#He was born through magic Xp

[thecreaturecodex]

Dalya

“Rider” �� Cindy Avellno, accessed at her ArtStation here

[And Monster Girl Summer is officially a Go! Part of my goal with Monster Girl Summer is to reflect on the games I’ve run in the past. And to sort of mentally catalog how many of the PCs started out monstrous, or became monstrous over the course of play. Like Dalya here. Dalya was originally a human, but ended up reincarnated as a gnoll. And was in the half of the party that survived their fight with Karzoug, as opposed to being wiped out in round 1. Time stop + reverse gravity + prismatic sphere, don’tcha know.

I ran Rise of the Runelords in 3.5. Dalya was originally built using the battle dancer class from Dragon Compendium. So making her a brawler was a easy choice for the conversion.]

Dalya CR 18 CG Humanoid (gnoll) This tall, lean hyena headed woman has her hair done up in a dyed fringe, and tattoos are visible beneath her fur. She wears leather armor and carries a buckler and spear.

Born to an exiled Shoanti father and a Varisian merchant mother, Dalya was used to living on the road. But she didn’t expect it to turn out the way it did. Visiting the Swallowtail Festival in Sandpoint, she was caught up in a goblin raid, which rapidly turned into investigating the growing power of the Sihedron cult and, eventually, opposing the forces of Karzoug. Underneath Thistletop, Dalya was slain by the barghest Malfeshnekor, but her allies were able to fight the beast back long enough to recover her body. Possibly as a side effect of being slain by one of Lamashtu’s chosen, Dalya was returned to life as a gnoll when brought back through a reincarnate spell. And Dalya couldn’t have been happier with her new body.

Dalya’s adventures continued from there, and she proudly brags that she’s never lost a fist fight with a giant. She was instrumental to killing Karzoug and preventing Varisia from being overrun by an army of lamiae and other monsters. But Dalya is not one to rest on her laurels, and she is in no way retired. Her current mission is to help a few packs of non-evil gnolls to settle in the Storval Plateau without causing too much conflict with the Shoanti quahs living there already. Her allies in this mission include a quartet of advanced crocuttals and Krojun Eats-What-He-Kills, a powerful warrior of the Sun Clan, himself reincarnated into a monstrous form (a bugbear) following a fatality in combat.

Dalya    CR 18 XP 153,600 CG Medium humanoid (gnoll, human) Reincarnated gnoll brawler (battle dancer) 18 Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +18 Defense AC 33, touch 20, flat-footed 26 (+6 Dex, +1 dodge, +1 natural, +6 armor, +6 shield, +3 deflection) hp 200 (18d10+90 plus 7) Fort +20, Ref +21, Will +13; +2 vs. fear, despair Resist fire 30 Defensive Abilities dancing dodge (9/day), hopeful Offense Speed 35 ft. Melee +4 evil outsider bane unarmed strike +34/+29/+24/+19 (2d8+16), +4 evil outsider bane bite +32 (1d6+5) or +4 evil outsider bane unarmed strike +32/+32/+27/+27/+22/+22/+17 (2d8+16), +4 evil outsider bane bite +32 (1d6+5)  or +2 returning distance spear +30/+25/+20/+15 (1d8+17/x3), +4 evil outsider bane bite +32 (1d6+5) Ranged +2 distance returning spear +26 (1d8+17/x3) Special Attacks awesome blow, brawler’s flurry, brawler’s strike (magic, cold iron, silver, chaotic, good, adamantine), martial flexibility (12/day, 3 feats as swift action or 1 as immediate), rolling flurry, sparring partners (3/day) Statistics Str 30, Dex 22, Con 21, Int 9, Wis 13, Cha 16 Base Atk +18; CMB +28 (+36 trip, +35 grapple, +30 bull rush, +29 disarm); CMD 48 (56 vs. trip, 55 vs. grapple, 50 vs. bull rush, 49 vs. disarm) Feats Acrobatic Steps (B), Combat Expertise (B), Combat Reflexes, Deflect Arrows, Dodge, Fleet (B), Improved Grapple (B), Improved Trip, Improved Unarmed Strike (B), Iron Will, Mobility, Monkey Moves, Monkey Style, Nimble Moves (B), Power Attack, Snapping Bite, Vicious Stomp (B) Skills Acrobatics +27, Climb +16, Intimidate +17, Linguistics +0, Perception +18, Perform (dance) +11, Ride +12, Sense Motive +12, Swim +16 Languages Common, Gnoll, Shoanti SQ close weapon mastery, dancer’s cunning, legendary, maneuver training (trip +4, grapple +3, bull rush +2, disarm +1), martial training, reincarnated Gear manual of gainful exercise +4 (expended), tome of leadership and influence +2 (expended), amulet of mighty fists +5 (+4 evil outsider bane), belt of physical perfection +4, +4 brawling leather armor, +5 buckler, +2 returning distance spear, winged boots, pliant gloves, cloak of resistance +4, ring of major fire resistance, ring of protection +3, potion of cure serious wounds (x3), potion of haste (x3), 500 gp worth of mundane jewelry, 36 pp. Special Abilities Dancer’s Cunning (Ex) A battle dancer can treat her Charisma score as her Intelligence score for the purpose of meeting the prerequisites of combat feats. In addition, she can attempt a Perform (dance) check instead of a Bluff check to feint in combat, and her unarmed strikes are considered to have the performance weapon special quality. Dancing Dodge (Ex) When an opponent attempts a melee attack against Dalya, she can expend one use of an attack of opportunity as an immediate action to move 5 feet, granting the battle dancer a +3 dodge bonus to AC against the triggering attack. The attack is still resolved normally, even if the battle dancer’s movement takes her out of the triggering attack’s reach. This movement is not a 5-foot step and provokes attacks of opportunity from creatures other than the one that triggered this ability, though the battle dancer can attempt an Acrobatics check to avoid provoking the attacks. Dalya can use this ability nine times per day. She can use this ability only while wearing light armor or no armor, and while carrying no heavier than a light load. Hopeful (Ex) Packmaster gnolls gain a +2 racial bonus on saving throws against fear effects and emotion effects such as despair, grief or boredom. They do not gain this bonus against rage effects, or other types of emotion effects, such as an unnatural lust or overwhelming presence spell (GM’s discretion). Legendary Dalya’s statistics are built using 25 point buy, and she has the gear of an 18th level PC. This increases her CR by +1. Reincarnated (Ex) Dalya was born human, but transformed into a gnoll due to a reincarnate spell. She has the bonus feat of a human, and bonus skill ranks for levels 1-4. She does not have the racial Hit Dice, or mental ability bonuses, of a gnoll. Rolling Flurry (Ex) When a battle dancer uses her brawler’s flurry, she must move 5 feet before each melee attack or combat maneuver. If she is unable to move 5 feet, she can’t attempt any further attacks or combat maneuvers. She can’t exceed her maximum speed. This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity if the brawler would be able to take a 5-foot step normally; if she would be unable to (for instance, if she were in difficult terrain), the movement provokes attacks of opportunity as normal unless she succeeds at the appropriate Acrobatics checks. While using this ability, she can still take her normal 5-foot step before or after making her attacks. Sparring Partners (Ex) When Dalya gains a flanking bonus on an attack while using her rolling flurry ability, the ally providing the flank gains a flanking bonus on its next attack against that opponent, even if the battle dancer moves out of a flanking position. If either the opponent or the ally moves more than 5 feet before the ally’s attack, the flanking bonus is lost. This ability works only if the ally is on the opposite side of an opponent during the battle dancer’s attack, not if a flanking bonus is gained in some other way, such as through Gang Up. Dalya can use this ability three times per day.

[eryanlainfa]

I just realized that even though i see your art of him and you talk about him a lot, i don't actually know anything about aiden. so. infodump to me about your OC lore please.

!!!! hi <3 I have SO MUCH to say about Aiden- and yet I don't share that much about them! I draw them a lot but never give much context, my bad xP

I did answer an ask a while ago about them here if you want! it has all the basic infos you might need and I've just updated it a bit because some stuff was outdated and I wanted to add some details. I also think you can find (very) few things in the eryanwrites tag

But you're asking for infodumping so!!! Imma infodump MORE >:3c

(this is in addition to the post I linked- you might want to read said post before, to have more context)

⚙ Backstory stuff

Despite being born in Old Corona, Aiden spent half of their childhood in another village even farther away from the capital. This village is run by a small saporian community and was mostly filled with travelers so people tended to come and go, lots of witches came by looking to seal their power to pass as human. So Aiden and their parents were easily welcomed there.

When Aiden was a child, the local Grandma (Aiden never learnt her name- she was just referred by everyone as Grandma) used to play with Aiden's hair a lot while she told stories. Aiden avoided cutting their hair for her, and even after her death they still refused to cut it.

Said Grandma was the village's healer and quickly became Aiden's role model. She was the first person to mentor Aiden in their quest to become a physician.

Aiden's second mentor is the current royal physician, the only one who didn't leave when the Queen got sick and no one could find a cure. Both of Aiden's mentor were/are unhinged and definetly shouldn't be trusted to teach children but that's why I love them.

Aiden is very not normal about human bodies. Both because of autism and the way their mentors educated them about it. Aiden is pretty desentisized about stuff most people would find gross.

⚙ Aiden's relationship with other characters

Aiden has a pretty good relationship with their parents. They're very loving people but a tad overprotective, it kinda made Aiden avoid talking to them about big problems because he was scared to worry them more than necessary, but overall they all love and care for each others. Aiden is just terrible at understanding and communicating his own needs.

They have many friends within the castle since they've been working here for a while now. They're also known outside of the capital since his mentor sometimes send them away, either on errand or to take care of villages without doctors.

Aiden isn't close to the main cast of tts, beside Varian. He respects and admires most of them but he doesn't consider them friends since he never really got interested in getting closer to them. They do know they can count on him when any of them gets hurt or sick, it's his job after all.

Aiden has a bestie- his name is Daniel, he's the son of the merchants proccuring most herbs for the physicians, and is currently part of the royal guards. He isn't a very fun person but Aiden enjoys how down to earth he can be.

⚙ random stuff

During the series Aiden went through like... 4 different leg prosthesis in one year because people (bad guy of the season) kept on breaking it. (I'll admit it was my go-to excuse as to why Aiden doesn't appear in canon. They're always off screen doing random things or laying on the floor stuck somewhere 😔)

They're very sensitive to temperatures since the Storm that made them lose their leg.

Aiden's magic got sealed by a tattoo on their back when they were very young, so as they grew up the tattoo got deformed and the seal weakened. Their extended family is the ones completely getting rid of it- by removing part of the skin. Hopefully for Aiden he was under hypnosis when that happens and he has no memories of it whatsoever. Varian is the one who found out about it and it made him really mad.

So you know Venefica's magic is linked to mind control. And Aiden caught feelings for Varian long before he caught feelings for them himself. Varian is very obvious about his feelings, yet Aiden doesn't acknowledge it at all. That's because they're somehow convinced Varian's feelings aren't genuine and is caused by their own magic they never learnt to control.

I mentioned witches cannot break promises so they avoid doing any, since it can easily end badly for them. Aiden (so far) made 2 : one to Quirin and one to Donella. The first one lowkey resulted in the loss of their leg. The second brought distrust between them and Varian. So yeah. Promises bad.

The only reason Hugo is allowed to call them Hobble is because he helped a lot with their prosthesis and still does

⚙ shipping stuff

At this point if you don't know I ship Aiden with both Varian and Hugo then-.. Idk how you escaped all my posting about them but I admire that, this is impressive. Anyway-

I wanted to try doing an actual love triangle so when each of them catch feelings it starts with : Aiden -> Hugo ; Hugo -> Varian ; Varian -> Aiden. Then things just... happen and at some point they all have feelings for both of the other and they are struggling to figure out what to do about it.

The first two to get into a relationship are Aiden and Hugo, but it's not really romantic, they're just having fun. Hugo quickly understood Varian was the team leader but the boy kept Aiden in high regard, so getting Aiden on his side would eventually bring Varian to it too. Aiden is very aware of it and is fine with it as long as Hugo isn't actively trying to get them hurt.

I have.. the worst love triangle dynamic chart ever :

I don't even know if its readable to others but oh well-

Anyway. I think that's enough! If any question rises I'll love to asnwer them! About Aiden or other ocs or timeline stuff- or aus- anything is fine

[xaracosmia]

ꕥ — WELCOME TO MARE COSMIA, GRIBBLE FIZZLEBANG. 🌓

ꕥ  — OOC INFORMATION;

name / alias: Joe age: 27 pronouns: He/Him ooc contact: fizzlebanic other characters in xc: N/A

ꕥ  — IC INFORMATION;

name: Gribble Fizzlebang age: 25 pronouns: He/Him series: dungeons & dragons (oc) canon point: Just after a failed attempt to permanently transfigure himself into a human, still searching for a solution. (PC level 10 by 5e rules) app triggers: Sudden transformations or loss of control, as these remind him of his unpredictable wild magic surges.

personality: Ah, Gribble Fizzlebang at your service, and what a service it is! You see, in this vast tapestry we call existence, I am, without a doubt, a thread of gold. My mind? A boundless landscape of brilliance, pulsing with ideas so grand, the gods themselves lean in to listen! Some might label my insights as confusion, but I call it vision—a vision so clear it pierces through the veils of reality. And these forces, these mysterious entities that skulk in the shadows? They know my power, they fear it, for I am destined for feats so spectacular, the tales of my exploits will echo through the ages. Every step I take is a step toward unimaginable greatness. Yes, I am Gribble, the inevitable, the unmatched wizard whose saga will outshine all!

something your muse struggles with: Where to start with this guy? Gribble suffers from delusions of grandeur and delusions of persecution. His paranoia is second to none and his mind has been warped enough to show it. To Gribble, the ancient evils between the threads of the fabric of reality watch his every move and conspire against him for that is all they can do in a futile attempt to stamp out his glory. 

your muse’s greatest strength: Due to his deluded nature, Gribble has dauntless confidence in his own actions. His brain is quick to find a pathway towards his next goal. His self assured nature is so core to his identity that he couldn’t ever conceive of another good idea after he has had one to begin with. He is relentless and madly driven. 

history / background: Born to a Goblin mother and a Duergar father, Gribble was raised in the grand city of Port Calais. The Empire which controlled this territory had deemed magic and its practice as an outlawed act after a spellplague ravaged the land and nearly brought about the end of the world. Gribble showed latent potential for magic that he couldn’t control of his own volition. His mother found someone who could act as a mentor to him and help teach him his powers in secret. This is how Gribble came into the service of a wizard and where his ambitions began to manifest. As time went on and his mother’s health began to fail, this wizard became something of a reliable parental figure toward him and one day he aims to repay this kindness a thousand fold. 

powers / abilities: Gribble is a spellcaster capable of several powered tiers of magic based on the mechanics and systems of dungeons and dragons. As a player character from that game, he has spells up to 4th level. My idea was that Gribble would gain back each spellcasting level one by one as he levels up within the mechanics of the XP system for this server. 

