#bc negotiating with salem

[bestworstcase]

actually the funniest part of the ‘summer rescues them on salem’s behalf’ scenario is conceivably, if global comms are still down, norse continue to be under the impression that rwby+j are dead until the five of them turn up in vacuo with neo cinder summer rose and salem in tow. and jaune is like fifty for some reason. like this is insane right. it’s three days after atlas fell vacuo is splitting apart at the seams there isn’t enough water to go around half the refugee camp got buried in another sandstorm yesterday afternoon and the immortal witch they’ve been getting curb stomped by for a year rocks up with a wyvern and seven dead people to negotiate a ceasefire.

[dystopicjumpsuit]

DJ! It's me, Carol, I just can't ask with my side blog.

Questions for you. Feel free to ignore any you don't like:

6. What kind of people are you attracted to?

19. Do you like bubble baths?

20. Do you like your neighbors?

22. Where would you like to travel?

24. Favorite part of your daily routine?

32. Which celebrities would you have a threesome with?

59. First thing you ate this morning?

78. Favourite ice cream flavour?

107. Have you ever been on a horse?

I guess that's enough. Pick and choose as you like, if you'd rather not do them all. I just wanted to give you plenty of options!

@clonethirstingisreal

Hi Carol! Thanks for asking! I queued that reblog so long ago that I'd forgotten about it, but the questions are super cute.

6. What kind of people are you attracted to?

Fictional ones 💀

In seriousness, I tend to be more attracted to personality types than physical types. People with a quick wit that is tempered by kindness, who can hold their own in a conversation but aren't threatened by silence or afraid to be alone with their thoughts, who actively listen rather than just waiting for their turn to speak. Honestly, my fics give a pretty good indication of what kinds of personalities I'm attracted to.

When it comes to physical types, there's a vanishingly tiny subset of men that I find attractive, and it's basically bears. With women, the sky is the limit. Y'all are gorgeous.

19. Do you like bubble baths?

In theory, yes. In practice, I only have one bathroom, so to take a bath requires a preliminary cleaning of the tub, which is the opposite of relaxing. Someday, I will live somewhere with a freestanding tub, and then my bubble bath power will be unmatched.

20. Do you like your neighbors?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH no. Most of my neighbors are dodgy as hell. That said, there's one house across the street and three houses up that I think, "Those people seem cool. I should bake them some bread or something." But then I realize I've lived here nearly eight years and it's just weird at this point. They probably think WE'RE dodgy as hell. Besides, what if they're gluten free? Too risky. Much better to just hide away like the hermit that I truly am. Though the idea of leaving a loaf of sourdough on their doorstep like a cat leaving a mouse as a gift does have its appeal.

22. Where would you like to travel?

In the United States: New Orleans; Salem, MA; Vermont (all of it). Outside the United States: Morocco, Spain, Turkiye, Iceland, Scotland, New Zealand, Portugal, Italy.

24. Favorite part of your daily routine?

SNUGGLE TIME. When I first wake up in the morning, and my partner tugs me across the bed to tuck in for a cuddle, and the ghouls curl up in front of me. It's like being in the middle of the world's coziest sandwich. We repeat this process at bedtime as well. It's non-negotiable.

32. Which celebrities would you have a threesome with?

I have literally been thinking about this question for hours, and to be honest, I struggled to come up with any, not because I wouldn't have a threesome (totally would), but because I don't keep up with celebrity news, so I have no idea who is a horrible person and who I would allow into my ten-foot personal bubble. Based purely on looks and vibes, I'm going to say Ming-Na Wen and Pedro Pascal. I squirm in bi panic every time they're both on screen in The Mandalorian.

59. First thing you ate this morning?

Two Great Value gingersnap cookies and a cup of caf. Breakfast of champions.

78. Favourite ice cream flavour?

Tillamook Mint Chocolate Chip. It has these nice, big chunks of fudgy chocolate that makes it the obvious choice. Umpqua Chocolate Peanut Butter is a close second, and you need to come visit me so you can try it BC that shit is regional AF. If you're a peanut butter appreciator, it is incredible. It has, like, a RIVER of salty peanut butter running through chocolate ice cream. Chef's kiss.

