Chat chat chat, rah rah rah, buzz buzz buzz, blah blah blah, rhubarb rhubarb (GLoGtober 1)

More idioms from the world of Pb.

BIRD AND RING: Left and right, respectively. See “birdwards” and “ringwards”.
BIRD AND SEASON [ARGUMENT]: Chicken-and-egg argument. Do the birds follow the pattern of the seasons, or do the seasons follow the pattern of the birds? See “birdwards”.
BIRDWARD: Clockwise. “Birdwards” because it is the direction the birds migrate over the course of a year. The birds’ arrival marks the coming of warm summer, and their absence marks cold winter. Given the lack of sun and moon (whatever those are, ask the Lunatics), the bird-patterns are how centennial time is kept.
CHAINKISSER: Lesser-than, pauper, of a lower class. When you’re on the chains, the only way to go is up.
DRAGGING A CATHEDRAL: To be carrying a burden or performing labor unnecessarily. An allusion to Saint Zinc’s trial of strength, in which he dragged a cathedral to the other side of a mote, and in so doing burst the first spider egg, to make sure his mortal son would be sheltered from rain.
[TO HAVE] CHLORINE’S LOVE: To repeatedly return to a toxic relationship. A reference to Saint Chlorine, whose embrace is so tight as to inevitably smother its recipient. Only the tempestuous misanthropy of her twin, Saint Sodium, can assuage her stifling affections.
[TO HAVE] LOVE LIKE WATER: To love deeply and richly. An allusion to the Courting of the Stars, and the eventual wedding of Saints Hydrogen and Oxygen. To have a love as steadfast and generous as theirs is a high compliment indeed.
[TO] HAVE THUNDER [IN ONESELF]: To never be able to stop working on something.
[TO HAVE] NEON’S NOSE: To be unnaturally perceptive. An allusion to Saint Neon the Great Hound, the only non-human Saint, known for his unerring olfaction.
[TO BE] ON THE CHAINS: At rock bottom.
[TO BE] ON THE ROCK: So old its origins aren’t popularly known. “The rock”, in this case, refers to the Golgothan Edifice, upon which is painted the first image.
[TO BE] PLAYING THE PITS: Gauche, out of style. A reference to a practice from the Saccharinian Conquest in which operas and plays that ceased to be in vogue with the cognoscenti and popular audience were performed in pantomime for prisoners in oubliettes, as a sort of salve to ease popular cognitive dissonance about the use of oubliettes.
POP: Magic user, occultist, thaumaturge. So called because they’re known for going “pop”; it’s a dangerous profession, you know.
RINGWARD: Counterclockwise. “Ringwards” because it is the direction of the Ringfire Rail’s circuit. The Ringfire Rail is the current hubris-fuelled magnum opus of the ever-ambitious Iodine Empire, upon which screams and soars the Lightning Rail.
ROCKHOPPER: Vagabond, mendicant. Hops from rock to rock. What do you want from me?

Delicacies on the Ocean of Oil (GLoGtober 4)

BLUEGRUBS. Those aren’t twinkling stars, but little blue larvae, letting off light as they pupate into stirges. If you harvest them, you get a little bit of salty, but not repulsive protein. The question is how to safely get up to the ceilings of the towering caverns they’re attached to without waking the broodmother stirges…

HAIRCAPS. The Ocean’s response to spaghetti. Anemone-like fungi that grow out of demon shit whose “hairs” are removed from the stalk and served with odiferous eel-sauce. The process of extracting the phosphorescent poison from its strands is one that demands intense culinary skill, meaning an innocent bowl of street noodles could be an unstable, even lethal, mutagen.

CRANIAL MUSH. Crack the skull of one of them Crik-Criks or Moodles or whatever’s handy and stir around the pinky-grey stuff in there. Toss in a couple of mushrooms, their eyeball/s, and their left big toenail, if you want that particular blue cheese flavor. Let sit over a campfire to warm and enjoy when lightly bubbling. Survival of the fittest, baby.

DIPSIES. Normally the Granny’s Lips, an oozing fungus reeking of sulfur and unearned sweat, induces the gag reflex in anything capable of it, but when dipped in oil, they become palatable enough to be safely eaten. “Dipsies” is also the name of a popular contest of fortitude: how many can you stomach before the oil can’t counteract the Lips’s natural stench?

TACKSLATE. Calcified minerals scraped off of the underside of limestone that’s been shit on by bats for many years. Often with a pinch of salt. It’s as utterly unappealing and liable to cause dental damage as eating a rock sounds, though post-scavenging societies often manufacture a stockpile in case of emergency or long journeys. Shut up ‘n eat yer stones.

SHADOW. In the most desperate of desperations, when hunger becomes all you can see and rage becomes all you can taste, you can eat your own shadow, if you can find yourself a scrap of light. It’s a dangerous position to be in, because hunger so ravenous doesn’t beget restraint, but those who grow fat on their own shadows inevitably succumb to become the pallid and cannibalistic Id, boogeyman figures in the Ocean’s mythopoetry.

