#dubious eldritch parental figures

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

Chapter 5 of Lina and Son, an annotated summary

-

Lina: Kids, please leave the wetwork to me, I have no morals or compunctions and it won't mess me up, whereas it will absolutely traumatize you.

Steph and Tim: Ok but. We need to kill the Joker

Lina: Understandable, lemme introduce you to this weird guy i found

-

Jason: I am not going to get attached to these two random teens helping with my "Kill The Joker" plan.

Jason five minutes later: MINE

-

Tim: Oh no, my parents died in that plane crash! This is horrible!

Lina, putting away her maracas and party poppers: Yes. Horrible. That is certainly a word you could use to describe this situation.

-

Talia: Well, we've killed the Joker. What's your plan now?

Jason: I dunno, I never thought I'd get this far.

Talia: You could reunite with your father...

Jason: Nah, I'm gonna lay low for a while in Gotham because I don't feel like getting up.

Talia: This is going to backfire on you, and I will point and laugh when it happens.

Perfect

[cantdance]

10 fandoms 10 characters tag game

rules: name 10 of your favorite characters from 10 different fandoms, then tag 10 people (i wont do that)

tagged by @lolotr almost a month ago. it took me a while to get to this, half because i kept forgetting and half because i legitimately struggled to come up with ten different fandoms i can claim to be in, but whos going to pass up a chance to rave about their blorbos

Final Fantasy XIV Online (FFXIV) - i love so many of the characters from this game. its not hard, the game is designed to make you love them. they feel like real people, especially in the last two expansions which emphasized their relationships with each other and with the wol (aka the player character). its difficult to choose one favorite but if i have to id say its gotta be alisaie leveilleur. despite not being relevant to the main story until the second expansion, her character is so rich and compelling. shes just a girl who wants to understand why her beloved grandpa left her to save a bunch of strangers, and she also wants to find out who she is and become her own person out of her familys (and especially her brothers) shadow. she also likes violence and explosions and how can you not enjoy that in a girl. unlike a lot of people who like alisaie, i also love alphinaud, and i love the way they interact. alisaie is my preferred twin but only by a slim margin. you can blame the backwards ass way i played this game for the fact that i love alphinaud even in 2.0

Marvel Comics - obviously its loki laufeyson! name a bitch more iconic. canonically genderfluid since 2014. your doomed by the narrative fave. raised by a father and a society that hated them for who they were, forced into the role of a villain to juxtapose their brother who was the only person to ever believe they could be more, at least until he didnt. killed and ate and burned themselves over and over to become something new. literally broke free from the narrative to become their best self but still a morally dubious shithead trickster in any (well written) form. my absolute blorbo of all time, dm me for a reading list

Norse Mythology - loki laufeyson again lolol. name. a bitch. more. iconic. canonically genderfluid since the viking age. born from a forest fire after lightning struck a tree. canonically hot but in a fucked up and dangerous way. odin was like "whos this hot weirdo" and decided they were brothers. your ultimate doomed by the narrative baddie. prophesied to end the universe. the god of fucking around and finding out. there are so few verifiable facts about this bitch, he is a complete enigma even among the rest of norse mythology which is already so fractured and weird. we straight up dont know how, why, or even IF he was actually worshipped. hes the only god to not have a single village dedicated to him. there are, like, two or three runestones depicting him. snorri made him into a jesus figure in the eddas but he serves so much cunt that he is repeatedly misinterpreted as literal satan. your fave could never.

LegendLark/Dames and Dragons - this is another difficult one because the characters are all so great, but im giving it to laika because i have a funny story about it. my first listen through i was in the middle of the gray manacle arc when i started asking myself who my favorite was. i decided it was laika literally the episode before she leaves 🥹

Dungeons and Daddies - i feel like my favorite should be scary, as someone who was once a goth/emo teen girl. however im gonna have to give it to my boi normally lee oak-swallows-garcia, the perky peppy chipper cheery mixed up mascot who doesnt know who he is anymore. imagine knowing your parents are disappointed with you at like, 14. imagine inheriting a generational curse except its a literal eldritch curse that you cant do anything about. imagine connecting with the mind of an incomprehensible eldritch being that is killing your reality out of loneliness and fear and hatred and deciding to show kindness.

The Locked Tomb - probably an obvious pick but its gotta be gideon nav. shes your butch sword lesbian. shes your jock trapped in a science convention. shes your tragic unloved child. shes your doomed by the narrative/came back wrong double threat. shes everything to me.

Paranatural - im not actually current, unfortunately. ever since zack changed formats ive found it difficult to read. i understand why they decided to do it the new way, but my attention span is simply not long enough. eventually i will catch up probably maybe. that said, my favorite is of course max. i just love how sassy and exasperated he is. he literally didnt ask for any of this shit. like he just moved to a new town where he doesnt know anyone and suddenly theres ghosts and he has to join an organization to fight them and his bat has a monster inside of it and he almost gets run over by a train, how fucking exhausted must this kid be all the time

Hunter X Hunter - its the only anime on the list baybee. i thought about including others but none are super current and hxh is the one that i still feel strongly about. my fave from hxh is the one, the only, killua zoldyck. my son. my angel. my precious catboy murder child. a boy who was tortured by his own family and trained to not care about other people and who was so lonely he latched onto the first boy his age that hed ever met. he is so full of love and he would do anything for his best friend, including kill people, but to be fair he would also kill people for literally any other reason

The Wheel of Time - my most recent experience with wot was rereading the eye of the world in preparation for the amazon show, which was a huge letdown for me and a lot of fans of the books. my last experience with it before that was when i was, like, 12. as a kid my favorite character was egwene, and now my favorite is...still egwene. she is a strong, confident young woman who knows what she wants and doesnt shy away from going after it. shes very strong-willed and doesnt bend to the will of others, she is unrepentantly herself. she also reads very heavily as a lesbian despite being in a (rather annoying imo) het romance with the mc. i dont think this was intentional (given the aforementioned het romance) so i wouldnt call it coding but like. shes a young adult who eschews traditional female roles and aspires to be unmarried and spend her time with other women how ELSE am i supposed to read that

Homestuck - very much NOT a current fandom, but it defined a great deal of my life, so i feel like it should be included. my favorite for this one may be the most difficult to predict, or maybe not idk, but its kanaya maryam. i remember the first time i was reading, waiting for my patron troll to pop up, and it was her. at first i paid attention to her just for that, but i fell in love with her pretty fast. i have a thing for female characters who go through arcs of self discovery and learning to value themselves outside of the opinions of others. something about starting out thinking youre a prop for other people and ending as a whole ass person is so *chefs kiss* also shes sassy and wields a chainsaw which is badass. i personally think her arc fell flat and she was underutilized in the end, but shes hardly the only one that got overlooked tbfh

im not tagging anyone mostly because i have no idea who i would tag. if youre reading this and want to do it, please do!

[ao3feed-lokitony]

Betwixt

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/hcytf49

by Shortsnout

For years Odin’s been trying to find the perfect mate for Loki. His trickster son foils each of these attempts with his juvenile pranks, switching secondary genders to repel any potential suitors. Attempting to circumvent Loki’s gender fluidity, Odin presents two potential suitors from Midgard.

One is an omega named Tony Stark, heir to the multi-billion company of Stark Industries, intelligent enough to keep Loki on his toes. The other is Stephen Strange, an alpha Master of the Mystic Arts, with a depth of magical knowledge that might be enough to tempt Loki into mating.

Loki’s solution is simple, make the two suitors leave of their own accord to avoid his father’s wrath.

However, unbeknownst to Loki, both Midgardians are hiding secrets of their own. Tony is attempting to escape a future life of being mated to an abusive alpha, while Stephen is months away from suffering an Eldritch malady that will render him comatose if he doesn’t find a mate to bond with.

They won’t be scared away easily.

There is no dubious consent between Loki, Stephen or Tony. Everything between the three of them is safe, sane and consensual.

Words: 6660, Chapters: 1/25, Language: English

Fandoms: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Doctor Strange (Movies)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Multi

Characters: Tony Stark, Loki (Marvel), Stephen Strange, Frigga | Freyja (Marvel), Thor (Marvel), Odin (Marvel), Fandral (Marvel), Peter Parker, Howard Stark, Obadiah Stane, Ancient One (Marvel), James "Rhodey" Rhodes

Relationships: Loki/Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Loki/Tony Stark, Loki/Stephen Strange

Additional Tags: Frostironstrange, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alpha Stephen Strange, Omega Tony Stark, Omega Verse, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Omega Loki (Marvel), Alpha Loki (Marvel), Howard Stark's Bad Parenting, Creepy Obadiah Stane, Evil Obadiah Stane, Protective Loki (Marvel), Protective Stephen Strange, Protective Tony Stark, Rough Sex, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Threesome - M/M/M, Alternate Universe, Safe Sane and Consensual, Falling In Love, Idiots in Love, Asgardian Culture (Marvel), Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, BAMF Tony Stark, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Insecure Stephen Strange, Good Loki (Marvel), Heat and Ruts, Happy Ending, No mpreg, Odin's Parenting (Marvel), Awesome Frigga (Marvel), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, OT3

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/hcytf49

[ironstrangeao3]

Betwixt

by Shortsnout

For years Odin’s been trying to find the perfect mate for Loki. His trickster son foils each of these attempts with his juvenile pranks, switching secondary genders to repel any potential suitors. Attempting to circumvent Loki’s gender fluidity, Odin presents two potential suitors from Midgard.

One is an omega named Tony Stark, heir to the multi-billion company of Stark Industries, intelligent enough to keep Loki on his toes. The other is Stephen Strange, an alpha Master of the Mystic Arts, with a depth of magical knowledge that might be enough to tempt Loki into mating.

Loki’s solution is simple, make the two suitors leave of their own accord to avoid his father’s wrath.

However, unbeknownst to Loki, both Midgardians are hiding secrets of their own. Tony is attempting to escape a future life of being mated to an abusive alpha, while Stephen is months away from suffering an Eldritch malady that will render him comatose if he doesn’t find a mate to bond with.

They won’t be scared away easily.

There is no dubious consent between Loki, Stephen or Tony. Everything between the three of them is safe, sane and consensual.

Words: 6660, Chapters: 1/25, Language: English

Fandoms: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Doctor Strange (Movies)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Multi

Characters: Tony Stark, Loki (Marvel), Stephen Strange, Frigga | Freyja (Marvel), Thor (Marvel), Odin (Marvel), Fandral (Marvel), Peter Parker, Howard Stark, Obadiah Stane, Ancient One (Marvel), James "Rhodey" Rhodes

Relationships: Loki/Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Loki/Tony Stark, Loki/Stephen Strange

Additional Tags: Frostironstrange, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alpha Stephen Strange, Omega Tony Stark, Omega Verse, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Omega Loki (Marvel), Alpha Loki (Marvel), Howard Stark's Bad Parenting, Creepy Obadiah Stane, Evil Obadiah Stane, Protective Loki (Marvel), Protective Stephen Strange, Protective Tony Stark, Rough Sex, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Threesome - M/M/M, Alternate Universe, Safe Sane and Consensual, Falling In Love, Idiots in Love, Asgardian Culture (Marvel), Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, BAMF Tony Stark, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Insecure Stephen Strange, Good Loki (Marvel), Heat and Ruts, Happy Ending, No mpreg, Odin's Parenting (Marvel), Awesome Frigga (Marvel), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, OT3

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/42666480

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

One Word Prompt: Fish

Title: Scaled and Icy

Pairing: Platonic, familial Logince

Summary: “Oh, Virgil is going to hate him. He’s going to erupt in a rant about Logan being too impulsive as if Logan doesn't think out every action in a methodical manner.” Or. Logan decides to adopt an abandoned human child. 

