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unnydhnes.bsky.social
Unnýðnes 🍁
@unnydhnes.bsky.social
230 followers 990 following 650 posts
Writing moody science fiction and fantasy, when I can get the time. Also chopping things with swords. Current project is Cloud Goddess, a glimpse into the far future of a world ruled by AI demigods. They/them.
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unnydhnes.bsky.social
I decided that anytime I repost some of [the horrors] going on out there, I want to post something that's less negative too. I scribbled a bunch of portraits for a TTRPG I'm running recently, please have one! Lionel's glad you showed up, and hopes you're doing well today.
A farmer named Lionel, with a full beard, floppy wide-brimmed hat, and a jolly expression
September 24, 2025 at 5:29 PM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
September 16, 2025 at 2:38 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
A short, single-handed sword with a translucent crystalline blade.
May 5, 2025 at 5:11 PM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
A Shield! And some other things.
Image of a woman standing beside her traveling equipment, including warm clothing, food and survival gear, weapons, and a large decorated shield on display on a tripod.
April 18, 2025 at 4:50 PM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
The image provides a screenshot of the conversation linked in the quote. It's not an adversarial conversation, I just wanted to include a picture to summarize it. Click on through!
April 18, 2025 at 3:09 PM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
April 2, 2025 at 6:05 PM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
I dunno, I think it looks pretty good. A lot more contiguous than it seems if you don't use a Mercator projection
March 31, 2025 at 8:08 PM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
I think it's honestly a pretty reasonable arrangement, geopolitically as well as culturally.
a hypothetical world map depicting Canada as a member state of the EU
March 19, 2025 at 6:11 PM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
Have been writing, but havne't been doing a lot of posting. But here's a sneak peek at a drawing - working on one of the gadrihiri cultists. Upgrading their death mask tattoos into proper death masks?
An unfinished sketch of a supercilious person wearing a skull mask and pauldrons
December 5, 2024 at 3:35 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
And another snippet from today for #nanowrimo
Does that make me a monster, Archer’s son? I killed perhaps a hundred, though I still can’t see their faces. In their predations on the Lines, they’ve killed ten times that and enslaved ten times more. Many have said I was the one slaying monsters that day. Perhaps all humans are monsters, and we’re all saints, and we’re neither of those things, we’re animals, and I was hurt and wounded and driven to a rage. I was doing what any animal would do in that moment, and any pretense of morality we might put to it is just a game we play with words to pretend that we aren’t still animals in our hearts. I’m not looking for you to explain it to me, offworlder, I don’t care what you think. I know what I am. I am Karan Maryatu Tesyet, and I’m a lion. Put me in with the goats, and you should know what to expect.
November 21, 2024 at 3:25 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
Managed to get ahead on #nanowrimo today, after getting a few days behind. Nice to have a good session and knock out double your word count, and also to get to a major milestone in the book. No chance to rest on laurels though, on to the next!
Usually I remember the faces of the men I kill, but those I have no memory of. I killed the temple guard outside of the doors too, and should have taken his gun, but there wasn’t a blessed thought in my head. No thoughts of fighting, or living, or even surviving. Just motion and animalistic rage. Instinct. I’d found the sword-wind and could not leave it. To say that I ran for the exit would be a generosity. I stumbled and fell, and kept falling, crashing like saltwater waves from rock to rock, killing whoever crossed my path as I ran for the exit. The light at the end of the tunnel was so bright that it seared my eyes, and I swear that I was ascending to Samsara. I was forever falling, and forever rising, tumbling towards my ending.
