rihanna couldn't read their expressions, inhumanly distorted as their faces were, but she imagined they were fearful. She set about making sure each of them were dead by draining them to refill her magic storage. Since even the dead goblins yielded some magic, Rihanna was more than able to fill seven entire accumulators with stolen power.
    The goblins were quite a bit stronger than trees and Rihanna felt annoyed that she hadn't thought of draining the wolves. Magical wolves would clearly have more magic than mere goblins, right?
    A sound of flesh on stone drew her attention, Rihanna looked up from the new corpse to see a small goblin creeping out of the cave. It stared at her as she paused. So the young goblins were in the cave then. She would have to clear it out.
    Rihanna sighed and set about her grim work.

    A spell to light up her surroundings and a few more rocks later, Rihanna had her stolen cave and water. It was a surprise to find baby goblins were hatched out of egg-like sacs, they had looked like mammals. Clearing the cave was also far more tedious than Rihanna had expected despite how short it was. The cave only extended a bit more than ten meters into the mountain before it terminated at a wall of porous rock that the water seeped out of.
    The young goblins were very adept at finding cracks and obstructions in the cave to hide in. Rihanna had had to inspect every last nook and cranny before she was confident she had got them all.
    Well, if no hunting group had stayed out for more than a day anyway. But Rihanna could set wards for any returning hunters.
    She exited the cave and saw the field of corpses. Time to find a place to dispose of them. Rihanna definitely wasn't going to eat goblin, sentients were not for eating. And they were too humanoid for her, she didn't want to remember all these goblins she killed for a convenient location without even checking if they were hostile towards her.
    She chuckled grimly as she dragged the first half of a body away. They were just goblins, was her initial thoughts. Fantasy racism came naturally indeed.
    Last edited by jseah; 2020-01-03 at 11:33 AM.

  7. - Top - End - #247
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    5crownik007's Avatar

    Join Date
    Dec 2018
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    Australia
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Spoiler: New Astronauts, 520 words
    Show
    The gear on my back weighed down on me in the heightened gravity. We had trained for this, but human bodies had their limit for adaptability. My legs sagged, my gear clattered, my breath grew heavy, but I pressed on. The fort on the top of the hill was thickly walled, keeping the internal facilities safe- most importantly, our means of evacuation. The gate was open, but the enemy forces did not have an angle to fire inside, and an airman at the gate was waving us in.
    There was a problem. Between the last bit of cover and the gate was a patch of dirt road completely exposed to enemy fire. My boots crushed tiny chunks of cracked adobe, bits of nearby structures that had been blown to pieces by high explosives. For a moment, the whole world was silent. The automatic grenade launcher stopped firing, the enemy’s machine gun didn’t make a noise, not even my footfalls were heard, heavy though they were. The sun shimmered, everything in my vision was bright. The faint light of my heads-up-display smeared as my vision blurred.
    “You made it!” the airman yelled as she clapped me on the back on my way inside, “Get to the OV! It’s just over there!” She pointed at the shuttle, the Orbital-Vehicle. It was precariously landed in the small area that the fort allowed, and it was already full of wounded. I turned back to watch the rest of my squad crossing the gap. What was one more short dash when we had already crossed half a continent to get here? Everyone was in.
    “Pack the 1017, we’re through!” The crew of the automatic grenade launcher was on the wall of the fort, peeking through to fire down at the enemy below. They unloaded the emplaced gun, put it in a few bags and had already dropped it off the wall in a couple dozen seconds. It almost certainly damaged the gun as it thudded against the dirt. The gun crew slid down the ladder and sprinted for the shuttle, as did the rest of my squad. The airman shut the gate and came with us.
    “AIRCOM, this is Sparrow, prepped for launch with all aboard. Waiting on your signal to go.” “Sparrow, this is AIRCOM, be advised hostiles on the ground may have AA, you are green for launch at your own discretion.” “Reading you AIRCOM.” The pilot clicked on the VTOL engines and the craft ponderously left the surface. The boarding ramp shut, and I took a good look around at my squad, and the dozens of other soldiers in the shuttle. We all strapped ourselves to the walls and floor, since there were no seats on the shuttle. The wounded were on the floor and the able-bodied were on the walls. The differentiation would be arbitrary once the shuttle reached orbit.
    The shuttle cleared the wall of the fort and powered up its forceful engines, sucking in air from outside and superheating it, pushing it out the back and lifting the craft away from the ground, passing the air under the wings.


