This is the top of a thread on the Weather Factory Twitter in which Alexis shows off summoning mechanics. First he tries to summon one of the Voiceless Dead, using the fragility of Neville’s sanity, but it starts struggling so he sends it back. Then he uses a Cindered Crown along with Neville to summon something called a Caligine, which starts struggling as well. However, he’s already sacrificed the Crown, so he doesn’t want to let it go, and he really doesn’t want a Caligine running loose, so he uses Passion to force it to his will, which is luckily successful. Neville is apparently no worse for wear, but Alexis’s Passion is turned to Fascination in the process of asserting his will.
I told you he’s too useful to be gutted on the altar!
[quote=illuminati swag (Benthic)]https://twitter.com/factoryweather/status/958722202937057281
This is the top of a thread on the Weather Factory Twitter in which Alexis shows off summoning mechanics. First he tries to summon one of the Voiceless Dead, using the fragility of Neville’s sanity, but it starts struggling so he sends it back. Then he uses a Cindered Crown along with Neville to summon something called a Caligine, which starts struggling as well. However, he’s already sacrificed the Crown, so he doesn’t want to let it go, and he really doesn’t want a Caligine running loose, so he uses Passion to force it to his will, which is luckily successful. Neville is apparently no worse for wear, but Alexis’s Passion is turned to Fascination in the process of asserting his will.[/quote]
Let’s make this easier to follow.
Now we’re talking (although they’re not)
It won’t work without some Knock in the mix, though. You always need to open the way.
if you don’t have the Locksmith’s Secret, which invokes Knock? There are other ways! Here, I’m using the assistance of my disciple Neville - don’t move, Neville - whose fragile sanity means he brings Knock aspect to the rite.
right, yes. If you were planning to summon mute but ravenous dead chez toi, we should probably have mentioned that this might happen.
good good, we had a spare Reason card knocking around
That could have gone better. But we do also have this Cindered Crown knocking around, and Neville is still on shift, so let’s see if this goes better
for *****'s sake*
Neville I said stand still
This is a Caligine, and I don’t want one of those loose in the house. On the other hand, I put my Cindered Crown in a sacrifice slot, so it’s already gone, and if I shut down the summoning it’s a wasted treasure.
this is fine
RIGHT YOU SMOKY TROUBLEMAKER SETTLE DOWN
that Passion I invested has been turned into Fascination, which is not great, but I should get that back if things work out okay
GET IN.
that could have gone worse. Contending for mastery is an ante-up mechanic, so if it keeps struggling, you have to keep investing the Passion, until you run out.
that’s it for now! Wishlist here if this sounds like your thing:
edited by Anne Auclair on 1/31/2018
[quote=Anne Auclair][quote=illuminati swag (Benthic)]https://twitter.com/factoryweather/status/958722202937057281
This is the top of a thread on the Weather Factory Twitter in which Alexis shows off summoning mechanics. First he tries to summon one of the Voiceless Dead, using the fragility of Neville’s sanity, but it starts struggling so he sends it back. Then he uses a Cindered Crown along with Neville to summon something called a Caligine, which starts struggling as well. However, he’s already sacrificed the Crown, so he doesn’t want to let it go, and he really doesn’t want a Caligine running loose, so he uses Passion to force it to his will, which is luckily successful. Neville is apparently no worse for wear, but Alexis’s Passion is turned to Fascination in the process of asserting his will.[/quote]
Let’s make this easier to follow.
Now we’re talking (although they’re not)
It won’t work without some Knock in the mix, though. You always need to open the way.
if you don’t have the Locksmith’s Secret, which invokes Knock? There are other ways! Here, I’m using the assistance of my disciple Neville - don’t move, Neville - whose fragile sanity means he brings Knock aspect to the rite.
right, yes. If you were planning to summon mute but ravenous dead chez toi, we should probably have mentioned that this might happen.
good good, we had a spare Reason card knocking around
That could have gone better. But we do also have this Cindered Crown knocking around, and Neville is still on shift, so let’s see if this goes better
for *****'s sake*
Neville I said stand still
This is a Caligine, and I don’t want one of those loose in the house. On the other hand, I put my Cindered Crown in a sacrifice slot, so it’s already gone, and if I shut down the summoning it’s a wasted treasure.
