#i love (1) balletic halfling

[halflingbadass]

I'm once again thinking about Orym. About how he went for a Goading Attack even though he only had 2 HP left. About how he went into that dark warehouse all on his own without any guarantee he'd be able to talk to anyone outside if something happened. I just. He's got a bit of recklessness to him and I'm so here for it.

[xombigirl]

I am bad at processing and remembering details but was Orym's husband actually referenced by Liam? When in canon did he say he was queer? I thought it was fanon but now I'm suspicious I genuinely missed something

So it's widely accepted fanon actually! It's been drawn from an old Tweet of Liam's talking about his replacement character for Vax, from the blurb for the song My Lover on Orym's playlist and from the small aside where Liam said "For him" during the test from the Wildmother.

[eponymous-rose]

4-Sided Dive Highlights - Critical Role C3E22-E24 (June 7, 2022)

Tonight’s guests: Matt, Liam, Travis, and Taliesin! Dani immediately declares an end to the faux-conversation we start on, which is probably for the best. Matt is tonight’s Tavern Keeper! Matt, dying slowly on the inside during the opening: “I have bones in me, I guess.”

What the Fuck is Up With That? Matt: “We got topics, motherfuckers.” Travis thought they were just going to see a repeat of the paper layout for the skyship from campaign 1 and was blown away by the new piece. Matt had it commissioned a while ago in the expectation that they’d wind up doing skyships at some point relatively early in this campaign. There’s a long digression about Teddy Ruxpin. Liam: “I have no idea why, Orym is in love with airship.” There’s another digression about Top Gun, and Liam points out that Travis’s shirt looks like it has a little propeller beanie made of jets. Taliesin: (sing-song) “Someone’s going to the danger zone!” Taliesin points out that since he ruined the last attempt they did at ship-to-ship combat, he’s been craving it on the airship. Travis: “You can totally DM that, right?” Matt: “Just make enemies with people who have skyships now.”

Matt asks about the cast’s lasting impressions of Jrusar. Taliesin teases that they didn’t get to see a lot of the cool stuff while they were there. Everyone wants to know more about the tunnels under the city, to the point where leaving that behind feels like the Happy Fun Ball. (Matt mentions they only saw about 20% of the HFB.) “It reminds Orym of home in that you’ve got all these amazing structures, but there’s so much nature woven in and around it.” There’s a digression about salmon fishing in Alaska. Yes, truly. First impressions of Dusk? Taliesin: “She’s not broken enough to be a local.” Lots and lots of questions, early days yet!

Favorite form of fictional travel? Skyship is popular. Travis: “I love a good teleport and apparating/disapparating.” Taliesin: “I’m a Nemo kid, I love a submarine. Deep underwater freaks me out.” Liam: Blaine the Monorail in the Dark Tower series and the landstriders from The Dark Crystal. Matt: “Fanboats. I grew up in Florida, I know they’re real but they shouldn’t be.”

Tower of Inquiry! Liam pulls a (still-sticky) block. “It’s a good thing this is glued together.” We’re talking modern AUs - which occupation would the characters have in the modern world? “Orym would either be in the New York Ballet in Swan Lake, or he might be a coach for track-and-field. Or an athlete himself in the Olympics. I think I’d go ballet.” “I think Chetney would be a woodworker... or a dentist. Would really enjoy it, really.” What about Ashton? “That’s pretty easy. He would work in an ice cream parlor. Hate it and have no customer service whatsoever. That’s the best shit job for a punker I can think of.” “Eshteross would be a mysterious venture capitalist.” How about the Shade Mother? “She’d be in season four of Stranger Things. Character actor.”

Tower of Inquiry, round two! Travis pulls a block! The whole thing nearly comes down. What would the characters’ Twitter bios look like? Dead silence contemplating that for a few seconds. Travis: “It would be CPock Industries. he/him, no instant gratification, 18+.” Matt: “Little link to your Etsy page.” Taliesin: “Anime character, nothing but obnoxious political retweets. Might actually say that in the bio.” Taliesin, to Liam: “I’d have a Soundcloud, you’d have a Tumblr.” Liam: “It would say pie is better than cake. Might have a link to a YouTube channel of different workouts, probably.” Taliesin: “Halfling your way to health.” There’s some discussion of Robbie Daymond’s hiking. Travis: “This is for you, Robbie. Stop summiting stuff.” How about the ship captain? “All pronouns, all caps. Free spirit. Seeing the world. Will do it all. Again. Link to my OF, but it’s mostly just them making food.”

