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twentyyearstoolate · 14 days ago

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To celebrate finally leaving one of the most toxic tables I've ever played at in my life, I'm going to give DMs and would-be DMs some advice on how to run a good campaign. Admittedly, this is more geared towards 5e and some of the advice will be specific to mechanics you'd find in crunchier games, but a lot of it is applicable regardless:

The rolls you ask for shape the story you tell

Something I see novice DMs do all the time (and novice players petition to do all the time) is call for rolls on actions that are decidedly unheroic - I'm not talking about players who run 'edgy' or evil-leaning characters, although that can be a problem if it's against the group wishes - I mean when players are asked to make Perception checks to see a monster standing in the road fifty feet away, or Investigation checks to search a corpse's pockets for coin or clues, or some form of Charisma check to get discounts (or spiteful markups!) at every shop they visit. Sometimes this also comes in the form of repeated checks at a certain task until somebody fails, because getting lost in the woods on a failed Survival roll is the way the DM planned for them to get introduced to the plot hook, and it takes upwards of five rounds of rolling because there's a ranger with expertise in the party.

Let me be clear - with the exception of the latter example, this is a fine way to run a game, if the story the group wants to tell is about heroes who bumble their way through tasks a normal person would accomplish without remark. I know this sounds facetious, but you genuinely can have a good time playing adventurers who can slay dragons and cast world-altering spells, yet trip over their own feet in the process of solving problems. Your table in that case might be better served with a system that espouses that kind of goofy incompetence in its flavor text, like Paranoia, for example, but you can tell any kind of story with any system, as long as everyone's having a good time.

However...

I imagine most of the time, the tables at which these rolls are called for would rather be telling stories about heroes who are competent enough to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time, and it's frustrating to them not only to have to risk failure for the most mundane activities, but also to play renowned scholars and practiced explorers who fail to recall common knowledge and get lost walking in a straight line on a well-trod path.

Please note, DMs, that you are under no obligation to give anything to your players, but everything you set against a roll of the dice chances a failure, and information and resources gated behind these checks run the risk of not being discovered or learned. If there's something your player characters (and by extension, their players) need to know or do in order to progress through a story, and it's not something of remarkable difficulty and/or great importance? Assume at least one of them would succeed given enough time, and give them the knowledge.

Learn to use redirection to this end, too - if players are badgering shopkeepers for magic items and such, it's just as easy and believable to tell them "My supply of magical ore was stolen by bandits" or "The shipment still hasn't arrived from the mountain pass that runs through 'rocks fall everyone dies' cave" as it is to tell them "no, you can't have that," and you can do that regardless of how many 20s they roll because those resources were never going to be gated by an ability check in the first place. Players get a quest hook, you get to point them in the direction of what you had prepped for the session, and it's still up to you whether or not they find what they asked for.

Fail Forward

If I had a dollar for every time a session got hung up on a failed skill check, I could afford all the Dwarven Forge I want. Very often, rookie DMs assume the PCs will succeed at most of the checks they've planned, gate progress behind that success, and fail to consider how the story moves forward if they should fail, leading to PCs sitting around waiting for more plot to happen to them so they can get back to the adventuring. Where you have planned checks, make sure that both success and failure provide a viable path forward. Try to have results in mind for both whenever you ask for a check.

Instead of a failed survival check causing PCs to lose the trail of the creature they're tracking, make them wander into a hostile creature's territory unknowingly, or delay the search to the point that the creature becomes aware of their presence and can plan an ambush. If a persuasion check to gather information fails, give PCs false information that pushes them toward a trap, or have the NPCs give the information at a cost - perhaps the Mayor needs an infestation dealt with before they'll reveal which direction the ranger went. Frequently, failure on checks is well complimented by this "Yes, but..." methodology. Systems sometime describe it as "Success at a cost." Again, redirection is your friend here - it's very easy to make failed checks like these point where you want players to go. Keep in mind that there's two sides to this coin - players who succeed, plan ahead, or use features and resources wisely should be rewarded with advantages, extra resources, and hidden information.

Make your players feel seen

Players create characters ostensibly because they're interested in roleplaying those characters. Make sure they get opportunities to do so in a world they can engage in, and that reacts to their presence. Assume the PCs know things their players don't, and inform the players of these things where it's appropriate. Also assume that friendly and neutral NPCs notice their characters even when they're not onscreen, and seek to ally with or invest in them.

You have a Wizard in the party who's an archaeologist by trade? Won't she be pleased to know that the artifact that was just namedropped has ties to a dig site they were at a few months ago. There's a barbarian who spends their free time in underground fighting rings? What luck, that instead of having to make fruitless checks to find more bouts, the local fighters' guild recognizes him and invites him to talk to the guildmaster because more lucrative opportunities await for both of you (or if the last few bouts have been unsuccessful, to offer to scout combatants ahead of time to give them an edge, if they'll do the guild a favor first.)

Players love it when DMs say "I share your vision of the character you want to play, and I want to help tell your story" with hooks like these. I love getting detailed backstories from my players with mentions of specific places and people, because the work to write a story that will compel that player is already mostly done. Good players will hand you plot points alongside their character - use them, it's free real estate and it all but guarantees engagement.

Let players have (some) fun

Everybody gets their enjoyment from roleplaying games in different ways. Thespians are drawn to tabletop like moths to flame. Quite frequently you'll get players with talky characters who love to put on airs and accents and yak for hours if you let them. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - some of the best sessions you can have are ones where a die never touches the table because players are engrossed in discussion with each other and/or some bit NPC that you'd planned on throwing away after they did their job - Just make sure everyone at the table is actually having fun with the conversation, and be ready to move it on if people start getting bored.

You will also get players at your table who have an 'unbeatable build' planned for your game, the kind who dig through all the books and make characters with a weird bullshitty multiclass, looking for features that key off of each other. I've found the best thing to do is to just ask these players what the wombo combo they're planning on using is. Review it with them, make sure it works the way they think it does, find ways that it can be thwarted (and make the player aware of these - nobody likes being pantsed halfway through a session,) and most importantly... let them use it, not always, but enough that they can feel good about it - there's nothing quite so frustrating as building a character with a shtick that never gets used because your DM takes pains to stymie it with every encounter they build.

At the end of the day, the DMs goal is to tell a story with the players that everyone enjoys and contributes to. You should pick up quickly what each player is looking for - try to facilitate the experience they want.

Roll on your tables ahead of time

I've been in games where an inordinate amount of time was chewed up by the DM rolling to generate random encounters and treasure on lookup tables, or to decide the weather, or to make names for NPCs, the whole gamut. Please, please, please sort this out ahead of time, not just because spending ten minutes rolling and sifting through spreadsheets kills the momentum of your game, but because if you're truly relying on the tables, you will end up generating a result that wrecks your campaign, whether it's an encounter that curbstomps your level 1 party, or a deck of many things that derails the whole story because it's a magic item with yet another lookup table with catastrophic outcomes - in both of those cases, you need to do these rolls behind the curtain so your judgement calls aren't on display for the whole table to see.

If you need to have random encounters, determine ahead of time what the encounter is and how it's laid out, so that your players aren't spending half the session waiting on you to set up an encounter you didn't plan for. If you must roll for magical items, roll ahead of time, and if they end up on hostile NPCs, ensure that it makes sense for them to both have these items, and that where applicable, they can use them against PCs. Nothing quite like defeating bandits who had resources like potions of healing or a cape of the mountebank, and putting aside that they might be wildly inappropriate treasure for the encounter, it becomes a point of contention that for some reason they didn't think it was prudent to use these things in the fight that preceded their discovery.

How to avoid TPKs

It's an all-too-familiar scenario - An encounter that should have been a challenge ends up being a pushover. You juice the next fight with something a little stronger than your players should be able to handle, but somehow they make it look even easier than the last one. You pull out all the stops. Two PCs are downed in two turns, and your big bad still has their breath weapon on deck. Now you either have to pull punches, kill characters, or ass-pull a deus ex machina to prevent the end of the campaign. What happened?

This section of advice leans specific to 5th edition D&D, but the lessons should be applicable to other systems with significant crunch. Frequently, DMs run encounters that swing wildly one way or another for a number of reasons:

Hostile creatures don't use all the tools available to them in an encounter, including consumables, cover, and concealment.

The encounter has too few hostiles compared to players, and they gang up, or too many, and they get overwhelmed.

DMs frustrated by an apparent lack of challenge plan an encounter that TPKs because it's much too hard for the group.

PCs and/or hostiles get extremely (un)lucky, and a series of good or bad rolls either trivializes or botches the encounter.

DMs who fall prey to this, please understand - encounters are not supposed to be nailbiting tossups. CR isn't meant to be a measure of an encounter's lethality, it's built around draining the party's resources. PCs who expend their resources wisely should reliably win, and you want the PCs to win, because the alternative is that the game ends, often in disappointment and resentment. If you're regularly running encounters with CRs that are 4+ levels higher than the APL? You're going to have one or more PCs die, and they will be rightfully upset that you put their character in a deathtrap.

That said, it's frustrating when it feels like players can trivialize encounters. Keith Ammann's The Monsters Know What They're Doing offers excellent insight into running encounters with specific groups of creatures. I highly recommend it for DMs who run 5e, but I've got some summarized advice that's more applicable to most games:

Creatures encountered on their home turf will use it to their advantage. Hiding, lying in wait, submerging, flying, burrowing, and climbing are all good ways to get an edge on players who don't have the natural advantages the creatures do.

Creatures know there's strength in numbers. If they outnumber players, they'll act more boldly. Conversely, if they begin to dwindle, they'll know they're more likely to be targeted, and fight conservatively.

Creatures always make use of the best options available to them. No dragon will withhold a breath weapon just because one of the PCs looks a little wobbly. Resources do not sit untouched just for PCs to claim as spoils. You don't have to antagonize unconscious characters, but fair fights do not pull punches.

Intelligent creatures will not wade into an open field to get peppered with arrows and spells. If they have ranged attacks of their own, they will make them from the safety of as much cover and concealment as they have available.

Intelligent creatures who are in communication with the world at large will learn of exemplary individuals like the PCs who might threaten them, and prepare accordingly. It is perfectly reasonable for big bads to scry on the PCs, or lean on a network of spies and informants to suss out PC tactics and plan around them, and only the worst villains don't have an exit strategy or two in their pocket, should the PCs prevail.

Wounded creatures, unless purpose-built or magically compelled, do not zealously throw themselves onto swords - they will almost always prefer to run and live than to try to fight their way out of a bind. If the battle's not looking good for them, they will flee. If they can't flee, they will surrender. If they can't surrender, they will beg, cower, or lash out in a desperate attempt to escape.

All this taken into consideration, fortune is fickle, and it's still very possible that a PC might die. Adventuring is not for the faint of heart, after all. Whether it happens in the moment or at session 0, ask the players if they're okay with character death. If not, it is acceptable to have an NPC intervene to prevent or reverse that death. If so, and if it should happen, make it meaningful. Give the player some last words as they bleed out, and perhaps let the remaining PCs roleplay a memorial for their fallen comrade when they're out of danger. The stakes have to be meaningful if player choice is to have any impact.

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I hope any part of this has been useful and informative for up-and-coming GMs. Above all else, remember that you're here to have fun, that mistakes will be made, and that as long as you're with friends you love and trust, you're 90% of the way to a good game.

And players, cut your GM some slack and go with the flow, okay? They're here to have fun too.

#ttrpg #d&d 5e #tabletop roleplaying

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mermaid--bride · 1 year ago

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Pedrinho, Saci and Tio Barnabé

Laito: What do you have for me, Slut-chan~?

Ayato: Yeah! Speal it, Fake Blue!

Maria: Alright. Subaru is a little boy called Pedrinho who has a huge adventurous spirit. He loves visiting the farm and specially listening to the stories Uncle Barnabe, who's Laito's character, has to tell him. One day, he tells the boy the legend of the Saci Perere. A one legged spirit who moves around in a whirlwind, causing problems and playing pranks.

Ayato: One legged... That's me then right? What else?

Maria: He tells the boy the process to capture the Saci. That way the spirit becomes attached to him. All he needs is a straw sieve and a bottle in a windy day. The bottle must have a stopper closing it with a cross drawn on top to prevent the Saci from escaping.

Laito: Nfu So we are turning Ayato into a genie in a bottle? I'm not against it~ Fufufu

Subaru: Hehe Dumbest genie in history.

Ayato: Shut up, you two!

And you, Fake Blue, should give Ore-sama a better clue! That one is horrible!

Laito: Come on, Ayato-kun~ At least try having a bit of fun~

Let's see, maybe the garden is a good place to look. If you need wind to get a Saci, no better place than outside.

Subaru: Right. Let's get this over with.

And you don't stay too close to that old man, alright! It's bad enough you let him cast such stupid spell on you!

Laito: Nfu How cute, Subaru-kun is all worried about Slut-chan's safety~

Subaru: Tch! O-Of course not! I just don't want this to get worst than it already is!

Laito: Sure, sure~ Well, I must say this really bothers me too.

I don't want this man anywhere near my Slut-chan~ Nfu

Ayato: Alright let's go, you both! I'm getting tired of moving around in one leg!

#halloween event #halloween #diabolik lovers #dl #dl oc #sitio do picapau amarelo #Saci #Saci perere #Pedrinho #Tio Barnabé #Laito #laito sakamaki #Subaru #subaru sakamaki #Ayato #ayato sakamaki #maria #maria ramos #fanfic

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florencwrites · 4 years ago

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ECHOES, PAGE NINE 〚dreamwastaken〛

Sam allows Dream to write a singular message, one that he so desperately seeks. A visitor comes to cheer her up, he never fails to. series homepage

The walls of the portal room had been smoldering and sizzling ever since it was built, however, even though the prison itself was built from the same stone they were not one and the same ore.

You see, the portal room had been built from stone extracted from the deepest of caves, lukewarm water with scorching magma. They had been melted and merged until they ultimately would form the blistering mineral they were now.

The prison itself needed more stone than the measly chamber, obviously. So, to cut costs, the prison itself was built from surface lava, a stream that had appeared in splotches across a field somewhere close to the mountain ranges. The water they had used was icey, freshly molten away from the very peaks of the extreme hills. This made it easier to not only mine but also place, gather, and lean against for prolonged periods of time.

Which is exactly what was happening for hours on end, within the tepid confines.

Dream had never felt more useless, bored, simply.. Blasé. Spiritless, indifferent. He could keep mustering up words, carving them down into his singular chest with the blunt pen he had received from the warden. He had been given a full chest of books, and when he grew excited for new reading material; he quickly learned for them to be empty. Devoid of a singular word. All of them.

Sam had rolled the unsharpened pen over the netherite hedge with a level of disinterest even he was quite jealous of. He had shot up from the corner of his cell where he had been bathing his feet in a built-in pond of sorts. His wet feet splattered against the tiles, sliding away from where they were set down in the slightest. "Is she still there?"

"Sam!" He knew not to lean on the bricks themselves, having learned the amount of voltage on them the hard way many a time before. "Sam! Is she still there?"

The man had already stepped back onto the platform that would take him back through the drowning lava. "I'm not doing any of this for you, I need you to know that."

