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Hams is still in the period where industry is based more on long term specialist labor and less on replacable machine operators. The workers in Nuln are well paid professionals.
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May 24, 2019 17:00
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Yeah, the public education stuff is explicitly there because the Sons (and daughters, they mention that in the WHFRP Companion) of the Guns don't actually get a choice in where they work until they 'pay off' the upbringing and charity. Just, you know, getting a trade as a cannon engineer or skilled industrial laborer is actually really good work in the Empire so it ends up less indentured labor and more 'I did years in Nuln to pay off my student debts until I was free to go work somewhere else, but wouldn't you look at it, I have a family and a house in Nuln so I guess I'm going to stay and keep contributing high value labor for decent money'.
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May 24, 2019 17:02
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It's a bit frustrating that someone who is clearly competent (she maneuvered herself into an Electorship!) being treated as a ditzy blonde. It would be much more interesting if she was a skillful political operator who likes having parties and gardens named after her and garden parties because that's why she worked so hard to amass power goddamn it, to have very nice parties. What, everybody else is allowed to have their vaults full of gold or Slaaneshi cult orgies or their special zoo full of deadly animals, and she's not allowed to name an orphanage after herself?
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May 24, 2019 17:08
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Our group just always wrote it as 'she's not that much different from normal for an Imperial noble, but gets a lot of poo poo because that's something that happens a lot to politically important women'. The sheer amount of things she's accused of just reminds me a lot of what went on with Catharine the Great. Meanwhile the setting's actual Catherine the Great expy in Kislev is considered a perfectly normal ruler because it's normal for women to rule Kislev as often as men, since the Gospodar were founded by Ice Witches. There's plenty of scandals about her, certainly, but they're 'oh no Katarin is trying to centralize all power in her person again' and not 'she is so immoral and dumb'.
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May 24, 2019 17:16
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The narrative of 'dumb slut I hate her I hate her ' could only work as the personal opinion of some disgruntled pettite nobility. History is certainly full of those but they usually come with addendums.
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May 24, 2019 17:32
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Something like a quick "this narrator is unreliable" indicator would do a lot to clear the air in this book. As it is, I'm half expecting the Countess' physical description to be eerily similar to a certain former First Lady and Presidential Nominee.
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May 24, 2019 18:02
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The book is a little bit too old for that as it came out in 06.
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May 24, 2019 18:09
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Warhammer Fantasy: Paths of the Damned Part 3: Forges of Nuln City on a Hill Something to remember about Nuln's layout is that the city was originally designed by dwarfs who were helping to fortify and build it during the Actual Age of Actual Sigmar, and that the city has continued to rebuild new walls as it moves outwards and grows. Nuln is exceptionally well defended, despite lacking anything as impressive as the huge impact crater walls of Talabheim or the Falschlag plateau in Middenheim. It is situated at the last point where one can easily cross the River Reik, and one can only cross the river because of the enormous bridge the dwarfs of old helped the humans to build and engineer. A bridge that can even open up in order to let taller ships pass under it. All of Nuln is able to be locked down in case there's another invasion of orcs (or anything else) and the guns that are usually sent to defend the rest of the Empire can instead be trained on the attackers. Nuln is not self-sufficient; no city is. It relies on the produce of Wissenland to feed the city, but it also needs a constant flow of raw materials to feed the forges, too. Much of this comes from the mines and mountains to the south, and with the underground river route going under the Vault mountains and all the way into Tilea and the great roads originally laid down by Sigmar himself, Nuln has many ways to get what it needs. More importantly, most of the other cities and large towns rely on Nuln for finished goods. Its hinterlands and outlying communities have decent farming on the banks of the Reik, not to mention fishing, and I'd imagine the water being a bit cleaner and safer than Altdorf is very helpful to both endeavors. Nuln is as important to large scale commerce as Marienburg, and for similar reasons most people in the Empire want to keep Nuln happy and doing business with them. Nuln's south gate is where most large-scale commercial traffic happens, while the west gate leads into the poorer parts of town and sees