Prepare For Muscles And Monsters On Far Off Worlds

(Associated Links: Ko-Fi tip jar, Discord server, previous blog)

It's been a few days since I opened up the gates, and I've been working away at my commissions. Expect a new chapter for A Song Of Silk And Steel soon, as well as a sequel to Hot Dragon Inaction.

There's also been some folks kind enough to signal boost me, and I've received a generous tip in the jar! Of an amount that, when broken down into individual "coffees," equals 30 of them. That means a list of 30 episodes to watch! But that brings us to the question of what to watch, and I've been getting ideas in that regard.

Rimworld has, at the time of writing, four different DLCs that add new gameplay features. The first, Royalty, added the Shattered Empire faction, the remnant of a once-powerful hypertech empire that can grant you noble titles if you complete their quests, along with an array of psychic powers for your colonists.

The second, Ideology, added extensive belief systems and mechanics for different colony roles, rituals, and celebrations related to them, as well as adding the utterly adorable dryads, symbiotic plant-creatures that you can add to your colony by psychically bonding with a tree.

The third, Biotech, added a genetics system, various varieties of genetically-altered "xenohumans," and the ability for your colonists to have children, along with allowing you to have friendly robots controlled by a cybernetically-enhanced "mechinator" colonist.

And the fourth, which just came out, Anomaly, is a horror-themed DLC that adds all kinds of bizarre and terrifying creatures, objects, and events, along with several new technologies that can come from studying these horrors.

When a new DLC comes out, Mr. Samuel Streamer likes to do a short series exploring it. He keeps the mods at mostly quality of life and some aesthetic changes and focuses on exploring the new mechanics. So, since Anomaly just came out, checking out his Rimworld: Anomaly series is both a good way to get a look at what the game is like now with minimal modding, and see a recent example of his style that's entertaining but not so balls-to-the-wall unhinged that it's hard to follow for a newcomer.

The only problem is that Samuel's Rimworld: Anomaly series is a sequel... kinda. For the most part, he tries to keep things self-contained, but he's managed to pick up some reoccurring characters and, if you watch everything, you can pick up the references and continuity bits here and there. And when he'd finished his last big series, there'd still been a couple of days before the DLC released. So, he'd figured he'd just do a quick joke series of a couple of episodes to fill space. And his fans loved it, so two episodes became four episodes, and then some of the characters made the jump to the Anomaly series.

Do you strictly need to watch that previous series to know what's happening? No, but it provides some extra context to the jokes, and it might be a good introduction in and of itself to the kind of bizarre themed series he does without getting into one of the huge ones, plus... hey, only four episodes.

So, the first four episodes we watch will be Rimworld: Gymbro (yes, really), and then we'll go right into punching horror sci fi monsters in the face with with twelve-episode series Rimworld: Anomaly. But, that still leaves us with fourteen episodes unaccounted for, so let's see... How about vampires?

See, one of things that a lot of mods add is non-human pawns. Before Biotech, xenohumans were part of the game's lore, but only ordinary "baseliners" were actually in the game. A popular framework mod is around that makes adding new humanoids a breeze, so they're extremely popular.

And so, naturally, a vampire mod popped up heavily based on Vampire: the Masquerade. And, naturally, since Samuel's played Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines before (he's actually made Fat Larry as a colonist in his series' before and eventually made him into a wizard named Larry Potter and no I'm not joking) he eventually made use of it for a series.

Then Biotech came along and added sanguophages, which are basically sci fi vampires. And then a big group of modders whose thing is expanding on existing vanilla mechanics went and added a few different types of sanguophages, and so material was born to keep doing more vampire series and make the vampire empire one of those reoccurring elements.

I consider myself a fan of World of Darkness, especially the Vampire line. So let's, after we finish with Anomaly, turn back the clock to the first adventures of Anne Guine, so-to-be vampire empress, with Blood Feast.

That means that for now, the plans are:

Rimworld: Gymbro - all 4 episodes
Rimworld: Anomaly - all 12 episodes
Rimworld: Blood Feast - first 14 of 27 episodes

If another 65 CAD hits the tip jar by the end of May, we'll be able to do the full Blood Feast series. Beyond that? Possibly more vampires, but I'm also open to suggestions. And once we know how many we'll be doing, I'll figure out the "when" and how many at a time, but I'm tentatively thinking 3-4 episodes per at the moment.

Back to the fanfic-ing, for now. Take care, all, and thank you for the support.