#but cool dragon scales and boosted attack sounds cool

[finalfroevo]

potential mega sandslash and for it to be part dragon type woahhh

[duhragonball]

Super Dragon Ball Heroes Episode 50

The finale of the Supreme Kai of Time arc finally came out a few weeks ago, so let's wrap up my liveblog of it.

Just so we're all up to speed, I covered Episodes 41 through 49 here , here, and here. But if you're not in the mood to read that: this arc introduces Aeos, the previous Supreme Kai of Time, who has now returned to take back the position from Chronoa. Aeos believes that there are too many alternate timelines now, and Chronoa's refusal to deal with them has only made things worse, so Aeos and her four attendants take over the Time Nest to resolve the problem instead. Aeos's solution is to hold a big tournament with warriors from different timelines, and the losing teams get their timeline erased.

This all gets thrown into chaos when Demigra shows up, having recently gained a power boost from the Dark King energy once held by Fu. I'm not sure if this was just a coincidence, or if Demigra somehow manipulated the Aeos/Chronoa dispute to his advantage. Anyway, he tries to seize control of the Time Nest and destroy all the fighters who oppose him, which culminates in this climactic beam struggle against Goku, Bardock, and Future Gohan.

Just so we're clear, the Bardock and Future Gohan we see here are variants from other timelines, recruited by Aeos to serve as her attendants. Bardock was the "Hooded Saiyan" who occasionally helped Goku during the previous arc. Gohan hails from a world where Trunks died fighting 17 and 18, while he survived.

Anyway, the Father-Son-Grandson Kamehameha ends with Bardock daring the boys to push even harder, which leads to Bardock turning SSJ4, Goku going Ultra Instinct (again), and Gohan turning SSJ2. This overwhelms Demigra and he dies.

However, before Demigra is beaten, Aeos and Chronoa have this nice little reconciliation where Aeos points out that Demigra only got this far because of the multitude of alternate timelines. Even if he's defeated, some other menace will just rise up to replace him. She asks Chronoa how she can continue to support sparing the timelines if this is true, and Chronoa replies that a lot of good has come from the alternate timelines as well, and she's willing to trust the heroes to rise to the occasion. Then they hold hands and do some sort of time stuff, which might have helped tip the scales against Demigra, but I don't know. When it's all over, they use the Scroll of Eternity to restore everything to the way it was before Demigra attacked.

Goku is satisfied with this outcome, but he has one last bit of business to discuss with Aeos: Goku wants the Super Space-Time Tournament to be restarted, since he never got to finish his match with Xeno Goku earlier in the arc. Aeos agrees, and this time it's just an exhibition, with the fighters who still want to fight having 1v1 matches with no brackets.

We get some brief glimpses of the other matches, like Piccolo vs. Pikkon, Master Roshi vs. Grandpa Gohan, and so on, but none of these amount to anything. This episode spent a decent two minutes re-telling the beam struggle from Episode 49, which could have been used to show a little more of the cool fights they teased instead.

Credit where it's due, Goku vs. Xeno Goku actually gets some time, and there's some cool spots, like SSJ4 Goku trying to use a Warp Kamehameha on UI Goku, only for UI to try to float over to avoid it. Then 4ku snares him with his tail, but UI-ku is still too nimble to be trapped for long.

As everyone watches, Aoes reflects on how Goku impressed her, and I think the implication is that Goku's the one who convinced her not to erase the other timelines, at least for the time being. Then there's a credits sequence, like this is a big finale, but it's not.

They do the finish of the Goku/Vegeta fight from DBS: Super Hero, and it's UI Goku who wins. Sound booking, but I wish they could have come up with a different way to end it. I mean, Aeos's tournament was already a rip-off of the Tournament of Power, and Demigra's invasion was just a retread of his invasion in Xenoverse 1, and now this. It's tough to find anything really fresh in this story.

With the match settled, Aeos announces that she'll be leaving again to survey the alternate timelines for herself. She says she wants to re-check everything to re-evaluate her decision, and warns Chronoa that if she finds she had it right the first time, she'll be back to erase everything like she intended. Chronoa seems to accept this. Maybe she's confident that Aeos will see things her way, or maybe it's just that Chronoa has no choice. This arc suggests that Chronoa cannot, or will not, challenge Aeos' authority. I guess with Aeos leaving, Chronoa is reinstated as Supreme Kai of Time, but they never explained why Aeos left the job in the first place, or what claim she had to take it back. There's a lot of unanswered questions in all of this.

Aeos's four attendants will be joining her on her new mission, including Vidros, who proposed to Yamcha during the tournament. So what about that? Well, it turns out Vidros can't marry Yamcha right away. Her people have a tradition that says she can't marry until she reaches a certain age, which is still a dozen centuries away. So she intends to go with Aeos and return for Yamcha 1200 years from now. D'oh!

This did not go over well with the fandom, who were pretty hyped for the idea of Yamcha getting the girl. I think we all knew that there'd be some kind of catch. They weren't going to marry off an established character in a web series for crying out loud. I choose to look at this in a positive light. Yamcha's still got a fiance. And just because she has to wait 1200 years doesn't mean that he has to wait the same amount of time. Aeos might do her a solid and bring her back to the present day so she can still marry Yamcha during his natural lifespan.

At least Vidros had some sort of character arc in this story. I have no idea what this alternate version of Piccolo was supposed to be about. He just shares some meaningful looks with Gohan and that's it. Future Gohan says goodbye to Xeno Trunks, Bardock takes a last look at his son, and they all head out.

I seriously wondered if Episode 50 was going to be the finale for the entire web-series, since this arc seemed to wrap up the last plot threads of the whole show. Most of SDBH was about Fu's rise to prominence, and then he got defeated with the help of Demigra and Aeos's team, who settled all of their business in this arc. So this seemed like a pretty good stopping point, but no. There's an Episode 51, which promises a whole new arc that will probably take another two years to finish. I guess Super Dragon Ball Heroes will be around for a while longer.

And I'll probably cover those future story arcs one of these days, but this seems like a good place to stop for now. It's a lot more satisfying to watch this show several episodes at a time, and it'll be at least a year before we're far enough along to make this worth my time. But we'll see how it goes.

[quirkwizard]

What do you think of Dragon and Razor Sharp for a Quirk Marriage?

This sounds like the kind of concept that would come out the art book of a nine year old. Like it’s a dragon and it’s covered in swords. It’s totally cool, man.

New Quirk Name: Sword Drake

This Transformation type Quirk allows the user to take the form of a gun metal gray, draconic form the size of a van. The form boosts improve physical abilities, granting the user superior strength, speed, and durability. The most notable feature of this Quirk is the user's scales. In reality, these are made of metal, granting the user even greater defense. The user may push the scales outwards, either selectively or as a whole, becoming a series of sharp blades. The blades are extremely sharp, capable of cutting through even concrete on their own. This gives the user a monstrous Quirk in combat, craving through whatever might be in their path. They can barrel headfirst through obstacles, tank massive attacks without issue, deal immense damage to their foes, carry their allies around, or just scare people with their massive size. Though taking on the form will drain the user's stamina faster, making it harder to maintain. The dangerous nature of the Quirk can make it difficult to use, both with the user's size and the sharp blades that cover their body.

[demonfox38]

Completed - Faxanadu

So, at the end of my last post game evaluation, I brought up "Faxanadu" as a better alternative to "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link." I honestly don't know if that's a controversial opinion or not. On the surface, I can see that raising the gall of a lot of dyed-in-the-wool Nintendo fans. Like, how dare I lift the third-party product over something created by Nintendo itself. And, to be honest, I can feel that contradiction. "Faxanadu" looks worse, sounds worse, and plays just a bit stiffer than "Zelda II." Why would I like this game more if it is an inferior product?

Well, in this case, it all comes down to attitude.

"Faxanadu" is a weird little offshoot from a prestigious pedigree. Directly, it's a spin-off/side story to "Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu" of the "Dragon Slayer" series. I'm guessing that if you are as familiar with Japanese computer RPGs from the 1980s—that is to say, knowledgeable by the name alone—you might recognize its sister games "Sorcerian" for its lovely soundtrack and "Tokyo Xanadu" from a list of titles available on Steam. But, hey. TL;DR—"Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu" sold 400,000 game copies in 1985, so Nintendo was all too happy to get a slice of that pie. In the translation from computer to Famicom ("Faxanadu"? Get it?), the adaptation lost its RPG battles and became a more stream-lined action platformer with some vestigial RPG elements.

Sounds strange? It kind of is. Just think "Zelda II" without death pits.

Adding to the uniqueness of this game is its peculiar plot. In "Faxanadu", your PC is charged with stopping a horde of extra-terrestrial forces and dwarves hopped up on meteor dust from killing all of the elves living alongside them on the World Tree. It's like the Yggdrasil myth meets "Night of the Comet." Very, very 1980s in its mix of mythology and weird space shit.

The game itself is as you might expect from an action platformer. Move around locations, purchase equipment, fight, keep moving until you find the final boss. The weirdness of it flakes off a little bit at a time. Like, those experience points you accumulate? They don't go into stat improvements. You talk to a guru (a priest dude) to bank them in and earn a title. This will aid you when/if you die, as the game will drop your corpse off at the last guru you visited with a preset amount of money based on how awesome your title is. Dying can be a great way to warp around, as well as to get your ass back to full health for free. Hell, you don't even lose accumulated items if you die. (Although, if you use a key, that’s gone for good. You may have to purchase a few extra if you die in the wrong spot.) Death isn't always the best strategy, but it can help in the right circumstances.

Frankly, the game is very chill about your failure. Pretty much everything else, too.

The mellow atmosphere of "Faxanadu" is something to be appreciated. Even if most people have given up on their home being saved, they're more than alright sitting around, smoking and drinking and chatting you up. (God bless, there are so many smokers in this game.) People are constantly telling you to not try too hard to save their asses, as well as encouraging meditation and keeping calm in the face of defeat. Not to be crass, but it makes you wonder if people have something other than tobacco in their cigarettes.

Let's be honest. If they were toking, it would explain a few laughable bugs.

Oh, man. You've got to hear about these errors. Like, I know register mathematics and assembly coding is a bitch, but this game makes some choice mistakes. Like, that title system I mentioned earlier? You're supposed to be given more time to use special items like hourglasses and winged boots when your title increases in rank. In execution, the opposite happens. The more monsters you kill, the less time you're given on the clock to use cool shit. It doesn't ever lock you out of an area, but it is something to keep in mind. Additionally, there's this pendant that you're supposed to get in the second area that should increase your attack power. However, the game already thinks you have that equipped at the start, so when you get it, that attack boost gets turned off. That's right. Take the pretty necklace and you do less damage. I mean, hey. You don't want to get it accidentally broken, do you?

This game isn't particularly bright in the aesthetics department, either. Most of the color palette is brown, green, cream, and salmon. Character portraits have this weird animation when they talk to you where their blinking and speaking is desynced in a disturbing fashion. Hell, of the allegedly dwarven enemies, I can only point to one or two enemies that I believe are dwarves. The music is a little better than average for the NES, but nothing I'd put in a playlist (minus the opening theme, which is an awesome fantasy rip.) I mean, it's sure better than the "Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu" footage I saw on YouTube, but it's not exactly a feast for the eyes and ears. Even platforming and movement of your PC is a bit stiff. Also, this uses password systems to save instead of batteries. Which, hey, fine by me. But, it's definitely cheaper than using a battery, and I know a lot of people find passwords to be difficult or annoying to use.

So, if this is an inferior looking and feeling product in comparison with "Zelda II", why do I like this one more?

Well, the chillness factor, for one. The difficulty in this game is much more manageable as well. You can carry several healing potions on you, and there are classes of enemies you can farm for food to get your health up in dire straits. Hell, there's even an elixir that will auto-pop on you if you take too much damage. Additionally, screwing up platforming doesn't automatically kill you. It might make you have to take a few rooms to get back to where you were trying to go, but it's not a kiss of death.

Yeah, this one's easier, for sure. But, I don't feel like it's purposefully wasting my time, either. The cash for most equipment upgrades can be ground out within ten or fifteen minutes, if you're willing to put in the time. You can skip certain locations, if you really don't want to deal with their hassle. Granted, skipping too much could cost you the best equipment, and you certainly need that to fight the final boss. But, the trials you face to get that aren't the worst. Hell, getting the Dragon Slayer itself becomes retroactively sad and metal once you figure out just what you were fighting to get it.

There are important things to do, sure. Nobody's on your ass if you screw up. The NPCs want you to succeed, and they want you to do so with a clear head (and an empty purse, in some cases.) It's the kind of game where you take an afternoon or two to knock out. Nothing overwrought, nothing dramatic. Just you and a handful of Keebler Elves fighting back cosmic horrors that have taken over the neighbors.

