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grailfinders · 2 years ago

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Grailfinders Viewers' Choice #15: V1

today on Grailfinders it’s our first Viewers’ Choice build in Pathfinder 2e, V1 from Ultrakill! the long and short is: he robot, he go to hell, he shoot everything there. he’s like the Doomguy, if the Doomguy ate hell as he went. or if the Doomguy had an official dakimakura of him in a schoolgirl’s uniform.

yeah, Ultrakill gets weird at times. anyways, V1’s a Pistolero Gunslinger to pull of sick trickshots with his pistol, but he’s also getting the Sterling Dynamo dedication to pick up some extra literal arms from his brother and he’s an Occult Witch to pick up some figurative arms from hell.

check out his build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here!

Ancestry & Background

unlike wotc, Paizo realized that there’s more than one kind of robot in the world, so we actually have some choice this time around. that being said, we’re making V1 an Automaton, both for its combat capabilities and because it too is the last vestiges of a dying civilization. You get a stat boost in Strength and one ability of your choice like Dexterity, and you also gain access to Low-Light Vision. as Something Wicked taught us many painful times, V1 does not have true darkvision. because of your Automaton Core, you’re not really a construct, and can be healed and damaged like a normal humanoid. while that removes some resistances and immunities, it also means you won’t instantly die at 0 HP, so checks and balances.

on the plus side, you still have a Constructed Body, so you don’t need to eat, drink, or sleep. you still need to take a long rest, but you’re not unconscious for the 2 hours it takes. really frees up the ol’ calendar for some speedrun practice.

while your punches are pretty powerful, this is a first-person shooter, so you’re starting off as a Sharpshooter Automaton. this gives you the Automaton Aim action, reducing the accuracy penalty for firing your gun at a longer range. trust me, nobody wants to be up close and personal with a Sisyphean Insurrectionist.

if you do fight in close quarters, you’re going to want something better than a regular old fist to fight with, right? the Automaton Armament you get gives you a Claw attack, dealing slashing damage and using your dexterity to aim.

at level 5, your Arcane Safeguards let you Resist Magic as a reaction, adding +1 to your save against a spell, and also increasing the odds of a critical success against arcane spells. most of your adventure is in hell, so failing against a plane shift would be really awkward.

at level 9 your wings finally do something, thanks to Arcane Propulsion. once a day, you can fly for up to five minutes. I know you technically can’t fly in Ultrakill, but have you seen some of those speedruns? you can fly enough.

at level 13 you get a Rain of Bolts, letting you fire shrapnel in either a cone or in a circle around you once per day. man, that minigun has a worse recharge time than I remembered…

at level 17 your Astral Blink gives you sick gamer reflexes, so you can Dimension Door once an hour at 4th level. grappling hooks- always cool.

oh, and of course you’re a Warrior. not much else for a literal killing machine to be, really. boosts to Constitution and Dexterity, training in Intimidation, and the Intimidating Glare feat. I don’t think V1 even has a mouth, so this’ll help a lot.

Levels

1. okay, first up the proficiencies: trained in Will saves and Class DCs, Unarmed, Simple, and Martial attacks, as well as Unarmored, Light, and Medium defense. you start off trained in Occultism, Acrobatics and Religion to fight demons and know what you’re fighting, and as you level up your intelligence you get training in Athletics, Arcana, Medicine, and Diplomacy. you’re an expert in Perception, Fortitude and Reflex saves, as well as Simple and Martial firearms and crossbows. we’d prefer firearms, but if you gotta fit in, you gotta fit in.

as for your actual level, your Key Ability as a gunslinger is Dexterity. you also get an Ability Boost off the bat for some more Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence. be prepared for 0 boosts to Charisma, V1 just straight-up does not talk.

if you get attacked, you can Hit the Dirt! and leap out of the way, giving you a bonus to your AC and knocking you prone when you land. that’s a combat slide baby!

you’re also trained in the Way of the Pistolero, training you in Deception (though I still want to use Intimidation as the way skill), and giving you a Raconteur’s Reload. that means you can demoralize or create a diversion and reload in the same action!

you can also move Ten Paces as a free action when combat starts. you get a plus 2 to the initiative roll, and you can draw your pistol at the same time. you can also step up to 10’ away as a free action at the start of your first turn.

your Singular Expertise gives you a +1 bonus to all damage from firearms and crossbows, at the cost of reducing your proficiency with other weapons. they’re all trained, and they can’t be improved until your gun skills do. it’s not a huge deal since you don’t use that many regular weapons anyway, but it’s something to keep in mind if you intend to modify this build at home.

2. a level 2 you can make a timely Pistol Twirl as an action to feint an opponent nearby. if you succeed they’re flat-footed against your ranged and melee attacks, if you critically fail, you’re flat-footed against all their attacks. it’s not quite a charged shot, but you’re more likely to get a critical hit, so I’ll count it.

you can also Cat Fall, reducing all your falling damage. I don’t think Ultrakill even has fall damage, right? Either you live or you don’t.

I guess we’re facing off against V2 now, since you’re already getting your Sterling Dynamo dedication. with this, you can replace a limb or add a new one, though you can’t get an extra hand this way. yes, sadly we won’t be quadruple-wielding this build. I know, now it’s unplayable.

the good news is that it’s silver, so it deals extra damage against devils, and the Power Driver Dynamo you get deals more damage (a d8) than your stock hand while also shoving creatures around. You have to keep a hand free to use this, but you’re not really getting any two-handed weapons anyway. The one other downside is you need to keep the whole thing wound up, spending a minute to wind it for the next 24 hours. this doesn’t sound bad, but enemies can disable the thing to cut down the timer, and later you’ll get abilities that spend windup time. there’s a reason most of your fights only last a few minutes.

3. at third level you become Fleet, giving you an extra 5’ of movement speed. it’s no monk movement, but that does speed you up enough to change your leap to a max of 15’ in a go. you’re also better at Occultism now. it’s not useful yet, but you need to know a lot about hell in order to get down there. without dying, I mean. getting to hell is real easy if you don’t mind being stuck down there.

you’re also Stubborn, improving your Will Saves and you can save more often against being controlled. I doubt there’s that many people in hell with 1337 hacker skillz, but it’s better safe than sorry, y’know?

4. at level four you kind of get your shotgun, allowing you to perform a Black Powder Boost. Whenever you leap, you can spend some ammo to go an extra 10’. so yes, now you can move as much as most player characters can in an action as a reaction. you’re not super-fast, but god are you hard to pin down.

when you land without taking damage, you can make a Rolling Landing as a reaction to step away from your landing point. this will also improve as your acrobatics does- as an expert you can stride up to half your speed, as a master you can move at full speed, and as a legend you don’t trigger reactions.

finally, you tinker around with v2’s arm a bit to make it a Modular Dynamo. I’m sure he won’t mind. now you can swap your power driver for Entangling Barbs or vice-versa as an action, giving you a short-range grappling hook for enemies. we’ll get the real one later, don’t worry.

5. at level five you get another Ability Boost in Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence. your Gunslinger Weapon Mastery bumps up your proficiency with all your weapons, and you’re an expert in Acrobatics for better movement tech.

6. at level six we finally get a shotgun proper thanks to Scatter Blast. I mean you can always just buy a shotgun (and you need to for this action to work) but now it’s Ultrakill-tier, with a longer range and a wider scatter shot. it even explodes now! directly on you, with a critical failure! this is why most people don’t punch their own guns.

you become an Underwater Marauder, preventing you from being flat-footed while swimming, and you can use your fists without penalty. hey, the water level’s going to happen eventually, might as well prepare for it.

you can also Piston Punch with v2’s arm, attacking two creatures at the same time at the cost of two actions and an hour of winding.

7. at level seven you can Skitter while prone, crawling up to half your speed when you move. it’s hard to match Ultrakill’s movement in a turn-based game, but at least you can slide around wherever you want now.

you’re also a master in Acrobatics now, giving you even more space to move around with, and your Vigilant Senses make you a master in Perception. finally, your Weapon Specialization adds extra damage to all the weapons you specialize in. currently, that’s a +3 to most firearms, and a +2 to your unarmed attacks.

8. at level eight you can Leap and Fire when you hit the dirt, letting you take a shot at whoever triggered the reaction mid-leap. this is about as close as we’re getting to a true parry system, but you deal more damage with your guns anyway, so… close enough.

we’re not done upgrading your reactionary dodges though, since with Kip Up you can stand from prone as a free action without triggering attacks. now you can finally boost dodge, something you could do since… the first level in-game. this is going a bit out of order, sorry about that.

we also finally get your Witch Dedication, which will let us start filling out the rest of your arsenal. we’re picking an Occult patron, since that’s probably what devils count as, right? At least I assume it’s some kind of devil leaving guns all over the place in hell…

you get trained in occult spellcasting, and you also get trained in Survival. to be honest, most of these skills aren’t really something we need for the build- turns out a silent murder machine isn’t that complicated. still, we had to pick something.

as a witch, you get a familiar, which is basically a living spellbook. they come packed with a couple cantrips, but you can only pick one per day, so we’re only going over one or two spells per level. Warp Step will greatly increase your speed, giving you an extra five feet of movement for a turn and letting you stride or fly twice as part of the two-action spell. if you’d rather focus on looking cool, Musical Accompaniment will give you that sweet sweet Ultrakill soundtrack in the background, giving you a +1 bonus to performance checks for a minute, and possibly some other checks as well, as deemed appropriate by your DM. all this comes at a cost to your stealth checks, which- yeah, duh. it’s hard to sneak with a boombox on your back

9. at ninth level your advanced deed, Pistolero’s Retort unlocks. with this, you can react to someone nearby critically failing an attack on you to take a shot on them. again, not quite a parry, but the spirit is there.

you also have Gunslinger Expertise, which does what you’d think, and you’re now a master in Occultism. we’re still not at the point where we can invade hell yet, but we’ll get something nice next level for your trouble.

