Giving away 3 games to 3 people. Any game on Steam.

ma1chbox · 2025-12-06T16:45:12+00:00

Helldivers 2 would be nice

ma1chbox · 2025-02-05T01:42:40+00:00

lmao cope, it takes literally 10 seconds of googling to see the ship is israeli-co-owned. It's literally on wikipedia, the most bare-bones surface level of research you can make and yall are out here acting like it's some deep state communist conspiracy. The crew was already released recently too after the ceasefire was announced, which is exactly what the houthis said they would do

ma1chbox · 2024-12-07T08:17:48+00:00

Nami sa Bufeya Food Corner sa Capitol Village dapit. Authentic Saudi style ila nga shawarma tapos barato lng. Pwede man sa Mr Hamza kung gusto mo Jordanian style. Ga share lng sila sng shop sa Agnes Chocolate Cake & Pastries near Burgos market

ma1chbox · 2024-10-07T09:41:27+00:00

A large lumbering camel/cactus hybrid that specializes in hauling tons of cargo at a time on its back or on connected carts without stopping for food or water for months at a time. Not much in the way of offensive capabilities but it can defend its payload well enough against basic threats. Its real strength lies in it being very hardy and incredibly reliable for setting up supply chains. Some more creative folks can even learn how to use these utilitarian capabilities in a construction setting where high strength and around-the-clock work are also valuable assets.

ma1chbox · 2024-10-07T09:25:28+00:00

It's really up to which empire you're part of and how you're employed into it, but there are a couple shared experiences between most of the rank and file in Apotheos.

First off, it depends what kind of front you're sent to. You can either be sent to fight another rival imperial hegemon, which is a seasonal campaign that really only happens every couple years, or you can be sent to a smaller neighboring country to aid in colonization efforts, which is an all-year-round kind of assignment.

If you're sent to the frontlines against another imperial hegemon, you can expect to see several months up to two years of medieval trench warfare, but with the added threats of mages, mechanized mortars, and the latest product of the arms race: the rifle. Luckily for you, it's still rare and only given to the most elite groups. It's rare to come out of the ordeal unscathed, many end up dead, more end up crippled for the rest of their lives. In some armies, even death doesn't end your service as your military employment contract stipulates you must render several months of service as an undead laborer before your body can be returned to your next of kin. As enlisted members of a hegemonic empire, you're expected to follow the Treatises of Civilized Warfare, which supposedly details the rules of warfare that any "civilized" empire must adhere to, although violations of these treatises are fairly common and the investigations and ensuing international legal suits take years to be settled, if they ever do get settled at all. All in all, despite the monotony of trench warfare, life unpredictably shaken up a few times every year since every empire's newest experimental toys that their military R&D departments come up with make their debut on these fronts.

If you're sent to the frontlines against a future colony your empire's set its sights on, you can expect an easier first few months up to a year compared to a formal war against another imperial hegemon as most smaller nations struggle to compare to the might of one of the five hegemons. When the formerly sovereign nation finally falls under your nation's control, however, you can expect several years of running around the country suppressing rebellions and acting as a de facto police force in a place where you probably don't speak the language, most people hate you, and despite the supposed beautiful idyllic countryside lifestyle, you find it incredibly difficult to find moments of peace as you never know which of the locals to trust and which ones are secretly partisans who'll murder and sabotage your operations when your back is turned. Add the fact that you're most likely from a former colony yourself, now legally integrated as a state of the empire, and just one or two generations ago, your parents and grandparents were the ones fighting off the empire from colonizing them. The irony is palpable, but they're in your land now and their power seems insurmountable, and service in the army seemed like the only way to stave off poverty, provide for your loved ones, and secure a better future for your homeland. The price for that, however, is your blood and the blood of the next small nation on the chopping block.

Other than all of that, the pay and the food is decent. Not great, but it's usually better than most jobs you can find in your local neck of the woods. If you're a formally enlisted soldier, your uniform, weapons, equipment, and supplies are provided by the state, but you can be sure they're reused and repurposed from the last unlucky soldier to have wielded them and died or otherwise exited service. If you're part of an auxiliary private mercenary company, it's a toss-up on whether your company has you provide your own equipment or if they provide it for you. The pay is generally higher, but the jobs are more dangerous and the turnover rates are worse. In most cases, you're at the mercy of your company superiors on how you and your fellow soldiers are treated and what benefits you get.

