But I'll start with some new stuff as of today.

For the Rubyverse, I was working on the vampiric martial art some more.

I'm not sure if I had a name in mind for the vampiric martial art before, but now I do. I was thinking the English name for it would be "Moving Tree". I decided on that name for a variety of reasons. The idea behind it is that the user has their roots firmly planted in the ground--the martial art is not one which really involves jumping. It is furthermore one which involves being solidly positioned on the ground, such that nothing fazes the user.

In fact, the implication is also meant to be that the user is as tough as wood, with a hardened body.

And yet, there is also a fluidity in movement inherent in the martial art, the softer, flowing elements as if a tree is being blown by a gentle breeze. These sharp, crisp movements direct things, and can lash out with incredible precision and power.

Plus, there is the fact that branches can be, when sharpened enough, used as if spears--with the implication of impaling enemies upon the 'branches'. (Which in this case would be hands.)

There's more to it than that, but another one of the main reasons I chose that as the name is because it had the aesthetic of a name which sounded like it was plausibly a martial arts name to use. Yes, I haven't done the requisite research on Chinese martial arts that I wanted to, to get a better idea, but I DO know that quite a number of martial arts take HUGE cues from nature in their naming schemes.

And the idea of a tree which moves seems like it is something that could, quite plausibly, come from that culture. (Especially given that one of the traditional Chinese elements is Wood.)

Will I remember to call the vampiric martial art the Moving Tree martial art? Probably not! After all, it's possible this isn't the first name I've given the martial art, it's just the name I came up for it today.

Still, I feel that if nothing else this is a promising name. I'll need to find out what the best non-English name would be, because the non-English name would be the OFFICIAL name for the vampiric martial art, with "Moving Tree" just being the translated-into-English name for said martial art.

Beyond that, I also developed another new technique.
So the knife-guard's signature technique is the impale, from which the impaler stance derives its name; it is also the signature move of the martial art as a whole. While all four of the founding masters of the style were involved in every step of the process, the knife-guard was primarily co-developed by (who else?) both Tepes Lords.

The tri-guard's signature technique is the typhoon strike; while all founding four masters were involved, it was most heavily developed by Victor Wu.

And today, I developed the Claw-guard's signature technique:
Kneading/Purring.

What it is, is basically an existing martial art move in more flowing styles/forms, a circular motion.

The back hand rotates either above or below the front hand, and the front hand rotates either below or above the front hand.

When the front hand goes below the back hand/the back hand goes above the front hand, it is called Kneading; when the front hand goes above the back hand/the back hand goes below the front hand, it is called Purring.
These names originate from how, if you slow the motion down and slightly exaggerate it, what the fingers resemble.

The motion of the hands in Kneading looks a lot like a cat kneading, when slowed down. (At full speed, it's more like a scratch.) The potion of the hands in Purring bends the wrist in such a way that one hand comes back almost to the jaw, in a position which is stereotypically associated with the position you'd see paws placed in on a cat which is purring.

Now, Kneading/Purring can be done in a continuous cycle, where you make a full circle. Backhand to front to back, rotating clockwise or counterclockwise continuously, which is considered continuous kneading/purring. However, far more common is to switch between the two: instantly do a knead/purr, and then snap back with a purr/knead. 

So I'm not quite sure I'm explaining this motion as well as I should.

Basically, know how claw guard is essentially just knife guard except with a curled hand with the fingers apart? Well, it starts with the forward-hand in front, as per the norm for the martial art, and the back-hand in the back, obviously. But the motion snaps the back hand into the front and the front hand into the back.

This can be done in a static position, but is designed to synergize well with moving between the back/defensive stance and the forward/attack stance of the impaler stance. This is also one of the best defensive moves in the arsenal of the martial art, meant to give a continuously rotating guard--in theory, making it much harder to exploit vulnerabilities in defenses.

In all other aspects of the vampiric martial art, unless the hands are involved actively in either a strike, block, or grab or some sort, they remain static. They are locked more or less in a single position, where they rest. Now! Said position happens to be a smart position, one where they can easily in a split second snap a block/strike/etc. out. But the fact remains that an opponent can, if given the chance, see potential weaknesses in the defense because the defense never changes its base position.

This isn't just a vampiric martial art thing. I know from experience in sparring for my tae kwon do that the arms in the guard? Unless they are punching or blocking, they don't tend to move. The legs? They move a plenty. But the arms have more or less a single fixed position, a single 'optimized guard position', where with minimal movement a block/strike can be made.

And I don't think it's just my school.

I think this exists in almost all martial arts. I know they're not the best example, but like. In basically any movie featuring martial arts where the fighting is choreographed in such a way that you can see the fighters have a guard in the first place. The guard doesn't move when not striking/blocking/grappling. It just sits in one position.

It also is there in game animations, too, for the most part. Sprites are animated where the knees bend, the hips bend, there is forward and backward movement where the spine more or less is moving forward and backward. You know the like, it's something you see all the time. Yet when not performing either a block or a strike or a grapple, how often are the sprites' arms actually fluidly moving?

I mean, sure, it happens, but it doesn't happen often. Maybe it's wasted effort, or maybe there's the fear that the movement creates a vulnerability, maybe there's a reason for it. But I also believe that there's a reason why not every martial art does this, why some do have the arm movement I'm more or less talking about--

After all. There are existing forms where the arms move in more or less the way I am talking about. (In fact, I know at least one form from tae kwon do which uses the basic movement I am dubbing in my martial art kneading/purring.)

So I think that, mechanically, it can work as a way to more or less serve to theoretically make it much harder to exploit gaps in defense. And, yes. The movement behind kneading/purring is such that both arms are fully capable of blocking and striking at any moment.

In fact, half the reason to use this is to launch an unexpected attack, most likely a palm strike. Because the rotation is done continuously, and because it only takes ever so slightest the modification of movement to turn the simple rotation into a strike, a blow can be delivered with no warning by using this method.

At least. In theory. I have tested the body mechanics and the idea is at least theoretically sound. It acts pretty much as the counterpart to an existing thing from fighting.

In sparring, already. Your feet aren't meant to be static. They are springy. Bouncy. They have ever so slightest the continuous movement between one another. To allow for the ability to move forward, backward, sideways, in an instant, to react to being hit, and to surprise an opponent by 'invisible movement'. A move with the feet to close distance without revealing you're closing distance, or a kick without revealing you're throwing a kick.

It's a very tae kwon do type thing, but I imagine quite common even outside of it. You move the feet continuously so that your opponent never knows what you are planning to do next, and so that you can always be ready for what your opponent does next.

Kneading/purring, as I envision it, is basically doing the same thing the legs do, except with the hands. Especially since it can rotate two different directions, attacks can come from any number of different locations/times, without warning that there is any deviation from the pattern.

And yes. If you couldn't tell. It was indeed developed primarily by Lord Darkblood, and thus, is the style Ruby adapts for use in Red Hood Rider.

That's the main thing I'll be blogging about today, but I also thought it worth mentioning a dream I had last night.
The dream was almost nested, as a dream within a dream. Almost. It was a situation where I was involved in an event and thought I was more or less on break from a different event (a different dream). In the event I was involved in, I was watching television.

On that television, there was a kids cartoon show playing. Now, I don't remember if this was a real cartoon show, a fictional cartoon show, multiple real cartoon shows meshed up, or some combination of these, but what I do remember quite clearly was, within that cartoon show, there was dialog within that I listened to and memorized. (Unfortunately, I promptly forgot what said dialog was upon awakening.)

I was immensely reassured, and told my companion in the dream: "That's exactly the type of dialog that I use in Phyrra and Cyrus!" So basically. At least inside my dream. The dialog of Phyrra and Cyrus comes across as being natural, as being standard for a kids cartoon show, being just as good if not better than the material of other shows circulating in the contemporary market.

Of course, this is a dream we are talking about.

Butstill.

In spite of that.

Upon waking up.

The reassurance remains. Because I do tend to trust my dreams a lot. Phyrra and Cyrus was born from a dream, and this dream was indirectly telling me I feel, "You are on the right track. Don't second-guess your choices in terms of the dialog and what you want the characters to be. You are making something which is of quality."

​And I want to believe in that.

Well, I suppose by saying I am doing some spring cleaning of sorts. I'm moving every piece of paper which I know is 100% obsolete to an appropriate location; I am moving things which are potentially appropriate elsewhere to those locations; I am cleaning up my notes more or less.

The good news is--I am just about done with this process's first stage.

The bad news is, I've got a ton of stuff which I classified as either
-Being kept around because there was some detail different,
-Is pertinent to current things,
-Was explicitly never blogged about,
-Or--and this is the biggie--I have no memory of whether I have blogged about it or not.

If I removed that last one I'd have a good 70% less papers in the gigantic stack I have.
Still!

This has allowed me to more or less focus.

I have the recent content I haven't blogged about. The perfect RPG content (times two), the new webcomic, more about the impaler stance, and of course, the focus of why I did this, Phyrra and Cyrus notes.

I also have peripheral easy access to what I believe is the entirety of the relatively-recently-written notes on a story idea I meant to unload the details of in a gigantic ramble yet never got around to, the story which started as a Bleach knockoff but evolved to be something that is my own.

So...more or less, the question becomes...what can I blog about today, and what can I not blog about today?

I'll not be doing the gigantic ramble on the Bleach knockoff story idea yet (that one deserves a special ramble of its own), but I should be able to do the others...once I finish with the organizing of my papers. For a frame of reference, I'm pretty sure that I started dumping stuff in this area during NaNoWriMo of 2016. I am up to...well, a little past this point of last year, 3/26/2017.

Hmm...I suppose I'll start with the Rubyverse bit, about the impaler stance's vampiric martial art. What wasn't new was that there were two guards: knife guard (knife hand block is a common enough thing that I don't need to describe what it is; this is basically that), and claw guard (same basic positioning, but with fingers apart and curved).

What I developed which is new as of...well, about a week ago...is what I dubbed the tri-guard: open hand, elbows pointing up, towards target (with palm close to body). (Note that the front hand and back hand can take different guards, but are most frequently seen using the same guard.)

In normal circumstances, this would be a hilariously bad idea, because it exposes the ribcage to attack. However, I played around with the position, and found that with sharp, crisp enough techniques that are well-placed and timed, this wasn't actually an issue and was a potential asset.

In particular, the elbow up is great for up/upward outward blocks, the hand can sweep downward to do a downward block fairly easily...for either side. As in, with the right elbow pointing up, the right hand can block downward and have the deflected attack go to the right, OR go the other way and have it deflected to the left (more as a push than a sweep).

Other than the elbow itself, there isn't really much of an inward block, though the elbow itself acts as a pretty effective, close-range defense. And for an outward block, the same motion which applies for the downward block can be used. The whole thing is fairly fluid and effortless when I try it, and it pairs nicely with a particular strike pattern.

The idea behind the tri-guard is to use the triceps to snap a strike outward, where you basically just go from a bent elbow to a straight elbow. This is loosely akin to a very close-quarter jab; it isn't meant to have much power, but it's fast, allows you to grab your opponent, and sets up for the followthrough.

This followthrough has a working name of the Typhoon Strike, which is more akin to a cross: with the front hand fully extended, twist hand and reverse it around (the idea being you are grabbing onto them, drawing them in, and knocking them off-balance), and simultaneously the back hand does the inverse motion, rotating out to deliver a powerful strike. By reversing the process, this can then be combo'd, where the back-currently-in-front hand grabs and pulls, and the front-currently-in-back hand snaps from its rear position back into the position it started in.

I'm probably not describing it fairly well, but the body mechanics of it when I tried it out were at least in theory fairly sound. This stance also allows me to play more heavily around with the more crane stance aspects that I was inspired by originally, in that the triguard is built to allow for low/high blocks with a much, much greater ease than the knife/claw guards do.

Next on the list, and probably a disappointment because I've been building it up for so long as some amazing thing, is the new webcomic idea I had, called Average Joe's Bar.
The idea behind it?

Basically every being from every mythology gather in a bar to just hang out. Many of these beings even have multiple forms. For instance, capital-G God has no less than four: Big G (stereotypical old man with a beard), Momma G (an elderly plump black woman), Lil' G (a Bishonen anime boy), and Girly G (just a small girl). All angels have one for each gender (Lucy/Lucifer, Gabrielle/Gabriel, Michelle/Michael, etc.), and so on and so forth.

You have patrons like Lucifer/Satan I (Satan, in this case, being a title), God, various demons e.g. Beelzebub, The Devil/Satan II, Zeus and other Greek/Roman gods, Thor and other Norse gods, Ra and other Egyptian gods, Titans, (Demi)humans ranging from Jesus, Buddha, Hercules, Achilles, Theseus, Perseus, Moses, Noah, and the like. Basically, figures who are involved in the divine.

All of them more or less having the powers they are meant to have (or lack thereof).

...And they all meet in the titular bar, run by...
...Joe, a completely and totally, 100% ordinary human, who in theory could have regular human patrons. It's just that by some cosmic coincidence, everyone who is a patron at his bar just so happens to not be a normal human being. (He does, however, have the ability to serve godly drinks, e.g. ambrosia.)

It was envisioned as a slice-of-life story, where gods would get into antics, more or less, and crazy stuff would happen, but more or less that in spite of their drunken stupor, the gods would more or less always walk out with nothing having changed. Basically, just a setting to have fun in.

Of course, because I'd actually have to research everything I put in, and because I utterly suck at slice of life comics, it'd never come to be, even if I could pull off the art style. (I had a more chibi-like art look planned for all of these various numerous mythological figures, as to best emphasize the comedy.)

There may be more to it than that (for instance there might be a third Satan with The Devil being either Satan III and coming later or Satan II coming before, don't quite remember), but I think I hit all the important notes.

Two down, two very long ones to go.

​I'll start with the Perfect RPG. It's something I've worked less on because my inspiration has been far more focused on Phyrra and Cyrus as of late, but I've still done some work there. I worked out the beastmaster's name (you remember that she was the one to romance the dark archer, right?), and settled on Erin. This marks her as the first character I've actually named!

I also figured out an aspect of the Dark Archer's personality--in most situations, he will talk in a slightly antiquated, eloquent, verbosity-laden way, where he more or less is formal. However, whenever he is stress out, he will slip into more casual speech. Said stress is, mind you, what stresses him out. For instance, because he loves battle, even if his life is in danger he'll still be talking formally because to him that's not stressful.

However, try and get him to express emotions......

...This can be seen when the romance begins.
The following dialog is the precursor to before you can select something, to give an example:
Dark Archer: My good friend, I come to you seeking advice.
Protagonist: Sure, what are you after?
Dark Archer: I have grown rather fond of Erin over our time together, and I wish to formally initiate courtship. However, I am uncertain as to how this should be achieved.

This is when the dialog box comes up.

I also worked out a working draft for what the dialog is for choosing the hilariously stupid option of "Present Boar's Head as Proof of Manhood". Said dialog might change, but I more or less thought it'd go something like this (I wanted to show you this as a comic, but oh well):

Protagonist: I dunno, man...give her something?
Dark Archer: To what thing would you suggest?
Protagonist: Something with a personal touch would probably show sincerity!
Dark Archer: That is not a bad idea! I know just the thing......
[Fadeout to black; scene transition]
Dark Archer: Hey, Erin, look at this!
Erin: A- A...
Erin: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
*Erin faints*
Protagonist: She...she fainted!
Dark Archer: Ohcrapohcrapohcrap......
Protagonist: What do we do? Whatdowedo?
Dark Archer: I dunno, this was YOUR idea!
Protagonist: Uh...uh...let's go check her out!
Dark Archer: Check her o...DUDE SHE'S UNCONSCIOUS!
Protagonist: Yeah, that's why we need to!
Dark Archer: What the hell, man?!? I want to date her, not...
Protagonist: I MEAN CHECK UP ON HER!
Dark Archer: Oh.
Dark Archer: Uh...
Dark Archer: ...That sounds like a good idea.
[Fadeout to black]
Protagonist: Just a small bump to the head; she'll be fine once she wakes up.
Protagonist: Wonder what caused her to react that way?
Dark Archer: ...You think she liked it?
[Scene fades out]

As a reminder. Erin is an all-loving hero who absolutely adores animals. The two guys, during this route, are utterly clueless; Protagonist genuinely doesn't know why she reacted that way and the Dark Archer is genuinely hopeful that she liked it.