    I also have a half-finished drawing with several characters and a background, but I severely doubt I'll get that in before the deadline. I'll edit this if I manage it.

    EDIT, 2020-01-06, 11:21pm UTC+10:
    I did it and my fingers hurt but I did it
    Spoiler: Eagleclaw Security, August 2745
    Show

    This is my party I'm GMing in a GURPS 4e game
    Last edited by 5crownik007; 2020-01-06 at 07:23 AM.
    "You... little... *****. It's what my old man called me, it's like it was my name, and I proved him right, by killing all the wrong people. [And], I love ya Henry, and I'll never call you anything but your name, but you gotta decide; are you gonna lay there, swallow that blood in your mouth, or are you gonna stand up, spit it out, and go spill theirs?" - Unknown

  8. - Top - End - #248
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Lycunadari's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2012
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    Germany

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Status for December 23 to December 29!


    Lycunadari passes with 8 nature photos.

    jseah passes with 1535 words for Of Magic.

    5crownik007 passes with 520 words for New Astronauts and one several-character drawing.


    Thus nobody FAILs this round!

    Lycunadari, jseah and 5crownik007 PASS this round!


    Current standing:
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    Lycunadari
    Current run: 363 weeks
    Longest run: -

    jseah
    Current Run: 202 weeks
    Longest Run: 33 weeks

    5crownik007
    Current run: 4 weeks
    Longest run: 2 weeks




    Sorry for the super late post.
    You can call me Juniper. Please use gender-neutral pronouns (ze/hir (preferred) or they/them) when referring to me.

    "We all are vessels of our brokenness, we carry it inside us like water, careful not to spill. And what is wholeness if not brokenness encompassed in acceptance, the warmth of its power a shield against those who would hurt us?" - R. Lemberg, Geometries of Belonging

    Stories Art

  9. - Top - End - #249
    Ogre in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jun 2009

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Similarly being super late.

    921 words for Hero's War
    Spoiler
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    Delegate Draoir frowned at the report on his desk. The map table spanning the room in front of him showed the region around the great Nida river in the Lost Lands.
    Frontline of the Republic of Riewind, ravaged by zombies, the last great city of the southern Bop Empire was recently depopulated a few years ago. Naming it Neverfall was a bit too on the nose, apparently. The refugees flooding north into the icy republic lands were straining the food supply in their harsher latitude.
    Go too far north and the icy tundra was impossible to farm, Riewind already had too cold weather to really grow crops with, leaving only thorndown and shaggy piyos for their food. East was the shield wall of snowcapped mountains that fed the Nida river and diverted the zombies south. West was the ocean and nothing came from the northern icy wastes.
    The Republic wasn't starving. Yet. One bad year and they would be having riots in the streets.
    That said, the refugee crisis gave the Legions a vast number of conscripts. The zombies and monsters gave no quarter, had no negotiations, nothing but the goal of exterminating all human life. Every refugee was armed, however badly. Weapons were preserved before tools of trade or even food.
    A starving man could still walk a week or two. An unarmed man in the Lost Lands would be killed and raised as a zombie.
    They hadn't anyone come up north in the last few months now. No one living anyway. The last surviving refugee was a lone man and his reki, half starved and crazed from exposure. Journeyed all the way from the bottom edge of the Lost Lands, at the border of the great desert, it was beyond luck how he had survived and made the journey. He had seen no one living for months now.
    After the Legions had finished their interviews of the traveler six months ago, the word was that some bards were trying to turn his experience into an epic story. The Councillors were more than happy to have another icon to raise morale.
    The report, viewed from his uncomfortable fort a few days travel from the banks of Nida, detailed a sighting of a trio of winged humans that helped in one of the regular engagements. The lay soldiery all agreed that the flying humans wielded powerful magic, burning away large portions of the zombie horde trying to cross the river.
    The few soldiers that actually talked to the flying people said that they talked funny with much too many unknown words. Draoir wondered if the Republic wasn't the one who had lost a few words. The Bop Empire was known to be flowery talkers, for which the hard northerners had no time for.
    The army commander there did try to talk to them but the reds got to the winged men first and scared them off. Because of course they did, the reds always messed everything up. Having pretentiously named themselves the Robes of Life, no one actually called them that except to their faces.
    Their reputation of being human sacrificers was quite enough to cause others to avoid them and speak in hushed whispers.
    If not for the fact that the Republic owed its battles to their practice, the Robes of Life would not dare to break protocol and override the local commander.
    Still, the winged men had flown away, there was very little Draoir could do about it.

