iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Had some time to kill today and felt like I was divorcèmaxxing

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Seized by an idea for yet another TTRPG

CRUCIBLE: AN CEOFHID

The Empire of Moon-and-Stars claims dominion over the world, propped up on the pillars of old warrior clans, the blessing of the High Temples, and sanctity of the Mother-Tree. But reach is not grasp; a multitude of kingdoms froth at the borders like ocean swell and further-flung protectorates chafe at the influx of bureaucrats and soldiers. There is peace, yes, but peace as empire would have it, fragile and crueller than the eye can see.
Thus do some seek the between-places. The wilds, the lost villages, the sacred sites hewn by no human hand.
An Ceofhid; the mists-and-forests.
This is the wandering-way, threading in and out of the world of mortal law. Where those who would cultivate mystic power do so beyond the dogma of the High Temples. Where you, o wanderer, would go; duel rivals in rings of elder trees, seek hermit-masters for secret techniques, brush the skin of civilisation once more in roadside inns and border-towns. Yet be not reckless, for the verse of filidh cut deeper than steel, and the binding geas of Dlí Ceofhid ensures the rites of the way are kept with threat of terrible curses. Beware the deepest clearings, the eldest stone, the places where root and mushroom ring the soil, lest the Kindly Neighbours join you to their sport.
Travel the world, wanderer. Seek wisdom. Seek power. Cultivate the Patterns and become yourself. Resist temptation, resist hubris, for the way is hard and the shortcuts sweet, but at the end of every crooked path waits the tyrant called I.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Don't you feel your heart burning?! Will you bow before you break?! [it's gonna be uhhhh months before this structure makes sense to anyone else]

THE PATTERN OF THE GOLDEN FLAME
Auspicious Attributes: Bearing, Fitness
Inauspicious Attribute: Guile
Sects: Mendicant Knighthood, Ashwalkers, Galathine High Temple

Sing, Dragon-Star, of the righteous woman’s wrath; beset on all sides by iniquity and tyranny, that she in furious anger is driven to wield the axe. Sing, Dragon-Star, of the world aflame; all burnt away and made new again. Sing, Dragon-Star, of the one-within-all; of the many who raise fist before throne, though the heavens may fall.

* Punish the wicked
* Destroy the tyrant
* Clear the dead
* Make way for growth
- Accept revenge before justice
- Exercise cruelty in defiance of prudence
- Spend lives not your own
- Refuse action

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Me: I should finish an existing project. Also me

If the cultivation of a Pattern is alignment with the pillars of the world, it should be no surprise then that it tends to distinction and order. To structure and hierarchy, for all adherents of the Silver Tree must insist elsewise. To embrace the Sixfold Pact, therefore, is to reject the prison of category. It is to stand against the walls of heaven and deny the stone. To embrace the Sixfold Pact is to seek the dissolution of all that which divides and distinguishes, yet struggle always with adoration of the tyrant called I.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

THE CRUELEST ANIMAL is so fun to write and design.

Negotiate
Core Move

Diplomacy by the first means, ideal when one respects the humanity of an interlocutor and is interested more in the content of their character than of their ribcage.

Roll +Brutality
Your approach is blunt, offensive, forthright, of violent rhetoric or emotion.
On 10+, increase Tension by 1 and pick two from the list below.
On a 7-9, increase Tension by 2 and pick one from the list below.

Roll +Grace
Your approach is cool, polite, circuitous, detached; elegant and cruel.
On a 10+ pick one from the list below.
On a 7-9, increase Tension by 1 and pick one from the list.

Roll +Intellect
Your approach is reasoned, calm, diplomatic; detailed and compromising.
On a 10+ pick two from the list below.
On 7-9, you and the other party pick one each from the list.

Roll +Wit
Your approach is clever, charming, funny; irreverent and relaxed.
On 10+ reduce Tension by 2 and pick one.
On a 7-9, reduce Tension by 2

The other party concedes resources
You take 1 Hold against the other party in future Negotiations
The other party is provoked to Enact Violence
The other party is compelled to avoid violence
The other party will do you a favour
The other party will fight at your side at least once
The other party believes you
The other party is compelled to antagonism against a third party
The other party is compelled to cooperate with a third party

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

#poetry is often an exorcism, or a flirtation - this is more the former and I no longer recall what I meant at the time.

A-Diction
I believed, when I was five
that something stalked the hallways
in the softness of the night.

Crept from my bed, tipped
on bare toes down creakless stair;
I too would shun the light.

And on for months, years
never favoured with the sight
of the thing weighting the empty air.

Fair to ask me now;
"haunting stranger in the night,
of all things, for this I should care?"

I believe, at thirty-five
that someone is that ought not be there
at the edges of my sight.

So I compose you verse,
a gift wrapped in reckless greedy dare
to bring your soul a little light.

