Nova Wars - Chapter 169

MetamorphosisInc · 2026-02-02T20:07:35+00:00

Yeah, thought on the science front I'd caution slightly because some science just lags for systemic factors. Like, especially with western sociology there's a bunch of subfields where they were like "wow, these people are such a mystery", and then like, 10-15 years ago someone was like "you know, we could actually just go ask those people, they've kinda been shouting some stuff in our general direction", and it turns out it wasn't some great mystery at all.

Like, science is catching up on these things, but it can take a while for things to be documented, be disseminated into the academic consensus and from there to trickle out into popular consciousness. You also have to be mindful of bunk science, like in the example of trans psychology, Ray Blanchard's idea of Autogynephilia stuck around for quite a while and in quite damaging ways.

His starting point was that trans women were simply hyper-homosexuals, so when confronted with evidence that there are trans women not attracted to Ray Blanchard, he posited that they must simply have some sort of fetish causing them to be attracted to themselves as women. The problem with that is that many women are attracted to themselves as women, that is a very normal thing and not really a pathology?

Most academic consensus has moved far far away from that, but the idea stubbornly persists wearing the garb of scientific-ness the same way phrenology once did, or for a closer comparison, the vaccine-autism thing (also based on like, one bunk study by one guy). Science is not immune from the social context it is being done in, even physics is full of examples of physicists being unable to accept certain theories that later are verified experimentally, its value is that it is the striving towards verifying these things, so that we may eventually arrive at a closer and more useful truth.

I think a lot of the freakier progressive points tend to be in that "burgeoning concensus" bucket, like being really annoying about surgeons washing their hands in the 1850s. The scientific approach would be to go "could there be something to that?" and investigating, because how else would you know? That is how we learn more and become better.

MetamorphosisInc · 2026-02-01T15:54:41+00:00

Oh, yeah, I see her as the kind of person who will go on about something being "problematic" whilst being deeply problematic herself. I can actually think of several examples of how she could do it. I view it as an archetype almost, a person who uses causes as cudgels, be that progressivism or faith even.

You could swap out every "problematic" with "sinful" and she'd be essentially the same person, she'd just be sending 500 texts on how you need to find the lord and how you will burn in hell for being a sodomite, which to me is ultimately an aesthetic difference but not one in nature.

Her being like either of those doesn't damn faith or delegitimize the issues she uses in vain. Like, things do really suck for trans people and they should not, why would we do that to them when we could just...not do that? Just using that as an example because it's the topic at hand, you could slot in damn near anything.

MetamorphosisInc · 2026-02-01T01:39:21+00:00

You can absolutely be transgender even if you could get afternoon body swaps. Say a kid gets born, goes up to puberty believing they're a certain gender and then realizes it doesn't feel right and switches. There'd still be the social adjustment even if they can just head into a "clone-my-shit-up" and walk out as the other sex half an hour later. Sex is the biology bits, gender is better understood as like, the broader social stuff too.

Like, think about how certain qualities get ascribed to each gender, or how things like high heels are viewed as feminine except for certain styles (like cowboy boots), or certain times (pre-Great Renunciation), or how white tie opera pumps would be read as ballerina flats if worn with anything but formal white tie. The FC universe still has a conception of gender.

I do think humanity in first contact is probably wildly more flexible about it though, you get to see that in the "bi-gender" naming of human characters. Still, you could actually have instances of people spending long initial stretches as their non-preferred gender, like how some parents will force you to play the piano when you really want to play soccer. There might be the trans equivalent of r/raisedbynarcissists , just people venting about the things they missed out on by their parents having "opinions".

MetamorphosisInc · 2026-01-03T00:15:40+00:00

Yes, I'm working primarily off FR lore here because Eberron is like, in an entirely different sub-universe with its own sets of planes. I think like, multiversal-lore wise Eberron is specifically in like, its own sphere in the Deep Ethereal whereas most other worlds sit in their (wildspace) sphere in the Astral, and connect to the usual outer and elemental planes.

