#if you ever get the chance

[orionsangel86]

I have never nerded out so much in my life. I am currently sitting in a 700 year old Scottish castle, in the library, where the books are all at least 100 years old. The ancient clock on the mantlepiece over the fireplace just chimed quarter past the hour and the atmosphere is thick with history.

I should return to the sitting room across the landing past the grand staircase and reception, where my mum is waiting for me, having drinks before we are escorted down to the dungeon for a traditional Scottish a la carte dinner. Yes. The dungeon. Its now a luxury restaurant. But they kept the original Walls, archways, and a suit of armour.

What even is this place? Who knew that castles could be converted into hotels? That our twin bed suite still retains the original stone walls from the 13th century build. This place is beautiful and seeped in history and I am in heaven. I want to live here. I never want to leave.

Tomorrow I get to meet the falcons and owls and other birds of prey they keep in the grounds. This place is a fairytale come true.

Happy birthday to me :D

[miserye]

American sweet potatoes are always so disappointing

[blametheeditor]

Welcome to Prompt Roulette By Title! Or Bingo! Or B L A M E, whatever you fancy!

In light of the new year, me and the editor @moobloom-mention this one this is the person to blame have created a way to torture each other via the wonderful game of Bingo.

My esteemed colleague and I sent the other 24 different titles although they cheated and made me make 12 of theirs and have created prompts for each one for the other to use. And every other week, we roll to see which title is landed on in order to send over the prompt.

Now, we haven’t agreed to this yet, but the first one to get Bingo gets to decide the plot of a story to collaborate on no one tattle on me we only let them know if I get it first.

But that’s the plan for the year! I’m excited, as well as terrified of what they’ve managed to come up with. The best part though, neither of us are safe.

[teahawke]

Let me tell you a little story about this guy:

This is Harley Jestin. My most favourite guy I've ever created, my dnd character. He's a wood elf bard born on 1st February and on the 30th of December the story he was apart of will come to an end.

He was actually the third dnd character I had ever made despite me not having played it at the time! It was all hypothetical and drawn on my twitch (something I'm so grateful to have recorded). I was just playing around with character design and chatting about how much I wanted to play dnd. Initially he looked very different:

His roots have always been planted in music, and so much of what he came to be initially stemmed from the song Little Dark Age by MGMT. Aspects of his story, his character, and his appearance all came from the lyrics of this song.

"The ruins of the day painted with a scar" - Something reflected in both his story and his character design (more on this in a bit, small side note: this line always reminds me of Dragon Age Inquisition with the scar in the sky, I love fantasy worlds so much)

"Just know that if you hide, it doesn't go away" - This is where the idea of the mask came from! I sat and listened to the song on stream, keeping it muted for chat (curse you DMCA) but drawing little symbols that the song inspired. A mask was one of those things; sometimes used to hide an identity, the line has a sense of mystery around it. That was something I really wanted to work into a character. An untold story. Every version of him has had a mask, even when I changed up the class and race. He has always been hiding something.

"The carvings on the face" - This again forged ideas of the mask, what would the mask be made out of? Initially I was going to create a druid because I love imagery of nature and I really wanted to play a magic user. I believe I actually switched his class to bard outside of the stream but his race changed from High Elf to Wood Elf and I thought it was cool to have a wooden mask (carved!!). I had further ideas of the mask being an instrument for him to play - we never ended up using that idea but I thought the mask could also be a flute.

"I grieve in stereo, the stereo sounds strange" - There was a sort of unknown aspect about his whole story, in my own mind but in the game too. This will make more sense as we go! (Although this line gives me HUGE TAZ: Balance vibes, like yeah you go little fuzzy memories!! give me sad backstories!)

"The image of the dead, dead ends in my mind" - Backstory things xoxo I liked the imagery of a maze that this line provokes, like coming up against something, a blockage, no escape. It has a haunting tone about it, something I was also considering when making his character sheet! On dnd beyond they have a couple of backstory elements you can add to a character and one of them was the 'Haunted One' - [You are haunted by something so terrible that you dare not speak of it. You’ve tried to bury it and run away from it, to no avail.] I think elements of this made it into his character but I ended up not choosing this background for him!

"find me standing all alone / Open-eyed, burn the page, my little dark age" - One of the most important aspects of his character came from this line, "burn the page" quite literally sparked inspiration for me. It formed what his story would be, what it would come from and now I notice every time fire and flames are used in song lyrics, in anything I read, in art I see. I see him everywhere. The line gives a sense of urgency, of hiding something, getting rid of evidence, open-eyes knowing of what you've done, the mystery of what you left behind. All things I took into his character.

