#away i go to my dungeon to grind these things out

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Unironically one of my favorite things about Daggerfall's main questline is how it lets you loose with no instructions other than "talk to the members of the three main royal families ig" and then as soon as you hit level 3 you get a letter from Princess Morgiah like "I might have some of the info you need, come see me at Castle Wayrest teehee ;3" and then if you go talk to her right away you're basically fucked because as soon as you go talk to her she sends your level 3 ass to Scourg Barrow which is a dungeon you DEFINITELY aren't prepared for at that point unless you're doing an extremely optimized powergaming build and it's not like you can just leave and grind a few levels and come back later bc as soon as you talk to her and accept her quest she gives you a 30 day time limit and if you're not back by then then the quest fails and you get locked out of completing the main questline forever and if you don't accept the quest when you first talk to her you also get locked out of completing the main questline forever.

I love 90's RPGs so much.

[ghouldump]

Girlll did you delete your last fic? Whyyyy I was about to read it😭😭

Your Best Nightmare | Lestat de Lioncourt x Reader

ෆ being away from your companion, as both of you take on stardom, can be frustrating, but it is very rewarding to see your maker for the first time in months.

(anon asked for bi!reader w/ crossdressing lestat and if possible some nsfw content)

girl, somebody messaged me and said it was weird and i was confused like you watched a show with vampires killing people like bffr, but ig i’ll repost bc somebody else asked too 😂

The crowd seemed more lively than ever, screaming the frightening lyrics, but paid them no mind. Humans, despite having dominion over nearly every species, were quite stupid. They all had things they liked, they idolized, and in many of their eyes, it didn't take much to seem trustworthy to them. A quick photo of you holding the cheek of a beautiful mortal, and overnight, you were a national treasure — proof that vampires were not a danger.

Vampires, although people of the night, were only bound by their circumstances, and if there were others, they deserved the privilege to reveal themselves. It was cute, really, the same songs that were once deemed monstrous, alarming, and cultish, were now innovative, you were now an icon, like your lover, the vampire Lestat, you were simply adding your contribution to rock culture. However, they didn't even realize, all of them were wrong. They couldn't be more wrong about everything.

I'm your best nightmare,” you sang, as the audience joined you.

And then it happened, you were in my arms

Your lips on my throat- your hands on my, on my...

Two bodies together, the intimate sin

The pain and the pleasure, could do mortals in

How could you know, what I'm thinking of

To me lust can be, as beautiful as love

Here tonight, your pure heart and soul

Untainted passion should have no control

She asked me if I...

I told her the truth

I said "I'm sorry, it takes me, longer than you"

She smiled and blushed, and continued to grind

And promised to make me, go out of my mind

Returning her promise, she, came to a halt

Licking my lips, I, tasted her salt

Then she sat up and gasped and clutched at her breast

I thought she was coming- I'd never have guessed that

As she grew pale, as white as a flower

She collapsed to the floor and was dead in an hour

Hearing the humans singing along to the deranged song, you nearly laughed. Too foolish to grasp the very lyrics, escaping their mouths. A song about your very first hunt, alone. Delilah, the name itself brought a nostalgic tingle to your tongue.

You remember the night utterly, from the time you stumbled out of your coffin, to you crawling back in. You sat alone at the bar, The Dungeon, a frequent spot for tourists when she caught your eye. Dancing against her friend, they both laughed loudly, singing along to the music. Her skin was flawless, her makeup dark, with an incredibly flattering dress, hugging her curves beautifuly.

Just from staring alone, you almost held your throat from how thirsty you were. Standing up, you approached her, her friend nudging her, their eyes shifting to you.

"Hey," she smiled, briefly biting her lip.

"Hey," you repeated, peering into her thoughts, not a single piece was left unattainable from your view.

"Are you here alone?" she asked you, her friend whispering that she was going back to their group of friends, to give her privacy.

"I'm afraid I am," you smiled, as she moved closer, tilting her head.

"Then I'll have to keep you company"

"I'm very difficult to entertain"

"That's because you haven't met me," she giggled.

"Ah, I see, and what is the name of the woman I've waited for?" you asked her.

"Delilah"

"Very beautiful-

"Please, I was named after my grandmother," she said, smiling as you chuckled.

"I'm Y/n," you said, holding out your hand, shaking hers.

"Would you like to get out of here? Maybe have some fun at my place?" you asked, leaning closer, to glamour her.

"Yes, I'd love to," she smiled.

"Good girl, why don't you tell your friends that you're headed back to your hotel for tonight, because you're tired, and I'll meet you outside," you winked, watching as she went to the group of friends.

It wasn't much longer before you were both nude, her moans only continued to arouse your longing appetite. Her gentle kisses, and promises to rock your world, as her orgasm drew near — it only made you want to rip her to pieces more. Holding her soft hips, you felt your fangs emerging before you began to suck from her breast. She panicked for only a moment, choosing to follow along with your erotic behavior.

"I'm coming," she cried, grinding against your thigh. Her breathing hitched, feeling your cool fingers near her glistening pearl.

"You taste just as good as you look," you whispered, staring down, as you hovered over her.

"Your turn," she giggled, her eyes still shut. If only she had opened her lovely raven eyes, to see the monster in front of her. Blood dripping from your mouth, as you stared at her, seeing her for nothing more than she could ever be to you, food.

"Unfortunately, you won't get the honor, tonight, as your life is coming to an end," you said, and just as she was able to open her eyes, you lunged forward.

Draining her, you could sense her heartbeat, hear her thoughts, and feel the sensation of her nails clawing into your back. It was all euphoric, you were a monster, you could admit, and you loved every bit of the thrill, of experiencing such an occasion, with stunning humans.

As the final song came to an end, you waved, bowing at the arena of people, the music fading, as the stage lowered, giving the illusion that you were disappearing. Going backstage, you thanked your team for working so hard for the tour, before you changed clothing — and headed to your hotel. You intended to catch your flight tonight, but with the concert ending so late, you couldn't take the risk, as the sun was bound to rise in the next hour or two.

Although you felt impatient, you would have to wait another night, before you could catch the private jet to New Orleans, to him. Lestat de Lioncourt, your muse, maker, lover, and companion. He turned you nearly 40 years ago and you have been inseparable ever since.

With the both of you busy with your careers, the two of you promised that it would be fine to have flings on the side, as long as there were no feelings attached — not that you would be able to feel anything for another anyway. You had yet to meet another as passionate, as he.

As the driver stopped the car, you quickly made your way into the building, as the sunrise began to peak from behind the buildings.

"Good morning, miss Y/n," the receptionist smiled, batting her eyelashes as you looked her way.

"Morning," you winked, before entering the elevator.

Going to your floor, you stopped for a moment, seeing Amanda, your assistant, standing at the door, it only meant one thing, groupies. Your team sometimes selected women and men, bringing them to your room. Your publicists emphasized how important it was for you to not be seen hunting, and you were simply playing your role.

"Thank you, Amanda, why don't you go get some rest?" you spoke, grinning as she jumped, glancing over at you.

"Yes, of course, sleep well," she nodded, practically running to the elevator.

Opening the door, you squinted, trying to allow your eyes to adjust to the dim room. The blackout curtains blocking any potential sunshine. Hearing the sound of the faucet running in the bathroom, you entered and shut the door. Taking note that you couldn't hear any thoughts, you looked around for a handbag or wallet, to identify the person, just as the bathroom door opened.

Gasping, you couldn't contain the large smile, as Lestat exited the bathroom, he wore a black bralette, cheeky knickers, and a silk robe on top. His blond waves looked even more luscious than usual, with a light pink gloss on his lips and blush.

"You came to California, to see me," you said, trying to swallow the emotions bubbling inside. You felt so elated, seeing him for the first time in months.

"I couldn't go another day away from you, chéri," he confessed, as you moved closer, embracing him. Mumbling a low, "baby", while he held you near, placing a kiss on your lips.

"You look so pretty," you giggled, as he pecked your lips again.

"I had to look my best to get your attention, I've seen the woman that come to your shows," he smirked.

"They don't stand a chance, next to you," you said, as he stared longingly into your eyes.

"I missed you," he finally said.

"I missed you too," you said, as those words were all he needed to hear before his lips were connected to yours, his tongue slipping into your mouth.

Biting down on your lip, he groaned, lifting you in the air, walking over to the bed, before breaking the kiss — as you peeled each article of clothing away, your eyes set on his piercing blue ones.

"This is so cute," your eyes twinkle, as he removed the robe, the obvious bulge in his panties catching your attention. Sitting on the bed, in front of him, he went to his knees. Kissing your lips, he moved down your neck, holding your waist, as you arched your back. "Love," you moaned, feeling his breath against your skin, causing goosebumps.

Laying back, you bit your lip, as his mouth traveled south. Kissing your glistening pearl, before hungrily consuming her. Your fingers found their way to his blonde tresses. Your eyes could hardly stay open, as his tongue repeatedly lapped over your cunt.

Furrowing your eyebrows, you moaned loudly, "I'm so close," you said, the orgasm escaping, as his long fingers moved up to your breast - caressing them.

"I wasn't sure how much longer I could take, being away from you," he spoke, as you agreed, pulling him close to kiss his lips, smearing the lip gloss on his pale skin.

"Take this off, please," You tugged on the bralette, you needed every part of him, bare.

As he stood, you grinned, exploring his toned body. He kept his usual sultry eye contact, as he slowly removed the lingerie, purposely teasing you.

"Lestat," you whined, giggling.

"Patience is a virtue, ma chéri," he smirked, as he approached you, bound to another night of sharing his endless love with you.

"Fuck Patience, I need you now," you groaned, making him laugh.

"Anything for you"

in the original post, i explained that all of the upcoming posts won't be released in a particular order, since i’m working on everything in my drafts.

[munsonsmixtapes]

hiii im wondering if i could put in a request?? 💕

something like you’re dustin’s older sister and you’ve always despised eddie no matter how hot you thought he was and you two were always bickering at eachother and you guys are like enemies right, one night at a party there’s like this crazyyyy sexual tension between the two of you and you guys can’t help but look at each others lips while arguing with eachother like normal and you guys crash lips and it’s like angry sex and soooo hot!!!

Eddie Munson x Henderson!fem!reader

cw: MDNI (18+) smut (p in v) both Eddie and reader are very degrading towards each other, grinding, Eddie receives a hickey, spanking, anal

You had hated Eddie the moment you laid eyes on him. And he didn’t like you either, telling you as much with absolutely no shame. Too bad you could also dish it out. For once, someone was actually putting Eddie Munson in his place and he just couldn't stand that. Because he was the dungeon master for every campaign, everyone just let him say and do what he wanted because without him, there wouldn't have even been a game. Not you, though.

You were always able to get him right where it hurt and he just couldn't stand it, because for once, you were someone who was hating him for exactly who he was and not who everyone thought him to be. You knew he wasn't some evil devil worshiper who was running a cult and that got under his skin, that you were calling it just like you saw it.

Things between the two of you had gotten really bad when you had started a rival DnD club. The other players wouldn't let you back in because all you did was argue with him and ruin the campaign for them, so what else were you supposed to do, not start your own group?

And when Eddie caught wind that you were trying to convince Dustin to join your club? Well, you might as well have stabbed him in the back because that would have hurt a lot less. Dustin might as well have been his younger brother and now you were stealing him away? Sure, you and Dustin were actually related by blood, but that didn't make it hurt any less.

"I'm not doing it, y/n," Dustin told you as he got into your car as you picked him up for school. You didn't even have to speak for your brother to know exactly what you were going to ask. You had been asking for weeks and every time it was the same answer. You weren't really that upset and you understood that it was because he had a special bond with Eddie, but you were his sister, didn't that count for something?

"Making me choose between one of my best friend and my sister is really unfair, you know that?" He asked, throwing his backpack into the floorboard.

"No one's making you choose, Dustin," you shook your head as you put the car in drive. "You have a special bond with Eddie and he made his club first so I guess I can let it slide."

"So you'll stop with your stupid feud?" You didn't think it was that serious, but maybe you weren't seeing the big picture like Dustin. You were only seeing it from your point of view and it seemed like Eddie was the one who was always instigating your arguments.

"Yeah, Dustin," you looked over at him for a brief second before tuning back to the road. "We'll stop."

You hadn't lied when you said those words, but the second you spotted him across the room at a party that Robin had invited you to, your blood was boiling. You didn't think he even knew Steve like that, so you had no idea why he would have been there. Probably the free booze. Definitely the free booze.

You wanted to say something to him, but you weren't sure what. You had promised Dustin, but he wasn't there, so you could say whatever you wanted to Eddie and your little brother never would have known.

"Please don't," Robin whined as she saw what you were about to do. She grabbed onto your arm and tried to hold you back, but your mind was already made up.

You downed the rest of your drink and slammed the cup down onto the coffee table before making a beeline for the metalhead. God, you hated him. And how could you not with his stupid perfect hair and he stupid pretty brown eyes and his stupid pink lips that you wanted to kiss?

You wiped the thought out of your head and continued to walk towards him. It was as if everything had happened in slow motion. In the time you had gotten to the party and gotten your drink, one of your shoes had come untied and you had stepped on it, causing you to fall right onto the floor in front of everyone.

Eddie didn't know what he was doing, but he was quick to help you to your feet. You didn’t know why you were wearing heels when you knew that you’d be drinking, but the damage was already done.

“I don’t need your help,” you told him, trying to push him off of you, but he wouldn’t let you go as your legs were giving out once again.

“Yeah, I can tell,” he rolled his eyes and you hated how you could feel the heat of his hands through your shirt and how his warm brown eyes were filled with concern. “Falling for me, hm?”

“Not even close.”

“Right,” he nodded. “You just can’t hold your liquor.”

“Right on the money, Munson. Guess you’re not as dumb as you look.”

“Can we move this little conversation somewhere else?” Robin asked, appearing by your side. “It’s a little disruptive.”

“The conversation is over,” you grumbled, finally getting Eddie to let go of you. He was about to walk away, but Robin grabbed him by the arm, preventing him from getting too far.

“But it’s not,” she said, also grabbing hold of your wrist. “I think I speak for everyone when I say that you need to talk whatever this is out.” She rested a hand on each of your shoulders and led you up the stairs to the nearest room which just so happened to be a guest room.

“Robin, what are you-” you both said in unison, but she shoved you into the room and both she and Steve stood against the door so neither of you could open it.

You tried to opened it but it wouldn’t budge. You then let Eddie try, but he couldn’t get it either, the effort being no use. You were now stuck until they let you out and you knew that you would have to stay there until you worked things out.