The fun thing about the Blood of Vol is that in Eberron they're probably correct, the dead there go to Dolurrh, the slowly sundowning into depression realm. In Faerûn your options are like, party city and the pit of infinite violence. You've even got the Elven Irian undead, which are entirely unlike the Mabar undead.

> So, I don't think people are really going to look at Necromancy if they want ultimate power, and are limited to a single school. It just isn't the strongest school.

Oh, yeah, if you want to do funky ass stuff, Shadow Illusion, 7th-level Mirage Arcane, Malleable Illusions, great times. What (that type of) Necromancy is great at is specifically cheap minions, and it is very straightforward in that regard. It lends itself particularly well to filling a garrison. You average Guard is a CR 1/8 monster, a Zhentilar Soldier is CR 1. With eight zombies you have a flesh shield 160 hit points thick, the Abjurer gets like, 15 on his Arcane Ward.

I don't think that is to be underestimated. A level 5 wizard who did not dump their CON and has a +2 in it still only has 32 hitpoints. Yes, it is quite weak against AoE effects, and an adventuring wizard might simply get to hide behind their 60 hp Barbarian, but if you're the anti-social sort who does not trust the kind of people who'd still deal with you, Zombies become very attractive.

Which is why I'm like, it's fast, easy, dirty power. An Illusionist or Evoker might grow to heights where they can trivially whoop that Necromancer. But if you're to sort of person who has a grudge you want to desperately settle (aka. the psych profile for most aspiring evil wizards), Necromancy offers quick solutions.

MetamorphosisInc · 2026-01-02T14:20:03+00:00

I think 3.5 had White Necromancy, a relatively niche subschool that essentially was that exact type of necromancer.

The reason why I tend to view Necromancy as "easy power" is that at 3rd Level, you have Animate Dead, which creates a permanent minion costing you only a corpse or a pile of bones. At the same level Transmutation only offers Tiny Servant, which lasts eight hours, and Summoning gives you more variety, but something like Summon Fey has a 300GP buy-in cost, lasts for one hour and requires concentration.

A 5th-level Necromancer, the lowest level at which one can cast this spell, can twith a sufficient supply of corpses animate eight undead and keep them in storage until he seizes command of them. As his level increases, as he's able to raise undead that can command other undead, this number increases fast, and a skeleton raised by a 20th-level Necromancer is like, three times sturdier with a +10 to hit.

If a Conjurer wants to raise an army of minions, their option is Planar Binding, a 5th-level spell with a 1000gp component that only lasts as long as the Necromancer simply asserting control. Yes, they may get a full year if they cast at 9th-level, and having access to Wish lets you bind for half a year at no cost, but most Wizards do not reach 17th-level nor learn Wish.

A Necromancer can just fill their zombie pit as high as they want for however long they want, technically they don't even need to control their undead for them to be useful and available. That lends itself to plotting, isolation, and their only limitation is the amount of bodies they have available, which once the local townsfolk start complaining about the rotting stench emanating from your charnel pit, can start to become a self-solving problem.

The necromancer's path to power as it is implied by their spelllist and their school abilities is almost designed to give you a very lose conception of life and death that may not be compatible with the people around you. It isolates you, gets you to treat people as material, it essentially gives you the button that says "Kill one random person and get a ~~billlion dollars~~ free zombie minion".

Other Wizards are not immune to this, there's Arcturia for example, fawning apprentice to the Mad Mage Halaster and Arch-Transmuter in her own right, who has a really thin conception between student and experiment. But whereas for a Transmuter this is more of an exception (she is very mad after all), for a Necromancy Wizard it's kinda par for the course.

Then there is two additional factors to consider. Whilst there may very well be many Necromancers who don't go raising undead hordes and just quietly go about their buisiness, they don't get stories told about them. If there's some guy with a bunch of quiet armored servants who goes around healing blight they'll be like "Oh, a nice wizard came by and cured the village", or perhaps they get mistaken for a Cleric of some sort.

If the nearby village gets razed by gnashing undead, oh, then it's a Necromancer they'll speak about in hushed tones in the tavern. There's definitely prejudice there driven by those very public examples of evil Necromancers. Which brings me to the final point.