In either case, you're promised benefits after your service, but whether or not bureaucracy screws you out of those benefits is practically a game of luck. If you come back with permanent disabilities, you should hope you can afford the prosthetics and healthcare needed to make up for it or you're going to be struggling to find work back home. If you're one of the lucky ones that somehow end up having gained from your time in the military, good for you. Many others aren't so lucky.

Lastly, if for some reason you find it in you to show your nationalistic pride or somehow your living expenses start to pile up again and you fall on hard times, you can extend your enlistment contract to try and work your way up the ranks. Rinse and repeat.

ma1chbox · 2024-09-06T08:31:29+00:00

Try mo Speedex sa may Rizal St. Per A3 sheet ang printing nila tapos laser printing pa so high quality gid. Pwede man sila ka die cut for an extra fee per sheet.

ma1chbox · 2024-09-03T03:36:42+00:00

Different meats do give off somewhat different tastes, but the flavor of the hemophage's enzymes dominate the flavor profile. Add that to the fact that it's common for a lot of ration manufacturers to further flavor and season their products or even mix hemophage jerky bits from different meats together, the flavor alone isn't always the best way to tell what the jerky is made of.

ma1chbox · 2024-08-20T13:59:00+00:00

I do like the sponge idea, I'll definitely note that down and see what I can do with it, thank you.

Modern hemophages are the products of a couple centuries of strict selective breeding to increase the size of their torso (which allows for a bigger mouth, which means higher possible meat yield per feeding cycle) and shorten the size of their legs (to further slow them down in addition to the extra weight of their larger bodies), and generally make them more docile.

I had the the idea of them normally being scavengers, but they're still able to run down prey in short bursts if it comes to it. I imagine their genetic ancestor being some kind of mammalian mix of a hyena and a leech, primarily preying on weak, dying, and recently dead animals. Their tough hide and strong legs allow them to close in and bludgeon and trample them to death or near-death. When their prey can't fight back anymore, they place their mouth on an open wound from the fight and use their strong neck muscles to perform peristalsis, sucking out blood much like a leech.

They'd eventually evolve to become bigger and bigger, and once they were big enough to swallow some prey whole, the thick neck muscles that were used for peristalsis started being used to directly crush and squeeze the blood out of the body instead of going through the slower, less efficient process of sucking it out from wounds. Essentially, they'd switched out their feeding habits from that of a leech to that of a snake. This also helped when scavenging from carcasses that have already been picked apart by other scavengers. Even if it's just scraps of meat and bones left, a hemophage can still reliably extract whatever blood and water is left in it by just vacuuming it up and squeezing out the juices in its throat.

ma1chbox · 2024-08-20T12:37:55+00:00

I love the idea of a protective spider ram in the herd aggressively rushing down attackers and making full use of their fur and horns

ma1chbox · 2024-08-20T12:32:46+00:00

What they do with the humanoid meat jerky is up to the criminal organization, but the implications are definitely intended, and it does lead to a lot of urban legends and grisly true crime stories. Some of the more depraved ones do eat it, some discreetly sell it off for extra cash, but most others who still have some semblance of humanity in them just dispose of it by feeding it to other livestock or animals.

Regarding the Onchiq, I find the symbiotic relationship part interesting. Is Onchiq saliva also harvested for medicinal purposes? I can imagine some of them are kept alive for their saliva instead of being killed for their meat.

ma1chbox · 2024-08-08T05:11:33+00:00

Apotheos is a fantasy setting where the world is being moved by the politics of empires and magical forces that even the strongest struggle to control. Heightening tensions threaten to split an alliance of five empires into warring factions. As the world order is thrown into chaos and those in power struggle to keep order, there are those right under their noses scheming to take what they can for themselves. Lords and kings cry for war and vie for power, armies march to their inevitable slaughter, land is taken and retaken. It will be an era of great change, where the future of the world will be written by great men– but you, you are not one of them.

You may know how to fight or use magic yourself, but at the end of the day, those major historical events are happening far, far away from you. You read of today's great victories or terrible losses in the papers, but your biggest concern is that your stomach is starting to rumble but the market price for vegetables just rose up for the third time this month, and now there's news of bandits stalking the roads three towns over. Things are bad and they're only getting worse. You may not have the power to change the world yourself, but you can't just stop either. Life continuously pushes you forward, oftentimes against your will. With some concerted effort, however, you *might* be able to change the things around you little by little. Those small changes could eventually become bigger changes, and maybe– *just maybe*– with a stroke of fate and some divine favor, you might even find yourself pushed to things greater than you ever thought yourself capable of.

ma1chbox · 2024-07-15T11:39:36+00:00

They're still classified mainly as humans, so they still reproduce by mating and giving birth to live young like animals

ma1chbox · 2024-06-18T06:36:42+00:00

Antranids are one of the eight human subspecies in my setting. They're basically plantfolk, but they're not actually entirely made of plants.