You couldn’t believe you hadn’t seen it sooner. You fell right into your friends’ trap and now you were going to have to stay with the metalhead who you despised.

You sat down on the bed with a sigh then collapsed onto your back, accepting defeat. If you couldn’t get out without reconciling, there was no use in fighting. The bed was actually kind of comfortable so you could have stayed there for quite a while if Eddie didn’t start yapping.

He stood by the door, sipping on the beer that was in his hand and you found yourself letting your eyes take over his body. He was dressed in a cropped band t-shirt and pair of short shorts. He looked good and you almost wanted to tell him as much, but you didn’t want to feed his ego.

He turned to you, setting his beer on the dresser before making his way towards you. He stood in front of you, giving you a view of his great legs and you he to tear your eyes away from him.

“Like what you see?” He asked, his tone becoming very flirty. His pink lips twisted into a smirk and you almost wanted to kiss him. Almost.

“Not in the slightest,” you grimaced. But you did like what you saw. Maybe a little too much.

“Oh sorry, here. Let me give you a better view,” he turned around and purposefully dropped his keys, slowly bending down to pick them up, wiggling his ass as he did so. And damn did he have a great one. Why did you want to look and why did you kind of want to give it a slap? It was right there. All you had to do was reach over and-

“I caught you looking, l/n. You can touch it if you want. I won’t tell anyone,” he winked as he set his keys next to his beer. He then crossed the room and planted himself right next to you so that your thighs were touching. "I bet you've even thought about me naked," he teased his face a little too close to yours for your liking. You could see his brown eyes perfectly and could count every single eyelash if he had stayed there long enough.

And the thing was, you had thought about him naked. Even though you never would have admitted it. Sometimes when you couldn't sleep, you'd use your fingers to entertain you and maybe sometimes your mind would wander to Eddie. Maybe he was hot. But only maybe. There was no way in hell you were going to tell him as much. He didn't deserve to know how much you thought about him.

"It's okay if you have," he assured you. "Because I've thought about you naked. And believe me, in my dreams, you look hot as fuck."

"You're disgusting," you grimaced, but really, it was kind of turning you on. You felt your cheeks getting hot and you turned away from him. "I wouldn't sleep with you if you were the last man on earth."

"Woah, sweetheart," he put his hands up in defense. "No one said anything about us sleeping together. I was just talking about fantasies."

"And that's all it's going to be, because in case you forgot, Munson, I don't like you." You stood from the bed and stepped away from him, knowing that you only needed one more push and your lips would be on his.

"I don't like you either sweetheart, but I'm just trying to get along with you because of Dustin, because unfortunately, you're related to him."

"What do you have against me? What did I do?"

"Nothing, actually," he replied, leaning back on his hands, crossing one leg over the other. He was looking hotter by the second and you needed to turn away before you did something stupid. "I just like pushing your buttons. But you clearly seem to hate me. Wanna share with the class?"

"You're arrogant," you said, crossing your arms over your chest. "You think your hot shit because you play DnD, but guess what, Munson? So do a lot of other people. I think you're just mad because I'm a better DM than you." That seemed to unleash something in Eddie because before you knew it, he was standing from the bed and making a beeline for you.

"Hey, no one is a better DM than me," he jabbed his finger into your face. You kind of liked when he got angry. There was something about it that made you want him even more.

"Oh, I beg to differ," you chuckled, stepping closer so that you were toe to toe with him. "Even Dustin says I'm better than you."

"No he didn't." You could see his gaze moving down to your lips and you mimicked his actions, trying your best to be more subtle than he was.

"No, he didn't," you shook your head. "But you believed it for a second, didn't you? God, you're so easy to rile up, you're so-"

Before you could finish your sentence, Eddie grabbed you by the neck, pressing his lips to yours in a messy kiss. You gasped into his mouth, but quickly responded by moving your lips with his. Your hands quickly wound into his hair as his went to your waist, wrapping around it tightly as he tried to remove any space between the two of you.

Just as his tongue swiped along your bottom lip, you pulled away, not wanting things to get too heated. You pulled your bottom lip between your teeth and Eddie desperately wanted to nibble on it. Now that he had gotten a taste, he felt like he could kiss you for the rest of his life and never get bored.

"We can't do this," you said, stepping away from him, but he just followed you, backing you up until your back hit the dresser. You wanted him to kiss you again, even wanted to let him go all the way, but there was something about it that felt wrong. Mainly because you were Dustin's sister. Not that either of you would have told him.

"Why not?" He asked, licking his lips and he didn't miss the way you were looking at them, like they were a glass of water and you were absolutely parched.

"Be-because of Dustin."

"He doesn't have to know, but if you don't want to kiss me, then that's fine," he turned towards the door. "We can just go downstairs and tell Steve and Rob that we made up-"

But before Eddie could get to the door or finish his sentence, you turned him around to face you, throwing yourself into his arms before pressing your lips to his in a messy kiss. He was quick to respond, moving his lips with yours, his hands slowly moving up to your waist again.

He licked into your mouth and you moaned as his tongue swirled around yours, backing him up to the bed. He collapsed onto it, taking you with him and you were quick to straddle his waist. You kicked off your shoes then pulled away before pressing a kiss to his cheek, moving his hair out of the way before leaning down, your lips hovering over the shell of his ear.

"I'm gonna show you who the real master is," you whispered and Eddie could feel his dick hardening at your words.

You then pressed a kiss to his neck, peppering the spot with them before adding in your tongue. You could feel his heart racing against your lips and almost wanted to laugh. Good. You had him right where you wanted him. 

You began to suck on the skin, wanting everyone to see exactly what you had done to him. He laid there, pliant to your touch as you marked him up, wanting to let you do whatever you wanted to him. The woman he had been fantasizing for months was on top of him, giving him a hickey so who was he to deny you? This was just a wet dream come to life. 

His hands moved up the back of your shirt, his fingers digging into your back as you continued to work, a moan escaping his lips as he did so. Your teeth grazed the skin and his heart rate skyrocketed, another moan falling from his lips, his fingers digging even further into your back.

Once you felt like your work was done, you pulled away, smiling down at his neck that was now shining with your spit and the hickey that was forming. You had given multiple in your lifetime, but thinking about the fact that Eddie Munson was now going to be walking around sporting the mark that you gave him suddenly made you feel very wet.

He pulled you in for another kiss and you were the one to dip your tongue into his mouth, slowly grinding against him as you did so. You could hear a whimper in the back of his throat and let it die on his lips as you continued to kiss him, still grinding against his cock that was getting even more hard by the second. 

You pulled off your shirt and Eddie stared at your chest, his eyes filling with lust. You stared down at him and continued to grind on him, knowing that he needed just a little push to get the little whimper to pass through his lips. 

“l/n, please, can’t take all the teasing.” His whining was so hot and making you even more wt as you thought about him actually needing you that bad. 

“Gonna need a bit more, Munson.” You were grinding even harder now and Eddie swore that he was going to lose his goddamn mind. “C’mon, beg me.” 

“Please,” he whined again, more passion in his words. “I mean, do you need to see my cock to see how desperate I am?” You knew he was exaggerating, but you actually did want to see his cock, wondering if it looked anything like you thought it did. 

“I do, actually,” you nodded and his hands moved to his shorts and seeing how his dick was tenting in his pants, you could already see what a mess you had made of him. You got off of him and let him get the shorts off, followed by his underwear and you couldn’t help but stare at him, lying there with his cock in full display, the thing much bigger than you had anticipated. 

You followed his lead and stripped your underwear before your skirt and you could see Eddie’s mouth fall open as he stared at you, lust clouding his eyes even more. You then pushed him onto the bed before retrieving a condom from his pocket, opening the packet then rolling the thing onto his cock.

“Don’t think this is because I like you or anything,” you told him as you straddled his waist again, slowly placing yourself onto his cock. “This is just because you’re here and you’re hot.” Eddie had no problem with that. Why you were fucking him was none of his business. He was perfectly happy with you using him for his body. 

“I don’t care,” he shook his head. “Use me.”

“Oh, I intend to.” You leaned down and pressed a hot kiss to his lips before you began to ride him, bucking your hips against his in a slow motion to get used to it before picking up the pace. Your hands found his shoulders and they dug into his skin as his moved to your waist, the same treatment given to your hips.  

You watched him as you continued to ride him, seeing the way he was already coming undone doing something to you. Your movements got harder and faster and clearly that was what Eddie was wanting considering that he was more responsive to you, moans and whimpers falling from his lips. 

“Knew you’d look hot underneath me,” you said, your breathing getting labored, but Eddie only thought that made you even more attractive. “I mean, look at you, I’ve barely even done anything and you’re already fucked out.” Eddie almost wanted to see what he looked like to know if you were telling the truth or messing with him because he thought that he had been pretty nonchalant up until then, Okay, maybe except for the begging. 

“Gonna need for you to beg for me again,” you said and you were getting too cocky for Eddie’s liking. You were so confident that you were driving him crazy, and you were, but he didn’t want you to know just how desperate he was for a fuck. 

In one swift move, he sat up and pushed you onto your back so that he was on top. It was about time he taught you a lesson, making you moan so loudly that the rest of his house could see just how well he fucked you. 

“I’m the master now,” he said, pinning your arms to the bed. Your mouth was wide open and for once, you didn’t have anything to say. You were shocked by the sudden movement that you needed to catch your breath, but Eddie pounding into you made your brain short circuit. 

He was going so fast and hard and all you could do was moan, loving the way he wasn’t being gentle. He was whispering the most filthy things into your ear and you felt so overstimulated, but didn’t want it to stop. This was easily the best you ever had even though you never would have admitted it. Eddie’s ego didn’t need to be fed anymore. 

“Now you’re the one who’s going to have to beg,” he said, stopping his movements completely. He just stared down at you with his big brown eyes, a hint of mischief behind them just like always. He leaned down, pressing his lips to yours, his moving slowly against, giving you just a taste, but not the full thing. He didn’t want to spoil you, after all. 

“C’mon,” he urged against your lips. You needed him, but there was no way you were going to beg. You didn’t beg. If it came down to it, you’d just finish the job yourself and make Eddie watch, punishing him for what he had done.

“Not a chance,” you replied. “I can stay here all night.” Eddie didn’t like that response. In retaliation, he sunk deeper into you, fitting all of himself into your cunt and he had to hold back a laugh as he watched you gasp. You just needed a little push and you’d be whining his name in no time.

You couldn’t hold on any longer, very close to giving in, the feeling of his entire cock inside of you getting to you. You thought you could take it, but you really couldn’t. It was more painful than you would have thought and it was driving you crazy that he was trying to make you seem like you wanted him more than you did. You both were just fucking each other because you were there. And maybe you were attracted to him a little bit, but that was beside the point.

“Eddie, please,” you begged, your voice much more whiny than he would have expected. “Eddie, please fuck me.” This was exactly what he was wanting and it really wasn’t that hard to get you to submit. 

“That wasn’t so hard, was it sweetheart? All you had to do was beg daddy.” 

“You’re disgusting.” 

“Oh, don’t start that or else I’m going to have to punish you.” He pounded into you once more which elicited another delicious moan from your lips. Your grip on him was becoming more rough and he wanted you to hurt him, wanting to be able to see your marks when he looked in the mirror. 

“You say that like this wasn’t already a punishment.” You were giving it back to Eddie and every response almost made him short circuit since the women he usually slept with submitted so easily, obeying his every command, just wanting to impress him. But you, you were different and he liked that. He liked how bratty you were behaving and was going to have fun punishing you. 

“Turn over,” he commanded, his eyes growing dark. 

“Eddie, what-” you were trying to ask him what he was meaning, but he just cut off. 

“I’m not speaking fucking gibberish, y/n, I said. Turn. Over.” He pulled out and you flipped over onto your stomach, a gasp leaving your mouth as his hand made contact with your ass with a loud smack. He did one more, harder this time and you were becoming concerned about how much you were enjoying it. 

You moaned as the smacks continued and before you could even process what was happening, the spanking had stopped. You tried to turn around to see what he was doing, but he pushed your face into the mattress and pounded his cock into your ass, his movements fast and hard. You turned your head to the side so you could breathe and your fingers dug into the comforter as he continued, another moan slipping from your lips. 

You knew that Eddie was a freak in the bedroom, but not this much of one. And did it make you a freak that you were enjoying what he was doing? Definitely. And now you weren’t sure how you were going to go on knowing that this was what you could have had all along if you had stopped your stupid feud. 

“See what happens when you talk back?” He asked, giving one more push and now you were coming undone, an orgasm ripping through you as he removed his hand from your face. You screamed his name and he chuckled to himself as he had you exactly where he wanted you. He then pulled out and disposed of the condom before helping you to your feet. 

You both got dressed, the tension having died down and now you couldn’t look each other in the eye after what you had just done. You cleaned yourself up then put on your clothes, turning your back to Eddie as you did so, suddenly feeling exposed. This was definitely a one time thing and now you were going to have to masturbate for the rest of your life since none of your other hookups would ever compare, Eddie always on your mind as you got yourself off.

Once you were dressed, you turned around to see him grabbing his keys and shoving them into his pocket before reaching for his beer. He stepped closer and tilted the bottle towards you as if he was offering you some. You took a sip, grimacing at how warm it had gotten then handed it back to him. 

Eddie then grabbed hold of your waist and pulled you to him before pressing a kiss to your lips, this one soft and gentle. Just as you were getting into it, he pulled away, pecking you then turning to the door. He rested his hand on the handle then turned to you for a brief moment.

“Don’t be a stranger,” he winked then fled the room, leaving the door wide open. You quickly followed him, stopping in the doorway just in time to see him bound down the stairs to join the party where everyone was hopefully oblivious to what you had just done. 

You waited a few seconds and followed, heading down the stairs just in time to see Robin handing Steve a twenty dollar bill who pocketed it. They both caught your gaze and waved you over, both wrapping an arm around you.

���So how was he?” Steve asked and you tried your best to hide your smile. 

“Oh, we didn’t do anything,” you shook your head, hoping that they would buy your terrible lie. 

“Oh please,” Robin knocked her hip against yours. “We could hear the two of you fucking like bunnies up there. Now come on, let’s get you some water, looks like you need it.” She led you to the kitchen to get you the water and you turned your head in just the right direction to catch Eddie staring at you. He raised his bottle to you and you nodded in response. 

“Same time tomorrow?” he mouthed and you nodded enthusiastically, fully prepared to give him your number after you got your water. Maybe you didn’t hate each other as much as you thought. Maybe all of your attraction to each other was hidden by your supposed hatred. Well, now you supposed you were enemies with benefits and you had absolutely no problem with that.