Tower of Inquiry, round three! Taliesin knocks a block straight onto the floor, but the tower remains intact. “If your character was a candle, what scent would they be?” Travis: “The scent of rusted pennies. The scent of pine, birch, oak, ...” We have a digression about Nag Champa incense. Liam: “How would you mix sweat and cherry blossoms?” Eshteross? “I will say a ginger spice. Beyond that, I would say a musky cedar.”

Deep Dive time!

Liam gets asked about seeing Clasp connections in Marquet. He’s blown away by how much has propagated from the first campaign and the home game. Travis remembers very little about the Spireling structure. Matt: “Each major city that has Clasp involvement, the Spirelings are essentially the collection of leaders that organize that sect of the Clasp wherever they are. Shenn has been one of the power players in Emon.” Matt mentions that he always dreamed of running a game that would let him connect threads between campaigns.

Liam: “Everybody in this building is really randy about Calamity right now.” Matt: “I’ve wanted something to happen in that era for a long time, and it wasn’t until we were talking with Brennan, we were talking about different things, mentioned the Age of Arcanum, and he just went like, we’ll talk about that one.”

Taliesin is asked about the return to Bassuras and the prospect of finding the Nobodies. “I don’t think they’re there, first of all. Not really a person who likes to look back or ever deal with things that were in the past.” Taliesin just assumes the Nobodies scattered to the four winds. “It is like going to your hometown with your friends, really. This town is shit. This bar is great. I like writing characters who don’t want to deal with their shit.”

Matt is asked about collaborating on the Hellcatch Valley. “The wonderful Bashir Gaus has been helping write with this. I’ve outlined the continent’s main regions, and certain ones are primarily my creations, and then go through consulting and things like that.” But other regions, he offered to the collaborators for whatever caught their interest. “What inspires you? Go.”

Travis is asked about his Calamity character, Cerrit “Pinch” Agrupnin. “I felt like I had to rep a little bit of just that straight melee class.” As soon as he started getting how detailed things were going to be, he wanted to be the one trying to connect the dots that others were missing. I based him off of John Cusack in ‘Con Air’.” Travis thought it was a great excuse to try an eisfuura and an inquisitor rogue. “Holy shit, the stuff you get as a rogue is crazy!”

Liam is asked about bonding with Chetney. “I mean, I think he was rightly super skeptical of Chetney but oddly finds himself really getting along with him. Chetney kind of fills a casual grandpa slot for him, and that’s fun to be around. We gotta work through some things, you might have some anger issues, but Pop-pop’s got a good heart in there.”

Taliesin is asked about inspiration behind Ashton. He hadn’t done punk yet. “What the fuck does punk look like in a fantasy realm? I watched a bunch of Henry Rollins talking about his life.” He also watched documentaries about the punk scene in the 80s and 90s in LA: “The Decline of Western Civilization III”. For Fundamental Chaos, that was just wanting to create something difficult and complicated.

Matt is asked about the fey influence in this campaign. It wasn’t something he wanted to pull into the campaign initially, but between Fearne and some of the other players having a fey-touched influence, he realized there wasn’t all that much of it they’d explored in earlier campaigns.

Travis is asked about the toy-making process. “Now there have been multiple nights where I’ll just search ‘wooden’ and a bunch of different words.” What would Chetney make for the illustrious DM? An orrery.

The Tower of Inquiry Continues! Travis is chosen again. It’s Very Dramatic. If gold didn’t matter, what would the characters’ first purchases be? Liam: “Buy the group a skyship outright.” “Cheney would make a hostile takeover bid for all the toystores in half the continents so there’s still some left to be conquered.” “Ash would just buy that whole chunk of property that they’ve been living in in the Spires.”