He finally turned back to face Dream, adding, "Write her something."

"Anything?"

"A goodbye, Dream."

She, however, had been oblivious to her friend's unwavering protectiveness. She had not a clue that the letters her lover wrote had been disbanded piece by piece, only because they didn't convey the message Sam so desperately desired.

There was not a doubt in his mind that their parting would ultimately be best for her and her mental well-being. Dream, however, was a stubborn man. He was not someone who got intimidated easily, he was patient and there would always be that one thing Sam could never account for, nor change; Dream's love was set in stone.

It was carved in the walls of every cave he had explored, it was etched into his skin with runny ink. He was feverish with love, whether it was the matching prints they had gotten together that had gotten infected after all, or whether it was simply his unfaltering affection for her.

They had taken away everything, his freedom, his friends, his mask, even his bright eyes had been dulled by their hands; but they would never take her away.

Sam spent his days in the library, hours upon hours spent exploring the aisles and scrutinizing seemingly endlessly long pieces of text in the hopes of finding a way to break the spell he had on her. His every waking moment was brought to by the windowsill, surrounded by towering piles of ancient books.

And, was his mind not occupied by the swirling letters, his eyes would always trail around the waterline in search of her. Not much of a search it was, though, she would always be sat exactly where he reckoned her to be.

He let his eyes wander over the permanent sorrow etched into her face, the trail of grass floating on the waves. "What I'd give to take your place."

She knew there were little men who were as persistent as her, who could drown themselves in their wit for as long as she had. Her tears had dried, deciding to spare themselves for when she truly needed them. Her shoulders were raw with the aches they had had to endure for the longest time, the uncontrollable shaking they would endure for the entirety of every night.

She never really slept anymore, sleeping meant to see him in the worst state imaginable. However, that wasn't the worst thing. The nightmares she could handle. Seeing him all bloodied and tortured, some days he would seem content, happy. Those hurted more.

The worst thing about the nightmares was that whenever she awoke from one of them, for a split second her mind would reassure her, "It's just a dream."

A blade to the heart, constricted airways every morning when she inevitably had to come to the realization that it was not just a dream. The nightmare becomes reality, the hunter becomes the hunted.

"Hey." A scratchy voice sounded from a few feet behind her. "Still sad, huh?"

She rapidly crawled to her knees, pulling her feet from the water that had started to wilt her skin. "You fucker."

She embraced him as he, too, fell to his knees. "You absolute prick."

A smile on her face, bright enough to light up the entirety of the realm. He, almost instinctively, returned her beam, his eyes squinting with the force of it. He'd missed her. "I'm a minor, you can't swear in my presence."

"Please, just shut your mouth for one goddamn second." She giggled in his shoulder, oh, how she missed the times he had been a little boy. The days where she could pick him up with a small huff, throw him on the back of her saddle and return him to his father after another one of his little escapades. How Phil would always thank her with the most genuine eyes, telling her that he wished he could promise that it wouldn't happen again, but how it probably would again tomorrow.

"You're mean to me, I'm gonna tell Philza you said that." He pulled from her embrace, deciding to sit criss-cross from her in the grass, letting the blades tickle his exposed ankles. He truly needed new jeans. "I reckon you missed me more than I did you."

"I'm sure I did, Tommy."

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pixiedurango · 4 years ago

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actual HELPFUL Skyrim mods

I’ve been wanting to post about modding my Skyrim experience for a while now. Only the sheer amount of installed and running mods made it an overwhelming endeavor which I couldn’t handle as we speak of 200+ mods as of today. Now I decided to break it down a bit to make it a reasonable post (or a bunch of) that might provide something helpful for the ones that - like me - love the casual game and attempt to find things that help me focusing on the story experience. (If any of you considers those to come cheating, probably it is but I do I and you do you and I wish you all the best. Bye.) I’m going to link to the nexus so everyone can find everything easily. (Also: Power and happiness to all the modders out there. You guys are awesome! 1. LockpickPro just as simple and functional as it sounds. Never want a game without it. I simply lack any patience of the vanilla lockpick system. Also saves a lot of perks you simply won’t have to invest into the lockpicking skills-tree.

2. Simply knock Have you ever known the struggle coming to a house at night, where the guy who sent you on a quest is sleeping and you have to wait for them to wake up? Or being a righteous character who has to get something from somewhere and the door is locked all the fucking time and you have to lockpick the door to get in do fulfill your quest? Worry no more. Simply knock and any friendly npc is most likely to get up and open the door for you whenever.

3. Barenziah Quest Markers Really Bethesda? 24 stones without a single clue? It’s like the equivalent to the dreaded shard search in Inquisition and it sucks just as much. I refuse to go without that markers anymore.

4. Convenient Horses I rarely do horse riding in Skyrim but when I do, I just don’t want my horsey to follow me everywhere through fast travel. Hence I use this handy mod to switch off that annoying feature.

5. Valuable merchants Simply rises the amount of gold to trade for up to 10.000 gold for every merchant in Skyrim.

6. soulgem crafting No link here because I obviously use a mod that is not to find anymore on the nexus and I can’t recommend any of the many current mods because I don’t know about how they work because they do different things than mine which basically just lets you upgrade soul gems at a forge y the ratio 2:1 - BUT I can highly recommend the Acquisitive Soul Gems Multithreaded mod that will prevent lesser/tinier souls to jump into your valuable grand/black soul gems. Each soul will only go into a fitting soul gem and I find this is very neat of them.

7. Run for your lives is a handy mod that makes civilians flee into their houses or seek shelter anywhere in case of a dragon attack instead of running into the way, getting themselves killed and involuntarily raising your dragonborn’s bounty.

8. Enchanters Merchant Sets up a merchant stand in Whiterun where you can buy every vanilla enchantment via random items. This is probably really close to cheating but getting started with enchanting early in the game is always essential for me so I know I can buy the “carry weight” and “fortify sneak” enchantment (and anything else that comes in handy) early on. Of course you’ll need some (a lot) gold so its not THAT easy peasy anyway.

9. Ars Metallica Smithing mod. I actually use one called smithing 2.0 which I can’t find on the nexus anymore (it seems to be available on the steam workshop though) but it does basically the same things so I think I might link this one here.

10. Armored mage robes I fairly often play mages and it always bugged me that their robes are not armored at all. So this mod fixed that. In the same light I love to use JS Armored Circlets because no matter what I play, warrior or mage, I HATE helmets... I mean I spend 5 hours in the CC what do you expect? Hiding my pretty baby under an ugly helmet? Nope, don’t think so.

11. Glowing Ore Veins 300 - Is a life (and time) saver for me. I think the ore’s glowing is super helpful without being too bright. But I remember before running this mod even in mines I had difficulties to find the ores to mine.

12. Arrow Conversion Spell - Is this cheating already? Maybe, but its actually super convenient to simply use a spell to upgrade all your arrows into the highest arrow class you have in your inventory. At some point you’ll end up with way too many arrows to ever use and you can go and sell them to make easy gold. I think most of them mods are pretty common and well known but maybe there are peeps out there who are still new to modding and can make some use of this. Also, if people have more recommendations in that light of usefulness, be my guest, reblog and ad.

Also check out my post about my favorite armor mods

#Skyrim #Skyrim mods #Skyrim modding #TES V #The elder srolls 5

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votederpycausemufins · 3 years ago

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Aaaaaa I’m posting this on mobile how do things work here? But i also have no impulse control so I’m posting anyway until waiting for a computer again.

chapter 4 of scattered au fic go! Au by @hermitcraftheadcanons and I @helleborusangel because they are frembd and I show my care this way!

“Oh sweet sweet dirt. I’ll never get mad at you again. You don’t just fill chests, you’re soft and safe.”

“Uh Ren, you good there?”

“Give me a moment my dude.” The wolf shifter replied, lying on the ground to hug it. “I’ve been stuck there since I spawned. Not sure what happened, but it looks like you found me.”

“Have you been looking at chat?” Etho asked, and Ren looked towards the ravine again. Looking back in it, Etho could see the comm sitting at the bottom. “Well, you’re not the only one in a situation like that. In fact, you’re in a better situation than most people seem to be in.”

“What do you mean?” Ren asked, and then he was passed Etho’s comm. Death messages filled the screen, appearing as he looked. Scrolling up, there were plenty more. “Why hasn’t anyone said something in chat?”

“Because he can’t. Nothing we try to type will send. The only thing coming through are deaths and achievements. I spawned with Beef and Joe at the real spawn, but we were the only ones there. I’m not sure how, but I managed to die, and now I’m here.”

Ren nodded. “Well, now that I’m on the surface, I’m gonna go get some wood enough for a pickaxe. Then I’m jumping back in that ravine to get my comm.” Etho raised an eyebrow. “Hey! There’s water for me to land in. I just couldn’t get to it from my cliff.”

“Well, I’ll join you. I don’t have any gear since I died, so we’ve got the same situation.”

Ren nodded and looked to the closest tree, part of a dark oak forest. “Hey Etho, I saw Mumbo was dealing with illagers. You think that could be the forest he’s in?”

“Maybe. But let’s start with getting ourselves geared up. It would probably be worse for him if we showed up and died before he could get out.”

“I guess you’re right.” Ren agreed as he went over to one of the trees and started breaking the logs. “Still might be good to see if the place is even there. I mean, I’m just suggesting he could be here.”

Etho shrugged. “Well, maybe we’ll be lucky. I was close to Joe and Beef, so maybe others are close to each other too.”

Ren nodded and finished gathering wood, now heading back to the ravine. Etho followed, not having crafted anything for himself, so Ren was the only one mining stone, the ninja just taking half of what Ren mined up for himself. Then both of them made sets of stone tools, going deeper into the ravine to gather coal and iron.

The two of them built around themselves as night finally fell, torches placed throughout the ravine to try and keep monsters from spawning. “You know, regen isn’t working right. So not only are we spread out, but we all have ten hearts until we die, no matter how much we eat. It might be different if we used gapples and potions, but figured you should know.”

“Thanks for the heads up man.” Ren thanked. “My guess is it’s just natural regen that’s been disabled, so apples and potions should do fine.” Then he pulled out his comm. “I hope Impulse will come out of this okay. He’s really dying a lot.”

Etho nodded. “Yeah, hopefully we can figure out what temple he spawned in.” And then he pulled out his own comm. We’ve still got coordinates, so memorizing that will be key. We’re at zero zero, so that’s easy enough to remember.”

Ren messed with his own comm. “Yeah, we’re still kind of far though. I say in the morning, we deal with checking the forest first since it’s right here.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Mumbo was backed into a corner. He hadn’t stopped trying to escape since he had gotten so close so many times. “Please, if you want me to leave, I can do that! I don’t have anything, and I’m not going to tell anyone where you are. I just want to get out of here!” He had started pleading a bit a few deaths ago, and was still doing it because it had made the vindicators hesitate for a moment.

He expected that was going to be all that would happen this time as well, but instead, the axes never fell. Mumbo had his eyes closed, but then hesitantly opened them to see what was going on. The vindicators were standing to the side, the evoker now right in front of him. He grumbled in a language Mumbo didn’t really understand, leaving him confused. “I’m sorry… I’m not sure I understand you.”

The evoker sighed and waved his arms with a spell. Mumbo held his arms up to brace himself, but nothing happened. Or at least, nothing to hurt him happened. “If you don’t want to be here. Why are you here?”

Mumbo looked up. The evoker still had what he could best describe as a villager accent, but he could understand them now. “I… I don’t know. Some friends and I were just trying to move to a new world, and instead of wherever I was supposed to show up, I didn’t. So instead I just keep appearing in that bedroom of yours.”

“And I should believe this why? Why leave a world behind? Alone I might understand, but with friends?”

“I… we… We like to explore different worlds and… help advance them.” Mumbo answered, being careful with his words which the evoker noticed. “At a certain point, we move on to try with a new world. It’s just this time, something went wrong.”

“I see.” The evoker said with narrowed eyes. “Well, empty your pocket. Prove you have nothing.” And Mumbo did just that. “Very well. You may leave.” And then the evoker cast one more quick spell and the redstoner vaguely recognized it was bad omen. Mumbo nodded and left, hearing a quick ‘good riddance’ before he finally was able to make it out of the mansion.

The moment he was out, Mumbo was glad to see it was now day at this point. He took a deep breath of fresh air before running over to a tree. Unfortunately, even though it was day, the forest provided enough cover for monsters to spawn. Before Mumbo could really react, he was killed by a skeleton and back in the mansion, yelling in frustration.

Vindicators quickly ran to the room ready to attack, but instead they were met by Mumbo, who was half yelling, half crying, and pulling at his hair. “I can’t leave. I’m never getting out of here. I’m cursed or something. Who knows if anyone’s coming to get me. I could be stuck here forever. No, I’m going to be stuck here forever. No might about it.”

There was a noise from one of the vindicators and Mumbo looked over before lying down on the wool next to himself. “I don’t care. Just kill me. I’ll just respawn here anyway. And it’s not like running will do anything.”

He closed his eyes and just waited there, but he wasn’t killed. Instead, he heard footsteps walking away, leaving him alone. Mumbo just stayed there, trying to think what he could possibly do next. His first thought was to get killed again as there was a new set of footsteps coming his way, but again, nothing happened.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” Mumbo recognized that that was probably the evoker. He didn’t respond though, not really having the willpower to do so. “Even if you did, something seems to be keeping you here.”

“Can you just lock me up or something? Then I’ll be out of the way.” Mumbo replied, voice muffled by wool.

“Oh believe me, I would like nothing more than to do that. This place is outfitted with a cell. The thing is, I doubt your patron would approve of that and I would rather not get on the bad side of that.”

Mumbo paused, confused. He took a few seconds to process what the evoker had said, then he pushed himself up enough to look over at the illager. “I’m sorry, my what?”

“Oh dear void you don’t even know. Why would they even- No, questioning might make things worse. Oh void he probably got put here on purpose.” They said, talking more to themself than Mumbo as they pinched the bridge of their nose. “Look, don’t cause trouble and you can stay here. Do whatever you please if it’s going to get you to leave.”

Mumbo was still confused, but after a few moments of stunned silence, he nodded and the evoker left. Did he have any clue what was going on? Absolutely not, but at least he likely wasn’t going to die again anytime soon.

“Come on Ren, we’ve looked at every inch of the forest and the sun is going down again. Between you and me, if he was here, we would have found him. We would have found anyone if they were here.”

“I feel like I can’t do nothing.” Ren complained, tapping his foot in frustration.

“We can still get more gear and get back to spawn. That’s not nothing. The more people we can get to spawn, the better. It means more numbers so that eventually we can go help anyone who’s stuck. I mean, there’s people in the nether and end. Do you really think you and I could solve that on our own like this?”

Ren looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t say anything. He just followed Etho when he started to walk in the direction of spawn. Ren kept them supplied with food and even got them beds from killing every sheep he saw. Etho on the other hand made sure to keep wood, stone and coal stocked, gathering enough iron for them to both finish up their sets of armor and tools.