It still makes me laugh to this very day thinking about the scene. As in, I literally just laughed myself to tears by typing it out and thinking about it. If you're not reacting much the same way, that means I need to better demonstrate things, be it on a different medium or with better descriptors of their characters or just a rewrite of the dialog, but then again. This is MY perfect RPG, so I suppose it making me laugh is good enough.

The other thing I worked on for the perfect RPG was more or less making the first steps towards defining the relationship between the Future/Present/Past and differences in things sold.

For a start--it's (almost) impossible to make a profit off of buying things cheap in one area and selling them in a different area. With specific exceptions (said exceptions being tied to repeatable quests meant to level up the Merchant job), all goods are sold at a set price.

Goods are bought at varying prices so you can get things where the buy/sell ratio is 1:1 (as in, you can sell it for just as much as you can buy it), but also in places where the buy/sell ratio is potentially 1,000:1 (as in, you get 1/1000th of the item's cost to buy when you sell it).

The game does have a rudimentary supply/demand function, mostly tied to the repeatable quests to level up the merchant job, but still existing even outside of that. There are two basic variables at play:
"We have plenty of this good"/"We have very few to none of this good", and
"This good is something we can sell"/"This good is something which we'll never sell".
There is an in-between state for both, "We have some of this good"; "this good will sell a little bit".

And selling prices are thus set at select prices off of those criteria. None of this good + we can sell = maximum profit; Plenty of this good + something never selling = least profit; there are seven intermediary states (for nine total) of good prices.

Again, outside of specific circumstances, it's never possible to make a profit buying one place and selling another, but it's possible to get a 1:1 ratio between the two. 

Now.
That having been said.

I didn't quite get to work out the details, but I wanted to work out that there are different mechanics in play between the Future, Present, and Past when it comes to
-Buying Items (Cost/Variety/Grade)
-Buying Gear (Cost/Variety/Grade/Number of Slots)
-Upgrading Gear (Cost/Grade/Number of Slots)
-Enchanting Gear (Cost/Variety/Grade/Number of Enchantments)
-Slotting (Cost/Type/Number)
Among others.

As an example I came up with, in the Future, it'd be possible to buy products that are mass-produced and thus have a high number of slots, but come at a lower grade. Variety would be increased, but so too would cost.

I didn't get to detail the mechanics there, but I got a start on them, the idea being that the economics of the three times are not interchangeable, but still follow a general mold such that you, as Walkers, have a fairly decent progression in the quality of your gear as the game advances which is supported by the storyline.

​And now we get to the main project.

I suppose I'll start with the heroes.
I had a bit of a concern when I was going over the story in my head.

The Thaukama has 13 total members to it across the whole story. But of them, only about half of that are given the level of character depth over the course of the series that I would prefer them to have.

Phyrra and Cyrus, being the titular characters, aren't a concern. Gora, the only Guardian for the first half of the first season, is obviously not a concern because he travels with the Thaukama from the very beginning and is from the onset the closest to the siblings, so he's not a concern.

Ace, as the first human to join the Thaukama which he does fairly early on (we're talking, like, first six episodes or so), is not a concern of mine when it comes to depth. We have plenty of opportunities for him to show off his heroic badassery every step of the way.

Cedrick, given how he is introduced and how long he takes to formally join the Thaukama, is not much of a concern of mine. He is introduced before episode ten (when, exactly, hard to say) and remains a rival/antagonist until the shipwreck (his official joining point), so he has a fair amount of character focus during half the series. While he does lose some limelight after that coming into season two, he remains as one of the core fighters of the Thaukama. I'm not too concerned about him.

Kaze is not a concern, though mainly because he is deliberately designed to be the Guardian with the least amount of depth to him. This is an intentional design choice for him, to make there not be much about his character, though even given that, he has opportunities where he gets to show his character off to others.

Bard is a bit of a concern, though--during his introductory arc, he has a ton of focus. Like, he has a great deal of depth added to him during the period of those 6-8 episodes. But after that, I'm a bit concerned I don't have enough planned for him when it comes to the Thaukama's team dynamic more or less. How he interacts with others. He DOES get some focus in the latter half of the second season, though, so I'm not concerned about him that much.

Lily is not a concern of mine, because she is a co-holder for team mom with Myra, in addition to her interactions with Hera and generally her usefulness to the team, between her shops in various cities and her life experience and what she can do. She's also mostly a noncombatant in spite of being an incredibly competent fighter when she does fight, so that gives me some freedom to let her do things aside from fight.

However, there's three human members of the Thaukama and a whole Guardian (one of the core entities to the series) that I am a little bit concerned about when it comes to chances to really show them off as characters, to give them depth, personality, screen time, and levels of individuality such that you get to see them as people rather than just plot devices used to further the story.

I am deeply concerned and even troubled by the fact that Myra is someone I don't have a lot of material for. Even Kaze, the homicidal maniac, has more planned than she does. I know she is a people eater, along-side Hera. I know she is the team mom, and shares this role with Lily. But in spite of her holding the status OF team mom...I don't really have her doing much in the way of motherly things for the majority of the story, and that's an issue.

Plus, aside from that, she's the only Guardian I don't really have much in the way of battles planned. Admittedly, I don't have many for Kaze, either, and I can only think of one (really, really awesome) battle for Hera, butstill, Myra is introduced in episode 14, or thereabouts. She's with the Thaukama for 3/4ths of the series, more or less. She should have a notable impact, which I am still working on giving her.

I do have a little bit of depth planned for Will, in that his services as the son of nobles help the Thaukama out and he is the one who helps provide them with rides, but I don't have much in the way of plans for him...until the second half of the second season. This is a bit of a concern of mine, since unlike the others he doesn't have as much screen time. I do think I need to do more with him.

Alena I also am deeply concerned with--as the last member of the Thaukama introduced at a set point, I have only ten episodes to show her off and make her be seen as a deep, important character. She has a very heavy focus, but I'm not sure it's enough. I did develop a bit of a patch for this, though--I am giving her a cameo during a time contemporary to Cyrus's "are you going to have lesbisex?" line. Her introduction proper wouldn't be until later, but even this little bit would help to establish her in advance.

However, the largest concern of mine is Clara. Other than her introduction, I have...basically nothing on her. I still have basically nothing on her, but I did manage to figure out some ways to help. One way I am helping out is by introducing her earlier--she'll be in the shipwreck, and is introduced on the mainland, returning from a pilgrimage there to head back to the new world, where she does most of her adventuring.

She would be traveling with her master, and the shipwreck actually serves as a convenient method of separating her from him...allowing her to become a member of the Thaukama far more believably, and also helping to explain why she doesn't have her master with her (an issue I had before--basically, the idea was to introduce her without her master but I was having trouble with how that'd work and once her master was in the picture how it'd make sense for her to travel with the Thaukama; now I have a way of doing that).

The main thing I did to flesh her out was to develop Paladins. (Disclaimer: I want to research Paladins in D&D to see what they can do. I want to cover most "traditional" Paladin abilities, more or less, which can be justified as being based on Sun Magic. So, no, no Anti-Fear-Aura, but yes, Lay-On-Hands. See below.)

Specifically, I developed Paladins such that Paladins are subdivided into two types, depending on what they are aiming to specialize in (because, remember--they use specialized magic; they can't learn everything without becoming full mages which takes half a human lifetime).

Solarii (what Clara is in training to become) are spellbladers, who make use primarily of two main spells. Clara's lantern-spell and engulf-weapon-in-light spells are the two preliminary versions of the spells Sun Scorch and Fire Hammer (respectively).

...Yes, those names should seem oddly familiar, but I thought it appropriate. Sun Scorch, the evolution of the lantern-hand, is basically an explosion of pure sun energy, radiating out from the caster to obliterate all opponents, cast either through the hands or through a weapon.

Fire Hammer, the evolution of the engulf-weapon-in-light spell, is to create an entire weapon out of pure sun energy, controlled through heliokinesis. This heliokinetic weapon is usually utilized to rotate around the caster to attack enemies on all sides, since with every strike, a miniature sun explosion is unleashed. (This type of 'weapon rotating around the caster' spell is common enough that I think the effect comes across.) Alternatively, the concussive/explosive force generated when the weapon is 'thrown' forward can devastate a single target in front of the caster. (This is from the source material where the name originates from, but can also be thought of from another source...)

There is also a mundane application. The weapon might be made out of pure sun energy, but is still solidified--it can be grabbed. Because it is controlled by the heliokinesis of the caster, it can go however the user wills it to. When you combine these properties, what you have is that when the user grabs onto the weapon, they can, functionally, fly.

In short, this is an ability you can think of as basically being Thor wielding Mjolnir, except instead of being lightning-oriented, it is oriented around the sun. Otherwise the effects are much as you'd expect them to be, launched and returned at will, the staple attack of a Solarii. (Because Sun Scorch tends to, with repeated casting, exhaust the user, whereas Fire Hammer is cast only once and thus the only drain involved is the heliokinesis which relatively speaking is basically nothing to a trained paladin.)

They may have other spells, but these two are their signature moves, which are what make them be Solarii. They are incredibly potent, powerful abilities, difficult to master, and yet incredibly awesome once they are. Solarii paladins are generally what the masses think of as "adventuring paladins", because they have a skillset best suited for that profession--martial moves that are combat-oriented, albeit having pragmatic use outside of combat (e.g. smithing).

​Paeans are the other half of paladins, thought more of as the "healing paladins". They do have combat-oriented skills, revolving around ranged weaponry (typically missile weapons in the form of bows or the occasional crossbow), but most of what they focus on is healing/buffing based around photosynthesis. That being, they use the energy of the sun to propagate life, mending wounds at an accelerated rate and the like.

I don't have their spells detailed as well as I do Solarii spells, admittedly, but that gives you a general framework for what they do. They are more passive, but just as important.

There are some spells common to both types of paladins--the main one, Shield of Light, is exactly what it sounds like, though the form of the spell differs. For Solarii, the shield of light is a spherical barrier encompassing an area (based more around the sun scorch), usually surrounding an ally, which can be condensed (based more around the fire hammer) to form...a rather literal shield, often directly in front of the target to stop an incoming powerful attack.

For Paeans, the shield of light is a barrier encompassing an area, usually surrounding an ally, which can be condensed to form an aura surrounding the target. You know how in sci-fi a semi-common piece of tech is a personal forcefield? Sometimes so personalized that when you see the outline of it it is literally just inches above the skin and form-fitted to the body? The uncondensed is the former; the condensed is the latter.

Both techniques might have a different basis based around the particular magic unlocked in the individual to use (because, again, this is specialized magic which must be taught from an early age and which only is partially unlocking magical potential such that the caster can do a very specific set of things and nothing else), but they result in an identical effect, thus the shared name.

That's what I have for heroes.

Now let's move on to the villains!

​Back a few days ago, I managed to give them some names. The first big bad, Sloan Patrick Breaker, received the equipment which made him a threat from the third big bad. When defeated, he contacts said big bad and informs him, "The ones who defeated me are the ones you were hoping to surface. Their names are Phyrra and Cyrus."

His evil schemes are fairly small compared to others. I don't have the specifics laid out yet, though.

The second big bad, Gunther King Slayer (for the record, he is the son of two villains so that name is not what you'd call incidental), received the ability he needed for his scheme from the third big bad. When defeated, he contacts said big bad and informs him, "Phyrra and Cyrus are on their way to the New World, and if they survive the trip...they will be fully awakened."

The third big bad, Archer Cross Hill, more or less is after Phyrra and Cyrus's powers for himself.

All of those big bads, because they are tied together, have a particular theme to their names--it's ridiculously subtle though, so mad props if you can navigate my mind to the extent where you are able to pick out the common thread to all three names. (Even better would be if you discover a common trend to their three names that I hadn't intended because that'd mean there was more than just the original one!)

The fourth big bad, deliberately meant to break the trend, is named Muse Gerald Icarious. Which, in of itself, has a not-so-subtle meaning to it along similar veins to the other names. (You might note that not many of the names in Phyrra and Cyrus are particularly clever; all of them more or less are some reflection of something.)

The third big bad, Archer Cross Hill, stole some research from Muse Gerald Icarious in order to enact his final scheme (which failed, obviously), but the final big bad being the final big bad gets to use the research in its full unadulterated form. Said research being...

The Six Sins.
"Six?!? What happened to seven?!?"
Not just kidding!
You heard it right.

SIX sins.

The Six Sins are summoned spirits, directly akin to the four Guardians in function--they are cursed spirits, who reveled in their particular sin until they were forced to never embody their desire. They can never truly die; whenever they are 'killed', it simply means that they cannot be re-summoned for a minimum of 200 years. (There is of course no maximum so they could theoretically go all of eternity unsummoned, but if killed then they can't be summoned again for 200 years.)

And, yes, they are a bundled package. You summon them all together, and then are the master of all six until all six are released from the bond.

So the basic reasoning behind this is...the six sins were once human. (Which differentiates them from the Guardians, who explicitly never have been human, though did once exist without being tied to the books.) When they were caught for their crimes, they were cursed to serve a barbarian sorcerer-warlord, who made it sure that the owner of the seventh sin (pride) controlled them...starting, of course, with him. (This being eons ago in the story, his name has been lost to the history books.)

That is why there are only six of them. Because the seventh sinner is their master, the human who summons them, who must embody both pride, and yet also humbleness. They must have the ambition and drive to have grandiose goals and essentially a grandeur of godhood mindset, to have the knowledge that they can have the power to surpass all...

...And yet, because the curse also forces the sinners to be their opposites (more or less), the owner of the other six sins must be humble and wise enough to understand their own limitations and be honest about their capabilities. This unique mixture is a rather lethal one, because it involves a person who dreams big but knows exactly what steps will end up screwing them over. In other words--a genre savvy villain.

The Six Sins are...
Ivan, sinner of Gluttony. Ivan is unique among the sins for having the capacity to lie; the other sinners cannot. Ivan's sin was that he was a serial killer cannibal. At the height of his debauchery, he would eat one entire human a day, bones and all. (Literally everything in a human is at least some definition of edible with the right preparation; if you're a fat bastard, you have a big enough gut to eat much more than normal.)

His punishment, upon being cursed, was to become a mummy. (Think, half of the curse from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Specifically, a combination of their appearance and the eternal hunger/thirst.) When he touches someone, he drains them of their physical energy, as if starving them.

Olivia, sinner of Lust. Olivia is unique among the sins for having the capacity to still sin, albeit not in her sin. Her sin was that she was a serial rapist--she tortured her victims, enacting various sexual fetishes on her unwilling partners. If they died, that was no problem; she kept going, making her guilty of necrophilia. She was also indiscriminate in her victim choice--man, woman...or child. So yes, she was guilty also of pedophilia. (I realize I might not be able to get this by censors, but I'd get as much as I could through with the rest implied.)

Her punishment, upon being cursed, was to become a withered old hag. (Think the other half of the curse from Pirates of the Caribbean, unable to feel the pleasures of the flesh.) Her touch drains mana. Because she is so denied what she desires and is eternally reminded of it, she experiences envy.

Balian, sinner of Wrath. Balian is unique among the sins for having full recollection of his name. All the other sinners only remember their first name, but Balian knows his full name. Balian's sin was that he singlehandedly massacred an entire city of 10,000 civilians. When an army of 20,000 was mobilized to avenge them, he massacred the 16,000 who fought...and then, when 4,000 fled in terror...

...He hunted them down, massacring every village along the way, just on the possibility they harbored his prey. He left no survivors by the time he had finished. So yes, he was in fact a person of mass destruction. He was a spellblader, whose spells are ironically what he is more or less cursed to only be able to use (nothing more). Back in the day, he used entrapment spells such that he could help narrow escape routes such that there was nowhere to run, allowing his massacres to transpire.

...Now, he is cursed with the appearance of a pseudo-Buddhist monk (bald head, peace beads, etc.), able to create barriers (basically a kekkaishi) which are explicitly nonlethal. He cannot loophole his way into killing someone by, say, materializing a barrier inside a body, or asphyxiating someone by draining their oxygen. (Well, he can do that to the point of unconsciousness, but the barrier collapses before killing anyone.)

He is forced, absolutely forced, to be a complete and total, absolute, utter pacifist. He cannot harm anyone. At all. He can only prevent harm, and is in fact compelled to do so. He can't do nothing; he must help prevent harm, in order to never embody his wrath.

Erik, sinner of Envy, is unique among the sins in that he has no recollection of his past life--thus, he doesn't remember what sin he performed. (Mostly because I couldn't actually think of what atrocity he committed comparable to the others, butstill.)

His curse was to become a blind beggar, with the gift of healing--in other words, he is forced to only give to others and to never in turn receive anything for his service. He is basically compelled to always reverse destruction. 

