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calextheneko · 1 year ago

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So anyway... I enjoy Baldur's Gate, but as someone who is primarily a Pathfinder player who... is not a fan of 5e DnD, I find myself... At odds with the game at times when I feel like I should be able to do things I can't... And weirded out what the game considers big numbers. Like, I felt like it took every resource I had to break 30 AC on a character... And like I had to trick the game to get a character's strength stat up to 22.

Meanwhile, in the latest Pathfinder video game

Yeah.... Meet my Chaotic Neutral Trickster Barbarian and what I consider normal stats. My dump stat intelligence at 28.

And if you think this is hideous you should see the things I put together in actual pen and paper table top when I get to actually play. I'm normally a forever GM but every generation the stars eventually align and I get to be a player.

Anyway, I made a psychic in the Iron Gods adventure path. A catfolk named Tau. Psychics are basically a lot like wizards just instead of specialized school abilities they gain special abilities called Phrenic Amplifications. Anyway, that's not important the important takeaway is that Tau was a very VERY squishy caster.

His AC was 40. Or 46 when he decided to cast Form of the Alien Dragon. Yes, Form of the Alien Dragon, not normal dragon, because I can't be normal with anything. Also Form of the Alien Dragon is the only dragon transformation psychics can learn and even then they're limited on which ones they can turn into based on which ones fit the occult psionic power theme. Anyway, he routinely walked around in dragon form, but also invisible, but also with mirror image which somehow still works even when invisible, and mind blank on meaning that spells like see invisibility and true sight automatically fail on him so you have no way to force him to become visible.

But what was really fun, is the bizarre combination of feats and abilities he took to just do strange things. The party almost TPKed in the first dungeon. Until he used Charm Person on the Juju Zombie that was killing them. Now you may go, wait a second, undead are immune to all mind and compulsion effect. Yeah, Tau doesn't care. He had a spell called Will of the Dead that allowed all of mind affecting spells to work on undead as normal. This was taken to hilarious levels later when in book 3 we encountered a ghost who was supposed to be the arc villain and constantly sneak attack us with cloud kill by coming through the walls and leaving for the entire dungeon. Charmed him on his first appearance. And now that he was my best friend, agreed to get him to disable all his traps and get rid of all the monsters so he could give his new best buddy a tour of his lair.

Then I lured him into the basement where the rest of the party was all waiting with readied actions to bust out their best ghost killing abilities and just delete him from existence. And then after he was dead exercised his spirit from the tower so he couldn't come back and we're like. Wow, we have a fully stocked tower with robot guards programmed to see us as allies. Looks like we have a new home base!

Then later he charmed a hologram and pulled the exact same stunt. I'm going to be honest. Even I'm not 100% how that worked but the GM after reading through the rules several times eventually declared that sentient holograms per the rules had no natural protection against magical effects.

He also charmed a Plasma Ooze, kept it as a pet and made it his best friend and fed his enemies to it. Through another combination of feats I could now use mind effects on vermin and oozes. I also picked up a spell to dominate constructs. The only thing I couldn't charm or mind control by the end of the campaign were plant creatures. It was just... Kind of hilarious because... It's the GM is like.

"Wait, you made a psychic, a class that specializes in mind effect spells in a campaign about fighting robots which are immune to mind effects."

"Yeup."

"Well it's your choice."

If only he had known what was to come. Other highlights include a spell that lets me lift one enemy up with telekinetic power and throw them at another enemy. Mind Crush, I mean Mind Thrust, which dealt severe damage and left people with debilitating status effects even when they made their save. And Ego Whip, which gave them a -10 to Wisdom, Charisma, or Intelligence, Even if they made their save. Saving only made it temporary.

Oh you're a cleric, so you have a high will save and think you don't have to fear me. Well take a -10 to your wisdom stat. Your will save just went down by 5 as did the DC for all your spells. What now?

Then there was the time he trapped a dragon in a giant telekinetic hamster ball, pushed it over an edge into an endless voice and just caused the dragon to be deleted from existence.

... There's probably a reason I'm always a GM and never a player. XD

So anyway... The level of customization I get in Pathfinder and the ability to just pull these completely insane builds out that no one expects that are completely unique is why I love it so much. But anyway, as much as I prefer Pathfinder to 5e, I very rarely get to be a player, so kind of eat up table top video games to get my urges and crazy builds out. I have over 1000 hours of gametime in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and it's one of like only 4 games in existence I got every achievement for because you put that many hours in you eventually find and achieve everything. Though... Forgot the name of it... The secret boss in the Midnight Isles DLC. Screw that thing. That is the absolute worst achievement to get because it's entirely RNG on if you're going to get the items needed to unlock it or encounter the island types needed to unlock things and you could play for months nonstop and not get the first key needed after you get the pirate map and holy symbol because the right island/undertow effect never spawned. Or it did spawn but you finished a voyage so were forced to start with a new crew again and none of your casters were high enough levels to have the spell you need to activate the item that has a random chance on spawning on the correct item combination. Oh right you can get the right item combination and then the item you need to cast the right spell on might not even spawn. And you have to get three keys this way. Yeah, that was terrible and I totally cheated and force spawned the keys into my inventory because after several days of trying I was done.

Still, I'm having fun with Baldur's Gate 3... and what I've learned is that... 5e is... surprisingly fragile and easy to break. Aheh heh heh. Maybe I won't get a 62 AC anytime soon, but I have figured out how to build a tactical nuclear strike on Raphael's bedroom. That's my plan for how to beat him on my hard mode run. Sadly the plan will require the sacrifice of a party member to trigger cutscenes and activate the bomb but... bringing people back is only a level 3 spell or 200 gold so you know... Nuking the devil in his own home and ending a fight before it starts... I think I can spare a level 3 spell slot or 200 gold to make that happen.

Aheheheheheheheheheh.

If I have any explosives left over when I'm done I'm gonna go visit dear old Auntie Ethel next. I feel her lair would look better if the entire thing was on fire.

But hey, sometimes I build elaborate nukes... Sometimes I do things the simple way. Those poor idiot guards patrolling the docks while wearing heavy armor. One shove and then I just stand on the shore and watch then drown.

Good thing I'm pretty sure 5e did away with the alignment. Not that I'm evil. I swear I'm good aligned. Just... Chaotic good.

Very... Very... Very... Very... VERY chaotic. But still good.

Side note, just had a thought after posting this, since I am a forever GM, maybe I should post a weekly session recap on Tumblr of my games. That a thing people would be interested in reading?

#Baldur's Gate 3 #Baldur's Gate III #Dungeons and Dragons #Pathfinder #5e #Breaking the Game #Tactical Nuclear Strike Against the Devil #What Do You Mean 62 Strength is Too High?#wrath of the righteous #Charm Person #Charm Monster #Charm Freaking Everything #This Is Why I'm a Forever GM

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masterweaverx · 4 years ago

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Part of the fun of these character builds is taking absolutely ridiculous characters and making them work in the context of D&D. So today I’ll be looking at Makuta Teridax, from Bionicle. That’s right, I’m expanding my palette a bit!

So Makuta Teridax is a Makuta. Which means he’s a shape-shifting robot with the elemental power of shadow, a unique shadow hand, a bit of telepathy, the ability to make Kraata and Rhakshi from himself... and, oh, fourty-two seperate Kraata Powers. Which he, himself, can also use. Also he has the mask of Shadows. Yeah, Bionicle was a wacky setting, all things told. Basically, we’re going to have to go Full Caster, with some unusual considerations.

Since we’re going Full Caster, that means we’ll be using the point buy system--all six stats start at 8, and you have 27 points to spend to up them, at a rate of 1 point for one improvement up to 13 and then 2 points per improvement after. That means upping a stat to 15 costs nine points total--and we’re going to be upping Intelligence and Wisdom to 15 to maximize our spell power. That leaves us nine points to split between Constitution and Charisma--five to Constitution, upping it to 13, because Constitution is both the ‘health’ and the ‘concentration’ stat, and 4 to Charisma, upping it to 12, because when a Makuta speaks, you listen. And Teridax is the leader of the Makuta...

Bionicle characters are biomechanical and you know what, so are Warforged! Yes I know the Makuta are actually living gas clouds in airtight armor but (1) they weren’t always that and (2) this is Flavor/Mechanics oriented, not accuracy oriented. Anyway, as an Envoy Warforged specifically, Teridax gets +1 to Constitution and +1 to two other stats--which are of course going to be Intelligence and Wisdom, since those are going to be our casting abilities.

All Warforged have Integrated Protection--instead of wearing armor, they can switch between ‘modes’ they’re proficient in every long rest, great for a shapeshifter. There’s also Warforged Resilience, which makes him immune to disease, resistant to poison, renders eating and drinking and even breathing unnecessary, and makes him impossible to put to sleep magically. Speaking of which he also has Sentry’s rest, which means on a long rest he just goes inert for six hours without going unconscious.

Envoy Warforged in particular have a few other advantages. Their Specialized Design gives them a Skill Proficiency and a Tool Proficiency, and since we’re not going to get it anywhere else Teridax is going to pick Intimidation and Thieves’ tools. And they have an Integrated Tool--they can select one tool they’re proficient with, and not only is it part of their body but they have expertise with it. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that the tool, in this case, is a Disguise Kit--because Teridax is going to get proficiency in disguise kits from his background.

And what background is that? Why, Charlatan, of course! Free with proficiencies in Deception, Sleight of Hand, Disguise Kits, and Forgery Kits. It also has the False Identity feature, allowing Makuta Teridax to take on another persona (like say, Turaga Dume), and have all the paperwork on hand to prove that, no really, he’s Turaga Dume! Pay no attention to that sphere in the corner. He’s also really great at forgery of documents.

And now comes the tricky bit: getting 42 Kraata powers, plus all the other abilities Teridax has, onto a spell list. Doing that meant I had to multiclass, pick specific subclasses for each class, allow each class to meet a minimum level, and amp two different stats to their max. It was incredibly tricky, but through some very, VERY careful selection, I pulled it off. Mostly. The Elasticity Kraata Power just couldn’t fit, sorry about that. But everything else, I packed in! Are you ready for this?

Three levels in Tempest Domain Cleric...

...then seventeen levels in Nature Theurgy Wizard.

Okay, so before I explain the subclasses, I’m going to go over the standard class abilities. Clerics have proficiency in light and medium armor, shields and simple weapons, and Wisdom and Charisma saving throws. They get two skill proficiencies--I chose History and persuasion--and at three levels their big thing is just... Channel Divinity. Which I’ll get to in a moment.

Wizards, on the other hand, get Arcane Recovery, which lets them regain spell slots on a short rest once per day up to a total of half their wizard level rounded up. That’s 9 points here, so you can get three third level spell slots, or a fourth and a fifth, or five first and two second... but you can’t get seventh, eighth, or ninth spell slots back, presumably for balance reasons. The Wizard class is also where we’ll get our four Ability Score Increases, for a total of eight points to spread among ability scores--and putting four each in Wisdom and Intelligence lets us have the MAXIMUM SPELL POWER for this combination. Trust me, preparing Spells is important for clerics, and for wizards.

So now let’s talk about the Tempest Domain. Teridax gets proficiency in Heavy Armor and Martial Weapons from it, as well as Wrath Of The Storm--which means if somebody rushes in and hits him, he can use a reaction to force the creature to make a dexterity saving throw or suffer 2d8 Lightning/Thunder damage. And he can do this five times per long rest. Of course, it also gives him a Channel Divinity option; once per rest, Teridax can either Turn Undead (making them run away from him in fear), Harness Divine Power (regaining a spell slot of first, second, or third level), or unleash the power of a Destructive Wave (automatically rolling maximum for Lightning or Thunder damage).

And now... Theurgy Wizard. What does it do, you might ask? Well, it basically hybridizes Cleric and Wizard classes. A Theurgy Wizard takes a Cleric Domain--in this case, Nature--and those spells are considered Wizard spells for purposes of what they can learn. They also get some of the Domain’s cleric benefits--not the eighth level one, or any weapon or armor proficiencies from the first level, but at level seventeen, they have everything else.

Including Channel Arcana, which is slightly different from Channel Divinity. For one thing, Teridax can do it twice per rest, instead of just once. For another, the options are either Divine Arcana, giving +2 to his next spell’s attack roll or save DC, or Charm Animals and Plants, which... charms animals and plants within 30 feet for up to a minute.

Acolyte of Nature means that Teridax has proficiency in Animal Handling and a single druid Cantrip, which we’ll get back to in a moment. Dampen Elements means that, as a reaction, he can give himself or anybody in 30 feet resistance to an attack that hit them if that attack did acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage--very useful in a world where a good portion of the population has elemental powers. And Master of Nature means that he can take a bonus action to tell critters that are charmed by his Channeled Arcana what to do on their next turn.

And now, at last, we get to the spells. BUT FIRST! Let’s calculate this all out. Since Clerics and Wizards are both full casters, Teridax has all the spell slots--4 first level slots, 3 second-through-fifth level slots each, 2 sixth and seventh level slots, and one slot for eighth and ninth levels.

Clerics can prepare a number of spells equal to their level plus their Wisdom modifer--so 3+5--up to a level determined by their cleric level--in this case, up to second level. They also automatically have spells prepared from their domain, which don’t count toward the previous limit; while it’s only up to the level they can learn, it’s still an extra four spells.

Wizards, on the other hand, learn six spells at first level and two spells every level thereafter, so at level 17 that’s 38 spells. Granted, they only prepare their level plus their intelligence bonus a day, which is 22 spells from that 38 spell list, but hey! That’s on top of the 12 prepared spells of a cleric

And Teridax also has five Wizard Cantrips, 3 Cleric Cantrips, and 1 Druid Cantrip from Nature Theurgy. Which segues well into why I picked Nature Theurgy--I needed a LOT of wizard levels for most of these spells, but I also needed some Cleric levels for some spells wizards couldn’t get, and some Druid spells that neither class could get on their own. And most of the low-level spells I needed that come in a cleric domain actually are from the tempest domain, but the Nature domain has high-level spells from the druid list... hence, Nature Theurge.

So with all that said: The list below covers the spells Makuta Teridax has, and what abilities they correspond to. Spells from Cleric, Cleric Domain, or Druid List use Wisdom; Spells from Wizard or Wizard Theurgy list use Intelligence. The listed Cleric spells are considered always prepared; Teridax selects 22 of the listed Wizard and Theurgy spells every long rest.

The Makuta Power Shadow Hand has 2 component spells: Lightning Lure and Soul Cage. The Makuta Powers Project Voice Through Shadows and Telepathy have the same spell: Telepathy.

The Kraata Power Density Control has 2 component spells: Gaseous Form and Investiture of Stone. The Kraata Power Insect Control has 2 component spells: Infestation and Insect Plague. The Kraata Power Plant Control has 2 component spells: Plant Growth and Grasping Vine. The Kraata Power Rahi Control has 2 component spells: Animal Friendship and Dominate Beast. The Kraata Power Weather Control has 2 component spells: Control Weather and Fog Cloud.

The Kraata Power Stasis Field has 2 component spells: Hold Person and Hold Monster. The Kraata Power Teleportation has 2 component Spells: Misty Step and Teleportation.

The Kraata Powers Fire Resistence and Ice Resistance have the same spell: Protection from Energy. The Kraata Power Elasticity has no component spells, due to not really having a good match and most of its benefits being covered in other spells.

Cantrips: 5 from Wizard, 3 from Cleric, 1 from Druid for Nature Theurgy -Chill Touch [Wizard] --Shadow Blasts (MAKUTA) -Fire Bolt [Wizard] --Heat Vision (Kraata Power) -Infestation [Druid] --Insect Control (Kraata Power) -Lightning Lure [Wizard] --Shadow Hand (MAKUTA) -Mending [Cleric] --Forge Tools (MAKUTA) -Sacred Flame [Cleric] --Laser Vision (Kraata Power) -Thunderclap [Wizard] --Sonics (Kraata Power) -Thaumaturgy [Cleric] --Control world mechanics (MAKUTA) -True Strike [Wizard] [Concentration] --Accuracy (Kraata Power)

1st-4 Slots -Animal Friendship [Wizard Theurgy] --Rahi Control (Kraata Power) -Cause Fear [Wizard] [Concentration] --Fear (Kraata Power) -Command [Cleric] --Terrorize (MASK OF SHADOWS) -Cure Wounds [Cleric] --Quick Healing (Kraata Power) -Fog Cloud [Cleric Domain] [Concentration] --Weather Control (Kraata Power) -Inflict Wounds [Cleric] --Protosteel Armor (MAKUTA) -Ray of Sickness [Wizard] --Poison (Kraata Power) -Sense Emotion [Wizard] [Concentration] --Sense Moral Darkness (MASK OF SHADOWS) -Sleep [Wizard] --Sleep (Kraata Power) -Thunderwave [Cleric Domain] --Power Scream (Kraata Power) -Witch Bolt [Wizard] [Concentration] --Electricity (Kraata Power

2nd-3 Slots -Blindness/Deafness [Cleric] --Enshadow (MASK OF SHADOWS) -Crown of Madness [Wizard] [Concentration] --Anger (Kraata Power) -Darkness [Wizard] [Concentration] --Darkness (Kraata Power) -Detect Thoughts [Wizard] [Concentration] --Mind Reading (Kraata Power) -Enhance Ability [Cleric] [Concentration] --Adaptation (Kraata Power) -Gust of Wind [Cleric Domain] [Concentration] --Vacuum (Kraata Power) -Hold Person [Cleric] [Concentration] --Stasis Field (Kraata Power) -Immovable Object [Wizard] --Gravity (Kraata Power) -Invisibility [Wizard] [Concentration] --Chameleon (Kraata Power) -Locate Object [Cleric] [Concentration] --Sense through Shadows (MASK OF SHADOWS) -Misty Step [Wizard] --Teleportation (Kraata Power) -Shatter [Cleric Domain] --Fragmentation (Kraata Power) -Silence [Cleric] [Concentration] --Silence (Kraata Power) -Spider Climb [Wizard] [Concentration] --Magnetism (Kraata Power)

3rd-3 Slots -Gaseous Form [Wizard] [Concentration] --Density Control (Kraata Power) -Haste [Wizard] [Concentration] --Dodge (Kraata Power) -Major Image [Wizard] [Concentration] --Illusion (Kraata Power) -Melf's Minute Meteors [Wizard] [Concentration] --Plasma (Kraata Power) -Plant Growth [Wizard Theurgy] --Plant Control (Kraata Power) -Protection from Energy [Wizard] [Concentration] --Fire Resistance (Kraata Power) --Ice Resistance (Kraata Power) -Slow [Wizard] [Concentration] --Slow (Kraata Power) -Vampiric Touch [Wizard] [Concentration] --Hunger (Kraata Power)

4th-3 Slots -Confusion [Wizard] [Concentration] --Confusion (Kraata Power) -Dominate Beast [Wizard Theurgy] [Concentration] --Rahi Control (Kraata Power) -Grasping Vine [Wizard Theurgy] [Concentration] --Plant Control (Kraata Power) -Summon Greater Demon [Wizard] [Concentration] --Create Kraata/Rhakshi

5th-3 Slots -Hold Monster [Wizard] [Concentration] --Stasis Field (Kraata Power) -Insect Plague [Wizard Theurgy] [Concentration] --Insect Control (Kraata Power) -Passwall [Wizard] --Molecular Disruption (Kraata Power)

6th-2 Slots -Chain Lightning [Wizard] --Chain Lightning (Kraata Power) -Disintegrate [Wizard] --Disintegration (Kraata Power) -Investiture of Stone [Wizard] [Concentration] --Density Control (Kraata Power) -Soul Cage [Wizard] --Shadow Hand (MAKUTA)

7th-2 Slots -Teleportation [Wizard] --Teleportation (Kraata Power) -Whirlwind [Wizard] [Concentration] --Cyclone (Kraata Power)

8th-1 Slots -Control Weather [Wizard] [Concentration] --Weather Control (Kraata Power) -Telepathy [Wizard] --Project Voice Through Shadow (MAKUTA) --Telepathy (MAKUTA)

9th-1 Slots -Invulnerability [Wizard] [Concentration] --Limited Invulnerability (Kraata Power) -Shapechange [Wizard] [Concentration] --Shapeshifting (Kraata Power)

And I mean... LOOK AT THAT LIST OF SPELLS. It’s ridiculous. Bionicle is an amazing setting, sure, but this is insane! Even if Teridax burns through all his spells, he’s still got nine cantrips--NINE! With a lot of effects! That he can use to attack the petty heroes coming after him.

So yeah, that’s Makuta Teridax.

#Bionicle #Dungeons & Dragons #D&D 5E #Makuta Teridax #Character Build

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cursewoodrecap · 3 years ago

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Session 23: Medical Ethics

Y’all ever been to college?

Our new friend Vigdor has just pulled a pale, twitching human leg out of a poster tube, sheepishly admitting to Valeria that it’s his own.

Valeria blinks at it. “Well, it doesn’t appear to be bleeding demons, so that’s good?”

Shoshana sticks her head in the door, and has to pause to take in the sight. “Uh, bruh? Bruh? I have questions. Is that yours? I mean, like, yes, you HAVE it, but was it attached to-“

“That’s a bit tricky? It was amputated twice.”

“Twice?!”

“Once from me, and then, well, um. Once from an amalgam of sewn together body parts?”

(Gral and Shoshana pile into the room, because Oh, Lore?)

“When I was in the swamp, we were fighting a bunch of zombies led by this particularly nasty undead guy. We called it the Wailing Wight. At first it was just the usual undead hordes, but then a local leatherworker was found, torn apart and harpooned every which way, half his limbs torn off and stolen. After that, we started getting attacked by stitched together abominations cobbled together from human and animal pieces. I was there just trying to help the villagers, being a doctor and all. But that’s when I lost my actual limbs.”

“They got stolen, like the leatherworker’s?”

“I had to chop them off. Which, for the record, is not a fun time? The Wight’s harpoon has a kind of poison that rots everything it touches. So I had to amputate or, like, die. So I cut them off and his zombies, uh, stole them. And I managed to get one back? Kind of a long story. I don’t know how I recognized it, but – I guess I know my own leg like the back of my hand? Now I’m taking it back to Sturmhearst. There’s a weird fluid inside it; I want to study what’s going on with that so we can take care of the nastyboy in the swamp.”

“Well, I am generally against nastyboys,” says Shoshana, poking his foot in the ticklish bit. It squirms at her.

We’re headed to Sturmhearst anyway, so traveling together seems reasonable. We think about taking Fun Key Shortcuts, but that could backfire spectacularly, so we’ll play it safe and go the normal, boring way.

In the morning, we head downstairs. The inn is trashed. The stalwart barkeep Rene is not there; instead there’s a young elf sweeping out what debris he can. As we grab breakfast and the young fellow thanks us over and over for saving his friend’s life, Vigdor awkwardly wanders around casting Mending on chairs and tables that got a little too close to the tentacles and chainsaws. Shoshana doesn’t really do non-destructive magic, but she slips the barkeep some gold for repairs.

Vigdor’s too lopsided for a horse, so he’s gonna hop on in our cart. He’s very taken with the Eyegis, poking at it with fascination. “You can see the blood vessels in the eyes, despite no source for a blood supply! Do they have tear ducts? Have you ever seen the shield produce tears? Can you make it cry?”

Valeria gets very uncomfortable with this line of questioning and turns the eyes back into painted ones, put off by a Weird Stranger gettin’ all up in her business. Gral distracts him by asking about his fancy metal limbs.

Vigdor goes full technobabble on how the runes and machinery work. “Well, there’s three different kind of magical actuators on each joint, and they act as conduits for the dilithium crystals-” He knows the details secondhand from Bjork and none of us speak robotics, so if he ever needs serious repairs he’ll have to bring them back to Sturmhearst for the engineers to take a look at.

Valeria knows a bit about Jotunn runesmithing, but she’s never heard of it working to this degree of precision; before, she’d only heard of stuff like boats that row themselves, or a peg leg that has a little extra articulation. These are fully actuated limbs!

Val checks if the limbs are the same metal as our space wrench, but nope, they look like completely normal everyday metals. She’s not gonna inspect further, because she has RESPECT, unlike SOME people.

(“Hey, I didn’t try to pry the eyes open or anything!” Vigdor protests.)

She does notice one thing, though: Valeria recognizes runes from most magic systems even though she doesn’t know them well enough to use; her sister studied magic for a long time, so she knows what they look like. There’s one elaborate rune that appears on both Vigdor’s forearm and leg that is of no origin she’s ever seen.

