Image Response Ping Pong 14

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 Here we are , here we are , IMAGE RESPONSE PING PONG NUMBER 14 , in which we act as CHALLENGING MUSES in order to keep a lively series of blog posts , so to keep the sly flame of promotion burning .

 (DCOhas a kickstarter to get a limit print run, it's fully funded, but you still have the opportunity to back it and so get a print copy reliably , instead of waiting for them to be available via mail order or store front)

Patrick has envisioned a visionary god

 And given us the above to respond to ..





















This is a Abeyantal Ambassador   ,a would be an elemental if the natural of reality was configured differently. This Ambassador, the Coruscate-Illuminant, is on its way to present itself before  the protean metabeings in the process of creating a reality.
The Coruscate-Illuminant argues for light as mass, energy as tangible solidity , a world where fire is a brick .

 It is unlikely it will successfully argue its case, it would help if the Coruscate-Illuminant would form an alliance with other Abeyantal Ambassador, but it can't envision sharing reality with any other. It desires to be an endlessly neon highway in a void forever.


Okay , now back to you Patrick.

Who be these?

(the answer is here!)

Image Response Ping Pong 12b

Print PDF And an extra table to this post

d6 Sorcerer Knights of Nova Melniboné.

All assumed to have to a Restless-lance, a Changesome Flail and be riding an eel-horse of renown.

1.Scourfrous Zeal, his herald the Amphitere , its wings envasted ears, its head just lips and a lascivious tongue , its song lovely as its appearence horrid. His armour is bristling field of eyelids and his weapon the stolen tongue of the Dawn Bell

2. Volume's Man, his herald the Calopus, a horned wolf , laterally split entire by its own smile. Its horns make twice its height and festooning with mournful candles. His armour baroque with pearl and sculpted cherub reliefs. He wields a great hoop-net , "gods gullet" , that devours inexorable any caught in it. 

3. Burnt Poet, her herald the Leonine Whale, its furred form twisting ever in the air. It murmurs sadly to itself as it swells and declines alternately like a cloud . Her is a libary of burned books, joined with amber. She has the Eventual Moth, a tireless hunter, only real to its victim.

4.Padagoo Grune, his herald a Lympago, its manish form buckled under its own musculature, two dozen failed nations flags atop spears piercing its back. His armour a 1000 years of military fashion , cast in iron and smeared with sooty grease.

5. Kissing Grief, his herald a Stellione,the starlizard weasel, lit from inside  so brightly it hurts to look at it. His armour gold with a corona of blue flame. His weapon a great blade, a single piece of reflective glass that blinds and ensourcens .

6 Providence Jiver, his herald the Wonderful Pig of the Ocean, jovial , rotund , and a bounding.

His armour that of abyssal crabs, his weapon is the alabaster trident , which he caught the pig with.

Image Response Ping Pong 12

Print PDF WELL THAT WAS DARK

Well that was Patrick's response to a dark image , so reaping what you sow I guess. Though I think the dudes who did the reaping often were traveling specialists?

Two Preambles:

1. I'll assume if you are reading this blog you are wanting something to take your mind off the global pandemic and already have made use of all the information available to you , etc, and therefore are not assuming I'm being blithe or oblivious by not mentioning it.

 2. The image response ping pong post series is an ongoing promotion of the dco reprint kickstarter So there's the link out of habit, but anyone and everyone got other stuff going on right now.

 annnnyho

This chimerical and polychromatical creature, what is it ?


It is a Heraldic beast, note the careful and artful framing of the horns , cheek tufts and spurred ears, the single wing, and its innate yet measured posing.

 These beasts are more literal heralds than other beast of that title. Sorcerer Knights of New Melniboné create them as living heralds, both in the sense of a coat of arms , and to fly before , to announce their presence giving reasonable warning to their subjects to abase themselves. Subjects that do not make respectful positions , will suffer  the wraith of the Sorcerer Knight , and the torturous fecundity of flesh from a blow from a   Changesome Flails, or a fair worse Khronous Uneasement , which is what will befall those the Knight-Resplendent chooses instead to smite down with their Restless Lance.

The Beasts themselves are mix of impossibility, impracticality and savage actuality. They are so reliant on magic that if one could suppress the incantations that flow in their blood, they would barely be able to breath let only stand .


and now Patrick, for you :

Image from here , Howard V Brown possiblity

Patrick's response here

Image Response Ping Pong 10

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did you know DCO featured on Kickstarter's "projects we love" , resulting in the addition of exactly no-one (that I can tell from the infomatics they give us) additionally backing.

While that was nice of kickstarter , I'm more amused that the audience of kickstarters "projects we love" is not an audience that sees a naked starving giant and thinks Cor better back that one.
That's you lot , apparently . Breath that rarefied air!