107. Have you ever been on a horse?

I have! I've been on enough horses to know that I'm not a horse person. Nothing against them; they're just not for me.

[strqyr]

many things change over time, but raven 'i don't really want to be here' branwen doesn't:

raven: it doesn't matter to us. let's get this over with. [5.12] raven: let's get it over with, i guess. [9.10]

also considering that, like. the haven plan happened the way it did bc raven felt she was backed into a corner—either agree to salem's original plan (which puts her at disadvantage, so that's a no) or fight it out (which would attract grimm, something raven wants to avoid as per 5.4, so that's also a no)—and found a way to negotiate herself out of that corner, so if the "let's get this over with" is a sign of reluctance to being there in the first place, and these lines are meant to draw parallels...

what does that say about how the plan for summer's mission came about in the first place?

[bankzonestaffingsolutions]

Trade Relationship Manager – Kotak Mahindra Bank Jobs – Fresher Male Candidates – Salem

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Salary: ₹4,00,000 to ₹10,00,000 per year

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[mooncpone]

It is a bit charming if after the lieutenant summer plot twist and the negotiation, it is yang rather than ruby that welcomes summer back more bc

On one hand we have all the endless yearning and grief of ruby for summer before but now it’s almost gone with ruby jumping to ‘don’t be summer’. That contrast and conflict is going to be so juicy I just

On the other hand we have the abundance of yang’s parallel to both summer and salem; yang gets compared with raven but in fact she resembles summer more. And I think she may understand salem more somehow

[queenofnohr]

okay i was intentionally being rly vague about what went on last session bc i think some of it is major plot points for the Waterdeep Dragon Heist campaign and I don’t wanna spoil/ruin that campaign for anyone who is playing/intends on playing it BUT i’ll go into more details below the cut on like. what the fuck is going on lol

So, basic lowdown:

Fon & Roa originally got with the party under orders from the Zhentarim (evil mob-esque organization looking to put their ppl in power and pull the strings behind the scenes) bc the Zhents wanna find the Stone of Golorr bc it’ll lead to a bunch of money or some shit & the party was in contact with the son of the previous lord so the Zhentarim thought they might be the best lead

The Zhentarim is a splintered organization - aside from the fact that different areas have their own branches of the Zhentarim, the Zhentarim in Waterdeep has two competing factions - one under control of Davil Starsong (which the twins work for) and another under control of Manshoon and his goon, Urstul Floxin.

The Zhents that attacked the party on the mountain 2 sessions ago were from the latter group - Fon got the info out of one of them by intimidating them

But why were the other Zhents posted up and “guarding” a monk who could predict the future? (the party was visiting said monk for a prophecy about some coming evil)

Fon has an inkling that the other branch of the Zhentarim knows where the Stone is and posted guards up so no one else would be able to get that info from the monk

Fast forward a little bit - the event that kicks off the party having to confront Lady Gralhund is essentially a bomb going off on the street the party lives on. The casualties include members of the Zhentarim and a dwarf who had something taken off his body by a cloaked man.

Fon & Roa visit Davil Starsong like “uhhhhhhhh there was a domestic terrorist attack and some of the bodies found had Zhent tats” and Davil was like “those were not our guys. oh my god please clean this mess up” and because that’s an order Fon is now in Working Mode. They will pull a clean-up job, on god.

Party follows the clues around the city and eventually ends up on the nobleman part of town - Fontaine disguises the party with them being the nobleman Duke Genovese and the rest of the party as his retinue (it was a nat 20 roll btw)

The watchman at the Gralhund estate confuses the party as backup that Lady Gralhund must’ve called for and the party gets in without confrontation. Apparently the 1st floor has been overtaken by Zhents. Cue Fontaine ohshit.jpg

The party gets to the balcony and offers Lady Gralhund assistance. She’s like “uhhhhhhh who the fuck are you people we dont need your help”.