“How long’d it take Bjork to build this thing?” Shoshana asks, squinting at Vigdor’s kneecap.

“Well, I was unconscious for a good bit of it so…between a week and 2 months? He was already working on it when I, uh, had to amputate.”

“…did you KNOW you were gonna wake up with those things on?”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah. It took a while ‘cause the original blueprints they found were for somebody, like…really short for a human or really tall for a halfling? Something in between. Bjork had to resize the whole model to fit a human.”

“He, uh, FOUND blueprints?

“I can’t imagine he’d have made blueprints for a person who didn’t exist? It was all proportioned very strangely. I don’t know too much about it, you’d have to ask Professor Bjork.”

(One of the players asks if the strange rune, perhaps, says ISTC in a language the characters don’t know. It DOES, and we’re all very pleased with ourselves for previous-campaign references.)

The long road stretches on before us, and we have plenty of time to talk as we spend a week or two heading north toward the coast. We fill Vigdor in on the four flavors of Curse and the concept of the Prisoners, and that we suspect there’s major Key nonsense going on up at the university. (Heh heh, “major key.”)

Vigdor and Shoshana bond over being locals. Why are foreigners so weird about trolls?

Vigdor really, really wants to look at Twombly’s glasses. We explain to him that the Key could take his desire for knowledge and turn him into a cackling, dimension-hopping madman with a few extra eyeballs. He still wants to play with the glasses. Valeria protectively hides the Key map, just in case, flashing her Hunt fangs at anyone who asks about it.

After like a week of pestering everybody, Vigdor gets to look at the glasses. Disappointingly, when not looking at the Key map, the colorful lenses just make everything look slightly more those colors. Maybe Gral’s lutestrings look weird, but that could be the placebo effect. He tries flipping around the many lenses in different combinations, and finds that all of them make him look absolutely ridiculous.

Eventually after many days of travel, we can smell the ocean and the distinctive stench of a large number of humans living in one place. Vigdor takes in the familiar sight of his college hometown. Shoshana is dumbfounded that this many people can live on top of each other, while Valeria thinks it’s a quaint little town.

Up to the west, Sturm Castle squats on a cliff above the city, like a big hippo of knowledge. It looks like it was once a reasonable castle shape, but it’s had new wings and towers built onto it haphazardly until it’s a weird sprawling network of jammed-together architecture. By the edge of the cliff, in one of the more sensibly-built sections, a majestic lighthouse beams out over the bay. In the city below, the largest building appears to be a grand temple, with its roof carved in the shape of an open book. The perimeter of the city is outlined by strange wooden and metal towers, two or three stories tall with conical brass roofs.

Eh. It’s only got one castle, so it can’t be that good of a city compared to Aurentium.

Our cart is briefly stopped for a quick examination at the gate by a friendly city guardsman. He’s flanked by two of the same enormous owl-masked guards we saw accompanying Quercus and Ulmus. “Hi, welcome to Sturmhearst, folks! What brings you here?”

We all awkwardly try not to look at Vigdor’s leg bag.

“I’m, uh, here to visit Dr. Emily Thorpe?” he tries.

“Oh, visiting the university. Don’t need yer life story. Where you stayin’? I can recommend some inns. Oh, and check out the Scholar’s Temple while yer here!” He hands us a brochure from the Sturmhearst Tourism Board and steps back. “ALL RIGHT BIG GUYS, LET EM THROUGH!”

The owl guards don’t move.

“Oh, uh, I mean –“ He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a whistle. “Lemme see if I can remember how the doc told me to do this.” He blows a few sharp notes on the whistle, and the owl guards promptly step off the road to let us through.

Huh.

Vigdor makes an investigation check on those guards, who definitely weren’t around back when he was in school. They’re pretty bulky for humans – no, honestly, they’d be bulky even for goliaths. He’d heard a story from Professor Bjork that the school was hiring goliath mercs and dressing them in owl masks, but the professor had sounded like he hadn’t believed it much. Supposedly they’re silent because they don’t speak the language, but Vigdor’s pretty sure Bjork speaks Jotunn, so that excuse doesn’t quite hold up.

Once we’re out of the guards’ earshot, Gral pulls a huddle. “Vigdor, the Key’s a more recent influence, so let us know about anything new or significantly more abundant – that’s where we’ll need to search.”

Vigdor hmms. “The big brass towers weren’t here before. And the owl guys didn’t used to be a thing.”

Gral cuts another glance back to the owl guards, considering. “…How much of a faux pas is it to remove a Sturmhearst person’s mask?”

“I mean, if you’re dealing with the plague, it’s kind of a dick move? And dangerous? But most people – it’s like, the same rudeness of grabbing someone’s hat or jacket. For some people it’s badge of honor or superiority, y’know, how amazing they were to get through the gauntlet of Sturmhearst. But mostly it’s a practical tool of the job. We’re not, like, afraid to show our faces.”

Gral nods. “So you wouldn’t have to duel them, then.”

“W-what?”

“Oh, with bards it’s like ‘you are not deserving of your title’ and you have to duel about it. You know, like, how dare you slander my name, I’ll have to fight you for my honor?”

“Oh, uh, no, nothing like that. The mask is proof of office, that’s all.”

Before we get investigating, though, it’s late and we should rest. Vigdor wasn’t a palling-around-town type, but he rolls a nat 20 and knows the best inn in the city – not one of those touristy places on the square; the best-kept-secret on a side street that only the locals and regulars know about.

We have a lovely night around the docks of Sturmhearst. Shoshana spends like fifteen minutes just staring out to sea, because they MAKE boats that big???? This much water even EXISTS????? There’s a dragonborn ship from Aurentium, a goliath ship from Jotunhein, a couple of Galwan freighters, and even a ship crewed by colorful macaw aarakocra. (History check: while the Aquilians mostly died out, some of the ground-based aarakocra cultures survived. Valeria’s met macaw traders before in Aurentium; they tell lots of stories and do GREAT impressions.)

Valeria, meanwhile, holies some ocean water. They say Galwan clerics swear by holy seawater; salt repels demons, right? It’s gross harbor water but, whatever, it’s holy now. She also beats a sea captain at Man-go, presumably dock style. The inn’s equipped for foreign travelers, so it’s got a whole bar of draconic and goblin spices!

Gral, meanwhile, discovers the inn is near a bath house and enjoys finding out what a sauna is.

Morning comes, and Sturmhearst U awaits. Vigdor knows the main campus has the colleges of Engineering, Science, and Medicine, while the satellite campus across the bay houses the college of Ethics, which includes humanities like economics and history.

Valeria rolls for Order of the Rose knowledge. The Order actually has an arrangement with Sturmhearst when they’re working in Valdia – whenever the Order is sent on disaster relief, some Sturmhearst ethicists are sent to help coordinate. Valeria’s never worked with them personally, but the impression she’s gotten from her fellow knights is Not Great. From what she’s heard, they’re supposed to do triage and help direct the knights, but it seems like they spend the whole time sitting around debating absolutely horrible things. “Hey, if we brewed up some necromancy, could we use the skeletons of plague victims to transport supplies without spreading the infection?” Apparently they just sit around in corners debating whether that kind of shit is kosher or not, without ever actually DOING anything.

Also ethicists wear white instead of black like most Sturmhearst scholars, which is just pretentious. We then poke fun at an Order of the Rose knight calling anyone else pretentious.

Vigdor studied at the College of Medicine; he’s a doctor. But that’s not where he’s taking the leg.

“Why not Medicine? I mean, it’s a human body part, innit?” Shoshana asks.

“It’s…I have some concerns…regarding the, um. So, along with this leg, my arm was stolen, right? Not long after the arm was stolen, the sewn-together amalgams got a lot, uh, cleaner.”

We stare at him.

“…as if whatever stitched them together had my medical training.”

…oh.

“I’m a little hesitant taking that info to the College of Medicine,” he admits.

“Why?”

“There’s a lot of ‘for the greater good’ stuff with the College of Medicine sometimes. The College of Ethics keeps them in check. Anyway, there’s actually this thaumochemist I want to take a look at it.”

(We’d know the discipline as alchemy, but she hates that. She’ll go on a whole tirade about it. Somebody yells “Full Metal Thaumochemist” and we accidentally take a commercial break. We’ll never get tired of that joke.)

More of those owl guards are at the door, supervised by a businesslike white-coated member of the College of Ethics. His mask is a bit more abstract than the ones we’re used to; not modeled after a bird face like the regular scholars’. He lets Vigdor in with no problem, though he’s a bit suspicious of the rest of us. We’re with a doctor, though, so he’ll let it slide. “Welcome to Sturmhearst, may your visit be enlightening.” He does the same whistle we heard before and the guards step aside. Gral’s a string guy, he can figure out the notes easily enough but he doesn’t whistle.

“Nothing goes on here without Ethics knowing about it, huh,” Gral observes.

More owl guards are stomping around, some carrying heavy objects. Vigdor knows where he’s going, but asks an owl guard for directions, as an experiment. The owl guard doesn’t even notice him. He steps in front of the guard, who just steps around him very politely.

The castle is a nightmare to navigate, like Hoeska, but we have an expert tour guide. “The old keep, the part that used to be a castle – that’s where all the 101 classes are and the whole working hospital. All the additions are laid out super weird, and then there’s the tunnels underneath. The Chem students had WILD parties down there, they brewed up all SORTS of stuff. The lighthouse is a real lighthouse, but it’s also where admin is, and the dean’s and headmaster’s offices. Oh! DO NOT cross the librarians. Each college has its own library? Like, theoretically they share the whole collection, but which college keeps which books is kind of a blood sport…”

Shoshana and Gral hang back, feeling out of place. “Bards don’t really have a college, exactly?” Gral explains. “It’s more of a pilgrimage. I met the elders of each village and they imparted wisdom upon me?”

Shosh feels like an uneducated hick even by that standard.

We take a hairpin turn in one of the Science buildings and run into Professor Quercus! Or at least someone with a bird mask and a similar voice, chatting with some other masked scholar. “Ah! Yes! We made a lot of excellent discoveries before we started to run into problems – you see, there hadn’t been an event in some time, but if we could get in there to the source, we could really – well, my goodness! These are the people I was telling you about, who gave me such wonderful notes!” Quercus turns to us, sounding rather delighted. “I certainly didn’t expect to see you here. Welcome to the world of knowledge! What brings you here? I thought you were having adventures and derring-do!”

“Well, it turns out our adventures led here!” Gral tells him.

Quercus nods enthusiastically. “I’d show you around, but I rather need to speak to the bursar! If you need anything, I’m sure you can find my offices without too much problem. And please, if you’ve encountered any interesting monsters, I’d love to hear details! Especially if you have samples!” Despite his keen excitement, Professor Quercus rolls a four and fails to notice our Shusva accessories.

“If you ever need a cup of tea and a biscuit, you’re welcome to stop by my office! I’d be more than happy to speak with you! And if you could do me a favor – well, I wouldn’t mind having you with me when I speak to the bursar! See, our expedition to Holzog has hit a bit of a snag. The events with that mist stopped happening, you see. Luckily, we managed to identify which house you were going to, and we were all set to investigate, but then the Baroness put a squadron of those damnable Condotierri to prevent us getting in – “

Gral shrugs, deliberately casual. “I don’t know why you’d go back; there’s not much to see besides what’s already in the notes.”

(Vigdor immediately rolls insight to see if Gral is lying. Unfortunately for him, bards are excellent liars.)

“Anyway. The bursar’s giving me an earful about continuing to fund the expedition. I’m considering withdrawing from Holzog and asking him to redirect the funds into a different project! For example, lots of interesting monsters have been seen around Barroch lately!”

Yes, definitely, we want him to go somewhere that’s not a Tempting Key Portal. Valeria and Gral tag-team Persuasion checks to sell him on interesting cases of monsters we’ve heard of around Barroch. If we’re fuzzy on the details – well, all the more reason to have someone get out there and take a closer look!

Quercus is rather taken by the idea. “If you would, Mr. Duu –“

“Um, actually, Duu is the tribe, my family’s name is-“

“-yes, if you could write me some letters, I might find it useful making the acquaintance of the locals while setting up camp. Sturmhearst hasn’t established an official relationship to your people yet’”

Gral agrees to write up a formal letter explaining the mission of Sturmhearst and the expedition to make introductions a bit smoother; the word of a bard will go a long way in gaining the cooperation of the orcs of Barroch. He’ll do a personal letter of introduction for Quercus, and a general letter to Shieldeater’s administration to explain who the heck these weird bird people are.

“Wonderful! Bring it by my office!” He gives us directions that make NO sense to anyone but Vigdor. We’re pretty sure several of those compass directions aren’t real words?

“Oh, and if you see an angry tall woman stomping around, tell her I’m not here! She’s mad at me for some reason I can’t discern. Good day!”

He scuttles off, presumably to hide.

We definitely want the gossip on that – Ulmus was mad at him about funding, and she definitely dissed his field of study. Is this what academia is like?

Vigdor confirms that the professors have all kind of weird beefs, interdepartmental politics, and personal feuds. “One of my professors gave me a B- in amputation – shows what he knows – purely because I was taking some classes outside the College of Medicine and he got all offended. It’s a lot of politics and bullshit, they’re all more concerned about their careers and publishing than actually important stuff.”

We find a door with a brass plaque: Dr Emily Thorpe, Thaumochemist. There’s a paper list tacked to her door with a list of courses: “Intro to Potion Brewing,�� “Principles of Alchemy Thaumochemistry”

Vigdor knocks. “Yes, who’s there? Come in!” a voice calls.

“It’s Vigdor! Vigdor Gavril!”

“Ah, Vigdor!” A halfling woman in the requisite bird mask waves from behind a counter where she’s handling a set of proper Movie Science bubbling beakers and flasks. “Yes, you sent me that letter! You had something ‘interesting’ for me!”

“Yes, and you will see why I couldn’t be more detailed!”

She notices his metal arm as he starts pulling open his heavy waterproofed case. “Oh! I heard that Professor Bjork was giving you his prototype! How’s it working?”

“They’re loud and heavy and uncomfortable sometimes, but I have limbs! Can’t complain! But then I, uh, found one of my limbs again.”

He goes over to an open table and pulls out his entire-ass leg with a flourish, plus vials of hair and blood and strange unidentified liquids. Her eyes widen.

“Ah, this is yours!” She watches his toes wiggle. “Well, you don’t see that every day.”

“Yeah, I found it stitched to some kind of unholy undead abomination.”

“And that explains the Knight of the Rose. Hello, Kyr.”

“Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service!”

“Dr. Emily Thorpe, at your service as well, I guess? Pardon the mess in my lab, it’s not much but it’s home. Hand me that vial?” She pulls out a syringe and takes a sample of not blood, but oily black liquid, from the leg. “It will take some time, but I can write up a thaumaturgical profile without much difficulty. Do you mind if I keep it?”

“You can hang on to it. But I would appreciate discretion.”

“Yes, this will stay between me, your friends, and – oh, this is Hugo, he’s my teaching assistant. He’s been helping since the school was mobilized.” She turns to Vigdor’s clearly uneducated hick friends (not you, Valeria, you’re very fancy) and explains:

“In times of crisis, the University turns from education to innovation. Were this a disease, we’d be researching cures! If demonic, we’d be researching weapons or dimensional banishment. We haven’t really received direct orders this time, so everybody is doing their own thing, which I can’t say I mind. Mostly I’ve been helping other researchers with the practical application of their theorems.”

She scribbles out a hasty list. “Hugo, if you can go to the library and put these books on order? The Vigmar and the Auspelius especially would be useful, but don’t let the librarians kill anyone over them. And the Principles of Advanced Anatomy – tell them I won’t ask. But I do need it.” The grad student nods and hustles out of the room.

(Shoshana insights, out of paranoia. Hugo’s a good egg, though he might refer to thaumochemistry as alchemy.)

“Now, Dr. Gavril, do you want this leg back? How intact-“

“Want it back? Like, in the abstract, or on my body?”

She pulls out a vial of bubbling acid. “I’d like to put some of this on it and I’d like to see what happens.”

He blanches slightly. “Uh. Um. I have some proprietary-“

“Aw, no acid then,” she grumbles, stowing the acid with an audible sigh.

“Only do something you would do to living person’s leg. That they would survive!”

“How would I know? I’m a chemist, this is only, like, my second dead person!” She pauses. “…well, fifth.”

Shoshana starts looking around at all the alchemy equipment curiously. Everything here is clearly labeled with numbers, and letters that feel like numbers, and complex formulae, which hedgewitch potionery doesn’t really account for.

There’s a knock at the door. “Ah, that must be Hugo. Come in!”

Valeria instinctively body-blocks the leg from view.

It is not Hugo. In walk 3 white-clad ethicists. The gentleman at the front is in fancier robes – we suspect he’s the kind of fellow who has tenure – and he wears a powdered judge’s wig atop his mask. We immediately don’t like it. His two companions peer around the lab – one has a jeweler’s loupe built into the lens of his mask, and the other is carrying a big chime with runes carved into it, clearly a magic item of some sort.

“Dr Thorpe,” the leader intones.

“Sorbus,” she replies disdainfully.

“I see you have guests, is now a bad time?”

“Is it ever a good time?” Emily makes a point of tending to her samples and beakers busily.

“I suppose not. We have come to ask a few follow-up questions. Have you been visited at all by Professor Matthias Macker? Has he followed up on the project you were working on together?”

“I told you, no! I had no potions strong or precise enough for what he needed, and he’s never spoken to me since. That was months ago!”

“And no one has seen him since then. You understand why we need to know what you discussed.”

“Yeah, not since you quarantined the whole surgical wing!”

“That is not what I’m asking about. Has Macker’s assistant Greta Ruble visited you?”

“No. She’s a good kid, though, don’t hassle her.”

“We are simply making sure she is not a danger.”

Emily sputters angrily. “A danger to who?!”

“I cannot tell you that.” He turns to Valeria. “Kyr, it is always a pleasure to see a member of the Order here. I suppose if you’re here we can be assured nothing… unethical is happening,” he says, unpleasantly oily. “I am Professor Rigmor Sorbus of the College of Ethics; I lecture on legal and judicial ethics. These are my assistants, Charles and Pippin.”

Valeria bows with the precise degree of politeness required. “Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance. In these times of mobilization, it falls to us as ethicists to supervise our colleagues’ noble efforts. Please, I implore you: if you see anything untoward or suspiciously unusual, I request you report it to the nearest representative of the College of Ethics.”

Emily butts in. “What happened to Eric Pelbort, his other assistant?”

“Mr. Pelbort has transferred to the College of Ethics and is assisting us with some research. We will let you know if that changes.” He tells her dismissively. “Kyr Argent, the College of Ethics has always been proud of our long association with the Order, and I would like to extend our deepest condolences for the tragedy of the Crusade. Should you have need of any assistance whatsoever, do not hesitate to ask. Our offices are on the satellite campus across the bay. If you were to visit, I’m sure many would love to speak to a paladin of the Order of the Rose.”

“We have business here, but I might be able to make time to stop by,” she equivocates.

“Very well. I will let you all get back to whatever it is you’re doing with that leg,” Sorbus says, turning neatly on his heel and taking his leave, his toadies hurrying in his wake.

(Yes, you guessed it: That was Professor Rowan, with his Tort Wig and his assistants Pip Loupe and Chime Charles.)

“Those guys give me the creeps,” Emily grumbles. “They used to be fine, but lately they’ve been doing this whole inquisitor act.”

Vigdor’s always known these guys as douchey blowhards. But now they’re douchey blowhards with AUTHORITY.

There’s always been a divide between Ethics and the other three colleges roughly the size of the harbor! The sciences don’t believe in debate, they believe in experimentation! Anyone who can spend an entire week talking without action is wasting time and breath. The College of Medicine thinks even less of them – they just get in the way of progress!

(IRL we all respect medical ethics, but Sturmhearst WAS founded on a fine tradition of graverobbing and leeches.)

Vigdor is primarily a surgeon, or he was, when he had two fully functional hands. (Two players at once: “HE GOT DR STRANGED!”) He had quite a few classes with Macker, the chair of the surgery department. Most people didn’t like the guy, except his surgical grad students who would defend him to the death. A bit of a hardass about proper procedure, but that’s probably not a bad quality for a surgeon. He was a local institution, so it’s pretty alarming he’s somehow gone rogue.

“His whole lab was quarantined?”

“The whole teaching wing, actually,” Emily tells us.

“Are there people in there? Some kind of sickness?”

“Not that I’ve heard. Ethics just put guards outside the labs and blocked everyone from going in. They’ve done it to a couple places around the school recently. The excuse is that someone was doing ‘unsafe experimentation’ that’s ‘poisoned the area’ or something?”

Wack. “How long have these quarantines lasted?”

“They don’t really end? A couple stopped after a few months, but some have been there for a year! Nobody goes in or out. Sometimes the white coats go in, but it’s pretty rare and they don’t stay long.”

“Is that what all the guards are for? Where’d they all come from?” Vigdor asks.

“Medicine used to be the ones, uh, hiring them.” (A quick insight roll notes that she hesitates on the phrase “hiring.”) “Lots of them still answer to whoever they were originally assigned to. But recently Dean Chidor from the College of Ethics took over that whole program, so a lot of the newer ones answer primarily to the ethicists. I mean, they all dress the same, so it’s kinda hard to tell? I haven’t asked a lot of questions, I’ve been trying to keep my head down since the whole thing with Macker.”

“What actually happened with him?”

“He’d been acting weird for a while,” she confides as she starts sticking pins in the leg and wiring them to a voltage generator. “He’d been working on something, some kind of extreme surgery – I think he was looking into a method of surgically removing Curse corruption. He was hitting roadblocks, though; he called in me and Alma Ulmus, who’s a College of Medicine bigwig.”

“Yeah, we met her in Bad Herzfeld!”

“I heard she’s here again, stalking around the halls complaining about funding. She knows more about his project than I do. Anyway, Macker sent me requirements for a healing potion he was gonna administer as part of some surgical procedure. I couldn’t get anything as powerful or precise as he needed. I’m a thaumochemist; I don’t know medicine that well. So it was beyond me to do that amount of gross tissue damage repair as controllably as they wanted it. I mean, I made some pretty nice innovations as far as the theory of potioncrafting, I’m hoping to get published as soon as it goes to peer review.

“But I couldn’t do what he needed, and eventually I got shut out of the project. Then one day he vanished. Alma set off for Bad Herzfeld and Macker stopped coming out of his lab. His assistants were still going in and out, but not long after that, the ethicists quarantined the place.”

“Has anyone else been quarantined?” Valeria asks.

“People from all three colleges got hit. I dunno about other ethicists, I haven’t heard about them quarantining anything of their own. But everyone else has. A group of engineering students were building a defense system to be deployed out to the Scar, and all of them got quarantined. Here in my department, Dr. Vilman – remember him? Stupid goatee, did a lot of stuff with crystals? – got shut down. Sometimes they quarantine the whole lab; sometimes they just shut down a project and everyone working on it gets a ‘guest lecture position’ over in Ethics. Sorbus said they got one of Macker’s assistants, Eric Pelbort. He had another one, Greta Ruble, but I guess she’s given them the slip.”

Emily’s got experiments to do on that leg, so we’ll let her get to it. As we head out, Gral asks one last question. “What’s up with those guards, by the way? Why do they only respond to those whistles?

“Uhhhh,” she says, as we fail our persuasion check. “They, er, don’t speak very good Valdian. Mostly foreigners, goliaths, the like. The whistles get their attention.”

Gral sighs and doesn’t push it. Vigdor’s already making plans to pickpocket a whistle. Valeria, since she has a direct invite to talk to the ethicists, considers the unheard-of paladin approach of Just Asking Them Directly.

First, though, Vigdor wants to check out the quarantine of Macker’s lab; he knew that professor well, and we’re all curious what’s been going down.

We walk on over to the surgical wing to case the joint. There’s a single owl guard blocking the hallway, presiding over a small barricade. A pleasant sandwich board sign states “Area quarantined by College of Ethics, apologies for the inconvenience.”

We try to walk in and the enormous guard holds out a hand to stop us. Shoshana tries to wiggle around him, like a cat trying to get at your dinner, but he impassively blocks her every move.

Gral tries a smoother approach. He begins with small talk; the guard doesn’t even twitch. He starts asking prying questions about the surgical ward. No response. Fine, then: he switches to Orcish, a sinister undertone weaving through his voice as he uses Words of Terror.

An insight roll reveals completely unchanged body language.

“Either they’re immune to fear or not a humanoid,” Gral reports back. “Not a single emotion. Definitely not goliath mercenaries.”

