#can't do brief either ahahaha

[ace-malarky]

intro post 2024

sup lads, it's been like two years and I figured the pinned post probably needed updating

wait it has almost exactly been two years that's hilarious

Anyway. some things haven't changed. Name's still Ace, no matter what I write on the notes I send to my old library

I'm always up for tag games and random asks!! throw 'em my way as you like :3

pronouns are in flux! predominantly they/them, sometimes it, occasionally he. It varies on the bit, but you probably can't go wrong tbh

we're - we're going to say early 30s. it's not wrong and it's better than this being outdated in a little over three weeks when it all changes once again

no I did not plan this, no I can't do a basic formal outline, I have to ramble. what did you think i wrote for.

Other Places I Can Be Found include twitter & instagram under more or less the same username

~~~

Writing Focuses!

Everything is fantasy, everything is queer. Excerpts can be found under Writing Pieces

I'm largely jumping around between vaguely connected scenes and character work right now, but there's definitely a pattern!

mainly;

Soul of the Party - when a series of mysterious thefts sweep across town in the weeks before the annual tournament, Solaris is removed from the duelling tournament to avoid bringing attention to his cousin's family. Instead, he and his cousin and a band of Feral Mages investigate on their own and find a plot targetting one thief from Off-World (ft. four separate magic types, light crime, sword fights, mistaken (secret) identity, curiosity almost killing the cat)

Shapeshifter WIP - when things start getting tense between neighbouring countries, Syn volunteers to slip across the border and pass information back in an attempt to avert the looming war. They may have underestimated how hard it was going to be to go back when no one recognises them and their own best friend hates them (ft. pining, friends-to-lovers of the star crossed variety, hand wavy world building, questionable morality, questionable spying techniques, A Certain Level of Dumbassery, some Fucked Up Shapeshifting)

Dumb of Ass, Snake of Tits - a DnD story of a dragonborn monk who leaves their monastery to see the world, ends up with a Morally Dubious Courtesan for a travelling companion, gets cursed (twice), has a slight corruption arc, but somehow still comes out better than they started and with a boyfriend to boot (ft. travelling, fights, the unwillingness to wear a shirt in camp and making that everyone else's problem, other uses for bras when you don't have tits, revenge, What Sharp Teeth You Have, unquestioning kindness until it isn't kind, overthinking but eventually manage to communicate about it, slight pining, one vaguely horny dragon)

@dorksndisasters for the not-technically-dnd campaign that I run! The full first draft of the first arc is up there and I am currently editing to make it less stilted and transcriby

and, you know, the usual. Fair Folk, Superheroes, Pirates, Time Travel, WereCreatures, Winged Folk, Storytellers, Dragons, Vampires, Curses, Even More DnD. All of the WIPS can be found on this page and some of them are in this definitely out of date post here

I'm always up for answering questions about any of them, even if some haven't been touched in literal years. They're still growing mould somewhere in there. Branching out in ways I didn't conceive of.

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World Building

also a big ol' thing here, the main tag is world building but that isn't just my stuff in there, it's also a lot of reblogs

largely centered around the Mist Worlds which is where most of my WIPs are set. There is an Overview post, a Magic post, a bit on the Mist Itself, and also the Worlds (and a page where this is collated)

some bits are incredibly handwavy and made up on the fly, other bits I have been thinking Too Much about for Too Long

~~~

Characters

Oh boy we got 'em. Occasionally can be found via rambles on Sundays (Thursdays, under new management) under the tag So It Ends

Syn and Maverick are competing for blorbo of the year right now and if a wip or specific characters aren't mentioned, these are probably who I'll answer ask games for

Syn - a distractable and mischievous shapeshifter who volunteers to be a spy because "pretending to be someone else is what I do" no we're not going to unpack that right now. they/them, big fan of antlers. also goes by Vale or Lance

Maverick - a frost dragonborn who's a little bit naive to the ways of the world and prefers to assume the best of people if they can. Likes to help, doesn't question as much as they should. Not quite an "everything happens for a reason" mentality, but certainly thinks that they got what they deserved at points. they/them, has been known to act without thinking on a number of occasions

[blackjackkent]

Springy has informed me there's some potentially interesting NPCs in the tavern and that I should go back to check it out before the plot locks me out of Saradush, so...brief detour!