I had (and still have) a tendency to create a character in a stream and then never draw them again. Never actually take them anywhere - in the stream I joked about it. How Harley would be left behind, and then I joked when I drew him again that he "made it past the first stream!!":

I messed around with his style a little, changing colour palette when I swapped races and classes (it's so fun to look back at how he's changed throughout this year, these pictures were all before we started playing dnd!):

I switched to redder/earthier tones in his colour palette because of the switch to being a wood elf!! I think this was his first profile picture on dnd beyond :')

My lovely friend reached out (someone who has become my bestest friend in the whole world) asking if I wanted to play dnd with her, her partner and another one of her friends! She knew I had made Harley and had been wanted to play for a while - she was the one who introduced me to dnd in the first place with The Adventure Zone podcast and I just fell in love! We started playing what would be known as The Oblivion Crisis (a homebrew campaign set in the world of Oblivion) on the 28th February.

Right after we started playing I drew him once again changing some stuff around and it went from this:

To this, the first picture of the post! (which remains as his profile picture to this day):

It all started with a small oneshot of Death House because one of the members couldn't be there right away BUT the official campaign began on the 7th of March.

Two days before our first session, our DM told us that he wanted some backstory to our characters, initially we weren't going to have any at all but he asked for some notes, a page or two, on our fellas.

This is what I sent to my party:

Harley’s childhood was a very happy and safe one, his small elven clan (maybe made up of like… 3-4 families?) stayed well away from the conflicts/politics of big cities, travelling through and making home in the many white oak forests of (land/kingdom/wherever this is set - I’d like to think they’re always on the move, at a fairly slow pace but they’re never in one place for too long). He picked up music very easily and the quiet forest life allowed his skills to flourish. A couple of adventures find him playing the viol in a clearing, and one was the prettiest person Harley had ever seen. They were a travelling band and after hearing Harley play, begged him to join them. Encouraged by his friends and family and stirred on by his heart, at the very young age of 50 he left his clan to travel the realm and play music with them. Harley became close with [name] (maybe he had a little crush but I’ll never tell - I didn't think of a name for him for a LONG time) BUT (a few years later, would have to build up some stories of bardic shenanigans) they run into trouble. A bunch of bandits raid their camp and things go from bad to worse, [name] dies in Harley’s arms. (RIP NO NAME I’M SO SORRY HARLEY </3) The other two band members [name and name] blame Harley and abandon him. With no way to contact his family, and no way of knowing where they ended up he goes to the one place he can call home. The white oak forests.

Since the death of [name] and the split of the band, Harley isn’t close to anyone and travels alone (before Crowley and Robin - the other party members). But when he does find himself in their company, he shares his past and his hope to continue [name’s] dream of playing music across the whole realm. Meets Crowley in a forest lumber mill, he’s there looking for work, wanting to always be on the move (distract himself).

And this is what I sent to the DM:

Harley Jestin is a liar.

We played dnd pretty much every single week since then barring a handful of occasions where we would do mini oneshots if a member of the party couldn't make it. Every week on the stream following our dnd session I would update my chat on the story of our campaign, what our characters were up to, and I drew Harley A LOT in that time.

I will try to give an overview of the story: Harley and Crowley met each other in the White Oak forests near Bruma in a lumber mill. Harley overhears Crowley asking for help, he's looking for his daughter and Harley offers to go with him. He encourages Crowley to go to the Imperial City and as they arrive and meet Robin they come into contact with a gnome, Damien Mageous. He tells us he's a collector of magical artefacts and needs some help retrieving one from a nearby ruin.

Each of us there for our own reasons (Harley's hiding wandering, Crowley's search and Robin's research on becoming a druid) and all dirt poor, we decide to take on his job.

These are the player characters of the party: Harley (left), Crowley (middle), and Robin (right).

These guys and all of our travelling companions made for fantastic art inspiration!

Every week I got to talk about how we killed skeletons and stole gems and how very early on I made an NPC cry (it makes me sad to this day!!!). I got to talk about Crowley's search for his daughter and Robin's quest for knowledge of being a Druid.

And then Harley died.