10. finally, tenth level is here! bump up your Strength Dexterity Constitution and Intelligence again, then grab Deflecting Shot to parry a wider range of attacks- if a nearby ally would get hit, you can fire a shot to add 2 to their AC. and don’t worry, you’ll know if the +2 will make a difference, since you can use this after the attack is declared.

your sliding also gets boosted thanks to Nimble Crawl. Currently, it’s the same as skittering, but as you improve in acrobatics, you can crawl at full speed, and as a legend you won’t even be flat-footed, allowing you to finally have a proper shootout sliding around like a greased pig, just the way god intended.

you also get access to Basic Witch Casting, giving you one spell slot per day for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level spells. Gravitational Pull is a first level spell that pulls a creature up to 20 feet closer to you if they fail a fortitude save, knocking them prone on a critical failure. sadly, this doesn’t pull you towards them on a success, but that would be cool, huh? you could also grab a Kinetic Ram to push creatures away from you like v2’s arm should.

for your second level spell, Inner Radiance Torrent is a must have for your railgun. you can spend two actions to two rounds on this spell, making it either a 60’ or 120’ line. if you spend two whole turns charging it up, you deal extra damage and irradiate yourself for a minute. you can also Shatter for your shotgun’s alt fire.

finally, your third level spells! Vampiric Touch is a must-have, finally letting you drink the blood of your enemies for healing! you deal negative damage to an enemy in melee range, gaining temporary HP out of the deal for 1 minute. you can also grab Ghostly Weapon to fight Mindflayers. I think they’re ghosts? I don’t know.

11. eleventh level gunslingers get Evasion, mastering your reflex saves and improving your successes with them. you can also Siphon Life by spending two actions now! I know you have to get dropped to 0 HP by a negative enemy first, but I mean. it’s hell. there’s going to be negative enemies there. and if you’ve managed to do a deathless run of Ultrakill so far, that’s as impressive as it is unlikely.

still, this means you can deal extra negative damage when you punch a living creature, forcing a fortitude save against them and healing you based on how much damage takes.

you’re also more Athletic now, congrats.

12. at level twelve, your Ricochet Shot finally lets you bounce a bullet off a coin to ignore cover. I know this is the second gun you get in the game, but to be fair you don’t have to buy it right away.

you can also Quick Jump, so now your black powder boosts can be added to your High and Long jumps as well, while also packaging everything into one action.

finally, you take a Basic Lesson in Witchcraft, learning the Lesson of Calamity. you learn the Stumbling Curse hex to mess around with your enemy’s movement via creative usage of grappling hooks, while your familiar learns Ill Omen. if their target fails a will save, they get disadvantage on at least one attack roll or skill check next turn. this way you can still mess around with the grappling hook, even if your enemy is too heavy to move that often.

13. at lucky level 13 you become a Gunslinging Legend, improving your training with all weapons once more. you also gain Medium Armor Expertise, improving your armor training. you’re also an expert in Intimidation now. I mean you can basically intimidate for free every time you reload, you might as well be good at it, right?

14. as a 14th level gunslinger you can perform a Dance of Thunder, spending all three of your actions to just viciously abuse the action economy. You can now step, strike a nearby enemy, and reload, repeating the three actions each time you successfully hit your target up to two more times. all this comes at the cost of making your fatigued for a minute afterwards, reducing your AC and saves, but it won’t matter much if your enemies are all dead, right?

you know what we need? better boosts. with Powerful Leap, your leaps can move five feet vertically, or an extra five feet horizontally. that means you can now move further than most people can move in an action as a reaction, shoot the guy who tried to attack you, and finish it all off standing. now I’m pretty confident we’re matching ultrakill in terms of movement. maybe not the weird momentum stuff, but we’ve still got six levels to go.

you also learn some Expert Witch Spellcasting, improving your occult spell training and giving you a fourth and fifth level spell now, with a sixth level spell to come. with your fourth level slot, we can finally use everyone’s favorite weapon, the drill! Dimension Anchor can keep an enemy from teleporting for up to an hour, but if you’d rather have a bunch of blood and damage the Vampiric Maiden can help out. it deals damage, gives you temporary HP, and can immobilize an enemy for a round.

for your fifth level spell, grab Repelling Pulse to really knock a creature around and deal damage at the same time.

15. another Ability Boost, this time into Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom to shake things up. you also become a Titan Wrestler, allowing you to shove and grapple creatures up to two sizes larger. I’m pretty sure this means King Minos is still out of your weight class, but I’m sure we’ll figure out some way to parry him later.

you now have a Grim Swagger while wielding your gun, making an intimidation check against the will dcs of all creatures in 30’, frightening them or making them flee on a success. I know it’s tempting to use an Ultrakill meme for this, but fight the urge! you can do it, I believe in you.

you also have a Greater Weapon Specialization, and the greatest skill in Acrobatics. you now take no falling damage from any height, can move up to 30’ when you hit the ground without causing an attack, and you can slide around at full speed with no downside.

16. at level 16 you can parry ranged attacks with an Instant Return, catching a bullet out of the air and firing it back at the poor son of a bitch who tried to shoot you.

you’re also better with speed tech now thanks to Aerobatics Mastery helping you maneuver in flight.

you can also use Murksight to see through fog, mist, rain, and snow. you’re just as accurate in Wrath as you are anywhere else, and given how much blood you get on you on a daily basis, that probably counts as rain too.

you also get that sixth level spell slot I was talking about. Suspended Retribution lets you get a real counterattack off if you read your target right. You pick a specific trigger, and then for the next minute the target will take 70 points of damage whenever they activate the spell, though they can also waste a whole turn to remove it. either you restrict the enemy’s attack pattern, or you get a free turn. either way, a fun spell.

17. you’re now a Juggernaut, making you a master of Fortitude and improving your successful saves. robots! pretty tough. they should make armies out of the things.

your Shootists Edge makes you a master of your Class DC, and your mastered firearms can now completely ignore the range penalty when firing them. that’s the great thing about robot gunslingers- no breathing or heartbeats to affect their aim. you’re also Legendary in Occultism now- it’s a secret tool that’ll help us later.

18. it’s later! you now know Master Witch Spellcrafting, improving your spell power again and giving you a seventh level spell! there’s just one we want this time- the spell Plane Shift. Now you can finally invade hell, just like you always wanted! So I guess we haven’t played any of the game yet? Kind of makes sense, Hell is a tough place to invade. don’t ask where we got the arm though.

you can also use Bizarre Magic to make it harder for people to recognize or identify spells you cast. turns out, it’s hard to translate binary on the fly, who knew?

you can now Reach for the Stars when you use a black powder boost. for each dose of power or piece of ammunition spent, you can add another 10’ to your leap, up to five times in a single jump. that means you can leap up to 80’ as a reaction, changing direction with each piece of black powder used. now we have matched Ultrakill in terms of stupid momentum bullshit.

19. for your 19th level, your True Perception gives you a permanent True Seeing spell. now you see the world for what it truly is, a… visual novel? weird. you can get that thanks to your Incredible Senses making you legendary in perception. you also have Medium Armor Mastery, improving your armor training to master. you’re also a master in Intimidation now. I know this isn’t as ridiculous as last level, but I wanted you to have plenty of time to enjoy blowing yourself up.

20. finally, you hit level 20. you get one last Ability Boost in Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom, and your Slinger’s Reflexes give you an extra reaction each turn for counterattacks.

now that you’ve filled out the in-game encyclopedia, you have Assured Identification, making it easier to identify magic. thank god.

one last thing before you go- you learn the Lesson of Death as your final witchy bonus. sure, the Curse of Death is cool, dealing tons of damage and killing an enemy in 3-4 rounds, but the real reason we’re here is so your familiar can learn Raise Dead, because Gabriel knows you aren’t getting through this game without it.

oh right, one last thing before the pros and cons- your eighth level spell, Devour Life. force a fortitude save on a target, dealing 60 negative damage and healing you for half that in real HP. excess is temporary, and if this takes a target to 0 HP they instantly die. simple, effective, and very, very bloody.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

your positioning on the battlefield is super important in Pathfinder, and V1 is one of the best builds we’ve done to date when it comes to controlling his own position as well as his enemy’s. He’s relatively fast, can slide around and fly, and most importantly he can move reactively, which saves his actions for attacking while also giving him a better idea of where to move, and that’s all before we talk about how he can push and pull enemies like he’s taking their turns for them.

He’s also great at abusing the Action Economy, with Hit the Dirt effectively giving him an extra move and attack action from pretty early on in the build, plus his Dance of Thunder letting him take three turns in one go to cap off a fight.

a lot of times, damage focused characters have issues with longevity, especially when it comes to healing themselves. V1 does not have that problem, with his vampirism allowing him to patch himself up without losing out on damage.

Cons:

unlike Ultrakill, you have limited ammunition in Pathfinder. maybe. obviously it depends on your DM, but when you’re using five bullets per reaction they’re going to cut you off eventually. you also have limited ammo in terms of your spells- only having one slot per level seriously limits how often you can cast stuff.

you’re great in combat, but you’re practically a dead fish when it comes to socialization. you have almost no skills except for threatening people, and even then you have the lowest charisma score possible. there’s a reason you’re a silent protagonist. and alone.

a lot of your abilities don’t become useful right away. we barely use intimidation at all, and your occultism uses up a lot of skill improvements despite the fact that we use it for almost nothing beyond unlocking spells in the second half of the build.

