Gold! [Submited]
So, gold was... Something. I never felt so glad for my past self going for a lower achievement than what I wanted. I mean, I always want Diamond, but the pledge was to go to Gold, because maybe I have premonition powers and I knew things were gonna get tough. Not only were some prompts really blocking my flow, my internship let me go, I was travelling to another city (which actually ended up being quite good for me, except for the part I spent nearly 2 days travelling back in the end of the month). End of the day, promised fulfilled, gold achieved.
It wasn't as steady as it was slow and then frenetic by the last two or three, happy I managed tho.
The ancient civilization that has influenced do much of the colonizers culture. While Emberly is a pot of many cultures, from natives to foreign colonizers to refugees, most of governing structure and powerful individuals come from the continent of Middlelands and in one way or another, their ancestors had an experience with Taianees. Be it they are descendants of Taianees, or they ended the Taiania Empire, or they fled and eventually create another country that would grow and later invade other territories, Taianees are an important part of Superia western civilization.
I was visiting my mom most part of July, and would you believe it? I had the best chicken broth ever because they are just that good (And I can't eat it at home because I leave in a really hot weather) and if shoup/broth isn't the best food ever, I dunno what is. And so I present you: SOUP! Really. Soup. I did gave it a bit of a twist, with it being sold in (occasionally) bags that you can reap and drink from and having a cold version that is not quite soup (spoilers, its really good, fruity and kinda chunky... like shaved ice). Still, I got stuck on it for a while, mostly because I decided I needed a list of prefixes and suffixes and basically a dictionary to the slowly growing native Novalma.
It should come as no surprise that, despite rules and treaties stating there would never be Super Soldiers in the great nations, governs began projects to increase the numbers of supers working to help their nations, aka Superheroes. HERO Initiative was NOT supposed to be that, but at the same time, even as the original creator of the program thought of it as a way to give agency to marginalized supers, it is a good tool to make 'altruistic' heroes that would work with the betterment of a particular nation in mind, and really isn't it the perfect plan? And since it is kinda with high school classes, you can shape the mind of really young future heroes to be the greatest ever! (The small dose of disbelief in humanity is not to be used as evidence of my mental state, is just... Things are really gray, and this is mostly a sarcastic paragraph)
Honestly, I moved and mashed this so many times. At first it was the Heralds Tower, thinking, again, medieval (and because that was the name as was using in the two newspaper quotes), but than it became its own thing and now it has... secrets, but is also really important for Carracosta and Emberly. Think... Daily Planet. Except without the giant globe, or any other weird iconography at the roof with exception of maybe the company's logo. And trying to think about corporative and how large corporations rent and how these are a really tall buildings and what could there be in them... Mind boggling.
Hard to write about something that... is not written. I mean, choosing a sign language was a given to my fish people. I could of course make them communicate through sonars, but they are humanoid, they have a great deal of body language and so signing was the obvious step. And I always liked signs as a whole, I even tried to learn it a few times, never stuck even if I sometimes really wished I knew how to sign because I am particularly selective about who hears my voice that day. This also expands a bit on my fish folk and how they are actually very distinct among themselves and how even if there is a 'universal' sign language that does not mean everyone uses it or uses only it... More to come later.
A city that was built around a city. Technically around a settlement. If one calls it the "Old Town", is because people are weird. Now this part full of touristic spots and old buildings has a spot of modernity in its criminality and many attempts to marry the old and the new in this modern metropolis.
Let me tell you, I started this after a long break because of the trip, and honestly, the break didn't help (lol). Its just, this was a bit tough to write in a way that felt like what I wanted to say, you know? Any way, villains got back, and the door to explain a bit about "Alignment" (or Type of Super) got unlocked as the Machinist is a Chaotic Villain, now there are some arguments that Chaotic Heroes are just Anti-heroes, but I'll look into it further. Still, I am happy I got to talk a bit about the cowboy and locomotive era of my world.
If Admiral got cited at least a few times, as the current great hero, one gets curious: Who was the previous great hero? Well, of course there was one and his name was Colonel Shore! This piece of patriotic super was one of the youngest of his generation to serve and fight for 'the good thing' and honestly one of the longest actives. A symbol and a burden to its successor, Colonel marked more than history, but also the mind and heart of many.