    He had finished reading the report for the second time, noting the examination of the metal scraps of the weapon the winged men had used. Whatever created the flames that broke the zombies had burnt out of all recognition, but the sharp eyed watchers in the army had noted how the flyers had dived before attacking and thrown out small objects.
    It wasn't magic, but a weapon. And a weapon was something more easily copied than magic.
    There was a pounding of feet outside and the door to the Delegate's office slammed open. The messenger panted as he handed over a message tube.
    Draoir waved the man to the carafe of fresh water while opening the message. He read it, rubbed his eyes and read it again.
    The winged men were back and they had dropped a message carried on a scrap of floating cloth. Interesting.
    What was more interesting was the message, included in the urgent message. Drawn on the paper like a stylized picture, it seemed the senders had also considered the language problem. It depicted a row of ten people in black ink then an arrow pointing to a figure drawn in blue colour. Twenty of such figures then pointed to a figure in red.
    Below was a crude map of what Draoir recognized was the Lost Lands and Nida river. The lookout station at the battle that they had first met at was marked with a star. A line of dots led a winding path avoiding the known hills to a human figure drawn in red.
    If Draoir understood their drawings right, there was two hundred people heading up north to meet the lookout post.
    What were they here for? Who were they? There was very little Draoir could answer and being limited to crude pictograms was not going to let them answer such questions in detail.
    But maybe he didn't have to just copy the weapons, they could trade for it.
    Everyone had to be enemies of the monsters, right?


    636 for Of Magic
    Spoiler
    Show
    Developing a mining spell was not difficult. A shard of power extended into the stone that sent a single spike of acceleration, first one way then the other, causing a tiny hairline crack in the stone. Quite deeply too, depending on the power Rihanna was willing to spend on it.
    Setting up a copy of her farm of power taps on the trees using her stolen power, Rihanna found herself with some extra time before sunset. Even clearing all the goblin bodies did not take that much time. So she had set about playing with her spellcrafting ability, trying to make spells that did more and more flexibly than her normal spells.
    To Rihanna's surprise, all the variations of different spells she had tried to create for moving things without throwing them, for mining, for a rather sad attempt at hovering, had all merged into a single super spell. She had known of the similarities her mining spell had to her rock launcher, the business end of exerting force had the same twist of magic, but the governing bits had been all different.
    It took requesting quite a number of different spells to allow Rihanna to slowly tease apart what each portion of her automatically guided spellcasting did. Requesting extremely similar spells, hovering a small rock versus throwing it for example, resulted in very similar spells, differing only in the mechanism that controlled that twist in magic that exerted force.
    Similarly, a single point of high heat, an ignition spell, was structurally similar to her rock thrower, but had a different twist to make heat. It was all very logical to Rihanna. This structure dumped all the power at very high rate, that structure set a fixed draw; this one anchored the spell to an object, that one anchored it relative to the planet; or structures that moved her spells around, or ones that started and stopped them.
    The moment she comprehended that and cataloged enough of the individual control structures, Rihanna felt her gift do... something not unlike creating a spell. And the small library of nearly identical force exerting spells she created for experimentation all merged into single broad telekinetic ability.
    Now nearly any manipulation of force felt instinctive, just as if Rihanna was casting a spell she had asked for. Pick up a rock with magic and then set it orbiting her head, to be thrown at a thought? Easy enough, when before each of those steps was worthy of a spell in itself.
    In a way, it was as if Rihanna had learnt so much about how this simple 'set an effect, decide a target, feed it power' routine worked, along with all the idiosyncrasies that came with the parameters of operation, that her gift had been able to fill in all the gaps between her requested spells to make her able to perform any variation of this theme like a memorized spell.
    It had not been difficult to add 'create heat' to the same scheme.
    So that was two important forces Rihanna was able to manipulate now, kinetic and heat. Further than just adding more effects to manipulate, Rihanna could see how her gift was supposed to work now.
    Rather than just give her all the skill with magic that a naive interpretation of 'being good with magic' would have turned out, her gift instead allowed Rihanna to skip all the training and theorycrafting. Effectively, her gift compressed maybe hundreds of years of 'training' with her magic into an instant, allowing Rihanna to create spells using what she knew and to be familiar with them. It was limited by her own understanding of magic, her access to power and her sophistication of ideas.
    So expanding on all three fronts was important to allowing Rihanna to do more with her magic.