Word-Count: 1k

Warnings: Dubious Morally Grey Logan, Merfolk But They’re Like Fae!, Presumed Child Abandonment, Slightly Unreliable Narrator, Transformation, Emotional Manipulation, Mentioned Cannibalism (Kinda), Angst With a Kinda Happy Ending, Don’t Worry Roman’s fine, Probably, It’s Dark Fairytale Vibes Okay

Here, have another eldritch logan adopts a child au! 

-

"You're like a fish!" The human child crows, his brown eyes alit with both wonder and joy. He couldn't be much older than three, possibly four. Which is all the more concerning, really, for where is his parents?

Logan blinks. "Not entirely but yes, I do share similar characteristics to them."

"Fish, fishy, fish-man!" The child declares, pudgy fingers reaching to touch Logan's bioluminescent blue scales.

"A-aahah--" Logan begins, moving slightly back, "Please refrain from touching people without asking their permission first."

He tilts his head, golden brown locks falling over his eyes. "Pleeeease can I?"

"Of course, thank you for asking."

The human child's face brightens at this. He reaches again, this time delicately touching Logan's scales with care.

"Whoa," The human child breathes in, "It'ssocool."

He then draws the hand away, resting it against the sandy shore. "My name is Roman and I wanna be a prince! What's your name?"

"You may call me Logic," Logan smiles, showing a slip of his sharp needle-like teeth. There's several rows of them unlike a human’s set of teeth.

This terrifies most humans, but not Roman who possesses the boundless courage of childhood. He leans closer, face scrunching up.

"Logic's a silly name." He declares.

Logan laughs, "Well good thing it's not my true name."

"It's a pretend name? Like make-believe?"

"Essentially, yes. You shouldn't give names away, they have power."

Roman doesn't seem to heed Logan's words, instead protesting, "Well, then, I wanna be Prince Romanul-us-ulus--Romulus then!"

Logan lets out a low, crooning noise, one generally meant to console young merlings. He never expected himself to so enchanted with a child, let alone a human one. Yet the instinctual parental drive is stronger than he thought.

"Well, Roman, would you like to be a prince?" Oh, Virgil is going to hate him. He’s going to erupt in a rant about Logan being too impulsive as if Logan doesn't think out every action in a methodical manner.

"Well, yeah!" Because Roman needs someone to look after him. His parents are clearly not doing a great job of it. He could've gotten swept up in the waves and died if not for Logan.

"Take my hand, come with me then, Roman." This is something the Ocean surely wills. She offered Roman to Logan and he must honor that.

"Okay!" Roman says, eagerly taking Logan's webbed hand.

And it's all Logan needs to pull the child underneath the water, wrapping his arms tightly before Roman can squirm away. Oh, how the child thrashes, his human instincts kicking in and trying to get him to go towards the surface.

It's alright though, it won't last long. Logan sings, thanking the Ocean for Roman. He won't beg for the Ocean to be merciful because the Ocean is not merciful. The Ocean will either let Roman live or She won't. It's something humans seem to fail to understand, time and time again, as they try their hardest to thwart Her will with their contraptions.

Soon Roman's thrashes go weak and the child is limp, heavy in his arms. Logan hums, rocking the child gently back and forth. His grin widens at the slits forming on the child's neck, acting as the opening for gills.

It's the only warning he receives as Roman's eyes reopen, a fiery red hue, as a piercing wail escapes his lips. The child’s soft, rounded baby teeth fall out as little rows of new merling teeth replace them. Still not full-grown teeth, but better at tearing through raw fish than a human’s dull teeth ever could.

"I know, I know," Logan croons, stroking his golden brown locks, "It'll be over soon."

Roman is not the first human Logan has seen the Ocean take as Her own. Virgil was one of the first Logan witnessed. He’d fallen overboard off a human ship, too young to know how to swim. Logan’s pod circled around his sinking figure, tails whipping with fervent excitement.

“He’s an offering from the Ocean,” Logan’s father had whispered to him, “Either he’s meant to become one of the Ocean’s children or he’ll perish and we’ll feast on his flesh.”

Virgil survived, snapping and clicking with the ferocity of a bullshark. Logan has an inkling Roman will be the same as his wails become more of a hissing, shrill noise. 

His ears has elongated, tipped with small winged fins. Similar fins appear on the backside of his elbows and Logan suspects on his back as well. The most important part, of course, is when the human’s pair of tails conjoin together to become one. This is where many prove their unworthiness to be one of the Ocean’s own. They perish, a mockery of what a Mer should be; malformed and incomplete, a disgrace to the Ocean.

“Shhh, shhh, Roman, let the Ocean accept you as one of Her own, don’t fight it,” Logan continues crooning, adjusting his grip so he is only holding onto the upper half of Roman’s body. The sliver of Roman’s soul that is still human tries to use this to kick at Logan, to dislodge his grasp. 

But this is hard when the tails become stiff, rigid as they become one, shimmering as ruby scales overtake soft flesh. The outerwear humans are fond of wearing tears, ripping to shreds as its unable to handle Roman’s growing unified tail. The tail itself almost makes up his original height but not quite. Roman’s tail twitches once, then several times.

“Rather an odd sensation for you I imagine, hmm?” Logan comments, tracing the edge of Roman’s finned ear fondly. Oh thank the Ocean, he never thought he’d be happy to have a child of his own until this moment.

Roman opens his eyes again, a good proper glowing red hue. “F-fishyman--Logic?”

“Yes?”

“I--I’m a fish too?”

“No, Roman, you’re not a fish. You’re like me--you’re one of the Ocean’s children now.”

“O-ooh. But why? It hurt so much!” Roman pouts, tail lashing angrily.

“That’s simply how it is, little prince,” Logan hums.

“Well, I don’t like it! Can I change back? I wanna see my mom and dad.”

“Now, Roman, you can’t do that. Your parents left you, they weren’t watching you like they should and now I will take care of you. You want to be a prince now, don’t you, Roman? Roman, you will be a prince and you’ll be so excited you’ll forget those humans ever existed, alright?”

Foolish, foolish humans. They really should’ve taught their child about the importance of names. That’s alright, Logan will teach Roman now and keep him safe.

“I do wanna be a prince, I’m going to be a prince, right?” Roman murmurs, yawning. The process of becoming one of the Ocean’s own is a tiring one. He snuggles closer to Logan, curling his tail around Logan. Something Mer instinctively do, to ensure they won’t drift away from their loved ones when they fall asleep. Logan smiles at this.

“Yes of course,” Logan soothes, “You’ll be my little prince and I won’t ever let any harm come to you.” 

[chiclet-go-boom]

So for the first time since the... middle of February? Beginning of March? It’s fucking quiet at work and I have caught up to everything I want to catch up on. So for the first time on forever I’m in hold pattern until somebody gets back to me. I haven’t had more than three minutes of downtime in MONTHS and suddenly this afternoon is just streeeetching before me like a pristine slope of downhill snow.

I could fire up my many, many WIP fanfic documents and try working on something but nah. Instead, I shall regale you with the many things I could be work on in bullet format, so that we can all admire my options.

FFVIII - Sins of the Living - Squall / Seifer This is the oldest thing I have that technically I’m still working on. I have ten chapters done out of what was envisioned as twelve so this is like, nearly over. The gap between chapters nine and ten was seventeen years though and I have people who have, in fact, had it on their subscribe list for that long. Every so often, somebody posts a comment lamenting that its not finished. I should finish it.

Shadowhunters : “parabatai thing” - Jace + Alec A little one-shot thing from Clary’s point of view on the deal between Jace and Alec. I can’t figure out the exact point I want to make at the end, so its languishing on a three-quarter build since I’m not sure what romance-crushing epiphany to end on exactly.

Shadowhunters - “morningstar” - Jace / Alec Wherein Sebastian doesn’t exist and Jace is Valentine’s one big experimental shot at fucking over the Clave and the war. Featuring graphic torture, mindbreak, feral Jace and desperately valiant Alec and enough dubious consent issues to make your pearls clutch in a fever. The sin of Eros, oh my. I wanted to channel at least a little bit of the feel of N I G H T M A R E but went wildly off track pretty quickly. I am not cut out for creeping horror, who knew? But I can write a pretty savage fight scene, giggity.

Star Wars Sequels - “twincest” - Kylo / Ben This random thing I worked out with Ben and Kylo as teenage twins, terrible parenting and a bunch of sexybad decisions made at lightspeed. Supposed to be fairly short but fell into a plot and never worked its way back to the top of the pit.

Star Wars Sequels - “future imperfect” - Kylo / Rey A modern day/magic AU idea, where Ben and Kylo are twins again but Ben sees the future and Kylo sees the past and Rey (Never A Palpatine) can find anything that’s lost and we do mean everything. Leia runs (owns) the largest single coven on the northwest coast, Snoke opposes her in the east and Luke is missing, the bastard. I had some pretty good visual scenes worked out for this, had some kickass bits with Phasma and Hux and its one of the few fics where I wrote down the world building points I didn’t want to forget about.

FFXIV - The Lighted Paths - Emet-Selch + WoL Started writing this for NaNoWriMo last year because the Meatball told me to and I was amused enough to cough up a 10k of a start before playing the game got more important than writing about it. A reworking of Shadowbringers that would bork the fuck out of Endwalker, I started wandering into romantic territory with the WoL and realized I didn’t care for it really and never floundered my way back to a throughline I preferred. Emet-Selch as vague eldritch horror, sin eaters are terrifying, and you don’t get through thirteen thousand years of mass slaughter by being overcareful with consequences.

FFXIV - “eldest sister" - Ser Aymeric / WoL I love this one in my head. POV of a pleasure house madam in Ul’dah, the WoL contracts our narrator to set up a “first night” with Aymeric before they have to leave for Gyr Albania, possibly never to return to Ishgard because the tides of fate wait for no miqo’te. Featuring a potion of Lethe, miqo’te sex and marriage rituals, a yearning WoL and Aymeric keeping his secrets close to the chest.

FFXIV - “pandora’s box” - Ser Aymeric / WoL This one is a bunch of disconnected scenes so far with a narrative thread I haven’t pulled together really, I just like thinking about it. Like Pandora, once you open the box, you can’t close it again and some things? Some things will eat you alive. The WoL punches through the acceptable limits of power and realizes to their terror that the pit waiting inside them seems bottomless: aether to fill it, aether needed to cascade into it in a waterfall of inevitability. With Haurchefant gone, the voice of love and reason, how do you ground yourself back to flesh and blood when all that you touch, you want to consume?

FFXIV - “viator” - Zenos yae Galvus / WoL Fix-it fic so that Zenos doesn’t end up gasping out his last beyond the end of stars. G’raha is not best pleased by this. Featuring cuddle-clutching for warmth, turning to your killer for comfort and making sure the dead guy understands he doesn’t get to leave you like this. Small sidebit/denouement where Zenos and the WoL reenact some of that last fight in front of witnesses back in the real world, who finally get to see what happens when the gloves comes off and mortality is more a concept than a reality for either of our best frenemies.

Merlin (BBC) - “prince of summer” - Merlin / Arthur What if the show was more medieval fantasy and less played for laughs? Featuring fairy rings, fae with teeth, Beltane, the Wild Hunt, seven lost years and childofmagic!merlin who knows more than he’s supposed to and less than he ought. Uther Pendragon’s A+ Parenting.

Harry Potter - “the open circle” - Harry / Draco The second ficthingie on this list that actually has world notes scribble down so I don’t forget. Wherein Draco doubles down on who he is and means it this time, Harry discovers what being the Master of Death really entails if you intend to stay on this side of the line and Eighth Year Hogwarts where the question comes down to: what did Lucius have in his other hand? Old Magic Is More Frightening Than You Think.