It would be interesting to know the scale of this world. The dwarves don't seem to be that much shorter than the elves, so I have to wonder if everybody's just four feet tall or something.

I'm almost certain that I picked this up off eBay decades ago after reading either a genre list or recommendation list on GameFAQs. Even now, the price on it is cheap. (Of course, ROMs are free, but it's a $10.00 cart.) This was a better game than what I would normally get out of my other source of NES games—that is to say, the K-Mart bargain bin (which may have been leftover stock the company bought from FuncoLand? Not sure.) Long story short, this game is relatively short, cheap, and fulfilling. If you need something retro and easy going, this game might do the trick. It might not blow your socks off, but it won't blow your head off, either.

[mgrgfan]

Past of the future, future of the past...

Chapter 9. A strange beginning

25.06.2000, 20 years after the Shift Neighborly Town, Sinnoh

Gentle ringing sound filled the room. With a sigh, a boy with long blue hair has removed the blanket and got up, doing morning stretches. After he was done, he took a shower, changed from his favorite dark pajamas to something more suitable and left his room, going down to kitchen for breakfast.

As always, his mom Deborah has made something amazingly-smelling and his dad Yakob was trying to start himself up with a cup of some horrifying caffeine mix, as dark as…

"Oh, and there you are, just in time!" said Deborah, as a figure has arisen from the shadows in the far end of the room.

"Suppose so. Morning, everyone," replied the Pitch-Black Pokemon, crossing the room.

"Morning, Darkrai," sighed Tobias, taking a seat. Yakob mumbled something welcoming too, then returned to drinking his crime against coffee. Darkrai visibly shifted away from Yakob, still having highly unpleasant memories about that one time he tried whatever infernal substance Tobias' dad was brewing for himself. There was a good reason it was once nearly classified as a chemical weapon, as a wide-awake Komala in Yakob's lab, who also made a mistake of trying this liquid insanity, could attest to.

After a wonderful breakfast (with Latios joining them soon after the beginning), the entire group started to pack up for today's trip in Unova. Thankfully, whatever unholy mixture Yakob was taking was sufficient to finally wake him up, so, he took the wheel, leaving Deborah, Tobias and Darkrai free to take seats, while Latios has cloaked and clung to the car's roof, loving the thrill of "riding" like that.

With a silent hiss, hydrogen started flowing into the fuel cells. Seconds later, with a quiet whine, wheel hub motors kicked in, driving the car away from the home and towards the Sunyshore City - specifically, the Theta Spaceport.

----

The not-so-young-anymore dragon silently flew underneath the forest's canopy, using the flexibility of its serpentine body to maneuver between trees. Something in the back of its mind screamed, that it shouldn't be going like this, that it should be soaring free in the sky, but immediate concerns continued to override it for many years.

Jet-black Legendary knew, that here, it was in relative safety. Humans would have massive troubles searching for it there. They won't risk using their horrific weapons there… or, at least, so it hoped.

Right now, it was nearing the edge of the forest, near the road from place, known to humans as "Pallet Town". It has decided to stay here for a bit, until the night comes… which should happen relatively soon, in fact.

Rayquaza took a rest on a tree, monitoring the situation around. Thankfully, the road wasn't used this often and Rayquaza knew, how to hide, so, even with its jet-black scales, it didn't have much trouble hiding.

Some time later, it has noticed a single young human, who was traversing down the road with two Pokemon at his side - a Pikachu and a Solosis.

Sky High Pokemon knew this human - quite a few years ago, this young human got lost in the forest and ended up taking shelter from rain under the roots of a large tree, together with a lot of Pokemon. Rayquaza knew this moment very well, especially since it also took a shelter there, coiling around others… and, despite worries of the Legendary, it all went pretty nice.

Sensing no one else of note around, the not-so-young dragon decided to take a risk and lit up the bioluminescent stripes, then flew almost right in front of the young human, even showing off a bit. While human did end up taking some device and pointing it at Rayquaza, evidently, it has malfunctioned and produced no result of worth… although Sky High Pokemon decided to stop doing the risky things now, darkened the bioluminescent stripes again and disappeared under the canopy of the forest, barely noticing Ho-oh flying above it, to which none of the participants paid much attention.

----

"Good afternoon passengers," sounded from the speakers. "This is the pre-boarding announcement for flight P-52-4 to Nuvema, Unova. Please have your boarding pass, Pokeballs and identification ready. Boarding will begin in approximately ten minutes time on Tower 12. Thank you."

Tobias, Deborah and Yakob nodded to each other and headed towards the appropriate access terminal. Two elevator and one travelator rides later, they were walking through the access arm to their vehicle, which was just finishing getting refueled with slush hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Seemingly short and stout (but only seemingly so), it, nonetheless, was capable of easily carrying up to 1000 people between any two points of Earth.

Family took their designated places, with Latios being confined to a Pokeball and Darkrai managing to secretly leave it and sneak into the shadow under Tobias' bunk.

"Attention, passengers, this is your captain speaking. The vessel will take off in ten minutes. Walkway is now retracting," sounded from speakers, as the doors to the outside world got closed and walkway got retracted. Passengers were still chatting, as they were taking their places and preparing for takeoff, some of them checking safety cards and/or watching the safety videos, some sharing their experiences, some merely talking… all was as usual.

"Attention, passengers, this is your captain speaking. The vessel will take off in five minutes. Make sure you're on your designated acceleration couch, safely strapped and with your Pokeballs put into the safe underneath it," sounded from the speakers again. Tobias, after a small check, found out Darkrai's small machination, but decided to stay quiet, knowing his oldest Pokemon partner all too well.

"Ten, nine, ignition sequence start, six, five, engine running fully... Liftoff! We have a liftoff on ballistic liner P-52-4! Tower cleared!"

As those words were being said, the plug-cluster aerospike engine has ignited and reached the nominal power. The launch clamps have opened too, letting the huge rocket soar into the sky and set the trajectory to suborbitals, while also making passengers experience moderate G-force. People, however, seem to take it just fine, some of them even joking about the flight being "Smooth, quiet and, in altogether, delightful experience".

Finally, all external fuel tanks ran dry and, with quiet dull clangs, separated from the rocket, starting their own flyback sequence to allow for easier recovery. In the meantime, ballistic liner finished the boost phase and entered the microgravity coast, with captain making another announcement:

"Good afternoon passengers. This is your captain speaking. First I'd like to welcome everyone on Talonflame Aerospace flight P-52-4. We are currently cruising at an altitude of 185 km at an speed of just under 7 km/s. The time is 1:25 pm. The weather under us looks good and with the lack of wind at the arrival point we are expecting to land in Nuvema with some fuel to spare. The weather in Nuvema is clear and sunny, with a high of 25 degrees for this afternoon. If the weather cooperates we should get a great view of the city as we descend. Right now, you will be able to unstrap yourself and to get some awesome views in the illuminators. I'll talk to you again before we reach our destination. Until then, relax and enjoy the rest of the flight."

Indeed, soon enough, people liberated themselves from the safety straps and started gathering around illuminators, with Darkrai managing to slip out of the shadows and get near Tobias too. While it did prompt some uneasiness, authority of Yakob and Deborah was sufficient to prevent it from escalating further, allowing a blue-haired boy and a white-haired Mythical to enjoy views of Earth from the space for a bit longer… until another announcement came through:

"Attention, passengers, this is your captain speaking. In five minutes, we will begin the flip maneuver. Please, return to your couches and strap yourselves back."

Grumbling, people have complied, returning back to their acceleration couches and strapping themselves in order to prevent flying away, when rocket fires maneuvering thrusters. In exactly five minutes from announcement, RCS engines rumbled and the rocket flipped around, pointing the main plug-cluster aerospike engine in the direction of travel. Soon, the main engine woke up again, decelerating the rocket a bit and correcting its trajectory.

The rocket plunged through the atmosphere, decelerating even further as it goes, with liquid hydrogen circulating through the truncated spike of main engine and cooling it down, allowing it to work as a heat shield. Soon, it ended its flight by a gentle hover landing, with exactly right position and heading to allow one of the access arms on the service tower to reach it. After the connection of access arm and opening of doors, Tobias and his family packed up and left the rocket, reaching their rented car two elevator and two travelator rides later.

As usual, human part of the family took their places in the vehicle, Latios cloaked and clung to the outside, while Darkrai stayed in shadows near the backseat.

"So…" started Tobias. "What's this conference's going to be about?"

"As always, yearly conference between researchers of Legendary and Mythical Pokemon," replied Yakob, driving the car to the hotel. "Thanks to your help, we've got some nice results."

"Yakob, if they ever try this again…" said Darkrai from the shadows in a pretty grim voice.

"I know, crouch, get to the nearest cover and wait for the Dark Void attacks to stop flying, then use the replicas of Lunar Wing over the victims, once you've cleared the area."

"Exactly. The fact of me deciding to follow Tobias and you two on my own volition does not mean me welcoming invasive experimentation."

"I sure remember the last time…" muttered Deborah in a strange voice.

"I didn't kill anyone back then, though," quickly replied the Pitch-Black Pokemon, as if slightly afraid, prompting Tobias to enter the conversation again:

"Mostly because of Latios with his Heal Pulse being capable of stabilizing their condition, until I was there to break the Lunar Wing replicas from my personal stash out."

"Yep. Exactly what I've counted on," said Darkrai, even leaving the shadow a bit and nodding.

"Not the best strategy… but, I guess, we'll have to let it slip for now." mumbled Tobias' mother, then sighed. "I hate the rocket lag, to be honest."

"We all do!" agreed everyone inside the car with her.

----

"Now arriving to the Space Colony Core-Middleway," sounded in the cabin of "Drapion" Galarian deep space transporter, as it was slowing down and preparing to dock to the still-unfinished Bernal Sphere - a greatest testament to the insane race of the Space Fever, alongside with automated factories on the Moon, as well as mass driver, which was used to deliver parts of the colony into space, where they were assembled.

"Finally…" mumbled a remarkably unremarkable human, cradling some strange case in his hands. Soon, a quiet, dull "clang" announced, that the ship has docked to the gigantic space installation. Man, blending in with the rest of passengers of the Earth-L5 express, left it through the docking tube and went through a route few people knew, heading straight to the biolabs block on the equator of the sphere.

Inside the Lab 14, another man was already waiting for him.

"So?.."

"Recovered," said the newcomer, opening his case and extracting a strange, tubular device with a faint glow inside the transparent middle section. "You have no idea, how hard it was, though. But old Fuji built some stuff real sturdy."

"Heh… brother was sure like this… was."

The colonial sighed, knowing too well, what's happened back on the planet, then went for another question:

"What about the second specimen?"

"Was unable to recover."

"Well… I guess we'll have to do with only her for now."

"I guess."

The newcomer gave the device to the colonial scientist, who, gently cradling it, took it to the adjacent room and placed it on the table, starting to connect it to the equipment.

"Lessons were learned, mistakes will not be repeated," mumbled the scientist, working on the device and, from time to time, looking at a huge empty biogrowth tube behind him. "I just hope you'll understand me, when the time comes…"

----

"Your Majesty?" sounded a message from the comm app.

"Yes?" replied the Empress.

"Project SAS is going almost as planned. Phase 2 is at 70%, industrial automation is progressing surely, second level networks are almost established."

"ISFs 3, 5 and 9?"

"Gave us all-clear on the technical side."

"And… what about possibility of Scenario 5?"

"Non-zero, but not too great. Roughly 3.6% possible."

"3.6% - not great, not terrible," concluded the Empress, before the call has ended and she relaxed in the chair, remembering, how has it all started fifteen years ago...

----

The Empress was sitting in her chair, listening to the group of scientists, who were standing before her and telling about a plan - a very audacious one, but, given, what has happened a week ago, worthy of consideration. When they've finished giving the explanation, she stood up a bit, walked to the window and, looking at the city outside of the Palace, asked:

"Automation of the economy, huh?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And… what does it promise for the Empire?"

"Well… an economic solvency that will eclipse that of the rest of the world, no corruption, once it's fully implemented, highly-reactive planning, allowance…"

"Enough. Tell me one thing… Does it mean, that, should it be fully and completely implemented, I will lose my power and be, in fact, left without ability to rule the Empire, remaining merely a face of the new, automatic government system?"

"... Yes."

"And… will this system bring more prosperity to the Empire, than I and the rest of the current rulers can?"

"... Yes."

"... Then you have my full approval."

"... Huh?"

"You are to begin the implementation process as soon as you can. If sacrifice of my position and power will mean the best for the Empire - I am ready to do that."

"... As you wish."

The group of scientists left the room, leaving Empress looking in the window and thinking, whether this decision was right or not and should she cancel this project, while there's still some time left.

