Secret Jackalope 2022

This request comes from Unwary on Discord

 

"what folk dances do vampires prefer? Are head spells Turing complete? take another of your interests outside of TTRPGs and make something based on it, in all the detail you wish.." 

What folk dances do vampires prefer?

Vampires do not have folk dances, as only the nobility have access to the tinctures and unguents required to stave off the mental degradation of that condition. In a twist of fate that has wet many a pen in many a monastery scriptorum, the curse of vampirism rewards the blasphemies of the ruling class, while the impoverished who might curse the divine for their woes are struck down with no recourse.

Anyway, the dances. Vampires rarely gather in groups, but when they do it is typically the social event of the century. No expense is spared for the lavish affairs. Ballroom dancing, of course, slow and languid, stretching from moonrise to sunrise. The music is god-awful; something in the vampirization process leaves the subject with the king of all tin ears, so to the outside it is a truly wretched cacophony of screeching strings and wailing brass.  As the dancers do not tire, the dance itself will go from moonrise to sunrise. The strictures of the social hierarchy must also be danced around, both literally and metaphorically - pairing with one above or below your station will jump right over scandal and directly to open combat. Nothing like a vampire's duel to get the blood pumping (ha-ha).

The dances themselves bear no resemblance to anything modern aristocrats do, being unstuck in time. They are, in their way, an alternate timeline of events - of ancient and antiquated modes and mores carried forth out of the past, trotting along their own developmental path.

You would, as a non-vampire, likely not want to go to one of these. Not even for the danger (which is high), and not even because you would constantly be mistaken for the help (an even higher probability), but simply because vampires are terrible and no one would wish to spend more time in their presence than absolutely necessary.

Are head spells turing complete?

If you ask a wizard, they will say no - a spell has no existence outside of its function, and possesses no volition of its own.

They say this because wizardry, unwilling to cooperate with the spirits and feeling itself above the push and pull of the world, trap and lobotomize those spirits, chaining them to their spellbooks as the slaver does to the enslaved. It is one lie of many they use to justify themselves, claiming that wizardry is all about hard work and study, and that witchcraft and druidism and the ways of the cunning-men are outmoded superstition.

Wizards: absolutely no sense of right and wrong.

Free Space

This one is difficult, because I already integrate a lot of non-game stuff into the blog already. Hrm.

 

The Venus of Willendorf was likely a self-portrait.

Blue dwarf stars do not exist yet because not enough time has elapsed in the universe.

Way more bilical apocrypha than you think is concerned with esoteric defenses of calendar reform.

Some dunderheads in the 1890s wanted to import hippos to the American south as a meat animal