[ramblingkat]

I’m not sure exactly where this came from. And it’s four, almost five in the morning. Have random eldritch blurbs. 

Fandom: Bleach

Characters: Isshin, Kisuke, Ichigo

Notes: Eldritch things are about. Headcanons as well. Here be monsters. 

He wouldn’t stop crying. 

At this point, Isshin was getting desperate. He could see that Masaki was as well. Both of them were going around with dark shadows under their eyes, and Isshin was feeling sluggish from how little sleep he was getting. Every time one or the other of them started to get to sleep, the crying would start again. 

Ichigo wailed, reedy voice raspy for all near constant crying he did. Even when the baby fell into some fitful sleep, he whimpered and fussed still. If Isshin thought he and Masaki looked horrible, it was nothing compared to their baby. 

He was so -thin-. They had taken him to their pediatrician. They had taken him to the specialist the pediatrician had recommended. They had even taken him to Ryuken, who was still working on finishing his training as a doctor. None of them could offer any reason on why Ichigo would not stop crying. Why he would eat greedy and almost as constantly as they could feed him, and still continued to lose weight. 

There was no fat baby cheeks for him. No pudgy little arms and chubby belly. Ichigo was thin, and Isshin could swear he was getting thinner in front of their eyes. 

He was desperate. 

So, after telling Masaki his plan, Isshin went across town and let himself into a candy shop. 

Inside, Tessai was cleaning, though his head came up as the sound of the wail that came from Ichigo. Before Isshin could say anything, there was the soft sound of the door in the back of the public area opening and a head of mussed pale hair sticking out. 

“What,” Kisuke said after a moment, blinking sleepily, “is that?”

He seemed to have just woken up, and Isshin had a moment of jealousy that the man could get to sleep. But he shook it off. He wasn’t sure if he trusted Urahara, there was always too much in that man’s head for him to fully trust anyone. Plus, having heard the official story that was told in the Seireitei over why the twelfth’s former captain was no longer a captain, Isshin had a hard time shaking off his paranoia. Even with everything the man had done for him since he’d come to the living world. 

That was not important now. 

“Ichigo,” he said, short and to the point. “He cries constantly. He barely sleeps. He’s always hungry.” 

Kisuke looked at him, a faintly dubious look on his face. “Don’t...all babies do that?” he asked slowly. Likely, Isshin thought  uncharitably, this was the closest he’d been allowed to a baby. Most people knew not to let assassins and madmen pretending to be scientists near children. 

“He doesn’t gain weight,” Isshin continued. “It’s not a physical thing. Masaki and Ryuken both say he’s having odd bursts of reiatsu. Masaki says she feels cold when she feeds him.” 

Just as he expected, that piqued Kisuke’s interest. The other man came closer. He looked at the baby in Isshin’s arms, then held his own out. “Give him here.”

After a moment of hesitation, he did. 

For being so uncertain about how babies worked in general, it was obvious that Kisuke had not been looking at Ichigo so much as how Isshin was holding the infant. He settled Ichigo into his arms with surprising ease. It was actually something of a shock, though Isshin couldn’t put his finger on why. 

Kisuke held his hand over Ichigo a moment, eyes glittering strangely all at once. 

Isshin looked away. 

When the light reflected that way, it was just safer to not look directly at Kisuke. Every instinct in Isshin’s body and soul screamed to take Ichigo away from what held him, even as his brain tried to reject that anything was holding Ichigo. 

Kisuke might not have corrupted his fellow captains like it was claimed, but he had definitely done -something- that was wrong. 

Then Ichigo stopped crying. 

His neck popped, Isshin whipped his head up to look at his child. But Ichigo was still there, Kisuke’s hand on his body. Eyes caught between bluish and brown slowly blinked close, tiny fingers curled around Kisuke’s.

“Go away,” Kisuke said softly. “For at least an hour. I need to focus.”

Isshin bristled. He was not going to….

“If you want your son to live for much longer. Go. Away.” 

Kisuke’s tone echoed in Isshin’s skull, and he swayed. To the side, he saw Tessai murmuring, hand held up, a faint glow around his head. Trying to think past the buzzing in his ears, he swallowed hard. “What are you doing to do?” 

Even his own voice sounded far away and distant. 

“I’m going to help,” Kisuke said after a moment, sounding like himself again, cheerful and like a human. A muffled human, but human nonetheless. 

He turned and vanished back into the private rooms. Isshin went to follow, only for Tessai to grab his arm. 

“We should go,” he said quietly “It would not do for you to die while your son is saved.”

He wanted to stay. Wanted to shrug off Tessai’s hand and go after his son. Whatever Urahara was going to do, it wasn’t going to be good. He knew it. 

But…. Urahara had saved Masaki, all those years ago. He’d helped Isshin settle into this life he had now. He was a monster, but he had kept his word so far. 

Isshin allowed himself to be tugged along and wondered what his son would be when he saw Ichigo next. 

<center>***</center>

Humming to himself, Kisuke slipped back through the shop. He came to a section of the hall, smiled, and then stepped sideways. The world twisted, and he followed his new path. In his arms, Ichigo mumbled, still pulling power through the grip he had on Kisuke’s fingers. 

“Poor little thing,” Kisuke crooned at him, allowing the poor thing to eat. “They make you half a monster and leave it at that. You’d think they’d know better than that.” He smiled. “Quincies and hollows, so similar in their needs, if not volume.” 

He felt power being pulled from him, being soaked up by Ichigo as the baby fed in a way he so obviously needed desperately. What had they been thinking? Oh, he’d expected something to happen, but to let a baby starve like this. 

Hollows and Quincy fed off spiritual power, even if the Quincy denied it. They could pretend with all their twisted little souls that they were just regular humans with powers. If that was the case, he wouldn’t need Quincy -and- human power to make a vaccine for the visored. 

Poor little Ichigo fed off reishi around him when it was free, and off the reiryoku inside of people when he could touch them. But he couldn’t get enough. Not for the hollow that was in the heart of his soul. Even as a baby, he could feel that hunger.

What were Masaki and Ryuken doing? Isshin was blind as any regular person now, so Kisuke could understand him missing it. But those two were still talented in their own way. How could they miss the fact Ichigo -hungered-?

Not that it mattered. Kisuke had plans for this malleable little soul. 

He always wanted a child of his own. 

Some more walking took them to the place he kept his precious little toy, the beat of her breathing echoing in his heart, pulsing in time with his blood. Kisuke could hear her singing, wanting to stretch out and reach for things not even he could see. But she was too small, too weak. Even as he fed her, there was not enough power for what she wanted.

But the core of that broken star was his own soul, and Kisuke knew she’d get what she wanted someday. Right now, she was quiet other than her soft song, though he could feel her buzzing as he got closer. 

The closest thing he had to a child so far, something pure and distilled of himself and Benihime. A thing of destruction, creation, and everything between. 

Her singing grew louder as he settled near the ornate wooden box that held her. Keeping Ichigo tucked against his chest with one arm, he opened the box and curled his fingers around the humming darkness that was the Hogyoku. 

She seemed to shiver under his grasp, pulling a bit of power from him, just as Ichigo had been before Kisuke had pulled his hand free. The boy whimpered, but was otherwise quiet. Though he’d just fed quite heavily on Kisuke’s power. Poor thing probably needed to settle that first, but Kisuke knew he’d be starving again soon enough. 

That gave him time for this. 

A sigh, and he shut his eyes. 

“Come on, we need to help feed your brother,” he said cheerfully, reality going hazy around him for a moment. 

When he had made the Hogyoku, Kisuke had started with a simple thing. A mix of the four powers. It hadn’t been hard to get what he needed. Though he had chosen to use a piece of his own soul, using Benihime to weave shinigami will with Quincy light, Hollow hunger, and pure human strength. Weaving the strands over and together, breaking them apart at the most basic of layers until they stopped being separate. When they went from being four different types of power and flavors to a glorious, radiant whole. 

He still didn’t remember everything, but it had ripped something apart, and he had killed half the people who had been in the labs that night. If Central 46 had discovered that, he’d have been facing them long before Aizen had made his move. 

But Kisuke had figured out how to put himself together again, to separate his mind and body from what it -could- be. 

He simply wasn’t done being Kisuke  and Benihime yet. 

But the Hogyoku was still this pulse infant of possibilities. Everything and anything was a potential reality for her. Once she fed enough. Once her song stopped having a note of hunger. 

Convincing her to share her food with her new brother took some doing. Kisuke was sure he was going to sleep for a week and then go hunting to feed all of them.

Well, that was what a good parent did, he supposed. .

Shifting, he held the Hogyoku above Ichigo’s chest. “Come on now,” he said cheerfully, even as she pouted in his fingers. “Be good.” 

Still, she resisted until Benihime sent a pulse down Kisuke’s arm into beating black creation. When would she learn that Kisuke was the nice parent?

Then a shift in his fingers, and a thick, oozing drop of something formed, dripped and shifted downwards. As it went, the bit of darkness shifted through solid, liquid, what he thought might be plasma, and a few other states of matter Kisuke had never seen. 

How interesting. 

Then it landed on Ichigo, soaking into his skin almost instantly.

Kisuke waited. 

A sensation that felt like a grumble through his fingers, and he felt the power drift from the Hogyoku towards Ichigo. Who absorbed it.

Then reality warped again. It had done it once with his first child, and now, it did it with his second. 

Ichigo’s eyes opened, a brilliant, faceted golden rainbow of colors with no names, and a chill ran down Kisuke’s spine. Fear and interest all at once. 

The two looked at each other for a long moment, then Ichigo yawned, blinked his eyes a few times. Kisuke was almost disappointed when they returned to the color they had been when Isshin brought the boy. But he also felt a bit of pleasure at a job well done. Already, even in just this few seconds, Ichigo’s cheeks were starting to fill out. 

“Really,” he said, putting the Hogyoku away, back into her box. “If your parents wanted to create a monster, they shouldn’t have stopped half way. That’s simply bad science.”

He stood, and then headed back to the front. 

Children were an interesting idea, but feeding them was the most Kisuke wanted to do with them until they were able to talk. 

“Remember,” he said to the drowsy infant he carried. “This is our little secret.”

Ichigo yawned and went to sleep. 

[mythgirlimagines]

This week, I have a brand-new talentswap MAID especially for you! If you couldn’t tell by the pun in the first sentence, this Myth is the Former Ultimate Maid!

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BACKSTORY AND TALENT

Originally living with her sisters at an orphanage, Myth watched as both of sisters got picked up by loving families, while poor Myth was left in the dust. In order to make herself more desirable to prospective parents, Myth taught herself how to cook and clean after all of the other kids in the orphanage. Eventually though, much to her joy, she was eventually was picked up by a wealthy family that eventually ditched her, despite being great at her maid duties. Eventually, after going through many wealthy families and being tossed out/abused/ignored, without a second thought, one family managed to keep her: a warm and loving family with an artistic prodigy for a daughter. For once, Myth felt the love and affection that she was starved for, after all of those years of isolation and being tossed out like common trash. All of those skills accumulated from both helping out at the orphanage and being raised as a maid for all of these wealthy families, earned her the Hope’s Peak title of Ultimate Maid. 

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RELATIONSHIPS

Wyre Anon, Former Ultimate Artist

Born into an influential family of artistic geniuses, with their father being a master sculptor and their mother being a expert sketch artist, Wyre mainly specializes in the craft of both their parents, even though they are a master in practically every art form their parents can throw at them. When Wyre heard from their parents that someone was going to be adopted into their family, Wyre was ecstatic at the idea, and Myth quickly proved themself as a great servant and sister figure. Myth regularly serves food and cleans up after Wyre, when they gets particularly busy. Every since Wyre heard about Myth’s past with all of the other families, they claim that they are willing to fight all of them, much to the protests of Myth. 

