#(one of the players is Very likely to drop off once the campaign ends. she moved to a different city during these years and

[varjopeura]

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[utilitycaster]

Stuck my I Voted sticker on my stress ball due to the joys of living in a swing state.

Valinari Ziegler (or Nari for short) was a character I played in an Exandria campaign that unfortunately died a few years ago due to scheduling issues. He was a half-elf Shadow Sorcerer who eventually multiclassed into Rogue (when the campaign died he was 6 Sorc/2 Rogue, I probably would have gone either Swashbuckler or Mastermind if I'd gotten to level him up).

When I created him, I had two thoughts in mind: I wanted to do something fun with the Shadow Sorcerer ability that allows them to possibly stabilize at 1 HP when they would otherwise drop to 0, and I wanted to create a character with a vested interest in being in an adventuring party (because I've noticed that a lot of the time people struggle to come up with a reason their characters all want to be in a group). I ended up landing on the idea that he was a former member of the Deastok Myriad who was betrayed and almost killed by another member on the orders of someone higher up (only surviving due to his sorcerous abilities kicking in), but he had no idea who or why. His goal, then, was to make powerful friends and come back to find out why he was killed and get revenge.

Once I started playing him, however, a few things I didn't anticipate happened. First, I made him in Heroforge and inadvertently made him look like the MCU version of Loki (I had already named him after the mythological Loki's children), which prompted a whole bunch of jokes from my group and ended up informing his character a good bit--I'd always planned him to be a smooth talker, but the Loki lean in characterization made me more inclined to embark on stupid plans that bit me in the ass as often as they worked out (this also meant I was the character that pushed the shiny red button more often than not, and it caused me to utter the line "Fuck it, I have poor impulse control and proficiency in CON saves", which is one of my favorite things I've ever said in D&D). Among other things, he managed to con a treasure map from a merchant by exchanging it for a piece of bent metal that he claimed to have come from the Whispered One's stronghold but actually was pilfered from a dead kobold, but he also almost got killed by a fiend that he had threatened thinking that she was imprisoned in a way that she couldn't harm him. The other thing that happened was the classic character development of him initially seeing the other party members as instruments of his revenge but coming to care about them (in particular our party's Druid was very nice to him and, in her player's words, immediately engaged Mom Friend mode upon hearing him refer to her, the person she'd traveled with for two weeks, as his oldest and dearest friend and our Monk was both interested in the way he operated and willing to call him out on his bullshit--they had a really fun dynamic).

Mechanically, Nari is one of the characters I've put the most thought into build-wise, and I had a lot of fun playing him in combat. His build was centered on the spell Shadow Blade combined with the Shadow Sorcerer ability to cast a version of the Darkness spell that only the caster can see through. Throw in sneak attack I was doing a lot of damage. The DM also gave me a magic item that allowed me to teleport in dim light and darkness 3 times a day--it was, however, identical in appearance to MCU Loki's stupid helmet.

Hey! I saw your other message, and no, i just got off Tumblr and went to bed last night for my own well-being before seeing this, no worries about word count.

I know it feels, well, kind of silly to finish up now, but I do want to thank you for voting. It's by no means the only tool we as people in the US have to express our opinion nor to enact change, but it's certainly one of the lowest effort for the highest impact and it has become bizarrely fraught on online spaces. And so silly ask memes are by far from the only thing I do around elections or in my advocacy; but they are one of them, and I hope to continue doing them for a long time.

Getting to the actual character, I think Nari sounds all around great. "Why is my character here" is perhaps the most important thing you can ask yourself in any story, whether it's D&D or original fiction, and a lot of people don't, so having a character with clear motivations available is not faint praise: it's a sign that you put care and thought in and I think the relationships your character was able to build with others in the party reflect that. I also think the Darkness + sneak attack combo is a really creative and fun multiclass - a lot of my frustration with rogues is that I love a cool assassin in fiction but D&D mechanics explicitly make being a rogue in that archetype almost impossible, and I think you reclaimed that. And I love a big red button pusher. There's hooks! Find them!

Anyway this game and Nari sounds great, and man, I kind of hope for your sake there's a way to revive it.

[arobinwithoutbatman]

((Alright folks, under the read more is the very long tale of what's happened so far in my dnd campaign and what happened last night

SO!

I live with my DM, have done for 5 years now and we've been best friends for about 20 years. Ish. We forget how old we were when we met. It's a long story. The entire world is homebrewed; everything from maps to culture to world history to an entire fucking pantheon. Seriously. My best friend is *incredible* and when I'm not involved in a campaign, I've been their sound board.

The party composition has changed a lot since we first started February 2022 for various reasons: -Cleric switched to Bard cause he was getting a bit bored and wanted to try something different for a while. The Cleric is still alive just currently tied up with work at his temple -Original Bard switched to Rogue because she lost her character sheet and it got flavoured that she was always a Rogue and just pretending to be a Bard -Barbarian was kicked out once he finally revealed his true toxic narcisstist colours and if he comes anywhere his ex (the Rogue player) we're calling the police -One of our Sorcerers switched to Paladin because we had no melee party members and got our asses handed to us a few sessions ago. That particular fight was meant to be difficult and unwinnable but not quite as drastic as what ended up happening. Lots of unlucky dice rolls

Current Level 10 Party composition is as follows: -Luran: Half Elf Bard, not sure what college. He's an artist, his inspiration is flicks of colourful paint that twirl very prettily around us -Love: Reborn Tiefling Sorcerer. Can't remember what her source of magic is rn. She's got all of her skin and organs and everything, she's just covered in burns -Farla: Tabaxi Rogue, Assassin specifically. She's caused so many fucking issues for us -.- Oh and she's officially in trouble with her guild for lack of loyalty and therefore potentially getting the rest of us in trouble -Xiderm: Reborn Eladrin Druid/Artificer. The tech thing is recent. He's literally a skeleton. Yes his name is a taxidermy joke. He and Love bond a lot over the death thing -Cassius: Human (I think) Paladin, Oath of Conquest. He's only been with us for a few sessions and was specifically assigned to us by our mercenary Guild Master to babysit us because we keep ending up in shit -Alice (AKA me~): Human Archfey Warlock, Pact of the Tome. I went full Alice in Wonderland because autism brain a couple years back said "This is a thing you like now" so I'm running with it. Wild Beyond The Witchlight only enabled this. My Patron is the Cheshire Cat~ I'm also currently a Dhampir! I got turned a while back and only got found out last night~

I can go into the story of the whole campaign cause that'll take up it's own post tbh but last night~

We finished our journey across the lake and continued escorting a lovely dwarf named Amelia. She's taking a project back to one of the big cities in the area; she's essentially making the world's first WarForged but it's not quite there yet, it's barely even a prototype and not even sentient. We're headed to the same place so we offered to go with her. We settled into this cosy little pub in a crack in a mountain, got a brief lesson on Dwarven culture (whether you finish the drink or not, you accept the mug that is offered to you and at least try a few sips. To so anything else is highly offensive) and settled in for the night before heading off the next morning. We stopped off at a teeny tiny hamlet cause night was falling, city is still like 3 days away. And the inn didn't really have enough rooms and beds for all of us so we sort of just... grabbed whatever space we could in the area.

Which made it difficult for me to sneak off and go find some food. Cause I got turned into a vampire in a session that happened in October and I only started seriously dropping hints in... March? Because I have heard our Druid/Artificer out of character chatting to our DM that he's sure something is going on with me and just never did anything about it in character. So yeah, I've been very quietly communicating with DM for that long for whenever I'm sneaking off at night to go find an animal to suck the blood of.

As you can imagine, I got caught. Rolled a pretty decent stealth check but Xiderm saw through it and was more concerned by the fact that I, Alice, a very proper lady and courtsean who needs sleep, was sneaking out of the inn in the middle of the night. I noticed I was being followed and tried to lose him, thought I did but we're in a mountain area. There's not a lot of wildlife around that would sate me and I went hungry the night before. Xiderm ended up catching me a couple of rodents of varying sizes but it wasn't enough to fully sate me. It'll have to do though. We had a good long talk and I was given an ultimatium: Tell the party about my condition before we reach Kethador ( the city we're headed to) or he will.

Which I've agreed to purely because that city is underground. No wildlife means no blood. Which means I start getting disadvantages after 3 days, after a week I have to kill to be sated and after 12 days I will go feral and we don't know how long we'll be there.

We also had a talk about when it happened (Player actually guessed this) and why. I chose it. When the rest of the party were getting attacked by creatures in the middle of the night, I was called by an alluring voice which turned out to be a very pretty lady vampire who offered me the choice to be turned instead of being attacked by her hoardes of brothers. I had a talk with Chesh and with her and then accepted her offer.

Anyway. Next morning we start going up the mountain pass and end up in a fight with a rock dragon. Think... Gravios from Monster Hunter. And then we ended there because we play in the evenings and some of us needed sleep and had work in the morning.))

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

I have to ask for 21, because I'm me

21. do they have an idea about how they’ll die? do you?

Ahahah, I love you being on brand. Never change.

She has in fact died died twice (so far). Once when refusing to give up the location of Strahd's much sought-after vampire hunter nemesis - being a stubborn righteous ass, she got pretty beat up and blood-sucked, then dropped off one of the towers of Castle Ravenloft to her death. She got brought back a few in-game days later thanks to said vampire hunter having a scroll of Raise Dead and being convinced by the party that, if nothing else, a glowy smitey paladin was pretty useful in the fight against a vampire, so it was worth it. Recovering from that is... well, still ongoing.

The second one happened when facing some extremely pissed off Strahd harassment just before the endgame, engaging him in melee and trying to keep his attention away from the rest of her exhausted companions as well as the Martikov family - great allies of the party who were at the moment providing desperately needed sanctuary in their winery (and also I love them). Strahd had a magical fire shield up which meant each attack on him was… costly, to say the least. This one was very brief, as one of the family's three precious magical gems was sacrificed to bring her back almost as soon as Strahd, that absolute bastard, left after a brief gloat and threat or twenty. This was also very costly for the artificer in our party, as the backlash of tinkering with the gem to unleash its magical properties ultimately led to him losing his arm. It was a very, very grim time and a real “darkest before the dawn” moment nearing the end of the whole Barovian misadventure.

I know player character death gets handled wildly differently depending on the table. Some folks love permadeath and going through a dozen characters and just rolling (haha) with whatever the dice decide, while some lean fully into playing in worlds where bringing someone back from the dead is just a couple of diamonds and a brief cleric visit away. I feel like I’ve played in games that fell all throughout the spectrum, but in this particular case we went more narrative focused than probably ever before. In our discussions with the DM about how we'd even handle character death in the campaign we all agreed bringing in new outsider characters would be kind of a pain and would ring pretty hollow, so we agreed we'd use the scarce and often very costly possibilities given in the adventure itself, and, if all else failed, we'd go the Revenant route - i.e. whoever dies can be some brand of Too Angry To Die, swear to do one last thing (probably defeating Strahd and freeing the land in this particular case), and come back as an extremely driven undead version of themselves, a sad kind of semi-existence, that, bittersweetly, is guaranteed to end when the task is accomplished. It never actually came to this, as it happens, though each member of the 3-strong party had a brush with it. But it was certainly a rather grim (and appropriate) possibility.

The Silver Flame, which Ramiel formally belongs to via her knightly order, believes that the souls of the worthy and faithful are supposed to join the flame after death and strengthen it in protecting the world from demons/fiends/all manner of evil - so essentially she expects the fight to never really end. Barovia, however, is a prison for a specific evil lord - which also happens to be a prison for the souls of anyone who dies within it. So not only was that hanging over her, but she experienced a small, brief taste of it (twice!) - the revenant option doesn’t seem so bad anymore, suddenly.

All of this is to say, the possibilities were and are many and varied, but I am absolutely certain this is not a person who is going to die peacefully in her sleep at a venerable age, and so is she.

[blogtaculous]

Well, I did it. I went back and played Skyrim’s big DLC campaigns, and thankfully I finished it before 2024. I’ve got some thoughts, and many of them are negative.

But first, some background.

I got Skyrim around launch after getting an XBOX 360 for Christmas when my college roommate shocked the world by dropping out. A friend of mind recommended Skyrim, and it was my first Elder Scrolls game and first big RPG (aside from Two Worlds, which barely ran on the family PC and therefore doesn’t count). I loved it, as many did in those days, because it was a pretty big deal in 2011.

I would later get Hearthfire (it was the cheapest) and I liked that a lot, too. I miss that character, actually, and his home in Falkreath (RIP Gunnar, I wish I could export your save). I wanted to try Dawnguard and Dragonborne, but it wasn’t to be. I ended up with a copy on PC in 2016 or so and I tried to play through it again, but once I played Witcher 3 I just couldn’t tolerate Skyrim anymore. The reasons are numerous and they’ll come up later.

Recently, I moved my PS4 to my wife and I’s bedroom to facilitate our transition from streaming services to physical media. When we met I had her try Skyrim, her first video game experience like that ever, and it was very funny, so when I bought the PS4 I got handful of games for her to try if she wanted to get better (she would latch on to ESO, by the way), and Skyrim was one. This seemed like a good time to finally get through the DLC that I hadn’t had a chance at.

So, I’ve done it. I did the main quest, the civil war, then Dawnguard and Dragonborne.

The early hours were fun as a nostalgia trip. It had been years, and the rose colored glasses were in full force. But, that didn’t take long to wear off, and I can safely say that Skyrim, while it was revolutionary in 2011, absolutely does not hold up.

It’s ugly, the gameplay is bad, every system is completely mediocre, and the voice acting is poorly directed. The writing is just awful, the quests are forgettable, and it’s mismanaged.

Skyrim has been released on every console since launch and yet some bugs remain. Others have been fixed by modders (for free). There have been no improvements at any level since 2011, with some huge and even game breaking bugs untouched.

This part of the experience frustrates me the most. I hate that I have to rely on unpaid community labor to make this game playable. And, speaking of the community, let’s talk about paid mods and the creation club.

It sucks.

More specifically, it sucks to charge for mods (whose creators were likely not fairly compensated for their work), and it sucks that Sony doesn’t allow custom assets, but it ALSO sucks to bundle mods with the game. Why? Well, because a lot of modded content is only good because it’s a freely available labor of love, but once it becomes an inseparable part of the game it has problems. This is most evident with Saints and Seducers, a mod that’s outrageous and stupid.

In short, Saints and Seducers adds new bandit enemies, items, and pets. But it was clearly made by fans, not professionals, because it commits the cardinal sin of ignoring gameplay restrictions. The pets, for example, cannot be harmed. They are completely untouchable, which becomes a problem when they have bugged dialogue and cannot be dismissed (a bug that has persisted for three years). The items are ugly and out of place with the other weapon and armor sets. Also, it’s extremely stupid for the bandits to be invincible until the player goes across the exact right spot in the bandit camp. All things I expect from a silly mod that never ever should have been bundled with the base game.