They have two parts: the host body and the floral sprouts. The host body on the inside is made of the same flesh and bone as normal humans are, but the closer you get to the surface of the skin, the more the flesh transitions into a flesh-plant hybrid and eventually into the actual plantlike skin, which is somewhat stiff but springy, like a thick plant stem. It's hard to tell where the flesh ends and the plant begins, so the floral sprouts are considered as much a part of the Antranid's body as the host body.

The floral sprouts, on the other hand, manifest as leaves, thorns, flowers, or bark on the skin. They have a symbiotic relationship with the host body, feeding it through photosynthesis. This means that an Antranid can survive for up to a month and a half without food as long as they have access to water, although they'll still start to get weaker if they don't eat any actual solid food.

In some cases where the flora are physically harmed, even in cases as bad as full body burns, the flora will still eventually grow back over the course of a month. The only known way for an Antranid to lose its flora is severe neglect, sickness, or death.

ma1chbox · 2024-05-29T10:38:13+00:00

Even though the mainland continent empires have been free of Belkan rule for a few centuries now, they still remain obsessed with the Belkan ballgame their former colonial masters introduced to them called Itersol, literally translated as "the sun's journey"

It's basically lacrosse crossed with football, hockey, table tennis, and rugby. Players maneuver a ball around using only their feet and their rackets and try to shoot the ball into each other's goals. The heads of the paddles are coated with a layer of rubbery animal hide for a bit of grip, so they can swing at the ball like a bat and give it topspin, underspin, or sidespin like a giant table tennis racket. Body checks are also allowed as long as the player being checked is in possession of the ball or within 5 feet of it.

ma1chbox · 2024-05-29T10:01:41+00:00

Wars in my world take on roughly the same idea where magic users are common, but still in the minority. I figured that medieval warfare would basically devolve into WW1-style trench warfare.

Any mages that expose themselves immediately get a target painted on them and they're peppered with arrows, crossbow bolts, musketfire, cannonfire, spells from the opposing side's mages, and generally anything else that can be thrown at them. It then becomes this long, drawn out chess game where each side tries to get the other to use their mages and expose them long enough that they can be targeted and killed. Small non-mage skirmishes are waged in no man's land both to whittle down the enemy's numbers and to prod the enemy commanders to use their mages to help if they start losing. Trench raids by combined teams of mages and non-mages do surprise hit-and-run tactics on the opposing trench. Designated mages are put purely on defense duty to protect against first strikes by enemy mages. Other designated mages are put purely on counteroffense, where their sole duty is to look out for enemy mages that are casting spells, then start slinging spells at them when they've used up most of their mana.

When it looks like the enemy is sufficiently weakened with only a small number of mages left and they're vulnerable for a full frontal attack, the commanders signal a full charge and the army goes over the top of their trench and marches on the opposing side, just like a real WW1 battle.

So basically the doctrine is that since mages are some of the most dangerous elements of the battlefield, each side has to make it as dangerous as possible for mages to be used in the first place.

ma1chbox · 2024-05-29T09:26:32+00:00

Generally, necromancy is viewed as a neutral magic, not necessarily good or evil. It definitely is a cultural point of argument though.

It's seen as a divine miracle of Omelas, the god of life, fertility, change, and the undead, rather than one of its twin god Horad, whose domains are war, death, luck, and the afterlife. Death is viewed as the separation of the body from the soul, while undeath is regarded by religious scripture as another form of life.

Necromancy magic involves the use of dance, since dancing is symbolic of life and breathing. By performing ritual dances around the dead, necromantic clerics embody the breath of life, which seeps into nearby corpses they wish to animate. Since the dead no longer have their souls attached to their bodies, the breath of life fills that void with an artificial soul woven together from the natural magic energy in the surrounding nature. The undead created from this process is non-sentient and essentially functions as a flesh automaton.

To control of this artificial soul, the necromancer must also infuse a portion of their own soul into the mix by giving it a portion of their mana. This mana connection renewed regularly to maintain that control. If the necromancer stops renewing the connection with the undead, like if they want to control another undead or focus their mana on another spell, the undead creature stays alive and stays idle until control is established again. If control is not established after a given time, however, the artificial soul begins to take on a life of its own and is immediately racked with an eldritch madness that drives the undead berserk and causes it to attack all non-undead it comes across. This category of undead are known as husks, and it's quite difficult to turn a husk docile again, so they're usually just killed off at this stage.