Outfit: A brown paint-colored apron over a black sweater and matching pants and shoes, a tool belt with sculpting supplies, black fingerless gloves, glasses from original design.

Anon Scar, Ultimate Detective

Despite Scar’s eccentric behavior and constant talk of possessing an “All-Seeing Eye” under her eyepatch (which was actually lost in a battle between her and a particularly violent criminal), none of Scar’s clients can deny that she is a very competent detective, in spite of both that and her age. Her detective duties can get very stressful at times, but it seems Myth has a psychic connection to Scar’s distress, for she would always be there with whatever can calm Scar down. This has caused Scar to feel both intrigued (in regards to the possible existence of psychics) and concerned for Myth’s health and well-being (because of Myth‘s constant overexertion and overworking).

Outfit: A black and purple eyepatch on her left eye, a black jacket slung over her shoulders Yasuhiro-style, a black vest over a white dress shirt, black pants and black thigh high heels.

Fusion Anon, Ultimate Astronaut

Ever since he was little and went stargazing with his grandparents, Fusion has always showed an interest in reaching the stars and traveling beyond the boundaries. Having aced both the physical and written exams at NASA, despite his age, Fusion is well on his way to becoming a full-blown astronaut. Fusion also trains younger children who are planning on becoming astronauts just like him, via lectures on astronomy and little physical exercises to build up endurance, and he brought his astronaut-training seminars to the Kibo-Con. Myth regularly assists him in his seminars, and in return, Myth gets glow-in-the-dark star-shaped stickers and freeze-dried “astronaut grub” from Fusion. 

Outfit: A blue galaxy printed jumpsuit over a red t-shirt with a yellow star on the front, black and dark grey gloves and matching boots, glasses from original design.

FU-510-N Mk. 2 (aka. Fusion Anon II), Ultimate Robot 

FU-510-N Mk. 2 (or Fusion II as she’d like to be called) was a robot created by NASA, in order to both assist Fusion in his seminars and accompany him on his future space expeditions. Created to entertain adults as well as children during the lectures and training, Fusion II was written with more of a sarcastic edge to her dialogue with Fusion, making her a bit more of a straight man to Fusion’s cheerful and pun-loving funny man, almost like Fusion’s rebellious teen daughter. Fusion II bonded with Myth quickly over their shared statuses of being “assistants“ to others. But much to Fusion II’s dismay, it doesn’t seem like Myth is able to pick up on her sarcasm at all.

Outfit: A white exoskeleton, pink and black joints,  and four small black wheels underneath her “skirt”, clothes from original design.

Just Anon, Ultimate Anthropologist 

Running away from home, because of his massively rich, influential, and incredibly strict parents, with nothing but a backpack and his wits, Janon eventually found the one thing that actually interested him, while on his trek across the world: people and their cultures, which attracted him to the field of anthropology. After writing all about his travels and the philosophies he learned in a couple of journals he eventually published for the masses, Janon was revered as a genius in the field of anthropology. Despite planning on taking this secret to the grave, Janon has a secret soft spot for Myth, for she reminds her of the poor maids being crapped on by his influential family.

Outfit: A black facemask, a black overcoat over a pink t-shirt, a skull necklace, brown pants, black boots, a big brown backpack.

Sparkle Anon, Former Ultimate Entomologist

Specializing in lepidoptery and coleopterology, Sparkle intends on showing people all about the beauty of insects, in the most flamboyant and over-dramatic ways possible. Despite these idiosyncrasies, she is a respected figure by entomologists and aspiring entomologists everywhere. While Myth loves admiring the odd butterfly as much as the next person, Sparkle attracts insects like sugar water, and they are all a nightmare to remove and exterminate. The whole insect issue isn’t helped by the fact that Sparkle loudly and explicitly refuses to let Myth get rid of any of her “precious jewels”. Luckily, Sparkle shared some non-pesticide related methods to herd her insects, in case they get wild.

Outfit: A cape that resembles monarch butterfly wings with shoulder pads that look like rhino beetles, a green insect carrier,  a brown skirt with darker brown ant patterns, the glasses, jacket, undershirt, leggings, and boots from her original design.

Egg Anon, Former Ultimate Child Caregiver, and Wet Sock Anon, Former Ultimate Aikido Master

With a childish, immature and cursed yet caring personality, Egg was a massive hit amongst the children of the orphanage that they and their twin Wet Sock were born and raised in. In order to protect the children that their twin cared for, the brooding and cynical Wet Sock decided to pick up aikido and self-defense skills, dominating bigger foes in all the tournaments they entered. Shouldering the burden of hearing the twin’s primary defense mechanism (read: cursed comments), Myth quickly bonded with Egg, thanks to their shared interest in caring for others. Myth tried to bond with Wet Sock, but because of them being tsundere, Myth only gets judo thrown in response.

Egg’s Outfit: Part of their hair tied up with a yellow scrunchie, a green hoodie with yellow sleeves, a fanny pack colored like their original shirt, black shorts, long yellow socks, green light-up-shoes, glasses from original design.

Wet Sock’s Outfit: Same outfit from the original, but with black aikido pants and matching sandals.

Curious Anon, Jr. Ultimate Supreme Leader/Assassin

With the dubious and odd title of “Jr. Ultimate Supreme Leader” and an enigmatic and stone-faced personality, almost nothing is known about this mysterious Jr. Ultimate, not even what their talent entails. What Myth and the majority of the media don’t know, is that Curious is that his title is actually the Jr. Ultimate Assassin and is current throneholder of a secret underground religious cult that is particularly known for brainwashing and teaching their children how to assassinate potential religious rivals. Luckily, Myth was fortunate enough to not cross paths frequently with Curious, for she would definitely try to adopt the preteen assassin with a messed-up upbringing, if she ever catches wind of the truth.

Outfit: A simple white robe with a green sash indicating leadership that hides their assassination weapons.

Anon Nerd, Former Ultimate Inventor

Being a mechanical genius born in a country that was ravished by a massive war, Nerd was quickly sent to work in manufacturing and inventing brand-new weapons for his nation’s army. This past has given him a hair-trigger temper and a hatred for being interrupted, when he is in the middle of inventing. And yet no matter how many scouter-burns she suffers in the process, she never remembers that little tidbit of information about, when she comes barging into Nerd’s lab with his dinner, much to the rage of the easily-enraged inventing prodigy. But beneath the foul mouth and even-fouler temper, could Nerd have fallen for Myth’s kind and earnest attitude, despite being very annoying?

Outfit: Black armor that covers everything apart from his head, and the scouter from his original design.

Eldritch Anon, Ultimate Pianist

Videos of a person garbed entirely in black and playing self-composed pieces have been springing up on the internet for the past year or so, and despite the mysterious person attempting to make absolutely sure that he wasn’t found, Hope‘s Peak found the true identity of the online piano prodigy: Eldritch Anon, a former piano champion, who has since retreated to the shadows in growing anxiety and fear. Whenever Eldritch thinks about anything he wants or needs, Myth would always be right behind him with his want or need in tow. Because of that, Eldritch now wears a tinfoil hat on his head at all times, to prevent Myth’s psychic powers from reaching him, to no avail. 

Outfit: A black marching band outfit with white music note buttons, over a grey hood-up hoodie patterned with black sheet music, white gloves, tall black boots.

Dream Anon, Ultimate Magician

With infectious childlike cheer and unstoppable charisma on stage, Dream’s magical performances are truly a sight to behold, whether you’re a child or an adult. Dream has recently employed Myth as her magical assistant, and Myth regularly roped Dream out of trouble, just in case her magical performances go awry. But at the same time, Dream also took on sort of a mentor role to the maid. While Myth has entertained several guests with some minor parlor tricks, Myth would love to learn all about how Dream accomplishes all of her large-scale and stupendous, and how Myth can learn them herself. If Myth learns from the best, she would be able to entertain way more guests.

Outfit: A black and pink top hat, a black coat and white gloves over a pink vest, an orange bow tie and a white dress shirt, a pink skirt, grey stockings, and black tap shoes.

Iris Anon, Jr. Ultimate Cosplayer

Having been a regular consumer of fiction ever since she was little, she picked up sewing and fashion design from her parents and eventually began making accurate-to-the-show cosplay items, ranging from simple accessories to full-blown outfits. Despite being really clumsy when it comes to everything else, Iris is amazing at handicrafts. Myth and Iris consider each other “sewing buddies”, for their shared interests in sewing outfits and other such handicrafts. Iris regularly lets Myth model her cosplay, for they are about the same height and have the same proportions. Iris would be lying if she said she hadn’t tried sticking cat ears or dragon horns on Myth when she wasn’t looking. 

Outfit: Hair down with a heart barrette on each side of her head, a pink jacket with sewing supplies in her pockets and on her sleeves over a seira fuku with a red ribbon and a blue skirt, black stockings and red Mary Janes.

Purple Anon, Ultimate Adventurer

As the daughter of two famous and affluent ambassadors, Purple has been to practically every corner of the globe. Because of her travels, Purple regularly talks in archaic terms mixed with the insertion of gratuitous foreign vocabulary into her sentences, which means that the majority of the Anons can‘t understand a word coming out of her mouth. Purple is also stunningly timid for the daughter of two ambassadors, and often hides behind Anons that are bigger than her for when she doesn’t want to be seen by the crowds. Even if Myth can’t understand much of what comes out of Purple’s mouth, Myth still loves seeing Purple slowly but surely come out of her shell and talk about her travels.

Outfit: The beret from her original design, a dark purple overcoat and brown gloves over the sweater from her original design, lighter purple pants, brown boots, a brown carrier bag.

This AU will center around the maid getting helped for once, much to her protests.

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PERSONALITY

Despite her less-than-stellar past, Maid!Myth has a cheery and energetic attitude that belies (and bolsters) her sheer aptitude as a maid and her joy is described as “infectious” amongst Wyre’s family. With definite “mom energy”, Maid!Myth always comes prepared with the wants and needs for each and everyone of the Kibo-Con attendees, and seems to have an almost telepathic ability to whatever they all want, which unnerves a couple of the Anons (namely Eldritch, Scar, and Purple). Even though she overworks herself to a fault and everyone constantly tells to take a break from her work, she constantly shoulders every burden and duty placed upon her, in hopes that they won’t abandon her, just like every other family before Wyre’s family. This gave her a case of “chronic hero syndrome”.

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APPEARANCE

Maid!Myth’s naturally brown hair is tied in a prim and proper bun, complete with a white and light pink French-maid style headdress. As for the rest of her clothing, Myth wears a white and light pink French Maid dress with the only exception to the “white and light pink style” being a ribbon around her waist with a pink-to-purple-blue gradient, purple socks and red Mary Janes.

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I hope you like this AU! Let me know what you think of the AU and its roles in your reblogs!

[littlemissgeek8]

Okay I just wanted to say I love your dnd art like so much!! It’s amazing!!! If you don’t mind me asking, can you summarize what you’ve done in your campaign with Jemima Appleblossom so far? She’s so cute and I would literally die for your PC

Aww!! Thanks! It’s always a joy to run into people who likemy characters! :3 I can totally give you a summary of our campaign thoughunfortunately it is 30 episodes atthe time of writing, with 31 going up later today, and I was unable to shrinkit to a reasonable size. I’ll put it under a cut to save on people’s dashspace, and I’ll also put links here for the youtube playlists in case there’sanyone who’d like to watch it instead of just reading about it. XD And for anyone interested in the series, this recap will catch you up in time for today’s episode to go out!