We were making our way out of a crypt following a storyline for Robin. He had forgotten someone very important to him, or rather he had been forced to forget through a memory wipe spell (cast by Damien, our boss xoxo) and upon remembering we set off to the city of Cheydinhal to find the love of his like, Annika. A whole bunch of stuff went down, a few necromancers here and there, but we fought and won against the big bad here, Keld! On the way out of the crypt, Robin set off a trap activating 4 statues of armour to come to life.

With no spell slots left to heal and just plain bad luck, Harley goes to 0 HPs and I roll so bad on the saving throws. And he dies.

In his final moments the DM asked what does Harley say. He didn't say anything. He took off his mask.

AND I CRIED SO MUCH, I WAS SO SAD. I was excited and scared and sad: getting to reveal to my friends the true backstory of this character, to see him DIE (it's okay, he got revived almost immediately). Now we can loop back to...

"The ruins of the day painted with a scar" - Harley Jestin was on the run for a crime he did not commit. For a murder he did not commit. But the death of Eden Ashford haunted his mind and scarred his face. He worked in Bruma castle, forced into being a music teacher instead of losing his life (he stole something from the Lord of the house, his family bartered him away as a worker to the castle so he wouldn't be killed). I think this moment, when everyone got to learn everything, was my absolute favourite of Harley's whole story. I had been purposefully choosing fire magic for his character. His main instrument was a lyre because he was a liar. When we first met Damien, he told Harley in secret he knew who he was due to his... noble connections, and threatened to kill him if he didn't keep quiet. I had been making a spotify playlist with so many songs for his character, most of them having subtle hints at this underlying story. Of fire and flames and love and running out of time.

The person who actually killed this little girl was Kit Baxter, the chef in the castle, and the man Harley loved :)

ANYWAY HERE'S SOME MORE ART XOXO

This is something me and the DM knew from the beginning and getting to do a big reveal of this in real time was so exciting and scary and honestly the most fun. LIKE I was so frightened of accidentally telling people the real story, especially when I was talking about him LIVE on stream three times a week!!!

I had no way of knowing how (if at all) this fake/real backstory would even be revealed because that's just the nature of the game. The dice had meant he was going to die and in that moment he decided to stop hiding. They brought him back to life and he explained... mostly everything. He was on the run, he didn't do it, and he wants to clear his name (although he did conveniently leave out some very crucial info that Harley had worked with some of Crowley's family. People who could've known where his daughter was. At this point in the campaign we had done a sort of rescue mission to Bruma castle but Harley was disguised the whole time!)

He died two more times after this, the second time being stabbed by a demon in an Oblivion Gate (which were becoming more of a threat the further the story went on) and he was saved by a peculiar doll purchased in a magic shop: in that familiar black abyss of death he saw a little argonian girl who told him "thank you for looking after me" and let him come back to life (now with a very cool new yellow eye).

The third and final time Harley died was during one of the biggest battles we had faced. An Oblivion gate opened in the Imperial City the morning after Crowley and Harley's HUGE argument. They hadn't made up but the world started to end anyway. The sky turned red and there was fire everywhere and I don't know if anyone trusted Harley anymore. Two huge daedra (who we nicknamed big red and big blue) absolutely kicked the shit out of us. Roack died, Junk died, Annika died and Damien tried to save Harley. He had fallen unconscious within a firewall, a warmth all too familiar back again all too soon and Damien tried to use a dimension door but with one final swing he was done. His final words were "I'm sorry" and that was it.

I don't think he will pop up during our last session on Saturday. In the time since his death the party were sent back in time (he was too but not with any of his memories), so it's not impossible. But I think I am both heartbroken and satisfied with the way his story unfolded.

Harley means so much to me, creating and playing him has been like no other creative endeavour I've ever taken on, it has been so fulfilling. It has, in a way, kept me going! This little elf boy who was awkward and mysterious and alone. Who just couldn't get the words out and froze in the face of danger. Harley Jestin wasn't a hero. He wasn't a hero and he died anyway, his story never finished. He never got to find out why Kit blamed him. He never got to make it up to Crowley. He ran out of time and it makes me so incredibly sad. I am so proud to have made him, to have experienced all of this.