[propertyofkylar]

kinktober day 12: facesitting (f!kylar x gn!pc)

word count: 995 note: loose continuation of this royalty au fic, also find more abt the royalty au here tags/warnings: facesitting, au, cunnilingus, kylar tries to be dom but really dom reader, mostly just me simping over kylar tbh

“And you have to do what I say, because I’m the princess!” Kylar huffed. 

You flashed her a teasing smile. It was far too easy to rile her up, and admittedly too fun. “That usually works for you, yeah?”

Kylar glared at you, folding her arms across her chest, but the pink tinge to her cheeks gave away how flustered she was truly feeling. 

It had been a few months since Kylar had kidnapped you and essentially forced you into being her personal guard-slash-concubine. The “guard” thing was mostly just how she introduced you to others. For the most part, you served as the princess’s sex toy. 

It wasn’t a bad position to be in by any means. You were fed and housed, even though the castle was ramshackle and the food not great. But you could be out fending for yourself. 

Plus, you got to tease the adorable Kylar constantly, which had become one of your favorite pastimes. 

It was almost like a game the two of you played. The spoiled princess made demands of you. You put up a fight, but eventually gave in. Honestly, it was something you really enjoyed, and it was pretty obvious Kylar felt the same way. 

“If you don’t like it, then you’re free to go back into the dungeon,” Kylar said, but you knew she didn’t mean it. 

You feigned being hurt, pressing your hand to your chest and sighing dramatically. “Princess, you wound me! You wouldn’t be so cold-hearted, would you?”

She wiggled slightly, blush creeping up her neck as she sat on her bed. “I…I would.”

You sat next to her, leaning in so your breath ghosted against her throat. Kylar shivered and you were so close, you could see the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “I see. Better do as the princess says, then,” you whispered. 

You started pressing kisses to her neck as your fingers deftly worked to undo her corset and gown. You prided yourself in how skilled you were at undressing Kylar. Soon enough, she wore nothing but a chemise, hare nipples tenting the fabric slightly. 

Smirking, you ran a hand up her inner thigh and brushed against her core. Kylar yelped. “Princess, soaking already,” you murmured. 

Flustered, Kylar squirmed, but you pushed her down onto the bed and then laid next to her. “Well? Didn’t my princess demand something of me?”

Kylar hesitated for a moment, making you giggle, but she hiked up the skirt of her chemise and straddled your face. You breathed in her sweet, musky scent as your hands gripped her fleshy ass. 

It was adorable how Kylar tried to act like a dominant leader, yet fell to pieces around you every time. You could feel her thighs trembling, afraid to put her full body weight on you. A shaky exhale was the sign that yes, she had felt your nose bump her clit. 

“C’mere,” you murmured, punctuating with a lick to her folds. Kylar gasped. “Sit down, princess. I can handle it.”

Digging your nails into her flesh, you set yourself to work, collecting Kylar’s sweet juices on your tongue. Soft sighs fell from her mouth with each twist of your tongue. Your sweet, spoiled princess had demanded to sit on your face enough times that you were confident in your abilities to make her cum. 

As you flicked your tongue up to Kylar’s clit, you also looked up at the beautiful girl hovering above you. Her fists were clenching the skirt of her chemise, her eyes squeezed shut with her lips parted slightly. The stunning sight made you only want to tease you further. So you sucked on her bundle of nerves, which made her hips buck forward and grind on your face. 

“Just like that, good girl,” you mumbled. You swiped your tongue through her folds again, drinking her up. Kylar whined out your name as you did so. 

Kylar seemed to be growing more confident, steadily grinding her dripping cunt against your face as you wormed your tongue into her hole, twisting and curling it to suck up every last drop. 

“P-please,” Kylar moaned, and you could tell she was close. You kept up your work until she cried out your name and even more juices gushed out of her. 

She panted heavily and looked down at you, the two of you making eye contact. Kylar’s face turned even redder when you winked at her. She knew what was coming next - a princess couldn’t possibly be satisfied with only one orgasm, after all. 

You kept licking and sucking her wet cunt at a steady pace, enjoying the way Kylar writhed and moaned above you. To you, there was nothing more arousing than watching her come completely undone by your hand (or mouth, that is). 

Your deft tongue drew a second and even third orgasm from the princess, who at this point was practically sobbing from it all. She choked out your name with a soft “please,” and you knew she had hit her limit. 

Wrapping your arms around Kylar’s soft thighs, you suddenly flipped her over so she was on her back, and you now were hovering above her. With her wide eyes gazing up at you, pupils wide, you bent your head down and kissed her passionately, forcing her essence into her own mouth. 

“You always taste so sweet,” you murmured against her lips, looking at her with heavily lidded eyes. Her adorable, fucked our face made you want to lower your head back down and keep drawing out orgasm after orgasm. But you held yourself back. “Was my work satisfactory to your highness?”

Kylar, who needed a few moments to catch her breath, nodded. “Y-yes,” she managed. “You did, u-um, you did quite well.”

You grinned. “Good,” and went to settle in next to her, but you suddenly found yourself flat on your back, Kylar straddling your thighs. She flashed you a slightly crazed smile. 

“Your turn.”

[malaierba]

This fic wasn't supposed to be a fic at all. It was supposed to be a stupid dirty joke that answered what I asked here.

But when an anon asked me about it (thank you whoever you are, im working on it!) it kind of got away from me. Grew legs on its own and ran, I was already halfway through when I realised that wait, this doesn't fit my vision at all?!? where did the structure for my stupid joke go???

But it was already kind of long and tbh there is soooo little laishuro out there that I was like. welp! i'm already here, may as well commit!

Rating: M

Twelve. That was twelve times that Laios had used the wrong name. After everything that transpired in the dungeon, you'd think he'd pay more attention to that he was saying, right?

Laios giggles as Toshiro's hands, exploratory, seem to brush over a ticklish spot as they roam over Laios' torso. It's enough to bring him back to the present moment — Right, probably not the best of times to be thinking about names of all things.

He repeats the motion, hoping to commit that place to memory, much like he already knew that if he bit behind his neck just so the blond would gasp. The sum of both actions results in Laios' hips snapping up, which does wonders for Toshiro's mood.

"That tickles, Shuro" Laios all but giggles against his temple. He'd find it endearing if that wasn't the thirteenth time he—

Stop. He's obviously just distracted. He had been getting it right after they met outside of the dungeon, after all. The only other time he had made the mistake had been the first time something like this happened. Toshiro let it slide then because it was best to not ruin the moment, there were some half foot around so they had been trying to stay quiet in general, and the nervousness and anxiety and the two fingers that Laios shoved in his mouth did make speaking up. difficult.

Toshiro offers an apology against his ear, and in an attempt to avoid getting distracted himself he grabs Laios hips and allows one of his thighs to press against his partner's groin. One of Laios' hand immediately flies to cover his mouth, a loud and honestly quite poorly muffled groan vibrating between their chests, followed by his hips rolling in an obvious display of unsuppressed hunger.

One of Toshiro's hands finds one of Laios' wrists. He presses against it, half-pinning Laios as he pushed away to look at his handiwork. The king below him (still hard to believe, which didn't make him any less proud) is getting desperate. Toshiro felt a wave of desire swell in his belly as he watched Laios watch him grind against him, and something like relief in the background of his mind. If Laios kept his mouth covered then he probably shouldn't understand anything the blond said, which was the best scenario possible that didn't require him explicitly chastising his partner, in the middle of sex, when he'd quite frankly prefer to just hope he was creative enough with all the ways in each he could keep that mouth busy.

"Hey" Laios whispered. "Come here, Shuro, I want t—"

Toshiro never learned what Laios wanted. The hand on Laios hip suddenly found its way into the man's underwear, grasping at it so unexpectedly that Laios freezes below him. Toshiro curses himself inwardly, suddenly frustrated. He starts to pull away, embarrassed at having startled Laios, when the other grabbed him before he got far.

"it's fine, I just didn't— You just surprised me." Laios offers a tentative smile. "You can be a little rougher, if you want? We can continue." Laios waits for Toshiro to say anything, do something. When all the samurai can manage is furrowing his eyebrows and hesitate, he adds. "Unless you want to stop..? Take a break?"

He can tell that Laios is trying, which only makes him feel like a bigger ass. If he were to listen to his instincts, he'd probably be halfway out of the door, uselessly hoping that by scaping hurriedly he'd at least leave the memory of this spectacular fumble alongside his dignity. Luckily for him, ignoring his instincts in favour of trying to do the right thing is at last familiar territory.

Toshiro takes a deep breath. He had gotten too into his head, so much so that even Laios noticed. Least he could do was offer an explanation.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so rough." He lets the comment about being allowed to be rougher slide, though he does put a pin on that. Maybe he'll inquire later, if Laios won't be turned off by a partner that can't focus on him properly. "I was distracted. You... you've been calling me the wrong name since we got here."

Toshiro observes the way Laios eyebrows knit together, can almost see him walks himself through everything that's happened so far. He can see the way realisation hits him, first in the way his eyes widen, then in the way that he gasps.

"I'm sorry! I didn't notice!" He's sitting up and reaching for both of Toshiro's hands, which he allows. "You should have said something sooner, Toshiro."

Toshiro feels himself blush. He's reminded of being a child, how Hien would scold him when his timidity got the best of him.

"I didn't want to offend you", he explains, shaking his head. "It's not like you're doing it on purpose. I could tell you weren't thinking." He sighs quietly. "Honestly, I don't know why I got so hung up on it. It's not that important. I should've focused on you instad."

"If it's bothering you, then it is important", Laios countered. "I want you to feel comfortable with me. If you aren't comfortable, it's only natural that you'll be distracted, right?"

"... right"

"It won't happen again", Laios promises, so seriously that Toshiro feels himself smile at his earnestness. "I've been getting it right since, uh, that day, right? I don't really know what happened just now. I guess my subconcious took over!"

Laios offers a fairly carefree, slightly sheepish laugh, which is met by Toshiro tilting his head to a side in curiosity.

"Your subconcious?", he repeats.

"Ah... it's nothing." Toshiro isn't quite sure he believes that, and his silence must communicate as much since Laios eventually massages his neck, looking vaguely embarrased, and explains: "It's just... I started thinking about, you know. What it'd be like if we fooled around since before I got your real name. I guess the part of my brain that associates you + getting handsy with the name 'Shuro'?"

Toshiro all but gapes at Laios, who's in the middle of attempting to laugh his silliness away, and thus either doesn't notice or doesn't care that he just admitted to having have fantasized about Toshiro since... How far back? Toshiro makes a feeble attempt at trying to pinpoint a moment since meeting Laois where he could reasonably assume that the blond had started to regard him sexually, before giving up. He didn't notice, he's not sure he cares that much about the when either. After something like that, there's really only one thing he cares about.

"You make it sound like you've thought about it a lot", he says quietly. Laios misses the moment when Toshiro's hands find his shoulders. Getting pushed back onto the bed is, of course, harder to miss. "So in those fantasies of yours, what am I doing?"

If Laios looked any more like the cat that got the cream, Toshiro would almost fear that the madman had finally figured out how to become part monster.

"Well... remember what I said about not minding it if you're rough?"

[never-wednesday]

So i did some Stupid Fuckshit this past month in final fantasy ffxiv: I wrote a character who i wanted to be a reaper through MSQ for story reasons.

This means that in order to accomplish what I want i need to be reach level 70 in a combat class, which was Paladin so I could start in Ul'dah and get fast queues.

I allowed myself some concessions: having access to the first three dungeons would grant us access to the leveling roulette, and Sylph Management will grant us a job, which makes the prospect of grinding much much more tolerable. So i allowed myself to progress the story just enough to move from Gladiator to Paladin.

It took me a total of 28 days (Oct 8th to Nov 4th), and 2 days, 6 hours, 12 minutes of playtime. Just under a month isn't bad, especially considering i spent almost a full week out of town and unable to play at all.

In that time I primarily used daily leveling roulettes, and despite unlocking PvP far earlier only used PvP for the last 5 days. Hunting logs, minimal levequests, every sidequest I could find, and pretty much any FATE I stumbled into was how I spent my time. Also, lots of Palace of the Dead. It was interesting! I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I don't hate Reaper (I didn't have the good sense to give it a proper test on my main first) but I can solidly say I do NOT recommend this! What the fuck!

If you do want to do this though, here's my advice:

- just start doing your daily frontlines as soon as possible the exp is no joke. It's also the only other roulette you have access to besides the basic leveling roulette, and you will want that scaled exp

- pursue challenge log entries!!! I didn't realize how good these were until the LAST DAY they got me from about 1/4 of the way to level 70 to level 70 so so fast. The chocobo companion and FATE challenge entries pair very well together, so pick up some gyshal greens! It'll also make soloing those fates much faster (ask me how i know)

-rotate between activities, PotD runs, FATEs and hunting log entries are well and good, but if you don't want to feel like you're going to start fist fighting every goddamn enemy personally you also gotta spend time doing other things that are fun. That's part of why I did so many sidequests! They have lots of love and charm in them, and it's a nice break from harsh grinding. I also really spent some time learning gpose which was super fun!!

-dont divide your time between multiple classes if you can at all help it. Honestly, I'd really recommend staying away from conjurer/white mage because it's much harder to do solo potd runs with (I did lots of potd content solo out of convenience). If you are going to pick up a new class, pick up something like RDM, GNB or any other class that starts at a high level and fully commit to it till you hit your goal

-uhhh, be yourself, have fun, and test your goal class BEFORE you do this

[the-pen-pot]

Convivial

Summary: Merlin is propositioned. Arthur intervenes.

------

The problem with feasts, Merlin thought with some annoyance, was that it did not take long for various members of the nobility to slide down the slippery slope from "convivial" to "raucous". For all their fine breeding, once the wine started flowing it seemed all manners went out of the window.

Generally speaking, Uther did not tolerate his nobles meddling with the servants. It was more because he thought such behaviour beneath his courtiers rather than out of any regard for the safety and happiness of the castle staff. Still, the King did not have eyes everywhere, and his various lords and ladies took the view that what Uther didn't know couldn't hurt them.

That was how he found himself here, pinned into an alcove in one of the hallways by Lord Bancroft. The cold stone of the castle wall dug into his back as the lord's body pressed against his front from shoulder to hip, all hard muscle and harder... other things.

It was not the first time Bancroft had cornered him, but before, he had kept his torso braced and distant in a faint parody of respect. All Merlin had to do was duck under his arm, make his excuses and be on his way. Clearly, he had learned from his mistakes, and now Merlin could barely breathe as Bancroft's whispered words poured into his ear like hot ash.