For those not wanting to read through all 8,930 words ofthis, TL;DR: “Ragtag group of adventurers get pulled into another world wherethey find themselves rubbing elbows with gods, fighting monsters, makingfriends, reviving demigods and unwittingly unleashing some massively dangerousthings onto the planet. In between accidentally dying a few times.”

[Ghostwolf] [EscoNitz] [CriticalHat]

Well, we started off in Parnast, sent by our individualfactions to investigate a missing wizard. My halfling bard Jemima is a Harper,same as our other bard, the human Gineye. Our other party members included Lei,the Tortle Paladin, Zuradar the Tiefling ranger, Lilystra the half-orcbarbarian and Zareem, the Aasimar warlock (who works for the Zhentarim, theonly other faction I remember.) On our way to find the missing wizard, we raninto a bunch of Kobolds who attacked us, but one Kobold --with distinctivewooden legs and one arm-- was trapped inside a cart by his own people and gaveus some assistance. When we finally found the wizard he was in the process ofsummoning something that turned out to be a Water Weird, which subsequently atethe whole party, ending the first session.

We woke up a week later inside an infirmary, which we soondiscovered was in an underwater city—the water weird didn’t just eat us, ittransported us basically to another dimension far away from Faerun. Seeing usas adventurers, one of the triton soldiers from the town we woke up in took us upto the surface to the port town of Audio Bay. (I might be spelling it wrong,sorry, I don’t have good notes this far back.) There, a dwarven merchant namedJonah gave us a quest to track down some missing gear that was stolen from him,a quest which lead us to a well with a Zhentarim symbol on it (surprisingly,since none of our factions exist in this dimension) and inside said well, weencountered a “dungeon” of a dubious nature filled with hobgoblins and bugbearsin leather armor and chain shirts. (Yes it was a kink dungeon, no I don’t wantto remember much about it. XD) After thoroughly stomping everyone involved, aminiscule orc calling himself “Bob” entered the room, shouting at us forhurting his people (whom he then revived with no effort at all.) We told him ofour mission and he agreed to let us take the stolen weapons back, along withgifting us a mysterious box filled with magic coins and a magical shield to ourpaladin. It wasn’t until later that we discovered that “Bob” was actually thegod of slaughter, not until after Zareem managed to roll a natural 100 and hithim with an eldritch blast.

As we left the dungeon, we were greeted by a pack of strangelooking wolves and a tall, blond man in a black coat who asked us to give himthe weapons we’d retrieved. He wouldn’t accept “no” for an answer, nor did wehave much time to try convincing him that we’d been assigned to collect thembefore our hair-trigger warlock decided to cast Charm Person on this newcomer.Unfortunately, the man was carrying a Staff of Charming and nullified the spellbefore it could affect him, before wildshaping into an earth elemental andproceeding to do his best to squash us. It wasn’t until Zareem and Zuradarmanaged to capture one of the “wolves” who turned out to be another druid thatthe man relented, changing back and calling off his friends. He admitted hisactions were hasty and together we traveled back to Jonah’s store with thestolen weapons, where it was revealed that the weapons were a special orderfrom the druid himself, Edan. In return for the weapons, Edan financed someupgrades for our group through the organization he works for (including a sweetring for Jemima which changes her vicious mockery from a d4 to a d6.)

The next day saw Edan taking us to an open air market on thedocks to shop around for supplies, before taking us to a tavern and treating usto lunch. (It was a pretty low-key session though there was a lot ofnon-story-important horseplay.) At the tavern we ran into the druids we’dfought the day before as well as a familiar face: Hanzi, the Kobold with thewooden limbs. While we ate, Edan mentioned that the druids, Hanzi and himselfwere all from Faerun originally and offered to let us join the organizationthey were working with when they went back to their base at the end of themonth. Shortly afterwards (after Jemima spent some time performing for thetavern patrons) Edan left the tavern, citing a “call” from his celestial parent(which Jemima immediately recognized, due to her own bardic master having beenan Aasimar as well.) Before they could pursue, the party was given a quest toinvestigate something in the tavern’s cellar, which turned out to be a wholeton of giant spiders (and a lot of screaming from Jemima) as well as a mimicwhich had taken the place of a box intended for Jonah.

As we returned to Jonah’s shop with his shipment, a heavystorm had started rolling in off the ocean, and after checking in with Jonah(and asking him if anyone would have been trying to kill him by sending him amimic) we headed out to the courtyard to find Edan standing by a scorched areawhere several lightning strikes had taken place. One of the lightning strikesleft behind a glowing orb that turned into a box which he quickly pocketed andrefused to tell us what it was, but we learned some troubling information aboutthe how though the portal we’d come through was a common occurrence, somethinghad interfered with it and kept his organization from closing it on time. Afterthings nearly came to blows between him, Zareem, Zuradar and Gineye, we allheaded off to prepare for whatever the next day would bring and eventuallysleep.

The next day was stormy again, but we set out with Edan anda few others to the docks, hoping to stave off whatever horrible thing wasapproaching the town from the portal in the ocean. Almost immediately, Edanflew off towards a monster out in the ocean, leaving us to deal with a largenumber of minor water elementals who did a good deal of damage before welearned we could destroy them by damaging the summoning circles they came from.Meanwhile, Gineye (with his Special Eyes) noticed “Bob” and several cloakedfigures watching the proceedings from the air nearby. As we defeated theelementals, a massive bolt of lighting shot from the storm over the ocean,right into the monster Edan was fighting, killing it and throwing Edan’slifeless body onto the docks nearby. Jemima tried in vain to use Healing Wordto revive him, only to be shut down by someone sending her a clear mentalmessage that she was wasting her time. Soon afterwards we found ourselvesfacing the same Wizard we’d been sent to find, who had merged himself with thewater weird. The battle was short and fairly one-sided as we all charged himbefore he could do much, eventually leading him to attack Lei one-on-one.Nobody’s entirely sure what happened but the wizard disappeared and Lei learnedhe could shoot a beam of radiant energy from his mouth.

That concluded, the realization of what happened to Edan hithome as a few of us tried to go over to him, only to be stopped by two of thecloaked figures Gineye had seen. One, a massive bugbear went to solemnlycollect the body, while the other (a skeletal form we couldn’t see well) tooksome glowing orb from Edan’s head before leaving. We’d managed to save thecity, but we’d lost a friend in the process. The next week was spent helpingthe city rebuild from the attack, though for Jemima it was a week of privatemourning and a grim realization that the fairy tale heroics she’d dreamed ofwere only a fantasy in the face of harsh reality. Then, we were called in toJonah’s again, only to find “Bob” sitting there, along with a large box and thedruids we’d met earlier. He gave us a mission we couldn’t really reject—travelwith Jonah and the druids to take the mysterious box to a town calledSylvenstand, checking in with a few towns along the way. When asked why hechose our group to do this, he admitted that we’d been specially requested, orrather Jemima had been requested for this job and it followed that everyoneelse would come too. In addition, Jemima was given three gifts—the owl-headedStaff of Charming that Edan had used, his bag of holding, and Bob’s holy symbolon her wrist as a sign of protection. And so, the group set off cross-countryto Sylvenstand in an enchanted cart with a box they weren’t allowed to touch(or let anyone else touch either, save for one contact they were told to meet.)

Their first destination was Flatol, where they were sent toinvestigate some reports of some strange goings on. This lead the party toinvestigate a crypt, one decorated with symbols and writing praising Orcus, andinside we found the necromancer that we’d been sent to find who almostimmediately trapped us into seeing our worst fears, but before anyone couldreally dwell on them, the Necromancer himself was murdered by the thingconjured up by Hanzi’s fear: a terrifying shadowy cleric. The battle thatensued was brutal, with us trying to defend against the cleric’s powerfulattacks or healing each other as best we could, but in the end the nightmarecleric was defeated. However, the cost of fighting him turned out to be Lei’slife, for the killing blow on the cleric sent our unconscious paladin into hisfinal death saves (Thanks, Zareem for not moving your Shatter spell somewhereelse.) However, instead of outright dying, a glow surrounded him, bringing himback but without his hard shell and with a much longer tail. The coins we’dreceived from “Bob” on our first meeting with him had each bonded with one ofus and this was the first time they’d revealed their powers: saving the bearerfrom death but bringing them back with a change or two.

We ushered our now semi-naked Tortle back to the cart andprepared to move on (though not until after a horrifying lunch in which ourTiefling nearly petrified several people with some of the dishes he’d made and did actually petrify himself for a shorttime.) Then, we moved on to Glens, the next town on our journey. TheNecromancer we’d run into had gone to Flatol from Glens and we were informedthat another necromancer had been in town as well, along with a frighteningbounty hunter who was hunting him down. Our search for clues turned up little,but as we all went to meet up in the town square, a huge hulking barbarianleaped down into our midst, wielding a massive axe. We weren’t much of a matchfor him, until Lei managed to grapple him, giving Gineye a chance to use a boltof petrification he’d picked up earlier. The Barbarian failed his save hard,turning to stone before our eyes, but as Gineye removed his hood, a familiarface stared back—Edan’s, thoughframed by dark hair instead of blond. Needless to say, Jemima didn’t take itwell, and we carefully moved the petrified man back to the cart to be restored.Before we left, however, the axe the barbarian had been using decided to attachitself to Gineye, revealing itself to be not only cursed but sentient as well.

A cleric who was currently traveling with us managed torestore the barbarian, and a conversation later revealed that he was not, infact, Edan. He introduced himself as Ivan the Lucky, a bounty hunter who hadbeen chasing down the necromancers we had run into, and he’d been working longenough to have a solid reputation, so the chances of him being Edan withamnesia or something was extremely low. However, we couldn’t let him leave asone of the jobs in our contracts was to investigate the grisly murders in Glensand there was a good likelihood he was involved somehow. So, with Ivan in towwe headed off to the next town, Crance, which was currently embroiled in arebellion of some kind. However, we had to stop there to meet up with acontact, and since we weren’t given a description of the contact we had tocross our fingers and hope we found him. A couple of men in a tavern claimed tobe the people we were looking for and agreed to come back to the wagon inexchange for some help with a situation they were in. It was only after givingthem the information we had and letting them inspect the box (which thankfullythey didn’t tamper with) that we found out they were not, in fact, our contact,but a mysterious half-orc in town might be. They were with the resistanceagainst the tyrannical government in the area and they directed us to a guardshack where the half-orc and some of their own people were being held.

Our group headed over there and found the guards to besurprisingly easy to defeat, and in the cells were a group of heavily injuredresistance fighters and one massive, angry owlbear. The half-orc however wasnowhere to be seen, until we headed to a room in the back. There, we found himstanding over the corpse of the head guard, pulling a knife out of thestill-warm body. The distinctive red teardrop tattoo on his face marked him asthe person we were searching for, since it matched the mark Jemima had receivedfrom “Bob” at the start of our quest. The half-orc, Grug, followed us back tothe cart to properly inspect the box and pay us for the tasks we’d alreadycompleted, but took an immediate dislike to the currently sleeping Ivan. Heexplained that Ivan was Edan’s Alternate—somewhat but not quite the same personborn in another dimension, though many differences in environment and home lifecan lead to wildly different characteristics, jobs and lives. He then warned usto keep Ivan away from the box, stating that it was dangerous to have himaround when Edan was in such a “weakened state.” Yet again, Jemima freaked out,demanding to know what he meant by that before Zareem completely stopped theconversation by boasting about how Bob approved of him b/c Zareem had managedto hit him. In a fit of rage, Grug dragged Ivan’s sleeping body away andunleashed a bunch of monsters on us, since pissing off a paladin by boastingthat you’d hit his god is probably the worst idea ever.