“Tryin’ to talk your way into the surgical wing?” says another chatty passerby. “Good luck. They got all the medical cadavers locked up in there and they won’t let us in.”

(Cadavers? Oh shit, we bet that’s the guard factory, theorize the players.)

“Oh, are you a med student?”

“Yeah. I work with Professor Herberts, or I used to, anyway. We needed a couple cadavers to do this comparison study about spleens; we got some weird ones from out in the wood, we compare spleens to see if place with thing don’t worry about it; need control spleen. And then these BIG DUMB IDIOTS wouldn’t let us in, and Herbert got transferred to the College of Ethics all of a sudden. He’s been gone a couple months.”

“How long do professors usually transfer for?” asks Gral.

“I mean, they usually pop over to give a lecture or two and come back by the end of the day.”

(Vigdor happens to remember that the College of Ethics also runs an asylum. They live in a big spooky castle and do dissections with guts and stuff, it can do a number on your head! Some of the ethicists have branched into the field of psychology. No reason to mention this when people are having extended stays on the ethics campus, of course…)

The student shrugs. “I gotta get to lecture. If you manage to get in there, any chance you can bring me back a couple spleens?”

We wave goodbye noncommittally, though Vigdor insists he can pop a spleen out of a corpse like a yolk from an egg. He’s a good surgeon!

Anyway, Vigdor went to school here, and the dice are on his side; he knows a side path through an old abandoned classroom into the surgical suite. He pops the lock on the door easily; all the undergrads used to go this way when slipping into lecture late, to get past the TA keeping track of tardies.

The guard is in earshot but facing the other direction, and he’s not even blinking, much less scanning around. Gral casts Silence on us and our very clanky party slips by easily.

Shosh sticks her head into the TA’s office. Nothing really stands out, but she swipes some interesting-looking notes from the desk drawers to look at later.

Meanwhile, Gral and Vigdor go into Macker’s office. The desk is an absolute mess, which is very unlike the guy Vigdor used to know. There are wheeled chalkboards crammed into the office, covered in scribbles and anatomical diagrams. Paging through the notes and glancing over the chalkboard, Vigdor makes a decent medicine check and can at least figure out what problem Macker was working on.

Based on what Dr. Emily told us, Macker’s trying to develop a surgical procedure. The issue is that whatever he’s doing would cause so much physical trauma that it’d kill the patient, and he’s looking for some way to prevent that. There are lists of healing options: formulas, spells, potions, nonmagical stabilization methods to keep the patient alive while various tissues are extracted from the body.

Gral’s unimpressed. Healing methods? That’s pretty tame for forbidden knowledge.

To Vigdor’s experienced eyes, this stuff looks mega-advanced and highly experimental, but Gral’s right – it’s not anything you’d scramble to censor.

Weirdly enough, the place doesn’t look ransacked, only disheveled and a little dusty. Macker’s notes haven’t been moved since he was here. Maybe this isn’t what the ethicists were after?

We head to cadaver storage while Valeria keeps watch. Cadaver storage is creepy as hell, but only because it’s, y’know, a room full of cadavers. A lot of the bodies, kept stable with Gentle Repose, appear to be Cursed, but that’s hardly weird. What’s so crazy they’d keep it hidden from everyone?

Vigdor opens the door to the dissection labs, Gral’s Silence deadening any ominous warning he might have had from the room beyond. Yes, the table here’s been recently used, and the bizarre symbols scrawled on the chalkboards have spilled onto the surrounding floor and walls, but Vigdor’s eyes are drawn to where the chalkboard peels away like skin to reveal a strange, multicolored, impossible space. The floor begins to take the shape of a stone hand that projects out into the shimmering void, joining a daisy-chain of enormous hands that form a walkway out to a marble platform floating in space.

Gral takes his Silence spell with him and runs to get Valeria.

Eyes starry, watching entire worlds and impossible shapes spinning through iridescent mists, Vigdor takes his first heady hit of Key taint.

As we cut session, Valeria considers that the ethicists may actually have a point.

#the cursewood #Session recap #sturmhearst university #gral omokk'duu #valeria argent #vigdor gavril #shoshana bat chaya #The key

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michelles-garden-of-evil · 4 years ago

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Episode 31 Review: Danger to the Cryonics Capsule

{ Not available on YouTube }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

And now we reach Episode 31, the first episode that isn’t currently available on YouTube. In fact, none of Week 7 is available on YouTube, which means no Bad Subtitle Special until the end of Week 8. (Is anyone else disappointed, or is it just me?) It’s a pity, because this is both a good episode and probably relatively unchanged from Ian Martin’s original script, although the absence of cheesy one-liners about the Devil does suggest some rewriting.

Here's the synopsis for this one, by the way, from the October 24, 1969 issue of The Plain Dealer:

It’s interesting to note that, while this summary comes from the period of the Lost Episode summaries, it still accurately describes the plot of the aired version of the episode. It doesn’t describe all of it, but then, none of the newspaper summaries do, before or after the Lost Episodes period. So, without further ado, let’s hurry back to the crypt on Maljardin and check on Erica Desmond’s cryonics capsule.

Dan trying to stop the cryonics tank from malfunctioning, despite knowing nothing about how it works. Not generally a smart idea.

While Jean Paul and Elizabeth are still with Vangie at the French Leave Café, the cryonics capsule's cooling mechanism malfunctions and its tank starts spraying water upwards. Dan tries to get it to stop spraying, but his efforts are in vain and he calls for Alison. She freaks out and they both run down there, but it doesn’t stop until just after Quito arrives around the corner.

There’s a scene where they’re trying to fix the machine and both of them are talking to each other, but the only audio we hear is the background music. Not sure if that was deliberate on the part of the writer or the director, or if it’s a blooper.

Alison asks Dan what he was doing down there, and he confesses that he was searching for the missing cyanide. There’s an interesting part where he says “I’m not sure I trust [Raxl] or that zombie,” and Quito--who is still hiding--clenches his fists as though angered by the reminder of his undead state.

Quito clenching his fists just before the intro.

After they return to the Great Hall, Alison blames Dan--"perhaps you inadvertently crossed the wires," she says--but he denies it. I'm surprised that Alison would accuse cautious, practical Dan of something so careless, but I don’t know him as well as she does. I’m also not sure how inadvertently crossing the wires would cause a tank to start spraying water, and I’m not sure the characters have any idea, either.

On the main island with Jean Paul and Vangie, Jean Paul recaps his cryonics scheme in a way that makes it clear that Ian Martin and/or the meddling executives really didn’t want him to repeat his catchphrase from the earlier episodes again:

Jean Paul on Erica’s resurrection: "It WILL happen. I made that vow the day my darling wife was stricken IN SPITE OF GOD!"

Raxl, of course, blames THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES for the leak in the capsule’s tank. Raxl may be right--she usually is about matters of the occult--but after learning of the note from the Episode 30 script about who pushed Holly down the stairs, I’m thinking that the true culprit is someone else, someone less obvious. This scene also provides some blatant foreshadowing for the aborted plotline involving Tarasca:

Raxl: “The master must be protected from all demons, from the past and in the present, especially the witch who seeks to own him!”

The next shot.

A clear shot from shortly after of Elizabeth’s dramatic eye makeup.

The witch’s own version of Bissits Face™?

Meanwhile on the main island, Jean Paul convinces Vangie to hold a séance to contact Erica's spirit, which she is willing to do if slightly reluctant because she knows that she will eventually die on Maljardin. This suggestion excites Elizabeth, whom he has to remind that "it is not a game." She also asks if he would ever let her go, and he says that he would only let her return to Maljardin: proof that Jean Paul is still on board with the whole detained guests thing.

In the lab, Alison is searching the drawers of Dr. Menkin’s cabinet for his notes on Erica and finds a small notepad hidden among the papers in one. She reads it, her mouth agape, as Raxl enters.

What could it say about Erica?

Raxl lets Alison know that she knows about Dan searching for the missing cyanide in the crypt and is not pleased. She asks Alison if Dan doesn’t trust her, and she defends him, saying that none of them can trust each other anymore. Then they debate whether or not one of the other characters made the machine break down. Alison says that she now thinks it most likely broke down on its own, but Raxl still insists that someone (by which she means Jacques) tampered with it. Raxl has a point, because brand-new water tanks don’t generally start spraying out huge amounts of water on their own like the capsule’s cooling tank was doing.

SCENE INTERRUPTING DAN: “Hello, Raxl. I didn’t know you were interested in lab experiments, too.” (LOL)

Even though the leak was clearly the work of supernatural forces, Alison still tells Dan, "Don't make any more waves around here." Good luck with that. You may want to talk Jean Paul into having Quito buy you duct tape the next time you see him, then tape Dan’s mouth shut and tie his hands behind his back to keep him from tearing it off. That’s the only way to stop him from accusing Jean Paul of being a murderer and imprisoning all of you here. (It will also make it easier to get with your far more attractive brother-in-law, especially if you leave Dan in his bedroom while the two of you wrestle with your unresolved sexual tension in the Great Hall.)

In the crypt, Raxl tells Quito that it’s time to begin searching the caskets for the conjure doll and the silver pin--which I thought she said they already did in previous episodes, but I could be wrong. Maybe they just want to double-check to make sure they checked everywhere in the basement. Quito begins pulling open Jacques’ casket and we cut to a couple filler scenes with the other characters. When we return to Raxl and Quito, we find her back upstairs searching the fireplace in the Great Hall for the doll and pin. When Quito arrives, she asks him if he found them in the casket and he shakes his head. They head upstairs to continue their search--which, again, I thought she said that they already searched upstairs in Episode 29, but I suppose they just want to double-check.

Alison tells Dan when he next visits the lab that Dr. Menkin was trying to learn how to recreate an entire human body. Reminds me of Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Menkin both tried to play God by creating a living human body, but their experiments differed in that Frankenstein used cadaver parts to build his man, while Menkin’s experiments involved cellular regeneration and possibly (based on the sources referenced in Episode 26) robotics/artificial intelligence as well. I don’t know if Martin had planned to draw a direct parallel between the Drs. Menkin and Frankenstein at some point, but I suspect he was.

But Alison still doesn’t know enough about his experiments to satisfy her (or us), because all of Dr. Menkin’s notes from the six weeks before his death are missing. This is suspicious for obvious reasons, given his death shortly after her arrival, which she still doesn’t know was Jacques’ fault for no other reason than that she was upstairs at the time when he told Raxl his highly suspicious story about Menkin’s “accident” in the water.

Really, Dan? A bottle of cyanide goes missing and yet you willingly drink alcohol that’s been sitting out where anyone could pour poison into it? SMH Yet another reason why Alison should duct tape your mouth shut.

Dan is suspicious of Raxl--who is just about the last character they should suspect of hiding the cyanide or murdering either Erica or Dr. Menkin--but even more suspicious of Jean Paul. He and Alison also discuss how Jean Paul may not have filed Erica's death certificate with the authorities and how suspicious this makes him look--which is recap, yes, but which I bring up again because it is still relevant. I am really thinking (and was really thinking as far back as last fall) that Martin was originally planning to reveal that Jean Paul killed Erica and was trying to resurrect her out of some combination of guilt, regret, and fear that Erica's death would make him look suspicious. This would not only make these clues worth more than red herrings (or, should I say, kippers?), but it would also connect to all the things that Jacques says about he and Jean Paul not being so different. I have a whole theory about this, which I plan to discuss in a future post sometime later in this arc.

Alison also mentions some sea caves five hundred yards from an unseen cove on Maljardin, which she says Raxl told her about (unfortunately, I don’t remember in which episode). This seems to be foreshadowing something--I’m guessing the discovery of Jacques’ pirate ship that’s mentioned in another episode--but they never visit the caves, unless that’s where the Temple of the Serpent is located.

Back on the main island, Jean Paul has returned, but Vangie has left to go somewhere. Jean Paul says that she is probably packing a few days’ clothing for her stay on his island. Elizabeth is relieved to hear that she will only be there a few days. She also reveals that she sees Vangie as "competition" for Jean Paul's affections. (LOL) I would say that she is deluding herself, but then, she is unaware that Jean Paul was possessed all the times that he flirted with her; in her mind, Jacques is the real Jean Paul and the Jean Paul who mourns Erica is “not himself.” It does explain, however, why she was clinging to him in that one scene from last episode. Even so, Vangie never has any love interests on the show. I’ve suspected for a while that she and Raxl secretly have a thing for each other. Obviously they wouldn’t have shown that on TV in 1969, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t still ship them together.[1]

Elizabeth’s profession of interest in him motivates Jacques to possess him again, and we get

HEADACHE FACES! Yay!

After possessing him, Jacques reassures Elizabeth that he is very much still interested in her (Elizabeth, I mean, not Vangie). He also sends the audience more false hopes for Holly's death: "I'd stake Jean Paul Desmond's life, virtually every day…What’s one life, more or less? It doesn't even matter whose life. Take your daughter for example, before she's twenty-one and inherits all those millions."

Elizabeth looks appalled by this suggestion, but it’s hard to say if she truly is or if it’s all an act. I’m sure, though, that this is, roughly, the thought process going through Jacques’ mind:

Coming up next: Jean Paul and Vangie make more arrangements for the séance to contact Erica and Raxl reveals more of Maljardin’s history.

{ <- Previous: Episode 30 || Next: Episode 32 -> }

Notes

[1] In the books, Quito is Raxl’s husband, but that obviously isn’t the case on the show, or else she would most likely be jealous of his affections for Holly. The fact that she isn’t suggests that the two aren’t married (or, at the very least, aren’t married anymore) in the show canon. This means that Raxl doesn’t have a canonical love interest.

#strange paradise #maljardin arc #ian martin #week 7 #episode 31 #review #analysis #bissits face #comics #cryonics capsule #headache faces #makeup #raxl/vangie #SCENE INTERRUPTING DAN #speculation on ian martin's original story #tarasca

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tigerkirby215 · 5 years ago

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5e Vi the Piltover Enforcer build (League of Legends)

Have you ever really wanted to be a total rebel flipping tables in D&D? Have you ever wanted to improve how much damage you can send through the roof? Was there ever any certain time that you thought brute Strength and Charisma combined?

Well I guess now it’s time to shine because finally; she’s here. Here comes Vi.

GOALS

Violence - As Vi’s motto goes: “Punch first; ask questions while punching.”

Vitality - Vi is deceptively tanky, capable of shielding herself and keeping enemies down while she beats them down.

Vision - As a matter of fact the best bet one has is to quickly react. We’ll need to be able to get in quick and start punching so that the baddies don’t get away.

RACE

Vi’s only human but she’s naturally gifted inventor, and with all those tattoos of hers one could easily be written off as the Mark of Making from Eberron. As part of House Cannith your Intelligence increases by 2 and you can also increase an ability score of your choice by 1: naturally that will be Strength because have you seen Vi’s... hands?

You also get Artisan’s Intuition which lets you add a d4 to any Arcana (Hextech) check as well as any check involving Artisan’s Tools, and Maker’s Gift which gives you proficiency with one Artisan’s Tool of your choice: choose Mason’s Tools because you need to know how to build a wall if you want to break it down!

But the most notable skill you have is Spellsmith: you get the Mending cantrip for free which is always good to have, but most notably you can cast the Magic Weapon spell once per Long Rest. But when you cast the spell it doesn’t require concentration. Do you know how good an hour-long +1 to your weapon is? Consider this your Denting Blows doing their work.

You also get a language of your choice: much like with Warwick I’d consider Riedran to be the language of Zaun but if that isn’t up to your fancy I bet a lot of the people in Piltover speak Elvish.

ABILITY SCORES

15; INTELLIGENCE - Vi stands for vizer, and while you aren’t prophetic you’ll be needing brains for the vast majority of your class features.

14; CONSTITUTION - Vi stands for vice, and you need to be able to squeeze as well as be squeezed.

13; CHARISMA - Vi stands for vixen, with looks that kill which are needed to multiclass.

12; STRENGTH - A little lower than I’d like, but Vi stands for viable with Standard Array. We’ll also be getting ways to remedy your strength later in the build.

10; DEXTERITY - Vi stands for underprivileged; you can’t have everything high with Standard Array and the skills we’ll be missing from our low DEX will be made up for later in the build.

8; WISDOM - Vi stands for vicious. You’re a hothead who makes punching jokes constantly.

BACKGROUND

You’re Piltover’s Finest member of the City Watch, which is a background from the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. You get proficiency with Athletics and Insight for back-alley brawls and straightforward interrogation. You also get two languages of your choice and guess what I’m going to say? Pick what you want because it really doesn’t matter!

Your main feature as part of the City Watch is Watcher’s Eye. You can easily find both Piltover guard outposts and Zaun gang hideouts, but Caitlin is far more likely to welcome you for a cup of tea than the chembarrons will be welcoming for a cup of punch in the face.

(Artwork from uhdpaper.com)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - PALADIN 1

Here’s a shocker! Truth be told the main reason we’re going into Paladin first is for their skill proficencies, which we can’t get from our other class...es! Anyways Paladins get proficiency in two skills of their choice: Intimidation and Persuasion will round out our interrogation skills.

You also get Divine Sense to locate any baddies who need some punching. As an action you can detect the location of any celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet of you that is not behind total cover. You know the creature’s type but not its identity, and also detect the presence of any place or object that has been consecrated or desecrated for the duration, which lasts until your next turn. You can use this feature a number of times equal to 1 + your Charisma modifier (so currently twice) and regain any expended uses on a Long Rest.

You also have some Refillable Potions with Lay on Hands. You have a pool of health equal to five times your Paladin level which you can use to heal the sick. As an action you can heal a target for an amount of health up to the maximum of your Lay on Hands pool, or can spend 5 hit points to neutralize one disease or poison affecting the target. I’m sure Caitlin gave Vi some basic medical supplies in her Hextech gauntlets. That’s the excuse I’ll be going for anyways. But speaking of Hextech...

LEVEL 2 - ARTIFICER 1

Here’s the real meat and potatoes of this build. As an Artificer you get access to Magical Tinkering, letting you do a variety of simple Hextech modifications to a tiny object. I recommend reading the ability over to see everything you can do. You can have a number of these active equal to your Intelligence modifier, which is currently 3.

You also get Spellcasting as an Artificer, using your tools as your focus. You learn two cantrips from the Artificer list: Shocking Grasp will serve the role of your gauntlets for now, which isn’t to say it’s a bad spell. (But you might want to swap it out for something else after you get proper weapons.) You make a melee spell attack and on a hit you do a d8 of Lighting damage, and the target can’t make reactions on the turn. Light meanwhile will let you light up your gauntlets in the dark, because you can’t see in the dark, you silly human.

Artificers are prepared spellcasters, meaning you can swap out your spell list at the end of of a Long Rest. With that in mind the spells I suggests are going to be exactly what I said they are: suggestions for the most in-character spells, but feel free to swap them out as needed. Expeditious Retreat, despite it’s name, is not necessary to retreat. It gives you the ability to Dash as a Bonus Action for its duration, allowing you to chase an enemy down with Vault Breaker. Feather Fall will let you cushion your fall in case you get knocked back, and Longstrider is a non-concentration based speed increase.

LEVEL 3 - ARTIFICER 2

Second level Artificers can Infuse Items to turn them into magic items! You can choose four Infusions at this level but can only craft 2 at a time:

Enhanced Defense will let you block some blows with your gauntlets.

Enhanced Weapon meanwhile will let you punch harder with your gauntlets!

The Goggles of Night from the Replicate Magic Items list look stylish as heck, and also give you Darkvision as a human.

And Caitlin would appreciate if you took good care of her rifle by making it a Repeating Shot weapon.

But much like everything else with Artificer take these as suggestions, meaning that you’re free to instead take what’s more useful to the party instead of what’s useful to you. Can you tell that I really like Artificer?

Oh and you can also prepare another spell: how about Catapult to chuck some rocks at the enemy? Gnar gada!

LEVEL 4 - ARTIFICER 3

3rd level Artificers have The Right Tool for the Job, letting them spend an hour to create a set of Artisan’s Tools that they might need. But more importantly they get their Artificer Specialty and I think it’s pretty obvious to everyone that we’ll be going for the Armorer Artificer from the Unearthed Arcana.

As an Armorer you can make Power Armor with your Smith’s Tools (which you also gain proficiency with) which doesn’t have a Strength requirement, replaces any lost limbs when it merges to your body, and can be used as a focus for your Artificer spells. I know Vi doesn’t really wear armor but you can reflavor the armor as giant metal fists: I’d recommend grabbing (or crafting!) a set of Cast-Off Platemail as soon as possible so you can quickly take your fists off if they get grabbed by a giant enemy crab.

You can choose between two armor models and the Guardian model comes with fisticuffs known as Thunder Gauntlets, which do a d8 of Thunder damage and also give enemies disadvantage on attacks other than you due to being disoriented by giant metal fists punching them. You can use your Intelligence instead of your Strength to attack with these which is why we kept our Intelligence high. You can also use your Bonus Action to make a Defensive Field, creating a Blast Shield of temporary hitpoints equal to your Artificer level.

You can’t prepare any more spells at this level but you do get Magic Missile as well as the Shield spell. The former isn’t quite in-character but the latter is great to keep your defense ungodly high. Also seeing as we got some punching fists now I’d recommend swapping out Shocking Grasp and grabbing Chilling Smite (the... you know what I mean) with Ray of Frost. It’s always good to have a ranged option to slow the enemy down!

IF UA ISN’T ALLOWED: This build does work with Battle Smith I guess but it loses a lot of its flavor. If forced to play Battle Smith feel free to reflavor your fists as a magic Warhammer. You won’t be able to put on Plate as fast as Battle Smith but you’ll still have Heavy Armor proficiency thanks to your starting level in Paladin.

But truthfully Armorer Artificer is about on-par with Battle Smith if not a little weaker. I’d recommend at least trying to convince your DM of that before they force you to get a robot dog.

LEVEL 5 - ARTIFICER 4

The uneven ability scores are annoying me so increase your Charisma and your Intelligence by 1 with this Ability Score Improvement.

And with a higher intelligence you can prepare two more spells! Detect Magic will let you detect any stolen Hextech and get a general idea what it does, and Grease can be a good trick for a getaway!

LEVEL 6 - PALADIN 2

Now that we got our fists it’s time for some Excessive Force! Second level Paladins get Spellcasting but can instead ignore their spell slots for Divine Smite! When you hit a creature with your fists you can spend one spell slot to deal extra radiant damage. The damage is 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum of 5d8 with a 5th level slot. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend, to a maximum of 6d8. You could probably make the argument that some of Zaun’s more freakish freakshows are undead?

But since we got spells anyways we may as well prepare them: Bless will make your punches a little more accurate, letting you add a d4 to your attack rolls, Divine Favor will make your punches a little more punch, adding a d4 Radiant damage if you hit, and Heroism will make sure that you don’t back down from a fight! Paladins are prepared spellcasters though much like Artificers, so I would also possibly recommend Shield of Faith if you want to be harder to hit. Or... you know... the Smite spells.

Ah and you get a Fighting Style. There are a few options to choose from: Defense is great for more AC but Dueling (depending on your DM’s interpretation of your Hulk Hands) will increase your damage! If your DM’s stingy about you technically having two fists just equip a shield! Boom: now you have Defense and Dueling! Doesn’t pay to be stingy, cupcake!

LEVEL 7 - ARTIFICER 5

Quickly hopping back to Artificer for our Extra Attack. Hitting ‘em hard once is more important, but you know what else is good? Hitting ‘em hard twice!

And how about some second level Armorer spells? Mirror Image is a little wacky but is certainly useful, making you harder to hit. Shatter however is much more Vi’s speed, smashing objects as well as people! But don’t forget you can prep second level spells too~ And since you’re multiclassing you have a lot more spell slots relative to your level. Not like you aren’t going to use them all for Smites though.

LEVEL 8 - PALADIN 3

There are two options for Sacred Oaths to take, which I’ll both explain. The main appeal of either of them is your Channel Divinity options, which I’ll also talk about.

Option 1: Oath of Conquest. Your two Channel Divinity options are as follows:

Conquering Presence - As an action you force each creature of your choice that you can see within 30 feet of you to make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save they become frightened of you for 1 minute. The frightened creature can repeat this saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. This is a good way to make some space but remember that your Charisma isn’t that high, so the DC for this ability isn’t high either.

Guided Strike - Just stick a flat +10 onto an attack roll. You can do it after you see the roll but before you know the result, but most of the time a +10 will let you hit. Great if you need to knockout a key foe.