ALL OF FONTAINE’S SYNAPSES ARE FIRING AT ONCE. THEY ARE HAVING A FUCKING BRAIN BLAST. Why didn’t Lady Gralhund call the city watch? This must be something that can’t be made public until the event is over. Fontaine originally thought that the terrorist attack was a stupid move by the other branch of the Zhentarim. BUT because of all this weirdness they piece together that even the other half of the Zhentarim wouldn’t be that stupid and this is probably a coverup by Lady Gralhund in a deal gone bad. (Fon speculates that Lady Gralhund was probably working with the Zhentarim to get the Stone with like a 50/50 split deal, the Zhents found the dude who had the Stone, and she blew them up to try and get her hands on it before them)

In any case even though Lady Gralhund is a backstabbing piece of trash that shouldn’t have stuck her nose into underworld business, Fon also needs to clean up the Zhentarim shit anyway so they go back to the ground floor and help Lady Gralhund’s men take out the Zhentarim forces

This includes none other than Urstul Floxin. Party has a ROUGH FUCKING TIME CONFRONTING HIM but eventually manages to beat him.

Party now has to deal with Lady Gralhund. Fontaine has pieced together most everything together and has come up with a bunch of contingency plans - owing to their EXTREME PARANOIA due to what happened with Salem.

Fon’s priorities go: 1. Ensure Roanoke’s safety at all costs. 2. Complete the mission at all costs (The mission here being - wipe the Zhentarim’s involvement in this from the record) 3. Ensure the safety of those they have taken under their wing (i.e. the rest of the party)

Anyway. Fon’s Plan A is - negotiate with Lady Gralhund. Leverage their knowledge of exactly what happened to their advantage and offer Gralhund protection and a hand cutting ties with the underworld in exchange for her testimony absolving the Zhentarim of wrongdoing. Plan B - kill everyone in the estate and forge Gralhund’s suicide note indicating a massive tragedy wherein Xanathar’s gang massacred the household and not even the Zhents she paid for protection could save them.

So that’s where we are now.

[canonicallyanxious]

12, 17, 26

Thank you for these Allie!!!

12. Do you need to finish a book before you can move on to the next one, or will you have multiple books going at once?

I sometimes have multiple books going at once but ideally i best operate reading one book at a time?? idk it’s just easier for me to focus that way, like i know if i try to read multiple books at once it’s going to take even longer to finish all of them whereas doing one book at a time is more efficient for me, idk. I do currently have two books I’m reading, murder on the orient express and a poetry collection, but i’m putting the poetry collection on hold until i finish the agatha christie novel anyway lol

17. Do you know any poetry by heart?

LOL I WISH i do know the first line of the Canterbury Tales prologue which is something like whan that aprill with his shores shote or something like that bc we had to memorize the first like twenty lines for bonus credit in a 10th grade english class but that’s really all i remember skdjfnsdkfsnd

26. A book you studied in school and ended up loving?

Shit so many actually lol i’m a huge nerd who liked pretty much everything they read in school... sorry bout it... uhhhhh idk if i can remember all of them tbh considering both my majors required like a shitton of reading but imma do my best!

High school:

Devil in the White City - Eric Larksen

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey

Hamlet (play) - William Shakespeare

College [english]:

The Bride of Lamermoor - Sir Walter Scott

Persuasion - Jane Austen

Sula - Toni Morrison

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem - Maryse Conde

The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Nervous Conditions - Tsitsi Dangarembga

We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

Cloud Nine (play) - Caryl Churchill

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Clifford’s Blues - John A Williams

Notes of a Native Son - James Baldwin

Maus - Art Spiegelman

The Photographer - Didier Lefèvre, Emmanuel Guibert, and Frédéric Lemercier

College [anthropology]:

With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India - Gayatra Reddy

Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry - Tanya Luhrmann

Righteous Dopefiend - Jeff Schonberg and Philippe Bourgois

Bookish asks!

[bestworstcase]

So! That new rwby beyond episode huh?