this is fine
RIGHT YOU SMOKY TROUBLEMAKER SETTLE DOWN
that Passion I invested has been turned into Fascination, which is not great, but I should get that back if things work out okay
GET IN.
that could have gone worse. Contending for mastery is an ante-up mechanic, so if it keeps struggling, you have to keep investing the Passion, until you run out.
that’s it for now! Wishlist here if this sounds like your thing:
edited by Anne Auclair on 1/31/2018[/quote]
Neville old boy you just can’t keep it together. Also the colonel everyone of his scars as a weapon. I wonder if that means every moment of calm that he gets better killing people? If I had to guess I think he embodies everything that is combat from wars to battles to curses.
Alexis has posted some details about the upcoming magical rites on the Steam forums.
[quote=Alexis Kennedy on Steam]All rite creations need Forge in the mix somewhere (the aspect of remaking). But there are only two rites in there now; if you stick around for the Adept’s Build, there’ll be another six, and some more clues about making them.
currently in game:
Rite of the Crucible Soul
Rite of the Watchman’s Sorrow
TBC list of rites that I’m implementing right now:
The Rite of the Sea’s Feasting
Rite of the Map’s Edge
Rite of the Smith’s Striving
Rite of the Mother’s Mercy
The Rite of the Sea’s Wedding
Sunset Rite
Rite of the Wolf-Divided
Rite Intercalate
…[what the rite does] depends what you put in it; so depending on what resources you have access to, in theory most rites can do most things…[/quote]
Alexis also answered my coffee inquiry with a non-answer, so if you have any questions the Steam forum is definitely the place to pester him :P
Also, be sure to check out this very entertaining essay on historical occult names and the challenges of evaluating/using Stolen ones. It’s pretty hilarious in places:
[quote=Alexis Kennedy’s Names Essay]Some occult or esoteric writers were poseurs and dilettantes. Some were intensely focused scholars who took their work extremely seriously. Some of them picked pseudonyms as casually as a fifteen-year-old might pick a gamertag now: they banged some syllables together and picked a sound they liked. Some of them were elaborately chosen for specific reasons (that might still fall apart under the gentle pressure of actual scholarship). Some of them use nicknames, some of them have been given identifiers by subsequent scholars, some are possibly, but not definitely, fictional: Hermes Trismegistus, Satoshi Nakamoto.
…
So practically anything, even something quite high-fantasy-looking, might go in as a pseudonym. But if someone thinks [not actual example] Masticus Indomitablus looks like a really cool name, and I use it as the name of a notorious charlatan who made up their name after four absinthes too many, that’s going to be unfortunate.[/quote]
Also, if you missed the cutoff for contributing a Stolen Name, Alexis will be willing to let that slide if you send him the survey "quick." Though I’d recommend reading the above essay first, to get a good idea of what he’s looking for.
edited by Anne Auclair on 2/1/2018
New twitter thread! This time showing an investigation, and a new way of throwing it off. First Alexis sends Neville to go murder Inspector Wakefield, but he has no Edge and thus is unsuccessful. This attracts even more unwanted attention and also Neville disappears. Poor lad. So then Alexis brings out the big guns - a being called a Maid-in-the-Mirror, who seems to be one of the Dead who has passed the Knives and the Peacock gate and serves the Sun-In-Rags. She has 10 Edge and 10 White, and some other aspects that aren’t clear. She easily kills Wakefield, bringing back a human corpse and some notoriety. Spoiler below has several large embedded images showing this.
Also, https://twitter.com/alexiskennedy/status/959435217034514432
A new Rite, the Rite Intercalate, "recapitulates the Sun’s abominable fate. It is used in extreme times by foolish adepts." Who’s ready to learn Long division?