You also get the Armor of Agathys and Command spells always prepared, which can further control your enemies and keep you safe.

Option 2: Oath of Vengeance. As for Vengeance’s Channel Divinities you have:

Abjure Enemy - Choose a dude within 60 feet of you that you can see and force them to make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save the creature is frightened for 1 minute or until it takes any damage, and while frightened the creature’s speed is 0, and it can’t benefit from any bonus to its speed. On a successful save, the creature’s speed is halved for 1 minute or until the creature takes any damage. Fiends and undead have disadvantage on this saving throw and creatures that can’t be frightened can’t be affected by this. Overall while this can hit as many people as Conquering Presence it’s a great way to keep one enemy at bay while you pound the rest of their friends.

Vow of Enmity - As a bonus action you can mark a creature you can see within 10 feet of you for a smackdown using your Channel Divinity. You gain advantage on attack rolls against the creature for 1 minute unless one of you fall unconscious first. This is the boss killer: target the most dangerous enemy with Assault and Battery and knock them face first into the proving ground!

Vengeance Paladins also have the Bane and Hunter’s Mark spells always prepared, so you can make sure the enemy stops resisting.

Personally I opted for Vengeance but regardless of which one you pick you get Divine Health, because justice doesn’t take a sick day.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 9

Your now a misfit always ready to brawl, with your business roughing up their friends as the law. But as a matter of fact the best bet one has is to quickly react to the first attack that’s aiming for the bones cause you can never go back so just risk it. With that run-on sentence how can you be the first to attack?

WIZARD 1

YOU’RE A WIZARD MOTHERFUCKER! Level 1 Wizards don’t get much beyond Arcane Recovery, letting them recover half their level (rounded up, so 1) in spell slots on a Short Rest.

But you also get Spellcasting: 3 cantrips and a total of 5 prepared spells at this level. For your cantrips Sword Burst is a good backup damage source against enemies that resist your Thunder Gauntlets or have high AC, Mold Earth lets you put those mining tools you stuck to your hands to good use, and Friends is a funny spell that gives you Advantage on Charisma checks. 5e veterans are probably saying “but doesn’t the target hate you after you cast Friends?” Well here’s a little trick for ya: Intimidation is a Charisma check too, meaning that you can cast Friends and then do some Piltover Interrogation. Who cares if they’re mad when they’re terrified of you?

Wizards are prepared spellcasters much like Artificers and Paladins but they have a unique mechanic with their spellbook, forcing them to find spells out in the wild to write down before being able to prepare them. You get 6 Wizard spells at level 1 and every time you level up you can get 2 more spells. If you find a spell scroll or another spell book you can copy any spells into your spellbook, but we won’t be going too far into Wizard so you’ll only be able to grab first level spells. Regardless a big spell list is always useful! Anyways I’ll do my best to list the most in-character spells but feel free to grab whatever you see that’s useful.

Absorb Elements is great for some “I’m Rubber Your Glue”, letting the damage the enemy deals bounce off you and stick to them!

The Unearthed Arcana spell Acid Stream is a little brutal for the “good guys” but you don’t play fair. Smash a chemflask and throw that stuff at the baddies!

Comprehend Languages is good for interrogations, though I doubt you care what the criminals have to say.

Earth Tremor lets you strike the earth to knock your enemies over and make it harder for them to walk.

Identify is useful for identifying any stolen Hextech.

Unseen Servant is great if you want Caitlin to do some sheriff work in the background. The Unseen Servant is unseen, and can do some servant work for you. I recommend reading the spell over to see everything the Servant can do but in a lot of ways it’s a better Mage Hand.

It should be mentioned that you need a focus or components to cast your Wizard spells, and your armor only works for your Artificer spells. The weird thing about multiclassing between three spellcasters in 5e is that you need a focus for each class. But here’s a combo you can do which is technically legal:

“Hold” your Arcane Focus in one hand

Put a Holy Symbol on your armor

Use your armor to channel your Artificer spells

Is this legal? By all accounts yes. Does this look silly as hell? Also yes, but remember that it’s just for your DM to know that you can do this with the rules as written. You’re more than welcome to pretend that you’re not holding your focus and aren’t even wearing armor! This is a roleplaying game, after all.

LEVEL 10 - WIZARD 2

God I hate Wizard, but it’ll all be worth it for our Arcane Tradition. And what better tradition for a misfit who’s ready to brawl but War Magic? As a War Mage you get Tactical Wit, letting you add your Intelligence to your Initiative which is good because it was starting to feel like you weren’t ready to brawl!

You also get a lighter Blast Shield with Arcane Deflection, letting you add 2 to your AC or 4 to your Saving Throws. Yeah Shield will provide more AC but that’s limited, and you can’t improve Saving Throws with Shield. You also can’t cast leveled spells after using Arcane Deflection but you know what you can do? Punch!

As for another two spells to add to your list? How about you blind people with Color Spray and cause fear with... Cause Fear. Everyone panic!

LEVEL 11 - ARTIFICER 6

It’s straight down Artificer now thank god. 6th level Artificers get Tool Expertise letting them double their proficiency bonus with tool checks. Yup that’s what Expertise is!

You also get more Infusions woo! Since you’re using Light to see in the dark (you human you~) I’d recommend grabbing a Radiant Weapon to light the way instead. And seeing as we’re walking around with giant metal fists how about some Boots of Elvenkind to muffle out footsteps (so this way you make a flat Stealth check, instead of one with Disadvantage!) But again: get Infusions that will help your party, as these are just suggestions.

And finally you can prepare more spells. Seeing as we’ve been able to get Second Level spells for awhile now how about an Elixir of Iron? Enlarge / Reduce is two spells in one, letting you enlarge or reduce a creature or object in size. If you enlarge the target it becomes twice as large and eight times as heavy, and if it’s a creature it has advantage on Strength checks and saves and does an extra d4 of damage with its weapons. Inversely reducing them makes them half size, eight times lighter, gives them disadvantage on Strength checks / saves, and makes them do a d4 less damage. (They can’t do less than 1 damage though.)

If the target is unwilling it can make a Constitution check but I’m sure you and your allies are willing to be huge! Truthfully though Enlarge / Reduce isn’t the best for combat, but it’s great for puzzle solving out-of-combat since you can target objects too! You’d be surprised how many problems can be solved with a really big rock.

LEVEL 12 - ARTIFICER 7

Level 7 Artificers get Flash of Genius: When you or another creature you can see within 30 feet makes an ability check or a saving throw, you can use your reaction to add your Intelligence modifier to the roll. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. Vi stands for virtuous, and a good jungler always helps their teammates.

LEVEL 13 - ARTIFICER 8

At 8th level you get another Ability Score Improvement but I say the best bet you have is to quicky react: the Alert feat will let you make the first attack with a +5 to Initiative, and it makes sure that you can’t be surprised and can’t be hit with Advantage if you can’t see an enemy. BEGONE EVELYNN YOU THOT!

You can also prepare another spell: Enhance Ability is great in a pinch if you need a hero moment. You can give yourself or an ally Advantage on a particular type of ability checks, and a bonus effect depending on what type of checks you help them with. Cait’s getting in a chase? Cat's Grace. You need to smash a wall? Bull's Strength. Got challenged to a drinking contest? Hell yeah Bear's Endurance!

LEVEL 14 - ARTIFICER 9

9th level Armorers get Armor Modifications: your armor now counts as separate items for the purposes of your Infuse Items feature. The armor (chest piece), boots, bracers, and weapon can each bear one of your infusions. In addition, the maximum number of items you can infuse at once increases by 2, but those extra items must be part of your power armor. I’m not going to touch this now since there are two infusions you get at next level which are far more useful, so feel free to stick whatever infusions you want on your armor for now.

You do get 3rd level Artificer spells now, and as an Armorer you get Hypnotic Pattern and Lightning Bolt always prepared. Not quite in character but Hextech can do a lot.

LEVEL 15 - ARTIFICER 10

10th level more Infusions! Let’s start with your Armor Modifications first:

The Helm of Awareness from the same UA as the Armorer gives you Advantage on initiative rolls. You also can’t be surprised but you already have the Alert feat, so...

Gauntlets of Ogre Power will sort your Strength out, setting it to 19 which is more than enough for most things.

As for your known infusions: a Cloak of Protection looks stylish and gives you +1 to your AC, and while it isn’t too in-flavor for Vi Winged Boots are just too good to pass up. (Feel free to pass ‘em to someone else.)

You may notice that we’re getting a lot of attunement items: good thing we have Magic Item Adept to give us an extra attunement slot and also to make magic item crafting cheaper. Along with your two attunement-based infusions on your armor I’d recommend grabbing the Cloak of Protection and Radiant Weapon. (Or attune to some of the Magic Items you’ve probably found by now and get a +2 weapon from your Enhanced Weapon infusion, since it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to find +2 Thunder Gauntlets.)

And guess what? More spells! Message is a cantrip that will let you send a message in team chat, and Haste is a nutty spell that increases your speed, AC, gives you advantage on DEX checks, and lets you take an additional action on your turn. Just don’t lose Concentration because the spell makes you exhausted when it ends, causing you to lose a round to recover.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 16 - ARTIFICER 11

11th level Artificers can make a Spell-Storing Item. When you finish a long rest you can touch a weapon, tool, or magic item and store a spell in it. It has to be a 1st or 2nd-level spell from the Artificer spell list that requires 1 action to cast, though you don’t need to prepare it.

While holding the object, a creature can take an action to produce the spell’s effect from it, using your spellcasting ability modifier. If the spell requires concentration, the creature must concentrate on it. The spell stays in the object until it’s been used a number of times equal to twice your Intelligence modifier or until you store a spell in a different object.

There are a lot of really great spells you can give your allies with this. In particular Mirror Image from the Armorer list can be given to just about anyone to increase their survivability since it doesn’t require Concentration. Again I have to repeat that playing Artificer is all about knowing what your team needs, so look over your spell list and see what’s most useful to your party.

LEVEL 17 - ARTIFICER 12

12th level Artificers get another Ability Score Improvement and it’s about time you max out that Intelligence modifier for basically all your Artificer abilities.

With the Intelligence increase you can prepare another spell: I’d recommend Elemental Weapon to give your punches a bit more punch!

By the way the Intelligence increase also lets you prepare more Wizard spells! Just saying!

LEVEL 18 - ARTIFICER 13

13th level Artificers can prepare 4th level spells. Armorers have the Fire Shield and Greater Invisibility spells always prepared, which are never not useful. Sunfire Cape is quite strong now! For your prepared spell Freedom of Movement is the most in-flavor 4th level Artificer spell for you to take, since Tenacity is really useful for a melee champion.

LEVEL 19 - ARTIFICER 14

14th level Artificers are Magical Item Savants that can attune to up to 5 items at once regardless of race, class, or level restriction, which is good because we’re getting our final bunch of Infusions at this level.

First of all I’d recommend replacing your Gauntlets of Ogre Power with a Belt of Hill Giant’s Strength since it’s objectively better in every way. And you know what’s fun and won’t infuriate your DM in any possible way? More AC! Get a Ring of Protection to punch your AC through the roof!

For your final infusion there are a few fun options:

If you want to be tankier an Amulet of Health is never not useful.

If you want to have a backup punch an Arcane Propulsion Arm will let you punch the chem-barons with your raw fist.

Boots of Speed are sweet for either you or your allies to chase enemies down.

Gem of Seeing is more of Cait’s thing but True Sight is never not useful.

Or you can just look through the rest of your Infusion list to find something fun.

And hey: more spells? Don’t mind if I do! You’re experienced enough to give some Guidance to your allies (though they’re probably good enough at skill checks not to need this anymore), and Piltover’s Finest probably has some Hextech to Dispel Magic.

LEVEL 20 - ARTIFICER 15

Your final level is the 15th level of Armorer Artificer for Perfected Armor. When a creature you can see ends its turn within 30 feet of you, you can use your reaction to force the creature to succeed on a Strength saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failed save your Guardian armor pulls them up to 30 feet toward you in an unoccupied space, and if you pull the target to space within 5 feet of you, you can punch them it as part of this reaction!

You can use this reaction a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier (so it should be 5 times) and regain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest. Face first you’ll pull them into the proving ground!

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Vigilante - You’ve got a +10 to initiative and Advantage on initiative checks. I think it’s very safe to say that you’ll be going first.

Violence - Your Thunder Gauntlets should have at least a +1 on them, likely a +2, and with the Magic Weapon spell from your race you can turn them into a +3. This means you’ll have at minimum a +12 to hit, maximum of a +14 to hit, and will do a total of a d8 + 8 (up to +10 if your weapon is a +3!) damage per hit! Not to mention Divine Smites for even more burst! Oh, and you can channel your Vow of Enmity for Advantage on whoever’s back you particularly want to break today.

Impervious - Have I ever mentioned that Artificer is really dumb when it comes to AC? With Enhanced Defenses, a Cloak of Protection, and a Ring of Protection you will have a grand total of 20 AC with just Chain Mail, and up to 22 with Plate! (23 if you took the Defense fighting style.) If you really want to piss off your DM you can also technically equip a shield to bump your AC up to TWENTY FOUR. (25 with the Defense fighting style! That means a Tarrasque has a 30% chance not to hit you!) And to top it off your Ring and Cloak give you +2 to all saving throws, meaning that even your lowest saving throw (DEX) is a +2 and your highest (CHA) is a +10. Oh and to top all this off you have Arcane Deflection to bump your AC by 2 or your saving throws by 4 in a pinch, and if all else fails you have the Shield spell to increase your AC by five.

CONS

Overachieving - You’re somewhat bogged down by Concentration spells but are far more bogged down by your Reactions. You only have one reaction per turn which you need for Arcane Deflection, Flash of Genius, the Guardian Armor’s pull, and of course your Attacks of Opportunity and reaction spells.

Vignette - The vast majority of your features only come back after a Long Rest. The only things you get from a Short Rest is your Channel Divinity and a single level 1 spell slot once per Long Rest with Arcane Recover. You’re perfectly capable of fighting without them but all your best tricks are limited by spell slots or charges, meaning that with the exception of making enemies piss their pants you will have to keep mostly to punching if you expect to have a long night on the prowl.

Viable - Your Charisma, Constitution, and Dexterity are all lower than I’d like but that’s the problem with a three-way multiclass. You can squeeze some more ASIs out of both Paladin and Artificer if you ditch the Wizard levels (Paladin 4 / Artificer 16) but unless your DM is willing to homebrew stat-increase items for DEX and CHA you’re going to have to keep one of them low. Low Charisma hurts your Paladin features, low Dexterity hurts for AC and saving throws, and low Constitution hurts for obvious reasons. If you’re lucky enough to get good stat rolls along with a 13 in Strength go ahead and take them but it’s very unlikely that you will only have to dump one stat. (IE Wisdom)

But you don’t need endurance when one punch is enough to knock them out? Hit ‘em and hit ‘em hard; they can’t resist if they’re unconscious. Get into the thick of things and break some bones! Just remember to call for backup when a fight gets too heated. The sheriff can’t lose her best woman.

(Artwork from uhdpixel.com)

#DnD 5e #dnd #dnd build #dnd artificer #League of Legends #League of Legends Vi

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mrneighbourlove · 4 years ago

Text

Fall of a Dynasty: Ch 8. The Hardest Choices

The hostile takeover was more chaotic than Jaster expected. Going through the Imperial Capital and up to the palace, the man was able to convince some to fight for his cause. To take over the Empire from a cowardly Zannah. His main and equipped fighters included the Theron he swayed to his side, monsters Exodrum provided, and a secret weapon the god gave him. Attacking the palace, he sent citizens first to attack the palace guards as more experienced soldiers took aim. “Faster! We shall rewrite Hasai history through fire and blood!”

As they were making their way into the courtyard, a portal open horizontally up, and a group of strangers dropped down. ‘Jaster Fett’ only needed to recognize his sister to know he was in danger. With a whistle, he directed his militia. “There’s the Empress! Kill the False Emperor! Free the Empire from her weakness and madness! I will secure the throne room!”

Zannah saw most of her guards were either dead, busy fighting others, or spread out. They’d be on their own. “Manaco. Prove yourself to my daughter. Griffith, you go find Annuciata’s blimp and get it ready to fly. Leere, Zizi. You deal with the traitors and the confused citizens. The rest with me.”

Rinku drew the Master Sword and a shield. Griffith and Athena grabbed some swords of the fallen off the ground. Leere channeled her magic, conjuring the undead beneath the ground. Zannah took a few deep breathes to ready her fire, and charged barefoot as a mob started to close in with swords, pitchforks and fire balls.

"Ever see what happens when two Lorleidians combine magic, Zannah?" Zizi was not happy about the empress shoving her through the portal. She should have had the chance to at least say goodbye to her husband. Yet, what was done was done. Manaco knew what his mother was insinuating and gently took her hand.

"What do you get... when you combine fire and earth?" Concentrating her magical energy, her earth and his fire started to mix. Nihilus had to be contained. He could not leave the palace. "Magma."

Then a loud whoosh, the ground shook and it started to get unbearably hot...

“Zizi, don’t you dare burn down my palace! This is where Athena and Manaco will live!” Zannah jumped over the start of the magma, saving a guard from being killed by a Theron with a jump kick. Her brother was already disappearing into the palace with a small detachment of guards.

Athena and Griffith felt the heat, even as they launched and reflected fire at the enemy. They knew who to kill, and who to maim. Citizens who were confused and angry, and the murderous soldiers.

"It's a fucking building, Zannah. No matter what happens to it, we cannot let your brother out. We have to contain him if we hope to have a chance of Rinku cutting him down." Zizi was not budging on this one. "If you're going to have a little faith in rekindling a friendship instead of just tolerating each other, then trust me!"

“It’s built history where I raised my family.” Zannah roundhouse kicked a basilisk in the face. “Not to mention there are innocents inside this building. Just-“ Zannah launched a lightning bolt down the throat of the beast. “Don’t burn it down! I trust you to be safe!”

Leere successfully conjured her a few Floor Masters to terrify and grab militant citizens. “Come on! We can trap him inside the palace!”

Magma lined the outside of the palace. No one was getting in or out without serious damage. Due to the contents being molten rock, no Hasai who could wield fire magic could extinguish the heat. Manaco then started his fight. Years of training were currently going to pay off now. He never had a desire to be a warrior... but he had the desire to protect his family. He used his magic to set himself ablaze and then started taking down enemies. A Vatra's fire could never hurt the user.

Zizi decided to deal with trouble the old fashioned way. Nothing worked better than a quick crater in the ground to hold traitors in place.

Griffith kissed his sister on the cheek, giving her good luck as he fought his way to the docking hanger. Athena looked to Manaco, eyes raised as she joined Rinku and her mother towards the palace. “Manaco! Come on!”

Manaco followed after the twins, leaving a trail of scorched footprints in his place.

“Don’t you need a sword?” Athena shouted behind her as she stabbed a man in the chest to defend herself.

Manaco simply snatched a foe by the throat and within seconds, all that remained was a pile of ash.

"Swords are overrated, 'wife'. Much more fun to simply disintegrate." Even now, he had a sense of humor.

Athena didn’t laugh, simply worried about their lives.

Outside, Leere got back to back with Zizi, each using their respective abilities to restrain the separatists. “So ‘Earth Sage’. You ever think that you’d be helping the Fire Witch like this? More important question, don’t you Kahli is going to kill you for bringing Manaco here?”

"Leere, you know as well as I do that I didn't bring Manaco here," Zizi created a sizable crater and trapped many enemies within it. "Manaco followed his damn dick here."

“Zizi. Your daughters fuck around like bunnies. Least he-shit!”

Leere pulled Zizi down as they went behind cover from a volley of arrows being shot from above. With the clench of her fist, a wall master took hold of the archer, dragging him into shadows. “That was too close. Least your boy seems to be finding a steady career. Did I tell you I’m expecting a daughter?”

"Urboro is the one that likes to fuck and she's within her right to have a fun night with whoever she wishes." Zizi yelped when Leere pulled her to the side and blocked out the arrows. "And you should talk, I know how much you loved to party with the old snake." The Zemlja then arched an eyebrow. "... you're not pregnant so I'm assuming Sunny is. If you're going to have a kid, then you're definitely going to have to take some precautions around a farm. I thought my plantations wouldn't be too bad, but my kids still found a way to get into trouble."

“My party days are long behind me Zizi. And yeah, Sunny’s the one who’ll carry my kid.” When Zizi tilted her head in confusion, Leere explained it with one word. “Magic. But let’s focus on staying alive.”

Meanwhile, as Zannah raced through the palace with Rinku, Manaco and Athena, there was a small ticking from above them on the roof. Rinku was in the middle of cutting down another Theron to heed the noise. Looking up, Zannah leap forward as she was separated from the others. Between them, T0-D landed, two shimmering blue guardian swords drawn.

“Tod! You too?!” Zannah leaked heartache in her voice.

“Confirmation: Reprogrammed. God of War. Must obey. I-I-I’m sorry.” His eye suddenly turned from red to black. “Voice commands shutting down.”

The android swung with lightning fast speed at Rinku and Athena, both women needing to protect themselves. Athena gritted through her teeth as she struggled in a lock of blades. “Mother. Go!”

Manaco was busy keeping the pathway clear for the women. There seemed to be an endless supply of Hasai ready to throw away their lives for this brother of Zannah's. Idiots, the lot of them. Could they not see that sometimes a love of power would only lead to ruin? When T0-D suddenly appeared out of nowhere, Manaco knew the fight was suddenly getting serious. The robot was a deadly fighter. He could not allow T0-D to touch him. Stories from his father, Covarog, and Malik were enough to know that one wrong strike could mean death. As the robot tried to push back Rinku and Athena, Manaco zoomed in behind T0-D, kicking out the robot's legs. Rinku had the weapon to use against Nihilus and had to go with Zannah.

Rinku gave Manaco a nod of understanding, running off. “You better stay alive kid!”

T0-D immediately kicked himself off the floor, his talon feet giving Manaco a hard kick in the chest. Athena was quick to get between them, firing a stream of fire at him. “Manaco! Don’t use the same strategy twice. He’ll learn and use it against you.”

"Then exactly how are we supposed to beat him?" Manaco asked his to-be wife. "... I don't suppose I can melt him into a pile of slag."

Athena tried to launch fire directly at T0-D, but the android countered by spinning his joints at sonic speeds, both blades rotating with the motion of a turbine. The flames were nearly propelled to the sides. The swords cut sparks into the floor as he walked towards the Hasai. “Do what we must.”

T0-D suddenly opened up a path within the spinning. Just enough for his head to light up and fire a Tesla bolt at the pair, dividing them apart.

Manaco had to think quickly. Neither of them had the speed like T0-D did, so avoidance was key. Yet, if his limbs were disrupted, the two of them could possibly subdue him. Zipping out of the way of the bolt, he then told Athena, "We have to make sure he can't hurt us. We need to take out his arms."

Hearing that, T0-D replied by activating two more arms. Clicking on the handles, two more Guardian blades lit up. Athena looked to Manaco quickly, giving him a deep scowl. “Fight with your actions, not words.”

Throwing her sword at T0-D, Athena took a risk by disarming herself, but she channeled her magic, and tried to blast the android apart with large bursts of fire. “You’ll only get on chance. Go on my signal.”

T0-D danced around the fire, taking multiple swings at Manaco.

There had to be something that he could use to stop the arms from spinning. Manaco took a quick glance around the room. There were several old weapons on the wall, but some still too ancient or not useful in this situation. Then, he settled on an old morning star. The chain on it could prove useful but... would it hold? He dodged once, then twice, and rolled forward, jumping onto the wall, and grabbing the weapon. Evading yet another strike, Manaco had to calculate the exact right moment to get close. Not only did he have to worry about the sharp blades, but he had to make sure Athena had enough time to react. Almost... almost... there!

Manaco leapt into the middle of the arms, getting nicked in the process, but managed to wrap the length chain around T0-D's arms... and pulled as hard as he could. He gritted his teeth, putting a foot on T0-D's leg and strained. "Athena! Now!!!"

Athena changed her attack to lightning, pouring her power to short circuit T0-D’s weapons. “Take out his limbs!”

With a yell, Manaco pulled as hard as he could, the spikes ripping through T0-D's wires and disengaging a few of the limbs. The Vatra then used his extreme heat to weld the joints on the others, so they could not move.

T0-D shambled about on the ground, silently unable to fight back, only rage filling him.

Athena didn’t even take a breath to stop the mission. “We need to go now. Can you move?”

Manaco grunted as he released the chains and panted heavily. He had avoided major damage, but was still injured.