I feel so lucky to be here and have him. He is just an elf, a drawing, a story but he is also a part of me. I think I could talk about him forever to anyone who will listen.

which oc would you say was your ‘oc of the year’? (because you made them this year, they had the most development this year, or you just feel like it)

[draconicshinx]

I am BEGGING younger drivers. drive carefully. give yourself room. for fuck's sake use your turn signals and don't fucking weave thru traffic. this is not a video game, this is real life and if you get into an accident, you could get killed or kill someone else VERY easily

[makshu]

Oh and, yesterday I visited one of the seven natural wonders of the world :)

[theshadowrealmitself]

I like to think that Vulcans who come to understand that Humans just can’t try to process emotions the same way as them, it’s just healthiest to let it out in harmless ways, decide that venting and stuff should be taken just as seriously as Vulcan’s meditation time, and will encourage the Humans around them to complain about what’s upsetting them

People who are used to aloof Vulcans who avoid Humans at all cost running into one comforting a Human

“-and then they said my cheesecake was subpar, and they didn’t even bring a dish!!!”

“The purpose of this event was that every participant brings a food item of sorts, correct?”

“Yeah!!”

“And they did not follow this rule while insulting dishes that were brought?”

“Mostly just my dish but yeah >:(“

“How illogical”

“That’s what I’m saying!!!”

[bruciemilf]

“Bruce is emotionally incompetent and can’t step outside his own morality” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“Dick is extremely stubborn and thinks he’s right all the time” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“Jason has hypocritical tendencies” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“ Tim is entitled and doesn’t think about people when seeking results, and often acts uncaring” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“Damian is rude and bratty” yeah, it’s a character flaw.

Also, some people may not even regard everything listed above as flaws.

Having negative traits allows incredible flexibility within your characters, what makes them intriguing, what makes them easy to relate to. If you want to write people, then write people. But they can’t be good and clean all the time.

[mourn-and-watch]

just want to remind y'all of some kirkwall-related details that are not at all relevant for the possible events of datv:

meredith stannard is alive and kicking and is also planning a war against tevinter

red templars are in control of the gallows; it's hard to tell what's going on in the city itself, but with varric absent it might be left with no viscount again

there's an elven graveyard on sundermount where ancient elves entered uthenera; it is also possibly dedicated/related to mythal

there was also a demon contained in an idol on top of sundermount who supposedly possessed a great knowledge about arlathan and eluvians

the veil in kirkwall has always been remarkably thin and tevinter magisters were weakening it on purpose during their reign; the whole city was built as an enormous blood magic ritual site

if the veilguard squad is going to travel through the eluvians there's still one in kirkwall. the one that has been plot-relevant since dao

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji goes to Lotus Pier (No relation to the AU of the same name)

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[jagalart]

Peacock Prince

[frangipani-wanderlust]

Hey, if money were no object, I'd be in Bali all the time too. It's lovely, there's great snorkeling and diving, a volcano, good food, and—if you speak Indonesian—actually really easy to ditch the rest of the tourists.

"why are so many of my old school friends in Bali all the time" and other questions that are apparently plaguing my early twenties

[moghedien]

Minthara says “in Her name” when you first meet her and she’s following the Absolute but when you recruit her and she expresses that she no longer follows any god, but she still has an intact paladin oath, and she says “in your name” occasionally because she’s no longer Lolth’s paladin or the Absolute’s paladin, she’s your paladin

[theslimeologist]

Its viscerally upsetting that our preferences are apparently respected but we’re all automatically opted in for tumblr’s AI 3rd party “partners” to supposedly scrape our posts and content? L O L

BLOG SETTINGS -> VISIBILITY -> ENABLE “PREVENT 3RD PARTY SHARING”

If you’re on mobile *you must first update the tumblr app*

THIS MUST BE DONE FOR EVERY INDIVIDUAL PUBLIC BLOG YOU HAVE

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

putting my prediction on record now that the coming decade is going to see the rise of viral-marketed fancy at-home water filtration systems, driving and driven by a drastic reduction in the quality of U.S. tap water (given that we are in a 'replacement era' where our current infrastructure is reaching the end of its lifespan--but isn't being replaced). also guessing that by the 2030s access to drinkable tap water will be a mainstream class issue, with low-income & unstably housed people increasingly forced to rely on expensive bottled water when they can't afford the up-front cost of at-home filtration--and with this being portrayed in media as a "moral failing" and short-sighted "choice," rather than a basic failure of our political & economic systems. really hope i'm just being alarmist, but plenty of this already happens in other countries, and the U.S. is in a state of decline, so. here's praying this post ages into irrelevance. timestamped April 2023

[gatoburr0]

Bracelet date ♡

Bonus