I can't do intros for shit. Do you think Ozcar's answer to Jaune's question of "Do you think we're gonna make it?" was, in part, them dodging the question? Not revealing how unsure they feel and instead choosing to comfort Jaune with "Around those campfires, did it really matter?" Do you think of that answer as a cop-out, or as a legitimate answer? Both perhaps?

oh oz absolutely thinks they’re not gonna make it. i am so sure about that.

bc the thing is, ozpin thought he’d been at war with salem for centuries, he thought he’d managed to keep her out and whittle away her influence down to almost nothing. right. his whole reason for handling the situation the way he did in v1-3 is he believed that salem wouldn’t leave the shadows, wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize her secrecy. the thing about his paranoia in seeing salem’s hand behind every grimm attack and every period of unrest or war is he had no idea what salem was capable of or how far she would go, but he believed that he did.

within the space of, like, maybe a year and a half, salem has. knocked down beacon academy, forced haven academy to close by assassinating most of its faculty, laid siege to atlas with a fleet of millions of grimm and directly caused atlas to fall, and within a few weeks of that razed vale to the ground. three of his four academies are either destroyed or defunct; two whole countries are just. Gone. it’s been a year and a half!

he. underestimated. really really badly, he underestimated salem and for him this past year has been a harrowing journey of discovering exactly how badly he underestimated her. a year and a half and they’ve gone from “unprecedented era of peaceful prosperity” to desperate last stand. oz hasn’t been in such dire straits since the final battle of the great war when he resorted to using two relics to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and now one of those is within salem’s reach, and if they take the sword out of its vault that’s just one step closer to salem getting her hands on it.

like, oscar annihilated her millions of grimm in atlas and a few weeks later she turned around and flattened vale.

this is not a fight they can win. and i think oz is painfully aware of that. (the whole point is that the only way out is through negotiation. they have to stop fighting her and start talking to her.)

but i also think he meant “around that campfire, did it matter?” very genuinely because he found his hope again when he returned in atlas, and the situation being hopeless has no bearing on how he chooses to look at it or how he chooses to act. so things are very very bad but oz is, emotionally, in a much better place now than he was at the beginning of the story when things appeared to be okay. it’s the next step from “fear isn’t worthy of our concern”

[bestworstcase]

prepared to eat these words possibly but i’m… really not convinced that jaune’s going to have the villain arc that so many people seem to expect from him in V9. ominous fiery knight in the teaser, sure, it does seem like a nonzero possibility but i have yet to see an argument for how he gets there from guilt-stricken self-hatred and grief that doesn’t boil down to “…and then the ever after brainwashes him”

1. the ever after appears to respond to emotions, and 2. the release date trailer has ruby encountering a figment of her younger self; it seems more likely to me that the knight is, well… that. a manifestation of what jaune feels about himself that he will need to confront.

further, it would feel extremely odd imo for the volume that promises to be about exploration of the main characters’ self-identities, their chosen purposes, their understanding of themselves as heroes, to maneuver jaune into a major antagonistic role—the story then becomes about team rwby alternately fighting jaune or trying to save him, relegating their own desperately needed reckonings to the narrative margins. either the release date trailer is flat out lying by making ruby’s lack of identity beyond heroism its centerpiece or whatever’s going on with jaune isn’t meant to pull focus, and in light of how overtly V6-8 built up toward ruby having a crisis of identity after taking up the mantle of humanity’s savior the latter feels several orders of magnitude more likely.

i’m just. doubtful that a jaune villain arc of any significance can happen at this point without turning into the locus of the volume’s identity theme, and rwby is frankly Better Than That; on the other hand, there is a second and only slightly less salient question undergirding V9 and that is whether or not the kids are equipped to stop salem, and i think THAT is likely to be where jaune fits into the narrative arc. because i don’t think the answer to that question is a matter of capability. how do you stop a desperate woman who cannot be stopped by force? you have to talk to her. the inescapable fact is that this conflict does not end until salem either wins or they negotiate with her; the kids are not equipped to do that now, but i suspect they will be by the time they make it back to remnant.

and, very conveniently, salem’s heroic foil is stranded in the ever after too, isolated and grappling with his private demons while team rwby try to find their way home without him because none of them know that he fell. i think they’re probably going to trip over him at a critical point in the “how do we stop salem?” narrative arc and jaune, who a) is by a wide margin the likeliest hero-side character to be able to think about salem’s side of this conflict (because his own ordeals fairly closely mirror hers), and b) has already had the seed planted re: salem being possible to reason with, will be integral in revealing the answer.