Deryll, sinner of Greed. Deryll is unique among the sins for not having anything unique about him. He is a textbook cursed sinner. His sin was that he was a serial killer of noble heritage--similar to Gluttony, he murdered at least one person a day, but instead of eating them, he collected various, numerous trophies from his victims. (Which is a semi-common thing from actual serial killers.)

His curse was that he became a robot, unable to be adorned in anything. (This was the only way I could think of to make the fact that he's naked get by censors.) If he grabs onto anything, he is forced to teleport away--without the item.

He also serves as the messenger for Muse. He's the one who informs the Thaukama that Archer made use of powers of the sins and knowledge acquired from his master, and that his master is actually out for much the same goal...however, his master still regrets Archer's actions, because while Archer acted alone, it was only possible thanks to his master's research.

Furthermore, his master desires to acquire his goal through any method necessary--even peaceful ones. Conflict was thus, strictly speaking, unnecessary, and that it happened was not ideal; the violence used was excessive and entirely unrequired for the goal.

However, Deryll does relay that his master laments that, inevitably, they'll still come into conflict, because his master is villainous and the Thaukama are heroic so even though his master's goal can be met without any force, they will still end up fighting each other.

Ulysses, sinner of Sloth. Ulysses is unique among the sins for being the only sin to feel remorseful for his sins. The other sins? They still desire their sin, just are cursed to never have it. With all but Olivia apathetic about their situation, yet making it clear they absolutely would still perform their sin if they were capable of it.

...Not so much for Ulysses, who feels immense, deep regret for his actions, desiring atonement he knows he'll never get. His sin was multiple chained events--he started as an adventurer, becoming a part of their core group. Eventually, he was placed in a position where he could easily have saved them...yet he let them die, and reveled in it, enjoying the absolute betrayal of trust his companions had placed in him.

After this, he returned to his kingdom where he was a prince, and took innocents and placed them in Saw-like death-traps, such that he could just watch them slowly die as they tried to get out. At every stage, he could abort the torture-executions, but he kept them going because he enjoyed watching them suffer and die rather than sparing them.

Inevitably, his kingdom was invaded, and while he easily could have crushed the invaders...he let his people perish. He deliberately ordered his troops to more or less act in the way which was most passive and yet still suicidal. Then, fleeing from the carnage, returned to adventuring and duplicated his first feat on a second group of unsuspecting adventurers.

This betrayal of trust is emphasized as essentially having been the worst of the sins (not that hard to understand when you go Thaukama-->Nakama), and thus, his curse is also the most severe. At its most base level, his curse makes him an insomniac, incapable of sleeping and yet always eternally having the effects of sleep deprivation forced on him thanks to this.

Furthermore, he is a compulsive analyst genius.  (And yes, he does look like L from Death Note.)

The exact specifics make this even worse. He has the absolute compulsion (think like in Code Geass where Suzaku is geassed by Lelouche with the "Live!" command) where he cannot commit suicide, not even suicide by cop; he is compelled to fight to survive and to not pick fights he cannot win. If he can win a fight, he is compelled to proactively INITIATE said fight against any he deems a threat to his master; he can't let his opponents live/go free, nor can he let them kill him.

Why would he want that?

Because he is in eternal pain. He has hyper-senses. Increased vision, VERY increased hearing capable of hearing everything, increased sense of touch, taste, and smell.

Additionally, he is constantly being forced to analyze that sensory input. In short, he is a constant, never-ending, ultimate Sherlock Scan, aware of every little detail about everything in his surroundings which more or less means that he can see the life story of everything he is around more or less; there is no "off switch" to this ability, and no way to tune it out.

Worse, he has an Eidic memory. He remembers everything. Every thought he's ever had, every emotion he's ever felt, every feeling he's ever experienced. Pain from a wound he sustained hundreds of years ago still hurts as if brand new. And that above ability? You know, the scan everything one? He remembers every single second of every single scan.

Constant sensory overload, fresh every single moment. He more or less is in a constant neverending hell, and among the reasons is that he can remember with crystal clarity his sins, and what he did, the absolute betrayal of trust, the feelings he felt when doing so, and with his new abilities, being able to understand exactly how every single victim felt, through a combination of a retroactive sherlock scan (that being, knowing things he didn't know at the time through having perfect recollection and perfect intuition) and through personal experience (in that unlike when he was originally alive, he has now personally experienced the wounds he inflicted on others dozens of times so he knows exactly how they felt).

He is forced to hunt down enemies and eliminate them, knowing full good and well exactly what it feels like to be killed, and being unable to be killed himself because he's too competent to be killed and can't let himself be killed. He basically gets to always experience the absolute worst of everything.

​This is, more or less, what gave him a conscience, though. By having to actually witness what his atrocities were like, he actually genuinely is sorry for it, but knows that even were it possible for him to be released from the curse, he wouldn't deserve it.

By the way, yes, he is in fact the most deadly of the six sins. He makes it abundantly well-known that he is in fact going to massacre the Thaukama if they let their guard down for so much as a second, and the only reason that he isn't compelled to fight them is that he calculates a 60% chance he'd die when fighting every member of the Thaukama at once, violating his master's commands in the process.

I think that's about it. I am looking at the three sheets I have, scanning them for information, and I BELIEVE I got everything I had written down, so I think that's everything.

So yeah, that's what I had.

You'd THINK that'd be because of the bracelet, but no. It's actually probably because we're coming up on her birthday. March 17th, 2015 was the first mention of what would become Ruby. It was a Tuesday.

March 19th expanded her. And then other entries throughout March further built her into an entity.

I decided last year (or was it 2016?) what her official anniversary was, but I can't recall what and I can't track it down. Still. Her birthday is around this time. I don't know when, exactly, I'm meant to celebrate it...but it is soon.

Today, the subject came up in my mind of characters' parents and to a lesser extent, family.
Ruby's parents are featured albeit as minor characters. She does have siblings, too.

Sally's an orphan since her parents were killed in a vampire attack on the homeless shelter; her older sister died the day Sally's powers awakened.

Gary's parents are millionaires, with the caveat that's lower-millions, sub-$10,000,000, but still technically millionaires, plural. He is an only child.

Hannah, like Sally, is an orphan.

Amy is Ruby's daughter, so her lineage is obvious enough.

Dale, as a vampire who is literally like a thousand years old technically had parents but suffice to say it's not something story-relevant given they are centuries deceased.

...But that's still four members of the Ruby Gang's ten fighters that I didn't have the family of locked down.

Harold/Herald (who's he? I realize it's easy to forget about him given that as the Team Normal his badassery is something not often advertised but he is a member proper of the team who is not a joke and is an actual, serious, real combatant that actually makes up the main muscle of the team) is old enough to be the father of a teenaged child. He's not; he's single, but he has a sibling that has a daughter, and said niece is teenaged in years, so he's around that age.

As a result, it can be safely stated his family's not really that important. His niece is in training to take up the family business. His sibling isn't retired per se but is on an extended vacation for the duration of the time raising their child(ren) to adulthood. His parents are of the age where they easily could be retirees...but since Hunters tend to be spry for their age, most likely, his parents are off being Hunters in British Columbia--somewhere kinda sorta close by, but not really story relevant.

Whitney is slightly older than the other riders, and I just remembered that her family is accounted for since her family owns a bar.

...Still, however.
That left D.D. and Vili unaccounted for when it came to family.

Today I managed to work out a character, who I decided fitted perfectly as being her father.

His name: Thomas, AKA, "Tank". He's a street fighter, and basically immune to anything not explicitly magical/supernatural in that no human has ever managed to actually beat him in a fight; he remains undefeated.

This is because his moniker of Tank is appropriate--people think of Tanks as basically a "moving fortress": something incredibly well-armored such that it is nigh-impregnable, often with heavy weaponry, but which is slow to move and lacks maneuverability.

...He is not that kind of Tank. He is a modern Tank. Which still has the armor to be nigh-impregnable and the heavy firepower to unleash punishment...but also is fast and maneuverable. The TVTropes term for this would be "Lightning Bruiser", and given Vili's element, it seemed an appropriate enough description for her father.

He's also a genius, at least in term of street smarts/combat sense, in that he knows exactly what to do. He is well-trained and uses good technique and recognizes sloppy technique; he is the one who trained Vili how to fight in the first place and still acts as her trainer to this day because he can critique all her numerous imperfections. (Namely, "stop letting your powers do the fighting! I am a skilled fighter even without my build!")

It'd be a little bit of a challenge to draw him though. He's meant to have an impressive girth: to have an outer layer which is filled with fat. This fat weighs him down a lot and acts as a shock absorber allowing him to absorb impacts from blows, but underneath the fat, there is enough muscle such that he isn't encumbered by the fat. He, essentially, quite literally: knows how to throw his weight around. His muscle + fat creates a lot of mass behind his strikes, and he is nimble enough to deliver one after another after another after another.

It's also not possible to throw him off-balance, to tip him over, or anything like that; he is just...built in a way where he is able to hold himself. And yes. He can even jump. And when he lands from the jump, that too carries a disproportionately large impact.

...You would think that someone like this would be impossible, but I'm actually modeling the idea for him off of an actual guy I know from tae kwon do who is often described as essentially "fighting a freight train". If he had the mental faculties (his main weakness is that he hesitates and that he thinks too much more or less, overthinking things which slows him down) to match his physical capabilities, he would dominate literally every fight because no matter what strike or kick I throw at him he isn't phased and he hits with incredible force and I've seen him combo strikes with speed when not dealing with the thought behind it.

...Now admittedly. I am also taking some cues from some fictional fighters, e.g. The Blob (X Men), Po (Kung Fu Panda). But the idea is not as ludicrous as it sounds. You can both be incredibly strong and yet incredibly full of blubber, capable of tanking any blow because you absorb it, and yet dishing it out with both speed and strength of unbelievable amounts in spite of (or rather BECAUSE OF) the fat which people'd expect to be a hindrance.

So I swear. The guy I am envisioning is in fact not something which is too outside the realm of reality; he is someone who very easily could exist and I imagine somewhere in our world actually does. I'm that confident it's possible. To have a build which is basically immune to typical redirection strategies, immune to being knocked off-balance, immune to punches/kicks, and yet is fast and strong. With the mindset of a fighter, such a person would be a force to reckon with.

And this is the guy I picture as being Vili's father. I imagine him as being much the same as her: a combat-loving guy, mostly laid back, but strict when it comes to combat to the point of being almost militaristic, and being incredibly disappointed when his daughter slacks off.

Anyway, I still owe you the rambles I promised over half a week ago, but given that I am past my bedtime already (this ramble took me ten times longer to type than I thought), I should be going to bed.

So something interesting about me and my relationship to Ruby: when her look was birthed, it was birthed off of largely items I already had, combined with items that I wish I had but didn't have, along with a little bit of flair from genres like magical girl, superhero, and the like.

I had her three hairties...but I lost them. Or rather, I still have them, it's just they wore out and/or broke. I have them more or less enshrined above my old computer desk; every retired hairtie ends up being placed their when their services have been rendered. Still! When I say I lost them. What I mean is I ran out of them. I substituted for thinner ones...which also ran out, leaving me with only one hairtie and no spares.

She has two coats, her main one (which is a combination of 3 or so coats I owned and taking the best from all of them) which I didn't own and her Dark Ruby coat which is basically almost exactly what I consider my "main coat". (I wear a winter coat over it, and I wear coats under it, but it's still the look which is mine.) This being the warmup jacket. I still have this.

She has a skirt, which I obviously don't have, but Dark Ruby has shorts instead of a skirt.

Her leggings are directly taken from items I still have--my running shoes have since been replaced with newer ones which're almost identical and which I've yet to actually wear, but I still have them and the look is much the same even with the new ones. The socks used are still there, too; those knee-high socks are a real thing I own.

Angel Wings being a glow-in-the-dark bracelet was because I literally had that on my arm...but I lost it. And then I got a replacement. Lost it, too. Got a third! Didn't lose it, but I lost the connector so that meant I no longer could wear it.

Her hairstyle as default is what I wanted my hair to look like but obviously couldn't. Her Dark Ruby hair style being a ponytail was taken directly from my real life hairstyle.

Her Darkblood Coven ring was taken from the bat ring I had around my finger...and I have lost that.

Her fingerless gloves were something I didn't own but wanted to, which I thought were pragmatic for someone with her abilities to have.

​Her mask was just something which I figured was superheroish to have, though I imagine if I scoured through my house enough I'd find one which would be that domino mask because let's face it that's not an uncommon item to own. 

By and large, she was formed from things I was fond of--things I owned and wished I owned, and combined together onto a single person who had them.

...In a co-relationship to this, however, I have always strove to have more of her in me. I've wanted to make myself more like her. So as a consequence of this...I've always wanted to get things.


I finally, finally, finally recently regained the hairties which were the type and number used. (They are apparently the ones my mom uses when she uses hairties. Which makes sense, I suppose. It's not like I put hairties on a list. I just one day up and took the hairties I found and started using them; they had to belong to someone before then.)

While I still don't have her coat, I more or less permanently wear a light jacket which is pretty dang close. And have over it another red jacket that has some additional features. Also, I still have the warmup jacket meaning I still have the Dark Ruby outfit part.

I have acquired shorts--albeit red rather than black.

As mentioned, I still have the leggings, albeit never actually used in recent times.

With the way my hair is parted, that being, the asymmetrical pseudo-bob haircut (in that my hair is not shaved on one side but it is all on the left side--it does look kinda like a longer version of this except with the hair fully on the left rather than only partially there; if you saw me you'd know what I'm talking about), when I put my hair up, I am essentially putting it in a pigtail exactly the way Ruby was envisioned as having hers. Admittedly, only one; I don't have the hairstyle to support two of that type. (Maybe years from now my hair will be long enough to pull it off?) Butstill, I have it.

I don't have the bat ring, but I do have an amazing fidget ring which is comparable to it very, very easily.

I have obtained fingerless gloves as well.

...And today.

Well, today I was at work, and I spotted...

...Glow-in-the-dark bracelets which they were giving out.

I asked if I could have one...

...And they said no.

It was right there.

In front of me.

One of the last things I needed for me to more or less look like Ruby on a permanent basis. I mean yes, the things I wear I don't wear at the same time so I don't pull them all together at once in order to have an essential cosplay of her. But in theory I could, if I had them, so I was so disappointed.

...As fate would have it though...

...I came back at a later time, and was asked if I wanted to buy a raffle ticket. Since I always have a metric ton of pocket change, the answer was yes. And when I did give it, I was told...

...I could have not one, but four of the bracelets. Two of which are the same two which were the original source of inspiration for Ruby. (That being, the original two types that I wore.)

I am a very happy person right now.

Because that means that if I wanted to.

I could basically pull off her full outfit.

It'd be a mostly "just for my personal feelings" type thing since I'd be mixing Dark Ruby with normal Ruby and I'd be making some substitutes here and there and so on and so forth...but the point is.

I can do it now, and I couldn't before.

​So that was the highlight of the night for me.

I still am! But instead of using that as an excuse to not write much of a blog, I'm using today as a chance to write an extensive blog entry! So extensive, in fact, that I'm estimating a timeframe of about four hours between typing and research to finish it, and that's with me not going into things in as much detail as I could. Start time is approximately 2:15 PM, so I'll let you know how close my four hour estimate is when I finish.

I suppose I'll start with the mundane: remedies.

So background.

At work, we have free coffee, before noon more or less.

I make extensive use of this.

I can drink my coffee any way. Sugar and cream, sugar alone, cream alone (this is my preferred), or even black. (I don't really see what's the reason not to do it, but I tend not to simply because I like the flavor creamer adds plus creamer cools the coffee faster.)

When I am feeling myself be dangerously low on nutrients--and this is, unsurprisingly, happening more and more often at work--I have taken to adding sugar to the coffee. I'm pretty sure the sugar I want is real sugar and not sweetener. I'm pretty sure my work has the real sugar (it'd be the white ones), and I know absolutely for sure it has sweetener (between the pink/yellow/blue ones, I know at least one or two are sweeteners and I think all three are).

Still, just in case, I add both to the coffee, such that I have an emergency supply of energy. Is it healthy, heck no. Does it even help me? Probably not much! But it's better than nothing for someone who is hopelessly eternally underweight. (One good thing I have to look forward to when I eventually live with my girlfriend is that problem won't be allowed to stand. Long story there but that's not something to tell on a public blog.)

However, I still prefer not to use it.