Edit: Alexis appears to be in quite the teasing mood. https://twitter.com/factoryweather/status/959483820113264647 You can use the Rite of the Mother’s Mercy to, among other things, raise a corpse to life with the help of the Ring-Yew. In this case it seems to be raising the thing via making it part tree, so it will eventually take root, but it’s apparently quite helpful until then.
edited by illuminati swag (Benthic) on 2/2/2018
Hmmm, what’s to stop some other magician from sending one of those "Unstoppable Forces" after you and then animating your mangled corpse to be their woody servant? Protecting yourself is going to be a matter of serious importance.
It makes the wizards duel in Harry Potter look like nothing. Speaking of What Know because on the live stream he said it someone that passed through the second door but the lore from the prototype is still there. So is the both?
The lore from the prototype is still there?
Take a little break from CS, and look how much has changed!
Surprised that Erzeem seems to be affiliated with the Forge of Days, as I would have thought a being that has Thirst in its species’ name would be affiliated with the Red Grail.
The line ‘Even after the Sun’s division, the mortal pawns of the Forge of Days recalled it fondly’ gives a little insight into the nature of the Division.
First, it indirectly confirms that the Division was an actual event. It wasn’t some Book of Genesis-esque story that took place before history. The Sun was actually entirely whole up to a certain point in history.
Also, it gives us an idea of just how revered and important the Sun is in the CS mythos. It says a lot about the Sun that the followers of the Forge of Days -the Hour of anarchy, chaos, and constant change- look back on the undivided, up to that point unchanged Sun and say "Yeah, we really had a good thing going there, didn’t we?"
Also, I had another realization. It’s notable that since the beta the different types of lore have all had their names changed. Nearly all of them are called "Secrets" (a Watchman’s Secret)… except one. The lore for the Wood is called a Warning. As in "don’t you even think of doing trying this, you idiot."
I asked myself what a Barber had to do with the Hours of the Wood, then thought about the depiction we have of the Moth:
Notice the scissors and lock of hair? It’s a lot more important than you think.
A Barber’s Warning
A power of the Wood enjoys the separation of the lock from the scalp. For attention, burn it. For opportunity, bury it.
[color=#c2c2c2]I don’t remember which book exactly, but there’s a history book in the game now that discusses the advances of the "barbarians" and their uncouth gods. Whenever the lore brings up barbarians, it might be a form of code to get the Hidden Lore past the censors. "Barbarian" isn’t referring to savage tribals, it’s referring to "Barbers", perhaps again alluding to beginning practitioners of the Invisible Arts and their strange gods.[/color]
[color=#c2c2c2]I don’t know if Galmier realized this, but there seems to be a whole other dimension to the Lock than just the mechanical ones we use on physical doors. If I may theorize a minute, it might be that in metaphysical plane like the Mansus, it might not matter the specific type of lock, just the concept of one. Removing a lock of hair might be the same thing as removing the lock on the door of your mind, opening yourself to entities and alien truths that wouldn’t have access otherwise. [/color]
[color=#c2c2c2]Can anyone else think of any other potential double meanings in the lore of the other Hours?[/color]
Several small additions to your post:
Barbers tie into the Ecdysist’s Riddle, as they help and allow people to lose things. Those things are, normally, hair, but supernatural occult barbers might be able to cut off more than that.
the lock in Barber’s Warning may refer to the effort to stop people from knowing about Secret Histories and/or becoming Know, “Each fruit is an eye, but each eye is closed” and eyes first need to be cut open as a sacrifice to the Watchman to see a door (presumably the Stag Door) in one’s dreams (see: Physician Legacy).
There is another basic lore that isn’t called a Secret: The Occult Scrap, the base lore of Secret Histories. Whether this links the two types of lore or is merely a coincidence is up to you.
What’s interesting about Ezeem is that he first requests that you change him. In most other depictions, the Unmerciful Change is done by the practitioner of the Forge principle to others, and not by other parties to the practitioner. Tristan, the Forge-aligned Mortal, is said to despise distraction, trying to distance himself from outside factors. When the Change does affect practitioners, it us quite unpleasant (see: WAR OF THE ROADS, I think? The Secret History where Victorians made a deal with the Forge for extreme industrial might or smth. It doesn’t end well for them.)