#ultrakill #pathfinder 2e #pf2e #v1 #gunslinger #witch #sterling dynamo

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gameguy20100 · 2 years ago

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If Audrey's abuse of Chloe "makes her a good person" (according to Chloe stans's claims), then Vilitch the Curseling from "Warhammer Fantasy" tabletop game is a freaking Saint. /sarcasm

There is Vilitch's backstory (that I copied from Warhammer wikia):

"Once among the tribes of the Northmen there was born a pair of twins; one healthy, strong and handsome to look upon, and one wretched, weak and tiny. Though the tribe's leaders expected the wholesome son to become a great warrior, it was the runt Vilitch who was to change their fate forever.

The twins had a difficult birth, and their mother died soon afterwards, for it took all her strength to nourish the greedy infants. As they grew up, Thomin -- the thriving twin -- excelled in the hunt, and soon rose to lead the tribe's youngest warriors. The weakling Vilitch, on the other hand, was universally despised for his ugliness and frailty. He was forced to perform his dead mother's chores and, humiliatingly, was denied the use of a sword. Thomin used to beat Vilitch for the slightest infraction and, despite the runt's pleas, his father would not intervene.

As they grew up, Thomin became well-muscled and athletic, quickly learning the ways of the warrior. Vilitch barely managed to scrape by as an apprentice to the tribe's shaman, where he learnt a few meagre cantrips and a little knowledge about the Ruinous Powers that dwelt beyond the veil. Every night, the runtling prayed fervently to Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways, to reverse their fates, to make him the strong one and his brother the slave. The Great Sorcerer, who delights in anarchy, eventually agreed to Vilitch's selfish request.

One Geheimnisnacht, when the Chaos moon Morrslieb passed its closest to the Known World, Vilitch awoke to find that his body and that of his sibling Thomin had melded together. His brother's intellect had been added to his own, and there was nothing left of Thomin's mind save for a drooling automaton enthralled to Vilitch's command. The Master of Misrule leading his puppets to battle.

The grotesque fusion of warrior and runtling that staggered out of the twins' tent glowed with the power of Chaos Sorcery. Vilitch's budding magical abilities had been enhanced a hundredfold, and the hulking body to which his withered frame had been fused was possessed of diabolic strength. Laughing maniacally at his newfound powers, Vilitch embarked upon a bloody killing spree, sending crackling arcs of pure change into those who had looked down upon him in the past and forcing the body of Thomin to throttle any who tried to stop him. By the time the sun set, the village had been consumed by sorcerous fire and the streets ran with molten flesh.

But Vilitch's story did not end there. The malformed sorcerer-twin hunted down all of the warrior elite of his tribe and used his dire powers to enslave their minds, making them little more than walking puppets that lived and died according to his whims. Now, wherever the Curseling plots and schemes to further his own power, a band of hard-bitten veteran Chaos Warriors marches at his side, each of them under the fearful command of the disturbing creature that they know only as the "Twisted Twin."

Dang.

Now, that's a backstory for a villain.

#warhammer fantasy #the twisted twin #Vilitch the curseling #Chloe stans #abuse #ask and answer #adrianxiii

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solarflame33 · 1 year ago

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What's your favourite TTRPG?

someone asking about my hyperfixiation?

alright baby it's time, im going to answer that question in the longest way i can. I was going to try to structure it before i realized i have no idea how, so instead ill just infodump with whatever structure i make up as i go.

To preface this, i have a taste of course, and that is cool fight games, i like systems that really get into the nitty-gritty of character building and tactical choices in combat, I do not particularly care for roleplaying systems as me and my groups are very good at roleplaying on our own, we already make lengthy conversations between our characters, ask questions etc without really needing prompting, so i like systems that focus on the fighting since that certainly needs robust enough rules for my liking, i need to see damage numbers for my brain to buzz. I want to make big sword ladies that can split people in half and i need the system to support that.

Pathfinder 2e

So, as of now my favorite system is pathfinder 2e, its elegant 3 action system tickles my brain, it allows for interesting tactical choices (do i stride to flank the enemy even if I don't know whether it has attacks of opportunity or do I just take my chances with my strikes? do i make a second attack at -5 or do i try to aid an ally? etc) while still having a concrete and finite end to your turn, once you used all 3 actions that's that.

The problem a lot of people have with this system is that most things you could do in d&d 5e with an object interaction become one whole action, like drawing a weapon or opening a door, getting up from prone is also a whole action. To a certain extent i agree it is annoying, however I think the limitations imposed by the system can create much more interesting choices, especially when taking into account another great feature of the system, traits.

Pretty much everything in pf2 has traits, most of the time these traits are just tags like the fire trait which just tells you whatever has this trait has fire, while some have extra effects like the attack trait that means actions with this trait are affected by multiple attack penalty. Traits inform you of how stuff interacts with each other in a clean simple way, for instance some enemies (not all!) have an ability called attack of opportunity that lets them attack as a reaction when you take certain actions, how do you know which actions? simple, all actions with the move and manipulate trait (and ranged attacks).

On the note of attacks of opportunity I'll mention an example of one of my favorite moments of the system, I was playing a level 9 automaton barbarian, we were fighting a knight on a nightmare (hell horsey), we were in a hallway with the knight in front of me and our rogue behind me, i had just been brought back to consciousness by our rogue after the knight knocked me out, what that means is that im prone and my greataxe has been dropped while in reach of the knight, standing from prone and grabbing the weapon are both actions that trigger attacks of opportunity and I know this enemy has it, I consider my options since an attack of opportunity would likely knock me out again, my unarmed attacks arent great and being prone gives a penalty to hit, so i try to grapple (an attack that is unaffected by being prone as it is an athletics check rather than an attack roll) in hopes of getting the chance to use my remaining two actions to use my arcane slam feat (that only works on a grappled target) to knock him prone. However i fail my grapple attempt, so im left with two actions, still prone and without a weapon in hand, and then i remember at 8th lvl i took friendly toss, a feat that allows me to grab an ally and throw them, moreover, they get to make an attack as a reaction at the end of their movement. So i grab the rogue behind me by the leg and i yeet her on the other side of the knight, thus flanking the knight, granting sneak attack, and thanks to flanking she crits him and kills him.

Besides being a sick as fuck moment why did i tell you this? Well because i think this represents pretty well how it works, pf2 rewards versatility, most of your damage scales mostly automatically, especially as a martial character most of your choice of abilities will be about extra options that help you in certain situations, I've had the most fun building characters in pf2 when i was considering the actions available to them.

Especially with how the system works versatility is actually very easy to achieve, there's lots of feats within each class that allow you to be more effective in certain situations, a classic example being sudden charge, a feat that lets you stride twice and then strike using only 2 actions rather than 3, or friendly toss that i mentioned above. And outside of your class, since you HAVE to spread your ability scores at least a lil bit youll probably be good with at least one ability score that a different class focuses on. With the fact that feats are usually not direct power boosts it isnt as big of a deal to give certain feats for free or to use rules such as free archetype or ancestral paragon.

Now there's a lot to praise about pf2 and i could keep going about it like how encounter rating actually works, or all the sickass options available, or how it has so much LGBT representation including a deity that presents itself to mortals wearing their ideal body because "if a divine being has chosen to wear it, it must be perfect", but I think I've praised pf2 enough. Despite all the good pf2 is still not a perfect system and it has its flaws, some that should be mentioned even if I myself dont find them to be bothersome.

To start it should be mentioned that pf2 is pretty dense, it's a fairly crunchy system with a large amount of rules for a lot of different situations, which can make it a little difficult to approach but the main difficulty is really that a lot of the times rules reference other rules which can be clunky if you don't learn a good amount of rules before playing, i know a few DMs that like to come up with rules on the fly to fill in gaps or when they don't know the rules, and pf2 doesnt quite work well with that method as several rules have implications for other rules. At least tho most rules are one google search away thanks to them being free.

Another somewhat related issue is that pf2 can be overwhelming, it's not as bad as pf1 or d&d 3.5 however there is such a high amount of options that analysis paralysis is certainly an issue for some people.

Now these were issues that i dont really care about myself, i can work with a dense system and i love having tons of options, however pf2 isnt a perfect system for me either.

It's hard to find gripes with it but I do have a few, for instance while i love the trait system i do think it is unintuitive how so many traits are just tags with no effect on their own while so many others have extremely important effects like the flourish trait that means you can't use other flourishes that turn or the incapacitation trait that heavily holds back save or suck abilities by making them less effective on higher level targets, yet there is no differentiation between the two, you just need to always look at the tags, after a while it's not that big of an issue but still.

For this next one i wanna give a lil bit of context, d&d 5e has a rather large issue that all its players are aware of, the martial/caster disparity, as in 5e casters are just overwhelmingly better than martials, well pf2 fixed this, but went just ever so slightly overboard. In pf2 generally speaking martials have a few things they are good at and are REALLY good at them, usually hitting things hard, while casters are weaker but more versatile, there's exceptions like the kineticist which is mechanically similar to casters as its abilities mimic spells but is functionally closer to a martial as it is highly effective at few specific things, but exceptions aside this vaguely how they're functionally divided.