That having been said, it has become necessary for a formula.

Since being sick, I've been adding tea to my drink. I let the drink sit for 20 minutes (off the stand, with coffee) or 30 minutes (on the stand, with hot water), alternating between the two as I change positions and thus averaging two drinks per hour.

This I can only conclude has one of two acceptable names: 'cofftea' and 'abomination'. Because I imagine the one and only thing coffee purists and tea purists have in common is that they believe you should never mix the two, and yet I freely do so.

The formula changes day to day, but by the end of the day it's usually about the same:
Five tea bags (in a tiny 8-10 ounce cup, mind you) already at the bottom and thoroughly soaked. Add 50-60% coffee, preferably not decaf but I'll use decaf if regular's not available. As the tea diminishes with repeated doses, so too does the amount of sugar I add, from 4-5 (initial) down to 2-3 (final) by the end of the day sugar packs, with a near-equal but slightly less number of sweeteners (3-5 initial, down to 2-3 final).

Then I fill it most of the way to the top with the creamer. I can't confirm, but I believe my workplace uses half-and-half creamer, whatever that entails. The final bit I add is a top-off of hot water. Now, mind you, the drink is already heated because coffee is kept warm/hot especially when freshly brewed about once an hour (I get the fresh brew a good half of the time as one of the first people to have it, and then the stale brew as one of the last to have it the other half of the time), but the water seems to help balance the flavors out.

I add a wooden stick to stir, and I imagine the wooden stick actually adds flavor of its own because I leave it in (in no small part because half of the time it gets tangled in the tea strings).

I drink that, then add hot water, then rotate onto the guard stand, when off drink the hot water brew, and repeat the process. The tea I use is whatever's available, which seems to differ from time to time. (So does the sugar by the way. And for that matter, sometimes the creamer, though the creamer's mostly consistent.) Some are marked as caffeine-free.

When given the choice I normally stay away from those and stick with the ones without such a label since I assume a lack of a caffeine-free label indicates there's caffeine within and usually caffeine is half the point. Right now I'm having tea because I'm sick. But were I to have cofftea outside of being sick, it'd be because there's no regular coffee, decaf coffee is available, but so too is a non-caffeine-free tea bag available.

...Okay so the wording there's confusing. But basically. Outside of sickness, I use cofftea when I need a caffeine fix and the only coffee available is decaf. So that's one--maybe two--teabags. But when I'm sick. And I'm frustrated with being sick. I start to get desperate.

I don't even know if tea actually helps with a cold. And if it does, I don't even know if the tea that I take helps with a cold. And if it does, I don't even know if the way I make the tea is effective at producing the results I want. But if nothing else it is a rather effective placebo, especially today.

Today, I had one teabag which was some Dandelion Root thing, labeled as a 'Traditional Medicinals' and also as naturally caffeine free. Also present: Chamomile Herbal Tea (caffeine free), Peppermint Herbal Tea (caffeine free), Earl Grey Black Tea, and English Breakfast Black Tea.

Even using more sugar than I normally did.

What I can say about it is...

...It tasted. And I kid you not. It tasted exactly like cough medicine. And in fact. It wouldn't surprise me if its effect was exactly the same as cough medicine. It tasted terrible...but the bad taste might've been justified by how it actually WORKED, moreso than this tea trick I've been using has been previously.

Rather, for about an hour, my cold symptoms actually seemed to worsen rather than improve when I first began, but when I kept going...they vanished almost altogether, clearing things up in a way they hadn't ever been cleared up before. I even stopped having a runny nose! (Well for the most part.)

Now granted. I'm a firm believer in letting the body do its own thing. Coughing is meant to dislodge junk more or less. A sore throat is your immune system killing infected cells. A runny nose is forcefully expunging any material which could carry the disease. So having those things stop? Not necessarily actually a good thing.

Which is one reason why I stopped taking cough medicine and the furthest I was willing to go was to liberally make use of cough drops (I mean, I suspect that cough drops are essentially cough medicine distilled over time, but they feel like they aren't as potent).

More or less, if the disease the body is dealing with is a virus, then it's become my belief--mistaken or not--that there's no cure for it, no way to magically make it better, and that cough medicine can actually slow recovery down by slowing the body's fighting mechanisms from fighting the way they are inclined to fight, if that makes sense. (Basically, cough medicine doesn't cure the cause of the cold, just the symptom of it, and treating the symptom isn't a cure. It can make the cause last longer, and I want to avoid that.)

Of course, obviously, if the disease the body is dealing with is bacteria, different story altogether. I'm still not overly fond of antibiotics (among other reasons, they nuke the good along with the bad and I'm not the best at compensating with probiotics), but those are actually going to make a difference...provided of course that it is in fact a bacterial infection. (One other reason I'm not so fond of antibiotics is that using them against a virus is ineffective and even detrimental, and yet with this level of sickness symptoms differentiating between the two is difficult at best.)

So back to my point--I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight be making my own life more difficult if the tea did in fact act like cough medicine and suppress the symptoms which are part of the process in curing the cause, thus elongating the sickness...but at least I wasn't miserable during work and was able to function. I've found the tea remedy doesn't even last the whole day traditionally.

Either because it needs to be reapplied every hour or so or because the initial strongest dose wears off after about six hours (with five being the length of time I work), by the time I am home, usually I'm back to being my same ol' sick self again.

Still. I feel like sharing the experience all the same. If for no other reason than to make people who are actually knowledgeable cringe in absolute horror at my ignorance.

Anyway! What else have I worked on? 

Let's start with the Rubyverse.
I'm inventing my own martial art, the vampiric martial art featuring the Impaler Stance, as it's called.

However, I've developed it further. I meant to blog about this back on the eighth but didn't get around to it.

Still, since then I've begun developing the martial art behind the Impaler Stance.

First off: note that I haven't done my research. I'd want to research Chinese style martial arts (of which there are plenty) to get a feel for the general aesthetic behind them be it soft, hard, or hybrid between the two. (The vampiric martial art is in some ways incredibly soft, and yet in other very specific ways, incredibly hard, styled martial arts.)

A basic lore behind the vampiric martial art (which I need to name; I'll name it when I research Chinese martial arts and get a good idea for what kind of name it'd be) is that it was developed by two notable vampires with the aid of two other overseers: Lord Darkblood (the vampire responsible for Ruby as she is in the story and whose position she inherited when he was vaporized by her awakening) and Lord Tepes(/Tepez? Too lazy to look up which would be the technically correct spelling but this is quite literally Dracula) as the overseers, with the ones being:
-Lina Tepes (Dracula's daughter)
-And Victor Wu. 

Victor Wu is the current vampire Lord of the dieing Wu coven, which is a vampire coven that has a basis largely in Asia and yes...quite prominently, China. This specific martial art was developed ~1,000 years ago back when Lina and Victor were both reasonably young (thus the need for overseers) and still within human lifespans even.

I deliberately go out of my way to avoid going into too many specifics behind the Wu coven (it's honestly not something I want to take the time to properly delve into for the sake of Red Hood Rider even though the Wu coven is historically speaking one of the most important covens in the Rubyverse), but Victor Wu when developing the vampiric martial art which the impaler stance is derived from did have Chinese martial arts of the time as an inspiration.

I'd also research European Martial Arts of the time but...I honestly wouldn't know where to begin? Like. In the year of like 1,000 AD. In Europe. There was I'm sure some form of trained unarmed combat which we would in the modern world deem a martial art, but like. I've never even heard of any? I know of plenty of armed warfare methods. Even gladiatorial combat. Dueling, too.

But those are still with weapons. I can tell you how a gladiator fought; I can tell you how a duel would be fought (well, maybe), I can tell you how various different armies throughout Europe fought from Ancient Egypt up through early gunpowder usage pretty well (albeit not perfectly). But while it's all nice and good to know how a knight in shining armor swung his sword (it's not nearly as impressive as the movies make it out to be).

...How did they actually have an unarmed fight, often to the death? In the Eastern cultures, those martial arts are extensively recorded even going back a thousand years. So we know why they did it, how they did it, when they did it, and so on and so forth.

In Western cultures, sure. Things we can call Martial Arts were developed eventually. Pugilism. Boxing. It's half-new-world, but sure let's include Capoeira too. (I'm naming examples from the top of my head if you couldn't tell.) The likes of those, later on, we know how they formed, where they formed, and so on and so forth.

​Apparently, by a quick skim of what the wikipedia article I pulled up says, in the time period I am aiming for, the records...simply...don't exist. The earliest they come in is the 1300s, and I am aiming for literally 200-300 years before that. (Of course, this is assuming Dracula is older than Vladimir Tepes III, which I think is part of my established mythos; my job becomes a little bit easier if I am mistaken about that and Dracula was born in 1428/1431.)

Still!

What I'm getting at is that Lina Tepes, one of the developers of the style, had that European background. I decided that for the sake of simplicity the following:
The vampiric martial art would have English names for everything of course, but also have names for everything that were either Chinese (probably Mandarin) or Latin. Because the Wu coven has that Chinese flair, and because I figured that Latin was a bit of a universal language of sorts especially for nobility and it has...well, it kinda has the flair of the supernatural around it. (There's a reason Ominous Latin Chanting is a trope.)

So with that settled. All names are subject to change.

But basically.

The vampiric martial art has six stances I've developed. Three fall under the same branch, the backbone of the martial art, and would be considered part of the impaler stance (the impaler stance is mostly thought of as being the 'attack'/forward position of the three though, because vampires have far less need for defense).

If you think of facing forward as being 0 degrees, and perpendicular to that as 90 degrees, then the three backbone stances, core stances of the vampiric martial art, work as so. (They all have the exact same footwork, just with differing weight distributions.)

The front leg is anywhere from 0-30 degrees: mostly straight, but okay to have a slight curve to it.
The back leg is anywhere from 95-40 degrees: mostly facing to the side, but okay to be facing more to the front.
The idea is to more or less minimize the front profile as much as possible, hide the movement of the back (where the power mostly comes from), and essentially allow for the maximization of efficient, powerful movements.

Another benefit: when done properly, you can shift between all three different stances in the blink of the eye, making a switch between offense and defense happen at lightning-fast speeds. (At least that's the idea.)

Weight distribution is one of three ways, each a different stance: Loosely even distribution (~45-55%) with bent knees is the Even/Ready position: the user can launch forward, launch backward, switch, defend, attack, etc. with great ease, and without broadcasting their next move.

Weight more on the front (~55-95%) is Front/Attack/Traditional Impaler position: the body is naturally in a spot where it can launch an assault, comboing one attack after another.

Weight more on the back (~55-95%) is Back/Defend position: the body is naturally in a spot where it is difficult to knock the user off-balance (sweeping the front leg does nothing; sweeping the back leg is difficult), retreating is easy, and it's hard to connect a blow because the user is further away always.

Keep in mind: in none of these do you lean that way. Leaning back is a good way to get knocked over. Leaning forward is a good way to get stuck, get blinded, and the like. You remain upright the entire time.

The three stances I invented here take cues mostly from three stances that I know: fighting stance, cat stance, and back stance/karate fighting stance (my understanding of where it came from). Fighting stance is both feet at 30 degrees, loosely even weight distribution but slightly on the front (51-55%); back stance/karate fighting stance is both knees bent with the front leg pointed forward at 0 degrees and the back leg perpendicular at 90 degrees; cat stance is something which is a bit harder for me to describe, but it's one most people have a general idea for anyway since it's a favorite of martial arts flicks.

Mind you. That's not a direct correlation, where one equals another. All three of my stances take from all three of those stances. I have actually done some minor practice trial runs of the stances in real life, and I've found that they're incredibly easy to mess up/do wrong and incredibly easy for me to revert into my trained habits instead of what I'm aiming for (thus making a true test next-to-impossible), but initial results are still reasonably promising, in that when I pulled off what I was aiming for in my mind's eye of what the stances looked like, the results felt easy and practical to use which is exactly what I was going for.

There are three other stances, but these are mostly used in more formal environments as part of training: Neutral/Transition stance is when the feet are straight, make a V, and come together. Hands are often at the side in this position as a sign of respect.

In what I am dubbing the "Prepared" stance (because I named a different stance "Ready") is the stance which in other martial arts is the Ready stance. This is a pretty universal stance, and my usage of it differs very little from the norm. Feet loosely a shoulder width apart, hands in front at where the belt would be approximately (both open in this case, mostly straight but slightly curved), though differing from my style of tae kwon do (where they'd be facing straight) the feet continue the V pattern in that they are slightly turned outward.

The final stance I've developed is the logical extension of this: the Wide/Training/Drilling/Exercising stance, almost double shoulder width, feet in a V, and hands up in an open-handed guard. This is not a combat stance; it has no pragmatic value. It is however used for practicing precision on technique and for training strength and endurance.

With the stances developed, basic terminology time.

A fundamental part of the vampiric martial art I'm developing is the concept that one hand (usually the back hand) is the "Sword", and the other hand (usually the front hand) is the "Shield". When a Shield does a strike, it is called a 'bash'; when a sword does a strike, it is just called a strike.

Bashes typically have less power but are faster, because they come from the front and are closer to the target, but have less momentum and energy from the body backing them.

I've developed nine each (for a total of eighteen), though this is subject to expansion.

High Palm Bash is a combination of a Jab and a High Palm Heel Strike. The front hand strikes high.
High Palm Strike is a combination of a Cross(Punch) and a High Palm Strike. The back hand strikes high.
Low Palm Bash is a combination of a Sliding Punch and a Low Palm Heel Strike. The front hand strikes low.
Low Palm Strike is a combination of a Sliding Punch and a Low Palm Hell Strike. Just, the back hand strikes low.

Inward Chop Bash is an Inward Chop with the front hand.
Inward Chop Strike is an Inward Chop with the back hand.
Outward Chop Bash is an Outward Chop with the front hand.
Outward Chop Strike is an Outward Chop with the back hand. (May be weaker given body mechanics?)

Inward Ridge Bash is an Inward Ridge Hand Strike with the front hand.
Inward Ridge Strike is an Inward Ridge Hand Strike with the back hand (one of the few which is less powerful given body mechanics).
Outward Ridge Bash is an Outward Ridge Hand Strike with the front hand.
Outward Ridge Strike is an Outward Ridge Hand Strike with the back hand (also weaker given body mechanics).

Upperjab Bash is a combination of an Uppercut and an open-hand jab (fingers pointed straight), aimed at the throat, with the front hand.
Upperjab Strike is a combination of an Uppercut and an open-hand jab, aimed at the throat, with the back hand.

High Impale Bash is a combination of a Jab and an open-hand jab, aimed at the throat, with the front hand.
High Impale Strike, one of the titular naming moves of the Impaler stance albeit the less-used of the two, is a combination of a Cross and an open-hand jab, aimed at the throat, with the back hand.
Low Impale Bash is a combination of a Jab and an open-hand jab, aimed at the torso, with the front hand.
Low Impale Strike, the titular naming move of the impaler stance, is a combination of a Cross and an open-hand jab, aimed at the torso, with the back hand. It is the signature move of the style, where enough power is packed into a thrust to pierce through the target. (Keep in mind the fighters using this style are vampires. They have superhuman strength, which means their fingers will not bend or break; they will keep going through any target if trained enough.)

In non-impaler stances (Transition/Prepared/Wide), the default is to assign the right hand to be the 'front' hand, and the left hand to be the 'back' hand, and to appropriately assign them sword/shield designations.

When the front hand does a block, it is called a Block.
When the back hand does a block, it is called a Parry.

Blocks I haven't quite mapped out yet as extensively as I did strikes.
I know that knife-hand block is a staple and the default position for both hands; scissor blocks are common; crane blocks are featured; open-hand blocks are one of the core features when combined with the knife block.

I can tell you where hand positions are when in the impaler stances. The sword hand guards mostly the torso and below; the shield hand guards mostly the torso and above. Pragmatically, this means the back hand has the elbow somewhere between thigh and hip height (easily guarding the torso with minimal effort to guard the legs), and the front hand has the elbow at literally dead center of the chest (there's probably a name for it, but the spot where the ribs come together is where it is).

At least, that's how it looks more or less on my body, which admittedly has very long extremities with a comparatively-small torso. (My legs are one of the main reasons I'm 6'2"; my arms have the same long and stringy build that my legs do and thus are capable of reaching much further than normal.)

Everything I do is obviously an estimate, because I only have my own body as an experimental guinea pig.