When night finally fell again, they set up another small base for the night. Etho went staircasing for more ores while Ren stayed at the base. Their original plan was when Etho came back up, Ren would switch off and take up mining instead, and they would do that until morning. But before Etho could even return once, Ren watched as the sky suddenly started to move rapidly, and before long the sun was on the horizon.

“Etho! Ethooo!” Ren shouted, running down the stairs. Further down, Etho heard the shifter yelling and immediately thought the worst of the situation. He dropped what he was doing and started going up, sword in hand ready to defend against whatever problem was happening. But instead, when he finally met up with Ren in the middle of the stairs, he was smiling and his tail wagging out of control. “The sun’s up!”

“What? I wasn’t gone that long, was I?”

Ren just took out his comm. “No, look. Grian managed to do a day shift!”

Etho read the messages on the comm.

Grian has made the advancement [Sweet Dreams]

Grian went to sleep. Sweet dreams!

Grumbot has made the advancement [Sweet Dreams]

Jrumbot has made the advancement [Sweet Dreams]

“Huh, we weren’t able to do that.” Etho said, rubbing his chin. Since they had gotten enough wool for beds, the two of them had both tried sleeping before actually mining, but nothing had happened.

“Yeah, but if at least someone can do it, that’s going to be good for everyone! I bet Bdubs is mad about it though.”

“Don’t say that. Who knows where he is.”

“Well, he hasn’t gotten a single death, so I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“He also hasn’t gotten any achievements, so he might just be stuck somewhere.”

“I guess you’re right.” Ren strugged. “Well, since it’s day, do you want to keep traveling, or are we mining some more?”

“Travel’s better. I’ll grab what’s useful and join you in a few minutes. You pack up the camp.” Ren nodded and ran back upstairs. By the time Etho finally returned with his loot, the place was mostly packed up, though the cobble walls and beds still sat there, along with a sign pointing towards spawn. “Still working on packing?”

“No actually. I’m leaving some stuff here. If anyone stumbles across it, they’ll have some supplies, a place to set their spawn, and know where to go for spawn. Plus, we’ve got our spawns set, so if we do die, we’ll be closer to true spawn when we restart.”

“Hmm, good idea.” Etho nodded, then looked to Ren. “You’ve got enough wool for us to make more beds as we go?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve got plenty. Some of it is in different colors, but if we kill a few skeletons, we can redye them to be white.”

“Assuming that still works here.”

“Yeah, if now, we throw them out and I carry around white dye to use on sheep before I kill them.”

Etho pulled out some iron. “You know we can just make shears.”

“Yeah, but we also get meat out of it. Unless you want to sit around and grow wheat. Or hope we get some apples while chopping trees.”

“Alright, fine. Mutton it is. Can you hand me over some of the wool just in case. If you happen to die, I’d like a way to keep a new spawn while I wait for you.”

“Fork over some of that iron and you got yourself a deal.” Ren said, pulling out his woll. Etho complied and the two traded resources before starting to travel once more. Everything was going well for a while, but then they passed a surface cave, and a noise from inside caught Ren’s attention. “Hey! There’s a skeleton in there!”

Before Etho could say anything, Ren was racing off to attack the monster and steal its bones. Etho followed behind to make sure the wolf shifter didn’t die, only to nearly be shot when he entered the cave. In front of him, Ren was attacking the skeleton, which was trying to stay away from him and attack at the same time. Etho pulled out his sword and helped to attack the skeleton, and soon the monster was dead.

Ren immediately jumped to grab the bones, turning them into bone meal and then into dye. Etho looked around the cave to make sure there weren’t any monsters left, and for a moment, he thought there weren’t. But then, from a tunnel off of the cave, Etho saw the familiar green face of a creeper making its way towards Ren.

“Hey, look out!” Etho shouted. Ren looked up towards Etho who was coming at him with sword drawn. The wolf shifter then turned to look the other way, and saw the creeper starting to glow. Time seemed to slow as Etho hit the creeper away with the sword, though the slash managed to catch Ren as well in the process. Though the creeper had been knocked away slightly, it wasn’t enough to stop it from exploding, so a moment later, it did that.

As the dust settled, Etho was glad to see that he was alive, and looking over to Ren, he was as well. They were both low on health, but as long as they were careful from here on out, they would be fine. But then Etho heard growling. It wasn’t the growling of a zombie, no. It was something that normally was never meant for a player.

Etho turned and saw Ren’s sunglasses cracked from the explosion. His shirt was ripped a bit where Etho’s sword had sliced into it, blood dripping from the wound it caused. The shifter’s teeth were bared, and his normally brown eyes were red. Etho tried to back up, but before he could go far, Ren attacked him.

Etho was slain by Renthedog

#hermitcraft #scattered au #rendog #ethoslab #mumbo jumbo #grian #grumbot #jrumbot

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raeynbowboi · 5 years ago

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How to Play as Violet Parr in DnD 5e

To be fair the Invisible/Force Fields power combo is a surprisingly common trope, so you can also view this as how to plays as the Invisible Woman Susan Storm among other characters with this power set, I was just introduced to Violet first, and I’m a bigger fan of Disney and Pixar than I am of Marvel.

First up for Race, we’re mostly human but genetically mutated. It’s never made clear how supers came to be, but it seems to just be a genetic mutation, so Violet is a Variant Human. Variant Humans get +1 in two stats of their choice, we’ll choose DEX and INT. Luckily for this build, we only need 2 stats to be as maxed as possible so the rest can be dumped in the trash where they belong. Variant Humans also get to pick up a free feat, and here are your best options: Defensive Duelist - While wielding a finesse weapon, when an enemy makes a melee attack, add your proficiency bonus to your AC. A high AC means stronger forcefields which means fewer attacks are going to hit you. Also, because Abjuration Wizards get Spell Resistance which not only improves spell saving throws but reduces damage taken from spells, this melee-exclusive dodging aid is a fantastic option to further capitalize on her forcefields by reducing the odds of spells working on her and on melee attacks getting past her defenses. The only drawback is that Violet does not canonically use any finesse weapons. However, if your DM is willing to handwave the finesse requirement by letting Violet use a shield for this feat, it could still be in character for her. Fade Away - Okay, this is a Gnome exclusive feat but it works very nicely for her. Immediately upon taking damage, Violet will turn invisible, allowing her to run away or recuperate herself. As Violet’s invisibility is a little harder to incorporate into her build, this is a great way to give her another route to becoming invisible during combat.

Medium Armor Master - Only if you have proficiency with medium armor, you no longer have disadvantage on stealth checks which is great for an invisible girl with a knack for stealth. Your AC increases by an extra +1 when your DEX is 16 or more.

Moderately Armored - You gain proficiency with Medium Armor and Shields if you don’t already have it, and +1 STR or DEX. Not necessary if Violet takes a few levels in Cleric, Fighter, or Paladin.

Shield Master: You can use your shield to push enemies away, add your shield’s AC bonus to DEX saving throws, and Uncanny Dodge becomes Evasion.

Violet isn’t above defying her mother and sneaking on the plane, but then later on, Violet is the one advocating for following their mother’s instructions and doing as they’re told. Thus, I’d label her as Neutral Good. She does what she thinks is right, which isn’t always following the rules, but not always breaking it either.

For background, City Watch has been my standard go-to for super heroes. However, she’s dealing with a secret identity and is technically a criminal since super heroes aren’t currently legal. Secret Identity variant Charlatans get proficiency with Deception so you can bluff to your boyfriend that you’re totally normal and Sleight of Hand so you can sneakily take evidence about criminal activity.

The Class Weirdo

Let’s get this out of the way first, you are an Abjuration Wizard of at least 14 levels. By 14th Level you get temporary hit points equal to 2x your Wizard level + your INT mod when you cast an Abjuration spell. News flash, Mage Armor and Shield are both Abjuration spells. Literally any time you raise your AC, you’re getting an instant, automatic base 33 temp HP points, and 45 if you go maxed out Wizard. But more importantly, at 14th level, you not only have advantage on resisting spells, but when they do hit you, they deal resisted damage, leaving only melee attackers as a viable threat. Trust me, you want to be a 14th level Abjuration Wizard. However, there are a few other multiclass options to consider.

Cleric Protection: Your Wisdom score won’t be very high, but then, you’d mostly use your Cleric levels to pick up non-damaging spells like Sanctuary, Shield of Faith, Warding Bond, Spirit Guardians, and Guardian of the Faith. You pretty much get handed the Protection Fighting Style, and Radiant Defense which gives you or an ally radiant armor that, when struck for the first time, deals 2d10+your cleric level radiant damage. Too bad you need to be 14 levels in Wizard, so the absolute highest this can be is 2d10+6 for anywhere from 8 - 26 damage. You also get proficiency with Medium Armor and Shields, which is important.

Fighter Psychic Warrior: You tap into your inner reservoir of psychic energy. With augmented defenses, you can reduce any damage you or an ally takes by 1d10. You also get mage hand but big woop you already picked that up as a Wizard Cantrip.

Fighting Style Options: Defense: Increases your AC by +1 Interception: Reduce damage meant for an ally within 5 feet by 1d10, however distance can be discussed with your DM. Protection: Impose disadvantage on attacks meant for an ally within 5 feet.

Paladin Redemption: You can punish those who take violent actions against those other than you in radiant damage equal to the damage they just dished out with your Channel Divinity. At 7th Level you can take damage for your allies, but by 7th level, you’re a little out of luck, since that makes 21, and is therefore not viable. Also, Paladin requires CHA to multiclass and Violet is awkward and insecure.

Rogue Okay, so this one doesn’t offer shield proficiencies, but on the other hand, it does offer Uncanny Dodge, which becomes as good as Evasion with Shield Master. You also get Expertise so you can be unbelievably good at Stealth, Sleight of Hand, Deception, or Investigation. There’s no real recommendation here, as none of the Roguish Archetypes really seem to scream “yo, this is so Vi”, but Rogue is still a useful class to consider for her build. However, I suppose the best is Inquisitive as it lets her detect lies and makes her better at perception and investigation out of combat to find clues so she can solve crime.

As an Abjuration Wizard, Intelligence is the #1 priority. It’ll provide us with more temporary hit points when we use our Arcane Ward. Dexterity determines our AC. This can be one’s knack for dodging attacks (as was the case with Itachi) or it can be the deciding factor for how hard your defenses are to bypass. Considering a multiple ton robot had to drop its entire body on Violet multiple times to break her shield, I’d argue her shield must be pretty durable, so a high AC is in order. After that, we’ll pick up Constitution. While it’s fair that Violet herself isn’t super tough, her high CON stat could be seen as an extension of her force field powers. After that, the other three can land wherever you want to put them. This is one Fighter who doesn’t care about having a high STR stat, and Violet doesn’t need WIS or CHA outside of multi-classing.

Name: Violet Parr Race: Variant Human Background: Secret Identity Charlatan Alignment: Neutral Good Class: Psychic Warrior Fighter (4) Abjuration Wizard (16) Base Stats: Strength: 8 (-1) Dexterity: 20 (+5) Constitution: 14 (+2) Intelligence: 20 (+5) Wisdom: 10 (0) Charisma: 8 (-1) Saving Throws: Strength: +5 Dexterity: +5 Constitution: +8 Intelligence: +5 Wisdom: 0 Charisma: -1 Combat Stats: HP: 132 AC: 19 Speed: 30 Initiative: +5 Proficiency Bonus: +6 Passive Perception: 16 Dark Vision: 0 feet Proficiencies: Athletics (Fighter) Deception (Charlatan) Insight (Fighter) Sleight of Hand (Charlatan) Stealth (Variant Human) Skills: Acrobatics: +5 Medicine: 0 Animal Handling: 0 Nature: +5 Arcana: +5 Perception: 0 Athletics: +5 Performance: -1 Deception: +5 Persuasion: -1 History: +5 Religion: +5 Insight: +6 Sleight of Hand: +11 Intimidation: -1 Stealth: +11 Investigation:+5 Survival: 0

Equipment Leather Armor Shield

Damage Resistances: All Spell Damage

Paladin Feature: Fighting Style Interception: When an ally creature within 5* feet is attacked, use your shield to intercept 1d10+ Proficiency Bonus amount of damage.

Spell Slots 1st (4) 2nd (3) 3rd (3) 4th (3) 5th (2) 6th (1) 7th (1) 8th (1)

Violet’s Spellbook*

Wizards can learn ore spells than this, but we’re only focused on shielding and invisibility spells. Even her teleportation spells are a reflavored way for her to disappear and reappear somewhere else.

Cantrips 2nd Level 5th Level Blade Ward Blur Arcane Hand Friends Hold Person Hold Monster Mage Hand Invisibility Intellect Fortress Message Levitate Wall of Frce True Strike Misty Step Wall of Light 1st Level 3rd Level 6th Level Feather Fall Counterspell Globe of Invulnerability Mage Armor Magic Circle Guards and Wards Pro. from Evil & Good Nondetection 7th Level ��Shield Protection from Energy Teleport Ten’s Floating Disk 4th Level 8th Level Greater Invisibility Antimagic Field Mord’s Private Sanctum Ostil’s Resilient Sphere

Actions:

Action Surge: Take an extra action once per rest.

Bonus Actions:

Second Wind: Recover 1d10+4 HP once per rest.

Features:

Abjuration Savant: Spend less time and money copying Abjuration spells. Arcane Recovery: Recover 8 or fewer level 5 or lower spells on a short rest. Arcane Ward: Get temp HP equaling 2x Wizard Level + INT Mod on first use, and 2x spell level on subsequent uses until you finish a long rest when you cast an abjuration spell of 1st Level or higher. Defensive Duelist: Add your Proficiency to your AC against melee attacks. False Identity: You have a legally recognized second identity as a super. Improved Abjuration: Add your proficiency to checks for abjuration spells. Interception Fighting Style: Reduce damage on allies by 1d10+6 within 5 feet. Projected Ward: Your Arcane Ward can shield other creatures within 30 feet. Psychic Armament: Reduce damage of you and others within 30 feet by 1d10 Shield Master: Use your shield to push, add your Shield’s AC to DEX throws. Spell Resistence: Advantage on spell throws and take resisted spell damage. Telekinetic Hand: Cast invisible Mage Hand without components.

Between your high AC and your Arcane Ward bolstering your Temp HP, once you start getting to higher levels, your actual HP bar will hopefully start to see dwindling instances of being reduced. Pair her with a dedicated healer, and your team should be nice and secure with her around. How do you feel I did building Violet Parr? Would you build her differently? And as always, I take requests.

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sworn-unbeliever · 4 years ago

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16 - Lucubration

((For some context, Teremy + Reonora’s gang had their adventures in Norvrant and have all arrived back at the source here. Reonora had asked Teremy to work at Fortunes & Fancies for the next 45 days three months. So this entry is part of Teremy working there.))

wc: 1,859

Joey stood on top of the counter and cleared his throat. “Due to an influx of customers suddenly showing up at once and coincidentally wanting their commissions done within--” Joey flipped open his notebook, “--the next three days, I’m calling this morning meeting to organize and delegate tasks. So...” He paused again as his red eyes scanned his notes. “Reo, due to your knowledge of where everything is, and the nature of this job requiring many gathered and crafted objects from this and that occupation, you’ll be in charge of helping the free company do sweatshop--er, workshop stuff.”