a majority of foot traffic; it can take a few hours to get into the city because the gate is constantly busy. The east gate and its grand griffon statues is known as the Magnus Gate, because Magnus goddamn loved catbirds, we've been over this. Getting in and out of Nuln can take a PC a long time, especially with the need to levy that Leg Tax on everyone doing so. It can actually be faster to come into the city by boat; the piers don't actually charge the leg tax and so there's less need to watch over people coming in and out. The Emperor Wilhelm, a prestigious river liner, is going to feature prominently in the early parts of the actual adventure and be the site of an insufferable murder mystery. The Altstadt up on Nuln Hill is the wealthy district of the city, clean, prosperous, and built around the city's grand palace at its highest point. The closer you are to the palace, the better you are; the nobles and wealthy merchants like the way the hill literally places some people above others. Aldig Quarter is situated in the ruins of the original elven outpost Nuln was built around, and holds the palace and the renamed Emannuelesplatz thoroughfare. This is where the absolute wealthiest and most powerful people in Nuln live, as denoted by their proximity to the actual palace and the Countess. While the Countess has happily gotten to beautifying the interior, there is no mistaking that the Palace of Nuln was originally designed as a final fallback point and placed on a commanding hill primarily as a fortress. Over the centuries, the formerly pragmatic keep has had more and more wings and buildings added until it is a sprawling and confusing palace complex, with new art galleries and ballrooms to hold the Countess's 'all too frequent' social events. There's a little plot hook here about how the maids are the only people who actually know their way around the many secret passages of the Palace, which they use for 'naughty trysts' but also theft. Sometimes a maid goes missing, and the Palace staff worry that someone sinister may know ways into the Palace as a result. They never bother to look for or try to rescue 'silly girls' who go missing, though. For reasons. So, uh, is the plot hook rescuing a maid or paying one to tell you how to rob the Palace? Who knows. There's also a major memorial to the people who died fighting the Skaven a few years ago, though it's in a walled garden no commoners can actually get to. The Versammlung is another feature of the Aldig Quarter, the actual center of government for Nuln, known for its huge murals painted by famous artists in each age as the city and the city's government buildings have expanded. Some of the people who work there swear the paintings depicting the Skaven attacks in 1111 are haunted, with staff swearing the scenes of murderous ratmen move on their own. The Kaufmann District is a little ways down the hill, marking people whose fortunes are either currently rising (as they move to new homes uphill) or falling (as they're kicked out of Aldig). It is also home to the finest restaurants and theaters in the city, frequented by the entire Altstadt and even the Countess herself. The City Mint and most of the important financial houses are also in Kaufman. Every year, either some PCs try to rob one of the financial houses or some PCs try to stop people from robbing one of the financial houses; either works as a plot hook. This region also has the home of Otto Jaeger, relative to the famous author Felix Jaeger, of Gotrek and Felix. He's become a famous citizen of the city by donating huge amounts of material and money to fix the damage done during the While Nuln has a reputation as somewhat irreligious, it is still the birth-city of Sigmarism. Thus, there is a grand Cathedral of Sigmar where Johan Helstrum supposedly first preached to the people about the Lord's ascension. There's also a very old temple to Ulric, which mostly serves as a chapter house of the White Wolves, and a recently constructed and very grand temple of Myrmidia, due to the dedicated efforts of Myrmidian missionaries and the city's large Tilean and Estalian population. The true patron of the city, though, and the most honored temple is the Temple of Verena. Nuln has considered the Goddess of Wisdom and Justice the city's real defender ever since the Time of Three Emperors and the original collapse of the Empire of Sigmar (as pushed along, partly, by the aggressive religious persecution promoted by the Sigmarite church). The Temple of Verena is an impressive structure that also serves as an additional courthouse, and their judgements are considered to have the same weight as secular courts in Nuln. The Countess reserves the right to pardon any she sees fit, but otherwise leaves them to their business in respect of Verena. The adventure hook here is weird; it has a person acquitted of charges by the Temple of Verena and this causing a great scandal (since the charges were Chaos Worship) with the implication this is a sign that cults have infiltrated the Temple. Given it's Verena, though, wouldn't it be perfectly possible they just...kind of found the guy not guilty after looking at the evidence? That's perfectly normal for Verenans. Pierre will be very excited to see the grand temple. Next Time: Nuestadt
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May 24, 2019 18:57
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Please tell me “Gotrek and Felix” is an Asterix and Obelix reference. I want nothing more for there to be an expy of that in hams.