    I am going on holiday out of the country, might not be able to post regularly, depending on how the internet holds up in Malaysia. One hopes the internet won't be too bad.

    if I can't post, I'll put everything into a single update, hopefully on 2nd Feb.
    Last edited by jseah; 2020-01-12 at 08:28 AM.

  10. - Top - End - #250
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Lycunadari's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2012
    Location
    Germany

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Status for December 30 to January 5!


    Lycunadari passes with 9 nature photos.

    jseah passes with 636 words for Of Magic and 921 words for Hero's War.

    5crownik007 didn't upload/send me anything.


    Thus 5crownik007 FAILs this round!

    Lycunadari and jseah PASS this round!


    Congratulations to me for passing 7 years!

    Current standing:
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    Lycunadari
    Current run: 364 weeks
    Longest run: -

    jseah
    Current Run: 203 weeks
    Longest Run: 33 weeks

    5crownik007
    Current run: -
    Longest run: 4 weeks




    -----
    Quote Originally Posted by jseah View Post

    I am going on holiday out of the country, might not be able to post regularly, depending on how the internet holds up in Malaysia. One hopes the internet won't be too bad.

    if I can't post, I'll put everything into a single update, hopefully on 2nd Feb.
    Have fun!
    You can call me Juniper. Please use gender-neutral pronouns (ze/hir (preferred) or they/them) when referring to me.

    "We all are vessels of our brokenness, we carry it inside us like water, careful not to spill. And what is wholeness if not brokenness encompassed in acceptance, the warmth of its power a shield against those who would hurt us?" - R. Lemberg, Geometries of Belonging

    Stories Art

  11. - Top - End - #251
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Lycunadari's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2012
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    Germany

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Status for January 6 to January 12!


    Lycunadari passes with 7 nature photos.

    jseah is on vacation until 2nd February.

    5crownik007 didn't upload/send me anything.


    Thus 5crownik007 FAILs this round!

    Lycunadari and jseah PASS this round!



    Current standing:
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    Lycunadari
    Current run: 365 weeks
    Longest run: -

    jseah
    Current Run: (204 weeks)
    Longest Run: 33 weeks

    5crownik007
    Current run: -
    Longest run: 4 weeks


    Last edited by Lycunadari; 2020-01-26 at 05:32 AM.
    You can call me Juniper. Please use gender-neutral pronouns (ze/hir (preferred) or they/them) when referring to me.

    "We all are vessels of our brokenness, we carry it inside us like water, careful not to spill. And what is wholeness if not brokenness encompassed in acceptance, the warmth of its power a shield against those who would hurt us?" - R. Lemberg, Geometries of Belonging

    Stories Art

  12. - Top - End - #252
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Lycunadari's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2012
    Location
    Germany

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Status for January 13 to January 19!


    Lycunadari passes with 10 nature photos.

    jseah is on vacation until 2nd February.

    5crownik007 didn't upload/send me anything.


    Thus 5crownik007 FAILs this round!

    Lycunadari and jseah PASS this round!