Reonora tilted her head and patted herself, smiling. “You can count on me!”

“Teremy, since you’re a carpenter and blacksmith specialist, you’re the only one who can make these Tsukuyomi weapons. Specifically, the client wants a Tsukuyomi’s Moonlit Cane and Tsukiyomi’s Moonlit Great Axe. They already handed over the celestial kimono remnant. All that’s left is to gather the rest of the materials yourself and make the thing. Oh, and a manor cello.”

Teremy arched an eyebrow. “What does a manor cello have to do with anything?”

“The client wants it as part of their collection, I guess,” said Joey.

“And drying the wood?”

“I’ll take care of that. Just leave the spruce lumber with Rosemary and I’ll dry it out at some point within the next three days.”

“Sounds good.”

“As for me,” Joey scrunched up his face in a way only a lalafell could, “I’ll take care of the dance troupe costumes. Sequins. Why sequins.” He shook his head. “And Rosie, that leaves you to take care of the store. You okay with that?”

Rosemary nodded. “Mm! I’ll do my best.”

Joey clamped his book shut. “All right. You all know what you have to do. Feel free to ask me anything if you have any questions. Dismissed.”

Reonora picked up Rosemary, gave the plainsfolk a smushing hug and kisses to the cheek, then scoured Rosemary’s inventory for any items she had onhand. As Joey reopened his notebook to even begin counting the number of materials he needed, including sequins, he glanced over to see Teremy looking down at his own books. One hand on his hip, the other holding a book of carpenter recipes, the miqo’te frowned pensively. Joey was about to ask what was the matter, but Teremy spoke first.

“Tsukuyomi… you said?” Teremy asked.

“That’s right.”

“I can’t find any recipe that bears her name.”

Joey froze. “What? Lemme see that.”

Teremy moved closer to the counter and held out the book for Joey to see. Standing beside the miqo’te, Joey turned the pages of Teremy’s crafting manual.

“I see what’s the matter. You have the master recipes book? It’s the sixth one,” said Joey.

Teremy glanced at Joey blankly. “... master recipes?”

“You don’t have any of the master recipe books?”

“Unless these recipes fell out of my brain from years of experience, then no. First time I’ve heard of such a thing.”

“And let me guess. No folklore books either?”

“Such knowledge failed to fall out of my head the day I slept under a faerie apple tree. I deeply regret my error.”

Reonora passed by the two in the background, materials already collected. “He’s your protege, Joey. You agreed to show him the ropes.” She waved and left the store.

A chime rang as the door closed. All Joey could do was inhale reality, exhale frustration.

“I’ll start from the top and then tell you where to get them.”

* * *

Zhloe clapped her hands together and raised a foot, her face lighting up with such pure happiness that her smile may as well be the sun. “Oh, Teremy, these items are so beautiful! But no, I must think of the children. Thank you, thank you so much! This is not much, but it’s all I can give you.”

Teremy scooped up the armsful of yellow scrips. “Your happiness is enough. Yours and the… orphans…”

“Yes, and clothes--no, food! Ah! By the way, speaking of food, did you want to stay for dinner? I promise I’ll give you the bigger half of my portion!”

Teremy took a step back. “You keep your food for yourself. You need it more than me. T-take care!”

Down in the depths of Sui-no-Sato, Kurenai smiled politely and bowed. “Such splendor, such beauty. Your--” Her gaze quickly moved away from his chest to the objects in his hands, “--works never fail to impress me. Please take this gift of scrips in return.”

Teremy bowed and responded in Hingan, “The least I can do to help the cause.” Although Kurenai spoke Doman, he understood her somewhat as one who spoke a different dialect of the same language. And same for Kurenai in return. He hadn’t spoken his native language in awhile and doing so made him feel a little happy on the inside.

“I shall be looking forward to your subsequent return, if you will grace us with your presence again.” Kurenai bowed again.

“Wherever the wind will carry me.”

As Teremy turned around to leave, thankfully he had no clue as to Kurenai peering over at his two shapely ‘cloud pearls.’ All the miqo’te heard was a smack from Sanana’s hand. “Keep your eyes off the guys and on the prize!”

Thanks to the yellow scrips, Teremy now left Rhalgr’s reach with both the aforementioned master recipe book, as well as books of folklore native to Othard and Gyr Abania. One third of the battle done.

* * *

“Chromite Ore. A decent-sized piece of rock containing the metal chromium.” Teremy read out loud while dodging several demons. “Self-explanatory.”

Book in one hand, gunblade in the other, and with his face completely engrossed in the book of Othardian folklore, Teremy’s instincts took over in the heat of battle. He spun and weaved around any threat that dared come close to him in Haukke Manor. A couple of cuts from his gunblade was all he needed to disperse the voidsent from whence they came.

“Chromium. Difficult to discern from a single glance. Dark grey to black in colour. Slightly magnetic.”

The manor sentry screeched at him as his fire-endowed gunblade sank into its person. With an indignant flap of his wings, said sentry flew off to open the ritual spell blocking the door. But Teremy’s destination was elsewhere, namely the room of which said manor sentry hung out in itself. Teremy opened the chest and was greeted by two pots of manor varnish. Exactly what he needed.

* * *

“Rhea. A variety of ramie better suited to the climes of Far Eastern Othard.” Teremy glanced at the picture beside the descriptive text. “Compared to the usual ramie, rhea has smaller leaves green on the underside. Huh. Good to know.”

Teremy placed planks of spruce lumber by Rosemary as instructed. He petted her on the head and sauntered off to his next destination, his nose still stuck in the folklore book.

* * *

“Torreya Log. A rough cut of torreya timber. Then what the hell is a torreya tree--”

“Ignoring us would be your greatest folly!” cried Ascian Prime.

Teremy was sure he felt a tickle of… something. He merely summoned a small barrier around him in the form of a technique called Rampart and allowed the damage to brush off of him. Gunblade in one hand, book in the other like his previous run through Haukke Manor, his body moved on its own while he buried his face in the folklore book.

“Torreya, a genus of conifers. Spiky leaves. Destined to prick you before you prick them. Ah. All right. What a prick.” Teremy muttered as he stepped into a black portal for safety.

One he stepped out of the area, he found himself rewarded with enough poetic tomestones to appease Rowena’s employees. Bone charcoal and demicrystals acquired.

* * *

Torreya Log. The Lochs. Six o’clock. Teremy found said tree at the peak of its gathering time at some point in the evening. Thanks to the description, he recognised the tree’s needle-like leaves immediately. Hacking away with his patented axe--he trusted his faithful warrior’s axe more than he would a botanist’s tool, he acquired as many logs as this tree allowed him to have.

“Tsukuyomi’s Moonlit Cane. Three torreya lumber, two rhea cloth, 2 molybdenum ingot, one celestial kimono remnant, five demicrystal.”

Chromite Ore. The Peaks. Ten o’clock. Teremy brought a small magnet with him. When not latching onto his pickaxe, the magnet did do the job of detecting the relevant ore. Once again, Pick Clean, Blessed Harvest II, and as many ores as this node allowed him to have. He gave up with the magnet after awhile and left it hooked on one of the ores.

“Tsukuyomi’s Moonlit Greataxe. Three chromite ore. Two palladium ingot. Two palladium nugget… which makes how many nuggets? Hrm. One celestial kimono remnant, five demicrystal.”

Rhea. The Azim Steppe. Twelve o’clock. As someone accustomed to working with ramie, Teremy found the plant easily. Sure enough, smaller leaves green on the underside. Just like the other two folklore materials, he gathered as many leaves as he could.

“Manor Cello. Two manor varnish, one glazenut, four spruce lumber, four cobalt ingot, one dew thread. Interesting. Dew thread for strings.”

Teremy closed the master recipe books.

“Now for all the rest of that good shit.”

* * *

He returned to Fortunes & Fancies late at night. Reonora had locked the door, but Teremy had a key. He excused himself to no one on particular and turned on the lights as he entered. The planks of spruce lumber now laid by the side of the counter with a note in Joey’s handwriting. Drying done.

Teremy had all the materials he needed to start work. He rolled up his sleeves and pulled out his own list of items to make. Starting by propping the relevant master books up on the counter.

* * *

The fated third day had arrived. Reonora, Joey and Rosemary stood in front of the store bright and early. Reonora had no items onhand as all of her necessary materials went towards the free company workshop, but her clothes looked a little ragged and a few strands of white hair strung out of place. Joey dragged behind him a cart containing nothing but folded shimmering clothes and many sequins. Rosemary, who had to take care of customer service, had dark circles under her eyes.

“Have either of you heard from Teremy?” Reonora asked.

“I tried contacting him earlier but no answer.” said Joey.

“I hope he’s okay…” Rosemary looked down.

Reonora turned the door handle to her store.

The handle was open.

“Strange. I thought I had locked the door last night.” Reonora furrowed her brow.

Rosemary waved her hands. “Hopefully robbers didn’t come in!”

“Only one way to find out.”

The three entered the store. Thankfully everything seemed intact as usual. However, from the moment they entered, Reonora and Rosemary sensed a presence from downstairs from powerful, yet familiar energies. To Joey, who could only sense magic and therefore not this specific presence, heard soft, rhythmic breathing, also from downstairs. The trio headed downstairs and saw Teremy passed out on the couch. Beside him were all the items he had been requested to make, finished and gleaming from the highest quality possible.

#ffxiv #ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2020 #crafter and gatherer life

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justaghostingon · 5 years ago

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Room of Swords Space Pirate Au

Summary: All Gyrus wanted was to show off his new language to the scientific community, instead he ends up on the treasure hunt of his life as pirates, military, and strange bowler hat wearing secret societies chase him down. But he’s not alone, no. He’s kidnapped by the most feared pirate since the Pirate King himself, and forced to be their guide.

But Gyrus has secrets even he isn’t aware of, and a connection to the Pirate King that will turn the tables of the game.

Has anyone read Larklight? Because this is gonna take heavy inspiration.

Also it gets pretty long, so its under the cut

Gyrus, an amnesiac miracle man found floating through space and taken to a lab for examination. He proceeds to win over the scientists examining him and become a protogee of sorts.

Gyrus does some work in history on the side, and discovers a way to crack an ancient alien language that the scientists couldn’t. They are all really impressed and Dr. Iro invites him along to a science exposition to try and win a grant for the lab.

They dress up to present to this strange bowler hat society that is hosting the party, inviting space’s elite and brilliant.

But half the party are rich snobs and the other half seem...strange (and not just because of the bowler hats), Gyrus can’t put his finger on it, and it makes him uneasy. He chocks it up to nerves and moves to the side of the ship to get some fresh air.

And accidentally stumbles on one of the “society” shadowing one of the rich elite, who then turn back to seemingly normal, but they are now...off in the same way the others are. (And wearing a bowler hat).

This freaks Gyrus out so much he stays hidden on the deck even long after they leave. He finally emerges, ready to grab Iro and run...

At this point Kodya’s pirates attack, raising havok and demanding that the society give up their gold or no one gets hurt.

Gyrus gets grabbed as a hostage because he’s literally the first person they can reach. (Kodya kinda recognizes him, which may also play into it)

Unfortunately for the pirates, the society was expecting them, and has hired a full military fleet to take them on. Who don’t really care about a no name hostage in light of capturing one of the most wanted pirates in the solar system.

Kodya drags Gyrus onto the ship, and they take off.

Once they are far enough away, the whole crew turns on Gyrus. (Crew includes Tori, Sylvia, and Nephthys) Gyrus is afraid but demands to go back to save Iro.

Kodya is very confused because that is not what a hostage says usually, (and a little upset Gyrus doesn’t recognize him, and why is Gyrus younger? Did he have a brother also named Gyrus?) but once Gyrus explains he gets a dark look and refuses, claiming they got lucky. (And he doesn’t want those things near Gyrus, not again)

Kodya decides to make Gyrus a cleaner (cabin boy technically but he’s an adult so they’re calling it cleaner instead) on the ship, which works for a few days, until Gyrus stumbles on a treasure map and dagger in the journal left out in Kodya’s room. Kodya is upset he touched the journal, and Gyrus says he just wanted to read it better.

To which Kodya is thrilled and gets the whole crew together, and they decide to start on the quest for the pirate treasure.

They explain about the Pirate King, who came from nowhere and united the pirates, then betrayed them to the shadow society which nearly got them all killed. But he left a map to the greatest treasure, which everyone was looking for.

Kodya in particular wants to find it, and maybe answers as to why the pirate king betrayed them. (And also how he’s back seemingly with amnesia and younger somehow, is this even the same Gyrus? He’s handling all this like its new info)

The first clue takes them to Mars, which is struggling with colonialism as the humans mine valuable minerals and force the locals to work for them. The map requires “the heart of mars” which Kodya, whose from this planet, guesses is a valuable device that helps to convert the rare minerals.

Its also super large, and what the heck Pirate King?

They go to hide with some Rebel Martians friends of Nephthys and Kodya’s, who reveal that things have gotten far worse since the two of them fled, and the colonial leader, despite not making any public appearances, is demanding an even higher quota.

It also comes out that Nephthys used to be a priestess who foresaw the invasion and was helpless to stop it, and got kidnapped by the colonizers as a prize. Then Kodya, a young soldier newly enlisted from home, met and befriended her and together they escaped. But they couldn’t get very far. Fortunately the Pirate King saved them.

Nephthys feels guilty that she can’t help them more, and wishes there was something she could do. The rebels say there is a way they can help, if they get rid of the heart of mars, which will prevent the people from stealing anymore of their minerals.

They agree to do this, with the agreement that hey get to keep the heart of mars.

They split into two teams, to Gyrus, Tori, and Sylvia go in to visit the colonial leader, because Kodya and Nephthys are super wanted here, and Gyrus still has his suit and important looking documents. Then Sylvia will sneak down to let Kodya and Neph in, while Tori and Gyrus distract the colonizer leader.

The two ‘leaders’ that Gyrus and Tori are led to do not match the descriptions given, but after they see their documents, they welcome Gyrus and his...posse.

The ‘leaders’ puts on a front for Gyrus, but Sylvia and Tori find out the servants are frightened, as there has just been a coup-de-taut.

At the awkward dinner, Gyrus is treated like a guest, and Tori a bodyguard, while the ‘leaders’ regale them with their latest conquests, and how they recently defeated a rebel leader named “Serdtse” and show off his broken sword, his symbol of power.

Tori gets more and more furious as they listen, meanwhile, Sylvia lets Kodya and Neph in, and they attempt to remove the ‘heart of mars’

Gyrus gets half paralyzed by the food, and the ‘leaders’ reveal they need him alive because he’ll bring them quite a bit more money to the right people. Tori meanwhile is unaffected, and kills the male. Gyrus, still barely able to move, grabs the broken sword and tries to drag himself away, as the ship arrives and one of those “off” people in a bowler hat arrives.

Tori is unable to help, as she is stuck fighting the other leader.

Meanwhile down below, a bunch of minions come running to stop Kodya and Neph and Sylvia. They begin to overwhelm them, until some of the martian servants reveal themselves as rebels and help them win. Then the ‘off’ people show up there too.