The problem is that because casters are both tied to resources and also slightly weaker there's time where it doesn't feel that great to play them, mainly with the fact that you also don't really get any items to increase your effectiveness, you get items like staves or wands that give you more versatility but nothing like a +1 potency rune that martials get to hit more often, and with the high defenses that enemies tend to have at your level or even a level lower it can be hard to break that first spell and apply a good debuff to get better odds with other spells, and unfortunately even tho pf2 added multiple levels of success to still have something happen when enemies succeed on spells it's still often negligible and doesn't feel good to expend resources like that especially cus you don't get a lot of them at low levels. Overall tho I do not think this is a terrible issue, there are ways to build around it like teamwork focusing on reliable options that lower defenses, and even without this i think a potency item to buff spellcasters like martials is enough.

Now, that's actually pretty much it for the issues I've got with pf2, but I'm not quite done yet, I think pf2 is an extremely solid system and the flavor of the available options is also fantastic, it has few flaws, however I have more issues with it, but they aren't really pf2 issues as much as they are issues with most d20 systems.

The first issue is not exactly an issue with the system itself but it is commonly found in d20 systems, and that's the null result, which is when you wanna do something, you roll poorly and nothing happens, you waited the whole round to do your cool thing but the math rock stopped on a 1 so that's that. Now pf2 is actually not as bad as some of its peers at this (lookin at you 5e), thanks to the 4 degrees of success, which I realize now is a good system pf2 uses that I haven't explained, thankfully it's very simple, whenever you roll there's a difficulty class you need to beat, like to shield yourself from the fireball you need to roll a 17 or higher, in 5e there's only 2 degrees, you either do it or you don't, in pf2 there's 4, you can succeed, fail, crit succeed or crit fail, and the crit results have two ways to happen, you roll 10 above or below the DC or you roll a nat 20 or nat 1 which increase or decrease the degree of success by one step (this is important! a farmer cannot hit an ancient red dragon because a nat 20 will turn a crit fail into a fail which is still a miss). With this system and the 3 action system it is less likely to do nothing in a turn, it is however still very possible, especially because on attack rolls you still miss on a failure not just a critical failure, the difference is that some and pcs have abilities that do something when they are crit missed.

As a DM i almost always consider lowering the defenses of my monsters and increasing the hp so that the players get to do cool stuff more often... and then the die rears it's face on an ugly little single digit number that says fuck you that we lovingly call a nat 1. Nat 1s are rolled shockingly often at the tables i play at and lowering defenses of enemies won't fix the frustration of seeing that number and saying "well, that's that".

The next issue then has to do with the actual dice, it's something that has become obvious as ive been thinking about it and especially playing pf2 as well as baldur's gate 3 (which while it isn't a ttrpg it uses the 5e core rules and boy does if highlight some big issues with those rules), and that is the swinginess of the numbers, having a result that is twenty times as likely as another result but just as likely is kind of crazy, but really that is especially apparent when we look at the damage dice, bg3 likes to show you numbers rather than dice and seeing the damage of a fireball be 6 to 36 damage really puts it into perspective, it's worse at higher levels because you have other spells like blight that deal 8 to 64 damage, and while average results are more likely because of the higher amounts of dice that swinginess is still there. In pf2 this is even more apparent actually because of the more frequent and actually wildly more meaningful crits, because while in 5e crits just double damage dice, in pf2 crits double damage period, including all modifiers which there is a lot more of, and crits often have special effects too. In a recent one shot I was playing a kineticist and I used an ability to target two enemies, they get to make a basic save (no dmg on crit success, half on success, full on fail and double on crit fail) the damage was 2d8, the first turn i used it i rolled a 3 and a 2, one of my enemies crit succeeded ans the other succeeded so I dealt a total of 2 damage, the very next turn i do it again, both fail and one of em is a crit fail, and I rolled a 7 and an 8, dealing a total of 45 damage. In another game we play our barbarian is using a giant scythe and regularly hits for like 15 or so damage and the crits for 40-50 damage because scythes deal more damage on crits.

While critting feels fantastic, both on hitting and enemies crit failing, it is extremely swingy and gives an overwhelming amount of power to let the dice decide how an encounter goes, this may be supposed to be a moderate encounter but your barbarian went first and immediately crit a core enemy of the formation and now its a trivial encounter, or the zombie went first and crit the healer and downed them immediately and now it's a severe encounter. Maybe this was supposed to be trivial but I keep rolling 15s and up and my players look like they're rolling on d6s to hit. The swinginess also links back to the null result because sure the different degrees of success help but a crit success on a save is still a null result and a success dealing 2 damage is more like a slap on the back of the head than a consolation prize. And while the null result is something that's maybe fixable the swinginess is something that I think requires too much effort to change for how pf2 is built, crits are just too infused in the system to change them and everything just messes with the math that is core to pf2 making it so much harder to balance everything.

While I think I can live with both of these issues the more time goes on the more I wanna do something about them. And that's roughly when a new ttrpg in the making caught my eye. I've been following Matthew Colville for a long time, he's a great DM and makes wonderful videos with system agnostic tips on how to be a better dungeon master, he's also a game designer and the game design director at MCDM, and since the d&d OGL debacle they've decided to take a crack at making their own unique ttrpg, and well im hooked, he's made several videos on the MCDM YouTube channel explaining more in detail and some of what I've said is in reference to that, watching those videos has allowed me to put into words the issues I've been having, namely the null result. I'm excited to see what they've put together, and so finally that is why I phrased the answer at the beginning like that, pf2 is currently my favorite ttrpg but with the MCDM ttrpg on the way that is prone to change. I think I will always love pf2, it is an extremely solid system and making homebrew for it really feels like making a neat cog to add to a well oiled machine. I could probably go on about pf2 especially if I were to get into the specific options available (don't get me started on the kineticist, I am in love).

So that's it then, I hope it was worth 2 fucking whole weeks of wait.

#you know if this happens again i should write less #this was too much #pretty sure i am not normal #pf2 #d&d 5e #ttrpg stuff #time for a new tag #my infodumps #i wasted like more than half a week since the ask was first sent because i wrote so much stuff about other ttrpgs i played with some attempt #of structure that just fell apart so i just started again

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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year ago

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Games, Chapter Three and Epilogue - a Malevolent fic

It was almost over.

The games were done and the victors lauded. Soon, Hastur could take his daughter and leave, enjoying some time away while trying to figure out whatever was going on with Arthur Lester.

It was the perfect time for everything to go wrong.

AO3 || CHAPTER ONE || CHAPTER TWO

-----------

It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible. ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

The third day of the games dawned thick, as if the Dreamlands had filled with eerie, dark smoke.

Breeze blew through it, though the fug did not abate. Pinkish flowers swayed, bowing out of sync with whatever had gone strange. Screech-birds called into the mist with long hesitation, as if fearful of what might answer. The distant running water could not be heard.

In the stadium, the guards might have given up if they’d actually had opinions. Fortunately, they were automatons, created by Hastur to do his will, and so did not care.

There was a lot to care about.

Keeping it all contained was the goal. It was bad enough that the extra sections of Carcosa he’d created for this had been roundly trashed, all in the last night, and so far, he’d put out sixteen fires and prevented twelve war-causing skirmishes right here in the stadium.

There was already a war between the clay-like descendants of Shugothnah, thanks to an unplanned conception and inherited onyx in the Giant’s Quarry. One war at a time was enough, thank you very much.

The worst behavior was happening in the highest stands, furthest back from the victory laps. Some of it was good-natured, but a lot was violent—bets lost and won, loyalties to losing nations questioned, and just general drunken sadism all playing out.

There was nothing like a crowd as an excuse to be monstrous.

Honestly, Hastur didn’t care if they hurt each other, but he had to prove he could stop them. That he could split his attention and demonstrate such power even while handling potentates and their athletes.

He could not afford to look weak. He’d already had enough trouble thanks to ten-plus years of John’s shenanigans.

Speaking of shenanigans…

John gave no indication of recalling his confession. Hastur had no intention of bringing it up. Besides, there was no time. Right now, at this moment, John and Arthur were just as much at work as he.

Below Hastur’s floating form, the victors showboated on the arena floor. Giants of strength posed, flexing whatever they had for muscles, occasionally manifesting rocks to throw into the air and/or crush. Hastur’s power kept them safe from competitive cruelty, from each other’s thoughtlessness, from unhappy losers trying to get their own back.

And on the dais, Arthur played them great bass tones and enormous octaves and big sounds like rising floods and richness.

Bastions of speed zoomed around the periphery, blurs of color and show. Hastur’s power kept them safe from rocks and spells and maliciousness, from encountering enemies or even playful accidents.

And on the dais, Arthur gifted them wild runs and quick arpeggios and sparkling notes that danced like light on water.

Arthur shone. His music had not been a fluke. There would be no commentator-led riots today.

(Arthur was Hastur’s. Hastur was pleased.)

(Arthur was Hastur’s. Hastur felt bad.)

This morning, Hastur had come to realize he regretted hurting Arthur Lester. He just didn’t know why.

Maybe because he hadn’t done it in a while? No, that made no sense. Maybe because it had been pointless, achieving so little in response? No, that wasn’t it, either.

Maybe because it threatened his seduction of John? No. John expected him to be cruel. That wasn’t the reason.

Hastur really didn’t like things he didn’t understand. This situation was becoming a problem.

And on the dais, Arthur played.

Arthur was giving the victors everything they could ask for, and honestly having fun doing it. John kept up a running commentary; Arthur laughed at his descriptions, or shook his head. Just pretend it’s Laurel and Hardy, or the Three Stooges, he’d whispered, and John was delighted to comply.

It sure sounded like the stands were cheering for Arthur as much as they were for the celebrants below. In a way, it was expected; Arthur was an underdog, and everyone loved an underdog.