Anyway , thus  the opening  ritual complete, onward

Patrick has graced us with a poem

and given us

Humanoid Khepri Scarab from Late Period Egypt, Egyptian Museum of Berlin

Surprised that it wasn't a modern work, but of old Egyptian land.

I have a temptation to just research this exact artifact and do a history report. But I never had an Egypt phase as kid.

Instead again once more the fecund land.. we haven't had a magic item yet right?

this is a Might-of-been-kiln
You take  some scrap of sentiment , a lost opportunity and a closed door , give it to the bottom hands and it molds them, swallows them and birth a clay mummery of you. It will act out a shadowlife , slightly responsive to the environment but more responsive to an unseen one, acting out its craft, laughing with unseen peers, weeping at defeats , exalting at triumphs. All in dumb clay.

It's best to not watch too long, if one is too full of doubt and regret , trying to divine exact moments of the might-of-beens shadowplay , will become too absorbing. Soon the shadowplay will appear more real than their surroundings. They will walk like a shadow after their Might-of-Been , till one day it turn and smiles at them.

It will reach out gently to the former's face, and , like a mother with their child's tears,wipe their face away , and mold the former to just a clay suggestion of form.

AND NOW FOR  YOURS, PATRICK OF STUART

Jiri Sozansky found at the very very excellent http://drtenge.com/

HE DID THIS, LO

Image Response Ping Pong 8

Print PDF THE GAME CONTINUES

Patrick conjuring a umbral world that turns under the trains wheel and the insurrection arise against it, then he revealed a picture of this ugly dog

Alfrid Shaymardanov

 But first! The now all too familiar plug for the Deep Carbon Observatory kickstarter, now having exactly one stretch goal at 30,000 English Euros.   If reached (a mere 4000 English Euros away as of writing this post) the book will become sublimely grandiose , and will be constructed with the nigh inconceivable , as yet unprecedented, 3 RIBBONS
Minds were shattered at the beholding of Veins Of The Earths double ribbon, but here we are ADDING  ANOTHER RIBBON


Phew.
Back to this dog

This dog obviously collects souls. In certain infernal realms politics and gambling are twisted together like the strands of a rope. This Dog was formerly a prince or sub-duke, played badly, now owes much, and has only the form of a dog.

 He was walked the mortal realm for centuries now, getting owners, serving them as best a dog can, and then betraying them at the most ruinous time.

He damns souls not by temptation , as he lacks any of the customary powers and resources normally at hand to a personage le diabolique .

Instead this dog must choose his owners carefully.
Mortals of weak character but still in possession of a conscience.
Of a type that reflexively choose their own desires and needs over others , or are prone to inflict petty harms or injuries in moments of spite, envy or rage. But a type lacking the icy nerve of a blackguard or the heartlessness of a brute.
After an act of ill , this type will then begin to churn with guilt and will quickly turn to a trusted family member , mentor or companion.

To them they will seek solace, eager for vindication, reassurance or rebuke.

Thus this type will need good and firm guidance , far more than most.
They are easily lead astray but also easily kept in line too.

The Dog however will always be a source of assurance , a companion that does not judge or doubt, a instant balm for fraught nerves and lingering doubts.
His gaze is pure unconditional love, and to stroke his fur is to be instantly assured of all being right.

The results of which are ruinous in the extreme. Eventually no crime or base act becomes unconscionable to the owner , because The Dog will always be by their side, a silent validator and selfless comforter.

Then when the mortal has truly damned themselves and The Dog has grown bored , it will betray them. Revealing their possession to pursuers , distracting them from their normal security measures, uncovering hidden evidence etc.

If no subtle opportunity presents itself The Dog is more than capable of just tearing their owners throat out.

Either way the owner will find their soul now another gross fat hair writhing on the dogs coat.


So that's that dog Patrick , and now a muse-servitor for you :

James Pryde "the death bed"

BEHOLD THE RESPONSE HERE

Image Response Ping Pong 6

Print PDF  We are now in round 6 of Image Response Ping Pong ,

the kickstarter for GIANTLY IMPROVED DEEP CARBON OBSERVATORY is still ticking on , so there's your opportunity to get your print copy , otherwise wait until a point of sale can be found for them..
We have neaaarly settled on some minor stretch goals to extra-fancy the book. Nothing to do with increasing the writing or picturing because we reckon we got exactly the right amount of both.

 Patrick has responded and offered me this:

It is of course an ancestral urn,(or is meant to appear as)  used to contain the ashes of greatfathers and mothers and placed in a quiet room , so one may pray for guidance.