Still. I've covered stances, blocks, and strikes; that leaves kicks.
Kicks are done in one of two stances: Attack or Defend positions. Never the other four. (I suppose you could get away with it in Neutral/Transition.) When in the Attack position, you're going to be using back leg kicks since your weight's on the front leg; when in the Defend position, you're going to be using front leg kicks since your weight's on the back leg.

Keep in mind, once again, that a master of the impaler stance(s) is switching between all three at a rate fast enough such that it's impossible to just go "oh, weight's on the back, better guard from a front leg attack".

Back leg kicks when in front stance are mostly the torso and below: front kick (mostly push), round-house kick, inward crescent (no real outward crescent though it's possible), leg sweeps, and the occasional but rare heel rake. There's one more kick which can be done with a fair amount of ease, and it is the power kick of the style: the turn/back kick. Since the body is already turned half of the way, it's just a simple 70-100 degree rotation and BAM.

This has the obvious downside of leaving even the most skilled of fighters vulnerable when they turn their back to their opponent, but it has a huge payoff if it succeeds. It flows best with a series of Bashes/Blocks thrown and the sword hand more or less 'sheathed' in its guard position (so not having it out doing something which will rob the spin of momentum).

Front leg kicks can be done below the torso, but with the exception of a sweep, they are mostly done torso and above. The front leg kicks are the front kick, round-house kick, crescent kick (mostly inward), ax, the occasional heel rake, and the occasional side-kick. Said side-kick is more of a push-kick (same as the back leg's front-kick), in that it's not turning over far enough to have real power behind it (you're not gonna stun them with it in the impaler stance), but it's a good way to force an opponent back.

Like I said. Preliminary tests of body mechanics indicate that when I do it the way I actually pictured myself doing it, everything works as a viable, pragmatic fighting style. You have hard blocks to break the opponent's offense. You have soft blocks to latch onto the opponent. You have open-hand strikes, from the front to give an initial stunner, and from the back to deliver the power.

You can kick, but kicks come secondary to the focus on the hands and basically, maximizing mostly an efficient, effortless defense which in the drop of a hair can switch to a focused, precise, deadly offense, delivering swift, decisive blows.

That's the idea anyway.

The next steps for me are to deliver some levels of consistency and to also start developing forms, which I'm in the preliminary steps of doing. (I suppose I also need self-defenses and one-steps, but those come later I'd think.)

My goal, if you hadn't noticed.
Isn't just to develop a fictional martial art used in the Rubyverse by vampires.

I mean.
That's how it started, alright.

But.

My goal here is to develop a martial art I've invented which would actually without supernatural powers be at least something resembling pragmatic in real life. It's something I've wanted to maybe talk to my tae kwon do instructor about; they probably would think it's one of the most amazing breakthroughs in my development as a martial artist, but it's possible I'm doing things wrongly enough that I could get a stern word from them or something to that effect.

​...And as we approach five.

Hahaha.

Four hours? I was being optimistic. Believe it or not, the Rubyverse bit about martial arts I just detailed was meant to be the sidenote of the ramble. SIDE. NOTE. As in, compared to the whole, a small fraction of it. I certainly know it's a fraction of the effort, given that I am deliberately not bothering to do my research on the Chinese martial arts right now. (Wanting to do that is one of the reasons the original ramble got delayed I believe.)

The thing which takes up the most amount of time?

​Once more, The Perfect RPG.

Let's start with a few things regarding the confrontation with the guest party member I mentioned before. Well, there's four endings possible: default ending of not being a dick, being a bit of a dick, being a complete and total dick, and surpassing dickhood into just flat-out monstrous. These are in fact appropriately reflected in the endings, actually.

There are many. Many. Many. Many many many many MANY endings for the game. Dozens of variations on them in fact. But primary endings can be divided into: Absolute Perfect, Perfect, Good (this is the standard; the typical average player will get this ending or variants of it and there are the most classified as this type), Okay (this is the best possible ending you can get by killing the guest character once), Poor (this is the best possible ending you can get by killing the guest character and leaving him dead), and Bad (this is the only ending you can get by killing the guest character until you can't kill him anymore because he suicides).

Absolute Perfect is achieved by getting literally every single quest in the game completed. Note this doesn't require getting 100% Completion, but it does require a few RIDICULOUSLY obscure things, like the occasional precise party composition for precise times and doing things in precise order, but this is not out of the standard for an RPG.

Though no single Absolute Perfect ending is considered canonical, *an* Absolute Perfect ending is, canonically, how the game ends. The Adventure Continues, and continues in the best way possible.

Perfect is achieved by getting all regular sidequests and easily-accessed (that being, non-obscure ones which are reasonably easy to deduce if not outright explicit) sidequests completed. The Adventure Continues...in search of a way for it to continue in the best way possible.

Good is achieved just by not being a total dick. Many characters settle down, though for some adventure calls.

Okay is achieved if you were a bit of a dick. Many characters settle down, and the ending is bittersweet, but happy.

Poor is achieved by being a dick. Characters promise to keep in touch, and things are mostly the same as in Okay, but there is a dark implication that the protagonist will become a villain.

Bad is when you're just a monster. Characters part ways, permanently. Things are more explicit than in Poor: the protagonist has a conversation where he explicitly accepts becoming a villain.

By the way, in that Poor ending...you are reminded once again. It was not just the game mechanics telling you not to do what you did. The game mechanics with the 3-5 warning screens were explicit enough...but even prior to that, the story explicitly features a scene where a villain warns the protagonist, "You need to let go". And that if the protagonist doesn't, that they'll end up becoming the villain.

In Good or better, the protagonist let go.
In Okay, the protagonist didn't let go initially when he should have, but rebuffs the idea of villainy in the epilogue, indicating character growth and that he has reached a point where he can let go.
In both the poor/bad endings, the protagonist hasn't let go still, which leads to a dark ending......

Incidentally, from a certain point of view, those can be thought of as canonical...in an alternate timeline. They're not canonical in the game proper, rather explicitly.

There's more content surrounding the Let Him Go choice, by the way.

When you kill the guest character, you are presented with a screen with his corpse. Examining it will have the following dialog:
"The corpse of your fallen friend, Name."
There will be four options available:
Revive (Uses 1 *revive item* or *MP necessary to cast a revive spell if protagonist character has one available*)
Loot
Desecrate Corpse
Leave

If you leave, it disengages, but you're still on the screen. You have to manually leave the body there. (And eventually you will no matter what if you're going for either the Poor or Bad endings.)
If you revive, it will revive him. He'll go into a dialog with you, unless it's your third revive, in which case you go straight into battle.
If you try to loot, you are given the following message:
"Weren't you paying attention? He gave you everything he had; the only thing he didn't return was his body."

I'll explain the desecrate corpse option soon enough.

If you have revived him ten times, then he suicides, you're still left with the corpse that you can interact with. However, the dialog box changes:
"The eviscerated corpse of your fallen friend, Name, torn to shreds badly enough that it cannot be revived."
Revive (grayed out and with strike text through it, debolded)
Loot
Desecrate Corpse
Leave

Loot and Leave are the same.

If you select Desecrate Corpse, regardless of whether the body is eviscerated or not, the screen will fade to black, and then reopen, once more showing the corpse. If you interact with it, you're given an altered dialog box:
"The desecrated corpse of your fallen friend, Name."
No revive option will display.
You have the options then of:
Loot
Leave

If you desecrated an eviscerated corpse, the dialog is much as you'd expect:
"The desecrated and eviscerated corpse of your fallen friend, Name, torn to shreds badly enough that it cannot be revived."
Loot
Leave

...And as you may have guessed.
You can in fact at this point.
Loot the corpse.

The items you receive from doing so have pros and cons both ways between being regular and key.
Regular:
PROS:
-Eternal Shame, permanently marking your inventory for being what you are.

CONS:
-Takes at least three playthroughs to get a 100% completion rating.
-Could miss them depending on inventory space.

Key:
PROS:
-By having the items removed from your inventory at the end of the game, it means everything you did was for nothing. You got nothing by doing it. You didn't earn anything. It was pointless to have done. It was something absolutely with no gain whatsoever.
-Guaranteed to always have inventory room for them (since key items have a special screen which takes no inventory).

CONS:
-It erases the evidence of the old shame.

Overall I lean towards key, because that fits the theme I have going for the storyline better.

The items you receive are the following:

Human Hair 
Item description: "A trophy for your treachery." (Implication being you scalped him.)

Human Brain
Item description: "If you added this to your own, it might mean you wouldn't be so stupid. Unless of course you did this deliberately, in which case you're just plain evil."

Human Eyes
Item description: "Well I guess he won't see no evil anymore."

Human Ears
Item description: "Well I guess he won't hear no evil anymore."

Human Nose
Item description: "You're despicable."

Human Tongue
Item description: "Well I guess he won't speak no evil anymore."

Human Heart
Item description: "Knowing you, probably carved out with a spoon."

Human Lungs
Item description: "Seriously, what is wrong with you?"

Human Organs
Item description: "If this is music to your ears, then you are beyond all hope."

Human Jewels
Item description: "No, seriously. You. have. Issues."

A note from the game developer
Item description: "It reads: 'You sicko'."

The only difference that the eviscerated corpse gives?

The note from the game developer has its description change:
A note from the game developer
Item description: "It reads: 'You absolute sicko'."

...Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

When he said that you should be called a villain for doing what you do to get those things.
He meant it.

To sum it up.
The game would make it abundantly clear.
"DO NOT DO THIS".
And that you deserve what's coming if you did it.

It would be there as an OPTION though in my perfect RPG. Just one that you're never ever ever ever ever ever ever ACTUALLY meant to take. (In a way it's a sensible conclusion from the logical extension of looting: you take everything you can. The text said he gave you everything except his body, so in order to loot from him......)

To not end on a morbid note (I'd like to think that it can be dark comedy and not just dark), there's more content to come for the perfect RPG though! Starting with a piece of worldbuilding: Touched.
Touched individuals are a natural consequence of Walkers existing in the world. Walkers can change the very fundamental landscape of the world in every sense: cultural, political, physical, etc. When a Walker interacts extensively with an individual in the Future/Present (key note, it has to be extensive; just saying to them 'hi' isn't enough), then if that Walker goes into the Present/Past and changes it, then when the Walker goes back to that time period, the individual they interacted with
-Still exists even if by all rights they shouldn't
-Still remembers the way things were
-Yet knows how things currently are.

Those individuals are called Touched.

They are, essentially, sensitive thanks to direct interaction with the walkers, to changes the walkers make. Non-touched individuals don't remember, because as far as they're concerned, the world they're in is the world that they've always been in. The changes which happened are history to them; they happened already.

So the game does not work on the principle of a stable time loop, where you go into the future, learn of things you haven't done yet, and then do them. Changes you make are unexpected and permanent. You have no way of knowing the consequences of your actions, except for interacting with the worlds after they've been changed.

I mentioned already that changing one could change the others and this applies for all realms in past/present/future such that changing one in the past can change a different one's future. And that's how it more or less would manifest in the game. One reason why going to the future is less helpful than you might imagine--the antagonists which are attacking are beings which live in a realm outside of space and time. So for them, they can attack all three.

They are not themselves walkers, but are close in principle to being walkers. (So close, in fact, that the characters are disturbed by the similarities as it is noted what they can do is similar albeit not identical to what walkers do.) They are sent to the past, they are sent to the present, they are sent to the future. They are attacking all three at once.

Succeeding in the past succeeds all three but is the hardest for them to do; succeeding in the future doesn't guarantee success in the others but is easier for them to pull off.

One thing I worked on yesterday was that because elements are now a key part of the setting, I wanted there to be game balance between them.

I did develop a system, though frankly Ice's placement makes no sense to me. It's just that it's the best I could think of.

Fire > Air > Earth > Energy > Water > Fire is a five-way rock-paper-scissors elemental wheel.
Ice > Light > Dark > Ice is a more traditional three-way rock-paper-scissors elemental wheel.

If you hit an element which trumps your own or which is identical to your own, it is more easily nullified/absorbed; if you hit an element which you trump, you do significantly more damage; each element has one it's weak to and one it's strong to.

Of course.

While enemies might have one element they are predominantly classified as.

This does not preclude multiple immunities/types/etc.

You could have an entity immune to all of them, vulnerable only to non-elemental attacks.
You could have an entity with rotating immunities.
You could have an entity immune to Fire, Water, and Air, yet vulnerable to Energy and Earth.

And so on and so forth.

This is just a loose guideline.

​The other thing I worked on yesterday was...yep. Classes!
Doesn't the game have no classes?

Why yes! Yes, it does not have classes.

By which.

I mean.

There are no classes in the game.

However. I explicitly did say that characters could be flavored as fitting into the archetypes we typically associate with a class. And I compiled a list of classes which could be featured as things which characters pull from. To repost it, it's like so:

Warrior/Fighter-->Knight
Thief-->Ninja
Monk-->Master (Martial Artist/Black Belt)
Red Mage-->Red Wizard
White Mage-->White Wizard
Black Mage-->Black Wizard
Blue Mage-->Blue Wizard?
Ranger/Hunter/Archer (/Sniper)
Dragoon(Lancer)
?Onion Knight?/Freelancer
?Dark Knight?
Scholar
Evoker/Conjurer
Devout/Shaman
Magus/Warlock
Summoner/Beastmaster
Sage
Bard
?Mystic Knight?/Sorcerer
Mime
?Time Mage?/Dimension Mage
Dancer
Samurai
Necromancer
Cannoneer
Gladiator
Oracle/Seer
Corsair/Pirate
Puppetmaster
Rune Fencer(Duelist)
Trickster
Templar
Squire/Soldier
Illusionist
Holy Knight/Paladin
Gunner(Gunslinger)
Gambler
Juggler
Elementalist/Elemancer
Defender/Guard/Sentinel
Assassin
Cleric/Priest/Bishop
Druid
Rogue
Scientist/Inventor/Chemist
Arbalester
Berserker/Barbarian
Arcanist/Psion
Siren

There's just about the number of classes listed necessary for every character to have 2-3 classes as their thing, if we assumed no overlap. (There would be overlap. I mean, I am creating The Perfect RPG here for me where each character is as unique as possible, but. Even I have limits; I'd recognize that past a certain point, there's a level of redundancy where characters share some traits with one another.)

I could limit the list further if I needed to, but I don't need to. This serves my purposes just fine. Because once more. There aren't classes. There's just the aesthetic of them, where characters have certain aspects and traits which are fitting for archetypes associated with particular classes, but don't have any official designation.

There's no rule stating that a character could only be a Fighter, for instance.
They could be a Fighter and a Beastmaster and yet also be a Dancer and yet furthermore have some Black Mage traits to them. In spite of each of those being VASTLY different classes, they are theoretically something which could fit entirely on one character.

The list above, then, is basically a guideline (not rule) for where my characters would draw their limit breaks, combos, counter breaks, counters, combo breaks, and hero abilities from. It is by no means an extensive list (items not there could be there) nor is it an inclusive list (items there are not guaranteed to be in the perfect RPG and even if they are featured may not be featured as much as you'd think).

On that note.

Another thing I added today:
Explicit guest characters.

The game features four guest characters which you, the player, don't know are guest characters. You have no clue that they are not among your final 20 roster. You don't know who the final 20 are until you've had the 24th character join and seen four rather permanent departures in the game. Every character introduced is indistinguishable for the most part.

But EXPLICIT guest characters would have different behavior. All those unique things I said all 24 characters have? These ones don't. No Leitmotif exclusive to them (though they could have one I suppose if it's something used elsewhere as well), but most obviously:
-They cannot level up
-They cannot have their equipment changed
-They cannot have anything assigned to them or removed from them
-You cannot name them
-They cannot advance in jobs
Among other traits.

These characters would mostly appear before the completion of your party, so in the earlier areas of the game. They would explicitly be in the party only for a single area, then leave for whatever reason. They could be placed in the backup party, but not the bench.

Explicitly guest characters probably would feature unique abilities, but every single unique ability they would have would have some identical effect exist on a character you'd pick up at a different time. This would never be a direct correlation. Say you had a guest character whose powers were a combination of a Black Mage and a Fighter. You'd then never encounter a character whose powers were a combination of a Black Mage and a fighter, but you would encounter a Fighter, and you would encounter a Black Mage, though they'd probably be like Fighter-Pirate and Black Mage-Ninja to give random examples.

In short: explicit guests are redundant with later party members that aren't guests (or at least not explicitly so), but their abilities would be scattered onto various different permanent (or semi-permanent) characters rather than directly having one person be an effective replacement/substitute. In this sense, they can serve as a bit of a preview, while still being their own unique characters.