It made John feel weird, though.

They all saw how amazing Arthur was. All of them. Between this and Hastur’s newly sprouted potential penitence, it left a funny taste in John’s metaphorical mouth.

He had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

It was almost over. Soon, his guards would begin the slow process of sending people home. Soon, he would tuck his Composer and Piece safely away, back inside the palace. Soon, he would fetch his daughter and take her on such a trip as she’d talk about for weeks.

Many of the bigger players had already given him gifts of gratitude and left. It was almost done, he thought to himself. Almost over.

Which was, of course, the moment the Mi-Go—furious that Hastur had not given them unearned victory even though they once used to worship him—threw a fit and actually dared to attack.

The celebrant sounds changed.

Suddenly there were screams. Explosions. Suddenly, there came the electric snap of spells and the rumbling crackle of fire.

Arthur had lived through one World War, barely lucky enough to stay out of it because he’d been too young. But he’d seen the footage; he’d had dreams of the horror of battlefields and the stink of trenches.

What rose all around him was the sound of those dreams. It was as if a second World War—a thing he desperately hoped would never come to pass—had broken out.

He stopped playing, frozen. “What’s going on?”

Arthur! And John gripped the piano with his left hand and shoved so hard it sent Arthur flying backwards off the bench.

Arthur knew better than to fight it, and scrambled back the moment he hit the ground. Between the two of them, it saved his life.

Something landed where he’d been, something smelling vaguely of seaweed and fungus, and it came down with such force that wood shattered like shrapnel and piano wires snapped like whips.

Arthur cried out.

One of the fucking Mi-Go? John blurted.

“Injustice!” buzzed the thing. “We will see regret this day!” and it came at them. Came with hacking sounds, as though it swung machetes with every step, slicing them into the earth in anticipation of slicing into him.

Pincers! John warned, and Arthur scrambled backward, unable to get to his feet, sharply aware that they were on the dais and very high up, and if he fell, they’d die.

Whatever it was loomed over then with salt-water stench and a shadow of cold, and it chittered in triumph.

Nnn'drn! John bellowed.

Shield.

Something like electricity raced down from Arthur’s eyes through his chest and out his arms and in front and—

Whatever was attacking clanged, blocked, followed by a horrible screeching sound as though this thing was trying to cut through a glass bowl with knives, and—

Arthur’s heart beat.

Hastur arrived (and Arthur could feel him) and smashed the attacker (spatters of fungal-smelling goo went everywhere) and snarled, “They dare attack you?”

Arthur’s heart beat.

I cast! I cast through him! John sounded panicked.

And Hastur took Arthur into his arms.

Muffled, now, the sounds of fighting, because Arthur was wrapped, Arthur was buried, and he hated confined spaces but he hated people trying to kill him so much more, and—

Arthur’s heart beat.

“You saved him,” Hastur said, his voice so big this close to the core of his body, so deep, overwhelming and absolutely tickling through every single nerve Arthur had, and—

Arthur! John seemed ready to sob it.

“I’m here,” Arthur said, or maybe yelled, or maybe whispered. His head spun with colors (this was not sight but it was invasive), and he clung to the heavy, hot limbs keeping him alive, and drifted in the terrible sounds of murder.

Arthur’s heart beat, and it did not stop.

Inside the arena halls, there was no warning.

Half the west wall blew in, blasted to deadly chunks of stone wrapped in spells, and Dis knew damn well this was no Mi-Go’s doing.

That was too much power.

Her own shields required no delay, no voice commands, nothing so sloppy, but she didn’t want to just block this. She roared to announce her rage as she pressed, flung, heaved her own power at the incoming rubble and hurled it all right back out again at speed.

Whoever had blown the wall in got a nasty surprise.

“Go! Go!” yelled panicked servants, running by. Below, athletes bellowed like the monsters they were and leaped into the fray, though there was no way to tell yet whose side they were on.

Someone was behind this. Someone big. More of the arena fell (and for Hastur’s power to be shattered so easily was—)

Lori ran in (pretty damned spry for a sixty-year-old woman) and made a throwing motion.

Suddenly, Dis felt invisible. Knew it, knew she was; recognized this ward as a tricky one to learn, and Lori had done it like a pro.

Also recognized that there was probably good reason. So Dis grabbed her and pulled her against the wall, not only trusting the ward, but ready. Ready for whatever next came.

This turned out to be a good move.

The things that stepped through the wall’s ruination had once been gods.

Long dead, long died out, these things couldn’t be here, and even if they were, they couldn’t be here like this.

They’d been mixed with things, matched, turned into something else, patchwork pieces of horror. They trembled their way in like chilled fat, like bodies that weren’t quite stable, and looked with no eyes for…

For what?

They spoke to each other. It wasn’t a language Lori had ever heard.

Dis’ tiny inhale through her teeth said she had heard, and understood.

Communication was a beautiful thing. She met Lori’s gaze, gripped her shoulders, pointed straight down, and raised her eyebrows.

Stay put. Lori got it. She nodded.

And Dis—

It was like she’d cut a slit in the air and then wrapped it around her like a blanket. She disappeared.

The monsters bubbled and hissed, moving through the stadium, passing beyond it and toward Hastur’s part of the city.

Toward Hastur’s palace.

It wasn’t the Mi-Go. They’d long regretted their pettiness and scattered.

Fuck knew what it was, but the things that came shambling out after the athletes were mutations, chimeras, disgusting monstrosities Hastur would never have permitted to live even if he’d been insane enough to make them.

Shock made him pause just long enough to get ambushed.

In his arms, Arthur jolted and sent through the mark as clear as day: BEHIND

Hastur dodged.

They’d tried to pincer him. These… hideous, trembling creations had dared try to pincer him in his own fucking home.

Arthur passed out. Whatever he’d just done drained him.

But his heart still beat.

Arthur! John’s panic rocketed through them both.

In the distance, screams, crashes—were those things heading toward his palace?

Hastur! Do something!

Hastur had enough.

There were no words for this. For the madness that took him. For the rage that someone, some enemy would dare to attack at the end of the games, would hit his guests just to distract him, would dare go for his Arthur and his home and whatever else it was they wanted here.

How dare they?

Hastur lost his mind.

He trembled.

Expanded.

Grew.

Grew until he towered above the arena, high enough to see all the stupid walking tumors trying to breach his home, and he fell upon them with the kind of ravenous fire reserved for falling stars.

The commentators huddled in the rubble of a fallen room.

“Cykrathu, my friend, we might be seeing our death right here.”

“Zotha, my friend, you are right—but what a way to go!”

“Cykrathu, my friend, I have not seen such passion, such horror, such violence, since the olden times, since so many years past that I hardly recognize it now.”

“Zotha, my friend… we are about to be obliterated by accident in the King in Yellow’s wrath, by Kaiwan, by Him that Slept Beneath, and I can’t say I’m too unhappy.”

“It was good to know you, Cykrathu.”

“I think I love you, Zotha.”

The commentators stopped talking. The only transmissions after that were wet, organic, and distinctly happy moans.

The enemy never made it to the palace.

They left a trail of destruction on the way there, though, carved through Carcosa like acid, like claws. When killed, they fell apart, pieces going to rot so quickly that there was no chance to even gauge what the fuck had made them, or whose magic signature might have lingered.

The ones Hastur didn’t explode, he smashed to paste.

Someone had tried to take advantage of the games to invade Carcosa.

His fury was bad. Very bad.

The insult.

Oh, it was personal, and when he found out who—

“My lord,” reported one of his people. “Carcosa stands.”

It did. It was soot-kissed. Ash-strewn. Colored with blood and ichor and other things that flowed through physical vasculature.

It had lost a lot of buildings, and several fields had gone up in smoke. But on the whole, its citizens survived, and all of them knew it was because the King in Yellow had kept them safe.

(They couldn’t have missed him, honestly. He’d been conspicuous even for him.)

What guests survived had been gathered into groups, herded for their own safety and everyone else’s.

They didn’t seem to mind.

“They’ll be talking about this for millennia, Cykrathu.”

“You are right, Zotha, you are right. Epic. Absolute masterpiece!”

“I don’t think I’ve been this entertained in… well. At least since I was a sprog.”

“Hahaha! If world-ending invasion is all it takes to make you happy, Zotha, we should come here more often!”

They laughed.

Freaky commentators. Hastur let them be. He did wonder, though, what their employer would think of the fact that they were entwined now and could no longer be separated.

He hoped Faroe hadn’t been too frightened by all this. The battle had not, of course, reached the palace, and she’d been confined to the palace for the entirety of this day. She probably hadn’t seen anything, but there was no way she hadn’t heard.

And of course, his own soldiers and people were still panicked, which could not have helped.

Still in his arms, Arthur rested.

John demanded Hatsur check his stats every once in a while, but Arthur was fine.

Arthur truly had acclimated. He clearly was no natural to magic, but John could—at least once—successfully cast.

Like today, once might be enough.

Hastur did not put him down.

More reports came in. The stables were razed; the cultists lived, it seemed, because the mules had taken off and they’d all followed (Why? Who knows why broken humans did anything?) and were all wandering the wilderness now, crying for him and clinging to their animals.

Hastur sighed and ordered them to be fetched.

He’d given his word. Cared for. Their efforts had come to naught, in the end, but that wasn’t their fault. They’d done what he asked back on Earth, in Leerie, and what kind of god would he be if he didn’t keep his word to his faithful?

More servants—but these ones spotted him, looked absolutely panicked, and ran the other way.

Hastur went still.