"I'll be fine." He used his own fire to seal his wounds for the time being. "We need to go help your mother."

Zannah and Rinku had finally cornered the formers brother up by the observatory. Having chased him through the palace and killing every lackey thrown at him, they were finally ready to finish this little separatist movement. All he could do was sick the last view guards he had left on Rinku while Zannah danced around them. “It’s over Nihilus.”

The man tried to swing a dagger at her, but the Ocho ducked low, and swinging a fist upwards encased in fire, she physically punched his hand off. The man screamed, stumbling backwards onto a deck. From outside, even Zizi and Leere could make him out. “And now, you die again.”

“Wait! Stop!”

There was something in his voice that indeed made Zannah stop from executing him. A closer look at this Jaster Fett, and the woman’s mouth went dry. Despite what the decades that passed between them, Zannah could still remember all the vivid expressions of her brother. His joy, his anger, and most importantly his fear. “Seras?”

Rinku killed the last guard, pausing as the two siblings shared their little reunion.

Seras clenched his stump, sweat dripping down his face. Although given a brand-new body, he still had the same energy that he had as a teenager. “Yes Zannah. It’s me.”

The twin sister shook her head, disbelief filling her. “It can’t be you.”

“Why? Because it would be so much simpler for you to kill our older brother?”

That struck a nerve with Zannah, but in a different direction. “What? It was so much simpler for you to kill your twin sister than?”

Seras clenched his teeth, cartelizing the stump with his fire. “Of course. You watched me die so long ago on the plains of Hyrule Field. You took control of the Kikai Empire, when it should have been my birthright. You got to live while I was burning in hell! Exodrum tortured my soul for my failure in battle. When the god suddenly came to me with the opportunity to return to the land of the living and seize the Empire for myself, I took it. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anyone?”

Manaco heard the commotion up ahead and reached out and grabbed Athena by the shoulders. He motioned for her to be quiet and the two of them listened in on Zannah's conversation. All of them assumed that it was Nihilus who had returned. This was not going to be easy for Zannah...

Leere was motioning for Zizi to slowly lift them up with vines to the balcony to rejoin the others.

As for Zannah, her eyes nearly glazed over. This was one last cruel prank of the gods against her. “Seras. I mourned you. I built a legacy that you might have cherished. And now that you’re back, now that you’re alive, you tried to have me killed?”

“It’s the Hasai way. And it’s what Exodrum and his allies wanted.”

“Fuck the Hasai way! Fuck Exodrum! You’re my twin brother! My brother! I loved you! I was the only one who did!”

A long silence filled the air between them.

Zizi watched the scene unfold as did Leere. The situation just went from bad to worse. This was Zannah's twin brother, not her psycho elder brother. How was this going to be taken care of? She glanced at Leere with a frown. This was supposed to be a quick mission, not one of debate. Manaco, on the other hand, only saw one objective; to kill Seras. He had caused enough devastation to the Hasai people. More of this would only bring suffering to the innocents. Taking a deep breath, Manaco outstretched his hand, and whispered to Athena, "We can't let him hurt our people any further... do you agree with me?"

“Yes, but...” Athena was conflicted.

Leere whispered to Zizi, still out of earshot of the others. “This might not be Nihilus, but he was still a sociopath. He scared Kanisa and took joy in those he killed.”

Seras sighed, smiling from ear to ear. “You know Zannah, it’s nice to see you grow up to be such a fine, beautiful, as well as capable woman. Can’t we simply just divide the Empire amongst ourselves, for the betterment of our people, or the betterment of-HKK!!!”

To everyone’s shock, Zannah still carried out her mission. In a quick movement, she superheated her hand to drive it through Seras’ chest, grab his heart, and squeeze it into paste. The man’s eyes nearly exploded out of his sockets as he spat out blood. “Sister?”

“Oh god. Oh sweet merciful heaven forgive me.” Zannah, traumatized by her duty, pulled out too fast. She didn’t even remember to grab him. The last look Seras gave her was a similar one she saw the first time he died. Fear. Yet even worse, there was sadness now. His body tumbled backwards, falling off the balcony and onto the pavement down below. Leere has to pull herself close to Zizi as they watched the body fall past them and hit the ground.

Zannah crumbled to her knees, clenching her bloody arm, shivering with the upmost guilt and heartache. Small sobs escaped her as she broke down. This was the second time she had to see her twin brother die. And being the cause of death directly this time was too much to take. “I’m sorry. Oh god I’m so sorry.”

Zizi was not expecting Zannah to suddenly kill Seras. As Leere grabbed her, the Zemlja held tight to her friend. To kill her own brother for the sake of the people... what was going through Zannah's mind? Manaco, too, was shocked. He glanced at Athena, not knowing what to say.

Athena was horrified. It happened so quickly. She didn’t have words.

It seemed that Rinku did. She walked over to Zannah, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss Zannah...”

The tired Ocho didn’t respond as Zizi hoisted herself and Leere up.

Zizi said nothing. She had no idea of what to say. There was nothing she could do to make Zannah feel any better.

Zannah’s senses only came back to her when she heard the Danjurian blimp come flying by. “...Athena. Manaco. Fly over the cities and declare marshal law. Declare your decree as Emperor and Empress.”

Manaco really did not like being told what to do. Yet, for once, he was not going to argue with Zannah. Holding Athena's hand, he followed her to announce the decree to the citizens.

Griffith threw a ladder down to them so they could climb aboard. Annuciata made devices that could amplify their voices. As the pair traveled over the Hasai capital, nearly the whole island had gathered to see who would come out on top of the civil war. Taking Manaco’s hand, she waited as Griffith flew into view. “Citizens of the Kikai Empire! The usurper is dead! His allies are dead! But hope survives! I, Princess Athena, will be taking the throne from my dear mother. Together, with my new husband Manaco, a Hasai of Hyrule, we shall lead you to a bright and rich future as Emperor Manaco and Empress Athena of the Empire! Now return to your homes! Peace needs to be established!”

While Manaco and Athena were occupied announcing the victory to the Hasai people, Zizi watched Zannah crumple with her grief. The Zemlja supposed she was lucky in that aspect. She never had lost a family member to death. True, her mother passed, but... did that really count? She never knew her mother or her father. All she had was her sisters. Now, Zizi had a husband and many children. Her family was growing... and she never thought of losing any of them. She prayed to the spirits that she'd die before any of her children would. Zizi could not stomach the thought of watching one of her babies pass before her... or her husband. Yet Zannah had to kill her own brother. Watch him die. Twice.

"You and I didn't get along at first. We didn't like each other. But then, we came to know friendship and that... that was broken, I know. But this... I know I once told you I wanted you to experience my pain but... not like this. Never like this." Zizi cautiously put a hand on Zannah's shoulder. "I'm... I'm sorry about your brother, Zannah."

“It’s ok. You don’t have to pretend. I got exactly what was coming to me.” Zannah sounded so... hallow. So broken. She truly believed that she deserved this. Was this not what fate wanted otherwise?

"No matter how horrible someone has been," Zizi pulled her into a tight hug. It still hurt what Zannah did to her family, did to Kahli. She was not sure if that feeling of mistrust would ever go away. But the right thing to do was to go on for the sake of her son and Athena. There would be no more strife. The next generation depended upon it. "No one deserves suffering or pain. I... I forgive you..."

Zannah hugged tightly back, tears swelling in her eyes. “I’m sorry Zizi.”

“Pathetic. Even in victory.”

The voice froze Zannah to Zizi. From a fire place, a corpse that had tumbled in rose up, flames leaking from the eye sockets, mouth, and cuts Rinku gave it. It was a frightening Avatar indeed. “I gave you a challenge to rise up to. You succeeded, and yet here you are, grovelling like a dog. Perhaps your daughter will serve me better.”

Leere and Rinku instinctively stood to protect the others. “Get back you vile bastard.”

"It's not pathetic to have emotions, you... you... conceited, power-hungry egomaniac!!!" Zizi held Zannah tighter when Exodrum appeared. "Why don't you just simmer down to a dull spark and stay that way!!!"

“Hmm, perhaps I should take Zolori under my wing?” A wolf like growl echoed around the room. “I own the Hasai. I am their god. They are my war bound children. As God of War and Fire, I burn away weakness. Zannah. You are weak.”

"A god should love their children, should take care of their children! The only reason the Hasai follow you is fear! And that's not true admiration! They're only doing it for survival!" Zizi spat at Exodrum. "Zannah isn't weak! You're the weak one! You're a coward! You use nasty tactics to get what you want and if someone dares to step out of line, then they're not your perfect, brainless, soldier! You're no god!!! You're just a... a... a fucking piece of ember that managed to set a fire! You're no true flame! No deity! You're an imposter!!! You're the tyrant!!!"

“Get back you bloated carcass.” Rinku swung the Master Sword defiantly.

This seemed to get a raise out of the deity, as with a raise of his hand, he blasted the group with a steaming torrent of air. “Silence your tongues. No mortals can judge me.”

"But I can." Vatra had appeared in the room. There she was in all her glorious beauty. A figure completely composed of the hottest fire. "Zemlja is not the only one that the Earth Sage prays to. You forget that half of her children are of flame."

Exodrum couldn’t believe his eyes, quickly shedding the mortal body to become a being of pure fire. “No.”

Behind Vatra, another spirit appeared. This one was of Hyrule, holding a more concrete form of an eagle. Under its claws it held an orb of light. This was Eldin, a spirit of light. “Exodrum. You hold no sway over the Hasai no more.”

“Lies! Lies from spirits no one cares for!”

"You are to be nothing, Exodrum. You abused your position." Vatra sounded very angry. "The deities are supposed to watch over their people. We have all seen failure at some point. Yet, you, on the other hand, take pleasure from the torment of the Hasai. No longer will they be under your guidance. Today, that stops. The new Empress and Emperor prayed to me. I will now watch over the people as well as my Lorleidian children. You," She gestured. "Go away. And don't you dare come back."

“No! You have NO AUTHORITY!”

Eldin opened his wings, blasting Exodrum with holy light. “Zannah gave the Empire to Hyrule. As such, its people and lands will also be protected by the Holy Goddess. You are banished by Hylian and Lorliedian decree.”

“Curse you both! I’ll have my subjects back!”

"I'll cease your burning before you come back to these people whom you have mistreated." Vatra warned Exodrum. "Flee. And do not return."

The light of Exodrum scattered, with Eldin protecting the mortals as the fire flew in all directions. Once the flames settled, Eldin looked to Zizi and the others.

“Earth Sage. You have done well here. So too have the other Sages. You will soon meet the others. Fate will bring you together for a great purpose. They will be chosen, as you were chosen. Walk with tranquility of the Forest.” Eldin squawked an eagle’s cry as he vanished into light, leaving the women and Vatra alone.

Zannah still held onto Zizi’s arm, taking slow breaths. The days events physically exhausted her. Was it even supper time? She didn’t know anymore.

Vatra still remained. There was a lot of upcoming work to do. Still, she had a task to complete now. "Zannah... a word?"

“Alone?”

"Yes. Unless you prefer the company."

“I’ll be fine.” Zannah said that more to reassure herself then the others, but she meant it for all. Rinku gently took Zizi by the hand to let her know it’d be ok to leave. Once the other three closed the door to the observatory, Zannah’s shoulders dropped as she sat back in a chair. “I don’t suppose you’re going to overlook my faults? Worried you favour Zizi and still feel I need more punishment.”

"While each and every being on this planet has faults, it is unjust to judge a person based upon their wrong doings. Yet, that being said, there are those who revel in those faults, and use it to hurt others." Vatra was like Zemlja, in a way. She was wise and just as old as the earth spirit. Yet, unlike Zemlja, she had a temper. "You have certainly pushed your luck."

“Your point?” Zannah looked briefly at the blood of her brother, still fresh on her arm, a coating against her blackened hand.

"My point is... despite what you have done, you did somehow manage to learn humility." Vatra gazed at the woman. "You learned that you can never be the strongest, the most powerful. There will always be another who is stronger. And lastly, you also learned that you can be hurt just like the others you've hurt. You learned a very hard way. I deem that lesson enough."

“I have a feeling you’re not here just to lecture me? Gods can use pastors and priests for that.”

"No, I am not here just to lecture you. I am also here to tell you I will watch over your people." Vatra promised Zannah. "A shrine will be erected here to where they can pray to me if wished."

“Anything else?” Zannah was becoming more and more disheartened by the second. “Or does the pretty spirit want to move on?”

"Zizi told me you fear of being damned." Vatra asked. "Is that what you truly think of yourself?"

“I’m a killer. I’m a betrayer of friends. I just murdered my own brother. So yes. I do believe my soul is well beyond damned. My children are grown adults now. Part of me is scared to start aging again. Because I know the second I punch my ticket out I’ll be right back in the clutches of Exodrum. Or maybe I’ll be lucky and go to whatever your version of hell is.”

"A Lorleidian will only be damned if he or she turns his back on their people, or us spirits. It's a high offense, one that is not forgiven." Vatra then reminded Zannah. "There are even those who are deemed the worst have a chance a redemption. I think you have found yours in apologizing for your wrongs and trying to make for a brighter future."

Zannah looked Vatra in the eyes, shrugging her discontent away. “You have anything else to say or give me?”

"Is there something you wish to know? Followers of any of the Seven Siblings may ask, and if within our abilities, will be granted an answer."

“Can I be given a free pass into heaven? Can I be freed of my guilt? Can I get a kiss from her flaming goddess?” Zannah said the last request in a bitter sarcastic tone. “What advice can you give me? I’m done ruling. I’m done being a Demi god. I’m just a tired, worn woman who wants to settle down the rest of her days. I’m no sage. I’m no preacher.”

"Only you can make your way to the heavens, and only you can absolve yourself of guilt. And a kiss usually pertains to a blessing." Vatra then assured Zannah. "Life has been difficult for you. Yet, I assure you, it will get better. Will you take my word for it?"

“I suppose that’ll be a start.”

"You will live out the rest of your years with Annuciata and you will be blessed with grandchildren one day. Not all hope for the future is lost."

“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Zannah stood up, granting the goddess a respectful bow.

"Until next time, Zannah." With that, Vatra vanished.

Zannah sat back into her chair, unsure on how to continue with the future. Long term at least. When the other women entered, she took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “Zizi. Rinku. Leere. I think it’s time I have one last formal meeting with your sister, Earth Sage.”

"...?" Zizi looked a little puzzled. Why would Zannah want another meeting with her? Yet, she expressed no objection. So, she took a seat next to the woman.

“I think it’s only fair I transition my power to Athena officially in front of Zarazu and Annuciata. The other countries can get mail if they are foolish enough to decline an invitation.”

"...? I'm surprised that you want to do that." Zizi held up a single hand. "No offense, but... you just lost Exodrum."

“No. I just killed my brother.” Zannah stood up, overlooking the balcony. “Thinks it’s time to reassure the others a more civilized ruler will be taking over.”

She looked hollowly down at the corpse of her brother.

"... you did what you had to do, Zannah. It was him or your people. Your family." Zizi reminded her gently. "Sometimes... family can be the ones who hurt us the most."

“Funny that. I was doing the hurting...”

________________________________________________________________

Previous Ch.https://mrneighbourlove.tumblr.com/post/621742371644850176/fall-of-a-dynasty-ch-7-first-steps

Final Ch. https://mrneighbourlove.tumblr.com/post/621742911768477696/fall-of-a-dynasty-ch-9-new-lineage

Crossover with @ridersoftheapocalypse

#crossover #Hasai #Zannah #Zizi #Rinku #Leere #Manaco #Athena #Death in the Family

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mst3kproject · 5 years ago

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Daughter of Dr. Jekyll

John Agar’s in this. So, for that matter, is Gloria Talbott from Girls Town and The Leech Woman, and it was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, who brought us The Amazing Transparent Man. It was released on a double-bill with The Cyclops, which I’ve already reviewed, and while all that seems to promise us an utter crapfest, the premise at least sounded intriguing. Then I actually pressed play, and was greeted by an opening consisting of gray fog, theremin music, and a bored narrator. Oh, yeah. This is gonna suck.

Said opening narration very (and I mean very) quickly introduces us to the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which a distinguished scientist used a strange potion to turn himself into a werewolf! Wait… that’s not what happened in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at all. Wasn’t it a story about how every person has the capacity for evil and that’s part of what makes us human, and… aw, fuck it, this is a John Agar movie. Okay, sure, a werewolf. Whatever you say, Portentous 50’s Narrator. Moving on.

Janet Smith and her fiancé George Hastings arrive at her family’s palatial home, which she will inherit on her upcoming twenty-first birthday. That’s not all that’s come down the family line, though. Janet’s last name is not Smith, but Jekyll, and she was born after his experiments in lycanthropy had begun. Might she pass it on to her children? Or might Janet herself not be affected? Or is her father’s old friend Dr. Lomas an evil hypnotist using her for his own ends? Wait… what?

After sitting through crap like The Incredible Petrified World and Creatures from the Abyss, I kind of want to give extra points to Daughter of Dr. Jekyll. It’s actually fairly well-constructed for the most part, it’s rarely boring, and the sets representing the Jekyll family estate are very nice. There’s a plot I can follow, I know who the characters are, and so forth… my standards have dropped so low, that’s actually kind of impressive. The creepy delivery guy who hangs around whittling stakes and sowing discontent is pretty effective, himself, even though he’s a very one-dimensional character.

There’s still plenty of badness to be had, of course. The movie appears to be set in the first decade of the twentieth century, but it’s not very committed to that. The sound is frequently weird, from the absolute cacophony of frogs at the opening to musical cues that I swear were stolen from Robot Monster. There’s a random cameo from a very 50’s pin-up girl who appears, gets killed, and vanishes without us ever even learning her name. The climactic fight between George and the werewolf is extremely shatnery and the werewolf makeup is even lamer than in Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory.

Even worse, there’s an entire subplot that kind of doesn’t even bother happening. Most movies that are going to involve angry villagers have some scenes in a local pub or something to show the rabble being roused – even The Giant Spider Invasion had that. In Daughter of Dr. Jekyll we hear about angry villagers from a couple of different people but never actually see them until the pitchfork-toting crowd appears out of nowhere at the end. It’s like an angry flash mob. All we needed was a few thirty-second scenes, but I guess this movie couldn’t afford villagers. The whole climax is obscured by fog that makes it very hard to tell who’s who and what’s going on.

As usual, we’re confused about who our main character is supposed to be. The person whose eyes we see the story through is Janet. It’s Janet whose arc we follow, and Janet who we learn the most about, but she’s a very frustrating character because she is entirely without agency. The only choice she appears to make in the entire film is agreeing to marry George, before this story begins. Otherwise, she’s letting him or Lomas tell her what to do, completely incapable of making her own decisions (she even says as much, when George asks her if she’d like to go to London and elope). When the action occurs, she’s drugged with sleeping pills or in Lomas’ hypnotic thrall.

Even the very premise strips Janet of control over her own fate. She is not the heir to a scientific legacy (as other descendants of Henry Jekyll in other movies have been) but to a genetic one. Tanya in Lady Frankenstein chose to continue and improve on her father’s work. She might not have. Janet, on the other hand, cannot opt out of the family’s potentially tainted DNA. This lack of control is reinforced through smaller events as well: George won’t let Janet change her mind about marrying him, and when the young couple tells Lomas they don’t want his money or estate, he reveals that both were actually Janet’s the whole time. Like Eddie in The Beatniks, Janet is basically a victim even when good things are happening – they always happen to her rather than because of her.

The character who actually tries to take control of the situation, and who I think we’re supposed to see as the ‘hero’, is George – but we know nothing about George. He loves Janet and he has terrible fashion sense, and that’s really it. It’s her family we learn about, and her mental disintegration that follows. George spends most of the movie just hovering on the sidelines watching, and even at the end he doesn’t do very much. He explains what’s really going on to Janet and the audience (though we’ve already figured it out) and gets his ass kicked by a geriatric werewolf. The monster is actually killed by the mob of villagers, while George just stands there with Janet sobbing into his shirt. The movie probably wouldn’t have been much different without him.

The thing that really takes the viewer out of the movie, however, and does so repeatedly for its entire seventy-minute running time, is that it can’t make up its mind what its monster is supposed to be. I already mentioned the narrator’s conviction that Mr. Hyde was a werewolf, but it gets way weirder and more confusing than that.

The servants at the Jekyll house also talk about werewolves, and tell Janet and George in threatening voices that they know how to deal with such creatures. On the other hand, when Dr. Lomas himself tells them what happened, he tells the story we’re familiar with: Dr. Jekyll wanted to separate the good and evil parts of a person, and ended up giving the evil in himself a free agency of its own. This made me think maybe the servants were just a bunch of superstitious peasants? Maybe they called Mr. Hyde a werewolf because they didn’t know what else to call him? That almost started to make sense… but then George picks up a book about werewolves, and in its pages he reads that a werewolf leaves its tomb on the night of the full moon so it can drink blood, and can only be killed by a wooden stake through the heart.

Wait. What?

That… that’s not werewolves! Werewolves are killed by silver bullets! Stakes through the heart are vampires! Werewolves don’t have tombs! What is going on here?

By the time the climax rolls around, we’ve already figured out Dr. Lomas’ evil plan, and sure enough, it turns out he’s hypnotizing Janet into believing she’s a werewolf so she will commit suicide and he can have her family’s money. That makes sense in a Scooby-Doo kind of way, I guess, and I can accept it for the sake of the movie… but then he actually turns into a werewolf and goes out to suck blood! What? What? How did that happen? Was he playing with Jekyll’s formula? But Jekyll turned into Hyde when he took the drug, not at the full moon! What the fuck?

The movie never explains itself. We’re just supposed to take this bizarre conflation for granted. But vampires, werewolves, and Mr. Hyde are three totally different types of monster! Vampires are undead corpses who avoid decay and death by sucking blood. Werewolves are living people who transform under the full moon and kill out of animalistic rage. Mr. Hyde was Dr. Jekyll’s repressed evil side given form. You could probably argue that all three have the same root, in our need to conform to certain standards in order to make society work, but Daughter of Dr. Jekyll doesn’t try to do that. It just mixes and matches story bits at all, combining conflicting mythologies and leaving very visible seams. In fact, we may as well consider this a Frankenstein movie, too!

I can only imagine the fun Mike and the Bots would have had with this confusion. I’m picturing a game show in which they must match the weapon with the monster, and if they lose, they get eaten. Tom would have figured out that you survive by picking what ought to be the wrong answer. Crow would not.

The opening narration of Daughter of Dr. Jekyll notes that Robert Louis Stephenson’s book is a classic, and it is so for good reason. It’s an exploration of the evil within us all, the intrusive thoughts and secret desires we would rather attribute to an alter ego than ever admit to anyone, and the fact that the sinner is as much a part of each of us as the saint. Daughter of Dr. Jekyll throws all that out the window by equating its villain with a vampire/werewolf, making him a sort of mindless monster. It’s confusing and annoying, and its compelling source material deserved far better.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #daughter of dr jekyll #oh shit it's john agar #50s #you is a warwelf #just fuckin weird

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stem-sister-scuffle · 10 months ago

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STEM SISTER SCUFFLE: ROUND 1 MASHUP 13

Alphys (Undertale) vs Maru (Stardew Valley)

Alphys is a Roboticist, Biologist and Souls/Determination Researcher!

Maru is a Roboticist, Medic (Nurse), Biologist and has an interest in Astronomy!

Why you should vote for each contestant:

Alphys:

"Because she messed with DETERMINATION and made Amalgamates, blending monsters into each other to form horrible combinations of undead beings. She’s a lesbian"

"Man made horrors, overwhelming guilt, cute lizard girl, bisexual"

"SHE'S SO CUTE. She's awkward and shy but you can tell she knows a lot about what she does!! She's also a bit of a tragic character considering her biological endeavors have gone kinda. wrong. SHE'S BI AND LIKE ANIME 🫶"

"Ultra qualified women with deep scientific knowledge who are also massive anime nerds and can't hold a simple conversation represent!"