LEVEL 0 (cantrips)

Acid Splash: 5 feet range of damaging acid spray.

Fire Bolt: Minor fire spell casting a bolt of flaming magic. Can also ignite flammable objects.

Mage Hand: Create a spectral hand for simple tasks or carry up to 10lb

Minor Illusion: Creates a simple visual or auditory illusion. Can be seen through based on rolls or player discretion.

Prestidigitation: This spell is a minor magical trick that novice spellcasters use for practice. You create one of the following magical effects within range:

You create an instantaneous, harmless sensory effect, such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint musical notes, or an odd odor.

You instantaneously light or snuff out a candle, a torch, or a small campfire.

You instantaneously clean or soil an object no larger than 1 cubic foot.

You chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material for 1 hour.

You make a color, a small mark, or a symbol appear on an object or a surface for 1 hour.

You create a nonmagical trinket or an illusory image that can fit in your hand and that lasts less than 10 seconds. 

1ST LEVEL SPELLS

Catapult: Toss an object no heavier than 5 pounds up to 60 feet in a straight line. If it hits a creature, causes minor to moderate damage. 

Chaos Bolt: A moderately damaging elemental ranged spell where the damage type is determined by dice roll. Possible damage types include Acid, Ice, Fire, Force, Lightning, Poison, Psychic, and Thunder. The damage type is determined by rolling 1d8

Disguise Self: Visually alters appearance with no added effects. 

Mage Armor: Buffs a willing creature, wrapping them in protective magic comparable to a set of armor

2ND LEVEL SPELLS

Alter Self: Appearance changing spell with various effects;

Aquatic adaptation: You adapt your body to an aquatic environment, sprouting gills and growing webbing between your fingers. You can breathe underwater and gain a swimming speed equal to your walking speed.

Physically changing your appearance to another race with no change in abilities. You can only change into creatures around your size level.

Natural weapons: You grow claws, fangs, spines, horns, or a different natural weapon of your choice. Your unarmed strikes deal minor bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, as appropriate to the natural weapon you chose. 

Pyrotechnics: Choose an area of nonmagical flame that you can see and that fits within a 5-foot cube within range. You can extinguish the fire in that area, and you create either fireworks or smoke when you do so.

Spider Climb: Until the spell ends, one willing creature you touch gains the ability to move up, down, and across vertical surfaces and upside down along ceilings, while leaving its hands free. The target also gains a climbing speed equal to its walking speed.

3RD LEVEL SPELLS

Antagonize: You whisper magical words which enrage a target, forcing it to attack any creature you choose that it can reach. If it cannot reach an enemy, the target simply stands still.

Fireball: Large-range moderately powerful fire spell, launching a flaming ball of fire at its target. Can also ignite flammable objects.

Stinking Cloud: You create a 20-foot-radius sphere of yellow, nauseating gas centered on a point within 90 of you. The cloud spreads around corners, and its area is considered heavily obscured. Creatures within the cloud will be poisoned unless they do not need to breathe or are otherwise immune. A moderate wind will disperse the cloud in four minutes whereas a strong wind will disperse it in one minute. 

4TH LEVEL SPELLS

Polymorph: This spell transforms a creature that you can see within range into a new form. An unwilling creature must make a Wisdom saving throw to avoid the effect. The spell has no effect on a shapechanger. The creature is limited in the actions it can perform by the nature of its new form, and it can't speak, cast spells, or take any other action that requires hands or speech. The target's gear melds into the new form. The creature can't activate, use, wield, or otherwise benefit from any of its equipment.

Another inherent ability is that he contains a magical storage space within his body by way of an active enchantment called ‘Hoard Gullet’. 

You gain a magical second stomach, which can be used to transport objects securely.

You can safely swallow and transport any object you could normally swallow (including items at least three size categories smaller than you).

The capacity of your hoard gullet is 100 pounds and/or 10 cubic feet.

You can't remove individual items from your hoard gullet, but as a full-round action, you can expel its entire contents into your square.

It otherwise functions as a bag of holding.

items / weapons: A damaged but still functional guitar, a quarterstaff, a rather nice stick that he claims to be a magic wand.

starting ability: Spellcasting: Cantrips. 

starting item: Quarterstaff

would you like this character to be housed upon arrival?: Not Needed! Gribble wouldn’t be the type to trust provided housing as soon as he gets there.

extra: I cannot stress enough that I am willing to tweak this character and his abilities to fit in with the rest of the characters in this server. 

discord id: fizzlebanic

[helps-the-writing-brain-go]

Lolol, it's cool. Thanks for commenting! I'm glad to have any opportunity to talk about Billy XP. Lemme see if I can try and explain a bit for this vision:

For this headcanon, I see vampire teeth as largely human (Which helps them pass) but with a couple of additional dental adaptations and bits. i.e.

Similar to snake teeth, they have a pair of long, thin and hollow fangs meant to deliver vampire venom which has a numbing and/or soporific effect. Rather than folding back against the palate when not in use however, they retract up and backwards into the palate (Hence the first post about them being fairly small, but still longer than regular teeth). Aside from the slits a little behind the gap between the canine and lateral incisor (So they appear a little behind these teeth), they are indistinguishable from a human mouth at a glance.

-

For the bones thing - I was thinking that due to the enhanced everything - Regular teeth enamel isn't going to be able to withstand the new kind of bite force Billy and definitely Marvel is now able to pull off since they'd crack in seconds.

Think of it as a newer, stronger enamel specific to vampires wherein it helps protect the above hollow teeth preventing breakage as well as cracking when he bites. (He can grow them all back fairly quickly, but evolutionary/curse advantage basically tries and gives him what he needs so they don't break much at all). So he can cronch as he likes, kinda like using an ice pick to break ice, finding or making a weak point and pushing in to widen the gap and splinter the bone to get to the marrow.

You're right about the bone-"eating" thought. The canine was to break it and get to the marrow, but generally for most bone-eating animals (particularly herbivores), molars are the way to go. Hmm...something like if Billy doesn't feel like going through the hassle, he just eats them by crushing them wholesale between his molars and getting all that meaty goodness without the fuss?

Lol, just imagine:

Cap: Are you gonna finish that?

Flash: *Holding a turkey skeleton after he'd polished off the meat* No...?

Cap: Great! Thanks! *Going to town cronching*

Hmmm...still debating on how that impacts his digestive system however, since following this, he'd either have to have particularly potent stomach acid to get rid of the shards or - well, he'd have to hack up inedible pellets lol.

Billy's case is more out of the norm what with the interference of his Pantheon at the time of his turning, so he's more lively - so to speak

In both his forms, Billy and Captain Marvel are very tied into magic and thus to intent. For the garlic, some European folklore states that Vampirism was suspected to be a blood-borne disease and due to the allicin inside garlic, which is a powerful antibiotic, it was said to cleanse the blood.

Another less reputable but fairly funny reason for garlic as well is that garlic repels mosquitoes and surely, what repels one bloodsucker must do it for them all! Haha.

In any case, whatever actual effect the garlic has on their bodies is amplified by the intent and belief soaked in the "fact" itself thus strengthening it in terms of it being a repellant (magical property wise). On the flipside, it isn't deadly to them due to the still living bits of them, but it causes discomfort and hence they try to avoid it.

In several comics, while Green Arrow can make a mean chili, he does have a recurring tendency to make it extra spicy at times so that may be a deterrent for Billy if not for Cap. Though Billy might power through regardless considering his food insecurity and feelings being touched by Arrow's offer if he was not otherwise unable to.

TLDR: Heeheeheeheehee Vampire!Billy go brrrrr

More Vampire!Billy

Flash likes to sit next to Cap in meetings bc he can hide behind his bulk and snack or chat

At least until one dry meeting, Cap yawns wide, revealing perly white, viciously sharp fangs and then goes back to leaning boredly against his palm like its nothing

Flash has also learnt not to touch the "juice packs" Cap has, the man swears it isn't blood but it sure as hell looks, smells and tastes like it

Cap is THE Sunshine Boi but also has the creepiest aesthetic without meaning to

When his hood is up, the shadows are impossibly deep, revealing piercing, predatory blue eyes

Everyone hears him bouncing around and talking but no one ever hears him walk or catches him when he sneaks away

Growling is not uncommon when he is frustrated

Occasionally daydreams on what various people's blood tastes like. His hungry face, idly watching you is not comforting

He can walk up walls. Is that a vampire thing? A guy who can fly thing? Superman could do it, but would he?

Cap and Billy can't eat Green Arrow's chili without some discomfort :(

He/They tell him it's because of allergies but they're not happy about it

If he eats something with bones in it, he will use his canines to crack them open and eat the bone marrow

[whispered-pear]

Tetra

[mpanighetti]

Halloween Zero-to-Thirty Challenge Rating Challenge

October 31st prompt: Chaos

Apep the Fallen (Challenge 30)

Artwork by TigerLilyNoh!

Lore

The World-Encircler. The Despoiler of the Land. The Devourer. The Most Evil. Many epithets have been devised over the millennia to speak of Apep, a serpent embodying primeval chaos thought to predate creation itself. Such is his terrifying eternal power that people have long attempted to devise spells and rituals to stay his destruction of the worlds; it is perhaps a sign of naïve aspiration that his most common title, The Fallen, attempts to portray him as already defeated. But a god that represents an unending foe to good and order cannot be held back indefinitely.

It is said that Apep is an adversary of the sun god Ra, and that he appears in the form of a gigantic snake to sink Ra's solar barque as it travels through the underworld to transport the Sun each evening. That a sun reliably rises each morning to mark the dawn on populated worlds is a testament to Ra's daily triumph over chaos, but those who know of this struggle dare not rest easy assuming all will be well the next day.

Apep has no subjects, no loyal followers, no great cults making sacrifices in his name to bring about his rending of worlds. Perhaps paradoxically, Apep requires no followers to feed his power through collective belief, as that belief is inherent in the warding magic of priests of Ra, in the hushed whispers of denizens praying for a new dawn in the uncertain dark of night, in the many nicknames he is given in an effort to sully his true name. He draws power through fear itself, and until he is forgotten as the worlds fade to dust, that fear is a great power indeed.

Such is the might of chaos that an entire legion of deities and the collected masses of the dead must join forces to delay his destruction for a single night, every night, into eternity. And even when the collected might of the pantheon strikes him down, cuts his body into pieces, and burns the viscera to ash, he inevitably returns the next night to try again, and the eternal struggle against entropy starts anew.

Attributes

Gargantuan aberration (void dragon), chaotic evil

Armor Class: 25 (natural armor)

Hit Points: 717 (35d20 + 350)

Speed: 60 ft., fly 120 ft. (hover)

STR: 22 (+6)

DEX: 30 (+10)

CON: 30 (+10)

INT: 28 (+9)

WIS: 22 (+6)

CON: 22 (+6)

Saving Throws: DEX +19, CON +19, INT +18, WIS +14

Skills: Insight +14, Investigation +18, Perception +19, Stealth +14, Survival +14

Damage Immunities: cold, force, poison, psychic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks

Condition Immunities: blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, paralyzed, poisoned, stunned

Senses: truesight 120 ft., darkvision 240 ft., passive Perception 29

Languages: Common, Draconic, telepathy 120 ft.

Challenge: 30 (155,000 XP)

Proficiency Bonus: +9

Special Traits

Born of Chaos. When Apap drops to 0 hit points or dies, his body is destroyed but his essence travels back to his domain in the Far Realm, and he is unable to take physical form for a time.

Innate Spellcasting. Apep's innate spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 26). He can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components and lasting for the duration without concentration:

At will: thunder step (6th level)

5/day each: banishing smite, scatter, synaptic static

3/day each: call lightning (6th level), plane shift, reverse gravity, time stop

1/day each: dark star, earthquake, meteor swarm, psychic scream, tsunami, weird

Legendary Resistance (5/Day). If Apep fails a saving throw, he can choose to succeed instead.

Limited Magic Immunity. Unless he wishes to be affected, Apep is immune to spells of 6th level or lower. He has advantage on saving throws against all other spells and magical effects.

Magic Weapons. Apep’s weapon attacks are magical.

Void Nature. Apep doesn't require air, can fly freely in a vacuum, and can move through a space as narrow as 1 inch wide without squeezing.

Regeneration. If Apep has at least 1 hit point, he regains 30 hit points at the start of his turn.

Actions

Multiattack. Apep can use his Frightful Presence. He then makes up to three attacks: one with his bite and two with his tail.

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +19 to hit, reach 20 ft., one target. Hit: 32 (4d10 + 10) piercing damage plus 27 (6d8) force damage.

Tail. Melee Weapon Attack: +19 to hit, reach 25 ft., one target. Hit: 28 (4d8 + 10) bludgeoning damage.

Frightful Presence. Each creature of Apep's choice that is within 120 feet of him and aware of him must succeed on a DC 26 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature’s saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to Apep’s Frightful Presence for the next 24 hours.

Legendary Actions

Apep can take 5 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. Apep regains spent legendary actions at the start of his turn.

Bite Attack. Apep makes a bite attack.

Gravity Breath (Costs 3 Actions). Apep exhales an invisible aura of increased gravitational pull in a 90-foot cone. Each creature in that area must make a DC 26 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 72 (16d8) force damage, it is pulled up to 60 feet toward Apep, and its speed is reduced to 0 until the end of its next turn. On a successful save, a creature takes half as much damage, its speed is halved until the end of its next turn, and it is not pulled. Until the start of Apep's next turn, any object that isn't being worn or carried in the cone requires a successful Strength check (DC 26) to pick up or move.

Hypnotize (Costs 3 Actions). Apep uses his innate spellcasting to cast synaptic static or weird.