Yes it is my good lady.
Yes it is my good lady.[/quote]
I was sort of implying that I needed more detail.
[quote=Weather Factory]
gearing up towards our next big content milestone, the ADEPT’S BUILD, which will focus on the magic in the weft of the world. see if you can work out a few spells, rituals and incantations from @cuckooclockwork’s assets…[/quote]
btw, I have the distinction of posting Cultist Simulator’s very first Steam screenshots. I mostly focused on the art. I particularly like the new Ecdysis Club art. I was a little skeptical about the leg, but it looks way better on a card than I thought it would.
btw2, Oriflamme’s Auction House now features a mummified hand with a painting on its palm in a glass display case. In Sunless Sea, the Venderbight Curator will reward you with a mummified hand with a painting on its palm if you bring him a pot of violant ink. Alexis sure likes his mummified hands with paintings on their palms.
.
edited by Anne Auclair on 2/5/2018
[quote=Edward Warren]
Surprised that Erzeem seems to be affiliated with the Forge of Days, as I would have thought a being that has Thirst in its species’ name would be affiliated with the Red Grail.[/quote]
I’m pretty confident he is affiliated with the Grail. But, maybe he doesn’t want to be? He might not find his current position all that pleasant or comfortable. Or maybe he wants a promotion? He is after all only the Second Thirsty and we have no idea where the Thirsties stand in the overall hierarchy of Names. Maybe he’d even like to replace the Grail…or become something less, like a mortal (consider the Principles of Coral in Sunless Sea). Maybe there’s something he needs to do that requires a change in form. Whatever it is, the fact he’s asking a Know for help him implies that it’s off the books, so to speak.
[quote=Edward Warren]The line ‘Even after the Sun’s division, the mortal pawns of the Forge of Days recalled it fondly’ gives a little insight into the nature of the Division.
First, it indirectly confirms that the Division was an actual event. It wasn’t some Book of Genesis-esque story that took place before history. The Sun was actually entirely whole up to a certain point in history.[/quote]
Well, technically it took place before the current history :P So it’s not so much in the past as in the past and very sideways.
The idea of a multitude of adjoining, equally true but no longer real histories brings to mind John Crowley’s AEgypt Cycle. To take one example from the series, in the world of AEgypt the Ptolemaic earth-centered solar system used to be 100% true. When Copernicus discovered our solar system was heliocentric, he did so not because past astronomers had been incorrect for thousands of years, but because the nature of reality had recently changed and now the solar system was heliocentric. These changes in reality affect not just the present and future, but also retroactively change the past as well, creating a new past where Ptolemaic astronomy was always wrong. This is equally true with stuff like Alchemy - in one age it was possible (albeit extremely difficult) to turn lead to gold and create things like the philosophers stone. In the new age, all that alchemic science is absolute rubbish and always has been. Periods of changes, where one age/history transitions to another, are particularly contentious, because in this in-between state past histories resurface and all possible futures can be glimpsed. So, that medieval rite to call down a demon that, as far as your reality was concerned, never worked…will suddenly start working…and the demon will be very real…and probably not very friendly. Also, it’s possible for pieces of previous ages to be preserved into later ages - fossils of what once was - and knowledgeable persons might seek to create these so as to enlighten future people or just to avoid having their worlds totally erased.
Another thing is that every level 1 lore save two has an occupation associated with it in the title and/or its descriptions: watchmen, barbers, locksmiths, smiths, murders, adapts, warriors, weapon-makers, anatomists, dancers, shamans, and sextons. The first exception is the Occult Scrap, for obvious reasons (Secret Histories lore really seems the odd duck out, doesn’t it?). The second exception is the Red Secret. Like, no occupations are connected with it…it just is. The Grail seems much more of the world than the rest of the Hours. All the other archons have specific mortal domains or interests, while the Grail’s position seems much more foundational: birth, life, hunger, thirst, sex - the mortal world itself.
The book is William Gore’s Wainscot Histories, which sounds rather Borgesian (maybe Gore is this history’s Borges).