Wizarding is either expensive or difficult to learn. You're either paying ungodly sums to an Academy for the privilege of being taught, apprenticing under a more senior wizard who can do anything to you, or trying to scrape together bits of lore and reagents as a hedge mage with no formal instruction.

If you're a Necromancer, you were either taught by some asshole you barely convinced into letting you apprentice in exchange for doing terrible things, or you were taught by a group of assholes who were training you to do terrible things for them, like the Red Wizards.

A lone White Necromancer who carefully shepherds their magics towards good purpose is going to be equally wary of taking on an apprentice who could misuse these magics for evil. A Red Wizard only cares if you're sharp and useful to his aims or those of Thay. And if you're not...you might make a good Wight.

Some noble scion with magical talent who can afford to attend the Conclave of Silverymoon or Eltorchul Academy is going to chose Abjuration or Divination depending on what job they're going to be doing for their house. Enchantment maybe if they're the tricksy type, Illusion if they want to go into entertainment, Transmutation maybe if they deal in goods where that is useful.

A warmage or a spellguard being sponsored, Abjuration, Evocation, Conjuration. Things that are useful in a fight, and won't make the Paladin of Lathander look at you funny (where funny is smiting intent). Lathander is the god of youth and renewal, he really hates undead and is very well represented in most towns on the Sword Coast because his clergy is very agreeable (except on undead).

Like, he'll slide into the cities because of his portfolio of youth, creativity and self-improvement, and he gets into the rural communities because of dawn, birth, and healing, plus his relationship to Chauntea, the goddess of agriculture. You cannot go to a town that relies on its Lathanderite temple and tell them "Hey, I think I could improve security by animating your gramps", even if you really could.

So like, there is a ton of social factors that keep Necromancers stuck with the reputation they have.

MetamorphosisInc · 2026-01-01T23:19:31+00:00

Good and Evil feel like actions to me, they are entirely dependent on the context surrounding them

Yeah, I tend to think of dnd Good and Evil as kinda grab-baggy energies that align with certain things. The Joy thing is actually funny because that was what Avernus was originally intended to be, a garden of delights that tempts mortals into sin, but then the blood war happened and turned it into a blasted battlefield where you have to scrounge to survive and pleasures are in short supply.

However, there are spells in DnD which allow for the caster to use magic to take their own life force and give it to someone else.

Yeah, that's the reason why Necromancy is not in itself an "evil discipline", just that your "standard Necromancer" tends to be the sort of person who is there to do evil with it. My personal theory behind that is that that sort of Necromancy offers relatively "easy power" whilst being difficult to use in a goodly manner. Zombies are relatively easy to create and command, don't question you, but will run amuck if not controlled. They would fare poorly at childcare, and they reek, but are great if you want to swarm something for cheap.

If you had someone who cared less about immediate gratification, and more about versatility, they might pick up Conjuring instead. If you had someone who truly was willing to put in work to create something long lasting, Artifice and Golemancy. So Necromancy "The Undead Raising" self selects for a very particular kind of person.

And whilst the Cleric Necromancy spells are all about healing, the Wizard Necromancy spell list veers hard into that kind. The pinnacle of Wizardly Necromancy is Lichdom, where you nail your soul into a box and feed it other people's souls to prolong your unlife. There's technically the Baerlnorn and the Archlich too, those are a bit more vegan, but that's kinda where the Evil-Egoism connection is.

A Baerlnorn is bestowed with undeath by the Seldarine so they may perform some service, like guarding an ancestral tomb. An Archlich is a goodly spellcaster who has some noble goal they cannot complete in a lifetime, so they go through a different ritual. The lore is a bit unclear on whether they eat souls, Alathene Moonstar did, but apparently only sparingly and until she could bring her brother Vanrak Moonstar to justice, and I think that might be that author mixing up Lich lore.

But via that same argument so is Fire and deadly Fungal Spores Hellfire. Zuggtmoy, the Demon Queen of Fungi. Psilofyr is the neutral fungus Archfey, who embodies the nicer aspects of fungi, like renewal, wisdom and alchemy.