Wyrmhole (Costs 2 Actions). Apep uses his innate spellcasting to cast scatter or thunder step.

[id: monster stat block for Apep the Fallen, depicting a cobra with two tails entwined around two naked people with their heads bowed in resignation]

[Original prompt]

[sanjuno]

Meta Fic rides again

I'm a little stuck on how to word something in my Nano 2020 project so I decided to take a break by trying to read “Scum Villain’s Self Saving System” again and failed horribly because I got to the part when Binghe comes back and my interest died a quick and messy death for yet a third time. Someone write me a giant pile of gen-fic and LiuShen AUs to heal my heart.

Here, I’ll start us off:

Spite and Fury (or; PEDW is a hive of Scum and Villainy)

So bitter-old-man!Madara dies of old age after he passes his Epic Revenge Plot over into Obito’s keeping, and the Sage’s knockoff-brand cycle-of-transmigration peels Indra’s chakra out of Madara’s soul - which results in dying!Madara having a screaming ragefit that sends his spirit-and-chakra careening through the void between worlds

At which point shattered-and-fragmenting-more!Madara gets into an altercation with the System and since the System is a little bitch it tosses Madara into the worst possible Fate it can think of (see: PEDW)

Transmigration bullshit and Sharingan fuckery smash into each other in a gigantic clusterfuck of asspulls

Madara is missing bits because Indra’s imprint got ripped out

The Shen Jiu base soul is missing bits because torture and previous abuse of his character by the System

The resulting villain amalgamation is Not Pleased

Instead of landing in the divergence point chosen by the System - aka the Qi deviation fever shortly after Binghe arrives at Cang Qiong Sect – we instead have the jigsaw puzzle mashup of Mads-and-Jiu land in baby-slave Jiu’s body

The good news is Madara and Jiu stop fragmenting because they end up woven together - they’re stuck together as an almost-single person only with two different sets of memories

Character exploration is going to be an EVENT

Also the Madara part of them is really happy with the silky smooth hair

Also Yue “lets-Binghe-kill-him-because-he-thinks-Shen-Jiu-is-dead” Qi is cast is a much better light when compared to Senju “stabs-his-sworn-brother-in-the-back” Hashirama

So Mads-Jiu plays it close to canon for the first few years - the only real difference is that he tags his Jiejie with a tracking seal for after he escapes from slavery - he’s not leaving his ability to find her again up to chance or developing a reputation as a whoremonger if he can help it

When he gets bought by the Qiu is when Mads-Jiu starts being a manipulative little shit like we all know he is

Xanatos-pileup-or-bust!Mads-Jiu basically lets Yue Qi escape alone because he NEEDS Yue Qi to become Cang Qiong Sect Leader for his long-term plans to work properly

So Mads-Jiu warns Yue Qi that if he has to be CAREFUL because cultivating is dangerous and if Yue Qi comes back missing any pieces then Jiu will cut the EXACT SAME BITS OFF HIMSELF

And so Yue Qi is EXTREMELY safety conscious and the life eating sword drama is avoided entirely

Of course he’s also taking longer to reach his initial strength levels than in canon because he isn’t rushing

So there’s nothing like Yue Qi showing up early to trigger a plot divergence alert in the System

</mwahahaha>

Mads-Jiu is more pragmatic regarding Qiu Haitang’s so-called innocence this time around - and so he arranges for her to catch the Creeper Qiu bro abusing and assaulting Shen Jiu

Haitang is HORRIFIED AND DISGUSTED to see what her brother is doing to her fiancé and also TERRIFIED by the fact that he talks the entire time about how sweet it’s going to be when it’s HAITANG under him

The Qiu burn on schedule but Haitang kills her fair share - double Qi deviations FTW!

The system does not notice such a minor change in the background events - Jiu kills the Qiu, burns down their house, and Haitang survives the fire with vengeance raging in her heart

Mads-Jiu kills the demonic creeper that was hanging around because ew no and also keep your hands of Haitang

Again, it’s too close to canon for the System to notice - Jiu killed him in defense of a “childhood friend” so hahaha again

Instead of being used as a stalking horse by an evil master Mads-Jiu runs off with Haitang to track down and rescue his Jiejie

Shenanigans ensue

Afterwards Mads-Jiu “has an idea to help find Qi-ge” by asking around for him at the Immortal Alliance Conference

Of course there are more shenanigans and Yue Qi saves all three by claiming that they’re Cang Qiong disciples - so of course he drags all 3 of them back with him and wibbles at the current Sect Leader until he lets them all join

Still (mostly) following canon! Ha! So no “punishment” events get triggered in the System (which is mostly dormant because the Protagonist isn’t born yet XP)

Qiu Haitang was supposed to join a Sect! Jiejie got sold on schedule! Shen Jiu killed the Qiu and his “first master”! Yue pesters his Shizun into letting his sibling(s) join the Sect in an unorthodox fashion!

But the devil is in the details

And the devil’s name is Uchiha Madara

Jiejie ends up as Peak Lord for Talisman Peak because magic and seals saved her before

Haitang ends up Peak Lord for Hidden Peak because she refuses to be caught unawares by a dangerous secret ever again... also because she’s a mean sneaky bitch and owns it

Having more than one sibling for the Sect Leader to blatantly favour means less wholesale resentment directed at Mads-Jiu as well

However the Jiu part of them has memories from PIDW and also SVSSS - so he knows that shit is going to get horrible once Su Xiyan gets knocked up

Obviously the answer is to seduce all of his fellow peak lords into a glorious polyamorous clusterfuck so as to promote skinship and pack bonding and harmony among the sect leadership

(It worked for PIDW Binghe with his wives and SVSSS Shen Yuan with getting Bing-mei to chill his tits after all and nobody can trip you into bed quite like a shinobi)

And so Cang Qiong’s family aesthetics get rocked so hard that instead of panting after his Shizun baby disciple Binghe decides to seduce his peers...

... and his rivals

... and other sect’s disciples

... and the occasional demon

Mads-Jiu is really proud of his baby demon lord but makes sure not to single Binghe out - instead every Qing Jing disciple gets rewarded and punished at the same time

It promotes bonding! And teamwork!

And prevents the utter destruction of Mads-Jiu’s chrysanthemum via oversized demonic pillar!

There is totally going to be an extra where Mads-Jiu realizes that the average size of a male cultivators pillar is DANGEROUSLY EXCESSIVE

NOBODY NEEDS THAT MUCH PILLAR

Even HIS pillar hasn’t escaped the curse

BIGGER IS NOT BETTER!

How the fuck is he supposed to fight if he can’t even wear pants comfortably!?!?

(No wait come back Mu-shidi this shixiong is sorry it wasn’t mockery it was a perfectly reasonable tantrum that was a long time coming now stop sulking your dick is very pretty let shixiong make it up to you~)

And at some point there will be a wild Bing-ge who appears to cause trouble with a mirror that’s intended to temporarily transform people into the form of their last life - he aims it at the native Bingbing to get him out of the way so he can steal the “nice” Shizun

It would have been Pom time for Bingbing but Mads-Jiu pushes him out of the way

And cue giant explosion of dark Qi as a bonus expansion pack of Madara’s 10-tail Jinchuriki time with powers-and-memories gets downloaded into Mads-Jiu

Mads-Jiu the “Heavenly Demon Demi God” drops several mountains worth of flaming meteor rock on the invaders and then goes on a giant flaming skeleton rampage against Bing-ge

... Bing-ge has changed his mind he doesn’t want this Shizun take him back and oh gods the shrieking

How does he shriek so loud? Doesn’t he need to breathe?

... ok so Shizun breathes fire that’s good to know

Whelps time to bravely run away

And then the amassed sects need to figure out how to calm down the rampaging hell beast

The youngest Qing Jing disciple is brought out and told to cry for Shizun

Actually-a-broody-hen!Mads-Jiu whips around and starts fussing over his baby student

Because baby why are you crying stop it tell Shizun who hurt you and he will BURN THEM TO ASH

The last bit I have an idea for involves Mads-Jiu getting yanked though dimensions because Edo Tensei where he instantly twigs to what is going on and pushes the “righteous cultivator” skin to maximum strength

He shoves all the baby ninja behind him and keeps barrier spamming the zombie army - because ew no stay away from the children resentful corpses

Zetsu is included in the zombie army shall not pass smack down

Zombie!Tobirama is appalled because wut? Wasn’t this supposed to be Madara’s zombie? What is happening?

And I dunno something where he “notices” the resentful energy surrounding Danzo because stealing the eyes of the people you murdered is bad karma

So Mads-Jiu does a spirit thing and the ghosts of the Uchiha rips Danzo apart while screaming about his guilt in full view of the entire Village

And then Mads-Jiu goes home because filial little Bingbing came to get him and he’s not enjoying upending the shinobi social order nope not at all whom exactly do you take him for?

... Yes he’s done and ready to go back to his spouses now he’s sure the ninja have all learned better than to raise living corpses now anyway

The end

=/=

[warsofasoiaf]

Character Analysis: Jon Irenicus

Irenicus is a fun villain, and I think nailed one interesting element of writing down, that of bringing down the villain’s threat in an interesting and believable way. The hero typically grows in power in any story, not just in a game where your progression is literally your XP, but what the villain does, how they grow, is also interesting. If the villain is more powerful than the hero, and also does things to grow and learn, theoretically the villain should still be wrecking house. BG2 wove this into the story itself, where the more you learned about Irenicus, the less menacing he became, culminating into where he was arguably your lesser at the end: he was powerful but only aping what you were. 

Obviously, spoilers for BG2 abound.

Baldur’s Gate II introduces us to our villain almost as a cold open. Fresh off the high of defeating Sarevok, you leave Baldur’s Gate after being pressured to leave by “dark forces” and by those who suspected that you shared similar heritage to Sarevok. Seems a bit odd, honestly, to oust the Bhaalspawn with suspicion given that during the course of Baldur’s Gate I, you saved two of the Grand Dukes. It’s certainly understandable that folks would fear your heritage and you’d want to move on to greener pastures, but something more than a 3-minute cut scene would have probably set the scene better.

However, this opening, and the ‘cutscene’ that follows gives Irenicus a grand initial reveal to the player. This guy is an ultra-powerful wizard, and he speaks with a clinical detachment as he states: “It’s time for more experiments.” It’s a wonderful opening to illustrate exactly what you’re dealing with. He’s clearly interested in your godly soul, and exploiting it to some unknown purpose. What is unknown, as he gets called away by some unspecified intruders by a golem. In the next scene, magical traps are set off as an unspecified Shadow Thief gets disintegrated. Story-wise, this serves no purpose, it’s purely meant to be a way to show off the new spell effects and other cosmetic changes to the engine from Baldur’s Gate II, with the disintegration dust and the screen shaking. But it does help illustrate the power level that Irenicus is throwing around. Save-or-die spells were relatively rare in the lower level of Baldur’s Gate I, even Semaj, Sarevok’s mage companion, wasn’t firing off disintegration willy-nilly. Throwing around disintegration spells clearly shows that Irenicus is a new high-level baddy. Later we see that he killed characters from Baldur’s Gate I off-screen, Khalid and Dynahier, two of the three sets of paired companions from BG1. This gives their partners reason to join in with the player character, but it also serves to show his power; Irenicus is such a bad dude that he can wipe your party before the game starts, like he was getting coffee. It might be a cruel cut, but that’s its intent, to make the player character mad at the villain, to want to punch his smarmy face in.

Commensurate in the danger of Irenicus is the need to find out what’s going on. Irenicus clearly knows something about your godly soul and so you want to find out what he knows. Even for an upstanding lawful good character, growing in power means finding a way to effect good on a larger scale, and perhaps to overcome the evil in your tainted blood. After all, no matter how good you were in Baldur’s Gate I, you still were an incredibly powerful killer. Sure, most if not all of them were bad dudes, Mulahey the iron ore poisoner, the bandits of Cloakwood, the Iron Throne and their plans to take over the Sword Coast. But chaos and destruction follow in your wake, and that chaos undoubtedly would hurt innocent civilians; Saradush in Throne of Bhaal is clear of that enough. Even just knowing more about what is going on could better prepare you for the next Irenicus or the next Sarevok.

When you go through the starter dungeon (another piece of game design, you are being tutorialized but the pastoral instruction of Candlekeep makes no sense for someone who already had an adventure), pieces of the man start to fall into place. He holds a bunch of captive dryads as concubines to remind him of someone he lost. He keeps an immaculate bedroom for a companion that is never there, with an alarm ready to dispatch the golems to kill any who cross the threshold. There’s a woman that was in his life that is no longer there, and the loss pains him, or at least, it seems that it should. Chatter with Imoen and the dryads show that this mystery man is trying to elicit feelings that he had lost, and that’s an entirely different case of worms than pining over a lost love. There’s some element of almost-unwilling psychopathy to these actions. Other hints in this dungeon illustrate this as well. His servants, discarded in vats and forgotten about entirely, would at first evoke classical evil overlords casually disregarding their own subjects. He’s almost all of the way there, but there’s enough there that the player is suggested that there has to be something more to it than that. He does seem to have some sort of sociopathy to him, where people are objects that he can find fascinating but he has no empathy. We see this later with Wanev, who Irenicus spares solely because he was hit by a spell that left him a lunatic, which Irenicus found funny, the administrator of a jail for the insane now rendered an insane patient himself.

He is powerful though, that much is clear when you break out of the starter dungeon. His display of magic collapsed part of Waukeen’s Promenade, and when the regulatory magical body of the Cowled Wizards comes to shut it down, Irenicus is capable of swatting mages like they were mosquitos. Just like the Shadow Thieves that he had been fighting, Irenicus seems more annoyed at the interruptions than any physical threat posed by his myriad foes. He’s definitely a powerful wizard, and when he finally submits to the Cowled Wizards, he does so clearly as their superior, dragging Imoen along with him. It’s fairly plain from a game design perspective what Irenicus is doing; he’s going to Spellhold so you have to get there. Good characters want to rescue Imoen, evil characters want to interrogate him to unlock the power in your blood. Either way, the player character is given a goal, and Irenicus disappears physically from the story for the moment.