(check mr. tactics guy’s expression when salem Releases Them in witch, then ask yourself this: why did the woman who can effortlessly pin people to the floor with a snap of her fingers deliberately withdraw the restraints holding her captives before she fought hazel to, notionally, prevent him from giving those captives a window of opportunity to escape? bc jaune noticed that. he didn’t have the chance to think about it right then but now he’s stuck in wonderland with nothing to do but agonize about whether he could have done something, ANYTHING different so that penny could still be alive. and: he really didn’t have a choice during the battle. he had seconds to act; his semblance does not heal injuries anywhere near that quickly. but what if he could have done something before that battle to alter the course of fate? what if he’d acted on that moment of confusion back on the whale, for example. what if he’d followed that perception of something not adding up to the bizarre but logical conclusion that salem decided to let them escape for some reason, what if he’d gotten oscar off the whale and left the ace-ops to blow her up instead, would the ultimatum have still happened, would the evacuation and the catastrophic fight that interrupted it have gone differently? would it have happened at all?—the answer is probably no, it wouldn’t have changed very much in the grand scheme, because even if ironwood used his nuke blowing salem up she would’ve been back in an hour or two tops and penny had already been infected by the virus by then. but think about how irresistible this line of thinking might be to a guy whose self-esteem was already on the floor before cinder murdered his friend right in front of him, when his desperation not to lose anyone else and his hatred of himself for not being able to save pyrrha has been what drives him since beacon fell. this poor kid’s brain is going to be fucking devouring anything, any inkling of “maybe if i had done this penny wouldn’t have died” whether it’s rational or not. and like… they gave him that beat of “huh???” after salem set them loose for a reason.)

[bestworstcase]

Do you think part of the series going forward will be Oz recognizing that he was wrong in some cases when it came to Salem? Bc I don’t think the story will end with just a big fight bc, Ruby as our simple soul protagonist does like to try to talk things out. I can see a scene where she and Salem are in a void space and it’s a lot of talking. It a redemption bc in her quest to free herself Salem did eventually… start killing people on purpose which we can’t really talk away haah. But there can be more than one victim in this kind of situation. While many of Oz were plagued with Salem, your post reiterates that she didn’t start as this evil person. She was trapped and used whatever she could to free herself. It’s hard to call someone pure evil at the time of them being abused which is why I love this show. Bc Salem is the villain of their story but the victim of her own and parts of Oz and all of this can be true at once. I don’t think Oz and Salem will get back together in the end but I wonder how it Will end. Peace for Oz would be Evil Dalem no longer being in the world so his mission to Stop Her would be fulfilled. (A shitty mission considering the god of light didn’t say at the time she was an Evil Immortal bc they literally made her immortal). But what does Salem want. What does Oz Actually want outside of what has been driving him? If Salem came to him eons ago and swore to not hurt anyone would that be enough? Bc he’s trapped here by magical curse to so years of Salem being dormant didn’t lift the curse. What does peace look like for them I wonder. And will the show explore Salem’s side of things and what she’s hoping to do

so

hot take

i don’t think ruby is going to be the inciting force behind any character’s villain -> hero arc, and especially not cinder’s or salem’s; ruby does try to talk things out when she believes her opponent is reasonable, but a) she’s never succeeded, b) she categorically does not engage with salem or salem’s allies as if they are reasonable people, and c) knowing the painful histories that shaped them into the people they are now does not change ruby’s outlook whatsoever, because she’s now had months to think about what jinn showed them and the only conclusion she’s come to is that salem can be stopped because she’s failed before.

i do expect ruby to undergo a shift in her thinking here over the course of v9, but i don’t think it will be as profound as ruby losing her pragmatism altogether. i think she’s just going to come out of this more willing to reserve judgment about whether or not someone needs to be put down by force.