Kodya and Neph freak out, and drag everyone away from them, Kodya throws a light bomb behind to shine brightly and temporarily stun them.

They run to Tori and Gyrus, and Sylvia and Kodya help fight the scary leader while Neph heals Gyrus. Not much they can do about the ‘off’ person though, so they all run some more.

Then to stop the shadows for good, a mysterious stranger (“Serdtse!” the rebels shout) blows up the whole building for good.

Kodya gets upset that they didn’t get the heart, and then Gyrus’s bag starts glowing. Turns out the half sword is the clue. Kodya is very confused, and feels they should meet this ‘Serdtse’ but the military show up and they have to run, taking the credit for the attack so the martian’s don’t get blamed.

They decide to hide in Venus, the only place no one will look, because the last people to try to live there turned into trees. (Read Larklight) Tori is the only survivor of the mysterious illness, and she offers it to them as a place to hide. (Her queen was one of the victims).

Gyrus offers to try and find a cure, and takes some seeds, even though Tori says its hopeless.

Also this is where Kodya decides to try and teach Gyrus how to fight, because he was absolutely useless back there.

They also try to figure out what the connection between the glow of the half sword and the map. Eventually Sylvia reveals that a metal like this that no one can identify, their best shot is the mines on the moons of Jupiter, which has the best ore experts in the world. They all decide to go there.

At Moons of Jupiter, which is a mining town and a hub for pirates, Sylvia is from here, and eagerly shows off the place to the others. Even Kodya is beginning to relax, except that everyone they meet keeps trying to get Kodya to visit the storm to find the answers he needs. (Storm knows the answers to everything in Larklight, but rarely appears)

Kodya points out two things, first, that the storm is illusive on the best of days, and second, that it hardly gets everything right, as it was wrong about the Pirate King, because he once asked it a question, and it was obviously wrong. He won’t tell them exactly what he asked though (probably something about Gyrus)

Meet Don and his crew, who head the pirate armada Kodya work for, and teams up to find the treasure. The crew that is much nastier to Gyrus than Kodya’s.

Gyrus gets into trouble with Ragan for looking like the Pirate King. It is here he learns the Pirate Kings name was also Gyrus. Neph stops Ragan, pointing out Gyrus is far to young, and was working as a scientist on earth, so he’d have to have been there for ages. Gyrus thinks now is not the time to mention his mysterious origins.

Gyrus gets pushed off by one of the crew, unclear who. Kodya jumps over to find him, and Tori ends up falling off too.

Storm light makes the half sword spell out a single word: Saturn. (in plain english)

The crew believes this is where they have to go.

Meanwhile the storm itself saves Gyrus, introducing himself as Alistair. He tells him he is an old friend, and here to help him and tells him that he needs to go to Earth to find the real treasure before Don does.

Also that Gyrus is a god, because those things apparently exist with the ability to put things in motion. He was supposed to die, but decided to keep living to see what would happen. Met Don and very naively told him what he could do. Don wanted to take for himself, but he was clever. He befriended Gyrus first and pushed him towards his own goals of destroying the Empire. When Gyrus finally grew wise to how he was being used, he betrayed Gyrus and made it look like Gyrus betrayed them. Gyrus tried to fight back, by hiding the way to his power, but Don was relentless, and so Gyrus confronted him to make him stop. Unfortunately he was not planning on the bowler hat society, which got tweleve members of Don’s armada. (Larklight, read it).

Also Kodya shows up for this and is very annoyed that Gyrus and the Pirate King are the same person (and didn’t tell him he was still alive!), but reluctantly goes along with it. (because he does care)

Alistair introduces him to Maria and Knox and thier crew, who are waiting to rescue them, and ended up finding Tori. Serdtse is introduced too, who turns out to be Hinju, brother of Xinju, who Gyrus did not kill.

They explain how they made the broken sword as a decoy to the true key, Kodya’s dagger. But now they’ve got Kodya and Gyrus they should be able to get the treasure long before both the pirates and the bowler hat society right?

Wrong. Because Kodya, not realizing it was so important, left it on his ship. Which is now run by Nephthys. Which is going to Saturn.

So they decide to split up, which is to say Alistair teaches Gyrus a way only he can teleport, and sends him to earth to get there before the problem, while everyone else goes to convince the pirates to change allegiances.

Meanwhile the girls and Don’s crew all go to Saturn, where the clue opens a locked door of a ‘memory’ journal, and the crew learn of the origins of the bowler hat society (race from the beginning of the world, want to remake everyone in perfect order like the rings of Saturn)

Which is very knowledgeable, but pretty much useless for them. The pirates and the girls debate on whether the treasure is a fake, this is another clue, or they missed something else.

Meanwhile Don comes to the conclusion that the knife is wrong, and goes to find the correct version on the ship.

Neph goes back, ends up coming in on Don’s investigation. Not knowing what is going on, Don mistakes her for knowing what’s going on, and reveals he’s the mastermind.

Also Gyrus’s crew reach Saturn, and try to steal it back, only to get into more trouble. The pirates are divided on who to believe, Gyrus’s crew and Neph, or Don. Having Hinju manages to make Xinju to side with Gyrus though, but Ragan is not convinced, because Don is one persuasive man.

The two teams split up on separate ships, and race back to earth.

Meanwhile, Gyrus discovers that the ship he first was found in floating in space is actually the treasure he was trying to keep hidden. The only problem, he has absolutely no idea how it works.

So he meditates at the suggestion of the scientists, only to discover that there is a power inside himself.

Which would be poetic, if it didn’t also have a personality.

So Gyrus is trying to sort out millions of years of memories, while the scientists sit around him confused.

All except for Iro, who sees this as an opportunity to use his shiny new bowler hat. Which he puts on Gyrus’s now helpless head.

Gyrus now has to fight off an attempted possession, while figuring out how to use his powers.

He finds a way to throw it off, but not before Iro reports it almost complete, and the Bowler hat society moves into their next big plan: to possess all of the Empire’s parliament and Queen. (Different from Tori’s, unless I decide to change that later)

At the last second, Gyrus manages to throw off the possession, figuring out a way to cure it in the process. He rushes up to stop the bowler hats, but he’s held back, and his method of curing is to slow, only one at a time.

Then the pirates attack.

The pirates attack everyone, each other, who knows what’s going on up there. It creates chaos instantly, and Chaos is the exact thing that the bowler hats hate. They temporarily break from their hosts to fly up and stop the pirates. Kodya’s pirates notice, and start causing even more chaos, which makes all of them swirl up into the sky, trying to attack.

But this is really, really bad for the pirates. So Gyrus decides he has to help them.

He uses his powers to create a large, white light, and tells them its the power. All the shadows fly towards it. Don also tries to go and get it, putting his own crew at risk and causing them to turn on him.

Once all of them are close, Gyrus whips out the seeds from Venus, makes them grow with his power ‘setting things in motion’ and traps them in a bubble with only the bowler hat monsters. They all turn into a tree.

When the dust settles, no one is quite sure what happened, but the scientists are there to step in for Gyrus to the Queen.

Don is arrested for trying to kill like 14 people. The Queen then gives everyone else full pardons so they are no longer pirates, and names them heroes of the state.

Which the pirates aren’t sure what to think about, but hey, they’ll take a party and not dying right now.

Gyrus and his friends reunite, Gyrus now aware of who he is, and it ends with them all eating with the scientists and regaling them with their adventure.

#room of swords #larklight #larklight au #gyrus #kodya #tori #nephthys #sylvia #ragan #don #hinju #alistair

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friendshipcampaign · 5 years ago

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Session Recap 2/10/19: Divide and Bonkers

As Erwyn, who’d been the party’s primary source of planar information throughout the trials thus far, was still most decidedly out of it, Voski addressed the raccoon to ask what plane they were in now. The raccoon responded that this was a simulation of Bytopia, and designed to mirror the dual nature of the plane itself. Kriv and Voski looked up to see another stretch of land floating directly above them -- along with a fat pigeon, waiting in front of another portal.

The raccoon introduced herself a Berylbimbedon Greatgullet and Voski politely introduced herself in return. Ditto had to be prodded, but wearily gave her lengthy full name as well. Kriv introduced himself as well as Amaranth and Erwyn, who weren’t present enough to chime in with their own names.

When the party asked what their trial on this plane would be, the raccoon stood on her two hind legs and recited:

“On two pages this story is writ To one column you gotta commit You’ll need someone on high On the ground that’s the sky To move forward, your pathway must…”

She trailed off at the end. “Split?” Ditto asked. Berylbimbedon confirmed that was it -- she was just cursed to never be able to finish her limericks.

She explained that there were actually two keys, one on each side, which would have to be grabbed simultaneously for them to proceed. The group was allowed to split themselves how they wanted, as long as they had people on both sides. Ditto suggested that they should make sure they had a healer in both groups. With Amaranth and Erwyn not offering any input (or seeming entirely there at all), however, it was hard to have a group discussion. Kriv asked if they could take stock of what exactly had happened in the last simulation, as their separate cells had kept him from gauging the situation completely.

The group considered jumping to the other side of the plane for a bit to talk, as it seemed more pastoral and less dangerous, but Erwyn proved too wobbly for them to help over. They sat in a circle in the woods instead, though Voski remained up and paced around the others. Ditto summoned Tiktik back to let them know she’d gotten out of the last simulation okay. After their relieved response to her explanation, they wandered over to Amaranth and Erwyn, too, to lick them. Kriv tried talking to the others and offered his scale of Bahamut if anyone needed it, but said he needed to know what was going on, as this wasn’t the first time some of them had gone near-catatonic and they couldn’t keep doing this.

When no one answered right away, Voski commented that the simulation must have used some kind of divination magic that could extract and project the things they’d heard back at them. Ditto mentioned she’d heard the voices of people she’d known before.

“I don’t like feeling weak... trapped,” Amaranth said, finally speaking, with Kriv’s arm slung around her. She stiffened and moved a bit away from the group, pulling out her flask and drinking deeply.

“You know you might be upside-down in a while,” Voski said.

Amaranth kept drinking.

Voski went on, saying that dismissing the experience by saying it wasn’t real was pointless because the memories it drew on were real, but nothing about it was actionable, either. In the meantime, Ditto scootched over to Amaranth and, noting she had drained more than half her flask already, gently pushed it down. Amaranth reacted to this by saying that she needed it right now, causing Ditto to sigh and tell her to be careful.

At this point, Kriv got up and starting poking around the area somewhat, looking for any sort of clues as to how to proceed. Voski pulled out her lute and asked if, with four simulations to go, everyone felt like it was worth it to keep going--pointing out they didn’t have to work with the organization that had, technically, done this to them if they didn’t want to. Amaranth and Ditto said they’d come too far to give up now. It took Ditto shaking Erwyn’s shoulder to get him to respond to the vote at all. Quietly, he said he wanted to continue -- but didn’t seem like he was about to get up and move anytime soon.

Kriv cast Locate Object to try to find the portal key on this side of the plane and, on getting a ping, told the others he’d see them in a bit and got up and started walking. Even when Voski and Ditto told him to hang back, he stubbornly kept walking, brushing off their concerns. Ditto tried to shake Erwyn to see if he was ready to get moving yet, but he was still too shaken to get up. She tried casting Levitate on him but he resisted, giving her a sharp look.

“That not cool?” Ditto asked. He shook his head, and she added, “Ok, see, now I know it’s not cool.”

Amaranth started drunkenly staggering after Kriv. As the dragonborn moved onward through the forest, his foot slipped through a leaf pile, which was revealed to be illusory, and he looked through it into what appeared to be some kind of pit below. The two of them continued forward together until Amaranth slipped and fell through another illusory pile of leaves herself, managing to pull herself up out of it by wrapping her tail around a tree. Kriv asked her if she really wanted to come with him in this state, and she insisted she did.

The two of them continued onward and came across a small ravine with a strain of some kind of ore running through it. Kriv leapt over it and Amaranth followed, barely making the leap and pinwheeling once she reached the other side. Eventually they reached the point where Kriv’s spell seemed to be leading them, but there was nothing there, and something didn’t seem quite right about it. Kriv deduced that they were likely on top of wherever the key actually was, and that it was located somewhere underground.

Kriv put on his Blindsense scarf to try to spot if there was another illusion hiding a hole nearby, and was able to find one fairly close. On poking his head in he determined it was actually some sort of tunnel entrance. He and Amaranth both entered, Kriv having to try his hardest to keep the drunken Amaranth mostly-upright. At the end of the tunnel was a stone door with a plaque on it. However, Kriv was able to see through this as well, revealing it to also be an illusion -- and that something large with a serpentine limb was moving on the other side. His Divine Sense didn’t reveal any information. Amaranth approached to read the plaque and Kriv warned her not to move forward.

“Are you really confident in your sneaking abilities right now?” Kriv asked, skeptically.

“I’m always confident in my sneaking abilities, Kriv,” Amaranth said.

“Yeah, I bet you are,” he sighed.

She moved forward, wobbling down the corridor, but still fairly stealthily, and read aloud the limerick on the false door, which said:

“Adventurers, heed and beware! You must pass through the Grizzlegump’s lair With some pluck and a hop You can come out on top If you placate the beast with a....”

As she snuck, Kriv caught a better view of the creature, which appeared to have many long, snake-like, fuzzy arms, and a bear head.

The two of them decided to head back and find the others and climbed back out of the tunnel, Kriv’s armor making some noise as they did so. As they walked past another one of the pits on the surface, two giant, fuzzy arms emerged and tried to grab both of them. Kriv escaped the grapple, but Amaranth had less luck and was snatched off the ground. Kriv began frantically yelling possible solutions to the limerick to try to soothe the monster (while struggling to come up with rhymes in Common, which was really more like his third language).

Back in the clearing, Voski heard Kriv’s shouts and informed Ditto -- and Erwyn, who was still fairly dazed -- that she was going to see what was going on. Ditto got up to assist too, telling Erwyn to stay close before she ran off into the woods. Erwyn tried to pull himself up as well, but shakily sunk back to the ground. Berylbimbedon offered him some water.

Suspended in midair by the Grizzlegump, Amaranth added to the chaos, trying to help Kriv by shouting out any rhyming word for ‘lair’ she could think of. It latched another long, fuzzy tentacle arm onto her before dragging her back down into the tunnels. Kriv gave chase, shouting at Amaranth to try to placate it. Voski and Ditto approached the scene themselves, the latter casting Expeditious Retreat on herself to try to get there faster. Erwyn tried again to follow as well, but was too dizzy on his feet to do much more than crawl.

Voski stumbled into one of the illusion pits and Ditto, watching her fall into the ground, realized what they were. She shouted to ask if Voski was okay or needed to be Levitated out, but Voski urged her to keep moving above ground.

Amaranth just kept yelling and cursing at the Grizzlegump, unsuccessful at either getting it to stop or escaping herself.

“Fucking let go of me, you giant noodle demon!” she shouted.

Kriv caught up to her and told her to stop yelling. He started to sing a jaunty Draconic herding song he remembered from back home, in the hopes that the solution to the limerick might be “air” -- as in a song.

