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Oof, colleague, this one is real loud.

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Mountainhome's leadership thinks the time is right for the dwarves to leave the mountain and retake what was theirs on the surface before the Clataclysm. The first scouts in a thousand years have been sent out, and those that have returned report wonders and horrors in equal measure.

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Now, finally, the surface looks safe enough to explore. While dwarven technology has outstripped anything on the planet, their society is rotten to the core - authoritarian and corrupt. Inequality is rampant, but little is done, because everything is in its place. Especially the Fatherless.

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refuse to do. They're untouchables, barely surviving at the edges of dwarven society, and only then by the largesse of their so-called betters.

The Fatherless are dwarves of no clan - outcasts, criminals, iconoclasts, non-conformists, the poor, etc. Tossed out of the dwarven caste system for one reason or another, the Fatherless live in slums around the gleaming stone and steel dwarven cities. They do the work that "good" dwarves

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Obedience, hard work, and conformity were valued above all other virtues. They were, the leaders said, the only things that had kept the dwarves alive while the world died around them. These virtues were enforced from on high. A powerful caste system developed, and at the bottom were the Fatherless

As their knowledge and mastery of the natural world grew, however, their culture stagnated. It grew in on itself, obsessed with tradition, hierarchy, and authority. A place for everything, and everything in its place applied home life, shop organization, and even individual dwarves.

To survive cut off from the surface, the dwarves developed new sciences, mixing magic and technology to grow food and streamline production. They mastered steam, they mastered blasting powder, they mastered bleeding edge materials sciences, and the kept building, building.

For centuries, the answer was always the same - no. So the dwarves waited. And they waited. Repairing the damage done to their deep mountain cities by earthquakes and the shifting of tectonic plates in the wake of the cataclysm - and there was much damage - kept them busy for a while.

They waited. And they waited. Years turned into decades. Decades into centuries. At first, the dwarves sent expeditions to the surface to see what, if anything was left. None of them returned. They then turned to magic and divination to see if the world was habitable again.

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secluded valleys and mountain glades, sealed their massive stone gates, and hunkered down to wait out whatever trouble their human neighbors had brought on themselves and the world.

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The dwarves had as much warning as humans and halflings about the coming apocalypse, but they were better prepared to weather the storm. Nestled as they were in their mountains, the dwarves survived largely unscathed. They pulled what survivors there were from the surface settlements nestled in

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The dwarves had no gods - they worshipped their ancestors and the spirits of stone, metal, wood, and water. Their culture was strong and mature, their craftsdwarfship the envy of all other cultures, and they had long had friendly trade relations with both humans and elves.

Then there were the dwarves. On the same continent as the humans' most powerful city was a sprawling, rugged, dangerous, towering mountainous region that covered most of the continent's southwest region. In these mountains was Mountainhome, the largest population of dwarves in the world.

The halflings - small, pastoral people the size of human children - were not so lucky. They were immolated along with the humans, and their survivors met the same fate as the straggling human survivors did.

The elves, who enjoyed a deeper, more collaborative communication with their gods, disappeared a week before the great cataclysm. Every elf gone as if they'd never existed, leaving behind vast, empty deep forest cities and all of their belongings.

There were other people in the world, people who worshipped other gods (or no gods at all), but they were considered beneath the human gods' notice and their needs weren't considered.

So, like a spoiled child destroying their toys in a fit of pique, the gods rained fire and thunder and horrible magical energies down on humankind in an attempt to wipe out their creation. With the slate clean, they thought, they could create a race of more biddable, more sycophantic creatures.

The human gods were capricious, jealous, and childlike despite their godly powers and wisdom. They felt that humankind had insulted them, had reached too far and made themselves in the gods' image. Whether or not they actually had is moot, the gods thought so and humans would be punished.

One by one, the human empires were wiped from the planet's face by the gods. More magic, more boiling heat, more arcane radiation, more destruction. What had humankind done to deserve this?

It began with a flash and a terrible sound over the capital city of the world's most powerful human empire. A white-hot ball of pure magical energy and raw deific anger. When the light faded, nothing remained but a smoking crated hundreds of miles across and unfathomably deep.

Millennia ago, in a fit of rage, the human gods attempted to destroy what they had created. In the span of a week, they reduced all of humankind's work to rubble and nearly annihilated the entire race.

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Sheryl Weikal says Prosecute ICE @leftistlawyer.com · 2h

Okay, so, this Dwarf thing I've been thinking about. I have some ideas I want to throw at the wall here, see if they stick

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Reposted by PJ Harvey Dent

In 1996, I was eight years old. And I showed my parents a doll of myself as a girl I'd made and asked if they could please fix what was obviously a terrible mistake. My parents, desperate to keep me away from what they saw as the liberal degeneracy of the public school system,

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Dude, it rules. Make sure you swing past when you leave tomorrow (or, better yet, tonight when the big sign is all lit up). Wife and I stayed there on our honeymoon, and we've been back a couple times since.

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Please tell me you're staying at the Blue Swallow Motel.

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I kinda lost interest in that game once it forced you to help NCPD out. Fuck them guys.

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Ruin a book by adding a word: Outlaws MC, Inc.

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That's the good stuff right there. Then you just kinda stare at the plate like, "What happened here?"

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happy filth_oween @filth-waste.bsky.social · 04/01/2024

You and me both, sister.

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Reposted by PJ Harvey Dent

the cryptkeeper introducing porn like “prick up your ears for a tale that will scare you stiff! you’ll be GLANS you stuck around heeheehee”

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Ho-lee shit. This is art, hang it in the Louvre.

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*ascending slide whistle noise*

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When we walked in, one of the first things we saw was a Narragansett Lager bumper sticker, the "Hi, Neighbor!" one, slapped on the back of that brown recliner. We took it as a sign that we were in the right place.

The building with the furniture was /also/ some kind of lefty punk party squat. There were "No one is illegal on stolen land" and "land back" and "Free Palestine" stickers everywhere, and a flag about two-feet square hung from the ceiling that was the Shahada printed in a bunch of different dialects

The building with the tires and bumper covers was real gross and had lousy light. The other building, though, the one with the furniture? What a space. Lots of gorgeous natural light from big skylights in the main space, and enough holes in the roof in other rooms for good spotlight effects.

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I was more worried about composition, light, and what she was touching/coming in contact with than shutter speed or aperture. I did mostly want deep (or as deep as you can get with a phone camera) depth of field because there was something to see /everywhere/.