He isn’t absent though. In your dreams, Jon Irenicus waxes philosophical at the player character, evoking thought-provoking questions. He explains the paradox of your existence of being born of murder, given life from the act of taking life. He speaks about accepting the gifts that will be given to you, regardless of whether or not you want them. These dream sequences are clear upgrades in quality and presentation from the spoken-dialogue text boxes from the first game after you beat major milestones. David Warner does a great job here in delivering Irenicus’s lines, he feels like a evil mentor speaking about philosophical topics with the same detachment that he tortured the player character with in the opening. While we find out later that these dreams aren’t sendings from Irenicus but rather parts of your character’s godly subconscious, they suggest to the player going through Chapter 3 that Irenicus does indeed know a hell of a lot more about you and your godly blood, keeping the player interesting in finding out exactly what it is you need to find out. The other quests in Chapter Three don’t have much to do with Irenicus, aside from some random events with the guild war in Athkatla at night, where the player will find out pretty quick that one side is powered by vampires, the level drain and click-dialogue of “your blood is rather inviting” isn’t exactly hiding that there be vampires engaged in a secret war with the Shadow Thieves. Even then, it’s tangential. You knew the Shadow Thieves were attacking Irenicus, which suggests at least some level of camaraderie with the vampires, but as we saw with the deep dwarves in Irenicus’s lair, he doesn’t care about followers, and they might simply be disposable assets if anything at all. If you want to know about Irenicus, you’re going to have to get it from the man himself. 

Of course, as befits a high-level mage, Irenicus breaks out of the prison in a cutscene, kills the Cowled Wizards and goes back to whatever unsavory plans he thought up for Imoen, teleporting into the lobby and chewing the scenery with his “I CANNOT BE CAGED!” speech, reinforcing his position as the central big bad and confirming the Cowled Wizards as mere obstacles. This part of his plan has been made clear. Far from the meddling Shadow Thieves and Cowled Wizards, Irenicus can continue his experiments on Imoen in Spellhold, and it falls on the player character to go there and end it. Irenicus, of course, knows this too, and he makes sure he has contingency plans to deliver you to him. I’m of three minds on this. On one, he’s so powerful it seems that he is so powerful, and Amn so large, that plenty of these isolated areas within the continent would service just as well for Irenicus’s lair. Why waste time with all of this blah-blah-blah and just take what he wants? It’s not like teleport spells are beyond his ken. On the other hand, it’s a good way to break up into the freeform quest design that Chapter Three gives, offers the chance for your characters to level up and get cool gear, lets you rock the stronghold quests which definitely let you feel your class and increase replay value, and the idea of the forbidding wizard in the island lair is an excellent backdrop. On the third, it’s in-character for an immortal mage to have plans within plans, even to the point of complexity addiction, although his conduct afterward sort of torpedoes this idea. 

That is, after he recaptures you, he immediately goes back to work to his experiments, and after another trippy dream sequence with Imoen, you find his plan. His goal is to absorb your divine soul, taking it for his own. He doesn’t explain anything more, but now that he has you, he discards you just as he has so many others. Telling his sister Bodhi to dispose of you is what keeps him from being someone like the Riddler, since he’s actually going for a proper smart villain play and killing the soulless husk he leaves behind just in case he pulls a protagonist move and comes clawing back for his stolen soul. It’s Bodhi’s instability, her desire to hunt you brought on by her vampirism, that keeps you alive. After the player character becomes the Slayer, Bodhi tells Irenicus, but true to his condescending nature, he simply...ignores the PC, writing them off as someone who is going to keel over any second due to their lack of soul, completely oblivious to the fact that Bhaal’s avatar was the Slayer, and it’s clear that something is replacing the void that he left within you. The PC must effectively turn that dismissiveness against him, by releasing the imprisoned mages within Spellhold, from the powerful but mostly harmless Dili to the megalomaniacal Tiax. Yet this hard-fought battle does not end with Irenicus’s death and your victory, instead Irenicus goes to pursue his other, as-yet unknown goals while he sends another band of cutthroats to die at your hand. 

Yoshimo is sort of my feelings on this Irenicus’s Spellhold plot writ small. As powerful as Irenicus is, he really doesn’t need Yoshimo, not if he has Sarmon Havarian and so many others. Yoshimo shows up in the starter dungeon, and is useful if a bit obsequious in a “who me?” sort of fashion. He doesn’t have a really good reason to stay with the party from a story reason that he gives you. He could have said: “Hey, thanks for getting me out. Deuces!” Yoshimo’s geas gets him to want to stay with the party, otherwise he’s dead. In that sense, it makes sense for him to want to be with the group. And as the only thief who gains levels aside from the absolutely annoying Jan Jansen, he’s useful for dealing with annoying traps, because reloading a game because your main PC tripped a trap and got petrified is certainly frustrating. Game mechanics though, interfere with this. You as the player character have control over the six-person party and if you want Yoshimo to be there, he’ll be there, and if you don’t, he’ll sit in the Copper Coronet, geas be damned. He’ll stand right there until you go back in after the Underdark chapter, in which case he flops over dead and hardly anyone cares. That’s a system engine limitation certainly, but it’s remarkably clumsy. What is good though, is Yoshimo’s regret during this. He knows he has to betray you and is forced to do so, and he genuinely likes you. The writing that happens is crisp, Yoshimo truly does apologize and Irenicus backs up his dismissive assholery by telling him to shut up. When Yoshimo confronts you in Spellhold, his writing is crisp. “No redemption, and no second chances. My heart to Ilmater.” He fights you and goes down swinging (which was annoying the first time I played because he had the Celestial Fury +3). And you can actually take that heart to Ilmater, occupying a valuable inventory space through the next chapters until you can reach Waukeen’s Promenade again, where you can choose to forgive him or not, but give the heart to Ilmater either way. It would have been saccharine to restore Yoshimo, but this way, I feel, is more powerful in a world with such powerful enchantments to see the effects on the people whose lives it ruins. So the game can be clunky at parts, and Irenicus can be as well, but there’s true craft and joy in it.

Back to Irenicus though, we get the sense of more to him when we see the intro splash screen for the next Chapter. Making a dark bargain with the drow, we see that they have captured surface elves, one of whom immediately refers to Irenicus as Joneleth, suggesting a backstory far deeper as Irenicus immediately resorts to killing the prisoner after being the one to suggest interrogation instead of immediate execution, a lashing out that seems out of character for the clinically-detached evil villain we’ve been coming to know. The backstory is clear in the Forgotten Realms, the dark elves and surface elves are mortal foes and anyone who is known to the surface elves to ally with the dark elves is a great betrayal. As the PC goes through the Underdark and comes out, they are captured by the surface elves. Through a conversation with Eldoth, it can become evident that the surface elves know more than they are letting on, such as when they are the ones who suggest holy water and stakes to fight Bodhi, despite not knowing anything about either one of them. After you slay Bodhi and restore Imoen’s soul to its rightful place, you can call Eldoth out on it. Irenicus is “the Shattered One,” an exile of the elves, and it’s here that Irenicus’s story becomes apparent.

Irenicus was a powerful wizard and lover of Queen Ellesime named Joneleth. Yet in his heart, Joneleth yearned for more power and sought to take the essence of the Tree of Life, the lifeblood of the city of Suldanesselar, for himself and Bodhi. This dark ritual nearly killed many that existed within Suldanesselar, and so Joneleth and Bodhi were punished, stripping their elven nature and immortality away from them, leaving them with a mortal lifespan, thus Joneleth became Jon Irenicus, the Shattered One. Bodhi sought to become a vampire to transgress the mortal years she had, but Jon had felt that it degraded her to that of a high-functioning beast. Irenicus’s scheme was far more grandiose if also possessing an elegant simplicity: he lost an immortal soul and so he needed to take one for himself. The Bhaalspawn was the perfect choice, powerful enough to defeat Sarevok and awaken the power within, weak enough to be captured and have the divine soul snatched away. With his stolen soul freshly acquired, Irenicus now looked to the second part of himself, to revenge himself on the elves. The dark elf invasion ultimately failed, helped out by the PC butchering the leadership of Ust Natha, but Irenicus is still going with golems and summoned demons to destroy the city, usurp the power of the Tree of Life, and complete his long ago schemes. 

I... I do not remember your love, Ellesime. I have tried. I have tried to recreate it, to spark it anew in my memory, but it is gone... a hollow, dead thing. For years, I clung to the memory of it. Then the memory of the memory. And then nothing. The Seldarine took that from me, too. I look upon you and feel nothing. I remember nothing but you turning your back on me, along with all the others. Once my thirst for power was everything. And now I hunger only for revenge. And I... WILL... HAVE IT!!

When confronted by Queen Ellesime, she even asks if there was any part of him that remembered the love he had for her, and the PC sees that it’s her that was in his mind for the beautiful bedroom way back in chapter one. It was almost certainly her that Irenicus thought of when he was with his dryad concubines. And when she poses that question, he answers with the above quote, that he feels nothing. While it seems like this is a loss of depth, that he’s just a flat character, I don’t think this is the case. Irenicus had the chance to change, for self-reflection. Instead, he remembers it as all the others turning their back on him, without any recognition that his schemes nearly killed them. It’s the classic abuser mentality, how dare you make me do these things to you. When his victims tried to defend themselves, he lashed out and remembers only their ‘cruelty’ to him. It’s this that makes Irenicus, for all his great arcane might, so small. Where before he was this intimidating figure, now he’s a petty man, and fittingly, it’s here that you can kill him. Temporarily, at least, because there’s still one more dungeon. Irenicus and you are still battling for your divine soul, and after a few self-reflective quests of your own, you duel Irenicus, who dies pitiably, torn to shreds by demons as his power fails him. It fits the heroic and thematic heft of the arc. As you grow in power, Irenicus diminishes in threat. He was your torturer, an inhuman menace, then he became just a man, torn apart by tiny demons that you probably could take down by the truckload. 

There’s good things to learn here. Irenicus isn’t a super-unique villain, although some of the villain tropes are personalized for the sake of the Baldur’s Gate story specifics. But he does his job admirably. David Warner’s voice work, and the special effects (pretty good for when the game came out in 2000) really was able to sell Irenicus as an enjoyable villain. 

Thanks for the suggestions, Anons who were looking forward to this.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[cutegirlmayra]

Who will read?

Stories I have planned to write:

1. Sonic and the Chaos Seas (Sky and sea Pirate AU) - Much like the amazing prompts I did, I have an idea for a Sonic Pirates AU, much like my Medieval AU- where Sonic is the captain of the Bablyon Jewel, which houses the Master Emerald stolen from Angel Island... buuuut since it’s Guardian can’t part with the Master Emerald, and can’t seem to convince Sonic to turn the ship around, Knuckles joins piracy... unwillingly. Tails is his first mate, who is a genius with the ship’s ancient technology, except that Jet and Storm refuse to leave their family heirloom, as Jet is the rightful owner of the commandeered ship. They need the Master Emerald to locate, which Tails’s machines, the 7 emeralds to prevent the terrible ‘Tsunami of Skies’ event depicted in Silver’s future scrolls... the day the sky became the sea... and wiped everything off the planet! Shadow was stolen along with the feared Pirate Gerald’s research... and his granddaughter’s wereabouts remain a mystery... after Sonic accidentally wakes up Shadow, he agrees to let Shadow have his revenge on the Royal G.U.N armada who are secretly working for Eggman, who has convinced Queen Elise that he’s gathering the Emeralds for the world’s sake... Captain Rose and her all female-crew have an old score to settle with Captain Sonic, and Team Chaotix have a specific client looking for their rabbit daughter... who they believe was kidnapped by Captain Rose. It’s a journey that races against time..! But Sonic..? a Sea captain..? Nay! A sky-flying pirate who hates the sea but believes in the justice of the free winds! Shall we all head aboard? (Chaptered story, Pirate AU, Some Sonic couples like Sonamy.)

2. Sonic Storybook Series - Consisting of Oneshots of different stories. Travel to the desert land of traded goods and magical artifacts to discover The Desert Jewel (Aladdin), or perhaps travel the woods and find ancient curses with howling results? (Little Red Riding Hood), maybe you’re more a kingdom missing it’s royalty, kinda guy? (Twisted Cinderella) Which ever you preuse in your readings, care to still take the perilous dive into the Books Of Wonder!? Sorry, Sonic... you don’t have a choice. You’re evil doubleganger, born of your friends insecurities, is going to make sure you’re never the hero again! (Series of Oneshots - so multiple story-chapters - some Sonamy lol)

3. Sonic Family - Set in the distance future... Discover a secret deal, arranged out of love, before the nefarious Eggman infuses half his mind with a metallic computer to keep himself from falling to Alzheimer's. However, the machine turns him in-human, and takes over his fleshy-side. Older Sonic has to give up the oath he made so many years ago, and abandon his friends in pursuit of Eggman. It’s a deadly fight, but with the evil-counterpart ripped from Eggman’s head, Eggman finally shows his age... And Sonic is forced to place him in a home for the elderly. “Oh look! A talking hedgehog!” as Eggman is wheeled into the nursing home, Sonic, after so many years away, returns to his family... Only to find it’s a complete mess! His eldest is trying to get his mentor, Shadow, with Sonic’s wife! Amy wants another baby, and if not, then Sonic needs to be a decent father for a change... His second oldest is having fights at school, his third youngest is Tails’s apprentice and doesn’t really know much or care to learn about his father, only racing and science! His littlest is barely on her first word... can Sonic reunite with his friends and form the connection with his family he gave up long ago? And when Eggman’s mind returns to him, placing the last bingo piece into place,... does this mean Sonic’s family isn’t safely hidden anymore!? Find out! In Sonic Family~ (Sonamy and other Sonic Couples story, future AU, chaptered.)

4. Amy Rose Origin Story: The Piko Warrior - Ever wonder where Amy came from? Sonic never bothered to ask... until that is, her past catches up with her. Warriors from an culturally-rich and brutal era have sworn to find The Rose’s Last Line before a dangerous evil finds it first and wipes out the last of the Piko Warrior’s bloodline! But... the Rose’s bloodline is a traitor? Amy Rose was raised by wandering Gypsies that taught her fortunes and tarot cards, right? But you’re wrong... Will Amy tell the secret of her Piko Piko Hammer and finally tell her team of friends the truth about her brutal past? Stay tuned for this, Amy Rose’s Origin Story! (Sonamy chaptered story + Amy Origin)

5. Amy's Judgement (Judgement spirit and King Spirit. FIGHT! lol) - Unaware of her orphan past, Amy simply wants to spend the rest of her life chasing Sonic and being apart of his world... but the Gods deem otherwise. When the team discover an ancient spirit haunting the world with his undead army, it’s only up to Sonic to connect with the Spirit King, the most powerful soul in all the afterlife, in order to acquire the legendary power to fight with Spirits! (In the flesh, it’s no good!) However... The Spirit King seems to hate Sonic,... but why? And why does he look so sorrowful when seeing Amy Rose? Will the team discover their families they’ve never really known in the spirit world? Find out, in this devastating war of the living and the dead! (Chaptered story, everyone’s origins revealed, moderate Sonamy.)