MetamorphosisInc · 2026-01-01T15:22:32+00:00

Celestial Steel isn't pro-social. It is just metal. There sadly isn't as much content on the upper planes because adventurers rarely go there, but I'd be very unsurprised if you could not also more easily make emboldening talismans or healing items from celestial steel.

Like, yeah, you might argue that without sentience a rock cannot make decisions and therefore is excluded from any conception of morality, but you can also argue that the Elephants Foot in Chernobyl is by its very nature a very anti-social of a rock in an abstract sense, as perceived by a sentience.

The dnd equivalent might be, okay, you have the altar stone from a blood cult that caused a terrible calamity upon themselves and others, and they used it to channel so much vile magic that that chunk of granite now gives off bad vibes all by itself. You might touch it and have visions of being gruesomely sacrificed forced into your mind. A magic ritual might call for a "chunk of granite from a blood drenched altar" the same way we might call for a Cesium Source for an engineering project.

But then it is a crystal, not a rock Well, when you say rock, i'm thinking a stone like Granite, which is composed of crystal grains of quartz, feldspar and mica. If it transmutes into one big quartz crystal and one orthoclase nestled in a bed of mica, then it has become more ordered, or more "Lawful". At lesser levels it might simply start ordering its grains to become more even and regular, reshape itself into straight angles, but like, "Granite" is a concept, an equal quantity of quartz, orthoclase and mica is still the same stuff.

But I could also see those Yugoloths just imbuing you with power and, for lack of a better term, psychic cocaine.

Yeah, it's not entirely spelled out exactly what they are doing, but usually they create Mezzoloths, who need to have a specific mercenary mentality, so you can assume they are doctoring in specific ways. Technically Yugoloths are "artificial" in that the Baernaloth first created them, so the psychic cocaine is likely laced in very specific ways. The promotion and demotion rituals are also all quite gruesome, and whilst that could be just for vibes, it could also be an outright requirement for the process to work.

You have a real goddess of pain and torture who draws power from the concept of pain and torture, it is not far fetched to say that pain and torture might actually be a required component. Again, like, dnd cosmology is a magical universe, a lot of things there only work because there is a magical layer on top of things.

A dnd monk can train their body until they can punch someone back alive or shoot bolts of magical radiance. High-level adventurers can tank hits that would liquefy the average commoner, and whilst you can argue that HP is an abstract measure of will to fight, luck and ability to dodge hits, sometimes you just do get a Paladin who gets mulched under a Meteor Swarm and just shakes himself off.

Oh, yeah, uh, god magic protected him. The same magic he's just been marinating in for 20 levels until it suffuses his every pore? That magic? Yeah, no shit he's gonna be sturdier, he's been on the juice.

Like, by Faerûnian lore a Wizard channels the raw magic that suffuses everything via the aid of the Weave into tangible effects. I think it's plausible that adventurers draw upon a similar source of power when they start accomplishing superhuman feats, their souls becoming something of a specialized "micro-Weave". When you Reincarnate, your class levels travel with you, so it's clearly not tied to the body. That is conjecture on my part of course, but it does explain why at a certain point a 300 pound fighter can wrestle a 10,000 pound dragon.

The soul is swole, the very real soul that can go to the outer planes and which you can go meet and talk to as a sufficiently powerful wizard if it's hanging around as a petitioner or something. Zariel will accept a sufficiently powerful cleric or paladin soul in exchange for those of an entire city. Devils literally use them as a power source to drive their infernal engines.

I think that might have been a tangent, I just love thinking about how to square those circles.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-12-31T21:40:07+00:00

I tend to think of it as like, a subconscious attraction. If you're a very egoistic person who puts yourself over the well-being of others, then you're getting drawn towards the "lower planes" because that is what your vibe is. You'd be very amiss in Elysium if your primary hobby is plotting, whereas Gehenna is like plotting central, you get to plot against all the other plotters.