"idk she's kind of just. The Royal Scientist . built a robot and put a soul in it. tried to bring monsters back to life, this failed miserably. did research on souls and determination. has a kickass lab. also nerdy as hell and can't just. tell the truth to save her life. love her"

"I don't think we have a word for "works with SOULs and DETERMINATION, including fusing ghosts with robot bodies and creating immortal abominations of multiple people stuck together." I guess you could probably just put her down as Robotics. Mechatronics or something. Like sure she melted a bunch of guys, but she takes responsibility! Feeds em dog food! That takes responsibility. Bisexual"

"She had a friend who was a ghost, and they wanted to be famous! So she used her knowledge of robotics to build them a new body how they wanted! He became famous, as he wished! And Alphys worked on a bigger, better body that fit him well, though it used up a lot of power and needed more upgrades, hence why it wasn’t used often until the final battle with him (Him being Mettaton). But basically, Mettaton got a new body the way he liked it, changed his name, and started going by different pronouns (Mettaton is only ever referred to by they/them when people reference the ghost). Alphys allowed him to feel much happier as himself, and they’re great friends! Though, she did pretend that she created Mettaton and his SOUL herself, no ghostliness involved. But Mettaton did agree to that.

Because of her perceived achievement, (though her actual achievement was also pretty cool) Alphys was hired as the Royal Scientist for the Underground, and got to work with Asgore, the king of all monsters! She continued working with Mettaton, and Asgore asked her to try and find a way to break the barrier that was trapping them Underground without killing humans. Alphys found an interesting thing called Determination, or DT within humans using the SOULs of humans Asgore had killed and allowed her access to.

She tested it on some flowers in his garden to see what would happen, and nothing did. That she realized at the time, anyway. She had actually injected DT into a flower sprinkled with the remains of Asriel, the king’s dead son, and brought him back to life as a flower. Problem was, Asriel, or Flowey as he eventually called himself, didn’t have a SOUL anymore, since he was a flower. Thinking that nothing had happened, Alphys decided to try and see if it could really bring back monsters that had fallen down/were on the verge of death. She asked people for their family members that had fallen down. The monsters that had fallen down were basically dead, but the last of their magic hadn’t quite run out yet. However, their magic was being spent keeping their bodies from turning to dust, and they were unable to move, pretty much in a coma. So really, if it didn’t work, no harm done! Either it works and they live, it kills them, or it doesn’t do anything and they still die!

Alphys conducted her tests, and at first, it worked! All of the monsters were getting up and moving around! She contacted the families to send them back, but when she was about to, she discovered they had all started melting and had stuck together and merged into one being. She chickened out for fear of how the families would react, and proceeded to ignore a bunch of letters for quite a while. Eventually, she did own up to it, though she was immediately fired (by the EX-queen, not Asgore. Was that even legal?). The families were just happy to have their loved ones back, and while they were still somewhat upset, understandably so, they didn’t really blame her all too much.

ALSO!! She got a girlfriend!! She’s canonically expressed interest in Undyne, Captain of the Royal Guard and who would eventually be her girlfriend, Asgore, and the unknowable! She has made mistakes. Big ones. But honestly, I don’t blame her for the mistakes. The real problem was that she is incredibly anxious and let that get the better of her, leading to her not telling people important things that they deserved to know. She’s not the best at being honest."

Maru:

"She is interested in robotics and even builds a giant robot in one of her special events if the player is close enough friends with her. Her father was the one who introduced her to STEM in general, as he is researching the environment in game and I believe it's stated or implied that she often helps him with his research (I'm pretty sure, at least, but it has been a while since I've played and this event is at the very beginning of the game)"

"She's this teenager who is just brilliant despite, you know, living god knows where in a tiny town. She built an actual robot and then it immediately gained sentience so she just set it free. So she's like a scientist with morals!!! Also she can be a love interest in the game. So you can romance this scientist girl, and some of her fav gifts are battery packs and gold bars which she uses for building robots <3"

"She lives with her mom and dad and loves science, she made an entire robot to help her parents because she was worried about them not having help when she's not around. She let the robot go because the robot didn't want to to serve it's "purpose." She loves cheesy cauliflower, literally the perfect woman"

"You can have a lesbian wedding with her! UwU"

"She’s interested in lots of general sciences, but she does plant biology with her father, nursing as a job (so medical sciences), and for fun she likes astronomy and robotics! Her whole personality is literally built around being an STEM girlboss! Her father is a scientist and her mother is a carpenter and and her brother is a programmer…. Autistic nerd family frfr"

"She literally builds a sentient robot who comes to life and leaves to explore the stars. Very skilled in her chosen field!!! AND she acts as a nurse TOO? Very busy, very smart. If you marry her, she suggests you automate your farm. It's always funny because I already have."

"She helps her dad with his biological research into the valley's native flora and fauna. When she's not doing that, she loves inventing things and tinkering around. Her favored gifts are almost all things that can be used in her inventions. At the end of her route she builds A SENTIENT ROBOT. She also works as a nurse part-time."

""Maru acquired a passion for creating gadgets at a young age. When she isn’t in her room, fiddling with tools and machinery, she sometimes does odd jobs at the local clinic." super cool and very pretty"

"Robotics, but she also works in healthcare and dabbles in astronomy :) Literally built an AI beneath her childhood bedroom. I married her one playthrough but tbh she belongs w Penny."

"she is a nurse and the biracial queen we love to see. i married her in all my stardew valley worlds"

#stem sister scuffle #round 1 #alphys #ut alphys #undertale #utdr #sdv maru #stardew valley #sdv #stardew valley maru

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skylanders-after-the-end · 5 years ago

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Destination Destiny

Gearshift, Smash Hit and Knight Light were in the middle of a journey through a barren wasteland. The robotic Trap Master was sitting next to the Supercharger in his enormous Thump Truck, which was excellent for such a terrain, while the angelic knight soared alongside them.

“We should reach our destination in approximately twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds.” Gearshift delivered her inhumanly precise calculations as usual.

“Wow, this really is like having a navigation system!” Smash Hit never interacted with the Tech Skylander before, yet he was pleasantly surprised by her behavior. “Gearshift, tell me how many fries I can fit in my mouth!”

“Zero. Because telling you the answer to such a nonsensical question is not part of the mission. Thus, I will not count a single potential fry.” Without the blink of an eye, Gearshift silenced the warsupial and left him disappointed.

Knight Light snickered as he spread his wings further to keep himself in the air. “She may be a highly advanced robot, but she has a mind of her own. She’s a Skylander after all.”

Smash Hit sighed. “Guess I’ll have to find out myself then.”

The trio soon arrived at Molekin Mountain. Ever since the Skylanders’ visit during the time when Kaos tried to claim the Fist of Arkus, the town has been quite peaceful. The friendly molekin greeted the Skylanders cheerfully as they entered the town.

“What’s the deal here? Everything seems fine to me.” Knight Light asked his companions since he, once again, simply tagged along and had no idea what the mission was about.

“A resident molekin can help us get to the all-knowing Oracle, which can tell us where the Golden Queen is located.” Gearshift carefully scanned the area looking for said molekin.

Smash Hit leaned his head past the tall robot to look the equally tall knight in the eyes, or mask in that case. “To keep it short – we ran out of ideas.”

“This hunt really seems to have no end.�� The Light Skylander grumbled and wondered what he would do once they finally found the villainess. “Maybe it’s for the better.”

Keeping their eyes peeled and asking around, the Skylanders were looking everywhere for the molekin known as Barnsy. Unknowing to them, some dark forces nearby were lurking and waiting for the right moment to disturb the peace in the rocky town.

Meanwhile at the Academy, Spyro was conversing with Boom Bloom and Wild Storm, who told him about their latest mission and the horrific ambush they experienced. The leader nodded and dismissed the Senseis, before Star Strike floated up to him.

“Spyro, if I’m not bothering, could I talk to you for a second?” The alien has been passively concerned with the current problem that the Skylanders were facing and recently had an idea.

Spyro took a deep breath and tried to take his mind off the information he just received. “Please don’t tell me you saw more possessed people trying to kill you.”

“…No.” Star Strike said to Spyro’s relief. “About that though, I thought there might be a way how we could solve that problem more easily, or at least prevent worse things from happening. Same goes for the Golden Queen situation.”

“I’m listening.” Even though there was a lot to do, Spyro was willing to hear his fellow Magic Skylander’s suggestion.

“You already know about the Book of Destiny.” Star Strike began, which immediately sparked Spyro’s interest, as he’s always been very intrigued by the mystical artifact. “Even though we can’t access the Interdimensional Realm anymore, we came up with another way to get to the book.”

“We?” Spyro was confused since only Star Strike was present.

Out of nowhere, Enigma, Déjà Vu and Mysticat appeared next to cloaked being through magical entrances, making Spyro jump up in surprise.

“You seriously need to stop doing that!” The dragon breathed heavily while the mist and sparks the magicians created faded away.

As soon as Spyro was back on his feet, Enigma began to talk. “We may not be able to get to the book directly, and not in this moment.” He glared over to Déjà Vu who nodded confidently. “But we know where and when it was, and we can use our combined magic to get us to the exact place and the exact time when it was there.”

Spyro wasn’t quite sure if he understood everything. “You’re suggesting we travel through time and space?”

“Exactly.” Mysticat answered. “Enigma’s teleportation, Déjà Vu’s time manipulation and my illusions, we can project ourselves right in front of the book and read it.”

Spyro needed a moment to process everything and make sense of the sorcerers’ plan. “And where exactly was the book?”

Everyone looked over to Star Strike, whose head sunk after hearing the question. “My home.”

“We can only perform this spell for a very short time and in a limited space.” Mysticat explained further. “All we can do is look into the book.” The feline has heard of the alien’s wish to return home, but he made it clear that there was no way she could even see her old planet during this procedure.

“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s read that book!” Eager and full of new hope, Spyro dashed off. He didn’t even know where he had to go, but he assumed that it would have to be somewhere more private.

“Who knew that Spyro was such a bookworm?” Déjà Vu joked as they followed their leader.

Traversing through the long and dark tunnels the molekin have dug over the years, the Skylanders were on their way to the top of Molekin Mountain, looking for Barnsy. Smash Hit made a short stop at a store with rock candy, a specialty in the area. Little did the Earth Skylander know that those were actual rocks rather than candy.

“Did you know that molekin eat rocks?” Smash Hit was rubbing his left cheek to ease the pain after biting one of the minerals. “Whirlwind won’t be happy about my second visit this week.”

“How do you always manage to turn every excursion into a comedy show?” Knight Light giggled and looked down on his short ally who rolled his healthy eye.

“I just like to explore places. Discover new things, y’know? As a Skylander you barely have time for that stuff.” Smash Hit was happy with his job, yet at times he felt overwhelmed by the quick pace and stress of the missions. “If you asked me, we would never have to find the Golden Queen, I love travelling to all these places!”

“Yeah, I guess there’s a good side to all of this.” Knight Light on the other hand preferred when there was a strict schedule. Not only due to the current pressure from his former superiors, but he has always been the proactive type to get out there and fulfill his duty. “And this Oracle, it can tell us anything?”

“Everything.” Gearshift corrected the Trap Master. “The Oracle, also known as Octavius Cloptimus, is an all-knowing being. It will be able to answer all of our questions, which is exactly what we need in this time of uncertainty.”

The team was quiet and only the sound of their steps across the dry rock ground could be heard. “Do you think it can tell me how many fries I can fit in my mouth?”

Knight Light laughed as Gearshift stopped and turned around to look at her allies. She stared at Smash Hit, coldly, without moving an inch. The Skylanders thought there was a malfunction until she finally opened her mouth. “It can.”

When the robot turned back around, Smash Hit clenched his fist triumphantly and exclaimed a silent ‘Yes’.

The trio has reached the circular stone house of the molekin in question. Gearshift knocked on the small door before ducking down to the point where she was nearly on her knees and entering. Knight Light did the same but struggled with getting his wings through the entrance. Smash Hit on the other hand only had to bend his head down to enter. Inside the small building, the taller Skylanders cowered next to Smash Hit, looking at Barnsy, who was standing in front of a window with his back turned towards the heroes.

“Barnsy, we’re sorry to intrude into your home like this, but we have an urgent mission and require your help.” Knight Light spoke to the small creature who kept staring out the window. “If you could-”

Gearshift grabbed the angel’s arm to stop him. “Something is not right.” She fixed her eyes on the molekin and inspected him.

They all looked at Barnsy, waiting for him to show a reaction, until he finally turned his head to reveal a pair of lifeless black eyes.

The male Skylanders gasped while Gearshift proceeded to roll backwards and out of the house before making her Traptanium gear appear. While Smash Hit swiftly followed the Trap Master and Knight Light once again had to squeeze his wings through the door, the molekin unleashed terrifying screams. Looking across the town, the Skylanders spotted all of the molekin running in complete panic and fleeing from their homes. Before they could interfere, a gigantic figure landed right in front of them and blocked their path.

The team slowly moved their heads upwards as an enormous shadow covered them. “Oh boy.” Smash Hit gulped and hesitantly pulled out his chain and boulder, while Knight Light flipped his wrist to make his scimitar appear.

The undead dragon Malefor towered over the three who appeared like mere toys compared to him. The dragon grinned before opening his sharp mouth and spitting a spectral flame at them.

In the Magic Realm, the most mystical location nearby the Academy, Spyro, Star Strike, Enigma, Déjà Vu and Mysticat have gathered to perform the spell that would lead them to the Book of Destiny.

“And you’re sure this will work?” Spyro was still a bit skeptical. “There isn’t anything dangerous about this, right?”

“It can only become dangerous if we separate or someone interrupts the spell.” Enigma was observing his Traptanium sigil to make sure everything was in-tact. “We get there, take a look at the book and come back here.”

Star Strike was awfully quiet, she seemed to be lost in thoughts. The alien knew that she couldn’t get back home through the spell, yet she was hoping that there could be an exception. Just this once.

“Then we can begin.” Mysticat summoned his staff and prepared himself.

The three sorcerers formed a circle around Spyro and Star Strike. They all held their respective staffs and recited a spell in unison. The weapons began to glow and each of their powers combined created a magical pattern on the floor underneath them, which the two Magic Skylanders watched in awe. Suddenly they were engulfed by a purple fog which was spinning around them like a hurricane. Even though the wind was tearing at them mercilessly, the magicians stood strong without interrupting the spell. Spyro began to feel dizzy when he saw lights flashing all around him and he felt like he was rushing at lightning speed. It was a sensation he has never felt before and all of his senses were overstimulated. It felt like his head would explode any second. All of a sudden, it stopped. The Skylanders opened their eyes and found themselves in a small house with book shelves covering every wall. In the center was a podium. A pillar of light coming from above lit up the many golden accents of the giant brown book on top of it.

“This is it.” Spyro was about to step closer when he saw that the sorcerers were still holding their staffs tightly and focused on keeping the spell up. Star Strike was by his side, but that wasn’t enough. “Uh, guys? If you don’t mind, maybe one of you could take a look as well. You said there should always be multiple people looking into it to see more outcomes.”

“Right.” Enigma grunted and had to hold himself together to keep the spell up. “Can you two manage on your own?” He looked over to Mysticat and Déjà Vu who were just as tense as himself.

“I can freeze the spell for a moment, that will give us some time. But you’ll have to hurry.” With those words Déjà Vu lifted her hourglass above her head which emitted a blue surge of time energy. The timelord could move freely now and look inside the book as well, but Mysticat had to keep the illusion up. “Are you alright?”

“Don’t worry about me. Go ahead.” The feline reassured them of his ability to hold everything together for some more time.

“Alright, let’s do it.” Enigma joined Spyro’s side while Déjà Vu stood next to Star Strike.

The four Skylanders approached the book until they were standing in front of it, yet nothing happened. Before anyone could speak, the artifact swung itself open and the pages shot from one side to the other. They could see everything. Glimpses of the past, pictures of the present and visions of the future. The book was overwhelming for anyone, they had to focus to only see the future. Star Strike however looked up for a moment and lost the visions. Instead, she set her eyes on a window. A small, unimportant window that allowed her a look outside. Her home. It was right there, she could finally see it again after so many years. While the others were busy with the book and Mysticat closed his eyes to concentrate on the spell, the alien removed herself from the group to float towards the window. She was like hypnotized, she could not control her movements. She knew that they shouldn’t get separated, but she only wanted to take a small look. The Magic Skylander didn’t notice that the window was outside of the magical circle, so she would have to get out of it as well.

Meanwhile the Book of Destiny kept skimming its pages. The Skylanders were beginning to see a bigger picture. Golden Queen, Malefor, Kaos, all enemies they knew and that were still out there somewhere, trapped or not. It showed more figures, blurrier this time. Figures that seemed familiar, yet they couldn’t recognize them. And then the book stopped. All eyes were set on a page which was flooded with sentences and words. They couldn’t make out anything. They stared at it for a few seconds until the scribbles began to move. The letters shifted and fell into place and they could all make out a singular sentence.

“An alliance destined to destroy”

Mysticat briefly opened his eyes just to see Star Strike reaching out for the small window and nearly exiting the circle. “Star Strike, no!”

The Sensei interrupted the spell, and everyone was caught in a storm of magic before reappearing back in the Magic Realm.

Star Strike’s arm was still stretched out. Once again, she reached for nothing, it disappeared before her very eyes. She was disappointed but quickly realized what she did and turned around. She was expecting to see furious faces, but instead was met with confusion.

“An alliance destined to destroy…” Spyro repeated the only sentence he could see. “You all saw that, right?”

Enigma and Déjà Vu nodded. “What does it mean?” Enigma could only think about the mysterious message.

“That sounds like a riddle even I cannot solve.” Mysticat joined the discussion. “I’m assuming it’s a warning that our enemies will join forces.”

“We know the Golden Queen’s out there, and Malefor is free. Could it be…” Déjà Vu was afraid to think of what could happen if those two villains decided to team up.

“Then it’s better if we don’t find out.” Spyro was curious as well, but he wouldn’t wish for something like that in even his wildest dreams. “We have to take down every last villain, all of them.”

As the Skylanders were walking away, Star Strike kept staring at the spot where she saw the window moments ago. Her home was so close, yet so far. She started to wonder if she would ever be able to return.

In the midst of the battle at Molekin Mountain, another flurry of spectral flames was homing in on the Skylanders. Gearshift backflipped to avoid the incoming attack. She then split her gear in half and started kicking parts of it at the undead dragon as it was spiraling around her body. Malefor protected himself with his wing before violently flapping it to shoot the parts back. Smash Hit and Knight Light tried avoiding them, but got hit nevertheless.

“There’s no way we can defeat him, he has an answer to everything!” Knight Light attempted to rise back into the air after his wing took a hit but struggled to do so.

“We have to target his weak spot, he always protects his face and chest!” Smash Hit, who already figured it out, grabbed his chain and swung his mighty boulder at the dragon with full force. Malefor jumped up into the air before he could get hit and slammed back onto the ground, creating an earthquake.

“If we don’t get him out of the city, he will destroy everything!” Knight Light stressed the others and started looking for some way to lure Malefor away, but the dragon had no intention of changing locations.

“Foolish Skylanders, you think you can protect those puny molekin? You can’t even protect yourselves!” Malefor inhaled deeply before unleashing a dangerous trail of fire at the Skylanders.

Knight Light acted quickly and grabbed Gearshift and Smash Hit to fly them out of harm’s way. He couldn’t carry them for too long and crashed on an island nearby. “What are we supposed to do!?”

“We cannot terminate him, due to his resurrection powers. The only way to temporarily defeat him is by handicapping or trapping him.” Gearshift knew what had to be done, but even she didn’t know how.

“Hex already tried that and look what happened!” Knight Light became more frustrated with each passing moment, feeling like they would have to retreat and thus fail the mission.

Soon Malefor spotted the Skylanders and began attacking them again. Any counter seemed pointless so all they could do is evade his blasts and hope for nothing else to be destroyed.

Smash Hit grew tired of that strategy and decided to step up. “Hey, you big old raisin! Over here!”

The insult made Malefor give the warsupial a death glare and he headed towards him. That’s exactly what Smash Hit wanted. Before the dragon could attack, the Supercharger tossed his boulder right at his face and used his chain like a whip to bring him down. He jumped onto Malefor’s leg and furiously smashed the metal plates covering it, trying to do some damage. Malefor, not feeling a single attack from the small hero, simply flipped his wrist and tossed the Earth Skylander back on the ground before turning around to strike him with his tail. Smash Hit was thrown right against a rock, leaving some cracks upon impact. He let out weak moans of pain before falling onto his knees and finally laying on the ground. Malefor grabbed the boulder with the bare tips of his claws and dropped it right next to his owner.

“What are you supposed to be? A warsupial with a simple boulder and a chain? At least your friends have something to offer.” Malefor interrupted his speech to strike down an incoming Knight Light and keep Gearshift at bay with his fire breath. “You’re pathetic. Just like the dirt underneath you, you are nothing. Another worthless pawn of the Skylanders that will fall under my power.”

Smash Hit tried pushing himself back up but failed each time, and Malefor’s insults didn’t help. He felt weak, useless. His attacks had no effect, and he was taken out by a single hit. Meanwhile the two Trap Masters kept on fighting and couldn’t be shaken off as easily.

To the Skylanders’ surprise and relief, Malefor went into a more defensive state and didn’t attack them anymore. Underneath him, a bunch of mindless molekin with the same black eyes as Barnsy appeared and went after the Skylanders instead.

Knight Light was quite baffled to feel a small creature jump onto his back and tear him down. He grabbed the molekin and tossed it to the side, trying not to hurt it. “What’s going on? Why are they all like this?”

Gearshift had already reconnected her gear and instead of attacking, she simply created weak shockwaves that kept the corrupted molekin from getting close to her. “Undead magic is capable of turning any creature into an obedient monster that will follow their tormentor’s lead.” The Skylander’s eyes were turned to Malefor, who smiled upon seeing the angered heroes dealing with the horde of minions.

Then, when they least expected it, Smash Hit saw someone familiar in the distance. He had to squint his one working eye, which still had a blurred vision, to make sure it was who he thought it was. The other two Skylanders looked at him and then into the direction he was staring at and were shocked. “Hex?” the warsupial thought he was hallucinating.

The witch just finished turning another molekin into one of her monsters. Like always, she only transformed half of the town, while the other half had to hide and in the worst case kill or get killed by their corrupted friends. She looked over to the Skylanders, seeing faces of disbelief, as well as Gearshift’s ever so neutral expression. The wind in the area made her horns and dress wave, giving her a ghostly appearance.

The next thing they knew Malefor flew past Hex, making her disappear from the spot she was just in with his departure. The dragon was gone, and so was the sorceress, leaving nothing but a destroyed town, countless corrupted molekin and three speechless Skylanders behind.

#skylanders #skylanders after the end #skylanders ate #ate #fanfiction #original story #gearshift #knight light #smash hit #spyro #star strike #déjà vu #enigma #malefor #hex

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randomramblingtidbits · 5 years ago

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Spova Week: Future

A/N: So I didn’t get this done in time for Spova Week because I was worried about my future, i.e. board exams. But I passed the first exam, so why don’t we see what the future has in store for Sprx and Nova now? This also includes some head cannons I have for what I imagine post War of the Undead/Season Five would be like for the entire team as well.

“So this is the gift from Quint?”

Sprx flicked the lights in the garage on, beaming with pride at the new ship among Otto’s moon buggies. “Yep, it’s a top of the line ST5-Starcarrier.”

You’re going to have to jog my memory about what that means.”

“It’s not as maneuverable as a ZZ3X-Starspeeder, but it makes up for it with amenities and capacity. Quint figures that properly stocked it could support a small squad for a month before needing to dock. And it has a hyperdrive so it can do warp jumps if necessary.”

Nova looked over the ship. It was about three-fourth the size of a Foot Cruiser so it dwarfed the buggies that surrounded it and nearly hit the top of the garage. The wings and jets attached to it did give it a slick and aerodynamic look. “It’s not exactly what I would think of as a parting gift.”

“Yeah, I told Quint he didn’t owe us anything,” Sprx shook his head, “It’s not like we were expecting a reward when we rescued his crew the first time and coming to our aid more than made up for that anyway. But he insisted, saying that it’s the least he could do since he did also still us a neutron generator.”

“Uh-huh,” Nova put her hands on her hip as she gave him a smirk. “I think he just used this as an excuse to give you a ship. He probably wants you to come visit him so you can keep swapping pilot stories.”

Sprx gave her smile in return as he ran his hand over the ship’s hull, stopping to wipe away a smudge. “Hey, technically it’s the team’s ship. I’m just the driver for wherever we need to go.”

Well, he just gave her an opening for what she actually came to talk about. Nova took a deep breath. “What about Galaxia?”

“Hm?” Sprx looked away from the ship to her. “Sure, I could get the coordinates from the Robot and take you there if you want. Planning on visiting your master already?”

“Master Offay mentioned that he was planning of having a tournament soon to celebrate the return of Galaxia. I figured I could participate and learn a thing or two from the other fighters.”