There is a thin line
between a curse
and a prayer.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Thinking about becoming an Instagram poet

I don’t think we’re built to be happy, people like us.
Not for longer than minutes.
But we can be together.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Dark Knight job quests still my favourites

"By The Fury, who are you? Why are you doing this?" cried the knight, all his dignity lost as he scrambled backwards across the flagstones, past the corpses of his comrades, until his helmet tolled miserably against the wall.

Khotun hefted his greatsword, eyes glittering like ice under moonlight. "In a perfect world, men like me would not exist," he said, as the shadows in the hall writhed and darkened.

"But this is not yet a perfect world."

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Did yuo know that for the price of FREE you can download any of my convention one-shots? Written to run in three hours (but with room to go big if you have time), with five pre-made characters and primers for system & setting, the only thing you don't get are the dice!

The Exorcism of Logan Spire
A Crucible: Darkening Skies scenario for five unfortunate souls

The machine-shops and firing ranges, the bedrooms and ballrooms of Logan Spire are stained in blood. A massacre cleared out these august chambers and scattered the Logan family to the far corners of Imeria. But those old misdeeds have power, and the Spire has become haunted beyond all recognition; ghosts growing monstrous and powerful on the resonance of the place. Now it’s up to you to cleanse these halls with ensorcelled revolvers and ivory bells.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

mrw one of capital's wretched lickspittles dares to flog their inane wares at me

A still image of TV fraud Dr. Phil berating someone with the words "You're ugly. You're disgusting. I'm gonna kill you. Give me $200"

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

I can do a little fanfic, as a treat

"I thought Ultima would be the end of it."
"You know it couldn't be, Khotun. One legion does not an empire make, and the beastmen threat yet looms," she replies, "the Warrior of Light is still much needed."
"Is that all I am to be, Y'shtola?"
She stands straighter, taken aback. "All you are to be?"
He doesn't reply immediately, only raises a hand from his lap and stares at it, palm up. His fingers tremble.
"So many lives...." He begins, pauses, releases a breath before it can become a sob. "I know them, Y'shtola. Every frightened Garlean conscript, every Tempered kobold, every desperate bandit. The Echo forbids me the luxury of monstrosity."
"Yda tells me you were a gentle spirit, even before wakening to the Echo."
"Then we deserve the Garleans," he says, bitterly. "At least they're ashamed enough of their bloodlust to concoct justifications for it."
A sound echoes over the empty plaza, louder for the smallness of it. Khotun turns his head, but does not touch his stinging cheek.
"That you of all people...!" Y'shtola seethes, "That you who bristle with righteous indignation every time we go to Ul'dah should dare to suggest the Empire is justified!"
"I am so weary, Y'shtola, of being a weapon," Khotun says quietly, looking her in the eye again, golden limbal rings bright in the deepening dark "when may I be a man once more?"

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 30/10/2024

Big fan of Robert Montgomery, though he makes his work an absolute bastard to share

A billboard covered over with black paper and white text, reading:
New countries will grow up on graceful promontories where a few people gaher together. In their world it will be illegal to own the land, and they will make new literatures in which the oil age will be almost forgotten. All our cities will be folded back into the sand and our words will be forgotten and they will not even remember how we once held the whole world in our hands and how we crushed it like a bird in our hands.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 28/10/2024

I don't always write #poetry that's angsty and angry, but this is probably the most positive it gets

Ever since I was a man-
-the first time I looked back on harms I’d done and muttered
Fuck. Goddammit. I really did–
-I’ve known love was in the early morning cold
In the late night sleepless comfort
In the gloaming walk home
In the serendipitous teacup
And yet

Some days I want to end a world for you

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 18/04/2024

Warlock gang. Appropriately I will also contort any given setting and system to make a paladin who is technically a warlock, or a warlock who is technically a paladin. I want to do hero shit but in a spooky way.

IDRlabs D&D class test results showing a result favouring Warlock, followed by Bard and Paladin.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 18/04/2024

I am *very* particular about my conditioner but have never been compelled to try a hair mask. However:

Bearded guy with glasses compensates for huge forehead with luxurious long dark brown hair while looking mildly perturbed at the camera

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 15/04/2024

I have no memory of writing this but there it is in my drafts. #poetry

the night is young and empty and

all my pleasures are ash in my mouth

all silence all stillness and then

a thousand miles away a hundred miles away

a screen away

I see lights. I linger in the dark at the edge of the scene.
Someone might know my name and ask how I am.

I know how I am; unreal. Not here. Not there.
There is nowhere left for me in this world that there are also people. I've forgotten how to speak to you. I don't know the rules here.

The nature of a ghost is to forbid the living.
I forbid you. I deny you. I abjure you.
Please let me be dead. I belong to nowhere else.

My love is your love like moonlight is sunlight
Eclipse me so I can no longer
want (what) you (have)

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 04/04/2024

My perfect little angels who can no wrong. Seriously the void boy there is so immaculately well behaved.

A black cat with luxurious thick fur cuddles a smaller tortoiseshell cat while they sleep on top of a cat tower.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 04/04/2024

Look. Look at this smug little bastard face.