Why would they do that, especially now, when he’d just saved them all from ruin?

They knew something he didn’t. Something they feared him knowing—or feared his response.

He flew.

Flew faster than he’d ever flown in his life, not because he knew what was wrong, but because he didn’t, and he landed in his own throne room like a meteor.

Dis manifested as if from the ether, grim. “She’s missing.”

And for a moment, for Hastur, everything just… stopped.

Stopped, as if time had died, as if he dwelled on a pea-sized planet run by Mi-Go.

“We’re looking. If you have some kind of a tracker on her, Hastur, now is the time to use it,” Dis said, unafraid, harshly business, and vanished, presumably to continue looking.

And now, now, now, he could hear it.

“Faroe!”

“Princess! Princess, it’s safe now to come out!”

“Faroe!”

No.

No, this—

This couldn’t—

Hastur ripped open a portal to her room and charged inside.

Not here.

No blood. No sign of anything. Her bed neatly made. Her—

Her crown was on the pillow. Why was her crown on the pillow?

“Faroe!”

“Princess! Where are you?”

“Faroe!”

The cries came from all over the palace, from the field outside, from his hearts.

No.

No, this—

No.

He tore outside, and looked, and sought.

No sign of her. No sign of Nibbles.

He flew to her bathroom.

Her hairbrush was gone?

It didn’t matter. She’d left hairs behind, just a few, and he snatched them up before portaling to his lab deep underground.

It wasn’t much, wasn’t enough, because he’d taught her how to hide from finding-spells if she were ever in trouble, and the tiny compass he’d rigged using her hair pulled taut failed to find her. It spun, pointless, useless.

He’d never considered for a moment that she’d hide from him.

He almost smashed it, but didn’t. Instead, he tucked it in his robe and portaled back above.

“Faroe!”

He joined them, yelling at the top of his lungs, howling for her with all his might and sending her name to ricochet into the sky. “Faroe!”

Arthur started awake. “What?”

Arthur. Arthur, stay calm—

“Faroe!” roared Hastur.

Arthur fought like a weasel.

Wriggling, biting, clawing to get out, and when Hastur startled and dropped him, he didn’t even hesitate. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know! Faroe!”

Hastur’s voice was—

The brokenness in it, that was—

Arthur paled. He ran in the opposite direction, calling. “Faroe! Baby, come out! Faroe!”

Hastur knew she wasn’t here, knew, because the compass showed that, but he had to look, had to find some kind of clue, had to hope that maybe she’d found a way to hide really well, because even dead, the compass would work, and he had to find her, because nothing else mattered, and—

“Hastur!” Arthur cried.

Hastur smashed through a wall to get to him.

Arthur stood before a vaguely familiar woman, and he was paler than the three sheets of paper he held.

The woman bowed to him, making the appropriate hand-sign for one of Hastur’s cultists, and he was so confused that he just stared at her.

Hastur, said John, even. Hastur. She’s run away.

No, the woman hadn’t run, she was right there, what was he talking about?

Hastur. John made a strangled sound. Arthur. Come on. I need you both to be functioning right now. She’s run the fuck away. Hastur!

Arthur’s shaking was bad.

The world stopped again, Hastur thought. Time fainted. Passed out. Ceased to breathe.

Hastur!

“Hastur,” whispered Arthur. “They’re from her.”

From—

Hastur didn’t remember taking the letters, but here they were in his hand.

The woman had seen Faroe. Hastur turned on her. “You,” he began with a snarl.

Arthur stepped between. “Don’t.”

Faroe asked her to give them to us. Don’t… don’t be a fool.

Hastur had no mental room to respond to that right now.

The girl (Sadie? That was her name, Sadie) stayed bowed, clearly ready to accept his wrath should he give it.

He did not give it.

He held letters from Faroe. That was so much more important. He ignored the girl, the Lester, the Piece, and read.

There was one for each of them: him, Arthur, and John.

Beloved father, started the one. Do not seek me. I am well, and shall return soon—by the fortnight, if my plan is sound. I go now to find the source of your anguish. You, and Uncle Arthur, and John—I know why you fight, and it is because of me.

“What?” said Hastur, completely at sea.

I do not go alone. I am armed, and carry the arsenal of wisdom and spells you have given me. You taught me to stand strong, father; I am in no danger.

Besides which, Nibbles accompanies me now, and she is a foe most dear.

Hastur. Fuck. Did he break? Hastur!

Hastur ignored him.

I love you, father. I love you more than you can ever comprehend, and I will find the source of this trial and solve it. When I return, whatever I have done wrong will be righted, and if it be a wrong in me, then I will have cut it out.

Please don’t fight with Uncle Arthur anymore.

Please don’t ma

A bunch of crossed-out words. Hastur snapped a spell at it, and the crosshatching vanished.

ke him bleed again. You only punish the wicked; he cannot have done anything so terrible that he deserved your wrath.

The rest, clear as crystal:

I will return soon.

Don’t look for me.

I love you. I’ll give you reason to be proud of me when I come back. This, I swear.

With all my heart, Faroe Lester Yellow, princess of Carcosa, duchess of Ythill

Hastur only became aware he was wailing, howling, screaming, when he tore something inside his throat, and ichor began to burn.

There were two more letters.

The one to John read, Dear John, You are Arthur’s most faithful sworn, and I recognize this. I know that you and I have never seen eye-to-eye, though I do not know why—but that, I think, is why I must go. I will return a better woman. I will return purged from whatever you dislike in me; this, I swear.

Please take care of Uncle Arthur. He can be fragile, and he needs you like he needs chivalry.

Love, Faroe Lester Yellow, princess of Carcosa, duchess of Ythill

Arthur’s was oddly gentle:

Uncle Arthur, I love you. When you comforted me, when you helped me sing after bad dreams, you taught me the beauty in human frailness. I understand now why we still exist as a species, though I am still glad to be removed from it.

Please continue to eat and heal and be strong. I know it is hard sometimes for you, but I want to see you again when I come home.

I’ve asked dad not to harm you anymore, so he won’t. Uncle Arthur

Crossed out letters.

Hastur removed the hatching.

I wonder if I know who you used to be? I think I might; I think I know what kingdom you ruled, before something went wrong and you had to be taken in to keep from burning yourself to ash.

“What?” said Arthur when this was read to him, completely at sea.

The rest of it, not crossed out, every letter clear and indented as though she’d pressed extra-hard into the paper: I’ll be back soon. I promise I’ll come back stronger. This is my quest, Uncle Arthur, and I think you understand. I seek no literal Holy Grail, but answers, and I will find them, for I am

Faroe Lester Yellow, princess of Carcosa, duchess of Ythill

They all sat in the ruined hall, surrounded by rubble, holding paper instead of their girl.

Dis had come along at some point. Hastur could not remember what she’d said; she’d led Sadie away, then altered the search. Half her team looked for clues in the palace; the other half raced away toward the nearest places of transit, toward local portals and flying carpets, toward any avenue Faroe might have taken, hoping someone might have seen.

Arthur was silent.

Hastur was silent.

John growled. And you don’t have a fucking tracker on her why?

“She’s… she’s my…” Hastur trailed off.

Great time to start grasping autonomy. Good job, there.

“John.” Arthur’s voice cracked. “Please don’t. Not now.”

Fuck. After a moment, low, he said, I can’t do anything for either of you.

“Why did she…” Hastur stopped. “She… she thought we…”

“We were fighting over her, though. Just not for anything she did,” Arthur said. “For our place with her.”

Hastur rose. Paused. Sat back down again.

He would be a fool to go haring off at random. He needed a clue before he dared search. If he missed her and she was harmed because he’d gone flying in the wrong direction—

Arthur covered his face with his hands.

Hastur wanted to scream again.

He couldn’t. He was king. He had to hold it together. He had to… be the strong one here.

His throat still burned, and he’d already had to heal Arthur’s and Sadie’s ears once.

There had to be some fucking clue, John said again. What was she even talking about? Holy Grail? King? Arthur, you were never king of jack shit.

Arthur managed a weak smile, haunted in the shattered hallway mirrors. “No, I certainly was not. Of the bottle, maybe.”

“King Arthur,” rumbled Hastur, low and threatening. “That is an old human legend. Did you tell her of it?”

Arthur didn’t hesitate. “No. I honestly haven’t even thought about it in years.”

Someone had planted that idea in her head, though. Someone who would pay dearly.

Dis returned. “I have word.”

They leaped upright, both of them, Hastur with such force that Dis had to take a step back.

“Easy,” said Dis, evenly. “She was spotted going west.”

“West?” said Arthur. “West? That’s…”

“A start.” And Hastur vanished.

“Hey!” Arthur shouted, voice cracking.

Don’t leave us behind! John cried.

Dis sighed. “Great,” she muttered.

“Hastur!” Arthur bellowed at the top of his lungs.

Hastur reappeared and grabbed him.

Arthur stiffened, expecting pain, reflexively preparing for breaking and snapping and bruising.

It didn’t come.

They all stood there in silence.

“Hastur,” said Dis, slowly. “We can look for Faroe, but we can’t deal with your guests. Do you understand? There’s more at risk here than just your daughter.”

Hastur made a choked sound, then flew past her at a speed so fast he had to cradle Arthur’s head so he wouldn’t get whiplash.

Hastur’s guests were summarily sent home.

He opened portal after portal, ushering them through, hurling any who hesitated without concern for injury.

It took him fifteen minutes to clear the place. Fifteen precious minutes, while Faroe wandered farther, seeing who knew what, getting into who knew what, drawing who could even guess.