And this stuff can’t be removed or disabled. Capital B Bad.

Anyway, I played a sword and board character this time because I’ve always wanted to. It is as unsatisfying as every build, because the combat system is shallow and bad. It wasn’t even good in 2011, really, and it definitely isn’t good now. Not much else to say.

Like all Bethesda games, there’s a thousand different systems but they’re all average. The world design and environments are really solid (except the colors, which are ugly), but everything else is so blah.

The DLCs are fine. The bad writing is back, of course. Dragonborne has some cool Cthulhu ideas and imagery, but the final boss fight is frustrating since the combat system is such a chore already, then it tries to be a multi-stage boss fight and they’re all the same. I always wondered why everyone loved Serana and it turns out it’s really because she’s basically the only NPC in the entire game who gets even a little character building.

Now that I’m finally through this last little chunk I can put Skyrim down for good, though this time without the nostalgia goggles. Considering the proceeding work (Fallout 4, Starfield, etc) I expect the next Elder Scrolls game to similarly be poorly written, badly designed, ugly, and safe. I’m sure it’ll also include the worst base building mechanics ever designed, excessive loading screens, and wooden characters as only Bethesda’s aging and decrepit game engine can provide.

The magic is gone, the ability is gone, and all that’s left is Todd “It Just Works” Howard’s poor design philosophy and Emil “I Can’t Do Branching Quests” completely worthless writing. Starfield was made for 12 year olds and the anodyne tastes of their parents, and ESVI will be the same. I have no faith in the future of Bethesda “RPG” development.

Like I said, mostly negative thoughts. I wish I could say the 31 hours I put into this last foray into Skyrim was worth it, but I’m not really sure it was.

[wearykatie]

Journey Into the Wild Beyond - Chapter 3: Thither (Part 1)

Just as a side note before I get into it - I really love the names of the different areas being Hither, Thither, and Yon. Really creative. I’m not at all bothered that a stroke I had over a decade ago gave me a very slight speech impediment that becomes worse when I’m tired and hits really hard on “th” sounds. 

Thittthtththhhter

Before they went to Thither, the party wanted to stop in on a few friends and let them know the big bad hag was dead. They needed transportation though, and luckily, Downfall had a spare swamp gas balloon. Also a very lucky coincidence: Alice decided to show up again and she knew how to pilot one plus how to get past the fog barrier separating Hither and Thither. 

…can I just call it Twitter or something? I don’t think anyone is using that. 

Trapped in a balloon with the party, Alice couldn’t escape the questions. Who was she? Can’t say. Why is she helping? Can’t say. Why did she tell the party she couldn’t enter Downfall but did so just fine once they defeated the hag? Can’t say. 

Good talk, Alice. 

But really, they did get a lot out of the conversation. She wanted to help the party, she was sorry that they had to do this alone, and her inability to elaborate on things clued them in that she might be under the same magical compulsion as Diana from Chapter 1. She also seemed to have a particular bond with Elora. 

Now, Elora had found out that her missing item was a stuffed animal and further that it was a rabbit. This is around the point that K asked me out of game what shade of blue Alice’s fur was. Oh, you know…

About that shade. 

So that cat (or bunny) was out of the bag, since I decided that within reason, things the players can deduce out of character can be deduced in character if they’re working off the same information and not using meta knowledge.

During an overnight stay at the walking inn (the Inn at the End of the Road), Artie had a chat with Alice and during that, he noticed something. He wasn’t able to look Alice in the eyes. He knew she had a face, knew it was vaguely humanoid, but couldn’t look directly at it or recall exactly what he saw. It’s like something was charming anyone who looked at her to not want to look at her. Artie attempted to see past this, and since elves have advantage on charm effects, he managed to roll pretty high. Alice looked like Elora to him.

The party stopped by Telemy Hill to give Jingle Jangle the bag of truffles they recovered from Bavlorna’s cottage. Yet more acts of kindness that the DM and Prismeer would remember… 

Imaginary Dragons

The book has the players cross over the fog barrier with help from a scarecrow friend and then they get dropped off, I guess, because the balloon isn’t mentioned again. The party seemed to like Alice, so I didn’t want her to ditch them again just yet. Hmm…oh hey, Prismeer has a dragon. Well, dragonkin. A Jabberwock to be specific, and its hunting ground is Thither. 

Time for a balloon crash.

A mid-air battle happened with Alice shooting at the Jabberwock with a bow while trying to land the balloon as quickly as possible. This resulted in a crash, but Hakewood was able to cast Feather Fall on himself and the rest of the party, though Alice fell out of the balloon and got separated from the group. This was only long enough for the party to have a nice little encounter with a friendly NPC in a cave who spun gold into magic items.

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight really goes hard on the literary references.

Hakewood and Artie both sensed their items were to the north. They were safe from the Jabberwock for now, they had new items, and they found some ground transportation in the form of a chariot pulled by an owlbear. If you’re not familiar with those…I mean it’s in the name. They’re heckin’ cute too, and I didn’t have to be convinced to include one in my campaign. 

I’d threaded the story of Zybilna through the last chapter and expanded on it more in this chapter, so let me talk about that for a sec. 

The Wickedly Benevolent Queen

The party had read about someone named Natasha, they had heard about Zybilna, and through portraits in Bavlorna’s cottage, discovered that the hags were the daughters of Baba Yaga, but also there was a fourth daughter who seemed to be on the outs with the Hourglass Coven. There had also been mention of Iggwilv, the Witch Queen. 

Before leaving Hither, the innkeeper Tsu was able to provide them with more information via an old children’s story about how Prismeer came to be. It was a domain of delight, carved out of the untempered raw chaotic magic of the Feywild called the Wild Beyond (my little addition to give the campaign title a double meaning) by the Witch Queen, Iggwilv. Iggwilv was a cruel tyrant looking to subject the new land and its people to her rule, but she felt discontent. She was too powerful. None could oppose her. She needed a challenge. 

Enter Zybilna, an archfey (basically a fey demigod) who came to Prismeer to challenge the Witch Queen and take over the domain to rule benevolently.

Being magic students, the party didn’t know about Iggwilv or Zybilna prior to the story, but the name they discovered in the cottage - Natasha - was familiar to them. She was a powerful mage, and she had a few spells named after her. Including ones some members of the party used. But as far as any of them knew, Natasha, or Tasha as she was better known, had disappeared years ago. Could Iggwilv be Tasha? Or Zybilna? This is what the party had to stew over.

But for now, more dreams. 

Where Were They Going Without Ever Knowing Their Name?

Full elves don’t sleep. Well, they can sleep, but they don’t need to. They do meditate though, and during meditation one night in Thither, Artie experienced a vision. In it, he was running through the Feywild being pursued by something. 

Slowly, two things became clear: he was in the form of a wolf, and the things pursuing him were also wolves, but they were running with him. He trips, goes tumbling, and reverts to elven form. The other wolves stop and also become pallid elves. They tell him it’s okay, he’ll get the hang of it, and then say they will meet him back home. As the other elves vanish, Artie realizes he doesn’t know what way they went, where he is, or how to get home. 

Hakewood has a dream from shortly before he left for Magewood Academy. He’s helping out in his parents’ store, but every time they say his name it’s garbled noise. He wants to go to the academy to learn and make them proud, but his mother seems a little distant and asks why she can’t remember his name. 

I had to play on certain themes for each missing item, and for Hakewood and Artie, a sort of family theme started. Artie was getting hints of a place and family he’d forgotten because he didn’t have the means to get there anymore. Hakewood wanted to one day own his own shop like his parents but had no name of his own to differentiate between him and the other Hakewood’s store.

The missing items took so much from the player characters, and exploring that helped to make the story more personal to them. Otherwise, they’re just a bunch of random people saving a far off land in the Feywild because that’s where the plot is.

I Said “Loomchurch” So Many Times and I Don't Know Why

In their travels throughout Thither, the party met a unicorn named Lamorna who was looking for her lost mate, Elidon. She offered her help if they were going to take down Skabatha and also provided additional context for how the Hourglass Coven trapped Zybilna. They had used Elidon’s magic in conjunction with a magical cauldron to freeze time within Zybilna’s palace. Elidon himself might be the key to ending the spell.

The party also met Will of the Feywild, a Peter Pan-like kid who led a group of lost children. 

Okay. So. Will of the Feywild. My players learned this in our post-game “fireside chat”, but The Wild Beyond the Witchlight makes a choice about Will of the Feywild that I didn’t allude to and as far as I’m concerned isn’t canon to my campaign. See, Will isn’t a child. Will is actually an oni who used to kidnap kids for Skabatha until one of the other hags changed his alignment, and he took on the Will persona.

I didn’t use this for a number of reasons, but there were two big ones. The first was I was going with the idea that killing the hags would undo some of their curses. The book even states that if Will’s curse is ended, he becomes evil again and attacks the player characters. The second major reason is oni are known in D&D for being magical shape shifting ogrekin who kidnap and eat people. It was difficult for me to go that route and portray Will as a child knowing he was actually an adult monster who used to kidnap and eat kids.

Will told the party that Skabatha or “Granny Nightshade” had several kids locked away in her workshop making toys. This workshop is housed in a fallen tree to the northwest in Thither called Loomlurch. Will also gave them an item he’d stolen from Loomlurch the last time he was there liberating some of Granny’s workers - a unicorn horn.

Well, that bodes poorly for Elidon.

Nevertheless, the party set out to free the remaining children, save Elidon, and defeat Skabatha. Since this was an involved dungeon with complications both in-game and out, I’m going to save that for the next part.

[costumerdelight]

No one probably cares but Imma post it anyways. Our D&D shenanigans because I'm abusing a Vestige of Divergence's powers for personal gain.

IE, I'm playing pranks for funsies

So quick background: we're playing in Wildemount, we started in Hupperdook with the jailbreak scenario. We picked up a kobold friend who we named Red.

We then went to Zadash via Felderwin (where my character is "from", more on that when I decide to post my PC's background) and found Calianna in the basement of the house of the guy who taught me swordfighting properly, a retired hero of his own regard. (We are playing a dragon-heavy campaign and I LOVE it! The farmhand was coerced into allowing the dragon cult to hold Cali in the basement)

Freed her, got her to Zadash, and we continued on our way to Pride's Call where another party member, William, is from, and he reunited with his family (and the player left the campaign :( ) while we lost Red. So we chased down who we thought kidnapped him and found him in a mountainous academy-ish campus with a bunch of dragons.

Side quest fetch quests ensue, where we go chase down a kid who stole a hammer, but we go to the Ruins of Shattengrad (where we get a bunch of bank notes), then towards Ice Haven, and in Ice Haven, my character gets "kidnapped" during a weird semi-dream fugue state. Turns out its the shipcrew of an old party member of mine from a long time ago, and I get to chat with my fey patron while on deck.

They take me to Balenpost in Eiselcross where the rest of my current party is landing (we had talked about following the thief kid to Eiselcross so I was able to request a drop off), and someone from the Claret Orders tried to recruit me, and I said nah.

We meet up and take off again to Syrinlya, but we get waylaid by a rotund frog man and a water elemental and he kidnaps our captain and we end up finding her, plus a tiefling mage named Honor. And we find a bunch of treasures! Including the Hide of the Feral Guardian, which one of the shipmates pilfered.

We investigated it and found out it was fancy magical, and I try to get it from the NPC. He refuses for a bit, but at some point he started getting weird dreams from it that he didn't like, so he gave it to me in exchange for the mithril armor I had found.

We get to Syrinlya and find the Buyer, who has us go after the other group to try and find the Salsvault, where the cure to the ice sickness is rumored to be found. We very much want to figure this out because our barbarian has the sickness, and we want her cured.

While en route, we find out our warlock was once a bear, amd that was how he crossed from the Dynasty into the Empire unimpeded. We also run across a frozen dragon, but we decide to look at it more closely later on our way back. I keep staring at the armor (because dumbass didn't put it on yet) and we keep going.

We find the vault and, surprisingly, get through it with minimal combat. Including persuading the mastermind behind the disease to tell us where the cure is. We get the cure, then the barbarian, already afflicted, finds the sickness storage vault and destroys it all. We still did not find the group so we start our return to Syrinlya, but partway there we have uninvited guests of some snowy kobolds show up (furry little cuties) and we chase them down because we don't know why they came after us.

We end up finding a weird bunch of kobolds who our barbarian convinces, with almost zero persuasive accumen, that she is a dragon in humanoid form, and she is on a mission to get a hammer from them for some dragons she knows (she did not know that the hammer was for a dragon until that moment). We get to go into the encampment and avoid all confrontations as we retrieve the hammer and leave on our merry way, with a message from these kobolds for the dragon we are going to go and see.

We continue back to Syrinlya, again, and find our frozen dragon. We uncover it from the snow and find it has an egg made of sapphire, and our warlock decides to free it and care for it. We have so many pets, because he has a faerie dragon familiar, the barbarian has a bird *and* an animated gauntlet. Now, dragon egg.

I decide to finally put on the Hide of the Feral Guardian, and gain the ability to polymorph/wildshape into a giant owl. I come to the party and sit on the egg, not realizing our warlock can understand me, so I just keep saying "whooo whooo" like an owl, in my own voice he can understand, and get an apt nickname. We return to Syrinlya, finally, and cure our barbarian. We celebrate with drinks and wait for the captain of our ship to return.

We get on the ship and take off towards Bysaes Tal, because we plan to reroute towards Rexxentrom to cash in our bank notes before going back to Pride's Call. On the ship, I prank the crewmate that had taken the armor originally and startle him much more than I expected to.

And that's where we are, level 6, and ready for what Wildemount has to offer, 100 days into our own journey as we camp on the shores of Bysaes Tal. (As a placemarker, when we went to Felderwin, it was just after the purple wurm attack and the M9 had gone into the tunnel. "Welp, those idiots are dead now." As we arrive to Bysaes Tal, the M9 arrive at Whitedawn Lagoon with Essek and his new wee parasol.)