Voski put on her Goggles of the Night to try to see underground and started moving in the direction of the now very audible commotion. Up ahead in the tunnels, Amaranth wriggled an arm out from the Grizzlegump’s embrace. She then pulled out a dagger and stabbed it, causing it to let out a loud, angry roar. It tried to bite her and missed, giving Kriv an opportunity to heal her using the scale. He urged them both to calm down, and for Amaranth not to attack it. She stopped struggling and dropped her dagger. With Amaranth no longer stabbing it, the Grizzlegump seemed slightly calmer, and Kriv started to sing a different song, this time more of a nighttime lullaby he recalled from his childhood. It set Amaranth down and started climbing upwards towards its nest.

Erwyn, who had been pursuing slowly, realized that he was unlikely to reach the others all that quickly and got a different idea in his mind. He slowly made his way back to Berylbimbedon and asked to confirm that this was a simulation of Bytopia and get an explanation of the trial here, as he had missed much of the information before in his haze.

“Alright, can you at least tell me if it would be really, really stupid to go over to the other side myself?” Erwyn asked, after hearing the full instructions.

“Kid, this whole set of trials is stupid.”

“You have to understand,” he said. “I’m not very smart.”

He then asked the raccoon to send him to the other side, so he could try to find the other portal key quickly and hopefully help his friends out in that way instead of his seemingly ineffectual pursuit earlier.

By the time Ditto and Voski finally reached the tunnel chamber where the Grizzlegump was (Ditto had started reading the sign on the illusory door, but Voski was unfazed and pushed through it), they found Kriv singing to the creature, and a battered-looking, but free, Amaranth. Kriv pulled one of the previously-collected keys out from his bag and tried to gesture for the others to start looking for the one in the Grizzlegump’s lair.

“You must be joking,” Voski said, on seeing the creature.

On being told what it was, Ditto explained excitedly that the Grizzlegump was a nonsense creature from stories that were told to young gnomes growing up, whose only consistent feature was that it had to have at least one part that looked like a bear.

Ditto, Amaranth and Voski discussed what they should do next, since they weren’t supposed to take this key until someone had found the one on the other side as well, while Kriv, who was still distracting the Grizzlegump by singing and couldn’t join the conversation, grew frustrated. Eventually, Voski spotted the key overhead and pointed it out, but as they couldn’t grab it just yet, Ditto and Voski decided to head back and search for the second one. They agreed that Ditto would Send a message to Amaranth to let her know once they had it--and that they should hurry to check up on Erwyn as well, as they were concerned about leaving him sitting alone in the clearing.

Erwyn, in the meantime, had stepped through the portal to the other side of the planar simulation with Berylbimbedon, and had a difficult moment of trying to adjust to the weird switched gravity before it all settled and seemed natural. He told the raccoon to inform the others where he’d gone if they came looking for him, and she headed back to her original side. He then took stock of his surroundings and noticed a settlement in the distance, which he started heading towards through the pastoral fields immediately surrounding him.

One building in the settlement appeared to be larger than the others, and Erwyn approached it to knock on the door. A gnome-sized man greeted him and invited him in, offering to make him something to eat if he would sit down and listen to some stories. Erwyn tried to impress upon him that he really needed to figure out how to find the other portal key, as he was very worried about his friends, but the more he insisted he couldn’t stop and sit for a while, the angrier with him the man seemed to grow, telling him he was very rude. When Erwyn explained that his friends were on the other side, there was an odd glint in the man’s eyes.

“Then you’re all alone here?” he asked.

Nervously, Erwyn started to backpedal, saying he really needed to get looking and trying to brush over the fact that he’d come over alone. Before he could move towards the door, however, the strange man’s long beard started to move as if of its own accord and surrounded him, trapping him and pinning his arms to his sides -- and preventing him from leaving.

#session recap

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sailor-cresselia · 6 years ago

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Zi-O 21; both raw AND subbed~!

Advance Warning: I have never seen Ryuki, and it’s probably going to show. A lot, if only because I have no connection to whoever the Guest Characters are, and what any issues they bring in could mean. I’ve seen Marcosatsu’s History Of Ryuki though, so that should help a little. (three links, because he wound up doing it in three parts)

Starting off with watching the Raw!

BlackWoz’s Storytime Vault doesn’t have much to offer, aside from a worrying angle at the end.

I’m impressed by Uhr’s control with reversing the damage he’s doing to that mirror. Of course, he’s paying almost zero attention to Schwartz in the process, but there’s a method to his being a little brat this time.

He’s trying to get the attention of some guy in Ryuki’s mirror world.

Sounds like his idea is “So, my new candidate? He’s from another world. Remember how that Tsukasa guy traveled? It’s kinda like that, but not.”

(What was going on in Ryuki?! Also, how many endings is this going to make for that season? Because I seem to remember hearing that there’s like, five? At least?)

I like the touch with Another Ryuga’s name and year – they’re backwards, like you’d see in a mirror.

Sougo’s DEFINITELY using Gun Mode a lot more recently. I like it’s finisher with Double, though – it’s basically a smaller scale version of the CycloneTrigger Memory Break. … What was that one called? Ah, there it is. Trigger Aerobuster.

Names are important. I’m doing my best to get them right.

But it’s basically that, with purple shots in the center of the wind bursts.

… of course, it gets reflected right back at them, because MIRRORS, but still. Points for fighting at a distance, especially with that dragon arm – that was doing some damage, it looked like.

Geiz’s Drive armor is back! (I’ve missed the shift cars, so it’s nice to at least see Max Flare, Funky Spike, and Midnight Shadow’s tires again.)

But again, mirrors.

Tsukuyomi: So, you lost him?

Sougo: Well, yes, but also we had to help the injured construction worker.

Geiz: And everything got sent back at us, so…

blah blah, ‘whats the deal with the time jackers’ blah…

“What IS this Day of Oma you mentioned, anyway?” Good question, bud.

“Well, in our history, it’s the day that Oma Zi-O took over the world.” Geiz, I get that you’re upset. But. Um. What did you just do to that chessboard?

As far as I know, you’re not able to cause shockwaves. Not just by symbolically slamming a chess piece down. ...I don’t know anything about chess, but I’m assuming that piece is the Black King. Wiping out all of his opposition in one strike… along with all of his allies.

Sougo retaliates with “And the one WhiteWoz is from, says that you stopped that from happening.” He uses the White Knight to knock down the Black King, leaving the Knight alone on the board.

And then we have the Time Jackers, trying to get someone else altogether in charge. Black Bishop takes out the White Knight. The Time Jackers are from the same timeline as Tsukuyomi and Geiz, after all.

That day is when the world’s future is decided… ooh, ominous.

… drat, have to skip the next bit of exposition, but while they’re outside talking about… victims? I think?

I hear that same sound that heralded Geiz’s Time Mazine arriving back in Episode one.

Okay, so the victims are all connected to the magazine/journal/website from Ryuki? Makes sense.

Oh man, Shinji’s already dead?! Welp, that’s it, arc over, time to go home. (dusts off hands)

Hm. He covered up all the reflective surfaces – which would include windows and vents. Because Mirror World.

Of course, that poses a problem when you use a gas heater.

Okay, so at this point, while I was watching, Over-Time posted their subs. So I just got the script, went back to the beginning, and started over.

Well, at least BlackWoz is going along with the nicknames for now. I guess he understands the need for the distinction.

Hm. Schwartz seems to think that Geiz is going to be trying for the throne on the Day of Oma. But, sir, have you met this kid? Yes, yes you have, we’ve seen you interact with him. There is nearly no way that Geiz would ever want to be in charge.

...I say nearly, because time travel and predestination and all of that jazz. WhiteWoz is screwing with the kids head.

HUH. Uhr’s logic isn’t even “it’s kinda like that Decade guy”, he was specifically told about the Mirror World by Tsukasa. (insert a certain 10-year-old meme here.)

And what’s even more interesting than that… is that Schwartz didn’t know about the Mirror World.

And we’ve already seen that Schwartz can go to other timelines, as per when he created the Another Shinobi Watch.

Hm, looks like we’re in for another variation of ‘not the Another Rider you think he is’, aren’t we? Another Ryuga has the last portion of his name covered by what appear to be burnmarks. Much like how Another OOO’s year was cracked, so it could appear to be 2016 while actually being 2010.

Oh dear GOD they’ve been fighting Another Ryuga for a WEEK. He just keeps showing up and disappearing. (Because mirrors, not that they know that.)

“Why do they keep getting harder to fight?” Well, Sougo, it’s probably largely because we’re about out of Phase Twos, and the Earlier Heisei Riders were pretty brutal, from what I’ve heard. Plus, you keep getting teleporters involved, so that doesn’t help in the slightest.

Thank you for finally asking what the Day of Oma is, though.

(Low INT, high-ish WIS.)

“Well, what future do the two of you want?” Asks the noodle with a pretty decent Charisma stat. And neither Geiz or Tsukuyomi actually have an answer for him.

(Ow, my heart.)

Okay, all the victims followed Ore Journal online, but it has since gone completely under, since it just couldn’t keep up with the times.

I was right on the money about Shinji, though, he clearly knows full well about the reflection teleportation, and now so do The Kids.

GEIZ I UNDERSTAND YOUR LOGIC. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN I HAVE TO LIKE IT.

“Beat him in the time before the attack returns.” Because there’s a lag before the mirror shield shows up, so there’s a brief window of time. But an attack that would take it out that quickly would return just as powerful… directly at where it came from. Also known as the Rider who launched it.

And also also known as Geiz, if he gets his way.

Because a soldier who can’t defeat his enemies isn’t much of a soldier, now is he?

(Thanks a lot, eps 15 and 16. Thanks.)

Aaaand Uncle Tokiwa doesn’t actually know Woz’s name! All he could do for the Watch was clean it up… oooooh...

Sougo’s next powerup has an awful lot of that burnished gold on it. The same, or almost the same, tone as Oma Zi-O’s.

“Hello, my overlord~!” “Not. Now.”

Good boy, Sougo. And you even met this weeks tribute, and didn’t realize it!

I still don’t buy the “he doesn’t remember” thing, by the way, especially given the mirrored surfaces – how would he have known without having been Ryuki? Does he know about all the other victims? I don’t think you’ve actually talked to him yet. But I’ll let the memory ‘detail’ slide for now, since it looks like BlackWoz is actually being straightforward at the moment…

Aaand Sougo’s desperately trying to ignore him. Fair. Since that second Zi-O watch is tied to him becoming evil and all. Decent WIS stat, and also BlackWoz’s idea of ‘subtle’ is very much not so.

Meanwhile, with Geiz and Tsukuyomi… Yeah. He doesn’t plan to come out of this fight. Because what good is a soldier who can’t win?

And also, he, too, knows he is being stalked by his own personal Woz.

“What’s your end goal? If I come out on top, what’s your future like?”

“Just like this, a peace as if time has stopped.”

… Hi, yeah, not here for that phrasing at all, actually. Having just come out of HUGtto! Precure, wherein ‘stopping time so that despair can’t happen’ was kind of the villians whole thing, I’m trusting you even less than before.

Nothing can disturb the peace if nothing moves again, now can it?

But for Geiz and Tsukuyomi, literal veterans who have seen armies destroyed in the wave of an arm… they don’t have that frame of reference, now do they? They might just hear the “a time not unlike the one here” aspect.

“Hey, think I can use that notebook?”

“Nope, nuh-uh, OP reality warper powers are mine and mine alone.”

OOF. Right. Uhr contracted Mirror World Shinji, didn’t he? Which, of course, means that his existence is tied to Regular World Shinji’s existence. Can’t defeat the Another Rider? Take out his other link to living.

WhiteWoz and his “Obstacles are for killing” attitude does not sit well with Geiz.

“Hey, other me! You want revenge on that guy, right? The one who attacked you? Of course ya do! Why not!”

Meanwhile, Regular Shinji looks like he’s having thoughts along the lines of “I’m not going back to the belt! I’m out, man! I finished! I’ve finished like FIVE times already! Let me retire!”

Huh. The smudge over ‘Ryuga’ is gone. Neat. (aaand at which point I realized i’ve probably been spelling it wrong, and went back to fix all the places I used two ‘u’s on instinct.)

Clever, clever Uhr. “You can’t get a watch from a person who never existed, from a world that no longer ever was.”

...well, Schwartz could go to alternate timelines, so… Hey, Geiz, Tsukuyomi, Sougo, did any of you happen to get Tsukasa’s contact info?

Also, Tsukasa, did you have to clue the Time Jackers in on the ‘other worlds’ thing? I’m just saying, that might come back to bite you.

You are coming back, right? You don’t get to drop cryptic ‘I’m destroying this world first’ comments, and give tips to the assorted groups, and then just never come back.

It’s rude.

We need some sort of follow-through on this stuff, at least.

Geiz attempts his suicide attack… but Sougo knocks him out of the kick before he can gain momentum…

“I’m not letting you die, damnit! You still need to make sure I don’t go evil, and I’m definitely tempted by this watch right now...”

and then said watch doesn’t even try to activate.

Aaaand then Sougo gets wrestled into the Mirror World.

(Isn’t that place supposed to be super fatal if you don’t have an Advent Deck?)

Aaaah! The backwards writing, and the fact that some of it is glitching is bad enough. But the lack of sound? Nope, I’m not here for that at all. That’s never a good sign.

Although Kudos to O-T for getting the subtitles for some of those signs. Well done.

So, yeah, sorry Sougo, it’s not 3-Days-From-Now You this time. (But seriously, what happened to him?) This time it’s Evil You.

Not even 50-Years-From-Now Bad-Ending Evil You.

We’re talking a “Terran Empire Enterprise” type of Evil You. … well, at least he doesn’t have a goatee.

OH GOD AAAAGH GO BACK TO SILENCE PLEASE

Distorted belt effects are not okay! Agh! NononoNO!

Oh, and uh... Hey! Remember literally yesterday? When I said I’m loving the ‘parallel self’ juxtapositions that Zi-O’s been doing?

I should probably have remembered that the Ryuki tribute was next, and that I’ve seen the preview screenshots with Mirror Sougo being super creepy.

I may have changed my mind a bit on that juxtaposition love.

MISTAKES WERE MADE.

#kamen rider zi o #kamen rider ryuki #sailorcressy says #...i'm probably going to be making an Updated Faction List after 22 #aren't I?

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darkspellmaster · 6 years ago

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Young Justice Theory: Final Crisis connections

Given events that have taken place over the last three episodes and the clue that the episodes spell Prepare the Anti life equation, it’s becoming more and more clear that that Greg and Brandon probably are pulling from Final Crisis and the events surrounding it.

The more I’m looking at the events of good old Final crisis the more I’m seeing stuff going down with the YJ crew that mirror stuff going on with Final Crisis. And, while I don’t think that this event will happen in this season, I feel like we’ll see this whole event going on with either Season 4 or Season 5.

-New Gods are at war and Darkseid manages to manifest inside the body of a human, and making him want to be the architect of a new universe. On top of this a Monitor is placed inside a human to deal with his failings in his duties.

