*Cough* Soccer. *Cough*

I'm try-iiiiing. I'm not sure what to write about yet. TRRRRYY-IIIIIING.
*Clangs chains against desk*

One day, the world will realise that I was right all along and they'll say, "Alas! Why hast we not abolished currency like the Great Jon say'd we shood?"
Their literacy and speaking skills will be terrible because MONEY RUINS EVERYTHING.

Well, you can keep your weather. I'll trade someone else for their summer. Maybe Arizona would be nice.

It's got to be hotter than the winter here, right?

Woo! I don't know what that is off the top of my head, but I'll see what I can find!
Also, I don't know what you're talking about. Summer? It's Winter here down in Brisbane, and it's damn cold. You can give me your summer any time, my good man.

(y) You're welcome, bro. Good art deserves good commentary.

That statement gives an excellent idea of how coarse their hair must be (given that nails and hair are slightly different versions of the same keratin compound in humans), so that adds a whole new aspect to the accuracy of this image. The hair looks pretty coarse and straggly. I like that about the beard.

I'm liking this. It's wonderful. But this:

*The upper arm that is closest to us looks like it's oriented too far down to connect to the elbow off-picture. I can see that his shoulder isn't shown fully on-pic, but I'm taking this "criticism" from the orientation of the veins. They look like they're pointed down, but the elbow looks like it'd be just too far back.

*Those fingernails are creepy. Please make me less scared of them. :p

*The artist appears to have put a lot of effort into making those trees look like they fade into the distance. I.e. some of the further branches are lost in the fog. It gives the image a slight 3D effect. Even the troll's lip looks well-rounded and not just flat. But the tusk loses definition the further it goes up. Perhaps some darkening on one side of its point might make it look rounder?
Again, it's really just the top of the tusk, once it begins overlapping skin. Its base looks great.

*Second last thing: the troll's right hand (kind of pointing at us)? I can't see how it connects to his arm. The big limb bit on the other side of his arm looks too thick. I just can't make that out properly.

*Aaand, last but certainly not least, HOLY CRAP HIS NECK LOOKS AMAZING. I just noticed how well done that neck is. It is VERY well-defined.

Good stuff, altogether. Just a few things I thought I should point out.

Oh hey there. Yes, you're looking at the one and only Cruciform.

It's been a damn long time since I was last here, and now I've got a bit of time and I'm starting to get into roleplaying fiction and stuff like that again. So I thought I'd drop in and get back to work if that's what's still on and poppin'.

It's not a contradictory view. It's a "just in case I'm wrong about a god not being" view. I am most definitely supremely atheist, though.

I'll take a look at the wording there, guys.


Yeah, (I do plan on him not being a real Helcrani) I think someone would still risk enslaving a few little people if they could, you know? People really are that evil.

I'm a lovely mix of atheism, agnosticism, and pantheism. I don't believe in a god, but if one was to exist, I'd be of the opinion that it would be essentially synonymous with the universe.

GAH! Dangnabbit!

Well, I'll see what I can do with that.

Not so much the nimble fingers, but more for the small fingers. They can fit into the small joints on the puppets and still tie knots, et cetera.

As for the recent nature of it, I mentioned specifically in the overview that it was first "officially" seen in 1658. There would have been other even more crude versions in the past, but the point is that this is the first time where it would have been seen as even more of an art form than as just a toy and I plan on mentioning that sort of thing in the History.

Thanks for that. Got a bit on at the moment, but I'll take a good look at it a bit later.

NOTE: This is most definitely not a complete piece. I still need names, a Construction section and a Use section, and I need to confirm and write the history. While I do not doubt that a Helcrani merchant (or merchant pretending to be a Helcrani) could be evil enough to do what is said AND implied in the History notes I have, I need to know if the Milken Brownies would stand for enslavement or if they should just be paid really well in return for crap treatment. Opinions on that and anything else while I finish it off, please.
*As an aside, I've looked through the miscellaneous section and haven't found puppets or marionettes of any kind, so I've taken them for further use in a second entry I would like to use as soon as this one is as good as blarrowed. If there's any known problem with me "inventing" this so late in the timeline, please bring it up.


For thousands of years, children have had toys created in the shapes of all manner of creatures and races. These have ranged from pieces whittled from wood, or even rags stuffed with other materials which have then been sewn into their “human” shape.

By far, one of the most revolutionary of these toys is the “string puppet”. The puppet’s limbs are attached to strings which are manipulated via wooden toggles to make the puppet seem lifelike, allowing the manipulator to have the puppet act out any number of manoeuvres. It was first officially seen in New Santhala in late 1656 in the hands of <name pending> who seems to have invented it.

The history of the puppet before 1668 is what makes it all the more interesting however, as it holds an almost gruesome past for those who were entwined within its strings.

In 1656 when the string puppet was first seen in the hands of <name pending>, it was a crude piece that worked well only because of the skill of its manipulator. it was rather flimsy and the strings that held its limbs wore multiple knots along their length, suggesting that they had been broken many times. However, its execution was amazing, being that it had been created by little more than a child who had no access to professional resources.