'I would treat you well. Smother you in gifts and riches. If you were my bed-mate, you could have anything you desire. You would only need serve me on your back.'

Only on my back? Merlin thought. That's not very imaginative.

If this was some idiot down the tavern, he would have already kneed him in the fork, but if he defended himself against a noble then there was a good chance he'd end up in the dungeon for his troubles. It would be his word against theirs: self-defence versus an unprovoked attack, and he knew who Uther would believe.

'My Lord,' he said, quiet but firm. 'Release me.'

'You must grow tired of tending to the needs of the Prince – serving him day and night from what I hear, and with little thanks for your efforts. Or perhaps he grows tired of you. He has seemed more... distant... of late, and someone else served him at the feast tonight. You should be with a man who appreciates you.'

Merlin grimaced, swallowing hard. He had not realised that anyone else had noticed that he and Arthur had been more stilted with each other. It was his own fault. He was the one who had finally found the courage to tell Arthur about his magic. While he was glad he had not sent him to the pyre or banished him into exile, Merlin missed the easy friendship they'd once had and the trust Arthur had given him. Some days, he wondered if he would ever get that back.

It seemed even Bancroft had noticed and had chosen his moment to strike. His promises all sounded as sweet as a songbird, but it was also absolute bullshit. Bancroft was a good-looking man, but his reputation brimmed with brutality. When his latest favourite lost their shine, they instead seemed to collect bruises. Hadn't his last mistress died after taking a nasty tumble down some stairs?

Now, he'd decided he wanted Merlin. Not, he suspected, because of the way he looked. Instead, it was about his status. If Bancroft could steal him away from Arthur – Prince and heir to the kingdom – then it would be a feather in his cap when it came to the gossip of the court.

'It's my honour to serve Prince Arthur in whatever way he asks of me.' Which sadly did not involve time spent between the bedsheets, but Bancroft didn't need to know that. 'Now let me go.'

'I think not.'

Merlin wasn't sure what was worse, the writhe of his tongue as he thrust it into Merlin's mouth, or the sudden, painful grind of Bancroft's hard cock against him. For a split-second he froze, paralysed by his surprise before anger surged – a cresting rush of prickly heat that fountained through his chest and filled his head with its buzz.

There was no room to pull back his fist for a punch, but it was the matter of a moment to bite down hard on Bancroft's tongue. The hot copper taste of blood flooded his mouth as Bancroft reared back with a yell, clamping his hand over his lips as he glared at Merlin through the curtain of his tumbled fringe.

Quick as a snake, Bancroft drew back his hand, ever muscle coiled to slam his fist into the side of Merlin's head. Except the blow never came. Instead, he froze, his body locking up in surprise as a familiar voice came from behind him.

'Enough, Lord Bancroft.'

Merlin closed his eyes in disbelief, cursing his dreadful luck. Of everyone to find him like this, it had to be Arthur.

He shifted to the side, his gaze darting down to the point of Arthur's dagger where it pressed over Bancroft's right kidney in emphasis. Arthur's face was like granite, utterly unyielding and devoid of emotion. Only his eyes gave him away, snapping with anger. 'You are clearly the worse for drink. It has affected your judgement and allowed you to forget the covenants of the court. The servants are not to be used for your pleasure.'

Bancroft's face twisted into something ugly, and the wine he'd consumed had clearly dismissed any good judgement he might have once had. 'Of course not, Your Highness. They are reserved for your use, I suppose?'

The leering innuendo couldn't be more obvious, and Merlin rolled his eyes in disbelief. It was a cheap blow, and nothing he or Arthur hadn't heard before. Normally, Merlin shrugged it off and Arthur feigned complete ignorance, delighting in the discomfort of his courtiers when they tried to explain what they meant. This time, though, Merlin caught a glimpse of something as it flickered over Arthur's features: a shadow he could not name, there and gone again.

'Merlin chooses who he beds, Lord Bancroft, and I believe he's made his answer to your invitation more than clear.'

There were some men who could take rejection with grace. Unfortunately, Bancroft wasn't one of them. Merlin could see the bloom of fury in his eyes: a harsh, illogical rage. For one appalling moment he thought he might attack Arthur, but when he lunged, it was in Merlin's direction, his fist raised and his face thunderous.

It was the matter of a moment to step to one side, using the man's momentum against him. Merlin's fingers tangled in those curls and slammed Bancroft, hard, against the castle wall. The man dropped like a stone, his eyes rolling up in his head and his body falling limp.

'Well done,' Arthur managed after a moment's stunned silence. 'Is he dead?'

He sounded supremely unbothered by the prospect, and Merlin scoffed, shaking his head. 'No, he's still breathing.'

'Pity.' Arthur sighed, sheathing his dagger back in his boot before he looked Merlin over, his gaze lingering on his rumpled clothes. All trace of humour fled his face as he stepped forward, one hand reaching out in an aborted movement before falling back to his side. 'Are you all right?'

Merlin grunted. 'I won't be when he wakes up. He's going to go straight to Uther. I'll probably end up in the dungeons for my trouble.'

'No, you won't. You were assisting Lord Bancroft – who had overindulged – back to his bed. Unfortunately, he stumbled and headbutted the wall.'

'Who's going to believe that?'

'Everyone, if I'm the one saying it.' Arthur folded his arms over his chest, lifting his eyebrows as if daring Merlin to argue. A moment later, he glanced along the corridor, dropping his voice to nothing but a murmur. 'Besides, bruises are easier to excuse than accusations of magic. I assume you didn't' – He wiggled his fingers back and forth in the air – 'do anything?'

Merlin sighed. 'No. He was too close. He would have seen.'

'Right, well. We can't leave him here. Grab one arm and throw it over your shoulder. We'll take him to his chambers.' Arthur bent down to take Bancroft's other arm, and between the two of them they dragged him to his feet, bracing themselves for a long, clumsy stumble through the castle.

No one interrupted them. Most people were still at the feast, and the few guards on duty knew it was not their place to ask. When they finally dumped Lord Bancroft on the bed, Arthur stepped back with a sneer, letting out a breath before grabbing Merlin's shoulders and steering him out of the room. 'Don't worry. If he wakes up squawking any accusations in court, we'll make sure he regrets it. And Merlin?'

'Yeah?'

'From now on, I expect you to stay at my side during feasts.'

'But, George...'

'There's only so many jokes about brass I can stand.'

Merlin drew in a breath. He knew better than to keep pushing. Arthur was rubbish at apologising, even at the best of times, but he had learnt to read between the lines and find what he wasn't saying. This was an olive branch of sorts: the first step to bridging the distance that had yawned between them since Merlin's confession, and he seized it gratefully.

'Yes, Sire.'

------

'Wear this.' Arthur tossed something shiny at Merlin as he walked through the door to the Prince's chambers. He dropped the clean laundry he had been carrying in order to snatch it from the air, huffing a protest at the resulting mess.

'Prat. You did that on purpose.' He held up the medallion, which was not much bigger than a coin and strung on a leather cord. His breath caught when he recognised Arthur's personal heraldry: not something of Camelot, but a design that belonged to the Prince alone. It was etched, not stamped, suggesting something carefully commissioned rather than made in haste. 'What's this for?'

For a minute, he thought Arthur might fob him off with an excuse, hand-waving away any need to explain. He could see the temptation to do just that in the crease of Arthur's brow, but in the end, he leaned back against his desk, his folded arms the only clue to his tension.

'There's another feast coming up. Hopefully, considering how Bancroft left Camelot in disgrace after last time, the other nobles will have some common sense. However, if one of them should try anything while you're wearing that, I can at least call them out in the duelling ring.'

Merlin wet his lip, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head to the side as he looked at Arthur. His faint suspicions about what, precisely, Arthur had given him crystallised into certainty, but he needed to hear it from his own lips. 'And why's that?'

'Because...' Arthur sighed, straightening up and stepping closer, reaching out to curl Merlin's fingers closed around the pendant, securing it in his grasp. 'It marks you as my favourite and places you under my protection.'

Merlin stared, half-hypnotised by the press of Arthur's hand over his own and the cool metal of the necklace quickly warming in his palm. The incident with Bancroft happened more than a month ago; he had thought it forgotten. 'People will talk.'

'People already talk.' Arthur looked down at their joined hands before glancing up at Merlin through his lashes. This time, there was no missing the flash of something hot and longing in his eyes, hastily stifled.

It was not the first time, these past few weeks, that Merlin had caught a glimpse of that same emotion. Initially, he had told himself it was nothing but wishful thinking. Then, he had started to hope. Now he looked at Arthur and wondered how he could ever have missed it.

He went to draw back, but Merlin tightened his grip, holding Arthur in place as he prayed to whatever gods might be listening that he was not misreading the situation. Nervous butterflies thrashed in his stomach as he dredged up his courage, untangling his voice from the briar of his own fear as he shifted closer, reducing the distance between them to little more than a hand-span of space. 'Would you like to give them something worth talking about?'

He watched the way Arthur's eyes darkened at his implication. The tip of his tongue was a glimmer of pink as he licked his bottom lip, and Merlin followed its path with his gaze, helpless.

When Arthur spoke, his voice was hoarse, as if he longed to smother the words in his throat but had to speak them anyway. 'You don't – you don't have to do this. There's no price for this, Merlin. I don't expect anything of you.'

'And what if I want to?' Merlin asked. 'What would your answer be then?'

He waited, his heart in his throat and his whole body humming with possibility. He could neither move forward nor retreat, not without Arthur’s permission. He had made the offer, and it was Arthur's choice what happened now.

He did not have to wait long.

A tiny hint of pressure from Arthur's hand was all it took to close that final space, his answer not spoken, but rich and heady in the heat of his lips over Merlin's own, dizzying and perfect.

Yes, said the kiss, the first of many. Now and always, yes.

[jadeylovesmarvelxo]

The Only One

@saramelaniemoon  asked:

H! Can I have eddie x reader request?

They're cute new couple and Eddie introduces her to his hellfire friends. They get along with her and he's so happy to have his friends and his girl together.

But after some time he doesn't want her to go to hellfire meeting and politely ask to stay home and read or study. She's worried that she embarrassed him somehow.

But Eddie is just jealous boy because one of the boys likes her too much (in his opinion) and he's so worried that she'll realize she deserves better that him. He wants her all to himself while he still can...

Soooo just misunderstanding and insecure Eddie boy (I love him)

Fluff ending please 🙏

Also including this request by anon

Could you do a fem!reader x Eddie

Where reader grinds against Eddie’s hand

And Eddie thinks reader is everything and they make out a whole bunch and there lots of sucking on eachother?

Warnings; A Little bit angst, some spice, insecure Eddie, lots of fluff.

Likes and especially reblogs are always appreciated 😘 I don't give anyone permission to copy my work.

💞💞

She and Eddie had been dating for a little while now. All of her friends thought they were the cutest couple and Eddie was the perfect gentleman.

He was kind, sweet and those big brown eyes of his never failed to make her melt.

Today Eddie was taking her to Hellfire Club, where he and his friends played D&D and Eddie was the Dungeon Master.

Noticing her worried expression he squeezes her hand softly.

"Hey, stop panicking. My friends will love you sweetheart. Who wouldn't?" butterflies fill her belly at his sweetness and she kisses his cheek as they head into the drama room.

"Sheeples" Eddie annouces and they all turn around to face him gawping at her.

"This is my girlfriend yn. She's joining Hellfire for tonight and I sure as hell hope you welcome her happily" he gives them a hard stare and she waves at them all, Eddie was overprotective at times but in this case it eased her nerves.

Hopefully his friends liked her?

Eddie was beaming and she was happy that he was happy. He told her that having his friends and his girl in his sacred place was incredible for him.

So she threw herself into the campaign with gusto. Truthfully she knew next to nothing about Hellfire but Eddie when he wasn't deep in DM mode gently guided her along.

His friend were very helpful too. Including Gareth and Jeff whom she got on well with and soon she felt completely at ease at Hellfire.

Plus, Eddie looked delighted at how well she was getting on with everyone and that filled her with a happy glow inside.

💞💞

Waves of pleasure crash over her as she grinds against Eddie's hand. He kisses her hungrilly as his hands run up and down her waist.

They were in the middle of a heavy make out session which would have to end soon as she and Eddie would be late for Hellfire Club.

But she loved kissing him and when he was telling her how she was everything to him and how all sorts of lovely things she didn't want to pull away.

Her lips move to her neck and she sucks softly on his skin. His hands move up into her hair and she giggles as he dips down to kiss the curves of her breasts, sucking lightly on her skin.

"Eddie, Hellfire is soon we need to go" something changes in his expression and he gets up.

"Hey why don't you stay in tonight princess, stay all cuddled up here and read or study until I get home"

She's confused. It had been a few weeks and she thought he was enjoying her being with him and his friends?

Gutted at his request she nods sadly.

"Oh, okay" he notices her mood change straight away and softens.

"Please don't be upset sweetheart" she feels a bit teary and Eddie kneels beside her.

"Have I embarrassed you in some way?" she asks and his eyes widen.

💞💞

Eddie's heart drops at her question.

"Did I embarrass you in some way?" he shakes his head gently kissing her head.

"No, of course not princess" shit how does he explain to her how he's feeling? That he's jealous and feeling insecure because Gareth seems to like yn a little too much?

What if she realises she deserves so much better than him? It's something he constantly worried about.

She's crying now and he kissing her tenderly.

"The truth is I'm jealous because Gareth likes you, maybe a little too much and it worries me because I keep waiting for the day that you realize you deserve better than me"

She softens and takes his hands.

"Oh Eddie, I love you and only you" she cups his cheek.

"I don't want Gareth or anyone else. I love you. You're everything to me. You're so special. I wish you would see that"

Warmth fills his entire body and he cuddles into her.

"You really mean that sweetheart?" she nods and kisses his forehead.

"I love you"

"I love you too princess. Come on then let's get everything sorted for Hellfire then we can head back to mine yeah?" he feels a lot better, a weight feels like it's lifted off his chest.

He should have known that yn would understand and be so sweet about it. He gives her another kiss and then they head out to go to Hellfire.

💞💞

💞💞

[veemo4]

2023 Media Thread (Re-do to add a Read More Link)

Spark The Electric Jester 3:

Man I was holding off on spoilers for MONTHS until the holidays when I could get this game, and I only beat it in the beginning of the year and well…HOLY SHIT I didn’t know I needed existentialism in my funny little platformer- Gameplay is INSANELY solid, like honestly some of my favorite platforming controls I have ever used! Music is top notch as well!