It was likely he’d missed a few, but whatever remained could be handled by his people.

Would have to be handled by his people. “Dis,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You are in charge while I am gone.”

Dis stared at him. “The hell I am.”

Instead of answering, he took off into the air, carrying Arthur like a good luck charm, and surged west.

Lori emerged from a seemingly empty shadow. “Um. Did he just put you in charge of Carcosa?”

“And I was going to quit,” Dis muttered.

“Did he… did it work?”

“Oh, yeah. I can feel it.” Dis sighed and rubbed her face. “Well, first things first, I’m giving myself a damn raise.”

“Ha.”

Fire crackled. Far off, voices called, trying to search through rubble for missing citizens.

Lori stepped closer. “What are you going to do?”

“Don’t know. If I wanted to do this, I’d have a better idea. The fuck was he thinking?”

“I suspect that he doesn’t trust anyone else,” said Lori slowly, using that analysis that made her such a good spy. “He trusted you alone with his daughter for hours a day. Is there anyone else he trusted like that?”

Dis frowned. “No. Even her tutors always came in pairs.”

“There you go, then.” Lori slid her hand into Dis’, interlocking fingers (and could feel the thrum of power her hand, as if tied to the heartbeat of the city). “How can I help?”

Dis licked her lips. “West. It’s possible she went toward Celephaïs.”

Lori paused. “So you want me to go home.”

“For now. I can do a lot of things, but I can only be in one place at a time.”

“Darned corporeal limitations.” Slowly, Lori kissed her cheek. “Pleasurable as they are.”

Dis didn’t quite manage a smile. “I’ll open a portal for you. And… I’ll reach out soon.”

“I look forward to it. Here’s to hoping Faroe is as capable as her father thinks she is.”

Lori did not specify which father she meant. That detail really didn’t matter, after all.

--------

“Who. Did. That?”

Silence through the worlds, the universes, through all the realities and timelines and shadows of worlds that would never be but almost could become.

“Who. Did. That?”

Nothing. No one. The stars seemed to hold themselves still and trembling.

The Lord of the Wood paused in tending her brand-new baby to answer. DEAR, YOU WON’T FIND ANSWERS BY SHOUTING INTO THE VOID.

“I don’t suppose you know who did that,” Kayne said, low, not really threatening, but leaking anger, his humor drowned in rage's wake.

The new Dark Young—mostly blind, only able to see the physical realm just yet—twisted under her Mother's million tongues. I DO NOT, said the Mother Goddess.

“Someone. Is fucking. With my show.” Kayne’s voice traveled, trembling deep water, distorting waves of heat, causing the brains of many small creatures to explode.

WELL, YOU HAD TO EXPECT IT EVENTUALLY, DIDN’T YOU? YOU’VE FOUND SOMETHING SO LOVELY.

“Whoever you are,” said Kayne, “this is it. Your moment. Step forward now, and I might forgive you.” His voice dropped to registers only Elder Gods could hear. “REFUSE TO STEP FORWARD NOW, AND I DEFINITELY WILL NOT.”

Silence. The only sound was licking and the tiny, world-breaking bleats of a Dark Young just born.

Scowling, Kayne waved his hand and brought out one of the mutated monstrosities he’d stolen from Carcosa before Hastur smashed them all.

It shambled in a circle, awkward and moaning, unable to even stand up straight.

“Severed from whatever mind it had,” Kayne muttered, circling it. “Signature completely hidden—I see. By weaving god-parts together, they’ve created a false echo—an etheric signature that simply doesn’t exist.” He began to strip it.

The thing seemed to know pain. Its moans deepened, warbled, but it lacked the ability to do more than continue its circular pace.

Layer after layer he took off, scowling, more violent by the moment.

Its warbles rose. Grew ragged. Finally screeched into star-blight territory as he ripped its life apart.

It fell in chunks to the forest floor and bubbled, rotting.

The baby Dark Young tried to scrabble over there to eat them.

The Lord of the Wood pulled her back. MUST YOU MAKE A MESS?

Kayne hissed. “No. I apologize. I have half a dozen more of them, anyway.” He looked up to the night sky. “I don’t know who you are,” he said, low, “but this is my game. You will be very sorry.”

Far away, hidden in mist and shadow, a deep, old mind with plans of its own did not bother to respond.

-------

CHAPTER ONE || CHAPTER TWO

#malevolent #malevolentpod #malevolent pod #malevolent fic #kiy malevolent #arthur lester #john malevolent #faroe lester #surrogate series #kayne malevolent

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sw5w · 11 days ago

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Live Sports at the Outlander (1 / 2)

STAR WARS EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 00:22:19 - 00:22:22

Complete Locations (and previous editions Inside the Worlds of Episode II, etc.) identify the planet seen on the Podrace screen as being Ando Prime.

Volume 59 (Coruscant) of the Star Wars Encyclopedia series identifies the location on Ando Prime as being the Andobi Mountains.

And Episode I Racer identifies the course that goes through the Andobi Mountains as the Andobi Mountain Run.

I love it when I can connect something back to one of my favorite games growing up!

Listing of callouts for search purposes:

• Acros-Krik • Lysko Buelia • Mya Nalle • Yma Nalle

• Unidentified Humans • Unidentified species

• AccuTronics' B1 Team • Ando Prime • Andobi Mountain Run • Betting kiosk • Biological Athletes Union • Commenor • Committee Against Non-Sentient Abuse • Consumer Automata • Cybot Galactica CLL-6 Series • Holomag • Industrial Automaton ASP Series • Lambda sector • Loronar B3NK • Mid Rim • Nalle Triplets • Nuna • Nuna-ball • Nuna-Ball League (NBL) • Odupiendo • Odupiendo-racing • Podrace • PublicTechnic JR Series • Roche 8D Team • Serv-O-Droid RIC Team • Sub-cargo class • Veril Line Systems Otoga Team

• Unidentified J930 Dash-8 Podracer • Unidentified Plug-8G 927 Cluster Array Podracer • Unidentified Quadrijet 4-Barrel 904E Podracer • Unidentified sports network logo • Unidentified Vulptereen 327 Podracer • Unidentified XL5115 Podracer

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famousautomatondreamsrockstar · 3 months ago

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My Automaton Dreams bandmate, Dylan Reed Dare, is a very handsome, intelligent, blonde, tall, 6'1", blue eyed, muscular raw vegan endurance athlete and bodybuilder and he would make a great sperm donor for y'all ladies if you're trying to pay him money for his genes — Dylan was valedictorian twice in grade school and he is better than me at playing guitar.

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jonmcbrine-author · 5 months ago

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New St. Cloud City is the fictional home of the characters of Unsecret Identity: Eric Icarus - Book One. Known as “the Blue Gem,” the shimmering cityscape sprawls across the sky with the buildings’ reflective windows twinkling in the sunlight. The Kell Bridge welcomes travelers as they cross over the serene Horton River. First-time visitors are greeted by the buzzing activity from the busy streets and exuberant billboards and signs. Flying drones zip through the air, servicing various businesses and outlets, providing a sense that the future is now. The city’s crown jewel is its tallest skyscraper, Pantheon Tower.

Atop the building, Pantheon Solutions’ upward-pointing lightning bolt aims at the clouds above, representing the tech-development headquarters. In addition to overseeing the creation and manufacturing of next generation technology, Pantheon Tower is the base of operations for the team of superheroes known as the Super Society. With the squad’s sleek helicopter, the Pegasus, parked on the roof, the top floor is where the team calls home. CEO of Pantheon Solutions, Baron Maddox, works as the Super Society’s benefactor, utilizing New St. Cloud City’s unique legalization of approved vigilante activity. Backed by the city, Maddox houses the Super Society, giving them lodging as well as near-limitless access to crime fighting equipment. Each member of the team is armed with special weapons that aid them in dispensing justice.

Pantheon Solutions isn’t the only tech-based company in town, though it is by far the largest. Slate Technologies rivals Baron Maddox’s mega-corporation, but they operate as a distant second. Having earned a reputation of producing less efficient machinery and devices, Slate still manages to secure lucrative contracts with the city’s emergency services department. Slate’s rates being cheaper plays a significant part in how they acquire such important partnerships, but as the citizens may say, you get what you pay for.

The lesser known tech-developer entity is Boxworth Dreamineering, owned and solely maintained by Brian Boxworth. A former partner of Baron Maddox, Boxworth enjoyed industry-wide recognition as a brilliant inventor and his biggest project was a secret military weapons experiment. Unfortunately, the demonstration of his armored soldier prototype went haywire, leading to disastrous consequences for Boxworth’s career and family. His working relationship with Maddox dissolved, and Boxworth was blackballed from the science community. Determined to restore honor to his name, he creates Boxworth Dreamineering, inventing multifarious gizmos and gadgets. Despite being shunned by potential investors, Boxworth carries on, working on a machine that may literally change the world.

The future is the focus of this modern metropolis, and education the next generation is of the upmost importance. Dawson University is where the brightest minds and the most gifted athletes attend, nurturing their intelligence and establishing themselves as future leaders. North New St. Cloud City High School shows its pride with its mascot, the Golden Eagle, though their sports trophy case is mostly empty.

With futuristic automatons, towering skyscrapers, and the high-tech defenders known as the Super Society, New St. Cloud is truly the city of tomorrow. The presence of a super team, however, attracts super-criminals as well - what dangers may threaten the people of the city? And will its existing heroes be enough to stop them?

Stay in the loop for more details by following Jonfiction Blog on Substack and be sure to check out jonmcbrine.com for more info about this and all my books.