“Or you could teach them a thing or two.” Now it was his time to give her a smirk. “Alright, just clear it with the rest of the team and I’ll be your personal chauffer.”

“You could go visit Quint afterwards.”

He snorted and rolled his eyes. “I doubt it. The tournament would probably take a couple weeks at least and with you gone I don’t think the team would be fine with me also leaving.”

“Actually, Chiro and Antauri already gave us a leave of absence.”

“Yeah, see-what?” His mouth hung open as he stared at her.

Nova nodded and held his hands. “Well, how else are you going to break in the new ship? I figured we could start with three months off and go from there.”

“You’re serious? But what about the team? What about protecting Shuggazoom?”

“Shuggazoom does need protectors, but that doesn’t mean it always has to be us. The Super Robot can pilot himself now and there are plenty of other heroes here to help out.”

Defeating the Skeleton King once and for all hadn’t been the only outcome of their victory. The Dark One corruption that had tainted places like the jungles and Blasted Lands had been also dealt with. The end result was that there was suddenly a lot of land outside of Shuggazoom City suitable for civilization. Land that they had offered to their allies, especially the groups that had nowhere else to go.

The Robo-Apes were one of the groups who took up their offer, to Otto’s delight. He quickly settled in to the group, offering his mechanical expertise for things from repairs to lessons. Being in such a setting seemed provide him with nonstop inspiration, resulting in the largest streak of inventions from him that the team had ever seen.

Alliana and the rest of the Arcadia survivors also settled down. Jinmay, who knew what it was like to be new to Shuggazoom, was always ready to help them out however she could. Just like how Otto endured himself to the Robo-Apes, so too did Jinmay become a beloved figure to the settlement.

Chiro helped out with both groups when he could, but often he was busy in Shuggazoom. It wasn’t just that he was the hero of the city, but also an inspiration. He was an example of how any citizen could stand up to defend the city. So like how the monkeys had taught him how to be a hero all those years ago, he now taught the bright eyed youths of the city. It was weird seeing the student becoming the teacher, but Chiro thrived in the role.

And regarding teachers, Antauri found himself with some new students. The disciples of the Veran Mystics that had survived the destruction of their order had tracked him down and also set down roots in Shuggazoom. They sought a way to undo the corrupted teachings of the previous masters, so Antauri taught them. He had even considered the idea of reestablishing the order, or at least a successor of some sort to it.

And then there was Gibson, who was taking advantage of the untainted jungle to frequent the Alchemist’s old labs. He spent days going through his books, notes, and files. He even brought the spell book from among their battle trophies with him, intending on following their creator’s lead in combining science and magic.

Everyone one else has their own plans and goals, something of their own to focus on that had nothing to do with being Hyperforce, except for Sprx. Maybe it was penance for his doubt that lead to the war, or maybe it was fear that if his dedication wavered for even a moment he would cause another. Whatever it was, the monkey that had once taken every opportunity to laze about now refused to take a break.

Well, Nova had a goal of her own.

“I know you want to go and explore the stars. So now you can.” Then she blushed, “And I want to be with my boyfriend. So I'd like to go with you...if you’ll have me.”

She yelped as he picked her up and spun her around, which quickly became a laugh alongside his own. He put her down, holding her close as he nudged his forehead against hers. “How did I ever get a girl as wonderful as you?”

“I believe you said something about being my personal chauffeur.” She said with a laugh. “I take it that is a yes?”

Sprx answered her with a kiss, surprising her but it was a good kind of surprise as she melted into the embrace.

“Whatever you want,” He said when they parted, a bit out of breath from the long kiss. “So, Galaxia?“

“That, and don’t forget about seeing Quint. We have three months to begin with, and then we can request some more time if we want. You got any recommendations?”

She could just see his mind spinning, planning out an itinerary for their trip already and figuring out what other stops to include. Maybe they could go to that one stop with the Lugs again? They did have some cute plushies there that she wouldn’t mind getting, though Sprx would probably insist on being the one to purchase them for her.

They would return to Shuggazoom, of course. It was their home and they would always be members of the Hyperforce, their family. But for now, it would just be him, her, and the stars.

#SRMTHFG #srmthg #spova #spova week #Acara's fanfiction #no spova baby fyi #because I have another WIP with a spova baby #not beta read

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antagonistchanremade · 5 years ago

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I’ve mentioned before that one of my stories, Stellar Grievances, featured a class system loosely based on the class systems from Fate, Mass Effect, and TF2.

Here’s a bit more of an in-depth look at the system.

Technicians are, lore-wise, tied with Medics and Scouts for being the most intelligent class, though specifically they’re engineers, unlike Medics and Scouts. In terms of actual function? They’re summoners and brawlers. They excel at close-quarters combat due to their brute strength, and they also are capable of deploying self-constructing drones and structures to aid them and their team. The reason that they’re brawlers is because of the tools they use to deploy their robotic buddies, portable micro-factories called Wrenches; Wrenches were initially designed specifically for the deploying purpose, but early Technicians realized that Wrenches were also just really good for hitting stuff. So, they started designing Wrenches with this secondary function in mind, being sturdier and tougher, and also started working out themselves to better effectively wield Wrenches as weapons. Even without a Wrench, Technicians just tend to be the most buff class as a result, since they rely more on muscle mass than any other class (though Knights, Assassins, Marines, and particularly Scouts tend to be in better shape overall). Technicians also have a number of secondary abilities that aren’t quite as crucial to their function as summoning and brawling, and aren’t even universal, but are still interesting, such as hacking enemy computers and equipment to backfire on themselves, or mildly manipulating gravity (but only for themselves).

The main protagonist of Stellar Grievances, Stella Greenfield, is a Technician who wields an arm-mounted Wrench called, well, the Gauntlet Wrench; this means that her fighting style revolves partially around deploying drones and structures, and partially around just punching shit. She also utilizes gravity manipulation quite a bit to enhance her dodging and her punching. Finally, she also designed an AI, Eve, who provides advice, runs all of her drones and structures, and assists in hacking.

Another major Technician is known as Haley, and she wields a Wrench that looks like some kind of cross between an actual wrench and something out of either RWBY or Lyrical Nanoha. She’s noteworthy for being a Technician who doesn’t rely as much on her intellect; sure, she’s just as smart as any other Technician, and she does use her drones and structures at all and utilizes gravity manipulation for the same reasons as Stella... but she mostly focuses on the brawler aspect of being a Technician. She really likes hitting things, and she’s really good at it.

Assassins are, lore-wise, well, assassins. However, that doesn’t actually quite demonstrate their actual function. Their true function is being a stealthy Support class that focuses on debuffing enemies. All Assassins have one major stealth ability, but if they want to learn a new one, they must forget the old one, and all stealth abilities are intended to be sidegrades to each other. More importantly, though, is that Assassins can learn a wide variety of debuff skills that can be cast either at a distance or up-close. See, Assassins did start out as actual assassins, and when they joined the fight, they intended to use those same skills of taking out priority targets, but they quickly found that such skills weren’t as effective here. But, they did find that their weapons could be repurposed for Support purposes. The distance at which a Skill can be cast isn’t dependent on the Skill itself, but rather, on the weapon- some Assassins use things like knives, while others use things like sniper rifles. However, as a side ability, Assassins are still capable of one-hit kills on most enemies, but these one-hit kills are costly and don’t work on particularly tough enemies, so it has limited use.

The secondary protagonist of Stellar Grievances, Madison (no last name), is an Assassin who wields a sniper rifle and has the stealth ability of turning invisible for a short period. Her rifle has multiple delivery methods for debuffs- tranquilizer darts and vials of harmful substances can be fired from it, and it also has a transmitter near the barrel for sending out signals to potentially hack enemy equipment.

Another major Assassin named Ichika has a ninja gimmick- his weapon is a kunai that can be coated in harmful substances and has a sort of communications disruptor attached, and his stealth ability is disguising as enemies.

Another potential stealth ability could be a smokescreen or an EMP.

Medics are, lore-wise, again, tied with Technicians and Scouts as the most intelligent class, but are physicians. Their function is pretty widely varied- they are a combination of a Support class (being a healer and buffer) and a Tank class (being capable of absorbing lots of damage). Medics joined the fight primarily as healers, and quickly adopted the other two functions in order to be more useful. Medics are unique in that they wield two major pieces of equipment, one MedTool, and one shield. The shields are how they function as Tanks; not only can it absorb damage the Medic would have taken, it can also be used to protect teammates. The MedTool, meanwhile, is responsible for their Support class endeavors. It’s responsible for healing and buffing teammates. A secondary “ability” Medics have is being deadly against the undead; “ability” is in quotes because it isn’t really a separate ability, and more like a separate trait of their healing ability. “Healing” an undead enemy does damage. An actual secondary ability is bashing enemies with their shields, though since Medics tend to be the least in-shape class, this has limited effectiveness most of the time.

The team’s Medic is Lily Flowers, who has a prosthetic arm with her MedTool built in and a holographic shield generator affixed to her living arm.

Another major Medic has a MedTool that’s a staff, and his holographic shield generator is actually affixed to the front of the MedTool, so it’s like a two-in-one deal.

Another major Medic, meanwhile, has a force field generator instead of a holographic shield, and the default shield is just plain solid.

Knights are, lore-wise, the oldest class, sorta. While the class system is in general a fairly recent development, all Knights were originally members of an order of knights that has existed for centuries. In terms of function, they are experts at bladed melee, and they’re also psychic. So, they all wield bladed weapons- swords, axes, etc.- and they all have crazy mind powers. Their mind powers mostly just benefit themselves, with abilities like being able to see through the eyes of others or electrocuting enemies or setting their blades aflame.

The team’s Knight is Kyousuke Tenjou, who wields a longsword and often uses telekinesis and sets his blade aflame.

Another Knight named Gabriella wields a rapier, and another one known only as the mysterious Delta Knight uses arm-mounted blades.

Marines are, lore-wise and function-wise, possibly the most boring class to talk about, though that’s not a bad thing; they keep things simple and don’t try to fix what ain’t broke. Lore-wise, they’re soldiers, nothing much else to them. And function-wise, Marines are defined by the fact that they use guns. A lot of them. Most classes are limited to having one piece of primary equipment (Technicians have Wrenches, Knights have Swords, Assassins have their weapons); the two exceptions are Medics (who have two, their MedTool and their shield) and Marines. Marines can carry up to six pieces of primary equipment. And unlike Medics, who have two types of equipment and they can have one of each? Marines only have the one type of equipment, guns. They can just have six of them at once. And that’s really it. They have guns. They’re also fairly slow, which makes them pair up well with Scouts; you’ll see why once we get to them next.

The team’s Marine is James Ferguson. His favorite gun is a laser gun that’s labelled as an “assault rifle” since it fires a steady beam; it looks like a tommygun. He also has a revolver that, when fired at the ground, causes a serious of spikes to shoot out from the ground, kinda like Lurkers from StarCraft. And he has a flamethrower.

Scouts are, lore-wise, the final “intelligent” class, alongside Medics and Technicians, and are specifically scientists. Function-wise, Scouts are the most unique class, and the best descriptor I can come up with for their role is “agile masters of Battlefield Control”. A Scout’s main piece of equipment is their, well, transportation. The piece of equipment that makes them so agile compared to everyone else. As for their skills? That’s where things get complicated. One thing a Scout can do? Instantly swap places with another teammate (hence why they pair so well with Marines). They can also analyze the battlefield to spot things like environmental hazards, traps, drops, pickups, and other things. And they can analyze enemies to learn the enemy’s strengths, weaknesses, and skills. They can also move pickups and put them somewhere else, and send out and pick up distress calls, and operate vehicles with increased skill. They also have some offensive skills, like sending out ricocheting projectiles or just straight up attacking an enemy with a buzzsaw. Just, in general, they have a number of really miscellaneous and esoteric abilities, mostly but not entirely geared towards support.

The team’s Scout is Travis, who has hoverboots.

Other Scout transports include hoverboards, motorcycles, jetpacks, and grappling hooks.

#oc posting

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gunterfan1992 · 6 years ago

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What Became of Marcy and PB?

I thoroughly enjoyed the finale, but I was left with one nagging question that is still bothering me: what became of Marcy and PB? I’m not talking about their relationship status. (The epilogue of the episode makes it pretty clear that they ended up as a happy couple.) I’m talking about 1000 years in the future.

In an interview with TVLine, executive producer Adam Muto noted, "I don’t want to lay out their entire future ... but there are enough pieces there that you can kind of construct what their life will be like going forward.” If that’s the case, then let us follow the hints and try to figure out what became of our two favorite (quasi-)immortals.

Reader be warned: this post is full of half-baked conspiracy theories and cherry-picked data points, all assembled in a way that vindicates my theory that Marceline and Bubblegum are still alive in Ooo 1000+. I make no claim that this is 100% full-proof. I just don’t want to believe that they are dead!

Let’s start with the King of Ooo: BMO. After Beth and Shermy question the robot about what happened to Marceline, Bubblegum, Finn, and Jake, BMO responds that they “kept living their lives.” This, combined with the fact that Marceline no longer lives in her house and the Candy Kingdom is in ruins, suggests that the two are dead. But while this answer might seems obvious, it leaves a lot to be desired.

First off, Marceline’s cave-house being abandoned is not indicative of anything too major. Remember, she used to live in the Tree Fort before eventually abandoning it, too. By the time that Ooo 1000+ rolled around, she could have easily moved to another locale. In fact, I would argue evidence within the episode suggests that sometime (probably awhile) after the Tree Fort was destroyed, Marceline gave her cave-house to Finn, Jake, and BMO, and then likely moved in with PB (given that at the end of Stakes, Bubblegum offers to let her move into her castle, an offer which Marceline initially declines, but implies she might one day take up). Not only would this be thematically fitting, as it was she who “gave” Finn and Jake the Tree Fort in the first place, but it would also explain how some of Finn and Jake’s belongings found a home at the house (1) and how BMO came to be in possession of a few of Marceline’s items, like her DARE shirt, sunscreen, or Simon’s broken glasses. These were items that Marceline probably didn’t care that much about (2) and consequently left behind when she moved.

Perhaps a bigger issue is that Marceline, for all intents and purposes, can’t easily die—if at all. She is immortal, and while she has her weaknesses, it’s unclear if they truly are lethal weaknesses: we’ve seen her survive being exposed to sunlight (“Henchman”, “What Was Missing”), cut in half (Stakes, “Everything Stays”), bombarded with garlic (”Henchman”), and poisoned (Stakes, “May I Come In?”). You might be asking, ‘The previous Vampire King was killed? Could not someone have staked Marceline, too?’ Unlikely. We know from Stakes that the Moon—the vampire from whom Marceline derived her healing powers—could survive being staked in the heart (remember, she was only defeated when Marceline absorbed her vampiric essence, not when she was staked). Marceline absorbed the Moon’s power, therefore it follows that Marceline can’t die from being staked. Perhaps Marceline had her vampiric essence removed by Bubblegum, and she grew old and died, just like her fever dreams in Stakes? While this is certainly a possibility (we know that Bubblegum can remove the Vampiric Essence from Marceline, given that we have seen her do it), it negates the main themes in Stakes, which focused on Marceline coming to terms with her immortality and learning to love her lot in life. If Marceline can die even in her undead state, then all the suffering unleashed upon Ooo during Stakes was for naught, and that just doesn’t seem like something Adventure Time would do.

And what of Bubblegum? We know that Bubblegum’s biological age is correlated with her candy biomass (“Mortal Recoil”, “Too Young”). This means that her “rate of mortality [is] decouple[ed] … from chronological age,” heavily suggesting that she is ‘biologically immortal’. This concept—which is a real thing, fyi—does not mean that she can’t die, just that she won’t die from old age (3). Thus, she likely lived hundreds of years into the future after the age of Finn and Jake, probably into the Graybles 1000+ world. This is implied by the state of the Prizeball Guardian: it looks rather pristine, in comparison to pretty much the entirety of Ooo, suggesting it is a somewhat new creation. Given that the guardian was almost certainly created by Bubblegum (I mean, just look at it), and the guardian is new-looking, it suggests that Bubblegum herself was alive at least recently (4). (This is also suggested by admittedly non-canon drawings that Steve Wolfhard made clearly showing his belief that Bubblegum is alive in the Ooo 1000+ world.)

Given that Bubblegum cannot die readily from old age, the only other thing that could have killed her, I argue, would be some sort of calamity. Ooo 1000+ looks pretty wrecked, and was not the Candy Kingdom destroyed? Yes, and in both “Lemonhope” and the intro to “Come Along with Me”, we catch glimpses of the ruins! But, if one peruses the storyboard of “Lemonhope II”, one will notice Tom Herpich’s purposeful note that the kingdom is “abandoned (not bombed out)” [emphasis added]. Indeed, the kingdom looks overgrown and desolate, but not like the site of a war zone (e.g. the main citadel is mostly intact, and a number of skyskrapers are unscathed, unlike others we’ve seen that we know were caught in the crossfire of war). This, coupled with the fact that the Prizeball Guardian exists suggests that, rather than having her kingdom extinguished in a war, Bubblegum loaded up her citizens into the Guardian, put them in what is effectively cryogenic sleep, and then abandoned her old realm (5). Why? We’ll come to that in a second.

But before we jump into that, let me entertain the idea that Marceline and Bubblegum are dead and living together somewhere in the afterlife, say, the 50th Dead World. While a sweet idea, it is complicated by the fact that Bubblegum is the embodiment of the candy elemental, and will almost certainly be reincarnated in the future. [I now enter into headcanon territory] Also, Marceline is the daughter of the Lord of the Nightosphere, a deathless entity. Given how much he wanted Marceline to “take over the family business” (“Daddy’s Little Monster”), do you think he’d really let her succumb to a mortal’s demise? Almost certainly, he would have had a few words with Death. While this is extrapolation beyond the text, I think it’s worth thinking about.

Now, let us jump back into the main discussion by considering BMO’s collection of Ooo memorabilia. Eagle-eyed viewers will note that BMO’s trove of junk is made up almost entirely of bits and pieces from the show’s past: including Finn and Jake’s clock, a King of Ooo figurine, Simon’s glasses, Carol’s elf drawings, Ice King’s drums, and a collection of princess crowns. While a handful of the items almost assuredly belonged to Marceline (e.g. Simon’s glasses, sunscreen the DARE shirt) and Bubblegum (e.g. one of the crowns), there is one item of immense sentimental value missing: Marceline’s ax bass. Surely, if BMO were to keep sentimental reminders of previous friends (notice, BMO has both the shattered remnants of the Finn and Jake clock, as well as Jake’s favorite cup, which has been glued back together) the robot would have kept the vampire queen’s most prized possession? Its absence suggests one of four things: a) Marceline is still alive and in possession of the bass, or Marceline was killed and the bass was b) buried somewhere (a la Finn’s robot arm or as a grave marker), c) carted off by scavengers, or d) returned to the Nightosphere. All are viable possibilities, but the fact that BMO tracked down some rather valuable items (GGGG’s groovy Martian headgear, the crowns of power, etc.), it seems strange that the robot could not have also tracked down the bass, given that BMO liked Marceline (“Ketchup”) and probably knew how much the instrument meant to her (based on their interactions in “What Was Missing” and “Ketchup”).

Given all the issues above, there is one answer that I believe solves the mystery: Marceline and Bubblegum are both alive, but have chosen to abandon the portions of Ooo that we know. Perhaps they are off exploring on their own, or perhaps they have left Earth far behind. Why would Bubblegum abandon her realm? Simple. She was ‘tired’. She expressed these exact same sentiments in “Varmints”, only after her citizens had ‘voted her out of office’. Perhaps by the time Ooo 1000+ rolls around, Bubblegum was once again exhausted by the duties of office (having ruled for 1800 years), but decided to leave on her own terms. Simply abandoning her kingdom would have caused it to quickly collapse (cf. “The Pajama War”), and every time she created and/or appointed a successor, they turned into a tyrant (”Too Young”, “Goliad”, “Bonnibel Bubblegum”). Thus, the only option left was to load up her citizens in a device that would keep them safe until she eventually returned at some point in the future to resume control of her realm.

But could not the Prizeball Guardian simply be a defense mechanism in case the kingdom is attacked and/or Bubblegum is killed? Possibly, but cryogenically preserving candy citizens would do them no good if their creator—the one who could wake them up and then take care of them after some calamity—was gone (consider, for instance, that during times of war or natural disaster, governments don’t load up refugees onto buses, anesthetize them, and then drive them around in circles for decades). Indeed, the Prizeball Guardian seems less like a disaster-evasion project and more like a stasis chamber to keep the candy people safe until some future time. The storyboard for “Graybles 1000+” seems to back this up: when Crunchy is removed from stasis, he mumbles, “What time is it? Did it work?” In other words, it is as if Crunchy was expecting to be displaced in time and to be revived at some future date, rather than simply ‘saved’ (7).

The theory that Marceline and Bubblegum are still out there sidesteps many of the problems we have considered. It explains why some of Marceline’ stuff was picked up by BMO, whereas other items of greater sentimental value (e.g. the ax bass) are missing. Likewise, it nicely explains what happened to the Candy Kingdom. But where did Marceline or Bubblegum go? That is the real question. Perhaps they hopped down to the Nightosphere (unlikely), or perhaps they set off to find parts unknown. Maybe the went to Mars. (There’s even substantial evidence that they might be in the finale’s intro sequence!) The Oooniverse is pretty much unlimited, meaning that so too are the possibilities. Given that the Prizeball Guardian was designed to one day ‘wake up’ all the candy citizens, it is likely that Bubblegum (and Marceline) will one day return to Ooo, but for now, they are outies.

Still not convinced? Think I’m grasping at straws? Then let me present one final piece of evidence. Into 2016, Cartoon Network released a bonus video on their YouTube channel that features Marceline singing a song about “someone kind of special” to her. This song is a cover/reworking of the shows ending theme, "Come Along with Me”, in which Marceline lovingly intones:

Run away with me And the poltergeists and ghouls. We can wander through the darkness And play by our own rules.

Run away with me To a cavern shaped like home Where we'll build our own forever And never dance alone.

[emphasis added]

While rife with similes and rich language, the lyrics of the songs are pretty easy to decipher: Marceline cares deeply about someone and yearns to literally run off with them, living forever in a state of happiness. And what’s the name of this song? Why, the “Happy Ending Song”! While one could argue that the song isn’t canon and thus shouldn’t be considered as evidence (6), I think it nicely foretells what Marceline and Bubblegum‘s future holds. For one thing, the song is a play on "Come Along with Me", which in many ways is canonically 'prescient', as it is the song that plays during the montage depicting the future of Ooo's citizens. By alluding to and building off this tune, I would argue that "Happy Ending Song" arguably absorbs some of the original’s 'prescient' nature post facto (8). For another, the very last shot shows two feminine figures silhouetted against the setting sun, holding hands. Notice that this shot follows the lyrics and Marceline’s dialogue, subtly implying that it is depicting some future event. Ultimately, both the imagery in the video and the lyrics themselves hint heavily that Marceline and her paramour (which the series finale finally confirms to be Bubblegum) end up living together happily, free from the cares of modern society, as they “build [their] own forever” [emphasis added]. This nicely echoes what Marceline told Bubblegum at the end of Stakes: “Now, I guess we get to hang out together forever.”

Long story short: I believe that Marceline and Bubblegum are still alive and kicking, but have left Ooo far behind.

Footnotes

1. For instance, the the weird diving bell that used to hang from the Tree Fort is on the porch. While Marceline certainly lived in the Tree Fort at some point in the past, it's not entirely clear why she would've hauled this item all the way to her house and then abandoned it. It's more likely that it was scavenged by Finn and Jake, who arguably had a much more sentimental attachment to the old fort.

2. But Marceline loved Simon like a father! Why would she leave behind his glasses? Likely because these glasses were the ones that Simon wore while he and Marceline wandered the wasteland (you can tell because the left lens is broken). When he was returned to his normal state, he likely got new glasses, and these older ones were forgotten about.

3. While Bubblegum fully admits in “Goliad” that she will likely one day die, it is heavily implied that she believes her death will come from some horrible accident (like the Lich possession), rather than just old age. Furthermore, Bubblegum and Marceline’s discussions about mortality in Stakes suggests that Bubblegum would outlive Marceline were the latter to turn into a mortal. Remember, that in Farmworld, Marceline lived 1000 years as a mortal before she was killed by the Mutagenic Bomb. This means that Marceline as a mortal in Ooo Prime would likely live 1000 after turning mortal again (with the 1000 years she lived as a vampire not counting, since she was essentially ‘stuck’ at age ~20). Putting these puzzle pieces together suggests that Bubblegum believes she can easily live another 1000 years.

