Desert Elves-- An otherworlder on the Flipside might, upon hearing the word "Elf", envision haughty magic-users living in forests. Indeed, such creatures did once exist there, but this race--The Blue Elves--are long extinct. The forest they occupied fell millennia ago, a victim to their own massive overuse of terraforming magics, and these are their distant descendants. Desert Elves are slim, tan-skinned (darker the farther north one goes in the desert), and generally blond, brown or red haired with green or yellow eyes. Desert Elves are rather different from their ancestors, being mostly a warrior culture (magic is still very much used here, but its application is mostly offensive) who are very good with bows (a skill inhereted from the elves of old). Desert Elves rarely dress in anything more elaborate than a simple brown or gray cloak and undergarments, and tend to either live in small villages around oases, or in the larger cities of other races. The title of "High King of All Elves" still exists and is held by one Elahadrion XII, but is entirely a matter of ceremony at present. Once every hundred years (generally, once in a lifetime, two if they're lucky, for most elves) all Elves able gather at Heledrenon, the site of their ancient capitol, for a feast and a week-long celebration.
Elves who live quieter lives do tend toward the contemplative (sometimes being best described as spacey), but this is by no means a universal trait, and many nomadic elves are actually quite down-to-earth, being almost more similar to general perceptions of dwarves.
There are two vastly different kinds of undead on the Flipside. Natural and Manufactured.
Natural Undead are less a type of creature and more of a natural phenomenon. When enough Prismaticka concentrates in one place, it will look for an outlet, and the corpses of slain creatures (especially if unburied) are a viable outlet. Natural Undead tend to resemble generic zombies, and are rather inactive. They rarely do more than shuffle around aimlessly until the Prismaticka that powers them runs out and they slump back to the ground again as corpses. Though horrifying to the unprepared, citizens of the areas in which such creatures live consider them little more than a pest.
Manufactured Undead are a different beast entirely. Necromancy is a complicated fusion of several kinds of magic (mostly but not exclusively Formulism) and is closely related to Constructist (Golem-making) pursuits. But rather than fashion new bodies to imbue with life, Necromancers prefer to use corpses. Most necromancers start small. Raising a few insects, then moving up to rodents. It is a long time before a would-be necromancer is ready to create his first humanoid servant. When he does, it will often crumble back to dust mere minutes later. Constructed Undead require a "fuel supply" of Prismaticka that generally disappates quite easily if not somehow contained. Thus, while many necromancers can raise temporary zombies or skeletons that may last as long as a few weeks, any long-term projects require the creation of elaborate artificial organ systems. As such, these undead rarely directly resemble the creature--or far more often, creatures--they came from. A listing of some of the basic types is below.
*Skeletals: A Skeletal is any undead creature manufactured mostly or entirely of bone. They are by far the most common type of Constructed Undead, since preserving the flesh of a target is usually not worth the extra effort. There are many types of Skeletal Undead. *Skeletons: These are your basic, raised skeletal corpses. Often humanoid. *Mantis Dead: Often the next step for a novice necromancer as soon as they learn how to make their servants live indefinitely, Mantis dead replace the hands of a humanoid skeleton with either finely sharpened ribcage bones, or simply sickle blades. They are named for their resemblance to a praying mantis and are often found as foot soldiers for larger undead forces, or as the sole servants of "beginner" necromancers. Variants may replace the feet as well, creating quadrupedal creatures who balance on fine points to locomote. Another popular variant substitutes axe or scimitar blades for scythe, and this variant is often more manuverable in battle. *Skeletal Archers: Many novice necromancers make the mistake of assuming after a few failed tries that trying to get a skeleton to shoot a bow and arrow is an impossible task. And indeed, a basic skeleton's fingerbones will often pop off while it attempts to draw the bowstring, among many other problems. However, with dramatic restructuring of the hand, it is possible for a necromancer to create a specialized skeletal creature whose sole combat role is shooting arrows from crossbows. These creatures generally have as much as a dozen fingers on each hand, allowing them to work the crossbow rather delicately without popping any joints off. Their shots tend to be rather lazy, sometimes arcing badly, but they can fire well if given proper guidance. *Boneshots: After a time, it will generally occur to a necromancer that skeletal undead (especially humanoid examples) do not really use their teeth for much. This, combined with the inherent limitations of the Skeletal Archer, must have led to the creation of the first Boneshot. They wield specialized weapons resembling hand-grafted, clockwork pistols that fire teeth (generally imbued with a spell of some sort, often explosive in nature, as regular teeth are not much of a threat). It is often they, rather than Skeletal Archers, who serve in the ranks of the most powerful