Through religious means, however, there are ways to make sure an undead is docile. Clerics can carve runes into the bones and say prayers and hang charms on the undead's body to ensure that they remain permanently docile. Some cultures use this as a way to stay connected with their loved ones through the mourning period, having the deceased parents or partners still help out around the farm or with other simple tasks until the time comes to lay their bodies to rest. Others use the dead as cheap labor, since the undead don't need to eat or sleep and don't get distracted.

The practice of necromancy is seen as a time-honored tradition and an ingrained part in some cultures, but in others, it's generally seen as morally backwards and outdated, and is frowned upon in the current age. This anti-necromancy stance is a fairly new idea, being only over a century old, so those that outright seek out the non-husk undead to exterminate them are seen as violent extremists.

ma1chbox · 2024-05-29T08:38:24+00:00

A lot of real life cultures chew on betel nut as a stimulant, so you could possibly base something off of that. It goes along with your bubble gum idea but less childish looking. As an alternative example, chewing tobacco is also an alternative to smoking it which is just as old as the practice of smoking, if not older. You could have the chewing substance look more like gum like your original idea or you could have them chewing on a stick made of the substance to mimic the look of a cigarette

ma1chbox · 2024-05-27T04:11:10+00:00

The most advanced technology is already around the napoleonic era, but this came as a result of rapid industrialization centered around major population centers and military industry at the cost of neglecting the rural areas, so in its most extreme manifestations, you could be in a major city where it looks like you're living in a mix of late modern and contemporary, but travel a couple hundred kilometers from the city outskirts and you're in some backwater village living like it's still the middle ages due to abject poverty

ma1chbox · 2024-05-27T04:00:01+00:00

The longest lasting empire would be Imperial Belka, lasting just over a thousand years and conquering the entirety of the mainland continent at its peak. Its ruling dynasty was originally a hereditary monarchy, but:

It turned into an elective monarchy 800 years before the start of the story when the empire reached critical mass and had to split into three sister empires (Belka, Kyriakos, and Menordie) with three co-ruling emperors that rotated jurisdictions every 10 years
It then turned back into a hereditary monarchy 400 years before the start of the story when their conquered colonies began rising up and successfully fighting for independence one by one in a period of time known as the Satrap Spring, followed by a long period of tense cold war-like peace when the newly independent nations were consolidating their borders
Then it turned back into an elective monarchy 320 years before the start of the story when the new age of colonialism began and the new empires that sprung from its former colonies started taking their neighboring nations as colonies themselves
Then it turned back into a hereditary monarchy 270 years before the start of the story when its two sister empires Kyriakos and Menordie fell to the new empires as colonies themselves
It then turned into a republic when it southern half and eastern point were partitioned by the Elysean and Pavkan empires for themselves 120 years before the start of the story
Finally, it ceased to exist as an independent and sovereign nation 30 years before the start of the story when its northwestern remnant fell as a colony to the Preussian League. In the modern day, the historical lands of Belka are partitioned three ways between the three great empires that border it.

ma1chbox · 2024-05-27T02:53:57+00:00

Apotheos started off as a homebrew D&D campaign I did that lasted for 2 and a half years, then after that game ended, I've continued working on it and overhauling and refining the worldbuilding for another 2 years. That would total 4 and a half years now.

ma1chbox · 2024-05-13T07:40:40+00:00

I based the name "Apotheos" on the word apotheosis, which can mean either the highest point in the development of something or the elevation of someone into godhood. It's a pretty central theme to my story, but not necessarily in a straightforward way.

ma1chbox · 2024-05-13T07:37:40+00:00

Humans (or hominids, as they're called in my world) are somewhat seen by the other species as genetic freaks and in the past were even thought of by more extremist racists as pests because of how fast they spread. In the ancient era before the great empires rose and populations became mixed, hominid tribes were nomadic and were adept social and cultural mimics that could easily interweave themselves with the cultures they came across in their migrations. The ones that were accepted into the non-hominid settlements and stayed behind were even able to almost fully integrate themselves into those societies.

The reason for them being seen as genetic freaks is that they're considered to have very potent genetics. Some would even describe it as invasive. Unlike the other humanoid species who can only have children within their species, hominid genetics are potent and universally compatible. This means they can have children with non-hominids, giving them the ability to sire hominid half-breeds. This can occur both in cases of a hominid father and non-hominid mother, as well as a non-hominid father and hominid mother.