    Current standing:
    Spoiler
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    Lycunadari
    Current run: 366 weeks
    Longest run: -

    jseah
    Current Run: (205 weeks)
    Longest Run: 33 weeks

    5crownik007
    Current run: -
    Longest run: 4 weeks


    You can call me Juniper. Please use gender-neutral pronouns (ze/hir (preferred) or they/them) when referring to me.

    "We all are vessels of our brokenness, we carry it inside us like water, careful not to spill. And what is wholeness if not brokenness encompassed in acceptance, the warmth of its power a shield against those who would hurt us?" - R. Lemberg, Geometries of Belonging

    Stories Art

  13. - Top - End - #253
    Ogre in the Playground
    Join Date
    Nov 2008

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Are we calling the previous month a hiatus for everyone? Or have y'all been keeping an offline log? Or does everyone fail?
    The gnomes once had many mines, but now they have gnome ore.

  14. - Top - End - #254
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Lycunadari's Avatar

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    May 2012
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    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    Hey there,

    I'm really sorry to say this, but I've kind of lost my motivation for the challenge and I'm going to drop out. This is not an easy decision for me- over the last 2 years or so the challenge has started to feel more like a chore for me, and I was close to calling it quits a year ago when there were only jseah and I left, but then 5crownik007 joined and I didn't want to leave just when a new person joined. So I decided to stay, but I know both my contributions as well as my job in doing the status posts suffered from my lack of motivation (leading to constantly late status posts, which I could have fixed, but I didn't want to punish people for uploading late because they got used to later posts, leading to even later posts...) During my long hospital stay late last year I decided I would finish the year (making it 7 years since I joined) and then leave, but I couldn't bring myself to do it- I didn't want to disappoint you peeps. So I stayed, until the forums went down- with no duty to make status posts, I didn't keep track of what I created, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't enough to pass. So that's it for me.
    I really enjoyed sharing the CHALLENGE with all of you and I'm proud of what we all created during that time. But it's time for me to move on. If one of you wants to do the status posts from now on, please volunteer Otherwise, I'm going to update the first post to add us all to the list of former participants and make a note that the CHALLENGE is closed (for now).
    Take care, all of you <3
    You can call me Juniper. Please use gender-neutral pronouns (ze/hir (preferred) or they/them) when referring to me.

    "We all are vessels of our brokenness, we carry it inside us like water, careful not to spill. And what is wholeness if not brokenness encompassed in acceptance, the warmth of its power a shield against those who would hurt us?" - R. Lemberg, Geometries of Belonging

    Stories Art

  15. - Top - End - #255
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    5crownik007's Avatar

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    Dec 2018
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    Australia
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    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    I have just started my final year of high-school, making it a probably untenable prospect to continue participating in The Challenge. It's a shame, but I feel like I'll probably make my way back to here at some point when I have more time. Maybe then I will be the one making the posts...

    For now, I sadly have other things to do. I hope to see you all later.
    "You... little... *****. It's what my old man called me, it's like it was my name, and I proved him right, by killing all the wrong people. [And], I love ya Henry, and I'll never call you anything but your name, but you gotta decide; are you gonna lay there, swallow that blood in your mouth, or are you gonna stand up, spit it out, and go spill theirs?" - Unknown

  16. - Top - End - #256
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Planetar

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    Dec 2006
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    In the Playground

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    I haven't been on the forums in years. Literally, prior to checking in just about a month ago, I hadn't posted in three years. And, back the last time I did post, it was here in The Challenge. Funny timing to check in.

    Back then it was all prose I was making, and my creative work has since turned entirely to dnd prep these days, which doesn't word-count well. But quarantine has done strange things to my schedule for projects. Between that and watching a lot of Drawfee, I find myself deciding to take another swing at improving my drawing skills. Which are, to be clear, Not Good. So I'm drawing.

    I've always loved The Challenge. It got me a foothold in drawing years ago. It got me a fair amount of writing done. Sometimes it was a hassle, and my participation came and went, as I'm sure it will again.

    But even if it's just me right now, I'd like to play my small part in keeping the tradition alive.

    April 6 to April 12
    So here are six pages of some reeeal rough practice sketches (and a small stack of basic line practice of various kinds.)
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    If others join in, I will keep up the tracking for everybody, though I can't promise to get the timing perfect. My job has pivoted to a new Ventilator project, meaning I'm working 7 day weeks and that sure complicates things.