necromancers as ranged combatants. *Grafted: As a necromancer becomes more powerful, he finds himself easily able to raise fully functional, lesser skeletons. But he often finds them lacking a certain intimidation factor--even Mantis Dead are more function than form--it is at this point that he will generally finally find a use for all of the animal bones he will inevitably collect. Grafted are Skeletons who have had much of their humanoid bodyparts replaced with rather morbid animal equivalents. Fingerbones are replaced with pointy, boned claws, Skulls are replaced with those of cows, large reptiles, pigs, and horses, extra limbs of various levels of functionality are often added. These creatures are as much sheer terror-infliction as they are combatants--indeed, the Mantis Dead tend to be far better at close-quarters combat--and they excel in the role. *Bone Horror: The culmination of skeletal shock troops, Bone Horrors are the necromancer's realization that he no longer needs to stick to nature's pre-defined forms. A Bone Horrors is simply an amalgamation of many, many skeletal bits and pieces assembled into a hulking humanoid shape. Ribcage bones often serve as claws and teeth, and morbid skulls-made-of-skulls are not uncommon. Bone Horrors have incredibly complex inner workings--only the Lich, outlined below, comes close in terms of sheer complexity--thousands of sloshing containers of liquid are pumped via an artificial, magic-powered heart to the creature's extremities, long sheets of parchment are sewn to the creature's bones, containing pages upon pages of spells that keep the creature animated. Bone Horrors are a terrible masterpiece of necromantic engineering, and the ferocity of one's most powerful Bone Horror is often used as a badge of honor among necromancers.
You know I always get the word "repository" confused with "suppository". So you can imagine my shock/horror when I saw this thread title for the first time today.
A young but horrendously deformed scientist invents time travel. His dad volunteers to test it, and travels back in time to remind himself to wear a condom.
I had an idea for an "Evacuation" mode for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive:
Inspired by the cut "Escape" mode from the beta of the original CS, Evacuation mode (ev) would be a custom gamemode for CS:GO, derived from the Demolition gamemode (itself derived from Gun Game).
Format: 10 rounds total per map, in two blocks of best-out-of-five matches. After the first five matches, teams switch, as in Demolition mode. 10 rounds is hopefully not too lenghty.
Gameplay: The CTs are invading the Terrorist base, and the Terrorists must escape by reaching the Evac zone. The CTs will have infinite respawns, to make sure that the Ts don't just camp and kill them off. The Ts will not have this luxury, which makes escape more important. CTs will get a new weapon and bonus grenades for kills every time they respawn*, but the Ts will only get these rewards on the next round. The Ts are indeed armed: they start out with SMGs and downgrade to pistols. The CTs also have downgrading, but their weapon path operates more like in standard Demolition mode. Though seeming one-sided, what helps the Ts is that their downgrading is more gradual. The timer is left in, and might last as long as it does in Classic modes. At the end of the timer, the CTs win if there are living Ts who have not escaped and are not close enough to the Evac zone (to further discourage camping while also not punishing the whole team if one guy gets close but does not make it in time).
Maps for this mode can also be in stages, much like in TF2, though implementing this may be tricky. The levels could be designed to let the CTs get the drop on some Ts or let the Ts trigger traps to shake the CTs off their trail.
*Alternatively, CTs and Ts get a similar arsenal, and CTs only downgrade on the next round, and more kills are required for bonus grenades.
I have an idea for a game. I've mentioned several times wanting to get into programming, and this game idea is the reason. The idea was to be a sort of Zelda/Elder Scrolls mix with a bit of Minecraft and Golden Sun thrown in for good measure. The way the game would work is that, on your character's birthday, s/he receives a display case with a model of a world in it that s/he can enter and exit at will. The world itself is traversed by imbuing elemental spirits in the display case to give yourself special abilities (e.g. chopping down trees to get wood). Before entering the world, you have to eat, and what you eat determines how long you can stay in the world and give you bonus health/attack power/etc. You enter the world through "sanctuaries" which are weapons bound with a power that creates a field that only you can enter and acts as a sort of hub between the worlds. Combat would be Zelda-esque, with a few added twists, such as the ability to use weapons other than swords, magic (okay, I know Link sometimes has spells but that's rare and these spells would be different), and having to occasionally do stuff like duck or jump to attack enemies. You can create weapons using combinations of ores, different types of wood, crystals, etc. found throughout the world. Armor would come in sets (unlike, say, Oblivion, where you can wear a leather torso, steel greaves, and fur gloves) and be either light or heavy. If the armor is heavy, it restricts your ability to change direction while moving (remember how Link controlled in the original Zelda? Like that, only with the ability to move diagonally I guess.)
