#campaign: waterdeep dragon heist

[vulpixelates]

lflekfjd while running waterdeep: dragon heist, i have been playing volo as a flamboyant man experiencing twink death, only to realize that he's supposed to be a hettie lothario... unrealistic. i reject this wholeheartedly. canon is my bitch

[firnen-the-teragram-teabag]

Things that nobody said until I played D&D part 2

"the pope says 'the most powerful weapon in the world, my son, is the bible gun' and he pulls out the bible gun"

"your racism upsets the stirge so much that it just drops dead"

"explain why we shouldn't kill you right now" "my funky fresh moves"

"wisdom saving throw to not be horny"

"we are distracted by his sweet, sweet nipples"

"you are the Minecraft Alpha to our Minecraft 1.18"

"he's always visually moist"

"can i flirt with the eyes"

"I just casually slip the cake into my hat"

"onwards, to the piss hut!"

[mushroom-punk]

uploading this now bc idk what else to do with it. insert quippy flirty funny one liner here

[b0zart]

La Gazette de Eauprofonde 📰

is an artbook made by 8 artists, friends and DnD enthusiasts. It has 78 pages of illustrations and press articles to introduce you to our Campaign, the city of Waterdeep and its intrigues.

"Follow the adventures of 7 characters brought back to life by a mysterious entity, and sent on a mission to find the famous treasure of half a million dragons in the City of Splendors."

The book is in French, but! will be translated in English soon.

It covers a homebrew version of "A Tail of Two Fishies" & the first chapter of the campaign.

Digital version & Pre-order are here :

A big thank you to @dames-zine for making this possible!

And thank you to all those who show interest in our small project. 😊

[0w0whatisthis]

Manshooooooooon…… manshoooooooon‼️‼️‼️‼️ come back to meeeeeee archmage actually on our side (🤞🤞) come back to me‼️‼️‼️‼️

[princefleabitten]

Sketches from Dragon Heist and shamelessly shipping my character with Jarlaxle

[skullhaver]

helloo wait tell me about the fel'rekt date..(my fave trans drow guy)

Fel'rekt and my drow rogue Athren had a classic Waterdhavian courtship. After Athren and his fellow PCs made a splash at the Sea Maiden's Faire carnival, Fel'rekt started spying on our party on the orders of Master Jarlaxle "Zord" Bregan. He showed up to Trollskull Tavern's grand opening magically disguised as a human carnie named Sterling Keates. "Sterling" made a charming first impression, but over the course of the evening, our party sussed out his amulet of Disguise Self. When we confronted him about why exactly he was wearing an illusion to a social event, he explained that he used the amulet to look a bit taller, broaden his shoulders, square off his facial features, all to feel more comfortable with how he looked...

"Oh shit," we said, a group of 4 queer players. "We super rudely clocked his Amulet of Alleviate Dysphoria." And proceeded to stop pestering him about it, immediately.

We would go on to meet Fel'rekt out of disguise and openly working for Bregan D'aerthe, while "Sterling" stayed our tavern regular. It took us a stupidly long time to realize that the two of them were the same person.

Eventually, our party started reluctantly working with Bregan D'aerthe, and Fel'rekt (good-aligned, deeply devoted to Jarlaxle, Eilistraee-worshiping) became a semi-recurring NPC and narrative foil to my character Athren (chaotic neutral loveable asshole, selfish and deeply suspicious of declaring organizational or divine loyalties of any kind.)

And I can do you one better than telling you about their first real date -- my DM and I put it on AO3!

[bluravenite]

Jarlaxle Baenre portrait (with hair)

(if you're my d&d player get out of here, rascal)

Tip jar // commissions

Bald jarlaxle under the cut ↓

Hate when Tumblr fucks up the post format !!! Why!!

[cookiesnpaste]

DND PARTY!!!!!! WOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[itswrenlyart]

Totally good people with solid morals who never threaten anyone ever 👍👍👍👍 (/sar)

Meredynn belongs to @snail-sex5 Cygnus belongs to @once-ina-blue-moon Jax belongs to @cheesest1cks

[old-world-bird]

Two loves of Marcella (but only one of them is healthy). I kinda felt like missing the good-old linocut days, but I didn't want to do actual linocutting, so I went into a stylization experiment with sketches. Love how these turned out.

Marcella/Wilhelm. They are canonically married now and raise 4 adopted children + one own daughter, 3 dogs, and a pack of cats, and they also adopted a family of mimics, because Wilhelm is still a druid and everyone loves him. Also, he is now Wilhelm Matsovets and my heart melts every time I think about them :'3 Marcella/Douglas Helderon. As I said once before, he sucked out her brain at last and turned her into a mindless blood-lusting creature. That episode and how easily she fell into that abyss inspired this sketch.

Commission info

[vulpixelates]

WOOO. i dm'd for the first time in like five years!!! and it didn't go horribly wrong!

i randomly decided that i was up for it and since my wife finished her character sheet today officially, we just kinda hopped in and did the introductory scene for dragon heist (tavern brawl, troll fight, getting the quest from volo) and it went well!

i kept bouncing between accents but i do that anyway 😂 i can't do an accent while someone is doing a different accent unless it's like. their natural accent tho even sometimes then i end up mimicking it accidentally aoiejfoai

anyway, following a module is 10x easier than coming up w everything on the fly. my very first thing i ran i planned TOO much and then w everything else i mostly wung it and it just aofeijaoiewf i got so overwhelmed so easily any time anything went wrong lmao but i think having a guide for stuff will be great for getting into the groove

or at least, i really hope so, bc i have so many ideas for like one-shots or mini-side-campaigns to run for the group...