Author's notes: The ballistic liner Tobias and his family rides is based on ITHACUS global transportation rocket; The "Drapion" is based on a real project of a "Scorpion" general-purpose space transportation system; Space Fever will be explained more, as the time goes; Can you guess, what was the device the newcomer gave to the scientist on the space colony? The hint is in the only name mentioned in this section...

[crystalelemental]

Sounds like there are some new Pokemon moves with the DLC.  Let’s take a look.

First up is Expanding Force.  An ice-type move that gets stronger and hits both opponents if Psychic Terrain is up.  Honestly, I want to hate it on the grounds that the Terrains kinda need severely nerfed, but Ice types need more stuff they can plug in to, so I’m pretty content with this.  Also, if it means a bunch of Psychic types can get an Ice move that may be special, great.

Steel Roller.  It’s a damaging move, it seems, that removes Terrain.  Good.  That said, it fails entirely if there’s no terrain.  Not as good.  I do like that it’s essentially their attempt at a hard counter to the Tapu.  Coulda just...nerfed the damage buffs of Terrain abilities and made them way less threatening and omnipresent.  But sure.

Scale Shot is a multi-hit Dragon move, that boosts speed but lowers defense.  That’s, uh...that’s a choice.  I can’t remember if there are any Pokemon with Skill Link that are likely to get this.  I don’t think there are.  The stat changes are the really interesting bit.  Depending on who learns it, this could be a big part of their arsenal.  We know Kommo-o will get it, let’s be real.

METEOR BEAM!  Holy shit that’s so cool!  Two-turn Rock type special attack, that boosts special attack by one stage when it starts charging.  So you actually power up before launching it.  I adore this, that’s so good as a risk/reward.  Nothing’s immune to Rock, and Special is a good pick to hit the weaker stat of Steel, its most prominent resist.  That makes switching in a bit tougher.  You know.  For lower tiers that don’t involve Ferrothorn.

Shell Side Arm is the Galarian Slowbro move.  Adaptive damage, can poison.  Neat.

Misty Explosion is so funny, yet so stupid.  It’s explosion that gets powered up on Misty Terrain.  How strong is it normally?  Is it as strong as Explosion of Self Destruct?  Is the boost doubling power?  Also it’s a Fairy move, which means no immunities.  That’s...that’s gonna be an event.

Grassy Glide is priority in Grassy Terrain, but otherwise not important.  Honestly, Grassy Terrain got fucked.  Because grass types always get fucked.  Psychic Terrain gets a nice Ice move, and Misty Terrain gets what may be a buffed Explosion.  Grassy Terrain gets a grass move.  But it’s got priority.  Okay.

Rising Voltage is the Electric Terrain move, and it doubles in power if Electric Terrain is up.  50% boost from the terrain and then doubled power.  Can’t wait for Scarf Tapu Koko to get banned.

Terrain Pulse is just Terrain’s answer to Weather Ball.

Skitter Smack is likely a physical move that lowers opponent special attack.  I kinda like it.  Good for the bug types.

Burning Jealousy deals damage, and inflicts a burn on anything that boosted this turn.  Here’s the very, very important question.  Does it have negative priority?  If yes, this move is fantastic.  If not, we will absolutely run into a situation where slow boosters don’t have to worry about the burn at all.

Lash Out is pretty nice, too.  If your stats were lowered, doubles the damage.  I say it’s nice because Intimidate.  Switching in to an Intimidate user now punishes that switch.  Unfortunately it’s Dark type, and there are absolutely Fighting type intimidators.  So good luck.

Poltergeist attacks the foe with their held item.  There has to be some kind of mechanic for determining damage, I just don’t know what.  It fails outright if no item is held, so the big question is whether the item is removed after an attack.  If yes, the move is worthless.  If no...it’s still worse than Knock Off.

Corrosive Gas seems to be just removing all items in play.  So in Doubles, that may have some use, but it removes the partner’s item too.  Risky.

Coaching, which gives a one-stage boost to attack and defense of an ally.  Useless in Singles, and frankly useless in Doubles.

Flip Turn.  Hey, remember how I hate VoltTurn combos, and think they’re the worst thing to happen to this game and need severely nerfed?  What if, instead of cutting base power or making the switch a negative priority, we just added a Water-type version of it to the mix?  Because Water types aren’t known for being extremely good.  Fuck this move, and fuck them.

Triple Axel feels like they’re showing off Galarian Hitmontop.  Three-hit move with each hit getting stronger.  Also it’s Ice type.  So that’s kinda neat.

Dual Wingbeat.  Basically just Dual Chop but for birds.

Scorching Sands.  Hey, remember when we made Scald, and it was kinda stupid how it would leave every Pokemon with a burn except for the one type that was weak to it anyway?  Remember how people have complained that this really isn’t a very competitive move because you wind up just burn fishing for RNG because 30% is kinda high for an effect this good?  What if, instead of balancing that skill out, we made a Ground-type version of it, so that this move also has exactly the same issues as Scald?  Then, everyone gets to be miserable as we continue to learn nothing!  Haha, game design!

Jungle Healing.  Restores HP and heals status of self and ally.  Guessing that’s Zarude’s exclusive, and it’s not even that useful.

Wicked Blow, which is the one panda evolution move.  It’s always a crit.  Okay.

Surging Strikes is the other evolution’s move.  It also always crits.  Okay.

The three starters got their G-Max moves, which all ignore opponent abilities.  Okay.  There are abilities that negate all damage from those types, so I guess that helps.

The panda evolutions get a move that ignores Protect.  Which G-Max moves already did.  I know they mean Dynamaxed Protect too, but shush.

Venusaur and Blastoise got their type’s version of Charizard’s Fire Spin.  So really not that useful.  At all.  Great.

Overall, there’s like three things I’m actually interested in, and a few that are just disgusting.  Who asked for Water-type U-Turn and Ground-type Scald?  The G-Max moves continue to be useless, as they all are.  Everything else is just kinda okay.  Meteor Beam is definitely my favorite of the bunch.  Flip Turn and Scorching Sands are definitely the best of the bunch, though depending on conditions and damage, Burning Jealousy and Misty Explosion might be incredibly good moves.  And of course, if Expanding Force winds up being widely available for Psychic types, then consider it my personal favorite.  Psychic types used to be great because of their wide type coverage, and ever since the physical/special split they’ve had a tougher and tougher time.  Most don’t get Ice coverage, a few get Electric, and Focus Blast sucks too much to really do any good.  An Ice-type move that’s widely available would at least be nice.  But then, so would Aura Sphere now that it’s a TR, but oops only physical attacking Psychics get that.  So I expect nothing good to come of it.

[gayelectro]

Been thinking about “what if I was an Elite Four member” so--

Type: Fighting. First ever out and non-binary E4 trainer. Reigon? No idea, probably either Unova, Hoenn, or Alola. 

Pokemon! 

Hitmonchan up in front, armed with Thunder Punch and Ice Punch to knock out those pesky flying types and Bullet Punch for fairies. He also has Mach Punch for that sweet STAB. Ability is Iron Fist, so now all of his moves are given a power boost of 20%. Lowest leveled Pokemon of the bunch, however. 

Next up is Infernape. He’s got Flare Blitz for a strong non-fighting type move. Low Sweep for STAB and to slow down other Poke’s that might go to fight other, slower members of the team. Iron Tail to combat against fairy types and Rock Slide to combat against flying types. Unfortunately, he is stuck with the Blaze ability and second lowest level. 

Then there’s Scrafty! This bad lizard is a psychic type’s nightmare, but a fairy’s dream. Got a 4x weakness to fairy type moves, but this fella is meant to take down psychic Pokemon like a house of cards. Crunch and Snarl get a STAB and is great against psychic types. Also has High Jump Kick, because it’s cool and hits hard. And, as a last stand against fairies, Sludge Bomb. Coupled with the ability Moxie, this is the third strongest Pokemon on the team. They’re also genderless, like their trainer! 

Now, for the “final” Pokemon, I dunno who should be the strongest and who should be second strongest. I love and really identify with both of these Pokemon, and they both have their pros and cons. So I’ll just talk about them both and figure it can be left up to interpretation, lol. 

Heracross! She’s all about STAB, babes, as she’s only got bug and fighting moves in her roster. Bug Bite, Brick Break, Megahorn, and Close Combat. All Attack moves (her best stat) and all getting that STAB. And her ability is Guts, which ups her already wild Attack stat if she’s in a pinch. Unfortunately, she’s got no defenses against flying types and a 4x weakness to them, so she better hope that either Hitmonchan or Infernape take care of those birds first. 

And Kommo-o! She’s another member of the team with a 4x weakness to fairies, so let’s really hope that somebody else handles those for her. But she’s a powerhouse. She’s got the advantage of being a psuedo-legendary, so that already gives her some wicked high stats. Her Soundproof ability also helps make sure that no sound-based moves can hurt her. Move-wise, she’s rather similar to Heracross. STAB time. Clanging Scales and Dragon Pulse for dragon type, and Focus Blast and Drain Punch for fighting type. 

And yeah! That’s my team! I gotta look more into the Fashion that fighting type trainers/gym leaders/E4 members go for, see if I can make an outfit for it. 

[zippdementia]

Part 87 Alignment May Vary: The Sea of Moving Ice

One of the biggest rules of being a good DM is letting your players take direction and control over the story. It is hard to do, sometimes, especially in D&D, where the DM is often put in the position of knowing everything the PCs are going to encounter (per a dungeon map) and in charge of directing a story that they are told by a module. It is something I have gotten better at as I’ve developed as a DM and yet this game presents a unique challenge in that it has gone on for so long and has incorporated so many story elements and plot lines that, as we draw close to a conclusion, there is an element of linearity that is being assumed (we aren’t starting any new huge unresolveable plotlines).

During this next section, which took us about six sessions to play through, and will be broken into two blog posts, I had to remind myself of that a lot and ultimately was able to let go and let the PCs steer the plot into areas I didn’t foresee at all.

Speaking of steering, this section opens with the Players traveling through a teleport in Vraath Keep to Waterdeep, and from there boarding a vessel, an Icebreaker, to take them north into the uncharted Sea of Moving Ice. This is an adventure lifted straight from Tyranny of Dragons, though changed drastically to fit our story needs. I fell in love with the idea of a dungeon embedded in an iceberg and really wanted to bring that into the campaign.

Brief note on the party’s time in Waterdeep: just to set the stage for the current political climate, while in Waterdeep the party learns that while the Alliance (a political banding together of Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, and five lesser cities, whose seat of power is in Waterdeep) has allowed Karina to link her teleport to their city, they are not very supportive of her war effort and feel that getting involved in a war on foreign soil in the Elsir Vale is not very worth their time or attention. They feel powerful enough to repel any invasion that happens to cross the water and seek to attack the Sword Coast; they worry  that Karina’s power and influence make her a figure that people would follow and there are some that mutter that the best thing to happen would be for her and the undead to die fighting each other. 

Into the White

So why are the PCs heading into the Frozen North? What are they looking for? The set up I use for this adventure is that Karina gets a vision in a dream, a message from a dragon she once gave The Rod of Storms to, in exchange for “treasure when she needed it.” The dream tells her to go to the Sea of Moving Ice and find a particular iceberg named Oyaviggaton, which is native for “Winter’s Crown.” However, Karina cannot leave Vraath Keep right now. This vision comes 80 years or so after she initially traded for it. She did not suspect she would be in the middle of running a war when it came. Karina sends the players, in her stead, telling them that her visions showed her an iceberg, and beneath the iceberg, a library. And beneath the library, something for her, waiting... encased in a massive wall of ice.

Cliff Notes: A long while ago, during the Haggemoth adventure, Karina traded the Rod of Storms away to a Bronze Dragon. It was a cool moment and at the time it let me get rid of a troublesome item and focus on the character growth that was happening with Karina. But the dragon made a promise: one day, when the time was right, it would repay her with a gift. Now that time has come! The Rod of Storms ended up coming back into the game, as well, in the hands of one of the Red Hand generals, and from there it was taken by Nysyries, and when she was killed by Harpies it.... geez, I actually don’t recall after that. I remember at some point Aldric got it and it got powered up by an elemental elder on the plane of air, and then Imoaza killed Aldric to get the Rod and then it was used to build Black Razor Alpha... I mean, this item has woven itself in and out of our story. I thank Robert Kendzie for designing it, as part of Haggemoth!

There is a mechanic in the Sea of Moving Ice adventure that determines, using simple dice rolls, how often a random encounter occurs and after how many encounters the PCs find the iceberg they are looking for. I take this table for our use, but with a twist: I come up with a bunch of new encounters and, depending on what they roll, decide to use those to build up the next part of the story. Imoaza’s player ends up getting the first encounter and it’s one I had hoped to use... three Buer Hags (from Vollo’s Guide).