And that's pretty much it. I don't have an end goal quite yet, but one idea I kind of like is that you find different designs for magic circles over the world and you have to use them to summon a demon which you then fight, but before you have to do that you have to protect the magic circle through building Minecraft-esque structures around it.
Comments
this relates to Flipside
Desert Elves--
An otherworlder on the Flipside might, upon hearing the word "Elf", envision haughty magic-users living in forests. Indeed, such creatures did once exist there, but this race--The Blue Elves--are long extinct. The forest they occupied fell millennia ago, a victim to their own massive overuse of terraforming magics, and these are their distant descendants. Desert Elves are slim, tan-skinned (darker the farther north one goes in the desert), and generally blond, brown or red haired with green or yellow eyes. Desert Elves are rather different from their ancestors, being mostly a warrior culture (magic is still very much used here, but its application is mostly offensive) who are very good with bows (a skill inhereted from the elves of old). Desert Elves rarely dress in anything more elaborate than a simple brown or gray cloak and undergarments, and tend to either live in small villages around oases, or in the larger cities of other races. The title of "High King of All Elves" still exists and is held by one Elahadrion XII, but is entirely a matter of ceremony at present. Once every hundred years (generally, once in a lifetime, two if they're lucky, for most elves) all Elves able gather at Heledrenon, the site of their ancient capitol, for a feast and a week-long celebration.
Elves who live quieter lives do tend toward the contemplative (sometimes being best described as spacey), but this is by no means a universal trait, and many nomadic elves are actually quite down-to-earth, being almost more similar to general perceptions of dwarves.
on Flipside Necromancy & Undead:
There are two vastly different kinds of undead on the Flipside. Natural and Manufactured.
Natural Undead are less a type of creature and more of a natural phenomenon. When enough Prismaticka concentrates in one place, it will look for an outlet, and the corpses of slain creatures (especially if unburied) are a viable outlet. Natural Undead tend to resemble generic zombies, and are rather inactive. They rarely do more than shuffle around aimlessly until the Prismaticka that powers them runs out and they slump back to the ground again as corpses. Though horrifying to the unprepared, citizens of the areas in which such creatures live consider them little more than a pest.
Manufactured Undead are a different beast entirely. Necromancy is a complicated fusion of several kinds of magic (mostly but not exclusively Formulism) and is closely related to Constructist (Golem-making) pursuits. But rather than fashion new bodies to imbue with life, Necromancers prefer to use corpses. Most necromancers start small. Raising a few insects, then moving up to rodents. It is a long time before a would-be necromancer is ready to create his first humanoid servant. When he does, it will often crumble back to dust mere minutes later. Constructed Undead require a "fuel supply" of Prismaticka that generally disappates quite easily if not somehow contained. Thus, while many necromancers can raise temporary zombies or skeletons that may last as long as a few weeks, any long-term projects require the creation of elaborate artificial organ systems. As such, these undead rarely directly resemble the creature--or far more often, creatures--they came from. A listing of some of the basic types is below.
*Skeletals: A Skeletal is any undead creature manufactured mostly or entirely of bone. They are by far the most common type of Constructed Undead, since preserving the flesh of a target is usually not worth the extra effort. There are many types of Skeletal Undead.
*Skeletons: These are your basic, raised skeletal corpses. Often humanoid.
*Mantis Dead: Often the next step for a novice necromancer as soon as they learn how to make their servants live indefinitely, Mantis dead replace the hands of a humanoid skeleton with either finely sharpened ribcage bones, or simply sickle blades. They are named for their resemblance to a praying mantis and are often found as foot soldiers for larger undead forces, or as the sole servants of "beginner" necromancers. Variants may replace the feet as well, creating quadrupedal creatures who balance on fine points to locomote. Another popular variant substitutes axe or scimitar blades for scythe, and this variant is often more manuverable in battle.
*Skeletal Archers: Many novice necromancers make the mistake of assuming after a few failed tries that trying to get a skeleton to shoot a bow and arrow is an impossible task. And indeed, a basic skeleton's fingerbones will often pop off while it attempts to draw the bowstring, among many other problems. However, with dramatic restructuring of the hand, it is possible for a necromancer to create a specialized skeletal creature whose sole combat role is shooting arrows from crossbows. These creatures generally have as much as a dozen fingers on each hand, allowing them to work the crossbow rather delicately without popping any joints off. Their shots tend to be rather lazy, sometimes arcing badly, but they can fire well if given proper guidance.