So we know that Darkseid is up to something since he’s making deals with the Light. We also know that Halo’s powers came from the sky. The question is was it coming from outside her or coming from inside her already. She knows facts about New Genesis, and realizes a lot of things about herself and yet she doesn’t connect to her past self. Meaning that there’s the option that this can either be the Mother box they pulled apart and put into her, or that this could be a New God that is reacting to things around her.

We know Orion is missing, or rather away, according to Bear. Could he or another God be in her? This could also be a Monitor, as they can also come in male or female forms and being placed in her as her body has the ability through the Mother Box to connect to the New Gods.

-New God Granny Goodness posses a body of a Green Lantern to frame Hal Jordan for Murder, and that leads to Bruce deducing who she is and him being captured. This also leads to the call to arms by the Heroes for a war against Darkseid.

So how might this play in. Well we know that the VR Sets that are being put out are pushing the GW network which is run by jerk faced G. Gordon Godfrey, aka, Glorious Godfrey -who works for Darkseid himself.

Oh but that’s not all. As others have pointed out these goggles seem to connect to Granny Goodness, the head of the Female Furies on Apokolips and also a right monster. While it’s clear that these goggles are being used for possible corruption purposes, I think they’re also being used for scanning. Namely to identify children who have Meta genes to exploit them to build the army that Darkseid needs, and more than likely it’s scanning for pieces of the equation itself.

Granny could very well be Helga Jace or anyone in disguise, and it’s clear that the others in the Light have someone that they’re working with outside of Godfrey. On top of this, given what happens in Final, it’s very easy to see Granny getting her hands on Batman after maybe framing someone on the team for murder.

Having the JL have to rise up against them would make sense, which could lead to other issues with the Light later.

Keep in mind the ones that they are going after meaning to Apokolips their minds can be ore easily played with. And who are the ones using the VR sets the most? Kids.

-Outsiders and the Judas contract act as a distraction and the possible infection of various characters.

With team Batman working their own and the looming implications for the Judas contract coming into play it’s not hard to see this working in favor for the Light. It wouldn’t be that hard to see, through some means, Wonder Woman and others being infected while out in space and carrying the illness to earth. This could led to a lot of problems, namely the title of Antisocial Pathologies. Which more than likely will be covering the whole situation with the bacteria named Morticoccous.

-Time Travel again and the return of Bart and Conner.

So in the original story Lois get’s mortally wounded when a bomb goes off and wounds her at the Daily Planet. Meanwhile Barry and Wally have to race against the Black Death -the death of the New Gods, and stop a bullet from killing Orion. Meanwhile both Bart and Connner were returned from their deaths via the LoSH from the future and the two sent back to help save everyone.

Likely we’re going to see Barry and Bart doing the running with Wally returning along with Conner if he’s killed to stop the situation. This may tie into the idea that Barry may go into the future with Iris leaving Bart with someone like Max or grow up Bart, or leave Wally as the only Flash with Jay joining them.

-Dan Turpin searching for Missing kids leads him to the Dark Side Club, failure to stop Orion’s death and the fall out of Darkseid using the Anti life equation on the humans.

So we already have people looking for missing kids, although we don’t have a Dark Side Club, and we already have a missing Orion, so that all checks out and connects. I don’t think he’s dead...yet, but it could come into play later.

Okay so this is somewhat important. The Anti Life Equation is more commonly a math problem that is a math proof of the futility of life. This is unleashed through the net in the original story. However! I don’t think that will happen this time.

Behind Babs is the Oracle Eye. Now this is not the normal Oracle looking icon.

That is the oracle Symbol. You know what the eye is for?

This is Brother Eye, a program that was created by Batman due to his paranoia from his memory being erased by Zantana in Identity Crisis. Brother eye is a huge satellite that watches Metahumans and can infect people with nanotechnology.

It’s more likely that Darkseid will wind up controlling this and end up using that to infect or corrupt the people of earth.

Meanwhile we would probably see Barry and Bart probably meeting Wally and possibly Conner in some future time line and fighting against the super human army that Darkseid created. More than likely we would see exactly how the supers that are not infected stay uninfected by the equation and possibly a cure to all of this in the form of a symbol by Anthro given to Metron of the New Gods.

-Heroes of unlikely types.

Given that Lex and Dr. Sivana play a huge role towards the end of this story helping to go against Darkseid I would not be surprised if we got the story point that, with the tech that Lex has, he and Silvana are able to get control from the Justifiers in this story with the heroes in the future and turn them back to normal so they can fight against Darkseid. We probably will see Damian here in this future.

I’m really not sure how things will play out for the rest of the story. But given the ending being called Nevermore I think we may see some really depressing endings come out of this.

Superman comes back from the future, and Batman get’s “killed” by Darkseid after escaping from being held by Commander D. The Flashes end up leading the Black death racer to Darkseid to kill him, meanwhile the Ray traces the Metron symbol across the earth freeing everyone, and then everything gets sucked into darkness after Wonder Woman releases Darkseid from the body of Dan Turpin. Superman, thanks to the LoSH finds a wish granting machine and has to sing to it to counter Darkseid, and winds up fighting against the evil monitor that has been mostly controlling Darkside. This leads to the army of Supermen from the multiverse to come and that leads to the arrival of various teams from across the multiverse to fight with the Darkness. In the end they win and Superman wishes for a happy ending.

Turns out that Bruce isn’t dead, he’s sent back in time and has to time jump back to the future. This leads to the Battle for the Cowl, leading Dick to become batman, Damian to become Robin. Tim to search for Bruce as Red Robin and Jason to become a protector of Gotham. Barry Allen comes back from the dead, the Teen Titans reform with some fall out regarding Conner trying to figure out himself now, and Bart dealing with being dead and alive again.

Honestly it’s hard to guess what they’re going to pull from this story but if I had to guess...

Return of Wally West from the Future.

Batman “dying”

Jason, Dick, Tim and possibly Cassandra fighting for the Cowl

Birth of Jon will come out of this I’m damn sure

Conner either deciding to go to the future because he feels he can do good there being with the Legion of Super Heroes.

We may see hints of the Guardians of Oa taking on a bigger role or hints of the Crisis on Infinite Earths looming.

I’m sure Young Justice Season 5′s crew will look very different than what we have now.

Halo is not going to make it as I think she’s living on borrowed time.

Terra’s death and other things may lead to Brion staying with the team and helping them go forward.

Forger will probably go back with the New Gods and become the Bugs leader.

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osmw1 · 6 years ago

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Poison-Wielding Fugitive Chapter 66

The next day.

“Pardon me, but I must depart once again.”

We were in the middle of breakfast when Celes announced her departure.

“That right?”

Wayne curtly responds to Celes.

“I am wondering about the sword if—” “We’ve finished work on the prototype already. The protection ain’t quite right but take it with you. Not like you can do much with that broken sword of sword of yours.” “But—” “Just shut up and take it.”

It may seem like Wayne snapped at her, but he likes to eat breakfast and read his newspaper in silence.

“… understood. I am in your debt.” “Cohgray, yours is ready too. The boys were messin’ around and whipped something up for the mushroom too. You can use it until the real deal gets completed.” “Mu!” “Oh, thank you very much.” “You’ve brought a whole lot of different kinds of materials with you and I’m itchin’ to work on ‘em. Take your time eatin’.”

With that, Wayne heads to work. … is it just me or is he bulking up and getting bigger every day?

‘Yea, the blacksmith looks to be more muscular than yesterday to me as well. This is just like the innkeeper.’

What on earth is up with that?

‘Dost thou believe that he is so eager to forge because of his fears of contracting another disease? Or perhaps that he is excited to see such quality ores?’

Man, I hope it’s the latter. I think he’s too energetic for his own good. Anyway, we finished up our breakfast before heading for the forge. We step inside and as soon as his apprentices noticed us, Wayne comes over with our newly crafted weapons. Celes’ gorgeous sword catches Veno’s attention.

‘Hmm… what an exquisite blade. Mine dragon senses are tingling!’

Veno has his attention on her sword, but I focus on my crossbow.

Rapid Elba Orichalcum Crossbow +6 Quality: Superior Required level: Base level 45 Bonus effects: Rapid Fire, Auto Reload, Increased Mana, Faster Projectile Speed, Bonus Damage, Improved Poison Arrow Loading and Damage, Accuracy Compensation, Limiter A crossbow with a focus on rapid fire and damage for all purposes. Its extraordinary rate of fire more than makes up for its slightly heavier weight. Damage output and projectile range have been remedied. The user can choose to automatically enchant projectiles with poison. The crossbow can shoot projectiles other than bolts but at a reduced rate of fire. The action has also been simplified, granting ease of maintenance. However, the crossbow draws the user’s Mana, necessitating a great Mana pool. As powerful as it is, the crossbow tends to be picky with its user and so its true might heavily depends on the wielder.

Wow… talk about overpowered. The Magic Iron Crossbow that Wayne lent me feels like a toy bow in comparison.

‘Aye, this is quite the fine piece. It should cost more than for what thou hast paid. However… it may be difficult on thine stats.’

What do you mean? I hold the crossbow in my hands. Hmm… it’s got some heft to it. But I don’t think it’s so much the physical weight as much as it would overload me mentally.

‘Thou meetest not the required level. With the lass’ cooking, thou mayest just narrowly be able to wield it… but the Limiter effect can only be overcome by thine strength. ‘Tis quite the nuisance. It would be unwieldable without first bypassing the Limiter.’

There sure is a lot of stuff packed into one weapon. I guess only high-rank adventurers can use this thing. And to think that even they aren’t a match for you, Veno… it really drives home how weak humans truly are.

‘Deprecate not thyself. Masterest the weapon and thou canst slay beasts like Safkrym or Elba with nary so much trouble.’

Well, you’ve got a point.

“Mu!”

I look away from my crossbow and see what Muu is up to. Looks like he’s bouncing with joy getting a new axe, helmet and armor. That armor is like… a stab vest or something. And its helmet looks more like a shield on its head. Muu looks like its cosplaying or something, but it looks good on them. Then, Muu goes clink clank.

“Muuu?”

Muu tilts its cap to one side as if asking Arleaf how she thinks of his new clothes.

“It looks great on you, Muu. Hopefully it is not too heavy though.”

Arleaf’s approval and doubt makes it seem as if she were Muu’s big sister. Well, it’d be troublesome if the armor is too unwieldy.

“Mu!”

Looks like Muu’s fine.

“We made sure Muu’s armor would be easy for it to move around in.”

Did Rurika forge this just for Muu? It really gives of a Warrior vibe. I wonder if we look like half-decent adventurers now. Oh, right, I almost forgot about the weapons we picked up in the sewer. I should show Wayne now. It might be a little tough to repair, but he says it would make for good materials for upgrading equipment.

“Now, then…”

Celes slings the sheathed sword to her hip. She doesn’t seem to have the time to check over Wayne’s handiwork. But judging by Veno’s reaction, it’s definitely made well.

“Oh, let me send you off.” “Hmm? I appreciate it.” “I do apologize, but I must help Gramps with his work…”

And so Rurika declines.

“Fret not.” “Yeah, the rest of us can send Celes off.” “Yes, we shall. Thank you very much for everything. Grandpa Wayne is only so healthy thanks to your help.” “The medicine I brought him is but a drop in the bucket.” “You were instrumental, Celes. Let me pray to the Holy Dragon for you before you leave.”

Rurika bows her head down and starts praying. Celes, though, has quite the forced smile on her face.

“Then, if you will excuse me. I shall try my best to see everyone again.” “Okay, take care now!”

Celes and Rurika say their goodbyes before headed off together to the stagecoaches. Walking through town with our new weapons on our backs really makes me want to go and try them out.

‘I feel the same way when test out new spells. Perhaps we shall take the chance to go out for a hunt.’

Sounds great. But let’s see Celes off first, alright? She’s probably from somewhere in Saint Yggdra. Somewhere we definitely shouldn’t step foot in.

“I extend my thanks to you all.” “That’s our line, Celes. Really, thank you for everything you’ve done for us.” “No, let me thank you. The time we had spent together had been very meaningful. You have reminded me of what my original goals were, and I am now able to head towards the right direction. Our adventure together had been utmost splendid.”

It feels good to know she thinks so highly of us.

“I pray that your wishes to be soon granted.” “?”

Arleaf looks at us, confused by our exchange. Though I think she’s got some clue.

‘Her family has been cursed. That prayer is for it to be lifted and for her to be able to safely and swiftly return by their side.’

Arleaf’s expression changes after listening to Veno speak. It’s at times like these where Veno comes in handy.

“Ah, if you ever run into any troubles, you may rely on me. I shall help you to the best of my abilities.”

Celes holds her hand out. I grip her hand and give it a firm shake. However, in the middle of this refreshing moment comes a squadron with armor-clad warriors and robe-wearing mages storm in with battle standards in hand. They rush in and encircle us. We’ve been surrounded.

contents: /ch001/ /ch002/ /ch003/ /ch004/ /ch005/ /ch006/ /ch007/ /ch008/ /ch009/ /ch010/ /ch011/ /ch012/ /ch013/ /ch014/ /ch015/ /ch016/ /ch017/ /ch018/ /ch019/ /ch020/ /ch021/ /ch022/ /ch023/ /ch024/ /ch025/ /ch026/ /ch027/ /ch028/ /ch029/ /ch030/ /ch031/ /ch032/ /ch033/ /ch034/ /ch035/ /ch036/ /ch037/ /ch038/ /ch039/ /ch040/ /ch041/ /ch042/ /ch043/ /ch044/ /ch045/ /ch046/ /ch047/ /ch048/ /ch049/ /ch050/ /ch051/ /ch052/ /ch053/ /ch054/ /ch055/ /ch056/ /ch057/ /ch058/ /ch059/ /ch060/ /ch061/ /ch062/ /ch063/ /ch064/ /ch065/ /ch066/ /next/

(how about leaving a tip for me?)

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galaxa-13 · 6 years ago

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Underdark campaign is progressing nicely.

The group decided to start heading towards the deep gnome city to look for clues on the missing people. Sia was able to convince the group to head in that direction with her knowledge that deep gnomes are nice people and her ability to speak both Gnomish and Undercommon. On the way, though, they came across a wall that was not part of the map Hachi had made them.

There was a stone door in the wall that had a demon’s face on it. Sia tried knocking, but nothing happened. As Sorrow and Amon approached the door they heard (and saw) the door speak to them, welcoming those of infernal heritage and commanding they make a blood sacrifice of the child of Lolith (Lolith being the main god of the drows). Sorrow was able to shake off the compulsion. Amon wasn’t so lucky, but he was lucky enough to feel the warm embrace of something and words spoken in a language he did not understand before the compulsion left hi as well. Sorrow explained to the group that they needed Sia’s blood to proceed.

Sia refused to be a part of any blood-letting. She wanted to study any magic the door had and Amon wanted to search for a mechanical way to open the door. Neither seemed to be very successful and Sorrow decided not to wait around, instead drawing a blade and making a tiny cut on Sia’s arm. The single drop of blood was enough for the demon to open its mouth, thus opening the door. Despite not being grievously injured Sia will not forget this transgression.