[crypticsteve]

we deserve to see robin, nancy, steve, argyle, and jonathan fumble their way through a dnd session (not a full campaign, they would literally murder each other).

eddie as the frustrated dm who is also dropping helpful hints like, "i mean do you have anything that could possibly help you in this moment, steve?" and steve is just so fucking stressed. "i don't know man! i don't fucking know." steve is like pulling his hair out because this is a game why is he so fucking stressed. but once he finds his groove he's killing it... all the way up until he sacrifices himself and drops to 0 hit points and very dramatically dies.

nancys clearly the most organized like she's taking notes, she read mikes binder, she knows what the fuck to do. but she also gets so mad at her rolls, "that's fucking bullshit! that should've been a fucking hit munson!" and eddie just lolls his head to the side, "language, wheeler. thems the rules." it's definitely a flash back to last week when the gang played monopoly and nancy flipped the board because eddie put a hotel on boardwalk. tensions are high.

robin is the opposite, no notebook, no notes, she has no idea what the fucks going on but she is loving it. waaaaayyy too over descriptive in literally everything and the sole reason that this session is astronomically long. she is more into the improv side of the game than anything else, but she's also naturally good at understanding the nuances. and extremely strategic. the type of player that you think is bullshitting their turns and then all of a sudden at the very end it all comes together and everyone is just amazed. "how the hell did you do that?" steve would ask, a twizzler hanging from his mouth. "it's called strategy steve. look it up."

jonathan is just there for the vibes. but he did spend the most time crafting his character and he has a funny voice he uses through the whole session. he's believe it or not the comic relief. anytime things get a little too contentious (definitely not looking at nance and eddie at all) he'll be the one to quip something and get everyone back on track.... even though that's technically eddies job. he also loves the story aspect of the game. and has a really good memory. like he'll be like, "yeah but at the beginning you said we were headed west, so technically..." eddie pretends not to be really annoyed.

argyle fucking saves the day. let's be real here. he has never played dnd before (for the sole reason that he never had anyone to play with) but he picks it up in seconds. and he's having the. most. fun. like laughing his head off but also his rolls are just somehow impeccable. like only has like 2 bad rolls the whole session. and he has the final deciding roll and just destroys it. everyone is screaming. jonathan is grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. it's such a beautiful and triumphant moment. eddie recruits him to join hellfire for real.

[titlemewickedwonderland]

Blind by Love (Part 9)

Summary: A once condemned man now free of charge but living the life of someone who's been through hell Eddie Munson believed he is incapable of being loved after what happens in the Upside Down that nearly takes his life. What happens though when he meets an unexpected girl who is thrown into his life and teaches him that one doesn't need to ability to see what's right in front of you to know love is never out of reach?

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Blind!OC

Story Contains: Set after S4. Story mention of Past trauma, PTSD, and mention of gore/blood; if you are sensitive to any of these topics please refrain from reading for your own mental safety. I don't want to accidentally trigger you, darling! Stay safe!

Chapter Warning: Fluff. Set after S4 in 1986

PREV.

They were wondering what she was doing here. She knew they were. She didn't play D&D. She would have been the only girl there too if Erica, Lucas's younger sister wasn't there sitting and staring quizzically at the strawberry blonde as the older girl sat a little too close for the comfort of the group to their Dungeon Master. Gareth, Jeff, and Freak may have been oblivious to the fact she was here because frankly they were so used to the older teen by now that it was a common thing as if she were part of their group regardless of her lack of activity in their games. That being said, Mike and Dustin, both seemed a little confused and off-put just like Erica to see Nicole there in the dark room lit only by the orange glow of Jeff's basement. To say the ride over here with them was…a bit awkward for sure.

"So, tell me again what she the hell she doing here? She ain't playing." Nicole's pale skin flushed at Erica's rudeness but she was comforted if only a bit by Eddie's warm palm on her bouncing leg beneath the cover of the table.

"Erica! Don't be rude!" Mike hissed but the other female merely shrugged and made a 'so what?' face as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"I got a point though. Who cares if she's your cousin Mike? Who the hell invited her? What happened to this group being exclusive to the campaign members?" a dark brow cocked as she eyed the other female whose mouth had dropped open.

"Erica!" her name was shouted by both Dustin and Mike this time as the others fell silent and glanced between them.

Nicole hadn't gotten to know Erica very much since she was a few years younger than Lucas and anytime she'd come to visit her family Lucas was always alone over at the Wheeler's house but the blonde certainly had heard of Erica's spicy tongue; she didn't like being at the end of it right now though. For someone who's only 11 years old, she was smart and too blunt for her age. A sort of bluntness that was over bordering full of bitchiness.

"It's okay. J-Jeff if you don't mind could I use your phone so I can call my aunt to come to pick me up?" the girl began rising from her folded chair beside Eddie but the party quickly began protesting much to her embarrassment and uncertainty.

While Erica didn't want her here for whatever reason the rest of the boys had her back even if they too were confused about her presence. Nicole maybe thought the younger girl could be jealous but that was a stretch; she wouldn't be surprised considering Erica had been the only girl for a while playing so having another female in the room might have thrown her off even if she wasn't playing. Who knew the real reason though for the hostility but it was making the older female uncomfortable. It was clear she wasn't welcomed.

"Sit down Campbell." Eddie's voice stated firmly over the shouting of the other players as his strong hands gripped her waist and pulled her back down

But instead of the softness of leather beneath her that she expected and the cold metal of the chair, she felt the warmth and strength beneath her that was all Eddie as he had pulled her to sit on his thigh instead of the chair with one arm draped lazily around her waist. The new position allowed her to smell the scent that she'd come to recognize and find comfort in that was all Eddie and feel the steady beating of his heart against her back as he leaned closer to the table to level the entire table with a stern glare.

"Nicole stays. She is our guest," he stressed the words out as he pinned Erica down in her chair. "She is a defaulted member of this table even if she is not a member of the campaign, Sinclair. So shove a sock in it before I pull you from the company."

The threat made the smaller girl's mouth open in shock and the boy's eyes grow wide. Eddie never threatened anyone with abandonment or being thrown from the campaign party. The fact he was doing it over a girl was something surprising even more when they noticed her positioning. Mike felt a flare of protectiveness and opened his mouth to say something while Eddie was still glaring daggers at the younger girl across the table but Dustin's hand gripping his shoulder made his jaw snap shut. It took him a second to notice that Nicole was not in any uncomfortable position. She did not seem nervous while being encased in the older male's grip and instead seemed to lean a little into him as she took in the arguments around her.

The teens exchanged looks with raised brows as if promising each other they were going to talk about it later but for right now the night was just beginning and they couldn't be out too late since they had school in the morning so the pair finally slammed their hands on the table in front of them at the same time regaining everyone's attention.

"It's fine! Nicole's my cousin and she's always with me so it's all cool!" Mike stated

"Yeah, besides. She'd be bored doing nothing at home right Nikki?" Dustin shot the girl a smile despite her not being able to see but the girl still turned her head in his direction and gave a soft smile in return.

"Not much a blind girl could do. I think I'd have much more fun here with you guys…I may not know how to play but I do love good storytelling." her smile was a little more genuine as she said this. Since she couldn't read to pass the time like she used to; she enjoyed listening to others talk and tell stories or better yet, reading books aloud for her.

"Well, Eddie's the best storyteller out there so you're in good company!" Gareth cheered clapping with a grin with relief that the air around the table settled again.

"Hey knows, keep that up and you'll boost my ego man." Eddie grinned evilly over at the other who rolled his eyes playfully.

"Right, so that's settled, Eddie let's start man!" Dustin tapped a beat onto the top of the table in excitement trying to get the ball rolling again.

Erica didn't stand a chance seeing all the others backing up the girl so she kept her mouth shut even if her glare would often shoot over at Nicole every few minutes. Despite the feeling of the hospitality like ice picks stabbing her in the face every few moments in time Nicole felt comfortable enough to lean her body back into Eddie's chest as his chin rested on her shoulder as he spoke. Gareth wasn't joking when he'd mentioned Eddie being a good storyteller. He was very animated as he told sceneries and snippets of a story scene. The rumble of his voice and laughter would vibrate along her spine as she kept her position perched on his thigh with one of his arms wrapped around her waist to keep her there. The way he would lower his voice every so often to whisper quips into her ear as the others would talk or argue over decisions to be made would often make her giggle and she swore not only once but a few times that she could feel Eddie's smile against her skin as he rested his face close to hers and every time she would find those stupid butterflies in her stomach flutter.

Sometime during the night both her legs had draped over the older man's lap as she readjusted herself to rest her head against his shoulder; content to be cradled with one arm on her hip and the other caging her when he'd reach to grip the tabletop. He did not move or rise from his chair in animations like he normally does due to the fact he had a girl in his lap but the others didn't seem to notice as his storytelling skills seemed to make up for it. Despite it, all the group had a good time, even Erica. Sometimes during the campaign, Eddie noticed that Nicole hadn't reacted in a while and when he looked down at her he noticed that the girl was fast asleep. She was so calm and relaxed against his chest that he couldn't help but smile down at her softly and pull her closer against him with his arm. When he lifted his gaze he caught Mike's stare and the soft smile fell quickly as he returned his attention to the game. After the game was over and the board, pieces, and books packed up in their respective packages from the players and the others sneaking back upstairs to leave it was just Eddie and Mike left in the basement. The tall male was just about to wake Nicole when Mike's voice spoke up quietly; hushed and with a hesitant tenderness that the older boy wasn't used to seeing the Wheeler teen show. He looked so awkward standing there with his hands in his pockets and his bag slung over his shoulder.

"She hasn't been sleeping good you know," he commented looking down at his older cousin. "I hadn't noticed it when she first arrived cause I'm such a heavy sleeper but…She's had nightmares, dude, I mean like…Upside Down worthy nightmares." there was a guilt that was written all over his face. "I caught her with Nancy during one of her episodes. She kept crying and begging us not to let it get her. Not them…not him or her Eddie…IT. She said 'Don't let it get me' and…I just…" he swallowed hard and looked up from his cousin to his friend's face which was uncharacteristically sober as his dark brown eyes stared up at the younger boy.

"She saw something back then Eddie…I-I don't know what it was but…" Mike hesitated to try to find words but both Eddie and Mike looked towards the stairs when Dustin's voice spoke up from the dimness of the stair lights as he leaned against the railings. Obviously having stayed behind without being noticed and hearing everything

"If you think about it…Nicole had that accident what…3 years ago?" his blue eyes were staring at the girl. "And when did the whole Upside Down begin Mike?" his friend looked over at the taller boy who seemed like he was struggling.

"It started with Will's disappearance remember? With the Demogorgon. 3. Years. Ago." Dustin stressed that point out. "When did you get the call about Niki's accident?" one brow rose pointedly

It took him a minute before the teen's face fell and his skin paled as he slowly looked over at Nicole who lay peacefully sleeping against Eddie's frame. "A few days after Will's disappearance." the words felt like acid coming out of his throat.

"She told me about it…she didn't know what it was but she remembers…she was scared to tell anyone because she thought people wouldn't believe her." Eddie's voice was low as he tightened his grip on the girl. "I told her what I knew of the Upside Down because it sounded like a creature that you'd described to me before." his dark eyes grew darker

The three boys fell silent. "You know I think this is the first time that I can remember that she's slept without waking up from a nightmare." Mike broke the uncomfortable silence.

Eddie glanced down. "Yeah, I bet. Poor thing must have been exhausted from not getting sleep" he didn't tell them.

He didn't tell them that he knew everything. That Nicole knew everything. That he'd let his guard down and let this slip of a girl slide right through the cracks of his armor. He couldn't tell them that he slept better too when he smelled the scent of her lingering on his pillows and sheets. He didn't tell them that he'd let her inside his heart and allowed her to see the most damaged part of him that he could barely even look at himself in the mirror. But what he most certainly couldn't tell them was the fact that he'd fallen in love with this beautiful girl and she didn't even know it. For all, they know their dungeon master was just attached to a special needs girl because he was an only child and found something in her that he was missing. But they would never know the depths of just how special she truly was to him and he was okay with that. As long as Nicole knew and never left him because if she left him; Eddie would have lost a part of himself.

NEXT

[sukipershipper]

Can you spill some of ur bugsnax hcs?

I assume you mean with the characters, in which case, Yes of course!  Bear with me though that all of these are going to take place Post-Snaktooth Island. I might do some headcanons on what happened on the island but for now take these.

(SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE END OF THE GAME, I also apologize for it being so freaking long...I actually did not intend on that)

FILBO

They all lived in a small but very prosperous town, said town doesn’t have a name cause Mun isn’t creative enough to make one yet

After being elected Mayor, Filbo had learned to become more assertive with others. His role as Mayor of the small town involves him doing a few small tasks, like cleaning up the streets or helping with lessons at the schools

Other times however he is brought into meetings to plan celebrations, opening new buildings and ways they can develop the community.

His meeting council includes Floofty, who is always helping him out in terms of his decisions.

His office has all of the trinkets and maps from Liz’s adventures, as well as pictures of everything they did on Snaktooth and all the pictures she and Eggabelle have of each other.

Filbo constantly sends out letters in bottles to Snaktooth in the hopes that Liz and Egg will find it and write back. He is still waiting on a response from them

When he gets bored, he often just draws in a spare journal he has. He does this in meetings or when he’s at a lunch with the others

He had a statue of Liz and Egg made and placed in the center of the town to help remember them and what they stood for

WAMBUS/TRIFFANY

Wambus and Triffany live in a small country home just outside the town next to the beach and a small grotto. 

The place has a large amount of land for Wambus to start a farm with all sorts of sauces. The beach they live next to has a big cave with all sorts of secrets that Triffany is willing to discover.

Reconnecting with their kids has been a challenge, seeing as they left quite abruptly. The kids did eventually start coming around though.

Wambus is a very good cook, lots of people headcanon it and I headcanon it too. The man can make a mean roast. Only reason he never did it on Snaktooth was because the food was already walking around so he had no need to.

Triffany may look like a stick but she’s actually quite strong. On the same levels as Wambus and Chandlo? Maybe not. But she has punted several people before.

She is also very unconventional in her methods, resulting in lots of Scars and broken bones. Wambus had tried bandaging her up before but after failing 15 times he just called Floofty.

Speaking of Floofty, the couple have a very good relationship with the scientist. Floofty often helps Triffany with collecting samples or attempting to help Wambus with growing crops, though those attempts often result in Wambus yelling and Triffany trying to calm her husband down.

FLOOFTY

Floofty now teaches at the towns school, they’re a very talented professor and many of the students they teach have delighted in their work. Though other teachers find the methods very...unconventional.

Though Floofty is still quite cold hearted to most of the grumpus’ they have learned to be more cheerful towards certain Grumps. One of which being Snorpy and the other being their students.

Many students ask how Floofty lost their leg, to which they reply: That information is irrelevant, but if you truly wish to know then speak with the Mayor

When Not teaching they’re usually helping Snorpy out with anything involving the Grumpinati. Though they aren’t really of much help considering their methods

They definitely are considered a cannibal, Floofty was once seen carrying an arm (no one knows if that was theirs) and took a little nibble of it...then spat it out and complained that it was too salt

They are always helping Filbo out in terms of his mayoral duties.