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May 24, 2019 19:41
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Xiahou Dun posted:Please tell me “Gotrek and Felix” is an Asterix and Obelix reference. Nope. Gotrek and Felix are two extremely big-name lore characters for the novels. Gotrek is a Slayer, and Felix is the human he's wrangled into following him around to record his deeds. The two of them are Thanquol's archnemeses and stars of a whole bunch of Warhams novels.
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May 24, 2019 19:45
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There are no words to describe my disappointment.
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May 24, 2019 19:56
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Xiahou Dun posted:There are no words to describe my disappointment. I mean, to be fair, they ARE very cool on their own
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May 24, 2019 20:23
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Gotrek is the world's worst Slayer, because he's just so good at killing things that nothing he picks a fight with can finish him off.
wiegieman fucked around with this message at 21:33 on May 24, 2019 |
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May 24, 2019 21:12
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yea, Gotrek rules because he's so angry that he's so loving good because the whole point is he needs to die in battle but he just keeps owning demon lords and poo poo. That's the only kind of overpowered I'm willing to accept, just actively hating the fact that he's the best in the world.
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May 24, 2019 21:30
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Hc Svnt Dracones 2.0 It's like Groundhog Day, except the Groundhog is an anthro cyborg rodent with guns for nipples and a bitcoin wallet Don't loving ask me why the cover has yet another stupid taur on it. In fact, don't ask me why this loving exists. And please don't ask me why the hell I'm suffering through this again, because the answer's likely to break me more than you. So, for those new to the funhouse, this is a repeat review, of sorts. I reviewed the original pile of poo poo about four years ago now, including the lorebook where we learned that God is actually an evil meme and Satan is an evil wikipedia. It was a loving ride with mild undertones of weird sex poo poo and extreme overtones of hyper-Libertarian garbage. It was like a negaverse version of Eclipse Phase, with everything good turned on its head. It had broken mechanics, it had broken brains, it had abilities that literally existed more or less only so you could destroy yourself with them by accident in incredibly gory ways and the developers seemed to not have noticed this. It was hilarious. But maybe they've learned from their mistakes, so let's begin! Intro, Background & Deepest of Lore So, funnily enough, there's literally no editor credited for HSD2. Just artists and one madman who wrote everything. I wonder if he ever read my original review? Nothing particularly stand-out about the index except I think maybe the organization there looks a bit less insane, by which I mean we're not introduced to the fact that sentient robots exist and can gently caress and become pregnant from organic jizz like five pages before the end of the book this time around. Oh, yeah, that's a thing, btw. Like before, it's also got some ideas about its high concept: quote:I know, it’s a curious thing to see in a book with a bunch of animal people wandering around and no apparent humans to speak of, but at its core, humanity is what HSD is really about. HSD presents a unique situation in cultural evolution: a reset switch. It proposes that at a point in history 700 years before the game’s current day, human-kind effectively stopped and “started over.” Through war and strife their bodies were destroyed, changed, and born as something new on another world. Their old planet was leveled, as was the vast majority of its cultural history and heritage, and all the previous biases associated with slavery, racism, classism, sexism, and so many others that all grew out of thousands of years of human cultural growth and change were effectively wiped out as the old race died and the new race took its place. Are such biases gone forever? Of course not. But the history, the social momentum, the inexorable force of thousands of years of slighting each other; that was all halted in a brief, fiery moment. Which, I mean, it's not a bad idea. Playing humanity's inheritors in the far future. It's just. This game promised that in the original, too. I have my doubts!  