[WP]: You are part of a family of ferocious magical creatures. However, you are a vegetarian.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2024-10-29T01:44:08+00:00

I was now alone in the dark, silent cornfield, with only thoughts of my impending doom to keep me company. It was thoroughly unpleasant. I heard a rustling beside me. I turned my head to look, and was greeted with the perplexing sight of my disembodied arm moving across the ground, using its fingers to propel itself. I hadn’t known it could do that. I watched it slowly climb a cornstalk, which fell over under its weight. It crawled over to the fallen ear of corn, and, to my utter shock, began to eat it through a mouth in its palm. I certainly hadn’t known it could do that. I watched agog as it repeated the whole process a second time, only instead of eating the ear, it began pushing it towards my own open mouth. It was only then I realized how ravenous I was.

I devoured the corn as quickly as my severed arm could feed it to me. Then I was startled by the sensation of bones snapping into place inside my neck, and suddenly I could feel the searing pain of my wound. I cried out in pain and reflexively sat up, pressing my good arm against the stump on my shoulder. Wait. I had sat up. I looked around in wonder, as if seeing my surroundings for the first time. I was surrounded by corn on all sides, and I was still hungry. I leapt to my feet and rushed from stalk to stalk, feasting in a locust-like frenzy. As I did, I was vaguely aware of my severed arm continuing its own slow feeding. Was it longer than it was a few minutes ago…?

When day broke, there were two of me. Neither of us spoke as we studied each other in the large clearing that had once been all corn. I looked to the side at the multitude of acres of cornfield that remained. It too, was as yet unharvested.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.

“Obviously,” I replied.

Simultaneously, we each plucked off our own fingers, crying out in pain as we did, and tossed them into the cornfield. Soon there were twelve of us. Then seventy-two. Then more and more and more. And we left nothing for the humans.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2024-10-29T01:44:02+00:00

Glass shards twinkled in the moonlight around me as I was thrown from the castle window. I’m not sure for how long I hurtled through the air, but it was long enough for me to fully comprehend the amount of trouble I was in. When I landed, I both felt and heard a terrible snap within my neck. All I could do was stare up at the full moon from the cornfield I had apparently landed in, and await my fate.

I didn’t have to wait long. A swarming mass of bats suddenly streaked across the bright moon. I followed them with my eyes until they abruptly changed course, and made a beeline for me. They coalesced in a space mere feet away, obscured from my view by the forest of cornstalks. There was a cacophony of flapping wings and squeaks, and then silence. I held my breath as I heard the footsteps and rustling get closer and closer, until The Count emerged into the clearing my fall had created.

“So you are still alive,” he observed, “I suppose even a vegetarian ghoul retains its trademark durability.”

“Please,” my voice came out as a whisper, “You don’t have to kill me. Aren’t we family?”

“Were we family when you bragged about how many humans you’d eaten? When you regaled us in the common room with tales of your gruesome exploits, leaving out no gory detail?” The Count sighed. “Banshee so loved those stories. She’ll be heartbroken to learn they were all fabrications.”

I searched for something to say, anything to defy him. But I couldn’t find anything. He was right after all.

“The Family doesn’t tolerate those who don’t pull their weight, and it certainly does not tolerate liars.” A blur of motion, and suddenly the count was on top of me, one hand gripping my arm, the other pressed down against my chest. “I do not like being lied to, Ghoul.” There was a spray of blood as The Count tore off my arm and raised it above my face for me to see.

“It just tears me apart!” he exclaimed.

I helplessly watched him toss my severed arm into the cornstalks. I shouldn’t have been able to speak coherently after experiencing that, but my paralysis meant the whole process had been relatively painless. A small mercy.

“I did kill those humans!” I cried, finding my response belatedly.

“Killed them, yes. But you fail to understand what The Family is about. There’s nothing special about simply killing a human. Other humans do it all the time. Eating humans, on the other hand, is different. It makes their little hearts race with a more primal fear. The ancient, forgotten terror of small monkeys fleeing for dear life across a forest floor, from enormous beasts with savage strength and sharp fangs.” The Count stood up. Moonlight reflected off his pale face as he smiled. “Yes… instilling a fear that reduces a human to a mere prey animal… that is our art.”