Buer hags are ice Hags, and I play this encounter up, where they attack the Icebreaker while wheeling and laughing about in a storm they created. They try to lock the Icebreaker onto the side of a huge glacier and partially succeed before the party drives them off with powerful magic. But a few things come out of this encounter. First, they realize that Ruz is a changeling and they tell her something strange: “You’ve come looking for the other one, haven’t you? But you can’t have her. You can’t have our child!”

Also, during the fight, one of the Hags descends on a crewsman manning the crow’s nest and brutally devours him alive. The gory display combined with a blast of a spell from the Hags to amplify its effects overloads Milosh’s circuits and he becomes convinced that he is on a mission in his old life, chasing something infinitely important and yet completely undefinable across the fertile plains of his homeworld, Eberon. He charges out into the icy waste and disappears. After combat, Imoaza and Ruz wait for him for a while while helping to fix up the ship. But when he doesn’t return after an hour, they decide they need to go find him. What follows is definitely a side quest and was nothing I expected to happen this adventure, but it is a piece I love. All three of them become lost out in the snowy expanse of the glacier, trying to come up with ways to find their way and find each other. Like Milosh uses a scrying spell to try to find if anyone is around him. And Imoaza has a cool idea. A while back I mentioned she got a glimpse of the Weave, the magic that surrounds everything. So now she asks if she can try to find the Weave again and use it to trace Milosh’s passage. It’s such a fun idea, we run with it, and Imoaza rolls for Arcana, scoring a critical success! With this, the dice are telling the story for us: Imoaza not only taps into the Weave Sight but finds that she can see more than ever before! Around this time, Milosh casts his scrying spell, and to Imoaza it is like a siren going off in her Weave Sight. She tells Ruz and they head off towards Milosh’s location.

The crater Milosh found himself in was cut in half by a humongous Chasm. Milosh thought briefly of taking shelter there from the coming storm but almost immediately discarded the thought. Something about the chasm was uninviting. Or no, that wasn’t quite right. Uninviting means uncomfortable, the opposite of desirous. And a hole in the ground certainly fit that description. But the chasm went beyond this. Looking at it Milosh could almost see the chasm walls pulsing, like they were breathing, like he was staring down the gullet of a gigantic black beast. Milosh didn’t react without purpose to most things, yet staring into that void he shuddered involuntarily and took a step back.

The Crater does indeed hold a monster and it attacks just as Ruz and Imoaza find and reach Milosh. A mighty Remorhaz bursts free of the chasm and chases down the players, fully intending to swallow one of them to slowly digest as it returns to hibernation. Rather than fight it, Ruz casts fly on everyone and they boost out of there, Milosh firing a delayed fireball out of his gun-arm into the furnace like maw of the Remorhaz as they do... as the Remorhaz is immune to fire, it does nothing, except convince them they are making the right choice. This sets us up to run a crazy chase scene, the Remorhaz charging through the snow beneath them as they fly away, trying to not let the building storm knock them back into the awakened creature’s grasp.

They eventually lose it and make their way back to the ship, but one more thing happens before they set sail.

it looked like an abandoned battle site than a camp, Ruz could now see. She silently thanked Karina for the gift of the magical robes that seemed to keep her warm as she bent in the snow and ran a fur-gloved hand through the wreckage of bone and wood that she had found nestled into the shadow of the rock. She frowned as her hand bumped against something else, something made of leather. A bag... and inside, a journal? She picked it up. The pages had not gotten wet, thankfully, and so she teased open the frozen spine and began to read.

As they finally sail away from this glacier, the party spots an old campsite next to what looks like a fortress wall and decides to investigate. They find the remains of some kind of explorer’s party and Ruz finds a journal he does not share with the others. It belonged to a Changeling, someone who was being rescued from the Buer Hags who had stolen her. However, before the party could escape, they were found here in their final campsite and wiped out (or so Ruz can assume, for the journal ends with the words, “I can feel it in the air. My mothers are close.”)

While Ruz reads, Imoaza and Milosh examine the fortress wall. Imoaza finds strange runes all over it and before she can warn him, Milosh scales the wall and sees beyond it where a hole disappears into the earth. Imoaza’s Weave Sight shows her the runes lighting up and something awakening beyond the wall, just as Milosh hears the sobbing of babies coming from the hole and a scrabbling sound.

Terried, the three dart back to the ship and sail away. 

Ready Player Two?

The players are ambushed. It starts with Kobolds, dropping boulders on their ship as it sails down a narrow avenue formed by two glaciers that will, over the course of decades, eventually touch each other. Imoaza flies up to the glacier lip to do battle and while up there, she is attacked by something far worse, a hideous long limbed humanoid which makes a cry like a wailing child as it leaps at her. Imoaza is taken.

This scenario was set up based on their action last time, which released something, or many somethings, that have been hunting them since. But it was also a necessity from a meta game perspective, as we have a session where Imoaza’s player won’t be joining us. So this removes her from the action while keeping suspension high.

I had intended this to be a quick scene, where the PCs realize they are outnumbered and have to abandon their ship to sail away on rowboats, as the boulders from the Kobolds are sinking their boat. Ruz actually does something incredibly clever: he uses a chromatic orb of cold to freeze the holes in the ship and asks if the ship can stay afloat long enough to get them out of there. I say yes... but then I also effectively cut this out as a possibility as three of the long limbed demon-like horrors drop down on the deck and start killing crew.

The result is the scene I intended: there are some nice moments of tension as Ruz and Milosh try to fight back while also freeing their rowboats (some cool uses of Telekineses to do this) and trying to save as many of the crew as possible from the horrid beasts. At the same time, it puts the players on rails more than I like to do. My general thoughts when DMing are not to overplan and not to try to force players into a specific scenario unless the story absolutely calls for it. Those times are RARE, and even then should be made as natural and organic as possible and STILL a DM should be ready for everything to change on them in an instant. Truly good games come from those unexpected changes, those twists and turns that the DM cannot anticipate and must follow to their conclusion. In this case, having the float still be a factor would not have been a detriment to the story and would have made the players feel empowered, which has always been my goal. But I miss it in the moment, and so they escape the ship and Milosh blows it up with a delayed fireball (kinda becoming his Megabuster Signature move).

Still, despite me missing this opportunity, other things arise because of it. The PCs pick up a few survivors out of the water, including the one-eyed, hook handed Captain, and set out into a lonely night broken by a sea of stars above them. And in this moment, Ruz and Milosh share a very cool, player directed, bonding moment. Ruz casts a psychic spell so they can speak without “speaking,” and maybe because of the quiet blackness, the rocking of the boat, their exhaustion, or the incredible otherworldly view of the stars, they transcend the physical plane and end up together in another space. Hear, Milosh sees Ruz’s true Changeling form and Ruz reveals what she is. She also reveals what she read in the journal and that she believes there is another Changeling out here on the ice, somewhere. The two speak of Imoaza and refuse to believe she is gone. They speak of their purpose and realize that both of them have lost a piece of their purpose. Milosh’s entire existence was devoted to the Surveyor, or in this case the next closest thing (Carrick, possessed of a piece of the Surveyor’s soul). With him gone, he now doggedly pursues the prophecy, trying to stop it from coming to fruition. But he does so without direction and without a thought to what might come after. Ruz, on the other hand, lost her entire history, displaced from a world she knew to a near eternity spent in Chaos. Now she has returned to find her city destroyed, her homeland under siege, and she has no one left to fight for except herself. Ruz says that no matter what, she will not be a sacrifice to this new Faerun she doesn’t know. She has sacrificed enough. She wants to find a family and live again. They both agree that their goals mean seeing this war through to its end, winning it, and then having the freedom to move on. Overwhelmed by Ruz’s candor, Milosh reveals his truth to her, as well: that he was taken from another world, aeons ago... so long ago he is not even sure that world exists anymore. He was placed in this cybernetic body by the Surveyor and told to pursue the prophecy. He does not know what future he would even want for himself, now.

Their discussion is interrupted by the captain, who tells them they are coming up on the iceberg they sought.

In Tyranny of Dragons, Oyaviggaton is the primary dungeon, an iceberg home to a white dragon who is dominating the Eskimo-esque villagers who reside on its floating lair. I’ve changed this scenario a little, making the Dragon a trio of witches and adding in some story-related pieces to the dungeon, as well as changing some of its challenges to match my level 16 and 17 (Milosh) characters. But the primary outline I’ve kept the same, and that ends up leading to some unexpected ire on the part of my players. See, in the original, the natives on the island are suspicious of the outsiders and stage a fight between them and their champion warrior, Orcaheart. They say it is to be a one-on-one fight with NO MAGIC... and then they cheat during the fight (the shaman, Bonecarver, heals Orcaheart). And if caught cheating, they turn this around on the players and attack them for daring to accuse their shaman. It’s a very hostile moment and it is definitely meant to conjure up the “hostile natives in a strange land” trope that is part of many pulp fiction works of yore. And despite it being anachronistic and unintentionally racist, it does touch on a style of storytelling that is so embedded in Western culture that I can’t help but be enamored with the moment. It’s problematically familiar. 

That said, it also has a major design trap for the unwary DM. And tonite, I was that DM.

See, if the natives are under the thrall of an evil force, then the whole point is that the PCs should want to help them. Having the natives cheat and lie during what is supposed to be an honorable fight doesn’t enamor them to the PCs. In fact, it is liable to make players loathe them. This could potentially be circumvented by some really big clues as to what is going on behind the scenes or, even better, by making one of the natives a very obvious ally, who can then also explain what’s going on. The text even suggests this be Bonecarver... but that is hurt by the fact that they also make Bonecarver the one who cheats!

Had I thought about this ahead of time, I would have taken out the cheating entirely. It doesn’t add anything except more conflict, and this is already literally a head on brawl. You don’t need the extra bit. But I don’t think about it and the end result is a laughable amount of rage being directed at these already victimized natives. Milosh is the one to go up against the mighty Orcaheart and he almost wins... but the cheating means he gets knocked unconscious and when Ruz spots and points out the cheating by using magic of his own to strengthen his voice, the natives turn on him as an evil mage and knock him out, too.

Oh man, the players are pissed! They wake up inside the iceberg dungeon and, spotting three frog-like humanoids going through their belongings, immediately unleash hell upon one of them, smashing him to jelly against a wall. The others reveal they were sent by Bonecarver to help them proceed deeper into the iceberg and fight the witches. Then they hand them potions (a third is currently smashed against the wall) and flee for their lives.

The players make a pact to (a) stop the witches, and (b) burn the village to the ground.

Below the Berg

Now inside the Iceberg (and on a new session), it’s time to bring the party back together. Milosh and Ruze begin searching the dungeon and in the process come across a couple of trophy rooms: rooms where giant monsters and even an entire treasure galleon have been frozen by the power of the Bhuer Sisters. They also encounter more Kobolds, these ones carrying Imoaza, who has been frozen in a block of ice!

The players make quick work of the Kobolds (two turns) and go to work on freeing Imoaza with fire spells. When the block of ice is damaged enough, she comes back to her senses and breaks free with Blackrazor suddenly in her hand and a wild look in her eyes. Her two companions back away and try to talk sense into her. But Imoaza is seeing other people... Aldric is in front of her, accusing her of his murder and taunting her for getting trapped in a cold place... like the place he died. Imoaza reacts as she does to most opposition: disdainfully. And in her disdain, she finds her way back to the present. But Aldric’s voice will forever be taunting her, now. This is an indefinite madness, a leftover of her harrowing experience being ambushed by the Wendigo, the hideous creature with the cry like a child that captured her and brought her unconscious to the witches, who froze her for their keepsake. Aldric’s player (now playing Milosh) actually role plays this voice out when appropriate, basically bringing the voice of Aldric back into the game, even if Imoaza is the only one who can hear it.

The three, now reunited, set about exploring more of the iceberg. They find many interesting things here, which will be detailed in the next post: Still Frozen.

[a-d-n-d-journal]

Game Session #11

Characters:

Mirri in the wind, tabaxi; rapier, lute, cleric (of Tempus) robes

Rysiel, half-elf druid; acid burns, simple clothing and leather armor, scimitar

Teir, tiefling warlock; acid burns, vibrant gold skin and black hair w/silver highlights, horns, hooves, expensive-looking clothes and leather armor, carries a dagger as his only (physical) weapon

Zastu, dragonborn rogue; white scales almost completely covered in a hooded cape and mask, leather armor, short bow and shortsword + dagger

Noteable NPCs...

Sydiri Haunlar, human (Chondathan) fighter; brunette, chain shirt, dagger, shortbow, wooden club

Zephyros, cloud giant; windswept white hair, wispy white beard, billow purple robe with gold stars

It's been a busy week since our last game, so there are some things I can't really recall about our session. We all got together at Mirri's-player's place and had some tacos, which was great!