Explicit guest characters would be used basically as often as necessary to advance the story in a way that a permanent character's addition couldn't provide. As a result, there'd be as many as the story and game mechanics deemed necessary. It could be a lower number like four, it could be a higher number like 20. But they'd be a part of the Perfect RPG as I envision it.

There's one other thing I worked on...but frankly. I've reached the four hour mark. (Well passed it actually; I started at 2:10 and it's 6:20.) I'm getting a little bit exhausted, and the thing is. The next section (which was always planned as the final section) of my ramble requires the most amount of research.

Basically, I was going to try and get a list of status effects/ailments I want in the game.
I need to do my homework.
It's easy enough to find the list in Final Fantasy VII, but I need to actually do so.
It's easy enough to find the list in Chrono Trigger, but I need to actually do so.
It's easy enough to find the list in MARDEK RPG, but I need to actually do so.
It's probably easy to find the list in Epic Battle Fantasy 3/4, but I'd need to actually do so.

The main thing making this an extensive project is not only the need to do the above (each which does take time), but rather the real problem: I also wanted to research various different effects from POKEMON. Which is...
...Well it's a rather long list to say the least but one I want to comb through and steal from since it DOES have a bunch of the features I want in my Perfect RPG. Pokemon is a vastly-underrated part of my childhood; I tend to overlook it in favor of Gauntlet Dark Legacy, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, Majesty, and SaGa II/III among others, but it was still a STAPLE. It helped define my RPG-playing experience. So yes some elements from it would indeed be in my Perfect RPG, as many status ailments as I can plausibly lift being among them.

Hmm.

I suppose I can do the research tomorrow some time, but I'll list the ones I did get.

All status effects would be categorized as 'Negative' (undeniably a bad thing), 'Mixed' (situationally good or bad), or 'Positive' (undeniably a good thing).

Flying (unique status effect I'm inventing, providing immunity to Earth attacks and halving non-long-range physical damage attacks, but leaving self doubly vulnerable to wind and fire attacks)
Burned
Frozen
Slowed
Berserk
Energetic (Charges combos at double speed and deals 25% extra damage, but takes double damage and counters take four times as long to charge)
Tranquil (Charges counters at double speed and reduces damage taken by 50%, but reduces damage dealt by 25% and combos take four times as long to charge)
Blind (reduce accuracy)
Regen (gives Regen)
Null-(Element) (Nullifies attack of specified element)
MP Barrier (halves magic damage inflicted)
HP Barrier (halves physical damage inflicted)
Auto-Revive
Sleep
Numb (can't use physical attacks)
Paralyzed (chance of skipping turn)
Death (instakill)
Death Sentence
Confuse
Silence (can't use magical attacks)
Zombifie
Weak
Wet
Cursed
Haste
Sapped (1/3 of: HP drained from Sapped individual to caster; MP drained from Sapped individual to caster; both HP and MP drained from Sapped individual to caster)
Drained (1/3 of: HP drained from Drained individual to caster; MP drained from Drained individual to caster; both HP and MP drained from Drained individual to caster)
Leeched (1/3 of: HP drained from Leeched individual to caster; MP drained from Leeched individual to caster; both HP and MP drained from Leeched individual to caster)
(I want one of Sapped/Drained/Leeched to drain HP from target to caster, another to drain MP from target to caster, and the third to do both, but I'm not sure which name should be used for which effect.)

Bleed (reduces max HP)
Unfocused (reduces current MP over time)
Erase (reduces both current HP and MP over time)
Stupefy (reduces max MP over time)
Regress (reduces both max HP and MP over time)
Petrified

...In no particular order, with the explicit caveat that this is an incomplete list. I need to do my research (also check TVTropes, another source) to see what other ones I want. 

So while I didn't finish that project. This is everything that I wrote up today. As in. I've done everything I pre-wrote. I didn't do everything which the entry was meant to cover because I'm only like half-finished with the status effects. There's so much more to do there. I also want to list elements which particular status ailments are more affiliated with, which I attempted to get started but kinda did badly so I'm scrapping what I wrote.

So. That's more on the Perfect RPG.

With every passing day.

More and more a game I'd want to play.

Less and less a reachable goal and less and less something anyone else would want to.

​Ah well.

There was not a two-day gap in entries with today being a double-entry. My previous entry was made on Wednesday, just past midnight. I forgot to adjust the date on the entry to reflect that.

Anyway!

Today is Valentine's Day. It's my first one with a girlfriend, though unfortunately they have a long day today (and I had a long day yesterday meaning neither definition of the 14th is viable for us to have a date) meaning no intimate time given that I work tomorrow and thus can't stay up. I did however get free food from Denny's, because my mom and dad decided to eat out and allowed us kids to tag along.

I also on the way down developed a new power for Ruby in Red Hood Rider.

...Hey!
Don't go rolling your eyes, sighing, or just thinking "...again?" or the like.
Trust me on this! Just...bear with me for a while. What I'm saying is something that you'll actually think is something which would be too good to not have.

Basically, it's not a power specific to her--it's a universal power of all vampires.
This new power is actually a consequence of one of the very most basic aspects of vampire physiology in my setting. In my setting, while vampires can drink through the mouth (which is considered stronger than sex; on a willing participate the kiss of a vampire is better than an orgasm; on an unwilling participant the bite of a vampire is explicitly akin to rape), the primary method vampires drain blood is through their fingers.

The new power is extrapolating based off of that, by virtue of a required secondary power of sorts--it's not even much of a power. Basically, vampires can for a limited period of time breathe underwater, via sucking in the oxygen from water to go directly into the bloodstream...but this is not something which allows them to stay underwater indefinitely. Their draining is meant specifically to drain blood from people, not to drain oxygen from water.

So how long it extends their ability to remain underwater, I'm not sure exactly. Lower figure would be ten minutes, higher figure an hour or two, but it wouldn't exceed that. It also isn't exactly healthy for them to do. This can be thought of as an emergency oxygen system, to be used only when the primary oxygen system has failed. It's also something which is specific only to water. It doesn't work anywhere else.

And even given this...my use for it?

...A skit.

A gag.

An omake before the start of an episode, as a one-off joke...and even then, with the explanation being mostly in the author blurb with it only implied in the comic image proper. This is why it's not really something to groan about her having; it's not something story-significant. It's just for the sake of a single piece of humor, one which is in a setting that while fully canonical is detached from the main story altogether. Isolated and remote, with it only serving to vaguely segue into a new episode.

In this case, the skit would go something like this, with Angel Wings saying,
"Sally is calling you."
And Ruby's response?
"Please text her to tell her I can't answer her right now on account of (new panel) me slowly drowning to death." with the new panel revealing that her leg is tied to a magical chain which is attached to a big weight with her underwater.

For obvious reasons, this would be before Gary becomes the elemental rider of water (since he could fix it far faster, obv).

I'm thinking that this makes a better omake than whatever I had planned before as an introduction to one of Ruby's Rogue Gallery villains--in this particular case, you might have guessed it's the mobster. I don't remember his last name (as ashamed as I am to admit I the creator can't remember his full name) but his first and middle name are Mac Rose. Because what superhero setting is complete without a local mobster that is an antagonist of a hero.

The shackle is an anti-magic one, if you hadn't guessed, which would of course prevent Ruby from just summoning a bow to sever the chain.

Soyeah. Not a new power which serves any practical purpose.
I mean.
I could make it serve a practical purpose.
I'm sure this is a power lots of people would love to have and it is technically one extra thing.

It's just that it's one extra thing that I consider completely and entirely irrelevant to the story outside of a single gag. And honestly I don't really see much of an issue with having characters possess powers which are displayed for no other reason than Rule Of Funny, since...well. I aim to entertain. The moment has a bit of black humor involved, but I still think that if handled well it'd be a good addition to the comic.

...Which means I'd have no excuse if I failed to give you what I wrote yesterday!

Basically, at work, as is my wont, I just brainstormed things--in this instance, brainstorming for a project I should still technically actually be working on! I did multiple things for Red Hood Rider.

Starting with a basic of the Rubyverse.

Basically, in the Rubyverse, there's a few kinds of people:
-Soul-severed individuals (cursed, in a sense, with multiple downsides but among them being they are locked out of anything whatsoever positive when it comes to supernatural/magical/elemental things but are still vulnerable to negative consequences from those things).

-Immune Humans (cannot become supernatural beings for whatever reason; can be specific to one type or can be general)

-Bane Humans (actively serve as a bane to supernatural beings for whatever reason; can be specific to one type or can be general)

-Hybrid Humans (explicitly part supernatural but otherwise human)

-Dormant Humans (what a Hybrid Human's genealogy becomes when diluted enough--essentially, they still have the supernatural genes recessive within which can activate with specific triggers, but with those triggers absent, they are otherwise just normal humans)

-Magic-Numb Humans (cannot use magic of any kind)

-Anti-Magic Humans (various different ways where their very existence disrupts magic)

-Bloodline Humans (the magical equivalent of Hybrid Humans, this is humans who can use specific types of magic because their parents could use that type of magic)

-Recessive Humans (the magical equivalent of Dormant Humans; this is humans who have the recessive gene to use specific types of magic because their ancestors could use that type of magic, but they require specific triggers to activate)

-Universal Donors (humans who can use every type of magic be it elemental, magical, or supernatural in spite of them being human...but can use it only in such low doses that it is effectively worthless; these are the people who actively stockpile the...well, stockpiles of supplies that people involved in the supernatural/magical worlds have been using for hundreds of years, which I blogged about before)

-Supernatural Beings (self-explanatory)

-Magical Beings (self-explanatory; mostly humans)

-Elemental Beings (self-explanatory; mostly humans; mostly also explicitly magical)

And then, of course:
-Normal Humans. Normal Humans have no innate advantages or disadvantages.
They can become most types of supernatural beings.
They can become most types of magical beings.
They can become many types of elemental beings.

There's magical systems which exist that require nothing special other than knowledge in how to use them; a normal human can easily be trained in how to use them.
There's magical systems which require specific things to happen; humans often are sensitive to these things. Becoming a Rider is among these things.
All supernatural beings which can spread relatively easily have specific rituals involved in turning humans. (Because the only way supernatural beings gain population outside of biologically reproducing is via turning humans. Most supernatural beings capable of turning can also do biology, e.g. vampires can be born or turned and there's no real difference between the two other than potentially social standing.)

And so on and so forth.

Basically, normal humans are just the boilerplate "can have anything, good or bad, applied to them". They have no innate bias. They have no inherent advantage or disadvantage. They are the norm.

Keep in mind that normal humans make up only a fraction of the total human population, but that most kinds of human you either can't tell the difference between them and a normal human, or if you can, that they deliberately go out of their way to by and large look as if they are just normal humans.

Soul-severed individuals are born with a physical impossibility of ever knowing what they are. (They have to be told what's wrong with them, more or less.)

Immune humans only know if they either have an existing lineage (that being, the progeny of an immune human also being an immune human) or if they are actually exposed to the supernatural.

Bane humans, same as immune humans.

Dormant humans often have no way of knowing they have a gift until the gift is actually activated. (There are dormant human genealogies which track their gift, in order to better assess if/when to activate it though.)

Magic-numb humans would need to actually attempt magic to learn they cannot. (This is not something that there is existing lineages of that make a point of tracking it. Immune humans have reason to tell their children they are immune, for things like becoming a Hunter. Magic-numb humans have no such reason since most humans don't use magic anyway meaning it's not exactly a disability they'd make a point of remembering. As a result, they don't know.)

Anti-magic humans need to be exposed to magic to learn about their trait. Given that magic was scarce to the public eye until ~60 years ago in the Rubyverse and only in the modern day has begun to become more mainstream, this is something most wouldn't have known until relatively recently.

Most recessive humans know about their bloodline, but there are plenty of instances of them having for whatever reason lost this knowledge, and thus, lying dormant until an event necessitates the trigger of their powers.

Universal donors as a general rule do know (though some may not), but other than doing their extra job, they make it a point to not advertise who they are (other than using it to get immunity from being targeted for harm, because everyone both hero and villain and in-between has use for universal donors and it is a Very Bad Idea to hurt one because it screws you over; Universal Donors essentially have diplomatic immunity and are required to be neutral in conflict REGARDLESS of conflict type, but by and large they avoid making it known).

Bloodline and Hybrid humans tend to know about their powers for obvious reasons (because, well...they have powers), but while Magic and Supernatural beings in the Rubyverse haven't actually enforced a Masquerade...they HAVE kept their activities relatively low-key throughout history.

They have always existed. Some periods in time have been higher than others. (For instance, there was rather an explosion in supernatural/magical activity during the middle ages thereabouts, and beings of both kinds were fighting wars, both in the shadows secretly and out in the open flagrantly.) But until approximately the 1950s, activity was by and large not a notable thing. So to the world at large, they were just humans.

So when you put all of those together.

They pretty much mean that by and large, for all intents and purposes, unless specific criteria are met, most of the seven billion people in existence are just normal humans. This has always been the case, but I haven't really done much in the way of extrapolating all of this out into a more formal built world.

I also was just doing that as background for a fundamental part of the setting.
Beings exist as one of those three types--Supernatural, Magical, and Elemental.
Keep in mind by and large that all Elementals are either Supernatural or Magical, so are both considered a third category, and yet simultaneously, a subcategory of both the other two. (In that they are a separate entity altogether in that elemental things play by a set rulebook whereas magical and supernatural beings play by a set rulebook which is entirely different.)

And another thing to keep in mind is that these types? Not mutually exclusive. In fact, to some extent, they are almost inherently mutually inclusive.

Vampires are a go-to example. Not only are they creates of the night, they are considered the rulers of the night. Universal to them, this gives them access to Darkness-element Magic: both Elemental, and Magical, in nature. Whether it is the element or the magic or their supernatural powers which dominate depends on the individual, the method they were created, and their peers (i.e. what coven or clan if any they come from).

Riders are another. They are explicitly Magical beings, neither supernatural nor elemental...
...Except the eight elemental riders, which in the modern day, are eight of The Ruby Gang. Those eight not only have magic, but elemental abilities in addition to their magic. They are, in fact (as revealed by a time traveler from the future), the most powerful generation of elemental riders to exist in history, mostly because they exist in the glory days of superheroics. (In the past, there wasn't as much of a boon in the otherworldly; in the future, supes are less common because mostly they are born "when they need to be born" and the advancement of technology means that while most have the recessive genes of supes that few actually develop superpowers simply because technology means that 'why need a superpower when technology just serves the same function?'--in short, you can think of superpowers as a function of human pragmatism combined with laziness; no need for the powers = the powers exist less often.)

Ruby is an example of being all three, but she's not special because of it, she's not unusual because of it, her being all three is not such a rarity that it is a case of Protagonist Power. (You know, something I could also call Shonen Syndrome: the protagonist being half-everything and thus having access to every power.) I am explicitly saying, by Word Of God, that there are MANY such individuals across the world, existing all over the place.

It's seriously not that uncommon. Stating that she's suffering from Protagonist Power/Shonen Syndrome because of that trait is akin to stating that someone knowing how to repair a car has Protagonist Power/Shonen Syndrome--sure, not everyone can do that and it's a bit of a useful, pragmatic skill which not everyone has the talent for even if anyone can theoretically learn it, but it's nothing special.

That having been said, Ruby does have Protagonist Power/Shonen Syndrome. She just has it for reasons entirely unrelated to the above. (She is quite a bit of a Mary Sue, but in essence what I'm saying is she's not a Mary Sue for that reason, it's other things which make her one.)

Speaking of Ruby though, I also invented another power she of course doesn't really need given the amount of powers she already has, buthey. All the elemental riders have powers which are beyond-godly in strength, at least in theory. (I've rambled about some of the capacities for just about every element I believe. Air having access to all four fundamental forces of the universe, being the co-master of the domain of abstract thought and thus being able to materialize just about literally anything, and so on and so forth comes to mind. I could do the same for any rider's list of potential powers, not just Hannah.)

And comparatively speaking, this is actually not that strong of an ability compared to what I could be giving. It's just an ability which I felt made sense to give and which I feel would actually fit as a logical extension of her existing powers and actually serve as a way to tie them together.

Basically, Ruby's Super Mode (with a hint of Superpowered Evil Side initially, until she undergoes vampiric training  and accepts her vampiric half full-time which makes her more at ease with herself essentially), Dark Messiah, is her full-vampire female form. (She has a full-vampire male form, which requires essentially no trigger at all, but for obvious reasons, she has a distaste for it.)