GRAMBLE/WIGGLE

Gramble and Wiggle share a small little two story home in the town. The house is decorated with all sorts of flowers and different patterns on the fence

While Wiggle is always busy touring, playing music, Gramble became the local veterinarian for the town. His experience with the Snax actually prepared him for the animals. 

He also has a small little puppy, ten times better than any of the Snax he had

Gramble still does keep pictures of Sprout around his room, as much as he hated knowing he harbored a parasite in his home, he still missed the little guy. (I am fully convinced the one at the end though was Sprout)

He and Wiggle began dating right after they settled into the house together, believing that it was much needed change for the both of them.

Gramble knits sweaters for Wiggle since she goes out touring so much, he also knits plush versions of the Snax he kept back on Snaktooth. It was the biggest mistake he made, cause now he envisions them staring at him and wanting to murder him

Wiggle always tries to help him when it comes to his nightmares. Playing white noise or ASMR videos so he can go to sleep

Her songs are very well received and she has quite a lot of publicity. Do The Wiggle is still one of her best selling numbers, but she has some love for her other pieces too.

She is always asked to sing at events by Filbo, and of course she never says no. One of her favorite things to do is get one of the kids to come up and sing Do The Wiggle with her since it’s one of the best songs in their opinion

She has a ring box tucked away in her dresser, she’s waiting for the right moment to pull it out on Gramble and propose

CROMDO

Cromdo is doing much better in life, opening up a successful karaoke bar and gets quite a lot of business from some of the guys in town. 

He also showed the less serious side of himself a lot more, and once he let down such a defensive guard he was able to get further in life, albeit he still has a long way to go

He and Beffica still don’t get along, but they’re on better terms than they were back on Snaktooth 

He hasn’t completely dropped his ways though, he’s still a big old Scumbag (and we love him for it). Often he tries to make a profit off something miniscule like an old bottlecap. 

Though Cromdo is still a scumbag, he helped Filbo and Buddy set up Filbo’s campaign to get him elected

Cromdo still tries stealing Triffany’s stuff and Wambus fucking yeets him all the way into town. How he has no broken bones from that is still a mystery to everyone.

BEFFICA

Beffica is now a photographer for the local newspaper, probably not a good choice in many of the Grumps opinions

She is however much better than she was on Snaktooth, and does have a small friend group outside of the Snaktooth Island group

Her old friend group has tried getting in touch with her but she’s very reluctant to talk to them again

Many of the older grumpus’ have basically adopted her because she’s still very shaky after everything, they didn’t expect her to be so shaky but life is surprising.

Her favorite person to go to though is Triffany, for the pure fact that she and Triffany just talk about guys and it’s the best chat ever

She and Filbo are on much better terms, and she may or may not have some feelings hidden for the new Mayor but we will never truly know

She and her ‘Bestie’ go out for Boba tea all the time, a truly fun experience for the both of them

CHANDLO/SNORPY

Chandlo takes Snorpy out on morning runs all the time, he’s proud that his bro is taking baby steps into letting the outside world embrace them

Oh, Snorpy is also He/They now, I honestly feel like it fits them

Snorpy and Chandlo moved to a small little apartment complex for now. The home is very quaint and the two have little designated areas for all the stuff they have.

They also had to make room for Floofty as the sibling insisted on staying with their brother for...reasons

Chandlo goes to library a lot to learn new techniques to help Snorpy, but he also secretly reads up on articles about the Grumpinati in the hopes to help Snorpy destroy them one day

He and Floofty have made a strong pact over the fact that Snorpy must be protected at all costs, no exceptions

Snorpy is a lot more open about what he does now, often asking for advice from Chandlo about his inventions and whatnot.

Neither of them are good cooks, they both try but both almost always burn the complex down so they just ask Floofty to do it

Snorpy actually bruises very easily, he is a literal tomato. So he doesn’t always participate in many physical activities but he does try his best

When Snorpy does bruise, Chandlo goes into full panic mode as he doesn’t know how to tend to wounds. No one ever told him that you can put ice to make it go down quicker

They are married, they have all the paperwork signed and the rings to prove it

SHELDA

She does still go by the name Shelda as people aren’t quite used to calling her Shellsy Woolbag

She actually took up dating when she encountered an old friend of hers, such friend does not have a name because as stated before, Mun is not creative

Shelda has a lot of books and meditation CD’s in her shelves, she also has a Tape Player so when she goes out on walks she can listen to some of the best audiobook readings

She and Floofty get a long a little better, sometimes Floofty will give her insight as to what the world is to THEM and Shelda shares a funny story in return, one that does manage to make Floofty laugh surprisingly.

People don’t often see her get out much, possibly because she’s always busy writing up her experiences and whatnot

She is Buddy’s comfort and the one that they room with currently, she is actually very good company believe it or not

She and Buddy also love writing little stories together as practice for her next book, and they also exchange drawings and doodles they’ve done over the course of the day.

And that’s pretty much it! 

[amanda-glassen]

The Wonder Years: Part 6

While getting ready for her first school dance, twelve-year-old Olivia starts a path toward discovering who she is truly meant to be. Parts 1-5 can be found under the the tag #alex and liv: the wonder years

Thank you to everyone who reblogged the last chapter and an extra special thank you to @imaginaryoperagloves ​@oliviaswifey and my lovely anon for your comments.

...and a very happy day THREE of birthday week to my love @ghostwritingcabenson

Olivia had kissed her girlfriend just three more times before Abbie and Serena interrupted their time alone. She had now kissed Alex a total of five times and each kiss had been better than the one before. And it’s going to keep getting better. 

“You guys missed the best thing to happen at the dance,” Serena excitedly told her best friend. She sat down on the bench next to Alex and squeezed in as closely as she could so Abbie could sit down on the other side of her. “Logan in our homeroom asked Ava to slow dance with him even though he’s with Allie and when Allie found out she splashed an entire cup of punch on him and his white shirt. Everyone, even the seventh and eighth graders, were laughing at him. He’s such a creep. It’s gonna be the topic of conversation all day on Monday and I can’t believe you guys missed it.”

“What were you doing out here anyway?” Abbie asked. “Were you sick of the eighth graders? The way they dance is just grinding on each other. It’s so gross and they think they’re so much cooler than everyone.”

Serena gasped. “I know why they were out here.” She started to stare at her best friend’s face. “Something about you is different, Alex. You’re glowing and you’re like a whole new woman. You and Olivia were kissing! Tell me all about it. Did she slip you the tongue? Wait, you can’t tell me that in front of her. Call me as soon as you get home and tell me every detail.”

“What?” Alex’s eyes widened. “No! Olivia and I don’t do that! We just kissed normally.”

Serena nearly pounced on her best friend. “You and Olivia kissed? I’m so happy for you! You still need to call me tonight and tell me everything, though. Are her lips soft? Abbie’s are really soft and she wears vanilla chapstick. She tastes like a birthday cake and you know how much I love birthday cake.”

“I’m right here, Serena,” Abbie said in a frustrated tone of voice. “And none of that slipping the tongue stuff for us either. That’s so gross. I have enough spit of my own. I don’t need yours, too.”

Olivia glanced over at the pick-up and drop-off area and noticed a man around her mom’s age pull up in a black sports car. Her mom drove a hybrid and hated men who drove sports cars because she said most of them were pretentious, but Olivia had to admit it was one of the coolest cars she had ever seen. 

“That’s my uncle Emerson,” Abbie told them. “My parents are having date night tonight so I’m staying with him.”

“Can we check out his car?” Serena asked. Before Abbie could respond, Serena grabbed her by the hand and started hurrying her over. 

“You want to see it, too, don’t you?” Alex asked Olivia. “Nevermind. I don’t even have to ask. Let’s go see it.”

The car was a brand new Mustang and Olivia was in awe of the interior and all the features it had. “Uncle Em, these are my friends Alex and Olivia,” Abbie told him, bringing Olivia out of the trance she was in from staring at the car. “And the beautiful girl in the same dress as me is my girlfriend Serena.”

“It’s nice to meet you girls,” Emerson said to them. He was handsome and well dressed with brown hair and brown eyes and Olivia was sure she had seen him somewhere before even if she couldn’t figure out where.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Olivia blurted out.

“You’re Serena Benson’s daughter, aren’t you?” Emerson asked. 

“...yeah,” Olivia hesitated. “Do you work with my mom?”

Emerson shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen your mom in thirteen years. She and I were best friends in college. We did everything together. She was in my fraternity’s sister sorority and I found out her dorm room was a few doors down from mine. We were both pledges at the same time so we’d swap horror stories about pledging every night at the cafe on the first floor of our building.”

“My mom never talks about college,” Olivia said glumly. “She doesn’t show me pictures either, but I saw her sorority keepsake box this past summer and I think that’s where I recognized you from. You guys went to formal together, right?”

Emerson slicked his hair back with his hand, trying to recall when he and Serena had gone to formal together. “Freshman, sophomore, and junior year,” he said matter-of-factly. “Now that I think about it we went every year other than senior year because your mom moved back home to LA when…”

“When she was pregnant with me?” Olivia asked. She could feel Alex, Abbie, and Serena staring at her, but she didn’t care. Whenever she asked her mom or even her aunt and uncle who her dad was, she was always met with a vague answer of her dad being someone her mom knew in college, but she was now face-to-face with someone who could possibly give her answers and she didn’t care how anyone reacted to her getting them.

“Would you girls excuse me?” Emerson asked. “Olivia, do you want to step aside and talk? I can see you have some other questions and it’s better if I answer them privately.”

“I’m her girlfriend,” Alex crossed her arms. “Olivia and I don’t keep secrets from each other, so anything you can say to her can be said to me.”

“Is that okay with you, Olivia?” he asked.

“...yeah,” Olivia responded nervously, now wondering if this conversation was still a good idea.

The three of them were standing close enough for Emerson to keep an eye on Abbie and Serena but far enough for the two of them not to be able to hear their conversation.

“Your mom was something,” Emerson chuckled. Judging by the expression on his face, Olivia could tell he was thinking of fond memories. I’ve finally found the right person to give me answers. ��She was president of Phi Delt in her junior year. She was sick of weekly weigh-ins and all of this asinine stuff the girls were forced to do so I got a call from her at 3 a.m. and she’s saying she had an epiphany and that she’s going to run for president so she can change everything she hated about the organization. She laid out her entire campaign plan for me and I remember being so in awe of her because her plan worked. Serena was so fiery and so much fun. That woman was my everything when I was an undergrad. She found out she was pregnant a couple of weeks after our junior year ended. She had gone back home to LA for the summer and she called me a few minutes after she found out she was pregnant. She ended up taking a year off of school and I never saw her again.”

“She should be here any minute,” Alex said, her arms still crossed as she talked to Emerson. “If you and her were such great friends, I’m sure she’d love to see you.”

“I better not,” Emerson responded. “Serena and I had a falling out. I’m not sure she’d be as happy to see me as you think she’d be.”

“Why?” Olivia asked. “Did it have to do with my dad? If you were her best friend and the person she spent all her time with, you had to know him. Can you tell me something about him? Anything?”

“Were you jealous of him?” Alex narrowed her eyes at Emerson. “She liked some other guy so that’s why you stopped talking to her?”

“There was no other guy,” he said to Olivia, completely disregarding Alex. “That May, when she got pregnant with you, there was no other guy.”

“How?” Olivia asked. “If there was no other guy, then how did she－oh. You’re my...” It had suddenly become too much for Olivia. She wanted to cry, she wanted to hug him, but mostly she felt angry with her mom for keeping him from her all these years. 

She knew she only had a couple of minutes left with him, so she clinged to her dad tighter than she had ever clinged to anyone before for fear that the moment she let go, she’d realize that this had all been a dream. 

Emerson wrapped his arms around her, placing a kiss on top of her head. “I’ve been waiting so long to hold you, ever since I found out your mom was pregnant.”

“You have?”

“I loved your mom with all of my heart,” he said as she caressed Olivia’s back to comfort her. “I wanted us to be a family, but she didn’t want that. She didn’t even want me to see you, but I’ve watched you grow up online. Your mom and I aren’t friends on social media but I’ve seen your pictures through friends of friends. Abbie says you’re a great basketball player. You and I have that in common. I played when I was your age and in high school.”

“I get it from you then,” Olivia managed to say through her tears. “My mom knows nothing about sports.”

“Olivia,” Alex tried to get her attention. “Your mom should be here any second now. We have to go, unless...Emerson, you’d like to see Serena? Serena and her perfect girlfriend who is tall and strong and can probably hurt any man who messes with Serena.”

“Your girl is a fiery one, too,” he said to Olivia. “I know your mom should be here soon, so I’m going to give you my number and you can call or text me anytime you want.”

Olivia pulled away so she could get her phone out of her back pocket. Once she got his number, she immediately texted him so he could have hers. Her text message simply read, ‘Hi, Dad.’ but she had waited a lifetime just to be able to call someone that.

Olivia watched her dad drive away, wondering if she’d get the opportunity to see him again or if her mom would keep him from her for another 12 years. I don’t care what she says. This is her fault. We could have been a family this whole time but she ruined it for us. She ruined everything.

“I don’t like him,” Alex said as they walked over to where Jamie’s car had just pulled up. “There’s something creepy about him. Your mom seems cool, Olivia. She’s even taking us for frozen yogurt right now when most parents would never do that for their daughter’s boyfriend or girlfriend. If she’s cool about other things, don’t you think there’s a good reason why she never told you about him? And he knows your mom wouldn’t want you to talk to him, but yet he says you can text him behind your mom’s back? A responsible adult would first try to make amends with your mom and then build a relationship with you.”

Before Olivia could respond, Serena came rushing over to her. She had removed her stilettos and set them down on the grass so she could walk faster. I don’t even want her touching me. But the moment she was wrapped up in her mom’s embrace, Olivia couldn’t bring herself to be mad at her. “Ollie, sweetie, why are you crying? You had me so worried.” 

She felt the softness of her mom’s sweater dress and smelled the familiar scent of her Burberry Blush perfume and the product she used whenever she wanted her hair in beach waves. Everything about her mom felt like home and she never wanted to upset her or do anything to hurt the woman who loved her more than life itself.

“We just found out something very disturbing, Ms. Benson,” Alex began. “Mrs. Rodriguez, our science teacher, is giving us another science project. It’s really going to cut into Olivia’s ESPN time.”

“My girl,” her mom said as she began to caress her back the same way her dad did just a few moments before. “Is that what’s wrong? You know I’ll help you with your project.”

“Yeah,” Olivia nuzzled into her mom’s shoulder. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She did have a project.