November 21, 2024 at 3:24 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
Execution day, but it's been postponed. #nanowrimo
Oh child of Betek Mar, you poor and wounded creature that comes limping before me. Were you brought here by happenstance, or did cruel fate drag you before me? I know not your heart, nor need I to know it, for all your hearts beat as one. One hand of humanity works against the other, one wounds while another heals, all at the behest of my ever-turning brother in Samsara. But still you do not turn away, to find someplace green and cool and wet. Is this love that drives you to me? You shall wither at my bosom, child, but I shall not turn you away. I know you not, but I need not know you, for my love is blind and I give it to all of you freely and the same. The Private Meditations of Gaigadrihur Betek Mar Shard
November 19, 2024 at 4:23 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
Apparently Karan loves nothing more than taunting her jailers. I guess when you're already slated to be executed you don't have much left to lose! #nanowrimo
It’s funny how time moves in circles. There I was, waiting for an execution for the crime of being the wrong kind of person. And now, here I am in your cell, waiting the same fate. You’re no better than them, and to be entirely frank, you’re no smarter than them, either. Your Archer’s just been kinder to you. Such is the nature of Shaytrobakani, though, isn’t it? He heaps gifts on those who enforce his will while piling miseries on everyone else. Compliance is mandatory under the Archer’s reign. He really is the Great Mover’s brother in all the ways that matter. What are you going to do, kill me twice? Put me in the Tank again? It didn’t break me before, it won’t break me now. That infernal device works by pulling all sensation away from the unfortunate you jam inside of it - all sight, all sound, all touch, everything rendered to a neutral middle. There’s something mystical in how the Mover made those things, it’s not just a quiet little box. It’s imprinted with some dreadful pattern that eats away the resolve of the weak. But that’s not me. You know that now. And isn’t it strange how Shaytrobakani overthrew the Mover, but yet still uses the worst tools afforded to him by his defeated brother? If the Great Mover truly were an evil, wouldn’t the Archer want to break the weapons that built up that evil? But he does not, and he will not, for the Great Mover poisoned your Archer as thoroughly as Dastrophel lays dead. Both are victims of Savrakandur. You just refuse to see it.
November 17, 2024 at 10:44 PM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
Karan is going to make her escape tonight, and she's building up her resolve to go through with it. #nanowrimo
That thought sunk deep into me, that last night in my apartment. I watched the ceiling and thought of the barren earth. The Oasis towers destroyed, the Betekani reduced to corpses strewn along the Lines like seed-husks between them. No life but Indrahama. They’d crack open the seal of their mountain in expectation of a great wave of life cascading out as the Garden promised, but she would betray them. Gaigadrihur loves us as the sun loves the stones, but there is no room in her heart for faces or names. The vault would crack open and the hot and the dry would flood in, and the carbon would come crashing into that verdant cavern like an invisible flood crashing through a valley. The animals would die, and the plants soon after from the scorch and desiccation, and Betek Mar would be as it was in the beginning - lifeless, empty, serene. And the Goddess would lift her hand to the world once more and begin anew. They wish for death, those Gadrihiri. I’d give it to them, before they brought it for the rest of us.
November 16, 2024 at 5:31 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
A visitation from the Mother of Shards #nanowrimo
It was her, the Angel. Bahuvrihi, the Sin-Bearer. Mother of Shards, ever shattered by the hand of Savrakandur. She spoke as if her voice were a cool stream, trickling over rocks. O child of sunlight Heavy are the burdens I set upon your shoulders. Thrice-bound, thrice-wounded, You shall be carried by strong winds To Atricord And find the freedom not your own.
November 15, 2024 at 1:52 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
✨ Quote repost with your art that has stars ✨
It's a space boat! Shaped to appear like a round-hulled naval ship with clinkered hull, and a sloped and gabled roof. Animation reveals the interior parks and rooms and docks.
November 13, 2024 at 10:09 PM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
#nanowrimo update, 1778 words today. Struggling over job how mystical I want to make the Asurakanda - the galaxy-spanning AIs that control human civilization, for good or for ill.
I was bade to kneel. I did so, and by that time I was so shocked by the sights around me that I felt fear in my heart as the Voices of Gaigadrihur approached from the dark either side of me. I don’t remember the oaths they had me make, though in that moment I felt pressed hard to commit each word to memory. My life depended on it, but moreso than this, it felt in that moment that my soul might, too. This was her qutuktum that I knelt before, the reliquary that held the tiny fragment of her galaxy-spanning heart. To think that I spent untold hours knelt before the tiny vessel that held Savrakandur’s! Crammed full of prayer slips, His tiny face looking up at me with its thousand bright eyes, it seemed petty and mundane in that moment. This entire mountain was a prayer to Gaigadrihur’s endless green. My faith shuddered, and just like the worlds she shapes for us, I could feel my soul conforming to her will.
November 11, 2024 at 3:07 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
#nanowrimo came easily today! A nice surprise. Karan tests herself against the storm and wins.
The priests watched as I dragged myself to the centre of the basin, where we’d gather every morning to say our worthless oaths and empty prayers, and I pushed myself up to my feet. My hair broke free of its knot and blasted out behind me like a fan, joining the writhing folds of my ragged skirts, and in that moment, I felt it. It was perhaps the ache in my muscles or the blast of pain from the scouring sands, it was maybe the bone-deep fatigue and the terror that still lingered in me from my free-air climb through her storm, but I felt what the Goldathans felt, what the Gadrihiri feel when they call on their Goddess. I felt her power, her fury, her love. Her storm cut through me, and I knew what it was like to be united with the power of the earth. It wasn’t my intention to feel it, nor did it move me to desire a life as a devoted cultist of the garden, but it is not the nature of the Asurakanda to demand devotion beyond acknowledgement. We are nothing but animals to Gaigadrihur, one more species at play within Her endless garden. Still, at that point, I learned why her faithful held her with such devotion.