The Wainscot Histories
Card Description
Subtitled ‘Stories from Behind the Walls’: a miscellany of non-traditional histories complied by William Gore, including battles not generally aknowledged and countries which appear on no map, told in a playful, apparently fictional manner.
Studying Description
Gore does not mention the Mansus directly, but constant coy metaphysical references to ‘Ascending the Staircase of Years,’ to ‘the Doors of Sleep,’ and to ‘the Blue Light of Dawn’ suggest he had commerce with the unseen world.
Final Description
‘It was common in that time to speak of the Division of the Sun; by which Contemporaries understood, the irruption of Barbarian Forces, and of their uncouth Gods.’
I’d be a little hesitant to hang speculation on something so coincidental as a superficial similarity between two English words. The word barbarian and the word barber come from different places, linguistically. I also don’t buy it as code for "getting past the censors," as much bigger liberties have been taken in other books and were somehow okay (Skeleton Songs, I’m looking at you!). Though given how the world works, one can’t completely dismiss the possibility of some sort of relationship between barbarians and barbers either…
Let me just say then that I think the ‘Barbarians’ that William Gore writes about were both real and incredibly violent.
I know that in certain quarters of the scholarly world there is a theory that the Aryan invasions and subsequent colonizations dramatically changed the nature of religion in a number of regions, among them Greece. The indigenous pantheons were primarily maternal, while the invaders pantheons were patriarchal. So the earth goddesses of the conquered were married to the sky gods of the invaders, or relegated to out of the way places (such as oddly primordial deities like Hecate, goddess of crossroads). That’s the gist of it anyway. It’s really not hard to imagine such a thing happening in one of the earlier Histories of CS.
Now, if we were to look at it in a more occult direction, one might interpret the causations differently - the barbarians triumphed because their uncouth gods triumphed. Consider the mythological Trojan War, where the cause of the war, the course of battles, and the ultimate fate of the city are determined by the intrigues of the Olympians.
[quote=Clifton Royston]Q: Was the Great War a victory, defeat, or inconsequential to the various hours?
A: Depends on the History. But to be less coy, events at that level are of direct interest to the Hours.[/quote]
However, something that should be pointed out - Gore doesn’t seem to be saying that the Barbarians and their Gods caused the Sun’s division. Rather, their appearance seems to have been a direct result of said division.
What exactly happened to the Sun seems to be the central mystery of the game.
edited by Anne Auclair on 2/7/2018
[quote=Vavakx Nonexus]
What’s interesting about Ezeem is that he first requests that you change him. In most other depictions, the Unmerciful Change is done by the practitioner of the Forge principle to others, and not by other parties to the practitioner. Tristan, the Forge-aligned Mortal, is said to despise distraction, trying to distance himself from outside factors. When the Change does affect practitioners, it us quite unpleasant (see: WAR OF THE ROADS, I think? The Secret History where Victorians made a deal with the Forge for extreme industrial might or smth. It doesn’t end well for them.)[/quote]
Before assuming anything about Ezeem’s desire to be Changed, we surely need to consider the Hellraiser-esque implications of ‘Now, my turn’. Having read everyone’s points, I suspect that Ezeem will turn out to be evenly-balanced in both Forge and Grail, and pretty formidable in both. All creatures summoned in demonstrations have had the exotic thing that so far hasn’t appeared in any Lore (though I’m sure it will): hybrid Principles. The Maid in the Mirror has a swingeing 10 Winter…and also, 10 Edge. On the basis of the Dread Twitter Summonings, the likely dual-Principle scores for lowlier creatures seem to be 8, 6, and 2.
Rites don’t carry any Lore or Principle score of their own at present, just 1 Ritual. So we can work out the Principle scores of Neville’s Mystery Summoning, even though it failed, by examining the icons at the bottom of the panel: 1 Ritual, 1 Tool, 2 Heart, 1 Lore, 4 Winter, 2 Follower, 1 Mortal, 4 Knock.
1 Ritual = The Rite of the Smith’s Sacrifice; 1 Tool, 2 Heart = an unknown Tool; 1 Lore, 4 Winter = A White Ceremony; 2 Follower, 1 Mortal, 4 Knock = Neville, and what’s left of his sanity.