Her mom placed a kiss on Olivia’s nose. “I love you so much Ollie. You’re my smart girl and I know you’re going to do great on your project but if you ever need help with anything at all, you can always come to me. Now let’s go get you girls some frozen yogurt. I want to hear all about your date and get to know your Disney princess.”

“Ms. Benson, stay here. I’ll go get your shoes,” Alex said. “They’re Louboutins. They should not just be lying in the grass.”

“Your girlfriend knows her shoes, Ollie.”

“She knows everything,” Olivia beamed with pride. 

“Apparently she knows how to kiss, too, because I can see some glitter lip gloss on your lips.”

Olivia immediately covered her mouth. “Mom, I－wait, is that a mark on your neck?”

“I’m allergic to our fabric softener,” Serena quickly responded.

Olivia was grateful when Alex returned with her mom’s shoes and they could finally drop the subject. “Ms. Benson, your cheeks are so pink. What blush do you use?”

“Oh, I’m not wearing any,” Serena responded. “I only wear foundation, mascara, and lipstick.”

“You’re glowing!” Alex told her. “I need to know your skincare routine.”

Olivia took a second glance at her mom. She did look different. Her cheeks were pink, her lipstick that was usually perfectly applied was somewhat faded, and she had a dark mark on her neck. What did she….oh, MOM! Yuck! She was making out with Jamie right before picking us up. I’m never gonna be able to look Jamie in the eyes again.

But on second thought, now she can’t ground me for kissing Alex. If she does, I'll ground her for making out with Jamie. 

Olivia wasn’t sure if she should talk to her mom about meeting her dad or if she should even continue texting him behind her mom’s back no matter how much she wanted a relationship with him. But she had until the end of the night to think about it. For the next hour, she was going to eat some frozen yogurt with gummy worms in it and try to avoid getting grounded.

[puckngrind]

What’s In A Name:8 - J. Toews

Chapter 8

Where we left off: Bekah accompanied Jon to the NHL100 Gala and he suggested they could live in Chicago together.

Warnings: smut, language

Word Count: 3,396

Series Masterlist ) Puck ‘n Grind’s masterlist

Untitled.

His season ended in round 1 and anyone could see the disappointment all over Jon’s face for the first few weeks after being knocked out in four games. Bekah came to game 1 and wore the jacket he bought her with his name and number on the back. The conversation from LA still hung over their heads but was not discussed by either with the end of the season. Work was crazy for her and summer flew without seeing Jon much. She did take a Friday off in August to take the long weekend go see him at home in Canada. She could see why he spoke about home the way he did. It was peaceful even with the sounds of slap shots waking her up one morning. She toed out to the kitchen to see coffee already made and prepared to her liking of a splash of honey and cream. She hummed while taking the first sip realizing it was exactly how she made it. The large window in the back eliminated source of the sounds echoing through the house. Jon was working out on his mini rink in the backyard. She opened the door with nothing on but one of his old, warn UND shirts on.

“You are crazy Tae!” Bekah emerged with coffee in hand leaning on the railing of his deck. Jon laughs and starts to make his way to her.

“Determined is usually the adjective used Beks.” His sweaty lips dip down and brush against hers. “Determined. Also, good morning.”

He was very determined to get her to Chicago. He knew she loved the city but the conversation in LA was looming over every discussion of a weekend with him. It took a ton of effort for Brynn convincing Bekah to go for the Blue Jackets and Blackhawks game in October. She helped Bekah wiggle some of work accounts during a few lunches and wouldn’t stop talking about it until they booked their flight. Bekah was working so hard that she resisted at first but Jon was thankful for Brynn’s persistence got her to his city.

Brynn rolled her eyes when Bekah walks in from the parking garage in her playoff jacket within Toews airbrushed across the back and a I heart Chicago T-shirt under. “I’m happy for you friend but you are an Ohioan damnit!” Brynn laughs and links arms with Behkah so they can head to the arena.

Jon scored and had an assistant handing the Blue Jackets a lose. Brynn laughs as the two friends embrace near the locker rooms and head their separate ways. “Have fun you two.” She waves more at Jon than Bekah.

“Nice game Tae.” Bekah looks up at Jon as he takes her under his arm.

“I felt your energy, Baby.” He kisses her lips. “Let’s head home.” The words lingered but weren’t touched by either one.

Bekah loved the way Jon smelled post game. It was intoxicating especially as he pressed into her making her legs push hard into his ass while she moaned out his name loudly.

“Come on Beks.” Jon encourages feeling Bekah’s orgasm coming. His not far behind. Bekah’s back arches up and he works faster. Reveling in the way their bodies moved in sync.

“Jon, I...” She moans out while her toes curl tightly into his legs.

“Merde Beks! Je t'aime.” Jon grunts out as he climaxes and collapses into Bekah’s trembling body.

“Uh, what did you just say?” Bekah tries to catch her breath. “Tae?” Jon whinces realizing the gravity of his words. “Jon.” Bekah tries to move him but he just lays with his head in her neck attempting to catch his own breath. “Jonathan! What the hell did you just say?”

“It was French Beks.” He finally moves so she can see his face.

“You orgasmed in French? You’ve never... have you ever... wait. What did you say?” Bekah questioned.

Jon’s mind and heart are racing. Of course he loved her. But saying it in French while cuming wasn’t exactly the way he wanted to tell her for the first time especially when they hadn’t established anything beyond exclusivity. “Babe, I don’t know.” He rubs the back of his neck.

“I swear I heard t’aime. Isn’t that love?” Bekah feels the heat coming to her cheeks. Her hand swiping at sweat on Jon’s hairline.

“Beks. Maybe. I don’t tend to remember what we say in the moment. Plus my brain is hardwired for both languages. Remember, I learned French first.” Jon searches her eyes and sees a smile appear.

“Well that was new. I didn’t hate it but it was new.” She kissed his lip tenderly. “Does it mean something when you brain switches like that?”

“I don’t think so mainly comfort I guess but we’ve been pretty comfortable for awhile. Seriously Beks. I don’t think I’ve ever done it before, ever.”

“Interesting.” Bekah struggled her shoulder out of not understanding before kissing his lips and Jon was thankful for the dropped conversion.

Work picked up for Bekah again. Her firm was given the task of the Cannonball for the CBJ foundation. As the marketing department she was stressed. She took a few days at Christmas and spent them in Chicago. His family didn’t join this year because of the schedule but he was thankful to see her in the mist of maybe her biggest project yet. All-Star break came and went. Jon didn’t make the All-star team so he came to Columbus and spent time with her but mainly in bed then she was off to work. Brynn didn’t mind when he suggested lunch out and invited her knowing they had a standing lunch date.

The week of Cannonball Brynn walks in with flowers. “These were delivered for you.” Bekah could hardly see her tiny best friend over the ginormous bouquet. Bekah’s eyes bug out of her head when her eyes adjust to them. She has only received flowers once at her office and it was when her grandfather died and they were from Brynn and Derek not her boyfriend. Jon sent her flowers for her birthday but to her apartment and not to work.

“Holy shit Rin!” Bekah gets up to grab the flowers and places them on the ledge behind her desk.

“There is a card.” Brynn points towards the center of the roses. “I didn’t read it. Still sealed.” Brynn’s face lights up as Bekah fishes out the note and opens it.

To the purrdiest lady at the ball,

You have worked so hard and I’m so proud of you.

Always, Tae

Bekah’s heart skips a beat and her face has a smitten smile across it.

“Does he always end his notes that way?” Rin questions.

“What? Huh?” Bekah rereads the card and looks at her best friend puzzled.

“Always, Tae. Does he always sign things like that?” Bekah just nods gliding her fingers over the text. “Very similar to that tattoo you have isn’t it.” Brynn flicks her finger to Bekah’s left side where the Always yours tattoo was.

“He’s done it before seeing the tattoo.” Bekah’s brain remembering the note she kept in her wallet from when he gave her his jersey. Butterflies erupt in her stomach thinking about the similarities.

“Yeah, just adding to the list of your no name thing there Bekah.” Brynn breaks the silence caused by Bekah’s realization. “Those flowers are stunning! I’m gonna let you call that handsome man.” Brynn waves from the door and Bekah turns to inhale the arrangement of red and white roses.

She picks up her phone and calls Jon.

“You didn’t have to but they are beautiful. Thanks Babe.” Bekah hardly let’s him say hello.

“Oh, well deserved. You worked your ass off for this western rodeo campaign and I just wish I could be there to push you across that dance floor, Beks.” There was a silence that they both let happen.

“I miss you.” Bekah finally whispers.

“I miss you too Beks but I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”

Cannonball got Bekah all nervous. She ended up wearing the same dress that she did for the NHL 100 gala with some major convincing from Brynn. “You worked hard, that dress is amazing why not wear it and we can enjoy ourselves.” It definitely didn’t go with the theme and Bekah considered if it was too much for an event she was technically at for work. The fundraiser was perfect. Being country themed the players showed up in hats and bolo ties. About half way through Bekah felt the weight of the project lift off her shoulders as she started to mingle among some of women from the Chicago trip and the team. Her comfort level in the hockey world had dramatically changed and even Seth Jones noticed it when they were talking. He had run into her and Jon at the All-Star game in 2017 that became the focal point of the conversation. Bekah crawled into bed way later than she expected and didn’t wake up until her phone was ringing before her alarm.

“Hey Tae!” Bekah knew it was only Jon calling that early.

“Why the fuck do I see Josh fucking Anderson’s arm around you on Twitter?” Jon chokes out through his teeth.

“Huh?” Bekah sat up and rubbed her eyes.

“I was looking through the tag from your event and scrolled to see a picture of that cocky new call up Jacket with his fucking arm around you. Bekah... I... I....”

“You need to breathe Jon. No one had their arm around me especially Josh.” Bekah grabs her tablet from the nightstand to find this picture. The mention of Josh’s name made Jon almost growl.

“Well it sure as hell looks like he’s all cozy with you.” Bekah can tell Jon is pacing the floor. She hears the hard thud of his feet even over the phone.

“Jon! We. You and me, we are exclusive. I’m not seeing or talking or flirting with any other man.” Bekah scrolls as Jon breathes heavily into the phone. She finally sees it. From the angle of the photograph it does looks like Josh’s arm is on the small of her back and not whatever he was propping himself on. A small smirk on Josh’s face as she is talking to Seth. “Jon, Honey, I’m looking at the picture right now and I was just talking to the boys. Seth was asking about what part of the All-Star game I enjoyed since he saw us in LA. The conversation was about YOU,Tae.” Bekah waits and hears Jon swearing in both French and English. “Jonathan Bryan Toews calm the fuck down. You have a game tonight and you cannot be all like this.”

“Like fucking what Bekah? Pissed that my woman is looking like she’s talking to another man and one that is in my profession and one that I have to play soon. Pissed that we won’t call this what it fucking is because we live in different states or are scared or whatever it might be? My head hasn’t been in the right space and it’s hard to lead a damn team when I’m this way.” Jon stops pacing and can hardly hear over booming from his pulse in his ears.

“I... I don’t know what to say Jon.” Bekah feels the prick at the corner of her eyes.

“Well maybe you need to figure that out. I need to get to the rink and settle down. I’ll talk to you later Beks.” Jon hisses and hangs up. Bekah pulled her pillow over her head and starts to cry. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying but she just did it. Jon’s word echoing in her thoughts as she did.

The two texted a few times in the next few weeks and even Brynn could feel there was something off. “Bekah, he’s coming in town tomorrow night after their home game. You need to talk to him.”

“Rin, please don’t.” Bekah looks up from the salad she’s just pushing around with her fork.

“Call what you two have whatever you want but it’s something and in the last few weeks you’ve been a puddle of a human instead of the annoyingly hot for Toews bestie I’ve come accustomed to. You two make each other better you know?” Brynn stares into her best friend’s eyes seeing all the confusion that was stirring.

“But Rin.” Bekah whispers.

“Just go talk to him.” Byrnn spells out and Bekah knew she was right.

She texted Jon asking to meet in the lobby. He said he had a late team meeting but could slip out for a moment. Bekah’s heart beat faster and her cheeks flooded red when she sees him walking towards her.

“Hey Beks.” Jon leaned down and kissed her forehead.

“I’ve missed you.” Bekah blurts out.

“I’ve missed you too.” Jon stands close but not too close. “What’s up?”

“We haven’t seen or talked to each other in awhile.”

“Yeah, we’ve been busy.” Jon rubs the back of his neck looking down at her and she sees his pocket buzz.

“I... I... fuck... why is this hard?” Bekah whispers almost to herself as Jon’s pocket buzzes again.

“Beks, I don’t know but I really have to go. Tomorrow night, after the game I’ll meet you down in the tunnels like always okay?” He dips down and kisses her cheek before jogging off.

Bekah shook off the odd exchange and the next day wore her Toews jersey as she had been doing the last few seasons. Brynn’s eyes were bright when she got into Bekah’s car and saw the familiar jersey but said nothing. The ladies were closer than normal for this game and when Jon skated by during warmups she saw a slight smile across his face.

The game was not great and Bekah could swear she saw Jon push Josh after the whistle and words were exchanged but when Brynn said she didn’t see anything she wrote it off as paranoia. The Blue Jackets won and when Anderson scored in the third Bekah felt Jon’s eyes on her while the entire arena erupted in cheers. After the game, as always, Bekah waited for Jon between the home and visitor’s locker rooms. Bekah getting chirped by a few of the player who saw her in the Toews jersey and recognized her from Cannonball. Bekah sees Jon and starts toward him. His expression soft as he makes his way to her.

“Bek-caw!” A booming voice behind her calls out. She turns to see Josh with his hands to his mouth.  Seth, and Boone behind him in the tunnel. The boys all wave and she waves back then turns to see Jon standing in front of her. A grimace now flooding his face.

“Ready?” Jon pulls his arm tight around Bekah and she felt his whole body was tense.

“Yes, Tae. Let’s get outta here.” Bekah squeezed Jon and the two made their way to his hotel room. Once inside Jon drops on the bed kicking off his shoes but fully clothed in his suit. “I’m sorry Tae.” Bekah curls up into him and she can feel the tension radiating out of him. Jon finally groans and moves their bodies. Stripping Bekah’s clothes off first then his own in almost silence. Just the sounds of movement and kisses filled the air. He slinks down her body and presses his tongue into her core.