November 8, 2024 at 1:21 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
didn't think I was gonna have anything for #nanowrimo today, what with world events and all. But I did! Actually not displeased with it. We meet an old enemy today, and get a little catharsis.
The wild panic in his eyes cleared away as he recognized me, but before he could answer I snapped my knee into his flank, and he buckled over with a wheeze. I wasn’t fighting fair, wasn’t giving him a chance to center himself. He didn’t deserve it. Nor would I give it to him if he did. “You-you’re dead!” he cried, and I laughed and kicked him into the dirt. “You’re right, you worm. I died, and now I’m dead, and you’re dead, and we’re all dead.” I didn’t stop kicking him. I ignored the shouting of the guards. “All the Tesyet died in Tara, and now we’re stuck here in hell, forever, just you and me.” He cried out, for I was savage. There wasn’t any mercy in me, and I truly wanted to beat him to death.
November 7, 2024 at 3:07 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
today's #nanowrimo has Karan getting thoughtful about her time while the unhappy guest of the Garden cultists:
They weren’t deep thoughts. I’m no philosopher at my best, and I hadn’t the energy to do more than repeat the words. I told myself that I wanted to memorize them, so that I would be able to seem the eager student when tested by the guards. But it became a mantra, and it pushed its way into my heart. Obedience, Mindfulness. Fearlessness. Selflessness. Peltiri gave me a gift that I’m still grateful for, in that desert. Simple beliefs that were separate from my faith in the Great Mover, and detached from the terrible beliefs of the Goldathans. A nobility in its own right. You’d do well to consider that, too, Archer’s Son.
November 6, 2024 at 1:37 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
Perhaps Chrome will let me upload images?
November 5, 2024 at 2:47 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
Day 3, 1695. Doing okay! Our hero's been captured, and she's contemplating her miserable fate.
It wasn’t a proper room, though, don’t think of your nice, polished, square prison cells when you write these places. No, they were holes fit for buzzards or fennec foxes, just cut larger. The floor wasn’t flat at all, but was rough, impossible to sleep on comfortably, and one couldn’t stand higher than a hunch. A chamber pot and a filthy, tagged blanket was my only furnishing, save for the remains of the last occupant. We knew that a slave had died when buzzards sat at the mouth of their cell in the morning, and apparently they hadn’t quite dragged away all the bones of my predecessor. I thought to chuck them out into the void beyond, but instead I threw out only the skull. Ribs, a femur, a few bits of knuckle - it was grizzly, but bone can be worked, and can be sharpened quite well if done properly. Coward. Does it make your stomach turn to think of it? You wouldn’t last a day in the highlands, whelp.
November 4, 2024 at 2:12 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
Day two #nanowrimo, 1723. Still on track! Writing a bit of a fight scene, though not a whole lot of pepper in it. This is all written as a recollection of the main character, and she's sick to death of fighting at this point.
But I was a fool. I didn’t know the layout of these cargo containers like a defender should, only had the vaguest hint of what lay behind each turn. I ran, and shadows came out at me from the right. To my credit I was already firing - even if I was an idiot, I was a fast idiot - and one of them fell with a cry. Gunfire popped from the rest, scattering shot against the metal containers as I scrambled back into cover and dashed back where I’d come. The net closed. I’d love to tell you about a heroic stand, about how I fought until they finally overwhelmed me, bleeding and defiant to the last. That’s how the stories all go, but they’re all wrong. We’re all toys of the Asurakanda, and we only have moments of heroism at their pleasure. I didn’t see it at all. A rifle butt, or a fist perhaps, though I pray it wasn’t a strike so pathetic as that - struck square on my temple as I emerged from the other side of the container, and down I went into the dark. I’m sure it was just as sudden and pathetic as the victory I was still gloating over.
November 3, 2024 at 12:53 AM
unnydhnes.bsky.social
Long time since last post. Warming up for NaNoWriMo here! This novel attempt is part of a worldbuilding project I've called Cloud Goddess. It's going to be a dark science fiction, with notes of Dune and Deserts of Kharak. Moody desert vibes and strange implacable gods.
October 20, 2024 at 8:39 PM