Post-Break Shenanigans! Exploding Kittens! If you get knocked out, you can ask other people questions from their tankards. Liam is eliminated extremely early, so it’s his turn to ask questions. How does Ash feel about being debt-free? Is the other shoe going to drop? “Oh, it’s going to drop any minute. Good things don’t happen to people.” How about Chetney’s revenge? Is this new for him? “Chetney is experienced with death. He definitely has a moral system, a way of judging people. The slate has been wiped clean for now.” The inspiration for Eshteross? “I wanted to introduce a unique possible patron to the group that-- I didn’t mean to create a ‘Batman Beyond’ Bruce Wayne figure, but when people started pointing it out...” Travis is eliminated! He asks Liam about going to Bassuras on a bit of a side-jaunt from his plot right now. “He’s much more powerful and in a better place with this group, these are his friends now, and it’s gotta be a give and take.” Matt is victorious! Last question for Travis: what was it like to lose control of the wolf during the heist? “I had forgotten about it up until that point. I like it because then you have to RP out of it or around it.”

Round 2! Taliesin asks if there’s anyone in the party Chetney doesn’t trust. “There’s more than one!” Travis is out first this time! What does Orym think about the Grim Verity? “He’s really happy to have some more learned people with him. Feels over his head, so he’s just glad there are a couple of brains in this group, intelligence scores aside.” Matt is out and asks about what Chetney thinks about the Gorgynei. “Wants to learn from them, because it’s been so long. If it’s real attractive, he might run away.” Liam is victorious this time!

[halflingbadass]

Will I ever be over the song My Lover being on there? No. No I won't.

Catch me on a Tuesday morning, listening to Orym’s playlist and getting emotional about the fact that we now get A WHOLE CAMPAIGN with this little dude.

[bookshelfpassageway]

The Property of Dragons

Because why not take the two things that I am obsessed with and squish them together? Some Teepoh D&D race/class suggestions for your consideration...

RGB: Human. True Neutral. Either an Arcane Trickster with the Entertainer background, or a Bard with the Criminal background. He could also easily be a Bard/Rogue multiclass that could be either background tbh, since canonically he’s both.

Hero: WHO INVITED A LITERAL CHILD TO AN IN-UNIVERSE ACTUAL DND PARTY. OH. THATS RIGHT. JEEBS DID. She's like... Kind of hard to pin down, actually. Definitely at Level 1, perhaps a Sorcerer, or a Paladin whose cause is SAVING THE WORLD AND EVERYBODY IN IT. Probably human? True Good alignment.

Dial: Related to RGB, so human or half human at least. He's also hard to say. Given his current standing with Hate, I might call him either a Cleric or, maybe more accurately for our antagonist, a Warlock?

TOby: I wanna say one of the pint-sized races, like the world’s most bitter gnome or something. My only criteria for his class is that it allows him to cast the Vicious Mockery spell.

Julienne: I know nothing about the bird races aside from the fact that there's like, three of them, and that she's got to resemble a pink flamingo still. She's also a Monk, who will destroy you unarmed with the power of ballet. (Don’t worry, she’s just a Monk for the ninja powers, she’s still married to Melody)

Melody: Bard, absolutely. The tricky part is her race, if we go by her comic appearance, she's almost definitely something large and scary-looking (Orc, Minotaur, other large creature i cannot think of?), but if we use Mod's humanized design for her then I'd say she's an adorable halfling. This choice does not affect her personality in any way, she's good and filled with love no matter what size she is.

Assok: "Kenku cannot create new sounds and can communicate only by using sounds they have heard. Most kenku use a combination of overheard phrases and sound effects to convey their ideas and thoughts.“ Probably more the party mascot than a PC, I have no idea what kind of class Assok would have. 

Click: Could be same class as Dial, or maybe a Ranger, but honestly the guy is a Gunslinger, even though I don't think that class is "technically" canon. Soldier background.

Tinker and Tailor: to be honest, I have no idea. Maybe Wizard!Tinker? They’re both Guild Artisans at least.

Magnus: School of Illusion Elf Wizard, obviously. My gut instinct is High Elf, but Steel's said in the past that Magnus has had a career in supervillainy in a past life, so I'm also down for a Drow!Magnus too (also the hair would match). Perhaps a Sage or an Entertainer?

Madras: Wizard, or perhaps some kind of Alchemist. Guild Merchant variant of the Guild Artisan background. I'm not sure on her race, but it’s probably one that is not usually associated with the good guys. She is the personification of an eye disease, after all.

anyway, discuss as you do so please...