The torso and head of the doll were a single piece of wood, shaped to resemble a woman with an ample bosom, as the assumed creator’s sister was so inclined. It did not have a mass of detail; it had no face but for the one that was painted on it in white and black, and the neck was thick and round. The string that held the entire doll upright was tied around the neck several times and was attached at the other end to a wooden toggle that <name pending> would hold in her mouth when in use.

Each of the four limbs were held in place by a girdle of string around the torso that the limbs could be tied on to. The arms and legs themselves were single pieces bent slightly at the middle to simulate knees and elbows. At the “hands” and “feet” on these pieces, <name pending> had attached other pieces of string attached to wooden toggles that she used in her own hands. The left arm and leg of the doll was controlled by her left hand and the right arm and leg were controlled by her right hand.

The toggles for these limbs she held in between her thumb and forefinger for the arms and between her bottom two fingers for the legs. The strings themselves were ingeniously well-presented despite their shambling appearance. The young woman creator had somehow cut the strings to be the exact same length for each limb, and had provided sufficient length for the leg strings that her movement of the arm strings would not affect it aversely.

The final addition was a little rag dress, assumed to have been cut from the owner’s own clothes to cover up the string girdle.

Modern string puppets are almost infinitely better prepared. The head moves freely to the neck and is sufficiently detailed to look human or elven, or even dwarven depending on the puppet’s height and body structure. The original puppet is remembered at being not much over a fore in height, though modern creations are almost two fores tall if they are to depict humans, which are currently the most common in circulation.

The heads are painted with a face and have small ear-like appendages on the sides that can, again, be either human or elven. The torsos are built in male or female varieties, but the biggest achievement with the puppets is the successful elbow and knee joints used in its creation. The head and other limbs are attached to the torso via small metal eyelets which are tied on with strong woven string to allow almost complete freedom of movement, but in the joints, movement is restricted to human possibility.

The Brownies responsible for this do not share their secret, but say they did modify the eyelets they used so that the arms could not bend too far backwards and the legs could not bend too far forwards. When in use by a skilled partisan, these modern versions of the original string puppets look as though they are flowing in dance and all other kinds of movement.

Wooden toggles are no longer used to manipulate the doll, having been replaced by two wooden bars. The first of these bars holds the head string in the middle and the arm strings at each end. This bar is about half as long as the doll is tall. The legs, on the other hand, are attached to a bar that is held about a palmspan and a half above the other. The bar itself is as long as the legs of the doll.



1656- first official sighting by Helcrani merchant in hands of homeless sisters. He woos them and takes them under his wing.
1657- being built more efficiently by the Helcrani merchant’s Milken Brownie slaves.
1658- puppet sisters disappear from the streets of New Santhala.
1660- puppet sisters return to streets of New Santhala, apparently no longer homeless. One is a better dancer, and then other is a better puppet master with better puppets. They advertise the opening of a puppet shop owned by Helcrani merchant.
1662- puppet sisters die mysteriously. The Helcrani merchant’s business continues to flourish as his Brownies find a way to make better knees and elbows for his puppets.
1664- merchant hires dancers and artists to learn to dance along with the puppets at public and private performances around New Santhala.
1667- Helcrani merchant dies of an illness. His shopkeeper finds the cage in which the merchant has been keeping his Brownie slaves. Some of them are dead. Shopkeeper writes a book entitled, “The Puppet Master: thirty years of horror”, detailing the terrible secrets of the Helcrani merchant’s life.
1668- only three copies of “The Puppet Master” are sold before the puppet store goes up in flames. The shopkeeper escapes with minor burns. He continues the legacy of The String Dancers and hires the Milken Brownie slaves as actual employees to travel with them.
1670- string puppets are sold out of the String Dancers caravan as it passes through its route through New Santhala, <other cities>.

PLEASE NOTE: If it is in red, it is a comment of my own. Unlike usual, I won't be taking a look at grammar since this entry needs a fair touch of work. Instead, I'm attempting to help you understand and implement Valan's very extremely valid (sorry for the alliteration) points.


I'm going to suggest something wild here. Go to the bestiary section (we're in it), and take a look at the thread marked, "Need an idea or want to revise an entry?" Look through it. I very very HIGHLY suggest that you start out with an animal you like in that thread, write an entry on it, and work on something that isn't too groundbreaking. The problem with most of your entries, Perab, is that you're trying too hard to make something cool and unique that you're ignoring the need for it to be Santharian.

If you want to write your own fantasy world, nobody's going to stop you, but the fact remains that it can't exist within Santharia. Kudos to you for being unique, but uniqueness doesn't make an entry. The way it ties in is how an entry works, and this barely ties in to anything else Santharian. You've put it in a extra-fictional place (as in, fictional outside of Santharia). Even if it was in a Santharian place, you haven't even taken the time and effort to look for potential predators and prey. You've only said, "It'll eat anything it can that is made of meat."

Now, I know what I've said here has been harsh, and I'm sorry that they are that way, but that's just the crap end of the stick. You'll need to change an extremely large amount of what's in this entry in order for it to fit into Santharia. I stand by my suggestion that you go and find an animal entry that needs to be implemented since that will teach you a lot about referencing other Santharian works and it'll help you create ordinary creatures that are still unique.