When Reason is used in Work (I think) to dispel the summoning, Work’s slots change to read thus:
The only things that change are the 1 Insight generated by Reason, Winter shoots up to 10, a generic ? icon (that of the unknown beastie) appears, and also an additional 6 Moth. So, whatever was coming from the Mansus, baited by the scent of Neville’s madness, would have scored a respectably horrific 6 Winter, 6 Moth. I wonder what it was; unlike the Caligine it doesn’t have any identifying art yet, just the ? placeholder.
Compare the starting and ending slot stack for Summoning the Caligine with the same Ritual, same subject (Neville), but a sacrificial item (a Cindered Crown) and not a random Tool. Start:
End, after successfully cowing the captious Caligine with sweet, expensive Reason:
The incoming Caligine would seem to score 8 Forge and 8 Moth, which makes sense as it took a sacrificial item – a Cindered Crown at 1 Tool and 8 Forge a pop – to summon it, whereas formerly, poor underappreciated Neville was working with whatever 2 Heart tool he could scrounge. I was confused for a bit by 9 Moth, but the extra 1 Moth is coming from the Reason card, now transformed to Fascination.
The only 2-Principle creature mentioned so far is the Burgeoning Risen, with a Principle-score of 2 Edge and 2 Winter, which seems a bit curious for a hapless detective’s corpse quickened by Woody Moth-power, as set out here on Twitter (where it can also be seen that the Caligine does indeed have a Principle-score of 8 Forge and 8 Moth).
May all our wishes come true, apparently. Well, I’ve always wanted green fingers.
[quote=Vexpont][quote=Vavakx Nonexus]
What’s interesting about Ezeem is that he first requests that you change him. In most other depictions, the Unmerciful Change is done by the practitioner of the Forge principle to others, and not by other parties to the practitioner. Tristan, the Forge-aligned Mortal, is said to despise distraction, trying to distance himself from outside factors. When the Change does affect practitioners, it us quite unpleasant (see: WAR OF THE ROADS, I think? The Secret History where Victorians made a deal with the Forge for extreme industrial might or smth. It doesn’t end well for them.)[/quote]
Before assuming anything about Ezeem’s desire to be Changed, we surely need to consider the Hellraiser-esque implications of ‘Now, my turn’. Having read everyone’s points, I suspect that Ezeem will turn out to be evenly-balanced in both Forge and Grail, and pretty formidable in both. All creatures summoned in demonstrations have had the exotic thing that so far hasn’t appeared in any Lore (though I’m sure it will): hybrid Principles. The Maid in the Mirror has a swingeing 10 Winter…and also, 10 Edge. On the basis of the Dread Twitter Summonings, the likely dual-Principle scores for lowlier creatures seem to be 8, 6, and 2.
Rites don’t carry any Lore or Principle score of their own at present, just 1 Ritual. So we can work out the Principle scores of Neville’s Mystery Summoning, even though it failed, by examining the icons at the bottom of the panel: 1 Ritual, 1 Tool, 2 Heart, 1 Lore, 4 Winter, 2 Follower, 1 Mortal, 4 Knock.
1 Ritual = The Rite of the Smith’s Sacrifice; 1 Tool, 2 Heart = an unknown Tool; 1 Lore, 4 Winter = A White Ceremony; 2 Follower, 1 Mortal, 4 Knock = Neville, and what’s left of his sanity.
When Reason is used in Work (I think) to dispel the summoning, Work’s slots change to read thus:
The only things that change are the 1 Insight generated by Reason, Winter shoots up to 10, a generic ? icon (that of the unknown beastie) appears, and also an additional 6 Moth. So, whatever was coming from the Mansus, baited by the scent of Neville’s madness, would have scored a respectably horrific 6 Winter, 6 Moth. I wonder what it was; unlike the Caligine it doesn’t have any identifying art yet, just the ? placeholder.