[neverending-monologue]

To make up for how little I talk about my OC’s, I guess I could talk about all of the roleplaying characters I’ve had instead? 

1)  Francisco Corvi, a netrunner in Cyberpunk 2020, the first tabletop game I ever played.  I never really got the chance to develop his personality much since I was in a big group and didn’t really know how to roleplay yet, but it was still a really fun game.  My favorite part was when I, in a moment of in-character recklessness, turned on an obviously evil computer, summoned AI Satan, and immediately got knocked out by AI Satan, along with our healer.  And as the hacker, I was the only one who could actually damage the boss that I’d summoned... oops.  Also he was pansexual and romanced a really cool lady who fought with a mech suit.  He proposed at the end of the campaign and rolled a critical hit. 

2)  Astrid Erichsen, an alchemist/wannabe viking for FATE Core.  My friend, the GM, has a really cool high sci-fi setting/campaign for Fate, but she held a mini campaign to test out the system first.  I knew I wanted to play as a muscly (sp?) viking woman, so this character was my chance to sort of test that personality out.  I got to blow up a lot of stuff and be a huge lesbian so it was pretty fun.

2)  Cassie “Muscles” Valkyrie, an axe wielding viking, also from Fate.  She’s from our main Fate campaign, which has been going for over a year now and is still super great!  Like the other PC’s, she has amnesia, so she started off just being a charismatic, axe-wielding viking with a grapple that has been used to slaughter countless enemies.  One time she grappled three guys at once and killed one of them with her thighs.  Then she started getting her memories back and realized that she (gasp) might not actually be a viking!  But it’s okay, because then she gained more of her memory and realized that she did in fact train on a viking planet, even if she wasn’t born there.  Also, the GM has said that our characters from the mini campaign are still somewhere in this universe, so I hope that Astrid and Muscles run into each other one day.  Viking lady OTP. 

3)  Sora Drachixius, my first dnd character from a campaign that finished up last year.  She was a dragonborn ranger on a revenge quest to find her younger sister.  She was a positive, virtuous, heroic person in a world that... wasn’t any of those, really.  Sadly, even though the campaign ended with her defeating the boss, she wasn’t able to save her sister in time.  I like to imagine that Sora is out there somewhere, a sadder, more cynical hero than she was before, hunting down bad guys with no sign of stopping, probably breathing acid on a lot of them.  Also, her two best friends are her wolf companion Lupin McFenris, and a drow who really just wanted to do ballet. 

4)  Zinnik Si’Sali, a drow rogue from my current dnd campaign.  Have I ever mentioned that the drow are my favorite “evil” race?  Because they totally are, but orcs are an extremely close second.  My guy here left his family in the Underdark to avoid an arranged marriage and learned how to be a con artist on the surface.  He really loves selling people worthless junk and bs’ing his backstory to anyone who will listen.  My favorite accomplishment is that one time he killed a bad guy, disguised himself as that bad guy, infiltrated the bad guy’s camp of other bad guys, and ended up doing the guy’s job so well that he got him a promotion.  I felt so bad for killing him then.  Maybe I just knocked him out and he’ll have a great surprise when he wakes up! 

5)  I almost forgot Alessandra Netherbank, my halfling rogue from my (other) current dnd campaign.  This is with my roleplaying group at my new school, so it’s been fun helping everyone else learn how to dnd.  She’s a swashbuckler who first became a pirate after stealing her dad’s ship.  She spent a few years on the high seas, roaming around with her other troublemaking teenage friends.  Our campaign hasn’t been going on long so I haven’t accomplished too much yet, but last session I rolled a Nat20 to pickpocket a guy and ended up just stealing all of his clothes, so that’s something. 

[halflingbadass]

Dear artists of Tumblr. Orym in this hoodie when?

[halflingbadass]

All of this!!!! The shenanigans that the Crown Keepers got up to were pretty damn funny. You'll also miss out on Cinna Brightbow which would be a fucking travesty. Liam going full Irish and trying to kill his own character. I laughed so damn hard.

[halflingbadass]

Can I just say, watching Liam play Orym/a fighter in combat is stunning?? His turns run so smoothly, and his moves are so badass...and Matt is there with him every step of the way! They vibe so well during Orym's combat rounds?? Idk if I'm saying this right but hopefully you get what I mean

I totally get what you mean!! I play a Fighter in one of my current campaigns and it's been such a joy to watch Liam really getting into a good melee character. Vax was usually more of a ranged fighter and Caleb was all spells all the time so to see him just digging into Orym is such a delight!