Picking up from last time... The adventurers discovered that some of the cultists missionaries had flown upstairs to... Do what? They weren't sure, but they needed to get up there! They spent some time trying to figure it out. They estimated about 100ft up, and they had enough rope, but no way to get it up. Rillix, the Tressym, could not carry that weight. However, the winged cat could carry something small... Rysiel turned into a crab and Rillix carried him up. But first the druid spent some time actually trying to find the cat, and then some more time trying to convince it to do the task. Rillix is very intelligent, but Rysiel ended up bribing him. Once upstairs, the tressym wouldn't leave Rysiel alone until he fed it some of the meat dropped from the griffons (in the aerie above the second floor). Rysiel looks around... Zephyros is lying catatonic on the ground, drooling a little bit. A pillow is halfway under his head, and it looks like someone tried to pull the blankets off the giant's bed, but gave up halfway through. A slightly glowing orb floats 10ft off the ground in a corner, and a 5x9ft chest sits in another. The walls are filled with shelves of giant books. A hole in the ceiling leads to the aerie. There's no sign of the cultists missionaries or their giant vultures. Not being in immediate danger, Rysiel tries to figure out how to get the rest of the party up.

Zastu ties the two 50ft ropes together and fastens it to an arrow (not sure why I decided an arrow could life 20lbs of rope, but a tressym couldn't -shrugs-). It takes two tries, but she gets the arrow through the hole 100ft up, where Rysiel grabs it. (Retcon: I forgot to give the party a magic item at the start of the session...) Sydiri had found a peculiar rod in among the junk that Zephyros dumped down earlier. It had an engraved design of a horse's head at each end, and a button. Teir played with it and discovered that, when the button was pressed, the rod stopped moving in midair. It seemed pretty stable, so the decide to use it. Rysiel ties the rope, temporarily, to Zephyros' hand, allowing Zastu to clamber up with the floating rod and a boost from Teir and Mirri. At the top, she and Rysiel tie the rope to the rod and let Mirri up. Teir ties the rope to his waist with Sydiri's help, and is raised. The warlock uses Guidance to help the process. OK, so they're all at the top. Now what? Zephyros is "awake", but unresponsive. They try healing him, but no cure spell works. Teir casts Shocking Grasp, which jolts the giant upright, but all he will do is ramble incoherently. They decide to leave him be. Mirri's been curious about what's up here for a while, so they look around a bunch, eventually settling on the giant's bed and playing the lute. Teir checks out the chest, which is more than big enough to get into. There's some clothing, a giant comb with gems in it, and a spellbook. The spellbook is super interesting, but Teir can only copy spells that have a ritual component... None of these ones do. The warlock casts Detect Magic and looks around. Lots of magic stuff, like Zephyros' staff, the spellbook, the floating orb, the floating rod, etc etc, but nothing they didn't already know about. The books on the shelves appear to be journals that Zephyros has written, so they contain no more interest than the ones he's already brought down for them. Teir sends his spectral raven up through the hole in the ceiling to the griffon aerie. It's a lot lower than the ceiling of the 1st floor, so he can see through its eyes. Two griffons watch curiously, but leave the raven alone. There's some nests, some meat from a leftover hunt, but nothing interesting, and no cultists missionaries either. Eventually satisfying their curiousity, and realising that the cultists missionaries aren't there, they head down the rope (except for Mirri, who naps on the giant bed). Once downstairs, the three discover that Sydiri has gone outside to speak with the cultists missionaries. They check in on her, but she seems fine. They're really bored. A few hours later, Zephyros has recovered and descends to the first floor. The cultists missionaries come in to hear his descision. The giant seems ready to ask them to leave, but Sydiri seems to have converted to their way of thinking. There's an awkward conversation with the party, where it sounds like they want Zephyros to help them? Again, it's not clear what the cultists missionaries really want. Zephyros does end up asking them to leave though. On their way out, the cultists missionaries drop a pouch of something, which Zephyros gives to the party. Rysiel snatches it, and not knowing what the sparkling dust does, he takes a pinch and tastes it. He turns invisible, must be invisibility dust! But Teir is pretty sure it's fae-related, and not what they think it is. No one bothers asking the high-level wizard giant, for some reason.

A few days pass. Zastu finishes making her minor healing potions, and Sydiri still talks occasionally about how cool it would be if the prime material plane were reverted to a state of elemental chaos--where there was no ground and you just fell into the sky forever. It's pretty creepy. Anyway. She's outside one day when she sees a silver dragon approaching. Teir and Mirri go outside to investigate/greet them, while Rysiel and Zastu stay inside with Zephyros. As the silver dragon approaches, they see that it carries THREE dwarves in each talon. That's how big this guy is...! Teir greets him respectfully in draconic and asks what they're doing here. The dragon is pleasantly surprised, and tells them that he owes the dwarf queen a favour and he's just ferrying these dwarves around. He also asks about Rysiel's dragon skull, because he can see the druid poking his head through the curtain. It's an evil blue skull, but unfortunately Rysiel did not kill it. Oh well. The dwarves themselves are brusque. They're here to stop the giants from flying too near their territory. Giants have been tearing up the land, and they don't want any boulders or anything dropped on any settlements (like with Nightstone). Teir and Mirrir are making some progress with the negotiations and convincing the dwarves that Zephyros isn't going to harm them, but... Suddenly Rysiel casts Ice Knife and hurls it at the dwarves!! I guess he doesn't like them? The Ice Knife misses, but each of the six dwarves reaches into their pouch simultaneously and grabs a potion, which they then quaff. They all turn into puffy clouds and start floating (slowly) into the tower. They float past Rysiel, who can't do anything, and start moving about the first floor. Zephyros asks what's going on, and the party fills him in. The giant wizard casts Charm Person on two of the clouds, making them friendly toward him. They then revert to solid for and start chatting. The giant doesn't seem overly concerned, and they really just seem to be exchanging pleasantries. What an eccentric guy... (There are a bunch of skill rolls in our chat log, but I don't remember what they're for) Eventually the remaining four clouds start floating up to the second floor. A minute later there are sounds of throwing axes hitting something. Zephyros stops chatting and starts casting levitate. Zastu and Rysiel manage to grab his feet as he rises into the air, but Teir doesn't try and Mirri misses. They hang out with the two dwarves downstairs.

Upon reaching the second floor and seeing the dwarves throwing axes at his Navigation Orb, Zephyros casts Resilient Sphere over the valuable item. Thwarted, the Dwarves turn to the three newcomers. Zastu springs into action--she doesn't want to kill the dwarves, so she aims to try to knock them out, but misses. Rysiel does the same, his attack connecting. Unfortunately, there are four dwarves with multiple attacks. They don't want to kill either, so two of them gang up and knock out Zatsu. Rysiel is a bit more lucky, and she remains on her feet. On Zephyros' turn, he casts Mass Suggestion. All but one of the dwarves is affected, and Zephyros commands them to leave peacefully. The remaining dwarf stands there trying to rouse his companions from their magical stupor, but it doesn't work. Rysiel takes the opportunity to cast Cure Wounds on Zastu, waking her up again. The angry druid prepares to cast Moon Beam, but it's Zephyros' turn, and his Charm Person spell allows him to convince the remaining dwarf that they should leave peacefully as well. The giant ends up ferrying them all downstairs, where the dwarves decide to leave under the magical compulsion. Zephyros mutters something about dwarves and dragons, and pretends that nothing happened.

The next day, they arrive at Triboar. They survey the town from above, trying to memorize its basic layout. Mirri looks for a temple, hopefully one to Tempus. Zephyros gives Teir a notebook he has, this one a reasonable size, filled with History and Arcana facts in the common language.

Spells cast:

Mirri:

Abilities:

Cantrips:

Spells:

Rysiel:

Cantrips:

Spells: Cure Wounds (1st), Ice Knife (1st)

Teir:

Cleric abilities:

Cantrips: Shocking Grasp

Spells: Cure Wounds

Rituals: Detect Magic

Treasure looted:

Zastu continued making the rest of her minor healing potions (she has 4 now)

Everyone decided to exchange their misc loot for gold

Magic "floating" rod (Teir?)

Magic (faerie?) dust (9 uses left, Rysiel)

Notebook filled with info on History and Magic (Teir)

[feheroestips]

Quick overview

Nowi is somewhat of an oddball in heroes. For a start her stats Low speed and somewhat low res never sounds like a good combo, and her attack dosen’t even hit 50. However she has amazing Hp and her defence is pretty solid as well. When the game first came out I couldn’t understand why people used her, maybe it was because of awakening and how the games cast is maremite for some people, but the true reasons is her base skill set isin’t bad and synergies quite well. But most importantly Lighting breath. Nowi is an amazing blue tank unit if you have her, but its normally scale or be scaled for her.

Base kit

Nowis biggest selling point is her lighting breath +, the arguably best breath in the game right now. Its got distant counter built in, those making her very good during enemy phase. However it comes with the side effect of lowering your special cooldown by 1. which she dosent have one anyway so......... good going INTSTS. She then has rally defence, rally skills are okay I guess, attack or speed is nice but its a nice clutch sometimes. Defence +3 is also pretty good as it helps her against melee units, and then finally threaten resistance which if the foe survives the first battle, she can normally KO them on the next due to dragon breath being magical based.

If you’re looking to complete the kit Im not going to lie, literally slapping on moonbow and swordbreaker is you’re best option, in fact its arguably her best set. 

Suggested set

I am Nowi, hear me roar!

+atk/spd -res

Lighting breath +, Reposition, Moonbow

Fury 3/triangle adept 3, Swordbreaker 3, threaten res 3

Nowi needs +spd ideally as it lessens the amount of units who can double her, which helps her do what she does best, fight back. Moonbow is used because her weapon slows the charge so she needs a low cool down one, which the best right now is moonbow. Sword breaker helps her survive against units who have falchion mainly, but also to double them back due to her low speed compared to most reds. Triangle adept can be used to help this, but Id suggest fury due to it buffing all her stats by 3 and puts her at 36 speed when +speed nature. Honestly though the rest of it is her base kit, shes pretty cheap to build and you seldom need other skills, my advice would be though, if you have Ninian as well, use her as the dancer on the team as fortify dragons can boost Nowis base defence to 36, with neutral ivs and no skills, along with her resistance. Allowing Nowi to take many hits and then dish painful ones back.

[rumikothefox]

Favorite Monster Hunter Monsters, Part 1

I have a lot of favorite monsters in this series.  It was honestly very hard to narrow it down in any capacity.  Even having only played a few of the games, narrowing it down still only got me down to 15 normies and 8 elder dragons.  I’m doing the elder dragons in a separate post because I feel like it’s unfair to compare normal monsters to elder dragons that are basically MADE to be extra cool and very powerful.

I have played 3 Ultimate, Portable 3rd, 4 Ultimate, and touched a LITTLE into Freedom Unite (not enough to get super far).  I JUST hit the end of low rank in World, so even if high rank introduces any cool new monsters in that game, you won’t see them on this list.  You also won’t see monsters I’ve never fought, so sorry if Amatsu or Lao-Shan being excluded make you sad.  I never fought them.

These aren’t in any particular order.

Brachydios

I believe it was Gaijin Hunter who mentioned that your first flagship monster will always be close to your heart.  Considering MH3U was my first official romp through the MH series, it makes sense for Brachydios to be on this list. While the American release gave us Azure Rathalos on the cover for MH3U, the actual flagship for the game was originally Brachydios (look up the Japanese boxart). Brachy gave us the introduction to slime/blast weapons, which usually end up some of the best weapons in the game now. Brachy’s glowy parts are actually explosive saliva that he coats on his pounders and horn to attack with. I love the little detail that to coat his horn, you see him use his pounders much like a cat uses its paws to clean its face. He has a deviant/variant called the Raging Brachydios that causes explosions more quickly and whose pounders, horn, and even tail will eventually explode just from repeated hunter attacks. I love his mechanics, but as far as looks, nothing will beat that blue sheen the original Brachy boasts. His weapons look pretty awesome too and motivated me to make them for each weapon type just for the hell of it.

Gore Magala

Another weird flagship situation. Gore Magala was on the cover for our US release of MH4U, but he was actually the MH4 flagship. Still, regardless of whose flagship he is, you can’t deny the cool factor. I loved that we got this really cool black-and-purple themed armor from him that gave me slight Alatreon vibes, and at pretty low level as well, making it possible to look like a raging badass pretty early on. I also always found it awesome how the area you were in would darken when he enraged. He introduced the Frenzy mechanic to us, a strange mechanic that could debuff you if you weren’t careful, but that was also able to buff the hunter if dealt with correctly. Even though you beat him pretty early on, his effects are long-reaching and cause other monsters through the game to be frenzied and, worse, apex, a special level of frenzy that was just.... yikes. Ask anyone who played a lot of MH4U endgame what 140 apex jho was like. I also love that, to use a cliche, this isn’t even his final form. The form of him you see in the picture above is an adolescent form. When it gets old enough, it sheds its darker scales and takes on this pale ivory look as a Shagaru Magala. There is also a variant called the Chaotic Gore Magala, a Gore Magala that tried to shed its scales but was only able to change halfway. Still, neither of them really hit me as much as the original.  He brought us a new mechanic that made things exciting and looked too damn cool, even if he’s a total edge lord.