GLOWSHOTS. A mix of haircap poison, oil, and moonshine, mixed into a dubiously luminescent shot. How people ingest this and still survive is a matter for theologians, not physicists, but it’s said that no one has ever drank more than 5 doses in their life and survived to tell the tale.

DREDGELETS. Information on a Dredglet nest’s location is valuable, but not as valuable as the skill required to spear and prepare them without being unceremoniously devoured. If you manage to catch one of these buggers swimming just below the rainbow-ripple surface, if you manage to drive the spear down at just the precise angle, if you manage to strip it of its spines and rip out its teeth and cut through the chitin to the stringy meat in the core, you can get the closest thing to a tasty, square meal the Ocean has to offer. But, and this is very important, you must be absolutely careful not to wake their mother in the process of fishing.

What's the buzz, tell me what's a-happenin'!

Idioms from the motescape, because I couldn’t be bothered to write up Potassium’s Pilgrimage, the Courting of the Stars, or the Craftsman Wars in full.

[TO BE] ANKHED: Converted, usually unwillingly. Though the imagery is that of the Church, it is colloquially used even in non-religious senses, though the ankh-shaped scarring burned into the backs of ex-heretics hint that there yet lurks truth in the old saying.

[TO BE] AIRSICK: Synonym for lovesick. See “Airy Eyes” for explanation.

[TO HAVE] AIRY EYES: To be ignorant of something, usually willfully. An allusion to St. Oxygen’s obliviousness to St. Hydrogen’s advances.

[TO HAVE] ANTIMONY’S EYES: To have bags under one’s eyes from sleepless nights of work. An allusion to St. Antimony’s commitment to craft.

BORON’S HAMMER: An all-purpose interjection of dismay. Melted down after the Craftsman Wars as a display of goodwill.

CYANIDE’S BOX: A distraction or diversion. An allusion to St. Carbon’s contest post-Craftsman Wars; St. Cyanide, throughout the Wars, was safeguarding their submission, a chest-sized box carved of ivory. When St. Carbon finally opened it to judge St. Cyanide’s artifice, she found that it was empty, as the time it took to appraise the box gave St. Cyanide time to steal her Death Mask.

[THE] DOWNS: Covert name for the Undermarket. “Wherever there is a city with doors that can be closed, there follows the shop that cannot sleep.”

GALLIE: Animal lover, often derogatory. Originating from St. Gallium, the very first to bond with a Naursic, Hamble (now the traditional name for all bonded Naursics). Naursics are indigeouus to the windward-side shadow of the Golgothan edifice, resembling crosses between news, elephants, and shaggy-haired deer.

[TO BE] HERCULEAN: To do something difficult but worthwhile or good. An allusion to Hercules, the only sinless Dwarf ever built by St. Boron.

[TO RECEIVE] THE KISS: To die. An allusion to St. Carbon’s Death Mask, as stolen by St. Cyanide following the Craftsman Wars (see “Cyanide’s Box”).

IODINE KNOWS: Nobody has a single fucking clue.

LUNATIC: Someone utterly insane. Originally, someone who believed in “the moon”, whatever that is.

[TO] LISTEN TO THE WHISPERS: To do something utterly unexpected, most often a betrayal. A reference to St. Potassium’s pilgrimage; while in the White Lands, his disciple St. Magnesium attempted to kill him after hearing something in the wind howling through the broken pillars and arches.

THE MOUNTAIN: A metaphor for enlightenment, or, more broadly, one’s goals. An allusion to the destination of St. Potassium’s pilgrimage, though some take umbrage with the idiom’s usage, claiming the Mountain is a literal place somewhere in the motescape.

[TO GET THE] NICKELJITTERS: The stage between the euphoria of learning something new and the confidence of mastery. An allusion to St. Nickel and his eternal apprenticeship under St. Antimony post-Craftsman Wars.

[TO] PASS THE SNIFF TEST: Given the pungency of magic and how many people have learned to smell Old World, passing the sniff test means being proved or suspected an arcane oddity. Frequently shortened; something simply “sniffs”.

[ONE’S] SOULMATE [IS] IN AN (ANIMAL): In reference to someone failing to find or seek romantic success. Since pure souls are redistributed upon death (or so it is believed), the common explanation for such failure is that one’s beloved is in a beast’s form. The more ludicrous the animal, the better.

[TO BE] READING POETRY: Proselytizing unwantedly or in poor faith. Like “Ankhed”, used broadly, despite clerical origins.

SCROLLSNIFFER: Out-of-touch intellectual. In a rather patronizing display, Mordent University’s front gates still retain this graffitied word from the Paint Riots.

[TO HAVE] WINGS ON [ONE’S] BOOTS: A straight person with a strained relationship to queer people, anywhere from fetishistic to homophobic. Derived from the winged boots of St. Mercury, the messenger who was corrupting St. Oxygen’s messages to try and get St. Hydrogen to fall for him instead.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

Pb: New Age (Rules)

 AND THE STARS KEEP CHURNING...