“Fuck Jon!” Bekah jumps and he presses his hand down at her hips to keep her body in place. He’s relentless and doesn’t let up after an orgasm rips through her body. His fingers curling into her as he sucks and flicks at her clit. Bekah yells out his name as the second orgasm crashes over her with even more of an intensity than the first. Jon only let’s up for a moment while he adjusts her legs and slams his throbbing cock into her. The room now filled with curses and moans. Jon biting at Bekah’s shoulder while she claws at his back. He thrusts hard into her then stops. Her eyes that are screwed shut fly open and the intensity of Jon’s eyes was a lot to take. Pupils blown, the look of want and a hint of something she couldn’t put her finger on before he rolled his hips out and slammed back into her. Bekah’s hands fly up to brace herself with the headboard. Jon’s hands move so he’s on his elbows with his lips ghosting her lips. “Mine.” He whispers then presses his lips on hers. Bekah feels Jon twitch deep inside of her which causes her body to climax again. Jon rolls off of Bekah. His hard expression softens and he kisses her then heads to the bathroom. She expects him to return but when the shower turns on she pads over to the bathroom.

“Tae?” Bekah looks into the shower and Jon’s forehead is pressed against the tile and the water is running down his back. He doesn’t move or answer. “Baby?” Bekah enters the shower and wedges herself between the shower wall and his body. Jon’s eyes closed and her hand comes to cup his cheek. “Jon?” Bekah runs her thumb across his cheek.

“I’m sorry Beks.” He opens his eyes and looks at her.

“Sorry for what?” She keeps her hand in place and blinks the spray from her eyes.

“For everything Beks. For everything but I’ll start with my behavior in bed just now.”

“Jon.” Bekah goes to kiss his lips and he moves.

“Let me finish. I got jealous. I got pissed off. I didn’t talk to you. I have let you and my team down. I just...” Jon takes a deep breath.

“Jon, let’s get out of the shower and talk okay?” Jon nods his head and let’s Bekah lead him out. She dries them both off and snuggles into his chest in bed.

“I’m sorry.” He says again and runs his hand down and up her arm then pulls her body flush with his.

“You keep saying that.”

“I mean it.”

“And the jealousy thing?” Bekah looks up at him.

“I couldn’t see beyond a poor camera angle and got angry that these local guys could see you almost daily. That they could easily have you if they wanted to.”

“But they don’t and they won’t.” She reassures him. “And the whole mine thing?” Bekah whispered out and rubs her shoulder.

“Fuck Beks did I hurt you?” Jon kisses the spot that already looks like it’s bruising.

“It was in the heat of the moment and I’ll be fine. But Mine Jon? The possessive sex thing isn’t exactly you.”

“I know. I just... fuck.... fuck... fuck.”

“You fuck?” Bekah laughs. Jon sits up on his elbow and looks down at Bekah.

“Bekah. I love you and I know we said we aren’t naming this but I love you and I’m a fucking idiot for not telling you this years ago.” Jon leans down and kisses her lips.

“Jon...” Bekah breathes out.

“And not just love. I don’t want to live without you honestly. When we leave each time it gets harder. When that hint of cinnamon smell from your pillow is gone I find myself in the kitchen trying to replicate it but it’s your smell. You. I want you. I want you to come to Chicago, run my new foundation, build a life with me, together. Je t’aime Rebekah. I said it once before and didn’t realize then that I meant it but I do.” He drops back down so their faces are inches apart.

“Jon.” Bekah places her head on his chest. He combs his fingers through her wet hair.

“You don’t have to say anything Beks. I don’t want you to say it back unless you mean it. I’m okay with being just this. Okay? Just know that’s what I want is more and if you don’t then we keep doing what we are doing but if you consider even a little bit of what I just said that we can start slow and not all at once. I’m in this for the long haul Beks.” He hand glides under her chin and slowly moves it to look her in the eyes and kisses her lips again.

“Okay.” Bekah quietly says.

“Okay? Okay to what Beks?”

“Okay....”

[jonthethinker]

I’ve been thinking about what I would find to be the perfect ending for Critical Role Campaign 2, and I realize how far my ideal ending may be from where we will probably end up, and why that is.

This isn’t to denigrate our fine storytellers, but there’s some strong ideological differences between what I would find most beautiful and interesting and where they are likely to end up.

To the cast, I sense it seems this is a story of recovery and discovery of identity. Seven broken people find each other, perhaps by chance or, as Matt’s opening lines of the campaign suggest, Destiny. Regardless, they come together, and in that coming together, they help each other heal. This takes time, and comes with many conflicts and false starts and set backs, but slowly, they do indeed begin the process of healing.

As they heal, these lost souls begin to explore their identities safely in each others’ company. Each member of the Mighty Nein gets a chance to feel out who it is they are and want to be, all the while knowing that if they stumble and trip along the way, they have their dear friends to catch them. Eventually, they will have a firmer grasp on who it is they really are, deep down, and with that, be able to tackle the rest of what life has to throw at them head on. So far, if I am right and this is indeed what the cast believes, I completely agree with them. But things do begin to diverge on where they seem to want to take it, and where I wish it would be.

This divergence begins in the fallout of this healing and recovery. What happens next? Place and Purpose, of course. Once they know who they are, they are ready to find their homes; ready to find where they really belong. For now, that place is the Mighty Nein, but for some reason, this type of story never seems to be satisfied with that answer. There must be a new chapter, one in which the Mighty Nein, while remaining loyal and committed to one another as friends, each go their own way. They will have done what they set out to do with the group, and now they must build something new on their own.

You see this clearly in the two characters most aware of what kind of story they stumbled into, unsurprisingly played into by the two players least bothered by the fourth wall; Sam Riegel’s Nott The Brave/Veth Brenatto and Marisha Ray’s Beauregard Lionett. Both of these characters have been dreading the eventual closing of this chapter on healing and recovery, because of how comfortable they’ve become in their place within it, and how unprepared they feel for what surely must follow.

Nott was afraid of getting her body back because it would mean she may have to leave behind the first thing she’s ever felt good at, and grappled with how that must make her a terrible wife and mother to have those sorts of feelings. Once she does regain her body, Veth still grapples with these very feelings, even when she could have everything she thought she was fighting for all along, because the adventures of the Mighty Nein have so filled her with excitement and purpose and meaning like she’s never had before. She’s still waiting for that other shoe to drop, and the day her travels must end, because that’s the only way she feels she can satisfy the contradictions.

Beauregard was in her mind a loner, and only with the Mighty Nein has she ever started to question that self-diagnosis. In the Nein, for the very first time, she’s found a place for herself, and a group of people who can actually dull all her sharp edges. She has clear meaning and purpose in working with the Mighty Nein to overcome their personal obstacles, and maybe in doing so, leaving the world a little better than she found it. Before the Nein, those sorts of things weren’t even possibilities. She even felt she was assured a young death and thus no future to begin with. But when she realizes she could have a future, she wants it to be with the Nein... But as her ability to empathize begins to bloom, she realizes this may not be what everyone else has in mind. That some day, the rest of the Nein hope to put the Adventuring life behind them, and in that moment, Beau will have a future to decide for herself and herself alone, and that is terrifying. Because the main thing the Nein has taught Beau is how desperately she doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

As I said, I agree that this is a story about recovery and identity, but it is also much more that. For me, as just a humble member of the audience, the story of the Mighty Nein, above all, is a story about the consequences and possible solutions to isolation, loneliness, powerlessness, and above all, alienation. All seven of our great heroes have been forced through their particular backstories and their mutual adventures to battle with these very feelings over and over, and to me at least the solution to these problems is, well, the community, solidarity, and comfort of each other.

For me, it’s not so obvious that the Mighty Nein has to, well, end.

Sometimes it feels like the cast agrees with me, but usually only in their moments of greatest spontaneity, dealing with the struggles and heartbreaks right in front of them as they happen. I think of Fjord casting his falchion into the lava only to be pulled in closer by his friends. I think of Beau facing her parents, and then later with the fallout of her potential bargain with the Hag. I think of Jester preparing to confront her father, and the subsequent results of his apparent rejection. I think of Caduceus saving his family and his home, and deciding to stay with the Nein anyway. I think of Caleb confronted by Trent in Castle Ungebroch as a shield of his friends form around him. I think of all the Nein reassuring Veth they would accept and love her no matter if she was staying with them or not, but how much they’d miss her if she went. I think of how easily they accepted Yasha into the fold whenever she came back from her wanderings, and how hard they fought to get her back when she was taken from them.

The reason I come to the conclusion that the cast see’s the Nein as eventually having to end is the end for Vox Machina. You had seven people who helped each other heal and grow in ways they never thought they were destined for, experiencing a sense of belonging and purpose the world had never afforded them before the merry band formed. But as a would-be-God was locked away and a dear friend, lover, and brother faded from their grasps, they all drifted in their own directions. They all had a place to fill in the grand scheme of things, and it was time for them to grow up.

And its this notion of growing up that grates me. That these moments of camaraderie and companionship must be as ephemeral as our adolescence. The adventuring days and the bonds we form within them are only meant for our youth, and the meaning and purpose and place we find inside of them is only meant to help us through the confusing days of young adulthood, before we begin our real days as adults, which may only be tackled alone or with a lover. I simply don’t see it this way.

Adulthood should not be this singularly alienating experience that it has become. For most of the existence of humanity, it has not been. We are not meant for self-sufficiency and independence to the degree our society insists upon. Societies would not have formed in the first place without faith that a person can depend on others to provide for them. If the blacksmith also had to sow and patch their own clothes, she would never have time to blacksmith, just as a tailor can’t focus on sowing when she has to build and maintain her own tools. Poverty and deprivation can lead us to have to be more independent than we ought to, but in a world with equitably managed resources, we can afford to have faith the farmer will provide our food, the treatment plant will make our water safe to drink, and the carpenter will keep the rain off our head.

Think of how miserable most adults are today, and then think about how alone and alienated they all are. They are either spending each day working themselves numb only to go home and distract themselves with various entertainments, or if they have “community,” it’s so narrowly defined and judgmental that the gains made from your place within it are completely offset by how much you must cut yourself into shape to fit in. The greatest moments of our lives are often within our youth, because while you’re young you get to grow and stretch and stumble in the company of other people doing the same, and there is no expectation in doing anything else. But we’ve decided on some arbitrary point in which this time of personal exploration and safe company must end. If you’re old and want to expand your horizons, I hope you’re rich, because if not, it ain’t happening.

So for me, to imagine a world in which the members of the Mighty Nein might go a week, nonetheless months without seeing each other is beyond cruel. Think of the feeling of security and belonging the Nein have provided for one another, and tell me there has to be some arbitrary cut off date for their continued company. Think about Fjord breaking the habit of filing down his tusks because of the support of Jester and the Nein, a habit he performed into his early thirties, and tell me that one day, he needs to go out on his own because of reasons. They can take the lessons they’ve learned from the Nein, and still have the Nein, and not be unprepared to take whatever challenges life has to offer them, and in fact, may be better at tackling them all together with their family at their side every step of the way.

People prosper most when they decide they are better off working together than they are alone. To me, it’s abundantly clear this is true for the Mighty Nein. And I hope and pray when the time comes the cast will see it the same way. And I’ll accept and almost certainly enjoy whatever ending they end up having, in this strange form of improvised entertainment. None of this is to hate on the cast or me trying to tell them how to run their game or tell their story, I just have a lot of feelings on the matter. I am almost certainly overthinking something that may very well be a long way off from even happening. but after spending literally hundreds of hours with these fictional characters, I can’t help but want the best for them. And so far, the best for them is... well, each other. And no possible future they could have will be as good as one in which even in their golden years, they can look over and know, no matter what, they have the Mighty Nein.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

beamsaber: campus art museum heist edition

it’s everyone’s favorite part of the week, out of context snippets from the beamsaber campaign i’m playing

our GM @bronanlynch​: “idk how much of a timeskip there was, time is fake and i don’t care"

we are doing a series of interlocking heists from a college campus: stealing mech designs from a weapons dealer/tenured art professor, and on the side privately stealing a cool sword for our boss

love to steal shit to finance my boss’ eventual defection and escape while not being able to defect and escape myself

the Aesthetic of this faction is Catholicism but more Goth

our cover is we’re taking our intern on college tours

but it’s a fancy space-ivy-league liberal arts college so we need to fit in so we go to our good friend sebastian, who is definitely not a space vampire, and do a fashion show sequence. it’s very important to me that u know i was wearing this but with a long train the robot i stole three sessions ago is holding up. my stolen robot is full of guns. there are LEDS all up in my frilly collar and it is not just pink but some combination of wild colors that flouresces under blacklight. at one point i had to leave my robot behind to act as a watchdog and detached and draped my train over it so it looked like a weird piece of art. 

our gm and our other player @duckswithwings​ are significantly artier than i am so i derailed the whole session when they had to stop and explain that the vatican has boxes of dicks that were taken off statuary and there’s some sort of effort to match the statues back up with their dicks. i skimmed an article with the line “it seems like penises in Italy might be making a comeback sometime in the (relatively) near future.”

this will be relevant later

“Is the mission bold?”  “Our looks are!”

“You look the other grad student up on space facebook-”  “Spacebook, if you will?”

ended up assassin’s creeding my way down a building bc i had to get out of the office i was snooping around, but Fast

GM tried to give me the level one harm “paper cut” but i critted the resist so that somehow erased one stress box??? what a good game

stanza says “oh HELL yeah love a sword.”

“Lurking, and scheming, but trying not to look like I’m lurking and scheming. In an artsy sort of way.”

Actually got the briefcase with the plans in the most ludicrous spy parody way possible: tailed professor to museum where she was sketching, successfully declared an unusual weapon (tiny clear boomerang) to knock the professor’s tea into her lap so she had to duck into the bathroom to clean up- stuffed dress train in robot, stuffed briefcase in robot, jumped out window, once again assassins’ creeded my way down. Ducked into drama building next door’s bathroom (someone is crying in here) to check that this is the right briefcase (yes but there is SO much unrelated shit in here).

Sat in fancy cafe eating pastries, planning sword heist

“The artifacts are vampires.”

“Let’s dishonored this shit” and then we dishonored this shit by sleep darting the guards.and also violence, but the sleep darts did a lot of the work

so we have a trophy room back at our secret lighthouse base and we meant to steal an entire box of statuary dicks for the trophy room BUT while dodging the campus rentacops our intern dropped the box and managed to only get away with a couple :<

[fnlrndcllctv]

THE YEAR IN FIGHTING GAMES: 1994

As the original release of Street Fighter II turns 30 this year, we are taking a look at the landscape of fighting games between 1991 and 2021 on a year by year basis!

This week, Shaun Eddleston takes a look at 1994…

1994 was an eventful year for video games.

Nintendo was starting to wind down on its production of NES games, while celebrating the success of games such as Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo. SEGA’s Sonic The Hedgehog series was going strong with Sonic The Hedgehog 3, and games such as DOOM II and Warcraft were making their way onto computers all across the world.