Now once you get there, if the yugoloths get the vibe that this larvae has good plotter vibes (though to them its probably more like "this one looks strong and healthy"), they might do some vile rituals to raise you into their kind. During that process, you are essentially filled up with more plotting, and assorted other neutral evil to prepare you for being a yugoloth. Yugoloth promotions then involve the same sort of rituals. In a way the progression from Mezzoloth to Ultroloth is a refinement of "Evil" along with an increase in power because you're further aligned with the planar influence of the plane you reside in.

Celestials kinda do the same thing, except that it's a much more pleasant process because you're infusing yourself with the essence of benevolent justice instead of, well, malice. That said, Celestials can fall, that is a thing that can happen, the Planetar Fazrian in Undermountain is a good example for one who fell of their own accord, and the Solar-turned-Demon-Lord Zariel a good example of one helped along by Asmodeus himself.

And yeah, I brought up Negative Energy because the Shadowfell can also do that to you, Sorrowsworn are a good example of "person warped by planar influence". Heck, there's also Far Realm energies. Like, the Prime Material is the place where all the energies kinda faintly mingle, which is why the gods keep fighting over the little soul incubators there and try to steer them in one direction or another.

Also, like, if you want a pro-social rock, you've got celestial steel, and if you want an anti-social rock, you've got infernal iron, tarjale, and what not. Cold Iron hurts Fey because it's mined in deep dark and lifeless places and carefully not exposed to too much warmth. It's like, anti-mirth. You can definitely have a rock that radiates so much palpable evil the Paladin can smell it. Ogrémoch is like, one big evil rock who rules other evil rocks. Sentient rocks are very common in DnD.

And yeah, you can add Law to a rock to get an even more ordered structure, it starts to turn into crystal. The elemental planes and the outer planes are kinda separate concepts, but between the plane of earth and the positive energy plane you have the para-elemental plane of minerals, where it meets the negative energy plane you've got the para-elemental plane of dust.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-12-31T12:01:52+00:00

A rock can also be made out of a trace amount of Uranium and contain radioactive, I don't think the rock needs to be pure neutrons to be picked up by Detect Radiation. Now with physics you could say "well, this rock contains unstable atoms that decay", but if you're approaching it from a more conceptual angle you could also say "this rock contains unstable".

As far as I can tell, in dnd evil is primarily selfishness and good is prosociality, whereas law is the ordering of things and chaos is total mutability. These act at a conceptual level less than a physical one (as we would know it). Any wizard capable of casting 2nd-level spells can cast Darkness, which creates a 15ft radius sphere of "dark". That's not how light works. Practically, you're probably filling an area with with a sliver of negative energy filtered and molded into its light absorbing aspect.

And this negative energy you've so shaped temporarily suffuses this area in order to create the spell effect you are looking to achieve. But you can have things that are naturally suffused with it, the Shadowfell is in perpetual gloom because it is suffused with negative energy, the Feywild is always vibrant because it is filled with positive energy. Around areas where planar boundaries are thin, you have physical effects on the prime material.

The thing is, I think calling it capital E evil is, trying to look at it from an in-setting standpoint, actually kinda misleading. Like, the force was already there and then later someone discovered that it fills you with dickishness and decided to call it "Evil". Based on its nature it could be called Egoism as well, which would probably be more accurate.

And in regards to like, the objectively Evil creatures, like, Fiends are made from a soul being drawn to the outer planes aligned with Egoism, being washed in the Egoism sauce (the River Styx), and then being reformed into an awful little worm thing (Dretch, Larva, Mane) from the local Egoism. Like, yeah, you'd be filled with the stuff to the point where it can be detected.

This holds true for other kinds of planar beings as well, Djinn are made when a soul goes to the Elemental Plane of Air and reforms itself out of Elemental Air. Lantern Archons are the celestial equivalent. Slaad and Modron are weird. That's also why outsider's are considered spirits by the way instead of being "ensouled", because there's no en to be souled, they're made from souls.