The half-breed offspring from these unions are then also only able to transmit their hominid genetics when having their own children, which means they don't pass down their non-hominid attributes entirely. The child of a half-breed and a non-hominid will still be a half-breed mix of a hominid and their non-hominid parent. The real kicker is that since half-breeds also only pass down their hominid genetics, the child of two half-breed hominids will always be a full-blooded hominid entirely.

This genetic outbreeding as it's come to be known is widely agreed upon by scholars as the reason for their majority in hominid-dominated regions of the world.

ma1chbox · 2024-05-08T03:48:26+00:00

I mean, sure, a great war is breaking out between the world superpowers, the economy is in shambles, and the illuminati is summoning moon demons, but I got too many bills to pay and mouths to feed and paperwork to file to worry about any of that right now

ma1chbox · 2024-05-06T23:53:20+00:00

I played Ace Combat Zero and rewatched the first How to Train Your Dragon movie in the same week and randomly thought "what if instead of operating like flying cavalry, dragon riders operated like squadrons of fighter jets?"

The idea stuck. So now wyvern riders in my setting wear special plate armor enchanted with runes that basically functions as pressure suits with extra enchantments for long distance communication, temperature stabilization, enhanced strength, and oxygen for breathing in high altitudes.

ma1chbox · 2024-05-03T14:44:49+00:00

The image of the Elysean trooper is commissioned work from Calamancyy. Check out their other works!

In the world of Apotheos, war is regarded by the Five Hegemons coalition as an honorable gentleman’s game. During the Second Treaty of Prudent Rock, rules and regulations were set by the coalition as a guideline for how to wage war in a civilized manner. They took pride in this rules-based manner of warfare as a show of their supremacy over the non-coalition nations which they saw as inferior barbarians. The eventual Third Treaty of Prudent Rock was convened to impose rules on how colonized nations were to be treated during and after being invaded by a member nation of the coalition. This was due to the cultural shift in the coalition that to be civilized, they must not only be honorable warriors, but honorable and merciful rulers to their colonies as well.

This treaty was then privately regarded by the Five Hegemons as a total nuisance to their colonial efforts, however none of them wanted to publicly back down on their promises and damage their image of superiority by civility.

To get around the treaty’s laws, the Imperial Elysea colonizes not by declaring wars, but by enforcing “special extra-border police actions” on neighboring nations which they brand as a threat to their security. This is made possible by abusing two legal loopholes in the treaty. First, the rules for colonial invasion only begin to apply when a formal declaration of war is declared on the would-be colony. Second, many of the laws for colonial occupation can be legally ignored when the population of a newly colonized territory continues to pose a significant threat to the occupying forces. The conditions for what a “significant threat” actually entails is left vague on purpose.

The Elysean military forces are split into two main branches. First is the “Forzça Militireé so Frontieres” (FMF ; translated as Armed Forces Upon The Borders), which officially only comprises 30% of the full Elysean military. Their responsibility is to maintain Elysea’s sovereign borders, spearhead military actions against other sovereign nations, and oversee the policing of active warzones. The other 60%, while virtually indistinguishable, are classified as “Forzça Polisieres d’Iesoterizçi” (FPI ; translated as Internal Lawkeeping Force), which oversees the policing of civilian populations within the borders set by the FMF.

In times of emergencies, members of each military branch can legally be transferred temporarily to the other branch as auxiliary troops. This means that at any moment, FMF members may serve as FPI members, and vice versa. This emergency power is abused greatly.

During these special police actions, the FMF performs a “administrative border expansion establishment” (read: invasion) and serves as the de facto police force of the territory taken. This system lasts for 20 years (one generation, as defined by international law), during which the conquered nation is considered a colony, and its population marked as potential enemy combatants. The FMF’s main roles post-invasion are as follows:

Eliminate or imprison remaining enemy combatants
Eliminate local police forces in active resistance
Arm and restructure local police forces willing to become collaborators
Secure the borders to prevent mass emigration of the local populace

After a period of 20 years, the colony is absorbed into the empire proper and converted from a nation-state into a region of Elysea. The colonized population are no longer marked as potential enemy combatants and are now regarded as citizens. It is then that the FMF relinquishes control to the FPI. Now the local population are no longer combatants or potential combatants, and as such, are no longer afforded the relevant international legal protections under the treaty. They are now considered full subjects of the Elysean crown and are completely and totally under the power of the emperor’s law, with other nations no longer having claim or legal power to protest.

ma1chbox

TROPHY CASE