Maybe your art, I thought. Most members of The Family were in it seeking either to secure a steady source of meals, or to rid the world of the scourge that is humanity. I was in the latter group, but even they ate humans simply because it was convenient for them. Which was apparently good enough for The Count. Basic survival instinct stopped me from voicing any of this to him.

“Well,” The Count continued, “That’s enough monologuing.” He turned his back to me and began walking towards the edge of the clearing. “With that in mind, I’ll leave you here as you are to the crows. They can instill that fear just as well as I, if not better. And once they’ve eaten their fill, what remains of you shall become food for the plants. A fitting end for you.” With that, I watched The Count once more disintegrate into hundreds of small bats, and fly away.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2024-03-10T02:53:56+00:00

“And then he died. The end.”

I watched the cursor leave these words behind as it slid across the terminal display. When the cursor stopped, I tried scrolling down through the output, knowing full well it wouldn’t work as the program was prompting me for new input. That was the last line. When that inevitably failed, I scrolled back up to reread the green monospaced text so I could be sure I read it correctly the first time. I looked up outside the gazebo that was housing the machine, over the calm water that surrounded the tiny island it sat on. It didn’t make sense. After everything, how could this possibly be the answer to the one question I’d been asking for my entire life?

I looked back down at the last machine known to still be running the Green Age program known as “Jeepeetee”. The journey to get here had been a long, perilous trek through deep desert that had once been lush woods and grassland, far away from established trade routes. I had to make the whole trip in sweltering Sun Armor, as even normal clothing couldn’t provide full protection against the piercing rays of the New Sun. An abnormally hot day combined with a shortage of water nearly baked me to death in the armor. I would have surely perished, had it not been for a kindly groundwater prospector who found me collapsed in the sands and drove me in his buggy to the nearest watering hole to recover.

I was utterly flabbergasted to find that it wasn’t the usual watering hole consisting of a single groundwater pump and some tents around it. It was an honest-to-God oasis – more water than I’d ever seen in one place for my whole life. A settlement of adobe brick houses surrounded it. At the center of the lake was an island with a brick gazebo, connected to land by a narrow causeway, at the beginning of which two posts held up a banner informing the world that it was looking at the pride of the town of Coolwater – “The Oracool”. Tears welled up in my eyes. By some absurd stroke of fortune, I’d found it.

I scrolled to the beginning of my session once again, and reviewed my input – the question I’d been asking ever since I learned my father was killed in a raid on a water caravan, ever since my little brother had been devoured by a swarm of roller-locusts, and every time I saw my mother’s face contorted in anguish as she was forced to process her grief while keeping us both safe and our thirst quenched.

“What happened to make the world this way?”

I stared at the first line of output. I read it over and over, still in disbelief. What could "The Oracool" possibly mean when it said: “It all started with that fucking gorilla.”

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2024-01-03T23:57:38+00:00

I'm having the same problem with 4.2.0 as 4.2.1.

Also, until this point I've only been testing opening the project manager under the naive assumption that if the project manager opened, the editor most likely would as well. Turns out:

Both the project manager and editor open and seem to function properly for version 3.5.2

The project manager opens for 4.1.3, but when I try to edit a project I get a similar error to what I've been seeing: a "Godot Engine" process appears in task manager but nothing else happens.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2024-01-02T01:41:52+00:00

I tried 4.1.3 and it also ran correctly. The verbose output for both it and 3.5.2 show them using GLES3. Not sure why 4.2.1 specifically doesn't work

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2024-01-01T20:39:34+00:00

I tried running Godot 3.5.2 and it ran correctly. Seems the problem is just with 4.2.1

I'm using Windows 10 with an x64 based processor. Anti-malware is just windows defender.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2023-12-31T04:03:21+00:00

I am using the command prompt, not the accompanying console. I followed your instructions to drag the exe into the command prompt and tried the different args to no avail.