Seregios

At some point, I’m going to stop with the flagships. Really. But Seregios was just too cool to pass up. He introduced the Bleed mechanic, one that causes the hunter further harm if they move or evade while suffering from it. To be honest, when I first saw a promotional image of him, I was severely disappointed. They liked to show him with his scales flat against his body, which made him look like little more than a sleek, gold-ish wyvern. Cool, but not entirely original or awesome for something that was the MH4U flagship.  Then I saw him take on a Rathian and puff up his scales and I got it. I also love his hawk-like roar, despite him having zero to do with a hawk (except the flying thing I guess?). His movements are a bit on the fast side, but once you learn his movements he is a fun monster to fight. He also has some of the cooler weapons in the game, mechanic-wise. For melee weapons, evading with your weapon out causes your weapon to regain some of its sharpness. The weapons aren’t stingy on initial sharpness either, making them weapons you don’t have to use many whetstones for. For bowguns, evading with your weapon out causes you to reload a single bullet of your currently loaded ammo. And for the bow, close range coating gets the same damage boost as if you were also using power coating.  It’s pretty awesome. I used that light bowgun through a huge portion of G Rank. 

Furious Rajang

A variant of Rajang rather than a subspecies, I think Furious Rajang was the first time I really felt like a monster was just insurmountable for me. Sure, a monster like Jho is scary, but never once did I feel like I couldn’t ever beat one eventually. Rajang, especially his Furious variant, just basically wiped the floor with me so often that I very nearly began to hate him more than a few times. He was the monster I had the hardest time learning the tells for, for some reason. It was frustrating and, seeing as I fought him in MH4U and I was largely a gunner in that game, not evading in time and getting hit by nearly anything of his would often one-shot me, or get very close unless I was absolutely topped off in hp.  He’s one of the main reasons I honed for Life on my bowguns. But besides the large hate I had for him and the fact that I needed some of his armor.... he’s just so damn cool. His roar has this strange effect that almost sounds like he’s doing it through a loudspeaker and almost breaking the speaker with the sound. He is a monkey that pretty much goes super saiyajin when angry. He shoots lightning out of his mouth. Let’s summarize that: he’s a super saiyajin lightning monkey with a cool roar. I mean... come on! And as stated, his armor ended up in a lot of franken-sets just due to how good some of the skills were on them.

Those fists will kill ya, though.

Molten Tigrex

Let’s cross a tiger, a T-rex, and a wyvern. Let’s make him angry. Let’s make him hungry. Let’s make an angrier and hungrier version of him. Okay, now let’s make an even angrier and hungrier version of him that uses blast and is the size of a brick shithouse. Perfect.

Don’t get me wrong, Tigrex is a cool fucking monster. He’s pretty much up there with Jho in terms of a monster that is just a ton of aggression and hunger. He’s the choo choo of death and god help you if you step on the tracks. Brute Tigrex is pretty awesome as well. I didn’t realize a Tigrex could become MORE aggressive, but apparently I was mistaken. But then in strolls Molten Tigrex. Not only do I love his coloration, but I love just how absolutely huge he is. He starts off slow for a mercy, though as the fight goes on, he gets progressively faster and crazier. He can put puffs of blast powder in the air much like Teostra and set it off using his claws like pieces of flint. He also covers ground very fast with how big he is. You have to use caution as a melee user because due to his size, you can easily get lost in attacking him and not see a tell that would otherwise have you preparing for the incoming attack.

His weapons are very good, especially his heavy bowgun, which is among the best heavy bowguns in the game. Plus... it’s his head. You made a cannon out of his damn head. I mean... how can you beat that?

Glacial Agnaktor/Zamtrios

To be honest, it was hard to pick just one here. I love these monsters for similar reasons. Both are these huge monsters that just kind of swim through the ice and snow as if it were water. Zamtrios is a little less stealthy about it, but he has that awesome Jaws effect going on when he does it. 

Glacial Agnaktor is a subspecies.  The normal monster, the Agnaktor, is a fire-based monster who lives in volcanos and wears lava like armor once it cools on his body.  By constrast, the Glacial Agnaktor packs ice and snow tightly on his body to make his armor, preferring to live in freezing tundras over raging volcanos.  I got very well acquainted with this monster while farming his lance set, since his armor was the best guard lance set in the game by far. His movements are cool and I love the little clicking thing the Agnaktor family does with their beaks. A little less of a fan of the 360 no scope beam of death, but that part is also kind of cool, too.

Zamtrios has a sand-based subspecies and while I love the Tigerstripe Zamtrios’ paralysis weapons to death, I can’t help but like the style and feel of the original monster more. I laughed when I saw him balloon up for the first time because it was goofy as hell, but it quickly became closer to terrifying when I realized that form is surprisingly swift when he wants it to be and boy does it hurt when he lands on you. He also does the ice/snow armor thing, along with giving himself a sawtooth nose to boot.

Overall, I love them both and they feel so similar that I just decided to group them together.

Abyssal Lagiacrus

Okay, this one is a little bit of a cheat. I have actually never fought Abyssal Lagiacrus myself. I’ve seen screenshots and know he’s fought in the same arena as Caedeus, but outside of that, my knowledge of him is minimal. I regret that I never got to fight him. I was late to the party with MH3U to begin with and didn’t know a lot of people who played MH at the time, so I had a hard time leveling my HR by myself and to unlock his quest, you had to get your HR to 70. He was the highest HR single monster hunt in the online guild hall. His weapons looked really damn cool to me and I always wanted them, but I was unable to get them.

Lagiacrus as a whole is a really cool monster though. I loved the sea serpent theme of him and while I often celebrate the lack of water combat in the newer games, fighting him underwater was always a really cool challenge. I thought Ivory Lagiacrus would be easier because he’s on land more and while I was correct to an extent, Ivory is much more aggressive and dangerous and it sort of offset that solid ground comfort. I love the fact that as he gets more charged up, those spikes on his back start to glow. Overall, I found him fun to fight and I can’t think of third gen in general without thinking of the Lagiacrus.

Savage Deviljho

Deviljho is amazingly scary on his own. You first come across him when you definitely aren’t powerful enough to take him on. He strolls on up, sensing a free meal, and he doesn’t care if he takes it out of you, Cha-Cha, your palicos, or the monsters you’re fighting. He’s nomadic, having no territory of his own and therefore able to be found just about anywhere. He’s just looking for where the food is. He will even eat his own severed tail if you give him half a chance.

He’s also easily one of the largest monsters you’ve seen by the time you first encounter him.  Only weapons with decently high reach are going to reach his tail or head on a normal basis and he does large sweeping attacks and huge strides that bridge distances in a time you wouldn’t expect from a monster so bulky.

Savage Deviljho is that much more terrifying. His base form is what you’re used to seeing for an enraged Deviljho. When Savage Jho enrages, he gets a shroud of dragon energy over the top of his head and back and all you see around his eyes is a black shroud with glowing red eyes peering at you from it.  Truly, the abyss stares back at you. Savage Jho is just that much more mean and powerful than his normal counterpart.  I also love the coloration of his gear. Deviljho gear has a pretty cool shape, but while the normal gear is this dulled green, the Savage Jho gear has this almost punk black-and-hot-pink thing going on that I think looks awesome.

I think that’s it for part 1. I’ll finish up the rest of the normal monsters in a second part coming up and elder dragons will have their own third part. o/

[hentaihunblog-blog]

Pokemon Go Real Time Weather Gives Powerful Pokemon – OtakuKart

New Post has been published on https://hentaihun.com/blog/2017/12/15/pokemon-go-real-time-weather-gives-powerful-pokemon-otakukart/

Pokemon Go Real Time Weather Gives Powerful Pokemon – OtakuKart

Niantic parent company behind Pokemon go launched the biggest update of 2017, It seems Niantic really loves to surprise its Player community in year’s last month. Niantic Launched 50 new Generation 3 Pokemon Go.With new amazing generation 3 Pokemon, Niantic included a really amazing Real-time weather system.

Pokemon Go added Real-time weather effects.Now Pokémon GO should now be able to sync with your local weather conditions. That will invoke some cool new animations onscreen, but it actually has gameplay effects as well.For all of the below types, the weather conditions equate to 25% more Stardust when caught, increased spawn rates and increased strength in battle:

Pokemon Go’s new weather feature is causing some insanely strong Pokemon to appear in the wild.For the last year and a half, Pokemon Go has had a secret two-part cap as to how strong Pokemon can be when players catch them. Pokemon won’t appear at a level higher than the trainer catching them (so a Level 20 Trainer will never find a wild Pokemon at Level 21) and no wild Pokemon will be higher than Level 30.

However, that may have just changed due to the new Dynamic Weather system just implemented by Pokemon Go. Players are now reporting seeing and capturing Level 32 to Level 34 Pokemon in the wild, all of which appeared due to a “weather spawn.” Pokemon that spawn due to the weather have a small ring around it, and it appears that these Pokemon can also have a boosted level in the wild.

Raid Bosses that are affected by the weather also get a boosted level when caught. Usually, all Raid Bosses are caught at Level 20, but those affected by the weather can be caught at Level 25 instead.

Pokemon Go did claim that certain Pokemon in the wild would have boosted CP due to the weather, but players assumed that it referred to either Raid Bosses or a general buff that applies to all Pokemon, wild or tame. No one expected for Pokemon Go to actually exceed its Level Cap, thus giving players access to some great Pokemon without needing to spend Stardust and Rare Candies.

Clear Weather – Ground, Grass, Fire

Partly Cloudy Weather– Rock, Normal

Snow Weather– Steel, Ice

Rain Weather – Water, Electric, Bug

Fog Weather– Ghost, Dark

Windy Weather– Dragon, Flying, Psychic

For now, the 50 Generation 3, weather effects and beta stage of battle parties are the biggest changes in Pokemon Go. All of this sounds pretty great, and I wish it was about 30 degrees warmer here so players wouldn’t freeze while catching all these new Pokémon.

A big holiday update is in the works, with more details to be shared “soon.As we can clearly see Niantic is actively expanding the Pokemon GO development team to build many more amazing updates in 2018.“Stay tuned for news next week about upcoming improvements to certain features.” and as a trainer, I hope we get something much better than a global event.What are your thoughts?Lemme hear you guys out in the comments or you can get connected with me on Snapchat-Vibsz16 and Instagram. Stay tuned.

Here is the list of Top 10 Gen 3 Pokemon That Are As Strong As Legendary Pokemon, and can help any player to capture and attack gyms.

Number 10 – Milotic

MAX CP- 2542 ATTACK – 60 DEFENSE – 79 STAMINA – 190

Milotic is an aquatic, serpentine Pokémon with a primarily cream-colored body. It has red eyes with long, pinkish antennae above them. Additionally, there are long, hair-like fins above its eyes, which begin thin and thicken towards the tips. These eyebrows extend to almost half of Milotic’s body length and will be longer on the female than the male. On top of its relatively small head is a straight spike. The tail consists of four large, blue fins with pink ovals in their centers. Each of the tail fins overlaps the next slightly, causing it to resemble a fan. While it has not been depicted, Milotic’s scales are said to change color depending on the viewing angle.

Number 9 – Flygon

MAX CP- 2458 ATTACK – 100 DEFENSE – 80 STAMINA – 160

Flygon resembles a slightly insectoid, bipedal dragon. It is primarily light green and has a pair of large rhombus-shaped wings with a red trim, toeless hind legs, and skinny arms with three-clawed hands. Its tail has several dark green stripes and three small green rhombus shapes with red trims at the end. It has large eyes and a pair of green antennae that point back. The eyes have red covers that prevent sand from getting into its eyes. With its wings, it kicks up sandstorms to hide. Its wings make a “singing” sound when they are flapped, earning Flygon the name “The Desert Spirit”. It lives in the desert.

Number 8 – Gardevoir

MAX CP- 2341 ATTACK – 65 DEFENSE – 65 STAMINA – 136

Beginning its life as Ralts (the Pokemon that kinda looks like male genitalia), it’s a little surprising it turns into Gardevoir – who looks a lot like some kind of elegant dancer (and a lot of other things, if you dare to venture into Google Image Search – which reminds us: NEVER GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH ANY POKEMON EVER BUT ESPECIALLY NOT GARDEVOIR). Apart from its traumatic internet legacy, it’s a pretty solid Pokemon (now one of the added Fairy-types), and its Pokedex entries indicate that it would do anything to protect its trainer. Always nice to know your Pokemon has Stockholm’s Syndrome.