It was also a year where Germany placed Mortal Kombat II on its index of media works deemed harmful to young people by Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons effectively banning the game from sale in the country (and remained that way all the way up to 2005!).

Let’s take a look at 1994 in fighting games...

One of the more obscure Neo Geo titles, Aggressors Of Dark Kombat (known as Tsuukai GANGAN Koushinkyoku in Japan) was an interesting title that felt like a bit of an experiment in the genre. The game’s movement feels more like it would fit into your standard beat ‘em up game such as Final Fight and Streets Of Rage, and even drops weapons into the stage for fighters to use. 

The game also includes a fun comeback mechanic, the “GAN GAN attack”, which kicks in once a player’s health bar drops below a certain point, and their power bar is full. Once one of these mega attacks connects with an opponent, the player automatically wins the round.

Art of Fighting 2 continues the story that kicked off in the previous year’s entry, as we immediately learn that the identity of Yuri’s kidnapper, the tengu masked Mr Karate, is none other than Takuma Sakazaki, Yuri and Ryo’s father. This is all part of a much bigger criminal plot that ends up being spearheaded by a certain young crime lord from another popular SNK fighting title…

As for the game itself, almost every aspect of the Art Of Fighting experience was rebuilt and polished. The character sprites and stage art looked better, and a new “Rage” gauge mechanic was introduced into the mix. All of the game’s characters are immediately playable in arcade mode, and each have their own specific dialogue when interacting with other fighters.

The first 3D weapons-based fighting game was also one of the earlier releases on the Sony PlayStation, and was poised to be the game that would “outshine” the impressiveness of Virtua Fighter’s groundbreaking graphics.

While it didn’t quite beat out SEGA’s franchise, Battle Arena Toshinden still had a couple of interesting aspects to it that are still worth mentioning today. 

First of all, it is arguably the first “true” 3D fighting game, as it included the ability to side-step or dodge roll during a fight. This meant that the act of avoiding projectiles now had more options outside of blocking the hit or jumping over it, giving the game a little more depth (both mechanically and visually).

Thanks to the newly opened up 3D movement, ring outs are also possible in the game, where players can lose a round by simply falling off the side of the stage. This is an element that many gamers see as a bit of a cop out during a fight, but I personally see it as a fun way to humiliate opponents and even bring overly confident fighters back down to earth.

Capcom’s massive success with Street Fighter II was one of the most important moments in video game history, and the game was still going incredibly strong since its release 3 years prior (including this year, which we’ll touch on later in the article). There was a big question that lingered though; what non-Street Fighter fighting game would Capcom bring to the table next?

That game was Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors.

Darkstalkers wasn’t a million miles away from Street Fighter II in terms of gameplay. It utilised the same six-button L/M/H attack layout, and even used a Super Gauge that would be shared with the series.

The main strength of Darkstalkers that set it apart from its more famous older cousin, and that was its characters and theme. Instead of a tournament of worldwide fighters that many 2D fighting games utilised, Darkstalkers took inspiration from classic horror movies from the Universal era and offered a cast of 10 fighters that range from werewolves, sasquatches and vampires to Egyptian mummies, zombies and a Frankenstein’s monster for good measure. 

A spooky cult favourite!

1993’s Fighters History was a controversial entry in the fighting game genre. Not necessarily because of any violent content or especially iffy storyline, but for just how similar the game was to Street Fighter II. It was so similar, in fact, that Capcom attempted to sue Data East for just how much of a shameless ripoff the game was.

Capcom wasn’t successful with the lawsuit, and Data East went forward with a sequel, Fighters History Dynamite.

The game, perhaps more commonly known in some places as “Karnov’s Revenge”, added more characters (including the game’s boss fighters, Karnov and Clown) to the playable roster and spruced up the game's stage backgrounds.

Other than the slightly expanded range of fighters, and a hilarious hidden character to discover, not a lot else has changed from the first title, and still feels like it can’t shake off the original comparison that it got into trouble for.

Many 2D games up to this point were trying to mimic Street Fighter and Fatal Fury’s cartoonish graphics, there wasn’t really anything outside of Mortal Kombat’s digitised graphics that truly felt “next-gen” going into the middle of the decade.

Enter Killer Instinct.

While Rare as a developer was having a fantastic year already, with the success of Battletoads and Donkey Kong Country leaving long lasting impressions on the industry, their fighting game was a revelation in arcades, bringing a mix of 2D gameplay on 3D stages, strong bloody violence and a ridiculous new combo system to the table.

The characters were memorable, the animated FMV sequences were jawdropping to watch, and witnessing the game announce blare out “ULTRA COMBO!” whenever someone nailed a particularly savage sequence of hits just felt right.

Why not check out our thoughts on the game’s “killer” soundtrack?

Inspired by the popularity of Ryo Sakazaki (Art Of Fighting’s main protagonist) and his appearance as a guest character in Fatal Fury Special in 1993, SNK decided to go all out and start a crossover fighting series that brought together characters from their library of past games.

The game, named after the fighting tournament in Art Of Fighting and Fatal Fury, allows players to choose from a selection of 3-member teams that have been designated to different countries of the world, and matches revolve around an elimination system. In addition to a selection of original new characters, KOF ‘94 mixed together the Ikari Warriors, Psycho Soldier, Art Of Fighting and Fatal Fury franchises to fill out one of the largest fighting game rosters around at this point.

The game’s music is the subject of our very first entry in the Soundtrack Sunday series, so check it out!

Of the slew of games that took direct inspiration from Mortal Kombat, very few actually left a lasting impression.

One of the exceptions to this was Primal Rage, which saw stop motion dinosaurs and prehistoric apes duke it out for supremacy in the new “Urth”.

The game, which also took inspiration from Taito’s Dino Rex from 1992, caused its own controversy with one of its fatalities. In 1996, a woman from Arizona said that her 11 year old son had bought the game, and used a strategy guide to execute the “Golden Shower” fatality (in which, as the title suggests, the character Chaos urinates all over the corpse of an opponent). She flipped out and started a grass-roots campaign against Primal Rage, which resulted in some US stores withdrawing copies of the game, including the already-censored SNES version, which didn’t even contain the offending move.

The game was also successful with its merchandise, and saw a line of toys and a board game to accompany it.

The first Samurai Shodown game was, and still is, one of the finest fighting games of the early 90’s, so SNK had a huge task on their hands when it came to creating a sequel.

With Samurai Shodown 2, they absolutely knocked it out of the park in pretty much every aspect. All of the sprites of the characters who reappeared from the first game had been completely remade, a bunch of new characters had been added in, everyone got amazing new moves and a number of new game mechanics were also introduced to make the game feel much more balanced and fun to play.

One of these new mechanics was the “Weapon break” system, which meant that if a player got hit with a particularly powerful attack, there was now a chance that it would knock their weapon clean out of their hands, leaving them unarmed until it was recovered. The sheer panic of scrambling to pick up your sword while the opponent is slashing away at you is a thrill that still feels as effective today as it did back then.

Street Fighter II’s reign as king of the arcade fighting games was starting to wind down by 1994, so the game saw a final upgrade in the form of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which added more game speeds, new animations and moves for all of the characters, a new “SUPER” gauge system and the introduction of  a hidden character that would quickly become one of the franchise’s most recognisable fighters; Akuma!

While many more casual players may not have felt the real impact of these changes (this was the third update in as many years since the original release), it remains as the “definitive” version of Street Fighter II, and is still used in tournaments to this day.

Developed by Namco (and ported to PlayStation in 1995), Tekken took the 3D fighting style that was pioneered by 1993’s Virtua Fighter, and added its own spin on things in regards to the control system.

Instead of using the traditional fighting game inputs that corresponded to the strength of the attacks, Tekken utilised a system that dedicates a button to each individual limb of the fighter. In doing this, the game became more of a learning process for players that wanted to do special moves and combos. This departure was so innovative, that experienced players could now figure out special moves by studying the fighters limb movements during their animations.

Known briefly as “RAVE WAR” during its beta test stage, Tekken quickly found itself as one of the most popular PlayStation games in history, and became the first game to sell over a million copies for the console.

Take a look at our thoughts about the game’s soundtrack!

Virtua Fighter was an incredibly important moment in gaming, so following up with a sequel that lived up to its predecessor was absolutely vital for SEGA.

Luckily, with Virtua Fighter 2, they managed to not only surpass the first game in the way it looked, but how it played too. Improved movesets ramped up how authentic each individual martial arts/fighting style felt, and with things running at 60FPS in the arcade version, the game felt like it was miles ahead of its competition.

The third entry in the World Heroes series was yet another improvement on the games that preceded it, but considering the sheer amount of solid competition it was facing in 1994, it still fell to the wayside.

The game added two new fighters and added a brand new boss to face off against, but things were starting to feel somewhat dated with the series now, and it suffered as a result.

While there were many action-adventure and side-scrolling beat-’em-ups based on characters from the Marvel universe, it wasn’t until the early 90’s until we got a fully fledged fighting game. It only made sense that Capcom, one of the heaviest hitters in the genre at the time stepped forward to fix this.

Released in arcades in late 1994, X-Men: Children of the Atom established what would become a beloved and fruitful relationship between Capcom and Marvel, and laid the foundations for the successful “Vs.” series that fighting game fans have played for nearly 25 years now.

The game is loosely based on 1993’s “Fatal Attractions” storyline, in which Magneto and his Acolytes return to confront the X-Men, tempting Professor Xavier to cross a moral line to stop them. It’s a pretty insane storyline with some fairly gnarly imagery (one such example sees Wolverine getting the adamantium ripped out of his skeleton!), and the good vs. evil dynamic lends itself perfectly to the setting of an arcade fighting game.

1994’s entries in the genre saw developers starting to take full advantage of the new 3D graphics that SEGA introduced with Virtua Fighter in the wake of a new console generation, while 2D fighting games kept on coming hard and fast to try and best Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat’s popularity.

Join us next week as we take a look at the games of 1995!

Did we miss anything from 1994 that’s worth mentioning?

Let us know in the comments below!

[jq37]

The Royal Report– A Crown of Candy Ep 3

Keep Sharp

On the Road Again

Welcome back to Calorum you guys. We last left off witnessing an actual miracle as a group of cheese assassins masquerading as meatlanders (and Brennan by proxy) failed to kill a single Candian, Tartguard included.

Now, everyone is picking up the pieces. Amethar is still messed up from the fight so he’s being tended to. Liam and some of the NPCs are working on clearing the tree from the road. Ruby, still covered in blood, is in one of the carriages and when she uses Prestidigitation to clear the blood from a circus flyer she was carrying, Calroy walks in and grabs her hand to stop her as a reflex. He quickly drops her hand--very bold move to grab one of the princesses like that--and tries to impress on her that the rest of the world isn’t like Candia and she really really needs to stop with the casual magic when they’re on the road. Ruby is really naively taken aback and frustrated by this information but Calroy describes it like it’s business as usual. Her aunt, Lazuli, has the title of Archmage but the official position is that the title is an archaic holdover from less enlightened times and she was simply a really good alchemist--even though everyone knows that’s untrue. That’s politics bay-bee! Lapin joins the conversation (along with Theo shortly after) and says that if people knew where he got his powers from, he’d be dead (which seems a weird thing to say with Calroy in earshot).  

Outside, Liam is chopping up the tree and finds these little peppermint acorn things called Heartseeds which are basically concentrated, ambient, magical energy that can grant small wishes. Preston eats them and gains a fly speed of 40 (but it’s like he’s a firework--he has to land after 40 feet). Jet finds Liam and asks for help with keeping an eye on Ruby. She’s pretty shook after seeing her almost die. Liam is down to do it for nothing (the kid just wants to be included) but Jet insists on being in his debt and--always on brand--he just asks for some cool seeds. She also finds a meat shield that’s made out of gross, burnt, stuck-to-the-pan meat bits that she names Burnt Ends. 

They get going again and in the PC wagon you have all the PCs but Jet (who is outside with the guards and Grissini) along with Cruller and his wife--Lady Donetta. She chats with Grissini for a little bit while the adults try to get her to get in the carriage. She’s finally swayed by Ruby but when she comes in she says she wasn’t (just) flirting. She was trying to get intel on how in trouble Ruby was. Liam offers that he speaks Ceresian so he can spy if they need him to and also did anyone have any dreams last night? Theo--who is trying to keep everyone alive and was like so close to being impressed by Liam--along with Lapin and Cruller try to get everyone back on track but Ruby--defiantly--is all, “They’re not gonna kill me. I’m a princess!” Theo points out that someone almost killed her literally ten minutes ago and Cruller points out that death isn’t the only bad thing that can happen to a person. She could get forcibly put in a monastery for instance. Jet is not even having that in hypothetical-land and says that as the heir princess, she would lay the smackdown on anyone who tried to do that. 

It looks like things are about to dissolve into overlapping gibberish but Amethar does the dad thing of putting his foot down and yelling at everyone to get along before taking a dad nap passing out from his injuries. Lady Donetta patches him up while Cruller once again talks about the importance of politics. It’s not just them that have to play this game. The Meatlanders are polytheistic generally but all Bulbian on paper. Jet thinks this whole song and dance is ridiculous and should be changed once she has more sway in politics, but she’s willing to shut up for now. She’s also willing to keep Lapin’s secret, but him bringing it up sparks Cruller’s interest. Lapin tries to gloss over it but Liam chimes in that he’s sorry about breaking his teacup. Lapin shuts him up (Liam on a low Insight check thinks he hates him) and rolls a 14 to get Cruller off his back.

Secrets and Lies

As they cross the border into Fructerra, Sir Theo invites Ruby and Jet out for some fresh air and they invite Liam which he goes along with even though it’s clear he wanted to talk to the sisters alone. As soon as they’re out of earshot of everyone Theo turns off the scold and says that regardless of everything they’re all saying, Ruby absolutely needs to keep studying magic. He says that he was a ward of Lazuli who taught him some magic (including animating Sprinkle) and he has a whole-ass lore dump for them that he was planning on subtly revealing over time but now’s the time for getting everybody up to speed ASAP not mentoring from the shadows:

He says that Lazuli--who, like Ruby and Jet, wanted magic to be acceptable and not relegated to the shadows of one kingdom--was doing arcane research into wild stuff like immortality that would have advanced the world a lot further than its current state. She died sacrificing herself in a battle where she was the only Candian casualty. Theo was there and, before she sent him away, she said that she needed to do it to, “save [their] people and save [their] world.” He didn’t get what she meant and why that would be literally the hill she--a princess and Archmage--would choose to die on but he knows she would sometimes have visions of the future and he thinks she might have known Ruby was coming and needed to ensure that timeline happened. Ruby--who is outraged that this is the first she’s hearing of all of this and shocked that Theo is suddenly cool (“I've always been cool! All of us are cool!”) still doesn’t want to do all this “book stuff” or embrace any kind of magical destiny and even Jet is like, “Come on girl.” Anyway, Sir Theo tells them they just need to be chill and lowkey and he’ll hook them up with magical training and banned books for Jet. He also promises to teach Ruby the Find Familiar spell. 