6. Yugioh OC story (Will give official name later) - While Atem is enjoying his afterlife, Mana admits that there is something missing, but perhaps without it, he could continue on in blissful ignorance, but it’s not enough for Atem. Learning that there are Cursed Millennium Items that were thrown from the first batch, the Ring being cursed in secret, he rises from his rest through the Millennium Puzzle, returning to his Partner to seek his aid. Yugi is elated to see his old friend, but deeply concerned. Atem has many enemies now... and old rivals who will take advantage of this situation. Atem must recover the parts of his memory that were sealed away in the cursed items... Then they hear singing? Join this remarkable quest as the old gang gets back together to find the missing items, stop an evil Egyptian witch, and discover the missing power of the Millennium Heart, which can bring monsters and spirits... to life! “The Falcon shall find the split Dove again...And carry it’s heart to the seeking Anubis. Only then can eternity be completed, and the Pharaoh at last, rest with all his lost souls.” (Yugioh characters x Many OCs and just epic dueling lol chaptered story, it’s also just a story not all about romance XP)

7. Amy Rose's Fanfiction (Headband and puppet universe.) - When Canon Amy Rose begins to wonder if she’s satisficed in her universe, a unique opportunity presents itself... grab Chaos’s brain and create her own universe! Without knowing how she did this, the gang is informed from Tikal that Amy has created a separate universe, and they must unite with the many other universe’s to find her and get her back! However, Amy Rose creates a Fanfiction Universe with ‘puppet’ forms of her friends. Enjoy the story of Amy Rose trying to live out her dreams and fantasies through Puppet Amy Rose who begins to see suffering and fights the control of her Canon-counterpart. Can they convince Amy to return to the Canon that needs and misses her? Only by jumping from Comic, Boom, Anime, Classic, and Game universes can Tikal stretch out her power through Chaos Control and find Amy... somehow bringing her back or convincing her to return to where she belongs! (Chaptered story with adaptations of Sonamy: dark sonamy, sonamy au, modern sonamy.)

8. Softer Shades (shadamy) - Yall already know lol. Chaptered Shadamy story.

                                          Which would you read?

[emmys-grimoire]

Cosmology blurb

Mulling over ideas for a fanfic series set in the Celestial Realm and realizing I may need to make some educated guesses about how things work. I figure I’d share my observations. Spoilers ahead.

I’m thinking the realms aren’t sandwiched/stratified on top of each other but are arranged more like this...

... if Lilith didn’t have to fall through the human realm to get to the Devildom and if the heavenly gates are accessible from the Devildom (implied when MC is transported there from the Devildom). There are obviously Celestial-Human and Devildom-Human access points in the story, too.

Traditionally, Heaven is upstairs and Hell is downstairs. But, while clearly inspired by these places, the Devildom is not actually Hell and the Celestial Realm is not actually Heaven. I mean, they’re not even named that.

They each have their own seperate skies with different constellations/celestial bodies (Devildom doesn’t have a sun and the other two realms do, and they have Belphie’s/Beel’s stars). Clearly the act of falling from the Celestial Realm to the Devildom is at least a metaphorical thing, but it’s implied to be literal, too.

I don’t think it matters a whole heckuvalot, but it’s interesting to think about.

Angel versus Devil society

Looking at what small details we have, the way these two realms have evolved and currently function is also very interesting.

The Devildom is a monarchy while the Celestial Realm may be an autocracy with a caste system (I think the Devildom probably does, too, just by the nature of feudalism but it may not be officially acknowledged). Previous Demon Kings have lived and died (there’s a tomb and a line of succession) while the Celestial Realm presumably remained ruled by the same entity throughout time. 

That’s pretty interesting, too. Demon Kings are not immortal. Diavolo, however, is likely stronger than Lucifer -- it makes sense that he has to be if he’s actually meant to replace his father.

The Celestial Realm’s caste system has Luke at the lowest rank, some kind of middle or multiple ranks, and Michael at the top rank. Lucifer used to occupy the same rank alongside him.

Christian angelology has multiple very detailed and convoluted hierarchies regarding angels, and for that reason it's probably much more simplified in the game. It already deviates from the typical choir arrangement by having archangels be the top rank when they're normally near the bottom, and giving them the six wings of the seraphim (the top choir).

We're not given much insight as to whether or not angels are born into these ranks or if they ascend them through good works and valor in battle or something. Lucifer being so utterly flawless seems to suggest he was born with it, but Luke complaining about being in the lowest rank suggests that there may be some way for him to change that arrangement and it may simply be a consequence of his (lack of) age and experience. Simeon also mentioning Michael may be of higher rank but he's still "a normal angel" may also allude to that. It could be a variation, where everyone starts at the same level but Lucifer and Michael were specifically given a greater share of angelic power so they were meant to get to the top and that inevitably happened. Or maybe angels gain xp and levels in fights with the demons and they managed to become head and shoulders above the rest by being better gamers.

Also, the legion of angels. 

A legion is a military or semimilitary unit. That is an interesting term to call what may also double as your governing body outside of daddy. The game mentions Michael was in charge of Mammon’s “training” before he was handed over to Lucifer, and well...

Michael is usually depicted and referred to as a protector and the leader of the army of God against the forces of evil, and it seems he reprises that role in this universe. Lucifer once did, too.

A fundamental part of “angel training” may revolve around warfare and training for it. We know the angels and demons have had a long, bloody history, but fighting doesn’t seem to be a part of RAD’s curriculum. The Celestial Realm may have changed it’s course now that they’ve entered a period of relative peace, but I’m not entirely sure.

So far the only in-game lore detail we have related to the actual fighting is the colosseum being destroyed in a battle before the creation of RAD, but it’s proof that the angels have invaded the Devildom at some point. It might have went vice-versa, too, and we simply haven’t observed it because we haven’t been in the Celestial Realm for more than two minutes. 

In spite of all this, it doesn’t seem like angel society is wholly bad. It’s likely rigid and hierarchical, but it is also strangely communal. The brothers have all fostered close bonds with each other within the Celestial Realm -- not the Devildom -- and the angels in the story seem to maintain their positive opinion of Lucifer and his brothers in spite of him sparking a civil war and them now being demons. How the angels treat each other is also noteworthy: Simeon and Luke clearly love each other and have a healthy relationship, by all accounts Michael wholeheartedly supports Luke and gives him positive feedback, and in spite of Luke’s obvious (though changing) prejudice towards all things demon they’re comparatively even-keeled. They generally operate on the assumption that they should help each other and others and that’s a good thing.

They also seem to be onboard with the intent behind exchange program. Luke isn’t sent there to be a spy like Simeon probably was, because he’s pretty terrible at subterfuge. 

A tacit admission that Luke’s perspective is one commonly held by the denizens of the Celestial Realm. Simeon points out that it’s not entirely bad, and I’m inclined to agree.

And also an acknowledgement that the thinking is flawed and they’re willing to make an effort to expand their horizons (considered a good thing). So something has changed, and it’s probably connected to... well... Lucifer and his brothers falling. Or the Celestial Realm just isn’t a monolith and there’s competing viewpoints even with how their society is structured. It’d be interesting to hear what the brothers thought about demons before they became demons themselves, and how they adjusted to that transformation (we get insight on how Lucifer viewed them via Glory Days, but that’s it.)

The Devildom, in contrast, uh... still has problems in this area outside of Diavolo.

This is disregarding all the soul devouring, torture, and casual murder that goes on between demons -- including the brothers. Diavolo is well regarded, but he’s also been unofficially in charge for quite awhile and it doesn’t appear he thinks this is a problem, even though he himself doesn’t treat his subjects poorly (as far as I know, anyway).

Which brings me to this...

There’s a reason he doesn’t really have any close bonds beyond Barbatos and Lucifer, in spite of being universally beloved. And I’m not sure how well he knows Barbatos, honestly. He’s isolated, and it’s not entirely related to his position; Lucifer has been in a high status position in both realms and doesn’t have this problem and never really did in spite of being prickly and anal-retentive af. There’s been quite a bit of commentary in these lessons about how he’s changed and may be reverting back to his angelic tendencies, with Barbatos implying that while it may be good for him and his family, it may not be what’s best for the Devildom... and I think that’s a mindset carried over from his tenure serving under Diavolo’s dad and helping enforce the current state of the Devildom for a specific purpose. MC somehow turning Lucifer and his brothers back into good people (or better people, at least), and Diavolo being envious of their closeness, may interfere with that: the demons around them may start getting ideas, and Diavolo may make more changes.

So not all is well in the Devildom, either, and Diavolo may not be cognizant of how or why. While the Celestial Realm may be a militant society with authoritarian impulses and bigotry, the Devildom sounds like a corrupt monarchy with a dog-eat-dog world underneath that makes trust and love liabilities to survival and keeps the peasants where they are forever. It’s simply another brand of dysfunction.

Hoomans and MC

The Human Realm is probably meant to be some kind of middleground in the dark/bad - light/good spectrum, with its inhabitants having no impulses skewed one way or the other and thus possessing the ability to slide back and forth. 

Demons interact with the human world via being summoned, pacts, or simply travelling there. Manipulating them and preying on them involves magical speechcraft. The angels aren’t allowed to reveal their angel forms to humans, travel there without permission (though it seems the punishment for this wasn’t enough to deter Belphie/Beel/Lilith/Mammon), or magically extend their lifespans -- it seems they prefer to meddle in their affairs indirectly, and revolves around shepherding them towards certain (presumably good) decisions. Ironically enough, Michael himself seems to violate these tenets with Solomon, who is evidently aware of who gave him the demon-controlling ring and was invited to chill with him in the Celestial Realm. It’s do as I say but not as I do, apparently.  

The game seems to imply that it’s possible that MC inherited Lilith’s angelic tendencies/abilities/memories/whatever after the big reveal, which makes me think she may not have turned into a demon before she was reborn. There’s no reason to think she would have retained her angelic abilities as a demon when her brothers haven’t -- she presumably would have lost them before being reborn, if she was turned into a demon first. Diavolo might have just skipped that step altogether for simplicity’s sake.

But she did technically fall, so ???? Maybe it’s just literally falling from the sky.

tl;dr version: they’re all fucked up and the exchange program is a good way for them to try to get their shit together. And I like how it’s set up.

[thecreaturecodex]

Whirlbat

Image by Walt McDougall, accessed at Monster Brains here

[Before I took a break, I asked for feedback about whether or not people wanted more of the “Good Stories for Children” monsters. They had been the first runner up in a poll I ran in February, but they seemed to get less notes on average than my other work surrounding them. The feedback I got was decidedly mixed, with some people saying that they didn’t like them, others saying they did, and some people on the fence. Well, I’m going to keep going, because I like them. I’ve got another four written as I queue this up, and will probably get another 4-6 out of the batch before I get through.

Now, that being said, this story does come with a warning. Namely, there’s old time racism in it, which has not been the case for most of these Walt McDougall stories. Just a quick use of the N-word, totally irrelevant to the story itself. Eeeugh. The monster in this one gets slain, as these monsters often do, by the chemistry know-how of your plucky young protagonist, although this one is pretty gruesome--he pours acid on its back and leads it on a merry chase until the acid eats through its shell and into its organs. You know, for kids!]

Whirlbat CR 12 N Magical Beast This massive creature has the head and wings of a great bat, and the clawed paws of a lion. Overlapping scales like tortoiseshell cover its entire body.

Whirlbats are enormous desert predators, soaring on thermal currents over wide distances in search of prey. They are nocturnal, hunting by moonlight or pinpointing caravans and settlements based on torchlight and lanterns, and then diving down. Despite their immense size, whirlbats need relatively little food—a man sized creature once a week is enough to sustain a whirlbat.

A creature pounced upon by a whirlbat rarely lives long enough to react. Those that survive are carried off in the creature’s claws to be devoured at its leisure elsewhere. A whirlbat relies on both its tough shell-like armor and the whirling winds that surround it as defense. Arrows and crossbow bolts are deflected by the wind harmlessly, and even at rest, only magical weapons can pierce the monster’s hide.

Whirlbats are generally solitary creatures, each with a large territory in which it hunts. Because they prefer open terrain in order to better pinpoint food, they may uproot trees and destroy orchards when they establish a territory. During the mating season, whirlbat males compete furiously over females, engaging in grappling contests and aerial acrobatics in order to obtain a mate. Females bury their eggs in warm sand and then abandon them—the young are born able to fend for themselves and can fly within minutes of hatching.

A whirlbat’s wingspan stretches more than sixty feet.

Whirlbat       CR 12 XP 19,200 N Gargantuan magical beast Init +6; Senses blindsense 60 ft., darkvision 120 ft., low-light vision, Perception +17 Defense AC 26, touch 8. flat-footed 24 (-4 size, +2 Dex, +18 natural) hp 168 (16d10+80) Fort +15, Ref +14, Will +7 DR 15/magic; Resist electricity 10, fire 10 Defensive Abilities whirling winds Offense Speed 40 ft., fly 80 ft. (good) Melee bite +21 (2d8+9), 2 claws +21 (2d6+9/19-20 plus grab) Space 20 ft.; Reach 15 ft. Special Attacks pounce, rake (2 claws, 2d6+9/19-20) Statistics Str 28, Dex 15, Con 21, Int 2, Wis 14, Cha 11 Base Atk +16; CMB +29 (+33 grapple); CMD 41 (45 vs. trip) Feats Blind-fight, Flyby Attack, Hover, Improved Critical (claw), Improved Initiative, Improved Vital Strike, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Vital Strike Skills Fly +15, Perception +17; Racial Modifiers +8 Perception Ecology Environment warm hills and mountains Organization solitary, pair or scrum (3-8) Treasure incidental Special Abilities Whirling Winds (Su) Whenever a whirlbat uses its fly speed to move or makes use of its Hover feat, its body is surrounded in a barrier of air similar to a wind wall spell. Creatures of Small or smaller size cannot cross the barrier, and must succeed a DC 23 Reflex save whenever coming into contact with the whirlbat or be pushed back 10 feet. Arrows and bolts cannot cross the barrier and do no damage to the whirlbat; ranged attacks from other sources have a 30% miss chance. A spellcaster using control winds or control weather can suppress a whirlbat’s whirling winds for the duration of the spell with a successful DC 23 caster level check. The save DC is Constitution based.