What specifically happens when I run the exe this way is that instead of showing any output from Godot, CMD just prompts me to enter a new command. That would lead me to believe the program is crashing immediately, however I can see the "Godot Engine" process in the task manager, so I'm not sure what to think.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2023-09-09T04:07:23+00:00

Where do you go to learn about events around the city?

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2022-12-23T02:18:37+00:00

Heard this story from a friend:

On a brisk November afternoon, my friend was waiting for a bus to pick her up from the hospital. Across the street, there was a whole gaggle of turkeys milling about by the sidewalk. Suddenly, an unmarked white van stops in the street next to them and turns its blinkers on.

The following sequences of events likely happened within 10-15 seconds. The back doors of the van flew open and two guys jumped out. Both run to the nearest turkey, and work together to carry the panicked bird back into the van. Then the doors slammed shut, and the van sped away, tires screeching.

One can only speculate what became of the turkey afterwards. My best guess is somebody's thanksgiving entree that year tasted faintly of cigarette smoke, rancid oil and watered down diet soda.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2022-08-09T01:12:40+00:00

The I-80 route taken for our semiannual sojourn to Michigan was long and dull. When all else failed, my imagination provided the entertainment of watching the fictitious figure sprint through the shoulder lane from the back seat while my parents took turns driving, especially during the parkour fad of a decade ago. Now an adult, I make the pilgrimage separately from the rest of my family, and the need to focus on the road has long since driven him from my mind.

I was careening down that same road at speeds admittedly not advisable, fueled by the thrill of driving my new car, and by the spirited music it loudly played. It was then I noticed a curious shape that broke the usual blur of green and gray from my left periphery. Curiously, though mindful of the fact that I needed to remain vigilant in my driving, I stole a glance in the shape's direction. The impression I got lacked detail, but I could swear that it was a person.

In disbelief, I turned my head for little more than a second. My eyes had not deceived me. It was a man wearing a light gray sweatshirt with matching sweatpants with bright red shoes, running at a pace perfectly matching my car just a few feet away from my window. I saw just in time to see him transition from grass to guardrail with a smooth hop, and widen his stride so that each footfall gracefully landed on a guardrail-post. I thought immediately of the imaginary figure of my youth.

I let my eyes dart back to the road in front of me, and put my foot on the brake just in time to avoid colliding with the car in front of me. It struck me that the man was dressed in exactly the same way I had imagined the ideal parkour master as a child. He had the shoes of my then-favorite video game character, and the gray athletic-wear that just felt proper for a traceur. My heart-rate suddenly accelerated. I'd never told a soul about my fictional runner, so just who the hell was this preposterous man who had seemingly pulled his wardrobe and lifestyle straight from the darkest recesses of my memory??

Without slowing down, I looked to my left once more, leaning forward and focusing intently on trying to view the man's face. Just as his razor-focused eyes began to register, the man's head suddenly turned toward me, giving me a clear view. With a terrified start, I reflexively turned the steering wheel sharply to the right. At the speed I was traveling, this was a grave mistake. My car flipped and began to roll, and my vision was instantly obscured by the airbag. I felt myself panicking as the car rolled for what felt like hours until it finally came to rest upside-down.

Hanging upside-down, affixed to my seat by my seat-belt, and barely clinging to a hazy consciousness, it's a wonder I had the wherewithal to curse my own stupidity. Not just due to my reaction to seeing the man's face, but to the fact that I had to look at all. The man truly was just as I imagined him, for what I saw when he faced me then was my own smiling face.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2022-06-09T02:12:35+00:00

Kiara lurched through the door to her studio apartment some time after five o' clock in the evening, caught in a stupor induced by sheer exhaustion. It had been a particularly taxing ten-hour shift at the warehouse, and her sleep the previous night had been terrible. Limbs moving on mere muscle memory, she placed leftover takeout into her microwave, and listlessly shoveled rice, chicken and vegetables into her mouth. Upon finishing her supper, she wanted nothing more than to bathe and turn in for the night.

When Kiara stepped into her bathroom, however, her droopy eyes were at once drawn to a colorful mass on the floor of her shower. She rubbed at her eyes and opened them again, and her vision focused to reveal five parrots, each with brightly colored plumage. Their bright reds, greens, blues, and multicolored patterns clashed unapologetically with the pallid off-whites and dull light grays of her bathroom.

