#Ruidus is a hard word to spell

[thursdaythoughtsfromtheabyss]

Ruidus

Sent in as expeditioners to the red moon. A long, red-lit tunnel welcomes you in. You come out into the chaos of the expedition site and as you escape you are tracked by one of Avadon until you seek shelter in a big cave. The cave leads to a tunnel that takes you underground. You follow through the burrowing of a Bane worm. Its attacks and you flee [conveniently] into Kreviris. You navigate the city, moving down through the streets until you’re discovered by the hive mind. Its a harrowing escape through the narrow street out into the world and the house ends as you emerge out of the underground.

(The souvenirs in the gift shop include little Ruidian glass carvings. They’re adorable)

[seasinkarnadine]

prompt snippet

okay so Im still working on the prompts yall sent (Im now upwards of 4,000 words...) but I wanted to share a little sneak peek as thanks for sending. (Prompts: 4. Trying to hide your injury from them, but failing miserably once you faint right in front of them

Imogen calls Ruidus and takes way too much damage (does Laudna even know about this?)

----- It’s a bandit attack. That’s why the smoke smells weird. The meat cooking isn’t cut from a hare and roasted on a spit; it’s human remains. It’s charred hair and clothes and blood. “Well, fuck.” Ashton hefts their hammer on one shoulder. “Now what the fuck do we do?” Imogen looks at the overturned crates and smashed carts. The debris is scattered all over the hillside. The bandits seem long gone.

“Don’t suppose they mighta missed it?” She asks while she turns over a bucket with her boot. Fearne purses her lips as she looks out over the ruined campsite.

“Mama said that this captain, what was his name? Crawford? Crake?”

“Crotchgrab?” Chetney supplies.

“Cramer,” Imogen corrects.

“Yeah, Crampy, that he would probably keep it close to him.” Fearne nods. “So if we can find his body, it might be in one of his pockets.” As if to demonstrate she reaches into the depths of her fur and withdraws something small, hard, and round. She gives it a sniff, and then shrugs and pops it into her mouth. A moment later she spits it back out and scowls at it.

“We might not even need to do that. Hey Letters, are we close enough for you to cast Locate Object?” Imogen asks. The little robot wheels up beside her with a contemplative hum.

“Let me give it a try…. Oh!”

“Ya get somethin’?” Imogen leans closer to him like it’ll cause the effects of the spell to transfer to her.“I sure did! Come on, this way.”

“Don’t get too fuckin’ far ahead!” Ashton shouts after them as Chetney mutters,“Somethin’ about this place is makin’ my nose itch…”

“Something dangerous?” Orym asks.

“Might be. Might be.”

“Let’s everyone keep alert.” Orym says. He adjusts his grip on his sword, a determined crease to his brow.

It’s only as Imogen starts following after that she realizes Luadna’s hand slipped from her grip. Looking back she sees Laudna silhouetted against the night sky. In front of her is a shallow pit overflowing with corpses. Flames leap from the bodies and spew sparks up into the darkening sky. Laudna stands at the edge, staring into the flames, unmoving..

“Laudna?” She doesn’t move. Why isn’t she moving? “Laud, honey?” Imogen steps towards her.

“Mmm? Oh, sorry, lost in thought. Did we find it?” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“FCG thinks they found it.” Should she ask if everything is alright? Or should she wait for Laudna to say something? She could always take a peek…no, no. Boundaries, Imogen.

“I’m alright,” Laudna says reassuringly. This time her smile graces her lips with a natural curve.

“Yeah?” Imogen smiles back and reaches out her hand. Laudna takes it.

“We’re going to get this gem, and we’re going to power that machine, and we’re going to figure out what is going on with Ruidus, and we’re going to make your nightmares stop. And then we’re going to get ourselves a little house in the Heartmoor and I’ll bake you cookies every day.”

Surrounded by burning bodies and blood isn’t a place one should feel joy, but that doesn’t stop a laugh from escaping Imogen’s chest.

“Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

 “YOU GUYS COMING?” Ashton hollers from halfway up the hill. The others are waiting near the top.

“We’re coming!” Laudna waves back to him. “Shall we?” Imogen links their arms and they follow after their group.