[33skeletons]

This is a list of all the people currently available

If this blog gains any real traction, I’ll add more... but until then, I don’t want to get too carried away until I’m 100% sure that the effort is worth it. I hope y’all understand

Name: Deydra Age: 18 Likes: ice cream, yaoi, drawing, roleplay dislikes: rude people, coffee, people putting words in her mouth, XP, Punk Bio: She’s in an open relationship with Scruff. she’s mute, but doesn’t know sign language, so she communicates via charades. She’s a low key perv, but tends to feign innocence.

Name: Friday Age: 22 Likes: flirting, coffee, making people flustered Dislikes: tea.... that stuff’s too mild, spicy food..... are you fucking insane!?! Bio: This tall drink of water is not for the feint of heart. He knows all the right buttons to push to reduce you to a blushing puddle. He has a goofy sense of humor and will often make a complete fool of himself just to make people at least crack an amused smile.

Name: Manga Age: 24 Likes: being pampered, the finer things in life Dislikes: getting dirty, being treated like a commoner Bio: This Miss Priss is a purebred with a pedigree. She believes herself to be an aristocrat and deems those of lower standard to be “plebian filth” and below her. Quick witted with a sharp tongue to boot, she’s not the nicest person to be around unless you can meet her high standards.... or give her a bottle of fancy ketchup. She has a weakness for tough guys that can match her mental capacity and hold intricate conversation with her.

Name: Punk Age: 32 Likes: What’s it to ya? Dislikes: Like you’d like ta know! Bio: he’s quite stand-off-ish and likes to keep people at arms length as much as he possibly can. He gets along with very few people and likes to shroud himself in mystery, the less you know, the better for him. He’s a wild card that enjoys throwing people for a loop at every turn.

Name: Scruff Age: 19 Likes: protecting Deydra, spicy food, tea, cuddles Dislikes: sushi, bone broth Bio: he and Deydra are in an open relationship. He cares more about Deydra than his own life. He’s a tad stand-off-ish towards anyone he doesn’t know. He tends to act as a translator for Deydra when someone doesn’t understand what she’s trying to say. All the scars on his face and his gold fangs are all from fighting to keep Deydra out of harm’s way. Wherever Deydra goes, Scruff is never very far.

Name: XP Age:15 Likes: destruction, being an asshole, getting what he wants Dislikes: being told no, having to be nice, things he destroys being fixed Bio: This edgy teen just wants the world to burn. He strives to hurt people any way he can and often ends up getting beaten senseless by Scruff when he targets Deydra. Being an Error Nightmare, he can use both Error strings and Nightmare tentacles to bring about destruction and pain, though he normally keeps the tentacles hidden as not to instantly rouse suspicion from his targets seeing as most actively avoid Nightmares, but are okay with Errors, though he can’t hide the goop that covers his right eye, which gives away his other half if anyone’s attentive enough to put two and two together in time

Name: Hokori Age: 23 Likes: food, blood, peanuts Dislikes:..... meh Bio: With his hood up, he appears to be a Dust Sans, but with his hood down it reveals a large gash in his skull and allows him to pass as your average Horror Sans. He’s volatile and unpredictable, but the fastest way to this skeleton’s proverbial heart is lots of food. He’s a bottomless pit with an insatiable apatite. If he’s out on a killing spree and has decided to target you, your best bet at escaping is to toss a handful of some kind of small, easily scattered snack such as peanuts. He’ll stop and start picking up and eating whatever you threw like James Woods from Family Guy. He’s also a bit of a perv once he’s deemed you not worth the energy of killing.

Name: Calibri (left) Age: 21 Likes: shredding sick riffs on her guitar, rapping, beating the snot out of assholes that need a checkup with karma Dislikes: Assholes, people calling her fat... I’m a queen with more curves than you know how to handle!!! get it right, fuckers!!! Bio: This badass, bodacious babe is one of Gears’s twin daughters. She’s got a sailor’s mouth with an alcohol tolerance to match. She’s hot-headed, but also mediates when her sister Chiller is too angry to see straight and starts edging too close to the line when putting her foot down. Calibri is sexy and she knows it with a ride or die attitude. She don’t need no man to take care of her, no sir! She’s perfectly capable of paying her own tab and fighting off a group of thugs that don’t know how to take no for an answer! She, her sister, and her mom can play Through The Fire And Flames on their guitars. Name: Chiller (right) Age: 21 Likes: playing guitar with her sister Calibri and mother Gears, reading Dungeons and Dragons books Dislikes: movie adaptations of books, live action adaptations of animations, assholes, being angry Bio: Chiller’s a badass babe in her own right. She survived being hooked up to a car battery and has the scars to prove it. She’s a lesbian and proud, and prefers taking on the dominant role in a relationship. Her pain tolerance is incredibly high. She enjoys hip hop, interpretive and break dancing, and is one heck of an archer with nearly dead shot aim. She’s normally stoic and very blunt with her words, preferring to only speak when necessary. She’s a natural born pack alpha.

Name: Sparkle Age: 41 Likes: anything sweet, bright colors, J-pop, K-pop Dislikes: anything bitter, having to get violent, seeing others get hurt Bio: she may look all sunshine and rainbows, but she can punch like a freight train and sometimes forgets her own strength. She suffers from hypoglycemia and has to keep sweets and candy on her person if she leaves the house, though she will gladly share them if you ask. She enjoys baking, and can often times be found doing just that out of boredom, not that anyone has been complaining. She may appear frail, but she can tank hits like a champ so long as said hits don’t come from a sharp object or gunshot. Her twin sister is Shade. She has a problem with producing more magic than her body can handle, so her sister comes in handy for that issue.

Name: Shade Age: 41 Likes: star gazing, dark colors, bitter and robust flavors, Evanescence (she knows all of their songs by heart) Dislikes: sweets, bright light, satanists Bio: Miss Doom And Gloom here is a wiccan highly skilled in her practice. She has the ability to leech magic from other monsters because she has no magic of her own to use, so she uses the magic of others, though mostly the excess magic her sister overproduces. She doesn’t enjoy getting her hands dirty in a fight,.... good thing she wears gloves! She’s rather soft spoken, but make no mistake, she has an outside voice and will not hesitate to use it if someone’s getting on her nerves. She mostly uses defensive magic to protect others, though she knows attack spells purely for the defense of herself and others should it be absolutely necessary. She also knows basic healing magic, though she can only heal minor injuries.

Name: Aiden Age: 40 Likes: pain, meat, grunge and screamo Dislikes: pop music, allergy season, Bio: This sharp toothed masochist ADORES pain, both receiving and inflicting. She got so mad once, she ruined her voice, so now she sounds like she smokes a pack a day. She’s very fast, agile, and super flexible since she’s double jointed EVERYWHERE!!! She has three rows of those razor teeth and a tongue which is so long it can act as an extra limb, which she enjoys showing off to freak people out via picking up objects such as cups, keys, pencils, and even going so far as to balance on it. She has very bad allergies, so she smells by flicking her tongue out like a reptile. Her spit and other bodily fluids are highly acidic. She’s normally chill, but it’s still obvious she’s a bit unhinged.

Name: Gears Age: 40 Likes: hot sauce, children, playing his acoustic guitar, working on cars, blacksmithing, learning new things Dislikes: sitting still for too long, sweets, water, cold, rude people, being alone Bio: Gears is a country boy that enjoys staying in top physical shape and keeping his hands and mind busy at every chance he gets. He’s just as strong as Sparkle, but slower. He has fire magic that when not fighting to keep others safe, he uses to forge metal as a freelance blacksmith. He carries a ridiculously enormous wrench forged from the hardest metal known to man that he uses as a melee weapon. Fire doesn’t harm him, but water sure as heck does (but he can drink things like koolaid and soda and be perfectly fine... just no water on it’s own or saline solution)!!! He bleeds ferrofluid, which he can manipulate, harden, and liquify at will as a last resort in a fight or to keep his injuries from deterring him too badly. He’s a bit of a himbo, but not as dumb... he just has his moments where “me brain am no werk so gud” and it’s evident when he starts having Freudian Slips in whatever he’s trying to say or his response to a question is “uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhm...... wait one...... run that by me again?”. Gears was around during the great human monster war, which in his AU the humans sealed them in the mountain, but chased them till they were backed against the barrier, but the monsters hit a massive stroke of good luck and managed to take back the underground with the help of Frisk. Being a war veteran that has seen things no one should ever have to, he suffers from PTSD. Gears has a soft spot for children, and will often babysit for others if they ask.

Name: Sketch Age: 40 Likes: drawing, painting, coloring, blood, sketching,..... what? Dislikes: ......... what were we talkin bout? Bio: Sketch is an unhinged scatterbrained clutz of an aspiring artist.... with a dark side. She’s a low-key sadist that’s developed a taste for blood. Once you piss her off, stopping her is like trying to stop the Doom Guy.... just... stay out of her warpath and pray to whoever you pray to that you’re not the one she’s storming towards. She’s a MASSIVE perv and will openly stare at whatever she sees that she likes a little too much, even known to get handsy when the person doesn’t take the hint. She often loses track of important things like her phone, keys, ect and loses her train of though every now and then or feigns it to skillfully dodge questions and conversations she’d rather not be having.

Name: Rave Age: 42 Likes: singing, dancing, fashion and most importantly BOOOOOOOYYYYYS~ Dislikes: ..... depends on the situation, really~ Bio: A flamboyantly gay vigilante is also a medic with powerful healing magic. Rave is fleet of foot and deathly quiet when sneaking up on someone and with enough stamina to outrun most of his targets. His weapon of choice is a glowstick staff. Wanna hear what he sounds like? Go to youtube and look up any nightcore male version of any Ke$ha song and that’s what he sounds like. Rave likes looking hot AF and can frequently be found rocking women’s punk, pop and grunge style clothing and looking damn good in it and some eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara. He prides himself in keeping himself as healthy and fit as he possibly can at all times. He unironically likes pumpkin spice anything, peppermint bark lattes, and kale chips. 

Name: Dante Age: 42 Likes: children, Italian food, guns, cigars, wine, bourbon, being a wise guy mobster, Helping others.... so long as they help someone else in return that is.... sorta like.... paying for the person behind you in a drive thru where it starts a chain reaction of people paying for the next person’s meal..... little acts of kindness make the world go round, y’know.... and I’m a charitable man. Dislikes: rude people, having to go “Melancholy”, Bio: This Mafiatale Ganz (GZTale Sans) is the don of his own mafia that deal in guns, alcohol, and providing protection to those who come to him on the day of his sister's daughter's son's niece's nephew's grandmother's sister's wedding-..... pffffft hahaha!!! Just kidding! He has no blood relatives besides his brother Leon, but this group of people (everyone in the two pictures above this) are like.... illegitimate family.... adoptive you could say. Dante’s great with kids. He and Gears are the best at babysitting and often work together to help lost children find their families again when they’re out and about. Dante enjoys giving back to the community as much as he possibly can, even spending his free time doing volunteer work and donating funds to the city. When Dante gets a custom order on a gun, he has Gears forge it for him and focuses on the fine details, dip dying, engraving and making custom bullets to match.

Name: Anomaly Age: immortal, frozen at age 23 Likes: helping others, traveling to other AUs, fruity alcohol, karaoke, JAPANESE FOOD!!! Dislikes: spicy food, beer, celery, mushrooms, country music Bio: Anomaly has ben around for god knows how long. They are bigender. They have wings and horns (cause They’re a fallen angel) but prefers to hide them away. 40 years ago, they decided to create their own AU as a safe haven for anyone trying to escape danger, though danger seems to find their little safe haven more than they’d like to admit. It was around this time they discovered forgotten AUs and ones being destroyed or deleted and decided to try to rescue as many people from them as they could, bringing them back to populate their AU Crossroads, aptly named due to it being a meltingpot of the multiverse and still growing in size and population to this day. The 9 skeletons listed above were the first 9 they ever rescued and they became like their own kids. They’re a goofball, but make Them mad and you’ll feel their wrath! Skilled in a multitude of weapons and fighting styles, they’re a formidable force of nature. They can shift between male and female at will, though they prefer their female form due to them being able to fit in smaller spaces, being lighter weight, and being able to doe eye and bat their eyelashes out of most situations.... plus free drinks at the local bar on Thursdays.

Name: Eros Age: 19 Likes: long walks on the beach, cuddles, his family, oreos Dislikes: rainy days, confrontation (cause it makes people afraid of him) Bio: This 10ft tall, frightening behemoth is actually Aiden’s son! Out of all the second generation, he’s the youngest of the adults, but the most responsible of the four boys, often being the voice of reason amongst them, especially when it comes to the well being of children around his idiotic cousins Etch and Scribble and often being the one to get little ZJ to listen to what he’s told by telling him going to bed on time and eating vegetables will make him grow up big and strong like him. He’s actually a little on the shy side and very humble, only hamming things up around ZJ and other small children present. He suffers from early onset arthritis and has to take medication for it to keep his joints from locking up and grinding together, but he doesn’t let it hold him down. He and his uncle Gears work out together because it helps his aching bones and because Gears turns it into fun little challenges for him to keep him going with it instead of giving up.

Name: Etch Age: 21 (but a few months younger than Chiller and Calibri) Likes: mEmEs!!!, weed, being annoying, prank wars Dislikes: being forgotten, being ignored, pain (has a very low pain tolerance) Bio: One of Sketch’s sons and Scribble’s twin brother. He’s just very lonely and wants people to pay attention to him to stave off being alone for as long as he can... whether said attention is positive or negative. When no one pays attention to him or there’s no one to keep his thoughts from wandering to dark places, he steals his brother’s weed stash and gets high... which his brother hates because Etch could easily go to a doctor and get his own prescribed to him, but Etch fears the doctor’s office more than death and adamantly refuses to go, even hiding or running away at the mere mention of it. Etch tried to get a tattoo once.... he went into it screaming like a badass Viking, but before they could even roll up his sleeve to start, he ran out blubbering like a baby. He’s the most irresponsible one in the entire family and is always the one to cause major problems because of a bad idea he thought was good at the time. He ends up in bad situations a lot and finds himself with the wrong crowd more often than not, but lucky for him he has a family full of badasses that come to bail him out of any situation before he ends up hurt too badly.