*Boneshots: After a time, it will generally occur to a necromancer that skeletal undead (especially humanoid examples) do not really use their teeth for much. This, combined with the inherent limitations of the Skeletal Archer, must have led to the creation of the first Boneshot. They wield specialized weapons resembling hand-grafted, clockwork pistols that fire teeth (generally imbued with a spell of some sort, often explosive in nature, as regular teeth are not much of a threat). It is often they, rather than Skeletal Archers, who serve in the ranks of the most powerful necromancers as ranged combatants.
*Grafted: As a necromancer becomes more powerful, he finds himself easily able to raise fully functional, lesser skeletons. But he often finds them lacking a certain intimidation factor--even Mantis Dead are more function than form--it is at this point that he will generally finally find a use for all of the animal bones he will inevitably collect. Grafted are Skeletons who have had much of their humanoid bodyparts replaced with rather morbid animal equivalents. Fingerbones are replaced with pointy, boned claws, Skulls are replaced with those of cows, large reptiles, pigs, and horses, extra limbs of various levels of functionality are often added. These creatures are as much sheer terror-infliction as they are combatants--indeed, the Mantis Dead tend to be far better at close-quarters combat--and they excel in the role.
*Bone Horror: The culmination of skeletal shock troops, Bone Horrors are the necromancer's realization that he no longer needs to stick to nature's pre-defined forms. A Bone Horrors is simply an amalgamation of many, many skeletal bits and pieces assembled into a hulking humanoid shape. Ribcage bones often serve as claws and teeth, and morbid skulls-made-of-skulls are not uncommon. Bone Horrors have incredibly complex inner workings--only the Lich, outlined below, comes close in terms of sheer complexity--thousands of sloshing containers of liquid are pumped via an artificial, magic-powered heart to the creature's extremities, long sheets of parchment are sewn to the creature's bones, containing pages upon pages of spells that keep the creature animated. Bone Horrors are a terrible masterpiece of necromantic engineering, and the ferocity of one's most powerful Bone Horror is often used as a badge of honor among necromancers.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
☭
B̤̺͍̰͕̺̠̕u҉̖͙̝̮͕̲ͅm̟̼̦̠̹̙p͡s̹͖ ̻T́h̗̫͈̙̩r̮e̴̩̺̖̠̭̜ͅa̛̪̟͍̣͎͖̺d͉̦͠s͕̞͚̲͍ ̲̬̹̤Y̻̤̱o̭͠u̥͉̥̜͡ ̴̥̪D̳̲̳̤o̴͙̘͓̤̟̗͇n̰̗̞̼̳͙͖͢'҉͖t̳͓̣͍̗̰ ͉W̝̳͓̼͜a̗͉̳͖̘̮n͕ͅt͚̟͚ ̸̺T̜̖̖̺͎̱ͅo̭̪̰̼̥̜ ̼͍̟̝R̝̹̮̭ͅͅe̡̗͇a͍̘̤͉͘d̼̜ 
⚢
Inspired by the cut "Escape" mode from the beta of the original CS, Evacuation mode (ev) would be a custom gamemode for CS:GO, derived from the Demolition gamemode (itself derived from Gun Game).
Format: 10 rounds total per map, in two blocks of best-out-of-five matches. After the first five matches, teams switch, as in Demolition mode. 10 rounds is hopefully not too lenghty.
Gameplay: The CTs are invading the Terrorist base, and the Terrorists must escape by reaching the Evac zone. The CTs will have infinite respawns, to make sure that the Ts don't just camp and kill them off. The Ts will not have this luxury, which makes escape more important. CTs will get a new weapon and bonus grenades for kills every time they respawn*, but the Ts will only get these rewards on the next round. The Ts are indeed armed: they start out with SMGs and downgrade to pistols. The CTs also have downgrading, but their weapon path operates more like in standard Demolition mode. Though seeming one-sided, what helps the Ts is that their downgrading is more gradual. The timer is left in, and might last as long as it does in Classic modes. At the end of the timer, the CTs win if there are living Ts who have not escaped and are not close enough to the Evac zone (to further discourage camping while also not punishing the whole team if one guy gets close but does not make it in time).
Maps for this mode can also be in stages, much like in TF2, though implementing this may be tricky. The levels could be designed to let the CTs get the drop on some Ts or let the Ts trigger traps to shake the CTs off their trail.
*Alternatively, CTs and Ts get a similar arsenal, and CTs only downgrade on the next round, and more kills are required for bonus grenades.