Once the monsters were defeated we raced outside after Grugand Ivan, finding Ivan yet again possessed by Gineye’s axe as he’d been thefirst time we fought him. After getting the axe back from Ivan (which sent thelarge barbarian back to sleep) we turned our attention to Grug and the animatedswords he was currently attacking our cart with. A few near deaths later, ourfight was interrupted by Grug vanishing and “Bob” appearing in his place,demanding to know what was going on. Thankfully we were in our rights to defendourselves and “Bob” admitted that Grug was overzealous and a huge problem forhim, but he was obligated to keep the half-orc around due to Grug’s familyconnections. Still, Bob fixed our wagon for us and decided to travel with us toSylvenstand, stating that he couldn’t just teleport there due to the nature ofthe place. A few days of travel later, we reached the woods surroundingSylvenstand, a dark frightening forest that seemed to twist and move around,confusing travelers who dared venture into it.

Which is when we ran into the dinosaurs. About halfway intothe forest we were stopped by a dead end and a voice demanding to know why wewere there. When we explained our mission, the voice told us we could only passafter it had “tested our mettle” upon which an allosaurus and a swarm ofdeinonychus showed up. The battle was surprisingly long, made worse by thearrows being shot from an unknown source deep in the woods. However, thedinosaurs eventually backed down, but not until after Jemima heard a veryfamiliar male voice saying the phrase “You can do better” before their woundswere healed. The fight over, we trooped back inside the cart, following theAllosaurus (named Sharp) to the secret town of Sylvenstand.

When we arrived, Jonah took the mysterious box away, whileour group accompanied by “Bob” went to a building built into the massive treein the center of town. Before we could turn in our quest, we checked in with aman at the front desk by the name of Eldon. It was he who finally explainedwhat exactly it was we had been transporting all this time—Edan’s body,magically preserved and warded to prevent decay so that a reviving ritual couldbe performed once his soul was reclaimed. Then, we were ushered upstairs intothe massive tree to an enormous room where a humanoid figure seemingly made ofwood or possibly completely encased in wooden armor sat. Seeing as it wastechnically her quest, Jemima was chosen to speak for the party, turning in theletter they were sent with as well as being given a bag of coin to be dividedamongst the team later. Lei’s divine sense however, picked up the massive amounts of divine energy comingfrom the figure in front of them, as well as noticing the oak leaf symbol onthe man’s chest. Though the contract said we’d been sent to report in to a mannamed Tay’rados, there was little question that the true originator of thequest was none other than Silvanus, the god of nature and druids himself.

After some impromptu shopping at a small bazaar in town, weheaded off to the temple district to meet with one Captain Taylor who wassupposed to be able to help Zareem with a mysterious mark he bore on his chest.Captain Taylor agreed to help on the condition that we spar with him, anexperience none of us were quite prepared for, as he turned out to be anextremely high-level paladin who was pulling his punches. Midway through thefight, having taken a decent amount of damage, Taylor grabbed Jemima beforereaching an arm into her bag of holding, coming up with a purple coin that she’dnever seen before (she’d been getting small trinkets including a bag of dragonbone from Edan’s bag over time, but never seen that coin in all her searching.)Again, Edan’s voice chimed in with the phrase “You can do better” as Taylor’swounds began to heal. In an almost uncharacteristic display of kindness, Zareemhelped her get the coin back and to keep Taylor from taking it again, Jemimadropped it down the front of her shirt with a glare. Then, taking the staff ofcharming she’d inherited from Edan, she stormed over and slapped him deadbetween the eyes, shouting at him “How dareyou touch my things?” only for Taylor to shout back “How dare you take mybrother’s things?” When the fight finally ended, she confronted him about thosewords, discovering that Taylor (who is, in fact, the real Tay’rados and thenext in line to take over for Silvanus) wasn’t kidding about Edan being hisbrother, and the coin he’d taken was an Ioun stone that Edan had obtainedduring one of his many travels. The voice she’d been hearing was simply theHealing Word spell he’d kept inside it being activated.

After our sparring match ended, Tay invited us to join himat the local tavern for drinks to celebrate Edan’s approaching revival, thoughnot before we returned to the large tree building to answer a few questionsabout the wizard we’d fought back in Audio Bay. That was where, after the armorthe wizard had worn attached itself to Lei, that the wizard hadn’t justdisappeared that day, he’d been stowing along in Lei’s brain the whole timewithout anyone knowing. He hasn’t shown his hand yet, but the eventual effectsof this are unknown. Then we trooped off to the tavern, Lei and Zareemintending to party and have a good time, Zuradar and Gineye picking a fightwith a time-manipulating satyr who’d magic’d away some of our gear earlier (wegot it back thankfully) and Jemima meeting a nice man who gave her a book oncreating a Guard Drake from dragonscale (which she conveniently had thanks tothe bag of bones and scales in Edan’s bag of holding.) The party lasted allnight, though most were passed out before it got too late, particularly Zuradarwho was the first out after he failed to seduce an elf lady two times in a rowand left to drink until he couldn’t remember anything.

The next few days were less eventful, mostly everyone havinga bit of downtime and resting up, preparing for the next phase of the revivaloperation: retrieving Edan’s soul from wherever it had ended up. The owlbearthat we’d encountered in Crance had been put into a crystal by Grug fortransport, and thanks to Eldon, it was healed (though it had to be magicallyde-aged to save it) and given to Zuradar as a companion under the name Pip.When the time came for the expedition to set out, Jemima made sure our team wasinvited, since she desperately wanted to be able to save Edan. The expeditionwould leave Sylvenstand through a portal that had been set up over the last fewdays, though the endpoint was unknown until the portal was actually opened,bringing with it a group of dimensional “police” who wanted to know why we hadopened a portal onto a plane known as “Lunacy.” Tay seemed visibly distressedat the mention of that location, but in the end we were permitted to pass,providing he didn’t come with us (astipulation he didn’t challenge at all.) Armed with a glass jar with a locatingspell cast on it, we headed off into Lunacy.

The jar lead us through marshy woods until we came upon ascene of grisly carnage. Two hags had been torn apart along with a shambling moundor two, and as we approached we saw the one who had caused such destruction: acreature seemingly formed of wood with a featureless wooden mask. Immediatelythe jar Jemima was holding began to glow and vibrate, but just as quickly thecreature melted away into the ground, causing the jar to go dark again. Afterwe were set upon by another hag (and discovered that the damaged Weave on thisplane made casting spells a risky chance that often triggered wild magic tohappen) we continued on, the trail having been picked up again by the jar.After some walking we came upon a small tavern, the inside of which was emptysave for a lone barkeep in fancy eveningwear. He offered to give us informationor magic trinkets, and explained that the creature we had encountered, the“Beastmaster” was keeping him trapped. Our whole party was sure it was a trap,with the notable exception of Zareem, who made an agreement to smuggle a blackshard out of the plane in exchange for a magic sword and an axe.

Thoroughly disgusted at our companion, we continued on untilwe came to another clearing. As Zareem dashed across the grass towards a gate,the ground turned into more shambling mounds which proceeded to attack theparty. Midway through the fight, a large bear with a wooden mask lumbered in,attacking the mounds with us. However, once the mounds were destroyed, the bearturned towards us instead. Jemima had already put together that the jarresponding to both the Beastmaster (whose mask looked shockingly likeSilvanus’s) and the Bear (one of Edan’s common wildshape forms) were somehowconnected to Edan’s soul and she was reluctant to fight until being remindedthat druids change back from their wildshape forms after losing all their HP.When the bear finally fell, it morphed back into Edan, before dissolving intodust with a cry of distress, causing part of the jar to light up. This spurredthe party forward, towards the next location. There they ran across Eldonagain, who had followed them into the plane. He was badly wounded butsurrounded by corpses, including one giant spider wearing a wooden mask.Another piece of the jar lit up as Jemima approached it.

Then, Gineye managed to spot something across a nearbylake—on an island in the center, strapped to a cross-like structure, was Edan,or at least his soul. Coming from his body were five tendrils, two of whichwere rapidly dissolving. Using the teleportation that he had gotten from a wildmagic surge, Gineye teleported over to the island and summoned his axe, usingthe soul-collecting power of the axe to free Edan by having him slice off thetendrils. Edan’s soul disappeared, along with the fragments in the jar and theBeastmaster across the lake, but as soon as he’d done that, a massive shapeappeared in the distance. Sensing danger, Gineye returned, driving us all torun with Eldon in tow, back to the portal we’d come through.

The giant creature, which revealed itself to be a Terrasque,chased us all the way to the portal, eventually parking itself right on theother side of the portal but very much within striking range should we try toescape. Then, it revealed itself to be the same person Zareem had made a dealwith--the one who had marked him with the symbol of Vecna—itself an old andpowerful Primordial. It offered to let us pass as long as we kept the guardsbusy enough for it to escape, since the plane was rapidly dissolving around usas the weave unraveled. We agreed, while secretly planning to alert the guardsonce we were through, and escaped through the portal. The dimensional “police”were on hand to help, and drove back the massive claw that came through, butdespite our efforts, a tiny portion of the creature broke off and disappeared.Still, we had what we had journeyed for and after relinquishing the axe to Silvanus,so that he could extract the soul, we nervously awaited the revival itself. Wewere graciously allowed to be present for it, and the process went surprisinglysmoothly for all the trouble we put in. Upon waking up, groggy and disoriented,Edan asked for his bag which Jemima unquestioningly returned. However, insteadof keeping it, he simply took out the wooden box from the month prior andopened it, revealing a deactivated Void card from the Deck of Many Things. Witha glare he turned to Silvanus, telling his father to try harder the next timehe wanted to kill him before storming out of the room (just in time for Gineyeto return from searching the town for a saxophone in order to serenade Jemima’sreunion with the man she was clearly crushing on.) Gineye’s return lead to anembarrassment-fueled brawl, culminating with the party members involved (sansZuradar and Zareem who had left to talk to Jonah again) waking up the next dayin the infirmary.

When the party reunited in the tavern the next day theyfound out about a list of jobs open to them, now that they had been acceptedinto Mantle, the organization based in Sylvenstand. The party was very excitedover an upcoming tournament (though Jemima had her eyes more on the Bardcollege which nobody even looked at twice) but Gineye demanded they go to thecapitol city Paplus first, upon seeing not only the capture of the resistanceleader they’d encountered in Crance, but also a name he recognized—Lord Darius,a man he’d known before we first met up who seemed to be somehow connected tothe scars Gineye hides under a porcelain mask. As we geared up to go, we askedEdan if he wanted to come along, which he agreed to do, as he wanted to get asfar away from Sylvenstand and his family as possible.

The furthest we could travel by portal was to Paplus’sneighboring town StoneHelm, a two day’s walk from Paplus. Once the journey byportal was completed, Edan took his leave, stating he would be taking the jobat the Bards college there, though the party (save for a heartbroken Jemima)were too busy making plans for marching order and cooking arrangements to evennotice. A days walk later, they set up camp, dividing the nighttime watch intoshifts. During the second shift, after Jemima had bedded down for the night atthe end of her watch, a group of drow appeared, demanding Zuradar tell them thename of the halfling in the nearby bedroll, and at her last name ofAppleblossom the drow attacked, easily subduing the sleepy party and cartingthem off.

We awoke in darkness, with our arms and legs bound, with theexception of Zuradar who had been inadvertently untied by his owlbear Pip, andZareem who instead found himself in a nice room as if he’d been invited as aguest instead of kidnapped. It wasn’t long before the drow returned, removingtheir blindfolds and walking them out of their cells to a large central roomwhere they saw Jemima trussed up and suspended over a fire, and a hooded man atthe end of the room. The man demanded Gineye be brought forward and demandedhim to take off his mask or risk Jemima’s life. Grudgingly, Gineye complied andthe man removed his own hood, revealing the face of a man Gineye had worked withbefore during a similar rebellion back in Faerun, Tiberius. Like many of the peoplethey’d met, Tai had found his way to this world as well and joined the currentrebellion due to his own curiosity at how similar it was to the one in theirown world, even down to the blonde lady behaving shockingly like Gineye himselfhad done. A betrayal from within their ranks had gotten her caught by LordDarius’s forces, and the traitor in question happened to be the reason theywere captured in the first place—they were searching for a young halfling manwith the last name of Appleblossom who was known to use polymorph spells withthe aid of an enchanted broom. Alternates again, the party realized as theygrouped back up.