Name: Scribble Age: 21 (but a few months younger than Chiller and Calibri) Likes: memes, weed, hanging around Etch, Eros and ZJ, cuddles Dislikes: when Etch steals his weed, when Etch gets into trouble, pain (another with very low pain tolerance, looky there! But he has literally no tolerance for pain.... he screamed when he got those piercings)  Bio: Scribble suffers from anxiety and clinical depression and was prescribed marijuana to treat it. He and his brother were home schooled after freshman year of high school due to Etch pissing off the entire football team and them all ambushing the brothers in the locker room after gym class and um... let’s just say Etch got over it and Scribble still fears .....backdoor intimacy after what the football team did to them. Scribble is unable to protect himself and is a firm believer in pacifism. In times of battle, Scribble acts as a messenger, able to write notes in magic ink that can only be seen by it’s intended recipients. He normally just rolls with whatever Etch is doing or does what he’s told to avoid a conflict.

Name: Spritle Age: 20 Likes: Cheesy romance, dark humor and morbid jokes, rainy days Dislikes: removing her death touch nullifying necklace, people sexualizing her right off the bat, people underestimating her because of her appearance Bio: This brightly colored reaper girl is one of Sparkle’s daughters. She prefers to blend into the background and not be the center of attention if she can help it. Yes, her freckles are rainbow colors. She’s more on the proper side like her aunt Shade and enjoys a relationship if it’s not centered around perversion. She’d rather spend the day cuddled up on the couch watching disney movies, eating pizza and sharing a drink with two straws. She really likes nostalgic and retro things like 50′s diners and drive in movies. If you’re with her and intend on asking her out, doing old school gestures like laying your jacket over a puddle so she won’t step in it is the quickest way to win her over.

Name: Pixie Age: 19 Likes: when any guy is interested in her, when soon to be reaped souls try to run from her sister (It gives her something to do), sushi Dislikes: When people think she’s a child because of her nearly flat chest and high pitches voice, How her big sister has a bigger bust than her (Sprilte: Hey, if I could switch with you, I would! These things hurt my back!) Bio: Sparkle’s youngest daughter. Her father was an ErrorFellSwap Papyrus. She works with her sister as a chaser. Her job is to chase after, disarm and detain souls that refuse to be reaped when their time comes via trying to fight death or outrun it and thus trying to fight/run away from Spritle. Pixie is the first ever chaser on record and was the one who proposed the idea to the reaper council to keep reapers from tearing their bodies up to do their job. Chasers can be identified by a little white cross on their clothing or accessories and are required to be fast runners and ferocious fighters. Pixie has the speed and ferocity of a FellSwap Papyrus and is able to use her error strings to easily take weapons from your hands and tie you up to await the cold bite of Spritle’s scythe or claw blades. Pixie enjoys puzzles, her favorite being rubix cubes.

Name: ZJ Age: 4 Likes: coloring, playing outside, hanging out with the older boys, spending time with uncle Gears and uncle Dante, when his momma reads to him, hide and seek, COOKIES, CAKE AND CANDY!!! Dislikes: When people are mean and hurt others, vegetables, bed time Bio: Shade’s adopted son. ZJ is shy, yet a hyperactive ball of energy that likes to hang around with Etch, Scribble, and Eros. He has wisdom beyond his years thanks to his mother reading college level literature as his bedtime stories, but he has trouble articulating his words from the first three years of his life being spent with everyone baby talking him. When he doesn’t know how to respond to something, he just reacts by screaming “I DUNNO WHAT’S GOIN ON!!!” the same happens when he gets overwhelmed, but it’s accompanied by him hiding behind the nearest trusted adult.

FEEL FREE TO START SENDING ASKS AND RP STARTERS!!!

[secret-engima]

So questions for the new verse. What is everyone else's reactions to learning about Nox's issues finding a Guide? How do the additional Sensory Issues affect her Quiet Days? How do Nyx and Nox end up bonding? Does Ardyn have any similar issues? Does Titus end up being his Guide in this Verse? What is Nox's reaction the first time Nyx helps her out of a Zone out? (Sorry to send you so many at once.)

It’s okay! I like the enthusiasm. So- to try to answer in maybe order (but probably not) (also keep in mind I’ve read like- two Sentinel-Guide fics in my entire life so my representation of the trope is probably utterly skewed because I’m making it up as I go based off the summaries I read):

-Regis is ... VERY surprised to learn that his eldest daughter is ALSO a Sentinel, since Noctis is the first known LC Sentinel in history (Ardyn laughs very quietly under his breath). Ardyn gently passes off the major coincidence as a side-effect of being an Izunia, as Izunia’s have “long had a tendency to be Sentinels”. Regis lets it go, but worries immensely when he realizes Nox has the same power issues as Noctis has (she doesn’t actually, hers are MUCH WORSE because of the Crystal memories, but she doesn’t tell him that). Clarus promises to look into finding a Guide strong enough to help her, but Nox tells him not to bother. Clarus still tries, because this is Regis’s daughter, but it rapidly becomes clear that the only Guide with a prayer of handling Nox is Titus, but Titus made a snap-bond with Ardyn that everyone is maybe freaking out over so...

-Quiet Days are now pretty much BECAUSE of her sensory issues, because her magic tends to feed into her senses and when she has too many KoL memories crowding in her head they feed into her senses and it HURTS. It hurts like fire and blood and knives of broken glass beneath her skin and she doesn’t so much wander during her Quiet Days has HIDE (Ardyn does too, and is ... honestly astonished by how much easier his Quiet Days are after Titus starts tracking him down and gently pulling him out of them). Everyone is super worried about Nox’s sensory issues, especially after she has a Zone-Out for like- 6 hours that not even Titus can pull her out from. It takes Titus and Regis working together to finally pull her free and she is exhausted by the end of it.

-Yes, Ardyn has similar issues, has had them for YEARS and honestly probably spent a good chunk of his imprisonment locked in a Zone-Out, which did NOTHING good for his sanity and was probably calmed down from them during his time in Niflheim through the use of Besithia-made drugs (which ALSO did nothing good to his sanity). Of course, Titus and Ardyn have accidentally made a snap-bond either during or shortly after the Binding of Glauca incident and so while tensions were high between them at first, Titus is firmly in Overprotective Mode now and has a good handle on dragging Ardyn back to reality, so Nox is actually way worse off than Ardyn (much to his worry).

-Nyx probably ends up bonding during the first time he helps Nox out of a Zone-Out (so when she’s around 16 or so depending on how rare her Zone-Outs are). He very much doesn’t mean to, but he knows that both Princesses have sensory issues as the only recorded LC Sentinels in history (until Ardyn’s Reveal anyway) and how most Guides don’t have a prayer of helping. Now, Nyx has no idea just how strong a Guide he is, because there’s not exactly any formal testing for that and because he’s a Jungle Hick, he knows he’s a Jungle Hick, and with how Insomnians are constantly underestimating Galahdians and Nyx’s only source of comparison are other Galahdians who also have no idea how strong they are, he believes he too would not have a prayer of helping.

-But then word goes out that she’s missing, probably hiding in a Quiet Day and all the Guides are called on to try to track her down. Nyx follows some ... instinct he can’t quite name but has always trusted and finds her tucked away in a corner, wheezing and shaking like a leaf, looking like she’s in pain just from existing. A touch-based Zone-Out, Nyx thinks and he’s heard from Crowe, Lib’s Sentinel, how painful those could be and he forgets all about calling for backup because Nox needs help NOW and Nyx has always been reckless.

-He reaches out with his mind, lets his Shields unfurl to gently ping Nox’s mind and promptly gets dragged under by the strength of her Zone-Out.

-If feels like drowning. If feels like burning. It feels like a thousand things and yet nothing at all (like drifting in a void as lifetimes roll by, an eternity captured in a second and a heartbeat stretched out for an age). Nox feels like she’s angry-happy-sad-old-young-dead-alive in her magic and emotions, so strong that Nyx’s own world blurs in a way he’s never known it could.

-And here is the thing. Nox’s KoL memories give shape to that blurring, give fuel and memory, but they do not create it. Magic does. Here is the thing no one but Ignis and Prompto of Nox’s time and the Ignis of this time know. LC magic will always try to pull in the Guide touching it, try to shape the reality that is being overridden by the hyper-enhanced sense in a sort of failed attempt to fix what magic itself is helping to break. This is the point where most Guides recoil and pull away, afraid of being caught and drowned in the tide when really the secret is to believe you can still breathe, to trust that no matter what magic tries to tell the Guide, reality is still the same, breathing is still the same, and all they have to do is find Noctis/Nox in the middle of it and pull her free. It’s not EASY, but it’s not complicated either. Most of the time. It’s just the terror of being wrenched under the flow of magic that stops most Guides before they can get started.

-But Nyx isn’t like most people. He isn’t afraid of magic, or the tides. He is jungle born and magic forged. Where the others panicked at the magic beneath their skin when they first felt it, struggled to accept the foreign thing as theirs to wield, Nyx had laughed and embraced it, reveled in the taste of ozone warping brought and the heartbeat of fire in his hands. So when Nox’s magic tries to yank him under, instead of recoiling, Nyx reaches out and dives.

-The world becomes a blurry battlefield, and impression of anger and fear as blood flows down too sensitive skin (the trigger of the Zone-Out, the memory of the feeling driving her sense of touch to the max without her consent). There are too many emotions to catch and Nyx feels like the ground could give beneath his feet at any second, and he’s VERY SURE that Guides aren’t supposed to feel or see things when helping a Sentinel, but this is Magic and magic breaks all the rules. So instead of panicking, Nyx takes a breathe, ignores the taste of blood on his tongue, and calls for Nox. He reaches, halfway between magical memory and reality, for Nox in the center of the maelstrom. He calls to her and lets magic pull his voice along rather than fighting it every inch of the way.

-He has an impression of blood red eyes, and then- Nox responds. Jerkily, hesitantly, but its enough for Nyx’s reality to solidify back to the Citadel and Nox’s hiding place, back to the princess shivering under the burning of her own skin, and Nyx doesn’t hesitate to wrap his mental shields around the storm of emotion-magic-memory-life-death that is Nox. Doesn’t hesitate to let her in. The storm is already under his skin anyway, a little more won’t kill him (he hopes).

-And Nox is desperate for the help and Nyx is stronger than he knows, and both those things together causes something between them to snap into place, bright and clear, a bond that lets emotions flow free between them, that lets Nyx feel Nox’s emotions beneath the tangle of KoL memory and let’s Nox anchor herself to the steady flare of Nyx’s soul and ... Nox’s shake stops. She blinks awake and breathes as her sense of touch finally dials back to normal, as she feels the world calm beneath strong shields that feel a little like far off thunder and fresh rain and concealing jungle vines.

-....What?

-Nox focuses on reality, on the BOND she thought was impossible to ever have now singing in her soul and stares at ... Nyx Ulric.

-Nyx stares back in equal shock and thinks that- just maybe- Lib was right about Nyx being destined to someday bite off more than he could chew.

-But Nox feels so relieved, so exhausted and disbelieving and overjoyed, like her entire soul is weeping that someone FINALLY was able to help her, bond with her, and Nyx already knows he will never regret it.

-Of course in about 3 years Nox is going to be 19 and Nyx is going to wake up and realize that his Princess Sentinel is Very Hot and Amazing and he’s head over heels for her and oh no. And then he will very much be a Regret. At least until Nox kisses him. XP.

[dndhomebrewguy]

Akaname

Lurking in dilapidated estates and old bathhouses, the akaname rests in old filth, consuming the grime and dirt left by years of buildup. The akaname is a goblinoid demon that wanders the Abyss in search of anything from fungus to freshly dead corpses, consuming and making a home out of the filth.

Filth Hunters. Physically weak, the akaname find groups of each other and survive in numbers by swarming larger demons and parties of adventurers to rend the flesh and consume the body once it begins rotting. Virtually no society exists among the akaname as they live off the numbers they accrue, though they're inherently selfish nature means a clan does not pass 4 to 6 in number.

Maglubiyet's Waste. When a goblin dies, their soul is thrust through the Wheel of Cosmology and ends up in Acheron where they fight in an endless battle alongside Maglubiyet. However, Maglubiyet occasionally sees a goblin or two as disgusting and unworthy of battling with Him. Because of this, He thrusts them out of his forces and into the infinite layers of the Abyss, where He decides they will suffer for being disgusting in His eyes. Thus, a goblin stirs and is infected by the pull of the Abyss and an akaname is born.

Akaname

Small fiend (demon, goblin), chaotic evil

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Armor Class 13 (natural armor)

Hit Points 35 (5d8 + 15)

Speed 30ft.

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STR 11 (+0)

DEX 16 (+3)

CON 17 (+3)

INT 13 (+1)

WIS 14 (-2)

CHA 10 (+0)

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Skills Perception +4, Stealth +5

Damage Resistances cold, fire, lightning; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks

Damage Immunities poison

Condition Immunities poisoned

Darkvision 60ft., passive perception 11

Languages Common, Goblinoid, Abyssal

Challenge 1 (200 XP)

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Eye for Waste. The akaname has advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks made to track a creature that does not have all of its hit points.

Nimble Escape. The akaname can take the disengage or hide action as a bonus action on each of its turns.

Poison Absorption. Whenever the akaname is subjected to poison damage, it takes no damage and regains and number of hit points equal to the poison damage dealt.

--------------------------------------------------

ACTIONS

Multiattack. The akaname can make two claw attacks.

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack. +5 to hit, reach 5ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d4 + 3) piercing damage.

Tongue Lash. Ranged Weapon Attack. +5 to hit, reach 20ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d8 + 3) bludgeoning damage

(It's been a while, hasn't it? So... uh.... I think I'm writing a book that I might post on DMsGuild based on the current campaign I'm building. Sailor's Guide to Ishi'Tara, I'm calling it. This is one of the creatures that I'm putting in the bestiary. Because Ishi'Tara is a world and culture inspired by the Edo Period of Japan, I'm making yo-kai into creatures. nevertheless, I've been thirsting to post some original content on this blog and it's been awhile since I've done that, so I figured why not a small creature while I work on some of the bigger creatures and magic items and things. So, yeah. Here ya go. Hope it's okay...)