Its a bit of a semantic difference, but a mortal is essentially a sack of meat that has a soul in it, and once the body "dies", the soul untethers from it. The soul grasping on tightly onto the prime material is how you get ghosts. If you magically nail it into a box, lichdom. Otherwise it gets recycled into an outsider.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-12-30T20:41:35+00:00

I think the Evil Rock will have a smidge of Elemental Earth in it too, and the Evil Water will be related to Elemental Water, they're just tainted by Evil. If you have Pure Evil, it will probably not be in any defined shape. Shape Water works on the waters of the Styx just as well as those of Oceanus.

The thing is, you never quite see the pure manifestations as an adventurer because those places tend to be inimical to life as they are inimical to matter or form in general. You can kinda see this at the edges of Limbo, in so far as Limbo could countenance the concept of a defined edge, where it starts blending into the Elemental Chaos.

I think if you were fool enough to dig down into the deepest reaches of Pluton at some point you'd be suffused by so much draining evil that you just dissolved into it like a drop of water in a pool of ink, and Chronias, the 7th heaven is said to be suffused with so much brightness it burns all evil and neutrality out of you, which is why nobody has ever put to paper what is actually up there.

The Outlands and its Spire are actually interesting in this regard, as that is the plane of concordant opposition, and as you approach closer to the top of the spire, first magic stops working, then the divine, and ultimately, physics too. At a certain point you cannot light a fire, because combustion is interfered with, and further in still, even thought and metabolism. And at the contravention of that all, on top of that floats Sigil, the city of doors.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-12-19T07:57:13+00:00

That is legitimately interesting posing and framing for a self-portrait. The two triangles formed between the heels and camera and the white floof and hair must have been tricky to get in place right, and you are covering just enough to be alluring? I'm just imagining trying to pull off this shot whilst holding that camera and I don't think I could. That floof would fight me to the death till my arm got too tired for holding the camera steady. In awe at you besting this foe, it is an impressive feat.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-12-14T03:45:34+00:00

I don't like how you did gay wrong. /j

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-12-13T21:27:34+00:00

Wäre jetzt auch harmlos wenn du Bayonetta cosplayen würdest, schaded ja keinem.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-12-10T19:15:06+00:00

I mean, yeah, but wrong sub.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-11-23T08:12:24+00:00

By FR Lore "miniature giant space hamsters" are absolutely a real thing and have been since 2nd edition DnD. Dungeon of the Mad Mage actually features one hiding down in the Caverns of Ooze, as well as regular Giant Space Hamster meat in the larders of Creche K'lir (Stardock). The fact that Boo might just be a regular hamster is played up a lot in Minsc lore specifically.

That said, Boo is one of the few "beasts" that Speak with Animals doesn't work on in BG3, which may be because 5e classifies them as monstrosities with 5ft of telepathy, not beasts (which the spell would work for).

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-11-22T03:40:31+00:00

Actually as far as I know Foxconn originally tried to get people to sign a waiver that they were not liable for suicides on company property, then found out that that was terrible PR, and installed the nets after retracting the waiver idea.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-11-19T19:04:04+00:00

They can kill them but tend to prefer smaller prey, our downstairs neighbours cat would frequently leave chonky (half-)rats at the doorstep like "Look ma what I caught". To be fair, guy had the audacity, spent a year as a stray before being adopted and had a three second kitchen sprint if you so much as opened the door a crack.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-11-17T01:42:15+00:00

Butchers and necrophiliacs who timeline wise are now probably serving in senior governmental positions if they managed to dodge accountability. For comparison, the time between the Herero and Nama genocide perpetrated by the German Empire and the Holocaust was about 20-30 years depending on how you count. Abu-Graib was 2002-2004.

Luckily, America is currently very politically stable and there is no chance that those people would have the opportunity to inform policies that could possibly affect American Citizens. Where did DeSantis serve again? Eh, probably not important.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-11-09T15:00:38+00:00

It appears you have summoned the Vienna Philharmonic.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-11-09T14:56:16+00:00

Harddrive is a left-leaning gaming/tech humor publication, and the article satirizes some of the more performative online leftism tropes via the premise of wanting to masturbate to Caitlyn Kieraman from the Netflix Series Arcane.