As we had found our way not only to Paplus but the rebellionwe were supposed to aid, we found ourselves tasked with helping them take downsome high-priority targets. Namely, we were sent to investigate a guard house(since trying to talk a gnomish inventor into helping us without copiousviolence was sadly not anywhere close to our forte.) Inside we found no guardsat all, but instead a massive iron golem guarding the place which we wereforced to fight after the attempts to bluff our way past it failed. With sometricky maneuvering (and a hand grenade), Gineye managed to deactivate the golemand we entered the captain’s office. Our suspicions were on high alert when theguard captain’s voice didn’t quite seem to match his body, but before theErinyes possessing him could do anything, Gineye petrified the captain with acrossbow bolt, then shattered the resulting stone form to prevent the Erinyesdoing more harm.

By the time we returned, the other team had safely securedthe inventor who was currently very clearly possessed himself. After a gooddeal of fooling around and failed attempts at exorcism using the Command spell,Lei realized that as a paladin, he could perform the exorcism himself. With theinventor finally free of possession, he demanded we shut down the factory thathad been making the golems and mechanical enforcers for Lord Darius, butinsisted that we not harm Darius when the time comes for he was in fact, a goodman. The revelation that the revenge Gineye sought would be deflected by yetanother Alternate did not go over well.

So, we set off towards the golem factory with Gineye leadingthe charge, revenge still smoldering behind his mask. When we arrived, thefactory seemed deserted, but when the guard dogs that came out of a few nearbykennels turned into hellhounds, and an ice devil dropped in from above, werealized we were in trouble. The battle, though brief, was tough, painful andlikely made worse by the absence of help from Zareem (who spent all of his timeattempting to get one of the hellhounds to trust him in an attempt to keep it.)Meanwhile, the ice devil managed to get inside the mental world Gineye used toconverse with the spirit of his axe and begin to corrupt it, leading to Gineyebeing unable to get back in. In a desperate bid to regain control, he demandedLei kill him, hoping that the soul trapping powers of the axe would give him aback door and a chance to find “Axey” again before his coin revived him. With aheavy heart, Lei and Zuradar complied, using their own weapons to kill theircompanion.

Gineye fell, then disappeared, reappearing shortly afterwardsacross the room, but something was very much different. Instead of the cheerymask he wore, there was a more sinister one with a jagged smile and a sinisterred glow from his eyes. As it had several times before, the axe had taken overGineye’s unconscious body, puppeteering it into using all of its abilities toattack his friends. Hoping to somehow break its control, Lei, Jemima andZuradar threw themselves into combat while Zareem continued to ignore the fightand attempted to gain favor with the hellhound in the corner. Even aftercalling for help, Zareem didn’t join the fight, stopping only to retrieve anice spear that had fallen from the ice devil’s body and throwing it into a furnace,completing the job of destroying the factory that they had been given.

Meanwhile, inside his head, Gineye was locked in a battlewith a being that resembled a corrupted version of the mostly benevolent spirtwho had helped him for the last several weeks. Assuming (probably correctly,though no confirmation has been given on this point) that this was in fact thepower source of the axe, built from the many slaughtered souls trapped insideit, and having corrupted the actual “Axey,” he sought to free her from thecorruption. A few times her consciousness seemed to flicker, as if his attemptswere getting through, but he was running out of ideas. In one last desperate move,he pulled her into a hug, and when that didn’t work, he used the power of theaxe to summon two spears, stabbing them both through her back and into his ownchest, aiming for the coin around his heart.

Back in the real world, the spear tips manifested out ofGineye’s body before they and he vanished again, leaving only the axe behind.The party barricaded the factory and then rested, worried about their friendbut too battered and tired to leave (save Zareem who had done basically nothingthe whole fight.) As they were ending their rest, a figure began to crawl outof the axe nearby, eventually solidifying into Gineye, though mysteriouslywearing the dress his spirit friend had worn. Naturally the team had questionsbut Gineye was evasive and wanted to move on, stopping only to shoo Jemima awayafter noticing that her poking his leg was causing no sensation of touch.

Their mission complete and their party gathered, theyventured forth to return to the rebellion’s hideout, only to find the doorwelded shut and a trail of blood leading them towards the other door and an unconsciousTai. Thankfully his injuries were minimal, but Tai’s story was grim: during thetime they were away, the hideout had been attacked by the robotic enforcersthat Lord Darius was using, but during that time they had made contact with adivination wizard by the name of Monty who was also a transplant from Faerun,one willing to aid them in their cause. Monty had given them a tip, telling thatthe leader of the rebellion was going to be publicly executed the next day, whichhappened to be only hours away now. Together they went to the town square, nowfitted with a gallows and a horde of people gathered to watch the execution.

Something was very much off, however, as the party hid amongthe crowd, waiting for their chance to strike. The man introduced as LordDarius was a far cry older than the man Gineye had known, and something feltvery wrong about the whole scenario. Those feelings were proven right whenGineye was attacked by one of the masked enforcers and the cloak was knockedoff of the “prisoner,” revealing yet another masked enforcer. The crowd ran asour heroes found themselves surrounded by more of the metallic men. Having dispatchedhis own attacker, Gineye used his axe to create a rope and swung over to thebox with the elderly Lord Darius, soon after followed by Lei using his ownmisty step ability to teleport over.

Inside the box, while the old man may have been recognizedas Lord Darius to the crowd, behind him, hidden from the audience, sat a muchyounger man with a stony expression on his face. The same Lord Darius who hadscarred Gineye’s face. Gineye readied one of the many small powder keg grenadeshe owned, but before he could exact his revenge, the two figures flanking theyounger Darius revealed themselves—one, an arch devil and the other, a demonlord. The demon quickly whisked Darius away, while the arch devil took off intothe city, leaving a swath of destruction in his wake. Before long, our heroesfound themselves in the midst of a holy war, with hordes of demonic forcespreviously hidden in the town, rising up to fight an onslaught of paladins, clerics,and other warriors blessed by divine forces.

Flanked by Zuradar, Gineye ran after the arch devil that hadfled from the observation box, but quickly ran into a group of paladins andclerics who were also pursing the same target. Two of the group, marked by thesymbol of the Raven Queen, immediately took offense at Gineye’s existence, callinghim a “filthy undead” as one attempted to smite him with a lightning bolt. AsGineye protested the inhumane treatment (while the gaping hole in his chestproved their accusations correct) a paladin marked with the symbol of “Bob,”the god of slaughter they had met previous, came over and uppercut the one who castthe lightning bolt (said storm cleric looking shockingly like Zareem.) Thepaladin of Bob revealed soon himself to be in fact Grug, released from thepunishment he had been given by Bob, who urged them to leave before somethingworse happened.

The older Lord had been retrieved from the observation boxby the time Gineye and Zareem returned, but as they returned so did the archdevilwho Gineye had failed to catch before. Introducing himself as Bael, he demandedthe old man be turned over. The party refused, attempting to stop him throughcombat, but their efforts proved futile as he simply walked over and took whathe wanted, before disappearing. Through the use of a haste spell and his own paladinskills, Lei was able to track Bael’s movement back to the Lord’s castle, but itwas decided that the party should rest before continuing on. After a short rest(in which Jemima hounded Gineye for a while in regards to his new undeadstatus, one he couldn’t really deny when the gaping hole in his chest magicallypatched itself up) they trooped off to the castle, preparing for a confrontation.

Lord Darius was inside when they entered, Gineye fullyprepared to take him down one-on-one, were it not for the young noble killinghis older counterpart in front of the bard. Remembering the request from thegnome earlier, Gineye used a new spell, revivify, to revive him before whiskingthe old man outside to protect him. Then, as he returned, finally ready for hisrevenge, that moment was stolen from him as a dark shape appeared behind theyoung Darius, taunting the party before snapping his neck and summoning shadowsto attack our heroes. After having fought them once thanks to Grug, the partyknew how to deal with these shadows and the fight was brief, but by the timethey finished the shadowy creature had left, leaving behind the empty husk thatwas once Gineye’s most hated foe.

Gineye was all set to use his magic to revive or preservethe body, but the arrival of a man through a dimensional door stopped him. Itwas Monty, the diviner they’d been told about, who was more than happy to usehis magic to prove that even if Gineye preserved the body, there was no soulleft to revive him. However, Monty was able to speed them along on their waytowards finding the rebellion’s missing leader, as he directed them towards a dungeonarea that his scrying couldn’t see into—which must be the place as he couldfind her nowhere else.

Inside the dungeon lay a maze of traps, pitfalls andsentient doors who kept their rooms locked with riddles. Inside the very last doorin the maze was a set of stairs leading down to a large room, where a strange,sinister ritual was taking place. A number of cultists surrounded summoning circles,two of whom were wreathed in flame, the one in the middle conjuring up a domeof solid darkness. As stealthily as they could, the party slid closer, Gineyemanaging to make it all the way to a door on one side of the room where he cameacross a terrifying sight: the same exact cell in which he had been tortured.

Unleashing the full power of the axe, he demolished the cultistsin a single hail of swords, which left the summoned fire elementals free toattack at will. Again, the fight was short, the most notable event was Jemimadoing her best to attack one of the elementals with the rapier she’d beencarrying all this time—while forgetting that without magical properties to it,the enchanted fire could easily melt it. Rest in peace, rapier, you were loved.Once the fires died down (literally) the team set about investigating the roomand the dome of darkness in the center of the room. Sadly, efforts to dispel itproved fruitless so the party turned their attention towards a mural on thewall, one depicting a multi-segmented circle, each with a crowned creature carvedinside. After close inspection—including noticing that one segment seemed todepict the same tarrasque they had unleashed upon the world previously—the partyguessed the mural was related somehow to the cult they had encountered, worshippingprimordials from the different planes (each of the elementals seemed to bedepicted, along with ones that looked celestial and infernal.) Finally, theygave one last attempt to dispel the dome, finally breaking the spell with awell-placed arrow, but instead of finding the leader inside as they’d hoped,all they saw was a shadowy creature who disappeared in seconds, followed by hermagical cloak which Zareem kept for himself.

As they went to leave, who should they run into but Grug andthe same paladins and clerics from before? Gineye, remembering their reaction tohim, attempted to hide in the stairwell, but the storm cleric (who still lookedshockingly like Zareem) detected him with his own divine sense. As the partyrushed to protect him, Zareem himself squared up, drawing his sword anddemanding that the paladin face him instead. It only took one single mightyblow from the paladin’s mace to instantly kill the already injured Zareem. Therepresentatives of the Raven Queen left, telling the group to keep “theirundead” on a leash, as everyone tried to figure out what to do now. It was thenGineye posed an idea: someone should let him borrow a 3rd levelspell slot. His words were cryptic, but nobody had any third level slots leftafter the long day they’d had, so Gineye lowered it to a second level slot. TentativelyJemima offered him one of her second level slots, and Gineye in responseplunged his hand into his own heart, pulling out an axe and handing it to her,fading into the axe as his mask appeared on her face. From inside her mind, heused her body and magic to cast a spell to preserve Zareem’s body, before the groupset about a much longer rest.