Nier Automata: The End of YoRHa Edition:

Holy fuck how did I manage to avoid spoilers for this game for YEARS??? That ending was beautiful~ (Yes I did do all the main endings)

Chrono Trigger: I should preface this by saying I did modify this game a tiiiiny bit to have PS4 button prompts and fixing the Classic filter. Other than that, I can see why it’s a lot of people’s favorite RPG! Short enough in case you wanna replay it, and the foundation of the NG+ system definitely helps incentivize replays! Can’t wait to play Chrono Cross!

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII:

I binged both FFXIII and FFXIII-2 during October and November of last year, but took a short break to avoid burnout. And well, yeah this game was neat! I will admit though that since there’s no way to REWIND time like in Majora’s Mask that I got INSANELY stressed out but that didn’t take away from the sweet release of seeing these characters I love finally get their well-deserved happy ending :)

Mega Man Zero:

I put this one off and on throughout like 2 years because I just wasn’t good at it, but it taught me a VERY good lesson in perseverance! Really excited to play Zero 2!

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion: ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK ;w; Story was pretty…alright for the most part, but I couldn’t feel attached to any of the original characters :/ Honestly my eyes were on Zack just…being real with what’s going on. I may not feel bad for when people he cares about dies, but I can EASILY emphasize with him because I know that HE knows them. Knows them more than we ever will know. Also the gameplay and music are fucking stellar.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes:

I should preface all of this by saying I don’t remember what order I beat all of these in lmao. Anyways my route was Golden Wildfire and the story for it is such an improvement over its equivalent in Three Houses!!! I love Shez so much as a protagonist even if his outfit is a tiny bit dumb.

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

Man I really wanted to like this. And like, music and area wise I loved it! But the story feels…It just doesn’t feel like the finality for all we’ve done so far. I could not care at all for Meteion because they spend approximately like 20 or 30 minutes making us meet them and then throwing us IMMEDIATELY into the angst like, no. This isn’t even a case of “Well I don’t care but I can understand why others do” NO THE GAME MAKES YOUR WOL FEEL BAD AS WELL, MEANING YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO CARE! NO! I DON’T! I was able to at least pretend a little bit to roleplay as needed but man. At least Footfalls and the post-endwalker dungeon themes kick ass though. (Warrior of Light’s name for me is M’bahlon Tia)

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe

SO CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE I love kirby games sm and this is no exception. REALLY loved how hard the Magolor Epilogue got at certain points though that was great.

Fire Emblem Awakening

I CAN SEE WHY THIS SAVED THE FRANCHISE WHEN IT CAME OUT!! It’s a REALLY good game! I went with the default male Robin settings since that’s what’s in Smash Bros. And man just, everything about this game is AMAZING!!! Sadly cannot see myself replaying it anytime. I could just load my endgame save and grind out support conversations with other characters or do that…new game plus thing I think it was?

Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space: Bound Wills and the Hollow Puppeteer

I did this event initially back when it came out (and in fact is the main reason why I played the game in the first place) But I got horrible units and died super often, and revived every chance I got. But losing my save data and getting a better unit HEAVILY boosted my chances of getting through the event and man, it was a lot of fun! I love seeing tiny mona :3 JUST LOOK AT HOW SMOL HE IS AAAAAAAAA

Mighty Gunvolt Burst:

I had a lot of fun with this one! I used one of the DLC characters (I think they’re the Zero character from Mighty Number 9 but) it’s a great romp!

EDIT: ALSO SHOULD MENTION IT FUCKING OWO’D ME

Final Fantasy XV

“Walk tall…my friends.” I got this game YEARS ago but haven’t truly delved into it recently. And well… That ending got to me. It really did. The gameplay took me so long to get used to (especially since I had been more used to the more refined gameplay of Final Fantasy 7 Remake 3 years prior) Music is amazing, love the characters! I just wish the other episodes were finished and weren’t just put in a novel :/

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

HOLY FUCK THIS GAME WAS SO COOL. I always heard like, right, about how good this game was but I figured it was just nostalgia talking for people. NOPE. As someone who’s first paper mario game was super (never beat it, I was a really stupid child) and then played Sticker Star (Again, very stupid child but also that game is bullshit because everything is so obtuse and it sucks) But this? This was a big breath of fresh air. I am so excited to go back and play 64 and Super!!!

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Honestly? Way better than I was expecting. You can FEEL nintendo had a strangle-hold on the movie’s production though from how Chris Pratt in the final movie actually fucking voice acts somewhat (it’s a start), there’s no bad Illumination tropes, Peach is a dragoon, Toad and Bowser easily steal the show, and just, ALL THE REFERENCES WOW. EVEN THE NEWER THINGS. I didn’t see any Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi references though which makes me sad. I hope that if there’s a sequel it’s actually better and doesn’t fall into any traps movie sequels usually do, maybe even say if the other kingdoms from Mario Odyssey are in this universe (and maybe Isle Defino) The movie definitely could have used an extra 20 minutes spread throughout to add more to the main group dynamic.

Mega Man Zero 2

OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO MUCH BETTER BALANCE-WISE HOLY SHIT Cyber-elves requirements to be leveled up were MASSIVELY lowered and the enemy AI isn’t as overly aggressive! Loved the music too, especially Departure and the ending theme which was adapted for the song Clover! Can’t wait to do Zero 3!

WARE WA MESSIAH NARI! HAHAHA!

Mega Man Zero 3 was really good, but either I am getting way too good at these games or they are getting easier haha. Loved the music and gameplay though, and how Cyber Elves were handled here is absolutely the best they have ever been! If there’s any game in this series I am gonna replay, it’s Zero 3 without a doubt! On to Mega Man Zero 4, the last of the GBA era.

Mega Man Zero 4

I finally did it. I beat the entire Mega Man Zero series. While I do not agree with how the parts and cyber elf system were handled, It was not a bad experience by any means! It felt nice following Zero’s character arc throughout these games. I’m maybe gonna take a break before I tackle Mega Man ZX, but hey, I feel like that game’s gonna be fun! It’s the only one I actually OWN on its original hardware after all! :D

Sonic and the Black Knight

This was a fun distraction for a few hours! I had a lot of fun with this! Granted the second King Arthur fight took me an hour but besides that it was a quick and good romp! Probably has one of the best final boss themes in a sonic game I’ve ever heard! :D

The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past

Pretty fun game all things considered, but I didn’t like how punishing some of the design philosophies were in the end parts of the game. Music’s great though! Maybe I’ll revisit it one day, but not anytime soon. Still, can’t say I disliked my experience.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Where…do I even begin with this?…It was…genuinely amazing. I was waiting for a sequel to Breath of the Wild for years, and during my high school years I was wondering how they would even follow it up! Doing a sequel to an open-world game is harder than a lot of other genres.      But yet….they did it. They somehow did it. Those 6 years of development time more than paid off. It felt…amazing to run around a changed Hyrule from the last game. The mechanics were amazing, and the character development was really cool! The new rune abilities are dope!!!    BUT THE MUSIC MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM THE MUSIC OH THE MUSIC IS SO GOOD THE ENDING MUSIC MADE ME ACTUALLY CRY AHHHHHHHH PLAY THIS GAME PLAY IT NOW

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

And here we are! Finally got around to this! It was a really dope game! Loved the combat and music! I even did most of the bonus content and the Ultimate Cup Z, but I kept dying at the final phase of the final boss of that so I just gave up lol, it’s purely bonus content anyways lol. But honestly I loved this game! Can’t wait for the next mainline kirby game!

The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD

FINALLY GOT AROUND TO PLAYING THIS ONE! I owned this on real hardware since its release date but never got far. I finally got around to it with the motivation of beating Tears of the Kingdom, and I gotta say, it’s pretty good! Not exactly like, absolutely top tier game that everyone MUST play but, it’s decent! Bosses are a big sour point though. Music was pretty decent, though the final dungeon theme is a bore. Only other current Zelda games I gotta beat are the 2D/Top-Down ones, so maybe I’ll do one of those next! Possibly either Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks.

Pokémon Scarlet

HOLY SHIT THAT ENDING SEQUENCE WAS ACTUALLY COOL AS HELL!!! Like yeah, the game has its decent chunk of technical issues but, holy shit….those last two hours of the main story are phenomenal. TOBY FOX CONTINUES TO BE THE GOAT THE MUSIC HE COMPOSED IS AMAZING! I love how easier it is to capture pokemon compared to Sword and Shield as well. I do like Dynamax raids more as a multiplayer component, but I much prefer the Tera mechanic in terms of PVP. I stlll need to do the post game before the dlc comes out later this year, but all I really got is just the refights against the gym leaders and all that jazz. There’s also the Needle thingies I gotta pull out and the wall things I gotta investigate in order to get the other legendaries, but all I really care about is finishing the core of the main story, I got other games to get to lol. Probably thinking of either Paper Mario or Chrono Cross next haha.

Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Final: Build & Ex-Aid with Legend Riders

Okay so context: my friend @arcadiusdragoneyes​ is showing me and @darkspine576​ Kamen Rider Build since it’s one of his favorites and he wanted to indoctrinate introduce us into Kamen Rider AND IT’S FUCKING WORKING. I only know one part of this crossover, but I think it did a good job of giving across the feel of the other Kamen Rider series very well! Kamen Rider Build is so extra I love it. Can’t wait to finish Kamen Rider Build!

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Behold! a miniboss!

Then the room rumbled and a paper crane fell on the floor? Abel furrowed his brow and went to pick it up, but at that moment a wave of paper cranes swooped down, seemingly of their own accord, all moving in one great rush to form some sort of giant creature. The thing roars at them and Abel can’t help wondering a little hysterically if this is one of the fabled dungeon monsters, something so dangerous it’s been confined to this place for who knows how long. Abel readies his sword, feeling like the steel in his hand is woefully inadequate for the task before him, but prepared to fight with all his might– Then Fierce almost lazily unsheathes his giant sword, slices it across the air nowhere near the monster shifting towards them, and Abel watches with something like disbelief as a beam of light is emitted, moving unerringly towards the monster and burning the cranes it comes into contact with. They are packed so closely together to make the creature that they are all ashes in moments. Wait, something is still moving! Abel turns and almost feels pity at the sight of a lone crane, charred on one wing, pathetically shuffling along the floor trying to get away from them, Fierce walks over and sets one large boot on the thing, slowly grinding the thing under his boot with an expression of boredom, like this was beneath him. Abel feels ice in his veins at the reminder of the terrible power the deity wields so casually.

It was going to be funny but then Fierce decided to be terrifying on accident.

Ok but EVIL PAPER CRANES just made me BUST OUT LAUGHING LOL

Abel would be like “am I SERIOUSLY gonna die from origami” ISSJWBFLFISBAOW HAHAHAHA

Fierce stomping on that last one did hurt my heart a little, oof :(

[tenleaguesbeneath]

some musings toward hacking together a system to run my home games

combat engine wise, I'm drawn to either one-roll (well, maybe more like one+each rolls, where you roll once to determine the outcome of the whole combat and then each player rolls to determine personal consequences) or a puzzle combat system where rather than the enemy's defenses adding up to give it an armor class that you roll against, each one is a real thing.

Like, for instance, a knight in articulated plate with a zweihander would have a reach advantage (explicitly: you can't get close enough to use your weapons against him because he'll cut you up and push you back) and the armor protects all areas except for gaps too small to be practical to hit while he's up and moving, especially at range, and those are real in the game system. Rather than AC just he no-sells your attacks until you figure out a way to negate those advantages.

At the same time I want something more concrete and real than PbtA stuff does. I like the illusion that the narrative isn't just the GM and players saying stuff, that there's something concrete under it that the rules govern, that successes and failures are the result of interactions with the world and the mechanics rather than something the GM hands out. I like strings though, strings are good. I'm particularly thinking about thydungeonguy's recent posts about systems where the different parts (social interaction and combat) all play in to each other, with a shared metacurrency between combat and non-combat encounters.

I've had a little experience with Torchbearer and there's a lot I'd borrow from it and a lot I wouldn't. I like the grind. Honestly I'd want to take some of the emphasis away from the Conflict engine it has (in particular how you can basically never get enough Checks to rest properly without conflicts); just making plain dungeon crawling arduous is good. But I think I'd still want an OSR-style turn system over Torchbearer's.

Explicitly tracking characters' emotional states (like Torchbearer does, with Angry and Afraid as status conditions) is good.

I'm especially thinking of this in conjunction with psionics, and in particular this twitter thread about psionic archetypes and how D&D gets them wrong. Since I'm lately playing sci-fi psionic stuff that's on my mind.

I want some degree of random character generation, though stars without number's thing of making that optional but then giving an expectation value somewhat higher than opting out (three rolls vs two picks for background skills, or the raise option if you roll stats 3d6 in order). Not sure how much compatibility with D&D I want; that'd be a nice-to-have though. Honestly, what I like from random character generation is having a process to go through to meet your character, rather than just creating someone tailor-made, and don't like characters who are entirely optimized around doing one thing well. The random boons after you pick your class in On A Red World Alone are good, although I like the option for a random class which that system doesn't have.

Likewise, I want progression to be a mix of organic and player-guided. I don't want you to plot out a build from first to max level and have all that set in stone before play begins. At the same time there is something appealing about being able to quickly generate NPCs with just class and level. Tough needle to thread. I'm not sure I even like classes for anything else. but also adventuring gets you seriously injured and you may have to retire due to that.

I also don't want high-level characters to be godlike and I don't even necessarily want them to be rich. Being the best there is at what you do but having whatever wealth you gain go as quickly as you get it is a staple story.

[jocu-reads]

DIE Issue #5 Reread (Gillen & Hans)

Issue Six of DIE, "The Grind," features a lot — Sol acts like a catty advisor which is my favorite form of his character, Angela has to reckon with how she's let Die control her life both in and out of the game, we learn a bit more about her past, and we see how Kieron Gillen's work as a games journalist shines through with a discussion of The Crunch.

There's a very potent metaphor here between the characters in this comic are dominated by the systems of the game and those who are pushed to work tirelessly for The AAA Game, which I would call a descendant of the tabletop game in many ways.

We're entering the part of the text where my knowledge drops off some. Back when DIE was releasing, I must have read the first arc three or four times? It was all there was for roughly the first year, and I had many rereads before I ran the RPG beta, which launched sometime after Issue Five. Maybe we'll talk about those sessions I ran sometime soon.

Anyway, that's to say that these sections are very exciting as my memory is more foggy, so there's a lot of juicy stuff in here I didn't even recall. Let's get into it.