Large orange tabby cat lies with eyes closed and paws neatly folded like a good little gentleman who did not just steal a tortilla.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 22/03/2024

We're about to drop the middest album of Sovran Arthur's reign

A screenshot from the game Dragon's Dogma 2, wherein four figures are standing on a grassy hill in front of an old stone brick lighthouse. In the foreground is a sad-eyed human man with shoulder-length hair and a full beard. Behind him is a cat-woman in plate armour. Behind her is another, slightly taller cat-woman with a bow strapped across her back. Standing off to the right of the picture is a human woman in a wizardly robe thoughtfully stroking her chin. I am not sure how to express in text how much this looks like the album art for some kind of medieval reconstructionist doom metal band from Denmark.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 19/02/2024

The player who got this played them a bit more sinister than I expected but they were delightfully on-board.

Comrade-Thanatomat Riley Hawkar
The green hills roll down to the grey sea and the briny wind is cold, invigorating. You squint at a break in the overcast sky and giggle with wonder.
[DATA MISSING]
A hand reaching for yours. Small, soft. She smells like salt and gunpowder and sweat in the dim warmth of the supply room. The teachers cannot know.
[DATA MISSING]
Bright eyes under dark helmets. The thundering drumroll of ranked rifles. Cries of victory. Exhausted you half-collapse and throw your arms around your comrade. His tears feel scalding on your cheek.
[DATA MISSING]
Screaming, bleeding. Blind with panic, deaf to the roar of artillery shattering the bruised sky. Hearts stop all around you. Warmth leeches from your limbs and pools around your hips.
[DATA EXPUNGED]
Bright lights, distorted faces. Voices muffled as if by a thousand miles and a thousand years of distance. A few words glimmer in your mind like eyes in the dark of the supply room.
“-enough brain matter intact-”

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 09/02/2024

Thank you for your kindness. In lieu of a cute selfie here I am apparently nursing my fist after punching a guy out for putting his hands on someone at a party last year

A long-haired man with too much forehead and thick glasses is inexplicably pressing a finger to his lips, dressed in formalwear as disco lights play across his face and chest.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 25/01/2024

This isn't the exact blurb I submitted but I've forgotten it already. Much research required to get the cast right, they're not as fully formed on arrival as usual.

GHOSTFIRE ENGINES
A Crucible: Darkening Skies game for 5 players
The advance of our armies has been halted. Decades of struggle stymied by foreign intervention at the very gates of the Vampires’ capital. The Necrocommunist Union of Kaer made to bow before bourgeois imperialism.
And so the Necromancers of The Central Party have decided this armistice must be used to develop new weapons, new doctrines, to advance the deathless science of Necro-Tavronism in order to bring the war beyond our borders. Thus are you chosen, brave comrades, to field test the next generation of Osteidon; a necromechanical titan, an armoured shell of bone to protect and empower the pilot at the core. A weapon to destroy the Vampires and capitalists and the alleged ‘Dragon-Emperor’ in the name of the cause. Go forth into the wastelands of the Demarcation, fulfil the duty which transcends death!

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 05/01/2024

THIS IS A KĀKĀPŌ RESPECTING ACCOUNT IF YOU DO NOT LOVE AND APPRECIATE THE MAJESTIC AND NOBLE KĀKĀPŌ PLEASE FUCK OFF

A photograph of the magnificent and rotund kakapo, a large green parrot too stately of carriage for flight and beautifully green in colouration.

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 01/01/2024

>Show us the first album you bought Lost the physical case somewhere between evictions

The cover art of Mogwai's album Young Team

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 01/01/2024

Repost with your earliest childhood crush from film/tv. Or maybe it was Morticia Addams. Or Lydia from the Beetlejuice movie or cartoon. Honourable mention to Ryoko Hakubi anyway.

A still from Disney's animated Sleeping Beauty showing Maleficent and her crow familiar

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 09/12/2023

The energy I'm trying to bring to the skyline

"I have not been permitted to die and it's about to be everyone's problem."
A blood-spattered visage of penitent serenity screenshot from the videogame Blasphemous 2

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Sad Ghost, Smutpeddler @sadghost.bsky.social · 04/12/2023

File to: campaigns I'll never get to run

Truncated due to text limits:
The old world is dying.
The king is dead, his son is a halfwit heretic, a dozen dukes raise armies to contest the throne and bark like caged hounds on the borders.
The peasants suffer. The citizens of sieged cities suffer. Even the soldiers break and become as rabid wolves in the wilderness.
A new world is struggling to be born.
Where the war has not touched, farmers and shepherds are driven from their land 'for protection'. Taken into the cities where they must serve to survive, in the squalid dormitories and burgeoning textile mills.
And in all of this - you. You who were left near dead; broken, alone, used up. You who cried out in anguish and there, in the dark, something heard you.
And it asked you; wouldst thou wield my might, and yet more justly?
All you heard, in the depths of agony, was 'will you make them pay?'
Now is a time of monsters.

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