Why is a random furry giving me a ~smoldering stare~ while presumably having an uncharged JO crystal at the end of that string at the end of the Intro section? Is this sci-fi? quote:Modern history claims it began with the sphinx, the first genetically tailored, custom lifeform intended for commercial production on Earth, and the precursor to the race that would eventually inherit the solar system. A herald of the end of humanity. Ahahaha, so the loving sphinx. Let's just get right into the deep end of this poo poo with some ""art"".  HSD1.0  HSD2.0 So, basically, Mars is colonized off-screen and someone just more or less cobbles this thing together a as a thank-you to one of the nation-states involved in supporting the corporations that settled Mars. Because that's just a thing you do, all of a sudden, I guess. HSD 2.0 kind of skirts around whether it's sapient or not, but the original didn't really see any reason in loving around. Basically, this titty monstrosity had all the brains of a housecat, and so did the other custom lifeforms that became a fad after it was made. Dragons, gryphons, hydras and... anthro servants, you know, for taking care of the elderly! For being novelty helpers around the house! Certainly not for some weirdo to keep chained up and gently caress. It does eventually, however, come around to the loving point. quote:But with the already mountainous level of public concern over the moral implications of the normal custom lifeforms, the implications of a domesticated animal mind paired with a near-human body were too blatantly obvious to ignore. So the corporations are just belting these things out overnight. Like, I want to hammer home the fact that a group of unfunded, independent scientists made that sphinx thing, and then that is assumed to let them create all of these other horrors overnight. Like it's just a toolkit rather than each monstrosity being a bespoke horror requiring new and novel solutions to its weird genetic frankensteining. Anyway, people are pissed because this is weird. Some people are out to rescue catgirls from being someone's jizz muppet, other people are just horrified they exist and are murdering them and piling up the corpses in stacks because "gently caress the rich assholes getting up to this." Anyway, Earth governments ban this insanity before too much stuff gets set on fire. Mars is also independent, by the way, and corporations literally own entire cities at this point, and they're horrified because bloo bloo our profits and liberties to own slaves. The corptowns are, I'll note, described as "utopias." Because yeah being owned by loving Amazon would be a utopia. Please rule me daddy Bezos. quote:With their breeding pool insufficient to maintain a viable selection, the biped pets were effectively condemned to extinction within three generations. Their ten year lifespans were short to begin with, and for many, both in and out of the corptowns, it was an awfully cruel fate to bestow upon creatures that looked so human. Words like ‘holocaust’ and ‘sanctioned extinction’ drifted here and there among celebrities, CEO and politician alike, and left an awfully bitter taste in one’s mouth. Yeah because letting non-sapient catgirls go extinct is absolutely a reasonable comparison to the holocaust what the gently caress my man. Oh, yeah, another thing the intro just sort of drops on us is "Geomats" which are basically battleship-sized 3D printers and nanoforges that can roll across the landscape and poo poo out entire cities which is why corporations can just up and build their own towns in a couple of hours and move all their employees in. The author believes that national governments would actually let corporations just build these things and use them to make a new city "whereever they can find the space." This seems like an extremely correct analysis of politics and economics and all sorts of things. So let's move on to the part where Mars is NOT covered under the catgirl ban. So Mars' extremely rational response to "non-sapient genetically engineered personal fuckpets are outlawed, you loving maniacs" is "let's genetically sculpt an entire generation of human children to look like fursonas to make some sort of point, I guess." Oh and they were, of course, also engineered to be physically superior to humans in all ways as well as getting strapped with weird-rear end genetic purity stuff so that genes wouldn't mix too much and they'd no longer look like kawaii dogpeople and birdpeople. Because this is a sane thing to do. The text also claims that a population of 180 individuals would be enough to prevent catastrophic inbreeding. I'm not sure if anyone has the biology chops to kick that one over, but it seems a bit low to my brain. Anyway, Mars names them Vectors and proudly goes "hey Earth check it out lol we committed a loving insane crime against a bunch of unborn children for laughs, what up?" and the corporations are all "HAIL MARS, YOUR GENIUS IS VAST." while all national governments are horrified by this madness. The book insists that they're both right and wrong. The book is insane. Of course the national governments want to euthanize the Vectors and deny them their human rights