Mostly it's il-Khan soldiers hanging out in here, but there are a few people with unique names - Peltje and Viekang. I don't recognize either name, but let's see what they're about.

Always a good start to a conversation.

Oh!

Well, good news, Peltje, I do not believe you are insane. The bad news is that that means there ARE vampire courtesans in the castle prison, which I know because I just fought a bunch of them. But, y'know, silver lining.

And then the poor guy absolutely hauled ass out of the tavern at about mach 5. Wellp.

Let's talk to Viekang.

One of the answer options here is "Viekang...didn't I run into you in Trademeet?" but his name is not ringing any bells to me or Caden.

[blinkblink]

OH. Ahahaha. He's this guy, who randomly seemed to explode when Caden encountered him in the tavern in Trademeet.

I guess this is the equivalent to Caden getting the Slayer form as his Bhaal-related superpower? I think we got the better end of the deal tbh.

Other highlights of the tavern:

A guy named Hectan who responds only "I assure you, my Lord, I know nothing of that" to anything we try and ask him.

A cat named Tepid who doesn't want to talk to us.

:(

Finally, in a back room of the tavern, we find this dude!

I'm not entirely sure if we ever actually ran into him, but according to the wiki we could have run into this guy way back in Nashkel in BG1! And he could have provided some rumors to follow up on to move some of the quests along.

You're a long way from home, Volo. Are you a Bhaalspawn too?

Oh boy. :P

lolol. This feels like what would happen if you spawned some unholy amalgamation of Khalisah al-Jilani and Conrad Verner.

What else ya got, Volo?

This'll be good.

Wait, how the hell does Volo know about Gamaz at all? >:|

Poor Rasaad though.

Awww. <3

Imoen please do not further the rumor that all Bhaalspawn are evil, tyvm. (rofl tho)

Hee. OK, if Elminster knows this guy, he can't be all bad I guess.

But why does Rasaad get a mention of Gamaz but Volo doesn't even mention Khalid as such a big part of Jaheira's story. :(

Minsc is the best, casual reminder. <3 And must be protected at all costs.

Oh, you won't, but thank you for trying!

[spacetimeconundrum]

Okay! The main one I can remember was Werewolf vs. Vampire. Little known werewolf habits/symptoms. Did Campion being a werewolf affect his relationship with the woman in Dancers in Mourning? I can't remember if you address that, clearly I need to reread. Also I'm just feeling Christmassy and wondered if you've thought about Campion At Christmas. I realized I'm not sure how they celebrated back then.

You’ve given me a lot of different things to think about here, so bear with me while I ramble on for a bit…

In the (stupidly long) time since I’ve updated my werewolf!Campion series, I’ve actually done quite a lot of writing (I know, I know, where’s the proof?) and spent even more time ruminating on various aspects of werewolfiness with respect toCampion’s canon-adventures: what’s changed for him, and what bits of werewolf lore am I keeping for his story. A few of these happen to be VERY plot relevant for Mr. Campion’s War, so I won’tnecessarily go into them in great detail here, but a few tidbits:

- Real wolves are pack animals and large percentage of their communication is physical in nature or scent-based; humans are social creatures that also need a certain amount of touch/physicality in their interactions to thrive; werewolves tend to be much more tactile than youraverage repressed English gentleman of the early 20th century and considerably more invested in how things smell. Albert Campion is no exception, though he has a great deal of upper class socialization telling him that no, he can’t just grab people and / or sniff them, no matter what his instincts are screaming at him.

Before being cursed, Campion dealt with his insecurities / social discomfort via inane chatter - make people laugh and they’ll underestimate him or look for another target. (He spent a lot of time at school being bullied before he learned this trick.) After, he’s not much different, though large crowds tend to make him more anxious and prone to make himself politely invisible. But if you’re one of the few people he considers part of his inner circle, he’s much less physically reserved than before. (This was actually the aspect of Campion’s transformation that Lugg found the strangest. People, least of all Albert bloomin’ Campion, do not tend to hug Magersfontaine Lugg. Not unless one or both of them is dying. It’s weird for both of them, but it gets less so over time.)