what interests me so much about the potential for both salem and cinder turning around is that all the set-up for it is happening in-house, so to speak, in the changing dynamic of their relationship with each other and the untenable tension between their external goals and inner motivations; moreover rwby has been very clear and very consistent about portraying destruction as a force for change and creation without destruction as static to its own detriment, so thematically there’s solid grounds for thinking the first overture of peace will actually come from SALEM, not ruby or ozma or anyone else on the heroic side. and perhaps worth noting in that regard is that salem has been shown to be much more flexible strategically and operationally and tactically than anyone on the heroic side—so if she gets to a point where negotiating with her opponents looks like a more viable method of pursuing what she wants she’s going to be a lot more willing to scrap her original plans and take a risk on reaching out than they are.

(also i think for ozma there’s a lot more at stake, emotionally, in challenging his basic perceptions of salem—because if she is reasonable, if she is just a person, then he has to start reckoning with questions like “did she actually lie and manipulate me or did i take advantage of her trust?” and “does she maybe have a point about the god i’ve been loyally serving for thousands of years?” and—well just look at how he reacted when confronted after the lost fable. for ozma reconciling with salem means shattering some pretty fundamental beliefs about himself, and i don’t think that’s true for salem. so there’s less of an emotional barrier for her to make the first move.)

there’s also

this beat from 6.4 which i circle back around to a lot because 1. a lot of what happens in the salem half of this episode is a coda or counterpoint to the way jinn told her story in the preceding episode, and this moment of tangible regret and weariness when the mask drops pretty directly contradicts ozma’s perception (as relayed by jinn) of who salem is; and 2. salem is not happy about the choices she makes. performing for her inner circle the way she does before this beat happens emotionally exhausts her, and she expressly keeps going only because she can’t imagine an alternative path forward and the idea of giving up is intolerable; “and so we must… press on.”

this matters because it suggests the obstacle preventing the resolution of conflict is not that salem is an unreasonable egomaniac or drunk on her own power and acting out violent impulses of pure destruction, as her opponents (and most of the fandom 🙄) believe; it’s that she doesn’t believe she has any other choice, and if we put that into context with everything else we know about her—from the girl who threw pleas for help out of her window and then watched helplessly as hundreds of people died in her name, to being made the divine scapegoat and blamed for the murder of the planet, to her own partner rejecting her without even giving her a chance to explain herself, to thousands of years on the margins of civilization because everyone who knows of her believes she’s either a monster or a god or an unstoppable force of nature—it feels pretty obvious that the reason salem believes that is because no one has ever really listened to her or been there for her, ultimately not even ozma.

and that’s not a problem that any of her opponents are anywhere close to being able to grasp—whereas there is a character standing in the perfect position with the perfect mindset to rekindle salem’s hope, and that character is cinder, and in v8 a major narrative focus was on the… shifting dynamic between salem and cinder… so the set up feels to me very much like it’s headed in that direction.

also something something “even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change, breathe fire into the hearts of the weary,” something something cinder is the key to salem’s victory, something something, uh, a cinder is a spark and—

—the writing is on the wall yeah?

anyway rwby’s approach to villain -> hero arcs generally is not redemptive in nature but rather centered around atonement, and within that framework it is obviously more important to allow salem (and cinder) to be in situations where they are no longer killing people than it is to punish or forgive them for having killed people in the past; the dead cannot be saved but the future can be made better and safer for the living. emerald has also killed people but when she jumped ship the trajectory was towards integrating her into the group as an ally, not on interrogating her past misdeeds. (that said i half expect for salem’s villain -> hero arc to involve some revelations that she is not, in fact, as heinous as she has been made out to be—specifically i think summer is alive and working for salem fully in possession of her free will and that salem’s attention and efforts since the murderdivorce have largely been focused on working out a viable plan to tackle the gods rather than 24/7 conspiring against ozma.)

which is to say i think that once the immediate problem of salem’s resignation is overcome the turnaround will occur pretty fast, and likewise on the heroic side once initial reservations about whether they can trust her offer of truce are overcome the narrative focus will move swiftly to making the new alliance work vs redressing all of the bloodshed.