Liam helps Lady Donetta with herbal remedies for Amethar and he comes back at full health. Amethar gets to talking about Liam’s dad who he says had Liam’s knack from nature stuff and taught him (Amethar) how to fight. Calroy chimes in that his dad and Amethar fought together in the Ravening War. He also says that Liam being a hostage (he outright calls him a hostage) is what lets his dad not join the Concord (the kind of ride or die, post Ravening War pact everyone else is in) and remain an independent rebel state. Apparently, he seceded because, King Jadin (Amethar’s Dad--the past king), would not uphold Candia’s alliances. Liam’s dad (Duke Joren Jawbreaker) turned traitor to go fight with their Dairy Island allies.         

It takes another couple of days to get to Comida and, on the way there, Ruby learns and casts the Find Familiar spell--netting her a butterscotch falcon that she names Yak after the noise he makes. She hopes he’ll be friends with Sprinkle because Siobhan knows that the second real objective of every D&D campaign (after making friends) is acquiring pets and having them play with each other (which is in direct opposition to the DM goal of not letting any of your players have any pets).    

Cruller checks in with Theo about the secret magic lessons and also says that he’s looked into it and the imperial soldiers who saw Ruby do magic are gossiping. Grissini is shutting some of it down so it’s not spreading like wildfire but it’s really just a matter of time. Cruller tries to get more specifics about what Jet and Lapin were talking about (his Sugarplum magic) and Theo dodges the question. Cruller says that he can be more helpful if he’s in the loop but doesn’t push further. 

Faces and Names 

We have made it to Comida and, after a quick House Rocks family heart to heart, it’s time for a parade of a BUNCH of new characters:

Manta Ray Jack: Man at Arms of House Cheddar and one of Amethar’s Ravening War buddies. A literal 2 foot tall cube of cheese. He also has a tattoo of a Manta Ray on his arm  which isn’t important to the plot but is important to me that you know.       

Sir Morris Brie: Knight of House Cheddar, Master of State to the Duchess (who we’ll get to next) and another Dairy Island buddy of Amethar.

Duchess Primsy Coldbottle: A literal bottle of milk, 16-year-old regent of House Cheddar (Duchess of Lacramor specifically) and ruler of the Dairy Islands. On a nat 20, Ruby knows that Prince Tarthur Cheddar was the prince during the Ravening Wars but died. She also knows about…

Captain Annabelle Cheddar: (Captain of the Colby) who is this cool, naval, battle-ready lady that Ruby sees hanging out with a bunch of solider women fighters and having a great time while Primsy is talking to her advisors. Apparently, Anabelle should be the rightful heir to the Dairy Islands but was stripped of her title because she refused to marry (hmm) which Ruby thinks is sick as hell. She goes to chat her up and finds out that she’ll be fighting in the Melee part of the tourney.  

Senator Augustus Ciabatta: A full bread person who’s a senator from the very populous Ceresia and he’s throwing coins to the people from his palanquin. (I want it on the record that I feel an episode called Bread and Circuses coming.)

Prince Cabbage: The adult son of King Cabbage. His palanquin is the second largest. The largest belongs to...

Hierophant Rex Belizabeth Brassica: She is basically the Bulb Pope. She’s like a green woman with broccoli hair. She and Lapin have met before before she became pope. They quickly talk and she invites him to tag along as they pay their respects to the Emperor. He agrees to go. She’s followed around by Archbishop Onionpatch (another Primogen from Greenhold in Vegetania).

Theo is a little nervous about Amethar cozying up to all these dairy people considering the attack but Amethar insists he can handle himself. There’s a big feast set up and Amethar goes to talk to Primsy who is just super sweet and seems to know she has a lot of responsibility that she is trying her level best to uphold. She’s like the anti Jet and Ruby and Brennan...if something happens to her...I swear...  

Anyway, Theo is scanning the room for trouble and he sees (1) That Anabelle is looking at Amethar forlornly from across the room (maybe like she wishes she could be in the room where it happens so to speak?) and (2) there is a young Dairy nobleman stealth flirting with Primsy. Amethar asks Sir Brie about the attack and he says they had nothing to do with it. They don’t have the resources after the war which was fought largely in the Dairy Isles. He seems to blame Anabelle at least partially for the diminished power of House Cheddar based on the dirty look he shoots her when he mentions the state of the state. Amethar reiterates that the alliance between Candia and the Dairy Isles is solid and Manta Ray Jack pops in to casually drop that Amethar had a war girlfriend (lover? idk what the proper terminology is here) in the Far East Isles back in the day so I’m sure that’s gonna become relevant at the worst possible moment. 

Brennan also curses us by unleashing Thad (Jet’s avocado pen pal boyfriend) onto the story and as soon as Jet re-meets this poncy, French-y, horny, avocado she’s like “I made a huge mistake” and later gets him to “meet her outside” so she can ditch him.   

Theo goes with Liam to check up on Primsy because he’s concerned with whatever is going on with her and that cheese boy who he learns is her traveling companion--Lord Stilton Curdeau. And it’s covered by cologne but his cheese stink is familiar. He wants to alert Amethar but Amethar is currently eyeing Basha Myaso (Warlord of the Beef Clans and ruler of all of the Meatlands) who is glaring at him. On Calroy’s advice, he squares up with Basha who implies that Candia is responsible for the false flag attack. Amethar tells him to “watch [his] fucking mouth.” Diplomacy!

Meanwhile, Lapin is with the Pontifex in the Great Food Pyramid (which is, of course, a thing). She introduces him to Sir Keradin Deeproot who is this super buff super intense carrot Paladin. We learn that Lapin isn’t an archbishop and his title of primogen comes from his status as a “miracle worker”. Apparently, Miracle working is very uncommon even though the Bulbian church is so massive. When asked, Onionpatch says that things in Vegetania are fine except that King Belvedere Cabbage is infirm. Another Priogem--this one of Cersia--joins them, the Archbishop Fettucina Alfredi who is this very classically beautiful looking, toga wearing woman with glowing eyes--she’s also a miracle worker. Lapin is like, “Oh fuck,” because if she’s magic too then she might be able to tell that he’s not actually on the level.          

Lapin veers away from Alfredi and chats up the Pontifex who says Brightgarden is OK but they're currently dealing with a murder of an archbishop in the Meatlands (the Archbishop Raddica). Lord Basha is looking for who did it and the Pontifex wants them brought to justice ASAP. Alfredi brings up the attack on the road and wonders about the rumors she heard about strange magic. Lapin, sweating bullets, lies and says that he thinks it was the work of the Bulb. On a 14 Deception from Lapin, Alfredi thinks lavender fog would be a weird Bulbian intercession. It sounds more like something a false good she’s heard about from Candia would do. What’s her name? The Sugarplum Fairy? Lapin, with a 25 Persuasion check, is able to wave that off as primitive backwoods things that he’s working to stamp out in Candia. That’s enough to get the Pontifex on his side and they go up to see the Emperor. 

Outside of his room is his daughter--Lady Plumbeline Uvano--who is lowkey very upset about something. She greets them and then takes the Pontifex in to talk to the Emperor while Lapin waits outside with Alfredi and Kerradin. When she’s done paying the respects of the church, the whole holy crew goes back to the party. Before Lapin splits off, the Pontifex does a little pull aside with him about Candia’s role in the war and how she thinks, with him at the helm, Candia is in good hands.  

At Sir Theo's suggestion, Amethar has the Candy Crew stand with the Cheese Peeps during the announcement of the tourney which is a big deal because it’s a symbol that the alliance is still on even though they were attacked by cheese bandits. Primsy introduces herself to the princesses and gives them cool, milksilk handkerchiefs she embroidered herself with a candy cane crossed with a cheese cube on a stick with their house words: There is Strength in Sweetness. She doesn’t have one for Liam but gives him hers (it has her house words: Keep Sharp) on the condition he joins the archery competition and fights for her. With not a 15 between the 6 of them (even w/ multiple help actions) none of the PCs have presents for anyone else.              

The tourney is announced. There are three events, each with a dope prize. Winner of the melee gets a boon from the emperor at the end of his rule. The winner of the archery contest gets a seat on the Cornucopian Council, the title of Master of Arrows, and is made advisor to the next emperor (which seems like a LOT to put on a person whose main skill is “can shoot arrows well” but OK sure). The winner of the joust gets to name a candidate for Emperor from any class or house they wish and their choice must be considered. Ruby and Liam join the archery contest. Theo signs up for the joust. Jet is hesitant but Amethar convinces her to join the melee with him. She also scratches “The Dairy Islands Rule!” into a piece of wood for Primsy and she’s charming enough that Primsy doesn’t think it’s a slipshod afterthought.  

An imperial courier shows up and tells Theo the Emperor wants to talk to Amethar. He brings all the PCs and Calroy. Lady Plumbeline is still outside her dad’s room and she’s still pissed. On a 24 Insight check, Theo can tell that--as I suspected from episode 1--she is pretty ticked that she has all this institutional knowledge and competence and experience but, because of an arbitrary rule, she can’t take the throne. She tells Amethar (who she met when she was a teen) that they need to limit how many people go in as to not overwhelm him. He takes Lapin and Theo (who gives Sprinkle to Jet) and goes in to talk to Uvano.

Uvano, as we already know, was another Ravening War buddy of Amethar’s and another person he’s seen piss and shit--which we learn because that’s apparently how Amethar classifies who his best friends are. They talk the way old buddies do and Uvano asks what he would say about his life taking a surprising turn. Amethar says that if it was anyone else asking, he probably wouldn’t be on board but for Uvano? He’ll do it. That’s just what he wanted to hear.   

And that’s where we end the episode without rolling initiative because the combat in the next episode is all fun and games and to quote Lou Wilson--who I suspect is about to become the wrongest person in D20 history--“It’s all sparring. Nobody is going to get killed.”

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

You Should Know

Country Accents seen to be as follows: Dairy (Scottish), Meat (Russian), Fruit (French), Grain (Italian), Candy (American/British)

In the long awaited sequel to “Kristen Has -3 Dex,” Liam has a -2 to Charisma. 

Ruby speaks Lacra (Dairy-speak).

The Meatlander gods include The Great Cow, The Great Boar, and The Great Hen. 

The head beef dude has a super jacked T-Bone steak wife who I assume we’ll get a name for during the melee next episode. Update, courtesy of @fjordgofurther--we did get a name this ep. Her name is Scravoya.

The Bulbian concept of hell/the devil involves the “Hungry Ones” which just serves to underline that Brennan really did think this crazy thing all the way through and still decided to not do it but to DO it. 

Everyone levels up every episode I believe since D20 uses milestone leveling for the main seasons but Ruby and Jet leveled up twice to level 3 to help catch them up a little now that they have a story reason to be stronger. 

Things I’m Concerned About

Uvano is only in his 60s. Like, people die in their 60s but that detail casually mentioned in a setting like this always brings up the possibility of poison or some other kind of sabotage.

The second Brennan mentioned the daughter of Uvano in passing ep 1, I clocked it and the situation is basically what I was anticipating it seems. Like, of course she’s pissed. I would be too. I wonder if either the boon or the chance to offer up a candidate could be used to override the Concord rules? Either way, gotta keep an eye on her. Also, I noticed the little flippant remark she had for the Pontifex (“This is Fructerra, I’m dressed for court.”) and I don’t know if that’s distaste for the church or something more personal but it seemed interesting enough to mention. 

I know that the improvisational nature of D&D means that there’s not foreshadowing in the same way that you have in something fully set like a book or a movie but every time the Rocks family gets together for a sweet (ha) conversation (“We just want to protect you, Pop.”) I am just more and more sure we are being set up for a fall.  

Lou Wilson’s defining trait as a D&D player is doing what his character would do and letting it play out to its logical conclusion, consequences be damned--consequences be welcomed even. And Amethar is--como se dice--no Calroy when it comes to politics. I can’t imagine these facts at up to any kind of happy sum.  

Also, speaking of, I wanna trust Calroy, but I can’t. He’s too good at this. He’s too competent. He knows too much information and Amethar trusts him too much. Hope he proves me wrong but I will not be made a fool of by a slice of cake. Do you hear me Brennan? I REFUSE.    

I've only had Primsy for a week, but if anything happened to her, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself. No but, seriously, if she is just as she appears to be (and this is GoT so I guess it’s not off the table that she’s secretly like bad and it would have taken a 30 Insight check to find out) then MAN I am so scared for her. Characters who are just trying their best to do a good job are my Kryptonite and she is as much in the wrong genre as the twins are. Moreso even.  

I’m concerned Amethar has a cheesecake baby somewhere out there that’s gonna end up being a Problem. Oh my god what if one of the twins dies and their backup character is Amethar’s illegitimate kid? 

The Bulbian Church has so much power but so little magic which seems...odd. Also, just curious, what is a Paladin without divine magic? Isn’t that just a fighter?

I very much vibe with the concept of Alfredi as a character but lol I was STRESSED for Lapin during that whole conversation and I feel like that’s gonna be my default state for him all season.  

I’m concerned (or maybe just suspicious) that there’s more to the backstory with Theo and Lazuli than we heard. That little extra narration from Brennan about swearing he could feel her smile? Mmm, OK. 

Five More Things

The character art for this season cracks me up because Brennan clearly gave the artist for this season two lists and one list was labeled “Hot” and one was labeled “Ridiculous” and that’s how we got characters like Primsy and Calroy in the same scene as Anabelle and Grissini and the funniest part is Brennan’s absolute refusal to play any of these characters like they’re any more or less ridiculous than any of the others. He’s like, “The hot pasta woman is valid and the talking cheese cube is EQUALLY VALID.” 

“Not this season. Not season five.” Very bold of Brennan to be outraged about Emily trying to ride a living sprinkle dog like that's the ridiculous thing about a world with a living sprinkle dog.

The Sucorsi Road running into the Glucian Road for Sucrose and Glucose is the kind of worldbuilding detail that I love. 

I was gonna be so mad at Brennan for the nonsense that is the name “Belizabeth” but he said on Adventuring Party that he was specifically dunking on GRRM with that so he gets a pass this time. 

You know that famous Pixar meeting/lunch where they came up with Bugs Life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, and Wall-E in one conversation? I bet Brennan had a similar brainstorming sesh where he came up with Garthy, Anabelle, and two other thirst traps that haven’t been introduced yet. Like come on. He described her hair as, “princely”? Brennan is trying to kill some of y’all.