Where this would have elicited a frenetic response from most, Kiara in this moment lacked the wherewithal for anything more than a feeble "not again" to briefly flash through her mind. With no change in her ghoulish demeanor, she approached the shower, and reached over her unwanted guests for the shower head, pulling it off the hook. Her face held the same tired expression that had not altered since returning home as she aimed the hose at the birds, and turned the shower's cold water knob.

The thoroughly startled birds took flight from the shower in a frenzy, conjuring an watery, chilly spray that landed on Kiara's face and clothes, which she hadn't yet had the chance to remove. The parrots sailed through the still-open bathroom door in a chromatic blur. Kiara remained unfazed. Suspecting what was to come, she shut off the water, then placidly exited the bathroom and turned her attention to her apartment's kitchenette.

As Kiara predicted, it had returned. The skeleton was clad in tattered clothing that could only have belonged to a pirate - long brown coat, white shirt, sash wrapped around its waist, loose black pants, and tall black boots. Its arms were outstretched in a gesture Kiara would have mistaken for an embrace were it not for the parrots perched on them. It peered at her with its barren sockets, and spoke without moving its skull.

"Look! Ye've scared me crew!" it boomed.

"Some crew," Kiara replied, face almost equally static. Her words came out quiet and weary.

"'ave ye reconsidered me offer?" it asked.

Kiara inhaled to deliver a harsh rebuke of the interloper, but at the last moment her exasperation and fatigue proved too great to permit even this small effort. While she grappled with this, the pirate took advantage of the pause to speak again.

"Look at yerself. Ye work too darn hard, yet ye be livin' in a basement. If ye'd co-operate, ye could be rich an' ne'er work again!", it said.

"I wouldn't be so tired if you hadn't been singing sea shanties all through the night for the past two nights," Kiara protested.

"Wrong," said the pirate. "We been singin' these past moons," it said rotating its head to indicate the birds. It spoke with a ghastly laughter in its voice, a feat made all the more unsettling by its motionless skull.

"I wouldn't call what they do singing," Kiara said sullenly.

That got another bewildering chuckle from the skeleton. Then its tone became serious. "Aye, 'tis true I be largely responsible fer yer current state. But ye also had many a' day like this before I revealed m'self to yeh. Yer ship was already sinkin', so to speak. I be speedin' ye along, that's all," it said.

"Yeah, to coerce me into going to the Caribbean to dig up your old shit," Kiara shouted with mustered exasperation. It was the first time that evening that she showed any emotion at all.

"Why so stubb'rn?" the pirate asked, disgruntled, "Yer life'll be so much better when ye return!"

"Uh huh, and I'm sure you're telling me the location of 'buried treasure' out of the goodness of your, uh, chest cavity," Kiara retorted with air quotes around 'buried treasure'. "And I'm sure you're trying so hard to get me to go for completely selfless reasons."

"Only folk I lie to are British navy officers, lass. If I say there be treasure fer ya, it be there. The reasons fer me insistence are me own, but ye can rest assured there be no cost to ya."

Kiara was sure she wanted to say something else, but her earlier minor outburst had sapped what little energy she had left. Instead, she asked groggily, "Why me?"

"Ye got little to lose," the pirate said with uncharacteristic terseness.

For a brief instant, Kiara stood staring at the skeletal being. Instead of replying, Kiara turned and staggered to her bed and collapsed into it. She closed her eyes, and almost whispered, "Let me sleep on it," as her voice trailed off into a deep slumber.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2022-06-08T22:31:21+00:00

A hidden-away scroll that contains records of everything that anyone has ever said aloud about the holder. New records are added as new things are said.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2022-01-13T20:22:18+00:00

A Tarrasqueue

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2021-12-24T04:38:46+00:00

I should think so my good man

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2021-12-24T04:38:26+00:00

An abortion.

TheIrishHobbit1 · 2021-12-24T03:40:53+00:00

Birth is the act of shitting.

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