even though they're sapient, because national governments are being set up to be the bad guys here. They probably decided this in an ADMIRALTY COURT, too. quote:In a public display of support, they televised an award of citizenship to the Vector race and officially wrote them in as resident employees of MarsCo, following the same methods and practices that had existed in Earth-locked corptowns for years now. "Congrats, kids, you're corporate property now." is absolutely how I'd choose to show my support for a new species. quote:The resulting response from the growing united Earthgov was that Mars had no right to grant citizenship to anyone, and that the Vectors would have to be given status as a “corporate investment,” which carried with it a vastly different message. Such investments required outside regulation and scrutiny and were subject to checks and controls that were inappropriate to level on something that was essentially human in all but appearance. "But have you considered that regulating genetic tampering with sapient species is bad because controlling the resulting sapient would be bad??????????" Sounds like the author gene-edited himself a severe case of galaxy brain. Also regulations bad, please put more lead in my drinking water. Anyway, this of course provokes a global governments vs corporations war, at which point Mars goes: "Gee, we sure did a good job managing this. Let's make more fursonas!" as the rational response. These are, of course, a generation of weird mutants like taurs, mini-animals, etc. and like a huge bunch of them that have sapient brains trapped in entirely animal bodies. Because rather than abort them and start over, it was like "hell, they'll learn to deal with not having opposable thumbs and probably lovely vocal chords, too, right?????" Condemning them to that is in no way a loving evil thing to do, at all. Also a bunch of refugees are moving to Mars from Earth! Their rational response to "holy poo poo this war on Earth may go nuclear soon" was "okay let's just try some whack-rear end treatments to turn ourselves into furries, because being half dog will help me survive gamma radiation, right?" The more this book tries to explain things, the worse it explains everything. A lot of the war on Earth also gets glossed over more here. In the original, it was extremely praiseful of the amazing corporate armies and how they totally clowned Earth's lame national governments and then the governments had to resort to nukes, but the corporations just, like, hacked all of the nukes in mid-air, man, until suddenly ALL OF THE NUKES LAUNCHED AT ONCE and then all of Earth died. Spoiler, btw, that actually happened because some moron on Earth decided to copypaste alien glyphs into the code for the nuclear missile silos because everyone in this setting is retarded. It's also been declared that the lore supplement counts for ALL EDITIONS, so everyone's still retarded, and God is still an evil meme. PS: The furries loving terraform Mars in 23 years once all vestiges of national government and regulation are completely destroyed by nukes. Take that, communists! And we're not talking, like, a partial terraformation, no. In these ~20 years Mars' canyons are running with fresh, drinkable water and the majority of Earth's species of plant and animal life are introduced to Mars and take root no problemo. Because that's what furries can do. I guess. So... you know what? So far it's actually a bit less retarded. It's not quite as intensely randian as the last time around, but, hey, let's give it some time. I'm sure it's going to get plenty loving stupid soon enough. Next time, we'll clean up the last of the lore and learn what exciting fursonas we can build!!!!!!!!! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 24, 2019 21:58
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PurpleXVI posted:
*slaps the top of the sphinx* You can fit so many fetishes in this baby
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May 24, 2019 22:03
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What the gently caress is this poo poo. 
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May 24, 2019 22:38
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ChaseSP posted:What the gently caress is this poo poo. The internet is what people are really like.
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May 24, 2019 22:42
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ChaseSP posted:What the gently caress is this poo poo. Go check out the first one in the archive.
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May 24, 2019 22:42
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PurpleXVI posted:
I honestly like the second iteration, because the first looks blissfully doofy while being shown off while the second version's prototype sphinx looks like she resents her existence and her masters (especially with the master's forceful hand at her head).