- As far asCampion’s inner wolf is concerned, Lugg, Amanda, Oates, Guffy &Mary Randall, Hal Fitton, Val, Uncle Avril and later Charlie Luke and Rupert are part of his pack.

- Alcohol has almost no effect on him. The super high metabolism that allows Campion to heal rapidly and shape shift also means his body tends to process alcohol before he feels any intoxicating effects. Helpful when he’s trying to drink a suspect under the table, less helpful when certain poisons actually effect him faster than they ordinarily would. (Thank goodness for his fast healing.) This makes the events near the end of Death of a Ghost rather more harrowing when he discovers the mad combination of spirits the villain plies him with are having a deleterious effect on him almost too late.

- Speaking of that high metabolism - rationing for WWII actually makes things rather uncomfortable for Mr. Campion, as he can’t exactly explain to anybody with authority that he really needs to be issued enough coupons for two people. He ends up sort of solving this problem by supplementing his diet by shifting on non-full moon nights when he can and going hunting in the countryside as a wolf. It gets a bit tricky though, as every shift is a massive calorie expenditure, meaning he risks creating a net loss for himself if his hunting isn’t successful enough. (Not to mention he’s not always stationed somewhere safe enough to venture out in wolf-form or the risk of being caught ‘poaching’ afterwards.) Campion spends most of the war irritable, hungry, and underweight.

- That said, there are absolutely advantages to being a spy who can shape shift.

- Cats and horses hate Campion now, to the extent that some of his friends (who don’t know why these animals have taken an instant dislike to him) tease him about it. Dogs are either extremely wary of him or instantly his best friend, with very little in between.

- Campion had to falsify paperwork to avoid a government physical. Fortunately, he knows more than a few people in the right professions who owe him a favour or two. He’s avoided eye exams and medical check ups entirely since becoming a werewolf, mostly out of an overabundance of caution. He’s never sick and orders replacement spectacles from a theatre supplier.

- His eyes shine green instead of red in photographs taken with a heavy flash, but this really isn’t a problem until later in his life when colour photography becomes more commonplace.

- His normal body temperature runs hotter than most people’s, which is handy when waking up naked outdoors on a chilly English winter morning, miserable when riding the tube during a sweltering London heat wave.

- Is Campion’s lycanthropy contagious? If say, he were to bite someone, would they then become a werewolf too? Ahahaha. Stay tuned on this one, as it will be addressed in Mr. Campion’s War. Minor spoilers, it is inheritable, as Rupert Campion discovers to his dismay upon reaching puberty.

- Are there other supernatural creatures in Mr. Campion’s world? Other werewolves maybe? Yep. More than you’d think. Not gonna say who just yet. ;)

- His relationship with Linda Sutane (the woman in Dancers in Mourning) is largely unchanged by him being a werewolf, other than his enhanced senses making it much more obvious to him how mutual their attraction was (very). He still didn’t act on it, though he very much wanted to, and they parted as friends in the end. (The scene in Dancers in Mourning where he goes for a long walk through London to try to suppress his feelings for her very nearly ends in him stripping off his clothes and going wolf for a while until he manages to get a hold of himself.) This isn’t directly addressed in any of my stories, but it gets alluded to a little in Mr. Campion’s Secret and Mr. Campion’s Snarl.

- Christmas wasn’t celebrated all that differently then than today I think - dinners with family, presents, etc. The holiday actually only gets a couple brief mentions in the novels - first in The Tiger in the Smoke, which takes place in late November 1950, and then The Mind Readers, which seems to take place in December 1965. The short stories are another matter: The Case is Altered takes place at a Christmas party Campion attends in, presumably, 1938, wherein he has an opportunity to play Santa. The Man With the Sack is set on Christmas Eve, 1936? The Snapdragon and the CID is explicitly set on Christmas day, but various bits of it are so wildly anachronistic to the established timeline, I have no idea what year it’s meant to be; it’s blatant holiday fluff though so who cares. If you haven’t already read them, I highly recommend the short stories. Campion works really well in that format and they’re quick reads.

Merry Christmas!