Number 7 –….

CONT READING….

[zippdementia]

Part 36 Alignment May Vary: Finale

Thirty six posts and over a year ago we began this crazy romp with three prisoners on a ship in the middle of the chilly Moon Sea. Now we come full circle. Karina has found and forgiven her mentor, Tyrion has cured his affliction, and their new companion Traki is about to become wrapped up forever in the machinations of the red hand...

Why did he join this group of travelers? The question hits Traki like a stone. The night before agreeing to follow the Tiefling into the mind of her mentor, he had had a vision, a true vision, the first one since he had crashed on the accursed island. In it, he had once again seen his brother Falco, who told him that the elves of his homeland had felt his presence as soon as he had left Rori Rama.

“I am coming home to you, brother,” Traki had said. But Falco had told him that no home was left. Dragons had come to the woods. Dragons had pierced the secret places, found the valley, burned it and anyone who dared to stand against them. Nor had the dragons been alone: A goblinesque creature had ridden one, a great Black Beast of a Dragon, and on his chest had been painted the symbol of a Red Hand. Home, which had existed peacefully in the forest valley for thousands of years, was gone.

The Red Hand... Traki had seen the Hand clawing at the earth in fevered visions, had seen it spreading fire across the trees and forests of the world. He had also seen three figures, indistinct in their features, stride towards the hand, bringing with them light. Three figures he had seen, and three he had found, two Tieflings and a halfing. Inauspicious heroes to be sure, but he had told his brother he could not return to him yet, that he had to go chasing the Hand. And then he had followed the female Tiefling into her dream world. The Gods had repaid his gumption by taking his eyes.

But they will not take my world.

Determined, Traki told himself he would train; every day until the exhaustion tore him into sleep he would train to learn to rely on his other senses. Blindness would not be a disability but a boon. He would not be distracted from his purpose. His enemies could hide their bodies but not their smells, their breathing, their sighs of fear as he came for them. He would follow the three of his vision and the Red Hand would fall.

First, though, there are bills to pay.

Returning the Favor

Clem and the other crew members of Twyin’s Revenge approach the companions shortly after their return from Rayden’s mind.

“There is the issue of payment,” Clem explains as they all gather. “Our crew put nearly a year of their lives into this and expected 50% of the treasure in return, as Abenthy promised Captain Krisp. We are guessing that treasure doesn’t exist...”

Clem and the crew end up demanding several things: all of the party’s gold, the ship Tywin’s Revenge, and the eye of Callax from Karina. The party is willing to give up the ship, but they are not happy about the gold and Karina refuses to give up her most precious item, so a bartering ensues. It becomes heated once, when Tyrion casts Hold Person on Clem, but quickly the party realizes they will never make it back to civilzation on their own. The crew has them in a bind.

Ultimately they settle on giving up their masterwork weapons for resale, as well as several magical items—most prominent among them Haggemoth’s Band of Intellect and Belt of Defence, Tyrion’s Ioun Stone, and Karina’s Elven Chainmail. They are hard bargains, but as the crew puts it, they were owed much much more.

It is a sullen party, thus, that makes it way back to Ottoman Docks. Rayden and Xaviee depart at the Desert Island of Thud along the way, Rayden to await Karina’s return here (she still has to claim the portion of the land that the Fuzwah of Thud gifted her) and then assist her in whatever she decides to do, and Xaviee to catch a ship back to the Elsir Vale.

“Better men than I took on this quest and did not survive,” Xaviee tells them. “I can only imagine that the gods are not done with me yet. But I also know my path no longer matches your own. Abenthy showed me that. If I see him... well, best not to dwell on it. I will return to my homeland and prepare to finish what Twyin started.”

His parting is bittersweet. He leaves a friend, but a distant one, hurt deeply by Abenthy’s turn to his demonic father.

The group arrives at Ottoman’s dock in a late afternoon turned to night by a building storm. They make their way past the docks and Rose’s old tavern (now seemingly a gambling hall) and arrive at Zennatos door. Karina pauses here. It is almost too painful to open that door. The last time she did, Abenthy was here, and Tywin with his smarmy smile and callous manner. Both gone now. No, Abenthy is not gone, only changed forever. The thought comes as she gathers her resolve and pushes her way inside.

And finds herself staring into Abenthy’s cool eyes.

“Karina. I thought we might meet here. I was just explaining to Zennatos what must happen next, and why.”

Zennatos and Abenthy sit in the crowded sitting room, facing each other from the depths of large plush armchairs. Zennatos clutches a cup of tea like it is a magic shield of protection, while Abenthy sits calmly, unmoving as a statue except for the slight turn of the head he gives to look at Karina. His skin is like a statue’s as well, deathly pale, though with a strange dullness to it. His eyes, too, once so bright, are now strangely dead. He has lost his shine.

His life. Karina thinks. He is drifting away from all that made him cherish life.

Tyrion’s thoughts are more direct: I will kill this bastard. He had not forgotten the power lost when Haggemoth’s scales were destroyed, nor the way Abenthy had blithely brushed off his attacks afterwards. It was past time for a rematch.

Traki, on the other hand, sees nothing but feels the tension in the room and decides to leave well enough alone, at least for the time being. He says nothing but listens intently as Abenthy begins to explain why Zennatos must die.

“He stole the book,” Abenthy says. “And that in turn led to death and destruction for everyone. The people of Friezorazov, enslaved now by the Giant. The paladins of the monastery, dead by our hands.”

“The Desert Island of Thud,” Tyrion shoots back. “Saved by us.”

Abenthy stared at him. “One good deed does not erase the bad.”

“And one bad deed does not erase the good,” Karina counters. “This is wrong, Abenthy. It is not for you to punish Zennatos or judge him.”

“It is for me. I am the inevitability of Justice. There is no other more able to judge.”

Karina moves suddenly and stands in front of Zennatos. Quickly, Verrick moves to her side. Abenthy looks at him, and there is a touch of sadness in his eyes.

“I see you have reunited with your lover.”

“He lives, yes.”

“Move aside, Karina. I don’t wish to hurt you. I won’t hurt you.”

“And you won’t hurt Zennatos, either.”

“That is where you are wrong.”

“Can we talk more about bringing rain to the desert?” Zennatos chimes in with a quavering voice. “That was a good topic. All the good that came from my quest, yes?”

Wings burst then from Abenthy’s back, great skeletal wings, and his eyes glow a dark red. Fear washes over the room and Zennatos yelps in fright. Karina barely manages to contain herself in time to activate her cloak of Darkness. Abenthy’s fearful visage is lost in darkness. She reaches out through it, touches Abenthy’s face. “Come back to us. Don’t choose the path of your father. Don’t do this.”

“I must,” he says, and flings her aside.

What follows here is a surprisingly even fight. Abenthy is level 10 at this point, to Karina and co’s 7 (almost 8). But he refuses to hurt them, while they can barely hope to hit him with his AC of 24 (magical items boost it). Tyrion is full of rage, attacking Abenthy over and over to little effect until he finally switches to picking away at his health with psychic damage, for one or two or three points of health at a time. On top of this, everyone is rolling at disadvantage for the darkness and so consistently ends up with less than 10′s on their dice, except for Traki who keeps punching Abenthy in the back of the head, Karina who rolls her usual natural 20s, and myself who doesn’t roll much lower than 17 for Zennatos. This leads to some very amusing situations where Abenthy continually tries to get past Karina and repeatedly gets overwhelmed by her paltry 8 (or somewhere around there) Strength and finds himself on the ground with Karina pinning him... only to shove her off and start again. Meanwhile, Zennatos is blitzing through the darkness like an idiot savant, eventually getting the idea to smash a window to make Abenthy think he has fled.

It is not quite the dramatic encounter I had hoped for, but it does speak nicely to the conflicts plaguing the party. No one really is invested in hurting each other, except Tyrion who doesn’t yet have the power to go it alone, and so the battle devolves into a depressing and uncomfortable stalemate. Karina does try to talk Abenthy out of his path by insisting that Zennatos should spend his life in attonement rather than pay for his crimes by wasting that life, and Abenthy’s player allows her one roll to try and persuade him, but as luck would have it, it’s the one low roll of the night for her, and the attempt badly fails, only strengthening Abenthy’s resolve.

In truth, I had expected that Abenthy and Tyrion would clash like Titans and Karina would get caught in the crossfire, or else Zennatos would actually be murdered before the party could stop Abenthy. Instead seeing the stalemate continue on, I decide to step in and move us along to the next part of the finale...

I Hear Bells a Ringin’

Alarm bells begin to sound all over the city. Traki, having some background as a sailor, knows the sound and what this particular peal means.

“Pirates,” he says. “Marauders attacking the docks.”

“It is the Red Hand,” Karina says from the darkness.

“The Red Hand?” Traki’s heart leaps at the words. The prophecies were true!

“Reeves,” agrees Verrick. “He has followed us around the seas and back again.”

“The pirate captain who murdered your companions?” Tyrion asks.

Shando. Targaryen. Their names plague Karina’s thoughts. “Do you hear that, Abenthy?” she asks. “It is the men who murdered the Butcher of Skagos, who worked with Rose to kidnap women and enslave them to her will and the will of Mordekai.” Whoose armor you now wear. “There is your evil. Will you fight it? Will you bring them justice?”

The silence stretches on.

“Zennatos has fled,” Abenthy says at last. “Justice will find him, but today my strength is needed elsewhere. Yes. I will fight.”

Only then does Karina let her darkness fall away. She is face to face with Abenthy again. Their eyes meet. The look that passes between them carries the weight of lost possibilities. And then he turns and is soon gone, sweeping from the room like a light extinguished.

Zennatos momentarily emerges from his hiding and stammers out a thanks, begging Karina to continue protecting him. She tells him that where she is going it is not safe. He needs to flee this place, disguise himself, and above all do good. Only attonement, she believes, will save him from Abenthy’s justice. Zennatos agrees, handing the team over 300 gold pieces to thank them for their efforts.

The players then move out into the storm. The city is alive with shouts and screams, the noise carrying over the sound of the clanging bells. In the distance a red glow signifies fire—it looks to be coming from the Lord’s fortress. They move down the street towards the docks, stopping to fight ten Ratzotto pirates and their captain in the city center, dispatching them fairly easily (proving how far they have come in the course of this adventure). By the time they reach the docks, the storm has turned into a gale, sending waves crashing over the docks, where men are fighting to the death. From one dock three pirate ships have landed and men are swarming towards the city, but there, too, the companions can see the towering figure of Abenthy, cutting down enemies as they come at him, taking on eight pirates at once, rallying the city guard to move in and handle the others. Soon, he is lost in the mayhem.

The companions head another direction, towards a ship Karina knows well. The Audacity sits at dock as she remembers it, a low sleek pirate schooner, built for speed and stealth. It is not bothering with stealth now. It has crashed itself into the docks and secured itself with grappling hooks. It rides the storm easy, as if the storm is its horse. The deck has more than a half dozen pirates on it, though these are little like the Ratzotto’s the fought in the square earlier. Months ago, Karina watched as her former friend Targaryen murdered her new ally, General Tywin of the Elsir Vale, in a drowned tower while they tried to rescue Targaryen’s sister. Targaryen and the pirates that assisted him had been changed by the power of some God of the deep, morphed into beings that seemed more at home in the ocean than on land. These pirates now reflect that same change. Some are covered in barnacles. One has blue skin. Most grin to show razor sharp teeth and some even have claws instead of fingers. And at their head stands Captain Reeves Testain, his black beard encrusted with the salt of the sea and interwoven with stalks of seaweed. His jacket is open, leaving his chest bare, his pale skin slick with rain that seems not to bother him. His smile is manic, his stare one from beyond the grave. He sees Karina...

... but before anything else can happen, Twyin’s Revenge, manned by Clem and the rest of the crew, crashes into the Audacity, knocking several of the pirates into the sea. Crossbow bolts fire across the deck, taking down several more pirates. For a moment, the battle seems won, but then the sea opens up underneath Twyin’s Revenge and a monstrous mass of tentacles wrap themselves around the Ghost Ship. Clem and the others are dragged away from the Audacity, the men cutting desperately at tentacles as thick as masts. Reeves turns his attention back to the companions and gestures, and five pirates, four men and one woman, leap off the Audacity to meet the companions on the final dock leading to the Audacity, the final bridge between the players and their destiny.