In her Black Ruby state, she specializes in Darkness Magic born from her vampiric powers--and otherwise, uses various super-powered claws for both melee/ranged attacks, among other weapons in her arsenal. (A common vampire dark magic trait is being able to materialize a weapon from thin air, as long as the sun isn't out. Black Ruby can do this even with the sun being out owing to her still being a Rider powered by light.)

However, her final vampiric form DOES have access to something I invented yesterday--the Black Bow. Basically, it's a darkness-based version of her normal bow, launching supercharged versions of her normal attacks: the same basic ones, except much more powerful, at a much accelerated speed, with the additional flexibility of her darkness magic being readily mixed in freestyle.

She can't use some techniques (like her Supernova Shot/Sunburst Shot or the Arbalest Arrow), but she can use most of her powers in this form. (Similar to how Arbalest Armor can use many but not all, and Arcangel can use many but not all. Each form has upsides and downsides to it.)

Now, granted. This is pretty similar to what she can do in her Arcangel form (she launches 'arrows' in the form of feathers from her wings, and those arrows have the capability of using whatever powers she has in her normal bow for the most part), but only when at least one of the Forbidden Arts is also active in her Arcangel form.

By which, I mean, when she turns essentially Dark Angel in that she is partially vampiric when as an Angel and summons darkness elemental/magical attacks from her feather/arrows. Which is basically half-way to her using the Dark Messiah super mode anyway. 

Overall I thought that her having a bow in her vampiric final form would just be a way to tie her three super modes together. Arbalest Armor is an armor made from her bow, in that her bow is covering her whole body. (It gives great offensive capabilities, but it is still first and foremost an armor.) Arcangel is a bow made from her wings, or rather, her wings are made from her bow. So Black Ruby/Dark Messiah having a bow just felt like it should be there, and now it is.

​The third thing I wanted to go into is a bit of a loophole/exploitation in how things work. One of the reasons the Ruby Gang is as effective as they are is because they live in the modern age of communication, and eight of their members have access to the ability I am about to describe.

An inherent established trait of spirit totems is that they are telepathic to their owner. Ruby communicates to Angel Wings mostly by thought (though she can communicate out loud if she wants to); Angel Wings communicates to Ruby exclusively by thought and cannot speak out loud.

An inherent established trait of spirit totems is that they cannot communicate with each other, per se, but they have a link to one another in that they know where one another is for the most part and are capable of sensing things about the situation each other are in. (That being, a spirit totem can tell if another rider is, saaay, losing a battle they are in, thanks to the link between them.)

An inherent established trait of riders is that they are in fact human--they themselves are not telepathic, so they can't communicate directly to one another's thoughts.

HOWEVER.

In spite of these above facts.

All riders in the modern world--not just the elemental eight, but the Ruby Gang is the only group I explicitly have made to exploit this--effectively are telepathic, just in a roundabout way, because there's one final trait which is inherently established to spirit totems relevant:

Spirit totems are capable of serving as any form of communication device that's not actually written on physical paper more or less.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of acting as phones; you can call a rider.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of acting as "Facechat" (Skype, Google Hangouts, whatever you want to call it, an equivalent service thereto) so long as the other side is capable of reciprocating. (You can't facechat with a rider if you're calling from a phone booth for instance, because it being a phonebooth, no duh there's nothing for you to see and no way for the rider to see you.) The rider's spirit totem simply projects a holographic display of the other side, and similarly projects a display of the rider TO the other side.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable essentially of faxing. Now, it doesn't actually print a hard copy out on the rider's end, but what it does allow is for someone to fax to the rider, and the spirit totem essentially converts the fax to become what'd basically be an email attachment, able to be viewed with a holographic projection.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of sending/receiving texts. (Because they have the functionality of a modern smartphone; anything a smartphone can do, a spirit totem can do just as well.)

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of sending/receiving emails.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of storing voicemail.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of even sending messages on things like CB Radio or a Walkie Talkie: the rider speaks into their spirit totem, the spirit totem transmits it, and the receiving device (or spirit totem) plays the audio.

You get the idea.

They can do just about everything except for snailmail.

And a function that they have which is similar to services like Cortana, Siri, Alexa, and the like is that they can 'write down' things either spoken or even just thought (think like a voice-to-text service; those exist now, and spirit totems are capable of perfect voice-to-text and even thought-to-text; this latter part is vital), and they are capable of 'speaking' written things.

I know for a fact at least one of those above services will speak out loud the contents of messages received. And computers have had the capability to read out loud text for something like at least 20 years by now (albeit, even to this day they are a bit glitchy). Spirit totems have essentially that, except as perfect as it can get (in that they will always pronounce it correctly though given it's written word they can only guess at the intended inflections).

From this, you might be able to guess how the riders pull off their effectively essentially telepathy. (It doesn't work for the members of the Ruby Gang outside the elemental eight riders, but even outside of the elemental eight they can use half of this by sending messages to a rider or receiving messages from a rider without it being as obvious as sending/receiving messages would normally be.)

The riders simply mentally instruct their spirit totem, "Send a text/email to..." and then, in their thoughts, they outline the contents of the message. When finished, the spirit totem sends the message. On the receiving end, the spirit totem will tell their rider, "You have a new message from [rider who sent the message]. Shall I speak it?", and if given an affirmative, the spirit totem will speak the contents of the message to the rider.

Given that rider's spirit totem's communication services cannot be compromised (you can't hack into a spirit totem like you can hack into a smartphone), nor can they be tapped, nor can they be monitored, nor can the telepathy be intercepted or read by an outside party. This gives the riders an absolutely secure way of transmitting information between one another.

Now, of course.

It's not a perfect system.

The communication is very fast, but it's not quite in real time because you have to 'speak' the words to be sent, send them, allow for the transmission to be received (admittedly this is near-instantaneous as just about any modern communication is), and then have the transmission be played.

The communication can be interfered with if the rider is compromised enough. (For instance, a badly-enough-wounded rider or otherwise-incapacitated rider might want to send something to other riders, but in their state are incapable of doing so.) This is why sometimes on more solo adventures, a rider can end up in trouble and be in a position where backup would save the day yet they can't get any because they can't get through.

Said interference usually will, of course, trigger the link I mentioned above where a spirit totem can tell if another rider is in danger...but this link is something that has a limited range (too far from one another and you get no status update as it were), and even when inside of the range is something which CAN be interfered with (albeit only with difficulty; you have to go out of your way to interfere with the link and only two or three villains over the entire course of Red Hood Rider bother doing this rather than just employing a method of stopping all the riders at once from helping one another).

Soyeah, this has always been a part of the setting, but I felt like fleshing out the details a bit more explicitly by blogging about them. It is, essentially, the way I can allow both for solo adventures and yet also for team affairs, as should be the case in a setting inspired by the elements I was inspired by. (It's a superhero thing to work as both a team and an individual; it's a magical girl thing to work together but to also have focus episodes revolving around an individual member of the team; etc.)

I just find the Rubyverse to be an incredibly neat setting overall. It's just that me being me (I honestly question if even the simplest of simple settings made by me, if even the simplest of simple narratives I craft, could ever actually be made reality thanks to my natural debilitating traits weighing down my creative side), I probably will never get to actually show off all this neat stuff I have planned.

So I might as well give one today! Christmas actually contained a lot of thoughtful gifts this year. Every year, my family at least tries to get things good for each other, but this year, everyone was basically entirely successful with every member of the family, a first as far as I can tell.

Including myself, mind you. My brother got me two really, really, REALLY nice fidget rings. Unfortunately, they're not that photogenic but that's a shame because I really want to show them off in their full glory because seriously WOW they are amazing. They have a black chain in the middle of the ring for spinning, and an ornate design on the outline. The one I'm wearing is all-black, too.

There was a slight flaw: the ring's too big for my ring finger and yet too small for my middle finger...however, more on that in a second. There's a reason it's still such an amazing gift. My brother joked when I couldn't get it off my middle finger that it was a cursed ring...but seriously, this ring is so amazing that it absolutely demands a story be written with it as a central object.

I was thinking along the lines of a binding object, a contract of some sort perhaps or maybe death-related, definitely full-blown supernatural urban fantasy though specifics beyond that I haven't worked out. I do think it deserves at minimum one story--honestly the ring's so cool that it could have three, four, even five different full-fledged individual stories each with their different takes on the same object. It was THAT on the mark.

My older sister got for me a gift of many pairs of gloves that work with touchscreens (i.e., allowing me to use my phone with gloves on), plus a single pair of fingerless gloves. Now, these fingerless gloves are the same type of material as my more flimsy gloves. That being, the material which is like a type of clothing. Wool? I dunno, but it's a really common type of glove which is prone to tearing with a short life expectancy especially with long fingernails.

You can probably figure out what I mean by the description. So it's not exactly the fingerless gloves of Ruby. That being said, I've felt the closest I've ever felt to being Ruby since adorning them. As in. I lost my glow-in-the-dark bracelets a long time ago. I lost my bat ring a long time ago. I ran out of the hairties which I associate as being Ruby's instead using a much thinner type (and out of laziness now only have one instead of the signature two on the left arm).

So I've felt a little bit distanced from being her, in that I've had a harder time conjuring up imagine spots where I was roleplaying as her. It wasn't impossible, mind you, but it was difficult--more difficult than other characters. Sally my lifeguard tube acts as her bazooka; Hanna I play with her god-tiered wind powers; Gary I can do a lot with; Vili is easy; D.D. is also easy; Whitney and Amy I tend not to play around with that much but if I did I wouldn't have much trouble.

Yet I've been having difficulty for a while getting into the shoes of Ruby, in spite of her being the character that launched the whole Rubyverse as someone originally based in part off of me before she gained her own life/identity. Something that troubled me deeply.

And yet. The moment I put on the fingerless gloves. Instantly, it just came rushing back to me. The magic, the sensation, of her. Of Ruby in full form. It's not the right material and certainly doesn't have the square gap in the palm. But it still has made me feel much closer to her.

Not to mention, they're just kinda...really, really cool. And feel fitting, appropriate. They have merged with me, becoming natural literally overnight. They are a part of me, and a really awesome one. And there's one more thing. You know how that ring I mentioned was too small for my ring finger? Yeah, well...with the fingerless gloves on, it fits perfectly. It doesn't want to fall off, nor is it smothering my finger. It's removable, but not accidentally.

And the colors are complimentary as well, given both are black. Yet not the same black, different blacks so the ring is not invisible on the glove. So overall...I'd say that my older sister's gift hit the mark and was dead on the money in terms of being good.

My younger sister gave a gift which I have wanted for years as well, albeit one which has progressively gotten weaker and weaker in me as the years have gone by. A bit like Deck The Hall Ball in that regards; my parents gave it to us as a Christmas gift years after I had wanted to go, and yet the year we went was sandwiched between two awesome years as a year which was mostly unremarkable. (Though I did rather enjoy seeing Jimmy Eat World live, I wouldn't be able to note any other band there. They had plenty good enough performances with stage presence, it's just that...they weren't as memorable as bands in other years would have been.)

In this case, the gift given? One-day pass (believed to be Friday) for Emerald City Comic Con 2018.

The reason this is a gift that I've wanted for years that has gotten progressively weaker and weaker in me is that I have been a comic artist and avid reader of webcomics for years. Many, many, many of my online friends would be going to events like these, and I couldn't go to meet them in spite of it being in my back door practically.

I have always wanted the chance.
And yet.
I've lost current contact and familiarity with most of the people who might be going there.

ComicFury has literally thousands of people who I know, dozens/hundreds of which who might be in attendance, and yet, I last contacted them...my god how long ago was it? Was it almost a year, or is it almost two years now? Three? I lose track of the time. I simply...haven't been there in spite of my desire to be there. I love them all so much. I love it there so much. I just haven't been able to stay there no matter what I try and it's not their fault, it's always something stupid on my end.

Life gets in the way. I make promises I break. Even knowing I'm bipolar, even knowing I am autistic with inertia, I end up with issues, where I get things going and when I grind to a halt I get a ridiculous fear and it stacks and stacks and I just don't go even though I want to.

They're not the only place.

Comics I read off of ComicFury, I am behind on.
Many of them probably have way too many fans for me to ever get to know them, and it's not like they'd really remember some random reader who comments under the name Bree. (Something I may or may not even be able to tell them given that my older sister will be in attendance as well--something I think is for the better overall since it gives me a way to have an anchor, a root, because I have no way of really knowing anything will be okay.)

Some of the fans for said comics might. Even that's a stretch. For instance, while I became a vocal commentator on Go Get A Roomie for a few months, it was only a few months of a webcomic that's been going for years. Who's one commentator to them?

There is of course the slight chance of meeting people from the site I play mafia on, but the experiences I'd look forward to are the above ones. Meeting these people I called my friends. Meeting these people who I looked up to. Meeting these people who I engaged in various conversations at length, often with good banter. Showing them the shy real me who is an introvert in spite of my rather promiscuous activity when I am around.

I don't...really get that without reconnecting. I can attempt to come 2018 and getting closer to said event, where I begin to comment again and look out for announcements of attendance. But that's why this is a diminished thing from what it could have been--me years ago needs no reconnecting because me years ago was already there actively all the time. Me now does need the reconnecting because I am just a tremendously stupid individual who can't control her life.

However. All the same. While not quite as "on the mark". This is still a good gift. Because while the above might lead you to think I would be bitter...it's the opposite in fact. I am thankful that I now finally have that chance. I am hopeful that I might get the ability to reconnect with things I have wanted to reconnect with for ages. This represents an opportunity. It could be an opportunity for disappointment and suffering, yes, but it can also be an opportunity for me to really get to get things I've lacked for far too long.

I'm not sure how I can really explain my hope, my vision, my viewpoint there. But basically. I have faith that it will be something where good things will happen as a result of me having tickets to go there. Never in the way I anticipate of course even though the way I'd 'anticipate' would be awesome, but it will be there I am sure of it.

Besides that, I also received the gift of wireless headphones for my desktop. They need some hardware to be installed that we don't have at the moment (the anticipated date of arrival is this Friday I believe?), but these would allow me to not be limited by the ridiculously-short cord on my current headphones. I could potentially sleep in my room with them, or eat with the family while my dad is (listening to music to drown him out), or do things more freely without removing the headphones, and so on and so forth.

A pretty pragmatic, useful gift if not one which has the level of emotional investment those other ones do. It's not working yet, but when it does it will help a lot I imagine. Won't be perfect I anticipate that of course, but oh well. My point is, I got some good presents this year, and also gifted some good presents, too. My brother is notoriously hard to shop for but I believe he just might actually play the remastered Crash Bandicoot games I got for him. My older sister actually really liked the bracelet and necklace I got for her. My younger sister got some earrings, a ring, and one other item I forget and she seemed to think they were nice.

I think I have a reasonably competent sense of a metric for "gifts that they are putting a happy face on for the sake of politeness" versus "gifts they actually think are good", and basically, this year I felt disproportionately there was a higher amount of the latter than normal.

After gifts, we ended up playing a game called Dreamwood between us siblings (which I won) and, after it finished, did our annual Gauntlet Dark Legacy playing until dinner. After supper, we had two rounds of full-family Uno, then a second round of Dreamwood for us siblings again.

My brother got disproportionately lucky--in a perfect storm, he captured TWO of the strongest item cards in the game, giving him a +2 bonus when making 2/3 attack types. (For reference, creatures have difficulty ratings between 3-9 for most monsters. So any rating of 3 he was guaranteed to get, any 4 he had >random odds of getting with one card, etc.) He put it to good use, gaining an insurmountable lead.

To our credit, we did try to stop him early and often. I failed four times in a row to capture monsters that he on his turn proceeded to take. (I had >random odds, too, I just got bad rolls which landed me squarely in last place.) Eventually, however, I managed to capture the literally-strongest-item in the game (+2 regardless of attack type, capable of stacking with other items), albeit being too little, too late.

It allowed me to go from last to second (although because I took risks out of desperation of knowing I was last that ended up working aside from those early failures which placed me behind, I had already gained some ground), but it was literally impossible to catch him.

He ended the game with a move which was ridiculously lucky, too--he was attacking the strongest card in the game, with a 1/32 chance of success. His +2 bonus, two cards, and a one-time-use card allowed him to have a 3d4 + 2 (rather than a 2d4 + 2 without the one-time-use card), which had a 96.875% chance of failing because he needed nigh-perfect rolls on each of his dice to beat the monster...and he did.