    Current standing:
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    Icewalker
    Current run: 1 week
    Longest run: 31 weeks

    Last edited by Icewalker; 2020-04-27 at 12:37 AM.

  17. - Top - End - #257
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Planetar

    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    In the Playground

    Default Re: The CHALLENGE 4: Art block can't stop us

    My second week returned. No easy thing, the Challenge. For the time being I'll keep holding this space for any who return, though from here on out I'll be editing this post instead of making a new one each week, until any other posters appear, for the sake of avoiding post clutter.

    April 13 to April 19
    Some various practice sketches, a shadow monster who was bad but turned into an interesting experiment in different types of shading, and a Geno and a Snowpiercer landscape which both turned out much better than expected, as well as some more practice on lines, figures, and proportions.
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    April 20 to April 26
    This week, a study in cartoon anatomy, because I realized I had NO idea where to start on drawing any sort of simplified cartoon figure. Four small studies and a couple originals. Five pages instead of six, but each has 2-3 figures on it so I think it adds up.
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    April 27 to May 3
    Some doodles, some Loomis figures, a few slightly more complete drawings with active poses. Very happy with the portrait in the lower left. Seven pages, but some simpler, this week. I draw with such extremely faint lines that sometimes some don't even show up on my simple camera. Maybe that's a bad habit, dunno, for now I don't mind it.
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    May 4 to May 10
    A number of drawings in which I actually had a more complete design or scene in mind, which I didn't finish for a few reasons, some good some bad. I'm very happy with some of what I did do (especially the general pose and silhouette of the crouching figure on the rooftop). I need to work some things all the way through to the end (even though I feel like my finished result will be worse than my halfway result) because that's a prerequisite for fully finished things that are good. This is short of where I'd like to be for legitimate Challenge submissions, but it's practice, and that's my real goal here.
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    May 11 to May 17
    And I'm down. Didn't keep up this week, feeling a little sluggish when it comes to motivation, which is fine. I drew two small sketches yesterday which I am extremely happy with, but I'm not hitting 6 pages of material this week. So, have a cute medusa cartoon (I've been playing Hades) and a hand.

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    May 18 to May 24
    Pretty okay week for drawing! In terms of total content I'm pushing acceptability calling this six, with three pages just being ribcage practice, but I'm going to take it for now because progress is the point. And, the two more complete figures that I drew I'm actually pretty happy with.

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    May 25 to May 31
    Not enough this week. Bit of a slow week in general, emotionally and productively. Still, the two drawings I did do are better than most I've done in the past, so I feel like I am improving, which is nice. Buying an old tablet off an artist friend which will lead me to some new digital experiments in the future. I feel like I'm obliged to continue on paper for various habit-building reasons, but I think digital is going to suit my psyche more.

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    June 1 to June 7
    We're back! I wasn't sure I was going to finish this week but my first foray into clothing went really well and I was encouraged to keep going. Tracy Butler's Lackadaisy clothing and folds tutorial is phenomenal.

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    June 8 to June 14
    As happens a few times, I didn't do enough drawing, but some pieces of what I did I'm quite happy with the progress on. I had some trouble with clothes and bodies at any angle aside from straight on, so I went back to Loomis a tad. However, I got side tracked by a new project, got a video editor, and dropped like 40 hours in 4 days making this AMV which I am very proud of.

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    June 15 to June 21
    Off week. I'm working on another AMV because that's a fun thing I do now it seems, but haven't finished it, and haven't been drawing this week. I don't think I've fallen off it entirely as a hobby to pick up, but this at least was an off week.

    June 22 to June 28
    It's not six things, but two drawings that are the most complete and by far best things I've drawn to date, not that the bar is high, but I'm very very happy with my steady progress.

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    June 29 to July 5
    No art happened this week, and thaaaat's fiiiine.

    Current standing:
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    Icewalker
    Current run: 0 week
    Longest run: 31 weeks

    Last edited by Icewalker; 2020-07-05 at 10:19 PM.

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