The Art

I'm always happy to see more of the dieselpunk robot designs Stephanie Hans has for the Eternal Prussians. Here's the cover of the issue, which is one of my favorites:

We also see that purple & pink used again for flashback panels. I do really enjoy how Hans's watercolor style is amplified here, it seems so dreamy. I'm still struggling a bit to see if we're to read the emotion wheel colors onto these scenes. I'd expect them to be more yellow and green if that were the case, though that may not make for a very pleasant visual look.

Oranges in this issue are so haunting. The glow of the giant machines, the dying embers around Glass Town, and of course that final sunrise over Case. Brilliant stuff.

Descend

Hey I just noticed, is Angela going down the same stairs Ash and Matt did to get to the core last issue? Maybe... Hans uses very dream-like architecture, something that invokes the nondescript mix of GM narration and battlemap abstraction in RPGs, so it's a bit hard to be certain, but it is a spiral staircase going down down down.

I bring this up because... well it's a dungeon isn't it! There's going to be a whole arc about dungeons at the end of this, but I suppose that doesn't mean the characters can't do some delving now.

I'm noticing a theme with downward motion and character monologue. Angela does it here. We get some from Ash both when she enters the Glass Town core but again when she enters the trench in Issue Three. Huh. That physical/mental descent link will become really potent by Arc Four. Let's keep an eye out on that as we keep reading.

Angela Runs Away

A fair amount of this comic deals with the characters refusing (or being unable) to change from who they were as teenagers and how that continues to fuck up their lives both in and out of the game. Angela, as Ash describes her, has always been trying to avoid something by moving onto what's shiny and new. As we know, this how she ends up playing the game in the first place—Ash takes her so she'll stop being upset about the family dog dying.

This is what has pretty quickly happened upon entering Die again too. One of the first things she does when she has spare gold is boot up Case again. I've commented on this habit as being kind of wasteful in the past. I think that comes off harsher than I intend though. I don't think she's dumb to keep feeding him gold, but I do think she's being a bit selfish. In this issue, when the Ash party is hunkered down and barely scraping by, that "bit" becomes "kind of a lot actually."

Ash calls her out on this and she runs away from the confrontation, one she knows will inevitably worsen.

Keen readers may pick up on this, but I think Ash may be a bad sister.

We also learn she did this around her later life too. Working in the AAA game space and leaving projects. Escaping a strained marriage with someone new. Packing up and leaving when her husband found out. Trying to apologize after her new partner felt things got too heavy. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say her spending time with Case is running away from the matters at hand as well. Angela also realizes this by the end of the issue and this time puts a stop to her actions.

And yet. She's still running away from confrontations here too. Matt offers to take her emotional pain at Case's death away, something he can do as a Grief Knight (we'll talk about that in a sec) and she accepts the offer. Sure is lucky to have someone around that can eat all your sadness. Surely that isn't a poor coping mechanism or anything.

Another big problem Angela has is how often she jumps into terrible consequences without thinking too much. Like, okay, playing a game with your freak older "brother" and getting sucked into a nightmare world is kind of a freebie—I certainly can't blame her for that one. But the robot arm? I think it's clearer how that could backfire on you in the Genie Logic world they were in.

The other notable Campaign One mistake Angela made was dating Chuck, which seems like an obvious bad idea. But hey, she was just a kid right?

Problem is, Angela keeps following a self-destructive instinct as an adult. She gets involved in a workplace romance and her husband finds out. Terrible, but what did she expect to happen? She brings back her dog, knowing full well he will have to die again. It is a really unfortunate chain of behavior, one that is a clear consequence of her inability to sit still in bad situations and look for a good solution rather than a quick escape. Honestly, this probably made Angela and Chuck the second worst couple in the party.

I still feel like I'm being harsher towards Angela than I should, but there's a reason for that. All these problems spill over into her role as a mom too. This is something she is going to have to reckon with later. It's going to be really bad for everyone involved.

But let me cut her a break at least. This issue has given me a stronger appreciation for Angela, which I think happened when I read it back in 2019 too. This woman has been through a lot, maybe more than anyone else but Sol in the party. Despite that, she's still standing Were I in her position, I don't know that I could do much better.

The Neo

This is a weird class, since it is playing on a less defined archetype. Classically, the rogue exists to open up chests and disarm traps... and that's about it. There's certainly the sneak attacking and stealthiness of later editions and systems, but if we're looking at the B/X thief, my understanding is that it exists for one very specific use.

Angela is obviously doing more than just that though. I believe Gillen is drawing a lot on video game RPGs with the Neo, both due to it's connection to cyberpunk RPGs and therefore Deus Ex, but also with the name itself—the Neo is quite literally the new RPG.

The class also has one of the more "game-y" mechanics, a term I think is stupid but sometimes useful (what is a "game" after all? I guess "video game-y" is more apt.) Her abilities are on recharge, she needs power-ups to use them, she makes very concrete choices as to what to use and when. It is not unlike, say, a level up tree in Skyrim (or perhaps System Shock would be the more apt comparison of the games I've played.) It's also very telling that her class seems to convert money to playtime, a la arcade cabinets.

Your character's upgrades in System Shock 2

This puts what the classes are there for into better perspective for me. They are catering both to the traditional D&D classes, but also to types of players and types of games. We've talked about the Dictator and Master as storytelling classes, those who get deep into the roleplay and intrigue. Godbinder is another of those, but perhaps with more of a court and faction game focus. The Fool exists both as the so called "beer & pretzels" game but also fantasy pop literature to an extent, in all its forms (pulps, blockbuster trash, series that seem to never end.) The Emotion Knight fits a bit less cleanly here, but the Neo slots right into the CRPG niche. It helps that several of the characters have careers based around their class.

I think it makes a lot of sense then, that the video game class is built around stealth and the mercenary. I would consider the immersive sim as the closest video game genre to classic TTRPGs, drawing heavily on roleplay, character building, and exploitations of the world to overcome challenges rather than surpassing a scripted event. Of course, the cyberpunk flavor is a nod to Deus Ex, but the stealth comes more from Thief (which gets a direct reference in this issue too!)

I think this is also where the Neo's very wide range of powers comes from too. That's a very common move in ISs (consider System Shock, the Dishonored games, Prey. And... ugh... yes even Bioshock.) What starts as a way to build your character in a unique way often snowballs until you have everything unlocked by the end of a game... and Angela has been playing the Neo a very long time.

I should also mention the way Fair Gold plays into what Gillen sometimes refers to as an addiction for the class. I've never totally got this metaphor and frankly I think it's a little troubling. I'm just not sure what is gained by linking Angela (and the Neo) with addiction, something she does not appear to struggle with. I think it's apt to point out that she has some very poor and self-destructive patterns of behavior, but that's about where the metaphor ends. I don't have much more to say about the Fair Gold mechanic other than that for now, but maybe that'll change later.

That's enough about the class, let's talk about the other cyberpunk in the room.

The Fair (or, DIE drops another incredible concept out of nowhere)

In a shocking turn of events, this is actually the second time Gillen has made Daft Punk's Tron Legacy appearance into god-like beings. Maybe I need to rewatch that film to find the secret key to unlock his work.

As for how they're handled in DIE, the story just drops them here and says "Hey, this is the source of all of Angela's problems, a pair of painfully 'fair' and calculating cold beings that seem to delight in watching her squirm," and leaves you at that. And honestly? I really respect that. Usually Ash would delve into a monologue about all the times they encountered the Fair and how they are sooooo fucked up. Not that I don't eat that up every time, but it's nice to mix it up once in a while.

Part of me wants to crack open the RPG book and see if there's more to read about the Fair, but I don't think I will just yet. Sticking with the text in the books is probably best for now.

Anyway, I really really love these guys. Gillen will compare them to elves in one of his end of issue essays later, specifically their detached and timeless nature. I certainly agree with that.

I see these guys as a computer brain running parts of Die. I also see them as the developers designing that computer. It's a little blurry, like a lot of things in this comic.

They offer players who meet them a choice. It's a binary one, in this case the arm or the dog. They make their own decisions (to help or to forsake - to interfere or to observe) by a binary as well, literally flipping a coin. Comics love to have guys flip coins don't they.

Depending on the result of the flip, they answer "This is among the things that happen" or "This is not among the things that happen." It's a very concrete decision, as though it was always the case but needed to be known, rather than decided. There's something there with quantum observation, but I think this plays on how dice rolls and probability in general work.

When a character reaches a challenge, they either overcome it or they don't. Games have many resolution mechanics for this, but most RPGs use some amount of randomization. So will they succeed? Or will they not? The Fair side step the dice type, the difficulty class, the bonus, etc, and just give a coin: One or Zero. Why make the decision if it is already among (or not among) "the things that happen" though? Again, here we're playing with storytelling in RPGs. In the moment it seems unclear, but this stops being the case as soon as the face of a die is chosen. In fact, maybe it was determined the moment the die was cast, by which I mean cast in acrylic. If we follow what seems to be the Fair's philosophy (or Angela's understanding of it) the choices don't matter at all. The path is already determined.

I think that ties very well into the CRPG logic. There are only so many inputs and outputs a program can have. Notice how the Fair offered Angela only two options to give up. Her agency in how to garner a boon is given up from the start. Consider how this would differ from a TTRPG with a human GM, able to react to more player input. Consider how it may not differ.

For what it's worth though, Angela still follows through with the choice. Even without the Fair, she understands she has to let Case go. He dies. They get out. That is among the things that happen.

Other Thoughts

The Clockwork Prussians not knowing what to do with Glass Town (or seeming not to. Like much of this comic there's more going on) is really great. Another good nod to the GM scrambling to react after their players go way off script. "Occupying, I guess," is so great.

I talked a little about Campaign One here as well. I was on a long car ride with some friends, discussing what happens in arcs 2 and 3 of DIE the other week and while talking about how interesting (and maybe self defeating) a prequel series could be, I realized I don't actually know that much about how the party's first 2 years went. I suspect there are hints we could dig at around that though.

A big one is how Matt factors into it all. We learn here about the Grief Knight's emotion sucking abilities. Is this something he may have exercised often as a teenager? Perhaps to keep people sane and moving forward? That would be a pretty damning read, but let's tuck it away for now. I think we'll have A Lot to say about Campaign One by the end of this arc.

We close on the introduction of a favorite character of mine. We'll talk more about Augustus later.

[awellboiledicicle]

Honestly it's going to come up when Gale finds a book on anatomy in the apothecary that's only slightly falling apart. He offers it to Anders in full view of everyone and Anders looks like hes going to have a heart attack.

Anders would hurriedly tuck the book away and very much be doing the 'act natural' thing.

Gale would ask why and Anders would have to awkwardly explain that such books are highly controlled by the Chantry in Thedas. Which leads to Gale unfortunately going "But you're a healer."

Which, given this is before they find the secret door to the Necromancy dungeon, earns a sharp intake of breath from Hawke followed by the biggest sigh that the party has heard from a human in their lives. They see why about the time Anders' jaw works, teeth grinding a bit while he decides just how into this kettle of fish he wants to leap.

"Yes I am. One of the more accomplished spirit healers in my Circle before i ran away."

"Ran a--"

"I'm guessing you don't have those here, either."

"Not the way you're implying by that tone, no."

Anders opened his mouth and snapped it shut with an audible click, grip on his bag tightly.

"I-- Right. You wouldn't-- I'll tell you about them another time." He shook his head like he was trying to physically shake the knee-jerk rant out of his skull. "But no, even when i was being trained as a healer-- anatomy books were forbidden."

"All of them? How the devil were you supposed to know how to treat a body if you didn't understand it?"

"The official answer is that mages specialized in healing were to know their business through alchemical means. Officially, we were taught what a healing poultice did to the various races, how tinctures and elixers came to their end effects. How the end result presented, and if you presented a new formula to the Enchanters or just your specific group within the Circle, you generally tested it on the rats in the cellar under intense supervision. Anatomy wasn't part of it, outside Spirit Healing--like I do. Again, officially, the spirit works out the anatomy and you're just a conduit. No official reason for a healer in a tower to know how a body works." His voice lowered without much thought, and Gale leaned closer as if half the party hadn't paused their looting to listen. "Unofficially, you can learn almost as much outside-- where you can get a hand on books from up north. There's a nation called Tevinter, terrible place, but the chantry has no sway-- they do dissections and studies all the time. Hundreds of tomes make their way south from trade or--"

"Or someone helpfully looting a slaver caravan once they've slaughtered the bastards." Hawke piped up helpfully, having taken to sitting on a box and waiting out the conversation. There was a lever he really wanted to pull and had learned not to do such things without letting the group know. Far less accidents that way. He shot Anders a grin while the mage rolled his eyes. "Basically the Chantry views cutting up a body for anything but killing mages or elves a bit too grim, and call it blood magic. Which is illegal."

"Yes, that." Anders flexed his fingers and tried to not mind the audience he'd gathered on this generally private conversation. "If it weren't for having been a Warden, i'd have never seen an actual anatomical model. And then Hawke was kind enough to stock my shelves with every book his money could buy."

"Much to mother's distaste, if you recall."

"I remember her distaste with me, too, and she got over that eventually."

"True, but you came free."

Anders scoffed and tried in vain to keep the fond smile off his face. It dropped when he glanced back at Gale and remembered the topic.

"My point is: even if you weren't a mage, getting caught by the Chantry having something like an anatomical book could get you killed if the wrong Mother was in command of the local chantry. If you were a mage, though, the best outcome you'd hope for is death."

Gale weighed his options about asking after that last point and jumped tracks.

"Seems your Maker has some very strong opinions on reading material."

Hawke suddenly got very interested in the cracks in the ceiling and Anders pursed his lips as his shoulders tensed.

"You'd think that, wouldn't you? From how the Grand Clerics and Reveared Mothers pass down sanctions and edicts--" Another teeth clicking snap of his jaw, followed by a deep breath in and out. Once he'd calmed some, he continued. "No."

"Pardon?"

"The only one who knew what the Maker spoke of, for or against, was Andraste and she was killed."

"So... they're just guessing."

"Essentially."

"And you've no other gods to push back on it?"

"Flames, no-- the Maker was, before he turned away, the only one that bothered to manifest."

"Well, there's the elven Creators." Hawke sighed. "But they had their whole thing with being locked in the Fade for... shit, should have asked Merrill more. Ah well."

"Yes, fine, but historically they never cropped up in opposition to the Chantry directly. Elves, certainly-- there were whole exulted marches to that effect-- but not their gods."

"Wouldn't have been written down if they did, though."

"What," Wyll piped up, setting aside a barrel lid. "They edit history, too?"