His combat descriptions are absolutely stunning and he's upped his game even since EXU in that regard. I love the way he's so physical about it too, how he gestures like he's actually holding a sword and he's so fluid about it.

And yeah Matt is just tuned in to what Liam is putting down most of the time. I love the way they interact as a DM and a player and how they interacted as players together in EXU. It's just so wonderful to see and I adore them.

[halflingbadass]

It's almost 3 AM and I can't sleep so have some vague future Firewatcher thoughts:

Orym starts practicing his kata outside and Dorian definitely doesn't perv on him with his binoculars

A stray dog wanders up to Orym's tower one day and he winds up keeping him. He's a mutt that's at least part Corgi and Orym takes him for hikes in a backpack. His name is Ein because Dorian loves Cowboy Bebop

Dorian performs for Orym every night over the radio. Both of them struggle with insomnia and Orym finds sleep comes easier after he's listened to Dorian play guitar and sing

Dorian keeps trying to convince Orym they should figure out how to make a Zipline connecting their towers and Orym keeps shooting him down

There's a fire at some point(set by Poska and her crew for nefarious reasons)and Orym has to get to Dorian who is trapped in his tower

He puts Ein in his backpack and starts to run towards Dorian's tower, winds up having to climb up and his boots melt from the heat of the fire

They're rescues by Dariax who's a heli pilot and he gets them all to safety where they're rushed to the hospital for smoke inhalation and Orym has nasty burns on his feet

They refuse to leave each other's sides so the nurses just put them in the same room so they'll agree to be treated, along with Ein who Orym refuses to leave

[halflingbadass]

Based on this post by @criticalcoruscant I am thinking about Orym wearing glasses for anything up close. He definitely mends his own clothes and armor and I'm picturing him bent over his shirt in front of a lantern or a campfire with glasses perched on his nose and Dorian just being all 🥵😍😳😱

[halflingbadass]

I'm now on the Orym Is A Top train and I have some thoughts.

He's gentle at first, taking his time to make sure his partner(*cough* Dorian *cough*)is comfortable before he finally lets himself go and just takes.

Orym is hung. I don't make the rules, small man who's that bad ass with a sword? He's definitely not compensating.

He has Druidcraft. Tell me he wouldn't know exactly how to tie someone up with vines.

He'd be quietly domineering and very free with the praise as long as his partner is being good.

[halflingbadass]

I’m sorry you had a bad day. I have a cute HC for Dorym. Sometimes while traveling, Orym will feel a bit homesick. When that happens, Dorian will play a few songs he picked up while the three of them of them were in Zephrah. It never fails to bring Orym’s mood up.

Oh this is lovely. 😍😍

I love to think about Dorian picking up music from Zephrah without even meaning to? Like the melodies just get absorbed into his brain and when he can tell Orym has had a rough night he pulls one of them out and he can see Orym's shoulders relaxing little by little.

I love soft boys!

[halflingbadass]

Today has been not so great and I'm feeling the brain fog like woah. Who has some nice soft Dorym or even just Orym headcanons to share?

[halflingbadass]

Apropos of nothing but please imagine Orym with nipple piercings. Silver barbells with green ends on them. I feel like the tiny man would look really good with nipple piercings.

[halflingbadass]

I hope your day gets better, fam! 💛 here are some headcanons for you :3

-Orym loves to cook soups and breads! He didn’t usually have guests back home pre-campaign but he’d always make,, so much soup. When his adventuring friends visit he always makes sure there’s soup

-he loves to read trashy romantic novellas that are usually just full on inappropriate, but he doesn’t let on to anyone about it. he just sits in his rocking chair in cozy socks he knit with this awful book in hand

-if he and Dorian ever get married and domestic and stuff, I feel like he’d adopt a variety of orphaned kids whose parents were part of the Ashari. I can see him adopting a goblin toddler and naming her something cute like Daisy :3 plus it’d give him opportunity to practice knitting more! (Knitter!Orym is a headcanon I will love forever)

I 👏🏻 LOVE 👏🏻 ALL 👏🏻 OF 👏🏻 THIS