i do also want to highlight though that ozma’s mandate is not to stop salem—that’s something he began to fixate on as a goal, but what he’s actually supposed to be doing is uniting humanity in service of the god of light and then ushering in the day of judgment so that humankind can be either restored to wholeness in the eyes of the gods or exterminated once and for all. irrespective of whether or not salem made an oath of pacifism or not, she would still stand in the way of the mandate because she hates the gods. her violence isn’t the problem for ozma’s agenda—her defiance is. in the course of negotiating peace he will have to finally confront that and reject the divine mandate altogether, and i’m quite certain that that’s what will happen because rwby has, um, not been subtle about the god of light being the true villain of the piece. i’ve said this before but salem’s villain -> hero arc is also an ozma apostasy arc, you can’t have one without the other.

(my read on ozma generally is that he… knows that, deep down, and he’s been trying desperately not to look at it for thousands of years because he’s terrified of what it would mean to admit that salem is right in her view of the god he serves.)

as for what he actually wants… i mean, we know that. he wants to be with salem. that’s the whole reason he came back, and then he felt obligated to keep his word and tried for years to do both by deceiving salem about what he truly intended to accomplish, with catastrophic results, and… since then he’s spent lifetimes convincing himself that everything bad that happens to him is because salem is pulling the strings and the school he built was an exact replica of the castle he rescued her from when they first met and his office was in her bedroom akdhfnsg like he is completely obsessed with her. whether he still wants to be with her romantically is an open question but given the tone of until the end i wouldn’t exactly be surprised; at the very least i think in his heart of hearts he wants to be at peace with her and freed from the burden of the mandate (+reincarnation curse) preventing that from happening.

[queenofnohr]

ok session recap! this is actually a recap from the past 3 sessions but not a ton happened in them for various reasons (like our ranger + druid being absent for one, and our rogue having technical difficulties in another). with this I will be all caught up 😌

Fon!Salem piloted a sub, Roanoke punched a shark in the face, went treasure hunting and found an alchemy jug that was full of mayo

while our rogue was having technical difficulties fon-as-salem rode around on roa’s shoulders, embalmed a corpse using prestidigitation, and then they sat on the docks watching the sunset together (my DM asked us to roll a charisma check and people around us were stunned by how beautiful we were in this picturesque scenery)

we went to a mausoleum to find the stone of golorr only to find the entire place ransacked - bodies, bones, and all, then got ambushed by a rival gang outside (xanathar’s crew)

we accidentally killed a person in broad daylight but got away with murder (again) by negotiating with the guards since they didnt see someone stealing an entire mausoleum’s worth of bodies

we had some downtime while getting our only clue inspected and so Roanoke ordered a custom suit of heavy armor (glamoured to look like a suit). he didn’t have enough money though so the way it happened was that he kabedon’d Fon-as-Salem and the conversation went something like: “I need something from you.” “Oya? It must be important if you’re being this direct...” “It’s embarrassing, so could you just-” [the implication being have this conversation telepathically] “No, no, you’re not getting out of this that easy. I want the words to come from your own lips.” “I need.... *whispering* 600 GP.” “Oh my, you don’t have enough?” “No, it’s *lowers voice again* 1600 GP. I need you for this.” “Ah,  I’ll give it to you no matter what since you asked, but I am curious...” “It’s for a new suit of armor. So I can protect you better *grumbling* since you’re starting to do reckless shit like runnin’ into mobs by yourself”

the rest of the party: *laughing* oh my god ya’ll are too much 😂😂😂

in the meantime we also went to a bar  because our bard got a faction quest to investigate this....... paladin (? i forget) who’s been acting sus. while at the bar Fon!Salem and Roa also get another faction quest from the Zhentarim. They’re also the only ones to realize said paladin is like....... definitely possessed or some shit and his axe is sentient.

They make up a gameplan to deal with the dude, telepathically, AND EVEN THOUGH WE CAN HAVE THESE CONVERSATIONS WHILE DOING OTHER THINGS, my DM canonizes their telepathic conversations as: “Salem and Roanoke look intensely into each others’ eyes for about 3 minutes. (me interjecting: it’s not suspicious or anything!!!!! we can be doing other things while having this convo!) No, this is how it is. It’s kinda weird, but to be fair they do this a lot, so natch.”