Hawke and Anders shared a look.

"Do... people not do that here?"

"Nominally, in so far as the victor of a battle generally writes the history." Gale quirked an eyebrow. "But generally, the losing side's story still gets out and eventually into the history books."

"Huh." Anders blinked for a moment. "No, if you lose to the Chantry, you're only remembered as a faceless horde that fell under righteous blades or whatever they decide to spin it as."

"Good gods, you'll tell us people don't get taught to read next."

"Well, that depends on if you're rich or a woman." Hawke shrugged at their following confusion at the last detail. "Women read and write the laws of the Chantry, men follow it. Don't usually need to read to sing the chant, just learn it."

"To clarify, it was a man that betray the Maker's bride and one that killed her." Anders did not seem to know how to handle the assorted looks from those listening, and continued. "And since the Maker's chosen was a woman, they hold sway in the Chantry. Outside of that, things are generally equal. Mages are all taught our letters, along with the chant. Your average peasant knows the Kings common enough to sound out words, but most don't bother unless it's in the chant somewhere."

"For context, most gods and churches here just don't want you to raise the dead and go on a murder spree." Wyll frowned. "Well, most gods. The ones that would demand that sort of thing don't generally get worshiped in the light of day."

"Not that this all hasn't been extremely fascinating, but could we please get back to dealing with the matter at head?" Astarion most definitely did not complain from his corner of the room, where he'd been slowly sorting aromatics to purloin. Which he'd finished just a bit ago, thus entirely rendering further pause unnecessary. "That lever on the wall looks interesting."

"Worried about dying of old age?" Hawke huffed, standing back up and nodding to the group before placing his hand on the lever. He ignored Astarion's faux aghast expression. "C'mon. We can talk more about how terrible the Chantry is at camp."

And then they found Necromancy Basement and Hawke was in 0 mood to do anything but destroy the book and kill things.

[loregoddess]

Would you be willing to share your builds/levels for the final boss(es) of Octopath II? I'm trying to figure out how much more grinding I realistically need to do to actually finish this game.

Oh yeah, sure! I uh, had a lot more thoughts on this than I realized I would, so I'm sticking most of this under a read more, and I've tried to be vague about spoilers bc I wasn't sure how much you knew already from osmosis or looking at other online tips/guides. Also I ended up breaking things up into sections for easier navigation, because there is...a lot.

Table of Contents

General Thoughts

General Overarching Strategies

Character Preferences

Notes on Bosses

General Thoughts

Full disclosure, I've basically just been rotating my party and using whoever's the lowest level to try and catch them up on levels. Because I started with Ochette, she's locked into the party and is ungodly powerful as a result, but this will occur with literally anyone you start with (my first run I was using Osvald and he was so damned powerful by the end of the game). So I don't have a real "strategy" per boss (except for the optional superboss) so much as I switch around passive skills and subjobs based on who's lowest in levels and who I have to have in the party (Ochette + whoever's story I'm completing).

I will say, I don't feel like most of the bosses require a lot of level grinding, at least not for the character story final bosses. I kinda assume that the recommended level of 45 is like, the average of the entire team. As a general rule, I rarely use the fast-travel feature until I'm in the postgame section, and will literally walk my team everywhere, which helps to maintain levels so that I don't have to grind (and even if I do it's like, running laps in the dungeon right before the boss area until my lowest level person gains two or three levels, which only takes about about half an hour for me usually). Like, when I finished Hikari's route first, I had to run laps before the miniboss to get my two lowest team members to lv. 40, but Ochette was already lv. 52 at this point, and Hikari was about 42 or 43, I think. But I haven't needed to run any laps for any of the other bosses so far.

Also, I feel like Octo2 is a lot more balanced when it comes to stats/subjobs, and you can get away with doing a lot of weird things that work out in the long run so long as you're familiar with the battle mechanics and passive skills and how to make them work for you (which was true for Octo1 too, but I found myself almost always having at least Tressa and Therion in my team so I could get free money and open the purple chests w/out needing to backtrack, which limited my team compositions a lot more than Octo2, where no one character has a field-specific skill that makes them more or less useful than another).

General Overarching Strategies

I do have some general preferences. I like to have a at least one cleric and one apothecary in the party, and they can't be the same character (unless there's multiple clerics or apothecaries) just in case I need one of them to revive the other. This is mostly bc I like having the option to heal all, heal single, cure status ailments, or revive on hand at all times (as a result, if I'm using these as subjobs, they usually end up on a character who isn't my main damage-dealer, but even then it depends on the damage-dealing character).

I also like to have a merchant so I can use Collect bc I like having money, and giving the merchant subjob to certain characters is really helpful bc of the Rest skill being able to restore SP and cure status ailments. Generally I also like to have a hunter for Leghold Trap, or Agnea with Windy Refrain (gained by visiting Sealticge's shrine in the Leaflands) so I can manipulate when the boss attacks. Aside from those classes, I end up being really flexible depending on what I think I need. (As a side note, Leghold Trap + A Step Ahead from the inventor job can be really useful if you go in knowing a boss's weaknesses ahead of time, since you can break the boss and deal a lot of damage before they even get a chance to act).

Oh, but as a general rule, whenever I notice a character start to hit the 9999 damage limit output, I go and get DMD from the warrior class for them, because I love seeing big numbers go boom by optimizing my damage output. I also switch around subjobs a lot depending on what I think I'll need, and if I die during a boss fight I will go and rearrange my jobs or skills before I try level-grinding.

I also don't use any stat-enhancing nuts until the optional superboss, but I really don't think they're needed for any of the character story final bosses anyhow. If you've used them already that's fine though, I've totally mismanaged my nuts in both Octo1 and Octo2, and it's nothing a bit of level-grinding won't solve when it comes to the post-game bosses.

Character Preferences

Here's an outline of how I like to use all the characters. Keep in mind, everyone has their general preferences for how they like to use each character, and there's no right or wrong way to use a character, this is just what works for my playstyle.

Ochette

General: I use Ochette mostly to break enemies quickly with her Provoke monsters ability, and to output a lot of phys. damage. She's one of my main damage-dealers, and I rarely use her for support.

Latent power notes: She has one of the best latent powers for dealing damage, since the damage of her attacks scales with her level. I use her latent power as soon as the boss is broken, and I'll save Ochette's BP to use it at a full boost. Generally I use Beastly Fangs, but if the boss has multiple enemies that need to be taken care of (i.e. Partitio's final boss fight), then Beastly Claws is excellent as well. I don't really use Beastly Howl because there are better options to achieve the same effects that don't require Ochette to drain her latent power. I always use Ochette's latent power before I use divine skills or legendary beasts, since the latent power will refill throughout the battle and it doesn't cost SP.

Favorite subjobs: My primary subjob for Ochette is warrior, since it gives her access to Brand's Blade which is a good alternative to Beastly Fangs, and the warrior stats buff her already high physical stats. Alternately I will use her in merchant, but specifically for the optional superboss so she has access to Hired Help's Beastlings in case she has to use them (notes on that in the boss section below).

Notes on monsters: In general you can have whatever monsters you enjoy using for Ochette's Provoke ability, but I highly recommend having at least one monster that can deal axe damage twice to all enemies (any level, even the highest level "2x axe (all) monster" will only deal 1 damage to the postgame bosses, so choose whichever monster you like best), and a monster that can deal either dagger, axe, staff, lightning, or light damage to all (recommend getting a 9/10 strength monster for this, as they tend to have additional effects to their attacks such as debuffing the enemies or buffing the party; the Peek-a-boo from the area around Timberain tends to be a favorite because it debuffs enemy phys. and elemental defenses). Those two monsters will be the most useful for clearing the optional superboss, and a lot of bosses in general have a weakness to axes.

Castti

General: Castti works well as either a damage-dealer or support, so I tend to change her subjob depending on the rest of the team.

Latent power notes: I refuse to use concoct unless I have her latent active so that I can save on the ingredients. The only time I use concoct without the latent is during the two postgame bosses. I managed to get through the final boss fight my first run with only one pomegranate leaf thanks to her latent power (I uh, forgot to stock up at the secret market, but if you need more rare ingredients for concoct, the merchants that show up at night in the area to the west of Healeaks will sometimes sell stuff like pomegranate leaves).

Favorite subjobs: If I'm using her as a damage-dealer, than warrior and armsmaster are my go-to. For support, I tend to stick with inventor or merchant.

Notes on concoct: I use it almost exclusively for healing and buffing the team, and the ability to give everyone BP is super useful for setting up other damage-dealers and support characters.

Throne

General: One of my main damage-dealers, one of the best damage-dealers in the game. I was able to hit the 99,9999 damage limit with Throne thanks to the fact that Aeber's Reckoning scales with speed and seems to take the phys. attack stat into consideration as well. Optimize her speed and give her a high-damage dagger and she's golden for dealing wild amounts of damage.

Latent power notes: I don't have a particular pattern for how I use Throne's latent power, since how I use it depends on the battle situation. Sometimes I use it so Throne can act as temporary support, and sometimes I use it to set up Armor Corrosive and then use Aeber's Reckoning. Really, whatever I need a double-turn for, this power comes in handy for.

Favorite subjobs: Hunter for sure, it gives Throne an excellent boost to speed and evasion while also buffing the phys. attack stat nicely. Dancer is a decent subjob as well bc it gives her even higher speed/evasion stats than hunter, and access to Dagger Dance which is a nice aoe attack when level-grinding, but overall Dancer!Throne is kind of glassy for my tastes, and I like having Leghold Trap as an option for Throne's debuff repertoire in boss fights. I don't mind using merchant for Throne either, since Rest and Collect are useful skills for her to have.

Osvald

General: One of my main damage-dealers, magical edition. He's very squishy though, a true glass canon, so I have to either patch up his defenses with equipment and passive skills, or have someone dedicated to healing on the team.

Latent power notes: Love his latent power, it's especially good if you stack it with the buffs from either Advanced Magic (or the Stone of Truth, which just provides the 2x spell buff from Advanced Magic permanently), or Alephan's Wisdom. I would recommend using this at a full boost for optimal damage output. Like Ochette, I use this as early as I can so it an refill as the battle goes on.

Favorite subjobs: Cleric. Osvald's base stats make him an excellent healer, and the extra magical stats do him nothing but favors; plus having access to Holy Light is useful when his latent is empty since it'll typically deal more elemental damage for less SP than one of his aoe spells, and Mystic Staff can restore his SP. Alternatively though arcanist will grant him the best magic stats possible. I also didn't mind using him as an apothecary high elemental defense means good healing, and he can be a decent support when he's not blasting enemies off the screen.

Partitio

General: I tend to use him mostly as support, but he can deal decent damage when he's not supporting. Mostly he's a main support character for me though.

Latent power notes: Very useful for getting extra BP whenever you need it, and it tends to refill pretty fast so I use it liberally whenever I need BP.

Favorite subjobs: I tend to have Partitio mainly as an apothecary because it gives him a nice buff to his physical stats and more support skills to use (he doesn't make a bad healer either, especially with access to lots of BP from his latent). It also gives him access to a decent aoe attack (Sweeping Cleave) and Poison Axe, which are both handy to have. Alternatively, Paritio does okay as a warrior, thief, or hunter if I want to boost his damage-output, and inventor or dancer are good jobs to give him for extra support options (although I really only use dancer for the optional superboss). I'm thinking of trying him in the conjurer job for a while in my current run to see if the extra magic stats make Bifelgan's Bounty more useful for Partitio, since he seems to lean more physically for me than magically. (I hardly used conjurer except to get SP Saver my first run bc I couldn't figure out how to use it effectively, but I know it's gotta be useful somehow).

Other notes: If it wasn't obvious, the merchant job is one of my favorites as a subjob, and it gives Partitio a really nice set of skills. I don't actually use Sidestep that often and instead focus on things like Donate BP to boost my main damage-dealers in a pinch. Collect is a great skill bc I like having money.

Agnea

General: Main support, and a secondary magical damage-dealer. I tend to focus her on supporting, but her high elemental attack (especially paired with the Mooneater dagger) puts her almost on par with Osvald. She also has access to Windy Refrain which moves ALL enemies' actions to the end of the next turn, which is super useful for turn manipulation (and like Leghold Trap, very powerful when paired with A Step Ahead).

Latent power notes: Honestly I rarely use her latent power. Mostly I use it in general battles when I have her subjob set to scholar so she can use a boosted Analyze on all enemies. It is useful for using Collect or Steal on all enemies as well, but again, there's very few bosses with multiple enemies that you can Collect/Steal from. I think I might be able to use the latent with the apothecary's Rehabilitate which would be very useful on occasion, but I've never tried it bc Agnea is so optimized for magic that the phys. aspects of the apothecary subjob don't seem to fit her. Might have to try that out at some point though.

Favorite subjobs: I tend to have her as a merchant (Bifelgan's Bounty is a very nice powerful single-enemy elemental attack for her), but she does well as a scholar (excellent stat boosts to her magical stats) or thief (nice boosts to speed/evasion). She should technically make a good cleric as well, but I've never tried it out since I usually have another cleric present when Agnea's in the team.

Dance session notes: Dance session comes into play any time you use a dance skill, including Dagger Dance, so if you have the right follower, you can really benefit from Agnea's dance session. For most of the game I've been dragging along an NPC from Cropdale who offers Calming Rhythm (restores 500 HP and 40 SP to the target), but there's a dance session called Celestial Chorus which grants 1 BP to the target, which is super useful in boss fights since extra BP means more boosted attacks. The Allure page on the Wiki (here) has a full list of the dance sessions, and potential NPCs who offer them. Dance session boosts the power of the support dances by granting extra support bonuses beyond buffing stats, and Agnea's probably one of the strongest support characters as a result.

Temenos

General: Like Castti, I use Temenos half as support, half for dealing damage, but unlike Castti who I tend to rely on more for support, I rely on Temenos more for damage.

Latent power notes: His latent power is wickedly good for his Coerce path action, especially when paired with Sixfold Strike from the armsmaster job, and technically you could use it the same way in boss fights to break shields quickly, it's just...armsmaster is better on other characters in boss fights for the physical stat buffs it offers as a job (although Temenos did hit the 9999 damage cap when I had him as an armsmaster in one of the side dungeon boss fights, so Armsmaster!Temenos isn't entirely useless as a phys. damage-dealer). But Temenos's latent power + armsmaster + Full Power from the merchant class makes Coercion much easier.