Compare the starting and ending slot stack for Summoning the Caligine with the same Ritual, same subject (Neville), but a sacrificial item (a Cindered Crown) and not a random Tool. Start:
End, after successfully cowing the captious Caligine with sweet, expensive Reason:
The incoming Caligine would seem to score 8 Forge and 8 Moth, which makes sense as it took a sacrificial item – a Cindered Crown at 1 Tool and 8 Forge a pop – to summon it, whereas formerly, poor underappreciated Neville was working with whatever 2 Heart tool he could scrounge. I was confused for a bit by 9 Moth, but the extra 1 Moth is coming from the Reason card, now transformed to Fascination.
The only 2-Principle creature mentioned so far is the Burgeoning Risen, with a Principle-score of 2 Edge and 2 Winter, which seems a bit curious for a hapless detective’s corpse quickened by Woody Moth-power, as set out here on Twitter (where it can also be seen that the Caligine does indeed have a Principle-score of 8 Forge and 8 Moth).
May all our wishes come true, apparently. Well, I’ve always wanted green fingers.[/quote]
Did you see the massive hints he dropped in the data mining. He should the process of becoming a Know. Apparently they’re not entirely human they can develop unnatural cravings during the season of appetite.
It will probably become a bit more Mothy and Woody when it actually transforms into a tree. Though its creation rite did have a Moth of 8 - which came from the Caligine. So the magician got his knowledge of how to call upon the Ring-Yew from the smoke demon.
.
edited by Anne Auclair on 2/8/2018
A new twitter thread! This one is about randomized skinless bums. Text dumped below, along with a single icon of a skinless but clothed bum:
my beloved is drawing the man bums for the Cultist Stimualtor
thread: why the man bums? there are three likely goals (and a number of other endings) in CS: Power, Knowledge, and Sensation. this was a likely candidate for the Sensation goal. It was an alternative icon for the Ecdysis club. You’ll notice it reads clearly as ‘lady’ rather than ‘mans’. You’ll also notice it is implied possibly to be skinless.
so this is a good start for our self-destructive Notion: Sensation, in that Hellraiser SM sort of way. There are even constant references in the CS lore to ‘peeling back the skin of the world’. of course, it is a lady bottom, and some people prefer the bottoms of mens to the bottoms of ladies. maybe that’s not a problem! It could be the bottom of the protagonist, for instance. It could be a general standin for people’s bottoms, and I think, on purely aesthetic grounds, the general cultural consensus has been that lady bottoms > mans bottoms. but at the very least it could be read as imposing sexual preferences. I (a man) chatted to Lottie (a lady) and we thought it was probably okay, but not definitely okay. a relevant point here is that art time is at a bit of a premium. @cuckooclockwork are turning out magnificently horrible icons for us at a good clip, and thanks to the Kickstarter’s success we have a bigger art budget than we expected, but there are a finite number of working days between now and May 31st, and for both pragmatic and quixotic reasons we dislike being late. There are, consequently, a determinedly finite number of bottoms that can be drawn by freelancers with other commitments. CS involves a lot of very similar icons - eg there are >100 different occult tomes, not all of which need to be immediatley unique, and a whole range of things like Rites and Commissions which are supposed to be similar. So Lottie is already doing some art tweaking, and she was up for drawing a mans bottoms. imagine.
Lottie has now drawn (subject to searching creative review) a mans bottoms, and this solves the asset problem, but what about the design problem? CS takes my usual approach in being agnostic about the gender and sexual preferences of the protagonist. So if there is a lady bottom and a man bottom, we don’t particularly want to bring the narrative to a halt and say ‘indicate your bottom preferences’. so what I am inclined to do is to randomly assign a bottom variety each playthrough. If you end up with a man bottom and you prefer a lady bottom, RP it; and vice versa. I will probably allow a, ah, back door to let people swap the one for the other, if only to cut down on the trickle of occasional very cross emails. I may also just offer a narrative choice framed in a relevant way: ‘at the Ecdysis Club, do you choose this companion or that companion’. It’s a bit micro compared to the rest of the game, but it might fly. anyway, we can now announce definitively the presence of multiple bottoms in Cultist Simulator.
edited by illuminati swag (Benthic) on 2/8/2018