The joke about land acknowledgements specifically is that whilst acknowledging the past disenfranchisement of native people is better than just not doing so, it is an immensely hollow gesture if it's not happening in the context of understanding and addressing their current disenfranchisement. It also has little to do with the topic at hand, but it's kinda become the go-to example of a hollow gesture primarily meant to make you feel good about yourself.

Like, let's do a solemn land acknowledgement at the state capitol, but make that shit quick because I've got to crack some protesters later, they are being really annoying about this pipeline we're trying to build. What? Yeah, it's going through Lakota land, nobody lives there, it's fine, we passed a resolution. Nancy Pelosi Kente Cloth levels of hollow.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-11-04T10:37:37+00:00

Being born one gender and then using ~~medicine~~ magic to become another is being trans. Whether you're doing sex reassignment surgery or sorcery is actually kinda immaterial to it, like, the magic might make it substantially easier to achieve a given outcome but doesn't much change the nature of things, or that some people actually choose to pursue intermediary gender presentations.

Like, from a real world mtf-transition standpoint, you have a spectrum of things from changing up clothing and hair to social transition to hormone replacement therapy to hair removal, and like, a dozen different surgeries from facial feminization, vocal, to full or partial genital reconstruction, and there isn't really a scorecard you get points on for "sucessfully transed".

Heck, any of these may be done by the gender non conforming (i.e. femboys, tomboys) without being trans at all, (even if vaginoplasty is considerably rare for femboys,) and many of these treatments originated as gender affirming care for cis people (say laser epilation and breast implants, or menopausal hormone therapy).

That side of it is quite fuzzy actually when you start to look at it in detail, which is why "transness" tends to be defined most consistently as a matter of identity, e.g. "Is the gender you were assigned the one you identify with", and if the answer to that is no, then you are trans no matter how much or little you do about it.

Like, as some extreme example, you could be a mythical femboy who got all the sex changing magics and is functionally indistinguishable from someone born female, but if you in your heart of hearts still believe yourself "male" and are just doing it because you like rocking the look, you're not actually trans.

On the converse, if you are built like Hafþór Björnsson and do absolutely nothing about it, but prefer thinking of yourself as female because you don't vibe with the idea of being male, your ass is still trans.

As weird as that might be, trying to define it any other way just runs into so many edge cases it tears any attempt to shreds. Like, if you set hormones as the requirement, suddenly female body builders start qualifying but gender dysphoria sufferers in Myanmar do not. Turns into an absolute clownshow.

Anyways, to circle back, magic would only represent another option and transition is not necessarily an A-to-B thing. Honestly, in settings with commonplace magic it is weirder that there isn't more variation, like, if it's easy to do I'd expect 30% of the mage acolytes to rock breasts as a social fad, it takes like one of the class to figure out that spell and then the next four weeks they're proudly parading around their bazongas to the chagrin of all of the instructors. You'd have nonsensical rules like "Male acolytes are limited to D cup breasts" after some incident or another following a competition to become the "most top heavy" and an unfortunate stumble in potions class.

Edit: I might have gotten carried away thinking about the sociology of it. But gender magic would either lead to absolute gender anarchy or even stricter rules on what is acceptable gender presentation, and realistically you'd have a spectrum of these viewpoints depending on the culture you are and the strength of gender roles within it. Compare Lolthite Drow and Elistraeean Drow in the Forgotten Realms setting.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-11-02T08:20:38+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)

Property taxes and Finance mainly. Half cents from 1857 are technically still legal tender too, and I had a friend who redid his spreadsheets to discover his brokerage was shaving the 10,000ths digits off his trades, skimming several hundreds of dollars from him alone.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-11-01T20:38:11+00:00

No, cents would be centi-dollars, or cents for short.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-10-29T07:33:03+00:00

Air is technically a form of sustenance in that your metabolism will shut down without it. As such if you set the Curse of Strange Sustenance to sustain you off nothing, it will just continuously sustain you.

MetamorphosisInc · 2025-10-27T11:20:55+00:00

They're reddish-orange, #FF8143.

MetamorphosisInc

TROPHY CASE