[ssuzu]

a two-meter dragonborn hides a tiny halfling from the rain under his cloak 🥰 ✨ my sketch commissions are open! ✨

[yarnlass]

Dekarios clan <- Dauntrael clan?

This Secret of the Magister book has truthfully not much to relate back to Gale aside the obvious wizard lore, but I did find something that immediately linked to him in my mind.

One former Magister named Maxiladanarr Torstren (Magister from 1322 - 1328 DR, so longer than most at a span of 6 years) spent his time in office covertly creating several genetic lines of magic users. He did this by carefully manipulating certain individuals from magically-inclined families, and as of 1370 those families were prospering a great deal from their magical aptitudes. One such clan was the Dauntrael clan, who as of 1370 mostly live in Tethyr and the Moonshae isles, where they have miles of thriving farmland and a publishing house, called The Curious Eye.

This family is so Gale coded. I'm certain that the Dekarians intermarried with the Dauntraels at some point. Taken from Secrets of the Magisters:

Members of the Dauntrael family tend to be tall and slender, with flowing brown hair that under certain lighting conditions seems almost purple or blue. A few Dauntrael ladies in Tethyr use dyes to make their hair a soft blue in the seasons of summer revelry. Dauntrael always have large, liquid brown or blue eyes, tend to be more comely than average, and usually have mellifluous voices, suited for singing or oration. Only a little more than half of all Dauntrael have the ability to wield magic, but those who do have it tend to rise swiftly in power, and they exhibit great creativity and success in crafting or modifying spells. There are today about seventy Dauntrael mages, and over fifty of these are of higher than 10th level.

Gale didn't inherit blue or purple toned hair (oh but can you imagine? Perhaps Morena's hair is darker and purple-hued), but flowing brown hair, large, liquid brown eyes, comely, great voice? The spell crafting creativity and power? This is sounding so so Gale. There's more too -- as of 1370, the patriarch and matriarch of the family display distinctly Galeran tendencies:

Thurlad’s [the patriarch] love is gathering information about Toril. An orrery (mechanically animated model) of Realmspace occupies the domed upper room of his tower, and his head probably contains more lore about where rivers flow and mines can be found than all the tomes of Candlekeep. He cares not at all, however, for names and dates and the deeds of men, save when such strivings pertain directly to the advancement of magic.

His wife Deluma grows fruit in her gardens, helping them along with gentle light- and heat-altering spells, as a hobby (her husband has no hobbies), and devotes her work time to achieving an ever better understanding of the Weave. This has thus far enabled her to see if planned spells will work (and if so, how), and what effects intended modifications will have. She can already tweak her spells to attain the same sort of precise control over them that a Magister can (for example, doing maximum damage or minimal, just as she chooses), and she could probably, given the time and interest in doing so, craft the equivalent of a Cormanthan spell-web (a construct that links many cast but hung spells, to take later effect when certain conditions are fulfilled).

I need to know so much more about Deluma. By 1492 about 120 years later, there would have been a few generations between her and Gale, but I'm certain Gale would have been proudly compared to his great-great aunt Deluma...

The Dauntrael are skilled diplomats, very good at making neighbors and business colleagues like and value them. As a result, they are highly thought of, as good folk to have around who are both generous and capable. They try not to keep too high a profile, and for the most part people take them for granted, part of the rightful and proper furniture of the local landscape.

Members of this clan, however, see themselves as a family specially gifted by Mystra for some as yet unknown purpose, and they regard it as their duty to rise in local influence (while attracting a minimum of fame or attention) and in skill-at-Art, crafting scrolls, potions, and more permanent items whenever they have the time and means to do so. At the same time, they have a strong independent streak. Dauntrael should be free to marry whomever they please, dwell wherever they please, and do whatever they please.

I cannot believe this family is not related to Gale. The affability, the sense of importance and dedication to their skill, and their confidence to pursue the lives they want all while valuing their community and taking pride in what they do -- it's everything I see in Gale.

There's one story in particular that I imagine Gale taking in by the fireside in his childhood:

Most fireside family tales center on clever “save the day” uses of magic by Dauntrael in various crises, but the most important family legend concerns Shalima Dauntrael of Baldur’s Gate, who chose never to marry, but to have a child ere she grew too old to conceive. [Big Morena energy.] The darkly handsome partner she chose deceived her in many ways. “He” was in truth a marilith, and the child Shalima carried was a cambion. Discovering this well before the birth that would have slain her, the Dauntrael sorceress used every spell she had, or could steal, or could beg or bargain out of a dozen mages she confronted, to alter the nature of her child but not slay it. Her efforts resulted in her own survival, and a male human child, Hemtor, who had only a few tanar’ri characteristics. Perhaps luckily for both Faerûn and the Dauntrael, Hemtor (a wild one in temperament, who became a hiresword and died fighting pirates on the Sea of Fallen Stars) proved to be sterile. Shalima’s tale is told to all young Dauntrael when they despair, or rebel, or quail before something, as an example of the true Dauntrael spirit: This is a family that “never surrenders or gives in, but does what it must and can to win the day.”

This story relates for me back to Gale's ever present but still pragmatic optimism, his ability to roll his sleeves up and get on with what it takes to solve his own catastrophic death sentence as best he can, despite the odds and the face of his bleak fate should he fail. (Also, I can see how it might have affected his disinterest in having children.)

In short, expect to see a lot of blueish haired wet-eyed hunks and babes at your Waterdeep wedding.

[pluviance]

New Threnody portrait for @mistralrunner! ❤️

Hope you like it, friend!

[once-ina-blue-moon]

Just realized I forgot to put this guy’s ref actually up but this is cygnus! they are a drow tempest cleric and I am playing them in a wonderful and totally not cursed at all game of waterdeep dragon heist dm’ed by the lovely @itswrenly