About halfway through their rest, Zareem revived, his coinhaving activated—giving him permanent wings and a new set of powers. Gineye leftJemima’s mind and reformed in the physical world, and after a bit of foolingaround with him trying to mind-hop into Pip the owlbear’s mind that ended withGineye accidentally killing (and immediately reviving) the poor creature, the teamdecided it was time to move on. The war had died down across Paplus, and theirmission was over though at great cost. After delivering the news of the outcometo Tai, the team set off in search of a Gnoll paladin of Silvanus who they weretold had a scroll for them

What they found instead was a mysterious bar—the same barthey had encountered in Lunacy, still run by the extremely shady feeling manwho just so happened to sometimes be the primordial of Earth. Zareem andZuradar both asked to see what goods he was peddling today, leading to Zareemgaining a +1 chain shirt and Zuradar acquiring himself a +2 bow (for only twoof his hit dice, a total “bargain!”). Meanwhile, Jemima found the gnoll seatedat a table and retrieved the scroll from him. The man let them leave afterthat, noticing how uncomfortable the other three were, but with a reminder thatthey could find him if they only looked for him.

Outside the shady bar (which had mysteriously vanishedagain) they discovered that the scroll was a teleportation sigil, but one thatthey weren’t capable of activating. One person however, was, and it took only asingle utterance of Monty’s name for him to appear through a tear in reality,casting the spell that would take them off to the tournament.

After the chaos of a holy war and a rebellion all in thespan of less than a week, the gang was happy to have a chance to settle down andrelax. Once in the tournament building, they had to sign up, either in solo matchesor groups of 2, which lead to Zareem and Zuradar becoming a group (fittinglynamed Heaven and Hell), Lei and Jemima teaming up (as Swords and Chords) andGineye going solo (under the name “The Entirety of France.”) Then, with an hourto prepare, the teams wandered the building, discovering their old friend Jonahhaving set up a merchants stall there. Jemima immediately informed him of theloss of her rapier, relinquishing the melted remains. In return, he gave her asword he’d fashioned from some of the dragon bones she’d given him, a rapierelegantly combining master swordcraft with the sublime beauty of the naturalworld.

Geared up once more, the matches began. Zareem and Zuradarfound themselves heavily outmatched by a pair of orcs. After Zareemaccidentally hit the younger (and far more badly damaged) of the two with acritical hit poison spray, inadvertently killing the orc, the older and moreexperienced orc proceeded to knock both of them out. Jemima and Lei’s roundwent much smoother, against a lizardfolk and a man in a strange leather dusterwho carried what could only be referred to as guns. Despite the strange man’sapparent prowess with his weapons, he managed to score only one hit on Jemimabefore he was knocked unconscious himself, and the Lizardfolk surrendered soonafter.

Gineye’s match however was stranger still. His opponent wasa man who seemed to disappear shortly after the match started, stayinginvisible or hiding behind dust clouds the whole match, but doing significantdamage to Gineye in the process. Finally, angered, Gineye readied a crossbowbolt, striking as soon as he saw the man’s arm clearly. The petrification boltworked perfectly, petrifying the man and winning Gineye the match (though notbefore a contingency spell activated, using lesser restoration on the man whograciously conceded.)

After their match concluded, Gineye left to find his friendsin the infirmary (though only Zuradar and Zareem needed much attention.) In themidst of their conversation, the man he had just fought walked in, joining thediscussion of the fights he had witnessed. He introduced himself as James and extendedan offer to Gineye to meet him for breakfast at a specific tavern the nextmorning. Tired from their battles, the group headed out to an inn to rest. Itwas agreed that Gineye should go to the tavern to meet James the next day (sincethey might be more relaxed if it was just him) while the rest would return tothe tournament location to find out what was going on. The tournament itselfwouldn’t start for two days, and the actual matches were entirely team-based,but since Lei and Jemima both had passed their matches (as well as Gineye) theywere allowed to form a team and invite the two who had failed their matches aswell.

Gineye’s investigation only put him more on edge. Jamesseemed very eager to recruit him away from the others, even offering to “helphim leave” should Gineye need it, in a way that suggested assassination wouldbe involved. He also knew more than he should, particularly about the war inPaplus and how Gineye’s party had come through a portal in Paplus that shouldhave originated north of the town of Tance, the same as another group whoarrived recently (where, unknown to James, the hidden town of Sylvenstand waslocated.) Gineye played along as best he could, mocking his teammates and theirdecisions and offering to send a package later that day that might be useful toJames’ group. However, once he returned, he clearly wasn’t eager to join such ashady group, but instead had Lei send a package over to the tavern—one containingthe Axe Gineye had pulled from his own heart yet again. However, to his dismaynobody actually took the axe while he was there and in fact nobody was home forthe full day, leaving him to sneak out the next night with a pilfered spellbookand a sour mood.

Finally however, the day of the tournament arrived. The gangwas among the first to compete, finding themselves soon in a large arena packedwith thousands of onlookers. In the middle of the arena, a Kenku introducinghimself as Veo Elmwood was acting as the Emcee, introducing first our heroes asthe “NaCl Pain Delivery Service” and their opponents as “The Hands of Nature.” Theparty (and especially Jemima) were pleased to see Edan again, along with hisalternate Ivan, the ranger Alice (whom Zuradar had attempted and failed to seduceback in Sylvenstand) and Leafsong, the Gnoll paladin from earlier.

However, instead of a fighting competition as the party hadexpected, it was instead a series of games and tests of skill, each with a “firstto 3 points” system of one-on-one matches. The actual games were chosen by diceroll, with the first being a drinking contest. Gineye stepped up, certain hecould win with his undead constitution, even against his opponent Ivan, butonce again Ivan’s luck was on his side as he came back with three points toGineye’s two. Next, Jemima found herself face-to-face with Edan in a challengeof pure luck as they rolled dice, each hoping for a higher roll than theiropponent. Right at the last moment, when it looked as though Edan would scoreanother point for his team, Jemima caught a glow around Ivan’s hand for amoment as the dice flipped over onto a natural 1. Finally, it was Lei and Leafsong’sturn, a test of endurance as they were forced to withstand increasingly harderthrown rocks without crying out in pain. In the end however, Lei managed tohold out the longest, scoring another point for our heroes. And as we left themat the end of that session, they were preparing for the next round of combat: atrial by combat, forced by Ivan again using his luck to twist the die to his favor.

And there you are, thirty episodes summarized as best Icould, with deep apologies for not being able to condense it even further. Ihope you enjoy reading it, and feel free to check out our episodes on youtube!

[ao3feed-thor]

Betwixt

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/oUia1B7

by Shortsnout

For years Odin’s been trying to find the perfect mate for Loki. His trickster son foils each of these attempts with his juvenile pranks, switching secondary genders to repel any potential suitors. Attempting to circumvent Loki’s gender fluidity, Odin presents two potential suitors from Midgard.

One is an omega named Tony Stark, heir to the multi-billion company of Stark Industries, intelligent enough to keep Loki on his toes. The other is Stephen Strange, an alpha Master of the Mystic Arts, with a depth of magical knowledge that might be enough to tempt Loki into mating.

Loki’s solution is simple, make the two suitors leave of their own accord to avoid his father’s wrath.

However, unbeknownst to Loki, both Midgardians are hiding secrets of their own. Tony is attempting to escape a future life of being mated to an abusive alpha, while Stephen is months away from suffering an Eldritch malady that will render him comatose if he doesn’t find a mate to bond with.

They won’t be scared away easily.

There is no dubious consent between Loki, Stephen or Tony. Everything between the three of them is safe, sane and consensual.

Words: 6660, Chapters: 1/25, Language: English

Fandoms: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Doctor Strange (Movies)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Multi

Characters: Tony Stark, Loki (Marvel), Stephen Strange, Frigga | Freyja (Marvel), Thor (Marvel), Odin (Marvel), Fandral (Marvel), Peter Parker, Howard Stark, Obadiah Stane, Ancient One (Marvel), James "Rhodey" Rhodes

Relationships: Loki/Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Loki/Tony Stark, Loki/Stephen Strange

Additional Tags: Frostironstrange, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alpha Stephen Strange, Omega Tony Stark, Omega Verse, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Omega Loki (Marvel), Alpha Loki (Marvel), Howard Stark's Bad Parenting, Creepy Obadiah Stane, Evil Obadiah Stane, Protective Loki (Marvel), Protective Stephen Strange, Protective Tony Stark, Rough Sex, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Threesome - M/M/M, Alternate Universe, Safe Sane and Consensual, Falling In Love, Idiots in Love, Asgardian Culture (Marvel), Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, BAMF Tony Stark, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Insecure Stephen Strange, Good Loki (Marvel), Heat and Ruts, Happy Ending, No mpreg, Odin's Parenting (Marvel), Awesome Frigga (Marvel), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, OT3

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/oUia1B7

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

About a third of the way through chapter 5 of the thing (you know the thing, I don't shut up about the thing) and I started thinking about timelines, and I realized something.

Tim frees Messalina at least three months after Jason dies in this. He becomes Robin a year after Jason dies. Steph's chapter takes place about four months after that. And Jason's chapter takes place five months after Steph's.

Meaning that there are about two years between Jason dying at 15 and returning to Gotham at 17. (For those curious, Tim is 14 and Steph is 15 in this chapter).

Meaning that if he trained under the League for long enough to master at least a few techniques and acquire the All-Blades, he can't have been alive and awake for less than a year at minimum, so the absolute oldest he could have been revived at was a very young 16.

Meaning that assuming it takes some time for Talia to get desperate and chuck Jason in, it's very likely that he was revived before Tim became Robin.

And wouldn't you know it, there was a huge explosion of magic from a deity being associated with death and rebirth around the right time for Jason to be resurrected!

I'm gonna have some fun with this >:3

You’re going to have fun, and then we’re going to get to have fun. Wins all around.

[themaskedswordsmen-blog]

Funky Little Dude seems to have found a shiny rock for Matter. Gueeeeess it makes sense the lil beastie consider the larger fellow eldritch creature a parent figure??

  {✫} Said eldritch creature isn’t really sure what this gift is for, given that he has no real grasp of the relationship he’s formed with the little mimic, but he appreciates it nonetheless. Shiny rocks are always a welcome addition to his collection of Popstarian items that he’s started since he’s arrived on this planet. It’ll look great next to all of the weapons and artifacts that he’s acquired through highly dubious means. 

  ❝I appreciate your offering. It has a nice shape and luster to it.❞

  Shiny rocks deserve good rewards, so Funky Little Dude is given a light head pat in return for their efforts.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

IT'S UP https://archiveofourown.org/works/37967200/chapters/121461274

Love it.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

I lived bitch

CHapter four is done! I did it! Clocking in at over 12k words! Steph is here!

(can't link it or Tumblr will throw a fit, but it's there! i did it! it's done!)

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

I mean this in the nicest, most excited way possible, but I feel like a blorbo peddler who comes onto your blog sometimes with various OCs.

"Genuine premium blorbos! You want babies, we got babies! You want grandmas, we got grandmas! You want eldritch horror, you're getting a mama bear! These sales won't last long, get 'em while they're hot!"

And I’m the first one in line waving money in your face so I dont see an issue with this whatsoever. Please continue.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

Ok, genuine question here because I happen to respect your opinion a lot. When I finally get around to writing more about Eldritch Mom And Cryptid Son, should I lean more into the unsettling horror aspect of an Old God wandering around Gotham, only kept in check by the wishes of a young boy, or the oddly wholesome relationship between Tim and Lina that's honestly the healthiest thing that either of them have? Both are appealing to me but I like positive feedback and I want to give the people what they want

Can I… can I say both? Haha both would be so good. If I had to pick one I’d personally choose their relationship because I love it, but the horror aspect is so perfect too.