Unsecret Identity: Eric Icarus - Book One is available now from the Amazon Kindle store.

https://a.co/2XAtxvH

New blog every Monday. Newsletter first Monday of the month, only on Substack.

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paperanddice · 8 months ago

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Living flesh wrapped in a nightmare of chains, gears, spikes, and wire, automata devil are overseers and guards. They watch prisoners and "workers" in infernal factories with eyes on the front and back of their head that have been sewn open so that they can never miss a single thing. They carry two whips that coil and squirm likes snakes and can scent treachery (or so it is said), which they lash out with to catch attempted escapees. Those who draw the ire of an automata are fed to its second mouth, a great jaw filled with spines and whirling gears in its stomach that shreds its victim to a fine mist.

Inspired by the Tome of Beasts 1. This post came out a week ago on my Patreon. If you want to get access to all my monster conversions early, as well as access to my premade adventures and other material I’m working on, consider backing me there!

Pathfinder 2e

Automata Devil Creature 10 Large, Devil, Fiend, Unholy Perception +18; greater darkvision Languages Abyssal, Celestial, Common, Infernal, telepathy 100 feet Skills Athletics +22, Intimidation +19, Religion +17 Str +7, Dex +3, Con +5, Int +0, Wis +2, Cha +4 Items +1 striking whip (2) AC 31; Fort +20, Ref +18, Will +20; +1 status to all saves vs. magic HP 140; Immunities fire; Resistances physical 10 (except silver), poison 10; Weaknesses holy 10 All Around Vision Attack of Opportunity [reaction] Frightful Presence (aura, divine, emotion, fear, mental) 10 feet, DC 27 Speed 35 feet Melee claw +22 (agile, magical, unholy), Damage 2d6+10 slashing Melee jaws +22 (magical, unholy), Damage 2d10+13 slashing Melee whip +23 (disarm, finesse, magical, nonlethal, reach 15 feet, trip, unholy), Damage 2d4+13 slashing plus Grab Divine Innate Spells DC 29 ; 5th command, toxic cloud, translocate; 4th suggestion, translocate (at will); 1st command (at will); Divine Rituals DC 29; diabolic pact Constrict [1 action] (unholy) 2d12+13 slashing, DC 33 (grabbed by maw only) Maw Transfer [1 action] Requirement The devil has a creature grabbed. Effect The devil transfers the grabbed creature from its whip to its stomach maw or to its claws, or vice versa.

13th Age

Automata Devil Large 5th level blocker [devil] Initiative: +7 Whip +10 vs. PD (2 attacks) – 14 damage. Natural Even Hit: The devil can grab the target. The target takes 10 ongoing damage while grabbed. Punishing Maw +14 vs. PD (one grabbed enemy; includes +4 grab bonus) – 40 damage, and the ongoing damage while being grabbed by the devil increases to 20. Natural Even Miss: 20 damage. Natural Odd Miss: The grab ends. C: Pacifying Cloud +10 vs. PD (2d3 nearby enemies) – 5 ongoing poison damage, and the target takes a -5 penalty to disengage checks (save ends both). Natural 14+: The target is instead stuck (save ends). Natural 18+: The target is instead stunned (save ends). Limited Use: 1/battle. Devil’s Due (Fear): When you choose to add the escalation die to an attack against an automaton devil, you are dazed and don’t add the escalation die to any of your attacks until the end of your next turn. Whip Snag: Once per round, the devil can make a whip attack as a free action against a moving creature nearby it is not engaged with; on a natural even hit, the target is grabbed and the movement stops. AC 21 PD 18 MD 16 HP 136

#pathfinder 2e #13th age #homebrew #my homebrew #monster #fiend #devil #pathfinder level 10 #13th age level 5 #long post #tome of beasts

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hospitalterrorizer · 11 months ago

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diary118

1/9-10/2024

tuesday - wednesday

listening to some no-wave right now.

athletic automaton - the small ball game.

it's a good song, really fucked up nonsense riff spiraling out.

anyway today w/ music, i did not do what i wanted, i thought i'd get to 2 bigger remixes and 1 smaller correction, but i only did the small thing. i think this is partially because the next two big things are daunting, as in idk if i'll be able to get them right really, at least on this like, whatever-eth pass. but eventually. it's all iterative, and it's okay if it's slow, as long as i am learning.

i did do something good today though, re: productivity in art, i wrote a bit, or not a bit, a good chunk, something to fit into somewhere that maybe seemed thin, fleshing out multiple things, i think. and then a bit of narration right for the end came to me, in the shower. i really am happy with these two additions, they feel very strong.

otherwise today i did something i don't do a lot, i played 2 video games.

i'll talk about the like, artsy, game first.

i played 'he fucked the girl out of me' today, and i found it mostly good, i think, i guess i have to reflect on that more. i think maybe i just wish some parts where you are spending a long time walking, you moved faster. i don't know why though. i know those parts are supposed to make you feel stuck and miserable. it's also just that feeling of being stuck and miserable while walking, there's usually more than just that, there's an uncomfortable resonance w/ the environment, there's some kind of detail there making it all more lurid. or something. i dunno. that's a critique that's almost like 'missing the point' but it did come to me. i love the screen the game ends on, with the planet and the big mountains on it, i found that very pretty. i think maybe i also wish the game were written slightly differently but i don't know how, i really don't, i guess it just felt like it was maybe too caught up on itself, a lot of digressions w/ the audience. maybe i am just too eager to think 'fuck them' in those kinds of situations. but the more i talk about it, the more i think i basically like it because of how nostalgic it makes me, not even for stuff i necessarily like, but that whole first boom of queer games being made, that i remember, like that one game dys4ia (bad, basically, but fond memories of it), i remember playing that stuff as a kid, and through the years, into hs, seeing interesting queer indie games, often with that pixel art style, sometimes not, a big one i recall like that was that game anatomy by kitty horrorshow, who i wonder about. does she still make stuff?

it looks like maybe, she seems to kind of appear/disappear but she has an update on her patreon from 2023, so it seems like, maybe positive. i hope she's good rn. i really liked her games. cryptworlds was another huge one, for me, that game is kind of a freakish digital fort thunder feeling thing almost. there were others, as well, i remember porpentine's stuff, anyway, this game really connected to that period for me, the messiness of it, i do like that about these things, that's something that in hs inspired me to write, the relative rawness/emotionality of it all. i still think being able to go there is important but i also think now there's something to grow past in that, i guess it's the sense that if you're just emotionally raw all the time, you don't get anywhere, confessing 100% of the time doesn't get to the tension of being a person i think, there's things we don't ever even disclose to ourselves, maybe we think we do, there's a degree of distance at times, and then there's times we exceed (i don't want to use the word transcend as it suggests you become superior to/jump over that original confessional rawness) that and jump into something else, visions, ecstasy, explosions/disruption, in short i guess there's a way in which these confessional works fail to escape being monological, seeking to speak directly, they ensure a kind of total division / creation of the reading subject. it is not as it is in maurice blanchot's thomas the obscure, where thomas is reading and losing himself in the text, but instead there's a level of conversation, but you cannot necessarily respond. but idk, that's only some of these works, i don't think i can really level that at he fucked the girl out of me, the game elements make you participate in a way where you are writing/unwriting the text, so the way it's read is different. i guess more there in the critical thinking, i am thinking of something like dys4ia. i also do value vulnerability, a ton, i don't want it to seem like i don't or something, just that vulnerability is more complex/difficult than the most confessional work we see presents it. it, in certain cases, does truly require one to go beyond normal sociality and engage in a ways that seem wrong, speak incorrectly, cruelly, hysterically, whatever, speaking along the outer limits of acceptability. i think he fucked the girl out of me gets there, but i do also think its digressions to the player, moments where she says 'i can't explain this, this is a game, here's the short version,' and so on, that stuff gets in the way almost. this makes me sound really awful i guess, i'm being too hard almost? i dunno. the more i talk about it the more i admire it, because i think basically all games of this type kind of struggle with this, kitty horrorshow doesn't but she was making horror and her games were very light on this kind of particular writing, lilithofthezone was so abstract as well, the games weren't unemotional but the laughter of the carnivalesque was permitted, or that particular mode of feeling/sensing, under the weight of all that severity and so on, the boundary between tears of laughter and pain blurred totally. i think he fucked the girl out of me definitely marks a step towards getting closer to this in these kinds of games.

i also think the person that made it, taylor mccue, seems admirable, to me at least.

the other game i played today, was minecraft. i have to play with cube shaped objects to soothe my mind sometimes i guess. it is nice to play the game. my computer is so bad that my render distance is like, 3 chunks large. it's fucked but i am happy playing it. it really does soothe me. that says things about the kind of brain i have that i need this kind of thing sometimes like i need #### ### (censored) other times, and then other times i just need to write or whatever.

still feeling nostalgia for that early queer game wave, idek if it really was a wave or not, or if i was just too immersed or something. it's funny how much i liked all that and insisted on my being "normal" at the time. when i was like 8 years old, i swear, 8 or 12?? before 12, definitely. my cousin said to me:

you're going to be one of those people that gets their penis cut off and grows boobs.

and i said:

i don't know.

i'm definitely no the type to want bottom surgery. it's funny he didn't see that in me at all when i was living with him/my aunt, though. maybe he did and just didn't say anything.

tomorrow i definitely have to at least get that drum idea down, i hope i can continue to remember it, i'm sure it's mutant by now but the idea is still there, i can hear it, really. i love when i can hear ideas. it's just very hard to translate a lot of the time.

anyways i am like falling asleep on the ground so i just need to go to bed,

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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