Walking down the revealed hallway the group came to a room full of dead bodies and gore. In the center was a bit filled to the brim with bones. Three tieflings stood around it with a beat up drow tied-up between them. The tieflings seemed surprised, but not unhappy to see Sorrow and Amon, even calling out to them in Infernal. Sorrow asked what was going on and they admitted to doing a sacrifice to their god. Amon demanded that they stop at once and the triplets were no longer happy. A battle took place. One tried to blast Sia with fire, but she did a cool Matrix dodge and only got singed (though it still hurt a lot!). When the first tiefling died one of the remaining two decided to finish what they started, but fumbled his sword while trying to kill the drow (who was sobbing and begging for rescue in Undercommon). Gregor started to drag the drow out of the fray and he tiefling who had dropped his sword in a panic tried to punch the drow as he was dragged off, but he missed.

When all three were dead and Gregor had cut the bonds of the drow Sia went to investigate him. The necklace that was a gift from a other she had never known turned out to be a grand holy sybol of Lolith and upon seeing it around her neck the drow threw himself at her feet and thanked her for bothering to save him. He also introduced himself as Erol. He did not understand Common so only Sia, Sorrow, and Tafari were able to communicated with him.

They found out that he had been part of a party of 6, but they had all been captured by these tieflings. He was the only one left after their ritualistic sacrifices. He guessed he had been held captive by them for a few days at this point. He asked Sia if it was alright if he retrieved his things that the tieflings had taken from him. When she agreed they explored further into the decay filled dwelling until they found a grand library full of fine things. Everyone found an interesting bauble as they poked around, Sia’s was a dwarven music box that played Happy Birthday on someone’s birthday.

Sia asked Erol if he knew of Master Orlereini and he was surprised to hear the name, saying that he was a grand wizard of much renown. Though his noble house was small no one dared attack it with him around. No one had seen him or his family in centuries, though. Sia excitedly explained that she was actually his apprentice! He was shocked he was still alive. While he may not know of where he was currently, Sia was happy to know that there was a possibility she could find something about her Master down here.

Sorrow, while poking around the books, found a ledger belonging to some drow family. Upon further investigation she discovered many of the books in the library were about this family. Upon asking Erol about them he shared that said family had been driven out of drow society when the matriarch had turned to making deals with the infernal to gain ore power, leading to all future offspring being tieflings. Those three they had just killed were probably the last of the family line.

Also looking through the books Amon managed to find a spell book, one with a name of ownership written on the cover. The very name of Tafari’s missing daughter. Tafari snatched the book away from Amon and began reading through it. Mostly it was just a standard spell book (a gift he himself had purchased for her), but near the back he found what looked like journal entries written in the margins. Apparently his daughter had simply woken up in the Underdark and began to wander around in confusion. She injured her foot at one point and started crying, but a drow found her and took her for a ride on his giant lizard. Her fate was still unkown, obviously the teiflings had come into possession of her book and put it with the rest of their loot.

Amon (relayed through Sia) asked Erol if he knew how to reach the gnome city. Erol did not. Their search of the library done with it was decided to rest. A bedroom of sorts had been discovered lower down. The beds were shabby. Sia opted to sleep on some of the nicer library furniture with blankets pilfered from the cleaner beds. Sorrow, Amon, and Erol were going to take shifts keeping watch.

While Amon slept he had the most curious dream. He was in a lavishly decorated room full of delicious food and cute winged monkeys. The monkeys lead him down a hall into another room that held a small pool full of fish. There were more fine fabrics, food, and monkeys in this room, but there was also a large, blue lady. She had a locked collar around her throat and drank from a goblet from her pile of pillows before saying it was nice to finally meet Amon.

#gal plays

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planescape-torment-cheats6a · 2 years ago

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Planescape: Torment - Cheats

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 Hints and Tips for: Planescape - Torment. Planescape - Torment Cheats. Planescape - Torment Cheat Codes: There are more movies, you only see them when a high-level spell is being cast. To see them add in torment. You go south of the Mortuary and go to the Smoldering Corpse Bar. In there, go right and talk to a Dustman. She is actually a fake. If you answer her in this order: answers 1, 1, 1 and then 1 or 2 depending if you want 50 copper or 75 and then finishing the conversation. I found out you could do this as many times as you want. You may need to start a quest given to you by a Dustman at their bar west of the Mortuary first regarding a fake Dustman. Free EXP: You must be a sensate for this code. In the private sensorium activate the green stone where you talk to Ravel make sure youve already talked to her once then activate it again and answer in this order 1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,2,1 for xp repeat as necessary. Get good spells for free early in the game: Go to the inn Dorm at the Sensate place in the clerks ward. Save your game and try to steal from the lady who gives you a room until you get a key. Go into the eastern room and search the cabinets on the north wall. There are also several charms that may come in handy later in the game. Becoming a Godsman and getting the best axe: Talk to the Auctioneer outside the market in the lower ward. Perform the tasks he will ask you to do. The second task will be to deliver a message to a Godsman, therefore granting you passage to the northern gate in the lower ward. You will eventually meet a man in a room surrounded by other people. Ask him about becoming a Godsman. He will tell you to forge a weapon in the foundry, the first room you saw when you entered the place. Get the items you need from the clerk in the southwest part of the room. Ask Thildin, the muscular man, for some ore. Then, find the only empty barrel and make the weapon of your choice. Report back to the man that told you how to forge the weapon. Next, there will be a murder. You only need to know where the people are -- you already know where Thildon is; the man whose name starts with "S" is in the same room as man that told you how to forge the weapon, and the other is on the balcony just above him. Talk to Thildon one more time and report back to the man that told you how to forge the weapon. Just convince the man in the locked quarters to live. Be nice to him. You now are a Godsman and have access to the best axe in the game for GP. See Fell: If you are stuck, need an extra boost of strength, dexterity, constitution or other attribute, or want something but do not know how to get it, see Fell the tattoo man. Experience in Sensate Emporium: In the Sensate emporium the private sensory stones , keep going to Ravel's stone and nodding until you have to speak. You will gain experience points every time. Then, just end the experience. Sometimes the outcome can be more dangerous or important to your adventure than many combat situations, so you may want to take a second shot if you don't like the result. Sometimes there are clues that can help you out if you're stuck. Or you can always try asking one of your party members to point you in the right direction. But don't be surprised if, in certain situations, avoiding combat has a bigger payoff. Doing this prevents your characters from chasing an enemy off the screen. If you haven't found a corresponding weapons tutor to learn how to use the weapon, it will carry penalties with it. Hex Cheat: Submitted by nightraider This will show how to modify any of your character's stats. It's actually pretty simple. Example: 18 30 15 15 17 12 9. Once you have written them down, convert each one into HEX. You can use windows calculator in scientific mode to do this. Enter the value in to the calculator and click the Hex radio button to see the value in hex. Here are the above values in hex: 12 1E 0F 0F 11 0C Once you have them converted, using your hex editor search for the above numbers in the torment. Enter in the search like so no spaces : E0F0FC Once you have found these values you can change them as you like. You can use the your windows calculator the calculate the stats you want to hex and replace them as you like. Best ending: "Planescape: Torment" has two endings. The first one is the most common one, it occurs if you choose to fight the final boss. However, you can also convince him to merge with you. This will bring you to another, better ending better because all your friends will be resurrected and they all will have to say something to you. There are three ways to convince the final boss to merge with you. Two ways depend on your stats: you'll have to have over 24 in either wisdom or charisma. Then, carefully following the correct dialogues path, you'll be able to convince him. Another way is to have the sword Blade of the Immortal. If you threaten him to kill yourself with this blade and to end your and his existence, he will also merge with you. Defeating The Transcendent One: To easily defeat The Transcendant One, you need not go through extensive class training and retraining. Just get the Blade Of The Immortal. Find the man working at the forge. Ask him how the Lower Ward got its name. As you keep choosing the topmost conversation selection, he should tell you of a portal by the Siege Engine. After more conversation, he will tell you the key to open it. Then, go to the Siege Engine that has the bridge you can walk on. As you walk on the bridge, a dialogue box should appear. Choose the first option and a portal will open. Enter the portal. As you enter it, you will be warped in the Siege Engine. Look around until you find something called Coaxmetal. Talk to him and you will eventually get to ask him "Can you make a weapon that can kill an immortal? He will say that he needs a drop of your blood. After this, go to the Fortress Of Regrets with the blade in your inventory. When you confront The Transcendant One, ask him most of the questions you desire, but do not tell him to revive your fallen comrades. After you have extracted all you want to know from him, choose only the first dialogue option. Eventually, he will agree to merging with you. You will revive your allies and you will be damned to Hell. Easy experience: You need at least 50 gp to do this, but the money will not be spent. Go to Yellow Fingers in Ragpickers Square and let him pickpocket you. Observe him first, to claim experience and pickpocket skill points. After that, ask him what he is doing. Say that you will give him money, and give him 50 gp. End the conversation. To repeat the glitch, talk to Yellow- Fingers and do it again. The zombie will ignore you, saying that he is busy. You will get gp and experience points each time. Easy experience: When in the prison below Curst, which is accessed through the entrance in the Outer Curst dump, talk to Trias the Deva after you get Celestial Fire which can be found in the middle of the prison. He will ask you to free him with Celestial Fire. Select the "Leave" dialogue option option 3. Go back again and talk to him. He will say "Do you have another question mortal? You should gain , experience points. Talk to him again and select dialogue option 2 "Ah well, farewell". Then, talk to him again and repeat the first sequence 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1. Each time you complete the sequence, you will get the , experience. Use the quick-save after getting the experience in the event that you select the wrong dialogue option, in which case reload the game. Submit your codes! Having Codes, cheat, hints, tips, trainer or tricks we dont have yet? Help out other players on the PC by adding a cheat or secret that you know! Submit them through our form. Covering more than CheatBook-DataBase Cheatbook on: Twitter Facebook.

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polar-stars · 6 years ago

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No offense, but why do ya like Marui? It's the author's fault, not his, but he doesn't have a defined personality, or something that distinguish him from other anime generic side-characters. Same with Shoji, Daigo, Ryoko... Can't say the same with Shun and Yuki bc I actually like them. They at least have a bit of essence??? Sorry if I sounded mean, it wasn't my intention, I just have curiosity. And sorry if I made spelling mistakes as well, English isn't my first language. :')

Hello Anon!

First off, I gotta apologize for this extremely late answer. There are two reasons why I am only now answering.

A. I was in Italy, in a hotel on some mountain with barely any internet.

B. Your question is a tough one to answer for me, simply because I have ton of troubles to explain why I like something for some reason. Putting into words why I hate something is not much of a problem, but liking something? It often just sounds like incoherent stuttering with a lot of me repeating myself. But I’ll try my very best.

To get to your two points: “he doesn’t have a defined personality, or something that distinguish him from other anime generic side-characters.”

About the anime generic side-characters thing: In this case I really am no one to judge. I mentioned it here and there already but I am actually not much of a manga-reader and not at all an anime-watcher.

I used to “watch” animes back when I was younger but here’s the catch: I only ever started them but never finished one of them. In some cases I read the manga instead of watching through the anime (e.g. Sailor Moon, Ranma ½, Mermaid Melody), in other I just googled the ending and there are also a good bunch of cases where I don’t know the ending.

It’s not that I didn’t liked what I watched or something, that was almost never the case. It’s just a basic problem that I have that I absolutely hate to watch through series. There’s also tons of Western Shows from which I saw one episode and never returned again. It may sound stupid to a lot of you, especially in such times in which Netflix exists…but it really is that way. I find it absolutely tedious to watch through hundreds of episodes for a conclusion.

Now, Shokugeki is for some reason an exception. I can’t truly pinpoint what it is about Shokugeki that actually kept me sticking but, here we are.

However with all that background story out of the way, what I basically want to say is, that I really can’t judge the character on how similar he may be to other characters from other animes.

What I can say is that back when I had my “Let’s start a few animes, watch a few episodes and hop on the next one”-Phase, the animes I personally watched mostly had glasses-characters that were either this

or this

Ouran Highschool Host Club is one of the animes that I never finished by the way. Even though it was funny….I just stopped at some point

Also I am hoping I am not saying anything wrong here.

So from my (inexperienced) viewpoint Marui is not that generic. //shrug

While he does have a lot, a lot of comedic scenes (there are three running gags dedicated to him), he’s not completely designed to be a full-on comedic relief character.

This is one of the reasons why I hate don’t like the English Dub by the way, because in that they actually gave him a voice that suits a solely comedic relief character best. It’s extremely high-pitched and whiney.

In the original however it’s not much like that. I mean, his voice does get a little high-pitched and especially whiney here and there but only when he is being whiny (or when he fangirls).

But when he talks normally it’s not that high-pitched or something.

I can see that some people may not see it, but he’s not purely used for gags. He had a big moment during the AE Premlins that portrayed him as quite competent skill wise. From all the students that did not make it into he Main Tournament, the only one who is on the same level as him is Shun Ibusaki if we judge by the scores.

Also if we look at his bystander role during cooking battles, his main task there is to explain ingredients and techniques to the readership that may has no clue about that instead of being used for jokes.

He in general can get quite serious. But on the other side, the fact that he does has his comedic elements it doesn’t make him that mysterious, serious, smart character.

If you’re asking me for a define personality:

He’s highly intelligent and truly excels and devotes himself to what he’s good in.

However he is also very aware of what he lacks and that is actually a little refreshment in this cast and makes him a lot more humble than some of his other male classmates. It’s more pronounced by the fact that he’s one of the very few male characters who actually use “boku” instead of “ore”.

He can still be rather immature and also has problems to stand up for himself or gain respect for himself. What he lacks in terms of dominance over his room, he makes up with complaining so that his dormmembers at least get the hint that he is not approving of what they’re doing.

He’s the kind off person that quickly goes off from people’s radar and that is easily underestimated I think.

He’s quite helpful I think, but can be a bit of a coward here and there but get’s his guts together when it matters the most.

I am by the way the last person you should ask to write a BIO.

So yah….Why do I like him?

Reason 1.

I like the basic concept of him. A chef that cooks by research and knowledge.

Reason 2.

I like that it’s shown that he actually works hard and is not just a naturally gifted genius. Again, I find it very impressive that he figured out his weaknesses and actually works on balancing them out to achieve his dreams.

Reason 3.

He’s funny to me.

Reason 4.

But he can also be pretty cool, if you ask me.

Reason 5.

I can highly relate to him on so many levels. Like the moment in the anime where I started to truly like him was that one:

Everything about this picture is basically me to be honest.

Reason 6.

Seeing how unappreciated and unpopular he is by most, it only let’s my own love grow to be honest.

Reason 7.

My OTP strengthens my love for him even more.

Reason 8.

Yo….He’s actually kind off handsome….I think a lot of you will probably not get me on this but y’see the male characters are in general quite good-looking considering Saeki’s gorgeous art style. But also….I have a type you know?

…..

………Glasses.

THIS IS A MESS

All of this is a mess, I am so sorry for my scrambled words

But as I said, I find it extremely hard to put into words why I love something.

I probably did not change your mind Anon but I just hope that you got gists of what makes me liking this character ;w;

//sighs

Thanks for listening though ✨

I miss him so much

Where tf is his Timeskip Reveal Tsukuda I am still waiting.,

#Gofer answering to stuff

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