Not that it'd have mattered since if *I* had captured the monster, my point total would have been one below his point total without said monster. Like I said, he had an insurmountable lead. But by capturing that monster, he stomped us all. It was simply impossible to recover from the early setback. (Seriously, the guy captured two of the hardest items to get at the earliest stage of the game and as a result got two of the best items to allow him to cruise :easymode: through the rest of the game. It's dumbfounding that he got so lucky, but them's the breaks.)

It was a pretty fun time, though honestly in spite of all the fun I had with my family, I'd still have preferred to spend my time with friends instead. (By which I mostly mean my girlfriend.) Something I thankfully got some of later in the day and also today.

​Soyeah. That about sums it up.

There was bound to be interesting stuff happening. So...the day started with me bringing my stuff back which I had taken out. (Well, the essentials, anyway.) When I entered, I was blown away at how different everything looked. In my four years of employment, the pool and surrounding area has never looked this clean before.

It was weird and a little bit of cognitive dissonance. Never before have I seen such a mixture of shiny new and worn-down old in the same location, with everything cleaned and polished and lots of older stuff replaced with newer things but some things being impossible to hide their age even after a cleaning.

Buuuuuuut, overall the pool was a much better environment, and our staff room is also neater and more efficient with more space available and instead of lockers we have bins which're actually much bigger than the lockers ever were and have the advantage of being easily removed.

It was a whole lot of good stuff, so the reorientation went well I think. Of course, there was a slight oversight. Inevitable given this was my first week back and I was bound to forget something. In this case, my lifeguarding shirt. Buuuuut, since I was bringing my stuff back, that meant instead of depositing my gear I got to wear my gear.

Specifically, two of the items I bought earlier. The V-neck was wonderful, and it was light as could be. Unfortunately, while it is a staff shirt it's not a lifeguarding shirt, so over it I had to wear my hoodie, which is a bit bulkier and heavier, but with some adjustments, was livable. I got to break them in, and when my shift ended, put them in my bin when I changed back into my civilian attire.

Soyeah, that was work. I thought of a fair amount at work, but the thing which most stuck out? One of my mega-universes, Mythe. You'd recognize it as being a setting which I largely imported into Red Hood Rider. You may also recall it started out as a setting which was basically ripping off Artix Entertainment just with my own little touches added here and there. (And every story within has absolutely terrible writing.)

But one of my favorite stories in that setting, the climatic final book of that universe that I have dreamt up anyway, is what I worked on a little bit today. The plot can be summarized as, essentially, this: a gathering of all the greatest at everything has been called, intent on answering a grim threat. And by greatest at everything, we mean everything. Every fantasy job, every fantasy race (that is on the heroes' side at least), and every fantasy class (that is on the heroes' side at least), sending representatives to a council meeting.

The protagonist, a necromancer and ruler of a land, was obviously not invited since he of course is evil to the core--but with the right half-truths and taking advantage of the better parts of good-aligned people (namely, he can't hide the land he is from but he can chastise anyone for assuming him originating from a land ruled by an evil overlord necromancer--him, but they don't know that--would mean he'd be evil, when it is quite correct that people anywhere can be good or evil him included), he manages to get to the meeting anyway.

He attended more out of curiosity than anything else, but when the nature of the gathering was revealed, he was forced to volunteer with these best of everythings thanks to a common interest: a threat capable of destroying the world was well on its way to doing exactly that. Our villain protagonist is evil--not stupid. He knows that promises of mercy, of living if aligning with that foe, are empty because he lives on the planet they are trying to destroy, and has a rather vested interest in avoiding death. (Basically he has a grudge against death thanks to meeting death as a young man when everyone he knew was killed yet death refusing to take him too.)

A potentially incomplete list of all the attending abilities/traits:
-Fighter
-Warrior
-Soldier
-Guard
-Defender
-Guardian
-Knight
-Samurai
-Berserker/Barbarian
-Valkyrie/Viking
-Lancer
-Duelist (mixture of both pistols and blades, the latter which is also called a Fencer)
-Gladiator
-Martial Artist
-Monk
-Cleric
-Paladin
-Crusader
-Battle Mage
-Spellblader (part of what the protagonist is pretending to be)
-Weaponmaster
-Rogue
-Gambler
-Trapmaster
-Trickster
-Scout
-Bandit
-Pirate
-Thief
-Assassin
-Ninja/Shinobi
-Reaper/Reaver
-Archer
-Ranger
-Hunter
-Woodsman
-Arbalester
-Sniper (bow)
-Sniper (gun)
-Gunslinger
-Musketeer
-Merchant (is actually a class, yes)
-Mercenary (is actually a class, yes)
-Elemancer (can use magic of all eight elements but is limited to exclusively those)
-Pyromancer (the main thing the protagonist is pretending to be)
-Cryomancer
-(I need to look up the appropriate word for Energy)mancer
-Geomancer
-Aeromancer
-(I also need to look up an appropriate word for Light)mancer
-Shadowmancer
​-Necromancer (what our protagonist actually is but not something which is supposed to be known)
-Technomancer
-Telekinetic
-Mage
-Wizard
​-Warlock
-Witch
-Sorcerer
-Sage
-Druid
-Shaman
​-Summoner/Conjurer
​-Beast master/tamer
-Dragon master/rider/tamer/lord
-Telepath (Illusions/Hypnosis)
-Psychic
-Mirror (copies stuff, aka Mime/Blue Mage etc but Mirror is my name for it)
-Priest
-Healer
-White Mage
-Acolyte/Zealot
​-Incanter/Invoker
-Bard
-Dragonslayer
-Nightslayer (Vampire Hunter/Lycan Hunter, and similar)
-Witch hunter
-Shapeshifter
-Scholar
-Adventurer
-Caster (special class I made up)
-Ichoromancer (blood master)
-Creator (special class I made up)
-Scribe (profession)
-Blacksmith (profession)
-Accountant (profession)
-Historian/Librarian (profession)
-Runesmith (just assume profession until told otherwise)
-Alchemist
-Engineer
-Barber
-Archeologist
-Astrologer
-Diplomat
-Herbalist
-Miner
-Cook
-A vampire (well actually, half-vampire)
-A werewolf (well actually, half-werewolf)
-A dragon
-An elf
-Maybe a dwarf?
-Maybe an orc?

...The thing is. I'm not writing just about 100 characters to be on the heroes' side. I'm aiming more for 30-50: a notably large group, but a still passably small group. As a result. Multiples are possible, as in, one person being both the best vampire and the best of something else. And our protagonist--while specializing in necromancy--genuinely is a skilled pyromancer and can use it effectively in spellbladery, meaning he's both of those (secretly all three), for an example.

Another is that the telekinetic specialist isn't actually having their first specialist as telekinesis. They're firstly a cook. They use their telekinesis to effectively provide meals for an entire army singlehandedly, something impossible for anyone with anything less than absolute mastery of telekinesis.

So basically I want to eventually figure out the logistics of who specializes in what. I already know many of the main characters. The ichoromancer is a star in one of my other stories along-side the dhamphir. The lycan is also the caster and is a star in one of my other stories. Part of being a caster (which is similar to necromancy) is being tied to a partner and his partner is the best in one of the melee classes if not more than one. A few others were defined as well.

But I didn't get to narrow it down as much as I'd like. I did do a few things, such as the scholar being the bard as well and also being a scribe/accountant/historian/librarian (one of the most diverse skill sets), but for the most part these things are left blank right now even though they shouldn't be blanks.

...Oh and yes I actually can waste hours on research here especially with...distractions. I got pretty thorough but I'm pretty sure I could find more which I didn't consider duplicates or unusable if I did a little more digging than I've already done. Because, uh. Yeah. This only scratched the surface.

I love the setting and I like the story. Would require a massive rewrite to be usable but it's doable. The protagonist is one of my favorite creations of all time for good reason. (I wish I could explain more of the setting/world but I'm drawing blanks on what to say.) Good reason I imported him over into Red Hood Rider. (Admittedly he only gets a couple of cameos and references outside of the cameos but he's important all the same.)

On the very loosest of loose bases, in fact. The story that he appears in is thousand-year-old backstory for Red Hood Rider, in that events in his original source material of Mythe which his story was telling...have a very similar analogue in the Rubyverse's backstory. The funniest thing is, that wasn't even planned! It was just a funny coincidence. So in that regard, you could kinda sorta consider Red Hood Rider to be the sequel to this guy's story if not for the fact that it's in a different universe altogether. (The Mythe universe was imported into the Rubyverse, meaning that most things in Mythe happened in the Rubyverse, but vice-versa is not true in that nothing in the Rubyverse happens in Mythe unless it was originally from Mythe in the first place.)

So, in a sense, I could be said to be writing a prequel right now which also serves as a sequel to some of my other stories! Confused yet? I know I sure am!

More specifically, about elements. I may or may not have rambled on the subject before, but elements are a thing of great fascination to me. I figured the best way to start is to start by talking about the basic western and eastern element systems.

A commonly-forgotten fact about the western-element system is that it is not, as media commonly portrays it, actually a four-element system. The western element system we are familiar with has a fifth element, a "heavenly" element, Aether/Ether, the element of the stars, what the heavens are composed of. But I'll talk about that more in a bit.

The "worldly" elements were the four elements making up the world: fire, water, air, and earth. We all know the four-element chart. Water, opposite of fire; Air, opposite of earth; Water beats fire beats air beats earth beats water is often also used. There's so many things about this system which are commonly seen. It's a pretty standard system, subverted plenty of times, and people often "get creative" by later introducing a 'fifth element' of their own (which is usually something completely different from the original fifth element but not necessarily!).

I'm not quite as familiar with the eastern-element system, but they also use a five element system. I believe their traditional system is Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. But coincidentally, at least in my own elemental creativity, I will be talking about those later, too.

The next step up is the eight-element system. It keeps Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, but adds Light, Dark, Ice, and Energy to the spectrum. This also has a side-effect of changing elemental dynamics. Water gets paired with Energy; Fire gets paired with Ice. Because eight elements are more complicated, there's a lot more diversity and interpretation in there. Do you have a wheel on elemental affinities (i.e., one element beats another but is beaten by a third)? The possibilities are far more diverse than with only four.

This is the system I tend to most commonly use, thanks to my upbringing in Artix Entertainment's first game, Adventure Quest. It was what I used in my previous webcomic (speaking of which I made art for that today!), and it's what I use in Red Hood Rider, too. I like the eight-element system because of the incredible flexibility it provides. A four-element system gives you access to some creative ideas (for instance a favorite of mine is, "four elements, four fundamental forces of the universe"), but an eight-element system just feels a whole lot more ~official~ I suppose it would be, in that when I have it I feel more grounded in reality. It provides the best balance between having a lot and having a little, because once you expand beyond eight, there's no limit to what you can give.

For instance. The obvious step up from eight is the ten-element system. Generally the simplest and easiest way to get a ten-element system is to subdivide the Earth-element. (You can blame Bionicle for what I ended up with.) You can subdivide it into any number of different things, but I have a preference for these three:
-Metal
-Rock
-And Nature.

Included in Nature would therefore be Wood. The reason I like these three is because these three are all relatively broad, yet common, elements which encompass essentially everything Earth has to offer. Metal is everywhere in our world. If Metal is not classified as its own element, it's under Earth because where else would it go? It's not fire, it's not ice, it's not energy, it's not water, it's not light, it's not dark, it's not air. It's either a part of Earth, or it's its own element.

Avatar: The Last Airbender may have popularized the idea of metal as an element (at least a sub-element of earth), but the idea has been around since long before then. It makes sense, after all. The explanation given is usually to the effect of what Avatar gave, in that metal is just refined rock, but I like to separate metal and rock.

Rock is what covers a significant portion of the Earth, too.

And Nature is what makes up life. I tend to not call it Life as an element (because that itself can be an element, but see below), but the sentiment is there: it is both flora and fauna, in that it is everything organic, more or less, in the world. It WOULD be possible to subdivide it in half, into said flora and fauna (making it basically be Wood / Nature as two separate things), but this is not something I often do.

...However, something I DO do? Often, if this still feels too narrow--and it usually is--instead of not including an element named Earth, I will include an element named Earth, which would be the broad sweeping category of "everything on the planet (more or less) not fitting into one of those three categories". If sand/dirt don't count as Rock, they'd count as this version of Earth. Things like poison, acid, gasses which aren't classified as air, and the like would also fit into here.

We're up to eleven at this point.

Then comes the biggie category. Spirit/Soul, Aether/Ether, Heart/Love/Life, Heavens/Stars/Divinity/Holy, Ethereal/Dream, Ki/Chi/Xi/Chakra/Body Energy. You can potentially get 10-12 elements from these, or you could lump them all into one element of your choice name. They cover similar concepts which is why I lump them together, but they are not in fact synonymous. I tend to separate them out into about two (maybe three) categories: "heavenly otherworldly element", and "material otherworldly element"/"earth otherworldly element".

That is: I create one element which is an element that exists outside of the normal plane of existence, on a level associated with divinity. Spirit/Soul/Heavens/Stars/Divinity are the likely candidates for the type of name I would give that element, in that it is something on another realm and that realm is higher.

I also create one element which exists outside the normal plan of existence, which is otherworldly, and yet closely mirrors and is very directly tied to our world. Think like "The Force", or similar: something which is likely to exist in most things (or at least most living things if not). This can be Spirit/Soul/Aether/Ether/Heart/Life/Ethereal/Dream/Body Energy/Ki/Chi/Chakra.

...But often, that won't quite be adequate enough, in that you can have a need to explore something which is neither of those and yet still doesn't have a negative connotation associated with it. Something which is often considered stronger, but isn't necessarily so, in that it is an element that is necessary for the others to exist and yet it is not something superior in of itself. Soul/Heart/Life/Dream/Ethereal are the most likely candidates for this element.

Of course. There is an element that can go as far back as being the ninth element. Ninth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth by this point. This element is one of my most common elements. It is, simply put: Void. Void is my staple element once I expand outside of the elemental-eight. With an eight-element system it gets lumped in as part of Darkness but the moment I free myself of that restriction, Void is in as one of my elements.

Void is an otherworldly element, yet it represents more of "nothingness" than it does "something". If I have just one between all the words I gave above, this is a binary relationship in that void is the opposite of that one. But if I have more than one, it goes something like this.

The more divine/heavenly one can be thought of as "purity of thought", more or less. The more earthly one can be thought of as "pure potential". The third would be more "purity of existence". The void, in essence, is "purity of absence". It is most strongly a counter to the first two in that it is not strictly speaking tied to death (though if death is not an element, it is likely under the realm of Void), but it is tied to the nothingness associated with a purity which stands in contrast to them.

Nothingness is itself a potential element, but it's not one I'm going to include in the list. Instead, making the list in spite of it being tied to body energy/heart/life among others, is Blood. When I expand my element system beyond the eight given, blood is often among my list, because blood serves a purpose and has a great versatility within it.

Fire, Ice, Energy/Lightning, Water, Light, Darkness, Air/Wind, Earth, Nature, Metal, Rock, Void, Blood. And then we get to choose how many of those otherworldly elements we use. At least one, with three being what we want to max out on. Which would give us a nice comfy 16-element system. This could be worked down to 15 by scrapping one. It could be worked down to 13 by two of {scrapping the second and leaving only one, combining blood with one, combining an earth element}, if I did my math right.

But this is where I tend to draw the line. 13-16 elements is about as far as I'll go. You can go further, of course. To pull up a TVTropes list of commonly-used elements (when I say 'just earth', btw, I mean "earth or an element which in an 8-element system would be part of earth"),
​-Storm (I have no clue but it's not really an element)
-Gaia (just earth)
-Machines (really just use Metal)
-Crystal (just earth)
-Death
-Poison (just earth)
-Lava/magma (seriously it's just fire)
-Sun (it's just light)
-Sound (mostly just air though this is a serious contender for its own element)
-Radiation (just earth)
-Magnetism (just energy)
-Smoke/gas/mist (air or earth)
-Explosions (mostly fire with maybe some air butyeah definitely not an element on its own for me)
-Mud (just earth)
-Hellfire (just fire will do nicely thankyouverymuch)
-Illusion (neat power, but not an element)
-Time
-Space
-Gravity (strong power but not in of itself an element--it's something some elements may control though)

Some of these are things that I can probably flesh out more, but basically, most of them are covered already. You might note looking at the list that I left some off, but that's because the ones I left off were ones which had names I didn't use but were describing things I already have used.

I'm content with my little expansion, though I think I should off of an expanded-element system list what each element would actually do. Ah well. Some future blog I suppose.