[3d10fire-damage]

i gotta ramble

right now i’m kinda concluding that somehow, imogen going super saiyan here is going to revive her downed party members or otherwise undo the events of this combat

because on one hand, yeah if the players make poor choices or just get unlucky then all is fair, if they die then they die and that’s just how it is, but like i dont think they made bad choices, for the most part? they decided, pretty much as soon as they could, that they needed to run from the encounter. that otohan was too powerful and they should not stay and try to beat her. but then running just didn’t work, because between otohan’s legendary actions and her echoes, she was chasing each one of them down in turn and basically downing them once per round.

and the party didnt even go into the fight hurt or tired, really. they had plenty of spells and HP. so they wasted a bunch of time trying to run, which was futile, and then by the time things got real, they hadn’t dropped her low enough to actually get that close to beating her.

and THEN when laudna reached out to otohan about the moon crown thing, and rolled a really good persuasion, it seemed to convince otohan, but then laudna said something slightly wrong i guess, and otohan went and killed fearne anyway. like that high roll didn’t matter. (also like the fact that she saw imogen’s memories about the device didn’t matter.)

so then i’m like, okay this whole encounter hinged on imogen, from the beginning. fair enough. so otohan spends a big portion of the encounter telling imogen to give in to the storm, and it’s like... ANYONE in that position (unless they were playing an evil character or something) would naturally, instinctively, choose to resist. that’s what imogen has been doing this whole time-- running from the moon shit because it’s scary and possibly evil and she doesn’t want to hurt people. to give in, at this point especially considering otohan has only been hurting the party, would appear to be siding with the enemy. turning on your friends. or like, taking a big risk or sacrifice that might not be worth it. and really i dont think imogen knew what giving in would even mean? she didn’t know otohan’s intentions or what would happen if she gave in.

so obviously she kept fighting it. yeah she was rolling wisdom saves, but there’s always a chance she passes those, so if matt intended for imogen to like, auto-fail them to suit the narrative, he wouldn’t have asked her to make those rolls, or she would’ve had disadvantage on all of them. if you compare this episode to the episode where yasha gets taken over by obann, it feels a lot more... loose. i dont remember if yasha still made a roll to save against obann’s mind control, but either way ashley wasn’t going to be at the table for months. this was a much more winding path to get laura to say the magic words.

and after a while, with actual death occurring twice, it kinda felt like there was only one correct choice? or the bells hells just needed to be going full aggro AND rolling really well AND otohan had to be rolling like shit (did she ever make an attack roll under 20? if she did it wasn’t very often).

because when your choices boil down to: 1) you give in to the storm like the legendary NPC says or 2) you keep fighting a losing battle and watch all your friends die because you won’t comply with the legendary NPC...

you’re not actually forced to choose the former... but you would be really fucking inclined to, right?

but i don’t believe matt would railroad them this hard (certainly not on purpose), and i don’t believe he is the type of DM to punish them for making the “wrong” choice by killing the PCs. so in short lmao i guess i’m assuming (hoping) that somehow this ruidus thing imogen is doing can bring back the dead or rewind time or something because ngl i’m gonna be a bit frustrated if we permanently lose fearne and/or orym because of these shenanigans

[cadaceus]

EXU 6: “The Gift Among the Green”

Hello everyone and welcome to my liveblogs for this week’s episode of Exandria Unlimited: “The Gift Among the Green.” I absolutely loved the worldbuilding that Aabria gave us in this episode, and some of the character moments--especially with Opal--were truly so emotional. I am both so ready and not ready at all for these final two episodes! 

- This cozy Matt look is really working for me, personally (plus Omar’s outfit is so cute!)

- Fy’ra Rai calling Dorian “little brother” is gonna get me every time isn’t it  😭

- DARIAX AND HIS 0 PERCEPTION CHECK IS SO ON BRAND.... it’s okay baby boy.... we’ve all been there....

- Dorian getting the crown again via his friends skinny dipping into an ancient civilization... EXU once again being peak D&D

- A PUPPY??? Googol my beloved! (Oh and now Googol has the scary crown... this went downhill so quickly oh my lord)

- Ruidus has been mentioned... I just got flashbacks to that hour long Exandrian moon theories video on Youtube.... give me the moons lore Matt and Aabria!