Favorite subjobs: I tend to move Temenos around a lot in subjobs depending on what I need. He makes for a decent scholar due to the magical stats buffs, and dancer offers him decent stats as well and more support options, but my favorite subjob for Temenos is arcanist because it gives him access to light and dark elemental attacks, making the most of the Sunshade staff, and most importantly Reflective Barrier. See, my favorite thing to do with Temenos is have a dancer use Sealticge's Seduction on him, have him use Prayer for Plenty at full boost (hopefully on a team that's at full HP) to boost everyone's HP (up to possibly 9999), and then use Reflective Barrier and/or Sacred Shield at various levels of boost so I can yeet spells back at their caster(s) or otherwise cut down damage for a little while. Also arcanist offers really nice magical stats, and gives Temenos a good boost to his total SP pool, which is handy for when I do try to use his personal EX skill (bc of his personal EX skill, you will want to have something equipped that lets him regen SP, bc he can drain his SP really fast otherwise).

Hikari

General: Main damage-dealer. Makes for a sturdy backup support when you need one though, but I focus on his high phys. damage stats.

Latent power notes: Very useful and somewhat similar to Ochette's latent skills. Depending on Hikari's SP and available skills, I either use Hienka at a partial boost, and then follow up with Brand's Blade, or Tenretsuzan at full boost. Alternatively, if I need Hikari to do some backup support or use another skill, I'll use Hienka at full boost, and then use his bonus action for whatever. Sougetsusen isn't bad as an aoe attack when you need it though. Like Ochette and Osvald, I use Hikari's latent early in the battle so it can refill and be used later.

Favorite subjobs: Hikari does great as a merchant because of the access to Rest, which makes his Challenge path action easier to use without using all your healing items. Also Rest restores SP, which is super useful for Hikari since he can burn through SP really quickly between his warrior skills and Learned Skills. When I don't have him as a merchant, I like to use him as my armsmaster bc it gives him the best phys. stat buffs, and giving Hikari a Blessing in Disguise with the armsmaster subjob means you can use a lot of high-power equipment with negative effects without suffering the negatives (you can do that for any of your armsmasters by the way). When I don't have him in those two jobs, he makes for a decent apothecary (not as good at the healing though) or hunter.

Notes on Learned Skills: Like Ochette's monsters, you can more or less have whichever Learned Skills you enjoy using, but I like holding onto Divine Dual-Edge from the Ch3 fight with General Rou since it's a useful aoe attack, and picking up Limb from Limb from the Sanctum Knight in Stormhail (enter the Sanctum Knight HQ, go down the left hall and knock out the guy standing in front of a room, then go into the room and the guy in there is the one you can learn Limb from Limb from). Limb from Limb offers a powerful 4x sword attack on a single enemy, and was the main skill used in the guide I found when I needed help with the optional superboss. You can find a list of Learned Skills on the Wiki as well (here).

Notes on Bosses

Most of the character story final bosses are pretty easy, or if they're tough it's bc of their stats and not battle gimmicks, so it's just a matter of chipping away their health. Here's a few battle gimmicks I'd keep an eye out for though:

Castti's final boss has an ongoing battle condition where the entire team's max HP is reduced every turn. You can bypass this with the Sealticge's Seduction + Prayer for Plenty tactic, but it's still risky (Angea ended the battle with a total of 5 HP on my current run). It's best to just try and finish this battle quickly. (Your team's HP will return to normal after the battle).

Throne's boss has the ability to lock the party's main job's skills (so Throne won't be able to use thief skills) until broken so subjobs are very important, and this boss can summon all of her previous bosses (not all at once, but over the course of the battle), so this can be a tough fight. There's a few other gimmicks this boss can access (I think subjobs can be blocked until the boss is broken at one point as well), so paying attention to what's happening in the battle and having a flexible battle plan will help. Either bring a lot of healers, or find a way to output a lot of damage so you can skip the prev. boss summons and gimmicks.

Partitio's final boss has three enemy units you have to defeat before the armor on the main boss's shield fall off. Dealings lots of aoe damage is useful for the first part of the battle. A Step Ahead + Agnea's Windy Refrain is probably useful as well (for my current run I did not have A Step Ahead equipped, and had to do quite a bit of healing in the first half of the battle).

Hikari has the most stages to his final boss. You have to fight a miniboss (which you can save after), the final boss part 1, then there's a cutscene and Hikari has to fight a battle via the Challenge path action, and then the final boss part 2. So just be prepared for like, a lot of battle segments.

(I also seem to remember something being kinda tricky about Ochette's final boss, but hers was the first story I completed on my first run, and it's the story I'm saving till last on my current, so I dunno if my troubles with her boss were "this was the first final boss I fought" or if there's actually something weird about the battle).

As for character levels, for my current run I started with Hikari's final chapter, then worked my way to Castti, Osvald, Throne, Agnea, Partitio, and I plan to do Temenos and Ochette next. As I noted earlier, Ochette, my starter, was at lv. 52-ish during Hikari's chapter, with my lowest level team members being at about 38-ish and I had to do some laps to get them to lv. 40. Right now, going into Temenos's final chapter, Ochette's level is in her mid-high 60s (which probably will be closer to or over 70 bc I want to explore some dungeon areas on the Sundering Sea before I head to Toto'haha), and my lowest level characters are like, 51 or 52, which is well above the rec'd lv. 45. So again, I don't think you have to level-grind for the character story final bosses, because just by fighting them and travelling to their locations, your characters are going to get stronger.

As for the two postgame bosses...

If you do want to level-grind, I would suggest the Infernal Castle, as it's the highest level area of the game at lv. 55. There's also ways to optimize the amount of exp and jp you get via passive skills and equipment, so make sure to move that around before you level-grind. Also I found bumping the game speed to x2, and using powerful aoe attacks made the grinding go so much faster (I only spent maybe 4-8 hours grinding total my first run? on a file where I put somewhere between 180-200 hours into, so basically no time at all for grinding). I would not rely on Bewildering Grace, Agnea party-wiped the team more often even than the optional superboss killed me, so it's just not a safe skill. Also if you fight the Infernal Castle's miniboss, it can show up as a random encounter, and I personally found that the exp gained from fighting it again wasn't worth the time spent. I gained more exp per minute just entering minor battles, smacking the enemies with a double-boosted aoe attack (from Step Ahead and Boost Start from merchant), and then moving onto my next battle (courtesy of Vigorous Victor from apothecary). It's tedious, but it does work.

I would suggest completing all the side quests before beginning the final chapter, as there's a lot of nice accessories and equipment you can get. Keep in mind that fighting the optional superboss is actually one of the side quests, so while you can track your completion of side quests by area in the Journal, one of the areas will be incomplete until you kill the optional superboss (you do not have to fight the superboss to complete the final chapter, and the ability to complete side quests opens back up after you defeat the final boss). The optional superboss is absolutely meant to be more difficult to defeat than the actual final boss.

Also there's technically four bosses in the postgame. Two minor bosses during the final chapter segments, the actual final boss, and the optional superboss. The two minor bosses are easy though, they're no stronger than the character story final bosses (although for my first run I had fought the optional superboss first, so I was waaay overleveled for the final chapter segments; still the two bosses couldn't do anything fancy as far as I could tell).

For the Actual Final Boss, I accidentally steamrolled this dude my first run bc I fought the optional superboss first and had misused my nuts and therefore had to level-grind to make up for stats. Half my characters were at lv. 80 and other other were at 74 or 75. I didn't even have my passive skills optimized bc I was expecting the "dungeon" the final boss is in to be an actual dungeon, not a flight of stairs with no enemy encounters. All the characters were in my preferred classes for them (Warrior!Ochette, Inventor!Castti, Hunter!Throne, Cleric!Osvald, Apothecary!Partitio, Merchant!Agnea, Arcanist!Temenos, and Armsmaster!Hikari, but not in that order bc I didn't optimize my party order either).

A few guides online list the recommended level for the final boss as being 72-75, but I wouldn't know bc again, lots of level-grinding (I plan to fight the final boss before the optional superboss for my current run, just to see the difficulty differences). You will get to use all 8 characters though, not in the same way as how the Galdera fight works in Octo1, but you will need all 8 characters for the battle, so keep that in mind. Overall I haven't heard/read about too many people having trouble with the final boss, so you should be fine using whatever your preferred battle strategies are with a full team that's at least in their low 70s level-wise.

The optional superboss is a terrible jerk, I hate this boss so much, and despite being Pretty Good at the game I had to eventually look up a guide. The guide I used is here (major spoilers obviously), although I will say I modified this person's strategy (for example, I optimized Osvald's critical stat, had Castti as a merchant, small changes like that). I will note this person manages to output enough damage to skip one of the mid-battle phases of the first half of the boss fight, and that the Hired Help Beastlings skill from the merchant class is needed for this mid-battle phase if you can't bypass it (if I'm being too vague and you don't care about spoilers, I can actually go through this entire boss fight stage-by-stage and explain the logic behind the guide and my adaptations to the guide). I'm thinking of modifying the strategy here further on my current playthrough, but overall this is the superboss for a reason. Extremely gimmicky, very high stats, very annoying, but also possible to beat in like, 10 minutes with the right setup.

[dreadfutures]

what do you like about ashen? i always love new games 👀

(Ashen is currently on sale for $10 on Steam, and it's frequently on sale. It's also on Switch. I play on both, and they are platform locked for coop, just so everyone knows. It is also not couch co-op unfortunately.)

Besides the art direction, which I think is gorgeous and very unique, and the story, it's really the mechanics. I love how playing Ashen feels.

The art:

what a beautiful minimalist style, where the things that are detailed are really meaningful! how they can carve such beautiful landscapes out of such simple shapes! what innovative creature and character designs! (and also the giant sweeties like Bataran, Silaren, and Gefn. They're so cool and nice and ethereal.)

The story:

I think is intriguing and speaks to a really interesting and unique take on the Souls world building. Unlike a lot of Souls games, Ashen does hold your hand a little with "this is where you're going next, here's a map marker, and here's why you're going there, and here's what's going on in the world." So the lore and story is a little more accessible!

The characters are also good people, nice people, and there's a kindness to the world that you can see glimmers of in them and the settlement you build. Every time you progress the story, your settlement, Vagrant's Rest, grows more and more civilized. It's a peaceful place, a safe haven in the middle of a dark world, that is building up around you.

The Mechanics:

Ashen is a souls-like that gets billed as "souls-lite" but it's really not. It's pretty difficult. You have the giant bosses of Souls fame but you also have plenty of the 'actually the humanoid sized enemies are sometimes the hardest' kind of enemies in the overworld and as dungeon bosses.

The combat is hard and the companion AI is there because you really do need a companion.

But Ashen is built around having a companion not just in a "combat is hard and you'll need to get revived" kind of way... It has built the whole game around companions.

Companions can help you climb, open doors, solve puzzles, hold lanterns... And Ashen is actually a really great puzzle game. But more on that in a moment.

I really love the passive companion Co-Op. Your AI companion can get taken over at any time by another player, kind of like Journey. The only downside is...they have to be at exactly the same point in the story as you. Unfortunately this means that in order to play Co-Op with a friend you basically have to start a new campaign from scratch.

On the puzzles:

The platforming in Ashen is really, really good IMO. And there's a really unique thing they added that I've never seen in another game: puzzle-platforming-teleporting.

By throwing a spear and accurately hitting a target (actually easier than it sounds), you can long-range teleport. The physics of the game is really satisfying for throwing spears, making it a fun puzzle to try and hit the teleport statues from very, very, very far away or very extreme angles. It feels so satisfying to break the puzzle that way, and gain access to loot or hidden areas.

There's some big downsides to Ashen that I have to caution anyone about, though.

Souls are really minimal--it takes a lot of grinding to get money. You don't really level up your character, you level up your equipment and your talismans. So sometimes it can be a little frustrating to feel like you can't move on to the next area because it's too difficult, but you need to level up your damage and armor soooo much.

And the companion AI can only go so far. I have been stuck on the Palace of Lathyrius boss for literal, actual years because my AI companion immediately steps on the burning floor and dies, and I just can't solo the boss. I'm desperate for someone to play a whole campaign with me so I can just finish the game because I'm so intrigued by it!

Anyway it's often on sale for very cheap, which is a shame because I think it's a hidden gem of the action-adventure-puzzle-souls genres. It has a really well-defined scope and genre and vision and I think it's a work of art.

[19thperson]

So, every time it comes around, I get a bit obsessive about Steam Next Fest, trying an excessive amount of demos. I normally share my impressions in whatever discord channels I'm in. Decided to copy-paste them here too thIs time. Got a head start since a lot of devs uploaded their demos early for Summer Game Fest. Note that these are notes shooting from the hip, Won't be the most comprehensive or thought out.

June 2024 Steam Fest Impressions Day Zero

Lost and Found Co

Standard hidden object game that caught my interest mainly due to strong character design and good vibes. It delivers on those fronts, and each level has a nice variety of optional stuff to do alongside combing for the main hidden stuff. Also has a nice little home customization feature, but I do not know if it actually does anything.

Feels like it'll be one of the better hidden object style games, but I don't have the strongest affinity for them, so I don't know if I'll get full release.

Technical complaints include a couple signs this was designed for tablet first, such as the start screen saying "tap anywhere," and the game acts finicky if it's in superwide.

Dungeon Clawler

Yet another roguelite deckbuilder, this time gimmick is claw machine. It does do interesting things with it, like enemies whose debuff is making items larger and therefore harder to pick up. Or an effect that causes the board to fill with water, some items sinking some floating.

Was able to get a really good synergy going with the magnet bunny, filling my machine with metal objects and dropping a huge pile earch turn.

That being said, there were times when I felt at the mercy of the physics engine. Crucial items tipping away from the drop slot leading to my loss.

Overall, it is Yet Another One with a fun gimmick. Nothing revolutionary, and you can tell if you'll enjoy it or not at a glance.

The Big Catch

I'm torn on this one.

The presentation is top-notch, and when things are chaining together, it feels wonderful. When things are chaining together.

The problem is the game right now feels slightly too strict. You can grind on rails, but it's easy to not magentize. You can jump on individual pole tips, but you better get your jump centered onto it. You can use swings and springs to fling yourself, but it's easy to under/overshoot.

The thing is, I've seen what the game looks like when everything is going well. So I'm not sure how much of this is the game and how much of this is me.

Other complaint is that there's no map, just a compass. Normally, I'm all for that, but the demo's landscape is a huge desert with ruins in the distance. Crossing those distances isn't a problem with the sand surfing system, but it's easy to get lost.

Building Relationships

Incredibly barebones demo. Some intentionally awkward platforming, a fishing mini-game, and talking to various characters. It lives and dies on its writing and atmosphere.

But so far, it's nailing it.