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May 24, 2019 22:50
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If only I'd had a hyena sphinx with 36DD boobs to take care of my grandma after her stroke. WHERE IS THE FUTURE PROMISED BY HSD.
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May 24, 2019 22:58
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I like how the writers seem to have gained a teensy bit of restraint, just enough to make us know that they learned nothing.
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May 24, 2019 23:47
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You're made of sterner stuff than I, Purple.
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May 24, 2019 23:55
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Holy hell, it starts off running and simply does not stop. 
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May 25, 2019 00:27
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PurpleXVI posted:The text also claims that a population of 180 individuals would be enough to prevent catastrophic inbreeding. I'm not sure if anyone has the biology chops to kick that one over, but it seems a bit low to my brain. I mean, not that it really matters because the tech that created them in the first place exists so you can make 100% designer babies. They basically have Gene Magic so poo poo like that is completely irrelevant.
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May 25, 2019 00:52
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yea I mean just on its own if you hear reports saying 'there's only 200 (insert mammal here)s left on earth' that's never with the tone of 'excellent, that number is fantastic' unless it used to be 100. You need thousands to insure a diverse breeding pool, but like already said I guess that is moot when you have Gene Wizards who can just cast Summon Baby.
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May 25, 2019 01:10
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Young Freud posted:I honestly like the second iteration, because the first looks blissfully doofy while being shown off while the second version's prototype sphinx looks like she resents her existence and her masters (especially with the master's forceful hand at her head). Yeah, but the second one deffo looks like the second the cameras turn off he's gonna gently caress that catbirdlady.
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May 25, 2019 01:34
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Honestly the second is just way better in the art department in term of proportion, anatomy, and composition - though unfortunately it's also done to make it 'sexier' - BLEUGH
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May 25, 2019 02:20
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Hey Purple, glad to see we're back wallowing in the filth. Any chance you could dial back the r-word a bit there? Creeped in at the end of your review, and honestly the subject matter is bad enough without dropping down to their level.
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May 25, 2019 02:44
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goons 2019: "The whole furry hate thing of the 2000s was massively over blown, especially compared to an age full of nazis, pepes, honklers, and other magical woodland creatures" also goons in 2019: "That being said, loving CHRIST"
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May 25, 2019 03:12
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You made me google what a honkler is and I hate you for it.
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May 25, 2019 03:14
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As distasteful as the knowledge may be, staying abreast of internet nazi memes while staring at breasts of meme-furries is what we're doing now.
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May 25, 2019 03:18
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Xiahou Dun posted:You made me google what a honkler is and I hate you for it. 
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May 25, 2019 03:21
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Ronwayne posted:As distasteful as the knowledge may be, staying abreast of internet nazi memes while staring at breasts of meme-furries is what we're doing now. I miss when I could use 88 as a number that I'd easily remember cause it's my birth year, and not have to worry that people would think I was a Nazi. loving Nazis.
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May 25, 2019 03:25
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Nuln during the day: Nuln at night: 
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May 25, 2019 04:18
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Ronwayne posted:goons 2019: "The whole furry hate thing of the 2000s was massively over blown, especially compared to an age full of nazis, pepes, honklers, and other magical woodland creatures" "I am a snow goose, and I advocate for strongly pro-corporate economic policy that dramatically disadvantages already-marginalized groups." "Well, that's not okay." "What? What've you got against snow geese?"
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May 25, 2019 04:56
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How many pages are wasted on the history that no one cares about?
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May 25, 2019 05:24
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Why doesn’t the sphinx have nipples? How does that sphinx feed it’s children before they’re old enough for solid foods? Why would it have breasts with no nipples for actual breastfeeding? What’s the point?
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May 25, 2019 08:22
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By popular demand posted:How many pages are wasted on the history that no one cares about? Give or take 43 pages, vs 42 in the original, give or take a page or two.
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May 25, 2019 09:05
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| # ? Dec 10, 2024 15:06 |
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Battle Mad Ronin posted:Why doesn’t the sphinx have nipples?
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May 25, 2019 09:14
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