The hinging doors however reveal the real use, a escape portal for a member of the Horizon Society ,the decentralized wizards college.

However the sigil marks not a safe portal but one in which the ethereal tunnels from it are fraying.
The magics of the portal detect the damage and show the sigil as warning, let the user be aware.

To enter such a portal would risk predation, dimensional flinging, spectral marooning and soul-polyps.

The tunnels might be one of the rare ones that will be visited by a ChainOfArms, a centipedal nercomantic creation whose creation and useage was one of the many outrages that the unregulated magical studies of the Horizon Society inflicted on both common and rare society.

The remaining ChainOfArms work themselves to ruin , scrittering along the ethereal tunnels , finger-kniting the rips and holes they find.

The now firmly centralized Institution of Ethereal Affairs has firmly and severely banned any research surround the creation of them , including even dissectations  of one. Even being in possession of any part of one requires several permits and invites far attention from the Institution than is normally healthy.

AND NOW FOR YOUR IMAGE PATRICK:

THUS HE REPLIED

Image Response Ping Pong 4

Print PDF IMAGE RESPONSE PING PONG IMAGE RESPONSE PING PONG we hope you are entertained because we are doing this the whole run of the kickstarter campaign

Which you should back if you want to get a print copy ahead of the crawling,wailing and keening mob that no doubt will descend upon any shop or point of sale doth blessed with such a splendoriffic tome. click the text go to the link you know the drill

Anyway we are in the 4th round of this game. Patrick has answered my last serve thusly

 (click here to read his respond )


has given me this to respond to 

crapaud et grenouille by Jean-Joseph Carriès

 Okay we have a very expressively frog or toad. Toad seems more fitting for its countenance.
An expression thoughtful and somewhat malign. The Toad sees you very clearly and feels only bored contempt for you. Its black pit of a mind stirs somewhat as it consider any uses for you.

Let's build on that, (plus address the smaller frog ), we have a port city, a twin port city , "Callo-calloo"
A sleepy marauder of a river feeds into the sea beside it , and so its docks receive the shallow bottom river boats and the ocean crossing deep keelers.

Stretching out from the cities flanks are brackish swamps. Where the sea breaks against them is the thick wall of mangrove trees , which erratically give way to  the moody swamp cypress.  All of which is a smugglers paradise, providing they have learned the tunnel like paths through the mangroves and know which  long strands of moss festooning the cypress are sacred to spirits , and that which can idly brushed through.

The smugglers , wreckers, bandits, and belligerent tribes (though rare that any one of these isn't somewhat part of the other) have a port too, the Moondocks.
 A littoral phantom location like the Underground or the Blackmarket, its physical location merely hasty planks and rope lowered, concealed trapdoors, and backroom ladders, only its conceptual location is a constant mercantile reality.

The other occupant of note is frogs. Penny frogs hoping out of bouquets, nimble fly-snatchers at the window sill, surly gnarled poison toads firmly in the way, dizzy googlers jumping on your face as you sleep. Even a variety that ventures into the salt waters, protected by a thick mucus and pestering fishermen as it takes fish on the line.

  Thus the ever present chorus of chirps, croaks, burps,pops, and groans, must be endured to spend any length of time here.
As the frogs are so voice-some , you might make the mistake to think they are not listeners too.
But they are. "Frogs catch flies, but they catch words better" as they say here.

All this speech makes it way to a singular mind. "The Toad" as it as known, the everydayity of the name is in contrast to the fear and respect is said with.

The Toad Hears. The Toad Knows. 
The Toad will share with you what he knows in exchange for a meal. 
(assuming you can find him , a challenge and ordeal in of itself)
The meal must be flavoured with misery , rage, or grief.
A meal will obtain these flavours when the maker is unable to take the action they believe will alleviate those feelings and instead find themselves in the kitchen and its requisite burdens.

A meal served to him will get you 3 questions answered. If you have the culinary expertise to serve him several courses each will get 3 questions.

The Toad is no resentful  genie, and will answer each question attendent to its spirit and not merely a  miserly response to just the letter. 

However he finds a passing amusement in trouble and strife. 
So how much he says and what he doesn't say will be shaped by a desire to either to see you in problems or being the source of someone else problems.

The Toads palate grows bored easily, and offering him a meal spiced with a common situation risks angered him.

The Toad angered will result in the afflicted unable to find their way out of the mangrove , until the Toad grows bored of their misery or their death. 

And on moonless nights the frogs chorus can be joined by the lamentation of those who ired the Toad so much he holds them there even after their dying.


AND THAT IS MY absolutely purple I don't even know what's happening with my writing right now RESPONSE

MY IMAGE FOR YOU PATRICK IS :

Agostino Arrivabene

HIS RESPONSE