4. Notice also that in “Graybles 1000+”, the interior of the Guardian is dark but not dusty or abandoned. In fact, it looks quite well-lived in (and the storyboard for that episode, described as “cozy”); this suggests that someone was living here not too long ago. Given Bubblegum’s love of knowledge (note that books are strewn about as if they were recently read), and the portrait of the candy kingdom on the wall, it is heavily suggested that Bubblegum herself was the one who was occupying the space.

5. You might asking: what about Neddy and his love of the Candy Kingdom tree? Is not the tree dead in “Lemonhope”? Yes, but you will also notice that on the Prizeball Guardian, there are trees very similar to that which grew out of the Kingdom’s main tower.

6. The song was neither featured in nor written for a specific episodes, per Adam Muto. However, because Muto is very good about confirming/denying what is and is not canon (e.g. “The Adventure Time comics are as canonical as a Funko Pop”), the fact that his answer does not immediately decanonize the song is notable. Furthermore, the song is sung by Olivia Olson (that is, the official voice actress of Marceline), and the video even features new footage (albeit, mostly composed of flash-edited scenes from “Marceline’s Closet”).

7. Also, consider how hopelessly bleak and cruel it would be for the Prizeball Guardian to have been destroyed in “Graybles 1000+” if Bubblegum isn’t around anymore. The candy citizens would either sleep for eternity, or die a la 2001: A Space Odyssey. Neither fits with the arguably bittersweet (but certainly not mean-spirited) world of Adventure Time.

8. Perhaps this is why Marceline ends her song by noting it is an example of how "totally deep" she can be.

* As an aside, I also like the idea that Bubblegum, before she left, gave her crown to BMO (after all, were PB to have effectively abandoned her post, she would have no longer needed the crown), jokingly anointing the robot the “One True King of Ooo”, or something like that. It’s fitting that a joke like this would be taken up by BMO and turned into a veritable legend. It would also serve as one last dig against the charlatan King of Ooo, whom we know Bubblegum hated.

#adventure time #atimers #marcline #Marceline the Vampire Queen #bubblegum #princess bubblegum #bubbline #Ooo 1000+#Ooo 1000 #speculation #headcanon #denial #season 10 #finale #come along with me #spoilers

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weirdmarioenemies · 6 years ago

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It’s a Super Mario Odyssey masterpost!

Sorry to take a break from the Halloween goodness, but it’s the one year anniversary of Super Mario Odyssey! Hard to believe it’s been a whole year, isn’t it? There’s no denying this game is absolutely, how do we put this, “perfect” for a lack of even better compliments, with some vast, detailed worlds, many small fun challenges, and of course, lots of cool new Weird Mario Enemies!

...But today, we aren’t going to talk about enemies at all, because what this game also has is some fantastic Weird Mario Friends! To put things simple, there’s a lot of kingdoms in the game, and most of them have their own NPCs that we all love as dearly as the many friends and foes and spooky tree aliens we’ve featured on this blogs in months past, so sit back, as all three WME mods talk about the wonderful new NPCs we see in this game!

Talking about Bonneters, Tostarenans, and Steam Gardeners is Mod Chikako!

Talking about Lochladies, Shiverians, and Moon Rabbits is Mod F Boy!

And talking about New Donkers, Bubblainians, and Volbonans is Mod Hooligon!

With that out of the way, let’s-a go!

Name: Bonneter

Mario’s grand adventure starts off on an EXTREMELY strong foot when he regains consciousness in a land populated by... g-g-g-g-GHOSTS! The precious Bonneters live in the delightfully spooky Cap Kingdom, where there is rarely a color present besides white, gray, or black, and the whole land is enveloped in a thick fog. To top it all off, the music is simply perfect for a spooky, yet friendly town of ghosts! Also, they all have British accents.

Of course, there is one Bonneter who stands out from the rest, and that is Cappy, Mario’s newest friend! He embodies the ability of the Bonneters to take the form of normal hats and Capture other beings. Yeah, it’s basically possessing people. It’s okay. It’s fun.

What do you think is under their hat? Is it part of their body, or are they stylish? They don’t LOOK very natural, but Cappy has a few tufts of hair on his hat/head, so the answer is... I don’t know!

Also, there is no spooky-themed area in this game. The only ghosts in the entire game are your friends! Score one for ghosts!

Name: Tostarenan

Here they are... the first ever new characters we saw in Super Mario Odyssey! Remember that Switch trailer way back when? Where we saw like three seconds of Odyssey? Those three wonderful seconds? I do!

Tostarenans are, of course, based on calaveras, the decorative skulls used in the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead. They live in a cozy little town just as colorful as they are, and love nothing more than having fun and eating frozen- I mean, freezy treats!

As I’ve touched upon in their own post, Tostarenans have their own undead version, the Chincho! Which means... these are living skeletons! How does this work? They’re the same shape, so do they have exoskeletons? Again! I don’t know! But wow, that’s two sorta-spooky friend species already, huh? Like we said! This game is perfect!

Name: Lochlady

Lochladies are the world-famous fashion designers found in the Lake Kingdom... a Kingdom whose industry relies entirely on fashion! Peach/Mario’s very pretty wedding dress was made here. According to the brochure, they’re known for their flexibility but also their strength, and that’s kinda funny... they might look dainty, but these fish are strong!

A fish? A mermaid? They’re really a bit of both. Of course mermaids are their main inspiration, but these things very clearly have scales, right? It’s nice that even the very-human designs in Mario are still a little bit silly.

Though, I suppose the term “mermaid” wouldn’t really apply to them, since mer comes from the Latin for “sea”... instead, they’re named Lochladies... a loch, of course, being a Scottish word for a lake... Like Loch Ness! And Dorrie, the incredibly-Loch-Ness-Monster-inspired friend, even shows up here. If you ignore the fact that Lake Lamode is a French name, it all works out.

Name: Steam Gardener

That’s no watering can! Just kidding, it is. But it’s also a robot! And most importantly, it’s a friend! Really just a wonderful combination of things to be.

Steam Gardeners live in the Steam Gardens! They’re steam-powered! They garden! And they are very good at it. They come in different magnitudes of rustiness, but don’t worry! It seems they can very well go on forever as long as they stay charged. Their heads can be empty, but can also contain flowers or even seeds that they can dispense!

I really love the Steam Gardeners because they don’t really look like a character at all, you know? They look robotic, sure, but there’s not really much of a face or anything. And if you ask me, that makes them even more fun! The flashing lights seem to act as a face, if anything, since that’s what they point toward you while speaking. Oh yeah, they’re even asymmetrical! They’re really just a mishmosh of things that most people wouldn’t consider “cute”, but guess what! I think it’s precious! Sue me! (I would probably win because this isn’t a valid reason to sue someone!)

Name: New Donker

When the first trailer for Super Mario Odyssey came out, one thing that immediately caught everyone’s attention was the New Donkers! Usually, when humans appear in the Mario series, they are very heavily stylized, like ol’ Mario Mario himself! But these humans are hardly stylized at all, looking like your average businessperson you’d pull off the streets of New York in the 1950s!

Seeing Mario interacting with these much less stylized people is as jarring as it is hilarious, with lots of people questioning how this sort of image could be from a real Mario game. This is exactly the kind of off-the-wall wackiness we all appreciate over here!

...Of course, then there’s the question of if the New Donkers are technically human. We know Mario is human! We’ve gotten numerous statements from Nintendo that confirm it, aside from one old advertisement which listed him as “homo nintendonus.” What we really should be talking about is the New Donkers! We have no official source considering them humans, as they are exclusively referred to as “New Donkers” in-game. One statement from Nintendo says the reason Mario looks so different from the New Donkers is because “there’s lots of different kinds of people in the world,” but when the definition of “people” also includes dancing skeletons and garden robots, I think that it can be considered a pretty broad term.

Of course, even then, New Donkers and humans are obviously two very genetically-similar species capable of cross-breeding. How else do we explain Pauline?

Name: Shiverian

I love many many things in this big blue Earth of ours, but chubby seals are definitely way up there. So, these guys? Absolutely... wonderful. I love them. I love their dopey voices, I love their cute widdle faces. I love their cosy little town, and I love that they hold competitions where they literally roll around a racetrack, because they’re just that round and fat!!

Shiverians are one of the few NPCs you can capture, too! When in Fat Seal form, you can compete in their Bound Bowl races... Humans aren’t allowed to participate, but the brochure makes it clear that only a fat seal man could survive such a race.

And above all, I love their funky elder. Look at those shades. He’s a cool old man. He’s not like your grandpa- he’s hip!

Name: Bubblainian

I think one thing we can all appreciate here at Weird Mario Enemies Dot Geocities Dot Io is gastropods, no matter what shape or form they take. In Super Mario Odyssey, they take the form of giant French snails with flesh-lips, but better off to be a snail with weird flesh-lips than not be a snail at all, am I right gamers?

I’m glad that they picked snails as their “easy-going beach populace,” (though snails are a good choice for anything, really) but what stands out most about Bubblainians to me isn’t the Bubblainians themselves, but rather, one very particular run-down I had with one during my playthrough of the game!

Bubblainians hide in their shells whenever an enemy gets too close, a small detail I really love. However, one time when I was playing, I was wearing the chef outfit, and was running up to talk to one of these guys when without warning, it hid in its shell! I assume a nearby Gushen might’ve just gotten a little too close, but I just thought it was silly because these French snails were afraid of a chef!

You know, because escargot is a dish in France that’s made from snails and...

Well, it was funny to me at least.

Name: Volbonan

My absolute favorite world in Super Mario Odyssey has to be... New Donk City. I feel that that’s most peoples’ favorite. My immediate second choice, however, is Mount Volbono, and I just love its inhabitants to death. Before I die, you’ll see me laying down, on my deathbed saying “man, I sure love the Volbonans from Super Mario Odyssey” and then I’ll be dead.

But why do I love Volbonans so much? Well, I guess it’s just that I’ve always sort of had an affinity for inanimate object creatures (anyone who’s met me knows how much I love Vanilluxe) and Volbonans are just a perfect design for a fork character! I tried a few shots at designing fork characters in the past, but I made the dire mistake of putting the face on the part with the tines, rather than the handle, a mistake which the Volbonans so excellently fix! Really, I never considered using the tines as limbs, it’s a design that works so well that I’d be cursing myself if the Volbonans weren’t so inherently blessed in and of themselves.

Throw on the chef hats and neckerchiefs, and they go from perfect to extremely perfect, having a design befitting of their hobby of cooking! It feels weird that an entire species has a life focused on cooking, but I suppose that if you’re a giant fork in a land of giant food, there’s nothing better you can do. One of the souvenirs you can buy from Mount Volbono is a set of forks based on the Volbonans themselves! Cute! A little freaky, but still cute!

I think it goes without saying that I want the Volbonans, alongside every other Odyssey NPC, to be playable in the next Mario Kart. Let me race around the whole Mario world as a giant fork or 1950′s (ambiguously) human man!

Name: Moon Rabbit

I am summoned once again from the depths of my cave to talk about Japanese folklore, because I enjoy doing that! The Dark Side stage, unlocked after you beat the game, is also known as “Rabbit Ridge”, and features food-shaped rocks and a whole lotta bunnies... Why? You may or may not have already heard of the story of the moon rabbit (it’s pretty well-known), but in case you haven’t:

According to our friends in the east, the markings of the moon kind of resemble a rabbit pounding mochi with a mortar and pestle. And yeah, I can totally see it. Of course, Mario Odyssey very prominently features hats, and it prominently features the moon in nearly every Kingdom.... and rabbits, naturally, are pulled out of hats! It works on so many levels!

The regular Moon Rabbits aren’t all that talkative, but of course, there are some fairly notable rabbits, too! Yup, the Broodals are from the Dark Side of the moon... which might even be why they look like UFOs when they fly around in their hats. I won’t talk too much about them here, but you’ve gotta wonder... why are they so much more anthropomorphic than their fellow Moon Rabbits? Is this a Goofy/Pluto scenario?

#super mario odyssey #mario #mod chikako #mod f boy #mod hooligon

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gameridernews · 6 years ago

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Ex-Aid review: Kamen Sentai Gorider

I was originally lumping this in with the other spinoff material, but then I realized the Gorider stuff was basically movie length, so it makes sense to talk about it on its own. Since this is a crossover... spoilers for Gaim, Blade and Agito! That's completely unavoidable due to one key aspect of this crossover. Let's begin.

Kamen Sentai Gorider is a weird crossover, billed as a sequel to Choh Superhero Taisen, that features 5 returning Riders who... at some point transform into the Goriders, a combination of the original Sentai and the original Rider. I really don't understand the logic of even making these suits, but it's certainly a conversation piece.

This one is currently only available with TV-Nihon's subs but Excite was talking about working on it. It's an interesting one because it was originally released via the au streaming service called Video Pass, and thankfully received a DVD release later. These were released in 3 parts, called Mazes, each being about 30 minutes long and equating to a movie overall. Let's see if it was all worth it.

Maze 1: Emu died?

Well, with a title like that, who could resist checking this out?

The story is entirely set within an amusement park that's just in the middle of nothingness. Emu wakes up here and finds a small hut with a fancy candlelit table. Poppy is here in a kimono, calmly serving drinks in a robotic fashion, then walks away. Then a figure enters the room - an older man that Emu immediately recognizes as a guy named Kino. He transforms into Another Agito, which is another Agito from Kamen Rider Agito.

... Okay, lemme just explain that a bit better - they don’t really explain it. Basically, the term "Agito" in that series is used to refer to someone who’s been gifted with special powers, more or less. The titular hero and this guy are both classified as Agitos, and since Kino appeared later as another Agito, it makes sense that his name in later promotional material was... Another Agito. It's easy for that to be a "IS this a Kamen Rider?" debate, but with the current Buttobasoul games, he actually got the full title "Kamen Rider Another Agito". Very cool he actually got picked for this crossover, out of all the green Riders.

Since Kino is suspicious about basically being summoned from death, he transforms into Another Agito and tries fighting Ex-Aid outside, only for another introduction from a man named Kenzaki; Kamen Rider Blade.

So, the ending of Kamen Rider Blade is interesting and I am gonna have trouble shucking and jiving my way around it since this crossover heavily makes use of this. Kenzaki explains how he's technically dead because he allowed himself to become an Undead, the monsters of Kamen Rider Blade's series. It... makes sense in toku terms, but as we learn later, we don't need to think too much about that logic. Until now, I never had strong feelings about the main character one way or the other, outside of my lukewarm feelings on the show itself. But that will change once we get to the third part of this.

Despite Emu having this unexplainable feeling that there's no way out, Kino and Kenzaki decide that the best course of action is to simply leave the amusement park, but they find themselves coming back to the same spot everytime. Meanwhile, we get a couple lovely returning people from Gaim! Minato (Kamen Rider Malika) appears, putting Emu into a tight grip as Kaito (Kamen Rider Baron) stands before him with judging eyes.

Let's talk about Gaim. Gaim is still my top favorite show, but the more I hear other people share their thoughts on it, the more I'm realizing Kaito is... a problematic anti-hero/villain. I think he had a good character at the start but it's once he becomes a villain that his motivations become one-dimensional, and in some ways, confusing. Minato likewise is a pretty great badass character, but there's a section of fandom that believes she has some lousy gender representation to her, which I feel is probably just what happens when you interpret her motivations as romantic when they really don’t seem to be. But that’s as much as I’m gonna humor that discussion. In any case, Minato died to protect Kaito, and in the final battle with Gaim, the titular hero obviously needed to win. So out of the Riders so far, these are certainly the furthest from heroic deaths.

Despite that introduction, Kaito and Minato sit at the table with drinks, just in time for Kino and Kenzaki to come back from their endless walk. With all these people in a room together, they try to figure out what they must have in common in order to be gathered in one spot by some omnipotent force, and make one conclusion so far: All of them are Riders.

However, Kaito is never one to play nice, so he tries finding an escape. Minato follows and we get some nice banter, which is interrupted by the appearance of Shocker monsters... and it's here I also notice Kino specifically identifies these as Shocker, which gives me wonderful headcanons about Another Agito having dealt with them in the past. Must’ve mistaken him for Hongo.

Everyone gets a piece of the action, and finally... Kiriya appears, who transforms into Kamen Rider Lazer and finishes off the last monster. Meanwhile, back at the ranch hut, Emu questions how Kiriya is here after he died, which makes everyone realize the other connection they have: They all died in some way, which means Emu must’ve died as well.

Kino, however, is not convinced. He talks about how suspicious Emu has been up to this point, experiencing an inexplicable case of deja vu this entire time, and the clencher is the fact that there's a large mirror in the room that only Emu can see himself in. He seems to be the only one that stands out, which is reason enough for returning characters in a crossover to beat him up.

Maze 2: Escape

Everyone gangs up on Ex-Aid outside, until Lazer gives him the chance to escape and calm everyone down. They have some discussion, with Kaito criticizing Kiriya's trust in others, while Kenzaki finds Emu and encourages him. As they take on more of Shocker's disposables, the others talk and develop reasons to stop targeting Emu, and eventually show up to help him. Finally, directly at the halfway point, everyone is on the same page.

At the hut, Emu pieces some things together. They can't leave. Poppy in the hut repeats the same greeting everytime they enter. This, along with other things in the room that have reset themselves, reads like an RPG of some sort.

With that realization, Poppy enters the room again and transforms into a monster, which we learn is the final boss of this game. As they fight it outside it proves to be formidable against 6 Riders. While the others are distracted, Blade stabs Ex-Aid in the gut, giving him a nearly fatal wound. When questioned about it after Kenzaki trusted in him, Kenzaki reveals he's actually someone else in disguise - someone whose true identity is cropped off screen, but we can tell he's a crazy man in skinny jeans, so that narrows it down. Honestly though, I kinda expected Emu to be the actual fake, so kudos to them on that!

Emu is told that this game is designed to be unbeatable, and that everytime he plays it, he forgets all he learned, so he's doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. Emu tries to hide, but the final boss tracks him down, delivering the final blow.

That's when we get a twist I actually didn't know about. Emu wakes up in CR, with Asuna being concerned about the current situation. We learn that Bugsters have suddenly been reviving all over the place, and Brave and Snipe can only hold them off for so long. Emu has to enter this game, represented in the real world by Genm Corp's console with a monster claw growing out of it. However, Emu recognizes the game is unbeatable... so do they even have a chance?

Maze 3: Forever Gorider

Emu tries playing through this game once more, while Asuna and a weakened Hiro are unsure about what to do. Just then, a mysterious person enters CR...

It's when Emu enters the hut, for the first time in his experience, he finds a mirror shard with some numbers written in blood - he saw this previously, but it was very unclear what these meant. I... think the idea is that time has resumed where he died before, because once he realizes what the numbers mean, the other Riders enter the room after being beaten up by the final boss. Initially, Emu has forgotten who they are, but one by one, they get him to remember. Once Kenzaki tries, however, Emu remembers who he really is and calls him out as a fake.

This is confirmed once a differently dressed Kenzaki walks into the room - the same person who came to CR just moments ago! It's revealed that he has a reflection like Emu, meaning he's very much alive, and the fake Kenzaki is (according to Emu's complex number code) none other than... Kuroto Dan.

Kuroto laughs maniacally and puts away this facade, revealing his true face. Emu knew that his actions were different than the others, so he left a clue for himself that would remain even if the room reset. Kuroto is impressed, but questions just how the real Kenzaki got here.

It's at this point I learned that this writer, Kento Shimoyama, must be the hugest fan of Kamen Rider Blade, because what happens next is Kenzaki appreciation fanfiction. Hell, this makes ME wanna use Kenzaki in some fanfiction.

Even though this is just a game world, Kuroto still used Undead abilities as a fake Blade. Undead are drawn to other Undead, so Kenzaki sensed this and came to the source in CR and had them send him into the game world. Clever stuff.

Kuroto reveals that he prepared this game in the event he dies, and that he intended to gather the despair of all these dead Riders and turn that into the power needed to resurrect himself - sure! That sounds like Shocker talk to me. Of course, since Kiriya was here, he had to disguise himself as Kenzaki-- Now, remember how I said it makes sense in a toku way that Kamen Rider Blade was considered "dead" because he was no longer human? Kuroto reveals here that he was taking on the form of Kenzaki, a Kamen Rider whose whereabouts were unknown - so that whole "technically I'm dead" stuff was Kuroto spouting bullshit. Took what I would disregard as toku logic and used it against me! I can respect that.

Kuroto thinks he's won, so he absorbs the life out of these Riders, but... then parts of the room get destroyed, causing cards to rain from the sky for some more brilliant Kenzaki dialogue.

Kenzaki tells Kuroto that he fucked up by taking on Kenzaki's likeness. Not only is Kenzaki an Undead, he's also a Joker specifically. The logic behind Undead dictates that once only one Joker remains, the world comes to an end. Since Kuroto revealed himself to be a fake, Kenzaki is now the only Undead left in this game world, therefore it is doomed to destruction. FUCKING. BRILLIANT. WRITING. Kenzaki is a badass.

The Bugster threat leaves the real world, and the amusement park in the game world has been reduced to a wasteland. Kuroto isn't done yet, however, as he transforms into his classic Zombie Gamer form, summons the final boss and more Shocker minions, then a big fight takes place. This ultimately culminates in Genm absorbing the power of the final boss, donning some crazy armor on top of his Rider suit.

Once it seems they've been cornered, Ex-Aid throws the Riders some cards from the events of Choh Superhero Taisen - using these, they transform into the Goriders, which was wholly unnecessary but at least they get more use here than in the movie. In the last fight. Of a three part special. Named after them.

The Goriders do three very Showa finishers, finally finishing off all of the enemies. However, Genm still won't stay down, and he attempts threaten them by warning that they won't be able to come back to life if they destroy him. Unfortunately for him, this whole experience has given them all acceptance in their deaths. So, Genm decides he wants to destroy the rest of this game world, along with all of them.

However, in one last noble sacrifice, Another Agito, Baron, Malika and Lazer hold Genm back and allow themselves to die with him, giving Ex-Aid and Blade the chance to escape and live on.

And so... we cut to later. Emu is back in the real world, and after telling Hiro and Asuna about what happened, he concludes that the Riders sacrificed themselves willingly and they shouldn't be too upset over it. We get a happy stroll downtown, bringing Gorider to an end.

So... how was it? Well, I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it works.

I mean, okay. Okay-okay-okay. Let me be clear about this: Crossovers in Rider are not on the same level of writing as the shows, so I’m a little less critical of them. They’ve gotta do a lot and you can’t expect the person writing this to fully GET the personalities of the characters they’re working with. Not to mention, you gotta do some weird shit to create higher stakes and justify a huge gathering of heroes.

What I think saves it for me is just how... fanfic-y it is, out of all the crossovers. They all have this certain vibe to them but this one is different.

Like, Gaim characters, sure they were popular so they make sense. Lazer’s from the current show and he’s dead, so bring him in. When you start working things in like Another Agito and the fucking brilliant use of Blade, it feels more like someone with a passion was involved and wanted to give their favorites a chance in the spotlight. Which is even cooler when you realize these actors weren’t even in the movie this special is a sequel to, so they were brought back just for this.

Also the Gorider stuff is a total “I wonder how this gets used!” gimmick that has very little relevance. I’m not gonna disagree on that. It really has no reason to exist, other than probably to give this an extra push.

Despite all that, it feels like fanfiction I can get behind, and I gotta say again, the stuff they did with Blade might be the most meaningful thing I’ve seen from these crossovers since Kamen Rider Taisen’s use of Faiz - and that’s going several years back to when they started really getting actors to come back.

I enjoyed this. It's got this odd somber atmosphere and it has some cool twists to it that don't usually happen with crossover material. They not only picked some interesting returning Riders, but also, Blade technically exists in the world of Ex-Aid and it kinda actually works!

At the end of the day, it's a crossover that has very little impact on anything and is completely optional, just like the Choh Superhero Taisen movie it's an indirect sequel to, but it’s enjoyable if you just want a little crossover action. I'm gonna miss the spring crossover movies since they've been getting lots of actors to come back and make the stories a little more meaningful - it makes a huge difference when you're seeing actual Kenzaki and actual Kino on screen instead of having them be in Rider suits the whole time with a soundalike.

So... now that I've finished going through the bonus material for Ex-Aid, it's time we have a look at the next thing on the list to review.

That review will be on @buildridernews and will be linked here.

See you Next Build.

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