- YES DORIAN LORE DORIAN LORE 

- Oooh, his real name is Bronte... I wonder what his last name is and why he refuses to say it? He must be some sort of nobility, right?  👀

- Orym admitting to checking out Dariax during the skinny dipping LMAOOO Liam’s characters will just always gravitate towards Matt’s magic men

- FEARNE’S PARENTS LEFT HER 50 YEARS AGO?? So she has spent almost half her life without them... oh my love 😭

- Dariax LIED to the group and about Tharla Starr too, he is so precious

- “I’ve never done anything without Ted” :((( Love them

- Dariax saying to the Observer “there’s been a lot of people in my head recently” reminds me of one of my favorite Yasha lines, “There’s been a lot of people in my head and I don’t want to give them you” and now I’m emo again

- “That’s called... branding” I mean, Dariax is not wrong LMAO Dorian has one of those names where you just want to say the first name and last name together

- HUH? Who/what did Opal see in the mirror? At first I thought maybe Ted, but Ted would look like Opal (ie: not blue eyes) right? Curiouser and curiouser....

- Oh, she saw her mother.... baby girl... Opal is making me sad today, Aimee has done such an incredible job with this character 😭

- FY’RA KAI IS ALIVE???

- Orym got a seed! I wonder what sort of seed! (Or maybe they said and I missed it...)

- That group Perception check was..... rough

- HUH??? Someone got Opal with a dart, but they are in the ancient city so did someone sneak into the city or is there someone after her that is a resident of this place?

- LIAM SAYING CALEB INSTEAD OF ORYM I MISS HIM ALREADY TOO  😭 😭

- A chase scene?! Let’s gooooo

- This derailing into a conversation about gender and sex in the animal kingdom is so valid of them dfgdhjkfl

- Wait, I didn’t know Word of Radiance was a 5e spell.... any Stormlight Archive fans here who know exactly what I was thinking of when I heard her say it...

- “Save Opal--and get my axe back!” Priorities on point :’)

- MEAT BEAST??? PUPPOS??? 

- Ashley’s two Natural 1s in a row...  😭

- Opal Misty Stepping on to the back of Dire Wolf!Fearne is so badass, I love that imagery so much... anytime someone uses that spell it ends up being so freaking cool

- Wait why was Opal kidnapped again? Or do we not know yet?

- Fy’ra Rai going “I tell you all these things with two slaps on the back!” made me laugh so hard tbh sfghdjkld that’s just how D&D works sometimes, I wasn’t even questioning it until she pointed it out!

- The way Ashley went “I apologize” in that long drawn out way was so funny dfgdhjk

- Huzzah for getting the Ring of Invisibility, that’s so cool! But also YIKES IT WAS THE PURPLE PEOPLE WHO WERE AFTER OPAL?? HOW COME??

- Dariax’s Opal impression going “Help me Ted!~” before spellcasting truly made me laugh out loud quite literally fsghjkdl (timestamping it at about 4:22:28 on the VOD, 4:07:28 on YT)

- Poor Opal is in shock isn’t she :(((

- NOOOOOO I DON’T WANT ANJALI TO GOOOO I was lowkey hoping that she would stay with the group for the rest of the time, she feels like such a key part of them now!

- “Don’t worry... I would do anything for my friends.” This is still giving me Dorian Corruption Arc vibes and I am not mad about it... what if he makes the same bad turns/choices as he did previously (that Fy’ra Rai is referencing) but this time it’s not because he thinks he’s better off alone, it’s because he does it for the sake of his found family? This is not a theory just an angst dump but woof I love how much potential this storyline has

- I like “the Chosen Ones” as a name so much! Maybe not as much as “the Natural Ones” as I saw suggested in the chat, but hey it���s still a keeper ;)

- Ooh, so is this Ted’s body that someone found? Or is it more of a metaphysical imagery of Ted, ie inside of Opal’s mind? I am so intrigued at what’s to come in these last two episodes!

- See You Next Thursday friends! ;)