[fancoloredglasses]

Dungeons & Dragons episode review Module 3-2: The Time Lost

[As always, all animated images are owned by Wizards of the Coast and Marvel Entertainment. I’m a huge fan. Please don’t sue me]

Time travel is a crutch most shows eventually use, and Dungeons & Dragons is no exception

If you would like to view the episode, it’s available on YouTube

Where the PCs are: Sheila, Diana, and Presto are level 9, Bobby, Hank, and Eric are level 8. Hank and Eric should level up this adventure (then again, if the DM had let the party do anything worthy of XP, they would have last adventure!)

We have opened on the party wandering aimlessly, on their way to missions, and in the middle of missions. However, this is the first time we have opened at the end of a mission...which they have failed. The party had found a portal home, but couldn’t get through for some reason (that they don’t explain)

(Thanks to Reddit)

Diana tries cheering the party up, but they ain’t buying what she’s selling. Suddenly...

...a Blue Dragon attacks the party with its lightning breath! Just as the party gets their bearings and can mount some sort of defense...

...a...fighter jet?!...chases the dragon away. Diana wonders where the jet came from, as it doesn’t look like anything from Earth.

Meanwhile, the jet (whose pilot has the call-sign “Starfire”) is trying to radio anyone to figure out what the hell is going on when suddenly Venger responds and gives chase.

Back on the ground, Dungeon Master makes his presence known to the party. He (sorta) explains that the jet came through a portal from Earth, but it poses a danger to Earth. Then he vanishes. Hank makes the executive decision to go looking for the portal.

Speaking of the portal, it seems that Venger controls this one and has captured Starfire. What’s more...

...he’s not alone.

It turns out that Venger is plucking people from across time looking for the right person from the right time and place...from the past, when the world was at war (guess what era he’s looking for. You’ll likely have a 50/50 shot at being right)

Then the portal opens to show...

...a battlefield in which a damaged plane flies through. This is what Venger is looking for.

Unfortunately, the plane lands (sorta) near the party. They pull the pilot (who identifies himself as Josef Mueller...with a very thick German accent) from the wreckage of his plane. They ask Josef if he remembers where he came through, and in a very confused tone he directs them where he came from.

Later, Josef is learning more about the Realm from his new friends...including what their magic items can do. The party is convinced the Josef is part of an air show, as the plane hasn’t been made in at least 30 years. This causes him to run away for some reason.

It turns out that Josef is (as I’m sure you guessed) a German pilot from WWII. He immediately denounces his allegiance to the Nazis once he’s alone. Unfortunately, the party caught up with him and he explains. The party doesn’t hold it against Josef, offering to take him to their time. So would that make him Captain Germany?

(Thanks to writeups.org)

Suddenly, Venger attacks, leaving the party little choice but to run. Venger’s blasts down trees and cause them to burn, surrounding the party with fire. Time for a commercial snack run!

We come back to Venger using his magic to lasso Josef, carrying him away. Hank uses his bow to destroy a small waterfall, turning it into a raging flood that puts out the fire (wouldn’t that drown the party as well?) Once the danger has passed...

...he couldn’t have shown up five minutes earlier? Nope, he just wants to spew more exposition: Venger intends on pulling a Back to the Future on the party by changing the past such that they wouldn’t be born using a device known as the Chronos Crystal. He then spews his usual cryptic advice before vanishing: Time can make allies of enemies. The party them heads to the Chronos Crystal.

Meanwhile, at the Chronos Crystal, Venger makes Josef an offer to go back to Germany a hero by giving him Starfire’s jet to use against the Allies, as well as transferring knowledge of its operation from Starfire to him. Josef seems intrigued (so much for denouncing the Nazis)

Later, the party reaches the Chronos Crystal and gets a nasty surprise...

Venger then goes full-on monologue explaining his Evil Plan as Josef prepares to head back and win the war for the Fatherland. Venger takes a moment to gloat that even the memories of the party will vanish as soon as Josef flies through the Crystal’s portal. Eric tells Hank to shoot Josef down, but Hank can’t bring himself to do it. At that moment...

...Josef attacks the Crystal, destroying it. All of the people displaced by the Crystal begin to return to their own time...except Josef (because plot) The explosion causes Venger to discorporate to return another day.

Meanwhile, Starfire’s jet explodes, but Josef ejects, falling into the portal before it collapses. Dungeon Master appears to explain that Josef Mueller returned to Germany to fight against the Nazis.

[As a quick historical note, there was a Josef Mueller during WWII, but he wasn’t a pilot, but a lawyer who was part of the German Resistance against the Nazis]

Once again, the party gains no XP. I’m beginning to see why the campaign will be ending soon...

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Kasumi/Hamuko Parallel post

I mean I’m not saying Kasumi is Hamuko reincarnated in Minato’s timeline, but I feel like it’s a very good possibility (considering MT’s lore and as well as possibly Persona’s). I mean again, it’d be REALLY SEXY if I was proven wrong with Adult!Hamuko showing up in P5S! REALLY SEXY ATLUS! ;w; (just watch and see me be right with both P5R and P5S, let’s hope not cause that’s giving me a headache just thinking about it haha ;w;). Anyway, this is mostly going to be a parallel post between Kasumi and Hamuko, both really freaking shallow to “hey those are some key character traits!” kinda stuff. I’ll organize it from newest release/info to oldest. So starting with PQ2 (prior to that I will open to why it’s perfect timing out of universe) and then P3P (during which I’ll talk about why the timing in universe is perfect too).

There will be spoilers of P5R BUT ONLY ones from a stream, which showed the first like 10 min of the game (the spoiler is that it confirms when a specific scene happens in game). There will be PQ2 spoilers tho so like....yeah 8U

(lowkey been trying to finish this since Cinderella’s announcement but better late than never and I wanted to at least get most of it done before P5S’ possible trailer tonight 8U)

Under the cut cause length and pics~!

So before with start with PQ2, I should say why this is perfect timing out of universe. PQ2 has just released, Hamuko is in the public’s head. Not only that but she was as important to the game as the main-main case (aka P5). Now would be the perfect time to release a new character who looks the same and has the same importance. I mean this wouldn’t be the first time they did it, they first did it with Arena-PQ1-Ultimax, with PQ1 having secret answers to Arena, and Ultimax later reaffirming these answers (I’ll keep it vague for those who have yet to play the, as I like to call it, “The Yasogami Labyrinth Trilogy.”) It could be that PQ2 was actually our Arena in a possible trilogy (with P5R being the PQ1 and P5S being our Ultimax, that’s just a theory tho, it could just be that this is a duology too 8U). But yeah this is why it feels like perfect timing if they wanted to make this twist. Now onto PQ2

PQ2 (might add more later):

Were to start is the real question, I’m kinda just going to list of things with pictures showing them. I’ll try to keep everything numbered to make it easier.

1) Both apparently first appear in the first arc which stars Kamoshida (Kasumi is stated to not introduce herself during that time, but we can still find her). Kasumi is around for Kamoshida, Hamuko is around with Kamoshidaaaaaman.

      a) Coincidentally enough, there is a little girl that appears in Kamoshidaaaaman’s trailer that looks A LOT like Kasumi. (which I dunno might also symbolize Hamuko, speculation on my end but I felt the female dinosaur kind of symbolized Yosukesaurus that we actually see in the movie so maybe it’s a parallel maybe not but I wanted to throw it out there), also if Kasumi’s life is anything like Cinderella (and trailer girl’s dad is dead from that impact), that means Hamu/Kasumi/Trailer girl both have their dads possibly not being around anymore:

2) Both technically have a magical girl connection, Kasumi mostly from her transformation and what the devs said....but Hamuko said something really interesting concerning the PT and Magical Girls:

3) (P5R first 10 min stream spoiler) Both are introduced into these two games via showing off how great fighters they are (even tho that’s not Kasumi’s chronological introduction to the audience because of the cold open, but it’s the first time we see her and it’s our first impression of her). 

4) I don’t care if I’ll repeat this below in the P3P thing, but yet again but PQ2 hinted at Hamuko’s big appitite again:

5) Hamuko’s Ult Persona, both in P3P (tho it’s not shown in the credits) and in PQ2 is Messiah. Considering she’s a savior, and Kasumi’s relationship with magical girls (who usually are the “saviors”).....shallow I know but there. 8U

6) A big one, PQ2 actually hints at reincarnation, it’s just a throwaway line but....it’s not the first time Persona’s had a throwaway line and then it ends up coming true (sometimes it’s happenstance and sometimes it’s on purpose). (I should also note, reincarnation is a big part of MT, it’s even in the title, so it’s def not something that’s off the table). And the reason I’m including this is because, it kinda hints that even if Hamuko is reincarnated Kasumi, they’d kinda still have their own identity and be a different person. 

7) Lastly (for now probably), Hamuko and Kasumi both end up “joining”/working with the PT at some point. I mean so does the rest of P3/4, but they really try to make Hamuko feel included, and she feels extra gung-ho about the whole thief thing. It’s a shallow/small one but I should include it anyway.

(the reason I might add more later is because I’m re-going through PQ2 to see if I pick up anything else, anyway onto P3P~!)

P3P:

Before listing their similarities, I want to explain what I meant by the timing being perfect for in-universe. The reason being, if Hamuko died around 1999, she’d probably be reincarnated into someone who was born around 2000, and people roughly in 2000 (minus the first 4 months) are....guess what? 1st years during P5 (Futaba and Yusuke have late birthdays fun fact). And considering Kasumi is a first year~! Yeah it’s perfect timing if they wanted to pull a reincarnation card. 

1) They.....they have the same face..... I’M NOT JOKING THEY HAVE THE SAME FACE! It’s not the hair style it’s the face man! ;w; Rough same eye shape and face shape (sadly their portraits usually have their faces not being the same portfolio but this is the closest we have):

2) The both have red eyes (which also look brown in some lighting). (I know some people want to say Hamuko has auburn hair for some gd reason even tho it’s pretty brown in a lot of artwork, but since that’s close to red and Kasumi has red hair like bonus points it seems if auburn is also a correct answer XP)

3) Both of their portraits like to have their eyes looking to the left (their perspective)/right (our perspective) area (the angle of their face differs tho):

4) Both have been said to be big eaters. Like Atlus is freaking advertising this about Kasumi like crazy man, but Hamuko has food and her big appetite tied to a loooooot of different events with P3P. Like Hamu being a hungry girl and loving her food is a very iconic trait to her (ironically it’s not really done to death in PQ2 unlike Chie’s meat or Aki’s protein klfjsadl;fja). 

5) Both have red as a main theme (like red eyes, red ribbon, red shoes/headphones 8U). It’s shallow but important!

6) Shallow but interesting thing I notice, there’s a lot of key design similarities between Fem!Orpheus and Kasumi’s PT outfit and Cinderella. The biggest being the vine embroidery and the same heart design. There’s also the fact Fem!Orpheus Picaro also has red hair and a black headpiece similar to Kasumi who has red hair (all the time) but a black ribbon, also both have a similar flower connected to them (red gloves and black fingers, former for Kasumi and the latter for Cindy, but I don’t think it’s as important as the heart/vine/flower similarity). 8U Other than that I’ll just show it in the picture below:

7) This one is part of a popular theory with Kasumi, and will possibly be debunked after P5R’s release but I do want to throw it out there. If the theory that Kasumi gets hit by a car in the rain (possibly during the fireworks festival), well..... That means they both have ties to car accidents. Just described what  might be Kasumi’s. Hamuko survived one 10 years prior to P3, and there’s two that happen in two separate events (she saves Yukari from a crazy driver almost hitting them), and I iirc Theo saves Hamu from a crazy driver). 

8) They have similar designed shoes (tho the promo art of Kasumi her shoes are different from the teaser so I dunno if it still counts) But it’s worth  mentioning since Atlus went out of their way to keep Yusuke’s shoes as a reference to the past Persona game school he was supposed to be a part of before they made Kosei (god I’m so sorry for that word salad, no I won’t fix it at least not now)...btw Yusuke’s are stated to be in reference to P3 it’s stated in the art book:

9) Kasumi’s maid outfit is much closer to P3′s(and P4) than it is to P5′s (aka the traditional black and white as opposed to P5′s red and white), it’s just odd that it’s not also red 8U:

10) Uhhhh this (I don’t care we’re look for the smallest details! >:D DX ;w; also I’m ok really I’m ok 8U ;w; orz):

11) Last thing, but interestingly enough they both are known to jump really high. It’s not stated as a big thing for Hamuko, you just see it in her critical and that’s pretty much it. But it is a big defining moment for Kasumi (remember she jumps high to get a kid’s balloon). They also both like to twist and twirl in the air (tho Hamu is just designated to her critical). Shallow I know but I want to throw it out there. 8U:

Seriously look at that air time!

I might add more to this section, because I feel like I’m forgetting something but flksdajf;akf I want to get this out. Before I end it I do want to add a few not completely related Hamu parallels (but I can still loop back around cause my mental gymnastics are top notch! Probably even better than Kasumi’s! 8U). First is Minato parallels, which via PQ2 we find out that he and Hamu are “basically the same person.” The similarities is that he and Kasumi both have the same type of sword, and both of their Personas have the same skin (I think Male!Orpheus’ face is the only “real part” and thus both have the same kind of skin), and OT and Cindy technically both have blue eyes. 8U Small but I wanted to mention those 3 things. The other is Mitsuru, fun fact between Hamu/Minty/Mitsuru/Kasumi they all seem to be honor students (or can be, Hamu/Minty it’s up to the player). But I now a lot of people think Kasumi’s red hair and it also being wavy remind them of Mitsuru more, almost like a sister? Kinda like:

RIP to Hamuko, the cockblock sister zone destroyed us all that day. We stand with you girl. 😔✊✊

So yeah I dunno how else to end it. They just have a lot of similarities ok? And some of them are very distinct design features. Of course, again, it’d be really sexy of you to prove me wrong with Adult!Hamuko in P5S Atlus. ;) Be really sexy of you to stop ignoring Hammy and P1/2 characters~! Oh it’d be such a shame if I was proven wrong and those two things happened instead. Oh whatever shall I do~! 8U