This is a fun fight. I use enemies from the Princes of Apocalypse campaign, two reavers, two dark tide knights, and one fathomer. It’s a bit of a test, too, to see how the players will do against more varied enemies and groups in the upcoming campaign. Tomb of Haggemoth has a lot of Boss Monsters (tm) and Red Hand of Doom is much more about a mixture of enemies with different classes and abilities supporting each other to make combat harder and more tactical. I want to see how that plays out here.

It is a tough fight. The reavers go down pretty quick, with Karina “leaving her mark” on one of them in the form of a bolt through the eye. But their point is to blockade, not kill: they block the bridge long enough to give the fathomer time to cast spells from afar without being harried, and he rolls three critical strikes, severely cutting down the health of Tyrion. When Tyrion faces off against one of the knights, he is quick to be knocked unconscious. And then things get interesting.

Seeing that the blind monk is battling effectively despite his condition and that Karina is a good shot, the knight tries a different strategy. He kicks Tyrion’s unconscious body off the dock and into the sea, forcing the players to split up if they wish to save him. Karina takes the bait, leaping off into the ocean and making some very harrowing spot checks to see if she can find and save Tyrion. Left alone to face both the knight and the sorcerous fathomer, Traki is soon overwhelmed on the dock and goes down.

Now, as far as the enemies know, they have won the fight. The fathomer starts walking the dock to check the waters, make sure the heroes are down. The dark tide knight goes to work on searching Traki’s body--they are pirates after all, and this gives the players a turn to make a plan before the knight tosses HIS body into the sea as well. The players take the opportunity: Karina, having pulled Tyrion to shore without being seen, revives him and together they launch a sneak attack against the knight, killing him.

Left alone to face three heroes, the fathomer changes tactics, turning into his serpent form and trying to drag Traki into the sea to drown him. Traki avoids this attack and the fathomer tries one more desperate ploy: turning invisible, he dives into the sea and waits for the players to cross the bridge. Then he gets behind them and sneak attacks Karina with vampiric touch, draining her health and restoring his own. It doesn’t save him, Karina is quick to reverse the hold and cut him in half with her scimitar, but it leaves them all shaken and injured for the final battle, out of potions and running low on spells.

And it does illustrate that the players are ready to face the Red Horde and gives me some direction on making some final touch ups to the Red Hand campaign before we begin. But first, there is an old foe to face...

The Final Battle

“The little bird returns!” though he stood on the prow of Audacity in the midst of the storm, the companions could hear Reeves Testain as if he stood directly next to them. For Traki the experience was the most surreal as he could not see the man to show the lie.

“I have followed you across the oceans, girl,” Reeves continues. “I used my scrying magic to see your path. I lost you once, recently, when you went to an island where I could not follow. But now I have you again. And I see you have hatched more companions, girl. Do they know how your other friends died? If they did, perhaps they would not be so eager to stay with you.“ He spotted Verrick standing next to her. “And you have brought your manservant, too. Traitor! You betrayed the Many Headed Goddess. But her power has not stopped growing. I will murder you, destroy this pitiful town, and then move on to the East, where she amasses a great army. The Red Horde shall fall upon the land like locusts. The Vale shall be the first to fall, but not the last.”

“You speak of the Red Hand!” Traki called out. “But I have seen another prophecy. I have seen their fall.”

“If you have seen anything it is because the Queen willed it. She shows you hope in order to sweeten the victory when she takes it away from you.”

“This is the one who killed the others? Who killed your friends?” Tyrion asked.

Karina nodded. “I cannot ask you to join in this fight,” she said.

“... and you won’t have to,” Verrick answered. “Let us put an end to this.”

And so the three climbed on board the Audacity and found its lord waiting for them. Reeves attacks viciously using magical ice storms to halt the heroes and hold person to freeze them in place. Tyrion takes him on directly but even his magical axe seems only to be partially effective. Meanwhile, Reeves wields a relic of the deep, the ancient trident Drown, pulled from the tower of the Drowned God in his quest for power.

There is another one here, as well. Behind Reeves, huddled by the prow, is a young girl who Karina alone recognizes: it is Jade, Targaryen’s sister. She is in a kind of trance and Karina correctly guesses she is controlling the tentacled beast attacking Clem and his men. However, all attempts to attack the girl fail as a powerful psychic shield deflects all arrows and Reeves is between her and the other party members. The same shield seems to protect him, as Karina’s attempts to loose arrows at him all end with the arrow stopping feet from him and falling harmlessly to the ground. She even tries a silver arrow but this fails just the same.

This fight is meant to be very hard, possibly outside of the player’s ability to handle. The reason is that there is another way to fight Reeves rather than head on, a way that exists because Karina managed to reclaim the Undersea Effigy back at the Tower of the Drowned God. The effigy begins calling to her from within her bag of holding. It wants her to touch it, to use its power. Doing so will allow Karina to engage in a battle of wills with Jade over control for the Kraken.

Unfortunately, Karina doesn’t trust the voices! This almost leads to the annihilation of the party but for once I step in with a pretty heavy hand to push Karina towards using the effigy. When Reeves freezes her in place with his hold person and prepares to slaughter the rest of the party, she finds that only her right arm can move, and then only towards the bag of holding. Yes, it is remarkably heavy handed, but I think it’s okay considering this is the final fight and a very big moment. Looking back on the campaign as a whole, if I had given the players a book or scroll earlier, detailing how “the many headed statue controlled the denizens of the deep,” the forced hand could have been avoided, but honestly this final battle was not fully developed until a few sessions back and I didn’t see a place to squeeze that in. So instead we get forces outside of Karina’s control taking over a little. Which, considering that part of the campaign has been about otherworldly powers, I think works out just fine.

Karina reaches inside the bag, knowing what she is searching for, reaching for it  despite her fears, despite promising herself that this relic would never again see the light of day. Then her hand closes around cold jade stone and the world disappears.

She is huge. She is powerful. She is hungry. She is ancient. She opens her jaws and the ocean pours in. She stretches and her tentacles break bones, crush wood, move waves. She focuses and sees the ship at the docks, the figures fighting on it, and the one who she must kill.

NO.

The voice is an intrusion, a blot on her mind.

I RULE THIS CREATURE. YOU MUST LEAVE.

Karina. Her name is Karina. But the voice, the voice was not her voice. It was...

LEAVE NOW OR I WILL HURT YOU.

... Jade. The little girl. The psychic. Karina pulls herself free for a moment from the Krake Spawn’s mind and sees the girl, or at least feels her hovering nearby, her power palpable but weak, spent, drained.

“I can overpower you,” Karina says. And then she dives back inside the Kraken.

This is a battle of wills, and really the final battle of the campaign. I don’t pull any punches here. For every roll Karina wins versus Jade, she will get to make an attack on Captain Reeves for massive damage, maybe enough to turn the tide, maybe not. The real power comes if she can make three in a row.

And by the gods, that is exactly what she does. This is a huge accomplishment, considering that Jade rolls Will at +2 and Karina at -1 (I think... it’s low, anyway). But Karina, staying true to her character, rolls well in a crisis and she pulls out that natural 20 as the final roll of the campaign, kicking Jade from the creature’s mind and bringing its full power to bear on Captain Reeves.

Tyrion leaps back as the tentacles smash into the deck of the Audacity. Reeves throws his hands up, blocking his face and eyes from the splintering of wood. Before he can lower them again, he is wrapped in the thick wet tentacles of the Krake Spawn, the beast lifting him high in the air. Reeves fights for a moment, but the tentacles tighten and he all but disappears beneath their slimy folds. Then the sea opens up and a massive maw fills the space where water once was. Reeves calls out a final condemnation of the party: “My Queen will revive my Soul! All that die in her service will walk again! She will reap this world! She will—”

He does not get to finish. Reeves is dropped into the maw and disappears amidst rows and rows of razor sharp teeth as the jaws close and the creature retreats back into the depths, hopefully never to be seen again.

Aftermath

With the Kraken defeated and Reeves dead, the rest of the pirates are easily routed, without the players’ help. Karina comes back to herself to find the Jade statue destroyed, a true signifier of the end of the campaign as the first adventure we had was retrieving the thing from the depths of the Moonsea, over thirty sessions ago. Jade (the girl, not the statue) comes back to herself as well and thanks Karina for saving her mind from the creature of the deep. “Had you not pushed me from it, I would have been lost to the deep forever.” She asks after Targaryen but all Karina has the heart to tell her is that he is at peace. The lie makes her think of Abenthy, who condemned Targaryen’s soul to his father’s hell, and she feels a great pang in her heart. I lost him too, she thinks. Maybe not to death’s embrace, but he is gone all the same.

They do not find the Aasimir after the battle. He has disappeared, they assume to hunt his quarry. Zennatos, too, has disappeared, they know not where to, though Karina hopes it is to take her advice and do as much good as possible. Whether it will appease Abenthy she knows not, but it is worth trying.

With the battle finished, the companions look out upon the town of Ottoman’s dock. The lord’s manor is aflame and it is said he was murdered by pirates in a raid on his fortress. The town has much rebuilding to do, a new leader to elect. But for once, this is not a task the companions feel they need to take on. They have their own paths to follow.

Karina, the Seeker of Callax, says farewell to the group. “I have had enough adventuring for one lifetime,” she tells them. “I have found the truth I sought and avenged the ones who I called friends. Something tells me this is where I should stop. I have a reward to collect and a school to build. Traki, I hope you find what you are seeking. Tyrion, do not lose your music.” And with those words of parting, she and Verrick leave, catching one final ride on Tywin’s Revenge as Clem and the crew take them back to Thudd, where she collects her reward from the Fuzwah, the promised expanse of land to do with what she pleases. Aided by the Fuzwah, she builds a school here to teach adventurers how to defend themselves against the dangers of the world. In return, they give the school a cut of their treasures from their hunts. It is a small percentage, but it adds up, and eventually the school grows in power and reputation. Karina never forgets Abenthy’s journey, and she picks her students with an extremely critical eye, never wanting to turn out a student who starts on the path of good, but falls to their own search for justice. She uses the spell book of Haggemoth and his histories to aid her studies, and in doing so, feels that she is keeping alive the old dwarf’s knowledge and setting it to good. Maybe she could not save his soul in her journeys, but in this small way, perhaps she can help him offer pennace.

Jade trains at the school for a time before eventually leaving on a mission of her own: find a way to free her brother’s soul from the clutches of I’afret. Verrick and Rayden remain, growing old with Karina, being her truest guides and mentors, and ready to lift their blades again the day the Seeker of Callax ventures forth again.

Abenthy had planned to return to Thudd as well, to claim his prize and build his own school, a school of justice and punishment, but fate and his father push him onto another path. “There are men and women in this world whose hearts are pure,” his father tells him. “They are ready to follow you and be soldiers in the war which will come. You must collect them, test them. Those you find worthy make your companions. Those you find lacking, send to me.” And so Abenthy sets forth and slowly gathers an army of fanatics. Insanely loyal to him, they travel the world as mercenaries, choosing their causes as Abenthy sees fit. Under his command the group becomes known as the Inevitables, and it is said that they only serve those with just causes. Before long, their numebrs have swelled to massive size and then Abenthy turns his sights towards unfinished business with a certain giant on the isle of Friezurazov…

But these stories unfold over the course of years, and there is yet more to be told of the here and now. Traki’s prophecy tells him to head East, to find the Red Hand and stop it before it crushes the life out of the world.

“Is this a journey you intend to continue?” Traki asks Tyrion.

“My story is not yet over,” the Halfling answers. “And East is as good a direction as any. The Elsir Vale, Reeves said? I know tell of the land. Ancient place. Perhaps some old magic survives there, something worth finding.”

“Three companions are meant to fight the Hand,” Traki tells him. “But we are now only two.”

“I find these prophecies tend to work themselves out,” Tyrion says, adjusting a string on the golden harp he retrieved from Haggemoth’s tomb, the last surviving treasure of the mage dwarf’s hoard. He strums a chord as a test and smiles, pleased with the melancholy sound. “I have a feeling someone will come along.”

“What Karina said about losing your music… what did she mean by that?”

“Just the woman’s way of saying goodbye,” Tyrion says, and strums a new chord, this one as discordant to the first as the halfing’s lie was to truth. “This Red Hand thinks it is powerful. But wait till they get a load of me.”

Next session will show the start of Season 3: The Red Hand of Doom. From here on out we will be converting the Red Hand of Doom from 3.5 to 5e and each post I’ll talk a little bit about how the conversion was handled and why I made the decisions I did. With Red Hand of Doom being played every week, it seems, by some group somewhere, it will be fun to add our little oddball party to the mix. Karina’s player will be back, too, but not as the Seeker of Callax. She has retired the character to live out her days in relative peace, a just reward for her incredible survival of the massive and deadly Tomb of Haggemoth campaign. Instead, a new character will emerge to join our heroes as they make their way to the Elsir Vale and into a darkness that they do not yet fully comprehend.