The paladin invites us into the sewers to take down a demon. We agree (if only to try and deal with him out of the public’s eye). We get attacked by tentacle monsters. The encounter goes something like this - Roanoke: *gets bound by tentacles* Fon!Salem: Looking good, Roa! *IMMEDIATELY GETS BOUND BY TWO TENTACLE MONSTERS* Roanoke: *breaks free from tentacle monster* Fon!Salem: *fails to break free from tentacles* *weakly, whining* t-tasukete brother...

we get through that encounter, fight the demon, end up having to fight the paladin bc he’s FUCKING POSSESSED, complete our bard’s faction quest even though she isn’t even here

Fon!Salem & Roanoke look into our Zhent faction quest which involves finding a guy. The people he’s associating with are a gang of were-rats. Roanoke almost gets into a fistfight with them in the middle of an alleyway. Fon!Salem is able to diffuse the situation and they tell us to meet them on the docks next evening. Fon!Salem absolutely expects to get jumped.

we get updated on the clue and go to another guy who’s supposed to be able to tell us where the clue leads to - but he doesn’t wanna tell us for free. the party REALLY doesn’t wanna spend money since we’ve been spending a lot already

Fon!Salem (to Roa): “Take off your shirt, brother.” DM: “For reference, because it’s heavy armor now, it’ll take 3 minutes to take off.” Fon!Salem: “What if I help him?” DM: “It’ll take 1 1/2 minutes.” Fon!Salem: “Okay, I strip off my own shirt then help Roa out of his.” DM: “Yeah, okay. You strip your brother. Roll a charisma check.” me: *rolls a 23* DM “Oh shit, yeah okay. This dude is fucking enamored by your pecs.” NPC: “Jesus your abs.... I could wash clothes on those things..... Holy shit......” Fon!Salem: “So can you tell us now?” NPC: “W-Well, customer confidentiality and all... Maybe if you sweeten the deal....” Fon!Salem: “So do you wanna get tag-teamed by us or do you want to watch us make-out with each other?” Roanoke: “If you want more than that, you’ll have to pay good coin.” The rest of the party: “OH MY GOD *incomprehensible squealing noises*” NPC, trying to hold onto a shred of dignity: “N-No what I meant was either funding or ideas for my inventions...” DM: “I do need to clarify that he’s still staring holes into Salem and Roanoke’s naked torsos” Fon!Salem: “What if we sell you the rights to our likeness so you can make anatomically accurate sexbots of us?” DM, choking: “ROLL PERSUASION” Our Ranger: “PLEASE ROLL HIGH OMG I NEED THIS TO HAPPEN”

we did not roll high. I asked our ranger if she intended to buy one to which she responded “No comment.” I then asked her OOC if she intended to and, in-between laughing hysterically, still answered “I dont wanna answer that”

we were able to get the info just bc Fon!Salem 1. needed to silver their dagger in preparation for getting jumped by the were-rats. 2. bought a parachute backpack for a handy dandy escape 3. asked the NPC inventor to discreetly implement a grappling hook gun disguised as a telescope onto the turret that attaches to the twins’ room (just in case Fon!Salem & Roa ever need to backstab the party and set the whole bar on fire and make a quick escape, you know?) and the NPC inventor decided that was enough coin to get him to talk

we go to get jumped by the were-rats. we successfully incapacitated them which is where the last session ended and Fon is gonna wake the leader up and interrogate them straight mafia style next session.

Fon!Salem also got bitten by one of them and failed the con save and so got afflicted by the curse of lycanthropy. HOWEVER, there’s almost no downside to this as it means that Fon is impervious to most damage that isn’t magical or done by a silvered weapon AND because they are a changeling, even physical symptoms can be suppressed. so they might just keep it for now (our evil paladin friend might be able to dispel the curse?)

This is extra delicious thematically bc Roanoke, as a priest of Selune, is trained to hunt (evil) lycanthropes